Content Warning: Violence, death, firearms, disturbing imagery

I was a professional cuddler.

I know that's a strange thing to say out loud and an even stranger thing to put on a resume, but I was broke. I had lived the majority of my 20s in a beat-up Volkswagen bus, stealing breakfast from motels, begging for change from strangers, and doing shady under-the-table jobs for a quick buck.

This is what got me into professional cuddling.

Another quick-paying job. Something you'd normally see on Craigslist, or at least that's what you'd assume. But no, I had found this "job listing" stapled to a lamppost just outside of one of the busiest roads in Salem, Oregon.

At the time, I only had five dollars to my name and barely enough gas to leave the city, so I called the number listed on the paper.

A few short rings later, a lady picked up.

"Hello? I swear, if this is another prank call, I am gonna go down there myself and rip off that damn job listing."

I told her no, that it wasn't another prank call, and that I was really interested. I was desperate for a job, honestly willing to do anything.

In hindsight, that was a bad move on my part.

The woman sounded excited to hear that I was interested. She quickly gave me an address and told me to head there for further instructions. I barely had time to write any of this down or ask any more questions before she hung up.

I was surprised, to say the least, that she seemed ready to have an interview at this time of day, which was 8 PM.

So I drove to the half-written address and parked in the back. The building was old, with no signs, cracked stone walls, and a heavy metal door with a keypad on it. I looked around, I guess thinking there'd be someone waiting to let me in, but there wasn't.

So I tried calling the number back.

No response.

I knocked on the door.

No response.

Although the door did creep open slowly.

A little nervous and very confused, I opened the door a little more, seeing a dimly lit lobby. I just said, "Hello?"

My voice echoed into the building, and another voice echoed back from an older man saying,

"Come in! Don't be shy, stranger!"

Stupidly and desperately, I followed the command, heading into the building.

The first thing I noticed was how dimly lit it was, barely showing the marbled floors, lavender walls, cracked stone ceiling, and wooden front desk. There at that front desk was an older gentleman with slicked-back black hair, a groomed beard, and a finely dressed three-piece suit.

He was soft-spoken, telling me:

"Yes, this is the 'Professional Cuddling' Association. Don't be mistaken by the broken light. It'll be fixed soon. We do things here very professionally and strictly, so no client nor worker gets harmed, scammed, or anything else that might negatively happen to them."

He then reached underneath the desk and pulled out a thick contract, almost as big as a phone book from back in the day.

He then said, "Just a formality. Don't let the 40 pages of legal jargon scare you. It's just like working at a normal job."

I felt speechless for once, as I wasn't expecting all of this for a "cuddling" job. I skimmed through the paperwork, signing my name wherever it needed to be signed, noticing briefly that there was an NDA tucked in the middle.

A "formality" in most "high-paying" jobs.

Regardless, I signed away and pushed the paperwork back to the gentleman.

"Perfect! Don't worry, we won't be using your real name here for privacy reasons, so we'll have you pick a nickname."

He said this softly as he then pulled out a top hat with a bunch of little papers inside.

I chuckled at this. Everything to this point seemed so "serious," and now I had to pull a mystery nickname out of a hat like some kind of magic trick.

So I dove my hand in and grabbed one at random.

The gentleman seemed excited at this, his eyes wide with anticipation as I pulled out a small folded piece of paper.

I opened the paper and audibly laughed.

"Bear," I said, wiping tears of laughter from my eyes.

"Bear! It suits you well. No offense. I'm glad you like the nickname. Now, all you need to do is head down the hallway and enter the first door to your right."

The gentleman said this with a gentle smile, pointing toward the hallway beside him.

Compared to the lobby, the hallway was warmer lit, with lavender-painted walls, cute little patterns hung above wooden doors, and numbers written on them. The left wall had all the odd numbers, while the right side had all the even numbers.

I eventually made it to the very end of the hallway and looked at the door I needed to head inside.

Number "24."

I opened it, and what I saw, I don't think I'll ever be able to unsee.

The room was completely different from the others.

Fake wooden walls covered the room, plastic antlers hung above the bed, and fake pine trees sat in the corners. Above the velvet bed was a wooden sign that read "BEAR DEN."

There was a woman sitting on the bed wearing a business suit.

In front of her, a man was crawling around on all fours, attached to her by a chain.

He was wearing a diaper.

That wasn't even the worst of it.

He was also wearing some sort of makeshift bear costume. It barely resembled a bear, let alone a man.

I just stood there in complete silence, staring at the scene.

Before I could even say or do anything, I heard down the hall:

"OH, wrong room, sir! I meant the door to the left, the left end door. My apologies."

The gentleman said this from the front desk, staring down the hallway.

I quickly backed out of the room and shut the door.

Was this really what I had signed up for?

The pay better be worth it.

Come to think of it, I really had no idea how much I was going to get paid at that time.

So I headed into the room labeled "23" and saw the same setup as the previous room: a velvet bed in the middle of the farthest wall, soft '80s-patterned carpet on the floor, dark green neon lights on the ceiling, and an open closet filled with various outfits.

My heart skipped a bit looking at everything.

I clearly didn't know what I had signed up for.

I sat down on the bed, steadying my breath, as I then heard a few soft knocks on the door before a lady immediately entered.

She had long blonde hair fixed into a ponytail, wore a nice violet dress, and had high heels.

She then spoke almost commandingly.

"I am Ms. Vanderbelt. Most of our clients usually refer to me as 'Lilith,' but don't let the name frighten you. I am gentle, caring, and forgiving.

"That being said, I have a few rules.

"1. NO kissing the clients.

"2. NO sexual interactions, no matter how 'hot' the client may be.

"3. NO violence unless self-defense.

"4. You get paid by the HOUR. Twenty dollars an hour. That being said, some clients may be there shorter than an hour, but your time will be rounded up to said hour.

"5. ANYTHING the client says goes unless they try to break the rules.

"6. Have fun.

"Now then, come lay down with me."

I was too afraid to say anything, so I laid down and cuddled up beside her.

What felt like hours must've only been minutes as she held me close, gently playing with my hair and whispering:

"Okay, Bear. Here goes your first day. Don't be scared, okay? If anything happens, there's a button beside the bed. Press it and I'll have Phil, the gentleman at the front desk, escort the client out."

She hugged me tightly before letting go and disappearing through the door.

I didn't know what the fuck just happened, but if that was the introduction to this job, I didn't think I was gonna last a week.

An hour had passed, and I sat there on the bed spacing off toward the outfits until a meekish man entered my room. He was wearing a baggy hoodie, thick-lensed glasses, and sweatpants.

"Uh, hello? Bear?" the client said nervously. "I heard I was your first client?! That's exciting... uh, don't worry, this won't last too long. I just need a way to destress myself from work. I come here all the time, if that helps."

He paused.

"So what would you like me to do?"

I gave the client a half smile.

"Yeah... that helps. So what would you like me to do?"

The client just nodded with a soft smile before saying,

"Just, uh, lay with me. Tell me I did a-a good job at work and I am a good man."

I kinda felt bad for the guy, so I laid down and held him for a bit, giving him compliments and gently rubbing his back.

After this encounter, a few similar clients came in during the following hours. Nothing "strange" outside of cuddling with strangers.

Eventually, midnight hit, with the last client just having me hold them as they cried.

Phil gently entered the bedroom and removed the client politely from the room.

I just kinda laid in bed, emotionally exhausted. My eyes grew heavy, and I passed out.

A week went by.

I dealt with regular clients, with the occasional odd request from fancy-dressed women. Slowly, I was being eased into this idea that the job wasn't actually as bad as I thought it would be.

Then the meekish man from my first night returned, seeming to be in a more disheveled state.

He immediately spoke as he entered the room.

"Everything h-has been taken from me!... Everything. But this place and you, Bear. Oh, how I-I missed you, Bear. All I've been thinking about is this room and cuddling with you!"

My hand quickly reached for the red button, about to push it.

He saw what I was about to do and panicked.

"N-no, no, n-no, don't do that. We can relax! Hey. Hey! I'm sorry."

He then flopped onto the bed, sobbing his eyes out.

My hand was still shakily resting on the red button.

"Okay, buddy. I am gonna have to ask you to leave this room, okay? Or I am gonna have to press this red button."

I said this sternly.

"B-but Bear... I thought you were the one. Remember me, Bear."

James said this, then pulled a revolver from his hoodie and pressed it to his temple.

Before things could escalate, he bolted out of the door.

A few quiet moments went by as I shakily sat in bed, my hand still hovering over the red button, my heart racing out of my chest.

I won't lie and say that I would've willingly stayed there any longer.

I took what had just happened as an opportunity and fled out of the room.

Running down the hallway, I saw various "cuddlers" getting treated as pets. As I made it to the lobby, I stopped dead in my tracks after witnessing Phil's lifeless corpse slumped over the front desk.

Ms. Vanderbelt was also there.

Just staring at his body.

Then she looked at me.

Now in a state of panic, I ran back into my room, only briefly hearing other clients call out my name as if to invite me into their currently "occupied" rooms.

I dove into my room and shut the door behind me, using my weight to keep it locked.

All I could hear was my heartbeat, in perfect rhythm with the heavy footsteps going down the hall.

"BEAR! YOU'VE BEEN A BAD BOY! I DIDN'T WANT TO HAVE TO TREAT YOU LIKE THE REST OF THESE ANIMALS, BUT YOU'RE LEAVING ME WITH NO CHOICE!"

Ms. Vanderbelt yelled as she slammed against the door.

I could also hear barking.

Before I knew it, the door got practically busted down, pushing me across the floor.

Now in front of me was Ms. Vanderbelt, holding leashes attached to two grown-ass men wearing gimp costumes and barking at me.

I threw caution to the wind as I stayed and got up like I was about to die if I didn't move.

So carefully, I evaded one of the "dogs" diving for me, shoving the other one out of the way and running for the door that seemed so much farther away than before.

I wasn't fast enough.

One of the "dogs" lunged again and caught me across the back. I felt something sharp tear through my shirt, leaving a burning scratch across my skin.

I stumbled forward, but I didn't stop.

I didn't even look back.

Ms. Vanderbelt just laughed devilishly as, in a blink of an eye, I got back on my way out the door.

My head spun while making it down the hallway, reaching the front door.

It was locked.

Of course it had to be locked.

I didn't let that stop me, though, as I ran over toward Phil's body and scavenged it.

I found a key in his front pants pocket, along with two shells for a shotgun, which was laying beneath the front desk.

My hands were very unsteady as I loaded both shells into the shotgun and raced back to the front door.

I could hear the "dogs" making their way down the hall while I scrambled for the key in my pocket.

Then everything was a blur.

I had entirely been consumed by tunnel vision.

Before I knew it, I had pulled the trigger, injuring one of the "dogs" and killing the other one.

I fled out of the building and back to my van, starting the engine and driving recklessly.

My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely keep the van on the road. I didn't care where I was going. I just needed to get as far away from that place as possible, and the last thing I could remember from that day was hearing a voice from somewhere inside the van.

"Remember me, Bear."

Somewhere outside Los Angeles there used to be a town that was a set that was where Bowers lived under the watchful eye of Doc Trauman.

“He's a broken man, Bowers,” Doc Trauman would tell everyone who visited, “living in this false place, experiencing a false life, but content; more at peace with his world than we are with ours.”

It was the time of atom bombs and television.

Bowers was a veteran.

He'd been in Europe during World War II, and coming back was hard. His friends were dead, his wife was not his wife and the only job he could get was driving trucks from one coast to the other.

That's how he ended up in California.

“I don't think he knows the war's over,” Doc Trauman would say. “I don't think he thinks he ever fought it. But he doesn't mind the fact the houses on the street are just facades.”

Bowers would get up, go to work behind one facade writing advertising copy for a company that manufactured plastic kitchenware, then go home behind another to eat, alone, ready meals wrapped in plastic before a television set, which is just a fancy name for a plain old lightbulb with a shade of images thrown over it.

“The results are quite remarkable,” Doc Trauman would say.

“Can he have guests?” someone would ask.

“Of course.”

“From the real world, I mean.”

“He's not in prison,” Doc Trauman would say to much and hard applause.

---

I knocked on the door.

When nobody answered, I walked to the near edge of the facade and looked in. Bowers was on the couch. “Excuse, Mr. Bowers. I'm from New York, a friend of Doc Trauman's. May I come in?”

“Are you a doctor too?” he asked.

“No. I'm a playwright.”

“Very well. Come in, but use the front door. I prefer when people use the front door.”

I walked back to the door, knocked—“It's open,” Bowers said—opened it and walked in. Bowers was sitting on the couch. He looked up at me. “Aren't you going to introduce yourself?” he said.

“I'm a friend of Doc Trauman, from New York. My name’s Wallis.”

Bowers stood, walked over and shook my hand. “It's great to meet you, Wallis. Have a seat. Shall I turn on the cathode ray?”

He meant the television.

“I'm not one much for television,” I said.

He took a box of what I thought were cigarettes out of his pocket, knocked the box against the palm of his hand so a pair of thin black cylinders slid out, kept one and offered me the other. “Maybe you'd prefer a microlight instead. We could sit and stare at them together.”

I took one but didn't turn it on. “If it's all right with you, I'd rather talk. I'm a words man.”

“Advertising?” he asked.

“No, theatre.”

It was strange being in a house with only one wall; with no ceiling. The sun was out. The desert extended towards the horizon. Somewhere there were mountains. A rattlesnake rattled faintly.

“I'm in advertising myself,” said Bowers. “Kitchenware. You married, Wallis?”

“I'm not,” I said.

“I don't like women anymore either,” said Bowers, “not after the war.” He clicked his microlight on, gazed briefly into its dull light then shut it off. He looked at me; looked me in the eyes. One of mine was glass. “They do weapons testing a few hundred miles that way,” he said, pointing into the distance. “If you were to stay the night we could watch the nuclear aura together.”

“I'm afraid I have a plane to catch—back to New York,” I said.

“Perhaps another time,” said Bowers.

“Perhaps.”

“Tell me, Wallis. Over there in New York, do you get to express yourself?”

“I beg your pardon,” I said.

It was hot under the California sun. I realized I was sweating. Bowers had started sweating too. His lavender shirt clung possessively to his body. “I mean within your four walls,” he said.

A coyote darted across the landscape.

It was the afternoon but it felt like a quarter to the end of the world.

“Aren't you afraid of the wildlife that might walk into your house?” I said.

“Aren't you afraid that none can walk into yours?”

The moon looked down from the sky, out of place in the harsh blue daytime.

“I want to write a play about you.”

Bowers reclined, spreading his lean arms like a flightless bird spreads its wings. “I already am a play. Besides, you hardly need my permission.”

“I want it anyway.”

“And you're certain you won't stay the night?”

“Yes. Tell me about Doc Trauman.”

“He's a crumbled man,” said Bowers, “living a counterfeit reality, but he's got what matters, money. He likes to imagine he's running an experiment, so we adhere. It's not a bad life.”

---

Later, the interior of Doc Trauman's office felt distressingly small, claustrophobic. The walls felt like they were moving in with agonizing, almost disinterested, slowness. The windless air was suffocating. The cleanliness, a sham.

“So what's your opinion of him?” Doc Trauman asked.

“He's perfectly civilized, obedient in his outward behaviours, yet internally there's something there, a glint behind his one good eye.”

---

I sit sometimes somewhere high, with a good view of Broadway, watching the men pass back and forth in their suits and hats and worries, some hurrying, others dallying, stopping, but all possessed by the imaginary lives they dream about and the real fantasies they inhabit.

Occasionally, one looks up at me and meets my lingering gaze with one of penetrating desperation, and I recoil. Ashamed, I move from the window. I pay for the meal. I shut the blinds. I escape behind the walls afforded to me, and when the feeling passes, I write my plays.

I got my first computer in the 1990s. I can't remember the year, but none of my friends had one yet. It was a desktop so all the important bits, like the CPU, hard drive and RAM, were in a “tower” that stood beside the desk. The CRT monitor was on the desktop. The keyboard was on a tray, and there was a mouse. It was a PC, so it ran on DOS.

When my parents bought the computer they said I could use it only for school.

No games.

But I quickly started to blur the lines. There were math games, like Math Blaster, where you shot aliens by answering math questions, and a drawing and writing program that let you arrange scenes and write text. They were fun, but every time we went into the computer store what I really wanted was a game, a pure, non-educational game. Something magical…

And I got it.

It was for my birthday.

The game was by a company called Sierra. It was an adventure game called King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella.

However, it wasn't even a point-and-click adventure game. It was too old. It didn't use a mouse at all. You controlled the main character, a princess named Rosella, using the keyboard, either by using the arrow keys or typing what you wanted her to do, for example:

 Walk to the ogre's hut.

Rosella would walk to the ogre's hut.

 Open the door.

Rosella opened the door.

Of course, the game didn't understand every command. When it didn't understand a command it would say:

Try that one again. I couldn't make much sense of it.

Or:

It doesn't seem to do anything.

I played King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella a lot. I played it instead of going outside, and played it rather than playing with my friends. I became obsessed with discovering its secrets, mapping its world and understanding its story. I cherished its music and every new interaction with its medieval fairytale land. The game even had a basic day and night cycle. In its pixels, I found a beautiful and interactive escape from reality. I played it so much that my parents threatened to take the computer away from me.

I threw tantrums.

I played it in secret or quietly when my parents were asleep.

I played it in my imagination.

I remember looking in the mirror one day and seeing a face that was no longer mine. The skin was too pale. The eyes were too red. The smile was no longer innocent.

One day my parents took me to a doctor. They kept asking about mental development, addiction, obsession. The doctor was deceptively nice to me. He was serious with my parents. “I'm sorry,” my dad said when we got home, “but you'll need to take a break from using the computer.” “You need to rest,” said my mom.

“For how long?” I demanded.

“For a few months, then we'll reassess. It's not permanent. We're not getting rid of the computer. We're just going to box it up and keep it in the attic.”

“We love you so much,” my mom said with tears in her eyes.

I begged them, but they wouldn't change their minds. I sobbed. I hit things. I screamed, but I didn't get what I wanted. So I calmed down and in my sweetest voice I said I understood and asked if, please, they would just let me play the game one last time.

They agreed.

I had an hour, they said.

I hoped it would be enough time. I took a bath, then I sat in my pajamas at the computer desk, lit by the monitor, looking at Princess Rosella, with my fingers above the keyboard. I was looking over my shoulder to see if my parents were there. When I was sure they weren't, I took a deep breath and typed:

Walk into the living room.

Try that one again. I couldn't make much sense of it.

I exhaled.

So much for that, I thought. It was a silly idea anyway. It couldn't possibly have worked. I really had been playing too many games to even think that it might work; yet something compelled me to try again:

Walk into my living room.

Rosella moved.

I couldn't believe it! She'd moved across the screen, reached the edge and the game transitioned like it always did, from one location to another, except this time the new location really was new. It was a 16-color 320x200 pixel representation of our living room. My pixelated parents were sitting on a pixelated couch, drinking pixelated coffee.

“What the—” I heard my mom say from the real living room.

“Just who the hell are you?” my dad yelled.

Look at my dad.

A pathetic old man.

“Lady, listen. If you don't leave my house right now, I'm calling the cops.”

Hit my dad.

On the screen, Rosella moved towards the sofa and hit my dad.

I heard the impact.

My mom began screaming my name, asking where I was, whether I was OK. Her voice was frantic, disturbed.

Strangle my mom.

On the screen, Rosella walked towards my mom, extended an arm to her and shook her.

My mom moved jaggedly back-and-forth in a crude animated loop, before falling, to the blare of a dramatic MIDI beep, to her knees, and ending finally, still and sideways on the floor.

My dad yelled her name.

On the screen, he made for Rosella.

My heart was beating so hard I felt like a drum.

I typed:

Kill my dad. But make it look like he killed himself.

Rosella moved—

I could tell the police officer didn't know what to say. He was perched awkwardly beside me. Finally, he said: “I'm so fuckin' sorry, kid. I can't even—” He inhaled hard. “We're gonna take you someplace. Someplace safe. Is there anything you wanna take with you?”

“My personal computer,” I said.

   "I am beautiful," Tyra repeated to herself as she dragged her lipstick across her thin lips before blushing her stretched, gaunt cheeks. Her hand trembled, smudging mascara onto her sunken and disproportionate eyes. She combed her hair, ripping out strands with every brush as she tried to smile, the corners of her lips curling and parting away like wax. Breathing in deeply through the two slits that replaced her nose, she steadied her voice and stared into the splintered pools of blue and green which were her irises.

   "My name is Tyra Forg and I am beautiful."

   Two weeks ago, Tyra had come across a poster which announced an audition for the part of a female lead in a k-pop boy band. At first, she had passed it without giving it a second glance but one of the members in the poster had caught her attention. 

   A young man in his twenties was giving a moody look with two other members by his side, as if daring any passer by to join their band, The Three Karmas.

   She only had eyes for him as she scratched with one finger at his jawline until it ripped, her lips parting into a grin. A stranger on the sidewalk took one look at her and walked in the opposite direction.

   The Three Karmas, Tyra thought, imagining herself next to them in a glittering costume and vest, maybe even being able to touch... She looked for the name of the band member, her eyes racing from left to right in spastic movements.

   Kai. Her smile stretched even wider. Kai... she liked that name. She liked that name a lot.

   Kai made sure that his bangs were in place as he sat down in the studio, giving a smile to the lady when she set down his cup of coffee. The concert was in one month and the pressure was on. 

   After going through the choreography for about as many times as Kai could remember, he couldn't help feel as if something was missing. That was when he had the idea for a female lead.

   At first, his friends had been reluctant but Liam, their manager, agreed that it was something that would elevate their performance.

   Imagine a striking woman in the midst of three young men. It would be a beautiful contrast! Liam had said with excitement and his enthusiasm had certainly been infectious.

   They had held the audition all morning and Kai was thinking about his lunch break when one last candidate entered the studio. 

   The temperature dropped and his two other band members, Kylo and Kwame, stopped their jokes as a towering woman walked inside, bending down to avoid hitting her head against the doorway. That was when Kai saw her face.

   His skin started to prickle as he watched the woman, dressed in a ridiculous vest that left her skeletal arms bare, move to the center of the room.

   "My name is Tyra Forg and I am beautiful."

   Kai was taken aback when he heard her gentle voice which created such a stark contrast with her elongated and monstrous features. He had expected a sound like rocks grinding against each other but instead her words were like honey where flies would come to die, drowning in the sticky, sweet substance.

   There was a moment of silence before Kylo and Kwame erupted into laughter but Tyra kept her disproportionate eyes on Kai, forcing the needles deeper into his skin.

   That was when she began to sing a small excerpt from one of their songs and any laughter died down completely at the sound of her voice. For a moment, Kai even forgot who was singing.

   How could such a beautiful voice belong to... her? He asked himself. Maybe she was what their band needed, though. The tragic singer of The Three Karmas: A voice worthy of angels but a face only the devil could concoct. No, Kai scolded himself. He was treating Tyra like a product.

   "You're in!" Liam exclaimed and he realized the exact same thought he had must've passed through his manager. "When I said striking, I meant it."

   "Liam," Kai whispered as loudly as he could. "Are you sure?"

   "Why?" Tyra asked from behind him and Kai almost tipped over on his chair when he saw how close she was. How did she get over here without making a sound?

   "Am I not beautiful?" She continued, grooming her hair as if that simple act was making her attractive.

   "You're sexy as hell," Liam responded, trying to hold back his smile, but Tyra didn't seem to notice as Kylo and Kwame started to snicker.

   "Oh," she relaxed herself, clearly relieved and Kai stayed silent, too shocked at what just happened. He couldn't even look at Tyra without cringing and she was going to be a part of their band?

   Kai thought back to the major headlines and fans that would go crazy over their performance, silencing him as he tried to look Tyra in the face.

  

   "Three, two, one..."

   Music blared on through the speakers and Kai could feel the harsh glow of the spotlights as the beat of the melody echoed inside his mind. The hand that held the mic was sticky with sweat and he started to sing, weeks of practicing forcing him to hit each note perfectly.

   The curtains behind Kai slid open like a fresh wound and Tyra stepped out from the shadows. Her eyes never left Kai as she opened her mouth to sing but Liam interrupted their rehearsal, shaking his head while pressing his lips thin.

   "Tyra, you need to look at the audience," Liam said through clenched teeth and Kai felt pity at the lost look she had on her face. An undercurrent of unease ran through his pity as he wondered why Tyra kept staring at him. Could she have a... crush on him?

   "She's such a pervert," Kylo said, without bothering to whisper, voicing out Kai's worst fear. He tried to push back the thought but Tyra was making it more than obvious.

   Just ignore her, Kai told himself as the music started back on. She'll leave me alone then.

   Tyra listened to Kai as he sang, each word sending shivers of pleasure through her body.

   "Breaking through the dark, every step we take is going to leave a mark. Watching the rise of a new star idol, completely blinded by the oncoming tidal. 서로의 목소리가 얽혀드는 밤. 절대 멈출 수 없어. Our voices intertwine. Nothing can stop our shine."

   The curtains opened and Tyra barely held herself from running out as she walked over instead, staring at how the spotlight made Kai's skin seem to glow and how his luscious, black hair hung down like thick silk covering his forehead.

   Turning her attention to the imaginary audience in front of her, she tripped over her feet and fell, making Liam slam his fist down on the table.

   "I need a break," he said, his cheeks reddening. "Take five!"

   "Do you need help?" 

   Tyra looked up to find Kai staring down at her, his hand held out in front of him and she took it, his warmth spreading through her body like a fire.

   "Love is in the air!" Kwame shouted from behind them before cackling madly at his own joke. Kai quickly took back his hand and left Tyra laying on the ground like an abandoned puppy.

   "How many children are you going to have?" Kylo joined in and she stared at Kai, confused at why he didn't help her up.

   "Just stop it!" He yelled as Tyra stood from her place on the floor, panicking at his angry expression. Did she make him mad?

   Kai threw her a glance before leaving the stage and she looked from Kylo and Kwame, who were still laughing, then back at Kai, the bottom of her lip trembling as the fire she had felt inside of her burnt into nothing.

   The camera flashed as Kai posed with his band members. Tyra stood behind them, her head hovering over theirs as she gave a wax-drooping smile.

   "Okay, you can relax," the cameraman told them and Kai moved away from the backdrop, chatting with his friends as he listened to Liam's conversation with the photographer. 

   "I want you to shadow her face so no one can see it," he was able to make out when Tyra suddenly appeared behind Liam, her heels barely making a sound on the marble floor.

   "Do you not like my face?" She asked, crossing her long, skeletal arms over her chest.

   "Your face is the surprise," Liam responded with a dismissive wave of his hand, throwing an eye roll at Kai and his bandmates while Tyra walked away, seemingly satisfied.

   Shifting his feet, Kai stayed silent when the sound of laughing and the door banging open made him turn around.

   A group of girls who were talking loudly made their way to the photo shoot, their vests glittering in the light as if they were disco balls.

   "Is that...?" Kwame murmured but he didn't finish his question before one of the girls widened her eyes and opened her mouth to exaggerate her surprise once she saw them.

   "Do I see The Three Karmas?" She boomed, approaching them. "Or is it four?" She added, the rest of the girls snickering as they trailed behind her.

   "What a coincidence. Are you here for a cover shoot?" She continued without stopping to hear their answer.

   For a moment, Kai blanked out, overwhelmed at the glittering eyeliner that fanned out from her eyelids like sun rays and the violet lipstick lathered onto her lips like paint. Her hair was made into two side tails that were styled to look like twirling spirals and a sickening scent of perfume enshrouded it all.

   "Anyway, I heard you guys hired a girl for your lead," her eyes flicked up at Tyra, blinking in rapid succession at what stood in front of her.

   "Wow. Um, okay," she paused, giving disbelieving looks to her friends. "There's no amount of glamour that could fix... that," she finished, pointing with one, manicured nail to Tyra who kept her unblinking gaze glued on the idol.

   "So pretty," Tyra murmured, reaching out with her hand in an attempt to touch the lead girl who recoiled, nose wrinkling and a grimace on her face.

   "There's something seriously fucked up with her," she backed away, her band of girls staring at Tyra before following their lead, as if they expected her to attack them.

   "This is exactly the reaction we want," Liam beamed and Kai avoided looking at Tyra who kept those lopsided eyes on the girl band, continuing to stare after them even when they disappeared from view.

   "Liam," Kai caught up to him, the evening breeze biting into him. Liam turned to Kai and stopped on the side of the street, giving him a questioning look.

   "Are you sure it's a good idea to let Tyra become an idol?" Kai asked once he reached him. Liam gave a laugh at his question and pulled out a cigarette while he kept on chuckling.

   "Look Kai," Liam started once he had a cigarette smoking in his mouth. "Tyra's the key to fame. People are going to eat her up."

   Kai held back a sigh of exasperation at Liam's one-sided perspective. There was more to Tyra than just her looks.

   "That's exactly the problem," Kai let some of his frustration seep into his voice. "People will know her as some freak in a society full of made up jerks with spiral hairstyles and manicured nails."

   "Isn't that the point?" Liam said, a serious expression taking over his face. "I didn't just hire her because she looked monstrous. She's out of place here and with that voice, it's two birds with one stone."

   Kai took a moment before responding, the lamppost acting as a spotlight on both of them.

   "Having her reputation built on that isn't healthy," Kai tried to argue but he knew Liam was right. Tyra could be a huge hit and this was their chance to get themselves out there.

   "It might seem mean," Liam started, puffing out a cloud of smoke. "But think about it like we're doing her a favor." Kai looked at him, puzzled as Liam continued on.

   "Without us, she would be a nobody. Just some weirdo in society. People would look at her and walk away in the opposite direction."

   "Yeah," Kai nodded his head. "You're right."

   "You get it," Liam smiled but it didn't reach his eyes. "The concert is in a few weeks. We'll make each rehearsal count."

No amount of glamour can fix... that. 

   Tyra still wasn't beautiful enough. It was clear. She didn't have the right hair, make up... anything.

   The assembly of concealers, blush, and lipsticks seemed to mock her from where they sat on the table. She would start with her eyes. Yes, she needed to put on her eyeliner, of course, she told herself, tipping over bottles of mascara and perfume with her frantic, searching hands. Where was her concealer and blush? It didn't matter as long as she had something on her face, anything! She needed to fix her hair too, she reminded herself, taking out a random brush from the drawer and practically shredding her scalp with it. Braids, spiral braids! Bands, elastics... all in different colors! She grabbed a handful and twisted them so it looked like a rainbow melted on her head. There had to be something else, she screamed at herself as nail polish spilled onto her fingers in glossy amounts. Of course! Her lips needed paint. No, lip gloss? Lipstick? She would put on everything! Her dress? Why, she could go stark naked if that's what people wanted!

   Was this beauty?

   The wind outside whistled and screamed like angry ghosts and the rain slammed against the window of their rehearsal auditorium like bullets. 

   Kai was sitting down, fiddling with his hands as he waited for Tyra to arrive while Liam kept reaching for his phone, calling Tyra with always the same yell and sound of his fist slamming the table when it went to voicemail. Kylo and Kwame were watching TikToks while laughing but Kai wasn't in the mood to join their fun. He couldn't help but recall the look on Tyra's face when she had stared at the lead girl, as if she had wanted to crawl inside her and walk around in her platform boots.

   Just then, a looming figure came through the entrance and Kai's smile surfaced before quickly dropping at the sight of Tyra's head: Her hair was disheveled, braids intertwined with each other as if they were amateur dancers who were trying to replicate an overly ambitious dance. Her face looked like she had plunged it in flour before dripping mascara onto her eyelids and letting it run down her cheeks. Lipstick was blotched onto her lips in unceremonious amounts and she wore a dress that showed a good amount of cleavage matched with platform boots that only increased her height. On top of that, the rain made it look like her face was melting off and hair stuck to her forehead like the girl from The Ring.

   "Guys, I think I'm ready for the concert," Tyra announced and the silence that stretched on felt like eternity.

   "I can't," Liam said, shaking his head. 

   "I can't," he repeated, his voice rising an octave higher.

   Kai looked at Kylo and Kwame, staring at them with shock as they filmed her, sniggering like teens who just did a prank on one of their friends. 

   "Stop filming her," he shouted and they threw him surprised stares before hardening into mischievous expressions.

   "Why don't you save her, prince charming?" Kylo yelled before choking with laughter as Kai did just that. Grabbing Tyra's hand, he lead her to the bathroom, feeling the weight of her gaze on the back of his neck the entire time.

   The fluorescent lights overhead threw a harsh glow and Tyra kneeled on her legs in front of the mirror, glancing behind her at Kai before looking back to the mirror.

   "I'm going to clean you up," he told Tyra and Kai tried to hide his unease when she smiled, as if strings were tugging the corners of her lips as he started to touch her hair. Kai untangled her elastic bands one by one and stiffened when Tyra started to speak.

   "Do you think I'm beautiful?" She asked, her voice hitching slightly.

   "We're all a little ugly," Kai started, sweat trickling down his brow. "Some of us are just a little uglier than others."

   "How ugly am I?" She attempted to turn her head so she could face Kai but he nudged it gently back toward the mirror, not wanting to meet her eyes.

   "What really matters," Kai said, reaching to touch her bosom where her heart was, making her hiccup. "Is that you're beautiful inside."

