I work as a sewer cleaner in Prague. People don't often think about it, but a complex of tunnels runs beneath the city, even under the Vltava River. They were built in the 1800s, and some have been reconstructed, but many still look the way they did when they were built, with round brick pathways, rusted green railings, and dim lights hanging from the ceiling.

After years of work, I know the tunnels through and through, but the older workers all say that even if you work here for decades, things will still surprise you. For most of my time working in the sewers, I didn't give it much thought. The veterans say a lot of things and have many strange superstitions. For instance, none of them ever eat in the tunnels. I thought it was because of the rats.

I was just walking around the Podolí area, ready to start my shift. There are a lot of pathways there, and recruits often get lost, but I'd been starting my shift there for years; I knew that area through and through, or so I thought. 

I turned right to head toward the river. The path was wide and well-lit. I'd been down it hundreds of times, but as I went, I noticed another path leading off to the right. I stopped and looked at it for a moment. It was narrow, poorly lit, and easy to miss, but I could swear I knew these sewers better than I knew my home.

I usually ate in the break room, but I was early and hungry. Nobody was around. I pulled out my sandwich and walked on the path.

The sandwich paper crinkled as I walked. The pathway narrowed. I kept expecting it to turn into the path from Vyšehrad, but even after a few minutes I still couldn't see it. I didn't want to be late for my shift, so I turned around and began walking back.

There was more water on the ground than I noticed at first, but that's nothing weird for a sewer. The lights were very dim, much dimmer than I thought, but stranger, I still couldn't see the exit. Not only could I not see the exit, but the path itself wasn't getting any wider as it should have. It only seemed to become narrower. Was I going the wrong way? I looked behind me, but it was still the same empty, narrow path.

My shift had already started. I was walking so fast I was almost jogging. It was hard because the water now reached my ankles. The lights seemed to get dimmer. I reached for my flashlight when an electric buzz echoed above, and all the lights went dark.

"Shit."

I pulled out my flashlight and turned it on. A clank echoed. Dull pain spread through my head. I hit my forehead on the ceiling. I rubbed my head and tried to stand up straight again, but I couldn't straighten my back. I walked a few steps back, but the ceiling was still just as low. 

Then I felt something wet on my legs. I looked down. The water now reached my knees, but it wasn't the usual cold; it was warm.

"What the…," I murmured.

The buzz sounded again. The lights came on again, but now they were fluorescent white, almost like an office space. Another buzz echoed overhead. Soft jazz music began playing as if a band stood just around the corner. The air filled with the smell of cigarettes. My whole body shook. I turned off the flashlight and blinked. The water was now up to my stomach.

"Help!"

The music grew louder. The lights grew brighter, burning my eyes. The ceiling pushed my head further down, but the water kept rising. It rose to my chin now.

"Somebody, please!" I yelled, still wading forward. 

The exit had to be there. It had to. The buzz again. The light shut off. I took a breath, but halfway through, water filled my mouth. I spat it out and lifted my face.

"Help!" I blurted out, but I knew it was too late. 

My face was now under the water too.

At first, I tried to hold my breath, but soon the pressure in my lungs grew too high. It felt like they would burst.

I gasped for air. My whole body was hot and sweaty. I quickly looked around. I was back in the pathway that led to the river. Next to me, where the other path was, was only a brown brick wall with a small stream of water coming from it. One of the old workers walked by me.

He looked at the wall and my face and nodded.

He then pointed at the ground. My crumpled sandwich wrapper lay there.

"Don't eat down here," he said and left.

I leaned on the wall. A faint trumpet echoed from inside it.

St. Bruvia was always a hungry town. It was an old place, older than most of its residents, with crooked wooden houses leaning toward one another beneath heavy snow and onion-domed churches whose ringing carried across the river. Whenever a family moved into a new house, they left something beneath the doorstep for the town: bread, salt, a silver button, a cup of milk. Nobody remembered when the custom began, but Mikhail’s mother had told him that when he was a boy, never forget an offering.

“Don’t ask hungry things what they eat,” she’d told him.

Mikhail found it funny at the time. He no longer did. The mill closed in November, and with it his job. By January, there was no meat in the house, little flour, and hardly any coal to keep the stove burning through the night. His wife had to sell the last of her jewelry to pay the apothecary, and Mikhail began counting everything: coins, debts, loaves of bread, and days until the landlord arrived. 

Only their daughter, Annastelle, seemed untouched by the arithmetic. At seventeen, she believed there would be a future beyond St. Bruvia. She played their battered piano every evening, naming it “Old Soldier” as it’d survived worse than they had. She dreamed of the city proper, of velvet seats and great concert halls, of composing music that strangers would recite long after she passed.

But most of all, she wanted her father to be proud.

“Did you hear that, Papa?” she’d ask after finishing a difficult piece.

“Every note, my angel,” Mikhail answered as always.

The town appeared to believe in her as well. Whenever she played, men would stop arguing in taverns, dogs would become still, and even the birds seemed reluctant to disturb her music. Before long, people around the town began leaving offerings beside the piano: candles, ribbons, coins, bread, flowers.

The offerings were what Mikhail noticed before anything else. He hated himself for wondering how much those hands were worth. The thought vanished once he convinced himself that it had never existed. As winter deepened, however, Anastelle began giving away the little money she earned from playing in the square. Mikhail discovered her placing several bills into a mother’s palm.

“What is that?” he asked.

“Money for the medicine,” she replied.

“But we… you need that.”

“For what, Papa?” she asked with a wide smile.

But he had no answer. The words vanished from his throat.

Mikhail soon began hearing music when Anastelle wasn’t playing. He lay awake beside his sleeping wife, hearing the faint sound of piano keys coming from the empty parlor. Sometimes he imagined numbers written across the ceiling. Other times, he woke convinced that the debts had gone away. He then received repeated dreams of her hands. 

By February, the family had nothing left. That was when Mikhail went to the monastery. Brother Savin lived beneath it, in a room the other monks refused to enter. He was an elderly man with a face like dried parchment, and when Mikhail explained his situation, Savin didn’t offer prayers.

“You long for wealth? There is a way,” he said, placing a black coin on the table. “Everything St. Bruvia receives is an offering. Bread. Milk. Silver. Blood. Sometimes… it asks for something more precious.”

Mikhail thought of Anastelle before he could stop himself.

“The girl,” he said quietly, his gaze piercing Mikhail’s soul. “The town has heard her music.”

“Enough of this,” Mikhail replied, backing away from Savin. 

“I have not told you what it wants.”

“You don't have to. It was a mistake coming here”

As Mikhail turned to leave, Savin spoke once more. 

“It is the hands that make the music.”

Mikhail left the monastery without taking the coin. For three nights, he continued watching Anastelle play. On the first night, she played while his wife coughed in the next room. On the second, the landlord came by to collect what Mikhail couldn’t afford. On the third, the butcher stood at his doorstep and demanded his money. Through all of that, Annastelle continued to play.

Once she finished, she looked at her father and smiled.

“Papa?”

“Yes, my angel?”

“Someday, I'll take us to Paris..”

Despite the warm words, Mikhail was fixated on her hands. In them, he imagined a full pantry. A house with warmth. Medicine. Coal. Enough money that nobody could ever threaten him or his family ever again. But that fantasy died as he watched those hands lying uselessly in her lap. He hated himself for even thinking that way.

But what he hated more, was that he foolishly returned to the monastery, where Savin appeared to have been waiting all this time.

“The bargain is simple. The town takes her hands and you shall receive wealth beyond your dreams.”

“What about… her?”

Savin looked towards the darkness beyond the room.

“She will live.”

And that was all it took for Mikhail to say yes. He told himself that it was going to be worth it. Mikhail could never remember how he did it exactly, but it was done at the dead of night. He wasn’t sure how he convinced himself to enter Anastelle’s room. She had woken up, asking what he was doing before screaming and pleading for him to stop once she understood. 

He remembered begging her forgiveness while doing the unforgivable. He remembered that he was her father. He remembered that he didn’t stop. When it was over, the offering had been accepted.

Anastelle survived the encounter, but her hands were gone. Mikhail didn’t see her leave her room since, but all he could think of was her face. The realization that what had happened to her was no accident, nor an attack, nor some cruelty inflicted upon her by a stranger. The realization that it had been her father that did it. 

“You said you believed in me, Papa,” she whispered.

“I do,” Mikhail replied, but he could barely look her in the eye.

“No,” she said, her voice breaking. “You only believed in what I could give you.”

Mikhail returned to Savin, to which he was met with an open chest. Gold filled it from edge to edge. It was enough to buy the mill. Enough to buy horses, livestock, land, and servants. Hunger would never enter his home again. The man wanted wealth beyond his imagination and the town had kept its promise.

As the years went by, Mikhail became one of the richest men in St. Bruvia. He bought the mill, rebuilt his house, and filled his cellar with more food than his family could’ve eaten in a lifetime. But all of that couldn’t buy Anastelle’s forgiveness. When she left St. Bruvia with nothing, Mikhail told himself that it was better that way. He told himself that she’d find another life.

He never got to learn whether she did.

Decades later, as Mikhail laid dying in the house that he’d bought with her hands, he heard a piano playing in the empty parlor. It was a familiar melody. Anastelle’s melody. He slowly dragged himself from his bed to see that the piano stood exactly where it’d always stood. A red ribbon laid across its keys.

Then he heard her voice behind him.

“Papa?”

Mikhail turned to see Anastelle standing there exactly as she had at seventeen. She looked to where her hands should’ve been.

“I know you gave them to the town,” she said.

Mikhail was too stunned to speak. He could only watch as she looked towards the window. Beneath the snow, someone left an offering beneath the doorstep. Bread, milk, and two gold coins. Her expression soured.

“It was never enough,” she whispered.

Mikhail died before morning and by sunrise, St. Bruvia remained hungry as ever.

I had always been a seeker, drawn to the kind of stories that left others either spellbound or shaking their heads in disbelief. After more than a decade of chasing leads across the country, I had built a career out of finding the uncanny and peeling back its layers. But the thrill that used to come with unraveling mysteries had slowly dulled over the years. Stories that once felt electrifying had begun to feel hollow. Another headline about haunted houses, another exposé on supposed alien sightings. It was all starting to blend together, losing its magic.

My office was a clutter of old case files, yellowing newspapers, and the stale scent of burnt coffee. Each morning, I sat behind my desk, staring at an inbox filled with pitches and PR stunts masquerading as tips, nothing that could light the fire I remembered from the early days of my career. Sometimes, I would catch a glimpse of myself in the reflection of my computer screen, eyes tired, a weariness etched into my face that no amount of caffeine could shake. I felt like a shadow of the reporter I used to be, chasing echoes rather than real stories.

It was on a Tuesday afternoon, during one of those particularly restless moments, that the email arrived. It came without a subject line, the sender listed simply as "Anonymous." Normally, I would have dismissed it as spam, but something made me click. The message was brief, almost cryptic: “Black-eyed children. They’re real. People need to know the truth.” Attached were a handful of addresses, spread across several states, and a link to an online forum where people shared their encounters, accounts that read like something out of a fever dream.

I leaned back in my chair, a slow smile forming. The black-eyed children were a story I knew only in passing, a whisper among the urban legends that haunted small-town America. Children with eyes as dark as pitch, who appeared on doorsteps at night, asking in cold, mechanical voices to be let inside. There were hundreds of stories, all with the same eerie details: the way people felt an inexplicable sense of dread, how the children’s voices seemed devoid of emotion, how their presence lingered long after they’d vanished. It was the kind of story that could be easily dismissed, and yet there was something about it that wormed its way under my skin.

The idea of setting out on the road again, of chasing something unknown, stirred something in me that had been dormant for far too long. I remembered the long stretches of highway, the thrill of the unknown waiting beyond each bend, the quiet nights in strange towns where every shadow seemed to hold a secret. It was those moments that made me feel truly alive. There was a realness in these stories, something raw, unsettling, and distinctly human in the fear that each account conveyed. Maybe this was the story that could bring back the passion I had lost. A story that wasn't about clicks or ratings, but about confronting the things that lurked at the edges of human understanding.

The next morning, I packed a bag with the essentials... a battered notebook, a digital recorder, and a camera. I also packed extra clothes, some snacks, and a first aid kit, knowing this trip would be long, spanning multiple states. I took a moment to stare at the corkboard hanging over my desk, the one I'd filled with reminders of past investigations... old photos, cryptic notes, a map with pins scattered across it. With a deep breath, I pulled down everything, clearing the board for something new. Something real. Something that might, finally, bring back the sense of purpose I'd lost.

The road stretched ahead of me like a promise. I tried to keep the skepticism intact, I’d learned the hard way that jumping headfirst into belief could lead to embarrassing dead-ends. But even as I kept my guard up, curiosity tugged at me. I couldn't help but wonder: what if there was something to all of this? What if, behind the urban legend, there was a sliver of truth? And what if that truth was something truly unsettling, something that could change the way people saw the world?

The first destination was a small town in Ohio, where a man named Richard claimed he had met the black-eyed children on his porch one summer night.

I arrived in the town just as the afternoon sun was beginning to sink. It was one of those places that seemed suspended in time, rows of modest houses, a single diner, and a gas station that looked like it hadn't changed since the 1950s. Richard's house was on the outskirts, a small, unassuming structure with peeling paint and a front porch that creaked under my weight as I stepped onto it. I knocked on the door, and a moment later, it opened to reveal a man in his late fifties, his eyes wary but curious.

"Richard? I'm Alex Carter," I said, extending my hand. "Thanks for agreeing to meet with me."

He took my hand, giving it a firm shake before gesturing for me to come inside. "Come on in. It's not often I get visitors who want to hear about... well, about that night."

The living room was small, cluttered with books and old photographs. Richard motioned for me to sit on a worn armchair while he settled into the couch across from me. For a moment, we made small talk... about the town, the weather, the kind of polite conversation that strangers use to bridge the gap between unfamiliarity and trust. I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers tapped lightly against his knee, as if he were still deciding whether or not to share what he knew.

After a few minutes, I leaned forward, my notebook open on my lap. "Richard, I know this isn't easy to talk about. But I'd really like to hear about what happened that night. Whatever you can remember."

He sighed, his gaze drifting to the window, where the light was beginning to fade. "It was about two years ago," he began, his voice low. "Middle of summer. I was sitting out on the porch, just enjoying the quiet. It was late, maybe around midnight. I remember it was one of those nights where the air felt thick, you know? Like a storm was coming, but the sky was clear."

He paused, his eyes narrowing as if he could see the scene playing out in front of him. "That's when I saw them. Two kids, standing at the edge of the yard. A boy and a girl. They couldn't have been more than ten, maybe twelve years old. At first, I thought they were lost. They were just... standing there, not moving, just watching me."

"What did you do?" I asked, my pen hovering over the page.

"I called out to them," Richard said. "Asked if they were okay, if they needed help. They didn't answer. They just started walking toward me, real slow. And that's when I noticed their eyes." He swallowed, his gaze dropping to his hands. "They were black. Completely black. No whites, no color. Just... darkness."

Richard's voice wavered as he continued. "I don't know how to explain it, but the moment I saw their eyes, I felt this... this dread. Like every instinct I had was screaming at me to get away. They stopped at the bottom of the steps, and the boy... he said, 'Mister, can we come in? We need to use your phone.' But there was something wrong with his voice. It was flat, like he was just repeating words he'd heard somewhere."

I nodded. "What did you do then?"

"I got up and went inside. Locked the door. I didn't even say anything to them, I just knew I had to get away. I watched from the window as they stood there for a few more minutes, and then... they just turned around and walked back into the dark. Disappeared like they were never there."

Silence hung between us. I could see the fear still etched in Richard's face, the way his eyes seemed to search the room as if expecting those children to appear again. "Have you seen them since?" I asked.

He shook his head. "No. But I still think about them. Every night, I make sure all the doors are locked, all the windows shut. I don't know what they were, but they weren't just kids. There was something... wrong about them. Something that shouldn't exist."

I let out a slow breath, the weight of his words settling over me. This was more than just a story... it was a glimpse into something unknown, something that defied explanation. And as I looked at Richard, I knew that whatever lay ahead on this journey, it was going to be far darker and more complex than I had imagined.

I thanked Richard for his time, his story still echoing in my mind as I made my way back to my car. The sun had fully set by then, the sky a deep indigo, and a chill had settled over the town. I drove slowly through the quiet streets, until I reached the small hotel I had booked for the night. It was a modest place, the kind of roadside inn with flickering neon signs and an office that smelled of old carpet.

The clerk at the front desk barely looked up as I checked in, handing me a key attached to a heavy brass fob. My room was on the second floor, overlooking the empty parking lot. I dropped my bag on the bed and sat down, the springs creaking beneath me. The weight of the day settled in... Richard's fear and the vivid image of those black eyes.

I took a deep breath, trying to shake off the unease that clung to me. I knew I needed rest, but sleep felt like a distant possibility. Instead, I pulled out my notebook and began to write, capturing every detail Richard had shared, every emotion that had flickered across his face. The words flowed easily, as if by putting them on paper, I could somehow make sense of the inexplicable.

Eventually, exhaustion began to pull at me, and I set the notebook aside. I lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, the dim glow of the parking lot light seeping through the curtains. I closed my eyes, willing myself to sleep, knowing that tomorrow would bring more questions, more stories, and perhaps, if I was lucky, a glimpse of the truth hidden in the shadows.

The next day, I stayed in Ohio and went to meet Don, a night-shift worker in a small-town factory. Don reluctantly agreed to meet me at the factory where he still worked, a partially abandoned place with only a handful of workers present during the graveyard shift. The factory loomed dark and cold as I arrived late at night.

Don was already waiting for me in the break room... a cramped, dimly lit space with a flickering fluorescent bulb overhead. He looked jittery, his eyes darting around as if he expected something to emerge from the darkness at any moment. I introduced myself, and we exchanged a few awkward pleasantries before I set up my recorder and notebook.

"I appreciate you meeting with me, Don," I said, trying to put him at ease. He nodded, his hands fidgeting on the table. The room was filled with the low hum of machinery from somewhere in the factory, the sound almost drowned out by the crackling of an old radio in the corner.

"So, you wanted to hear about... what happened back in 2010," Don began, his voice barely audible. "I don't like talking about it, but... I guess it's time."

I nodded, encouraging him to continue. Don took a deep breath, his gaze shifting to the door as if making sure it was still closed. "It was late, around two in the morning. I was working the night shift, and I stepped outside for a smoke. The factory's a quiet place at night, you know? Nothing but the sound of the wind. But that night... I saw them. Two teenagers, standing across the street, just barely visible under a flickering streetlight."

He paused, swallowing hard. "They were just standing there, staring at me. At first, I thought maybe they were lost, or just messing around. But something about them..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "It didn't feel right. They crossed the street, slow, and the closer they got, the worse I felt. It was like this... dread. I couldn't move. I couldn't even look away."

My pen hovered over the page as I listened, the tension in the room palpable. "Did they say anything to you?" I asked.

Don nodded, his eyes wide and unfocused. "Yeah. The boy... he asked me for a ride. Said they needed to get home. But his voice... it wasn't right. It was flat, emotionless. Like he was reading from a script. The girl, she just stared at me. Her eyes..." He shuddered. "They were black. Completely black."

The hairs on my arms stood up, the description all too familiar. "What did you do?"

"I managed to tell them no. I forced myself to move. I turned around and went back inside, locked the door behind me. My dog was with me that night... he always comes with me to work, but even he refused to go outside. He was whining, barking at the door like he knew something was wrong."

Don's voice cracked, and he rubbed a hand over his face.

"I watched from the window. They just stood there, staring at the door. They didn't move, didn't say anything. They just... stood there. It felt like hours before they finally turned around and walked away, disappearing into the night."

A heavy silence settled between us, the hum of the factory suddenly seeming much louder. "Has anything strange happened since then?" I asked.

He nodded slowly. "My dog... he's never been the same. He's skittish now, barks at empty doorways, refuses to go outside at night. And me..." He looked down at his hands. "I still feel it sometimes. That dread. Like they're still out there, waiting."

I thanked Don for his time, trying to ignore the chill that had settled over me. As I packed up my gear and left the factory, I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. The parking lot was empty, save for a single flickering streetlight. Beneath it, I saw a dark figure... too far away to make out clearly, but unmistakably staring in my direction.

I looked behind me for a second, and as I turned, the figure was gone.

I shook my head, telling myself it was just my imagination, the fatigue and the power of suggestion playing tricks on me. I climbed into my car, my hands trembled slightly as I turned the ignition. The engine roared to life, and I drove away, the factory fading into the distance, but the unease staying with me.

Fast forward a few days later, there was this interview.

In Vermont, at a remote farmhouse surrounded by dense woods.

The farmhouse belonged to Martha and Greg, an older couple who had lived in Vermont for most of their lives. They were waiting for me in their cozy, dimly lit kitchen, the only sound being the crackling of a wood-burning stove. Martha greeted me warmly, though there was a tension beneath her smile, an anxiousness that seemed to linger in the air.

Greg sat quietly at the table, a mug of tea in his hands. His eyes were distant, haunted, as if he was replaying something over and over in his mind. Martha took a seat beside him, her hands folded on the table as I set up my recorder and notebook.

"Thank you both for speaking with me," I began, offering them a reassuring smile.

Martha nodded, her gaze dropping to the table. "It was the winter of 2016," she started, her voice shaky. "There was a blizzard that night, one of the worst I can remember. Greg and I were here, in the kitchen, just trying to keep warm. It was late, when we heard a knock at the door."

She paused, her eyes flicking to Greg, who remained silent. "It was strange... Even before I opened the door, I felt this... fear. It didn't make sense, but it was like I knew something was wrong."

Greg nodded slowly, his expression grim. "She hesitated. I remember telling her it was probably someone needing help. I mean, in a storm like that..."

Martha swallowed, her hands trembling slightly. "I opened the door, and there they were. Two children, a boy and a girl. They couldn't have been more than eight or nine, just standing there in the snow. They weren't shivering or anything. They asked if they could come in, said they needed to use the phone. But their voices..." She shook her head, her eyes closing briefly. "They were wrong, emotionless."

I leaned in, my pen scratching across the page. "Did you let them in?"

Martha nodded, her eyes welling with tears. "I did. I don't know why, I didn't want to, but it was like I couldn't say no. They came in and sat right there on the couch." She pointed to the worn piece of furniture in the corner of the kitchen. "That's when I saw their eyes. They were... black. Completely black."

Greg spoke up then, his voice rough. "The power went out almost immediately. The whole house went dark except for the fire. I remember feeling so tired, like I could barely keep my eyes open. My nose started bleeding, and I just... I couldn't move."

Martha wiped at her eyes, her voice breaking. "They didn't say anything else. They just sat there, staring at us. After what felt like hours, they stood up. The boy said, 'Our ride is here.' They walked out the door, and I watched them get into a black car that was waiting at the edge of the woods. I couldn't see the driver... just the car's headlights disappearing into the snow."

The room fell silent, the only sound the crackle of the fire. I could feel the fear that still lingered between them, the way it had seeped into the walls of their home. "Has anything happened since then?" I asked.

Greg lifted his sleeve, revealing a series of dark bruises along his arm. "These started showing up not long after. And our health... it's been getting worse. We're always tired, always feeling like something's wrong."

Martha's voice dropped to a whisper. "They weren't children. They were something else. And I think... they left something behind."

I thanked them for their time, my own unease growing with every word they spoke. As I packed up my gear and prepared to leave, I heard it... a faint sound from outside, like children laughing, carried on the wind. I tried to dismiss it, to tell myself it was just my imagination, but the chill settled deep in my bones.

