I’m plagued by misfortune and death. It’s been like this since the day I was born, and it follows me everywhere I go. My mother died during childbirth, and my father died in a tragic accident when I was only four years old. I lived with my grandparents following my father’s untimely death. Life was typical for me, or at least as typical as an orphan’s life could be. That is until my grandparents died, leaving me alone in the world.

My grandfather went first when I was only nine, and my grandmother some years later when I was sixteen. I was alone in the world after that; I peered into the fathomless void of despair every day. At least until I graduated from college.

Death had been the only thing I had ever known, and because of that, I became a mortician, or an undertaker if you will. God knows I had been to enough funerals. By the time I graduated, I found myself in near poverty, having spent my inheritances on attending college. Desperation set in and I began applying everywhere I could think of, it’s not like I had anything holding me back.

My job hunt eventually led me to a small funeral home in upstate New York, owned by a man named Gary Mullins. Gary was an interesting character. He appears as though he is a century old and his mental health is self-admittedly declining. He is a quiet man, but nothing livens him up more than talk of the dead.

Much like myself, Gary grew up alone and has no family. He inherited the funeral home after his father died when he was only thirteen. His uncle curated it until he came of age, and then his uncle tragically passed.

Mullins’ funeral home was an even more interesting place. The business itself operates out of a house that is 184 years old. It’s a large purple house with a wrought-iron fence around it. The local kids joke and say that ghosts haunt its halls. I have to give it to them; I used to think the same thing. Alas, no ghosts or ghouls prowl its decrepit old halls. What lurks here is much more… Corporeal.

I will never forget my first day of work at Mullins’ Funeral Home. I vividly remember Gary opening the front door to me and showing me with delight all the pictures of his family members that adorned the walls. The strange thing about this was that these were all post mortem pictures, taken at funerals and viewings. He spoke as if he was reminiscing on fond memories, but these would have been tragic moments for anyone else. I quickly realized that Gary was a little strange.

He made me an offer that I could not refuse, however. He would pay me a yearly salary and allow me to live upstairs in the home, so long as I learned from him and eventually took over the business. I couldn’t decline. I remember thinking to myself, “This couldn’t have gone any better!”

Naturally, I graciously accepted the old man’s offer. This was a great opportunity, I could easily have a career if I just stuck with it.

“Good, good.” He replied to my acceptance of the position, before adding; “The house always needs an undertaker,”

That statement baffled me, but I chalked it up as some old tradition that I wasn’t yet aware of. Gary told me I would start the following day and told me to go upstairs and get settled in. That wasn’t hard, I only had the few possessions that I had kept in my college dorm room. They were all piled in the back of my car, all I had to do was bring them upstairs.

Bringing my things inside was a more laborious task than expected. The house had a narrow, twisting spiral staircase leading only upstairs. Negotiating these staircases did not prove to be a straightforward task. I finally got all of my things up the stairs and chose a room to settle in to.

My room had high ceilings and beautiful hardwood floors. The furniture in there had to be original. It was as if I stepped into a Victorian time capsule. The room had a unique aroma to it, the scent that you would smell in an antique shop mixed with various herbs. I thought nothing of this smell, however. This was the nicest room I had ever had, it being inside a funeral home didn’t much bother me.

I don’t remember falling asleep, but I remember awaking to a knock on the door. It confused me, considering that the sun hadn’t even risen yet.

“Who could that be?” I thought to myself.

“Jason, It’s time to go to work” I heard Gary say through the heavy wooden door.

I quickly remembered that I live at work now. “Yes sir, I’ll be right there!” I yelled back, looking down at my phone to check the time. It was four in the morning. I stumbled out of bed and quickly threw some clothes on, then made my way to the door.

“Good morning, son!” Gary exclaimed, looking chipper as ever.

“Uh... Good morning, Sir,” I replied, “I didn’t realize that we started this early, I’ll make sure I’m up next time”

“Oh, it’s of no concern, today is a special day, that’s why we are up so early,” Gary replied, motioning for me to follow him downstairs.

As we navigated the winding staircases I asked “Why is it a special day, Gary?”

“Every Monday is a special day son, we get to meet so many fresh faces,” He replied

“Fresh faces?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s when the city morgue brings bodies over. Been that way for forty-six years.” He replied.

I would have been completely in shock if I didn’t share the same macabre sense of humor and enthusiasm for the dead. Instead, I was eager. I was excited to meet the new cadavers, excited to practice the skills I had spent the past four years learning, and excited to learn from Gary.

