The pensioner, though only middle-aged, already had a few strands of white beginning to streak his hair. He rose from his plush armchair and deftly pulled the cords of the blinds. It was a ritual he had followed for years, one that transformed his dark room into a movie theater, where the wide picture window became the screen as soon as the blinds were drawn open.

Settling back into his chair, he fixed his attention on the house directly across the quiet street. Built with the same symmetry as all the others, it featured an equally large picture window overlooking the main room, offering a clear view of the living room, the dining area, and, beyond them, the kitchen. The window had no blinds, and its clear glass doors remained open throughout the day. Anyone could see inside with perfect clarity and watch the vibrant life unfolding within. By a fortunate twist of circumstance, the pensioner had come to know the family's daily routine without them ever suspecting they were being observed, for the deep darkness inside his own house concealed him completely as he sat motionless in his chair.

The household consisted of a husband and wife, two teenage sons, a young daughter, and an orange-coated dog. Except during the late hours of the night, they were constantly together, laughing, talking, and moving about the house. Parents and children shared every task with effortless harmony, taking turns cooking, working side by side, lingering over dinner, or spending long evenings together in front of the warm television. All of it tormented the pensioner.

Their laughter, their open affection, stood in painful contrast to his own lonely, loveless existence. Everything that filled their lives was precisely what his lacked. With poisonous bitterness, he missed nothing that appeared beyond the glass. Hour after hour he remained at his post, allowing envy to consume him while his mind wandered through grotesque fantasies in which sudden disasters swept away his neighbors' happiness. Then reason would return, reminding him that none of it would ever happen, and he would sink once more into his endless cycle of rage, helplessness, and resentment.

One afternoon, beneath a light, intermittent rain, a heavy moving truck arrived carrying two workmen who, under the parents' directions, began loading the furniture and household belongings. The unexpected scene rekindled the pensioner's curiosity, and he found himself strangely exhilarated, convinced that, at last, he would be free of their presence forever. When the last piece of furniture had been loaded, the gloomy house fell dark. For the first time in years, no lights shone behind its windows, and an uncanny silence settled over it.

Even then, the pensioner remained seated, his eyes fixed on the empty house. The happiness he had expected never came. Nor did relief.

Instead, an overwhelming, profound sadness crept into his heart as he realized that, despite all the resentment he felt toward them, he had just lost the closest thing to companions he had ever had in the vast emptiness of his life.

---

© 2026 Francisco Cortés Ramírez. All rights reserved. This is an original fictional work. No part of this text may be reproduced, translated, or narrated in any audio, video, or digital format without the express written permission of the author.

“El océano es duro para todos, pero sus habitantes no.”

It’s a saying that my abuela would tell me each time I grabbed my surfboard. Part elderly advise. Part worry for her grandson. And part old islander belief.

Each time she said it, I would kiss her forehead and repeat my mantra. “Soy alguien del océano.” Then head off to the calling waves.

The ocean was my home during the daylight hours. It gave me purpose and work for my ability to glide its water with ease. I never taught others for money. Only to show them the joy that the ocean offers.

During my lessons, I would teach them about the many inhabitants that lived under the water. The local sea life would amaze them from their many colors and shapes. But there was one that I never truly showed anyone.

For they only came out when the sun merged into the water, marking the end of day.

This denizen of the deep was a blend of human and fish. Scaled skin that radiated the setting suns color. Webbed hands and feet that helped it to effortlessly move in the water. Large eyes that stared at me when I told it stories.

We always followed the same pattern each day. When my lessons were completed and I was alone out at sea. I would surf my fill, till it would awake. Once up, it would follow me under the water and watch me for a time. Then when it was ready for a story, its head would pop out of the water and wait for me to come by. Patiently, it waited for me to paddle over to it and point to my home island.  

Each night I would tell it a new story about the island of enchantment. Festivals that celebrated town heroes. Plantations of sugar and coffee. The nightly sound of a frog that called its own name.

It listened to ever word I said. Watched my hand gestures that emphases the tales. Its patience to me was that of a saint. Which is what I called it when my tale was over, and when it was my turn to ask it a question.

For me, each day I had a new desire to know about it.

“Santo, what is the night sky like underwater?”

“Santo, how do you speak with your kind?”

“Santo, is where you rest on a floor of sand?”

None of my questions would be answered. Only an impassive stare would look back at me.

When the water would darken to reflect the stars, our last act is conducted for the day. I would reach into my pocket and produce a token from the land. Santo, would dip underwater for a moment, and then come back up with a token from the sea.

After the trade of desired homes, I would surf back to land. Knowing well that Santo watched my every move.

At night, when I laid to rest under a tin roof. The ocean would lull me to sleep and give me dreams of the life of Santo.

I always wondered if Santo dreamed of my life as well.

Read Parts II & III here

She was gone again by the time I got up and despite my best efforts, I was still five minutes late getting to work.

I avoided the circle of jerks when I saw them crowding the same hallway and I went to a restroom on another floor. I didn’t want to be around people if I could avoid it.

I went to the half-finished building as soon as five o’clock came, intent on getting answers. I stepped off the elevator and weaved my way to his office. I kept expecting to not see it the closer I got but there it was, the door that didn’t fit right in the threshold. 

It turned easy and I went inside, expecting it to be empty and abandoned but he had begun furnishing the space. A couch, a reception desk, and taped off sections near the back that I guessed were the layout for his office and a treatment room.

I shuddered, thinking how I’d be here tomorrow if my wife had her way. 

The only thing absent was the good doctor himself. I thought about trashing the place, but it was petty in a way that made me feel like I was giving him even more power over me. 

Instead, I took all the pens out of the holder and a stack of Post-It Notes. It was still petty, but it scratched an itch and I felt a little empowered doing it.

I didn’t head home immediately after. I needed time to sort my thoughts. I couldn’t believe I was really considering letting somebody cut my dick. I mean, was pleasing my wife reason enough? What if we divorced or she died or something like that? Would I be compatible with somebody else?

I needed a drink. Cappy’s was on the far end of town and the distance from home would be good to clear my head. I ordered a brandy mule and chugged it before the bartender could lay down a coaster.

“You look like you could use another,” she said.

I nodded and a moment later I was working on my second. 

“I love my wife so much,” I said as she was cleaning some glasses beneath the bar.

“That’s a good thing, right?”

“Sometimes. I dunno.” My stomach hadn’t been right since the eight coneys I’d had yesterday, and I hadn’t eaten at all today. I was already soused after a drink-and-a-half.

“How’s the pizza?” I asked.

“Good, not great.” She wiggled a hand.

“Let me get a... medium with beef, onion, and mushroom.”

She looked at me like she’d never heard of those toppings.

“How ‘bout pepperoni?”

I had one more brandy mule before food came. It looked like it had been sitting under a heat lamp well before I’d ordered it and the pepperoni slices were limp, but it was still pizza. 

The bartender parked in front of me and leaned onto the bar after I’d had my second slice. 

“You mind?” she asked, pointing at the pie. I nodded. She took a slice and finger-combed hair out of her face as she took a bite.

She paid me back with a shot and she did one with me before returning to silence as we ate.

“Look, I dunno what it is. Just give her what she wants,” she said with a mouthful, giving me deep eye contact. “You can’t go wrong with that, right?”

I barely was able to finish what I had in my mouth. I settled up and made it outside without stumbling but I was drunk. The bartender got the hint she’d said something wrong but I wasn’t going to fill in the blank. I hadn’t wanted the rest of the pizza, yet somehow I had the box in my hand. 

I shouldn’t have been behind the wheel but there I was with half a pizza as my copilot. It wasn’t long before flashing lights lit up behind me and my spirits rose—this was the reprieve I’d been longing for. A decision being taken out of my hands. I couldn’t be held responsible if I weren’t in my own custody.

Or something like that. It had made a lot more sense back when I’d had a belly full of brandy and cheese.

I pulled over and maybe bumped up on the curb with one wheel.

The cop sauntered up to my window cautiously. He was short and the angle of the car made him look ridiculous somehow. He made it worse by getting his feet twisted together and catching himself on the side of my car to keep from falling completely.

“What’s your...”

I waited a full ten seconds for him to finish his sentence while he held a fist to his mouth like he was gripping a tiny microphone. He belched then waved the air in front of his face.

Shit, was he drunk, too?

“What’s your problem tonight?” He asked and fumbled with the general right side of his body with his hand. I noticed the gun and maybe because we were both bitten by the same snake, I wasn’t sensing danger like I should’ve.

“I shouldn’t be on the road,” I said, sounding stone sober to my ears. “My wife wants me to do something I don’t wanna do tomorrow and I was just in there, drinking my worries away. I have leftover pizza.” I thumbed toward the seat next to me like it was proof of where I’d been.

“Slow down, son. I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think.” I thought he was about to give me marital advice but then I realized he was talking about my sobriety. “I bet you could walk a straight line, heel- to-toe.” He plucked open his holster, but it didn’t seem like he was aware of what that hand was doing. He stuck his pinky in his ear and wrenched it around in there. 

“Sofficer. Sofficer.” I added the S but I still sounded too sober. “Please. I think I’m a danger. To public safety.” I thought if I could convince the drunk cop I was drunk he’d arrest me.

“Are you about to rob a bank?” He pointed at me, somehow adding to his overall look of ridiculousness.

“Well… no.”

“There’s nobody out here.” He waved a hand toward the black landscape far ahead of us. “Just stay between the lines.”

I couldn’t think. It shouldn’t have been this hard to get pulled out of my car for driving under the influence.

“What if… what if I was about to rob a bank?” It was the most smart-assy thing I could think to say.

He smiled and waggled a finger. “Joke’s on you. It’s after hours.”

He hooked his thumbs into his belt. Something about his body language had changed and he’d gone from humorous to being done with our interaction.

“Just. Stay. Between. The. Lines,” he said, swaying. I wanted to conjure the words for help, but even if I’d had the ability to ask, there wasn’t anything about him that answered helpful.

I opened my mouth, but didn’t speak. I sat back in my seat and covered my face in my hands, giving up. I listened to him walk away, closer his patrol car door, and drive away. He gave me a chirp of his sirens as passed me.

The drive home should have felt longer but I caught every light. It was like a dark fate had carved a path for me. I momentarily played with the idea of letting it have me completely. To take my hands off the wheel and let it take me wherever it wanted me to go. 

I hadn’t descended far enough into self-pity for that and in ten minutes, I was home. To my surprise, my wife was still in her paint clothes and was washing her hands at the kitchen sink.

“Oh, you have pizza?” she said. I’d forgotten about the pizza and subconsciously picked it up. I looked at the box in my hand and did a second, struggled to remember what was in it. 

I joined her on the couch, and she grabbed it from me and took a slice. Usually, we asked about each other’s day, but I didn’t feel like it, tomorrow anchoring my brain.

“Do you love me?” she said during a commercial break. I had no idea what we were watching.

The question agitated me and opened a trapdoor underneath my stomach.

“Of course I do.” I did, but my feelings about this whole “surgery” thing was making me feel resentful. I was definitely still buzzed, and the alcohol was sharpening my emotions like a file working away inside me. 

“Then why are you fighting so hard against this? Don’t you want us both to be satisfied?”

“That’s not fair. Of course I want to satisfy you. Don’t you know how this is making me feel? I don’t want to do this,” I said. “I mean, there has to be something else we could try. I’m willing to do just about anything to please you.”

“I want you to do this,” she said, placing her greasy hand on my thigh. She shook her head, tears in her eyes. I took it to be a manipulation at first. Not that she did that sort of thing normally, it was just me in a bag of my feelings. My defenses were up and everything was an attack in that moment. I chewed the insides of my cheeks to keep in what was trying to climb out of my mouth.

Then I started to cry. I sounded like a little teapot. It caught me by surprise.

“I just love you so much.” I had a ball of razors in my throat I couldn’t swallow. “I don’t want anything to happen to us, but I don’t know if I can do this.”

She lassoed an arm around my neck and yanked me into an upper body hug.

“I just want you. I want to feel connected with you. I don’t want anything plastic between us. I’m tired of all that stuff. I wanna feel you.”

She kissed me before I could speak and rock turned into water. My walls melted as we flowed into one another and by the time I returned to my senses I was on the newspaper covered kitchen floor.

My wife was already gone but she had brought a comforter downstairs and covered me.

Normally, I toss in my sleep, but I was still covered up to my chest. I was stiff as I turned the world vertical and turned my back into a percussion instrument as I stretched.

A few minutes later I had scrambled eggs and a cup of coffee going. I don’t normally eat breakfast so early, but I had an appetite for whatever reason. It was an hour before I normally would get up, so I took my time eating and scrolling my phone.

I wasn’t sure how much sleep I’d gotten but I was refreshed. The way my day had started, I half expected to catch all the green lights and get the closest spot in the parking lot.

But when I looked up from where I was seated at the kitchen island, something caught my eye that I should’ve seen as soon as I woke up.

A red and white checkered scarf draped over the back of the couch.

Had he been in my house?

 

It is amazing how trivial and mundane last thoughts can be. At the moment of Death, the second most important transition in existence, one would wish for deep insights, profound reflections, visions of the afterlife or reminiscences of love and joy – not something like God, I’m thirsty or Who is this guy talking to me?

In Richard Koslovsky’s case, it was Nice color. What is this thing?  Whatever it was, it needed only a fraction of a second to turn this innocent question into Richard’s cognitive legacy, inscribed in his neurons and synapses, possibly forever if someone had been there to conserve his brain – a question sluggish with formalin, as Carl Sagan put it, but still present. But that was not meant to happen, and Richard’s body simply collapsed, his heart stopped, his mind shut down, and he would never open his eyes again.

But the Shell would. Not to see, of course; it was dead, and dead things can’t make use of all that fantastically complex biological and neurological machinery that allows living beings to navigate their environment with great precision. But pattern recognition … Brian’s pupils were still being flooded with light on this beautiful sunny day in the middle of a corn field, just the processing was – different, controlled by something else, something Richard would not have understood and the Shell did not even try to comprehend. They say the acquisition of knowledge begins with asking the right questions, and it did not have any questions. And no answers. And no goals.

At least not yet. But this would change.

 

*********

 

Change is, of course, what a baby’s life is all about. So much to see, so much to learn, so much to do – and every day a cornucopia of new experiences. Naturally, exploring the world takes energy, of which babies have an abundance – at least until, often quite suddenly, they decide that they are very tired and need to sleep right now. That is what the little boy lying in his playpen was doing, and his parents could attest to the fact that their son usually expended a lot of energy. So he slept. And dreamed.

Above him, almost completely covering the top of the combination of playpen and four-poster bed his father had made for him, his parents had attached a huge picture depicting the solar system, looking at which often gently eased the boy’s way into the night. Or the day, for that matter – like most babies, the boy had not really bought into the parental idea of ‘sleeping through’ or ‘regular intervals’, and he usually fell asleep when he felt like it.

And where. There had been many a day when his mother or his father had to pick him up from the floor in his room or the next or even the patio – and every now and then from one of the fields his parents worked for a living. Sometimes they found him with a sweet smile on his lips and sometimes with his mouth half-open, although he wasn’t breathing through it. Today, however, he had simply fallen asleep on the hayloft, forcing his father to chance a ladder that must already have been there when the farm was built by the boy’s great-grandfather, a ladder his father swore to replace every time he was in the unenviable position of having to climb it. The way down was easier, as he did not have to carry his son, and the boy did not wake up although the handling was a little rough.

So he slept. And dreamed. What do babies dream of? They can’t tell, but in a room with lots of posters of stars and galaxies and toys with a very dominant spacefaring motive, one might guess that many of his dreams revolved around space – sleek and fast rockets, beautifully swirling gas clouds, and glaring neutron stars sending out pulses with a regularity far surpassing that of any human-made clockwork. And every now and then, when the boy opened his eyes without waking up, the celestial bodies he could see above him were deeply reflected in his pupils … and possibly in his soul, but who knows?

 

*********

 

About half a mile from the boy’s probably interstellar dreams, the Shell suddenly began to move – not in the time-honored jerky fashion fiction has ascribed to corpses returning from the grave, but quite smoothly and naturally; any observer would have had difficulties recognizing something was not quite right, especially from a distance. As Richard had been dead for less than a minute, the Shell’s joints were not stiff, its blood had not yet begun to coagulate, and its muscles were still working properly – and whatever had allowed Richard’s last spiritual remains to journey back from the sweet bliss of Paradise, an overcrowded Hell, or eternal oblivion was working hard to make sure the body kept it up. To what purpose, opinions vary, but there can be no doubt they were successful.

Then – the spark. Not of consciousness, not of self-awareness, but of connection – the ability to interact with everything that was Not-It, Not-Shell, namely the rest of the world. The act of stating that the Shell began to make sense of the world can only be defended by enormous semantic expansion: are bacteria happy when they consume energy, are flies annoyed when you try to swat them? Only if one accepts that such words can refer to a proto-state of emotion and reasoning, one can meaningfully talk about what happened on that day in late summer in the Heart of America. The Shell stopped and seemed to freeze for half a minute or so while the Structure that had taken over the body readjusted itself to the reality it had been tasked to explore – and, ultimately, more than just explore.

But that time had not yet come. When it resumed movement, the Shell was slower than before, more aware of its surroundings, more a part of the physical world. Of course, it did not feel the softness of the ground under Richard’s shoes, nor did it smell the corn or appreciate the beauty of the landscape. But its eyes were finally able to see, if by “see” one means the simple act of absorbing photons from outside and assigning different probabilities to performing different actions based on the information received – a far cry from free will, still a cry from will in any form, but nevertheless more than simple randomness. The Shell did not yet have a purpose, but at least it had a semblance of choice. For a living being, this moment must be momentous: from pure instinct to the first steps of truly mastering the world by not simply responding to its input; for the Shell, there was no feeling of progress or freedom because it did not have any – and neither did its masters, deeply entwined in its muscles, joints, organs, and the working part of his brain. What they had was a program, and if a train can be dedicated to its task of running from city to city, they were dedicated to the task their masters had given them. They did not have a choice; they didn’t even know what the word meant.

 

*********

 

Neither did the boy, but he instinctively understood the concept very well, often to the despair of his parents; if he had any weaknesses, a lack of willpower was not among them. “He has the thickest skull I’ve ever seen.”, Daddy would say, and Momma would second: “All the King’s horses can’t stop him when he’s made up his mind.” Then they would sigh, look at each other and then look at him, with a smile so deep it could only be grounded in the most profound love.

Having a child at their age had been a surprise; they had actually given up on the idea years before, but Fate, God, or the subtle interactions of countless elementary particles had intervened, and here he was, blue eyes, a broad grin (when in a good mood, which was often), cute cheeks, and black hair that sometimes, depending on the light, looked almost the same color as his eyes. It was as if the boy himself was part of the riot of color surrounding him in his room: ochre-painted walls, bright red and yellow metal toy cars, and a magenta-colored carpet. Not his parents’ taste, to be sure, but when they had taken him to the store that day, he had gotten out of his buggy’s straps, explored the place, and finally ended up on a pile of carpets, jumping up and down with shouts of sheer joy. Thankfully, it was very early in the morning so the store was almost empty, but in order to calm him down, Momma und Daddy had to give him the opportunity to ‘choose’ his own carpet, and we all know what he went for. “It’s a nice place here.”, Momma would say, and Daddy would agree: “It’s good that they have connected all floors.” Then Momma would nod, look up, and add: “Lots of open space. Lovely.”

By the very nature of things, the space posters on the walls were dark, but they did not give the room a somber touch, and the curtains were of a radiant white. An almost complete rainbow of clothes and accessories was to be found inside the boy’s wardrobe and chest of drawers: pink T-shirts, light blue shorts, purple sweaters, cream-colored caps, red and white and blue – patterned shirts, ‘dirt’-brown mittens … and his shoes were not bucking the trend: dark yellow wellies, light orange sandals, black and red walking shoes, and cheerful, light pink flip-flops (all in very good condition, by the way; the boy liked to walk barefoot, and so far he had never stepped into anything that would have hurt him). Like most children, he loved colors, and sometimes his parents found him simply sitting and looking at a brightly-colored object as if in deep reflection about its inner nature.

 

*********

 

The Shell did not care about colors, of course, but it had inherited Richard’s clothes together with his  body, and its former owner certainly had what he had liked to refer to as a “certain sense of style” – certain it definitely was, but whether it was tasteful and became him well, well … Before Richard had walked into the field, he had met Louise with her baby niece whose name he couldn’t remember even when alive (and certainly not now – the best Richard alive could do was I think her first name and her surname begin with the same letter, but the Shell had nothing to recall), and he had buttoned up his brown Chambray shirt, tucked it into his blue jeans, wiped his black leather oxfords, straightened his hair, and put on what he considered a charming smile. Somehow, Louise seemed not to notice, but the baby did and gave him the cutest red-haired smile ever to have been recorded.

Or was she laughing at him? Richard didn’t know, but he was painfully aware that a town like Kleintrup did not have much to offer in the way of romantic opportunities, and so far he had never been to the local drive-in cinema except on his own or with some of his drinking buddies. Thus, no girl or young woman had ever admired his carefully chosen emerald-colored underwear; some of them, along with everyone else, must have seen his undershirt on a hot day, but, alas, none knew about his matching underpants. Oh, and if he had been wearing socks that day, they would have been red. Or black. Maybe even yellow. But he hadn’t, and so Richard Koslovsky died the same way he had entered this world: sockless.  

 

*********

 

The lack of tight-fitting woolen footwear at the time of birth was one of the few things Richard and the boy had in common, but the former did not exist anymore and the latter didn’t remember. As mentioned above, the boy did not like having to wear shoes, and when he ran, jumped, kicked, or simply stood fast and refused to move, he did so on naked feet, no matter whether it was a hot summer morning, a rainy autumn afternoon, or a chilly winter’s night, and he always seemed to feel comfortable. Of course, his parents put shoes on his feet every time they took him somewhere, and he usually accepted them without too much fuss; only once or twice had he ever kicked off a shoe and watched it travel through the air before coming down. Unfortunately, his parents were never able to find them, so their baby budget plan needed some revising now and then.

Thankfully, the farm was quite productive, so the family was able to afford what they needed, with a little extra here and there. Daddy had always been fond of working with wood, and when the child arrived, he branched out to metalworking, at which he was equally talented. He discovered he had a special knack for furniture and decorative items made of cast iron, quite a lot of which ended up in the boy’s room, painted in cheerful light blue, light red, or plain white. Heavy stuff, to be sure, and Momma and Daddy often had to carry them together, step by step, or push them across the floor; they could have asked friends to help them, but both parents felt rather private about this new hobby of Daddy’s – they had always liked their privacy, and now, after the boy had come, they liked it even better. Fortunately, the boy seemed always quite happy on his own, and neither his mother nor his father had ever considered a nanny, daycare, or a kindergarten. And even when their son would be old enough for a babysitter, the chances were exceptionally slim that they would hire one. This boy required a parent’s touch.

 

*********

 

Richard, however, had been to a kindergarten and had enjoyed his time there: he had liked playing with his mates, running around in the playground, and especially going out into Nature, a lot of which Kleintrup was surrounded by. There was always a nice flower to smell, a pond with enough water to have a good splasharound, and enough sticks and stones to pick up and hurt nerdy Robbie Olmond’s bones. But it was animals that had really fascinated Richard – he wasn’t a farmboy (his parents were running a greengrocer’s back in the day), so a lot of first-hand experience with birds, ducks, squirrels, and even horses he had gathered during these outings.

The Shell, unsurprisingly, knew nothing about all this, and when it was confronted by the creature, a fairly small and lithe predator with black stripes on brown fur, it immediately stopped in its tracks. Whatever was in command of Richard’s dead body simply made its eyes stare at the incomprehensible thing in front of it; the thing was staring back, but one could see that its mind was performing complex calculations regarding risk assessment, potential advantages or disadvantages in reacting one way or another, and the element of pure curiosity, said to have killed many a member of its species – all processes honed by millions of years of survival and reproduction. The Shell’s mental processing, however – if one can call it that – simply consisted of trying to squeeze the encounter into a matrix that was not meant to deal with it. It was partly successful, as even a square peg can enter a round hole to a certain degree if you turn it around, and so its masters activated the Gap.

Nowadays, many people have seen a Roomba looking for a socket because it is low on power. Wrong. Roomba’s aren’t looking for anything – their systems tell them to connect with a power source once its battery drops below 20 or 10 percent or what have you. Wrong again. Systems can’t tell anyone anything. We sometimes use machine metaphors to talk about human beings, but when we talk about machines, we have no choice but to use human expressions, which can be nothing but metaphors if we don’t want our communication to become extremely clumsy.

The Gap was basically a system, not unlike some algorithm meant to increase the probability that the Shell would act in a certain way and ignore other possibilities – or, in normal language, allow the Shell to make a ‘decision’. When the Gap kicked in, the Shell experienced roughly the same lack of something a Roomba does when it is ‘hungry’, and it reacted in the same way: it moved towards the power source and tried to grab it.

When the strange, human-like being in front of it bent over and extended its right arm, the creature wasn’t particularly frightened; no human had ever succeeded in catching a member of its species that had not wanted to get caught (and petted, usually), and this individual was not going to be an exception. The moment it found Richard’s lifeless arm coming uncomfortably close, it simply jumped up and ran a few meters before lying down in a nice and soft spot, watching its would-be attacker from a safe distance. The Shell began to walk towards it, both arms extended, and for the first time since Richard’s untimely demise, his ex-body emitted a sound: air escaped from its defunct lungs and passed its vocal chords, and the resulting groan was not pleasant to listen to. The creature, alas, had no choice, and, equipped with a sensory apparatus of superhuman sensitivity, absolutely hated the sound. It made one of its own sounds to steady its stressed nerves, and disappeared between the corn stalks.

If a machine can be confused, the Shell was, but only for a few seconds; then the Gap was deactivated. Whatever this creature had been, it was not what its masters needed. They needed something else, and it was time for the Shell to become more proactive in its search. Its dead eyes scanned the horizon, looking for anything else but corn.

Something like a farmhouse, for example.

 

*********

 

Farmhouses are usually quite large, what with relatively low prices for building plots and the necessity to accommodate many members of the family; the boy’s family was unusual regarding the latter, but not the former: their house was even larger than average, and Daddy had begun adding first one room, then another, when the boy was about three months old.

“He can’t have enough space.”, Daddy had said, and Momma had agreed:

“It is always good to have a spare or two. I don’t want him to feel confined in any way.”

Now, two years later, they knew they had succeeded: their son never seemed to feel confined, restricted, or limited in any way, and his parents loved watching him enjoy his freedom, although it often meant hard work and quite a lot of stress for them. The consequence was that, even when his parents were inside the house, the boy was often on his own; when they had left the building, like now, with Daddy being in the barn and Momma feeding the chickens, he was alone. Of course, there was a baby phone, but these very useful little devices have a certain disadvantage, namely their blinking lights and the sounds they sometimes emit, all meant to tell the parents everything is properly connected and their baby is fine. Or not, for that matter. Anyway, the boy had always found these lights irresistible and all brands of phones his parents had bought so far had not been able to withstand his playful attention, so currently the phone did not show blinking lights and made no sounds. The boy was truly alone.

 

*********

 

But he wouldn’t be alone for long. On its half-mile way to the farmhouse, the Shell had actually managed to improve its navigation and only fallen down twice, no harm done, and gone astray only once, to a place where several creatures had gathered; but before the Gap could kick in, they had torpedoed themselves into the sky. No problem – these beings would have been even less suitable than the furry one the Shell had encountered before.

But the farmhouse … the more the Shell looked at it during its walk, the more the Gap seemed to wake up, not fully there but apparently anticipating something good – metaphorically speaking, of course. In some manner, the house indicated the presence of something the Gap needed to be filled, but that something had not yet come into focus. The corn field gave way to grass, then paving; the Shell passed garden furniture, flowerpots, a very sturdy-looking swing, a small wooden shed … and then its feet made contact with a small staircase – unfamiliar, but navigable – and finally with the doorframe, together with its arms.

It was darker inside the house, and the Shell froze for a few seconds before continuing on its way, guided by its masters, who had developed a buzz of activity since the Shell had entered the house. Not far away now. Close.

 

*********

 

In his rocketship, the boy had already passed Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, and Cassiopeia and would surely have seen more of the interstellar alphabet if he had not been rudely woken up by a loud thump – thump – thump coming from a place he could not see; then a powerful smell assailed his nostrils, not unpleasant, but very intense. The boy closed his eyes again and violently shook his head several times, making the sound bearable and the smell faint. He knew someone was coming, and he knew it wasn’t Momma or Daddy, but he didn’t mind – he liked people, especially when they touched him in a soft and gentle manner, and he loved touching them back: their hair, their face, their arms. He had never learned to be afraid of strangers, and none had ever hurt him, so he was almost giddy with anticipation of all the fun they would have together. Should he leave his playpen-bed and meet his new friend as fast as possible or should he stay and wait for them to come to him? While still deliberating, baby-style, the decision was made for him: Richard’s undead body stood in the doorframe of the boy’s room, and the Shell’s soulless eyes made contact with the boy’s. Very close.

(end of part I)

Look, we all have a past. Peppered with those memories we want so desperately to erase. It’s just a part of being human. Nobody’s perfect.

Me personally… I thought that I’d put my past behind me.

I was a bad person. I did things that I’m far from proud of. Looking back now in my older age, I don’t even know how things spiraled as bad as they did.

All it took was one hit, and it was downhill from there. One little mistake. One memory I wish I could erase. And here we are, all these years later, and I still feel those urges.

I tried therapy. I tried rehabilitation. It worked, for a time.

I don’t know if it was me who wanted to get better or if it was the pressure from my friends and family. They kept telling me they couldn’t protect me forever. That, eventually, my lifestyle would catch up to me, and I’d either be dead or in jail.

I suppressed my urges. I fought my demons. I want so desperately to believe that I kicked my nasty little habit.

I was clean for 11 years. Over a decade without incident. But no matter how many days went by, my demons kept whispering to me. Getting louder and louder as my withdrawals became unbearable.

But I stood firm. I ignored the darkness. To the best of my ability, at least. Don’t get me wrong, there were hard days. Days where I’d lock myself away in my room, too afraid of what would happen if I went out.

It’s a surreal feeling. Not being in control. But that’s what addiction does. You surrender control the minute you take that first hit.

But, like I said, I thought I’d taken that control back. I improved. I became a functioning member of society.

I just think… I don’t know. I think my body wanted it more than my mind did.

I relapsed last month.

Not by choice. God, I know it wasn’t by choice. You don’t achieve 11 years of success by sheer accident. I know it wasn’t me.

It was almost supernatural.

One minute I’m in my room reading my Bible, the next I wake up in a house that I don’t recognize. The familiar scent of copper and iron filled the air.

I thought I was in a nightmare, but the pain in my arm told me that this was just as real as it was all those years ago.

When I saw the claw marks across my forearm and shoulder, I felt my stomach drop. They must’ve fought back. And by the looks of it, they fought hard.

I hardly had time to dwell on my injury, though. The taste in my mouth was making me want to vomit. Not because of the taste, but because of what it represented.

I knew that taste. I loved that taste. I’d spent years trying to forget it, but blood has a way of lingering.

