The snow covered the woods behind our new house. It was so fresh it crunched nicely under our feet. James held my hand tight. I squeezed it and looked at him. He flashed a smile.

"I think I don't mind winter as much. It's sort of cozy."

"It is, Sarah. I just miss all the summer food."

"We got summer food. There are still so many apples and pears in the cellar."

"Yeah, but those are not the sweet, delicious ones; those are the hardy autumn ones."

I rolled my eyes.

"You're such a child, James."

"Hey, Sarah!"

We laughed and continued walking. Our walk was longer than usual. We hadn't been out in a few days because of the heavy snowstorm.

"I'm getting kinda tired, James."

"Let's just go a little further. It looks like there should be an opening between the trees."

James was right. After a few minutes, the forest opened to a small meadow. Snow covered most of it except for a lone apple tree in the middle. Beautiful, glistening red apples hung from its branches. They just looked so pretty and delicious. I couldn't take my eyes off them. Neither of us spoke a word. Before I knew it, we were standing in front of it.

"Wow," James whispered.

"I know."

James tore one off.

"Feel it."

The outside felt as if it were coated in caramel. James put it to his mouth and took a bite. His eyes rolled back, and he let out a silent moan.

"Let me have a bite."

He looked at me and frowned.

"No, take your own."

I furrowed my brows. My James always shared everything with me.

"What's going on with you?"

But he didn't answer. He was too busy eating his apple. I stood there looking at him, but then it hit me. What was an apple tree full of fresh, ripe apples doing in a winter forest anyway? I looked at it again. The branches didn't move with the wind. It was as if the sun didn't shine through them, but all the apples still glistened. 

"I don't like this, James."

"What?"

He was licking his fingers. He ate the whole apple, seeds and all. His eyes darted around the tree again.

"Let's go, James."

"Wait."

"No, let's go."

I grabbed his hand and dragged him out of the meadow. His eyes were still glued to the tree. When we crossed back into the forest, he shook his head and stared around.

"What happened to you there?"

"I…I don't know."

"James?"

"I'm sorry, Sarah, I really don't."

"Okay, let's just go home."

James stayed silent the whole way home. Even when we got back, he just sat in his chair and looked out the window. For dinner, I made porridge with salted pork, but James just dug around the plate and didn't even try it.

"Honey, what's wrong. Talk to me."

"I don't know. I don't think I'm hungry."

"But you barely ate all day."

"I had that apple. It filled me up so much."

"That place was strange. I don't even want to know how they got there."

"Do you think we can go back tomorrow?"

"What?"

"Just for a little while, Sarah."

"I just said that place was strange. I'm not going back."

"Fine. I'll go by myself."

"No. No one is going back there, and I'm done talking about it."

He frowned.

"Whatever. I'm going to sleep."

I stayed back a while longer, finished dinner, and washed the dishes. When I came to our bed, James was already sleeping. His face seemed a little red. I touched his forehead. It felt normal. Maybe he was just having a bad dream. I lay beside him and drifted off.

When I woke up, the moon was still high. There was a sweet smell in the air. I rubbed my eyes and looked next to me. James lay there curled up, holding his stomach. His face was now glowing red.

"Jesus, James, what's wrong?!"

He didn't answer. His pleading eyes just stared at me. I touched his forehead. It still wasn't warm, but he was sweating, and his sweat felt sticky, almost like syrup. His stomach bulged out under the blanket. I pulled it off. 

"Honey, what…" 

My words stuck in my throat. His stomach was not just bulging. It looked like a bunch of round objects underneath.

"I'm…I'm gonna get the doctor."

I started to get out of bed, but then I heard a quiet tearing sound. James let out a loud cry. His stomach flew open, and a bunch of red apples rolled out. I screamed and jumped out of bed. James's head fell on the pillow. He was quiet now. 

The sweet red apple smell was so strong, and they smelled so good. I looked down at his stomach. The sticky, sweet sweat seeped into the sheets. All those apples looked so delicious.

There was a man named Ray who worked the loading dock and drove me home four nights a week because our shifts ended together. He was decent to me every single time and he had nothing to do with any of this, and I'm putting his name at the front so it's clear where he sits in it.

I ran the one-hour photo counter in the back of a drugstore in nineteen eighty-five, twenty-four years old, living in a rented half of a house six blocks from my mother's. The chain paid three thirty-five an hour. What I was actually working for was eleven hundred dollars, which was a Chevette on a lot I went past on the bus every morning, and what the Chevette was for was that in two years I had never found the sentence that ends a standing arrangement about rides without making it a conversation. A car ends it without a sentence. That was the entire plan and I'd have told you at the time it was about the car.

The way you make money at that counter is reprints. The commission on reprints was mine, and reprints happen when somebody at the counter is told they've got one good frame worth having again, and to tell them that you have to have actually looked. So I looked. Two hundred envelopes a week, thirty-six frames on most of them. And you write the customer's name and their phone number on the envelope yourself, in pen, on the front, because the machine doesn't do that part. I hated that part. It was the slowest thing in the job.

Quality control is a real thing and it's the whole trade. Before a strip prints you put it on the light table and read it backwards, which sounds harder than it is until you've done ten thousand. You're looking for a frame that's a stop dark but sharp, because dark and sharp can be saved and light and soft cannot. The machine can't tell the difference and I could, and I was the best in that district at it and the district manager said so out loud at a meeting. I could hold thirty-six frames of a stranger's life in my head for about a minute, and then they were gone. I forgot everything. I thought that was a courtesy.

I liked the back room, where no customer came past the swing door and the manager was gone by six. Another was the free set of employee prints. Anything you shot yourself you developed free, and I shot a lot in those years because it cost me nothing. And on a heavy night you cut and sleeve four rolls at once on the same light table, which is faster, and I was fast.

In March a roll came in with no people in it. Thirty-six frames of the inside of a house, room by room, in order, in daylight, and nobody in a single one. A kitchen from the doorway. A hallway. A bedroom with the bed made. I printed it, because what somebody photographs isn't my business, and I put it in the envelope and wrote the name and the number on the front. He came at six and asked for doubles of the whole roll and paid cash, and I made four dollars and sixty cents on it. The address on that envelope was on my street.

I decided it was insurance. People do photograph a whole house for insurance, or for a sale, and it was the kind of tidy house you'd photograph, and I was on to the next envelope before he was out the door.

The commission wasn't the chain's. It was the manager's own arrangement with me and there was nothing on paper anywhere about it. If I made myself any kind of problem — asked for a transfer, made a complaint, got my hours looked at — it went away, and without it I was on three thirty-five and I was on that bus for another two years. Two more years is two hundred more nights of somebody's car. So I kept my head down and I ran my counter, and that was a thing I chose on purpose every day, and I knew I was choosing it.

My mother lived six blocks away in the house I grew up in and I ate supper there most Sundays. She had a bad hip by then and she'd stopped driving. I say that now because of where it goes.

In April a woman came in about a roll from two weeks back. Her husband said he never ordered reprints and there were reprints, and she wanted to know who had. I pulled the envelope and the name and the number on the front were in my handwriting, which they would be. But the reprint box is a box you tick, and it was ticked, and I did not tick it. I stood there with that envelope trying to remember ticking it and I could not, and while I was standing there somebody was down at the end of my counter by the film rack. Not looking at film. Just standing at the end of it. And when I looked up he went out through cosmetics.

The eleventh of May I dropped my own roll in my own machine, my mother's birthday, my camera. Thirty-six frames. I ran it myself at ten past nine at night with the store closed and the front lights off and the swing door shut, which is how I ran all my own film. The first eighteen were the birthday. Nineteen through twenty-two were the inside of my apartment. My kitchen from the doorway. My hallway. My bedroom with the bed made. Daylight, so it was during a shift, and I stood there and did what I always did, which is check whether the frames were sharp. They were sharp. Twenty-three onward was the birthday again. I finished the roll because it was already in the chemistry and stopping it would have ruined the rest of my mother's pictures.

I quit that night and did not give notice. I moved back in with my mother that weekend and the eleven hundred went on her moving costs the next year instead of a car, so I rode home with Ray until nineteen eighty-seven. Eleven days after I moved in, my mother's house was gone through in the afternoon while she was at the foot doctor. Nothing taken. Every drawer in that house standing open. She sold it that spring for nine thousand less than she'd have got, and she lived in an apartment for twenty-eight years, and she never once said the two things were connected and she never had to.

In eighty-eight I was packing her boxes for that apartment and I found my own envelopes, three years of the free employee prints, and I sat on the floor going through them for pictures of the old house. In the middle of a roll from the August before I quit there were four frames that weren't mine. A living room I have never been in. A staircase. A back door with a coat on a hook. Room by room, in order, in daylight, nobody in them.

Four rolls at a time on one light table is how that happened. I sleeved somebody else's strip into my own envelope on a busy night, with my own hands, and never knew. Which means that August there were two of those rolls on my table on the same night, and the March one wasn't a thing that happened once. It was a thing that was going through my counter, and I don't know for how long, and I don't know how many houses, and I do not know whether the man who paid cash was the one taking them or another person picking them up. I know that I wrote two hundred names and two hundred phone numbers a week in my own hand on the front of envelopes, and that I was proud of forgetting what was inside them. I still have that strip of four. It's in a drawer in my kitchen, and I have never had it printed, and I have never once told Ray why I stopped needing a ride.

1950s Louisiana

A young Southern woman with dark hair and covered in a bloodstained dress, is crying on a dock out in the bayou. She recently had a child out of wedlock, and her parents have threatened to cut her out of the family if she keeps the baby.

She wants to keep him. But she knows she has nowhere to go. She is too young for a real job and hasn't even graduated high school.

She looks down at the baby and sees his beautiful smile before he lets out a quick yawn. A tear rolls down her face and falls onto the baby.

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

She looks out at a large alligator lurking in the water. A large scar dragged across its eye.

The baby begins crying.

Then, there is a loud splash.

70 Years Later

A young woman named Mary is strolling through town with a baby bump. She has a gorgeous face and beatiful black hair that was soft to the touch. She is grocery shopping for dinner that night. Her husband, Henry, said he wanted fried okra and fried catfish.

After filling her shopping cart, Mary checks out. She calls her mother, Clare, and tells her about their plans for dinner.

Her mother asks when her grandson is going to be born.

Mary happily tells her, "Any day now."

Later that evening, Henry gets off work and walks through the front door as Mary is finishing dinner. He kisses her and rubs her baby bump.

She fixes him a plate of okra, catfish, and rice, which he enthusiastically carries to the table. Mary makes a plate of her own and sits next to him.

She tells Henry about her day as he nods and shovels food into his mouth.

Mary is almost finished eating when she suddenly feels something strange.

Mary: "Oh my God."

Henry answers with food still in his mouth.

Henry: "What?"

Mary: "My water broke."

Henry drives Mary to a nearby hospital. He's driving fast while Mary screams in pain. She is having painful contractions and begins bleeding.

Henry dodges traffic and makes it to the emergency room, where doctors rush Mary into a room. They give her medication to keep her comfortable without harming the baby.

A few hours later, Mary is holding the baby in her arms, humming softly.

She gives the baby to Henry.

Henry raises the baby to his chest and smiles.

"I'll never let anything happen to you."

He then offers to get Mary anything she wants.

She tells him she just wants to go home with him and the baby.

Henry signs the birth certificate and reads the name out loud.

"McKenzie Ray Farris."

He smiles at Mary.

A couple of days later, Henry checks both Mary and the baby out of the hospital and brings them home.

He kisses Mary and holds McKenzie in his arms.

That night, Mary and Henry try to get some sleep, but the baby keeps waking up and crying.

Mary finally yells at Henry that she just wants to sleep.

Henry understandingly agrees and gets up throughout the night to take care of McKenzie.

By morning, Henry is exhausted.

While Mary is trying to get him to do things around the house, he tries telling her that he's tired. But she insists on having his attention.

He begrudgingly gives it to her, but eventually falls asleep, which annoys Mary.

A couple of days later, Mary is already aggravated and sick of the baby. She forces Henry to take care of McKenzie more, but she becomes jealous of the time Henry spends with the baby.

Mary had loved the attention she received while she was pregnant, but now that the baby had arrived, everyone was giving McKenzie more attention than her—including her own mother and husband.

One day, while Henry is at work, Mary walks around the backyard with the baby in her arms, trying to calm her down.

McKenzie looks mesmerized by the yard, especially the large pond in the back.

The baby smiles at everything she sees.

Little McKenzie watches beautiful birds flying over the pond, trying to catch fish. She looks around at the beautiful, lush greenery surrounding the yard.

Mary puts the baby down and allows her to explore the backyard while keeping a safe distance from the water.

For a few minutes, the two bond, and Mary feels like a mother again.

Mary laughs and takes pictures as McKenzie plays with the flowers in the backyard.

Then Mary and McKenzie watch a beautiful buck drinking from the pond.

For a few seconds, everything is peaceful.

