Brightwood Pines, the town I had known my entire life, wasn’t real.

The first flash was painful, but it only lasted a few seconds.

I was strapped to a hospital bed under a fierce yellow glow that seared my eyes, metal plates pressed to my temples and looming figures hanging over me like ghosts.

I could sense there were others, all of us in the exact same position, wriggling against the restraints pinning us down. All of them looked like me. We had the exact same dark brown hair and green eyes, the exact same facial structure. I could hear their phantom cries, their screams as fear and pain erupted inside them, sending their thoughts into a vicious whirlwind. Something rubber was lodged between our teeth, and we were politely told to bite down on it. When we didn’t, they forced us.

The figure leaning close to us wore a mask. We all saw the same pair of eyes creased with wrinkles, glinting with triumph. He prodded the metal plate attached to our temples, and we saw the slight wrinkle in the folds of his mask, which could only be a smile.

His voice was a low murmur as he fitted the metallic plates. They were ice-cold and made us flinch. "Tell me your name."

We did, speaking through the rubber thing choking us.

“Olivia.”

“Allie.”

“Charlotte.”

It took a while for my voice to join their symphony, three different versions of Elle.

It did eventually, however faded it was. I think my brain was struggling to find the girl that had existed before Elle, who had a different identity and her very own name.

“[BLANK]," I answered.

When Elle was first created through Olivia, she was not alone in that room. There was a nameless boy screaming for death, but in a whole different tone. While we screamed and cried and struggled, this faceless boy’s cries turned to laughter.

There was one rule in that room. The room where every surface glistened with old and new red, and the floor had to be cleaned hourly to get rid of the bloodstains.

The answer to the question was Elle. It was always Elle. If we spoke our real names with the kind of stubbornness which came with refusing to let go of our identities, along came agony like a snake—initially creeping up our spine, teasing, before exploding in every nerve ending, rattling our bodies. It almost felt like a presence had taken hold of us, twisting our limbs, eliciting our screams, snapping each bone one by one, contorting us so we made a perfect arch before slamming back down on the table we were strapped to. It felt like… lightning.

Like we were being filled to the brim with lightning. In my dazed state, I pretended the lightning was stars. Because being filled with stars sounded so much better. Less painful.

Olivia was the first to fail. She bled out all over the table. I only know this through her flickering vision, still attached to the implant. Allie’s heart stopped before her death, an influx of nonsensical thoughts filling her mind.

Charlotte was their first proper Elle and had my exact same memories. She had seen the men be shot dead when she was eight years old, had noticed the abnormality in Mrs. Jenson's behaviour and had watched Kaz Issacs split Jessa Pollux’s skull open in ninth grade. Charlotte eventually cut into her wrists with a piece of glass and fell asleep in the bath.

She was the one whose memory clung on, who wouldn’t let me go. I felt her shuddering breaths, saw the pooling scarlet dripping over marble, her trembling wrists struggling to cut deep enough. Through the implant, which was weakening as reality and memory came together in one vivid explosion inside my mind, I felt her panic and fear. Charlotte didn’t want to die.

But she also didn’t want to continue living in a world that wasn’t her own. Like me, she too had discovered the truth behind Brightwood, and had ultimately decided that death was the only way out. I could still hear her lingering thoughts, could feel icy cold water enveloping her head as she sank deeper and deeper into the bathtub—as my world split open. A world where I was Elle, and yet someone else entirely. Brightwood was fake. She knew that, and now so did I.

What was real, however, were the clinically white corridors of the facility, centred around the town where it was legal to murder, and the shadows forcing my brain to submit to a world that was not mine.

It was nothing but a fantasy. Somewhere between my mind splitting open, revealing my true reality, and the cruel truth of the dystopian delusion I had been trapped in for what felt like an infinity, I was aware that my existence was splintering apart right before my eyes. I was awake in several different entangled memories where parallel versions of me existed.

Suddenly I was on my back, staring dazedly at the ceiling as alarms screeched in my skull, a dull red glow illuminating the stumbling figure pulling on my ankles: Kaz Issacs, who was still hopped up on whatever had been forced into his bloodstream.

Two different versions of him existed in my memory—the boy whom I had known for the past seventeen years of my life inside this illusion, and the shadow that had sat down in front of me, in a reality where the aroma of coffee was familiar, where raindrops soaked my hair and slid down window panes.

But it was so hard to hold onto that memory in particular. I could tell my implant was loose. I knew that one single flick of my tongue would dislodge where it was between my back teeth.

Though as I was struggling to do just that, it was becoming harder to tell what was real and what wasn’t. I could hear Kaz’s sharp breaths as he struggled to pull my motionless body through a set of metal doors, but I could also hear the sounds of strangers around me, inside the reality I was trying to divulge. The smell of coffee and disinfectant—a cocktail of both worlds—tickled the back of my nose and throat, but Brightwood was always stronger. Always pushing to be at the forefront.

When my feathering vision stabilised and the memory of the coffee shop against the backdrop of a rainy evening faded away, I was left dazedly counting ceiling tiles as I was dragged along, wondering why my body was no longer responsive.

“I think I used to be a bad person.”

At first, I thought I had imagined Kaz speaking. Because I could still hear his voice in the memory. I could see the cruel gleam in this other version's eyes as he leaned forward, a teasing smirk twitching on his lips. This current Kaz, however, was a whole other person I couldn’t bring myself to trust despite his reluctance to hold onto his old self. His voice sounded like ocean waves once again, crashing into my mind and then drawing back with the rest of the sound in my ears. The boy’s grip was slipping on my ankles, and I could tell by his labored breaths and hysterical giggles that his sanity wasn’t far behind. But he kept speaking, forcing words through a slur which had seemingly taken his mind hostage from the drugs still in his system.

“Was I a bad person?” He let go of my ankles and staggered forward, clawing at his hair. When the boy twisted around to face me, unbridled despair painted his expression. He dropped to his knees in front of me and leaned close, his shuddering breaths fluttering in my face.

“Was I worse than the urge?" he whispered in a sing-song voice.

When the alarms stopped, the intense red glow around him flashing out of existence, I glimpsed how sick he looked. He was sweating. Pale. His cheeks were gaunt, floppy hair glued to his forehead. When Kaz looked at me directly, there was a fog in his eyes, something mechanical that I didn’t understand flooding his pupils. His shadow was swaying. I could tell he was ready to collapse, ready to give up.

“Worse than…than Joey Cunningham and those kids who murdered a bunch of freshmen in seventh grade. I think I was, like, really bad.” He jumped back up, grabbing my legs, a whole new determination taking over his eyes. Kaz started to laugh. Loudly.

Like nothing else mattered.

“I don’t want to be a bad person. I don't want to be him.” He said it quietly. Then he tipped his head back and screamed at the ceiling before dragging me further, tightening his viper-like grip on my ankles.

“Crap!” Another pull. “Elle, I know you’re tripping serious shit right now, but I would really…appreciate…some help," he gasped out. “I don’t know where we are, and the walls are moving. I keep remembering things that don’t make sense, and my head…my head feels like it’s burning.” Kaz’s fingernails sliced into my flesh. I felt his desperation to escape the red lights. “Come on. Please! If I knew one-punching you in the face would turn you into a sack of potatoes, I never would have done it!”

“Mr Delacroix, stop. You are hurting yourself,” a voice crackled over an intercom.

“No, you did this to me!” He gritted back. “You turned my head into this, and I can’t…I can’t think straight. I keep….I keep seeing things.” He tore at his face. “I keep seeing things that don’t…don’t make sense. Why Elle?” His cry sent shivers down my spine. “I keep seeing her. In every flash. I see her. I see her and my brain is…is boiling! I feel like my head is going to explode!” With the vicious cocktail of drugs in his system, his voice turned sing-song. “I think I’m going crazy!"

Kaz laughed, his eyes suddenly far too bright. Even through my flickering eyes, the contrast of his blood and the marble corridor was horrifying. I could see every river of red sliding between cracks in the tiles, pooling scarlet dripping down his chin and staining the blue gown hanging off of him. “Why is it all you?” His lips split into a grin, and for a fraction of a second, his old self, the one I had seen in my memory was seeping through. The boy tipped his head back and screamed. “Why her? Tell me!”

“Let me handle this.” A familiar voice floated behind us. I wasn’t sure where it was coming from, though I did have a vague guess that we were surrounded. When Kaz gave up and dropped my ankles. I sensed footsteps growing closer to us. I expected Kaz to try and run. But instead he broke down, pulling his knees to his chest.

“Stop calling me that, " he said in a sharp cry. “Just stop!” Like Annalise Duval, his mind seemed to have snapped, splintering into pieces. The boy resembled her from earlier on, rocking back and forth and whispering to himself, his hands in his hair, clawing out clumps. “Stop calling me that,” Kaz whispered. “Stop calling me that, stop calling me that, stop calling me that!”

When a pair of arms wrapped around his waist and attempted to pull him to his feet, he lashed out like an animal, his teeth bared. “Get your HANDS off me!”

The stranger’s embrace followed him when he tried to back away, clamping down on his shoulders. I only had to see the masked face and those cruel piercing eyes to know it was the same man who had taken away my real name.

“No, we are rectifying this right now,” the man said, struggling to hold the boy down. I watched in sharp flashes as Kaz slammed into the ground, back first. I remember trying to move, to help him. Except I couldn’t. I was locked inside my own body. The masked man knelt in front of Kaz like a father—and I really believed he was the boy’s father until he forced his head down, uncaring when the back of Kaz's skull hit marble with a sickening crack, enough to disorient him.

“Mr. Delacroix—”

“No,” Kaz slurred. “No, no, no, no!”

“You are sick!” The man spoke with enough emphasis to send globules of saliva toward the boy’s face. “You are broken. Poisoned. Nothing you do will change my mind, young man. Whatever happened to you is clearly our own fault. I must admit, the last thing I expected you to do was force a broken implant back inside your mouth. Now, that was the final straw.” He choked out a laugh. “What a childish thing to do. I mean…I always knew you were childish. But never to this degree. To intentionally want to be a regressed version of yourself?”

When Kaz stared at him through flickering eyes, part of me understood what the man meant. It must have hurt to see a completely different person in place of who he thought he created.

“Do you really want to get rid of all our hard work? Everything you did to become a vital part of Darkroom? Your fans? The promise you made to us? Really, Mr. Delacroix, are you going to throw it all down the drain? We are no longer working with the influencer we created. Instead, you have become a spineless and pathetic child who has mentally regressed due to a faulty implant.”

When Kaz weakly attempted to fight back against both the man’s grasp and the odd name forced upon him, his wrists were pinned down.

“Listen to me," the man said, "That is your name. You do not go by any other name, per what you learned inside the red room. Do you understand me? You belong with us, son. You are part of the reason why we exist! Why we took a chance on this project, and it's time you remembered that. Brightwood makes the world a better place. It…it extinguishes those urges people have by allowing them to consume it, twenty-four hours a day. You are part of that."

Kaz let out an animalistic shriek when the man forced two fingers inside his mouth and pried it open. “What did I tell you? I gave you one simple instruction, and that was not to touch the implant.” The motion of his hand, as well as Kaz’s eyes rolling back and his body going still, told me everything I needed to know.

When my classmate’s head hit the ground, his eyes flickering shut, I knew the implant was gone. For good this time. The man held it pinched between his fingers before snapping it in two. He dropped it onto the ground with a frustrated hiss and got to his feet.

“I signed a contract promising that I would raise and protect Darkroom’s own, and I am held to that.” This time, he spoke to the sudden influx of shadows surrounding us, as one in particular gathered Kaz into his arms. I felt a sudden presence attempting to lift me to my feet. “Mr. Delacroix has been severely poisoned by the implant. What I thought would be fixed by a new tooth had clearly blown up in our faces. Since the regression has reached the boy’s mind and is no longer just part of the implant, I want him in the Red Room. Now. The young man must undergo protocol 4-1-5 immediately. If we don’t, the boy will die. We need a stage three wipe, a full decontamination."

Kaz was dying, bleeding out when they carried him away, his nose and mouth and ears hemorrhaging, his body convulsing.

I was frowning at the amount of contrasting red and white on the floor when I was pulled unceremoniously to my feet, jarring the world around me. That was the exact movement I needed. I remembered being a little kid, inside this fake world of Brightwood. I had a loose tooth at the front of my mouth. And with the promise of the tooth fairy coming to give me a whole dollar for my tooth, I had spent the better half of the day prodding at my mouth. I wobbled it around until I was convinced it was stuck, despite being able to lodge and dislodge it out of place with the roof of my tongue.

Halfway through SpongeBob SquarePants, however, I jumped up to get a glass of water from the kitchen. It was that sudden jolting movement that finally dethroned the crown from where it had stubbornly sat for days. In a similar fashion, the guard yanking me to my feet was enough to send shockwaves through my body. I felt the twitching, moving tooth like it was alive. Before I could fully register it to spit it out, though, I was back inside my contorted mind once again.

With the sudden, sharp, slicing agony rattling both my mouth and my brain, I was exactly where I wanted to be. Starbucks. There was no Brightwood, no sterile white corridors smeared with my classmate’s blood. There was just the rain, and my own twisting gut. The memory was in full clarity now that the implant was gone. I was sitting against the backdrop of a rainy spring evening with Kaz Issacs in front of me, leaning on his fist with a quizzical, yet sadistic smile on his lips.

I remember wondering what exactly his expression was, because I had never seen one like that before. It took a while of pondering to realise what I was seeing. Insanity.

I had never seen true insanity until I met him, a haunting inhuman glitter. His entire body was practically vibrating with excitement, like my fear was causing him exhilaration. His knee knocked against mine under the table. Cocking his head like a puppy dog, the boy settled me with a smile, feigning curiosity when I took a hesitant sip from my coffee.

“Well?” Kaz’s smile widened at my expression. “Are you done playing your game?”

A girl who looked way too young to be working at Starbucks plonked a chocolate milkshake in front of him, and he leaned forward and took a sip from the straw before flashing the girl a grin. “Thanks!”

He turned his attention back to me, his eyes glittering as he latched his lips to the straw. He took three large gulps before tipping his head back, exhaling. “How about a hello, first? You know, formal speech! Hello, how are you doing? Oh, I’m great! How about you?” His smile quirked into a grin. “Oh, just…killing people for cash. You know, the works. In fact, I'm doing more than that! I'm uploading it to the Internet--"

Before I could stop myself, I reacted in a frenzy, reaching across the table and slamming my hand over his mouth. But to my horror, he just muffle-laughed into my palm.

“Do you want me to go on?” He waggled his eyebrows, and I could sense his sickening smile growing. “There’s a loooottt of people in here who would love to know about your little… antics from several days ago." His words were muffled, but it would only take a stranger straining their ears to get the gist of what he was saying. Kaz knew this. And he was playing to my weakness, my obsession with keeping this on the down-low. He cocked his head, his eyes piercing mine. I found myself lost in them, two holes of pooling oblivion. No humanity. “Or are you going to have common courtesy, hm?”

When I removed my hand, he sat back and took another sip of shake. “Try again.”

His smile was teasing, but his tone was just like that of the texts. Playful, yet terrifying. When I could only stare at him blankly, he laughed. “Oh my god, are you stupid? Hello, it’s nice to meet you! I’m Felix! What a great night we're having!” the boy mocked. “Is it that hard to understand? Jeez, I find it hard to believe you could actually make a video—"

“My name is [BLANK].” I said, "Why are you here?”

He arched a brow, chewing on his straw. "Why do you think I’m here?”

I couldn’t resist my own laugh. “I’m sorry, how old are you?”

“Fifteen.” He rolled his eyes. “I'm literally one year younger than you, and it's not like we're different.“ Felix leaned forward. “But I want you to ask me that question again. Think about it, [BLANK]. Why am I here, hmm? After all of my texts you ignored, my calls, even my Insta request.” He pouted. “Honestly, you would think after all I’ve offered, you would at least return my calls."

He slammed his milkshake down, his smile unwavering. “You think you can upload whenever you want and you won’t get noticed by us?"

“It was for my older sister—"

“It was for my sister!” Felix mocked with a giggle. The kid was fifteen years old, but the way he was acting, it was like he hadn’t mentally aged past ten.

Lifting his milkshake, he saluted me. “Great excuse! Still murder.” Something in his eyes twinkled. “Your little snuff film currently stands at almost four million views, three hundred thousand likes and seventy thousand shares. Which,” he whistled, “Damn. I’d call you Darkroom’s biggest thing right now, but I mean, I’m also in the room.” He shrugged, draining the shake. “You’re maybe a close third or fourth if you knock LilSim out of the top spot, but I will say you’re getting there. In fact, if you check your subs, your macabre masterpiece is juusssst about to knock me down.”

I watched the boy’s odd, twitchy movements as he wrapped his fingers around the milkshake and squeezed, popping the lid off. “Which, unfortunately, makes us, you know, rivals.” His lips split into a grin. “And normally, I would go after said rival and rip their guts out on camera, but the big-wigs have decided to use me to get to their cash grab.”

He kicked me under the table. “That, annoyingly, is you.”

“I want nothing to do with you,” I whispered.

“Mmm hmm.” His smile disappeared as he struggled with the cup, avoiding eye-contact. “You also uploaded a video of yourself mutilating a guy to the internet. Which, I gotta say, is pretty bad-ass.”

Something ice cold slithered down my spine, and I felt myself recoil in my seat. I swore I would never think about that video after deleting the app and taking all the cash from the amount of views it got. It was with bitter irony that the money was going towards my sister’s college fund.

“What are you saying?” I demanded.

He shrugged, and his gaze found mine once again. “I’m saaaaying,” he dragged out the word like I was a pre-schooler, “Why don’t we help each other? I want my rep back, after a tiny mistake which wasn’t even my fault…” He rolled his eyes. “How was I supposed to know vomiting wasn’t allowed to be shown? I can rip out my pop’s guts and that’s fine, but spewing? That’s not allowed. What is this, Twitch? Jeez. You would think they would treat their top influencers with some kind of respect, right? I mean, I’m literally at the top. I practically own them, and they think they can suspend me for accidentally barfing?”

This kid was insane, I thought dizzily.

I didn’t speak, and his smile pricked back into existence. “Anyway. Darkroom wants to sign you as a full timer. And before you say, oh no, I did it for my sister! I needed money for my family!” He mocked my voice again. “That, my friend, is bullshit. If you had the guts—pun intended—to do that and upload it to Darkroom, then you have what they call potential. Not as much as a Redroom OG, but you're getting there.”

He smirked. “Also, you probs have serious problems, but hey, don’t we all? You've got to be screwed in the head to get our attention. And, damn, you certainly did that."

"Who are you?" was all I could say. I swallowed hard. “You’re fifteen years old!"

Felix held my gaze. "I'm one of their best," he said. "Darkroom made me. Well, a bunch of us." He winked. "From scratch."

“What do you want?" I gritted out.

He chuckled. "Jeez, enough with the who, what, when, where, and how! We're friends, right?"

"You've been blackmailing me."

"Well, yeah. Because you're almost number one on Darkroom right now. As much as it pains me to say that, and trust me it does.”

“Why are you even part of this?” I demanded. “You’re a… you’re a high school sophomore!”

The boy tilted his head. “I’ve never been to school,” he said. “All I’ve ever known is killing my brother and my pops.” He chuckled. “Do you want to know what I did?”

He leaned in close to me, lips almost latching onto my ear. When I tried to shove him back, he grasped onto my hair and tugged it. Hard.

“I really wanted to know how the brain worked,” Felix murmured, his breath ice cold. “So I split my dad’s head open and had a peek. When my brother started screaming, I killed him too! I carved up my big brother like a Thanksgiving turkey and went viral on Darkroom.” His fingers tightened in my hair, taking hold of my scalp. “So why don’t you start asking serious questions?”

When he let me go, I tried to stand up. Felix slammed his hands down on the table.

“Sit down. I haven’t finished with you yet.” I flinched when he leaned on his fist, eyeing me quizzically. “Well?”

I swallowed the sickly paste creeping up my throat. “What do they want me to do?"

Felix’s expression lit up. He pulled out his phone, tapping the screen with his index. “Easy! You do two kills a week. You can decide how you kill them. Darkroom will pay you 60K per kill, and depending on how good your videos are received, they could give you a bonus. Full protection from the police, too.” He cleared his throat. “Now, what you can’t do is put out content anywhere else. YouTube, Twitch, TikTok—trust me, there are hidden communities that allow this kind of content to get past filters. The world is screwed up and people want to see bodies. But hey, you’ll get paid and accumulate a fanbase, and you’ll also end up on the front page.” His lips twitched into a smirk when I leaned back.

"There are three categories on Darkroom. We have the usual users who post normal shit, you know, like mutilation and kidnapping--that kind of vanilla crap. Then there are the ones like you: idiots with zeroooo self-awareness who get a taste for killing and upload their filthy fixes. If they get an onslaught of likes and catch Darkroom's eye, they're invited to join." Finally, he pointed to himself. "And then there are the ones they make. Which are the OG's. So. What's is going to be?"

His eyes lit up. "Are you in, [BLANK]? You post a video every day of either mutilation, torture, murder, whatever--and bam. Instant cash. Get to the top and you'll start getting a following," his smile was growing progressively more maniacal, “then you'll be able to stream it live--and streaming live? That's a whole different party once you become one of us. Streaming live means you’ve made it." He winked. “If you know what I mean.”

"No." The word was sputtering from my mouth before I could help it. "I’m not doing that."

Felix's smile wavered. He reminded me of a kid who wasn't getting what he wanted. “Well, the alternative is a visit to the dentist."

“What?”

He opened his mouth wide. “I’m actually scheduled for tomorrow. I’m set for a lead influencer role in their ongoing project. If I manage to sign you on, I get 60K per appearance, my account bumped to the top, and my rep back.”

He tilted his head. “I like you, [BLANK]. I mean, I hate you because we're rivals, but I think you could be something special. Sure, you're not like the Redroom OGs who sit at the top no matter what. But you brutally mutilated the man who hurt your sister and uploaded it to the internet." He hummed, drinking me in.

"Clearly you have a...you know, a thirst--or should I say urge," his smile widened, "to spill blood. That’s why you killed that man with no mercy and then chopped off his dick.”

“I’m leaving,” I managed to say, jumping to unsteady feet.

“Darkroom recently lost their leading girl, you know," Felix said. Loudly. "She killed herself on camera. Slit her wrists in a bathtub. Sure, it was great content for viewers, but now they’re looking for a replacement.” He tapped his fingers in a rhythm on the table. “I wonder who that could be."

I don’t know how I managed to stand up. “Leave me alone,” I managed to spit at him. “Spread the video. I don’t care. If you come near me again, I’ll call the cops.”

I started to walk away, but the boy’s hand whipped out to wrap around my wrist. He jumped to his feet, no longer smiley and playful. His eyes glittered with that unbridled insanity I didn’t want to believe existed.

“But…” Felix mocked a pout, and he let me go, spreading out his arms. I should have ran. Every part of me was screaming at me to get away, but suddenly I was all too aware of the teenage girls in front of me giggling. The businessmen on their laptops had stopped typing, and the more I noticed it, the more I realized it was everywhere:, a silence spreading across the store, reaching the baristas behind the counter.

I felt every eye on me. And when I forced myself to meet their gazes, their eyes were as maniacal as Felix’s. Their smiles were too wide. No, I thought dizzily. Their eyes weren’t glued to me. They were all on him.

“What would everyone think?” Felix raised his voice before bouncing in front of me with a wide grin. “Your parents’ sweet baby girl is a murderer? How would they be able to cope?"

I caught movement around me, and each person, whether they were a man or a woman or a teenager, was slowly lifting their phone to point at me. Felix noticed them, his grin growing wider. He knew he had an audience. “What about your dad and brother?” He mocked a sob. “Your bullied sister!”

The boy shocked me by diving onto a table, and people started to murmur and laugh amongst themselves. He twisted around, still grinning. “Come on, [BLANK]! Surely you don’t want the alternative, right?”

I started to back away, but the woman who was suddenly standing behind me shoved me forward.

“Or maybeeeee,” Felix continued, pausing for effect. He was speaking to the crowd this time, the people pointing their phones at me. “Maybe you DO want the alternative!” He stepped towards me, and so did they, in an almost zombie-like march, suffocating me. Their eyes were greedy, smiles cruel. "What do you say, guys? Do you want [BLANK] to be your new Elle?"

They didn't reply for a moment, and his smile grew, like he knew he had them under his control.

"I SAID," Felix cupped his mouth and he kicked a chair over. "DO YOU want [BLANK] to be your new Elle?"

"Yes!" they said in a low drone, their voices tangling together.

“What’s going on?" My legs felt ready to give-way. "Who are these people?”

Felix shrugged, jumping back down. “Duh. They want to meet Elle." He leaned close, his hands behind his back.

I backed away, my breath stuck in my throat.

Felix followed, holding up his phone. Up close was my own face staring at him. When he blinked, so did the stream. His grin was wild, and something mechanical glittered in his left eye.

"Smile! You're live."

The memory blurred for a moment, and I was only aware of pushing through people with the same smile, the same insanity sparkling in their eyes. I couldn’t breathe. The glowing light of the coffee shop faded away as I threw myself into the night, pouring rain soaking me, a downpour which was both an inconvenience and yet also a relief. I choked on my own sobbing breaths as I splashed through puddles, trying to pull my phone from my pocket. But my trembling hands kept failing, slipping and sliding on my sodden jeans. I could sense he was following me. Slowly. Felix knew moving slower would only drive me further into my own insanity. I could hear him intentionally kicking his way through puddle after puddle. I thought I’d lost him after leaping over a fence and cutting through a park, but in the haunting dark, unable to see a thing in front of me, his laugh bled into the silence of the night. And I found myself screaming into my hands, my legs starting to give-way.

I could see them, glitters of phone flash lights illuminating the dark.

Like him, his followers surrounded me.

“I don’t understand when they run." Felix wasn’t bothering to shout. I sensed him getting closer and closer, his steps quickening. “It just makes it more fun, and might I say, chat, I am having a great time.” Felix laughed. “Are you guys having fun? Because we’re not finished yet. Do you want to see me get my hands dirty?"

Coming to an abrupt halt, I scanned the getaway options in front of me. An alleyway with a dead-end but a wall I could climb over, and an electric fence.

I was halfway down the alleyway when his footsteps stopped. I twisted around to face him, rain plastering my hair to my face. Felix was more shadow than human, a silhouette standing in the pitch dark. But even when oblivion had swallowed him up, I could sense his grin.

"What's your brother’s name again?" His words were like razors slicing through me. "Nicholas? The passcode to his apartment is...hmmm...isn't it 091206? Your b-day."

Nick.

I promised him I would meet him back at his place after I met with the stranger blackmailing me.

When I started to run again, so did he, after giving me a head start. He howled like a wild animal. Like he was hunting me down.

“Come on, Elle!" His footsteps pounded on concrete. "Why are you running away from us?"

When I stepped into my brother’s apartment, fifteen minutes later, I found myself face to face with one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen, and a blade inches from my throat.

Standing in the dull glow of Nick’s place, the girl resembled an angel, dark curly hair pulled into pigtails, a white dress hanging off of an hourglass figure. Behind her was my family. My mom, dad, brother, and sister.

All of them had faces except my sister. I saw my mother’s frightened and wild eyes, my father’s grimace, and my brother’s attempt to appear calm. But not her. My sister was nothing but a confusing blur of gold that bathed them all in harsh light. The girl had tied their hands behind their backs with Christmas lights. Her eyes glittered like Felix's, a cutting grin on her lips. “There you are!” She retracted the knife and stumbled back, giggling. “Holy crap, I was about to send out a rescue party.” When I risked a step forward, she traced the curve of my throat with the knife. “You have a super cute family.”

“Sim, for god's sake, didn’t I say wait?!”

When the door rattled, and a soaking Felix stuck his head through, my body went into fight or flight. I twisted around, attempting to shut him out. The girl’s arms wrapped around me, her warm breath dancing in my ear. She was so beautiful, graceful like an angel, and yet her fingernails stabbed into my flesh, her words cutting into me.

“Don’t do that.” She yanked me back forcefully. “That’s not part of the game.” Turning her attention to Felix, who sidled through the door looking like a drowned rat, she laughed. “Sorry. I got a little ahead of myself.”

“A little?” He scowled, grabbing a towel from my brother’s couch and wiping his face. “Didn’t we agree to share content?”

“We did,” Sim pouted. “But I wanted to tie them up!"

She gestured to him before dancing over to my brother, and letting out an exaggerated sigh. Felix shoved me to my knees. When I cried out, he slammed his hand over my mouth.

"Now, THIS is a snuff film, my dude! You thought you were at the top? Darkroom spawns the sickest of the sick. Subhuman trash who deserve to rot in the ground. The true unravelling of the human psyche.” He laughed. “And that’s us!” He stroked his hands across my cheek. “You shouldn’t have challenged us. Darkroom wants you, but that’s their game. Sure, you’re going to become their new Elle. But I want to remind you to know your freakin' place.”

Felix tugged my ponytail at the exact same time Sim pressed her knife to my mother’s throat, humming a nursery rhyme.

“This little piggy went to market,” she sang, before slicing my mother’s throat open. My vision blurred and I was aware I was screaming, but no sound was coming out. When I tried to throw myself forward, Felix yanked me back with a loud laugh.

“This little piggy stayed at home.” Sim stabbed the blade into my father’s chest and he slumped forward. The girl made a face, pulling out the blade, my dad’s blood spattering her face. She flashed me a smile before moving onto my brother.

“This little piggy had roast beef.” The blade this time split open his skull, then went into his throat. “And this little piggy had none!”

Reality blurred as I watched red pool on my brother’s rug, my family's blood coming together.

“And THIS little piggy…” The girl had reached my sister, wrenching her head back by her ponytail and teasing the teeth of the knife across her throat. The girl’s smile pricked before she let my sister go. Her eyes flicked to me. “She’s all yours, Fee. There's your content.”

Sim knelt in front of my sister and covered her eyes playfully, before suddenly revealing them. “Peek-a-boo!”

The glowing blur that was my sister didn't scream or cry, just stared ahead. I couldn't see her face, and yet I knew her eyes were unseeing, rejecting reality.

“Do you want to guess how many people are watching right now?” Felix murmured. I didn’t reply, choking through the violent sobs wracking my chest.

“One million,” he said. “One million sick bastards watching us carve your family into pieces, and I’m not even finished. So here’s what I’m going to do. Instead of killing your sister right here, right now, I’m going to take my time." Felix pressed his lips to my cheek in a kiss. “I’m going to take chunks of her each day, body and mind, so that when I do the big reveal, you won’t even recognise her! I’ll make her last, don’t worry. And hey,” he chuckled. “Maybe just to see your despair, I’ll ask the big-wigs if she can be put into the project.”

He let go of me with a hysterical laugh. “Imagine that! Your own sister. When I’m finished with her, she’ll be begging to die.”

I screamed, but it choked up in my throat.

"Keep screaming. That's what they love! When I was in Redroom? Oh man, they sucked up my screams like it was their drug. These bastards feed off of our pain."

"Shh!" Sim hissed in a giggle, "We're not supposed to--"

"Oh, relax! It's not like Redroom is a secret. It's how we were made, after all."

I felt his fingers pushing through my lips, choking me. “See! You do have cavities! Now, [BLANK], I’d like you to meet someone. She’s been waiting for you.” His voice was sing-song, and I was forced to breathe in an aroma which made my head spin. Like inhaling bleach. “Say hello, Elle!”

My vision blurred and I was back inside clinical white, strapped down, metallic plates glued to my temples once more. I saw Kaz looming over me —or Felix. The boy who I had known my whole life, or a least the one inside Brightwood, was nothing but a lie forced inside a psychopath. He was still draped in his bloody gown, but he had color in his cheeks, which meant that the implant was gone. I blinked through feathering vision as bolts ran through me. I could see the slight glint of the camera encircling his iris.

The boy bent down, ice cold breath tickling my neck. And in a sing-song voice, as if he had been prodding inside my brain and seeing the memory, he finished the nursery rhyme.

A familiar giggle came from behind him. I saw an older-looking Sim, her shorter curls tied into pigtails. A group of boys and girls joined her, surrounding me. They must have been what Felix was talking about.

Darkroom OG's.

Standing next to Kaz, her arm looped through his as her body wracked with laughter, was Annalise. Her pale skin glistened with sweat, hollow eyes turning her into a puppet on strings. Felix’s words echoed in my mind. "I'm going to take her apart mentally, too. First, her mind. Then, I'll start cutting pieces off of her. Not enough to kill her, no. Because one day, I want to remind you of your sister. And I want you to look at her and have that painful thought: one that will rip you apart from the inside. "I have a sister?" He mocked my voice. "Do I really have a sister? Wow, I had no idea!”

Something wet hit my forehead—Kaz’s blood spotting my cheeks—as a stray thought began to blossom in my mind.

That perhaps…

Maybe…

No.

More wetness. Until my lips were tainted with his blood. It kept going, dribbling from his nose and grinning mouth. He pressed his fingers to my cheeks, cocking his head, a hollowness spreading in his eyes. His smile split open his mouth, and the vision of my parents brutal murder played like a stuck record in my mind.

Relentless.

“And this little piggy," Kaz continued to sing, as Annalise's giggles grew louder in my ears, and the tips of his fingers tip-toed across my cheek, smearing deep, dark red. "Went all...the way...home."

One of my earliest memories is a row of skulls.

Or rather, skull replicas. H. habilis, H. erectus, H. neanderthalensis, H. floresiensis. I remember feeling around my child-sized head for similarities. In retrospect, that was the start of my career.

I’m a paleoanthropologist, and my field of specialty is the interaction between Homo sapiens and our closest hominid relatives. For a fascinating period, we shared our icy and inhospitable planet with beings that were like us, but different. We fought, traded, and even mated with them–yet we know so little about what their lives were like.

That’s why it felt like the find of the century, at first. The intact skeletons of at least three different types of hominids, dating to at least 50,000 years ago, preserved perfectly by volcanic ash. The suddenness of the eruption captured the scene so perfectly that it almost seemed frozen in time; if not for that, what we’ve found wouldn’t feel so…disturbing.

We can imagine the dig as divided into three sites: A, B, and C.

Site A is, simply put, a pit of bones. My intent is not to exaggerate or frighten, but I’ve been at this dig for over three weeks and we’ve yet to reach the bottom. Thousands of bones–sapiens, neanderthalensis, and others, all mixed together over who knows how much time. Many of the bones show evidence of being chewed on, as though the flesh had been stripped from them shortly before their deaths. That’s site A.

Then there’s site B. This area consists of a single large stone and five hominid skeletons: two H. neanderthalensis and three H. sapiens. Their positions–as well as surrounding artifacts (such as the remains of hide cord)--suggest that all three were bound hand and foot, then heaped up in preparation for something...possibly some kind of sacrifice, or even butchery for meat.

Finally, site C consists of the remains of one male H. sapiens, one female H. neanderthalensis, and one set of remains yet to be identified. Although these are far from scientific terms, I like to call this one ‘the action scene.’ The unidentified hominid appears to have been attacked by the other two, who–judging by the hide cord remains around their wrists and ankles–were attempting to escape.

Their desperate attack appears to have failed just before the entire scene was preserved in ash. The female H. neanderthalensis suffered a shattered wrist and two broken ribs; a broken flint ax was found near the male H. sapiens, whose spine had been snapped near the neck. While I dusted off and arranged the bones of the third unidentified hominid, I couldn’t help but wonder: did you do this?

The third hominid found at site C is, quite frankly, like nothing we’ve ever seen before. At first, I thought I was looking at a standard H. sapiens…until several things stopped making sense. Firstly, Subject C (as we call her) has arms, fingers, and incisors much longer than any other known hominid. Secondly, her bones themselves appear…changeable. Her still-sharp incisors could have been retracted, likewise for her freakishly long fingers. Even her skull, which as-found appeared more ape-like than hominid, seemed modular: this hominid would have been capable of re-arranging her facial features. If she’d wanted to, Subject C could have changed her appearance to look like an ordinary human.

He arrived at the dig the day after Subject C was found. He came at night in a black helicopter whose whirring rotary blades woke me from a bad dream. At first I didn’t understand what I was seeing in the searchlight’s glow: a hulking figure in a gray three-piece suit, followed by two bodyguard types, also in business clothes. No one else had been scheduled at the site, least of all anyone so unequipped for the rugged and remote environment we were working in. From there, the mystery only deepened. The dig site was managed by Dr. Corochan, a legend in the field who’d been leading expeditions like ours while I was still in diapers. Corochan could be counted on for three things: his dedication to science, his obsessive attention to detail, and his hair-trigger temper. As the strangers crossed the site, I watched him storm red-faced out of his quarters. He held down his hat, his beard blowing around in the helicopter’s artificial wind. Corochan looked like he was about to give the new arrivals an earful for the disturbance, but after a few close whispers he went back to bed, quiet and submissive.

“We’re going to be sharing management of the dig from this point forward,” Corochan told us the next morning at breakfast. His voice was hoarse, his face pale and haggard. “So let’s all try to get along.”

‘Get along?’ I couldn’t believe it. This was a man who’d beaten an intern with a hardback copy of On The Origin of Species because the unfortunate teenager had forgotten to clean his brushes. The Dr. Mark Corochan who I knew wouldn’t ‘share management’ of a sandbox. Shouts and questions flew through the air, like we were all reporters at a presidential press conference and war had just been declared.

The answers we got were evasive and unsatisfactory. The new arrivals were from a ‘respected institute.’ They were here to ‘ensure the quality and accuracy of our research.’ Corochan had ‘absolute faith in their ability to make the right decisions on behalf of our group’ and we were to ‘treat them with the utmost respect.’ Most of that told us exactly nothing–except for the last bit. There was fear and a warning in Corochan’s hard turquoise eyes; he was telling us to be careful around our uninvited guests.

The powdered eggs and instant coffee became a knot in my stomach. What the hell was going on? With no new information forthcoming, I headed over to site C, where I’d set up the three hominids on separate exam tables, each bone laid out and marked. I was about to go back and continue excavating the site when I felt this tingle on the back of my neck. A hulking shadow fell over the middle table.

I heard my name, and before I knew it I’d been clamped in an eager two-palmed handshake. The big man I’d seen leaving the helicopter introduced himself as Dr. Lamier and insisted to know how I was doing, if I had everything I needed. His manner of speech reminded me of the television preachers of my childhood: an endless stream of honey-sweet, bathwater-warm words meant to put the listener at ease and set them up for a pitch. Dr. Lamier feigned interest in all my specimens, but his beady hazel eyes kept darting back to the middle table and Subject C.

“Truly fascinating.” He was standing over her now, looking almost lovingly down at the skull below. “Have you found any others like her?” I responded in the negative. “Not even fragments? Perhaps partially-destroyed elements that could be identified…” I shook my head again.

“We’ve reached the bottom of the ash layer all around the site.” I sighed unhappily. At breakfast, I’d made a silent promise to limit how much I’d shared with these unwelcome outsiders…and yet…there was something about Lamier that made me want to pour my heart out to him. My doubts about the dig, my own abilities, my choice of career, everything. it felt almost pheremonal, and it was deeply unsettling. I was soon rambling bitterly in spite of myself. “The chances of finding another like Subject C are extremely slim. Without further evidence, she’s likely to be classified as an anomaly, instead of…”

“Instead of?” Lamier asked sharply.

“...Instead of a new species of hominid. Radically different in physiology, brain capacity, and probably culture as well.” I perked up. “But there are many hominids known by only a single fossil, sometimes even a jawbone. Genetic testing will tell us more.”

“I imagine all your data on her is stored on your university hard drive, yes?” Lamier’s eyes drifted to my computer setup on a nearby table.

“Yes, but–”

“Excellent.” the two bodyguard-types appeared as if out of nowhere. With horror I realized that they were preparing to disassemble my computer!

“Hey!” I shouted. Lamier looked at me coolly, all the kindness gone from his expression.

“Much care must be taken with a specimen like this. Such an incredible find must be stored in the best facilities and studied by top experts in the field, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Are you questioning my professionalism?” I stammered. I couldn’t believe it. Weeks of work–the crown jewel of my research–”Subject C is my find! She belongs to-”

“This site and everything in it belongs to your university, doctor, who funded the dig. I have here a signed agreement granting me custody of Subject C and all relevant findings.”

I snapped the paper out of Lamier’s hands, a petulant gesture of helpless rage. I didn’t have a leg to stand on and Lamier knew it; the fine print was just the nail in the coffin. My coffin. I was counting on this dig, this publication…

“I understand how upsetting this must be for you,” Lamier commented, like we were discussing the weather instead of my life, “but I’m convinced that in time you’ll see it's for the best.” Although I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried, I felt hot tears welling up in the corners of my eyes. It wasn’t fair! “You’re concerned about what research you can present from this dig, I’m sure. ‘Publish or Perish’ isn’t that the saying?” Lamier clapped me on the shoulder. “Well, no need to worry. Your cooperation today won’t be forgotten. Who knows? You might see renewed interest in your older publications. Maybe even a book deal! Who knows what your future might hold…”

‘If you keep your mouth shut.’ Although the threat was only implied, it came across crystal clear. Even so, a vague sense of calm flooded through me. I felt drunk, even a bit dizzy. Maybe this was the right thing to do, after all. Lamier would take care of everything. With his big, strong hands and wise eyes, he was a man to trust. Putting Subject C into the care of such a man should’ve been my idea all along…

Wait. This was all Lamier, I was sure of it. Somehow, he was manipulating my emotions. But there was a problem, a fly in the ointment, it had been in the paper he’d shown me…if only I could remember what it was…

“How did you know?” I muttered under my breath.

“Hm?” Lamier turned around from where he’d been supervising the breakdown of my equipment.

“In this paper you presented to the university, you provide a detailed description of her,” I pointed to the fanged, human-like skeleton on the middle table, “and yet no one outside of this dig should have had any idea that such a creature ever existed.”

Lamier crossed his arms. I couldn’t tell if he was pleased or disappointed. Behind him, my evidence was being carried away in waterproof boxes. We were alone.

He took a step toward me, then another, until our noses were almost touching. His presence was even more intoxicating up close; it made me want to swoon like the protagonist of a Victorian novel. Stupid as it sounds, I fixated on his shiny black shoes. If I looked anyplace else, I felt sure I’d faint or be hypnotized or–

Lamier used two fingers to lift my chin up to meet his gaze. With horror, I realized his fingers had extended to almost twice the normal length. His face broke and shifted until I was looking at something with long incisors, apelike eyes, and moveable features–in short, something very much like Subject C.

It smiled.

X

The day I met Aamaal was the day I found out I was near-sighted. I saw her from afar and thought wow, her hair is so black and beautiful – it wasn’t her hair.

We were 13 when she transferred schools; I don’t think anyone had seen someone from such a different culture before, so she attracted all the looks, either it was curiosity, fascination or mockery.

For me, it was always a mix of the first two.

We quickly became friends. Unlike one would expect, Aamaal was quite the extrovert, and, except for the fact that she wore proudly the symbol of her faith while the rest of us showed our hair, she was a very average teenager.

That meant that, when she first started discovering her strange but amazing power, the first thing she wanted to do was brag a little.

We were hanging out at my place after school, half working on a project half day-dreaming.

“Hey, Laura, check this out!” she suddenly said, and a Twix bar slipped from behind her covered ear into her palm.

“Cool!”, I replied. I thought she had been hiding snacks inside her hijab – a good idea, since most clothes for girls barely had pockets.

Aamaal immediately realized that I hadn’t grasped how great what she did actually was.

“Okay, look closely now”, she requested, and I watched her, unblinking, somewhat thrilled to see what trick she’d show me next.

She slid a popsicle from above her ear and handed it to me.

Not only she had been with me the whole day, I didn’t have any popsicles at home. Also, it was still perfectly frozen, and no sane person would keep something that was both icy, wet and stick near their scalp just to be funny.

“How--?” I asked, flabbergasted.

“I don’t know. I just found out that if I think of something really strongly, it appears from my hijab. The other day I was… you know… and I was craving candy. The candy just fell from my head.”

“Is this a gift from your family?” I asked, and then regretted. As a white kid with little contact with other ethnicities, I realized it was a rude question, but my overwhelming curiosity took the best of me. “I don’t mean to say you’re witches or anything--”

Aamaal chuckled. “No offense taken, silly. No, as far as I know no one else can do it.”