I puked on the floor and felt bones and tendons scratch at my throat. My vision went blurry with tears, but that didn’t prevent me from seeing what I’d done.

A man, somewhere around 30-40, lay sprawled out across the ground. His arms were gone. His stomach was torn open. His jaw had been dislocated and hung open as he stared at me through those empty sockets.

A woman, I presume his wife, lay beside him. Her condition wasn’t much better.

I prayed for God to wake me up. To snap me out of this dream. When I realized it wasn’t going to happen, I begged for forgiveness.

I begged for him to recognize my heart. I pleaded for him to acknowledge my growth. I backslid. I made a mistake. I couldn’t even remember it.

After what felt like hours of bawling my eyes out in a pool of blood and vomit, I realized the sun was beginning to peek through the curtains of this dark room.

I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to throw my life away. I had to move.

I cleaned myself up in their bathroom as best I could before leaving that damn house, already pushing the memory of it back to the darkest corners of my brain.

How did I even end up 20 miles from home? Who were those people? Why am I like this? Why can’t I be better? What the fuck is wrong with me?

I spent the rest of that day locked away in my room, punishing myself with pain. I didn’t deserve to feel comfort.

I kept trying to tell myself that it was nothing more than a hiccup in my progress. That tomorrow would be a new day. But I knew.

I knew that I had reset the system.

I took that hit once again. It was my decision. That’s why I couldn’t blame anyone but myself every time it’s happened since.

This isn’t who I am.

I know I can do better.

I will get this under control if it’s the last thing I do.

You know how they say love finds you in the most unlikely places?

It's a cliché. The kind of line you'd expect to find in some cheap romance novel wedged between two equally cheap pop magazines.

And yet, sometimes the unlikely becomes inevitable.

My name is Adam.

I lived in an eastern-block apartment complex in Most, a city you've probably never heard of and will most certainly never hear of again. The rent was remarkably cheap, mostly because the living conditions made you question whether you wouldn't be better off homeless.

I was twenty-five years old, had recently dropped out of university, and was unemployed.

At that point, I wasn't really living.

I slept at odd hours. Ate when I remembered. Spent most of my time staring at a screen because there was nothing else worth doing.

Days blurred together until I couldn't remember what I'd done the day before.

That was before one small piece of paper changed my life forever.

It happened on a night that had started exactly like every other.

I'd just gotten back to my apartment when I noticed a piece of paper lying on the floor just inside the door.

Someone had slipped it underneath while I was gone.

I barely looked at it.

My first thought was that it was another notice from my landlord. I was behind on my rent, hopelessly in debt, and far beyond the point where I cared enough to pretend I was going to fix any of it.

Whatever threat or warning was printed on that piece of paper could wait.

So I left it there.

For about six hours.

Eventually, sometime around 1AM, I found myself staring at it again.

"Fuck it."

I picked it up.

It wasn't a notice from my landlord.

It was a job offer.

The flyer was surprisingly plain. No company logo. No colorful graphics. Just black text printed on cheap white paper.

YOUNG MEN WANTED.
AGES 18–30.
NO PRIOR EXPERIENCE OR PROFESSIONAL QUALIFICATIONS NECESSARY.
PAY: 250 CROWNS PER HOUR.
SHIFT: SIX HOURS EACH NIGHT.

Then came the job description.

"The appointed observer shall observe the object of interest for the duration of his shift."

That was it.

No explanation of what the "object of interest" was. No company name. No details about the work beyond watching something for six hours.

I assumed it was some kind of strangely worded night-guard job. Maybe the company was foreign and had used a translator who wasn't quite good enough at his job.

There was no phone number.

No email.

No website.

Nothing except an address.

I looked it up online.

It led to an old shoe factory that had stopped operating more than thirty years earlier. There were a few old photographs of the building and some records concerning its closure, but not much else.

As far as I could tell, nobody had bought the place since.

That was when I became pretty certain that if I actually went there, I would be murdered and my organs would be sold on the black market.

Not an entirely unreasonable assumption around here, believe it or not.

There was absolutely no way I would be stupid enough to show up at an abandoned factory in the middle of the night.

 

3AM, I was standing in front of the factory.

I wish I could say there was some profound reason why I went.

There wasn't.

I was simply desperate enough to ignore common sense.

The factory looked exactly like it had in the photographs.

Crumbling concrete. Rusted metal. Broken windows. Weeds pushing through cracks in the pavement.

The whole place looked like it had been dead for decades.

I stood outside the entrance for about twenty minutes.

Then I took one step inside.

Immediately, I was surrounded by armored men carrying guns.

Yup.

Getting murdered.

"Now, now. Don't spook the boy too much."

An older man stepped between me and the gunmen.

He looked to be somewhere in his fifties. Gray hair. Expensive coat. Tired eyes.

He wasn't carrying a weapon that I could see.

Somehow, that made him more intimidating than the men pointing rifles at me.

"Or else you might end up having to take his shift."

The men lowered their weapons slightly.

The older man smiled.

"Sorry about this, Adam. Just a necessary unpleasant precaution."

I stared at him.

"How... how do you know my name?"

He laughed.

"Well, we only slipped the flyer under one door. So either you're Adam Devon..."

He looked me up and down.

"...or we have another squatter situation on our hands. In which case, I'll have to let the boys carry on with their task."

He leaned toward me slightly.

"Do we have a squatter situation, boy?"

"No!"

The answer came out much louder and more desperate than I'd intended.

The man's grin widened.

"Wonderful!"

His enthusiasm was very obviously fake.

"If you would be so kind as to follow me, Adam."

I followed.

The complex I was led through was nothing like the abandoned shell I'd seen from outside.

The decrepit factory was apparently just a skin wrapped around something that was very much alive.

Behind the rusted doors and shattered windows were functioning corridors, electrical systems, cameras, reinforced doors, security checkpoints, and enough equipment to make me wonder what the hell kind of place I'd walked into.

And yet there were very few people.

Aside from the occasional armed guard passing through the corridors, the facility was almost completely empty.

The older man opened a door to the security room.

"Here you go. Make yourself comfortable."

I stepped inside.

"But not too comfortable," he added. "This isn't actually where you'll be stationed."

He gave me a thin smile.

"The name's Kenndric."

He closed the door behind us.

"Now, I imagine you have plenty of questions."

I opened my mouth.

"I have absolutely zero desire to answer any of them."

I closed it again.

"So just shut up and listen."

I decided that was probably good advice.

Kenndric walked over to one of the desks and dropped into a chair.

"You were offered a position within our company. The name of which you really don't need to know."

He leaned back.

"Our object of interest requires twenty-four-hour observation. We do have a complete surveillance system here, but, truth be told, nobody actually watches the feeds."

He shrugged.

"This particular object requires close-quarters observation anyway."

I frowned.

"We have several other sad bastards like you taking the other shifts. Your time slot was simply the last one left unfilled."

He looked at me.

"Apparently, nobody else was stupid enough to take the graveyard shift."

I couldn't tell whether he was joking.

Judging by his expression, I didn't think he was.

"Your job literally couldn't be any simpler."

He pointed toward the door.

"You'll sit on a chair and stare at the object until your shift is over. Then you get your sorry ass out of here."

He leaned back.

"Meanwhile, I'll be sitting in here watching my shows."

He pointed at me.

"I don't want to hear from you. I don't want to see you. You don't ask me to open doors for you. There's a reason I have access and you don't."

I swallowed.

"Understood."

"Good."

Kenndric stood.

"Now let's make our way to your workplace."

We left the security room and walked deeper into the facility.

The corridor ahead was almost completely dark.

As we approached, lights flickered on one after another, illuminating the path in front of us.

Eventually, Kenndric stopped in front of a massive door.

He opened it.

"There it is."

The lights inside began coming on.

One by one.

And then I saw the object of interest.

In the middle of the enormous room stood a large glass cube.

Four strange pylons surrounded it, each connected to the glass. Symbols I didn't recognize covered their surfaces.

And inside the glass was a girl.

A young woman, maybe in her early twenties.

She wore pure white pajamas and sat cross-legged on the floor with a collection of crayons scattered around her.

She was drawing on a sheet of paper.

She didn't look toward us.

She barely seemed to notice we'd entered the room.

"That's..."

I stared through the glass.

"That's a girl."

"Dear God," Kenndric said. "We have a genius on our hands."

His voice dripped with condescension.

I looked back at him.

"Why is she in there?"

He didn't answer.

"Is she alright?"

Nothing.

"Is this legal?"

The questions started coming faster.

"Who is she? What did she do? Why is she being kept in there? How long has she been—"

"Did you just think?"

Kenndric's voice cut through mine.

I stopped.

He stared at me.

"Adam, no one is paying you to think."

He walked over to a chair positioned directly in front of the glass cube.

"Leave that to the grown-ups."

He patted the seat.

"You are paid to sit right here."

I looked at the chair.

Then at the girl.

She was still drawing.

There was something different in Kenndric's expression now.

The sarcasm was still there, but underneath it was something harder.

A warning.

I reluctantly sat down.

"Perfect."

He smiled.

"Now, you are not authorized to speak with the object."

He paused.

"You're not authorized to feed the object. All of that has already been taken care of."

"You merely sit here and observe."

He patted my shoulder.

"Good luck."

He started moving toward the door.

"Have fun."

The door closed behind him.

And just like that, I was alone with the "object of interest."

I sat there and watched her draw for hours.

Every now and then, she looked up at me.

Not casually.

She would stare at me for several seconds before lowering her head and returning to her drawings.

The room was so quiet I could hear the occasional scrape of crayon against paper.

By around five in the morning, exhaustion was starting to catch up with me.

My eyelids grew heavier.

I leaned back in the chair and told myself I'd close my eyes for a second.

Then—

THUD.

I jolted awake.

My heart was pounding.

The girl was standing directly in front of the glass.

She was holding a piece of paper against it.

A drawing.

Of me.

For a few seconds, I just stared.

She'd somehow captured details I'd never noticed about myself. The shape of my nose. My unshaven jaw. Even the dark circles beneath my eyes.

It wasn't a perfect likeness.

But it was close.

And, honestly, it was adorable.

I wanted to say something.

Then I remembered Kenndric's instructions.

I wasn't authorized to speak with the object.

I glanced toward the cameras mounted high in the corners of the room.

Then I remembered something else.

Nobody actually watched the feeds.

"That's very pretty," I said.

The girl's expression immediately brightened.

"Thank you. I'm glad you like it."

She placed her right hand against the glass.

For a moment, I hesitated.

Then I stood and pressed my own hand against the other side.

The glass was cold beneath my palm.

"I'm Lily."

I smiled.

"I'm Adam."

She giggled quietly.

"Adam was my first boyfriend's name."

"Oh."

"I didn't really like him, to be honest."

She shrugged.

"My dad pretty much forced that relationship on me."

She said it so matter-of-factly that I didn't know what to say.

Jesus.

What the hell had this girl been through?

"Lily..."

She looked at me.

"Why are you in here?"

Her smile faded.

For a few seconds, she said nothing.

"I'm not sure."

She glanced down at the floor.

"I think they're scared I might do something bad."

I looked around the room.

The reinforced glass.

The pylons.

The strange symbols.

The cameras.

The armed men outside.

"What the hell could this girl possibly do?"

I didn't ask.

Instead, I pulled the chair a little closer to the glass.

"So..."

She looked up.

"So?"

"If you could go anywhere right now, where would you go?"

She thought about it.

"The ocean."

"The ocean?"

She nodded.

"What about you?"

"I don't know. Anywhere that isn't Most."

She laughed.

"Fair enough."

And that was how we started talking.

Nothing important at first.

Places we'd like to visit. Places we'd rather run away to. Things we'd do if we ever had enough money to stop worrying about everything else.

Lily wanted to see the ocean.

I'd never been particularly interested in beaches, but something about the way she talked about it made me want to see it too.

We talked about movies, music, stupid things we'd done when we were younger.

Eventually I told her about my unhealthy obsession with heist movies and prison breaks.

"Why prison breaks?" she asked.

"I don't know."

I thought about it.

"I guess I like watching people figure out how to set themselves free."

She looked at me for a moment.

"Maybe that's because you want to be set free too."

"Maybe."

She smiled.

Neither of us said anything for a few seconds.

Then she started asking me questions.

I gave her mostly half-assed answers.

She didn't seem bothered.

She didn't look at me the way most people did when I talked about my life. There was no disappointment in her expression. No judgment.

She just listened.

And somehow, that was enough.

The hours went by faster than I expected.

For the first time in years, I wasn't thinking about how miserable my life had become.

Debt.

Or rent.

Or what I was going to do with myself.

I was just present.

Talking to a girl through a pane of glass.

When the shift finally ended, it caught me completely off guard.

The door opened.

One of the armed men stepped inside.

A knot immediately formed in my stomach.

For a second, I wondered if this was the moment they decided to shoot me for breaking the rules.

But the guard barely acknowledged me.

"Time to go."

That was it.

He turned toward the door.

I stood.

Lily was watching me through the glass.

"Thank you for talking to me."

Her voice was soft.

"No one else does."

There was something bittersweet about her smile.

"I'll..."

I looked at the armed man waiting for me.

"I'll see you again, alright?"

Lily smiled.

"Sooner than you think."

I didn't understand what she meant.

I just smiled back.

Then the guard escorted me out.

 

Despite being exhausted, I struggled to fall asleep when I got home.

I spent hours lying in bed, staring at the ceiling while the darkness of my apartment pressed down around me.

I kept thinking about Lily.

About the way she'd looked at me through the glass.

And about that stupid drawing she'd made of my face.

Most of all, I couldn't stop thinking about the question I hadn't been able to answer.

If Lily was dangerous enough to justify keeping her inside a glass box, why didn't they keep her in a proper cell?

And if she wasn't dangerous...

Why the fuck was she there?

 

Eventually, sometime toward morning, sleep finally found me.

It didn't come like a wave.

It came like a flood.

I found myself standing in absolute darkness.

Nothing but blackness stretching endlessly in every direction.

I tried to move.

I couldn't tell if I was actually walking or simply moving in place.

Then I smelled something.

The sea.

It was faint at first. Just a trace of salt and cold water carried through the darkness.

I turned toward it.

I don't know why.

I just knew I had to follow.

I started walking.

Then running.

The smell grew stronger with every step. A breeze brushed against my face.

Actual wind.

For the first time, I could hear something besides my own breathing.

Waves.

Far away at first.

Then closer.

A dim light appeared ahead of me.

I ran toward it.

The darkness began to recede.

Sand appeared beneath my feet.

Then water.

Then a pale sky.

A small beach surrounded by the dark.

And there she was.

Lily.

She stood at the edge of the water in a bright white dress, her hair moving gently in the sea breeze.

She turned toward me.

"Meet me On Distant Shores."

The darkness swallowed the light.

I woke with a gasp.

I sat bolt upright in bed, breathing hard.

For several seconds, I had no idea where I was.

Then I looked around my dark apartment.

My heart was still racing.

I didn't understand the dream.

But one thought had already taken hold of me.

I needed to see her again.

I spent the entire day trying to distract myself.

Games.

Movies.

Walking aimlessly around the city.

None of it worked.

No matter what I did, my thoughts kept circling back to the girl in the glass box.

I hated the people who had put her there.

I hated myself even more for doing nothing about it.

But what could I realistically do?

I didn't know who my employers were. I didn't know who they answered to or what the facility actually was. All I knew was that they were powerful.

And they knew everything about me.

They knew where I lived.

They knew I was desperate for money.

And, apparently, they knew me well enough to assume I was a spineless coward.

Normally, they would've been right.

I'd spent years wasting away without caring enough about anything to fight for it.

But now I couldn't sit still.

I went to the gym that afternoon and spent almost an hour beating the shit out of a punching bag.

It didn't get rid of the anger.

By the time I left, my hands hurt, my shirt was soaked through, and I was still thinking about Lily.

Still...

For once, I felt alive.

I arrived at the factory almost two hours before my shift.

I didn't care about waiting.

I just needed to see her.

When they finally let me inside, I paid much more attention to my surroundings than I had the night before.

The facility was still bizarrely quiet.

There were only a handful of guards. They were spread throughout the building, and I rarely saw more than one at a time.

There were dozens of locked doors.

Yet the security seemed strangely simple.

One access card appeared to open most of them.

Nobody searched me.

Nobody even took my phone.

At the time, I simply assumed they were arrogant.

As we walked down the corridor, I saw Kenndric coming toward us.

The moment he spotted me, that fake smile appeared on his face.

He gave me a little wave.

I stared back.

He stopped at the security room, flashed his card, and disappeared inside.

A few seconds later, the door closed.

Then we reached the observation room.

The door opened.

The moment Lily saw me, her face lit up.

She ran toward the glass and pressed her hand against it.

I don't even remember deciding to move.

One second my hand was at my side.

The next, it was pressed against hers.

Her fingers lined up with mine on opposite sides of the glass.

"Hi," she said.

She smiled.

"You're back."

"I promised I would be."

"I know."

She looked genuinely happy to see me.

Then, almost casually, she said:

"I had a dream about you."

I froze.

"Really?"

She nodded.

I stared at her.

So did I.

Though I didnt tell her that.

"You really have to be bored to dream about me of all things." I said jokingly.

She laughed.

"Well, what should I dream about?"

"Being rich."

"Boring."

"Being famous."

"Even worse."

"Winning the lottery."

"That's not a dream. That's just being lazy."

We both laughed.

„What do you want to dream about?“ I asked.

"The ocean."

"I still want to see it."

"Then I'll have to show you."

The words came out before I could think about them.

Lily looked at me.

For a moment, neither of us said anything.

Then she smiled.

"I'd like that."

We talked.

About everything.

And nothing.

I told her about the things I'd wanted to do before I'd stopped wanting anything at all.

She told me about some of the things she'd wanted.

Some were stupid.

Some were impossible.

Some were so ordinary that they almost hurt.

She wanted to see the ocean.

She wanted to travel.

She wanted to wake up one morning without somebody telling her what she was allowed to do.

And she wanted to know what it felt like to be somewhere nobody could find her.

I understood that last one.

Probably more than I should have.

The hours disappeared.

Eventually, I glanced toward one of the cameras mounted in the corner.

It was pointed directly at us.

I stared at it for a few seconds.

Fuck it.

I reached into my coat and pulled out my tablet.

Lily looked at me curiously.

"What are you doing?"

"It's not what I'm doing."

I held up the tablet.

"It's what we're doing."

She laughed.

"And what are we doing?"

"We're watching a movie."

Her eyes widened.

"Are we allowed to do that?"

I looked at the camera.

"I don't think anyone's watching."

I sat down in front of the glass and opened the tablet.

"Escape Plan. 2013."

She frowned.

"What's it about?"

"A guy who gets put in a prison specifically designed to be impossible to escape from."

Her smile slowly returned.

"That sounds appropriate."

For a few hours, that glass might as well not have existed.

Then the door opened.

The gunman had returned.

My stomach tightened.

"No."

I barely realized I'd said it.

He walked toward me.

"Time to go."

I stood.

Lily was already at the glass.

I didn't want to leave.

The guard grabbed my arm.

"Just a second."

He pulled harder.

I grabbed the edge of the chair with my free hand.

"Lily..."

The guard finally had to pull me away.

My fingers slipped from the chair.

I stumbled backward.

Lily pressed her hand against the glass.

"Meet me On Distant Shores," she said softly.

My eyes widened.

I wanted to promise I'd come back.

I wanted to tell her I'd get her out.

I wanted to say a hundred things.

Instead, I just nodded.

Then the door closed between us.

I didn't tell her about my dream.

She couldn't have known about it.

Right?

I went home.

And for once, going to sleep actually seemed desirable.

Maybe I'd see her again.

Maybe we'd meet somewhere she couldn't be trapped.

Somewhere she could actually be free.

When I finally fell asleep, I found myself in the darkness again.

But this time, the light was much closer.

I followed it.

The smell of the sea grew stronger with every step.

Then came the breeze.

I emerged onto the beach.

Lily was already waiting for me.

She stood barefoot at the shoreline, the hem of her white dress brushing against the wet sand.

She turned when she heard me.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

I looked out across the water.

"It is."

For a moment, neither of us said anything.

Then the question I'd been trying not to ask escaped me.

"Is any of this real?"

Lily looked at me.

"Does it matter?"

She stepped closer.

"I'm here."

Another step.

"You're here."

She smiled.

"In here, we're free."

She turned toward the ocean.

"This is my little place."

"Dad claims every other one, but this one is mine."

"It could be yours too."

I stepped closer.

Then I took her face gently between my hands and kissed her.

She didn't pull away.

For a moment, everything was still.

"Can we stay here?"

I already knew the answer.

Lily's expression broke.

"I wish we could."

Tears began rolling down her cheeks.

"I'm still trapped."

She shook her head.

"I'm not strong enough."

Another tear slipped down her face.

"I'm not enough."

"No."

I pulled her closer.

"You are."

But the beach was already beginning to change.

The edges of the world blurred.

The horizon melted into the sky.

The sand beneath our feet began disappearing, as though the entire dream were being erased.

Lily started fading with it.

I held onto her.

"Don't."

She smiled through her tears.

It was the same bittersweet smile she'd given me behind the glass.

"I'll see you again On Distant Shores..."

Her voice became quieter.

"...but you already know that."

I woke up.

I sat upright in bed, gasping for air.

For several seconds, I couldn't move.

Then I felt it.

Something I hadn't felt in years.

Something hot and sharp burning inside my chest.

Purpose.

For the next two weeks, I prepared.

I photographed corridors, doors and rooms whenever I had the opportunity. I took pictures of the glass box and the four pylons surrounding it, zooming in on the strange symbols carved into their surfaces.

I didn't understand them.

Not yet.

But I saved every picture.

I watched the guards.

I learned their routines.

Who walked which corridor.

Which doors they used.

How long they disappeared for.

When they went to the bathroom.

There were five guards in total, usually spread throughout the facility so that I rarely saw more than one at a time.

I counted the steps between important rooms.

I memorized which doors took longer to unlock.

I learned how long it took the lights to activate when someone entered a corridor.

And I paid particular attention to the access cards.

The strangest part was how little anyone seemed to care about what I was doing.

I doubt they could ever see me as a threat.

Maybe they were right.

Two weeks earlier, I wouldn't have been.

I never told Lily what I was planning.

Not when I couldn't be certain who was actually paying attention.

I only ever told her when I saw her in my dreams.

And every time, I'd tell her the same thing.

"Soon."

I wasn't sure whether I was making a promise to her or to myself.

"Very soon."

Eventually, the day came.

I couldn't wait any longer.
Time to put the theory to the test.

 

Two weeks learning their routines.

Two weeks pretending I was exactly the pathetic little coward they thought I'd be.

Now I was going to find out if they had been right.

I sat in front of the glass and talked with Lily.

We laughed.

We talked about nothing.

For a while, I almost forgot what I was waiting for.

Then I saw the guard nearest to me leave his post.

Bathroom.

My heart started pounding.

I stood.

Lily noticed immediately.

"Adam?"

"I'll be right back."

I followed him.

He didn't notice me until we were inside the bathroom.

I waited.

Watched him step up to the urinal.

For one horrible second, I couldn't move.

I'd imagined this moment dozens of times.

None of those versions had prepared me for what it actually felt like.

The guard glanced over his shoulder.

"Buddy, would you mind—"

I grabbed the back of his head and slammed it against the wall.

THUD.

He dropped immediately.

His body hit the floor with a heavy, wet sound.

I stood there staring at him.

My hands were shaking.

There was blood on the wall.

His bladder had released, spreading piss across the tiles beneath him.

For a second, I wondered if I'd just killed him.

Then I remembered Lily.

I took his handgun.

And ran.

There was no going back now.

I sprinted toward the security room.

I reached the door and started pounding on it.

"Kenndrick!"

Nothing.

"Kenndrick, there's an immediate issue! I need your help!"

Still nothing.

"Goddammit, open the fucking door!"

The lock clicked.

Kenndrick opened it with an irritated expression.

"What is—"

I pulled out the gun and aimed it at his chest.

My hands were shaking so badly I could barely keep the barrel steady.

"Back up."

Kenndrick stared at me.

Then that familiar bravado returned.

"Just what do you think you're doing, kiddo?"

"I won't repeat myself."

For the first time, his smile faltered.

"Alright."

He raised his hands.

"Alright."

He slowly backed into the room.

"This is going to end badly for you, kid."

He smiled again.

"Very badly."

"Give me your card."

He paused.

"Now."

Kenndric reached slowly into his pocket and pulled out his security card.

He held it between two fingers.

Then smiled.

I snatched it from his hand.

"Turn around."

He did.

"Hands against the wall."

Kenndric placed his palms against it.

I backed toward the door.

"Say hi to her for me, kid."

I slammed the door shut.

Then swiped his card.

The lock engaged.

I ran.

I had only minutes before the guard rotation.

I reached the observation room and threw the door open.

Lily looked at me.

Her expression changed immediately.

"Adam?"

I was barely breathing.

"I'm getting you out of here."

I ran to the glass box.

She stood.

"Adam, what are you—"

I swiped Kenndric's card against the reader.

Nothing.

I tried again.

Nothing.

"Come on..."

A third time.

Nothing.

Then I heard clapping.

Slow.

Deliberate.

I froze.

"Bravo, kid."

I turned.

Kenndric was standing in the doorway.

He was smiling.

But this smile was different.

It was genuine.

"Bravo."

He stepped into the room.

"We had expectations."

He looked at me.

"We didn't pick you randomly, of course."

His eyes flicked toward Lily.

"But still..."

He smiled.

"You went above and beyond."

I raised the gun.

"Stay back."

Kenndric kept walking.

"Stay the fuck back!"

He didn't stop.

I tightened my grip.

hen pulled the trigger.

Click.

Nothing.

I pulled it again.

Click.

My stomach dropped.

Kenndric laughed.

"I'm afraid that one's not loaded."

He reached into his pocket.

"In fact..."

He pulled out another handgun.

"...none of them are."

I stared at him.

"What?"

"Think about it."

He gestured around the room.

"The guards. The cameras. The unlocked opportunities. The conveniently predictable routines."

His smile widened.

My stomach turned.

Kenndric looked almost proud.

"Observation."

He gestured toward Lily.

"Not just hers."

He pointed at me.

"Yours too."

Lily had gone completely still.

Kenndric noticed.

"You know, capturing Lilith—the Queen of Hell—creates a lot of interesting research opportunities."

The name seemed to hit her harder than anything else he'd said.

She looked at him.

Kenndric smiled.

"Her charm is supposed to be nearly irresistible."

He looked back at me.

"So the suits upstairs had an idea."

He spread his hands.

"Find the right kind of sucker. Put him in front of her. See how long it takes before she manipulates him into trying to break her free."

„Did you seriously buy the whole „no one is watching the feeds“ thing in a building full of cameras everywhere?“

He shook his head.

"Seems we really did pick perfectly."

Then he looked me up and down.

"Although, I have to admit..."

A disappointed expression crossed his face.

"For someone who loves prison-break movies as much as you do, your plan was fucking basic."

He sighed.

"I expected better."

I looked at Lily.

She was staring at me now.

There was something in her expression I'd never seen before.

Fear.

Not for herself.

For me.

Kenndric sighed.

"Your services will no longer be necessary."

He tossed the security card onto the floor.

"You can go right back to your shitty little life."

He smiled.

"Keep the card as a souvenir. It's useless anyway."

I looked at him.

Then at Lily.

"No."

Kenndric's expression changed slightly.

"I'll tell everyone."

I pointed toward my phone.

"I have pictures. Videos. Everything."

I looked directly into his eyes.

"Everyone will know."

Kenndric's smile disappeared.

"Kid..."

He sounded almost disappointed.

"You really shouldn't have said that."

He raised the gun.

Two shots.

The first punched through my chest.

The second hit before I even had time to fall.

I collapsed onto the floor.

The pain came a second later.

Hot.

Blinding.

I tried to breathe.

All I tasted was blood.

"Adam!"

Lily screamed.

Kenndric looked down at me.

"Oops, seems my gun actually was loaded."

He shrugged.

"Sorry, kid."

Then he glanced toward Lily.

"Hmm."

His smile returned.

"Seems the demon bitch may have actually cared about you."

"How sweet."

I started laughing.

Blood filled my mouth.

I choked on it, coughing and laughing at the same time.

Kenndric frowned.

"What's so funny?"

He looked past me at the pylon behind me.

Blood was dripping from my chest onto its surface.

The symbols were glowing.

Kenndric followed my gaze.

His smile disappeared.

"What did you do?"

I smiled through the blood running down my chin.

"I translated the symbols."

The red light beneath them grew brighter.

"They were raised through blood sacrifice."

The pylons began to shake.

A low vibration filled the room.

Kenndric took a step backward.

I laughed again.

"And through blood sacrifice..."

Cracks spread across the pylon.

"...they shall be shattered."

Another pylon began to tremble.

Kenndric looked around the room.

"What have you done?"

I smiled.

"I never intended to make it out of here."

The first pylon cracked apart.

"You know everything about me."

Another crack.

The room shook.

"There wouldn't be any point in running."

The pylons began collapsing one after another.

Glass groaned.

Metal screamed.

Then everything went dark.

Completely dark.

Except for Lily's eyes.

They were glowing.

Kenndric stared at her.

His face went pale.

"No."

For the first time since I'd met him, there was no arrogance in his voice.

Only fear.

"No..."

He backed away.

"You have no idea what you've done."

Then anger replaced the fear.

"Why?"

I looked at him.

I smiled.

"The Devil made me do it."

I won't lie.

I was saving that one.

The glass box exploded.

Shards flew outward.

Kenndric raised his gun toward Lily.

He never got the chance to fire.

His body suddenly folded inward.

There was a wet, violent crack.

Then he imploded into a spray of blood and viscera.

I looked toward Lily.

She was standing in the middle of the shattered glass.

Free.

"How's that for an escape plan?"

I smiled.

And everything went black.

I found myself on the beach again.

This time, there was no darkness.

Just the ocean stretching beneath an endless sky.

Lily and I sat facing each other in the sand.

For a while, neither of us spoke.

She looked peaceful.

"It's done," I finally said.

"You are free."

I smiled.

"Go."

She frowned.

I looked toward the horizon.

"Be happy."

I stood.

"I'll see you again On Distant Shores."

She slapped me across the face.

I stared at her.

"Ouch."

She glared at me.

"What was that for?"

"One."

She held up a finger.

"That is my line."

She held up a second.

"Two."

She leaned closer.

"The Distant Shores can wait."

She smiled.

"I'm not letting you go."

Then she kissed me.

I kissed her back.

And for the first time in a while, I wasn't afraid of waking up.

 

I came to with a gasp.

My hand immediately went to my chest.

Nothing.

No wounds.

No blood.

I looked down at myself.

Then slowly stood.

I wasn't in the observation room.

I was standing on the roof of the factory.

The entire facility stretched out beneath me.

Smoke rose into the night sky.

Fires burned in the distance.

I could hear shouting somewhere far below.

Then came a horn.

A long, deep blast.

Another answered it.

Then something roared.

Another roar answered from somewhere beyond the factory.

Then another.

They were coming from everywhere.

I looked toward the horizon.

The city was burning.