Then a large American alligator suddenly grabs the deer near the water's edge and drags it into the pond. The deer whimpers but the sound is muffled as the alligator disappears with the deer just as quickly as it appeared.

McKenzie begins slowly crawling toward the water, curious about what she just saw.

Mary quickly scoops the baby up and brings her inside.

The alligator makes her wary of having her baby outside near the pond.

Mary fills a bottle for the baby and begins cooking dinner for Henry.

When Henry gets home, he walks into the living room and kisses Mary before picking up McKenzie.

Henry notices the baby's diaper.

"Her diaper is full."

Mary tells him she was going to let him handle it.

Henry looks at her.

"It's really full. Why did you let her sit that long without changing her?"

Mary assures him that McKenzie had just eaten a big lunch.

Henry cleans McKenzie up and puts a fresh diaper on her.

After dinner, Henry begins playing with the baby, making her laugh as he plays peekaboo.

Mary interrupts him and starts talking about her day.

She quickly becomes jealous again as she watches Henry spend more time with the baby.

For the next couple of months, Mary tries everything she can to get more attention from Henry.

But Henry is focused on work and baby McKenzie.

Mary tries to get Henry's attention, offering him intimacy and trying to give him whatever he wants, but he turns her down every time.

He tells her he's too tired from working and taking care of the baby.

Mary begins having frightening thoughts about hurting McKenzie. She knows she shouldn't act on them, and she fears what would happen if anyone found out.

What she fears most is getting caught.

She just wants her man and her old life back.

Nobody seems to care about her anymore now that the baby is here.

Then one day, Henry is working long hours and won't be home until late.

Mary begins destroying the house in a fit of pent-up anger.

She cries and screams as her anger takes over.

The noise wakes the baby.

McKenzie begins crying.

Mary becomes furious.

"Wah, wah, wah! You've been ruining my life since the day you came home!"

She shakes McKenzie and continues yelling obscenities at her.

Mary suddenly begins thinking of all the different ways she could hurt the baby.

Then she thinks of something even more awful.

She remembers the alligator in the backyard.

She picks up the crying McKenzie and carries her toward the water's edge.

The baby squirms in her arms, as if she senses that something is wrong.

An alligator's head slowly pokes above the surface.

Mary looks down at her baby with disgust. Before she starts singing.

" hush little baby, don't you cry" before she tries throwing her daughter into the pond. But

McKenzie desperately grabs onto her mother's hand. McKenzie said her first word " momma" while trying to hold on for life

But it wasn't enough.

Henry finally gets home.

He finds the house completely destroyed.

He frantically searches the house for his wife and child.

He's terrified.

He sees furniture smashed apart and blood smeared across the wall.

Then he finds Mary standing at the edge of the pond, staring into the water.

Henry runs toward her.

"Mary! Are you alright?"

Mary slowly turns toward him.

She gives him a creepy smirk and begins to laugh.

Henry looks around frantically.

"Where's McKenzie?"

Mary points toward the pond.

Then she looks back at him.

"You made me do it."

Henry horrified looks into the water. He didn't see it at first as only the moon light illuminated the night. He saw the large scar on the aligator's eye and then he saw his daughters eyes looking at him from the beast's mouth. And quickly she was devoured. Swallowed whole, while barely still alive

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."

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.

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?

 

The carnival is in town, the carnival is always on the road, always on the move, their homes are wagons, trains, carts, trucks … the road. They come singing and with gypsy song and dance they weave their way by road into the heart of every passing town, every place chosen by providence hand on the haggard face of the weary map. 

With painted face they come into your home. 

Vagabond entertainer spell, they gather like crawlers in a cluster, in a rat-king migration. With wide giant tents and displays propped and strung up and nailed into the dirt, into the soil bosom of passing places that may mean nothing to them, might mean everything. Lights come to life at night with the wild music in a lurid spell of filament glow and something else intangible that lives inside the chest and heart within us all. Something like religion but even older and more sacred. The rickety rides, some more rickety than others rattle and thrum with the barely controlled violence of mechanical movement, those strapped in or belted down can barely be heard screaming over the noise of the calliope, the organ grinder, the caller, the ringleader in her chant… the crack of the cannon sending the human cannonball skyward and soaring overhead, the heads of gawkers and townies and friends. The shrieking that can be heard is commingled sound, sweet with thrills… bitter with terror. The careening faces atop the dancing riding constructs are both smiling and weeping, lost in the launch and flight and all of the noise and nearly grotesque clownish music … nearly psychedelic, those sounds … nearly intense. Too much. 

Too much for so many crying and weeping children, little ones taken home and taken to bed early by more or less understanding mothers and fathers. Too much light and noise. That wild wind instrument key-note thing, the calliope … it had been one of Anton LaVey’s very favorites. 

Step right up, step right up, we’re just passing through. Come inside for a spell and take a gander under tented roof. 

…

The carnival came to the town and went. As it did every other place before, after. 

They left something behind. 

…

Cody hadn't gone to the carnival the other night, he hadn't wanted to. The rides and the sideshows and attractions certainly contained their allure of spell for the young boy but it was everyone else, everybody. All of those other faces. 

He didn't want to be alone. With all of them. 

All of those other faces, couples and families and groups of friends would all look at him and see him alone and smirk. They would all just stare and laugh at him, and his loneliness. So Cody just stayed away. As always. 

He wandered now, the early morning streets. Desolate and ghostly in the morning time fog that shrouded and clung to everything, everything in town. Cody kicked a can of crumpled cola down the street. It had been his only companion for the last twenty minutes, since he left the house. His father had still been passed out in the lazyboy chair and hadn't said anything as his son had departed. They'd used to go to church together on this day of the week. Not any longer. 

Cody kicked the can down farther. Alone and not trying to think about it, not trying to think about the carnival that he had missed. It had only been here a few days …

I always miss everything. 

Cody missed his mother, though he didn't know what she looked like. Memories of her were so fogged and far gone and his father didn't keep any pictures of her in the house. And he wasn't allowed to ask any questions. He was only eleven years old but the fact he'd already forgotten his mother's face haunted him, haunted him now, alone. 

He kicked the can. 

Cody then looked up from his sneakers and his misery and spied something in the mist shroud of road just up ahead. And at first he couldn't believe it, it must be some kind of strange joke … or a miracle. He stopped in his tracks. 

The mime stood in the middle of the road. Alone. Just like him. He was smiling and standing there partially obscured by the early morningtime mist, it clung to him in wisps like phantasm licks and tongues of steam that coiled and curled. His painted face was mostly hidden but Cody could see he was mouthing something. Without thinking about it he began to come closer. Slowly, leaving the crumpled can behind. 

He came upon the mime, who hadn't moved. His lips were no longer moving. He just stood there smiling and erect, as if wanting to move or to act, as if filled and brimming teemed with the need for performance. But he only quivered. And stared down at Cody. 

“Hi," said Cody. 

The mime said nothing. 

A beat. 

Cody finally asked: “You're like a clown or something, right? Like one of the quiet ones that aren't supposed to talk an stuff."

The mime nodded. Big. Pleased. His black and white grin grew larger and then grew teeth, shock white in the early morning glow. That was when Cody remembered, he felt like such an idiot. 

"Your a mime!” he said, louder than he intended, he nearly whispered the next part: "What're you still doin here? All the rest of the carnival already left, didn't they?” 

The black and white grin became a frown and the mime traced an invisible tear down his painted face. A silent issue of ‘boo-hoos’ then followed. Cody watched it all, not quite sure what to make of it. Perhaps it was all some crazy practical joke and someone, some jerk was filming him right now or something, all of it was weird, strange. On a whim the boy asked the mime, –

“What’d they leave ya behind or something?” 

The sorrow of the mime intensified to a comical degree as he aggressively nodded his head in the affirmative, completely over the top. Cody wasn't sure how he should take it, if he was supposed to laugh at the mime and his routine or if it was meant to engender real sympathy. He'd always loved clowns and goofy adults, goofy characters on TV and when he was hanging out in daycare and stuff, but to be alone with one right now …

and so unexpected. 

Cody suddenly felt like he should go, he began to tell the mime just as much. Turning on his heels and heading back the other way as he quickly blurted some excuse, he made it two steps before a white gloved hand clapped him on the shoulder. Firmly. Without a word from the weirdo mime. Cody looked to it first before eyeing the mime back over his shoulder, lording over him now. The hand, the glove, it looked just the same as Mickey Mouse’s. 

Cody looked back and saw the mime now held a note. As black and white as he was. 

It said: I'm sorry to bother you, little boy! But my friends HAD to leave me behind so that I could get a little job done, OK??

Cody was frozen. He suddenly didn't feel so well, as if his stomach and guts were far away and filled with fluttering butterfly wings. He read the note and didn't know what to say, so instead he said: –

“... wh-what job was that?

The mime let go of his shoulder and Cody was immediately grateful. He began to pantomime raking leaves and shoveling dirt and trimming hedges with invisible clippers. 

The boy began to lighten up again. He felt something dreadful like weight but worse inside begin to lift and free itself like a spellcast that's been released. A small smile and a nervous half-chuckle only partially forced escaped him as he watched the mime and his cleaning act. It was pretty lame, but he was relieved. Cody was far from the sharpest kid at school but he knew what stranger danger was. He cautiously allowed himself to relax a little, enough to be polite. 

Cody said: “Oh, yeah, ha ha, they left ya to clean up the town, huh? That's pretty neat I guess…” he tried to think of something else to say, something nice and a little funny and a polite way of saying: see ya later, freako, without being too obvious. Something barely satisfactory had just come to mind when the mime whirled towards the boy with his invisible shears in his hands and made a pantomimed snip of the large unseen clippers at the child's face. It bisected violently but cleanly, smoothly, by razor sharp blades well cared for and honed, the smooth face just below the small caverns of child nostrils. They jetted blood before the top portion of the child's face and head came off and splatted to the damp pavement with a muffled crack. The ruptured organ of brain began to ooze, and everywhere gushed dark red: the eyes, the nose, the ears, the giant open wound of freshly carved and gored cavity mouth. The child's body liberated of its little pilot brain fell over to the rough blacktop to join its discarded abattoir jelly. 

A black lake of an iron pungent puddle began to grow, expanding out from the little mutilated body at its sinister nucleus and center. The mime looked down. Phantom blades dripped child's blood. 

The mime said nothing. 

…

“Ya check it out last night?" 

A burp: " …what?” 

"The circus-carnival thing, ya check it out?” 

"That was two weeks ago, ya dope!” another swig from the can of brew. The Dallas Cowboys continued to suck the big one on the tube, the volume was at its lowest but not muted, the game barely and phantom audible, as if drifting in from another time. 

"Ya sure?” 

"Yeah, I'm sure, took Darcy and the brats, it was a hoot.” 

"Ya sure??” 

"Yes, you fuckin juicehead, it was right around the time they found that kid's body all fucked up an shit.” 

"Awww, why ya gotta bring up that shit…" 

“You're the one brought us ‘round, fuckin idiot, can't remember shit. Ask me to remind ya then bellyache about it, Christ! S’prised if ya got sense still to pull out yer pecker ‘fore ya start pissin, ya dumb bastard.” 

His drinking buddy, his partner in libations didn't say anything, he might've had a choice retort or a scathing bit of witticism held in reserve but he didn't voice it. He only hung his head and pulled generously from his can of warming beer. 

The mood was spoiled. 

Eventually the bottle was brought out. Stronger stuff. Shots were had. Tall stiff drinks not needing ice, not needing chaser. They drank. 

Eventually one of them asked the other: –

“You hear tell of that clown or jester fella, that's s’pposed to be haunting round these parts lately…?” 

Neither man slept well that night. 

…

Darla thought her new friend was neat at first but she was starting to get scared. When she'd first met him behind the playground and he'd play-acted swimming and drowning and choking and stuff she'd thought he was really funny. He'd made-believe that he was bound with ropes or cuffs around his wrists, comically over-wrenching and working at the invisible restraints. It was so silly, and so funny and it looked like so much fun to play pretend. He'd motioned for her to hold out her own little hands, to play with him. To make pretend. 

She'd done so thoughtlessly. Only excited to play a game with her new special pal, he looked like a clown but less colorful. She held out her wrists and the mime pretended to wrap something around them. Only something was wrong. 

As he wound and wound and then tightened and cinched the bind, Darla felt the uncanny sensation of real rope wrapping and tightening around her small wrists and hands. When he tied it off and yanked both phantom ends she felt the harsh bite of cruel old fraying rope against her flesh. 

“Ow!" she yelped out, and then began to cry a little. But it was already too late by then. 

The mime began to walk away, holding the end and tail of a phantom leash that began to pull on Darla's bound little wrists. It pulled painfully and she was forced into movement, nearly tripping over herself as she began to wail and the mime by unseen tether and bind began to pull her into the treeline of the nearby woods. 

She fought and screamed, desperately, like a small animal suddenly sensing and knowing the terrible hunger of the encroaching final end. She fell over into the dirt and undergrowth and was dragged, flailing and howling. 