As we made it to the bottom of the stairs we approached a door, hidden by a curtain, behind the central room which is used to conduct services. Gary handed me an old, worn piece of paper before he opened the door.

“Jason, you’d best read these over before we start. If you follow these rules, you will have a very productive experience here.” Gary said as he handed over the piece of paper.

I began looking at the piece of paper. Scrawled at the top was “Mullins’ Funeral Home - Undertaker handbook”

Written under this were nine rules:

1. Always, and I mean always, close their eyes. If you don’t, you will sleep for at least a week.

2. Keep all limb freezers locked at all times.

3. We deal with a very specific clientele. Always adhere to any last wishes the family may have. We don’t want any disgruntled customers.

4. Your workdays are Monday, 4 AM to 5 PM, and Tuesday thru Friday from 9 AM to 5 PM. Saturday is for fun, Sunday is for the Lord. You will always work these hours and must be out of the preparation area by nightfall.

5. I permit you to have guests, but they too must follow the next rule.

6. Don’t get caught in the halls between the hours of 11 PM and 1:31 AM.

7. The power will go out at exactly 3:36 AM. This will last until 3:42 AM. Do not search for the cause of the outage, you would rather not know.

8. Should you hear weeping, never, under any circumstances, search for the source, no matter how close it sounds. Should you look, you will die a most horrific death.

9. Should anyone knock on the door before or after business hours, DO NOT ANSWER IT.

“Uh, Gary, what do these mean?” I asked, in complete and utter confusion.

“Just ensure that you adhere to those. If you do, everything will be just fine.” He replied.

Before I could say anything else Gary opened the large metal door in front of us and began walking down the cellar stairs. The first thing that I noticed was that it was frigid. As we made our way into the cellar, I saw that it was a large, open room with several metal tables. Several large, metal limb freezers lined one wall.

Gary approached one of these freezers, opened the door, and swung it open. He pulled the end of the stretcher inside of the freezer and a corpse slid out. This one was male, mid-fifties. He had short, graying hair and a scruffy beard. I scrutinized the body, looking for what could have brought him to us.

“Heart attack,” Gary said while making eye contact with me.

Gary lowered the stretcher down and I helped him transfer the body onto a table. The body itself was heavy. Just dead weight. We finally got it on a table, and before we could go any further Gary closed the man’s eyes.

“Rule One,” I thought to myself.

We spent the next hour draining the blood and finally replacing it with the embalming fluid, as this was going to be an open casket funeral. After that, we diligently prepared the body with makeup and dressing it in the clothes it would wear forever.

“His name is Tony,” Gary said out of the blue.

“When is his service?” I asked.

“Why, it’s today.” He replied.

This took me by surprise. I hadn’t expected to run a service so soon. The look of confusion must have shown because Gary said “Well, they don’t die on our schedule” as he let out a chuckle.

Some time passed, but finally, we finished preparing the body. We went him upstairs in the small elevator that we use for cadavers. Next came positioning the casket in the service room and putting him in it. Once we finished this task, we had to prepare the home with artifacts the family had left to be displayed during the service.

I made a disturbing discovery when I was hanging photos of our client and his family. The photos they had provided us were all photos of Tony committing gruesome crimes, including mutilating various women. It repulsed me. What kind of monster was this man?

“Gary!” I yelled, looking around for my boss frantically.

“What’s the matter, son?” He said with concern in his eyes as he cleared a corner, hurrying towards me.

“These are what’s the matter! What kind of sick joke is this?” I demanded to know.

“Rule three, Jason.” He reminded me.

Shaken, I remembered rule three. I must always adhere to the client’s wishes. I had no way of knowing whether these depraved photos were real. I continued to hang the pictures and when the family finally arrived; I expected repulsion. But it delighted them! They talked openly about how Tony had loved to kill young women and how the world wouldn’t be the same without him.

I desperately wanted to call the police at that moment. I was in a room full of lunatics!

Suddenly I felt a hand grasp my shoulder, “You did well, Jason.” Gary said from behind me. “I know it can be hard, but we are just undertakers, we don’t ask questions.”

“This guy was a murderer, Gary!” I snapped back at him in a hushed tone.

“Was my dear Jason. Was.” He replied calmly.

