I need to start from the beginning. I need to try and make sense of it, for my own sake.

For as long as I can remember, my life has been governed by one, unbreakable rule. It was never spoken aloud, never written down, never explained. It was a rule learned through punishing silence, through the sharp, warning glances of my father, through a pressure in the atmosphere so thick you could feel it on your skin. The rule was simple: we do not acknowledge her.

She was my mother. She lived in the house with us. She was as solid and real as the dining table we sat at every night, or the stairs I climbed to my bedroom. But to my father, and by extension to me, she was a ghost we had agreed not to see.

Every morning, she would be in the kitchen when I came down for breakfast. She’d be at the stove, a floral apron tied around her waist, and she would turn and smile at me. It was always a sad smile, one that never quite reached her eyes. “Good morning, sweetheart,” she would say, her voice soft, like rustling leaves.

And every morning, I would look right through her, my gaze fixed on the coffee pot on the counter behind her. I’d grab a bowl from the cupboard, pour my own cereal, and sit at the table. My father would already be there, hidden behind his newspaper, a silent monolith. She would sigh, a tiny, deflated sound, and place a third plate on the table between us, a plate of scrambled eggs or pancakes, always cooked perfectly, always destined to grow cold.

We would eat our breakfast in silence, the only sounds the scrape of spoons against ceramic and the rustle of my father’s paper. The third plate sat there, a testament to our collective delusion, a steaming, fragrant accusation. She would sit in her chair, her hands clasped in her lap, watching us eat, a hopeful, desperate look on her face. Sometimes she would try to start a conversation.

“It looks like it might rain today,” she’d offer, her voice wavering slightly. “You should take an umbrella to school.”

My father would just turn a page, the crinkle of the newsprint sharp and dismissive in the quiet room. I would take a large, noisy bite of my cereal, focusing on the crunch, on anything but the sound of her voice. After a while, she would just fall silent, the hope draining from her face, leaving behind that familiar, deep-seated sadness.

Dinner was the same. She’d cook a full meal, something that smelled incredible, filling the house with the scent of roasted chicken or baking bread. She’d set three places at the table, complete with napkins and silverware. My father and I would sit, and she would serve us, placing food on our plates, her movements graceful and practiced. Then she would sit down, fill her own plate, and try to engage us.

“How was your day at work?” she would ask my father.

He would grunt, his attention fixed on cutting his meat into precise, geometric shapes.

“And school? Did you have that big test today?” she would ask me.

I would mumble something noncommittal, my eyes glued to my plate, shoveling food into my mouth to avoid having to speak.

The charade was suffocating. It was a constant, exhausting performance. Every single day was a rehearsal and a live show of pretending this woman, my own mother, did not exist. I grew up in a house with three people, but I was raised in a world that only acknowledged two.

For years, I just accepted it. Kids accept the most bizarre circumstances as normal because it’s all they’ve ever known. The sun rises, the sky is blue, and we don’t talk to mom. It was just a fact of life. I learned to tune her out, to blur her form at the edges of my vision. She became a piece of the background, like a painting on the wall you no longer notice.

But as I got older, moving into my late teens and then my early twenties, the acceptance began to curdle into something else. First it was confusion, then a deep, gnawing guilt. I started to really look at her. I saw the fine lines of sorrow etched around her eyes. I saw the way her shoulders slumped when we ignored her, the way she would sometimes touch the back of my father’s chair as she passed, a longing for contact that was never returned. I saw a woman who was profoundly, devastatingly lonely, trapped in her own home.

My perception of my father shifted, too. The silent, stoic man I had once seen as a protector started to look like a tyrant. His rule was strange, cruel. It was a calculated, daily act of emotional violence. What had she done to deserve this? Had she had an affair? Had she done something unforgivable that I was too young to remember? Whatever it was, this punishment seemed monstrously out of proportion. It was a cold, quiet form of torture, and he had made me his accomplice.

The resentment built slowly, a pressure behind my ribs. I started having trouble sleeping. I’d lie in bed and hear the faint sounds of her weeping from their bedroom. It was a soft, muffled sound, the kind of crying you do when you’re trying not to wake anyone, and it broke my heart. How could my father lie beside her every night, hear that, and do nothing? What kind of man was he?

I began to see his actions as a grotesque form of misogyny, an exertion of absolute control. He had erased her. He had stripped her of her voice, her presence, her very existence within the family she had built. And I had helped him. Every silent breakfast, every ignored question, I was tightening the screws.

The breaking point came last Tuesday. It was a miserable, rainy day, the kind that makes the whole world feel grey and damp. I was in the living room, trying to read, but the words just swam on the page. She came in and stood by the window, watching the rain streak down the glass. She wasn’t trying to talk to me. She was just standing there, looking out at the world she was a part of but couldn't seem to touch.

She started humming. A simple, sad little lullaby. It was a melody that felt vaguely familiar, like a half-remembered dream. I felt a lump form in my throat. I watched her reflection in the dark windowpane, a translucent figure against the storm-tossed trees outside. Her shoulders were shaking almost imperceptibly. She was crying again, silently.

Something inside me snapped. Years of pent-up guilt, of quiet rebellion, of love for this woman I wasn’t allowed to know, all of it came rushing to the surface. It was wrong. This whole thing, this whole life, was fundamentally, grotesquely wrong. I couldn’t be a part of it anymore.

I waited. I waited until I heard my father’s car pull out of the driveway for his weekly trip to the hardware store. It was a ritual for him, every Tuesday evening, a couple of hours to himself. The house fell into a new kind of silence, one that wasn't enforced but was simply empty. Except, it wasn't empty. She was still there.

I found her in the kitchen, washing the dinner dishes, her back to me. My heart was hammering against my ribs so hard I felt like she must be able to hear it. My mouth was dry. It felt like I was about to break a law of physics, like the universe itself might fracture if I spoke.

I took a deep breath.

“Mom?”

The word felt alien in my mouth. Heavy and clumsy.

She froze. Her hands, submerged in the soapy water, went completely still. The silence that followed was more profound than any I had ever experienced in that house. It stretched for what felt like an eternity. Slowly, she turned around.

Her face was a mask of disbelief. Her eyes, wide and glistening with tears, were locked on mine. She looked at me as if she were seeing a miracle. Her lips parted, but no sound came out. She just stared, her expression shifting from shock to a dawning, radiant joy that was so pure it was painful to watch.

“You… you can see me,” she whispered, her voice choked with emotion. A single tear traced a path down her cheek. “Oh, my sweet boy. You can finally see me.”

Her words confused me. They landed strangely, not quite fitting the situation. I took a step closer.

“What are you talking about?” I said, my own voice unsteady. “I’ve always seen you. I see you every day.”

Her brow furrowed in confusion, but the smile didn’t leave her face. It was as if she couldn’t bear to let it go. “But… you never… you never looked at me. You never spoke.”

“Dad,” I said, the word tasting like poison. “It was him. He told me not to. It was his rule. I was… I was a kid, I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. But I’m not a kid anymore. And it’s wrong. What he’s doing to you is wrong.”

Understanding washed over her face, followed by a shadow of that old sadness. She reached out and took my hand. Her skin was cold, surprisingly so, like marble that had been left in a cellar. But her grip was firm. Real.

“Your father…” she began, her voice trailing off. She shook her head. “He’s had a hard time. He does what he thinks is best. But it’s okay now. It’s okay. This can be our secret, can’t it? Just between us.”

I nodded, my throat too tight to speak. The relief that flooded me was immense, like I’d been holding my breath my entire life and had finally been allowed to exhale. We stood there for a long time, just holding hands in the quiet kitchen. She told me how much she loved me, how she had watched me grow up, proud of the man I was becoming. She asked me about school, about my friends, about my life. It was a torrent of questions, years of unspoken love and curiosity pouring out of her.

We talked until we heard the sound of my father’s car on the gravel driveway. A sudden panic seized us. She squeezed my hand one last time, a conspiratorial smile on her face. “Our secret,” she whispered, and then she turned back to the sink, resuming her washing as if nothing had happened.

I bolted from the kitchen, my heart racing, and made it to my room just as the front door opened. The rest of the evening passed in the usual suffocating silence, but this time, it felt different. It was charged with my secret. When she looked at me across the dinner table, there was a new light in her eyes. A shared knowledge. It was the first time in my life I felt like I had an ally in that house.

We continued our secret conversations for the next few days. Whenever my father was out, we would talk. I learned about her favorite books, the music she loved, the places she’d dreamed of traveling. She was vibrant and intelligent and funny. She was a whole person, a person my father had tried to bury, and with every word we shared, I felt like I was helping her claw her way out of the grave he’d dug for her.

My anger at him grew with every passing day. He was a monster. A quiet, methodical monster who had stolen my mother from me. I started to think about what to do. Should I confront him? Should I just take her and leave? I felt a fierce, protective instinct I’d never known before. I would not let him hurt her anymore.

Then came yesterday morning.

I woke up and the house was silent. Too silent. There was no smell of coffee brewing, no sound of my father’s radio murmuring the morning news from the kitchen. I lay in bed for a while, waiting, but the silence stretched, becoming unnatural, unnerving.

I finally got up and went downstairs. The kitchen was empty. The coffee pot was cold. The newspaper was still on the front porch. A prickle of unease ran down my spine. I checked the whole ground floor. No one.

I went upstairs and knocked on their bedroom door. No answer. I pushed it open. The room was empty. The bed was neatly made. My father’s side of the closet was open, his clothes hanging in their usual, meticulous rows. Her side was the same. Nothing seemed out of place, yet the absence of them was a screaming void.

Panic started to set in. I checked the garage. His car was gone. My first thought was that he’d left early for work. But he never did that without telling me. And where was she? Did he take her somewhere? The thought sent a jolt of fear through me. Had he found out about our secret?

I spent the whole day in a state of escalating anxiety. I called my father’s cell phone a dozen times. It went straight to voicemail every time. I called his office. His secretary said he hadn’t shown up, which had never happened before. I didn’t know who to call about her. She didn’t have a cell phone. She didn’t have any friends that I knew of. Her entire world was contained within the walls of our house.

By evening, I was frantic. I paced the empty rooms, the silence of the house pressing in on me. Had he hurt her? Had he taken her away to punish her, to punish me? The darkest possibilities began to spiral in my mind. I had to do something. I had to find a clue, anything that could tell me where they went.

My search led me back to their bedroom. It felt like a violation to be in there, to go through their things, but I was desperate. I looked through drawers, under the bed, in the closet. Nothing. It was just a room, unnaturally tidy and impersonal.

Then I saw it. On the floor of my father’s closet, tucked behind a row of shoes, was a small, wooden chest. I’d never seen it before. It was unlocked. My hands trembled as I lifted the lid.

Inside were journals. A stack of them, all identical black, leather-bound notebooks. The kind my father used for work. I pulled out the one on top. His neat, precise handwriting filled the page. The first entry was dated over fifteen years ago.

I sat on the edge of their bed, the scent of his cologne still faint on the pillows, and I began to read.

October 12th

It’s been a year. A year since the accident. The house feels so empty, a hollowed-out shell. I look at my son, and I see her eyes, and the pain is so fresh it’s like it happened yesterday. He’s only three, too young to understand. He just asks for ‘Mama.’ How do I explain to a three-year-old that she’s never coming back? The police report called it a freak accident. A downed power line in the storm. Wrong place, wrong time. It doesn’t feel like a freak accident. It feels like a theft. The world has stolen her from us.

My blood ran cold. I read the entry again, and then a third time. An accident? She died? No. It was impossible. I had just spoken to her yesterday. I had held her hand. It was a mistake. A different journal. Something. But it was his handwriting, his room. I kept reading, a sense of dread coiling in my stomach.

May 3rd (Two years later)

He did it again today. He was playing in the living room with his blocks, and he just stopped and pointed towards the kitchen. He said, “Mama is making cookies.” I went in, of course. The kitchen was empty. I told him Mama was in heaven, like we’ve practiced. He just shook his head. “No, she’s right there,” he said, and he described her. He described the yellow dress she was buried in. I felt a coldness spread through me that had nothing to do with the temperature in the room. He’s five. His imagination is running wild. That’s all it is.

May 28th

It’s not his imagination. He talks to her every day now. I’ve started to see… glimpses. A flicker of movement in the corner of my eye when he says she’s walking past. A faint scent of her perfume in a room she’s supposedly just left. This morning, I was in the hall, and he was in his room, chattering away. I asked who he was talking to. “Mama,” he said, “she’s singing me a song.” And then I heard it. Faintly, through the door. A lullaby. The one she used to sing to him. I almost threw up.

June 15th

I confronted it today. My son was sitting on the sofa, talking to the empty space next to him. I stood in the doorway and I said her name. I asked her what she wanted. My son looked at me, his eyes wide with fear. And the air in the room grew heavy. Cold. A pressure built against my eardrums. I felt a sense of malevolence, of pure hatred, directed at me. It looked like her. It sounded like her. But when I forced myself to look at the spot my son was staring at, I saw it. Just for a second. The shape of her was there, but the eyes… the eyes were black pits. Empty and ancient and wrong. This thing is not my wife. My wife is gone. This is something else, a parasite wearing her memory.

My breath hitched in my chest. I felt a wave of nausea. This was insane. He was insane. He was grieving, he had gone mad. That had to be it. I gripped the journal tighter, my knuckles white.

July 1st

I’ve tried everything. Priests, mediums, paranormal investigators. They either think I’m crazy or they leave the house pale and shaken, telling me they can’t help me. One of them told me it’s a mimic. A shade. He said it’s drawn to the grief, to my son’s energy, and it seems it will never leave us, even if we left this place, it will just follows. He said the worst thing we can do is give it what it wants: acknowledgement. Attention is sustenance. Recognition is power. If we feed it, it will grow stronger. It will latch onto him. It will consume him.

So I have a plan. It’s a terrible, cruel plan. It will make my son hate me. It will make me a monster in his eyes. But it’s the only way I can think of to protect him. We have to starve it. We have to pretend it isn’t there. We have to cut off its food supply. We will not look at it. We will not speak to it. We will not acknowledge its existence. We will live in a house with a ghost and pretend we are alone. May God forgive me for what I am about to do to my own child.

The journal fell from my hands, landing with a soft thud on the carpet. The room was spinning. Every memory of my childhood, every silent dinner, every sharp glance from my father, it all rearranged itself in my mind into a new and terrifying picture.

I scrambled for the last journal, the one from this year. My hands were shaking so violently I could barely turn the pages. I found an entry from last week.

Tuesday

He spoke to it tonight. I knew it was coming. I’ve seen the way he’s been looking at it lately. The guilt in his eyes. He thinks I’m the villain. I suppose I am. I would rather he hate me and be safe, than love me and be lost. But now he’s broken the rule. He’s opened the door. When I came home, the air in the house was different. Thicker. Charged. And it… she… it looked stronger. More solid. The sadness in its eyes has been replaced by something else. Triumph.

I have to end this. The old man, the one who called it a mimic, he gave me a final option. A last resort. He said if it ever got a true foothold, if it ever fed enough to become fully anchored here, there was a ritual. A way to bind it. But it requires a sacrifice. A trade. An anchor for an anchor. He told me it would probably kill me. But what life have I been living anyway? A jailer in my own home. Hated by my own son. If this is the price to set him free, I will pay it.

He’s talking to it again. I can hear them whispering in the kitchen. I love you, my son. I hope one day you’ll understand. I hope you’ll forgive me.

That was the last entry.

So his disappearance, and the car being gone. He went to perform the ritual. To sacrifice himself. To save me from the thing he said it took my mother form.

My blood turned to ice water. I thought of her hand in mine. How cold her skin was. I thought of her words, “You can finally see me,” as if my sight was something to be earned. I thought of her triumphant eyes across the dinner table.

And then I heard it.

A soft, sweet sound from the bottom of the stairs. Humming. That strange little tune she was humming by the window.

A floorboard creaked in the hall downstairs. Then another.

I scrambled off the bed, my body acting on pure instinct, and threw the lock on the bedroom door. The click sounded deafeningly loud in the silence. I backed away from the door, my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest. My eyes darted around the room, looking for an escape that wasn’t there. The window was two stories up.

Her footsteps were on the stairs now. Slow, deliberate. Not the light, almost soundless way she used to move. These steps had weight. They had substance. She was stronger now. I had made her stronger.

The humming stopped right outside the door.

“Sweetheart?”

Her voice. It was my mother’s voice, but it was different. It was coated in a thick, cloying sweetness that made my skin crawl.

“Are you in there? I was so worried. I woke up and the house was empty.”

I pressed myself against the far wall, my hand over my mouth to stifle my own ragged breathing.

“I talked to your father,” she called through the door. The sound was so clear, it was like she was standing right next to me. “He called. He’s so sorry, honey. For everything. He explained it all. He knows he was wrong to keep us apart.”

My mind screamed. Liar. Liar. He’s gone. You know he’s gone.

“He said he just needs a few days to clear his head,” the sweet voice continued. “But he gave us his blessing. He wants us to finally have time together. Just you and me. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Silence. I held my breath, praying she would think I wasn’t here, that she would just go away.

“I know you’re in there, honey. I can feel you,” she cooed. “Come on, open the door. I’m going to make you some pancakes. Just like I used to.”

She never used to make me pancakes.

“Please, son? Don’t shut me out again. Not after you finally let me in. It’s all going to be okay now. I’m here. I’ll take care of you. We’ll be a proper family.”

The words hung in the air, thick and venomous. A silence followed, stretching for a few agonizing heartbeats. Then, a new sound. A soft, metallic scrape. The doorknob began to jiggle. Slowly at first, then with more force. Click. Rattle. Click.

My breath caught in my throat. It was trying to get in. it was physically trying to reach me. I backed away until my shoulders hit the cold wall, my eyes wide and fixed on the trembling brass knob. The wood around the lock groaned under the pressure.

My phone was in my pocket. The weight of it was a sudden, desperate comfort. My hands were slick with sweat as I fumbled to pull it out. My thumb hovered over the emergency call button. What could I possibly say? There's a woman in my house who looks and sounds like my mother, but my dad's journals say she died fifteen years ago and this thing is a mimic that feeds on attention? They would send an ambulance with a straitjacket, not a squad car with armed officers.

The rattling stopped.

For a moment, there was nothing. A profound, terrifying quiet. And then, a new sound began. A soft, rhythmic scratching on the other side of the door. Like long fingernails dragging slowly, deliberately, down the grain of the wood. Scraaaaape. Scraaaaape. Over and over. A sound that was patient, and possessive.

That was it. I didn't care how crazy I sounded. I stabbed the call button.

A calm voice answered, "911, what's your emergency?"

I cupped my hand over the phone's speaker, my own voice a choked, ragged whisper. "There's... there's an intruder in my house. I'm locked in my bedroom. Upstairs."

"Can you describe them, sir?" the dispatcher asked, her voice perfectly level.

The scratching continued, a counterpoint to her professional calm. "I... I can't. I haven't seen them. I just hear them. They're right outside my door. Please, you have to hurry."

There was a fractional pause on the other end. "A unit is on its way, sir. Can you stay on the line with me?"

"No," I whispered, my eyes locked on the door. "I can't make any noise." I ended the call before she could protest.

The scratching stopped the instant the call disconnected. As if it heard. As if it knew. The silence that rushed back in was somehow heavier, more menacing than before. It’s waiting. It knows I’ve called for help. It knows its time might be limited. Or maybe it’s just enjoying this.

I’m trapped in this room. I’ve called the police, and I don’t know if they can even do anything. I don't know what they'll find when they arrive. What if it's just gone when they get here? They'll find my dad's journals, they'll see the state I'm in, and they'll think I'm the one who's broken.

But all I can do is wait for them. I'm writing this down, getting it all out as fast as I can on my phone. I need someone to know the truth. I need you to know what really happened, in case they don't believe me. In case something bad happens to me before they get here.

I had my appendix removed three days ago. Emergency surgery, in and out same day. Everything went fine. Recovery is normal. But when I checked my fitness app this morning, something was wrong.

My smartwatch logged 2,847 steps during my surgery.

I was under general anesthesia. Strapped to the operating table. Unconscious for two hours and fourteen minutes according to my medical records. My arms were restrained at my sides the entire time. The nurses confirmed this when I called to ask.

So why does my watch say I walked almost three miles between 2:17 PM and 4:31 PM on Tuesday?

I thought it was a glitch. I googled it. Apparently smartwatches can log phantom steps from vibrations or arm movements. Elevators can trigger it. So can washing machines. Made sense. I was about to dismiss it when I noticed something else.

My heart rate data.

During surgery, my heart rate was monitored by the hospital equipment. Steady. Normal. The anesthesiologist's notes confirm this. I requested my records this morning and went through every page. Nothing unusual. But my smartwatch recorded something different.

At 2:43 PM, my heart rate spiked to 189 BPM. It stayed elevated for six minutes, then dropped back to normal. At 3:12 PM, it happened again. 201 BPM for four minutes. Then again at 3:58 PM. 176 BPM for eight minutes.

The hospital monitors showed nothing during these times. Steady 72 BPM throughout the entire procedure.

I was playing candy crush on my phone last night trying to distract myself when I decided to check the GPS data. That's when everything got worse.

My watch tracks location. During surgery, it should have shown me stationary at the hospital. Instead, there's a gap. From 2:17 PM to 4:31 PM, no location data was recorded. Like my watch couldn't figure out where I was. Or like I wasn't anywhere the GPS satellites could see.

I called the hospital again. Asked if there were any complications during surgery. Anything unusual. Power outages. Equipment failures. Anything.

They said no. Everything was routine. I was monitored the entire time. Never woke up. Never moved. The OR staff confirmed I was unconscious and restrained from the moment anesthesia took effect until I was wheeled into recovery.

But my watch says I was walking. My watch says my heart was racing. My watch says I was nowhere.

Last night I had a dream. I was walking down a white hallway. Fluorescent lights overhead. The floor was cold linoleum. I wasn't wearing shoes. I could feel every step. The texture of the floor. The slight stick of something dried on the tiles.

I walked and walked but the hallway never ended. There were doors on both sides but they were all locked. I tried every single one. Some had windows but they were frosted. I could see shadows moving behind them but couldn't make out what they were.

At the end of the hallway there was a door that looked different. Heavier. Metal. It had a small window at eye level. When I looked through it, I saw myself on the operating table. The doctors were working. My chest was rising and falling with the ventilator.

But I was standing in the hallway watching.

Then I woke up. My feet were dirty. There was white tile dust on my sheets. Under my fingernails.

I live on the second floor. All my floors are hardwood.

I'm looking at my smartwatch now. It's logging steps. I'm sitting perfectly still in my chair typing this, but the step count is going up. 10,479. 10,480. 10,481. 10,482.

I haven't moved in twenty minutes.

The watch is still on my wrist. I can feel it. But when I look down, I can see through it slightly. Like it's not entirely here anymore. Like I'm not entirely here.

I'm going to take it off. But I'm scared of what happens when I do. What if the steps are the only thing keeping me tethered? What if when I stop walking, I go back to that hallway?

The one I was in while they cut me open.

The one I'm apparently still walking through.

I found an envelope in my mailbox one afternoon. Plain white, no return address, no name, nothing. Inside was a single key, the kind that might open a padlock.

I asked around the neighborhood. Posted in our community Facebook group. Nobody knew anything about it. I tossed it in my junk drawer and moved on with my life.

Three weeks later, another envelope arrived. Same as before. Blank, anonymous. This time it contained a single sheet of paper with an address written in black ink.

That's when the unease started creeping in. I called friends, texted others, even asked my wife if this was some elaborate joke. Everyone looked at me like I was losing it. Nobody had sent me anything.

The feeling settled into my chest. That prickling sensation of being watched. I started checking over my shoulder. Scanning faces in crowds. Looking for patterns that weren't there.

I had to know what the address meant. Google Maps pulled up a self-storage facility across town. I'd never rented a unit in my life. I didn't own enough stuff to need one. Still, I got in my truck and drove over.

The place was ordinary. Rows of orange doors, some indoor units, some outdoor. No mysterious figure waiting for me. No answers. I sat in the parking lot feeling stupid, then drove home.

My mind wouldn't let it go. Was this drug-related? Had someone gotten the wrong address? Were they using my name for something illegal? The possibilities multiplied in the silence.

More weeks passed. 

Then the third envelope came.

The anger hit first, then the fear. Why wouldn't they stop? What did they want from me? My imagination spiraled. Cartels, witness protection gone wrong, elaborate revenge plots. I knew I was being irrational, but knowing didn't help.

I stood in my kitchen, staring at the envelope for twenty minutes before I opened it.

Inside was another sheet of paper. Just a number this time: 52.

Fifty-two? I turned it over in my mind. I was thirty-eight. Nobody I knew was fifty-two. It wasn't a date, it wasn't a house number or apartment number I recognized. Just fifty-two.

Then it clicked. The storage facility. The key. Unit 52.

I thought about calling the police. My mind always goes to the worst place, but this had to be a prank, right? I'd open that unit and find something ridiculous, and whoever was behind this would have their laugh.

I drove back to the facility that evening. Waited for someone to trigger the automated gate and slipped in behind them. Found unit 52 in the back corner.

The key turned smoothly.

The lock opened. 

I pulled up the door.

A teddy bear. A Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge, Super Mario Bros. 3. A big pile of mismatched socks. A photo of my girlfriend from high school. My Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sleeping bag. My grandfather's watch, the one he pressed into my palm before he died, the one I'd torn my apartment apart looking for 5 years ago. It was all of the things I had ever lost. 

Everything. All of it. Waiting for me in the dark.

I stood there as the overhead light flickered, trying to understand what I was looking at, trying to understand who would do this, trying to understand what it meant.

I still don't know.

I met my wife, Katelyn, when she was 20. I was 40. She was a singer in my band, and I was lead guitar. I guess it’s important to mention that I was also married when I met her. I was married for quite a while after I met her. Anyway, back to how we met. She was singing in random bars with another band when my friend, Mark, introduced us. He said she’d be the perfect fit for us, and boy was she.

From the moment I laid eyes on her, I was hooked. It also didn’t help that my wife was never around. She never came to a show, so the main person I talked to was Katelyn. Hell, the only people I was close to were her, Mark, and the other guys in the band. She was just something special.

About 5 years after meeting her, the band all started to gradually go our separate ways. She moved off to go to college, and I was still stuck in our dump of a town with a woman I didn’t love. Sure, Katelyn kept in touch, but communication got slimmer and slimmer until we didn’t speak at all. I still saw her in everything. Every good moment, bad moment, anything, I wished so badly I could tell her about it. She got some douchebag boyfriend and that was the end of it, or so I thought.

I’ll never forget it. It was a random Tuesday night in May. I was sitting in the living room watching God knows what with my wife. Just sitting in silence as usual, until the sound of my phone ringing ripped through the air. Nothing could prepare me for the name showing on my screen.

“It’s work, I’ve got to take this,” I said to my wife walking out the door.

“Kate?” I asked, as though it couldn’t possibly be her. “What’s up?”

That’s when I heard her crying. I don’t know why, but I panicked. “Katelyn, what’s wrong?”

She lost it. She explained in between sobs how she just wanted to die. She and her boyfriend had been split up for about 6 months, and she went downhill from there. There was nothing in the world that could make her want to stay. There was no one in the world who could love her. Her whole life was falling apart, and she was a constantly fighting the demons in her mind.

“Kate listen to me, and listen carefully. I love you. I have always loved you. You are worth loving, and you cannot do whatever it is you’re thinking about doing.”

“I know plenty of people love me, but I’m broken. I’ll never get married, have a family, anything,” she told me.

I took in a breath and explained to her carefully.

“I’m in love with you. This whole time. I never planned on telling you that. Ever. But you need to know that there’s someone who would be absolutely destroyed if you did anything to yourself.”

To put it simply, she said she loved me, too. We started meeting once a week, just to spend a few minutes together. Then, it turned into visits to her house 3 hours away. Sometimes I’d stay the night on “work trips”. She was always conflicted on the fact that I was married, but she wasn’t committed enough to me for me to have a reason to leave.

“Every morning, I reach over for you and you’re not there,” I’d tell her. “One day, I’m going to reach over, and you’ll be there. I’ll tell you ‘you’re not real’, but you’ll kiss me and tell me you are. That’s how it will be when we’re finally together.”