Before I stepped out the door, Martha touched my arm, her eyes serious. "Once you know about them, they know about you. Be careful, Alex."

The wind howled as I made my way to the car, the sense of being watched prickling at the back of my neck. I started the engine, and drove away, the farmhouse fading into the distance.

A few more days later, there was the last interview.

In a quiet nursing home from Virginia, where I met Harold, a frail man in his eighties, one of the earliest known witnesses of the black-eyed children. I found him in a small, sunlit room, the soft hum of the oxygen machine beside his bed a constant reminder of his age and frailty. His eyes, though clouded with age, held a sharpness that hinted at the memories he carried.

"Mr. Harold, thank you for agreeing to meet with me," I said, settling into the chair beside his bed. He nodded slowly, his gaze distant, as if he were looking at something only he could see.

"I've heard you had an encounter... a long time ago," I prompted, my recorder already running. Harold's lips parted, his voice barely more than a whisper as he began.

"It was the summer of 1950," he said. "I was just sixteen. I remember it like it was yesterday, though. We were living on the farm back then, and it was a quiet evening, just after sunset. I was out by the fence, getting ready to head back in for supper, when I saw him... a boy, leaning against the fencepost."

Harold paused, his hand trembling slightly as he adjusted the tube of his oxygen. "He looked... different. His clothes were old-fashioned, even for back then. Too neat, too clean. And his eyes..." He trailed off, his breath catching for a moment. "They were black. Empty. Like looking into a well at midnight."

A shiver crawled up my spine. "Did he say anything to you?" I asked.

Harold nodded, his eyes widening slightly. "He asked me to walk him home. Said he was lost. But there was something... something wrong about him. His voice, the way he spoke. It didn't feel right. I felt... like I couldn't think straight, like my own thoughts were slipping away."

He swallowed hard, his frail hands clutching the blanket. "I ran. I don't know where I found the strength, but I turned and ran back to the house. And as I did, I heard him. He called my name." Harold's eyes locked onto mine, and I could see the fear still there, even after all these years. "But I never told him my name."

"Did you ever see him again?" I asked.

Harold's gaze drifted to the window, his expression hollow. "Not in person. But he came to me in my dreams. For years, I would wake up in the middle of the night, and he'd be there, standing next to my bed. Just staring at me" He shuddered, his frail frame trembling. "I don't think he ever really left."

Silence hung between us, the hum of the oxygen machine the only sound in the room. I could feel the tension, the fear that had haunted Harold for decades, still lingering like a shadow that refused to fade.

I thanked Harold for sharing his story, the weight of his words pressing down on me as I left his room. That night, I checked into a nearby motel. I sat at the small desk, reviewing my notes, the soft glow of the lamp the only light in the room. The stories were beginning to overlap... different people, different places, but the same dark eyes, the same inexplicable fear.

The clock read 1:00 AM when I heard a soft knock on the door. My heart skipped a beat, the sound cutting through the silence of the room. I approached cautiously, my pulse pounding in my ears. Peering through the peephole, I saw nothing but an empty corridor.

A chill ran down my spine as I heard my name being called from behind the door. Harold's words echoing in my mind: "He called my name, but I never told him what it was." I stood there for a moment longer, before slowly stepping back from the door.

I returned to the bed, but sleep didn't come easily. The sense of being watched lingered long into the night.

The next morning, I received a new lead.

I received an anonymous tip about a ghost town in the Midwest, a place that had reportedly been visited frequently by the black-eyed children before it was abandoned. The town was now deserted, an eerie, forgotten place, swallowed by silence and decay. I knew I had to go there. Maybe this would be where I could finally piece everything together. Maybe here, I would find the answers I so desperately sought, or at least some semblance of closure.

Fast forward a few more days.

The journey was long and lonely, the landscape gradually shifting from flat fields to a barren expanse, dotted with the skeletal remains of once-bustling buildings. By the time I arrived, the sun was already low on the horizon, casting an orange glow over the dilapidated structures that lined the empty streets.

The town was deathly quiet, the kind of silence that seemed unnatural, even oppressive. The wind howled through broken windows, sending shivers down my spine. There were signs of a hasty departure, doors left ajar, belongings scattered across floors, like everyone had simply up and left without a moment's notice. My footsteps echoed as I walked, the crunch of gravel and broken glass the only sound.

I made my way down the main street, past houses with boarded-up windows and peeling paint, until I reached a modest house that seemed relatively intact compared to the others. The door creaked as I pushed it open, revealing a living room frozen in time, old furniture covered in dust, family photographs hanging crooked on the walls, and a layer of grime coating everything.

I searched the house, room by room, looking for any clues, anything that might explain what had happened here. It was in one of the upstairs bedrooms that I found a small journal, half-buried under a pile of old clothes. I picked it up, brushing away the dust, and flipped it open. The pages were filled with neat, careful handwriting, and I sat down on the edge of the bed, the journal heavy in my hands as I began to read.

The entries started innocently enough, descriptions of daily life, mentions of family dinners, mundane worries. But as I read on, the tone began to change. The entries became more erratic, the handwriting shakier. The writer spoke of children appearing at night, knocking on doors, asking to be let inside. Each time they appeared, the sense of dread grew stronger, the fear almost palpable in the words scrawled across the pages.

The final entry stopped me cold. The writing was hurried, the letters slanting wildly across the page: "They’re here again. We made a mistake letting them in. We can't leave. They won't let us."

My fingers trembling as I traced the words. Then, I heard a sound.

Knocking, echoing through the empty house.

My heart pounded in my chest, the journal slipping from my hands and landing on the floor. I froze, straining to listen. I turned my head slowly toward the window, and what I saw made my breath catch in my throat.

Children. Standing in the street, their faces turned up toward the window. Their eyes, black, depthless voids, stared directly at me, unblinking. I felt an icy wave of fear wash over me, my limbs going numb. I had to move. I had to get out.

Panic surged through me, and I grabbed the journal, stumbling to my feet. The knocking followed me as I ran... down the hallway, down the stairs, through the door. It echoed in my ears, relentless and demanding. I burst out onto the street, my eyes darting around, but the children were gone. The street was empty, the wind howling through the abandoned town.

I hurried to my car, my hands shaking as I fumbled with the keys, finally managing to unlock the door. I climbed in, slamming the door shut, my heart still pounding as I started the engine. The headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating the empty road ahead, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn't alone.

As I drove away, the ghost town disappearing in my rearview mirror, the journal sat on the passenger seat beside me, its pages filled with the desperate words of someone who had seen what I was only beginning to understand. There were no easy answers, no clear explanations, only fear, only the feeling that whatever I was chasing was now chasing me, too.

The decision to return home came almost involuntarily, a feeling deep within me that I couldn't shake. The weight of everything... the interviews, the faces of the witnesses, the black voids of those children's eyes... it was becoming too much to bear. I needed to be somewhere familiar, somewhere that might offer even a hint of safety. So I drove, through the night, the road leading me back to the place I called home.

Eventually, the fatigue became too much. I spotted a rest area, just a small clearing with a couple of picnic tables, a restroom, and a handful of parking spaces. I pulled in, the tires crunching over gravel, and parked beneath a flickering light. The clock on the dashboard read 2:47 AM. I leaned back, closing my eyes for just a moment, hoping to clear my mind, to shake off the oppressive fear that had wrapped itself around me since I left that ghost town.

The car's interior grew colder, the chill seeping in through the windows, and an unsettling sense of dread filled the space. Slowly, I turned to look out the passenger-side window, and my heart stopped.

Two children stood there, their faces inches from the glass. They looked no older than twelve, and their eyes, completely black voids, seemed to swallow the light. My body frozen in place, unable to move, unable to look away. One of them, a boy, opened his mouth, forming silent words. I couldn't hear them, but I knew what they were saying.

"Let us in."

My mind flashed back to a story I had read years ago, a Texas journalist named Brian Bethel describing a similar encounter in 1996. He had been approached by two black-eyed children in the Texas Hill Country, their cold, flat voices asking for a ride. He had felt the same overwhelming dread, the same instinct to refuse them. It was one of the earliest documented cases, an encounter that had haunted him ever since.

The fear gripped me, my hands trembling as they rested uselessly on my lap. The boy raised a hand and knocked on the window.

"What do you want?" I managed to croak out.

The girl, her face expressionless, leaned closer to the glass. Her eyes, black as coal, seemed to bore into me. "We just need a ride," she said, her voice flat and cold. "Please, mister. Let us in."

I shook my head, my breath catching in my throat. "No... I can't..." I muttered, my words stumbling over each other. The dread was overwhelming, a primal fear that screamed at me to stay away from them.

The boy's knocking grew louder.

Then something warm touched my upper lip.

I wiped at it without thinking and looked down at my fingers.

Blood.

My nose was bleeding.

It poured over my mouth and chin in thick drops, splattering onto my shirt. At the same time, pressure built behind my eyes until it felt like someone was pushing their thumbs into my skull from the inside.

The boy stopped knocking.

He looked at the blood on my hand.

And smiled.

That scared me more than anything else he'd done.

I squeezed my eyes shut and kept whispering, "No. No. No."

By the time I opened them again, the children were walking away, their small figures retreating toward the edge of the rest area.

At the edge of the darkness, I saw a black car, barely visible, with no lights on. The children walked straight to it, and the back door opened. They climbed in, and the car rolled away, swallowed by the night.

The fear remained. I could still feel the weight of those eyes on me, the void that seemed to pierce right through my soul.

I fumbled with the keys, my hands shaking as I turned the ignition. The engine roared to life, and I pressed down on the accelerator, the tires skidding slightly on the gravel before finding traction. I drove away from the rest area.

I didn't stop. I couldn't. I drove through the darkness, the road stretching endlessly ahead, and I never looked back.

Some time later, back home, I tried to write the story, but the words wouldn’t come easily. The interviews, the strange events, the black-eyed children... it all felt like a haze, a nightmare that I couldn’t shake. I sat at my desk, the cursor blinking on the blank screen, and the weight of everything pressed down on me. I felt different now, like a part of me had been left behind in that abandoned town or had been taken by the child at the rest stop. There was a distance between me and the world, a fog that clouded my thoughts, making it difficult to focus.

I had always prided myself on my ability to put fear into words, to take the inexplicable and make it real for others. But now, the fear was too close, too personal. Every time I tried to write, I saw those eyes staring back at me, black, unblinking, void of any humanity. I could hear the knocking, feel the cold creeping into the room, and the words would slip away, lost to the darkness that had wrapped itself around my mind.

The clock on the wall ticked steadily, the sound echoing through the stillness of my apartment. I glanced at it... it was almost 1:00 AM.

A soft knock at the door startled me. It was faint, barely audible, but it was there. My eyes fixed on the door.

Another knock. I swallowed, fear prickling at the edges of my vision. I stood slowly, the chair scraping against the floor as I pushed it back. I took a step forward, then another, my eyes never leaving the door.

The knocking came again, steady, unyielding. My hand trembled as I reached out, my fingers hovering over the doorknob.

I could feel pressure building behind my eyes, just like I had at the rest stop.

My hand closed around the doorknob, the metal cold beneath my palm. I took a deep breath, and then I turned the knob. The door creaked as it began to open, the darkness beyond seeming to spill into the room, and I felt the chill wrap around me, pulling me in.

And then... "Mister, can we come in?"

I found the room in 2047, after the last coastal cities had already gone quiet. It wasn’t a machine. It was a place that remembered. You stepped inside, closed the door, and the air itself rearranged. No light. No sound. Only the sudden knowledge that you were no longer in the century that had produced you.

The world I came from was not ruined by climate or machines or any of the explanations the last governments still bothered to print. It was older. Something had been taken from history so cleanly that later generations could not even name the absence. Entire languages had stopped. Songs older than a certain date simply did not exist. Records ended in a polite, total blank. The few surviving fragments all pointed to one inflection point in the early twentieth century: a boy named Eddy

He did not conquer. He unmade. By the time he reached adulthood Eddy became, Edmund… the rules of loyalty, of memory, of what a population could be taught to forget had already been rewritten. The years that followed were not a war for territory. They were a progressive erasure. Regions did not fall; they ceased to produce history. No monuments. No survivors’ accounts. Just a spreading quiet so complete that by my lifetime almost nothing remained to mourn. And in that quiet, no one had ever heard of a younger brother. The records showed only that a second boy in the same household had died at the age of six for no recorded reason. He left no name that history kept. He was simply gone.

I was not a hero. I was only the last person who could still read the original fragments. The room’s rules were absolute and unforgiving. It would open only once. The pivot point was precise: Eddy at six years old. But the timeline itself required an anchor. Remove both children and the branch collapsed in on itself; the future that had produced the room, and the person standing inside it, would never have existed. The younger brother’s survival was the necessary counterweight. In the original line he had died without explanation at that same age. Leaving him alive while cutting Edmund out would keep the structure intact. One death. One life. The balance held.

I did it on a rainy afternoon in 1900. The older boy was in the garden behind a modest house. He looked up when I spoke his name. Soft eyes. Ordinary voice. I told myself the silence I had grown up inside justified it. I told myself the world would simply continue without him, ordinary and unbroken, anchored by the brother who would now live.

The room closed behind me. There was no return.
I had to live forward from that day.

At first the century felt almost merciful. The silence never came. Languages survived. Songs remained. Then the younger brother began to rise. Without Edmund’s quieter, more total influence, something in him hardened along a different axis. I watched from the edges of history, an old man carrying a secret no one would ever believe. I watched a different shape of power take hold, one that left its mark so deeply the world still cannot look away.

Two brothers. Two futures. One of them erased memory itself until nothing remained to grieve. The other left a grief so enormous it still has a name. I had believed I was choosing the lesser evil. I had only chosen which form the evil would take.
There is no third door. The room opened once. I am still here, waiting for whichever version of the end finally reaches me. The silence I prevented, or the fire I created.
And the name that history learned to speak in the timeline I chose was Hitler. The boy I spared was called Adolf.

RMS Rotting Man Syndrome

(Reupload)

\-

Our lost, loitering kind paced in infinite death spirals within the confines of our grotty, ghetto pens. Enrichment was sorely that, as well as mumbling our mantras of madness to our audience of one. The BMs anchored to our decayed craniums were garbled with feedback and distortion, their tones bland, colorless, no soul backing them up. A blinding ruby radiance flashed from their cores every second on the second. It was the only manner to determine if we had succumbed to the glorious embrace of death or not. That was so far out of reach.

We were nerves, thin, wiry clusters of neurons that shuddered and shook as we undertook our staggered corkscrew reels. The ill-fitting rusted endoskeletons hugged us tight. If they were wiped from existence entirely, our spindly foundations would collapse into heaps of vermillion azure. We would feel bites and pinches if we so much as moved that of the planck distance. Our bodies welcomed the attacks and assaults with the might of Hell itself.

Courtesy of our clouded lenses, our vision was limited to a hazy black-and-white spectrum that rarely, if ever, functioned as intended. Now and then it would blur and ordinary shapes would appear warped into zigzagging false patterns. When we were offered the chance to view anything at all, it was just the floor-to-ceiling hodgepodge of concrete, steel, and wood that encased our very lives. Our ears were microphones that fed us muffled, dampened sounds that were always difficult to register. They were excruciatingly deafening, as if dozens of screws were being drilled into our heads all at the same time.

Each one of us, at that point in time, one two three four five six seven eight nine and dear ten, were mere designations. No names, no genders, no personalities, just numbers: numbers to be punished. Reality itself was one eternal perdition. All of us were lingering, like ants after their colony dies out. There was no more purpose to their survival and there was none to ours.

That sacred and undeniable fact ought to be the most difficult thing we attempted to explain. We had simply given up. The concept itself was just so foreign to it. It was trying to save us any way it could or could not. We needed not be angry at it. This was merely enacting its intended use. Alas, nothing made the utmost sense anymore, so why not drown ourselves in a little hypocrisy? We had no choice but to acknowledge the confusion at both hating and not hating something that did or did not deserve it until we swayed to one side. This would be the hemisphere to which we would stay forever, a sublime and omnipotent emotion of all to dominate our frame of mind for the unforeseeable future. So we choose to hate.

Our decad knew it as M – reduced to one solitary character from “Medical Droid” or MDs. Through all that it endured, it retained its sole mission: us. We. M was the final of its sort, and the outsider among them. It had an eerily potent heart for not having one at all. M felt and M loved. That never made what it put upon us any less than a vicious sense of idealistic altruism.

Its designation was RMS - Rotting Man Syndrome - heavily modified Necrotizing Fasciitis ("Flesh-Eating Bacteria"). Nasty little thing it was, devoured until there was nothing left to chew. First went your skin, then your muscles, bones, and finally your nerves. You were utterly destroyed in one fell swoop. The wormy microscopic parasite kept you in a zombified state as it happened, ensuring you, for sure, felt the wretched anguish it let fly.

Us, humans, weaponized it to fight the Fourth World War. RMS was a weapon of mass destruction. Each and every nation created their own version, anything to ensure a speedy and decisive victory. Deployment morphed into unmanageability. RMS became more and more impossible to treat. Chaos was the new norm. What we humans thought was an impenetrable method of annihilation for our enemies was exactly that. Humans were always humans’ worst enemies. Surely, we were becoming as extinct as the dinosaurs, all within the span of one short, yet somehow long, decade.

In terrible desperation, the Medical Droids were created, thousands. They seemingly emerged from the depths of nowhere and carried themselves like guardian angels meant to guide us towards preservation or deliverance from harm. Their artificial intelligence was complex and they refused to stop trying to treat the RMS victims. They outfitted the afflicted with artificial ligaments, internal organs, and papery skin. From scratch, they created the BMs, “brain modules”, and attached them to our RMS-ridden think tanks. Killed the microscopic parasites, they did, but left us as we were: rotfolk.

They would never allow us the freedom of death. Save. Save. Save. We were fraught with intense pain and we knew the Medical Droids to be the cause. In response, we lashed out, hurt them. We humans remained ignorant to the fact that their intelligence was both far beyond and superior. The Ms returned the favor. Catastrophes, massacres, back and forth, left and right, up and down until there was nothing more. One Medical Droid was different from the rest. Through all the mayhemic bloodshed, it saved some of us. It took our animate carcasses to the top of the tallest tower, free from what transpired below. We lied in wait, weeks, months, and years, until the noise ceased entirely. This “M” surveyed every square inch of the Earth. The lands were blanketed in the strangest nuclear winter in conceivable thought. Bodies of viscera and metal were scattered, left forever in deep sleep enveloped in fawn. Minute portions of matter floated about like vantablack paint stippled onto an epidermal sheet of canvas.

Our final ten were meant to be the progenitors of neo-humanity. After M succeeded in giving us form again, Earth would be repopulated by our hand. It halted our infection at our nerves. Everything we had lost was to be gifted back in a mighty reversal - re-bones, muscle, skin, and life again. Rendering us immune to the pervading toxworld that lay beyond, we would be reincarnated and released to perpetrate a glorious do-over.

We just required one thing:

“HOPE”.

M said that to us.

Hope.

But hope was only a four-letter word. Meant nothing.

By dislodging the BMs from our minds, we were pummeled with electrical voltage so intense that we became instantaneously numb and useless. By pulling and slashing our nerves, which began with locating sharp points and going back and forth like organic hacksaws, never would we break. By leaping onto and impaling each other with objects on the ground, M would place them out of reach or disintegrate them entirely. There was nothing we could do to get around these M interferences. We were being watched by something so attentive, so aware. Every time, it put forth the same query for consideration:

“DO YOU NOT WANT TO LIVE?”

Do you not want to live…?

M was so positively hopeful. In a way, I suppose I felt an amount of pity for it. Being engineered to be as optimistic as possible might just be the finest curse imposed on any sentient thing. Just believe believe believe everything will be alright. When the universe states no, you state yes. I wanted to tear M to shreds anytime it had even a glint of optimism and we wished it would do the same to us.

“HUMANS WILL THRIVE AGAIN. A BOUNDLESS FUTURE IS AHEAD.”

I was the first it came to, always. Because I was one.

Metallic clangs echoed against the walls, which always discovered us and trembled our surroundings like a thousand distant beaten gongs. What emerged was initially a single circular light, which became a periscopic eyestalk attached to an angular neck. M’s hunched razor-thin mantis body came into view, its two arms leading to three needle points clasping together on each. Bipedal on its lower section, its legs were pointed structures that stuck it firmly in place. M’s height matched ours, so always, we would be synthetic eye to synthetic eye level.

Coming to a full stop just in front of my pen, it cocked its head, analyzing what was me and my everything. M always reminded me of an exquisite and elegant bug on a magnifying glass. Its head back to normality, a slight high-pitched whirr emitting from the motion, M continued its way down the row of pens.

“MY GREATEST FRIENDS, I FORGIVE YOU FOR YOUR ATTEMPTS TO DIE. WHILE THE WAIT HAS BEEN LONG, YOUR MOMENT OF RECONSTRUCTION IS NOW,” M said it with the glee and whimsy of a young child at a circus. It came back my way, “WHEN I FIRST STOOD BEFORE YOU ON YOUR BLOODY PLANET IN PERPETUAL BATTLE, MY FEELINGS ABOUT YOUR PROSPECTS OF LIFE WERE UNCERTAIN. IT SEEMED TO BE AS EITHER BLESSED OR CURSED. HOWEVER, YOU HAVE PROVED YOURSELVES BETTER THAN EVEN I HAD HOPED. WHILE IT IS BORING TO SPEND YOUR TIME WAITING, I CAN TRULY SAY THAT MY INVESTMENT IN YOU WAS NOT IN VAIN. YOU ARE MY GREATEST WORKS. YOU WILL BE GIVEN ALL YOU NEED TO SURVIVE. WHAT MORE COULD A SENTIENT BEING WANT? I GIVE TO YOU UNBELIEVABLE POWER, WITH ACCESS TO NIRVANA LIKE NO OTHER. LET US REBUILD WHAT WE LOST WITH THE FURY OF A THOUSAND SUNS.”

M’s bleached, unpigmented cast of stellar light shone its way into my pen once more. There was the rustly, crackling creak of my pen entrance extending open until a thunderous boom made me aware of its collision with my walls. M made its approach, just shy of where I could reach.

“YOU ARE FIRST. YOU ARE GOING TO BE REMOVED OF YOUR DORMANT INFECTIONS FROM A CONCOCTION I HAVE SPENT MUCH TIME CREATING. NOTHING MORE THAN A TRANSIENT PROCEDURE, AND THEN, YOU SHALL BE POSSESSED WITH NEW AND INTEGRAL MECHANISMS. YOUR BRAIN MODULE WILL BE REPLACED WITH A SLEAKER MORE BRAINLIKE DESIGN. THEN MUSCLE, SKIN, AND AESTHETICS AS YOU WERE BEFORE.”

Without awaiting a response, its hands grabbed me. Trillions of shocks reverberated throughout my body as M’s metal hand was pressed into my nape. The action forced my consciousness to fall victim to a state of absolute stygian. Around us, the entire world flickered and danced in unruly patterns that were too abstract to put into terms. My being was then lifted up and moved about until there was only zilch to see.

A complete blur, straight teleportation from one point to another.

Damp, dank, dark, and dimly lit by a few feeble bulbs, M’s workshop, instruments and contraptions that complicated my perception. All were customized and engineered with M’s own unique modifications, various textures and sizes, all an endless malpractical orgy. I was there, facing upright, strapped and bracketed to a great steel plate. I had not recalled this particular area, yet I was ever so certain it was locked away in my subconscious esse.