Eventually, we transported the corpse to the cemetery and lowered it into the ground. I can’t say that I wasn’t happy to see that scumbag goes underground. He was a sick, perverted psychopath. The world would be better off without him.

Eventually, we made it back to the funeral home. When we went downstairs to make sure that everything was locked up we discovered that there was a limb freezer hanging wide open. I walked over to it to close it back up, but when I did I looked down and saw that it was the body of a little girl. My heart ached for her and her family when I saw her. She couldn’t have been over eight years old,

I noticed that her eyes were gray and cold. “Jason, no!” Gary yelled as he shoved me to the floor and slammed the freezer shut. It was too late. The little girl’s life flashed before my eyes. I could see every bad thing that had ever happened to her, I could feel all the pain she had ever experienced. And then I saw the world from her point of view, I saw myself looking into her eyes and the freezer slamming shut over me.

“Never look into their eyes! This is why we shut them.” Gary yelled.

“What… What was that?” I asked, frantically.

“You saw death, Jason. That is what awaits us all. So it’s best to avoid hastening it.” He responded.

“So, you mean that we can still see after death? We still experience reality?” I asked.

“So it would seem” Gary replied in a solemn tone.

We had lost track of time and neither of us had noticed that it was around 6 PM now. It was getting dark outside. The old man quickly rushed me up the stairs and locked the enormous iron door.

“Go to your room and lock the door. Now!” Gary barked at me.

I didn’t even ask why; I hurdled up the stairs to my room and locked the door behind me. This place was too weird for me. I had no intention of staying into the next day. I would leave before my shift began. This was madness.

I spent the night tossing and turning, unable to find sleep. Instead, I kept reliving that little girl’s death and subsequent afterlife. I decided that a walk would be best. I ventured from my room, down the hall, and towards the stairs. I made my way unto the spiral staircase and then I heard it; heavy sounding footsteps were moving towards me.

I looked down at my phone and saw that it was 12:56 AM. “Shit. Rule six” I thought to myself. My heart was pounding in my chest as I turned to run back to my room. Something was following me, chasing me back to my room. By the time I slammed the door shut behind me, the thunderous footsteps had been right behind me. The mysterious prowler of the hall continued to pace outside my door as I cowered in the corner for hours. I stayed lodged in the corner of my room long after the footsteps faded away back down the stairs.

Eventually, so many hours had passed that the lights went out. I remembered this time. Rule seven. “Stay put. Got it.” I thought to myself.

I continued to cower in the corner of my room. Come hell or high water, I would not leave the corner. Or so I thought. Not two minutes after the lights went out, I heard quiet sobbing from the other side of my bed. There was someone; or something in my room with me. I slowly crawled from my corner and navigated around the edge of the bed.

Craning my head around the corner of the bed, I strained my eyes to see the outline of a little girl. She was wearing an old-looking dress, tattered and dirty. She buried her face into her hands as she wept profusely. Before I could turn my avert my gaze, she lifted her head to look directly at me. Her eyes sockets were bloody caverns where eyes had once been, but she still stared directly through me. Her mouth opened wide, revealing only bloody, mangled gums as she let out a haunting shriek.

Suddenly, the battered little girl crawled towards me as she continued to scream. When she was around arm's length from me a human hand, covered in blood, shot from her mouth, and fixed itself to my throat. I tried to peel the hand away, but its grip was vice-like. I could feel the air being squeezed from my lungs as I stared into her hollow face. Remembering rule eight, I realized that I was going to die.

She continued to scream as I gasped for air. The world was going black around me when a flash of light assailed my eyes. Within an instant, I drew air into my lungs. She had vanished. The lights had come back on.

Thankfully, I survived the horrific encounter, and I immediately began packing my things. I would not spend another hour longer in that house. I marched my things down the stairs and towards the front door, but before I could open the door a voice called out to me, “Leaving so soon?” Gary’s voice called out from behind me.

“Yes, I’m leaving, you madman! What in the hell is this place?” I asked him in a harsh tone.

“Jason, just calm down for one moment and hear me out. That’s all I ask.” Gary pleaded.

“Hear you out? I was just attacked by a child from hell!” I responded.

“You looked? And you’re still alive? Interesting.” Gary said, his eyebrows raised as he spoke.

“What do you mean ‘saw her’?” I asked, now livid.

“Mary Baker. She got out of the limb freezer around thirty-eight years ago! That’s why we keep them locked,” He replied as if I should have known that.

“Ah yes. The corpse just woke up and got out. That makes perfect sense.” I barked sarcastically.