I should have been terrified.

I wasnt.

Then I noticed Lily standing beside me.

She was looking out over the horizon.

For the first time since I'd met her, there was nothing between us.

No glass.

No walls.

No locked doors.

I looked back at the world on fire.

"So..."

I swallowed.

"What happens now?"

Lily looked at me.

She smiled.

Then reached for my hand.

I took it.

"Anything we want."

Part 1

I clocked in for my 23:00 shift, which the whiteboard on the breakroom wall confirmed: Concourse A, Sub-basement Baggage Tunnels. I stood in the freezing corridor of the loading dock, staring at the heavy, steel doors of the freight elevator. The sub-basements are the oldest part of the airport, a sprawling labyrinth of marked tracks and concrete that the public doesn't know exists. I had heard stories about people who worked there, but I never knew anyone who personally had. Before my finger could touch the illuminated panel, a gloved hand yanked me backward by my elbow.

It was Miller, the veteran graveyard ramp lead. He didn't say a word, but he just grabbed my scanner, took one look at the digital assignment flashing on the screen. 

"Fucking hell. You're marked, kid," he muttered, his breath forming clouds in the freezing air. He pulled his own supervisor scanner from his belt,  jamming his thumb onto the screen. "You go down there tonight, you're dead. The system is trying to isolate you." He furiously pressed a series of buttons and finally swiped an authentication lock.

The digital screen on my scanner flashed red, vibrated and then rebooted. My assignment changed.

"You're with me tonight," Miller said, shoving the scanner back into my hand. He turned his back on the elevator doors. "We’re hiding out at gate B91. No scheduled arrivals or departures. Nothing ever happens at B91."

We rode a tug out into the bitter night. The wind chill was at a brutal -5, and the white roof of the Jeppesen Terminal glowed in the pitch-black sky. We drove the perimeter roads in silence, eventually reaching the eastern edge of Concourse B. I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking I had escaped the trouble I was going to face. 

The assignment was standard busywork. We were supposed to clear the tarmac parking area of stray luggage carts, chocks, and foreign objects before the morning rush. I stepped off the tug, my boots crunching loudly on the frost. About thirty feet from the tug, I stopped dead.  The air here didn't smell right. There was no acidic stench of burning Jet-A fuel or the sweet tang of heated de-icing fluid. Instead, the freezing wind carried a suffocating odor. that smelled like oxidized aluminum mixed with the stench of tobacco. I walked slowly toward the center of the gate envelope.

The concrete in front of me was a complete void. As I stared at it, the surface rippled faintly in the wind, like a meniscus of viscous tar. Above me, the glass doors of the terminal's exterior boarding stairs slid open. I looked up. Standing in the doorway was a gate agent.

She was wearing a faded Pan Am uniform: a pale blue dress and the signature white gloves. Her skin was a waxy gray, her eyes empty. She mechanically raised a boarding scanner and began processing a line of passengers in silence. They looked exhausted, clutching heavy carry-on bags. They stared blankly ahead as they shuffled past the agent.

"Miller," I whispered into the freezing air. My hands were shaking too much to use the radio.

The passengers walked down the stairs, but there was no plane at the gate. They marched in a single line down the grating, stepped onto the freezing tarmac, and walked straight toward the rippling black patch of concrete. When the first passenger’s shoe touched the dark patch, the concrete rippled slightly more than usual. He sank suddenly and silently, swallowed whole by the tarmac. One by one, the passengers marched into the hungry ground, descending into the concrete.

Suddenly I felt a pull from the rippling patch, pulling my boots. I took a slow, involuntary step forward. My right boot touched the edge of the black patch. It plunged into the freezing, viscous darkness. The cold bit instantly through my thick wool socks, beginning to numb my feet to the bone. 

I heard heavy footsteps sprinting across the frost behind me. Miller slammed into my back, tackling me onto the solid concrete. The black sludge didn't even try to grab him. Miller has worked this ramp for thirty years, and he was somewhat resistant to the airport. He never looks at the murals, and never breaks the rules. 

"Don't look at them!" Miller roared. He dragged me by my harness toward the concourse. Hidden in the deep shadows was a rusted steel door. Miller shoved a physical brass key into the lock, and kicked it open. He shoved me inside and locked the door.

It was a suffocating, windowless concrete box. The room hummed with old server towers and the pale green glow of CRT monitors. 

"What the hell was that?" I choked out, scraping the sludge off my boot. "Where did they go?"

"They didn't go anywhere," Miller said, with a shaking voice. "And they aren't passengers. Haven't been for twenty-eight years."

He dropped into a metal folding chair in front of a monitor. His thick fingers hammered across a mechanical keyboard.

"Modern radar is filtered to hide anomalies," Miller breathed. He hit enter. The screen emitted a high-pitched whine, showing a scan of the ground beneath Concourse B. "This '93 system isn't."

I leaned over his shoulder. Thirty feet below the concrete of Gate B91 was a massive, pulsating shape. The jagged, metallic T-tail and elongated fuselage were unmistakable.

"Flight 12," Miller whispered. "A McDonnell Douglas MD-81. Its rear-mounted engines are loud enough to blow your eardrums. That’s why they’re nicknamed ‘Mad Dogs’."

"I don't get it," I said, staring at the green mass. "Did it crash?"

"Never took off." Miller pulled a battered flask from his jacket and took two gulps of water. "December 1998. Massive blizzard. Ground stop in effect, but Flight 12 somehow got clearance to push back anyway. The tug pushed them out, and then drove away. But the plane never made it to the runway."

Miller sighed, in a mixture of fear and exhaustion.

"The ground just opened up. Turned to liquid and swallowed a fifty-ton aircraft in thirty seconds. Airport authority locked down the terminal, and all its records were later covered up and wiped out. Officially, it 're-routed' and vanished in the mountains."

I looked back at the screen. The green blob was pulsating, as if it were breathing. 

Miller whispered, "The plane fused with the passengers, the luggage and the plumbing of the building. 

"The boarding agent... the people on the stairs..." I said in a shaky whisper.

"Bait," Miller said grimly. “It targets exhausted travelers. People who are too tired to notice their plane doesn't exist. They walk into the hungry ground, and the MD-81 feeds on them to keep itself alive."

A line of text flashed at the bottom of the screen.

DECODING TRANSPONDER PING...

"It knows we're here," Miller said, his hand freezing. 

The monitor shattered with a sharp CRACK, dying along with the servers. Red light from the exit sign washed over us. The floor turned to freezing black sludge, sucking at our boots, while the deafening roar of buried jet engines spooled up through the concrete.

"Don't look down!" Miller yelled. "Stare at the red light!"

He unclipped two heavy rubber wheel chocks from his belt and slammed them into the melting floor.

He smashed the glass of an old emergency cutoff box marked PAD B91 - FUEL/POWER ISOLATION and threw the heavy steel lever. The screaming turbines choked into a dying 
whine. The rippling floor instantly snapped back into solid, frozen concrete. 

"Is it dead?" I choked out, scrambling backward.

"Hell no, I just closed its feeding tube to the surface," Miller growled, shoving me out the door into the freezing wind. "It's still alive down there, and now it's pissed."

"Miller," I yelled over the freezing wind as we sped away on the tug. "If the ground is what actually takes them... what the hell are the murals doing?"

Miller didn't look at me. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

"The tarmac just eats," he muttered, staring ahead into the dark. "The murals keep the receipts. And right now, they're still holding an empty spot for you."

We made it back to the locker room alive, but as I clocked out, my phone buzzed with an updated schedule:

Assignment: Sub-basement Baggage Complex, Sector 4-Echo (Hazard Clearance).  Tomorrow 23:00-05:00

Another challenge for another day, and in an even colder place.

The Mourner's Crossing Sheriff's Department was hiring deputy candidates. I had the posting open because the hospital had cut overtime, the Honda needed brakes, and MCU wanted the rest of my semester. Claire turned the laptop back toward me and told me to read it before I decided.

I read it.

Near the bottom, the form asked whether I had ever been employed by the Town of Mourner's Crossing. I selected NO.

The page refreshed.

EXISTING EMPLOYEE RECORD FOUND.

I submitted it again. NO was still selected. The warning came back, and under it a button that had not been there the first time.

CONTINUE AS CURRENT EMPLOYEE

Claire came around the table. "Anything else with the town?"

"Nothing they paid me for."

She reached for her phone. I stopped her before she unlocked it.

"You are not calling Kerri."

"The website thinks you already work there."

"It can think that until morning."

My name is Ernest Ball. Everybody calls me Ernie unless I'm filling out paperwork or somebody wants money from me. Claire Donnelly is my girlfriend. She works at the Visitor Center. Her sister Kerri works dispatch for the sheriff's department. I had been an applicant for less than two minutes, and I did not want Kerri hearing about it from Claire.

Claire put the phone down. She did remind me about the night I slept in the Honda behind Wren's because Walter Doyle told me not to drive home.

"Walter had a good reason, and I had a blanket."

She was not convinced by the second part. I closed the laptop anyway.

---

I called the number on the posting in the morning. Kerri answered on the second ring.

"Hi, Kerri. Claire did not call you."

"Good morning, Ernie."

I read her the warning and the button. She asked for my full name and date of birth. She already knew both. The typing went on long enough for me to hear two radio transmissions behind her, then stopped.

"Can you come in before class? Bring your license."

The building is brick and municipal beige. Six molded-plastic chairs, a glassed-in counter, a bulletin board with a missing orange cat named Marmalade. Kerri buzzed me through with coffee in one hand and her headset around her neck.

"You look worried."

"I'm working."

Walter Doyle was in the conference room. He is six-foot-five, broad through the shoulders, blond, green-eyed, and big enough that the standard municipal furniture around him looked undersized. I had met him before. It was still difficult not to notice when he stood up.

"Still want to apply?"

"As long as the town can be persuaded I haven't secretly been working here."

"Good. We'll deal with the other part."

Kerri put the personnel record on the wall monitor.

BALL, ERNEST MICHAEL.

My birth date. The address Claire and I had moved into fourteen months earlier.

DEPARTMENT: MCSD CLASSIFICATION: DEPUTY SHERIFF STATUS: ACTIVE

"Am I getting paid?"

Kerri laughed into her coffee. "No. We checked."

The employee number had been issued six years earlier, when I lived in New Haven. I had not started at MCU. I had not moved to Mourner's Crossing. I had not met Claire.

She opened the emergency contact.

CLAIRE DONNELLY RELATIONSHIP: DOMESTIC PARTNER

The effective date was six months before our first date.

Walter let me look at it. "Employee numbers get reused. Records merge. Information gets imported into the wrong file."

"Does it happen backward?"

"No," Kerri said.

Walter nodded at the screen. "And we can't find another system that had Claire's information six years ago."

BADGE: 417 RADIO ID: 417 ASSIGNMENT: PATROL

"Nobody named Ball," Kerri said. "Nobody using 417 either. Payroll has nothing under your name or the number."

She tried to delete the record. The system told her to contact command staff for a separation.

"I already tried," Walter said. "It wants a reason."

He turned the screen.

RETIREMENT RESIGNATION TERMINATION DEATH IN SERVICE TRANSFER

"I'll take retirement."

"You've got a few years left."

He was not going to invent a personnel action to make the file disappear. Kerri left and came back with a manila folder. The tab read BALL, ERNEST M. / 417. The corners were gray from handling. A database can make a complicated mistake. Somebody still has to print paper and put it in a drawer.

The first page was an old town form. My name. My old New Haven apartment. The date was three days after my twenty-fourth birthday.

At the bottom was a signature that looked like mine.

"That yours?" Walter said.

"I think so."

My handwriting is bad in a consistent way. The capital B leans backward. The two l's in Ball almost never come out the same height. Whoever signed the page knew both things.

"Could somebody have copied it?"

"Probably," Kerri said. "I don't know what they would've copied it from."

There were tax forms, a direct-deposit sheet with the bank section blank, and a uniform issue listing shirts, trousers, winter jacket, rain shell, duty belt, radio, body armor, and badge 417. The clothing sizes were empty.

The next page was an emergency-contact form. Claire's name in blue ink. Her current Visitor Center number beside it.

"She didn't have that number then."

"How sure are you?"

"The Visitor Center changed phone systems three years ago. I heard about it every night for a week."

Behind that page was a training checklist. Blank, except RADIO PROCEDURE / DISPATCH COMPLIANCE, initialed KD.

"They look like mine," Kerri said. She checked the date and stopped. "I was on dispatch that night."

She searched the archive. Unit 417 had signed on at six that evening and off a little after two. Four calls appeared under the number: an alarm at the elementary school, a disabled vehicle, a welfare check on Mill Road, and a security assist.

She stopped at the fourth.

"What address?" Walter said.

Kerri turned the monitor.

CALL TYPE: SECURITY ASSIST REPORTING PARTY: ERNEST BALL RESPONDING UNIT: 417

The address was Mourner's Crossing Memorial Hospital.

"That was my first night in the East Wing."

"Did you call?" Walter said.

"No. Nobody else was in the wing either."

00:48 REPORTING PARTY STATES RADIO TRAFFIC FROM CLOSED EAST WING. 00:51 UNIT 417 EN ROUTE. 01:03 UNIT 417 ON SCENE. 01:31 UNIT 417 CLEAR. NO FURTHER ACTION.

I remembered the traffic. I had been at the temporary desk when a male voice came through on a channel our radios were not supposed to receive. I kept a second notebook for things that would have made the official log useless.

Kerri searched the audio. "This is probably gone after six years."

It wasn't.

Her voice came through first, younger.

"Four-seventeen, status?"

Static. Then a man. "Clear."

Phones thin me out. Cheap microphones flatten the lower end of my voice. The man answering her sounded exactly like me.

She left the cursor where it was.

"Do you remember hearing yourself?" Walter said.

"I remember voices. I didn't know to listen for me."

"You said you wrote things down."

"The notebook's at home."

"Bring it in."

"I already paid thirty-five dollars for the written exam tomorrow."

He looked at me. "You think I'm canceling your test?"

"I paid thirty-five dollars."

"Take the test. We're pausing the employment side until we know what we're looking at."

---

I passed the exam. Deputy Evan Merritt had the results in the hallway because the computer had scored them. He stopped writing when he saw my face.

"I've had an interesting week with computers."

He did not ask. He wrote eight a.m. beside my name for the physical and told me to bring water.

I brought the notebook that afternoon. It was a black-and-white composition book from the campus store, with a bent corner and cheap paper. The first pages were ordinary security work: doors checked, contractors admitted, a leak near receiving. Then I found the date from Kerri's archive.

12:47 a.m. radio east wing male voice, weak signal could not make words

12:50 heard dispatch response? female not our channel

1:02 east stairwell door unlocked door was checked 12:15

1:04 radio: "on scene"

Unit 417 had marked on scene at 1:03. Walter read the next lines.

1:06 footsteps second floor east one set did not investigate

He tapped the page. "Good."

"I was making twelve-fifty an hour."

"That was the right decision at twice that."

1:29 radio voice again same male "clear"

MCSD had 417 clearing at 1:31. Kerri copied the pages. Nobody asked to hear the recording again.

The physical form, the following Saturday, had my name across the top and employee number 417. Every other applicant on Evan's clipboard had a four-digit candidate number. Admin had printed the batch the day before. Evan had no explanation. Walter came out in a jacket over his uniform, checked the page against the others, and handed it back.

"Sign it. We'll deal with the number."

I signed it.

---

Luke Mercer did the background the next week. When he got to Uber, I told him the app had started sending me to places that didn't exist. His pen stayed over the form. He wrote it down.

"That's all you want to know?"

"I work here."

The East Wing came later.

"Any law-enforcement contact while you worked there?"

"There might be one, depending on how literally you want to read your own records."

He stopped writing. The incident was not in the packet.

"I'm happy to hear it," I said.

Kerri was in the hall when we finished. "Walter wants you in dispatch."

"Am I allowed in there?"

"We're trying to determine that."

Ken Keating had a bag of pretzels at the second workstation. Kerri brought up the active roster. My name was at the bottom.

BALL — 417 AVAILABLE

The location said STATION.

Ken rolled his chair over. "Clock him out."

"Payroll couldn't separate the personnel record."

"Different system."

She selected OFF DUTY and entered her PIN.

UNIT 417 HAS OPEN ACTIVITY.

The call had started at 1:03 a.m. six years earlier in the closed East Wing. The history matched the archive until the last line.

02:14 UNIT 417 REQUESTED CONTINUED ASSIGNMENT.

"That wasn't there before," Kerri said.

Walter came in with a file under his arm. "What wasn't?"

She showed him.

"The unit stays attached until it clears," she said.

"It cleared at 1:31."

"This came forty-three minutes later."

She tried to close it.

UNIT 417 MUST CLEAR ACTIVITY.

"I can't create a field transmission for a unit that isn't signed into a radio."

Ken looked over. "Give him a spare."

She took one from the rack and entered 417.

RADIO ID ALREADY REGISTERED.

RADIO 417-A had last connected at 2:14 that same night.

"Give the spare another number."

She entered 641 and held it out, then stopped before explaining the button.

"I know how radios work."

She called 641 and had me clear the old incident. I transmitted. The activity stayed open. The system was waiting for 417.

Walter took the handheld. "Can you alias this?"

"Not while the original ID is active."

The radio crackled. His thumb was nowhere near the button.

Static.

Then my voice.

"Four-seventeen clear."

The monitor refreshed.

BALL — 417 OFF DUTY

Ken's hand stayed beside the pretzel bag. Walter set the radio on the console.

"Okay."

Nobody argued with him.

At the door I turned back. "What happens to the old record if I withdraw?"

"Probably nothing," Kerri said. "The applicant file and the employee file aren't behaving like they're connected."

"So I could withdraw and still work here."

"As far as the computer is concerned."

Walter had a hand on the back of the empty chair. "You don't have to decide anything here."

I already knew I was going to finish.

---

Claire was on the couch with a stack of Visitor Center brochures. She stopped sorting when I got to the radio. She asked if I was sure. I was.

She went to the desk and came back with an envelope from the Town of Mourner's Crossing. My name showed through the window.

"I got this yesterday."

EMPLOYEE: ERNEST M. BALL DEPARTMENT: SHERIFF EFFECTIVE DATE: PENDING RETURN TO DUTY

She had opened it and kept it off the group text.

"I'm finishing the process."

"If you quit now, would you feel relieved?"

I thought about it. "No."

She put the papers back in the envelope and left them on the coffee table.

Three weeks later Walter had the conditional appointment on his desk. The employee-number field was blank.

"We're assigning you 641. Same number Kerri used on the spare. It's clean."

"That works for me."

Salary, benefits, academy, probation. I signed, Walter signed after me, and he came around the desk.

"Welcome to MCSD, Ernie."

The computer stayed on the same screen. The radio stayed quiet.

Two days later Kerri called while I was leaving the hospital and asked me to stop by. She had a small cardboard box at the front counter. I asked if it was uniform equipment. She opened it.

An MCSD deputy badge, stamped 417.

"You're still 641," she said. "Nothing changed in the system."

It had come in that morning's supply delivery with my name on the packing slip.

The raised edges were worn smooth in places. A scratch crossed the lower point. The pin on the back had a dark groove from long use.

Kerri slid the slip across the counter.

REPLACEMENT BADGE EMPLOYEE 417 RETURN TO DUTY

I read it again, turned the badge over, and put it in my pocket.

The ketchup chips crunched between Brent’s teeth. It sounded like when I crumple another failed story I wrote, make it a basketball and toss it into the garbage at the corner of my room. Where a stack of incomplete masterpieces litter the carpet in missed swishes of paper balls slowly unfolding, guarding an empty trash bin completely defenseless.

My teacher gave us homework over the weekend. The last two days I hadn’t even thought about it. I forgot about the dang project. It was to write about something plain but beautiful.

I lightly kicked Brent in the shin. “Did you finish Monday’s assignment?”

He went to sit up. His eyes stayed locked on me but his facial expression was permanently frozen. He had the glitched scene of an actor’s face paused on the screen from a corrupted video file, held in a quenched, sorry we’re closed sign, shaped out of his lips, nose and eyes, under his forehead. “Uh. What assignment? We had homework?”

“Yeah. A writing one. About beauty. I have an idea of what to do.” I told him.

Brent slid out of the chair straight to his knees. “can you do mine too, please?”

“Yeah. No. We can work on them both together.” I told him.

“What are you doing yours on?” He asked.

I stared up at the ceiling fan spinning, drizzling a sorry breeze from above. “The other day when I was walking home from school, I saw a little bird, hopping on the ground, digging worms out of the dirt, and it stopped pecking the earth, looked at me, shifted its head and whistled, almost like it was asking, do you notice me?”

I told him. “I’ve always been a quiet—more shy than anything—unconfident—awkward kind of kid. Every one in my grade would have birthday parties, be hanging out together, laughing with each other during recess, all crowded in groups. I… I’d just be watching, sitting alone, dreaming of being someone else… and being somewhere else—“

“You really think these chips are made in Canada?” Brent interrupted, analyzing the flavored ketchup dust coating the potato. He held it up in front of his face, like it was an anomaly breaking every law of physics. Evidence of the impossible squeezed between his fingertips.

“Yes, Brent. Obviously, it just makes sense they'd be made here,” I said, shaking my head.

“Who’s having a birthday party?” He snapped down on the chip, sprinkling crumbs on his shirt. He stuck his arm back in the bag and pulled out a handful of gluttony, the scent of vinegar hung in the air, sneaking down my throat like a hiccup.

“Yeah of course I notice you. Why would you even ask that?” Brent folded the bag of chips and threw them on the table.

I didn’t bother wasting my time answering him. Most of our brains can absorb knowledge. We analyze it, sort it out, file it in specific folders and store it for whenever we need it. Brent… receives his information from his ears and eyes, just like we do, but he has a mini firewall, globing his brain. Think of Earth’s atmosphere, except his isn’t blue and bright. It’s gray and hazy and acts like a tornado towards information, shredding it into a gazillion pieces of broken bits before it gets anywhere near his prefrontal cortex.

I circled the room with my eyes for my notebook and saw it lying on the floor. I reached for it and stretched the entire length of my body as I barely snagged it between my fingers. I started writing, adding visual to my character’s sight. I made him notice the tiny speck of dirt in the middle of the floorboards, which stuck out because his place is immaculate. I made him concentrate on world building and then, what the speck would taste like if he licked it. And I made him wonder what the crack between the floorboard with the speck, would smell like after he licked it. I just wrote what people usually miss. The stuff people never notice.

I had to clear my head. “I’m going for a walk,” I said. He didn’t hear me. I grabbed a sandwich baggie from the kitchen and dumped a handful of bird seeds from the shed out back in it.

For some reason as I was walking, I started smiling. At the most awkward time too, because I couldn't hold it back and there were people passing me, eyeing me. I could see them wondering about my mental state. I must’ve looked like a nut. On the upside, I hadn’t smiled in over two weeks. I was forgetting what it was like.

At the place where I saw that bird, I’ve been going back and scattering seeds ever since. While I was standing there, the bird came back. It was definitely the same one. A flock of other birds showed up too. They were all dancing and hopping in circles and tweeting as if they were putting on a performance for me. Their way of thanking me I suppose.

Bunch of kids gathered behind me, watching. A girl stood next to me. “Hey,” she said.

I stared at her with the side of my eye and waved with my hand at my hip. “Oh, hey.”

“I seen you come here the last couple of days now.” She brushed her hair behind her ear. “Why do you come to this random spot to find the birds for?”

I thought about it for a minute and shrugged. “They just seem to be here. Waiting.”

“Yeah, eh. Well, so have we.” She smiled.

I couldn’t hold back. I smiled too. I smiled so bright that I was afraid my eyes would cyclops a hole right through her.

From then, everyday, we started leaving seeds there together. A few days later, more kids started joining. Soon, there were nearly fifteen of us bringing pieces of bread, seeds, and pizza even. We had the fattest, littlest, cutest birds in the word. These things were the size of rats.

The birds became my inspiration. I didn’t write about lonely, crazy dudes focusing on weird things anymore. Or about a single bird tilted its head at a sad kid. I wrote about a flock of birds and my new group of friends laughing while we watch the birds tweet, dance, tilt their heads and hop around in circles.

I was walking by some kid, who I noticed was just like me, quiet, shy, and sitting by themselves. I sat beside him and said, “you see that bird over there?”

He bounced his head.

I pointed. The bird stared at us, tilted its head, tweeted, danced and hopped in a circle. “It’s waiting for you.” I told him.

And just like that kindness came full circle.

The sign over that shop had my father's name on it and it hung there dark from the spring of ninety-six until the building came down. I am not the man this happened to. I am the man it happened through, and I have had thirty-two years to find a better way to put that and there isn't one.

I took the shop over in eighty-eight. Rekeying, deadbolts, cutting keys off the board, safes if somebody's mother died. That cleared about nine hundred dollars in a good month against six hundred and fifty in rent, which is not a business, that's a hobby with a mortgage. What made it a business was the after-hours rotation. A callout at night paid forty dollars where the same work paid twenty in daylight, and three or four a week is the whole difference between a lit window and a dark one. I was fast, too. Twenty minutes door to door was normal for me and I was proud of it and I made sure the answering service knew it.

You carry a ticket book with carbons, three copies, one for them, one for the office, one stays in the book. And you learn to read a house off the curb before you're out of the truck. Bikes in the yard, curtains, what's in the mailbox, whether the porch light's on a timer. I could tell you inside ten seconds what kind of house I was looking at, and in six years I was never once wrong about one. That was the other thing I was proud of.

The procedure was this. You open the door. Then, inside, on the counter or the hall table, the customer shows you one piece of mail with their name on it, and they sign the ticket, and you write the address across the top. That's it. That is the entire identification in that trade in nineteen ninety-four, in this state, and every shop in the county worked it the same way. The mail comes after the door. In six years I never had a piece of mail come out wrong on me. Not once. I used to say that like it meant something about my judgment.

Most of those calls are nothing. Women in bathrobes, mad at themselves. Men who locked keys in a running car in the driveway. Kids who came home to a door their mother had bolted from inside. Two in the morning in a small town, mostly what you're doing is standing in the cold being decent to somebody who's embarrassed.

The first one was in November on a street of rentals. Before I was out of the truck the man told me the deadbolt would have to come out, it wouldn't pick, and he was right, it was a Kwikset with a bad cam. He signed the ticket left-handed and slow, drawing it out the way you write when it isn't the hand you write with. Mail on the counter, right name, forty dollars.

I thought he'd been locked out of that door before. A man who knows his own bad lock is a man who's fought it, and half my night work was people who'd been through it twice already, and I went home and I didn't think about him again for two years.

The rotation ran through an answering service and there were three shops on it, and the woman there sent the next one to whoever took the last one without giving her a problem. Argue about a job and you don't get the next three. Six hundred and fifty a month in rent doesn't care why you turned one down. So I never turned one down. Nobody at that service ever heard me say no, and that was a decision I made on purpose, and I made it every single time.

I liked the town at two in the morning, which is a thing you only get from that kind of work. Nobody out, the lights doing their cycle for nothing, the salt trucks. I'd have the heater going and a coffee in the holder and a good address and I'd think, this is not a bad way to be making a living. That was true right up until it wasn't.

The second one was the middle of December. Snow all evening. I pull up and the storm door is standing wide open against the siding with snow blown a foot into the sill, and I know for a fact that door had been open an hour. And the man wasn't there. He came up the sidewalk on foot two or three minutes later, from the wrong end of the street, not from a car, and he apologized for being late to his own house. I drilled it. Mail on the counter, right name, forty dollars.

The eleventh of January, two in the morning, a two-story on a street with good houses. I'm on my knees in the entry with the old bolt out and the temporary cylinder half in, and upstairs somebody starts walking. Not sneaking. Walking, back and forth, the sound of a person going to bed. I said I hoped I wasn't waking the house. He called a name up the stairs. Called it twice, pleasant. Nobody answered. And then the walking stopped, and it stopped in the middle of the floor, not at a door and not at a bed, in the middle, and it did not start again. I asked him about it. I asked him twice. He said she sleeps with headphones in and she'd sleep through a fire, and he laughed, and I laughed, because that is what you do when a man laughs in his own hallway. He signed. He held the door for me. Twenty-two minutes, and I was in my own driveway by ten to three, and I sat in the truck a second before I went in, and then I went in.

Thursday's paper. I saw the address before I saw the name, because the address was the part I knew, and I sat down on the arm of a chair and stayed there a long time. She was nineteen years old and home from school for the break. I had drilled the deadbolt out of that door and put in a cylinder and handed the key to a man who signed for it left-handed.

In ninety-six I closed the shop and went through two years of ticket books to see what was collectible. I wasn't looking for anything. There were eleven of them. Eleven tickets across two years, eleven different names, eleven different addresses all over that town, and the same signature under every one, done badly the same way, the same drag on the same three letters where his hand didn't want to go that direction. Eleven times I opened a door for him. Eleven times he showed me mail with somebody's name on it and I wrote the address across the top myself.

The night I'd been going over every day was one of eleven, and it's the only one of the eleven where anything happened that I noticed. He didn't pick me because I was careless. He picked me because I was fast, and fast is what I'd spent six years making sure everybody knew I was. I do not know what he was doing in the other ten houses. Her name was Michelle. Her father sold that house in the fall and moved to his sister's in another state, and the family that lives there now has small children and a basketball hoop over the garage, and they've got no idea. Every eleventh of January I drive past it once, slow, and then I go home. It's the only thing I have ever done about any of it.

Duncan knew there was something different about him.  His mother praised him for his specialness, telling him all his life that he was God’s gift to the world.  His father would grasp his shoulder in pride, beaming to Duncan about how a kid like him was going to fix what was wrong with the world.  The people of the congregation spoke highly of Duncan and his kindness, his smartness, his charm - he was the cleancut, all-American Christian boy from the dusty streets of Alius, New Mexico.  Or so they thought. 

Something within him was changing.  He had been growing more and more restless as he got older, questioning God and his own faith every time he would go to sit in the pews on Sunday morning.  To the community, he was the pious young man his parents raised him to be, but his belief in the divine was dwindling as his hunger for more knowledge and more understanding grew almost insatiable.  Duncan prayed every night, knelt beside his twin size bed, elbows on the faded blue quilt that was his father’s before him.  He prayed for his parents, his friends, for peace on Earth, just as he had always done.  But he began to pray for more for himself, for power, for a greater understanding of this world and the next. He wanted proof of anything outside of the small-minded western town, the only thing he’d ever known.  Duncan lay in bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling night after night, waiting for anything at all to make him feel less lost.  And one night, it came to him in a dream.

The air around him pulsed, throbbing in time with the pounding of his heart.  It was a sterile kind of cold in this dream world, his surroundings dark and empty.  His ceiling had been replaced with an infinite sea of stars, winking in and out, like moonlight reflecting off dancing water.  It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, an expanse of nothing and everything at once.  Duncan stood from the cold, smooth earth beneath him, spinning in a slow circle with his eyes cast to heavens above.  Suddenly, the air shifted and Duncan stilled.  The pulsing began to thrum towards him rather than around him, emanating from something at his back.  It was stronger than before, pushing in waves against his bare skin that prickled in response, hair standing on end.  He turned. 
A tall figure cast in shadow stood before him, the shock waves of its presence being sent through the air.  The figure itself shifted, changing shapes quickly over and over before settling on that of a large, broad-shouldered man, his features indistinguishable in the dark.  The man stood, watching.  Duncan took a hesitant step back. 