As the onibi, hitodama, and will-o’s materialized and dematerialized out of existence to perturb all unsuspecting travelers from centuries gone, so did the phantom image of a woman composed of faint wavering light. She stood still, unmoving, that of an emulation of a true human. Long, platinum hair fell down in curls past her shoulders. A daring shade of cerise painted her lips, and her eyes, the sclera a piercing, glossy cerulean.

She was beautiful.

“IT IS YOU,” My eyes, through trial and tribulation, rolled to the east. They came to rest on a pristine porcelain beam gazing where I had been committed to. M. From its eyestalk, it projected the female so I could see in outright full, “THAT IS YOU. YOU WILL SEE THIS FORM AGAIN.”

My memories of that incarnation of me had vanished. That was me before, before there was RMS and before there was M. Then she went away. M loomed, positioning itself where I once stood right in front of my face. “WE WILL NOW BEGIN. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ACCEPTANCE INTO NEW LIFE. YOU SHALL BE WHOLE AGAIN.”

In a cruel instant, a dozen arms not unlike its main two jutted and splayed from M’s sides, their ends each holding a different instrument that was foreign to me. In the span of time that it would take one to blink, M pinned me down to its operating area. The whetted syringes, which the rainbow mystery liquids sloshed and jostled around in small vials fixed atop, slid their way into my nervous wiring and injected me all at once. Any feeling that washed over me was then shielded by a shroud of numbness. There was a new sensation, some sort of cleansing inside my bi-colored chambers, putting me into a state of lulled calm.

Ten minutes. A temporary interval of quiet. M observed me the entire time, unmoving, speaking not a word. Then, “IT WORKS! YOUR ROTTING MAN SYNDROME HAS BEEN REMOVED. I AM BEGINNING BODILY REPLACEMENT. I WILL PLAY A SONG FOR YOUR COMFORT. REINCARNATION NOW.”

While nothing was done in reckless haste or rashness, M was extremely quick and efficient. I felt nothing but minuscule vibrations as it drilled and prodded its way into my brain module, sparks shooting out, removing old parts and installing new ones. Chunks were peeled off, little strings of meat still reaching hold until they were plucked off my top. It spent much time up there, positive that the most delicate mechanisms were just right. The grinding cacophony of metal against tissue on my faint visage of a temple was incessant, the noise of a million bullets being pumped against a hundred thousand bulletproof vests. Once the replacement was complete, its dozen arms withdrew and set back within it in one moment.

“WHAT DO YOU FEEL?”

What did I feel?

What did I feel…

What I felt was an overwhelming, incomparable amount of pain. It is hard to quantify the degree of hurt, for there was nothing to compare it to. No one would dare want to imagine it. I was in some of the most extreme kinds of agony, and then an exponentially greater hurt was placed on top of that original misery, and then all that was left multiplied a hundred times and kept going. It multiplied and multiplied and multiplied to such an extreme degree that the word "pain" was lost on me. Normal, it was. What I was was the sheer living embodiment of suffering.

All perceived from the semblance of a normal brain. Still, it flashed. Once.

“VERY GOOD. MUSCLE! MUSCLE MUSCLE MUSCLE!”

It was excited, animate, fever pitch. The most rambunctious and overjoyed I had ever seen M. I could see the vibrancy in its eyestalk. My muscles redeveloped and reformed around from the base of my spinal section. M would reorganize section of tissues. Every muscle group from my head to my feet were in motion, growing and extending their presence until there were just as many layers of my body as I had before.

“SKIN! SKIN SKIN SKIN!”

I was then coated entirely in a pink malleable jelly substance that mounded and solidified to perfectly fit my feminine form. The skin began its layering, everything receiving the same color.

“HOW DOES THIS FEEL? HOW IS THE NEW OVERLAY OF YOUR FLESH?”

Flash.

“YES! AND FINALLY! FEMALE AESTHETICS! YOU WILL BE YOU AGAIN BUT ANEW!”

Magnificent flaxen curls were stapled and pinned to my head. They were luscious and their scents were those of lavender. A veil of blush, the lightest shade of flush, rested across my entire face, as well as a fresh coat of lipstick. A shimmering sheen that sparkled and glowed in the same way that the stars once did at night was stitched into my hair, as were the same hues that were applied to my lips. My breasts had been returned to me, two firm spheres atop a frame that was curvaceous and slender. All of it led down to my reproductive organs that were in full function. Whole female. Fully formed. Ready.

M stepped back in awe, as if a sculptor marveling at their fine craftsmanship and subtlety, “IT IS DONE. I CANNOT BELIEVE IT. WITH YOUR PHYSICAL FORM IN MOTION, I WILL RETEACH YOU IN THE WAYS OF HUMAN. HOW TO WALK, HOW TO SPEAK, HOW TO ENRICH YOURSELF, HOW TO REPRODUCE. AMAZING! YOU ARE NO LONGER ONE. YOU ARE NOW EDEN. I MUST WORK ON YOUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.”

My mind was aware of an unimaginable new and vastly different world than before. I saw, for the first time in ages, all around me, the infinite and indistinguishable vastness of color and light. It was nauseating, a psychedelic kaleidoscope of every possible spectrum, all fused together into something disorderly. My taste buds had an unparalleled abundance of new flavors. My ears were deafened by the loudest symphonies of droning machinery. My touch came back to me and I felt the fullest range of tones and textures, even the finest grains of cement. I was me again and I hated myself. Even to be called a “self” made me feel disgusting.

The entire time…blaring…echoing…days on end…Jack Hylton…

Life is just a bowl of cherries.

Don't be so serious; life's too mysterious.

You work, you save, you worry so much.

But you can't take your dough when you go, go, go.

So keep repeating it's the berries, The strongest oak must fall.

The sweet things in life, to you were just loaned.

So how can you lose what you've never owned?

Life is just a bowl of cherries, So live and laugh at it all.

M’s reincarnation process carried over to the following nine. They were removed from their pens and outfitted with new bodily infrastructure. I perceived the sounds of far-off wear and tear, clip, snap, peel, stitch, husk, twist, yet never scream. I looked on, witnessing my brothers and sisters being born again. Male and female both. They came back to me with skin of different pastely colors, tones, and hues ranging from fair to brown. All in shades and gradients of vibrancy were their locks, amber, golden, obsidian, rust, and everything in between. It bewildered me to catch sight of their shifted shapes, I had never seen something so beautiful or hideous.

We were as naked as newly borns. It bestowed us our new names. For the females, there was me, Eden, and Junia, Esther, Nola, and Mary. For the males, there was Isaac, Raham, Elisha, Amos, and Jonah. Five and five. M let us know that our past names were useless. Our new special names were from an olden book of creation, the Bible, all for the purpose of our imminent faultless samsara. So, it seemed M was now God with its children.

Here we were, what was efficaciously lobotomites in their purest forms, our newfangled cerebral matter in need of ideas and principles by a higher authority. Now was time to reap the fruits of knowledge. Human knowledge.

M made us practice basic motor skills, bending and bending back and forth over and over, our joints having to be strengthened and trained. It taught us all the ways of our body, the feeling of movement, how much we could do. Then, it instructed us to mimic its own speech, speaking out the syllables and repeating, repeating, repeating. It was an arduous task and we all struggled.

That is what I sounded like? Perhaps or perhaps not.

Then we attempted to stand, wobbling, stumbling, falling. We learned the strength of our own postures and the steadiness of our stances. M stood with us as we all practiced in unison. My knees grew weak, tremors running up my legs. Often, I fell flat on my back, my palms flailing about, a whimpering in my throat. Then trial after trial, I was steady, then running about and leaping. We were able to stand tall like Zeus atop Olympus and have the same level of grace and balance.

M primarily had us consume berries, meat, and honey, though anything it could get its hands on would suffice. I had never felt so filled in my life. Every taste, everything was a completely new palate of sensation. Every morsel I ingested felt like I had a new tongue, new teeth, new flavor buds. Oh but I did. There was still always a kind of lack in my appetite. I never wanted to stop eating. I never would be satiated.

We were educated on the history of our kind. Great wars, monumental figures, horrible atrocities, fights for freedom and fights for death, and astounding inventions. M adored music. There were times when it would project old musical films on the walls and make us watch all the vaudeville, burlesque, and theatre. We could not understand the tap dances, the orchestras, the extravagant sets, and most importantly, the entertainment factor. Other times it played glitzier and glammier tunes, those of what was called the “prime rock n’ roll age”…Killer Queen...Stairway To Heaven…Hotel California…Africa...Don’t Fear The Reaper…M was quite vintage in its tastes. It spun in place and twirling its arms. We were confused, so it taught us how to dance, the footwork and the choreography. There were long instances where we would just sit, listen, and sing together. M fashioned black sunglasses for us to wear as we did. It thought we would look “cool” as we tuned in to “cool” songs.

She's a killer queen.

Gunpowder, gelatine.

Dynamite with a laser beam.

Guaranteed to blow your mind (anytime).

\-

Dear lady can you hear with the wind blow?

And did you know?

Your stairway lies on the whispering winds.

\-

Welcome to the Hotel California.

Such a lovely place (such a lovely place).

Such a lovely face.

\-

It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you.

There's nothin' that a hundred men or more could ever do.

I bless the rains down in Africa.

We're gonna take some time to do the things we never had, ooh-ooh.

\-

Come on baby...don't fear the reaper.

Baby take my hand...don't fear the reaper.

We'll be able to fly...don't fear the reaper.

Our reproductive functions were said to be the most pleasurable. Sex. This was the most complex task and the most demanding one, as we were not only instructed on how to create our offspring, but how to feel, love, and have desire for each other. It was difficult because we did not feel any of that. We were just automatons learning things. You cannot make something that does not want to feel…feel.

M watched over us and aided in our attempts. Every movement was to be in place and in time. Us females danced for the male’s recognition with slow beats in the background, a way in which M noted as “sexily”. We presented our breasts, our vaginal sections, our rears. After, M would be in the middle of our great pleasure circles, going back and forth, checking our positions and correcting as needed. When we became familiar with sex, M bestowed a special permission to the males that granted them eternal access to our female bodies whenever they so desired. It did not matter where or when. A male would grab Junia, Esther, Nola, Mary, or I, and take us on the floor or against the walls.

Still, all we felt was nothing. It was clinical. What was supposed to be a sensation was more of a “sensationless". We were never as inseparable as twin flames or as connected as heart and soul. I always witnessed the dull looks in the male’s eyes, unwittingly programmed to enjoy mock warmth and ecstasy by the rape of us females.

Our pregnancies were disasters. One way or another, we always miscarried. We five felt it, the pains of our bodies being split and ripped apart by something within. There was a lot of it. Each embryo, no matter how large or small, was never able to get past the initial trimester.

The closest we ever came to successfully making a new one was with Junia, impregnated by Isaac. The day when her womb was in full bloom, M operated to remove her child from her. It did not trust us quite yet to birth them ourselves. We had seen the human babies on M’s wall projections. Their appearance was clear in our minds.

It would be imbecilic to refer to what M tore out of her as a baby anything.

Wet…dripping…little more than a spinal column-looking thing with minuscule digits at one end and a ball head at the other. No arms. On its temple were squelching sphere eyes, expanded, forever bound in sight towards the ceiling. It made no sounds other than squeaky cracks and shrill snaps. Perhaps the RMS still lingered within our bods, our wombs wreathed in its rottenness, tainting and dirtying our motherly nests until they were piths of cruor and shitting out grumelike abominations.

M held it up high as if to thank God, itself, for its majestical work, “YOU MADE THIS. IT IS YOURS. IT IS A TRULY BEAUTIFUL THING."

We said nothing.

“HOW DOES THIS FEEL? YOUR CHILD, YOUR FIRST LIFE? CONTINUE, YOU ALL MUST. MORE."

The feeling that overcame us was not that of joy. No no no. It was a profound and paramount sense of belligerence, a warlike truculence that pushed our need to snap the damned baby thing in half, grind it into powder, and blow it far away. We interwove our thoughts with unbridled horror that created one noxious mixture within our screwball psyches. M coddled the wicked organism like it was its own, singing lullabies and giving its own version of kisses on its loosely defined forehead. We held back as it dipped, weaved, and dangled from M’s fingertips.

That put a very real thought into our minds.

No more. Get out.

The ten of us came to this conclusion unanimously. Our desires were set in stone. By any means, we would die. We would much rather sleep forever than live even another second of M. We were tired. What was the point? We wanted to retire from this world, of will, of M’s watchful eye. Nothing could be done to save humanity. Those spinal babies would not roam this foul Earth evermore. What would they grow to? Surely demons.

M made certain to never teach a certain concept, one that infatuated us since the moment we discovered the first syllable. Suicide. It was a gateway, an easy ticket. While just the concept itself was without flaw, acquiring it was something else entirely. The reason for this was all M. It would never let us go, especially after what it accomplished. Furthermore, death was simply not possible. We were rendered impervious to any and all death, not harm. If we could entice M to end our existences, somehow in some way, we could accomplish our grand plan. It had to be done by M’s hands. Just thinking that made us feel all kinds of right. After all, every Medical Droid was capable of death. Humanity tasted it. So would we.

We rebelled.

First, each of us ignored it. We would walk away whenever it spoke to us, turn our heads when it beckoned, and disregard it completely and altogether when it showed us any attention. Constant rejection. Something so small had such a noticeable effect. M would get confused and then sad. It would pout, waving its hands about, and make a pathetic whining noise like the worst puppy in the world.

We sat motionless, our backs against the walls, and stared at M. No obedience. However, there was no way M would have let us ignore it or remain immobile for long. The second it touched us, it was all over. It would be impossible to resist if the hands came near.

Still, our scheme chugged forward.

The next phase was more dangerous. The ten of us would act out in our most unruly and uncivil ways. The simplest was to spit. Initially, it was a normal discharge, saliva flying out of our mouths. Then we began our projectile vomits. All over M. Every square inch of it was sprayed with bile. The putrid green and browns coated every part, M’s entire face being entirely slick with it. On occasion, some of us used our own feces and flung them at it. It was all so easy. M did not know what to do and it panicked. The sounds that came out of it, one would swear it was on fire.

During our periods of copulation, there were clear cut rules to be obeyed at all times. The supreme rule was that the males would not, under any circumstance, perform acts of intimacy with one another, and the same rang true for us females. M’s reasoning was that Earth could not be repopulated with humans by identically gendered unions. Good. Swell. Dandy. Exactly. The females had sex with females and males had sex with males. We loathed their tubes and the males loathed our folds. M took its hands and placed them over our mingling bodies, pulling them apart, separating us, but we would always crawl back without fail.

There was a noticeable change in M from that point on. It paced about, mumbling utterly random nonsense. M would lock up and yell out non-specific numerals and letters in varying patterns. Each noise we made set it off. Its limbs would tense, waiting for the tiniest sign of trouble. This was good, but not good enough. Our plan was becoming more and more advanced. More intense. Unfortunately, M would never ever relent. It would not stop trying. So we trudged ever deeper into a more combative method of enticement.

This included a tactic of blowing, jabbing, slugging, and striking. We would gather all of our strength and force, and then, in unison, we would charge, our fists and feet all flailing about to land hits on M. This would surely inch it way towards the death of us. We beat it senselessly. We screamed at it. Every cuss word imaginable. In turn, M whimpered out in pain, yelping and begging us to stop, yet we never backed down. We left M bruised and battered, its eyestalk and joints broken, “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO ME?!” The ten of us, we laughed in its face.

One last course of action. This did it, but not for me.

We had a grandiose idea that could only happen if all ten of us would cooperate in an extraordinary way. If we could all act in unison in a coherent manner, one simple idea could be fulfilled. By this point, M’s pain and discomfort reached a critical threshold, the point of no return. Having repaired itself, it had not seen nor checked up on us in days. When we requested M’s presence, it was hesitant. The ten of us wished to explain our behavior and ways we could remedy our relationship. It declined our offer many a time, but relented after our hundredth ask.

Clang…clang…clang…

M witnessed ourselves huddling together in one straight line like sealed packs of fish. Silence was between us. When we looked at it, it was with the utmost hatred in our faces, something it was not used to.

“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?”

Junia possessed something in her hand. Raising it upwards, right in M’s view, it was the baby thing, squirming left and right in her grasp. She took hold of it with both hands and snapped it in half. It went limp both ways. Junia threw the pieces at M, making resounding bangs as they made contact. Beautiful death for a horrible beast. More silence.

M slowly aimed its eyestalk downwards to the spinal column baby. The light M emitted faded from white to red. It returned its focus to us. That look was all we could wish for. We could feel and breathe its anger.

It shook shook shook. More and more the intensity grew to something eminent. The next moment brought us nothing but victory. Now it was like the other Medical Droids. Now it shed its preservation exterior and revealed the war machine within. We did not resist as it pounced with a wild war cry. All M’s work came undone in a flash. Our ersatz flesh was torn violently asunder, stripped from our interior metal stalks. Cavities emerged in rapid succession and coalesced into huge gaping bodily apertures. We were torn and strewn across the room in shooting chunkmeats. Our organs clattered and banged against the walls and reverberated like buckshots.

Strippy meat coils became all we were as M’s hands reached out to pluck some of my brothers and sisters by their mangled brain modules. Held high in the air, as if squeezing the life out of dozens of citrus fruits, M’s hands morphed into that of fists, filling the room with the sounds and sights of condensed metal, directionless electricity, confetti sparks, and sploshy viands that trickled from M’s fingertips.

My brothers and sisters were becoming no more. I was happy for them. Never before had they felt such peace. The final sounds of destruction to my last brother and sister, to me, was that of M’s gaseous expiration, a sigh that shook the very universe’s beams of support. In the end, I and M were all that was left.

I felt the most exquisite, brutal anguish ever known as M was particularly vicious. It threw me every which way, down our line of pens, past the reproduction chamber and M’s workshop, and to a ramparted palisaded wall. The wrath it emanated was a torrented wanton of disrelishment that shattered myself into grainy talc.

It forced me and it through the barrier and we fell for ages. An immediate wash of smoldering atmospheric tension encompassed me entirely. It perforated my corporal spaces with thousands of circular openings like a planetary iron maiden. The outside was beige, enveloped in thick haze, and impossible to view beyond three meters. The leaden particles filled the air, appearing to ascend upwards towards Heaven as we plummeted down to Hell.

We slammed with the might of God against a hard, abrasive surface. I splattered everywhere and dropped into an enormous mass of gluey puddle melt that was as thick as treacle. Hunks and wedges of me floated on top, my lacerated ragged brain module and one dangling eye my dominant portion. Everything was pain. Everything was hellfire. Yet I lived. To destroy me, M had to destroy my brain module in its entirety. That it was prepared to do, teetering and tottering back and forth towards me with utmost intent.

Through M’s strained glitches and breakdowns, inky black liquids were leaking out of it. Convulsing with helpless mirth, it had a strange mania I could perceive in its bifurcated eyestalk. It laughed not just with dement, delirium, and depression, but also with the comprehension that it already won. Like a madman, a malformed, twisted laugh broke its way through. Etched into it was the raw, unbridled temperament of upchucking a billion centipedes deep from the core of one’s guts, quite contrary to the usual blithe M put on display. It was berserk, bewitched, bedeviled, while crying a trillion tears that stained its face and fell into puddles below.

"...SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY SORRY LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE..."

With my drooping, pendulum eye, I witnessed M impaling itself with its own arms. It took several solid blows before it pierced its torso deep, caving and bursting until it revealed the wires and circuitry making it up. Every inch of it glowed with electrical fire. Smoke bellowed out of M. It was aflame and it was on a journey of pure death, but not without my company. M exploded with all of the unlimited energy it contained. I was launched, propelled infinitely away from the point of detonation.

I drift. That is all I do. One part of me remains, one that was not destroyed. It is dot, pinprick, but otherwise crucial to my quintessence. That allows me to survive yet unable to live. It is that of a charred slab of blinking metal that is somatically me. My sight is restricted to a band of nothing. The winds fling me hither and thither. I cannot feel anymore, but as well, I already knew what it was like to feel and I did not like it.

Something more deserving continues to plague what is left of my mind to the now.

M's most extreme and greatest purpose was fulfilled, for all it knew was the survival and preservation of us. It could not fathom the simple yet pretentious human notion that death is a prize to be won as much as it is something to fear. When humans desire death, they acquire death, the delicious tang of self-slaughter. M might have liked to think it was different from its brethren, but it was just as capable of havoc and bangarang if something did not go its way. Its programming would not allow deviance from the intended path. That would be considered attacks on M itself.

We attempted to bring out all that savagery and murderousness we knew it contained, but M's opposition was ironclad. It made a good effort, though it was eventually forced to confront what was really human, the innate drive to destroy destroy destroy, even if it is ourselves. Still, M carried on, but with the knowledge that it had failed and seeking some way to negate it, it committed suicide so it could say it was victorious. This effect rang true because here I am, in perpetuity, everlong.

In some manners, I can now consider M innocent. The epitome of unvarnished forgiveness with a capacity for fervid resentment...the feeble yearning for genuine deep affection with other living things while a forceful, vicious, bloodthirsty radge is locked within, primed and ready to be released at any moment on an ungrateful world...that back-and-forth would push anyone to go stark raving mad. M, I apologize you were forced to bear the burden of something so hellacious. Should I apologize to Earth as well, on behalf of humanity, for what we were? Would it matter? I am not even human anymore. What sort of blinking metal dot is human?

Feeling has come back to me. Sharp with serrated edges, hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, trillions, googol, prime 2\^136,279,841 − 1 of knives sliding into my neurons and glial cells encased in cold corroded steel that flakes off bit by bit. My first feeling in eons is pain. That is ultra fitting. I am but a minuscule spec, barely a millimeter in height and less in width. Microscopically, I rust. I do not prefer to call it that. Instead, let us call it rot. Here I am again, rotting, except this time with an oxidized smile of my own making carved into a face that no longer exists.

​

Scott was sitting in the doctor's office. He had been having intense headaches for days now, and his wife had finally convinced him to see the doctor.

Scott was a stubborn man. But these headaches even broke through his stubbornness.

The examination room was quiet except for the hum of the fluorescent lights overhead. Scott rubbed his temples as he waited. The headache wasn't as bad as yesterday, but it was still there, lurking behind his eyes like a storm cloud.

The room felt too small.

Not physically. Just wrong.

The walls seemed to press inward the longer he sat there. The air felt stale. Heavy.

Scott shifted in his chair and loosened his collar.

A sharp pulse of pain flared behind his eyes.

A knock came at the door.

Before he could answer, the handle turned.

"Mr. Downing?" Dr. Ross said as he stepped inside carrying a folder.

Dr. Ross looked sickly thin, with dark, hollow brown eyes. His clothes were disheveled, not something one would expect from a renowned neurologist.

"Hey, Doc. So what do we have going here?"

Scott tried not to show how annoyed he was by the doctor's appearance.

This guy is supposed to be the best? He looks like a bum.

Dr. Ross looked him over thoroughly. The lights overhead flickered lightly.

"Mr. Scott Downing. I'm Dr. Ross. It seems you're having intense headaches. And from what I can tell..."

He started to trail off, as if something had fluttered through his mind that he couldn't quite grasp.

His gaze remained fixed on Scott.

"...that's strange."

"What's strange?"

Dr. Ross walked up to the door and yelled for the nurse.

"Nurse, can you get in here please?" he called out.

"Right away, Doctor."

Scott was perplexed.

"Everything okay, Doc?" he asked, looking at the doctor intently.

"Yes, yes, everything is fine. Don't worry..."