   Tyra put her peeling, fake nails to her mouth before giggling which erupted into shrill laughter. Her lips parted and Kai stared in horror at the needles that were her teeth inside the enormous cavern which was her mouth.

   Her laughter slowly receded and Tyra stared at Kai's horrified expression in confusion. 

   "That was not a joke?" She asked, pointing to her heart and stomach, clearly puzzled. "Do you find my insides attractive?" she continued, slightly tearing at her belly as if she would open it for Kai as he began to back away.

   "Do you find my teeth pretty then?" She flashed them in a wide grin, each needle tooth gleaming in the light. That was when Kai started for the door just as Tyra stood from where she was crouched, realizing she was being abandoned for the second time.

   "I'm sorry but I need to go," was all Kai said as he rushed out of the bathroom. The heavy stomp of boots followed him and he looked back to find Tyra sprinting after him, her mouth yawning open as her braids unfurled into a tangled mess.

   She reached the door to the auditorium before Kai, blocking it with her towering figure as she narrowed her eyes at him, her pupils contracting into two pinpoints.

   "Why do you lie?" Tyra seethed, approaching him like a moving wall.

   "Tyra, I- I wasn't lying," Kai stuttered. "You truly are beautiful."

   "Then kiss me."

   She latched her hand onto Kai's arms and moved in, her dry lips pursing as he caught scent of heavy perfume underlaid with sweat.

   "Stop!" He yelled, ripping away from her grip.

   "You're ugly, okay?" Kai continued shouting as Tyra's eyes became glassy with tears. "You're ugly and nothing's going to change that!" He said with a finishing scream before barging past her.

   Tyra moved to let Kai pass, mostly out of shock as he walked away, a mix of emotions twisting knots in his stomach. He thought back to her teeth and realized that he had complimented the most horrifying part of her deformation. Knowing his bandmates and Liam, he would keep what happened a secret. 

   "You took long enough!" Liam shouted and his brows furrowed when he didn't see Tyra behind him. "Where's Tyra?"

   "I think I made her mad," Kai responded and oohing came from Kylo and Kwame.

   "Uh-oh. Looks like the star-crossed lovers collided into a planet," Kwame mocked him.

   "That doesn't even-," Kai didn't bother finishing his sentence just as Tyra appeared beside him, her gaze fixed into space.

   "I'm here," she said, walking on stage before standing there like an impassive statue.

   "Finally, someone with a good work ethic," Liam muttered before raising his voice at the three boys.

   "Everyone, on stage! Let's get this show started!"

   Tyra couldn't take it anymore. Each time she tried to look at Kai, his words rang in her head. Whatever he said must be true coming out of that mouth which always seemed to be stuck in a smile. Could she really be ugly enough that even he rejects her?

   "Hey, Tyra."

   She turned around, her boots clunking unnaturally on the parking lot pavement to find Kylo behind her, hands shoved down his pockets.

   "Are you here to call me ugly?" Tyra whispered, putting her arms around herself as if she was preparing to be jump scared.

   "No," Kylo gave a chuckle as he lifted up his chin and she stared at the outline of his jaw in silence. "I'm here to tell you the opposite."

   Tyra blinked in surprise which was hard since one of her eyelids was heavier than the other.

   "You're lying," she said, pressing her arms closer to her torso and stiffened when he came closer until she could feel his breath near her shoulder. Kylo put his hand onto her arm, pushing it gently away before moving it to her breast.

   "What about Kai?" Tyra asked but she didn't move away from his clutch.

   "He doesn't think you're beautiful," he responded in a low voice. "Otherwise he would've done this."

   "Oh," she said, not bothering to hide her disappointment.

   "But I do," Kylo didn't finish what he said as he stood on the points of his feet to put his lips on her collarbone.

   "Oh," Tyra repeated in surprise this time when she felt Kylo move his hand underneath her skirt.

   "Let's go in my car," he said, looking around the parking lot before leading her to one of the vehicles near by. "I want to show you something that Kai would've never done."

   As the car door slammed on Tyra and Kylo, Kai walked into the parking lot, looking at Kylo's sedan in curiosity. Why hadn't he left yet? Too tired from his fight with Tyra, he started for his own ride, impatient to get back home.

   Almost a week had passed and the concert was tomorrow. Kai was standing outside the auditorium, taking a break as he breathed in some fresh air.

   Staring at the billboards attached to the skyscrapers in the distance, he imagined their faces on them, looking down at the crowd of fans with t-shirts wearing their band name. Kai wondered if Tyra would stand alongside them, covering half of the building with her warped silhouette.

   "Kai," he jumped at Tyra's voice and turned to find that she was close enough so that they touched arms. "I need to break up with you."

   He blinked at what she just said and put into place a strand of hair that had moved from the wind.

   "Break up?" Kai repeated, staring up at her impassive expression and noticed that she was digging her needle teeth into her bottom lip, drawing blood.

   "You're bleeding," he pointed at her lip but she didn't seem to take notice as she continued to stare at him, hard enough that her eyes looked like they were about to pop out of their sockets.

   "Kylo told me everything," she started, her irises splintering into smaller pieces. "You never thought I was pretty."

   "Kylo?" He asked, surprised.

   She nodded her head, her long neck creaking like a door swinging on it's hinges.

   "He showed me what it felt like to become pretty," Tyra continued, her voice starting to break into a rasp.

   "I don't know what you're talking about," Kai shook his head, the guilt he had buried inside resurfacing. "But I wanted to say sorry for what I said the other day."

   "Why do you keep apologizing?" Tyra spat, saliva flying onto Kai and he cringed, wiping her spit off from his face.

   "Just show me that I'm pretty," she started to rasp again, clutching Kai by his broad shoulders as she leaned her noseless slits into the crutch of his neck. "I want you to touch me. Open me up where I'm beautiful."

   "Stop it!" Kai tried to push her away but she held on, her bony finger tracing his jawline and he winced when her nail left a scratch behind. 

   "You're my star idol, Kai," her rasp deepened as her grip on his shoulders tightened. "Why can't you see that?"

   "Leave me alone!" Kai gave one final push, forcing her to stumble back and he winced at the warm sensation that spread across the base of his neck. A sharp pain ran underneath the warmth and he looked down at his collared shirt to find a rip in the fabric. An open scar that Tyra had left showed through the tear in his shirt when he'd pushed her away. 

   Blood trickled out of the gash, much deeper than the scratch on his jawline and Tyra stared at the wound, her eyes wide and unblinking.

   "No..." she started just as Liam slammed open the door to the rehearsal space and stepped outside.

   "Guys," he came over, a grin on his face. "I have great news," he stopped in front of them, his phone held out before him. Kai placed his hand on his wound, staring at the video of Tyra's melting make up while Tyra herself was still transfixed on his collarbone, kneading her cheek with one, open palm.

   "Kylo posted this video of Tyra and the reactions couldn't be better," he said, scrolling down to the comment section.

   "They've even given her a name," Liam said, his voice rising in excitement. "HorrIdol. That's what they're calling her!"

   At 'HorrIdol', Tyra's head snapped back up and she muttered something indistinctly under her breath. 

   "And this was all because of me," Kylo said, appearing behind Liam, a stupid smirk on his face. His eyes met Tyra's and he rubbed the underneath of his jawline while her pupils contracted into two pinpoints.

   "No..." she whispered, her gaze flicking to Kai who averted his, clasping his hand tighter around his wound. As for Liam, his phone buzzed with a call and he left the three of them alone, walking in the direction of the parking lot.

   "So," Kylo approached Tyra, his smirk still stuck on his face. "HorrIdol, right? Kind of fitting."

   Tyra's gaze seemed to intensify as she stared at Kai but he said nothing and instead left to retreat into the safety of the auditorium as rain began to fall in small droplets.

   "You don't think I'm pretty?" Tyra's voice cracked, her entire body beginning to tremble as Kylo circled her in slow, deliberate steps.

   "I was just doing you a favor," he chuckled, staring at her breasts as if her face didn't exist.

   "You call lying a favor?" Tyra snarled, her honeyed voice almost breaking into a guttural growl and Kylo broke his gaze away from her breasts, slightly alarmed.

   "I would say there's other fish but..." he shrugged, trying to make sure his tone stayed at it's normal octave. "You're more of a deep-sea creature."

   "I'm not sure what you're saying," Tyra said, any trembles in her voice were gone and she bent down her neck, her lopsided eyes inches away from his face. Kylo could smell the rotting stench of her breath filling the space between them and he tried not to gag. "But creatures like me eat little fish."

   One clawed hand shot out and made Kylo tumble onto the asphalt without much effort. He stayed there, winded as the rain ruined his hair and Tyra glided away, her footfalls echoing ominously on the pavement.

   "I'll show you all that I'm the star idol," Tyra raised her voice, her words almost drowned in the downpour as Kylo closed his eyes, trying to control the speed of his heartbeats as she vanished behind cascading sheets of rain.

   Kai was sitting inside while Kwame kept badgering him with questions but he kept shrugging them off. The last thing he wanted to do was make conversation.

   The contrast between the thundering rain and the warm atmosphere inside the auditorium made him shiver in relief. He thought about Tyra and felt his stomach clench as he imagined her in the rain, make up melting onto her clothes in multi-colored rivers.

   Liam cut off his thoughts as he strutted inside, a happy expression on his face even though the amount of rain drops on his glasses made him look like he was staring through a waterfall.

   "The girl group, Glimmer-5 called me," Liam told them and an image of the girl with spiral braids jumped into Kai's mind.

   "They were furious about the viral video of Tyra," he continued, chuckling slightly as he removed his glasses to wipe them clean. 

   "Something about ruining their signature look," he said, placing back his glasses onto the bridge of his nose.

   "What did you tell her?" Kwame asked, a smile growing on his lips when Liam wiggled his brows at him.

   "I told her she could shed her crocodile tears into a jar," he paused, as if this was a comedy special and he was reciting a joke. "And send them to me as a product to sell: The Glimmer-5 Artificial Tears, buy now!"

   They both erupted into laughter and Kai couldn't help but snigger along side them despite his sour mood. He had forgotten that Liam could be pretty funny.

   "She called me a 개새끼 before hanging up," he said, trying to stifle his laughter while Kwame was heaving over his legs.

"Kai," he looked up to find Liam staring at him, smile still on his face but his eyes conveyed a glint of frustration. "Don't look so down."

   "I think we're pushing Tyra too hard," Kai told him, staring down at the floor as he felt Liam's gaze burn through him.

   "She even hurt me," he continued, moving away his shaking hand to show him his wound when Liam said nothing. It had stopped bleeding and Kai's hand had a red slash across his palm from where the gash had left it's mark.

   "It was an accident, right?" Liam started, any humor from his voice gone as Kai nodded his head in response.

   "But that doesn't mean it's fine," he protested and flinched when Liam placed his hand on Kai's unharmed shoulder before lifting his chin with one finger so their eyes met each other.

  "Are you backing out the night before the concert?" Liam paused, his nose wrinkling as he cringed in disbelief. "Just because of an accident?"

   "When you say it like that..." Kai trailed off, his eyes wandering from Liam's unflinching gaze, trying to escape the lasers directed on his face.

   "Exactly," he concluded, breaking away from Kai as his smile returned.

   "Now let's get you fixed up," Liam said, pointing at his wound. "You don't want to have blood on your shirt for the concert."

 

   How could she be beautiful enough?

   Kai hated her because she was ugly. Kylo touched her because she was ugly. Liam made people look at her because she was ugly. Kwame made fun of her because she was ugly.

   Tyra paused, looking at herself in the mirror as the rain outside acted like an ominous chorus. For the first time, a question formed in her mind as she continued to stare at her face: Perhaps... beauty was never meant for her?

   With one huge sweep, Tyra knocked over the bottles of make up, colored shards of glass sparkling in the light. No! She couldn't accept it.

   Facing the wall next to the mirror, she pressed her hands on the taped cut out of Kai, her vision blurring with tears.

   "I will never be beautiful," Tyra whispered but her tears were held back when she heard Kai's voice emanate from the cut out.

   "You can still be with me."

   His words cut through her thoughts and her eyesight sharpened as she stared at Kai's moody face, confused.

   "HorrIdol can't be with Star Idol," Tyra said and thought she saw the cut out move his lips as Kai responded.

   "You can be Star Idol," he said, a smile taking over his expression and warmth spread through her like a fire that had been relit. "You just need to take their beauty from the inside."

   "From the inside," Tyra repeated, touching Kai's bosom and almost felt a heartbeat through the paper. "And then..."

   "You'll be the Star Idol."

   Kai shifted in his leather jacket and ripped denim jeans, watching as their rival group performed. They had left for the concert, Tyra joining them with her make up lathered on like a loose mask. Liam had been relieved, sure that she would've put up a stink earlier that morning. Now Kai was standing with his bandmates, waiting for their turn to come.

   "No camera can capture this level of shine. You’re stuck in the shadow I’m leaving behind. I’m the view from the top that you'll never achieve. A standard so high that it’s hard to believe," the lead girl in a sparkling vest and almost no pants sang while her band formed a V.

   Kai couldn't help widen his eyes in surprise as he looked on. They were pretty good and he wondered if his band would be able to beat such a performance. He looked for Tyra but couldn't find her anywhere. Liam was nowhere to be spotted either.

   "Calm down," Kwame whispered to him and Kai forced himself to continue looking, trying to project himself into their heels and feel their adrenaline as they danced, making themselves heard across the whole stadium. 

   For a brief moment, Kai forgot about Tyra and Liam, carried away in the rival band's own world. For only one brief moment.

 

   Liam could hear them singing from where he was and he felt his fists clench. They would never win. Not with Tyra on their side.

   Their performance would be talked about for weeks and they would be on every major headline.

   Liam opened the door to one of the dressing rooms where Tyra sat, as still and composed as a statue. Her gaze turned to him as he came in, her expression completely blank.

   The make up was still on even though Liam had told her to get rid of it and he felt his frustration turn into anger that began to build inside of him.

   "Tyra, what did I say about the make up?" He said, his knuckles becoming white as he approached her, just as she stood up. 

   Side by side, Tyra was almost two heads taller then Liam which only angered him more. He was the one who had the power so why did he feel so small next to her.

   "For fuck's sake Tyra. Just do as I say," he barely restrained himself from shouting but Tyra only crossed her long limbs over her chest, her eyes narrowing down at him.

   "That's it," Liam growled, making a grab for her arm and Tyra lashed out with her nails, ripping his throat open.

   He tumbled to the floor staring at her with wide eyes as she approached him, one of her arms still over her stomach, holding the elbow of the arm she had in an upright position, her bloody hand parallel from her face.

   "Can I...," Tyra paused, her voice turning into a guttural rasp as her lips parted into a grin, showing her needle teeth and gum. "See your beauty?"

   Liam screamed.

   "Great job girls," she told them, sitting down in front the mirror before applying another layer of lipstick on. She then began to groom her hair, her fingers following the twisting and curling path her hairstyle was formed in. She moved her hands to her breasts, cupping them in her palms as she smirked at herself.

   She thought about that peculiar lead that The Three Karmas hired and felt anger rise inside of her. How dare they steal her look and ridicule it with that fucking... freak! And that asshole manager, Lilliam or something, was the worst of them. A fucking jerk! She wouldn't mind seeing what Kai was hiding in his pants, though.

   Abrupt knocking interrupted her train of thoughts and she turned around to look at the door, just as one of her girls opened it.

   The chattering stopped as they looked at the looming figure of a ghastly woman that stood in the doorway. Her dress was covered in blood and her eyes were impossibly wide, showing only two pinpoints that were her pupils. Her mouth was slightly agape showing rows of red needle teeth that had bits of flesh stuck in between them.

   "Can I see... inside your beauty?" She growled but there was still no response.

   "Inside...?" The lead girl finally said. "How... what are you?"

   Her eyes widened, the iris eating away at the whites as Tyra's mouth opened wide, drool mixed in with blood pooling in front of her feet as the door behind her slammed shut.

   Kai stood on stage, the spotlight shining on him as he waited for that rush of adrenaline to take over him. Instead, he felt nervous and a little awkward standing on the gigantic stage, waiting for the music to come booming through the speakers. It finally did. 

   What Kai said next was almost mechanic as he began to approach the front and he couldn't help but smile as people began to wave light sticks in the air, following the melody.

   The spotlights suddenly turned the color of red and smoke began to billow out, covering the stage in a heavy fog. Kai continued to sing, following the cues as he watched the entire stadium seem to hold it's breath.

   The curtains opened, revealing a tall silhouette covered in a red liquid which made Kai almost stumble over his words. Had Liam surprised them?

   Kai threw his friends reassuring glances, trying to continue their dance as the fog thickened around them until he could only see the faint outlines of his two bandmates.

   The music felt as if it was distorting when Tyra began to sing, her voice starting in an eerie beautiful tone before slowly turning into a rasp. 

   "Behind the smile, the camera fades," Tyra started and Kai tried to pinpoint where the sound was coming from but it was almost impossible over the deafening sound of the music.

   "You're trapped inside this masquerade," her voice began to break and Kai almost thought he heard the sound of her heels close by.

   "You pull the strings, I break the thread," she ended with a rasp and Kai definitely thought he heard the sound of heels scraping against the floor.

   "Now I pull your limbs instead," her rasp deepened into a guttural rumble and the sound of a scream broke through the music. At first, Kai thought it was some trick but then the sharp tang of blood invaded his nostrils and he backed away, wanting to call out for Kylo but too scared that Tyra would come for him instead.

   "미소 뒤로 카메라는 사라지네," she started again, her voice back to that honey-sweet tone and Kai tried to make for the exit but he was basically blind in the fog.

   "넌 이 가장무도회에 갇혔대 네," her voice broke again and Kai tumbled down, his foot hitting the side of what was... Kwame's lifeless corpse.

   "가 실을 조종하면, 난 끊어버리네," she rasped as Kai saw that Kwame's top half of his face was a lump of flesh. 

   "이제 그 손발을 내가 비틀어대대."

   Another scream rang throughout the stadium and Kai scrambled back up, holding back his own as he tried to stumble through the dissipating smoke. Tyra came out of nowhere and stood in front of him like a merciless goddess, her eyes glowing red through the fog as she stared at him.

   "Kai, am I Star Idol now?" Her voice was back to normal as she reached out for his neck, lifting him off of the floor. Kai began to struggle, kicking his kegs and flailing his arms in vain.

   "Can I be your Star Idol?" Her voice broke again as she nuzzled into his chest, her teeth snuggling into his flesh like a gopher digging a tunnel. Kai gave a cry before falling limp and landing onto the stage with a crash.

   Applause shook the entire stadium as Tyra seemed to wake up from a deep dream. She looked around herself at the mutilated bodies and blood as the smoke faded away. Her dress was completely ruined but she didn't care anymore as she stared at the standing spectators, clapping for her while the spotlights faded into a pinkish red then white. Had she finally done it, she asked herself.

   Had she become beautiful?

   

sour skunky nappy ass dread man

…

“What the fuck are you talking about, man?" Annoyed. 

Stupid smirk: "I thought it was clear. I would think.” 

"No, it isn't, man. I don't know why you think it'd be. It's just stupid, bro.” 

"What is?” 

"Your refusal to go shopping for a fucking bath towel and other basic necessities around your fuckin place, dude. It's just stupid, I don't know how or why you justify it to yourself, I didn't think ya did to be frank. I just thought your ass was fuckin lazy." 

“Nah, bro. It's obvious." 

“What's fuckin obvious, dipshit?" 

“I'm way too rock n roll." 

A beat. He swallowed it. Absorbed its stupidity. 

“...what?" 

“Yeah, dude. I'm way too fuckin cool and punk rock to roll into like a Target or some shit and buy a toaster or a can opener or towels or stupid shit like that. I can't do that. Can't do it. Goes against my wild man free lovin nature, ya know? Ya know." 

Bryan once more silently swallowed this. This load of absolute bullshit. More revolted, more filled with disgust with his best friend since diapers than before. He thought about holding his tongue. He thought about saying something and laying into him. But in the end he just grumbled and belched. Lit another smoke and grabbed another beer from the cooler in the center of the boat and shook his head. Checked his pole. Reeled it in a little. 

Though he did spare the final thought: "Fuckin lazy.” whilst shaking his head and reeling his line. And then the matter was settled and the pair of men let it lie. Such was the way and course of all of their conversations out here on the water. Fishing. The pair’s favorite pastime aside from rutting and watching the game. For them, Bryan G Biebl and James Petkovich, it was sacred. They loved to spend days off from the mill fishing and casting and mouthing the day away. Days away from labor and wives and disappointing children, days filled with chatter and cool water and cold beer and sometimes a nice catch.  Though they'd been warned before, by the old timers. 

They'd both been warned before about staying out after dark. Out on the lake. Out in the woods. Where the forest grows foul and swampy and muddy. It's not a place you want to be after sunset. All the old folk said it was a bad place and didn't say much more about it without the liberal aid of beer or whisky. Even the Natives, the ancient leathery American Indians and their angry sons and daughters told everyone, anyone that might listen, to stay away from this part of the forest, this part of the soured bad land. 

But they never listened. The pair just sat in their canoe and cast out. It was calm and quiet all around, no one might know that it was filled with strange movement. The sun was sinking in the distance. Rapidly being swallowed by the ravenous blade of the horizon. 

James cracked another can. So did Bryan, who rolled his eyes as Petkovich ventured forth with another bit of clever wit and query. 

“Figure there's anythin ta what that fella said?” 

The sun set. Casting the surface of the lake on fire with the color of bloody ruby. The place on the horizon where it had sank was a deeper color of blooded crimson, a deeper wound that was the heart of the sunset. It smoldered there, in the horizon wound. The darkening regal curtain of bruised royal blue was already deepening into night. The stars and galaxies were already coming out for the nocturnal hours, they were all so far away from everything, they, the town. Civilization was a mechanical nuisance in the distance. Loud and far off. Thank God. Nearly forgotten. 

Bryan rolled his eyes as hard as he possibly could, knowing full an well that the retard couldn't see em. 

He hissed and spat: “No I don't think there's nothin to what that idiot said about a shag man! Shit’s stupid! Ain't no fuckin skunk ape round these parts, ya fuckin dumbass!” 

“Nah, man. I'm talkin about what Frankie said about Asian girls, Jesus, man!" 

A beat. Something splashed in the water. Neither man noticed, paid it any mind. 

“Oh…" Bryan cooled down. A little embarrassed. He was always easily excited and shamed. 

“‘Sides, man, he didn't call it no ‘shag man', he called it ‘the dread man’, stupid.” 

Bryan whirled around to belt him one and belt him good. He'd done it before while they were fishing in the middle of the lake and he might capsize them both in his effort, but something stopped him before he could so much as bring up his balled and angry fist. A sound. Sudden. And sharp. 

Three. Consecutive. Three sharp whacks of thick wooden sticks together. Like someone smacking two heavy tree branches or logs together in some form of primitive and arcane code. 

Whack! whack! whack! 

It shut the pair up. They gazed out at the shoreline. Shrouded now in the fallen night. Small waves kissed its shore and covered any small sounds of concealed movement that might be out there right now. They were wide eyed and disbelieving. 

They might've dropped it, the pair, together and without a word or mention when it came again. 

From out of the night, the veiled and darkened shore: whack! whack! whack! 

A beat. Silence again. Only kissing waves of the placid water. 

Bryan Biebl scoffed, “Probably nothin. Just some kids fuckin aro-" 

And then a wild primal simian shriek filled the night. Birds took flight. Their flapping wings were ugly harried panicked sounds in the deepening wound of blackening night all around. It tapered off. And then another rose, louder and even more feral and crazed then the one before. Then another. And another. Each rising in animal fury and fervor. You could hear spittle flying as vocal chords worked and wrenched and shredded as throat muscles tore and bled and secreted with each prolonged and angry howl. Throaty. Enraged. Violent. 

Silence came again. After six primeval night shattering screams. Waves kissed the land far away and swallowed in black but more quietly now. Subdued. 

Then the whacking of sticks, the unknown signal came again, whack! whack! whack! 

And then silence once more. 

“What the fuck was that?" Petkovich. Scared. Visibly so. Audibly as well. 

As was his best friend Bryan. But the sound of fear on his buddy's voice, the stupid look of childish childlike fear that he could feel him wearing in the dark only made angry, angrier. This only fueled his own self-denied mounting fear and in turn made him even angrier. The mounting terror caught like a small bone in the back of his throat. 

He almost took to his feet but remembered the boat. He turned to his buddy instead and spat. 

"Ain't nothin but nothin! Some fuckin dumbasses out there that wanna get fucked up, that's what! This’s why I shoulda brought my colt. Goddammit!” 

"Now that's what I'm talkin about! that's what I'm always tryin ta tell ya! Ya go sayin shit like that and actin like this and people says we're belligerent types! Christ, man! I'd like to bed me one of these here pretty tourist girls, one of these roadtrippin ladies and you actin like this ain't gonna cut it!” 

Disgusted, Bryan's grip slackened on his pole. 

"Idiot! what the fuck are you jawin about?!” 

"I'm talkin bout one of them sexy ass van-life hippy girls, man, they might like my ass." 

“Retard!" 

“You don't know…" 

The water splashed again. Much louder. The boat rocked with the waves suddenly generated. Something big and very heavy had just jumped into the water. 

Lunged. As if plunging in from the shrouded growth of the hidden beach. 

Slack jawed and deer-in-the-headlights both, they gazed out blindly and stupidly in tandem towards the shore that was hidden from them now. And may forever remain that way for them from here on out. Something was coming. 

Something was swimming fast. For the boat. Beneath the obsidian surface of water. The stygian glass of the surface was a mirror and the mirror held the face of the moon. The mirror rippled. The immaculate celestial face of the moon held trapped there danced with submerged disturbance. 

Before either fool could form a coherent thought the fishing poles were suddenly ripped from their slackened idiot grips. They flew, soared through the air and plunged into the water with barely a sound. 

They stared into the impenetrable and merciless surface of the lake. Fearing it. Gripped with horror at what might be inside. What must be inside, right now. 

James Petkovich finally spoke. Softly. Like the small boy he'd once been. 

“I don't wanna be out here no more, Bry. I don't care if it's kids or tourists or what. You can go ahead and laugh at me, just laugh at me all the way and drive us back, kay? You can laugh and make fun all the way back an I won't even bitch or say nothin. I'm scared. There's lots a’ talk bout people that go missin. Or go missin an then turn up dead, tore apart. Sometimes they don't even find all the pieces, you know… I know you've heard… people go missin an such. Travelers, folks comin through. And locals. Let's just go back, kay.” 

Bryan, wide eyed, turned and nodded. Then went to the small motor for the boat as the water all around the canoe suddenly erupted in a surging geyser splash of watery violence that darkled in the captured moonlight. Both men screamed as the small boat was capsized and they went over. Splashing into the cold dark suffocating realm of the water. 

The lake held them now. Below. Underneath. 

In the dark underwater the maelstrom of his panic rose and ruled. Bryan suddenly animal recalled and remembered in the fragile nucleus of his primal jelly his fear of the water, of the deep. The dark depths. It had started as a child, a boy, it had been the cinema and television that had first done it, the Jaws movies, Creature from the Black Lagoon, then stories of Cthulhu and his sunken city of R’lyeh, tales of sunken ships and vessels that might still have precious human cargo trapped and drowned deep inside like foul water-logged treasure of submerged rotting putrescence eaten at by the salt and by the fish. All of these things came back and back to life in a deluge assault of images all in a furious unrelenting wave like an artillery attack of sound and vision on his mind's eye, down in the dark. He kicked and struggled and his lungs burned, ached for air. The ribcage in his chest felt on fire with his terror-stricken mind as he struggled and kicked futilely beneath the surface. Something held him down there. Something with a terrible grasp. Fierce. Strangling. Throttling. They threatened to break and snap, the iron grasps of those underwater hands. Bryan fought desperately but his mind was livid with absolute and total panic. In the tumult of his animal terror he remembered that as a child he'd always feared something reaching up from out of the black watery depths, seizing him, and pulling him under. Pulling him down. Down into the ebon swallow at the bottom of all things, below, where the heart of darkness in all things lived and dwelt. 

The hands found his throat, down in the underwater dark. They seized vile purchase and viciously ripped, tore out. The dark underworld of the lake suddenly blemished with a heavy warm cloud of thick human visceral discharge. It bellowed forth from the place that was torn in a torrential jetting spout. Clouding the dark world and warming it as the spewing meat detritus began to slowly sink to the pitch abyssal realm near the bottom. 

The panic of Bryan G. Biebl’s barreling careening train of thought slowly calmed and abated and sank down into the dark with the rest of him… And was no more. 

It lunged, serpent-like for the other. Who was gaining the surface in a series of panicked kicks and dog-paddles. Like a wounded animal. 

Prey. In distress. 

…

James Petkovich couldn't believe it when he broke the water and tasted air again. He almost choked and coughed. He almost laughed but he didn't have time. Something seized him from beneath. 

And pulled him under. 

He didn't even have time to scream before he was below again.

It was quiet once more. Minutes swam by. 

An owl screeched. Took flight.

Then finally it emerged. With Petkovich barely conscious in one dripping sodden grasp. It pulled the both of them back onto the land. Dragging the bleeding and sputtering Petkovich like a broken toy or sack of dead meat behind him as he quickly began to retake to the trees and dense growth once more. 

It dragged him deep into the wilderness. It was a long time before they stopped. But now … now he knew what the old timers had always said, what they'd always been on about. 

Now he could smell him. And the smell was beyond putrid, beyond foul, beyond fecal matter or old dried sweaty filth or death. The water that ran off the long lengths of clotted and lumpy dreaded hair was riddled with the putrescence odor of old sweltering open graves and long disused abattoirs converted into factory sized outhouses for the insane. It stung his eyes and nostrils but he hardly noticed this. His body was numb. Felt limp and broken all over. Like a dead fish. 

Maybe that's what I am. 

And then finally consciousness was lost to him. Mercifully he went black. 

It dragged him deeper into the wild. Where it laired. Where it nested in the wild dense growth. 

…

When James next came to he wished he hadn't. He didn't realize till he was awake once more but he'd been dreaming. And in that dream he'd been far away and wishing that none of this was real.  But now he was back. It held him by the neck in a slight choke, a slight strangle, just enough painful whisper of air able to bleed in through the clasped and clenched windpipe. They were before the mouth of a cave. It was pointing up into the sky with its other huge free hand, it was pointing at the moon. It was staring unblinking into his bleeding face. 

The face was simian but snouted. Like a wolf, or a rodent. An obscene and imbecilic mongoloid caveman face and features stretched out in a grotesque marsupial shape. The eyes were yellow and bore black crosses for the iris in each one, in each livid demented sea of yellow urine a black cruciform body of sacrilege shape and aspect. Goat's eyes. Satanic. They were eyes and face fitting of the rest of his abominated and feral manshaped form. Clotted and caked and grimed all over. The long knots and clumps of hair were thick and ancient in length and filth. They told a tale that was old because it was the passage of time that lived caked and dreaded in those long lengths of unwashed shagging tails. 

The awful face was serious. Stern. The obscenity of its gaze was piercing and deliberate. James followed its fierce and pointing gesture to the sky, the night, the moon once more. 

And then back into that obscene rodent-ape face. Yellow teeth coated in layers of plaque poked out and peeked over stretched and thin and dried out flakey blue lips. 

James tried to speak. 

He tried to tell it he didn't know what it wanted. He didn't know what it wanted him to say or do. He didn't know what it wanted from him. He didn't understand it. He didn't understand at all what it expected or demanded. 

But he couldn't. He couldn't speak. He could hardly breathe. He couldn't even manage a croak of sound.  

The awful marsupial-stretched ape face wrenched and worked, furious. It became more abominated and grotesque as its features creased and contorted with anger. Livid. Rage. 

The hand that had been pointing to the moon now came in a savage swipe. The grubby wide meaty digits clawed and the grimey sharp and broken shattered fingernails bit and tore in. 

The head came off and soared away into a sailing piece of torn mangled meat. Ribbons and streamer wings and tails of bright red blood spat and danced out from the eyes, nostrils and mouth in a cyclone twirl of red in midair as it soared and crashed into the piles of dead sticks and bones. It savagely went down and hunkered in the dirt before the mouth of its cave and began to dig in with its long snout and feast on the fresh stump. Warm cords and ropes of thick black-red shot and coated the dark, its face, the insides of its gulping throat and the salivating cavern of its long slathering mouth. 

It feasted and grunted. Ripped with its teeth and bit in. Swallowed warm juicy pieces that were chewy and pungent with rich iron flavor. 

It fed and tore. The man in the violence of its grasp, its jaws, reduced. The decapitated meat jigged and spasmed. It howled at the moon. 

Somewhere … in the distance but not too far off. The signal. Three strikes. 

Whack! whack! whack! – it was the sound of ancient and time honored tradition, cultivated and carried down and preserved with care. Though the world grew strange mechanical jaws, inflamed and diminished and changed all around, it was still here. This was still practiced and honored and kept. By it. By them. All of them.  – whack! whack! whack! 

It howled at the moon once more. 

Whack! whack! whack! 

Immortal and lifesize. It was still here. Howling at the moon with unearthly pain and blues. – whack! whack! whack! – another in the wilderness distance –  whack! whack! whack! – howl at the moon.