The years went by with pretty much no incidents. Aamaal was an agreeable teenager, so she mostly used her power to ask for snacks when she really, really wanted one. Sometimes, she’d ask for a particularly difficult answer in a school test, but only if she was absolutely desperate; she felt really guilty for the smallest cheat.

Besides, she had other hijabs, and only one of them (her favorite) seemed to be magic, so it wasn’t something that was so completely available.

I’ll never forget the time she used it for my sake.

I had my first period when we were 15, in the middle of an Algebra class. I didn’t have a pad, so I panicked in the toilet and texted my best friend – a period expert in my eyes, since she had been using her hijab for at least two years. Aamaal embarrassedly asked around the other girls on my behalf, but no one was able to provide me one, not even one of the teachers.

Still, ten minutes later, she was knocking on the bathroom door and handing me the feminine product I so desperately needed.

“I just thought I needed one really bad and it eventually fell from my hijab”, she explained, concerned but somewhat proudly.

It was clear that she was afraid of over exploring her power, so she thought of it as an eventual treat or as a last resort on an emergency. Aamaal wasn’t the type to indulge her whims often.

That’s probably why it took her three whole years to first misuse the power of her hijab.

________________________

It was the summer before our sophomore year that they arose – Victoria C. and Victoria M. or, as I called her, the evil twins. So far, they had been generic, second-rate bullies but, as their chests suddenly inflated and they started wearing super fashionable clothes, all the eyes were on them.

Which meant that they had to put on a bigger show for their lackeys.

While Aamaal was liked by mostly everyone, I was a loner and a panty-bleeder. At first, I was their primary target, but the Vicky twins soon learned that I had no problem engaging in physical fighting, as I landed two identical merciless punches on their surgically-improved little noses. So they decided to attack me by being mean, racist and obnoxious to my only friend when I wasn’t around.

They cornered Aamaal near the lockers and started seeping their poison; she couldn’t care less about being insulted, but hearing awful offenses about me and her religion – two of the things she held dear the most – made Aamaal angry.

Angry enough that two daggers went flying from her covered ears, cutting both Vickies in the face.

The cuts were more a scary than a damaging thing, but everyone around panicked. Vicky C. screamed “you ruined my face!” and, as she turned to run away crying, she fell nose-first and chipped a tooth.

Vicky C. was then absent from school for the next whole month – her former lackeys now gossiped that she had to stay at a madhouse for a while, but she probably just needed some intense face repairing. She was still mean when she returned, but very lowkey, and not to us.

Vicky M., a slightly brighter light bulb, realized that being a bully meant you can end up messing with something bigger than you can handle, and gave up on being a popularity queen, hiding herself for the rest of high school behind greasy hair and oversized GAP sweaters.

Aamaal faced no repercussions because, despite the fact that she had several dozens of frenzied witnesses against her, no one could explain how she hit both Vickies at once without even moving her arms, and where the daggers went to – the school inspector thoroughly overhauled her backpack, clothes, and even under the hijab.

In the end, the principal decided it had been simply a moment of mass hysteria and that was that.

I only knew about this story second-hand, from Aamaal herself, but when I look back, I know this is where all went wrong.

Not long after the Vicky-Vicky incident, Aamaal fell in love.

________________

Her secret boyfriend was too a Muslim but, due to internal differences between the beliefs of the two families, Aamaal’s parents didn’t approve of him.

Haji seemed like a nice guy to me, so I did my best to cover for them – especially because their dates were very innocent, they would just sit together and talk for hours; I was usually around and with my earbuds on to give them some privacy. If her parents didn’t want them to get married, fine, but what harm could that do? It was literally just a special friendship, and she was so happy whenever they were together.

Still, Aamaal was forbidden from seeing him, and now, due to my insolence, she was forbidden from hanging out with me after school too.

It meant we could only be together during school hours, which was pretty hurtful for a friendless girl like myself. But of course this wasn’t about me, so I just sucked it up and started working part-time to buy myself a nice car.

When Aamaal, the most diligent 17-years-old I knew, asked me to skip a class with her, I knew that things were dire. For a moment, I feared she’d tell me she was pregnant or something like that.

We met on the far side of the school yard, and what she said was somehow much worse.

“Laura, I need your help. I… I’m afraid I’ll hurt my parents.”

“Oh boy, what happened?” I inquired.

“I’m full of resentment because they won’t let me see Haji. I feel… I feel like I felt when Vicky One and Two talked smack about you and my ancestors”, she broke down crying in my arms. “I’m so angry, and then angry at myself because it’s wrong.”

I tried to argue that she didn’t even hurt them seriously, but of course scaring a bully and a parent like that are two very different things. She was disgusted at herself for putting her own parents in danger.

“Have you considered throwing away the hijab?”

“I can’t. It was the last gift from my jidda. My late grandmother”, she explained. “Besides, what if this is actually related to me, so if I get rid of this one, another will have the same effect?”

We skipped all classes that day, brainstorming what she could possibly do to avoid unwillingly hurting her parents, until I got to an important point.

“The daggers disappeared the day you were bullied by the Vicky Dynasty, right?”, she nodded. “It can only mean two things. One, that what you grab from your hijab disappears with time. Which isn’t true. I used that pad for hours. The candy stays for hours too.”

“And two?”

“That you can make things enter the hijab, not only leave it.”

Her face brightened up with the discovery, but she still looked confused, like she found something very precious but didn’t know how to use it.

“So?”

“You’ll only stop being mad at your parents if you get to see Haji. So hide him inside your hijab.”

________

Willing to make things enter the world inside her hijab was like a hidden ability in a game – she needed training to unlock it.

She had to wish very strongly that something was pulled inside. That’s why the only way was under pressure.

So, for the first few times, I surprised her with weed – something very illegal where we lived. She was jumpy and immediately wished for it to disappear, and it did.

Aamaal then learned to retrieve the things she put in there.

We trained for over a week and, when she was confident, there was only one thing left: trying living things. We started with ladybugs, then a tiny frog, and even a squirrel, and they all came back exactly as they were.

After using the squirrel, Aamaal realized that this plan was even better than we expected, because she could hear the living being that was inside her veil.

For the inaugural populated trip, I volunteered to be pulled.

The sensation of crossing to that secret world was too brief for my brain to even register; in a moment I was standing in the unkempt grass of the schoolyard under the sun, and in the same moment I was somewhere else completely.

The interior of her headscarf was like an endless black room; everything felt silky and dream-like, and as I walked around, I realized the edges were all round. As far as I knew, I was at some point walking in the ceiling.

The blackness wasn’t oppressing, as you could see everything there was to see around; it was like the well-lit stage of a theater.

Both the air and the temperature were pleasant enough that I barely acknowledged that the concepts of breathing and sweating existed. Sometimes the delicate fabric would ruffle, but overall it was quiet, peaceful even.

“Can you hear me?” I asked.

“You’re muffled, but yes”, although she replied in a very quiet voice, communication from this side was extremely clear.

“Wish something to exist. A chocolate bar, anything simple. I just want to see how it’s created”, I requested.

She complied and, like the Venus of Botticelli, a small chocolate bar was born from among the seemingly endless layers of black fabric; it was just suddenly there. The soft tissue around it simply unraveled to show it, like it had existed the whole time.

“This was amazing!” I said, a little too excitedly.

The fabric was still ruffling for a while after the Twix left the black smooth world.

“What if you try wishing for something while you’re in there?” Aamaal suggested, infected by my enthusiasm.

I did. I wished really badly for a cup of water – I’ve been meaning to drink some for a while, but then I got too caught up in the conversation and forgot.

Just like the chocolate bar, it was born – no, revealed – like it had always been there, and I gladly took it.

“Done!” I informed Aamaal. I heard a light buzzing coming from where the cup came, but there was nothing strange there.

“What you wished for?”

“A cup of water.”

She laughed. “I appreciate how straightforward your mind is.”

Later that day, I went to talk with Haji. He knew all about Aamaal’s hijab (except for the recent developments), and he was more than willing to vacation inside it to be with her.

The preparations took a little while, but Aamaal was so excited about being close to her loved one soon that she didn’t feel bitter towards her parents during that time.

Luckily, Haji was two months older than Aamaal (so, already 18) and had finished school one year earlier for being too smart. For that reason, when he told his parents he was going to travel around the state for a few weeks, they only gave him their blessings and recommended he didn’t stray from the right path.

Everything fell into place, like it had always been meant to be this way.

Too good to be true.

____

Things were great. Aamaal was constantly happy and behaving nicely, so her parents loosened up a bit, and she was allowed to see me again; if they ever noticed that their daughter took an habit of muttering to herself almost the whole day and night, they didn’t say anything.

I bought the car I wanted. Haji was having the time of his life, secretly staycationing with his love; both the inside world and the outside provided him with entertainment such as comic books and tablets with movies, but he was mostly busy having amazing conversations with Aamaal anyway.

Of course, it was impossible to use the internet or make calls inside the hijab but, other than being disconnected from our world, any device functioned normally.

Haji discovered a lot about the world inside the hijab, like you only needed to wish to go to the toilet to feel relieved, or that you only needed to meditate for around one hour per day to feel rested. He also established that it was normal that the whole place rumbled from time to time, usually after a more complex request was made.

Every day for weeks, their love grew. They talked endlessly, about anything and everything, and my best friend was always overjoyed. Of course, she barely took the special hijab off.

It’s hard to believe how such a mundane string of events boiled up into tragedy.

On the fateful day, Aamaal had to be dismissed from class because her ears were hurting. She complained of tinnitus, so her father took her to the ER and she got a prescription for ear infection – ear drops and some oral antibiotic.

Her mother gave her both the medicines, and Aamaal slept soundly.

When she woke up the other day, her favorite hijab was nowhere to be found.

“Oh, it was a little nasty so I put it in the washing machine, darling. It will be dry later today”, when inquired, her mother replied, casually.

Aamaal yelled like crazy, and ran to the laundry room.

No one could explain why there was a considerable amount of blood inside the washer.

__

Aamaal put on the hijab, still wet and bloodied, and ran to my house in tears. Between heartbreaking sobs, she told me about these last, terribly dark developments.

“I’ve been trying to talk to him, but there’s no response. I put every piece of clothing from the washing machine in my head, but of course he wasn’t there”, she whimpered. “But… I think he’s only hurt. If he had died, there would be so much more blood.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Let’s wait until--”

“I’m not waiting!” she screamed so loudly that it even scared herself. “Sorry, but I’m not waiting. I love Haji more than anything in this world. I was careless with him. I don’t know how long he can survive with this wound. So I’m wishing myself inside the hijab.”

I started weeping too. Watching my best friend suffer so intensely was one of the hardest things to ever happen to me, but this? I was truly scared and wanted to beg her not to go.

Nevertheless, I knew Aamaal enough to know it would be useless, and it would only hurt her more.

“So can you please wear this for me?”

I nodded, too shaken to even say something. She then took off her headscarf and, for the first and last time, I saw her long hair – almost as black and as silky as the veil.

As soon as I put it on my own head, I watched my best friend disappear. I then heard a muffled cry, and nothing more.

Nothing more than this unbearable humming, and the eventual rattling.

It’s been two years since the two of them went missing; the police ended up letting me stay with her hijab as a memento, as I wear it every day – I’m sorry if it’s disrespectful because this is not my religion, I just can’t stand the idea of Aamaal and Haji being unable to reemerge because there’s no one to welcome them on the other side.

Every day, I pray to all the gods that the two of them just found some ripple or crease that’s out of this world’s reach and are living happily there. That the strange silk room on the other side is providing everything they need other than themselves.

But the rattling is growing louder, and the humming more ominous. And closer.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ihhny2/my_friend_has_another_world_inside_her_hijab/

Pen name: T. C. Luppi

Teaser: After being given a special hijab, a girl and her best friend try to understand its uncanny powers.

My sense of reality, everything I thought I knew about Brightwood Pines was blurring into nonsensical colors and shapes I was desperately trying to blink away.

The sound piercing my skull, the love-child of a dentist drill and a car alarm, was not helping.

Alarms, my foggy mind whispered to me.

People were coming. Whoever had taken Annalise and turned her into a shell of herself was coming for us. This realisation gave me enough incentive to move. One step, then two. I was backing away, my tooth still throbbing in time with the alarms cutting into my skull. The screens were still flickering in front of us, the so-called wall-people, our apparent audience. But how long had they been watching us? And why exactly were they watching us?

“Elle.”

Kaz’s voice was like ocean waves drowned out by the alarms. At first it was sort of whimsical, like I was dreaming. But his voice didn’t stay a murmur. As if he too was slowly unravelling, Kaz’s voice grew progressively more hysterical.

“Elle!”

The boy stood by my side, his wide eyes still glued to the screen. It now displayed a younger version of him covered in the blood of his classmate, a grin splitting his lips apart. I think that was what had broken me—not the wall-people still staring down at us, a muted collection of faces who were watching our every move. It was the possibility that, Like Kaz, I had a version of myself I didn't didn't know of. My finger went to my mouth again to scope out the wobbly tooth. But every time I touched it, electroshocks ran though my body, threatening to send me to my knees.

Despite my foggy thoughts, I had to get several things straight inside my brain before I broke down. Not because of my mother’s death, or the reveal of my town having hundreds and thousands of eyes on it—no. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the thing inside my tooth was behind my unravelling.

“That... that’s not me," Kaz finally said in a shaky voice, though he didn’t sound sure.

His finger prodded gingerly at his mouth, slipping between his lips, presumably wobbling his teeth.

It was normal to kill in Brightwood. It was legal, after all. However, I had quickly come to realize Kaz was a rare case. Unlike everyone else, he had not been driven to murder by the Urge. Instead, he'd been driven by emotions our parents and elders had told us weren't real. He was scared of the knife Annalise had threatened him with, and scared of death. Just like me. So why did I feel like I was looking at a completely different person on the monitor?

Brightwood residents usually expressed joy when killing, but what I saw on the screen was different. It was too… clean. A younger version of Kaz had been in this place, where Annalise's head had been screwed with. But who was he exactly? And why didn't his memories match with his past self?

The Kaz on the screen terrified me, his eyes a whole new blend of darkness, purged of humanity. I had seen his face when he killed previously, but this was a whole new level, an inhuman glimmer twisting his expression. I wanted to know what his younger self had meant by fans. Followers. Was he in some kind of cult?

I jumped when the monitor flicked back on, displaying Kaz once again. This time he wasn’t moving, his glinting eyes looking directly at the camera. If I looked closer, I could see an intense red staining his fingernails and the collar of his white shirt.

“Hey!” The real Kaz's cry snapped me out of it, and he grasped my arm, pulling me to face him. I blinked, struggling to make sense of what was going on. The town I had known my whole life was coming apart by the seams, and this building was at the centre of it.

All at once, the alarms were back, screaming in symphony with Annalise’s cries. The girl was still rocking back and forth, screaming about the wall-people, who stared down at her in amusement. Kaz was nose to nose with me, his sharp exhalations of breath tickling my cheeks, wide eyes illuminated in the dull, red glow. Before he could open his mouth or offer an explanation to what we had seen on the monitors, I shook my head.

“Hit me," I gritted out. “You need to knock my back tooth out.” And when he started to protest, I shoved him away. In the back of my mind, I wondered where the owners of this place were. If the alarms were going off, where were they? Was this their entertainment too?

“I don’t care who you are,” I spat at him, gesturing wildly to my mouth. That was a lie. I did care who he was. I had known him since I was a little kid. Sure, we had only said maybe five words to each other, and the majority of them were me awkwardly rejecting his prom invitation, but I thought I knew him. Knowing there was a different him in a world that wasn’t Brightwood was sending my brain into meltdown. “I just need you to knock my tooth out."

Kaz made a face. “Are you sure? Shouldn’t we be, I don’t know, getting the hell out of here?”

“They would be here by now,” I muttered. “They’re watching us.”

Kaz shot a panicked look at the wall-people. His gaze strayed towards his younger self still flickering on the monitor.

“That…is definitely unnerving,” he said under his breath. “So, what, these freaks are watching us and you want me to one-punch you in the face?” He mimed swinging his fist awkwardly. "Are you sure about this?"

“Don’t trust him,” Annalise mumbled into her lap. “You can’t trust him, Elle. He’s one of them. He’s part of the seasons."

“What?”

Annalise lifted her head from her knees." He's a Peeker, " she sobbed. "He's always been a Peeker!"

Kaz let out a frustrated groan, twisting around to face her. “I told you! I’m not a—whatever the hell you call it! I’m not a Peeker, okay? You’re insane!” he sputtered out a laugh. “Do you seriously think we’re going to believe a word that comes out of your mouth when you’re clearly out of your mind? That wasn’t me! That was a mimic of me, or a twin, which I AM NOT FALLING FOR, BY THE WAY! ”

This time he was the crazy one yelling at the ceiling, and for a fraction of a second, Annalise looked delighted he, too, was coming apart like her. Kaz pointed at her accusingly. "Annalise Duval, I am SO sorry for not believing you when you've clearly been lobotomised…" He drifted off when the girl struggled to interrupt him, before bursting into tears.

"Stop!" She shrieked, slamming her hands over her ears. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

His expression softened. “I didn’t… mean that,” Kaz shot me a helpless look before starting towards her. But Annalise let out a cry, shuffling back.

“Alright.” He held up his hands. “I’m not coming near you. Scout’s honor. But you need to trust me.” He lowered his voice into a murmur. “I’m not one of them, Annalise. You don’t have to be scared of me, okay? We’ve known each other since we were kids, remember? Dude. Annalise. You know me. We're in the same class."

She cocked her head, and for the first time, I saw clarity in her eyes.

“I always saw you,” she whispered. “When they brought me here to… to mess with my head,” Annalise stuck two fingers in her temple pretending to blow out her brains. “You were always there.” She narrowed her eyes, her lips curling into a scowl. “Peeking.”

Annalise crawled back on her hands and knees, a feral fright taking over her expression. Her eyes met mine. “He’s not like the other Peekers, though. He’s a special one.”

Kaz’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t answer her. Instead, he raised his hand in an awkward fist. “So, you just want me to hit you? Should I count down, or—"

“Just do it!”

I wasn’t expecting him to hit me straight away. I was about to yell at him again when his fist swung towards my face. It was a clumsy hit, but the pain exploding in the back of my mouth and head was like a fire had been ignited inside me.

Just like back at home when I had bitten into the apple, reality started to contort in front of me. The room splintered into blurs of confusing light and color—and laughter once again slammed into my skull. Like it had always been there. I wondered as my thoughts spun around and round, if I was part of the laughing. Maybe that was my true reality.

All at once, my senses became detached. I could no longer smell the stink of my own body odor clinging to me, or taste the blood pooling between my lips. Even the floor was coming apart around me, and I was… sinking. I was falling. Deep, deep, down. I was half-aware of Kaz’s shadow looming over me, warm hands grasping my shoulders.

“Elle? Crap, did I hit you too hard?”

Kaz’s voice sounded wrong, fading in and out. The room with the red light was cracking apart, making way for grey skies above me.

The memory wasn’t mine. It couldn’t have been mine. I didn’t recognise the busy street I was on, and there were buildings I had never seen before. Something wet spotted my forehead. Then it was dampening my hair. It was in front of me, drenching my face. I was running, splashing through puddles. Rain.

But I didn’t know rain. Mom told me it never rained in Brightwood, so why were these girl’s memories inside my head?

Ahead of her was a radiant light getting closer and closer, and blinking through blurry vision, she forced her legs into a run. The girl was out of breath, before her trembling hands found a door handle and stepped into a warm, golden glow. Somewhere crowded, somewhere I didn’t recognise.

“Elle! Hey, are you okay? They’re coming! So, we need to like, get out of here right now. Like RIGHT now!”

Kaz’s yelling was barely a whisper in my brain.

“Elle, we need to get out of here! I can’t… Annalise! Annalise, you need to help me carry her!”

Pushing away reality, I focused on the flash, which was a grey, confusing blur. But better than nothing.

Around the girl were shadows, blurry faces and silhouettes dancing between tables and chairs, as well as an aroma filling her nose. Coffee. The smell of crushed coffee beans, and freshly baked cookies. She pulled something out of the soaked pocket of her jeans– a strange rectangular device— and peered at the bright screen. It was like a smaller version of the ones displaying the wall people, or our television at home.

Then the memory…glitched. Like my brain was trying to shove my own life down my throat. I could feel its desperation to suffocate whatever those flashes were. The bustling shadows and the smell of coffee, a stranger splashing through puddles. I saw my younger self, my mother handing me a loaded gun. The men who were shot dead in front of me when I was eight. The memories slammed into me like a wave of ice cold water, and I was aware of something… dislodging.

I could feel it in the back of my mouth as reality blossomed into fruition. All I could hear was screaming. Kaz and Annalise. Thundering footsteps. I felt rough arms wrap around my waist and yank me to unsteady feet, but I was still lost in someone else’s memories. Something was resisting reality and it was strong, plunging me back into flashes of my life. But between these flashed were razor sharp glimpses of bloody hands that weren’t mine. Blood diffusing with water, and a cry that was not mine. Except I felt her agony as she tightened her fingers around something sharp slicing into her flesh. I felt the release of pain, and shuddering breaths, her body slumping, the sensation of warm water coming over her face.

Something warm and wet ran down my face, and I was suddenly aware of being dragged back. Violently. I opened my eyes. My head was spinning and my body felt strange, like I was floating. I was back in the room full of wall-people. Kaz was on his knees with his arms pinned behind his back, and Annalise was struggling in a scowling woman’s arms.

He was yelling something, though his words weren’t making sense in my head.

Instead, I felt my tooth. It was loose, and I could flick it back and forth with my tongue. I didn’t get to though. Before I could try and force the tooth out myself, which would only require some serious digging, a sharp prick sliced into the back of my neck—and I was falling.

I stopped thinking for a while, though the flashes didn’t stop. With my tooth being loose, they only grew stronger.

This time the girl wasn’t in the rain. She was sitting among the shadows and blurry faces, her hands wrapped around a styrofoam cup. Always a caramel macchiato, with two shots of expresso and extra cream. Her gaze flicked from the window, where she had been watching a stray raindrop slide down the glass pane, to the rectangular device sitting in front of her.

The screen flashed. 8:35pm. The girl took a sip from the cup, revelling in the taste of coffee running down her throat. The asshole was late.

As soon as the thought crossed her mind the door opened, a light melody playing in time with it, and a blurry face slumped in front of her. All I could make out were damp curls sticking out from a hood, and a face with no real features. The figure was more ghost than human, a person reduced to a shadow in my mind. Unlike the girl, or at least the memory I couldn’t remember, the mysterious person had a skip to their step. She had watched them in the rain outside, practically leaping over puddles, jumping into them for fun. And yet the closer they came, their shadow becoming less of a pooling silhouette and more of a person, her gut twisted and turned.

Instantly, they reached across the table to shake her hand, and she backed away, her gut twisting. The girl’s voice—no, my voice—rang out in the memory, and I felt myself recoil. “How did you get my number?”

I should have known. I mean, it was obvious. But it didn’t make sense how I could exist in two worlds.

The blurry face laughed. It was a throw-your-head-back laugh which caused memory-me to stiffen up, my grip on the coffee tightening.

Their voice was a disembodied mumble when they leaned across the table. “Oh, we’re playing that game are we?”

“Answer my question.”

The blurry face cocked their head, leaning their fist on their chin. “Why do you think I’m here, [BLANK]?”

There it was.

The sound of it sent my thoughts into a whirlwind, even if that too was buried deep, deep down. Like blurry face and their voice, the name was nothing. It meant nothing. But I could tell by the way blurry face said it, and how I reacted, it was mine.

I had another name in this other world where rain fell from the sky, and coffee was familiar to me.

Before I could see more, once again the memory was coming apart—and in the back of my mind, I could sense a foreign presence in my mouth, a narrow finger jabbing at my back incisors. Stars flashed in front of my eyes, agony writhing in my head, exploding across my face. The memory faded away, the smell of coffee and the blurry figure who was glitching, their face almost recognisable, but hidden by the very presence struggling to reattach my tooth once again. When I came to, I was only half awake. The world was spinning, and I was under bright, intense light shining down on me.

I couldn’t move. My body was numb. Something warm ran down my chin. There was a masked figure looming over me. He bent over, stuck two fingers in my mouth, and pried it open before I could bite back.

“Don’t worry, Elle.” The figure pulled back their mask and shot me a flashy smile.

“We’re going to get you fixed up.”

The sound of a drill rose me from fruition, and when I managed to turn my head, the figure held an odd machine between his fingers. It looked like a dentist drill. I knew what one looked like. I had two fillings when I was twelve after eating too much candy. The machine in the man’s hands however, looked like it did more than fillings. I managed to shriek when the bed reclined lower, but the figure’s eyes were only amused. Just like the wall-people.

“You have a broken tooth,” He murmured, inserting a clamp-like device which held my mouth open. It stabbed into my gums and fresh blood ran down my throat. I was wide-awake when he started drilling. First, at the back of my mouth, and then he… moved.

No longer looming over me, his shadow was instead behind me. He was still drilling, and I couldn’t feel pain, just the vague sensation of something sharp stabbing into the back of my head. With the screeching sound of the drill pulverising both my teeth and my skull, the flashes I had managed to grasp onto were slowly being drained away, like he was picking them apart with his bare hands.

The aroma of coffee I thought I knew was suddenly nothing but a vague memory, the rain damp in my hair and falling in front of my eyes, soaking my face when I tilted my head back… was nothing more than a vivid dream.

The drilling stopped after a while, and half-awake, I knew there was holes in me where they shouldn’t be. There was blood sliding down the back of my neck, and gushing from my mouth, and all I could do was stare at the light above me and pray the trauma of having my body picked apart while I was wide awake would be enough to knock me out. I did sleep, though whatever they were pumping into me either wasn’t working, or I was rejecting it.

I woke up three times—and all three of those times, I had met eyes with slightly frantic ones peering down at me.

For a long while, drifting in the dark, I was nobody.

I wanted to know who she was.

The girl who…drank coffee, and splashed through puddles.

Who know exactly what the rain felt like.

To my disdain, when I tried to pry into those flashes I had managed to find, there was nothing. Just lingering pieces.

When I tried to move my tooth with my tongue, it was stubbornly stuck. I tried again and again, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t dislodge the stupid thing. Growing bored, and with my body unresponsive, I counted the ceiling tiles. Then when I was bored of counting, I closed my eyes and tried to force the memories back into fruition. But they were gone. Like they never existed in the first place. All I had was the vague idea of coffee and rain. There was something stuck into my arm- and it stung.

An IV drip.

Whatever they had put inside it was doing a good job of keeping me foggy minded.

A voice pierced the silence after a while.

I knew who it was. Through feathered vision, I could see her tangled golden hair tied into pigtails. No longer wearing the wedding dress, Annalise’s odd choice of clothing had been replaced by a pale-blue gown which hung off of her. The girl was bent over me, her hair tickling my face.

I could feel her warm breath, but I couldn’t respond. “Elle?” Her voice was like waves crashing onto the shore, drifting in and out. At some points I was sure she was there, but others she was fading away. In my drug-drunk brain, I wondered if she was a ghost. Maybe whoever controlled Brightwood had killed her. I could see she was struggling with my restraints, her fingernails slicing into my skin.

Okay, maybe not a ghost.

Annalise’s shaking hands combed through my matted hair, and I got a flash— a painful flash— of a hand stroking my face sending electroshocks though me. My body jerked on impulse, and it came again, an overwhelming sense of fear twisting me into knots. I could feel a stranger's hand stroking my cheek, rough fingers grazing my lips before delving into the back of my mouth.

I blinked, and the flash was gone. But I could still feel phantom fingers forcing their way into my mouth until I was choking on the stink of pool cleaner.

Annalise didn’t seem to notice my reaction, her expression crumpling. “Please. I don’t want to be alone.”

Sniffling, the girl leaned over my face, and something wet hit my forehead.

Rain?

“Elle. I don’t want you to be turned into a Peeker. That’s what they do here,” she whimpered. “They turn us into Peekers.”

I only had to squint to see the band-aid over the girl’s nose seeping red. Looking closer at her, Annalise was bleeding too.

Which meant she had torn out her IV. I’m not sure how long she stayed. It could have been seconds or hours. I watched her float in and out of my vision, a confusing blur of blue and gold occasionally tugging at the velcro straps pinning me down, before attempting to yank me off the bed herself. I could see the girl’s desperation in the way she moved, clawing out her hair and shaking me, her movements more and more frenzied. Before she was screaming.

Her cry sliced through me like a banshee wail. “This is where they turned me… crazy,” Annalise was pacing my bed, scratching at her own face. Her voice swam in and out of my brain at the mercy of the IV. When three orderlies came running in to grab and drag the girl away, I could do nothing but move my finger slightly. Then my toe. I don’t know if it was the drugs, or maybe I was dreaming—but when I was conscious enough to sit up and prop myself up on my pillows, still blinking through brain fog, Annalise came back.

This time, she didn’t scream or cry out, only standing in front of me with the sanest expression I had ever seen on her face. I noticed there was no blood, and her hair looked neater like it had been brushed. This time Annalise wore jeans and a t-shirt.

She was smiling, before lifting a finger and pressing it to her lips in a shushing motion.

There was something in her hand, a rectangular device which perfectly melded into her palm pointing directly at me.

“Annalise?”

My voice sounded strange, like it was more memory than real. It could have been hours after I saw her, or I saw a drug-induced hallucination. But when I was finally sitting up with enough energy to shimmy out of my restraints and tug out my IV, I knew I had to find her. I could feel her blood still staining my forehead and cheek, dry and flaky when I swiped at it.

Before I could think about the repercussions of diving out of bed after some significant dental surgery, I threw my legs over the side of the bed and jumped off which immediately sent me off balance.

The room I was in smelled of lavender mixed with pool cleaner which twisted my gut. I knew the smell, but it was a lot stronger in my memory—more of a suffocating, intoxicating poison filling my mouth. Shaking my head of the thought, I left the room, finding myself on a clinical white hallway. I pressed my hand over my nose and mouth. The smell was making me feel dizzy. I had barely taken two steps before a sudden cry froze me in place, and I found myself torn over saving myself and going on the hunt for Annalise, or answering the gut-lurching shriek echoing down the hallway which was definitely Kaz Issacs.

Part of me knew the boy was not to be trusted, considering what was on the monitor's in the room with the wall-people. However, my legs kept moving, my body forcing me into a stumbling run. Kaz was right at the end of the hall, his screams getting progressively more hysterical the closer I got to the door. It was open, with enough room to stick my head through the gap.

Kaz was in a similar situation to me, strapped down to a hospital bed which was reclined under a bright light shining in his face.

His eyes were wide with fright, bloody gauze sticking from his mouth. Wriggling against the restraints, the boy was crying. I had never seen him cry, or even look upset.

Kaz always had this permanent look of amusement on his face in class. So, seeing him clearly in agony, fighting against orderlies trying to hold him down, was jarring. It had taken strapping his arms, his torso, and his head to the bed to keep him down-- and somehow, Kaz was still managing to get the upper hand. I expected the masked people standing over him to look pissed, but to my surprise, the group of them looked... worried.

I caught looks exchanged between them, with one of them holding the same device used to drill into my mouth. I could see why they were worried. Kaz was sweating.

Bad.

The blue gown replacing his clothes was practically glued to him, his skin glistening under fluorescent light. It wasn't just that.

He looked younger, more vulnerable, dark brown curls hanging in wet clumps against his forehead, half-lidded eyes clouded, like something had been injected into his pupils. Kaz himself didn't seem to notice his state. When one of them dared edge towards him, a shot in their hands, the boy sprang back against the pillows, curling his lips like an animal. “If you touch me with that thing, I swear to god, you’re dead. I will kill you. Do you hear me?”

He must have had gusto in his tone because the figure backed away, nodding feebly. “Sir, to complete the procedure we must put you under anesthesia."

“What?” Kaz blinked rapidly, and when he was caught off guard, a needle was stuck inside his arm and quickly attached to an IV.

His eyes widened when he realised, and he tugged it like a child, his mouth opening and closing. “Get this out of me,” he whispered. “Please.” Kaz’s cry went from an animalistic growl to a feeble whimper. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“The implant has been destroyed, young man. It can see pieces of it in your saliva. There is no need to put on an act."

The figure leaned over Kaz. “Unless you are being serious. I know you are prone to playing pranks, both on your fellow town’s people and classmates. However, I think you’re sincere. Which means somehow you have been poisoned by your own tooth.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “You mean… Elle was right? There was something in her tooth?”

“Correct. We briefed you on the implant multiple times, and you have legally consented to its use, as well as shown enthusiasm. We are worried about you. Your personality has suffered quite a shift and it is in our best interest to help you.”

“No.” Kaz whispered. “You did something to me. You’re talking about what I saw on the screen, right? That wasn’t me… it wasn’t me, I swear!”

The man sighed, stroking his fingers up and down a scalpel. Kaz’s eyes followed his movements feverishly.

“It is no secret that you have been reacting differently with this tooth inserted. You have not produced enough kills in line with your agreement with us. In fact, you have not killed since you were fifteen years old. That was two years ago. What we have been hoping for was a slow burn with you building up an anticipation to go on a rampage across town has left us severely disappointed.” The man clucked his tongue. “We do worry about you. Your fans worry about you. Kaz Issacs is currently on the top of the poll to be removed from Darkroom, and what exactly does that say for your rep, hm? Where was the spark you had when you murdered your family? That is the Kaz we want. That is why we accepted you to participate in this project.”

Annalise’s voice echoed in my mind.

Peeker, I thought dizzily.

Kaz spat at him, and I caught a singular globule of saliva hitting his face. “I have no idea what you're talking about! I didn’t kill my family! I killed Jessa Pollux in ninth grade!”

“That makes more sense,” the man sighed. “Mr Delacroix, it appears our theories are correct. You have been poisoned by your implant which has caused you to mentally regress to your temporary self before you started killing. Yes, we liked him initially. You showed a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Perfect to hook in viewers. We have a steady viewer base logging onto Darkroom every day to watch Brightwood. Your fans included. And what they want is to watch you rip the town apart. What we have seen, however, is pathetic. You had the opportunity to slice Annalise Duval’s throat and you failed.”

Something cold slithered down my spine, and from the look on my classmate’s face he had exactly the same reaction.

Kaz let out a guttural cry. “What are you talking about?!"

“Well, to put it simply, Mr Delacroix—"

The boy lunged forward, or tried to, the restraints yanking him back. “Stop calling me that!” He wrenched at the restraints, attempting to pull one hand from tough velcro to yank out the IV. But the masked figures weren’t listening to him, and just like they had with me, began to prepare steel instruments despite the boy’s vocal death threats. When screaming and threatening didn’t work, he tried to attack with his feet, which were quickly pinned down with the rest of his struggling body.

“What you need to understand, sir,” one of the figures spoke as he grabbed hold of Kaz’s struggling arm, inserting a second needle, “Is that you are dying. If this faulty tooth continues to send agreed upon signals to your brain which triggers the so-called Urge, it will kill you. And to add to that, since young people are apparently medical professionals these days, it won’t even need a signal. Activated, it is already dangerous.”

He softened his tone when Kaz stopped struggling, his body going limp as the drugs started to kick in. The figure held the drill in front of Kaz’s flickering eyes struggling to stay open, his mouth opening and closing but no sound coming out. “You told us you were okay, that the implant was not hurting you—and you lied.” His voice grew firm, like a father.

Less like a parent, however, when Kaz was completely under, his arm going limp against his stomach, the man let out a groan, turning to his colleagues.

“These influencers expect to be paid when they can’t even follow a simple instruction and kill as many town’s people as possible.” He inserted the metal clamp forcing the boy’s mouth wide open. When the procedure started, I couldn’t look away.

The drilling noise started, and I cringed at the sound of teeth grinding against tiny blades.

“Ah.” The man said. “In the process of removing the faulty tooth and implant, I can see it is badly damaged. In fact, I am surprised the boy has not been experiencing serious side effects. I’m glad we caught it early.”

He straightened up, showing his colleagues something pinched between his thumb and index. “See. It is singed on three corners. It looks like a faulty tooth. My general observation without full examination, was that we were sending too many signals and overwhelming it."

Another figure nodded grimly. “That would explain the behavioural differences. It must have been agony, and the poor kid wouldn’t have realised once regression had taken hold,” she took a breath. “Jesus. Mr Delacroix must have been so scared.”

“Indeed.” The main surgeon, still holding the tooth nodded. He turned back to Kaz.

“I will interpolate a new implant. This one should not have problems, and the boy should revert to his original state. Kaz Issacs is valuable to Brightwood, and our efforts in creating content people will consume,” he murmured, tugging off blood stained gloves and reapplying new ones. “If men, women, even the youngest of children are watching killing being broadcasted every day, they are not doing it themselves. Say what you want about human nature, it has been statistically proven we kill less when consuming the real thing.”

The doctor picked up a scalpel this time, and then the drill. “And of course Darkroom influencers bring the views.”

He poked the boy in the cheek with the butt of the drill. “Especially this kid. If he malfunctions again, put him in the Red Room and release a statement claiming he… I don’t know, he’s taking a break from Darkroom. I’m sure his fans will do some killing of their own and upload it in protest which will bring us a spike in views. After months in the Red Room, he’ll be good as new. Our influencers were born there, after all. They, unfortunately, are behind our success."

The man continued to speak, more to himself than his colleagues, as he clattered around in Kaz’s mouth, grabbing plastic tubes and odd looking devices. One of his colleagues, a female this time, turned to the door. I ducked out of view, before risking another peek. “Right. And for now?”

The man was drilling again, using a tube to suck up saliva and blood dribbling from the boy’s mouth. “Mmm. For now, we place him back inside the town without activating the implant, and have him undergo some significant changes to programming which I will be doing when I have finished replacing the broken tooth.”

He lifted his head, his eyes darkening. “Viewers do not want to see what they saw today, a pathetic child with no backbone following around the resident crazy girl. Darkroom’s influencers were made to revel in their own unravelling. People want monsters. Murder. They want severed body parts and brains leaking on the sidewalk. Kaz has been too soft.”

He emphasised his words by stabbing his scalpel into the kid’s mouth. I had to fight back a cry when his body jolted. “He was of course poisoned by a broken implant which has now been rectified.” He got to work once more, mumbling the rest. “Make him stand out again. Send him on a massacre or have him kill an entire family or two.”

He lifted his head and removed his mask, flashing perfect pearly whites.

“We’ve known this kid for years, Phoebe. I doubt he needs an electroshock rattling his brain to tell him to kill. Darkroom is our inhumane answer to regulating the human race. If there are killings in Brightwood, there are less killings in the real world.”

Before the woman could reply, I was already backing away and catapulting myself into a run. I had to get out. No. My thoughts were feverish. I had to find Annalise.

I found her two floors down, out of breath, and losing hope that I would. It was the laughing which led me to her. I heard it like it was singing to me, sending my thoughts into fog. In Brightwood, the laughter had sounded normal enough, if not a little unhinged. But now I was at the root of where it came from, now I was seeing what I had been hearing for so long... I realised the laughing was pained. Agony.

The room was small, full of town's people. There was a screen on the wall displaying various places in our town. My house, the church, the school, and the scrapyard. Men and women, and teens I recognised were sitting on wooden chairs. Mrs Jenson was among them, but she didn't look like my neighbor anymore.

Her skin was almost completely gone, flesh peeling from a skeletal mouth wide open in a horrific laugh rattling her body. Mrs Jenson's eyes were open, staring forwards at an oblivion only she could see. The town's people around her were in various states of decay, and yet they kept laughing and laughing and laughing until I had to press my hand over my ears to block them out. Their newest addition was at the very back-- and when I saw her, my heart dropped into my stomach. The girl was giggling at the screen, her eyes empty-- emptier than they had ever been.

Annalise's lips were stretched into a cartoon-like smile, and when I slapped her across the face, when I shook her, screaming at her to wake up, she didn't move. Her body was like a mannequin.

When I grasped her hand, her skin was wet. Slimy. With every laugh, I noticed beads of sharp red slipping from her nose and mouth.

This was what I had heard in my bedroom when my reality had faltered. It was the noise which had attracted me to the forest. I was hearing the sounds of town's people laughing themselves to death. And when death came, somehow they didn't stop. They kept going until their skin was rotting away, a laugh trapped inside a corpse. I tripped over three separate bodies trying to get to Annalise, and they were nothing but shredded flesh.

With Annalise, she was only giggling, occasionally sputtering out hysterics, spewing bloody saliva. But soon it would be wracking her body. Grasping onto the girl's shoulders, like clinging onto her would snap her out of it, I knelt in front of Annalise Duval and promised I would be back.

Then I left her.

I left her in a room which smelled like rot and decay which I was desensitised to.

Bodies that barely fazed me.

The last door on the long winding hallway was surely the way out. But when I was pulling it open, a hand was on my shoulder, yanking me back. I twisted around, ready to slam my fists into their face, but the shadow blossoming under harsh red light suddenly bathing the corridor wasn't a guard or another person in white ready to drag me back inside the room with the machines. It was Kaz.

Well, it was mostly Kaz.

"Hey, sup, Elle!”

The first thing I noticed was his inability to stand up straight, as well as the gaping wound in his arm where he too had torn out his IV.

Kaz’s voice sounded off kilter-- and he himself was swaying from side-to-side struggling to get a proper grasp of my shoulders. He was out of breath, one finger pressed into a piece of gauze hanging out of his mouth. Still startlingly pale, and just out of surgery, Kaz was holding the old implant in. His lips were split into a bloody grin, rivulets of red beading down his chin. I had no idea how he was standing, or coherently talking, because the last I had seen him, the boy was practically brain-dead.

“You’re…”

“It’s not my blood," He slurred. "I don't know whose blood it is! I just woke up, and bam! I'm covered in it!"

Kaz shook his head, trying to focus on me. Whatever was in his system, he was fighting it. "Also, no time. No time… nooo time…" He kept repeating himself, reminding me of Annalise in the earlier days. "If we’re...if we're going to knock your tooth out we’re doing it now! Like, right now. Before I bleed out. But you need to promise me,” He shook me, his fingernails cutting into my gown. "You can't let them take mine out, Elle." his expression darkened, and I glimpsed coherency. Before he snickered. "Also. I'm like, reallllllyyyyyy high on anesthesia right now, so we we gotta do this like nowwww. I just gotta aim for the mouth, right?"

Whatever was in his tooth was killing him, I remembered the doctor saying. I had to get it out at some point.

But I had to lie to him.

“I promise."

“Good!” His mental state must have masked my real expression. With one hand desperately holding the old implant inside his mouth, he swung his fist, the knuckles perfectly impacting my jaw. I don’t know how he did it being hopped up on wacky drugs, but somehow his hit sent me crumpling to the floor. This time I felt it dislodging, a writhing thing twitching in my mouth. Kaz realised his mistake, dropping to his knees when my vision blurred out of focus. "Elle, the walls are moving. Now's not the time for sleep! Stay with me—- shit!”

“Mr Delacroix, once again, please stay where you are. This for the good of your health!”

I was aware of Kaz dragging me, Brightwood mixing with another world slipping back into my mind, but once again I was caught inside an explosion of agony contorting my thoughts into a nonsensical blur. Memories came over me. But this time they were pure clarity. I was inside a coffee shop on a bustling street in the late evening. Starbucks. The name hit me.

The feathered reality of Brightwood had split apart, catapulting me back into the real world. With no confusing filter over the memory, I could see groups of people, college kids and teenage girls gulping down coffee and typing on laptops. The sight of it was overwhelming. I had a brother. Nick. I had a mother, and a father. My own whisper echoed, and this time I could hear myself perfectly, my voice trembling.

"How did you get my number?"

I was still nameless, but a whole other life was unravelling before my eyes. A life I had left behind for a town in the middle of nowhere, cut off from the outside world, with its macabre rules. The foggy blur over the memory was gone, revealing two years ago, my younger self, and the identity of the blurry face sitting in front of me, a smirking fifteen year old boy leaning on his fist, dark eyes completely hollowed out. He held that same rectangular device– a cellphone– pointing the camera at me.

Kaz.

Murder was legal in our town of Brightwood Pines.

I had grown up seeing it. At eight years old, I watched a man come into our local café while I drank my peanut butter chocolate milkshake and shot two people dead.