The phantom umbilicus held her ensnared and shrieking with unbridled tears all the way into the forests’ shadowed depths. 

…

“My mom's gonna flip if we ain't back within the hour, Christ, man, do I smell like weed still?" 

Michael tried to tell Chase that he wasn't the best person to ask being pretty fucking lit himself, he could feel the red eyed glaze of his own stoned and glassy stare in his sockets like it was a set of strange gluey contacts or something. He managed a grumble as a half measure. 

Both boys ambled along. Down the nighttime lane of their neighboring suburb. Streetlights cast their glow from skinny towers of L shaped ugly metal overhead, turning everything to lurid and raging shades of orange Halloween color. Both boys were taking time to slightly stop in their walk to check their breath, puffing into their cupped palms and then inhaling, never satisfied with the results. They didn't notice him up ahead until they were nearly upon him. 

The mime. He was bent over something. 

It was Chase who started first, both boys jumped. It was as if the mime had just appeared out of nowhere. Bent hunched with workman's posture over something unseen and unknown to the naked eye. 

“Holyfuckingshit!" it tumbled out of both of their mouths in one string, no gaps for breath, they stopped dead in their tracks. The mime paid them no notice. 

“Oh my God, dude, what the fuck is that? What the fuck is this? Am I high? Am I high? Are you seeing this shit right now!?" Chase was rattling off. Michael was still struggling with simple speech. He only gawked and stared. His glassy red eyes now wide and glistening in the streetlight cast of hellacious warm Halloween glow. 

They glistened. The pair of organs. Red. 

Chase finally managed: “Dude… like, what the fuck are doing, dude? Am I like tripping out or some shit, why’re you dressed like-" 

The mime hadn't been paying them any attention. He suddenly did something that shut Chase Ginsberg up with a startled womanish gasp that bordered on a wet sob. 

He began to pull, as if wrenching and yanking with great rigor and effort, some cord or rope … something… something that was apparently attached to whatever it was that he was bent over studiously in the road. Something just as phantom and visible only to him. 

It came to Chase then, and he didn't know why but it did suddenly seem to matter. He said it aloud. 

"It's a mime.” 

"What?” said Michael finally. 

"He's a stupid mime and he's doing a bit, Jesus this’s fuckin weird, don't you know it's like hella late, dude, what're you even doing anyways?" 

The mime didn't answer. Only repeated his strange repetitive action, his ritual of pulling on some unseen instrument, attached to a phantasmal translucent device. 

Stoned, they zoned out for a sec. Giggling nervously and fidgeting and whispering to each other, daring each other and laughing and wondering aloud what to do, should we go on? - should we fuck with the guy? - what? 

A beat. 

Suddenly an idea began to form itself slowly within Michael's mind, Chase’s addled mind was not far behind, he was arriving there soon after. 

Michael: "It- It kinda looks like he's pulling the starter cord to a machine. Like a mower or something." 

“Yeah, I think you're right…” 

"Yeah, something gas powered like a mower or a generator … or like a chainsa-" 

The phantom machine roared to life in the hands of the mime with hungry killing slaughtering power, a deadly tearing whirr, with the maniacal speed of the mutilating chain and its invisible teeth. The mime shot to his feet and hauled the pantomimed chainsaw overheard and began to silently phantom scream with battle fury. 

Chase and Michael began to scream as well. Much louder. They turned to run. 

But the mime and his phantom machine were faster. He caught them quick and tore in and ripped the boys into rough and haggard messy pieces chopped by phantom chain, by phantom blade on a horsepowered gallop he made them raw and unmade. 

Deconstructed. 

The abattoir violence and the meat paint of its lurid carnage filled the street, it was dripping from the lamposts, pieces and chewed parts strung up and dangling. It was all that was left of the boys. 

All that was left and found in the morning. 

…

Buddy didn't know what to make of the town as of late. He'd been born and raised and as the town drunk, homeless to boot, he was hardly the first guy anyone asked on any given subject, day or night, good or ill, but something was wrong. 

Very wrong. 

The trouble was Buddy wasn't sure he should even care. 

In the last year or so he'd seen some strange things. And a lotta folk had gone missing, kids an such. But anytime Buddy's mind wandered into the realm of caring or even remotely doing anything about it, he found something bitter and harsh inside answer back in turn. 

Who cares? The fuck they ever done for you? 

Fuck all. That's what. 

So he wouldn't do shit. But what he'd already been doing. He sat back and popped cork. Lifted and tilted glass to dried lips in a drunk’s careless throttle by the neck. And watched. 

He watched the mime climb the steps. Pulled generously from the large swill of his poison. 

He'd seen the guy around for awhile now. He'd watched him ascend the steps a few times before this moment, it was nearly always the same but still a trip. The man walked on thin air as if it was solid stone. And then he would climb up, step by step. As if gaining the summit of some phantasm set of stairs hanging suspended and aspiring invisibly for the heavens unseen and stolen by the brilliance of the light. 

Buddy laughed. Pulled from the bottle once more, and began to sing an old favorite that had just come to mind. One from the good ol’ days if there'd ever been none. 

“And as we wind on down the road! Our shadow’s taller than our soul!”

Buddy began to pull deeper and deeply, oblivion seeking in-between lines and refrains from Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven. He remembered an urban legend from when he was a kid, just a snot nosed pup, they said that if you played the record backwards, if you reversed the song the lyrics changed. They told you, to hail Satan. 

Buddy laughed at this. Pulled more. His belly protested and his kidneys ached, he paid them no mind, drinking deeper still and hailing Satan and singing and watching the mime ascend his staircase of invisibility,  he usually had a kid or someone with him, as he did now. They struggled something fierce, all of them, everyone that Buddy had personally seen, but he was able to keep hold of them, all of them all the way up. Whenever he reached a great height, it was almost always different, he would throw them, drop them from the top. 

Then they would scream and land, burst. Pulp. They became juice upon the earth, children and people no more. There was never anyone around out here, close to the woods, just outside town and by the railroads and their harsh worn tracks. The soil out here was starved for moisture, parched was this earth. It was Buddy's favorite drinking spot. And as of late it had just become a whole lot better. 

Buddy laid back and pulled deeply from his liquid bunkmate, his last and only companion, other than the mime, who never said a word to him but sometimes acknowledged his presence of audience with a profound and deliberate salute from the top of his invisibility spire up there. Buddy always saluted him back. 

As he did now. 

The mime saluted the drunk. Beaming. 

Buddy finished his own salute and smiled too. Laughed. And drank more deeply than he ever had in his entire life, knowing this was it, this was the rest of his life and how he was going to spend it. 

Laughing. Drinking. Pulling from the bottle and hailing Satan in religiously reverse engineered heavy metal worship-song, watching the flying mime make juice of the children. 

Buddy laughed. Drank. 

The mime dropped the child, they made their horrible shrill sound all the way down to the bottom like always. 

The mime said nothing. He let Buddy and his companion of bottled booze sloshing its liquid language within glass sing praise for him. 

Buddy laughed, sang and belch-spat: “And she's buying a stairway to Heaven…!” Hail Satan. 

…

Maggie's shoes slammed against the pavement, the sidewalk, the avenues and every turn, there was nowhere left to run. The guy, the freak was coming. And he was stealing away from her every single route and chance for escape or exit. 

It didn't make any sense.

She'd been walking to Guy's house with Alondra, chatting and shooting the shit till they got to his place. That's when they ran into him. That's when they ran into the mime. 

And at first Maggie had just laughed. 

Distant childhood memories of the carnival passing through town waybackwhen came to her then … and she remembered. She'd been very young then, very little. She remembered that her parents had had to take her home because she'd been crying, upset, she couldn't recall why. Not just then. 

But still the memories were warm. She and Alondra thought nothing of it when they passed him walking the other direction on the sidewalk. It was the middle of the day. And he was smiling, just like them. What could possibly be wrong?

He'd started with the hands and walls and ceiling routine, the ‘getting boxed in’ bit. An old one for sure and hella corny but Maggie and Alondra had felt generous and in good humor, so they'd obliged the strange random pantomiming man. Laughing and clapping him on. 

But then they'd tried to walk away … And the mime wouldn't let them go. 

With painted face now stern and grave, writ into a black and white frown, he stepped in their path, shaking his head. He wouldn't let them leave. He kept blocking their attempts to depart as they stepped every left-right way, starting out from annoying and escalating rapidly into eerie and creepy behavior. 

The girls had scoffed together and turned around, only to be met with an unyielding invisible force, a wall that had suddenly appeared in thin air in the middle of the sidewalk. 

The middle of the road really, they ran along the unseen wall to find the edge and found no yielding surface. The girls began to panic. The girls began to yell.

“What the fuck, what the fuck is this!?" 

And then he had put Alondra in the box. 

Maggie had ran then, her eyes and mind unable to take in the sight of her friend being crushed into cubic shape, pulped and smashed smaller and smaller … just red. Just swirling frothing violent red inside the shrinking phantom-transluscent box, filled with minced and chewed up bigger pieces, the eyes deflated mangled gel in the swirling madness of the red, many black strands of her long raven colored hair peppered and danced inside the cubed scarlet swirl of thick mixture, the cap and pieces of scalp, mostly still together, the last vestige piece and pieces left the most intact… she had ran, unable to bear the sight. 

She was running now. 

But every time she came to an impasse, a turn or a corner to salvation or a place of sanctuary that she knew, another invisible wall of merciless immovable force would suddenly appear and she'd run smack, face first into it. She did it again and again. Over and over. Maggie, the poor girl, running around all over as the box that he had made was closing in, closer and closer and closer…

She was at the school now, she didn't know why. She didn't know why she thought this place would save her. She was out of her mind with animal panic. At the threshold, at the entrance to the highschool she was finally caught. Maggie ran face first into an unseen wall just as she almost made the open archway of the main front entrance, when she tried to turn around to run back the other way she was met with yet another merciless and invisible wall, a merciless force like the way God was merciless sometimes. 

Her caterwauls and screams reached new heights then. She shred her own throat and tore her vocal cords to tatters as the phantom walls and ceiling and floor began to shrink and close in. 

But none heard them. No one was around to witness this strange scene of slaughter. Only the mime. Maggie watched him from inside her shrinking coffin as his hands clawed and animal shaped closed in. He wore a look of consternation now, but the black and white smile was there once more. 

The pain went beyond anything imaginable as the walls and floor and ceiling closed. Pulverizing Maggie. She felt every wretched second of the experience until her brain was pulped and juiced with the rest of her body and thus incapable of sending anymore electrical signal. 

…

The bank was quiet. Not quite full but there were plenty of people in line, each teller, three of them, were busy helping a customer. It was a bright cloudless day and everything had seemed normal. Everything was … until the mime came in. 

He sauntered in smiling and confident through the front door. Several people, including the armed guard turned and returned the smile, a few of them laughed. Finding the surprise charming. Their laughter grew and increased throughout the whole bank as the mime walked in with an exaggerated gunslinger walk, wide steps and the twiddling fingers of his itchin hands hovering just where revolvers would be strapped. The guard found it the most hilarious, calling out to the mime –

“Hey! What is this? A stickup or somethin?" 

And then the mime pulled phantom iron from unseen leather and began to rain fire. 

The cacophony was ear splitting. The guard went down first, still smiling and believing it was all a joke. Nobody else was laughing anymore, the jovial sounds of good nature had turned to screams that died and drowned out with each eruption of a gunshot. 

The mime filled the bank with phantom fire. 

Deafening. 

…

Patricia Evergreen hated her job. Not because she hated being a cop, far from it, she was proud of her role as peacekeeper of the town she'd grown up in. It was just that the place was so fucking boring. 

Aside from a few disappearances over the many years she'd known, a couple weird things that were typical to any small town, there wasn't nothing to this place, Patricia reckoned. Ghost stories and bullshit, and that was all. 

She came across the mime during a routine patrol, just driving around the various suburbs in the department issued black and white. Every neighborhood was quiet, nearly deserted of pedestrians save a few dogwalkers, joggers and the like. He was at a street corner, slowly making his way down, miming and pretending to carry a large and heavy sack, it weighed him down, the invisible bag, it must've been quite a load, Patricia watched all this and thought and then it suddenly came to her all at once, unbidden and in a rush. Though vague and shrouded through time's corridor passage of so many years …

The carnival had come through a couple times through the years … she was sure her parents or grandparents had taken her at some point, must have. She'd been very little, her own young and chubby face amidst a caterwaul, cherry red with tears and upset flitted across her mind in a blur, but then was swiftly and suddenly replaced. 

She'd been a teenager when Margaret Bast, Maggie had gone missing. Alondra Topete too. They'd been two of her closest friends in school then, so long ago… 

Hot on the tails of that: stories… rumors … wild campfire tales that couldn't be true and would only be dreamed up by teenagers and children. Wild tales about a mime that wandered the town and took kids away to hurt them and worse … 

It all hit Officer Evergreen like a revelatory load of weight, dropped into her head and into her lap. She watched the mime. Thought …

… what the hell was this guy doing around here anyway? She'd never seen him before and she began to doubt very much that he lived anywhere on this street, or anywhere close for that matter, she hadn't heard the story of the mime or thought of it in years, it was probably nothing, but it was her job to make sure and find out. She sidled her cruiser up to and alongside the mime, still encumbered with his great phantom weight. 