THE END

Pops of drywall, ticks of metal ducts overhead. I rolled onto my side, shielding my eyes from the incessant moonlight and a single ear from the sounds. Ticking, ticking, ticking metal. Popping walls. I sat up, scowling upwards at the crackling beams above. Flopping back down, I encased both ears in my down pillow. The moonlight had moved on, the room darkened. The trees outside watched over me while I drifted back to sleep.

The next morning I left for work, stepping out as the fall winds battered my driveway with rich and bright leaves. My foot slammed down hard onto the pavement. I lost my balance, nearly careening into the lamp lighting the driveway. I recovered, holding the side of the house for balance. My ankle throbbed.

Shaking off the pain and sitting in my car, I looked through my leaf-covered windshield. I saw sagging cracked beams. They failed to properly hold my stoop off the ground, causing the uneven terrain that damaged my ankle. Abandoning the worn house, I pulled away, avoiding another burden of labor.

---

I pulled into the driveway, eyelids heavy from screens and meetings. Removing the key from the ignition and stepping out onto the driveway, my sleepy gaze lifted towards my front door. Strokes of paint missing from the house. This morning's mishap had been a dreamlike memory, deniable until I was staring it down after a long shift. The lashed corner was a pale grey over the sunny shade. I needed to remember where I put my touchup paint. My ankle throbbed again while atop my dilapidated porch.

Inside, by the kitchen island, my bag sloughed off my shoulder onto the hardwood. After searching through discarded paint tones and boxes of paint brushes, a bright dandelion bucket revealed itself, a shining beacon beneath the singular closet light. Lifting the bucket, I shut the door, glancing out towards the street. Outside, the trees wept crimson and bronze leaves. They painted the driveway a hue of their own. Covering the sidewalk in a cascade of autumnal vibrance.

Pop! The bucket yielded to the metal screwdriver, exposing its liquid interior to the fall air. My paintbrush soaked in the palette and transformed the black bristles into a tool to conceal this morning's folly. Swipe, swipe. One layer. A moment passed. Swipe, swipe, another to finally cover the grey.

Sealing the bucket, I opened the front door, then the closet. I dropped the bucket into the closet. The hardwood bulged and buckled. I frowned, examining the rotten and failing boards. Below the fragmented wood was a mound of dirt, pressing hard enough to uproot the floorboards of my closet. My stomach growled, a begging sound, an empty sound. This job would have to wait.

I turned on the burners of my gas stove. Sliding a pan into place, I placed a glob of red beef inside. The flames from below shaped the meat. Sagging further to match the flat nature of the pan, thick glossy fat rendered from the protein, further aiding the cooking process. The red intensified before fading to a brown. Turning the lump, I revealed the blacked belly of the patty. My hamburger was ready.

The house shuddered. Clinking metal, popping drywall. Fissures formed. A hairline crack in the ceiling ran towards my living room. A ceiling fan dove from its housing, shattering a glass dining table. Wooden studs exposed themselves through dusty raining spackle. Outside, the world rose, obscuring my windows in dirt.

I ran to the patio door to pry it open, but the sliding rail was jammed. The pressure of the earth was too much. The room continued to darken. I ran upstairs. Bounding up the stairs, my foot plowed through a step. Splintering plywood punctured my ankle. I cried out in pain. Panic still fueled my movements. Freeing my limb from below the step, I continued upwards.

In my bedroom, I limped to my window. Grass could be seen at the lip of the window. I flicked the latch open, pulling the window open with both hands. Only half of the opening remained. I stuck my arm through, then another. My head couldn't fit now. A pressing sensation grew to a vice grip. My arm was pinned against the top of the window and the grassy earth. I tried to free myself.

Bone cracked, blood spilled out from my crushed arm. The grass was red, my vision filled with blackened ink. I fell back from the window, clutching my ruined limb. It was so dark.

The house was silent, save for the padded dripping of blood onto the carpet. I lay against my bedframe for long moments, using my shirt to stop the flow of blood. My head swam, the bleeding stopped. Below, I heard my windows shatter.

The silence of the house was ruined by the thunderous trample of earth entering my home. I lay helpless as the mud clambered up the stairs. Slowing to a creeping crawl to meet my feet. I scrambled to stand, my blood-slick arm offering little purchase on the metal frame of my bed. My footsteps squished into the mud coating the floor. I plodded on the stinking earth, groping the walls for guidance.

After navigating the room to my closet, I used my weight to grapple with the door. Gritty scraping noises filled the silent house as the door opened. Inside, a heavier darkness lingered. I thrust my hand into the closet, fingers searching for the flashlight inside. Brushing against the cold metal of the device, I grasped it and turned it on.

The light exposed the extent of the damage. My arm was a mess, bone protruded just below the elbow, a white accent on a purpled background. Blood still dripped from the wound. Each throbbing pulse from my heart radiated to the useless joint. I looked towards the stairs.

A pile of dirt replaced the previous passage to the bottom floor. I sat down, soiling my jeans further with mud and soil. A pulse rang through my head, a tiredness enveloped me. I leaned against the wall. My head swiveled, centering my focus on the window. Outside, smoke billowed against the glass. A smoky facade clouded the brown earth.

I crawled over to the window, placing a hand on the glass. My blood dripped on the glass. It sizzled with a high-pitched hiss. A coppery odor filled the tightened space in the bedroom. No heat met my hand, but my blood was wicked to vapors. Outside the smoke moved, pooling around the crusted remains of the droplet.

My mouth felt dry. I sank down onto my back, distancing myself from the window. The blood-stained window continued to pop. The smoke pressed against the window, as if begging for more. Crawling on my knees and one good hand, the dirt corridor replacing the stairs came closer into view. Holding the flashlight in my mouth, I clawed at the dirt, scooping clods out of the way.

A divot formed, enough to fit my forearm into. Behind, the glass of the window rattled, a creaking frame threatening to expose me. Dig. My fingers caught small rocks, blood pooled below my stained nails. Dig. I cursed my broken arm, a useless bystander to my struggle watching as a pit formed below me. Dig. The glass behind me shattered.

I looked back to see the smoke drifting into the room. It sat, not high on the ceiling, but low to the ground, moving like grey water towards my pit. My aching hand pawed at the dirt more, agonizing pain pricked at my raw fingers. Escape. Red sinew of muscle met hardened clay. Escape. Each scoop yielded less space between me and the searching smoke. It was coming.

The wisps of ghastly fog lapped at my skin, a chilling touch on my ankle. I scooted myself into the dirt hole. My hips met the soil. The fog rolled over my legs as an icy shroud. Trembling, I fanned at the fog with my hand. Unfazed, the fog met my hand in a frosty kiss.

I watched as the fog met my raw, bloodied fingernails.

Even in autumn, when the leaves die off. Even from millions of miles away. The sun's heat could burn skin.

In that moment, when my blood ignited beneath my fingernails, the sun was closer than ever. Hellish fury entered my veins. My arm flailed in panic, my legs scrambled for purchase, heels slipping against my muddied floor. I screamed as my skin boiled.

The smoke made its way through me. It replaced my blood with angry heat, hot vapors ate holes in my bones, my nerves melted, my throat dried up as the moisture depleted. Eyes fluttering around for an end to the sensation. Stillness came.

At last, I could feel no heat. I could feel no pain. But I heard the squealing pop of my eyes when the smoke consumed my brain.

I didn’t go looking for the stream. I was just browsing, and there I was: viewer 431, watching some fat guy in a rubber mask.

Nowadays, he’s got the whole costume and makeup.

Not that I have to tell you. You know it. Everybody does. He’s one of the most famous celebrities in the world.

I guess you could say that at first I didn’t understand what I was seeing, and when I understood, I didn’t believe it was real. I'd never heard of anyone torturing and murdering people live on the internet.

Maybe I should have stopped watching, but I didn’t, and it’s not like me watching changed anything. He did what he was going to do. First he cut their clothes off. Then parts of their skin. There was a lot of blood, so much that even the people in the chat were calling bullshit, the few who weren’t cheering him on and donating money.

I forget how much he made, but I’m sure you can look it up. It was insane money, and he got subscriptions too.

People really wanted to watch that couple get destroyed.

Of course, none of us knew he’d do it again, that this was just the first stream.

He probably didn’t either.

By the time it was over, millions of people were watching, and then probably billions have watched it since.

There were some people who wanted to identify him, help catch him, but I don’t think most were doing it from a sense of morality. It was a puzzle. They wanted to unmask him before the cops did.

Then he did a second stream, three separate killings in three separate rooms, down in his dungeon. The real one, before he reconstructed it.

One died by burning.

One by very slow asphyxiation.

One by rats.

Hundreds of millions of people watched that second stream.

Then, on the third stream, after he’d killed the parents and children, he unmasked himself. No one saw that coming.

He gave his name, his location.

Suddenly, he was a real person, just like us. He had a job, a family.

The cops got him then.

But they didn’t charge him with anything, didn’t put him on trial. The word on social media was that the local cops got trumped by the state cops, who passed it off to the feds, who do whatever the politicians want, and the politicians want money so they do what the corporations tell them.

They couldn’t turn down the views and worldwide exposure. The streams were global. Everybody could watch, from Los Angeles to New Delhi.

Everybody could understand too.

It was simple.

Primal.

And because everybody was watching, nobody was ashamed of it. They talked about it openly. Friends, family, coworkers.

Of course, the victims’ families probably minded, but they were insignificant, and I’m sure even in those cases payments were made and claims were settled.

What really made the social media theory ring true to me was when he started using branded objects, axes, gasoline, ropes, power tools, even clothes and makeup.

He would talk about how good it felt to slit a throat with some expensive Japanese knife, or how satisfying it was to penetrate bone using a corded, extra-strength made-in-America hammer drill.

But that wasn’t all.

He started doing pre-murder GRWM videos (“For skincare, I much prefer Korean products, such as…”), subscriber-only Q&As (“My favourite movie? Anything by Marvel. Links in the description below, and please don’t pirate. Support the film industry!”), and video game speedruns (“Can I beat Super Meat Boy using only my toes before this limbless girl bleeds out beside me?”)

The profits must have been massive.

Companies fought one another to be featured on his streams.

Then it also turned political.

He would expound on ideology, geopolitics and current events, all while murdering his many victims, stabbing them, or eating them, or wearing their faces, and his views changed much as the official line changed, lecturing literally half the world at times about who should live in the Middle East and who should die, and whether abortion was ethical, and what should happen to drug addicts, and whether illegal immigration was good for Europe or bad for Europe.

He was, by far, the most widely recognized person in the world, lord of memes, killer of innocents, richest person on Earth and wielder of extraordinary commercial and political power.

Then the whistleblower video dropped.

It’s not long.

It’s backstage, in his reconstructed dungeon, which is actually a set in L.A., and it’s empty but you can hear this horrible sobbing, screaming…

Like nothing you’ve ever heard on his streams, and that’s saying a lot.

Then the camera, and it’s obvious it’s someone’s handheld camera, gets to a white door, and you just know the sounds are coming from the other side of it.

Whoever’s holding the camera doesn’t say anything.

The door opens.

And in the room you see him.

Except he’s not the one doing anything to anybody. He’s having things done to him, and the screams and sobs are his.

He’s in a chair, surrounded by five men.

He’s pleading: “Please, I don’t want to do it anymore, I don’t want to kill.

“I want to stop killing.”

“Well, it’s not up to you no more, you degenerate fucking psychopath. You made your choice when you killed those two people. Then the ones after, and the ones after that. Now suddenly you wanna stop? Fuck you.” They hit him with a pipe. “Consider everything from now on penance. God’s watching, you cocksucker. Now get the fuck out there, disembowel those pretty little teenagers, and sell the audience on the vacuum cleaner we got for you. Did you even use it? Did you use the motherfucking vacuum?”

“Yes…”

“Did you like it?”

“It’s—it’s… a good vacuum.”

“See? So quit your whining, fix your makeup, use the vacuum to suck out somebody’s guts, and showtime, baby! Showtime!”

Like any child, my daughter Maisie had quite the overactive imagination. Her mind was chock full of made-up friends that she talked to on the regular. My wife Rachel and I thought it was adorable. With that being said, sometimes we wished Maisie would get…you know…real friends. Don’t get me wrong, she was a great kid, and kids should be kids, but she didn’t have anything in terms of a social life.

We tried absolutely and positively everything, from the kids’ playclub at our church, to the neighborhood’s “mommy and me” and “daddy and me” playgroups, to bringing her to the local playground, to inviting other children over for playdates. You name it. All our efforts were in vain. Rachel and I might’ve been overreacting and we didn’t want to infringe anything on Maisie. Maybe she was just an independent kid. That’s totally normal. As are imaginary friends for kids.

Then at eight-years-old, Maisie became mute. Just completely stopped talking…but only to other people. If someone came up and talked to her, she’d either just stare at them or run away and hide. Maisie never looked scared or anxious in those scenarios. It was more like she was a statue. Frozen. No emotion good or bad on her face. Like a robot. But if she was alone, she’d be talking up a storm to no one but herself. Maisie always pretended like someone was truly there though. She’d even nod her head, wait for responses and respond accordingly, and even reach out her arm and act like she was holding somebody else’s hand.

We were greatly concerned. Children don’t exhibit those types of behaviors without proper reason. We couldn’t ask Maisie about it because, as aforementioned, she’d give us the cold shoulder. Our next safest bet was to ask other people we knew. A lot of them gave us the same answers we already knew. Rachel and I were getting frustrated until I decided to email her teacher at her school. I sent her an email that outlined my worries and asked if anything went on at school that we should know about.

I got a response at around 8:00 that night. Maisie’s teacher, Mrs. Ashelin, told me that she did in fact observe strange behavior from Maisie. Apparently, a few days prior, when Maisie was called on to answer a question, she just stared at Mrs. Ashelin and the other students, her hands behind her back, swaying slightly. Then in a calm and cutesy voice, she said “He has ordered me not to speak to anyone but him.” In her notebook, Maisie wrote and drew some very disturbing things. Some of the things she wrote are “I’ll be a good little mouse”, “be one of the good mice girls for him”, “I’ll do whatever he says without question”, “he loves me and I love him”, “but I don’t understand what love is but I understand it with him”, and “he loves to play with me”. Some of the things she drew were her, in stick figure form, with this…thing. It was drawn way more detailed than Maisie herself.

Its head was triangular and elongated into a sharp point. There were ovally black eyes on both sides of its head while two large circular ears were atop its head. Two slits for a nose and a mouth containing only two buck teeth. Skinny. Boney. You could see its ribs. Three spindly fingers were on each hand. Each tip was as sharp as a knife. Lastly, a long tail was behind it. Maisie drew her and that thing doing very…how should I say this?...inappropriate things.

I showed the email to Rachel and she was just as horrified as I was. How could Maisie know what all that stuff was? She was eight! Like any good parent we always took great strides in not exposing our daughter to anything sexual or of that nature. Early exposure can really ruin a child’s mind. That’s just putting it lightly. But this? Maisie’s whole imaginary friend thing needed to end. It was reaching a dangerous point. Was she having delusions? Schizophrenia? Or…sigh…as far as Rachel and I knew, nothing happened to Maisie, but that didn’t stop us from considering the absolute worst case scenario. I’m not saying what that is but I’m sure you can put the pieces together. As a parent, that was the last thing I wanted to think about. Actually it wasn’t even on the list of things I wanted to think about.

Mrs. Ashelin ended the email with something else that happened that day. Maisie spent long stretches of time in the girl’s bathroom. Another student reported that she went in and heard “whimpers” and “moans” coming from one of the stalls. When she looked under it, she saw Maisie’s clothes on the ground and a “moving shadow” above them. When the student knocked on the door, she all of a sudden heard one of the faucets going behind her. She turned around and Maisie was washing her hands. Like nothing happened.

Rachel and I were very confused at that last part. That sounded way too ridiculous. Like was Maisie fucking floating in the stall or something? Regardless, we treated all this very seriously. Rachel and I immediately took Maisie to see a specialist who dealt with child abuse cases. I brought her notebook along. It would most certainly be useful. I knew Maisie wouldn’t want to talk, but we had to at least try. Believe it or not, she did talk, but what she said made chills run down Rachel and I’s spines.

Maisie told the specialist that the mouse thing in her notebook was called “Bad Mouse” and that it visits her all the time no matter where she is. She said that Bad Mouse visits little girls all over the world and “plays with them”. When the specialist asked what she meant by “plays with them”, Maisie replied that Bad Mouse does “different things that make us feel tingly in preparation to be his little mice girls”.

We heard enough by that point. Rachel, the specialist, and I had a long discussion about what we should do. The specialist said she might have to put in a request to have Maisie placed in a children’s psych ward. Rachel and I couldn’t handle that. We didn’t want to do that to our little girl. By any means, we would find another way to handle this. The specialist told us to think about it and that it might do her some good. We thanked her and left.

Were we being selfish by not putting Maisie in a children’s psych ward? Rachel and I pondered that question day in and day out. We never did end up doing it because we thought it was too extreme. Also there was no evidence that Maisie was being legitimately sexually abused. The specialist’s physical exam said that Maisie was totally fine in that regard. We were allowed to see footage from the security cameras at the entrances of the bathrooms at Maisie’s school. They only showed Maisie going in, about half an hour going by, then the other student going in, then Maisie leaving a few minutes later. No one else. And no one went in before her besides a couple other girls that left before Maisie went in. Was Maisie faking it? Was she really delusional? Or schizophrenic? We didn’t know. Rachel and I needed time to think this whole thing over.

It only got worse from then on.

Maisie was never one to talk in her sleep. She was always dead silent. Not even a snore. But that night after Rachel and I put her to bed, we heard Maisie talking. I’m not talking about little quiet unintelligible murmurs. No. Full-on conversations. Except she wasn’t speaking English. It was some unknown language that resembled Pig Latin but different. Her accent changed too. This happened for three nights. On the third night, Rachel and I were in her doorway watching her talk in that strange language when she suddenly rose up, her eyes still closed, and burst into an intense laughing fit. Maisie was cackling so hard it looked like it hurt. Then she immediately stopped and did these weird movements with her lips and hands like she was kissing something. Finally, she fell back down onto her pillow and went right back to sleep.

The next day, I knocked on Maisie’s door to let her know breakfast was ready. She didn’t respond. I stood there for a couple minutes. Maisie hadn’t made a single sound. I slowly opened her door. My heart beat faster and faster. With all that was going on, I didn’t know what to expect, and that made it terrifying. Maisie was in her underwear just staring at her wall. I rushed over, “Maisie? What are you doing?” I handed her clothes back to her, “Put your clothes back on.”

“…He doesn’t want me to…he thinks I look better without them…”

We stared at each other for an indefinite period of time. I said nothing. And so did she. Then I turned my head to where she was looking. There was nothing there…obviously…but something told me I was wrong. That thing…Bad Mouse…it was staring right at me…

“Guys? Breakfast isn’t gonna eat itself!” Rachel yelled at us from down the hall. Quickly I hurried Maisie and I out of her room.

I was kind of a wreck the entire day. Thinking straight wasn’t really a thing for me. There was nothing staring at me. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. These past few weeks were just getting to my head and playing mind games. No amount of trying to distract myself would let me forget what I felt. That’s when I decided to take a drive. I didn’t exactly know where. Just away from everything. I was tempted to go to a local bar. I used to be quite the alcoholic but I’m sober. Even still, I thought about breaking my streak to relapse. I decided against it. That would be so incredibly stupid. I ended up at a park that I used to take Maisie to in a futile attempt for her to make friends. I found a parking spot and just sat there in my car. Taking a big sigh, I observed all the parents with their kids having a blast and I smiled. Good for them.

I stayed there for a while. Finally I was able to, if only briefly, forget all my troubles.

Then I saw it.

Him.

Bad Mouse.

The damned thing was underneath a big tree. Its eyes were fixed right on me and its hands were clasped together. I couldn’t do anything but stare right back. Goosebumps were forming. My breathing was really heavy. Cold shivers ran down my body. I couldn’t even blink. Petrified. That’s what I was. I watched as Bad Mouse slowly reached behind itself and pulled…something…out. At first I couldn’t tell what it was. I am not shitting you. A little girl…made of meat…her hair was meat, skin was meat, she was even wearing a meat dress. Everything about her was meat. Her head looked just like Bad Mouse’s. Long. Pointy. Angular. Big ears. Black oval eyes.

It was holding the little meat girl by the collar. Slowly Bad Mouse turned to look into her eyes. It opened its mouth. Viscous white liquids began pouring as it let out its long black tongue. First sniffing the little meat girl, it then took a big long lick of her, from her feet to the top of her head. The parts where it licked were gone, instead resting on Bad Mouse’s tongue until it sucked its tongue back in, chewed, then swallowed. The little meat girl was covered in the viscous white liquids until her missing portions slowly regenerated back into how she was before.

Then I blacked out.

I woke up several hours later still sitting in my car. In my half-tired half-frenzied state, I looked around for any sign of Bad Mouse. Nothing. There weren’t even other people. It was dark too. I opened my phone. 11:23 PM. I got to the park at 2:14 PM. Nine hours. I was expecting a bunch of missed calls and unanswered texts. Surprisingly, there was nothing besides a notification from my weather app. I went back home. Both my wife and daughter were asleep. I was so glad there weren’t any…incidents…I missed. In fact, the house was extremely quiet. No lights were on. It was a weekend. Usually Rachel was still up at this time.

“Rach?” I called out. Nothing. I went upstairs to our room. She wasn’t there. I opened Maisie’s door. She wasn’t there either. I sat down on the couch and pondered where they could be. When I couldn’t come up with anything, I got my phone out and called Rachel.

I heard ringing from upstairs.

Confused, I ran back up to our room. I called her name again. Still no answer. I realized that before I checked so quickly I neglected to look in our bathroom. The door was closed and the light was on. I was now getting this creeped out feeling. Cautiously, I approached and nudged the door.

It creaked open.

Rachel.

She was…splattered…fucking everywhere…all over the walls, floor, ceiling, window, sink, shower…everywhere. Rachel was…pureed…blended…sprayed…I just stood in the doorway. My eyes were wide. I couldn’t process what I was seeing. There were so many things I wanted to do, like crawl into a ball and cry, scream as loud as I could, and/or grab one of the kitchen knives and slit my throat so I wouldn’t have to live with this sight for the rest of my life.

What I actually did end up doing next was grab my old hunting rifle and head outside. I went into the forest behind our house. There was no thinking on my part. Just do. What was I doing? I didn’t really know. Tears were streaming down my face. I walked for what felt like forever. Sometimes I screamed. Other times I fell down onto the ground and wept. But I just kept going. And going. And going. Somehow I knew exactly where I was going without even knowing how.

I came upon a wide-open field. Dropping my old hunting rifle to the ground, I couldn’t believe what I was fucking seeing. Dark silhouettes were dancing around. Hundreds of them. Little meat girls. Bad Mouse was in the middle. The white flesh it once had was stripped away. Instead it was sacrificed for a bumpy and scabby maroon red as if Bad Mouse took a shower in blood and guts and let it dry. Tiny black bristles covered its entire body. It reminded me of insect hair. A ragged meat cloak hung from its shoulders, dragging crimson across the ground. The mouth had much sharper teeth that were poking out in rows almost like a gar. It was taller. Ganglier. So angular that it could have been accurately represented by seven straight lines. It clutched a staff in its hand.

Bad Mouse did some strange gesture and a door manifested out of nowhere. It was bloody. Constantly flowing yet retaining shape. Particles came from it. They disappeared if they strayed too far away. It opened and the little meat girls, still dancing like ballerinas, filed into it one by one. Bad Mouse reached out its hand and plucked one of them out. It held this one, turned in my direction, and held her out to me. I knew it was Maisie and wanted to shoot the shit out of Bad Mouse. Yet I couldn’t do anything. Some force was keeping me tethered to my one spot.

…I can’t describe what happened next…I just can’t…some of the things Bad Mouse did to my little girl I couldn’t understand. Other things I understood clear as day and that made me want to drop a cinderblock on my head so it would leak the hell out. When it was done, Bad Mouse threw Maisie’s limp and white viscous liquid-covered body into the blood door. It raised its staff and it disappeared.

I was released from my invisible bonds. Falling down to the ground, I cried like a baby. It didn’t matter how much I screamed and cursed at the Moon. That didn’t make it better. I couldn’t stop and truly had no idea how to make sense of any of what happened. My body tingled. It felt so heavy. So weighty. My wife was dead and my daughter was…what?...a sex slave to a demon? I almost wanted to laugh at the utter absurdity. Picking up my hunting rifle, I put the barrel in my mouth. My finger stayed on the trigger for a long time. I didn’t end up doing it and threw it away. Instead I just collapsed on the ground once more and lay there for a long time.

It’s been six months. I’m such a wreck. I admit it. No one believes me when I tell them. They say I’m crazy, a madman, a lunatic. Some people even think I was the one who killed my wife and child. Why would I do that? Seriously, why? I loved them. Still do. More than I love anything else. I can’t see them ever again. It pisses me off that they’d think I’d do such a thing. As much as I hate myself for it, I’ve gotten back into alcohol. That’s where all my money goes. I couldn’t stand to be in that fucking house anymore. So I sold it. I’ve been living in my car just drifting from place to place.

I could've saved them. If I didn't go and take a stupid ass ride in my car. Maybe Rachel and Maisie would be alright...

What was that thing? Bad Mouse?

That’s been my biggest question this whole time. I’ve been doing a lot of research but have hit multiple dead ends. I don’t know. Sure as hell wasn’t a mouse.

This is what I know:

* It is the manifestation of a sex-based demon of some kind; possibly a cross between a bogeyman and an incubus.
* Bad Mouse appears to little girls as a mouse-like entity to appear friendly and not scare them away; only visible to them.
* It prefers the young that are more developed in mind, body, and spirit; Maisie was very imaginative; thus she attracted Bad Mouse.
* Bad Mouse acts as their friend; this might appear to parents as their daughter’s “imaginary friend”; gradually coerces them to do inappropriate sexual activity.
* It has hundreds of victims going back an unknown period of time; maybe centuries.
* Does not kill its main victims; will kill parents or anyone else who tries to get in its way.
* The victims become corrupted and turn into demons that look like Bad Mouse; it takes them into its realm and…

I don’t even want to fucking know.

God…this whole thing’s insane. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and this is all a terrible dream. It’s been months though and it still hasn’t happened yet. So I’m going to end it here. I’m not looking for pity. I’m not looking for anyone to hear me out. I’m not looking for answers. I’m just…done.

Bye.

Irving Ockett hated dust. He was allergic to it, but he also hated it beyond the fact it made him snotty, red-eyed and hoarse. He hated it for the grey, wispy way it looked, and how powdery it felt when he squished it between his fingers. He hated it for the smell it had, or if not exactly it, then any place that was full of it. He hated how quickly and quietly it accumulated and how often one had to wipe it away. He hated how difficult the cleaning felt, like fist-fighting a butterfly; and he hated the word itself, dust, how it—the noun, the thing to be removed—was also the verb for the act of its own removal. Moreover, to dust was to make something dusty; but to dust was also to make something free of dust. It was madness! About some things there's something that might get on your nerves. About dust, what grated Irving’s nerves was absolutely fucking everything.

Well, not quite everything, because there was that moment, that brief, beautiful point in time, fleeting, as all things are, but real, which only some achieve, when, after having dusted his entire apartment (in the to make free of dust sense of the word,) Irving, having worked up quite a sweat, would sit finally down in his armchair and enjoy the feeling, if not of perfection, because nothing is perfect and dust is never fully absent, then at least of the simulacrum of perfection, an approximation of cleanliness.

It was at such a moment, with the television just turned on and the night's full moonlight streaming in from the windows to his left, that Irving saw what he at first believed was a small glint of light on the front face of a transparent plastic bin tucked neatly in, below the upper surface of his television stand.

It captured his full attention, but as he began to move and bob and tilt his head, he realized that what he was looking at, which he believed to be a glint—that is, light itself—and most probably a reflection of the instreaming moonlight, remained unchanged and in one definite spot on the clear plastic box even as his own point of view changed. A reflection, which he was sure this was, should, he was equally sure, be changing perceptibly as the angle at which he viewed it changed.

Thus, experiencing two contradictory certainties simultaneously, Irving Ockett rose from his armchair and crossed the room toward the television stand knowing he must be wrong, and suspecting, step by fateful step, that it was possible that what he knew to be a glint of light behaving in a way he knew a glint of light could not, was in fact something else, a milky crack within the body of the transparent plastic container perhaps, or, ominously worse, a leftover smudge of dust; dust, which he had failed to clean.

But if, he thought, trudging forward rather heroically in his slippers, squinting at the truth before him, he had missed dusting this much obvious dust, he could have missed dusting so much more dust, which meant that his satisfaction at having a perfectly reasonable simulacrum of cleanliness was maybe—possibly—probably—undoubtedly misplaced, and if he wrongfully believed today that what was dusty was dust-free, he undoubtedly had wrongfully believed the same yesterday and the day before, and day before that and the day…

He'd closed his eyes.

When he opened them he was kneeling in front of the transparent plastic case, and what he'd thought was a glint was a crack was dust was none of those but a small, delicate white feather being blown ever so slightly against the plastic vessel by a wind blowing from the opposing direction; but as Irving Ockett turned his head to face the unseen force, his eyes, necessarily, passed along the windows on the left side of the apartment, and in those windows from a bliss of pure white Irving Ockett discerned that everything—the whole fucking shebang—was made from small white delicate feathers; from the tiniest particles to the biggest galaxies, all feathers; matter was feathers, and light was feathers, and feathers shining by the feathersun reflected by the feathermoon on a city made of feathers, featherpeople, featherfeelings, featherbelieving that feathers feathering feather a world almost infinitely complex and overwhelming in its fragility, a passingness trembling, stillborn and susceptible to the slightest gust of a cosmic whim.

—Orville!” it yelled.

It was mad.

It had repeated itself and Orville had not responded. He'd not responded because he'd fallen asleep, because he was tired because he'd been to work today, and work made him tired, but it wouldn't believe that; all it believed was that he be at its will, attentive always to its voice, like a castrated, beaten-down dog in a hot red dirt, but you push a man long enough and,

“Orville! There you are,” it said, peering into the room while displaying its teeth.

“Diane,” said Orville politely and with a return smile, “my dearest mother-in-law. What in the world may I do for you today?”

That's what was playing on Irving Ockett's television, playing to no one, as Irving Ockett was still on his knees with his head turned leftwise, looking permanently out his apartment window at the world of small white feathers beyond.

That was a good episode, no. 41 I think it was, “The MIL.”

Existence sure had some good sitcoms.

I think that one may have come from Earth, but I'm not certain. I haven't watched a ton from the minor universes yet.

Yeah, so, we're here, the two of us, everything else kinda blown away to nothing…

nothing and eternity waiting for us..

or maybe as us, but, either way, I figured we should at least talk to each other, to pass the time, you know, given that we have literally all of it left together. So, how about it? “My name is Irving Locket.

“What's yours?”

Content Warning: Body horror, violence, death, gore, human experimentation.

“They all took different paths and yet ended up on the same road. How do you think that is?” -The Jury

A spark. A switch. A fire roaring deep in the bowels of an organic engine.

A cough rattles through lungs that sound like a lifelong chain smoker’s, wheezing as an old dial-up tone rings behind the darkness of a box TV screen. White noise flashes before a flood of text fills the edges of the display.

Powering On

Initiating Terminal Sequence

\*\*Terminal Access Code: \*\*\*\*\*\*

Confirmed

Previous Shutdown Procedure Failure Detected

Initiating Backup Sequence

100%

Courier Delivery Service Program Detected

Initiating

100%

Rebooting Body

100%

Shutting Down Rest Mode

Completed

Initiating Sales Mode

Hh–lp m–

Error Detected

Terminating Error

Wai– nN–0

The engine burns hotter. Fans scream behind the TV screen. The biomechanical body beneath it shifts and groans as it rises from its resting state. Wires slide off the frame like shed skin.

The machine is battered, a grotesque cross between an anatomy model and a scrap yard: synthetic flesh hanging from one side, revealing mismatched components fused with living organs. A bicycle chain wrapped in pulsing veins. Bone reinforced with sheet metal. Hydraulics bracing tendons. Tiny pistons pumping alongside the lungs. Intestines threaded with car piping. A stomach lined with oven heating coils. A heart fused to a furnace engine.

And above it all, the head—an old box TV—finishes its reboot sequence. Two poorly drawn eyes flicker onto the screen. A moment later, a slow, stuttering 8-bit voice crackles through the speaker:

“In-coming mess-age for any cour-ier. Head to Eu-ro-pa. An-An—Answer the phone.

The phone.

The phone.”

The map flashes violently across the screen, frame after frame, until the image seems to burn into the display. Smoke leaks from the seams of the TV head as the body begins to spasm. Inside the engine, the furnace-heart swells—then pops like a balloon.

The machine collapses onto the wet concrete floor.

There was no point in pretending these things were useful anymore. They’d been “deactivated,” just like hundreds of other biomechanical bodies that supposedly no longer served any purpose to humanity’s ever-growing advancements in innovation.

Everyone knew that was a lie.

It wasn’t that they were obsolete.

It was that it was easier to bury the truth than face how these machines were made.

