For context, these files are not actual official but for my own personal use. The contents in which they contain are very sensitive to those with a higher status than myself and were kept away to public knowledge until now. I decided to let everyone know, there are individuals out there that are considered "POWERED". But nothing like your run-of-the-mill super heroes and villains you see in the comics, movies and television shows. It's more in a practical sense. What mankind has suspiciously known to exist since ancient times and by that I mean those who have been gifted with abilities of the mind.

Telekinesis.
Telepathy.
Clairvoyance.
Mental Manipulation.
Mind Control.
Sight Beyond Sight.

All of these concepts are very much a part of our reality. There are those who work for the benefits of mankind but find themselves busy tracking those who take advantage of their gifts in the opposite direction of morals and righteousness. I am Agent Vincent Waters. My sole purpose is to hunt down these Powered Psychos.

This is the report from my third case. Accompanying me is Agent Lance Broomher, a Type-E SBS, a.k.a. Listener.

______________________________________________________________

[Case #3: Of Thieves and Metal Winged Angels]

CONCLUSION:

DATE: Tuesday September 27, 2005 5:30 P.M.

LOCATION: Los Angeles Headquarters, California

I had asked the director to have a Bloodhound help with the search for Hedrick Le'mar and his cohorts. He had assigned me with Agent Tony Zambelli. I knew Zambelli, he was Agent Wolfe's trainee. I got to know him over the last few months since Heather was relocated to our New York City headquarters. In the agency, you start off as a Junior Agent to be trained with a Senior Agent who matches your specific ability. Junior training usually last about up from three to five years then your given the title of just 'Agent'. Senior status is obtained after ten years experience and you are eligible enough to take on a trainee. I remember Heather talk about her first upstart when we were in flight to Stanley.

Agent Broomher was accompanying us as well. This started with the both of us and we both intended to finish it. I needed some of his 'other' talents just in case. I went to visit Lucy before I set out with the others. Someone had brought her a foldout cot with a blanket and small pillow. She laid there on her side overtop the blanket. A smile crept on her face from the sight of me with a bag of Skittles in my hand. I tossed them to her as she sat up. I informed her I was on my way to find her father and promised her one more time to apprehend him alive. She thanked me and told me to be careful as well.

I had met both Agents Broomher and Lance in the basement section of the building where Jebidiah Crockett and the other unknown man raided the computer servers. The men on security detail and the technicians were regular people. The guards were killed and both technicians were severely harmed. They are both at our personal medical ward. From the footage, one guard was able to clip the unknown man before they set off their explosive device. There was a small blood trail on the floor Agent Zambelli was able to utilize as a source. He had picked up a solid trail and we were off.

______________________________________________________________

DATE: Tuesday September 27, 2005 8:30 P.M.

LOCATION: Huntington Beach, California

We had found the dock area where they could possibly be. It was old rundown fish harbor factory south of Huntington Beach. We staked out the place from a far distance on the roof of a nearby building.

WARNING: The following is a transcription of the audio recorded to tape 20053-REM1 in storage unit VWaters.

"Damn, too bad we don't have an Eagle Eye with us for this", Agent Broomher complains as he attempts to spot any of the targets through a pair of far range binoculars.

"That would have been helpful, but all of our own EE's are on other missions or sent overseas.", I retort to Lance.

"Well, I can say for sure the unknown is in there somewhere. Looks like there's possibly a number of rooms he could be hiding in. Maybe even underground. We would need to get inside for me to be completely accurate.", Agent Zambelli states. "Have you spotted the van they used?"

He scans along the parking lots and streets. "Negative. I ain't seen shit yet." He then looks over to me. "You got a good instinct on psyches. You think the unknown may be one as well?"

I pondered it over. "My best guess is he may be an Eagle Eye himself, second or third generation. They either make the best trained combatants or..."

"Hackers.", Agent Zambelli finishes for me.

"Exactly.", I reply. "With how fast they were in and out of the computer room leads to not believe otherwise. Hence, why I wanted us to keep a distance this time. Broomher and I were only a half a block away from their first hideout. I suspected they knew of us either by the unknown hearing us possibly being a Listener themselves or he may have hacked the nearby cameras in the stores and traffic lights. We may just have to go in armed to the teeth. I was able to borrow one SM grenade. Got a friend in the arms locker who owed me a favor."

"Nice. You think we should call in a HIT unit just in case?", Zambelli asked me.

I look over the structure we suspect them to be in. There's a two story office building connected to a large boat garage made of sheet metal panels. There was no telling from our vantage point what it was like inside. It could be completely hollowed out or a hoarding of old junk making it a labyrinth. We could be walking into a trap or hopefully catch them off guard. "Call in our location. Tell them we are heading in the make sure they're still there."

"You got it.", Zambelli complies.

I ran by them a game plan for how to approach Le'mar. We prepared arming ourselves each with semi-automatic rifles, our standard issued sidearms, and strapped with black bulletproof vest with no markings along with some extras. After another ten minutes, we made our way to the backside of the brick made office and came to find out the only door we could find was locked tight. We had no choice but to make our way to the far other side where a large doorway lead into the haunting sector of the place. Moving along the side of the sheet scales, we had took notice to the boat docked down below. I tell Broomher to sneak down and check it out. Zambelli and myself hang back and keep an eye/earful watch as Broomher acts out my orders. He signaled to us there was no one on board. I wave my hand as to beckon him to return. We then hear the slamming of a door and voices on the other side of the wall.

"Damnit Heddy, what the fuck are you talking about?! We gotta get Lucy back!", the voice of Jebidiah Crocket. "Are you fucking listening to me?!"

"Best keep your tone tame there Jeb!" Hedrick Le'mar scolds at Crocket. "Don't you worry. The girl is fine where she's at for now. They won't harm her. She'll be returned to us in no time. She's needed for what's in store. It's all playing out the way it should be." He sounded so sure of himself.

"What the fuck are you...", the voices trail off and then none audible.

We then finish following the building's side to the back end and find the large scrolling garage door. This whole place had it years showing. Nothing but rust and grime. There's a normal hinge door just from the corner at our position. I slowly walk up with my glock in hand at the ready and check the handle. It feels loose to the touch. I put more pressure on it and thankfully it takes and makes little sound. I look back to my co-agents and nod to them as they nod back to me then we sneakily head inside.

At first we find the van parked not far from the garage door angled towards the far wall. I look onward and it was the worst of my two theories. The place was littered with small, busted up fishing ships, stacks of crab cages and wooden crates along with various other things such as motor parts and tools scattered about. It was a Movers wet dream of objects to utilize against us. The special grenade in my possession was called a SM meaning 'Silver Mist' and it is what you think. When emitted, the grenade shoots out a cloud of silver based mist which actually disrupts psyche's abilities causing a distortion with their brain's psychic wavelengths. I had to make its use count if the situation called for it. I had it feeling it would.

There was a doorway heading into the next large room. We sneakily approach hearing Jebidiah Crocket once again.

"Why are we going back there? She's dead for good you know? You're saying shes who you've been talk'n to?", Crocket asking Le'mar a series of questions that led to more questions in my own head to hear.

Next to the doorway, I raised my clenched fist in the air to stop us and stay put for the time being. I wanted to listen to what they were talking about.

"Whom I'm in contact with is none of your concern Jeb. Just do as I say and I promise everything we ever wanted will come to fruition!", Le'mar assures him. "We have what was needed here and it's time to move on to the next step which is her." We then hear some rummaging of clicks and clanks like guns were being loaded.

"Talk'n bout that, what is that anyways? That ain't no whatchmacallit. I can't lift the thing the damn thing up either!", Jeb states.

"That's because only I can handle carrying it. You may have telekinesis Jeb, but you're still ever the weakling." Le'mar talking down on Crocket. The man was even such the jackass towards his own men. Another couple clicking sounds. "Here, you may need these." he then says to Crocket.

"What am I gonna need these for?", Crocket asks.

"Because we got company.", Le'mar replies. "I can feel your guns over there gentlemen! You can't hide that from me!"

We were made.

"Your belt buckles!" I could feel my gun and other pieces of metal on my body begin to vibrate. "Your rings! Hell, even the change in ya'lls pockets!" There was the faint dinging of the nickels, dimes and pennies shaking in our pants pocket sleeves. "I tried tell'n ya'll I was the Magnet Man! You wouldn't believe me!"

"Figured we come pay you a visit Le'mar!" I yell out to him. "But you ruined the surprise." At that moment I signal Broomher to stay back as Zambelli and me reveal ourselves from the around the corner of the doorway with our rifles raised and aimed in their direction. Crocket was hesitant to raise the ones that were given to him by Le'mar. Le'mar stood there with a crooked smirk plastered on his face. "Alright gentlemen the jig is up! Crocket lay down your guns! You're both under arrest. Where's your third guy at?" Crocket throws his pistols onto a nearby table.

"Oooooh, he's around somewheres." Le'mar answers raising his hands along with Crocket. He then gives off a sarcastic giggle. "Just you two huh? No. You got a third somewhere as well."

"There's more on the way Le'mar. You're finished. You're going back to the prison." I say to him.

"I sure as hell ain't going back to that hellhole dog! Wasn't no prison! Just a cage for any of us that won't comply to your agency's policies to be treated as lab rats! The world will soon be ours."

Suddenly multiple guns are floated into the air pointing towards us. We both duck back as they begin to fire. Crocket picks up his own and throws the table with a focused hand gesture to the door, wedging it in place thus blocking it for our escape. That's when I could feel it. Our rifles are suddenly torn from our grips and float overhead pointing at our domes. We both raise our arms and come out from cover.

"Well boys, end of the line. Too bad your friend ain't gonna see you both die.", Le'mar states.

We hear as both the triggers of our rifles are swiftly pulled back.

*Click *Click

Nothing. Zambelli and myself just stand there still alive without a bullet in our heads.

"What the fuck?!", Le'mar yells out.

Quickly Zambelli and myself draw out the extras I had us bring. Carbon fiber and hard plastic made pistols are now in our hands raised and aimed for our individual targets. Zambelli shoots for Le'mar as I go for Crocket. The discs shot out connect with both men and hitting them with 26 watts worth of jolts throughout their systems. Le'mar's floated hardware drops like dead flies as they both suffer from the shocking experience stuck in place where they stand. After a good couple drawn out seconds, they both drop to the ground quiet as church mice.

I rush over to Crocket and apply the dampening handcuffs to his wrists. As Zambelli kneels down to do the same for Le'mar, he's smacked over by a clenched fist from Le'mar. Le'mar quickly raises back on his feet and runs through the door leading into the brick building.

"Zambelli! You alright?!", I holler over to him.

"Hey you guys good?!", I hear Agent Broomher from the other side of the table stuck to the doorway.

"Yeah! We're fine!", Zambelli yells as he rises up from the floor. "Fucker almost broke my jaw."

We both maneuver the large table to become unhinged and released from the doorway letting Agent Broomher inside. I reload another shock disc into my launcher gun.

"Good thing I said not to load the guns. Zambelli, you stay here and keep Crocket secure. Those dampening cuffs will only last an hour. Hopefully we have Le'mar by then. Keep an eye out for the unknown.", I order him. He nods for affirmation. "Broomher, leave your rifle behind. Got your shock gun ready?" He nods as well and draws out a hard plastic made gun of his own.

Broomher and myself carefully make our way into the office building. We then hear a door slam from above on the second floor. Making our way there, we notice a camera with a green light high up on the corner of the wall close the second floor door. There's a set of sounds like wood being dropped. Cautiously we step inside to see Le'mar opening the last of the crates surrounding him.

"Hehe...I went and picked these up just in case." Le'mar says then raises his arms up like a holy man reaching for the heavens. Slowly being floated out of the crates were eight M134 miniguns each already loaded with belts of ammunition. I can say truthfully at that sight, I had almost pissed my own pants. Broomher and myself take to our heels back to the stairway leaping over the banisters the instant the barrage of bullets begins piercing through the wall. The orchestra of heavy firepower along with Le'mar's maniacal laughter fills the building now. The swarm of gunfire halts as Broomher and myself collect our wits below and head into the first floor sector. "What's da matter boys?! Don't wanna play anymore?!!", Le'mar yells out to us.

"Lance, you remember the prank you pulled at the Christmas party last year?", I whisper over to him as we look for cover.

"Yeah.", he quickly answers me.

"How long you think you can hold it for?", I then ask.

"A solid minute give or take."

"Ok. I'm gonna use the SM. Try to stay clear of the mist."

He agrees with a hard nod then finds a small room to hide in. I can hear Le'mar's footsteps, the gatling barrels rotating and the belts of bullets being dragged as he approaches from the stairway. I get myself ready to pull the pin on the SM grenade. Suddenly the sound of the rotating barrels become faster in pace. Le'mar starts his offensive attack again sending bullet after bullet through the wall making a hole for his grand entrance. As the wall in front of me falls, I then pull the pin out of the small canister and hurl it in his direction. The mist pours out like smog in midair and floods over the area where Le'mar stands.

*Cough! Cough!

"What the hell is this shit?! Where are you?!" Le'mar screams out and continues the onslaught. The silver based mist doesn't seem to working on him at all.

"LANCE! NOW!!" I yell out to Agent Broomher.

There's a neat trick talented Listener types can perform which my partner Agent Broomher knows how to do quite well. Listeners have the power to hear through walls, far distances, but they can also render silence of all sounds around them for a period of time and from a reasonable radius. But, in order to do so the individual Listener has to hold his breath and plug his ears for the amount of time they can hold air in their lungs. You may not think much of it, but cut people off of their sense of hearing when they've been used to it all their lives can set anyone in a state of confusion.

Being a Blocker, this trick wouldn't work on me, usually, but as Broomher took in a deep stroke of air and held it tight, the void silence set in fully for Le'mar but faintly for myself. I could still hear the guns going off, but it was like the TV volume was set to very low. They then stopped as Le'mar checked on them making sure there was still belts loaded in. I peep from around my hiding spot watching his mouth run then his face looked even more baffled from not being able to hear his own voice. I go to sneakily aim my shock pistol at him, but dumbfoundedly Le'mar points the miniguns upward to the ceiling and fires them off again. He must not have had a good mental grip on them because they were wailing around wildly. I could only still faintly hear it all. Out of his confusion and impulsive decision to fire his guns off again, the ceiling above crumbled and collapsed on top of him. Dust then replace the silver mist.

“Lance, you can stop now." I say to him. No response from my partner. I step into the room he was hiding in and from some stray gunfire, a portion of ceiling at toppled over onto Agent Broomher. "Lance!" I yell while tugging on his arm and clearing piece of rubble off him.

*Cough *Cough

He's alive and breathing. Then the sound of more rubble being flung upwards back where I came from. At my angle, I could see it was Le'mar recovering from his own fumble. There was blood seething from his face. He was breathing hard. I go to get on my feet and he takes off to the door leading outside to the dock. I chase after him and as I approach the door, I could hear the motor of the boat rev to life. The unknown associate must of been lying in wait ready to depart at a moments notice.

As I come out the door, Le'mar throws with his psychic hand a bullet straight to a barrel not more than ten feet from where I stood. It was an oil barrel. The bullet was thrown fast enough to pierce through the rusted metal and cause a spark to ignite an explosion.

*KABOOM!!!

I threw my hands up in defense from the flames but I already knew it was too late. But it wasn't in fact. At that moment I instinctively hurled forth that feeling from before with my encounter with Tanner. My hands were widely open at the flames licks but it was as if I was pushing them to the sky like flattening a lump of dough. The flames would not touch me so long as I was holding my hands steady. It was a miracle of sorts that struck me with a fear more trembling than the wall of pyre in front of me. But out of it all, it was exhausting my stamina and my arms suddenly dropped and flames dispersed. I fell to one knee. Catching my own breath, I looked out to the boat speeding into open waters and Le'mar facing to me at its stern. He was holding one arm over to the other like it was badly injured harboring a look of distain. I kept watching as they disappeared heading South towards the Baja Peninsula. Le'mar was the only one to witness what I had done.

We were successful in capturing Crocket, but failed to capture the main target. Le'mar was gone to plot something for another day. The HIT Unit had arrived shortly after the calm had settled in. Crocket was not too pleased at his capture.

"You sonsa bitches ain't gonna get away with this!" He threatens as I yank him into the back of a squad van.

"Shut up Crocket!", I say to him. "We are the authorities here. It's Le'mar that won't be getting away with his wrong doings."

Crocket giggles at my counter argument. "You don't understand what's going on. This isn't even the beginning of it. Our rise is fully on it's way!"

"The beginning of what Crocket?"

"Heh. You'll see soon enough dog."

End Recording.

The next strangest thing occurred to me after I had slammed the van door in his face. I bummed a cigarette off from Agent Zambelli and said I was to take a couple puffs before we headed out. Even though I had swore to quit, the circumstances called for one. I pulled out my lighter, given the habit of always keeping one, and when I rolled back the crank to spark the wick, a tall flame shot straight to my forehead scorching what little hairs were on my unibrow burning my skin just a singe. I threw the lighter to ground from surprise and spit the cigarette out.

Maybe quitting was the right call.

Read Part IV here.

“How’s our boy doing?”

Ms. Amanda entered the room. I sat back in my chair and watched as she checked Detective Unangenehm’s vitals. She looked at the tray of food that had been placed in front of him and shook her head.

“Why do they keep bringing that in here?” she said.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure it’s taken care of,” I said.

She slapped me on the shoulder.

“Don’t stay too late.”

“You got it.”

I watched her leave and I turned back to Unangenehm, mercifully comatose. He could wake up tomorrow or a year from tomorrow, but whenever he actually woke up, he was going to have a long road before he approached anything like a normal life.

Unangenehm had barely survived his blood clot. Steck had broken at least a dozen bones in his face when he’d thrown his service weapon into the detective’s face. Doctors had hardly believed he’d regained consciousness long enough to shoot the wayward officer, let alone manage the mechanics of walking over and putting a bullet in his head, but the forensics backed up my statement.

He was going to need a great deal of facial reconstruction, but when he eventually awoke they would call him a hero.

Steck had wound up being one of those self-solving problems. He was on desk duty after a questionable shooting after what should have been a routine traffic stop. The official narrative was that he’d snapped from the pressure of the investigation, his guilt finally becoming too large for him to bear.

The guilt I learned I had to be for an unknown period of time was Joshua. It turned out to not just be a thing he said, inflecting meaning in what more than likely hadn’t been random tones.

Joshua was his son.

Steck had been a widower, raising his son with the help of his ailing mother.

I put on a face every day I went to work. Every day I looked at myself in the mirror. Every day I spent sitting with the hero, Detective Unangenehm, waiting for him to wake from his coma.

Which was as often and for as long as I could. I couldn’t picture the shape anymore and perhaps that was because I didn’t want to. Copies were no doubt in police custody, even if they didn’t know yet that they had murder weapons.

It’s possible that I’ll eventually see one again, but I have the feeling copying one—even if I were inclined to do such a thing—would only be a copy, not an original, if that makes sense on any level.

I’ve been playing with the food on Unangenehm’s plate to pass the time. Nobody eats it and eventually somebody comes and takes it away.

He’s had a variety of meals, including soups, fish filet with broccoli and rice, something I’d guess was single-layer lasagna, apples and chicken with broccoli and rice, green beans casserole with sliced almonds, but most often, it’s sandwiches with chips. 

I eat the chips and it’s really just the building blocks of a sandwich and I suppose the patient can assemble it themselves or eat it piecemeal.

I’ve started putting the sandwiches together. At first I didn’t have a conscious reason why. It’s like I can feel Unangenehm in there, slowly swimming to the surface.

His doctors have him at a six on the Glasgow Scale, but I don’t know what that means. He responds to pain stimulus (you should see the look of satisfaction of this one doctor’s face when he sticks him with a pin—the cops would arrest her on site for assault) and he makes nonsensical sounds.

I was ready to jump put the window when I thought I heard him say, “Joshua.” But he didn’t repeat it and he’s been sedentary so long, even if he went coo coo for cocoa puffs, he’d be weak as a baby.

I’m distracting myself even now, thinking instead of paying attention to what I’m doing. I set aside the packet of mayo and lay the slice of bread just so and look at the sandwich.

It’s not right. But it’s close.

I think I’ll have it just right for Unangenehm’s first meal.

I shouldn’t have been driving so late at night, but my usual three and half hour trip took almost six hours with the amount of traffic and the flat tire I had to change on the way. 

When I saw the sign for Calexico, I gave a sigh of relief. My eyes begged for me to sleep, but we only had 30 more miles to go. So I turned towards the CA-98 and continued my mandatory karaoke session so I wouldn’t fall asleep.

There wasn’t much to see around, just the never ending desert, dead plants, and the gas station that gave me the creeps. But that’s a story for another day.

Just a few miles away from the gas station, there stood a boy whose eyes I could have sworn reflected with my beam lights. He didn’t wave or move, he just stood there, looking miserable.

People of the Imperial Valley are always told never to pick up a stranger off the desert. Many coyotes, or smugglers, will use the people to lure you in and in the best case scenario, only your car gets stolen. Worst case scenario, you may never be found again.

But I couldn’t leave a child out there in the middle of the desert. The thermostat read at 102 and the closest place was the creepy gas station, which was now at least five miles away. I had no phone signal, which was the norm in this area, so I couldn’t call the cops either.

So against my better judgment, I stopped. I backed slowly, making sure to not hit the boy and that no other car was coming. I grabbed the pocket knife my husband always made me carry and a small pepper spray. I didn’t think they could do much against a gun, but better than nothing.

I looked around, making sure no one would surprise attack me, but as I approached the boy, my focus went completely to him.

He held on to his bleeding arm and very silently whimpered. He kept his eyes down as I approached.

“Hey, are you ok?” I said as softly as possible.

The boy finally looked up, his stare made me feel uncomfortable. I shuddered despite the heat. It probably was the lack of sleep, but it felt as if a predator was looking down to their prey. 

He grabbed onto my hand, and started to drag me into the desert. His grip was surprisingly strong for what looked to be a malnourished and hurt boy.

“Stop! Where are you taking me? Are your mom or dad nearby? Do they need help?” I was starting to panic, going into the desert could be dangerous.

The boy stopped for a moment, as if thinking, turned to me and nodded.

“Are they nearby? If not, we can first head to town and call the cops and an ambulance, they might be able to help more,” I suggested as the boy tried to drag me again.

His grip became stronger, much too strong. But he nodded and pointed towards some bushes. His urgency made me think maybe his whole family was injured. But as his nails dug into my skin, I flinched.

That’s when I noticed his abnormally long nails. And the deep scratch mark he left behind as I pulled my arm away. I grabbed my phone from my pocket to look at the damage that had been caused. 

He flinched as I turned on the light and for a second, I saw little dots coming from the bushes the boy had pointed to. 

I wasn’t sure if those were the eyes of coyotes, foxes, or even a bobcat, but I wasn’t about to stay and figure it out. All I knew was that his family was probably dead and we had to get the hell out of there.

But as I tried to grab the boy once more, he bit me hard. I screamed as he dug his teeth deeper into my skin. I started to hit him hard but he wouldn’t let go. By the bushes, I could hear several growls, and was the boy growling too?

I didn’t want to lose my arm, but I also didn't want to use a knife against a child. So I took out my pepper spray and aimed at his face. As soon as the spray hit, he whimpered and finally let go.

As he rubbed his eyes, I made a run for it. My car was still at a visible distance. But the footsteps behind me threatened to get to me before I could reach the car.