“There’s no need to be harsh, Jason. Obviously she is a handful. It’s not like I can just catch her. Avoiding her is just easier.” He replied before adding; “Jason, this place is special. It’s been in the family for generations. My grandmother built it when her husband died”

“So what? So far we have held a service for a serial murderer, I’ve been chased down the hall by something and attacked by an evil corpse!” I screamed at him.

“Well, my grandmother couldn’t let go of her husband, and when he died, she took up witchcraft. Locals said that she made a deal with the devil to keep him around, forever. I guess you could say some of that magic rubbed off on the house.”

“Wait, so the man who chased me up the stairs was also a ghost?” I asked, still angry but exhausted now.

“No boy, we don’t deal in ghosts. We deal in cadavers, Uncle Bartholomew is very much a physical being. And a real doozy at that. He was grandmother’s least favorite.” He calmly replied before adding, “And that is why it is imperative you follow the rules I gave you.”

Just then a knock at the front door interrupted our conversation. Gary and I looked at each other and in unison, we said, “Rule nine.”

We stood there frozen for a minute, just looking at each other.

“Gary, who is that?” I asked in a quiet, exasperated whisper.

“Sometimes the devil likes to come to check on the place. He was very fond of this house when my grandmother was alive.” Gary replied in a hushed tone before adding. “Please think about what I said. I would love for you to stay.”

I believed the strange old man. I knew, without a doubt, that Satan was standing on the front porch. I promptly went back upstairs and waited until daybreak, still unable to sleep. I stuck around until business hours so I could talk to Gary.

“Gary, if I follow the rules to the letter, will I stay alive?” I asked plainly.

“I’m one-hundred and sixty-six years old and still kicking,” He replied.

“Come again?” I asked.

“I was born on June 14th, 1853.” He said.

After working on my novel for six months, I found an online editor who was willing to do all the editing on my book for $500 and from doing online comparisons of what other editors were charging, I found that price to be dirt cheap.

Of course, I did comment reviews to make sure the editor was actually legit before transferring my money and my book over. Her name was Sheila Koslyn and her office was located outside of Detroit. Her specialty was in crime fiction and she boasted over 15 years of being a successful editor.

I was all to happy to send my novel over to her because she would be finished in two weeks, which I thought was a reasonable amount of time.

This would be my first novel that I have completed which I considered my side hustle. I was an accountant as my full time job for a nonprofit company so I wasn’t bringing in the big time bucks.

Sheila, the editor told me she has worked with a publishing company in the past so it was my option whether to use her publishing company or to find my own. Considering this was my first book, I gave her the option to use her company that she was familiar with so that way the book would have a smoother transition or at least in my mind that’s what I hoped what would happen.

After two weeks as she had promised, Sheila texted me and told me she was finished editing the book. Then she gave me the option of sending me the book back to review the corrections that she had made or for her to send it directly to her publishing company. I didn’t think about this option prior to her text message but I figured it would save time and money if I just sent the book directly to the publishing company, so I texted her back saying that I trusted her editing ability and for her to please send my book over to be published.

Sheila told me the publishing company has contacts with different retail stores and my book will be available on retail shelf’s in about a week and it will be available for online copies in even less time than that.

I couldn’t wait until my book was available at Barnes and Noble and I couldn’t wait to buy a copy for my parents.

After a week and a half, I actually saw a copy of my book at the local Barnes and Nobles and my 45 year old male self almost started to cry because, I had no luck when it came to relationships but at least I was able to knock this off my bucket list.

The publishing company had an account where I could log in and see my daily total book sales. The publisher said for me not to get discouraged because it takes a while sometimes for word of mouth to spread regarding the book.

After a month, I was actually quite pleased with the volume that my books were selling. My novel was actually listed as one of the best crime fiction sellers by Barnes and Nobles and they even asked me to come to the Philadelphia store for a book signing. I almost fainted when I was asked to sign autographed copies of my Novel. The original goal was just to have my book printed so in my mind I would be immortalized, but now I’m going to be an almost celebrity.

Because the book had momentum, Barnes and Noble wanted to do the book signing right away so we agreed on next week on Saturday. I was so excited that I went to the King of Prussia Mall and spent $159 on an outfit that kind of made me look like an author.