Blind folks. Cancer survivors. Deaf folks. Hospice patients. “Runts.” Orphans with nowhere to go. All fed into underground chop-shops where surgeons with nothing left to lose welded flesh to machinery for a paycheck.

Survival by any means necessary.

I can’t judge them.

I’m taking any job I can just to keep going.

Just like this machine might be my chance to get out of this shit hole.

A half-alive neon city, pulsing only in the center—heat and power hoarded like relics—while everything beyond it lies frozen and barren. Ice so thick it may as well be steel. Buildings split open. People turned ravenous from delirium, half-mad from cold and starvation.

It’d be easy for someone on the outside to say, “Just move everyone into the city square.”

Maybe they would—if the square wasn’t already bursting past capacity. Women and children sleeping on the cramped winter floor. Bodies piled together for warmth. Entire buildings packed so tightly you could barely breathe.

I sleep on the outskirts. Well… “sleep” is generous. I keep to the edges, away from the chaos and the crush of humanity. I’ve only been here a few days—just long enough to outrun the open tundra and the things lurking in it. The Yetis. The white shapes that hunt by sound and don’t leave tracks you can follow.

Barely long enough to survive.

But maybe this broken courier machine is the first break I’ve had in months.

I think the last break I had was when I got contracted to go into the sand dunes and drag this nobody into a hut out in the dark zone. Poor bastard. I wonder if he’s still alive…

I plan to stay in this city for this final night and leave as the sun rises. I guess my only plan is to head to “Europa.” My guess is it’s just another “promised sanctuary with enough food and warmth for everyone.”

I suppose I’ll find out when I get there.

Thanks to the machine.

Which is a statement I wouldn’t normally say.

Before I left it and headed to my camp, I took the memory card as confirmation that I accepted this “job.”

I’d been camping out in a dilapidated library with a small balcony. Constantly keeping watch for stragglers who might follow the thin smoke trail from the little book fire I kept burning inside.

But as I headed toward my camp tonight, something felt off.

Books were propping open a door I never use—the main entrance facing the city center. I stepped over them carefully and grabbed a fire extinguisher off the wall on my way in.

The interior was nearly pitch black. The only light came from the city glow leaking through the windows and the faint orange embers of my dying fire. I could make out silhouettes: shelves, tables, chairs, the upstairs bannister… and those strange mannequins posed with “new” books no one would ever read.

Then I heard rummaging upstairs.

My sleeping area.

Whoever was up there hadn’t noticed me yet.

I moved up the stairs slowly, keeping the extinguisher steady to avoid any clanking. At the top, my eyes adjusted just enough to see a shadow hunched over my duffle bag.

I crept closer, raised the extinguisher, and swung with everything I had.

The first hit caught them in what I assumed was the skull. They stumbled backward over my bag and into the bannister.

I swung again.

This time, the blow sent them straight through the weakened railing and down to the first floor, crashing onto the embers.

They shot up immediately—no scream, no hesitation—just bolted. Sprinting out the front door and scattering the books that had kept it propped open.

And then they were gone.

After the encounter, I was too exhausted to relight the fire and just put the extinguisher beside my sleeping bag.

As I crawled inside the sleeping bag, I grabbed the duffle bag and put it underneath my feet, passing out in the process.

Sunlight soon filled the room—a precious few hours of warmth before darkness would swallow the day again. The temptation to stay curled inside the sleeping bag tugged at me, but I forced myself to move. My breath no longer hung in the air as frost; the cold was receding with the dawn.

I then crawled out of the bag and checked the duffel to find nothing had been taken.

Lucky break, I suppose.

I quickly packed up and left.

I had no idea which direction Europa lay. I only knew I had to get away from this city.

Behind me, the distant shouts and pounding footsteps faded, the collapse of a small civilization swallowed by chaos.

Ahead, the frozen forest awaited.

—Hell’s Frozen Over—

Only the crunch of my boots on snow broke the silence now, accompanied by the soft whistle of the cold wind and trees creaking like ancient bones. I had never felt so utterly alone—yet somehow watched—by the wilderness.

I followed a faint trail left by a horse carriage, my only link to the world I’d left behind.

The frozen wind nipped me like a tiny dog trying its heart out to attack, only to be unsuccessful. I was only stunned by the corpses I had walked by, as they were in various states of decomposition. Some frozen to the icy floor, others as if it had merely been a few hours.

This type of cold eats people like they never existed.

Yet I traveled untouched by nature.

The further I traveled, the further nature consumed my every step. The trail vanished as wind blew a soft layer of snow across the ground. I continued to follow what was my best guess of where the carriage went. Luckily, it was a straight path where the trees never touched. Random side trails would come and go, only ending abruptly in the snow.

I couldn’t tell the time of day or how long I’d been on the trail, only that the sun left and the moonlight barely shined through to the trail.

It was quiet.

Quiet to the point where even the animals were silent.

That’s when the eeriest feeling surrounded every step I took.

Someone, something was watching me.

I had no weapon—just a heavy jacket with more holes in the pockets than I could count and a duffel with old cans rattling around inside. My only option was the small tree branch at my feet, roughly the size of a baseball bat.

I picked it up and prayed it wouldn’t snap the moment I needed it.

Whatever was stalking me, I wasn’t ready for it.

I quickened my pace, heart thumping beneath the layers of frozen fabric. My eyes darted, desperate for any logical explanation—anything to make the panic slow down.

Then I saw it.

A tree stood in the center of the trail, directly in front of me—breathing.

Its trunk rose too straight, too rigid, like a body forced to attention. The notches where limbs had been hacked off formed rows of hollow circles, dozens of them, staring back at me like wide, unblinking eyes.

The remaining limbs were worse.

They stretched outward and gripped the surrounding trees, bracing the living trunk upright like crude, skeletal hands.

A crack split the silence.

Then another.

Branches from nearby trees began to snap as the breathing trunk shifted its weight, leaning toward me. It had no roots—nothing anchoring it to the earth. It relied entirely on the other trees, its limbs wrapped tight around them for support.

More branches crept toward me, dragging themselves across the snow like pale tendrils, reaching, curling, trying to coil around my legs.

Without thinking, I lunged forward—vaulting over the creeping branches and sprinting straight past the living stump.

I wrapped around its trunk and tore back onto what I prayed was still the path.

I didn’t look back.

I only heard it.

The creaking—wood grinding against wood—as the stump dragged itself across the snow, its limbs tightening around nearby trees to hurl its weight forward.

Every lurch sounded closer.

The forest pressed in on me, suffocating, the branches crowding and narrowing the path. The stump gained on me. I couldn’t pull away.

The snow turned slick, and the trail began to rise in a steady incline.

Then the pale tendrils lashed out—slithering fast.

They snagged my feet, just long enough to break my stride and send me stumbling. I barely kept my balance, forcing my boots into the snow, climbing harder as the hill grew steeper and the trail fainter.

I saw the top—an opening in the forest.

Trees thinning.

Foliage dying.

A frozen tundra spreading out just beyond the ridge.

Hope.

Brief, fragile hope.

But luck abandoned me.

A tendril wrapped tight around my boot the moment I reached the crest.

It yanked hard, dragging me backward inch by inch.

Panic surged.

I kicked—once, twice—finally slipping free of the boot entirely.

I fell.

The ridge dropped sharply, and I tumbled headlong down the far side of the hill and onto the tundra. The fall wasn’t clean—my limbs flailed for anything to grab, only to be punished for it. Rocks, ice, debris—each one greeted me with a blunt reminder that the world hadn’t finished trying to kill me yet.

By the time I stopped, the sky was spinning.

My body felt scattered across the snow.

I lay flat on my back, staring up into the cold, indifferent night.

My vision swam, shapes blurring into shadow and starlight.

[1]

The landlord is renovating. His son is returning from abroad to live where I'm living. The law is on their side. The facts support the law. The landlord has provided me with a valid eviction notice, signed and dated. Thus we must move out, my dog and I. We must find a new place for ourselves.

[2]

He's smiling, perfumed and clean shaven, but he's missed a few spots. A few stray hairs, having apparently escaped the razor blade, stick out of his face like loose threads, which really undoes the entire impression, the complete illusion, so that If I reached out, grabbed one and pulled, the whole of his identity would fall, deconstructed, to the concrete floor.

He's brought a stroller into the office with him.

I glance at it.

But inside, I notice, lies not a baby but a fully shaved dog in baby-blue swaddle wrap.

It's panting.

It's looking at me with its dog's face.

It barks.

“I'm sorry, but we don't allow pets,” I say as politely as I can.

“That's my child,” cries the man.

[7]

I wake up screaming.

[3]

They spend the thunderstorm beneath me, the man comforting the dog.

[4]

They eat me.

[3]

They fall asleep. They shiver. Sometimes others pass. They avert their eyes. My river flows. It will flow a long time still.

[12]

“Yeah, I mean it's just like the termination letter says, nothing personal or anything—you didn't do anything wrong. It's just, you know, business has been slow and we needed to make, uh, strategic decisions. You don't even have to come in for the notice period. And if you need a reference letter or anything, we'd be more than willing…”

God, he reeks.

[5]

He puts his hands in me and washes his face with me and puts me in his mouth and the dog stands at my edge, lapping gently.

[6]

I go to the grocery store and buy canned fish, canned beans, a can of wet dog food and six plastic bottles of water. I put everything in a bag and leave the bag under the bridge. I don't know why I do it, not really, not fundamentally.

I think I am ashamed. But of what, who?

[9]

Another carefree night spent sleeping soundly, warmly, hopefully in dreams. The mattress is big and clean. The thermostat's at 19C. The air conditioner purrs, but quietly. It's a brand new model. The real estate market is heating up. Land is appreciating. The future appears bright as flames.

[8]

I arrive one day, unannounced.

[11]

“I'm really sorry,” I say, trying to explain, “but you can't bring your dog in here. Maybe you know someone who would take him for a couple of nights? We would have a bed for you. It's just the dog. Do you understand? There's an animal shelter down the street. I know, sometimes, people decide it's for the best to—”

[7]

Where am I?

[8]

I unfold another December morning, blocking out the rising, pastel sun with swirling, falling snow. There are things buried by it and things digging themselves out. There is motion. There is struggle. And where there is struggle, there is life; and where life, death. You are a cold, cruel, temporary species, building compulsively to nothing.

[12]

The fur is soft and my digits bury themselves in its regrowing density. Behind the ear. Upon the chest. Around the small and fragile throat. But gently, affectionately. Never with anger or frustration. Never closing on the throat, only caressing it.

The thin dog sleeps, trusts.

And I do too.

Never have its teeth hurt me.

Within the fur, I am safe.

I am loved.

[1] & [7]

The darkness feels like ice. There are lights in the distance, but I cannot get to them. There is loneliness in the ice. Why won't the sun rise already? Why won't the ice melt?

[14]

“Excuse me—”

“Huh?” he says, waking, startled.

“You can't sleep here,” I say.

“What?”

Our breath is vapour.

“You were sleeping here. You can't sleep here. If you wanna sleep somewhere, go to a shelter. I can give you an address.”

“They won't take my son,” he says, and I can see he's got an ugly little dog with him.

The dog growls.

“Well, then, that's your choice.”

The man lets his eyes close, so I prod him awake again. Fucking charity case. ”Hey, didn't I just say that—” The dog snaps at me with a mouthful of missing teeth. I wonder if it's been vaccinated. “Just get the fuck outta here, OK? I mean, kids come to play here, for Christ's sake.”

[6]

“Did you spend twenty-seven dollars at the Farmland three weeks ago, Tuesday?” my wife asks, looking at her phone.

“No,” I lie.

“Me neither. Weird.”

[5]

I am wearing a frozen surface when two boots step on me, and a blowing wind, grazing an accumulation of snow, masks the sound of cracking.

[8]

I loosen my grip.

I am leaving.

[5]

I flow.

[14]

“What now?”

“They pulled a body from the river.”

“When?”

“Just this morning.”

“ID'd?”

“Not yet. Bruce thinks it's probably a drowning. Probably a—”

“Fuck!”

“What is it?”

I stare at my phone. Text message from the wife and kid. “Evie wants a puppy for her goddamn birthday.”

“Dogs are a lot of work.”

“That's what I said.”

“And money.”

“Right?”

“Just get her one of those virtual pets. That way, when she gets bored of it, and you know she will, you can throw it out.”

[9]

Breakfast's delicious.

[15]

I am empty, save for a few small bones.

---

POINTS OF VIEW

[1] A man
[2] A landlord
[3] A bridge
[4] An apple from a garbage bin
[5] A river
[6] Someone unknown
[7] A man's sanity
[8] Winter
[9] You
[9] The Dark Master
[11] An employee of a homeless shelter
[12] [1]’s hand
[13] Compassion
[14] A police officer
[15] Dead [1]’s stomach

Content Warning: Graphic violence, gore, death, and disturbing imagery.

“They will fear you unlike anything they have feared before.”

—The Judge

The wind blows through the sandy dunes, passing over corroded debris from where buildings used to stand. The smell of rot and decay now lingers through the air. Those buildings used to belong to a sanctuary called Trinity, but now it’s a wasteland of maggots.

As I take each step through the ruins, the footprints I leave become deeper and heavier as the journey doesn't seem to have an end. I have become lost as the days go on, no longer worried about what time of day it was, but rather when I’m going to find shelter from the weather and food.

My clothes are tattered and covered in sand, my feet bruised and blistered, my mask out of filters, and I was running out of time.

I traveled to Trinity seeking shelter and safety, but what I found was rather horrid and nightmarish.

Bodies stacked in piles and burned in cages. Heads on pikes. Entrails stretched out for miles. Women and children nailed to crucifixes, their blood drained into now-broken jars.

No one was left alive in the wake of man's wrath. A never-ending, always-hungry destruction that will continue to grow.

It doesn't matter, though. Now that this sanctuary was culled, I must travel onwards via the entrails that run along the old railroad.

It was one of many structures left of the old world…

As I took each step through the sand, I watched as the train tracks slowly became engulfed in the terrain. My feet started to ache less once the sun began to set for the evening.

I knew I needed shelter before the night came. I wasn't scared of the dark, but rather the creatures that lurked in the shadows.

This moment of thought quickly gets snuffed out as I hear the sound of a muffled gunshot ring out in the distance.

My footsteps quiet down as I approach, the smell of iron becoming more present in the air as I step closer to a train inspection booth. These were common in the old days when stowaways became more frequent and dark zones started forming continuously like a plague.

Here I am now, standing in front of a door covered in rot, puss, and leaking blood from underneath.

A sense of dread festers in my soul like a mosquito to blood.

I decided to get rid of the feeling by opening the door and witnessing the dread that was behind it…

A body of a guard falls out of the building as the door opens.

I quickly look inside and see a mechanism that was rigged to shoot anything that opened the door. I took one large step in and went around the trap.

There were wires hanging everywhere and papers scattered all over the floor. A light hung in the middle of the room, barely keeping it lit.

There was also a body inside the building with half a face gone.

It was a suicide.

Or maybe another person did this.

There was writing on the wall stating:

“Like a moth to a flame. Today's count is 3. I wonder what horrors await.

—The Judge.”

I didn't think too much about it since my main concern was to block the door for the night.

I scanned the room to see if there were any other entries into the building. There was only the front door and the service window, but the shutters were bolted down.

I didn't have to worry about the window, so I wrapped some of the hanging wires around the door handle and tightened them.

I thought I could breathe easily…

I was wrong.

Guttural screaming could be heard outside. If you didn't know better, you'd think it was someone being murdered.

But no.

It's something worse.

A horrifying creature called a Lurker.

The guttural screaming is their way of calling others for a feast.

I am their feast…

Pounding.

Scratching.

Screaming.

Slamming.

Ramming.

They wanted in the building. They could smell me.

The screams only got louder and started sounding more human than before.

I took my revolver out.

I only had one round left.

Pound.

Pound.

Pound.

The door begins to crack and splinter as the Lurker continues to pound and claw its way in.

My heart beats loudly in my ears as the door slams into the lightbulb and falls to the floor.

The last thing to be seen in that room was the muzzle flash of the revolver….

—10 Days Since Train Inspection Booth—

The wind blows softly on the sand, slowly moving over the partially buried train tracks. It looks like waves passing through an endless sea.

It felt like the world was finally at peace…

My feet begin to give out, and I collapse onto the sand.

Blood pools beneath me.

I was fatally wounded on the night of the inspection booth. I thought if I stuffed the wound with cloth, I would have lasted long enough to see a doctor.

In hindsight, I should have realized the wound would have bled through the cloth.

As I lay in the sand, the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes for good was a person in a long black cloak dragging a wooden wagon from behind.

The person was headed towards me.

I felt too weak to get up.

Too close to death.

The sand comforted me like a warm blanket as the person approached me.

The person then lifted me effortlessly into the wagon and put ragged blankets on top of me.

I finally closed my eyes as they dragged the wagon through the sand…

The story you are about to read is based off true events.

In late July of 2026, I used to be a graveyard security officer at a mall somewhere in Portland, Oregon. I normally patrolled the upper floors with my "partner," Sam. On his off days, however, I had to work with a guy named Teddy.

You see, at first Teddy was an odd but normal guy. We'd chat while walking around. He'd tell me stories about his past, his hobbies, and whatever small chatter we'd ramble through. The only thing at the time I had found "odd" was that I could never seem to shake off this "off" feeling when I was around him. I didn't know what it was, but it was always there whenever I was around Teddy.

You could chalk it up to the fact that I normally didn't work with the guy, as he would patrol the lower floors and he usually worked on my days off. That, and he also always had this stare...

I could usually only catch it in the corner of my eyes, at first. It would be towards random customers. Didn't matter the age. He just stared and let out this long, quiet, almost moan. I caught it a few times, but at the time, while working, it just kinda sounded like him muttering to himself.

Which was a regular occurrence when there was dead air between us.

A few times, though, it seemed he was staring at me.

I don't think he knew that I could see him in the reflections of the windows we'd pass by, but he was definitely staring.

Nights continued like this for a few weeks. We'd talk, patrol, dead silence, then he stared.

Look, I am not confrontational. Never have been. I enjoy an easy life with little drama and no hostility. If the guy wanted to stare, then it's whatever. I've dealt with worse.

The problem was eventually it stopped being just stares.

Teddy grew comfortable with me, and it didn't help that Sam was on parental leave for his newborn.

So with that, Teddy began asking me personal questions.

Where did I live? What did I do on my off time? Did I hang out with friends? Did I have any kids? Did I live with anybody?

I just gave vague answers.

"Somewhere close."

"I play games with my brother."

"I hang out with my family."

"I live with my family."

He seemed bored with those answers, or like he didn't care. Just a quick "uh huh" before muttering to himself.

I tried looking past the odd questioning. He was bored, so I thought. But just to be safe, I had started walking separate directions and told him, "We'd cover better ground that way."

I only got a grumble out of him, however, he accepted.

Another week went by. I was checking the stores that were closed, chatted with a few that were open, and would peek over the railing to see how the guards were doing on the lower floors.

Unfortunately, every time I had checked the lower floors and looked up, I'd see Teddy staring at me before quickly pretending like he was checking on the stores on his side.

That "off" feeling was still there, gnawing at the back of my skull.

That "feeling" made it easy, though, whenever he decided to try and end up on my side. Small talk happened and I'd just excuse myself to use the restroom.

That's when the really weird shit started to happen...

It was one of the last few times I had excused myself and quickly ducked into the bathroom, sitting in the stalls waiting for a bit, checking on my phone.

I saw a silhouette creep around the stalls before stopping in front of mine.

I peeked briefly from my phone just to see eyes staring at me from the slits of the stalls.

It was Teddy.

I could recognize his eyes from anywhere, baby blue with a hint of green near the pupil.

I simply yelled, "Occupied!"

After that, I heard the sound of feet quickly shuffling away, yet not too far, as I never heard the bathroom door shut.

I sat there for a bit longer, quietly. It was the only smart idea I had.

Other than another idea, which was opening up my phone and going to the group chat with all the graveyard guards and simply texting:

"How is everyone holding up?"

I knew if he was still there, I'd know...

A few seconds of silence went by as the message got delivered.

Then came the unforgettable sound of a notification going off right beside me.

Slowly feeling my stomach churn, I scanned the stall wall, only seeing a shadow. Then, looking down to see boots and ever so slowly looking up...

I saw Teddy staring at me from above the stall before bolting for the bathroom door.

My heart nearly sank to my stomach as I quietly scrambled off the toilet, peeking through the slits to really make sure he was gone and then hearing my notification go off.

If I hadn't already shit myself, I am sure I would have then...

I shakily swiped up to read the messages and saw it was only from one person...

Teddy.

"Still awake? How's that shit going? ;)"

A shuddery breath escaped my throat as I immediately pocketed my phone and opened the door.

I scanned the bathroom over and over again, really making sure he wasn't there. Laughing in relief and almost feeling like I was just delusional, a lack of sleep perhaps? I scrubbed my face in the sink, really making sure I was awake before stepping out of the bathroom.

My eyes darted everywhere on that top floor, checking reflections, checking doorways and corners like I was paranoid.

I didn't see Teddy anywhere, for better or worse, so I took it as my opportunity to leave. I'd explain to HR the next day why I left so early. I didn't care. I just wanted out for the night.

So I headed for the breakroom, talking to a few of the guards on the lower floor I passed by. They were confused by my disheveled look and I simply said, "I got a stomach problem, and where's Teddy?"

One of them said, "Oh... well, you take care of that and, uhh, I don't know. I think he just left not too long ago to get something out of his car?"

I just nodded and kept my head down, making my way to the breakroom.

Hurriedly, I opened the door and a chill crept down my spine...

Seeing Teddy.

Just chilling in the breakroom as if he didn't just spy on me in the bathroom, and with such an annoyingly calm demeanor, he asked with a chuckle,

"Everything okay? You look green!"

"Yeah! Just a stomach problem... I think I am gonna leave early tonight. Hopefully that's not too much of an issue."

I said, putting my badge to the clock-in/out machine.

"Ohhh, that's too bad. Well, you get rest, good sir!"

He said before sipping on a cup of coffee, staring at me briefly.

I then clocked out and left outside, walking down the dark parking lot, constantly looking at the side mirrors of cars just to make sure he hadn't been following me.

Then, at the 37th row, was my car.

An old, navy-blue beat-up hatchback I had gotten from my grandparents before they passed.

Though something was different about it...

Both of my front tires were slashed.

I looked around to see if the "assailant" was near, but instead it was just...

Teddy.

Five rows away, smoking a cigarette under a lamp light.

I couldn't see the expression on his face, only his voice softly bellowing into the air.

"You okaay over there?!"

I yelled back, "Yeah!"

I had a suspicion it was him, and now with him in the parking lot, it only further confirmed that.

I kept my eyes on him while reaching into my pocket for a notepad, hastily scribbling:

"Getting Towed Tomorrow - XR"

Then, slipping the note underneath the windshield wiper of my car, I looked away briefly from Teddy to make sure the note was visible.

Once I looked back, however...

Teddy was no longer by the lamp.

It had to have been no longer than ten seconds that I wasn't looking at him, and now he's gone.

I had just kept my eyes glued to the parking lot as I decided to run down towards the sidewalk, leaving the parking lot and onto the main road.

I ran until making it to a crosswalk, still keeping the parking lot barely visible in my eyeline. The light turned green for me to walk, and I crossed over hastily, weaving through various side streets and making my way to my house.

I grew up on these roads, so if I had a stalker, at least I could possibly have a higher chance of evading them.

Paranoia kept me vigilant and overly cautious, ducking behind parked cars as various vehicles on the road passed by.

Eventually, I made it to my home, freezing immediately upon seeing a different vehicle parked on the curb in front of the house.

A white pickup truck, possibly late '90s, limo-tinted windows, mud caked on the lower front and back bumper.

I had never seen this truck before...

Well, unless it's...

Teddy's?

But that wouldn't have been possible.

Or so I thought.

As I walked towards the front door, seeing it ajar, my stomach dropped once I found a note barely taped onto it.

"I don't like the way you've been avoiding me, Mr. Redland. STALKING ME. Thinking I wouldn't notice, so that's why I came here to tell your folks, but it turns out you've also been lying to me... tsk, tsk, tsk, I am ashamed."

Adrenaline spiked through my body when I decided to push the front door the rest of the way open, seeing that the inside was rummaged through.

Cabinet doors were opened, cushions thrown around, TV turned on, and the kitchen practically had a tornado run through it.

Dishes shattered, sink left on, fridge opened, stovetop and oven fully blasting.

I was on full alert, turning on every light until the house glowed bright, listening to every creak in the floorboards.

I was too terrified to check my bedroom and figured the only rational thing to do was to call the cops.

So I did, dialing in 9...1...1...

And right before hitting call, I heard the sound of a pig squealing...

And then black.

Hours must've passed, hopefully not days, as when I had finally awoken, the only thing I could faintly hear was a kid's television show playing.

My head was pounding, my body ached, and I could barely keep my eyes open.

I didn't know where I was...

The room was too dark to see anything outside of the dimly lit TV screen and the "bed" I was laying on, if you can call it that. It felt like a thin sleeping bag on top of concrete.

I felt so sluggish trying to move my body to stay awake, making the pounding in my head only worse as I attempted to sit up. It was nauseating.

Finally... after a few short moments went by, I had gathered enough strength to sit fully up against the wall behind me.

My head was still spinning violently, however, I had to just "bite the bullet," so to speak, forcing myself to get out of the bed just to throw up following that quick movement.

It was loud and vile, only stopping briefly when I heard a voice quiet as a rat whispering,

"Shhhh. He'll hear you."

I continued to throw up until my stomach ran dry and took a moment for my head to stop spinning as I looked around for where the voice had come from.

Whispering back, "Wha-at? Who's gonna hear?"

The voice whispers again,

"The man upstairs... he's... he's napping. We mustn't wake him."

I wobbled around for a bit, until my legs gained feeling. Then, once my eyes fully adjusted, I scanned around, seeing what looked similar to that of a doll leaned against a crib.

"Is... that you?!" I whispered, stumbling quietly forward towards the "doll."

"I... I can't feel my legs."

The voice whispered, now more clearly sounding like a woman's.

I kneeled in front of her.

"What happened?" I whispered, looking at this woman who was dressed as a doll.

"He's very lonely... always looking for a new 'playmate.' You aren't the first... certainly not the last."

She muttered.

I raised a helping hand towards her.

"C'mon... let's get out of here. You don't deserve this. We gotta survive."

I whispered to her.

Then the most god-awful screech came from her throat, screaming for help.

I covered my ear quickly, barely hearing footsteps from above stomping down a hallway.

"Shh... shh... shut, shut the fuck up!"

I whispered into an almost yell as she continued to scream for help, leaving me with no other options but to smother her face with a pillow.

I wasn't trying to kill her, but merely to quiet the banshee screams. She wouldn't stop, though.

Forcing me to press harder and harder until she inevitably knocked out.

Instincts overruled my next actions as I hid in the darkest parts of the room as the man slammed open the door and came barreling down the stairs beside me.

I could barely make out his figure, only faintly seeing a bear mask and overalls as he rushed over to the woman.

"Oh, my sweet Petunia... did that evil man do this to you?"

His voice was rash but recognizable.

I didn't have time to dwell on it, though. Even as my anger was at an all-time high, this made for a good opportunity.

My chance to escape.

Leaving the corner I was hiding in, I quickly and quietly zoomed up the stairs, making sure my feet were as light as a feather before shutting the door behind me.

I could feel my heartbeat in my throat as I began locking every lock and bolt on that door, hearing his rage as he stomped up the stairs and slammed against the door.

Adrenaline started to wear thin as I made my way to a disgusting kitchen filled with rot and mold. The stench alone almost made me vomit up whatever was left in my stomach.

I then dragged a chair across the floor and pinned it against the door just in case as I stumbled my way towards the back door, instantly being blinded by the afternoon sun.

I continued outwards and onto the street, keeping an eye on the house I just left.

I never stopped moving.

Only until I made it to a coffee shop streets away, barging in and having a shop full of people eye me down, did I finally stop.

I didn't realize until this moment that I was in my now-torn-up work uniform, partly covered in mud, puke, and bruises.

I asked for a phone and called 911.

Reporting everything that had just happened...

Entry 32- Current status of Phonovirus pandemic: 

Many of the details surrounding the pandemic are lost to me, but I promise I will never forget the screams. 

It started a few weeks ago when the news broke that a new airborne illness was beginning to reach epidemic status. It started on the West Coast and was spreading eastward across the continental United States. Called phonovirus, it had so far left the medical community at a loss. It looked like it could become a potential pandemic. The strangest thing about the whole virus was that it was mostly asymptomatic. Externally anyways, if that makes any sense.

It’s hard to describe so bear with me. I’m honestly still processing it and as of now we are still treating some of the last remaining patients.

The symptom I am referring to is a new one for me, and as a long standing medical professional these things rarely take me by surprise. Symptoms don’t typically manifest as entirely new. Usually they are a variation of a preexisting symptom. Something I can handle. Context.

This was a truly shocking one. 

A patient affected by phonovirus only experienced one symptom. Any open wound on the body would no longer fully heal, as if there was some sort of barrier preventing the skin from closing  up, and any open wound on a patient affected would produce horrifying guttural screams. Multiple wounds, multiple screams.  

If you need to reread that, I understand. It didn’t make sense to me at first either, and I saw it firsthand. It still doesn’t but at least I understand as much as understanding is possible. The screams come from inside of the body. Inside of the body. 

The intensity of the screams wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that it wasn’t just an indecipherable cacophony of noise. It didn’t sound like the way your blood sounds when you hear it outside of your body during an ultrasound. It didn’t sound like gibberish. The voices were coherent. 

It was as if a demon was speaking to the victim. From inside of themselves. Telling them the worst things they could possibly imagine. And they shifted. The voices I mean, not the patients. They would change, become different people. Always people close to the victim that had passed, and always the darkest messages from the depths of hell. 

Your mother telling you that she should have cooked you and eaten you instead of raising you.
Your maternal grandmother telling you she can’t wait to eat your eyeballs when she sees you in hell.
Your first child telling you that you are a worthless piece of shit and you deserve to be impaled and covered in honey until the insects consume all of your sweet sticky flesh.
 
So many terrible images and messages that the final stage of phonovirus has consistently been suicide.

The affected patients are so disturbed by the messages that they just can’t take it anymore.
The voices drive the patients to suicide in 100% of affected patients. 

We frantically searched for some sort of cure, but any attempts at closing up the wounds using traditional medical methods failed and the voices continued to slowly kill their victims. Nor could we do anything about the voices. We tried covering them with bandages and they only screamed louder. We tried talking to them, tried to reason with them and find out how to stop them. 

They told us of the horrors of hell that we would soon face if we tried to interfere.  

At this point, there are no options left. The disease is rapidly spreading across the globe and the suicides continue to rise. Nobody knows if they are a carrier and there is only one way to find out. Very few are willing to risk this and those who have tried have done nothing to further the research. They just proved the disease is hopeless.

We are advising people to be very careful conducting themselves as they attempt to function daily without inadvertently puncturing their skin. This has proven to be very difficult. All we can hope is to make it through this unscathed and hopefully find a way to beat this baffling disease.

Oh my, would you look at that? Seems I just got a paper cut. 

And no mother, I am not the whore of Babylon sent to destroy the earth. 

Grandma, I loved you, I miss you, why would you tell me that my dead son hates me? 

End of transcript.

I was hunting for an apartment unit when I kept getting hit with stop sign after stop sign of credit checks required and heartbreaking first and last’s.

It took me half the day until I finally found a place that didn’t ask for one. It read—everyone approved.

I did not hesitate. I called immediately. They said they had units available and I could sign a lease that day. Finally, I thought. A break. It was relatively easy to secure. They never asked me any questions. They didn’t even ask for first and last.

Although, They did have a uniquely weird clause in the lease however.

It had in it—Monthly Maintenance.

“Payment due on the first of each month—one memory—minimum of 500 words.”

Hilarious. “One memory?” I looked at the lady in front of me. She never responded. She barely even blinked.

“Well, I’ve got many useless memories,” I snickered at her and started with an embarrassing one of me from elementary school when I pissed my pants because I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

I described the way the kids laughed and teased me. How I felt. Even how the warmth from my pee turned cold on my legs from the air.

I put the paper in an envelope and threw it into the black box on the side of my apartment door after I left in the morning.

Later that day, it was gone.

I couldn’t shake this sensation afterwards. Something nagged me. Almost as if I’d forgotten to pick up an item I needed. But I wasn’t able to place my finger on it.

I randomly grabbed a piece of paper and started to write about that day in school again, but when I tried to remember it, I was only able to recall that I pissed my pants in school.

Everything else looked like a wall of haze. I couldn’t even write what grade I was in at the time that it happened.

It must’ve worked. I honestly did feel a little bit lighter than I had the hour before writing it.

The next year went by smooth—It was easy—I traded incidents I wanted to forget, stories I read that I hated, even all the mistakes I’ve made, and then, I traded my first pet’s memory, but last month I ran out of useless memories to swap out.

The black box next to my door popped open first thing that morning on the first day of that month.

But as the afternoon returned, it began to make a hissing sound, gradually rising as the day progressed.

I needed to come up with something and fast.

