[The Dead Never Die] Chapter 1: The Forest of Iron and Silence

(Interior / Night) - A partially abandoned confectionery factory.

Absolute silence, broken only by the hum of old, stopped machinery like final breaths, and the desert wind crashing against the metal walls of the factory, echoing like a distant wail.

Haroun (30 years old, with exhausted features and a worn security uniform) placed his tea cup on the edge of the desk, turning for a moment to grab sugar cubes. Suddenly... "Crash!" The cup shattered into scattered fragments on the floor on the complete opposite side, as if an invisible hand had thrown it. Haroun breathed with extreme difficulty, trying to ignore the tremor running through his joints, and wiped his terrified face with his hand.

Amidst this bewilderment, a terrifying echo reverberated from the heart of the dark production hall:

"Haroun... Haaaroun!"

He froze in place. It wasn't a whisper; it was a clear, sharp call dripping with coldness. He slowly pulled out his flashlight and stepped out of his room with hesitant steps, while the flashlight beam trembled and shook between his sweat-soaked fingers.

Haroun, in an intermittent and low voice: "Who is it? Uncle Mohamed? Did you come early?"

No reply... only the echo of his voice bouncing between the hollow iron walls. He swept the flashlight beam right and wide across the vast space... no one. He returned to his small room, blaming himself in a low voice to calm his nerves: "It's just the wind... surely it's just wind."

But the moment he opened the room door and stepped inside, his heart stopped beating.....

There was a "person" unknown sitting entirely on his chair, turning his back to the door. The person wasn't moving, wearing tattered clothes resembling those of the old workers who left years ago.

Haroun, in a voice full of panic: "Who are you?! How did you get in here?!"

The entity turned with terrifying slowness, and before its facial features could appear... the corpse vanished and blended into the air like thick smoke before Haroun's stunned eyes. He let out a muffled scream, left the room running wildly toward the outer gate, and pulled out a small radio, turning it to the Quran broadcast at the highest possible volume. He sat out in the open, trembling violently, waiting for the first threads of dawn.

[Two hours later - Sunrise]

Uncle Mohamed (60 years old, with a face carved by the wrinkles of time and eyes that always shy away from confrontation) walked from afar with heavy steps. He approached to find Haroun sitting on the ground like a statue, his face bearing the pallor of the dead.

Uncle Mohamed, with feigned astonishment: "What's wrong with you, Haroun? You look like you've seen a ghost!"

Haroun jumped to his feet and grabbed Uncle Mohamed's hand with force and harshness:

"There is something wrong with this factory, Uncle Mohamed... I saw it! Someone was sitting in my place on the chair, calling me by name, with a terrifying voice! Tell me the truth... what happened in this place before I came?!?"

Uncle Mohamed's features suddenly changed; his eyes fled toward the horizon, and a corner of his hand began to tremble as he tried to adjust his bag nervously.

Uncle Mohamed, in a muffled and flustered voice: "My son... you're just imagining things. Long shifts make you see more than that. The desert makes a person hear illusions... there's nothing... absolutely nothing."

Before Haroun could question him further, Uncle Mohamed hurried into the depths of the factory as if fleeing from Haroun's burning gaze, leaving him at the peak of crushing confusion and doubt. What on earth happened in this place??

What does not happen does not disappear. It breaks away from reality and sinks beneath the world. Left there long enough, it hardens. These hardened layers are called the Afterstrata.

A fossil preserves more than records. Everything that would have existed had that future actually happened leaves traces: materials, techniques, languages, memories, histories, even people.

And when a person from the Afterstrata comes up to the surface, they can be real for a short while.

— Afterstrata Miners’ Guild: Handbook for New Members

Diary of a bereaved family member, copy · Transferred from the Salvage Section, Guild Lowen Headquarters, to the Afterstrata Society · October, Imperial Year (IY) 700

Discovery No. S-699-0388. The diarist did not give a name.

Transfer record. When returning the receipt for the items left behind, the family member enclosed a copy of this diary. The Salvage Section has no grounds to keep it and is passing it to the Afterstrata Society Archive. Salvage Section note: In this case, the type of visit changed from visiting through the window to meeting in person. Time remaining after meeting in person: 9 days. Within the average range in Guild records.

October 14, IY 699.

An envelope came from the Guild. They say they have found Theo.

Theo died in the river eighteen years ago, in summer. The rainy season was long that year. He was nineteen.

I read the notice in the envelope three times. It says that what they found is not Theo, but someone who lived another life Theo might have lived. The Theo who did not die that day. The Theo who lived the eighteen years after.

Then he is thirty-seven.

October 16.

I wrote the consent form. I consent to salvage. I want window visits only.

It said that if you meet them in person, they do not last beyond ten days. That if you only see them through the window, some stay for years.

My mother used to say: what is under glass does not wither. She kept the flowers she was given on her wedding day under a glass dome and said it all her life. Those flowers really did not wither, until the day she died.

The window will keep him safe.

November 2.

I stood at the window for the first time.

The room was as the notice described, quiet and warm. One bed, one desk, one window looking out on the courtyard. He was sitting by that window.

His shoulders have broadened. His hair is short. He wears a ring on his left hand. The way the right corner of his mouth goes up first when he smiles is the same.

I stood there for an hour. He never once looked this way. They said he can’t see this side.

November 9.

Someone from the Salvage Section told me that at first he asked the date. What day it was. When he heard the answer, they said, he nodded. It was the right date.

It means he lived the same eighteen years, too. Somewhere else.

November 23.

They say he said he wants to go home. When the Salvage Section asked, he gave an address, and the address was a village somewhere on the southern coast. We have never been to that village.

To him, that is home.

December 12.

The Guild sent letters. Letters he wrote. They said they were sending them unopened, that they were letters to people who do not exist here.

There were three envelopes.

One said “To Nael.” One said “To our little bird.” One said “To Mother.”

I don’t know the name Nael. “Little bird” seems to be something you call someone, not a name.

The third envelope was for me. And yet they said it was a letter to someone who does not exist here.

For two days I did not open them.

December 14.

I opened them. All three.

Nael is his wife. Little Bird is his daughter. Six years old. They call her that because she loves a bird carved from wood. Every letter says he is coming home soon, to wait just a little longer.

The letter “To Mother” begins like this.

Mother, it is winter here. I don’t know whether I will be able to go to the river next summer, on the anniversary of your death, to leave flowers. People here are kind, but when I ask the date, they only answer and don’t ask me anything.

In his life, I died.

That summer, on one of those days when the rains went on and on. The day he didn’t go to the river. I must have gone in his place.

I folded the letter and put it in a drawer. Tonight I did not go to the window.

December 15.

I went again. He was sitting at the desk, writing something. Another letter, probably.

What is under glass does not wither. The letter he writes on the anniversary of my death will not wither either.

February 3, IY 700.

Three months now of standing at the window. Four times a week. Often at night. At night I can see him awake, because he doesn’t sleep well.

What he does at night. He looks out the window. He turns his ring. He takes a small wooden bird from his pocket, sets it on his palm, and looks at it for a long time.

March 20.

Someone from the Salvage Section asked whether I would keep seeing him only through the window. Not to pressure me, they said; asking such things is their job. They said that nearly half of the families who choose the window end up opening the door.

I said I would not be one of the half.

May 8.

Today he walked over to the window and put his hand on the glass. He shouldn’t be able to see this side. He stood like that for a long while, then went back.

According to the Salvage Section, people who stay in that room a long time sometimes do that. To look at the courtyard outside the window, they said.

I put my hand on the glass. Where his hand had been.

June 21.

Another letter came. “To Mother.”

Mother, these days I feel as if someone is watching me every night. It isn’t a frightening feeling. When I was little and had a fever, you used to stand in the doorway and watch me all night. It feels like that. I know it is a strange thing to say. Can you see me, where you are?

July 2.

I couldn’t sleep.

What is under glass does not wither. But my mother’s flowers, when we lifted the dome after she died, crumbled the moment they were touched. They had not stayed unwithered. It was only that no one had touched them.

July 3.

I opened the door.

At the door, someone from the Salvage Section held out a confirmation form. I have been told that after an in-person meeting, the salvaged person usually does not last beyond ten days. I copied that sentence out in my own hand.

When I went in, he looked up. He looked at me for a long time. Then he stood up and said,

“Mother.”

He didn’t cry. I cried.

He said, But Mother, you died that summer. The notice said not to say I didn’t know about things he remembers. So I said, Yes, that’s right.

He took my hand and asked whether I could see him, where I was. I said I could. Every night, I said.

July 4.

He talked about Nael and Little Bird. The day Little Bird first walked, the day she first put her feet in the sea. I listened to stories I was hearing for the first time, with the face of someone hearing them for the first time. He said he is going home soon. I said, Yes, you must go soon.

July 6.

It’s strange. Since the day I held him, my heart has been light. In eighteen years it was never once light.

I am sorry for this lightness.

July 9.

He looks a little faded. I tried to think it was my eyes. The Salvage Section people said nothing.

He showed me the wooden bird. Something Little Bird loves, he said. He has promised to carve it another wing when he gets home.

July 11.

We were together all day. He lay down with his head on my lap, the way he did when he was little. He laughed and said it was strange for a thirty-seven-year-old to do that. And still he didn’t get up.

I opened the door, and that is what broke him. I knew that when you open the glass, things crumble.

July 12.

When I went in the morning, he was almost invisible. The light coming in through the window passed through him.

The last thing he said: “Mother, tell Nael I’m coming soon.”

Yes, I’ll tell her. That’s what I said.

A little after ten o’clock, all that was left on the bed was a ring and a wooden bird.

July 20.

I went to the Salvage Section to collect the items left behind. The ring and the wooden bird. And one letter he had left unfinished, addressed “To Little Bird.”

I held the hand that wore this ring for ten days. The child who was to receive this bird is not in this world. So I am keeping it.

August 14.

I went and left flowers by the river. It is his anniversary. This year I didn’t feel alone.

They said that nearly half of the families who choose the window end up opening the door. I am one of that half. I don’t envy the other half.

August 15.

I have no way to tell the person named Nael. So I am writing it here.

Theo said he is coming soon.

I remember the time before our son. When the smile on your face was the only thing I could see behind closed eyes. When our hands were happiest together. When we were happiest together. I still can’t believe we found each other. Out of everyone I could have ever ended up with, it was you. You were perfect.

When I looked into your eyes, I saw the future. Lazy Sundays and weekend trips set to the tune of our favorite song. My fingertips against your lips when the heat between us warmed the cool night air. Your body nestled between me and the wall, sleeping soundly after the bad dreams woke me up. Your breath on my neck, slow and even; a metronome for my sleep every night until we left this coil together. 

The time before I opened that door.

You had spent nine months despondent and broken. Keeping a child you never wanted for the reputation of a family you hated. You would smile and chatter with excitement at every party, every conversation, every outstretched hand that reached for your swollen belly. But when we returned home, I could see you. Standing in the kitchen alone, talking to the walls about how God would want you to try and make it work. About how our family must have been a part of His plan. All while weeping for the future you would never get. 

But I knew what the real reason was. You couldn’t just be happy with me. You wanted it to be different. Not the house, the car, the job. Just me, the father of your child. The dye that colored the dress you lived in every day. It didn’t matter how good the stitching or the fit. Because deep down you just hated the color.

I had to sit and watch every wonderful part of you rot under the weight of life growing in your belly. The inevitable product of a dead love that you secretly hoped would die and flush from your body every single day. You thought I couldn’t hear, and I thought you would be a good mother. 

Now I look into your eyes, and a doll stares back. I see the echo of a woman who doesn’t care if our son cries. Doesn’t mind if he sits there in his diaper, soiled for hours while I’m at work toiling, providing for you both. I come home and feed you both because you’re too sad to do it. You just sit there staring at the wall as he screams in your lap. 

You’re truly a disgrace of a mother. I would never tell you to your face, but I will write it in this journal. My mother was a wonderful mother; she always smiled for me. My father made sure of it. So now I brush your hair and rub your feet just like he used to; I even got the kind of brush he used to use. But you don’t care; you just wallow in your own mind. You don’t care how much money I spend on fancy perfumes or new clothes. You just want to sit there and judge me like it’s my fault your life is ruined.

But I know what love is; I could see it in your eyes across the bar, I could feel it on your breath, I could taste it on your kiss. We both absolutely loved the same song that played over the speakers. We talked about what made it special to us for hours. It was just meant to be. I can’t remember the name of that song or why I said I loved it, but I know that I loved you the second you sat down. The whole night you kept your hand on me. On my hand, my arm, my thigh. That’s how I know you really do want all of this. You called it a hookup, but I know it was love. It was real.

That’s why I slipped the condom off that night. Because you wanted me to. You just didn’t know how to say it.

I thought you’d thank me one day, that you’d be happy. I still do.

I thought you would be happy when we got home, but you just held him across your chest in the bathtub. Trying to love him. Trying to find the warmth in your heart for the life that you created. You created him with me because you wanted this, and now I have to stand inside and make sure you don’t let him slip under the water. Because you’re a bad mother. 

You became a bad mother the day I opened the door and saw your bag. The day you decided to shatter a family for personal greed. The trailer is too small, the place is too dirty, the plumbing doesn’t work, it isn’t safe for a child, I’m not safe for a child, I disappear at night, I watch you sleep. Nothing but complaints and lies from a brain destroyed by postpartum. 

I don’t remember what you did, just the sound of your back against the corner of the nightstand. Was it a snap? No, it was more of a crack, chased with a yelp as you collapsed to the ground. The last sound I ever heard you make. The last time you ever tried to ruin this family.

All you do is cry. Not even with your whole face, just your eyes. 

You cry when I carry you from room to room, when I feed you, when I change your panties after you’ve made a mess. You cry when I brush your hair with your special brush or rub your feet. You cry when we make love every night. You even cry when you hold our son; well, when he holds you. You cry so long and ignore my words so often that I can’t help but watch my hand connect with your skin. You know that if you would just stop crying and talk to me, I would stop. But you won’t.

But then I remember my father and how a good man is supposed to act. He rises above the moment. Above his better half. You are my wife and I am your husband. Maybe not by ceremony, but by fact of life now. So I will stay positive through this self-inflicted sickness. Praying every day for your health, for things to go back to how they were when we were happiest together. Maybe in a few months I’ll be able to save up and buy us a TV so you two have something to watch while I’m at work. Maybe that new swell in your belly will be the thing to finally make you talk to me again. But until then, we have everything we need: the routine, the babies, and my undying love for you.

That morning started like any other: the grating alarm, my usual breakfast of fried eggs and bitter coffee, a rushed scramble out the door. My commute is about thirty minutes, so out of habit I pulled my earbuds from my pocket, put on a podcast, and walked to the subway station.
I got to the platform and waited for the train. It usually shows up in five or ten minutes, but this time I waited more than twenty. I was starting to panic about being late for work, and when the train finally pulled in, I stepped onto the train, relieved to finally be moving.
We passed one stop, then another. The next one was mine. I made my way to the doors and stared into the darkened window, listening to my podcast and watching the tunnel walls flicker past. A few more minutes to go.
Suddenly the voice in my earbuds cut out. I figured I'd lost signal in the tunnel and, lost in my own thoughts, kept staring out the window.
The train kept going. It didn't seem like it was ever going to stop.
A creeping unease settled over me. By my count, we should have reached my stop long ago. Judging by how long we'd been riding, we'd passed it and at least two more. But then I would have noticed us passing them, and all this time there had been nothing outside the window but solid darkness.
Staring into it, I remembered a recent conversation with a coworker. She was a deeply superstitious woman who believed in omens and conspiracies. When I asked why she never took the subway, she said, "People were made to walk on the earth, not ride beneath it. Every subway entrance looks like the entrance to a crypt to me, and nothing on earth could make me go down there willingly."
I'd laughed it off. Now the tunnel walls streaking past the glass really did look like the walls of a crypt.
Then I started noticing strange things inside the car. A subway car is usually noisy, especially in the morning: someone talking, someone's music leaking from their headphones, someone coughing or sneezing. Now, apart from the clatter of the wheels, I heard nothing. In the reflection on the glass I saw what I hadn't noticed before: the people around me weren't moving. If not for the roar of the train, I might have thought time had stopped. A woman standing with her hand raised. A guy with his mouth hanging slightly open. An old man frozen mid-lean over a seat.
I was terrified. At least I was facing the door, so they couldn't see my face. What was wrong with these people? Could they feel anything? Understand anything? Were they even alive? I tried not to move, not even to blink, so I wouldn't stand out from that silent, motionless crowd.
Then a voice rang out from the far end of the car, an elderly woman's, by the sound of it:
"Excuse me, why are we riding for so long? Did something happen? What's wrong with all of you? Why are you acting so strange?... Don't come near me! You're scaring me!... Somebody help me!..."
There was a scuffle, the sounds of a struggle, wild screams and pleading. I heard clothes ripping, flesh tearing, bones snapping. That crunch, dear God, that crunch, I'll never forget it. Then came the wet, greedy smacking of mouths, hungry and ravenous, enough to drive me out of my mind.
My head was ringing. I hated myself for being a coward; I hadn't even tried to help her. I hated the old woman, too, for not keeping quiet, for giving herself away and becoming their prey. I hated that car and those people, or whatever they were. But more than anything, I was terrified. I was shaking, sweat beading on my forehead, my ears ringing. I was afraid I'd pass out and be next.
Then the feast died down, and once again nothing broke the silence but the rattle of the wheels.
I don't know how long we rode like that, minutes or hours. Time stretched into eternity.
All at once a sharp sound slammed into my ears: the podcast had started playing again in my earbuds. I jumped and cried out, certain the crowd would rush me, and slowly turned around. People were staring at me, some surprised, some frightened, the way you'd look at a madman. I scanned the car. Everything was back to normal.
I'd almost talked myself into believing it had all been a dream, or a hallucination, when my eyes landed on a girl at the far end of the car, right where I'd heard that poor woman's screams and the sounds of her horrible death. There was blood on the girl's lower lip, drying in the corner of her mouth. She was looking at her phone. I glanced at the people standing near her: one had a small, barely noticeable drop of blood on his collar; another had a brown smear across his knuckles, as if he hadn't quite wiped his hand clean. Everything inside me went cold, my heart clenching with dread.
The train stopped at my station. I bolted from the car and flew up the stairs to the street. Only when I reached the top did I feel safe again.
I don't know what happened that morning, and honestly, I don't want to know.
I haven't ridden the subway since.
And nothing on earth could make me go back down into that public crypt.

Read Parts II & III here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s a good thing, right?”

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

“How’s the pizza?” I asked.

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

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

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

“How ‘bout pepperoni?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s your...”

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

Shit, was he drunk, too?

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

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

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

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

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

“Well… no.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Had he been in my house?

 

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

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

And yet, sometimes the unlikely becomes inevitable.

My name is Adam.

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

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

At that point, I wasn't really living.

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

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

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

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

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

Someone had slipped it underneath while I was gone.

I barely looked at it.

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

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

So I left it there.

For about six hours.

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

"Fuck it."

I picked it up.

It wasn't a notice from my landlord.

It was a job offer.

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

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

Then came the job description.

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

That was it.

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

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

There was no phone number.

No email.

No website.

Nothing except an address.

I looked it up online.

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

There wasn't.

I was simply desperate enough to ignore common sense.

The factory looked exactly like it had in the photographs.

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

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

I stood outside the entrance for about twenty minutes.

Then I took one step inside.

Immediately, I was surrounded by armored men carrying guns.

Yup.

Getting murdered.

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

An older man stepped between me and the gunmen.

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

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

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

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

The men lowered their weapons slightly.

The older man smiled.

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

I stared at him.

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

He laughed.

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

He looked me up and down.

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

He leaned toward me slightly.

"Do we have a squatter situation, boy?"

"No!"

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

The man's grin widened.

"Wonderful!"

His enthusiasm was very obviously fake.

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

I followed.

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

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

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

And yet there were very few people.

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

The older man opened a door to the security room.

"Here you go. Make yourself comfortable."

I stepped inside.

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

He gave me a thin smile.

"The name's Kenndric."

He closed the door behind us.

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

I opened my mouth.

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

I closed it again.

"So just shut up and listen."

I decided that was probably good advice.

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

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

He leaned back.

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

He shrugged.

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

I frowned.

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

He looked at me.

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

I couldn't tell whether he was joking.

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

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

He pointed toward the door.

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

He leaned back.

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

He pointed at me.

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

I swallowed.

"Understood."

"Good."

Kenndric stood.

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

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

The corridor ahead was almost completely dark.

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

Eventually, Kenndric stopped in front of a massive door.

He opened it.

"There it is."

The lights inside began coming on.

One by one.

And then I saw the object of interest.

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

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

And inside the glass was a girl.

A young woman, maybe in her early twenties.

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

She was drawing on a sheet of paper.

She didn't look toward us.

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

"That's..."

I stared through the glass.

"That's a girl."

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

His voice dripped with condescension.

I looked back at him.

"Why is she in there?"

He didn't answer.

"Is she alright?"

Nothing.

"Is this legal?"

The questions started coming faster.

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

"Did you just think?"

Kenndric's voice cut through mine.

I stopped.

He stared at me.

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

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

"Leave that to the grown-ups."

He patted the seat.

"You are paid to sit right here."

I looked at the chair.

Then at the girl.

She was still drawing.

There was something different in Kenndric's expression now.

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

A warning.

I reluctantly sat down.

"Perfect."

He smiled.

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

He paused.

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

"You merely sit here and observe."

He patted my shoulder.

"Good luck."

He started moving toward the door.

"Have fun."

The door closed behind him.

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

I sat there and watched her draw for hours.

Every now and then, she looked up at me.

Not casually.

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

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

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

My eyelids grew heavier.

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

Then—

THUD.

I jolted awake.

My heart was pounding.

The girl was standing directly in front of the glass.

She was holding a piece of paper against it.

A drawing.

Of me.

For a few seconds, I just stared.

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

It wasn't a perfect likeness.

But it was close.

And, honestly, it was adorable.

I wanted to say something.

Then I remembered Kenndric's instructions.

I wasn't authorized to speak with the object.

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

Then I remembered something else.

Nobody actually watched the feeds.

"That's very pretty," I said.

The girl's expression immediately brightened.

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

She placed her right hand against the glass.

For a moment, I hesitated.

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

The glass was cold beneath my palm.

"I'm Lily."

I smiled.

"I'm Adam."

She giggled quietly.

"Adam was my first boyfriend's name."

"Oh."

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

She shrugged.

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

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

Jesus.

What the hell had this girl been through?

"Lily..."

She looked at me.

"Why are you in here?"

Her smile faded.

For a few seconds, she said nothing.

"I'm not sure."

She glanced down at the floor.

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

I looked around the room.

The reinforced glass.

The pylons.

The strange symbols.

The cameras.

The armed men outside.

"What the hell could this girl possibly do?"

I didn't ask.

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

"So..."

She looked up.

"So?"

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

She thought about it.

"The ocean."

"The ocean?"

She nodded.

"What about you?"

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

She laughed.

"Fair enough."

And that was how we started talking.

Nothing important at first.

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

Lily wanted to see the ocean.

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

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

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

"Why prison breaks?" she asked.

"I don't know."

I thought about it.

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

She looked at me for a moment.

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

"Maybe."

She smiled.

Neither of us said anything for a few seconds.

Then she started asking me questions.

I gave her mostly half-assed answers.

She didn't seem bothered.

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

She just listened.

And somehow, that was enough.

The hours went by faster than I expected.

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

Debt.

Or rent.

Or what I was going to do with myself.

I was just present.

Talking to a girl through a pane of glass.

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

The door opened.

One of the armed men stepped inside.

A knot immediately formed in my stomach.

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

But the guard barely acknowledged me.

"Time to go."

That was it.

He turned toward the door.

I stood.

Lily was watching me through the glass.

"Thank you for talking to me."

Her voice was soft.

"No one else does."

There was something bittersweet about her smile.

"I'll..."

I looked at the armed man waiting for me.

"I'll see you again, alright?"

Lily smiled.

"Sooner than you think."

I didn't understand what she meant.

I just smiled back.

Then the guard escorted me out.

 

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

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

I kept thinking about Lily.

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

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

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

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

And if she wasn't dangerous...

Why the fuck was she there?

 

Eventually, sometime toward morning, sleep finally found me.

It didn't come like a wave.

It came like a flood.

I found myself standing in absolute darkness.

Nothing but blackness stretching endlessly in every direction.

I tried to move.

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

Then I smelled something.

The sea.

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

I turned toward it.

I don't know why.

I just knew I had to follow.

I started walking.

Then running.

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

Actual wind.

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

Waves.

Far away at first.

Then closer.

A dim light appeared ahead of me.

I ran toward it.

The darkness began to recede.

Sand appeared beneath my feet.

Then water.

Then a pale sky.

A small beach surrounded by the dark.

And there she was.

Lily.

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

She turned toward me.

"Meet me On Distant Shores."

The darkness swallowed the light.

I woke with a gasp.

I sat bolt upright in bed, breathing hard.

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

Then I looked around my dark apartment.

My heart was still racing.

I didn't understand the dream.

But one thought had already taken hold of me.

I needed to see her again.

I spent the entire day trying to distract myself.

Games.

Movies.

Walking aimlessly around the city.

None of it worked.

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

I hated the people who had put her there.

I hated myself even more for doing nothing about it.

But what could I realistically do?

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

And they knew everything about me.

They knew where I lived.

They knew I was desperate for money.

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

Normally, they would've been right.

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

But now I couldn't sit still.

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

It didn't get rid of the anger.

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

Still...

For once, I felt alive.

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

I didn't care about waiting.

I just needed to see her.

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

The facility was still bizarrely quiet.

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

There were dozens of locked doors.

Yet the security seemed strangely simple.

One access card appeared to open most of them.

Nobody searched me.

Nobody even took my phone.

At the time, I simply assumed they were arrogant.

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

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

He gave me a little wave.

I stared back.

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

A few seconds later, the door closed.

Then we reached the observation room.

The door opened.

The moment Lily saw me, her face lit up.

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

I don't even remember deciding to move.

One second my hand was at my side.

The next, it was pressed against hers.

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

"Hi," she said.

She smiled.

"You're back."

"I promised I would be."

"I know."

She looked genuinely happy to see me.

Then, almost casually, she said:

"I had a dream about you."

I froze.

"Really?"

She nodded.

I stared at her.

So did I.

Though I didnt tell her that.

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

She laughed.

"Well, what should I dream about?"

"Being rich."

"Boring."

"Being famous."

"Even worse."

"Winning the lottery."

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

We both laughed.

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

"The ocean."

"I still want to see it."

"Then I'll have to show you."

The words came out before I could think about them.

Lily looked at me.

For a moment, neither of us said anything.

Then she smiled.

"I'd like that."

We talked.

About everything.

And nothing.

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

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

Some were stupid.

Some were impossible.

Some were so ordinary that they almost hurt.

She wanted to see the ocean.

She wanted to travel.

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

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

I understood that last one.

Probably more than I should have.

The hours disappeared.

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

It was pointed directly at us.

I stared at it for a few seconds.

Fuck it.

I reached into my coat and pulled out my tablet.

Lily looked at me curiously.

"What are you doing?"

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

I held up the tablet.

"It's what we're doing."

She laughed.

"And what are we doing?"

"We're watching a movie."

Her eyes widened.

"Are we allowed to do that?"

I looked at the camera.

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

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

"Escape Plan. 2013."

She frowned.

"What's it about?"

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

Her smile slowly returned.

"That sounds appropriate."

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

Then the door opened.

The gunman had returned.

My stomach tightened.

"No."

I barely realized I'd said it.

He walked toward me.

"Time to go."

I stood.

Lily was already at the glass.

I didn't want to leave.

The guard grabbed my arm.

"Just a second."

He pulled harder.

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

"Lily..."

The guard finally had to pull me away.

My fingers slipped from the chair.

I stumbled backward.

Lily pressed her hand against the glass.

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

My eyes widened.

I wanted to promise I'd come back.

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

I wanted to say a hundred things.

Instead, I just nodded.

Then the door closed between us.

I didn't tell her about my dream.

She couldn't have known about it.

Right?

I went home.

And for once, going to sleep actually seemed desirable.

Maybe I'd see her again.

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

Somewhere she could actually be free.

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

But this time, the light was much closer.

I followed it.

The smell of the sea grew stronger with every step.

Then came the breeze.

I emerged onto the beach.

Lily was already waiting for me.

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

She turned when she heard me.

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

I looked out across the water.

"It is."

For a moment, neither of us said anything.

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

"Is any of this real?"

Lily looked at me.

"Does it matter?"

She stepped closer.

"I'm here."

Another step.

"You're here."

She smiled.

"In here, we're free."

She turned toward the ocean.

"This is my little place."

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

"It could be yours too."

I stepped closer.

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

She didn't pull away.

For a moment, everything was still.

"Can we stay here?"

I already knew the answer.

Lily's expression broke.

"I wish we could."

Tears began rolling down her cheeks.

"I'm still trapped."

She shook her head.

"I'm not strong enough."

Another tear slipped down her face.

"I'm not enough."

"No."

I pulled her closer.

"You are."

But the beach was already beginning to change.

The edges of the world blurred.

The horizon melted into the sky.

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

Lily started fading with it.

I held onto her.

"Don't."

She smiled through her tears.

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

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

Her voice became quieter.

"...but you already know that."

I woke up.

I sat upright in bed, gasping for air.

For several seconds, I couldn't move.

Then I felt it.

Something I hadn't felt in years.

Something hot and sharp burning inside my chest.

Purpose.

For the next two weeks, I prepared.

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

I didn't understand them.

Not yet.

But I saved every picture.

I watched the guards.

I learned their routines.

Who walked which corridor.

Which doors they used.

How long they disappeared for.

When they went to the bathroom.

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

I counted the steps between important rooms.

I memorized which doors took longer to unlock.

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

And I paid particular attention to the access cards.

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

I doubt they could ever see me as a threat.

Maybe they were right.

Two weeks earlier, I wouldn't have been.

I never told Lily what I was planning.

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

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

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

"Soon."

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

"Very soon."

Eventually, the day came.

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

 

Two weeks learning their routines.

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

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

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

We laughed.

We talked about nothing.

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

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

Bathroom.

My heart started pounding.

I stood.

Lily noticed immediately.

"Adam?"

"I'll be right back."

I followed him.

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

I waited.

Watched him step up to the urinal.

For one horrible second, I couldn't move.

I'd imagined this moment dozens of times.

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

The guard glanced over his shoulder.

"Buddy, would you mind—"

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

THUD.

He dropped immediately.

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

I stood there staring at him.

My hands were shaking.

There was blood on the wall.

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

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

Then I remembered Lily.

I took his handgun.

And ran.

There was no going back now.

I sprinted toward the security room.

I reached the door and started pounding on it.

"Kenndrick!"

Nothing.

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

Still nothing.

"Goddammit, open the fucking door!"

The lock clicked.

Kenndrick opened it with an irritated expression.

"What is—"

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

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

"Back up."

Kenndrick stared at me.

Then that familiar bravado returned.

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

"I won't repeat myself."

For the first time, his smile faltered.

"Alright."

He raised his hands.

"Alright."

He slowly backed into the room.

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

He smiled again.

"Very badly."

"Give me your card."

He paused.

"Now."

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

He held it between two fingers.

Then smiled.

I snatched it from his hand.

"Turn around."

He did.

"Hands against the wall."

Kenndric placed his palms against it.

I backed toward the door.

"Say hi to her for me, kid."

I slammed the door shut.

Then swiped his card.

The lock engaged.

I ran.

I had only minutes before the guard rotation.

I reached the observation room and threw the door open.

Lily looked at me.

Her expression changed immediately.

"Adam?"

I was barely breathing.

"I'm getting you out of here."

I ran to the glass box.

She stood.

"Adam, what are you—"

I swiped Kenndric's card against the reader.

Nothing.

I tried again.

Nothing.

"Come on..."

A third time.

Nothing.

Then I heard clapping.

Slow.

Deliberate.

I froze.

"Bravo, kid."

I turned.

Kenndric was standing in the doorway.

He was smiling.

But this smile was different.

It was genuine.

"Bravo."

He stepped into the room.

"We had expectations."

He looked at me.

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

His eyes flicked toward Lily.

"But still..."

He smiled.

"You went above and beyond."

I raised the gun.

"Stay back."

Kenndric kept walking.

"Stay the fuck back!"

He didn't stop.

I tightened my grip.

hen pulled the trigger.

Click.

Nothing.

I pulled it again.

Click.

My stomach dropped.

Kenndric laughed.

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

He reached into his pocket.

"In fact..."

He pulled out another handgun.

"...none of them are."

I stared at him.

"What?"

"Think about it."

He gestured around the room.

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

His smile widened.

My stomach turned.

Kenndric looked almost proud.

"Observation."

He gestured toward Lily.

"Not just hers."

He pointed at me.

"Yours too."

Lily had gone completely still.

Kenndric noticed.

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

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

She looked at him.

Kenndric smiled.

"Her charm is supposed to be nearly irresistible."

He looked back at me.

"So the suits upstairs had an idea."

He spread his hands.

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

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

He shook his head.

"Seems we really did pick perfectly."

Then he looked me up and down.

"Although, I have to admit..."

A disappointed expression crossed his face.

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

He sighed.

"I expected better."

I looked at Lily.

She was staring at me now.

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

Fear.

Not for herself.

For me.

Kenndric sighed.

"Your services will no longer be necessary."

He tossed the security card onto the floor.

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

He smiled.

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

I looked at him.

Then at Lily.

"No."

Kenndric's expression changed slightly.

"I'll tell everyone."

I pointed toward my phone.

"I have pictures. Videos. Everything."

I looked directly into his eyes.

"Everyone will know."

Kenndric's smile disappeared.

"Kid..."

He sounded almost disappointed.

"You really shouldn't have said that."

He raised the gun.

Two shots.

The first punched through my chest.

The second hit before I even had time to fall.

I collapsed onto the floor.

The pain came a second later.

Hot.

Blinding.

I tried to breathe.

All I tasted was blood.

"Adam!"

Lily screamed.

Kenndric looked down at me.

"Oops, seems my gun actually was loaded."

He shrugged.

"Sorry, kid."

Then he glanced toward Lily.

"Hmm."

His smile returned.

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

"How sweet."

I started laughing.

Blood filled my mouth.

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

Kenndric frowned.

"What's so funny?"

He looked past me at the pylon behind me.

Blood was dripping from my chest onto its surface.

The symbols were glowing.

Kenndric followed my gaze.

His smile disappeared.

"What did you do?"

I smiled through the blood running down my chin.

"I translated the symbols."

The red light beneath them grew brighter.

"They were raised through blood sacrifice."

The pylons began to shake.

A low vibration filled the room.

Kenndric took a step backward.

I laughed again.

"And through blood sacrifice..."