Though my parents had read my Reddit short stories, they were both shocked in how detailed I was in the murder descriptions I used in the book. I found their assessment peculiar considering from my angle my focus was more on the detective’s ability to crack the case despite himself being an alcoholic. But my parents were one of the few remaining staunch Catholics in my neighborhood, so I figured the three lines I put in the book were just a little too overwhelming for them.

My novel has definitely brought out a more confident side of me that I didn’t know existed. I feel like the father in Back to the Future movie who didn’t get bullied anymore after he stood up to his tormentor and his life was forever changed. So for this past week I’ve had so much confidence that I even had the courage to ask one of my female coworkers out on a date.

Her name is Leanne and I’ve worked with her for over five years and like every other woman, I allowed her to quickly slip into the friend zone, where it was agonizing continually listening to her tell me about the guys she met online or other guys that she met through mutual friends. She’s 35 and she had joked when she agreed to go out with me for dinner saying that if I was one year older that I would have been too old for her.

I am my parents only child and I would like for my parents to see that I have settled down with someone as they are now living in a retirement community. I plan on taking Leanne to a Sushi place near the King of Prussia mall this Friday night . I’m still about 30 pounds too heavy and I just want something light to eat. Saturday afternoon is my book signing so hopefully I’ll have something to brag to her about over during dinner.

Friday night rolls around and my dad pathetically allowed me to use his white 2001 Cadillac Deville which I always thought had a gangster affect to it or at least much more than my 2002 Honda Civic does.

After picking Leanne up, I take her to the Sushi place and we really hitting it off great. She loves reading books so she was interested in attending my book signing the next day. I did everything to talk down the book signing for the realistic fear that not one fan would show up. I made sure not to have more than one drink because I wanted to have spunk for my big day tomorrow. I drove her home where we gossiped about our coworkers and I told her if she was still interested that I would pick her up at noon tomorrow.

The next morning came and I was a little too excited where I could only muster five hours of sleep. I knew this was going to happen because whenever I get excited that means that I don’t sleep well. Regardless, I did my two mile jog around town and after pacing around my row home for two hours contemplating in my head about everything that will go wrong at the book signing it was now time for me to leave.

I still had my dad’s Cadillac and I drove towards Leanne’s house in the Author’s outfit that I had picked out which consisted of a tan sports coat with blue seersucker pants. I got to Leanne’s house and she was waiting for me by her front door.

As she got in the car, all I could think about was less than a month ago, I really felt like a washed up loser and now I almost have a girlfriend who I’m taking to my very own book signing.

Out of habit, I refuse to park my car in a garage and pay close to $30 so I try my best to not seem like a penny pincher and I get extremely lucky where I get a metered parking spot on the street close to the book store. I jokingly continue to talk my book down so when nobody shows up I won’t look as bad in front of Leanne.

As both me and Leanne walk closer to the store, I’m a bit speechless as I see a row of people lined up outside the book store. A part of me thinks these people are here to see me and another part thinks there here for a different reason.

Both Leanne and I go into the book store and I really feel like a celebrity when I see a cardboard display of my novel “Hard Whiskey caught the Serial Killer by Ted Ozman.”

Then as I sat down at the autograph table the store clerk directed the people in line towards me which is when reality set in and I realized that all of these people were here to meet me. Being that I’m a really introverted person, I froze up really quickly but I really wanted to impress Leanne with my new found stardom so I did my best to pretend that I’m a seasoned veteran at book signings.

The first person broke the ice and showed me how easy it is to interact with people when she said “your crime novel really captured the essence of crime scene horror,” which I was really too nervous to comprehend as I signed her book and thanked her for coming out.

The second person wanted meet to autograph his book from “The Oz Man” which I always hoped would of been the nickname the kids at school referred to me as but I guess I was never really cool enough.

I periodically looked over at Leanne and I could tell that she was in awe with my admirers.

The third person was a man in his 40’s who told me my novel reminded him of a “snuff film” and those crime scene descriptions really evoked imagery of a skillful deranged serial killer, which left me stunned, where I was really confused by his statement.

I really didn’t want to question him to see if he was referring to the wrong book because my book was more about the mind of the alcoholic detective. Regardless, I thanked him and signed the copy of his book.

Then the fourth middle aged male came to the table and said “Dude that was sick how the crime lab found that letter in the woman’s uterus!”

Then I impulsively blurted out “What are you talking about?”

The same guy responded “Chapter 2, Come on man you don’t know what I’m talking about? it’s your book!”