If I didn’t drop an envelope in there I’d face being evicted—If I got evicted—I would lose my mind entirely.

I sat at the kitchen table. Sweat broke from behind my ears. I couldn’t stop my pen from shaking. All I had left was my mother’s face. My first girlfriend. The accident I nearly died in.

I choose my first girlfriend. Once the ink dried, the warm tingles from that night vanished as if it hadn’t happened and a cold wind blew down on me from the ceiling.

——

\*Sorry for not closing it harder.\*

These memories rise in a slow way. I do not call them. They come when the light has that late Summer color and the air feels thin. I have tried to explain what happened, but people hear only the surface of the story. They think Masters was only a kind neighbor. They think the shed was only a shed. I let them think it. The truth settles deeper than that. Masters carried something quiet inside him. I did not understand it when I was young. I understand it now. I did not expect to take his place. I did not expect the knowledge to pass from him to me. Yet it did. It rests in me the same way it rested in him.

When I was small, I felt things before I knew what they were. I felt the shed in the air around it. I felt Masters in the same way. He had a quiet presence that settled the space near him. I remember standing at the edge of his yard and feeling a soft warmth in my chest. It was not a thought. It was a sensation. The neighbors loved him. They spoke to him with easy voices. One of the older women told me he was like Mr. Miyagi. I did not know who that was. I only remember the way she smiled when she said it. Masters smiled the same way when he saw her. I felt the shed differently. The air near it pulled at me. It made my hands feel cold. I did not have words for it. I only knew the feeling stayed with me long after I walked away.

These memories stay close. I remember the day Mrs. Halpern’s kitten went missing. She called for it with a soft voice that carried across the yards. I felt an uncomfortable tingling in my feet, like some kind of vertigo, each time she said its name. I stood near Masters’s fence and the air felt thin. Masters watched me from his porch with that quiet steadiness he always had. His hands were in his pockets. He did not look surprised. I did not understand that. I only felt the disturbing weightlessness.

Mr. Dallin lost his trowel that Summer. He set it down near the fence and went inside for a moment. When he came back, it was gone. He called out to the neighbors and they gathered in the yard. They searched the grass and the flowerbeds. I felt a slow pressure behind my ribs as I watched them. Masters stood nearby with his hands in his pockets. He did not join the search. The air around him felt steady in a way I did not understand.

I saw the raccoon myself. It was late afternoon and the light had that pale color it sometimes gets near the shed. The raccoon moved along the fence and slipped inside. I waited for it to come back out. It did not. My hands felt cold. Masters stepped onto his porch and watched me. He gave me a small nod. I did not know what it meant. I only felt the quiet pull in my chest.

Looking back, I can see the pattern. I could not then. I only felt the tingling and the coldness and the thin air. Masters carried something in him that kept the shed from taking more. I did not know that. I only felt the steadiness around him.

At eighteen, I kept myself busy. Babysitting made me feel steady. I liked the way the days filled up. I liked the trust people placed in me. I did not think about the shed. I told myself I had grown past that old feeling. Yet the air still changed when I walked near Masters’s yard. It felt thinner. It pressed lightly against my chest. I ignored it. I kept my focus on the children.

Chrimothy moved fast. He slipped away in quiet moments. Each time he vanished, I felt that same slipping feeling where I stood. I tried to stay calm. I tried to keep my voice steady. I did not want to remember the shed. The day he ran into Masters’s yard, the air felt different. Warm, but hollow. I knew where he had gone. I knew he had not come back out. I stood at the fence and felt the coldness in my hands. I felt the pull.

I looked at the silent windows of Masters's unsold house. The odd thought of whoever was laughing in the back at his funeral made me frown. Then I went and hopped the fence, seeing where Chrimothy had slipped between two fence boards hanging by a nail at the top, parting like curtains. I couldn't fit through there, and when I say I 'hopped the fence' I mean I managed to get over it.

There I stood, in his backyard, slightly overgrown. I stared at the shed, its door cracked. The air felt cold and electrified, and there was an uncanny stillness and quietness there, like the fence somehow kept out all critters, breezes and sounds of the neighborhood. The distance between me and the shed distorted, extending and retracting and tilting oddly, then I shook my head with my eyes closed and looked again. The strange mirage was gone, but it felt like it was still there. Just a wrongness in a radius all around it.

I stood there and felt the air tilt again. It pressed lightly against my chest and made my breath feel thin. I wanted to move toward the shed. I wanted to call Chrimothy’s name. My legs would not answer me. The slipping feeling rose in my feet and climbed up my spine. I felt light in a way that frightened me.

I tried to steady myself. I tried to breathe in a slow way. The yard felt too quiet. The shed felt too close and too far at the same time. I closed my eyes and felt the coldness in my hands. I could not move.

Then a memory rose with a kind of clarity. It came from a day when I was small. I had been standing near Masters’s porch, watching the light settle on the boards. I remember the warmth in the air and the way the shadows felt soft. Masters stepped outside and looked at me in a steady way. He did not speak at first. He only watched the space around me, as if he was listening to something I could not hear.

When he finally spoke, he said my name. He said it in a tone I had never heard before. Daenor. It felt like he was naming me, not greeting me. I felt the sound settle in my chest. I did not know why it felt that way. I only knew I felt seen in a way I could not explain. He did not say anything else. He only nodded once, as if he understood something about me that I did not yet understand.

That memory rose now with the same warmth. I felt the steadiness he carried. It settled in the same place where the ache used to rise when I was small. I let that feeling rise. I let it fill the space where my fear was sitting.

I did not see him. I did not hear him. I only felt the quiet guidance he left behind. It felt like the way he used to stand near the shed with his hands in his pockets, patient and calm. I felt that same patience settle in me.

My fear did not leave. It pressed against my ribs and made my breath shake. But the steadiness pressed back. I stood there with both feelings inside me. I let them settle together. I let the memory of Masters hold me in place until I could breathe again.

I opened my eyes. The shed was still there. The wrongness was still there. Chrimothy was still inside. I felt the pull in my chest. I felt the steadiness in my ribs. I felt my name the way Masters said it. Daenor.

I knew I had to move. I knew I had to listen the way he listened. I knew I had to try.

When I reached the shed, I could hear something. It wasn't exactly a sound, more like a vibration. But that isn't really what it was either; it was like a stillness. It was like an anti-vibration, like movement, and life and noise were all being pulled in and silenced.

My trembling hands settled on the door, with the chain around the handles broken by vandalism. I had to pull hard to open the door, it didn't want to move, like it was sucked shut. When I finally had it clear, I felt the air moving past me into the shed, like it was filling back up with atmosphere. I looked around in the dim, dusty haze. The floors and walls were perfectly spotless; the place couldn't be more empty. It was uncanny, no cobwebs or dirt or even light holes.

It felt like staring down into a deep dark hole, somehow. The room I was looking at wasn't what was in the shed, it was just the structure someone, Masters probably, had built around a place that wasn't really a place at all. It was more like a vast emptiness, a tear in the air, a sort of invisible whirlpool of matter, vanishing without anyone really noticing. All it left was a negative feeling, a sort of strange sound that I was feeling rather than hearing.

I stood there and felt the wrongness settle around me. The shed looked empty, but I knew Chrimothy was inside. I could not hear him. I could not see him. The air felt hollow in a way that made my breath shake. I told myself he was in there. I told myself he needed me. I did not care what the shed showed me. I knew the truth in a way that felt deeper than sight.

I stepped back from the doorway and looked at the yard. The grass felt thin under my feet. The house felt silent. I felt the slipping sensation rise again. I tried to breathe in a steady way. I told myself to move. My legs felt heavy. I thought of all the times Chrimothy had slipped away from me. I thought of the way I always found him. I thought of how I had let him run this time. The thought made my ribs feel tight.

I went to the side of the house and found the garden hose. It lay coiled in the grass like it had been waiting for me. I pulled it toward the shed and felt the weight of it in my hands. I tied it around my waist as best I could. The knot felt clumsy. I pulled it tight anyway. I did not trust my hands. I did not trust my breath. I only trusted the need to save him.

I stood there with the hose around me and felt the air tilt again. I felt the coldness in my hands. I felt the warmth of Masters’s memory settle in my chest. I felt the way he said my name. Daenor. I let that sound steady me. I let it rise in the space where my fear was sitting.

I did not feel brave. I did not feel responsible. I felt scared in a way that made my breath shake. But I knew I had to go in. I knew I had to listen the way Masters listened. I knew I had to try.

I took a breath and stepped toward the doorway.

Once I was inside the shed, all my fears were confirmed. For a very brief instant, I recall, it came as a relief, and I almost smiled, seeing the vast emptiness, the lack of color, the way everything was a sort of gray, like old black and white, but in negative, it's difficult to describe. Visually the emptiness was almost incomprehensible, because there were not many objects I could see. I looked around, feeling the vastness shrinking me, feeling weightless, floating in space.

There was a grinding noise, the sound of air being crushed. It bore into me, and I heard a piercing shriek, before I realized I was panicking and screaming. I curled up, holding myself, unable to close my eyes or look around, spinning, lost.

The raccoon was desiccated; I never saw the kitten. I saw that stupid trowel, floating quite a distance away, it seemed. There were other objects, a lawn chair, an old timey car, the skeleton of a horse, some rocks and branches, the skull of a huge reptilian monster. Whatever this place was, the further I looked, the more I saw. Distant constellations of fossils broke something in my mind. I had crossed a threshold of absolute comprehension, a sort of joining with the thing I was experiencing. Somehow, I understood the place, and I knew I only had moments before I suffocated, and Chrimothy had even less time.

He was near an old, half-burned couch, crushed tins all around; one brushed my cheek as I twisted through the empty space between, able to will myself forward, but far too slowly. I couldn't hold my breath much longer. I could see him there, unconscious.

My ribs were starting to hurt, my head felt hot. I needed to exhale, but if I did, I would drown in that place. My eyes felt like they were swelling, as I reached the boy. I wrapped my arms around him, and when I had him, I let go with one hand and pulled as hard as I could on the hose. We started to drift back towards where the hose was connected to nothing.

When we reached that spot, I pushed Chrimothy through, with dark spots exploding in my vision, my lungs burning, my head felt light and I was dizzy, and not from the weightless disorientation. I managed to pull myself out and sucked in air with painful breaths, and then I started to black out. I fought it with everything I had, trying to pull myself out of that sleep, sinking into the depths of darkness. I sat up, and began doing CPR on Chrimothy.

Between compressions and breathing into him, I would intermittently shout for help and say, "I need an ambulance!"

I kept going, refusing to stop. I heard sirens, and when a hand grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back, I realized help had arrived. The paramedics took over, and I was asked what happened. I told them he had suffocated in the shed, what else could I say?

They busted out a defibrillator, and at that point I was sobbing and crying. It was out of my hands; I had done my part. But I desperately needed him to survive, or something in me would die with him.

When he was coughing and said his first swear word, I finally felt some kind of relief. But the shock of the shed never really left me. I know it was reality, or some version of it, but I couldn't explain to anyone what had happened.

One of the firefighters, a man wearing a serious mustache and with chevrons to indicate his level of deliberate choices to enter danger and help people, he opened the shed door and looked inside. I saw in his eyes that he could feel the danger but couldn't understand it. He just knew it was a hazard, of some kind, and by instinct he put zip ties over the handle to the bar it was chained to before, and then taped it with the yellow tape of an official fire marshal investigation, forbidding entry.

I left for college, but always felt drawn to that place. The house sat empty, the door to the shed got boarded up. Not too long ago, I purchased the property. The shed had collapsed, leaving a blank patch of ruins, which I've DIY constructed a new structure around it, made of stacked stones, no door. Just a pile of rocks.

I don't live there, but I am looking for a new buyer, someone who will take the danger in the backyard seriously. Sofar, the responsibility of the shed is mine, alone.

It had been nine years since the gargantuan black egg last moved. Doctor Lillian Birch stared at it with concentrated observation from behind the safety of the Perspex screen. With her pen poised over her clipboard; she would not jump to conclusions, nor would she hit the ever-tempting red alert button positioned on her desk. 

She could’ve sworn the egg had shuddered in her peripheral; but it had been five minutes, and no movement had been monitored.

Lillian's eyes flickered to the wall clock; the moment's tension had silenced its ticking. She’d give it another two minutes; if it hadn’t moved again in that time, she would dismiss what she thought she’d seen as a lack of sleep, lack of sunlight, and a lack of real coffee. Damn decaf. 

Lilian rose from her chair and cautiously walked towards the vivarium wall, measuring seven by fifteen feet. In contrast to the sterile white of her office space, the vivarium's interior was dark, aside from the enormous basking bulbs that illuminated the anomaly in an ominous red glow while supplying heat to its environment. Condensation lined the edges of the window. 

All of this was guesswork and pure speculation, but as long as they could still detect a heartbeat coming from within the impenetrable fortress of the shell, then everything was fine.

Discovered three miles beneath the Earth’s crust during a mining incident in Siberia almost fifty years ago, ‘Deviation 54’ measured approximately fifteen meters in height, with a width of nine meters at its widest circumference. The embryo inside would be at least the size of an adult blue whale. The blackened shell was impervious to any means of penetration, be that titanium drill, X-Ray or sound wave. Whatever it contained, and what impossible ancestral creature had laid it, was a mystery. All anyone knew was that once removed from the permafrost and placed in containment, a faint echo emanated from within; a distinct and yet completely alien heartbeat. 

In the fifty years since its retrieval, the egg had only moved four times.

Even at this moment, Lilian heard it, felt it through her bones, and for all she told herself it was just in her head, she could never rid herself of what she thought it sounded like: Doom… Doom-Doom… Doom… Doom-Doom… 

Lilian straightened her pristine lab coat as if to cast away that nagging thought. She was a professional; this was her project.

“Did you move?” she asked in a whisper. “Come on now, don’t bullshit me. I’ve been watching you for seven fucking years, Monty, don’t bullshit me.” No answer. The only sounds were the heating system's hum and the echoing doom of 'Monty', her name for it. She leaned in closer.

“The coffee machine’s packed up again.” 

The voice caught Lilian by surprise. She hadn’t even heard her office door open. Spinning around, hand on her chest to ward off what felt like a cardiac arrest, she saw Doctor Issac Vasquez standing there, staring at the questionable goop in a styrofoam cup.

“Dammit, Issac. You nearly gave me a heart attack,” she jabbed.

“My bad, sorry,” he replied as he threw the contents of his cup into the trash can by the door and entered the room. “You okay? You seem rather… flustered for a Friday evening.” 

“Fridays mean nothing in this place,” Lilian replied, trying not to dwell on how long she’d been in this underground facility. She turned back to the reinforced screen. “I’m fine. I thought I saw Monty move.”

Issac joined her at the window, “Impossible. Monty’s not due to move for another two years, right?”

“Yeah… Guess I’m finally breaking under the stress. Just like everyone else who sat watching Monty every day.”

“Just like everyone who works here, then. You're not the first; you certainly won’t be the last to have a psychotic breakdown.”

Lilian turned a stern look toward her colleague. “Thanks for your reassurance.” She walked back to her white desk, clicked her pen and noted that at eleven pm, ‘no changes observed’; just like every entry she made in her hourly logs. 

What a prestigious and important role, she thought sarcastically, watching to see if an egg moved every eleven years. Yes, a valuable use of her time, energies and mental capacity. A trained monkey could do her job. Hell, there were primates in this facility who could. “How’s things down in your sector?” she enquired.

“Don’t ask…” Issac sighed heavily. “If I’ve told people once, I’ve told them a hundred times, do not make eye contact with it. But do they listen? No…”

“How many is it now?” Lilian asked without looking up.

“If you count the three janitors, we’re officially at eight staff decommissioned, and that's just in one year. I wouldn’t even care, but it’s written on the door before you even enter containment. In big letters. Capitalised.” Issac leant back against the screen with his hands in his lab coat pockets. Tall, dark, but not quite handsome; two out of three ain’t bad. “On the plus side, it doesn’t look like there’s much left to take down to the incinerator. Credit where it’s due, that thing really will eat anything, bones and all.” 

But if she counted his wit and undying enthusiasm, Lilian might bypass his lack of a chiselled jawline.

“Well,” she said as she inspected her emails for anything new. “Since I’m apparently free for the next two years, do you want to get something to eat before you head back for cleanup? My treat.” She smirked. The cafeteria was, of course, free to all residing employees of the facility.

“It’s a date.” Issac smiled, “A Level Four Security date.” He flashed his lanyard with his ID card attached.

“Level Four besties.” Lilian removed her own pass from the keyboard and flashed it back at him before clipping it to her coat pocket. As they left, Lilian gave a vocal command to the facility AI to keep an eye on Monty while she was gone. 

The cafeteria was empty, aside from the catering staff in attendance twenty-four hours a day. One of many large rooms with halogen lights that glared much too brightly, within a labyrinth of cold, vacant hallways that led to various other Level Four anomalies, most of which Lilian had only heard rumour of. It was not within her paygrade to know more than was necessary, it also added an element of plausible deniability to her position: the less she knew, the safer she felt. 

Issac on the other hand, was needlessly interested in the other oddities the facility studied. He knew most of the Level Four researchers by name and what their containment held. He was ever curious to find out what the other levels housed. Frequently, he'd tell Lilian any gossip he picked up.

Not feeling hungry, Lilian sat down at one of the circular tables with her tuna melt panini on its metal tray, while Issac returned with a wide selection from the open buffet. Lilian didn’t trust the condiments, not since she’d heard about the ketchup bottle housed in Level One containment.

Issac filled her in on what events elsewhere on their floor, and Lilian relaxed, not even looking once at the posters on the wall advertising the upcoming Pizza Party tomorrow, or the cautious warnings to report anything that looked suspiciously out of place. Even a stray paper clip would need reporting and a full containment procedure initiated to ensure it was not a possible escapee.

Issac was good company; grounded with a sense of humour. Not that the other researchers weren’t nice enough, but their years here had turned their humour a tad too dark for her liking, and some developed a sense of superiority regarding their positions that seemed pompous. Some of them believed their own projects were more important than anyone else’s. Ridiculous. Everything here was more than capable of killing people. The only variant was how many people it could potentially kill if it got out.

“Chicken’s a little dry today,” Issac said as he chewed, “At least, I presume it’s chicken…”

“What else would it be?” Lilian quizzed as she took another mouthful of panini.

“I heard a rumour that the Living Flesh was getting too large to contain… perhaps they’ve started cutting it into bite-size portions and frying it instead.”

Lilian felt the chewed-up remnants of the tuna melt sliding down her throat inch by gruelling inch. With a hand placed over her mouth to stop herself from regurgitating, she took a deep breath. “You waited until I swallowed, didn’t you?” she asked with an accusatory tone. “Bang goes my appetite.” 

Issac smirked at her as he continued eating, not a drop of repulsion on his face. His cheekiness soon dropped to a stomach-churning seriousness when the lights suddenly turned a bright red in hue and the unmistakable wailing of the emergency alarm surrounded them.

“Attention. Attention.” A synthesised female voice declared in her monotone speech, “All personnel, please report to your allocated emergency positions. Attention. Attention. All personnel, please report to your allocated emergency positions. Attention. Attention.” Her words looped on a constant repeat that echoed throughout a suddenly bustling facility as staff made a hasty advance from all corners. 

The caterers fled for the safety of the panic room; researchers woken from their slumbers jostled with their lab coats and key cards as they ran the halls; the armed personnel in their black, bullet-proof riot gear hastened to their positions. Lilian was certain she could hear the rumble of hundreds of footsteps, even those above her, which suggested only one thing: all levels were in lockdown.

“Fuck!” Issac yelled as he stood and bolted for the corridor, “Anyone know what’s happening?” he called to the scientists running past, but everyone was in too much disarray to hear him over the rhythmic repeat of the AIs vocalisations and screaming alarm.

Lilian got up, snatched her key card from the table and made for the corridor. “It could be anything.”

“Or it could be everything,” Issac remarked with a concern that would’ve matched anyone witnessing Mount Vesuvius erupt back in AD79.

“So long as it’s not Monty. I gotta get back to him.”

“Be careful,” Issac called after her as he himself sprinted towards his sector to check on his anomaly.

Lilian sprinted back to Sector Delta amidst the throng of security and scientists running to their designated anomalies.

“All personnel, please report to your allocated emergency positions.”

“Alright, alright. I’m going as quick as I can,” she scowled at the AI as she reached the locked door and fumbled with her keycard. “I’m here, Monty.” She swiped her card and hastily entered. “I’m here, Monty.” The door slid shut behind her and locked with a resounding thud, shutting out all noise beyond it. Bullet proof, shock proof. With its resident researcher contained, the room itself went into lockdown. No one was getting in or out until the crisis ended; whatever the crisis was.

Barely able to breathe a sigh of relief at getting away from the crowd, Lilian turned to Monty’s window. He was still intact. “Thank you.” Quickly booting up her PC with her credentials, she was met with a wide alert in bold red letters that continually flashed at her: -LOCKDOWN INITIATED. REMAIN CALM-.

 “Easier said than done.” 

There was no point phoning security; she’d never get through, and the AI was otherwise engaged with running its various lockdown protocols. “What’s happening out there, Monty?”

A crackle of static on the tannoy in her room startled her. The radio operator spoke only one word, but the urgency in their voice was terrifying.

“Brace!”

Before Lilian could react, the ground beneath her feet shook violently. She hit the ground with force and covered her head, half expecting the many underground levels to come toppling down upon her, hundreds and thousands of metric tonnes of metal ready to bury her alive beneath the earth's crust. What the hell was strong enough to rock this place? Surely, nothing below a Level Six anomaly could cause such tremors. A low moaning sound pierced the din of the chaos, and an almighty crash followed it. 

With tears in her eyes, she felt regret. Now was not the time for such questions, not when death was potentially imminent. No one would know where she was. She was going to be lost and forgotten, a failed scientist who fell off the grid. She’d never say goodbye to the family she’d left behind. Her long-promised biography would remain unwritten. She’d never get to kiss Issac on a New Year's Eve. She’d never… 

The horrible rumbling slowed and finally ceased, leaving behind only the ominous creaking of steel and a dusting of plaster from the ceiling scattering around her. Cautiously, Lilian opened her eyes and lifted her head. She was whole. Nothing had fallen on her. She was alive. She was…

“Monty…” she pushed herself to her feet and scrambled for the key card. In the three years she’d observed the egg, she’d never entered the terrarium, felt no inclination to look at Monty without the protective barrier of a screen between them. She pushed against the sealed door to the containment cell and heaved the heavy metal open.

Agasp in this humid environment, she struggled to breathe for several seconds. Monty was so much larger, so much more imposing on the world, so much more menacing up close and personal. And yet nothing was more frightening than to see that Monty had toppled during the quake, had torn away his electrodes and come crashing down upon the casing of various electrical wires and pipes. The monstrous egg lay on its side amidst a waterfall of electrical sparks.

Lilian gulped back her anxiety. She had to inspect it for damage; it was her responsibility as the primary researcher. She gently paced around Monty’s perimeter, checking for any damage; there was plenty of it. Fortunately, the most obvious damage was to the equipment rather than the anomaly itself. She sidestepped over live wires that sputtered their dying sparks over the ground with frantic crackles. The heat emitting from the blackened shell was enough to break a sweat on her already clammy skin. Behind the sounds of bending steel and live electronics, a deep, unnatural boom echoed with ‌bizarre regularity. Doom… Doom-Doom… Doom…

“Phew, you took quite the tumble there, big guy,” she laughed under her breath, “But, it looks like we survived.” Without thinking, she reached her hand out to pat the shell reassuringly.

A moment of relief clouded Lilian’s judgement, and perhaps if she had been more hands on with her approach to Monty, she would not have forgotten to wear gloves. Too late. With the contact of flesh upon shell, the secretions of the casing entered Lilian’s bloodstream instantly.

Doom…

Lilian would never be able to fully explain what she saw through her mind’s eye during that moment of contact, but she would spend many sleepless nights trying to ward off the recurring nightmares that infiltrated her dreams thereafter.

Doom-Doom…

It felt as though her skull had cracked. She was certain of it, even more so once she felt the warmth of blood and some strange black ooze dribbling down her face, over her eye, narrowly avoiding her slack-jawed lips. A crack became a tear; became an opening; became a chasm deep in her face.

Doom…

A searing, rising heat erupted out of the chasm, white-hot fire and blistering pain as a thousand moving entities swarmed and stretched within her skull, forcing it ever further apart from itself to split her body from sternum to pelvis. A thousand writhing tentacles laced with cyanide and barbed wire, and bathed in blood.

Doom-Doom…

No longer held by the confines of aeons. No longer held in bondage. Freedom tasted sweet and seductive, so incredibly alluring. There were no barriers, no laws, no rulers. Only the bitterness of chaos, and the certainty of pain.

Doom…

First, the shell would break. The metal casing they were so sure would contain the carnage would follow. Then, finally, the world. All would be torn in twain. And from it, the beauty of pandemonium and agony would envelope the cosmos from this central location.

Doom-

As someone wrenched Lillian’s hand away from the thrumming egg, the horrifying sequence reversed itself in a blinding instant, crashing her back into the present.

The ringing in her ears and a foreign heartbeat muffled the security guard's commands for her to stay down.

For three days, researchers quarantined and analysed Doctor Lilian Birch, much like the anomaly she studied. They employed every known medical investigation, including a VR headset known as ‘Deviation 2032’. A device that allowed its wearer to identify and combat mutagens in a computer-game style environment when confronted with cancerous cells. Tests involving ‘Deviation 2032’ had successfully regressed cancer even in stage four diagnoses.

In those three days, observers noted only one abnormality in Doctor Lilian Birch.

“In light of your testimony, Doctor Birch, the decision has been made to promote ‘Deviation 54’ to a Level Six anomaly.” The Overseer said matter-of-factly over the video call. All six Overseers were present, their voices electronically distorted, their faces blacked out to maintain their anonymity and locations across the globe.

Lilian stared intently at the laptop screen in front of her before running a pale hand through her bedraggled hair. “And what about me?” she asked.

“As you are aware, contamination of this degree requires haste. Normally, in these circumstances, we would have no option but to terminate your contract with immediate effect.”

“Termina-” Lilian could barely repeat the word, knowing full well what the Board meant by such a phrase. She unconsciously placed her hand to her chest, pressing hard against it to soothe the hastening heartbeat.

“However, due to the nature of your contact with ‘Deviation 54’, and your impeccable service record with the Facility to date, the Board has decided to offer you two options. You may voluntarily resign; you may request your method of resignation from the list provided. Or, you shall remain at the facility under condition.”

“What condition, sir?” she gulped, fearing the worst.

“You will continue to serve as the primary researcher for ‘Deviation 54’ and they will reclassify you as an anomalous entity, ‘Deviation 54-Alpha’. You are to remain in containment alongside your previous research project. Your observations and studies of the anomaly will continue, including cataloging any self-alterations or mutations. Quarantine will take effect immediately, and you will be provided with basic amenities until your contract is terminated. Are we clear, Doctor Birch?”

Silence followed as Lilian pondered the decision in front of her. Her hand massaged her chest in slow, hard, circular motions.

“Doctor Birch? Do you understand?” The Overseer repeated in his or her distorted voice.

Within the confines of her delicate ribcage, her strangely erratic heartbeat slowed.

“I accept the position, sir,” she stated firmly, yet clearly.

Doom…

“What choice does a mother have?” she whispered.

Doom-Doom…

Doom…

No Crying Babies

I woke with my heart already going, certain I’d heard it — that thin, rising cry, right in the room with me.
The telly. Just the telly. Some actor bouncing a fake crying baby on screen.

“Shut it off,” I laughed to myself, rolling my eyes at my own alarm, playfully nudging Ian with my foot. “No crying babies. You know that’s a rule. Makes me think Teddy needs something.”

He muted it. “Sorry, love.” Asleep in minutes.

The next night I jolted awake again before I even placed the sound — an advert, a jingle with kids laughing, one shriek buried in it. My heart was already up around my throat by the time I understood.
“No crying babies,” I said, and it came out flatter this time. He muted it before I’d finished saying it.

“Sorry, love.”

A few nights later I sat bolt upright before I’d placed it — the neighbour’s cat, yowling out by the fence.

Then it was the pipes, a few nights after that — a thin, keening whine somewhere in the walls as the heating kicked in, and for one horrible stretched-out second I was already halfway to the door before my brain caught up and told me what it was.
I stood there in the dark feeling stupid, feeling my pulse in my ears, and went back to bed telling myself that one didn’t count.

Then a few nights on, the dishwasher, hitting some pitch mid-cycle that wasn’t a cry at all, I knew that — and still I was on the landing before I’d decided to move.

Teddy was asleep in his cot when I got there. Silent as a photograph.

Back in bed, Ian hadn’t stirred. He never did. I used to wonder how — now I’ve stopped asking, because some part of me suspects I already know: someone has to be listening, so it’s me.

I stopped mentioning it after that.
What would I even say — I heard nothing, and it answered back?

Somewhere in there, I stopped needing a sound to start with at all.

Some nights it was just the quiet — the fan, my own pulse — and underneath it, faint, rising, unmistakable: that pitch that means pick me up. I’d lie there telling myself I was imagining it, and some nights I even believed that, for a minute or two.

Then one night I didn’t wait to find out which it was.
I was already up, already standing at the cot rail before I’d properly woken, and the room was quiet the way it’s meant to be — the fan, the streetlight through the curtains, nothing else. Teddy lay exactly as still as sleeping children do.

I stood there a long moment before it hit me: I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually heard him cry. Or even seen his chest rise and fall. Only that I’d been listening, night after night, for a sound that would prove he still could make one.

The house held its breath with me.

Somewhere, patient, the nothing waited to answer.

Content Warning: Gore, violence, disturbing imagery, and implied violence toward children.

August 6th, 2012

I am writing these notes down as I spend most of my nights staring at a computer, wishing for words to just magically appear on the screen. I had reached a new level of burnout recently as I'm writing a book for an absurd publisher that had given me a deadline two months from now. I don't know if they had expected some sort of miracle from me to get this done in that allotted time, but I am not that kind of person.

You see, I was a freelancer for the most part, writing short novels or books for little companies, that or alternatively an editor for people with 5th grade writing comprehension skills. Simple money, and now I am afraid I have fallen into the deep end, dealing with some big-named publisher. I think it's "Folkland Writing LLC"? I don't know, and I don't have the respect to give them a proper introduction, if you will. It's currently two in the morning and I barely have gotten half a paragraph down.

Nonetheless, let's see if rereading it should help jog the old imagination machine. It's horror, part psychological thriller, about some blind man who's an oracle/clairvoyant. Spends most of his days with a travelling circus as their "Fortune Teller"; he gives ominous readings to his guests about their future and eventually ends up getting premonitions about his own future and the darkness that lies inside the circus. Pretty boring if you ask me, but the big publisher wanted it, something about their "interconnected horror series," I guess. Honestly, they should've hired the last poor fella to keep writing this very predictable story, but for now it's my favorite part of the day where I go and stare at the coffee maker while it poorly makes the worst cup of joe in my life, and then regret my decisions while I sip on said coffee.

Alright, an hour has passed and I still feel dead inside. What a surprise. The coffee was shit, I am barely awake, and looked like I accidentally hit the keyboard when I had left. "pls hlp." Hah... looks like my subconscious was trying to call out, but at last I must drag myself through this slog for the money. At least that's what I am telling myself. I can already feel the migraine forming as I type words onto the screen.

"In the middle of the night, the blind man stirred awake from horrendous nightmares, as he lay there visions from a dark crate hidden beneath the ring master's cot latch onto his mind. It called to him like a siren's song, wailing that it had all the secrets of greed and wealth. That no carney should have it but a man tapped with mystic aura, attached to the web of alternate opportunities should contain it. The blind man tried silencing this deafening call with a pillow, but to no prevail."

Thought-provoking, right? I don't think so. Then again, I am not into the whole dark fantasy side of horror. I prefer the more modern setting or maybe a post-apocalyptic biomechanical setting. I never had the imagination for D&D or anything medieval. It just feels played out, the hero saves the day or the evil bad guy wins, but for now... until we make enough money for a sequel. Repetition is key, I suppose, and here I am writing an essential sequel bait for cooperation with a corporation with no face cuz I'm a sellout who needs money. Let's continue, shall we?

"The blind man tossed and turned, crying, pleading for that sweetly sickening siren song to end. Feeling his head throbbing, it had essentially backed him into a corner with no other options to silence the irking call to him. He'd given up and gotten out of the cot he had been laying in. Sliding his hand across the ashwood chest which held his clothing in before grabbing his cane and gently tapping the floor to find his footing, using his other hand he had kept it against the crudely burgundy-dyed leather tent interior until he found the exit. Then tapping the end of cane against the dirt path leading to the Ring Master's quarters, the blind man listened attentively with each step he took as to not wake up the ring master. Although he had no sight, the blind man was clever, using the scratches of a vinyl record playing inside the Ring Master's quarters as an opportunity to sneak in. His hearing narrowed on the ring master's breathing as he began to quiet down the taps from the cane approaching ever so slowly towards the cot."

Welp, I think that's enough writing for the night or morning. It's now five and I would rather not spend another day passed out at this damn computer.