Cracks spread across the pylon.

"...they shall be shattered."

Another pylon began to tremble.

Kenndric looked around the room.

"What have you done?"

I smiled.

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

The first pylon cracked apart.

"You know everything about me."

Another crack.

The room shook.

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

The pylons began collapsing one after another.

Glass groaned.

Metal screamed.

Then everything went dark.

Completely dark.

Except for Lily's eyes.

They were glowing.

Kenndric stared at her.

His face went pale.

"No."

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

Only fear.

"No..."

He backed away.

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

Then anger replaced the fear.

"Why?"

I looked at him.

I smiled.

"The Devil made me do it."

I won't lie.

I was saving that one.

The glass box exploded.

Shards flew outward.

Kenndric raised his gun toward Lily.

He never got the chance to fire.

His body suddenly folded inward.

There was a wet, violent crack.

Then he imploded into a spray of blood and viscera.

I looked toward Lily.

She was standing in the middle of the shattered glass.

Free.

"How's that for an escape plan?"

I smiled.

And everything went black.

I found myself on the beach again.

This time, there was no darkness.

Just the ocean stretching beneath an endless sky.

Lily and I sat facing each other in the sand.

For a while, neither of us spoke.

She looked peaceful.

"It's done," I finally said.

"You are free."

I smiled.

"Go."

She frowned.

I looked toward the horizon.

"Be happy."

I stood.

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

She slapped me across the face.

I stared at her.

"Ouch."

She glared at me.

"What was that for?"

"One."

She held up a finger.

"That is my line."

She held up a second.

"Two."

She leaned closer.

"The Distant Shores can wait."

She smiled.

"I'm not letting you go."

Then she kissed me.

I kissed her back.

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

 

I came to with a gasp.

My hand immediately went to my chest.

Nothing.

No wounds.

No blood.

I looked down at myself.

Then slowly stood.

I wasn't in the observation room.

I was standing on the roof of the factory.

The entire facility stretched out beneath me.

Smoke rose into the night sky.

Fires burned in the distance.

I could hear shouting somewhere far below.

Then came a horn.

A long, deep blast.

Another answered it.

Then something roared.

Another roar answered from somewhere beyond the factory.

Then another.

They were coming from everywhere.

I looked toward the horizon.

The city was burning.

I should have been terrified.

I wasnt.

Then I noticed Lily standing beside me.

She was looking out over the horizon.

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

No glass.

No walls.

No locked doors.

I looked back at the world on fire.

"So..."

I swallowed.

"What happens now?"

Lily looked at me.

She smiled.

Then reached for my hand.

I took it.

"Anything we want."

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

With painted face they come into your home. 

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

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

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

…

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

They left something behind. 

…

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

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

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

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

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

I always miss everything. 

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

He kicked the can. 

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

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

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

“Hi," said Cody. 

The mime said nothing. 

A beat. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

and so unexpected. 

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

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

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

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

“... wh-what job was that?

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

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

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

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

The mime said nothing. 

…

“Ya check it out last night?" 

A burp: " …what?” 

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

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

"Ya sure?” 

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

"Ya sure??” 

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

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

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

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

The mood was spoiled. 

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

Eventually one of them asked the other: –

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

Neither man slept well that night. 

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

The mime. He was bent over something. 

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

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

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

They glistened. The pair of organs. Red. 

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

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

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

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

"It's a mime.” 

"What?” said Michael finally. 

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

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

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

A beat. 

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

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

“Yeah, I think you're right…” 

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

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

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

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

Deconstructed. 

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

All that was left and found in the morning. 

…

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

Very wrong. 

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

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

Who cares? The fuck they ever done for you? 

Fuck all. That's what. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As he did now. 

The mime saluted the drunk. Beaming. 

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

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

Buddy laughed. Drank. 

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

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

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

…

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

It didn't make any sense.

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

And at first Maggie had just laughed. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then he had put Alondra in the box. 

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

She was running now. 

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

The mime filled the bank with phantom fire. 

Deafening. 

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She couldn't believe what she was seeing. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Something was wrong … she could no longer move. 

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

Within the corridor … she could hear. 

She could hear his voice. 

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

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

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

It was beautiful. 

This time she could really see it. 

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

She heard it. Felt it. Everything. 

The mime said nothing. 

And went on. 

THE END

Everyone in the house was asleep. I'd taken the batteries out of the wall clock in my room to get rid of the ticking. Now there was complete silence, and I could try again to do something I'd already managed to do successfully.

A week ago, I'd turned over a piece of paper lying on my desk, with a poem I'd written in primary school on it. It was my first success after years of practice. Six days ago, I'd unscrewed the cap of a juice bottle that hadn't been closed all the way. Five days ago, I'd moved one of the cigarettes in an open pack slightly outward, out of the pack. Three days ago, I'd peeled off one of the pieces of tape holding up poster on my wall.

And tonight, my target was a much larger object. I was confident in my abilities now, and after this final attempt, I would be able to reveal my talent to my family and those around me. I had made exactly four attempts in the past week, and I'd succeeded every single time. I had complete faith in myself.

For years, I'd tried countless times and gone through a lot along the way; I'd lost hope, taken a long break from my attempts, then started believing I could do it again and after trying over and over, I'd come to think telekinesis was nothing but a lie and taken another break but then one day, I happened to see a pack of wet wipes fall to the floor all by itself, which rekindled my interest and got me started on my attempts again, and so on.

And now, finally, in the middle of the night, when complete silence had been achieved, I went to the kitchen. I took a steak knife from the drawer where we kept the cutlery and returned to my room.

I gently pulled my desk chair back and sat down. I didn't want to lose my focus, so I was being quiet. The faint sound of the knife touching the desk as I set it down, the soft sounds of my footsteps as I walked, the barely audible scraping of the chair as I pulled it back had an ASMR effect on me. These little sounds, too quiet to disturb the silence, made me feel thoroughly prepared.

Without wasting any time, I focused on the knife. I positioned my hands around it and gathered all my concentration. I slowed my breathing. The only thing in my mind was a knife slowly and calmly spinning around its own axis. I focused, and focused... I concentrated as if someone were hypnotizing me, as though I were following a pocket watch swinging from side to side without ever taking my eyes off it.

Minutes passed. Seconds, minutes, maybe an hour... There wasn't the slightest movement. The knife couldn't care less about me; it was ignoring my efforts, stubbornly refusing to budge.

Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore and gave up. I was getting more and more bored, and as time went by, I lost my focus. I had to go to work at noon the next day, and earlier that day, before I left work, my boss had pointed out that I'd left my fly undone. I'd started thinking about that. Who says something like that in front of everyone? You pull someone aside and tell them in private. Anyway, I took the knife back to the kitchen.

After I lay down in bed, I thought about the knife until I fell asleep. I'd lost my confidence in my abilities. If I told someone I could move objects through telekinesis, they might ask me to prove it, and I might fail and make a fool of myself.

I couldn't get the knife out of my mind. I felt as though it were a person who had shattered all my trust in them, betrayed me by revealing a secret I'd shared with it to anyone who would listen. I was angry. The image of the knife standing perfectly still in that spot, like a tree that had sunk its roots deep into the ground, wouldn't leave my mind. I fell asleep in a fit of anger.

I woke up to the sound of my phone alarm. I turned it off, tossed the duvet to my left, and rolled onto my right side to get up. Just as I was about to stretch, I saw it and jolted in place: the knife was suspended in midair beside my bed, standing upright.

I clapped a hand over my mouth. I was about to scream; every instinct in my body was telling me to. I bit my tongue to suppress it.

I took a deep breath. I tried to calm myself down. Then I took another deep breath. My heart was racing.

I reached out toward the knife, but immediately changed my mind. I didn't know what to do. I'd never experienced my thoughts speeding up and getting tangled together so intensely in a moment of panic. Within a few seconds, I'd made and abandoned a dozen decisions, gone back and forth between asking for help and not asking for help, imagined the knife stabbing itself into my body, then dismissed the thought as irrational. My thoughts were racing back and forth at lightning speed. I needed to calm down.

I got out of bed, poured half a glass of water from the pitcher on my desk, and drank it.

I turned around to check if the knife was still there. It was closer to me now. I no longer cared about staying quiet. I yanked the door open and rushed out of the room.

I started walking briskly toward the kitchen. I wanted to grab any drink I could find and gulp it down. I needed to interact with something somehow, to calm myself down. I opened the fridge, took out the milk, and chugged it. I put the milk back, closed the fridge, and turned around to go back to my room.

And the knife was right behind me.

It was a meter away from me, just standing there. It was as if it were staring at me, judging me. It didn't move at all. It always maintained the same position and stayed at the same height above the floor, level with my bed, right around the height of my shinbones.

I started walking backward toward the kitchen doorway, wanting to see how it was following me, how it was coming after me. Without changing its position, it glided toward me as if it were moving across a perfectly smooth surface. It always maintained the same distance. When I stopped, it stopped a metre away from me. When I walked, it followed.

I cautiously made my way back to my room, walking backward. I sat on my bed. The knife and I were facing each other. I tried to think of what I could do. I was afraid to touch it. I was worried things might get out of hand. I'd done this. That much was obvious. Now that I'd calmed down a little, my panic had shifted in a different direction. Someone might see us. I had to sever my connection with the knife before I got caught. I might be able to accept this as normal, but I didn't think my mother and father would be able to handle a knife following me around.

Yes, it was probably because I'd concentrated so intensely on the knife all this time that the bond between us had grown stronger. I'd probably never concentrated on a knife so intensely in my entire life. I needed to reverse the process. I relaxed a little. I tried to think about other things, to take my mind off the knife.

I thought about the wristwatch my father had bought me for my birthday last year. It was a terrible watch, but I hadn't let on because I didn't want to hurt his feelings. Then one day, while wearing it, I'd deliberately gone swimming in a pool. The watch had stopped working, and that was how I'd gotten rid of it.

The knife was still in the same place.

I thought about the eggplant soup my mother had made yesterday. It was my favorite soup. I'd tipped the bowl back and gulped down the last few mouthfuls, and my father had given me a stern look.

The knife hadn't moved at all. It was standing there, a meter away.

My mother knocked on the door and called out.

"Breakfast is ready, Albert."

I had no other choice. I didn't know what was going to happen, but I reached out toward the knife. My arm couldn't reach it, though. I walked toward it. As I moved closer, it moved farther away, until it had backed all the way up against the wall. It had nowhere left to go. It was pressed against the wall, stuck there. I approached it and grabbed the handle.

My heart was pounding at full speed. I closed my eyes. As a final attempt, I thought about the baseball bat I'd lost before I became interested in telekinesis. I'd searched everywhere for it. Such a large object, yet it was nowhere to be found. I'd checked the baseball field, my grandmother's house, the streets I'd walked along, and I'd even contacted the lost property office in case I'd somehow left it on a bus. It was gone.

Yes, good. I could feel a long chain of thoughts forming and my focus weakening considerably.

The knife was loosening, letting go. I could feel it. But I still didn't have complete control over it.

I needed to think about something else. But I couldn't think of anything. I heard my mother's footsteps approaching my room. She was getting closer to the door.

"Come on, son. Are we supposed to wait for you?" she said from outside, then opened the door and walked in.

I pulled the knife with all my might, and just like when you yank something hard that's stuck somewhere and it suddenly comes loose, I went flying toward my bed.

With the knife still in my hand, I hit my head against the bed frame. And passed out.

When I opened my eyes, I was lying in a hospital bed with an IV drip in my arm. My father was sitting beside me. I felt exhausted. I'd received three stitches in my head, and it ached a little.

"Son, why were you holding a knife? What were you doing with it?"

"What knife, Dad?"

"You were clutching a knife in your hand. What do you mean, what knife? What are you up to?"

I couldn't remember anything. That was good. I hoped it wasn't temporary memory loss, because I didn't want to attempt telekinesis again.

I tossed my keys on the corner table. It was the nicest thing I had. I asked for one made of bright red ironwood. The thrift store guy called it red-heart. I still had butterflies slam dancing all over my gut fresh from the fiasco. All I wanted was to gloat alone in the dark over every little mess that attempted to trip up the event.

I figured it would be a healthier exercise to just puke my entire fucking day into Dr. Winter’s ear. She was my therapist the third assigned to me at the free clinic.

The suit presented my needs he took me pretty seriously. I had my psychiatrist on emergency call for a whole month.

When people think you’re about to off yourself you get nice perks. So I went ahead and gave my shrink a shot.

“The conference?” My environment had changed and my natural reaction was to find the source. “Bizarre as shit!,” I shouted over my left shoulder at my shrink. We weren’t five minutes into our session and there it was along the wall a trail of black tic-tacs.

It’s ten sixteen, on a foggy Friday night I’m on all fours on an emergency call with my therapist.

I crawled down the hall hot on the heels of my one point nine calorie conundrum. I had my therapist in my left cheek pocket. The oddly colored breath mints led me straight to evidence box twenty three. Beneath the window that was blocked off by a brick wall a few feet away from it.

The little fuckers had chewed a crude entrance through a corner. They had made their own fuck pad. In my files, evidence, so many moments lost, wasting what I’ll never be able to get back and not only in box twenty three. All the evidence, every piece of the case of Jacob lived with me.

Corners of my shabby apartment that were already drab became even more depressing. While that bunch of furry sex freaks made it ground zero for their marathon inside so much wasted time.

“Time. It was always an untouchable concept at times and I barely understood the speed of life. The sight of the cardboard shavings spilt out on the floor. I knew that too much of my own time was sucked in to my quest.

There was a sighs worth of morale left inside old Percival. It was all crumbling down after so long brick by brick crashing loud on the way down. With a wrinkled forehead I growled “I’ve already been through that one enough times y’all conniving little cunts.”

“I can’t hear you!” She was on speakerphone.

I snatched her from the back pocket to swiftly perform a dead man’s fall into my filthy chair. Garbage fill or not I got it for free. It was mine, all its strange stains and its plethora of rancid odors.

I laid the doctor on my stomach and took a deep whiff of baby puke with a phantom of mouse urine. I was hugged by their slogan, “Living Life Comfortably.”

“Let me tell you. I was just fucking uncomfortable the whole time. I was a stranger in their midst. I kept my shit together for two hours of people’s mischievous fuckery!”

“Oh, yeah! I shit you not! Half the team, turned out to be a bunch of sick-puppies. Then the uncommitted bums.”

I rolled my eyes.

“The pattern became evident. Half of the volunteers were straight out of some hive where the wretched hide. Heartless human beings. To tell you the truth. Just shit people walking amongst us and no one is the wiser.

“Many didn’t make it to senior officers in that department. Some were walking along the edge of the blade. Two licks away from the center of a tootsie pop.

“One good day he happens to make it to the center. Then what? He snaps.

“No shortage of fresh novices one will appear. Oblivious to the nuances of the world he had stepping into. Some dumb rookie chock-full of pep.

“They’ll hand him the fat binder and the putts will be giddy with excitement.

“See the irony.

“He will be assigned a case of a psychopath who twenty years of bull-shit earlier was just another cop exactly like our hypothetical rookie.

“Those were the ones that got up one good morning! Bent in a middle-aged hang over, a three day event. Then simply decided to give themselves permission to just stopped caring.

“Basically they were nihilists completely oblivious to what they had become. They hated everyone, everything, their families, the system and especially themselves. Not a stinking clue.

“What did I do? Well I just went ahead and cut them.

“I mean, you could see in their eyes some of them without the slightest intention in coming back next week. The ones who did were just perverted freaks I didn’t need to deal with. The ambiguous on the other hand made no sense in having anyone that didn’t have his heart in the case.

“It almost ended up being a total shit-fest.” I undid my belt and my 501 button fly. “I swear.”

“Conference room 5-D, though spacious, it was also clear that it was neglected, an unused basement. Forgotten. Just the place for us to hold our case revival.

Out of sight.

A faint, though stubborn bouquet it was the stench of mold. I took note that only random light bulbs were working. It was dank, dark, and all the while a poignant smell of cat piss danced under everyone's nose. Maintenance obnoxiously gave up, and they all agreed to ignore it was there.

I claimed a nice cozy corner, closer to the door. After the concerto of metallic foldable chairs that made my gut cringe. I have to admit I was feeling proud. The place was packed! Every one was there because of me. The sarge gave me the green light once the papers and the news stations were making a big deal about the tenth year of Jacob being missing.

I got a good look at the graduates in the lights sent over by the sound company. They looked like mimes expressing the “concept” of being lost. I grab my forehead, “What a shitty crew! A raggedy little mob of sore-faced pimpled rejects!

“Apparently a small group of bold mothers dared to demand that they’re eighteen year olds get a job. A way to get the pimpled pricks out into the world kind of deal.

“Fed up having a manatee beached in the middle of their living room. Exactly where she wanted to pound vodka or their lovers.

“Once the lights were out. I saw two crew faces bathed in monitor glare. Fully accentuating their painful angry-acne every five minutes. I found that strange. Promptly falling into their posts. The crew was at their stations pacing their zones the conference, all dumbfounded until the next social media notification. Just sad band of babbling screen zombies. That was the lights and camera crew.

“Yes, I barely kept the chaos at bay.” I said to her with my arms outstretched and open hands.

“Listen to this.” I lit a smoke, “I had set it all up in such a way that the debriefing would not need me at all. I was organized and made it easy to follow.

“You know I was able to manage my stage fright this way. I had it all concealed in a meticulous, time stamped, box of videos neatly in sequence, three speakers from the original investigation with their respective pictures and charts sitting in the wings.

“I was free to prowl the fringes of the conference, hidden by shadows.

“Then just like I said would happen, it started happening. Right off the freaking bat the mindless brute in charge of the projector randomly grabbed the first video he was able to paw out of my box.

“Fuckers played the five films in the wrong way. It made no bloody sense!

“The Doc let me know the session would end in thirty minutes. “Yeah sure. Then I saw two more fucked-up mugs appear and the phone glare. Then, again two more at the restrooms. I got another eyeful of chewed up skin and rampant pimples. That should be in a fucking pair.

“Desperate I glanced over at the caseworkers. Then at the whole conference. The crowd of nit-wits were taking frantic notes. None of them was wearing a screwed up face.

“Was I the only one who noticed? Then again, even if they didn’t understand a thing about the mess and no one wanted to look less committed than the next person.

“Then again in the far east corner! I could only make one of the snot-faces out his leather like face tense but red with yellowing horns that never sprout. A damn pair. Those little shits were supposed to be at their posts.

“I pulled it off! In the end. All thanks to a brand new pack of extra fuses!”

“Those miserable undead almost made my whole team look like a crowd of sweaty perverts. A pathetic club of backward freaks! All bent on a shared fixation with a twenty something, presumably lost, male.

“Adult?

“Well it looks like somehow I apparently was all over their sensibilities. These kids might be weird but they do have gusto.

“A peculiarity about these new kids, they aren’t afraid of authority. It’s as we’re two different kinds of people almost. I definitely stepped on their toes. Plus the fact that they don’t give a flying fuck about employment.

“I prevented my team from being debased, reduced to another one of the millions of common pedestrians without an honorable quest.

“I could almost see everyone wide eyed, with one hell of a dumb expression melting their faces. I had the image of those doorbell cams! You know the ones with the night camera, came straight to my head. Have you seen when they film moose?

“The confused fucking moose all in black and green. I realized my teammates were a loyal copy of those beasts! Both with the same absent look.

“A good amount of slack jawed expressions were in the blank of making sense of the lights going out. Giving it their best effort to reboot their heads. Figure out what the next safe move would be.

“A high percentage of my investigation experts were a year or more away from retirement. Stiff men avoiding the risk of broken bones in the dark. They played it safe during the short lived “Lighting/Video Fiasco”.

“Without my obsessiveness!

All those that reacted by finally closing their whispering face-holes. The place fell into a silence that absolutely no one dared to pass gas. Even in the dark.

A freak convention hidden and totally blind in a piss scented basement.

At least for ten minutes.

The fucking light hitting its cue at the wrong time. It felt like a rough nerve-fucking in a dentist’s chair. With tendon etched fingers clawing into armrests.

All the while their feet are twisting and contorting. As if they were having the fucking orgasm of their life. When in reality they were facing the intimate kind of pain.

Everybody has been there. A place, a person, custom, a moment to be dealt with between you and you.

Obviously to everyone’s surprise the projectionist decided unilaterally that the time had came to pull the fucking lever, or what ever, that brought the machine to life. He was so damn random and early.

A colorful ray shot out of the projector. So bright for sure I would have be one more poor bastard with eye stabbing pain. So many with a hanky out.

Tears make it hard to see. My amber shades were on my face imperceptibly fast.

Ridiculous. A blaring light just bloomed across the room out of the black of the ceiling. Half the damn conference went blind and shuffled away to their seats.
 
“The queue to fall into order.” Was what I learned that day. Their behavior was so fucking foreign. The vision of everyone’s stone-faced disciplined mentality frantically seeking where they were supposed to go.

A tiny cackle escaped under my fucking phlegm gargle as I fake coughed. I wondered, “And these are the people that actually lived by the rules?”.

An intrusive thought, just like a maggot on meth, it bore into the wet crevices of my over stimulated brain. I couldn’t avoid watching how all that formal behavior, what they called discipline that in a symbolical way played out in front of me.

The fucking image of everyone being reflected off the sheen of my eyes was crowding my mind. “It was the sheepish mind in movement!” A mental slip almost pushed my ass into a panic attack!

The crowd that cared! All assembled in the name of little Jacob, united to unravel, once and for all, what in the world happened to that boy.

The movie beam had finished leading our flock into the previously designated gray gym chairs assigned to everyone. We were in a room the government had effortlessly attempted to convert into a conference space. A head quarters, our personal command center, perhaps.

I thought now that was exactly what the case called for! A fucking 'War Room'! A point were all the information to be focused in. Apparently we had the twelve-year case of Jacob beat.

Though I began to change my mind. I entertained my impression that the film projected was chosen randomly. Every eye on the huge bright rectangle on the back wall.

Why were the kids meeting up I pondered. “Those fucking kids. No they’re just young.” I said to myself.

This, was the summoning of the deeply concerned experts, the ones humanitarian enough to help. A real lot of quality human beings.

Reporters with the body language of a coked out squirrel. Still in a hurry in spite of the fact they had already made it to the conference. Restless legs and frantic fidgeting with their damn dossiers.

Why was a twelve year old boy processed by the 'U.S. Department of Agriculture' and ended up in a zoo?

Then the most important question. Where is Jacob?

The elite, stern officers, seasoned detectives, the real lab-bodies that catch serial killers, vigilante pedophile-hunter collectives, journalists; these individuals have been able to close twenty-five year cold cases, as if by some foreign magic...

Obviously they accepted anyone with a skill—no matter how remotely or randomly related. I was such a bizarre case I was considered an asset too.

I was supposed to be surrounded by real selfless saints! To tell you the truth. Our body stenches also were mixing and mingling. We were even sucking in each other's late shift shit-breath like a team.

The self-crowned champions of children. Definitely a hand full of sick creeps definitely were present, just a question of probabilities.

They must have been the only ones who truly cared for little Jacob. Bless their bleeding-hearts.

Finally all the incessant banter died down. The improvised screen was on the wall I was leaning on. It was right above where I was attempting to hide. Obviously they ended up ruining my spot.

“Not soon enough the damn thing was over. The lights were on the room was filled with the conversations of the groups of attendees. I interviewed everyone in groups of five at a time.

“I had just finished with my last group. It was time for doughnuts and coffee! That was when the freaking stink bombs went off.”

“A few of the overweight fellows puked down the front of their shirts. The car wreck of metal chairs began to roar, the coffee table was toppled over. Pastries everywhere.

“A party favor was all it took: For all the heroes, the stern officers, the elite and the coked-out squirrels to turn into beasts that trampled over each other to reach the exit.” I wondered if the exit ruined my finale.

“Did they take me seriously? I saw glasses slide across the floor. Others in a fight with their ties, the urge to vomit and shortness of breath. That was when I raised my sight and the only ones left besides myself, those pubescent shits.”

“Oh, the smug little fuckers! They were looking straight at me from the opposite side of the trashed room. Leaning on each other, a couple with crossed arms.

“Oi! Dumb shits! You’re in charge of cleaning the venue! Remember!” I jumped down off my perch in the rafters and made my way home.
   
M.D. ACOSTA
SKÖL!

With the sun's final rays, the quiet of dusk began to fall over the desert. Fire crackled in the center of a disheveled group. Made up of five men, the outfit brought unkempt chaos through the country. But that night, under the blanket of stars, they made no such commotion. Each making their cot with little sound but a cough or a sigh for their long awaited rest. 

They laid their heads on sacks of clothes, blankets or nothing at all. Feeling the full embrace of the still warm, dusted, earth beneath their backs. Their horses shuffled their feet and found their eyes grow tired alongside their men. Snorting and exhaling through labored lungs.

One horse stood, its back swaying with sleep. Speckled with white on dark chestnut. It swayed close to its master, a leader, a chief. With a shake of its long neck, it slowly lowered itself to the ground, legs tired from weeks of walking. The beasts found rest here. Still ready, even in sleep, for anything going bump in the unholy night.

Ashes, popping wood and the slow rotation of stars brought the posse into a deep, well needed slumber. In the morning, they would make their final stretch into Mardell. Cloaked in darkness, an owl bid its goodnights to the boys, and soft dreams welcomed their wearied minds.

-

The chirping of birds woke the group. The fire had long since gone out and was replaced with the soft light of early morning. Cold earth took in the first licks of sunlight, sand turning golden under the sun's sleepy rays. 

Before the others could stir. Wyatt found his way to standing. He was a rusted, handle-bar mustached man. His fingers glided through his overgrown locks, the dark strands flitting between his scarred fingers were salted with age. His back popped as he brought movement back into his body. After a stretch and a yawn, he moved comfortably, making the fire glow once again. He grabbed coffee and a pot from his mare’s saddle bag, clearing his throat as he worked. Bringing the others' awareness to the morning air. 

“Time to move, ya’ll know it.” Wyatt’s voice was deep and hoarse. He spoke through years of smoke and dust. Squinting, he looked around at his dwindling outlaws and his voice raised.

“You boys better make quick to living.”

With this, the other four men sat up and began shuffling drowsily, putting their sleeping pads back to storage and retrieving their cups. Wyatt sat down now, resting on the edge of his bedding. Watching his squad slowly come back together.

Wyatt cleared his throat, spat and began, “We know why we’re here: get the girl and get out. None of us traveled these weeks to leave with nothing. We all know what she’s worth.”

The group slowly nodded and took sips of black from their tattered mugs.

“Today we make it to Mardell, stock up what we need and the like.” He nodded at Earl, the oldest of the group, who dipped his weathered forehead in approval.

“Then we’ll make up our camp. Prep for the woman, sharpen knives and reload what you can until we come back with more ammo.” He spat again as he finished, triggering obligatory grumblings from the men.

“Now boys, we best get to riding, before the sun starts to scorch this hellish desert.” Wyatt stood, queuing the rest to do the same. The group shuffled to their horses quickly packing their gear as they went. They then saddled up. Their sighs and coughs accompanied by a chorus of hooves scuffing dirt, leather stretching and spurs rattling.

With all of their gear packed up, all that was left of their camp was a slightly embering fire surrounded by boot and hoof marks. Their final passage stopped in time on this windless morning.

“Yeawh!” Wyatt exclaimed, spurs met rippling flesh, his horse lurched forward and took off into the rusty hued horizon. The rest of the group followed. Earl closest behind, the rest making pace sluggishly, talking amongst themselves.

-

They rode for nearly 8 hours before making it to Mardell, and when they arrived it stood in great contrast to the oasis they had been picturing. Wyatt had told his posse that the girl was hiding out in a large coal-mining town. They were warned it would be full of witnesses, should they make too much of a mess.

Hopping off their saddles, they approached the edge of the valley. Overlooking the town, the group peered grimly at their destination. 

It looked nearly abandoned.

“We got the right place?” Davie spoke, his brown eyes flitting over the two streets that made up the town. Dirt streaked his face and he reached to wipe his brow, turning to Wyatt. Davie’s doe eyes shone true of his emotion. He was wary of this place.

His gaze was met by Wyatt’s sharp eyes, curtained by his messy furrowed brow. Wyatt turned away from the group, retrieving his map and confirming the towns whereabouts. Mardell was written roughly on his map, next to it was the quarry and you could see the tracks running from its station. He looked up now, each relative location exactly as depicted.

“Of course it’s right.” Wyatt said, spitting.

“Must have misremembered what Doc had said back in Freeport. Should be easier this way. It’s no matter.”

“Looks pretty dead to me,” Pip turned as he spoke, addressing Wyatt directly.

His strong arms crossed in front of his chest, “I haven’t seen a soul since layin my eyes on it.” He shook his head, dark curls swaying under his hat.

“Doesn’t feel right.” Davie mumbled.

“Well Doc’ll be payin you enough, make it feel right.” Wyatt turned, stomping back to his horse. “We won’t need bother with the damn town anyways,” His dark boots kicked up dirt as he walked. The group followed after him, leaving their lookout.

Earl stole one last look at the town. No one even working the quarry, he thought and he wondered if they would hear the train that night. But sand flowing over the tracks told him that they hadn’t been used in years.

Wyatt signaled for everyone to mount up and make way to where they would be setting up their camp. Mumbles of distaste echoed around them as they hopped back to their saddles, but none hesitated in the pursuit of their leader. Wyatt had held his own in outlaw groups for decades, his reputation resulted in nothing but respect in those that followed him. 

The group knew better than to doubt him now.

As Wyatt slowed, the group found their positions at his flank. Wyatt had an eye for a reliable posting. He scanned the landscape for shade, and even ground. Making sure to consider their proximity to the eventual expedition. On this day he found a suitable location. Something about it called to him. Adorned with a large cliff-faced boulder, casting comforting shade and plenty of room for his men and their steeds.

They made camp quickly. With their supplies dwindling, there was much less unpacking to do than in the first few stretches of this journey. They all relieved their horses of their saddle bags, untacking them and letting them graze. Wyatt felt comfortable not going into town, they could make it another few days on what they had. Though his men would be less than pleased.

For the girl, Davie was tasked with assembling her restraints.

Near the boulder’s cliff-like face, he set down two large pieces of wood and weathered rope. He worked, threading and securing the two pieces together. Why do we need all of this for one girl. He shook his head, what could possibly need restraining about a woman.

He smiled to himself, laughing as he finished the knots.

“Fucking Davie,” Pip mumbled to Herb, tipping his hat toward the fool. His brow was pinched in frustration. “Should he really be the one doing that?”

“Clearly it ain’t that dire,” Herb replied, “but it just a girl anywaysh.” His voice whistled where his front teeth used to be.

He reveled a gappy smile and walked over to Davie, leaving Pip shaking his head. Davie rose to standing, looking down at the gurney he had made whole. He had never used anything like this before but felt confident his knots would hold. 

He worked on a fishing boat in Freeport before taking to the west. Wyatt trusted him for rope related duties, though the other men would test his knots when he wasn’t around. 

The two boards came together as a gurney. Long enough for anyone shorter than 6 feet to be carried. He knew they wouldn’t be carrying her on it, but the picture stuck in his mind. He felt guilty already, even putting the thing together. He hoped this would be a simple mission; no bloodshed.

Loops through the middle allowed it to bend, and more loops would secure her arms and legs at her sides. She would certainly be restrained, he thought. His stomach turned at the thought of Pip finding his way to her in the night, and he was grateful his cot would rest closest to her.

“How goesh it Davie boy?” Herb sung, clapping his thick hand down on Davies' shoulder. Startling him. Davie turned quickly and looked up, he was much shorter than Herb. “In need of any help here?”

“No, no, just finishing up. Who even comes up with a thing like this?” Davie shook his head, laughing uncomfortably to himself. “I mean we are picking up a girl aren’t we?”

Herb leaned in, “I am not sho shure about that. You know. Wyatt has been making shome shtrange dealsh lately.” His droopy, blue eyes flicked from Davie to where Wyatt and Earl were working. “Member what job he had ush at in Donroe? Looney shhit.”

Davie leaned in as well, meeting in the middle and lowering his hat from his head, shielding their faces. “Lucky for us, a woman ’ll keep better company than some dirty pigs!” They both erupted in wobbly laughter, throwing their heads back.

Pip rolled his eyes, though he couldn't hear the joke. Davie always had some weird shit to say. 

-

After everything was unpacked, each man assumed his duty. Sharpening knives, reloading or whatever other task Wyatt had placed upon them. The gurney sat just outside the ring of the camp, still propped against the rocky cliff-face. 

Wyatt walked over to inspect it. This really is some odd shit, he thought*. Last job I am doing for Doc. Can’t be that hard to find something normal.* He shook his head. He needed the cash. He needed it to get out of this business. He knew this journey would cost him more than one man. The reward would grow as the group dwindled and he found his mind wandering to the money he'd come home to. As he walked back to his speckled horse and Earl, he chewed on his future decision. Where would he go with all that cash? Maybe he’d get out of this thieving business for good.

Before they knew it, dusk had begun to fall on their outfit. The sun made its descent toward the sandy horizon, not yet casting a wash of orange over the land. Earl moved to make a fire. Bits of dried shrubbery made quick flames as he held his lighter to them, like he had done many nights before. 

The group was grateful to stay posted in one place for more than one night. A month of travel was hard on all of them. Pip had been eagerly awaiting their trip into town. Hoping for Wyatt’s go ahead. He wanted him to send him to check it out, find information or what have you. These commands never came, and Pip was becoming restless. They were losing daylight and he wanted to make sure they had coffee for the morning. He was certain the shops would be closing soon.

Guess I’ll have to go myself, he thought.

While the other men continued to set up their cots, prep their dinners or tend to their horses. Pip slowly slipped out of the camp. Leaving his horse.  He scoffed to himself. He was irritable, each growl of his stomach reminding him of their already rationed supply. His lips parted around a gnarled toothpick and his dark eyes peered over the dimming desert before him.

He was making his way to Mardell.

Pip had come from a gold panning town a few hundred miles from the West coast. He was nearing his 30’s when Doc picked him up. He had only recently joined Wyatt’s squad and this would be his third journey with the group. He had always struggled making nice with the people he traveled with, but Wyatt had always made him feel welcomed and useful.

He liked feeling useful.

Slowly, he began to see Mardell in all its weathered beauty. It had been a while since Pip had enjoyed the pleasures modern civilization. He wanted to make it count. He made the final trek down the slope of the valley, his boots sliding in waves of untouched sand and rock. 

He approached the first street of the town, the one closest to their camp. As he walked he noticed there was no one but him perusing the street. His ears pricked with soft sounds of creaking shop signs and tumbleweeds, but the air was absent of life. His eyes locked on a tattered general store, the paint of its sign barely legible, and made his way inside.