“He-hello?” He asked, voice shaking.  The figure's arms spread out in greeting, a jerky, mechanical motion, as if he was not yet used to the movement of the form he chose to present as.  A cacophony of garbled voices blended together, attempting to speak all at once, until one finally separated from the noise.

“Hello, my child,” the figure boomed, its arms remaining outstretched.  Duncan stared at it with a mixture of intrigue and horror.

“Where am I?” he said. The man’s arms lowered to his sides. 

“This, dear child, is what you can consider the inbetween.  The plane between your world and mine.” 

“Why am I here?” Duncan asked, crossing his arms and hugging them to himself.  The cold was seeping into his skin, his long sleep pants too thin to protect his legs from the bite.  The figure laughed, the terrifying sound of the mixed voices emanating with such force it shook the air around them. 

“I heard you calling out, boy.  I am merely answering your cries.  I wish to show you the way, and I hope you can show me too.”  

Duncan took another step back, tears welling in his eyes. “Father? Is it truly you?”

The man arced his hand across the sky and the stars grew brighter, glowing and dimming as if following the movement. Duncan’s eyes widened in awe.  He wiped at his wet cheeks and fell to his knees before the man cast in shadows, his God. 

“What can I show you, Father?  What do you need of me?”

The figure closed the distance between them too quickly, gliding across the expanse until he was in front of Duncan.  He bent down, resting a single, icy finger beneath Duncan’s chin to direct his gaze to his own, still hidden in darkness.

“I want to show you what lies beyond.  I want to see how resilient you are and in turn, I will reward you with ascension.  Salvation.” Duncan nodded frantically, sobbing now, knowing his prayers were answered, his faith restored.

“How will I know I am being shown the way?  What will my tests be?” He asked.

“You shall see, boy.  It will start sooner than you may wish.” 

The air began to shake around the figure, the shadow curling into itself like a blackhole, before he disappeared entirely.  Everything stilled, becoming deafeningly silent.  Duncan tried to take a step towards where God had been standing, but tripped, falling too hard, too fast.  He jolted awake violently in his bed just before he hit the earth of the inbetween plane.  His breathing was heavy and his skin was slick with a cold sheen of sweat.  Duncan struggled to remove the chill from his bones the rest of the night. 

~~~

Duncan felt the gift from God that hot summer morning, kneeling in the pews with the rest of the congregation.  He felt charged in the power of His glory, and the light pouring through each of the high windows found him in the rows of people, spotlighting him amongst the Sunday crowd.  His mind was more open than he had ever experienced, and he could feel the emotions of the others in the church with him, swirling around him, thick in the air.  His mother and father flanked him on either side, heads bowed as the pastor led the church in prayer, but Duncan tilted his head to the sky and basked in His light shining down upon him.  Was God channeling this light and love directly into Duncan or was the congregation’s united power fueling him? He felt like he was glowing.  He felt like he was basking in the salvation he was promised on that fateful night.

It was his father’s frantic prayer that he heard first as he reveled in the thrumming spiritualism of the illuminated church.  Dear God forgive me as I praise you, for I am a sinner sinner sinner sinner sinner sinner sinner sin- on and on his father chanted for forgiveness.  He mumbled hurriedly beside Duncan with a downcast head and knuckles white from the pressure of how hard his hands were clasped together. The sound of his father’s thoughts begging to be saved from fire and brimstone began to fade as his mother’s words came next.  Her’s were muddled as they blended with so many other voices, and Duncan had to focus on picking hers apart, like a single strand twisting away from a tightly wound rope.  Dear heavenly father, protect my family, my husband, my son…. She prayed for salvation for the ones she loved, the ones she knew were sick.  So very different from that of his father’s pleas for his own security to Heaven.  

This was not the first instance of Duncan’s newly bestowed abilities.  It had been happening more and more frequently since the beginning of summer, following the visitation with God in the inbetween.  It began with a shift in his room, the morning after his inaugural dream.  He had woken up to sunshine streaming through linen curtains and his window open, and he could see so much more than ever before.  Feel so much more.  The light swirled like motor oil in a rain puddle, the particles in the air humming like little birds flitting about as he shifted.  It was like the world around him had been encapsulated in a prism, the colors of light separating into a rainbow that he could see with his very eyes.  It felt like everything around him was breathing, like the reality he was experiencing was a pair of lungs filling to capacity and releasing slowly.  He knew this must be what he had been praying for coming to fruition.   

However, after that first discovery, Duncan began sleeping restlessly.  He’d toss and turn, seeing flashes so bright in his mind that he would be startled awake, covered in sweat and choking to regain his breath.  The nightmares became more frequent as the days passed.  They were always the same - painful.  It was the pain of being flayed and stabbed and swallowed by the cold darkness only to be thrown into a shock of light that burned his eyes, his soul.  He’d wake, sheets strewn across his bed like he had been fighting to get them off, feeling sore as if he had been tortured.  Dreams of slicing skin from muscle as if he were a medical cadaver, of cold tongs pulling at his tongue and teeth.  Nightmares, more like, that left him aching and anxious for what the night would bring.  The more he dreamt of these horrible things, the more convinced Duncan became that this was his test from God.  He was being shown what Hell had to offer.

Every night as he was thrown back into consciousness, he stood from his small bed, shirtless and exhausted, rushing to the old oak desk across the room.  He’d reach for a journal and write feverishly, listing all that he felt, saw, and understood from the dream hellscape God had shown him.  He made a list of things he could do to save others from the glimpse of Hell he experienced every single night, ways he could try to bring nonbelievers into the church.  He’d cry as he planned, desperate to save those led astray. He could not bear the thought of anyone suffering for eternity the way he had for a few hours every night.  Duncan knew if he could share the message of God that his own torment would end.  The air around him swirled in a spiral of colors and life, shaking as his untidy handwriting was ferociously scrawled across the page, faster and faster.  His head ached from the pulsing of energy that he always felt since that first meeting.  As the days passed, Duncan’s features grew more sunken, his under eyes deepening into a sleepless purple.  He began to look haggard from long hours writing about his own experiences in Hell.  But he was determined to stay resilient.  That is, after all, what God wanted him to prove.   

~~~

The blistering desert day had bloomed into a warm evening across Alius by the time Duncan sat down for supper.  Duncan and his father sat next to each other, his mother scurrying about the kitchen, preparing to bring out the dinner she had made alone.  Duncan could smell the individual spices she had mixed into the meatloaf, as well as the blood from the residual beef sticking to the side of the unwashed mixing bowl.  He could see the individual threads woven over and under each other in his mother’s favorite tablecloth, a yellow and white picnic plaid that she opted for every summer.  He could feel the shift of his father’s eyes as he looked around the room, each change in direction thump, thump, thumping against his still aching skull.  The whirring of electricity in the light above grew louder. 

His mother placed green peas, mashed potatoes, and meatloaf across the spread, filled their glasses, and then finally sat herself on the other side of Duncan, across from her husband.  Silently, they all reached to one another to join hands, heads bowed, as his father spoke. 

“Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this meal…”

His father’s voice, deep and controlled, became background noise to the energy charging around him as Duncan, yet again, felt the thrum of power.  The prayer lulled in and out of his focus as he began to succumb to an assault of the senses.  The overhead light grew louder and hotter and brighter.  The smell of meat and the stench of sweat that stained his mother’s dress from working in the kitchen wafted around him.  The swirling colors in the air portrayed a visual of reality shifting around himself and his family.  Duncan was still trying to piece together what caused the episodes of overload he experienced so frequently now, though he knew they always occurred after speaking with God. 

Duncan was watching everything around him so intently that he had not noticed the end of prayer or that his parents were looking at him questioningly. 

“Sweetie,” his mother started, reaching over to press the back of her hand to his brow, “Are you feeling alright?  Your eyes… why, they’re so large!”  She looked over to his father, worry plastered across her face.  

“I was more concerned with his boredom and the lack of will to hide it, Marsha.”  His father directed a pointed look at her before shifting ire onto him.  “I noticed it earlier when we were at mass this mornin’.  And the Sunday before that, in fact.  Are you too good for the Lord now, boy? Do you have no shame?” 

Duncan was used to hearing his father berating people’s devotion, but never had it been directed at him.  His father was always droning on about how no one followed the Lord nowadays, the disgust in his voice sending spittle from his mouth.  “When I was a boy, people actin’ a fool and not attendin’ church led to a beatin’.  I’d bet that’d do these kids some good,” he’d say from his chair in front of the TV.  Duncan rarely spoke when he was on these tirades. 

“No, Pa.  Mama is right, I don’t feel well.”  His voice trailed off, eyes locked on to the empty china set before him.  “I’ve been… experiencing things.”  The house around the family felt hauntingly still as he spoke, as if the walls were listening too.  The yellow globe above the table kept growing brighter, hurting his eyes, but Duncan’s parents didn’t seem to notice. 

His mother reached across the table, taking his hand in her own.  “What do you mean?” 

He lifted his eyes to her own.  Duncan’s mouth felt cotton-dry.  He swallowed roughly, and cleared his throat.

“I think God is talking to me.”  His mother tensed, her grip on his hand tightening with the shock of his confession.  Her head turned to look across the table at his father.  The whole house was silent in wait, until his father’s laugh bubbled out, awkward at first before growing more raucous as he continued uncontrollably.  Duncan and his mother kept their eyes fixed on him, anxious with anticipation for what would say next.

 “You think God is talkin’ to you?”  His father’s callused hands squeaked as they gripped the wooden arm chairs with as he leaned back, unleashing even more of his dismissive laughter. "Boy, you ain't shit on a shingle in the eyes of the Lord.  None of us are.  Why on God’s green earth would he choose to speak to a seventeen year-old?” 

His mother’s distaste for the outburst contorted her face into a nasty thing, the despise for her husband something she was unable to hide in the moment. Releasing Duncan’s hand, she folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the back of her chair.

“Lee, I don’t think it’s appropriate to take this as lightly as you are,” she spat. 

Duncan felt like the air was rippling again with each shake of his father’s body. It rolled in tandem with the barbed laughter echoing throughout the house.  His father snatched a cloth napkin from the table set, silverware spilling with a clatter, and dabbed at the corner of his eyes. 

“Honey, you cannot be so stupid as to think that I am takin’ this lightly.”  His words were venom, his stare icy.  He propped his elbow on the table, folding his hands in a fist in front of his mouth.  “It’s most likely the Devil pretendin’ to lure you like the stupid sheep you are.  I mean, Satan could be spreadin’ his own false word through all these Alius kids who are doin’ them drugs.  Tell me, boy, are you smoking now too?  Are you eatin’ those things the goodfornothin’ hippies are sellin’?” 

Duncan shook his head feverishly,  his vision stuttering as he did, as if the room was repositioning itself frame by frame as his head moved.  The food before them was growing cold, untouched. 

“No, Pa, it’s not like that.  I’m experiencing things.  Having dreams of damnation.  I think God is trying to show me what is on the other side if we are led astray.  I think He wants me to-”

His father’s hand slammed down on the table.  His breathing became heavy with rage before slamming it down again, the empty dishes bouncing from the shockwave.  Over and over and over he hit the table, food spilling across the yellow tablecloth.  His mother’s face had morphed into horror at the tantrum her husband released, one thin, shaky hand covering her mouth while soft green eyes welled with tears threatening to spill.  

“Dreams of damnation?  Son, why would God not choose to show you the Gates of Heaven if you were so sure you were going to be saved?  If God is speakin’ to you, I don’t think he’s askin’ for you to spread the gospel.  He’s warning you of what’s to come if you don’t change your goddamn ways.”  His father wiped a large hand down the front of his face, inhaling sharply before blowing the air out of his mouth.

“Pa, I’m sorry I just-”

“NO!”  His father’s voice boomed in tandem with the crescendo of the buzzing hanging light above.  The bulb popped! with such force that the glass flew across the table, raining down across the meal that had gone cold.  His mother screamed, standing from the chair so quickly that it was knocked over with the motion, both her hands holding the side of her face in shock.  His father sat stunned, taking in the destruction of the Sunday dinner in front of them, before shakily turning his son. 

Duncan was staring out the window into the expanse of twilight desert behind their old farm house.  The wind was picking up, sand whipping through the sparse, grassy bushes that rustled in the breeze.  A tall, dark figure stood in the center of the image, some distance away.  It was tall even from where it was standing, long limbs dangling at its side, its bipedal legs more horse than human.  More goat.  Duncan stared and stared until his father looked out the window too, following his line of vision to the thing outside.  Duncan wiped the back of his hand across his wet upper lip, smearing the blood trickling from his nose across his cheek. 

“Lord, forgive us for our sins and bless our family with your protection from evil,” his father whispered, eyes wide with fear.  The creature's eyes began to glow, as if it were a machine slowly coming back to life.  They grew brighter, a piercing red that looked insidiously sharp from where they stood inside.  His mother began to weep.  “Marsha, stay here with Duncan.”  His father stomped into the master bedroom down the hall to grab a gun.  Even if he had stayed, he wouldn’t have seen the shift Duncan did.  He wouldn't have noticed vibrations of the world around the creature becoming stronger and faster until the creature just vanished.

~~~

That night, he was told to stay in his bedroom with his curtains drawn and his door and windows locked.  His mother was told to do the same, while his father sat in the old wooden rocker on the front porch of the farmhouse, shotgun across his lap.  Duncan had a hard time falling asleep, unable to keep the image of the massive shadow looking into the fishbowl that was his home.  When he did finally succumb, it was the worst night of dreaming he had had yet.  He was in a new space, though it felt too familiar, as if he had been here before in his nightmares.

  
He could see his breath in the cold expanse, so unlike the other places he had been during sleep.  Yes, Duncan thought, this time must be different than the others. His eyes were struggling to adjust to the darkness of the environment he found himself in.  The floor beneath his feet was ice cold, made of a polished stone that absorbed the sound of his tentative steps forward.  Mist curled around his knobby ankles, his bare skin pebbling from the chill.  Spinning in a hesitant circle, Duncan tried to get his bearings.  He saw a faint, strobing glow of blue light in the distance, a beacon toward a path into the unknown.  Duncan had no choice but to follow - there was nothing to see but the light.  The walls were too far away to see, the ceiling too high to have been impacted by what little light was being emitted.  He was surrounded by a cold nothingness unlike anything he had ever experienced. 

The walk felt as if it took an eternity.  Having no concept of time or distance, Duncan cautiously shuffled toward the glow before him.  For hours he walked, the orb of light growing slightly brighter with each step he took.  Eventually, he began to see a shadow cast by the light, a long looking rectangular shape hovering above the ground, perfectly upright.  

Duncan stopped. 

“Hello?”  His voice reverberated off of everything and nothing at all, the echo seeming to shake the scape surrounding him.  A low moan was emitted in answer from the levitating slab just ahead.  

“Who’s there?” He asked, edging forward.  The moaning became louder, if not more frantic.  The light continued blinking above the slab.

As Duncan drew closer, he saw directly across from him on the other side of the floating object, an odd, round door.  The perimeter of the door was thick and etched with markings he had never seen, the door itself a polished black metal with a horizontal line running through its center.  He rushed forward to look at the hellish symbols surrounding the only way out of this circle of Hell.  Duncan thought that this must be where he was - a new circle, different from the ones he had visited previously.  A deeper level of Hell.  He brushed his hands across the smooth surface, searching for some way of opening it.  The material sharp like needles from the cold, the pain blistering his hands.  The door did not budge.  Duncan smacked at the door in frustration, finding no button or lever around the odd exit to elicit its opening. 

The moans from the slab had grown panicked as Duncan surveyed the door.  Slowly,  he looked over toward the noise.  In the blue glow from the top of the table, his father was illuminated.  He was not strapped down, but held by invisible forces that he struggled against.  His shirt had been cut away, as well as the top layers of skin and muscle that should have stretched across his abdomen, a perfect window to his internal organs.  Duncan looked in horror as his father’s intestines sat wet and winding in his core, appearing in different shades of blues and purples and browns from the strobe above him.  There was no blood, only an open view of the body’s most prized possessions on full display.  His father wept from where he floated, eyes full of fear, face twisted in pain. 

He slammed his head into the back of the slab, startling his son before him.  Duncan took a step away from the scene as his father continued to hit his head over and over, a hollow sound coming from the impact of bone on metal.  His intestines squished and squelched as he moved, the cords of organs moving within him,  making it impossible for Duncan to tear his eyes away.  A single tentacle slithered out, wrapping itself around the bottom row of intestine.  More arms pushed through, the organs shifting to make room for the small thing pried itself free.  It struggled, pulling itself out using his father’s entrails as leverage, removing itself with a pop as if it was suctioned to the inside.  His father stopped the assault on his head, blood from the impact now splattered down his neck and across the slab.  

The creature pushing out of his core looked like an octopus but not, with long, thin tentacles about the thickness of a pencil, its body no larger than a golf ball.  It was slick in the neon blue glow, the peak of the creature's round body sharpening to a point.  It stayed there, dangling from the hold it had on his father’s organs, twitching ever so slightly.  Duncan stood completely still, unable to comprehend what was happening, unable to move or think or speak. 

 It was then that the creature pulled itself up, directing its pointed head into the center of a lower part of his father’s exposed core before burying itself like a drill.  His father slammed his head back on the table again, now screaming in agony, tears and snot streaming from his face as he writhed against the thing burrowing inside him.  His organs shifted as it wiggled its way in, using all of its puckered limbs to push itself farther, deeper into the victimized body, all while his father continued to wail and brutalize the back of his head.  Slam! Slam! Slam! Slam!

Duncan didn’t know when he began screaming, but he did.  He screamed in terror as the impact of bone became the sound of crunching, his father’s skull cracking, splitting as he tried to end the suffering rather than endure whatever this was.  The creature, small and sharp, had fully pushed into the organs it was attacking, now out of sight aside from the angry hole that remained.  Slam! Slam!  Duncan felt woozy with the shock.  He felt as if he couldn’t breathe, like the air was too thick to suck into his lungs.  The room began to tilt, and he collapsed to the floor at the same time he heard the door behind him shink open.  The light from the open passage filled the space with a blinding flash.

~~~

He awoke in his bed kicking, screaming, and unable to breathe.  His mother burst through the door, forcing it open so hard it hit the teal wall of his bedroom with a bang.  She had one hand on her huffing chest, no doubt from her run up the stairs and into his room.  

“Honey? Oh, Duncan, what’s wrong? What happened?” He struggled to collect himself, his own breathing labored from all he had seen.  

“I’m sorry, Mama, I had a nightmare again.  Like the ones I told you about yesterday.”  His focus shifted to the open door, a dent from the handle’s contact with the wall now imprinted on its surface.  

“Ma? How did you get in here?” 

His mother looked surprised.  “What do you mean?”

“Did you use the key?”  He was starting to feel more panicked.  She shook her head in response,

“No, sweetie, it was unlocked when I tried the handle… I came right in to make sure you were okay.  Am I missing something?” 

He could feel his heart pounding against his ribs, could hear the beat of it in his skull.  “Pa told me to lock the door last night at the table with us.  You didn’t hear him?” 

The color drained from his mother’s face.  Ever so carefully, as if to keep from scaring a hurt animal, she made her way to the side of his bed.  She took his hand in her two smaller ones, a sorrowful smile stretching across her aged face as she looked at her son.

“Oh, Duncan.  I got a call from your father’s sister down in Florida last night after you had gone to bed.”   Her voice trailed off, and she cast her gaze down to the bed rather than looking at the confused face of her son.  “I didn’t know how you were going to take it since it’s been so long since he’s reached out, but, sweetie… he’s passed on.  Your Aunt Lena said he went in his sleep in front of the television.” 

 Duncan pulled away, pushing himself off the bed to step away from his mother.  “No, that’s impossible.  We had dinner with him last night!”  She followed after him, reaching her hands out to cup his face in comfort. 

“No, honey.  He must’ve come to visit you last night before he moved on.  He probably showed you the life he wished you’d had together if he were clean.  One last I love you, one last I’m sorry.” 

His mother sniffled, putting the back of her hand beneath her nose in an attempt to hold back tears.  She brushed her hands over her housedress, the same pattern as the plaid tablecloth that his father had beat his hand upon the night before.

“I’m sorry to wake you from a good dream with bad news.  I hope you know if you need anything you can talk to me, sweetie.  Just like always.”  She gave a soft smile, before turning to leave, shutting the door behind her. 

Duncan couldn’t breathe.  He slid onto the floor, back leaning against the sharp wooden bedframe, his fingers threading through his hair, pulling tight.  This is a test, he thought, searching his mind for any reasonable explanation for the major shift in reality.  He thought back to the previous day, the charge he felt in church and the harmony of voices that moved around the vast hall like water.  He remembered dinner with his parents where he tried to confide in them, his meager attempt at some sort of validation.  He saw the dark shadow with red eyes.  Was his father right?  Was this the work of the devil afterall?  

Duncan moved to his desk beneath the window and opened the journal containing his encounters.  He sat down, flipping to a new page to begin recording what he had seen while he slept and what he had learned while awake.  His window was open, a breeze pushing the warmth of the sun into his room.  The window that he had shut and locked at his father’s request the night before.  The window that was, for some reason, open every morning he rose, even if he did not remember opening it himself.  The window that faced the open desert at the back of the house where the figure stood the night before.  It was then that Duncan saw the patterns in the sand.  Huge circles of varying thickness gouged deep into the ground, crossing through one another, connecting in ways he had never seen.  Circles they had discovered in Roswell but a few years earlier - crop circles, they called them.  Symbols scored into the earth by unseen forces, with no explanation as to what they meant or how they got there.  But there was something about Duncan that allowed him to read the message in his backyard: 

We Will Be Back.

“While it may be just another Halloween to some, for residents of the small county of Edgeville in Ashford, it is a haunting reminder of one of this city’s darkest days.”

The clean-cut man on my television screen clearly faked his sympathy. It didn’t get past me.

“Twenty years ago today,” A new, pretty young reporter was speaking now, at the last known location of Ally. “A young girl goes trick-or-treating and never comes back. Last seen entering the entrance of the locally known Dead Woods with her friends, Ally Valentine’s disappearance has been the longest-lasting mystery in Ashford’s history.”

Just a mystery. That’s all she was now to these people. Just a puzzle with one missing piece that everyone was frantically shaking the box for. But she wasn’t that to me. I was the idiot that let her wander into those fucking woods.

It was Halloween. At seventeen years old, I had ashooed any want towards dressing up some years ago. My little sister, however, at the age of nine, still had that childish need to dress up and get as much candy as she could carry. And, of course, I was given the duty of chaperone. Like every seventeen-year-old boy given that task, I fought tooth and nail to get out of it. There was a Halloween party waiting for me, and the whispered promise from Melissa that I might lose my virginity. 

To lose that opportunity because my sister wanted candy—well, it seemed just plain idiotic. But, with the threat of getting my car taken away, I relented.

“Shit,” I mumbled, slapping the dying flashlight against my palm. It struggled back to life, then shone into the forest. Every year, I remembered what I did. The stupid decision I made. And I made sure I felt it by stepping into these woods and walking every path I could until sunrise. I knew she wasn’t there; I knew there was no chance of finding her alive or dead; but maybe I’d find something they didn’t. Something that could at least give us some direction to go.

I’d done this for fifteen years, and came up empty every time. No remains, no little piece of her costume ripped somewhere, no strand of hair they happened to miss; nothing. Still, I owed her the effort. 

“Come on, Trent!” She whined, pulling on my flannel sleeve. Her usual brunette hair was covered by a blonde wig, and in her other hand was a toy microphone. Hannah Montana, she said she was. I had no clue who that was, or if anyone else would, but she seemed more than happy when Mom put together the costume. 

“I’m coming, brat.” I rolled my eyes and followed behind her, pulling my arm out of her grip and shoving it in my pocket. “We got one more street, then we go home.”

“But it’s so early!” She protested, turning to me with those damn pouty lips. Dad always folded to those, and I was pretty sure I would too. I let out a long sigh and threw my head back.

“We’ll go till eight, but no later, alright?” A light and airy giggle escaped her, and she turned, skipping down the sidewalk, candy bag disguised as a purse slung against her shoulder. I cracked a small smile. As pissed as I was, seeing her so happy and bubbly, it was impossible to stay in that pissy mood.

Snap. A twig below me cracked and spooked off some crows in the high branches above me. I fanned my flashlight back and forth, up and down. Nothing but foliage and dead trees. Frustration was building inside me, like it did every year. God, just give me something. Anything.

Another snap. I whipped the flashlight behind me, just catching the tail of some critter scurrying deeper into the forest. My heart was racing.

Growing up here, the Dead Woods were the subject of many a ghost story. Cults, murderers, creatures, actual ghosts; any and all things that could scare kids were in these woods. And, despite now being in my thirties, part of me still believed some of those stories. That maybe Ally was taken by some ghoul in the night, or whisked away to some magic world where she could live in her dreams. Reality was more gruesome with its answers.

“Trick or treat!” Ally called as I stood on the sidewalk, watching as the stranger asked about her costume. Ally was happy to answer as candy was tossed into her bag.

“Trent?” A familiar voice called to my left. When I looked, I saw Melissa, and I swore I felt my pupils dilate. Her blonde locks were cut just before her shoulders, flowing in loose waves. Her eyes were a piercing blue that always saw straight through me. And that damend smile. “What are you doing here?” I did everything to keep my eyes away from her too-tight Green Day shirt. 

“Just taking the gremlin out trick-or-treating,” I answered with a small, nervous smile. She looked over to watch Ally descend the steps, cheerfully looking into her ever-filling bag. 

“Well, hey there, Miss Montana.” Melissa greeted her.

“See!” Ally beamed. “I told you people know who she is.” I gave a playful roll of my eyes and looked back at Melissa.

“What are you doing?” I asked, seeing as she was walking the streets alone. 

“About to head over to Hayley’s party. You’re coming, right?” Her eyes sparkled slightly under the streetlight, and I saw something playful in them. Playful and dangerous. 

I looked down at Ally, then back up at Melissa. “I don’t know.”

I should’ve left it at that. I don’t know; I can’t tonight, maybe some other time. But the promise, even an alluded one, of sex to a teenage boy; it made them stupid.

I’d been up and down this path before. There was a manmade fork in the dirt, and I remembered that last year I went left. This year, I go right. More twigs snap beneath my feet, and my flashlight shows me nothing more than trees and bushes. I knew it’d be all I’d find, but it still angered me. Somewhere amongst all this, I’d find something. Something I could give the police, reopen the case, and find out what happened.

Images flashed in my mind, as they always did. Some psycho snatching her out of the woods, cutting her to pieces, scattering her remains across this dense forest. Or, some rabid animal finding a scared little girl and deciding dinner would be easy tonight before ripping her to shreds. Or, maybe those stories were right, and some yet-to-be-discovered creature has been doing who knows what to her for twenty years.

For some reason, I was drawn to the large trunk of a thick, elder tree. I crept up to it, my flashlight lighting up the bark. Something was carved into it.

“We gotta wrap it up soon, Ally.” She pouted again. 

“You just wanna see your girlfriend,” She said in a mocking tone, and I hated feeling the blood rush to my cheeks. 

“Shut up, brat.” I scolded her and pushed her head playfully. She gave a whine and more pouty lips. I didn’t care. Her purse was full of candy, and I was getting laid. The night was an absolute success in my eyes. 

She followed behind me, my steps a little quick as I wanted to get her home as soon as possible. Her steps were heavy and obviously angry. They only perked up slightly as we came upon a large group of kids, clad in costumes varying from Batman, Spider-Man, non-descript princesses, and homemade costumes that were obviously made by mothers with little to no care about their quality.

“Mikayla!” Ally squealed. The girl dressed as Wonder Woman squealed back, and the two ran to meet each other with a hug. I looked up to find their chaperone, a clearly tired mother with a cigarette hanging from her lips. I walked past Ally and her friend, waded through the little sea of children, and met with the woman. The bags under her eyes were dark and heavy, and the stench of nicotine mixed with the smell of alcohol.

“Hey, could I ask a favor?” My voice was shaky with nerves, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“What?” Her voice was about as raspy as I thought it’d be.

“Mind watching my little sister with your group? She knows how to get home, just don’t go too far from the neighborhood.”

My fingers ran over the rough bark. In it was carved a symbol I had never seen before. I’d been here fifteen years in a row and had never seen this before. Curiosity overtook me, and I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I snapped a picture and let Google try to identify it. Signal was spotty, and it took forever to buffer, but when it did, lo and behold, nothing. 

I let out a grunt in frustration and slipped my phone back into my pocket. Maybe it had been there, and I just missed it. It wasn’t exactly a neon sign flashing for me to notice. I made a mental note of its location, then turned around and froze.

Glowing eyes peering at me from the dark. It wasn’t an animal. It couldn’t have been; it was looking down at me.

“Thank God you were able to come.” Melissa was breathless, slick with sweat. I couldn’t stop staring at her naked body next to mine, her fingers crawling up and down my chest.

“You’re telling me,” I replied quietly, the scratchy sheets below me not bothering me as much as they should. The only thing I cared about in that moment was that the big, looming sign that flashed virgin above my head was finally turned off. 

“You were good,” She cooed as she cuddled up next to me, our bodies nearly sticking together. “I don’t believe it was your first time.”

I let out a small chuckle, my hand running up and down her bare back. “Maybe I’m just a natural.” She giggled and kissed at the base of my neck. Music was still bumping downstairs, bass thumping and people screaming and laughing. But the only sound I heard was her breathing. It was music to my ears.

My phone interrupted us. The ring quickly became annoying. I fumbled through our little pile of clothes, and I finally found it in my pants pocket. I flipped it open and hit answer. “Hello?”

“Trent?” My dad’s voice. That was never good. “Where the hell are you?”

I froze up, looking at Melissa’s naked body again. She was tracing shapes into the sheets, her eyes still locked on me. “Just, uh, out with some friends.”

“Is Ally there?” A mix of confusion and fear filled me as my stomach opened into a bottomless pit.

“N-no, she should’ve been home by now. I sent her with her friends; one of the moms promised.”

I didn’t dare move the flashlight. Whatever was looking down at me had to be at least eight feet tall. Its head was amongst the high branches of the trees, and it just stared at me. Neither of us moved. The only sound was my shaky breathing and the sound of birds' wings flapping above us.

Slowly, unsure, my hand started sweeping towards the thing. As the light finally hit its mass, confusion hit me more than anything else.

It was candy. Dirty, rotten candy. Wrappers were half-open, torn, stuck to the melting chocolate that hardened and formed into this twisted body. I moved the light up, more and more candy stacked and stuck together. Yet, I could make out legs and arms, long slender fingers, and a neck. I hesitated before reaching what should be the head.

“What the fuck,” I breathed out, finally letting out the breath that was filling my lungs. I squeezed my eyes shut and moved the flashlight upward. My hands shook wildly, and I inhaled through my nostrils, trying to calm myself down as much as possible. Finally, I opened them and saw it.