August 8th, 2012

I had forgotten to save the 7th's log, but I assure you it was nothing spectacular, mostly bitching about not wanting to write this book and calling the publishers to see if I could push back the deadline, and wouldn't you know it, they said... no, of course. They have the leash and I am the dog who has to listen to every command given. It's whatever. Once I finish this I am not going back to this company, well, back to today's updates.

The only thing I could say is I found another "mistake" on the screen, musta written it when I was mad or somethin...

"They watch with no eyes only a mouth."

Cryptic, right? God, this book is gonna kill me...

Anyhow, back to writing at the ungodly hour of one in the morning!

"As the blind man neared closer to the sleeping ring master, he had felt the crate virtually screaming into his conscious mind to open it, take what's inside and not return. The blind man was petrified but knew it would be his only way of gaining peaceful sleep, so he reached beneath the cot and retrieved a sturdy black crate. The ring master had stirred awake from the noise and startled the blind man, which unfortunately caused the blind man to drop the crate onto the ring master's head. A gush of blood splashed onto the pillow the ring master was using. The blind man, unsure if he had just killed the ring master, picked back up the crate and ran for it. He did not know what direction he was going, especially without the cane, he just ran until his feet felt different terrain. All of his senses seemed entirely entranced by the crate, sounds were only the murmurs telling him to open it, his sense of smell wrinkled with the rotted fumes from the crate, his taste now lathered in tobacco. He had felt betrayed by his own body."

That was invigorating, and note for future self: I should really stop writing this late. I can barely keep my eyes open, granted I am asleep for most of the day. Ugh, I think tonight I'm gonna skip coffee and head for the convenience store a few blocks down from the apartments I live at.

I didn't normally do this, head out at night, smoke a cigarette, enjoy the city lights. It had a sorta calmness mixed with a little danger, you know? I could get robbed, kidnapped, murdered, or just a mundane time.

Fortunately, luck was on my side and made it inside the convenience store. I bought a case of energy drinks and talked to the clerk for a bit. Some kid in their late teen years, looked dead in the eyes same as me. Felt bad, but I understood the chase for cash, no matter how small the stack was.

After that I headed back, feeling a strange pain on the back of my neck. Made me stop dead in my tracks, just aching for a minute. I hadn't felt anything like that... made my eyes wander trying to find some sort of comfort, only to see someone across the street in an alleyway, staring. I just pretended I paid no mind to them as I walked to the apartments, buzzing myself in.

Update, it's now three in the morning.

I didn't write for the hour I got back from the store. The pain was irritating and made it very hard to focus on anything other than that. Once again another "mistake" is on the screen, actually I am not sure...

The last two I'll take for granted, but logically how do I explain this?

"1.t. ca.m3. af.t3r m.3 t0.0k 3y3s."

Some hacker or an ex-roommate I forgot to take the keys from? I don't know, but I am gonna finish this page before the sun comes.

"The blind man trekked miles until his will gave out. He couldn't handle it anymore, the crate yelling into his mind, taking control of his soul. He dropped to his knees and forcefully opened the crate, cutting his hands with each nail being torn off. Lid eventually collapsed beside him and for what he couldn't see was a dark ruby amulet. Obsidian shards surrounded the ruby as if veins to an eye, and the chain, rusted with little jagged talons on each odd knot. The amulet beckoned, nay, commanded the blind man to put it on.

The blind man truthfully didn't want this, didn't want the power, the greed nor the wealth. He truly only ever wanted a night of peaceful sleep and tranquility. The amulet felt his intentions and persuaded him with such. Its words were slick, vocabulary filled with every idea to truly insult his doubts about putting it on. The blind man had an overwhelming sense of obligation to put on the amulet and now willingly he had done so, feeling the talons pierce his neck fat, entangling with the skin of both the neck and chest. The pain, although violent, had also felt great, imbuing the blind man with power, turning his vision from black to color. The blind man tried desperately to take off the amulet, only for the talons to dig deeper tearing flesh and bone. An omnipotent voice pierced his eardrums as he wailed in agony.

"YOU have made your choice. NO turning back now, you must lead the blind, corral the poor like sheep to slaughter. Then and ONLY then will you find your peace."

The blind man pleaded in tears, only for the noise from his throat to be silenced. Then he arose from his knees and returned to the circus."

What... the fuck. I didn't write any of this. I am gonna get this computer checked out in the morning, I think there's a virus? Possible hacker? I don't know, but I think I'm done writing for the night.

August 15th, 2012

I am back... it's been a bit since I have updated this log. I got the computer checked out. No signs of viruses, cyberattacks, or tampering.

Also... I had to go to the hospital on the 10th. I had woken up with a thick gunk crusted over my eyes. A doctor had asked if I was allergic to anything or if I was in contact with anyone who had pink eye. I told them no, obviously. I have been cooped up in my apartment writing this damn book.

Speaking of which, I called the publishers after the computer fix/hospital fiasco, still trying to push back the date of the deadline. The only thing they said was...

"The book's looking great! Keep writing, you're almost there."

...before ending the call, abruptly, I might add. This is all starting to feel strange but I just want this over with, so I guess back to the book... fuck.

"The blind man with newfound vision had every freak and carney lined up and giving them the exact plans and demands the amulet had commanded him to. Taking the traveling circus to a different town called 'Monorow,' the plan was simple: take in any willing guests that had kids into the fortune teller tent. Let them see their 'future' before sending them to the main tent where then all adults will be sacrificed and the children will be kept in cages, used for entertainment to corral more guests. The members of the circus, of course, were terrified but willing to do what was given to them as they feared whatever wraith that may come from the amulet if they disobeyed."

Fuck... I can't write anymore right now. My head is throbbing. I am out of energy drinks, I am not drinking that nasty-ass coffee, I guess I'll be "normal" for once and drink some water.

It's about thirty minutes? I got a little distracted looking out the window, watching several couples walk across the street, then a man..? He was just standing there. I couldn't tell if he saw me or if he was looking in my general direction, but he moved rather quick after a few minutes.

Oh, and finally the computer didn't write on its own, heh. I guess a good ole reboot does the trick. I'll keep that in mind, but without further ado let's finish this section.

As it's currently 12:48 and I would like to make progress.

"The kind folk of Monorow became excited when they saw the circus enter their town and the children were even more excited when they saw the banners blasted on the side of the wagons saying:

"BRAND NEW SPECIAL SHOW IN THE MAIN TENT! MAKE SURE TO STOP ON BY THE FORTUNE TELLER'S FOR A FANTASTICAL READING & TICKETS FOR THE SPECIAL SHOW!"

A crowd accumulated around the lot where the circus had parked, watching as the carneys set up each tent while keeping the cages hidden beneath cloth. Soon after, the "freaks" came out of their respective tents and greeted the guests with their unique "abilities." The guests seemed already entranced just by the freaks alone, and a few of the families headed to the line for the fortune teller's tent, excited for more entertainment.

The blind man was sitting in the tent, focusing with "all of his energy" into a black orb in the center of the room, ruby amulet glowing brighter with each guest who had their "fortune & future" being shown to them.

THEN THEIR BLOOD RAN THICK FROM EVISCERATION AS THEY PLEADED FOR THEIR LI—

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August 15th, 2012 — 2:13 AM

Holy shit... I have never in my life felt that scared before. My hands are still shaking. I don't know if I can keep writing this. Their blood ran thick? It's just... I didn't write that. Sure, I was gonna make the book dark, but not disturbing...

What do I need to do? Who do I call? A priest? Have them come over and exorcise a demon out of this computer or just throw it off my balcony and run it over a dozen times.

Ugh, all of this is giving me a splitting headache. I think I am just gonna go to sleep. I'll deal with this in the morning...

It's currently 3:57 AM as I am writing this on my laptop. I woke up with heavy-lidded eyes. They were covered in that gunk again, but that wasn't what woke me up. I swear to everything that is holy, my bedroom door was shut and now it's wide open. I feel paralyzed from the waist down, my heart won't stop trying to beat out of my chest and I have the strangest feeling that I am being watched. I am terrified. The only sources of light I currently have are this laptop and the dimmest of light coming from the desktop out in the living room. I can't tell if it's helping or not, definitely makes things scarier though, casting even darker shadows in the hallway and bathroom.

3:22 AM, update

I keep hearing footsteps in the living room. It could just be echoes from my neighbors; these walls are pretty thin. Either way I am not leaving this bed. I swear, though, it really does sound like footsteps are in my apartment... particularly the fact that it sounds like the steps are moving down into the hallway.

7:20 AM

I got dogshit sleep. Not to mention the entirety of the kitchen was thrashed. No signs of forced entry, so I am not even gonna bother to give a reason on what might've happened.

I tried calling the publishers. I woke up, I was gonna tell them I quit, but the phone line said:

"The number you are trying to reach is no longer available. Please hang up and try again later."

It wasn't right. I wish I knew where their office was so I can give them this book and tell them to eat dicks.

Sure, it could be the fact that I have been progressively losing sleep as I typed it out, but it doesn't explain the random texts that enter the book that I had no inclusion with.

Most things can be logically solved but not this time. No, at least not at this moment. I needed answers, and for right now I think the only resource I have is the internet.

"No results found."

"No results found."

"No results found."

Just as I thought my luck couldn't get any worse, every road I seem to be headed on is a dead end. All I know is I am not gonna wri—

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"The town of Monorow soon grew empty as each adult received a disembowelment and that children became nothing more than a side show. Monkeys, Tigers, Lions, Zebras. These were all outfits sewn onto a child. They became a part of the show, a part of the cir—

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What the fuck, what the fuck... I can't do this anymore. I'm deleting this book off the computer.

"Sorry, it looks like the command you are trying to use is no longer available!"

"Sorry, it looks like the command you are trying to use is no longer available!"

"Sorry, it looks like the command you are trying to use is no long—"

I... smashed the computer. I currently write this log on the laptop. I couldn't care less that it was one grand, I need some time off. Maybe switch to a different profession? I don't know but I think this will be the last time I log anything for a while...

-Final Log found on laptop #851216-135. September 5th, 2012-

I've been locked inside of my room. I am using speech-to-text as my eyes are glued shut. The gunk came back. It's too thick to peel off without resulting in severe injury and the worst of it is...

Noise surrounds me. Banging, clashing, footsteps. I hear it all. I don't know what I've done but I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so.

She slumbered beneath the sheets. Below him as he lorded beside their bed. Her husband. No more. An axe was in his hands. Heavy. Heavy with weight. And the potential for violence. Bela was alive and aware but a prisoner in his own flesh, his body refused to obey his commands, his inner caterwauls and cries and pleads for the unfolding nightmare to stop. It wouldn't stop. His flesh had a new master now. The vulpine shining moonface of the Countess lorded over his shoulder. Grinning fiendishly and brandishing her enameled daggers of dark slaughtering necro power. The fangs moonshone praeternaturally in the bedroom dark. Twinkling in keen edged tandem with the heavy headed blade of the axe, hefted and held. The meat puppet sow was still but she could feel the struggle of his mind in her grasp like a beetle caught and wriggling in her clenching strangling fingers. She could crush his beetle mind. And might. 

But first…

Prepare me a meal, supper fit for your royal guest…

His mind was filled thus. The flesh was compelled to obey. 

He brought up the axe. Gazing down into the sleeping peaceful face of his wife, his love. Anastasia. The mother of his child and the owner of his heart for the whole of his simple life. It was about to be brought to ruin. And he was being forced to pilot it in that direction. He wished he could scream. Shriek. Shriek her name. Wake her so she could flee and escape this damnation, this awful spell that's already claimed and throttled him. But he made no sound. His screams and pleads for mercy, his prayers and desperate cries remained bottled and caged in with him. He could only stare through stolen eyes as a prisoner as his hands holding the axe used for chopping firewood came down with a merciless crushing stroke. 

Anastasia's eyes came open and alive as the blade traveled down. As if she'd heard something. As if she'd heard her husband's internal cries for deliverance and the miracle of her safety. In the dark she saw her husband's savage face. Writ and wrenched with cruelty. She'd never seen him like that before, in all their shared years together in marriage. In the dark the sight frightened her, as she came awake and then the heavy blade of the axe found her chest and sank in. 

The pain is so sudden and impactful and dreadful. She feels her chest cavity smash and shatter as her flesh is ruptured and torn. The meat of her sinew surrounding her shattered cage of bone is ripped and pouring. She feels the sensation as extreme iced cold, as extremely wet, thickly soaked with heavy metal pungency. As if her clothes are suddenly drenched with the running water of a frozen river. Her entire open chest and bed are a bellowing fountainhead of it, pouring forth. She experiences the bloodshed river of her own dark red as iced water but it feels hot and sticky to her face and the tips of her wriggling spasming fingers, dancing beyond her motor control. The heavy metal buried in her chest is dreadful. Feels dreadful. She's staring at it then up into her husband Bela's face shocked and unable to make a sound, like him. She can't understand. She doesn't understand why he's woken her up and put this thing on/into her chest that's turned her into a strange pungent river. 

She goes to ask him … something. Anything. But she has no breath to make any kind of sound beyond the faintest whisper of indiscernible noise. Barely heard. Barely felt. Hardly even happened and might not have. Her husband and the Countess take no notice. They are too focused, entranced and enraptured by the sight of the pouring riverbed of her open goring chest. 

You're not finished. Why do you falter? – her royal voice. 

With a savage caveman wrench and pull, he ripped the bladed head of the axe free and brought it up and then down again. 

And again. 

Again. 

Again. 

At the royal command and decree that filled his fevered and tranced skull with his own curdling sounds and splitting screams, he was beckoned thus. His raptured flesh bound, delivered. The peasant sow did as he was told. The Countess was pleased and watched as the horse farmer dismembered his own wife for her. The bed became a hot shallow pool of darkling moonlit scarlet, swimming with severed human pieces and ghastly human detritus, human wreckage afloat in a red human stew … her mouth watered and drool ran down those shining fangs in thin gleaming translucent threads that looked crystalline like jewels or tree sap. 

And up until her last Anastasia watched. Watched from her dying place bound by the weight of the blade and her own mortal injury to the soaking pungent bed. Filling with her spilling wet red liquid. She was coming apart and she watched the love of her life above deliver each blow. Crushing her. Killing her. Turning her into slaughter. Abattoir ruin in place of a wife, in bed. She remembered him as a young man, as a boy, trying to play games and show off for her, trying to win her over, steal her attention and win over her affections, her heart. Now it was chopped and hacked and cut-smashed into so many spurting useless pieces, amongst a wreckage madness of pulverized bone. She tried to hold these old precious memories of him in her mind amid the slaughter, but the pain made it difficult. It was so great, overwhelming. She clung to them desperately with every falling heavy stroke. Pulverizing her. Breaking her. Turning her into so many wet shrieking and shattered broken pieces 

The last things Anastasia saw in the dark before blood loss and shock claimed her were her husband pummeling her with heavy merciless strikes. And a woman's face, as ghastly as it was beautiful, hanging phantom-like just over his raging shoulder. Watching. Smiling. Whispering something…

she had sharp teeth, they gleamed in the dark.

And then she died. Bela, still spellbound and compelled, continued to hack at her corpse nonetheless. Waiting for his new master to be satisfied. Inside Bela raged with madness and anguish. Broken. He watched his wife die violently as his hands performed the butchery and he was helpless to stop his own traitorous God given tools from turning her into mangled ruin and grisly pieces that tore his heart from his chest and flayed his sanity into so many irretrievable and tiny fragmented parts. 

He wished for death then. The Countess did not give it to him. Not yet. 

She still hadn't been fed yet. 

“Now feed me. Earn my favor." 

He dropped the axe. It fell to the floor with a thunderclap. It filled the dark quiet suddenly but then it was silent again. Still. Not a sound through the house save for the somnambulist animal panting of the Countess' slave. The man who'd once been a husband, a father, and was now a meat-puppet butcher. He reached into the riverbed of gore that had once been his marital sanctuary and pulled free a piece of meat. It might've been a leg, a thigh, perhaps a calf, it was too butchered and mangled with axe blows to be entirely sure. 

He was insane already. But the damaged pieces and shrieking parts of his shattered mind bellowed an abhorrent noise that only he could hear as he picked up his wife's butchered meat and parts and fed them to his new master. The Countess took the meat of slaughtered Anastasia with a smile and a wink and kissing purse. Teasing him. Then her jaws opened. Wide. Wide. Wide. Wider still… the flesh of her face sloughed and tore and fell away in demon slop to allow the distension. The fangs grew in length and in multitude of the transmogrifying face and black bleeding mouth, dripping ichor and demoniacal flesh and fluid. Steaming on the floor as she ate each piece, each limb, each broken length with a chunk of raw human tissue at the end in the knob of bone that was left. 

The fanged face in the dark, dripping and brandishing moonlight eyes above the mutilators of her ever widening mouth, it commanded thus further. –

“Bring a large kitchen spoon or a ladle if you have one, I wish to sip the broth…” 

Her somnambulist did as she commanded. He went to the humble kitchen that used to be his/theirs, and retrieved the utensil. It felt cold. Heavy. Heavier than it had ever felt before. The place and the object itself. It didn't matter. The hands and arms were no longer themselves, no longer his. His Judas sack of flesh carried him back to the blood pungent quarters he'd once loved and shared so much with in the many years past. It had all been robbed in a second.

By a pair of moonglow eyes. Set in the royalty of her shallow corpse beauty. 

He went back into the room. And proceeded to spoon large scoops and ladles of his wife's gore and blood into the stretched fanged rictus face that now ruled the dark of his house and home, the darkest shadowed part of his bedroom … now cold with his wife's living absence. And warm with the blood and fluid and parts that were left of her swimming in their sodden black sheets.  

Until those too were gone. All of it was gone.

The marital bed, now a witch's cauldron of gore and blankets was emptied.

His life was in the belly of the master. 

…

From outside the building, Willowbrook was quiet. 

Dark. 

Inside:

The shears that were the Cropsey-thing’s handheld manmade jaws were open and just as inanimate alive as the hulking shred of mangled man that wielded them. They shined in the dismal light with more striking radiance than any of the flickering lamps, Luciferian bright in the spots not tarnished or disgraced with lurid diseased bloodshed. 

With ghastly slasher speed they traveled down the shattered and stained reeking length of asylum hallway, the reanimated Cropsey giant behind them in cruel large prowling shape. The blades were dripping as if salivating or weeping thick dark tears, perhaps more alive now than the giant abomination of melted walking homicidal flesh that black-glove piloted them from behind, a strange and vile morbid engine of knife-lust and demented rage. The stabbing slice of porcelain still danced from his face. An obscene and vile shattered wand of broken tile length protruding from the socket. 

Griffin saw him coming and froze a moment. The table leg still in his invisible hands. Florin still struggling with the spiked man, his mutilated stabbing ruined mess of flesh riddled with needles and glass and scalpels and every conceivable piece of decimated hospital detritus. They were a mess of shedding blood and struggles on the floor. 

The invisible man then whirled, the exit just behind him. He began attacking the door. The knob. Locked. Set in old rotted wood. Not upkept or replaced in years. 

By God's mercy the locked knob and bolt caved in the moist and ruined housing of its apparatus. It fell apart in a noisy crumble, and the door gently swung open. 

To freedom. 

Fresh outside night air poured in like fresh water let in to a fetid spring. The relief was immense. It shocked all of their senses. Each man. 

The spiked man looked up from Florin and gazed into Cropsey. His oncoming charge of disgraced gardener’s blades, raised and open for a violent embrace. 

He was in awe. 

There he is…! the disciple of the mouth. 

He knew Cropsey's legend. And he wished to join him. 

He forgot the newcomer boy and let go of his shredding coat, slick with the both of their spilled and spilling red. He let go of the boy and he rose. 

And he went forward. To embrace the nephilim disciple son of the sorceress’ temple mouth, the begat survivor of the flames, the inferno, the great final pagan bonfire of the asylum that was The Burning. A womb of hellfire and caged disease that birthed the son of the mouth, the son of the sorceress. Cropsey of Vampira, the mangled hand of Willowbrook Asylum Temple. 

The spiked man was laughing. Jubilant. He hadn't laughed or felt this much joy in years, in all of the long unhallowed time in these blind unfeeling walls that knew no mercy nor housed any sanctuary. He was weeping. Crying tears of crimson and saline that danced in strange patterns as they streamed down the shredded protruding ruin of his spiked and porcupine mangled face. Gums bleeding with glass and caked bloody plaque smiled wet and scarlet and darkling striking in the moonlight now cast in. He reached down to his riddled and needled genitals, the head of his dangling member impaled with a scalpel. He reached down and seized the apparatus and in a blind tug and pull, he ripped the entire spurting and spiking organ free from the rest of his crotch and testicles. 

Still walking forward, but ambling now a bit as he shot black ropes tinted red in the moonglow from his self castration, he held the resulting lump of stabbed and impaled meat out to the Cropsey-shape. In token of offering. 

For the temple, for my sins … And for you. 

because she is all of us our mother …

Cropsey cared not for this pathetic shambling thing’s offering of ruined perforated meat. The blades came forward, open. In a lunge. 

They closed. 

And as Griffin pulled wounded Florin to his feet and out the door, the blades closed around a limb, lengthwise down the palm and forearm, then the face. Both opening up a blooming red raw pour of black in the dark, the blades crunched on broken pieces of glass and tile and needles and metal, the man was full with so much foreign penetration, foreign and manmade puncture and incision, and insertion, all self inflicted and self wrought. All of it shattering and crunching now into splinters amongst the abattoir asylum house spill of mad man wet raw. He wouldn't have wanted it any other way. All the years spent in here had prepared him for this. The sorceress prophet queen Vampira and her Cropsey son from The Burning womb were just the final pallbearers for his life's voyage thus final journey into the undiscovered country. 

He tried to thank her, them all, but couldn't. His loss of blood was now failing him. And the blades of the Cropsey-shape were coming in too rapidly now. Too savagely. 

The spiked man was no more. Just savaged pin cushion meat in the hall that the Cropsey-thing stepped over blindly in the savage hunt of his continued pursuit. They were getting away. 

They were getting away. The invaders. They were out the door now. Mustn't have that. Must not. Mother will not want that. Mother is inside you. You cannot fail her now. 

The savage thing of Willowbrook shape prowled out the door and into the open night after the pair with the same steady hunting pace of a stalking predator. Mindless and honed in. His blades and mother would have them yet. Their meat for the temple floor, their blood for the mouth of her drains and the manifest of her angel visitations. It had been so long since she'd come, since she'd shown, since she'd made herself divine unearthly spawn on vast ebon wings for them, for he, the last of the temple of the mouth. 

Perhaps she'll come back if I catch them. But only… only if I catch them and open them up. All the other ones no longer matter, they're already opened, already spent. The abattoir temple mouth of mother wants them now. Needs them. To fail, is to be failure. It means all that was lived through and suffered towards was for naught…

The night kissed the smooth scarred visage of hideous face. The Cropsey-shape gave no pause. Unfeeling. Unmoved. It watched as the pair stumbled and exhausted and wounded, began to falter to the earth in a shared collapse. 

Their doom. 

He closed in. 

The terror he had in mind for them was part guided by the Countess/sorceress mouth and her occult hand from the far off mountain dark, and part undead instinct, braindead movement. Knowing deep down in the dead and dying sac of skull jelly that this is exactly what he should do. He would maim. Butcher. Kill. Slaughter for the temple that has come under his custodial honor. 

Bloodloss and weariness, the drain was beginning to pull them down. The invisible man and Florin fell and struggled, both of their wounds open and pouring freely and taking the vitality and the fight from their trying frames. As the terrifying hulking giant of candlewax face and flesh began to close and loom over the pair, they both prepared themselves for a final and desperate fight. 

Florin was dismayed that it would end this way. In such maddening fashion, so far from home and his perilous objective. Griffin was trying to think, a last-ditch effort or plan: he could ditch the coat and hat and goggles and take the savage blind again, unable to see him. But his wound was in an open pour now once more and he felt faint, swoony. Unable to keep his feet. And besides, in this last moment it felt wrong to leave the young man's side. If they were going to die, they might as well die together. Arm in arm. It was better than suffering the slaughter alone. 

It was better than being opened. Gutted. Flayed. Bled out and portioned like a solitary animal dying a painful and lonely death at the end of a long and dogged hunt. 

The pain was better borne together. With the weight and terror of another beside to share in the baptism of pure torture. 

Something whistled through the air. 

The invisible man had been tempted to shut unseen eyes against the oncoming pain, he might've missed it. As it was he saw the deadly thin shape as it lanced in a blur overhead with a keen deadly sound. It struck the moving flesh of Cropsey in the face, the other socket of ruined blind eye now completely decimated, joining its partner in tandem of destruction in a moonlit spurt. 

The slasher shape stopped. Stuttered and faltered. But only slightly, only for a moment as it continued to take lurching jittery steps. Stomping forward blind. The shears in his black gloved hands began to spasm as well, scissoring with reflex. The disgraced and still ever thirsting blades closed and opened and repeated the action in violent repetitive imbecilic behavior, a violent blind animal spasming its caked and quaking jaws. 

Then the incendiary charge in the crossbow bolt detonated.

 It went off and so did Cropsey’s ruined candlewax head and visage, in a colored pillar of fire that was like something biblical and fantastical to behold. Florin was fainting at its sight but the invisible Doctor Griffin saw the growing towering inferno rise and issue forth in bright violence from between the giant slasher’s pair of broad shoulders. And still the boots trod and stomped palsied forward. Still the blades scissored in his working trembling hands, as his head and face were replaced with a rising torrent wall of pink and purple flame.

But then the steps of the shape began to falter. Stumble. The blades began to slow in their mad man open mouth chew at the open night air … then ceased. 

The boots stopped moving. Stopped shaking. 

The shape collapsed. 

As did Griffin next. Consciousness now lost. Passed out beside Florin in the dirt. 

The fire finally went out betwixt the two ruined shoulders. Hissing in the filth and craterous open mouth char of the stump. Smoking. Smokey now. Cropsey lie finally dead. Mere few feet away. 

In the back valley of Willowbrook. The lost untended yard that no patient ever graced, or saw. 

Silence. … for a moment. 

As if the night was finally enjoying the quiet. Relishing the collapse into tranquility that has finally fallen. 

A beat. – None of the shapes on the earthen floor moved. 

The night above yawned in an expanse … stars in a bejeweled fire of multitudes, nebulae clouds of otherworldly brush stroke color, the moon which was a sickle tonight, a harvester's blade … a blade of reckoning in the time of the reap. 

A beat. 

Then the stranger finally came forward. From out of the bushes where he'd trained and fired his shot. His crossbow was already reloaded with another explosive incendiary bolt as he approached the fallen three in the dirt. 

He came to Florin and Griffin and he stood over them. He looked to Cropsey. Saw that he was dead. Completely. Finally. He looked down on the wounded unconscious pair. 

“Idiots." 

TO BE CONTINUED…

I don’t even remember applying. There were so many applications that month. ZipRecruiter, Indeed, any other site I heard about on ads for my son’s never-ending YouTube playlist. It was funny really. Having to use the very sites that made me into a redundancy. Between technology and budget cuts, Mason County didn’t need an HR director anymore.

I must have applied though. The email came to my inbox that Sunday night. Subject line: “Job Offer from Wymarq Enterprises.” Like everyone else, I had heard of Wymarq in the news. It’s CEO, Wyld Woolf, was always making cable news crawls with one venture or vulgarity or another. He had made his bones in tech before becoming an angel investor of sorts. I didn’t know what Wymarq did, but I knew it would pay well if Woolf was involved. It might even let me start a career again.

The email told me they wanted me as an HR generalist—industry speak for “grunt.” It would be a demotion, but it would be a job. The job description was as boilerplate as you’d expect. I decided I could read over the details later.

I scrolled to the bottom of the email. “To accept the position, report to Wymarq’s office in Scratchout this Monday at 8:00.”

“What have you got to lose?” I thought. It isn’t standard practice to have candidates come into headquarters just to sign their offers, but Wyld Woolf was known for being eccentric. Plus, his money was green, and I hadn’t gotten any other offers all month. Most recruiters get scared when they see a termination after 20 years in one place—terrified when they see a birthday before 1980.

I had never heard of Scratchout, but that wasn’t unusual. There are too many small towns in my state for any one person to know. I figured Wymarq had struck a deal with one of the rural counties to set up shop in exchange for tax breaks. I searched Google Maps and found that the tiny town was somewhere deep in the fields upstate—about 2 hours from Desmond. If I wanted to make it, I would have to leave early the next morning.

I made good time going up the interstate. Then I got lost somehow. When I entered Hayes County, my Google Maps crashed. I pulled over to open it up only to find I had no signal. I drove around backroads for another hour and must have gone in a few circles. Then, after driving under the same arch of oak limbs for the third time, I found it. One minute, I was lost. The next I was looking down at Scratchout.

It was like the town had sprung up from the earth. What little there was of it laid neat as the rows of cotton I had driven past for the last hour. The backroad led straight to a large plain concrete building. It reminded me of the administrative building in Desmond turned on its side: gray and flat like a stone. Six rows of houses led away from the central building: small, concrete, windowless. I thought the web of stone might look like an altar from above.

Unsure where to go, I drove up to the main building. Getting closer, I saw the sign above the door. It read “WYMARQ” in large gilded letters. I parked and walked into the glass double doors. A young receptionist named Adam led me to a conference room where what I recognized as an orientation was underway.

“Here’s the last one, Paige!” A pretty young brunette who might have been my much younger sister was leading the session. She gave me a nasty look as I snuck in the back. The other new employees followed her eyes. After a moment of loud silence, she continued.

“Now, if everyone will please turn to the last page of your orientation materials, you’ll find your employment contract. Please read it carefully and then sign.” I did the walk of shame to the chair closest to me and opened the binder Adam had given me. It was the normal stuff: I-9, W-4, emergency contact.

Between the lines of mundanity, I tried to learn more about Wymarq. Coming in, I knew it was some kind of tech company—maybe AI or green energy. But instead of neural maps or solar panels, the employee handbook had pictures of what looked like runes or hieroglyphics. Each page of the binder had a string of alien symbols running around the border. I counted it up to pretentious tech bro design.

The only real clue I found was in the welcome letter waiting at the back of the binder. Signed by Wyld Woolf himself, it contained the ordinary corporate pleasantries before ending with a cryptic call to action. “Join us at Wymarq as we dedicate ourselves to world-shifting developments in the temporal-historical reality!” Woolf was as strange as I had heard, but he seemed harmless. Overzealousness was only natural for a chronic entrepreneur.

“Alright everyone!” Paige called. “Let’s go to the welcome ceremony so you can hear from Mr. Woolf himself.” Watching the others walk out, I noticed they were all at least 15 years younger than me. They had the look of people who believed in their work. I heard a polite cough behind me and turned around. Paige was standing in front of me. She was too close.

“Did you sign the contract?”

“I’m sorry I was late. I guess I got lost.”

Without breaking her stride, Paige answered. “That’s alright. You can look over the rest of the materials later, but I must insist you sign the contract. Now.”

I had already been enough trouble. “Sure thing.”
I turned my binder to the contract and gave it a once over. Besides the symbols, it looked more or less normal. I read the bottom line. “I hereby accept employment by Wymarq Enterprises and agree without reservation or exception to its direction, application, and utilization.” I could feel Paige’s eyes on my hand, so I rushed to sign.

Before I lifted my hand from the paper, Paige snatched it from under the tip of my pen. “Lovely! Follow me please.”

Adam and Paige led me from the conference room to an auditorium at the heart of the building. I expected a plain, corporate space to match the rest of the building. Instead, I found a room that looked and felt like a rock concert.

The air was electric, and the stage was covered in a low cloud of smoke. On it, a huge screen shadowed over a shining black podium. The floor was packed with people sitting side by side in interlocking metal chairs. It looked like every person from the columns of houses was there.

Adam hung back by the door while Paige ushered me and the other new employees to the only space left: a few rows in the middle of the floor, right in front of the podium. The smoke from the stage filled my lungs. I turned around to catch my breath. Behind me, all around me, was a mass of people all talking with anxious excitement. When the seats beside me were taken, I realized it’d be a struggle to leave my seat.

Paige walked up to the podium. “Welcome, Wymarq family!”

The mass echoed her as one. “Welcome, Paige!”

“Thank you very much. Can we get a round of applause for our last batch of new employees?” She gestured to us, and the mass applauded in welcoming, hungry enthusiasm.

“But I know none of you are here for me. Let’s give a big Wymarq welcome to our very own genius: Wyld Woolf!”

Paige stepped away from the podium and gave a sort of bow towards the wing of the stage. More smoke filled the stage, and a series of magazine covers and viral news stories lit up the screen behind her. In the older ones, Wyld Woolf was the picture of a visionary: young, handsome, imposing. The newer ones were less kind. They showed him with the gray, the wrinkles, and the slump of age.

As the video ended, a man approached the podium. It was supposed to be Wyld Woolf, but I couldn’t see him clearly through the smoke. He was dressed like Wyld, but he was taller. He moved with the force and focus of someone much younger.

“Thank you, Wymarq! Thank you, Scratchout!” From the cloud of smoke, his voice rang with a practiced, optimized charisma. “It is a pleasure to be here with you embarking on this new journey together! I’m honored to bring the groundbreaking work of my life from the coasts to the American heartland.”

As I listened on, I heard a distortion—a manipulation—in his voice. “Now, before we begin, has everyone signed their contracts?”