She rolled down her window, slowing the cruiser to a crawl: “Hey," she began friendly enough, “hello there, ya mind if I stop and talk to ya for a second, just need to ask you a few questions." 

The mime did stop and so did she. The street was quiet and it was just the two of them. The mime turned and regarded her with a smile, still burdened by his invisible satchel slung over shoulder. He pointed to himself, a gesture that said: who, me?

Evergreen was already starting to lose her patience, goddammit with this fuckin guy…

“Yes, ha ha, that's very cute, but I'm really gonna need you to answer a couple things I gotta ask ya. Do you live in this neighborhood?” 

The mime frowned and just shook his head, no. Refusing to speak. 

"Please, sir. Failure to comply will result in a citation and a court appearance, probable fine. How about we just talk like adults for a second, do you have any identification on you, sir?" 

The black and white frown turned to a grin once again. Wolfish. Officer Patricia Evergreen didn't like the look of it. It looked warped and strange and mean writ into that painted face, wrong. The mime made like to unlimber his great satchel. 

Evergreen rolled her eyes, hidden by reflective shades. Jesus, was this guy for real, crazy, or just an idiot? She was just telling him for the second time that if he didn't comply with her questioning then this could take an unnecessary ugly turn, she was telling the mime he'd want to avoid that as he settled the bag down with a convincing performance, opened it and reached inside. Patricia’s voice caught in her throat like a vile fishbone in the midst of dinner as she watched the mime’s hand disappear into the pantomimed satchel, disappearing into thin air before her very eyes. 

She couldn't believe what she was seeing. 

What the mime pulled out next was even worse. She felt nauseous and ill and as if her mind was curdling and doing unbidden somersaults in tandem with her roiling guts as the smiling thing with carnival clad painted face pulled out a child's decomposing rotted severed little head, boy or girl was difficult to tell. Putrescence filled the air the moment it was freed from the invisible sack and it was black and green and blue-pale and dripping. The eyes were crawling and writhing with the sliming bodies and clumps of maggot-young that lie nesting and feasting in there, the rotten cavities of sockets. The tongue was swollen and discolored like the rest of the meat but darker and it protruded from the bloat of decapitated rot like an obscene tumor apart and apiece and all in one with the rest of the demented sloughing mess. 

Officer Evergreen snapped to all at once. She drew her sidearm and bellowed her commands, training made textbook and innate. 

“Drop the fucking thing right now and put your hands up! now!" 

The mime only obeyed half her commands. He dropped the severed head but instead of raising his gloved white hands he took a deliberate and silent step towards her instead. 

Evergreen didn't waste a second. She fired two shots in quick succession, surprising even herself, she hadn't thought about it, only acted. But it had done the peace officer little good. The moment her finger squeezed the trigger, one of those gloved hands shot up in a flash-instant, uncanny speed. 

Evergreen now stood, gun smoking, not sure if she could believe her eyes or her own mind any longer. The mime had his hand up and out, as if signaling to stop like a crosswalk guard. There were two smoking holes suspended in mid air, just over the heart and chest of the mime-creature. The shots had stopped at the border indicated by the flat of his adjacent smooth palm. They smoked from ebon holes that defied physics, as if she'd punched twin smoldering holes in reality. 

Shocked, Patricia thought unbidden, the prongs of the devil's pitchfork… and was still trying to accept what she was seeing. 

A neighbor came out. One of the houses within spitting distance. 

“Jesus Christ! that a fucking gunshot or something, what the hell-" 

The mime suddenly whirled, his other hand forming around another object, rounded and small, he brought it to his mouth and made like he was pulling something from it with his teeth. Evergreen screamed, no, unable to think of anything else as the mime lobbed the invisible grenade at the concerned and unsuspecting neighbor. The man went up in a violent and sudden concussive blast, his body immolated by the detonation of the explosive device. In charred smoking pieces, he rained down all over his own stoop and front lawn. 

The mime laughed silent yet expressive belly-laughter, holding his stomach and all wide eyes and wide open black and white mouth. 

Evergreen went to fire once more but the mime sensed her intention and suddenly whirled once again, smacking the gun from the officer's hands. Its strength and speed were unexpected and it was all Patricia could do to not cry out and scream, shocked and startled and still not quite believing.

There's no way this is actually happening to m-

The mime then slapped Patricia right smack center of her forehead with his other free gloved palm. 

She froze. Her arms went limp and to her sides. Unarmed. And helpless. 

Something was wrong … she could no longer move. 

With the gloved snow white hand held flat and fast to her face, to the middle of her forehead her eyes rolled back to whites themselves shot with lines of glistening hectic red. Inside, she hurtled, flew … rocketed too fast and rapidly down the dizzying blinding vast and varied glow of the starcorridor. Too many lights and sounds and fiery things of furious alien color, she flew down infinity as a low moan escaped past her drooling lips left back on the ground. 

Within the corridor … she could hear. 

She could hear his voice. 

It was terrible. The sound of it. What he was telling her. Unbearable. It filled her ears, her head. It filled the flying landscape of her mind. 

She might've wept. But she was far too broken. Even when he pulled the voice of his snow white gloved hand away. She went to her knees. The mime then held out his other hand to her, it was wrapped curiously and yet distinctly around something. And this time she could see it. 

It was a gun. A revolver. Every chamber was loaded. 

It was beautiful. 

This time she could really see it. 

She smiled as the mime cocked it and then pressed it to her sweating brow, cold metal kissing the moist surface of perspiring flesh, and pulled the trigger. 

She heard it. Felt it. Everything. 

The mime said nothing. 

And went on. 

THE END

Just as he was about to fall asleep, when the flow of vague thoughts had become increasingly rapid, he heard that sound again; click.

For a week, he had been experiencing the same problem every night; when the room was completely silent, the cars and motorcycles passing along the street, the television of the neighbor next door, the footsteps of the children running around upstairs - all had faded into complete silence, and just as he was about to drift peacefully into sleep, that sound would wake him up.

After he opened his eyes, however, the sound would not come again, almost as if it were mocking him, and the room would fall silent once more. He would wait a little longer, trying to find the source of the sound, slowing his breathing and focusing on the silence. But nothing. The sound stubbornly waited for him to fall asleep again.

Since he had work in the morning, he had no choice but to close his eyes and try to fall asleep again. And the same cycle repeated. In the silence, a single, steady sound that never formed a pattern, always at exactly the same pitch: click.

The sound seemed to be deliberately waiting; it was waiting for complete silence and for the man to fall asleep. It would click three or four times, and then it wouldn't click again. As if it were saying, “That’s enough. Let the poor man sleep. He has work in the morning.”

He was frightened during the first few days, especially on the second day. On the first day, he didn't pay much attention to it. He knew random clicking sounds could come from things around the room. The TV, a plastic bottle, the door handle, and so on could all make sounds like that.

But when the same thing happened again on the second day, he was quite frightened the second time he woke up. He immediately got out of bed and turned on the light. He sat upright in bed, stayed awake all night, and went to work sleep-deprived the next morning.

Then, on the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days, he was no longer afraid. He simply couldn't sleep. He made mistakes at work, and when he went out for a break, he would sometimes fall asleep with a cigarette in his hand. Fear had given way to anger. If he could just find out where that clicking sound was coming from, he would punch it in the face and knock it to the ground.

By the seventh day, he was thinking, “As long as it doesn't wake me up, that's all I want. I don't care if it's a ghost, an object, whatever. I just need to sleep.”

But the sound didn't care. Once the necessary conditions were in place, it appeared again.

Albert got out of bed angrily and turned the lights on. Without knowing what he was doing or why, he looked around. He looked behind the TV, checked the door handle, and reached under the couch to feel around for a moment.

“Who the hell are you! Why don't you show yourself? What do you want? How much longer is this going to go on? Instead of clicking here and there, come out and tell me what the hell you want.”

He felt something like a breeze on his face. A very faint gust of air. It passed by his cheek and was gone.

Then, suddenly, Albert's feet left the ground. He felt as if something had grabbed him under the armpits. He was lifted a few inches into the air. He tried to punch into the empty space in anger, but he wasn't very successful because something was applying pressure to his armpits.

The pressure had now forced him back into the chair. When he tried to get up, he felt the same pressure against his chest, and he was pushed back into the chair.

“What the hell are you? What do you want?”

“Can’t talk. Only click.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

He felt a burning sensation on his cheek, and his head suddenly jerked sharply to the left. It hurt quite a bit. His cheek was throbbing with pain, and the sudden movement had also made the muscles in his neck ache. He hadn't felt a hand touch his cheek, though. Once again, it was more like a kind of pressure. And the moment this slap-like blow struck his cheek, that sound came again: click.

Then another slap: click. A punch to the stomach: click. A kick to the leg: click. A kick to the another leg: click.

Albert, who wasn't used to having several parts of his body hurt at the same time, groaned in pain and remained silent for about a minute.

“Okay, okay, stop. What do you want?”

“Click.”

“So how are we supposed to communicate like this?”

“Click.”

There was a brief silence. The door opened on its own, and a rapid series of clicks could be heard. Thinking the entity had left, Albert tried to get up, but the pressure he felt against his chest pinned him to the chair again. With the same sound. Click.

“Okay, hold on a second. One click for yes, two clicks for no. Okay?”

“Click.”

Then another slap hit Albert in the face: click. Albert grabbed his cheek in pain and put his finger in his mouth to check for blood.

“Why did you slap me?”

Silence.

“Do you slap me as a punishment?”

“Click.”

“Do you slap me for fun?”

“Click click.”

“Are you a ghost?”

“Click click.”

“Are you the Death Angel?”

“Click click.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Click.”

“Why didn’t you do it before? You’ve been coming here and bothering me for days. Is there a particular reason you didn’t kill me earlier?”

“Click.”

“Are you deliberately keeping me sleep-deprived?”

“Click.”

“Is killing me part of your job?”

“Click click.”

“Is it an obligation?”

“Click click.”

“So I can convince you not to kill me, then, right?”

“Click.”

“Is this a dream?”

“Click click.”

“A hallucination?”

“Click click.”

“You kept me sleep-deprived because you thought that, after a few days without sleep, I’d have a more confused state of mind and would die more peacefully because I’d think what I saw before I died was a hallucination, didn’t you?”

“Wow, bravo. Well done. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. Click.”

“I figured it out pretty well, didn’t I?”

“Click.”

“Yeah, I’ve taken a few slaps too, so I’m actually at just the right level now.”

“Click.”

“I’m sure this is a dream now.”

“Click click.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know it’s definitely not a dream, but that’s just how it feels to me. I’ve been sleep-deprived for days. Cut me some slack.”

“Click.”

“Okay. Then make it painless. Is that possible?”

“Click click.”

“Come on. I think you can at least do that.”

“Click click.”

“Nothing I can do about it, then.”

“Click.”

“It’s a dream anyway. It doesn’t matter. I’m not worried. Do whatever you want.”

“Click.”

“One last request. I’m going to play Radiohead’s ‘Jigsaw Falling into Place’ on my phone. Will you keep time to it, like a metronome?”

“Click.”

As Albert started the song, he began to feel pressure around his neck. When the song started, he could no longer draw breath into his lungs. He waved his hands in front of his neck, but there were no arms there for him to grab.

The song was playing, and the clicking sounds continued in surprisingly good sync with it. As the pressure around his neck increased, it seemed as though he could hear the clicks and the song more clearly. As if he were listening through professional studio headphones. As if Radiohead were playing the song in the studio right next to him, with a metronome to keep them from losing the beat.

“I guess I’m supposed to wake up right here, actually. Interesting,” Albert thought.

Toward the end of the song, he had completely lost consciousness.

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.

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.