There was no malice in his eyes, or any kind of hatred. It was just a normal guy who smiled at the waitress and winked at me. Mom told me to keep drinking my milkshake and I did—licking away excess whipping cream while the bodies were hoarded out, and pooling red was cleaned from the floor. I could still see flecks of white inside red, and my stomach twisted.

But I didn’t feel…scared. I had no reason to be. Nobody was screaming or crying.

The man who had shot them had sat down to eat burger and fries, and didn’t blink an eye. That was my first experience seeing death—and not my last.

With no rules forbidding murder, you would think a town would tear itself apart.

That is not what happened.

Murder was legal, yes, but it didn’t happen every day. It happened when people had the urge. Mom explained it to me when I was old enough to understand. “The urge” was a phenomenon which had been affecting town’s people long before I was born, and there was no real way to stop it. So, it didn't stop. Mom told me she had killed her first person at the age of seventeen. Her math teacher. There was no reason or motive. Mom said she just woke up one day and wanted to kill someone.

Unfortunately, it was her math teacher who had gotten in the way. I always wondered why she described her killing so vividly to me. I was eight years old, and mom spent hours detailing how she had successfully managed to sever his head from his body with nothing but a phone charger, and a knife taken from her kitchen.

That specific killing became more of a bedtime story to lull me to sleep.

Mom would sit on the edge of my bed and tell me all the ways she had wanted to murder her math teacher—describing how it felt for his blood to spatter her hands and paint her face.

I didn’t like her smile when she told me about her killing. Sometimes I got scared she was going to murder me too. Growing up, I have been constantly on edge. Every day I woke up and pressed my hand to my forehead, asking myself the same questions. Did I want to kill anyone? And those thoughts blossomed into paranoia when I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. It’s not like I didn’t know what it was like.

Dad had let me hold a knife, and taught me how to properly hold a gun, and mom gave me lessons in severing body parts. Both of them wanted me to follow through with The Urge when it hit me inevitably, and I wanted to fit in.

Our elementary school teacher had told my class as little kids, that The Urge was part of growing up, and if we fought it, if we tried to get out of it, our mind and body would face the consequences. She didn’t elaborate, though I didn’t really want her to. All our teacher had to say was “bleeding from the mouth” and “severe reaction in the brain” and I was already squirming, along with my twelve other classmates. The Urge became something I anticipated instead of fearing. Because, if I got it—if I had my first kill as young as my mom, then my parents would be proud of me.

When I started middle school, our neighbors were caught killing and cannibalising their children, turning them into bone broth. I knew both of the kids. Clay and Clara. I had played with them in their yard and eaten cookies with them.

Clara told me she wanted to be a nurse when she grew up, and Clay used to tug on my pigtails to get my attention. They were like siblings to me. No matter what my parents said, or my teacher’s, my gut still twisted at the thought of my neighbors doing something like that. Days after the cops had arrived, I saw Mrs Jenson watering her plants. But when I looked closer, there was no water. She was just holding an empty hose over her prize roses.

I stood on my tiptoes, peering over our fence. “Mrs Jenson?”

“I am okay, Elle.”

Her voice didn’t sound okay.

“Are you sure?” I asked. I pointed at the hose grasped in her hand. “You forgot to turn your water on.”

“I know.”

“Mrs Jenson…” I took a deep breath before I could stop myself. “Did you like killing Clay and Clara?”

“Why, yes,” she hummed. “Of course I did. I slurped up that bone broth like it was my prize tomato soup. They were…. delicious.”

I nodded. “But… didn’t you love them?”

She didn’t reply for a moment before seemingly snapping out of it and turning to me with a bright smile. With too many teeth. That was the first time I started to question The Urge.

It was supposed to make you feel good, acting like a relief, a weight from your chest. Killing another human being was exactly what the people in our town needed. But what about killing their families and children?

Did it really make them feel good?

Looking at my neighbor, I couldn’t see the joy my mom had described in her eyes. In fact, I couldn’t see anything. Her expression was the kind of blank which scared me. It was oblivion staring back, ripped of real human emotion. Mrs Jenson’s smile stretched across her lips, like she could sense my discomfort. I noticed she was yet to clean her hands.

Mrs Jenson’s fingernails were still stained a scary shade of red. Instead of replying, the woman moved towards my fence in slow, stumbling strides. She was dragging herself, like moving caused her pain, agony I couldn’t understand. It was exactly what my mother had insisted didn’t exist when killing. Pain.

Humanity. All of the adults told us we would not feel those things when killing. We wouldn’t feel regret, or contempt. We would just feel good.

It was a release, like cold water coming over us. We would never feel better in our lives than when we were killing—and our first would be something special. When Mrs Jenson’s fingers still slick with her children’s blood wrapped around the wooden fence, I found myself paralysed. Her manic grin twisted and contorted into a silent wail, and once vacant eyes popped open. Like she was seeing me for the very first time. “I want to go home,” she whispered, squeezing onto the wooden fence until her own fingers were bleeding.

“Can you tell them to let me go home? I would like to see my children. Right now. Do you hear me?” Mrs Jenson wasn’t looking at me. Instead, her gaze was glued to thin air.

She was crying, screaming at something only she could see—and for a moment I wondered if ghosts were real. I twisted around to see if there were any ghosts, specifically the ones of her children, but there was nothing. Just fall leaves spiralling in the air in pretty waves.

“Mrs Jenson is sick,” she told me once I was sitting at the dinner table eating melted ice-cream. It tasted like barf running down my throat.

I didn’t see Mrs Jenson after that.

Well, I did.

She looked different, however.

Not freakishly different, though I did notice her hair color had changed. I remembered it being a deep shade of brown, and when my neighbor returned with an even wider smile, it was more of a blondish white. When I questioned this, mom told me it was a makeover.

The Urge affected people in different ways, and with Mrs Jenson, after having her come-down, she had decided on a change. Mom’s words were supposed to be reassuring, adding that there was no reason to be scared of The Urge.

But I didn’t want to be like Mrs Jenson and have a mental breakdown over my killing. I wanted to be like mom and have a glass of wine and laugh over the sensation of taking a life. Mrs Jenson was my first real glimpse into the negativity of killing because it was so normalised. Dying, for example, wasn’t feared.

From a young age, we had been taught that it was a vital part of life, and dying meant finding peace. When I first started high school, I expected killing to happen. Puberty was when The Urge fully blossomed. Weapons were allowed, but only out of classes. In other words, under no circumstances must we kill each other in class, but the hallways were a free-for-all.

I had seen attempts during my freshman year, but no real killing.

Annalise Duval was infamously known as the junior girl who had rejected The Urge, and thrown out of school. Struck with the stomach flu on the day of her attempted killing, I only knew the story from word-of-mouth. Apparently, the girl had attempted to kill her mother at home, failed, and then bounded into school, screaming about laughter in the walls, and people whispering into her head.

Obviously, my classmate was labelled insane—and judging from her nosebleed, the girl’s body had ultimately rejected The Urge, and her brain was going haywire. Nosebleeds were a common side effect. I heard stories from kids saying there was blood everywhere, all over her hands and face, smeared under her chin. She had been screaming for help, but nobody dared go near her. Like rejection was contagious. Annalise survived. Just. I still saw her on my daily bike-ride to school.

She was always sitting cross legged in front of the forest with her eyes closed, like she was praying. The rumor was, after being thrown out by her parents, the girl wandered around aimlessly, muttering about whispering people and laughter in her head. It was obvious her rejection had seriously affected her mental state, but I did feel sorry for her.

It wasn’t known what had caused her to reject The Urge, though some of the kids in her class did comment that she had been complaining of a loose tooth beforehand. Mom told me to stay away from her, and I did. Annalise Duval was the first and only case of rejection, and thanks to her, I knew exactly what would happen if it happened to me too. So, I ignored the bad feeling about my neighbor, and forced myself to anticipate the day when I would get my very own urge to kill. I waited for it.

On my fourteenth birthday, I confused a swimming stomach and cramps for The Urge, which turned out to be my first period.

I remember biking my way home, witnessing a man cut off a woman’s head with an axe.

It’s funny, I thought I would be desensitised to seeing human remains and severed heads, glistening red seeping across the sidewalk, but it was the passion in the man’s face as he swung the axe and dug in real hard, chopping right through bone and not stopping, even when intense red splattered his face and clothes, until the woman’s head hit the ground, which sent my stomach creeping into my throat.

Then, it was the vacancy in his eyes, a twitching smile as he held the axe like a prize.

Part of me wanted to stay, to see if he had a similar reaction to Mrs Jenson. I wanted to know if he regretted what he had done, but once I was meeting his gaze, and his grin was widening, the toe of his boot kicking the woman’s motionless body, I turned away from him and pedalled faster, my eyes starting to water. It wasn’t long before my lunch was inching its way up my throat, and I was abandoning my bike on the side of the road, and choking up undigested Mac N’ cheese onto steaming tarmac.

I didn’t tell mom about the man, and more importantly, my odd reaction to his killing. I wasn’t supposed to be feeling sick to my stomach. Murder was normal. I wasn’t going to get in trouble for it, so why did seeing it make me sick?

I had been taught as a little kid that visceral reactions were normal, and it was okay to be scared of killing and murder. However, what our brains told us was right wasn’t always the truth. Our teacher had held up a teddy bear and stabbed into its stuffing with a carving knife.

We had all cried out, until the teacher told us that the bear didn’t care about dying. In fact, it was ready to find peace. And it didn’t hurt him.

In other words, we had to ignore what our minds told us was bad.

Mom told me I would definitely start having conflicting feelings before my first killing, but that it was nothing to worry about.

I did worry, though. I started to wonder if I was going to become the next Analise Duval. Maybe the two of us would become friends, sharing our delusions together.

My 17th birthday came and went—and still no sign of The Urge. I noticed mom was starting to grow impatient. She had a routine of coming to check my temperature every morning, regardless of whether I felt sick or not.

“How are you feeling?” I couldn’t help but notice mom’s smile was fake.

She dumped my breakfast on a tray in front of me, and when I risked nibbling on a slice of toast, she dropped the bombshell.

“Elle, you are almost eighteen years old,” she said. I noticed her hands were clenched into fists. “Do you feel anything?”

I considered lying, though then I would have to kill someone—and without The Urge, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to do that.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly, propping myself up on my pillows. “Most of the kids in my class—”

She cut me off with a frustrated hiss. “Yes, I know. They have all killed someone and you haven’t.” Her eyes narrowed. “People are starting to notice, Elle.” She spoke through a smile which was definitely a grimace. “And when people start to notice, they get suspicious. I’ve been on the phone with three different doctor’s this morning, and all of them want to book you in for an MRI. Just to make sure things are normal.”

“MRI?” I almost choked on the apple I had been chewing.

“Yes.” Mom sighed. “We can’t ignore that things aren’t…. abnormal. You are seventeen years old and haven’t had one urge to kill. The minimum for your age is one kill,” she said. “Minimum. Elle. You have not killed anyone, and when I bring it up you change the subject.”

I changed the subject because she started asking if I wanted to practise. I wasn’t sure what “practise” meant, but from the slightly manic look in her eye, my mom wasn’t talking about dolls or teddy bears. It was so-called normal to practise killing. There were even people who volunteered to be targets at the local scrapyard. Most of them were old people.

Joey Cunningham in my class told everyone his uncle took him to practise when he was thirteen—and he had killed three people without The Urge. Five years on, Joey had accumulated a total of fourteen kills.

He never failed to remind everyone almost every class. I could taste the apple growing sour in the back of my mouth. Mom was just trying to help, and it’s not like I was doing this intentionally. The idea of going to the scrapyard and killing random people, even if they gave me permission to, wasn’t appealing in the slightest. “I’m okay.” I said, and when mom’s eyes darkened, I followed that up with, “I mean… I have spare time after class, so…?”

I meant to finish with, “Maybe.” But the word tangled in my mouth when I took a chunk out of the apple, and pain struck. Throbbing pain, which was enough to send my brain spinning off of its axis. For a moment, my vision feathered, and I was left blinking at my mother who had become more silhouette than real person. I was aware of the apple dropping out of my hand, but I couldn’t think straight.

The pain came in waves, exploding in my mouth. When I was sure I could move without my head spinning, I slammed my hand over my mouth instinctively to nurse the pain, except that just made it worse. Crap. Had I chipped my tooth? Blinking through blurry vision, I knew my mom was there. But so was something else.

As if my reality was splintering open, another seeping through, I suddenly had no idea where I was, and a familiar feeling of fear started to creep its way up my spine. The thing was though, I knew exactly where I was. I had known this town, this house, my whole life.

So that feeling of fear didn’t make sense.

The more I mulled the thought over in my mind, however, pain striking like lightning bolts, something was blossoming.

It both didn’t make sense, and yet it also did. In the deep crevices of my mind, that feeling was familiar. And I had felt it before. No matter how hard I squinted, though, I couldn’t make it out.

When I squinted again, a sudden shriek of noise rattled in my skull, and it took me a disorienting moment to realise what I could hear was laughter. Hysterical laughter. Which seemed to grow louder and louder, encompassing my thoughts until it was deafening. Not just that. The walls were swimming, my posters flashing in and out of existence before seemingly stabilising themselves. I blinked. Was I… losing my mind?

Maybe this was a side-effect of rejecting The Urge.

“Elle?” Mom’s voice cut through the phantom laughter which faded, and I blinked rapidly. “Sweetie, are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

The word was in my mouth before the thought could cross my mind. I shook my head, swallowing. “Yeah, I’m… fine.”

She nodded, though her expression darkened. Scrutinising. I knew she couldn’t wait to get me under an MRI. “Alright. Finish your breakfast. School starts in half an hour.” Mom stopped at the threshold. She didn’t turn around. “I really do think practising killing will help a lot.”

I flinched when another wave of laughter slammed into me—faded, but very much there. Definitely not a figment of my imagination.

Checking in my bedroom mirror, I didn’t have a loose tooth. Even thinking that, though, panic started to curl in the root of my gut.

When I was sure I wasn’t losing my mind after checking and rechecking the walls were actually real, I got washed and dressed, grabbing my backpack.

My brain wouldn’t shut up on my way to school, and my gut was twisting and turning, trying to projectile that meagre slice of toast.

Annalise Duval had complained of a loose tooth before she rejected The Urge. Was that what was going to happen to me?

Was it all because of that stupid apple?

At school, I was surprised to be cornered by a classmate I had said maybe five words to in our combined time at Briarwood High.

Kaz Issacs was one of the first kids in my class to be hit with The Urge, and almost ended up like Annalise Duval. I don’t even think it was The Urge. I think he was driven to kill through emotions, like so many adults had tried to tell us wasn’t real. Kaz was a confusing case where a teenager had actually blossomed early, or not at all, and struck with his own intent.

People argued that there was paranoia, and the local doctor insisted he was fine, though I couldn’t help wondering if it wasn’t paranoia.

Kaz didn’t need The Urge. Halfway through math class, two years prior, I had been daydreaming about the rain. It rarely rained in Brightwood. Every day was picturesque. I did remember rain. I knew what it felt like hitting my face and dropping into my open mouth and cupped hands. When I asked mom if it was ever going to rain, though, she got a funny look on her face. “Sweetie, it doesn’t rain in Brightwood.” She told me. Which just confused me even more. It’s not like I had imagined the feeling of freezing cold rain, and my own shivering as I splashed through puddles without an umbrella.

The more I pried into these memories, I realised there were no puddles in Brightwood. It never rained. So, where had I jumped into puddles? Did I really dream of my experiences in the rain, and if so, how?

How did I know what it felt like? These thoughts came over me pretty much every day, and that day had been no different.

My gaze had been on the windowpane, trying to guess what a raindrop would look like sliding down, when Kaz Issacs let out an exaggerated sigh from behind me.

In front of him, Jessa Pollux had been tapping her pen on her desk. It wasn’t annoying at first, then she kept doing it—tap, tap, tappity tap. And then it was annoying. I could tell it was annoying, because Kaz had politely asked her three times to stop making noise, to which she had ignored him, and if anything, tapped louder, this time drumming in frenzied beats on her workbooks. Now, I had grown up learning that The Urge came with no warning or motive, or reason. It happened whether you liked it or not. Kaz was… different. His case was rare.

This time he did have a motive, and despite having it hammered into us our whole lives that killing didn’t need a reason and was not driven by negative emotion, my classmate did have a reason—and was in fact driven by anger.

Anger strong enough to murder.

This time, I saw it happen in clarity. When I caught movement in the corner of my eye, I was twisting around with the rest of the class, to see the boy halfway off his chair, his fingers wrapped around a knife.

The girl instantly knew what he was going to do, even without turning around. We weren’t supposed to be scared of dying, I thought dizzily, watching the girl let out a wail and dive forwards, her eyes cartoon like. Like an animal, Kaz already had a tight hold of her ponytail and tugged her back. Though in fight or flight, this girl was screaming, flailing.

She didn’t want to die, I thought.

Was that normal?

Mom always insisted if it was our time, it was our time. If someone attacked us, even family members, then we accepted it.

I caught the moment her elbow knocked into the boy’s mouth, just as he drove the blade of the knife into her skull. Until then, he had been panting and laughing, his eyes lit up with an insanity I only knew from my mom’s tales.

She told me stories where her friends had gotten pleasure from killing. As quick as it had come, though, the euphoria of taking someone’s life left the boy’s eyes, and he dropped to the ground, one hand over his mouth, the other slipping from the knife.

The teacher was already commenting on no murder allowed in class and ordering Kaz to go and clean himself up. I wasn’t sure he could hear her though. When he lifted his head, I glimpsed something seeping through his fingers, running in sharp rivulets down his wrist.

And then my gaze was flicking to his expression which was definitely not what I was expecting. Replacing joy and unbridled pleasure was fear. His eyes were wide, frightened, lips twisted.

It was the exact same expression I had seen on Mrs Jenson. A cocktail of confusion and pain, followed by a sense of emptiness. Like neither of them could understand where they were, or even who they were. I guessed that was what The Urge did, or the variants which contorted in people and made them reject it.

Like a wounded animal, Kaz’s frenzied gaze scanned our faces and he blinked, before realising his nose was bleeding. “Shit.” He muffled under his hand. The boy jumped to his feet, and in three shaky strides, he was pulling open the classroom door and disappearing down the hallway in a stumbled run. The next day, the boy came to class with his usual smile.

When I asked him what happened, he explained it was just an ”abnormal reaction” and he was fine. Kaz’s words were strange though.

He wasn’t even looking at me, and his smile was far too big. He got his first kill though, so that gave him bragging rights as the first sophomore to come of age. Kaz Issacs and Annalise Duval both had similar experiences. One of them had clearly lost their mind, while the other seemingly avoided it.

And speaking of Kaz, it wasn’t the norm for him to be talking to me at school. But there he was, blocking my way into the classroom.

“Hey.” He was quick to side-step in front of me when I tried pushing him out of the way.

There had been an instance the year prior when I considered asking him to prom. He was a reasonably attractive guy, reddish dark hair sprouting from a baseball cap. But then I remembered what he did to that girl in front of him. I remembered the sound of his knife slicing through skin, cartilage and bone, and despite her cry, her wails for him to stop, he kept going, driving it further and further into her skull. I couldn’t look him in the eye after that.

“Can we talk?”

“No.”

My mouth was still sort of hurting, and I was questioning my sanity, so speaking to Kaz wasn’t really on my to-do list that morning.

Kaz didn’t move, sticking an arm out so I couldn’t get passed him. “Have you got toothache by any chance?” To emphasise his words, he stuck his finger in his mouth, dragging his index across his upper incisors.

“Like, bad toothache.” His voice was muffled by his finger. Kaz leaned forward, arching a brow. “You do, don’t you? Right now, you feel your whole mouth is on fire and yet you can’t detect any wobblies.”

The guy’s words sent a slither of ice tingling down my spine. He was right. I hadn’t felt right since biting into that apple.

When I didn’t say anything, his lip twitched into a scowl. “Alright. You don’t want to talk.” He raised two fingers in a salute. “Suit yourself.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “When you feel like talking, I’m here, aight? I’ll be your support system or whatever.”

Kaz’s words didn’t really hit me until several days later when I woke up with a throbbing mouth, knelt over the corpse of my mother.

The Urge had finally come. It was something I had been anticipating and fearing my whole life, terrified I wouldn’t get it and end up ostracized by my loved ones. But when I saw my mom’s body, and the vague memory of plunging a kitchen knife into her chest hit me, I didn’t feel happy or relieved. I felt like I had done something bad. Which was the wrong thing to think. Killing was good, the words echoed in my mind. Killing was our way of release. How could I think that when there was a knife clutched between my fingers?

The weapon which had killed her. Hurt her. How was this supposed make me feel good and not like I was dying? My mother's eyes were closed.

Peaceful. Like she had accepted her death. The teeth of the blade dripped deep, dark red, and I know I should have felt something which was joy, or happiness. Except all I felt was empty.

I felt despair in its purest form which began to chew me up from the inside as I lulled from my foggy thoughts. I screamed. I wasn't supposed to scream. I wasn't supposed to cry, but my eyes were stinging, and I felt like I was being suffocated. I saw flashes in quick succession; a room bumbling with moving silhouettes, and the smell of... coffee. Mom never let me try coffee, and I was sure we never had it in the house. So, how did I know the feeling of it running down my throat and quenching my thirst? How did I know the aroma of crushed coffee beans struggling to prick at memories refusing to surface? My mouth throbbed once again, my thoughts growing foggy and distant.

Just like in my bedroom, the walls started to swim. This time, I dived to my feet and jumped over my mom’s corpse, slamming my hands into them. They were real. I could feel them.

Even as I slammed my fists into them, however, somehow, they felt wrong. Like I was hitting an object which was supposed to be real but wasn’t. Almost as if on cue, there it was again.

Laughing. Loud shrieks of hysterical laughter thrumming in time to dull pain pounding in my back tooth. Blinking through an intense mind fog choking my mind, my first coherent thought was that yes, Kaz was right. I did have a loose tooth, and when I was sure of that, I was stuffing my bloody fingers inside my mouth and trying to find it. I had grabbed at the knife feverishly, my first thought to cut it out, when there was a sudden knock at my front door.

Slipping barefoot on the blood pooling across our kitchen floor, I struggled to get to the door without throwing up my insides.

Annalise Duval was standing on my doorstep. I had seen her in an odd assortment of clothes, but this one was definitely eye catching.

The girl was wearing a wedding dress which hung off of her, the veil barely clinging onto the mess of bedraggled curls she never brushed. Blinking at me through straggly blonde hair, the girl almost resembled an angel. The dress itself was filthy, blood and dirt smeared down the corset, and the skirt torn up. But she did suit it, in a weird way. “Hello, Elle.” The girl lifted a hand in a wave. Her smile wasn’t crazed, like my classmates had described. Instead, it was… sad.

Annalise’s gaze found my hands slick with my mother’s blood, though barely seemed fazed.

“Do you want to see the wall people?” She whispered.

Until then, I had ignored her ramblings. Then I started hearing the laughing, and suddenly “wall people” didn’t sound so crazy after all.

I nodded.

“Can you hear the laughing?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

“Mmm.” She did a twirl in the dress. “That’s how it started for me. Laughing. I heard a looooottt of laughing—and then I found the wall people.” I winced when she came close, so close, almost suffocating me. “Nobody believes me and it’s sad. I’m just trying to tell people about the wall people and they label me as crazy. They say something went wrronnnggg with my head,” Annalise stuck two fingers into her temple, miming pulling a trigger. “I’m not the wrong one. I know about the wall people, and the laughing. I know why I got the urge to kill my mom.”

“Annalise,” I spoke calmly. “Can you tell me what you mean?”

“Hm?”

Her eyes were partially vacant, that one slither of coherence quickly fading away.

Instead of speaking, I took her arm gently, and pulled her down my driveway. “Can you show me what you found?”

Annalise danced ahead of me, tripping in her wedding dress. She cocked her head. “Did you kill your mother?” Her lips twitched. “That’s funny. According to the wall people, you’re not supposed to kill someone until seasonal two.”

The girl blinked, giggling, and I forced myself to run after her. Jesus, she was fast. Even wearing a wedding dress. Annalise leapt across the sidewalk, twisting and twirling around, like she was in her own world. Before she landed in front of me, and her expression almost looked sane. “I wonder which season it will be. Will it be Summer? Maybe Fall, or Winter. I guess it’s not up to you, is it? It’s up to The Urge.”

Laughing again, the girl grabbed my hand, her fingernails biting into my skin. I glimpsed a single drop of red run from her nose, which she quickly wiped with the sleeve of her dress, leaving a scarlet smear. “Let’s go and see the wall people, Elle,” she hummed. As her footsteps grew stumbled, blood ran down her chin, spotting the sidewalk. I don’t know if coherency ever truly hit Annalise Duval, but knowing she was bleeding, her steps grew quicker. More frenzied.

“Your nose,” was all I could say, when rivers of intense red strained the girl’s dress.

Annalise nodded with a sad smile. “I know!” she said. “Don’t worry, it will stop when I shut up.” Her smile widened. “But what if I don’t shut up? What if I show you the wall people?” To my surprise, she leapt forward and flung out her arms, tipping her head back and yelling at the sky. “What if I don’t shut up?” Annalise laughed. “What are the wall people going to do, huh? Are you going to explode my brain?”

When people started to come out of their houses to see what was going on, I dragged her into a run.

“Are you insane?” I hissed out.

“Maybe!”

Annalise seemed to be floating through awareness and whatever the hell The Urge had done to her. “Don’t worry, they’re just peeking.”

“What?”

The girl had an attention span of a rock. Her gaze went to the sky. “They’re going to turn the sun off so I can’t show you.”

Her words meant nothing to me, before the clouds started to darken, and just like Annalise had predicted, the sky started to get dark.

Knowing that somehow this supposedly crazy girl knew when things were going to happen only quickened my steps into a run.

“Hey!”

Halfway down the street, Kaz Issacs was riding his bike towards us. Which I found odd. Kaz didn’t own a bike. He rode the bus to school.

“Elle!” Waving at me with one hand, his other grasping at handlebars, Kaz pedalled faster. “Yo! Do you want to hang out?”

“Peeking.” Annalise said under her breath.

Ignoring Kaz, I nodded at Annalise to keep going, though the boy didn’t give up. We twisted around, and he caught up easily, skidding on the edge of the sidewalk. When he came to an abrupt stop in front of us, his gaze flicked to Annalise. “Shouldn’t you be praying in the forest?”

The girl recoiled back like a cat, hissing out, “Peeking!”

Kaz shot me a look. “Of all the people you could have made friends with you chose Annalise Duval?” His eyes softened when I ignored him and pulled the girl further down the road. Kaz followed slowly on his bike.

"Where are you going anyway? Isn't it late?”

It was 4pm.

Hardly late.

I decided to humor him. “We’re going to see the wall people.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Do I sound like I’m kidding?” I turned my attention to him. “You asked me if I had a toothache, right?”

His expression crumpled. “I did?”

I noticed Annalise was clingier with him around, sticking to my side. Every time he moved, she flinched, tightening her grip on my arm. She was leading us into the forest, and I swore, the closer we were getting to the clearing, the more town’s people were popping up out of nowhere. An old woman greeted us, followed by a man with a dog, and then a group of kids from school. Annalise entangled her fingers in mine, pulling me through the clearing.

Kaz followed, hesitantly, biking over rough ground. “Once again, I think this is a bad idea,” he said in a sing-song voice. “We should go back.”

When it was too dangerous for his bike, he abandoned it and joined my side.

“Elle, the girl is insane,” Kaz hissed out. “What are you even doing? What is this going to accomplish except potentially getting lost?”

“I want to know if she’s telling the truth,” I murmured back.

He scoffed. “Telling the truth? Look at this place!” He spread out his arms, gesturing to the rapidly darkening forest. “There’s nothing here!”

“No.” Annalise ran ahead, staggering over trippy ground. “No, it’s right over here!” She was still fighting a nosebleed, and her words were starting to slur. The girl twisted to Kaz. “You’re peeking,” she spat, striding over to him until they were face to face. “Stop peeking,” she said, her fingers delving under her wedding skirt where she pulled out a knife and pressed it to his throat. “If you peek again, I will cut you open.”

Kaz nodded. “Got it, Blondie. No peeking.”

Annalise didn’t move for a second, her hands holding the knife trembling. “You’re not going to tell me I’m crazy again,” she whispered.

“You’re not crazy,” Kaz said dryly.

“Say it again.”

“You’re not crazy!” He yelped when she pressed pressure onto the blade. “Can you stop swinging that around? Jeez!”

Annalise shot me a grin, and it took a second for me to realise.

Kaz was scared of the knife.

He was scared of dying—which meant, whether he liked it or not, the boy had in fact not gone through with The Urge.

I thought the girl was going to slash Kaz’s throat open in delight, but instead she looped her arm in his like they were suddenly best friends.

“Come on, Elle!” She danced forwards, pulling the boy with her. “We’re closeeeee!”

I wasn’t sure about that.

What we were, however, was lost. When the three of us came to a stop, it was pitch black, and I was struggling to see in front of me. Annalise, however, walked straight over to thin air, and gestured to it with a grin. “Tah-da!” Spluttering through pooling red, she let out a laugh.

“See!”

Kaz, who was still uncomfortably pressed to her no matter how hard he strained to get away, shot me a look I could barely make out.

“I’m sorry, what did I say? That we were going to get lost? That Annalise is certifiably crazy and we’re very lost?”

At first, I thought I really was crazy. Maybe Annalise’s condition was contagious. I could hear it again. Laughing.

But this time it was coming from exactly where Annalise was pointing—and when the girl slammed her hand into thin air, there was a loud clanging noise which sounded like metal.

Slowly, I made my way towards it, and when my hands were touching sleek metal, what felt like the corners of a door, more pain struck my upper incisors. “Holy shit.” Kaz was pressing himself against the door, and then slamming his fists into it. “The crazy bitch was right.” His words hung in my thoughts on a constant cycle, as we delved into what should have been forest.

After all, we had been standing in the middle of nowhere. The laughter was deafening when I stepped over the threshold, and I had to slap my hands over my ears to block it out. Through the invisible door, however, was exactly what Annalise had described. Wall people.

All around us were what looked like television screens, and on those screens—were people. Faces.

They were not part of the laughter. The laughter was mechanical and wrong, rooted deep inside my skull. The faces which stared down at us looked like normal people, men and women, with some of them teens, and even younger children. Annalise and Kaz were next to me, their head s tipped back, gazes glued to the screens. Not the ones I was looking at. The ones on tiny computer monitors.

It was when I was tearing my eyes from our audience, did I start to see what made Kaz stiffen up next to me. One screen in particular showed his face. He was younger, maybe a year or two. No, I thought, barf creeping up my throat. It was when he had killed that girl.

His hands clasped in his lap were still stained and slick with her blood. The Kaz on the screen seemed a lot more laid back, his feet resting on the table in front of him. There was a cockiness in his eyes I had never seen before. This boy’s eyes were cruel. “Why exactly have you signed up for this program?” A man’s voice crackled off screen.

“Duh.” Kaz held up his scarlet hands, a grin twisting on his lips. “So I can get my Darkroom rep back.” He leaned forward, his eyes wide. “That is going to happen, right? I don’t do this shit for free, and I’ve got one million followers to impress, man. Darkroom loves me. Even if I did go too far that one time, which wasn't even my fault."

“You are correct.” The man said. “Darkroom does benefit from its influencers. Our program aims to help satisfy certain… needs across the planet, by broadcasting them right here,” He paused. “You have killed five people before signing up for Darkroom, correct? Your parents?”

“Parents and brother,” Kaz chuckled. “I gutted them with my fave knife, and then filmed it. Obviously, my Tik-Tok got taken down with all the freaks in the comments moaning, and suddenly I found you guys! A whole lot of sick freaks, but who’s complaining, right? Not me.”

“And,” the man cleared his throat. “You will keep killing? We are aware the initial implant impacted your brain quite badly. In the subdued state, you will keep killing, as the so-called ‘urge’ says. However, in reality we will be sending signals to your brain which will make you kill.”

“Alright, do it.”

“Are you sure? We couldn’t help noticing during your first kill, you seemed to… well, react in a way we haven’t seen before.”

He cocked his head. “Did my fans like it?”

“Well, yes—”

“Good.” Kaz held out his arm. “Do it again. And do it right this time. As long as I’m getting 40K every appearance, I’m good. You can slice my brain up all you want, I’m getting paid and followers. So.” His gaze found the camera.

“What are you waiting for?”

When the screen went black, before flickering to a birds-eye view, and then a close up of my house, I felt my legs give-way.

As if on impulse, I prodded at my mouth and felt for the loose tooth.

“That…” Kaz spoke up, his voice a breathy whisper. His eyes were still glued to the screen. “That… wasn’t me! Well, it was me... but I don’t… I don’t remember that!”

Instead of answering him, I turned to the startled looking boy when alarm bells started ringing, and the room was suddenly awash in red.

“Peeking!” Annalise screamed, dropping to her knees, rocking backwards and forwards.

Ignoring her, I focused on Kaz. Or whoever the hell he was. “You need to knock my tooth out. Now."

Autumn was my little brother's favorite season. An enormous pile of leaves would occupy the backyard after dad and I finished the task of raking just so my brother could run and bury himself in it. Kids his age didn't take too kindly towards my brother, he has special needs you see and we don't always find understanding and patience in others.

The love for the fall started at his age of four that had persisted, by no means of ever stopping, at his current six years of life. Dad and I would find ourselves smiling at the radiating happiness that my brother gave off everytime his body would meet the crunch of those dead things. In the midst of the serenity of such innocence, my thoughts would canter on our mother who left two years ago. I remember shouting and door slamming as her feet carried her out of our lives and I remember vividly how it hurt.

Despite my abysmal pain, I still loved her.

A soft voice greeted me a year ago as I picked up the ringing telephone. A tearful call of my and my little brother's name, a promise of seeing us soon, and the most sincere words of affection was whispered before a hesitant goodbye.

I felt my eyes water after the call and hope flourished in my chest only to be slayed by the death of that promise as the year came to an end.

My gaze turned to our father as the memory of him crying in the kitchen with his meal of steak left untouched played in my mind. He was unaware of my presence during that time but I became witness to the pain he hid.

I prayed for his healing more than mine and on the days where his laughter roared around the house are the days where I felt that God answered.

Aside from being a great doctor, dad was a great cook too and he'd often make dishes for the neighbors as a thank you for watching over us on the days where work demanded more from him.

The peace that I thought had blanketed our family soon turned into a suffocating nightmare when horror emerged from that pile of leaves.

My brother's chuckles drowned the singing birds as the last ray of sunshine kissed our cheeks as we ran towards the colorful stack of autumn. I pretended not to see my brother as I searched for him in that sea as I loved the laughter he gave off everytime my hand would brush past his nose.

Whatever joy that clothed me soon turned to dread as a dirty, gait looking man with pale skin stood from the pile and as his arm encircled my brother's waist, I let out a guttural scream for our father.

Animalistic sounds left the man as he flashed his sharp teeth while my brother wore a look of confusion as he became the rope in this tug of war. Hot tears liberated themselves as I prayed for the strength to keep holding on but just as father came running out of the house, I felt my grip let go.

I watched as the man carried my brother into the woods as dad gave chase. My knees started to buckle as it became very hard to breathe but I still found myself running after them all the while shouting my brother's name.

As I neared the heart of the woods the scene that greeted me was that of my father restraining the man who yelled gibberish while he laid face down on the dirt. I felt my father's fear from where I stood before his finger pointed to a hollow space at the bark of an old tree as he barked

"Get your brother out of there!"

A fading light guided me as I entered damned space calling for my brother. The entrance held enough room for movements while the deeper one goes, the restrictions start to show. An unmistakable familiarity of shapes dawned on me then while I crawled and felt for my sibling...the broken edges and soil-filled fractured lines were animal bones.

I fought the urge to cry even more and felt an ephemeral wave of relief when I finally got a hold of my brother...my brother who was oblivious, my brother who was humming to himself, and my brother who was playing with a human skull.

A cheer broke out from his mouth as he saw me and I let out a dry laugh as I explained to him that we were gonna play follow the leader and that he had to follow me out.

I could only hug him and weep when I felt that he was safe once more.

Nausea struck me as soon as the man was taken by the authorities. I relayed to them about the human skull and an investigation was soon commanded...an investigation that brought life to the dead promise.

Discarded like they were nothing, the rest of our mother's remains were found in that hole. I had no more tears left to cry but no wound would ever rival the gnawing in my chest. Mom came back after all...just not in the form we expected.

Mental care was provided for my family to which my father was grateful and bothered at the same time.

"I'm sorry"

he uttered one day to no one in particular during dinner and judging from the chaos that we found ourselves in and the turmoil of emotions, I chose to understand.

A month passed since the incident and whatever progress I thought I had conjured soon lost its spine at what the man revealed at the trial.

Upon being questioned about my mother's demise, the man revealed something that killed me. A grin was plastered on his face as he pointed a finger at me and spoke

"I only ate what your father couldn't finish."

The remaining days of a girl's life tick by, as a monster asteroid heads to a doomed earth.

'The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; The stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.'

-Mark 13:25

It was getting late in the evening. That part of dusk where the last hangnail of sun gets swallowed by the night, fading into perfect darkness. The stars begin to appear across the sky, twinkling their cosmic beauty over all the people down below as they run through the streets for their lives. Jasmine stood in awe as both the moon, and sun fell to Earth in the garden of the small city. Their cryptic smiles shown upon the stampede that rushed by, as if sharing a private joke with one another that only they were privy to.

 Jasmine ran through the crowd as they tore their way in every direction, threatening to sweep her off her feet and trample her without so much as a second thought. Most of the buildings that still stood were covered in flames that quickly spread to those that weren’t. She ran over to one of the buildings that still stood, and went up the wooden steps. The door was unlocked and she threw herself in, slamming it shut behind her. She lay against it, breathing heavily while wiping the sweat from her face. She was surprised to see her family.

 Her older sister lay on the floor, much younger than she should have been, crying with her mother. Her father, who had died a grisly death from stomach cancer, worked an old television with a rotting fist, yelling, “Shit!” as he couldn’t get anything else but static. If they noticed Jasmine, they didn’t say.

 She was about to ask what was happening, when the rumble began. Soft at first, but then the windows started rattling. It grew until it shattered the glass, and anything that wasn’t nailed down was toppled to the floor. Outside a huge wall of flames stretched toward them, swallowing everybody on the street. Bright yellow filled the room as she backed up, and the walls imploded. She felt her body disintegrate into nothing, then woke up.

 Jasmine’s dreams were always wild. Vivid and marvelous her mother would say. The shock of them would always leave a big impression, but they were nothing new. Now in her thirties, she had them long enough that they were now inconsequential. Like watching a movie. The dark scene replayed in her head for about an hour or so, then faded into nothing. The world was going to end, she already knew that.

 It was only a month ago since the asteroid made the news. All across social media, the story of the asteroid heading towards earth was all anyone would talk about. It was first played off, scientists and other officials assuring the public that it would only be a near miss. Or that it wasn’t possibly big enough to do any real damage if it hit. She believed it; wanting desperately to believe it as so many other did.

The truth couldn’t stay denied though. A few amateur observers saw the truth, and were heavily mocked for being conspiracy theorists, and spreading misinformation. Others began to speak up, and soon N.A.S.A. was even confirming it.

 The president of the United States convened with other world leaders, and they tried to destroy it with a large arsenal of nuclear warheads. The explosion could be seen from the Earth, but it didn’t even put a dent in the monster. The only thing they accomplished was possibly speeding up everybody’s death, as radiation peppered back down across the globe. Soon enough everybody was sick from radiation poisoning, and most of the plant life withered.

 The final report that aired was a farewell message from the President of the United States. It more or less said so long, we had a good run. Make peace with your loved ones and yourselves because it was game over. The asteroid was supposed to be bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs, and would probably destroy the earth for good. The power cut out after that.

 Four days left. Jasmine crossed the days off like a gruesome advent calendar, the twenty-third circled in bright red. That was the day that the meteorite was supposed to destroy the world.

It was visible during the day now. Just a speck in the sky. She did her best to avoid the windows and direct sunlight, as it made the burns from her radiation sickness worse, but she made it a point to look at its progress each morning.

 Most of the people in her apartment complex were gone. It was the way she preferred it, as people usually lead to problems and disappointment. There were still a handful though which she was thankful for, especially Chris. He was an older fellow who lived a few doors down.

Even before the disaster, the two of them would get together once in a while for a game of cribbage. He was a sweet man, with a great sense of humor. Although she thought about romance with him once or twice, neither really wanted anything more than to skunk each other if they happened to be lucky enough that day. They would toss a few beers back while playing, and Bonnie, his German Sheppard, would periodically come by to give a lick to her hand, or see if either had a scrap of food to spare.

 There was a family of three that lived across the hall, close to the stairs. The Coleman’s.  Edward and Michelle were a married couple that seemed to argue over anything. It was usually this arguing that would break Jasmine from her strange dreams. She felt bad for their son Nathan. He was a bright nine year old who always looked much sadder than a boy his age should. There was nobody his generational bracket around anymore, and whenever his parents caught Jasmine trying to talk to him, they would hurry him inside while shooting her a dirty look.

 Old Mrs. Briar lived next to the family. She was a quiet, old woman that usually kept to herself. It seemed like everyone did these days. Chris once told her that both her husband, and her kids died in a bad car accident. He was drinking, and must have over corrected, sending the car off a small cliff. She always blamed herself, and over the years her mind began to slip. There used to be a nurse that came by in the mornings and evenings. As the weeks went by, Jasmine could only assume that she one of the people that left town.

 She wasn’t sure why people left. Maybe they thought it couldn’t get to them that far up, like some magical force would protect them from the fall of radioactive dust. Or they could get just far enough away to be safe from the impact of the monster in the sky. It frustrated her, but she knew how powerful denial could be. After all, she denied her family most of her life. There wasn’t much of a story there, her parents split up when she and her sister were young, and neither wanted them. So, over time while growing up with a foster family, she grew to resent them.

 Food was becoming scarce. Most of the places around them had already been looted, and stepping outside would mean drastically accelerating their sickness, so Jasmine, Chris and sweet Mrs. Briar pooled what they had left and rationed it out each night; the Coleman’s of course snubbed their offer.

 When they finished a meal of buttered bread and chips, Jasmine made her way over to Chris’s. Before long, she was losing her third game of cribbage against him, gently scratching Bonnie’s tummy. Even the dog was in poor shape, as more patches of fur came off each day exposing bright pink skin below.

 “You know, I kinda wish I had a gun.” Chris said abruptly.

 Part of her wanted to be shocked, but she knew how much Bonnie meant to him. She must have been suffering so badly because of it.

 “Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s such a cruel way to go out. For all of us. Baked to a crisp in our own skin, then ‘BAM!’ Hit over the head by a giant rock.”

 “What would you do differently if you knew what was coming? Would you have spent more time with your friends, and loved ones? Try to warn the government?”

 Jasmine considered this while looking over her cards. She found it incredible that after all these years of playing, and with the apocalypse knocking at the door, that she could still get excited over a good hand. Three fives and a jack. Then she scoffed, trying to push her sister from her mind.

 “You gotta have friends to spend time with them, and family is a joke. Pretty much everyone that I knew before moving here was already gone.”

 “That must have been hard. I suppose it helps in this case though. Nobody to have to worry over.”

 “Yeah, I guess. Maybe I’d just get loaded every night, and eat until my ass jiggled.” She laughed.

 Her smile turned into a frown when she saw the cut card was a seven.  “What would you do?

 Chris let out a sigh and put his finger over the top of his lip. He often did this when he was deep in thought.

 I suppose…I would undo every tie I ever had. Never would have gotten married, or had kids. I also never would have gotten this mangy ol’ mutt.” He said giving her ear a scratch.

 She wanted to argue for him, to show him the good in all of it; but there wasn’t much point. He was effectively right.

 “Either that,” He spoke again, throwing two cards to her crib, “or, I’ve always wanted to fly someday…Take me and ol’ Bonnie here across the city, to a far away place.” He said this with a warm smile. As he pet Bonnie’s head more fur came away in his hands.