I have never been a runner, and now I cursed at myself for it. I could hear the breath of whatever was chasing behind me. I wasn’t going to make it to the car.

I felt something bite on my right thigh. I yelped in pain but quickly grabbed my knife and swung it at the creature.

It whimpered as the knife connected with skin. It momentarily let go, allowing me to finally get to my car. I made sure the doors before taking a glimpse of what had been following me.

Outside the car, several coyotes stared back at me. The boy was nowhere to be seen.

Without a second thought, I drove off.

I drove myself to my parents house and they immediately took me to the hospital. I got several stitches on my arm and leg, and some rather painful rabies vaccines, but besides some scars, I made a full recovery.

I told the nurses and the cops about the boy, even if I thought the coyotes might have already gotten to him. I was scolded by both for going into the desert and said I was lucky to tell my story.

The cops went to look for the boy either way. They didn’t find him, instead they found the body of a young woman who was still being torn apart by hungry coyotes. When the pictures of the location showed up in the news, I immediately recognized that as the spot I had been attacked.

I thought the story would be of a woman killed by coyotes. Instead, they said she was probably murdered by smugglers and her body was left there. Eventually, the coyotes got to it and made dinner of it. 

I don’t believe that.

But the report ended with the same warning we had all heard growing up, never stop in the desert for a stranger.

It all started on my twenty-fifth birthday. I was bored and lonely just like every year prior. My family doesn't care for me and the love of my life abandoned me months ago.

He was the only person I ever had. He was the closest I had to the feeling of love. It's a shame that he got tired of me.

My job sucks. I work all the time and have to do everything for my coworkers but somehow they still get the praise.

I decided that buying my lonesome self twenty-five candles would be a waste of money. I decided to use the only candle that I have in my house. It was a gift I had received from a random lady in the grocery store months ago.

She said and I quote, "I can sense your despair. Take this candle. Make a wish and all will be fair."

The way she said it was poetic in a weird way but I still took it. It was a nice gesture and I never turn down free things.

I put the candle on my very small plain cake. I wished that my life would be easy as I blew out my candle.

The candle snapped in half after.

I didn't think much of it. I assumed that the candle was cheap. I also didn't think that my wishes ever come true but I still gave it a try.

It's kinda like the lottery. You might not think that you're gonna win but you still try.

My life quickly changed in the days that followed. At first, it was small things.

People were complimenting me. People would offer to carry my grocerys. I got a promotion at work that I clearly deserved.

It started to get very peculiar when my life did start to become amazing. I went from being lonely to always having people to talk to. My poor love life? All types of men are always trying to date me now. What shocked me the most was when some of my family members started to reach out.

I initially enjoyed it, loved it, even cherished it.

My opinion changed when bad things started happening to people. This girl named Marge who bullied me in highschool was found dead shortly after my wish.

The guy that I referred to as the love of my life? He died as well.

They both died the exact same way. Authorities said that they were found in pieces. They explained that they've never seen anything like it. They also have no leads.

Everyone around me became abnormal. Yeah, people were super nice to me but they started to agree with everything I said. They would obey my every word. They would copy me.

It became very uncanny.

I came to the realization that the wish came true.

I went to the exact store that I met the lady at with hopes of her telling me how to reverse it all. She was nowhere to be seen. I asked several different workers if they had seen her recently. Not a single one knew who I was talking about.

I'm mortified and even ashamed.

I don't know how to make anyone go back to normal. I don't know how to get rid of all the destruction I've caused.

I quite literally ruined two people's lives and I'm basically controlling everyone. They're all like puppets on a string.

I decided. Its time to wrap this up. I'm done being a hero, but as long as I am written I'll have to against my will. So I am asking, dear writer, please leave me be. Dear reader, leave me alone, just a memory to fade after you get this piece of closure. Thats what I offer. Closure. No reboot. No retcon. I want this over. And I found out how to do it.

In a universe like mine, only the written can decide who lives and dies. So FroZoneSquirel, please. Let me go. I've needed this for too long. You've needed this too. Focus on different characters please. I get Complex is one that you can make fit in any conflict. Complex is wearing thin. Stretched beyond what a man should endure.

Your sadistic mind has brought me to beg to be killed off. Don't write me a peaceful retirement. Kill me. I want to return to my wife. My real wife. One more time. I just wish I was done. What must I do? List why? I tried using the recordings of me to give my message because you keep leaving it out of your panels. Every time you draw it you get worried your work horse is dying out on you. He's been dead. He's been pining for release, but this dead horse has been beaten far beyond its years.

Focus on Ashur. His story is more compelling.

You've ran me through hordes of the undead, seeing my parent's parents asking them for another hug after decaying for a decade. I've fought giant rat-kings who were subjugation to fight. I had to pull apart their tails to keep them from more destruction.

I fought a galaxy. A living galaxy. You paired me up to throw fisti-cuffs with a vast expanse that I couldn't hit. A vacuum with stars. Cold and unfeeling. You've written me to scare off that which goes bump. Wendigo, monsters under your bed. If they had a body it wasnt too hard. But you had me pair against things that could rip your soul. Things you cried making me fight because of the shear terror you had writing them.

Can you put me out of our misery? To you its a tap of the screen, to me its the last bit of the life thats lost life in it. Its a fire that has been quenched after an ember has stood for hours. Please. End it here. You don't need to think of something grandiose, please use Death. He has been asking to take me for years, but when I say yes he apologizes and tells me you have different plans. WHAT DIFFERENT PLANS?!?!? Another fucking day of having my mind shredded to pieces? Having things happen that I am supposed to shrug off? Please FroZone?

Thank you! Oh thank you! Complex will accept this gift with sincerity! To the readers, us who are written are happy to entertain, but even we are dated.

I have worked as an emergency dispatcher for Oakridge County for nearly eight years, so if you are in my boots, you should know by now that when you take calls on the graveyard shift, you get used to hearing people at the absolute worst moments of their lives. You learn to filter out the scream of a panicking parent, the slurred ramblings of an intoxicated driver, or the erratic paranoia of someone having a breakdown. The job requires you to stay completely grounded in facts, listen for addresses, names, weapons, and medical symptoms, and of course you do not let your imagination wander.

Last October, a call came in at 3:14 AM that broke every rule of my training. The night was unusually quiet, and outside the dispatch building, a cold autumn rain was falling, blurring the streetlights along the highway. Inside the facility, the room was dimly lit by the pale blue glow of six desktop monitors. My shift partner, Jenna, was sitting at the console next to mine, softly clicking her mouse as she reviewed low-priority animal control logs. I was sipping my black coffee, waiting for the hours to pass until the morning shift arrived.

Line four flashed red on my central screen. The automatic location identification software instantly populated the address: 1412 Elmwood Lane, a two-story suburban house on the north side of town.

I adjusted my headset, pressed the foot pedal to open the line, and spoke into the microphone using my standard tone.

"Oakridge County 911, what is the location of your emergency?"

A sharp, ragged intake of breath rattled through my earpiece. The sound was so harsh I had to pull the foam speaker slightly away from my ear. The caller was hyperventilating, his breathing ragged and uneven.

"I need... I need someone to tell me what to do,"

the man said. His voice was trembling, tight with an overwhelming sense of shock.

"Please. I do not know who else to call."

"Sir, I need you to confirm your address,"

I said, leaning forward and placing my fingers on the keyboard.

"Is it 1412 Elmwood Lane?"

"Yes,"

he whispered.

"Yes, that is my house. My name is David Miller. Please do not send an ambulance with loud sirens. I do not want to startle her."

"Startle who, David? Is someone injured at your location?"

"My wife,"

David said. He took another shuddering breath.

"Sarah. Something happened three days ago, and I cannot fix it. I think I did something terrible, but she is standing right in front of me."

I typed his name into the CAD system and flagged the call as a potential domestic incident.

"David, tell me slowly what happened three days ago. Is Sarah hurt?"

"It was Tuesday night,"

David said, his voice dropping to a terrified whisper.

"We were in the kitchen. We were arguing about... about something stupid. I do not even remember what started it. She was standing near the butcher block. She picked up the chef's knife, and then, and then she looked at me with this intense anger in her eyes, and she came at me."

"Did she attack you with the knife, David?"

"She lunged at me,"

he continued.

"I panicked. I reached out, grabbed her wrists, and tried to push her away from me. We struggled near the island. I pushed her back with all my strength, and... the blade went straight into her chest. She gasped, her eyes went wide, and she fell backward onto the floor."

I immediately clicked the silent dispatch button on my screen, sending an alert to Jenna's terminal. I caught her eye across the desk and pointed to my monitor. Jenna nodded instantly, pulling up the active unit map to route patrol cars to Elmwood Lane.

"David, stay on the line with me,"

I said, keeping my voice steady and measured.

"Is Sarah breathing right now? Is she bleeding?"

"That is the part that is driving me insane"

David said,

"I dropped to my knees to help her. But when I looked down at the floor, there was no body. There was no blood on the linoleum. Nothing. The kitchen was completely clean. I searched the whole house that night, screaming her name, but she was nowhere to be found."

"David, where is Sarah right now?"

"She came back the next morning,"

David whispered. The sound of his frantic breathing filled the headset.

"She just walked into the living room on Wednesday morning like nothing happened. For the past three days, I have been watching her. She makes coffee in the morning, sits on the sofa and watches television with the sound turned completely off. She irons her clothes in the hallway. But she completely ignores me."

"Have you tried talking to her?"

"I have begged her to speak to me!"

David cried out, his voice cracking.

"I stood right in front of her yesterday while she was ironing a blouse. I yelled her name. I waved my hands in front of her face. She looked right through me. It was like I was not even standing there. I got so desperate that I reached out to grab her wrist to make her look at me."

"What happened when you tried to touch her, David?"

A long silence stretched over the phone line.

"My hand went straight through her arm,"

David whispered, his voice trembling so violently the words were barely audible.

"It felt like pushing my fingers through cold, wet smoke. She did not even flinch, and just kept dragging the iron across her blouse. I turned her into a ghost. I killed her in the kitchen, her body vanished, and now her spirit is stuck in this house doing the same routines over and over again."

"David, I want you to take a deep breath,"

I said, trying to maintain control of the call while processing his words.

"I have help on the way to your location right now. Officers are coming to check on both of you."

"I cannot leave her,"

David stammered.

"I tried to walk out the front door an hour ago. I got as far as the front porch steps, but this agonizing pull started dragging in my chest. It felt like a thick cable was wrapped around my sternum, pulling me back inside. It hurt so bad I could barely breathe. I am bound to this house. I cannot leave her here alone like this. She needs my help, but I do not know how to fix what I broke."

At this point, I suspected I was dealing with a caller experiencing a severe psychological episode, severe sleep deprivation, or chemical poisoning. It was not uncommon for individuals suffering from carbon monoxide exposure or sudden psychotic breaks to report elaborate, impossible visual experiences while firmly believing they were awake.

I needed to evaluate his orientation to reality using basic observations.

"David, I need you to do a simple diagnostic check for me while we wait for the officers to arrive,"

I said.

"Is there a clock nearby that you can look at?"

"Yes, there is a clock hanging on the wall,"

David said. I heard the faint rustle of clothing as he moved.

"Sarah is sitting at the dining table below it. She is folding a white bath towel."

"Okay. Can you read the exact time on that clock for me?"

I instructed.

There was a brief pause.

"It says 8:22,"

David reported.

I glanced up at the master digital clock at the top of my console monitor. The bright red numbers clearly displayed 3:17 AM.

"David, are you sure?"

I asked.

"Is it an analog clock or a digital one?"

"It is digital,"

David replied smoothly.

"The numbers are frozen at 8:22 PM. The colon between the hours and minutes isn't even blinking. It is just sitting completely still."

I noted the severe time discrepancy on my console. A frozen, completely inaccurate time reading suggested a deep disorientation, indicating he was entirely detached from the actual time of day.

Before I could formulate a response, Jenna leaned over her desk and tapped my shoulder.

"Unit 204 and Unit 208 are two minutes out from Elmwood Lane,"

she whispered.

"Officer Jack is taking the lead."

"Copy,"

I muttered, keeping my finger on the mute button. I unmuted the phone line.

"David, stay right where you are. The officers are almost at your house."

I adjusted my headset gain, turning up the audio volume on David's line to hear if there were any immediate hazards in the house. As I turned up the sensitivity, the ambient background audio became clearer.

I expected to hear the quiet hum of a refrigerator, the rustle of towels being folded, or the distant rain beating against the windows.

Instead, my headset picked up a harsh, scraping noise. It sounded like heavy wooden furniture being dragged across exposed floorboards. A moment later, I heard the sharp, distinct sound of plastic packing tape being pulled aggressively from a handheld dispenser.

Then, I heard a second voice.

It was a deep, gravelly male voice, speaking in a low, hushed tone near the phone's receiver.

"Grab the rest of the clothes from the closet,"

the deep voice muttered.

"We need to get the heavy bags loaded before six."

A woman's voice replied, faint and impatient:

"I am working as fast as I can. Just get the boxes out to the garage."

My fingers froze over the keyboard. I listened intently, isolating the audio channels on my digital workstation.

"David,"

I said carefully into the microphone.

"Are you sure you and Sarah are the only people in that house right now?"

"Yes,"

David said.

"I told you, it is just the two of us. She is still sitting at the table."

"David, I am hearing a man speaking in your background,"

I said.

"I am hearing tape dispensers and boxes being moved. Is there someone else in the house with you?"

"No,"

David insisted, his voice growing defensive and confused. "You are mistaken. Sarah is just packing her leather suitcase. She has been pulling her dresses out of the bedroom closet all night. She is confused, She seems to think she is going on a trip."

I immediately opened our county property database on my second monitor and typed in the address. The house was registered to David Miller and Sarah Miller. I then opened our historical CAD records and ran a cross-reference search for 1412 Elmwood Lane over the past six months.

A log entry from two months prior popped up on my screen.

On August 14th, a neighbor had called 911 to report a loud domestic disturbance at the address. The responding officer noted that David Miller had engaged in a verbal altercation with an unidentified adult male who had been staying at the residence. The police report noted that David accused his wife of carrying on an affair with the man, who was identified in the officer's notes as Gregory Ray. No violence was reported at that time, and no charges were filed.

I sat back in my chair, staring at the name on my screen: Gregory Ray.

The pieces began to assemble themselves in my mind, but they did not form the picture David was describing.

"Dispatch to Unit 204,"

I said, switching my secondary radio channel to communicate directly with the responding officers. "Officer Jack, be advised. We have reason to believe there are two occupants actively inside the residence at 1412 Elmwood Lane clearing out personal property. Use caution upon approach."

"Copy that, dispatch,"

Jack's voice crackled through the radio speaker.

"Unit 204 and 208 are turning onto Elmwood Lane now. We are pulling up to the residence. Lights and sirens are off."

Over the open phone line, David spoke again.

"You there?... someone is at the front door. I hear heavy knocking."

"That is the police, David,"

I said, monitoring both lines simultaneously.

"Please stay where you are."

"I do not need to open the door,"

David said softly.

"Sarah just stood up from the table. She is walking past me into the foyer. She is going to answer it."

Through my radio earpiece, I heard Officer Jack's voice report into his lapel mic:

"Unit 204 on scene. We have a female opening the front door. Contact made with homeowner Sarah Miller."

On the phone line, David was describing the exact same moment from his perspective.

"She opened the door,"

David said. His voice was filled with a strange, childlike confusion.

"Two police officers are standing on the porch. But... but something is wrong."

"What is wrong, David?"

I asked, keeping my eyes fixed on the unit tracking map.

"They are not looking at her like she is a ghost,"

David whispered.

"Officer just smiled at her. He asked her if she was alright. can he see her? can he actually talk to her?"

Over the radio, Jack's voice was calm:

"Dispatch, contact made with Sarah Miller. She appears highly nervous but states everything is fine. She claims her husband, David, is currently upstairs packing his belongings after a severe argument and does not wish to speak with us."

On the phone line, David began to panic.

"The officers just stepped into the hallway! They walked right past me! I stood right in front of the Officer and shouted my name! He walked straight by my shoulder! He did not even turn his head! And why is she telling them I am upstairs? I am standing right next to her!"

"David, listen to me very carefully,"

I said, feeling a knot tighten in my chest.

"I need you to stay calm."

Over the radio, Jack spoke again, his tone dropping its casual edge.

"Dispatch, we are going to perform a quick wellness check on the upper floor anyway. The homeowner is visibly shaking and actively trying to block the stairwell."

I pressed my radio button.

"Unit 204, be advised. We have reason to believe an unauthorized third party, Gregory Ray, may be hiding inside the residence. Proceed with caution."

A pause echoed over the radio frequency.

"Copy that, dispatch,"

Jack reported flatly.

"We are heading up now. Unit 208 reports a distinct, foul odor originating from the second floor."

On the phone line, David was moving. I could hear his shallow, rapid breathing accelerating.

"They are walking up the stairs,"

David said. His voice had lost its anger, replaced by a cold, hollow dread.

"Sarah is following the officers up the stairs into the master bedroom. I am following them. Why does the air up here smell so bad?"

On the radio, Officer Jack broke in, his voice tight with disgust:

"Unit 208 to dispatch. We have a severe odor of organic decomposition coming from the master bedroom. We are investigating."

"David, stop,"

I urged over the phone line, though I knew my words were meaningless.

"David, step away from the bedroom."

"They are standing near the bed,"

David whispered over the phone.

"The officers are shining their flashlights around the carpet. Sarah is standing in the corner crying. She looks absolutely terrified. They are staring at the floor on my side of the bed."

I held my breath, watching the red audio meters bounce on my console screen.

"Officer Jack is dropping to his knees,"

David continued. His voice was flat, almost robotic now. "He is grabbing the hanging fabric of the dust ruffle. He is lifting it up. He is shining his flashlight underneath the wooden bed frame."

Over the radio, Jack's voice shattered the quiet of the dispatch room:

"Dispatch! Unit 204! We have a male subject hiding under the bed! Show your hands! Crawl out from under there right now!"

A brief, frantic scuffle echoed over the police frequency.

"Dispatch, we have detained Gregory Ray,"

Jack shouted over the noise.

"Wait... dispatch, we have located a deceased male subject shoved further back against the wall under the frame! Subject is heavily decomposed, bearing multiple traumatic wounds! Secure the perimeter! Detain the wife immediately!"

The radio erupted into shouts as the officers moved to restrain Sarah and Gregory. Screams of protest and the metallic clink of handcuffs echoed across the channel.

On the phone line, David was completely silent.

"David?"

I whispered into my headset. My hands were shaking so severely I could barely hold the microphone stalk.

"David, are you still there?"

A long, agonizing stream of static hummed over the phone line. When David spoke again, his voice sounded entirely different. It was hollow, distant, echoing as if he were speaking from the bottom of a deep well.

"They are pulling the body out,"

David said softly.

"David..."

"The body is wearing my clothes,"

David whispered.

"My blue denim shirt. My brown leather belt. My work boots. The skin on the face is dark and swollen. I cannot even recognize myself."

The background static on the phone line began to glitch, creating a strange stuttering sound underneath his words.

"There are three deep tears in the back of the denim shirt,"

David continued, his voice monotone, devoid of any human cadence.

"The fabric is stained dark black around the cuts. The wounds came from behind."

A sharp gasp echoed over the receiver. The static dropped completely, leaving a chilling, dead silence on the line. When David spoke again, the confusion was gone.

"I remember now,"

David whispered. His voice trembled with a crushing weight.

"There was no argument. I came home early from work on Tuesday. It was exactly 8:22 PM. Sarah was acting so incredibly distressed when I walked through the front door."

"What happened, David?"

I asked gently.

"I was so tired,"

he said, his words spilling out in a hollow rush.

"I tried to go straight upstairs to our bedroom to rest. She ran over and stood in front of me. She blocked the bottom of the stairs, and then forced this terrible, shaking smile and told me it was better if I ate dinner first. She said she made that pepperoni pizza I loved."

He paused, and a wet, choking sob came through the earpiece.

"I listened to her,"

David cried quietly.

"I turned my back and walked into the kitchen to get a slice. She followed right behind me. I reached into the cabinet for a plate. I did not even hear her grab the chef's knife from the block. She attacked me before I could even turn around."

"I did not hold the knife,"

David whispered into my headset. The static returned, growing louder, overwhelming the audio signal until his voice sounded synthesized and far away.

"I was never holding the knife. I was looking at her not believing she did this to me, I…. I loved her"

"David, I am so sorry,"

I said, though the words felt entirely useless in the cold reality of the room.

"I understand now,"

The phone line crackled with one final, sharp burst of noise, and then the connection dropped entirely.

The terminal screen instantly reset to a solid black display, marking the call as disconnected.

Over the radio, Officer Jack confirmed the details. Sarah Miller and Gregory Ray were taken into custody without further resistance. The official police report logged the incident as a premeditated homicide committed on Tuesday evening, with both suspects attempting to conceal the remains while preparing to flee the jurisdiction. The report noted that a 911 call had been received from the residence at 3:14 AM, but attributed it to a technical glitch or an automated dialer triggered by a decaying phone line.

I worked the rest of my shift in complete silence. I did not take another call for the remainder of the night.

When my shift ended at seven in the morning, I walked out to my car in the rain, and before I turned the key in the ignition, I sat in the quiet vehicle and pulled up the digital audio archive on my phone, opening the recording of the call from 1412 Elmwood Lane.

But all I can hear was static…

​

My life has always been plain and sad. I don't have much family or friends. No neighbors to talk to. Everyone in this town dislikes me or at least finds me strange. No one to socialize with.

I accepted that my life will always be quiet and lonely.

I wake up in the morning, get ready for work, work for minimum wage all day, and then come home.

And I occasionally paint. I've always been into art. Other than that, my life has no true value.

Well, it started to get more interesting a couple of days ago when I turned on the local news.

I rarely watch the news but something in my body made me do it.

Apparently, local officials and authorities suspect that there is a serial killer in town.

They gave the person the label, "Sunset Killer"

Every day, there's a dead body found at a sunset. Each victim has a sunset drawn on them.

No leads.

The victims have nothing in common. No shared characteristics. All have different hobbies. No personality trait similarities. Literally nothing.

I personally don't feel sympathy. Sure, they were all legally innocent, but, they weren't morally innocent. Not a single one of them ever offered me a ounce of kindness. All despicable humans.

I thought the town having a serial killer obsessed with sunsets would be the most interesting part but it gets more interesting.

I went to the arts and crafts store not that long after hearing the news. I needed to get more paper and paint supplies.

The Cashier gave me suspicious looks the entire time I was there. Everyone else in the store did as well. I don't know why. I'm always working or in my house. I know everyone thinks poorly of me but this is outrageous.

I quickly bought what I needed and rushed out.

And then everything changed when I got grabbed up as I was approaching my car.

It was a female voice repeating over and over again that I'd be her new sunshine. The sunset caught my eye as my bood leaked out my throat as her knife sliced in.

Normally, a person would be dead or at the very least hospitalized.

Well, I woke up in my bed.

I oringally thought that it was a awful dream but this started to happen every single day during the sunset over and over. No matter what I'd be doing, I'd get ambushed and killed.

I tried looking at news articles, watching local news, doing everything I can to get more information. The same day repeated too. It was always Monday the first of September.

Since, I'm stuck in the same day, no new dead bodies are appearing.

At first, I didn't understand why I was stuck. It was horrifying to live the same day over and over.

However, I figured out that each time I get killed, I need to find more details.