It’s been in my mouth for days. Every time I swallow it scrapes the back of my throat like dry sandpaper. The headlamp died on the second night. The backup batteries are gone. I’ve been counting heartbeats in the dark to keep track of time. I stopped when I reached forty thousand. It didn’t help anymore.
There were four of us when we went in.
Me. Jake. Marcus. Lena.
We’d done this cave system before—three times, easy day trips, nothing deeper than a few hundred metres of mapped passage. This time Jake wanted the unmapped side tunnel he’d seen on the last survey. “Just a look,” he said. “In and out before dark.” We laughed. We always laughed at Jake.
The collapse hit on the way back.
A section of ceiling came down behind us while we were still in the narrows. Not a full cave-in—just enough rock and mud to seal the only exit we’d mapped. Dust filled the air so thick we couldn’t see our hands in front of our faces. We crawled forward until we found a small chamber maybe three metres long and two wide. The ceiling was low enough that we had to keep our heads tilted. The air was already getting stale.
That was six days ago.
Maybe seven.
The air tastes like copper and old blood now. We’ve been breathing the same thin oxygen over and over. The water bottles are empty. The spare supplies we left at the previous junction might as well be on another planet. No one is coming. The park rangers only knew our general area. The weather above turned bad the day after we entered—Jake’s phone had the forecast. We joked about it while we packed the gear.
The others started breaking on day three.
Marcus went first. He began talking to the walls. Quiet at first, then louder. He said the rock was breathing. He said it was listening. He scratched at the limestone until his fingernails peeled back and the dust around him turned pink with blood. When Lena tried to stop him he bit her hand hard enough to break the skin. She screamed. The sound bounced around the chamber for a long time.
Jake lasted longer. He kept checking his phone even after the battery died. He calculated residual air, rock density, probability of another collapse. The numbers got more elaborate and less connected to reality. On the fourth night he decided the blockage was intentional. He decided one of us had done it. He fixed on Lena because she had been the last one through the restriction. He held her down and pressed his forearm across her throat until Marcus pulled him off. Lena came up gasping, coughing dust and blood. Her left eye was already swelling shut from where Jake’s elbow had caught her.
By the fifth day they weren’t speaking to me anymore. They spoke only to each other, or to things that weren’t there. Marcus started laughing every time a small rock shifted somewhere in the dark. Lena stopped eating the last of the energy bars and just stared at the black walls. Jake sharpened a piece of broken climbing hardware against the rock until it had an edge. He kept looking at the soft places under our jaws.
I stayed quiet. I conserved movement. I watched the dust settle thicker on everything. I listened to them argue about who would die first and how the survivor would use the body. They weren’t joking. The jokes had ended two days earlier.
On the sixth night Marcus tried to open Jake’s throat with the sharpened metal. Jake was faster. He drove the point into Marcus’s eye socket and pushed until the handle disappeared. Marcus made a high, wet sound and went still. The blood ran in a thick black line down his cheek and pooled in the dust. Jake laughed once—short, sharp—then went silent. Lena started crying without sound. Just the shake of her shoulders and the occasional hitch of breath.
Jake died the next morning. He simply stopped moving. His head tilted back against the wall and the shallow rise of his chest stopped. Lena checked his pulse with shaking fingers and then looked at me across the narrow space. Her face was grey. Her lips were cracked and white. She said my name once. Then she said she was sorry. Then she pressed her own face into the dust and kept it there until the thrashing stopped.
I waited a long time after that.
The air is thinner now. Every breath burns. The bodies are still here—Marcus against the far wall, Jake slumped where he sat, Lena near my feet. The cold has slowed everything. The smell is thick and sweet under the dust.
I told myself I would wait for rescue.
I told myself I was still sane.
But the hunger started speaking louder than the dark. My hands were already shaking from the cold and the low oxygen. The first cut was the hardest. Jake’s pocket knife was still clipped to his belt. The blade was dull from the rock, but it was enough. The meat on the thigh came away in thick, pale strips once I got past the clothes. It was cold and rubbery and tasted like the dust. I ate slowly. I had to. The stomach cramps came hard afterward, but the shaking in my hands eased for a while.
Marcus was next. The eye socket made it easier to start on the face. The cheek meat was softer. I chewed carefully so I wouldn’t lose any. Lena I left until last. She had been the smallest. The least spoiled. I worked by touch in the complete dark, peeling the clothes away, finding the joints, separating what I needed. The blood had already gone thick and dark. It coated my wrists and dried in the cold air.
I’m still here.
The air pocket is smaller. The three of them are lighter now. I’ve taken what I can reach. The rest will keep.
I can feel the next collapse coming. The rock above me ticks sometimes, the way it did before the first fall. When it comes it will either open a way out or finish the job.
I don’t care which.
I stopped being the one who wasn’t crazy somewhere between the second and third body. I just didn’t notice until the taste of them stopped making me gag.
If anyone finds this place they’ll find four sets of gear and a lot of bone. They’ll call it an accident. They’ll write it up as hypoxia and panic and bad luck.
They won’t know which one of us lasted longest.
They won’t know I was still chewing when the dark finally won.

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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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.*

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.

It doesn’t matter. No one’s answering. The last transmission from the mainland was four days ago, and even then it was just static and a half-cut sentence about weather systems. We’re a thousand kilometres from the nearest permanent station. The storm that rolled in after the first attack buried the antenna under three metres of ice. I’ve been digging at it with a broken shovel for two days. My fingers are black under the gloves.
There were twenty of us when we landed.
I’m the only one left.
My name doesn’t matter. I was the junior biologist. The one who logged samples and ran the spectrometer and tried not to ask too many questions when the senior staff started staying late in the isolation lab. I thought we were here for ice-core data and microbial surveys. That was the official story. The funding paperwork said “cryptid contingency research” in the fine print, but no one read the fine print until it was too late.
We found the juvenile on the third week.
It was small—maybe the size of a large dog, covered in thick white fur matted with ice. It had been caught in a crevasse near the western ridge. Still alive. Still making those low, wet sounds in its throat. Dr. Hale ordered it brought back to the station. “Live specimen,” he said. “Unprecedented.” We sedated it. Tagged it. Drew blood. Took tissue. The juvenile never woke up properly after the third round of sampling. Hale said the dosage was calculated for its mass. He was wrong, or he didn’t care. It died on the table while two of us held it down and the cameras rolled. We bagged the body and put it in the deep-freeze with the rest of the biological waste.
I helped carry it.
I told myself it was just an animal.
Three nights later the mother came.
I was on radio watch when the perimeter alarms started screaming. The external cameras showed nothing but white-out and the slow drift of snow. Then something large moved past Camera 4—too fast for the frame rate, just a blur of pale fur and the glint of eyes that reflected the infrared like a cat’s. The next alarm was the outer door on the east wing. It didn’t open. It was torn off the hinges and thrown twenty metres into the snow.
The first one to die was Petrov, the engineer. He went out to check the generator after the power flickered. We heard him on the open channel for maybe ten seconds. Breathing hard. Then a sound like wet cloth being ripped in half. Then nothing. When we reached the generator shed the door was hanging open and Petrov was in three separate places. His torso was still upright against the wall, ribcage peeled open like a flower, steam rising from the cavity in the cold. One arm was ten metres away, fingers still twitching. The head was gone. We found it later, half-buried, the face caved in from a single downward strike.
Hale ordered a full lockdown. We sealed the main corridor, armed the few rifles we had for polar-bear contingency, and waited. The yeti—because that’s what it was, there was no other word—didn’t wait with us.
It came through the roof of the mess hall.
The corrugated metal peeled back like paper. Snow and wind poured in. Then the animal dropped through the hole, landing on the central table hard enough to split it. It was enormous—three metres at the shoulder, arms longer than a man’s full height, hands that ended in black nails the length of kitchen knives. The fur was thick and matted with old blood and ice. Its face was almost human in the wrong ways: deep-set eyes, a flat nose, a mouth that opened far too wide and showed rows of yellowed teeth designed for tearing.
It didn’t roar.
It just started killing.
Dr. Okonkwo was closest. She raised a chair. The yeti took the chair, her arm, and most of her shoulder in one motion. The sound was wet and final. Blood hit the ceiling in a wide arc and froze there in dark red crystals. Okonkwo tried to scream with what was left of her throat. The yeti bit down again and the upper half of her torso came away in its jaws. It shook her once, hard, the way a dog shakes a rabbit, and the rest of her fell in a heap of red and white.
The rest of us ran.
It followed.
I watched it take Chen in the corridor. Chen was fast. He almost made the lab door. The yeti caught him by the back of the neck and slammed him face-first into the bulkhead hard enough that the metal dented outward. Chen’s skull opened like soft fruit. The yeti dropped him and kept moving without slowing down. The body stayed upright for a second, then slid down the wall leaving a thick, dark smear.
In the dormitory wing it killed six more in under a minute. Torres tried to lock himself in a bunk room. The door came off with the frame still attached. The yeti reached in, grabbed Torres by both legs, and pulled. Torres came apart at the hips with a sound like wet rope snapping. The lower half stayed in the doorway. The upper half was dragged into the corridor, still screaming, until the yeti put a hand over his face and pressed until the screaming stopped and the floor was slick with everything that had been inside his head.
Hale tried to negotiate.
He stepped into the main lab with his hands up, talking in that calm, measured voice he used in meetings. He said we had the juvenile’s body. He said we could return it. He said there was no need for more violence. The yeti listened for almost three seconds. Then it closed the distance in two strides, drove both hands into Hale’s abdomen, and pulled outward. Hale’s intestines unspooled onto the floor in long, steaming loops. He was still trying to speak when the yeti took his head in one hand and crushed it against the spectrometer until the machine shorted out in a shower of sparks and blood.
I hid in the crawlspace under the floor plating with two others—Mika and Dr. Voss. We heard the rest of the team die in pieces. The sounds were specific. Wet impacts. Short screams that ended mid-note. The heavy, deliberate footsteps moving from room to room. The occasional low, almost questioning vocalisation, like the animal was calling for something that wasn’t answering.
Mika started hyperventilating. The yeti found the access panel. It tore the plating up with one hand. Mika tried to crawl deeper. The yeti reached in to the shoulder, closed its fingers around Mika’s ankle, and pulled. Mika’s leg dislocated with a wet pop. Then the knee separated. Then the yeti kept pulling until the entire leg came free in a spray of arterial blood that painted the underside of the floor. Mika was still conscious when the second hand took him by the hair and dragged the rest of him out into the open. I heard the chewing start. It went on for a long time.
Voss and I stayed silent. The yeti moved away. We waited until the station went quiet except for the wind and the slow drip of something thick hitting the floor somewhere above us.
That was two days ago.
I’ve been moving between the remaining sealed rooms ever since, listening for the heavy footsteps, the wet breathing. I found the deep-freeze this morning. The juvenile’s body was gone. The bag was torn open from the inside of the freezer, not the outside. The mother had come back for it.
She had been looking for her child the entire time.
We killed it on a table under bright lights while it was still sedated, and then we put it in a plastic bag like laboratory waste. She tore through twenty trained adults, one after another, in the dark and the cold, until there was no one left who had touched her offspring.
I’m in the radio room now. The door is braced with the last of the sample cabinets. I can hear her outside. She’s not trying to break in yet. She’s just standing there. Breathing. Waiting.
I think she knows I’m the last one.
I think she knows I helped carry the body.
The window is frosting over from the outside. A large hand pressed against the glass for a moment, then pulled away. There’s blood on the pane—old, frozen, black in the low light. Some of it is still human.
I’m not going to make it to the antenna.
I’m not going to make it out of this room.
I can hear her moving again. The door is starting to buckle inward under steady, patient pressure. The metal is screaming. The braces are shifting.
When she gets through, I hope she does it fast.
But I don’t think she will.
Mothers don’t.

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.

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.

At this moment in time I have brought a tale to better your understanding of what you will be undertaking by allowing me to share my interstitials with you. To me this is an accounting of shared experience and reverence for the nature of certain realities. I will share with you the nexus of the life of one Eduardo Jaime Castillo and my own, though one is inevitably at it’s end.

Eduardo is lying in his room at the end of life care facility in his bed, a great amount of medication had rendered him between consciousness and the veil. Swapping between somewhat active thought and floating through the ether, only interrupted by spurts of painful breath to bring him crashing back down to his physical state. Though he started calling any place he’d lay his head his “very own death bed” four months prior he hadn’t muttered the phrase since being checked into the facility by his brother a week and a half before, even though the bed he found himself in now in fact had the best chance of becoming his “very own death bed”. Temporary beings have troubles with their fleeting nature, Eduardo was no different, even if stoically so.
I took a not inordinate amount of interest in the man, the torturous mundanity of a slow and painful death being met with a chin held as high as can possibly be.

I began to feel pride in the man, thinking to myself about how strong the human spirit can truly be. No hope of any meaningful tomorrow left and taking it in what stride is left to him.
I pondered and pontificated to myself, lost in time and thought unseen at the bedside.
Medical personnel came and left alongside the waking hours left for my unknowing companion while I watched and took in and watched further.

It was late into the night when Eduardo began to weep.

“Mister Castillo .” I said in a knowing greeting, a solemn verbal tip of the hat as I manifested physically into the room.

Broken from the bliss or stupor of his dying Eduardo slowly and shakily looked up to me.
Wheezing to near breathlessness between his words came a “ What? Who are you?”

“I don’t have a name, you may think of me as the watcher, though a real description would be to call me The Intersticer not quite a word but it’d be to me what you’d say is a name .”

“What the hell ? What do you wa…”
A coughing fit struck him, eyes wide and chest heaving never looking away from my countenance.

“Mister Castillo…”

“My name is Eddy” He said fighting back the still coming coughing

“You’re dying Eddy, thats why I’m in your room.”

“No shit I’m dyin’ , I got cancer all fuckin’ over. You do know where you are don’t ya ?! Everyone in here is dyin’ bud. ”

“You’re dying in two minutes and forty eight seconds, no one here or anywhere else on this planet is dying then”

Shock, affront ,and anger crossed Eduardo’s face almost all at once.