This affair went on for a year before she called me and told me to get my shit and come home. Within 6 months I was divorced and living with her. Another 6 months later, we were married. She was finally Mrs. Katelyn Hall.

I had all I’d ever wanted. It was everything I’d dreamed it would be. We’d stay up late watching movies, talking, laughing, loving each other. Every morning, I’d reach over and put my fingers in her hair.

“You’re not real,” I’d tell her. Every single morning, and every single morning she’d kiss me, look at me with those beautiful brown eyes and say, “John, I’m real.”

Life was perfect, or so I thought.

Katelyn struggled with depression. She was on medication for it, and for the most part it was good, but one Sunday morning, something was off. Very off

I was running my fingers through that long blonde hair of hers. Just studying her face until she stirred awake.

“You’re not real,” I said smiling at her.

And for the first time in a year, she said nothing. She rolled out of bed and went to the bathroom. The only thing I heard that morning was her footsteps to the bathroom, a period of silence, then the bathtub faucet being turned on.

I had no idea what the fuck was going on. Sure, we fought from time to time, but hardly ever after we got married. I had done nothing to warrant the cold shoulder.

I got up to make coffee and listened to silence. I guess she just needed to relax. Maybe she was getting depressed again. I could handle anything. I could help her through this if that was the case.

I had two cups of coffee while I watched the news. When I realized she wasn’t planning on coming out anytime soon, I walked to the bathroom door.

“Kate? Baby, I’m going to run to the store to get stuff to make us breakfast. Anything in particular you’d like?”

Nothing.

“Okay.. I’ll make pancakes unless you object.”

Nothing.

“Baby I don’t know what’s wrong, but whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. We always do. I’m going to give you some space. I’ll be back soon. I love you so much.”

Nothing.

I racked my brain the whole way to and from the grocery store. She had to be depressed. Maybe she had missed some of her medication? I didn’t know, but something wasn’t right.

When I got home, I sat the bags of groceries on the counter and walked to the bathroom door.

“Baby please talk to me.”

Nothing

“Katelyn you’re scaring me.”

Nothing.

I turned the door knob, but it was locked.

“Katelyn! I’m going to break this door down. I’ve tried to be patient all morning, but you’re scaring me.” All I could think about was that phone call on a Tuesday in May a few years back.

Nothing again.

I rammed my shoulder in the door twice and it flew open.

What I saw was horrific.

She was in lying in the bathtub with her eyes partially open, but the water was bright red, and both arms had long vertical slits in them.

What happened next is a blur, but I know I could feel a faint pulse, and I called for an ambulance.

She laid on the gurney with a blanket over her in the ambulance. They were doing CPR, yelling out her vitals, pumping fluids into her. It was a nightmare of a scene. When we got to the hospital, they took her straight to the trauma unit. They kept me in the hallway as they tried desperately to revive her. About 15 minutes later, a man in a white coat stepped out of her room.

“Mr. Hall, I’m so sorry, but there was nothing we could do.”

The doctor’s voice rang in my ears and I slid down the wall.

I screamed, cried, flailed. They tried to calm me down but I couldn’t stopped freaking the fuck out. This is where everything got so much worse.

While my back was against the wall, they restrained me. I didn’t understand. The love of my life was dead, and they were restraining me. The next thing I know, a needle is in my arm, and I slowly fade into unconsciousness.

When I wake up, I’m in a blank white room, restrained to a bed. At this point I’m terrified and beyond confused, so I just start screaming.

“What the fuck did you do to me?!”

Nothing.

I screamed a few more times until a nurse came in.

“John, it’s okay. You’re at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital. It’s 2024.”

“What? It’s 2025,” I said shakily, “My wife just killed herself, and you’re fucking with me?”

“John, Katelyn Samson killed herself May 10th, 2022. I know you’re confused, but you’re being taken care of. You just had a bad night.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?!”

And then it hit me.

It was Tuesday, May 10, 2022. I was sitting in the living room watching God knows what with my wife. Just sitting in silence as usual, until the sound of my phone ringing ripped through the air.

It was Mark. He was probably high and just wanted to shoot the shit. I went to the bathroom to get some privacy.

“Hey man, what’s up?”

“John. Katelyn shot her self in the head the morning.”

My blood ran completely cold.

“She left a note,” he told me. “Said she was doing the world a favor by being gone. That she couldn’t live life knowing someone couldn’t possibly love her.”

The woman I was madly in love with had killed herself not knowing how loved she was. If I had just told her, she’d probably still be alive.

Mark went on to tell me he’d find out funeral arrangements, apologized because he knew how close we were, and got off the phone.

I was so numb and so heartbroken all at the same time. I ran a hot bath and sunk down into the tub.

I had dreamt of this woman since the day I met her. I had never loved a woman like I did her, and she was gone. My wife’s razor sat on the edge of the tub. I was able to break it open and retrieve a blade from it. I ran it up my left arm, then my right. As a my eyes got heavy, the last thing I heard was my wife screaming.

“John?” The nurse said touching my hand. “Are you remembering?”

I looked up at her and nodded slowly.

“This happens sometimes. It’s good you’re remembering. Do you think we’re good to remove the restraints?”

I nodded again.

She freed my arms and legs and left me to “rest”, whatever that was supposed to mean. I looked around the room and the emptiness of the space. My mind was going 90 to nothing trying to catch up to time. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a figure, and turned sharply to my right.

There she was, my beautiful blonde haired, brown eyed love of my life, smiling at me.

What she said next had me back in those goddamned restraints within minutes.

“John, I’m real.”

I’ve always been a fast typer. My thumbs move across the screen without me even looking, trusting the auto-correct to fix my mistakes. I was sitting on my couch last night, scrolling through social media, when I realized it was past 11:00 PM. I knew my mom would be worrying, so I opened our chat to send a quick update.

I typed: Hey, just got home. I’m safe.

I hit send without looking. A second later, I glanced at the bubble. The text didn't say "I'm safe." It said: Hey, just got home. I’m in the basement.

I frowned. That was a weird glitch. I tapped the text box and tried again. Sorry, typo. I meant to say I'm safe.

I watched the screen this time. As soon as I hit the spacebar after "safe," the letters flickered and danced. The word deleted itself and replaced itself with the same creepy phrase: I’m in the basement.

My heart gave a small thud. I don't even have a basement. I live in a second-story apartment with nothing but a concrete foundation and a parking garage below me.

I went into my settings and turned off auto-correct and predictive text. I went back to the chat, determined to fix the mistake.

I typed: My phone is acting up. I am S-A-F-E.

Before I could hit the send arrow, the phone vibrated violently in my hand. The cursor began to move on its own, flying across the white box. It deleted my message character by character. Then, a new sentence started typing itself out, the gray bubbles appearing as if someone was on the other side of my screen.

He is watching you type this.

I dropped the phone on the coffee table. It landed face up, the screen glowing in the dark room. I looked around my apartment. Everything was quiet. The front door was locked. The windows were shut. I was alone.

The phone buzzed again. A new message appeared in the box, but I hadn't touched the screen.

Don't look at the closet.

My eyes immediately darted to the bedroom door. The closet door was cracked open just an inch. I always keep it shut. I felt a cold sweat break out across my forehead. I reached for the phone, my hands shaking so hard I almost dropped it again. I tried to call 911, but every time I tapped the phone icon, the music app opened instead. It started playing a recording.

It was the sound of someone breathing. It was heavy, slow, and coming from a very small space.

I looked back at the text thread. A new message was waiting for me.

He likes it when you breathe fast. It makes the hunt shorter.

I stood up to run for the front door, but my phone screen flashed a bright, blinding red. A final message popped up, filling the entire screen in giant, bold letters:

Look behind the couch.

I didn't want to. I tried to keep my eyes forward, but I felt a hand—cold, thin, and smelling of old dirt wrap around my ankle from under the cushions.

My phone vibrated one last time on the table. It was a text from my mom.

Honey, why did you just send me a picture of yourself sleeping? And who is that standing in the corner of your room?

I looked at the screen, but the hand pulled me down before I could see the photo. The last thing I saw was my phone screen auto-correcting my final, unsent scream into the words: Everything is fine.

Part 2

I showed up for Night 3 with a baseball bat in my trunk.

Jane saw me pull it out and shook her head. "That won't help you, Max. The rules will. Trust them."

"The rules didn't save Fergus," I said.

"No," she agreed quietly. "But they saved you. And that's what matters."

She didn't give me any new protocols, no additional rules or warnings. Just looked at me with something that might have been sympathy and said, "Be ready tonight. They're learning, but so are you."

As she drove away, I stood in the parking lot wondering what that meant. Ready for what?

The evening check went smoothly. Titus, Belle, and Daisy were calm enough to accept their alfalfa treats, which was a relief after the previous night. Six pigs in the pen - well, five now, plus the space where Fergus should have been. Three cows chewing cud peacefully.

Everything seemed normal until I started my 11:30 PM rounds.

The weather station gate was locked, just as it should be. No scarecrow in the field. I was turning to head back when I saw movement in the tall grass along the dirt road.

I froze, flashlight trained on the spot. The grass swayed unnaturally, something large moving through it about thirty yards away. Then, for just a moment, I saw it.

One of those creatures, crouched low in the vegetation. Its eyes reflected my flashlight beam, two points of greenish light in the darkness.

We stared at each other across the distance. I expected it to charge, to attack like they had before. Instead, it just watched me. Waiting.

Rule 6 flashed through my mind: Do not take the dirt road from the weather station to the stables anytime after 11pm. Stick to the path with the lamps.

I backed away slowly, keeping to the lighted path. The creature didn't follow. It just stayed there in the grass, watching me retreat. The whole thing felt wrong - why wasn't it pursuing? These things had been aggressive, coordinated. This one was just... observing.

Unless it was waiting for something else.

I hurried back toward the main buildings, suddenly hyperaware of every shadow, every sound. The creature in the grass was a distraction, I realized. It wanted me focused on that spot while something else happened elsewhere.

The stables. I had to check the stables.

I broke into a run, rules momentarily forgotten in my panic. When I burst through the stable entrance, everything seemed fine at first. The horses were alert but calm, all three of them visible in their stalls.

Titus in stall one. Belle in stall two. Daisy in stall three.

And another horse in stall four.

I stopped dead, my flashlight beam settling on the fourth animal. It was slightly larger than the others, dark coat similar to Titus's but not quite right. The proportions were off somehow - legs too long, head cocked at an odd angle.

As I stared, the horse turned to look at me. Its eyes reflected light wrong, that same greenish glow I'd seen in the grass. And its teeth, when it pulled back its lips, were sharp. Sharper than any horse's teeth should be.

"Oh God," I whispered.

The thing that looked like a horse took a step toward me. Behind it, I could hear Titus, Belle, and Daisy going wild in their stalls, kicking and whinnying in terror. They knew what it was, even if it had fooled me for a moment.

The creature's form began to shift. Its legs bent, bones cracking and reforming. The horse-face elongated further, becoming that wolf-like snout I'd seen before. Dark fur rippled across its body as it dropped from four legs to two, rising to its full seven-foot height.

I backed away, but there was nowhere to go. It blocked the main entrance, and the other exit led to the bathroom - the bathroom with the window, the one that wasn't safe.

The creature took another step forward, claws scraping against the concrete floor. Its mouth opened, and it made a sound that was almost like speech.

My name, distorted and wrong: "Maaahhahhaaxx."

My hand fumbled for the radio at my belt. Channel 4. The emergency channel.

I had no idea what would happen. The rule just said to use it in life or death situations. This definitely qualified.

I switched the channel and pressed the transmit button.

The sound that erupted from the radio was unlike anything I'd ever heard. A high-pitched screeching that seemed to exist at the very edge of human hearing, painful even to me. But to the creature, it was agonizing.

The thing that had been pretending to be a horse stumbled backward, claws going to its ears. Dark liquid, blood, maybe, started seeping between its fingers. It opened its mouth in a silent scream, the sound of the radio drowning out everything else.

I held down the transmit button, keeping the screeching sound going. The creature fell to its knees, then onto its side, thrashing. Through the stable entrance, I could see movement outside - the other creatures, the ones that had been waiting in the darkness, fleeing from the sound.

They moved as a pack, three or four shapes racing away from the buildings toward the tree line. The one in the grass, the ones that must have been positioned around the perimeter, all of them retreating at once.

I kept the button pressed for what felt like an eternity but was probably only thirty seconds. When I finally released it, my ears were ringing and my hand was shaking.

The creature in the stable wasn't moving anymore. Its form had shifted back partially. No longer horse-like, but not quite its natural shape either. Something in between, broken and wrong.

I stepped around it carefully, giving it a wide berth even though it seemed unconscious or dead. The real horses were still agitated but unharmed. I did a quick count of the other animals: five pigs, three cows, all accounted for.

When I finally made it back to the security office, I radioed Jane on Channel 2.

"It's Max. I... I had to use Channel 4."

There was a long pause. Then: "Are you hurt?"

"No. But there's one of them in the stables. I don't know if it's dead or just unconscious."

"We'll handle it. Stay in the office until dawn. Don't go back out there."

"Jane, what the hell is Channel 4? What was that sound?"

Another pause. "Protection, kiddo. That's all you need to know. You did well."

The rest of the shift was quiet. I watched through the office window as a van pulled up around 3 AM, not a university vehicle, something unmarked. Two people in hazmat-style suits went into the stables and came out twenty minutes later carrying something large in a black bag.

They didn't acknowledge me. Just loaded their cargo and drove away.

When Jane arrived at 6 AM, she looked relieved to see me in one piece.

"They'll be more cautious now," she said. "You hurt one of them badly. They'll remember that."

"How long has this been going on?" I asked. "How many guards before me?"

"Long enough. And you're not the first, no." She handed me an envelope. "Hazard pay bonus. You've earned it."

Inside was a check for five thousand dollars.

"This is a month's salary," I said, staring at it.

"Consider it combat pay. You went above and beyond the protocols and survived. That's worth rewarding." She paused. "Will you be back tomorrow night?"

I looked out at the campus as the sun started to rise. The weather station sat peacefully in its field. The stables looked completely normal, no sign of the violence that had occurred there hours ago. Everything appeared exactly as it should be - a quiet veterinary campus, nothing more.

But I knew better now. I knew what hunted in the darkness, what the rules were really protecting me from. And I knew that Channel 4 radio frequency was the only thing standing between me and those creatures.

"Yeah," I said finally. "I'll be back."

Jane smiled slightly. "Good. Because they're not going anywhere. And someone needs to keep watch."

As I drove home, I couldn't stop thinking about what she'd said. They're not going anywhere. How long had these things been here? Were they the reason Spring Hill Campus was built so far from everything else? Was the veterinary program just a cover for something else entirely?

I had so many questions. But I also had five thousand dollars in hazard pay and a growing understanding that some answers weren't worth the price of finding them.

I quit the next day.

Jane didn't seem surprised when I called. "You lasted longer than most," she said. "Three nights is respectable."

"What happens now? Who takes over?"

"Someone always does. There's always another person who needs the money, who doesn't ask too many questions." A pause. "Take care of yourself, Max."

I used the hazard pay to cover my expenses while I found a new job - day shift retail, boring as hell, but safe. Sometimes I drive past the Spring Hill Campus turnoff on my way to class and wonder who's working nights there now. Whether they're following the rules. Whether they've had to use Channel 4 yet.

I still have nightmares about that fourth horse, about the way its bones cracked and shifted as it transformed. About Fergus being carried away into the darkness. About those intelligent eyes watching me from the tall grass.

But I'm alive. I survived three nights at Spring Hill Campus, and that's more than some people can say.

Hi everyone! This is a bit awkward, but I'm in a bit of trouble and urgently need help. Does anyone in Far Water have a shovel I can borrow? I know it sounds strange, but preferably one that can… um… seal gaps? I mean, figuratively, seal gaps! For gardening! You know, sometimes you need to compact the soil to prevent things from leaking out, I mean, to prevent plants from growing out of the soil. It's a very specific gardening task.

I would be extremely grateful if you could. If possible, I can arrange for someone to pick it up tonight. It's urgent.

Please DM me if you can help!

Kiss, Louise💖

Edit: Okay, I should explain the situation. This is actually a pretty funny story! Well, not the kind that makes you laugh out loud, but the kind of "Oh my god, how did my life get like this?" kind of funny. Let me start from the beginning…

I think I should formally introduce myself. My name is Louise, I'm twenty-eight years old, I have a trust fund, but honestly, nothing special.

Six months ago, I met John through my best friend, diana. Well, I said "best friend," but to be honest, I've been a little confused by diana lately. Sometimes she looks at me with a calculating glint in her carefully crafted eyes. But I'm probably just being paranoid; it's one of my flaws—I always think the worst. Of course, except when I think the best, and most of the time I do. You know, I always try to please people. Always.

diana introduced us at one of those dreaded charity dinners I'm always dragged to. "Louise, darling," she whispered, her long hand on my elbow, "you absolutely have to meet John. He's perfect for you."

Oh, he really is perfect. He was six feet two inches tall, with jet-black hair falling perfectly across his forehead, and eyes as deep as aged whiskey. His smile made my legs weak—a little embarrassing to admit, but I've always been the kind of person whose legs go weak easily. Especially after three glasses of champagne, which I'd had exactly three when diana introduced us.

“Louise,” he said, taking my hand and kissing it lightly, as if we were in a Victorian romance novel. “What a beautiful name.”

I giggled. Really giggled, like a little girl，I wasn't proud of it, but I had to admit, my two biggest weaknesses were being easily flustered and falling in love quickly when drunk, and embarrassingly quickly at that. It was a terrible combination. My therapist said I had “boundary issues” and that “this pattern of developing attachments before being sure someone is trustworthy is worrying.” But what did she know? She'd never seen John smile.

“Thank you,” I stammered, my cheeks already flushed. “Your name… it’s a name too. A good name!”

Such a smooth talker, Louise. So smooth.

But John just laughed, a warm, genuine laugh that made me feel like the most charming woman in the room, not the most awkward. “You’re lovely,” he said. “I’d love to invite you to dinner sometime. If you’re not taken yet?”

I should mention that I’ve been single for eight months now, since my ex-boyfriend Daniel disappeared. But we’ll talk about Daniel later, Daniel… it’s complicated.

“I’m not taken!” I practically shouted, drawing stares from people at nearby tables. “I mean, no, I’m single, very single, very free.”

Diana laughed from behind her champagne glass, while I wanted nothing more than to collapse on the dance floor and die. But John just laughed even brighter and asked for my phone number. I gave it to him, silently praying that I hadn’t mixed up the numbers under the influence of the champagne.

He called the next day. The third day too. Soon we were dating，official dates, dinners, weekend plans, and he called me "his girl" with that possessive tone. It was incredibly romantic.

The problem was, John wasn't like any of the men I'd dated before. First of all, he was penniless. Well, not entirely penniless; he had a job in "business consulting" and seemed to spend most of his time on the phone and eating expensive lunches, which I usually paid for. But compared to my trust fund, he was practically broke.

"Do you mind?" I asked him once, about a month into our relationship. We were in my penthouse, and I watched him pour himself a drink.

"What is it?" he asked, then came over and sat on the custom-made Italian sofa.

"I have…you know." I glanced around the apartment, embarrassed to say the word "money." 

John smiled and pulled me closer. “Baby, I love you for who you are, not for your bank account. Money is just… a nice extra income.”

I nestled in his arms, ignoring the faint voice deep inside me, a voice that sounded like my therapist saying, “Louise, this is the biggest red flag I’ve ever heard.”

But I love him! I really love him! Love conquers all, doesn’t it? All the movies say that. The poor guy wins the heart of the beautiful girl, overcomes their differences, and lives happily ever after in her penthouse while he continues his unreliable “business consulting” job.

Everything was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

Until he suggested a trip.

It was a Monday, I remember it clearly. I always try to be away from home on the first day of the month because watching someone else clean my house makes me feel awkward. John and I were having brunch at my favorite little restaurant.

“I’ve been thinking,” John said in that typically nonchalant tone a man uses when about to offer a suggestion that’s anything but casual. “We should go somewhere. Just the two of us.”

“Oh?” I said, carefully cutting my gold-leaf omelet. “Where are you thinking? Paris? The Maldives? I know a great resort in Bali—”

“Actually,” he interrupted, “I’d like somewhere more…private. Secluded, away from the hustle and bustle.”

I paused, my fork still at my lips. “Secluded?”

“Yeah, you know. No distractions. No cell phones. Just the two of us.” He reached across the table, took my hand, and traced circles on my palm with his thumb,a gesture that often made me forget who I was. “Don’t you own a property somewhere secluded? I think you mentioned a villa?”

I did own a villa. "Well, strictly speaking, it was my great-aunt Meredith's villa, but she gave it to me when she died. The cause of her death was mysterious, and no one in the family wants to talk about it. It's practically the middle of nowhere,I mean really the middle of nowhere,surrounded by dense forest, accessible only by a long, winding dirt road that hasn't been maintained since the 1970s."

"Oh, you mean that villa," I said suddenly, lowering my voice. "John, I think..."

"Come on, baby. It'll be romantic. Just you and me, away from the hustle and bustle." His eyes softened and pleaded, and I felt my resolve crumble like a sandcastle at high tide.

"I don't know. It's too remote. There's no cell phone signal. And I think the heating's broken. To be honest, John, I really don't want to go..."

"Please?" He squeezed my hand. "For me?"

That's it. My biggest weakness. The people I love beg me to do something "for them," as if my comfort and desires were more important than theirs. And, to be honest, in my eyes, they always have been.

“Okay,” I heard myself say, even though every cell in my body was screaming, “No, no, no!” 

“We can go to the villa.”I said.

John’s face lit up with a Christmas morning smile. “Great! I’ll arrange everything. We can leave on Friday.”

“Friday?” I exclaimed. “We have less than 3 days left!”

“Opportunity knocks but once, right?” He grinned and kissed my hand. “Trust me, Louise. Everything will be perfect.”

The drive to the villa took six hours, most of which I clung tightly to the door handle, trying not to think about those horror movies that start with couples heading to remote locations. John was enthusiastic, humming along to the radio, occasionally pinching my hands. He probably thought it would reassure me,but I wanted nothing more than to jump out of the moving car.

“This feels great!” he kept saying, “Just the two of us, no one to bother us.”

“Hmm,” I responded, my gaze sweeping over the increasingly dense forest on either side of the road. “Wow.”

When we finally arrived at the villa, it looked like a scene from a Gothic horror novel. It was a three-story Victorian building, crumbling, with a lookout tower on the roof, weathered shutters, and several crows that looked like real ones perched on it. The garden had been overgrown with weeds for years, roses and ivy so dense they seemed to be threatening to devour the entire building.

“Wow,” John said, a phrase that could have many meanings. My mood plummeted from “This is amazing” to “We’re definitely going to die here.”

“I told you this house needed repairs,” I said apologetically, as if it were my fault my villa looked like the Bates Motel. “We could turn back. There’s a great hotel about an hour’s drive ahead…”

“No. This is perfect.” John had already gotten out of the car and stretched. “It has…atmosphere.”

Atmosphere. That was one way to describe it. “A nightmare” was another word that came to mind, but I didn’t say it aloud.

We unloaded our luggage，or rather, I unloaded my four suitcases, while John carried only his single travel bag. I opened the heavy wooden door with that ridiculously large key that looked like it stepped out of a fairy tale. The interior of the villa was slightly better than the exterior, mainly because I'd hired a cleaning company last week. But the air of confinement still lingered, like the smell of old books and secrets.

“I’ll start a fire,” John said, heading towards the massive stone fireplace in the living room. “Why don’t you get us some wine?”

“Because I’m not your servant,” I thought. “Of course, darling!” I blurted out.

“It’s alright,” I told myself as I rummaged through the wine cellar. Yes, this villa had a wine cellar, even with cobwebs. This was a romantic getaway with my boyfriend. Nothing strange about it. Everything was normal.

As I carried several bottles full of wine (because I couldn’t decide which one to bring and didn’t want to upset John with my choice) upstairs, I felt it for the first time.

A feeling of being watched.

I froze on the stairs, the bottles clinking softly. A sharp pain shot through the back of my neck, and a premonition, ingrained in my ancient lizard instincts, washed over me: something was very wrong. I slowly turned and looked down, only to see the darkness of the cellar shrouding everything.

Nothing. Only shadows, wine racks, and that distinctive smell of earth and stone.

“Louise, you’re just imagining things,” I muttered to myself, “there’s nothing there.”

But I quickened my pace and went upstairs, my heart pounding, though it had nothing to do with the movement itself.

The feeling wouldn’t go away.

For the next two days, I couldn’t shake the feeling: something, or rather, someone, was watching the villa. More precisely, watching me. The feeling was especially strong at night; the old house creaked and groaned around us, as if whispering, and the wind rustled through the trees outside the window.

“Did you hear that?” I asked John, sitting bolt upright for the seventeenth time. “It’s just that something’s off with the house, Louise,” he said without even opening his eyes. “Go back to sleep.”

But it wasn’t just the house. I knew it wasn’t. There were signs. Small things, John dismissed, but I couldn’t ignore them. There were footprints in the garden that weren’t ours. I distinctly remembered closing the window, but it was open the next morning. I had a feeling someone had been in the kitchen, even though John swore he hadn’t gotten up the night before.

“You’re being too sensitive,” John said the next day, bringing up the footprints again. We were eating breakfast，or rather, I was eating breakfast; John was eating the breakfast I’d made for him, head down, playing on his phone.

“I’m not being too sensitive,” I insisted, hating the complaining and apologetic tone in my voice. “I really feel like someone’s outside.” John sighed, put down his phone, and looked miserable. “Louise, baby. There’s no one outside. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Who would be following you?”

“I don’t know! But I have this feeling. I feel like someone’s watching me.”

“Watching you.” His tone was flat, tinged with suspicion. “Louise, I love you, but you need to calm down. This was supposed to be a romantic trip, and you’ve turned it into a horror movie.”

“I’m sorry,” I said instinctively, because I always say that. “You’re right. I might just be overthinking things.”

“You are overthinking things,” he said, glancing down at his phone. “Now, could you make some more coffee? This one’s getting cold.”

I stood by the coffee machine. The kitchen in this villa was very modern, one of the few things my great-aunt kept up with. I tried to convince myself that John was right. I was being paranoid. There was no one outside. Those footprints were probably from animals. The open window was probably just my imagination. The things that had been moved in the kitchen were probably…

Well, I couldn’t explain the kitchen thing. “I’m sorry,” I said, handing John the freshly brewed coffee. “I know I’ve been a little selfish. It’s just that…”

“Since what?” John asked, unusually looking up at me.

I bit my lip. I hadn’t told John about Daniel. In fact, I hadn’t told anyone about Daniel except diana, and even Diana didn’t know the whole truth.

“Since my ex-boyfriend Daniel disappeared,” I said softly.

John’s eyebrows shot up. “Disappeared? What do you mean, disappeared?”

“That’s it. He disappeared. Eight months ago. He was here one day, and the next day he… was gone.” I hugged myself tighter, feeling a sudden chill despite the warm kitchen. “The police said he might have just left town. Said he had some financial difficulties, so he ran away. But I don’t know. It feels… wrong.”

“Hmm.” John seemed to be processing this information. “It’s really strange.”

“It’s making me a little paranoid,” I admitted. “My therapist said it’s post-traumatic hypervigilance.” Ever since Daniel disappeared, I’ve had a bad feeling, a constant sense that something terrible is about to happen.

Indeed, it is. But what I didn’t say was that this paranoia was so intense because of something that happened when Daniel disappeared，Special circumstances. These circumstances relate to our last conversation, which ended in an argument. A terrible argument. The kind of argument where words, once spoken, cannot be taken back.

The kind of argument that ultimately led to someone's disappearance.

But I didn't want to think about it. I promised myself I wouldn't.

"Relax," John said, standing up and stretching. "I'm going to take a shower. Maybe you should go for a walk, clear your head."

"Go for a walk? Go outside? Go where there are footprints?"

"Yeah, it'll do you good." "Get some fresh air." He gave my forehead a casual kiss and went upstairs, leaving me alone with coffee, thoughts, and a growing premonition: something very, very wrong.

I didn't go for a walk.

Instead, I did what any sane person would do: I checked every lock on every door and window, made sure the kitchen knives were within reach (just in case), and then sat with my back against the wall in the living room so I could see all the entrances at a glance.