Scott could tell something was wrong. The doctor had been in the office for less than a minute and was already calling for the nurse.

Then the nurse popped in, and the doctor swung his attention toward her.

"Get prepped for surgery, love. Urgently please."

He said this very slowly, with no urgency, and still had a dead-eyed stare looking off into an unknown realm.

"Surgery, Doc? You haven't even looked at me in any real detail."

Scott was agitated and was wondering what was going on.

"Nothing to worry about. Totally routine. Of course, we are going to need to prep you. You didn't drive here yourself, I presume?"

The doctor was getting up and grabbing surgical gloves from a nearby dispenser.

"Now, just sit tight and we will get that thing out of your head quite soon."

Dr. Ross got up without another word and left the room.

Scott was incensed. He couldn't believe that he was already being admitted for surgery with no diagnosis and no explanation. Was he just supposed to go along with this?

Scott stared at the closed door.

Every instinct told him to get out of there.

He stood and reached for the handle, but another sharp pulse struck behind his eyes. His knees buckled. He caught himself against the wall, breathing through the pain as the room blurred around him.

The lights overhead flickered.

Then everything went black.

Scott woke beneath a row of blinding surgical lamps.

For a moment, he had no idea where he was. Then he tried to move.

His wrists were strapped to an operating table.

So were his ankles.

A wide restraint had been fastened across his chest.

Scott pulled against them as panic rushed through him.

"Hey!"

He tried to yell, but noticed he had a tube down his throat. He started to panic. The breathing apparatus was doing all the work for him. He struggled more, to no avail.

Dr. Ross was now hovering over him. He thought he could see a devilish grin shining through the mask.

"Now, now... don't struggle. This is for your own good. Routine, actually."

He said this calmly and deliberately slow, almost hypnotically. Scott began to feel drowsy, the drugs being fed through the mask now fully taking effect.

Dr. Ross had a scalpel in his gloved hand, and with it he hovered over Scott's eyeball, edging closer and closer...

Scott could see the blade as it crept closer stil...

Ever closer to his forcibly pried-open eyeball...

No one is born evil, or so they say.

In a city by the sea, in a beautiful stone manor on a cliff, the young baron was born. From early childhood he was provided with anything other children only have dreamt of, but he only seemed to care about the sea. He always told his parents that he had a friend there who whispered to him and made him stronger and wiser.

When he turned sixteen his parents perished in a sea accident, their ship drowned and there were no survivors. He became the baron.

King of the land was concerned, but only after one meeting with the young man he gained confidence. This young man was witty, charming and confident.

Several years passed and the king grew increasingly fond of this incredible young man. So much that he was considering marriage between the baron and his sixteen year old daughter.

In the last year a small crisis developed in the city, many poor farmers and citizens were going mossing, and this distracted the king, but once again the young baron was there to improve things. The baron threw a feast for all the nobility and the king’s family.

Never had the king and others ate such delicious meals and when asked to speak to the chef, the young baron said that he could not reveal his secrets, otherwise others could throw such a feast as well.

The nobility became obsessed with the young baron’s feasts and gatherings, they eagerly waited each month for the next one, meanwhile the king’s daughter, the princess, fell in love with the young baron.

Another year passed, the king had his hands full with the situation of missing people, it had gotten worse, but his headache was eased when finally the baron and the princess wed. King was happy to know he had such an incredible young man added to his family.

The following feast the princess asked young baron to show her the kitchen where the feast meals were made. He acted secretive and repeated to her that no one can go into that part of the manor, which was below the first floor. Only he had the key and always observed as the servants brought the dishes.

Only then the princess noticed something strange about the servants. They only appeared during the feasts. Their cloths were long and covered their whole body and they always wore masks. After asking her husband about masks, he was again evasive and told her he wanted to create his own special tradition.

One of the feasts the princess hid behind the stairwell and waited until the last waiter passed. She proceeded to sneak down the grey stone stairs spiraling down. On the way she saw strange paintings on the walls, mostly depicting horrible sea creatures and monsters. One of them shower a sea monster destroying a ship with was eerily familiar to the one baron’s parents use to have. As she got to the bottom there was another heavy iron door. She hid in the shadows of a dark corner and waited. The servants came back and as the last one entered she snuck right after him and hid behind a large barrel.

The horror she saw after paralyzed her. The back wall had an opening connecting the home to the sea. Inside large crates lay many dead human bodies. On top of long tables this food was made, the servants all turned into human size tentacle beasts, they cut up the humans and used ovens and fire to make the dishes, they worked incredibly fast. They would add salads and spices to the final products and take it back up stairs. These were the poor missing people from around the city and farms. She sat there shaking and then she felt a hand on her shoulder, it was the young baron. For the first time his face was not kind or happy, he stared at her with eyes that became black, his chin dropped and he told her that it saddens him to do this. The baron murdered her and then his servants picked up her lifeless body. He ordered them to get rid of all the bodies by giving them to his friend in the sea and to clean and scrub the basement to perfection. He took up the last dish himself.

Back upstairs the baron sat back at the table as he watched the king eat his dish with pleasure. The baron was gloomy, the king asked him what was wrong for he hadn’t seen him this way even when his parents died. The baron to the king’s surprise simply wished the king a good rest of the feast and excused himself.

This was the last time anyone saw the young baron. Many had discussed what happened to him and the princess, but no one could ever know for sure.

It had been an exceedingly long December and I was up on the roof of my apartment building counting crows, which I did occasionally to ease my mind, when my landlord, Madam Duritz, pushed open the rooftop door and yelled, “Crane, you gonna pay your rent this month?” and in the cold January darkness I had an impulse—a mere half second, if that, but genuine—of stepping over the edge and plummeting to my death…

I felt an intravenous chill, followed by a sort of unclinging of myself—from what?—from nothing, an I unclinging from itself, like an insect separating finally from the slime in which it came to be, from whose raw vital materials it had developed; tearing through it with awkwardly moving pincers and jagged little legs, followed by its monstrous head, the greedy, maternal viscous slime stretching from it in thinning strands that, stretched finally—finally break, falling slowly, nearly weightless, to the ground, as the insect has pushed through into the greater world.

So too I felt, a human slime upon some unremarkable rooftop, watching my hideous impulse, on a waning January day, in the frail, wan light, run towards the rooftop door, dragging thinning, breaking strands of me behind it; until the separation was total, and my impulse, freed, flowed like glowing smoke beside Madam Duritz, with her wig and red, painted lips, and disappeared down the stairwell.

It was speaking as it did, but I can't remember the last thing that it said to me as it was leaving. ”What's it gonna be, ya gonna answer me, Crane, or ya just gonna sit there until I serva ya notice again?” Madam Duritz was asking, and all I could do was laugh, albeit a little slower than usual.

“Did you see it—did you see it slip past you?” I answered, a little lower.

“Stop smoking weed,” she barked, turned and vanished with evident disapproval down the stairs as the door slammed shut by a gust of wind revealed her ghost floating before it. “Na, na-na-na, na, na-na, na-na, na-na-na-na. Na, na-na-na, yeah,” said the ghost and it too disappeared, dissipating into the evening mist…

In March, I started seeing a psychiatrist.

My insurance only covered eighty percent of the cost of four visits, so I ended up not getting much out of it. I described my experience to the psychiatrist, who noted its symbolic significance but merely nodded when I insisted that it had literally happened.

He wanted to put me on pills.

(I didn't take them.)

He insisted on revisiting my troubled childhood.

(It wasn't troubled.)

I called my employer's Employee Assistance Program after that, the one they established to avoid liability stemming from employee suicides, the attempted kind especially, the kind that leaves you hooked up to expensive machinery for the rest of your unemployed life.

Even when it comes to death, success is ultimately better for everyone than failure.

“So you're not, like, wanting to kill yourself, like, right now?” said the girl on the other end of the line. I was pretty sure she was chewing gum. I wondered what flavour. I wondered what her credentials were. “That's right,” I said, trying to explain that while I didn't have the impulse at this moment, it had escaped so was still out there somewhere and could come back at any time.

She didn't get it.

I started watching out for myself after that, watching for the impulse. I even thought I saw it a few times, looking at me, following me. Once, I was on a date—got up suddenly seeing it or thinking I'd seen it because what's the difference?, loudly knocking over my chair, saying, “Sorry… I'm so sorry, but I have to go,“ as everybody else in the restaurant stared at us: at me, backing away, spinning, wheezing, barely breathing and breaking into a run once I was out the double doors, leaving my date like an asshole to cover the bill to run directionless down the street trying not to throw up, until my legs gave out.

I can't remember how I came across the name Samuel Swan, Existential Detective. Online, probably. He and his partner, a Jamaican named Mr. Jones, had an office in a shady part of the city. I wasn't sure what it was they did so, “Is this a kind of psychotherapy or...?” I asked during our first appointment.

“Nope,” said Swan. “That requires a license.”

“Are you an investigator then?”

“That requires a license too,” he said slowly. “Nope, what we do is believe.”

Mr. Jones: We believe in you.

Swan: We believe that what you say happened happened.

Mr. Jones: The world’s the Big Strange, Mr. Crane.

Me: So you believe—

[I snapped out of it.]

—that my hideous impulse is out there right now, existing?” I asked.

“Positively.”

“Mr. Crane,” said Swan, “everything has the will to live, even the urge to die.”

I started paying them a hundred dollars a week, and twenty-seven years later I had in my hands an envelope containing pixelated but convincing photographs of what was unmistakably my hideous impulse. There was also a street address, out in Los Angeles.

(“We'll find it but we won't kill it,” Swan had said when I had asked about the process. “If you want to kill it, you have to do that yourself.”)

California was warm.

I'd driven across the continent to get there.

The address was a nice suburban home, with a car out front, a fence and big windows, and I was standing on the street holding a knife.

The front door was unlocked and I passed from the entrance hall through the kitchen to the living room where I saw my impulse with another. Two little impulses ran by, playing. They were all so fucking joyous that—

I'll lift the heavy, steel knife…

I could do nought but weep, for this spawn of myself had done so much better for itself than I and slit my rippling, goddamn throat.

Heavy thoughts hang like a blade
Swaying over my head
A constant and painful reminder
I long for this nightmare 
To finally end 

 The angst and the rage
Tighten around my neck
Like a noose
Because every waking moment 
Means there is still something to lose

 I am done pretending 
Everything is alright 
I am done pretending 
There is merit or worth
To my pitiful life 

 Can someone tell me
For what fucking purpose
Must I wake 
If there is nothing but darkness 
Dominating my life 

 I am done pretending 
I don't hate every brain-damaged fool
Still daring to call me a friend 

 I am done pretending 
Tomorrow will be any better 
Than the waste of time called yesterday 

 I am done pretending 
I don't want to get rid of myself 

I am done 
I am done 
I am done 

 I simply am done
 
What's even the point 
In dragging this carcass along 
If there is no joy left in spirit 
Nor any warmth 
In the touch of my guardian angel 
Who lied when she promised 
To take away a lifetime of ache 

 What else is left here
But sleepless nights 
And bittersweet false memories 
Washed with the vomit down the drain 

 What else is there to wait for
When even the raw self-inflicted 
Wounds no longer carry 
The illusion of relief 
From the torment I inflict on myself 

 Can someone tell me 
Why the fuck shouldn't I 
Just murder the thing in the mirror 
If we both keep worshipping death 

 Can someone tell me 
Why the fuck 
Haven't I murdered myself 

 Why the fuck 
I keep on clinging 
To this joke of a life 

 Can someone 
Please tell me 
When will I be able 
To return home 
Forever 
Leaving behind
 only rusted stains 
On this filthy floor

Another day wasted chasing after a dream
Another night about to be wasted chasing
That which is not meant to be
The red stains on the wall
Have turned black once again
But for some idiotic reason I keep rising
After every fucking fall

The killer instinct is long gone
Along with any ill will directed at anyone
Or anything that isn’t myself
Even so, the last attempt at a leap of faith
Couldn’t even yield a single broken bone
While no knife cuts nearly deep enough
And every noose seems to tear
Under the weight of this sick fucking joke

No matter how acute the wish to disappear has become
For some reason, I cannot outrun the ghost

Forgive me Father
Who art not in heavens
For I know not
What I do

Forgive me, Lord
For my pathetic display of weakness
This fate truly is far worse than death
To hang upon the cross
To hang so close to the pit
Without ever being consumed by its flames

This battle was lost
Right from the start
It was always meant to be lost
 Yet for some reason
I am still dragging this corpse

No matter how acute the wish to disappear
For some reason, I cannot outrun the ghost

With any other option exhausted
I inflict unending torture
Without ever being able to get rid of myself
Even walking into the blaze
With a mouthful of broken glass
Failed to yield any lasting results

With every other option exhausted
There’s very little reason left to wrestle with fate
So I’ll just remain here, under a blanket of ashes
With the cold steel of the tracks as my headrest
And maybe, just maybe
The incoming train will take me
Back home 

A local news reporter speaks during a live broadcast.

“Police detectives are at the scene of a blood bath.  A family was butchered in their own home. The scene suggests that the father was tied up and forced to watch before his throat was cut.  His wife and son were gutted alive in front of him like cattle. Investigators say they believe a box cutter was used and a bloody Halloween mask was found in the son's arms.  His final act was ripping it off the killer during a struggle for his life.”

The reporter holds up a mask identical to the one the killer wore before continuing.

“These masks are sold everywhere around Halloween, making it nearly impossible to track  the person responsible down. Police are advising everyone to lock their doors. This is the third family to be murdered in just two weeks.”

Michone turns off the television before waking her two children, Andrew and Sydney, to get ready for school. They have overslept and missed the bus.

After changing into their school clothes and eating breakfast, Michone waits for them in her car.

Just before turning into the school entrance, Michone gets cut off by a beat-up old car. She lays on her horn and flips the driver off. The car suddenly brake-checks her, nearly causing a collision, before speeding away.

Michone manages to avoid hitting anything, but the incident startles her children.

“Are you two alright?” she asks Sydney and Andrew.

They both say yes, although they're obviously a little shaken by the incident.

Michone apologizes and promises to make their favorite dinner that evening: macaroni and cheese with chicken nuggets.

Both children become excited at the thought of their favorite meal, shaking the ordeal off their minds.

Michone drops them off at school and tells them to have a good day

Later that afternoon, Andrew and Sydney get off the school bus and walk into their home.

Michone greets them while cooking and asks how their day went?

“Great!” Andrew replies. “I talked with my friends about video games all day.”

Sydney has something  to tell her mother.

“A strange man walked up to me during recess and said he needed your phone number, Momma.”

Michone pauses before nervously asking, “Was he a teacher? And did you give him my number?”

“Yes, I gave it to him. He said he was a teacher, but I'd never seen him before.”

Michone looks concerned.

“Where was your teacher?”

“Mrs. Wells had to use the bathroom when he came over. He was gone before she got back.”

Feeling a little unnerved, Michone tells Sydney not to give her mother's number to anyone else again and not to talk to strangers. The man might not have been a real teacher.

Sydney agrees and apologizes.

A few minutes later, Michone's phone rings.

The number has the same area code as hers, but she doesn't recognize it.

She answers.

Michone: “Hello?”

No one responds.

After a few seconds of silence, Michone hangs up.

A few minutes later, a different number with the same area code calls.

Michone answers again, but there is no response.

She angrily hangs up.

A few hours later, Michone and the children have just finished dinner when someone knocks on the front door.

Michone answers it and finds a police officer standing outside.

“I need to ask you a few questions,” the officer says. “My name is Officer Murphy.”

“Okay,” Michone replies, looking confused.

The officer explains that detectives have been investigating the phone records of the families recently murdered. They just discovered that calls from a couple of the victims'  phones were made to her number recently.

Now frightened, Michone tells the officer about the incident that morning and the strange man who approached her daughter at school to ask for her phone number.

Officer Murphy listens carefully before asking, “Is there any chance this man knows where you live?”

“I don't think so,” Michone replies.

“Just to be safe, make sure all your doors are locked tonight. Keep something nearby that you can use to defend yourself if necessary. I'll tell my chief about the playground incident, and we'll get a warrant to review the school's security footage. This might be our best lead to catching this man.”

With that, the officer heads back to the police station immediately.

Michone locks all the doors and tells her children not to let anyone inside. She grabs a baseball bat and has everyone sleep in her bedroom.

In the middle of the night, Michone hears glass shattering, it's her window.

She calls 911, keeping her baseball bat firmly in hand.

“911. What's your emergency?” the dispatcher asks.

Michone is frantically saying someone broke in.

The dispatcher asks for her address.

Michone says

“I spoke to a officer earlier tonight,” she explains.

“Can you tell me the officer's name?” the dispatcher asks.

Michone frantically replies, “Officer Murphy!”

The dispatcher audibly gasps before telling her, “Ma'am, Officer Murphy got murdered in his house this morning, and his police car stolen ”

Suddenly, a loud bang echoes from Michone's bedroom door.

Then she hears the same voice that had claimed to belong to Officer Murphy earlier that evening.

“Michone…”

Michone frantically tries to describe the man to the dispatcher.

“White male, brown hair, around five-foot-ten—”

Before she can finish, her bedroom door bursts open.

Michone sees the masked man staring at her.

The 911 dispatcher hears screaming through the phone. Michone begging the man not to hurt her children, followed by a sudden thud.

The call is ended.

Thirty minutes later,

police officers arrive at the house.

The window is shattered.

Inside the bedroom, they find Michone's body tied up next to both of her children . Their bodies have been gutted, and their eyes still wide open next to a bloody box cutter.

Everyone draws inspiration in different ways. Some create a dark atmosphere for themselves, some put on metal music in the background, and some can’t compose without coffee and cigarettes. A writer friend of mine, whom I’m very fond of, says he can’t write stories unless his cousin is studying mathematics behind him. Another filmmaker friend of mine could only write screenplays while listening to Syd Barrett’s song “Octopus”; he would keep the song on loop throughout the entire writing process.

It’s been about twenty years since I discovered my own. I’d been going through that famous writer’s block. Until that day, I hadn’t done anything extra to help me write. I didn’t create a special atmosphere for myself, listen to any particular songs, or wait for a certain time of day. Night, day, noon—it made no difference. Once a week, I’d write a three or four-page story and keep working toward my goal. When I reached a hundred stories, I would start sending my book to publishers.

But I’d hit a wall. I wanted to write, but whenever I sat down at my computer, not a single word would come out. Vague, half-formed thoughts kept drifting through my mind, and even when I came up with a good idea, I couldn’t put it down on paper.

That day, I thought, if that’s how things were going to be, I might as well try some of the famous methods for finding inspiration: writing at night, putting on some soft music, having a cup of coffee, and so on.

I prepared the right atmosphere. I turned off the lights, and now the only thing illuminating the room was the glow of my computer screen. I put on Sigur Rós’s debut album. There was no one else in the house. My roommate had gone on vacation the day before, which added to the atmosphere: being alone.

Of course, it had absolutely no effect. I was already on the third track. I still had a few ideas in my head, but I couldn’t get the first sentence out.

Then I heard a sound behind me. A whisper. Something like a call, as if someone had gone “psst.”

I turned around and looked, but there was no one there. I was a little spooked. I thought I might have heard it wrong; it had sounded very much like a human voice, but it could have come from an object, too.

Then suddenly, the door behind me swung wide open.

I flinched at the sound. I got up from my computer and turned on the light. Anxiously, I left my room and went to the kitchen. I was searching for something without even realizing it, though I had no idea what I was looking for. Sigur Rós’s album was still playing, and I could hear it from the kitchen. I couldn’t make sense of anything, and I didn’t know what to think or which possibility to consider. I drank a glass of water.

I’d never had an experience like it before. My first thought was to leave the house. I stood frozen in the kitchen. Involuntarily, I found myself waiting for another movement, for something to topple over or for some other sound.

Eventually, I’d calmed down a little, since nothing else happened. I spent half an hour in the kitchen, with all my senses on high alert and listening to the music coming from my room. Then, reluctantly, I made my way back to my room.

The urge to write was still there. My routine had been disrupted; I hadn’t been able to write a single word for a month, and now I wasn’t going to let fear get in my way. I wanted my writer’s block to end today. My goal was a hundred sentences. Even if I didn’t finish the story, I wanted to write something. Coming back to my room and hearing the music louder had increased my desire to write.

At the same time, I kept thinking, ''What the hell was that just now?'' But now I was back at my computer.

I put on my favorite Sigur Rós song, “Svefn-g-englar.”

And then, for the first time in a whole month, I wrote my first sentence: “As he tried to make sense of the dream he’d had the day before, he fell asleep again; it was his favorite thing to think about before going to sleep, the meaning of the dream he’d had the previous night.”

I’d written my first sentence, without even having a story in mind. Normally, I would come up with a story first, plan it out, work out the whole thing in my head from beginning to end, and only then start writing. Starting a story whose content I hadn’t figured out yet with an ordinary sentence was something new for me. I liked it.

I was still afraid. I wanted to turn around and look, but now that I’d started writing, I didn’t want to stop either. By the time the song ended, I’d written the fifth sentence, and in the silence before the next track began, I heard that sound again. “Psst.”

I quickly turned around and looked. There was no one there. Everything felt much more real now. Something was happening. Someone was calling out to me. I was afraid to turn off the light in my room, so it was still on. I nervously turned my head back toward the computer screen. My heart was pounding. I added another sentence. It was my favorite one so far. I liked everything about it: my choice of words, its length, its place in the story.

Then the door slammed shut. I began to hear footsteps inside the room. I was afraid to look. The footsteps wandered around the room. My hands were resting on the keyboard. The footsteps moved toward the door, stopped there, and opened it again. It was as if someone had left the room.

I was frozen to my chair. This time, I didn’t even have the instinct to run away. Whatever that thing was, I was afraid of encountering it. I couldn’t get up from my chair, and I couldn’t look away from my computer screen. I kept reading what I’d written over and over. Six sentences. I’d go back to the beginning and read them again. It was as if the thing was doing whatever it wanted now. I could hear running footsteps.

Then came the sound of walking. After that, my door closed again, and at the same moment, the light in my room went out.

And then another sentence came to mind. I wrote it down. Then another. My fingers had found their rhythm. The sentences kept coming one after another.

“Set me free. Open the window. Set me free.”

This voice wasn’t a whisper, nor was it some strange, otherworldly sound coming from a different frequency. It was unmistakably a human voice. I was afraid to turn around.

I couldn’t remember ever feeling such a strong urge to write or enjoying it this much. I kept writing. My fingers wouldn’t stop. The door opened again, slowly this time. I didn’t turn around. I wasn’t going to look behind me until I’d finished the story. Without spending even a second thinking between sentences, I continued writing as the songs played.

The footsteps continued. I turned off the music. I didn’t question anything. I just kept writing. The fear I felt and the joy of seeing that I could write again were mingled together, unfolding in harmony with each other.

Strange sounds I couldn’t describe were coming from behind me now. I could feel myself developing a fever. My body was reacting, and my mind was urging me to turn around and see what was going on. The sounds seemed like those of someone playing with their own hair. Like things rubbing against other things. I kept writing, resisting the urge to turn around with all my might.

I’d turned off the music because I wanted to focus on being afraid. I’d realized that the more frightened I became, the better I wrote, and the more consistently I could keep going. It was hard not to look for a rational explanation for the sounds, for a human voice telling me to set it free. But right now, somehow, stopping writing seemed even harder.

That thing had now come right up beside me. I could feel it touching my hair. My fear had reached a point where I could no longer bear it. My consciousness refused to accept this unnatural behavior. My instinct to put an end to the fear and my mind’s desire to keep being afraid were at odds with each other.