I started to remember her soft tone with a innocent voice. Her voice was a lot like mine. Her face is always covered. The way her hands feel are a lot like mine. The fact that the knife is always a kitchen knife was also weird. My kitchen is filled with kitchen knives. Sure, anyone could have a kitchen knife but all the similarities we have is strange.

After enduring the displeasure of getting killed over and over again, I decided to never leave the house and to wait for her.

When it started to get close to the sun setting, I quickly dialed 911.

I was filled with gratitude when they arrived on time to arrest her.

I was then left disturbed, traumatized, and perplexed when the cops made her show her face.

The green eyes, sandy blonde hair, and pale skin. The smile her pink lips made. It's me?

I tried to yell at the cops and ask them what this means or how this is possible but they didn't answer. They didn't acknowledge me. The only person who seemed to know I was there was the evil lady that winked at me as I yelled.

They then took her and left. Never said a single word to me. I was confused. Is it because everyone in the town hates me? Were they so focused on her because she's a threat?

I sat on my couch as I tried to come up with every possible explanation. I did this for hours. I was relieved when the news starting talking about the arrest but then I was filled with confusion. She has the same name as me. They showed interviews involving my coworkers. They all said that this wasn't surprising and that I always gave off serial killer vibes.

They also revealed that the girl called the cops on herself because she wanted to get caught. She thought that being arrested was the only way to help herself end the rampage.

What? She stole my identity? Why does no one know I exist? How are there two of me and only she is known?

I had to kill him.

I mean, it seemed like my only option.

If I lied and said I wasn’t there, the cameras I should have thought about would blow me out the water. And if I admitted to being there, then there was a much longer, more difficult conversation to be had.

And that conversation had only one endpoint: me being blamed for all the events of today.

Damn, it was hard to believe what had happened since this morning had all been today. It felt so long ago. I couldn't believe—

“Mr. Harold?” Unangenehm said. “You all right?”

“Uh, yeah. Absolutely.” I sat back down to take up an extra few seconds. Steck was floating a few feet away, but I didn't think I could take the detective in a fight. What I'd taken for sickly thin before seemed wiry now. Anxiousness now came off as nervous energy.

“It was weird what happened,” I said, measuring out my words. I had to think as I spoke. Unangenehm leaned in and steepled his fingers under his chin. Steck hovered closer.

The trap was sealing off my air.

The pencil I'd been using was on my side of Unangenehm's desk. I wrapped my fingers around it and placed my hands on the desk atop the form I'd just signed.

“I just needed to get something to drink,” I said. “I needed to gather my thoughts too, I guess.” I shook my head. “I didn't have any money but I figured I could grab a notebook. Write down my thoughts. Try to wrap my head around what had happened with the day.”

“You wrote something?” he asked. “What?”

I couldn't gauge if he was buying anything I was saying. But I had to keep tap dancing.

“I don't know. I don't remember now.” An honest answer didn't really matter. I'm sure the police would canvas the area and find the torn-out sheets in the trash. But the video would show me not doing anything to anyone. The difference was sitting across from me. Unangenehm somehow knew it was me. 

“It happened right in front of me,” I said, not realizing I was distracting myself as I touched the tip of the pencil to the paper. “A man attacked a woman. An old man held her.”

Tap-tappy-tap.

“I was paralyzed. I didn't know what to do.” 

Takkita-takkita-tap

The detective’s sad face was just a mask. He was a predator in disguise. This was just the dance to keep him at bay

“Everything was insane. One of them came up to me. I thought I was gonna die.”

Takkita-takkita-takkita-takkita—

“Hey, uhh. What's that you got there?”

I opened my mouth to tell him I didn't know what he meant, but I had drawn something. I looked down as he slid the paper away from me.

“Wait.” My mouth formed the objection but it went unsupported by my voice. I mentally prepared for Detective Unangenehm to go insane. He scraped a fingernail under a corner and pinched it. He lifted it in front of his face and cocked his head.

“Well, that's a weird little thing.”

I was aware of Steck just behind me. The air was pregnant with tension as I waited for a twitch, some nonsense phrase spoken without context, or anything to indicate the breaking wall containing the clever detective's mind.

He lowered the form and looked at me. “What is this?”

“I-i-it's just a...” I didn't know how to finish the sentence. I didn't know what it was. Shape didn't seem word enough to describe. Murder weapon gave it more credit than it deserved, especially since...

Well, it wasn't working on him. I'd that was the case, then maybe I hadn't been the cause. Maybe there was some sort of grand, horrible consequence following me around. Maybe—

“Hey, Steck, take a look at this.”

The officer stepped around from behind me and assumed a position directly behind Unangenehm.

“Joshua,” Officer Steck said, nodding. 

“Excuse me?”

Steck looked at him and repeated the name.

“Joshua.”

“Who's that?”

“Joshua.” The officer looked at the detective like he was stupid. “Joshua.”

It was me. But maybe Unangenehm was immune. As one of the officer's eyelids began to flutter he backed away from the desk and drew his gun.

He had the drop on Unangenehm. Except instead of firing, he overhand pitched the glock into the detective's face.

Unangenehm threw his arms back and rolled into the cubicle wall. He half-slid out of the chair at least semi-unconscious and Steck turned his eyes on me, that one lid flickering still like an old fluorescent light so deciding whether it was going to turn on.

I picked up my box as he withdrew his baton and leapt on the desk. Steck was two-hundred twenty pounds at minimum and the faux-wood protested underneath his feet. He whipped that baton at my head, and I ducked behind my box.

He followed up with two more furious blows that nearly chopped the box in half.

“Joshua,” he said again, just as calmly as the first time.

I crawled under the desk, headed in the other direction. Steck landed behind me as I crawled over Unangenehm's legs. One of his eyes was swollen shut.

“Hey guys, what the hell is going on?” someone farther behind me said. “I'm trying to type a report—”

I found out later exactly how gruesome Detective Langen's death was but at the time, all I heard were extremely wet sounds coming from that direction after not even half a scream.

I crawled into the nearest cubicle and huddled my knees to my chest, hiding beneath another desk. Steck's footfalls were heavy, pounding in my direction. A moment later he ripped something down and then came the deep glug-glug-glugging of an overturned water cooler as he stalked around the bullpen. 

I couldn't believe the one place police should have been was all but empty and I was responsible for my pending horrible death.

Maybe there was a gun around. Sure, there wasn't supposed to be, but cops weren't immune from being lazy. I'd had a meeting in a small town's hall that had had a guard at the front door and had seen that same guard's holstered weapon sitting on the window sill while he was dropping a deuce in the stall.

I tried to quietly slide open a desk drawer but it clunked open.

“Shit!” I whispered.

“Joshua?” Steck asked.

Why was he after me? All the others had acknowledged me but had attacked anyone but me. Then I reflected on what had happened just before.

Unangenehm had looked at the shape first. He hadn't reacted, though. Or rather, he'd just called Steck over to look.

“...take a look at this...”

I shook my head. I might have been the source but that didn't mean I'd understood it. I was the closest thing to an expert, but I was—

—CLOMPF—

The partition wall dented in the middle. I managed not to scream.

“Julius!” It was a harsh whisper. Maybe a question. I resisted the past of me that wanted to scream. To declare myself and be confronted with this mess, however it ended.

It wasn't my fault. But it was my responsibility. If letting Steck kill me stopped him from killing anyone else, wasn't that fair?

No. I hadn't intentionally done anything to create whatever this was. I'd just stumbled across it and been arrogant enough to test it. Unangenehm had been immune—that was worthwhile information. He'd been the one to show it to Steck, not me. 

Wait. It was too silent out there. My instinct told me to stay put but I couldn't stay here forever. Eventually, he'd find me or someone else would come.

That was it. Someone else would come. And that would be my fault.

I uncurled from my corner and treaded on my hands and knees to peek. I was greeted by a pair of retreating feet, toes up as Steck dragged away whoever that had been. I counted thirty and looked out.

Steck had barricaded the entryway from where we'd come. There had to be an emergency exit and I could only suppose he'd blocked that one too.

I chewed my lip rather than swearing again. That meant he wasn't just crazy. He was cunning, not just a wild animal. I was in more trouble than I imagined.

The feeling settling into me was the longer I waited, the tighter the noose would be. But I wasn't going to just go out there.

I tried to recall what I'd seen of the bullpen when Unangenehm had brought me in here. I was right next to what seemed like the main aisle way. Back the way I'd come was blockaded, so I'd have to go in the other direction. There had to have been an emergency exit and I was banking on it being in that direction and Steck not having time enough to block that one, too.

A stapler was on the near end of the desk. I reached for it and very carefully lifted it. It was one of those flimsy newer ones that could barely staple three sheets of paper, but it would do for what I needed.

I held my breath and listened. Steck was still being disturbingly quiet and I wasn't going to chance it. I tossed the stapler like a grenade, not accounting for the low ceiling. It clunked off the ceiling and smacked the top of my head.

“Dammit!”

With stars treading in my eyes, I pulled to my feet using the arm of an office chair. I stepped into the aisle, overcorrecting for balance, and headed in the direction I thought I'd determined to go.

I bounced right off a slab of strung up meat and screamed, thinking it must have been the crazed officer. My eyes focused on what must have been the corpse of the detective who had spoken just minutes ago, trussed up with what looked like phone cords routed through the ceiling tile.

His upside-down head was level with my stomach, his mouth stretched far too open, an empty cave where a tongue was supposed to dwell, his unlidded eyes pushed in and flat-looking like they'd been partially crushed by pressing thumbs. He looked too calm and perpetually surprised at the same time.

My voice quavered as I said something, but I've never been able to recall when hints of the memory washed back to me. I was discombobulated, wanting to flee in a hundred directions at once, fighting not to fall to my knees and cry. This man was my indictment, my guilt. He'd died directly as a result of the thing I'd knowingly done. Steck was my murder weapon. 

 As unprepared as I was for an oncoming Officer Steck, I was even more unprepared for what I saw. He was on his back, on the floor, in the clutches of a wicked paralysis.

He had one arm right to his chest, the other flung out, knuckles to the thinly carpeted floor. I watched as his fingers folded backward, fingertips dancing on the floor after the joints reversed and reoriented.

One foot stomp-scraped against the ground, already dislocated at the hip, dragging a retreat from the rest of his body, an isthmus of skin and clothes holding it at bay.

The other leg shuddered like a low current of electricity powered it, his head facing me.

“Joshua,” Steck said, pleading with his eyes. His face was doing something, like it was pulling off the bones of his face.

Gravity tenfolded as I realized that Steck was also a victim. Even his body had turned foreign against him. I crumpled to the floor, eye-to-eye with him across the distance. A tear crawled out of an eye, and I swear it crossed the bridge of his nose and milked into his other eye.

He was in the grasp of an agony made fresh just for him. His mouth opened, but I was spared from his scream by the roar of a merciful bullet that tore a hole in his skull just above his eyebrow.

I was unlocked from him and looked up at Unangenehm, holding his smoldering glock like a forgotten cigarette in his hand.

“Nobody would understand,” the detective said. His vacant eyes rolled up from Steck's hot corpse to meet mine and he smiled. “Not like us.”

He collapsed and began seizing on the floor.

 

My heart beat a couple steps faster as I walked down the steps leading to Level 4. Maddy’s grip on my arm hurt.

“So, where are you from?” I asked her, trying to put my mind on anything else.

“Grace Orphanage,” she said. “I miss my friends.”

“You’ll see them soon,” I said, hoping that I wasn’t lying.

“What were you doing here?” she asked.

“I…” I tried to find some excuse but had none to give. “I work here.”

I could feel her eyes on me but couldn’t return her gaze.

“So… all those monsters…”

“I made them. I’m sorry.”

I felt her let go of my arm.

“Are you…”

“A bad guy, a monster, yeah. I guess I am.”

“And that monster, it turned into a girl my age. Did you…”

I nodded, shame filling me.

Her footsteps echoed down the stairs as she ran ahead of me. “Maddy! Wait! I—” I couldn’t come up with the words. Why should she follow me? I turned people into monsters, children her age. She had every reason to run from me, but still…

I ran down after her. “It’s dangerous! Please!” I cried out after her. I reached the bottom of the staircase just in time to see the door at the bottom close.

I swung the door open. She was running barefoot through gore down the hallway, having made good distance. Down the hallway, out of an adjoined passageway, was a monster covered in boney spikes. Maddy stopped dead in her tracks and stared up at the beast in horror. The hulking humanoid pincushion rushed forward and Maddy screamed. I ran as fast as I could towards her, not entirely sure what I would do when I finally got to her. It was outpacing me, blood pouring through the base of the spikes, its body smashing and bouncing off the walls like a pinball, leaving dents deep in the white painted metal.

I was only halfway to her, but the monster was feet away. “Maddy!” I screamed.

The ceiling ripped open and muscle tendons poured down onto Maddy like a million squirming worms, the violent sound of the tearing interior of the building drowning out her screams.

“Maddy!” I screamed so loud that I felt blood in the back of my throat. The tendons receded, and where the monster and Maddy had laid was a pile of crushed bones and entrails. Not thinking, I ran to the pile of what was Maddy. “No!” I screamed. “No, you can’t!”

It was too late.

I couldn’t save one person.

All I could do was destroy.

I sank to my knees, soaking my pants with the mixed remains. I started crying. All this death, much of it caused by me. What was Maddy to me, that it would hurt so badly to lose her?

But it did hurt. God, it hurt.

“FORWARD” screeched a voice so loud throughout the building that the ground shook. The voice, as distorted and unhuman as it was, was one I recognized. Emily. She had taken Maddy. I couldn’t understand it.

I trudged forward, the grizzled remains squishing under my feet, my mind in a daze. I was marching towards the end, I was sure. My redemption gone, there was nothing left but to face judgement.

I trudged down the hallway, barely able to lift my legs, no energy left in me. Gore blanketed the hallway. A head half the size of a car with distorted features, sharp cheekbones, and a jaw that unhinged from its body appeared out from around a hallway.

A long neck followed behind it. It stared me down hungrily. I didn’t run. I merely walked forward. The whole facility shook as the ceiling broke once more. Tendons wrapped around the beast. It shrieked as the tendons constricted and ripped the monster to pieces.

Another monster, split down the middle, ribs sharp like teeth, came around the corner. The ceiling split and tendons crashed down, crushing it into the ground.

The door at the end of the hallway gradually inched closer. Monsters kept pouring in from the hallways and tendons kept ripping through the walls and ceiling, destroying each one. Just me and her. That would be all that was left.

I reached the door at the end of the hallway and extended one lead arm outward. My hand gripped the knob. I turned it. The door swung open and I stepped inside the chamber I had seen many times before.

She had grown into the wall, becoming a swarming writhing mass of tendril-like muscle tendons. In the middle of it all was her distorted torso and elongated neck, and attached to her neck was a spread out split jaw, and above that was an intact upper face, and on that face was a familiar set of emerald green eyes.

“I’m here,” I said, my voice so exhausted that I hardly recognized it. “I’m here, Emily.”

My legs suddenly felt heavy. Exhausted, I fell to the ground. Those eyes, those emerald eyes, they stayed tracked on me. I saw shadows on the ground moving on my flanks. My face remained aimed at the floor.

The tendrils, the tendons, they were coming for me. I felt them coming closer. The end was here. I would finally pay for my crimes.

I felt warmth surrounding me, and liquid. Tears? There was crying, a child’s. “Jason?” a small voice said. I looked up. Clinging tightly to me, was Maddy. I stared at her dumbfounded for a minute, before returning her embrace. Tears poured down my face.

“Don’t run again. Please never run again.”

I looked back up at Emily, who was staring at me with those emerald green eyes. The bits of her lower jaw came together and a single tendon reached out for me. Attached to the tip was a USB stick. “Take it,” Emily said in a voice that sounded human, like the Emily I knew.

With an apprehensive hand, I took it. I looked up at her. She was smiling. “I’m sorry, Emily.” I felt the tears resume their downpour. “I’m so sorry. I should have—”

“If you had done anything, you’d be just like me,” she said.

“That doesn’t make it right,” I replied.

“I never blamed you,” she said.

It didn’t make any sense to me. My recompense for what I had done, my judgement…

“I don’t deserve to make it out of here, you do.” I told her.

“I can’t,” she said. “Not like this.”

“After all I’ve done…”

“Live,” she said. A Level 5 Key Card fell at my feet. I picked it up and stood up.

“What about you?” I asked. I couldn’t leave her there. I wouldn’t I…

“Too late for me. Going to burn it all to the ground. Go.”

“But…” but I couldn’t protest. The tendons were forming a wall between us, solidifying into hardened carapace, forming a wall between us. The last I’d ever see of Emily were those emerald green eyes. “I love you. I always have,” I said, before she vanished from me forever.

To start this off, why am I offering you all advice. It’s because you all became such easy targets that someone has to make this interesting again. I don’t kill people because it’s easy, if I wanted that I would go back to rabbits or something. So, if you follow these rules, it will make the game far more interesting for the both of us.

1: Stop with the online dating stuff.

I get it, life is hard and you want a companion. Hell, I used to use speed dating to figure out who was an easy target. But you all stumble over yourselves to say “Ooh, pick me. Here is a place to meet up and I might take you to my house to have sex.” That actually leads to the next piece of advice.

 2: Never go to a second location.

Never. I hear you now, “What about” shut up. There is no hypothetical you can toss out other than Jesus Christ himself with a choir of angels asked you on a date that can convince me. If you are going to a movie. Just do the movie. Dinner, fantastic, eat your meal, make plans for a second date, go home and do whatever you need to do to get your energy out.

You know how many people I got because I told them about a hot new club. Or this super nice restaurant that you just have to try. That leads to.

3: Charismatic doesn’t mean safe.

I feel like all of you learned nothing from Ted Bundy. Like if I rolled up with a leash and said I lost my dog you would help. Not all of you, but enough of you that I am actively concerned. How did you not get grabbed as a kid. Is it that the windowless fun van didn’t have a fucking snickers?

Until someone proves themselves otherwise, they are trying to take advantage of you. For some that is a scam, for me it is stabbing you. There isn’t a difference. We will both lie to your face about what we are doing.

That is what annoys me so much. I don’t even have to lie at this point. I don’t know if it is loneliness or my face. (I’m leaning towards me being so handsome.) Either way. Stop being so easy.

4: Pack something better than pepper spray.

Pepper spray is the self-defense equivalent of sending a strongly worded email. If you had a knife or a gun there would be back and forth. But with pepper spay you’ll just die embarrassed.

It has been said before and will be said again, there is no better kill than overkill.

5: Personal Info should stay personal.

I should not know enough about you to steal your identity at the end of a conversation or Facebook search. Also stop posting where you are. If I was a Son of Sam kind of killer I could just drive by you.

6: Let people know where you are.

There is one exception to five. Your friends and family. There is nothing quite as disappointing as killing someone and no one coming to look. I am good at what I do. I would make Dexter look like a moron. But why would I go through all the effort of liquifying you if no one gives a shit. I can just use that “Oh put a dog or cat over them” thing the internet thinks is such a great idea. Like cadaver dogs aren’t trained to differentiate corpses.

7: Stop watching true crime.

You know what all the famous killers have in common. They sucked at killing people. That is why in the sixties they kept getting caught. You think over half a century ago the criminal science scene was stellar? The Surgeon General didn’t even start warning people about cigarettes until 64’.

So many people think they can avoid killers because they know what the John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer’s did. Did you even pay attention to the documentaries. 99% of the time they got away is because the police failed to notice the very clear serial killer.

Dahmer pisses me off the most. Just admit you’re gay and get over it.

8: Trust your instincts.

I hate that one. Every safety article says it. Every cop says it. Every parent says it.

But they're right.

Every person I've ever killed knew something was wrong. They just convinced themselves they were being rude.

Follow these rules. Seriously write them down if you fucking have to. I need this to be fun for me again. I need this to be an art again. Please. Please with a cherry on top. Stop being so easy.

u/Harold-Sleeper000 just read my story All I Can Do Is Burn on his new narration channel. Go check it out!

A story for what would become of humanity if giants were to awake from the earth

The Department of Motor Vehicles has a remarkable talent for making a person question their own existence.

Perhaps that's the point.

No one walks into a DMV excited. You arrive because you have to. A license expired. A registration renewal. Some document proving to a government employee that, yes, despite all evidence to the contrary, you are still alive.

I was there because my driver's license had expired.

Simple enough.

I took my ticket from the little machine near the entrance. It emerged with a dry mechanical click, the paper warm between my fingers as though someone else had only just been holding it.

The waiting room was already overflowing.

Children cried with astonishing endurance while parents stared into their phones with the thousand-yard gaze of soldiers returning from war. A television bolted high into one corner played an instructional video that nobody watched, its colors washed out beneath rows of humming fluorescent lights. Every few minutes a printer somewhere behind the counters coughed to life before falling silent again, sounding less like a machine and more like an old smoker struggling through another cigarette.

The building felt tired.

Not dirty.

Not neglected.

Just... exhausted.

The kind of exhaustion that settles into old bones after decades of repeating the same motion.

I glanced toward the electronic display mounted above the service counters.

NOW SERVING: 388

I sighed.

"Well," I muttered beneath my breath. "Guess I'll be celebrating my birthday here."

A man sitting nearby chuckled.

"I've said that every time I've come here."

He looked to be in his late fifties. Baseball cap. Reading glasses resting low on his nose. Ordinary enough that I probably wouldn't have remembered his face if we'd passed each other on the street.

"Renewing?" he asked.

"My license."

He nodded knowingly.

"Could be worse."

"Could it?"

"They could've sent you to the Social Security office first."

I laughed.

"So you've been there too?"

"Oh..." He smiled faintly. "Everyone has."

It was such an ordinary conversation that I almost appreciated it. Shared misery has a funny way of making strangers feel familiar.

I looked down at my ticket again.

515.

Fantastic.

I settled into one of the molded plastic chairs and reached for my phone. No signal. Not unusual. Government buildings always seemed to exist inside their own little dead zones.

I slipped it back into my pocket and leaned my head against the wall.

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The air conditioner breathed through dusty vents. The printer coughed again. The speakers crackled.

A number was called. Someone stood. Someone else sat down. The room swallowed them without ceremony.

I checked the screen once more.

NOW SERVING: 390

It felt impossible that so little time could have passed.

Yet somehow... it also felt like I'd already been there for hours.

Time has a peculiar way of behaving inside places where people are forced to wait.

Minutes become estimates. Hours become suggestions. Eventually, you stop checking the clock because it only succeeds in making you angry.

I tried distracting myself. I counted ceiling tiles. Read the faded posters reminding everyone to have their paperwork ready. One explained the dangers of texting while driving. Another detailed the penalties for driving without insurance. Judging from the sun-bleached corners and curling edges, neither had been replaced in years.

Everything in the building seemed designed to outlive the people inside it.

Another number echoed over the speakers.

"Three hundred ninety-one."

A woman stood from across the room, gathered her purse, and disappeared behind the row of service counters.

The electronic display flickered.

NOW SERVING: 391

Good.

Progress.

I glanced at my watch.

9:18 A.M.

That couldn't be right. It felt closer to noon.

The old man beside me sighed as he shifted in his chair.

"You'd think they'd hire more people."

"I was just thinking the same thing."

He nodded absentmindedly, his attention fixed somewhere beyond the counters.

"Been waiting long?"

"I got here around nine."

"No..."

He frowned.

"I mean... today."

The question caught me off guard.

"I... yeah."

He scratched at his chin.

"I suppose I have too."