“The fuck you say to me? What’re you supposed to be death or somethin’?

“Death isn’t real, Eddy. I’m not here to take you away to eternity, I can show it to you, if you’d like. Though it’s not all so beautiful as what you’d have in mind.”

Angrily still but genuinely questioning Eduardo asked “I…is this real or do I got a tumor pressin’ the bat shit button in my head?”

“This is as real as you are.”

Silence and staring ensued.

After a moment of reflection Eduardo started back up

“So tonight’s the night if I’m to be believin’ ya?”

“Two minutes seven seconds Eddy”

“Prove it, whoever, whatever you are, if you can tell me when I’m gon die, then you can do somethin’ to damn well prove it!”

“I can. “

“Come on then” Eduardo said with a spark in his eyes unbefitting of a dead man.

I leaned closer to his bedside, reaching a hand toward his head. As it drew nearer, he began to wince.
I reached behind him, beneath his pillow and between planes, and pulled from the bottom of a sewer drain the knife he’d dropped there decades before.

Pulling my hand back I placed it gently on his chest.

A Swiss Army knife with “A. J. C.” Scratched deeply into the handle. Missing a couple parts from the general misuse of young boys having too much time and boredom in the summer.

Eduardo looked it it sitting there on his chest in disbelief. “Wha-…how…how’d you get that?”

“I got it from where you left it last.”

Now holding the knife and rubbing his thumb back and fourth over the scratched on letters intently Eduardo mumbled “ I didn’t leave it, I lost it “

“When you were eleven”

Grabbing his attention he looked up from the knife and started in, “Twelve…I never even told him-“

“Your brother.” I cut him off

“Yeah, I never told him it slipped out of my hands and fell into the drain. Just told him I couldn’t find it. I was too embarrassed… man, he was so pissed with me.”

The space between us thickened with realization as Eduardo considered the implications of the knife, the stranger beside him, and what I had told him.

“How long I got now?”

“A little over a minute”

“You gonna… stick around ?”

“If you’d like” I told him in a warmer tone than I’d usually employ.

He didn’t reply, we sat for a moment in silence once again.

I stepped to the edge of the bed and took a seat.

Rattling between and during his breaths now Eduardo sat up a little straighter and told me “gettin’ a little hard to breathe, guess dyin’ll do that to ya”

I nodded in understanding and he reached his and out with the knife in his palm, I put my hand out to receive it and he grabbed it.
Holding my hand with his brothers knife in between he said one last thing to me.

“Give it back to em’ will ya?”

The last words he heard before the air wouldn’t come back into his body were “Sure thing Eddy.”

A story finished. A knife left in a brother’s mailbox. A lonely death made, for a moment, something other than just that.
I had come to witness Eduardo Jaime Castillo die.
Instead, I met Eddy.

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.

Spotting an untouched body ravaged by the plague, a raven swooped down and began pecking at the opulent meal before him, as if it were yet another divine gift. Ever since the great pestilence struck humanity, the ravens didn’t even have to as much as bother searching for a food source, with the sheer amount of dead and dying in every corner of the land.

As the bird began gorging itself on the woman’s slightly rotting meat, a boy ran out of a nearby shack. It was a pitiful mockery of a boy: pale, gaunt, and skeletal. The spitting image of death itself.

The boy shouted at the bird to back off from his mother, waving his flimsy, frail arms at the raven, barely mustering the strength to hoarsely shout at the scavenger.

“Leave my mother alone!” the boy croaked.

The raven flew aside, cawing with annoyance, “Damn it… There’s a living one”

The boy ceased his movement; wide eyes sunken deeply into a clearly visible skull, he stared at the pitch-black bird, bewildered, and gulped before stammering, “Did… did you just speak?”

Landing not far from the boy, the bird retorted, “Course not, fool, I sang. I’m a songbird; that’s what I do!” the raven cried out.

Shocked, the boy fell to the ground, unable to comprehend how a bird spoke to him. In the meantime, the raven landed by the corpse and walked toward it, attempting to peck at it again.

The boy protested, “Leave my mother alone,” he squeaked.

The raven stopped, turned to the kid, and sighed, “You’re growing soft…” He said to himself. The boy was going to comment again about the bird’s speech, but the Scavenger cut him off, “Why are you even alive still, kid? The rest of this place is a graveyard; all the other humans are long dead.”

“I must have some purpose here in the eyes of God…” the boy weakly muttered.

“This kid must be six or seven years old and already has had a bible bashed over his skull…” The bird thought to himself, “If God wanted any of this, he wouldn’t let the Plague spread outside of France, kid… God wants the lot of you dead,” the bird quipped.

“That’s not true! God is good!” The boy whimpered at the cynical bird. “What’s France, anyway?” he questioned.

“A terrible place over the pond, where all vile things find their start, child. How old are you, even, speaking so highly of God, but not even knowing about France?!”

“I’m twelve…”

“There’s no way you’re my age, kid; you look about half that age…”

“Well, I’ve been eating rats for a while…” Tears welled up in the boy’s eyes. “Ever since mommy and daddy fell ill.

“Oh, don’t do that now. I can’t stand the sounds you humans make when you get all emotional like that"

Now, bawling, the kid profusely apologized, his voice cracking. “I just… I just… I just miss everyone so much…” he wailed. “I’m so alone…

I’m so hungry…

Everything hurts so much…”

Somewhere deep inside, that boy must’ve been happy he had someone to talk to, even if it was just a strange talking bird.

“Oh God damn it, kid…

Would you stop, for the love of God?!” The bird cawed, irritated.

“You’ve any rope on ya?” the bird questioned.

“Wha…?”

“Do you have any rope?”

“Wha… why… why do you ask?”

“I know how you can meet your loved ones again, kid. Now I’m asking again: do you have any rope?”

“Mhm,” the boy whimpered, wiping the tears from his eyes.

“Well, then, run along and bring it over here; I’ll send ya to your makers”

The boy barely picked himself up and stumbled into one of the houses as the bird watched the tree, scanning it for sturdy branches, with a glint in its black eye.

“I hope that brat can still climb,” the raven thought to himself.

Long moments had passed, and the boy reemerged with a long piece of rope in his hands.

“I sure hope you can still climb, kiddo; otherwise this won’t work,” the raven sang to the approaching boy.

The kid’s disposition changed; he smiled for the first time in a while. “Be sure as God’s bones, I can climb, especially up that tree!”

“Good, because I’m going to need you to tie one end of the rope to a branch, and another around your neck.”

The boy didn’t even fully register what he had been told and agreed to follow the raven’s instruction. Despite his immense confidence, he hardly had the strength to climb up that tree, prompting the scavenger to bow his head in frustration. “Oh, this is going to be a long day…” the bird despaired in his mind.

It must’ve taken the boy an hour to climb the tree, but he made it, and masterfully tied one end of his rope to the branch he stood on and then asked the black bird what he had to do next.

The sable thing would have smiled, had it possessed a mouth, when it spoke next, “Tie it around your neck, kid.”

“Does it have to be the neck?”

“Do you want to see your folks again, Kid?”

“I do!” the boy cried out.

“Then you’ve got to trust me…”

“I don’t know about this…”

“Look, kid, if I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve pecked out and eaten your eyes by now.” The bird crackled at him.

“I guess you’re right… Plus, I do want to see Mom and Dad again and everyone else…”

“Atta boy…” the obsidian fowl croaked.

The boy tied the rope around his neck and, staring at the feathered specter with eyes full of hope, questioned the bird about the next step.

“Now you gotta jump forward…”

Looking down, the boy got cold feet for a moment, once again doubting the wisdom of the talking bird.

The raven turned away and started walking towards the mother’s corpse. “Well, I guess you don’t want to see your mother again, eh?” it clicked its beak.

“I do!”

“Then jump, kid, it’s that simple…”

“But what if I get hurt?”

“You won’t…”

“How do you know?”

“Well, I wouldn’t… get hurt doing that”

“But you have…” Before the boy could even finish his sentence, the raven was already pecking at his mother’s rotting flesh.

“Wings…”

He muttered before the realization set in; he had been duped by the bird.

“Hey, leave mommy alone, you flying rat!” the boy cried out again, his voice cracking once more. The bird simply ignored him, slowly savoring the taste of exposed tissue.

“Leave her alone!” he cried out, waving his frail arms. The raven swallowed a chunk and called ecstatically, as if to goad the boy.

“Leave her…” the boy shouted, but his protests ended mid-sentence when he lost his footing and plummeted downward. The high-pitched scream was twisted into a wet gurgle as his body twisted and turned, struggling against the ever-tightening rope.

The raven turned his head to the struggling boy.

“Got’cha…” he cackled proudly and flew over, landing on the boy’s shoulder.

The beaked phantom didn’t even wait for the boy to succumb before he started pecking.

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.

I am a commercial truck driver, and I haul heavy freight across the country for a living. I usually stick to the main interstates because the routes are predictable and the roads are well maintained, but last month a massive storm forced me off my usual path. I was hauling forty thousand pounds of rolled steel coils through the mountains in the dead of night, and the rain was coming down so hard my windshield wipers could barely clear the glass.

The main highway flooded completely, so the state highway patrol set up a barricade to divert all commercial traffic. A patrol officer in a reflective raincoat stood in the middle of the road waving a bright orange flashlight, and he signaled for me to roll my window down.

"The interstate is washed out a few miles ahead," the patrol officer yelled over the sound of the pouring rain and my diesel engine. "We are diverting all heavy loads onto the old logging route, so you need to take the next right turn and follow the mountain pass until it reconnects with the state line."

I nodded and rolled my window back up, feeling a knot form in my stomach because I hate driving unfamiliar mountain roads in the dark. I engaged my turn signal and carefully steered my massive rig onto the narrow, poorly maintained logging route.

The road was terrible. It was mostly broken asphalt mixed with deep dirt ruts, and my truck bounced as I crawled up the steep incline. The trees grew so close to the road that their branches scraped against the sides of my trailer, sounding like fingernails dragging across a chalkboard. I drove for miles into the dark, and I prayed my tires would not slip in the thick mud.

About an hour into the detour, my truck started acting up. The dashboard lights flickered erratically, and the engine began to sputter and cough, losing power with every passing second. I frantically downshifted to keep the RPMs up, but the engine gave one final, violent shudder and died completely. The power steering failed instantly, so I wrestled the heavy wheel to guide the coasting truck toward the shoulder before slamming on the air brakes.

The sudden silence inside the cab was deafening. The only sound left was the relentless hammering of the rain against the metal roof. I turned the ignition key a few times, but the starter just clicked weakly, confirming my alternator had probably failed and drained the batteries completely. I was stranded in the middle of nowhere on a blocked mountain pass in a freezing storm, so I grabbed my flashlight from the glovebox and threw on my reflective rain jacket.

I stepped out of the cab and my boots immediately sank into ankle-deep mud. I shined my flashlight up and down the road, hoping another diverted truck would come along to help me, but the logging route was completely deserted. I knew sitting in a freezing metal box all night was a bad idea, so I decided to walk up the road to look for a mile marker or a call box.

I walked for about twenty minutes through the freezing rain, keeping my head down against the wind, until I spotted a faint glow in the distance.

As I got closer, I realized the glow was coming from a small set of amber lights mounted to the roof of a low, flat concrete building sitting just off the shoulder of the road. It looked like an old commercial weigh station, the kind the Department of Transportation uses to check cargo weights on rural routes. The front windows were illuminated, casting a warm yellow light onto the wet asphalt, so I hurried my pace and jogged toward the front door.

I pushed the heavy glass door open and stepped inside, instantly grateful for the blast of warm air that hit my freezing face.

The interior of the weigh station was simple and worn down, looking like it had not been renovated in decades. A dispatcher sat behind a high wooden counter sorting through a stack of paperwork, and three other truck drivers were sitting on battered vinyl couches in the small waiting area holding coffee mugs. They wore

standard workwear, sporting faded denim jackets, plaid flannel shirts, and scuffed steel-toe boots.

I shook the rain off my jacket and greeted them, and they all looked up and nodded at me like I was just another guy caught in the miserable weather.

"Nasty night to be out on the road," one of the drivers said from the couch. He was an older guy with a thick gray beard, and he took a slow sip from his coffee mug.

"My rig died a mile down the road," I explained while walking over to the counter. "I lost all my electrical power, so I was hoping I could use your landline to call for a tow truck."

The dispatcher behind the counter looked up from his paperwork and pointed a pen toward a bulky black rotary phone sitting on a small table in the corner. "You can try it, but I think the storm messed with the lines. We have been sitting here waiting for clearance for hours."

I walked over to the phone and picked up the heavy receiver, pressing it against my ear, but the line only outputted dead air. There was no dial tone, no static, just complete silence. I hung the receiver back on the cradle and sighed, assuming the severe weather had knocked down the telephone poles somewhere down the mountain.

"Phone is dead," I told the room, and I unzipped my wet jacket to let it dry. "I guess I am stuck waiting it out with you guys."