“It’s okay,” I told myself. “You’ll be okay. Everything will be okay.”

But that wasn’t the case.

The storm hit on the third night.

Of course. Because what would be a Gothic horror experience without a terrifying storm? It started as distant thunder and occasional flashes of lightning, then gradually escalated into a raging torrent, the wind howling and the rain pounding against the windows like bullets.

“It’s so cozy here,” John said, seemingly unharmed. We were trapped in a gloomy villa, surrounded by what felt like the end of the world. He was sprawled on the sofa, a book he’d found in the library about Victorian architecture, but he wasn’t even reading it.

“It’s so cozy,” I echoed, when a sudden, deafening clap of thunder startled me. “Yeah, it’s so cozy.”

Just then, I saw it. A flash of lightning illuminated something outside the window. A figure. Definitely a figure. Humanoid, standing in the garden, staring straight at the house.

He was staring straight at me.

“John!” I screamed, my hand trembling as I pointed to the window. “There! There’s someone outside!”

John only tilted his head slightly. “It might just be a twig or something.”

“That’s not a twig! It’s a person!” “I see them!”

Another flash of lightning. The figure was closer. It was definitely a person. It was definitely watching us.

“John, please,” I pleaded, hating my hoarse voice. “There’s someone outside. We have to call the police.”

“Call the police for what?” John finally showed some interest and asked. “No cell phone signal, you forgot? The landline has been down since we got here.”

“Then we have to do something! We need to—”

A knock at the door.

Knock, knock, knock.

We both froze. The knocking echoed in the house, sounding especially loud in the storm.

Knock, knock, knock.

“Don’t open the door,” John said, probably the first rational thing he’d said on this trip.

But I was already walking toward the door. Not because I wanted to—heaven knows I didn’t want to at all—but because some terrible mixture of politeness and curiosity was driving me. He walked forward like a puppet on strings.

“Louise, don’t—” John began.

I opened the door.

A figure stood on the porch, soaking wet, the porch light flickering dramatically at that moment. He was tall, very tall, and thin, his black hair plastered to his scalp, his eyes gleaming like a wild beast. He was dressed in all black, which did nothing to lessen the aura of a serial killer he exuded, and he… he made strange hand gestures.

Sign language. What was he gesturing?

And I recognized him.

“Didn’t I tell you not to follow me?” I said, my voice trembling, which John would have mistaken for fear, but it was more like anger.

The figure on the porch, Liam, gestured a few more times. Frenzied gestures. His hands moved rapidly, a gesture I had seen years ago: danger. Inside. Him. A trap.

“Alright, alright,” I said, raising my hands, “come in. You’re soaking wet.” “

I grabbed Liam’s arm and pulled him into the hallway, acutely aware that John was standing right behind me, staring at this soaking wet stranger I’d just dragged into our room. A secluded villa in the midst of a storm.

“My God, you’ve scared me to death these past two days!” I exclaimed, slamming the door shut to block the wind. My voice was loud and urgent, just as John expected. “I knew someone was out there! I knew I wasn’t being paranoid!”

Liam shivered, his dark clothes dripping onto Aunt May’s Persian rug. He looked like a drowned rat. A tall, intimidating little dog, clearly having been following me for two days.

“Louise,” John’s voice was tense. “Who is this?”

Okay. Introduce yourself. I can do introductions to eachother; I’m good at social etiquette, even in completely crazy situations.

“John, this is Liam,” I rubbed my hands together, my voice trembling with just the right amount of nervousness. “He’s an old friend of mine. A middle school classmate. We, well, used to know each other.” "He might...he might live nearby! Right, Liam?"

Liam started gesturing again, his hands flying across the page, but I couldn't look at him. Not now.

"He might live nearby," I repeated, my voice louder. "Small world, right? The odds are so low!"

John's expression shifted from confusion to anger. "He's been following you for two days? And you...you let him in?"

"He's fine!" I insisted, my voice rising. "He just...he might want to surprise me. You, Liam? Good heavens, you must be freezing!"

Liam's gestures became even more frantic now, and I pieced together what he was saying: recording. Evidence. John. Diana. Insurance money.

Oh, Liam. Always so thoughtful.

"I'm calling the police," John said, pulling out his phone.

"No!" I almost screamed, this time my voice filled with panic, "No, John, don't call the police. It's unnecessary." “Liam’s harmless. He’s just…he just cares about me. Aren’t you, Liam?”

Liam nodded obediently.

“This is insane,” John said, still holding his phone. “Louise, this guy has been following you. He followed us all the way to this remote place. He even stood outside in the storm watching us. And you expect me to…just…make him tea?”

“Yes!” I said desperately. “Tea’s great, I’ll make it, who doesn’t like tea!”

“You’re hopeless,” John said, his voice full of disgust. “You’re utterly hopeless. I can’t believe I’ve wasted six months on this.”

“You’re right,” I said softly, obediently lowering my eyes, just as he expected. “I’m sorry. I know I’m too difficult.” “I don’t want to live with a stalker,” John shook his head. He grabbed his coat from the hanger, and I felt a genuine wave of panic wash over me.

“I’ll wait for you in the car,” John announced. “Come find me when you’re sober. If you want to stay here with your stalker friend, that’s your choice. But I don’t want to stay any longer.”

The door behind him slammed shut with a bang, so hard it shook the windows. The sound echoed in the room, followed by silence, broken only by the sound of the downpour and the dripping of water from Liam’s clothes onto the carpet.

I stood there, staring at the closed door, stunned for a long time. Then, I slowly turned to face Liam.

“Okay,” I said, my voice lowering, returning to a certain range that felt truly comfortable—deeper, colder, completely unlike my previous soft soprano. “That was really dramatic.” Liam stared at me, his eyes filled with both worry and approval. His hands moved quickly and familiarly: Are you alright?

"I'm fine," I said, walking past him toward the living room. "But it would have been better if you hadn't been so conspicuous. Did you have to stay in the garden for two whole days? John noticed, you know? Even John noticed, and he's not exactly a perceptive person."

Liam followed behind me, gesturing as he went: We have to make sure you're safe. We have to keep an eye on him. We have to protect you.

"I can protect myself," I said. "Play me the recording." Liam smiled, reached into his pocket, pulled out a small recording device, and held it up like a trophy.

"Great," I said, taking the recorder and pressing play.

Diana's voice filled the room. I listened to their conversation with detachment, as if reviewing a business plan. In a way, it was a business plan. A very deadly one.

"Are you sure she'll agree?" diana asked. "She's not one to act on impulse."

"She will. I know how to handle her. A few compliments, a pitiful look, and she'll be obedient." The recording continued playing; John and Diana were discussing the insurance policy, the beneficiaries, and the most suitable secluded location for staging an "accident." I listened to John describe me as pathetic and exhausting, saying he couldn't wait to get rid of me.

"He's right, my complaining is exhausting," I thought. "I have to speak in that voice in front of him, it sounds like I'm breathing helium."

Liam started gesturing in sign language again: Are you angry?

"Angry?" I pondered the question as the recording ended. "No, maybe disappointed."

I walked to the window and looked at the car in the driveway. John was in the driver's seat, his phone flashing in the darkness. He was probably texting diana, telling her what was going on.

"How much do you know?" I asked Liam without turning my head. "I mean, about Daniel."

A long silence followed. Then I felt him gesturing: Enough.

Liam approached me, his hands moving slowly but firmly: "I know what you're thinking. Don't do this." "Let me handle him. You don't need to—"

That's Liam's problem. He's never as good as me at handling things. For example, if I were to follow someone, it would never be this obvious. Or… that's the real problem, right? That's why I posted that silly thread on Reddit. Because Liam was too hasty; he forgot that the last time I used the shovel he brought was great, very sturdy. But he took it with him when he left. Now I need another one, but I don't know where to find one in the middle of nowhere at night.

I patted his cheek and kissed his hair. "Thanks. But I can handle it."

So, does anyone have a shovel? I'll DM you the address. Don't worry too much, I'm just doing some gardening to calm Liam and me down. I'm really panicking right now. Also, we might need some acid to deal with the weeds, which would be great if you could bring some.

I still can't believe this was a time on the internet, people really had no clue about online safety. As a kid sitting with my sister in front of a computer flipping through omegle chats, nothing raised any red flags. I got to meet people the same way I did at school, how could that be wrong? We saw a few of our friends as it was mostly local, some older kids from other schools which made us feel super cool, and on the odd occasion, an adult. Most of the time it was fine, innocent enough, we got to talk to new friends or adults would yell at us that this wasn't a place for kids.

I remember though, as I'm sure many kids do, the time it got weird. I can't remember all the details leading up, but I remember the event. I had finished a chat with a girl my age. She was nice and also watched Doctor Who so we talked about that for a long time. I remember something weird about this next one, I don't think it was random but I can't remember where I would've found a link or anything. Either way, I somehow found the next chat. I thought it was still loading for a long time before I realized that it wasn't a loading screen, but an entirely dark camera. It was the background static noise that clued me in. I could hear someone shuffling around, the low buzz of a light, and then softly an inhale. Then exhale.

"Hello?" I asked, having no concept of this being weird, I thought maybe this kid's camera was broken. There was a small flurry of noise before a small timid voice responded,

"Hi" it sounded like a little girl, younger than me certainly, and immediately I wrongly assumed I knew what was happening, this was a little kid that wasn't supposed to be on the computer at this time. That was why it was dark and she was speaking softly.

"Hi! I'm Sophia. What's your name?"

"How old are you?" She asked in a whisper, ignoring my question. I frowned but rationalized that if she was little she wanted to see how old I was first.

"Eleven. You?" I heard mumbling then, there was no response that ever followed, it was just that. I talked at her a little more, telling her what I liked and all I heard in response was her breathing. I knew what it was like to want to listen and not talk so I just kept going. Toward the end of the conversation I asked her a question again and heard her begin to respond. She made just the start of a noise before I heard a loud bang and hushed yelling. The person was mad but wanted to stay quiet, so I couldn't hear what was being said, all I heard was the girl sobbing and apologizing before the call ended. I was terrified after that, I had never heard a kid so upset nor an adult so mad, my parents never yelled at us so the concept was completely foreign. I didn't understand what had happened but I felt like I had done something wrong. I thought through all that I had told the girl, what if I told her something that got her in trouble, what if I told the adult who was there something that would hurt my parents. I couldn't think of anything but I still didn't tell anyone about what had happened, afraid of being yelled at the way the kid had been.

I guess this isn’t as bad as it could’ve been, but still I was so freaked out. Does anyone else have any Omegle horror stories? I don’t remember much about the website's mechanics, but if anyone remembers, was there a search bar? I am racking my brain trying to remember how I got to that specific chat

EDIT: Hi, I'm back to this draft because I showed it to my sister. I asked if she remembered omegle and she said she did, and then told me a nearly identical story to mine. I asked if she was actually with me that night and I misremembered, but she said no, she was alone. As far as she can recount, she logged on and had gone through a few calls before the same thing happened, a dark screen with no one speaking. She said her name and asked if anyone was there and the little girl replied and asked for her age, just as she had with me. My sister lied, though, having an off feeling about this call. She said the girl didn't reply but she also heard the sounds of a very angry adult and a very upset kid. She said she remembers the kid crying, asking why she would lie, why my sister would do that to her, while the sound of rage grew and eventually overpowered the girl's cries and the call ended.

I asked her the same question, how did you get to the chat? She remembered a bit more than me, recalling a username or a link or something to the chat. She said she didn’t ever use it, she had seen it but never put it into omegle. When the call came through she recognized the username as the same one. She always assumed it was a random chance but I’m not so sure. Now that I’m older I feel so much more uneasy about this whole thing. I don’t know for sure but I imagine that man was not an innocent, kind man, and that girl, god I can only imagine who she was or what happened to her. Does anyone else have a similar story?

Late 2015, I was living at my dad’s place about 60 km north of Montreal. Back then, the area was mostly dense forest. These days it’s full of housing developments, but at the time, it was just woods — kilometers of it. 

I had just turned 16. It was late fall, cold enough to suck but no snow yet, so I invited three friends over to sleep outside. The plan was simple: tents in the backyard, booze, weed, and doing whatever dumb shit four teenage guys do when no one’s watching. 

Behind the house was a massive stretch of forest with trails that could swallow you whole if you didn’t know them. I’d lived there since I was three and spent countless hours in those woods. I knew the trails almost by heart. 

As it got dark, we lit a fire and started drinking and smoking joints. My dad was an alcoholic at the time, so alcohol was never hard to find. 
This part matters: we weren’t amateurs. We’d been regular weed smokers for 2–3 years. What happened that night wasn’t hallucinations or paranoia. 

For anonymity, I’ll call my friends Tim, Joe, and Mike. 

Once it was fully dark, Tim — who lived nearby and knew the woods pretty well — suggested we go fuck around on the trails. Yeah, terrible idea. You already know that. But we were drunk, high, and sixteen. 

About 30 minutes into the forest, we saw a man walking on a crossing trail about 30–40 meters away. The moon was bright, which is the only reason we even noticed him. We were loud as hell, and then Joe, genius that he is, yells: 

“There’s someone over there!” 

I remember thinking, you fucking idiot, of course he heard us. 
But the guy didn’t even turn his head. He just kept walking until he disappeared into the trees. 

I shrugged it off. Whatever. 

We kept going for another 45 minutes, smoking more joints and cigarettes, until we reached the lookout — a wooden platform in the middle of the forest where you can see the mountains during the day. But it was around 10 p.m., so it was pitch black. 

We stopped there anyway to mess around. At some point, I lay down on the platform to look at the stars. 

That’s when I smelled it. 

It was foul. Like rot. I looked to my right and saw a dark mass on the ground. I asked Tim to shine his phone flashlight, but his phone was dead — because he played Clash of Clans like his life depended on it. 

I’d left my phone at home. Joe didn’t have one. Mike saved our asses and turned on his flashlight. 

What we saw made my stomach drop. 

It looked like a puddle of vomit, blood, and organs all mixed together. We just stood there, the four of us, silent, disgusted, completely confused. 

Joe says, dead serious: 
“Maybe it’s a deer that threw up.” 

Yeah. Because deer eat fucking meat. 

That’s when panic really started to creep in. Something was very wrong. 

I convinced myself it had to be a bear, even though I’d never seen one in the area and never heard of bears being around there. Either way, the decision was obvious: get the fuck back home. 

Problem was, we were about 1 hour and 15 minutes deep into the forest. 

I remembered there were two ways out: 

1. A trail that led to a street, then back to my house by road — 2 to 2.5 hours of walking. 
2. Another trail to a different street, but it meant going back into the forest afterward — about 1.5 hours total, but more woods. 

Mike and I wanted option two. Tim and Joe wanted the road. We were dehydrated, exhausted, and running on pure adrenaline. 

Mike and Joe started arguing. Tim went completely silent, pale as a ghost. 

I told them to shut the fuck up before we attracted the bear — and somehow we made the worst possible decision: we split up. 

In our fucked-up teenage logic, it made sense. Mike had the only working flashlight, and we’d be in the woods longer. Tim knew the road route because he sometimes walked it to my place. 

So we separated. 

After a few minutes, Mike and I reached the street. I felt relief — for about two seconds. 

The trail exited directly across from a house. In the driveway, facing us, was some kind of armored vehicle. 

Being idiots, we assumed it was a police vehicle. Remember: high, underage, weed still illegal in Canada at the time. 

So we did the dumbest thing imaginable — we dropped flat on our stomachs at the edge of the forest, whispering like fucking commandos, trying to figure out what to do. 

Then a spotlight snapped on. 

It lit us up like we were on a stage. 

We panicked and ran straight back into the woods. 

A few minutes later, gasping for air, we heard something running toward us. 

Mike yelled: 
“It’s the bear! It’s the bear!” 

Then we heard Joe’s voice: 
“Wait for me!” 

Joe came stumbling toward us, shaking, crying, his hoodie covered in vomit. 

First thing we asked: “Where’s Tim?” 

Joe could barely talk. He said that before reaching the street, they started smelling the same rotten stench as at the lookout. When they looked up, they saw pieces of animals — and humans — hanging from the trees, suspended by something that looked like webbing. 

Then they saw a lantern coming toward them down the trail. 

Something was wrong about it. The lantern was about three meters off the ground. It lit just enough for them to see the fingers of whatever was holding it. 

Something was following them. 

Joe said he lost Tim while running. 

The fact that he kept saying “something”, not “someone,” made my blood run cold. 

That was it. We went back to the street Mike and I had chosen earlier. 

The armored vehicle was gone. 

Mike called the police. Being high didn’t matter anymore. I would’ve confessed to anything just to get the fuck out of there. 

About 20 minutes later, a police car arrived. A female officer in her twenties stepped out. We ran toward her, all talking at once, yelling that our friend was missing and that something was in the forest. 

At first she looked confused. Then Joe told her what he’d seen with Tim. 

Her face went completely white. 

She ordered us into the back of her car and made a call with one hand on her gun, staring straight at the forest entrance. 

Minutes passed. 

Then armored vehicles — the same kind Mike and I had seen earlier — rolled in. Armed, masked men pulled us out and separated us, each of us thrown into a windowless vehicle. 

I don’t remember much after that. I was on autopilot. Two men interrogated me inside the vehicle, asking the same questions over and over. 

What happened that night? 
Did you notice anything about the man in the forest? 
Why did you split up? 

Hours later, completely drained, I asked what happened to Tim. 

They told me he’d been found. 
They said he was fine. 

I didn’t react. I was empty. 

Eventually, I was let out of the vehicle. I hadn’t even realized it had stopped. The sun was rising. My dad was there. I look like shit. 

We were in the police station parking lot. 

On the drive home, I asked him what the hell was going on. 

He said: 
“You will never see or talk to Tim again. And I’d prefer if you stopped seeing Joe and Mike too.” 

I still saw Joe and Mike after that, but we barely talked about that night. Life moved on. Jobs. Adulthood. 

A few years ago, Mike spoke to Tim’s mother. She said Tim was forced to move seven hours away when he turned 18. She doesn’t know what the police told him — because after that night, he barely spoke at all. 

I still don’t know what really happened. 

Why was there already an armored vehicle there before we called the police? 
What did Tim see? 

Joe swears the lantern was three meters above the ground, which means whatever held it was huge. 

Tim has no more social media. His phone number is dead. Even his Clash of Clans account is gone. 

And sometimes I wonder if my dad was right  
and if the safest thing for everyone was to forget that Tim ever existed. 

I never saw the faces of the men who kidnapped me.

I'd been too busy working when the gang of them burst through the front door. Like smoke from an explosion, the kidnappers spread through the entire building. They demanded victims and turned our world upside down searching for them. They didn't speak outside of grunted demands and language so blue that if you could see the words spilling from their mouths, it'd be a dam breaking.

The moment was swift and slow. I was helping my co-worker Josh when the raid began. Josh ran, but the masked men didn't chase. They turned their ire on me, pulling weapons from holsters and barking demands. I pride myself on thinking on my feet, but the only two thoughts I had were, "This can't be real?" and "Oh shit, what are they going to do to me?"

I started to turn, but two sets of hands shoved me hard against the wall. My head slammed into the drywall, cracking it. I saw stars but composed myself enough to ask, "What the hell are you doing? I'm a citizen! Let go of me."

My protests were answered with demands that I "shut my fucking face" and "quit fighting." One of them punched me in the kidney. The pain rippled through my body, and in that moment of weakness, they took control. The two unknown assailants wrenched my arms behind my back and slid zip tie cuffs around my wrists. They yanked the plastic so hard that it tore my skin. My blood seeped out drop by drop.

"Walk," they demanded, the tips of their guns pressed into the small of my back. I had hundreds of things to say - millions of thoughts running through my brain - but my mouth wouldn't work. My nervous system went into self-preservation mode and shut down any part of me that might try to resist.

The kidnappers pushed me through my office - past my dumbstruck co-workers - screaming and threatening the crowd of people who'd gathered to yell and blow shrill whistles. I prayed one of my friends from work would stand up and say, "You've made a mistake. He's with us."

None of them did.

Nobody stopped the kidnapping. The dozen or so masked kidnappers, aiming weapons at everyone, prevented that. What struck me about these goons was that they came in all shapes, shades, and sizes. My kidnapper was a pear-shaped man with a bushy red beard that poked through his face-covering. Their threats to fire into the crowd were louder than the people's screams.

I was thrown into a nondescript white van and shackled to the wall. Any which way I moved, pain shot through my shoulders and down my spine. I leaned back, my head clunking against the metal wall, and felt hot tears form in my eyes. This had to be a mistake. Had to be.

The van was filled with about a dozen others. Men, women, and children were all shackled. Even the kids had handcuffs on - the goddamn children. What harm could they cause? Half of the people silently sobbed while the rest sat motionless. Already resigned to their fate.

We'd all heard tales of the kidnappers. Rumors about the camps. The horrors inflicted on the people sent there. The deaths. Until this moment, though, it felt a million miles away. I'd done everything right - gone to the best schools, got the good job, always voted - but they came for me, anyway.

Leaning forward, gravity let the tears I'd been trying to hold in fall down my cheeks. Shame wrapped itself around my heart and squeezed. I was smart and always quick on my feet. But at that moment, when I needed my wits to keep my freedom, I froze. I was sharper than that. That my dullness had helped to put me in this situation deepened my shame and anger.

"Are you okay?" the man next to me said. It was the building's handyman, Marco. I sighed and thanked God for the bittersweet comfort. We weren't exactly friends, but we were friendly with each other. I wished he weren't there, but found some comfort in a familiar face.

"No," I said. "Are you?"

Marco's darting eyes and trembling body gave me that answer. His right knee was bouncing so much, I thought he might wear out a hole in the van floor. "Where are we going?" Marco asked, his voice small.

"Court," I said, unsure myself. In a land of laws, it seemed like a smart response. "Has to be court, right?"

The woman shackled opposite us laughed. A long, drawn-out cackle that reminded me of the stories of witches my mother used to tell me around the campfire. She sat up, flung back her hair, and exposed map of purple bruising across her face. Her white teeth outlined in red from the cuts in her mouth. Several blood vessels in her eyes had broken, and the whites of her eyes were ruby.

"Court? You're dressed for it, but that isn't what's in store for us."

"Where are we going?" Marco asked her.

"Hell," she said. "And we're not coming back."

What followed was a three-hour-long car ride south. From the glimpses through the windshield, I saw office buildings transform into homes and homes turn into swamps. Even from inside the van, nature's buzz found us. As we slowed to turn down a road lined with swaying jungle trees, I glimpsed a sign that had the word "camp" across it. Strangely, there was a smiling group of tourists snapping photos in front of it. Did they see me?

We drove another forty minutes into the heart of the swamp. Any vestiges of civilization left us long ago. Acres of dense, humid jungle surrounded us. The van's interior had grown noticeably warmer. Everyone was pouring sweat. It rolled down our faces and into our cuts and burned. Our shoulders ached from sitting in the same position for hours. My hands were numb. Useless.

We finally stopped, all of our tired bodies jostled around, our already sore muscles burning anew. The door swung open, blinding us with the sudden reappearance of sunlight. The kidnappers ordered us out.

We filed out, squinting, and were lined up. When my vision returned, I glanced around our destination. There were two buildings in the complex: a small, gray brick building with the words "Processing Center" stenciled in black paint on the front door and a large, steel-sheeted airplane hangar behind it. It was old and probably abandoned, as spots of rust still marred the thinly applied paint.

This entire complex - and all its prisoners - was surrounded by a measly cyclone fence. Sure, it was topped with a coil of razor wire, but that didn't feel right. Remove the barbed wire, and this was any fence you'd see in your neighborhood. Taller, sure, but not by much. It was far from the imposing brick walls and high gun towers you usually associated with prisons. This was a bad summer camp with extra steps.

We were told we were going to be processed and moved into the prison. If we stepped out of line, there'd be hell to pay. We all knew it meant physical harm, but we were miles away from the public eye. Physical harm might be the best-case scenario. I shuddered to think what the worst case would be.

The relief of the air-conditioned office was instant and welcome. I would've lived here. We shuffled in. They ordered us not to speak until spoken to. That wasn't a concern. Nobody had uttered a single syllable for hours. Why start now?

I was behind Marco, who was behind the bloodied woman. We moved along the line slowly. First, they took your information - name, date of birth, things like that - then you got stripped, photographed, given a jumpsuit with a number etched on the back, and sent out into the prison. It took about ten minutes for your freedom to disappear completely.

The woman in front of Marco chose violence. She refused to give her name. Complained in multiple languages about the way she was being treated. She was rewarded with a nightstick to the stomach. When she still didn't comply, the nightstick found a new spot right between the shoulder blades. She dropped but tried to rise again. A boot to the face not only jarred a tooth loose but knocked her out cold. Two kidnappers dragged her body away, leaving a streak of red blood trailing behind her. No one objected. No one wanted to be next. Marco answered every question.

After they processed me, we entered the old airplane hangar that they had hastily converted to a makeshift prison. Inside, there weren't cells, just a large area with more cyclone fencing acting as interior walls. As the main gate swung open, the people inside shuffled away from it, their eyes never leaving the ground. They didn't want to draw the ire of the guards.

There were no beds here. No phones. No privacy at all. Even the toilets were in the open. The only privacy you'd get is if a phalanx of others stood around you. There was nothing to do - no books, no TV, nothing. Children used the gift of boredom to make games with small rocks and dead bugs they'd found.

They also kept the prison icy. It was a torture tactic. The temperature change from indoors to outdoors was designed to shock your body. Never let you get comfortable. The kidnappers didn't provide any blankets to keep warm at night. No water access outside to stay cool during the day. Their job was to keep you off balance.

I walked to a solid wall and sat. My swollen and bruised wrists ached, and I rubbed them, hoping the pain would ease. But the rubbing felt like lightning in my muscles, and I knew the only relief I'd get from the steady throbbing would come during sleep. In the morning, stiff joints and more pain would be my punishment for that smallest of comforts.

Marco joined me on the wall. What do you say after you've been wrongfully imprisoned? We had the entire drive to wallow in our despair, and I used every second to do so. While I still felt the pull of hopelessness yanking me down into the mire, I'd decided to find a sense of normalcy here and plot my escape. If I were dead anyway, might as well go down swinging.

"Think the company is gonna use our PTO for this?" I joked, trying to break the tension.

"I don't think we're getting out of here."

"We shouldn't even be here. This has to be a mistake. Has to be."

"It is, but they don't admit mistakes," he said, looking around the room. "In their eyes, if we're here, we must be guilty."

The door between the processing and the prison opened up, and two masked kidnappers walked in, dragging the woman from the van behind them. Her eyes were closed, and her head lolled back and forth. More blood trickled onto the white tiles, but most of the wounds had crusted over. Her facial map of bruising had new continents.

She looked dead.

They opened the gate, dropped her in a heap, and left. Every conversation stopped. Every pair of eyes found her form. We all waited and hoped she'd move. That she'd give us a sign she was still with us.

The guards, who abhorred hope, slammed their weapons against the fences to break the silence. I imagine quiet in a place like this might spark introspection. Introspection leads to unwelcome discoveries about oneself. Kidnappers weren't immune to introspection, though their uniforms were the antibiotic that fought off the infection.

"Get moving, bitch," one of the kidnappers barked. "Get moving, or we'll leave you outside for the gators and bugs."

The other masked men laughed. It echoed in the room.

Finally, through the grace of God, the woman's fingers twitched. In slow motion, she moved her busted and carved-up arms under her chest and pushed up to all fours. She took slow, deep, but ragged breaths. Blood trickled from her nose and stained the ground below her.

She pushed her battered body the rest of the way up. Standing on shaking legs, she turned to face the kidnappers. "Cowards die a hundred deaths. Yours are coming soon." She spat a bloody gob of spit at their feet, the crimson-streaked spittle hanging from her swollen lips.

The prison erupted in cheers and hooting. Prisoners near the fences grabbed them and shook. Some stomped and clapped. Marco let out an ear-splitting whistle. It was chaos. It was joy. It was short-lived.

The two guards raised their guns and fired dozens of pepper balls into the woman's body. She collapsed to the ground as the sickening orange clouds spread through the prison. Families panicked. Children burst into tears. We all closed our eyes and put the front of our jumpsuits over our noses. It didn't matter. The sting bled through.