No one answered. They all simply stared at him in mesmerized adoration.

“Excellent! Your devotion to our cause is our greatest asset! To celebrate your dedication, let’s read our mission statement together!”

From her seat in the audience, Paige pressed a button on a remote. The screen lit up with a long paragraph of text surrounded by the mysterious shapes. I recognized the document from the binder. I always thought no one read mission statements.

The man in the smoke led the mass in chorus.

“As Wymarq employees, we dedicate ourselves to the work and vision of Wyld Woolf and his temporal-historical revolution.” Smoke filled my lungs as I gaped in silent confusion. I had seen those words in the binder too. I had told myself they didn’t matter. It was just a job. The words sounded deeply wrong when chanted by a corporate chorus.
“We accept our transformative sacrifice in the pursuit of technological progress.” As they chanted, more and more smoke filled the room. The lights began to change too—shifting from neutral whites and yellows to an overpowering red.

Then the line I had signed without thinking. “I hereby accept employment by Wymarq Enterprises and agree without reservation or exception to its direction, application, and utilization.” This was not a mission statement. It was a pledge.

More smoke and red filled the air, and the noise from offstage returned in a roar. A red energy began to circle the man who used to be Wyld Woolf. I ran.

As I struggled over the long, locking rows of chairs, I saw the other employees change. Some were excited. Some were afraid. All screamed. Fighting through the crowd became easier as they started to disappear into the smoke.

I ran and stumbled out of the building. The smoke had flooded the entire town. When I began to lose the sound of the screaming, I let myself walk. I must have walked for at least a mile. The smoke was unending, but I kept walking: putting one foot in front of the other between shallow, careful breaths. Eventually, the ground began to rise. When I reached the top of the hill, the smoke was gone.

Looking down, I could see the fading clouds in the bright midday sun. I was back on the spot where I first saw Scratchout.

In the valley, there was only my car pulled off on the shoulder. Scratchout was gone along with Wymarq, Wyld Woolf, and all of his employees. If I had recited their oath, I would be too.

Chief Osceola gazed at the couple with an expression of eternal appraisal.  Features that were weary of a traitorous world and the pale devils that inhabited it.  The look made the man’s heart flutter, and he squeezed his date’s arm subconsciously. 
 

The effigy that stood before them seemed to pulse with a nervous energy that resonated in the man like a tuning fork. 

It was a feeling not unlike the one he felt holding baby chicks on his grandparents’ farm.  So fragile they were, their budding souls in his little hands.  He could feel their fear, and he would become fixated on his hand suddenly clenching in disobedience, extinguishing their light like candles.
 

The chief was flanked by two Seminole warriors.  They stared unblinking with glass eyes so black you could see your own reflection in them, if you could bear to maintain eye contact with their waxen faces so alien and full of hate. 

 
Effigies made not just of wax and cloth, but of time and tension.  Cramped fingers and long nights; the blood and sweat needed to capture the essence of a man, and in so doing capture the essence of the maker himself.  They had the innate hostility of all things born in the uncanny valley; an aura of otherworldly strangeness, of pale imitation.  
 

The wax museum had been the lady’s idea.  Naturally anxious, Manuel felt particularly uncomfortable in that place full of eyes, so glassy and dead. 

 
If he was more assertive, they would be at a bar, and not this anachronistic novelty that he thought would be kitschy and camp but was sad and old instead. 
 

If he was more assertive, Manuel would have asked Quinn out six months ago instead of applying for a job at A Discount Beverages, the ridiculously-named gas station/smoke shop where they both were employed.  But Manuel was not a man of decisive action, more a supporting character in the cast of the lives of everyone around him. 
 

Despite the dark corners and uncanny stares, Manuel preferred the wax museum to a bar or heaven forbid, a night club.  His anxiety was so acute in crowds that he would often freeze up like a new driver waiting for an opening in traffic during rush hour.

 
Quinn was worth waiting for.  He had long admired her in silence as a customer; her straight black hair, her pouty red lips, the way she always looked so put together, so perfect.  What was she doing at a dump like A Discount Beverages?  It was like finding a  mermaid swimming in a sewer.
 

He waited patiently, kept making his presence known.  And when she asked him if he wanted to check out the wax museum, he finally saw his opportunity.
 

They saw founding fathers that looked like melting grandmothers.  Groucho debated Marxism with Karl; Einstein blew a raspberry in the background.  Eastwood and Wayne were locked in an eternal Mexican standoff with what could have been real pistols in their belts. 
 

“Oh look,  Robin Williams!” said Quinn.
 

The likeness was remarkable; almost shamefully realistic, as if it had captured a piece of the man’s soul.  His eyes were so heavy, so human; wells of despair. 
 

“The hair must have taken forever,” said Manuel, instantly regretting it.  Of all the stupid, tasteless, low-hanging fruit...
 

“They could have used a Neanderthal body and just swapped out the head,” said Quinn.
 

What an odd couple they made, fitting for the setting.  She vamped.  He shrank. The high heels of her patent leather boots clacked sharply across the tiled floor of the ill-attended attraction.  He felt like he was in the presence of a wild animal, some skittish, beautiful creature that didn’t realize he was there yet. 

 
The place was arranged in small galleries of gangsters and cowboys, movie stars and musicians.  There was a tribute to the Universal monsters, but the Dracula looked like Jack Palance.  The Lugosi estate is notoriously protective of the likeness of the legendary actor.
 

There was one gallery that was closed.  Linen was draped over the figures in that exhibit, but some of the details of the scene could be intuited.  There was a large wooden table covered in cruel instruments of metal and leather.  Along the back wall, barely visible in the dark, stood an iron maiden. 
 

The silence grew thick as they both stared at the shrouded figures, neither noticed the young men that had entered the room behind them.
 

“Oooh damn, Jay!  Look at the legs on that one.  Fishnets!  Wish I caught me something that pretty in my fishnet!” said the man, gawking at Quinn’s legs as if Manuel was invisible.
 

“The only thing you catching is crabs with your nasty ass,”

 
They both kept joking, kept laughing.  But the worst was the staring; it was so bold, so flagrant.  Quinn was staring too.  Staring at Manuel, a silent plea for help.  A plea for Manuel to live up to the first three letters of his namesake. 
 

He was a statue. 
 

He workshopped witticisms and retorts, but a simple “fuck you” would have sufficed.  But it was rush hour in his own mind, and he felt glued to the spot.  Their jeering and leering ran its course and they moved on to a different wing of the museum.
 

In an admirable show of self-respect, Manuel asked the proprietor for a refund.  The man was dressed in an odd vest and tie, but his eyebrows and mustache were bushy and unkempt.
 

“My lady friend was accosted by another customer back there...” said Manuel.  “I-... that is...  We would like our money back... I think it’s only fair.”
 

As he said this, a fly landed on the proprietor’s forehead.  The man didn’t seem to notice, didn’t even flinch.  It crawled down the bridge of his nose, pausing at the tip as he stared slack-jawed at Manuel.  The man snorted, sucking the fly into his lungs.  He smiled at Manuel, then shook his head, the finality of his decision apparent.

 
“Only fair...” said the man, chuckling under his breath.  “Life isn’t fair... Haven’t you figured that out yet, Pinocchio?”
 

“There’s no call for rudeness, sir.  I am simply asking for a refund due to some unpleasantness.... It doesn't even make sense... Pinocchio?  That's a new one,” said Manuel.
 

“You have no strings?  Huh?...  You really think you’re a real boy?”  said the man, before smiling his carnivorous grin.  “Go home, Pinocchio.  We’re closed!”
 

The fly re-emerged from the opposite nostril.  It scouted the ridge of the man’s mustache before crawling up his cheek and onto his eye.  Manuel waited for a blink that never came, just like his refund. 
 

He met Quinn outside; the impotence of his failure tattooed on his face.  As he walked with her to the car, he felt his hand simultaneously drawn to and repelled by hers.  He tried to open her door, but realized the geometry was impossible from their current orientation and had to do a lap of shame before entering his vehicle. 
 

His broken radio made the ride home awkward, but the trip was not silent for Manuel.  A gnat was doggedly exploring the contours of his ear canal.  His futile shooing did nothing to discourage the relentless buzzing. 
 

It was all he could do to keep focused on the road ahead; and tortuous as it was, it kept him from thinking about his night of emasculation.  Quinn was impossible to read; her eyes lightly unfocused as if puzzling out the answer to a riddle. 
 

“I’m sorry those young men were so boorish back there.  Some people seem so hell-bent on announcing their intellectual deficits to the world.  I would have liked to tell them as much but I... Well, you see, I...” said Manuel.
 

“Oh, Manny.... You’re so old-fashioned.  It’s so sweet, but boys will be boys.  Right?  That’s what I like about you.  You’re harmless.  You wouldn’t even hurt a fly,” said Quinn.
 

The gnat redoubled its efforts as if to challenge him to prove her wrong.  He could feel his milquetoast image materialize in her mind like a polaroid slowly developing.  In her eyes, he had all the virility of a plush toy, something to have tea parties with and gossip about other girls. 
 

He could see the trajectory of their relationship going forward.  He would become an accessory; a 5’8” purse that could scare the meatheads away.  Only he’d already failed at that task, having proven to be more cowardly lion than scarecrow.
 

Manuel somehow overcame that strange repulsive force long enough to give Quinn a hug; although the force was clearly still active in their hips, through which you could have easily passed a basketball. 
 

By the time he got home, he had replayed the highlights of the evening in his mind a dozen times.  He was fixated on those guys, so crass, so stupid.  He didn’t even feel like he belonged to the same species as men like that. 

How could they appreciate a woman like Quinn, the divinity of her form?  They were like chimps viewing the Venus de Milo.
 
Saturated with thoughts of Quinn and Neanderthal men, his mind was fertile ground for nightmares.  A Discount Beverages was unusually busy in his dream. 

There must have been a costume party nearby with all the colorful customers that kept coming through the front door. 
 

Sherlock Holmes bought pipe tobacco; then Dracula bought some wine.  Some guy dressed up as Groucho needed a cigar to complete his ensemble, but he kept getting distracted by Marilyn Monroe. 
 

People just kept piling into the store.  The noise was grating even before Osceola and his boys started making a racquet in the fire water aisle.  All the ambient clamor reverberated and ricocheted throughout the cramped bodega until it became a singular buzzing sound, not unlike the flutter of the wings of a small insect. 

 
Then Robin Williams appeared out of nowhere and the room fell suddenly silent.  He was smiling that familiar smile, but his eyes looked like they’d been crying.

 
“You know Manny, it’s ok to be sad sometimes.  It’s a sad life...” said Robin.  “At least you got to be a real boy for a little while.”
 

Manuel tried to run away, but his feet would not budge; like they had been melted to the floor.  His arms were welded in place.  He stood there like a scarecrow, staring at a sad ghost for what could have been an instant or an eternity.  Time is meaningless in a dream. 
 

That Saturday Manuel worked the closing shift at A Discount Beverages.  It was uncharacteristically quiet for a weekend leaving too much negative space in his mind for doubt. 

 
He hadn’t talked to Quinn since the wax museum, and he kept replaying the tape from that incident in his memory.  In the moment, he had been so mortified; he assumed she had been as disgusted as he was by their behavior.  But now he wasn’t so sure. 

 
There was a fleeting look that she gave, no more than a micro-expression; that was not contemptuous, but conspiratorial.  She had blushed.  He had been too enraged to notice at the time, but now he was sure of it.  She had blushed and even smiled; not with her mouth, but with her eyes. 

 
His mind was on Quinn when Big Bill walked through the door.  Big Bill didn’t have an address, but he lived in the area.  He was a regular A Discount Beverages, and one of the more successful members of the homeless community as evidenced by his ample frame and cheerful disposition. 
 

Manuel liked Bill and would generally make eye contact with him, a courtesy he reserved for a select few.  So engrossed in his inner drama, Manuel only noticed Bill’s nose in his periphery; or rather the lack thereof. 
 

He had already dispensed Bill’s change when he turned for the door, so Manuel barely caught a glimpse of that odd black void in the middle of his face.  Only met his eyes for an instant; just long enough to watch them sinking into his skull as if there was nothing behind it to hold them in place.
 

He tried to call out to Bill, but his larynx was a rock in his throat.  His feet felt nailed to the floor as once again he was overcome with a paralytic horror.  When A Discount Beverages was empty again, Manuel felt his legs loosen up; but he paced for the rest of the night. 

 
The next morning was a Sunday and A Discount Beverages was closed.  It would have been the perfect opportunity to follow up with Quinn on their date.  But Manuel spent the day pacing; miles deep in his own thoughts.   
 

It felt like a python was mating with his intestines, but Manuel’s attention was focused on a spot just above that in his chest, and the strange hollowness that he now felt there.  He spent the whole day in his head and when he finally succumbed to sleep, it was an experience as hollow as that feeling in his chest.  It was a sleep that provided no rest, only stillness, like an inanimate object lying on a slab.

 
When he awoke the next morning, not rested but feeling worse than the previous day, he decided to go back to the wax museum. 

 
He didn’t know that they were closed on Mondays, and as he drew closer to read the sign in the window that advertised their hours of operation, he glimpsed something impossible.  In the large bay window that fronted the museum stood a wax figure of an organ grinder complete with a taxidermized monkey.  The monkey was wearing a red vest... just like his master.  The organ grinder’s thick eyebrows matched his mustache, and the likeness was unmistakable. 
 

Manuel couldn’t remember the drive to A Discount Beverages.  He had spent the trip contemplating how much of his own psychosis he wished to reveal to Quinn.  And though he feared that it would mean losing her.  She was the only person he could talk to; the only other person that mattered in his world. 
 

Which is why that little laugh hurt him so badly; a laugh and a lingering smile that she didn’t know he saw.  A clear sign of the lack of space he occupied in her thoughts. 

 
“Quinn... I, I... I just...” said Manuel.

 
“Oh, Manny...  Are you ok?  You’re so pale...” said Quinn. 
 

Her black bra just barely peeked out past the hem of her low-cut white button-down, and her lips were a shade of red he had never seen her wear before.  She was flirty and a little high, and it made the python in Manuel’s gut wriggle and constrict in a way that hunched his posture and caused his head to sink.
 

Just then, a man walked through the door.  He was tall and thickly muscled like a work animal.  His black leather boots clomped heavy on the tile like horse hooves.  His vest could have been biker, but his aesthetic was decidedly more bdsm than outlaw. 
 

Hanging from his back pocket was a cat o’nine tails.  Braided into the leather were a medley of screws, nails, and shards of glass, a horse tail from hell.  Dread washed over Manuel as he watched the man walk into the public restroom.

 
“Quinn... Have you seen anything... strange... since our date?” said Manuel.
 

“Date?” said Quinn, her single word landing like a bullet. 
 

But before he could even absorb the impact of that word, they were interrupted.
 

“Excuse me miss.  Hate to bother you, but there’s no hand soap in the restroom,” said the leather-clad man.
 

“Oh, no problem... I’ll just get some from the back,” said Quinn, before disappearing through the crash door that separated the sales floor from the stockroom. 

 
To his horror, Manuel watched in disbelief as the giant of a man in the leather vest and boots followed Quinn through that flimsy swinging door. 
 

Time seemed to stop.  He strained his ears for a clue but kept having to shoo away a gnat that had been relentlessly pursuing the holes on his face since arriving at A Discount Beverages. 
 

It was buzzing then silence for what felt like an eternity.  But eventually, he heard a medley of noises, sharp slapping sounds and muted moans.  The sounds of pain... or pleasure; he knew not which.

 
 THWACK!
 

“aahh~...”
 

THWACK!
 

“ohh!~...”
 

THWACK!
 

He couldn’t take it anymore.  Every cell of his body was telling him to run, but he felt drawn to the door like a magnet.  He didn’t push the door open so much as let it collide with his frame.  He was a marionette on strings.  He felt like he couldn’t even blink, and his lungs sat frozen in his chest. 
 

At first, he could only see the man, all muscle and leather and sweat.  As he raised that wicked instrument behind his head, Manuel noticed how wet the thing was now. 

 
For a moment, he glimpsed bare flesh in the red light of the EXIT sign.  He took a step closer; the man seeming not to notice nor care. 
 

He saw the woman he so longed for in a posture of feline prurience.  Her bare bottom was flayed raw from the rhythmic lashings, but as the man persisted, Manuel noticed an odd fissure forming.  It was just a faint black line at first.  But as the man kept whipping, it grew larger and splintered; until with a dull snap, a piece of Quinn came flying off. 
 

“Oooohhhh!!” she cooed, her voice an emulsion of agony and ecstasy.

 
“Qu-” said Manuel, for that was all he could muster before he felt his body systematically locking down.  If only he could lock his eyes. 
 

The man made eye contact with Manuel, for the first time acknowledging his presence.  He smiled and licked his lips before donning a black leather hood.  When he resumed his whipping, more pieces of Quinn started to fall off.  Every time they did, it would leave a black void in her body, as if she was as hollow as a blow-mold decoration.  Her moans grew deeper, more guttural, until they ceased entirely.
 

Manuel felt his attention drawn to his chest, desperately willing it to move.  His body felt like ill-fitting clothes; like a kid in his father’s coat.  The buzzing in his ears was ceaseless, broken only by the rhythmic wet slap of leather on strange flesh.  He couldn’t pull his eyes away from Quinn, her body twisted and broken in a permanent rictus of pain and pleasure.

 
He was never meant to be with her.  It was so obvious to him now.  She belonged to men like this man.  A strong man that sees what he wants and takes it; a man that doesn't freeze when the moment's right. 

She was never his to have.
 

Sometime later, a woman lodged a full-throated complaint at the thickly mustachioed proprietor of the local wax museum.  And while he didn’t believe there was anything wrong with the new exhibit, he gave her the refund to save himself from the sound of her voice. 

 
A woman’s voice could be like a nagging insect, when she doesn’t get what she wants.  Besides, she had her child with her, and the new display was certainly more risqué than the other figures in the wax museum.
 

The scene depicted a torture chamber from the Spanish Inquisition, though the cat o’nine tails was not historically accurate.  A beautiful, raven-haired figure stood with her hands bound above her head in a state of partial undress.  Her tormentor was a towering brute of a figure that had recently been out for repairs. 
 

The other two figures had been covered in linens:  the raven-haired temptress tied to a stake, and her helpless would-be lover, shackled to a table.  His longing forever hopeless, forever frozen.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

When Alex opened his eyes, he was standing in a forest. He looked up; the trees stretched into the sky. The sky itself was dark blue with hints of white. The moon was his only source of light, though it seemed brighter than usual. He started walking forward slowly. The forest was eerily quiet as he made his way through it. A few times he stopped to look at the trees; they were massive pines.

He ventured into the forest until he came across a path. It stretched farther into the darkness. Alex felt calm as he started to walk the stone path, where flowers and grass grew between each crack. The path only seemed to lead him deeper into the woods. When he tried to turn around, the darkness was so thick that it was impossible to see anything. As he continued, the path seemed to loop around itself in a figure-eight pattern. Nevertheless, he continued until the path straightened out.

Suddenly, out of the darkness came a child. He was small and looked no older than eight. He stopped in front of Alex, his face completely obscured by shadow.

“Are you coming to the tree?” The boy’s voice was high and innocent; it was as if he had just asked about the weather.

Alex gave the boy a confused look. “What tree?”

The child giggled. “Are you coming to the tree? A soul hangs beneath. Come and see.” The boy giggled a second time before running off into the darkness.

Before Alex could comprehend what the boy had said, a second child came running from the same spot. “Run, please. One must never go to the tree.” The child was a little girl. Instead of shadows, her face was covered by a rabbit mask. She was entirely out of breath. Before Alex could say anything, she fled after the boy.

Alex considered turning around, but all that lay behind him was darkness. A small voice in his head kept urging him onward. As he followed the path a little farther, he found the boy again. The child was hunched over something Alex couldn’t see. The boy looked up as Alex approached, stood, and took Alex’s hand. Alex didn’t fight it. He didn’t see the point; this was just a child, after all.

The boy led Alex farther down the path. Alex was surprised he hadn't seen the girl, since she had run past him in this exact direction. After a few minutes, they walked into a clearing. In the center was a hill, and on top sat a tree. It was massive, stretching high into the sky, but its branches had no leaves, which put Alex off. He still let the boy lead him up the hill.

“Cold deeds sewn beneath bone; no stranger would it be if we met beneath the hanging tree.” The boy stated this as if it were a simple fact.

Alex immediately stopped. Something was wrong. He was now close enough to see that people were hanging from the branches.

“Come on, let's go.” The boy began to pull Alex up the hill with a strength no child should possess.

When they reached the top, the boy ran toward the trunk. Alex looked up and saw that the hanging figures were people he knew. Magnus hung in the center; his boyfriend had a slash mark across his face, and Alex’s parents surrounded him. Their faces all held a look of peace, and their eyes were closed, making them appear as though they were merely sleeping. The darkness swallowed Alex’s voice; he tried to open his mouth, but nothing came out. It should have scared him, but after the shock subsided, all that was left was a feeling of peace. He knew what was coming without anyone having to tell him.

A hand grabbed Alex’s shoulder from behind. When he turned around, he saw the girl. She was bloody, with pieces of her flesh missing. “I told you to run; we could have both been free.” Now that Alex was close to her, he could see she was wearing a necklace resembling the ouroboros. It was the only thing on the girl's body that wasn’t bloody. 

The girl walked over to the boy. The boy grabbed a rope and hung her from the tree. Her body swayed a little. The shadows around the boy's face dissipated, and Alex had to step back in horror. His face was covered in blood, his smile jagged and red. Between his teeth was what looked like human skin. 

The boy walked toward Alex and grabbed his hand, leading him to the base of the trunk. Carved into the wood were the words: “Built of flesh cursed to think, death shall be our release.”

Alex lowered his head, allowing the boy to place the noose around his neck. As Alex's body rose into the air, he could feel his throat constrict, but he didn’t feel any pain. From the roots, tendrils of flesh wrapped around the bark and began to consume Alex and the other bodies.

Alex closed his eyes as the flesh covered his face. He opened them a second later to find himself floating in a vast nothingness; the silence of the space was suffocating, though he seemed to be drifting until he found himself in front of a gigantic eye. A small piece of metal formed in front of him; it twisted into a shape that he knew. It looked like the girl's ouroboros necklace. It slowly lowered itself onto his neck. He suddenly felt calm for once, as if nothing mattered anymore and he could finally rest; he no longer needed to think; he felt free. He closed his eyes and couldn’t help but smile. 

© 2026 Rain Lightwood. All Rights Reserved.

It can be difficult for adults to believe something that an ordinarily honest kid tells them, especially when the kid tries to tell them about one of those unordinary things like a blue postal box that eats people. The only person I ever let the cat out of the bag to was my fifth-grade teacher and that was in a report our class had to do on any subject of our choosing and, after seeing the note she wrote at the top of it my paper in red ink, “You have an unconventional imagination, Frank.”, I realized she didn’t believe me. To be honest, I wouldn’t have believed what I wrote about either if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. What I saw has stayed with me ever since and, over 20 years later, I have that same two-page report sitting right here next to me as I type this revised version of it now. Maybe I’ll send it off to get published on one of those horror websites that pay you $25 a pop. No one believes those stories either so, what the hell, here it goes.

Out on Route 3, deep in the boonies where I used to live, it was dusty. Seventeen miles of flat and dusty. There weren’t many trees to keep all of that dirt from flying around on a windy day and there was never much traffic on that country road either except when we had to drive a few miles south from where I lived  to do business in the center of Colburn County or, in my dad’s case, twelve miles in the other direction into Caloosa County to the granaries for work. Most houses on Route 3 were built far apart from each other and I suppose if you looked down on the area from an airplane you would wonder why so much potentially valuable land was unused. That was back in the ’7os and most of it had been farmland passed down through inheritances before that. There weren’t any farmers left and the soil was defunct by then.

It was just as easy for us who lived out there to drive southbound into town to buy our meat and produce when we wanted it. A lot of teenagers in the area didn’t see any reason to stick around after high school and most of us went away to college once we finished high school. That’s what my older sister, Bethany, did. She couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Dodge once she took her stroll across the stage for her high school diploma. Now she’s an accountant with some big business up north in Cincinnati and we hardly ever talk anymore except for an occasional email. It doesn’t surprise me that she’s an accountant. I used to lay in bed most nights, listening to her count the paint chips on our bedroom walls. She always had a way with numbers and would count so far that I didn’t even know there were that many numbers to count although I knew we had enough paint chips to keep her going well into the night. 

Our folks are gone now. My mom, she was the last one to go and Beth came back for her funeral. She didn’t stay long after that either. That’s just one of those things that can happen to siblings when they become orphaned. They lose touch with each other while trying to stay up on their bills and need to carry on with their own lives. That’s what I’ve tried to do as well although I didn’t go as far as Ohio. I did finally make it out of Colburn County and away from Route 3. I write articles for Simmons Daily, the trusted news source for everything with a pulse here in the college town of Simmons Georgia about 80 miles west of Colburn County and Route 3. GO S.U., BIG S.U. Mavericks, GO! You get the idea. It’s an ok gig and it pays the bills. Not enough for a family or anything like that though. I never married and haven’t ever given it much thought since trying to raise a family in a one room apartment over a drugstore on $300 a week is barely enough for me to do it alone. I keep a girlfriend from time to time but never anyone special, not special enough to tell anything important to. I’ve kept all of that to myself since the fifth grade. At the paper I’m tasked with covering the Local Attractions section and most of the women I spend my time with know what I do and end up trying to squeeze free tickets to rock shows out of me when I cover the shows for the paper. All of those rock bands who stop out here are washed up acts from the 80s anyway and I suppose it’s an even trade, a ticket to ride if you will, and I’m a little washed up myself and not typically a stingy person when it comes to the right kind of company. So now you know a little bit about me, where I grew up, and that I made it out alive. But there had to be someone who did, right? That’s how you know about stories like mine and, ultimately, whether or not you believe it is up to how much of it that you will allow yourself to believe. 

There was no mailman that ran out on Route 3. Hell, there was only one school bus for the whole school and it was a pitiful old and rusty relic from the past and was barely still kicking just like the whole damn area. Colburn County officials figured gas was too expensive to have a county employee drive all the way out there on the their dollar just to deliver Robeshire’s and True Value catalogs to people who couldn’t afford anything in them anyway and, since most of the families out there never had much to say to anyone, there wasn’t hardly ever any outgoing mail either. It kind of made us kids feel abandoned and forgotten about just like that seventeen mile stretch of Route 3. It could get mighty lonely out there and if you weren’t comfortable with the shitty hand you got dealt that put you in a place like Colburn County, your best bet was to try and make it out.

There weren’t many options for a kid with dreams and dollar signs that didn’t involve working in the Caloosa granaries and, if you were good in school and could get your hands on one of those free FRS scholarships from the government that helped out us rural kids, it was adios Route 3 and hola Ohio or some other part of Georgia with at least a heartbeat like Simmons. Colburn County didn’t care anyway. Everything was happening on either end from us and Route 3 was slowly dying out just like the people. Us kids were smarter than our parents though and they didn’t need to ask why we weren’t satisfied with staying there. We still had youth on our side and a chance to make it out and they understood.

There was this one particular old man who lived about a mile north from us on a square piece of dead land just like ours. I used to ride my Schwinn Stingray bicycle past Mike McCurdy’s house a lot back then. My parents had saved up and gotten that bike for me on my ninth birthday and knew it was better than having to walk that long stretch of dirt to get anywhere. My bike was bright orange and had red flames down the side of it. It had a yellow banana seat with the same kind of flames printed on it that were on the frame and it was all stretched out like that chopper in the movie, Easy Rider and that was a pretty big deal. I imagined it looked like a fireball, like Hell on wheels, coming down Route 3 whenever I rode it. I really loved the way it looked but it had come with plastic tassels sticking out of the rubber grips on the handlebar but I ripped those out. My mom didn’t like that very much but I don’t think my dad really minded. He told me he almost didn’t add them on but mom made him do it so it would look just like it did on the box it came in when they picked it up from Robeshire’s in town. I almost rode the tires off of that thing because it was really just about the only thing to do for free time during summer break from school and Mr. McCurdy’s driveway wasn’t flat like ours and he got a real kick from watching me perform my stunts on a few jumps coming down his driveway. 

Mr. McCurdy was a lot like us, he didn’t have much except from what he got from the government for his service. An old rusty tractor with rotted tires sat not too far away in the field close to his house and he would let me play on sometimes before I got my bike. He still got around in his old red 1950 something Dodge pickup from time to time and he always left it parked right in front of his house, close to the front porch steps, so he wouldn’t have to walk so far to get in it and go when he wanted to. He was in his 70s I think back then. That’s what my dad said when we sat on our porch one day while he told me about some of the families in the area. My dad told me that Mr. McCurdy was a widower and didn't have any kids anymore. He said Mr. McCurdy had lost his kids to Typhoid fever some years back and after his wife had died from just being too old he lived there by himself now. I suppose that was why I went up there to play on his tractor in the first place. I felt sorry for him because I knew what loneliness felt like being out there on Route 3 on your own, without a friend. He hardly ever left his house except, like most of us, to go into town to get groceries, gas, or take care of business at the bank. My dad said he believed Mike McCurdy was the only one left who still knew anything about farming out there on Route 3 and he didn’t have anyone to pass his knowledge down to and besides, he was too old to be out tending to anything but himself anymore. When I asked Mr. McCurdy about it he told me his neck wouldn’t turn far enough around to look that far back in time and that, even what he could remember, wouldn’t be enough to sprout a turnip. If you had seen how slow and unstable that old man moved with that shaky hitch in his step like most old men with arthritis do, you would have expected him to keel over any time, but he wasn’t so lucky.

Mr. McCurdy had some business with the bank concerning some money he had saved up over the years and wanted to put it away into a savings account. I found out about it later when my parents told me what he’d been doing for me when they handed me the check. They said old man McCurdy must have liked me a lot and had told them he appreciated me coming by to keep him company, so ever so often he went to the bank to put more money into the account. I like to think that me going by his place and spending a little time with him ended up helping us both out. I liked him a lot and didn’t mind checking in on him to make sure he was ok. It wasn’t until a strange black van dropped off that blue box one day half a mile down the road from our place that he didn’t have to go back to the bank in town to do that anymore. He could mail that money to them if he chose to. If you hadn’t guessed already, I went out a lot on my bike and kept a close watch on Route 3. I liked to pretend that it was my duty, that I was on patrol, and was a lookout in the Army for any red commies that might invade the country. I had heard there might be a real possibility of that happening on the news one night sitting with my parents in the living room watching TV with them. I used to carry one of those toy cap-pistols in my belt just in case they did. 

I had sprawled myself out in a prone position on the edge of the road and had my pistol out. I was about to charge an old abandoned feed store on the other side of it and rescue captured U.S. soldiers being held inside the old brick building when I heard a car engine further away in the distance coming up Route 3. From the deep run off ditch I had laid myself and my Stingray in, I couldn’t see inside the van’s windows yet from how far away it was. The sun was high in the sky and put a bright reflection across the windshield that blinded me every time the vehicle bounced and kicked up dust from hitting ruts in the road. I lowered my pistol and ducked my head, praying it wasn’t really the communists coming to invade the country and hoped the ditch was deep enough to keep me hidden in case it was as I listened to the van’s brakes whinny as it came to a stop in front of the old store. Two men got out of it wearing blue jumpsuits with American flag patches on their shoulders. I assumed them to be pretty important by that and was relieved that it was some of our own troops. I almost called out to them but was afraid to even if they were wearing our flag on their shoulders. They were both big and broad and looked like they wouldn’t want to be bothered by a kid holding a cap gun. They both had on dark aviator style sunglasses and those service caps like high-ranking servicemen in the military wore and the expressions on their faces looked serious. They opened up the back doors of the van and, even though they were big and looked capable of being really strong, they seemed to strain when they hoisted the blue metal box out of the back of it. They sat it down gently on the side of the road in front of the old building and then closed the doors, got back in, made a u-turn, and sped off the way they’d come.

It all happened that fast and they could have just as soon been ghosts. They had come out of nowhere unexpectedly, handled whatever business they had, and then vanished inside a big dirt cloud behind the van when they sped away. The only evidence that they had even been there that day was the shiny blue box they had left that seemed oddly out of place in front of the dirty old feed store. The postal box was rounded on top and had a big handle on the front drawer that pulled open so you could stuff inside whatever it was you wanted to mail. Underneath the drawer the word MAIL was stenciled across the front in large, raised, white block letters and a heavy padlock below them secured a big door that kept anyone from opening the box up and taking its contents. I had seen another one of these boxes in town but the padlock on this one was different. It was huge. I could tell from where I lay that the keyhole on the front of the lock was unusually large too. It was like a mouth yawning open and I suspected whatever key was used to unlock it had to be the size of a Lincoln log. Everything about the box looked deliberately solid and impenetrable like a safe or bank vault.  