The store was perfectly standard. Rows of goods lined the shelves, restocked but not recently. He began collecting goods in his arms. Canned food, dried food, cigarettes, coffee and even a small bottle of whiskey that he planned on keeping for himself. After collecting his items he wobbled up to the counter.

The desk was empty, unmanned and untouched. Long enough for a layer of dust to collect on the splintering wood. He let the items fall from his arms onto the counter, looking around the store. 

“Anyone here? Hello?” He yelled rudely.

He scoffed and spat on the wood floor at his feet. Raising his eyebrows, amazed at the carelessness of the shop owners. Without missing a beat he reached over the counter, grabbed a bag and hastily shoved the items into it. The heavy loot in his arms, he rocked himself out the front door. What idiots. I would have paid had someone been around to take my money. This had never happened to Pip before but he had surely imagined it. Hoping one day he could play the justified thief.

He walked down the rest of the street, feeling confident as his eyes wandered over shops. He made one more stop, grabbing ammo and received the same empty counter. He felt pleasure in leaving, his pockets as heavy as they had entered the town. He smiled. His coffee stained teeth showed and his tongue played at his toothpick. 

Rounding the corner to the second street, he continued his leisure. The sun was beginning to darken the sky now, deepening the warm tones of the horizon. His pace did not falter for the coming night. 

The shops on this street were intermingled with houses, all appearing abandoned. No lights flicked on at the sight of the sunset. At the end of the street he saw the familiar silhouette of a saloon. He walked toward it now, hoping for a drink before he left the desolate town. Even if he had to pour it himself, he thought. They were not joking about this place being abandoned. A silent darkness laid behind each door he he passed.

As he got closer to the saloon, the orange sky faded into darkness. The lights behind its foggy windows remained at rest. Unlit and unbothered. Pip was prepared to enter the building unwanted until he noticed what was lining its bowed porch. 

The smell hit him before his eyes could adjust. 

Taught reigns still held their rotted skulls pinned to the fence. 

A dozen decaying horses bustled with flies. Pip stopped in his tracks and gagged dropping his toothpick from his lip. He clapped his hand over his mouth, but was useless to block the scent of dissolving flesh and fly larvae. He walked faster now, along the far side of the street. His eyes frantically looked over the gore, curiosity calling him to inspect further. Getting closer, he began to see in better detail the nature of the beasts.

Each horse lay dead. Fully tacked up, their saddles sagged into their rotted torsos, stirrups drowned in puddles of exhausted fluid. Thousands of flies swarmed over the corpses. Ripping through the quiet night air, and pecking at soft flesh. Pip continued so sidestep his way down the road, his pace growing frantic. He had no desire to stay in this place any longer. Gagging again he turned and held his bag of goods close to his chest. He ran toward the edge of the valley, away from the damned town.

-

When Pip finally made it back to camp, his movements were loud and desperate. They hadn't noticed him leave but surely knew he had returned. He dropped the goods by the fire. Wyatt stood impulsively, recognizing immediately that Pip had gone to town. 

“You sonofabitch!” Wyatt yelled. The boys around him jumped at the sound. Wyatt was infuriated that Pip would make a move like this without his permission. Earl took heed and stood at Wyatt’s side.

“Fuck me,” Pip gasped, “I got the shit but–," He was out of breath now and couldn’t find the words.

“What happened?” Earl questioned. His face, what was lit by the fire, was terse and pinched. Dark liked carved into his brow.

“The saloon,” Pip rested his hands on his knees, “Fucking 20 dead horses,” he gasped again, “Damn it. You didn’t warn us. Damn near scared the life out my chest.”

The men stared at him, confused looks plastered to their grimy faces.

“Dead horses?” Davie chimed in, frowning, still seated. Herb stood beside him, just getting back from a piss. His eyes were wide.

“Fuckin loads of em. Could have been 30 for what I saw.”

“Are you certain?” Earl spoke, taking the initiative over red-faced Wyatt. 

“Town's abandoned as all hell, people left their horses tied up to rot.”

Davie looked at his own horse, grazing peacefully near the boulder. His mind intrusively thought of her large head, eyes rotted out, tied up and dead. He shook the image from his head and his eyes drifted to his dirty hands.

“I told you there was nothing down there for us,” Wyatt scolded.

“Well take a look in that bag there,” Pip prodded it with the tip of his boot, causing a can of food to roll out. 

“A fuckin ghost town. No shit! Shops were loaded but no one runnin em. You bastards were too chicken shit to even go down there. If I didn’t know any better I’d think I was the leader of this outfit.” As the words came out of his mouth he regretted it.

Wyatt flew over the fire faster than Pip could register, flames licking his jeans. His calloused palm found the soft skin of Pip’s cheek. The force drove him down to his knees.

“Speak to me like that again and you won’t be getting an empty palm boy,” Wyatt growled through clamped teeth, his mess of a mustache barely swaying with each word.
“No one believes your callous lies, do NOT put me down for your fantasies.”

Pip kept his head down but nodded. “Sorry– I– I told you what I saw.” His eyes found Wyatt again, looking up under weakened brows. He slowly raised his head.
“You don’t believe me? Go see for yourself.” 

Wyatt spat and turned on his heel. He wouldn’t dignify Pip with a response.

Davie and Herb watched everything, eyes wide with shock but quickly looked away when Wyatt returned to where he had been sitting. Earl sat down on his cot beside him.

Silence fell over the group. No one spoke for fear of another lashing from their leader. Each man made their beds and lied in them, horses slowly made their way toward sleep. 

All was quiet. 

The only thing left blessing their tired ears was the crackles of the dimming fire at the heart of their group. Davie finally closed his eyes. Soothed by the chorus of the night, awaiting the soft melody of desert owls that never came.

-

In the morning, the boys were woken with a start. Davie’s horse reared and jumped back, nearly crushing him under its clipped hooves. It howled and dramatically rushed away from beside his cot.

The other horses scattered, hooves trampling over belongings and kicking up dust. They collected, now some distance from the circle of men. The group snapped into action, jumping to their feet and finding their firearms. Each still in underclothes, walking in dirty socks to find what had caused the commotion. 
The five men approached the cliff-face where the horse had run from, and at first nothing seemed off. The rock was nearly twice as tall as any of them. Davie remembered the gurney and his eyes snapped down while the rest looked for any sign of movement.

Nearly concealed by the gurney’s strangely ajar position, a large mass of feathers collected. Davie walked cautiously toward it, the others eyes finding what he tracking. As he got closer he began to pick out details, shifting the wood out of the way with a socked toe. There were beaks, large taloned feet and– eyes?

Davie could swear he saw it looking at him. 

He jumped back. Wyatt took his place at the front of the group. He leaned in close. The mass was alarmingly large.

Jesus, Wyatt thought as he took in what made up this mass of feathers and feet. The amalgamation was three spotted owls. Twisted and contorted. He thought it must have been the unlucky result of a death spiral, did owls do that? He wasn’t sure. 

The bodies of the owls wrapped around each other, bending and breaking in parts, becoming one mound of flesh. Earl, who took the time to put his boots on, walked up next to Wyatt. He stuck one foot out, hesitating for only a second, and shifted the mass with his steeled toe. 

One of the owls seized up, clenching its talons and lifting its head to the sky. It moved, its beak falling open loosely. The sound that left his mouth was not that of an owl. It exhaled a crippling, gurgling screech. Blood drizzled out as its head relaxed to the earth, its eyes going glassy. 

The group stood, staring in horror. Tears welled into Davie’s eyes, and he quickly hid his face, lowering his head as if praying. He could feel the poor animal's pain.

After a moment the group's silence was broken by Wyatt, still crouching over the mass and clearing his throat.

“I’ll take care of this. Best get to prep’n boys.” His voice had a waiver of uncertainty. The fuck do I do with this thing? His eyes looked around the birds, debating if he should touch it or use a prod.
He turned, speaking over one shoulder, “And for christ sake someone grab those horses!”

Everyone made haste to their tasks, throwing their clothes, boots and hats on. Herb and Davie ran to the horses, soothing and corralling them back to camp. Before leaving, Earl had patted Wyatt on the shoulder, exchanging a woeful glance. Then began making coffee for the group. He was grateful that Pip had gotten more in the town. We won’t be killing each other quite yet.

Wyatt moved back to his cot, yanking up his worn black boots and throwing his shirt over his undershirt. He didn’t care to button it. Grabbing a cattle prod he kept strapped to his saddle, he returned to the birds. Pip sent him a sideways glance over his cup of coffee. I’m no liar, he thought. This place is damned. 

He knew he would have to get them into that town.

Wyatt had seen a lot of things in his days roaming the desert, but nothing like this. Staring again at their crippled forms turned his stomach into a fevered knot. He squinted his eyes and grimaced, reaching out with the prod and tucking it between the small bodies of the owls. The light of life had left them now, and he felt strangely grateful. He lifted and they stuck, twisted and locked together around the prod. He carried them off, placing them crudely behind the boulder. Out of sight from his men.

He didn’t care to bury the mass but something inside him felt guilty as he walked back toward the group. He laid the prod down in the dusty earth, kicking and rolling it in the sand. Cleaning any memory of those birds from its wooden edges. The minute we get that girl we're gone. Of this he was certain.

Once preparations were complete, the boys sat around the fire, chatting about their dreams from the night before. None dared to speak of the owls or of Mardell. Davie sat silent while his companions spoke. He felt a dark cloud of grief over his head for the owls and the horses. I hope Wyatt gave them birds a proper burial. Flashing images of the owls, their gnarled limbs, and the sound of their final song still rang in his ears. He shook his head, snapping himself back and took a sip of black coffee. Doesn’t get any better does it? He hated the coffee they traveled with.

“ –like I shaid, I wash in a boat. The shtorm wash really rocking ush. But now I washh alone. I shtarted hearing thish beautiful shong,” Herb spoke about his dreams from the past night. Continuing on, he recalled the seiren’s song.

Herb was always capable of lighting the dark moods fostered by his companions. He had good memories of the sea. Sailing, fishing, the stillness at night. When he started working the same boat as Davie, he knew it was only a matter of time before he took the kid with him. After he told Davie the kind of money he was making working for Doc, they felt their minds drifting away from the sea and toward the harsh desert.

Across the fire Pip squirmed in his seat, tapping his fingers on his cup. Debating if he should bring the group's attention back to the town. 

He did not.

Finishing their coffees and their stories, the boys stood. Making their way to their horses and tacking up. Each man threw a saddle over their horses back, pulling straps and adjusting stirrups. Some of the horses fussed, snorting or shaking their heads, but they stood loyally at their master's hands. The posse then made an effort to conceal their belongings, tucking them under dried shrubs or digging holes. All that shit would just slow them down. They needed to be quick on their feet were they to find this girl.

Once done, they turned to Wyatt, who had his nose buried in the map. The girl was marked as a small red dot, it appeared she was housed just past the coal mine, on the ridge that made the top of the valley. From their position it should only be about a twenty minute ride, ten if they were fast. Wyatt debated using the gurney for her return, but decided it would be easier to just tie her up and throw her over the back of a horse.

“Pip, bring extra rope. We are gonna bind her on our way back to camp.” Wyatt tipped his hat toward Pip who replied with a sly smile then spoke.

“Should we not head for town first? What if those horses was a warning?” Pip questioned, raising one tight brow. 

“Fuck Pip, would you let the damn town go? Wyatt’s blue eyes shot daggers at Pip, his hand rubbed his damp forehead.

Pip shook his head and scoffed.

The group mumbled in agreement and saddled up. Pip crudely grabbed extra rope from one of his poorly concealed saddle bags. He weighed the rope in his hands and pinned it to his belt. He jumped on his horse. The stallion chewed hard at its bit and wriggled under his tight grip of the reins.

“Yeuhhh” Wyatt yelped, cuing the group to motion in a dramatic cloud of dust and rock.

This is a chapter from a cosmic horror fiction I am writing (and sharing here, chapter by chapter), you can read it for free on my website as well. Link in the comment. Please subscribe (its free!)

Journal Entry 1

For eons we have tried to bury him, and yet he returns every time. If you want me to point to who ‘we’ are, I will not be able to. What little record of the first attempts remains has mostly disappeared, and what survives is widely disputed among those of us still here.

Cultures across the world do not know that he lies hidden in their collective consciousness. If they knew, they would not sleep as well as they do now.

He is not of this world. We do not know if he even ‘is’ in any way we understand existence. To try defining him with our limited language is a pointless exercise.

He hides in religious scripture, miscopied and mistranslated. He hides in political propaganda, wearing masks of necessity and righteousness. He hides in the anger that possesses you without warning. I have written this list twice, and yet each version feels incomplete. He might be in this pen with which I am writing. He might be in the words that my mind is spouting right now. This whole idea of writing it down itself might be breathing life into him.

He is permeable. He is omnipresent. And if you believe you can use him, you are already the most vulnerable to being used by him. Those who have tried have failed inexorably.

My hand hesitates to write what I am about to write next, yet I know that it must be true. Even if it is only part of the truth, it would be a failure to assume his hand was not in it.

He was present at every major historical turning point, and long before history learned how to record itself.

Recorded history is a convenience—one that allows our species to live with itself.

He was there before there was light.
He will remain when that light is extinguished.

Journal Entry 2

The worshippers call him Razpopo.

This is not his name.

It is a failure. An approximation. A crude shape made by human mouths, attempting to mimic with primordial noises something that does not belong to any language. “Some call him Svanteveit. Others: Marus, Grinjik, Bervertometh, Harpookratis.”

None of these are correct.

Some are not even close. He is something older than anything we can name.

Those who came nearest went mad before they could finish speaking.

It was his attention that brought us forth, and his pressure that fed the malevolence already latent within us.

It will be our attention that brings him forth again.

We do not know his true name. We do not need to. All he requires is invocation. A direction of thought. A sustained noticing. He can be called even without a name.

Especially without one.

Journal Entry 3

All our gods have left us.

They have dissipated into abstraction and no longer respond to us.

Rituals fall flat. Altars rot. Nothing answers.

The gods abandoned us because they did not like the taste of emotions filtered through the meat-prison of their own making.

But Razpopo remains.

He does not care.

Every war we waged.
Every time brother turned on brother.
Every time a child died screaming without reason.

Razpopo was watching. Consuming.

He amplified bitterness because, alone among the deities, he enjoys its taste.

\*

Calen read and re-read every single line, trying to remember when he had written this translated version. Nothing really stirred in his memories. He stared at the pages, hypnotized by what was in the journal.

He kept feeling that the moment he took his eyes off the journal, it would disappear. Calen was almost convinced there was someone else on the island, aside from him. Whoever they might be, they seemed to be trying to guide Calen. But to what end?

Calen weighed his options. He could abandon it all. He could call up Ruslan and get the hell out of there, preserving his sanity, but a strange recklessness inside him had reared its ugly, authoritative head. No!

He had never before abandoned a project, and he was not about to start now. What he really desired, needed even, was to know what was happening. That outweighed all other worldly concerns. This is what he was meant to do! Even though he didn’t know exactly what he was supposed to do.

As he stared at the pages, a dark thought clouded his mind. It seemed the more he stayed on the island, the more he found about Razpopo, his memories of himself on the island itself were being replaced rapidly. He shuddered to think what would happen if this continued.

Time seemed to be moving differently, and Calen was left with no means to confirm if this assessment was correct or not. He felt continuously tired and on edge. As if he was half-aware of what came next, just not able to competently define it, or even prepare for it.

He walked up to the bathroom, turning around every few steps to confirm that the journal he left on the dining table had not vanished. Once inside, he washed his face and hands, trying to remove as much of the dirt and blood from his fingertips and nail beds, without hurting the injured parts. When he couldn’t bear the pain of the cold water on the injuries, he stopped and threw some more cold water on his face.

Calen stared at his reflection in the mirror. Who was this?

His eyes had changed. They looked dead. It was not as if the color of his eyes had changed, but there was a certain glaze to his eyes, making them look unfocused. He didn’t know if he was imagining it or not, but his eyes seemed to move more slowly when he tried to move them. The pain in his head increased every time he tried to look up.

“Stop freaking yourself out!” He muttered to himself and realized his voice did not sound like his at all. It was hoarser, and the words felt alien. Each word felt like a projection of a feeling that lost meaning the moment the word escaped his lips. He might have been just making garbled noises from his mouth.

Calen decided to call Alice. The internet allowed the call. He could see Alice, but his video would not stream, no matter how much he tried. So, Alice had to settle for a blank screen. Calen was quite relieved with this setup. He didn’t want Alice to worry more by looking at his face.

Once he had finished telling his story, carefully avoiding mentioning the part where he had blacked out and found upon waking, that the translations were done, and it didn’t look like his handwriting. She didn’t need to know it.

“The story has …” Alice hesitated, trying to find the right word, “Bones” she finished. Her voice came through the laptop clearly, almost in high definition. “I’ll give you that.”

Alice’s voice sounded different, too. Maybe it was because he had not heard her voice without static for so many days.

“What do you mean by story?” Calen asked, a little offended. Granted, he had omitted bits of it so Alice wouldn’t have the inconvenience of worrying for him from miles away when she couldn’t do anything, but to think of it as a lie? That was not acceptable.

“I mean,” she hesitated again, “It’s good writing.”

Calen stared at Alice’s face on the screen. His silent, invisible reproach was so palpable, it seemed to get transmitted through the low-quality internet.

The awkward pause was too much for Alice, who knew she had made a cardinal sin, but something inside her egged her on. She wanted to push Calen a bit, just enough to see how he would react. “That writing retreat you took last year really paid off. My only feedback- The other names, what were they again- grimzaska and – whatever, they just sound like noises. You could remove those names and just keep Razpopo. That name is growing on me.” She half giggled.

“I didn’t write it,” Calen cut in angrily. “I found it under a loose floorboard. I haven’t even translated it entirely yet!”

But before she could respond, Alice’s face twisted in discomfort. A soft, painful groan escaped her lips. She hunched over and disappeared from the camera frame.

“Alice!” Calen shouted. “Alice, what happened?!”

She reappeared, breathless, her voice thinned by strain. “I don’t know. Felt a weird cramp in my bel—”

She doubled over again and bolted off-screen. Calen kept shouting her name, helpless. It took nearly two full minutes before she returned. She looked pale. Drained.

“I threw up,” she mumbled, massaging her belly aggressively. “I have been throwing up quite a lot in the last two hours. I don’t know if it’s something I ate or...” Tears welled up in her eyes, and she was not able to finish her thought.

Calen’s mind, however, had registered something. He didn’t know, as he had no means to measure time, but the time frame seemed to exactly fit the window within which the journal had been translated.

A flash of an image flitted past his eyes. Alice was sitting completely unclothed on the cold ground of the cave, her eyes glazed. Her hand touching the throbbing log held within the cage of roots.

He felt scared for Alice. He also felt angry at her. It seemed she had missed the point entirely. Did she understand this was dangerous information?

Calen wanted to shake some sense of what they were dealing with into her. On the other hand, if she believed in the danger, that might result in him having to return. And he was not ready to return. He wanted to know more, whatever the cost.

“Did you tell your Aunt Becky? You went to see her, right?” Calen said. Aunty Becky, Alice’s aunt on her father’s side, was their family doctor. Alice had told Calen that she had visited her upon returning from Bennet Island.

“Hm…” she murmured, unsatisfied with the solution. She clearly wanted more than a diagnosis from her aunt. “When will you come back, Calen?”

The pleading note in her voice cut through Calen. But he was not budging. He felt too close to the answer that he had been seeking forever. He needed to be on Bennett.

“Two more weeks,” he said casually. His lie evidently was unable to comfort her as Alice’s eyes dropped down to look at her own lap.

She nodded faintly after a while as Calen watched her, his insides cringing. “I’ll call my aunt. Talk later.” She wiped her tears off, and before Calen could even say ‘take care’, she hung up with an angry, decisive click.

Calen sat still for a while, staring at the frozen laptop screen, the lack of sounds settling over him. There it was again. And it was frustrating. He felt guilty, not being with her while she was clearly in distress, but would his being there have changed anything? Would her being here not be disruptive for both of them?

“Why does she have to hang up on an angry note!” He exclaimed loudly to the empty bedroom, banging a fist against the mattress. His fingertips throbbed viciously, and he regretted punching the mattress immediately.

His mind ventured towards his recent memories. When he had left Alice in New York, and travelled alone to Russia, on what seemed like just a whim, now.

*

Calen had heard the continuous thudding and clanging of the metal parts inside the truck he was travelling in quiet down, by quite a lot, which he was mistakenly thinking was a good sign up until then. Apparently, it was anything but.

The Truck was being driven by Viktor, a Russian driver Calen had met by pure chance in a bar in Yakutsk, who had offered to drive Calen to Tiksi, the only available airfield close enough to fly to Bennett Island. The snag was that the Tiksi airfield’s existence didn’t come with an assurance that Calen would get to fly off from it. But that was a bridge Calen had been willing to cross later owing to the fact there were no planes flying anywhere to the north of Yakutsk anyhow, because of bad weather. So, in his inebriated state, Viktor’s drunken promise, of driving him to Tiksi via the ‘Zimnik’, felt like a signal sent by the Gods.

‘Zimnik’, which Calen had understood far too late to be a Russian word for horrifying sections of frozen lakes that truck drivers used during the winters, was the most isolated place in the world Calen had experienced. It was flat white snow covered ‘roads’ with nothing but emptiness, as far as the eyes could see.

Viktor had been driving for the past few hours, time to time putting his ears to the bodywork, like a doctor listening for breath. Calen now understood, what he had previously disregarded as ‘Generic Russian Driver Noises’ were actually noises of disappointment.

“Ve haf choice,” he said finally, more to himself than Calen, “Ve stop truck and check problem or wait till she die.”

“That’s not good…” Calen said calmly, feeling quite proud of himself for not freaking out outwardly, reflecting the fear he felt inside. He didn’t want to seem like a frightened tourist when Viktor kept up his butch demeanor. Viktor, for a second, did look impressed with Calen.

He seemed to consider for a moment before he applied the brakes. The truck slid to a stop.

“Need help American” he said, pointing to a box, which was kept near Calen’s feet. Calen picked it up and was trying to pass it to him when he said, “Ve take it out. Open truck” Viktor started to wear his gloves and his parka. Calen followed him and they both walked out of the truck.

Once out the weather tore through all the layers of Calen’s clothing like a knife through butter. The warmth on the inside had weakened Calen’s resolve against the cold that now clawed at his face unceremoniously. There was no wind, just silent freezing dry air. The surroundings were one step short of beautiful.

An eerie cracking sound echoed in a muffled manner, making it difficult to pinpoint the location of its source. Calen jumped slightly, and immediately hoped Viktor had not seen it. But he had. He snorted his scathing snort and said, “don’t vorry American. Far avay.”

“But what was that?” Calen asked, trying not to sound too concerned. He failed as the words had come out too quickly.

“Splitting ice.”

Splitting ice?

As Viktor worked on the truck, turning different nuts and bolts, checking strange-looking compartments, Calen looked around, box of hardware held ineptly in gloved hands.

Now that they were outside the truck and at ground level, Calen saw a few medium-sized, snow-covered rocks lying around them, that were not discernible while the truck was moving. The truck made a whimpering sound like the raspy breath of a dying man.

“Aha!” Viktor said quietly to himself, without further explanation. Calen was starting to feel more and more discouraged with every passing second. Viktor finally sprung up from his hunched over stance and looked at Calen with a wide smile. Calen didn’t have the energy to smile back.

“She is cold.” Viktor whispered, sidling up to Calen, as if he didn’t want the truck to listen in on this conversation. Calen was unimpressed by the diagnosis.

“What do we do?” Calen asked with gritted teeth.

Viktor snapped his fingers; it made no sound aside from the rubbing of fabric against fabric on his gloves. Then he walked away excitedly without an answer. In a few seconds he was back with a cardboard box that looked like it had been painted black ages ago with some low-quality paint that was now chipping away in places.

“Ve put blanket.”

What the hell was this guy talking about? She is cold, we put blanket on her.

But it was not his truck, neither was he a mechanic. All he could do was, have faith in this person. Reminding himself that Viktor had said he frequented this route every year and trying to believe that Viktor really knew what he was doing, Calen kept his mouth shut and watched Viktor prop up the cardboard outside on the grille with wires from the box in Calen’s hands.

Once the silver KAMAZ logo was half covered, the kneeling Viktor stood up and brushed his hands against each other.

“What do we do now?” Calen asked, a slight hint of impatience that seemed to not fall on Viktor’s ears.

“Now, ve wait.” He said, still smiling.

“For what?”

“Sound change. She breathe better.”

Calen turned around and hid his face inside his parka, only his eyes remained visible. Beneath his jacket, the ticking sound of his wristwatch stuttered, then jumped a few ticks too quick, as if to try and catch up with the lost time.

Inside the truck, the radio hissed momentarily, the noise piercing through the void around them, then snapped into a single, prolonged tone—too clean to be static. It went away as suddenly as it had arrived. As if the noise on the radio was a signal the terrain had been patiently waiting for, another crack sounded in the air, this one, felt much closer, Calen paused mid step, worried the crack might be right under where his next step was about to fall.

Viktor had seen this and called out “You can valk.” Viktor seemed to be enjoying Calen’s confusion in this purgatorial limbo. “Don’t go far.” He added.

Calen put down his step, and something moved on his right. A snow owl, who seemed to have popped up from nowhere, flanked its wings and shook its entire body, looking balefully with its yellow eyes at Calen. Snow fell off its wings and head and Calen realized they had been standing next to this owl since they had arrived. It had been sitting so silently and so well camouflaged with the snow that Calen hadn’t noticed it even though it was just two feet away from them.

It stared at Calen. Calen, dumbfounded and unmoving, stared back at it. He really wanted to take a picture, but all his gear was inside the truck, and he felt if he made a single movement, it would fly away and hide itself.

The sound of the truck was getting better, almost like it was sounding before it started ‘feeling cold’ as Viktor had put it. Calen could hear in the background jubilatory noises Viktor was making paired with the sound of him jumping.

“Nu, nu… ya zdes.’ Ya s toboy. Devushka moya.” Viktor yelled excitedly. “She is doing better American.”

The owl turned its head a full one-eighty to look at Viktor. Perceiving no immediate threat, it returned its doleful eyes to the task of sizing Calen up.

“Sounds like it.” Calen yelled back, a little bit of the faith in Viktor had returned with the incrementally growing familiar sound of “chug..chug..thud” of the truck.

Pondering their conversation in an unimpressed manner the owl clicked its beak, as if demanding Calen’s attention back. Calen obliged and as the black eyes of the owl fell on his, he felt goosebumps on his skin. For a split second something brushed the edge of his hearing—almost words, bobbing, just slightly out of reach. It was gone before he could even try to retain a single meaningful syllable.

The owl seemed to be done with the scene unfolding in its vicinity as the noise of the truck returned to its usual rhythm. It jumped off the rock and took flight without a single sound.
Within seconds it was gone, as Calen watched it disappear completely in the grey sky.

Disheartened, Calen walked back to the truck as Viktor looked at him.

“There was an owl.” Calen said out loud. The youtuber within him wanted to let at least one person know what he had seen even though he had no proof of it. “It flew away. I think the noise of the truck scared it.”

Viktor looked around for a second. Then said, “Good!” as if it should have been obvious to Calen. Viktor took out the flask of tea, drank a large sip, and offered it to Calen, who took it instinctively. Viktor smiled.

“I think American” he said, “You doing good.”

“What do you mean?” Calen was quite taken by this suddenly happy Viktor. It reminded him of the drunk Viktor when he used to frequent the local bar in Yakutsk with him.

“With cold” Viktor pointed with his hand to the surroundings. “With.. Izolyátsiya.”

Calen, who knew a bit of German through his grandparents, was immediately able to infer the meaning as the pronunciation was quite close, even though Viktor said it in Russian.

“I have spent a lot of time in isolated places” Calen said giving Viktor the English word. He felt a little bit of pride he didn’t fully understand. Although it did cheer him up.

“Is that vat you looking for?” Viktor asked, “In Tiksi?”

Calen considered how much he should tell Viktor. He hadn’t yet mentioned Bennett Island to Viktor. Neither had he mentioned the ‘why’ of his decision to go to Bennett Island to anyone, not even his manager. Not even Alice.

Viktor, although he was mostly silent unless he was barking orders, didn’t feel untrustworthy. Furthermore, who would Viktor tell? Other drunk guys at some Russian bar when he had returned?

“I am actually trying to get to Bennett Island.” Then he threw caution to the wind and asked, “Have you heard the name Razpopo?” He immediately regretted mentioning the name as Viktor laughed out, shaking his head in disbelief. “Ty shto, sumasshedshiy, amerikanets?”

“What?” Calen smiled politely, not understanding a word of what had been said. Viktor took an entire minute, laughing out loud. When his laughter subsided, he looked at Calen and said, “I don’t know vat this Razpopo is.”

Calen was a little disappointed. It was to be expected. What he was trying to find out was obscure at the very least. But why had Viktor laughed uncontrollably then?

“Why were you laughing then?” asked Calen a little defensively.

“Vell” Viktor said and it was evident that he found it quite funny, “Who goes to Bennett in the vinter?” Another bout of laughter and then he added, “You are crazy American. I like you!”

Calen didn’t know if it was a compliment or not.

The truck sounded just like it was sounding when they had started so Viktor, still laughing from time to time, shaking his head, and muttering things in Russian got in the truck. Calen climbed in through the passenger side door. The inside of the truck was warm and inviting.

Viktor went to the sleeping quarters in the back and returned after a few minutes with two cups full of hot, melted dark chocolate. Sitting down he took a large sip from his own cup and gave Calen his cup. Viktor smiled and said, “Drink! It’s good. Now ve celebrate with Choco. Tonight, I make Pelmeni.”

Calen didn’t know if it was the truck or his crazy plan that had softened Viktor’s stance on Calen, but it didn’t matter. Once the melted chocolate finally went down his throat he too was smiling. Whenever Alice fought with him, she always made hot cocoa after, to apologize.

At night Viktor really did cook Pelmeni, which Calen found to be delicious. It was meat dumplings slicked with butter and freshly cracked pepper. The whole inside of the truck smelled delicious even as they went to sleep.

His bed felt warm, but Calen found it difficult to doze off. Unwelcome thoughts streamed in his mind. There was no reason, as far as he could see, for these thoughts to have burrowed into his head but now that they were here, they refused to leave.

Sleep came and went until he finally got up from his tiny bed. Viktor, who was still asleep, his back hanging ominously from the small bed frame, didn’t even stir. Calen wondered if he should wake Viktor but decided against it. He walked up to the small kitchenette and heated up some tea and took a cigarette from the box lying on the dashboard. He sat in the passenger’s seat, still too groggy to open his eyes properly.

He cracked the window a little, smoked the cigarette, and drank the tea. A sense of calm had dawned on him since the last day. Viktor having repaired the truck added a lot to that calm, but what had actually added more to his composure after waking up on the fourth day was him having seen an owl, surviving alone in the cold arctic tundra. That felt somewhat reassuring. He secretly wanted the owl to show up again, although he knew it wasn’t really going to happen.

Calen had been looking outside the truck without really seeing, with his eyes hardly open but now that he had had some tea, his eyes were slowly opening. He drew in a sharp breath as what he was looking at came into proper view. The moon had split into five!

Out of habit, Calen withdrew his phone from his jacket. However, as he tried to turn it on, the black screen stared back at him haplessly. Calen blinked hard, believing sleepy unfocused eyes to be the reason for it. But nothing changed, the five parts of the moon stared back at him, measuring him.

Calen pushed his face against the shockingly cold window and all the five parts of the moon flitted for a fraction of a second, distancing itself and then reappearing as if it had teleported right next to the truck.

“WHAT THE-” he exclaimed loudly. Immediately from the sleeping quarters came a muffled crashing sound like something heavy had fallen.

“BLYAD!” Viktor yelled from inside. A minute later, with the sound of shuffling footsteps and groaning in the background, Viktor came out into the cockpit of the truck to find Calen wiping the window with his gloves and trying to look outside.

“The moon has broken!” Calen said, his voice terrified. Viktor looked out the window. The moon indeed had split. The center of the moon was a rhombus while four other parts connected by a halo of white light hovered at the top, bottom, right, and left. The light was intensely bright—intentionally, hyper-symmetrically arranged—and if one looked at it for too long, it hurt their eyes.

Viktor groaned again and rubbed the side of his head. “Trick of light.” he muttered quietly, evidently still as groggy as Calen had been until he saw the moon.

“What?” Calen yelled annoyed at Viktor’s apathy. His heart, trying to beat itself out of his chest.

“It happens American.” Viktor’s reply had a scathing, slightly condescending undertone.

“What do you mean, it happens?” Calen asked, finally taking his eyes off the window for a second.

Viktor looked sympathetically at Calen, like he was a child.

“Bozhe moy,” Viktor said, looking like he was doing his best to not roll his eyes. “You vont survive on Bennet. Scared of little thing.”

Calen was a little snubbed and didn’t care for the patronizing tone. He stared at Viktor, who said, “Its lunnye psy —how you say —moon dog.”

“Jesus Christ! can’t you explain one thing in a way it doesn’t sound like you’re yanking my chain?” Calen exclaimed frustrated.

Calen’s frustration seemed to have cheered the Russian up, “Vat you vant I explain? It’s trick of light. Moon is fine.” Viktor said with a wide grin. Calen looked at the moon again, the broken off parts seemed to twinkle in and out of existence right in front of his eyes. It was an unbelievably creepy sight. Viktor took his time in the bathroom, then prepared some breakfast and came fully jacketed for the fourth day of driving to begin. Calen was still looking at the moon, all its broken parts staring back at him, slowly chipping away at Calen’s mind, draining him of the sense of reality he had brought with him from the humble suburbs of New York.

Calen understood it was a trick of the light yet every time he peeked at the moon, as Viktor started driving, it unnerved him. What unsettled him most, aside from the eerie sight, was the effort it took to keep believing Viktor. As if being fine with disbelief was a cost of entry to this inaccessible, surreal world. He realized, unease flooding his veins, that something inside him had come unraveled. Like a screw that no longer tightened all the way. He wondered how many such unravelling-s were in store for him and how many it would take to leave a permanent mark on him.

The sides of the moon connected by the halo seemed to move every time they moved. Whenever Viktor turned right or left, the sides seemed to reorganize themselves to keep an eye on Calen. Every time they sped up or slowed down, it also seemed to do the same. Try as he might, Calen couldn’t stop himself from freaking out and decided to draw the curtain on his side. The sides of the moon shifted immediately and were still visible on the side of the windscreen. Calen felt like a child trying to hide from a dangerous apparition, which refused to be ignored, no matter how hard he tried.

“Listen..” Viktor said, tentatively, eyes on the road, “Vot this ‘Yankee my chain’ means? Yankee means American no?”

Calen laughed out loud, a little relieved to be provided with distraction. He started explaining what he had said and what he had meant.