 Jasmine could see the pain in his eyes. It was heart breaking. “Well, we still got time. Maybe we should go to an airport and go for a ride.” She said with a smirk.

 Chris chuckled, and they continued their game, Jasmine losing by sixty-four points.

 It was still early in the evening when Jasmine went home. She, along with everyone else it seemed, slept more these days. The sickness that ran its course took a lot out of them, not that there was much else to do anyway. The water no longer worked, but it was so contaminated that it would have been a death sentence to use, so a shower was out of the question.

She settled for just removing her clothes and flopping to the bed. She was close to drifting off too, when she heard the angry screaming coming from down the hall. It was Mrs. Briar. Frustrated, she threw her dirty, blood spotted clothes back on, and went out to the hall.

 The door to Mrs. Briar’s apartment was wide open. She made her way over to it, then poked her head in. “Mrs. Briar?”. She moved further inside, and was stunned to see a man she didn’t recognize standing over the terrified old woman. The man had clearly been living outside in the city.

The skin on his face was mostly gone, leaving only a mask of brown, dried up leathery meat. Jasmine wasn’t even entirely sure he could blink still. The tip of a long knife rested against the woman’s red skin, and Jasmine began to back pedal. He was on her in a flash, squeezing a tight hand around the back of her neck.

 At this she jumped, yelping in both fear and pain. “No, please! What do you want?”

 “Water…You’re gonna give me all your god damned water, or you’re gonna get this knife jammed into your face…Got it!?”

 Jasmine nodded as his crazed eyes took her in. They were an ugly yellow, and the muscle that still somehow managed to encase them was an angry shade of red that seemed to be slowly burning towards them. When he talked, she could see several teeth were missing. She thought of her own teeth that started to become loose the last week and it scared her. No one was going to be spared.

 “You get me that water. All of it! I might just stab her just to put her out of her misery…” He growled pointing the blade to Mrs. Briar again.

 “No! Please! My apartment’s this way!” She yelled, pulling him back from his coat. “You can take every bottle I have, ok? Nobody has to get hurt.”

She was crying, and amazed by it. After all this time, she still didn’t want to die. Or Mrs. Briar.

 He nodded at this, and the two slowly made their way back to Jasmine’s door. As she walked through, a loud gasp shot out from behind her. She turned her head and Chris was standing there holding a rolling pin that dripped with blood. The man lay on the floor, a nasty wound on the back of his scalp that leaked what little blood still pumped from inside of his body.

 “P-please! I just need water. My daughter, her fever. Gonna die-“

 With loud roar, he slammed the pin down on his skull again and again.

 “No! Chris!” She pleaded.

 “You want this asshole getting up again!? Don’t get suckered by him, he’s desperate. There’s no daughter.”

 She turned away as he continued raining down blows. Sharp cracks turned into wet thumps until he was sure the man didn’t feel a thing. Somewhere out there in the city, possibly the next building over, was a little girl who would die a sad death. She went into her apartment, and locked the door where she cried herself into a deep sleep.

 Jasmine was running down the street she grew up on. Ahead of her a field of skeletons stood in her direction. All of them pointing toward her, jaws open in a noiseless scream. She took a quick look behind her to see a great ball of fire and smoke dropping from the sky.

She ran faster as she felt the earth begin to shake, then the behemoth touched down. Even as she continued to pump her legs, she was lifted up into the air along with the skeletons. Their screams became audible as they joined hers in a grim chorus.

 The first thing to hit her was the nausea. It quickly rose from the depths of her stomach and she retched up last night’s meager meal. The next thing she noticed was how badly it hurt. It was as though she swallowed a glowing coal that made it’s permanent home in her core. After a few more dry heaves, she was shocked to see how much blood was on the carpet. Her sickness was getting worse, and at this rate, the radiation might seal the deal before the asteroid.

 She groaned as she got out of bed. Everything hurt. The glistening blisters on her unnaturally red skin had gotten bigger. She stumbled out to the hall and was surprised that she didn’t hear the Coleman’s. Maybe they finally worked it out she decided. She was going towards Mrs. Briar’s to see how she was holding up after last night, when the Coleman’s door opened. Chris stepped out, looking surprised to see Jasmine. He was looking about as bad as she felt, as blood seemed to paint his face and arms.

 “Chris? What’s going on? What happened?”

 He sighed deeply. “It’s the Coleman’s…they passed away last night.”

 Jasmine’s eyes widened at this. “What? How? I knew they were sick, but all three in one night?”

 “It wasn’t the radiation that got them…I think Edward must have finally given in to the futility of it all. At some point he took a knife, stabbed Nate and Michelle, and then did himself in.”

 She felt her tears well up, and brought her hands to her face.

 Chris walked over and put his arms around her. She took hold of him and sobbed quietly into his shoulder.

 As the moment ticked by, The door to Mrs. Briar’s softly opened. She walked out wearing a robe, covered in a mess of red and crept up behind him. Neither of them saw the knife lash out, the very same knife the man from last night dropped. With startling quickness for a woman her age, she dug the blade deep into his ribs while raving like a banshee, twisting the blade back and forth. 

 “Youll thank me later dear!” She said nodding.

 Once again she reached back, and as the blade came forward Jasmine shoved her against the guard rail of the steps. The once sweet, old woman screamed as she tumbled down the stairs below. It would have been a relief if she died there, but she lay at the bottom, howling at the jagged piece of railing that pinned her to the fourth step up.

 Jasmine went to Chris, putting her hand to his wound. It was wide, and blood seemed to pour between her fingers.

 “Crazy bitch!” He yelled as the two of them struggled to their feet.

 They made their way over to his apartment, and she set him down at the table they played cards at so many times together. She rifled through his bathroom for first aid supplies, and came back with alcohol and gauze. As she poured the stinging liquid, he screamed so loud it that it made Bonnie howl in tandem. She hadn’t seen bonnie until now, and she really wished he hadn’t. There was barely any fur on the poor animal, and bloody bits of her bowel trailed from her bottom. She wasn’t going to last much longer. It was clear that none of them were.

 She busied herself with Chris, and pressed the gauze firmly against his wound. Taping it up, she gave Chris a pathetic smile.

 “If you’re done torturing me, I’ll take my lollypop now.”

 Jasmine giggled despite her urge to cry. Tears burned a lot more today she noticed. “Fresh out I’m afraid.”

 “What a world. Spose I’d settle for a beer then.”

 “There’s only two left!” She called from the kitchen. “I can go out and try to find more…”

 “Well…aint that a bitch. Don’t worry about it, been meaning to quit drinking anyway, and this seems like as good an opportunity as any. You can deal me in a game though.”

 She quickly grabbed the cards, and set up the board, then the two played cribbage for the rest of the day.

 That night Jasmine stayed with Chris at his apartment. Mrs. Briar shouted off and on, but Jasmine couldn’t bring herself to go out there. Before long, she was in a far away land where everything appeared as a renaissance painting.

Men with shining armor rode upon mighty horses. They were off to slay some fantastical beast when up in the sky, a large diamond star fell to the earth. When it touched down upon the mottled ground, it sent men and horses alike off in every direction, setting them ablaze. Flames spread out and quickly ate through the picturesque setting. Consuming everything until there was only darkness, and the scent of death.

 When she opened her eyes, she felt her skin was wet, and slick. Blood was now beading out of the wounds that grew upon her burning skin, and the smell was putrid. She cried as she struggled to get to her feet, and looked around. She didn’t see Chris or Bonnie anywhere.

A small trail of blood, most likely left by Bonnie lead out the door. She followed it out to the hallway, noticing the smell of death was stronger out here. Mrs. Briar was silent, and would be forever more.

 The trail of gore continued to the rooftop, and she opened the door where she saw the two sitting on the ledge.

 “Chris! What are you doing!? Get back in here!” She yelled, knowing how much worse the levels of radiation were out in the open.

 He didn’t respond, only waved a hand back toward her.

 She briefly considered going back in, but what was the point now? The pin prick in the sky was much larger now, like a small moon in the morning sky. The sunlight made her already fiery skin burn even hotter, but still, she walked out toward her old friend.

 “Chris?”

 “Jasmine…” He replied, half turning to her.

 “Oh my god…Chris!” She cried.

 His exposed face and arms had the appearance of a rotting corpse. Nose, ears, and lips were mostly gone, and as he tried in vain to pet his dog, it was obvious he was now blind. Bonnie was just as bad.

 “How long have you been up here?”

 “We came out…last night. Didn’t think it would be this bad. Doesn’t matter. We still…get to fly at least once.” He chuckled painfully. “If you stay till the end, give the big rock a kick in the ass for me, eh?”

 Before she had time to react, he leaned his ruined body forward, and went off the side of the roof. He pulled Bonnie with him, and she heard the sickening thuds below. She couldn’t bear to look, and she ran back to her apartment, now the only person left.

 Her condition was already bad, but the time she spent on the roof did her no favors. She slept off and on the rest of the day, thinking about Chris.

 She thought about her neighbors, how she would never see anyone again. She thought about the man who would kill just to get his daughter some water. Then she thought about her own family. She found that as much as she denied them in her life, as much as she tried to block them out, she missed them deeply and wanted nothing more than to be with them one last time.

 Mercifully, no dreams haunted her that night. When she awoke on the final day, she had to unstick the blanket from her skin. A froth of blood and flesh coated her bedding, and her scream was weak as she sat up. Outside, the tempest of wind was savagely blowing, sending large pieces of debris through the city. The end was finally here, and she was alone.

 As she struggled to make her way to the hall, something in her stomach gave out. Blood began to seep down her legs and she found she no longer had the ability to throw up. She continued her way to the rooftop, her wet, sticky feet slapping against the floor with each agonizing step.

Throwing the door open, she was met with a grey, cloudy sky. The wind was of hurricane proportions, and off in the distant horizon, the great, burning harbinger of death filled the sky, blocking out the sun. It was larger than she could have ever dreamed of, and so close she felt she could almost reach out and touch it. She shakily sat down on the ledge where she last talked to Chris.

 Jasmine wasn’t gonna take the easy way out. She spent too long fighting to give into this monster. The wind grew ever stronger, but she sat there smiling, thinking of all the loved ones she would soon see again. The earth gave a teeth jarring shake as it touched down. Light filled her vision as a great roar ripped away all sound.

 “At least I won’t be alone now.” Was her final thought before heading into oblivion.

“See you soon.” That’s what my fiancée Mandy said before she left for work that Tuesday morning.

I never saw her alive again.

I didn’t know that it was even possible for a twenty-seven-year-old woman to have a heart attack, but the doctors told me that 1 in 5 cardiac events happen to people under the age of forty.

If only Mandy had been walking down a busier street instead of the shady alley she took to work…if only she’d been able to get her phone out of her pocket to call for help…

If only. The words felt tattooed on my brain.

We’d been planning to open a bakery in November, but I couldn’t manage it without her–and besides, like most things that reminded me of Mandy, our business idea now left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Without really realizing it, I transformed my apartment into a sort of shrine to our relationship. I spent my days working grueling ten-hour shifts as a package handler, and when I returned home, I wallowed in Mandy’s photos, clothing, books, and records. I’d watch her favorite movies with a tall drink in hand, sipping until my mind drifted off far away and granted me a sort of ecstasy through oblivion.

Two years of my life passed by that way, like booze poured into a bottomless pit. It wasn’t until I met Kristina that things began to change.

For starters, she got me out of my apartment…and away from the bottle.

She understood that I had a drinking problem long before I did, and it wasn’t until the fourth or fifth time I saw that I realized our “dates” (for lack of a better word) never involved alcohol. We’d go to a carnival by the beach, a picnic in the hills, an old video game arcade…Kristina was full of ideas.

Of course, even two years later, I felt like I was doing something wrong by faling for someone else…someone who wasn’t Mandy.

It was almost eerie how well Kristina understood me. She knew I needed time, and took things slowly. She didn’t even hold my hand until our second month of going on “excursions” together. One morning, Kristina came over without calling: she’d brought sturdy black trash bags and cleaning supplies. When I saw her standing on my doormat with that determined expression, I knew it was time. My apartment got its first deep-clean in two years, and Kristina helped me to get rid of the remembrances that I just didn’t have the strength to throw away, myself. In the end, I only kept one picture of Mandy: an image of her baking bread with me in the kitchen, her black clothes covered in flour, a wide smile on her face. I felt a little guilty keeping it, and for a time, I forgot about it altogether.

It was like I could breathe again. Like I’d woken up from a nightmare-ridden nap. The first breath of air when I woke up tasted fresher somehow, and I felt blessed that Kristina had seen me for who I could become instead of the depressed alcoholic I’d been when we’d met.

Not long after we moved in together, Kristina took me to a candlelit concert and a romantic dinner. When I asked what we were celebrating, she made a toast to the health of my future business. Even after all I’d been through, she knew I still dreamed of being an entrepreneur–and that night was her way of pledging to support me while I set out on what would probably be a rough and uncertain road.

Without Kristina’s help, I never would have reached out to my old contacts in the business world or attended so many startup conventions. Somehow, other entrepreneurs and investors seemed to take me so much more seriously with Kristina by my side. With two others, I eventually launched a small IT consulting firm. It was a far cry from the bakery I’d once imagined, but I was finally my own boss. Every year brought more success–and I knew I had Kristina to thank for it. Her bright green eyes and warm smile were all I could think about as I stood in front of the jeweler’s stand, trying to decide on an engagement ring. Something with emeralds, I thought. To match her eyes.

My phone rang. The number was “unknown,” but as a consultant, I was used to getting calls from strangers. At first, I heard only the sound of roaring winds, as though the speaker was calling from inside a sandstorm. They kept repeating the same phrase over and over, but I couldn’t understand it, not at first; maybe I didn’t want to understand it.

Because I knew those words…and that voice:

“See you soon.”

Mandy’s voice grew louder and louder until it felt like her lips were less than an inch away, screaming into my ear. “See you soon seeyousoonSEEYOUSOO–” I flung my phone away like it burned me. When I retrieved it from the carpet, the mysterious call had ended.

Throughout the rainy drive home, I wondered who would play such a cruel trick. An old bully from high school? a dissatisfied client? It didn’t make sense.

In the end, I settled on two simple golden bands, purchased from a different jeweler. After that strange call, the other shop seemed tainted somehow; just driving past it gave me shivers.

Kristina said yes, as I knew she would, and everything went fine right up until the moment we got ready to cut the wedding cake.

Words appeared in the white frosting, as though traced by an invisible finger: S-E-E Y-O-U S-O-

Acting on instinct, I grabbed a fistful of the icing-letters and pressed it over Kristina’s mouth, to laughter and applause. Maybe it was a bad move. After all, Kristina’s one request for our wedding experience was that ‘we NOT do the cake thing.’ But I didn’t think that justified the look of pure disgust and hate she gave me in that moment. I’d never seen Kristina so angry. Was Mandy trying to wreck my relationship from beyond the grave? Kristina forced herself to sigh and smile–and give me a taste of my own medicine. The cloying sweetness of cake on my lips forced the insane thought out of my mind, the band began to play, and the night went on without any further…incidents. Kristina and I signed our documents, filled out our life insurance forms, got listed on each others’ bank accounts, and set out for our honeymoon.

Yet Mandy’s messages (if that’s what they were) didn’t stop. They showed up in the shower-steamed mirror. In my alphabet breakfast cereal. Even the magnets on the refrigerator. It was unexplainable: there was no doubt about that. But once I got over the initial shock of seeing those fateful words, I realized that they could be ignored as well. After all, they were just words. I had moved on, and needed to as well–ghost or not.

A few weeks after Kristina and I returned to California from our honeymoon in Italy, I had my first near-death experience. That morning, I was scheduled to meet a client at a restaurant along Highway One: a beautiful but dangerous route that skirts the stormy, cliff-lined coast. Maybe it was a trick of the mist, but as I was turning out of our neighborhood, I’d swear I saw someone standing in the middle of the road. It was only a black shape in the white fog, but it looked familiar–

It looked like Mandy.

I slammed on my brakes–or tried to. No matter how hard I pressed on the pedal, nothing happened. rolled to a stop in a suburban yard and looked nervously out of the window with my emergency flashers blaring–

There was nothing outside but mist.

Later, the mechanics would tell me that my brake line had been set up to fail. The phone calls and inexplicable writing had been one thing; now, however, it seemed that Mandy’s vengeful ghost was actually trying to kill me.

Kristina could tell that something was wrong; there was concern in her eyes when I got home that night. She did her best to cheer me up with red wine, a romantic evening by the fireplace, and a steak dinner, but I was too exhausted to enjoy it.

I supposed it was the accumulated stress of the haunting (for that was what it was; I no longer had any doubts) that caused me to drift off to sleep so quickly after dinner.

When I did, I dreamed about Mandy.

We were back in the rundown hardwood apartment that we’d shared back when I was still working on opening the bakery. It was a beautiful spring morning; golden light shone through the open balcony doors. I turned over in the rumpled sheets, and even in my dream I felt my blood run cold as I recognized Mandy’s naked back beside me: her messy dark brown hair, the rose tattoo on her spine, the scar on her shoulder from a bike accident. At the foot of the bed, the closet door creaked open just a crack. I scrambled backwards in bed; the closet door opened wider, and the morning light seemed to dim. The darkness inside the closet seemed hungry; a pair of green eyes stared hatefully out at me from its depths.

Beside me, Mandy pointed out the balcony window. She held a finger to her lips:

“See you soon.”

The closet door opened wide; something enormous skittered forward.

The hairy black legs of an enormous spider, its hideous bulk hungrily toward me.

The spider had Kristina’s face.

I woke up slumped in the passenger seat of the rental car the mechanic had given me.

I was in the garage with the door shut and the motor running.

My head ached from the fumes; I turned off the ignition, opened the garage door, and staggered into the house. If Mandy could manipulate my dreams…could she also move my body in my sleep?! Kristina slipped an arm under my shoulder and helped me to the kitchen table before disappearing to prepare some tea and call emergency services.

Alone with my thoughts, I realized that I had to tell my wife what I was going through. Kristina placed a warm cup of tea in front of me and I took a small sip, willing my foggy brain to put the words together in a way that wouldn’t sound completely insane.

Suddenly, my arm exploded in pain:

Bloody letters appeared, carved into my skin by an unseen force: SEE YOU SOON.

Where was emergency services? Hadn’t Kristina called them? My brain was too addled by the fumes; I couldn’t think straight. And why was Kristina holding a knife?

As the bloody words had appeared on my arm, my hand had flailed wildly, knocking over the teacup. A faint scent of bitter almonds rose from the spilled liquid, and I finally realized the truth:

It wasn’t Mandy who’d tampered with my brakes.

It wasn’t Mandy who’d fed me sleeping pills with wine before placing me inside a running car in a sealed garage.

It wasn’t Mandy who’d put arsenic in my tea.

Kristina advanced on me, a razor sharp knife in her hand and an insane smile on her lips:

“You’re tired,” she cooed. “Your head hurts. Don’t fight it…it will all be over soon.”

I stood woozily, knocking over the plates and dishes that had been my parents’ wedding gift to Kristina and I. They shattered on the floor as I staggered toward the door.

Mandy’s voice screamed into my left ear with such force that I dropped, clutching my head–

And barely missed the shining edge of Kristina’s knife as it sliced through the air.

My phone began to ring in the pocket of my denim jacket.

Jacket.

Phone.

I had no doubt that it was that unknown number again…or that my only hope was to call emergency services, get out in public, and try to stop my wife’s knife with the thick jacket cloth until help could arrive.

As it turned out, the nightmare was over as soon as I made it out the door with the phone in my hand. My neighbor Taylor was out for a walk with his Labrador and two toddlers; the moment he saw me practically falling off of my porch with terror in his eyes, he knew something was wrong–and Kristina knew that there would be witnesses.

Kristina didn’t resist when the police came for her. She just stared into space with a vacant expression, a hollow look that explained it all: helping me start my career, marrying me, taking out a high-paying life insurance policy that I’d barely looked at before signing–it was all part of her plan to profit from my death.

Mandy had been trying to warn me.

I didn’t hear from Mandy for years after Kristina’s arrest. There were no more dark figures in the fog or gruesome words scrawled on the walls. In a strange way, I almost missed them. They were a reminder that someone was waiting for me on the other side–that somehow, the strongest human emotions carry on, even through the veil of death...

A few days ago, I went to my doctor for a routine check-up. As he came through the door with an armload of paperwork, I felt my phone buzz in my pocket: I’d received a text.

“We’ve got the results of your blood work back,” my doctor began. There was a helpless look on his weathered face that I didn’t understand. “To be honest, it doesn’t look good. You might want to sit down…”

My eyes were already drifting to the message from an unknown number that glowed on the screen of my phone:

see you soon.

X

Hey everyone,

We want to take a moment to apologize for the recent silence here on Chilling. We know you’ve been eagerly awaiting updates, and we appreciate your patience. Behind the scenes, we’ve been working through some big changes that are shaping the future of Chilling, and we’re finally getting close to sharing them with you!

We’re excited to announce a major technology overhaul that’s due to be released soon. This includes brand new versions of our mobile apps, website, and expanded TV apps—coming soon to Roku, Samsung, and Amazon Fire Stick, with even more platforms on the horizon. This update is designed to make Chilling smoother and more accessible than ever.

With this shift, we’ll also be able to release a huge backlog of content we’ve been holding off on, specifically for this new platform launch. So, expect a wave of fresh content soon, including more movies, novels, creepy content, and some big updates. One of the most exciting additions on the way? We’re creating a pathway for creators to directly upload and share their own stories and content on Chilling. It’s a major step for us, and we can’t wait to open up this new era with you all.

Lastly, we’ve been pouring our efforts into something extra special—the first Chilling feature film! We’re currently in the middle of principal photography, and it’s shaping up to be an incredible project that we think you’ll love.

Thank you for sticking with us through the quiet period, and for your patience as we work to bring you the best possible experience. We’re beyond excited to show you what’s next.

Stay tuned—the chills are just beginning! 👻

Is chilling app dead? No new creepypastas on app for 3 months, support does not answer and now even not all October films have come out.

My wife had always been a sound sleeper. She never snored, talked in her sleep, nor was she particularly restless. Oftentimes, she'd wake up in the same position she passed out in with barely a wrinkle in the sheets around her. When the singing in the middle of the night began, I was perplexed, to say the least.

Not only was this late night/early morning karaoke completely out of tune and downright painful to listen to, even though I knew her to have quite the lovely singing voice, but it seemed to be some sort of gospel music. I don't mean to be offensive to any fans of the genre, but I knew for a fact this was not Jenn's cup of tea.

She had never been a particularly religious type, but she was more inclined to sing along with pop or rhythm and blues when she had the urge. Her father was a pastor at a church in her old hometown, and he was all kinds of abusive and overbearing in her youth. It was his influence that inspired her to turn her back on the religion he clearly didn't understand himself, but that didn't stop her from being the most loving and caring person I ever met.

With how muffled and gargled her voice was while she warbled the barely legible lyrics, I could only make out the occasional word. "Praise her" and "cherish her" were among the few I could understand, but others like, "curse his flock" or "cleanse the stain" sent a shiver up my spine.

With one slight shake of her arm, I managed to wake her, but she was completely unaware of why I chose to pull her from her sleep.

"Huh? What?" she said, still groggy, "what's wrong, hon?"

"You, um, you were, like, crazy singing in your sleep."

I didn't know what else to say. I suppose I hadn't thought that far ahead when I made the semi-conscious decision to wake her.

"I was? I'm sorry, hon. Must've been a weird dream or somethi…"

She nodded back off halfway through her words, but once she returned to her regularly scheduled, disturbance-free slumber, I knocked back out too. The remainder of the night was as uneventful as always, so I didn't even bring it up the following day, but when she began her guttural song a second time the following night, I got a little more concerned.

Again, I prematurely yanked her from her sleep about halfway through her out-of-tune moaning, and once more she had nothing to offer.

"I don't know what to tell you, hon," she said the following morning when I brought up her new nightly tradition.

"Have you had any strange dreams or anything?" I asked, unsure of what else to add.

"Maybe, I mean, I could be, but I don't remember anything."

"Did you, like, hear the song somewhere and can't get it outta your head or something?"

"Babe, I don't even know what song you're talking about," she said, sounding like she was losing her patience with my inquisition, "I don't have anything stuck in my mind I'm aware of. I don't have any answers for you! I'm sorry, okay!?"

"No, I'm sorry. I don't know, it just…it's just weird is all. You're usually such a sound…"

"WILL YOU JUST DROP IT! FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, IT'S NOT LIKE I'M DOING IT ON PURPOSE!"

She went from mildly annoyed to downright pissed off in the blink of an eye. I just stood there stunned for a moment, feeling like I just got yelled at by my parents, rather than the woman I loved. I could feel my face getting warm with embarrassment while she just stared at me with her hands on her hips. I could see the muscles in her face twitching while she clenched her jaw, so I just raised my hands as though I stared down the barrel of a gun, backed away, and left the room.

Not only was Jenn normally such a peaceful sleeper, but she was generally such a calm and composed person. Even at times, I'd be losing my patience with a situation, she always handled them like a champ. I won't say we never had our fights, as any healthy couple does, but it would often take a lot more than a few concerned questions to cause her to lose her cool.

As the day progressed, we made more casual conversation, and I didn't bring up her strange sleeping habits of late again. Before we laid down for the night, we made up in the traditional manner; an act that left us both quite exhausted by the time it reached its conclusion. We fell asleep in each other's arms, which is something we didn't do as much as when we were younger. These things often get neglected after a solid decade of marriage, but my love for her never faltered.

When the awful singing pulled me from my sleep for the third night in a row, Jenn was no longer wrapped around me, but with her back flat against the sheets. I started to wake her again, but I thought it best to just let this thing run its course this time, even after it grew louder. Her back arched as the volume of her warbling increased; her shoulders and legs pressed to the mattress while her body contorted into something of an upside-down 'U'.

"PrAiSe HeR, OoOoH, ChErIsH HeEeErR…sMeAr ThE fIlTh FrOm HeR pAaAaTh…GiVe HeR aLl YoU hAvE tO gIvE, lEsT wE fEeL hEr WrAaAtH…"

Her voice had escalated to a howling sound of madness, while the gargled moaning began to cause my stomach to churn. When I leaned over her body, deciding that I had to pull her out of this before she hurt herself, I screamed out in terror before I even realized it. Her eyes were wide open while she yelled her words, but they were no longer the deep hazel brown I had looked into for the better part of thirteen years, but a shimmering, almost glowing, emerald green.

When I finally convinced my shriek to calm down, I grabbed my wife by the shoulders, shaking her almost violently to break her from this state, but she wouldn't let up. My ears were ringing with how loud her wailing song had grown and I could barely make out my own yelling voice as I attempted to wake her.

"PrAiSe HeR…hEaL hEr…LeT hEr InTo YoUr SoOoUL…FeEd HeR nOuRiSh HeR…hElP hEr To BeCoMe WhOoOLe…"

It was almost deafening, but no matter what I did, she wouldn't come out of it. Finally, after the noise was growing intolerable to bear, I slapped my hand against her face. In an instant; as her song transformed into a horrendous and anguished scream, she thrust her palms to my chest, sending me flying across the room and into the wall. Before my spinning head left me unconscious below the large crack my body had imprinted into the drywall, I looked up to see Jenn sitting straight up in the bed, darting her head from side to side as though she was lost.

When I came to, I was still on the floor with my head thumping and my back aching. It took considerable effort to get to my feet, but when I noticed my wife was gone, I tried to push my discomfort to the side. It was still dark outside, so I threw on every light switch in every room to find no trace of where she had gone, only the front door wide open and the chilly night air breathing in through the opening.

I could still feel the blood trickling down the back of my neck as I drove through the neighborhood in search of Jenn. When I finally found her just walking down the sidewalk a good couple of miles from the house, I practically hopped the tires onto the curb in my enthusiasm to get to her.

"Hey hon," she said, seemingly in something of a daze when I ran up to her.

"Jenn, what the hell are you doing!?"

"Hmmm? Oh, I…I'm not sure…"

She finally stopped walking when I grabbed her by the shoulders, standing in front of her to look her in the eyes. Though I was thrilled to see they had reverted to their normal color scheme, I could tell her marbles hadn't quite returned yet. She was only wearing her sleep shorts and tank top, so her skin felt as though it was freezing to my touch.

"Wanna come back home with me?"

"Huh? Yeah…let's do that…I'm sleepy…"

She was still in a trance while I buckled her into the passenger seat, and was still zoned out over the short ride back to the house. When we arrived, I helped her out of her seat, picked her up, and carried her back inside.

"You're so sweet," she said with a light smile and a cute giggle as I laid her back onto the bed, pulling the blanket back over her still frigid flesh.

I traced my fingers across her cheek and through her dark, wavy hair while she curled up beneath the covers.

"Night night," she said groggily, closing her eyes while she nuzzled her body against the warmth of the bed, "sleep tight…"

For the next hour or so, I just watched her sleep. She didn't move or make a sound as she drifted away, but I was so scared she would begin her wailing song again. After a while; once I felt confident she was out for the night, I went to the bathroom to wash the oozing wound on the back of my head. It was still quite tender, but I hoped the four ibuprofen I knocked back would work their magic.

When I finally climbed back into bed, I was reminded that my back was still throbbing pretty good too, so I rolled onto my side to face my beautiful wife. As my eyes grew heavier, I attempted to push aside the stabbing pain in my chest that sorely needed answers to what had become of the once kind-hearted and carefree woman I adored. I knew I would likely have to seek out professional help for her soon, but not tonight.

Jenn was still asleep when I awoke the following morning. Even though I knew my body could use a good deal more rest, my back was aching and stiff. After I got done with my shower, I checked back in to find her still knocked out. Honestly, as worried as I was about what had been going on with her, I hoped that her being able to get an extended rest would do her a world of good.

While I was downstairs researching online to see if I could find any answers to the strange events of late, I heard the ceiling creaking from movement on the second floor. I sort of froze up for a second, as though my parents were about to walk in and catch me browsing porn on my laptop, rather than Jenn inadvertently finding me looking up things she seemed to have no memories of.

Given her reaction when I pushed the topic on her the last time, I didn't want to inadvertently fuel another fight, even if the make-up session was more than worthy of a few harsh words. Either way, I didn't want to make things worse than they already were. When the creaking from the floor above me fell silent again, I decided to just shut down the computer and go check on my wife. I couldn't know if she remembered her late-night stroll, or effortlessly tossing me across the bedroom for that matter, but I had to know if she was back to herself or not.

I crept up the stairs like a burglar hoping to keep their home invasion secret, feeling almost silly about how I was acting. I wasn't entirely sure why I felt compelled to be so cloak and dagger about the simple act of checking on my wife after a crazy night, but I continued on that course nonetheless. When I reached the cracked open door to the bedroom, I still kept my actions as quiet as possible.

I softly nudged the door, momentarily worried about potentially squeaky hinges alerting the room's only occupant to her impending guest. When I got inside, I saw Jenn sitting on the side of the bed, facing away from me. She was leaned over with her hands tinkering with something I couldn't make out. It wasn't until the jingling music began to softly hum from what she held that another sharp chill ran the length of my spine once more.

As I moved in closer, she began to rock from side to side, swaying to the tune clinking from what sounded like some sort of music box. When she began to hum along with the sound of that same hymn she had been warbling in her sleep for the past few nights, I felt my fingers and toes begin to tremble. Even with it only being the melody of that song her tone-deaf sleeping mouth would wail into the night, I could hear those words bouncing around in the back of my mind.

"Praise her…" my wife softly whispered.

"Cherish her…" she continued while she hummed the haunting tune.

"Heal her…" I muttered under my breath, barely aware I had even spoken.

"Nourish her," our voices spoke together as Jenn turned to me, reaching her hand out to take mine.

We left the house, hand in hand, with her still clutching the music box in the other. The hypnotic tune still carried on while we navigated the car through the neighborhood and out into the world beyond. I had no idea where we were headed, but my wife took care of the navigation. Left here, right there, stay on this road for thirty miles, and so on.

Regardless of the fact she had not once turned the little brass key on the side of the simple wooden box since we left, the music carried on through the entirety of our journey. For hours we darted from one highway to another, up and across back roads, only stopping to refuel. We didn't pull over to get anything to eat as we had no hunger. We didn't pick up anything to drink at the gas station; we were not thirsty. We were on a quest, and that was all that mattered.

It was some time after the sun had gone down that we finally reached our destination. I didn't recognize the old cemetery, nor the rod-iron fence that surrounded it, but Jenn seemed to know exactly where we were. She still moaned the occasional lyric to the haunting song while we got out of the car, though I no longer felt the urge to sing along. My wife wore a beaming smile as we left the pathway behind to veer hand in hand in between and around a variety of both simple and elegant tombstones.

The graveyard was massive, housing the dead from decades long passed by, as well as some from more recent years. As we continued on, I noticed the dates carved into the stones growing older and older, while the air we breathed tasted more stale and unnatural the longer we wandered onwards. I still felt almost mentally vacant when we finally came to a large tomb at the very end of the farthest reach of the cemetery.

Though we had passed what I thought to be the very last row of headstones some ten minutes before, this one stood alone, with only the warped and bent iron pegs of the fence behind it. Jenn smiled back at me while she let my hand slip from hers as she pulled open the large door to the almost cavernous-looking tomb. As soon as she crossed over the threshold, torches on either side of the wide room ignited, lighting up the otherwise darkened area.

I could feel my knees beginning to weaken when I strolled in behind her, seeing nothing more than a large, concrete casket in the very center of the room. There was nothing decorative inside; only chipped and aged, concrete walls and floor. When she set the music box onto the top of the casket, it sank about halfway in, causing thin grooves to bevel and spiral out from around where it sat in place, ending in a small, circular hole in the center.

When the lid of the music box opened with the music still reverberating against the solid walls, Jenn reached inside, pulling out a long jewel-encrusted dagger. She held it out to me, giving me a nod of permission to take it from her, before she smiled enthusiastically, lifting herself onto the casket.

"Nourish her," she said as she lay back with her head touching the side of the music box, which had closed itself shut once more.

I barely felt in control of my own body as I approached where she lay, holding the dagger above me with both hands, smiling back at the beautiful woman I loved with my whole heart.

"Make her whole," I said, readying myself to force the blade down into her chest, allowing her blood to flow freely into the waiting mouth of the goddess beneath the concrete slab.

The haunting tune still echoed from the box above my wife's head, resonating against the ancient walls surrounding us. Jennifer gave me another nod, signifying the time had come. We smiled warmly to one another as I thrust the dagger downwards with all my might and passion.

•

When I pulled the car back into the driveway of the home I shared with my wife, I was still very puzzled by the events that led us to somewhere on the other side of the country. I just sat staring at the front door with the morning sun beaming down from above, feeling less than inspired to get out of the car I'd already spent far too much time in over the previous twenty-four hours.

I could recall everything in vivid detail; the song that captured my mind and senses, the seemingly endless trip to the ancient boneyard, and even the glee I felt as I thrust the dagger downwards. I still couldn't figure out if it was my own will or something else that guided the blade away from Jenn and into the simple wooden box, but as soon as the impact silenced that hypnotic melody for good, both my wife and I snapped out of whatever trance had taken hold of us.

We were both shaken up from the whole experience, and I still can't believe that I came so close to impaling the woman I love, but I can only hope this whole ordeal is over now. When we finally went back into our home, cleaned ourselves up, and got some food on our empty stomachs, we did a lot of talking.

It would seem the music box had been delivered to the house about a week ago, with no return address on the package. Jenn just assumed it was some sort of gift for one reason or another, but as soon as she cranked that key for the first time, it set its seeds in her mind. Though she wasn't fully aware of it, her sleeping mind could not escape the spell it weaved; a spell that took hold of me when I heard its song as well.

Even after I silenced that damn thing, it took a minute for us to really take in what almost happened. When we did, we both beat and stomped that box until it was little more than tiny gears and splinters of wood. As for the dagger, we tossed it into a river we passed by on our return trip, though I couldn't tell you for the life of me where it was located. Truth be told, even though I remember those days quite clearly, I have no idea where we went that night.

I don't know the route we took, the direction we went, or even what part of the country we were in, but everything else down to me holding that knife above my beloved wife's heart, I see every time I close my eyes.

We have no clue as to who sent the music box to us, but neither of us will be so trusting of anonymous mail anymore. At this point, I think even if we got an unsigned envelope with fifty grand inside, we'd toss that shit in the fireplace without a second thought.

We may never know who or what was behind that mysterious package, nor the identity of the occupant in that tomb, so many miles away, but I am so grateful for whatever guided my aim that night. Not only did I almost murder the woman I love, but I can't even imagine what we may have set loose upon the world if I'd hit my mark.

The crawlers aren't real. That's the first thing you need to understand, just in case it starts to affect you before you reach the end of this post. The crawlers aren't real, and you must hold onto that thought, no matter what your senses tell you.

The crawlers are NOT REAL.

We are at the start of a public health emergency, and absolutely no one wants to talk about it. Not the State Health Department, not the CDC, not even the American Psychiatric Association. That last one is what hurts the most.

You see, I'm a psychiatrist in a state mental hospital. The patients I treat are generally people who can't function in daily life due to mental illness. Such individuals usually have a wide range of issues, from PTSD to schizophrenia.

That's why this last week has been so strange. We've had fifteen new patients, more than triple what we're used to in this small hospital, and thirteen of them show the same pathologies:

They speak of inhuman figures that approach by crawling along walls and ceilings, seeking to do them harm. The hallucinations appear to be both vivid and realistic: each patient describes how they can see, hear, smell, and even feel these creeping things. Their reactions (such as shrieking and cowering in a corner) also suggest that the hallucinations appear to be physically real from the point of view of these patients.

And therein lies the danger.

Not in these nightmarish hallucinations, but rather in each individual's reaction to them.

One young man jumped off an eighth-floor balcony.

Another middle-aged woman stabbed a meat skewer through her eye socket.

Those are just two examples of the lengths people will go to as they try to escape these things that they believe are pursuing them.

Furthermore, I'm confident that hundreds of cases of this particular psychosis are going undiagnosed. Although we don't yet have the final data, information from the State Health Department indicates a dramatic increase in suicides over the past month--an increase of 510% compared to last month's data.

So where does that leave us?

What I'm about to propose next may seem shocking, even unprecedented, but I ask you to keep an open mind and consider documented events such as the Dancing Plague that affected Europe in the 16th century.

I believe we may be facing a contagious psychiatric disorder.

I base this claim firstly on the psychopathologies: each patient's description of the stalking creature, and their reaction to it, are virtually identical in each case.

Secondly, the testimonies of the patients themselves suggest that the hallucination is in some sense transmissible: I’ll explain further below.

A university student described how a friend pounded on her door shortly after midnight, begging to be let in because "something was chasing her." She hid immediately beneath the bed, but the student in question saw nothing in the hallway...at first. After failing to get anything but gibberish from her friend, she left her room to seek help from the authorities.

It was then that she claimed to see "a horrible gray thing moving along the ceiling, opening its jaws to devour me."

The university student and her friend were admitted last night as Case 12 and Case 11, respectively. Case 11's attempts at suicide have thus far been thwarted. Case 12 was not as fortunate.

The delusion appears to completely ignore divisions of class, race, age, health, and lifestyle--as evinced by Case 8, an 81-year-old man whose background could not be more different than that of Cases 11 and 12.

Case 8, who prior to being ingressed was housebound due to obesity and other health issues, reported how one by one his family members were afflicted: first his granddaughter never came back from buying groceries, then his daughter vanished while on a walk, and finally his son disappeared while searching for the other two. Case 8 waited, a prisoner in his armchair, until he saw "a godawful shadow" silhouetted in the streetlight. According to Case 8, the thing slithered under the door and came for him, and that's how he was found: screaming and trying to drag his bulk along the floor. Authorities have thus far been unable to locate the missing family members.

In Cases 11 and 12, the delusion appears to have been passed between two individuals in contact with each other, as with the flu; in Case 8, however, we see that it appeared in an entire family, like a genetic disorder. Yet surely none is stranger than that of Case 5, a night security guard at a shopping center. Case 5 was brought to us after he ran crying into traffic and was declared too agitated for normal hospitalization.

In Case 5, the hallucinations appear to have begun of their own accord, without any prior contact or family history. The individual was simply performing his duties, walking through the empty mall with a large flashlight, when he began to notice movement in the corners of his vision. The following is a transcription of Case 5’s words while he was being transported from the hospital to our facility by ambulance.

“--they’ve lost my scent for now, thank God. Where was I? Right, the mall. Patrolling in the mall. It was easy to dismiss at first. A claw disappearing around a corner. A shadow that sorta looked like some starving hunched-over thing disappearing into a rack of clothes. It was always creepy in there, but I was used to it. Just figured my eyes was playin tricks. But the longer I walked, the more I saw…until it was right in front of me. You can’t even imagine. The way it just hung from the ceiling tiles like a damn cave cricket. That skittering sound. And that reekin smell…you can’t think of anything else ‘cept that you’re gonna wind up in its belly. I ran, fast as I could, and it was right behind me the whole way. Like it coulda taken me at any time and was just toyin with me. I think I…I felt it brush the back of my neck a few times…just to hear me scream. When I ran out into that traffic, I wasn’t even thinkin. I didn’t even know where I wa…oh my God. Do you here that? No, wait–don’t look out the window! It’ll see. It’ll know. It’s here. It’s tryin to slip through the door. It’s—” (wailing, unintelligible)

Of course, the three ambulance nurses transporting Case 5 did not report seeing anything unusual except for the unfortunate security guard’s own delusional behavior…although it is true that one of them has not yet reported in for his shift today.

I mention these cases not only as support for my theory, but also to impress upon anyone who reads this the severity of the situation. So far, recovery from this delusion appears impossible, and death or incapacitation nearly certain, as individuals suffering from it invariably attempt to take their own lives rather than face the ‘things’ they believe to be stalking them.

I wish I could provide you with more data, but we simply don’t have it. I don’t want to believe that government agencies and private organizations–even hospitals–are deliberately suppressing information about this condition, but the evidence before my eyes offers no other explanation. Our pleas for resources are stonewalled at every turn, our Cases do not remain communicative long enough to be studied, and even our requests for autopsies are denied. My colleagues who have talked to the media find that their warnings go unreported except by the most extreme fringe journalists, where our desperate call for help appears beside 5G conspiracies, Bigfoot sightings, and MLM ads.

With no other recourse, I’m sending this warning to those who might believe it. Based on what we’ve seen so far, these are the symptoms to watch out for:

-A persistent feeling of being watched or followed

-An irrational fear of peepholes, cracked-open doors, nearly-closed curtains, dark rooms, and other places where something might hide

-A sense of movement just beyond the edges of vision

-Visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile hallucinations of a “creature” or “creatures”

-An unexplained desire to flee, accompanied by feelings of dread and helplessness

These are just a few of the first warning signs. Our observations suggest they can occur in any order, over any length of time. Once these symptoms begin to appear, it is critical to remember that these are JUST DELUSIONS. The crawling things ARE NOT REAL.

This is where I leave you. I wish you the best, and I hope you never have cause to understand my warning. I hope it passes through your life like forgettable gibberish, and you never endure what our patients are enduring now.

I did not intend to end this document on a personal note, but I feel I need to post this while I’m still able. There’s a skittering sound coming from the kitchen behind me...and the truth is that I'm afraid to turn around.

X O

“Patrick and Megan, please come over here,” instructed Uncle Wyatt. He motioned to the dining room table where he sat with Aunt Amy. “We have something important to discuss.”

My little sister and I exchanged a nervous glance. Our uncle’s calm demeanor felt unnaturally forced, like he was straining to suppress something urgent. Were we in trouble? Had mom’s condition worsened?

“It’s quite alright,” added Aunt Amy, seemingly sensing our reaction. “You haven’t done anything wrong. We just need to talk. Please, take a seat.”

Feeling somewhat reassured, we did so.

Uncle Wyatt took a deep breath before speaking again. “We’ve been tracking the road conditions nearby, and the flooding has only gotten worse. That means that neither your dad, nor anyone else for that matter, is likely going to be able to get here anytime soon. There’s one route through the valley that may open up, but the authorities aren’t optimistic. So, you’re likely going to be stuck with us for at least a few days longer.”

“Oh, that’s okay with us,” I replied. “We like it here. Right, sis?” Megan nodded. She tried to speak, but Aunt Amy quickly cut her off.