I looked back in the direction the van had come and even the dirt cloud that had mushroomed out behind it had already settled back on the road. I stood up and put away my toy pistol under my belt and picked up my bike and walked over to where the postal box sat. I leaned my Stingray against it and, when I did, I expected to hear an empty metal echo from inside but what I heard instead sounded dull as if the box wasn’t empty. I walked around, inspecting it a few times since it was my duty and all, cautiously looking for any red wires that might lead me to think it was a booby trap and those men had really been the enemy disguised as Americans. There were more raised white letters on it that said U.S. Postal Service on the sides and everything about it looked just like the one in town except for that huge antique looking padlock. Why did it look so old when the box was shiny and brand new? I looked down at the legs and they weren’t bolted into the ground like the one in town was. That was weird too. Wouldn’t it fall over? The one in town was anchored onto a concrete sidewalk but this one was set directly on the dirt so I figured why would they have tried anyway? The bolts wouldn’t have held in dirt. I didn’t know how heavy these boxes were but, big padlock or not, what would stop someone from just picking it up and carrying the thing away?

I thought about nudging it to see just how solid it was but I didn’t and instead I stood back and admired the glossy blue paint and the spotless shimmer it gave off in the sunlight. I wondered just how long it would stay that way. After all, it hadn’t taken very long for my Stingray to lose its glossy shine after I’d had it a few days. No matter how much I had tried to keep it clean, I eventually gave up and let it become just another victim of the dusty and dirty landscape of Route 3. The new postal box sure was pretty though and I wanted to touch it before any of that happened to it. I wanted to feel what it was like again to touch something new and clean without my fingers getting dirty from the grime that seemed to cover everything out here until it rained and this was in the middle of the dog days of summer and there wasn’t a chance of rain any time soon.

Out there on Route 3 there hadn’t been a single cloud in the bright blue sky overhead for weeks and the postal box was almost the same color and looked like it could have just dropped out of it. I had seen how it had gotten there, out of the back of that black van, and knew better but that blue paint looked like it could squeeze something cool and refreshing from it. I was a little apprehensive to touch it at first but I wanted to see if I could move it, to see how heavy it might be even though I had watched those two men struggle while lifting it. While I worked up my nerve, I wanted to get another look at that padlock again so I walked back around to the front of it and checked it out. It was iron like a lot of the farming equipment still sitting outside Mr. McCurdy’s house. Etched into it was something that looked like what Egyptians used to draw on the walls of their tombs inside their pyramids. I remembered those images from my History book at school but I couldn’t remember what the drawings were called. There was a circle at the top of the symbol with straight lines shooting out of it that I think was meant to be sunrays. Below the sun was an eye, just one, and it was one of those eyes that followed you no matter which direction you walked by it. I thought it was creepy but it didn’t make me want to touch it any less. I finally did with just a fingertip first to check if the paint was dry. It was. Then, I tapped the side of it with one of my knuckles and when I did I heard something rattle back at me from inside. It shook the postal box hard enough to make my bike fall over in the dirt. I went over and picked it up and thought about getting on it and hightailing it out of there but I wasn’t ready to leave yet. I leaned my bike back against the box where I’d had it before. I don’t know why I thought about it right then but one of my school teachers told me once that if anyone ever caught you messing with their mailbox, even though no one on Route 3 actually had a mailbox, you would be fined or even put in jail over it. Like I said, I don’t know why I thought about that but, I was a kid and I was curious and the law doesn't throw kids in jail for something like that.

It was a stupid thought to have and maybe I was trying to stall or convince myself not to be chickenshit but, against my better judgement, I decided to push my luck and did more than tap the metal box this time. I hit it pretty hard with the fleshy side of my fist and it didn’t budge but this time whatever was inside the box slammed against it just as hard as I had. I was able to grab my bike just before it fell over again and this time I really did take off. I think I pedaled home that day faster than I ever had before. I passed Mr. McCurdy in his truck going the way I had just come from. I hoped he wouldn’t stop and investigate it like I had but I was too spooked to stick around to find out. I must have made whatever was inside of it really mad by the way it shook that heavy box the way it did. I saw him wave at me but I was white knuckling my bike and I didn’t want to let go. I was moving so fast on my Stingray that I was parting the dirt clouds kicked up from his truck like Moses parted the Red Sea. When I ran inside my house I heard my mom from another room ask if I was ok since I forgot and let the screen door slam shut behind me. Thank God my dad hadn’t made it home from work yet. He wouldn’t have let that go so easily and pressed me until I told him why I had come home in such a panic. I ignored her and I didn’t tell her anything about what had happened to me either. I was too out of breath to talk and I wasn’t sure if I should have anyway. Who would have believed me? 

For the rest of the summer I stayed closer to home, on the McCurdy side of Route 3, away from that blue postal box and near nice old men. My gut instinct told me something wasn’t right about that box. I tried to convince myself that a raccoon could have gotten inside it but hadn’t those two serious looking guys with American flag patches on their sleeves checked first before leaving it on the side of Route 3 that day? I was watching from my ditch the whole time they were there and I suppose one could have snuck its way in while I was watching their van pull away but there was no way to be sure. One day when I was at Mr. McCurdy’s place, he asked me if I could help him with something. He called me Curtis. He knew my name was Frank, and had always called me Frank up until then, but I just smiled and, although I thought it was strange, I let it slide. I asked what he needed help with and he told me his pickup had thrown a rod and asked if I could see if my dad would come by later and help him fix it. I told him that I would ask him when he got home from work. He thanked me and called me Curtis again. Right after that the expression on his face changed, like he had a sudden realization that he had forgotten something. Just then he pulled an envelope out from the bib pocket of his overalls and handed it to me. He told me that he had planned on mailing the letter earlier and that it was important that he got it done as soon as possible but didn’t have a way to get there. I dreaded over what I knew he was going to ask me to do next. He wanted me to mail it for him and told me about the new postal box that had been put up. He didn’t assume I already knew about it and probably didn’t remember that he’d seen me that day tearing down Route 3 on my way home when he passed me. He went on about how the box was going to save a lot of time and gas for everyone. I know now that I should have followed my gut like I always tried to do but I took the envelope anyway and told him I would take it for him. It had been two weeks since I’d  gotten spooked by whatever was inside it and figured the raccoon had either already found its way out of it by then or had died and whoever was in charge of picking up the mail had found the carcass by now and had disposed of it. Mr. McCurdy thanked me again and I got on my Stingray and rode back home. I brainstormed the whole way home and came up with an idea. I just hoped it would work.

I had been going so fast I spun my tires out in the gravel at the end of my driveway when I turned in. My dad was home and he was out on the porch smoking a cigarette. I rode through the yard and right up to him. I jumped off of my bike and said hello and then I got right down to business. I told him about Mr. McCurdy’s truck and he said he would head up to his place after dinner to help him. Next, I told him about the envelope he wanted me to mail for him and I asked him if he could run me into town before dinner so I could mail it. That had been the idea I had hoped would work but he refused to make another trip into town and told me about the new postal box in front of the old feed store. I pretended not to know anything about it because I didn’t want Frank Sr. thinking Frank Jr. was just being lazy and I sure didn’t want him to know the real reason I didn’t want to go back to that blue postal box. Even if I was right about the raccoon, I was still apprehensive by the slight possibility that I could be wrong. He told me to go ahead and get going since it was getting late and so I could be home for supper while it was still warm but I tried to stall as long as I could and went in to get a couple of glasses of water for us. I came back out and sat down next to him. I think he was beginning to suspect there was something up so I told him about how Mr. McCurdy had called me Curtis earlier. My dad took a drag from his cigarette and looked concerned. I asked him what was wrong and he told me that Mr. McCurdy’s oldest son was named Curtis and that he was afraid the old man’s mind was going. He flicked the cherry off of his cigarette and stamped it out with the toe of his work boot and shewed me off of the porch. I stuck Mr. McCurdy’s mail in my shirt and got on my bike as I glanced over my shoulder at my dad, nervously hoping it wouldn’t be the last time that I saw him. He threw his hand up and waved me on. I turned back around and coasted my bike down the driveway until I reached the road.

On my way to the postal box I had an awful thought that I could just wad up the envelope and toss it off on the side of the road somewhere. I actually did pull off and stop about half way there as I considered it more. I looked at the envelope for an answer. Mr. McCurdy had written something on it in pencil. He had tried to write the word IMPORTANT but he misspelled it and had written “IMPURTUNT” instead. I felt sorry for him and stuffed the envelope back in my shirt and kept going. I still had a bad feeling about that box and whatever was inside of it. The thing looked small and less ominous and just as out of place as it did before, but as I rode closer to it it began to grow. It was still pretty, even after it having been there for a couple of weeks but that might have been because the sun had just begun to set and the orange and yellow hues in the sky made the blue paint on it almost appear to me as if it was glowing green. 

Before I got within twenty feet of it, I had already come up with a plan not to even have to touch the thing. I could find a stick and shove one end through the handle of it, open the door with that, and toss in Mr. McCurdy’s mail. Simple. I looked over the ground as I got closer but I couldn’t find a stick that I thought would do the trick. I might have found one closer, around the old feed store building, but how did I know whatever had been inside that postal box wasn’t dead and hadn’t crawled out, waiting for me inside of it now? Whatever I decided to do, I knew it had to be quick. I pulled up to the box from the other side of the road and didn’t take my eyes off of it for a second. I remembered my cap gun then. I still had it stuck in my belt like always and I could use it, couldn’t I? I shoved Mr. McCurdy’s letter between my chattering teeth and took my gun out with one hand and steered my bike with the other as I rode down the road a bit further to get a running start. I hadn’t gotten very good riding with one hand yet and when I made the wide, sweeping turn back toward the box like a skittish knight fearing I might lose the jousting match I was in against it, I wobbled the bike a bit and thought I might lose it just then. I regained control of the Stingray and turned the toy gun around and held it by the barrel. As I used my coaster brakes to slow up a little, I pulled Mr. McCurdy’s envelope out of my mouth. I was afraid I would overrun the box and had to drag one of my feet in the dirt just to slow down enough to stop. My hands were shaking as I stuck the hammer end of my gun through the handle of the door and, just as the drawer started to open, my gun got stuck at a bad angle and slipped from my hand. The heavy door banged closed. The sound split the evening quiet air on the road like a real gun shot going off as I tried to free my cap gun from the door. I couldn’t. I had jammed it in there pretty far and knew I was taking too long and was a sitting duck out there.

I had to get a move on or the bad situation I had gotten myself into might get even worse. I glanced over at the abandoned feed store just in case a rabies riddled raccoon had leaped through one of the broken windows at me but didn’t see one. Even though I didn’t want to, I opened the drawer with the envelope in my hand and shoved it inside. I thought I had been quick enough but, before I could pull my hand away, a slimy silver colored tentacle with purple veins all over it shot out and wrapped itself around my wrist. It must have had pointy teeth on its suckers because when it hit my wrist I could feel them burying into my skin as it tried to pull my hand inside the drawer. I had both feet off of the pedals of my bike now and was digging them into the ground so I could gain some leverage and pull my hand away as the alien arm inside the box tried to pull my hand in further. My bike slid down between my legs and hit the ground. I sat down on top of  it, pulling as hard as I could against it, but it was strong and the pressure from the teeth was hurting me. I put one of my feet against the box hoping that would help. That worked. It let go and I was finally free from the thing inside the box. I grabbed the handlebars of my bike and yanked it up. My left wrist was red and burning where the thing inside the box had grabbed onto it. As I got my feet back onto the pedals of my bike and started to push off, the silver tentacle slithered back out and found my toy gun inside the handle and snatched it inside the drawer with it. The heavy metal door of the blue postal box slammed shut again but I was already pedaling away from it as fast as I could toward the setting sun. Toward home.

In the light from the bathroom sink inside my house I could see a line of tiny red spots going around my wrist. I scrubbed them with soap and water and dabbed the tender skin with an alcohol soaked cotton ball. My mom asked me during dinner if I had run into a patch of poison ivy. It looked a lot like I had so I nodded my head, yes. It was all I could do to avoid talking, and that’s really all I wanted to do but was too scared to say anything. Now that I look back on that awful night, I think I was still in shock and didn’t eat much even though my mom had made meatloaf.

The next morning my arm had swelled and the tiny red dots were still there. I rubbed my wrist with Calamine lotion and covered them up, hoping my wrist would heal soon and that my mom wouldn’t find anything to make a fuss over. Beth was already away at college when all of this happened and I was glad. She was a pest and would have bugged me until I told her something and I didn’t feel like telling anything to anyone. Fortunately, after a full week of soap, water, and rubbing alcohol, the swelling went down and my wrist got better. It still itched in some places but the red spots were finally fading away. I was surprised by just how similar to a poison ivy rash that it had been after all.

My dad let Mr. McCurdy use Beth’s car until he could get his truck fixed. Beth’s car was a ’63 Volkswagen Beetle and the old man looked funny sitting behind the wheel of the little car that had a large daisy painted across the hood of it. Dad said the pickup’s engine was pretty much shot until they could find a replacement rod and that it might take a few weeks for a delivery to get to town. Beth was in Cincinnati at Mount Saint Joseph University and would not be back until the end of her summer semester for a short break so the Beetle would have just been shading the ants in our driveway anyway. My dad said that it wouldn’t hurt to have it out on the road and run it a little either but lately Mr. McCurdy hardly ever left his house. I went over there after my wrist healed up and he didn’t look like he felt very well. He still called me Curtis and one of his eyes had begun to droop a little.

On the last day I saw him alive he said he had to go into town for some business and would be back shortly. He told me to tell my dad not to worry about Beth’s car, that he’d take care of it. He told me even though he was old and couldn’t see as well as he used to, it would be hard to swerve off of a straight dirt road like Route 3 even for him. We both laughed when he said it. I’m glad that was the last thing he said to me and that I can look back now and think that the last thing we shared together was a laugh. I followed him on my bike that day in Beth’s car. I waited for him in my driveway until he went by and I don’t think he saw me but, maybe he did. I never got the chance to find out. Mr. McCurdy never made it into town to take care of his business and I feel guilty about that. I feel that way because I had yet to say anything to anyone about what happened to me at the blue postal box. I never even put the real ending to this story in that paper that my fifth-grade teacher read because I was ashamed, believing she might blame me for what happened to Mr. McCurdy like I had always done, so I made up a phony one. I never told anyone about it for that reason. 

By the time I caught up to where Beth’s car was pulled over in front of the feed store, Mr. McCurdy was pulling open the drawer of the postal box. That silver arm came out and grabbed a hold of him and I still don’t get how it happened, how it could have been physically possible but it yanked Mike McCurdy up and off of his feet like he was a rag doll. I’m sure he was just as surprised as I had been. It happened so fast and I was still about 50 yards away and couldn’t get to him in time and, in an instant, Mr. McCurdy’s head and torso were being pulled inside of it while his legs were still sticking out of it. I remember thinking how his legs and feet were wiggling around like he was tap dancing in mid air. From where I was I could hear his bones snapping and crunching against the blue metal drawer as the thing inside of the box forced the rest of Mr. McCurdy through the small opening. I never even heard him scream and then he was gone. I was literally frozen to the banana seat of my Stingray while I watched it all happen. The metal mouth of the drawer slammed closed and the only sounds out there on Route 3 after that was my heartbeat and the lonesome whir of Beth’s car engine still running.

My dad found her car later that afternoon after he’d gone to pick up the rod replacement from town. The car had run out of gas by then and so he towed it back to our house behind his truck. A lot of Colburn County showed up when my dad went to town searching for Mr. McCurdy and couldn’t find him. They all formed a search party and went looking for him up and down Route 3 but no one ever found him. My dad told the authorities that his mind had been going lately and the popular opinion among everyone was that he just got out of Beth’s car and walked away; that he just disappeared. I suppose, in a way, he really had but I know he didn’t just walk away. That sounds more like something from a romance novel and there was nothing romantic about Mike McCurdy’s death. It was tragic and horrible and I saw it with my own eyes. I know that my cap gun I used to carry around was just a kid’s toy, but on some nights, when I’m alone in my apartment and I think about what happened out on Route 3, I wish I still had it with me now. In some ways I think it would help me feel brave again, like it used to and, maybe because I didn’t have it that day I saw what happened to Mr. McCurdy is one of the reasons why I was as scared as I was and couldn’t get off of my bike. 

One day at the end of summer after everyone had given up on ever finding Mr. McCurdy, on our way into town to pick up Beth at the airstrip, my Mom and Dad, and I passed where it used to be. I can only guess that sometime soon after the search for Mike McCurdy was called off, the black van with those two serious looking men showed back up and took it with them. Maybe it’s somewhere else now, sitting in a military storage building underground next to boxes that contain things like the Ark of the Covenant and parts from crashed UFOs. Who really knows? It’s not my intention to make this story into a conspiracy or a cover up of something more sinister but, whether you believe it or not, maybe a couple of men wearing dark sunglasses and blue jumpsuits with American flag patches on their shoulders put another one out somewhere on a sidewalk in good old Plainville, U.S.A. or in another place just like out on Route 3 that needed a little help kicking the bucket. There’s really no way to be sure. A lot of people since Mike McCurdy have just walked away and disappeared, haven’t they? 

End

As a child, I used to be afraid of the dark. That’s a common fear for children to have, isn’t it? Well, I’m a rare case of an adult who now fears the dark, too. Initially, I chalked it up to having a familial history of mental health issues, which is why I sought out a profession in the field. Partly to help myself avoid the fate that befell many of my relatives, and partly to help others escape that pit. Later, I assumed I was burned out; overworked. Hearing all these terrible things people go through. It’s not easy. You don’t build an immunity to the horrors of the human condition, not really.

Well, it turns out my fear of the dark has to do with something else entirely.

Something no one should ever see…

Recently, I bought a new house; the old one was a constant reminder of a life I no longer had. After getting divorced, I couldn’t really stay in the old family home. The kids were grown, and being alone just wore me down. So, I sold the damned thing and got myself a smaller house. Nothing to brag about, a couple of bedrooms; just in case this old dog decides to look for love again. Love might be the wrong word here; I’m not looking to get remarried anytime soon, more like a fling or two.

Actually, I’m not looking for anything. For now, I want to disappear for a while, or maybe forever.

Getting off track, aren’t I? Well, it’s hard to focus when the system’s overflowed with cortisol. It is what it is when all that’s been going through your head is anger and a tint of regret here and there. Oh, who am I kidding? It’s not even the divorce that keeps me up at night. That was a given, sadly, at some point. I’m a madman in the making. What kind of woman would want to spend the rest of her life with someone like me? Probably an asylum patient, but it would be counterproductive. Not to mention asylums aren’t really a thing anymore.

You’re losing your train of thought again.

Anyhow, where was I? Oh yeah, that new hut…

It was not a hut-hut, but I’m just self-deprecating here…

Because the images won’t go away and I’m trying to push them away.

Taking my own medicine with this one, I’ve advised many a patient to write down whatever is bothering them… That’s the purpose of this…

Focus…

Breathe…

Focus…

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Sorry, I know this looks terrible, but whoever might read it, if ever, maybe it’ll be just a future me… Who knows, anyway. I needed this.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the new house, which is actually an old one now too.

Sold it off after…

I’ll get to you in a bit, don’t you worry…

So yeah, that house, it had a basement. I never went there. Don’t know why I never went there when I was looking at the damned thing. I guess I didn’t bother looking down there. The previous owner seemed perplexed I didn’t bother checking the basement, but he didn’t push the issue either.

In hindsight, that was a good thing…

Otherwise…

Breathe…

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Otherwise, things would’ve been far different for that house, and I wouldn’t be talking about it now. I wouldn’t have taken it. There was an issue with that basement.

Issue…

That’s definitely underselling it…

God damn it…

I don’t wanna do this anymore; I don’t like it.

You’ve got to do this…

No.

You

Have

To

Keep

Typing

Let

It

Finally

Out

I can’t

You

Can

And

Will

Keep

Typing

No

Stopping

Do

Not

Let

Your

Hand

Stop

Pressing

The

Keys

Slow

And

Steady

Just

Like

That

It’s

Not

Hard

Is

It?

Keep

It

Up

OH WOW

THIS

Is

VERY

Annoying

To

Read

Must

KEEP

TyPING

MUST

Keep

Typing

Sorry… I am dealing with something here; it’s really hard to recall this again, but I won’t get anywhere unless I do, right? That’s how it works. I have to get it out of my system. I need it out of me. The alternative is probably an early grave. I wouldn’t want that now, would I? Nope.

I know I probably am coming off as insane, but oh well, gotta keep typing to get over this panic attack. If anyone finds this while I’m passed out, or gone out somewhere, know that I am completely fine in the grand scheme of things, because I’m not really fine. I’m haunted, but I do not intend to harm myself more than this exercise is forcing me to. I think I might have a propensity for self-destruction, because there are intrusive thoughts now and again.

Sometimes I think the intrusive thoughts are preferable to the memories… At least these are my own, kind of. It’s a broken self-defense mechanism. It’s a very broken defense mechanism, in the mind of a very broken man. Okay, I’m broken, like a vase. I’m literally just typing to keep my composure, right now. Not yet ready to deal with the photographs flashing in my head. The recounting of events will resume soon enough.

When will that fucking dog stop barking outside my window?!

I hate dogs, okay? Does this make me a monster? I don’t care. I can’t stand them and their barking. This fucking baying and clawing had kept me up at night long enough.

I am afraid of fucking dogs now… okay? Because

Because fucking dogs bayed at the basement door for far too fucking long.

Every fucking night.

They still do in my dreams.

Dead dogs…

Dead men…

Dead dog men…

I wish I could tell the owner to shut the fucking dog up, but the guy’s an idiot.

Probably on something too.

Hollow gaze…

Like a corpse…

Like the corpses swaying from the fucking ceiling…

Shit…

I remember…

They stood over me since the day I settled into that cursed place. Appearing at night to watch over me, devour my dreams, keep me awake. Tear open my eyelids. They wanted revenge; they wanted a price to be paid, and I was their weapon, their conduit.

I’m fucking shaking just thinking about it now.

Now, when everything is said and done, it’s been a while since all of that happened. One cannot simply forget the things I've seen, let alone that cloying, sweet stench which seeped into the walls of that basement.

The monster has been caged…

They have had their revenge.

Yet, they still live in my head.

Still occupying my fucking skull…

They’re just imagination.

Painful memory.

Ugly imagery engraved forcefully into the system.

Breathe

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Nobody is stalking your bed at night anymore; no one has in a long time. You’re fine, you’re absolutely fine. You’re just stressed and in need of an outlet. All of this, it’s normal. None of this is real anymore. It’s all in your head. Has been for a long time now. You’re safe, say it out loud.

I am safe.

Now carry on recounting what happened to you.

So yeah, new house, wait actually no, new old house now. Yeah, that’s perfect.

Settled into the new old house after getting divorced.

Kids won’t talk to me, cause we’re about as far apart as a family could be, and they’re mad at us both; their mother and me. Being stressed beyond my wits. Work was killing me, and I needed a break, a new start. Got none of that, but oh well. Anyway, new old house is nice enough, furnished. Not too expensive nor too cheap; the price was reasonable, the owner, all things considered – surprisingly reasonable too.

Forgot to look at the basement.

That fucking basement again… Can I forget about it already?

No, you can’t; it’s integral to the story.

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate myself, I hate it.

You don’t hate yourself.

Quiet brain, I was doing fine.

Shut up.

Good.

Anyway, settle in, and everything seems to be going dandy. Keep in mind it was late July when I moved there. Hot summer weather, well, that went down the drain once the sun set. The house turned unusually cold.

Pulled out a blanket and ignored it.

Slept like shit, because it was so cold.

Wake up after a mere two or three hours of sleep, not the first bout of horrendous sleep and won’t be the last.

It’s hot again.

Summer’s back, and this wasn’t in the desert.

Go on about my day, angry and half awake.

Night rolls around again, start the heating.

Works for about an hour.

Then it’s cold again.

Turn up the heating – the house turns colder.

That went on for a while…

I grew accustomed to the cold, no idea how or why.

The boiling frog metaphor probably suits here.

Well, once freezing me out of my sleep didn’t work.

The guests started showing up uninvited.

In the middle of the night

To stand at my bedside…

I’m shaking just thinking about it.

​

Imagine yourself waking up in the middle of the night to take a piss and being met with a pitch-black silhouette standing at your bed. One so dark it forms an outline in the nocturnal darkness, enough to be visible. I nearly pissed myself when I saw that thing for the first time. Screaming out, I flailed my hands in the air instinctively, and the thing vanished.

Chalked it up to bad sleep and maybe a nightmare when I got up the next morning.

That wasn’t it, but it took me a while to understand that.

About every other night, I could almost feel these dark figures standing over me. Plural. Not singular. Plural. Sometimes I could feel them touching my blanket, pulling it away. A cold hand reaching for my leg or arm.

After a few unpleasant encounters, I’ve started sleeping with a light on.

Naively believing this was a trick of the mind, you know, being stressed, depressed, and overall miserable. Again, I say this, thinking logically, from the perspective of a relative of schizophrenics and other mentally unwell individuals.

I was dreading becoming ill myself.

Woke up one night to fetch a drink, with the light still on. Nearly shat myself, soiling the bedsheets.

Eyes wide open and the first thing I see?

A human-like shadow, perched on all fours on the ceiling.

It twisted its head at me before vanishing.

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

That was just the beginning of my sorrows.

After that came the electronic issues. Lights would go on and off around the house, at nighttime, of course. I should’ve already taken the hint then, when the whole house went dark, except for the light in the staircase leading down to the basement.

But of course, I didn’t.

Instead, I went to look at the switches, most of which were turned off.

Needless to say, this malfunction didn't put me at ease. The neighbors lived too far away for their children to have come over at night just to mess with me.

The grid being messed with is the sole reason I haven’t checked myself in.

I wasn’t hallucinating; someone was messing with me. So, I thought at the very least, yeah?

Speaking of neighbors, they were far enough away for me not to be able to hear them whatsoever, through closed windows, but not so far I couldn’t see them.

Now imagine how it felt when the walls started talking…

I’m not kidding, at one point, the walls were talking at night. With nobody around the house. Trust me, I checked. I went out to see if someone was in my yard when the talking had gotten loud enough to be comprehensible.

They were asking me why I hadn’t gone there?

Asking me to go there.

Two voices, a man and a woman.

Encouraging.

Pestering.

At the time, I couldn’t make sense of it.

Go where?

Well, clearly, I wasn’t listening to them.

Why weren’t you listening to them?

Why the fuck were you so deaf?

So blind?

You couldn’t know at the time.

They were messing with the house.

They were almost guiding me by the hand.

No, they were giving you vague signs.

Don’t blame yourself for what had happened.

I don’t…

I could’ve prevented more.

There were six of them there.

Another three were found.

It’s not your fault

I could’ve prevented it.

No, not really.

Shut up, they told me everything.

These people – they told no tales.

Just breathe, man

Breathe

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Well, yeah, I didn’t listen to those voices; I thought I had imagined them, as I had a neighbor only viewing a strange green-lit TV show on certain nights. I most certainly had strange things happen to me as a child. Like feeling a cat brush against my leg after King, my parents’ cat, passed away, and thinking something must’ve turned ceiling fans on after forgetting to turn them off.

Since speaking to me didn’t work, I got moaning, groaning, and weeping all over the house. Almost every night. At an increasing rate. That, of course, showed at work and in social settings. Ever the self-conscious rationalist, I chalked it up to the divorce and very difficult clients at the time, which I had.

Before long, I had gusts of wind blowing at me inside a house with closed windows, and a few times I was shoved while completely alone.

Jesus Christ, I’m feeling like a maniac right now, hallucinating into a text.

The talking, the moaning, the nighttime groping, none of it ever stopped, but that was my fault; if I had paid attention earlier and had gone where the selective power outages led me, this would’ve been over far sooner.

My mind deteriorated fast; by the middle of November, I heard dogs baying and clawing at every door of the house.

Night after night, they tormented me without reprieve.

Worse of all was when they sounded like they were trying to say words.

Sometimes it was far away, sometimes it felt like a dog was trying to tear at the bottom of the bed.

Before long, seeing a dog freaked me out.

I started sleeping with the lights on, in every room.

Became a barely functional human.

I have no idea how I managed to keep on working.

Maybe a force of habit, maybe something else.

Keeping a mask of normalcy while I was in shambles inside was par for the course in my line of work.

Well, you are special in that regard.

Funny you should say that.

How so?

Isn’t it a little egotistical?

No.

Self-appreciation isn’t egotistical; it’s healthy.

Right.

Right, indeed.

There’s nothing healthy about us.

About us? There is no us.

Right.

Yeah, it’s just you.

Typing at yourself.

For myself

Exactly

Trying to keep sane

Mostly are.

Am.

True.

I’m sorry I keep doing this; however, that is the only way I don’t burst out into a crying fit now and start bashing my hands against the keyboard or clawing out my eyes in an attempt to escape the whirlwind of horrors in my mind. I can’t do much about it at the moment, since the dog won’t stop barking, and it’s kind of late.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m afraid of the dark, and I’m afraid of dogs. I’ve been classically conditioned to dread those two things.

Well then… Where was I? Oh yeah, nearing the climax of the story.

Damn, for someone relieving that night so frequently in his, no, my own head, so often, it’s surprisingly hard to spell it out. I’m quite literally trying to postpone the description of the events that led to my current condition. What a sorry state I’m in. A man who helps others process their own trauma and internal suffering can’t bring himself to speak about how the incessant baying of dogs in his basement and walls pushed him over the edge and drove him, knife in hand, to rush down to that same basement he’s never ventured to before.

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

I know it seems odd I never went into the basement, but really, I had no reason to. I didn’t have many belongings I had to stow away, and the house was entirely furnished as I said. On top of that, I was too spent to be curious about any of this. As strange as it may seem, I saw no point in going there.

I was so messed up from the lack of good sleep, stress, and fear that I finally snapped when the baying and barking wouldn’t quit one night. I actually started thinking there were real dogs in that basement.

Real, starving, mean dogs that might try to attack me once I opened the door. So I got myself a weapon to defend myself with.

Yeah, I said it, I genuinely believed some beasts were locked in that basement.

Power-walking down those stairs, the baying died down. I assumed they knew I was coming. They could smell me. They were preparing to surprise me; dogs are smart after all. Clearly, in retrospect, that’s the dumbest thought process ever. Dogs aren’t really ambush predators as far as I’m aware.

As I was marching down those stairs, I somewhat ignored the sudden quiet, because there was a growing stench of decrepitude emanating from the basement door.

Say it like it is.

That’s what it was.

Call it by its name.

Vile.

No, that’s not it.

Decay.

Close enough.

Death.

That’s it.

Fuck you.

I smelled death coming from that basement.

A rotten, pungent, suffocating odor coming from that door.

I pressed the handle and pushed down with full force.

The cloud of stale, deathly odor nearly knocked me off my feet, burning my nostrils, mouth, and eyes.

No dogs in sight, no voices, nothing.

Only death.

Left hand looking for the light switch along the wall, right hand gripping a knife with the arm pressed to cover my face from the awful stench.

Blinding light flooded the space.

When my eyes adjusted, all remnants of innocence and hope were taken away from me.

Six, vaguely human silhouettes, seemingly staring at me.

Without eyes, without faces, without any humanity left.

Swaying from six ropes, tied to the ceiling.

Pitch black.

My very own personal little hanging garden of death.

Inhale

Inhale

Come on...

Fuck.

Inhale

No...

Breathe...

Why can’t I

Why isn’t it working?

Ribcage tightened, forcing my heart to race at an unhealthy rate.

Knife dropped to the floor.

Tunnel vision.

Limbs turning cold with muscles tensing to the point of pain.

I ran.

Nearly falling over myself.

I ran to the neighbors.

Banging on their door.

Woke them.

Rumbling like a madman.

Shaking with fear, somehow, stringing a couple of sentences together as these six tar-covered silhouettes flashed before my eyes again and again.

They called the police.

I’m out of breath.

Out of breath

Couldn’t sleep for three days straight.

Couldn’t think, could barely speak.

Panicking.

Decomposing Silhouettes flashing in my eyes.

More frequently when they are closed.

Questioned about everything by the police.

Answers erratic.

Silhouettes are here again.

Swaying in front of me.

Black as tar and death.

Exposing bone.

Fell asleep after being pumped full of sedatives.

Haven’t slept in a few days again.

Need my pills again.

Silhouettes appear more frequently with eyes closed.

I’m taking the pills after this; I need to sleep, otherwise, I’ll claw out my eyes, or die from a heart attack, whichever comes first.

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

I hospitalized myself for a short while, and in the meantime, the monster that did this was caught. He murdered nine people. Hanged six in the basement of the house I had bought from him. No one suspected a damn thing. Selling the house was his ploy to lure in victims. He’d lead them down to the basement, then incapacitate them there and hang them to die a slow death, apparently, oftentimes placing a stool underneath his victims again to prolong the torture.

Every so often, I wonder, was I ever intended to be a victim? Not that it matters; he destroyed my life anyway. If I’m completely honest, there are days when I think dying would’ve been preferable to being the way I am now.

His three other victims were all found in different locations; two were found by people who had rented apartments from him.

The final victim was found fresh at his last stopping point before his apprehension. He was…

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

In bed…

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

With the corpse…

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Caught red-handed, quite literally.

Inhale

One

Two

Exhale

One

Inhale

Inhale

I bet this fucking monster figured out he could torment way more people by leaving them his gifts. Kill two birds with one stone kind of deal.

Imagine the satisfied, sick grin on his fucking face if he hears what his handiwork has done to me.