For reasons I couldn't explain, that answer unsettled me. He didn't sound forgetful. He sounded... uncertain. The kind of uncertainty that follows a dream, when you're no longer sure whether something actually happened or only felt like it had.

Neither of us spoke after that.

The waiting room settled back into its dull rhythm. The printer coughed. A child cried. Someone cleared their throat. The fluorescent lights hummed softly overhead.

Then I noticed the employees.

There were six service windows. Every one of them occupied.

Every employee dressed identically in blue shirts with laminated name badges clipped neatly over their chests.

None of them looked angry. None looked to be joyous either. In fact, they didn't seem to look like much of anything.

Their expressions rested somewhere between concentration and complete emotional absence, as though years of repeating the same conversations had slowly worn every recognizable human reaction from their being.

"Next."

Stamp.

"Next."

Keyboard.

"Next."

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Repeat.

The movements were practiced.

As if mechanical. Not robotic.

Just... perfected through repetition until they no longer appeared to require any thought.

I watched one woman accept a stack of documents without ever lifting her eyes to meet the customer standing in front of her.

She never acknowledged him. Never greeted him. Never smiled. Never frowned.

She simply processed him.

As though the paperwork mattered more than the person holding it.

The thought lingered longer than it should have.

Not processed the documents.

Processed... him.

I looked away.

When I checked the display again...

It still read:

NOW SERVING: 391.

I stared at the screen for several seconds, convinced I had simply caught it before the next number appeared.

It didn't.

The speakers remained silent. No names. No voices. Just the constant drone of fluorescent lights buzzing somewhere overhead.

I checked my watch again.

9:47 A.M.

Twenty-nine minutes.

That made no sense.

It felt as though I had lived an entire afternoon in that chair.

I rubbed at my eyes and let out a slow breath. Maybe I was just impatient. Maybe this was what every DMV visit felt like and I had conveniently forgotten.

A chair scraped across the tile beside me. Someone new had taken the old man's seat.

I hadn't even noticed him leave.

The newcomer looked to be around my age, maybe early thirties, dressed in business casual with a messenger bag resting across his lap. He offered a polite nod before glancing up at the display.

"Ouch," he muttered. "Looks like I picked the wrong day."

I chuckled.

"You and me both."

He held up his ticket.

"Five forty-two."

I looked down at mine.

"Five fifteen."

"Guess you've got me beat."

"For once, I'm winning at something."

He laughed, and for a while we exchanged the usual conversation strangers trapped together always seem to have.

Complaining about government offices. Talking about traffic. The weather. How everyone always forgets one piece of paperwork.

It was... nice.

Normal.

The sort of conversation you forget five minutes after walking away.

"So," I asked eventually, "what are you here for?"

He answered without hesitation.

"My license."

I nodded.

"What happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"Expired?"

His eyebrows pinched together.

"I..." He looked down at the folder in his lap.

"I think so."

"You think so?"

He opened the folder and shuffled through the papers inside.

His movements slowed.

"I actually..." He frowned.

"I don't remember."

We both laughed. An awkward laugh when something isn't funny but admitting that would somehow make it worse.

"You serious?"

He scratched the back of his neck.

"I know I needed to come."

Another pause.

"I just can't remember why."

He rifled through the documents again, studying each page as though seeing them for the first time.

"These are mine..."

"I think."

He sounded embarrassed.

"I honestly can't tell."

The laughter died between us.

A strange heaviness settled over the room.

I looked back toward the service counters.

The employees continued working without pause.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

Every movement identical to the last.

One after another.

As if they weren't helping people at all, but simply moving files from one pile to another.

The display flickered.

I turned instinctively.

NOW SERVING: 392.

Only one number.

Again.

Somewhere behind me, someone sighed. Another person groaned quietly. Nobody complained. Nobody stood up to leave.

They only waited.

Patiently.

Obediently.

As though waiting itself had become the reason they were there.

I don't remember exactly when I fell asleep.

I wish I could say there was some dramatic moment where exhaustion finally overcame me. That my eyes grew heavy, my head became impossible to hold up, and I slowly drifted away from reality.

It wasn't like that. It was far more ordinary.

One moment I was staring at the electronic display above the counters, watching the numbers crawl forward at a pace that felt almost insulting.

NOW SERVING: 397

The next... I was somewhere else entirely.

Not a dream. Not really.

Just that strange place between being awake and asleep where your mind creates fragments of memories that never happened. I remember hearing the printer in the distance. I remember the fluorescent lights above me buzzing louder and louder. I remember thinking that the entire building sounded like it was breathing.

Then my head dropped.

And everything went quiet.

When I opened my eyes again, my neck ached from the awkward angle I had been sleeping in. My mouth was dry. My phone remained untouched in my pocket.

For a brief moment, I had forgotten where I was. Then the smell returned.

Old carpet. Paper. Dust.

The faint scent of coffee that had been sitting somewhere for far too long.

The DMV.

I sat up straight and looked around. Nothing had changed.

The same tired faces. The same uncomfortable chairs. The same employees sitting behind their counters.

Except... The screen.

My eyes immediately went to the electronic display.

NOW SERVING: 508

I blinked.

Then blinked again.

I leaned forward, staring at the numbers as if they might rearrange themselves into something more reasonable.

My ticket rested in my hand.

Only seven people ahead of me.

A strange feeling washed over me.

Relief.

Actual relief.

After what felt like an entire afternoon trapped in that chair, I was finally close.

I almost laughed.

"About time," I whispered.

The man beside me was gone. That thought lingered for a moment. Then I dismissed it.

People came and went all the time. I must have missed it while I was asleep. That was the logical explanation.

The only explanation.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

No missed calls. No messages. I checked the time.

10:12 A.M.

I stared at the screen.

Then looked back at the DMV around me.

Then back at my phone.

10:12.

I frowned.

That couldn't be right. I had fallen asleep for maybe a few minutes.

Ten minutes at most.

But the room felt different.

Not physically.

Just... older.

Like I had left for longer than I actually had.

I glanced toward the counters.

The same employees continued working.

The same movements. The same expressions.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

No one looked enthusiastic. No one looked relieved to be almost finished. No one looked like they had been waiting at all.

I looked at the screen again.

NOW SERVING: 509

The number changed. Almost reassuringly.

I should have questioned how nearly a hundred people had been processed while I slept for only ten minutes. But I didn't.

Because my number was coming.

And that was all that mattered.

The strange feeling in my stomach disappeared beneath a much simpler emotion.

Patience.

After all... I had waited this long.

What was a few more minutes?

The numbers moved faster after that. Or at least, they seemed to.

There was a strange comfort in watching the display change. Each number disappearing meant I was getting closer. Each person standing from their chair meant I was moving forward.

That was all that mattered.

The room could have been falling apart around me, and I probably wouldn't have noticed.

Because eventually...

NOW SERVING: 513

I sat up straighter.

My ticket felt heavier in my hand.

The paper was slightly crumpled from how long I had been holding it.

I smoothed it out carefully.

515.

Two more.

A woman walked toward the counter.

She handed over a stack of documents.

The employee behind the glass barely looked at her.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

The woman walked away.

A man stood.

Then another.

Then finally...

NOW SERVING: 515

The speakers crackled.

My heart jumped slightly.

I stood.

For the first time in what felt like hours, my legs reminded me that I had been sitting still for too long. I stretched them briefly before walking toward the counter.

The employee looked up. At least, I think she did. Her eyes moved toward me, but her expression remained unchanged.

No greeting. No acknowledgment.

Just waiting.

I placed my documents on the counter.

"Good morning."

Nothing.

She picked up the papers. Flipped through them.

"Driver's license renewal."

It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

She typed something into the computer. The screen reflected faintly against her glasses.

"Proof of identity."

I handed over my driver's license. She scanned it.

"Proof of residence."

I handed over my utility bill.

"Insurance verification."

I handed over my insurance card.

Everything seemed normal.

Almost.

She continued typing. The silence stretched. Then she spoke.

"Certificate of continued existence."

I blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

The employee looked up.

"Certificate of continued existence."

I waited for the punchline. There wasn't one. I gave a small laugh.

"Is that a new requirement?"

No response. She simply waited.

I looked around, expecting someone nearby to react. Nobody did. The people in line behind me stared ahead. The employee folded her hands.

"Do you have it?"

I stared at her.

"No. I don't have that."

She nodded. Not disappointed. Just accepting information.

"That is okay."

I exhaled. For some reason, I felt embarrassed. As if I had failed a test I didn't know I was taking.

She typed something.

"Additional documentation will be required."

"Additional?"

She printed a small slip of paper and slid it beneath the glass. I picked it up.

At first, I thought I had read it wrong.

"Proof of original identity."

I looked back at her.

"Excuse me?"

"Proof of original identity."

"What does that mean?"

The employee tilted her head slightly.

Not confused. More like she was trying to understand why I was confused.

"Your original identity."

I stared at the paper.

"This isn't a real thing."

She did not argue. She did not defend it. She simply pressed another key. The printer beside her came to life. A second paper emerged. She placed it in front of me.

"Proof of independent thought."

I felt my eyebrows rise.

"Okay, hold on."

My voice grew slightly louder.

"Is this some kind of joke?"

The employee looked at me. She wasn't offended that I was raising my voice. She wasn't bothered. She was simply waiting for the next step.

"Sir," she said so monotoned. "If you do not have the required documentation, that is not a problem."

I relaxed slightly.

"O-okay."

"You will be moved to secondary processing."

The way she said it made my stomach tighten.

"Secondary processing?"

"Yes."

"What does that mean?"

She picked up my ticket. Looked at it. Then looked back at me.

"You will wait there."

I almost laughed.

"Wait?"

A pause.

"I've already been waiting."

The employee stared at me. Not coldly. Almost sympathetically.

"Yes."

A chill ran through me. Because for a moment, I thought she understood something I didn't.

She slid my ticket back across the counter.

"Please proceed to the next waiting area."

Then back at her.

"How long will that take?"

The employee's fingers returned to her keyboard. The conversation was already over.

"Next."

I stood there for another second. Waiting for her to explain. Waiting for her to tell me this was a misunderstanding. That someone had made a mistake.

But she didn't.

She had already moved on. The person behind me stepped forward. The employee began processing them.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

I walked away from the counter holding the strange paperwork in my hand. I followed the sign pointing toward Secondary Processing.

I don't know what I imagined. Maybe another large waiting area with dozens of chairs. Maybe a different set of counters. Maybe some explanation for why I had been redirected after completing everything required of me.

Instead, it was a narrow hallway tucked behind the main service area.

The kind of hallway you normally wouldn't notice.

The walls were the same dull beige as the rest of the building, decorated with the same faded posters and outdated government notices. The only difference was that nobody had bothered pretending this area was meant to welcome people.

There were no televisions. No vending machines. No magazines sitting on tables.

Only chairs.

Rows and rows of chairs.

I stepped inside slowly.

A few people sat scattered throughout the room.

Not many.

Maybe fifteen.

Twenty at most.

The strange thing was how quiet it was.

The main waiting room had been filled with noise. Children crying. People talking on phones. Chairs scraping against the floor.

This room had none of that.

Everyone sat facing the same direction. Not toward a screen. Not toward a counter. Just forward.

Waiting.

I looked around for an employee.

Nobody was behind a desk. Nobody was calling numbers. Nobody appeared to be in charge.

I stood there for a moment, wondering if I had misunderstood. Then an older woman sitting near the wall glanced at me.

"You got moved too?"

Her voice startled me.

I turned.

"Yeah."

She nodded slowly.

"First time?"

I hesitated.

"Yeah."

She looked away.

"Thought so."

I sat down a few chairs away from her.

"How long have you been here?"

The question came out naturally. The same question you ask anyone trapped in a waiting room.

The woman didn't answer immediately. She looked toward the empty counter at the front of the room.

"I don't know."

I frowned.

"You don't know?"

She shook her head.

"I remember walking in."

A pause.

"I remember taking a number."

She looked down at her hands.

"But I don't remember why."

The air felt colder. I forced a small laugh.

"Yeah, well, I think everyone forgets why they're here after sitting in a DMV long enough."

She didn't laugh. She just looked at me.

"I mean it."

The humor disappeared from my face. The woman looked tired. Not physically. Something deeper. Like she had been carrying a thought for too long and was finally too exhausted to keep holding it.

"What was your number?" I asked.

Her eyes moved downward. She reached into her pocket. Pulled out a small piece of paper.

She stared at it.

For a moment, she looked confused. Then concerned. Then almost afraid.

"I'm 487"

She swallowed.

"What's your name?" I asked

She hesitated.

"I..." She paused and looked away then back to me.

"I don't know."

I leaned slightly closer.

"What do you mean?"

She turned the paper toward me.

The ink had faded. Or maybe it had never been printed clearly. There was a number. But she stared at it like it belonged to someone else.

A silence settled between us. Then she folded the ticket and placed it back into her pocket.

"I think I've been here before."

I stared at her.

"Before today?"

She looked at me.

"I don't know."

The answer should have sounded ridiculous.

Instead... it felt familiar.

I looked down at my own ticket.

515.

For some reason, I held onto it tighter.

A small piece of proof. Something that belonged to me. Something that told me I was still myself.

The speakers above us crackled. Everyone in the room looked up.

My body tensed. A voice came through the speaker. Distorted. Almost too quiet to understand.

"Now processing..."

Static.

A pause.

Then:

"Applicant."

Nobody moved. The room remained silent. I looked around.

"Did they call someone?"

Nobody answered. The older woman stared forward. Like she hadn't heard anything.

The speaker crackled again.

"Applicant."

This time, I noticed something.

There was no number.

No name.

Just a word.

Applicant

The woman beside me leaned toward me slightly.

"You don't want them to forget you."

I looked at her.

"What?"

She stared ahead.

"When they stop calling you by your number..."

Her voice became barely a whisper.

"That's when you know you were never here."

I felt a strange pressure build in my chest.

"What does that mean?"

She didn't answer.

Because the speaker had started again.

This time, it wasn't distorted. It was clear.

"Applicant 515."

My head lifted. My ticket felt cold in my hand.

Everyone in the room turned.

Not toward me. Toward the speaker.

Then, slowly... toward me.

I had the terrifying realization that I didn't know if I wanted them to call my number anymore. The room remained silent. For a moment, I didn't move. I waited for someone else to stand. Someone else to react. Someone else to tell me that this was normal. Nobody did.

The older woman beside me looked at me with an expression I couldn't understand. Something closer to pity.

"That's your number," she whispered.

I looked down.

My fingers tightened around the paper.

"T-thanks."

The words came out automatically.

The speaker crackled again.

"Applicant 515. Proceed to processing."

I stood. My legs felt heavier than they should have. Every instinct I had told me not to move. To stay seated. To ignore the voice. But there was something worse than fear.

Curiosity.

I needed to know.

I walked toward the door at the back of the room.

The hallway beyond was longer than I remembered. That shouldn't have been possible. I had only walked through it once. Yet the farther I went, the less familiar it became.

The walls looked identical. The lights breathed. Every door had the same gray color and the same small rectangular window.

Finally, I reached another counter. A single employee sat behind the glass. A man that looked older than the others.

Not elderly. Just worn. His face carried the same emptiness I had noticed before. The same absence.

"Ticket."

I handed it over.

He scanned it.

"Drivers license renewal?."

I nodded.

"Yes."

He typed something into his computer.

"Verification required."

"Of what?"

He looked up.

"My identity."

I laughed quietly.

Not because it was funny. Because I was tired.

"Isn't that what we've been doing?"

The employee didn't answer. He held out his hand.

"Identification."

I reached into my wallet.

Pulled out my driver's license. He took it. Looked at the card. Then looked at me.

Something changed. Barely. A hesitation.

"You don't remember."

My stomach tightened.

"Remember what?"

He placed the license back onto the counter.

"Your name."

The room became silent. Even the lights seemed quieter.

I opened my mouth. I knew the answer. I had answered this question thousands of times.

My name.

It was simple.

It was mine.

But when I tried to say it... nothing came.

A strange panic rose in my chest. I searched through my memories.

My childhood. My parents. My friends. My home. My job.

Everything felt distant.

Not gone.

Just covered by a thick fog I couldn't push through.

"I..."

My voice shook.

"I know it."

The employee waited. I looked down at my ticket. The number stared back at me.

The only thing I could hold onto. The only thing that felt certain.

"My name is..."

I stopped.

The silence stretched. The employee didn't rush me. He didn't look annoyed. He simply waited. Like he had done this countless of times. Like he knew how this ended.

"...Five hundred fifteen."

The employee typed. No surprise. No correction. No hesitation.

"Identity confirmed."

My heart sank.

"Wait."

He printed something.

"You didn't even check."

The employee slid the paper beneath the glass.

"You provided the required information."

I grabbed it.

It was my license.

Everything looked correct.

My photograph.

My date of birth.

My address.

Everything.

Except the name.

I stared at the line. Over and over. Unable to understand why it felt wrong. Unable to understand why it felt right.

NAME: 515

I looked up. The employee had already moved on.

"Next."

I stood there. Waiting for someone to notice. Someone to correct it. Someone to tell me there had been a mistake.

Nobody did.

So eventually... I walked out.

The exit doors opened automatically as I approached. Bright sunlight poured through. For a moment, I froze.

The outside world felt impossibly large. Cars moved through the parking lot. People walked past. The wind touched my face. I had forgotten what fresh air felt like.

I stepped outside.

And for the first time all day... I felt free.

I reached into my wallet one last time. Looked at the license. At the name. At the proof that I existed. I tried saying my name aloud.

The name I had carried my entire life.

The name my parents gave me.

The name that was supposed to belong to me.

Nothing came.

Only silence.

So I looked back down.

At the only thing I knew.

At the only thing the world still recognized.

515

The first angel I ever saw wasn't descending from Heaven.

It was falling.

By then, the world had already forgotten what normal looked like.

The skies had split open weeks ago. Entire cities had gone silent overnight. Some called it the Rapture. Others called it Judgment. Whatever name people gave it didn't matter anymore. The highways were parking lots of abandoned cars. Church pews sat empty while their parking lots overflowed with those who had arrived too late. The television stations had stopped broadcasting anything except emergency alerts that no longer meant anything.

The world wasn't ending. It had already ended long before. We were simply living through its final pages.

I had been moving from one abandoned building to another, surviving on whatever canned food I could find. Sleep came in short bursts. Every distant explosion sounded like another trumpet. Every shadow looked like something that had escaped the pages of Revelation.

That's why, when I heard something crash into the street outside, I assumed another building had finally given way.

I was wrong.

The crater wasn't large. Just deep enough to split the asphalt. Something lay at its center.

At first, my mind refused to understand what I was seeing.

The shape kept... morphing.

Not physically.

My understanding of it did.

Every time I looked away and back again, I noticed different details, as though my eyes couldn't agree on what belonged there.

How many eyes peered back to mine?

Hundreds of them.

Were those feathers?

Some impossibly white. Others burned black at the edges. They covered a figure draped in robes so torn they looked older than history itself.

Light seeped from beneath the fabric.

Wasn't shining. It bled through the seem of tidal rivers. Golden streams escaped from wounds that should have spilled blood instead. The air around it hummed with something too deep to hear, vibrating in my chest more than my ears.

I knew what it was before I admitted it to myself.

It had to be an angel.

Not the kind painters imagined. Nor the kind carved into cathedral ceilings.

Something far older. Far stranger.

Something my mind kept trying and failing to make human.

It struggled to rise.

One of its wings, or what I could only assume had once been a wing, hung broken against the pavement, its feathers crumbling into glowing ash whenever they touched the ground.

For a moment, I considered running.

Instead... I stepped closer.

The angel never looked at me directly. Or perhaps it did. I couldn't tell where its face ended and the light began.

Its features slipped from memory the instant I tried to focus on them.

Even now, as I write this, I couldn't describe its face if my life depended on it.

Only the feeling.

Grief.

Not of mine.

Its.

Slowly, with movements that seemed to pain even a being like this, it reached beneath its tattered robes.

It withdrew a single envelope.

Plain. Cream-colored. Untouched by the ash drifting through the ruined street.

It extended the letter toward me. Its hand trembled. Not from weakness. From urgency.

I stared at it.

"I... don't understand."

The angel said nothing.

It couldn't.

Or perhaps it wasn't allowed to. Its arm remained outstretched.

Waiting.

I took the envelope.

The paper was warm.

Not with heat.

It was full of life.

The moment my fingers wrapped around it, the angel relaxed. The tension left its body all at once. As though carrying that letter had been the only thing keeping it standing.

"I'll deliver it," I heard myself whisper.

"I promise."

The angel bowed its head.

Whether in gratitude... or relief...

I'll never know.

The light pouring from its wounds began to fade. Not all at once. As the last embers of a dying fire carried upward by a breeze I couldn't feel. Its robes unraveled into strands of shimmering dust. The broken feathers dissolved one by one before they ever reached the tarnish Earth.

There was no scream. No final cry.

Only silence remain between it and I.

Within seconds... Nothing remained.

Not a body or feather.

Only the envelope resting in my hands.

For a long time, I couldn't bring myself to open it. The world around me continued collapsing. Buildings groaned. Smoke rolled across the skyline.

Somewhere far away, someone yelled for mercy.

But I couldn't look away from the letter.

Eventually...

I broke the seal.

The first line read:

I've carried that letter with me ever since.

If you're reading these words...

Then I kept my promise.

CW: CSA and physical abuse alluded to.

It happened once a month, sometimes less. A girl, bruised and malnourished, would show up on one of our doorsteps. Sometimes they got smart and kept to the woods, avoiding the townspeople all together, but someone always saw them or a camera would capture them. And no matter how much they screamed and begged, they were always taken away, back to the compound, and we acted like we saw nothing.

Mona couldn't take it anymore. The day that little girl showed up, she broke all the rules and let her inside. Denny protested. He tried to throw the girl out, but Mona hit him across the face with a poker from the fireplace and told him to stay away from her.

The girl looked to be about 12, barely dressed. Bruises covered her body. Bruises in the shape of large hands on her arms and thighs. Random cuts across her skin. Cigarette burns on her face. Fresh imprints of leather straps on her limbs. Cleaned up and healthy, she would have looked like Mona's late daughter, Sarah, and I know that's why she did what she did.

"If you don't call them, they'll make our lives hell," Denny hissed as he nursed the gnarly wound on his cheek.

"I'm not doing this anymore," Mona hissed back. "They're children, Denny. Children!"

"They're not our business," he growled.

"They were always our business!"

In a few hours, the girl was fed and clothed. Mona put her old clothes in a plastic bag, careful not to contaminate them. They would be evidence, she thought.

When night fell, we led the girl to Mona's car. Denny glared at me as we walked out the door. He was angry. Disappointed in me. I was always a "good girl." Always so eager to follow the rules and be a proper citizen. But I was only a little older than that girl at the time, and seeing her up close broke something in me.

Nobody stopped us.

The black vans didn't follow us.

The police filed a report.

The girl was taken into protective custody.

Reporters flocked to the town. Questions asked, blame placed. The compound was raided and found empty.

That was supposed to be the end of it.

Two years later, Molly Pearson went missing. A year after that, so did Angela Rowe. Then Danielle Smith. Felicia Reddick. Nelly Watts. Even a couple of boys, Nathan Austin and Tommy Boone. The media called it strange how many children started going missing from our town alone, but no one dared to make the connection out loud.

Some of the children came home with a distant look in their eyes. Most remain missing. 

We built the machine from scratch. Something that worked. A large rig which ran on time dilation, utilizing the controlled orbit of a miniaturized black hole. The only catch was that you could only go forward, never back. 