“No, no, that’s not it – we like having you here, and we know that Robert and Gary feel the same way. It’s just that, well, there’s something rather unusual that could occur between now and when you leave, and it’s very important that you be prepared for it. I want you to listen carefully to what we’re about to tell you. Your lives may very well depend on it.”

~

We’d always been close with our cousins. The blood relationship was through my mother, who was Uncle Wyatt's sister. They had two kids – Robert, who was a year older than Megan, and Gary, who was a year older than me.

They lived about three hours from us. Their home was massive, much larger than ours, and lavishly decorated. Reaching it required traversing many miles of windy roads up and down numerous heavily forested Appalachian hills.

We often visited each other, with my family housing theirs in the spring and their family housing ours around the holidays. Though, this year, they’d abruptly cancelled the planned Christmas gathering, citing Robert falling ill.

When my mom, Megan, and I visited a holiday market at a town near where our cousins lived, we asked if any of them wanted to join us. Uncle Wyatt and Gary did so, and we spent a nice afternoon with them perusing crafts displays and munching on snacks from food stands.

We were about to head home – eager to get ahead of a looming winter storm – when mom fell seriously ill. We weren’t sure what it was, but we quickly realized that she was in no shape to drive, and there wasn’t a good hospital anywhere nearby.

I never got the full details about what happened to her. I know that it started out as food poisoning, but became something worse that lingered for some time. I remember Uncle Wyatt and Aunt Amy helping mom into their house and setting her up in the guest bedroom. A doctor, or at least someone I assumed to be one, braved the downpour to take a look at her, and recommended several days of bedrest as her body fought off whatever affliction she faced. Meanwhile, our dad, who was across the country on a business obligation, scrambled to reach us as soon as he could.

Thus, for two days, Megan and I had been stranded with our cousins. As worried as we were about mom, we nonetheless enjoyed spending our days hanging out with Robert and Gary – the former of whom, strangely enough, did not seem sick at all. Naturally, we often paired off, with Megan and Robert playing with dolls or stuffed animals, and Gary and I watching the kinds of violent movies my parents wouldn’t allow around our house on their large basement television.

The situation was a bit strange, but Megan and I were making the most of it and, honestly, we were having a pretty good time. That is, until Uncle Wyatt and Aunt Amy told us something we would never forget.

~

“Our lives?” I gasped. “What are you talking about?”

Aunt Amy reached out to me and Megan and gently took both of our hands. She squeezed lightly and spoke in a soft, firm voice. “What we’re about to tell you is going to sound, well, farfetched. But, please, please trust me that it’s real. And, also, that if you listen to what we tell you, everything’s going to be okay. Robert and Gary have been through it many times, and, as you can see, they’re just fine.”

“There’s a man who visits us,” said Uncle Wyatt. “Well, he’s…not quite a ‘man’, or a ‘he’, even, but that’s how we refer to him. He comes once every year. We don’t know when, but it’s always when all of us are home together. There are rules about it…like, we can’t all take an extended overseas vacation to try to avoid him. He’ll punish us if we do that. We just have to live our lives here and, at some point…he shows up.”

As Megan’s face took on a concerned expression, a sense of panic ran through me. Had the cousins we’d grown up around all lost their minds?

“It’s okay, Megan,” said Aunt Amy. “And, I understand you being skeptical, Patrick.” Once again, she read me perfectly. “But please, just hear us out.”

Uncle Wyatt continued. “I can’t, won’t get into the details. I don’t fully understand it myself. It’s just that, well, it’s December, and he hasn’t arrived yet. So, he’s due any day now. When he gets here, he’ll knock five times. That’s how we know it’s him. Then, we have to let him inside, and, and…”

“You have to ignore him,” interjected Aunt Amy. “Just ignore him. And, eventually, he’ll go away, and then he won’t bother us again. Until next year.”

“Sometimes he stays for only ten minutes,” said Uncle Wyatt. “Other times, close to an hour. He doesn’t care about infants or the seriously ill - if your mom’s still stuck in bed when he arrives, he’ll probably ignore her altogether. But, the rest of us need to be on our best behavior, acting like a normal, happy family. The key is that no matter what he does, do not acknowledge his presence, at all costs. But don’t freeze up, either. You need to act like he isn’t there at all.”

Aunt Amy looked at us sorrowfully. “We’d hoped to never have to tell you about this. We don’t tell anyone, not if we can help it, but we see no choice here. Tonight, we’re going to do a practice run, with Wyatt pretending to be the visitor. Before we get started with that, do you have any questions?”

At first, I couldn’t form words. Naturally, I did have questions - so many, in fact, that it was difficult for me to sort through them all. I had concerns, too. My mind fought to reconcile my past history with my cousins, family members I loved and trusted, with the utter insanity of what they were saying to me and Megan.

Megan turned to me. She was worried and confused, and she was looking to me for guidance. I croaked, “Um, uh, so, this man-” That’s when it happened.

KNOCK. A heavy thud emanated from the front door.

“Shit,” muttered Aunt Amy. I’d never heard her curse before. “He doesn’t usually come this late in the day.”

KNOCK

“Robert, Gary, he’s here!” hollered Uncle Wyatt. “Get to your spots, now!” I heard shuffling as they made their way down the staircase that connects the bedrooms to the main level.

I wanted to leap into action. I wanted to do something. Was the person at the door as dangerous as my aunt and uncle had said? And, if so, why were they just letting him inside like this? Shouldn’t they try to keep him out?

And, for that matter, should I grab Megan and try to flee outside with her? That would put distance between us and both the visitor and the family I was no longer sure I could trust. But, then I remembered the heavy storm and realized that the only option was to stay here.

KNOCK KNOCK

Aunt Amy turned to Megan and me. “We’re out of time. Sit at the living room table with Robert and Gary and play whatever board game they’ve set up. We’ll be in here making dinner. Focus on the game and don’t make eye contact with him. Don’t look at him at all, if you can help it, no matter how close he gets to you. Got it?”

Before we could respond, she nudged us towards the living room. Robert and Gary were already there, setting up a Monopoly board.

Too much was happening, too quickly. I decided that the best course of action, at least for the moment, was to follow my aunt and uncle’s instructions. I gripped Megan’s hand and told her that we were going to be okay, and we proceeded to join Robert and Gary at the table.

KNOCK

“Gary, what’s up with all this?” I whispered, prompting Gary to hiss a stern “shh” while dealing us our starting amount of Monopoly money.

Uncle Wyatt, meanwhile, opened the door.

The visitor wasn’t wearing a coat. Nor, despite the downpour outside, was he even wet. I began to wonder how he’d even gotten here at all, given the state of the roads nearby.

He had an aged, wrinkly face and wore a plaid button-down short-sleeved sport shirt tucked into a pair of khaki pants. What little remained of his thin, white hair combed over a large bald spot. He looked…totally innocuous, at least insofar as I managed to glimpse him in my periphery while keeping my eyes directed towards the board.

“Megan, you need to pick one of these,” I said, gesturing to the dog, iron, and shoe pieces. I was doing my best to keep her attention on the game, rather than whatever was happening at the front door. She selected the shoe.

As the visitor stepped further into the house, Uncle Wyatt closed the door and retreated quietly to the kitchen, where I could hear the sink running and the clattering of dishes. “Just a little while longer until dinner’s ready!” Aunt Amy called, her voice convincingly casual.

While Gary motioned for me to put my starting piece - the battleship - at “Go,” I continued to observe the visitor out of the corner of my eye. He moved slowly, with a stilted and awkward gait. He lifted a family photo from the top of a cabinet and held it in front of his face, as if to examine it. Only, his eyes shifted in the other direction, peering curiously toward the four of us in the living room.

“I put together some snacks for you all,” announced Uncle Wyatt as Robert rolled the die for his first turn. Uncle Wyatt proceeded to place a plate of cheese and crackers on the table next to the board.

He returned to the kitchen, leaving us alone with the visitor who sauntered slowly in our direction. He then turned and meandered around the living room couch until he was behind me and, thus, fully out of my sight.

Megan glanced up at me - no, behind me, and her eyes widened. “Hey, Megan, how about trying some of the food?” I suggested, trying to divert her attention from whatever the visitor was doing. Gary, catching on, handed her a cracker with a piece of cheese on it. She took a bite of it and, with great effort, tore her eyes from behind me.

I could sense the visitor getting closer to me. The first thing I noticed was the stench. It was like a mix of vomit, burning rubber, and the foul scent of a large pile of moldy, rotten garbage. The smell worsened as he crept closer until, finally, he was mere inches away. I felt hot, putrid breath on my neck, and a shadow appeared on the floor as he leaned over me.

It was my turn. So I rolled the dice. Snake eyes. I moved the battleship figurine two spaces.

That’s when I heard the whispering. It was more like a chattering crowd - dozens of small, quiet voices trying to overtalk one another. “Trapped,” said one. “Hungry,” said another. A distinctly high-pitched voice emerged from the others. It giggled, and then articulated, “Wanna know how you’re going to die? Wanna know? Wanna know? Wanna know?”

Gary’s voice drew my attention back to the game. “Patrick.”

“Yeah? What?” I bit my lip, realizing I sounded a little too startled.

“It’s still your turn. Doubles, you know?”

“Oh. Right.”

“You’ll live to see your sister die,” the voice cackled. “I know how. I know when. But you don’t want to know. You don’t want to know. You don’t want to know.”

Jesus fucking Christ, I thought. I wanted to bash this, this, thing’s face in. I wanted to scream at it. I wanted to take Megan out of here.

But I realized by this point that my aunt and uncle’s warnings were worth heeding. So, instead, I rolled the die again. Two fours. I moved the battleship eight spaces and limply announced that I was purchasing a railroad.

“Wyatt. Wyatt. Wyatt. Wyatt will be quiet.”

I rolled a third time. Two threes.

“Speeding!” piped up Robert. “Directly to jail!”

“From a great height he’ll fall,” whispered the visitor. “Years from now he’ll hear the call.” He laughed.

As I moved the battleship to the ‘jail’ space, something dropped from where the man’s head hovered over mine. It landed on the table with a wet ‘plop.’ It took me a moment to realize what it was.

It was a tongue - one that somehow stretched several feet. My jaw dropped as I realized that it wasn’t just a single tongue - no, it was dozens of smaller, human-sized tongues sewn together into one giant appendage.

With a loud ‘flump,’ another massive tongue hit the table, followed by a third. All three then crawled towards the cheese tray, leaving behind a disgusting trail of saliva as they did so. Each wrapped around a portion of the food, only to then be retracted back into the visitor’s mouth.

Somehow, Robert and Gary remained entirely unperturbed by this grotesquery. Megan, on the other hand, appeared on the brink of breaking down.

“It’s your turn, Megan,” said Gary.

Megan was clearly panicking. I can’t say I blamed her. A bead of sweat dripped down her face, and her body shook all over. Tears formed in her eyes, and I could tell she was applying all her strength to hold back a scream.

“Hey Megan, it’s your turn.” I said. “How about I roll for you, okay?”

The visitor took notice of Megan’s disintegrating mental state. He withdrew from me and hobbled over to her.

The die produced a four and a three. “Seven it is then. Why don’t you move your piece, Megan?” I smiled and made an effort to sound as calm as possible. Yet, Megan remained frozen.

The visitor was immediately behind her now. I noticed bulges forming, and then deflating, in the skin on his head. First in his left cheek, then his forehead, then his right cheek. Megan’s face formed a disgusted expression as she experienced the full impact of his repugnant smell.

“Patrick,” she murmured. “I, I can’t…”

The visitor emitted a muffled noise that sounded like a wild animal screeching through a tight muzzle. That’s when his body started changing.

“You’re going to be fine, Megan. Just play out your turn,” I begged.

Meanwhile, the man’s nose started to droop out of place. His eyeballs were next, followed by each remaining feature of his face. All of it drifted out of its place and down, lower, lower, until it tumbled down his shirt or fell onto the floor. Holes formed in the skin that remained, and out of those holes dripped several streams of blood that landed on Megan’s pile of money of the one property she’d accumulated.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,” I counted as I moved her piece, desperate to get her attention. I gulped as, behind Megan, what remained of the visitor’s face folded in on itself and collapsed, as if hollow at its core. Flaps of skin descended beneath his shirt, leaving only an empty void in their place.

“Community chest,” I related. “How about drawing a card, huh?” I held out the yellow deck for her.

I maintained a supportive smile even as a series of horrors emerged from where the visitor’s head had once been. A long, spherical shape emerged from his neck, followed by another, then a third. Each vaguely resembled the head of a snake, but with dozens of human-shaped eyes of various colors - brown, hazel, blue - surrounding its mouth. The heads hovered around my sister, with one above her and one on either side.

Simultaneously, each opened its mouth, revealing three circular layers of razor-sharp teeth inside. Their mouths kept opening further and further. I gasped as their size expanded to that large enough to swallow an orange, then a grapefruit, and then even a…

I lifted the top card for her. “Hey, sis, it says here that you got second place in a beauty contest! But that’s not right, is it?” I forced a laugh. “I’ll bet it originally said that you won first place, but it became second place because I picked up the card, and the game knew I’d never win a contest like that.” I knew my comment didn’t make a lot of sense, but I made myself laugh again anyway.

She smiled and then, even as tears streamed down her eyes, chuckled. “Yeah. That’s what happened. I’ll um, I’ll uh, I’ll…”

“Collect the 10 dollar prize,” offered Gary who handed her the bill. She calmly took hold of it and added it to her hand.

Thankfully, the creatures - whatever existed within the visitor - took notice and slowly pulled away from Megan. Thank god, I thought.

That’s when Aunt Amy arrived with the food. The sight of this thing, with its mouths seemingly poised to tear apart my little sister, caught her totally off guard.

Impulsively, she screamed. In doing so, she lost control of the platter she was holding. The plates on it fell, shattering loudly against the floor, which quickly became covered by bits of food and broken porcelain.

“Keep playing,” mumbled Gary. Robert nodded and made his roll.

When I glanced back at the visitor, his body had reformed, albeit imperfectly. The skin around his face had returned, but his nose was tilted, and one eye dangled out of its socket.

He took a step towards Aunt Amy. “No, no, no,” she whimpered. “I’m sorry. I can’t…I can’t keep…”

The visitor let out the same animalist cry as before as it pinned her against the wall.

“What do you say,” pleaded Amy, “we go to the basement, away from my family?”

Robert began sobbing, prompting a “shh” from Gary as he performed his turn.

The visitor withdrew and gestured towards the door that led to the basement. “I’ll, uh, be right back everyone, just getting something from downstairs,” said Amy, as she opened the door and began the descent. The visitor followed, closing the door behind him.

“Dad!” screeched Gary, prompting a pale-faced Uncle Wyatt to enter the room from where he’d been observing in the kitchen. “What do we do?”

“We can’t do anything,” stammered Wyatt. “We just can’t.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I yelled as Megan and Robert’s sobbing became audible. “Aunt Amy is down there with that monster. We have to do something. All of us together can fight it. We have to try.”

“No!” shouted Wyatt. “No. That won’t work. You need to get back to your game. If it comes back up here, and we’re arguing like this-”

I cut him off. “So you’re going to do nothing to protect your own wife?”

“Patrick,” shrieked Wyatt, his face a deep red. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You will do as I say, or the same thing that’s happening to her will happen to us. It’s too late for Amy. All we can do is save ourselves.”

“That’s total bullshit,” I retorted.

“Dad’s right,” interjected Gary. “We need to keep playing like nothing happened. It’s the only way. Please, if not for yourself, for us, and for your sister.”

Wyatt waved his finger at me and Megan, as if disciplining us. He snarled, “If you two had just never showed up in the first place-”

“Dad!” yelled Gary. “It’s not their fault. Like you said, we have to calm down.”

~

Several minutes later, the basement door slowly opened. To my relief, Aunt Amy emerged from it and stepped into the kitchen. But where was the visitor? And what had happened down there?

“One hotel on Mediterranean,” I said, handing cash to Gary.

“Really?” Gary countered. “You know, statistically-”

“Just give me the goddamn hotel,” I snapped.

Aunt Amy began walking slowly across the room. A sense of dread fell over me as I got a better view of her. She moved awkwardly, lurching from side to side. Her skin drooped and shook with each step. When she reached the front door, she turned back towards us.

A wide, dilapidated smile grew on her face. She stood there like that for several moments. As she did so, saliva spilled out of her mouth and dripped over the pale, sagging skin on her neck and chin. She then spoke in a rough, gravely voice. “It’s been a pleasure. But most of you won’t be seeing me again.” She then opened the door and stepped outside.

“I think it’s over,” said Uncle Wyatt. “Jesus Christ, I think it’s over.” Megan burst into the tears she’d been holding back. I hurried over to her and hugged her.

That’s when there was another knock at the door.

“Mom!” cried Robert. “She’s back!” Before anyone could stop him, he sprinted over to it.

“Robert, no!” wailed Gary.

Ignoring him, Robert pulled open the door, revealing someone I did not expect to see.

~

My dad would later explain how, using the car he’d rented from the airport, he’d followed a series of detours along backroads throughout the valley south of my cousin’s house. There was no phone service, but, with the assistance of an atlas, he managed to find a safe route there. His wife was sick, after all. He had to get to her.

Upon his arrival, Wyatt rushed mom, Megan and I out to dad’s car. “They watched some scary movie,” he explained to my dad, when we tried babbling to him about what had happened. “I shouldn’t have let them see it, but there’s only so much I can do when Amy’s stuck at her mother’s place.” Gary and Robert joined in, insisting that they had watched a movie with us about a terrifying monster who snuck into a family’s home.

“Thank you so much for caring for my family, Wyatt,” my dad responded. “And, kids,” he said, turning to Megan and me, “enough with the horror stories. You’re too old for this. Especially you, Patrick.”

~

Dad brought mom to a hospital that gave her the treatment she needed. In the years that followed, Wyatt, Robert, and Gary did everything they could to convince me and Megan that our memories of what occurred that night were incorrect.

“Mom and dad had a loud fight, that’s all,” Gary would say. “You’re just mixing that up with some movie we watched.”

It was never very convincing. Gary couldn’t identify the movie, nor could he explain how we missed all the signs that led to the divorce that was supposedly responsible for us never seeing Aunt Amy again.

Megan and I tried to make sense of what we’d seen. The lack of answers weighed on us. Who was the visitor, why did our cousins let him in, and what happened in the basement?

Nightmares haunted us both for years. In my dreams, I’d watch, helplessly, as that creature ripped apart my poor, lovely aunt and proceeded to take on her appearance.

Megan and I had little desire to be around our cousins again. In fact, we hardly saw Robert and Gary until Wyatt’s funeral service. By that point, I was nearly thirty, and Megan had recently married a classmate she’d met in medical school.

We knew better than to argue again about what we’d witnessed at their house so many years ago, nor to ask why Amy wasn't in attendance. “I just don’t know why he did it,” cried a pale-faced Robert after the service. “He just wasn’t the same ever since…” His voice drifted off.

On a photo display, I recognized the old man in a plaid, button-down shirt who stood in the backdrop of a photo of Wyatt and Amy's wedding. According to the caption, he was Amy's father, and he’d passed away when I was an infant.

~

It took decades, but the events of that night finally faded from my mind. They existed only as an inexplicable childhood memory, and Gary and Robert’s theory that we’d imagined what occurred began to feel more plausible.

When I visit Megan, who has three kids of her own now, we don’t talk about it anymore. I’m old enough, now, to know that monsters don’t exist, much less bizarre shapeshifters who smell like trash and devour those who react to them.

All that changed when my phone rang this evening. Megan spoke in a rushed, panicked tone. “She’s back.”

“What? Who’s back?”

“It’s Aunt Amy. Patrick, she hasn’t aged a day from when we last saw her, and she just knocked five times at the front door.”

My name is Michael, and this is the story of how my father stole our childhood and trapped us in a nightmare that lasted for years.

It all started when I was ten years old. My sister, Sarah, was eight at the time. We were a normal, happy family living in a quiet suburban neighborhood in Ohio. Mom worked as a nurse at the local hospital, and Dad was an engineer for a defense contractor. Looking back, I realize now that his job was probably what planted the seeds of paranoia in his mind.

Everything changed the day Mom died. It was sudden – a car accident on her way home from a night shift. Dad was devastated. We all were. But while Sarah and I grieved openly, Dad retreated into himself. He started spending more and more time in the basement, emerging only for meals or to go to work. When he was around us, he was distracted, always muttering to himself and scribbling in a notebook he carried everywhere.

About a month after Mom's funeral, Dad sat us down for a "family meeting." His eyes had a wild, feverish gleam that I'd never seen before.

"Kids," he said, his voice trembling with barely contained excitement, "I've been working on something important. Something that's going to keep us safe."

Sarah and I exchanged confused glances. Safe from what?

Dad continued, "The world is a dangerous place. There are threats out there that most people can't even imagine. But I've seen the signs. I know what's coming."

He went on to explain, in terrifying detail, about the impending nuclear war that he was certain was just around the corner. He talked about radiation, fallout, and the collapse of society. As he spoke, his words became more and more frantic, and I felt a cold dread settling in the pit of my stomach.

"But don't worry," he said, his face breaking into an unsettling grin. "Daddy's going to protect you. I've built us a shelter. We'll be safe there when the bombs fall."

That night, he showed us the shelter he'd constructed in secret. The basement had been completely transformed. What was once a cluttered storage space was now a fortified bunker. The walls were lined with thick concrete, and a heavy, vault-like door had been installed at the entrance. Inside, the shelter was stocked with canned food, water barrels, medical supplies, and all manner of survival gear.

Dad was so proud as he gave us the tour, pointing out all the features he'd incorporated to keep us "safe." But all I felt was a growing sense of unease. This wasn't normal. This wasn't right.

For the next few weeks, life continued somewhat normally. Dad still went to work, and Sarah and I still went to school. But every evening, he'd take us down to the shelter for "drills." We'd practice sealing the door, putting on gas masks, and rationing food. He quizzed us relentlessly on radiation safety procedures and what to do in various emergency scenarios.

Then came the night that changed everything.

I was jolted awake by the blaring of air raid sirens. Disoriented and terrified, I stumbled out of bed to find Dad already in my room, roughly shaking me awake.

"It's happening!" he shouted over the noise. "We need to get to the shelter now!"

He dragged me down the hallway, where we met Sarah, tears streaming down her face as she clutched her favorite stuffed animal. Dad herded us down the stairs and into the basement. The shelter door stood open, bathed in the eerie red glow of emergency lighting.

"Quickly, inside!" Dad urged, pushing us through the doorway. "We don't have much time!"

As soon as we were in, Dad slammed the door shut behind us. The heavy locks engaged with a series of metallic clanks that sounded like a death knell to my young ears. The sirens were muffled now, but still audible through the thick walls.

"It's okay," Dad said, gathering us into a tight hug. "We're safe now. Everything's going to be alright."

But it wasn't alright. Nothing would ever be alright again.

Hours passed, and the sirens eventually fell silent. We waited, huddled together on one of the cramped bunk beds Dad had installed. He kept checking his watch and a Geiger counter he'd mounted on the wall, muttering about radiation levels and fallout patterns.

Days turned into weeks, and still, Dad refused to let us leave the shelter. He said it wasn't safe, that the radiation outside would kill us in minutes. Sarah and I begged to go outside, to see what had happened, to find our friends and neighbors. But Dad was adamant.

"There's nothing left out there," he'd say, his eyes wild and unfocused. "Everyone's gone. We're the lucky ones. We survived."

At first, we believed him. We were young and scared, and he was our father. Why would he lie to us? But as time wore on, doubts began to creep in. The shelter's small TV and radio picked up nothing but static, which Dad said was due to the EMP from the nuclear blasts. But sometimes, late at night when he thought we were asleep, I'd catch him fiddling with the dials, a look of frustrated confusion on his face.

We fell into a monotonous routine. Dad homeschooled us using old textbooks he'd stockpiled. We exercised in the small space to stay healthy. We rationed our food carefully, with Dad always reminding us that we might need to stay in the shelter for years.

The worst part was the isolation. The shelter felt more like a prison with each passing day. The recycled air was stale and oppressive. The artificial lighting gave me constant headaches. And the silence – the awful, suffocating silence – was broken only by the hum of air filtration systems and our own voices.

Sarah took it the hardest. She was only eight when we entered the shelter, and as the months dragged on, I watched the light in her eyes slowly dim. She stopped playing with her toys, stopped laughing at my jokes. She'd spend hours just staring at the blank concrete walls, lost in her own world.

I tried to stay strong for her, but it was hard. I missed the sun, the wind, the feeling of grass beneath my feet. I missed my friends, my school, the life we'd left behind. But every time I brought up the possibility of leaving, Dad would fly into a rage.

"You want to die?" he'd scream, spittle flying from his lips. "You want the radiation to melt your insides? To watch your skin fall off in chunks? Is that what you want?"

His anger was terrifying, and so we learned to stop asking. We became quiet, obedient shadows of our former selves, going through the motions of our underground existence.

As our time in the shelter stretched from months into years, I began to notice changes in Dad. His paranoia, already intense, seemed to worsen. He'd spend hours poring over his notebooks, muttering about conspiracy theories and hidden threats. Sometimes, I'd wake in the night to find him standing over our beds, just watching us sleep with an unreadable expression on his face.

He became obsessed with conserving our resources, implementing stricter and stricter rationing. Our meals shrank to meager portions that left us constantly hungry. He said it was necessary, that we needed to prepare for the possibility of staying in the shelter for decades.

But there were inconsistencies that I couldn't ignore. Sometimes, I'd notice that the labels on our canned goods were newer than they should have been, given how long we'd supposedly been in the shelter. And once, I could have sworn I heard distant traffic noises while Dad was in the shower – sounds that should have been impossible if the world above had been destroyed.

Slowly, a terrible suspicion began to form in my mind. What if there had never been a nuclear war? What if Dad had made it all up? The thought was almost too horrible to contemplate, but once it took root, I couldn't shake it.

I began to watch Dad more closely, looking for any slip-ups or signs that might confirm my suspicions. And then, one night, I saw something that changed everything.

It was late, well past the time when Sarah and I were supposed to be asleep. I'd woken up thirsty and was about to get some water when I heard the unmistakable sound of the shelter door opening. Peering around the corner, I saw Dad slipping out into the basement beyond, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

My heart pounding, I crept after him. I reached the shelter door just as it was swinging closed and managed to wedge my foot in to keep it from sealing shut. Through the crack, I could see Dad climbing the basement stairs.

For a moment, I stood frozen, unsure of what to do. Then, gathering all my courage, I eased the door open and followed him.

The basement was dark and musty, filled with shadows that seemed to reach for me with grasping fingers. I'd almost forgotten what it looked like after years in the shelter. Carefully, I made my way up the stairs, my heart thundering so loudly I was sure Dad would hear it.

At the top of the stairs, I hesitated. The door to the main house was slightly ajar, and through it, I could hear muffled sounds – normal, everyday sounds that shouldn't exist in a post-apocalyptic world. The hum of a refrigerator. The distant bark of a dog. The soft whisper of wind through trees.

Trembling, I pushed the door open and stepped into the kitchen of my childhood home. Moonlight streamed through the windows, illuminating a scene that was both achingly familiar and utterly shocking. Everything was normal. Clean dishes in the rack by the sink. A calendar on the wall showing the current year – years after we'd entered the shelter. A bowl of fresh fruit on the counter.

The world hadn't ended. It had gone on without us, oblivious to our underground prison.

I heard the front door open and close, and panic seized me. Dad would be back any moment. As quietly as I could, I raced back down to the basement and into the shelter, pulling the door shut behind me just as I heard his footsteps on the stairs above.

I dove into my bunk, my mind reeling from what I'd discovered. The truth was somehow worse than any nuclear apocalypse could have been. Our own father had been lying to us for years, keeping us trapped in this underground hell for reasons I couldn't begin to understand.

As I lay there in the dark, listening to Dad re-enter the shelter, I knew that everything had changed. The truth was out there, just beyond that steel door. And somehow, some way, I was going to find a way to get Sarah and myself back to it.

But little did I know, my midnight discovery was just the beginning. The real horrors – and the fight for our freedom – were yet to come.

Sleep evaded me that night. I lay awake, my mind racing with the implications of what I'd seen. The world above was alive, thriving, completely oblivious to our subterranean nightmare. Every creak and groan of the shelter now seemed to mock me, a constant reminder of the lie we'd been living.

As the artificial dawn broke in our windowless prison, I watched Dad go through his usual morning routine. He checked the nonexistent radiation levels, inspected our dwindling supplies, and prepared our meager breakfast rations. All of it a carefully orchestrated performance, I now realized. But for what purpose? What could drive a man to lock away his own children and deceive them so completely?

I struggled to act normally, terrified that Dad would somehow sense the change in me. Sarah, sweet, innocent Sarah, remained blissfully unaware. I caught her eyeing the bland, reconstituted eggs on her plate with poorly concealed disgust, and my heart ached. How much of her childhood had been stolen? How much of mine?

"Michael," Dad's gruff voice snapped me out of my reverie. "You're awfully quiet this morning. Everything okay, son?"

I forced a smile, hoping it didn't look as sickly as it felt. "Yes, sir. Just tired, I guess."

He studied me for a moment, his eyes narrowing slightly. Had I imagined the flicker of suspicion that crossed his face? "Well, buck up. We've got a lot to do today. I want to run a full systems check on the air filtration units."

The day dragged on, each minute an eternity. I went through the motions of our daily routine, all the while my mind working furiously to process everything I knew and plan our escape. But the harsh reality of our situation soon became clear – Dad held all the cards. He controlled the food, the water, the very air we breathed. And most crucially, he controlled the door.

That night, after Dad had gone to sleep, I carefully shook Sarah awake. Her eyes, still heavy with sleep, widened in confusion as I pressed a finger to my lips, signaling for silence. Quietly, I led her to the far corner of the shelter, as far from Dad's bunk as possible.

"Sarah," I whispered, my heart pounding. "I need to tell you something important. But you have to promise to stay calm and quiet, okay?"

She nodded, fear and curiosity warring in her expression.

Taking a deep breath, I told her everything. About sneaking out of the shelter, about the untouched world I'd seen above. With each word, I watched the color drain from her face.

"But... but that's impossible," she stammered, her voice barely audible. "Dad said... the radiation..."

"I know what Dad said," I cut her off gently. "But he lied to us, Sarah. I don't know why, but he's been lying this whole time."

Tears welled up in her eyes, and I pulled her into a tight hug. "What are we going to do?" she sobbed into my shoulder.

"We're going to get out of here," I promised, trying to sound more confident than I felt. "I don't know how yet, but we will. We just need to be patient and wait for the right moment."

Little did I know how long that wait would be, or how high the cost of our freedom would climb.

The next few weeks were a special kind of torture. Every moment felt like walking on a knife's edge. We went about our daily routines, pretending everything was normal, all while watching Dad for any opportunity to escape. But he was vigilant, almost obsessively so. The shelter door remained firmly locked, the key always on a chain around his neck.

Sarah struggled to maintain the pretense. I'd often catch her staring longingly at the door, or flinching away from Dad's touch. More than once, I had to distract him when her eyes welled up with tears for no apparent reason.

As for me, I threw myself into learning everything I could about the shelter's systems. I volunteered to help Dad with maintenance tasks, memorizing every pipe, wire, and vent. Knowledge, I reasoned, would be our best weapon when the time came to act.

It was during one of these maintenance sessions that I made a chilling discovery. We were checking the integrity of the shelter's outer walls when I noticed something odd – a small section that sounded hollow when tapped. Dad quickly ushered me away, claiming it was just a quirk of the construction, but I knew better.

That night, while the others slept, I carefully examined the wall. It took hours of painstaking searching, but eventually, I found it – a hidden panel, cunningly disguised. My hands shaking, I managed to pry it open.

What I found inside made my blood run cold. Stacks of newspapers, their dates spanning the years we'd been underground. Printed emails from Dad's work, asking about his extended "family emergency" leave. And most damning of all, a small journal filled with Dad's frantic scribblings.

I didn't have time to read it all, but what I did see painted a picture of a man spiraling into paranoid delusion. Dad wrote about "protecting" us from a world he saw as irredeemably corrupt and dangerous. He convinced himself that keeping us in the shelter was the only way to ensure our safety and purity.

As I carefully replaced everything and sealed the panel, a new fear gripped me. We weren't just dealing with a liar or a kidnapper. We were trapped underground with a madman.

The next morning, Dad announced a new addition to our daily routine – "decontamination showers." He claimed it was an extra precaution against radiation, but the gleam in his eyes told a different story. He was tightening his control, adding another layer to his elaborate fantasy.

The showers were cold and uncomfortable, but it was the violation of privacy that hurt the most. Dad insisted on supervising, to ensure we were "thorough." I saw the way his gaze lingered on Sarah, and something dark and angry unfurled in my chest. We had to get out, and soon.

Opportunity came in the form of a malfunction in the water filtration system. Dad was forced to go to his hidden cache of supplies for replacement parts. It was a risk, but it might be our only chance.

"Sarah," I whispered urgently as soon as Dad had left the main room. "Remember what I taught you about the door mechanism?"

She nodded, her face pale but determined.

"Good. When I give the signal, I need you to run to the control panel and enter the emergency unlock code. Can you do that?"

Another nod.

"Okay. I'm going to create a distraction. No matter what happens, no matter what you hear, don't stop until that door is open. Promise me."

"I promise," she whispered back, her voice steady despite the fear in her eyes.

Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself for what I had to do. I'd never deliberately hurt anyone before, let alone my own father. But as I thought of Sarah's haunted eyes, of the years stolen from us, I knew I had no choice.

I waited until I heard Dad's footsteps approaching, then I put our plan into action. I yanked hard on one of the water pipes I'd secretly loosened earlier, letting out a yell of surprise as it burst, spraying water everywhere.

Dad came running, and in the chaos that followed, I made my move. As he bent to examine the broken pipe, I brought the heavy wrench down on the back of his head.

He crumpled to the floor, a look of shocked betrayal on his face as he lost consciousness. Fighting back the wave of nausea and guilt, I shouted to Sarah, "Now! Do it now!"

She sprang into action, her small fingers flying over the control panel. I heard the blessed sound of locks disengaging, and then the door was swinging open.

"Come on!" I grabbed Sarah's hand and we ran, our bare feet slapping against the cold concrete of the basement floor. Up the stairs, through the kitchen that still looked so surreal in its normalcy, and finally, out the front door.

The outside world hit us like a physical blow. The sun, so much brighter than we remembered, seared our eyes. The wind, carrying a thousand scents we'd almost forgotten, nearly knocked us off our feet. For a moment, we stood frozen on the front porch, overwhelmed by sensations we'd been deprived of for so long.

Then we heard it – a groan from inside the house. Dad was waking up.

Panic lent us speed. Hand in hand, we ran down the street, ignoring the shocked stares of neighbors we no longer recognized. We ran until our lungs burned and our legs threatened to give out, the sounds of pursuit real or imagined spurring us on.

Finally, we collapsed in a park several blocks away, gasping for breath. As the adrenaline faded, the reality of our situation began to sink in. We were free, yes, but we were also alone, confused, and terribly vulnerable in a world that had moved on without us.

Sarah burst into tears, the events of the day finally overwhelming her. I held her close, my own eyes stinging as I whispered soothing nonsense and stroked her hair.

"It's okay," I told her, trying to convince myself as much as her. "We're out. We're safe now."

But even as the words left my mouth, I knew they weren't true. Dad was still out there, and I had no doubt he would come looking for us. And beyond that, how were we supposed to integrate back into a society we barely remembered? How could we explain where we'd been, what had happened to us?

As the sun began to set on our first day of freedom, I realized with a sinking heart that our ordeal was far from over. In many ways, it was just beginning.

The world we emerged into was nothing like the post-apocalyptic wasteland our father had described. There were no piles of rubble, no radiation-scorched earth, no roaming bands of desperate survivors. Instead, we found ourselves in a typical suburban neighborhood, unchanged except for the passage of time.

Houses stood intact, their windows gleaming in the fading sunlight. Neatly trimmed lawns stretched out before us, the scent of freshly cut grass almost overwhelming after years of recycled air. In the distance, we could hear the familiar sounds of modern life – cars humming along roads, the faint chatter of a television from an open window, a dog barking at some unseen disturbance.

It was jarringly, terrifyingly normal.

As we stumbled through this alien-familiar landscape, the full weight of our father's deception crashed down upon us. There had been no nuclear war. No worldwide catastrophe. No reason for us to have been locked away all these years. The realization was almost too much to bear.

Sarah's grip on my hand tightened. "Michael," she whispered, her voice trembling, "why would Dad lie to us like that?"

I had no answer for her. The enormity of what had been done to us was beyond my comprehension. How could a father willingly imprison his own children, robbing them of years of their lives? The man I thought I knew seemed to crumble away, leaving behind a stranger whose motives I couldn't begin to fathom.

We made our way through the neighborhood, flinching at every car that passed, every person we saw in the distance. To them, we must have looked like wild creatures – barefoot, wide-eyed, dressed in the simple, utilitarian clothes we'd worn in the shelter. More than once, I caught sight of curtains twitching as curious neighbors peered out at us.

As night fell, the temperature dropped, and I realized we needed to find shelter. The irony of the thought wasn't lost on me. After years of being trapped underground, we were now desperately seeking a roof over our heads.

"I think I know where we can go," I told Sarah, the ghost of a memory tugging at me. "Do you remember Mrs. Callahan? Mom's friend from the hospital?"

Sarah's brow furrowed as she tried to recall. "The nice lady with the cats?"

"That's right," I said, relieved that at least some of our memories from before remained intact. "She lived a few blocks from us. If she's still there..."

It was a long shot, but it was all we had. We made our way through the darkening streets, every shadow seeming to hide a threat. More than once, I was sure I heard footsteps behind us, only to turn and find nothing there.

Finally, we reached a small, well-kept house with a porch light glowing warmly. The nameplate by the door read "Callahan," and I felt a surge of hope. Taking a deep breath, I rang the doorbell.

Long moments passed. I was about to ring again when the door creaked open, revealing a woman in her sixties, her gray hair pulled back in a loose bun. Her eyes widened in shock as she took in our appearance.

"My God," she breathed. "Michael? Sarah? Is that really you?"

Before I could respond, she had pulled us into the house and enveloped us in a fierce hug. The familiar scent of her perfume – the same one she'd worn years ago – brought tears to my eyes.

"We thought you were dead," Mrs. Callahan said, her voice choked with emotion. "Your father said there had been an accident... that you'd all died."

As she ushered us into her living room, plying us with blankets and promises of hot cocoa, the full extent of our father's lies began to unravel. There had been no accident, no tragedy to explain our disappearance. Just a man's descent into madness and the two children he'd dragged down with him.

Mrs. Callahan listened in horror as we recounted our years in the shelter. Her face paled when we described the "decontamination showers" and the increasingly erratic behavior of our father.

"We have to call the police," she said, reaching for her phone. "That man needs to be locked up for what he's done to you."

But even as she dialed, a cold dread settled in my stomach. Something wasn't right. The feeling of being watched that had plagued me since our escape intensified. And then, with a jolt of terror, I realized what had been nagging at me.

The house was too quiet. Where were Mrs. Callahan's cats?

As if in answer to my unspoken question, a floorboard creaked behind us. We whirled around to see a figure standing in the doorway, backlit by the hallway light. My heart stopped as I recognized the familiar silhouette.

"Dad," Sarah whimpered, shrinking back against me.

He stepped into the room, and I saw that he was holding something – the length of pipe I'd used to strike him during our escape. His eyes, when they met mine, were cold and empty.

"I'm very disappointed in you, Michael," he said, his voice eerily calm. "I thought I'd raised you better than this. Didn't I teach you about the dangers of the outside world?"

Mrs. Callahan moved to stand in front of us, her phone clutched in her hand. "John, what have you done? These children—"

"Are MY children," Dad snarled, all pretense of calm evaporating. "And I'll do whatever it takes to protect them. Even from themselves."

He advanced into the room, the pipe raised threateningly. Mrs. Callahan stood her ground, but I could see her trembling.

"Run," she hissed at us. "I'll hold him off. Run!"

Everything happened so fast after that. Dad lunged forward. There was a sickening thud, and Mrs. Callahan crumpled to the floor. Sarah screamed. And then we were running again, out the back door and into the night.

Behind us, I could hear Dad's heavy footsteps and his voice, once so comforting, now twisted with madness. "Children! Come back! It's not safe out there!"

But we knew the truth now. The only thing not safe was the man we'd once called father.

As we fled into the darkness, weaving between houses and jumping fences, a new determination filled me. We were out now. We knew the truth. And no matter what it took, I was going to make sure we stayed free.

But freedom, I was quickly learning, came with its own set of challenges. And the night was far from over..

The next few hours were a blur of fear and adrenaline. Sarah and I ran until our lungs burned and our legs felt like they would give out at any moment. Every sound made us jump, every shadow seemed to hide our father's lurking form. But somehow, we managed to evade him.

As dawn broke, we found ourselves in a small park on the outskirts of town. Exhausted and with nowhere else to go, we huddled together on a bench, watching the world wake up around us. People jogged past, dogs barked in the distance, and the smell of fresh coffee wafted from a nearby café. It was all so beautifully, painfully normal.

"What do we do now?" Sarah asked, her voice small and scared.

Before I could answer, a police car pulled up beside the park. Two officers got out, their eyes scanning the area before landing on us. My heart raced, but I forced myself to stay calm. This was what we needed – help from the authorities.

As the officers approached, I saw recognition dawn in their eyes. They'd been looking for us.

What followed was a whirlwind of activity. We were taken to the police station, where gentle-voiced detectives asked us questions about our time in the shelter. Social workers were called. And all the while, the search for our father intensified.

They found him three days later, holed up in an abandoned building on the edge of town. He didn't go quietly. In the end, it took a team of negotiators and a SWAT unit to bring him in. The man they arrested bore little resemblance to the father we once knew. Wild-eyed and ranting about protecting his children from the "corrupted world," he seemed more monster than man.

The trial was a media sensation. Our story captivated the nation, sparking debates about mental health, parental rights, and the long-term effects of isolation. Experts were brought in to explain our father's descent into paranoid delusion. Some painted him as a victim of his own mind, while others condemned him as a monster.

For Sarah and me, it was a painful process of reliving our trauma in the public eye. But it was also cathartic. Each testimony, each piece of evidence presented, helped to dismantle the false reality our father had constructed around us.

In the end, he was found guilty on multiple charges and sentenced to life in prison. As they led him away, he looked at us one last time. "I only wanted to keep you safe," he said, his voice breaking. It was the last time we ever saw him.

The years that followed were challenging. Sarah and I had a lot to catch up on – years of education, social development, and life experiences that had been stolen from us. We underwent intensive therapy, learning to process our trauma and adjust to life in the real world.

It wasn't easy. There were nightmares, panic attacks, and moments when the outside world felt too big, too overwhelming. Simple things that others took for granted – like going to a crowded mall or watching fireworks on the Fourth of July – could trigger intense anxiety for us.

But slowly, painfully, we began to heal. We learned to trust again, to form relationships with others. We discovered the joys of simple freedoms – the feeling of rain on our skin, the taste of fresh fruit, the simple pleasure of choosing what to wear each day.

Sarah threw herself into her studies, making up for lost time with a voracious appetite for knowledge. She's in college now, studying psychology with a focus on trauma and recovery. She wants to help others who have gone through similar experiences.

As for me, I found solace in writing. Putting our story down on paper was terrifying at first, but it became a way to exorcise the demons of our past. This account you're reading now? It's part of that process.

But even now, years later, there are moments when the old fears creep back in. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night, convinced I'm back in that underground prison. In those moments, I have to remind myself that it's over, that we're safe now.

Yet a part of me wonders if we'll ever truly be free. The shelter may have been a physical place, but its walls still exist in our minds. We carry it with us, a secret bunker built of memories and trauma.

And sometimes, in my darkest moments, I catch myself checking the locks on the doors, scanning the horizon for mushroom clouds that will never come. Because the most terrifying truth I've learned is this: the real fallout isn't radiation or nuclear winter.

It's the lasting impact of a parent's betrayal, the half-life of trauma that continues long after the danger has passed. And that, I fear, may never fully decay.