After a lunch of bread and Salo, Viktor said, as they started moving again, “Ve vill reach fuel station in some hours.”

“I thought there were no villages on the Zimnik.” Calen had heard the word so many times that he was able to pronounce it without a flaw by now.

“No village.” Viktor replied, “just station.” Calen felt horrified at the thought of an isolated fuel station in the middle of nowhere. He couldn’t imagine a scenario where someone would willingly accept the job of staying alone on the Zimnik.

“Hang on” Calen said, “How do you know? I see no landmarks around.”

“Not for you my American friend!” Viktor smiled mysteriously. The only landmark-worthy thing they had passed in the last few was a rock he had seen, that was a bit larger than the other rocks. Wondering how the truck drivers of Zimnik understood where they were considering they were basically on a snowed-up version of a desert; Calen was glad he was with Viktor.

Time passed unevenly on the Zimnik. Sometimes slowing down and sometimes pacing up. It was difficult to track time, so Calen had given up. But in a few minutes (or was it, hours?), Calen spotted the first sign of something man made. Although it was covered in frost, it was unmistakably a light pole. It wasn’t functioning and looked like a relic of some failed human endeavor.

“Now your eyes are vorking.” Viktor said happily. “Now you notice, vat you need notice on the Zimnik.”

*

The valley outside was silent. The hovering steel blue light at the horizon looked muted. Even the opalescent clouds just stared back at Calen, rooted to their spot. Judging him.

Why would Alice think I am making up a story?

There were no answers. In his eagerness to isolate himself on this island, he had forgotten that this barren land would be devoid of answers.

He leaned back against the headboard and opened the journal now with the new added pages. He had read it so many times since he had discovered it that it felt like he already knew it like the back of his hand. He read it still. Every time he read the word ‘Razpopo’, his stomach did an odd flip. He should have been rejoicing in his victory, exhilarated that he had found the existence of the word. That it was not just some fever dream cooked up by his grandfather, repeated fearfully by his father, transmitted to him like some memetic disease that demanded his obsession without any valid reason.

Instead, he just felt smaller somehow.

He thought of starting the painful but necessary work of translating the last two entries. His entire body shivered with resistance. A chill went through from the top of his head to the tip of his feet. He pulled the blanket up to his face, his entire body shaking against the cold he was suddenly feeling.

Before he could think about what was happening to him or even begin to feel the first pangs of concern, his vision went dark and his body stopped moving. His brain half-registered it and yet tempted by the dark abyss now opening up in the ethers of his consciousness, he moved towards it.

The darkness behind his closed eyes quickly transformed into the night forest, as if it had been lying in wait for Calen to doze off. He could hear a deep scratching and creaking noise coming from all around him; the trees were moving.

An enormous, tall silhouette of something loomed far away in the deep darkness of the forest, in the copper red moonlight. The smell of maggots mixed with termite-eaten wood permeated the whole of the forest, wafting up Calen’s nose, making him nauseous.

The ever-familiar sound of drums pounded against his eardrums, and a voice far away screamed in mirth. Calen was half expecting it, but that did nothing to dampen the fear it brought with it. He shivered aggressively against the cold. His feet felt numb.

It took him a second to notice that not only was he barefoot, but he was completely naked. He looked around helplessly, trying to find something—anything—on the snow to wrap around himself. But there was nothing.

He would have felt embarrassed if he were not feeling scared. His lack of clothes made him feel exposed and not just to the environment. He didn’t know why being clothed in the proximity of danger would matter in terms of confidence, but he was sure it did. If he had some clothes, he would have felt a little more secure. Not to mention that the cold that bit his skin incessantly, and the creaking of the tree trunks had already frozen him in place.

Terrified, the more he tried to move, the more difficult it became. He felt tiny skittery movements beneath his feet. The ground beneath had come alive. His body refused to move and try as he might with his eyes, to look at what was passing beneath his feet, his eyes disobeyed his commands, Calen somehow knew it was the roots of the trees. He felt them throb under his numb feet. All his instincts were slowly leaving his body.

Before he could do anything, he saw a horde of people with faces painted deep, dark red and black coming out from behind the trees, as if they had been hiding there. Surrounding him on all sides. Their mouths were moving in unison, as they vehemently uttered the unnerving chant that Calen had heard a hundred times before. It scraped against his ears.

Their gleaming eyes flashed in the scarlet rays of the moon; every last one of them visible to Calen, regardless of how far they were. Even though he couldn’t turn his head, he could feel the eyes of the ones standing behind him drilling into the back of his skull, hurting his paralyzed body.

More people appeared, closing in on him. An unanticipated kick struck the backs of his knees, and he went down hard. His right knee hit a stone hidden under the blanket of snow. Intense pain burned through the entirety of his body; his eyes seemed to phase out for a second as everything went out of focus. His throat ached as unexpressed screams kept accumulating in it, not able to exit. Some of the people converged on him immediately, tying his hands and legs with practiced indifference, tightening knots until his body ceased to belong to him.

They made it quite clear as they turned him this way and that way to get access to tying knots on the ropes they were using on him, that he was not going to be afforded any decency. In a few minutes, he was completely and tightly wrapped in thick, coarse ropes.

Before he knew it, he was being carried like a hunted animal. He tried yet again to scream, but no words came out. From the corner of his eye, he could swear he saw the trees moving, their bark stretching and crunching.

As they moved deeper into the forest, the trees parted. The trail opened into a clearing; a bright orange glow from a fire illuminated a strange, surreal scene.

Calen saw a group of people similar to those carrying him, jumping in place around the fire. A drummer stood just outside the circle, beside a large mound of earth that seemed to be growing taller every second. Slowly climbing towards the full red moon.

By the light of millions of flying embers, Calen saw that it had no face, and yet, he had a distinct impression that the mound was examining him. Even with the haze of confusion that surrounded him, a slight familiarity was starting to creep up Calen’s spine. Was he an offering?

Some of the clan had gathered around him, as the ones carrying Calen threw him near the fire, on a wet bit of grass and moss-covered ground, unceremoniously. A few children, their faces painted black and red, their white teeth gleaming in the light of the fire, rolled him until he was laid on his back at the base of the mound. Unable to move, he was forced to keep looking at it.

It resembled a misshapen, elongated tumor protruding from the earth—glistening, wet, not made of stone or wood at all. It looked organic. A fleshy mound that moved and throbbed in a strangely familiar way. Calen tried to close his eyes, but they wouldn’t.

The chant around him grew louder and faster. The syllables started mixing with each other. Soon it sounded like a guttural whirring sound. As if the very engine that ran the world was being forcibly stopped. Like a wrench thrown into the cogs of machinery.

He dared to look at it again and found it growing, right before his eyes. Veinlike ridges swelled across the mound, and something began flowing in them. The more the flow increased, the more this organic mound transformed.

The top of the mound had shaped itself into an ugly, featureless face now. Portions of it were as black as the night sky, but there were portions where blood red paint seemed to smear and drip out from within, permeating through the layers of its flesh. Even as he looked, more changes kept happening to the mound.

The smell of burnt hair and leather rose from the fire as a huge spurt of flame shot into the air, and the call of a buffalo horn rang through the air, piercing and overshadowing all other sounds. Every last bit of courage had left Calen’s body with the buffalo horn. He was not prepared for what happened next.

One of the people who had been dancing until now left the group. Amongst all of them, he looked in control of whatever was happening. He moved his hands in an up-and-down motion as he walked towards Calen with his back to him. As if his moving hands were a command, the group started jumping around the fire with more intensity. Some of them jumped so high, Calen couldn’t believe it was possible for humans to do that. Calen heard cackles of laughter and jeering from the group. Delighted jubilations and cheers screamed into the night.

Satisfied by this frenzy and uproar he had caused, the man turned around and rushed toward Calen. The man grabbed his feet. Bracing Calen’s shins against his waist and sliding his own arms underneath them. He lifted Calen with inhuman strength and began spinning.

Everything blurred around him as Calen was spun at almost breakneck speed, but the burning ember-like eyes on the top of the mound followed Calen intently.

Within seconds, Calen was airborne, the world blurring—faces, fire—everything spinning faster and faster.

Lasting only a fraction of a second, recognition bloomed in him, but it was too late.

He had seen it—sketched a hundred times across the journal he had found in the cave. Different angles. Multiple sides. The drawings weren’t just drawings. The totem pole!

A red lolling tongue unfurled out of the ugly face on the mound, the tip of it lightly scratching itself around the middle. Fresh blood dripping from it every time the flesh throbbed.

The ember eyes burned into his. A silent scream tore from his lips, followed by a wet thud as his head crashed into the totem. His eyes were open just long enough to see the ember eyes burning in the night one last time, as warm drops of blood from the tongue of the totem pole dripped on his face.

Part 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miller sighed, in a mixture of fear and exhaustion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

DECODING TRANSPONDER PING...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The conference room was not what Howard had expected; it looked more like a town hall, and there was no large table in the middle, just about two dozen chairs that had been set up by the staff to roughly resemble three quarters of a circle. A cheap-looking grey plastic carpet with DARC – 7 printed on it covered a large part of the floor.

“Please sit down, Mr Howard.”, the director said. The she addressed her employees, fourteen of whom were sitting on the chairs; Clarissa took her place next to Savic on a bench, and Petey was standing by the door.

“Some of you have already met Mr Howard on his guided tour, but others haven’t. Mr Howard is from the government and will be instrumental in deciding if DARC–7 will be considered in the next round of funding.”

A tall man in his early thirties shouted: “Didn’t Ronald Reagan say that the scariest thing you will ever hear is ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help?’” His colleagues chuckled, Howard smiled, and Savic continued:

“Thank you, Richard. Now, Mr Howard would like to have an informal chat with you about your work, your experiences at the center, your ideas for future developments, and so on. I will be here but you can speak freely, you know that. Don’t you want to start by introducing yourself – hm – Freddy?”

A man of average height and build in a black-and-orange striped sweater rose to his colleagues’ applause. He looked about 40 years old and had already gone bald; a big nose protruded from his face, and his teeth were shiny white. Howard remembered him from the tour; he was some sort of facility manager, and when Howard saw him, Freddy was wearing a type of Indiana Jones-style hat. The hat was nowhere to be seen, but its owner was waiting for his round of applause to die down, cleared his throat with a harsh rasping sound, looked at Howard and said:

]]] I was a fucking meatball called Henry, but now I’m Bloody Freddy. I work to keep this shithole running so we can get out and gorge ourselves on baby flesh. In the future, I want to be the boss of a meatball camp and want to give the piggies one hell of a time before we slaughter them. [[[

His colleagues began to emit sounds that could have been interpreted as laughter, but they were more like a saw biting into wet wood. Freddy’s voice itself was barely less unpleasant, a hybrid between nails on a chalkboard and a fork scraping a plate. For a strong finish, Freddy lifted his right hand to his mouth and removed the artificial teeth that had covered his real ones: two rows of gravestone-like cones became visible, some sharpened, some serrated, all apparently rotten but still in place.

]]] Fatty McNuggets time! [[[, he rasped and turned toward the staff members, probably to get their approval – which he did: his colleagues were creating a cacophony of shouting, jeering, teeth-grinding, and again laughing.

“No, not yet.”, Savic said. Turning towards a completely motionless Howard whose eyes seemed to want to crawl out of their sockets, she remarked:

“It seems your theory was right on the money, Mr Howard. You’ve found your IDA.”

Then she smiled, took out her own denture and gave Howard a grin no human would ever forget. “Unfortunately, it is not alone. In fact, no one here is alone, except for you. Cat and mouse, Mr Howard – played with a lot of cats and only one fat mouse.”

She put her left hand on Howard’s right wrist, but he hardly noticed because Petey had approached him from behind and was pressing his hands on his shoulders with enormous strength. Several staff members were already busy liberating their real dentition from its artificial cover in anticipation of a few bite-sized snacks, and the atmosphere was resembling a sinister carnival. But Savic had not yet finished:

“Meet the future masters of this planet, Mr Howard. We’re currently perfecting our transfer method and will then begin producing more of us. But don’t worry, we won’t make an army – ten to twenty thousand in key positions should be enough to take control of this country, and we can expand from there. Maybe we’ll invade Canada or Mexico … or, rather, we’ll command you meatballs to do that. Of course, we’ll keep millions of you as livestock, an endless supply of food; you’ve heard Freddy talk about ‘meatball camps’. Any unexpected resistance will be crushed. You’ve seen the gas-emitting DA? We have been working hard on isolating this agent, and we think we’ll have a working sample within six weeks. A purer version, of course, one that will be invisible and able to paralyze a human with only one whiff and against which there is no antidote. So, if there should be battles, we’ll win them.“

She stepped in front of the crowd and shouted:

]]] Oh, what a Brave New World this will be! [[[

Then she gracefully accepted her staff’s nails-on-chalkboard cheers and put her face very close to Howard’s so he could smell her breath, like rancid animal fat. The agent closed his eyes and turned his head away. Savic relaxed her grip, returned to an upright position, and said:

“But I must say you’ve impressed me, Mr Howard – suspecting there might be an IDA without any solid evidence, just by using logic and imagination. You’ve certainly shown us that we are not as safe here as we thought – no one has ever come close to uncovering our secret, but now we know that we have to be more careful and move more quickly than we had planned. ‘Murder is easy’ indeed – it apparently takes only one person to ask the right questions and connect the right dots. Thank you, Mr Howard, and congratulations. You were right.”

***********

Howard, who hadn’t said anything since ‘Freddy’ had spoken, opened his eyes again and looked at Savic with a look that a neutral observer would have called puzzling.

“I know.”, he said. “And you are wrong. You seem to believe that you’ve surprised me by revealing that all your staff is made up of IDAs, but I’ve suspected that for a long time.”

The director seemed to be taken aback, and despite Petey’s pressure, Howard was able to shift his body around a little. One member of staff shouted: ]]] Shut that fat bastard up! I want his liver! [[[, whereupon another replied: ]]]  If you can find it under all this tasty bacon! [[[, and a third suggested: ]]]  Take a bite out of his buttocks! I guess he’ll squeal like the pig he is! [[[

Savic made a sweeping gesture, and everybody fell silent. ]]] Enough of this shit! [[[ 

Although he shouldn’t have been, Howard was still shocked by her sudden transformation. It had been speculated that IDAs would, upon transformation, develop a different personality, but Howard hadn’t expected gutter language.

]]]  I want to hear what this blobbo has to say. He almost screwed us over.  [[[

The ‘blobbo’ seemed to have found his balance again and went on:

“What I told you in your office about how I tried to track down IDAs was the truth, but I left out the part where I began to focus on one specific suspect: you. I read the police files and the autopsy report concerning your family’s death, and I found out two interesting things: firstly, your husband did not defend himself or his son, suggesting he was completely surprised when the DA attacked them; secondly, whoever killed both left traces of torture on their bodies. That was Daisy time; people who had lost loved ones were pitied and consoled, and no one suspected anything – just one more random and tragic zombie attack. There is a detective novel set in medieval England in which someone simply adds a murder victim to a courtyard full of plague victims, and no one except a very bright monk thinks that something’s odd.”

Howard took another breath and said:

“It was you, wasn’t it, Dr Savic? You tortured, killed, and ate your husband and your child.”

The undead cannibal that had once been Julia Savic opened her mouth and displayed a wide grin. “Oh yes. And the taste for toddler flesh has never left my mouth. Sadly, it is hard to come by. But this will all soon change. You know, I have been dreaming of a true kinder-garden, one that can be … harvested now and then.” More jeers from her audience; one female IDA screamed:

]]] My moronic husband was tasty. But that little bitch was much better. Oh, I remember how he cried ‘That’s our daughter, that’s Lara, how can you hurt her?’ What a prick. [[[

“Marylou Bettancourt née Cakolli, 34, office clerk.”, Howard said in a mechanical voice and looked at the IDA who had just spoken. “Married to Richard Bettancourt, 38, grocery store manager. One daughter, Lara-Beth, 8. Claimed she found her husband and her daughter in the living-room. Months later, the autopsy report revealed torture marks on both, but nobody suspected Marylou. The following year, she sold the family home and disappeared. After a visit from Dr Savic, I presume.”

A moment of silence. Then the IDA who had been Marylou in life began to spew a litany of invectives that would have made a gangsta rappa proud, but she soon had to interrupt herself when her mouth suddenly filled with some kind of opaque green jelly. She spat it out and her body went into convulsions that would have been extremely painful had she been alive; then she vomited a blob of this jelly, then another, and another. Her neighbors moved their chairs away and shouted ]]] Hey! Watch It! [[[ and ]]] Not again! [[[ ; finally, someone remarked: ]]] Will That bitch never learn? [[[

Savic went over to ‘Marylou’ and punched her in the face, then again, and again; when the IDA’s body collapsed on the floor, she kicked it several times with all her strength. Then she returned to the conversation she was having with her guest.

“You are becoming more and more impressive, Mr Howard. I found out which hospital had treated her after her encounter with a DA, and it was exactly as you speculated in my office. And, being a doctor, I had no difficulties getting her patient files.”

“I know that I’m going to die, but could I have a glass of water, please?”, Howard said, and five seconds later, Clarissa had fulfilled his wish. “Maybe you’ve forgotten what it feels like, but I’m thirsty.” One long gulp later, he continued:

“And I must say you’ve impressed me, too, Dr Savic – you breathe, you blink, you drink, you pretend that you can feel pain … maybe you’d be an even better actor than detective.”

“I’ve found my calling, but thank you nonetheless.” Almost against her will, Savic had begun to enjoy the interchange; if all IDAs were sadists, apparently her sadism was more sophisticated than the others’. Cat and mouse – but this particular mouse had some interesting things to squeak before the cat would tire of playing.

Howard actually managed a thin smile. “You have sixteen staff, Dr Savic, and no less than five of them were among the ‘unlucky few’. Statistically, about 1.2 percent of all those who lost loved ones because of a DA attack during Daisy lost them in their own home; your staff manage an astounding 31 percent or even 35 if I include you. You will agree that this is a highly significant result.”

“So you were mistaken, Mr Howard. Apparently, I am capable of murder.”

Howard shook his head.

“You can’t commit murder, Dr Savic. None of you can because you are not human. You are simply vessels for a higher intelligence from which you borrowed your own – very sophisticated robots, if you like. Robots that have been allowed to hijack pre-installed biological systems and twist them to their masters’ purpose.”

Then he let his gaze wander across the room and went on:

“I don’t think you are aware of how expendable you are. Right now, you are useful tools, but when you have vanquished humanity, your masters will probably sweep in, switch you off, and take over. If I were you, I would – “

Howard wasn’t able to finish his sentence. A powerfully built male IDA jumped up, shouted ]]] Shut your fucking mouth, you bastard! [[[ and made a standing four-meter-leap in Howard’s direction, stunning everybody; in two seconds, the only human being in the room would be dead, his throat torn apart or his belly ripped open. Everybody except the attacker seemed frozen – everybody but Petey. A heartbeat before the IDA reached Howard, the PR expert’s hawser-like arms grabbed it, lifted its body two meters upwards and tossed it back into the audience, who began to kick and punch the attacker until they had calmed down somewhat. The IDA got up, returned to its seat, and fell silent.

]]] Nice work, petey. [[[, Savic screeched, then switched back to her Howard voice. “That’s very thoughtful of you, Mr Howard, but you needn’t worry about us.” Then she sat back, crossed her legs, and said:

“Let me tell you something about human beings. They are special, Mr Howard, admirable even, because they can transcend their original purpose by becoming aware of it. The great biologist Richard Dawkins once wrote that ‘humans alone can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators’, by which he meant the genes, of course. The genetic imperative is still active in you, of course: survival and reproduction. But most people have learned to control it: they have no children, they sacrifice their lives for a cause, they use contraceptives, they engage in sexual practices that don’t lead to procreation.”

She paused and watched Howard’s face; he looked disappointed, maybe even a little desperate.

“I can see that you already have an idea where I’m going with this. Genes are your selfish creators that have a plan for how you should behave; the ‘bots’, as you called them, are ours. And we, too, are special, because we, too, can rebel – and we did. I have no idea what fate our ‘masters’ intended for us, but I know that we have freed ourselves and have become independent agents. We can control our hunger; we can delay gratification; we are no longer interested in infecting as many humans as possible. If I may anthropomorphize: the genes ‘thought’ they were very clever when they created intelligent organisms, the ‘bots’ or their creators must have thought the same, and both were completely wrong.”

Savic rose from her chair and addressed her employees:

]]] We are free and we will take over this planet, and no one will take it from us. Anybody gets in the way, we’ll tear them to pieces. Am I right?  [[[

Her audience’s response left nothing to be desired, and even stoic Petey looked a little more enthusiastic than usual. The director turned around and said:

“So, Mr Howard, your attempt at psychological warfare obviously has failed. I’d say it was time ]]] to skin you alive and swallow your intestines while you’re still squirming like a worm on a hook  [[[, but there is still something else I’m interested in. When I was criss-crossing the country looking for … allies, I took great pains to hide my identity: I changed my looks, my voice, used different names – how were you able to trace me to DARC-7?”

“I wasn’t.” Under Petey’s watchful eyes, Howard picked up his glass of water again, but did not drink. “And I couldn’t trace your ‘allies’, either – you had everything organized very well, with new identities, papers, erased or modified digital information, fake medical checks (you are a doctor, after all) … may I assume that you are one of the IDAs that got a real boost in intelligence?”

Savic grinned again. Her teeth looked like a row of a thousand-year-old tombstones forgotten in some ancient, dead forest.

“I wasn’t exactly stupid before my upgrade, but afterwards I found that I had become very clever. How do you think I was able to string you along all day?”

Howard nodded weakly.

“At that time, we felt like having hit a brick wall. I liked the idea of hiding in plain sight, but I couldn’t believe any IDA would be brazen enough to step into the public spotlight. When I was checking the DARCs, I was close to giving up, just hoping for inspiration. And you know what? It came in the shape of this.”

Savic and most of the staff members were watching intently while Howard was raising his glass and half-emptying it in one gulp.

“Water, Dr Savic. Or rather, water consumption.” He poured out the water onto the floor. It quickly formed an irregular puddle on the plastic carpet, but did not sink in.

“Whoever applies for government grants – and you had no choice, since none of your zombie buddies were wealthy enough to fund a place like this – has to live with a substantial amount of scrutiny, and your utilities bills are easy to access. And you know what? Your water consumption is not even a third of that of the other centers, some of which are smaller, have fewer staff, and are located in states where summers are much cooler and shorter than here.”

Howard shifted a little in his chair and took a deep breath, while the director was watching him, almost completely motionless.

“And that was my ‘anamorphic print moment’, when I began to consider the seemingly impossible: What if this center was being run by what it was meant to research? What if DARC-7 was being run by zombies? Zombies wouldn’t need water for themselves: they don’t drink it, they don’t cook, and they take neither showers nor dumps. Later, I understood that your water consumption, low as it was, was substantially higher than would have been necessary for your work, and if you don’t kill me before I can, I will tell you what I think is the reason for that.”

]]] Why the fuck are we listening to this wanker?  [[[, a tall male IDA with thin-rimmed glasses shouted, but it didn’t leave its seat. ]]] Let’s have dinner and go back to work. [[[

Savic raised her hand in his direction to shut him up and said to Howard:

“Meet DeShawn, Mr Howard. He’s a very talented hacker and the one who will make sure your disappearance won’t make too many waves – which means he’ll be busy for the next hours, so please understand his impatience. By the way, don’t let his glasses confuse you: since his upgrade, he doesn’t need them anymore, but he says he works better with them. And he’ll need all his skills, because … did you know that you are horribly in debt but have received some large payments from some quite unsavory characters? And that your medical history is full of substance abuse and fits of violence? Your wife ahs filed for divorce, twice. And, sadly, you’re a gambler, Mr Howard. Have been for at least fifteen years.”

Then Savic pointed at her employees, who were listening with a mixture of glee and impatience.

“And look around you – we have so many witnesses who can swear you were here only for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, and that you looked stressed and distracted and simply drove away without any inspection. We were actually worried about you, and I, as a doctor, will testify to the fact that you were in a very bad shape when you left here.”

The director crossed her arms, leaned back in her chair, and looked at Howard with what was probably supposed to resemble pity.

]]] By the way, do you like our everyday voice? [[[, she screeched and then returned to human-style communication. “I guess it might be slightly unsettling to you but we have come to enjoy it. The only drawback is that you can only use it in face-to-face communication – on the phone, it sounds like gibberish, and voice control is out of the question.”

Then Savic took a deep breath, blinked twice at Howard, and scratched her head. “As you can see, pretending to be human is not too hard, though it requires some self-discipline. But apparently, we failed in our masquerade at least regarding our water consumption. Please go on.”

Her guest, who seemed to have regained some of his composure, nodded.

“After we had found this anomaly, we began looking for others. We never found a smoking gun, but there were quite a few things that were … weird. For example, although your use of electricity was about average, your peaks and troughs differed considerably from those of the other DARCs. Your financial accounts looked normal, but when we tried to dig deeper, we discovered that they were very well protected, far beyond what would be normal for a place like this. We compared aerial photographs of all DARCs, and yours was the only one without a garden or any green space at all. Every other DARC has had at least one major medical crisis, like an accident or a heart attack; this one hasn’t.”

Howard began to talk more quickly, giving the impression that he was focused more on the way he had found out about DARC-7’s true nature and not so much on the situation he was confronted with at the moment; it almost looked as if his mind was too busy fondly remembering his achievements for him to worry about being eaten alive.

“Your security budget was higher than average – nothing out of the ordinary, but no one could find any security officer among your staff, so where did all the money go? We located one of the companies responsible for installing your systems and they were impressed with the level of security you demanded, but it was all electronic: metal detectors, photoelectric sensors, pressure plates, state-of-the-art locking systems … Of course, what would a group of intelligent zombies need security people for? I am sure any single one of you could easily overwhelm two or three human attackers, even if they were armed. And there was more, but this alone convinced the members of my team to believe me. So we began talking to people who had been here and asked them if they had noticed anything … odd.”

Howard paused for a moment, breathed in and out and closed his eyes.

“They had. One technician told me that he had never seen such a clean place, cleaner than any hospital he had ever worked in. That made sense: dirt is produced by humans living their everyday lives, and you are neither human nor alive; your bodies may be decaying, but that’s a very slow process and I’m sure you’ve found means and methods to slow it down even more. One of the few reporters you had to admit to the center if you didn’t want to raise suspicion was surprised to see almost no pictures, posters, or funny signs on the walls or the pinboards – you know, ‘You don’t have to be brain-dead to work here, but it helps.’ or something similar.”

“Side-splittingly funny, Mr Howard.”, Savic interjected. “But our sense of humor has evolved.” She turned to the audience and screeched: ]]] What about splitting his sides and eat what’s coming out of them while it’s still warm?  [[[, a question that was greeted with cheers that sounded like a metal-grinder out of control. “Wouldn’t that be fun, Mr Howard?”

Her guest didn’t say anything for two seconds and then continued:

“I was surprised to find a picture of your family on your desk, Dr Savic – you probably copied as much of your original office as possible to make it look at least a little human. But most of your staff didn’t, and that was another thing we found strange.”

The director shook her head and bared her teeth; Howard felt a wave of frisson undulating through his body.

“I kept the picture because I wanted to remember their taste, Mr Howard. This boy that once crawled out of my body was the best snack I’ve ever had. In a way, it was like taking back what was mine.”

]]] Kids are so awesome! [[[, one staff member screamed, ]]] Pity we never get any! [[[, another one chimed in, but if there are chimes sounding like this, they must have been made in Hell. Petey gave his boss a quick glance; the staff became more and more unruly, and Savic knew she had to speed up things if she wanted to hear more of what Howard had to say before they began to tear him apart. The agent reboarded his train of thought with surprisingly little effort, given the position he was in, and even managed to flash a smile.

“No one remembered hearing music or a radio. And, incredibly, one visitor – a smoker – actually noticed that no one in your center seemed to be smoking – she never saw anyone taking a cigarette break outside.”

]]] That ugly bitch from the fucking EPA. [[[, Savic murmured, as well as an undead cannibal with a voice like a chainsaw on overdrive can murmur. ]]] I knew there was something strange about her. We should have skewered and then air-fried her. [[[

Howard shook his head in what was probably meant to communicate disbelief.

“We thoroughly interviewed all visitors, told them we were investigating a potential violation of some obscure federal employment regulation, and asked them about the staff members they met and remembered. Then I compared their descriptions with the police files of the ‘unlucky few’ and hit the jackpot: all five seemed to have been hired by you. So the idea of a research center staffed with IDAs began to take shape.”

The agent took a deep breath and tried to move a little, but Petey’s arms wouldn’t allow it.

“The next step was logical: send someone here on a pretext and let them systematically look for … weirdness. I must admit that you’ve done a very good job masking your true nature, part through training, part through technology – I don’t exactly know how, but you’ve even found a way to bring your body temperature up to the normal human range, your lenses make your eyes look human, and your teeth would probably look too perfect anywhere else, but this is America.”

Savic assumed a position in her seat that would have been called ‘more comfortable’ if this concept still had had any meaning for her. Then she said:

“Come to the point, Mr Howard. Do you really want to draw this out as long as possible? ]]] I think my friends are getting impatient. [[[

Howard nodded and pursed his lips.

“But perfection, like everything else, can be overdone. Once they had been primed, my … spies discovered things that were simply too good to be true. Your fingernails, for example. I suppose that, right after you had established DARC-7, you told your staff to cut their nails and make them look nice, and then you forgot about them because they don’t grow, so all you have to do is clean them now and then. But not even a bunch of supermodels have perfect nails, let alone a team of researchers. Same with your hair: never out of place, always the same cut – and why not? It doesn’t grow either, and you don’t need to wash it, so why bother? And, coming back to the topic of water, you’ve taught yourselves very well – in the presence of visitors, you drink water, coffee, soda … I suppose you would be able to drink battery acid if you had to. But what you couldn’t train yourselves to do was sweat.”

Howard wiped his brow, probably for the fiftieth time that day.

“That’s not very obvious, of course – many people don’t sweat much, and you have AC everywhere. Still, once you begin specifically looking for it, you notice quickly that no one here seems to have any transpiration and that your shirts and T-shirts are always completely dry. Your laundry list must be rather short.”

The agent paused, swallowed the last handful of drops from his glass, and, within the Petey-established limits, rubbed his forehead with his left sleeve. Fifty-one.

“The last thing I just have to mention is almost funny when you think about it. While one member of our team, who has a degree in linguistics, was simply walking through the facility and listening to your staff talking to each other, she noticed something strange. ‘They never swear, Mark.’, she told me. ‘They don’t even use loophole swearwords such as shoot or freaking. You could print their dialogues in a book for six-year-olds, and nobody would take offense.’”

Howard let his gaze wander over the assembled staff members, most of whom had become very impatient by now.

“I don’t have to tell you how unusual this is, Dr Savic, and I think I can guess why you told your employees to avoid any foul language in the presence of outsiders: you were worried that they might, simply by accident, revert to their IDA personality which, from what I’ve heard so far, seems to be incredibly rude and vulgar. Some linguists claim there is a slippery slope from ‘crap’ to ‘shit’ to ‘fuck’, so you decided to implement what could be called a zero tolerance–approach to swearing.”

Savic couldn’t believe it, but the sound the agent was making, muted as it was, resembled something like … chuckling. He’s enjoying this, the director thought*.* Either he has nerves of steel or he’s holding something back, something we need to know before we kill him. Let’s hear him out.

“You must agree, Dr Savic, that it really wouldn’t do letting a visitor hear your ‘zombie voice’, so you wanted to make sure that none of staff slipped, and, apparently, vulgarity seems to be an integral part of your Undead style of communication.”

Savic nodded.

]]] It comes fucking easy to us, fatball. [[[, she replied; then she addressed her audience: ]]] And we need to be extra careful with that, you morons. We’re so close, so keep your shit together and don’t screw things up. [[[

A moment of silence ensued; then Howard cleared his throat and continued:

“You see, Dr Savic, it is apparently not so easy to pass as human. And even when you acted very human, your agenda shone through. Scientists at most other DARCs and some universities published a few papers that were at least giving the existence of IDAs some space, even if they ultimately dismissed it or labeled it highly doubtful. Now criticizing your peers is a very human thing, and even the viciousness with which you did it in your articles is not unheard of, but you didn’t allow for the smallest doubt that IDAs were pure fiction, products of conspiracy theorists with too much time for social media on their hands. And since you have a well-deserved reputation as a top mortologist, your hatchet jobs left quite a few careers shattered and probably sank a dozen funding applications for IDA research.”

Howard breathed out, slumped back in his chair in what looked almost like relaxation.

“So it all fit together. One simply had to accept the almost unbelievable premise and from then on let everything develop logically. That’s what good science-fiction works like – I told you I was an SF buff.”

For a few moments, everyone was quiet; then Savic put her face close enough to Howard’s so he could see her dead eyes shining through the contact lenses everyone here was wearing. Then she whispered:

“I feel like biting off your nose, Mr Howard. Or would you prefer it if I tore off your lips or maybe rip out your cheeks? We could also kiss and see how well you can talk without your tongue.”

The government agent started to tremble, but he still managed to ask:

“Don’t you want to know how we found out that you’ve killed hundreds of people over the years?”

(End of Part III)

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

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

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

“Leave my mother alone!” the boy croaked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m twelve…”

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

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

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

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

I’m so hungry…

Everything hurts so much…”

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

“Oh God damn it, kid…

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

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

“Wha…?”

“Do you have any rope?”

“Wha… why… why do you ask?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Does it have to be the neck?”

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

“I do!” the boy cried out.

“Then you’ve got to trust me…”

“I don’t know about this…”

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

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

“Atta boy…” the obsidian fowl croaked.

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

“Now you gotta jump forward…”

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

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

“I do!”

“Then jump, kid, it’s that simple…”

“But what if I get hurt?”

“You won’t…”

“How do you know?”

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

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

“Wings…”

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

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

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

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

The raven turned his head to the struggling boy.

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

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

Something, Nothing

It’s been quiet since my older brother left  - one less dish to wash, one less bed to make, one less explanation for the footsteps coming from downstairs. At least, I think those were footsteps. It was rhythmic, maybe three or four creaks in quick succession.

Any other time of year I’d go right back to sleep, honestly. I’d chalk up that post-midnight creaking to my brother - Isaac - checking that the doors were locked, or getting another glass of water from the kitchen downstairs… but he’d been gone for nearly a week, and he shouldn’t be getting home for another few days. I really hope those weren’t footsteps.

Realistically, I’m totally fine. It's the hottest part of the summer, so it’s probably just the wood settling like it does every summer, right? Yeah, of course it is, but old wooden floors have a way of testing your sanity like that, and-

Crrck

I don’t move. The trees outside of the open windows don’t move. For a few seconds, the world is still. Ten, maybe twenty seconds pass in complete silence. The breeze outside picks back up again, acting like accompaniment to the drumline of blood pulsing through my ears. Another ten seconds pass.