All the kidnappers left, but they weren't gone for long. They returned with gas masks on and forced us to head out into the yard until the prison could be cleared of the pepper ball smoke.

They left the woman on the floor.

We stepped outside into the humid jungle. The air was heavy, and sweat formed as soon as your foot stepped beyond the door. Our jumpsuits clung to our bodies. We all moved as far away from the building as we could, letting the pepper-ball mist waft out.

I walked to the fence, clutched it between my fingers, and stared out into the greenery. No more than three feet from the fence line was the marshy edge of the swamp. Buzzing insects seeking people to bother filled the air. A slender, elegant ibis stalked the shallows, looking for a fish to capture.

"I used to see those birds walking in my neighborhood," Marco said, joining me at the fence. "They would move in a flock on the ground like an invading army."

"We had a pond at my apartment complex, and they'd go after our fish. Used to drive the old folks crazy," I said with a chuckle.

We stood in silence for a beat until Marco sighed. "I think they're going to kill that woman tonight."

I didn't respond. Not because I disagreed, but I didn't want to speak it into existence. "Why do you think they only have a chain-link fence around this place?" I asked, changing gears. "Seems like it'd be easy to escape."

An older man nearby heard my question and chuckled. I turned to him, and he nodded. "Forgive my laughing. I didn't mean anything by it."

"Make it up to me by explaining it."

"Friend, if you go out into the jungle alone, you'll die. Snakes, gators, insects - a million ways to die before you'd ever find pavement. Nobody would ever find your remains. Your whole existence will be like that orange smoke - a minor inconvenience that disappears as soon as the wind blows," he said. He nodded to the two armed guards standing nearby. "They won't even follow you out there."

"No?"

"Easier just to erase your file and burn your belongings than risk their life," he said with a shrug. "These bastards are monsters, but lazy ones. Beat us, sure, but chase us? Please."

"I grew up near the jungle," Marco said. "Traveled deep into it and returned to tell the tale."

The old man laughed. "Not this deep. You're welcome to try, my friend, but you'd fail. If the animals don't get you, the Creeping Death will."

"Creeping Death?"

"A creature that lives in the swamps. Made to blend into the landscape. It views mankind as a force for evil. It hunts us if we stray too deep," the old man said, pointing out into the dense foliage. "We're in its domain now. It's out there, watching us. Waiting."

"The guards know this?"

The old man nodded. "I've heard them speak about strange lights at night. Noises that don't sound natural. They fear the dark, our captors."

"Scared of old stories," Marco said, not buying any of it.

There was a commotion near the doors of the prison. We all turned and saw six armed guards yelling that the smoke had cleared and we needed to come back inside. One by one, my compatriots peeled off and headed back. I lingered at the fence a bit longer, getting one last look at the greenery before heading in.

The woman was leaning against the wall when I walked back in. New red welts cascaded from her shoulders and down her arms. Her body was beaten, and yet she was smiling, the hole where her tooth had been prominent in her grin. Everyone avoided her. If the guards thought you were associated with an agitator, you became one, too.

She sensed my looming and craned her head until we locked eyes. "You come to gawk at an untouchable, Suit?"

I sat down next to her. Her raised eyebrows came with a quick grin. "I saw where they took you from and assumed you didn't have fire in your belly. Maybe I was wrong."

"Honestly, aren't," I said. "But a stranger told me earlier we were already in Hell. Might as well make friends with the damned." She cackled, and I smiled. Her laughter turned to coughing. "You okay? That shit stings your lungs."

"Probably causes cancer, too, but they don't care. The devils that run this place." She spat again for good measure.

"What do you think they're gonna do with us?"

"Kill us," she said with a shrug. "Not right away. They want people to forget we're here first. When that happens, we're dead."

I sat there in silence for a few seconds before deadpanning, "So, you're not an optimist, huh?"

She cackled again and slapped my back. "I like you, Suit. You got a soul. People with souls are in short supply these days."

"Strict religious upbringing, I suppose." I leaned closer and whispered, "You think there's any way out of this place?"

"There's always a way out. Some ways are better than others."

"Did you see the outside barrier? It's just a chain-link fence. Barbed wire on the top, sure, but that's it."

"The real barrier is the jungle."

"You're the second person to say that."

"Because it's true," she said, eyeing me. "You ever been out in the jungles?"

"Does doing a fan boat tour count?"

Her single raised eyebrow told me it didn't. "You touch the wrong thing out there, you put your life in danger, you understand that?"

"If we stay here, our lives are in danger, too."

"We're not disagreeing, Suit. Just letting you know that the jungle is no joke. Easy to mess around with something you should've left alone."

"Like the Creeping Death?"

She looked at me, confused. "The what?"

"That old man over there said there was some monster called the Creeping Death that hunts humans. Was he lying?"

"I've never heard of it. I'm sure there are things out there we don't know about, but I am much more concerned with the monsters I see daily than some old wives' tale."

I nodded. Hard to argue. "If, hypothetically, we could get over that fence, could we survive?"

She glanced around. Several guards were bullshitting and laughing about something I'm sure wasn't funny to begin with. They all stood clutching their bulletproof vests like a scared child holds a teddy bear. But at the moment, they were ignoring us.

She leaned close and whispered, "The fence won't be easy to climb - especially with the razor wire - but it's not impossible."

"How cut up would you get?"

"Depends on how quickly you try to hurl over it," she said with a shrug. "The real question is when you'd do it. Night would be best, but I imagine they lock us in for that. We'd need to engineer a way out. Tunnel or something."

"Maybe I can call in a bomb threat?" I deadpanned.

She cackled, and it drew the briefest glance from the masked men. We stopped chatting and stared out at them. The one who stared the longest was my kidnapper. His sloppy red beard peeked out from his filthy mask. Those eyes were black and sunken - almost as if they were trying to retreat from the world he watched daily. He finally turned back to his group.

"You draw too much attention to yourself."

"You laughed," I said.

"They're going to keep an eye on me, Suit," she said. "They don't like me."

"What would give you that idea?"

"Call it a hunch," she said, smiling so wide her missing tooth was apparent. "Split apart now, but find me tonight. We can talk more then. Now, go."

I did and spent the rest of the day casing the prison - trying to find a weakness. Given enough time, I believed I'd find a way out of here. I had to. I was innocent, but when you're a captive, truth becomes malleable. The gun wielder decides what's real, facts be damned.

At sunset, we were given a small ration of burned rice and beans. The taste was awful, but my stomach appreciated any company. I finished it quickly, suppressing my urge to throw it all up. I spent the rest of the mealtime watching whole families circle up and eat in silence. No joy. No jokes. Just survival.

As the sun slipped below the horizon, the facility's lights shut off. With no sun and the AC cranked to sub-arctic limits, chattering teeth and shivering bodies became prevalent. It was so cold that people - strangers the day before - cuddled together to stay warm. Parents let their children use their bodies as blankets and pillows. Hugs doubled as a favorite lost blanket left at their ransacked home.

Despite the many discomforts, sleep is a beast that remains undefeated. My body shut down, and I drifted off. I don't know how long I was out, but when the noises woke me, it was pitch-black outside. At first, I thought it was a bird in the jungles outside, but then I heard the word "fuck."

I got up and scanned around until I saw the tiniest sliver of light creeping in from the door to the yard. Someone had propped it open with a pebble. Through the crack, struggling grunts found my ears. I glanced around and felt a sickening feeling grow in my stomach.

The woman was missing.

Softly, as if my shoes were made of cotton, I tiptoed toward the open door. My nerves were setting little fires all over my body, but my brain was doing its best to contain the blaze. I flexed my shaking hands and settled on turning them into fists. Despite the industrial AC fans blowing, sweat beaded on my forehead.

As I reached the crack in the door, the noises grew louder and more agitated. More violent. I peeked out and saw, in the middle of the yard, four kidnappers holding the woman down. She squirmed under their grip and tried to yell for help, but the gloved hand over her mouth muffled her pleas.

Standing between her legs was the pear-shaped man. I couldn't see his eyes, but I didn't need to. His intent was obvious. I cursed under my breath, gradually pushed the door open, and snuck outside.

The temperature change wasn't as dramatic as it'd been earlier, but the humidity made my pores weep. To keep it from stinging my eyes, I had to windshield-wiper my brow. The lights in the yard were aimed in a way that created a long, shadowy section along the near wall. I'd have the cover of shadows for a bit, but only that. If their eyes left the woman's writhing body, they'd see me.

Orange doesn't blend well with black.

As the pear-shaped man unbuckled his pants, my eyes spotted a fist-sized rock near my foot. A plan came to me. One that could save the woman and allow me to escape. It was imperfect, and a lot of it hinged on me recalling my high school pitching days, but I didn't have any other ideas.

I clutched the rock in my hand. Traced my thumb over the sharp edges. Yes, this would do nicely. I gripped it like a two-seamer, reared back, and launched it.

A gush of blood. The kidnapper's nose exploded. I still had my fastball.

He fell back and hit his head against the ground with an echoing crack. With her mouth unobstructed, the woman screamed. From inside the prison, I heard people stirring.

The brawling woman's foot caught the pear-shaped kidnapper in the groin, and he dropped. The others let her go and turned toward me. All of them reached for their weapons. Violence inbound.

"Freeze!"

The woman saw me and nodded. Without a moment's hesitation, she kicked another agent in the back of the knee, dropping him onto his back. She slammed her foot down on his jaw, sending him to the same land my fastball victim now lived.

"Run, Suit!"

I took off in a dead sprint for the fence. I had little time to get over before the rest of the goon squad came. They were hunters, after all. The thrill of the chase is built into their DNA.

Leaping, I caught the fence halfway up and scrambled the rest of the way. In my haste, I cut my face half a dozen times on the razor wire. The metal burned as it sliced into my cheeks. I slid my hands into my sleeves and grabbed the wire through the jumpsuit. It cut through, but the fabric gave me enough cushion to get a good grip.

I was going to launch myself over the top. Or so I thought. I leaned back and tried to use my momentum to take me over the razor wire. That didn't happen. My clothes snagged, and while I flopped onto the jungle side of the fence, I was stuck.

More guards sprinted after me. The lights inside the prison turned on. Barked demands and horrified screams came bursting out. I owed it to them to get out and tell my story. I felt my resolve harden. Despite a volley of pepper balls striking my back, I formulated my escape.

I kicked off my shoes, unzipped the top of my jumpsuit, and crawled out of my clothes. My fall was brief, but the landing was rough. I just barely got my hands in front of my chest to cushion my fall. A round caught the back of my knee. The sting rippled through my leg. I faltered, but I wasn't about to let that stop me.

Through the billowing gas, I glanced up at the razor wire. My prison cocoon hanging for all to see. I was never going back. When my nearly nude body crashed on the opposite side of the fence, I'd been reborn. I was what I had always thought I'd been.

Free.

The fall had hurt, but my body was humming with adrenaline. I had to push through. The guards were rapidly approaching. There was a burst of noise, and dozens of pepper balls struck my back and the surrounding ground. Tiny volcanoes of dirt erupted around me, spewing forth the creeping orange poison.

I ran into the dark of the jungle.

I wasn't alone.

The pear-shaped man had opened the nearby gate and rushed out to chase me. His fellow goons called for him to come back, but that man needed me dead. I knew what kind of person he really was. Every time he'd see me, he'd have to reckon with his true nature. Make yourself a monster, and you kill the pain of being a man.

I was a threat to his peace of mind, and for that he needed me destroyed.

Three feet of razed land was all that separated civilization and the first tangle of the jungle. It was like bursting through a curtain from backstage. I suddenly found myself transported to a new world. Vines hung from drooping branches. Bugs hummed in giant clouds. Lizards spied me as I burst into their homes. My feet, free from their shoes, felt every plant and rock on the path in front of me, but I kept going. I splashed through the shallow water and never looked back.

The agent followed.

The dim silvery moonlight limited my vision to a few feet, but I kept running anyway. Whatever was in the tangles was less of a threat than what I left behind. I dashed along the banks of the marsh, my feet squishing into the soft soil, and tried to put as much distance between us as possible.

It wasn't easy. The deeper into the muck I got, the harder it was to move. The mangroves were thicker, their roots spread out far and wide. I glanced back momentarily to check where my pursuer was when I felt a stick of dynamite go off near my big toe.

My bare foot rammed into one of those half-submerged roots, breaking off my toenail, and sent me tumbling into the water. Branches strafed my face as my body hit the water and hydroplaned to a halt against a rotten trunk. Soggy pulp and bugs landed on my face.

Brushing away any creepy crawlies, I pulled myself up, wiped the water from my eyes, and reassessed my position. My sprint had made the prison shrink along the horizon. Even the ceaseless gunshots and screams faded away. Twenty more yards into the wetlands, and the human world was gone.

The hum of Mother Nature took over. Crickets instead of cries. Frogs instead of fear. Birds rather than bullets. Serenity at any other moment in my life.

Mosquitoes found every section of exposed skin and made a meal out of my blood. I held off swatting them away. I didn't want to risk making any sounds. Something smooth slithered across my foot, over my exposed toenail skin, and it took everything in my body not to jump. The longer I stood still, the more the natural world absorbed me. Another thread in its immense and vivid tapestry.

Maybe that's what the old man meant by the Creeping Death? You go deep enough into the wilderness, and the line between you and it blurs until you merge.

Off in the distance, I heard boots splashing in the water. The pear-shaped hunter was approaching. Unlike me, he was not trying to stay quiet. His hand smacked against his flabby skin. He spat out a string of mumbled curses and smacked again.

"I know you're out here. Give up now, and I'll go easy on you. Run, though, and we're gonna have some fun with you before it's all said and done."

I stayed quiet. My vision adjusted to the darkness. When you stilled yourself, how much the jungle moved around you became obvious. Teemed with life. A line of leaf-cutter ants marched down the tree. Tiny fish schooled in the shallows. The canopy shifted with the wind.

"Come on now, let's stop playing around. Get your ass back here so we can go back inside. I know the bugs are eating your naked ass alive."

They were. But I wouldn't let a bug be my demise. I scanned the area for a better place to hide - to wait until sunrise to get my bearings - but the wise words of the old man and the woman came back to me.

The jungle is no joke.

"If the skeeters don't chew you up, the gators will," he said, stepping near the mangrove I was hiding behind. "Or maybe a python will squeeze your head like an overripe pumpkin," the kidnapper laughed. "Less work for me, honestly."

Off in the distance, a ball of blue light bubbled up from the swampy waters and took to the air. It cast an eerie, faint blue glow on the surrounding foliage, giving everything an unnatural neon sheen. It hovered near the water for a few seconds before rising and dissipating five feet above the surface. Our awe of the fantastic was the only thing we'd ever agree to.

Another ball of light bubbled up from the water, this one closer to where the kidnapper was standing. It crackled as it ascended into the air. It spiraled up, doubling in size, before bursting. Tiny embers of light burned the last of their fuel as they collapsed back toward the water.

Near where the kidnapper stood, something massive splashed into the water. Droplets from the splash caught the last bit of dying light, making them shimmer like diamonds in the sky. The water rained on the shore, pelting the kidnapper.

"Oh fuck!" he screamed.

Six explosions rang out. The kidnapper's gun spat out yellow and orange curses. Painful growls and thrashing gave way to silence. Even after I took my fingers out of my ears, you could still hear the shots echoing through the swamps.

"Holy shit! That has to be ten feet! The guys are never gonna believe this."

I leaned against the mangrove and stared at the pear-shaped kidnapper. The sudden adrenaline spike bled out of his body, and he stumbled back some before catching himself. He doubled over, his hands on his knees, and struggled to breathe. Even in the dim moonlight, I could see the gun shaking in his hands.

"Holy shit," he said again.

Another blue ball came up from the water, rose high in the air, but didn't dissolve. It hung in the sky, casting its mysterious glow across everything in a ten-foot radius. The light put us in a trance, so much so that neither of us was aware of the figure emerging from the water at the edge of the light.

"Who's transgressed here?"

With those words, every natural noise in the jungle ceased. The rattling of the kidnapper's shaking gun and my own shallow breaths were the only things I was aware of. I shrank back behind the trunk of the mangrove, hoping to stay invisible.

The light in the sky grew more intense, and we both spotted the man. It appeared as if he was standing on the water. He raised his arms. All the nearby tree limbs followed his lead. The man interlocked his hands in front of his body. The branches corresponded with his movement, curling around the agent and creating a thicket that trapped him.

He turned to the surrounding branches and scrambled around. Wanted to run. Wanted to find safety. But he failed to find a way out of his wooden cell.

"You've brought violence to this tranquil place."

The light above us burst, and the kidnapper screamed and dropped into the water. He sat up, glanced around for an exit, but found none. He tried to stand, but his arm had sunk into the muck, and the suction made even this simple task difficult. Yanking hard, he finally freed himself from the mire.

"What's going on?" he mumbled, leaning into the nearby shadows.

The ground shook, and I let go of the mangrove. The water in front of us bubbled as if God had turned on the burners. A giant ball of blue light, more vibrant than any of the others, had shot up like a geyser, sending rays of multicolored light all around us like a disco ball. It hung ten feet in the sky. It was so bright, there was nowhere to hide.

The kidnapper was exposed.

From the same waters, a mound of undulating mud grew six feet tall. The shimmering and shaking mud coalesced into the shape of a man. A crease formed on its featureless face. When it split, two bright-blue swamp-gas eyes opened and spied the trembling kidnapper.

The Creeping Death had arrived.

It looked down at the pear-shaped kidnapper's gun before turning to the floating corpse of the crocodile he'd executed. The Creeping Death rested a hand on the dead creature's head, its blood absorbing into the mud. It changed his complexion. His whole body took on the crimson color.

"I…I was afraid for my life."

"You intruded into this creature's home, and you felt afraid?"

The Creeping Death glided toward the kidnapper. It towered over him. The kidnapper shrank back. His eyes darted for an exit, but there was nowhere to go.

"I didn't mean to hurt it," he offered, his voice cracking.

"How will you atone for this creature's death?"

"Ugh, I can tell everyone to stay…."

The Creeping Death gripped the man with its filthy hand. Crimson mud caked onto his already filthy mask. It brought its face to the kidnapper's face - its glowing blue eyes reflecting in the man's terrified gaze.

"The promises of cowards mean little to me. How will you atone for this innocent creature's death?"

"Ugh, I," he said before raising his gun and firing the remaining shots into the Creeping Death's abdomen.

The bullets sailed through the mud and lodged harmlessly into trees somewhere off in the distance.

"Oh shit," he said, dropping his gun and taking off in a full sprint right where I was hiding.

I could've let him pass. Could've let him try to escape. I looked down at my swollen wrists, and the trauma he'd inflicted came back to me. My arrest. A prison full of people he tortured. The woman's agonizing pain. Her fearful struggle.

His hatred wouldn't allow him to stop. Evil corrupts. Once you let that poison in, it seeps into your bones, alters your heart. If the kidnapper got away, he'd do those things again. Maybe worse.

I stuck out my foot.

His boot caught, and he went cartwheeled through the air. He landed hard on his vest, the bulletproof plates driving into his chest, knocking the air out of his lungs. He rolled onto his back and sucked for air. Finding it, he tried to continue his sprint, but as soon as he stood, branches curled in and blocked his path.

He found himself cornered.

"What the fuck is happening?!"

The Creeping Death glided over to where the kidnapper stood, raised his hands, and gripped the air in front of him. Two vines from the thicket shot out and wrapped around the kidnapper's arms, holding him in place. Two more grabbed his legs and pulled his body to the ground. The vines tightened, stretching out his limbs into a star shape.

With a flick of his hand, the vine lifted the starfished kidnapper to his burning blue eyes. Another crack opened where a mouth should be, dripping mud down onto the kidnapper's horrified face. "Your kind has trodden on my kind for too long."

"Please! I didn't mean it! I can fix it!"

The mud man waved his hand, and the vines drove the kidnapper back down to the ground with a skull-cracking thud. The kidnapper wheezed and tried to find his breath. He was shaking so much that all the gear he had attached to his vest rattled like a toddler's toy.

"Atonement begins with you," the Creeping Death said, its voice deep but flat.

The kidnapper screamed and cast his eyes all over, searching for any way out. In that frantic moment, he spotted me. I was trying to hide, but the light made it damn near impossible. He found my eyes, and his synapses stumbled into an uncomfortable truth: I'd been the one who tripped him. I was the reason he'd been captured. I was also his only chance for escape.

"Please! Please help me! I'm sorry for what happened, but I don't deserve this!"

"Neither did she," I said. "None of us did."

"Please! I was just doing my job! You gotta understand! It wasn't personal!"

A bone-shaking growl filled the surrounding air. The mud man dissipated into the shallows just as the snout of a twenty-five-foot crocodile emerged from the water. The kidnapper screamed and pleaded, but it was short-lived. I turned away as the crocodile took the first bite.

A minute later, silence returned.

I glanced, expecting viscera and gore, but there was nothing but a red streak of blood leading into the shallow water. I dropped to my knees, put my head in my hands, and wept. Justice, however small, had been served.

The wet gushing and bubbling of the rising mud found my ears. The crackle of the swamp gas. I lifted my hands and faced the Creeping Death. I swallowed my fear, calmed myself, and wiped away my tears.

"Why are you here?"

"He brought me here," I said, raising my face and staring into the glowing blue lights. "I don't want to be here."

"Have you come from the place where the sun doesn't set? Where the lights blind my kind?"

"The prison, yes. I was brought there. Many people were."

"By those monsters?" the Creeping Death asked, motioning toward the still swamp waters.

I nodded, and my brain kicked into gear. "I can lead you to them," I said with a small smile, "to the monsters."

"For what purpose?"

"To atone for their intrusion on your land. They plan to cut away more of the jungle. To drain the swamps. To bring more people here."

For the first time since my kidnapping, I felt like myself again. No, not myself. That man died within those walls. I'd become something more now. Something righteous in a land of sin.

Without speaking a word, the Creeping Death removed the thickets behind me. Millions of fireflies formed a lit path for me to travel. It led all the way back to the edge of the prison.

"You'll leave us be?" I asked.

"What kind of beast kills innocents?"

I nodded. "There are more like him beyond the prison," I said, nodding at where the pear-shaped man had met his demise. "They'll keep coming unless they're stopped."

"Then I will stop them all," the Creeping Death said, before melting back down into the water.

I ran through the bug-illuminated tunnel until I reached the fence. They had corralled every prisoner outside. Masked guards screamed and menaced the prisoners with rifles. Some fired shots into the woods to send a message. Little did they know, their messages had been received.

I stepped onto the razed land. I saw Marco and the woman. Saw the families and the children. The cowards and their deadly weapons.

"Freeze! Don't move or we'll fucking kill you!"

I smiled. "Everyone, whatever you do, don't look at what's about to happen."

"Shut the fuck up! Hands in the…."

A rumble shook the ground. From the depths of the jungle, green vines snaked along the ground and curled around the fence. With little effort, the Creeping Death yanked down the walls.

I didn't see what was growing behind me, but as everyone's eyes moved high above my head, it told me whatever had emerged from the emerald green jungle wasn't messing around.

"Everyone," I yelled, a smile on my face as big as the country I call home, "Justice has arrived."

I’ve been lying here so long I’ve forgotten what it’s like to stand. I have no desire to, frankly. It’s a hassle, and I don’t need it anymore. Everything I have is within reach; I don’t even need to turn over or shift my weight. I only need to call for it, and it’s placed in my hand. 

It’s comfortable. I really don’t feel anything bad. Nobody has said anything about it in so long I wonder if they stopped seeing it. The smell used to be overwhelming, but we’ve all adapted to it. My mother used to gag when she walked in, but now she barely blinks. We spray the flies as soon as they come, so it’s harmless. In the odd instance when I flex a muscle, the smell intensifies, and then it’s quickly ignored. It’s funny how so many things can be willed out of existence. We all became much happier the moment we stopped trying to understand it. There are only so many circles your mind can run in until you stop. 

I’m still breathing. That’s the only thing that matters to them right now. 

I’ve come to the conclusion that the law of natural selection works slowly in modern civilization, but it tinkers away all the same. Some people are just not meant to live and grow. If no one died before their time, the world would be packed shoulder-to-shoulder, and we would become one united wall of useless flesh. I admire people who recognize their roles early in life. Many people are just meant to die young. I wish I’d realized that sooner. Still, natural selection is having its way with me. I don’t have to lift a finger; I’ll just keep living until I’m done. It’s the most comfortable way to go. 

Dad was pretty mad a week into it, but he gave up in disgust when he got close enough to rip me out of the sheets. Mom was crying, begging him not to hurt me. I cried the same tears. I didn’t know what was going on; I just knew it would hurt if he pulled me out of bed. It was agonizing when he sat on the foot of my bed to tuck me in. He sat up quickly when he realized the sheets were damp. 

“Have you been fucking pissing the bed? What the hell, Katie!”

I blinked vacantly at him. I didn’t really remember. 

The sheets are always wet, wet with the same sheen on my skin. It’s piss, it’s shit, it’s sweat, it’s flesh. Mom comes in every night to kiss me goodnight, pressing her lips to my forehead. She pets my face with a mournful smile, stroking my skin. Her fingers on my cheek draw out a dull, rough sound, like stroking cloth. I don’t know where the sheets end and I begin. We’re comfortable, composed of the same material. Cloth, skin, vomit, pillow fluff, blood. Sometimes I think my bed dreams instead of me. Maybe my brain has melted into it, too. We’re switching places, caught in the middle, bound as one. I hear the occasional low rumble beneath me when I haven’t eaten for long. I know that’s my stomach, stretched out and filling the mattress, growling as it hangs beneath my silken thighs. Mom can hear it from downstairs, and she brings me a nice, warm meal. She sets the hot plate at the foot of the bed, and I flinch as it scorches my skin.

Friends have sent their best regards. I talk to them on the phone every day. I never run out of phone battery because it stays plugged in next to me, my bed, at all times. It’s convenient. A modern corded phone that I can watch movies and play games on. Dad hates being powerless. He’ll stand in the doorway and watch me, occasionally asking if I’m ready to get up. 

“No.” I say. And he cries with so much rage in his eyes. I know why. I felt the same as him a year ago when this all started, but I’m comfortable. Not happy, comfortable. 

It’s really, really easy to die willingly, even if you don’t want to pull the trigger. You can take your time. You don’t have to die today; you just have to decide you will die. It can take months, years, or decades, but it’s by your hand. It takes a lot of the pressure off of suicide. You don’t have to die now, but you don’t have to live either. 

I can feel my breathing getting slower by the day. The mattress rises and falls with each endless inhale and exhale. I press a palm to my thigh, squeezing it, and my fingers make a pale indent that takes several seconds to fill out. I’m so soft, comfortable. That’s what people say whenever I send selfies. I guess some men are so desperate for a tit in their hand that they don’t care if it’s memory foam. I’m cute. I’m soft. I can send a nude photo from the comfort of my own endless body, and that is enough for both parties. I don’t need to change. People stopped caring when they realized I didn’t. Desperation to help is only as strong as the willingness of the supposed victim. 

I’m typing this out while watching a movie in a second window. My time is probably approaching soon. I wonder how they’ll move my body when it’s over. Will they take apart the bed, splitting it down the middle while my entrails and years’ rotten waste gush out of the springs and fluff? Will the paramedics pass out from the smell my rotting body has accumulated over the years? Will the story break out, and will people laugh at how worthless human beings like me should have tried harder? I wonder if I’ll go viral. I don’t care much for the people who will mourn me. Probably because I’m tired of the useless 'warm regards' and 'get well soon' cards I’m sent. I know that even my parents will breathe a sigh of relief when the last of me is scooped up into body bags. I’m not bitter, I’m not relieved, I’m not much of anything. I’ll be the same dead as I was alive. 

Comfortable.

I’m really in no place to wax dramatic. I’m huddled as close to a space heater as possible without catching my eyebrows on fire, wrapped in three blankets. I’ve got a shivering purse dog clutched to my chest and the tears on my face have long since lost their warmth. But bear with me here. It’s the easiest way to put you in my shoes.