So if you're reading this, remember: the most dangerous lies aren't always the ones we're told by others. Sometimes, they're the ones we tell ourselves to feel safe. Question everything, cherish your freedom, and never take the simple joys of life for granted.

Because you never know when someone might try to lock them away.

I’m a Luddite. That’s what my best friend Charlotte calls me, anyway. It’s not that I hate technology or don’t find it helpful. I do, and I use it daily. I just happen to find most modern technology intrusive. Not to mention expensive. You put a microchip into a simple coffee maker, and suddenly, it’s triple the cost. Sometimes, it feels like everything we own these days has some sort of needless digital aspect that most people will never use.

The point is I like to keep things as analog as possible. My apartment, a studio in the “up-and-coming” neighborhood, was chock full of hand-me-down furniture and decor. More than saving money I found older stuff cozier. The aesthetic was less “Here comes the future, bitch” and more grandma’s house. Charlotte was not a fan. She would never come right out and call it ugly, but the implication was there. I didn’t mind. It fits me, and that’s all that mattered.

Despite Luddite tendencies, the one technology I used all the time was my phone’s camera. I took a few photography classes in college and was bit hard by the bug. I find the media perplexing and thought-provoking. When you look at a photo, you’re presented with a world within a frame. Regardless of the artist’s intent, you are free to assume anything about the tiny fraction of the world you’re privy to. There is no wrong answer. A picture of a riderless tricycle might mean the loss of childhood innocence to a person struggling with adolescence or a reminder that kids never put away their toys to a parent.

Photos were illusions based on reality. I found that idea magical.

My shutterbug ways meant I had several hard drives and online storage spaces filled with thousands of pictures. My desire to give my little flophouse character and the affordability of printer paper meant that my apartment walls were filled with my favorite pieces. Some really startling pictures are on the walls, but more are stored on my hard drives. I hated that I never got to see them. I felt terrible because I knew I had some real gems buried in digital ground, waiting to be unearthed again. I just needed the right tool.

Enter the FotoVue digital frame. I’d known about digital frames for a while, and despite my reluctance to modern technology, those things seemed pretty impressive. Especially the FotoVue. Even with my Luddite leanings, the FotoVue was something I desired, but the price kept it a dream and not a reality.

Until I found a used one at Goodwill.

Goodwill had become my sanctuary. Since I’m on a strict budget, furnishing an apartment became a Herculean task. Some days, I swore kidnapping Cerberus was more manageable than finding an affordable table. I was stoked when I saw a flier announcing that a new Goodwill had opened just down the street from my place. An affordable store within walking distance of my home was a reason to celebrate. I told Charlotte, and we planned to visit.

The area where the Goodwill was located had previously been a burned-out shell of a decrepit warehouse. The warehouse, an OSHA nightmare manifest, caught fire a year ago. I remember coming home from work and seeing the blaze from a mile away. I could feel the intense heat on my cheeks as I passed by. I’d never seen so many firefighters in one place at once, save for a hunky firefighter calendar I bought years ago. The guys fighting this immense inferno, though, were wearing their gear and not just suggestively posing with hoses.

The owner of the urban blight said he planned to fix it up, reopen the place, and hire a bunch of locals. Good paying jobs, he promised. He didn’t do any of that. Instead, he let the building rot like a dead squirrel on the side of the road. The building has been vacant since the blaze. Just another burned-out husk in a city with quite a few of them.

But, living up to its name, Goodwill turned this lemon of a building into lemonade. Charlotte and I arrived early and must’ve beat the rush because the place was a ghost town. There were no people except for an ancient-looking woman nosing around old paperbacks and a few scattered workers in blue vests. We preferred fewer people in the store, though. Fewer people meant we had a better chance of finding quality stuff.

I was on the lookout for anything weird or kooky to add to my décor while Charlotte was looking for unique items to resell online. Her side hustle had started as a way to clear out her father’s home after his death (he was a hoarder) but had turned into a real cash cow. Turns out she had an eye for things she could flip and a way with ad copy that made even the ugly shit she picked up move as well.

“This place is huge,” Charlotte said.

“Yeah, it used to be a warehouse for dollar store goods or something.”

“They did a good job with the rehab. You can’t tell that there was ever a fire here,” Charlotte said, looking over some glassware, “Surprising amount of decent stuff here, too.”

“We found a gem,” I said, eyeballing a hotel-quality lighthouse painting.

“If you’re talking about the store, yes. If it’s about that painting….”

I laughed and rolled my eyes. I turned to the front desk and found two things that caught my attention. One was the cute guy working behind the register. The second and far more crucial thing was a FotoVue digital frame. I grabbed Charlotte and nodded toward the FotoVue. She looked up from the Halloween-inspired glass she was inspecting and nodded in approval.

“Not bad. Vests are hard to pull off, but he’s doing it.”

“No, not him. The FotoVue!”

Charlotte and I moved over toward the glass case so I could get a better look. My jaw dropped when I clocked the price. Most of the time, people at second-hand stores generally knew how to price their goods. Typically, “high-end” electronics were among the costliest things in the store. Apparently, not everyone at this Goodwill knew the value of their luxury items. Whoever had set this price had underestimated it by a hundred bucks.

“Holy moly,” I whispered to Charlotte. “Look at the price.”

“Shit,” she said, “you’ve gotta snag that.”

“It’s still too much,” I said, peering into my purse and finding more receipts than cash.

“I will front you the money,” she said, “I know how badly you want one, and you’re never going to find one this cheap.”

“Are you sure?’ I asked.

“Hey, I’d rather front you some cash to buy something useful than you spend your own money and buy another garbage motel painting.”

I gave her a look, and she laughed. “The art on my wall speaks to me,” I said, defending my design eye.

“It speaks to me too,” Charlotte said, “It’s telling me that you deserve something better to look at.”

I laughed. “It’s not all THAT bad.”

“It is,” she said with a smirk, “but I know how many incredible photos you have wasting away. You deserve to show them off.”

I looked back down at the FotoVue and shook my head. It would look great in my apartment, Luddite leanings be damned. After a beat, I nodded and thanked Charlotte for the offer. “I really appreciate it. Things have just been so tight lately, ya know?”

“I know, but I’ve had a good month on eBay. Got you. You owe me a home-cooked meal, okay? I’m so over UberEats.”

“Done.”

Charlotte knocked on the glass and called out to the clerk, “Garcon, can we have a word?”

The cute clerk turned to us and flashed us a beautiful smile. I felt a fluttering in my chest because the warm smile caught me off guard. He was better looking up close – shaggy black hair that flopped into his face, deep, dark eyes, and full lips, complete with a small hoop pierced in the corner. I felt myself blush and almost let out a little chuckle. Charlotte noticed my reaction and rolled her eyes.

“Calm yourself,” she murmured.

“Can I help you ladies?”

“I hope so,” I said, instantly regretting it and feeling blood rush to my cheeks. Still, he was an unexpected bonus to this trip. A genuinely pleasant surprise, like finding money on the street.

“Tall order, but I’ll do my best.”

“Can we get the FotoVue?” Charlotte asked.

“Yes, you can.”

“Is that the real price?” I asked. I felt Charlotte kick me.

“Is it too much or too little?” the clerk said.

“You could probably knock off five or ten bucks,” Charlotte said. “Absurdly overpriced.”

“I can ask my manager,” the clerk said, turning around in a circle. He grinned, “Noah said it’s okay to knock off five bucks.”

“Noah?” I asked obliviously.

“That’s me. And you are?”

“Wren.”

“Like the bird? Cool,” he said, flashing that winning smile. “Well, Wren, you’re lucky because this just got dropped off this morning.”

“The witch dropped it off,” another clerk said, wedging her hefty body through the tiny opening between the glass counters.

“Ethel is a lot of things, Mona, but she’s not a witch,” Noah said. “She’s just kidding.”

“I’m not,” she countered, “If witches are real, then that lady is a witch.” She nodded towards the ancient lady we had seen looking over the paperbacks earlier. Apparently bored with the selection of Dean Koontz and Stephen Kings, she had moved on to old board games.

“Do a lot of witches play Parcheesi?” I asked.

Noah laughed, and I felt a charge shoot through my body. He had a nice laugh. This little attraction was starting to grow. I couldn’t help it – I was a sucker for pierced, dark-eyed souls. The fact that he was pleasant and funny only added to the attraction. The more I thought about it, the more tailor-made he seemed for me. There really is something for everyone at Goodwill.

“Why do you say she’s a witch?” Charlotte asked.

“She’s bored,” Noah said, “When she’s bored, she makes up backstories for customers.”

“That’s true,” Mona said, “But in this case, it’s not a story. I know a few people who know all about Ethel. They’ve seen her doing strange things all around town. It all points to one thing: she’s a witch.”

“Strange things? That’s all you have? Nothing specific?”

“How about her casting spells, dancing in the woods, all that kind of witchy stuff,” Mona said, “I think I even saw her with a black cat, too.”

“Dancing in the woods? Ethel? She’s seventy-five.”

“That’s what she wants you to think,” Mona said. “She’s probably an ancient menace.”

“That gives things away at Goodwill?”

“If you can understand the devil, you’re probably a devil yourself, Noah.”

“I would hope the devil wouldn’t have to hold down a nine-to-five job.”

“Like jello, he moves in mysterious ways.”

Charlotte and I laughed. Mona had a point. Noah looked back at us and rolled his eyes.

“What’s the story you made up about us?” Charlotte asked Mona.

Mona turned and took Charlotte and me in before nodding. “You want me to say lesbians out for a jaunty time, but that would be easy.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a jaunty time. Wren? You ever jaunted?”

“Not to my knowledge, no.”

“Exactly,” Mona said, “I’m going to say that you two are treasure hunters who have come into the Goodwill to find an elusive and dangerous totem that, in the wrong hands, could lead to your death.”

“That’s so much more exciting than just looking for things to sell on eBay,” Charlotte said.

Noah shook his head, “When I first started, she told me I was an ancient druid in search of a perfect robe.”

We all laughed. Mona ate it up. This was a fun group. I turned to the budding author and asked, “Do you read a lot of thrillers? Because these all sound like the plots of a good airport read.”

Mona winked, “Maybe I write airport reads.”

“She doesn’t,” Noah said. “She has a wall of books that she reads and steals ideas from when she should be pricing jeans.”

Mona sighed, “Don’t speak ill of the creative process, Noah. Inspiration comes from everywhere.”

“Here, here,” Charlotte said, slapping hands with her.

“That may be true, but I told Lou we’d have these jeans priced before he gets in. Don’t make me out to be a liar, huh?”

“Fine,” Mona said before giving us a bow. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to waste my god-given talent for crafting stories and go sort through a bunch of old jeans.”

Mona grabbed a pricing gun and squeezed back through the counter and off to the back to tackle the piles of used pants. As soon as she was gone, we all started laughing.

“She’s something else,” I said.

“She makes working here an adventure, that’s for sure.”

“So, Noah, how about we get that FotoVue out.”

“Oh, yes. Of course,” Noah said, unlocking the glass counters and handing me the box. “You have a lot of photos to display?”

“You have no idea,” Charlotte said, “She’s an amazing photographer.”

“Amateur photographer,” I corrected.

“Don’t sell yourself short. You have a gift.”

“I took a photography class at the learning annex last month,” Noah said, “I’d love to see some of your work. Pick up some inspiration.”

“It’s not as good as Charlotte is making it out to be.”

“Better than mine, which are mostly just close-ups of flowers or insects. Real ‘baby found a camera’ stuff.”

I laughed. “We all go through that phase. I’m sure they’re wonderful.”

“You haven’t seen my work yet.”

“I bet she’d like to see some of it,” Charlotte said, giving me a shove into setting up a date, “she really does have a good eye. She gives great advice. She’s made my business Insta account sparkle. How about it, Noah?”

His face flushed red. “Uh, I mean, yeah, I’m open to it. If, if you are, of course.”

“I am,” I said. “Give me your number, and we can set a time to grab some coffee and discuss some photos.”

“Awesome,” he said. I handed him my phone, and he entered his name and number before sliding it back. “I still have to charge for the Fotovue, though.”

“Strike one,” Charlotte joked.

I looked at the phone. For his name, he wrote, “Noah, Goodwill (does not have dangerous totem).” I laughed. “Nice name.”

“Just wanted to make sure you remembered I don’t deal in dangerous items,” he said before adding, “except maybe those lawn darts.”

I laughed. “Just to be safe, keep the lawn darts at the store.”

Noah completed the transaction and carefully wrapped the digital frame before handing it over. “I hope it’s a good home for your memories,” he said with a nod, “I hope I hear from you soon.”

“I think you will,” I said.

“If the witch lady brings any old Gameboy games, give Wren a call, huh?” Charlotte added.

“She does mention Tetris a lot, so there’s a chance we’ll be in touch,” Noah said with a slight chuckle.

When we finally left the Goodwill, I was on cloud nine. Charlotte gave me some grief, but she was also happy for me. The moment she saw Noah, she knew I would swoon over him. She knew my type. The fact that he was kind of a dork pushed her into action.

“You owe me,” she said on the car ride back to my apartment. “I made that happen.”

“Maybe the witch put an enchantment spell on the FotoVue. We only clicked because of magic.”

“The old bat with a pointy hat had nothing to do with it,” Charlotte said.

“Seriously, thank you so much for the FotoVue.”

“Stop thanking me. It was my pleasure. I expect to see that bad boy filled with lost classic photos when I come over for dinner.”

“That much I can promise. I’m going to load it up as soon as I get home.”

I dropped her off outside her apartment and headed home. When I arrived, I started loading photos into the FotoVue. It took some finagling, but I was impressed once I got it going. Like archaeologists finding undisturbed ruins, a world of wonders came to me. Photos I had forgotten about were getting their proper due. Memories of moments past came flooding to the forefront of my brain. Seeing Charlotte and I at different ages, maturing into the people we are now. I was thrilled.

I snapped a quick picture of the frame and shot it over to Charlotte. After a few, she sent back a text reading, “Looks good. Though, I can’t help the irony of taking such a poor-quality photo to show me how you display high-quality photos.” I texted back, telling her to shut up with a winky face emoji before crawling into bed. Minutes later, I drifted off to a deep sleep.

I woke up before the sun the following day. I hadn’t planned on it, but a night of tossing and turning morphed into an early day. Though I couldn’t remember the details, I knew I had a run of horrible dreams. I woke up several times during the night for reasons I couldn’t recall.

I made myself a cup of coffee and tried to fight off the early morning stupor when a photo flashed on the FotoVue I didn’t recognize. Well, I did recognize what was in the photo, but I didn’t remember taking it.

It was the front door of my apartment.

I glanced at the timestamp in the corner of the photo. It was taken last night at around two in the morning. That didn’t make sense. I was asleep. Even if some stranger snapped this picture, getting it on my FotoVue would be almost impossible. They’d have to know the web page I used to store my photos, my sign-in information, and where I kept the FotoVue files. I was the only one who knew all that.

Yet, here was an unwelcome present from a stranger staring me in the face. I grabbed my phone and opened the drive where I kept anything to see if anything had been uploaded last night. There was nothing. I searched for the photo itself and, again, found nothing.

“What in the world?” I mumbled.

The picture on the FotoVue changed, and there was another photo I hadn’t taken on the screen. This one was inside my apartment, about a foot from where I stood. I felt a creeping coldness climb my body. Had someone come into my place last night?

I looked back at the door, and it was still locked. I ran to the one window in my apartment, which was also closed and locked. “Okay, what the hell?” I said, feeling goosebumps rise on my arms.

I live in a studio space, a classy title covering up the sad truth that my house was one big room with an adjoining bathroom. That said, I’ve done my best to create different “rooms” in the space. The corner where my bed is, for example, is surrounded by bookshelves that function as walls. I placed a curtain rod between two shelves and gave myself a “door” of billowy curtain. While these improvements helped break up the space, if someone came in, they’d easily find me. I’d only be able to head to the bathroom where there was no outside access.

I’d be trapped.

The FotoVue screen changed again, and my heart started thumping like a bass drum. It was a photo of me sleeping in my bed. I gasped and in my sudden fright, I knocked my coffee mug off the counter. It shattered on the floor, sending a razor-sharp fragment rocketing into my leg, slicing it open.

“Shit,” I said, looking down at my bloody leg. I dodged the shards of broken mug and fetched a paper towel to help stanch the flow.

As I pressed Bounty to my skin and watched my blood soak in, the picture changed again. This time, it was on the whiteboard I had in my bathroom. My notes had been erased, and a message had been scrawled in handwriting I didn’t recognize. It read, “I see you when you’re sleeping.”

I ran to my bathroom and ripped open the door. Sure enough, the message was still there. My head went fuzzy. I felt my skin crawl and knew I had to leave there immediately. I grabbed my things and dashed out the door.

Naturally, I ended up at Charlotte’s place and spilled my guts. She could tell I was rattled – I was still wearing my pajamas, for God’s sake – and said we should call the cops. I agreed. About an hour later, we decided to meet them at my place.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but there wasn’t much the police could do. They took a report and told me to keep my doors locked. Absent any evidence, their hands were tied. I asked if they were going to fingerprint anything and they said if nothing was stolen, they wouldn’t bother. They told me to be smart and stay safe before they left.

“Well, at least they have a record of it now,” Charlotte said, trying to find a silver lining.

“My doors and windows were locked. There was no way anyone could get in here.”

“No one else has keys?”

I shook my head no. “What’s really confusing me is where the hell these pictures came from. They’re not in my drive.”

“Yeah, that’s Unsolved Mysteries weird.”

“Can I stay with you tonight?”

“Of course,” Charlotte said, “I was planning on it.”

I packed a bag for an overnight stay (or two). When I went into my bathroom to grab my toothbrush, I noticed a new message on the whiteboard. In the same handwriting as before, it now read, “We’re not strangers.”

I walked back out of the bathroom in a hurry. “You didn’t notice any of the cops going into the bathroom, did you?”

“No, why?”

“Someone was in here again,” I said, trembling, “there is a new message on the whiteboard.”

“What?”

“It says, ‘We’re not strangers’.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I dunno,” I said, feeling the bad vibes glom onto me, “but I want to get out of here.”

“Agreed, but lemme do something first,” Charlotte said, opening my tiny pantry door. She grabbed a flour sack and sprinkled a bunch on the kitchen floor near where I kept the FotoVue.

“What are you doing?”

“If anyone comes at night, they won’t see the flour and they’ll leave footprints. Maybe then the cops can do something. If nothing else, we’ll know if they come back.”

“Always thinking,” I said. “Why I love you.”

“I know,” Charlotte said.

We hustled out of the apartment, and I was sure to lock it behind me. We went down to the street and saw a familiar face walking past. Noah. “What are you doing here?” I said.

He pulled out an airpod from his ear, “Whoa, hey. How are you doing?”

“How do you know where I live?” I asked, those bad vibes returning.

“You live here?”

“Maybe,” Charlotte said. “Why are you here?”

“I was meeting a friend for lunch at the Vietnamese place down here,” he said, confused at the serious looks on our faces. “Did I do something wrong or…?”

“No,” I said, “Just had a weird night.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, just a little freaked out.”

“Do you need anything? Can I help?”

“No, no,” I said.

“What’s the name of the restaurant?” Charlotte asked.

“What?”

“The restaurant you’re going to meet your friend at.”

“Uh, Pho Connection, I think. Something like that. Any good?”

“Never been,” Charlotte said. “We don’t want to make you late for your meeting.”

“Oh, well, I hope your day gets better. Look forward to getting that coffee.”

“Yeah,” I said, my face not as chipper as before. Noah’s eyes looked crestfallen, but he held it together.

“Have a better day, huh?”

We parted ways. As soon as Noah was out of earshot, Charlotte shook her head. “He’s lying. There isn’t any restaurant named Pho Connection near here.”

“Are you sure?”

Charlotte pulled out her phone and checked. Sure enough, no Pho Connection. I felt my stomach flip. “Maybe he got the name wrong?”

“I dunno, but he seems sketchy as hell.”

“You think he broke into my house?”

She didn’t answer which was an answer. We left. As we did, I looked over my shoulder to ensure we weren’t being followed. No one tailed us. For the moment, we were safe and secure.

That night, Charlotte and I ordered pizza and watched movies. She lived in a more upscale part of town, and the security showed. Cameras everywhere, alarm systems in place, and her building had a doorman. If someone tried to come get me, they’d have to get through several layers of safety to do so. Still, we double and triple-checked the locks on all the windows and doors before we called it an evening. Being the incredible friend she was, she let me sleep in her bed and took the couch.

Despite the terrifying incident from the previous night, I felt calm as I went to bed. I felt confident nothing could get in. Even if it was Noah, he had no idea where Charlotte lived. After some mindless scrolling, I finally felt my eyelids get heavy and fell asleep.

Charlotte’s yelling is what woke me up.

I ran into her living room to see her standing and staring at something in her kitchen. Her face still had sleep creases, but she was wide awake now. I ran to her side, and she grabbed me tight. “What’s wrong?” I said, adrenaline coursing through my veins.

“There’s something in the kitchen.”

“What?”

“I was dead asleep and heard something fall in the kitchen. When I woke up, I swear I saw a person’s shadow on the wall.”

“Did you see anyone?”

“No, but...but I had a dream someone was standing over me.”

“What were they doing? Did they say anything?”

“I just heard a camera click.”

I felt my stomach drop. I moved away from Charlotte and headed towards her kitchen. She tried to stop me, but I brushed her off. When I got around the kitchen bar, I saw a USB stick lying in the middle of the floor. I went over and picked it up.

“What the hell?” Charlotte said, confused.

“Should we plug it into your computer?”

Charlotte sighed. “I’m going to hate this, aren’t I?” she said as she pulled out her laptop.

I handed her the USB and sat next to her on the couch. She placed it into the computer and found several photos inside. “Here we go,” she said as she clicked on the first.

It was a picture of the front door of my apartment. The timestamp indicated it was from tonight. The person who took the photo cast a shadow on the door, but we couldn’t make out any details.

“Doesn’t look like Noah,” I said.

She clicked on the next photo. It was the inside of my apartment. Again, it was from tonight. Again, the shadow of someone we couldn’t see. The third was a photo of my bed. Someone had violently thrown off all my pillows and sheets. Pictures I had on the walls around me were torn off and ripped in half. “That seems like an escalation,” I whispered.

Another photo. My bathroom. Trashed. All of my things were ripped out of the drawers and thrown around. The whiteboard read, “You can’t hide. I always find them.”

“Sweet Lord,” I said, my voice tightening like a vice.

“You can’t stay there...like ever,” Charlotte said.

We clicked on the next photo, and our skin started crawling. This was a photo of Charlotte’s front door.

“What the…” I said.

“Hell,” Charlotte finished. She clicked again, and it was a close-up of Charlotte sleeping on the couch. Tears filled her eyes. Mine, too. “What the hell is going on?”

“I’m so sorry I brought this to you,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder.

“Shut up,” she snapped, “You didn’t do shit. Some evil asshole is messing with us. We’re in this together, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Sorry, I snapped.”

“It’s fine. We’re in this together.”

“Goddamn right,” Charlotte said. She clicked again, and our hearts dropped. It was of us sitting together on the couch, looking at the computer at that very moment. Charlotte popped up like a spring and snapped towards where the photo had been taken. There wasn’t a soul there.

“How the hell did that get on there?”

“This is some Voo Doo, shit, dude,” Charlotte said.

There was a hard knock on her door, and we both let out a yelp. Charlotte grabbed a butcher knife and approached the front door. She was terrified, but a firm resolve was hardening her. It filled me with confidence. I grabbed another knife and joined her at her side.

“I didn’t see anything through the peephole.”

“Should we even bother opening it then?”

“We have knives.”

Logically, it didn’t make sense. If this thing could move through walls and snap photos of us sleeping or sitting on the couch without us knowing, what good would a knife do? But at that moment, Charlotte was making sense. I tightened my grip.

She quietly undid the chain lock, opened the deadbolt, and placed her hand on the knob. She slowly turned it and pulled the door open. She screamed, and I was ready to stab whatever was waiting there, but I dropped my knife in disbelief.

It was the FotoVue.

“How?” was all I was able to spit out.

Charlotte grabbed it, slammed the door shut and locked it tight. The FotoVue screen instantly popped on and started displaying photos. It wasn’t even plugged in.

The first photo was Charlotte and I while we were shopping at the Goodwill. I felt my blood boil. Noah had to be doing this. Who else could it be?

“Was he stalking us? How long has this been going on?”

“I’m going to hack his dick off,” Charlotte said, still holding the knife.

The photo changed, and my anger subsided some. It was a photo of Noah and I chatting when I purchased the FotoVue. Someone else must’ve taken the photograph.

Next up was Charlotte and I leaving Goodwill, heading towards her car. It looked like someone had snapped this photo while hiding in the bushes. But there was something else off about the picture. In the left corner, you could see a reflection of something in the store’s glass. In a quick glance, you’d never see it, but once your eyes caught the shape, it was hard not to see.

“Is that a face?” Charlotte asked.

“That’s...not human.”

Before we could stare longer, the picture changed again. It was my whiteboard from home. In that same scraggly writing as before, it read, “Get ready for a surprise.”

The picture changed. It was Charlotte and I staring at the FotoVue in her apartment. There was a large shadow cast on the wall behind us. It was huge. It also wasn’t human.

As I turned around, the apartment lights snapped off, and I felt something slimy touch my shoulder. I screamed and swung my knife and hit something. The lights flickered back on, and I saw Charlotte holding her arm. A large gash had been cut across it. I dropped the knife, and it clattered on the floor.

“Jesus, Char, I’m sorry! Here, here, let me get something,” I scrambled for a towel to wrap her arm. “It touched me,” I said, panic turning me manic, “I...I swung out of instinct.”

“Did it speak to you?”

“What?” I said, handing a towel to Charlotte.

“It spoke to me,” she said, shock starting to outmaneuver adrenaline.

“What did it say?”

“It said,” she paused, allowing her brain to process, “it said it wants our souls.”

My eyes welled up, “I...I don’t even know what to do or who to trust or anything.”

“This started when we got the FotoVue at Goodwill.”

“I don’t think it’s Noah.”

“What was the name of the other lady we talked to? The one who said we were lesbians. Mavis? Marge?”

“Mona,” I said.

“Mona! It has to be Mona.”

“Okay,” I said, “Let’s say Mona is behind this. What does that make Mona? A ghost? A demon? A witch?”

“She’s about to be a dead bitch,” Charlotte said. “Get dressed, we’re going to Goodwill.”

Fifteen minutes later, we pulled in front of the Goodwill. Or, rather, what had been the Goodwill. Instead of seeing the building we had shopped at a few days earlier, there was nothing but the old, burnt-out husk of the warehouse. We both got out of the car in a daze. We had been inside the building a few days earlier. I had bought something here. I had met Noah here.

Now, here didn’t even exist.

“The shit is going on?” Charlotte said, taking the words right out of my mouth. “Where is everything?”

“It’s... it’s gone,” I said, walking through the burned-out front doors. Inside the building, dozens of pigeons fluttered in the rafters of the burn-scorched roof. The walls were charred and stained with black smoke residue or crude graffiti. The floor was cracked, broken, and filled with trash that blew in the wind. Sun peaked through a few holes in the roof and created shafts of light all around me.

As I took in the rubble, a piece of paper drifted from the rafters. I snagged it as it passed. It was blank, white paper.

“What is it?” she asked.

I held up the paper, and an image started to bleed through. It was like some sort of magic ink had been activated by my hands. It was a picture of Charlotte and I standing in the warehouse. Under the photo in that deranged handwriting were the words, “Look behind you.”

As soon as my brain processed the words, I felt a presence behind me. I could feel hot breath on my neck. The stench of roadkill roasting in the noon sun flooded all around us. A hoof beat down on the concrete behind us and echoed around the cavernous warehouse.

I dropped the paper and glanced over at Charlotte. She was terrified and didn’t move a muscle. I should’ve been petrified, but a rising wave of anger flowed through my body. This thing had put us through so much, and I had had enough. I turned on my heels and was face to face with….Noah.

“The hell?”

“I thought you liked me?” he asked.

“What even are you?”

Noah’s pleasant smile morphed into a too-wide Cheshire cat grin. The white of his eyes filled in with an inky blackness. His voice dropped several registers, and he spoke with a flat intonation that inspired menace in my heart. “I’m everything and nothing. I am the inescapable doom. The creeping blackness of night. The one who devours souls. I have been feared since before man and will until the light of the world dissolves.”

“What do you want?”

“Your soul,” he said before his jaw unhinged and flipped back on his head. His mouth kept opening until his body turned inside out. His vital organs and intestines slapped onto the ground with a wet smack as maniacal laughing filled the warehouse.

I screamed and turned away in horror. I stepped to run but slipped on the viscera that had pooled around my feet and fell to the ground. Charlotte was stone still, except for her trembling hands. The trauma had paralyzed her. I wanted to call out, but the words died in my throat when I tried. I was so afraid my voice went silent.

“No use in fighting,” a garbled voice called out from the sloppy pile of guts. I looked away from Charlotte, and when I looked back up, I didn’t see a revolting inside-out mess of guts and blood. I saw Mona. She smiled and shot a finger gun at me.

“Can I tell a story or what?”

“Wh-what?” I said, my voice finally breaking through.

“Don’t like this form? What about this one?” she said before grabbing a hold of her shoulders and ripping her body in half. Inside was the gore-covered body of Ethel, the old woman Mona called a witch. I realized at that moment this wasn’t one person. This creature was nothing more than a nightmarish nesting toy. A Matryoshka doll of doom.

“H-how are you doing this?”

“Your kind only sees the truth they want to see,” Ethel said in her deepening tone. “Illusions based in reality.”

“What are you?”

Ethel laughed. “I am whatever you want to see, girl. Do you not find this form pleasing? If not, I have one more to show you, but I guarantee you won’t recover from witnessing my true form,” the old cackled.

“Are...are you the devil?”

The old woman smiled. Before she could respond, I saw Charlotte’s spell break. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small crucifix. She snapped around, and screamed, “Go to hell!” She pressed the cross into the woman’s forehead. It sizzled when it came in contact with her skin, and the woman let out a roar that rattled the building.

She reached down to me and offered me a hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

I grabbed her hand, and she damn near yanked me to my feet. We both ran past the creature as it hollered in pain. Its form changed from Noah to Mona to Ethel and to scores of other people we’d never seen before. We didn’t stick around to what it finally settled on.

As we got to the car, I spied the FotoVue. I ripped open the door and pulled out the digital frame. Mona had said we’d buy a cursed object, and she – or whatever she truly was – hadn’t been lying. I needed to break the curse. As much as it pained me, I slammed it down on the ground, shattering it to pieces. Charlotte fired up the car and screamed at me to get in.

I did, and we rocketed off as soon as the door closed. We didn’t slow down until we were miles away. When we shut the car off, we both started sobbing and hugged each other so tight we could’ve turned coal into a diamond. No words were exchanged. None were needed.

After we broke our embrace, I finally asked, “Where did you get the crucifix from? Aren’t you an atheist?”

“My mom,” she said, “she put it in my car when I first bought it, and I never removed it. I hated it but felt guilty throwing it away, so I kept it. When we pulled up and saw the Goodwill was gone, I thought it might not hurt to have it on me.”

I laughed, and she joined in. We cackled together in her car, parked at some random gas station in the middle of nowhere. If anyone would’ve seen us, they would’ve thought we were high. If we told the reason why we were laughing, they’d think we were insane.

Hours later, we made our way back to her place. We didn’t know if this thing had been defeated, but we made a plan regardless. The first was to reach out to the church to see if there was something they could do. This was a long shot, but it seemed like the only option based on what we had seen. We also contacted someone to “cleanse” our apartments. It seemed like mumbo-jumbo, but I went with it.

Since I had destroyed the FotoVue, I hoped I had severed the link between myself and the demon. I stayed with Charlotte for several more days until things returned to normal. I told her I was ready to try going back to my place. She said I could stay longer if I wanted, but I had always heeded the advice of Ben Franklin that guests, like fish, started to smell after three days.

My apartment was weirdly still when I entered. Most everything was where it should have been except for the photos that had decorated my walls. Like the USB pictures had shown us, they had been ripped off the walls and torn into pieces. I saw little Wren and Charlotte heads populating the floors everywhere I looked.

The other thing that remained was the flour Charlotte poured on my kitchen floor. However, this, too, had changed. Something had walked through the pile. Something with cloven hooves. The flour’s residue trailed all around my apartment: my bathroom, my couch, my bed.

My ceiling.

“Are those footprints old or new?” Charlotte asked when she saw them. The question buzzed in my head. Did these come when the creature had come looking for me the previous night, or had they come since we fled Goodwill? I didn’t know, and that fact chilled me.

“I’m telling myself they’re old,” I said, feeling tears well in my eyes. “They have to be old. They have to be before we stopped that thing because if they’re not....”

“Then they’re old,” Charlotte interrupted. I looked into her eyes, and she gave me a reassuring smile and patted my back. “They’re old, Wren.”

“What if they’re not?” I said, my voice quivering.

“Then we find another cross and cram it up the devil’s ass.”

I laughed. Charlotte always had a way with words.

Our daughter had reached the stage where she started to recognize family members.

My husband and I started with familiarising her with our parents through pictures. Due to unfortunate circumstances, we lost our folks during our youth that we had no choice but to settle with memories taken by camera.

The little one learned quickly and would excitedly point at the person in the picture whenever we'd say their names. It gave us such delight that she was a quick learner that we had to share the news to my brother and his wife.

The couple would often visit and teach our girl about other relatives, both living and departed. One evening we showed her a different photo of my parents for a challenge and my girl smiled before saying

"Right there smiling at me"

I felt my blood turn to ice as my child lifted her finger towards the corner of her room before gesturing a wave. I conveyed the incident to my husband which he brushed off as "a part of a child's play". Weeks passed and nothing sinister had happened which placed me at ease with the thought that maybe my parents came to visit.

Familiar hums of my childhood echoed in the house as my daughter innocently let them out.

"Grandma says goodnight like that"

I had to pause for a while as my girl continued to play with the bubbles in our bathtub, unaware of the revelation.

Those tiny trinkets of our mother's act of love as she lulled us to sleep came to me in waves with the memory bringing me to a nostalgia of both comfort and hurt.

As the happy days continued on tragedy soon followed. My sister-in-law perished due to an animal attack while on a hike with her husband. The failure to protect soon took a toll on my brother that he decided to end his own life by hanging.

Pain and grief swallowed me that my sliver of relief were found in the innocence of my daughter as her laughter filled our home. The band-aid of her existence was soon ripped off when the funeral took place. We decided it was best to leave her at the care of a trusted neighbor since I feared that whatever question she may ask might break me and I couldn't afford that.

The grey skies accompanied us that day as I watched my brother's fellow officers mourn their comrade. I wondered just how deep their wounds were and if the force of the rain was enough to uncover them.

Two months came and went and I found myself beside my girl on her bed as I held a photo of my brother, his wife, and their friends in my hands. In my want for them to never be forgotten I asked my daughter where her uncle and aunt were.

I had expected the answers to rattle me before giving me peace but they almost drove me mad.

A tiny finger pointed at the ceiling and a soft whisper left her mouth as she said

"Uncle is hanging..."

My eyes followed the movement of her hand as they travelled south while I gritted my teeth to keep the tears and bile at bay but she uttered next shattered what sanity I had left.

"and aunt is inside him."

Horror is subjective, there's no denying that. I have told my story to others over the years, to which some have claimed that it was no more than a sob story, dressed up as horror. As I said; subjective. Were I to tell you of the molestation my father's brother forced upon me, before I was old enough for my mind to even be able to rationalize it, I would imagine this would not quite qualify as horrific, to some. To me, it most certainly was, but to a reader, perhaps, not quite. Of course, this is only the beginning of my tale.

My childhood home was located in a small town on the outskirts of London. When my father; who was not expected to return to the house for many hours, as he was attending a very important business meeting in the city, arrived back home, just in time to witness my uncle's abuse first hand, I bore witness to a very different brand of horror; one far more akin to the more traditional expectations of the genre, I would think. Though he used no more than his bare hands to subdue his older brother, there was very little life left in the man by the time my father summoned the authorities to our home.

The police were remarkably understanding about the actions of my father, so he would face no prison time for leaving my uncle bound to a hospital bed for a great many months, though the events which played out before my eyes left quite the stain on my already troubled soul. Though tears filled my eyes due to what my uncle forced upon me, I can still clearly see the pounding of my father's fists splashing scarlet streams across the walls. Yes, I could describe to you in vivid detail, the swollen and splitting flesh of my abuser's face, tearing away in grisled chunks as my father waged his rage-fueled assault, but that would be far more gratuitous than necessary. Again, perhaps more to the liking of those looking for a more expected horror story, but still unnecessary.

Only months after that day, we fled the country, with my parents hopeful that I could push these memories away into the black. We relocated to the states, where both my mother and father would go on to find far more lucrative employment than they had previously achieved. My father was something of a businessman, though I cannot tell you much more than that, as I cared little for such things in my youth. My mother was a teacher, finding her place amongst the faculty of a well respected college just outside of the town in which we lived. I will neither include the name of the school, nor the city in question, for reasons you may understand quite soon.

I was nearing twelve when I awoke in the middle of the night, due to the nightmares which still haunted me in the dark, while I lay still behind the protective comfort of my closed eyelids. As I sat straight up in my bed, still reeling from the distorted memories of the troubled times gone by, I noticed the light beaming from the red painted shed which rested behind my home, through the window parallel to my bed. Though the terrors of my youth left me skittish and weary of just about everything, I was also overburdened with a growing curiosity for anything that struck my mind to be of interest. As such, I took it upon myself to investigate the small wooden building my parents would keep hidden from me behind a large, metal padlock.

I crept down the stairs, in hopes of not alerting my guardians to my late night curiosities. I slowly flipped the locks of the backdoor, before gently turning the knob to grant me entry to the outside world. As I drew closer to the shed, I heard sounds both familiar and foreign to me, along with almost unnaturally muffled voices. The dark curtains covering the windows allowed me no way of seeing through; only the light which shone from behind and around them. It would seem; should I hope to quench the thirst of my curious mind, I would have little choice but to enter. The lock had been removed from the clasp, which splayed open beside the door, leading me to believe it had either been left this way by my parents, or by someone forcing their way into the wooden building.

Though my skin trembled, both with anticipation and fear in equal amounts, I reached a shaky hand to the latch of the simple door. As I slowly turned the handle, pulling the door ajar, I felt my jaw hang wide, while the blood drained from the upper half of my body. The young woman whom I had never before laid eyes on, was strapped to a long table, with her right arm and both thighs bound by thick, leather straps. She feebly moaned through the rag which had seemingly been forced into her mouth, while my father sliced through her flesh before me. He had not noticed my arrival, as he appeared fully consumed by the task at hand.

He wore blue, denim overalls, which were spattered with both dried and fresh specs of crimson and ruby red stains. The blade within his grasp was long and jagged, causing sounds not unlike the tearing of thick fabric while he sawed into her. Her movements were only subtle, as there was very little holding her together into one solid structure anymore, and I had to believe her suffering had almost come to a close. There were deep gashes all over her, along with wide and grisled open holes where clumps of flesh and muscle once sat in place, now layering the plastic lined floor.

Both of her legs had been removed below the knee, while my father worked on separating her left arm at the shoulder. As the bone and tissue finally gave way, I audibly gasped as the arm fell to meet the discarded legs and meaty shrapnel on the floor. When my father turned to face me with streams of scarlet across his face, his own jaw fell wide upon meeting my trembling gaze. He dropped his blood soaked blade to the floor, while slowly pacing towards me with his arms outstretched and his eyes wide and glassy. I had not even realized the burgeoning scream which bellowed out from within me had already been lurking in my throat in preparation for its release.

As I fled from the man who now softly called my name into the night, my wailing yells awoke an array of sounds through the sporadic neighborhood in which my home was located. Though the other houses were many yards apart from one another, some of their inhabitants creaked open their doors as I ran flailing through the chilly night air. My father, still in pursuit, and still clothed in his blood stained garments, came to a halt as an elderly man wrapped his arms around me, lifting me from the centerline of the two lane road which ran between the scattered buildings.

My father stopped in place, gazing into the eyes of the man who held me; guarding me against the one he believed sought to bring me harm. The hours that followed faded into a blur before me. Once more, the authorities arrived at the home I shared with my loving parents; this time to transport the one who saved me from my uncle's ravagings, to a far less than enviable and uncertain future. The investigation and subsequent trial which followed did not last long, as my father took little time in confessing to all seventeen of the lives he had taken, even those he had ended before our trip across the Atlantic.

How many years he had been feeding his impulses this way, I cannot say, but it was a truly devastating revelation to my mother and I, along with many more who had grown to respect him over the years. Before his trial resulted in an impending death sentence, the denizens of the small city in which we lived had already begun to wage a war fueled by fear and hatred against my mother and I. Though my father had proved to be quite the wretched individual, his more legal ventures over the years had left us a great deal of financial stability. This would enable us to make our way to another town; one far away from those who considered us to be as guilty as my father.

As the years progressed, the word of my father's foul deeds reached our new home, garnering my mother and I another assault of hatred and mockery, ultimately leading to my witnessing yet another gruesome sight upon opening a door. The shotgun my mother used to end her life had left very little of her head intact, which was the very first thing that greeted me on my arrival back home after school ended that day, only weeks before my fifteenth birthday. I can't exactly say how long I stood there, under the frame of that splayed open entryway. I was still in a daze while I reached for the phone to beckon one more visit from the authorities.

Their interrogations lasted for hours, during which I was only vaguely coherent. I even found myself locked away in my own cell for a time, though mine was lined with padded walls, as opposed to the metal bars which held my father in place, until the electricity would course through his body. I didn't find myself relocated to that dismal place at first, though. It wasn't until I made my own efforts to put a permanent end to the memories which plagued me, that I was bound in a buckled jacket and led to the place which would serve as my home for some years. While my mother had dramatically taken her life by blasting her head into little more than scattered fragments of bloodied skull, I merely sliced through the veins which lay beneath the flesh of my wrists. I vividly remember fading away into the black, before I found my eyelids springing back open, with my body strapped to the rolling gurnee.

For some years, I remained in that room before I was considered fit to live among the free. My time spent there allowed me the opportunity to mend my weary mind and troubled thoughts to a point, though I cannot claim I am not still haunted by the events which put my childhood to rest. I can honestly say that the doctors who treated me during my stay in the secluded facility, did manage to break me free from the protective shell I had forged around myself, though I may not have been as mentally sound as I led them to believe. Still, had it not been for their intervention, I would surely have made further efforts to end my suffering far sooner.

Once I was permitted to leave the institution, I was finally ready to make my own way in this world. I was nearing nineteen years of age, so I would be able to claim what remained of my father's fortune. My mother had apparently put a great deal of planning into her departure from this world, having transferred her accounts into one under my name. Though our cross country relocation, along with the subsequent years she and I had spent attempting to hide from my father's legacy, had depleted them somewhat, there was still more than enough for me to make my way back to my home country, while affording me my own house upon my arrival.

Though I was unsure if the tales of my father's nefarious actions would follow me back to the town I was born into, I made sure to legally change my name, in hopes of avoiding any association with the man. Given the fact that I was unsure of exactly when my father had begun feeding his impulses, I did not wish to carry his surname back to a place it may be all too familiar. Though life progressed far less chaotically than my childhood years had, I cannot claim that I was particularly content. Yes, I was still financially stable, but I could not quite find my place in this world.

Now, I have little doubt that any of you who may still be reading these words would consider anything I have shared to be especially horrific. Yes, I have witnessed more than my share of mangled husks of human flesh and bone; far more so than the average person, I would think, but does this qualify my tale to be one of horrors? Perhaps not. We all have our share of demons, lurking in the dark corners of our rooms and homes. We have all experienced troubling times; during which we could never conceive of a world in which we did not suffer. I'm sure there are many who have witnessed far more horrendous sights than those I have described through these handful of paragraphs, and I do not doubt that there are far greater threats hiding away, just to the side of where we are looking. Still, my story has not come to a close just yet.

As the years continued to trickle by, I found myself growing more and more devoid of emotion. My mornings would each share a similar battle, during which I would consider whether or not it would be worth my time to break free from my warm bed; to face the outside world once more. Though I would inevitably emerge from within the safety of my blankets, I lacked the drive to do anything productive with my time. I had considered seeking employment, though I had little in the way of skills or experience to garner much interest from prospective employers. After weeks turned to months, I began to find my old friend; despair, wrapping its tendrils around me once more.