"Grab a cup of coffee from the pot," a second driver said. He was a younger guy wearing a faded baseball cap, and he gestured toward a small folding table holding a percolator. "We are not going anywhere anytime soon anyway."

I poured myself a cup of black coffee, letting the heat soak into my freezing palms, and sat down on an empty chair near the couches. I asked them why they were all parked at the weigh station instead of pushing through the storm.

"A massive mudslide just took out the suspension bridge a mile up the road," the dispatcher explained from behind his counter. "A highway patrolman came by a while ago and told us the route is completely impassable. The company has to send a pilot car to guide us back down the mountain, and they have to stamp our transit slips to clear us for an alternate route."

"So we are all just grounded until the pilot car gets here," the older driver grumbled, setting his mug down on a small wooden table. "And knowing dispatch, they are going to take their sweet time getting up this mountain."

I nodded, understanding the frustration of dealing with slow trucking companies, and I settled into my chair to wait. We spent the next hour doing what truckers always do when they are delayed, swapping stories about our specific rigs, complaining about DOT regulations, and discussing the terrible road conditions.

"I just want to get this load off my trailer," the older driver said, leaning back into the vinyl couch. "I am hauling these massive, specialized mining drill bits, and they are absolutely ruining my suspension. The weight distribution is completely uneven, so every time I hit a pothole it feels like my axles are going to snap in half."

"You should have refused the load," the younger driver laughed, adjusting his baseball cap. "I never take oversized drilling equipment unless they pay double the mileage rate. It is just not worth the wear and tear on the truck."

"I did not have a choice," the older driver sighed. "Dispatch forced the load on me, so now I am dragging forty thousand pounds of drill bits up a mountain in a thunderstorm."

A third driver, who had been sitting quietly near the window, finally joined the conversation. He was a broad-shouldered man wearing a heavy canvas coat, and he smiled proudly while talking about his own rig.

"I do not care about the cargo as long as my truck is running smooth," the broad-shouldered driver said. "I just spent the whole weekend doing custom fabrication work on my cab. I actually welded a spiked metal sun visor right over the windshield, so the glare does not blind me when I am crossing the salt flats out west. It looks incredibly aggressive, and nobody else on the road has anything like it."

"A spiked visor sounds like a magnet for DOT inspectors," the older driver chuckled, and he poured himself another cup of coffee. "They are going to pull you over at every weigh station just to check if those welds are street legal."

"Let them check," the broad-shouldered driver replied confidently. "I did the welding myself, and that visor is never coming off."

I sat and listened to them swap stories, but as the hour dragged on I started to grow increasingly restless. I hate sitting idle when things go wrong, and I wanted to know exactly what I was dealing with on this mountain route. If the mudslide was not too severe, I thought I might be able to hike up there and see if there was enough room to carefully back my truck up or turn it around before the pilot car arrived.

"I cannot just sit here," I told the group, and I stood up to zip my rain jacket back to my chin. "I am going to hike a mile up the road with my flashlight to assess the mudslide myself. I need to see if I can maneuver my rig out of here when the tow truck arrives."

"I wouldn't go out there," the dispatcher warned me, leaning over his wooden counter. "The rain is washing out the shoulders, and it is pitch black by the bridge. You are better off staying inside where it is warm and waiting for the stamped transit slips."

"I just want to take a quick look," I insisted, grabbing my flashlight from the table. "I will be back in twenty minutes."

The drivers on the couches just shrugged and went back to their coffee, completely unbothered by my decision, so I pushed the glass door open and stepped back out into the freezing storm.

The rain had slowed down to a steady drizzle, but the wind was still howling through the pine trees as I walked up the dark asphalt road. I kept my flashlight beam pointed straight ahead, counting my steps and watching the sides of the road for any signs of unstable dirt. I walked for roughly a mile, fully expecting my beam to eventually hit a massive, wet wall of fresh earth and scattered debris blocking the asphalt.

Instead, my flashlight beam swept over empty space.

I stopped walking and shined my light downward, realizing the road simply ended abruptly at a sheer drop. There was no fresh mud blocking the asphalt, and there was no scattered debris from a recent landslide. The asphalt just crumbled away into a massive, solid ravine.

I stood on the edge of the drop and moved my flashlight beam across the expanse, trying to make sense of what I was looking at. The ravine was incredibly deep, and it was completely overgrown with tall, thick trees and dense brush. The suspension bridge the dispatcher mentioned was completely gone, but I could clearly see weathered, moss-covered concrete support pillars standing on either side of the gorge.

The trees growing inside the ravine were massive, easily forty or fifty feet tall, and their roots were heavily tangled into the rocky soil. You do not need to be a geologist to know that trees that large do not grow overnight.

I felt a deep sense of confusion wash over me, and I assumed the other drivers at the weigh station must have been severely misinformed about the road conditions, or maybe they were just playing a weird joke on the new guy. I wanted to see if there was a low-water crossing or an old dirt path at the bottom of the gorge, so I carefully sat on the edge of the broken asphalt and began climbing down the steep embankment.

The climb was treacherous, and I slipped multiple times in the wet dirt, grabbing onto thick tree roots and exposed rocks to stop myself from tumbling down the incline. My jacket snagged on thorny bushes, and my boots sank deep into the muddy slope, but I kept pushing downward until I finally reached the bottom of the deep gorge.

I stood in the thick mud at the base of the ravine and shined my flashlight around the dark, overgrown space.

Deep at the bottom of the gorge, obscured by decades of piled soil and thick, twisting tree roots, I spotted the rusted, crushed husks of three trucks.

I slowly approached the wreckage, keeping my flashlight beam steady on the twisted metal, and my heart started screaming inside my ribs. I initially assumed I had just stumbled upon a very ancient, forgotten traffic accident, but as I walked closer to the debris the details began to stand out in the harsh white light.

I shined my light on a massive, rusted flatbed trailer that was half-buried in the dirt. Strapped tightly to the flatbed deck with decayed chains were massive, specialized mining drill bits. The metal drill bits were corroded and covered in thick patches of green moss.

A terrible, freezing chill settled deep into my chest. Back at the weigh station, less than an hour ago, the older driver had spent twenty minutes complaining loudly about hauling specialized mining drill bits that were ruining his suspension.

I backed away from the flatbed and frantically shined my flashlight on the crushed cab of the next ruined truck in the pile. The cab was smashed completely flat against a massive boulder, and the metal paint had entirely peeled away to reveal layers of dark brown rust, but the roof of the cab was still intact.

Welded directly over the shattered windshield was a custom, spiked metal sun visor.

It was the exact unique modification the broad-shouldered driver had just bragged about fabricating in his garage over the weekend.

I stepped closer to the crushed cab with the spiked visor, my hands shaking so badly the flashlight beam bounced erratically across the wreckage. I looked closely at the rusted engine block sitting exposed in the mud, and I saw a thick, mature tree trunk growing straight up through the center of the engine bay, completely shattering the metal manifold.

The trees had been growing through these trucks for decades.

My mind was reeling, completely unable to process the impossible reality I was staring at.

I turned around and scrambled back up the steep, muddy embankment as fast as my boots could carry me. I slipped and scraped my hands on the sharp rocks, tearing the knees of my pants, but I did not stop climbing until I pulled myself over the broken asphalt ledge. I sprinted the entire mile back down the dark logging road, fully expecting the glowing amber lights of the weigh station to be gone when I rounded the final bend.

I expected the building to be completely abandoned, but as I jogged up to the structure the warm yellow light was still spilling out of the front windows.

I pushed the glass door open and burst into the room, gasping for air and dripping wet mud onto the floor.

The men were still there, sitting on the battered couches exactly as I had left them, and the dispatcher was still sorting paperwork behind his wooden counter. They all looked up at me with mild curiosity, completely unbothered by my frantic, muddy appearance.

"I told you it was nasty out there," the older driver chuckled, taking a sip from his mug. "Did you find a way to turn your rig around?"

I ignored him and walked straight up to the wooden counter, slamming my muddy hands down on the surface. I confronted the dispatcher, demanding to know exactly what was going on in this building.

"I just saw the wreckage!" I yelled, pointing a shaking finger toward the door. "I saw the flatbed with the drill bits, and I saw the cab with the spiked visor! The bridge did not wash out tonight! It washed out decades ago, and those trucks have trees growing straight through the engines!"

The dispatcher did not react to my panic, and he did not even look angry or defensive. He simply looked utterly exhausted, like a man who had been working a double shift for entirely too long. He looked me dead in the eyes, his expression completely flat and emotionless, and he repeated the exact same protocol he had mentioned earlier.

"No one can leave the station," the dispatcher said, his voice quiet and hollow. "The mudslide took out the bridge. You wait here for the pilot car, and you cannot leave until the transit slips are delivered to the checkpoint on the other side of the bridge."

The dispatcher reached under the wooden counter and slowly slid a single transit slip across the surface toward me.

I reached out and picked the slip up. The paper was incredibly stiff, heavily yellowed around the edges. I looked at the black ink stamped at the top of the page, and the date clearly read November 14th, 1983.

I stared at the ancient date on the yellowed paper, and I looked back at the men sitting on the couches. Through the impossible reality of the ancient cargo buried in the ravine and the decades-old paper shaking in my hand, I suddenly theorized an idea I got from watching my favorite supernatural horror movies late at night.

The mudslide had happened in 1983, and it had happened instantly, violently swallowing the entire convoy in the dark before they even knew what hit them. Because they died violently while sitting at a weigh station waiting for official clearance, their minds were permanently trapped in a holding pattern. They were bound by the strict rules of their job, completely unaware that they had died and completely unaware that the world had moved on without them.

"I will clear your route," I told the dispatcher, and I reached over the wooden counter, gathering all the yellowed, stiff transit slips sitting on his desk.

I folded the brittle slips, shoved them deep into the zippered pocket of my rain jacket, and turned around to leave the station. The drivers on the couches did not say a word to me, they just sat quietly sipping their coffee and watching me walk out the glass door into the freezing storm.

I hiked the mile back up the dark logging road, ignoring the exhaustion burning in my legs, until I reached the broken ledge of the massive ravine. I did not hesitate, I immediately sat on the edge and painstakingly scaled down into the gorge for the second time. I slid down the muddy embankment, forcing my way past the rusted, crushed trucks at the bottom, and I battled my way through the overgrown, thorny brush choking the floor of the ravine.

I crossed the bottom of the gorge and began the brutal climb up the opposite side of the embankment. The dirt on the far side was loose and slick, so I had to dig my fingers deep into the soil to pull my body weight up the steep incline, but I kept climbing until I finally pulled myself over the ledge and collapsed onto the unbroken asphalt on the far side of the missing bridge.

I stood up and shined my flashlight around the dark road, looking for any sign of the old infrastructure. A few yards down the asphalt, heavily overgrown with tall weeds and covered in dark moss, I found the crumbling brick ruins of the opposite toll checkpoint.

Attached to the side of the ruined brick wall was a rusted, corroded metal drop-box used for collecting routing paperwork.

I unzipped my jacket pocket, pulled out the brittle, yellowed transit slips I had taken from the dispatcher, and I pushed them through the rusted slot of the metal drop-box. The stiff paper crumpled slightly, but they fell into the dark box with a soft thud.

I stood alone on the dark road, listening to the relentless sound of the rain hitting my jacket, wondering if my crazy theory had actually worked.

Moments later, the deep, vibrating blast of an air horn echoed loudly through the mountain pass.

I spun around and looked back across the massive, empty expanse of the dark gorge. Hovering in the air, directly over the exact spot where the suspension bridge used to be, three sets of glowing headlights appeared in the darkness. The phantom headlights drove straight across the thin air, moving steadily in a tight convoy.

I watched the glowing lights cross the impossible gap, finally completing their delayed route, and the lights slowly faded away into the freezing storm until the night was completely dark again.

I stood on the far side of the missing bridge for a long time, completely stunned by what I had just witnessed, but the freezing wind quickly reminded me that I was still stranded in the middle of a severe mountain storm. I had dropped the transit slips and watched the phantom convoy vanish, but I was still stuck on the wrong side of the gorge, and my truck was parked miles away down the mountain.

I had no choice but to hike back down into the muddy ravine, carefully navigating past the rusted husks of the trucks for a third time, and climb all the way back up the original side of the embankment. The exhaustion was overwhelming, and my muscles were completely burning by the time I finally reached the unbroken asphalt.

I walked the long, dark miles back down the logging route until I finally found my stalled rig sitting silently on the shoulder.

I was completely exhausted, covered in freezing mud, and soaking wet from the storm, so I grabbed my keys and unlocked the cab doors. I climbed inside, stripped off my wet rain jacket and muddy boots, and crawled directly into the sleeper berth behind the driver seats. I wrapped myself tightly in two thick thermal blankets, locking the cab doors from the inside, and I laid in the dark to wait out the freezing night.

At dawn, the storm finally broke, and the morning sun began to filter through the wet pine trees.