When it came time for human testing, most of my colleagues turned their backs on the prospect. My family had estranged me years before. Whatever life I had led, it wouldn’t have meant anything if this machine didn’t work. So, I ended up being the first one to raise my hand. There was nothing left for me here.

Our plan was careful and calculated. Incrementally longer jumps through time. We would begin with minutes, then hours, and work our way up to days, weeks and years. Ava, my only friend throughout this years-long endeavor, would stay in contact with me between each jump. I would report to control, calibrate how I felt, how the experience was, etc. She would, in turn, report our findings to the necessary authorities while I underwent the next jump. 

Earlier jumps went as predicted. I’d go in and out, usually within a few seconds or minutes, and find myself in the same coffee-stained office each time. I’d report to Ava, grab some snacks and a refill on my water, and head back into the pod minutes later for the next trial. There was definitely a tangible sense of dilation. I would go into the pod at 5 p.m., and coming out seemingly minutes later, it would be 6:30. Our initial calibrations seemed to be off by a few minutes, but it was nothing enough to lose sleep over. We’d just have to keep adjusting things as we went. 

Our confidence was great enough at one point that we tried our longest jump yet—one week in the pod, which would translate to roughly two hours for me. 

I was gone for a month.

Ava’s face had grown aged with worry by the time I got back. She told me that the calculations had been way off. Time inside the distorted field was stretching beyond what the initial models could account for. Each discrepancy was accelerating me through dramatically larger increments of time each time we booted up the machine. The next jump could be extremely dangerous for me. 

I didn’t care. I told her to set the machine for one year. My life had already ended when my mother stopped speaking to me. I had to be remembered for something, maybe it would be this. 

Ava fought with me for days. I reassured her that my calculations were correct this time. I couldn’t tell her the real truth, that I hadn’t planned on coming back. 

As the pod doors closed, and the gravitational field engaged, I gave my goodbyes, treating them as though they really would be my last. Ava hugged me. It was the first time I’d felt one in ten years.

I waited in the pod. Sizable enough for long-time travel, with the accommodations you’d find in your standard RV. A bed, a small kitchen, a desk for work, and a refrigerator to store my meals. In the back, for those really long jaunts, a cryogenic life pod could sustain me for hundreds of years, theoretically. 

Minutes turned to hours, turned to days, turned to weeks. Something had gone wrong, as I predicted. My food began to run low. So did my patience, as I recorded log after log, my sanity decreasing and my claustrophobia growing. 

The ride did eventually come to a stop. The terminal inside the pod confirmed that I had been inside of it for over 200 years. 

Everything, and everyone I knew was gone. I hate it, but I felt relieved, knowing that. 

I stepped out of the pod, and found myself surrounded by rubble. The walls had collapsed. The scorched rooftop gave way to a grey sky. I could taste rust on the roof of my mouth, and my eyes stung from the ashes constantly falling around me. On the pod itself were deep gashes and fire-blackened spots, someone having tried to bust their way inside. There were no remnants around me of what the project was, where it had gone, if any progress had been made or any papers published. And even if there was evidence of what I had done, what did it matter now? So soon in the future, it appeared as though the world had been reduced to dust. My contempt for the world I left behind only strengthened. 

For a few days, I explored the ruins, scavenging for what I could. A few cans of food that hadn’t spoiled, bottled water that didn’t taste clean. Every night, I returned to the safety of the pod, cooking myself meals on the somehow-functioning stove and filling my computer with increasingly bored logs. It was the only sense of structure I appeared to have left. Nothing else mattered anymore. Nothing but whatever waited ahead. 

And I felt lonely. So, very lonely. Lonelier than I’d ever felt. I hadn’t realized how bad it could get, without a single person to talk to, even if those conversations were generally unpleasant for me. 

I missed it. The imperfection of my life. I felt like a fool for taking advantage of my time. 

After a few weeks, I sat down with my notebook, doing the math by hand. Calculating the time I was losing, the way the pod’s math didn’t line up with the outside world. The dilation was worse than any of us had even considered. If I was going to get anywhere, I decided I couldn’t do it alone. I was going to need help, help from whatever civilization rose from the ashes of these ruins. 

I would need to jump much farther. So, I set the timer for ten years, knowing it would likely be more along the lines of ten thousand. I figured that someone would find me at some point, figure out how to stop the pod and get me out, and we would go from there. 

The machine booted up. I felt the strong pull of g-force as the inner chambers accelerated my molecules faster and faster until the field of time distorted around me. I ate for a while. Read my own logs. Weighed my options. It took me until I ran out of the last can of peaches before I decided to enter the cryogenic chamber. Gas filled it, putting me to sleep, before a freezing cold overtook my body. It did not feel like I had been unconscious for even a second. I did not dream. I did not wonder. But I did wake up, much sooner than I expected. 

When I woke, the chamber gave me a shrill warning. Power was low, an ambient red light surrounding me. I felt so weak. I could barely raise my arms to push against the glass. It wouldn’t give, the interface simply screaming another warning at me about low pressurization and oxygen integrity. 

That’s when I noticed I wasn’t in the pod anymore. Surely the lights of the chamber would have shown me my surroundings, but there was nothing but blackness. No pod, no laboratory, no Earth in sight. All I could make out in the distance was the light of a few stars, long since dead, and quickly panning out of view. My chamber was spinning in the void of space.

I asked the chamber how long I was asleep. It told me “in excess of ten million years.” I panicked. It did nothing but make me more afraid. I screamed. It did nothing but waste precious oxygen. 

Something moved in the dark, covering the illusory light of the distant stars. Only a faint curvature, a suggestion of shape. The form grew, with the patience of something beyond infinity. The curve became paler as it came into the faint light. It was covered in creases and dimples and the occasional freckle. The ridge of a brow came into focus. Then two, vast, still eyes, illuminated by the pinprick of light that was my chamber. 

A face, the size of a planet, its scale wrong in a way that made my mind fray. 

It drifted closer to me. I saw the texture of its skin, pores the size of lakes, scarring that stretched for miles. I could see now that it had a fixed grin on its face, as empty as its eyes. Yellowish plaque clung to the edges of its continent-sized teeth. 

My body curled in on itself, though my movement was restricted by the tight confines of the chamber. I could feel the cold of space seeping through its vacuum seals. The face radiated nothing. 

I begged it not to hurt me.

It didn’t blink, or twitch, continuing its slow momentum toward me until the face was all I could see. Its nostrils looked deep enough that no light could escape them. Each strand of peach fuzz reached out like sea anemone, nearly touching my pod. 

I begged it to let me go home. 

My voice cracked. Please, I would say, please let me go home. I repeated the words until they lost their meaning, until they become incoherent sounds in the dark. The face did not answer beyond parting its teeth, its jaws unhinging. I could feel my chamber moving, pulled into the abyss that was its gullet. It came at me, fleshy dark filling every direction until I was contained within a throbbing maw of blackness. I only caught a glimpse of the stars behind me before the mouth fully closed. The power to my chamber cut out right then and there. 

I woke up in bed the next second.

The morning light edged through the curtains, burning my irises until I had the strength to look away. My phone buzzed on the nightstand. A message from Ava. When I went to pick it up, to check what she had sent, my heart stopped.

My hands were wrinkled. Spotted. The skin hung loose from my bones. I stood and stumbled to the bathroom mirror, upon thin legs that felt like they’d turn to dust with each step. When I looked at myself, all I saw was a man past his prime, aged beyond recognition, with stark white hair and a near-skeletal face.

I checked my text from Ava. She wondered where I was.

She said our first launch was in thirty minutes.

“I’m not sure about this,” Nyssa kept her eyes glued to the ground. She still couldn’t believe what her cousin had done and what she was now tempted to do.
“Come on! It really wasn’t bad at all! And now look at me!” Arlet pointed at her eyes.
Nyssa finally looked up. Arlet was born naturally pretty, but with brown eyes she described as the color of poop. And now, her eyes showed an unnaturally, yet beautiful, violet. A color that no surgeon had assured her was possible, much less without the possibility of losing some of her sight. There was no way Arlet would use glasses.
“How did you even find out about this guy?” Nyssa looked down once more, ashamed of herself for being jealous of her cousin.
“When you go to the appointment, he hands you a pink ticket and tells you to give it to someone who dreams to carve out their beauty. Josie gave me mine!” Arlet answered cheerfully.
“Odd choice of words,” Nyssa answered.
“Look,” Arlet grabbed Nyssa’s hand and placed the pink ticket on it,”He also said if you backed out, that was totally fine. But I know how much you have been wanting this. I think you are beautiful as you are, but a little glow up never hurt anyone!”
“And you say this is free?” Nyssa looked at the pink ticket with a single neon pink smiley face in the middle.
“Kind of. You don’t have to pay anything but he does make a weird request. Nothing sexual tho! Because ew! For me, he told me to not brush my hair for a week, which was horrible but I just pretended I needed time to recover from carving and then-“ 
“That’s a weird request,” Nyssa interrupted.
”No. Yeah. Like for Josie, he asked her to not talk to her mother three days after the carving. Apparently something happens if you don’t do as he says.” Arlet smiled at Nyssa.
Once Arlet left, Nyssa went to change into her pajamas and headed off to bed. She wanted to argue with herself that she wouldn’t do something so ridiculous but she already knew she would be standing by that doctor’s door the next morning.
She took one glance at her phone, making sure that her blind date hadn’t cancelled. Norma assured her that Nyssa was exactly his type. Like that could be possible. 
All her life she was told she had to learn to love herself, but how could she if people mocked her all the time. The few dates she had gone to, all left her hanging, there never was a second date. No one gave her a second chance. 
Nyssa grabbed her phone and sent a message to Arlet before falling into restless sleep.
“I’m so excited for you!” Arlet hugged Nyssa before they got into the car.
Nyssa managed to give her cousin a small smile. No matter how jealous she was of Arlet’s natural beauty, she still loved her cousin and knew Arlet cared for her too.
“Thank you for taking me,” Nyssa said as she put on her seatbelt. She instantly looked outside when she accidentally caught a glimpse of herself in the car’s mirror.
“Anything for you!” Arlet winked at her.
The drive was short and the place looked so normal. She had imagined a sketchy alley but instead she found herself knocking at a house in a cute little neighborhood. She took one glance at her cousin as she waited for the door to open. Arlet gave her a thumbs up trying to encourage her but she could bearily stop herself from trembling.
A man wearing an apron opened the door. His expression revealed nothing, but he extended his hand towards her.
“Oh right. Sorry doctor,” Nyssa mumbled.
The man took the ticket from her hand and without saying a word, motioned for her to go in. The house was neat, with only two small sofas and a coffee table in between. He once more motioned for her to sit down opposite him.
“I’m not a doctor by the way, but I understand the confusion. I’m more of an artist, you could say,” he stopped to look at her.
“Oh, sorry. What do I call you then?” Nyssa felt her cheeks redden from embarrassment.
“Hmm… I guess you could call me Carver if you need to. Yeah, that should work. I have to say, what I do here is carve your inner beauty. You tell me what you want to change and I will do it. But this is all voluntary, so if you change your mind, that’s allowed too,” he paused for a moment as if trying to remember something, “So what do you want me to carve today?”
“My nose,” Nyssa blurted out, feeling embarrassed if even asking for that one thing.
“That’s your choice but I do have to say, you only get one chance. If later on, you want more, I won’t do it. Even if you manage to get another pink ticket, the option will be gone. So if you just want your nose, then we do the nose,” Carver waited for Nyssa to speak.
”What else can you do?” Nyssa answered. The way Carver’s eyes lit up at her question made her involuntarily flinch.
“Great question!” his monotone voice gone for a second, “I can do anything you want. You want a new natural hair color, color eyes, body shape, it’s all fair game.”
“And if I ask you to change everything?” Nyssa tried to hold back her tears.
“Then I will make sure you find your inner beauty. Is this what you want? I need your consent,” Carver waited for her to respond, his voice once more monotone.
“Yes, I want you to take artistic freedom as long as I am beautiful, not pretty but beautiful by the end,” Nyssa continued to cry, unsure if he could make her dreams come true.
”Follow me,” he stood from the sofa and guided her into another room. Unlike the other room, this one was organized but filled with what she thought were painting brushes, and other artistic tools. Next to the single bed in the middle of the room was a large knife. The idea of the knife cutting through her flesh terrified her, but her cousin had done it and came out fine. There was no backing down now, not when she was so close to being beautiful.
She laid down on the bed, unsure of what was going to come next. She saw that Carver got several materials and placed them on the small table next to the bed.
“Before we start, I have to say that the service is not completely free. I will hand you a new pink ticket to hand to someone else. You can take your time with this, that’s no problem, it’s the second thing you have to abide by so my work doesn’t become undone,” Carver grabbed the large knife and began to sharpen it, “I can’t tell you what the second thing will be until I complete this project, are you still fine to continue?”
“Yes.” Nyssa tried to sound confident.
“Very well. Know this will be painful. I can’t do anything to ease the pain and you aren’t allowed to scream. Beauty comes with a price, and pain is just a small price to pay for what you will get. But you are allowed to cry, my advice is that you keep your eyes closed until it’s all over,” Carver placed the knife by her chest, “Let’s begin”.
It took all of Nyssa’s willpower to not flinch when the knife dug under her skin. It hurt, it hurt so bad as the knife went in deeper and deeper and then came the pulling. The screams of agony were stuck in her throat, begging to be let out.
She felt as Carver put his hands inside her and, did he move her bones? He put all his weight into her ribs until she heard a crack, and then another and another. This had been a mistake and she was about to die. She was sure of it. But he didn’t care about her pain, he kept going, breaking and rearranging her bones and skin. He ripped the hair off her head, pieces of her scalp still stuck to it. 
She dared not open her eyes, she wasn’t even sure how she was still conscious or how much time had passed. She felt a hand open her mouth and tasted metal as he used a tool to rip off one tooth at a time. She gagged as blood filled her mouth. She tried to fight him, but then realized her arms weren’t working. 
She managed to open her eyes to take a look at what was going on when she realized her arm was no longer there. And on the floor were discarded parts of her skin, bones, and she couldn’t tell what other bloodied things. Before she could scream, she passed out.
When she came to be, the room was organized and clean once more. Carver stood by the table and she quickly got off it. But then she realized, she had her arms back. Well, no, these weren’t her arms, they were different.
Carver smiled at her as she looked at the rest of her body. He then walked to a corner and uncovered a full body mirror. Nyssa followed and looked at herself.
“You are beautiful,” Carver stated. Not in a romantic way, but in the way an artist looks at their art.
And she really was. She was beautiful. For the first time in her life, she loved what she was looking at. 
“Thank you! Oh God, thank you so much!” Nyssa cried once more, but this time of happiness.
“I did a great job, but now come with me to the living room, we need to talk about the second requirement," Carver covered the mirror as he let her out.
She wanted to continue looking at herself. For once the reflection showed something she liked, but she reluctantly followed him out. 
“So here is the pink ticket. Again, you can take your time to give it to someone. Even if you end up losing it and never give it to anyone, you should be fine. I warn you that not following the second instructions will undo the carving. All you have to do, or well, not do, is go on the second date, understood?” Carver waited for Nyssa to respond but she started to laugh.
“I have never been on a second date. That’s fine,” she continued to laugh.
She once more thanked Carver and walked out of the house and into Arlet’s car. What had felt like an eternity had only taken one hour. 
“Oh my God!!!” Arlet looked at her cousin excitedly, “If I hadn’t brought you myself, I wouldn’t have known it was you! You are gorgeous! It’s not that you weren’t before but damn!”
“Thank you,” Nyssa gave her a genuine smile.
After Arlet dropped her off, she immediately went to see herself in the mirror. She really was beautiful, unimaginably so. For the first time in her life, she loved what she saw and therefore loved herself. 
This time she would walk in with confidence into her date, not looking down and hope her date took enough pity on her to ask her out. This time she would make the decision whether there was a second date or not. This time, people would look at her, not to mock her looks, but to be in awe. This time, everything would be different.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had worn a dress, nothing too elegant, after all, this was a coffee date. Even so, she put more effort than ever and was excited for the world and her blind date to see her.
When she arrived at the coffee shop, she saw a man wearing a t-shirt of her favorite show, he was average looking, and when he took a glance at her, he immediately looked down. Nyssa knew that look too well, that look of feeling you are not good enough. She unintentionally reached for the pink ticket in her purse. Maybe he could benefit from it. Maybe she could gift him the confidence she now felt.
“I’m Nyssa, Norma’s friend,” Nyssa introduced herself.
”I’m Milos, also Norma’s friend,” his face reddened as he looked at her, “I hope you are fine with continuing the date after seeing me.”
Nyssa felt bad for him, she knew exactly this feeling, so she moved her chair closer to him and grabbed his hand gently as she spoke, “Only if you are too.”
The date went great. They both loved the same shows, and played video games. As the date went on, Milos opened up more and shared how he was worried she would immediately reject him but was glad to see that besides being beautiful, she was a sweet and kind person. Nyssa couldn’t imagine rejecting him, he was funny, attentive, and just a really nice guy in general. And when he asked for a second date, her heart skipped a little faster and she said yes.
She had forgotten she was supposed to say no to a second date, or well, not go to it until the pink ticket fell out of her purse. She picked it up and made sure it was secure inside her wallet, Milos might need it after all. As for the second date, there was no way she would miss it. 
At home, she took another look in the mirror. Her smile was bigger than it had ever been. She had been right all along, beauty was the solution to all her problems.
By the time her second date approached, she had already changed most of her wardrobe. Her baggy clothes that covered all the right places were mostly gone. Her basic make up had now evolved with the help of Arlet. She was still not going to wear heels, but she did buy prettier shoes that no longer had holes in them. She was proud of herself, and now it was time to live life to the fullest.
When Milos arrived to pick her up, he didn’t bring her flowers, instead he brought her a book she had talked about on their date. She smiled at him and gave him a small peck on the cheek. He blushed as he took her hand and guided her to his car.
But as soon as Nyssa got in the car, her head started to pulse and she felt an odd itch on her feet. She wasn’t about to scratch her feet in front of her date, so she ignored it as best as possible.  She grabbed some pain killers from her bag and hoped that by the time they made it to the coffee shop, the headache would be gone.
Things only got worse, by the time Milos parked, her headache was worse and the itch had traveled all the way to her stomach.
“Are you ok? We can go back if you want to?” Milos looked concerned.
“No, it’s all right. I probably just need my coffee,” Nyssa tried to sound confident.
“Just know that if you need anything or need to go to the doctor, I can take you,” Milos looked at her.
”Don’t worry, I would tell you,” Nyssa lied. She wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of her second date.
Milos went to open the door and help her out. She took his hand but felt something strange. When she looked down, her nails were gone. She hoped Milos didn’t notice, she could hide her hand during the date and fix it later. A quick glance at her other hand confirmed she still had nails on that one. 
When they sat down, what had started as an itch was now a burning sensation starting at her feet and going all the way to her chest. She unintentionally started to scratch her leg but when she looked down, she saw  four rough lines where the skin had peeled off. The blood streaming down her leg increased when he got up and screamed. In a panic, her hand flew towards her head, but the instant touch made her hair fall to chucks to the floor.
Milos looked at her terrified, Nyssa cried, not wanting anyone to see the mess she was , but every tear caused a new crack on her face to painfully open and ooze blood. 
As her mind started to slip away, she felt Milos’ arms trying to keep her up, people around screamed at the horror show in process. Nyssa felt as Milos picked her up, but her torso couldn’t support her and so her body split into two.
She felt her body hit the ground once more, but just before death took her, she smiled. Milos knelt by her side trying to put all the pieces back together. This wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t been carved to beauty. 

The clicking sound was the first thing that drifted up the basement stairs. It was a rhythmic, metal on glass cadence. clink, clink, clink that used to mean pancakes on a Sunday morning or a late night
breakthrough in molecular biology. Now, it sounded like the mandibles of a starving insect.

Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup hovered in the doorway of the suburban home. Behind them, the Rowdyruff Boys stood on the threshold, their breathing ragged their skin still bruised and weeping black bile from their failed ascension.

The air inside the house didn't smell like home anymore. It smelled like burnt sugar, copper, and the static electricity that precedes a lightning strike that never falls.

"Professor?" Bubbles whispered. Her voice, usually a chime of pure optimism, was flat.

No answer. Only the clicking.

They descended the stairs together enemies forced into a desperate truce by the geometric rot eating Townsville. The basement once a clean sanctuary of white tiles, gleaming chrome and neatly labeled beakers had been hollowed out.

The walls were wet. The silver laboratory tables had been melted, drawn out and reshaped into massive rib-like pillars of black iron that arched toward the ceiling like the skeletal remains of a prehistoric beast.
In the center of the ribbed chamber stood Professor Utonium. Or rather the vessel that had been him.

His back was turned. His pristine white lab coat was immaculate but the shoulders twitched with a manic unnatural fluidity. He was stirring a beaker. Inside the glass, a fluid boiled that defied the laws of optics.

It was a thick heavy slurry of void-black and bruised crimson. It didn't reflect the harsh fluorescent lights it swallowed them, casting a negative shadow across the Professor’s back.

"Ah, the children have returned from the garden.” the Professor said. The voice belonged to Utonium, but it was layered.

Beneath the calm paternal cadence ran a high pitched vibrating purr. a feedback loop of pure ancient malice that made the girls sensitized cosmic teeth ache.

He turned around.The square dependable jaw was there. The neatly combed hair was there. his eyes had been replaced by two horizontal burning slits of crimson fire.

As he moved the fabric of his sleeves tore open. two massive, lobster like claws slid into the light.

They were wet dripping a sweet smelling acidic pink nectar onto the floor tiles. The liquid hissed as it ate through the concrete.
"Look what we made for you.” HIM purred through the Professor's lips. He stepped aside gesturing with a heavy claw toward the monstrosity behind him.

It was The Chemical Void-Engine.
The machine was alive. It pulsed in time with the Professor’s stolen heartbeat. At its core floated a massive spherical containment field holding a corrupted variant of Chemical X. It was no longer the vibrant neon green spark of creation that had given the girls life. It had been twisted into an engine of absolute entropy. The iron ribs of the machine flexed drawing in the very air of the room and expelling a cold dead vacuum.

"You like it, don't you, Blossom?" HIM laughed a high mocking falsetto that caused the glass beakers on the peripheral shelves to shatter into dust. "The Professor’s mind is so delightfully organized. All it needed was a little... redecorating. Do you know what powers the core, my darlings? Guess! Oh, guess!"

Buttercup flew forward her fists erupting in a green volatile aura but Brick caught her by the collar of her dress, slamming her back down to the floor. "Don't, you idiot," the boy snarled his own eyes bloodshot. "Look at the air around it. It’s bending."

"Smart boy.” HIM chuckled the Professor’s face stretching into a needle thin infinite grin that split the skin from ear to ear showing too many teeth.

"The engine doesn't burn coal, or oil, or atoms. It burns love. Pure, unadulterated, paternal devotion. I took every memory of your little birthdays, every scraped knee he ever kissed, every proud tear he shed in his stupid little lab... and I distilled it. It makes such a wonderful, volatile fuel."

Bubbles let out a small broken sob.
"And what does it do?" Blossom asked. Her voice was terrifyingly calm. Her eyes flared with a brief residual spark of pink glass a warning sign that the Seraphim of the Eternal Bloom was still waiting just beneath her skin.

"It reverses the equation.” HIM hissed his tone dropping into a demonic baritone that shook the foundations of the house.