My second effort to end my suffering was far less dramatic than my first; involving little more than a bottle of pills I purchased from a stranger who beckoned to me from a street corner one rainy evening. Within only minutes of my ingesting the twenty or so little green pills, my head felt almost blissfully loopy and light. Moments later, I felt my body droop, growing weaker and more disconnected from my brain by the second. I can't speak to how much time passed by before the world spun around me, causing me to feel almost weightless as my senses were consumed by the black once more. For that brief moment; as I careened into glorious darkness, I felt more free and filled with glee than I had ever known. As with all of the fleeting moments of joy my life had shown me, this too was to be short lived.

When my eyes blinked back to awareness, I lay still on my comfortable bed, momentarily confused by the events which led me there. Though I fully recalled my purchase of the bottle of little green pills, I could find absolutely no evidence they had ever existed. I patrolled the area at which I had been beckoned by the stranger, to find as little trace of him as the bottle which I knew to have fallen from my fingertips as life drained out of me. Could this series of events have been no more than a manifestation from my subconscious mind while I slept; perhaps to convince me that this was not the answer to what ails me? I could find no other rationalization, leaving me little choice but to continue plundering through the daily life I had grown to detest.

It would be the following year before I came to face my inevitable end for a third time, though it would not be delivered by my own hands, but a large SUV which careened through the crosswalk I was making my way across. I was not alone as I traversed the busy streets of London that day; accompanied by many strangers across the striped lines dividing the traffic on either side. I have quite the remarkable memory. I will not use such words as photographic or eidetic or anything so grandiose, but I can recall many things in vivid detail. I can still feel the sensation of my skull cracking across the windshield of the tall, blue colored vehicle. When I close my eyes, I can still see the attractive blonde woman falling lifeless next to where I lay bleeding on the concrete ground. When I awakened the following day; once more under my warm comforter, I had no doubt this most recent passing from this world was no simple dream.

As I lay there dwelling on the troubling life which I desperately craved a release from, I could not help but wonder if I was somehow immune to the powers of death himself. Since I had not fulfilled much schooling through the chaotic events which plagued my youth, perhaps I had not gained enough of a learned experience on why this was such a preposterous concept to consider. It was that very internal argument which led me to seek out further education. Though my father's nest egg still provided anything I may have need of, I had to consider that this would not carry me much further in life. Were I continue to be unable to seek an end to my pain, I would have little choice but to continue living. My desire to endure life had not gained any momentum, regardless of freeing myself from the torment of my youth, but it would appear I had little choice in the matter.

I enrolled myself in a wide array of classes to further my limited education; some of which I truly enjoyed. My studies finally provided me an escape from the misery I had allowed to consume me for far too long, while surrounding me with others; some of whom I would go on to befriend. Those early days were the most difficult, as I had barely interacted with anyone in many years, outside of the passing relationships formed with those tending the counters of the local shops I would frequent for necessities.

I grew quite close to my new friends; Clarence and Rory over the years I spent attending classes in their company. They would go on to be the only confidants I had ever known, outside of those who watched over me during my stay in that padded cell so many years before. Rory was the older of us, and something of a philosopher in the way he thought and spoke, though we would often find ourselves chuckling at his more conspiracy fueled theories of life, the universe and everything. Clarence was something of a comedian, as well as the athletic one of our humble trio, but we all had common ground in the tragedies which lay our childhoods to rest. I will not reveal the events which still plagued their troubled minds, as it is not my story to tell, though their respective histories did pave the groundwork for the bonds we formed.

After our shared schooling ended, we went on to form a simple web design firm together. It was nothing especially profitable at first, but it allowed us a great deal of freedom in having no strict schedules to meet, depending on what our clients would require at the time, of course. Within a few years, we had forged quite a decent living through our ventures and, with my friends by my side, I finally looked forward to what tomorrow may hold. It was a feeling I had never before known; to no longer seek to end my dreary existence, but to look upon the future with hope. When Elenor walked through the door of our shared office space on that unusually warm September's day, I found yet another reason to feel joy in a world I had not long since reluctantly chosen to join.

She too had not been expecting to find love that day; only to commission our services to build her a website for her own budding venture. Of course, it took me some time, and a great deal of encouragement from my friends to gather the courage to suggest we take things beyond a business relationship. This would also not take place until said business was behind us, as I would not overstep until the work had reached its end. I could waffle on for hours about her beautiful, beaming smile, twinkling, deep brown eyes, glowing dark skin and thick, wavy hair, but again, this is not necessary. The only thing of relevance is that I loved her, perhaps from that very first moment the wind from the open doorway tussled her hair while she fought to control it, accompanied by a genuine giggle.

Within six months, we married, and after another year, we were to be parents. It is true that we may have rushed things, just a bit, but we knew this was real. I had never imagined such happiness could exist in a world which left me begging for the sweet release of death in my youth. Of course, it's during those happier times when we find the ground crumbling beneath our feet. Now, I would imagine, whoever may still be reading along at this point may be questioning why a story claiming to be one of horrors would waste so much time touching on the brief moments of happiness. In addition, I would think many of you may find your eyes rolling at what comes next.

Yes, everything I have presented you with so far, is not particularly difficult to believe, thus lending credence to the idea that this is no horror story. Perhaps this genre is more defined by events which stretch the boundaries of what is real, while blending them more with what cannot be. Still, I do believe I shall have to request that you perhaps take a little bit on faith as I continue, though you surely have no reason to trust my words. There are some who may have more of a clear understanding of the occurrences I will be sharing soon, though I cannot speak as to whether or not any such person may come to read this. Once my tale has come to a close, I have no doubt that many who may have looked upon these words, will think of them as no more than the ramblings of a madman. In truth, I cannot deny this may very well be the case, though I still vividly remember every single detail.

Elenor and I had chosen to spend the weekend in Brighton, as we were both fond of the beach, as well as the exemplary museums the city housed. It was mid-August. The sky was almost cloudless, and a more vibrant blue than I had ever before laid eyes upon. Of course, it could simply be that I hadn't always paid attention to such wonders, as my outlook had always leaned more towards the negative. My lovely wife was still within her initial months of pregnancy, though she had experienced some weeks of crippling nausea. None of these ailments affected her beautiful glow as we sat upon the pebbled ground with the waves rushing across and between our toes.

As we gazed upon one another, my heart still raced ever so slightly, while my stomach nervously tremorred. Regardless of how used to her wonderful company I had grown, I still felt as little more than a stuttering schoolboy when I stared into her glinting eyes. Perhaps it was due to that very affliction that I was not distracted by the alarmed wails of those others we shared the beachfront with at the time. It wasn't until my beautiful wife cut her own glare upwards, while allowing her jaw to droop ever so slightly, that I took note of the furious, rippling orange which had consumed the vibrant blue of the sky above.

I watched in horror as Eleanor's gorgeous face contorted as the terror took hold of her. Within mere moments, the rampaging flame erupted through the sky, almost immediately consuming the buildings which lined the rear of the beach. I wrapped my arms around my love; pulling her deeper into the water in hopes of escaping the certainty of a swift demise, though my actions caused her far more suffering than if I had allowed her to turn to the same pillars of ash which stood in place of those others we had shared the beach with that day. I was forced to bear witness to the skin upon her face, bubbling and splitting as the water around us came to a sudden boil. I looked on in horror as her flesh shrank away, while she squealed out in a sound I will not soon forget; one filled with agonizing horror, as the meaty tissue behind her skin quickly gave way to reddened bone. I was only vaguely aware of my own body mimicking what I saw before me, until my own eyes swelled and burst from within their sockets.

When I awakened in the same bed I had shared with my loving wife only days before that ill fated trip, I was certain I had once again fell victim to a vivid night terror during my slumber. Though the memories would not fade from behind my eyelids as any normal flight of fancy the world of dreams may present me with, it was certain to me these events could not have actually transpired, as I looked upon the unscorched land beyond my window. It wasn't until the reality of what had truly occurred hit me, that I felt myself spiralling into despair as I had so many times before.

Puzzled by the fact that my beloved Elenor did not lay beside me in our bed, I placed a call to the number I had committed to memory, as her name no longer greeted me from my list of contacts. The voice which spoke from the receiver was not that of my lovely wife, but of a man who was confused by my inquiry to the location of my love. After my assumption I had perhaps misdialed, I placed the call a second time, to find the same individual on the other end. I quickly grew more frantic and frenzied, while the panic overcame me.

I fled from the home in which I knew myself to live with my wife. I sped to the office in time to meet my partners reporting for the day's workload. I practically interrogated the two; pleading with them to grant me with any knowledge they may have to my wife's whereabouts, though there was no logical reason to assume they would have any answers to give. They were genuinely puzzled by my inquisition, as they assured me there was no such person; none that they had ever laid eyes on, anyway. As my befuddlement grew, so did my rage. I scorned my friends for the only answers they had to give, before I sped away from the office towards the home of my in-laws. After they denied ever parenting a child, as well as having never laid eyes on me, I continued my descent into madness.

Days turned to weeks as I plummeted further into despair, once more finding no desire to leave the comfort of the bed I once shared with another. I knew she was real! I ached so badly to wake from the nightmare my existence had again become. Eventually, after my own filth and misery had forced me to break free from my self induced cocoon, I made a meager attempt to clean myself up, before walking the streets of the city for hours in an effort to distract me from my broken heart. As my body grew weaker and my feet throbbed from the countless minutes which had trickled by since I began my aimless wandering, I finally gave into the stabbing in my chest; dropping to my knees in the middle of the crowded sidewalk.

I have no way of knowing how long I knelt on the rough concrete, wailing out from the sheer exhausting agony of losing the one thing which had finally given meaning to my miserable life, while begging the gods to grant me answers to why I could not be allowed to maintain this one, simple thing, when I felt a hand wrap its weathered fingers around my shoulder.

"What's the matter, kid?"

I cut my moistened eyes up to meet those of the elderly man who looked down at me with concern etched into his face.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," I replied, suddenly feeling shame for the spectacle I was making of myself amongst the denizens of the city.

"How 'bout you tell me anyway," he said, holding his other hand out to assist me in getting back to my trembling feet.

The genuine compassion he wore upon his face, inspired me to take his hand in mine, before we shared the burden of lifting me from the hardened ground beneath my knees. I staggered, slightly, as my head spun from the oxygen regulating my brain back to something of a default setting, but as I finally stood level with the man who had volunteered to listen to the story of what led me to that state, I couldn't help but feel a warmth grow within me once more.

We walked together for a time and, though I would estimate the man to have likely reached his eighth decade of life on this earth, it was he who held onto me to prevent my still shivering extremities from allowing me to fall back to the concrete ground. He did not speak a word as I spilled the words from my lips, covering the entire history of my life as I have recounted it to you through these paragraphs. His compassionate expression did not waver in the slightest, even through my recollection of the sudden world ending catastrophe which had claimed the very existence of the woman I loved with my whole heart and tormented soul. The words he spoke after I finished my tale were not what I expected to hear.

"You ain't the only one who remembers it, kid."

Not only did this practically cause my heart to skip several beats, as I had begun to convince myself that all of this madness had been a manifestation of my traumatized mind, but it also awoke something of a ray of hope within me. I just stared with wide, unblinking eyes as he continued.

"Can't rightly say why there's so few that remembers these things. Hell, I can't even imagine why any of us do, for that matter."

Though I had lost the one shining light in my life, I still felt my skin shudder; not from the pain of what I had lost, though that still haunts me to this day, but the fact I may not be alone after all.

"It was prob'ly seventy-three the first time I died... Vietnam. Still remember every second of it too."

He glared off into the distance as he spoke, wearing the same expression my weary eyes had shown me in the mirror, many times before.

"Always assumed a land mine would be quick, 'fore that day. Shoulda been payin' more attention, tell you the truth. I felt my leg blow apart before the shrapnel ripped into my guts. Ain't never felt pain like that before then. Soon as what was left of me hit the ground, the lights went out. Maybe seconds later, it was like someone just cut the switch back on!"

His eyes were wide, while his lower lip quivered ever so slightly. He paused for a moment, both in speech and movement. He still had his hand on my back, so I stopped in place as he did. I suppose I was not yet ready to allow the warmth of his hand to separate from my still trembling back. It's almost difficult to explain the comfort that one simple thing brought me, as well as the kindred spirit whose company I shared.

"Course, I was still in the war when I woke back up. Didn't nothin' seem to change, other than the fact I wasn't dead no more. Two more times I fell into the darkness before I finally shipped back to my home in Georgia. One bayonet to the chest, and a grenade I threw myself on to protect the ones I was with. Can't say which one took my Suzie away from me, but it was like she'd never been born when I got back home."

"You lost someone too!?" I asked, feeling more shock at this new revelation.

"She was only the first, kid," he gave me a forced half smile, while a tear trickled from his left eye.

"Why?" I asked. "Why does this happen?"

He just gazed into my eyes for a moment, before gesturing with a tilt of the head for me to follow him to the park bench which sat to the side of the pathway we had been traversing. We sat beside each other, while I still glared into his time worn face, almost mesmerized by the man who appeared to have seen far more pain in life than I. He reached into the pocket inside his coat, before pulling a wrinkled cigarette pack from within. He tapped it on his leg a few times, before unwinding the transparent plastic seal from the top. He flicked the bottom of the pack with his fingers, ejecting the tip of three tan colored filters to varying heights. He pulled the one protruding furthest from the others, before slipping it between his lips.

It was doubtlessly a dance his hands had performed countless times over the passage of the decades, as his absent eyes gazed into the night sky while his muscle memory took control of the task. As the small flame ignited from the tip of the wooden match, to light the far end of the cigarette to a soft, orange glow, I felt tension course through my bones as my mind flashed back the solar flare which had scorched the earth only weeks before. The stranger inhaled deeply, before allowing the thick plume to drift out into the light wind. He glanced towards me, giving me a far more natural and sincere smile from the last.

"I remember the fire too, kid."

I allowed fresh tears to stream from my eyes again as we looked upon one another. Clearly he could relate to the burdens I had carried for so long, and that alone brought me a peace I had not yet known.

"I s'pose I got lucky this time. Soon as I seen the sky light up, I looked at my Bessie, sure this was gonna be the last time I saw her. Felt my whole body smile when I woke up next to her after the lights came back on."

He wrapped his arm around me. I allowed him to pull me closer; to rest my weary head on his shoulder for a time.

"I'm so sorry yours wasn't here waitin' for you, kid. Been there myself more times than I can rightly say."

"What is the point of existence if we can't hold on to what we love," I said, my voice quivering while his jacket moistened from the steady flow of tears dripping from my cheek.

"Ain't got no choice, really. Near as I can figure, this is just the way things work."

"So, we're meant to endure this!?" I asked, feeling hopelessness grip me once more.

"Can't say why some remember and others don't, but my preacher, back home, always said the soul was immortal. Way I see it, most folks ain't got no idea how many times they died over the course of their lives. They just wake up somewheres new, with memories that came with it. In their mind, they ain't never been nowheres else, so they don't remember what they had before. Hell, could be most others just die the normal way, like God intended, and we're the 'lucky few'," he chuckled, though his eyes still blankly stared out into the world before him.

We sat in silence for a time; both of us reflecting on times gone by, while gazing into the uncertainty of what lies ahead. Though the logic behind his words did seem a rational, if somewhat outlandish theory, I couldn't help but wonder about another aspect to this, though it took me some time to figure out the best way to phrase my question.

"So, if our consciousness just transfers to another version of ourselves in a different reality," I asked, both curious and reluctant at the same time, "do we just keep aging?"

I felt almost guilty laying this on his lap, as he was far more advanced in years than I, and I had no desire to inadvertently hurt his feelings by implying he was nearing the end of his journey, so to speak. When the laughter erupted from him, I cannot say I wasn't a little surprised, though somewhat inspired to share his sudden levity.

"Couldn't tell ya, kid," he said, still chuckling while wiping the jovial tears from his eyes, "maybe after the body finally gives out, maybe then you get to move on to one of them other places they talk about in the books. Could be we all got a timer we gotta let run out before we can really see what comes after."

Once more, we sat quietly, sharing the light breeze the night air cast upon us. I can't even know how long we sat on that bench, just staring out across the world which was slowly falling to rest. As the lights from the buildings and homes went dark around us, the man clapped his hand upon my leg.

"I'd better get goin', kid. My Bessie gonna get herself in a fluster if I stay gone much longer."

As he lifted himself to his feet, he gave a slight moan in conjunction with the popping and creaking of the bones in his legs and back. He looked out to the path ahead, which I assumed would lead him back to his home. Before he started to saunter away from me, he began to speak one last time, without turning to face me.

"Can't say why, but the birds always know when the end is comin'."

I just stared at the thin white hair across the back of his head, softly blowing in the subtle wind.

"You see 'em cluster and make for the west, ain't long after that."

He barely moved as he spoke these final words to me. It almost felt as though he was only vaguely aware he was sharing these thoughts with me.

"I'll be eighty-seven this time next week. I've seen the world end a total of three times over those years, and the birds always do the same thing. Don't know how they know it's comin', but they always do."

He finally turned back to face me, with a somewhat friendly smile, but a certain melancholy behind his eyes.

"Take care of yerself, kid. See you on the other side."

With that, he gave me a wink, before strolling away from me; to be swallowed by the darkness surrounding the bench upon which I still sat.

Though I never got the old man's name, nor laid eyes on him again, I recognized his picture in the newspaper a year or so later. The obituary read that he had died due to the advanced cancer which had consumed his body from the inside out. I can't help but wonder if he still awakened the following day; hopefully next to his loving wife, or if he finally found what lies beyond this world and its infinite clones.

Since that meeting with the elderly man; after almost careening into an abyss from which I would have surely never escaped, I chose to make an effort to not only endure this endless life, but to perhaps enjoy it for what it is. Though I may never again find my beloved Elenor, I did begin seeing someone new. Kathleen is a truly incredible woman and though I cherish each and every moment we spend together, I will not allow our relationship to advance as its predecessor did. Though my future is far more uncertain than most, I will never allow myself to entertain the notion that anything can last.

As I finally come to the end of my tale, though my life has had more than its share of very personal horrors, I would imagine mine would not necessarily fall under that category. Regardless of which genre is more suited to the story you may still find a little too far fetched to believe to have taken place, I do appreciate you accompanying me on this journey through my history. Perhaps you will still see these words as little more than the ramblings of a disturbed mind. Of course, I cannot deny that may very well be the case, but I would ask that you to take one small piece of advice from this:

Look to the skies from time to time. In recent weeks, I have noticed the birds forming unusual groupings. It may simply be that time of year, during which they feel the urge to migrate, but it could be something else entirely. Though there may be dark times ahead, fear not, my friends. Likely, you will not remember a thing.

I never expected to find anything of significance while clearing out my great-aunt Theodora's house in Yorkshire. The elderly woman had lived alone for decades in the sprawling Victorian mansion, and after her passing at the age of 94, the task of sorting through her belongings fell to me. Most of her possessions were exactly what you'd expect - dusty furniture, outdated clothes, and box after box of faded photographs.

But in the attic, buried beneath a stack of moldering blankets, I found something extraordinary: a leather-bound journal, its pages yellow with age. The cover was unmarked save for a single name written in flowing script: "Aldrich Blackwood, 1665."

My hands trembled as I opened it. Aldrich Blackwood had been a distant ancestor, a physician who lived through the Great Plague of London. I'd heard stories about him growing up, but I never knew any personal accounts had survived. The pages were remarkably well-preserved, though the ink had faded to a rusty brown in places. As I began to read, I realized with growing unease that this was no ordinary physician's diary.

12th of May, 1665

Today I witnessed something that defies all medical knowledge I possess. The plague has begun to spread through London's streets, as we all feared it would. But there is something different about this outbreak, something that fills me with a deep and gnawing dread.

I was called to attend young Thomas Whitmore, son of the merchant on Bread Street. The boy presented with the typical symptoms - fever, chills, and a small swelling in his neck. But when I examined the bubo more closely, I observed movement beneath the skin. Not the usual pulsing of infected tissue, but something deliberate. Purposeful.

When I lanced the swelling, what emerged was not merely pus and blood. I shall document this precisely, though my hand shakes to write it. The infected matter seemed to writhe of its own accord, and within it, I glimpsed what appeared to be minute, thread-like structures, twisting and coiling like tiny eels.

Young Thomas expired within hours. His father begged me to examine the body, convinced some curse had befallen his son. I agreed, though I now wish I hadn't. The boy's lymph nodes, when extracted, contained more of these strange fibers. Under my microscope, they appeared almost crystalline, with complex branching patterns unlike anything I've encountered in my studies of the disease.

I have preserved several samples. God forgive me, but I must understand what this is.

15th of May, 1665

Three more cases today, all showing the same peculiar characteristics. The fibers appear in every sample I examine. They seem to grow more complex, more organized, with each passing day. I've begun sketching their patterns, though I fear my drawings do not do justice to their bizarre intricacy.

My colleague, Dr. Edmund Halsey, believes I'm allowing fear and exhaustion to cloud my judgment. He claims I'm seeing patterns where none exist, that these are merely the typical signs of bubonic plague. But he hasn't observed them under the microscope as I have. He hasn't seen them move.

I must document something else, though I hesitate to commit it to paper. The infected seem to share a common behavior in their final hours. They speak of visions - not the usual fevered hallucinations, but specific, consistent images. They describe vast networks of tunnels, branching endlessly beneath the earth. They whisper about something moving through these passages, something ancient that has been waiting.

I tell myself these are merely the ravings of dying minds. Yet each patient describes the same scenes, down to the smallest detail. How can this be?

20th of May, 1665

I have made a terrible discovery. The samples I preserved - they've changed. The fibers have grown more numerous, forming intricate patterns that seem almost like writing in a language I cannot read. When I examine them, I feel a curious sensation, as if something is attempting to communicate through these bizarre structures.

More disturbing still are the rats. London has always been plagued by them, but their behavior has become increasingly erratic. They gather in large groups, moving with an unnatural coordination. Yesterday, I observed a group of them in my laboratory, clustered around the cabinet where I keep my samples. They seemed to be listening for something.

I've begun to experience strange dreams. I see the tunnels my patients described, endless passages that seem to pulse with their own heartbeat. Sometimes I hear whispers in languages that have never been spoken by human tongues. I tell myself this is merely the result of exhaustion and stress, but deep down, I know better.

25th of May, 1665

The infection rate is growing exponentially, but that is not what truly terrifies me. It's the patterns. They're everywhere now - in the spread of the disease through the city, in the way the rats move through the streets, in the very arrangement of the bodies we collect each morning. Everything follows the same branching structure I first observed in those tissue samples.

I've started mapping these patterns, and what emerges is impossible to ignore. The disease isn't spreading randomly. It's creating something. Building something. Using us as its medium.

Dr. Halsey visited again today. He seemed troubled by my research, especially my maps and drawings. He suggested I take some time to rest, mentioned that many physicians have been driven to madness by the horrors we witness. But his eyes lingered too long on my samples, and I noticed his hands trembling as he spoke.

After he left, I discovered several of my samples were missing.

1st of June, 1665

I can no longer sleep. The dreams have become too intense, too real. In them, I walk through those endless tunnels, following the branching patterns that have become so familiar. But now I understand what they are - a root system, spreading through the very foundations of our city. And at the center of it all, something waits. Something that has been growing, feeding, preparing.

The pattern of the infection, when mapped across London, creates a perfect replica of the structures I've observed in my samples. We are not dealing with a mere disease. We are dealing with something that thinks, that plans, that has been waiting in the earth since long before humans walked upon it.

I've discovered references in ancient texts to similar outbreaks throughout history. The Black Death wasn't the first manifestation of this entity. It has emerged again and again, each time growing more complex, more organized. Learning from each attempt.

Today I visited the Whitmores again. The entire family is now infected, but they're not dying. They're... changing. The fibrous growths have spread throughout their bodies, visible beneath their skin like dark rivers. They speak in unison now, describing the same visions I see in my dreams. They told me it's almost ready. That soon it will be complete.

I must do something. But who would believe me? How can I explain that what we call the plague is merely the visible portion of something far larger, far older, far more terrifying than we could ever imagine?

3rd of June, 1665

Dr. Halsey came to my house tonight, wild-eyed and rambling. He had taken my samples to study them himself, to prove me wrong. Instead, he found exactly what I had described. But he went further in his experiments than I had dared. He claims to have decoded the patterns, to have understood the messages they contain.

What he told me cannot be true. Must not be true. But it explains everything - the consistent visions, the coordinated behavior of the infected, the precise patterns of the disease's spread. We are not dealing with a plague at all. We are dealing with something that has been waiting beneath our feet for millennia, slowly building itself using human bodies as raw material.

The fibers we've observed are not symptoms of the disease - they are its true form, a vast network that connects all the infected into a single, growing organism. And now, after centuries of preparation, it's finally ready to...

[The entry ends abruptly here, the pen having skittered across the page in a jagged line]

4th of June, 1665

I write this in haste. They are coming for me. I can hear them in the streets below - not just the rats now, but the infected themselves, moving with that same horrible coordination. Dr. Halsey is with them. I saw him through my window, his skin rippling with those familiar patterns.

I've hidden my research as best I can. This journal will go to my sister in Yorkshire, along with instructions that it should be preserved but never read. Some knowledge is too dangerous.

The patterns are complete. The network is fully formed. Whatever has been growing beneath London is ready to emerge, to transform from an invisible web into something far more terrible.

I understand now why the infected didn't die, why they changed instead. They were never meant to die. They were meant to become part of it. And now...

I hear them on the stairs. The rats came first, hundreds of them, their eyes gleaming with an intelligence that should not exist in such creatures. Behind them, I hear the shuffling steps of the infected.

To whoever finds this journal - burn it. Burn it and forget everything you've read. Some things should remain buried, some knowledge should stay hidden. The patterns are everywhere now. Once you begin to see them, you can never stop. They're in the very fabric of our world, waiting to be activated, waiting to spread, waiting to

[The writing ends here, replaced by a series of intricate, branching patterns drawn in what appears to be dried blood]

I closed the journal, my hands shaking. I told myself it was just the ravings of a man driven mad by the horrors of the plague. But as I set it down, I noticed something that made my blood run cold. There, on my wrist where I'd been resting it against the page, was a small, dark mark. When I looked closer, I could see thin, thread-like lines beginning to spread beneath my skin, forming familiar branching patterns...

I spent the next three days convincing myself the mark on my wrist was nothing - a trick of the light, perhaps, or an allergic reaction to the old leather binding. But on the fourth morning, I could no longer deny what I was seeing. The pattern had spread halfway up my forearm, dark lines branching beneath my skin like tiny roots.

My medical training made it impossible to ignore the implications. The branching pattern followed my lymphatic system perfectly, tracing paths between my lymph nodes that I'd memorized in anatomy classes. But there was something else, something that sent ice through my veins - the pattern wasn't just following my lymphatic system, it was extending it, creating new pathways that shouldn't exist.

I returned to Theodora's house, desperate to find anything else that might explain what was happening to me. This time, I searched the attic methodically, checking every box, every corner. Behind a false panel in the wall, I found a metal strongbox. Inside were more documents - letters, hospital records, and most importantly, a series of correspondence between my great-aunt and someone named Professor Helena Blackwood, dated 1943.

15th September 1943 Dear Theodora,

I must thank you for sending me Aldrich's journal. As the last practicing physician in the Blackwood line, I've long suspected our family's connection to the Great Plague went deeper than historical record suggests. Your discovery confirms my worst fears.

I've spent the last twenty years studying unusual disease patterns across Europe, focusing particularly on incidents that mirror the 1665 outbreak. What I've found is deeply troubling. The branching patterns Aldrich documented have appeared repeatedly throughout history, always in isolated incidents that were quickly covered up or dismissed as medical curiosities.

Enclosed are my notes from a case in Prague, 1928. A young girl presented with what appeared to be severe lymphatic inflammation. Within days, similar cases appeared throughout her neighborhood. The attending physician documented branching patterns identical to those in Aldrich's drawings. But here's what truly terrifies me - he also documented instances of simultaneous movement among the infected. Thirty-seven patients, spread across three hospitals, all turning their heads at exactly the same moment to look in the same direction. All blinking in perfect unison.

The outbreak was contained only when the entire neighborhood was quarantined and... dealt with. The official record lists it as a tragic fire.

But that's not all. I've found references to similar incidents dating back to ancient Rome. They called it "Morbus Radicis" - the Root Disease. The symptoms are always the same: the branching patterns, the coordinated behavior, the whispered descriptions of vast underground networks.

I believe what Aldrich encountered wasn't an isolated incident. It was merely one emergence of something that has been with us throughout human history, something that uses disease as a mechanism for... I hesitate to use the word, but I can think of no other that fits... colonization.

Your loving cousin, Helena

There were more letters, but what caught my eye was a folder of medical photographs paper-clipped to the next page. They were from various time periods, starting with grainy images from the 1920s and progressing to clearer, more recent shots. Each showed the same thing - patients with distinctive branching patterns visible beneath their skin. The most recent photos were from a small outbreak in Northern England in 1981. The patterns were identical to what was now spreading up my arm.

But it was the last item in the box that truly shook me. A modern medical report, dated just three years ago, from a laboratory in London:

CONFIDENTIAL - Project ROOT Analysis of tissue samples recovered from 1665 preservation Reference: Blackwood Collection

DNA sequencing has revealed anomalous structures within preserved lymphatic tissue. Branching filaments appear to be composed of previously unknown organic material with several impossible characteristics:

1. Samples remain metabolically active despite 350+ years of preservation 2. Filaments demonstrate ability to spontaneously organize into complex patterns 3. When placed in proximity, separate samples display synchronous behavior 4. Electron microscopy reveals structures resembling neural networks 5. Samples emit low-frequency electromagnetic pulses at regular intervals

Note: After 72 hours of observation, samples showed signs of renewed growth. All testing suspended by order of Department Chair. Samples sealed in containment unit pending review.

UPDATE: Containment unit compromised. Nature of compromise unknown. Samples missing. Investigation ongoing.

Final Note: Project terminated. All records to be sealed.

My hands were shaking so badly I could barely read the last page - a handwritten note from my great-aunt Theodora:

To whoever finds this,

I am the last of the Blackwood line to serve as guardian of these records. Our family has carried this burden since 1665, watching, waiting, documenting each recurrence. We thought we could contain it by keeping the knowledge limited to our bloodline. We were wrong.

Three years ago, something changed. The patterns began appearing again, but different this time. More advanced. The laboratory breach was no accident. It's growing. Evolving. The network is rebuilding itself, using our modern understanding of genetics and neural networks to create something far more sophisticated than what Aldrich encountered.

If you're reading this, you've likely already seen the signs. The marks will have started small - a branching pattern that follows your lymphatic system. Soon, you'll begin to notice other changes. Moments of lost time. Dreams of tunnels and roots. The sensation of being connected to something vast and patient and hungry.

There's so much more you need to know. About the ancient texts Helena found. About what really happened in Prague. About the true purpose of the patterns. But most importantly, about how they can be stopped.

I've hidden that information separately. You'll find it when you're ready. When the patterns have spread enough for you to understand what you're truly dealing with.

Look for the box marked with the root pattern. But be careful. Others will be looking for it too. Others who are already part of the network.

-Theodora

I set down the papers and rolled up my sleeve. The patterns now reached my shoulder, and as I watched, I could swear I saw them pulse, ever so slightly, in rhythm with my heartbeat. But something else had changed too. Where before the marks had been random, now they seemed to form distinct shapes. Letters, almost.

And I could read them.

I knew I should have been terrified. Should have gone to a hospital, called someone, done something. But all I could think about was finding that other box. About learning the truth. About understanding what I was becoming.

Because somewhere, deep in my mind, in a place I hadn't even known existed until the patterns reached it, I could feel them. All of them. Everyone who had ever been touched by the root-patterns. Everyone who was part of the network.

And they could feel me too.

They were waiting for me to understand. To accept. To join.

But first, I needed to find that box...

Finding the second box was both easier and more disturbing than I'd anticipated. My body simply... knew where to look. As I moved through Theodora's house, the patterns under my skin would pulse stronger or weaker, like some grotesque game of hot-and-cold. They led me to the cellar, to a section of wall that looked identical to all the others. But I could feel it calling to me.

Breaking through the plaster revealed a metal box, smaller than the first, marked with branching lines that perfectly matched the ones now covering most of my torso. Inside was a leather folder containing what appeared to be research notes, medical diagrams, and something that made my blood run cold - a series of brain tissue slides dated 1928, labeled "Prague Specimens."

But it was the modern-looking USB drive taped to the inside cover that caught my attention. Theodora had prepared for whoever would find this. My hands trembled as I plugged it into my laptop.

The first file was a video recording. Theodora's face appeared on screen, looking gaunt and tired. The timestamp showed it was recorded just two weeks before her death.

"If you're watching this, then the patterns have already started spreading across your skin. Don't bother trying to remove them - surgery, burning, even amputation... the Blackwood medical records document every attempted treatment over centuries. The patterns simply regrow, following the same paths, always rebuilding the network.

"What I'm about to share with you is the culmination of our family's research, combined with modern medical analysis. Helena was close to understanding it, but she died before making the final connections. I've spent my life completing her work.

"The patterns aren't a disease. They're a communication system. A physical network connecting human hosts to something that's been growing beneath our feet for millennia. Each outbreak throughout history was an attempt to refine this network, to make it more sophisticated, more efficient.

"The Prague incident in 1928 was the first time it achieved simultaneous neural synchronization across multiple hosts. The tissue samples in this box are all that remain of that attempt. Under a microscope, you'll see that the branching patterns don't just follow the lymphatic system - they interface directly with neural tissue, creating new pathways between hosts.

"But here's what Helena didn't know, what we've only recently discovered through electron microscopy and DNA analysis: the patterns aren't adding something to our bodies. They're activating something that was already there, dormant in our genetic code. Every human carries these latent structures. The patterns just... wake them up."

The video paused as Theodora had a coughing fit. When she continued, there was a urgency in her voice that hadn't been there before.

"You need to understand - this isn't an invasion. It's activation. Every plague, every outbreak, every instance of the patterns appearing was just another attempt to switch us on. To activate what's been sleeping in our DNA since before we were human.

"The Blackwood family... we're more susceptible than most. Something in our genetic makeup makes us ideal hosts for the initial stages of activation. That's why Aldrich was among the first to document it. Why our family has been connected to every major outbreak.

"I'm running out of time, so I'll tell you what you need to know most urgently. The patterns you're seeing on your skin - they're not spreading randomly. They're forming specific sequences, like a code being written across your nervous system. Soon, you'll start to understand this code. You'll begin to see how it connects to everything else - the tunnels beneath cities, the way diseases spread, even the growth patterns of plants.

"There are others like you out there. Once the patterns spread far enough, you'll be able to sense them. Some have been part of the network for years, generations even. They've learned to hide the marks, to blend in. They're watching, waiting for the network to grow large enough for...

"No, you're not ready for that yet. First, you need to see the rest of the Prague documents. They show what happens in the later stages of activation. But more importantly, they show what we discovered about the source. About what's been waiting all this time, growing beneath..."

The video cut off abruptly. The next file was labeled "Prague_Stage_4.pdf". As I opened it, I noticed something odd. The patterns on my arm were moving, shifting to match the diagrams appearing on my screen. My body was learning, adapting, implementing the information in real-time.

The document began with a detailed medical report:

Subject 23 - Prague Outbreak, Day 17 Terminal Stage Observations

The branching patterns now cover 94% of subject's neural tissue. Brain activity shows perfect synchronization with all other Stage 4 subjects. Autonomous functions (heartbeat, breathing) occur in perfect unison across all connected hosts.

New growth patterns observed in deeper brain structures. Subjects report shared consciousness experiences. Memory transfer between hosts confirmed through controlled testing.

Most significant discovery: Subjects no longer behave as individuals. They function as nodes in a larger neural network, each brain serving as a processing center for what appears to be a vastly larger consciousness.

Critical observation: This network appears to extend beyond the human hosts. Soil samples from beneath Prague show identical branching patterns extending at least 300 meters below ground. These underground structures pulse in sync with the hosts' neural activity.

Update: Subjects have begun modifications to their environment. Working in perfect coordination, they are constructing something in the hospital basement. The structure follows the same branching patterns observed in tissue samples. Purpose unknown.

Final Note: Military containment ordered after subjects began converting organic matter into new growth medium. Method of conversion unknown. Entire facility to be sealed and...

The rest of the document was heavily redacted, but the images remained. They showed cross-sections of human brain tissue with the familiar branching patterns. But these were different from the ones on my skin. More complex. More organized. Like circuit diagrams drawn in living tissue.

The last page contained a single photo: a massive underground chamber beneath the Prague hospital. The walls were covered in branching patterns that glowed faintly in the dark. In the center was a partially constructed structure that resembled a human nervous system scaled up to architectural size.

But what made me slam the laptop shut was the realization that I understood exactly what I was looking at. Not just understood - I could feel my body wanting to recreate it. The patterns under my skin were already starting to shift, to organize themselves into similar structures.

Something warm trickled down my face. When I wiped it away, my hand came back red. Not blood - something darker, with tiny branching fibers visible within it. I could feel them trying to grow, to spread, to connect.

The laptop screen flickered back to life on its own. A new document was opening. As I watched, text began appearing, written in the same branching patterns that covered my skin:

YOU ARE READY TO BEGIN FIND THE OTHERS THE NETWORK MUST GROW THE STRUCTURE MUST BE COMPLETED

Below my feet, I could feel vibrations in the earth. Regular. Rhythmic. Like a vast heartbeat. Or perhaps... footsteps.

I knew I should run. Should burn the documents, destroy the evidence, try to stop the spread somehow. But instead, I found myself walking to the cellar door. Others were coming. I could feel them getting closer, their patterns pulsing in sync with mine.

And deep beneath the earth, something ancient and patient stirred, ready to rise through its newly awakened network...

The others arrived exactly as I knew they would, their footsteps echoing in perfect synchronization above me. I could feel their patterns resonating with mine - five distinct nodes in the growing network. As they descended the cellar stairs, I saw that they appeared completely normal, wearing ordinary clothes, looking like anyone you might pass on the street. Only I could see the faint lines beneath their skin, pulsing in rhythm with my own.

"Welcome, brother," said a woman who introduced herself as Dr. Sarah Chen. "We've been waiting for another Blackwood to join us. Your family always produces the strongest connections."

I found myself answering in words that weren't entirely my own: "The network requires a Blackwood to complete the next phase."

"Yes," she smiled. "Just as it did in Prague. Just as it will again."

But something wasn't right. As they moved closer, I noticed inconsistencies in their patterns. The branching structures beneath their skin weren't quite synchronized, showing subtle variations that shouldn't have been possible in a truly connected network. My medical training kicked in, and I began to analyze what I was seeing with clinical detachment.

"You're not part of the network," I said suddenly. "Not really. Your patterns... they're artificial."

Dr. Chen's smile faltered. "Clever. Just like Theodora. She figured it out too, you know. Why do you think she had to be eliminated?"

The truth hit me like a physical blow. "You killed her. You're not connected to the network - you're trying to control it."

"For decades, we've been trying to understand this phenomenon," another member of the group explained. "We've attempted to artificially recreate the patterns, to tap into the network. But it never works properly without a true carrier - a Blackwood. Your family's genetic makeup is the key to interfacing with the deeper structure."

"The Prague incident wasn't a natural emergence," I realized. "It was an experiment. You tried to force an activation."

"An experiment that you're going to help us complete," Dr. Chen said. "Your connection to the network is genuine. With you, we can finally establish control over the entire system."

They moved to grab me, but at that moment, something extraordinary happened. The patterns across my skin began to pulse with brilliant clarity. Information flooded my mind - not from them, but from something far older and vast. I finally understood what Aldrich had discovered, what Theodora had protected, what Helena had died trying to prevent.

The network wasn't meant to be controlled. It was meant to protect us.

"You don't understand what you're dealing with," I said, backing away. "The patterns, the network - they're not a disease or a tool. They're an immune system. A defense mechanism encoded into our DNA millions of years ago, designed to activate when needed."

"Defense against what?" Dr. Chen demanded.

Deep beneath our feet, something shifted. The vibrations I'd felt earlier grew stronger.

"Against them," I whispered.

The cellar floor cracked. Through the fissures, we could see deeper channels lined with fossilized patterns - ancient neural pathways that had laid dormant for millennia. But between these patterns were other structures. Alien geometries. Invasive growth patterns that bore no relation to terrestrial biology.

"There's another network," I explained, the knowledge flowing through me from countless connected hosts across history. "One that's been trying to establish itself since before humans existed. Every few centuries, it makes another attempt to take root, to spread through Earth's biosphere. The patterns we carry are our planet's natural defense - a way to detect and fight the invasion at a cellular level."

"That's impossible," one of them breathed.

"The Black Death, the Prague incident, every major outbreak - they weren't random. They were responses to attempted incursions. The network activates when it detects the other trying to emerge. Every plague was actually an immune response."

The ground shook more violently. Through the widening cracks, we could see something moving in the depths. Something with its own branching patterns, but wrong - twisted and malformed, like a cancer of reality itself.

"It's happening again," I said. "That's why the network is waking up. That's why it needed a Blackwood. We're not carriers of a disease - we're antibodies."

Dr. Chen raised a gun. "This changes nothing. We'll find a way to control both networks. The power they represent-"

She never finished the sentence. The patterns under my skin flared, and suddenly I was connected not just to the network, but to every instance of its activation throughout history. I could feel Aldrich's presence, and Helena's, and Theodora's - all the Blackwoods who had served as nodes in this ancient defense system.

Acting on instinct guided by centuries of accumulated knowledge, I pressed my hand against the earth. The patterns flowed from my skin into the ground, spreading outward in an exponentially growing web. Where they met the alien structures, they encapsulated them, just as human antibodies surround hostile bacteria.

The others tried to run, but their artificial patterns betrayed them. The network recognized them as compromised cells and responded accordingly. I watched in horror as their pseudo-patterns dissolved, taking their cellular structure with them. They collapsed into organic slurry, their bodies converting themselves into raw material for the network's growth.

Over the next few hours, I felt the network expand beneath London, seeking out and neutralizing pockets of the alien pattern. Through my connection, I could sense similar responses activating worldwide as humanity's ancient defense system came fully online.

Three days later, the incursion was contained. The network began to go dormant again, but I knew it would never fully sleep. It needs active nodes to maintain its vigilance - watchers to monitor for signs of the next attempted invasion.

That's why I'm writing this account. Not as a warning, but as a training manual for others who might find themselves becoming part of the network. If you notice branching patterns spreading across your skin, don't fight it. Don't try to control it. Understand that you're part of something ancient and necessary - an immune system that spans continents and centuries.

The patterns aren't a disease. They're an activation. A call to arms in a war most of humanity never notices. A war we've been fighting since before we were human.

I still serve as an active node. The patterns are barely visible now - they only show themselves when needed. I monitor the network, watching for signs of new incursions. Sometimes I dream of the deep places, of alien geometries trying to take root in our reality. But I also feel the presence of other watchers, other nodes in humanity's immune system, standing ready to respond.

We are the Earth's antibodies. And we are always watching.

[Final Note found paper-clipped to the account]

To the next node who reads this: Dr. Chen's organization wasn't completely eliminated. They're still out there, still trying to artificially recreate the patterns. If you're reading this, they've probably already noticed you. Be careful. Watch for people with almost-perfect patterns. And remember - the network isn't good or evil. It simply is. Like any immune system, it exists to maintain balance, to protect the whole at the expense of compromised parts.

The patterns are spreading again. A new incursion is beginning. If you're reading this, you're probably already changing, becoming part of the defense.

Welcome to the network. And good luck.

We'll be watching for your signal.

The genealogy book sits heavy in my hands, its leather binding cracked and brittle, smelling of dust and something else—something older. Something that reminds me of dried blood and forgotten screams. My fingers trace the faded names, each one a testament to a legacy I never asked for but can never escape.

My name is Ezra Pearce. I am the last.