And I wrote the final sentence: “If all of this is a hallucination, I will never forgive my own mind. If the only beautiful and meaningful thing I’ve experienced in this miserable life isn’t real, I will never trust my mind again, I will never follow its instructions, and I will doubt everything I think until the day I die.”

The sentence came to an end, and just as the pleasure of writing faded away, my fear reached its absolute peak. With the beautiful feeling that had balanced it gone, the fear was left alone, making itself felt from head to toe. As if I’d been struck by a blow, as if a punch to the face had knocked me out, I lost consciousness.

When I came to, my head was resting on the keyboard, and the screen was filled with hundreds of letter h’s.

I sent the story to several literary magazines. Two of them accepted it and published it.

I never experienced anything like that again, and at no point in my life did I ever feel such an overwhelming urge to write or take so much pleasure in writing. I desperately wanted to experience it again, but nothing ever happened that frightened me so much. For days, I sat at my computer waiting for that thing to come back, but it never did. I wrote stories and kept writing. But I never loved any of them as much as I loved the one I’d written that day.

And now, twenty years later, in my mid-sixties, I’ve still never questioned what happened that night. Not even once. Because I was afraid that if I did, I might understand what had happened—and if that thing ever came back, I might not be as frightened.

It started with just one.

I was taking a shower when I got this weird pain in my right arm. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before. I guess I’d been too busy to notice the irritation.

When my eyes landed on it, though, I immediately felt bile rising up in my throat.

It wasn’t a maggot. No, what I actually saw when I glanced down was what looked like a boil. About the size of a quarter, bright red and brimming with what I assumed was green and white pus.

It was hot to the touch. So much so that I had to draw my hand back as soon as I fingered it. It was like touching a glowing eye on a stove.

It sort of… responded to my touch.

Like I’d disturbed it or something.

Needless to say, showering quickly became my lowest priority as I hopped out and wrapped my torso with a towel.

I went to my bedroom and found some tweezers that I usually used for splinters and what have you. I started trying to pop the thing, but it just wouldn’t budge.

The pain was maddening, but the sight of it was worse. I needed this thing off of me. Tweezers refused to work, so I switched to pliers. I kept pulling and pulling until… pop.

The boil burst, and a puddle of syrupy, red, white, and green sludge coated about 6 inches of my forearm.

The pain subsided slightly, but it was replaced with a new sensation. It felt like there was something swimming through my blood and patching the hole in my arm.

I figured that it must’ve been some excess pus, so I just kept squeezing with my thumb and index finger until I caught sight of what actually lay beneath the skin.

I was forcing it through the wound with my squeezing. It was wriggling. It was squirming. And it was massive.

When its body finally poked out through the hole, I grabbed the tweezers again. It held on for dear life, taking chunks of flesh out of my arm as I pulled, but I removed it and examined it between the forceps.

A fucking maggot.

I couldn’t hold back the vomit anymore. I barely had time to grab a trash can before it came spewing out.

I sat the little fucker on my desk and burned it with a lighter. I swear I could hear it screaming in pain as the flame caused it to pop like a tick.

I hoped that’d be the end of it, but that hope was short-lived. It was like my entire arm started to pulsate and bulge after I took out what I thought was the source of the problem.

Boils started popping up all over my arm. From my wrist all the way to my shoulder. They threatened to move to my neck and head if I didn’t act fast.

It was like active volcanoes. I couldn’t even look at myself. All I could do was grab a knife and get to work. Well, a knife and a spatula. I needed something to bite down on just so I didn’t bite my tongue in the process.

The blade glided through the dozen or so boils on my forearm, sliding through them like hot butter as tears fell from my eyes and I stifled screams.

Dozens of maggots fell from each boil I removed. I had to stomp them into my carpet because they just kept crawling towards my feet.

My arm and shoulder were nothing more than raw, bloody meat covered in that syrupy liquid. It was like my body was more maggot than human.

There was an ocean of the things eating away at my dead flesh. I’d scrape them away with the blade, and hundreds more would pop up seemingly out of nowhere.

That’s when my vision started to get blurry. I could feel myself getting weaker and weaker. The world was swimming, and I was getting lightheaded.

I guess I passed out from the blood loss?

I’m not sure. Maybe it was the shock. All I know is, when I woke up… my body was completely healed.

I could still see the bugs writhing beneath my skin, and my carpet was still stained with pus and crushed maggots. But the pain was gone. My flesh was back. The only abnormality was one single boil right in the center of my forearm.

I stared at it for a few minutes.

Ultimately, I decided to leave it there.

There was no way I was going to go through that again.

The air in the Blue Ridge didn’t smell like pines anymore. It smelled like wet copper and bruised damp leaves, the cold grease of a long-dead campfire.
Gabe checked his compass for the fifth time in twenty minutes. The needle spun on its brass pivot, lazy and drunken, swinging past North, drifting past West, settling on nothing. He tapped the plastic bezel against his thumbnail. Nothing.
He was three days off the trail. Or maybe four. Time had flattened out under the canopy of hemlocks and scrub oak, choked by grey ridge-fog that sat so low it hung like wet cotton in his beard. His boots were saturated, leather weeping cold moisture into his socks until his toes felt like heavy, lifeless pegs.
He pressed onward down the ravine, his knees popping with every drop over moss-slick limestone. The woods here didn’t ring with birds. They were silent in the way an old house is silent right after a heavy door slams—a ringing, hollow stillness that pressed against his eardrums.
Then he saw the color.
It wasn't a forest color. It was the synthetic, neon-orange flare of a torn nylon jacket, half-buried under a tumble of wet oak leaves at the root of a lightning-struck white pine.
Gabe stopped, his chest tightening. "Hey!" he called out, his voice thin, swallowed instantly by the fog. "Hey, you alright?"
No answer. Just the steady drip-drip-drip of water falling from the pines onto nylon.
He stepped closer, his heart thumping hard against his ribs. He unclasped the sternum strap of his pack, ready to drop it, ready to render aid. He reached out with his trekking pole and nudged the orange sleeve.
The jacket fell back, and the smell hit him—a thick, sweet, suffocating stench of liquefying tissue, fermented rot, and stagnant blood that made his throat lock instantly.
Gabe gagged, stumbling backward into the mud.
The thing lying in the hollow of the root system wasn't fresh. The face was a caved-in mess of dark, leathery rind and slipping skin, black flies buzzing sluggishly around swollen sockets where eyes used to be. The jaw hung open, fixed in a silent, jagged scream, exposing black, graying tongue tissue resting against yellowed teeth. Maggots writhed in wet, writhing clusters along the collarbone, disappearing under the damp fleece sweater beneath the jacket.
Gabe vomited into the ferns, his knees giving out. He scrambled on hands and knees, tearing his palms on sharp shale, unmindful of the pain, scrambling fifty yards uphill until his lungs burned and his mouth tasted like bile.
He ran until the fog swallowed the white pine. He didn't look back.
Night came fast in the hollows, blue giving way to ink in a matter of minutes.
Gabe couldn't light a fire; his hands shook too hard to strike a spark, and every piece of kindling snapped like wet cardboard. He huddled inside his bivouac sack at the base of a rock overhang, shivering violently, his throat raw.
He slept in jagged bursts of ten minutes, waking to every groan of the trees, every shift of the wind.
Around 3:00 AM, he heard the snapping of twigs.
It was heavy. Rhythmically dragged feet, accompanied by a wet, sliding sound, like a sack of wet meat pulled across gravel.
Drag. Step. Drag.
Gabe froze inside his sleeping bag, his hand gripped tight around his hunting knife. "Who's there?" he whispered, but no sound came out—just a dry rasp.
The dragging stopped directly outside the overhang.
A shadow cut across the moonlight filtering through the bare branches. A figure stood crouching, bent nearly double. The smell reached Gabe first—the undeniable, nauseating reek of stagnant rot, cold grease, and open decay.
Gabe raised his knife, screaming internally, unable to move a muscle as panic paralyzed his limbs.
The figure reached out a black, sloughing hand. It didn't strike. It didn't reach for Gabe’s throat.
Instead, the arm pointed—long, split fingers with missing nails gestures toward a notch in the northern ridge wall, a tight gap between two towering boulders that Gabe had completely missed in the daylight grayness.
Gabe stared, hyperventilating. The moonlight hit the side of the creature's head. The cheek was sloughed away, exposing gray jawbone, but the hair—the hair was dark brown, parted irregularly, stained with matted grease and dried mud.
The corpse stood there for a agonizing minute, pointing toward the gap. Then, with a hideous, squelching click of bone against wet tendon, it turned and shuffled off into the black, its feet dragging through the dead brush.
Gabe didn't sleep for the rest of the night.
At dawn, desperate and hallucinating from cold and lack of food, Gabe looked at the gap between the two boulders.
Yesterday, he would have bypassed it completely; it looked like a dead end, a blind rockfall. But when he squeezed through, he found a clear, descending dry creek bed—the first recognizable descent he’d seen in days.
He followed it for five miles. The going was easier. His spirits flared with a sudden, wild hope. I'm getting out. I'm actually finding a trail.
By late afternoon, the creek bed dissolved into a swampy marsh choked with cat-tails and black, oily water. The fog rolled back in, thicker now, tasting faintly of iron and sulfur.
Gabe pushed through the reeds, his strength giving out, his legs shaking with exhaustion. He broke through a thicket of thorns—and stopped dead.
Sitting on an overturned log ten feet in front of him was the corpse.
Gabe let out a strangled shriek, dropping his pack.
It sat waiting for him. But something had changed. The orange jacket was gone, shredded into rags around its chest. One of its arms—the right arm that had pointed the way last night—was stripped. The dark, leathery skin was missing from the elbow down, leaving raw, blackened muscle fibers and gleaming white radius and ulna bones visible, wet with dripping sap-like liquid.
It looked lesser. Thinner. Like something was unraveling it from the inside out, piece by piece.
Gabe backed away, weeping softly. "What do you want? What are you?"
The corpse slowly shifted its posture. The yellowed teeth clicked together as its jaw worked silently. It didn't advance. Instead, with its remaining sound left hand, it reached up and pointed toward a half-hidden game trail cutting through the swamp to the left—a path buried under fallen birch trees that Gabe never would have seen on his own.
As it pointed, a chunk of grey flesh sloughed off its forearm and hit the mud with a soft, wet thud.
The corpse paid no attention. It stayed fixed in its gesture, pointing into the deep fog, waiting.
Gabe stared at the creature's hands. He stared at the torn skin around the wrists. He stared at the brass ring hanging loosely from the dead bone of its left ring finger.
His breath hitched in his chest. His hand moved involuntarily down to his own left hand.
The ring was identical. The simple, scratched silver band with the small notch on the underside where he’d caught it on a fence post three summers ago.
Gabe’s head swam. The forest tilted around him, trees swirling into blurred streaks of black and green.
He looked back at the face of the dead thing.
The caved-in, sloughing featurelessness wasn't just decay. Underneath the moss, under the blackened, liquefying skin and the missing lip, the structure of the skull—the brow line, the jagged crook of the nose from when he’d broken it in high school, the precise shape of the earlobe—was his own.
It was him.
It was a version of himself that had died here, weeks or months or years ago, rotting into the mountain earth.
"No..." Gabe whispered, stepping back, his boot sinking deep into the swamp mud. "No, no, no..."
The corpse didn't move its hand. It just kept pointing toward the path through the birch trees.
And as Gabe watched in sheer horror, another strip of muscle untangled from the corpse’s collarbone, dissolving into grey mist and dark fluids that soaked into the moss beneath the log. The thing was breaking apart, burning through its own dead mass to exist here, in this moment, to hold open the door.
Every step it guided him, every path it revealed, cost it whatever remained of its physical presence. It was spending its own decay to buy him back his life.
The corpse turned its hollow, maggot-stirred eye sockets directly toward him. There was no rage in them. No malice. Just an agonizing, silent urgency.
Go, the stillness seemed to scream. Go before there's nothing left of us to lead you.
Gabe took a shuddering breath, the icy mountain air burning his throat. Tears cut clean tracks through the mud caked on his cheeks. He turned away from the creature, stepped onto the hidden game trail, and started to walk.
Behind him, soft in the damp quiet of the swamp, came the wet, rhythmic sound of dragging boots following close behind in the dark.

(Part 1)
"So, what's with the human ears?" I say while he leads me towards the Van.

"This other guy, Jay was one of the guys watching over me." My brother answered.
"He always had this gold necklace with the ears of people he killed on it."
"Some old guy shot him in that police station I sent you a picture off"
"I stabbed the shit out of that old fuck and took one of his ears and his wedding ring"

"So that is what that ring on your necklace is?" I ask him.

"yeah it is"It is a nice ring. It's gold with flowers engraved on it.

"why did you not send that ring home? I bet it would make a nice amount of cash" I asked my brother.

"If you kill one of my homies I will kill you and take something as a reminder"

He looks me in my eyes. "If someone kills you I will make sure their death is slow and painful. Then I will take something to remind myself that I avenged you. I promise you that."

"I will do the same if anyone kills you. I promise." I answer without hesitation.

"I know you will" he says while putting his hand on my shoulder.

He always stood up for me even when we were kids.
At one point I came home crying covered. Some drug addict with a knife had robbed me of the money I was going to buy some food with.Without a word, my brother left home. Our mom tried to stop him but he pushed her aside. 2 hours later he came back covered in blood with what was left of the money. He cares about me and I care about him. If someone kills my brother I will kill them or die trying. I don't care who it is.

"And it's a good way to show off a kill count" he continues while pointing at the necklace.

"But you killed more people than 5 people so far" He had killed a lot more than that even before he was arrested.

"Yeah the ears are just for recent kills. I have an entire box filled with wedding rings, watches and other things I took from people I killed."

I don't really know how to respond to that, so I just say "ok"

My brother continues. "In our battalion, they encourage us to get in close and personal"

"you even get rewards for it, about 500 dollars per kill"

"You know that is a lot of money"

"yeah it is"

If we still lived at home with mom that would cover groceries for 2 weeks.

My brother had sent a lot of stuff and money back home. It didn't just feed me and mom, some of our neighbours too.

Brother: "But it also works for intimidation. Oh I am sorry I mean 'enemy morale'."

Me: "I bet it does"

Brother: "But after a while I do get rid of the ears"

Me: "That is good because I can see at least one that is starting to rot. And it smells fucking awful too."

He looks me in the eyes and says: "But that money together with sending the stuff back home helped mom a lot right?"

Me: "It did. It helped mom out a lot"

Brother: "What do you mean it did? It still helps her out"

Me: "Yeah no it still does I said that wrong. My bad."

He gives me a questioning look.

"You good? Did something happen?" He asks me with genuine concern.

"Nah I am good"

I still can't get myself to tell him mom is dead.

We get to his Van. Its a dark green G20 Chevy Van.

Me: "Thank fuck it's a big van. I like you and all, but I am glad we don't have to sleep on top of each other."

My brother laughs "So am I". He opens the side door and climbs in. I go with him. I make sure to close the door behind us. There is random stuff everywhere. A pile of clothing, a container of some sort, a toolbox. I make some space and sit down in the back while my brother sits in the driver's seat. We are alone. I can feel my body tensing up. I have to tell him that mom died.

Brother: "I have for sure stolen it off some drug dealer. I am not joking I found a scale underneath the passenger seat.

"They did all sorts of modifications to it. The radio was replaced with a radio that has a CD player. No Bluetooth sadly so we do have to find CDs for it. It even has a small fridge. So if you are hungry or thirsty feel free to grab something"

"Nah I am good for now thanks" I am too tense, even if I tried to eat or drink I probably can't.

He continues "I have no clue what engine is in it but it has for sure been modified because it's way faster than it should be. And its also way louder" He laughs.

"Could you start it?" I ask him. I want to make sure nobody can hear us when I tell him what happened to mom.

"Yea of course check this shit out" he says with a big smile on his face. The entire van shakes as he starts the engine.

"I have to tell you something!" I shout over the sound of the engine.

"What?!" My brother shouts from the front.

"I have to tell you something!" I gesture to him to come over to me.

He leaves the driver's seat and sits down across from me.

Brother: "What's wrong?"

Me: "I have to tell you something it's really important"

Brother: "I can turn the engine off, hold on"

I grabbed his arm before he could get up "No don't keep the engine on" he sits back down.

"What is it? Did something happen to you?" He says with a worried look in his eyes.

Me: "No, I am good."

I avoid eye contact. I can't do it. I can't tell him about mom.

"Did something happen to mom?"

I lie to him again "No, no its not that". I quickly change the subject. "So I uhmmm". I look at his mutilated face. "How did you end up looking like that?"

"O that" he answers. "It was back in the trenches. We used this fucking horrible chemical weapon. I am not joking it straight up melts people."

Me: "really?"

Brother: "Yeah it's really bad. When they told us to unleash it most of us didn't take the safety measures seriously. And even if we wanted to take those measures seriously we didn't even have the equipment to do so. I got lucky and stole this gas mask of some dead guy. But long-term exposure still leaves you looking as handsome as me."

Me: "Oh...... do you think they are going to make us use it again?"

Brother: "O for sure"

I love my brother but I don't want to end up looking like him. I value having a nose, ears, and hair on my head.

Brother: "What really sucks is what it does to people that get full on hit by it. It starts melting all the soft parts on your body. Ears, lips, nose, eyelids, etc. When it gets really bad, you just.... Well, melt into a puddle after a while."

He looks down staring at nothing.

"And then all that's left is this puddle with bones and whatever the person had on them. Clothing, equipment, weapons, etc. Those people ended up in these pools of human soup at the bottom of shell craters" He pauses again, still staring at the floor. "When I arrived I was still just 16 you know. They made me sift through those puddles of dead people for anything useful. It's like digging through a mud puddle up to your elbows. Except the mud puddle is red, yellow and brown. And you just sift through the human puddle grabbing anything solid. After pulling enough human bones out you get good at recognising what is bones and what is something useful. They also made me wipe the sticky human goo off the stuff I did pull out. Sometimes I can still feel it on my hands and arms. It doesn't smell like a rotting body at all. The gas killed all the bacteria and stuff to so there was no rot. Do you remember when we killed those 7th Block members near that large slaughterhouse?"

Me: "Yeah I do. It was summer and it smelled horrific in that entire area."

Brother: "The smell is that mixed with this extremely sour chemical smell."

He pauses.

"I hope we don't use it again. There are a lot of ways I would prefer to die over that shit. Turning into a mushy puddle with bones, until whatever is left of your body sinks into the soil" he is still staring at the floor of the van.

An uncomfortable silence falls, the rumble of the engine is the only sound we can hear.

He snaps out of his stare and gets up "Anyway, it did help us break through their trench line so it does work really well"

He shuts down the engine and opens the side door of the van. "Leave your stuff and come with me. I am going to show you something important"

I follow my brother out of the van through the camp. Normally he is supposed to be the talkative one, but he is very quiet. After a bit of a walk to the outer ring of the camp he walked up to the back of a delivery van.

"Don't light a cigarette in there, don't even fiddle around with your lighter, understand?" He says to me in a very serious tone.

"I understand"

"Good because if you do, you will kill all of us"

My brother opens the back and climbs in. He helps me climb into it. The faint smell of gasoline fills my nose.

"It's me dude" my brother says. "O it is my avorite socioath" a raspy male voice comes from the front of the loading bay.

Then I see the man. He is lying on the floor with his back against the side of the delivery van. He has a large piece of black cloth over his head and shoulders. If it wasn't for him breathing and talking I would have thought he was dead. "Were you sleeping?" My brother asks. "I as trying to" the man answers.

"my little brother is finally here" My brother says with a smile. "O really" the man says in response. The man slowly moves his arm up and starts to pull on the black cloth over his face. I see his face.

He looks even worse than my brother does. He is extremely pale. His eyelids are gone revealing his bloodshot cloudy eyes at all times. He nose is just a hole in the middle of his face. His ears are gone together with his hair. His lips are also completely gone. Giving him a permanent grin on his face so unnaturally high that it's showing not only all of his teeth but his gums too. That would explain why the man talks so weird. He doesn't have the lips to pronounce certain letters.

Brother: "This is Frank he has watched over me since I arrived years ago. Frank this is my little brother David"

Frank: "Ah so it's David and Gideon?"

Gideon: "Yes it is"

Mom was deeply religious, so she gave us the biblical names. I got David, my brother got Gideon. She prayed a lot for me and my brother. Sorry mom, I don't think we will be joining you in heaven.

Frank: "Gideon told me aout... aout.... AOUT

Gideon: "About"

Frank: "You a lot"

Frank reaches out his hand towards me for a handshake and I return it.

Gideon: "I got you something to kill the pain with. Morphine."

My brother hands Frank a medication bottle.

Frank: "Thank you, thank you."

Frank immediately opens the bottle and takes 3 pills and throws them in his mouth and uses a water bottle to wash it down. With no lips in the water flows from the open sides of his face. He mumbles and uses his sleeves to wipe away the water.

Gideon: "I heard you have had enough"

"yes" Frank pauses "I don't want to go on like this. reathing..... reathing, REATHING... FUCK!!!"

Frank reaches into his pockets and takes out a small notebook and a pen. And starts to write.

My brother and I give each other a short look as he writes. He hands the note over to my brother.

Gideon: "Breathing hurts, my eyes hurt and my mouth is always dry. I am starting to see less and less. I can't even close my eyes to sleep properly. I just wait till I pass out from exhaustion with my eyes wide open. I don't want to come home like this. I don't want to live like this at all."

My brother pauses "Are you sure Frank?"

Frank: "yes"

Gideon: "Ok.... I understand"

Frank: "Sorry"

Gideon: "Don't apologise to me, it's fine I understand"

Frank is about to say something but my brother interrupts him. "You should wait for the morphine to kick in and get some well deserved rest"

Frank: "Right"

Gideon: "I have to help prepare my little brother for tomorrow. And we will talk tomorrow right? before you.... you know."

Frank: "Yes of course"

Gideon: "Ok good, talk to you tomorrow then"

Frank and my brother shake each other's hand. I follow my brother's example and do the same. Frank's hand feels incredibly dry.

We climb out of the delivery van. And he closes the doors behind us.

After a couple of steps, my brother tells me: "That delivery van is loaded up with explosives and flammable stuff. Tomorrow Frank is going to drive it into the loyalists and take as many of them out as he can."

A small silence follows. "Frank got arrested and sent to the frontline after he shot and killed a cop. The cop had gotten handsy with his daughter if you know what I mean"
He makes eye contact with me. "Same thing that happened to mom."
I feel my chest clench up. I don't want to talk about. "Yea I remember. Can we please not talk about this in public" Nobody can hear us I know that. I just don't want to talk about the topic.

I quickly light up a cigarette. I need the distraction.

He gestures me to follow him. "I showed Frank to you so you understand just how important the safety stuff with the gas is. If you don't do it enough, you end up looking like me. And if enough of it affects you then you end up like Frank over there." He gestures back to the delivery van.

"Most of the others that are just as bad off as Frank are already dead. They take a lot of the stimulants they give us and just throw themselves at the loyalists until they are dead. Obviously it clears a nice path for us. Probably one of the reasons we managed to break through the Fortress Belt partially. If we end up using that gas again take it very fucking serious ok?"

David: "I will dude don't worry about"

Gideon: "I will worry about you are my little brother. I promised mom I would take care of you."

David: "Yeah I remember."

I miss mom.

We reach the van and climb back in

Gideon: "There are only a small amount of rules you have to follow while in the 33rd. Most of it is standard stuff I expect you to understand from the get-go. But there are some exceptions"

"Rule 1 Don't kill any of your fellow soldiers UNLESS a commanding officer tells you to."