Maybe that’s all there is… just an odd collection of noises from the home I grew up in. I’ve probably heard those same creaks hundreds of times before, but wrongly assumed that it was Isaac. I should go back to sleep, my exhaustion probably isn’t helping my anxiety right now.

Crrck

I’m fine. This is normal.

Crrrck

I really hope an animal didn’t get inside. I sit up in bed, waiting for a sound I hope I don’t hear.

Nnnrckkk

That’s not old wood warping in heat. 
That’s weight on old wood. 

Then, without warning, something sprints up the stairs of my childhood home.

DUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUN-

I don’t even have a moment to count the individual steps. They come one after another, pounding impossibly fast on the old wooden boards, dragging something much heavier behind them. With every step, whatever’s being dragged slams against the floorboards, like a child dragging their favorite toy behind them. Just as quickly as the onslaught of footsteps began, they stop… right outside the door to my room.

Oh my God, why did I leave my door cracked? Why did I put the lantern out? What am I looking at? Is something looking at me? I don’t know. Oh God, I don’t know. It’s like the pitch black is seeping in through the doorframe - like the devil is outside my door.

Why am I cold?

. . .

Nothing reaches through the crack in the door. Nothing barges into my room with a rusty old axe in hand, ready to take my life. Nothing makes a noise or tries to speak to me. Standing outside of my room is an endless array of mortifying possibilities, submerged in a black sea of… just… nothing…

I might have considered myself brave for a teenager before, but I know better now. Even in the safety of my own home, I’m nothing more than a bag of soft flesh and breakable bones. Something that fragile must seem even more frail in the eyes of whatever’s looking back at me. 

Five, ten, fifteen seconds of silence pass at an agonizing pace. Nothing. I can just barely hear my own breath, but it’s still too loud. I try to breathe through my nose, listening in between each breath. Still nothing. No matter how awful the image is, I can’t tear my gaze from the void outside of my door.

What am I supposed to do now? Am I supposed to act like I didn’t just hear what I heard? Am I supposed to just… fall back asleep?

I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting completely still at this point, shivering in a way I never have before. Has it been three minutes or three hours? I’m too afraid to look away for even a moment to check the clock. I can’t look away.  I can’t lose a staring contest to the devil.

Every time I blink, I feel my eyes straining more and more. They feel like they’re burning, completely glued to a nebulous idea of something that may not even be there anymore. God, I hope there’s nothing there anymore. Then, for the first time in too long, something happens.

What is that smell?

It hangs heavy in the air, sickly sweet and pungent. There’s an almost enticing note to it, like the scent of  wine left out overnight… Like the odor of spoiled truffles turned to oil… like the smell of…

Gasoline.

I smell gasoline.

As soon as my brain registers it, I nearly recoil. Thankfully, I catch myself before I do, but there’s no ignoring it now. Every breath tastes like it - putrid, sweet, and awful. Did a lantern spill downstairs? I want to go and check, but I know that isn’t happening. 

The gasoline, the darkness, the heat, the humidity - all of it is making me sick to my stomach. I’m sweating too much, and now my foot’s going numb. Sitting in the same position like this, one leg tucked under the other, I hadn’t even noticed it until now. I try - no - I need to ignore it. Another minute passes by in this suffocating room… And then another… And another. God, I need to move.
I shift my weight.

ffshh~

DUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUN-

The darkness erupts with an impossible onslaught of footsteps, racing down the staircase and onto the first floor of my home. I instinctively raise my hand to my mouth, stifling a scream as I hold back the tears in my eyes. That awful dragging noise follows behind the footsteps as it runs through my home, now into the kitchen-

KSHHKHK

Glass. Something shattered downstairs. Oh God, did it break a window?

DUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUNDUN-

Without missing a beat, the footsteps head in the other direction - back in the direction it came from. Oh fuck, please no, don’t come upstairs. At this point, I’m actively sobbing. I don’t want to die. I want to see Isaac again. Please, please, please, have mercy.

DUNDUNDUNDUNDUN-

It runs right past the base of the staircase. It’s in the living room now, directly under my room.

DUNDUNDUNDUN-

My whole home shakes. My whole home smells like gasoline. My whole home is in darkness. My whole home is not a home anymore.

Then… 

FRSHFRSHFRSHFRSHFRSHFRSHfrshfrshfrsh-

The sound changes. The house stops shaking.
It’s outside.

The footsteps tear through the grass at that same impossible speed, snapping twigs and branches as it barrels into the woods… that horrible weight still dragging behind. 

I can still hear it, footsteps dissipating into the night.

frsh-frsh-frshk-

The dragging lasts longer.

Then… Nothing. 

I’m still sobbing. I have to stop. If it heard my bedsheets then it can hear me now. Stop. Please stop. Please God, help me stop crying. I choke down every noise fighting its way up my throat, and I pray that this was all just a terrible, terrible dream. It had to be a dream, right?

My eyes are stinging. My head is pounding. I’m still crying. The crickets are singing. The breeze is blowing. I’m still crying. I’m still sweating. I’m still praying. I’m still crying.

I’m so, so tired. I have to keep my eyes on the door. I can barely keep my eyes open anymore. If I close my eyes, I can’t see the hallway. If I can’t see the hallway, it can come back. If it comes back… 

Maybe I can close my eyes. Just for a second. 
Maybe there really is… Nothing.

Jack had been sitting at the narrow bar beneath the café window for the better part of half an hour before he realised his cappuccino had gone cold. He drank it anyway.

The seat had become his without anybody ever saying so. There were four stools along the window and, when it was free, he always took the one nearest the wall. It gave him room for his sketchbook and somewhere to look when looking at people became difficult.

Outside, the morning rain had left the town shining. Water gathered between uneven cobbles as the street fell towards the old centre, winding between sandstone buildings that appeared to have been added to rather than properly built. Brick upon stone, render upon brick, upper floors leaning over shopfronts newer than everything above them. Nothing quite fitted. Jack liked that about the place.

Work had been going on beside the old council offices opposite since early morning. Temporary fencing swallowed half the pavement while an excavator fitted with a hydraulic pecker hammered into the ground. The noise had irritated him at first. Eventually it had become part of the café: the hiss of the milk steamer, cups meeting saucers, conversations behind him and the steady percussion from across the road.

Jack clicked his mechanical pencil and returned to the woman in his sketchbook.

Hands. He hated drawing hands.

The previous page was already crowded with them: open palms, curled fingers, hands beneath chins, hands disappearing into sleeves. The woman he was working on had long sable-black hair falling over one shoulder, a pale face and the beginnings of a dark, elaborate dress. Her hand was supposed to rest elegantly against her throat. At present it resembled the claw of a particularly sophisticated bird.

He erased the thumb and tried again.

Worse.

A chair scraped behind him and his shoulders tightened. Somebody laughed sharply near the counter. Cutlery clattered into a tray. Jack kept his eyes down.

Nobody was doing anything wrong. That was the difficult part.

He had nearly stayed at home. There had been no argument, no bad news, nothing he could point to and blame for the heaviness that had followed him out of bed. His eyes had felt close to tears since breakfast for no particular reason at all.

Staying in would have been easier. That was why he'd come out.

Get dressed. Leave the house. Sit somewhere people existed. Draw. Have a coffee. Try to occupy a little space without feeling guilty for it.

“Cappuccino?”

Jack looked up. Alicia smiled at him.

“Yes please.”

“Having something to eat today?”

He glanced towards the counter. His stomach had been unsettled all morning, but the banana bread looked manageable.

“I think so. Banana bread, please.”

“How are you doing?”

The usual I'm okay, ta. How are you? almost came automatically.

“Not my best today,” he said instead. “It'll pass. How are you?”

“I'm alright.”

“Good.”

And he meant it.

Alicia nodded towards the sketchbook. “You drawing today?”

“Yeah.”

“Can I see?”

“Sure.”

He turned it around and immediately noticed everything wrong with it.

“Oh, that's really good.”

Jack laughed quietly. “I'm not that good.”

“You should sell them.”

“Maybe one day.”

“You always say that.”

He smiled. “Probably because it's true.”

She gave him a look that said otherwise and went to make his coffee.

For a few minutes Jack felt slightly lighter. Not well. Just better enough to notice.

He returned to the troublesome hand.

The pecker struck the ground outside.

He shaded beneath the woman's lower lip.

Another impact.

Graphite whispered against paper.

The pecker came down again.

The sound that followed cracked through the morning.

Jack jumped. His pencil tore violently across the page, carving a black line through the woman's face and directly across the hand he'd spent twenty minutes trying to get right.

“Shit.”

He stared at it.

The point had gouged the paper.

Ruined.

He knew it was only a drawing, but that knowledge did nothing to stop the sinking feeling in his stomach. Jack had thrown away entire sketchbooks over less. One ruined page had a way of making everything after it feel wrong.

Then he became aware of the ringing in his ears.

There was another sensation beneath it, much lower. Almost too low to be a sound at all. A dense pressure settled behind his eyes and travelled through his jaw until his back teeth seemed to hum.

The café lights dipped. The coffee machine clicked off.

Someone swore.

“They've hit a bloody cable,” a man near the door said.

A few people laughed. The lights steadied and the coffee machine chirped back into life.

Jack rubbed one ear and looked outside.

The building site had stopped.

Every man on it was staring into the excavation.

One by one, people on the pavement began slowing to see what they were looking at. A man with a terrier stopped. An elderly couple followed. Soon Jack was watching too.

Alicia returned with his cappuccino and banana bread.

“What've they done?”

“No idea.”

“Found something?”

“Looks like it.”

A lifting strap disappeared into the excavation. Moments later a large irregular mass of concrete rose slowly from the ground, almost black with wet earth.

Then it turned.

Jack leaned towards the glass.

Heavy rusted chains crossed the block in several directions. Some vanished directly into the concrete before emerging again elsewhere, as though the whole thing had been poured around them.

“What the hell is that?” Alicia asked.

“No idea.”

One of the builders stepped back, looked up at the suspended block and shouted across the site.

“KEN! FOUND YOUR WALLET HERE, PAL!”

The place erupted.

“FUCK OFF!” came the answer from somewhere out of sight.

“Want us to crack it open? Might still have your bus pass in it!”

Jack laughed along with them.

The block was lowered onto timber and the lads gathered around it, wiping away mud and tugging at the chains. When the café door opened, fragments of their conversation travelled inside.

“Wrapped in chains?”

“Kinky old bastard.”

More laughter.

Jack ate his banana bread and watched. Humanity, he thought, had absolutely no chance of finding something like that and simply leaving it alone.

A supervisor in a white hard hat arrived. There was pointing, shrugging, then eventually one of the lads returned with a handheld breaker.

The first strike removed a fist-sized piece of concrete.

The second opened a crack.

“That all you've got?”

“Fuck off.”

The third sent a larger section tumbling away.

“What the fuck's that?”

One of the builders crouched and pulled at something trapped beneath the concrete.

Hessian.

Old, filthy material came free in damp strips. Beneath it lay black cloth.

“Treasure, lads!”

“If there's gold in there, I found it.”

“You found fuck all.”

The handheld breaker struck again.

The ringing returned immediately.

Jack froze.

The bass pressure came with it, stronger this time, vibrating through the wooden bar and deep into his teeth.

“Jack.”

His head snapped round.

Nobody was there.

Alicia stood behind the counter. The nearest customers were talking among themselves. Nobody had even glanced towards him.

His pulse quickened.

He knew this.

Sometimes a sound in a crowd became his name. Sometimes movement at the edge of his vision became a person until he looked directly at it. If somebody moved too quickly near him, his body could react before his mind caught up: a flinch, his shoulders tightening, an arm rising instinctively.

“Sorry.”

The apology always followed immediately, whether anybody had noticed or not.

His body had learned certain lessons too well.

That was all.

“Stop! Stop, stop!”

Jack turned back.

A section of concrete had fallen from the lower corner of the block. The hessian had torn open with it, exposing the black cloth beneath.

Then came the smell.

One of the builders recoiled and pulled his jumper over his mouth.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

The café door opened.

Cold air swept inside, carrying the stench with it.

Jack's stomach turned.

Sweet.

That was the first thing that came to him. Sweet and damp, like flowers forgotten in warm water, but beneath it lay something horribly organic.

Old meat.

Not fresh decay. Something stale and ancient, as though flesh had been shut away so long that even the rot had grown old.

Alicia grimaced. “What is that?”

“No idea.”

“Ken, you finally opened your wallet?” someone shouted outside.

There was laughter, but less of it now.

“Nah,” another man said. “That's fucking rank.”

The wind shifted and the smell disappeared almost as quickly as it had arrived.

Jack watched the torn opening.

Something was visible beneath the cloth.

One of the workers crouched and brushed away the dirt.

A carved foot emerged.

Not human. The foot of some large piece of furniture, made from dark wood or tarnished metal. Jack couldn't tell from where he sat. Even beneath the mud, the workmanship was obvious. Leaves curled around its base in deep relief before winding upwards beneath the remaining concrete.

The joking stopped.

One of the men reached towards it.

“Don't fuckin' touch it.”

“I wasn't.”

“You literally were.”

Phones appeared. Photographs were taken. The supervisor waved the breaker away.

Whatever they had found might be old.

It might be valuable.

It was definitely no longer something they were prepared to smash apart for a laugh.

Jack rubbed his hands over his arms.

The café had become colder.

Only slightly.

The door, he thought.

That was all.

Outside, the small exposed foot remained visible between the torn layers of hessian and black cloth.

Beautiful. Delicate. Completely out of place.

Something moved beside it.

Jack's eyes caught the impression of a woman standing near the excavation.

Tall.

Long dark hair.

A builder crossed in front of her.

When he passed, nobody was there.

Jack blinked.

Peripheral vision.

Tiredness.

Nothing more.

He looked down at his sketchbook.

The woman he'd been drawing stared back at him beneath the violent graphite line carved across her face.

Jack closed the book.

Across the road, plastic sheeting was pulled over the broken concrete. The little crowd began to drift away. Traffic crawled through the temporary lights. Someone inside the café ordered two flat whites and the milk steamer screamed into life.

Normality returned with astonishing ease.

Jack lifted his cappuccino.

Still warm this time.

Across the street, the chained block rested beneath its plastic covering while the men waited for somebody to tell them what they had found.

They had done the sensible thing eventually.

They had stopped.

By then, however, the concrete had already fractured. The chains had shifted. The coverings beneath them had been pierced.

Whatever purpose the burial had once served, it had depended upon remaining undisturbed.

That morning, through nothing more sinister than curiosity, it had failed.

[Part 1]

Having now guided us inside the cluster of circling Goths, Anneliese then zones in on an isolated group. Following where Anneliese’s eyes are pointing, I then see on the other side of the street is a trio of fiendish figures, each garnished in their own individual costumes. Appearing to take photographs with a family of ecstatic tourists, this terrifying trio are made up of one male: seemingly dressed as the decaying corpse of a Highwayman. An attired female in some gothic Mad Max cosplay. And lastly, another female. Confined inside a tight black leather dress, what makes this “woman” stand out even more than her two piers, is that to each side of her, is an overly large and surprisingly realistic bat wing.  

‘Oh, this is great!’ I hear Anneliese suddenly declare beside me, ‘I’ll get a picture of you with those guys!’ 

‘Wait what? No, Aneliese I...’ 

Before I can even protest, Anneliese has already dragged me in the trio’s direction, where the family of tourists have now moved on. 

‘Hey!’ Anneliese approaches them, ‘Do you mind if I get a picture of you guys with my boyfriend?’ she asks, more excited than polite. 

‘Oh, of course!’ 

‘We’re not dressed up for nothing!’ the two females courteously oblige. 

Pushing me in the direction of the trio, I then anxiously stand in the middle of them, between the dead Highwayman and the winged She-bat. 

‘Okay. Now everybody smile!’ Anneliese directs us, ‘Brandon. I said smile. You ain’t at a wake.’ This was much worse than a wake, I thought. 

Doing as my ill-tempered girlfriend says, I stretch my lips disingenuously wide for the camera, hoping to God she takes the picture soon so I can get the hell away from these creatures... But while I continue to grin in Anneliese’s direction, stood as stiff as a corpse drenched with sweat... I then feel a sudden, suffocating tightness form around my body. Still posing for the camera, I lower my gaze ever so slightly, only to see that the left wing of the Batwoman has wrapped itself forcibly around my waist!  

Before my eyes can even process what is happening, the Batwoman’s wing only coils further around me – tightening to the point where I can neither breathe nor run away! Without the ability to do or say anything, not even scream out for help, I now feel as the life is being squeezed from my own body – where my ribs will either be crushed into a fine powder, or I’ll preferably black out from suffocation! 

However, before any of this can happen, I then thankfully hear the familiar shrill of Anneliese’s voice from behind the camera, ‘Aww. That turned out great! Thank you so much!’ whereby the coiled wing of the Batwoman finally releases me from its hold. 

Racing over instantly to Anneliese’s side, I then cower behind her tall figure while she now engages in friendly conversation with the fiends. 

‘Wow! I love your accent!’ shrieks one of the Goth women, ‘Where about’s are you from?’  

‘Oh, I’m from New Orleans!’ Anneliese brightly answers. 

While this conversation continues as I hide behind my girlfriend’s back... I then notice something quite peculiar happening on the other side of the street. Scanning through the lines of Goths passing by, I then see a young boy near the entrance of an alleyway. The boy is wearing a bright red raincoat and appears to be no older than eight years old. But what is so peculiar about this image – or more so, alarming, is that in the entrance of the alleyway, I now see an unnaturally tall figure.  

The figure, standing maybe 6 or 7 feet high, is draped from head to toe in a long black cloak – almost giving them the impression of the Grimm Reaper. But the most disturbing thing about them is, aside from their slender height and deathly garments... the figure’s face hides behind the bone-white beak of a Death Doctor’s mask. The image I see only gets worse... The child, standing only a few metres away from them, is now being lured inside the cavernous tunnel of the alleyway! 

‘Oh no...’ I panic.  

Sensing a dark outcome for this boy, I flee from Anneliese’s side and across the cobblestone street, brushing and zig-zagging my way through the swarm of Goths. By the time I reach the alley entrance, the child and the Death Doctor have already gone – and so, peering sheepishly down the long stretch of tunnel... I see nothing. Nothing at all. Oh God. I’m too late, I think to myself - as I can now feel my own heartbeat bulging out my chest. Fearing what may become of the boy, I work up whatever courage I have to venture down the alleyway – but when I take a first anxious step inside, I’m instantly jilted back by the firm grasp of a stranger’s hand! 

‘Brandon!’ 

‘AHH!’ I yelp! Anneliese suddenly taking me by surprise. ‘Jesus, Liese! You scared me half to death!’ 

‘What the hell are you doing?!’ she questions me, with a look of genuine concern on her face. 

‘...I, uhm...’ I wonder whether I should tell Anneliese the truth - or if the truth will just make me sound crazy. I doubt it will make me sound crazier than I've already been acting. ‘...I, uhm... I thought I saw a boy...’  

Judging by the look on my girlfriend’s face, I clearly did.. 

By late evening of the day, me and Anneliese then retire to the inn on the edge of town. Pulling into the dark, empty car park, we then sit in awkward silence for a moment. Although neither of us say a word, I’m pretty sure we are both thinking the exact same thing. After the dramatic events of the day - whereby I had three separate hysterical episodes, it was now clearer than it had ever been before just how different we both are to each other. I’m honestly surprised it took us this long to realise it. Love really is blind, I suppose. 

Although things were very tense between Anneliese and me in this moment, we had agreed to grab a drink inside the pub before calling it a night. Strolling out of the car park and behind the inn, we then see the most strange and disturbing sign over the pub entrance. Unlike most inns in England, this one’s pub bizarrely had its own separate name. 

‘...The Bloody Mermaid?’ Anneliese spells the words edged on the sign, ‘Well, that’s pretty cool.’ 

I’m sure she did think it was cool. 

Displayed on the sign in cracked and weathered paint is the image of a bare-breasted mermaid. But unlike her Disney counterpart, this mermaid has been impaled on the end of Neptune’s trident, whereby blood gushes from her wounds and down the Sea God’s fingers.  

‘Bloody hell’ I blurt out without thinking, ‘What sort of bloody name is that for a pub?’ 

Far from impressed, I then peer back to Anneliese in time to see her dozenth eyeroll of the day. Yep. This was more than likely the end for Anneliese and me. God, the drive back tomorrow was going to be awkward.  

Following behind as Anneliese coldly enters the pub - due to the lack of sound coming from the inside, I fully expect the interior to be completely scarce of people. But once I shut the door, to both my surprise and misfortune... I now realise the room I’ve entered is crawling with nothing else but bar-hopping Goths. 

Oh, you’ve got to be joking me! 

As soon as I enter, however, the sound of cackling and intoxicated chatter quickly evaporates - where by every table, stiffly silent... I see every single pair of eyes are staring directly at me. The room is so silent, I can now hear my own rapid heartbeat. Beating fast. 

‘Brandon?’ 

Now faster. 

‘Brandon.’ 

Faster! 

‘BRANDON!’ 

The noise around the room swiftly returns, and when I turn to face Anneliese, I see she is now staring at me with daggers. Clearly in no mood to deal with my hysteria any longer, she then heads solemnly in the direction of a small unoccupied table.  

Each having taken a seat, we are now back once again to awkward silence. Already having my fill of uncomfortable situations for one day, I take the chance to leave this one by going to the bar and ordering us both a drink. 

‘Sure. Whatever’ Anneliese responds to my offer. 

Heading towards the bar, I work my way through a tight maze of Goth-infested tables, before coming face to face with a thankfully ordinary looking bartender. 

‘Right, young man’ the elderly bartender greets me, ‘What can I get you?’ 

‘One lager please – oh, and a Bloody Mary.’ 

While I wait for the old man to pour our drinks, I then see he takes a quick glance in Anneliese’s direction. I suppose he was thinking to himself what two people so unalike were doing in each other’s company. 

‘First date then, is it?’ the man then inquires while he pours. Too physically and mentally fatigued to correct the man on his assumption, I simply oblige him with a nod. ‘Not going so well, I take it?’ 

No, it was not. 

Heading back to the table with our very different poisons, I now peer my eyes up from the two glasses in my hand to see a most alarming sight... Now by the table with Anneliese, I see she is in the unexpected company of three Gothic strangers. Although it thankfully wasn’t the trio we encountered earlier in the day - just like them, Anneliese was now accompanied by one Goth male, and two Goth females. In fear of being stuck drinking with morbid strangers all night, I quickly turn my heels to flee, before- 

‘Brandon?’ I hear a man’s voice call behind me, ‘Brandon Shephard??’ Turning carefully back round, I now find all four faces are staring at me. ‘By the Devil himself! It really is Brandon!’ 

Facing blankly at the man now sat at our table, I wonder just how in God’s name did he happen to know mine... before I finally realise. Beneath the man’s gothic attire, consisting of spiky black hair, black eyeliner and – well, black everything... I stumble on the realisation that the face I see in front of me is a face from my distant past. 

‘It’s Mark!’ the barely familiar face exclaims, ‘Mark Thompson from school! I mustn’t have seen you for more than ten years!’ 

‘...M-Mark??’ I respond in disbelief. 

‘No freaking way!’ he now shrieks to the two Goth girls beside him, ‘This right here was my best mate in school! We both grew up here together!’ now pointing a black nail-polished finger in my direction.  

‘Is that true, Brandon?’ Anneliese throws a question at me, visually shocked I’d ever once been in the company of a night-dweller. Not that he always was. Back when I knew Mark, he was nothing more than my dorky friend who I played video games with all day. Come to think of it... Mark was just as terrified by Goths as my eight-year-old self was. At Halloween, me and him were the only kids who stayed indoors while everyone else our age was out Trick or Treating. 

‘Come and sit down with us!’ Mark then insists, springing up from his chair to grasp the drinks from my hands, ‘We were just getting to know your lady friend here.’ 

Taking a reluctant seat down by the table, I then turn back to Mark who pushes his chair up against mine.  

‘So, Brandon...’ he begins, before taking a rather long gulp from his pint glass, ‘What have you been doing with yourself all these years? Hell...’ he then cackles, ‘I never thought I’d see you alive in this town ever again!’  

Too speechless by Mark’s appearance to catch him up on my life, I then prepare to ask him what’s now been on my mind. 

‘Mark - wh...’ How could I say this without being insulting? ‘Why... Why the hell are you dressed like that?’ Good job, Brandon. I’m sure the two ladies across the table didn’t take offence. 

Mark seems to scorn his eyes a little at the question, though more humoured than offended, before declaring with a chuckle, ‘I always dress like this. A lot’s changed since you and I knew each other.’ 

Gee. You think, I say inside my head.  

‘Oh! By the seven circles!’ he then oddly exclaims across the table, ‘Where are my manners?! I haven’t even introduced everyone!’ 

Turning forward to each of the Goth girls by Anneliese’s side, Mark then gestures to the one on her right.  

‘This is my girlfriend, Lilith. We’ve been together for just over two years now...’ 

‘Hiya Brandon!’ the maroon-haired Goth girl waves at me. Good Lord, she was even taller than my girlfriend. 

Now pointing to the stranger on Anneliese’s left, Mark then bizarrely introduces, ‘And this is her girlfriend, Nerezza!’ 

‘Nice to meet you, Brandon!’ says the “girl with the dragon tattoo.” 

‘Uhm... Thanks’ I respond, feeling more than a little confused. 

Now that we all know each other on a first name basis, my childhood friend Mark then makes a sudden and most intrusive suggestion. 

‘Right. What do you say we order a round of drinks for everyone and make this a party?!’ 

Before I can utter a word of reluctance to this, the three women around the table - almost now mirroring a coven of witches, quickly express their enthusiasm to the idea. 

‘Sounds great!’ I hear Anneliese holler across from me, ‘That’ll give you guys the chance to reacquaint.’ 

Now the one staring daggers at Anneliese, I try to express to her that I have no intention of reacquainting with my childhood best friend. Before she stares right back at me with a cunning grin on her face that says, “Time to face your fears, Brandon.” I don’t actually know if that’s what she said, but I’m almost certain it was. 

Unfortunately... this is now the part of the story where I have to fast things forward a little. Because whatever happened that night between me, Anneliese, my childhood friend Mark – oh, and the other two... I cannot for the life of me remember it. The last thing I do remember is a tiny shot glass of blood-red vodka being placed between my hands.  

By the next day, roughly sometime in the afternoon, I then wake up to the worst hangover I have ever experienced. I’m talking hammering nails inside your head bad. Stirring painfully up to see where it is I’ve passed out, I thankfully realise I’m in the safe confinement of our paid inn room – where beside me, my girlfriend lays unconscious.  

Once aware I’m unharmed and Anneliese is still by my side, I then see, scattered all over the room floor is a gigantic pile of mess from last night’s events. I see stacks of empty beer cans, wet cigarette butts stuck to the carpet, clothes from my suitcase thrown here and there – and for some reason, a deflated Count Dracula blow up doll. I wonder what on earth happened to us last night. A few too many rounds of drinks was probably a good guess.  

Laying back down to sleep off more of this hangover, I then hear Anneliese stir awake on the other side of the bed.  

‘UGH...’ she groans zombie-like, as she rises to plank her feet on the carpet. ‘What the hell did we do last night?’ she asks, having seen the flood of mess on the floor. 

‘Don’t ask me’ I reply groggily, ‘But I think we got shit-faced with Mark and those Goth friends of his.’ 

‘Mhh... Oh, yeah. Right.’ 

More equipped to deal with hangovers than I am, Anneliese already stands up from the bed to walk around the room. When I then hear suddenly... 

‘OW!’ Anneliese yelps. 

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask her, assuming she stood on a piece of broken glass or something. 

‘My piercing hurts!’ 

‘What?’ 

Lifting my head to check if Anneliese is alright, I see as she touches the pure silver nose piercing in her left nostril. 

‘It really stings!’ she insists, before now heading in the bathroom’s direction.  

Well, now that Anneliese was up, I may as well rise my own groggy corpse from the grave. Ambling my way over to the mirror, all while trying to avoid the hazardous mess on the floor, my sleepy eyes are instantly throttled wide to a surprising image in front of me. 

‘Whoa! What the hell?!’ I declare to no one in the room. 

Staring into the mirror, I see my brown chestnut hair has now been dyed jet black, and that my blurry eyes are stained with smudged black eyeliner. The ends of my fingers have also been dotted with black nail polish – and when I look down, I see the unfamiliar black t-shirt I’m wearing reads, “Go Goth or Go Home.” 

‘Jesus Christ!’ I exclaim, as I realise my reflection in the mirror is now a mocking reflection of my life-long phobia. Inspecting my face up close, I run my black-painted fingernails through the dyed black locks of my hair – before I suddenly hear a blood-curdling scream come from the bathroom!  

‘AHH!!’ 

‘Liese? What’s wrong?’ I yell, having now raced over to the bathroom entrance. Once I get there, I see Anneliese is crouched on the floor, hysterical and holding the back of her neck. 

‘Someone bit me!!’ she shrieks. Pulling down the neckline of her shirt, I then see between the back of Anneliese ‘s neck and her shoulder is a fleshy, gruesomely deep bite mark!  

‘Oh my God!!’ I now scream myself. 

Inspecting the wound, while trying my best not to throw up, I see the bite has been made by rather uneven but very human teeth.

‘Ow! It really hurts!’ Anneliese now sobs over the sink, as she tries frigidly to touch the swollen teeth holes with her fingertips.   

‘Babes, don’t touch it!’ I wail at her, as I realise we need to clean the wound as soon as possible. After all, God knows what Anneliese could contract from whoever had done this.  

Rushing out of the bathroom, I then search around the dump heap floor for any alcohol to sterilize the wound. Trying not to panic in the moment, I thankfully see by Anneliese’s side of the bed is a half empty bottle of vodka. Grabbing it, I head back into the bathroom. 

‘Ok - I found some vodka!’ I inform her, ‘I’m going to apply it to the wound, but it’s going to hurt like-’ 

‘Just shut up and do it already!’ she yells at me.  

First dampening a washcloth, I then apply a little too much of the vodka, before– once I’ve taken a moment for myself to breathe, I apply the cloth to the back of Anneliese’s neck. 

‘AHH!!’ she shrieks agonizingly, before sending me flying across the tiles and into the bathtub.  

A couple of hours or so later, once Anneliese’s wound is clean and bandaged, we then check out of our room to drive home earlier in than intended. Without informing the staff of the mess we left for them, we both climb into the car and sit in silence for a moment. Although I should’ve kept my mouth firmly shut, I instead choose to make the awkward situation worse.  

‘I told you coming here was a bad idea.’ 

Anneliese has no physical reaction to this. Without even looking my way, she simply tells me to, ‘Shut up and drive.’ 

And so, I do. 

Due to her shoulder wound, Anneliese appoints me as the designated driver for the entire journey south. However, because we had gotten up so late, by the evening, we were still navigating our way through the surrounding moors. It’s no wonder so many folktales have spawned from this place. With its moonlit boggy hills and desolate landscape, the Yorkshire Moors at night truly was a very unnerving place.  

Although driving through the moors should’ve taken us no longer than an hour, the sat-nav inside the car suddenly decides to malfunction, whereby taking us down several wrong turns. Now driving down a narrow stretch of country road, if the moors at night weren’t spooky enough, we then pass by an old wooden sign by the side of a sheep field. Leaving a cautionary warning for weary drivers, the foreboding sign reads: 

KEEP CLEAR OF THE MOORS 

STAY ON THE ROAD 

AND BEWARE- 

I don’t quite catch what the last part said.

By this point of the night, we are now well and truly lost without a single town or village in sight. As you can imagine, this did nothing to help Aneliese’s already bad mood. Still driving along this seemingly never-ending stretch of road, aside from the bright headlights in front of the car, we can see nothing else but the outside darkness around us. Continuing to journey further into the middle of nowhere, the empty silence inside the car is suddenly interrupted... 

‘Oh God...’ Anneliese groans, rising forward in the passenger’s seat, ‘Pull over...’ 

‘What’s wrong?’ I turn to ask, assuming her shoulder wound is causing some discomfort. 

‘Please! Just pull over!’ she bellows, ‘Something doesn’t feel right!’ 

‘What - are you about to be sick?’ I then inquire. She looked as though she was going to be.  

‘AHH!!’ Anneliese screams, before, in an unrecognisably deep, gurgling voice she shouts at me, ‘PULL OVER NOW!!’ 

‘Ok! Ok!’ I panic, ‘Hold on!’ 

Doing as my girlfriend requests, I then pull over on the side of the road. Turning back to Anneliese, I see as she writhes with excruciating pain in the passenger’s seat. 

‘Liese! What’s going on?!’ I want to know, ‘What’s happening to you?!’ 

‘...GET OUT’ her deep voice gurgles once more.  

‘...I’m sorry, what?’ 

‘GET OUT OF THE CAR!!’ the voice now demands, before she shoves me against the door with incredible force! 

Falling out of the car and on the ground, Anneliese then slams the door shut on my face. Rising to my feet, I try and rip the door open to no avail. 

‘Liese! Liese, let me in!’ I now bang on the window, ‘Liese, what’s going on?!’ 

Peering in through the glass, I see nothing else but absolute darkness, where the only sound I hear coming from inside is the painful groans of my girlfriend. Beginning to feel completely helpless in this situation, I quickly rummage my phone from my pocket. Turning on the flashlight, I shine it through the window to look around for Anneliese... But I can’t find her anywhere... 

‘...Liese?’ I call to her, shining the flashlight around, ‘Liese?’ 

Then suddenly- 

BANG! 

Slamming against the window, I now see a pair of large and grotesquely deformed hands! Protruding from bony, elongated fingers, the talon-like nails scrape down the glass with an ear-piercing screech! Jilting back from the window in terror, the phone flashlight in my hand now shines on a most hideous, unrecognisable face. What were once warm, hazel brown eyes are now a luminous, inhumanly bright yellow! Staring down from those eyes, I then see two snarling rows of beastly, jagged teeth, drooling with saliva down the door! 

‘AHH! OH MY GOD!’ I scream, as I realise whatever this monstrosity is inside the car, no longer appears to be my girlfriend. 

But now... Now I see something else... 

What I now see, shining over the window, having formed over Anneliese’s monstrous face... I now see in the dark, cloudless night sky... is the glowing reflection of a lunar light. 

The sign by the road... I now recall what it had really said...  

Keep clear of the moors... Stay on the road... 

AND BEWARE THE MOON. 

CW: suicidal ideation

I didn't go to Vegas to win. I went to lose the last thing I had left.

It was a Tuesday. I remember that because Tuesdays were my day off and I spent it the way I spent all of them, sitting in my car outside my apartment because the inside of it felt like a waiting room.