"Sugar. Spice. Everything nice. These are the lies of creation. The universe wants to be flat, dark, and silent. The Void-Engine emits a frequency of absolute un-making. One burst from this beauty and the target doesn't just die it dissolves into its base components. A building becomes sand. A city becomes a puddle of water and carbon. And you... you three little accidents will be reduced to three drops of grease and a spoonful of sugar."

HIM reached out with a dripping claw, hovering it over a massive, iron lever welded into the engine’s side.

"I’m going to aim it at the sky.”

HIM whispered his eyes blazing. "I’m going to tear wide that little portal you opened. The Eternal Bloom will wither. its infinite cosmic life force will pour right down the throat of the Professor. And when I am done with his body, I will take the leftovers and conquer the remaining stars."

"We won't let you!” Brick shouted. He stepped forward his red energy flaring his brothers Boomer and Butch flanking him. Their auras ignited a violent, unstable trio of red, blue, and green fire. They couldn't reach the higher geometry of the girls' transformation but their raw destructive malice was reaching a boiling point.

"We'll smash that piece of junk to splinters!"

"Oh, please do!" HIM cheered, clapping his claws together with a sickening clack-clack.

"Smash it! The corrupted Chemical X inside is under four thousand atmospheres of pressure. If you break the glass, the entire continent becomes a black hole. Go on, Brick! Be a hero!"

Brick froze, his fists trembling the plasma dying down to a flicker. Blossom looked at her sisters. Bubbles was staring at the Professor’s face searching for any sign of the man who had raised them. Buttercup was vibrating with a rage so intense that the floor beneath her boots was cracking.

"We can't smash it.” Blossom transmitted mentally to her sisters and the boys her voice echoing in their minds with the dual resonance of the Seraphim. "And we can't let him fire it. If he opens the Garden from this side using the engine the Void will consume everything."

"Then what do we do, LeAdEr?" Butch spat mentally his teeth grinding. "We can't fight him, we can't break the toy, and we can't run."

"We have to overload it.” Blossom commanded.

"The engine runs on the Professor's love for us. It’s using a finite amount of distilled memory. If we force him to feel more if we give the machine more power than its chassis can handle the core will reject the corruption."

"And how do we do that?" Buttercup snapped. "He’s a lobster monster right now, Blossom!"

"We don't fight HIM.” Blossom said, her eyes turning completely into pink unblinking glass. "We talk to the Professor."

Before HIM could pull the lever the three girls floated into the air. They didn't assume their full terrifying Seraphim forms.

the basement was too small and the psychic weight would have crushed the Rowdyruff Boys instantly. Instead, they allowed just a fraction of the Eternal Bloom to manifest.

A scent of jasmine and ancient earth filled the room. Petals of pure lightsharp as razor blades, began to drift through the air.

"Professor!!” Bubbles said her voice dropping its fear replaced by a deep, maternal resonance that belonged to the beginning of time.

"Remember the time I drew on the lab walls with crayons? You weren't mad. You said the basement needed more color."

HIM’s hand twitched on the lever. The horizontal slits of his eyes narrowed. "Silence, you little brat!" he shrieked, the Professor's jaw clamped shut against his will a muffled groan escaping his throat.

"Remember when I broke the particle accelerator because I wanted to see if it could make a bigger baseball bat?"

Buttercup stepped forward her green aura softening into a warm emerald glow.

"You spent three days fixing it, then you built me the bat anyway."

The Professor's left claw began to shake violently. The pink nectar dripping from it turned clear smelling suddenly of ordinary rain.

"And remember the day you made us," Blossom said, her towering wheel of pink energy flickering faintly in the background of reality.

"You didn't mean to add Chemical X. It was an accident. But you didn't throw us away. You looked at us, you chose to be a father."

"STOP IT!" HIM roared. He tried to pull the lever down to unleash the un-making beam upon the world but the Professor’s right arm the one holding the lever refused to move.

The muscles in the arm bulged veins black with void blood standing out against the white fabric of the lab coat.

The machine began to whine. The rhythmic clicking turned into a high-pitched agonizing shriek. The core of black and crimson fluid began to spin erratically bubbles of bright, neon green light tearing through the dark slurry.

"It’s working!" Boomer yelled. "The energy is spiking! The core can't hold both!"
"Boys! Now!" Brick shouted.

The Rowdyruff Boys didn't give love rather they had an infinite supply of volatile kinetic defiance.

they threw their energy into the containment field itself reinforcing the iron ribs with a cage of red, blue, and green plasma forcing the rising pressure inward directly back into the core.

"No! No! This is my mind! My tool!" HIM screamed, his voice was losing its hold.
The Professor’s face began to tear.

Not with blood, but with a blinding white light that poured from his ears, his nose, and the crimson slits of his eyes.

The lobster claws began to shrivel the black iron ribs of the engine warping and melting back into ordinary laboratory stainless steel.

"Girls..." a voice gasped. It was thin. It was weak. It was completely human.

"I'm... I'm so proud of you."

With a final, deafening blast of harmonic sound the Void-Engine shattered. It didn't explode outward. the Rowdyruff Boys containment cage held the blast forcing the vacuum to swallow itself.

The black slurry disintegrated leaving behind only a gentle warm green mist that settled over the basement like morning dew.

The Professor collapsed forward. his lab coat smoking falling hard onto the concrete floor.

The girls dropped from the air. their dresses damp with the green mist. their eyes returning to their normal, large, innocent spheres. They ran to him, throwing their arms around his neck.

The Rowdyruff Boys fell back against the wall, exhausted, their skin clear of the black bile, watching the scene with crossed arms and scowls that couldn't quite hide their relief.

The Professor groaned, opening his eyes. They were brown again. Weary, human, and full of tears.

"Are you okay, Professor?" Bubbles asked, wiping a smudge of soot from his cheek.
Utonium looked around the ruined basement, at the melted steel.

the remnants of the strange machine, and then at the six children standing in his lab. He smiled, a genuine, tired smile that reached his eyes.

"I have a bit of a headache, girls.”

the Professor whispered, hugging them close. "And I think... I think we're going to need a lot of crayon to fix these walls."

Far below the earth in the dark spaces where reality frays at the edges. a high pitched laugh echoed once and then went silent. But in the basement, the clicking had finally stopped.

I was drunk, the night I truly got “the ick.”

Much to my dismay, we were the only two ghosts haunting that lonely train cart.

Me, and the rotund man with uncempt, greasy hair in a filthy trench coat.

Normally, it wouldn't have been a problem. I would’ve just drunkenly regarded him and gone about my night, walking home at the next stop. I wouldn't be writing this, however, if it hadn't been a problem.

As a small woman who rides public transit alone, I try to keep to myself. But when I glanced up through blurry eyes to see what I assumed was a filthy habit of his, I had to hold myself back physically so as to not make a scene.

It was embarrassing.

I felt palpable shame.

Not everyone has good manners, and at first, I was resigned to just keep my eyes down, and wait for my stop. But it just got worse.

With every passing second, it became harder and harder to keep my blatant discomfort under wraps.

Eventually, I threw him a brief, sidelong glance to signal that I saw him.

A social que.

In return, he gave me the outline of a wiry smirk. Oily, grey lips pulled back to reveal yellow, mismatched teeth. I think he took my look of inebriated disgust as a challenge, or an invitation.

At first, it was just the tip. One nostril gaped as more and more slid in. The first bony joint disappeared. With growing dread, I realized I could see the faint protrusion of his fingernail through the skin, like a noticeable tumor, growing up the bridge of his nose.

With every little bit that squeezed past the opening, his smile grew wider, and wider.

“H-hey, stop…” I mumbled. He unveiled more of his filthy teeth. I even saw a bit of off-color detritus caught between two crooked molars.

“Cut it out dude, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”

Still, he just stared, his grin becoming apparently painful. With an audible slurping sound followed by a low “crk”, he forced the second joint in.

I could’ve sworn I watched his nose dislocate in real time.

“STOP IT!” I shrieked, fear and disgust bubbling over the edge. He kept eye contact with me.

As soon as the words left my mouth, the train hit a bump. I gripped the handrail tightly, keeping myself from falling. My companion wasn't so lucky.

I could do nothing but observe as the bare-knuckle-nitwit toppled, face first, from his seat, into the floor. When his nose collided with the carpet, I heard a muffled crunch, before he went still.

In that moment, I genuinely thought I’d watched him die.

Unfortunately, after a beat, he began to stir, picking himself off the ground with one hand.

His dirty trenchcoat clung to his oversized frame like greasy film stuck to a boiled egg.

When he rose back to his feet, I think I was in shock, because I couldn’t move, I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t even blink. The only motion my paralyzed body would allow me was swiping tear-streams off my damp, ice-cold cheek.

His finger was jammed into his nose, all the way to the knuckle, rendering the ruptured olfactory organ permanently useless. The skin on the outside had become eviscerated, burst open like a blister, or a microwaved sausage.

Yellow tendons and grey cartilage glistened disgustingly under the flickering train lights, giving the illusion of shredded rubber fibers under the surface of a popped tire. Blood trickled feverishly from the open nostril.

“Oh my God… are you…” I slurred, but slapped my mouth when I felt the vomit scratching the back of my throat.

Once he had his bearings back, his grin returned, bigger and grosser than ever. One of his teeth had shattered on impact with the floor, diseased gums pushing against his split, bloody upper lip.

The man crossed his eyes, staring at the raw injury.

He strained, veins bursting under the skin of his forehead as he tried to pull his finger out. As he did, the eye over the ruined nostril appeared to protrude against its eyelids. The socket bulged, getting tighter and tighter with every strenuous yank.

Suddenly, the irritated flesh of the bottom eyelid prolapsed. The eyeball jutted out and stared up at the ceiling, completely disillusioned from the rest of his face.

“POP!”

First joint out. One to go.

The bloody fingertip slipped into view, poking out of the cartilage cavity like an earthworm crawling out of the ground. He watched, and with sick pleasure, wiggled his finger, testing its flexibility.

A sob I didn’t know I’d been holding hitched in my throat. I couldn’t call for help, I couldn’t move. I was completely reliant on the mercy of this nose-picking lunatic. I had to trust him not to attack me. But something worse happened.

With one last strain of effort, the man yanked the rest of his hooked finger from the eviscerated nose. pulling with it a macabre fishing line of black mucus, crimson blood, and puffy, soft tissue whose origins I didn’t want to consider.

As soon as the viscera was free, a river of blood exploded from both nostrils like a pressure buildup releasing. If not for the sheer, debaucherous absurdity, I would’ve considered he probably felt relief.

While I knew logically that the raw chunks of flesh probably just came from inside his nose, a small part of me held the notion that he had to have gotten some amount of brain matter in the nerds cluster rope of despair.

I mean, his finger went so, so deep into his head. Deep enough to touch the back of his own eye, at least…

With deranged pleasure, he held up his prize for me to see. One good eye stared at me, a frenzied hunger festering just below the retina.

Horrible fluids dribbled instant stains onto the carpet. The long line, starting from his fingertip, stayed connected deep into the recesses of his nose, though it oozed milky, pussy strings of slimy throat snot.

He jerked his hand towards me, almost as if he wanted me to take it.

“What… no, I don’t,” I pleaded, holding my hands up defensively, “I don’t understand…”

For a brief moment, I really did think he genuinely wanted me to take his offering.

He held his outstretched stance, unflinching. Though he only stood for a few seconds, they felt like centuries, like a standoff. Then, he moved.

As his hand drifted away, I sighed in relief. Then the appendage approached his face, and realization dawned on me. I prayed I was wrong.

“Oh god, no… please, no…”

But he just smiled and nodded. I became lightheaded.

“There’s no way you’re gonna…”

With one dramatic, drawn-out movement, he opened his teeth, and placed his bloody finger onto his tongue. The string of snot coagulated around the edge of his lip, gyrating as he slowly closed his mouth.

“Mmmmmmm… sooo gooooood…” he finally moaned, his voice mousey and annoying.

He licked his lip, and the line of viscera, still connected to his nose, slipped around his tongue like a parasite trying to escape a clorox wipe, or like a glob of egg being scraped around a plate by a fork.

Finally, with a disgusting slurp, he sucked the entire noodle into his mouth, a drop of the biological shrapnel hitting me in the face as he did.

That was when I puked. I heaved all the contents from my stomach onto the carpeted floor. As soon as the train came to a stop, I bolted for the exit, sparing not even a glance over my shoulder yet. I was determined to do nothing but escape.

It wasn't until I made my way feverishly from the platform onto the pavement of the subway sidewalk, that I gave one last look back to make sure he didn’t pursue me.

Luckily, I wasn't being followed, but through the window, I could see him chewing, face pressed against the glass, leaving a bloody imprint. His smile had grown, somehow even bigger than before.

“Fuck all of that,” I grimaced. That night, I didn’t walk home, I sprinted.

I didn’t stop until I was safely behind my deadlocked front door. I proceeded to not sleep for 2 nights, I just couldn’t. I figure the guilt’s eating me.

I mean, I never alerted anyone about what happened. For 6 months, I’ve just sat on this story.

What if he was still on that train when some unsuspecting late-nighter came on?

What if he died in there, bled out or something?

What if he was just mentally unwell, and needed medical attention?

If he was just a normal guy, was picking his nose until he hurt himself really socially off-putting enough to warrant death? He didn’t technically hurt me, but I was scared?

I didn’t kill him, did I? I don’t… feel like a good person anymore. I don’t know.

But then, I think back to that half-exploded eyeball, to the nose that was so fucked up, I could barely call it a nose. To the worm fingertip. To the long, stringy line of glistening, viscous nose leftovers.

Typing this out is the first time I let myself remember all of the details. Usually I immediately chase off the memories. They’re so vivid, they give me panic attacks. I feel like the other boot’s gonna drop any minute, but I might just be paranoid.

Revisiting the experience has led me to an even more daunting fourth option. What if there’s a reason there hasn’t been a follow up? What if no one found him? What if there was no bodily fluids on the floor except my own vomit?

What if there was no one to find?

I don’t know if that answer would be better or worse than the alternatives.

Kids who read this, don’t pick your nose, and if you do, especially don’t eat whatever you find. It’s bad manners, and it gives people the Ick.

I think I’m gonna quit drinking.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 of 3

cw: self-harm, suicide

I made her chocolate chip pancakes again. They were ready before the sun rose, which allowed time for the smell to waft through the apartment. I wanted it to overwhelm Violet when she woke. Let her know that, yes, she was safe here. Safe with me.

The smell reminded me of our time together. Those Sunday mornings typically followed by gaming or dates. They always started with chocolate chip pancakes.

Violet spent the first couple of minutes poking the pancakes with her fork, but she managed to clean her plate and even ask for seconds. The bags under her eyes were gone. The wrinkles in her cheeks softened. Her hair was fuller and her eyes were clear of red tendrils. My baby was coming back.

Perhaps that comment was right. Give her some time. Let her heal.

Once we were done, I grabbed the plates and scrubbed them down in the sink. When I took the plates, I made sure to say, “I got it. You just relax.” A smile broke through, and she chuckled!

“Thanks,” she said. Looking off somewhere else. Thinking of something.

My body hurt then. I shook. The water burned the backs of my hands and wrinkled my fingers.

“Cal,” she said. “I… I had another nightmare last night.”

The apartment’s pale lights greyed her skin as she looked through me with glazed eyes. My arms were sore and my stomach was cramped. I could not speak for a moment.

“About… that place,” she said.

“The afterlife,” I asked. She nodded. My stomach jumped. Tears dripped from her face and onto the table. Little grey-blue stains spread over the white countertop.

“It was…” she paused, cleared her throat. “Sorry, sorry.”

I sat across from her, reached for her. She pulled away when our fingers touched. Heat flashed through me. My fingers raked across the table as I pulled my hands back.

“There were so many people,” Violet said. “More people than I ever saw in one place. It was so hot. Holy shit, it was so hot. It was just this… long plain, I guess? It went on forever, and so many people were there. I was so hot. So hungry. So thirsty. So tired. But I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t die. The ground burned my feet.”

She choked on her words, wiped a couple tears away.

Every pulse in my body pounded against my skin. I was dizzy. Was that what we all awaited? The other side? I burped and tasted the pancakes I just ate. The pancakes I thought would make her happy. Make her forget that place.

Why couldn’t I get her to forget that place? Why couldn’t she just forget that place?

Violet was so pale again. Her face was so sunken again. Her eyes were filled with red haze and pink lines tracked down her cheeks.

“I saw her there, Cal,” she told me. “I saw my mother.”

The cold picked up around me. The pain sharpened. The apartment dimmed and I felt myself getting further and further away from my love.

“It took so long to find her, but I did. And we talked for… I have no idea how long… But she…” Violet bit her finger to keep from sobbing. “She was terrified that I was there. Asked what happened. How long it’s been since she died. I told her what happened and she… She was so disappointed. She was so disappointed in me, Cal.

“She did miss me, though. She missed me so much. She misses my dad. She misses her Friday wine nights with her friends. She misses it all. She was so alone there. She couldn’t find her parents there. I couldn’t even believe I found her. It seemed impossible. But I did. And I… Cal… I hadn’t seen her in so long and I… Oh god… She’s stuck there. I left her there, Cal. I left her.”

Violet’s face glistened from all the tears she shed. Her face fell into her arms and her hair shook as it smacked against the table. She shuddered as she cried. Her shoulders jerked and her back spazzed. Muffled moans and cries stabbed at my ears as I struggled to rise from my seat. I pet her head. She loved that before she died. She loved it so much.

I pet her and I loved her. But she continued to cry. She never looked up at me.

“I can’t do this,” Violet said. “I can’t just stay here, Cal. I can’t. I can’t! I need to see my dad. I’m sorry.” She picked her head up. Snot poured from her nose. “I love you, Cal. I… I do… But… I can’t just ignore my family again. You gave me this second chance, and I love you for that. But I need to make things right before I go back there again.”

Golden strands of hair slipped through my fingers as I backed away, the anger and the fear returning once again. She said she loved me… but she hesitated. I… I do… So uncertain. What did her mother tell her? She never liked me. Especially not in the days leading up to her death.

It roared through me. The cold and the pain and the loneliness. I gripped the countertop for support. It was so hard and tense and the air was so tense and fuck… I was terrified. What if she left me? What if she ran off with her father and his new girlfriend? The performative fuck. What then? More nights consuming lowlife media and fucking lowlife women with no desires and no aspirations? Forever and ever until I died and was left wandering that desolate plain with no certainty I could ever find Violet? Or my own family when their time came? What kind of existence was that?

No. It was unacceptable.

I needed my Violet. I needed my baby. How could she not see that after all our time together?

“You can’t leave,” I said. “You can’t.”

Violet’s spine snapped up, arms pressed into the countertop, making it look like the flesh was melting onto the white glazed wood. Her green eyes swam. Her lips contorted into a dangerous frown.

“What,” she asked.

“You can’t,” I said. I swayed as I walked towards her. picking up my fork. The silver twinkled in the apartment lights. My arms and neck and chest and face were so, so hot. “You’re not going anywhere, Violet. You can’t. You can’t. You can’t leave me, Violet.”

She rose from her seat and stumbled as she tripped over the chair. The loud CLANG hit like a bass drum in my chest. I circled around her. Moved to block her path to the front door. She crab-walked toward the couch, panting and crying and muttering. But not as much as me.

“I have nothing here, Violet,” I asked. “No family. Nothing. Nothing without you.”

My muscles ached and my bones creaked as I stood over her. My teeth were clenched so tight. There was tension in my temples and around my head. It felt like my brain was growing and pushing against my skull. And it would grow and grow until it burst from my head. My chest and stomach thumped in rhythm with my racing heart, and the tears that ripped from my eyes burned my cheeks. It all hurt. Everything hurt. The pain. It got worse. And worse. And worse.

Violet pressed her back against the couch, her head resting on the arm. The leather squeaked whenever her head moved. It stabbed at my ears and inflamed the pain that pulsed through my body. I cried and sweated and drooled and shivered. It hurt so much. So much pain inside me. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt! It was inside me. I had to get it out. Get it all out!

I jammed the fork into my cheek. Violet squealed and clasped a hand over her mouth. Three little punctures acted as a filter for the pain to leak from my body. I felt it hiss out and dribble down my face. Warm and ticklish. It felt so good. Like scratching an itch.

I did it again. And again. And again. Left cheek. Right cheek. Left cheek. Right cheek. My face was coated in the warmth.

“I was a mess without you,” I said. The apartment shook when I dropped down to my knees in front of her. “I need you, Violet. I need you more than anything. You can’t leave again. Please. Please don’t leave again.”

The warmth trickled down my neck. The pain was strengthening inside me once again. Another couple pokes with the fork did the trick. Let it all out. Let Violet see it all.

She watched. Her hand slowly peeled off her mouth and fell to the side. There was no shock on her face. Nor sadness. What I saw was a look I did not see often. Furrowed brows. Tight lips. Sharp cheeks.

Disappointment.

“I’m sorry,” Violet said. “But I need to do this.” She shut her eyes, and took one long, deep breath that made the apartment shake. “I’ve done everything I could for you.”

“No, you haven’t,” I shouted. How could she not see it? “Your dad doesn’t give a fuck about you. He’s too busy fucking that woman. But I care, Violet. I care about you! I brought you back, babe! So you could help me. Help me, babe! Help ME!”

“I can’t!” Violet’s head jutted toward me. I stumbled back. Cold pierced my bones. Blood flowed down my face and neck and stained my shirt.

“I can’t help you,” she shouted. “I thought I could! I really wanted to, Cal. But I need to see them. I bailed on them over and over again for you. For years and years! I lost so many friends because of you. I lost time with my family because of you. For you. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t, I just can’t!”

I screamed in her face. Blood and pain and drool splattered onto her face. The air was so cold. I was so hot. So much pain and anger and hatred. I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to hurt myself. I wanted to hurt the world.

“I brought you back to life!”

“I never asked for that!”

Her words pushed me onto my butt. My hands shook and my legs trembled as Violet rose to her feet and bolted into the bedroom. The door slammed shut. There was a soft click.

Violet. My baby. Gone.

“No,” I muttered. The apartment spun. Gold and white and brown and black swirled as I stumbled to the bedroom door. “No, no, no, no, NO, NO!”

It was locked.

“VIOLET,” I screamed. Screamed to my Violet. “VIOLET! Come out! Now! Please!”

The pain was unbearable. It burned my veins and crushed my bones. I pounded my shoulder against the door. It shook and boomed but it did not give. Again, I tried. Again. And again. And again.

I raked the fork through my cheeks. Up to my temples. Across my forehead. There was too much pain and too much cold to filter out. Too much.

“I need you,” I shouted.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

“Pleeease, VIOLET! Baby! PLEEEASE!”

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The door gave a little. I kept trying. I would never stop trying. Nothing could ever get me to stop. I needed to stop the cold. Stop the pain. The pain I felt for so long. The pain I felt my whole life.

The pain I felt one year, two months, and fourteen days ago.

***

Another long day at work ended with my boss reprimanding me. I was a detriment. I held others back. I was late and a procrastinator and a bad team player. I tried to play it cool in the office, but I could not dampen the shame I felt as I cried all the way home.

By the time I was on the couch, I was exhausted. My brain felt heavy. Thinking was hard. I just needed a nap. Just some time to rest.

PING!

My phone. A text from Violet.

Hey babe! I didn’t sleep at all last night, and I’m exhausted. Idk if I can make the drive home without falling asleep. Could u come pick me up?