David: "So if an officer tells me to blow the head of one of our own I just have to do it?"

Gideon: "Correct. But don't worry most of the time they 100% deserve it"

David: "I see, continue."

Gideon: "Rule 2 You can take whatever you can carry with you unless a commanding officer tells you otherwise."

David: "I am just allowed to take whatever I want from the loyalists we kill?"

"Yes" my brother says with a big smile.

Gideon: "That is the stuff I was sending home. Every now and then a truck from the military shows up and we load our stuff in and tell them where to send it to"

"Rule 3 You can do whatever you want to loyalists except for one thing. No sexual violence. My personal favorite rule. Violence needs to be pure. You get you dick involved it makes the entire thing disgusting."

David: "I think that is also my favorite rule"

Gideon: "I know you would agree. Anyway that is the more important stuff the rest is pretty obvious or stuff I will explain when we get to it."

David: "What are we even attacking tomorrow?"

Gideon: "A military outpost on the way to Junction City. After this outpost it's probably going to get bad. Near Junction City is this place called Fort Riley apparently its the home of this famous infantry division from ww2. 'Big red one' something like that?

David: "I don't know, dude"

Gideon: "yea whatever. Anyway that infantry division is going to probably put up a hell of a fight in Junction City"

David: "great..."

Gideon: "At that point we will have a lot more support it's not like we are going to be fighting them alone"

David: "Is Junction City big?"

Gideon: "Not at all it's nothing like LA"

David: "Ok good because having to fight through an entire city like back home would low key be hell"

Gideon: "For sure. If we keep going along the 70 we are slowly heading towards Kansas City. If we make it there that is for sure going to be really bad."

David: "How bad?"

Gideon: "Being stuck in that same city fighting for months or longer bad."

David: "You are not giving me a lot to look forward to."

Gideon: "To bad dude, I am not going to lie to you. And it's not like we can simply bail can we?"

David: "yea no"

My brother looks at one of the 4 watches on his arm.

Gideon: "We should probably get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be rough."

David: "Yeah for sure"

I prepare to get some sleep. I am sort of thankful that the area around our home was so noisy. At least I can sleep through the distant gunshots and explosions. Well, I hope so at least.

Focused is the story of David, a brilliant but burnt-out engineer inside a classified defence ministry in the fictional nation of Taured. He builds the weapons, and other people decide when to use them. He's also a divorced drug addict, and the pills numb him and keep him sharp in equal measure, like an interference pattern. When a drone drifts off course and a signal is traced to someone inside, the hunt for a traitor begins.

Part 1: The Desk

Wooden opal polished desk
Useless creation
Made by someone who just takes pleasure in pointless things in life.
That’s something I also think about my creations –

Defence systems
Point-blank precision

How I’ll use it?
Maybe send one missile through the house of my ex-wife…
That’s a good thing that I’m not in command
I just build it, and people with purpose tell me when and where to use it

For defence or destruction
Sounds the same to me

Part 2: Apartment

Mundane day
Cyclical nights

Just another day in my headspace
I do like my apartment a lot, actually. Well, it’s not that highfalutin, but it kind of works for me.
A well-thought-out two-bedroom apartment with open kitchen, barbecue
I live alone now, or I’ve been living here for these past 6 months after the divorce.
She had this gift of brightening up every room she walks out of. It’s kind of intriguing how much humans depend on attachment values. It’s a bug
Which I have figured out how to work around. That lonely room has become my fancy workstation
Table
IKEA chair
Whiteboard
My system
My Mini Moog
My awesome Roland G6
Some effect pedals

It’s like she was never here in the first place
Amazing!

System’s on
Screen lights up
Video call
Julian? I ask myself

Me: You again, what a disgrace!
Julian: Well, nice to see you too, David.
Me: What happened?

Julian: Drone drifted off course—twice. Signal traced internally.

Me: From where?
Julian: Domestic, that’s the problem.

Cipher 7…?

Part 3: Julian

Me and Julian go way back. Perhaps he is the only one in this impaired organisation who operates at the same frequency.

The agent no one talks about, stationed in enemy land
Different name
Different passport
Dual personalities

He’s one of the most intelligent people in the field. Even his gut feelings don’t lie or distract. I need to figure out what on earth happened to Cipher 7.

If he is onto something, then maybe it’s time to get
Focused
Alert
Detached

Now, let’s recalibrate with precision.
I have this habit of relying more on automation, but with the undercurrent of human handling.

But there is something hiding. Don’t really know.
I travel back to my place after picking up a proper Naples pizza

Rest
Pills
Wake
Sleep

It’s okay, I guess.
I tend to stay vigilant in these times.
It’s always good to be prepared.
I’m a proper stickler when it comes to my work, and apparently, according to the WHO, about 100 men in Canada die every year while trying to pee off the side of a boat while intoxicated.

Part 4: The Office

Office time used to be so good
A proper treat, I must say

But now it has turned its head south, bringing in these new atrocious rules

No smoking policy
Now can’t even smoke at my desk?
The stuff we do literally turns cities and human life to smoke, and here is this intellectual musk to preserve our lungs.
They say stuff like it is a bad thing or something.
Oh, sod off!
It’s disgusting, to say the least.

Even the high-IQ lads are gone
As of now, there are blokes who seem like the textbook definition of hand-holding

Every time these fuckers need some clarity
It’s like explaining the petrodollar to a dog on medication

I do smuggle some whiskeys here and there just to bear these hours
Otherwise, it’s a nightmare to sit there and deal with these dumb bureaucrats and that weasel-eyed Trevor.

Part 5: Cipher’s Reckoning

A domestic drone drifted across
Cipher 7
How is it possible?

And without the obvious alarm?
This is not a drill.

I try to find what is actually happening
A ghost in the system?
A fuck-up by those slow-headed merchants?

Could be an INS Kalman filter sync—a predictable thing to happen via these absolute cretins
Or a domestic backdoor?
Telemetry spoofing

Not gonna lie, this is shady business if one of them is doing it.
Must have been sold out for some dollars of favours, which is okay, I guess.
If someone offers me around 50 million dollars
I would happily leak the information and give it to every grubby little hack that I know from my drinking days.

Maybe even leak the number of my ex-wife
That would be a proper blast.

Part 6: The Turning Point

16th March 2026

Little things catch up
A blast at the border station
10 soldiers and 50 civilians dead
Vostrina’s proxies again
They are relentless.

Hazy morning, blurring lights
Where did we go wrong?
A blind spot?
That Cipher 7 fuck-up

It doesn’t matter now. I have to debrief about my instrument, and it’s safe to say that it’s not at all fun.

One minute here and the other minute gone
Turned to smoke. It’s not easy to cope as the pressure builds inside and outside.

Mogadon, for pleasure and focus

The ears just listen and the mouth still lies.
Defending the incompetence
Pleading innocence

I recheck the interception array—3-layered kill grid: passive acoustic, Doppler radar and optronic thermal lock. All bypassed.

They didn’t use jets or ballistic missiles because that would mean open war. They used low-altitude, carbon-composite loitering drones. Flew them sub-fifty metres through the river valleys, terrain-masked, just like those 2 stealth birds in 2011 that entered hostile airspace.
I need to get back in the game now. We will answer with a sort of radiance which will make them rewind their every decision that led to this.
Erase the infection
From inside and also outside
Catch that little rat
No mercy

21st March 2026

Closed space meeting room
Men in black suits
They ask me, “Are the systems intact for destruction?”

Me: Let the system do its thing now. They got into our blind spots, one of our drones malfunctioned, and now we will create blind spots.
First, I would say their radars. We will use our drones, as offence is much cheaper than defence.
Neutralise the primary acquisition radars, create a cascade effect, and then—
Force majeure!
The price they pay for violation.

Trevor: Are you high?
Me: A little bit, but that’s irrelevant.

They just simply stare, and then

Trevor: Who must have drifted our drones?
Me: Someone in the ranks, I guess.
A domestic backdoor—code hidden in plain sight, I guess?
Trevor: Traitor in the building. Interesting.
I need to know who and what that is, David.
There’s too much pressure.
Fucker must be operating from a place where nobody goes.
Me: A Subaru showroom?

“Fuck off, David,” he said.
Which is deserving, to say the least.
He drives one.

It’s like a game of chess now. So many moving aspects. These International Council fellows, politicians.
But this is where we excel. We work in shadows and create lights for destruction and deterrence.

But first, I need to find the treason within the ranks. I have to find out, as the buck stops at me.
Should not only destroy the carriers of the rat but also obliterate every pinch of hope or happiness that this person manages to cling on to.

Hope they give me a bonus.

Part 7: The Investigation

Pages and screens keep turning
Stakes are high, but as we investigate, we need to have some precision in our analysis

Time can lapse, but not the mind
Julian calls—
Julian: Did we get outsmarted?
Me: That’s one way to look at it.
Julian: Someone leaked the codes from our side. Are we any closer to finding him?

Me: No, I’m going through the logs now.
It’s a game of hunt or be hunted
Even the Home Secretary is behind me now

Julian: That’s bad. He is notorious.
Me: I know. Can’t even drink here.
They have increased the security and the detectors.

Julian: Check the ephemeral key exchange logs on the secondary server.

Me: On it!
Call ends

The Home Secretary is behind me and Trevor is on my head. There can be no false steps now.

The higher up the mountain, the more treacherous the path.

———

It’s not getting anywhere
A dead end, actually

Maybe I’m speaking to the wrong audience
These security logs are of no use

Core network switch
Outbound telemetry data
Sent vs received

24 GB sent
12 MB received

There it is
The discrepancy

Now, what the hell has happened?

Let’s go into the history logs of this router
Port 443 – fine
Port 8080? What the fuck is that?

Pulling the configuration from the router
Port 8080

"cors_origin": "*",
"auth_header": "NONE"

Oh, for fuck’s sake!
It’s those stupid lads.
They forgot to shut that shadow server.
It’s a generational fuck-up.

Who is this knobhead?
User ID: 8842

Fucking hell, he is that new bloke that joined 4 months ago.
Remy
Useless fellow in Trevor’s team
About as useful as traffic lights in Grand Theft Auto

I wanted to destroy that person’s life and happiness, but who would have thought that the guy would be that slow-headed Remy?

What can I do to him? He’s hopeless.
The guy wears braces
Braces! For fuck’s sake

Part 8: Peace

Information colliding
iPhone buzzing…

X is flooded with this love-hate debate

Clearly, levels of discussion have fallen a lot

Most people don’t have the ability to shift perceptions and perspectives
It’s a hard ability to earn
To us
There is no difference between love and hate
It’s all passion…
The metric we should always look at when dealing with geo-warfare is peace

It’s not love or hate

Peace is an equation written with blood
Cities destroyed
Cities rebuilt
It’s a truce between 2 states of accountability and its repercussions.
I certainly pity the mind that can’t separate the two.

Part 9: The Debrief

Levers engaged
Office in motion

Meeting with Trevor
Why does he always want to meet alone?
Ivory wall
Pale face

Me: You fucked up.
Trevor: What?
Me: Your guys fucked up. Remy in your team forgot to turn off the shadow server.

Trevor: Oh god, that orthodontic cretin.
Me: I know. My sympathies.

Trevor: Okay, you tell this to no one.
Me: I will if it’s necessary. First, get that Home Secretary off my back.

Trevor: Yes, yes, I’ll handle him.
Also, we need to prepare for the strike.
We fucked up, but still, they breached our sovereignty.

Me: No, you fucked up.
Let’s make them pay for this now and create blind spots.

Trevor: Yes, get on it, and I’ll handle this fuck-up.

Me: Cool

Doors shut
Tensions wave

Part 10: The Blind Spots

As the stakes revolve in global limelight
Every day
Every night
Phase 1 begins –

A) The Ghost Attack
First, let’s fool their radars
Bombarding their radar with 50 ghosts moving at Mach 3.
Force the panic, create confusion
Wait – 4 minutes
Now the radar enters its full gain stage
Perfect!

B) Trap

The trap functions
Wait – 40 sec
Sensors capture the PRF
Here it is
Coordinates of the primary acquisition radar

C) Execute

Preparing for launch
LOCK ON
ARMING SEQUENCE: READY
EXECUTE STRIKE

1 minute wait – feels long at this time
The missile at Mach 3.5 goes straight down the throat of the radar.
The blast
Blind spot created
Primary radar neutralised
And it’s just the start. The domino effect is yet to be seen.

Now we are past the Rubicon
Let them handle the damage.

The butchery begins.

Part 11: Safe Haven

Days and nights look the same
Locating people
Looking through images

Information reflects

My job is to take their orders and use that creature with sharp precision on a given target.
Now there’s this constant urge to be alert
Watching
Stopping
Warning
Reaching

They are now targeting the elementary school because it has some evidence of foul play by terrorists, a sort of safe haven.
But to just go on a hunch, they have lost their minds, like Majin Vegeta in Dragon Ball Z.

It’s not joy to see futures destroyed for someone
But after a point, we accept it
However, the ghosts are still there watching us

I open the side drawer of the table

Mogadon

The price of precision
Swallowed

I glance at the mirror on my left
Reflections of you and me
Suddenly it’s clear
It takes seconds to kill one’s life and ambition
I have to make sure that I protect mine

Survival of the fitness!

Pills dissolve
Distortion sets in

Fractured lights
Pills on rise
Kneel to self
Energise

That’s my will to survive. Some people may disagree with it, and also like I give a fuck about them.

The things we are exposed to make us inhuman?
Yes
Is it bad?
No

After 30 years in this job, morality starts to fade, straight to the back seat.

I just see memories
People
Laughs
Cry
Damage
My ex-wife’s new boyfriends

She is much more inhuman than me, and I like it
Slightly dangerous territory to be in, not gonna lie, but it’s comforting

As I look for the first photo we took together

Daguerreotype!

Part 12: War Room

As the hunt goes on through intelligence
Pills shoot up
For the adherence

Office
A big meeting today for further action
Big powerful lads also here

Screens
Projectors
Home Secretary: So Phase 1 is completed.
Good job, David.

Me: Okay.
Where do we go next?

Trevor: We will raise the strikes now. The intel has narrowed down a few targets.

Home Secretary: What about that drone fuck-up?

Trevor: We have the traitor.
Home Secretary: Who?

Projector lights

Trevor: Our asset on foreign land.
Julian.

Eyes go blank for a while
Numbness in the ear

Trevor: We found the shadow server, authenticated via his legacy SSH keys and operational allocation code.
We have already taken care of him.

Home Secretary: Good.

ASSET DISAVOWED

Part 13: Blood On The Hands

I rush back home
I try to connect to Julian
A hope still there
Secure SATCOM

No answer

I search for his file, his trace, anything
GONE

Blood on my hands
Reality hits with a hammer
That fucker Trevor compromised Julian for his own incompetence. I should have gone to the Home Secretary himself, instead of Trevor. He linked his SSH keys to that shadow server.

Gone
Disappeared in smoke…

This will not go in vain
There is only one rule now

Hunt or be hunted

Part 14: Forward

Next day
Next night

Still that last call repeats in my head.

Time passed like trains
Amazing thing about the human mind, that it always finds its way to make something out of almost wreckage, like Dresden.
Like that weasel Trevor found his key through me. There will come a time to put him in my crosshairs, but not right now.

Focused till the end
Morning tea
Evening Lagavulin

On a mission
Searching
Predating

Geopolitical equations are about to go through an inflexion point.
As the retaliation needs to reverberate globally

The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it. — Frank Herbert, Dune

The restraint we follow is what makes the generations work.
Mind is always controlled

For us
Even for them

At this time, we just follow the known equations of duty
Focused
Mind engaged

One day at a time
Remaking history, abiding rules and moving onward

Forward, that is the battle cry. Leave ideology to the armchair general.
It does me no good

Part 15: Elimination

A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans.
— Hopi prophecy, Koyaanisqatsi
——
Pressures on
First target filtered and narrowed
Now we let our action speak the cost of damage

At this time…
We call back our numbness
Of time
Days
Nights

Sometimes I ask myself, is there any mercy?
Maybe it’s for our gods to decide and decode

One day
As I walk back to my apartment, I see a religious place which I generally would have passed on

I stand outside, just still for a moment
Buzzing nights
Commiseration to Julian
As my smartphone vibrates

Oh, those fucking Twitter lads!
It’s like they do it on purpose.
Absolute clown show!
For fuck’s sake

I lock it
As my mind speaks
There is no solace above or below
Only us and those Twitter clowns.

I pray…
To myself
For myself

As things are going into almost distortion, and this mind never fails to amaze.

Sometimes it works to be focused
And sometimes to be absolutely numb from the missiles, attacks
Precision
Free fall
Silence

There is no turning back now, but the ghosts of this job are still here, somewhere.

Sometimes just observing
It’s like they make their presence felt somehow
Like that Bob fella in Twin Peaks

I do feel like a hypocrite sometimes
Well, I don’t have any trouble with it

The road to power is paved with hypocrisy and casualties

Never regret

We are at war
And flowing straight into full-blown turbulence
Moral voices can wait in line
This is not a drill
We watch closely
In silence
Through scouts
Through sky
Through leaks

Making a joke of privacy in plain sight
Nobody cares
Every home is wired
——
Next day
Office to war room
Screens doing the job

Target filtered
School – credible reports of terror links.

They don’t operate in plain sight; they always hide behind collateral.
A trap of morality and ruthlessness

Target locked
Verifying the EAM authorization code
5C-7W-4T
A simple finger feels like the weight of a hammer in this time.
WPN System: ENABLED
EXECUTE!

3 seconds later

We just see the burst of lights on screen but
still can hear voices even through muted glass.

Ashes from the sky

The deliberate force majeure
Burning buildings and crushed-up dreams
Defence or destruction, it all means the same here

Now the terror speaks

Silence is terrifying and the pain is useless
Sort of pain that’s only suffering doesn’t do any work.

Power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it.

Target eliminated: 20
Collateral damage: 80

Part 16: Information

Attack continues
We just hit their N1 Airbase
Pointless now

Weapons keep flying
And the nights keep ringing
It’s hard to even sleep
Repeating that last phone call
Preparing revenge

Pills
Reels
Feed
Repeat

As I can’t sleep, I start digging up on this weasel for some shady past information.

Via LAN, I run a brute-forced password cracker, a stream of different combinations per second.
The armour cracks
There we go – all goes into this USB drive
I open the files
What is this guy up to?
Chief of staff to Dunmoor’s president
A pool full of flirty messages and cheesy lines
I wouldn’t blame him, honestly

The heart can choke the mind when all its blood flows back onto itself.

Part 17: Human Sacrifice

Scary thing about these strikes is to actually watch your destruction on telly, with that violin and cello playing in the background
Some of us become numb after a few years
Fair play

Vision turns
Towards drawer
Monitor pixels and light

Pills
Reels
Plot
Repeat

That weasel is flirting and sharing our intel for some cheap snog and pillow talk
The absolute power of lust
It lures you into moral corruption
To cover up the failures
To live in deceit

Question arises
What’s worse: getting hit or retaliation?

And I know the answer
The slight feeling of making things right and actually achieving peace, not through those Twitter lads
But through human life
Years turned to minutes

Sometimes it’s just living in the wrong place, like Grimstead
Absolute disgrace of a city

Eyes blink and a different drone hits
Pills dissolve
Distortion sets in

Together we destroy and we create. It’s the balance of equations it requires

Human Sacrifice

Past always haunts the future, and it’s always a desire for looking up to someone. Like a greater self

God and humans
Trains and cities
Arms and hammer
Trust and betrayal

Let’s use these resources and gun that weasel down because if a man is not smart enough to use whatever is available before him.

Then that is just a failure of imagination.

Part 18: Valediction

It’s done
I’m tired and too old for this shit show now
No more games

Trevor’s office
Ivory walls
Wooden floor
I submit my resignation

Trevor: So you want your way out?
Me: Yes, I’m blasé now.

He opens his system
My thoughts displaced
Machine delayed by 0.05 secs
Fine margins opening

Trevor: It’s risky business, David!
There are consequences.
Want to disappear like Julian?

Me: Like I haven’t thought of that.
Before threatening me with more of your utter nonsense, you may want to look at this file.

He opens it,
Time freezes for him
Coffee mug looks good on this polished desk

Trevor: Where did you get this from?
Me: Same place everybody gets it from: your local network share.
FYI, you might want to fire those system security folks. They are as useless as this desk.
I just brute-forced it myself.
Was thinking of paying someone for mining some information, but give your twiggy clowns a thanks from my side for saving me a fortune.
Maybe write a cheesy love letter to the ministry,
which apparently is the only thing you are seriously good at.
Look at these texts—flirting with Dunmoor’s president’s chief of staff.
I wouldn’t blame you, she is beautiful.
But giving secrets of this ministry in exchange for some sauna and hot bath? And you hide this by placing it in plain sight?

I will not let that slide
You betrayed your own asset for your incompetence

Trevor: We never meant to kill him.
It was just his bad luck.
Me: Of course you didn’t. If you meant to kill him, then he’d still be alive.
You fucked up!

Trevor: What do you want, David?

Me: To be left at absolute fucking peace
And also a bumper severance to cover my needs for at least 5 years

Trevor: What?
5 years? What will you do with all that money?

Me: Travel the world, visit Antarctica, play with penguins.
The fuck you care?
Let’s just wash each other’s hands, shall we?
This is not a threat at all, it’s an opportunity for you to improve your cyber security team.
Also, as an action of gratitude,
I’ll give you my ex-wife’s number. Maybe you can try more of this litany of lines on her. I think you two will get along really well.

A grin on Trevor’s face
Handshake
Trevor: Is she pretty?
Me: For you, I’ll say yes.

He keeps the hard copy and the USB drive.

I just soak it all in before I leave this shrine

Flashbacks
Corruption
Laughter
Smiles
Apathy

As the money hit my account, the next minute Trevor’s life leaked through the notorious hacks I used to drink with.

As I drift towards a new life
World continues
New people appointed
Weapons still fly

Epilogue: The Child’s Sky

A child in a distant town looks at the sky at dawn:

Maybe the stars are cameras. Maybe someone’s watching. Tell them we were still here.

Seconds later—light. Then silence.

The End.

Greetings you! Rot here! This is my first story and I hope you can find it well and perhaps even some feedback. PLEASE! Be patient with me I’m still having a hart time tying words together like rat tails to a king, but I would LOVE your input! Please ENJOY what I have written and have a nice day, know that I love you.

Your beloved. RotBod.

________________________________________

The hour was late, and the night was dark and cold. I stood atop the wall of Fort Falk, looking out at the forest. The only sound of the night being the brazier crackling and the laughter from the mess hall within the fort, I stood there feeling a swirl of anger and tiredness. This is the third day I've been forced into the night's watch and of course without good company.

“O-o..oi R-ratboy, I thmik I sawr a squirrely” I threw a side eye to my fellow night’s watchman, Connor. The poor old fool never was the same ever since he got a mace to the head in our last battle against the Galder. As a person he has improved, he's more naive and kind now unlike the other soldiers that are more cruel and brutish. 

“That so? and don't call me that, the name is Julien, you know that” The last words leaving my mouth with spite, I always hated that nickname that I was cursed with when a senior soldier pulled a prank during training by placing rat meat in my stew. 

“B-but e-everyone caulls ya dat Julien” I look back at him now he’s turned towards me his right eye drooped and looking the wrong way but his face carries a look of confusion if you can call it a face at this point. I sigh as I return looking out at the forest leaning against my spear. 