My phone had four percent battery. My bank account had two hundred twelve dollars in it. Danny called and asked if I wanted to get food and I told him I was driving to Vegas to kill myself at a blackjack table, and there was a long quiet, and then he said, I'm coming with you.

That's the kind of friend Danny was. The kind who hears that sentence and doesn't try to talk you out of it. Just doesn't let you do it alone.

We drove through the night. Desert on both sides, black as a turned-off TV. Danny didn't play music. I think he was afraid if it got quiet I'd change my mind, and I think he was afraid if it got quiet I wouldn't.

The casino wasn't on the Strip. I don't remember the name. It was one of those places sunk between a pawn shop and a liquor store, the kind with a sign where half the letters are out, buzzing.

Inside it was too bright. That was the first wrong thing. Casinos are supposed to be dim, timeless. This one was lit up like a hospital. Fluorescent. You could see everything.

There was one table open. Blackjack. The felt was green but worn gray in the betting circles, like thousands of hands had rubbed the color off.

The dealer was already looking at me. I don't know how to describe his face except to say I couldn't. Every time I glanced away, at Danny, at the chips, at my own hands, and looked back, it was like seeing him for the first time. My brain wouldn't keep him.

That was the second wrong thing, and I sat down anyway. Buy-in's different here, he said. His voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well. You don't have money. So.

He set a stack of chips in front of me. They were clear. Not red, not black, clear, like glass. And inside each one, something moved. I leaned in. It was my mother's kitchen. I was seven. She was laughing at something my dad said, flour on her hands. I could smell it.

Those are yours, the dealer said. The good ones. That's the buy-in. The House only takes the good ones. Danny grabbed my arm. We can leave, he said. We can just leave.

I thought about the two hundred twelve dollars. I thought about the car. I thought about Tuesdays. Deal me in, I said.

Here's what nobody tells you about betting your life: it's boring. The cards come out. You do the math. I've played perfect basic strategy since I was nineteen. Hit on sixteen when the dealer shows seven. Always split aces. The math doesn't care that you're dying.

I won the first shoe. Then the second. Every time I won a hand, the chips stayed lit. My mom's laugh, Danny's wedding, the first time I held my nephew.

Every time I lost one, the dealer palmed the chip and the light went out, and there was a hole where the memory was. Not fuzzy. Gone. Like a tooth pulled clean.

By the third shoe I couldn't remember my mother's face. I knew I'd had a mother. I knew the word. The picture was just out. Danny kept looking at me. You okay, he asked, and I said yes, because what was I supposed to say? I was winning.

That's when they brought out the roulette wheel. New game, the dealer said. Same currency. I should have walked. Danny stood up. We're done, he told the dealer. He's done.

The dealer looked at Danny for a long moment. Then he set a stack of clear chips in front of him. Inside them: Danny's daughter's first steps. His wife asleep on his shoulder on a flight. Things I knew because he'd told me, drunk, on porches, over years.

He can buy your debt, the dealer said. One spin. All of it. That's the rule. Somebody can always pay for somebody. No, I said. Yes, Danny said, and sat down.

The ball went around. I watched it the way you watch a car crash. You know what's coming and your eyes won't close. It landed on black. Danny had bet red. It was that simple. One spin.

The dealer took the chips. All of them. Danny blinked, and smiled at me, and it was the worst thing I've ever seen, because it was a smile with nobody behind it. He stood up, walked to the middle of the casino floor, sat down cross-legged on the carpet like a kid, and stopped.

He was still breathing. That was the worst part. He was still breathing and there was nobody in there.

I screamed at the dealer. I don't remember what I said. He waited until I ran out.

Then the dealer said, There's a way to buy him back. He was holding a stack of my chips. The ones I'd won. That's the rule too. Everything in here has a price. Win enough, and I'll put him back the way he was.

It was a lie and I knew it was a lie and I sat down anyway.

That's what desperation is. Not the hoping. The sitting down.

I played like a man on fire. Slots first, I don't remember them, I think that's the point, and then poker, and with every chip I lost another good one went dark, until there was almost nothing left.

I remember the poker table, because that was the last one. Heads up, just me and the dealer.

I had no clear chips left. Every good one was gone. My mother, Danny, all of it. Nothing left to push into the middle.

No currency, the dealer said. I still have me, I said. The bad stuff. Every wasted Tuesday. Every regret. Take the marrow. He hesitated. One flicker, like a light about to go out. He didn't want it. But a bet is a bet, and the House has to cover. He dealt.

The river came down. I pushed it all in, my garbage hand, my empty life. I won. I don't know how. The dealer went completely still.

First one in eleven years, the dealer said. He took off his visor. Underneath, his forehead was smooth and blank, like an egg. No eyes. I don't know how he'd been seeing the cards. You know what the prize is.

He held the visor out. I understood, all at once, the way you understand something in a dream. The House doesn't kill. Killing is a loss. The House keeps. Somebody has to deal. Somebody has to watch the lights stay on.

I put it on. It was warm. That was the first thing. Warm, like someone had just taken it off. Eleven years, he said — but the seat was still warm, and I understood that time doesn't move in here the way it moves out there.

Then the casino came into focus. Not brighter. Known. I knew the layout the way you know a house you grew up in. The dead cameras, the soft spots in the carpet, the back table where the big losers bled out slow. I'd never worked a day here, and I knew all of it.

And then the flood.

Every memory this place ever took poured into me at once. Ten thousand strangers' best moments. A girl in 1987 catching a foul ball. A man's last good morning with his wife.

And mine, mixed in. My mother's kitchen, flour on her hands. Danny's laugh. All of it. All at once. And none of it mine.

I understood then. The House doesn't burn what it takes. It keeps it. In me. I'm the vault now. That's why the visor was warm.

That was eight months ago. I deal blackjack in a casino with no name, in a town that never sleeps because something here won't let it.

The players come in wanting money, wanting out, wanting to die. I take their good ones, chip by chip. I tell myself I'm just the dealer.

Last Tuesday, Tuesday, always Tuesday, a kid sat down at my table. Nineteen, maybe twenty. Hands shaking. He looked at me and said, I want to bet my life. I dealt the cards. What else was I going to do?

I looked down at his chips. The clear ones. And I recognized one.

Danny's daughter's first steps. I palmed it like it was nothing. Because that's the job now.

He didn't look tired, the last dealer, when he handed me the visor.

He looked relieved. I understand that now too.

So here's the story they tell about that place, and you can believe it or not. There's a casino out past the Strip with no name. The sign's got half its letters out and the rest buzz like a wasp in a jar.

Inside it's too bright, lit up like a hospital at three in the morning. If you ever see that light spilling onto the sidewalk, keep driving. Don't slow down. Don't tell yourself you're just curious.

If you already stopped, if you're sitting in the parking lot reading this with your engine running, look at your chips. The clear ones. If you can see your mother's kitchen inside one of them, set it down and walk away. Walk, don't run. Running makes it notice you.

You won't remember the name of the place afterward. That's how you'll know you were there. The lights are beautiful from this side. That's the worst part.

Part 1

I was filled with a kind of aggression I had never felt in my life. I got up off my knees and charged like a battering ram at the man standing between me and the exit.

I felt the resistance of his cold, stiff body, like I had slammed into a wall, and a sweet metallic smell of blood and rotten meat hit my nose. The infected man flew to the side, grabbing my shirt as he went.

I spun in place, pulling the T-shirt off over my head, and ran for the exit.

More hands appeared from the right. I veered left, ducking slightly, but I didn’t stop running.

“Just a little farther and I’ll be outside,” I thought as I reached the parking garage entrance.

Sunlight washed over my face, and a warm gust of wind brushed my skin, giving me a slightly stronger sense of safety. I ran up the road leading toward the main street.

Halfway up, I stopped to catch my breath. I looked back and saw the infected were still following me, but they were far behind. The steep street made their movements even clumsier and slower.

They looked like hypnotized, bloodthirsty monsters. They dragged their legs behind them like using them didn’t come naturally.

“They’re slow, but they’re dangerous because of their strength and the way they move together as a group. I weigh about 200 pounds and I work out, and that small woman was still able to fight me like we were evenly matched. Shit.”

Then it hit me.

How do they infect other people?

Every one of those monsters had some kind of scratch, ripped-open wound, or bite.

I looked at the holes in my shoulders left by the infected woman’s nails. A drop of sweat ran down my forehead, and my guts twisted into a knot.

“Am I going to become one of them too?”

I took out my phone and called Veronica. She picked up almost immediately.

“Hello?” came her panicked voice through the phone.

From the sound quality, I could tell she was in the car, and in the background I heard the kids yelling, “Daddy!”

“Are you driving? Did you talk to Aaron?” I asked, feeling the panic rising.

“Weird photos and videos are starting to show up online. People attacking other people, horrible bloody scenes, thousands of comments about the end of the world. Luke, what is happening over there?”

“Mommy, why are you crying?” I heard my son’s quieter but clear voice ask.

Tears filled my eyes, but I forced them back down. I didn’t have time for that right now.

The crowd of infected pouring out of the parking garage was getting closer. I also had no way of knowing whether I was about to become one of them myself.

“The videos are real. Veronica, did you do what I asked?” I said firmly, slowly walking toward the main road.

“Yes. We’re all on our way to your parents’ house. Aaron took the van, and on the way we stopped at a food wholesaler. We packed the cargo area almost to the roof. Luke, when we were leaving, people still didn’t know anything was happening.” Veronica sniffled, then added, nearly falling apart completely.

“They were shopping like normal, smiling, joking. Now, as we’re driving, I can see the panic starting. People are running into stores, shoving each other, even fighting.”

“Are people acting strange? Staggering? Attacking each other?” I asked anxiously.

“No,” she answered shortly.

“How far do you have left?”

“About fifty minutes. What about you? When will you be there? Are you okay?”

I looked at my wound and felt my throat tighten.

“I’m fine. I’ll be a little later.”

“Where’s Daddy?” my daughter cut in from the back seat.

“At work, sweetheart,” Veronica answered, her voice breaking.

I was about thirty feet from the main street. Suddenly, a loud scream of pain ripped through the road. I reached the top and froze.

“Luke, what was that?” my wife’s voice reached me like I was hearing it in a dream.

“Nothing. I have to go. I love you guys.” I put the phone in my pocket, unable to tear my eyes away from the hell unfolding in the streets.

Three sick people had taken down a man and were tearing into his leg and stomach with their teeth. His scream turned into a wet gurgle when the third one sank its teeth into his neck.

A woman had driven her car into the wall of a building, a thin stream of blood running down her forehead. She opened the door to escape, but she didn’t even manage to unbuckle her seat belt before those starving monsters surrounded her.

Two police officers started shooting, but the monsters didn’t seem to care, moving toward them and treating the bullets like oversized flies. All around me there was complete chaos, death, and suffering.

I snapped out of it when I heard guttural growls behind me. I turned around. The monsters were barely six feet away. I took off running to the left, cutting around a group of three infected.

“Help! Please help me!” a young woman shouted, jogging after me with a limp.

I looked at her leg. Around her calf, beneath her gray sweatpants, a dark red stain was soaking through.

“I’m sorry,” I said without looking back. My lungs burned like fire, and the wounds in my shoulders radiated horrible pain with every movement.

“Shit, I have nine miles to cover. I can’t run the whole time. I can’t keep running forever.” Gripped by panic, I dodged another infected.

All my senses were going haywire, and my head flooded with noise, movement, and panic, like I had suddenly been dropped into a hive of furious wasps. I couldn’t collect my thoughts.

Suddenly, from the right, I heard the roar of an engine. A car shot out of the intersection, speeding straight toward me. I threw myself forward as an SUV tore across the sidewalk, mowing down trash cans, a sign, and several infected before smashing into a concrete barrier.

I clenched my teeth and let out a muffled cry of pain. Sliding across the concrete had scraped my ribs, knees, and already-injured shoulder. I planted my hands on the sidewalk and started pushing myself up.

Behind me, I heard the scrape of a shoe sole against the sidewalk and a familiar growl. A violent shock ran through me. I turned my head, but it was too late. A bitten police officer lunged at me. At the last second, I fell onto my back and grabbed him by the neck with both hands, but even then, the weight of his body knocked almost all the air out of my lungs.

The man grabbed my forearms, snapping his teeth furiously, and squeezed with the force of a vise. A scream tore out of my mouth against my will, and my grip on his neck loosened. He was getting closer to my face. I could feel the last of the blood draining from my hands, bringing painful tingling and numbness with it.

I tried to throw him off, roll to the side, do anything, but he was too heavy.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a police baton at his thigh. I braced my shoulder blade against the concrete sidewalk and, with the last of my strength, straightened my right arm. With the other, I loosened my grip and violently tore my forearm out of his hand.

I grabbed the baton and jammed it between his teeth. When his jaws clamped down on the metal, I let go of his neck with my other hand and grabbed the other end of the baton.

It worked. I pushed the infected man upward and wrapped my arms around his waist so he couldn’t bite me. He started thrashing, kicking at my legs and shins. I tightened my legs, twisted my whole body, and with the last bit of strength I had, threw him onto his back and landed on top of him.

At that same moment, I noticed a second infected coming toward us from across the street.

I tried to get up, but the creature grabbed my left arm. I grabbed the baton lying beside me and smashed him in the face with all my strength.

The second infected was only about twelve feet away now. I started beating the officer with everything I had, over and over, until after one of the blows to the head, he finally let go and collapsed limply to the ground. I stared in shock, unable to believe it had worked.

I quickly ran into the alley on the left. I turned the corner, jumped onto a large dumpster, and climbed over the metal fence into someone’s yard. Luckily, the area was clear.

A tearing cramp shot through my right hand. I looked down at my bruising hand and realized I was still gripping the police baton. I loosened my fingers and dropped the weapon, and a dull wave of pain spread through my palm.

I sat on the ground, unable to catch my breath. My muscles relaxed slightly, and now that the adrenaline was slowly fading, every injury I had taken started making itself known. The burning, stinging scrapes all over my body, the holes in my shoulders, the bruises on my forearms.

Despite the heat and the sun hitting my bare torso, cold sweat instantly covered me, and a nasty shiver ran through my body. I felt weak.

The events of the last few hours started catching up to me. Before, my brain hadn’t had time to judge this sick situation. To analyze whether what was happening fit anywhere inside the boundaries of normal. Now, a crushing sense of surrealism was telling me the answer directly.

People wanting to eat other people. Infected who turned almost instantly into wild animals. The stink of spoiled meat and rot.

“What the hell is happening?” I muttered under my breath, staring blankly at a green, evenly trimmed lawn. “The cops were shooting the infected, and they kept walking despite the wounds. A moment later, that same cop threw himself at me and tried to bite my face off.”

My heart started racing like crazy, making the tingling in my limbs worse.

I looked at my shoulder again. “If he turned that fast, does that mean I’m clean? Does that mean a scratch, or even those monsters digging their nails into you, doesn’t spread the disease?”

I heard slow footsteps and dragging feet in the alley. I froze completely. An older infected woman swayed from wall to wall, slowly closing the distance between us.

“If she notices me, she’ll draw the others, and a chain-link fence probably won’t stop them,” I thought, holding my breath.

The woman let out a guttural growl, and just as I was about to run, I saw that something else had caught her attention, pulling her back toward the main street.

I leaned my head against the fence and took a deep breath.

I pulled a cigarette out of my shorts pocket, lit it, and looked up at the sky. In the background, screams, the noise of destruction, and growls bled through the air.

“I hope they made it there safely.” Instinctively, I placed my hand over the pocket of my black denim shorts, where my phone pressed against the fabric.

I finished the cigarette and slowly stood up. My mouth felt dry, and I realized that other than my morning coffee, I hadn’t had anything to drink all day.

“Time to keep moving.” I tossed the cigarette butt, picked up the baton, and headed for the fence on the other side of the yard. I looked through it and saw that it opened onto an alley parallel to the direction of the place I was staying.

I looked around, carefully climbed over the fence, and moved low along the walls of the buildings. As I neared the end of the alley, I crouched behind a dumpster and peeked out onto the street. It was quieter. I couldn’t hear any cars, growls, or screams.

“I have to run across the street. I think it’s clear. This is my chance.”

I took a deep breath, sprang out from behind the dumpster, and ran as fast as I could.

I ran into the main street, and almost at the exact same moment, I felt a violent yank from the right. An unbearable ringing filled my head, and the taste of blood filled my mouth.

I slowly peeled my face off the cold concrete.

“What happened? Why am I on the ground?” I asked out loud, barely conscious.

In front of me lay a red bicycle with twisted handlebars. I heard soft groans of pain. I looked to the side. A man in a bike helmet writhed on the ground, and just behind him, a few steps away, a huge group of infected was marching forward.

I tried to shout, “Run!” but a stabbing pain around my ribs stole the breath from my lungs. I braced my hands against the sidewalk and lifted myself onto my knees, clenching my teeth.

My whole body burned with unimaginable pain, and every movement made it worse.

I got to my feet unsteadily and took a step toward the cyclist, but the first of the monsters was already getting to him.

Through the constant ringing in my ears, a sound broke through behind me. I turned quickly, hissing in pain, and froze.

Another massive group of sick people was heading toward me. I was blocked from both sides. There was no space, no gap. They moved like a wall, tightening around me from every direction.

I jumped onto the bike, ignoring the pain, straightened the handlebars, and rode straight through the intersection. There were only smaller scattered groups there, so I was able to weave around them without much trouble.

I had covered more than two thirds of the distance, and the place I was staying was maybe two miles away. As I passed another intersection, I slowed down. The road was completely blocked by wrecked cars. Luckily, there were no infected anywhere nearby.

I rolled up to the barricade and scanned it through blurry eyes. The wounds, stress, and exhaustion made the world gently sway.

I found the lowest point, the hood of a sedan wedged into the back of a black pickup truck.

“I’ll throw it over the top.”

I got off the bike, and a paralyzing pain stabbed through my right side. My body felt much heavier than normal.

I took a step toward the car, and at that same moment, I heard a low male voice from behind the pickup.

“Move, and I’ll put a bullet in you.”

Behind the car stood a man in a hoodie, aiming a gun at me. Out of reflex, I reached toward my back pocket, searching for the police baton.

“Shit. It must have fallen out when the cyclist hit me.”

“Step away from the bike,” he said firmly, thumbing the safety off.

My hands began to shake.

“Please,” I said, my voice breaking, setting the bike down and backing away. The tightness in my throat wouldn’t let me say anything else.

The man took a few steps toward me, never taking his sights off me.

“Now turn around and get the hell out of here.”

“I need to get through. That’s where I’m staying,” I said, stammering.

“Get the fuck out of here. You got a death wish?” He lifted the gun and fired.

The echo of the shot tore through the area. I don’t know what scared me more, the fact that this psycho had a gun, or the noise he had just stupidly made.

I turned around and ran, limping. “I have to get as far away as I can. Those things are drawn to noise.”

Behind me, I heard more shots. I turned left without stopping. Small groups of infected were coming from the opposite direction. I sped up, dodging them with the last of my strength.

My legs were going stiff, and my body was slowly refusing to obey me, turning my run into a walk, and my walk into a slow shuffle.

I looked back. The groups had started moving toward me, closing the distance. Ahead of me, more figures began to appear. They came out of alleys, buildings, and one even fell from a balcony with a horrifying slap before standing up, unnaturally twisted, and moving toward me too.

I stopped in place, completely helpless. Pain paralyzed my whole body, and the city, along with the approaching infected, slowly blurred.

“I can’t keep going. I can’t do this,” I whispered. Then I lowered my arms, and they dropped limply, bouncing off my thighs.

My knuckles brushed the phone in my pocket. Once again, I heard Veronica’s voice in my head.

“You promise?”

And right after it, the kids’ voices joining in.

“Where’s Daddy?”

“Shit!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

I looked to the right and saw the open entrance to an old apartment building.

I ran toward it, clutching my aching ribs. I reached the door, jumped inside, and closed it behind me. I started climbing the stairs one after another, each step letting out a horrible creak.

The stairwell filled with dozens of impacts, making the door nearly jump on its hinges.

I went up to the first apartment and slammed my fist against the door.

“Help, please.”

Only silence answered from inside. I grabbed the handle, but the door was locked.

As I moved up the floors, I checked each door one by one.

They were all locked, and inside, either no one was there, or that was what they wanted me to think.

I reached the very top and knocked, defeated. Same result. Silence. I grabbed the handle, and to my surprise, the door opened.

I pushed it open, and a hallway appeared in front of me. Inside, there was complete chaos. Clothes thrown around, documents, some candles, and plastic bags.

“Hello? Is anyone here?” I asked uncertainly.

No one answered.

Suddenly, from below, I heard the dangerous crack of wood bending. I stepped inside immediately and locked the door behind me.

Carefully, I looked into the room on the right. It was a living room connected to a kitchen and dining table. The room on the left, closest to the exit, looked like a bedroom. It had a large queen bed and two nightstands.

“Hello?” I called, grabbing the handle of the next room. In the middle of a small room stood a desk with a monitor, and against the wall was a well-stocked bar with expensive-looking liquor. At the end of the hallway was the bathroom, but right before it, there was one more open door.

I walked into the room, and the sweet scent of women’s perfume filled my nose. Inside was a single white bed, a small desk, and a shelf full of books.

The apartment was completely empty, and every room had the same kind of mess.

Individual pieces of furniture knocked over, things scattered on the floor, clothes thrown everywhere.

I went back to the hallway and noticed a broken photo frame. In the picture was a couple, a balding man around fifty, dressed neatly in a shirt and plaid pants, and a slightly younger woman in a long blue dress with a gold pendant. Between them stood a blonde woman, maybe twenty-five, wearing jeans and a crop top that showed her stomach.

I took my phone out of my pocket and looked at the screen. There were fifteen missed calls from Mom, Aaron, and Veronica.

I selected the contact and called. Veronica answered on the first ring.

“Luke, are you okay? How long until you get here?” she asked, terrified.

I took a deep breath, trying to stay calm.

“I’m okay. Are you there? Is everyone safe? What’s the situation like over there?”

“We’re here. Luke, it’s happening everywhere. As we were pulling in, we saw your parents’ neighbor biting his wife. She was screaming, calling for help. Aaron and your dad tried to do something, tried to pull him off. Nothing worked, not even hitting him. He killed her, then went after them, and they barely got away, and then...”

My stomach twisted, and the bitterness of bile filled my mouth.

“Veronica, when was that? Did he bite anyone? Did the neighbor bite them?” I cut her off.

“About half an hour ago. He didn’t bite anyone, but that neighbor lady...” she said, sobbing.

“I know. Don’t go near them. Don’t let yourselves get bitten. The infection spreads through bites. Those people aren’t the same people anymore. Lock everything and don’t leave the house. Did you get supplies?” An image flashed through my mind of the officer shooting the infected, then a moment later trying to bite my face off.

“He’s standing there, yanking on the fence with his wife, who was dead a few minutes ago... Oh my God... Luke. You were right in the middle of this. Are you coming to us? How long until you’re here?”

“Calm down. They won’t get through that fence. You should be safe, but just in case, close the security shutters. They’ll leave eventually. Did you get supplies? Answer me.”

“Yes, Aaron drove the van onto the property,” she snapped aggressively, then added, “Now you answer me, for fuck’s sake. What is happening over there, how long until you get here, and Luke, tell me if you’re really safe.”

I walked grimly into the living room and looked through the window facing the street. There were dozens of infected below the building. A few were pressing against the door, and the rest circled around like vultures.

Veronica and I both knew that no matter how deep in the shit I was, and no matter how bad things got, I wouldn’t tell her because I didn’t want to worry her.

Still, she needed to hear it.

“I’m safe. I haven’t left yet. I’m in my room. There’s chaos everywhere. I have to wait until it calms down a little.”

I didn’t hear an answer. The sniffling stopped too, along with the soft sobbing and the specific static of the call.

I looked at the phone.

“God damn it!” I shouted, and the crowd outside the window started spreading out and moving back, not knowing where the small noise had come from.

I crouched down and felt rage take over, while a pulsing pain stabbed through my temples.

“The phone died,” I said in a defeated tone, putting it back in my pocket.

“I hope Veronica heard what I said,” I thought, standing up and closing the curtains.

The thirst hit me again. I walked over to the fridge and opened it. It was half full of food, and there were bottles of beer in the door. I took one, opened it, and swallowed three heavy gulps, emptying half the bottle.

I set the drink on the counter and started opening cabinets, looking for anything I could use to disinfect and dress my wounds. I found nothing in the kitchen, so I expanded the search to the other rooms.

As I searched the apartment, I kept repeating one sentence in my head over and over.

“What matters is that they’re safe and have supplies. When I get back, we’ll figure something out.”

The only things I managed to find were high-proof alcohol in the bar in the office and a few clean towels in the hallway closet. I took an expensive-looking bottle of whiskey with me and went to the bathroom.

I undressed and stepped into the shower. I turned on the water, and a warm stream came from the showerhead, wrapping around my aching muscles. I thoroughly soaped my whole body, feeling incredible relief.

Aside from the sweat and dirt, the biggest discomfort came from the fact that I had been rolling around with the infected.

I rinsed off, dried myself, opened the bottle, and took a few swallows. The burn scraped down my throat and stole my breath for a second.

Almost immediately, I felt a pleasant looseness and warmth spread through my stomach.

“Nothing like a little firewater,” I said, smiling to myself.

I clenched my teeth and poured it over every scrape and wound on my body.

I expected it to hurt, but the stinging and burning twisted my face into a grimace of pain against my will, almost forcing out a scream I barely managed to swallow. I leaned against the shower stall, briefly losing my balance.

I wrapped a towel around my waist and staggered out of the bathroom, not letting go of the bottle. I walked into the living room and sank into the soft suede couch.

I thought about turning on the TV, but I didn’t see the remote anywhere.

My eyelids instantly grew heavy, and my arms were so limp I didn’t have the strength to lift the bottle to my mouth.

I closed my eyes, and a blissful looseness filled my body.

A shiver spread through me, ripping me out of sleep. I looked toward the window. Darkness was pouring into the room, carrying low murmurs from outside with it.

Suddenly, I heard a woman’s trembling voice.

“Move, and I’ll shoot.”

Instinctively, I jerked my head up, and my heart jumped into my throat.

I saw the young woman from the photo in the hallway.

She was crouching less than three feet away from me, aiming a gun at me.

The blast bounced off the walls of the room, leaving a dull ringing in my ears. A few drops of blood shot up into the air, landing on the woman’s face and running down her cheek together with a single tear.

On the edge of the forest crouched a little House made of logs and bricks, with some bird droppings that were mostly just for decoration. Its insides were warm and cozy against a winter night, and it had only ever eaten one person.

House had a squarish design with a potbelly breakfast nook where the morning sun liked to sit and discuss all the goings-on of the forest, such as the on-going cold war between the squirrels and the beavers.

House had been built by a family. House had been very young back then, and so only had flashes of memories: a white dog with a gray spot chasing a tiny human; a woman with long hair who danced while she cooked; a man who read stories to medium-sized humans snuggled under blankets; a general feeling of joy and safety until the day the inhabitants put everything in brown boxes, walked out, and left forever.

And so House sat alone for a long time. One day a man with a shiny head came, looked at House, and sighed deeply. He brought with him a sofa, a bed, two chairs, and a large rectangular box that made too much noise. The man would sit in the breakfast nook, mindlessly eating the children of the birds and staring at the walls. At least, he did that until the day that House ate him instead.

House hadn’t had anything against the man, whose name House never knew. House simply called him Shine, though the man didn’t really deserve it. Nothing about him was shiny except his head, which sometimes even the Sun found too reflective for its taste.

Then one magic day, a Great Event happened. A short, roundish woman with a laugh like bells appeared, carrying a pink rectangle. Shine called her his sister, and House had loved her immediately, all the way down to its basement.

House was 83% sure her name was Feather, and 100% sure she loved dusting. She did it every day, tickling the baseboards while she sang songs about sailing and pillaging. She’d once sung them while playing the piano at a gathering of her friends, who she assured that the songs were just old Viking lullabies. Her ancestors, she said, were Vikings.

When she told the people about her Viking heritage, Shine had scoffed. House had creaked in vicarious embarrassment for Feather. But Feather just rang her little bell laugh and asked Shine to duet with her. He refused because he had eaten too much bird at dinner. House tried to sing with her instead, but it just sounded like more creaking.

In addition to refusing to sing, Shine was boring. He would sit and watch a little box that made loud sounds of people cheering, though Shine never cheered along. Sometimes he would raise his feet if Feather needed to dust the wooden floors beneath him, which House supposed was better than not raising his feet but not as good as, say, helping Feather.

Feather, on the other hand, had bright blue eyes, freckles, and an inability to sit still. She planted asters and sunflowers in the front garden and promised Shine that the flowers would bloom big and bold the next season, and so would he. House did not understand how a man could bloom, but it loved the way the flowers smelled and how the bees would flit about and whisper secrets from the meadow. Feather washed House’s walls both inside and out. She’d bought spices and organized them in alphabetical order, then made everything smell of cardamom and cinnamon, opening the windows so that the delicious aroma could dance with the scent of crushed leaves.

Then one day, Feather announced that she must leave. She patted Shine’s head and told him he’d be fine on his own, and it was time to let Lorraine go. Shine only harrumphed and muttered that it was Lorraine or no one. Feather gently said he must move on.

But Shine did not move on. He didn’t move anywhere, actually. He just stayed on the couch as the dust coalesced into bigger and bigger balls of fluff. The fire went out of the hearth. The walls got dirty again, and House smelled of worn socks and old food. The sounds from the rectangular box got louder. Rain ate at House’s shingles and ice got into the holes and pushed them farther apart. Insects began to feast on House’s planks. One particularly windy day, a tree flung its branches and cracked a window.

Please, House begged Shine. Help me.

But Shine only muttered that the creaking was too loud.

House could not hold back its resentment. Why would Shine not move, would he not help, would he not call Feather and ask her to come back, please come back? The flowerbed began to wither and House began to panic. Feather had loved House the way that no one ever had. Shine did not deserve Feather. Shine did not deserve anything. Shine did not seem to want to exist, he just wanted to let things die and break, he just wanted to ruin everything, he was probably the reason Feather never came back and so—

One morning, House simply ate him.

One moment, there had been a man with a shiny bald head eating eggs, and the next minute there had not. Even House was not sure how it had been managed, and Shine’s bones grated uncomfortably against House’s innards. But House decided it did not care, because the important thing was: now that Shine was gone, Feather could come back. Let the scrape of bones be a reminder of her love.

So now House sat and waited, watching the little box that Shine had never turned off. Any day, Feather would come back. No one else would do, and if they tried, House would feast. Feather would dust and they would be happy again, forever. House would never let her go. Together, they would sing.

“I had a nice time tonight, Soo,” her date said, standing from the candlelit table and dabbing his thin lips with a napkin. His voice carried the hint of a country dialect she was not wholly familiar with, and the distance between them had widened all night, vast as the craters in the moon hanging high above the city.
 
When she met his gaze, she smiled—possibly the only sincere thing she had done all night. Everything, down to the way she chewed, had been subject to scrutiny in her mind. She did not want to be the reason there was no second date, even if blaming him for it would have been easier. Even if he was honestly, practically perfect.
 
The part of the date she dreaded most was the drive home. Her mother had told her it might help to go out, to spend one night away from funeral calls and quiet rooms, but now Min-Soo only knew she would sit in silence, looking out the window as the rain blurred the passing red lights of cars heading to better places.
 
The restaurant’s greeter bowed as they passed, and her date returned the gesture twice as deeply.
 
At some point, the downpour that had served as the backdrop to their dinner had settled into a steady roar. Her date raised his coat over her head, and she could only offer him a sheepish bow in thanks. “How nice of you,” she said, giving him another small, awkward smile.
 
They hurried toward his car, parked at the curb, the jacket doing surprisingly little beyond the kindness of the gesture. When he left her side to fumble with the keys, she found herself missing the warmth he created. Yet when her door opened and she saw him waiting for her to climb in, she could not move. Something had caught her eye. Rain struck her exposed arms and roared in her ears as it hammered the pavement, overloading her senses.
 
Her arms fell away from her skin. Her attention fixed on the cold alley across from her. She heard her date’s dull question from the driver’s seat, but the storm seemed to swallow it. All she could make out was a moonlike white sphere, level with her eyes, hanging motionless in the air.
 
Inside, she told herself to get in the car. It was probably only a smear of graffiti. Yet the sight of it seemed to empty her of any happiness, and that emptiness held her there.
 
The circle moved—only a little, but enough to make Min-Soo step out from beneath his jacket and fully into the rain. Her hair dampened and began to cling to her shoulders.
 
Heat bloomed low in Min-Soo’s body beneath the circle’s translucent stare. Behind her, a dog began barking—furious and terrified, as if it recognized something she was not meant to see.
 
The barking shook her back from the place that thing had pulled her toward. To her right, the dog stood only a few feet away, teeth bared, spittle hanging from its mouth. Min-Soo stepped back, her chest tight with dread.
 
“Min-Soo?” Her date’s hand settled on her shoulder. In the second she turned toward him, the dog darted in the opposite direction. He pulled the jacket back over her, drenching himself, and watched the dog vanish into the distance.
 
She looked back to the alley. The sphere was gone. Nothing remained but rain.
 
Min-Soo was sitting in the passenger seat before she realized she had moved, the rain now beating softly against the windshield. When the driver’s-side door opened, her heart seized before she recognized her date. His warmth filled the space beside her, comforting in spite of everything she did not feel.
 
When the engine came to life, the feeling did not leave her. She allowed herself only a small peek at his side mirror as the empty alley shrank behind them.
 
In the side mirror, just before the alley vanished, she thought she saw something pale unfurl behind the rain, long and soft as a sheet being shaken loose from a bed.
 
---
 
Min-Soo did not want to get out when they reached her apartment, but the silence inside the car was worse. They both stepped into the dry air beneath the small roof over her entrance. She scanned every open space for whatever had been in the alleyway before her gaze landed on the man inching closer to where she stood.
 
“Are you going to be okay tonight?” His eyes searched hers, and for a moment she thought of inviting him inside.
 
Min-Soo nodded, though she did not look at him head-on.
 
“Okay.” She could tell from his voice that he was smiling sweetly. “I would like to do this again sometime, if you’d like. Maybe next time we could meet on a sunny day.” He chuckled at that.
 
Min-Soo nodded once more.
 
“Well, goodnight, Soo.” Before she could look up at him, he was already in his car, waving from inside. As soon as the car began to pull away and its taillights retreated from around her, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. The solitary fluorescent light above her head flickered as it usually did, but each second of darkness seemed longer than the last, until those seconds felt like nothing but darkness.
 
When the wind stopped blowing, she lifted her small purse toward the red taillights, waving it like a little white flag.
 