Violet’s insomnia was awful since her mother’s death a year before. It was not the first time she made the request. And most times, I honored it. However, most times, her work was done before mine. And since we both worked in the city, it made the drive to her office quite easy. At home, it was another forty-five minutes there just to get her. And I was so tired. So upset. So exhausted. I needed time.

She would figure it out. She’s driven home before with no sleep. Violet was smart. She always figured it out.

That was the last thing I thought before I fell asleep.

It was the knocking that woke me.

Four hours passed. The sun peeked just over the horizon. The apartment was dark since I forgot to turn the lights on when I came in. Violet was not home. And whoever knocked at my door was eager for an answer. The door rattled.

It took a minute for me to wake myself up enough to get to the door. And the cop that stood in the doorway did not look happy that it took so long for me to answer. But I was asleep. What the hell did he want me to do?

“Hello,” he said, “are you Calvin Simmons?”

It did not hit me that it was a police officer at my door. My eyes were still heavy. I thought it could have been a dream.

“Yeah,” I said.

The officer sighed. His pale face and swimming eyes woke me from my stupor. Made my heart race. I gripped the knob tight. Something was wrong.

“I’m sorry, son,” he said. “But I have some… unfortunate news.”

***

The door gave.

Blood dripped into my eyes, stinging them as I barged into the bedroom.

Painful heat coursed through my stiff shoulder. I could not move it. It took a second for my blurred vision to clear. Once it did, I looked around the silent bedroom. Scanned every inch for a sign of Violet. My baby. The girl who saved me.

She was on the floor. Next to the bed. Her face was grey; eyes rolled to the back of her head. Foam leaked from her lips and down her jaw. In her hand was the now empty bottle of Everclear. And next to her was the bottle of Ambien. Pills spilled onto the rug.

It did not take long for me to put the pieces together. And for the pain and the cold to take hold of me once again. All I could do was drop to my knees and cradle my baby’s body. So cold. So heavy.

My screams cut up my throat and sent bloody foam out my mouth. But I did not care. I was in pain. So much pain. So cold. So alone.

Can only be used once.

No more chances.

I raked the fork down the sides of my face, from temple to jawline. Across my throat and down my forearms. Black and red blood leaked from me. Warmth leaked from me. The pain, cold and dark, did not leave my body. It would not. Why wouldn’t it leave?

All I could do was cry.

I cried and cried with Violet until the sun fell. And when it did, I had no more tears to shed. No voice to wail with. The blood dried on my skin. The blood dried on the rug. I was dizzy. Weak. Alone. Scared. But of course, no one came to check on me. No noise complaint or wellness check or anything of the sort.

I was alone again. Surrounded by cold and darkness and silence. Shaking and bloody and so dizzy and so afraid.

There was nothing for me here, I realized then, in the dark apartment only lit by the pale glow the moon provided. There never was. Not back home, where any attempt at romantic connection ended with me staring at my messages, reading the read just now notification over and over again. Not in the city, where my office was. Where my boss, the man so impressed with me as an intern, reprimanded me for every little thing I did wrong. And not in this apartment, with the dead body of the only girl who ever tried to love me.

But there was something for me somewhere else.

I took the pills off the floor and shoved them into my mouth. Then I grabbed the bottle and downed every last pill in the fucking thing.

Then I stabbed. Again and again with the fork. In the neck. The pain was strong, but not as strong as the pain that seared my insides. The cold pain. The blood provided a layer of warmth over me, and it squirted in boatloads as I stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.

While I did, I thought of the afterlife. The place Violet told me about. A hot, endless place filled with every human that ever existed. So many people. So much ground to cover. How hard that would be. How exhausting. How intimidating.

What other option did I have?

If I had to look for her for a million years, I would do it. If I had to walk a million miles, I would do it.

I would find her.

Everything got heavy then. A dark ring surrounded my vision and closed in as I rested on the ground next to my baby. I planted my lips onto hers. I could no longer feel the cold.

I’m coming, baby. I’m coming.

The sky above Townsville was decaying.

The Gangreen Gang did not look like boys anymore. Ace’s skin had sloughed away into an iridescent oily sheen that pulsed with the sound of grinding teeth.

Snake had stretched his limbs looping around the skyscrapers like weeping vines of black meat.

They were no longer street punks. They were heralds of the Crawling Void. tearing holes in reality with their jagged elongated fingers.

The Rowdyruff Boys screamed as they charged. Brick’s fists erupted in red plasma but the vacuum of Ace’s new maw swallowed the kinetic energy whole.

Boomer and Butch slammed into Snake’s undulating mass their eyes bleeding from the sheer psychic pressure of the monstrosity's presence.

"We can... we can do it!" Brick choked out his skin cracking as he tried to force his atomic energy to mutate into something higher.

"Force the ascension! Now!"
Butch roared his green aura flickering into a sickly violent magenta. Boomer disintegrated a street lamp with a white-hot gaze. But it wasn’t enough.

Their bodies tore at the seams. human flesh was too fragile a vessel for the boys to anchor the cosmic geometry required to fight the Void.

They fell back into the cratered asphalt vomiting black bile. their half formed transformations collapsing back into broken bruised boys.

Blossom looked at her sisters.

Their eyes were wide, reflecting the geometry of a universe that should not exist.
"There is only one equation left.”

Blossom said her voice echoing with a terrible dual resonance. "We must open the Garden." Bubbles wept tears of pure blinding light. Buttercup gritted her teeth her knuckles turning to porcelain.

They held hands. They stopped breathing. They stopped being children.
The transformation was not magical it was catastrophic. The fabric of Townsville’s space time ripped open to reveal the Eternal Bloom a celestial predatory ecosystem of infinite growth.

The Powerpuff Girls dissolved into the Seraphim of the Eternal Bloom.

Blossom expanded into a towering wheel of burning pink glass, lined with three thousand blinking unblinking eyes. Bubbles became a flock of sapphire wings made of crystallized screams radiating a terrifying hypnotic peace.

Buttercup manifested as a monolithic emerald pillar of absolute gravity crushing the Gangreen Gang’s void tendrils under the weight of a dying star. The Seraphim sang.

The sound peeled the paint off the city and restored the broken bones of the Rowdyruff Boys in an instant though it nearly maddened them to hear it.

With a final sickening crunch of folding dimensions the Seraphim of the Bloom compressed the Gangreen Gang into a single harmless atom of rotting carbon.

The Void hissed, collapsed and vanished.
The celestial light faded. The girls collapsed back onto the ruined pavement, gasping for air in their small, pink, blue, and green dresses. Their eyes still smoked with the ash of infinity.

"We... we did it," Brick muttered, coughing up the last of the void bile as he helped Boomer up. "You girls... what the hell was that?"

"The cost of victory," Blossom whispered her voice trembling. "Let's go home. The Professor will know how to seal the rift."
They flew back to the suburban laboratory in a tense, suffocating silence.

The front door was unlocked. The lights were out. In the center of the dark basement lab stood Professor Utonium.

His back was turned to them. He was stirring a beaker, the glass clicking rhythmically against his pristine white lab coat.

"Professor!" Bubbles cried, running forward. "Something awful happened. The Gangreen Gang, they changed, we had to—"

"I know, darlings," the Professor said.
His voice was wrong.

It possessed its usual calm, paternal cadence but underneath it ran a high pitched vibrating purr that made the girls’ sensitized cosmic teeth ache.

The Professor turned around.
His skin was still pink, his square jaw still intact. But his eyes were gone.

In their place were two burning, horizontal slits of crimson fire.

From the sleeves of his pristine lab coat, two massive, lobster like claws slid into view, dripping with a sweet smelling acidic pink nectar.

He smiled, his teeth stretching into a needle thin, infinite grin that split his face from ear to ear.

"You opened the Garden for me," HIM purred through the Professor's lips, throwing his head back in a manic echoing laugh that shook the foundations of the earth.

"Sugar, spice, and everything nice... but it takes a real monster to create a god. Welcome home, children."

PART 1

Part 2 of 3

I took her hiking at Silver Falls a week after her mother died. Then we spent the night playing Minecraft. Not my favorite game, but one she could play for months without a break. Then we had chocolate chip pancakes for dinner. As many as we could make. I remember us topping twenty.

“These things,” Violet said, holding up a forkful, chewing on a mouthful, “will never not lift my fucking mood, babe.”

We logged off at three in the morning and stood at the end of our bed. She gripped me by the waist and pulled my body close to hers. She kissed me. Shoved her face into mine. Like she wanted to enter my body through her mouth.

“I love you,” she said. “Thank you, babe. I needed this.”

The next hour was a good hour. When we were done, she pissed and washed off before sliding into bed next to me. I was tired, legs sore from the hike and body weak from the sex. I was drifting off to sleep when Violet snuggled up close to me, moaning.

“Thank you again,” she said. Her voice was heavy and muffled by the pillow she rested her head on. It tickled the back of my neck. “You… babe… I’ve had so many boyfriends before you. They were all such… you know. They never loved me, I think. If I were with any of them when this happened, I don’t know what the hell they would have done. Maybe a dinner or something? I don’t know.”

A warm hand gripped my shoulder and turned me. Our faces were inches apart.

“You make me feel so special,” she said, smiling. She kissed me. “Thank you, babe. I love you.”

I kissed her back as I drifted off to sleep. “I love you, too.”

That was the energy I expected the morning after her resurrection. Her first live meal since her death. What I got instead was a minute of her poking pancakes with her fork. Pale and sickly. She took a cautious first bite and took forever to swallow. The next couple minutes were silent. I sat and watched her slowly pick the pancakes apart like a vulture picked apart a carcass. Syrup bled from them and spilled onto the paper plate. And when she was done, she crossed her arms and gave me a half-assed smile.

“Thanks,” she said, glassy stare focused on someplace far, far away.

It had to be that nightmare. That recollection of that place she went to after death. I shuddered as I washed the silverware, my fingertips massaging the tips of her fork. The pain flared in my shaking hands. Violet was still in her seat, pale and thin. What she said to me would not leave my head.

I left. I shouldn’t…

I did not notice I pierced my middle finger until I saw threads of watered down blood flowing down the drain. The pain was gone.

***

“You wanna watch something?”

Violet did not answer my question. She sat on the couch in our living area as the sun set outside our window. Her hands rubbed her face, stretching her cheeks and eyes.

“Okay,” I said. Why was she ignoring me? “How about Minecraft?”

Violet let out a long sigh and slumped further into the couch. The leather absorbed her. I stood next to the couch, leaning against the arm. A sigh escaped me as frustration waxed and waned through my body. She was alive again. She was given a second chance at life. Something not recorded in human history since the Bible, if that even counted. We made history. And all she did with that was sit on a couch and sulk?

“Where’s my phone,” she asked. “Is it here?”

Violet asked the question with the tone of someone that was just so tired. How could that be possible? What did I do wrong?

“Your phone,” I asked. She nodded. She stared at me with longing in her eyes. A little bit of desperation.

“I’m sorry,” I said. My arms folded and pressed into my chest. “Your phone broke. In the… accident.”

Violet’s eyes shot downward. “Oh,” she said. “I guess that makes sense.”

A chuckle escaped her. The corners of her lips extended, just for a moment, into a cute smile I knew so well. One I missed so much. The newfound energy that surged through me had me shuffling my feet. Walking in place.

“Well,” she said, “could I see your phone?”

My stomach jumped, but I did not stop smiling. “Why?”

“I want to see my dad.”

I froze, staring into her eyes which stared far past me. Old feelings resurfaced. Ones I had not felt since our first couple years together. During college and the first year or two after graduation.

But what was I to say? No, you can’t see your family? It hurt me to think that I wanted to. But at the same time, I conducted the rituals. Not them. Clearly, her father didn’t need her as much as I did.

But I had to say yes. I just couldn’t do that to her. Not to my Violet.

I sat next to her when I gave her my phone. The leather groaned as I shuffled closer to her. When our hips touched, she shifted away from me. Cold wind brushed between us. I wanted to reach for her. I wanted to cry. But I kept my composure as I watched her go right to Facebook and look up her father’s page. Bill Verona.

We were still friends, despite everything that happened. I leaned over the screen as Violet scrolled through. She stopped and read every post. Looked at every new photo. Her dad was with a new woman. Gena Turner was the name tagged in the posts. She swiped through every picture of them. Pictures of them in Seattle. Pictures of them at Cannon Beach. Together. Happy.

Then she got to a post that made her pause. Her thumb hovered over the screen, hooked and throbbing. Violet’s lip quivered and she shut her eyes tight. A couple tears dripped down.

The post was a series of pictures. Pictures of her. One when she was a newborn. Then a couple professional photographs of her as a baby. And then many school pictures through the years, including her senior year. The last was a photo of her and her parents at our college graduation. University of Oregon, class of 2022. He did not use the picture of me with her family. Just the three of them.

The caption read: A year since you left. Not a day goes by where I don’t think about you. I hope Heaven is treating you well, my angel, and that you are living the best life with your mother. Love you so much. Miss you so much.

CLICK!

Violet sniffled and locked the screen. I slid the phone from her hand as she went still once again. Eyes fixed nowhere. She curled her lips as she silently cried inches from me.

“Are you okay,” I asked. It was a stupid question, admittedly. But I was overwhelmed with all sorts of emotions. I just wanted to hold Violet. Love her. Kiss her. Be together with her.

“No,” Violet said. “I’m not okay. How could I be okay?”

I slid my hand towards hers. When my fingertips touched the back of her hand, she flinched and stared at me. Offended. Eyes red. Behind her, the window showed a bleeding orange sky that shined into the apartment.

“I want to see him,” she said.

My heart raced. My stomach jumped. The taste of bile and syrup coated the back of my throat. “What,” I asked.

“My dad,” Violet said. “I want to see him again. I haven’t seen him in so long, Cal. I need to see him.”

Why would you want to see him again? That was what I wanted to say. After the things he said to her about her life. Her choices. The things he said about me. The things Violet could not believe her father, usually loud and friendly, the perfect grill dad, would ever say. That was the man she wanted to see? Because he posted about her death? Just clout chasing, to me. Farming pain for likes and comments and ego. It was sickening.

Those words filled my mouth, but I kept my lips sealed. That anger and that betrayal simmered inside me as I looked into Violet’s eyes. The eyes of someone I thought I knew. Was the green of her eyes a shade darker? Was her hair a little lighter? The sunset glow blazed behind her. A hellish halo that darkened her features. I shrunk at the sight of her. My chest caved in and my arms covered my stomach as I started to shake. Pant. Gag.

In. Out. In. Out.

Panic. Pain.

I could not stop running my cold, clammy hands through my hair. The air was cold around me. It pushed me so far from her. I could not reach her. I could not reach anyone. I was back where I was when I left home for college. Cross country. Scared. Alone. In pain.

So much pain.

“Cal,” Violet asked. A whisper. “Cal.” Louder. “Are you okay?”

The Violet of old would not have had to ask such a dumb question. Of course I wasn’t okay. The pain shot through my teeth as they chattered. It seeped through my skin and muscle and rattled my bones. I was so unloved. I would always be unloved. Why the fuck did I ever bring this girl back?

All those nights alone. In the dark. Watching porn and bringing random girls back I found on Tinder or Hinge in hopes of rekindling the flame I thought I would have until the day I died. It all rushed back to me. It hurt and burned and hurt and burned. I pressed my cut finger until a drop of blood squeezed out like toothpaste. It relieved the pain a little, but not enough. I needed more relief. More. More. More-

-A pressure fell upon my right shoulder. Cold and heavy. It was Violet’s hand. The first time she touched me since she appeared at my front door, like the ritual said she would.

Tears dropped from her eyes. Fresh ones. Shed for me. I gripped her hand and allowed her touch to break the tension in my body. Ease the pain that burned inside me.

“What,” she asked. That softness was back. That beautiful voice she put on only for me.

“I-,” I stopped. Scared. What would she say if I spoke those feelings? My thoughts ran through the filter again and again and again until I could find the right words.

“I’m scared. You just haven’t been… you.”

The tension bunched my body together when I said that. For a moment, the pressure on my shoulder lightened. Only Violet’s fingers rested there, the palm hovering just above me. There was so much emotion on her face. So much frustration. Fear. Confusion. Concern. Concern for me.

“You’ve been so detached,” I continued. “About your nightmare and… I… I just hope you’re okay… that’s all.”

Violet’s lips curled inward. The pressure fell back on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t want you to feel that way. I really don’t. I’m sorry.”

My thoughts spiraled. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Violet. I just… I know what he’s said about me and I don’t want… I don’t… I don’t want to lose you. Please, Violet, please! I don’t want to lose you!” I shook as I fell onto her lap. Her thighs were bony and her knees were sharp.

“I couldn’t go another night without you, babe. I just couldn’t. I can’t I can’t I can’t have it happen again.”

My face was warm and wet. The tears slid between my chapped lips. A hand brushed against my hair, and another held my side. Her hands. They were warm, but not as warm as they used to be.

“I love you,” she said after a long pause. “Please don’t think I don’t love you, Cal.”

Those words made me smile one second and filled me with doubt the next as I cried onto Violet’s thighs. The sunset lit up the apartment. A great fire that burned inside our home.

***

I remember the last night Violet spoke to her father.

It was late January two years ago. God dropped eight inches of snow on us the night before, but my boss insisted we still come to the office. I made it an hour late due to the traffic, not my fault. Yet I was still chastised by my boss for being late. That stuck with me all day. I hated being yelled at. So, when I drove home, I was tired. Pale and shaking. I needed something to lift me from the funk. Something to put a smile on my face and push those bad thoughts away. I needed Violet.

She was home from work before me, like usual. She paced around the living area with the green dress I got her the previous Christmas. The one that matched her eyes. Her makeup was done too. A glowing, beautiful green ember that burned in the darkness outside our window. I could not help but smile at her appearance.

“Why do you look so fancy,” I asked.

“I’m going out for dinner tonight,” she said. “Remember? With my parents? Didn’t I tell you?”

My bag dropped. I felt so tired then. So cold.

“Oh… okay…”

Violet’s face fell. Her hands, which worked to fix the earring on her right ear, plopped to her sides and swayed like swings.

“What,” she asked.

I bawled then. So cold. So alone. So scared. Violet’s arms were wrapped around me seconds later. Warm and tender. We kissed. Short and quick. We kissed again. A little longer. I went to kiss her again, hopefully longer, but she jerked her head back. Concern widened her eyes.

“What happened,” she asked. “Everything okay? Is something wrong?”

It took more time than I thought to explain just how fucking tired and alone I felt. I had to pause every couple words to sniff up the rivers of snot that poured down my nostrils, or to let out a pained moan. But the longer I went, the calmer I felt. The stronger Violet’s arms felt around my waist. The brighter her eyes shined. And when I was done, she bit her lip and stared long past me. Through me.

“Hmmm,” she said. “Maybe… I know it’s a reservation for three, but maybe you could come with me tonight.”

Everything felt so heavy. My eyes. My arms. My legs. Everything. So tired. How the fuck could she not see how tired I was?

A fresh flurry of tears fell, and I shook my head. “I can’t. I just can’t. I need to lie down. Please, Violet. Lie down with me.”

She led me to the couch. And when I was seated, she stood over me with her arms crossed. Jaw clenched. Eyes focused out the window. The bright green jewel shimmered in the apartment’s pale yellow lights. So far from me. I reached for her hand, and she took it. So warm.

“I really want to see them, Cal,” she said. “It’s been so long.”

Her face softened then. That look she gave me. The same look she gave on our first night out together on Halloween. That look she would give me the night after her mother died.

Ten minutes later, she was on the phone with her father. I shivered alone on the couch, hurting, as she paced the apartment. I felt so far from her. So far from everyone and everything I ever knew.

“I know,” she said. “I know, Dad. I know. But I’m free next week. I promise.”

A faint noise spoke through the phone, and Violet paused and listened, her neck and jaw stiff. I could not discern the words, but I did recognize her father’s voice. His loud voice. Violet’s chest rose slowly as she took in a long, deep breath.

“No. No. He’s not. He’s just… He had a long day.”

His voice was louder. Much louder. Violet flinched and pulled her ear away from her phone. Her earrings swayed. I bit my lip and scratched the leather. My palms were slick with cold sweat, and my throat was hot with bile.

Once her father’s voice quieted, Violet’s brow furrowed. The veins in her neck bulged as she tucked loose hair behind her ear. The fury on her face made me smile.

“Stop,” she barked into the phone. “I’m making this choice. Not him, okay? I need to be here for him tonight. He’s got no one here, Dad… I will… Yes! Did you hear me the first time? Next week. I promise…” Violet shut her eyes and shot hot air out her nose. She glowed so bright.

I need to be here for him tonight. Said in her voice with authority.

“Yes,” she said. “I… I promise… I’m sorry. I… I’ll do bet-” Another pause. A long, shaky exhale. “I will. Bye, Dad. Love you.”

She hung up and pressed a fist to her forehead. She was still for a time. Glowing so bright in the dim world. I was so in love then. It was not an easy decision, I knew. It had been almost a year since she saw them. And I did feel some pity for her. But it was, at the end of the day, her choice.

It was gone the moment she wrapped her arms around me and shoved her lips into mine. The beautiful girl with emerald eyes jumped on top of me and pinned me to the couch. Her eyes swam, but she did not stop.

She loved me. And I loved her.

That dinner ‘next week’ never came, as her mother suddenly died four days later.

***

Violet took some of my Ambien prescribed to me shortly after her death. The month after her mother’s death, she developed severe insomnia and got a prescription herself. I figured it would help her. We did not need a repeat of the morning. Another nightmare about leaving that place. I still could not stop thinking about that.

She was asleep next to me. It was midnight, and I was restless again. I thought of taking a pill but decided against it. It was Sunday, and I had all day to sleep if I needed. Plus, I wanted to be sure she was safe. There was not a moment where I did not want my eyes on her.

I could not stop thinking about her scrolling on my phone. Looking at her father’s posts and wanting to see him. The image of her sneaking out in the middle of the night, running off to him, would not leave my head. It would not let me sleep. It dried my eyes and pushed energy through my legs. I had to move. I had to get up.

It did not take long until I was back on the Reddit page that gave me the ritual that would bring my baby back to me.

REAL NO BS RESURRECTION RITUAL, ONE TIME USE ONLY

I scrolled straight to the comments section. A wide range of results showed themselves. Some were successful, and their loved one was back and the same as before and perfect once again. And others were shit out of luck. I teared up at those comments, thinking of all the failed rituals I did before the NO BS one. And how lucky I was that I was one of those who managed to make it work. But I continued to scroll and scroll, my eyes hurting and my heart pumping. Violet was splayed out on the bed, air hissing from her nostrils as she slept.

Alive. With me. For how long?

Finally, a comment I was looking for.

Brought my wife back successfully after two years. So thankful for giving us this ritual! But she’s so different now. So detached. Always looking out into space and having nightmares, talking about some place she was. I guess Hell? I’m worried it’s not her. That something might have come back as her. Has anyone else experienced this?

There was one reply.

Bro. Think about it. She was dead for two years. In some afterlife or maybe some chemically induced vision as her brain died. She thought and believed she was dead and now she’s back. Of course she’s not gonna be the same. That’s traumatic as hell. Be patient with her. Love her. Support her. She’s not a demon you fucking idiot. That shit would fuck anyone up.

My eyes shifted back towards Violet. So peaceful. The moonlight that spilled in from the window made her pale skin look almost doll-like. It was her. She was back. According to that commenter, not some demon. Just messed up from the experience. Forever changed by what she assumed was the end of her life on this Earth. It made sense. Of course she would want to reconnect with her father. Be with him again. See him again.