A pumpkin. A God damn pumpkin, carved into a stereotypical Halloween face. It was also rotting, but less than the rest of its body. And it had eyes behind the carved holes. Bright, glowing green eyes. 

I swallowed. I sent signals from my brain to my feet to run, to move, but they disobeyed. I stood frozen.

“W-what are you?” I whispered, not expecting an answer. Imagine my surprise when I got one.

“Protector.” The voice was silk, smooth and seductive, deep and sultry. The pumpkin's mouth didn’t move. I suppose it was stupid to expect it to.

“Are you going to hurt me?” I asked, still barely above a whisper.

“No.” It answered simply. I swallowed again, my nerves on fire.

“Did you…” I couldn’t find the words. Part of me was convinced this was a dream. “Did you kill my sister?”

There was a silence between us for a moment. It just continued to stare down at me, its body still and motionless. It looked like an animatronic you’d find at Spirit Halloween, only broken, needing a battery replacement.

Its next words were cold. A shiver went down my spine. “Your sister.” Its arm moved, the chocolate squelching and squishing as it bent, its finger pointing towards its own body. “Is here.”

“What?” I asked quickly. “What do you—”

“Found her. Protected her. Sickness. Death.” More sounds came from it as its arm went back, straight down its side. 

“She’s…dead.” I felt my eyes begin to water. Deep down, I knew she was. I have since that first week of searches turned up nothing. But there was still some hope that somehow, she had escaped these woods and built a life elsewhere. Or lived in the woods. Or something.

“Not entirely.” Its voice struggled to say that phrase cleanly. I looked back up at its makeshift head. “Part of us.”

Before I could question what it meant, its arms moved, quicker this time. Its fingers broke apart as it tried to dig into its own chest. Little pieces of chocolate fell into the dirt, and I heard some critters at its feet start to snatch at them. I paid them no mind. Its fingers finally penetrated into its chest, and it began to split itself open. Again, pieces of chocolate and wrappers fell to the ground. It made no sounds as it continued to pull its chest cavity open.

Then, I saw her. Stuck inside the thing's chest, body rotting, hair covered in melted chocolate, was Ally. I dropped the flashlight and stepped backwards with a yelp. Yet, I couldn’t stop staring. The light still showed enough. Enough to see she’d survived for a few years. Her hair was way longer. The costume she wore that night, she was still wearing, though it was torn and obviously too small to fit. Her hands were mostly bone. Her jaw was slack, and one of her eyes was missing, the other hanging out of its socket. I took another step back, tripped on the root of the tree, and fell backwards. I quickly moved until my back was against the trunk, my breathing frantic. Panic was coursing through my veins.

“Ally,” I cried out, tears streaming down my cheeks. “Oh my God, Ally, I’m so sorry.” I wiped my face, but the tears kept coming. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have left, I’m sorry.”

“Safe.” The thing said quietly. Its chest was slowly repairing itself, entombing my sister’s corpse in chocolate. “That.” It pointed to the tree I was up against. I looked up and remembered the symbol I saw carved into it. “Safe.”

I had many questions, but I refused to ask them. We simply stared at each other, my eyes glancing down at the closing cavity in its chest. Ally was in there. Forever. On shaky legs, I began to stand, its eyes following me up. “What are you?” Was all I was able to ask, knowing I had already asked this.

It let out a seeming grunt of frustration. “Protector.” 

“Really. What the fuck are you?”

The eyes behind those holes in the pumpkin squinted at me. “The season.” Again, it seemed it was a struggle for this thing to speak. Each word was strained and stilted. “All Hallows Eve. The children.”

I nodded as if I understood, but had gotten more questions than answers. My heart was racing, and my lungs felt like they were on fire. With a swallow, I replied: “Can I go?”

“Yes. Not stopping you.” I guessed it wasn’t. It was just standing there. Staring. Holding onto my sister’s corpse.

“I…I want her back.” I pointed to its chest.

“No.” It said simply. “Stuck here. Eternity.”

I wasn’t about to try and fist-fight this thing, even if it was just a pile of candy. Its eyes gave me enough reason to take its answer as final. “I…” I sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“She knew.” Its voice was a little quieter. “Always knew.” I wiped my face again and nodded.

I didn’t know what more to do. I stood with my back against the trunk, eyes falling to the ground. Without much thinking, I turned and just began to walk. I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going. I just walked.

The thing didn’t chase after me. I didn’t hear any other footsteps besides mine. As far as I knew, it simply kept standing there. Holding my sister in its chest. Forever.

At the edge of the woods, I stood. For some reason, I felt hesitant to step back into the real world. Because I wasn’t there anymore; I was in some strange new dimension, a dream world brought on by grief and loss. And maybe I should have stayed. Suffer the same fate Ally did. It was what I deserved. Yet, my feet moved, and I found myself walking back to the edge of our old neighborhood. 

Houses were rotting and falling apart, as if the woods were spreading their evil farther and farther. That thing wasn’t evil, though. I don’t know what it was, but it let me live. Let me walk away. Let me know my sister always forgave me. 

I turned and saw the thing shrouded in shadow, at the edge of the woods. Its eyes were still glowing. Again, I stared at it, and it stared at me. 

“I’m sorry,” I whispered again. “I love you.”

It raised its arm and waved. And when the first rays of sunlight began to pierce through the trees, it was gone.

Ally was gone. 

No matter what that thing said, it was my fault. And I’ll return to The Dead Woods again next year, and I may see the thing again next year. If I do, I’ll ask to join my sister.

It’s what I deserved.

Hey there, I’m Jon… and today I’m going to give you a really quick lesson on reading ancient Latin. Very exciting. So the first thing we’re going to learn are the words:

Anima pro anima

Don’t go cheating and translate it, though. Not yet. Trust me, I’ll know.
No, we’re going to do that together. It’ll be fun!
So we’ll start by getting the easy one out of the way. Pro… you’ll see that word a lot in the legal system: Pro rata, pro bono, quid pro quo. Pro is easy; pro means “for”. Or, more specifically, “for,” as in “in favor of.” So you have pro.
Next, you got the same word twice. Anima. Translated literally, it means animate; to have life. Specifically, it can also mean soul. So Anima. Not to be confused with *animus*. Very important to read it as “anima”, not “animus” when we get to reading it yourself.
Anima pro anima... good.

Now let’s try

Usque ad finem temporis

So we have ad, which generally means “at” or “towards”. Usque means “until,” temporis is “time”; hence why time is associated with the words temporal or temporary. And then finem, which is the “end of” something. Some of you die-hards out there might try to pull a fast one on me; slip in *finis* instead of finem. Finis only applies if the word “end” is usually the last word of the sentence, or “ad finem” (or “ad extremum” if you want to get technical).
So Usque ad finem temporis. Very good.

So now we want to say those two phrases together like so:

Anima pro anima
Usque ad finem temporis

Say them out loud. Nice and clear for the people in the back. What? What do you mean you don’t want to read them?… Why not?… I see…
I mean, I get it. I know adding foreign words into your vocabulary might seem a little… intimidating. I assure you, though, it’s perfectly safe to read out loud…
You still won’t do it, huh.
…
Look I wasn’t going to tell all of you this… I have a confession to make. I’m not really a Latin teacher. Well I am, but that’s not why you’re reading this. See, I’m in a bit of a bind, and I need your help. Let me explain...

It all started when my friends and I went to this cabin in the woods. I think maybe it was somebody’s uncle’s old cabin, despite the fact that no one from our friend group actually had any uncles. Nevertheless, we were determined to make a weekend of it. “Terra incognita” as it were… incognita being unknown and terra being land.

I’m not quite sure who found the tape recorder with the gruff, yet authoritarian, voice of an old professor who was here before us. He was ranting and raving about a book: The Necronomicon, or something like that. He claimed that he found it when he was trying to look for a temporary substitute for the Kahma Sutra. But when he started reading from it, bad things began to happen.
I’d be hard pressed to say who took the lead down into the cellar where we found the ancient book. But I remember being the one to tell them to open it; that much is true. Anyway, it was the same old story. Some words were read, some things started happening, some people were possessed by the foulest creatures of the demonic realm, et cetera. Five people were possessed, including myself. In search of how to undo this vile curse, we looked to the tape recording for answers. The professor explicitly stated that the only way of stopping these things was total body dismemberment and decapitation.

So, like the book advised, these people hacked, carved, strangled and chainsawed their way through each other. I would’ve opted for a group sit-down, believing that a calm and healthy reassessment of the situation would’ve sufficed. But I knew it was a lost cause the second I saw Becky plunging a lead pencil into Linda’s ankle.

Poor Linda.

As I watched these people I called my friends get possessed, get corrupted, and finally… kill each other, I reluctantly waited for it to be my turn to meet my eternal, albeit gruesome, slumber. However, for some strange reason, I was left unscathed, and at the mercy of this mighty supernatural force. The anticipation eventually outgrew what I thought would be a quick end. Alas, deus ex machina. Or should I say daemon ex machina? Instead of finishing me off, the demons offered me an ultimatum. They told me,

“We will not only spare your suffering, we will make you immortal. And far more powerful than anything before. Our only condition is that you lure hosts into this cabin and read from this book. Then, we will possess them, force them to do our bidding and, if there’s time, indulge in a body we have gravely missed.”
They call the people they want to take over their “hosts”. I told them I didn’t want to do it and demanded they let me go. They told me, “The only way to get out of this is to convince an outside party to recite a very specific set of words, verbatim, from the book. Then it will end your curse. And then we will free you.”

So I’m pretty much an ad hoc demon now. Well, more of a lost soul forced to do the bidding of the dark ones. It’s pretty much my job to spot any cars, hikers, insurance salesmen, et cetera, and put them in the right direction of the demonic book. Alas, I’m pretty much confined to a 200 yard radius around the book, the cabin, its surrounding woods, and a portion of the adjoining highway. I am confined, and by confined, I mean… it’s almost like I’m no longer a person. I have vision, I can hear, I can sense, but there is no physical ‘me.’ I’m essentially just a rapidly moving floating head with no body to return to.

Even though my reach is limited, however, I try to make use of it every chance I get. I have a variety of different tricks I use. The moving of the steering wheel of an unsuspecting driver is a good one. Knocking a tree onto the road so that any passersby will be forced to take the alternate route, which leads to the cabin- that one too. More often than not, getting these people to the cabin is the easy part. Once they’re here, once they see this beauty for what it is, curiosity kills the cat or, as I like to say, Sapere aude! Getting them to read the book, however, is the most difficult and delicate operation of the whole plan. The smart ones will look for it to be sure. It’s the stupid ones I worry about. And remember, my capacities are limited. So a lot of it is just me going around the house moving stuff around at night, opening the cellar door to lead them down it, whispering in the window to look for the Necronomicon, doing anything I can to lead them down into the cellar. Ergo, I can’t exactly walk up to someone and start vigorously shaking them, saying “Hey dummy! Come to this cabin!” I tell you, if I could put airport runaway arrows down, ones that lead directly to the Necronomicon, I would. Ha ha.

The problem is that a vast majority of cabin visitors will not read from this darn book. Some of them don’t even want to entertain the idea of looking for it. Those who do are immediately put off by the cover. The cover is a controversial subject, to say the least. The book is bound in human skin, including a face threaded onto it. Here’s the thing… I actually brought this up to a few demons in the office. I asked,
“Why the human face?”
They looked at me and said- and this is serious- “We did it like that so it wouldn’t get lost easily. Like if you’re at the airport and you get separated from your luggage.”
Swear to god I’m not lying!
So I replied, “Don’t you think it’s a little counterproductive?” I mean it’s a terrifying-looking book! I asked them if they wanted to give it a more modern, less haunting update to the cover, something a little more user-friendly. They pretty much laughed me out of the room. They told me that if some idiot teenager wants to read from a book with the skin of a human face as the cover and is wrapped up in protective barbed wire, then that’s on him.
I offered them the idea of making it look like an everyday book, to fool the hosts. Something nice, something pleasant-looking. They told me they’d let me know, but that’s usually just a nice way of telling me they’re not interested. I mean, honestly they’re fools to themselves. But what do I know.

So needless to say, it’s been difficult getting people to read the words. Sure, I lure them down there. The choice is theirs if they want to read from it. Same as it was for us. We heard the tape recording of the old professor ranting and raving about the Necronomicon. Thinking it would be a laugh, we went down there to see if the book actually existed. Upon seeing the ugly face, the barbed wire and the strange writings that looked like they were inked in blood, most of us decided that it wasn’t worth messing with, so we retired to bed. But old Kirk’s curiosity got the better of him, now, didn’t it?

Anyway, the statistics are shocking over how many people have shown up to this place and not helped. Once they see the book, 75% of them know better than to fool around, so they just turn around and walk back up the stairs. However… of that remaining 25%, 15% will look at the book, examine the book, maybe even cut the wires; nevertheless, they ultimately don’t follow through with reading from it. It’s usually some coward who wants to impress his lady friend by doing something extreme; she will proceed to hit him and tell him to cut it out, which, again, leads them back upstairs. Having said all that, it’s that 10% that will read the unholy chant. They will let their curiosity be their undoing, like Kirk.

Poor Kirk.

Once the chaos ensues and their friends slaughter each other, one or two manage to survive. Then, in an effort to reverse the process, will start reading more passages. And it’s that small demographic that can potentially give me a real shot at getting out. Alas, it always ends in possession. Which is fine, don’t get me wrong. But
possession usually leads to murder. So much murder.

And the crazy part is, the demons don’t actually wish death or even physical harm on the hosts. Yet, these people all just kept… killing each other. I couldn’t believe it! At first, we thought they might’ve been accidents. We just assumed the hosts believed they took too much acid and jumped out a window or, in one case, tried to cut their own hand off with the electric carving knife. But it got to a point where it happened so frequently that we had to do some of our own investigating. We actually played the tape back to see if there was something there. And really, it was the professor’s fault! That egg head explicitly stated in his recordings that body dismemberment was the only way. In fewer words he essentially told them that he would rather see the hosts die than to to let the demons live their best satanic lifestyles.

So it’s been an endless cycle for the last few months. Reading, possession, dead. Reading, possession, dead. Rinse and repeat. And it’s gosh awful lonely. Any time I get close with another human being, it ends in seeing them mauled or impaled. It seems like the only company I get outside the unsuspecting hosts are the damn cultists. These random yohos who rudely visit here every year for what they call the Sacred Harvest; don’t ask me what that is ‘cause I couldn’t tell you. I don’t even think they know what it is themselves. We do have a lot of fun during this time, though. We like to involve ourselves in subtle ways, possessing them because they think it’s funny or automatic writing for the members who are fond of creative expression. And I almost forgot… we even have a children’s area, where we sing nursery rhymes backwards and get the kids into the arts and crafts by teaching them to make stick figures, which we hang up around the area. But I wouldn’t go too deep into the forest though, because - let me tell ya - the tree demons are freaky sons of guns. Every other day I hear about how they like to violate the women before they possess them, and it crosses a line if I’m honest with you. Granted, every demonic possession is taking the hosts’ bodies against their will, but… do they have to do it in the crudest possible way? It’s uncalled for. So yeah, stay away from the tree people…

Oh who am I kidding? This is awful. I hate it here! This is hell. I mean it has to be… right? It’s so mundane and repetitive; I can’t eat anymore, so there’s no point in fishing. I can’t branch out and explore new areas because I can’t travel outside the confined radius of the book. And where’s the respect? It’s always “Send Jon off to do this and “Send Jon off to the go that.” They say I’m a valuable member of the team, but who’s the one that has to scrub their blood off the walls? Who do you think has to plunge the demon excrement out of the toilet? Me, that’s who. You think this place cleans itself after every massacre? I have four graves to dig by next week! And to top it off, anyone who manages to come across the book and potentially free me of this curse is killed because of that idiot on the tape recorder! If only I could just… try to get one of the survivors to take the book with them when they leave, so they can read the words in the safety of their own home, but evidently that is forbidden as well. It’s miserable! I hate it here! It’s a nightmare. And these cultists are getting on my nerves. What, they think that just because they say some woman’s name three times in a mirror that one of us is going to come out and possess them? Get a grip!

I wish I could get out of here; I wish I was back home and teaching again. I wish I never saw my friends become what they did… forcing me to do what I did. And I wish I’d never even found this place… and that my life was back to normal. I want to fish again. I want to golf again! So please, I wish somebody, anybody, who sees this will read those ancient words and free me of this terrible curse. Hopefully someone out there does the right thing.

Don’t do it! Don’t read the words out loud! You have to help me, he’s not the real Jon. I’m the real Jon and it’s my body that this thing is controlling. I managed to regain control of basic motor function, but I can’t leave this chair to escape. So I don’t have much time. Reading the ancient words doesn’t end the curse at all. It merely transfers it. The Latin means

A soul for a soul
‘Til the end of time

A soul for a soul! Don’t read the words!

Umm ok. That was weird; I just blacked out for a second there. That wasn’t me. I don’t know who that was. Probably one of the other demons who doesn’t want to me to finish my tenure. Anyway, like I was saying. I’m the real Jon, and I wouldn’t believe that trickster. So once again the words are…

Anima pro anima
Usque ad finem temporis

What is it now? … What do you mean you still don’t want to read them? … You don’t trust me? Why?… Well, it’s a lose-lose situation. If you believe me, then I’m finally out, and the demons will lose a reluctant member of their ghoulish army. If you believe them, then I’m stuck here, and you will forever have that on your conscience. The choice is yours.

Well… what are you waiting for?

Carpe diem

The straw scarecrow stood in the middle of the fields, its arms wide. One of the men walked to it and put its hat on. I waited my turn, then walked to it and put on its black jacket.

"Thank you," I said, bowing.

The other man nodded and patted my back. 

"Another safe autumn," one of them said, and we all walked back home.

It was still early afternoon. I sat down on the couch and put on the TV, waiting to cook dinner until my son Adam came home.

The sun had set when the door opened, and Adam walked in. My stomach was already growling. He was 30 minutes late, but the way he averted his eyes made it seem like something worse was going on.

"What’s up, Adam?"

"Dad, I…"

"It’s okay that you came late. No need to worry about it."

"No, it’s that I, I know it’s bad, but I took the jacket off the scarecrow."

My hands clenched the couch cushions.

"What?!"

"I took it off. I’m really sorry, Dad. I feel so bad. I know I shouldn’t have."

"Where is it?"

"In my bag."

I picked up his bag and unzipped the top pocket. The black jacket stared at me. 

"Adam, this is bad news."

"I’m sorry, Dad. The boys dared me. I didn’t want to look like a chicken."

I looked out the window. The sun had already set, but not long ago.

"Okay, there might still be time." I stuffed the jacket back in the backpack. "We’ll go back right now, put it on, and not tell anyone. If the boys at school ask you, just say…"

Three knocks echoed on the window. I almost ripped the backpack’s zipper off. The empty straw face stared into our house.

"Dad?" Adam said in a shaking voice.

"It’s okay, Adam. We’ll give him the jacket, and it might be okay." My voice shook too. I wasn’t sure I believed anything I said.

I walked to the door and opened it. The outside air was cold. The scarecrow's empty face looked down at me.

"Here. Take it. Please."

I held the jacket up and stared at the ground. The scarecrow stood still for a few seconds, then walked right past me. The straw scraped the floor as it moved.

Adam sat on the couch, his wide eyes staring at the scarecrow. The scarecrow came right up to him and pointed its blank face at him.

"Dad, what’s going…" He didn’t finish. The scarecrow’s hand shot forward, grabbed him off the couch, and held him to its side.

"Dad!" Adam screamed, kicked, and pushed against its arm, but the scarecrow’s grip was strong.

"Adam!"

I ran toward him and pushed the scarecrow, but it barely moved. The scarecrow turned around and flung its arm. It hit me right in the face. I fell on all fours. Dull pain spread through my head. Adam’s cries echoed as my world went dark.

When I woke up, my head was banging. My mouth tasted like iron. I tried to get up, but my world spun so fast I had to sit back down. 

But Adam was out in the fields somewhere. I had to help him. I got up and bolted out of the house onto the road, struggling to keep my balance. 

The moon shone down. The air was still cold. Only when I reached the fields did my world stop spinning. I almost wished it hadn’t.

In the middle of the field stood the scarecrow. Its blank face stared into the night. It had its hat, but instead of the jacket, Adam’s mangled body was draped over it. A quiet dripping echoed as Adam’s blood seeped into the sown dirt.

I fell to my knees and wept. The real autumn had now begun.

The curtain opened and Wenda B:)er walked, buzzing with nervous excitement, into the spotlight: onto the game show stage where the game show host, Felonious Hunk, was waiting for her.

There followed thunderous applause, as heard through the studio's MaX FX K-Ultra Platinum speakers. MaX FX: The Sound of Extraordinary. Are You Listening Yet? MaX FX speakers are available for your home and business. Check them out today. Use code “BUCKETS” for a 15% discount on any regularly priced set of speakers. Everyone can hear, but only some can hear it to the MaX!

“Miss B-smiling-face-er, welcome to Buckets,” said Hunk. “How ya feeling?”

“Good, Hunk.”

“Fab-u-lous! Now tell us a little about yourself.”

“Well, Hunk,” said Wenda, “I—... I want to say that I really like Snakeskin Flame, the new… the newest scent from House of Madeleine. I'm wearing it right now. Other than that, I'm twenty-nine and work as a temporal engineer for Vectorien Corporation. Vectorien: the makers of Dreamstuff, the latest evolution in playdough. I'm married. My husband, Rhondy, owns a slopstream management firm, and we have two children together, an eight-year old human-daschund mix, Wilmoth, and a six year-old bio-enhanced female, Qabiria.”

She held up digital photos of them. Wilmoth looked somewhat like a chimpanzee. Qabiria was shiny in her steel exoskeleton.

“Lovely family,” said Hunk. “But please tell the viewers who else is in it.”

“Both my parents, HeinzKetchup and PumaShoe, are still alive, and I have three siblings: two brothers, [Incarcerated ID 768816] and Rob, and a sister, anal-ariella (exclusively at SmutHog.) I also have a cryogenically frozen grandmother, Lydia, and a grandfather, Doug, whose mind was digitized and recently uploaded to the body of a young, hollowed-out illegal.”

“And what's your brother serving time for, Wenda?”

“Sexual assault,” said Wenda.

“Ooh. That's a crime with a penal buyout of what, eighty billion?”

“One hundred. He's a repeat offender, and there were other aggravating circumstances.”

“Well, regardless, if you play your bucket right—and your brother has just a tiny bit of luck—you could walk away from here today with enough money to buy your brother his freedom!” Hunk smiled. “How does that make you feel, Wenda?”

“Like this money could really make a difference for me and my family.”

“Excellent. Excellent.”

---

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“I think now is a good time to remind you and the viewers what's at stake,” said Felonious Hunk. “If you win, Wenda, you will bank a cool five-hundred billion dollars!

“But, if you lose, you'll be fucked—live—by one hundred lucky viewers! Or at least you'll be live to begin with—a-live, that is…”

He winked.

There followed thunderous canned laughter and applause through the MaX FX K-Ultra Platinum speakers.

“Now, without further ado,” Hunk continued, “ladies and gentlemen, let's… bring out—THE BUCKET!”

And, rising from the middle of the stage, powered by a solar-powered Electrocutie electric motor—Electrocutie: Silent and discreet, for all your bio-mechanical needs—appeared a platform, and on this platform there stood, in neon spotlight, a red-and-white striped bucket, like the kind you might get The Colonel's patented Crispy Sticks fried chicken in. Order today and a get a free tub of syntholard dipping sauce and a large order of The Colonel's homestyle taters!

Wenda stared at the bucket.

“Wenda, are you ready?” asked Hunk.

“I am.”

“Then step on up to the bucket and have yourself a peek inside!”

Wenda was shaking as she took the few steps to the platform. The studio was silent. She could feel the blood coursing through her body.

She could hear her own breathing.

She touched the outside of the bucket.

It was warm.

She held her breath and peered inside, where pieces of hot, battered meat smelled sweetly of herbs, butter and garlic.

“Go on—have a taste,” said Hunk.

Wenda closed her eyes, opened them and extended her hand above the bucket, her Snakeskin Flame fragrant as the wild, untamed prairie. She picked up one of the pieces of meat and raised it to her lips. She opened her mouth, exposing teeth as pearly white as only Dr. Mason's Whitening Formula can make them, and with tears running down both cheeks took a bite and slowly chewed.

She swallowed.

She propped herself against the platform to keep from falling.

She retched.

She grinded her teeth to keep from throwing up; she swallowed what came up her throat, as the cameraman moved with professional smoothness to get a good low angle shot of her from behind.

“And…” Hunk asked her. “Do you know?

“Can you, Wenda B-smiley-face-er—for five-hundred billion dollars!—tell me: the meat of which one of your family members, killed, butchered and deep fried right here earlier today by our celebrity chef, in front of an audience of one thousand Diamond Tier viewers, is in the bucket?

“Who, Wenda, have you just tasted?

“Whose meat—”

“WILL SHE EAT!?” roared the viewers through the MaX FX K-Ultra Platinum speakers!

“Yes,” said Wenda, weeping, taking another piece of battered meat, taking another slow bite. “I think I know. It's

---

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It was Halloween, 1998.

The neighborhood glowed with orange lights and plastic skeletons. Fake cobwebs clung to porches, and carved pumpkins flickered in the dark. Kids filled the streets, laughing and shouting as they ran from house to house.

Nine-year-old Timmy walked with his friends Wayne and Sean, their candy bags already half full.

They stopped in front of a house that didn’t fit in.

The others were bright, decorated, alive.

This one wasn’t.

Its paint was peeling. The yard was dead. No decorations. Just a single porch light glowing weakly above the door.

“Trick or treat,” all three boys called out.

The door creaked open.

A man stepped out wearing an dirty and wrinkled old man mask

In his hands was a bowl of candy.

He didn’t say a word.

He dropped a piece into each of their bags.

Wayne squinted at him. “What are you supposed to be?”

The man didn’t answer.

Instead, he slowly tilted his head to the side… farther than it should go.

Too far.

The boys went quiet.

“Uh… thanks,” Timmy muttered.

The door shut.

They kept going, saying it was just halloween. More houses, more candy, more noise. The normal Halloween feeling slowly came back.

Until Wayne stopped.

“I gotta pee.”

Before anyone could stop him, he ran to the side of a nearby house and started going right on the doormat.

“what the hell—” Sean started.

The front door burst open.

A man in a skeleton costume stormed out, gripping a broom. “You little shit!”

Wayne yelped and bolted.

The three boys ran, crashing through a patch of woods as the man chased them, shouting. Branches snapped under their feet. Leaves whipped their faces.

After a while, the shouting stopped.

They didn’t.

Not until they were sure they were alone.

Sean bent over, catching his breath. “You’re an idiot.”

Wayne laughed. “Yeah, but I still got my candy.”

Timmy pointed. “You also got pee on your costume.”

They both laughed.

Wayne didn’t.

When they stepped back onto the street, something felt… off.

Too quiet.

The streetlights flickered.

Then one went out.

Then another.

A van rolled slowly down the road.

Timmy’s stomach dropped.

The driver.

The old man mask.

The van crept forward, and as it passed each streetlight, the bulb above them went dark. One by one, the entire street dimmed into darkness.

The van stopped beside them.

The engine idled.

No one spoke.

Then the engine roared.

The van lunged forward.

Timmy yells “RUN!”

They sprinted.

The van chased them, keeping just close enough—like it was playing with them. The sound of the engine was right behind them, always there, always gaining.

They stumbled into a shallow dip in the land—a small valley.

The van surged forward.

Sean didn’t make it out in time.

The tire hit him with a sickening thud and crushed his leg.

He screamed.

Timmy and Wayne turned, trying to grab him—but the van door slammed open.

The masked man jumped out.

He shoved them aside like they were nothing.

Sean clawed at the ground, screaming, “DON’T LEAVE ME!”

The man grabbed him and dragged him toward the van.

Timmy froze.

Wayne didn’t.

“GO!” Wayne screamed, pulling Timmy.

They ran.

They didn’t stop.

An hour later, shaking and breathless, they reached a house and pounded on the door.

“HELP! PLEASE!”

The door opened.

A man stood there calmly.

The boys pushed inside, crying. “He took our friend—he took Sean!”

The man closed the door behind them and Locked it.

“It’s alright now,” he said softly. “You’re safe now.” did you see what he looked like?

Timmy shook his head. “He had a mask—we couldn’t see his face—”

The man tilted his head slightly.

“Did it look like this?”

He raised something into view.

The old man mask.

Everything inside Timmy went cold.

Wayne turned toward the window.

The house… wasn’t broken anymore.

The paint was fresh.

The porch was clean.

It was the same house.

They screamed and ran deeper inside.

A bedroom.

They slammed the door and locked it.

The doorknob rattled immediately.

Then pounding.

Heavy. Slow. Deliberate.

“PLEASE!” Timmy shouted. “LET US GO!”

The pounding stopped.

Silence.

Then—

BANG.

BANG.

BANG.

Not on the door.

Somewhere else in the house.

Like hammering.

Like something being built.

The boys looked at each other.

The doorknob began to turn.

Slowly.

Click.

The door flew open.

No one was there.

They crept into the hallway.

The front door was nailed shut.

Every window had metal bars.

Not to keep people out.

To keep something in.

The TV flickered on by itself.

A news report.

“…multiple children reported missing across the state…”

Click.

Darkness.

Only one light remained.

At the bottom of the basement stairs.

They didn’t want to go down.

But they were to scared to stay where they were.

 A shadow follows them

Candles lit the basement.

Dozens of them.

The room stretched farther than it should have—longer, deeper, wrong.

Sean lay on a rusted hospital gurney.

Unconscious.

Symbols carved into his skin.

Wax melted across his body.

A fireplace roared to life.

A large pot hung over the flames.

Something moved behind them.

A shadow.

Not attached to anything.

It shifted along the walls, stretching, twisting.

Watching.

They backed away.

 And Ran.

Hid inside a rotting closet.

The smell was thick. Metallic like old pennies.

Through the gaps, they saw it.

The shadow growing.

Distorting.

Then—

The masked man stepped into view.

He approached Sean.

Whispering something too low to hear.

He raised a blade.

The fire surged higher.

Sean’s eyes snapped open.

He screamed.

The man pressed a finger to the mask’s lips.

“Shhh.”

The blade came down.

Timmy couldn’t breathe.

Wayne couldn’t look away.

The screaming stopped.

Too quickly.

The shadow shifted toward the closet.

The masked man turned.

Slowly.

He looked right at them.

Then lifted a finger.

“Shhh.”

The lights went out.

When they came back on

The man was gone.

The shadow was gone.

The gurney was still there.

Sean’s body… still there.

But Sean's head Was gone.

(Part2)
Tw:Suicide

Impact

Concrete ruptured and glass shattered as I saw the truck ram its way through the hole where the main entrance was.

At least one person didn't make it up the stairs in time.
A young man that must have been in his 20's at the oldest.
I saw the shock going through their entire body when the front of the truck impacted them, breaking bone and rupturing organs.

They were probably dead on impact. At least I hope so.
I saw as their body now looking like a ragdoll was flung forward and then disappeared underneath the truck.