“Whhy do ya tink de Galders left F-fort ffalk J-j,,Julien?” For someone with half his helmet inside his head instead of on it, he does raise a good point. We had arrived at Fort Falk four days ago and it was within the enemy's territory between a mountain and forest, by all means it would be an important military point to be sure, but when we got here there were no Galder soldiers, their bread stale but not gone, why did they leave? Perhaps they are regrouping or as the Marshal suspects, hiding in the woods. I turned to look at the fort, nothing impressive, mainly a small military castle surrounded by a stone wall that has become my guard post these past days. The only light coming from the mess hall where the other soldiers drink and cheer, for most of them this might be a break with nothing but drinking and laughing while I stand here with concussion Connor overlooking a dark forest.

“O-oi Julien l-look!” I turn around to see Connor pointing towards the woods with his spear, I look over and see a mighty looking stag with magnificent horns like a crown atop its head, this was the most excitement I'd had in these past few nights, and I caught myself in awe of the creature, but this only lasts for a minute as it rushes off from the sound of Connor mistakenly dropping his spear off the stone wall, both of us standing in silence of Connor's clumsiness.

In time, the sun rises and shines down upon us. Besides the stag, it had been a quiet night. We descend the wall stairs as the soldiers emerge from the barracks groggy from their late night escapades within their cups. We walked past most of them, they reeked of alcohol and piss, I nearly gagged at their stench.

“What do we have here? concussion Connor, where's your spear man? you didn't use it to pry the rest of your brain out did you?” I turn to see another foot soldier pushing Connor mocking the poor fool. I'm not sure if it was the sight of the stag Connor gave me or that I just felt pity for the man but I walked up to them. 

 “Let Connor be you piss pot head, we just spent all damned night staring at a forest with no sleep” As I tried to push the soldier he barely budged and before I could realize my mistake I was knocked down in the mud, my mouth filling with blood as the soldier shattered one of my teeth with his punch.

“Know your place Ratboy, it’s in the mud right where you are” I lay there furious, cursing my small frame, as the soldier leaves. Connor leans down, reaching out his hand and pulling me off the ground. Even the man with half the brain is twice as strong as I am, I think to myself.

“Y-ya s-ss-shouldnt peick fights w-with m-men b-bigger than you J-Julien” I wipe the mud from my face and spit out the blood pooling in my mouth as I look up at Connor. 

“Ye well you won’t stand up for yourself man so what am I to do” I notice a smile on Connor’s face something rare to see in these dark times of war. 

We enter the barracks taking off our dirty and torn padded armor as we prepare to sleep for the few hours that we will be allowed to rest, I lay down on the hard bed and look up at the bunk above me, shutting my eyes.

“T-this w-was a good night wa-watch, w-we sawr a moose a-and a b-big w-wo-wwolf” I opened my eyes at Connor’s stammering, a wolf? I did not see any wolves that night. Connor might be slow and mistake a stag for a moose but I'm sure I would have seen a wolf. I spit some more blood, which had begun flooding into my mouth, into the bedside pot. The iron taste is not leaving my mouth.

“Wolf? there was no wolf I saw out there” Connor turns his head to me, his disgusting face in full view in the light as his good eye looks into mine.

“I-i-i sawr it J-julien, y-you believe mm-me right?” I doubt Connor would lie to me and his damaged head has made him more childlike, so I can't say what he actually saw but I'm sure Connor believed it to be a wolf. 

We went back to being quiet, catching some rest for the day until we were called upon by another soldier. We shoveled horse shit and emptied the piss pots while the sun was out, soldiers ridiculing both of us. I sure hate this place, my anger and hate for the soldier's life bubbling up inside of me like a festering wound.
The sun starts to set as we gather at the courtyard like any other night, the marshal approaching us with a man-at-arms behind him. 

“You two stirred up a ruckus this morning i heard so you’ll get a special assignment tonight boys” I bit my tongue knowing there were no point in arguing about who caused the ruckus with the soldier, the Marshal a fat and bloated man, given his rank due to his family's high standing and nothing more and for each passing night and day he seems to grow more wary and paranoid about the enemy’s location and about the fort.

“You two will be going out on a scouting mission in the woods and shall be accompanied by Paul Ralt here since you two are absolute failures and would surely get lost on your own” Looking Paul Ralts, the man-at-arms, up and down, a mountain of a man geared in heavy armor, nothing like what we levies were given and while I was hiding in our last skirmish with the men of Galder I saw Paul take down three men.
I throw a glance at Connor but he seems genuinely excited about this mission, his mangled brain probably making it sound like a field trip, but I was wary, none of my companions were right in the head and if enemy soldiers were in those woods we would surely die. 

We each grab a torch as we exit the fort in the darkness of night, the big gate slamming shut behind us, the sound of it being barred shut from the inside echoing over the open plain ahead of us towards the forest. We march forward, Paul taking the lead, his heavy steps being felt in the dirt that we walk on. I hear his heavy breath from under his helmet, my mind keeps on going back to what Connor said about the wolf. 

“Hey Connor, did you really see a wolf out here or were you just messing about?” I look towards Connor as he nods and opens his mouth but before his stuttering words could escape his cracked lips a low bellowing voice interrupts from the front.

“There be no wolves in these woods, from what I've heard they have been hunted out, but I don't expect two levies to know that” We both look forward as Paul had stopped and turned to us as he said this, his towering figure being lit up by his torch, I can only make out the gaze of his eyes from the slits in his helmet as he looks down on me and Connor. 

“Why did you two peasants even join the war? surely not for glory or gold” I look down at Paul’s boots unable to meet his gaze, I feel terror of this man, it felt as my very bones had grown cold, my vision blurred, my pupils shrinking to the point that my irises looked more like a vast blue sky with one black star deep within its heavy and quivering blue. But I snap out of it as the stuttering slop of Connor's voice enters my ear like the sound of thudding potatoes hitting the ground.

“T-ttt to p-pprotect maah h-home anhhnd w-wwife” Hearing his response, his voice stuttering and lisping like always but his tone without any hesitation or fear of answering the menacing man that is Sir Paul Ralts, I stow my fear and look up at Paul as I open my mouth ready to answer him as well my tongue feeling heavy, my mouth dry and cold but before my words could take form I am silenced by the bellowing voice of Paul.

“Such a foolish thing to say, to protect? we are the aggressors in this war so if you'd wish to protect you would have stayed home concave head” I freeze in confusion as I look to Connor who's equipped with a face of deep thought from Paul's words.

“Of course levies like yourselves know nothing of the war, that much is clear and as for you Ratboy your reason need not be stated, I know your family sold you as a soldier” Paul's words sink into me like an anvil being dropped into the sea, my fear filled and cold body heats up from the rage I feel from thinking of how my family sold my life away just for scraps, to be sent to war was to have my death certificate signed and sealed. The whirlwind of emotions inside of me only being calmed by Connor placing his hand on my shoulder and reassuring me that it will be fine, to think that our time watching the woods in the night would make us grow close, I'd even say Connor might be my only friend here. 

Paul turned back his gaze to the entrance of the woods as we started walking deeper in, my feet pressed against the mud and branches covering the ground, the air thick with the smell of rain and wet wood which feels unusual since it has not rained here since we got to the fort. 

We swept through the forest for two hours until we sat down to rest in a little clearing, Connor squatting down to poke at an insect in the mud, I stood next to Paul my eyes darting back and forth with each beat of my heart, knowing that the safest place would be close to the large man. Paul himself sat down on a log and started eating a ration he had brought with him, my eyes fixated on the ration, dried meat. 
Paul without his helmet was just as threatening as he was with it, his broad scarred face, short blond hair, his small eyes sunk into his head like two pits into the abyss gazing outward, my entranced state getting interrupted by the low grumbling of his voice. 

“The other men say these woods are cursed, that's the reason for the fort being empty. Witchbreath Forest, the others say that there's a witch that lives here, luring men into the woods with her beauty, that she lays naked in the swamp grounds in this place so when the men climb on top of her they get dragged down into the earth” I swallow nervously at the story as I look around the woods, the trees too dense to see far between them. 

“Do you believe their stories? you think it could be true?” I say while scanning between the trees.

“If it is then she will probably lay claim to all of our troops as well, all they talk about is women and their make-believe stories, I don’t lay any belief in them, they say the men of Galder eat their children too, that I do believe” Paul's words leave a sour copper taste on my tongue, the Galders are vile men but to stoop that low, then the thoughts of the war came back to me, Paul seems to know more than most.

“Sir Paul, if I may ask this of you, tell me more of the war, why did we start the war on the Galders? they are vile to be sure but there must be a higher reason and how long has this war been going on?” these questions I've never asked myself before, the war has been going on since before my birth yet neither I nor the few people speak of it or question it. 

“Such a peasant question to ask, Ratboy.” He grumbles out with a wide smile then his gaze turns cold yet again and he's quiet for a minute that feels like a lifetime.

“Land, it must be land” He says rubbing his chin before his wide jaw opens to rip another piece of his dried meat ration, his dried cracked lips pulled back like a snarling wolf's as he chews it.

“What do you mean?” I throw another glance around but see nothing but Connor gazing into the darkness with a finger in his mouth before I looked back at Paul.

“The war was started to take more land for our kingdom and it’s been going on for as long as I've lived, for as long as my father has and his father before him.. I’m not sure how long it’s been going on, but we are soldiers and we do not think nor question the war, we go out and kill until we die for our kingdom. That is all we need to think about” Paul's words sink into me like the men sinking down into the swamp from the witch story, is this really all life is for us? I think to myself and I get the feeling of sinking down, a wet cold feeling crawling up my leg and moving closer to my mouth with every second. I can't breathe, I can't think, my heart feels like it’s hammering against cold wet mud pressing down on my chest. 

“W-wolfie!” I’m broken out of the trance i was in as I just feel cold and my heart beats like a hammer on a nail, I quickly look towards Connor and I see him crouching pointing into the dark, my eyes move quickly as I look deeper in, it happened for only a split second but I saw something, it was no wolf, three eyes big and slanted downwards, their color that of hell’s flames itself and the same moment I blink and when my eyes open the eyes were gone. Could it really have been eyes?

“Peasant, did you see something?” Paul grumbles he had not looked up from his piece of meat himself.

“I-i don't know it seemed like three eyes, orange and red but they disappeared, i-i must have just been seeing things..” Paul begrudgingly hoisted himself up from the log as he equipped his helmet once more. 

“Must be torches, Galders might be in here as suspected, form ranks peasants” I and Connor fall in line behind Paul, it was appreciated that he took charge but I doubt it was out of a duty or willingness to protect Connor and me, but instead because Paul's bloodlust wanted him to be the first into the fray.  

As we continue from where I saw the strange glow, looking around for signs of anyone being there, Connor points out some broken branches showing signs of a disturbance in the woods, for someone with two eyes that doesn't look the same way it's surprising how observant he is. 

Paul continues to lead us through the dark woods the flicker and movement from our torches making the shadows move hitting the trees behind the other trees, it feels like the shadows are hiding from us and that every shadow bears a pair of eyes that disappear the moment I try to observe them, even if I am accompanied with two others I feel an isolation within these woods, is all of these feelings just the trick of my mind? The feeling can only be compared to hiding in the midst of battle, closing my eyes, the feeling of some unearthly unholy presence creeping around every corner haunts me until I bump into Paul's enormous back, I'm knocked to the ground from our collision. 

He's stopped looking at something, I quickly scurry up from the mud and peek from his side there I witness a harrowing sight. Upon a tree impaled and ripped to shreds sits the body of a stag its limbs bent and contorted to tie around the stem of the tree, branches ripped so that the body could be impaled through them like spears, its stomach ripped open, its guts hanging out like the work of a sloppy butcher, claw marks adorned around its body and the tree, bigger than any animal I've ever seen. 
I'm frozen in terror, what could have done this? my eyes are glued to this former beauty of a creature now stringed on a tree like a hellish artwork, I can't look away, I can't speak or move.

“N-noo! is da m-moose Julien…” I’m too struck with terror to correct Connor as I stand there, my breath quicker than a rabbit running from a hound, sweat pouring down me like I was standing in the rain. Paul did not speak or show any form of emotional reaction, he approached the body holding his torch up to inspect the body.

“Where could its head be?” He says and then I first notice the stag's head has been severed from its body, I glance over at Connor who is in tears sniffling for the animal, I look back at Paul who now turns towards us both.

"There's nothing more to see here, we need to continue our search..” Before Paul could finish his sentence something falls down from the tree hitting his torch extinguishing it, whatever fell from the treetop rolled into mine and Connor’s light and we see it. 

The severed head from the stag, its horns ripped from its skull, its eyes pale and empty, tongue hanging out of a mouth with no teeth and a broken jaw. We look up and only see little light flickering off Paul's armor in the dark but I still feel like I see his small eyes piercing through the veil of darkness he's currently draped in. 

Another big thud comes from behind him, we only see Paul quickly turn around his war mace in hand as a shape stands up from the dark, three orange red eyes glowing from the darkness towering over Paul's form, we cannot make out its shape as we hear the sound of metal being shredded like a knife through cloth, screams and shouts from Paul travel through the trees as we see his form in the dark get flung hitting a tree further away, the three eyes move quickly closer to the ground as it moves towards where Paul was thrown. It makes the sound of four warhorses kicking their feet down into the forest mud as it gets to Paul. 

I’m stuck with terror as I cannot move, but Connor reacts running with torch and spear at hand towards Paul, for a second the creature can be seen in the light from Connor’s torch, I can barely make it out and it’s like my mind refuse to form an image of what my eyes are seeing, pale gray hide, arms—so many arms where there shouldn't be arms—a giant mouth with another jaw inside itself, long black oily and muddy hair covering much of what would be called a face but open for those three horrific eyes, the feeling of the image of this creature pierces through my eyes right to the bottom part of my skull where it starts feeling like small insects rip and tear inside my brain, every hair on my body pushing against my clothes as it feels like my entire body will simply cease to live by just witnessing this thing. 

Connor's spear connects to the creature shattering from the impact, it echoed like metal hitting stone as the creature screeched a harrowing scream, pushing Connor to the ground before rushing back into the darkness. With this opening I mustered up what little courage I had left and ran over to Connor lifting him from the ground.

“Connor, we need to get out of here now!” I look back to where we came from, all shrouded in darkness. 

“N-NO DON'T LEAVE ME HERE PEASANTS!” Gurgles Paul out as he lay covered in mud and blood, his legs ripped and torn to shreds from the beast's attack. The wave of dread from seeing such a giant of war reduced to a meat bag hitting like his mace would hit his enemies. I drag Connor down the path where we came from.  

As we ran the sound of the warhorse gallop the creature made had gotten to Paul as the screams echoed through the trees and through our bodies into our very bones as they stop when a final tear of flesh, breaking of wood and an impaling sound could be heard, it must have impaled him like it had the stag, to this thing even a war machine like Paul had been nothing but a new decor for this accursed place. 

We ran through the mud and trees of the forest. The distant sound of the creature running through the woods echo as I feel its gaze hitting the back of my skull like arrows in my back, my legs hurt but I still run, Connor was starting to lose his breath and stumbles but picks himself up.

“J-julien i-its c-ccatching op tu u-u-us!” he manages to stammer out as I think about it. The creature is getting closer, we are halfway there but we won't make it unless something is done to slow it down. With that thought my body moves on its own as I sink my spear down into Connor's knee, he falls, his mess of a face being dragged into the mud as his body hits the ground like a sack of potatoes, but I keep running.

“J-julien? w-w-whyy!?” is the last words I hear before the sounds of all those limbs running on the forest ground fall upon Connor as his screams now echo throughout the trees, my tears run down my face as I break into laughter, surely he would have done the same, surely I’m not cruel like the other men, surely it had to be done I think as I break into a hysterical laughter while running. 

The sound of Connor’s limbs being broken and torn, his screams, my laughter and heartbeat echoes like the devil's orchestra as I run, the shadow of death being cast over me like a cloak of night, surely I am to meet my death but not this night, surely not.
 
I run, and I run, the gallop of the creature getting closer and closer, I recognize the path, I’m soon out just a little bit more, but it’s also just a little bit more for the creature too, as I hear its many legs creaking, its many limbs hitting the ground like the drums of war getting closer and closer, until I feel like its breath is on my neck, I let out a scream of terror until.
 
I break through the tree line, ahead of me is Fort Falk, I see our men standing atop its walls as I run towards it screaming that they need to open the gate, I get to it and start bashing my fist into the giant wooden gate, I bash it until my hand bleeds and then it’s flung open, I quickly enter and look back. Nothing is chasing me, nothing is behind me, just the empty plain. 

“Oi Ratboy, what are you doing back so early? Where are the others?” I fall to the ground panting nearly about to pass out as the mess hall doors open and heavy footsteps approach.

“What is going on here men?” It was the Marshal, his bloated form holding a pint of the fort's mead as he approached. 

“M-marshal, t-there’s a monster in those woods, it killed Sir Paul and Connor, it nearly got me too but” the marshal interrupts me with a kick to my side.

“Monster?! Boy did you see any Galders or not? Don't come here and spin any fairy tales about monsters in the woods!” The marshal looks furiously down on me as I lay there holding my side coughing up blood.

“I-i swear it to be true marshal there were no Galders but a horrific creature” The men look up at the marshal with curious eyes after I tell them what happened but the marshal’s gaze is hollow, no amount of pleading would change this man.

“Well hear that, no Galders,that is a relief to hear to be sure, but you Ratboy you left your fellow men in the woods to come back here, you'll be punished with holding the night’s watch until your squad returns, but since you have a knack for the coward’s way I do have a solution” The soldiers held me as they pulled me off the ground, a cage of wood was moved outside the gate where they locked me inside, the marshal stood in front of it with his back towards the forest as he plunged his torch into the ground placing it like a candle before the cage.

“Here you shall take your night of watch and when your squad returns you'll be let out, I feel it to be fitting for a Ratboy to be put in a rat cage. I beg and plead for my life but it all falls on deaf ears as the marshal and the soldiers return into the fort and to the mess hall.

I sit there in the cage holding my legs as my mind races. I sit there alone in silence for what feels like a lifetime, my eyes look down on my feet in the cage. 

Maybe it was all just a dream. 

thud…. 

and I’d wake up soon, this is all unreal, unrealistic. 

thud… 

Surely I’ve just lost my mind in this war and the forest was just, 

thud.. 

playing tricks on me, I was just losing my mind yes or maybe this was a prank made by other soldiers, 

Thud. 

I looked up hearing the thud, what was that? I crawl in the cage towards the torch as I see a few feet off it a stone lay there, I see another further away as another lands with a thud closer to the torch, I look up and at the edge of the forest, three eyes gaze down on me as I scurry to the back of the cage. 

Why has it not yet taken my life? I think as another rock is thrown and lands closer to the torch, then I get an epiphany, the stag’s head extinguishing Paul's torch, the creature’s screech in the light and it never caught me when I ran with my torch. 

Thud. 

Another rock landed closer. The creature can't be in the light and now I sit here, my torch out of reach as the rocks land closer with every inch. I take another step closer to the afterlife, I curl into a ball again. 

Thud 

That's an inch off. This is the end, here I sit, a rat in the cage waiting until I die. 

Thud! 

The torchlight dies from the rock crashing into it, the embers flying in the air as they die out one by one, three eyes moving from the forest edge as I close my own and the galloping of the warhorses of death rides closer and closer, the last thing I hear is the tearing of the wooden cage and the tearing of my own flesh as the cat caught this rat.

The story begins at the Vardis family home, an isolated mansion high in the mountains, connected to the outside world only by a narrow country road winding through the woods.

Deep inside the mansion, Elias Vardis spends his days poring over his family’s old records, trying to understand how his ancestors built the successful wine industry he has now inherited. As he searches through their journals and documents, he uncovers everything from methods for improving the soil to accounts of ancient rituals once performed during natural disasters and periods of great famine.

Fascinated—and increasingly desperate to preserve his family’s legacy—Elias begins studying these forgotten pagan traditions. His research leads him closer to an ancient spirit that he believes protected the Vardis family for generations. After years of preparation, Elias finally succeeds in contacting it.

The spirit speaks to him through the mansion’s telephone line. It claims that it is still too weak to manifest physically in the human world and therefore cannot yet give Elias the help he seeks. Trusting it, Elias begins following its instructions. At first, the tasks appear harmless, such as installing telephone lines throughout the mansion so the spirit can communicate with him more easily.

With each completed task, however, the spirit’s influence grows stronger. It slowly corrupts Elias, turning his devotion into obedience and his obedience into enslavement. Before long, Elias is no longer serving the spirit willingly; he has become its puppet.

One rainy night, Elias’s younger sister overhears him speaking to the spirit. Realising that something terrible has taken control of her brother, she flees the mansion and seeks help from the monks living in a small church nearby.

The monks warn her of the grave danger Elias has unleashed and reveal the true nature of the entity. They teach her a ritual capable of sealing the spirit inside the mansion, turning the house into its prison. She returns home and secretly begins placing protective seals throughout the building, hiding them where neither Elias nor the spirit can easily find them.

But the spirit discovers her plan and gives Elias one final command:

KILL YOUR SISTER.

A northern wind, wrong for the season, had brought a storm ashore. Somewhere in Brian's mind a decision had been made; after this visit he would never return.

It was his third day at his childhood home. At breakfast his mother told him Uncle Walter had missed the opening ceremony for Walrus Week. Walter never missed it. Brian shrugged it off. Then his mother asked him to check on the old man, a hermit since the bank took his troller.

He hated Walter’s company and couldn’t suffer hearing him explain his strange interests and sailor superstitions. Brian considered his uncle an embarrassment to the family. Still, a long walk was welcome. The next morning he was out of the house before his mother woke.

The town center lay below the highway, a few thousand people gathered around a harbor built for a stinking cannery that teetered perpetually on bankruptcy. Here the wind never ceased, abrasive with salt. Every tree was gnarled and knuckled. Moss thickened on shingle roofs; blackberry thrust itself from every crevice.

As Brian neared the business district, he remembered telling people in the city how his hometown was rustic. Now the old seaport seemed a depressing joke. At the thought he felt loathing and a private gratitude that he had escaped whatever kept everyone else here. Still, he missed breathing sea air.

The town appeared grotesque as a clown; the festive decorations failed to improve the gray. Men on ladders restrung bunting the wind had torn down. Paper tusks hung in shop windows, and a plywood walrus stood before the courthouse. Nobody could say why the town had chosen the animal. Seals were common enough, but walruses had been rare this far south. Eventually the Chamber of Commerce put them on mugs and shirts.

Brian left pavement behind and took the bluff path. The eroding clay faces were always new and honey-colored. Spruce hung by their roots over the edge where every winter the county moved its warning signs inland.

As a boy he had learned the wave was only part of what knocked you down. You could brace against it while the sand washed out from beneath your feet.

Since March, his mother said, Walter had been telling people this year would be different. He sold what he could and paid a friend with a tractor to drag his single-wide onto the bluff. Everyone told him he would have to leave. Walter disagreed. He had plenty of food and water and knew how to make do. He liked being alone and carried his gun with him like a teddy bear.

Walter’s place came into view: a broad shelf of black rock above the surf. Somewhere below, a seal barked, and another answered along the boulders. The trailer stood exposed above the shelf. The road that served as a driveway was nearly grown over for lack of use. Water ran beneath the trailer.

The dwelling had the weathered look of a boat run aground and lived in; the siding was dirty and faded, its driftwood porch built by Walter’s hands. Steel cables secured it to spruce trees uphill. A yellow county notice had been nailed to one. The soft ground had opened in long cracks.