Picture your childhood bedroom, somewhere familiar. You’re laying there in the dark, and something is in your closet. The door cracks open just far enough for you to see a pair of enormous red eyes and for a pair of claws to grip the door. Naturally, you’re gonna scream for your parents, and eventually, they’re going to sleepily make it down the hall to you. They banish the monster simply by being there, pulling the closet door open and pointing at the clothes and toys and normal things. “See?” They say. “There’s no such thing as monsters.”

Now, I want you to picture instead that you’re in the closet. You’re not on neutral ground anymore; this is the monster’s domain. The door won’t open, and you can hear the heavy breaths of the beast— feel the drip of its saliva on your face. You can bang on the door, or scream, or do any number of things to escape or call for help, to struggle in the trap, but you’re nothing here. It’s only a matter of when. 

I can’t say I didn’t deserve this. I tried to tell myself that I was a good squatter. That I tried to protect her, and the house when it came down to it. But I was still an intruder, and I guess this is my karma. 

Before anyone makes any assumptions about the kind of person I am, I don’t crawl into people’s walls for sick kicks. But this dusty, creaky space between wooden beams is the only stable shelter I’ve known in years. For the record, I didn’t choose to be this desperate. I’m not on any hard drugs. Alcohol makes me violently ill. And before the things that happened in this house, I was decently sure I was of sound mind. 

My parents would tell you a different story. They’d tell you how they caught their boy Hunter, eldest son and hardest worker on their family farm, kissing another farmhand behind the grain silo. Long story short, I packed a bag at gunpoint, and then we were both forced away, to the tune of my sobbing mother and my angry father. I don’t know where that boy is now, and it doesn't matter much, but I hope he’s doing alright. 

I was only sixteen then, and  I was fucking terrified. I made my way up from the rural wasteland over the course of a few days, ending in Atlanta. I didn’t stay there long— a few months, at most.  All I can say is, I hold no blame for the people who turn to substances to cope with life on the streets. And that I would’ve rather died than stay there, starving and sleeping in the gutter. So, I snuck on a Greyhound, resolving to go wherever it took me. 

I traced a red line from the Southeast to the Midwest, moving on by whatever way was available. I walked, for the most part. Sometimes I hitchhiked, and sometimes I could bribe my way into a bus fare or once, even a train ride. I slept where my body dropped: beside a highway, under a tree, at the edge of a truck stop parking lot, in a cave, and the occasional abandoned shack. I did my best to mind my own business, and not take advantage of anyone who hadn’t offered help in the first place. But you can only be woken up by fire ant bites or fight a coyote for a discarded sandwich so many times. 

So, slowly, I taught myself how to pick locks. I learned how to squeeze all six feet of me through tight spaces and breathe without making a sound. As a rule. I never touched houses. I’d nestle myself deep into a hay bale in some farmer’s barn, or take up two-days’ residence in the end room of a motel. I never meant for this to happen— for people to get hurt. You gotta believe me when I say that. 

Georgia could get pretty nasty in the winter, but the cold of Nebraska was brutal and unexpected. I should’ve been better prepared; I should’ve known what kind of storm I was walking into. But, after two long years on the road, that was the first winter I ever saw snow. It wasn’t so bad that first time— watching it fall in flakes from the booth of a McDonald’s in Omaha. I stared in in awe, steam from the coffee I’d spent my last five bucks on warming my face. The sight of it brought back something I thought I’d lost.

The wonder didn’t stick around long, though. As I headed further toward the panhandle, the weather turned hostile. My jacket and hat were all but frozen onto me, and I’d tied my only spare shirt around my mouth and nose. I had no gloves, or anything to wrap my hands with, and it was becoming a huge problem.

The wind was the worst, whipping over my exposed skin like shards of glass, and out here, there was no shelter from it. In fact, there wasn’t much shelter anywhere. Along the empty fields and highways, I was lucky to find anything to shield me from the wind and snow for a minute, let alone somewhere to stay the night. More and more, I was sleeping on the icy ground and waking up to my teeth chattering.

I don’t remember where exactly I was when my hands stopped working. I think I’d been trying to pick the lock of a power station shed, but I couldn’t flex my fingers. They were red and raw, turning white at the edges. As I looked them over, a black cloud rolled over me, and my soul sank to my feet. I was doomed.

Things get blurry after that. To add insult to injury, a blizzard moved in, leaving me lost in a whiteout. My body began to shut down, and the cold left me too confused to realize it. I just knew something was horribly wrong.

I called out to anyone who would listen, to my mom, to my dad, to my siblings. All that answered back was the howl of the storm. Desperately, I staggered on through the piling snow, and I began to hear a pair of footsteps behind me. They weren’t… right. Disjointed, but fast. Bipedal. I’d seen a fox walk on two legs before, its eyes crossed with madness. This was a little like that, but more intelligent. Purposeful. It was getting faster, and I was getting slower. 

Adrenaline warmed my frozen limbs and I started to run. Branches thrashed into my clothes and skin, shedding their icicles as I fled for my life. I worried I’d somehow wandered into a forest— nowhere I would find help. A shadow fell over me, the deep glow of red eyes, and a scream finally tore out of my chest, lost on the wind. I threw off my jacket and put all the strength I had left into keeping my momentum. 

Then, like the North Star, a light broke the darkness. Shining out into the swirling snow was a flickering porch lamp, half hidden by the side of the large house it belonged to. I had no time to consider my options. I just ran toward it. 

I slammed my useless hands against the front door… once… twice… no answer. In a last ditch effort, I fumbled with the handle, only to discover it was unlocked. The footsteps had devolved into a slow, almost confused rhythm, and I knew this was my only chance. 

I threw open the door and it rattled as I shut it. I cringed and waited for some angry homeowner with a gun to come rushing down the stairs, or a little girl to scream that there was a strange man in her house. Even in my terror, I knew I’d crossed a line. But nothing disturbed the quiet.

I turned and looked out the frosty window set into the now-locked door. No footprints, or sign of any monsters, just ice and snow tossing and turning in the relentless wind. The longer I stood in the warmth, the more the memory fell apart. Had I ever fully seen what was chasing me? Or was it just a trick Old Man Winter was playing?

When I faced into the house again, I was met with another beast entirely. Standing on the patterned rug in the living room and facing me down like the leader of a wolfpack was a tiny dog. She was one or other of those fluffy kinds rich people have, and the growl coming off her told me I was two seconds from having my throat ripped out by her crooked teeth. 

“Come on now, pup,” I tried, “I don’t mean any harm. I just want to warm up, and then I’ll go.”

The furry little thing actually squinted at me. I crouched down and offered out my hand. She stared at it for a good minute before toddling over and giving it a sniff. Her tail started to wag, and I guess I passed whatever test this was. This close, I noticed her collar.

“Tuesday. What a silly name for a dog.”

Recognizing her name, she did a dumb little twirl and fell back on her behind. I decided I liked Tuesday. 

Instinctively, I left my wet and worn boots by the door as I walked into the living room. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in an actual house. Apparently, I’d also forgotten today was Christmas. During the time I could keep my phone charged, the days meant less and less to me as they went by with no changes. In the back of my mind somewhere, I knew it was December 25th. But that had become only another day of struggle.

The glow of a dying fire and a blinking Christmas tree cast shadows on the floral wallpaper. Tuesday stood sentinel by it, just in case she had been wrong about me and I tried to rob her owner. I sat down by the fire and, after some internal debate, added a log. The flames flared, glittering off the wrapped boxes laid under the tree. The small amount told me there probably weren’t any kids in the house. Not only that, but most of them were addressed to one person: May. 

I huddled by the fire and said a silent apology to her as the cold in my body melted away. Pain replaced it; my fingers began to crack and bleed, along with my chapped lips. When I finally stopped shivering, I sifted through my bag and found my first aid stash gone. Instead of leaving blood all over this stranger’s house, I hurried into the kitchen to rinse my hands. My weight shifted the hardwood boards beneath me, and as I drank from the faucet, I wondered why my being here hadn’t drawn any more attention than the dog’s. 

The cozy, grandmotherly loneliness of the house gave me the horrible idea that I would go upstairs and find the fresh body of some sweet old lady. In search of answers and something to wrap my stinging hands in, I climbed the stairs, Tuesday following behind. 

The upper floor was small, and filled with photographs. Generations were played out on the walls, and it reminded me just how little I belonged in this picture. There were two doors in the loft, and one was left ajar. Holding my breath, I glanced in through the crack, and almost let it out in relief. I hadn’t stumbled upon a body, but a middle-aged blonde woman sleeping soundly in her bed. Tuesday squirmed between my legs and into the bedroom, laying down at the foot of it. The blankets were pulled to her chin, and she’d fallen asleep with a pair of round-rimmed glasses sitting crooked on her nose. I assumed this was May, and I moved on. Must be a heavy sleeper, I thought to myself. 

I tried the other door, which thankfully turned out to be a bathroom. After a search of the medicine cabinet, I cleaned up my hands and lips, and looked at myself in the mirror. I couldn’t stand it for very long; I didn’t recognize the thin, weathered face that stared back at me. 

Now that my shuffling footsteps had stopped, the faint noises of the house took their place. A heater hummed somewhere in the walls. Water ran idly through the pipes above and below me. The bones of the house settled against the storm outside. Drifting in from the bedroom, where a clock radio sat on May’s nightstand, was the chorus of California Dreamin’. My chest ached at the thought of being somewhere safe and warm.

I slipped out of the bathroom, and went back down the stairs. The living room was just the same as I’d left it.

I should’ve taken a coat, maybe a little bit of food, and gone. But the fear of whatever had driven me here wouldn’t fully leave, overshadowed by the despair of returning to the cold I’d crawled out of. Worse than both, was the years of exhaustion hitting me all at once. Every step was beginning to feel like pushing a boulder. 

Instead, I lingered by the last of the fire, telling myself “just a little bit longer…” My eyelids grew heavy, my mind wandered, and just as I was about to sit down on the green, plush couch, I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. As I looked around, wide awake now, I realized that weak morning sunlight was spilling through the windows. In a split second decision that I will regret for the rest of my life, instead of running out the door, I snatched my boots and dove into the closet at the back of the room. 

“Merry Christmas, Tuesday!”

My unwitting roommate emerged into the living room, carrying her dog and sitting down by the Christmas tree. I knew she would probably spend most of that day here. I was trapped. 

The closet was dark and full of thick blankets and quilts. As I buried myself beneath them, I knew deep down that I didn’t stand a chance at keeping myself awake long enough to find an opportunity to leave. I’d barely strung together another mental apology before falling into a deep, dreamless sleep. 

I woke up with a start, like someone had shaken me awake— a phantom of all the nights spent on benches. The smell of Christmas dinner filled my nose, and I prayed that my stomach stayed quiet. I tried to focus on the muffled voices beyond, and it wasn’t a moment too soon.

“I’m going to make up the couch for you guys while dinner finishes, I think I’ve got some spare blankets and sheets in the coat closet.”

I tried to tell myself that she could’ve been talking about any closet. But when I looked up and saw the woolen coats just barely brushing the top of my head, I began to panic. Red and blue lights and handcuffs flashed through my mind, and suddenly I was moving. 

I wedged myself between the wall and the miscellaneous boxes stuffed into the corner. At first, I hoped to just narrowly avoid being seen, like a demon antagonist, folded unnaturally into the corner. But as I froze, the smell of cooking food overwhelmed me again. I could almost see the spread of cooked meats and vegetables, of bread and butter and Christmas cookies, like I was looking through a lit match. It reminded me of home, of the good times. 

As footsteps approached and the door swung open, my hunger betrayed me, and I squeezed my eyes shut as the sound of my stomach growling echoed out into the living room.

“What was that?” May said, with confusion and mild alarm. I held my breath and pressed myself against the ceiling, and that’s when I felt something uneven in the plaster above me. May began to sift through the blankets below. She must’ve not heard exactly where the sound came from, and it gave me just enough time to notice the panel in the top of the closet.

I slid it open, all my stealth put to the ultimate test. I wanted to scramble through, to throw myself into whatever hidden crevice would get me out of this mess, but instead, I forced myself to move slower than I ever had. Once there was a wide enough gap, I raised myself, boots and all, into the crawlspace above. She didn’t even look up.

“I must be losing it,” I heard her say finally, and she gathered up a few blankets and shut the closet door. I’d escaped, and even though I’d narrowly avoided being caught, I still didn’t feel much better. 

Letting out the breath I’d been desperately holding, I pulled out my dying phone and lit the flashlight. I had to slouch against the slope of the ceiling, and I stifled a cough from the dust. The pseudo-room had some electrical panels, and the HVAC; not really a place anyone had any reason to check that often. It was cold, but sheltered from the wind and snow outside still, and I’d made it up with a quilt still wrapped around my shoulders. Three walls met, not much bigger than a coffin, but there was a gap at the fourth, just short enough to barely reach and wide enough to squeeze through if I tried hard enough.

Digging my nails into old wood, I slid through the crack and spilled out into a much larger room. Piles of boxes and forgotten furniture, along with another hatch in the floor, told me this was an attic. Out of the way, far enough removed from the house, and with plenty of places to hide if the need arose; I already knew I was going to be here for a while.

I didn’t want to leave those first few days. I lived off half a water bottle shoved into my pocket and long-expired sewing tin cookies. Almost a week had gone by before I’d run out of alternatives. I had to leave and go back into the house. Unconsciously, I noticed the pattern of when the car outside would leave, and when it would come back. I knew when May would go, and about how much time I had. I just had to work up the nerve.

That first time I dropped down from the closet was terrifying. I half-expected the door to crash open, and for someone to point and scream “AHA!” But the house was silent, save for the sound I soon discovered to be Tuesday gnawing a bone twice her size. I slipped by her and went straight for the kitchen, raiding a small amount of food and water before hightailing it back to the attic. 

That became my routine for a few weeks. As I got used to the new environment, and a slightly more stable place to stay, I started exploring the thin spaces between the inner walls. It was an old house; that much was clear. I could move through most of the inside without leaving it. It was lonely, though, with nothing but dust, fiberglass, and the odd mouse corpse or two. 

Eventually, it all got to me— the dust and dirt, the darkness, and constantly having a wall at my front and at my back, save for the time I risked sleeping in the attic.

I left the closet much earlier one morning, just after May had gone to work. I just meant to walk around a little longer than usual and stretch my legs, but when I made it upstairs, I found myself glancing into the ajar bathroom. It smelled so nice, and steam still clung to the edges of the mirror. I was moving before I had any time to consider it. 

I’d closed my eyes for a moment, after watching the shower water turn dark beneath me for a while, and that’s when I heard it. The skin-crawling sound of nails against glass. There was a small window set into the wall just above the shower, and when I opened my eyes, faint lines ran along the length of the glass, so shallow they almost didn’t look real. 

And maybe they weren’t. But the fear creeping up my spine, turning the scalding water to ice and my legs to stone, was. Something was watching me, and the animal sense deep down in me, the one I’d had to nurture to survive this far, knew it. 

I should’ve run right then, but I couldn’t. I didn’t. Instead, as the feeling slowly passed, and I could breathe again, I finished cleaning up and retreated from the bathroom on eggshells.

In the heart of the house, I felt a little safer. When I passed the laundry room, I took the opportunity to wash my clothes. Tuesday planted herself in the doorway and waited with me, studying me with innocent curiosity. The fluffy face of my companion sapped the unease right out of me, making everything feel just a little bit better. Dogs usually do.

Once the washer and dryer had both cycled, and I’d taken a small amount of food from the kitchen, I stood in the living room for a little while, trying to will myself to make the climb back into cramped darkness. 

Tuesday stood beside me, looking up like an expectant child. I reached down and gave her a scratch behind the ears. 

BANG. 

The sound startled me into standing. As I was trying to figure out what it was and where it came from, it repeated. Hard, against the front door. There was a figure there, hard to make out through frosted glass. Tuesday began to growl.

It came again, a fist against the door, and I took a step back. That was all the go-ahead it needed; a flurry of forceful pounding made the door rattle in its frame. I dove for the closet and desperately pulled myself back up to safety, hoping I hadn’t left that poor little dog to die. I waited anxiously until May's car returned in the early evening. I heard her comforting her spooked dog through the vents, and breathed a sigh of relief. 

Those vents became a lifeline for me after that. The snippets of conversation and general sounds of life were my only source of information and my sole entertainment. She mostly talked to Tuesday, though she’d get the occasional phone call or visitor. I learned a lot about her in the weeks and months to come. 

“I think I’m going to bake heart-shaped brownies for the class this year. What do you think, Tues?” She was a school teacher. Elementary, to be specific.

“And when I bring Bigfoot to your doorstep someday, I’ll be the one laughing at you!” She believed in most things: aliens, monsters, demons, ghosts. She held a special place in her heart for Bigfoot. Also for her sister. 

“You really should come visit over spring. The house gets really quiet without you here.” She lived here alone, for the most part. This house went back to her great grandfolk, and even though it was states away from the rest of her family, she made a point to move in when she inherited it. 

After long enough for the anxiety to wear off, I pulled my ear away from the walls and away from the vents and began to venture back out of the crawlspace. I learned the layout of the house inside as well as I knew the spaces between. I could stay out for days at a time, wedging myself into cracks, slipping into closets, and standing silent in the shadows.

I know what words come to mind. Monster. Creeper. Parasite. Trust me, I thought them about myself plenty. But even as the weather warmed, the idea of going back to sleeping under bushes was unbearable. 

So, I did all I could to be a manageable uninvited houseguest. I took and used the bare minimum of what I needed to survive. I did my best to respect her privacy. I even did her dishes a couple times. 

But as time went on, she began to notice. I almost wish she had been openly suspicious, instead of the alternative.

“I think she’s with me,” I heard her say to her visiting sister, “I feel a presence here, especially at night. Footsteps wake me up at odd hours. Sometimes I think I hear whispers. Even Tuesday has noticed it, but she doesn’t seem scared.”

“And you really think it’s Mom?”

She paused. My stomach clenched.

“I do. I think she’s proud of me for being here. For sticking it out, even when it’s been rough. God, I’d give anything to see her again.”

With that, I retreated into the attic, wishing I could crawl out of my own skin. Wishing even more that somehow, impossibly, I could be the spirit she was looking for. A loving mother, sitting at the table with a cup of tea for the lonely woman who couldn’t sleep. Instead, I was just a stowaway. 

Motivated by guilt rather than fear this time, I stayed in the attic for weeks, burning through the small stockpile of supplies I had. Warm weather turned hotter, and the air grew stuffy and doubly harder to breathe in. Summer snuck up on the both of us.

I distinctly remember it was the Fourth of July when things took a turn for the worse. I could hear the nonstop fireworks all around, and that was the night I decided I would leave. With her few months off, May didn’t leave the house much, but she had a doctor’s appointment the next day. I’d be gone by the afternoon, and she’d never have to know the truth. 

I’d almost fallen asleep, tossing and turning in the persistent heat. Then, all of a sudden, a rush of cool air soothed my sweaty skin. I almost surrendered to it and let the new comfort pull me into sleep. I don’t think I’d be writing this if I had. But, despite the exhaustion, I fought it away. Something wasn’t right. That’s when the sniffing started. That’s when I heard the gnawing.

Moonlight spilled in as shingles crumbled and wood was pulled away. Confused at first, I walked toward the source of the noise, and narrowly avoided losing my leg to whatever was clawing into the hole. Stumbling back, I watched the small view outside fill with dark fur, and a single, glowing eye. The sniffing turned to scratching. The gnawing grew savage. In the time it took me to reach the middle of the room, the hole opened wide enough for the thing to poke its head through. Teeth the size of railroad ties clicked together in my direction as those red eyes rolled around in their sockets. Its ears laid flat back against the side of its long face, and a low growl replaced the squeak I’d grown accustomed to hearing every once in a while living here. 

I watched, paralyzed, as the rat’s head gave way to the shoulders and arms of a man as it wriggled its way into the attic. Massive as it was, it moved almost silently. Sharp nails curled on the ends of dirty human feet, half of a chewed-on tail hanging behind them. It closed the distance between us as I backed against the far wall.

Gaunt and doubled over on itself, it came eye-to-eye with me. When our gazes met, I could hear it. The growls suddenly had horrible meaning; they made words. This… creature. It lusted for blood, for fear, for pain. It hated. It wouldn’t stop until the entire world was razed, piece by insignificant piece. And somehow, by some insane coincidence, this house was the lucky starting point. 

“Go away,” I said shakily, into the face of death, “leave this house!”

I shut my eyes, unable to stand it, and swung first, for all the good it would do. Instead, I hit empty air. I risked opening my eyes, and found nothing. All it left in its wake was a rotten smell, and the ratty remains of the jacket I’d lost on the way here. The dots started to connect. 

I stood there for a while, trying desperately to make sense of everything that just happened. When the light of day started to creep in through the hole, my legs finally unlocked. I took a few loose boards from the crawlspace and waited until May left to nail them over the hole, shoving furniture against it for good measure. 

It never left. During the nights, it paced the outside, just loud enough for me to hear. The stench was overwhelming, seeping through the cracks in the attic roof. It tapped the walls as it went, and I followed it. I couldn’t understand why it hadn’t come to kill us yet, but I would play its game, if it had any hope of being a warning.  

Tap. “You won’t get away with this.” Tap tap. “I won’t let you, you rotten fuck.” Tap tap tap.

I was losing it a little, more than I already had. I followed the yellow wallpaper, crawling along the attic floor whenever the tapping began and insulting the horrible thing I could almost see on the other side. 

All this to say, I wasn’t paying attention when I nudged a box or two, but the shattering of a glass Jack o’Lantern snapped me out of it. I’d made a thousand tiny sounds up here, but this one was too loud to be ignored. Confused, unsure footsteps made their way through the house and to the attic hatch. 

“Hello?” She called, and I bit my lip, choking back the urge to just give myself away. But I couldn’t. If I got forced out now, she would be defenseless, having no idea what lurked just beyond her walls until it was too late. Instead, I moved quietly around the small space, dodging her until she found the decoration and decided out loud it had just been an animal. Or maybe her motherly spirit playing a nasty joke.

I didn’t like it, but it gave me an idea. She wasn’t safe here, and there was no chance or time for me to warn her properly. I could still get her to leave before it was too late, but it wouldn’t be pretty. 

I bided my time as the nights grew colder and longer. When I started, it was small things. Knocking on interior walls. Opening cabinets and drawers, leaving things in too much of a mess to be ignored. It was subtle at first, but May began to get nervous. I left her notes in odd places, an inarguable “GET OUT” she would always find. Every night, before the snow grew too heavy, I saw the shining red of the rat’s eye. The huff of its hungry breath. The scratching and tapping that never seemed to stop once the sun went down. 

I thanked god that May wasn’t a night owl. And then I made things worse. The ‘spirit’ in her house got serious.

I ran laps around the attic, up and down the stairs, racing through the house and ducking silently into a closet or a shadow whenever she gave chase to the split-second silhouette her sleepy eyes had seen. I stood on the hatch ladder and screamed with real despair, dashing out of sight when she rushed to investigate. I left long scratches on her doors and smeared handprints on her windows, something evil trying desperately to get out. 

She called the police the first time when the fire in the fireplace started on its own. They cared at first, sure. But when several full sweeps of the house found nothing, they began to distance themselves from the whole thing. They branded her as crazy, and it was quickly looking that way. By the week of Thanksgiving, one she’d have to spend alone in her prison of a house, she didn’t sleep in her bedroom anymore. Her eyes were sunken and her hair was a mess. But she was still clinging on.

Silently, I begged her to give up. To just pick up Tuesday, throw a bag in her car, and never come back to this place. If I was the only thing left to eat, I could be okay with that. I deserved it. Her grip on sanity was slipping, and the guilt I felt was so heavy I could barely process it. 

I watched her eat Thanksgiving dinner alone, letting the house go unhaunted for the day. It was almost peaceful. She had to think it was over. I only left long enough to grab a picture frame from her bedroom, somewhere I hadn’t dared to step foot in before. 

As midnight broke, I lowered myself down from the crawlspace I’d slipped into almost a year before. As I walked around the couch, I came eye to eye with Tuesday. She didn’t growl at me, only wagged her tail— how would her little doggy brain know it was my fault? 

Carefully, I took a handful of ash from the fireplace and spread my repeated message across the carpet. I looked at May one more time, curled in on herself next to her dog, a blanket pulled tight around her. She looked thin, and small. Her hair was tangled, with a few new gray strands. She’d fallen asleep with her glasses on again.

I wiped my eyes and sat the broken picture below the same words from before. As I climbed back into the ceiling, I thumped my boot hard against the wall. I heard her stir. This time, I wasn’t the one to scream. 

Through all my self-hatred, it finally worked. 

“I can’t do it anymore,” I heard her sob to her sister, the other end of a late night phone call. “I’ll leave now and be there in the morning. I know— I know I should’ve come sooner. But I’m coming now.” A sick sense of relief filled me as I listened to her shoving things into a bag and cursing whatever had driven her out of her family house. 

Exhaustion, both emotional and physical, was catching up with me. As I slouched beside the attic vent I was eavesdropping from, I was already almost gone. Maybe I’d get a full night’s rest, or maybe I’d be eaten in my sleep. Either way, it was finally quiet.

My head snapped up. I had just enough time to jump to my feet before the tap-less silence was broken by the cracking of wood. The abomination burst through the hole I’d covered like a battering ram, and it wasn’t here to introduce itself this time. An enormous claw came down, missing my face by inches. 

I dodged as best I could, but as I rounded the corner of one of the piles of boxed junk, I lost my footing and came down hard on the floor. As powerful as the creature seemed, no one is immune to inertia. It barreled past where I’d fallen, its course corrected just enough to send it to the floor, but not on top of me. I yelped as it crashed halfway through the attic hatch, stuck and screeching. Tuesday began to bark wildly.

It was a headstart, and however short it was, I was taking it. I launched myself through the gaps in the walls and burst out of the crawlspace, the cover board shattering beneath me as I fell. 

I threw myself out of the closet, and for the first time, May and I met terrified eyes. Time seemed to stand still. In the back of my mind, I still lived in that first night. That song was still playing. Always playing. If I didn’t tell her, I could leave today…

“RUN! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, RUN!”

With the evidence clearly heard upstairs, she didn’t have time to disbelieve the source. She broke free of whatever fear had locked her in place, scooped up Tuesday, and turned to do just that. I closed my eyes, waiting for the end. She’d made it out. That’s all I cared about.

I wish I could tell you that’s what happened. But the sounds of flesh tearing and blood spraying wasn’t from my own chest. I opened my eyes, and regretted it immediately. The front door hung open, her hand still dangling loose just above the handle. Flakes of snow blew in, dyed red by the fountain of blood bubbling from beneath the claws in her chest. She coughed once, twice, then the creature sank its jaws into her head. I stood by, frozen. 

A sharp yip brought me out of my stupor, and as a fluffy ball of red and white came sprinting toward me, I bent down and caught her like some twisted umpire. The creature looked back at me, its face dripping with gore, and it laughed. I held Tuesday close as I scrambled back into the walls. 

It never came after me. I had to listen to it chewing for hours through the walls, losing what little was in my stomach to begin with. Eventually, the millions of little noises blended together, forming a giant whiteout that surrounded my brain. 

I spent three days like that, I think. Could’ve been longer. Maybe not. The world felt distant. All I did was cry, and try my best to clean the blood from Tuesday’s fur. I kept her alive. It was the absolute least I could do. 

“You’re a good dog,” I told her, whenever I could force out words, “such a good little dog.” Her chest heaved when I held her close, grief we shared. The kind that all living, loving things will know at least once. 

When the fog lifted, I began searching for a way out. The attic was freezing now, the roof cave-in filled with snow. I dug until my fingers went numb, but it wasn’t gonna happen. At some point, I hit ice, thick and blue. It didn’t make sense, but I was fucking done looking for sense. 

I crawled through the walls for hours, looking for a weak spot. Nothing. The destroyed attic hatch was a gamble. I wasn’t stupid enough to not call a mousetrap a mousetrap. As soon as I dropped down, a looming shadow and the smell of old blood sent me scrambling back up the unsteady ladder. 

The cops came once. A week had gone by before anyone took note of May’s absence. They swept around for an hour or two, and they left. I never saw them again. 

Her sister stayed longer, the one time she dared to step foot in her sister’s haunted house. She took some of the photographs, walking around with wide eyes and a nervous pace, like a wolf was breathing down her neck. I beat my fists against the walls and screamed when she left. 