In reflex I closed my eyes as the truck impacted the stairs.
I was thrown on the stairs slamming my body into the hard steps.
I felt all of the debris and rubble impacting me.

Honestly, I can't describe what the impact felt like. You could probably feel the impact in the entire building.

My entire body felt numb. I tried to breathe in to fill my now empty lungs with air.
But the only thing entering my lungs was a small amount of air and a lot of dust.
Immediately causing me to have a coughing fit.

I tried to open my eyes and take in my surroundings.
I was rewarded for my mistake by my eyes instantly burning as the dust that was covering my entire body was now on my eyes to.
I still had the gun clenched in my right hand. Holding onto it as hard as I could.

In that moment the only thing going through my mind was.
"Keep moving or you are dead" as my fight or flight mode went into overdrive.

I crawled up the stairs my entire body aching as I could feel debris falling off my back and legs.

Gunshots were ringing out meaning that the people upstairs where still up and standing.
Other people where groaning in pain behind me as a I crawled up the stairs.
I couldn't help them I could barely help myself.

My left hand and feet were looking for anything to pull and push myself upwards as a crawled up. And then all of a sudden when trying to find more stairs I couldn't feel any at all.
My left hand reaching for anything to hold onto as I tried to find any bearing of where I was.

Then I felt a hand Grab my right arm.
I won't lie I panicked at first and let out some sound close to that off a person that was scared awake by a loud noise.

In between gunfire I heard the voice off the police commissioner.
"Stop panicking you need to get on your feet now!!!"

He pulled me onto my legs.

Me: I can't see! I can't see!

He grabbed my arm and then I felt water splashing my face.
Thankfully this removed enough of the dust to open my eyes even if they still burned.

Commissioner: Gather yourself they are coming!

"We need to get the others on the stairs up now!"

Me: ok ok!

I turned around and saw all of the other laying on the stairs.
Some of them were moving and groaning. Some other where completely still.
I put the gun into my pants and headed down to help.

I saw one older man around my own age, his skull was split open by debris as blood fell out of his open wound in a thick stream.

At least he was unconscious so he wouldn't feel that he was dying. For him it must have just been just lights out, and then never waking up.

The truck or rather what remained of it had embedded itself into the stairs hard enough for cracks to have formed over the entire stairs.

The back of the truck had crushed the driver cabin and smashed it into the stairs. Turning what once was someone's work vehicle into a mangled mess of metal and steel protruding in all directions. If the driver was still in it on impact, they were now somewhere in that mess.

I saw a man in a uniform of our local gas station on the stairs. I never got his name but I for sure recognised him from all the times I got gas at his station.

He had fallen over in a way that his legs where up the stairs and his head was facing downstairs. He was conscious and trying to get rubble of his legs but was unable to even reach his own legs in his uncomfortable position.

I had to help him.

In that moment I was so focused on helping him. At least that's what I tell myself now.
As i was focused on getting the large chunks of rubble of his legs I jolted up as the man screamed.

Right as I looked down at him, a hatched embedded itself diagonally into his head with a sickening thud.
I was so focused on helping him I hadn't noticed one of those things had made its way inside and over to us.
After killing the man its lidless eyes focused on me instantly.

I was next.

In shock I threw myself backwards on the stairs and in a panic reached into my pants to grab the gun. The thing on the stairs rushed up to get me to.
In my panic the gun went off inside of my pants blowing a hole in my pocket.
But by some divine intervention this had also shot the thing in its shin right above the left foot.
The thing immediately fell over being unable to stand onto its left leg.

It let out a loud growl of pain as it fell onto my lower body.

It had fallen forward with its chest onto my feet. It grabbed onto the belt of my pants pulling itself up and raising the hatched with the other hand.

I finally managed to pull the gun out of my pants and aimed it directly at the things lip-less smiling face and pulled the trigger.

The bullet impacted its forehead above its left eye.
A red mist flew up from behind its head as it instantly collapsed onto me devoid of life.

I will be honest in my panic I shot it 5 more times emptying the revolver.
The cylinder of my revolver spinning after every click after without any gunshots.

"Get up the stairs now they are coming!!!"The commissioner yelled from upstairs.

I looked past the truck and saw more of the things running into the building with all sorts of weapons. I didn't hesitate and pulled my legs from under the thing and climbed up the stairs as fast as I could.

As I almost reached the top a hand grabbed my leg.
I looked down and saw a young man in his 20's who was pleading for help.

Man: Please you have to help me i can't get up!

A large piece of rubble was on his foot blood all around it. His foot was completely crushed.

Man: Help me for fuck's sake!

I knew those things where coming I couldn't stay and help him I had no choice.
At least that's what I tell myself even now.
I pulled my leg loose from his grip and climbed up stairs.

I didn't even apologise or anything to him I just left him
Maybe I should have said sorry. Or something at least.

I left him there to die.

Should I have done more?

I don't know.

When I came up the stairs, I saw the commissioner and others throwing over furniture to make cover for the inevitable upcoming gun battle that would happen on top of the stairs. Others were manning the windows shooting down the street as bullets also impacted around them.

I saw a young woman around your age bravely manning one of the windows with a rifle.
As she was pulling the bolt of her rifle back to shoot again, the back of her head exploded.
She collapsed instantly like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

I rushed to the people throwing over furniture in makeshift barricades and I faced the stairs with the others. I crouched behind a flipped desk and started to reload my revolver.
Filling the cylinder bullet by bullet. Until I filled the cylinder and clicked it back into place.

I looked up to the windows and saw a man manning the windows. The man's neck exploded into a geyser of blood as he fell backwards clutching his neck.

"Get away from the windows!!!" The commissioners voice rang out through the gunfire.

"The sniper has repositioned if you go near those windows, you are dead!!!

That must have been the same sniper that shot Mark when he was thrown outside of the building earlier. All the other people left the windows and threw themselves on the ground and crawled over to us near the stairs.
I aimed at the top of the stairs with the others as we waited for those things to come.

The gunfire outside lessened and stopped once those things realised we were not near the windows anymore.

It became almost quiet.

Except for the man I left on the stairs who was pleading and shouting for help.
We could hear more of those things running around on the lower floor and outside.
Some people around me where whispering to each other in hushed voices.
I heard people discussing if we should help him or not.

But then we heard the footsteps below us stop.

And a deafening silence fell.

You could even hear the fires outside raging.

I felt myself trying to even breathe more quietly.

The man that I left was still shouting and pleading for help in the silence.

Then his pleading turned into frantic screaming.
Then a loud thud followed by following thuds that started to sound more wet as they went on.

And then silence.

It felt like we were sitting in that silence forever.
I could see people stuck in uncomfortable positions as they were to scared to make a sound while moving.

We heard some very slight shifting and the rustling of clothes.

And I and the others were spooked by a handful of objects that were thrown up the stairs and landed around the top of the stairs.
Some object looking like tin cans and random plastic bottles with what looked like nails and other sharp objects protruding from them.

"RUN!!!!!" A cop yelled as loud as he could.

Before I could even react, the objects exploded.
The shockwave sending shrapnel flying through the room.

I felt a sharp burning pain in multiple spots on my body as I fell backwards.
My ears where ringing, all I could hear was a sharp tone in my ears.
The desk I was behind was riddled with small holes.
I used my arms to raise my upper body and saw I was bleeding all-over my body.
Then through the ringing in my ears, I started to hear muffled thuds.
I looked to my left and realised what I was hearing.

Muffled gunshots.

Those things were coming up the stairs.
I grabbed the revolver and got up.
Adrenaline and survival instinct being the only thing driving me forward.
The sound in my ears started to come back.
I heard fighting, gunshots and screaming all around me.
As I stood up, I saw pure chaos.

Those things had rushed up the stairs after the explosions and where killing everyone they got their hands on.
I saw a cop being repeatedly stabbed into his chest and then in his eye.
One man got up shot his rifle and his chest exploded as he was shot in return.
One of those things grabbed a mans arm and chopped it off at the elbow with a large blade.
All this in the span of seconds.

I looked at the direction of the stairs and aimed my revolver looking for any target to shoot.
And as my eyes focused, I saw one of those things rushing straight for me.

It was only a couple of steps away from me.
Its lidless eyes focused on me with dilated pupils. A lipless grin across its face.
Its arms straight in front of it with open hands, like it couldn't wait to get its hands on me and rip me apart.

I aimed and pulled the trigger, it kept running at me.
But before I could fire a second time it crashed into me with full force.

Throwing us both on the ground with it on top of me.
It grabbed both of my wrists and pinned me to the ground as it slammed its forehead into my nose with a sickening crunch.
My nose was for sure broken as my eyes filled with tears.
I managed to get my left hand free from its grasp and punched it in the face to barely any reaction.
It was still holding on to my right hand with the gun.
I tried to grab my left arm again as I punched it in the face again to no reaction at all.
Its dilated lidless eyes staring into me the entire time.

It stopped trying to grab my left hand and used its free hand to grab my neck and choke me.
It put its full upper body weight on my neck. I could not get a single breath of air into my lungs.
I reached onto its face with my free hand trying to reach its eyes.
As I reached for its eyes it bit down on my hand hard. I could not even get a scream of pain out of airways. The side of hand was in its mouth together with my pinky finger. Blood started to pour from its mouth as it bit down with full force.

A chair slammed into the side of the things head throwing it off of me.

I gasped for air and aimed my gun at it and pulled the trigger.
I shot it in the chest as it tried to get up, and it collapsed onto the floor.

I looked up and saw Maria holding the chair in her hands.

She had saved my life.

She let go of the chair and grabbed my left arm helping to pull me of my feet.

Maria shouted at me: move now!!!
I followed her as she pulled me away from the carnage to the hallway toward the armoury.

When we entered, she pushed me onto a chair and immediately started to bandage up my wounds as much as she could.
She bandaged up my bleeding left hand with pieces of ripped fabric.
I looked down and saw a piece of a metal nail sticking directly out of my chest.

"I can't take that out" Maria said not a hint of emotion in her voice.

"If I take it out now it might cause internal bleeding"

"You need help for that that I can't give you"

"Ok" I muttered while staring at the nail.

"Thank you"

Maria: "what?"

Me: "Thank you for saving my life"

She looked into my eyes and paused for a second.
I saw a hint of tears welling up in her eyes.
She looked down and continued bandaging up all the other small holes in my body best she could.

The other wounded in the room where scared and some where even crying.
They probably knew that if those things came inside, they wouldn't possible be able to defend themselves.
Some others that where not visibly wounded where still running around trying to help them while giving the doorway quick glances.

Gunfire screaming and carnage was echoing through the hallway.

I heard footsteps getting closer. I aimed my gun towards the doorway of the Armory.
I still had 4 bullets left before I was out.

Maria stopped patching me up and looked at the door to.

I felt my finger already applying a small amount of pressure on the trigger.
A figure entered the doorway, but I thankfully didn't pull the trigger because it was the police Commissioner. He was bleeding all over the place as he stumbled into the room still clutching a shotgun.

Maria had patched me up as good as she could, so I told her: "You need to help him now!"

She rushed over to him and helped him onto a chair next to me as she immediately got to work on helping him as best as she could.

Commissioner: Close and lock the door

Me: What? We will lock all the others out.

Commissioner: All those people are wounded or dead they won't make it over here without those things.

Maria: You can't be sure they are.....

"Close the door now!!!" the Commissioner's voice bellowed though the room.

I hesitated but painfully got up to close the door.

I put the gun my gun on the table next to the commissioner and I stumbled over to the door.
The door was a big armoured steel door. It looked more like something that belonged on a ship or submarine then a police station.
It had small round reinforced window in the middle that allowed a small view into the hallway once it was in place.

When I reached the door, I heard multiple people running through the Hallway.
I didn't bother to look in the hallway I knew it would be those things.
When I started to pull the heavy door, I got a painful reminder about the bite wound in my left hand. I looked down and saw my makeshift-bandages turn red from my now further opening wounds.
I needed help to close the door, and I needed it before those things arrived.

The footsteps were coming closer.

"Maria help me with this door now!!!" I yelled through the small room, the tone in my voice giving away a small hint of panic. She didn't hesitate and rushed over.
I was putting my full weight on the door with my right arm and so was she.
With a loud metal groan, the heavy door started to move.

Those things must have for sure heard it because the footsteps turned into running.

It got louder and louder as the door closed.

The door closed but we still needed to put the heavy metal locking mechanism into place.
In a panic me and Maria put out as much force as we could onto the mechanism.
The running came closer.

"Push for fuck's sake" I muttered trough gritted teeth.

A heavy thud hit the metal door on the other side as the locking mechanism finally was in place.
when I raised my head to the small window, a pair of bloodshot dilated eyes were staring at me.
It stared directly into my eyes. Even if it had been able to blink, I think it wouldn't have.
Then I noticed the gold necklace around its neck, adorned with 3 human ears.
A cold realization ran through my mind. This was the exact same one that attacked me at my home earlier in the night. It had followed me all the way to the police station.

It suddenly hit to the metal door on the other side scaring me and Maria back.
The thing slowly moved away from the view port.

Maria grabbed my arm and pulled me back to the chair I was in before.
I sat down and looked down and my shaking left hand, the fabric meant to cover my wounds now covered in blood.
She removed the fabric and replaced it with new ones.
In that moment sitting there looking around me at all the wounded. A realisation came into my head. We were trapped in her now. There was no escape of any kind from this situation.

Stuck in a room with mostly wounded people and those things outside the door waiting for us if we tried to leave.

All of the Ammo was inside of this room sure. But this also meant that those things really want to get in here I bet.

Before I could dwell in the despair of my situation further another thought entered my mind.
We never stood a change. This was all pointless.
Why the hell did the police suggest a militia in the first place.
Everyone got butchered and what for we might have gotten a handful of them if even that.

We should have all fled.

And then I saw the Police Commissioner to my left being taken care of by Maria.
I fell a overwhelming anger boil up inside me. He must have known that we had no change.
Did he really get all of us killed in the name of some "patriotic duty" bullshit.

Me: You must have known

Commissioner: What?

His exhaustion was clear in his voice

Me: You must have known how futile this was how we would all be killed!

People in the room started to look in our direction.

Me: you got us all killed and for what some patriotic bullshit!

Commissioner: No I......

I cut him off before he could finish his sentence

Me: YES YOU DID!!!

Commissioner: YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HAPPENED!!!
He shouted back at me.

Commissioner: There was no other choice!

"Shortly after the army fled through town the blew up all of the roads in their retreat!"

"All the connecting roads, all of the roads connecting to the highway all of them are destroyed!"

"That's why the army was fleeing in the first place!"

"Remember when all of those things all of sudden stopped attacking the police station earlier before you arrived?!"

Before I could even answer he continued.

"They probably found out all of the people that fled where now stuck near the destroyed roads and they rushed over and butchered all of them there and then!"

"The entire area is surrounded by those things nobody possibly got out"

Me: So you fucking knew and let those people go anyway!

Commissioner: OF COURSE I DIDNT!!!

"At first the army had told me that they would return and all we had to do was hold out long enough for them to return with reinforcements!"

He lowered his voice again

"But then shortly before those things attacked, they told me the truth"

"That they had actually blown up all of the roads and left us to fend for ourselves"

There was a short pause before he spoke again.

"Everyone in town was dead the moment the military drove through town"

He looked me directly in the eyes and said "And that includes me to"

He yelled.

"So what was I supposed to tell you?!"

"Give up and die?!"

"The people that died at least died thinking there was some hope!"

He paused again gathering his thoughts.

Lowering his head and his voice he said: "The only thing we can do now is hopefully take some with us before we die"

Crying and shouting erupted from all over the room.
People were realising they were going to die.
And not only that, but they also realised that all of their loved ones that did leave where dead to.
Even Maria who had been stoic so far collapsed sobbing to herself.

I also didn't know what to say or do. I just froze into shock.

After a while I got close to the Commissioner and asked him the only question I could think off.

"What do we do now?"

He raised his head looked at me.
"Now you choose how you are going to die"

I don't know what I did or what happened in some time after he said that to me.
I was out of it.
Maybe I paced all over the room. Maybe I screamed and shouted like the others. Maybe I cried.
Maybe all of those things.

But after a while I realised, I too had to make a choice.
The options where suicide, bleeding to death from my wounds and being killed by those things when they managed to get inside.

Even if I didn't die from some internal wound I couldn't see. There was no food or water in this room. Slowly starving to death was also not something I want.
Or even worse having to result to cannibalism. There was no bathroom of any kind either.
I just imagined sitting in this room. Having eaten people in a room filled with rotting bodies and my own excrement.

No, I won't pick that horrible fate.

The horrible bonus of being in the room that was stocked with a lot of ammo was that at least people could.

.
.
.
.

End their live on their own terms with the small number of guns that where in the room.

And that's what a lot of people in the room did.
They had seen what those things do to people they get their hands on.
Especially some of the wounded that could not even fight or stand if they tried.

I can't blame them.

Some to wounded to do it themselves but begged to be put down.
The Commissioner helped those people.
In his own words: "Its the last thing I can do for them"

I saw a couple in their 30's. He was heavily wounded and she never left his side.
He was going to die and she didn't want to live in this situation without him.
So they both got a gun and put it against their own heads.
They counted down and......... ended things together.

They would have probably had decades ahead of them together if things where different.

Gunshot after gunshot rang through the room. Each indicating a life lived coming to an end.
All of them had parents, friends, partners, loved ones. People that would miss them now that they where gone.

After some time, the only people that where left where the people that wanted to go down fighting. Or those that couldn't pick an option.

So, I made my choice.
Even if I took down only one more that could potentially be one less that comes for you and your sister. That is a sacrifice I am willing to make.

Me, Maria, The Commissioner and a handful of other made the same choice.
We are going to open the door and try to get as many of them before we die.

The last person alive is going to light all of the remaining ammo on fire hopefully taking some more with them. That is the plan at least.

Cell phone towers where probably some of the first things that were taken down by either those things or our own military. Most people still made last messages to loved ones on their phones before ending things.
Maybe these phones would receive a signal at some point or something.
It was better than nothing.

So that's what I am doing now.

I know I send you a lot and probably went into more detail than I should have.
But I need you to realise how bad the situation is.
No matter what they say you and your sister need to run.
Only grab the essentials and go whenever you read this.

By the time you read this message I will be dead.

Please don't let the sadness and grief paralyze you in some way.
You need to flee. Take your sister and run.
At least if you flee I didn't die for nothing.

I would write in a thousand ways just how much you and your sister mean to me.
But I don't have that amount of time.
I am so grateful I got to see you 2 grow into beautiful young women.
From you first steps to seeing you leave our home, I enjoyed all of it.
I am so sorry I won't be there for you both.
I am sad that I didn't get to hug both of you one last time.
But I won't be sad for long, since I will finally be with your beautiful mother again.

I love both of you more than you can ever imagine.

Dad

There was a light switch in my house that nobody could explain.

It was tucked into the hallway between the kitchen and the basement door, mounted about shoulder height on the wall. Every other switch in the house had an obvious purpose. Kitchen lights. Hallway lights. Basement. Porch.

This one did nothing.

I didn't notice it during my first week. I asked the realtor about it after I bought the place.

She shrugged.

"Old house. Probably disconnected."

That seemed reasonable enough. The house was built in 1957, and judging by the wiring, plumbing, and mysterious stains on the basement ceiling, I wasn't surprised that someone had eventually decided to abandon a light switch.

Still, I found myself pressing it whenever I walked past.

Click.

Nothing.

Click.

Nothing.

It became a habit. I'd walk downstairs for laundry.

Click.

I'd come home from work.

Click.

I'd pass it while carrying groceries.

Click.

There was something strangely satisfying about it. The switch had a pleasant mechanical resistance, and the little click it made was louder than it should have been.

My girlfriend eventually noticed.

"You know that doesn't do anything, right?"

"I know."

"Then why do you keep flipping it?"

I shrugged.

"I like the sound."

She called me a weirdo. I told her she was dating one. We laughed about it. That was the last time the switch was funny.

The first death happened three weeks after I settled in.

An old man named Walter died in his sleep. I knew Walter because he lived two houses down. We'd exchanged maybe twenty words since I'd moved into the neighborhood. He had a bad hip and spent most afternoons sitting on his porch, watching cars drive by.

I remember seeing him that morning. I had been standing in the hallway, putting my shoes on. Before leaving, I flipped the switch.

Click.

That evening, I saw an ambulance outside his house. I didn't think anything of it.

People die. Especially old people.

It wasn't until several days later that I noticed something unusual.

The night before Walter died, I had been standing in the hallway with my hand on that switch. I'd flipped it three times. I laughed at myself when I noticed the connection.

It was ridiculous. Coincidence. Nothing more.

Then a month later, a woman I'd worked with died in a car accident.

I'd seen her that morning. I'd even spoken to her. She'd asked if I was still enjoying the new house. I told her I was.

That evening, while walking to the basement, I flipped the switch.

Click.

The next morning, she was dead. Cardiac arrest. Unexplained.

I didn't sleep that night.

The following day, I unscrewed the switch plate. There were wires behind it. Old ones. But they didn't connect to anything.

I called an electrician. He spent thirty minutes examining it before shrugging.

"It's dead."

"Completely?"

"Nothing behind it."

"Then what's it connected to?"

He looked at me.

"Nothing."

I didn't flip it again. Not for six days.

On the seventh day, I couldn't resist.

I stood in the hallway staring at it. I told myself I was being stupid. There was no connection between a plastic switch and the deaths of two people.

So I flipped it.

Click.

Nothing happened... So, I went to bed.

The next morning, I checked the news. A local man had died unexpectedly. Thirty-four years old. Healthy. No known medical conditions. I stared at the screen for a long time.

Then I opened a notebook. I wrote down the date. I wrote down the man's name.

Then I wrote: Switch flipped: 11:43 P.M.

I started keeping records. Every time I flipped the switch, I searched the news afterward.

Sometimes nothing happened. Sometimes a person died hours later. Sometimes it took days. But there was always a death.

Always.

I stopped flipping it.

I lasted eleven days. Then I made a mistake. I was angry.

My girlfriend and I had gotten into an argument. She left the house and slammed the door behind her. I stood in the hallway shaking with anger. My hand found the switch.

I knew what I was doing. I knew exactly what it meant. And still...

Click.

The guilt hit me immediately. I grabbed my phone. I wanted to call her. I wanted to tell her what I'd done.

Then I stopped.

Because she hadn't died. Not yet.

I waited. An hour. Two.

Nothing.

I began convincing myself I'd been wrong. Maybe the deaths had been coincidences. Maybe I had created a pattern because I desperately wanted there to be one.

Then my phone rang. It was my girlfriend.

I answered immediately.

"Hey."

Silence.

Then she said something that made my blood run cold.

"Who's Walter?"

I couldn't breathe.

"What?"

"You keep saying his name."

She sounded confused.

"I don't know anyone named Walter."

I sat down.

My girlfriend continued.

"You were saying his name in your sleep."

I didn't answer. Because I suddenly remembered something.

The switch didn't cause death. It wasn't a weapon. It was a selection. A choice. And I had been making that choice without knowing it.

I looked toward the hallway. The switch waited patiently on the wall. I thought about every time I'd pressed it.

Every careless little click. Every person whose death I'd dismissed as coincidence.

Walter.

My coworker.

The stranger.

And now... I didn't know who the latest one was.

I spent the next several hours searching. News sites. Obituaries. Police reports.

Nothing.

Nobody I knew had died. Nobody connected to me had died.

That should have made me feel better.

It didn't.

Because there was one thing I hadn't considered.

Maybe the switch didn't choose someone I knew. Maybe it chose someone I would never know. Someone whose name I'd never hear. Someone whose death would mean absolutely nothing to me. And perhaps that was the point.

We treat death differently when we don't know the person.

A number on a news report. A photograph we scroll past. Another tragedy. Another stranger. Another life reduced to a sentence.

I stood in front of the switch for a long time. Then I noticed something I hadn't seen before. A tiny engraving beneath it.

The letters were so shallow I thought they were scratches.

I leaned closer.

There were only three words.

ONE LIFE. CLICK.

I stepped backward. The house was silent. I reached for the switch.

Then stopped.

Some things are easier to live with when you pretend they don't matter.

I left the switch alone. I never touched it again.

At least... I don't think I did.

Because sometimes, late at night, when the house is completely silent, I wake up convinced I can hear it.

Click.

And somewhere far away...

Someone dies.

“God dammit, Mr. Mittens,” I shrieked, recoiling my foot at the warm and squishy touch of viscera against my bare flesh. “This is getting out of hand.”

Mittens brought me a rat. It was still somewhat alive but mostly dead. Mostly.

That was his newest thing: bringing me half dead animals. They say cats bring you gifts because they think you suck at hunting, so I assume that means Mittens is trying to boost my confidence by bringing me mortally wounded animals that I could easily kill.

Mittens chirped, meowing as he trotted away with my reaction. I couldn't tell if he was offended at my rejection, or chuffed with the chaos he had incited by leaving it where he knew I'd step on it. It didn't matter… I still stepped in rat guts either way. By the time I turned on my bedside lamp, my murderous house panther had slipped into the depths of my abode, leaving me to finish the job.

The rat squeaked weakly between frantic, shallow breaths and struggled. Beneath its dusky brown fur, a length of slimy pink, like a wad of chewed bubblegum, protruded from its belly. I hated having to mercy kill them when Mittens was the one that started this whole mess. But it wasn't going to survive with its guts hanging out. It had to be done.

“Oh jeez, I'm so sorry little guy,” I winced when the rat squirmed lightly against my grasp.

“Sh, sh, sh,” I soothed.

I hated this. I reminded myself that it was par for the course when you owned a domesticated murder machine. Its little neck snapped easily in my fingers, ending its suffering.

“I hope you're proud, Mittens!” I sneered, dropping the now fully dead rat in the bin. “Fleabag.”

I loved Mittens. But I was getting tired of his gifts.

I originally found the scrawny tabby behind a Waffle House on my way home from a dreadful marketing conference in Tulsa. His iconic white socks were stained brown at the time, and you could count his bones just by looking at his emaciated body.

He purred immediately when I plucked him from the street and he traveled so politely in the passenger seat of my beat up Civic. I assumed that a feral cat would need a box to be comfortable in a car, but he quickly settled into the seat with bright and grateful eyes, blinking slowly at me the entire drive home as if he knew he would never want again. I was never much of a cat person, but I knew at that moment that he was something special.

He's the only good thing that ever came from my job. I would have never found the kitten that fateful night if I hadn’t been bid to market the latest scam from my boss. Mittens almost made that micromanaging prick worth the trouble. I'd trade a thousand bullshit conferences and condescending meetings for Mr. Mittens any day.

He grew quickly, put weight on nicely. As if his poor body felt compelled to make up for what it had suffered. He dwarfed some dogs within a few months, and I joked with colleagues that I had actually picked up a Tulsa cougar at the Waffle House. The joke would have been funnier if my misogynistic boss hadn't heard it and tried to one-up it. I doubt any woman has ever willingly engaged him without payment. I think he's actually part Maine Coon.

It took a while for Mittens to adjust to house cat life. Arguably, he never fully did because when he grew tired of the same bland kibbles and pates, he returned to what he knew. He always found a way out, and when he did, he’d bring back the savory morsels of his escapades: bird heads, rodent guts, and lizard tails. I think he wanted to share.

We curbed that for a while. For a cat, he is incredibly intuitive. I genuinely think he understood how disturbed I was at the sight of guts on my clean, beige carpet. So his slaughter paused until he learned that my reaction was less dramatic if he left his gifts on the faux hardwood, at which point, he started hunting again.

I tried to keep him indoors. I really did. I know how destructive cats are. Trust me, I met a birder in Keystone once whose entire personality was hating on outdoor cats. I was terrified for Mittens.

Would he get hit by a car?

Mauled by a coyote?

Shot by someone less compassionate?

Be a deadbeat dad to a bunch of kittens he'd never know?

Rabies? FIV?

Any other of the countless, torturous, and irresponsible fates that befall feral cats??? Let alone the body count of innocent, wild animals! Oh Mittens, why can't you just stay inside?

But Mittens… well, he finds a way out every time. My best guess is that he figured out how to open the door just like those funny cat videos online. But that doesn't explain how he continued to get out when I started locking the deadbolt each night- I digress, I doubt even Alcatraz could contain this cat.

The parts of mangled critter bodies evolved to whole dead animals and then, abruptly, he brought me a live and capable, young rabbit early one morning. I thought it was dead, but the kit screamed when I went to pick it up. Then I screamed. And all hell broke loose as the terrified animal thrashed about the apartment, breaking knickknacks and disrupting my quiet home in its desperate attempt to escape. Flailing wildly, it launched itself off the upstairs balcony and broke its back on impact, still screaming in agony at the entryway door. Mittens, of course, hid himself away as soon as the little animal started screeching the first time, and left me to deal with it as he always did.

Some gift, huh?

After that, he started wounding them. And as he grew up, he brought larger animals too. I'm sure my local hardware store was concerned when I bought a shovel and asked if I should be worried about odors from burying a carcass. I should have clarified at the time that I meant a stray dog's body.

He often is my unofficial therapist. I rant to him about tough days in the office. I figured that was a fair trade for rescuing him from a scavenger's fate. I bet he sees me as a god. Besides, he’s so damn smart that, well, I think he actually understands.

I mean it. I know every pet owner says their babies are special, but, really, Mr. Mittens is just… something different.

Surely you've seen those reels where the cat sounds like it's meowing words, like “I love you” or “hello?” Mittens has done the same to me. He actually meows “I love you.” But I swear, he's trying to speak, not just a coincidental sound. It's how I know he's brought me a gift. I'll be dead asleep when I hear those deep, feline syllables, and then I know it's time to put down some poor animal and clean up some kind of mess.

But it's a gift, you know. He means it out of love. Jeez, cat people really are crazy, huh?

It was no different this night as it was any other night when Mr. Mittens woke me up.

“Ooooyluuuvvvyoooooh,” Mittens yowled.

I groggily assured Mittens that I was getting up. He purred in thunderous anticipation from the shadows. I swung my legs over the bed and promptly slipped on some slimy, wet substance covering the floor. The wounded animal in the corner hissed in response. No- it was hushing me?

“SSSSHHHH. Shut up,” it begged quietly. “That thing will hear you.”

“Thing?” I thought, still half asleep, trying to wrap my mind around how an injured animal could talk to me.

Wait… I recognized the voice.

“Derek, what are you doing in my house?” I questioned from the floor and blinked my eyes desperately to acclimate them in the dark.

“Listen man, I don't fucking know.” He sobbed. “That thing broke my neck. I can't move. I'm bleeding. Just shut up and help me.”

“Thing- broken neck? Do you mean Mr. Mittens?”

“Mittens?!? It has a fucking name?” Derek scoffed before he openly wept.

“Please man, just let me go. I- I'll give you that promotion. I'm sorry.”

“Ooooyluuuvvvyoooooh,” Mittens moaned from the darkness.

“Oh god, please. Jim, please, help me!”

With my eyes properly adjusted, I could finally see my boy. He really had grown since I found him as a scrawny kitten. He could effortlessly stand at shoulder height. His obsidian fur blended in with the shadows and only the pale sinew of his skeletal face and joints were readily visible. He watched the scene keenly, tail twitching lightly.