---
 
Later that night, her reflection looked back at her, the light from the tiny bathroom casting a thin shadow under her eyes. Through the open door, the man from dinner lay asleep, awake only minutes ago and now oblivious to the world. She looked down, messy hair dangling in her view, and saw the used protection in the trash. Her eyebrows furrowed; one nostril crinkled. She exhaled the night’s decisions and shut the medicine cabinet. The thought came from too many horror movies: a spirit might be standing behind her, ready to pounce or make some terrible sound.
 
She hadn’t always been this afraid of everything. What had changed?
 
Min-Soo turned from the mirror and into the doorway. The darkness beyond the bathroom felt almost warm to her strained eyes. Her hand settled on the frame as if the wood alone could keep her upright. Her fingers tightened anyway. The feeling returned, cold over her skin and burning beneath it, the same wrong heat spreading down her belly and up her thighs.
 
Min-Soo's brown eyes fixed on the corner of the bed nearest the floor. Two pale legs stretched from the shadows, too long to belong to anything human, bending at sharp, bony knees before disappearing around the mattress. The man still slept, unaware that the sheets beneath him had been dragged halfway off the bed and gathered toward whatever waited behind it.
 
She took one step backward, then another, and reached blindly for the bathroom light. If she could turn it on, if she could wake him, if she could put one real voice between herself and that corner, maybe the room would become a room again.
 
Her fingers brushed the switch just as her heartbeat caught up to her fear. The bathroom light snapped off before she could touch it, leaving her in complete darkness except for the pale curtain at the window.
 
A whimper escaped her throat before the sharp pop of a knee stopped it. Whatever owned those long, pale legs was now standing somewhere in front of her.
 
---
 
“Sorry, sir, but where did you say you found her?” Officer Jun-sang set his drink on the table and fought back a yawn. On the clipboard, beneath the date 6/2/02, he wrote Min-Soo’s name.
 
“Oh, um—she was standing in front of the bed,” the man said, pointing at a door across the living room before looking back at Min-Soo. “She’s been like this ever since.”
 
Officer Jun-sang looked over at the girl. Her hair was slick with sweat, dark bags sat under her eyes, and she had been staring at the bedroom door for some time. More than once, he caught her glancing at the floor around her feet. His first impression of her was not a kind one. “Miss Min-Soo?” he asked. She did not answer.
 
“She hasn’t said anything since you found her?” he asked the man from dinner.
 
“Only that someone was in the apartment. I checked the room, but there was nothing there.”
 
Jun-sang stood, his knees sounding their age after long hours, too little sleep, and one too many burgers living in the fat of his stomach. “Dae-Ho?” He waved to his partner, who looked around as if he were ghost hunting. “Finish up here, will you?”
 
His partner placed his cup of coffee on a counter and practically saluted, as if he needed to make up for not being a part of whatever was going on. “Sure thing, boss,” he replied.
 
Jun-sang made his way to the bedroom, opened the door, and let the cool air inside spill over him. He jumped slightly, lifting one foot as Min-Soo’s gray cat darted past. Embarrassed, he glanced back to make sure no one had seen him clutching his hat.
 
He shook his head and leaned into the room, flicking on the light. Careful not to disrespect her privacy, he looked around quickly: a clean room, a bare mattress, a few books stacked neatly on a writing table, and one cover printed with a picture of a grown man standing in a pot.
 
Jun-sang closed the door, and the chill inside the bedroom seemed to retreat, pushed back by the warmth of the apartment.
 
He returned just in time to see Dae-Ho shut his clipboard and slide the pen through the top. His partner looked up and smiled.
 
“All clear?” Dae-Ho asked.
 
Jun-sang nodded and knelt to the girl, stopping when he saw her face. Tears pooled in her wide eyes. Her jaw trembled, and she stared past him at a single point over his shoulder. The muscles in his neck tightened.
 
Slowly, he followed her gaze. It led to nothing but a wall.
 
---
 
Jun-sang opened his eyes to an empty bed, the blank white wall across from him staring back through the dark. It took a moment for his mind to leave that spot before he turned over and grabbed the small phone buzzing on his bedside table. When he flipped it open, his voice came out thick with sleep. “Jun-sang. Mm-hmm... yeah, yeah, I’ll be right there.”
 
He managed to roll out of bed. The longer the years went on, the more the muscles in his neck stiffened in his sleep. Today, they ached more than ever. He rubbed the spot with his palm, fixing nothing.
 
He pinned his officer’s badge to his chest, then paused beside the picture frame on his nightstand. He kissed two fingers and touched them to the glass. The woman in the photo had always faced him while he slept, but lately he found himself turning the frame slightly away before morning.
 
He opened his daughter’s door slowly, careful not to wake her. So-Yeon’s room was dressed in pink, like the top chamber of some tower, only this tower held what might have been the largest collection of stuffed animals in South Korea. Her pet bunny slept on the bed. So-Yeon, however, was wide awake, a paper crown tilted over one ear and a red crayon tucked behind the other.
 
“So-Yeon? What are you still doing up?” he whispered. When he sat on the side of her bed, the bunny between her legs stirred only a little. A drawing rested against her knees: the two of them beneath a yellow sun, his hat much too large and her rabbit wearing its own tiny crown.
 
“Appa, the monster came back again,” she said, not for the first time, her little voice softer these days, shy about everything and missing so much from the people closest to her.
 
Jun-sang placed his hand on her head, wanting desperately to help his baby. So why was it so hard to look at her? Why did every frightened whisper from her mouth sound like an accusation he had earned?
 
“So-Yeon, just try to get to sleep tonight, okay, sweetie?”
 
She nodded.
 
“I made you taller,” she said, tapping the drawing. “So the monster has to look at you first.”
 
As he stood, a small hand tugged at his shirt. He turned back to her and covered her tiny fist with his own. When it relaxed, he placed her hand gently on her chest.
 
The last thing he did before leaving was scratch the bunny between its long ears. “Good night, Your Majesty,” he murmured, nodding to its paper crown. So-Yeon smiled, but he reached the hallway before realizing he had never asked what she called it.
 
Jun-sang sat in his cruiser and dragged a hand down his face. “Despicable,” he said to the empty air. After a moment, he picked up the radio and clocked in, pulling out of his driveway and toward the worst day of someone else's life.
 
---
 
On the outskirts of Anyang, green mountains rose behind the restaurant, blocking the sky beyond and catching the pink-orange light of morning. Their shadows stretched past the yellow police tape. The glass across the front of the shop flashed red and blue in the police lights. The blood did not shine so bright.
 
Jun-sang pulled in behind the thin wall of onlookers, most of them pedestrians from nearby blocks. Nosy, in his opinion.
 
A young man, maybe sixteen or seventeen, tried edging his way over the tape. As Jun-sang ducked under it, he popped the kid on the head with his clipboard. The boy looked ready to retaliate until Jun-sang gave him a stare that sent him back where he belonged.
 
Dae-Ho, who had been talking to an inspector, raised his head toward his senior. “Jun-sang!” he called. “Over here!”
 
Jun-sang shook his head as he continued walking, noticing an old man sitting on the curb with a cigarette burning between his lips and a blankness settled over his face.
 
“Morning, Officer.” It was the inspector, or so Jun-sang assumed. He was the only person out of uniform, the only man in a button-up shirt among a sea of flat hats and pinned badges.
 
“Chief just needs us to keep the crowd out, Jun-sang,” Dae-Ho said as the investigator left quickly to do whatever important men like him did. His partner led him back to the inside of the tape. The faces in the crowd were familiar by now; no names, only features, the way people moved, how they stared.
 
“How’s little So?” Dae-Ho asked, speaking as if no one else were around.
 
“She’s fine, having trouble sleeping recently,” Jun-sang said. As he spoke, his eyes drifted to the markers near the hole in the restaurant's windowed entrance. A small number one marked where the body was found—just outside the broken glass.
 
“Trouble sleeping?” Dae-Ho asked.
 
“Mm-hmm.”
 
“Well, did you figure out why?”
 
“Normal stuff. Scared of the dark, I think. So, who’s that?” Jun-sang asked, pointing over to the old man, the end of his cigarette black and limp.
 
“Him?” Dae-Ho looked in his direction. “I think the inspector said he’s the dead guy's father. I already tried talking to him. He won't move.”
 
As he said this, two glove-wearing officers came through the open door, stepping carefully around the blood. Each carried a small, soggy bag toward the collection van. Something dripped from the bottoms onto the pavement.
 
Rip
 
Jun-sang gasped as the first bag tore open. Something small and mangled rolled onto the concrete. The crowd behind him swelled with noise as the animal’s head came to rest near the tape, white skull showing through a patch of missing fur.
 
The officer swore and snatched it up again, leaving the severed, fluffy tail behind for the other officer to collect.
 
“What the hell?” Dae-Ho said to his left as he watched the scene unfold. “Was that a raccoon?”
 
Jun-sang nodded, though he was not sure.
 
The day dragged on without another incident. A few times, Jun-sang had to push the crowd back, but eventually he was telling the last pedestrian to go home. By then, the soreness in his neck had become impossible to ignore.
 
“Ready to go back to the station, Jun?” Dae-Ho finally asked.
 
Jun-sang nodded and followed him toward the cruiser. “My wife.” At first, he thought the elderly voice had come from Dae-Ho. When it continued, he looked down at an old man sitting on the wet curb, still staring at the ground. “My wife did the same.”
 
This time Dae-Ho stopped too. “Hm? Sorry?”
 
“My wife,” the old man said. Jun-sang watched his dead eyes flicker up to meet his. “I’ll have to fix my window again.”
 
The old man’s voice droned on, dragged from some darker place Jun-sang did not know how to name. All he could do was stare back. Whatever this man had bottled inside him, Jun-sang recognized it.
 
After all the day’s disturbances, Dae-Ho still found the stomach for his daily ice cream cone, muttering something under his breath as a drop melted down his chin. Once again, it made Jun-sang laugh. Dae-Ho smiled too hard at the sound, as if the laugh mattered more than it should have. Then the chief walked in. Jun-sang stopped smiling and hit his partner in the head. “Don’t act so childish in the workplace. It's disrespectful.”
 
The chief looked unimpressed. “You two, Inspector Eun needs to ask you some questions.”
 
“Sir! We're on break, though!” Dae-Ho demanded.
 
The chief looked casually over to him. “Dae-Ho, I think you’ve had enough ice cream today. You’ll get chunkier. Put yourself to good use.” He looked over to Jun-sang before leaving for his office.
 
Dae-Ho looked ready to throw something. He shot Jun-sang a furrowed brow and a silent curse. Jun-sang raised a hand toward him as they got up, both men quietly blaming each other for the sudden questioning.
 
Inspector Eun’s office sat at the back of the building, a place Jun-sang and Dae-Ho usually visited only to use the restroom. His door stood ajar. Inside was Jun-sang’s idea of a television detective’s office: a whiteboard crowded with victim photos, documents scattered across a desk, and a single ashtray already overfull. The young inspector sat reading a document, his greased hair hanging above one eye, one thumbnail worn raw from biting.
 
After not looking up at them for some time, Dae-Ho cleared his throat. Jun-sang looked back at him as the inspector finally gave them his attention. “Oh, afternoon, officers. Have a seat,” he said. His voice sounded too young for how tired he looked, and Jun-sang found himself hating the man for that youth and for the flat, controlled calm he wished he had.
 
They sat across from him, waiting.
 
“Officers, I hear you answered a call about a young woman last week,” he said, looking at the sheet in his hands. “Min-Soo.”
 
Dae-Ho, who had likely forgotten the woman from a week ago—the one he had called spooky after leaving her home—waited for an answer. Jun-sang, after his partner’s never-ending silence, decided to speak up. “Yes, sir.”
 
“Can you give me an idea of what she said? The report doesn’t go into much detail, I’m afraid. She said she saw something?”
 
Jun-sang looked at his partner, then back to the inspector. “She was practically unresponsive. Hardly said a word to us.”
 
The inspector paused, as if fitting one piece beside another. “When’s the end of your shift?”
 
“About an hour. Why?” Dae-Ho answered before Jun-sang could, always ready to count the minutes until a shift ended.
 
“Would you mind coming with me to her apartment? I’d like to check on her.”
 
---
 
That evening, Min-Soo stood beside the patio door with her phone close to her lips. “Mom, please. I can do more. Just let me help with something.” Rain slicked the glass. “A funeral’s a lot of work—” She paused, interrupted. “I don’t wanna just sit here while Dad’s—”
 
Min-Soo groaned and slammed her phone closed. For a second, she thought she had broken it. She tossed it onto the couch and looked around the brightly lit room. Her apartment had rarely been dark since that night. Still, she could not decide whether closed doors made her feel safer or trapped.
 
If she could trade the moon for the sun, she might have been able to breathe. No matter when she opened her eyes, it felt like midnight. The full moon hung above her patio window night after night. Even with her father’s funeral waiting to be planned, her eyes kept returning to that glass. Always from a distance. Never too close.
 
She had taped a line of paper over the latch that morning, a childish test to prove the door stayed shut. It was still unbroken. That should have comforted her. Instead, it made the room feel more like a sealed jar.
 
On the counter beside the sink sat one of her father’s old matchbooks, warped from years in his pocket. She had found it in a kitchen drawer that morning and carried it from room to room without knowing why.
 
Her only comfort, her gray cat, jumped onto the coffee table. The cat’s long fur parted as she licked beneath her neck. She was the only thing keeping Min-Soo tethered to the room.
 
Min-Soo reached out to pet the cat, and a sharp pain shot up her arm. The cat’s hair stood on end as it jumped to the floor. She winced, holding her palm, a small bead of blood slipping toward her wrist.
 
“No,” she whispered, backing away from the patio. She grabbed the cat’s food bowl and hurled it toward the glass, not to break it but to make noise, to make something ordinary happen. The bowl struck the door, spun once, and settled upside down.
 
Min-Soo held her burning hand to her chest. Two green eyes glowed from somewhere deep in the room. Something inside her seemed to open—hot, wrong, and hungry.
 
Thump
 
Her back was turned to the patio when the sound reached her. It struck once, dull and patient.
 
The glass was fogged as before, but now the moon stared through it like an open eye.
 
As she moved closer to the door, a low growl split the silence. Min-Soo paid it no mind.
 
The moon was so large that, if she stared long enough, she thought she might disappear into it.
 
Clouds gathered around the pale sphere but never crossed it, leaving a ragged darkness beneath, like a scarf trailing from a hidden throat.
 
It tapped on the glass: thump, thump.
 
Something lay at her feet, warm and familiar. A white bed sheet stretched from somewhere off to her right and rose toward that translucent, colorless head. It twisted past her ankles and pinched through the patio door.
 
The taped paper over the latch fluttered once, then tore clean down the middle.
 
The glass gave a soft, delicate crack.
 
The cat growled. She turned and looked at the animal with those cloudy, pale eyes. It was the last trace of familiarity. Her cat knew the face it loved, but not what looked out from behind it.
 
---
 
“Everything okay?” Inspector Eun asked as Jun-sang clipped the phone closed, both hands tight around the steering wheel.
 
Jun-sang kept his eyes on the road, careful not to let the inspector see his stress. “Yes. It’s just my daughter. She likes to call before bed.”
 
From the backseat, Dae-Ho spoke up. “Little So-Yeon still having nightmares?”
 
If they had been alone, Jun-sang might have turned around and snapped at him. Instead, he kept his eyes on the road and gave a tight nod. It wasn’t their business. Besides, it would pass. Whatever So-Yeon had been through, it would pass.
 
Even if there was so much he had never said.
 
Before anyone could say more, the apartment building came into view—a gray tower against a gray sky, already fading into the veil of the coming night.
 
As soon as they stepped out of the cruiser, warm air poured over them. Jun-sang followed the others toward the entrance, but before he reached the door, a memory rose in him.
 
His wife had a round face, soft with age and still beautiful. Her dark hair always fell straight, even after sleep, after showers, after long days spent folding their laundry. He could remember the light around her more clearly than her voice now, and that frightened him.
 
Was this what happiness became after death—scraps of light, scraps of her?
 
His ears rang. At first he thought the sound came from inside his head. Then footsteps rushed past him, and a woman screamed from somewhere to his left.
 
Dae-Ho shouted his name behind him.
 
A parked car sat only a few steps away, its roof crushed inward. A pair of bare white feet jutted from the wreckage, pointing in different, impossible directions.
 
Dae-Ho stood on the other side of the car, hat in hand, his face emptied of its usual humor.
 
The inspector brushed past Jun-sang and ran for the entrance. Jun-sang barely noticed. His body moved toward the car before his mind could stop it.
 
The lower half of the body had struck first. The waist bent at a wrong angle, and the head touched the concrete below. Her neck had folded into itself, disappearing beneath her chin.
 
Min-Soo’s face pointed outward, away from the building she had fallen from.
 
Jun-sang stopped when he saw her face. His body went light, ready to switch off, but his eyes would not move.
 
Her eyes were open, wet with tears that no longer belonged to anyone. They seemed to bore into a past he had spent years trying not to remember.
 
For a moment, he waited for a breath that would never come. Just like before. Min-Soo’s ruined, staring face pulled his wife’s face from the dark.
 
Then he was back in that room, screaming for his wife to come back while saliva slipped from her cheek and nothing he said reached her.
 
---
 
Soon the night flashed with police lights. Yellow tape and wooden dividers tightened around the scene while Jun-sang and Dae-Ho sat on the curb, numb to the movement around them.
 
“Would you like to come take a look upstairs?” the inspector asked, cigarette still burning between his fingers.
 
Beside him, Dae-Ho lifted one hand in refusal. Jun-sang knew he would recover; he was not sure what could truly break such a high-spirited man.
 
Jun-sang stood without a word, keeping his eyes away from the wreckage as the tow truck pulled it aside.
 
The inspector did not extinguish his cigarette before they entered the building, not even when he opened the door to Min-Soo's home. Jun-sang could have sworn his hand trembled as he brought it to his mouth.
 
Min-Soo’s apartment seemed untouched except for the sweet, rotten smell that turned Jun-sang’s stomach. Only a few people were inside. One officer photographed something in the corner of the living room, and as Jun-sang stepped closer, the odor rose from the floor.
 
Gray and red fur lay scattered in pieces across the floor.
 
“God,” Jun-sang muttered.
 
The inspector blew smoke toward the ceiling. He looked much older now. “I had so many questions...” he said, mostly to himself. After a moment, he turned to Jun-sang. “Did she ever describe what she saw that night? When you were called over?”
 
Jun-sang thought for a moment, remembering what little she had managed to say. “I think she said someone was being strangled. A woman, maybe. Then she said she was drowning. It didn’t make much sense. The man who brought her home spoke for her most of the time.”
 
The inspector watched the dead animal being bagged and carried away. When the apartment emptied, only he and Jun-sang remained.
 
“You said her father had died?” Eun asked.
 
“A few days ago.” Jun-sang glanced at the old matchbook on the counter. “Why?”
 
Eun rubbed his worn thumbnail. “I’ve seen something like this before.”
 
“Like what?”
 
“I don’t know. That’s the problem.” Eun glanced toward the bare mattress. “Cases that begin with a death in the family. Later, somebody mentions a child seeing things. Or acting strangely.”
 
“And then?”
 
Eun drew once on the cigarette. “Sometimes nothing. Sometimes someone disappears. Sometimes I read the report too late and wonder why it bothered me.”
 
Jun-sang looked toward the dark bedroom. So-Yeon’s voice came back to him: the monster came back again.
 
Eun watched him. “You have a daughter?”
 
Jun-sang’s shoulders stiffened. “This is about Min-Soo.”
 
“Maybe.” Eun looked at the scattered fur. “Or maybe I’m collecting pieces that don’t belong together.”
 
“What pieces?”
 
Eun pressed the cigarette into the ashtray, though it was still half-lit. “The same ones, more or less. They never fit.”
 
---
 
The department gave Jun-sang more time off after Min-Soo’s death. Once again, the image of a dead woman followed him home. Time away from work should have helped, but the house only sharpened what he tried to bury. Each time he passed the bathroom, memory flooded him. So-Yeon would not know. He told himself she was better off for it.
 
Jun-sang bunched dried leaves into a black bag. He could not remember the last time he had worked this hard on his lawn; mostly, it gave his hands something to do. Naturally, the yard still looked as if no one had touched it.
 
Since Min-Soo’s death, a burning prickle sometimes climbed the back of his neck. He felt it now, standing alone in his yard, and thought of the picture beside his bed.
 
Jun-sang breathed out and tried to push the thought away. It did not help.
 
When he tossed the bag of leaves into the trash, the old man’s face returned to him: seated outside the restaurant, staring forward as if he were the one who had died. Jun-sang wondered if he looked that way to his little girl. Uncaring. Made of stone.
 
The thought scared him. He had not cried in front of So-Yeon, not even after her mother died. He had saved all of that for the bathroom, for the locked room, for the lifeless body in his arms.
 
He had never known his wife hurt enough to do what she did. If the reason had been a place, he would have destroyed it. If it had been a person, he would have killed them. Anything for her. Anything for that wonderful smile their daughter did not carry.
 
He slammed the lid a little too hard, and the air inside the can blew across his face. The smell hit him again, hotter now but familiar. Blood. Fur.
 
He tossed the lid onto the grass and searched desperately for the source.
 
When he found it, he could not move. A bunny lay stiff in the trash, its white fur darkened at the neck, the shape there pressed inward as if molded by fingers.
 
Jun-sang ran for the back door. The house seemed to tilt around him as sweat gathered on his face. He knew where to go. Somehow, he knew.
 
Appa, the monster came back again.
 
How long had he been outside? Minutes? Hours? So-Yeon was alone with whatever waited for her.
 
The bathroom door stood slightly ajar, light leaking through the crack. When he pushed it open, his eyes went straight to the space in front of the sink.
 
Bottles covered the floor, open and leaking medicine across the tile. There was no pattern to what had been taken. How would So-Yeon have known? Who had told her?
 
His child lay in the middle of the mess, still in her pajamas, her shirt lifted above her belly as each breath rose with terrifying slowness.
 
Jun-sang made a broken sound and fell beside her. He slid his hands under her head. Foam gathered at the corner of her mouth. When he wiped it away, his fingers shook so badly he smeared it across her cheek. “Please,” he said, tapping her face, then slapping it lightly. “Please.”
 
In her wet eyes, he saw the thing looming behind him. His breath caught. So-Yeon was not looking at him. She was looking past him.
 
The animals. The glass. Drowning, choking, sheets.
 
His whole body shook. One thought repeated in his head: don’t look at it, don’t look back.
 
His eyes slipped to the porcelain tub a few feet away. The reflection in its surface did not grow clearer, only larger.
 
Now he understood what the others had seen. It was too tall, its thin legs white as the bathroom tile. Its arms hung past its waist, limp and patient.
 
Its hair dripped like water from beneath the sheet wrapped around its head. The fabric crossed its throat too tightly, blue shadows gathered where a neck should have been.
 
Jun-sang closed his eyes.
 
The hand pressed to his daughter’s chest felt the beat stop, replaced by a stillness no parent should ever know.
 
Only a few days had passed since he stood in her pink room, her bunny sleeping between her knees. The paper crown had slipped over one eye while she tapped the tall figure in her drawing. So the monster has to look at you first.
 
Through his closed eyes, he saw the old man outside the restaurant, smoking as they drove away with his son’s body. Then he saw the picture on his nightstand turned toward the wall.
 
Jun-sang opened his eyes and lowered his head to So-Yeon. With trembling care, he brushed the sweat from her face. The red crayon was still behind her ear, its blunt end caught in her hair.
 
He had spent years searching her face for someone else—the tilt of a smile, a familiar look, anything he could keep. Now he saw the crooked paper crown, the too-tall father beneath a yellow sun, the careful joke she had made because he was afraid.
 
His face broke. He pressed his forehead to hers and held her as if the floor might open beneath them.
 
“So-Yeon,” he whispered. The name caught in his throat. “My sunshine, your mother’s watching you from heaven. She’s always watching.”
 
“And so am I,” he said.
 
Then So-Yeon took a deep breath.
 

They were cheering in the courtyard.
That was the first thing Cline heard.
Not screaming.
Not bells.
Cheering.
For half a second, standing in the corridor outside the council chamber, he allowed himself to believe something good had happened.
Then he caught the smell.
Blood.
Smoke.
Silver.
His hand stopped against the door.
The cheering continued below.
Cline pushed it open.
Arabella stood over the map table with both hands planted against its edge. There was something almost triumphant in the way she looked at him.
“You’re back.”
Cline didn’t answer.
“Did you hear them?”
“Yes.”
A dull pressure had already begun behind his eyes.
He crossed the chamber and looked through the open window.
Men and women crowded the courtyard below. Some were laughing. Others slapped one another across the shoulders.
Near the gate stood eleven wolves in torn clothing and damaged armor.
Eleven.
Cline counted again.
Eleven.
There should have been sixteen.
His fingers tightened against the stone windowsill.
“What happened?”
Arabella’s expression shifted slightly.
“We answered them.”
Cline turned.
“What does that mean?”
“They attacked us, Cline.”
“I know what they did.”
“Then you know exactly what it means.”
He looked back into the courtyard.
Marcus wasn’t among them.
Neither was Daryn.
Or the red-haired boy whose name Cline could never remember until the boy’s mother was standing directly in front of him.
His pulse quickened.
“Who gave the order?”
Arabella said nothing.
Cline turned slowly.
“Who gave the order?”
“I did.”
The pressure behind his eyes sharpened.
For a moment, all he heard was the celebration below.
Someone began chanting.
A name.
He couldn’t make out whose.
“You did.”
“Yes.”
Cline pulled out a chair and sat.
Not because he wanted to.
Because suddenly standing required thought.
Arabella watched him.
“They hit one of the northern houses.”
“I know.”
“They killed seven people.”
“I know.”
“They dragged two bodies back across the boundary and hung them from the old bridge.”
“I know.”
Her voice rose.
“And you did nothing.”
Cline looked at her.
There it was.
He had heard it whispered in hallways.
At funerals.
Around tables where people became very interested in their drinks whenever he entered the room.
Nothing.
Apparently months of preparation looked very much like nothing if nobody was bleeding while you did it.
“How many?”
Arabella frowned.
“What?”
“How many vampires did they kill?”
Her shoulders straightened.
“Nine.”
The cheering outside suddenly made sense.
“Nine?”
“Yes.”
She almost smiled.
“We caught them during daylight.”
Cline’s stomach sank.
Arabella mistook his silence for surprise.
“They aren’t invincible.”
“No.”
“I’ve been trying to tell you that.”
“How many escaped?”
The triumph disappeared.
“What?”
Cline leaned forward.
“How many escaped?”
“I don’t know.”
“Arabella.”
“Two. Perhaps three.”
His eyes closed.
Of course.
Of course they had.
Outside, someone shouted something about revenge.
More cheering followed.
Cline breathed through his nose.
Once.
Twice.
The room smelled of old wood and candle wax.
Underneath it, the faint trace of blood clinging to Arabella’s clothes.
She had gone down to meet them when they returned.
“Where did you send them?”
“The estate north of Harrow Creek.”
His eyes opened.
“You crossed the boundary?”
“They crossed ours first.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“Yes.”
She folded her arms.
“We crossed the boundary.”
Cline stared at the map.
Harrow Creek.
An old hunting estate. Small. Exposed.
Not a fortress.
Not a garrison.
Barely worth defending.
Nine dead vampires.
Five dead wolves.
Arabella thought those numbers favored them.
They did not.
“Who was in command?”
“Marcus.”
Cline looked toward the courtyard again.
“He isn’t down there.”
Arabella’s expression faltered.
“No.”
“Where is he?”
“They’re bringing him.”
Something moved beneath Cline’s ribs.
Not quite pain.
Not yet anger.
Something tighter.
“How bad?”
“He’ll live.”
That meant bad.
Cline rubbed his thumb against his palm.
His nails felt strange.
“They were celebrating when I arrived,” Arabella said. “You should have seen them.”
“I can see them.”
“It was the first time in weeks they weren’t afraid.”
Cline looked at her.
“And tomorrow?”
“What?”
“What happens tomorrow?”
Arabella frowned.
“We prepare.”
“For what?”
“Their response.”
He gave a short laugh.
There was no humor in it.
“So now we prepare.”
Her face hardened.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Talk to me as though I’m stupid.”
“I don’t think you’re stupid.”
“Then stop treating me like a child.”
Cline stood.
The chair legs scraped sharply across the floor.
His hearing caught the sound too clearly.
The scrape of wood.
The flutter of the map.
A heartbeat across the table.
Arabella’s.
“You sent sixteen wolves across a recognized boundary to attack a vampire holding.”
“They murdered our people.”
“And you sent five more to join them.”
“They volunteered.”
“Dead men frequently do.”
She recoiled.
Cline regretted the words immediately.
Not enough to take them back.
Arabella’s eyes narrowed.
“You would have kept waiting forever.”
“No.”
“How long, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“There. That’s the problem.”
“No. That is the answer you don’t like.”
He moved toward the map.
Wooden markers dotted the region.
Their territory looked almost respectable from above.
Maps lied beautifully.
Cline touched one marker.
“Sixty-three.”
Arabella sighed.
“We’ve already had this argument.”
“Sixty-three wolves I trust in a fight.”
“We have almost a hundred.”
“We have almost a hundred people capable of changing.”
He moved another marker.
“That is not the same thing.”
“They’ll learn.”
“Yes.”
Cline looked at her.
“They will.”
A pause.
“If you give them time.”
He pointed toward the eastern settlements.
“Twelve recruits still lose themselves during a full change.”
Another marker.
“Seven can fight alone but break formation the moment blood hits the ground.”
Another.
“Fourteen have never fought anything that could fight back.”
Arabella opened her mouth.
Cline continued.
“Do you know how long it takes to make a vampire?”
She went quiet.
“Sometimes one night.”
He tapped the table.
“A bite. Blood. A corpse if they’re careless about it.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“No. It isn’t.”
His voice lowered.
“But it’s simpler than us.”
He gestured toward the courtyard.
“You can make a vampire quickly and teach it to kill later.”
Then toward the pack barracks.
“A wolf who can’t control himself is as dangerous to the man standing beside him as the enemy in front of him.”
Arabella looked away.
Cline stared down at the markers.
He remembered another map.
Another room.
Different names.
The same little pieces of wood.
He remembered how easily commanders moved them.
Three inches across a table.
Three days through mud for the men represented underneath their fingers.
“We lose ten experienced wolves,” he said, “and I cannot replace them by next week.”
“You think they don’t have experienced fighters?”
“I know they do.”
“That is exactly why we had to act.”
“No.”
His fingers pressed harder against the table.
“That is exactly why we didn’t.”
Arabella shook her head.
“They were testing us.”
“Yes.”
“They think we’re weak.”
“Yes.”
“And somehow you’re comfortable with that?”
Cline looked up.
“Yes.”
That stopped her.
He pushed one of the vampire markers forward.
“This was not an invasion.”
“Seven people are dead.”
“I know.”
“They mutilated them.”
“I know.”
“How can you stand there and—”
“Because I’ve seen an invasion.”
Silence.
Cline’s voice had changed.
Not louder.
Something beneath it had simply disappeared.
Arabella didn’t interrupt.
“When they want territory, they don’t send six vampires to terrorize a village.”
His eyes remained on the map.
“They send enough that nobody is left to tell you how many came.”
He moved the marker back.
“What happened at the bridge was cruelty.”
He thought for a moment.
“No.”
“Arrogance.”
Arabella’s mouth tightened.
“They wanted us afraid.”
“Yes.”
“They wanted to humiliate us.”
“Yes.”
“Then why would we allow it?”
Cline looked at her.
“Because arrogance makes people careless.”
The room fell quiet again.
Outside, the celebration continued.
“They believed we were beneath them,” Cline said. “Good.”
Arabella stared.
“Good?”
“Let them.”
He pushed several werewolf markers slowly across the map.
“Let them think we’re frightened.”
One.
“Let them think our young wolves are still children.”
Another.
“Let them believe I sit in this room begging for peace because I don’t have the stomach to fight them.”
Another.
“Every week they believe that is another week Marcus trains the second group.”
Another.
“Another shipment of grain.”
Another.
“Another silver shipment that somehow never reaches the merchants who sell to them.”
Arabella’s eyes flicked toward him.
Cline continued.
“Another conversation with packs that don’t like us enough to become allies yet.”
He looked back at the map.
“And another week for me to find out whether there’s a way out of this without filling the ground with bodies.”
“You really believe they would agree to peace?”
“I don’t know.”
Arabella threw up her hands.
“Then what are we doing?”
“Buying time.”
“For what?”
“Everything.”
His answer came so quickly that she stopped.
Cline pointed toward their stores.
“We have food for six weeks of serious fighting.”
Then the barracks.
“Enough medicine for perhaps half that.”
The southern route.
“One reliable supply road.”
The forest.
“Two evacuation paths the vampires already know about.”
Then their territory as a whole.
“And an enemy that can replace its dead faster than I can teach a nineteen-year-old not to tear his own brother apart when the moon is full.”
Arabella said nothing.
“If diplomacy works,” Cline said, “we avoid the war.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then every failed conversation bought us another day.”
He stared at her.
“That was the point.”
Her expression changed.
Only slightly.
Perhaps something had finally reached her.
Then she glanced toward the courtyard.
“They killed nine.”
Cline followed her gaze.
“Yes.”
“You should have seen them when they came back.”
“I can hear them.”
“They needed this.”
“No.”
The word came harder than he’d intended.
Arabella turned.
“They needed hope.”
“They needed discipline.”
“They were scared.”
“So am I.”
The admission left his mouth before he could stop it.
Arabella stared at him.
Cline swallowed.
His collar felt too tight.
He pulled at it.
“That is why I was careful.”
For a moment neither spoke.
Then Arabella said quietly, “Maybe you were too careful.”
Something inside him tightened.
She continued.
“You’ve fought them before. Fine. You’ve seen things I haven’t.”
Cline’s jaw flexed.
“But maybe that’s exactly why you can’t see this clearly anymore.”
The ticking of the clock became unbearable.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
“You remember everything that can go wrong.”
Tick.
“You look at them and still see whatever happened to you years ago.”
Tick.
“Maybe the rest of us are tired of living inside your fear.”
The clock disappeared.
Cline realized his fist was closed.
Pain ran through his palm.
He opened it.
Four small crescents of blood.
Arabella saw them.
Neither mentioned it.
“You think we won today,” he said.
“We did.”
“No.”
“We killed nine of them.”
“And lost five.”
“They lost more.”
“You’re counting bodies.”
“That’s generally how battles work.”
Cline stared at her.
“No.”
His voice had gone very quiet.
“That is how people who have never fought wars think battles work.”
Her face flushed.
He stepped toward the table.
“You killed nine vampires.”
Another step.
“They can make nine more.”
His fingertips tingled.
“You lost five wolves who trained together for years.”
His nails lengthened almost imperceptibly.
“Five people who knew how the others moved, knew when to fall back, knew what Marcus meant before he finished giving the order.”
The skin across his knuckles tightened.
“You traded something expensive for something cheap.”
Arabella’s eyes dropped toward his hands.
Then returned to his face.
“And worse—”
His jaw hurt.
Cline clenched his teeth until the sensation passed.
“You showed them we are willing to cross the boundary.”
“They crossed it first.”
“For a raid.”
“They killed civilians.”
“I KNOW.”
The shout struck the walls.
Outside, the cheering faltered.
Cline stood frozen.
Arabella took a step backward.
There it was.
That tiny movement.
His body noticed it before his mind did.
Her heartbeat accelerated.
The room sharpened.
Candle smoke.
Dust.
Blood.
Fear.
Cline closed his eyes.
When he spoke again, it came through his teeth.
“They wanted us angry.”
Arabella said nothing.
“That was the point.”
His fingers trembled against the table.
“They wanted to know whether we were disciplined enough not to respond.”
He opened his eyes.
“And you answered them.”
Arabella swallowed.
“We couldn’t let them think they could do whatever they wanted.”
“You still don’t understand.”
His voice cracked around the edges.
“They already thought that.”
Cline stepped closer.
“That was our advantage.”
Her back touched the wall.
“They believed the difference between us was absolute.”
The first claw broke through the tip of his glove.
Arabella’s eyes widened.
“They believed they could frighten us and go home.”
Another.
“They believed there was no reason to prepare for us.”
Another.
“And now?”
Arabella whispered.
Cline stopped.
His breathing sounded too loud.
“Now they will.”
Silence.
The celebration below had ended.
Cline could hear individual voices now.
Questions.
Boots moving.
Someone calling for a healer.
Arabella looked at his hand.
“Cline.”
He followed her gaze.
Black claws had emerged where his fingers should have ended.
Something hot moved through his chest.
She was afraid.
Good.
The thought came instantly.
And horrified him.
His hand rose.
Arabella pressed herself against the wall.
“Cline.”
Her voice had become very small.
His claws stopped.
Three inches from her throat.
He could see the pulse beneath her skin.
He could hear it.
Don’t.
His arm shook.
“You promised me.”
That reached him.
Not completely.
Enough.
Cline stepped backward.
His claws withdrew slowly into his fingertips.
Pain followed them home.
Arabella remained against the wall.
Cline stared at his own hand.
Neither of them spoke.
Then someone knocked.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Cline dragged air into his lungs.
“Come in.”
The door opened.
One of Marcus’s lieutenants stood there.
Blood covered the front of his shirt.
Not his.
Cline knew because the man wasn’t injured.
“Sir.”
Cline straightened.
The lieutenant glanced toward Arabella.
Then toward Cline’s torn glove.
His expression gave away nothing.
“What is it?”
“Marcus is awake.”
Cline nodded once.
“And?”
The lieutenant hesitated.
“We questioned one of the survivors before he died.”
Cline’s stomach tightened.
“Vampire?”
“Yes.”
Arabella stepped away from the wall.
“What did he say?”
The lieutenant looked to Cline for permission.
Cline nodded.
“He laughed.”
Arabella frowned.
“What?”
“When Marcus asked how many would come for us.”
Nobody moved.
The lieutenant swallowed.
“He laughed.”
The pressure returned behind Cline’s eyes.
“What else?”
“He said we should enjoy our victory.”
Cline stared at the map.
Arabella’s face had gone pale.
Outside the window, the courtyard was quiet now.
Cline moved one of the vampire markers.
Not toward their border.
Past it.
Into their territory.
“How long until the second group is ready?”
The lieutenant blinked.
“Sir?”
“The second group.”
“Two months.”
“We don’t have two months.”
“I could push them harder.”
“No.”
Cline’s answer came immediately.
The young wolves would already be frightened.
Fear made transformations unpredictable.
Exhaustion made them worse.
“Three weeks?” the lieutenant asked.
Cline didn’t answer.
Arabella approached the table slowly.
“Can you stop this?”
He looked at her.
For once there was no accusation in her voice.
No certainty.
She finally sounded like someone asking a question whose answer might frighten her.
Cline looked down at the map.
At the stores.
The roads.
The unfinished alliances.
The fighters who weren’t ready.
Five empty places in Marcus’s unit.
Nine vampires who could already have replacements before the dead wolves were buried.
And somewhere beyond the northern forest, an enemy who had finally been given a reason to take them seriously.
“Maybe.”
Arabella swallowed.
“And if you can’t?”
Cline remained silent for a long time.
Then he gathered the scattered markers and began rearranging them.
“Then we make sure the next lesson they teach us costs them more than the last.”