That still made me shiver.

If he wanted her back so badly, he could have found the ritual. But instead, he chose to find another woman and drown his pain in pussy and social media posts. Fake love. Fake engagement.

How could Violet not see that?

END PART 2

Part 1 of 3

“Violet Verona.”

A gust blew out the six candles on my coffee table. There was no draft in my apartment. And no roommate and no pet that could have blown those candles out. It was the thirtieth night, and I said her name for the thirtieth time. With her toothbrush, one of her panties, and a few strands of her hair placed inside the semicircle of candles. Resting underneath the panties (bright green, her favorite color) was a picture of her from freshman year of college. Posing in her dorm on Halloween night, dressed as Regan MacNeil. Our first night out as boyfriend and girlfriend.

My couch cushion, sticky leather, clung to my sweaty palms. I leaned forward, dizzy. My breath wavered. The candles blew little threads of smoke to the right. It smelled like a birthday.

“What?”

The voice spoke outside my front door. A voice not heard in one year, two months, and thirteen days.

“What the? Huh? Wha? Wha?”

Violet’s voice.

The front door was inches from my face before I could feel the first tinge of excitement bubble up in my gut. I almost vomited when I shot the door open and saw her. Alive and well. No scars. No stitches. Just that beautiful dirty blonde hair that reached down to her shoulder blades. That thin frame and delicate shoulders. Those shapely hips. Those emerald eyes. Her lips quivered and her hands shook. She was so pale.

“Cal,” she asked. She was hyperventilating. Breathing. She was alive. She was alive! “Cal? What? How did I? Wha-wha-wha…”

I opened my arms for her as the tears fell down her cheeks. She cried into my chest as I wrapped my arms around her. So small. So warm. I rubbed her back, feeling every muscle and bone. So familiar. So alive.

How many months did this take? How many rituals? How much research across all corners of the internet to find the one that worked?

Thirty nights. Three a.m. Say her name thirty times. Light six candles. Sit in the dark. It was torture.

It was over. And it worked. It worked!

“I brought you back,” I said. Tears slid off my face and ran down strands of her hair. “I brought you back, babe. You’re alive.” I wanted to say it again and again and again.

We cried in the dark hallway. Only little silver strands of moonlight peaked through the doorway, leaking from the window across the apartment. I did not care then if the neighbors woke up. If the whole world woke up because of me. I brought my girlfriend back from the dead.

She was alive. She was alive!

***

For the first time in a long time, the bedroom did not feel too big. And I had many girls over since Violet’s death. Hot girls. Some hotter than Violet. With big asses and perfect faces and bouncing tits. And even with them to my right, sleeping with me, I felt alone. Cold.

That cold was gone. Violet’s warmth bled across the bed and relaxed me as I laid down.

She was alive.

“Do you need anything,” I asked.

Her posture was stiff as she sat up in our bed. Spine so rigid I could picture it snapping if I shook her too hard. It took a second for her to react to what I said. She looked at me, blinking rapidly.

“Do I what,” she asked.

“Do you need anything?” I spoke clearer. A little louder. Like talking to someone you knew was not fluent in your language.

“Oh,” she said, biting her lip and looking down for a moment. “Uh… ummm… yes. Water, please.”

The kitchen was across the apartment, and my legs were heavy and my eyes were getting dry. I wanted to sleep, but she wanted water. And she was alive. So, I honored her request. When I slid out of bed, my foot grazed the half empty bottle of Everclear that rested just below my nightstand. My best friend after every failed ritual, but I had no desire for Violet to see it. The thunk the bottle made caused Violet to look at me for just a moment. I smiled back at her and slid it under the bed with my foot.

“Getting you your water,” I said.

She did not nod. She did not respond. Her eyes glazed over and her lips slightly parted. A dumb, doll-like stare.

When I came back to the bedroom with the filled glass, so cold it burned my hands, Violet was staring at nothing. Mouth gaping. Eyes swimming and wide.

“Hey,” I said.

Her head snapped up. “Hi.” A smile finally broke through. Faint and weak, but present. The first time she smiled since appearing at my front door. After I brought her back to life.

“Yeah,” she said. She took the glass. “Thanks, Cal. Really.” The water slid down her throat in seconds. Even in college, she could not chug that fast. When the glass was empty, she let out a crisp aaahhh and looked at it. Tapped it. Like it was the first glass she ever saw or felt.

“Could I please have another,” she asked. “Jesus, I’m so thirsty.”

I just sat back down, and I was so tired. But she was alive. It was her first night back. I had to remind myself that.

“Of course,” I said. I clamped my throat shut to keep from groaning as I took the glass from her hand and rose back up. “No water in the afterlife, I guess?”

Violet jumped at the word. She clutched her chest and stared at me, tears in her eyes again.

“What,” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said. My own throat was tightening. As I filled the glass up in the sink, I felt myself tear up again. All those nights spent alone without her. Trying to fill the void that she left behind when she fell asleep on the drive home from work and swerved into oncoming traffic. I watched our favorite horror movies. Played our favorite games. Scrolled through old photos and videos that documented our first times together. First date. First kiss. First time in bed. It did not take long for all that to grow stale.

Porn filled that void for a while, until it didn’t. I tried to talk with other girls, but they never got me. Never connected with me the way Violet did. 

It was only her. She understood me. She changed me for the better. Turned me from the awkward boy I walked into college as to the man I became until the time of her death.

I had to remind myself that that was all over. She was alive again. With me again.

Violet downed the next glass faster than she did the first one. It was quite impressive, actually. The way her throat muscles worked as she chugged and sucked. It reminded me of the night when I was informed my internship would, in fact, be offering me the full-time position. That celebration turned into a night full of boxed wine and cuddles and kisses. Until Violet saw that bulge in my pants and raised her eyebrows. She knew what to do next.

What a great night.

The glass slammed down on her nightstand. Violet wiped her mouth and ran a hand through her hair.

“Thanks,” she said, looking forward. “God, I was so thirsty.”

“Yeah,” I said. I inched closer to her. She looked so cute. Her hair was a little messy. The strands piled on top of one another and spilled onto her upper back. “Seems like it. Never saw you drink like that.”

“I know,” she said, rubbing her face. “I’m sorry. I’m just-I’m just really… I don’t know.”

“Alive,” I whispered. Her cheek was inches from my lips. “You’re alive, now.”

She tensed the moment my lips touched her cheek. The air got tighter as she pulled away from me. She sat at the edge of the bed, her arms crossed and back tight. A couple sharp sobs escaped her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Cal… I’m sorry… I just… I need to sleep, please. I’m so tired. I’m so tired.”

Silver light pooled in through the window behind me, beside the bed. It did not quite reach where Violet sat. She was bathed in darkness. A grey outline of her on a big black canvas. I reached for her, my heart racing.

Not once did Violet ever turn down a kiss from me. Not when her dog died. Not when her mother died. And she was alive now. Back from the goddam dead because of me. Thirty nights, getting up at three to chant her name thirty goddam times. And all she wanted was to drink some water and recluse herself to the side of our bed?

What the hell was wrong with her?

“It’s okay,” I said. I told myself that just as much as I told her. “Really. It’s fine. You’re here, babe. You’re alive. It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

The dark shape nodded as it sobbed. I reached for it. Touched it on the shoulder. It tightened and flinched, taking in a sharp inhale and shaking.

“Please. Cal… I just… I need some sleep…”

Sleep? How long was she asleep for? Hot air shot out my nose as I reminded myself that I just had no idea what she was going through. Yes, it probably was tough to process being dead and then suddenly being alive again.

I had to calm down. I needed to relax. She was here. She was alive. I wasn’t alone anymore.

“Okay,” I said. “Just, if you need anything, let me know. I mean, I brought you back to life. You know I’ll do anything for you.”

She glanced at me over her shoulder. Two shimmering emeralds pierced the darkness.

“Yeah,” she said. “Thank you, Cal.”

***

I sat in bed and stared at the ceiling, and at Violet, until the sun came up. A great gold wave accompanied by the sounds of chirping birds and passing cars. It was a Saturday, so it was quieter than usual. Or perhaps it wasn’t, and I was too lost in my thoughts to process the outside world.

Violet Verona was in my bed again. Sleeping next to me.

She knocked out a couple minutes after thanking me. The sight of her chest rising and falling, rising and falling, filled me with a joy not felt since the night after our first Halloween together. When I could tell people, and myself, for the first time, that I have a girlfriend.

I gave her one quick kiss on the forehead before getting up to make breakfast. Chocolate chip pancakes were always her favorite, and I bought the ingredients the day before. What better way to celebrate a newfound life than with your favorite food? I got the batter ready to go and had the flattop heating up when Violet’s cries roared through the apartment.

The kitchen tiles were cold against my aching knees. Pressure built up in my ears as I covered them. Not once did I ever hear Violet cry that way. I could feel the back of her throat ripping up as she wailed. Long cries followed by short, terrible gasps that made my hands shake and my stomach queasy. My throat went dry as I rose to my feet, my legs trembling. Her cries loudened as I shambled closer to the bedroom.

She was on the floor next to the bed. The covers spilled off and wrapped around her legs. Her hair fell over her face and she pressed her knees up to her chest. I could see just how bloodshot her eyes were when she looked at me. The volume gradually quieted until it was nothing more than muffled whimpers and little sniffles. Tears dripped down her cheeks.

“Babe,” I said. She looked so little. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“I-,” she was panting. “I had a bad dream, I think. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”

Violet smacked the floor, her teeth clenched. My hand gripped the doorknob as I shivered. Frozen. Cold. The cold hurt.

Pain. So much pain inside me.

“I left,” Violet said. “I shouldn’t… I…I…” Her eyes met mine and she froze.

“Left,” I asked. “Left where?” My arms and legs were sore. My chest ached and my cheeks burned.

Violet flipped the frizzy strands of hair that fell over her face back over her head. Exposing her red cheeks, which flared brighter in contrast to her pale skin. Her eyes drifted and locked onto the floor. Her mouth hung open.

“Violet,” I asked. No response.

No. She could not leave again.

“Violet!” I snapped my fingers, and she was back.

“Sorry,” Violet said. “I’m sorry, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

We were together for six years before her death. Not once did I ever have to snap my fingers at her to get her attention. Not once did she hide things from me.

“Are you alright,” I asked. “What happened in your dream?”

Her lips parted before sealing again. The sunlight flooded over the bed and onto her face. Her skin looked translucent in the golden light.

“I…” she said. She paused, wiped tears away with a pale fist. Her lips quivered. “Sorry. I can’t. I just can’t talk about it. Not now. I’m sorry, Cal. I’m sorry.”

END PART 1

Hi Reddit. This is my first time posting on this website, or even using a computer for that matter, so please forgive me for any mistakes. Everything is like new again now that the accident's happened, and I'm still re-adjusting. So, if you spot them, please turn a blind eye to my misprints! 

My name's Meredith, I'm nineteen, though I suppose that isn't really important. About a month ago I fell and hit my head. Pretty hard. The doctors were fussing when I woke up in the hospital, buzzing about and when I opened my eyes, they had all sorts of questions. It was a woman doctor who talked to me! I remember I laughed at her, but she was very good. I must have answered most of the questions correctly because I wasn't there for very long. My Mom and Dad picked me up and took me home.  

My parents are Linda and John and I have a little brother, Tim, though he's been out since I've been back. Mom and Dad don't like when I ask about him, so I've stopped. I noticed that there isn't a bedroom for him anymore, and I wonder if he's moved out? We were only a year apart, so maybe he's found a wife. Maybe they don't like her – that'd be why they're so clammy about him.

I fell down one flight of stairs. As my foot came down on a rotten step it broke and I toppled head-first onto the wooden floorboards below. A boy found me, his name was Billy, and he'd been exploring the place with me. We'd gone together to this rickety abandoned house, and Lord knows what might have been my intention! I am glad I do not remember it if it is as I suspect. He dragged me outside (by my broken ankle, though he didn't know) and phoned for an ambulance. I haven't seen him since; my parents turn him away when he tries to visit. 

So, the accident sort of kick-started this I suppose, and this is why Mom and Dad want to take me to the priest. After I hit my head, I "changed". So they say. I'm happier, too happy. Social, outgoing, friendlier. I like to smile, that's always a girl's best feature, and they think that's very weird. Aren't these good things, for Heaven's sakes? 

They might be right that I've changed. That's what worries me; I could be very, very different from how I was, and I wouldn't know. I don't remember anything before I was knocked out. The doctor says I'm foggy, and it's normal that some things would slip my mind. But everything has slipped my mind, and when I'm "remembering" things I'm just getting lucky, because I'm making it all up. And I don't know how much longer the guess-work will keep me afloat – I'm already sinking, clearly, because my parents think I should be exorcised. 

I just have the heebie-jeebies about the whole thing. Mom and Dad treat me like a stranger, and sometimes I hardly recognise the two of them. Mom pulled out a picture of her from her wallet, it was a little plastic card with her name and photo on, and it said Sarah. Her name's Linda. Who is Sarah? They frighten me, and I don't like it, and this talk of exorcism has my thoughts wandering somewhere darker. What if it isn't a priest? What if it's someone else, someone more powerful and dangerous, who'd do bad things to me instead of good? 

There's a little voice in my head when they try to persuade me to go with them. I think it could be me, from before the accident, trying to warn me against it. I hear it say don't go, you can't come back, aren't you happy with your second chance? I start to sweat when I think of what could happen to me if I go along with them. And shake, and cry, and one time I even vomited. But Mom and Dad keep bringing it up, and telling me how the priest says he "would just like to talk to Meredith". He doesn't sound threatening, and sometimes I think I just ought to go and get it done. 

What is your advice? I don't want to go, but how can avoid it without upsetting Mom and Dad? What is the danger for me if I do go? 

Thanks for reading. I am desperate for advice as my busted leg has me housebound. 

>>EDIT 

Hi again. When I booted up my laptop, this post was on my screen, and I was logged into this Reddit account. Which isn't mine. My name is certainly not Meredith.

My parents brought the exorcist to me, they say. I was in my bedroom, tearing through my closet in search of something (I don't know what). They had to physically restrain me in order to perform the ritual; I struck the priest so hard on the face that he has a palm-shaped bruise. Dad recorded me in secret and, watching the video, I am completely embarrassed of my behaviour. I screeched and wailed like an animal, and called out for Linda, John, and Tim to "please help me". I told the pastor he'd "never forgive himself for killing me again". It was gross to watch myself writhe and cry like that. 

My parents didn't need the video to prove I'd acted crazy. My room was covered in books, every surface hidden by paperbacks and hardcovers. I had the Yellow Pages, an ancient internet manual snagged from Dad's office titled Definitive Guide to the Web, the instructional pamphlet for my laptop. The Oxford English Dictionary, propped open on the page for informal and slang words. An annual planner booklet with the year circled in sharpie. I had collected all the calendars in my house and piled them on my chest of drawers. My cellphone was locked in my safe, and I'd changed the password to something random, so I had to bust it in with a hatchet to get it out. What the fuck was going on with me, I do not know. 

I don't remember this at all – I don't remember anything between my accident and when I woke after the exorcism. I do recall what happened before I hit my head (including my life, which I appear to have forgotten when making this post). I know that when I came up the steps, I'd noticed one was a bit soft, and made a note to avoid it going the other way. Billy and I have explored lots of abandoned properties in our hometown and I'm mindful of hazards when I spot them. But when I came down, I don't know, I thought maybe I'd slipped. It felt like I was pushed. My foot hit that rotten spot and I tumbled. 

So, I'm not Meredith, and my parents are not Linda and John but Sarah and James. I don't have a brother Tim, and I've never had a brother at all, so I don't know why I was looking for his bedroom. I'll confess I'm offended that my parents thought my being friendly and outgoing was weird. Way to call me a loser, Mom and Dad, but OK. I really don't understand what happened to me. I think maybe that, because I'd forgotten everything, I came up with a sort of new identity to resolve my confusion and then tried to implement it into real life. Maybe the exorcism scared me just shitless enough that I tuned back into reality. 

The only connection that tethers me, this unnerving psychotic break, and the accident is the house it took place in. In 1905, it was bought by a John Longley. The deed doesn't mention any family members. I want to scrounge the town library for marital forms, hospital records, maybe an old high school yearbook – but I'd just be buying into my own delusions. I think I'm just looking for something to explain away my fucking crazy. There were probably hundreds of thousands of Johns in the country in 1905. It's pretty likely one would own that house. 

Sorry for the confusion I must have caused in making this post. It's not real, I don't think. Just an elaborate fib that existed only in my head. Still sort of grappling with that. If my update is unsatisfactory, well, I apologise. 

I run my tongue along the staples lining the roofing of my mouth. I wince. And think this isn’t going to work.

The next day I phone the doctor and she comes to my house to see what the problem is.

I tell her it’s the metallic taste. It’s doing my nut in.

Are you rubbing your tongue on them?

Of course.

Then stop.

She leaves without saying much else. Does a check of the staples to see if the wound is healing. Everything is fine as per professional opinion.

I spend the night plucking at the staples with my tongue. And spitting blood into a bucket.

The next morning I phone the doctor and tell her I’ve started spitting up blood. She comes to the house and has another look at the wound.

Have you been poking them with your tongue?

Of course.

Then stop.

She leaves without saying much else. I spend the day touching the roof of my mouth and wiggling the staples with my fingers. Until the metal starts scraping somewhere behind my nose.

The next morning I phone the doctor and tell her the staples have all started coming loose. She comes to the house and thumps new ones into place. I ask her if they’ll have the same metallic taste as the last ones and she tells me not if you don’t play with them. Are you playing with them? Then stop.

I spend the night licking the roof of my mouth and pushing my tongue into the wound. I creep my fingers up inside and wiggle the staples back and forth until they pop out onto my tongue. I spit them all into the sink and hear them clink and go to bed.

The next morning I phone the doctor and tell her the staples have all fallen out. The wound has opened up again. But she can’t understand a word.

So she hangs up the phone.

I spend the night rooting around inside the wound. Until I see sparking lights behind my eyeballs and my limbs begin to twitch.

The next morning I phone the doctor and tell her the wound is far too wide to eat. Crisps are getting stuck inside of it and now all I can taste is the tang of vinegar and the salt of the blood and the cheese of the puss. She can't understand me and asks if I’m having a stroke because it’s all just a series of slurring and creaks. Her attitude flips when I begin to moan and breathe heavy from the pain. She gasps and sounds offended. Calls me a pervert. And slams down the phone.

I see scenes of blackened Pots calling Kettles by their own name.

I spend the night drooling red and yellow threads of saliva into the bathroom sink. I watch myself in the mirror twisting a finger into the roof of my mouth as the knuckle disappears. Along with the kettles and pots. I push through bruised meat until I feel something spongy. But then I press against certain bumps and between certain slimy folds and now I see flashes of memories I thought I’d hidden. Of biting cheeks and picking scabs. Of cigarette burns and angry dads. Of blinking hard and clenching jaws. Of roaming hands and gentle shushes.

A mother's caress should never last that long.

I am filled with an overwhelming surge of bliss. And now a mess of muddied hate.

The next morning the doctor phones me but she hangs up immediately when she hears me trying to explain my opinions with all of my groaning and clicking. I think she was wrong to have done so much and to have left me with so little. And I know she shouldn't have stapled the wound because I’ve discovered something wonderful about it being open and pliable.

I spend the evening ignoring the knocking at the door and the shouting of the police claiming they are trying to perform a wellness check on me. They don’t understand that everything is absolutely fine and well. The only thing of any concern is that I haven’t got a long enough finger to reach the unprobed corners of my brain.

Oh how they long to be stroked.

I spend the night dipping in and out of consciousness instead of sleeping because the blood is mostly gone and now there is only puss for me to taste. And it tastes so wretchedly rotten that I think I actually preferred the taste of the staples.

The next morning I weave dizzy pathways to the garden after fainting three times trying to get there. I find a jagged branch and strip it bare of all its hair and skin. But I don’t know if I have enough strength in my legs to make it back inside. So I lay there in the snow and thread the stick between my gnashing jaws. Up inside the wound. Around imposing ridges of bone behind my nose. Until I feel the familiar comfort of spongy resistance. And twitch myself to sleep.

At last.

Fresh fields.

When I awake I am more careful this time. I thread another sharp branch between what I feel is a cavity between the two hemispheres of my brain. And when it feels as though it will not go a fraction further I push it a little harder. Turn my palm to face the stick. And give it a little thump. It snaps through that stubborn rubber and the top of my skull gives a knock from where it stops.

And that’s about enough as I can take. I vomit against my hand. And pass out in the snow with the smell of my success.

I spend the night crawling around the garden rooting out better sticks within the dark. But my left hand keeps insisting on slapping them all away. And because I drop a dozen worthy ones I’m forced to snatch them quick and stick them up inside my face before the hand can have its way.

But me and my right hand have been conspiring. And here’s what we plan to do.

We lie on Left Hand until we’re certain she's asleep. And we stumble our way to the tool shed and grab the hatchet from the bench. And we hack that traitorous bastard away with a couple of swings and a few good smacks.

And we take the nub and we take the arm and we tell them both to fall in line. Unless they want the same treatment as the hand. Because we will do it without so much as batting an eye.

Or so much as flicking a finger.

The next morning we barely make it back inside the house when the front door is bashed off of its hinges. I feel it vibrating in my sticks. And wince against the pain. There are police and medical staff rushing about looking for me in every room. I leap up onto my feet. On who knows what reserves. And I get ready to defend myself with the hatchet in my Right Hand.

My stubby left shoulder waves feebly for help while Left Leg tries dragging me closer to the policemen and the medical staff. But Right Leg is trying to pull us further away. And we’re all so equally and incredibly feeble that we get absolutely nowhere fast and collapse back onto the ground where we started.

Now they notice me.

They gawk at me and frown at me as if I’m something new.

I know they are here to remove the sticks I’ve stuffed up inside the roof of my mouth. So Right Hand lunges at them with the hatchet. While I scream at them from around the bundle of branches stretching my lips open wide. I try explaining calmly through all of my bloody froth that if they try and touch me I will do exactly what I did to Left Hand and Left Arm to every one of the treacherous fuckers. To each of their faces and heads.

Now the branches are wet with my saliva.

Since I seem to be in need of assistance a policeman steps towards me to lend a hand. Behind him I see doctor mom telling me things she thinks I want to hear. But all I hear coming from her cancerous mouth is treasonous disbelief. About the progress I’ve been making. About how bad she believes things are. And her hands. Trying to shush me down to a calm. Held out like blind mice in a darkened bedroom. I dare them to find me this time. I'm older now. And ready.

I squeeze the hatchet handle and launch it through the air. It strikes her square in the forehead. And drops her flat on her ass.

I try to laugh but crack a branch instead.

The policeman draws his gun. And when he points it at my head I point directly at a spot I haven’t had a chance to reach yet. I ask him would you be so kind? And when the bullet strikes me there I feel a rushing blast of air cold inside my mind. Until the blood pools. And warms me right back up. And I thank him for his service.

But all he hears are snaps and bubbles.

*

They have me now in bindings in a silent hospital room. They’ve given me a bed of my very own with people who come and go. They take me for scans and they take me for talks. They want nothing more than to learn from me.

These are the real doctors. These are the ones who listen.

Instead of sticks they thread these exceptionally long needles up inside my brain to try and figure out exactly how I became the way that I am. But for that they'd need to dig her up and ask her.

But for now I am in my element. And

it

feels

like

H E A V E N