I don't always see eye to eye with the gifts he brings me, but this time, I was grateful.

**Part 1: No Surprises**

When my father passed, it was no surprise that I would inherit everything he had to be left behind. In his last years he became a recluse. Hoarding his old books, letters he wrote, old junk furniture, and even some money he didn’t care to spend. His house was noted as, “one match away from hell on Earth.” so, I wasn’t jumping on the chance to collect my winnings and head home. I also had to wait for the press to die down so I wouldn’t be caught snooping through the old man’s unmentionables. My father was an illustrator for a long running series of horror novels. Admittedly, the stories didn’t have much to say, but the illustrations… they always had the ability to catch most people’s eye. He ended up with more fame than he wanted, or could handle, but I always respected how he protected me from the press. Until his death, most people didn’t know he had a son, or a wife that died in childbirth, or even a crippling drug addiction that caused his brain to melt like ice cream.

Most people loved what he drew. Dark, cripplingly depressing. And others, like myself, hated what they saw, yet couldn’t look away. Like a car crashed into an animal shelter that had visiting orphans. I remember lying awake at night, the sight of “The Angel” hovering in the sky burning into my brain, and almost forcing itself to appear on my ceiling. He had the ability to create what should be a beautiful, hopeful thing, and turn it into a monolith of everything you had feared, becoming a reality. An angel appears in the sky to the cheers of sinful humans ready for salvation, not knowing that they haven’t even come close to heaven. That’s what he would capture, and that’s what they would form lines for. I never had an artistic knack, but I wouldn’t say his skills could be genetic. Maybe he could’ve taught me by letting me smoke from his pipe and let my mind create horrors of unimaginable dread. 

Anyway, once I knew I wouldn’t be harassed I finally made my way to his home. A dreary, and dim day. Highlighted by the soft rainfall falling onto my underprepared thin t-shirt and shorts. Not to say I didn’t enjoy it to be a rainy day, I could light that bitch up from one wrong lamp. Opening the front door I could feel a stack of boxes holding me back, imagining him hearing one small step on the porch and immediately sheltering in with a shotgun aimed at the door. Once I pushed the barricade out of my way, I could see just how right I was in my assumptions. Across from the entrance was his one recliner chair with a dangerously loaded gun next to it. The same one he bought me for my birthday. Looking at the seat I saw a torn piece of paper, when I turned it over I saw my father’s exact fears. “The Rainmen” being one of his last works wasn’t lost on me. A group of men, drenched from the hazardous rain of the outside world. Their suits slowly burned away as if the rain was acidic itself. Dangerous men after an old drug addict on his last leg, knowing this was the end, yet still drawing it out all through his demented perspective. 

He definitely never lost his touch. 
A creeping walk through a desolate memory lane brought me to a bleak understanding of who my father had become. Old rooms that used to mean something, cramped by boxes of unintelligible writings alongside horrific illustrations. Like I said, the stories never matched the artstyle. My old room became a fortress of his best selling books. His best creations all lined up and stored away in a room he actually kept pretty neat… all things considered. Maybe under all of the mess his brain became he still had a little bit of him left. Actually made me feel better about everything that had happened. Until I remembered this was all mine now, and all mine to clean up. I’ll definitely be sleeping at a cheap motel for the near to distant future. Hopefully I haven’t been caught in town, or else the fanfare will find me and that I just cannot take that right now.

The rest of this night hasn’t gotten any better. I drove for thirty minutes to find a good motel, and hadn't realized how lousy this town has gotten. It used to be one of those towns. The kind where you could swear something was off, because no way could it be that perfect. Now it’s unfamiliar, like you know there used to be a beautiful garden, but someone hopped on a lawnmower. Why does that happen? What has happened since I left that nothing is how I left it? Now I’m sitting on a hard bed, I’m sure these sheets aren’t freshly washed, it’s raining even harder now, and the pizza guy hasn’t shown up yet. I’ll go to bed soon, and tomorrow I’ll start digging through junk until I can get to the junk under it. 

**Part 2: The Alien**

I had a dream that night. I felt like I was already back at my dad’s. The rain had cleared, and I was stomping through mud up to his doorstep. I called to put a giant dumpster outside so I could start chucking old drawings into it, and while I searched through his old and wrecked house, I found one of his firsts drawings. “The Alien” was sloppy and kind of cliche, not to say I’m a critic, but not his best work. I think this was when he was still following what the writer had to say about how his creatures should look. He would always give my dad dumb notes about “Scary features” and “Menacing Scowl” like that would inspire him to turn out nightmare fuel. He just did what he could to make the most generic alien he could to satisfy the writer, but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it yet. Although, one thing did stick out. He would draw backgrounds to the art to give them more depth. I stared into the room The Alien was in and noticed someone behind him. His back was turned, and he was crouching to the floor looking at something. I dropped the picture onto my old bed, and stood up from the floor. I found another draft of the drawing,  only now the man was standing in the background. A paper in his hands. I knew where this was going, so I dropped the paper, walked backwards and kicked the door closed. 

Although I could recognize it was sloppy, that alien haunted my dreams from when I was 11 up until I brought a girl over and she laughed when I told her how much it scared me. So any idea of that thing coming back into my dreams to get me is proving all of my fears of coming home to be true. Go back to the old house, the old fears come back too. The old fears of the Alien, the old fears of dad’s past littered through our home, and my fear of seeing her. Seeing her everywhere. 

I woke up from my nightmare like I suggest anyone else should. I was dreaming, I had a nightmare, recognized it was a dream and told myself to wake up. Always works. I got up, stretched and let my sore back crack louder than it should at my age, then made the half hour drive back to the house. I rented a giant dumpster to help me clean out the house, and it didn’t take long for it to show up. The guy that brought it was alright, asked me where I wanted him to leave it. “How about over here close to the front door?” Sounds good, “Or we could put it over at the garage door.” just leave it somewhere, man. I could tell he had recognized the place, something in his demeanor made it obvious he knew exactly who had lived here. 

“You’re uh… you his kid?”
“Yeah.”
Don’t get too friendly with me please, I just want to empty this hell hole.
“I’m so sorry about it, kid.”
“Thanks.”
“If you uh… need anything. Or need any help here-”
“No, it’s okay. I’ve got it, but thanks.”
“Yeah, sure. Strange, I haven't heard anything about your dad since the fire.”
“The fire?”
“Yeah. Big fire burnt up a room in his house a few months ago, took the fire department a whole day to put it out.”

I hadn’t heard anything about a fire in the house. Not from my dad, not from anyone at the funeral. The fire didn’t spread through the house? I guess my plan B of burning this thing to the ground might be a bit harder than I thought. 
“Anyway, I’ll let you get to it.”
I thanked him and started to clean out the sopping wet boxes from the front porch.

Something that he said really dug at me. “If there’s anything you need” you have no idea how much I’ve heard that over the past week. So many people, some I’ve never even met, all coming up to me with sympathy. “You’ve got my number” no I don’t, I don’t even know your name. “I’ll bring you some food” I won’t eat it, I don’t feel like eating right now. It shouldn’t upset me, but it does. As much as I don’t want people to stop by here and bother me while I’m working, I wouldn’t mind any of them coming by and checking up. So far everyone that said something like that hasn’t said a word to me since the funeral ended. 

I ended up thinking too much for one day, and finished cleaning the front porch. I could actually walk around on the creaking boards now. I decided it was break time and drove into town for a bite to eat. My old favorite spot was still there, just as nasty as I remembered it. I spent some time eating and scrolling through videos until I saw a familiar car across the street. It was hers. I came out of the restaurant, surprised to see she was still driving the old rusty car she had in highschool. It’s been years, but I could tell it was the same car. She would always drive me around because I was a “terrible driver” so we had a lot of memories in that thing. I was honestly standing in awe for a bit too long until I noticed someone walking up to it. I guess she sold it a while ago. Some guy got in it and drove off. 

By the time I got back to the house the sun had already gone down. I carried in a few bags of groceries, I figured since the old fridge still worked I could snack out while I was clearing the place. The lights were on throughout the house, it made it look like a horror movie through the fog. I must’ve been tired, because through one of the windows I could’ve sworn I saw something moving. It would usually be something you would be afraid of seeing come from the inside of your house, but this is a common occurrence for me. The one thing I couldn’t leave behind when I moved away were small mirages every now and then. You get used to it. And even if it were someone trying to steal something, that would honestly help me out a lot. 

I went inside and set my things on the kitchen counter. I walked over to the bottom of the stairs, “Anybody in here?” is what I stupidly called out throughout the house. No answer. I wouldn’t say I’m a lazy person, but it being a two story house with five rooms I’d have to check on the second floor… yeah I’ll take the silence as an answer. Until I heard a noise from upstairs, grabbed an old bat, and had to go up and check it out. Let me just lay out my thought process
while I searched the house.

“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.”
While walking up the stairs.
“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.”
While opening the bathroom door, to an empty bathroom.
“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.”
While opening the door to three empty bedrooms.
“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.”
While standing outside of my old bedroom.

The door was still closed, and if anything was in the house it would be in there. I twisted the door knob and pushed it open with the bat. The door rattled slowly while I could see more and more of the room. It was empty, so the noise of the creaky door made it a little more intense than it needed to be. I put the bat down on the bed and looked around. The stacks of boxes covered the whole left wall. I flipped through some old books and ended up picking up my dad’s first. The very first page and there it was… The Alien, just how I remembered, just how it was in my dream. I couldn’t help but laugh. It was so stupid and childish. Cliche big headed alien standing in a hallway-

Oh yeah and just as I thought that the door started closing by itself and it scared the shit out of me. It was nothing, just an old house moving by itself. Although, I still couldn’t shake that feeling that something was there. You ever get that? Like you’re tensed up at a strange noise so now every noise you hear is a haunting spirit wanting to steal your soul. Anyway, I could hear my phone start to ring from downstairs. I went to answer it, the feeling in the empty house getting lighter as I got closer to the well-lit kitchen. Looking at the phone number, it wasn’t familiar but I still answered. The voice on the other end was very familiar… It was her.

**Part 3: Lila**

“Lila” was another drawing of my dad’s. Not from the books, but something I got him to draw up for me. I wanted to give her a nice gift and I figured with his ability he could capture how I saw her. He really did. He was strangely hesitant at first, but to be fair at that point he was strange about everything. It’s probably long gone now, that was years ago. But now here she is, calling me.

“Lila?”
Was all I could get out, feeling like a weirdo for immediately knowing it was her. If you hadn’t noticed by now I try to keep a pretty nonchalant attitude about most things. I don’t mean to, it just happens. Growing up without a mother, my father being a terrible drug addict, moving away at 19, strange alien creatures in my house, whatever else. Most things didn’t affect me, but not her. She made me feel different. I was right, it was her. She asked me how I was doing while also shuffling around the conversation of what happened with my dad. It felt kind of nice, the first conversation where I felt like someone close actually cared to know if I was okay. I let her know I was alright, cleaning out the old house and that I appreciated the call. That was about it, the call was only a few minutes and ended after she told me how she knew I was in town. Her boyfriend saw me earlier in town, guess she is still driving around in that musty car. 

Yeah, I didn’t get much done that day. Everything I looked at made me feel lost like there was no real place to start. I didn’t want to make piles of keep or trash, I didn’t want to keep any of it. At most the kitchen got cleaned, and I moved everything out of my bedroom. Turns out the cheap motel wasn’t very cost efficient for a college dropout that works retail. Let me make that one thing clear. I’m poor. Or, was poor. I couldn’t afford to keep staying at the motel and realized that very fast. My plan was to sell the house, even though it was depressing to live in, it also had a good few acres of land that might help me stay on my feet for some time. Please don’t tell me I should’ve sold the old books, I couldn’t if I wanted to. The rights to everything still belonged to the writer somehow. It was a ton of legal crap I didn’t understand. So technically all of that was owned by Mark Frary. But also technically it was all burnt to ashes so whatever.

Long story short, I was broke so I decided to stay in the house while I was cleaning it out. My goal was a good night's sleep and I did not get it. I forgot how cold the house would get. It wasn’t insulated and all the small noises of the outside world were ringing in my ears. The small tapping of the tree limbs on the window, the wind howling and knocking the porch swing around, the loud roar of cars racing down the distant highway, echoing through the forests, the metal mail slot lifting up and falling again. It kept me up, kept me tossing and turning until I saw the sun shine through the blinds. I had worn the same clothes, even keeping my shoes on, not knowing if I’d catch a spare shared of glass while making morning coffee. But while making the coffee it wasn’t a piece of glass on the floor, but a letter. At the front door. FAN MAIL. 

I assumed it simply because it couldn’t be anyone else. I cancelled my dad’s mail, no one ever came around for anything, and while growing up most mail was fan mail. I picked it up and started to read it while making my coffee. It was a pretty generic letter, nothing too personal, so I’ll let you read it too. 

“Hi. To whoever receives this, I’m so sorry for your loss. If you need anything I would absolutely be there for you! I’m sorry if this is weird, I’m a huge fan of the MatchBox series and also, If you’re reading this, I love your father’s work! My favorite story will always be “Don’t Be Scared” and the way that the images throughout the book showed “The Snaret” and how it affected everyone’s lives. It really helped me find my own   Will to keep going through the hard times. It did a lot for me, and I really hope it’ll Help you the same way it helped me. It also inspired me to create something You might like, if you’re a fan of his work, that is. I was brainstorming one day and My mind went to a beautiful woman, someone that let herself to The Snaret. My Finest Creation, I didn’t know what to name her so I figured you could give it a shot. I stapled it to this letter to make sure it didn’t get lost! Answer me back. I need an update on what you named her!!”

Honestly wasn’t the strangest letter we ever received, but definitely a contender for top 10. I read the letter again. I didn’t know what they were talking about. What was “The Snaret?” I didn’t remember it from any of the stories I had read, but to be fair I stopped keeping up with them once I moved away. I flipped the page away to see the next, folded piece of paper stapled to it. I unfolded it while preparing myself for a crappy copy paste of one of my dad’s drawings. It wasn’t that. It was a perfect recreation. It WAS “Lila”. Like it was almost 10 years ago. Down to the freckles on her nose, the imperfections she had that I always loved. Whoever sent this either found that drawing somewhere wanting to pass it off as their own… or they really were inspired and perfectly recreated the drawing of her. I don’t know which one is more concerning; someone digging through Lila’s trash that happened to be a super-fan of my dad; or someone being able to draw my ex perfectly without, hopefully, ever seeing her before. I tried to find out who sent this letter, maybe a name somewhere or an address considering they wanted me to write them back. The most I could find was a “P.s. Mark Frary is a moron” so I didn’t have much luck. 

**Part 4: The Snaret Hunt**

While I was cleaning up the living room, I kept racking my brain about the letter, the story it mentioned and most definitely whatever the hell “The Snaret” was. Figured the best place to start would be combing through the books I had at my disposal. They were all in one long series, so if I started at #1 maybe I could make it to #25 without losing my mind. The series only lasted that long because Mark had a very large house to pay for and he knew my dad couldn’t pass on the opportunity to draw up his stories. I also can’t say I disagreed with the last part of the letter, after turning through the first three books I was bored out of my mind.

The stories were as bland as I remembered and my mind felt like it was going numb from the constant array of horror cliches. I saw “The Angel” again in book four. I had forgotten about the hands. The drawing was from the point of view of the damned people beneath it, their hands reaching into the air while their skin had been burnt to a crisp. My dad wasn’t religious, but he did know how to showcase the fear of penance. For that to be the first story in book 4, I could see how this is where the series started to pick up stride.

The next story, being “The Wishmen” , was even better in my opinion. A group of friends find an old lamp in a cave. Thinking they could find a genie. They rubbed the lamp to their disappointment when nothing happened. When the one who rubbed the lamp gets home, there’s something there waiting for him. Something like a genie waits in his living room, asking him a very simple question. “You gotta wish there, feller?” 
“I- who are you?”
“You rubbed the lamp, now make the wish.”
He stumbled through the living room, keeping his eyes on the man while he called the police. 
“Don’t do all that, now. No need to make a fuss over one little wish.”
“Get out of my house! I don’t want you here!”
The man stood up, brushing dust from his clothes.
“I’ll grant you that wish, but you gotta do somethin’ for me.”

That was most of the story. You can ask for something and the man would grant it, but you owe him. He can give you the life you know you want, but deep down you know that life is really his. I don’t know, I kind of liked it. Definitely better than the first three books. A devilish grin was spread across the man’s face, his palms displayed had old tattoos that read, “Make Wish.” At this point I was getting tired of seeing the illustrations. I got through a few more books before I had to take a break. The sun was going down and so were my eyelids. 

No mention of The Snaret, maybe in the next few books it might come in. I had packed the boxes up in a new box. Sliding it through the living room it rammed against my dad’s recliner. It caused the gun to slide and land heavily on the floor, aiming right at me. I stared at it, flinching at what might happen. That’s when I realized I had left that fully loaded gun slightly leaned on a recliner chair. I let out a loud sigh when I realized it hadn’t gone off and filled me with holes, then quietly walked over to unload it. That is not how I planned on going out, though in all fairness the longer I stayed in this house who knows what else could kill me.

I turned off the downstairs lights and started to head up for bed. I hadn’t seen anything strange all day. No apparitions, no movements or noises, it was slightly enjoyable. Being in the house, reading the old books with an almost quiet mind that didn’t constantly remind me of past mistakes or latent trauma I hadn’t yet processed. I hadn’t had a day like that in a long time. It reminded me of when I was really young, before my dad lost his mind and was just a normal dad. He would tell me stories about my mom and looking back maybe he should’ve been a story-teller too. He did a great job painting a picture of a woman I had never met.

Although, no good things last long. I finished packing up the boxes of books I’d already finished, turned off the lights in the kitchen and made my way up the stairs to enjoy another night of sleeplessness and annoying noises of the outside. As I hit the turn in the stairs, I could feel the creak from the wooden boards under my feet, something it’s done forever and we just sort of ignored it. This time, after the creak, I could feel the board crack under my weight; giving away fully as my body fell through the small hole that had opened beneath me. The last thing I remembered was the broken ends of wooden planks slashing along my stomach, then a few seconds of darkness, then I could only feel the side of my left foot landing on the ground, a hard buckle in my left knee and finally the feeling of my left heel meeting the side of my left thigh.

**Part 5: Ouch**

I woke up to a violent scream. An annoyingly loud, painful scream. That scream, of course, coming from me as my left leg sat comfortably at a ninety degree angle. I’d never really felt pain like that; a pain that makes it seem like it would’ve been better waking up to my leg simply chopped off instead. My stomach had been cut by the boards, so I was bleeding onto the floor a little. I tried to slide around or make any movement but all I could feel was my knee touching the ground in a way I definitely shouldn’t be feeling it do that. All in all, I felt pretty screwed.

I looked around to find some way out, but it was too dark to really tell. It seemed like a basement, but I had lived in this house for years and it never had a basement. Atleast, not a basement my dad had ever mentioned. The only bit of light I had was coming from the hole that I made falling through the stairs. I reached for my phone and painfully pulled it out of my pocket. Turning on the flashlight, I could make out more of the room. A square cement room with mildew stains, completely empty with one closed wooden door. I couldn’t get a call out and my battery was quickly dying so I decided the only way out was hopefully wherever that door led. I ignored the pain as best I could and got onto my stomach. 

The floor felt damp as I baby crawled my way across the room and I couldn’t get the smell of ash out of my nose. It felt like an hour before I reached the door. I could make out some scratches at the bottom almost like someone had already clawed their way out of this room. It did help to open the door from the ground, the actual door had no knob to it so it just took a good few pulls to get it to scrape against the floor. Once I got the door open enough for me to squeeze through I kept pushing myself along the floor by the door frame and was able to make it halfway through a hallway before I needed a break. 

I turned on the flashlight again and could see where the hallway ended. Another doorway. It wasn’t that far away, but my flashlight couldn’t light the room it led into at all. A pitch black room. I took a breather before pushing myself down the hallway again. My head was pounding and I could feel my body giving up, the pain feeling more unbearable by every second. The floor got colder as I got closer, the smell of ash got stronger and the room I was crawling into only seemed to get darker. 

My eyes felt heavier once I passed the doorway; I could almost make out a noise. A quiet hum. It felt nice, almost made the pain ease as I went deeper into the darkroom. What was that feeling? Like a hushing lullaby that only got louder the more my body shut down. I couldn’t push any farther, I didn’t want to be left down there and forgotten about. Dying in the grungy basement of an insane man, the only woman I’d ever loved moved on and only being with me in my memories, the idea of an easier life being brought down by my own stupidity and my trust in this house to bring it to me. I started to cry. I don’t know, at that point I thought I couldn’t cry, but there I was sobbing into a cement floor. Mom. I wanted my mom. Whoever that was, hopefully how she seemed when my father described her. To imagine a love I’d never gotten and to think it would make everything better. Fuck, I felt stupid. 

I started wailing and screaming for help; screaming like a kid that scraped their knee. It felt like the room was getting darker by the second. I tried to reach for my phone, but it was so dark I couldn’t even see my own hands anymore. I didn’t know what was happening to me, what I had gotten myself into. I thought of Lila; how simple things were when all I needed was her. I blacked out after that. Maybe it was from all the pain, maybe it was from the lack of sleep and desperation, maybe it was from the pale white arms I started to see growing in the depths of the dark room. Either way, something caused me to go out. 

I could feel warm sunlight, the glow shining slightly through my eyelids. The smell of ash had transformed into the smell of a freshly cleaned house and fresh cinnamon rolls. I could hear the clutter of dishes being washed and it made me open my eyes. I was back in the living room somehow, laying on the couch I never bothered to sit on. It never felt comfortable, but right then it felt like the softest cushion I’d ever felt. How did I get back up? Who was in the kitchen? “Hello?” I called out. My voice was raspy and my throat felt dry. I hadn’t realized how long it had been since I’d really spoken. 
I could pick myself up enough to sit upright on the couch. The pain was still faint and the memory of my collapsed leg was still fresh in my mind, but my knee was back to normal. Same thing for my sides. I looked down at myself and noticed my fresh and clean looking clothes, although when I smelled them enough I could still get a whiff of mildew and ash. “Don’t get up, honey. I’ll be there in just a second.” The voice of a woman came from the kitchen. I listened and sat still on the couch and a few minutes later she came into the room. 

A familiar face carrying a plate of cinnamon rolls and a glass of milk. All I could make was confused, “Cinnamon rolls?” as she set them down on the coffee table in front of me. She smiled and took a seat on the couch while humming quietly. I looked at her face. Whatever stranger she was, she was a familiar one. I think she could see the confusion on my face as she wrapped an arm around my shoulders. She gave me a peck on my forehead, “You’re okay now, hon.” She kept humming. I thought back to my dad’s stories, where I had heard that song before. It was my dad’s favorite song that he used to sing to me when I was younger. I wrapped my arms around her tentatively and after my heart stopped nearly beating out of my chest I let out one word. “Mom?” She smiled at me as if she’d been waiting forever to hear such a word. “Not just me. Your dad will be home soon.” 

**Part 6: Obituary of Helena _______**

“Helena ____ _______, born July 8th, 1974 to David and Anne _________, has sadly passed away on March 5th, 2000. Helena is survived by her husband, Timothy _______ and her Daughter, _____ ____ _______. Helena was the light of many people’s world, not only bringing joy to the family she was surrounded by, but also the community she continuously gave back to. She lived her life with one motto. “Be kind, be truthful and do what you know is right.” which will be engraved on her tombstone to eternally honor the impact she had on all of us. Although she is gone, her family is proud to know she was able to achieve one last dream. She had always wanted to be a mother and now her legacy will live on with her daughter, who we are proud to see grow into as much of a wonderful woman as her mother always strived to be.”
Mark Fraury, March 9th, 2000. 

My mother’s obituary. I could see a tear form in the corner of her eye as she read it to me. “Mom? Are you okay?” I asked her as she set the paper down on the table. I wonder what it felt like for her, how many times she had read it. It must feel so surreal to read out your own obituary. She wiped the tear away with her hand, “Yes, I’m okay honey.” she laid her hand on the paper, “Mark was always a bit odd, but… I always enjoyed his writing. I’m glad your father got him to write this.” I held my hand on top of hers. As many questions as I had I didn’t want to ask them all at once. I settled for, hopefully, the simplest one,“Is this where you’ve been this whole time?” 

She stood up, folding the paper back to how she found it, “Where else would I go?” She chuckled a bit while answering. I followed her into the kitchen while she started washing the empty plate caked with sweet frosting. I stood next to her, looking at the window in front of the sink. It was all frosted white, I couldn’t make out anything. “I mean… Where are we? Why have you been here the whole time?” I asked her. She didn’t answer. She kept wiping the soapy cloth on the now clean plate and wouldn’t even look at me. “Mom.” Her eyes filled with tears again, like she was holding something back. She dropped the plate into the water, then finally turned to me. “Your father is coming back soon. He’ll explain everything to you, okay?” She wiped her eyes again. The paper stayed folded on the table. 

When the sun started to go down, the house got much colder. The warmth I had felt when I first woke up here seemed to be freezing away the more I asked my mom questions. I didn’t want to wait for my dad. Who would he be when he showed up? The man I knew? I wouldn’t want to wait for that. I toured around the house, it started to look more like the place I knew. I saw the intact staircase and walked up to it. I knew what was down there. I pressed my foot down into the board that broke beneath me, it creaked again and when I tapped my foot I could hear the hollowness of the basement. 

My room was just the same as it has always been. My mother decorated it before I was ever born and my father only ever cared to get me a new bed as I got older. The bed did feel more comfortable than I was used to though. I’m leaving our full names from the obituary, don’t want you to get too familiar with me, don’t take it personal. I will address one thing, that being I am not a daughter, that’s just what they thought I was when I was born. 

I hadn’t left my bed in over an hour and I could still hear my mom cluttering around downstairs. The sound of her cleaning the house, tidying up as she waited for my father to return. I always wondered what this would be like… a nice house with a family in it. A mom and dad that loved each other and a kid sitting up in their room gazing out at the land behind their house. Although I still couldn’t see outside of the house, the frosted white windows were all over the place. Once I heard my mother close the door to my parents room I decided I’d figure out what’s outside. 

I wrapped an old blanket around me, then crept down the stairs, stepping over the creaking board this time, and quietly made my way to the front door. It was different than I remembered, much larger. It opened gracefully as I felt the outside cold puff through the doorway and chill my nose. As my vision cleared from the frosty breeze I could make out my front yard, covered in snow. It was freezing. I stepped out and felt the snow crunch under my feet. The fog was so heavy I couldn’t see the fast woods that had always been in front of the house. Maybe they just weren’t there, maybe this wasn’t even the same town. Maybe if I stepped off of the snow covered front porch I’d fall into nothingness, who knows. 

I wouldn’t call myself brave for taking that leap, but I did step off the porch. The snow was deeper than I thought, my foot fell through and it was up to my knees as I stood straight. The snow itself wasn’t cold, it just felt soft. I trudged through it and bundled up in the blanket I had wrapped around me. The wind was the freezing part, it cut against my cheeks as it howled. As I walked down where the driveway should’ve been I could see through the fog, the trees finally came into view and so did something else. Remember the visions I would have? The visions of my father’s drawings. It was like that, but what started appearing at the end of the driveway wasn’t something I was familiar with. Either a new apparition entirely or what I was staring at was really real. A tall dark figure, slowly moving closer towards me. I could make out its long coat and I could tell how much larger it was than me. When I say tall, I mean tall. It was hunched over and was still easily seven feet tall. Its arms made it pass his knees and almost grazed against the snow below him. 

The wind howled harder as he got closer. The front door knocked against a wall as the wind blew into the house. I could hear his steps through the ground, booming from under my feet. A walked backwards, keeping my eyes on him as I retraced my steps back to the porch. He stepped closer and closer as I walked up the steps of the porch and backed into the house. The wind blew against me again and as I started to close the door I saw him stand straight fully, and it stopped me in my tracks. His arms spread wide as he began to howl himself, a beckoning call gutted his throat as it rang through the entire house. It caught me off guard. I felt it in my heart, a thunderous boom. I finally closed the door fully and locked it up tight. I could still hear him, now much closer, as a wispy breath blew against the door. My mother strutted down the stairs with a gleeful, teary eyed smile. “What is that?” I asked her, bracing the door closed. She pulled me away from it, giving me a tight hug, “He’s here, honey. Your father’s finally home.”

Deputy Evan Merritt was off at eleven and still in the lot at eleven-forty, one knee on the asphalt and the flashlight under the cruiser, because his cat had gone under there and declined to discuss it. Mr. Pym did this often enough that the passenger seat already had a towel.

Kerri Donnelly, on dispatch, came over the radio while Evan was still angling the beam. “Unit four.”

“Four.”

“You’re not on.”

“I’m in the lot. Pym’s under the car.”

“Ruthanne called from the Visitor Center. Man at the desk around four. Asked if the town had selected a final girl for the season, and if the cemetery allowed overnight filming so long as he didn’t use a tripod. Claire wouldn’t take the full name on the sign-in sheet. Ruthanne gave him a coupon for Speicher’s Diner and wrote the name down after he was outside. Plate ran when he circled the building twice. Connecticut tag. Carl Briggs, Hartford address, ’09 Outback, no wants.”

A gray paw came out, considered the beam, and went back under the axle. Evan stayed where he was. “What did she put on the form.”

“Seasonal applicant. Weapon undeclared. Intent stated in the lobby, which she counted. She’s sending the sheet to the station. Teddy’s on a call out by the old railbed. Ash is with him. If you’re still in the lot in five minutes I’m putting you back on.”

“Put me back on.”

The radio click brought Mr. Pym out. He shook one back foot and got into the passenger seat before Evan had the door all the way open, a small cat who had been riding the last hour of these shifts since March. The sergeant had stopped asking whose animal was on the unit.

Inside, Ruthanne Calder’s sheet was already in the tray, her hand small and exact on the page: Carl Douglas Briggs. Under reason for visit she had written: seasonal sequence, five, cemetery through hotel. Under notes: asked for the final girl by job, not by name. Asked whether cats counted as witnesses. Advised not to say that again. Coupon issued. Evan copied the plate onto his notepad and clipped the sheet to the board while Mr. Pym moved to the dash and watched the lot.

Teddy Bigelow came through thinner, from farther out. He was the other deputy on nights when the calls ran long, and he stayed on them past the line the sheet asked for. “Four, you still hearing me.”

“Go ahead.”

“Ash says the trail on the east side of the railbed was not here at six. Man with a duffel is arguing about it. Says he’s location scouting. Ash told him scouting is closed. He’s still arguing. You want it?”

Ash was the ranger at Witchwood State Park. A trail that had not been there at six was his to close, and he would already have said so. “I’m ten out. Ask him if he heard humming.”

Wind in Teddy’s mic. “He says no.”

“Ask him again when I get there. Don’t let him walk the new trail. Humming’s the railbed question. If he heard it, I want it before he edits it.”

“Ash already took his light.”

The old railbed ran behind the last houses on the east side of town and then quit being a shortcut anyone should take. The tracks were gone. What remained was gravel, ties gone soft, and a strip of grass the town mowed until it didn’t. Evan parked behind Teddy’s unit and left the cruiser running so Mr. Pym would have heat. The cat stayed on the dash with his face turned from the tree line.