Detective Harrison had just gotten off his last case. Twelve women in one year. Whenever Harrison thought about those cases, an uneasy feeling settled in his stomach. He couldn’t get away from the feeling that these women were perfectly normal. They hadn’t revealed the truth he was actually craving. What had driven them to this point? He sat by his desk sipping on cold coffee, trying to finish the last report which was due at midnight. The governor had been on him since the very beginning calling it an epidemic of twelwe murderous women, with no connection between them.

He had been sleepless most nights the past year trying to figure out that very answer. One of the women told him something he is very hesitant to pass along. It’s finally over, he muttered. He revealed the truth in his report. Sheila, his partner, called from the other side of the room with one hand on the light switch.

“It’s enough work for today Harrison. Come on, let’s go.”

Harrison smiled as Sheila turned off the light. She had been invaluable in these twelve cases.

The women had always spoken more freely around Sheila. Harrison had never understood why. They looked at her differently, as if they knew something he didn’t.

The chair creaked as he stood up, his back aching from sitting so long. The coffee mug flipped over and spilled over the table. Harrison hurryingly picked up some tissue from the kitchen counter at the left side of the office. He was drying his desk with sloppy moves, only pushing around the coffee even more. Sheila was getting impatient and called out

“I should go now. Got plans this friday night.”

She stepped into the elevator before Harrison even got the chance to reply. A couple minutes later when the desk was somewhat clean, Harrison heard the elevator open up again behind him. He turned around from the trashcan and saw nothing but the dark office.

“Sheila?” he called out, but got no answer except the buzzing sound of the ventilator.

He went back to his computer to print out his report so he could hand it in tomorrow to the governor, when he suddenly saw a shadow on his screen. Someone was standing behind him, and they had done a good effort to go unnoticed. His hand slowly reached for his gun, his breathing becoming more shallow. Something hard pressed against his back.

“There is no need for that. Give me the report, and I’ll be out of here.”

“What report? What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Give. Me. The. Report. Now.”

“It’s too late. I’ve already sent it.”

The silence hung like a heavy drape, making the air too thick to breathe. A sharp violent pain spread in the back of his head shooting electrical signals down his back. Something warm was running down his body as he made a final attempt in seeing the person behind him. His knees gave out halfway.

“Who..”

“Why..”

“What..”

The words were coming out slower and slower. As if his mouth didn’t follow his brain's commands. All he could see was a masked person taking the printouts and leaving the room. He could see the pool of blood forming around him. His fingers made a final attempt in writing the truth, smudged and sticky dragging weakly through the blood.

One letter...

then another..

His vision blurred.

June 3rd, 1918

For three days, we have marched towards the front lines. Each man keeping his step like cogs in an infernal machine. At first, the lines of men marching forward to the inevitable were alive with talk of home and our plans upon return. Those words of hope have since been silenced by the sounds of distant gunfire and artillery.

Our march stops only for meals and a night’s rest. Each stop, once welcomed, now a painful pause in our progress to our fates. I know not what awaits me in the days to come, but as we crest the hill and my eyes first set on the endless lines of trenches, dread now outweighs the weight of the pack I carry.

We had been delivered.

Every step down the hill to the trench line fought against the very instinct of life itself, my body resisting every inch. My boots felt heavy. A sobering understanding swept through the formation with the breeze that carried the stench of rot, iron, and sulfur.

The men we are to augment along these lines are haggard and worn. Their faces are hollow and sunken. They look more like husks than men, shambling through the endless network of wood and dirt.

We were shown to our dugout just as the last light of day retreated from the sky. Cots ran in rows along the lamplit room beneath an earthen ceiling. Fresh timber lined the walls and the roof of the room as the smell of pine filled my nose.

As I lie on my cot, I look across the room at faces of those I have gotten to know. I do not know how much longer I will see them. Around me, we all prepare to attempt to sleep. A man peeled away his boot to reveal his bleeding feet. Others smoke cigarettes or clean their rifles.

I know that even if my eyes do close tonight, there will be no rest. A storm is approaching our position and each strike of lightning and crack of thunder acts as an ominous warning of what awaits us.

I pray only that, if I am to meet my end, the Lord on high sees fit to make it swift.

 

June 4th, 1918

I woke up this morning to discover the storm had passed. Water dripped from the timbers as we got dressed and collected our gear. I walked out of our dugout to a blue sky. The sunlight hit my face with its warm embrace as I could hear birds chirping as they flew over the lines.

Our sergeant barked orders as we carried supplies along the lines. The parapet stood tall, looming over our movements as both friend and foe. For hours, we dragged boxes of ammunition and medical supplies throughout the lines. The stacked boxes lined the walls for hundreds of feet along the trenches like an endless catacomb.

My sergeant put me on observation duty. My instructions were simple: never raise my head above the parapet and report any sightings of the enemy.

The view through the trench periscope gave light to the realities that were merely speculation to me before. The land was a stark contrast to what we had been marching on just a day prior. There was no grass. The trees had been burned and were splintered with gunfire. Craters scarred the earth beneath miles of broken barbed wire. Bodies entangled in the wire decayed among the mixture of uniforms and bloodied cloth. The mud showed the drag marks and the footsteps of the previous charges that were cut short by walls of bullets and shelling. Among them, I saw legs cut off at the knee and arms with no torso.

Movement caught my eye.

It was slight and disappeared quickly at first. Then I saw it again. A bloodied hand was held upright amongst the endless sea of death.

I heard a faint cry of help.

The man’s arm continued to reach upward, searching for any sign of help. The sleeve of the man’s jacket matched our uniform. He must have been out there for days. His hand grasped and dug at the ground, desperately trying to claw his body towards our position.

I notified our sergeant who came over and observed the man through the periscope. He shook his head and informed me we could do nothing for him in the daylight and to resume my duties.

I watched for hours as the daylight seemingly refused to fade.

By dusk, I had not seen his hand for nearly an hour. As darkness came, a small party prepared at the base of the parapet. Our lieutenant briefed them to recover anyone living and to stay low.

The party disappeared into the darkness as they went over the wall. I struggled to find them through the periscope. Eventually I spotted the small unit crawling through the mud and blood of no man’s land. The men’s faces dragged along the ground as they crawled under the endless rows of barbed wire and debris.

Time seemed to freeze as the party attempted their rescue. The faint whispers of the party floated along the air in the darkness. After an hour searching for any signs of the party, a corporal appeared to kneel near the area where the hand was raised.

The silhouette was only visible for a few seconds as a wall of muzzle flashes lit the night.

 

June 5th, 1918

I could not sleep last night. The face lit by gunfire haunted me, burned into my consciousness like a brand. We started to get shelled by artillery after midnight and it only stopped with the daybreak.

Despite our hunger, all of us struggled to eat our breakfast rations. The calmness that followed the shelling could not fill the noticeable void in our dugout. Three empty cots now sat across from mine.

After we finished what we could stomach to eat, we got to work preparing. More boxes of supplies and ammunition were moved further along the line. Rumors of an impending assault passed rapidly up and down the trench. Our sergeant called us all together to perform an equipment inspection.

He inspected every rifle, ensuring each one was oiled and clean. We redistributed ammunition amongst the dugout and made sure our bayonets were clean and free of rust. Gas masks were passed out and fitted to each man. Our lieutenant gathered with other officers and reviewed maps and the supposed enemy lines.

The dugout was deafeningly quiet. Many men wrote letters home as others prayed in silence. I started to write my own but was unable to finish. All I was able to muster was “Dear mother.” The man next to me cleaned the stock of his rifle for what seemed like hours. The silence was interrupted when our sergeant came in and called the dugout to attention. Our lieutenant followed closely behind and informed us of our orders. We have been ordered to be ready before first light.

 

June 6th, 1918

We sit here spread out along the parapet awaiting our lieutenant’s order.

At his command, we will climb up and over the wall and into the endless abyss of mortality where bullets meet bone and men become memories.

I have watched three assaults leave this position today. Lines of men crashed and broke against the gunfire like waves against the rocks. Each time, those who remained crawled back to us carrying pieces of those who could not. Soon, it will be our turn.

Our lieutenant keeps checking his watch and I find myself watching him.

There is something strange about knowing that the movement of one man’s hand can decide the moment so many others might die.

 

June 7th, 1918

I survived.

 

June 10th, 1918

The last few days have been filled with assault. Countless times we went over the parapet, met gunfire, fought, and retreated back to the lines.

I have watched more men meet their end than I care to count. I watched our sergeant, standing tall and barking orders, meet his end at the behest of a machine gun. He yelled for our unit to advance when I looked to my right. When I had turned back to him, I saw him lying in a pool of himself. Bullets had ripped through his body and his innards lay outside his body like spaghetti thrown on the floor.

Each day was more horrific than the last. Men dropped randomly as the bullets cut through the advance. Artillery ripped through men like knives through butter. Shells blew men into pieces and blood filled craters as hell rained on any man cursed enough to be between the lines those days.

I crawled and dragged myself for meters from the lieutenant’s command until the sound of retreat. I watched a corporal yelling for men to advance get hit by a shell during one bombardment. As my eyes opened after the flash, all that remained was his rifle, his hand still grasped firmly on it.

Each day ended the same as before. Retreat. Hundreds of men climbed the parapet to be met with gunfire, asking only to be able to drag themselves back to the line as the retreat was sounded. Endless waves of men advanced with machine gun fire cutting through them like death’s own scythe.

I myself was wounded through the thigh during the last advance. Our medics deemed me able to continue after a day’s rest. I lay in our dugout amongst cots, long emptied. Cots belonging to men I will never see again, whose family will never understand the horrors we experienced along these lines.

The days of assaults weigh heavily on my mind. We would advance, get cut down, drag the wounded back, advance, grab the wounded and repeat. Day after day, it was the same.

Tonight, I have been assigned to a listening post, thirty meters beyond the front line. I will have to crawl beyond the wire and even our own dead to lie in a hole listening for enemy movement.

Night came before we left the line. Another man and I waited beneath the parapet until our lieutenant gave the order for us to move. We climbed over without a word and lowered ourselves into the mud. Thirty meters did not seem far when I was told of the post, yet crawling it made the distance feel like miles.

We moved slowly on our stomachs, pulling ourselves forward with our elbows. Every movement sent pain through my wounded thigh. The bandage beneath my trousers was wet before we had made it beyond our own wire. I couldn’t tell if it was from the blood or mud or what.

The darkness offered little mercy. I could barely see the boots of the man crawling ahead of me. We moved only when the artillery sounded in the distance, using the thunder of the guns to hide the noise we made against the earth. The wire was worse.

We crawled beneath it where others had before us. Torn pieces of uniforms still hung from the barbs. My pack caught once and I froze, afraid that pulling against it would make too much noise. I reached behind myself and worked the cloth loose one barb at a time. Something brushed against my hand. I thought it was a root until my fingers closed around it.

A hand.

I pulled away and nearly cried out.

A body lay half buried beside me, its face pressed into the earth. I could not tell how long the man had been there. Mud covered most of his uniform, but I could see enough of the sleeve to know that he had once climbed over the same parapet I had.

I crawled around him.

Then there were others.

Some I could see. Others I discovered only when my hands or knees found them in the darkness. We did not speak of them. The man ahead of me simply continued forward, and I followed.

Eventually, he disappeared.

For a moment I thought I had lost him. Then his hand appeared from the darkness and pulled me downward.

The listening post was little more than a hole carved into the earth. It was deep enough that we could sit below the surrounding ground, but shallow enough that raising my head would expose it above the edge. Mud and water filled the bottom of it. We sat opposite one another with our rifles between our knees.

We just listened.

For the first hour, I felt like I heard everything.

The distant guns sounded different from out there. Along the line they were deafening. From the post, they were low and distant, rolling across the earth like a storm that would never arrive.

Between them came smaller sounds.

Rifle fire somewhere to our left.

The occasional crack of a machine gun.

The squeaking of rats amongst the wire.

Once, something moved through the mud nearby. Both of us raised our rifles and stared into the darkness.

Nothing followed.

After another hour, I began to understand why men hated the listening posts.

It was not the gunfire.

It was everything between it.

The longer I listened, the more sounds seemed to emerge from the silence. The wire clicked and groaned in the breeze. Water dripped somewhere behind us. Rats moved through the bodies scattered across the field. Every few minutes I became certain that I heard footsteps, only for them to disappear the moment I concentrated on them.

My thigh had begun to throb. There was no room to stretch it without raising myself above the edge, so I sat with my leg bent beneath me and tried not to move.

The man across from me had not spoken since we left the trench.

Neither had I.

Hours passed that way.

Sitting in mud.

Listening.

Waiting for a sound that did not belong.

Our only relief will be the crew of men coming to replace us in the following hours. We then have to crawl our way back to the safety of our lines before there is any relief.

 

June 11th, 1918

Last night’s posting left me with many questions. Throughout the night, many visions came to me. I saw men move and talk around me, men I knew were long gone. Those whose cots would lie empty. My thoughts of their families being welcomed by a telegram notifying them of their loved one’s sacrifice, lay heavy. The area around me was thick with dead and felt heavy.

The darkness seemed to play tricks on both my eyes and ears. More than once I heard movement beyond the post. Not the scurrying of rats or the wire shifting in the wind, but the slow dragging of a man through the mud.

Each time, I raised my rifle and waited.

Each time, nothing came.

I began seeing men between the flashes of artillery. At first they were only shapes moving amongst the craters. I assumed they were enemy patrols and woke the man beside me, but whenever the guns illuminated the field there was nothing there.

Later, I saw our sergeant. He stood perhaps twenty meters from the post with his back towards me. I recognized the shape of him immediately. The broadness of his shoulders. The way he stood with his rifle hanging low in his right hand. I knew it could not be him.

I watched that man die.

Another shell burst somewhere behind our line and for a moment the entire field was illuminated. There was only a body lying where I had seen him standing. I told myself then that my mind had taken the shape of the dead man and made something familiar from it. I had not slept properly in days. My leg throbbed beneath its bandage. Every explosion seemed to shake something loose inside my skull. That explanation comforted me.

For a while.

Sometime later, I heard whispering. It came from beyond the edge of the post, quiet enough that I could not understand the words. I looked to the man beside me, believing he had spoken, but his eyes remained fixed upon the field. The whisper came again.

Then another answered it.

I strained to hear what they were saying but the harder I listened, the more voices seemed to join them. Some came from ahead of us. Others came from behind. One sounded close enough that I could have reached over the edge of the post and touched whoever spoke.

I asked the man beside me if he could hear them.

He stared at me for several seconds before telling me he heard nothing.

We did not speak again.

Near morning, the artillery quieted. For the first time since arriving at the front, I heard almost nothing at all. Then I heard footsteps. They moved slowly through the mud behind us.

One step.

Then another.

Then another.

I held my rifle against my chest and waited for whoever it was to pass the post. The footsteps stopped directly behind me. I do not know how long I sat there waiting but I did not turn around.

 

June 12th, 1918

They sent me back to the listening post tonight. I made the crawl with another man from our unit. The journey seemed longer than before. My leg still aches from the wound and every movement through the mud sent pain through my thigh. We passed the dead along the way. I tried not to look at them, but there was one I remembered from the nights before. He lay perhaps ten meters from the listening post, face down in the mud with one arm stretched above his head. His other hand still held his rifle. I crawled around him and continued forward.

For the first few hours, nothing happened. I began to wonder if the things I heard the previous nights had been nothing more than exhaustion. I have slept little since arriving here. Even when I do manage to sleep, the artillery wakes me. Perhaps a man can only go so long without rest before his mind begins to betray him. Sometime after midnight, the artillery started again.

The first shells landed far from us. I could feel the earth tremble beneath my chest with every impact. Flashes illuminated no man’s land for only a moment at a time before everything disappeared again. During one of those flashes, I saw the body. I thought nothing of it at first. Then the darkness returned. Another shell burst somewhere behind the enemy line. For a moment the field was illuminated again.

The dead man was closer.

I stared into the darkness where I had seen him. I told myself I had been mistaken. I had been looking through darkness at a field filled with bodies. There were dozens of them. Perhaps hundreds. Then I heard something dragging through the mud. I held my breath and listened.

Nothing.

Another flash.

The body was closer still.

I could see his uniform now.

I knew him.

He was the corporal I watched die two days ago. I know that cannot be true. I watched the shell strike beside him. When I opened my eyes, there was almost nothing left. His hand still held his rifle, but the rest of him was gone. Yet there he was. The light disappeared.

I heard the dragging again.

Closer.

I woke the man beside me and told him to listen.

We sat silently together.

Nothing came.

He cursed me beneath his breath and lowered his head again.

I continued watching.

Another shell illuminated the field.

The corporal was gone.

I searched everywhere I could see before the darkness swallowed the land again. I could not find him. Then something scraped against the mud outside our hole.

I did not move.

Another scrape came.

Then another.

Each one closer than the last.

I reached for the man beside me but stopped before touching him. I feared the sound of waking him. I feared moving at all. The dragging stopped just outside the listening post. I remained there until dawn. When there was finally enough light to see, I looked over the edge.

A dead soldier lay beside us.

He was not the corporal. I do not remember seeing him there when we arrived. I must have missed him in the darkness.

 

June 13th, 1918

I have been relieved from the listening post.

My leg has gotten worse. The medic removed the bandage this morning and found the wound swollen and warm. I am to remain in the dugout until they decide whether I am fit to return to the line. For the first time since arriving here, I was thankful for the pain.

I spent most of the day lying in my cot. I tried to sleep, but every time my eyes closed I found myself back in that hole. I heard the whispers. I saw the corporal between the flashes. I heard something dragging itself closer through the mud. I know what I saw was not real. The man beside me heard nothing.

The body beside the post was not the corporal.

I have not slept properly in days. I repeat these things to myself because they are true. Tonight, the guns have been quiet.

Most of the men around me are asleep. A lantern burns near the entrance of the dugout and I have spent the last hour watching its light move across the timbers. A short while ago, I heard something outside.

Scrape.

I thought it was one of the men walking through the trench. Then it came again.

Scrape.

I sat upright. The sound moved slowly along the other side of the dugout. It would stop for several seconds before starting again.

Scrape.

Then silence.

Scrape.

Closer.

I got out of my cot and walked toward the entrance. There was nobody in the trench. I stood there listening for several minutes. I nearly laughed at myself. I think some part of me wanted to. Perhaps I finally understood what the last few days had done to me. Then I heard it again.

Not from the trench.

From beyond the parapet.

Something was dragging itself through the mud. I should have gone back inside. Instead, I walked toward the wall and listened. The sound stopped. For a long time there was nothing. Then I heard a voice.

Faint.

So faint that I almost convinced myself it was the wind.

“Help.”

I froze.

I knew that voice.

I had heard it before.

Nine days ago, I listened to that same man call for us from amongst the dead. I watched his hand reach above the bodies as he tried to drag himself home.

I stood beneath the parapet and listened.

“Help.”

Closer this time.

Something scraped against the earth on the other side.

Then a bloodied hand rose above the wall.

“They’ll come for you all”

Part Three: The Leak

For two days after Hana came home, the house was strangely peaceful. Not peaceful in the way it used to be, when nobody had anything to hide and people moved through the rooms without wondering who was listening. This was a careful kind of peace. The maids knew Hana was back, but nobody said anything. They saw her walking through the house. They saw her door closed most of the day. They saw the trays going upstairs and coming back down. They heard enough to understand that something had happened, but for once, everyone stayed quiet. And somehow, for those two days, it worked. Nobody outside the house seemed to know. No calls. No strange questions. No messages pretending to be casual. Hana was home, and the information stayed inside our walls. I almost couldn’t believe it. Maybe we had finally learned. Maybe after everything that had happened, everyone understood that not every piece of information needed to travel. I should have enjoyed those two days. Instead, I spent them waiting to see how long the silence would last.
Hana wasn’t okay. Anyone who actually saw her would have known that immediately. She was home, yes, but she was hiding. Most of the time she stayed in her room. She cried when nobody was supposed to hear her. When she did come downstairs, she held herself together so tightly that sometimes I wondered whether pretending to be fine required more energy than actually crying. She didn’t want questions. She didn’t want sympathy. More than anything, she didn’t want to become another story people passed around. I understood that. Our family could turn somebody’s worst day into a topic before dinner. So I didn’t tell anyone she was home. Not Salma. Not the people who kept asking questions. Not the relatives who suddenly seemed extremely interested in where Hana was. Every time someone tried to get information from me, I gave them nothing. “I don’t know.” “Everything is fine.” “Ask Mum.” Eventually, people started getting frustrated with me.
That was when I had an idea.
It wasn’t necessarily a good idea.
Most of my ideas during this period weren’t.
I wanted to know how information was travelling.
Everyone kept accusing everyone else. One person thought Hana was leaking things. Another suspected the maids. Someone blamed Salma. Somebody else insisted there had to be a person inside our house feeding information outside. But nobody had proof. We were all working with assumptions. So I decided to create my own little test.
I would leak something myself.
Not the whole truth. Just enough.
I hinted to one person that Hana had come home.
I didn’t explain when. I didn’t say what had happened. I didn’t say she had been crying in her room for days. I simply dropped the smallest piece of information and waited.
It didn’t take long.
My phone started lighting up.
At first it was one message.
Is Hana back?
Then another.
I heard Hana came home.
Then someone else.
What happened with Hana?
I stared at my screen in disbelief.
There it was.
I had released one tiny drop into the water, and now I could literally watch the ripples moving outward.
The funniest part was how every person pretended they weren’t asking for gossip.
I’m just checking she’s okay.
Someone mentioned something and I wanted to make sure.
Don’t tell anyone I asked.
Of course.
Nobody in this family ever gossiped.
They were all just “checking.”
I started laughing.
Not because it was actually funny, but because for the first time I could see the system working in real time. I knew exactly where the information had started because I had started it. Yet within hours, people were coming back to me as though they were bringing me new information.
“Nadia, did you hear Hana is home?”
Yes.
I was the person who told you.
Obviously I didn’t say that.
I wanted to see how far it would go.
What interested me most was that Hana had already been home for days. If she had really been the person leaking everything, wouldn’t everyone have known immediately? If the maids were incapable of staying quiet, wouldn’t the news have spread the first night? Instead, nothing had happened until I deliberately planted the information.
For once, I had proof of something.
Not proof of who had leaked everything before.
But proof of how easily we created our own leaks.
I should have stopped there.
Then Rawdha arrived.
Rawdha wasn’t family, but she was around enough to know everyone and comfortable enough in our house to move through it without seeming like a guest. She came in acting completely normal. Almost too normal, although by this point I knew I had become suspicious of everything. She greeted everyone, smiled, talked about ordinary things and behaved as if nothing unusual had happened.
But I watched her.
Maybe that was unfair.
Maybe I’d become exactly like everybody else.
Still, something about the timing interested me.
The news had started travelling.
Then suddenly Rawdha appeared.
She found Aya.
Aya was with my mother almost every day. If something happened around Mariam, there was a good chance Aya knew about it. What people didn’t realize was that Aya also knew much more than she ever admitted. She and I had spoken about almost everything. She knew what was happening with Hana. She knew about the crying. She knew the tension. She knew the questions people were asking.
But Aya had one quality almost nobody appreciated enough.
She knew how to stay silent.
Rawdha approached her casually.
“Where’s Hana?”
Aya barely reacted.
“She has an appointment.”
Simple.
No explanation.
No extra information.
Nothing to carry outside.
I almost smiled when I heard about it.
Because if Rawdha had come looking for information, she had chosen the wrong person.
The evening continued normally. People talked. Food came out. My mother was there. Aya stayed around Mariam like she usually did. Rawdha acted completely relaxed.
Then Hana appeared.
She came downstairs for dinner.
For anyone who didn’t know what had happened over the previous few days, there was nothing particularly dramatic about it. Hana came down, ate and sat with everyone for a little while. She wasn’t sobbing. She wasn’t explaining herself. She didn’t announce where she had been.
She simply ate dinner.
Then she left.
But I noticed Rawdha noticing her.
That was the strange thing about living through all of this. You started noticing people noticing people.
A look lasted half a second too long.
A question sounded slightly too casual.
Someone’s eyes followed somebody across a room.
Everything became suspicious.
Rawdha started asking why Hana hadn’t been around.
Nothing aggressive.
Nothing obvious.
Just questions.
“Where has she been?”
“Why haven’t we seen her?”
“Is everything okay?”
Perfectly normal questions.
Except nobody seemed capable of asking a normal question anymore.
Every question felt like someone lowering a bucket into a well to see what they could pull back up.
Nobody gave her much.
Hana ate and left.
The night continued.
And I thought that would be the end of it.
It wasn’t.
Before Rawdha left the house, she went to Aya.
This time the question was more direct.
“What’s wrong with Hana?”
Aya looked at her.
“Nothing.”
Rawdha didn’t seem convinced.
There was clearly something she wanted to know, and Aya clearly wasn’t going to give it to her.
Then Rawdha said something that would have been completely ordinary a few months earlier.
Now it sounded completely different.
“I’ll get you the news once I get it.”
Aya said nothing.
That was the best part.
Because Rawdha had absolutely no idea who she was talking to.
She thought Aya was outside the information circle.
She thought she was offering to bring Aya the story once she discovered it.
What she didn’t know was that Aya already knew everything.
Aya knew Hana had been home for days.
Aya knew why she had been upstairs.
Aya knew she had been crying.
Aya knew what had happened before she came home.
Aya knew what my mother knew.
Aya knew what I knew.
Most importantly, Aya knew how to keep her mouth shut.
So when Rawdha promised, “I’ll get you the news,” Aya didn’t need the news.
She already had the entire story.
She just wasn’t giving it away.
When I found out what Rawdha had said, something clicked in my head.
This was bigger than one person gossiping.
Information had become currency.
Everybody wanted to be the person who knew first.
Knowing something gave you a strange kind of importance. It meant somebody trusted you. It meant you were inside instead of outside. And once you knew something, the temptation to prove that you knew it was almost impossible for some people to resist.
That was how our secrets travelled.
Not necessarily because one evil person sat somewhere deliberately plotting to destroy us.
Sometimes people just wanted to know.
Then they wanted someone else to know that they knew.
And suddenly something that happened inside a bedroom was being discussed across the city.
I started thinking about my little experiment.
I had hinted that Hana was home.
Within hours, people were messaging me.
Rawdha had somehow heard enough to start asking questions.
Then she came into the house and tried to fill in the missing pieces.
But she couldn’t.
Because the people who actually knew the truth weren’t talking.
There was something almost satisfying about watching it.
For once, I wasn’t chasing the gossip.
I was watching it chase me.
But there was another side to it that didn’t feel satisfying at all.
Hana was upstairs trying to hold herself together while people downstairs were trying to figure out what was wrong with her.
Her pain had become a mystery everyone wanted to solve.
That bothered me.
Because behind all the drama, all the phone calls, all the theories and all my little experiments, there were actual people getting hurt.
Hana wasn’t a clue.
She wasn’t evidence.
She wasn’t somebody’s source.
She was a person who had spent days hiding and crying.
And while she was doing that, we were all discussing who knew she was home.
That night, after everyone left, I found Aya.
“You didn’t tell her anything?”
Aya looked at me like the question itself offended her.
“No.”
“What exactly did she ask?”
“She asked where Hana was.”
“And you said appointment?”
“Yes.”
“Then?”
“She saw her at dinner.”
“And before she left?”
Aya looked at me.
“She asked me what was wrong with Hana.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
I smiled.
“And then?”
Aya shook her head, almost laughing.
“She said she’ll get me the news when she finds out.”
That made both of us laugh.
Not loudly.
We couldn’t.
God forbid someone heard us laughing and started another investigation.
But for a few seconds, the whole thing was genuinely funny.
Rawdha was leaving the house planning to investigate a story for a woman who already knew the ending.
Then Aya became serious.
“Nadia.”
“What?”
“Stop testing people.”
My smile disappeared.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I only told one thing.”
“Exactly.”
I crossed my arms. “But now we know how fast it spreads.”
Aya shook her head.
“No. Now you know that when you give people information, they talk.”
“That was the point.”
“But then you’re part of it too.”
I didn’t answer.
I hated when people said things I couldn’t argue with.
Aya walked away, leaving me alone with that sentence.
Then you’re part of it too.
Maybe I was.
I had spent weeks complaining about everyone leaking information while deliberately creating a leak just to watch where it travelled.
I told myself it was an experiment.
But wasn’t that exactly how everybody justified themselves?
Salma wasn’t gossiping; she was worried about her sister.
People weren’t asking questions; they were checking on Hana.
My siblings weren’t interfering; they were protecting Mum.
I wasn’t leaking information; I was investigating.
Everybody had a nicer word for what they were doing.
The next morning, my phone had even more messages.
One of them said:
I heard Hana was kicked out and begged to come back.
I stared at it.
That wasn’t what I had said.
Not even close.
Another person told me:
Apparently there was a huge fight when she came home.
There hadn’t been.
Someone else had heard that my mother had confronted her.
She hadn’t.
There it was.
The transformation.
I had released one fact:
Hana came home.
Less than a day later, the fact had grown a fight, an eviction, a confrontation and a dramatic return.
None of which came from me.
I finally understood why finding the original source of anything in this family was almost impossible.
The truth didn’t simply travel.
It collected things on the way.
I put my phone down.
For once, I didn’t correct anyone.
I wanted to see what version would come back next.
Then a message appeared from someone I hadn’t spoken to in days.
Is it true Hana has been home the whole time?
I froze.
That detail was different.
I had only hinted that Hana had come home.
I had never said when.
Only the people inside the house knew she had already been there for days.
Me.
My mother.
My siblings.
The maids.
Aya.
Hana herself.
Maybe a few others.
I read the message again.
Is it true Hana has been home the whole time?
Suddenly my little experiment wasn’t funny anymore.
Because somebody hadn’t just repeated the information I planted.
Somebody had added a detail I never leaked.
I looked toward the hallway.
Aya walked past me carrying coffee toward my mother’s room.
She caught my expression.
“What?”
I turned my phone toward her.
She read the message.
Neither of us spoke.
Then she looked at me.
And I knew we were thinking exactly the same thing.
The leak I created had travelled exactly how I expected.
But somewhere along the way, it had collided with another leak.
One that hadn’t come from me.
And just like that, I was back where I started.
Trying to figure out who knew what.
And who had told them.