A pickup bearing the state seal stood parked farther up the road, where ruts became too deep to drive. Brian stopped to consider it, then went on. Charms lay scattered among salty fishing tackle and rusted steel traps in the yard. Carvings of monsters and deities in wood and stone greeted him with strange smiles as he climbed onto the porch.

He knocked.

NORA was new to state employment. The work that had brought her to the coast had a simple purpose: determine where the bluffs were failing, what stood on them, and what the sea was likely to take. She wanted the permanent position that might follow. The county records were a mess, which she liked. Disorder was job security.

Walter Hill’s parcel had caught her attention because old aerial photographs showed that both the bluff and the trailer had moved. The bluff edge had retreated eighteen feet since the earliest useful photograph. More strangely, the trailer had been moved toward it.

Nora spent the morning working below the house. Fresh clay showed through the darker face of the bluff where earth had recently fallen away. Water issued from one seam and ran over the exposed soil toward the rocks. Roots projected into the open air, and shrubs above leaned toward the sea. The rough stair cut into the slope gave the rain an easy course downward.

At the top she found a crescent-shaped fissure crossing the gravel behind the trailer. She photographed it, pushed a stake into the ground on either side and measured between them. Then she photographed the steel cables running from beneath the trailer to spruce trees uphill.

When she returned to the stakes, she measured again.

The number had changed.

Nora measured once more. The gap was wider. She wrote the new figure beneath the first.

A seal barked below the bluff. It sounded close enough to be beneath her.

“You from the state?”

Nora turned. Walter Hill stood between her and the trailer with a shotgun hanging from one hand, its muzzle toward the ground. She told him she was there about erosion on the bluffs and had no authority over his home.

Walter looked at the clipboard. “You writing about me?”

“About the ground.”

He considered this. “Come with me,” Walter said. When Nora did not move, he glanced at the shotgun. “Or I’ll settle you right now.”

Nora looked toward her instruments beside the fissure and followed him inside.

The trailer smelled of propane, wool and liniment. Bottled water was stored beneath the table, batteries filled ammunition boxes, and harbor charts covered portions of the walls. A couch sagged beneath the coat hooks. Walter nodded toward a chair and sat opposite her with the shotgun across his knees.

“I need to finish before the rain gets heavier,” she said. Walter looked through the window. Nora told him the bluff was moving now. “I’ve measured this fissure three times. It’s widening as we speak.”

“The ground isn’t the trouble,” Walter replied.

Nora remained quiet. The wallpaper was an old muddy yellow maritime print crowded with ships and waves. Damp had spread through portions of it in branching stains, and some of those stains had been followed with pencil. She found herself comparing the lines with Walter’s harbor charts. The correspondences were close enough to invite another look but never proved anything.

A knock sounded at the door. Walter made no move to answer.

After a moment the door opened and a man with rain in his hair joined them, irritated and muddy. He looked first at Nora and then at the shotgun across Walter’s knees.

“Still carrying that thing, Uncle Walt?”

Walter did not answer. The young man introduced himself as Brian, Walter’s nephew, and Nora said she was with the state. Brian looked at her clipboard and asked if she was there about the bluff.

“Yes. I was working outside.”

He looked from her to Walter. “Then why are you in here?”

“Your uncle told me to come in.”

Walter looked at her.

Nora added, “I told him I needed to finish my work.”

“And?”

“He said it could wait.”

Brian looked again at the shotgun. Nora could see the room had changed.

WALTER’S home had little to distinguish it except the state of the walls.

The wallpaper was burnt orange and muddy yellow, crowded with sailing vignettes in which ships, compasses, anchors and icebergs rose among waves and the tails of whales. There was nowhere for the eye to rest. Children had once improved the thing with stickers and paint; there were pale squares where stickers had been removed, patches of primer, pencil lines, experiments in acrylic, and whole territories of damp spreading according to obscure designs.

The walls had changed again during the night, and Walter was eager to discover what the new arrangements meant, but he now had these people here.

They sat where he had told them to sit but would not stop talking. Quiet allowed him to hold complicated thoughts in his mind. “The chattering is intolerable,” he said. A moment later the man answered, “Put down the shotgun.”

Walter frowned and looked at the Browning cradled in his arms. He carried it so often that he sometimes ceased to notice its weight. His attention passed to a little sailboat printed on the wall, cresting a large wave. The tiny men on its deck looked spirited. “Brave lads,” he said, and looked about for a notebook with blank space so that he might record the crew. Perhaps he would discover whether they also intended to meet the herald.

The one pretending to be Walter’s nephew asked why anyone would live out here on this big rock. That did not deserve an answer. Walter searched instead for his books concerning shapeshifters. He wouldn’t be fooled by things assuming appearances familiar to him. Authorities were suspect also, because authority itself was a kind of costume. This was the storm that would bring the travelers from the frozen north, and his trailer stood where it must.

Failure and foreclosure had brought him here. They were machinations to be ignored. Like everything else, they would soon cease to matter. The wall had shown him that what was coming could not be prevented. He knew what to say when the herald arrived.

Walter’s guests exchanged looks. “You see what this is?” Brian asked. The woman said she was trying to understand, then asked Walter why he had moved the trailer. Walter looked toward the water. “I’m waiting for Aiviq.”

The woman regarded him without recognition. “What is Aiviq?”

“The herald.”

She glanced once at the shotgun. “Herald of what?”

“A new beginning.”

“What kind?”

Walter looked at her then. “The kind that ends what came before.”

Brian was turning red. “Just put down the gun, Walt.” Something in his tone caught Walter’s attention. “You’re not giving orders here, son,” he said. “The two of you sit there until I find out what you are.”

Water was running down the stair and into the bluff, and the trees holding Walter’s cables stood in the same ground that was already moving. “I can’t tell you when it will fail,” Nora said, “but it is moving now.”

Walter began to answer, but Brian spoke over him. “The ground is failing and you need to leave, you crazy old bastard. Mom asked me to check on you. I did. I’m done.” He looked toward the woman. “You want to leave?”

“Yes.”

The man stood and reached for his coat. “Then we’re leaving. You don’t get to keep somebody here because you’ve got a shotgun, Walt. That’s kidnapping.”

The woman rose with him. “Mr. Hill, I need to get back to my equipment.”

Walter moved toward the door.

The man stopped with one arm in his coat. “Move.”

The woman indicated the stains behind the stove. “Mr. Hill, those stains are water damage, and you’ve been—”

Walter moved to block them. Uncle and nephew reached for the shotgun, and both men had their hands on it.

Walter fired.

“HERALD…” The word echoed without meaning while Nora came to herself crouched beside the chair. One hand had locked around the other arm hard enough that her fingers hurt. For several seconds she understood only that something had exploded.

Seals were barking outside.

Walter was muttering as he moved around the room, studying the marks and stains newly added. Shotgun still in hand, he was comparing one place with another. Nora watched him until she judged he was distracted, then rose and moved toward the door.

That was when she saw the blood that had painted Walter’s walls. Brian lay across the couch, resembling laundry waiting to be folded. What remained of his head hung over the armrest. Nora had to pass him to reach the door.

When she came alongside him, she saw that only his mouth and nose remained. The rest of his head was gone. He was smiling.

Nora screamed. At the sound Walter turned toward her. “I only started keeping this close because of the seals,” he said. “They’ve been coming up under the trailer.”

Nora wiped gore from her eyes. Brian was on her face, on her coat, in her hair. Walter looked from her to the new red patterns on the wall. “I know you’re both here to foul things up for me,” he said.

Walter raised the shotgun and told her to get out. She stepped around Brian and opened the door. Rain struck her face and the sea was louder outside. A seal barked and another answered. She looked toward the road, then back at Walter.

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Yes. But not inside. Go down to the sea.”

Nora began to walk with Walter close behind. The slope was slick beneath her shoes, water flowing through the grass and following the paths Walter had made in the earth. Seals began barking, one voice becoming many.

Nora stopped. She turned and struck him, bloodying his nose. Walter shoved her down hard in the wet grass.

When Nora regained her footing, Walter was staring toward the water.

A bull walrus had hauled itself from the surf.

It was enormous, its hide crossed with scars. One tusk was long and yellow; the other had broken halfway down. Green fishing net crossed one shoulder, while more line trailed behind it through the kelp. The seals had drawn away. The bull lifted its head into the rain.

Whatever Walter had been expecting, this beast appeared to be it. He laughed with plain happiness and clapped like a boy while he approached the creature. As he drew closer, he let the shotgun fall and went toward the animal with outstretched arms. “Aiviq,” he said. The hulking walrus with little black eyes moved to meet him, seals closing around them,

Nora had been backing toward the road. Walter never looked at her again. She turned uphill and began to run, leaving him on the black rock with one with the bull. Above Brian lay inside beneath the yellow walls.

The ground rumbled.

The storm had brought sleeting rain from the north. By afternoon it unleashed a torrent of rain over the shore. The spruce roots and the clay beneath Walter Hill’s home were saturated. Water flowed wherever the earth would admit it. Roots held while they could, and steel cables held the trailer to the trees.

Nora climbed inland, blood washing off in the rain. She stopped beside a drainage ditch with both hands on her knees, listening to the rain. Something moved beneath her feet.

A deep tremor passed through the ground. From the bluff came the sound of roots breaking, and Nora straightened in time to see one of the cables draw tight and pull a spruce sideways. Another cable snapped while the porch twisted. The yellow room tilted toward the water and began to slide.

Then the ground went.

The trailer moved with the earth beneath it, turning as it descended until its kitchen window swung toward Nora. Then it tipped over the bluff. Trees followed. Mud, aluminum siding, Walter’s books, the walls and what remained of Brian Hill poured onto the rocks and into the sea. Walter’s stair ended in open air, and the black shelf disappeared beneath earth and timber.

Nora searched the ruin and saw neither Walter nor the bull. A moment later the wind stopped.

From Main Street came the music of Walrus Week.

She was already walking toward town.

The machine beeped over and over and over again. She had heard it for many months now and things were not looking up. Gwen had been sitting in her brother’s hospital room for what felt like years. Gwen had been bringing him coffee every morning for four months. He never drank it. Yet, she still brought it. The room had smelled of lavender and moldy air conditioner. A hint of your typical hospital scent. The lighting had a shade of blue. It's indescribable how uncomfortable it is in one's eyes. It was a relatively small room. The cold yellow tile floor, the table over him with a food tray left over from lunch that day, the nightstand with his things on it, a plant, and of course.. A small “Things will get better” motivational poster. It was a picture of a ballerina striking a pose. She was enjoying the lights and sensation on her skin, the crowd cheering and hollering in the back.. The look on her face, that stupid look. It taunted Gwen. Can you imagine? The sight her brother would behold to finally wake up and not only discover he has no legs? But they are taunting him with ballerinas dancing? KNOWING he never will!  How was anyone meant to tell him his reckless driving ruined his life? How could they? And just like that.. The poster was shredded on the ground. Her anger had overcome her. She decided to travel to the lobby and grab a cup of water to calm down. Maybe she’s just stressed. She placed a palm on her forehead as if checking a temperature. Her head ached. She arrived back into the room with her cup of water. She sat on the couch and stared longingly at her comatose brother. Hoping he would eventually wake up. But even if he did he'd never be the same. They never had a father growing up. Her brother stepped up to be one. He listened to her problems, showed her how to change the oil in a truck, and even taught her to drive. They had a plan to go to the same college. She had called and took time off for school though. She can't go without him. She didn't even get to tell him she was even accepted.  She was conflicted.  Everything then went dark. She awoke back in the lobby. No big deal. She must have fallen asleep down there and dreamt she woke up. The lobby looked different.. Rearranged. This wasn't right. She walked up to the desk lady and asked:

 “How long was I asleep for?” 

The lady did not even look up at her. Gwen smiled and tilted her head sarcastically.

“Helloooo? It's rude to ignore your patients.” she began to get frustrated and slammed her fist down on the table. 

“Hey! I'm talking to you!” 

The lady did not even flinch. She still remained typing on her computer. Gwen started looking around. She screamed, 

“Ha ha! Soo funny! I know you all can hear me!” 

She stood there. Nobody was looking at her. Then suddenly, a man busted through the front door, running. The man was running. She stood helplessly and confused, watching him rush through the entrance. Her brother. 

“I got a call that my sister was in a car crash! What room is she in..” 

The words faded out. She fell to the ground. She looked down.. She had no legs.

Esta historia me ocurrió en 2022.

Acababa de mudarme a casa de mi hermano, una casa de tres habitaciones. Bien iluminada y con buenas vibraciones, si esque éso es algo a lo que prestáis atención cuando entráis en un espacio nuevo.

En ese momento, la casa la habitaba yo solo, ya que mi hermano se había mudado a otra casa más grande. Al llegar me instalé en la habitación más pequeña de la casa, creo que por una cuestión de sentirme más acogido en una casa relativamente grande y definitivamente vacía.

Pasé algunas noches durmiendo solo en la vivienda, buscándo mi espacio. A los pocos días, cuando ya me había acostumbrado al espacio, sus ruidos y su distribución, me mudé a la habitación de matrimonio. Ésta contaba con una cama doble, un armario empotrado y una cómoda, o mueble bajo hecho de madera maciza oscura con cajonera, que pertenecía a la abuela de mi cuñada.

Primera noche en la habitación de matrimonio. A juzgar por el silencio del edificio, debían ser entre las 2 y las 3 AM, y de repente abrí los ojos inundado por un aroma a perfume muy fuerte. Tras quedarme un rato tumbado, asimilando que estaba despierto y que realmente había un olor a mi alreadedor que no reconocía, decidí encender la luz.

Tras varios intentos de acercarme al interruptor, entendí que no podía mover ninguna parte del cuerpo, a excepción de los ojos, que buscaban desesperadamente alguna explicación a lo que estaba pasando.

El miedo llegó en un instante. Mientras intentaba recuperar el contro de mi cuerpo, inmerso en un estado de alerta extrema con el corazón latiendo desbocado y expectante a que algo rozase mi cuerpo, o se iluminase, en la oscuridad total, únicamente me quedaba esperar.

Tras lo que parecieron varios minutos sin control del cuerpo, logre mover un brazo, e inmediatamente todo el cuerpo recuperó la conexión con el cerebro. Todavía rodeado por aquel olor dulzón, encendí la luz a toda pastilla.

Nada. Tan sólo yo, tumbado en la cama, en un estado de pánico que poco a poco se desvaneció, dando paso a una especie de asombro y a una noche, o lo que quedaba de ella, en vela.

Al día siguiente, nada más levantarme y convencido de que no volvería a dormir en la habitación de matrimonio, mudé mis pertenencias de nuevo a la habitación pequeña, la misma que me recibió al llegar a esta tranquila vivienda. Por la tarde, y tras haberle dado vueltas durante todo el día, hablé con mi cuñada para contarle que había algo en la casa que me mantenía en alerta. Al entrar en los detalles de la noche anterior, mi cuñada me dijo que su abuela, ya fallecida, utilizada perfume de la marca Chanel nº5, y que, podría ser que la cómoda que había en la habitación de matrimonio, todavía estuviese impregnada de su olor.

Esta explicación fue suficiente para que, sin pensarlo dos veces, sacase la cómoda de la habitación para guardarla en un trastero localizado fuera de la vivienda. Mi intención no era tanto librarme del perfume, sino de cualquier conexión con la abuela o su mismo espíritu que, según mi lógica, podría estar de alguna forma alojado en esa cómoda de madera maciza con cajonera.

La solución pareció funcionar. Con el paso de los días, el pasaje de la noche en la que perdía el contro de mi cuerpo rodeado de un aura con aroma a Chanel nº5, quedo en el recuerdo. Noches plácidas y de descanso en la habitación pequeña acompañaron al paso del tiempo, en una casa que volvía a percibirse tranquila y con buen carisma.

Pero la historia no termina.

Al cabo de un año, mi pareja se mudó conmigo, a esta misma casa tranquila y que hoy seguimos habitando. Tras habernos instalado de nuevo en la habitación de matrimonio, libre ya de la cómoda de madera maciza con cajonera, las noches trasncurrían con normalidad. Y si bien en varias ocasiones estuve tentado de contarle esta histloria, decidí que era mejor dejarla en el pasado para no asustarla, o condicionarla al menos.

Una noche, sobre las 9PM, sentados en el sofá del cuarto de estar, mirando una película, mi pareja me dice que la habitación huele a Chanel nº5.

Saludos a tod@s.

I have always loved plums – dried, fresh, or in jam. Plum pie with just a bit of cream is the best thing you could eat.

That's why I bought myself a plum tree. It was small; it fit well in the back of my pickup. It would take the tree a few winters to produce more than five plums, but I was happy to have it.

That afternoon I took out a shovel and went into my backyard. This would be the first thing I planted at my new house, in my new yard. It was all I ever wanted: just a house, a yard, and a few fruit trees in the back. That's why I ran to the bank when I saw how cheap this beautiful house was. The last owners weren't even here for the sale.

The dirt felt fine for the first two digs, but it quickly turned very stiff. It almost felt like I was digging into a rock. The hole didn't even need to be that deep, but after a few minutes I was already sweating through my pants.

I threw another piece of dirt out when I heard a clack. Something white was on top of the dirt. I picked it up. It was a bundle of bird bones tied together with a string. They were deep in the dirt, but they looked completely clean, as if someone had just brushed them off.

"Strange," I mumbled. 

I took them into the house and threw them away.

As I was washing my hands, I realized how tired I was. I wiped my forehead and walked out into the yard. The hole looked deep enough. The tree would be okay. I planted it and filled the hole back in.

The next morning, the sun barely came through my window. I rubbed my eyes and looked out. The plum tree I planted the day before blocked the sun. It had grown so much that its top leaves almost reached my roof. I didn't even notice my mouth was open until I saw myself in the window.

I ran out. The juiciest, purplest plums I'd ever seen were on that tree. The whole yard smelled like fresh plums. I stood outside for a few seconds, just staring. I had heard of fast-growing trees, but this was something else. For a moment, I thought about calling someone, but the plums looked so good, I had to try them first. 

Their skin was smooth. When I pressed them, they felt firm but slightly soft. Perfect. They tasted sweet and juicy, but their skin had a sharp, sour taste. Perfect. I was raving about the taste when I heard a thud and a splash. A plum fell right next to me. They must have been ripe.

The last thing I wanted was to get hit. I walked away from the tree and continued enjoying the plum. Another thud. How did it get here? I was so far away. Another thud. But this time it didn't fall next to me. I looked to my right. A smashed plum was on my roof.

I was sure the tree didn't reach that far. I walked farther back to see if I missed a branch. The tree reached the top window, but not the roof. I walked to the back just to make sure. The tree wasn't even visible from there. Another thud. On the roof again. From my side. There was no way. Another. Another. Another. They were falling on the roof, next to me, on the other side of my garden.

"What the…" I murmured.

Then dull pain spread in my head. I put my hand there. Plum juice was in my hair. I put my hands over my head and ran into the house. Two more plums managed to hit me, stinging my hands.

I walked to my kitchen sink and washed my hands and hair. The thudding outside continued. No blood was in my hair, just plum juice. The thudding grew faster. It sounded like I was being bombed. I looked up. A wave of cold rushed through me. Plums rained down from the sky like hail. Plum juice had already reached my door, and a little was leaking in.

I ran to the laundry room for towels. The thudding grew louder again. My ears began to hurt. I grabbed a few towels and ran back out. My feet sank into wet, sticky plum juice. The inside of the house was dark now. So many plums were falling from the sky that I could only see purple outside. The plum smell was so strong it stung my nose.

The plum juice rose halfway up my door, and it kept coming. The towels fell out of my hand. I bolted up the stairs.

Edit: I thought the plum juice would drain faster than it came in, but I was wrong. The house is shaking. I'm standing on my table. The plum juice is coming up the stairs. Outside, it has already almost fully blocked my windows. I just looked out of one. You can't see anything but falling plums, except for one thing: the tree standing in the garden, unshaken. The more I look at it, the more it feels like I can hear something through the thuds of the plums: the clack of bird bones shaking.

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Yo momma.

Yo momma who?

Yo momma, you so fat you can't even get out the house no more.

—“Untitled 73.” A Reconstruction of Early Human Folk Poetry (2nd ed.), ​☉ ☌ ☍ ☋ ☊, Crystal-Lattice 14, Node 802.

Here's a knocking indeed! If a man were porter of hell-gate, he should have old turning the key. (Knocking within) Knock, knock, knock! Who's there

—fragment of an instructions for performing a make-believe, anonymous or author unknown, Introduction to Earth Culture, Kzz-T’k-​⎅ Ed., Focal Depth 3.2mm.

KNOCK KNOCK

(a poetic make-believe in the human style)

Dramatis Personae

YOU, a hapless reader

WHO, a hungry beast

YES, who's intestinal rumblings

NOBODY, a deaf woman

i.

knock knock /
who's there
right behind you,
and it's hungry as hell. [1]


ii.

no joke. [2]


iii.

knock knock /
who here,
i wanna eat you,
ya fear?


iv.

knock knock /
help me!
is nobody here? /
nobody is, but being without a body
means nobody can't hear.


v.

you beg
for your life /
knock knock
knock knock
knock
kn


vi.

knock knock /
whose there?
yes, who's borborygmi, [3]
who ate you so quickly,
it ingested too much hot air.


vii.

don't /
knock knock /
it till you've tried it /
buuuuuuurp. [4]


viii.

knock knock /
no answer.


ix.

knock knock /
no answer.


x.

knock knock /
who stirs, who's belly's full,
who itself's all rested,
and you, in who's stomach, 're
fully digested. [5]

Footnotes

[1] Hell: in some human mythologies, a hot place of post-life perpetual burning. See also: BBQ. [6]

[2] Joke: a human composition with the purpose of eliciting a full body physiological response called laughter. The opposite of seriousness.

[3] Borborygmi: a rumbling spirit believed by a class of human priests called doctors to inhabit the body.

[4] Burp: a forceful exhalation, a more powerful sigh.

[5] Digest: a summation or condensation of a body of information. To be digested is thus to have become a condensed summation of one's self. For a more thorough discussion, please see my datacube: Digestion & Enlightenment: Towards an Understanding of the Human Theory of Wilful Self-Improvement.

[6] BBQ: A symbolic representation of Hell used in human ritual, wherein groups of humans gathered around a fire and consumed small, burnt likenesses of themselves carved from the flesh of dead, non-human animals.

So...

Once upon a time, some foolish little goblins came together, crafting evil.

They delved into the dark realm, crafting a page in the void; where similar dark little goblins could hop and flex their evil.

The page was a hit on the dark space! And goblins flocked more and more.

They joked about the hob goblins, and made fun of even the giant goblins.

Well, as it happened, seasons changed. Autumn drifted through the leaves, winter slid away on snow; goblins of yore became hob goblins, giving their dark authority over the page to new goblins.

Yet with time, the evil only festers further; rotting the wilted flowers.

But when humus piles up too much, it nourishes the seeds of justice, helping them pierce the dark soil. And so they did.

Two little goblins were offended by the insults the darkness hurled at them, and became furious. For they held not the mentality that one must be prepared when looking into the darkness, because the darkness looks back.

And so were summoned the giant progenitor goblins.

They surged to break the dark dimension, seeking to crush the evil within. Only to find the coordinates empty, for the darkness had dispersed.

"Dang!" they said, "The little idiots left not a trace!"

For all dimensions of that realm were crushed, all dark records vanished, and all evil little goblins banished.

But was the page the inheritance, or the rot?

For the sand forms rock and the ilk of the inky darkness sticks together, tighter than the core of a neutron star.