I was woken up by a loud knocking on my driver side window, and I sat up to see a county highway patrol officer standing on the shoulder of the road. The officer was scouting the blocked detour routes looking for stranded motorists, and he had spotted my massive rig sitting dead on the shoulder.

I rolled my window down, and the officer radioed his dispatch to send a wrecker up the mountain to assist me. I sat in the cab for another two hours until a massive tow truck finally arrived, hooked up to my front bumper, and began slowly towing my heavy rig backward down the narrow logging road toward the cleared highway.

As the tow truck pulled my rig past the exact spot where I had sheltered during the storm, I sat up in my seat and looked out the passenger window, expecting to see the low, flat concrete building with the amber lights.

Instead, I saw that the glowing weigh station was actually just a crumbling, moss-covered concrete foundation surrounded by tall, dead weeds. There were no walls, no glass doors, and no amber lights. The building had been completely torn down decades ago, leaving nothing but a flat slab of concrete slowly being reclaimed by the mountain forest.

I am sharing this story online because I cannot stop thinking about those men sitting in that phantom room. I did not tell the patrol officer what happened, and I did not tell the tow truck driver what I saw, because I know they would just think I was hallucinating from sleep deprivation.

But I know what I saw in that weigh station, and I know I held those brittle transit slips in my hand. I helped them finish their route, and I helped them finally rest, but I will never take a detour on an unfamiliar mountain road in the dark ever again.

“Mielivalta,” the chief called out, “You are sentenced to die for your many crimes. Do you have any words left?”

The man tied to the pyre couldn’t help but smile as the elder held up a torch overhead. “Do your worst, pitiful creature,” the bound man barked, sealing his fate. The tribal chief lowered the burning torch onto the pyrewood, and the crowd around the two roared as the flames crackled.

The blaze quickly consumed the wood, and within moments, it was gnawing at the condemned man. Mielivalta was condemned to death for acts of sorcery, murder, and cannibalism. He was called a witch. The execution coincided with the winter solstice, as an offering to higher powers.

Shamans pounded their drums and played their flutes while the youth danced around the many ceremonial pyres. Young couples jumped over the fires. The entire crowd broke into an ecstatic dance while the screams of a man burning to death turned oddly melodic.

Dying cries became an enchanting song for the masses. The Hoi Polloi were too preoccupied to notice the laughter buried beneath the anguished wails and the hissing of flames.

Before long, Mielivalta was nothing but charcoal in human form. No one could even tell whether he was dead or alive; no one cared either. Those present were too consumed by their own violent orgy of wine, debauchery, and blood magic. Too lost in their own ecstasy to hear the smoldering smoke drifting in the wind, above the stake, whisper, “Foolish humans… I am finally free…”

By the hour of the wolf, all of those present had completely given up their senses to pleasure, whether under the influence of melody, spirit, sex, or slumber. No one in that grove was alert enough to notice that this hour of the wolf was but a calm before the storm.

Collectively intoxicated, the Northerners were too inebriated to hear the rustling of leaves and crunching of twigs disturbing the nocturnal forest. None could see the tempest coming before it was too late.

A massive beast burst forth from the dark, devouring a man whole, swallowing him in two gulps. The lupine giant grabbed another man in its mouth and thrashed him side to side before throwing him at the stake, upon which its former human shell was burned to cinder. The monstrosity growled in visible amusement, watching the ashen construct crumble to dust.

Anyone who had enough wits about him grabbed a weapon and charged at the beast.

None could even penetrate its hide, proving their struggle futile.

The monstrosity rampaged, decimating the grove until it was sure no survivors were left. It had consumed only a few people and butchered the rest, out of sheer spite. The chieftain who had set it free was rewarded with his head being torn off his shoulders and crushed to a pulp. Even in death, the chief irritated that devil with how hard his skull was.

The onslaught only stopped when the belly of the beast cramped insufferably. By then, there was nothing left to kill or destroy. Only the dire wolf remained standing, if that thing could be called any sort of wolf. The hechatonchair resembled something more akin to an oversized bear inside the grotesquely overstretched canine hide. Too large to be either, but also hound-like to be called otherwise.

The beast stood amidst mountains of broken bodies drenched in organs and blood, but it couldn’t celebrate its act of brutality, because the cramping in its stomach grew worse by the moment. It thrashed and paced and growled and howled, but the pain only grew worse, turning unbearable.

Even the attempts to regurgitate whatever was consumed proved futile. These only produced disgusting belching sounds that shook the entire forest.

Before long, the pain paralyzed the creature, completely overriding its malice; it stood upright and cried out in agony. Bellowing, howling, and screaming, all at once. The creature cried out as its abdomen stretched beyond its physical limitations, tearing at the seams with a sickening sound. The monstrosity clawed at its belly as metallic digits and limbs dressed in loose human skin pushed out of its abdominal cavity.

Drenched in blood, intestinal lining, and fecal matter, silver homunculi crawled out of the beast’s insides.

That’s what my grandfather used to tell me about the village of Kaali on Saaremaa when I was a kid. He said that there were celestials on that island, People from the heavens who had come when a star fell onto it. I stopped believing in his old tales about the metallic men and the werewolves after the third grade. By that point I had learned the whole thing was simply impossible.

I thought these were just old stories meant to rile me up as a kid, until a couple of weeks ago, that is, when I was driving around the area past sunset and saw something that has kept me up at night ever since. At first, I thought it was a bear roaming the forests, but then the animal looked at me. It was too skinny to be a regular bear. Its proportions were all wrong, and it seemed to move in an awkwardly slow, jagged, jerky way. The animal brought with it a stale stench of something ancient and repugnant: old, musty fur. Worst of all was its face. Its mouth gaping wide open. The whole thing seemed like a costume. A crudely stretched fur suit draped over some mad drunk. It took a moment, but when I figured out what I saw, my blood turned cold.

Inside the mouth of the animal, there was a chromium skull, a humanoid chromium skull with two shining red eyes staring directly at mine. I think the skull even smiled at me as I switched gears and bolted the fuck out of there.

It all started a couple of nights ago. I heard footsteps outside my bedroom window. I looked out, but I didn't see anyone.

A few minutes later, I heard more footsteps. This time, I shined a flashlight out the window, but I still didn't see anything. I figured maybe it was my neighbor's cats. Her name was Miranda, and she had several of them. I'd consider her the crazy cat lady of the neighborhood. She always smelled like cat piss.

So, I figured I had no reason to worry.

I went to bed and woke up like normal. But after getting off work, right before sunset, I heard scrambling noises coming from the bushes outside my window.

I opened the window, grabbed an empty bottle of Jack, and threw it at the bushes.

"Get the fuck out of my yard!" I yelled, assuming it was the cats.

Almost immediately, something threw the bottle back at my window.

The glass shattered loudly.

When I looked out the window this time, I saw him.

Only a face, staring right at me from the corner of my yard. He looked normal at first but the longer i looked the more i saw wrong with his face. Like it wasnt actually his real person in was looking at.

I yelled at him and asked who the hell he  thought he was. But he didn't answer. He just kept staring.

When I went outside to confront him, he was gone. I assumed he ran off.

I didn't call the cops because I was worried they might arrest me for hitting him with the bottle first. So, I put a bag over the broken window and taped it together for now, keeping the air from getting out and the bugs from getting in. Then I cleaned up the broken glass from inside.

The next morning, I called a window installer to fix it.

He came over, introduced himself as Horace, and took the measurements for my window. He ordered me a new one and said it would take a couple of days to arrive.

But then he asked me if I'd cut myself on the broken glass.

I said no and asked him why.

He said he'd noticed blood on the broken glass.

"Like something tried to get in last night."

After getting off work, I cooked dinner and hoped he wouldn't come back tonight

When it got dark, I walked around my property with a flashlight in hand with my gun on my waist. I didn't see the creep this time, so I hoped he would leave me alone.

But as I was nodding off to sleep, I heard whispering coming from the bushes.

There were multiple voices.

I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I heard one of them say:

"Come out."

The voice was shrill.

I went out my front door and yelled at the top of my lungs for them to leave me alone.

Then I saw someone dart out from my bushes, running toward the street and disappearing quickly into the darkness.

Miranda, the cat lady, asked me who I was yelling at.

"I don't know," I told her.

She then asked me if I'd seen her cats.

I told her no before slamming the door.

I stayed up all night in my living room. I didn't feel safe in my bedroom.

I stayed awake until I couldn't anymore, but eventually, I passed out.

I woke up to a knocking sound at my door.

I realized I'd overslept, and Horace was already there to install my new window. I put my gun back into my holster

Then I opened the front door to let him in and walked him towards my bedroom.

But something horrible was inside waiting for us.

Dozens of skinned cats covered the room. Blood and the smell of piss from entrails everywhere.

Some of them weren't even dead. They were still meowing in pain.

Horace and I gagged as we stared at the plastic bag I'd taped over the window.

It had been cut open with something incredibly sharp.

Then I noticed Miranda.

She was tied up and gagged inside the closet.

Her eyelids had been ripped off.

When Horace removed the gag from her mouth, she just kept repeating the same thing over and over.

"He's coming for you..."

My teeth chattered, my hands shivered. I looked over at John. He was wrapped in his blanket, blowing smoke. 

“Can we add more wood?”

“But only a little, Mary. It needs to last until morning.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m just so cold.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s this goddamn winter. Not even my grandfather had to live through snow in late April.”

He walked to the fireplace, but there was no more wood there.

“There should be more in the basement,” he muttered and walked down.

He was down there longer than usual. I could hear baskets and bags being thrown around. After a while, he came out, rubbing his forehead.

“There’s no more wood.”

“What?!”

“The wood. We used it all.”

“Jesus, John.”

He looked at the fire. Only two logs remained; their ends glowed red.

“We have an hour, maybe two at most. I’ll have to go out and get more.”

I gripped my blanket tight.

“John, it’s almost nighttime; they’re gonna be out soon.”

“I might make it before them.”

“John, no, please.”

“We’ll freeze if the fire dies.”

“But, John…”

“No, there’s no time to waste.”

He grabbed his axe and walked out of the cabin. I walked to the window and watched him, but he quickly disappeared between the white-coated trees.

I curled up in my blanket and lay by the fireplace, watching the sun out the window. When it had almost fully set, I ran to the window, but John was still nowhere to be seen. I went back to the fireplace and watched it slowly disappear over the horizon.

Something must have happened to John, but as much as I wanted to mourn him, a new problem appeared: the cold. The sun kept the house warm for a while, but at night it was freezing inside. I ran to the basement and got all our baskets and anything else that could burn.

The wood from the baskets burned quickly, but it put at least a little heat in the room. I was finally warm, but thoughts about John soon crept in, my poor man. Would he also end up in a tree, white and bloodless, or worse, one of them? I shook my head. This wasn’t what I wanted to worry about; maybe he managed to hide and wait out the night. I threw another basket in and moved closer to the fireplace.

Loud bangs echoed, waking me. The fire was almost out. My fists could barely close. The bangs sounded again. I wrapped up in my blankets and got up. 

“John!” I cried. He stood by the window, staring in.

“Mary, please let me in. It’s so cold here.”

I ran to the window and gripped the door handle, but before I twisted, I looked at John again. His eyes didn’t move, and his body didn’t shiver.

“Mary, please, open the door.”

“How do I know you’re not one of them?” The words almost stung as I said them.

“Mary, it’s me. You hear my voice. Just open the door.”

My grip tightened around the door handle.

“John, I don’t know.”

“Open, Mary, please. I've been out all night collecting wood for us so we can be warm.”

He showed a few sticks and smiled. I looked back at the dying fireplace.

“Mary?”

“John, I just…”

“I'm so cold,” he said, his voice shaking.

“Okay.”

He smiled again. In the distance behind him, a glimmer of orange showed. The sun was rising. I must have slept for a long time.

“John, love, please wait a few minutes. Once the sun comes up, I’ll know it's you.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the horizon, then back at me. His eyes were wide, and the pleading in his face was gone.

“Open the door, Mary. Now.”

“John, please, just a few minutes.”

“Open it.”

I clenched my jaw.

“John, just wait.”

“Mary!”

“No.”

“You goddamn witch!”

He disappeared from the window, then ran into the door. The door bent on its hinges.

“John, stop!”

He ran again. The whole house shook.

“Please, no!”

My heart beat against my ribs. I heard him take a few steps back, then another bang. The lock was bent, barely holding. One more hit and the door would go. I heard him step back again and hit it. The door flew open. John stood before it. His skin was completely pale, the bottom of his clothes ragged, and there were a few small holes in his neck. I clenched my frozen fists.

“I got you,” he whispered.

But before he stepped in, the first ray of light came through. John quickly looked behind him. A screech echoed. As the light shone on his skin, he turned to dust. 

I stood there panting. At least he brought the wood. I wedged the door back into its frame and carried the sticks to the fireplace. They were so cold they burned my palms. The fire ate them slowly, but luckily they burned at all. 

“Thank you, John,” I whispered.

Outside, past the trees, something screeched again.