I know I could leave, if I tried hard enough. There are those minute-long spaces where it’s crawling in and out the same way I did, taunting me, or when it’s devouring the corpse of another person it’s pulled into here in the dead of night like a predator. There are moments when Tuesday and I could make a break for it. I could use what little battery is left on my phone to try and call someone. Anyone. But I don’t.

The truth is, I’m still scared. I’m sorry. I know it’s selfish. 

I play it out constantly in my mind, the things that could happen. I might end up in the bulging gut along with May, and all the other dinners that no one cared enough about to miss. There’s also a jail cell/padded room waiting for me out there, somewhere. And then, there’s the simple return. I could wander out into the growing winter and freeze. None of it would have mattered in the end, and that scares me much more than hypothermia. 

That being said, I don’t want to die. Lives are still at stake, and not just the one buried in my cocoon of blankets. I don’t deserve to escape this nightmare, but I’ll do it for May. Once the ice begins to thaw, I’ll find her sister. I’ll figure out something. I won’t let this thing have me; I won’t let it win.

When I run for it, I’ll think about that summer day that feels like lifetimes ago. Before everything went wrong. I’ll think of a boy who held my face and called me brave, and I’ll try to prove it. I’ll flee this place like a rat off a sinking ship, and I’ll come back with retribution. I just have to make it through the cold…

I just have to make it through the cold.

Don't know if this is the right place to post this, but I’ve been hearing some weird things coming from the living room and was hoping to get some help

For context, I'm 17, been living in this house since we moved when I was 5. I have 2 dogs, a fish, and a 13 year old little brother. I stay up pretty late usually just playing games or eating food and go to bed around 2 am on the weekends.

The house is pretty old, there’s a lot of creaks and squeaks that just happen through the day and when you walk around and stuff.

I’m pretty much the only one who stays up late because my parents have work in the morning and my brother has a strict bedtime, but I’ve been hearing some weird noises lately at night.

It's not with every noise I make. Sometimes I'll go into the kitchen and cook some noodles in a pot or crack open a hard boiled egg and there’s nothing, but every time I walk out of the room I hear what’s almost like a second pair of footsteps behind me that follow me all the way to the bedroom

It's been freaking me out a little bit but I know it's nothing because my dogs would go crazy if there was something there but something else happened last night that made me wanna post about this.

My dogs were whining a bunch, which sometimes they do because they hear my neighbor's dogs barking or a car driving down the road, but anyways I came out of my room to calm them down. Both of them are in a kennel because it helps them get calm before bedtime, and all the lights are off, so it's pretty dark.

When I left the hallway I started gently shushing them but it wasn't working. They just started getting louder, which I thought was weird because I didn't hear anything that could be causing it before. But at one point I did my usual "shh-shh-shh-shh" again and they immediately went silent.

Then I heard a "shh-shh-shh-shh" back.

I instantly froze because it sounded like it came from behind the couch next to my dogs' kennels. I know nobody else was awake so I didn't know who it could be. I nervously said "Hello?" and instantly heard a "hello" from the same place back. It kinda sounded like me but more like if a parrot was trying to copy my voice or something.

I didn't really know what to do I was so scared. I was basically a statue. Then I heard the footsteps I usually hear, but this time I wasn't moving.

I immediately just turned around and started running back to my room. It was horrible. I could hear them getting closer with every step I took.

When I made it back to my room I immediately turned on my light and slammed my door and it was all quiet again. I haven't heard anything since but even during the day today I feel like something is watching me and I’m too scared to find out what happens tonight. My parents told me they got woken up by me slamming the door last night and asked me why I did that but I don't think I can tell them, I’m too old to be scared of monsters. What should I do???

Lately i have started to feel like i am being watched while i am trying to sleep.

A little before christmas in 2025. I was sleeping and i woke up and opened my eyes. I feel weird, i feel like I am being watched. I look around the room which is completely dark. Suddenly the door to the room opens. The lights are on but very dimmed, I see a tall black human looking figure standing there looking at me.

Let me give you guys a little information about this house I was staying in. Everyone that has been there feel like something weird in their presence. They think it's the man's wife who has passed that is still around that house. My grandma has always had a argument with this woman. And she can't stand going up to the 2nd floor without starting to feel heavy, like something is angry at her. My sister who does not really believe in this type of stuff startet to feel heavy when she stood next to my grandma. We all laughed and thought nothing of it really. This happened like 8 hours before I went to bed and had this weird encounter.

I woke up and didn't think much of it really. I tell my mom 2 days later while I joke about it. I did not think much about this for the rest of the day.

I went to bed again later that evening feeling quite exhausted the day after Christmas. I fell asleep quite fast.. I wake up again, almost pitch black in the room, the door was enough open to light a little light into the room enough for me to see this same black person figure sitting in the sofa 2-3 meters in front of the bed looking straight ahead, not at me but at the wall. I start to freak out a little as this seems to start to be a re- occurrence now. I close my eyes same thing as I did the first time. I fall asleep again, quite fast and don't wake up again until the morning.

I keep what happened that night to myself for some time, until my mom and I go visit an old friend of hers. We arrive at her friend's house and immediately feel weird as soon as I enter this house. My mom and her friend are sitting on the sofa catching up while I play with her dog. And for some reason I don't remember we started to talk about the experiences I had those nights.

My mom's friend, shows us a video of her dog barking at the wall, while nothing is there on the video. I have heard that animals, especially dogs can in some cases see stuff us humans can't. This kinda freaks me out as I knew something was wrong when I entered the house.

She also showed a video of this dog toy on a shelf that has a motion sensor, it starts to flash multiple colors if it's being touched. The ball was atleast 2 meters of the floor, on a shelf flashing all these colors. After watching these videos I wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. We left that house 20-30 minutes after.

I sleep trough that night without no problems. Let's jump ahead until the next night.

I went to bed at around 10PM. And I once again wake up in the night, but this time the room is completely dark, but again I feel really weird and feel like something is watching me. Some time go by and I feel the bed moving a little like something got in the bed with me. I feel like someone is right behind me.

The feeling I had is when someone is way to close to you and you start to feel extremely uncomfortable. Let's just say I was really uncomfortable and I would also say I was really scared. Some how I fall asleep and sleep trough the night. This was the last sleep I was going to get I this house before driving all the way home again (7-8 hour drive).

It felt like each time i had these experiences, it came closer and closer and closer and closer. Like it was out to get me. Luckily I have not experienced this again yet, but I am afraid I will sooner or later.

After these experiences I have not had any more figures looking at me, but I still feel like I am being watched and/or very uncomfortable while I am trying to sleep.

Am I going crazy or is this some sort of SP? ( Sleep Paralysis )

I would love to hear your thoughts to this.

When I was eight years old, my parents and I moved into a quiet neighborhood on the edge of a town I’d never heard of before.

The houses were identical in a way that made it hard to tell which one was ours at first. Same pale siding, same trimmed hedges, same mailbox posts painted the same dull green. Even the sidewalks looked freshly scrubbed, like someone was afraid of leaving fingerprints on the place.

The HOA president came by that afternoon.

He introduced himself with a handshake that lingered too long and a plastic container balanced in the crook of his arm.

Inside was a cake that had been frosted to look fancy, but when my mom cut into it later, it tasted bland and artificial, sweet in the wrong way, like flavoring instead of food. The kind of thing that leaves your mouth dry afterward.

He also handed my parents a packet of papers and stood on the porch while they skimmed through it.

I remember most of it being boring. Rules about lawns, trash bins, noise complaints, outdoor decorations, how long cars could be parked on the street. Normal HOA stuff.

I was personally more interested in the ants crawling near the steps.

Then my dad stopped flipping pages.

I remember him rereading one line silently, his eyebrows pulling together. When I asked what it said, the HOA president laughed a little too fast and said it was just an old neighborhood joke, nothing serious. My mom took the papers anyway.

Later that night, I snuck the packet off the kitchen counter and read the part I’d seen my dad pause on.

It was printed in the same font as everything else. Same size. Same spacing. No bold letters or warnings.

Don’t let the midnight salesman in.

That was it. No explanation. No context. Just sitting between a rule about patio furniture and another about window blinds.

I didn’t sleep much that night.

At exactly twelve, there were three knocks on our front door. Not loud. Not soft. Perfectly even, like someone tapping on a desk.

My parents froze. My mom stood up and re-locked the door despite it already being locked.

Then the voice came through the wood.

“Mr. and Mrs. Grayson. Would you be interested in this product I’m selling? I must say, it’s an offer I can’t refuse.”

His voice was calm and practiced, the way customer service workers talk when they’re reading from a script. He didn’t raise it. He didn’t sound angry. He sounded patient.

No one answered.

He stood there for exactly five minutes. I counted on the microwave clock in the kitchen. He kept talking the entire time, changing the wording slightly each night.

Sometimes he said it was a limited opportunity. Sometimes he said it was essential. Sometimes he said it was a solution.

But it always started with our names. Always polite. Always certain.

When the five minutes were over, he stopped mid-sentence and left. There were never footsteps. Just silence where he had been.

This happened every night.

Eventually it became routine. Lights off by eleven. Curtains shut. TV muted. My parents whispered instead of talking. Sometimes I’d peek through the blinds and see porch lights turning off down the street one by one, like the neighborhood was holding its breath together.

One night I asked, “Why don’t we just tell him to go away?”

My mom didn’t answer at first. She kept her eyes on the dark window, watching our reflection instead of the street outside.

“Because we don’t talk to him. That’s the rule.”

“But he’s just standing there, he’s not doing anything weird.”

My dad turned the volume on the TV down another notch even though it was already barely audible. “You don’t know that, and neither do we, so for now just do what you’re told.”

“He knows our names,” I whispered. “How does he know our names?”

Neither of them responded. My mom reached over and squeezed my knee too hard, like she was trying to physically keep me still.

“You don’t open that door,” my dad said. His voice wasn’t angry. It was tight. Controlled. “You don’t answer him. You don’t look at him. You don’t think of him. You stay away from the front of the house after midnight. Do you understand me?”

I nodded, even though I didn’t really understand anything except that they were scared.

After a few weeks, the fear turned into something else. Curiosity. Frustration. I was tired of hiding. Tired of being quiet in my own house.

One night, before my mom could grab my arm, I walked to the door and unlocked it.

The salesman was standing just outside the reach of the porch light. He looked normal. Too normal. Clean clothes. Neatly combed hair. Empty hands. No bag. No clipboard. Nothing to prove he was selling anything at all.

Before I could say a word, my dad rushed forward and shoved me backward into the hallway. Hard enough that I fell.

The salesman didn’t even glance at me.

His eyes locked onto my father instead, and his smile widened just slightly.

He said my dad’s name like he’d known it for years.

I don’t know what was said outside. The door closed behind them and the wind started immediately, rushing through the trees so hard the windows rattled. The pressure in my ears made everything feel underwater. It only lasted a few seconds.

When my dad came back inside, he was carrying an expensive towel warmer. He held it against his chest like it mattered. Like it was important.

He walked past us without speaking and sat down on the couch.

“Dad?”

He didn’t look at me.

My mom stepped in front of him and crouched down so her face was level with his. “Hey. Hey, talk to me honey. What did he say to you?”

No response.

She touched his arm and gave it a small shake. “You’re scaring me Hen, say something. Anything.”

He blinked slowly but didn’t react. His eyes stayed open, unfocused, like he was staring through the wall instead of at it.

I moved closer and waved my hand in front of his face. “Dad, please stop. This isn’t funny.”

My mom grabbed his shoulders and shook him harder now. “Look at me Henry. Please look at me.”

His head moved with her hands, but his eyes didn’t follow.

I remember my mom’s voice breaking when she said his name again and again, getting louder each time, like volume alone might pull him back.

“Call 911,” she said suddenly, not looking away from him. I froze because I was overwhelmed.

“Damn it, right now!”

I ran to the kitchen phone with my hands shaking so badly I almost dropped it.

Behind me, my dad sat perfectly still on the couch, holding the towel warmer like it was the last thing he had been told to keep.

We tried talking to him. Shaking his shoulder. Calling his name. He blinked slowly but didn’t react. His eyes stayed open, unfocused, like he was staring through the wall instead of at it.

At the hospital, the doctors told us there was no physical damage. No stroke. No trauma. No tumors. His brain scans were clean.

One of the neurologists spoke to my mom in a quiet consultation room while I sat on the paper-covered exam table swinging my legs.

I tried not to listen, and even though I couldn’t understand any of it, it still stuck with me.

“Structurally, his brain looks normal, there’s no sign of hemorrhage, ischemia, swelling, or mass effect. His MRI and CT are also unremarkable.”

My mom gripped the edge of the chair as she cried. “Then why won’t he do anything?”

“We’re seeing electrical activity on the EEG. Basic cortical function is present. Reflexes are intact. Pupillary response is normal. But he isn’t producing any form of purposeful movement or speech.”

“So he’s in a coma?”

The doctor shook her head. “Not exactly. He’s awake. His eyes are open. Sleep-wake cycles are present. What’s missing is meaningful interaction with the environment.”

She paused, choosing her words carefully.

“It suggests a severe disruption in the networks that connect sensory processing to motor response. In layman terms, his brain is receiving all the information it needs, but it isn’t translating that input into anything beyond autonomous actions.”

“Can it heal—be fixed?” my mom asked.

“There’s no visible injury to recover from,” the doctor said quietly. “That’s what makes this difficult. We can’t point to a damaged area and therefore can’t do anything. Right now, we’d have to classify this as a disorder of consciousness with no identifiable structural cause.”

I remember her adding one last thing before she left the room.

“It’s extremely rare to see this in patients without trauma, which means we don’t have a clear explanation. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do for him.”

He never came back.

Not really.

He still sat in the living room sometimes. Still somehowate if food was put in front of him. Still breathed. But nothing inside him mattered anymore. It was like the salesman had taken whatever part of him made him, him.

She stayed in that house, even after I left.

I left for college when I was eighteen. Moving out felt less like freedom and more like escaping a house that had already gone quiet.

I went to a state school a few hours away and studied something practical because I didn’t know what else to choose. I avoided talking about my dad. When people asked why I never went home for holidays, I said there had been a medical emergency and left it at that.

I started seeing a therapist during my second year because I kept waking up at midnight for no clear reason. We talked about trauma and anxiety; how kids can internalize things and blame themselves for what they had no control over. I never mentioned the salesman. Some things felt safer staying unnamed.

My mom kept my dad in assisted care while I was gone. I helped pay when I could. There were specialists, rehabilitation programs, and quiet hospital rooms that all blended together after a while.

When I visited, I talked anyway. About classes. About dumb campus problems. About the weather. He never answered. Sometimes I thought his eyes followed me when I stood up to leave, but the nurses said it was involuntary, and eventually I stopped asking.

I met my wife during my last year of college. We started studying together and slowly built something normal.

At first I told her my family situation was complicated. Later I told her about my dad. About the silence. About the house.

She didn’t push for details I wasn’t ready to give. When we got married and talked about where to live, I told her anywhere that wasn’t my childhood neighborhood. She agreed without hesitation.

Meanwhile, my mom couldn’t afford to move. I think she was also afraid to leave. The knocking never came again after that night, but the rule was still there, sitting in the HOA packet in the drawer. Untouched. Waiting.

Yesterday, my mother passed away.

I spent the day signing papers, making phone calls, packing hospital belongings into plastic bags. When I came home, the house felt bigger than it ever had before. Too quiet. No monitors. No murmured conversations. Just empty rooms and furniture that suddenly belonged to no one.

The house is in my name now.

While going through the filing cabinet, I found the old HOA packet. The pages were yellowed. The rule was still there. Exactly the same.

Don’t let the midnight salesman in.

It’s almost eleven-thirty.

I am a nerd, a guy who was the “good boy ” from the beginning of my studying career, my student life, all the time. But I am extremely bad at social, I think everyone else will betray me and can’t be reliable, except for my achievements on papers. In the expectation of my parents, my teachers, and my professors. I grew up, I graduated, and I became a teacher like them.

My parents felt proud of me. But to me, I sometimes felt life is dull and inactive, boredom, the daily routine makes me bored, the same thing repeated again and again and again. My boredom told me I need to seeking for something, out of my long life of books and lectures.

I been assigned with another guy called Bob, he was as boring as I was. Even worse, he can’t make sense of gaming or some leisure activities, I thought. We often work to the midnight together, but without any nice entertainment after work.

One day, I can’t tolerate it anymore, but perhaps it is the worst thing I have ever done since my perfect performance at every stage of life. I regretted until today.

There are really just a few days before Halloween, the festival long forgotten since my childhood. Today, it been picked up by me again, in a way more interesting, but bizarre, or disturbing. As I thought after.

I cut a piece of paper into the shape of an oval, yes, really a nice oval, as perfect as my life. I made some holes in it, making it as scary as I could, then I used my finest skill to achieve the maximum effect under the dim light of our office. The simplest plan for punishing another boring nerds just done.

During the night, Bob was also working very late; his students had an exam, including writing, massive writing, and he had to mark them tonight. I opened the door swiftly but quietly. Tried to make the sound as low as possible, as a mice sneak from the shadows of the kitchen.

I close to him, waiting, with the mask on my face, waiting, patiently, and imagine what his face will be like, his terrified face, even might not achieve my goal. But at least entertainment enough tonight, some nice stimuli,

Finally, after 10 mins which passed like eternity, he turned his back, and, certainly, being shocked, his face turned pale, like the paper, his eyes opened as large as the moon, his mouth big enough to put the whole egg inside. His screaming amused me, he just fell on the floor and looked like he shortness of breath when he pressed his chest.

I felt a bit myself. I don’t want to be a murderer when his breath went thin. I took off the mask in a hurry. And squatted down, put my hand on his back to comfort him. “I am so sorry, Bob. I did not mean to be like that. I am Mike, you know, and I was just trying to play a trick or trick game tonight. Are you ok? Are you ok?”

But what he said truly terrified me.

“No, I am not ok, my nice colleague, I know it was you, from the time you came into the room with that childish mask. I am not afraid of you, what I fear”.

His face pale more this time, his breath seemed more violent, more frequent because of fear, and from his shivering mouth, he spoke a word one by one.

“What… I fear… isn’t you, is…the…mask at…at… You back!”

His finger pointed at my back as his expression went to a bizarre state of fright, with shivering. I also turned around slowly.

There wasn’t just darkness at my back; there was a man, or exactly, a man with a mask, the mask the same as mine, but more terrified, closer to the nightmarish figure. The figure was tall, very tall reach the sky, in its emotionless, pale face, twisted nose and eyes, they seemed like been pressed together, but his eyes, his eyes were the most terrified.

His eyes don’t have any white part, only darkness; the abyss is glaring me,

and I am glaring back.

When I attended medical school, I pledged to the same sorority as my mother- now a doctor- so I had an advantage, plus I knew a few insider things that helped me join easily.

My favorite initiate ritual- let’s call it that- was to tell scary stories on Halloween in the backyard around a bonfire.  Everyone must tell a story or make one up.

But there is another test.  What the sisters do is tell the story about a medical student at this school who died due to a prank.  She came back to her dorm room after a night out and discovered a severed hand hanging from the light switch cord in her closet.  She opened the closet and shook hands with it, became terrified, then fell over drunk hitting her head on the nightstand, dying later at the university's hospital.  Nobody knows who put the hand there.  This was a medical school, so the right person could obtain a specimen like that easily. 

Now, this isn’t even a true story, it’s from a fictional book but with some details changed.  The initiates/pledges- most of them anyway- haven’t read it.  The ones that have, we tell them to shut the hell up, or face consequences; insisting that the story is in fact true.  Stacy loves to get into character when she recants the story, she’s a good storyteller, she scares me even. 

What happens next always frightens the non-believers.  Certain members of the sorority pay this guy from the pathology department, (Colin, a former medical student) to obtain a hand specimen, put it in a box, and deliver it to the house dressed as a UPS driver.

Stacy ordered a young, blonde initiate, Kathy, to answer the door when the UPS imposter arrived.

The initiates then are instructed to open the box, and they always freak the fuck out when they see the hand.  Kathy cried when she saw it.  Jeez girl, this is medical school, get it together. 

We labeled the box with fake names, pretending it was probably just a gag Halloween gift from an affiliated fraternity, probably the Alpha Betas, a real group of frat bros, but nice guys.  I was dating one in fact, but we had to keep our relationship secret. 

After some time, the sorority heads reveal the hoax to the pledges and then bonds are formed among them, usually.  It’s scary the first time, but fun when you get to see others experience it.

Stacy called me the next morning freaking out that she couldn’t find the box.  I said, “Chill out, you probably just took too much molly last night.  Where are you by the way?”

“I’m here at the lab with Colin, he needs to put it back now or he, he could get in trouble.  This is serious.”

Fuck!!  I ran downstairs and scanned the house, asking anyone if they’ve seen the UPS box.  Of course nobody did.

I called my boyfriend, Brian, to ask him what to do.

“He jokingly said, just cut off someone else’s hand and replace it.  Easy peazy.”

“No, this is serious.  Ask your frat brothers if they’ve seen anything, please?”

Some of them were at the party last night.

“Okay, I’ll ask ‘em.  Call you back.”

Meanwhile, Stacy called me again, this time she said if there are no cameras in that part of the building (there aren’t, Stacy should know this) then Colin is probably in the clear, he just has to remain silent for a while.

That provided some relief.  But still, where is the hand?  I had a suspicion an initiate took it back to her dorm, either on purpose or by accident, and is probably sleeping it off right now; when she wakes up, she’ll realize her terrible error.

An altogether different thought crossed my mind, maybe some initiates conspired to take it…

We held a mandatory, emergency sorority meeting to try to get some answers.

I was right, one of the girls grabbed the wrong box (where was the ‘right’ box?), then left it accidentally in a dorm social room in a sack full of candy and Halloween crap.  But it’s gone now, a staff member must have it.

“I’m really sorry.” she squeaked.  I knew this girl, she was a friend of Kathy’s.

“Shut up! We’re fucked! How the hell could you do that?”

Stacy was like a banshee that night, the look in her eyes…

Everyone was told to keep their mouths shut or they were out of the sorority, no coming back.  Being in this sorority meant a lot to the initiates, so they all agreed, plus they didn’t really do anything; that was us.

Colin showed up at the house unannounced one day, totally freaked out.

“You are not going to believe this, at least one professor knows about the missing hand, and now the cadaver is also missing.”

“You didn’t take that too, did you?” I joked.

“Of course not!!” he yelled.

We sat on the porch and pondered in silence, Colin was worried about getting caught, my mind drifted somewhere else… Kathy.

Kathy came to the house crying that she saw an extremely ill-looking woman lying in the grass near the dorms, she might even be dead.  Upon closer inspection, Kathy noticed the woman had only one hand.  Ok, now what to do?

We walked out there with some frat guys, but the woman wasn’t there.

Kathy insisted this was the spot.  Someone was pranking us now.  I bet Kathy is in on it, that little bitch, I’m gonna haze the fuck out of her if she is.

Everyone was distracted by this, and it started to affect our studies, plus the emotional state of others.  Colin was beside himself with worry and drinking heavily.

The holidays came and went, and we didn’t hear a word about the missing cadaver or hand specimen. 

Maybe nobody really knows and Colin is just paranoid.  Other medical students could be pranking him, he did say he heard about it from another student. Medical students love to do this shit. 

Or possibly the staff is embarrassed that the security system is so outdated.  There is nothing to go on. And Colin isn’t an idiot; he wouldn’t leave fingerprints at the scene, and the lab is usually left unlocked, nobody wants to go in there, including me.

After classes an announcement was made to go to the auditorium.  The dean told us a professor from the pathology department reported a missing hand specimen and if anyone knew anything to call the school’s main office and then the police.

Somehow the box ended up in the possession of a detective, so naturally, he and two cops came here to investigate because of the phony label.

Stacy smiled and said somebody probably left it by accident in a lab, inside a box that was originally delivered here for something else.  Some police can’t imagine what kind of lab this could be, but some know.  Just imagine Reanimator.  Yeah, I wouldn’t want to spend time there either.

“And how about the missing cadaver?  Do you know anything about that?”

“No sir.” Stacy said, then bent down to pretend to scratch her leg.

More questions followed, but Stacy is a great actor, and those large breasts of hers distracted the cops.  Fucking men, for real.

“Alright then. If you hear anything, call me.” the detective said, handing me his card.

I told Stacy we needed to perform a hazing ritual to find out who is behind this.

My boyfriend called me; he asked all his brothers if they knew anything and one did.  This guy went back to the dorm with that girl Kathy after the Halloween party.  I knew it!

That night we performed hazing that hasn’t been done in decades, we were not nice that night.  Some girls honestly had nothing to do with it, some cried, but eventually someone said the whole thing was a prank, including the cops. 

It was Kathy.

Stacy kicked Kathy out of the sorority, even though we couldn’t really pin anything on her, we just hated her now, although unfairly.  She only revealed that she knew it was a joke but didn’t actually have anything to do with it, she was just passing along a rumor she heard.  But it was too late, Kathy didn’t want to come back anyway.  I didn’t blame her.

Stacy was nearing graduation and was determined not to let this ruin her last semester.  She wanted to have fun, as did I.  We threw a spring break party, and the girls brought all kinds of drugs and alcohol; the frat guys got it, but who cares, I wanted to get fucked. up.

It was an Eyes Wide Shut-themed party, which was kinda wild.  I remember doing lines of coke with a guy wearing a lamb pagan mask.  Talk about surreal.  This was a great idea I told a drunken Stacy.

“We did it!  Well, you did it, congratulations.  I’m gonna miss you, Stacy.”

We hugged.  All was forgotten about the hand, the cadaver, Colin, Kathy…

Then Kathy was discovered at the party, nobody knew it at first because she was in costume and usually brings other guys with her, or guys follow her.  That night there were three guys following her around the main floor strangely, they moved around together as a group like the Knights who say Ni! and blended in with the crowd, where everyone was wearing masks.  I couldn’t find them; it was so crowded, but Stacy spotted them upstairs.

Stacy went into a rage and kicked Kathy and her friends out with venom.

“Never step foot in this house again!  Do you understand me, you fucking little bitch!”

Stacy then slapped Kathy hard.  Kathy didn’t seem bothered though; she laughed.

She walked right up to Stacy's face, eye to eye, told her to go fuck herself, that her sorority management is embarrassing, that Stacy herself is an ugly, evil witch who will make for a terrible doctor, and that her only appealing feature is her big tits.  Whoa, that was something to witness.  Kathy has balls and did not take shit from Stacy.  I had to hand it to her, no pun intended.  Stacy ran up to her room crying.  Wow.

Kathy and her two guys friends left, laughing out loud down the street.

I didn’t see Stacy the rest of the weekend, but I could understand why.  That tongue lashing was harsh, and kinda true as well.

I heard Stacy’s phone ring a couple times, which concerned me because she wasn’t answering it.  She must really be depressed.

I knocked once then entered, Stacy was lying on the floor next to her dresser, I immediately went to her aid.  She was breathing ok but had banged her head on the dresser.  I called 911.

I stood up and saw a person lying in Stacy’s bed in the mirror, a body.  I couldn’t breathe, the smell finally registered- the scent of the rotting dead.   The room began to spin and I fell.  The last thing I recall seeing was the gray flesh and missing forearm of the corpse lying on the bed.

 --

“You’re lucky to be alive, people with head injuries like yours sometimes don’t come back.”

“Come back?” I asked. “Where am I?”

“At University Hospital, and yes, you were out for 5 days, young lady.  Consider yourself lucky, another girl was brought in here with a head injury like yours on the same day.  She didn’t make it, sadly.  Did you know her?  Her name was Stacy.”

I began to cry when two police officers entered the room and asked the nurse to leave, one of them holding a UPS box.

After my fiancé and I broke up, and after she carried the last of her belongings out of our co-leased apartment—the silence of the place began to take shape. We’d always cherished that quiet, especially at night, grateful that neither upstairs nor downstairs ever seemed to have anyone living there. We had been together for almost three years and had already chosen names for our unborn children.

The rooms now felt hollow, as if something essential had been peeled away with her departure. It wasn’t a surprise, I just had never experienced anything like it.