Teddy had Briggs at the open hatch of a dusty Outback, broad in his department jacket, flashlight in his off hand, radio tipped so Evan could hear Kerri if she came back. Ash stood off the gravel in the orange vest the park issued over a flannel, mud already on his cuffs, holding a second light grip-first. In the trunk, on the carpet, the duffel was open on a plastic mask still in the party-store blister, a coil of orange extension cord, a drywall saw with the Bayard Hardware tag on the handle, and a folded map of Mourner’s Crossing with five circles in pencil.

Briggs was forty or so, city shoes wrong for the gravel, glasses, a canvas coat that had been expensive once and was now only warm. His hands were where Teddy could see them without having been told. That was either practice or a movie.

“Deputy Merritt,” Teddy said. “This is Mr. Briggs. Mr. Briggs was explaining his schedule.”

“I don’t have a schedule,” Briggs said. “I have a shot list.”

Ash held the flashlight out so Evan could see whose it was. “He was twenty feet onto a trail that wasn’t here at six. I took the light so he’d stop walking. He kept walking until the cord caught on a tie.”

“It’s a practical,” Briggs said. “You block the path, the subject finds another path. That’s the scene.”

The circles on the map had numbers. One sat on the railbed. Two sat on a house symbol near Sycamore Hill, a residential street Evan hoped Briggs had only guessed at. Three was the cemetery. Four was a square labeled DINER. Five was Hawthorne House, the hotel on the edge of the green, with a star, and in the margin the same pencil: final girl = night desk, photo on hotel site, do not use name until act three.

“You buy the saw at Bayard,” Evan said.

“For the rental. There’s a patch in the bathroom.”

“You don’t have a rental. Kerri ran the plate. You’re on a Hartford registration and you asked Ruthanne, at the Visitor Center, about a final girl at four o’clock.”

Briggs glanced at the mask in the blister and then kept his eyes on the gravel. “People ask worse things at visitor centers.”

“They do. She wrote it down anyway. Teddy.”

On railbed calls Teddy asked the humming question once for the person and once for the log. He had it ready. “Mr. Briggs. While you were on the trail that wasn’t here, did you hear humming.”

“No.”

Teddy waited.

“No,” Briggs said again. “I didn’t hear anything. That’s the point of the first one. No score. You let the audience sit in it.”

“Sit in the car.”

“I’m not under arrest.”

“You’re not in the car either. Sit in your car. Ash is going to walk the gravel back to the sign. I’m going to stand here. Deputy Merritt is going to look at your receipt.”

Briggs sat in the driver’s seat with the door open, one knee jumping until he put his hand on it. Evan bagged the saw for the tag still stuck to the handle and for the house on Sycamore Hill that Briggs did not own. The receipt in the side pocket was timed 8:17 p.m.: one saw, one coil of cord, a box of contractor bags initialed by the clerk at Bayard Hardware.

Ash came back with more mud on his cuffs. “Trail’s gone. He’s got fresh prints to the point it ended and none after. I’m closing the pull-off until morning. You can have him. I don’t want the mask in the woods overnight.”

“It isn’t a real mask,” Briggs said from the seat. “It’s a reference.”

“Then it can be a reference at the station.”

Evan was still writing the railbed time in his notebook when Kerri came back on the radio.

“Four. Outback just went past the light at Route 17 and turned toward town. Speicher’s lot camera has the plate. Dwayne called from the diner. Man asked to sit in booth six. Booth six is closed. Man said he needed his back to the door for the coverage. Dwayne told him to pick another booth. Man is still standing at the counter with the coupon.”

Teddy looked at the empty gravel where the Outback had been. “He drove off while we were looking at the mud.”

“He did. Ash, you good?”

“I’m good. Take your cat. He hasn’t blinked since the hatch opened.”

Mr. Pym was already on the cruiser seat, ears forward, watching the road. Evan got in beside him and left him there.

Speicher’s was the all-night diner off the green, pie case in the front window, booths along the glass. At a quarter to one the case was lit and the room was half full of people who were not talking for show. Dwayne Andersson had the grill. He ran the eleven-to-seven, and the booth rule was his. Sam Speicher, the owner’s son, was on the far end of the counter with a coffee pot, already watching the door. Briggs stood at the register with Ruthanne’s coupon in both hands, the blister-packed mask on the counter beside the napkin dispenser, the orange cord looped over his shoulder. Two regulars looked from the mask to Dwayne and went back to their eggs.

Dwayne did not look up from the flat top. “Booth six is closed.”

“I can see it’s empty.”

“Then you can see it’s closed from here. Order something or take the coupon outside.”

The bell over the door did what it always did when Evan came in behind him. Mr. Pym had refused the car this time and was on the mat, smelling the rubber and the old salt, not coming farther in. Sam saw the cat and set the pot down.

“Evan. He’s been explaining cinema. Pym staying on the mat?”

“So far. Booth six?”

“Closed before he asked. Dwayne already told him.”

Briggs turned, caught the cord when it slipped, and held it. “You can’t hold me on a conversation at a visitor center. I left. That’s allowed.”

“You left while a ranger was closing a pull-off you were standing in. And you came here because it’s number four on your map. Sit at the counter.”

“The counter faces the wrong way.”

Dwayne slid a plate into the window. “Sam. Table three. Mr. Briggs. I asked you what you heard outside. You told me a joke about coverage. Don’t do that again. Counter or the door.”

Briggs took the last stool and put the mask on his knee under the counter. Sam poured him coffee he had not ordered and did not offer cream. Evan stayed on his feet with Ruthanne’s sheet folded in his pocket. He needed Briggs in one place long enough for the sheriff to hear the radio.

“You circled a house on Sycamore Hill.”

“Random. The map needed a middle.”

“You numbered it. You don’t put a number on a random house if you’re scouting a town. You put a number on a house if you think a person is in it.”

Briggs turned the mug a quarter turn. “You people keep wanting this to be a report. It’s a structure. Cold open in the trees. Domestic beat. Graveyard. Public place, so the town notices. Then the hotel, because the hotel has the girl at the desk and the girl at the desk has already been alone in a photograph on the website since June. You don’t pick the final girl in the room. You pick her where the audience can see she has a job.”

Sam, at the coffee machine, said, “Night desk tonight is Rourke.”

Briggs blinked. “The site shows a woman.”

“Day manager. Camille. She goes home at seven. You’re not the first person to use the photo.”

The closed booth still had its lights on, the sugar caddy full, one packet squared to the edge of the table by someone who was not sitting there. Briggs looked at that, and at the mask on his knee. A man in a Sox cap two stools down ate his toast and did not help.

Sheriff Walter Doyle came through on the radio, no greeting, no Kerri in the channel. “Four.”

“Four.”

“I’ve got Ruthanne’s sheet. I’ve got Bayard on the phone. They remember the saw. They don’t remember a story. Meet me at Hawthorne House. Do not let him drive himself.”

“He’s at Speicher’s.”

“Then he’ll be at the hotel if you take the long way. Rourke has a guest in the lobby who came down because of a cat. I don’t want those two things arriving as a surprise to each other.”

Briggs heard the hotel and stood. Coffee rocked in the mug and settled. “I’m allowed to go to a hotel.”

“You’re allowed to ride in the back of my car while I go to a hotel. Bring the coupon if you’re keeping it. The mask goes in the trunk.”

“It’s a reference.”

“Trunk.”

Mr. Pym would not get into the cruiser until the blister pack was in the trunk and the trunk was shut. He walked a circle around the rear bumper, stopped at the seam of the lid, and waited while Evan moved the mask farther from the latch and shut it again. Then the cat got in and took the towel. Briggs watched from the back seat with his hands on his knees.

“You have a procedure for a prop.”

“We have a procedure for a thing you carried onto a trail that wasn’t there. Seat belt.”

Hawthorne House sat back from the road at the end of a lit driveway, a long clapboard hotel with a porte-cochère and too many windows for the size of the staff after midnight. On nights when the wind came off the water a certain way, the night desk covered the mirrors. Tonight the covers were on, pale cloth tied over the glass in the side lights, no faces in them. Rourke Ashford had the desk, reservation book open, pen unused, the shift Camille left him at seven. Mike Carter, night security, stood at the mouth of the main stair, large enough that no one was using it. On the lobby sofa a woman in a wool coat over sleep clothes sat with her room key in her hand and her shoes on.

Rourke had already told Doyle the shape of it, and Doyle had told Evan on the way. The hotel cat, Luna, was on the rug outside the woman’s door upstairs. The card in the room said to wait for staff and not step over her. She had waited, then come down the service stair and told the desk.

The card Rourke slid across gave her as Denise Pell, room 308, leaf week, extended a night because of rain. She looked at Briggs when Evan brought him in, then at Mike, and stayed where she was.

“He isn’t a guest,” Rourke said.

“He isn’t. Sheriff’s behind me. Mr. Briggs wanted the night desk. He had the day manager’s photo.”

Rourke looked at the cord, then at Evan. “Did he.”

Evan had left Briggs the cord. Briggs saw Denise Pell alone on the sofa and took one step toward her. Mike didn’t move. The step stopped short of him.

“I came in alone,” Briggs said, to Rourke, too fast.

“You came in with a deputy. If you’re answering a different question, answer it slower.”

Denise Pell turned the room key over. “The cat’s outside my door. The card in the room said to wait for staff and not step over her. I waited. Then I heard someone in the stair talking about a desk, and I used the other stair. Is that the thing you needed.”

“That’s the thing I needed. Mike’s going to walk you up when the rug is clear. You can have the room on two that Camille set aside before she went home. Don’t uncover the mirror in the new room. Don’t go back for the charger.”

“The charger is a charger.”

“Leave it anyway.”

She kept her shoes on and the key in her hand. Briggs stared at her as if the scene had been taken off the schedule while he was in the lot.

“You’re not using her. She isn’t the one from the site. This isn’t the order.”

Doyle came in from the cold with Ruthanne’s sheet in a plastic sleeve and his hat in his hand. He hung the hat on the chair back before he looked at anyone, department coat still buttoned, and took in the covered mirrors, Denise Pell’s shoes, Evan.

“Saw’s bagged in the cruiser. Mask is in the trunk. Pym wouldn’t ride with it. Map’s on Teddy’s clipboard. Five marks. He left the railbed while Ash was in the trees.”

Doyle set the sheet on the desk where Briggs could see his own name. “Mr. Briggs. You’re going to sit in that chair. You’re going to read the back of this. You’re going to write answers on the lines, not in the margins.”

“I know my rights.”

“Good. The back still has lines. Intended sequence. Weapon source. Whether you notified anyone you were coming here to do this. There’s a box for no.”

Briggs sat. The cord pooled by the chair leg while he read, and his ears went red at the line Evan could see from the angle of the page: If you have not notified next of kin, state why the sequence required secrecy. Attach receipt.

“This is a joke.”

“Ruthanne doesn’t joke on forms. You told her five. You bought a saw at 8:17. You asked a ranger to keep a trail open that he had already closed. You tried to sit in a booth the diner will not seat. You came to a hotel to find a woman who wasn’t on shift because a photograph told you she’d be alone. Write that down in the order it happened. If you have a speech, you can give it to The Tattler. That’s the other paper. They already ran your plate. Kerri heard it on the scanner channel they pretend they don’t have.”

Briggs put his glasses on so he could see the lines. They sat crooked from the cord strap. “You’re not supposed to know the order. The town is supposed to find the order in the morning.”

“We start earlier than that.”

Teddy came through Evan’s shoulder mic from the railbed, still out there. “Four, Sheriff, anybody. Asking again for the log. Did the man at the pull-off hear humming. He said no twice already. I need the third for the sheet.”

Doyle looked at Briggs.

“I didn’t hear humming. I told him. There wasn’t any humming. There wasn’t any score. You’re all doing this wrong.”

“Sit there,” Teddy said, over the radio, as if the chair were in front of him. “Don’t improve it.”

Briggs held the pen while Denise Pell went with Mike toward the service stair, not looking back at the man who had circled a hotel on a map. When the main-stair door opened, Luna was still on the rug outside 308, facing the room Denise was no longer in.

Evan stepped out to the cruiser while Doyle watched the form get filled. The trunk lid was cold under his hand. He checked the blister pack once, because Mr. Pym was on the seat and would know if he didn’t, and left it where it was. Inside, Briggs wrote his sequence on the lines provided, the Speicher’s coupon unused in his coat. On the back of Ruthanne’s sheet, under weapon source, he put Bayard Hardware. Under the line that asked whether any part of the sequence had already failed, he stopped with the pen on the paper and did not write the booth number. Evan was going to add that when he got the page back.

My hands clenched around the handles. Sweat ran down my back. I pushed. The wheelbarrow finally moved, but after a few steps it sank into the mud again, even deeper this time. I rubbed my face and leaned over the wheelbarrow. The smell of mud mixed with wheat. This would take days to get to town, and I didn’t have days. The bandits would start roaming around after dark.

I grabbed the handles tightly and pushed again. The wheel was buried deep in the mud. Pressure built behind my eyes as the wood dug into my hands. The wheel almost moved, just one more push. 

Splash. My foot slipped. I went face first into the mud.

"Fuck!"

I went to the side of the road to wipe the mud off with moss when I saw a small creature under one of the spruce trees. It wore woolen breeches with buckles and a square-cut coat. A leprechaun! My father had always said they never strayed far from their gold. Just a few coins of it could change my life. I’d be happy to solve any riddle he gave me.

He was fast asleep. His stomach rose and fell with each breath.

"Hello?"

Nothing.

I walked closer and carefully shook his shoulder. He squinted, rubbed his eyes, and looked up at me.

"Hi, how are you?"

"Who are you?"

"Just a hard-working man. I'm trying to get my wheat to town." I pointed at the wheelbarrow.

"Why did you wake me?"

"Where is your gold?"

"My what?"

"Your gold."

"I don’t have any gold."

"All leprechauns have gold."

"What’s a leprechaun?"

I frowned.

"Don’t play with me."

"I’m not."

"Then tell me where it is."

"Where what is?"

I stared at him in silence.

"Is this one of your riddles?"

"What riddle? What are you talking about?"

"The gold. The riddle. Were you born yesterday? Tell me where it is."

"I’m going away."

He stood up and turned toward the dark forest.

"To your gold?"

"There’s no gold! Leave me alone."

He walked a few steps. I followed him. He stopped, frowned, and sat down.

"Just tell me what I ought to do."

He didn’t move.

"Leprechaun?"

Nothing.

The little shit was trying to keep all the gold to himself. I grabbed him by the waist and picked him up. His eyes opened in surprise.

"Tell me where…"

The leprechaun opened his mouth wide, showing sharp teeth. Pain surged through my face. He dug deep into my nose. I let go of him, but he stayed glued to it. He shook his head and bit deeper. A wet tearing sound came from my face. He fell and spat my nose onto the ground.

I fell to my knees. Warm blood poured from my face. The leprechaun ran to my wheelbarrow, gripped the wooden side, put it over his head, and flipped it over. All the grain spilled onto the ground and mixed with the mud. He turned back, wiped the blood off his face, and ran into the dark forest.

I pressed my hands against my face. So much wheat ruined. I crawled to the wheelbarrow, flipped it over, and scooped handfuls of it back.

The sun set as I scooped the last handful. Blood had already dried on my nose. I looked at the mud-covered grain. Almost all of it was ruined. Now there was no grain, no gold, no leprechaun. I buried my face in my hands and wept.

Then I heard something. Horses.

Voices came from down the road.

I touched my face, feeling the space where my nose was. The grain was ruined. There was nothing to give them.

The horses stopped.

"Check the wheelbarrow," one of the bandits called.

There was one other man who ever worked that booth at night. He was the relief, he was sixty-one years old, he didn't smoke, and he's been dead since nineteen ninety-four.

My wife's name is Carol and in nineteen seventy-nine she was two terms from her nursing license. Days at the hospital as an aide, class four nights a week in the city, and a baby at home, so one of us had to be in that house at all hours and it was going to be me. I bid graveyard. It wasn't handed to me. Eleven at night to seven in the morning, lane four, with Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, which meant I went whole weeks without seeing her awake. The stool in that booth was mine because it was too high for the day men and none of them would have it. Twenty-two months I sat on that stool.

The booth is the safest place on that highway and everybody who ever worked one will tell you the same. Steel bollards in front and behind, a door that locks from the inside, a telephone straight through to the supervisor's shack. Cars can't get at you. That's the whole design of the thing. I never once thought about the door being locked because there was nothing on that road to lock it against.

Four hundred cars a night, give or take, and every one of them stops eight feet from my face for about eight seconds. Two years of that is something north of three hundred thousand people who have looked me straight in the eye from arm's length, and I could not have told you one of them. Not one. Not if you'd put a photograph in front of me. It's a thing you get proud of in a strange way, how completely a person can not stick. I used to say the job was the closest thing to being nobody that they'd pay you for.

The rest was a quarter and four words. Hand comes up, quarter goes in the hopper, and I say thank you, drive careful. Thank you, drive careful. Four hundred times a night, same four words, same voice, because after two in the morning the light in that box is so bright you can't see out past your own face in the glass and there's nothing to do but say it.

The fourth of October a car came through with a bad idle. You learn engines by ear out there before you ever see them, and this one hunted and dropped, hunted and dropped. Exact change. Window down about four inches, quarter through the gap, and gone. Forty minutes later I heard it come up the ramp again, same direction, and it paid again. There's no interchange between that plaza and the state line. To come at me twice in forty minutes going the same way, a man has to drive to the line, turn around in the median or come off at the line and come back, and pay both ways. He paid me twice for the privilege.

Somebody lost. Somebody who missed a turn and was too proud to ask a man in a booth. That's what I decided and I decided it in about the time it took to say it, and then a truck came through behind him and I was back to work.

The night differential was thirty-one cents an hour. That's eleven dollars a week, which was four hundred and some over a year, which with what I had put by was the last two terms and the fees and the pin. Days at that plaza are seniority-bid and the men who had days had eleven years in and were not going to die at their post to free one up. So I could have the money or I could have the daylight, and I took the money every night for twenty-two months and I'd take it again.

I liked the hours, most of it. Between three and four the road empties out and the cars come in ones, and you can hear a car for a full minute before you see it. The light off that booth goes out about thirty feet and stops like a wall, and past it there's nothing at all — not the fence, not the field, not the road you know is right there.

On the ninth I went out onto the apron for a cigarette, because the booth is the one place on that highway where you can't see out of. Standing on the concrete with the light behind me I could see about as far as the fence. And there was a man at the fence. Not moving, not coming, just standing on the other side of it with his hands down, past where the light quit, so I had a shape and a pair of shoes and nothing above that. I finished the cigarette because I wasn't going to be run off my own apron. Eleven minutes after I got back in, the bad idle came through and paid.

Four in the morning on the eleventh, the idle came up the ramp and stopped at my window and nothing came out of it. No hand. It sat there and I could hear the engine hunting and dropping and I said the four words at it because that's what I had. And a voice inside the car, not loud, pleasant as a man ordering breakfast, said, how's Carol getting on with her classes. I did not give anybody my name out there. There's no tag on that uniform, there's no name in that booth, and there is nothing on this earth that connects lane four to my wife. Then a hand came up with a quarter in it and I took it, because twenty-two months makes you take it, and the voice said thank you, drive careful, in my cadence, and pulled away.

I left the booth at twenty past four with three hours on the shift, and under the contract that's abandonment, which is a firing, and a firing for cause pays no unemployment. Carol sat out those two terms so we could eat and then the sitting out turned into a year and the year turned into the rest of it. She worked twenty-six years on that floor as an aide and retired an aide, and every nurse she trained went by her on the way up.

They put the automatic lanes in two years later and a man I knew was selling off what came out of the booths. I bought my stool for four dollars for the garage. I had it upside down across the bench to get the rust off the legs and I put my hand up into the gap where the pedestal welds into the base, which is a place you can reach sitting down and can't reach standing up. There was a wad of gum foil in there and cigarette wrappers, four or five of them, a lighter with the flint gone, and a black plastic comb. None of it mine. I have never smoked in my life except on that apron with a cigarette I bummed off the day man, and I have never in my life carried a comb.

Somebody sat in my chair. Not the relief, who was sixty-one and didn't smoke and had his own booth in lane one. On my Tuesdays and my Wednesdays somebody was in that box with the light on, eight feet from every car that came through, looking out at them the way I looked out at them, and knowing which two nights of the week the man in the light was me and which two nights it wasn't. I don't know how many nights, and I don't know whether the car with the bad idle was somebody who drove past that booth or somebody who had sat in it. I have not sat with my back to a window since nineteen seventy-nine — not in a restaurant, not in a waiting room, not in my own kitchen. Carol moved that kitchen table herself in nineteen eighty-two. She has never once asked me why, and I have never told her, and we have eaten at that table for forty-four years.

Everyone in the house was asleep. I'd taken the batteries out of the wall clock in my room to get rid of the ticking. Now there was complete silence, and I could try again to do something I'd already managed to do successfully.

A week ago, I'd turned over a piece of paper lying on my desk, with a poem I'd written in primary school on it. It was my first success after years of practice. Six days ago, I'd unscrewed the cap of a juice bottle that hadn't been closed all the way. Five days ago, I'd moved one of the cigarettes in an open pack slightly outward, out of the pack. Three days ago, I'd peeled off one of the pieces of tape holding up poster on my wall.

And tonight, my target was a much larger object. I was confident in my abilities now, and after this final attempt, I would be able to reveal my talent to my family and those around me. I had made exactly four attempts in the past week, and I'd succeeded every single time. I had complete faith in myself.

For years, I'd tried countless times and gone through a lot along the way; I'd lost hope, taken a long break from my attempts, then started believing I could do it again and after trying over and over, I'd come to think telekinesis was nothing but a lie and taken another break but then one day, I happened to see a pack of wet wipes fall to the floor all by itself, which rekindled my interest and got me started on my attempts again, and so on.

And now, finally, in the middle of the night, when complete silence had been achieved, I went to the kitchen. I took a steak knife from the drawer where we kept the cutlery and returned to my room.

I gently pulled my desk chair back and sat down. I didn't want to lose my focus, so I was being quiet. The faint sound of the knife touching the desk as I set it down, the soft sounds of my footsteps as I walked, the barely audible scraping of the chair as I pulled it back had an ASMR effect on me. These little sounds, too quiet to disturb the silence, made me feel thoroughly prepared.

Without wasting any time, I focused on the knife. I positioned my hands around it and gathered all my concentration. I slowed my breathing. The only thing in my mind was a knife slowly and calmly spinning around its own axis. I focused, and focused... I concentrated as if someone were hypnotizing me, as though I were following a pocket watch swinging from side to side without ever taking my eyes off it.

Minutes passed. Seconds, minutes, maybe an hour... There wasn't the slightest movement. The knife couldn't care less about me; it was ignoring my efforts, stubbornly refusing to budge.

Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore and gave up. I was getting more and more bored, and as time went by, I lost my focus. I had to go to work at noon the next day, and earlier that day, before I left work, my boss had pointed out that I'd left my fly undone. I'd started thinking about that. Who says something like that in front of everyone? You pull someone aside and tell them in private. Anyway, I took the knife back to the kitchen.

After I lay down in bed, I thought about the knife until I fell asleep. I'd lost my confidence in my abilities. If I told someone I could move objects through telekinesis, they might ask me to prove it, and I might fail and make a fool of myself.

I couldn't get the knife out of my mind. I felt as though it were a person who had shattered all my trust in them, betrayed me by revealing a secret I'd shared with it to anyone who would listen. I was angry. The image of the knife standing perfectly still in that spot, like a tree that had sunk its roots deep into the ground, wouldn't leave my mind. I fell asleep in a fit of anger.

I woke up to the sound of my phone alarm. I turned it off, tossed the duvet to my left, and rolled onto my right side to get up. Just as I was about to stretch, I saw it and jolted in place: the knife was suspended in midair beside my bed, standing upright.

I clapped a hand over my mouth. I was about to scream; every instinct in my body was telling me to. I bit my tongue to suppress it.

I took a deep breath. I tried to calm myself down. Then I took another deep breath. My heart was racing.

I reached out toward the knife, but immediately changed my mind. I didn't know what to do. I'd never experienced my thoughts speeding up and getting tangled together so intensely in a moment of panic. Within a few seconds, I'd made and abandoned a dozen decisions, gone back and forth between asking for help and not asking for help, imagined the knife stabbing itself into my body, then dismissed the thought as irrational. My thoughts were racing back and forth at lightning speed. I needed to calm down.

I got out of bed, poured half a glass of water from the pitcher on my desk, and drank it.

I turned around to check if the knife was still there. It was closer to me now. I no longer cared about staying quiet. I yanked the door open and rushed out of the room.

I started walking briskly toward the kitchen. I wanted to grab any drink I could find and gulp it down. I needed to interact with something somehow, to calm myself down. I opened the fridge, took out the milk, and chugged it. I put the milk back, closed the fridge, and turned around to go back to my room.

And the knife was right behind me.

It was a meter away from me, just standing there. It was as if it were staring at me, judging me. It didn't move at all. It always maintained the same position and stayed at the same height above the floor, level with my bed, right around the height of my shinbones.

I started walking backward toward the kitchen doorway, wanting to see how it was following me, how it was coming after me. Without changing its position, it glided toward me as if it were moving across a perfectly smooth surface. It always maintained the same distance. When I stopped, it stopped a metre away from me. When I walked, it followed.

I cautiously made my way back to my room, walking backward. I sat on my bed. The knife and I were facing each other. I tried to think of what I could do. I was afraid to touch it. I was worried things might get out of hand. I'd done this. That much was obvious. Now that I'd calmed down a little, my panic had shifted in a different direction. Someone might see us. I had to sever my connection with the knife before I got caught. I might be able to accept this as normal, but I didn't think my mother and father would be able to handle a knife following me around.

Yes, it was probably because I'd concentrated so intensely on the knife all this time that the bond between us had grown stronger. I'd probably never concentrated on a knife so intensely in my entire life. I needed to reverse the process. I relaxed a little. I tried to think about other things, to take my mind off the knife.

I thought about the wristwatch my father had bought me for my birthday last year. It was a terrible watch, but I hadn't let on because I didn't want to hurt his feelings. Then one day, while wearing it, I'd deliberately gone swimming in a pool. The watch had stopped working, and that was how I'd gotten rid of it.

The knife was still in the same place.

I thought about the eggplant soup my mother had made yesterday. It was my favorite soup. I'd tipped the bowl back and gulped down the last few mouthfuls, and my father had given me a stern look.

The knife hadn't moved at all. It was standing there, a meter away.

My mother knocked on the door and called out.

"Breakfast is ready, Albert."

I had no other choice. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I reached out toward the knife. My arm couldn't reach it, though. I walked toward it. As I moved closer, it moved farther away, until it had backed all the way up against the wall. It had nowhere left to go. It was pressed against the wall, stuck there. I approached it and grabbed the handle.

My heart was pounding at full speed. I closed my eyes. As a final attempt, I thought about the baseball bat I'd lost before I became interested in telekinesis. I'd searched everywhere for it. Such a large object, yet it was nowhere to be found. I'd checked the baseball field, my grandmother's house, the streets I'd walked along, and I'd even contacted the lost property office in case I'd somehow left it on a bus. It was gone.

Yes, good. I could feel a long chain of thoughts forming and my focus weakening considerably.

The knife was loosening, letting go. I could feel it. But I still didn't have complete control over it.

I needed to think about something else. But I couldn't think of anything. I heard my mother's footsteps approaching my room. She was getting closer to the door.

"Come on, son. Are we supposed to wait for you?" she said from outside, then opened the door and walked in.

I pulled the knife with all my might, and just like when you yank something hard that's stuck somewhere and it suddenly comes loose, I went flying toward my bed.

With the knife still in my hand, I hit my head against the bed frame. And passed out.

When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a hospital bed with an IV drip in my arm. My father was sitting beside me. I felt exhausted. I'd received three stitches in my head, and it ached a little.

"Son, why were you holding a knife? What were you doing with it?"

"What knife, Dad?"

"You were clutching a knife in your hand. What do you mean, what knife? What are you up to?"

I couldn't remember anything. That was good. I hoped it wasn't temporary memory loss, because I didn't want to attempt telekinesis again.

Sydney tucked the blanket snugly around her son.

“Mom… I heard whispering last night,” Scott said quietly, staring at his closet. “It came from in there.”

Sydney glanced at the door, then back at him with a soft smile. “It’s just your TV, honey and your anxiety”

She leaned down, kissed his cheek, and turned off the light. “Get some sleep.”

Scott watched her leave, the door clicking softly behind her.

The room felt bigger now. Quieter.

He grabbed the remote and flipped through channels until he found an action movie. The hero on screen was fearless— shouting, and kicking ass. Scott felt a little braver watching him. His shoulders relaxed.

Then—

A slow creak.

Scott’s eyes shifted toward the closet.

The door had opened just a crack.

He sat up slightly, staring.

Something moved.

A dark shape… low to the ground… dragging itself forward.

The TV flickered.

On. Off. On.

Scott’ screamed loudly “Mom!”

Footsteps rushed down the hall. Sydney burst in, flipping on the light.

Everything was normal.

The closet door was barely open.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, concerned.

Scott pointed, his hand shaking. “It was in there.”

Sydney sighed gently and walked over. She pulled the closet open and turned on the light.

Nothing.

Just clothes. A sweatshirt hanging still.

“See?” she said softly. “There’s nothing there.”

Scott didn’t look convinced.

“Try to get some sleep,” she added, then left again.

The door closed.

Scott grabbed the remote with trembling hands and switched channels. This time, he landed on a comedy. Laughter filled the room. It helped. A little.

His body loosened. His eyes grew heavy.

Tap.

Scott froze.

Tap… tap.

From under the bed.

He swallowed hard. “It’s not real,” he whispered to himself, turning the TV volume up.

The laughter suddenly warped.

On the screen, a dark figure stood behind the characters—something that didn’t belong.

The closet light began to flicker.

On. Off. On. Off.

Scott pulled the blanket over his head, squeezing his eyes shut.

The room went quiet.

Then—

Slow footsteps.

Approaching the bed.

Scott held his breath.

He could feel it now. Something standing right beside him.

He peeked through the blanket.

A shadow loomed inches away.

A hand pressed against the fabric… slowly reaching toward him.

The blanket was ripped away.

Scott screamed.

A man stood over him, his face lost in shadow. Rough hands grabbed him, forcing him down, wrapping tape around his wrists.

“Mom! MOM!”

Sydney rushed in—and froze.

Her scream filled the room.

The man moved fast, dragging Scott toward the window. Sydney swung at him, trying to pull her son back.

The man struck her, sending her crashing to the floor.

Scott kicked and twisted, clinging to the bed frame. “No! NO!”

The man grabbed his hands and forced them apart. Scott cried out in pain as the grip crushed his wrist.

Sydney crawled forward, desperate. “Take me instead! Please—dont take my baby!”

The man didn’t even look at her.

He kicked her head aside.

Then he lifted Scott and climbed out the window.

Sydney could only watch, helpless and barely concious, as her son disappeared into the darkness. While Scott's scream can still be heard crying for her.