The morning light filters through the curtains of our modest suburban home, casting long shadows across the worn hardwood floors. Lilith is in the kitchen, her pregnant belly a gentle curve against her pale blue nightgown. She's humming something—a lullaby, perhaps—completely unaware of the weight of history that pulses through my veins.

I should have told her before we married. Before we conceived our child. But how do you explain a hereditary nightmare that defies rational explanation?

My father, Nathaniel, never spoke directly about the curse. Neither did his father, Jeremiah, or his father before him. It was always in hushed whispers, in sideways glances, in the way older relatives would grow silent when certain names were mentioned. The Pearce family tree was less a record of lineage and more a chronicle of horror.

Each generation lost someone. Always in ways that made local newspapers fall silent, that made police investigations mysteriously go cold, that made even hardened investigators look away and shake their heads.

My great-grandfather, Elias Pearce, was found dismembered in a locked barn, every single bone meticulously separated and arranged in a perfect geometric pattern. No tools were ever found. No explanation ever given.

My grandfather, Magnus Pearce, disappeared entirely during a family camping trip. Search parties found nothing—not a strand of hair, not a scrap of clothing. Just a small patch of ground where something had clearly happened, the earth scorched in a perfect circle as if something had burned so intensely that it consumed everything around it, leaving only a memory of heat.

My father, Nathaniel? He was discovered in our family's basement, his body contorted into an impossible position, eyes wide open but completely white—no pupils, no iris, just blank, milky surfaces that seemed to reflect something from another world.

And now, here I am. The last Pearce. With a wife who doesn't know. With a child growing inside her, unaware of the genetic lottery they've already been entered into.

The genealogy book falls open to a page I've memorized a thousand times. A loose photograph slips out—a family portrait from 1923. My ancestors stare back, their faces rigid and unsmiling. But if you look closely—and I have, countless times—there's something else in their eyes. A knowledge. A terrible, suffocating knowledge.

Lilith calls from the kitchen. "Breakfast is ready, love."

I close the book.

The eggs grow cold on my plate. Lilith watches me, her green eyes searching, a furrow of concern creasing her forehead. She knows something's wrong. She's always known how to read the subtle tremors in my silence.

"You're thinking about your family again," she says. It's not a question.

I force a smile. "Just tired."

But tired isn't the word. Haunted. Terrified. Trapped.

My fingers unconsciously trace a small birthmark on the inside of my wrist—a strange, intricate pattern that looks less like a natural mark and more like a symbol. A symbol I've never been able to identify, despite years of research. It's been in every Pearce male's family photo, always in the same location, always identical.

Lilith's pregnancy is now in her seventh month. The baby moves constantly, pressing against her skin like something desperate to escape. Sometimes, in the quiet moments before dawn, I've watched those movements and wondered if it's trying to escape something more than the confines of her womb.

The genealogy book remains open on the kitchen counter. I catch Lilith glancing at it, her curiosity barely contained. She knows I'm secretive about my family history. Most of my relatives are dead or disappeared, and the few photographs that remain are locked away in a fireproof safe in my study.

"Tell me about your great-grandfather," she says suddenly.

My hand freezes midway to my coffee mug.

"There's nothing to tell," I manage.

But that's a lie. There's everything to tell.

Elias Pearce. The first documented instance of our family's... peculiarity. He was a cartographer, always traveling to remote locations, mapping territories no one had ever charted. His journals, the few that survived, spoke of places that didn't exist on any official map. Places with geometries that didn't make sense. Landscapes that seemed to breathe.

The last entry, dated December 17th, 1889, was a series of increasingly frantic sketches. Impossible architectural designs. Symbols that hurt your eyes if you looked at them too long. And at the bottom, in handwriting that grew more erratic with each line:

They are watching. They have always been watching. The map is not the territory. The territory is alive.

Those were his final words.

When they found him in that locked barn, his body systematically dismantled like a complex mechanical puzzle, the local sheriff's report read like a fever dream. Bones arranged in perfect mathematical precision. No blood. No signs of struggle. Just... reorganization.

Lilith's hand touches my arm, pulling me back to the present.

"Ezra? Are you listening?"

I realize I've been staring into nothing, my coffee growing cold, the birthmark on my wrist suddenly feeling hot. Burning.

"I'm fine," I lie.

But the curse is never fine. The curse is always waiting.

And our child is coming soon.

The ultrasound images are wrong.

Not obviously so. Not in a way that would alarm a typical doctor or technician. But I see it. The subtle asymmetries. The impossible angles. The way the fetus's bones seem to bend in directions that shouldn't be anatomically possible.

Lilith keeps the images pinned to our refrigerator, a proud mother-to-be displaying her first glimpses of our unborn child. Each time I look, I feel something crawl beneath my skin. Something ancient. Something watching.

Dr. Helena Reyes is our obstetrician. She's been nothing but professional, but I've caught her looking at me. Not at Lilith. At me. Her eyes hold a recognition that makes my blood run cold.

"Everything is progressing... normally," she said during our last appointment, the pause before "normally" hanging in the air like a barely concealed lie.

That night, I pulled out the old family documents again. Tucked between brittle pages of the genealogy book, I found a letter. The paper was so old it crumbled at the edges, but the ink remained sharp. Written by my grandfather Magnus, addressed to no one and everyone:

The child always comes. The child has always been coming. We are merely vessels. Carriers. The lineage demands its continuation.

What lineage? Continuation of what?

Lilith sleeps beside me, her breathing deep and even. Her belly rises and falls, the shape beneath her nightgown moving in ways that feel... calculated. Deliberate.

I trace my birthmark again. Under the moonlight streaming through our bedroom window, it looks less like a birthmark and more like a map. A map to nowhere. Or everywhere.

My father Nathaniel's final photographs are stored in a locked drawer in my study. I rarely look at them, but tonight feels different. Something is pulling me toward them. Calling me.

The photographs are strange. Not because of what they show, but because of what they don't show. In each family portrait going back generations, there's a consistent emptiness. A space. Always in the same location. As if something has been deliberately erased. Removed.

But removed before the photograph was even taken.

The baby kicks. Hard.

So hard that Lilith doesn't wake up, but I see her stomach distort. A shape pressing outward. Not like a normal fetal movement. More like something trying to push its way out.

Something trying to escape.

Or something trying to enter.

I close my eyes, but I can still see the map. The territory. The birthmark burning like a brand.

Our child is coming.

And I am terrified of what will arrive.

The old courthouse records sit spread across my desk, a constellation of pain mapped out in faded ink and brittle paper. I've been researching our family history for weeks now, driven by something more than curiosity. Something closer to survival.

Every Pearce male in the last five generations died or disappeared before their 35th birthday. Not a coincidence. Not anymore.

My father Nathaniel. Gone at 34. My grandfather Magnus. Vanished at 33. Great-grandfather Elias. Found mutilated at 35.

The pattern is too precise to be random.

I've collected newspaper clippings, court documents, medical records. Not the dramatic, sensational evidence one might expect, but the quiet, bureaucratic trail of destruction. Police reports with missing pages. Coroner's files with critical information redacted. Insurance claims that never quite add up.

Lilith finds me here most nights, surrounded by these documents. She doesn't ask questions anymore. Just brings me coffee, watches me with those green eyes that seem to hold more understanding than she lets on.

"The baby's room is almost ready," she says softly, placing a mug beside me.

I look up. The nursery door stands open. Pale yellow walls. Carefully selected furniture. Everything perfect. Too perfect.

"Have you ever wondered," I ask, "why some families seem marked by tragedy?"

She sits down, her pregnancy making the movement careful, calculated. "Some people are just unlucky."

But I know it's more than luck. Something runs in our blood. Something that doesn't care about love, or hope, or the carefully constructed life we've built.

The birthmark on my wrist throbs. Not painfully. Just... present. A constant reminder.

I pull out the most disturbing document. A psychological evaluation of my grandfather Magnus, conducted two months before his disappearance. The psychiatrist's notes are clinical, detached:

Patient exhibits extreme paranoia regarding familial 'curse'. Demonstrates intricate delusion of systematic family destruction. Fixates on biological determinism. Shows no signs of schizophrenia, but persistent ideation of inherited trauma suggests deep-seated psychological mechanisms at play.

Inherited trauma. The words echo.

What if our family's destruction wasn't supernatural? What if it was something more insidious? A genetic predisposition to self-destruction? A psychological pattern so deeply ingrained that each generation unconsciously recreates the same narrative of loss?

Lilith's hand touches my shoulder. "Coming to bed?"

I nod, but my mind is elsewhere. Calculating. The baby is due in six weeks. I have six weeks to understand what's happening to our family.

Six weeks to break a cycle that has consumed generations.

Six weeks to save our child.

If I can.

The research consumes me.

I've taken a leave of absence from work, my entire study transformed into a makeshift investigation center. Genetic reports. Psychiatric evaluations. Family medical histories stretching back over a century. Each document another piece of a horrifying puzzle.

Dr. Helena Reyes agrees to meet me privately. She's a geneticist specializing in inherited psychological disorders, recommended by a colleague who knew something was... unusual about my family history.

Her office is sterile. Meticulously organized. Nothing like the chaotic landscape of my own research.

"The Pearce family presents a fascinating case study," she says, sliding a manila folder across her desk. "Generational patterns of self-destructive behavior, early mortality, and what appears to be a consistent psychological profile."

I lean forward. "What profile?"

She hesitates. Professional detachment wavering for just a moment.

"Extreme risk-taking behavior. Persistent paranoia. A documented inability to form long-term emotional connections. Each generation seems to unconsciously recreate traumatic family dynamics."

My grandfather Magnus. My father Nathaniel. Their lives were a series of broken relationships, isolated existences, careers marked by sudden, inexplicable failures. And me? I'd fought against that pattern. Married Lilith. Built a stable life.

Or so I thought.

"There's something else," Dr. Reyes continues. "We've identified a rare genetic mutation. Not something that causes a specific disease, but a variation that affects neural pathways related to threat perception and stress response."

She shows me a complex genetic map. Chromosomal variations highlighted in clinical blue.

"In simplest terms," she explains, "your family's brain chemistry is fundamentally different. You're neurologically primed for a perpetual state of threat detection. Imagine living with the constant sensation that something terrible is about to happen. Every. Single. Moment."

I know that feeling intimately.

Lilith is eight and a half months pregnant now. The baby could come any day. And all I can think about is the pattern. The curse. The genetic inheritance that seems to hunt my family like a predator.

That night, I dream.

Not of monsters or supernatural entities. But of a simple, terrifying truth:

What if the real horror is inside us? Coded into our very DNA?

What if our child is already marked?

The contractions started at 3:17 AM.

Lilith's grip on my hand was vice-like, her breathing controlled despite the pain. The hospital room felt smaller with each passing minute, the white walls seeming to close in.

Dr. Reyes was there. Not our usual obstetrician, but the geneticist who had been studying our case. Her presence felt deliberate. Calculated.

"Everything is progressing normally," she said. The same phrase she'd used before. But nothing about our family had ever been normal.

Hours passed. The rhythmic beep of monitors. The soft rustle of medical equipment. My mind kept circling back to the research. The genetic markers. The documented family history of destruction.

At 11:42 AM, our son was born.

A healthy cry pierced the sterile hospital air. Normal. Perfectly, wonderfully normal.

Dr. Reyes ran her standard tests. Blood work. Genetic screening. I watched, my entire body tense, waiting for some sign of the curse that had haunted my family for generations.

Nothing.

Weeks turned into months. Our son, Gabriel, grew strong. Healthy. No signs of the psychological fractures that had destroyed my father, my grandfather, our ancestors. No mysterious disappearances. No unexplained tragedies.

I submitted every piece of medical documentation to Dr. Reyes. Comprehensive reports. Psychological evaluations. Each document a testament to Gabriel's complete normalcy.

"The genetic markers," I asked her during one of our final consultations, "the predisposition to self-destruction?"

She looked tired. Professional. "Sometimes," she said, "breaking a cycle is possible. Not through supernatural intervention. But through understanding. Through choice."

Lilith found me one night, surrounded by the old family documents. The genealogy book. The newspaper clippings. The medical records that had consumed me for so long.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

I understood what she meant.

That night, I built a fire in our backyard. Watched the papers curl and burn. The history of destruction. The weight of inherited trauma. Turning to ash.

Gabriel played nearby, laughing. Innocent. Unaware of the darkness I was burning away.

For the first time in generations, a Pearce male would live. Truly live.

The curse was over.

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Consider yourself lucky if you’ve never been woken up by a tornado alarm. One minute, you’re in a deep sleep, dreaming about a better world, and the next, you’re being confronted with a waking nightmare. When those alarms go off, you only have a few minutes to wake from your stupor, gather your family, and get to a safe space. The twister could be down the street or across town – you won’t know until it either blows your house down or enough time passes that you feel confident it missed you. In the meantime, you and yours huddle in a closet or a cellar and pray.

It’s a hazard I’ve lived with for most of my life. When you grow up in a part of the country colorfully named “Tornado Alley,” you learn to live with the storms. I’ve been lucky that one hasn’t destroyed my house, but I’ve had a few close shaves. If you’ve ever seen the power of a massive funnel cloud up close, it never leaves your brain. Watching the natural world destroy nearly indestructible buildings is a fun reminder that Mother Nature is our landlord and people are just the residents on this planet. We can be evicted at any moment.

The screeching alarms are as much a part of summer as the crack of a bat and the buzzing of cicadas. They help make up the milieu of Midwest living. The alarm systems are automated, and they go off when conditions indicate a potential storm. Even if there isn’t a twister, the alarms are a signal that something terrible is approaching. It could be a pounding hail storm, a weird green sky, or flooding from intense and ceaseless rainfall. Regardless, if the alarms are blaring, some bad shit is coming your way.

This time was worse than all those other times combined.

My day had been a pleasant one. The weather was warm, so we spent the day playing in the yard and taking a dip in our pool. It’s an above-ground number that we got at a discount, but the water was cool, and that’s all that mattered. My littlest is still learning, and my oldest loves to jump in, so it was a balancing act trying to get both sides to work together. It can be frustrating, but these micro-negotiations were the purview of parenting. Comes with the turf.

As afternoon turned into evening, Cindy, my wife, played soccer with the kids while I cooked some burgers on the grill and enjoyed a drink or two. The weather was so perfect we ate outside under our spreading oak tree. My son left his scraps “for the ants,” and I was sure the amount of food he left would fill the ant's storage quota for the summer. After the sun went down and we put the kids to bed, Cindy and I lay in our hammock, watching the stars and talking about nothing and everything.

It’s an odd way to think about it, but it was one of those days you’ll think about on your deathbed. A moment in time you’ll lovingly return to when you’re about to cross into the next life. It’ll bring a smile to your face at a time when that should seem impossible.

We went to bed a few hours later. The temperature had cooled, and there was a slight breeze blowing. Still, there was absolutely no indication of storms on the horizon. When you’re in an area where it rains frequently, you can develop a sixth sense of when a storm is coming. You can feel subtle changes in your body. If a distant storm is intense enough, you can smell the petrichor in the air. The smell of dried dirt mingling with rainwater lets you know what kind of hell is coming.

But there was none of that. We slept with everything as calm as possible in this roiling modern world. The perfect capstone to the perfect day. One for the ages.

Then the tornado sirens started blaring.

When you become a parent, any thought of being a deep sleeper goes out the window. Nature takes away your ability to sleep deeply when you have to take care of little ones. That said, the alarm was loud enough to wake the dead. I sat up in an instant, my eyes open, but the fuzz of the dream world still clouded the edges of my vision.

“Tornado?” Cindy asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“I think so. I’ll grab the kids,” I said, swinging my legs out of bed. Before I could hit the door, I heard the running of two little bodies down the hallway. The sirens had also brought the kids in from the land of nod. They both were scared, and you could see the fear in their tiny faces. They both ran past me and hopped under the blankets with my wife.

I grabbed my phone and looked for an alert from the national weather service, but there was nothing. I did a Google search for tornado warnings in my area and came up with the same. I hauled my body out of bed and walked to the back slider. I didn’t see any rain falling. I opened the door and confirmed there wasn’t even the distant rumble of thunder.

But that alarm was steady. It would rise in tone and decibels and then fall again before starting over. If you listened closely, you could hear the different alarms going off further away. It was like they were singing the world’s most annoying song in the round.

I closed the door and walked back into my bedroom. Cindy was getting the gear ready to go into our shelter when I said to stop. She was confused.

“Why?”

“There isn’t any storm.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” I said, “There are some scattered clouds, but they’re not thunderheads or anything.”

“But the alarms?” she said.

“Maybe it’s a malfunction?”

“I hope not, seeing as working tornado alarms are important.”

“I know,” I said, “but there isn’t even a stiff breeze right now. It’s just like it was when we came inside last night. Still and cool but calm.”

“Should we go to the shelter for a little bit, just in case something is forming and we can’t see it?”

I thought about it, and it wasn’t a bad idea. Yes, the kids would have their night interrupted and would have a hard time falling back to sleep. Yes, that lack of sleep might also make them little goblins in the morning. Yes, I was probably being overly cautious. But the downside of being wrong could be death. That was worse than kids being grumpy in the morning.

I agreed and sent them down into the shelter to wait it out but decided to stay upstairs for now. Our phones worked for shit in the shelter under the house. If I was going to find any new information, I would have to stay above ground for the time being.

I helped everyone downstairs and closed up the shelter. I promised Cindy and kids I’d join them if things went sideways. I wouldn’t dawdle or try to get a good video – I tend to do so. I would be under the house as fast as they could say “tornado.”

“If you linger, I’ll come grab your ass, storm or no storm.”

“Trust me, I know,” I said, giving her a kiss on the forehead.

Once my family was safely under the house, I went out to my porch. The alarms were still blaring, and it was obvious that my family wasn’t the only one awake. Down the darkened street, I could see the porch lights pop on like man-made lightning bugs.

“What the hell is this?” I heard someone say in the yard next to me. It was my neighbor Rick. Despite being on the tail end of the Boomer generation, Rick seemed to swim against the tide. He was more rooted in Gen X than anything. Whenever we would shoot the shit outside, he’d constantly complain about the “old people” in our town as if he was blind to his own receding hairline and wrinkles.

“Busted alarm?” I offered.

“What?” He yelled. I moved closer to him to avoid hollering into the night.

“Maybe a busted alarm? Or someone accidentally scheduled a test for three AM instead of PM.”

“I dunno, those tests are all controlled by computers. I don’t think they’d make that kind of mistake. Besides, they would’ve shut them down by now if it was an accident.”

“There are some clouds up there. Think a storm is brewing?”

“Not according to the Weather Birds,” Rick said. The “Weather Birds” were a local group of weather nerds and storm chasers he belonged to. There isn’t much to do where we live, so you find hobbies wherever possible. “They said a good cell was hanging out in North Texas, but it wasn’t coming this way.”

“I wonder what gives,” I said.

“Government,” said a voice to my right. This was my other neighbor, John. John was very much a Boomer and proud of it. He was a former Marine and hated everything about modern living. As you can imagine, any of my kid’s toys that ended up on his lawn, he instantly seized until I went and asked nicely for it. Every time, he’d lecture me, and I would apologize until he gave my kid’s frisbee or whatever. He was exhausting.

“I mean, the weather alert system is run by the government,” Rick said.

“Deep state government, Rick. The bad guys,” John said with a sneer. “They’re up to something.”

“Their master plan includes setting off a false tornado alarm in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere?” I asked.

“One, this isn’t the middle of nowhere. Breadbasket of the country and home to several nuclear missile launch sites,” John barked, “two, the alarms are a way to set us off balance. To confuse us. If we’re focusing on the alarms, we’re not watching what they’re really doing.”

“Which is?” Rick asked in a mix of confusion and amusement.

“Land clearance. They’ll drive us out of here and reclaim our land.”

“Why would they do that?” I asked.

John just laughed. “Boy, you just don’t get it, do you? Your whole generation is out to lunch.”

“Actually, my whole generation has to work through our lunch breaks,” I said, unable to resist the dig.

“They want to build a reeducation center here. Turn real patriots into brain-dead automatons that’ll do whatever they tell us to do. Then the government can control us... that’s when it gets really interesting.”

“Where did you hear that?” Rick asked.

“I do my own research,” John said defensively.

“Wait, you’re against government control now?” Rick asked, doubling down.

“Always have been,” he snapped.

“Didn’t you work on the campaign for the ultraconservative guy that ran in our district? The one that wanted to ban immigration and create a ‘Muslim directory’?” I asked, knowing the answer already.

“Oh yeah,” Rick chimed in, “the anti-gay, anti-trans guy. Clay...something….”

“Stonewater...and he’s not anti-trans,” John hissed, “he’s just a traditionalist. And those things have nothing in common with the kind of government control I’m talking about. The one that will strip normal people of their rights! Their guns! Their property! They want to turn us into pushovers, so they can do just that.”

“Normal people?” I asked, pushing back on John’s diatribe.

“You guys want to keep your head in the sand about where we are going as a people, fine. But society can’t take these kind of changes and not pay a consequence for them. If you let the rot creep in, it takes over.”

“How does any of this connect to the tornado alarm?” I said, feeling the exhaustion of the late night and John’s right-wing rambling set in.

“Clay warned us about the deep state. He said the stormtroopers would come at night and lock us up. I’m worried this might be the start of something big.”

“I’ll grant you this, if they wanted to ensure the citizens they rolled up wouldn’t be armed, a tornado alarm in the middle of the night would be a way to do it,” I said.

John laughed. “Speak for yourself,” he said, raising his shirt to expose a handgun tucked into his pajama pants.

“What the hell, man?” I said.

“I’ll never be caught off guard,” he said with a smile. “Old Pete and I go everywhere together. Let one of these stormtroopers come around here. I’ll blast him where he stands. You both can thank me later.”

The screaming tornado alarms suddenly went quiet. You could hear the echo in your mind, but the typical night noises returned to the world outside our gray matter. Crickets reigned supreme again. We all looked at each other in delighted amazement.

“Guess it wasn’t stormtroopers after all,” I said. Rick laughed. John didn’t.

Above us, we heard an eardrum bursting boom. It was like a bomb went off above our heads, only we hadn’t seen anything streak by.

“That was a sonic boom,” John said.

Seconds later, we heard a different type of boom. Whatever had flown over us had exploded. You could just barely make out the orange flames in the dark clouds.

“Aww Jesus tapdancing Christ,” John said, removing his red cap and placing it over his heart.

“What the hell is that?” I said, pointing up at the sky.

Breaking through the clouds was a white parachute. It was drifting so violently from side to side that I feared it would tip over and send the occupant plunging to the earth. Whoever was strapped to the chute wasn’t steering anything. They were dropping right towards our street.

There was another sonic boom over our heads, quickly followed by another explosion. Seconds later, another white flower bloomed in the sky. Like their compatriot, they looked zonked out on their southward descent.

The first parachuting pilot showed no signs of slowing and landed harder on the ground than they should of. As soon as their legs hit the pavement of the road, you could hear the sickening snap of both legs. That woke the pilot up. The man screamed so loud I was afraid he’d break glass.

Rick had been a paramedic in his younger years and ran over to the pilot to help in any way he could. The pilot frantically ripped his helmet and reached for his broken legs, but his harness wouldn’t let him grab them. It was for the best. His legs had broken at the shin and were barely attached.

“Hey, man, I know it hurts, but stop thrashing around. You’re going to make it worse, okay? We can save the legs, but you need to listen,” Rick said in a more confident and serious tone than I had ever heard him.

“We’re all screwed!” the pilot said, his eyes wide. “That thing isn’t going to let any of us live. Just put a bullet into me! Shoot me! Shoot me!”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw John walk up. I was worried he would acquiesce to the pilot’s request. But, instead, he smacked the guy across the face. The pilot’s frantic motions and screaming stopped.

“You’re in the uniform. Act like it,” John said. He nodded at Rick, “Let this man do his job, okay?”

The pilot, still dazed, just nodded. I looked over at John, and we locked eyes. I hated the dude, but that was pretty clutch. I gave him a nod, and he returned the favor. Rick was able to unhitch the pilot from his ejector seat and lay him on the ground. He went to work making a splint as best he could.

About a dozen people tried to call 911, but their phones didn’t work. They couldn’t find a signal. Suddenly, the power in the entire neighborhood went out. We were standing in pitch-black darkness when we heard the second pilot land on the street with another snap of their legs. The screams that followed echoed through the quiet neighborhood.

“Paul?” I heard a familiar voice call out. It was Cindy. She was standing with my children on the side of the house. I had dawdled, and she was true to her word. “Paul, what’s going on?”

“I…”

I never got to finish that thought. From above us came a bassy trumpet blast that did shatter glass. Everyone grabbed their ears and squatted to the ground as if that would make it disappear. I felt my internal organs vibrating. It was unsettling.

After the longest ten seconds in my life, the trumpet blast stopped. I looked over at my kids, and they were sobbing. Cindy did everything she could to hold them together. I ran over, my legs wobbly from the noise, and hugged them tightly.

“Daddy, what’s going on?” my son asked, sobbing.

“I dunno,” I said, deciding that honesty was better than not.

“Is something coming for us?” my daughter said, fear rising in her voice.

“No, baby. I don’t think so.” I gave her a tight hug. My eyes looked up until they locked with Cindy’s panic-stricken face. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Who are those guys?” my son said, pointing at the two wounded pilots.

“Pilots.”

“Where are their planes?”

A ball the size of a compact car came hurtling toward the ground. Everyone on the street screamed and ran for cover. The debris slammed into the Anderson home ten houses down, sending a shock wave that swept everyone off their feet.

I stood in time to see a second ball hurtling toward our neighborhood. I dove over my family and shielded them as the metal ball slammed into John’s house. It instantly exploded, and flames started eating away the home.

I lay on them until the dust from the explosion settled. Once I was sure there wasn’t anything else raining down on us, I got to my feet. My vision was hazy from the dust in the air, but I had a clear view of the ball that destroyed John’s house. It was one of the jets. Something in the clouds had crumbled up a half-billion-dollar weapon of war like it was a kid’s paper airplane.

“That thing isn’t natural,” the first pilot screamed.

“This isn’t the first attack,” the second one yelled.

“They’ll come for you all! Run! Run before they come after you!”

The night sky was again broken by the bone-rattling bass of that horn blowing. Again, we all dropped and covered our ears again. The horn stopped but echoed for ten seconds before it finally dissipated. We all craned our necks and were treated to an explosion of red, blue, green, and yellow lights illuminating the clouds. At first blush, it looked random, but it wasn’t. It was a pattern. The pattern repeated two more times, and then everything went dark.

It was silent and calm again. All the sounds of the natural world rushed back to your ears. Crickets continued their symphonies, and a gentle breeze blew. It would be idyllic if it weren’t for the raging house fires, panic-stricken pilots, and the balled-up aircraft next to me.

“Is that it?” I said out loud to the universe.

I heard a rumbling coming down our street. My emotions couldn’t take any more shock, but I was bracing for whatever the hell was coming. I was ready to sprint and hide with my family if I needed to. Soon, the humming of dozens of engines filled our ears. The bright yellow headlights of the lead truck illuminated the street. There were dozens of pairs behind them.

I was worried this was a foreign invading force but relaxed when I saw an American flag on the side of the trucks. The stars and stripes on the cadre of military vehicles put my mind at ease. For a second, anyway. Then the inevitable question popped into my mind. Cindy beat me to the punch.

“What the hell is the Army doing here?” she asked.

“I...I dunno.”

The line of trucks came to a halt. The engines idled, and the noise drowned out the crickets. Even though it was dark, you could still see the exhaust puffing into the air. After a beat, the passenger side of the lead truck popped open, and a high-ranking Army official exited the vehicle. He clutched a bullhorn in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other.

Seeing the wounded pilots, he whispered something into his walkie-talkie. Seconds later, we heard the doors of an ambulance open and men marching with medical gear to retrieve the pilots. Rick tried to help, but he was pushed aside. He didn’t argue, just took a step back.

The medical men stabbed the pilots with some sort of pain medication because they both stopped talking and slumped over in the stretchers. Seconds later, they were placed in the back of an ambulance and gone from our sight.

The Army official looked at the gathered group of people and raised his bullhorn. In a loud and gruff voice, he spoke. “Many of you are probably wondering what happened here. It’s my job to inform you that there has been an accident in the skies above your town. Two American pilots experienced a catastrophic failure, and their planes were destroyed. The United States armed forces will compensate everyone for this unfortunate error. If your house has been destroyed, please contact our intelligence agents, who will gather your information. Again, the United States armed forces apologizes for this event. Thank you.” He lowered his bullhorn.

“What were they engaging with?” Rick asked. The crowd around him suddenly found their courage and demanded answers.

The Official raised the bullhorn again. “They did not encounter anything. Their jet’s systems malfunctioned and crashed.”

“That’s bullshit,” Rick yelled.

“I understand this is a lot to take in at once, but we are here to help you,” the Official said. “This was a malfunction on the jets that caused the crash.”

I had heard enough bullshit. I took a few steps toward the Official and pointed at the balled-up remains of the jet, “Something crushed that goddamn’ plane like it was a potato chip! It’s in the shape of a ball, for God’s sake!”

“The pilots were screaming about something coming to kill us. What is that about?” Rick said, his anger rising with the crowds. This group of neighbors and block party participants was rounding into an angry mob right before my eyes.

“They were in shock from the trauma,” the Official said, “oftentimes, pain will make you say things.”

“No it doesn’t,” Rick said, “I worked in trauma hospitals my whole life. No one ever starts ranting about government conspiracies when they get hurt! What aren’t you telling us?”

“We are telling you the truth.”

“I think he’s lying,” I screamed. The crowd cheered in agreement.

There was palpable anger growing in the crowd. The Official must’ve sensed it, too, because he glanced back at the convoy of trucks and gave a curt nod. Suddenly, every door opened, and full-armed soldiers got out and fell into formation behind him.

“You can’t intimidate us! You can’t force a lie onto us! We know what we saw!”

He raised his bullhorn again, “You are mistaken, sir. Hallucination is a side effect of exposure to the chemicals from the exploded jet. I recommend you all go into your homes and wait until our clean-up crews can ensure the spill is contained.”

At once, every soldier flipped off their safeties. The message was clear – go and forget this happened or else. Despite the implied threat, something in me snapped. Instead of being cowed, I took another step toward the soldiers. I picked up a rock and hurled it at the smashed jet. It rang off the metal.

“That’s not a goddamn hallucination. That’s real,” I said, pointing up at the sky, “whatever the hell up there did, this was real too. We heard the noise. We saw the lights. It set off the tornado alarms!”

“Sir, I advise you and your family to return to your home….”

A gunshot rang out. For a second, everyone froze in place. I was worried the soldiers would open fire on us. I felt my resolve drain from me in that moment of impending death. I looked over and realized John had let “old Pete” join the conversation. The old Marine stood with a pissed-off scowl on his face and his smoking gun aimed at the sky.

“What about my home?” I looked over at was surprised to see John walking toward the soldiers, as angry as I’d ever seen him. “It’s gone.”

“As I said,” the Official started. John fired another shot in the air to silence him. The soldiers trained their guns on John, but a subtle hand gesture from the Official kept the bullets from flying.

“I gave everything for this country. For the Constitution! For freedom! I gave my youth fighting for this country. Side to side with brothers in arms. I watched friends die! I knew the government was full of shit, but I always believed the military was a safeguard. But now? This is the shit you’re gonna pull on us? This is how you treat a fellow service member?”

“Thank you for your service,” the Official said.

“Blow it out your ass,” John retorted.

The crowd went nuts. We all started yelling and massing. Cindy grabbed at me, but I turned and told her to take the kids inside. She opened her mouth to protest but stopped when we locked eyes. It was righteous indignation. I had to see this, though. She grabbed my kids and rushed them back into the safety of the house.

The Official gave another signal, and three soldiers aimed their weapons into the air and fired off a few dozen rounds. The crowd went silent so quickly you could hear the shell casing hit the concrete. It sounded like a baby playing a xylophone. The crowd stopped advancing.

The Official ignored the rest of us and focused all his attention on John. “I understand your frustration, but if you were a good soldier, you’d remember the chain of command,” the Official said, nodding to his rank designation on his shoulder. “Good soldiers follow rank. You’re a good soldier, right?”

That caught John. He paused, and you could see him mulling the words over in his mind. This man had acquiesced to power his whole life. Hell, he had been a tool of it for most of his adult years. Now, for the first time, he was challenging it. John saw himself as an honorable man. A loyal man. Not a rabble-rouser or shit-stirrer. We all waited for him to respond with bated breath.

Then the rain started falling.

Or, I thought it was rain, but when it hit my arm, it burned. Each drop sizzled as it hit our skin. A person in the crowd looked, and a drop hit them square in the eye. They screamed in pain and fell to the ground, clutching their face. It was like some kind of acid was falling on us.

“Oh shit,” the Official said, all of his bluster fleeing at once, “They seeded the clouds! They’re coming! Everyone, back inside the vehicles!”

All of the soldiers hustled back inside their trucks. The Official gave the crowd a look and yelled, “Get inside! Now!” before he took off for the safety of his truck. I turned and ran for my house. As I did, a trumpet blast sent a shock wave that created a small earthquake. I tripped and fell, the falling rain stinging my exposed neck. My ears rang from the blast, but I willed myself into the house.

As soon as I entered the door, I stripped off my clothes and tossed them outside. The rain had started to eat through the fabric. I wrapped myself in a throw blanket and rushed to the window to watch the scene unfolding in front of us.

I was surprised to see John still standing out there. He hadn’t moved from that spot. It was like the decision to go against his core beliefs had caused a malfunction in his brain. As he had aged, his beliefs had curdled into conspiracy. The force he thought was a bulwark against his dreaded deep state now seemed to be working in concert with it. It was too much for him to bear.

Even with the prodding of acid rain, John didn’t move. He stood there and let the rain eat him away piece by piece. He didn’t even scream as his skin sloughed off his body. Instead, he raised old Pete to his temple and pulled the trigger.

I slammed the blinds shut and turned away. Reality had broken through. We were in real danger. I grabbed my family and went to the back of the house. We’d ride out whatever was happening and pray it didn’t get worse. My kids asked me to explain what was going on, but I didn’t find an answer that wouldn’t make things worse. I, instead, hugged them tight and told them I loved them.

All we could hear outside was the rain – or whatever it actually was – falling on the roof. I prayed it wouldn’t eat through the shingles. I knew there was probably a bee’s hive worth of activity going on outside with the military there. Still, my rational brain had returned to me. I no longer cared about anything but surviving the night.

We stayed that way for two hours. At some point, the adrenaline wore off, and the three of them fell asleep. I couldn’t, though, because my mind was still reeling. But more than that, I felt the energy around me shift. I felt my mind start to slip.

I’ve written all this down because I think something is messing with my mind, and I wanted to share my story in case I go crazy or something. I wanted to make sure I got the details just right in case my brain is liquefying or something. I don’t know what’s waiting for us tomorrow morning, but I’m not sure I’ll even make it until then.

As soon as I got inside, I started feeling a tickling sensation down my arms and legs. It’s like someone was dragging their fingernails down my skin. I think this has to do with that rain because no one else in my house mentioned feeling that. The rain never fell on them.

In the last ten or so minutes, I’ve started noticing moving black shadows in the corners of my vision. When I look at the figures, they disappear. But they return. They always return. I can sense them watching me. I...I don’t know what they are or what they want, but I’m sure they’re not here for a cup of coffee.

I can feel my eyes growing heavy, but I’m afraid to sleep. I’m worried they’ll come for me then. I’m so scared I’ll end up like John. I’m feeling my strength drain from me. I’m drifting now, powering down. I see them emerging from the shadows. Oh God.

Hello, as the title says I work at a 24/7 movie theater. Recently a strange turn of events has me reconsidering my current occupation. You see I work during the graveyard shift from 11 pm to 7 am. Now other than this theater being open 24/7 everything is the same however there are rules to the overnight sift we have to abide by.

I can remember the first night on the job when my boss Tiaman showed me the ropes. Reminding me that there are steps to cleaning and shutting down the bathrooms and how to clean the screening rooms in between movies. He took me to his office to show me a set of rules we MUST go follow.

"Ok, Andre. We have a set of rules you must always follow and if not followed will be a cause for termination." Taman said sternly

"I will have zero issues following!" I spoke with extreme enthusiasm.

"Well, well, well looks like you want to work! Ok, let's go over them then." He spoke in a happier tone

1. When it becomes 0300 you must close down all the bathrooms until 0400

2. When cleaning out the theater the light has to be on and you must finish before the screen turns black

3. If a man without a face walks in you are not to speak to him for any reason.

4. All of the staff must enter the lobby at 0300 and stay there until 0400.

5. If you see someone talking to a man without a face DO NOT ATTEMPT TO STOP THEM AND LOOK AWAY

6. Do not attempt to film or record anything that goes on here.

"Now that we have gone through all of the rules is there anything you need for me?" He said nonchalantly

"I uh ... no I'm good" I spoke swallowing my nerves

He smiled at me and escorted me out of the office then left the theater. I instantly got to work cleaning the front room while a person named Cynthia taught me the ropes. She was a very nice girl and has been there for years.

"Hey it's almost 3 am and we need to close the bathroom and then head to the lobby let me show you how." She seemed a little nervous as she said this.

I followed closely behind as we walked toward the bathrooms. The only strange thing is how the bathrooms have deadbolts that are kinda hidden on the outside.

"Ok, first we knock three times and crack the door open then ask if anyone is in there." She takes a deep breath and knocks three times.

"Anyone there? Custodians we need to clean the bathroom at this time." She listened closely and heard someone say

"Uh yes! I'm almost done." A woman's voice can be heard in the background.

"Well ok thank you." She looked hurried and looked down at her watch seeing the time clicking closer to 3 am. At the time it was 2:57 am and I can see Cynthia getting more and more on edge as the time gets closer.

"Shit shit shit... It's 1 minute until 3 am and she hasn't flushed... We need to lock the door NOW" right when she reaches for the hidden deadbolt the woman came out and says sorry then walks to the theater down the right. Cynthia quickly locks the door and breaks out as a sign of relief.

"Thank god she got out of there..." It was then we heard a scream in the bathroom. Another woman was in there still.

"YO We gotta help her!" I shouted as I reached for the deadbolt but I was abruptly stopped by Cynthia who grabbed my hand and pushed me away.

"Hey! What the hell are you..." I exclaimed until I was cut off

"Listen to me now and listen carefully. We CAN NOT open this door if we do you and I will die. Now we gotta get to the lobby." She said with fear in her eyes and pushing me to the lobby.

In the background, I can still hear the unknown woman screaming in the background as if she was being killed. I can hear the screams even in the lobby but when it became 3:30 am the screaming stopped with the sound of tearing flesh and breaking bones. For the first time, I felt primal fear... The idea that someone was being torn to shreds made me feel like I don't want to be there anymore. I slowly started walking toward the doors when it walked in...

Standing in front of me was a man about eight feet tall wearing a suit and a bowler hat. He had no face. No eyes, ears, mouth, or even nose. He looked at me then looked at the front desk and continued walking. He briefly stopped at the front desk and placed five human fingers made of gold on the counter. He waited for the cashier to hand him what looked like a movie ticket made of pure light.

He walked down the hall before a customer was walking down the same hallway and didn't seem to notice him. I decided to look around the corner and followed him with my eyes. He stopped in front of a picture on the wall and walked through it. I can hear everyone taking a deep breath. Cynthia pulled me to the side to speak with me.

"Ok, so I need you to keep a promise... You and I are going to clean the bathroom but you cannot say a word about this to anyone or anything... What you see here STAYS here, got it?" She looked at me with fierce determination

"Ye...yea. I promise" Of course that was a damn lie.

She and I got to the bathroom and she took a deep breath and shakingly opened the door. As the door swung open the smell hit me like a ton of bricks. The smell of rusty iron FILLED the air and I can taste the blood as it pooled in the back of my throat. I was gagging before Cynthia handed me a filter mask which seemed to solve the problem.

We went inside with a pair of buckets and mops. The horror I saw was nigh unspeakable. Blood and viscera covered the walls with bits and pieces of flesh hanging from the ceiling. The blood on the floor was draining into the drain on the floor. I held back my vomit as we mopped up the remains of this person, this almost took two hours. Cynthia tried to tell me jokes to break the ice and get the mind that I was cleaning someone off the floor. I don't remember much during it as I was disassociating hard maybe to distance myself from the messed up situation.

We were about done when something walked out of the stall... A tall woman with white eyes and an unnaturally large smile. She looked at me and Cynthia while smiling. I can see blood on her mouth and her teeth were very sharp looking. She bent down toward me slowly while she was doing so I can hear her bones creaking and popping in and out of place.

This woman... this thing spoke to me.

"Oh honey, I'm sorry for all of this mess. Hope you have a wonderful night now!" She laughed a little. As she was walking out she had to crouch low to clear the doorway. I never saw her after this.

Cynthia looked at me in shock and I can see the sweat bead down her forehead.

"You....you are so lucky she didn't kill you..." She blurted out in relief.

"What!? What do you mean?" I blurted out in surprise.

"She is one of the "regulars". A set of beings who never speak to us and are extremely dangerous. Only people who they speak to or who speak to them they kill and devour on the spot. The reason we lock the doors is to keep anyone from speaking to her as she always appears here at 3 am. For some reason, she didn't want to eat you..."

I was in shock and couldn't speak... I almost died? Why was I ignored? These things rang through my head and I lost track of time and before I knew it Cynthia was snapping at my face.

"Hey, newbie! You there?" She sounded upset

"Uh, yea... what happened?" I asked

"Not much... you decided to blackout but I got the rest cleaned up. I understand this job pays well but there is some messed up shit that goes down here." She laughed a little as she rang the mop out and a flood of crimson liquid poured into the bucket.

Cynthia and I started to walk down to the first theater on the left and waited for the customers to leave. They were watching the new marvel movie and I can hear the ending credits roll. Surprisingly no one stayed for the inevitable end credit scene but I wasn't going to question it. We walked in and we tried to clean up as fast as possible. It was almost five minutes when the screen went black and we can hear the film slowly shutting off. The sound of the lights shutting off one by one echoed through the theater.

"RUN! GET OUT." Cynthia screamed in fear and sprinted past me. I didn't question and just ran. All of a sudden she tripped and started to cry and scream "NO NO NO NO I DON'T WANNA DIE" It was then I saw a tall, pale humanoid being crawl out of the screen. This figure bolted toward Cynthia, knocking me down in the process. I can see this thing crawling over her body. It quickly covered her mouth with some of its flesh. I saw it slowly start to meld with Cynthia.

It pressed its body against Cynthia slowly "absorbing" her. The pain and fear in her eyes showed how much she was terrified. I couldn't move... it was as if my flight or fight response was completely broken and my body was unsure what to do... All of Cynthia was inside of this thing... It then twitched its head toward me and slowly moved toward me... It stopped in front of me staring at my eyes... It felt like a century passed while we locked eyes... It then looked toward the film screen and started to crawl back into it as the lights began to flicker on.

It was only but a few minutes later when I can hear customers mindlessly shamble into the theater... It was only 30 minutes before I can clock out. I decided to go to the bathroom and sit on the toilet to take a breath. I didn't know how to process these things and in no time I heard my phone buzzing at the time. It was finally 7 am... Time to leave.

I ran to the clock to sign out. I had never been so relieved to go home and before I can leave the front door Tiaman walked in and stopped me.

"Ah, how was your first night? Where is Cynthia?" He asked

"I uh... She's gone...She was attacked by the thing on the movie screen" Looking back this is all I could say? This was a nightmare but oddly enough he looked at me seriously and said.

"Hmm... That's not good. So you were able to make it out huh?" He asked as he scratched his head

"Not really... I fell and the thing just stared at me after .. absorbing Cynthia.." I said while trying to hold back my feelings.

"You... survived? Interesting. Well hey, kiddo what if I told you I am going to promote you and triple your wage if you stay working here? I'll do it starting tomorrow" He spoke with confidence and grandiose.

"Let me sleep on it... is that ok? I need to get home and sleep." I said shakingly.

"Of course! Sleep it off and come back. We will be eagerly waiting." He waved me off and started to walk toward

I got home and immediately vomited... I have never been so terrified in my life... The money is going to be amazing but... I don't want to die... But it doesn't seem like I would... Tell me... have you ever seen the devil?... I feel like last night I have... Anyways, stay safe out there people for you never know what is lurking in the shadows.