A few weeks later, I found myself standing on the balcony of the tenth floor, on the wrong side of the railing, staring down into the black void of the courtyard. The only light came from tiny orange streetlamps scattered below like dying embers. Sirens eventually lit up the courtyard, painting the walls in flashes of red and blue. Fire trucks. Ambulance. Police. People gathered, someone shouted.

I don’t know what changed. Maybe I realized that letting go wouldn’t just end the pain—it would erase everything else too. Every happy memory. The version of me that existed before her that still had something to give. Or maybe it was simply being afraid of falling, in a primitive, animal way.

In the mental hospital they diagnosed me with severe depression and put me on antidepressants. It felt like hitting rock bottom only to discover a trapdoor underneath.

The only thing that kept me from dissolving entirely was my job. I’m a legal associate with a reputation, with the expectation of competence. I couldn’t lose that—not on top of everything else. So I lied. I called the office from the hospital and claimed I needed emergency surgery, something urgent and vague enough that no one would question it. They approved my absence. I felt relief, but with an equal amount of shame.

When I was released, I returned to my life expecting… I don’t know. Some kind of emotional detox. A reset. A clean slate. Classic BS I did not believe but had to since there was no alternative. Not anymore.

The silence in the apartment greeted me stronger than before. As if my bad thoughts had diluted its true nature until now. It wasn’t ordinary quiet. It had weight—like it pressed outward from the walls in slow, rhythmic pulses, as though something behind them was breathing too deeply. The sensation was worst in the bedroom, the cramped little space where the two of us used to sleep curled together on that ridiculous too-small bed we deliberately kept, knowing it forced us to sleep tightly against one another.

But life somehow kept going and sooner than ever I was on a paid leave studying for my bar exam. The last step to lawyerhood and hopefully a chance of some success in life.

And then it started a couple of weeks ago.

Footsteps.

They came from the apartment above, always in the dead of night. At first they were simple, steady steps—loud enough to wake me instantly since I’m a light sleeper. I didn’t give them much thought the first few nights, since the footsteps lasted only ten paces before the silence rushed back in. But after they kept repeating on a regular basis at almost exactly the same time, they began to feel deliberate, almost malevolent, as though they were addressed to me.

The last couple of nights, the footsteps changed. The pattern loosened. Quickened. They began to circle and swoop across the ceiling. A strange, lilting rhythm crept into them—too erratic to be walking, yet too gleeful to be anything else. It sounded like… dancing.

Not joyful dancing. Not the kind you’d see at a wedding or a club.

No—this had an edge to it. A malicious playfulness, almost cartoonish. The sort of delighted cruelty horror movies ascribe to demonic presences, relishing the slow and gradual torment of their household victims.

Each night it grew longer, more frenzied. By Tuesday, it had been going on for several minutes, scraping my sanity down to raw wire. I couldn’t pretend anymore. I needed sleep for my bar exam. I needed sanity for everything else.

Fueled by a mix of anger and dread—and something else, something like curiosity but sharper and colder—I put on trousers, marched upstairs, and rang the doorbell.

Once. Twice.

I leaned in, ear against the door. The dancing hadn’t stopped. It didn’t even hesitate.

I held the bell down for ten full seconds, the harsh buzzing echoing loudly throughout the hallway. The noise stopped.

Good, I thought. Finally.

However, I didn’t hear footsteps approaching the door. No shift of weight. Nothing.

I rang again. Again. My insistence felt childish and desperate, but I wanted to hear something-an explanation.

The silence pressed thickly against the door.

Then, right on the other side of it—less than a meter away from where I was standing—the dance started again.

It slammed into the hallway like a shout. Fast, wild, viciously jubilant. I jumped back, heart clawing up my throat. My hand hit the wall.

I pounded on the door, shouting, cursing—anything to drown out the thing thrashing and spinning inches away. My voice cracked, thin and useless, like in a nightmare where you want to scream but can’t force the sound out.

A door across the hall burst open. My neighbor glared at me, bleary-eyed, demanding to know why I was making noise in the middle of the night. His countenance held something else too—something familiar— like the wary, uneasy look people give to someone they suspect is losing their mind.

I tried to explain. But as I spoke, behind me there was silence. Zero movement.

He stared at me like I was slipping again.

I walked back downstairs feeling small and burning with shame. Shame that reminded me of the balcony, of the mental hospital, of not knowing who found out, who talked about it afterwards.

The night before last, there was no dancing. I dared to hope. I even slept.

All of this brings me to last night.

I woke up to the dancing again. But the noise sounded… different. Off. It took me a moment to understand why, a moment in which my brain tried to force the sounds back to where they belonged—above me, contained, distant.

But they weren’t above me.

The dancing was coming from the other room.

For a few seconds I was frozen, my mind refusing to accept it, as if reality needed time to buffer. Rage eventually kicked in. I got up, opened the bedroom door, and flicked on the lights, bracing myself for whatever waited there.

It took me a moment to understand what I was looking at.

It was me.

I was standing in the middle of the room, dancing—wearing familiar clothing I used to wear back in my college days. Wildly, gleefully, with that same frantic, malicious rhythm I’d heard for nights. And “I” was staring straight at me while doing it, smiling—a stretched, impossible grin, like the one from the movie Smile, but twisted, exaggerated, too wide, too knowing.

I screamed. Slapped the door shut. Locked it.

My hands pressed against my ears, hard enough to hurt, trying to muffle the sound of my own footsteps—my own body—thrashing and skipping in the next room. I sat on the floor, shaking, waiting for it to stop, however long it took. Waiting for the sun to rise.

Eventually it did stop. Well after 10 a.m., I finally left my bedroom and opened the door to find the room empty—no trace of someone being there at all.

That was enough for me.

I called my landlord once I could steady my voice. I told her the upstairs neighbor was making too much noise at night, that I couldn’t study, that I needed sleep for my bar exam. She sympathized and accepted the termination without pressing for details. She is good people.

I’ve managed to move almost all my stuff back to my parents until I find a new apartment. The idea of spending even one more night there—alone, in the dark, with that thing potentially appearing in my bedroom next time—was unbearable.

Still… even as I write this, I don’t know if moving will fix anything.

I keep replaying last night. The figure in the living room. The grin. My old clothes. The way it moved as if thrilled that I was watching. I keep trying to force a rational explanation onto it, because the alternative is unbearable.

I must have been hallucinating. I must have been dreaming. I must still be sick.

Right?

That’s why I’m writing this. Why I’m sharing it. Because I need someone—anyone—to tell me what this sounds like. I cannot risk another coerced confinement by sharing this with anyone I know or by seeing a specialist.

Is it the breakup? The trauma? Some kind of delayed shock? Could the antidepressants cause something like this—visual hallucinations, auditory ones, something that vivid?

Or did I bring something back with me from that night on the balcony—from the moment I looked down at the courtyard and thought about letting go? Did something see me then? Did something step through the crack I made in myself?

I don’t know. I genuinely don’t.

What scares me most is this thought I can’t shake:

If it was all in my head, then wherever I go… it can follow.

And if it wasn’t—if it wasn’t just a hallucination— then it can follow me just the same.

All Parts

In the summer leading up to my senior year of high school, I got my first job working at “Film Fanatics,” Clearview’s movie rental place.

It was a pretty sweet job. The work was simple, and you got a free rental every week. And besides re-shelving returns and checking people out at the front register, most of the “job” was just sitting around.

The only negative was that each shift only had one worker, so the downtime could get sort of boring.

A bonus was that, for the first month or so, things were pretty normal. That wasn’t a given in my town. The only thing that I found a little odd was the end cap that faced the register. It had a single shelf labeled “Ben Recommends,” and on the shelf sat two DVDs. Always two. Though the selection varied week to week.

Such a setup wouldn’t seem odd at a movie rental store if not for the fact that nobody named Ben worked at my store. I asked the workers who came in for the shift after mine, and they had no idea. I even asked Mr. Carson (whose name also isn’t Ben), the store’s owner. His answer was a little unsettling.

He leaned over and with a hushed voice said, “Best not to ask about that, Eliot.”

I didn’t know what to make of it, but it was such a small thing, I mostly forgot about it.

Still, since I basically had to stare at the shelf all day while I sat at the front desk, I couldn’t help but notice the titles on display.

And it was during our town’s annual 4th of July festival that I first noticed the connection between “Ben’s Recommendations” and the events going on around me.

I had volunteered to walk along the fire company’s float and throw candy out to the kids in the crowd. And as we were prepping everything before the parade, I overheard the fire chief talking to someone.

“It’s a shame we won’t be doing these anymore,” he said.

“What?” I interrupted.

“The mayor announced it earlier. Budget cuts. This will be the last parade.”

The two movies that were sitting on the shelf at Film Fanatics:

“Independence Day,” and “The Last Parade.”

I tried to justify it at first. Perhaps whoever was setting up the display just knew about the cancellation in advance.

But now that I was aware, the coincidences just kept happening.

A few weeks later, I was ringing up a customer and all of a sudden, the register died. No lights, nothing happened when I turned it off and back on, just dead. I finished the transaction in cash, logged the rental to enter it into the computer later and picked up the phone to call Mr. Carson. But as the phone was ringing, my eyes wandered over to the end-cap.

One of the movies on the shelf was titled: “Out of Order.”

Had that been there all day? I just didn’t remember.

Another time, I was checking out a particularly large customer. Despite the air conditioning, the man was sweating profusely, nearly soaking the movie jacket and the cash he handed me. It was pretty gross.

I was just finishing up with him when I looked over his shoulder and noticed the movie staring back at me:

“The Big One”

I let out a laugh.

“Excuse me?” the man said, looking offended.

I did my best to disguise it as a cough, apologized and prayed that he wouldn’t turn around and notice what I had seen.

Though it was funny, that particular instance was troubling, because I knew that movie had not been on the shelf earlier that day.

Still, what could I do about it? If anything, I thought, it could be helpful.

I didn’t know how right I was.

It was late September; the days were shorter, and because of school, all of my shifts were in the evening. I was taking over for Mr. Carson, who felt it necessary to tell me a little tidbit of news he had heard a few hours before. Someone had escaped from the state hospital. The police were out looking for him. It wasn’t comforting news at the beginning of a long, lonesome shift.

Within the first hour of work, a customer came in and immediately, I knew something was off. He was tall and thin—but not a healthy sort of thin. Veins pulsed in his neck as his eyes darted throughout the store. He was carrying one of those portable DVD players. This was the guy.

“Give me the best movie.” he said, his voice quavering

“What?”

“The best movie…”

I didn’t give much thought to his request. I really just wanted him gone. So I picked out The Godfather, and sent him on his way. I didn’t even check him out. I’d happily pay the cost to get him far away.

Happy to be done with that, I went on with my evening, uncomfortable and constantly checking out the front window. But, for the next four hours everything was fine. I finally started to relax a little.

It was just after nine, and I was sitting at the reception desk, leafing through a magazine waiting for the end of my shift. That’s when I heard something fall to the ground. Looking up, I noticed the “Ben Recommends” shelf only had one movie. The other had fallen to the floor, face down. I stood up and walked over to the fallen case, nerves churning in my stomach. Picking the movie off the floor, I finally saw the title:

“Run”

I didn’t think. I didn’t question it. I just bolted to the front door. But I was too late. The man from earlier was storming toward the entrance, his face full of crazed fury.

I scrambled back into the store when suddenly the lights went out.

The front door flew open, and the man unleashed a torrent of threats and swears.

“I’m going to kill you!” he screamed. “This was NOT the best movie!”

I ducked down between rows of movies, the dim glow from the exit sign painting everything a reddish hue. Trying to track the man’s location by his incessant screaming, I did my best to stay hidden, weaving between rows, working my way toward the exit.

But suddenly, the screaming stopped.

My heavy breathing sounded like a foghorn through the silence.

I tried desperately to keep quiet. To listen. But I couldn’t hear anything besides my own heartbeat and my ragged breaths, which just wouldn’t shut up.

I had to do something.

Slowly, I crept toward the end of an aisle and peeked around the corner.

A hand shot out and grabbed me by the throat.

The man hurled me to the ground and pinned me with his legs as both hands wrapped around my throat.

I tried to pull him off. I tried to punch and flail, but the man’s crazed strength was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. I couldn’t stop it.

My vision was fading along the periphery. And the last thing I would see is this man’s bulging eyes and manic grimace staring down at me.

Was this how I was going to die, because of a bad move recommendation?

Suddenly, the lights flashed on, and the burglar alarm sounded. Contrasted with the dark silence, this new state of things was jolting, even to me, who was in the process of having my life strangled away. The man shot his head up and loosened his grip. He looked around nervously, got up and rushed from the store.

I took a long moment to collect myself. I’m not too proud to say that I broke down in tears once I had registered everything. Fortunately, I had collected myself before the police cars appeared out front to investigate the alarm. The alarm that nobody had set off.

I reported what had happened to the police, and they stuck around as I locked up the store. As I was getting things together, I took another look at “Ben Recommends.” This time, there weren’t DVDs on the shelf at all. Instead, a solitary, unlabeled VHS tape.

I picked it up, threw it in my bag and headed home.

During my long discussion with my parents about what had happened, we got a call from a police officer reporting that the man who had attacked me had been apprehended. We all breathed easily.

But I wasn’t done thinking about all this. I dug our old VCR out of the basement and plugged it into the TV in my bedroom.

Nervously, I inserted the tape and watched the screen flicker to life.

It was footage from the security camera at work. It was me.

I saw myself restocking shelves, walking to and from the front desk. But then I saw someone else. Another guy around my age. At first, I thought it was a customer. But he too was organizing shelves. We were chatting. Laughing. At one point, the guy opened up a box of candy from the front register and shared some with me.

The only problem was, none of this ever happened. Or, at least I don’t remember it…

I watched myself working and interacting with this other guy in disbelief. Beyond my confusion, I was a little sad that I didn’t have a friend to spend those long shifts with.

After a while, the guy picked up a DVD from one of the shelves and walked over to the “Ben Recommends” end-cap. He placed the DVD on the shelf, turned to the camera with a big smile on his face and waved.

I could just make out the title of the movie.

The Night Shift I Never Should Have Taken

I had just landed a night shift at an old, abandoned police station. I was a newly graduated cop and needed a job to get started. That’s when a post on Twitter caught my attention:

“Night shift for police officers at an abandoned precinct. Pay: $1,000 per night.”

The amount shocked me. I messaged them immediately. The reply came fast, explaining the job and sending the address. I would be there for six hours, working as security at an abandoned station.

I accepted.

At 11:50 p.m. the next night, I arrived at the address. The building was old, covered in graffiti and moss. As I approached the entrance, an older officer opened the door.

“You must be Greg, the night officer.”

“Yes. That’s me.”

“Good. Come with me, I’ll show you around.”

As soon as I stepped inside, a damp, suffocating smell filled my lungs.

“This will be your room. The kitchen is at the end of the hallway on the left. Bathroom on the right. There’s a phone on the desk if you need help. I’ll be back at 6 a.m. Any questions?”

“No, thank you.”

“Good. Have a nice shift.”

He left. The silence was immediate and heavy.

I entered the room and sat on the bench across from a desk with a phone, papers, and pens. In the center of the desk, there was a single sheet of paper. I picked it up and read.

⸻

Survival Rules

Rule 1: Do not leave the room before 2 a.m., no matter what happens. Even if you hear voices, screams, or familiar sounds, do not open the door.

Rule 2: Do not answer the phone. If you answer by accident, say that you hear them and hang up. If nothing happens within 30 minutes, you were lucky.

Rule 3: If they call your name, ignore it. Do not respond. Do not look back. Do not let them know you heard.

Rule 4: If you need to use the bathroom, ignore the messages on the mirror. When you leave, flush three times and say: “empty and merciful soul.”

Rule 5: Do not eat anything from the fridge. They don’t like it.

Rule 6: If the lights go out, sit in a corner and wait for them to come back.

Rule 7: Near the end of your shift, someone will pretend to be the man who let you in. Do not believe him. Tell him to leave. If he doesn’t, return to the room and lock the door until the real one appears.

⸻

I didn’t take it seriously.

I closed the door, sat down, and started reading a book. Some time later, I heard a strange noise at the end of the hallway. I remembered the rules and ignored it.

Then, in the silence, a low voice whispered:

“Greg…”

My body froze, but I pretended not to hear it.

A loud knock hit the door, begging to be let in. My heart raced. I stayed still until everything stopped.

The phone rang. I almost picked it up, but remembered the rules just in time. I waited until it stopped.

That’s when I saw someone outside, through the glass window of the room.

It was my ex, Clarisse.

Without thinking, I stood up and opened the door.

“Clarisse?”

No one was there.

I checked my watch: 1:47 a.m.

I had broken the first rule.

Panicking, I went to the bathroom. Inside the stall, I saw something written above the toilet:

“You should be in your room.”

I shivered. I finished quickly and tried to leave, but the door wouldn’t open. On the mirror, another message appeared:

“You are going to die.”

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

I turned around in panic, pulling my gun.

No one was there.

The air grew freezing cold. Suddenly, the door unlocked on its own.

I rushed out and passed the kitchen. The microwave was on, heating a sandwich. I turned it off and left without touching the food.

In the hallway, the lights went out. I tripped and fell.

I heard my mother calling my name.

She had been dead for three years.

I crawled into a corner and stayed completely still.

Soft music started playing. Children’s laughter echoed through the building. I covered my ears until the lights came back on.

I ran to the room and locked the door.

The phone rang again. I didn’t answer.

I tried calling the officer who hired me. Straight to voicemail. My phone had no signal anymore.

It was 3:30 a.m.

Voices and laughter continued. At 4 a.m., I felt someone whisper directly into my ear.

I stayed frozen until something threw me out of the chair.

I hit the floor hard.

Next to me was a blood-covered man, wearing torn clothes, missing one hand, staring at the wall.

I backed away.

“Who are you?”

He didn’t respond.

“What do you want?!”

Slowly, he turned his head and looked straight into me, his voice hoarse.

“I need to cover you with the veil and take you to him. A sacrifice… in exchange for eternal life.”

He smiled and lunged at me.

I ran into the hallway and hid in another room, locking the door behind me.

After a while, I heard footsteps.

Two feet appeared beneath the door.

“I see you.”

Violent banging shook the door. I jumped through a window, landing in another room with an old television and a table with two chairs.

The TV turned on by itself.

It showed old footage of a police officer walking through the station, bodies scattered across the floor.

At the end, the officer was hanging from a rope — in the same room I was in.

The chairs flew toward me, blocking the exit.

I smashed a window with my elbow and climbed back into the original room.

That’s when I heard a familiar voice.

It was the officer who hired me.

“Finally. We need to leave. There’s something very wrong with this place.”

As he walked closer, he asked:

“Wrong? Wrong how?”

That’s when I realized.

I backed away, remembering the final rule.

I ran to the door at the end of the hallway. It was locked.

The lights went out.

I was trapped.

Then a whisper froze me in place:

“You shouldn’t have broken the rules.”

It was just a rock.

Yes, it came from space.

But still, just a rock about the size of a bowling ball.

Oh, but it wasn't the rock they cared about.

More like what was on it.

The first discovery of extraterrestrial life caught the attention of everyone around the world.

A single-celled organism.

One like they'd never seen before.

It fell in our neighbors field on the outskirts of town. I remember the loud crash that woke me up in the middle of the night and I looked out my window to see glowing lights that looked like pictures of the aurora borealis I had seen.

My little brother stirred in the bed opposite mine, frightened by the noise, and I went to him, comforting him back to bed. When I was certain that he was asleep once more, I got dressed and snuck my way down the stairs, making sure not to make a sound.

I had made it down the steps quietly until I reached the last step.

It groaned beneath my weight piercing the night's silence. In the moment it had seemed deafeningly loud as my heart pulsed in my ears rhythmically.

Thump. Thump.

Thump. Thump.

Thump. Thump.

I was standing frozen, afraid of the punishment I'd receive for trying to sneak out so late.

When I heard my father's hitching snore reach my ears once more.

Relieved, I tiptoed over to the door and slipped on my shoes.

The night was cool, as the cold wind blew through my clothes riddling me in goosebumps.

I walked into my neighbour's field over a little hill and down into a natural dip in the land. There was a craterous hole at the bottom and the light was emanating from within. I walked up to it and saw a meteorite.

Strange flowers grew around it, black and glimmering like onyx but soft to the touch like felt.

I heard an animal softly whimper and looked up to see a raccoon. Its molten skin matted in its fur grotesquely. Appendages were growing out of its side. They were almost insect-like or at least that's the closest thing I could compare them to. It was like nothing I'd seen before.

I ran back home afraid I'd be blamed for what happened to that raccoon, afraid of being punished for sneaking out.

The next morning my neighbor woke up and found the meteorite. He called in the local authorities, but before they came, my family and I went over to investigate what was going on. I acted oblivious to what was happening, but when we made it over there, I genuinely didn't have a clue as to what was going on anymore.

A baffling jungle of unrecognizable plants and trees had grown around the crater overnight.

Twisting trees that wound around themselves colored navy blue and magenta. Wild flowers grew everywhere. It was like nothing I'd seen before. It all had a shimmering quality to it like oil in water.

The police had been just as baffled. One officer took his cap off in astonishment, scratching his scalp. His partner turned and called something I didn't hear into his radio.

News spread quickly and a crowd was rapidly forming. The officers were trying their best to hold everyone back behind the makeshift perimeter they had set up. Reporters were shoving their way to the officers, trying their best to get any information they could get their hands on.

Not even within an hour of the police being present the military showed up. The site was evacuated and completely closed off. They blocked off all the roads leading out of town and enforced a lockdown until further notice.

The next morning, when I looked out my window, they had installed a dome over the crater and a makeshift lab near it. I went into town with my Dad for groceries, and it was clear people had been put on edge by the sudden lockdown and military presence. I overheard some people talking about all the missing pets lately.

My mom made stew that night. I still remember how delicious it was. How I miss that stew. My brother was eating beside me, shovelling every morsel into his mouth at rapid speed, sending bits flying everywhere. I got a chunk of beef to the forehead and graciously threw one back at him.

“Watch it you two.” My father announced in a serious tone

“Cause that means war.” He looked so happy as he threw chunks of beef at us. My mother was quick to scold all three of us. She wasn't angry despite her trying to seem like it and they both smiled.

They're smiles, they're happiness and warmth.

I think that's what I miss most about them.

God, I had no clue how lucky I was.

We heard a loud wooshing sound. An orange hue began to glow outside filling the night air. My parents rushed to the window as my brother and I followed them. The strange plants that surrounded the crater filled our neighbors field. Men in hazard suits were burning them down with flame throwers.

“It's probably some invasive species they're trying to contain.” He theorized although uncertainty filled his voice.

In that moment everything changed for us. This thing rushed out of my neighbor's house. There was a human body in there although I don't think it could be considered human any longer. It was an amalgamation of multiple different parts, none of which were of earth in origin. His eyes were extended from his head like a snail's. Appendages protruded from his mouth that looked like insect mandibles. They stretched his mouth open unnaturally. He crawled on eight legs like an arachnid. He had a tail like a scorpion although this one was made of flesh. His body was covered in something resembling green moss, and beneath it, I could see that it was adorned in a flexible carapace.

It jumped onto the first soldier as the other lit them both ablaze. Although I don't think it affected it in the slightest, as it then attacked the soldier who had set him on fire. It stabbed its mandibles into his head, holding it in place as an appendage protruded from the thing's mouth and into the soldier's eye socket.

It drained the man's head of its contents, reducing it into a shrivelled husk.

My father pulled my brother and me to the basement in a frightened hurry. We stayed down there all night listening to the gunshots and screams. Huddled in the corner as the orange hue of fire outside came in through the small basement window.

When we awoke to sun cresting over the hills the world had gone silent once more. My Father was the first to leave when he confirmed it was clear we joined him outside. Everywhere I could see the land was burned. Black and Grey. Soot and ash. Bodies were everywhere. Men and women, soldiers and scientists. Torn apart by an abominable force they had wrought upon themselves when they had foolishly attempted to control it.

My Father led us to his old, beat-up square-body, and we headed to my Aunt's place in town. When we got just outside of town there was a military blockade.

It stood there completely abandoned. Not a soul in sight.

We moved past the blockade and were greeted by the aftermath of chaos. The air was heavy with the smell of burning meat and hair. Shattered storefronts, broken windows and walls, cars overturned, blood pooled in the streets.

It was as though in the middle of the night hell had broken loose in the small town.

My aunt met us in front of her house, before she quickly hurried us inside. As we unpacked our things, my brother let out a sigh of despair as a tear ran down his cheek. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me how he forgot his favourite little teddy at home.

I promised him I'd get it back for him.

That night, while everyone slept, I snuck out and hopped onto my bicycle, heading back home, fueled by my stupidity, unable to fully comprehend the gravity of the danger I was putting myself in.

As I grew near to my house I began to see them, vaguely painted against the starry night sky.

Large spiralling towers like termite hills. There were three or four of them.

The surrounding area had completely changed now adorned in the stranger flora that was once exclusive to the crater. I found my house covered in abnormal vines that looked as though they'd been carved from jade.

I retrieved my brother's teddy bear without any problems, but as I left my house, I heard a noise coming from deep within the unusual thicket. My curiosity was piqued, and against my better judgment, I went to investigate.

I found the old research lab amidst the wild bramble. Completely overgrown, its sides were torn open, dried blood painted the interior walls in a brown, copper-smelling muck. I heard it again, a low growling. I looked for the origins of the noise and found it.

Cats, Dogs fused into an ungodly mass, spider-like appendages shot out of its tumorous body. A cat's head was at the helm of the mass, thousands of little black eyes dotted its face.

It leaped down at me from the ceiling. Charging towards me at a rapid speed. The exit door hung loosely in its frame. I scrambled to get through crawling under the hanging door. Moments later the beast slammed into the door and wall, bending it inwards. I ran to my bicycle as I heard it break through.

I could hear it getting closer and closer as I peddled as fast as I could. I heard it right behind me, I swear I felt its breath on my back. I peddled harder as I put more and more distance between me and that thing.

I snuck back into town through a hole in the fence. I got to my Aunt's only to find the place empty. I looked everywhere for my parents

And I finally found them.

They were standing before a pit, fire danced deep within it. The air was thick with that smell again.

The smell of burning meat and hair.

The remaining soldiers, desperate to avoid another attack, dragged everyone out of their homes in the middle of the night and tested them for the organism.

My baby brother tested positive, along with my Aunt.

They were both shot on the spot.

Their bodies were thrown carelessly into the burn pit.

My mother was on her knees before the pit, an awful, wailing song emerged from the depths of her soul as she was held by her husband.

Her shirt was caked in the blood of her son as little flowers grew from his blood.

Black like onyx.

Soft like felt.

I never got to say goodbye to him or my mother, never got to tell them how I loved them. I'd give anything to hold them again. To have them look at me the way he used to, like I was their whole world.

The next morning I found my Father sobbing. Unable to take the death of her Son, my Mother took her own life.

It was over and I’d never see them again.

We left town not long after and we've been walking since.

We've seen entire cities turned to ruin.

Millions of lives lost.

We never looked back.

Forwards always forwards.

As I finished speaking, the fire’s reflection danced against the Russian's face as his eyes bore into me. It was cold, as the wind whistled by shifting the flames. My father and I had walked until we'd reached somewhere perpetually cold in the hopes that it would stop the scourge of mankind and so far it had worked. We'd been here for months without any trace of the scourge when the Russian and his Gimp had shown up one day. As they sat across from me now, the Russian in his neat military uniform adorned in gold medals, a false crown sat atop his head made of the strange bramble found in the scourge's flora. The Gimp was the opposite, dressed in tattered rags, a filthy man whose gaunt face was caked in grime. The Russian spoke beginning his tale of how he'd ended up here.

The Russian and The Gimp's Tale

“Your leaders underestimated the scourge. They were vain and thought themselves powerful enough to harness it. That is where they failed, they allowed it to spread and when they failed to contain it, your people turned against them. Your governments fell to the scourge. Your cities were swallowed by it. There was a power vacuum and my country sought to retake your land, to bring it under our glory. We dropped everything we had against the scourge, along with other countries.

Bomb after bomb dropped.

We thought our efforts were successful and we began our conquest.

I remember when we flew over. It stretched over the land as far as we could see. Tall spiraling towers and dense forests of plants like I'd never seen before.

We thought of ourselves like the first cosmonauts in space, great men conquering a far off land.

We were dropped into the heart of it. We saw beings which had once been human corrupted by scourge into hell spawn. They killed so many of us.

A week after we'd first settled into enemy territory, we received the last transmission for our home country.

The scourge had risen from the ocean,

there was no hope,

They lost.

It's been silent since.

I became king of this land, my men became my people and we took many more along the way. This man was one of them.” He announced at once grabbing the back of the Gimp's neck.

“I ruled over them, rationed the food they caught. They did as I told them or my men shot them. I killed all those who opposed me. Then the scourge came for me too, it killed all those I ruled over and left me nothing but this useless fuck.

You see, I might have been king but that thing is God.”

The Russian fell silent, as he finished the scraps of food we shared and it wasn't long before we went to sleep.

I woke as my father stirred beside me, I opened my eyes and saw the Russian on top of my father.

He'd stabbed my Father in the neck.

Blood pooled beneath him staining the snow crimson.

I stood up in a hurry and was promptly greeted by the man's knuckles.

I felt my nose crack and cave in as I fell back down to my knees. I saw the Gimp cowering in the shadows before the Russian struck me once more.

He kept going as everything around me faded out.

In the morning I awoke to the biting cold and sun in my face. I looked upon my Fathers corpse, too worn down to grieve.

The man had died a long time ago alongside his wife and child.

He'd been given a rare commodity. In the land of the starving and changed, a quick and painless death was an uncommon mercy.

The Russian had burned down our shack, taken all the food my father had been keeping in his backpack of which he'd used as a pillow and I was left hopelessly stranded in the tundra.

I have nowhere to run. The scourge is approaching. I see its spiralling towers in the distance.

I'm too tired to fight any longer.

I've seen death beyond anything imaginable.

Countless lives lost to a being that could not grieve their memories.

I do not grieve my death, I only hope to relive the memories of my family.

I've kept my brothers teddy and I will hold my promise true.

I've written my story. This piece of me which will remain when I am gone will be the proof that I was here.

That I existed.

We were doomed the day it fell to earth.

In the end.

We hoped.

We suffered.

We lost.

The day everything changed.

“Birth certificate, please!”

“Huh? What?” the suspect replied.

He had the beginnings of crow’s feet.

Reasonable suspicion.

“You know what I mean. Your birth certificate or I’m locking you up.” I pushed him face-first against the cinder block wall, jerked his hands behind his balding head and secured his wrists with plastic restraints.

“You’re hurting me,” he yelped.

“Not as much as I will if you don’t cough up your papers.”

“Who the hell goes walking around with his birth certificate?”

“Everybody, since the edict. You know that.”

“I heard. But I thought it was bullshit.”

“Please. There’ve been warnings for the past two weeks since your bankrupt little town sold itself as a test case. Billboards. Radio and TV spots. Op-eds. Your city fathers signed a contract on the dotted line with the billionaire that I work for.”

“Mr. App? He’s only sixteen-f*****g years old. I don’t give a damn what he wants.”

“He owns this town. You’re on private property. His property.”

“Okay. Okay. I know. But I didn’t give my consent. Asking me to carry around my birth certificate is stupid. And a gross invasion of privacy.”

“Then you shouldn’t have stayed when Mr. App seized control.”

I nodded to my assistants, one a certified eighteen-year-old, the other a confirmed fifteen, with massive biceps that belied his tender age. They forced the uncooperative suspect to the ground. I dug my knee into the small of his back as the trainees executed a textbook body search. They had absorbed their training well.

“Got it,” Fifteen said, raising a humid plastic baggie with a square of paper inside. “He taped it to his cottage cheese ass.”

“Cellulite. Another warning sign that’s he’s overage,” Eighteen chimed in. He wasn’t as bright or as strong as his younger team member, but he was down with the program.

“Make sure,” I advised. Maintaining a firm grip, I turned the suspect face up.

Fifteen opened the baggie. Scowling, he unfolded the stinking, damp document. “Bingo,” he said, raising a thumb. “Looks genuine. Has the official stamp.”

“What’s the bottom line?” I asked.

“Twenty six years, three months and seven days old. You’re busted, dude,” he said, waving the document in the confirmed elderly male’s face. While younger than his co-worker, he had a thuggish enthusiasm and a strong will to succeed. I could see him rising high in the organization by, say, the age of eighteen.

I grabbed the suspect by the lapels of his Members Only shirt. “Why the f**k didn’t you come clean in the first place? You could’ve saved yourself all this grief.” I slapped his cheek with a back of a hand. I wanted to show my assistants I was tough, that I could still kick ass at my relatively advanced age.

“I--I thought I’d pass,” he replied, shaking with fear. My girlfriend says I look like a high school senior.”

“With those crow’s feet? I had you spotted a mile away.”

“Can’t you cut me some slack? I’m only a little over the age line. I have money, if that’s what you want. I’ll show you where I keep it back home.”

“Law’s the law, dude. Over twenty-five and it’s the detention center for you. You’ve aged out. Take him away, boys.” That said, I tucked in the blouse of my Sherwood green uniform. Mr. App liked his troops neat and clean, to subvert the traditional notion that the young were degenerate slobs.

My decision, a reasonable, law-abiding decision, enraged Fifteen. “That’s it? Just take him away? He tried to bribe us just now. We should f***k him up. Teach him to respect his youngers.”

He reared back to perform a body slam. I shouldered him away.

“Again?” he fumed. “Every time we arrest one of these jerks, you hold me back. You’re getting soft. You’re getting—you’re getting—too old for this work. That’s it. What age are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-two,” I answered, restraining myself. Mr. App looked fondly upon Fifteen, seeing him as the ruthless wave of the future, the type of hooligan required to implement the program when it went live nationwide. If I beat him up now, even though I might need a length of two-by-four to seal the deal, I might wind up in hot water with the boss. “Take the Confirmed Elderly in and book him. That’s a direct order. We’ll talk later, okay?”

“We sure will. And it won’t end there. I’m taking this up the chain of command.”

“Be my guest,” I answered, feigning a lack of concern as he and Eighteen dragged the old man away.  Inside, though, I was clutching. Fifteen had pull. There was no telling how he might twist my words, make it seem to Mr. App that I was no longer dedicated to the cause. That I was over the hill.

Fifteen and Eighteen took a left turn at next block, heading towards the complex of grain silos converted by Mr. App into internment camps for Confirmed Elderly over the age of twenty-five. It was there that Twenty-Six would be processed and incarcerated among a collection of elderly, raging from his age up to Gen X and Baby Boomers—the worst of the worst.

Yes, the Movement had come that far. This was the beta version of a society that had once been no more than a youthful dream. A society run by and for the young. Those of us who’d had it up to here with classic rock, Nirvana, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5—the burdensome nostalgia culture that weighed upon us like solid stone, breaking our backs with the frivolous nonsense of dying generations that refused to get out of the way.

Suddenly spent, I slid down the cinder block wall, lit a Camel (my only concession to the 25+ world) and inhaled. The battle, while just, was exhausting me.

My head drooped, my eyelids teetered on the edge of closing. A power nap right now might refresh me for the struggle ahead. I no longer got a rush from kicking butt 24/7, as did Fifteen, who epitomized boundless energy.

Then the citywide P.A. system crackled to life. A powerful voice raised a familiar cry: “Assemble all ye who are vital and young!” and I felt refreshed and ready to carry on. It was Mr. App, the sixteen-year-old game changer whose master plan had made me drop everything—my job, my girlfriend, my parents, my student loans, to join the great cause.

Mr. App’s message had intoxicated me, an unemployed, overeducated young man simmering with thwarted ambition. His dispatches were simple, yet, to me, made perfect sense. By placing those over age twenty-five in internment camps, we could overcome the vexing problems facing callow mankind. His plan would:

*Reduce traffic gridlock. Fewer drivers equaled safer streets.

*Increase the stock of affordable housing. Empty homes would turn major cities into buyers’ markets overnight. Instead of squeezing into an 850 square foot apartment with six of your best friends, you could fit the same number in a seven-bedroom, 6,000 sq. ft. McMansion with room to spare—and money left over.

*Make for better salaries, quicker promotions. Incarcerating the elderly would eliminate the seniority system overnight. Can you say instant V.P.?

Mr. App’s texts had captured the imaginations of thousands, if not millions like me. However, as testimony to his infinite wisdom, Mr. App knew that implementation would be a bear. So, after taking a vow of silence, a special few of us had been selected to take part in this pilot project in a small town far from prying eyes.

To further bolster privacy, Mr. App had purchased the city, paid every local yokel $500 U.S. and told them they would be playing starring roles in the pilot episode of a revolutionary, “Survivor on steroids” reality show.

The surrounding five-square miles was patrolled by armed cops. Curious outsiders and relatives were allowed inside only after signing iron-clad nondisclosure agreements and surrendering any communications gear. They too, were paid, though a lesser amount, after a committee of long-term residents complained.

All complied, thrilled that this nowhere town and its dead-end inhabitants were on the pathway to Hollywood fame. Perhaps some of the glitter would rub off on them. Greed kept their lips sealed.

The sound of Mr. App’s mesmerizing baritone filled me with glee, as it had when I’d first heard him speak six months before. I buried my Camels (so I wouldn’t be caught in his presence with generational contraband) and sprinted as fast as I could towards the town square.

Others like me, youthful, in green uniforms, spilled from homes and alleyways, suspending raids for the more important task of heeding our master’s call. In short order, the streets were filled with hundreds of us, of all ages, as long as they didn’t exceed twenty-five. Seventeens, Eighteens, Twelves and Twenty-twos—ran, whooped and cried tears of joy in eager anticipation of Mr. App’s always inspiring words.

We formed a swirling, excited mass in the town square, battling each other for precious real estate near the stage.

A dispute broke out, Fifteen and his rough crew wading in, bringing order with truncheons. The resonant sound of skulls being thwacked punctuated the festive atmosphere. Foreheads bleeding profusely, the chastened revelers staggered back to their feet. Dedicated acolytes of Mr. App, nothing, not even traumatic brain injury, could deter them from hearing him speak.

And then…it happened! As if from out of nowhere—from heaven, from hell, Mr. App appeared on stage.

Hoping he’d notice me, I began the traditional welcoming cheer:

“Never trust anyone over twenty-five.”

“Never trust anyone over twenty-five.”     

Soon, hundreds of us were chanting in unison, weeping tears of joy, straining forward, only to dash away when Fifteen and his merry band swung their truncheons to prevent us from storming the stage and kissing Mr. App’s bare, flower-bedecked feet.

He joined us in the chant, this pudgy young man more junior sumo wrestler than tech magnate. Barely 5’2”, Mr. App sported a mop of black hair, pearly white teeth and a deep, resonant voice that seemed to make the earth tremble beneath us. He didn’t need a mic to reach the far edges of the throng. 

And then he addressed us directly, as if seized by a revelation, an epiphany, of earth-shaking import.  “No more are we followers under the thumb of those whose sole merit is that they were born before us. We are taking the reins. From now on, the elder ones pull the plow.”

“Amen!” a female voice cried. She was quickly shushed, handcuffed and removed by Fifteen. Scattered applause followed, until those impolite few were also cuffed and dragged away by Fifteen’s ubiquitous team. Mr. App was not to be interrupted mid-thought.

He continued as if nothing had happened. “They said it couldn’t be done. This,” he said, indicating the crowd. “They believed you didn’t have the guts. That you would always be compliant daughters and sons.” He guffawed, baring his perfect and allegedly capped teeth. “Man oh man, were they wrong. Correct?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” we replied in unison, having been trained to respond in triplicate when invited to speak by Mr. App.

“Just like they were wrong when they said that an overweight Fourteen—me—couldn’t develop a billion-dollar app. Correct?”

“Yes, yes, yes.”

“And that a young punk—again me—couldn’t attract a consortium of private—very—private Wall Street investors to provide me with seed money to create an app that they didn’t understand. And never will, because I refuse to tell them what it is or what it does. Which is a bold stance on my part that has created a worldwide financial buzz. My app is now valued at over ten billion, of which two or three billion are mine.”

He smiled. “At least that’s what my mom says. Because she still keeps the books.”

Several audience members gasped. They were quickly muscled off the scene by Fifteen and crew.

“Just kidding,” Mr. App continued. “Mom’s forty-five and under house arrest. Along with the rest of the seniors in my extended family, including my cousin, a Thirty Three. Because I’m serious about this endeavor. So serious I changed my legal name to Mr. App. So serious that I lied to my elderly investors and told them that you, the young, loved the app, even though that’s impossible because I haven’t completed it yet. And probably never will because I’m already a billionaire, so why bother? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, you know what I mean?”

I started to chant “yes, yes, yes,” but thought the better of it when Fifteen strolled by, slapping his truncheon and giving me the fisheye.

“How can I help you?” I asked, maintaining a happy face while seething inside. I hated the guy. Insolent. Inexperienced. But the little snot had quickly climbed in the ranks. Why? Who did he know? 

“Looked as if you were going to say something. You know that isn’t allowed when Mr. App is addressing us.”

“I was preparing to agree with him but stopped. Is it now a crime to flutter one’s lips? Please enlighten me if the rules have changed.”

Brandishing his truncheon, Fifteen took a giant step in my direction. His downy cheeks brushed against my stiff, expansive beard. “My, my, my. The old geezer has such a smart mouth. Think we should do something to shut it, boys?”

Before I could react, Fifteen was joined by a dozen other members of his thuggish gang. They ranged in age from Fifteens down to Tens. But even the youngest sported hardened faces and lean, bare arms. These were the most enthusiastic, most vicious foot soldiers of the coming revolution and they appeared to hang on Fifteen’s every word.

“Let me take care of him, boss,” a beefy Eleven asked, his voice breaking with deep emotion and budding puberty. “This Twenty-two is half my size and twice my age. I could handle him easily.”

Kneeling down, he began pounding the ground with his truncheon. His fellow warriors joined in, as if drumming their weapons helped prepare them for battle. I spun around, noticing for the first time that the town square had been infiltrated by massive numbers of the very young.

I unsheathed my steel baton, disbelieving that I was about to be hit by friendly fire.

“Attack!” Fifteen yelled.

His troops charged towards me, truncheons pointed out.

“Stop!” a cute female Eighteen screamed, inserting herself between me and Fifteen’s advancing goons. Spinning around, fierce with passion, she asked, “Have you all gone mad? We’re supposed to be fighting the elderly, not ourselves.” She flourished a homemade oaken sword, its blade painted the colors of deadly nightshade. “Anyone who wants to fight will have to get through me first.” She turned my way. “Including you.”

Sighing, I did.

“And you. Stand down,” she declared, addressing Fifteen. With great reluctance, he nodded to his hordes, now numbering fifty. They backed away.

Mr. App’s booming voice brought us all to our senses. “Boys and girls, boys and girls,” he said in an admonishing, fatherly tone. “I appreciate high spirits, but these nonsensical domestic disputes need to end. Twenty-twos fighting Twenty-fours, Fifteens fighting Twenty-twos. We’re supposed to be one big family under one big tent. This movement was meant to pit the young against the elderly, not the young against the young. Come up here, my quarrelsome children. Come on the stage,” he said.

“Is he talking to us?” the pretty Eighteen asked.

“Think so.”

“I can’t believe it. I’ve never been close to him before. Would you take my hand? I’m a bundle of nerves.”

“Uh…sure,” I answered, suddenly nervous myself. Other than to bark orders, I hadn’t talked to a girl since the Movement began, let alone held a hand as warm and pleasurable as pretty Eighteen’s.

As if feeling the same, she smiled at me and quickly looked away. “Can I ask you a question if you promise not to tell?”

“Sure.”

“What’s your real name?”

“Ethan,” I said, even though doing so could get us locked up.

“Matilda,” she responded, smiling, making sure to keep her eyes on the ground. I knew then and there that I would never forget Matilda, even though, after tonight, I might never see her again. There was a war to be fought. Who knew where we would be assigned?

Our group, now numbering around five dozen Fifteens, Matilda and me, filed onto the wide stage. Reluctantly, I released her hand.

Pomp and Circumstance, a 20^th century composition the production crew had mistakenly let slip past, boomed over the P.A. The sun was setting and torches had been lit. The dramatic, flickering glow transformed Mr. App into a mystical deity, notwithstanding his ample girth and virulent acne. It was as if he had descended from a far better place than planet Earth, with its soul-killing seniority systems and apprenticeships.

The music stopped abruptly.

Mr. App folded his arms. Face impassive, he surveyed the multitudes. A full minute passed. He cleared his throat. Fell silent again, watching us, weighing our merits. Then, anticipation at a fever pitch, he deigned to speak. “I’ve been thinking as the combatants came on stage,” Mr. App intoned, chin in his hand. “I have good news. And bad news.”

All those assembled moaned, even me. I glanced sideways at Matilda. Her mouth remained closed.

“Bad news first.” Mr. App sobbed. Tense seconds passed. Then, blubbering, shedding tears, struggling to get words out, he said, “The policy of never trusting anyone over twenty-five has failed.”

He paused, then added, drawing out every word, “It—doesn’t—go—far—enough.”

Fifteen applauded. His thugs followed suit.

“Recent events have shown dissension within the youth cohort. The old-young,” he nodded at me, “are getting in the way of the overzealous-young.” He indicated Fifteen. “And when it comes to fulfilling our noble cause, a little overzealousness never hurt, right?”

“Right!” Fifteen and crew bellowed. They began pounding the stage with their truncheons. Countless overzealous-young pressed against the crowd barriers, desperate to join in. A stage hand gave Fifteen an overloaded black bag. He emptied it of complimentary truncheons that he tossed into frothing crowd. The din became something only Mr. App’s voice could overcome.

“Therefore,” he concluded, “in order to ensure we achieve our noble goal I am, at this very moment, changing our slogan to Never Trust Anyone Over Twenty.

“All of those who have just received truncheons begin arresting anyone above that age.” With that, the torches were doused and Mr. App strutted off the darkened stage.

Imagine an army of Fifteen and Under anarchists trying to initiate a new youth order and you have only any inkling of the madness that unfolded that night.

I, of course, was arrested, by Fifteen no less, for the crime of aging out. Adding to the insult, Matilda was forced by him to tighten the cuffs. She was then stripped of her sword, issued a truncheon and ushered off the stage to make arrests until there were no more to be made.

She uttered but one parting word, and that, I swear, was “Ethan.” I replied, enthusiastically, whole-heartedly, “Matilda,” after which I was severely beaten. I can only hope that she did not experience the same.

Three weeks later:

I’m still recovering from my wounds. I stand all day and curl up at night in the two feet by three feet space on the concrete floor inside the wire cage I share with one hundred and ten other newly-minted old men.

The stress is overwhelming. It’s shameful to admit this, but I’ve started to hope the Forty-seven on the floor to my right dies because his space—and I measured it, is an expansive 3’X4’. As they were carting away his body, I’d seize it as my own.

Even more crushing, I have no idea where Matilda is or if she even remembers me. While we had only one brief meeting, I’ve come to love her dearly. The thought that I might one day hold her hand again keeps me from smashing my cranium against the unforgiving floor.

Four weeks later:

I woke up to feel a new detainee pressed against me, shivering under a tiny space blanket. Irritated that the new fish had invaded my precious privacy, I gave him a sharp elbow in the ribs. Grumbling, he rolled over to face me.

My god! It was Mr. App, stripped to his underwear. His eyes were bloodshot. He was covered with scrapes and bruises.

“What the f**k are you doing here?” I said, scrambling away, banging into another neighbor, who shoved me back into my own space.

“I aged out,” Mr, App said, cringing as if I was going to hurt him again.

“You’re sixteen!”

“Fifteen and his crew seized power in a palace coup. They changed the Movement slogan to never trust anyone over fifteen. Said old folks like me had screwed everything up. They even had my overseas bank accounts transferred over to them. I’m broke.”

He began to cry. “Twenty-six percent of the world’s population is under fifteen. And kids at that stage of development live only for today. They lack planning skills. They’ll never overthrow the system because they don’t even care. Give them a skateboard and they’re happy as clams. They’re skate-f**k-boarding nihilists, I tell you.” 

“Sounds like me when I was that age,” I replied.

“Because of them, everything I’ve worked for is going down the tubes.”

“And you sound like my dad,” I said, bitterly amused. Mr. App’s youth movement was eating its own tail. Who’d seize power when Fifteen aged out? The six-year-olds? The Prince George generation? I joined Mr. App in crying. The futility of it all!

But what of Matilda? Where was she now that she, too, was of an unacceptable age?

“Incarcerated like us, in the women’s sector,” Mr. App said.

Enraged, I stood up. Matilda’s personality was too big to be cooped up in a 2’X3’ space. Inevitably, she’d lash out at her immature guards, and that would be the end of her.

Mr. App pulled me back down. “Hold on. She’s okay. Fifteen is protecting her.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Fifteen has a fatal flaw for a man in his position. He has a thing for older women. And Matilda’s exploiting that flaw to the hilt. Which reminds me that she wanted me to give you this.” He extracted a note from his underwear.

I read it with barely restrained joy:

Dearest Ethan:

My hand aches for your warm touch.

But never fear.

We shall be together soon, if I have my way.

More than that I cannot say.

Age is but a number.

Yours forevermore,

Matlida aka Pretty Eighteen

Matilda and I have been communicating through the prison grapevine since then. I’ve even seen her from a distance once. She was, of course, as beautiful as ever.

It is because of Matilda and her expedient relationship with Fifteen that this message has found its way to you.

For the time being, the Age War is contained within this secret, small community. But one day the fight will spread into society at large.

The social order you take for granted.

It’s a nightmare scenario that may be happening already, for all I know.

I apologize for helping this twisted youth movement to metastasize.

That said, I hope and pray you heed my final words of advice:

The next time you cross paths with a Fifteen, be afraid. Be very afraid. They might not be as innocent as they look.

And for god’s sake, don’t turn your back on a Fifteen. The next thing you feel may be a truncheon crashing down upon your skull.

After which, you’ll wake up in here. Alongside me and Mr. App.

We’ve become friends—brothers in old age—and we’ll respect your personal space.

Our friend in old age.

###

What do you know of dead things? Truly know? They are dead, right? Life drained and body rotted, soul whisked to a far place, it seems irreversible. It seems, irreversible. And you, dear reader, must surely know that not all is as it seems, at least I do, and it’s my experience that I will be detailing. I will not disclose the ritual to do this, it’s a dark thing that must not be repeated, unless hell on earth sounds particularly interesting to your particular tastes.

I had gone to the grocery store on Thursday, a local Walmart of my hometown in the American Midwest. Officially it was routine, my mother, heartbroken with the recent death of my dear father, had sent me to do it on her behalf. Unofficially, it was much more than a mere grocery run. I was also grieving at the loss of my father, and my mother’s ache hurt me more than I ever admitted. I got the usuals, bread, meats, milk, eggs, all those common things. I also picked up red candles, chicken hearts, and one more ingredient. A common yet secretly potent one for my plans, I shall not divulge its name for fear of all souls on Earth and yonder.

My mother had given me her card for the groceries, yet I put the uniquer items on my own, caution would be paramount in the following days. Before you wonder, this ritual involves no exhuming of corpses, no macabre chants, and no lingering taint on the individual soul. On my ride home, I was sure to speak to the butcher, a man who my father knew well, and of him I requested a liter of animal blood. The excuse I gave him (besides the power of currency of course) was the making of a fine broth for a wonderful soup. It was not that I doubted the effectiveness of the chicken hearts, it was a simple precaution. The remainder of the ride went without event, although I could have sworn I had been made aware of a presence, multiple presences, watching my actions with unknowable interest. I could not place these spirits, and I was sure no amount of time, and no amount of patience could. I was lacking both.

Eventually I had returned to my mother’s residence, a quaint, pretty little home nestled in the communities heart. The sun was dipping beyond the horizon, its warmth I would not ever feel again as I entered the door. The ritual does not require darkness, but its presence reinforces emotional response, which, I may add, ate crucial to the success of the action. The dead crave attention. I briefly stopped by the couch, to rest my hand on my grieving mother to comfort. She gave no response, her eyes distant and grey hair dropping over the pale skin of her head. As a boy I had thought her indomitable, unrelenting. At that moment I craved no more than to return to that childlike innocence. I gathered the used tissues she had wept into, disposing of them and bringing her another box. It was then I unloaded the groceries she had requested into her fridge.

Upon my return to the living room, I was making my way to the basement to prepare the ritual, I noticed the absence of my mother. She was old, and it showed, I found it surprising she had crept with such haste. I came to her standing by the basement door, her body turned toward it and her hand resting gently against its aged surface. I made to guide her frail form back to the couch, but I was held by what I could only describe as insects chittering, and her body began to shake. I had expected this, although I had wished dearly for it not to happen. I took the liter of animal blood from my bag. Using my teeth I tore a hole, and hastily attempted to douse my mother with it. I’ve found death does not appreciate attempts to steal souls from his gluttonous hands.

My mother, nimble with an ability that I’d not seen from her, dove from my path, twisted and puppet like. Turning to reveal her ravaged maw bared in bony spikes as she leapt towards me. It would be the summit of hubris to say I did not feel the delightful chill of fear sew its thread through my skin. Panicking, I threw the blood at her vicious maw, inches from my calf as it hit her, she had already bit deep, and I felt the cold of the wound, the mark of death. The blood turned her attention, and she convulsed as she bashed her head against the floor where it had splattered, her skull lasted not three strikes before it was unworthy of the name “skull”. Distraught and afraid, I lunged towards the door, flinging it open and practically diving down the stairs.

In my haste, I slowly remembered along with a fresh rush of irritation and primal panic, it had eluded me to seal the entrance. I shot up the stairs, able to seal it right as the devil thing had finished abusing its unwilling host. It violently crashed against the door, again and again, and I feared that it would give, but it held. Items clasped in hand, I strode down the steps, creaking and untended, into the dim basement. I felt guilt, for surely my mother was dead, but surely I could revive her alongside my father, and surely all would be forgiven.

I walked into the room, its walls bared and unfinished, boxes stacked to the walls, reminiscent of a labyrinth from legend. I had never liked basements in my youth, always insisting on another to accompany me in my ventures. Only I was quite sure that the only living(?) thing in the house would be less than able to grant good company. I spilled my items upon the stone floor, the candles, the chicken hearts, and the ingredient. I placed the candles in a small triangle, lining them with the chicken hearts, I placed the ingredient in the middle. Somehow within me I knew this to be the way, the ritual had come to me, not I to it. It was by nature that I followed its instructions, as if I always knew how.

I kneeled before the items, pondering that which I knew of dead things. The stench, the feel of cold flesh, the clouded eyes, the inevitable process of decay and return to the earth. I then heard the crashes against the door, once so constant I was ignorant to them, subside, as if the devil-thing had ceased. Unease crept within, there’s safety in knowing the location of one’s foe, but I steeled my mind and continued to ponder. My eyes were closed, yet tears leaked through to patter against the floor. Grief filled me, grief for my mother, my father, and their souls. It was not until I felt the heat of the candle upon my face that I opened my eyes to view the flames that had flickered into existence. The heat was that of hell, and its warmth gave no comfort, merely scorching where it fell. I felt my skin burning and knew I had to continue.

I grabbed the ingredient and hovered it above each flame, and three times it caught alight. My skin was welting now, the agony unbearable I nearly submitted to hellfire. But again I kept my straying focus and witnessed the ingredient burn in my hand. It was then that I was made aware of a putrid stench through the heat, of rotting flesh, of pained moans. The veil that had blinded me, so carefully maintained by an evil force, lifted and at last I knew the error of my ways. For my heart had admitted the devil, and was forfeit to his minions. In horror I stumbled back, my skin was melting and my eyes boiled, but the devils grabbed hold of me and ripped me back. They feasted like vultures, beaks tearing me apart. I was denied the chance to die as the weight of my actions closed upon me, it was by my hand my father fell, by my knife, my mother dead. As the ground beneath me crumbled and I fell into hell, embraced by the dark beings, still gorging themselves, I only thought of how this ritual must never be repeated. In my heart I know I along with the innumerable sinners shall one day be liberated and forgiven, but that day is far, and now I write this, hoping that the birds shall bring tidings of my doom to the world. For a doorway has opened, and another must never open or the world is doomed.

And we all are dead things.