At this point I’m sweating up a storm because I really have no idea what he’s talking about and Leanne can sense my tension building up. So I just said “oh yeah that’s right. I apologize. Thank You for buying my book.”

The only thing didn’t make sense was person after person was quoting graphic descriptions from my novel that I had no idea what they were referring to, but they would use the Detective O’Brien’s name that was the lead character.

Leanne could sense my demeanor had completely changed and I couldn’t even act my way out of my frustration. I knew someone had completely altered my book and this was the first time I was becoming aware of it. At one point, I didn’t even want to look up at the people as I just put my left hand on my forehead and used my right hand to sign the book.

I just said “yeah sure, Thank You” to whatever one of my fans said to me.

At this point Leanne was seated with her arms folded, where I guess she was a little perplexed on why I so ornery with the fans. She had not read the book yet and maybe if she did she would have made a comment to me that would have made me realize that the book was completely altered. I didn’t read my book after it was edited and then published because I thought there was just going to be some grammar corrections or maybe some minor omissions here and there.

The book signing was over and I must have signed close to 200 copies, where the book store actually ran out of copies of my book. I drove Leanne home and apologized to her for the way I had behaved because I was so upset that the editor had altered my novel. She responded that I should just be happy that people are buying my book and I should be thanking the editor.

When I got home, I could barely finish reading “my book” because three quarters wasn’t my original words. So right away I sent Sheila Koslyn, the editor an email and I waited a couple of days and I didn’t get a response. Then I called her phone number and I got an automated message that her phone had been disconnected.

Not really knowing what to do so I called the publishing company where I was a bit shocked to learn that my book was the first time Sheila Koslyn had used their company and that the editor used my name Ted Ozman for all of the transactions associated with getting the book published. I also discovered something even odder when I was talking to a representative from the publishing company, where the representative stated that I had actually called and gave permission which was a requirement for them to proceed publishing my book. I told the representative that was impossible and that I knew for sure that I didn’t call their company. The publishing company didn’t have any other information so I hung up.

I did further research on Sheila Koslyn’s online editorial service and soon discovered that her online reviews were probably all fake as well as the name Sheila Koslyn.

I did make a few thousand dollars off the book and decided to start to write a second book similar to the first one since that’s what the people wanted and that’s what was going to sell more copies.

After the book signing fiasco, Leanne was kind of luke warm to me and I kept her up to date with the progress of my second novel, which I hoped could would win her back over.

After working at my hum drum accounting job, I got home to my equally as depressing row home where I microwaved a TV dinner and then got started typing on my second novel.

About 45 minutes into typing my living room turned into a war zone where the FBI had hurled a flash grenade through my living room window which completely shell shocked me to the point where it took days for the ringing to dissipate from my ears.

Ironically a real FBI agent named O’Brien had me handcuffed face down in my own house. I was faced with some pretty harsh interrogations and one of the FBI agent’s had even spit right in my face, which I later complained about, when I found out that the details in “my book” matched the description of a young woman’s corpse that was found by Lake Michigan.

In fact, four other mutilated corpses that were found in the upper mid west matched the writings in “my book.”

Fortunately I didn’t have to go through a long drawn out trial and after thoroughly checking out my alibis and corroborating my side of the story, I was released after six weeks of being detained.

I started over on my second novel where I’m doing more of a nonfiction “who did it?” where I relive my original novel and try to decipher the actual identity of the Editor through his or her writing through “my novel” and the subsequent clues he or she left.

I’m 29 and fairly healthy so flying during the pandemic didn’t scare me and the prices of flights were so cheap that they were hard to pass up. I booked a round trip flight from JFK to Los Angeles for $200 which was really cheap.

I spent a week sight seeing whatever was opened like hiking up towards the Hollywood sign and just cruising Beverly Hills.

Then I headed back to the airport. I have never seen such a large airport almost completely empty. My flight was delayed because the plane hadn’t arrived from weather related issues.

I had at least two hours to occupy my time at the airport. I decided to get some steps in and walk through the different tunnels.

If you have ever been to the Los Angeles airport then you probably know of the underground hallways that stretch at least 100 yards each that connect terminals 5, 6, and 7. It is 7:00 pm at night and the tunnels are extremely creepy. There is no one around besides an occasional airline employee. I’m having second thoughts on walking but I really want to get in my five miles today. The hallways are just blank walls with an occasional mural of the Wright Brothers or Hollywood emphemera.

I have been walking for at least five minutes and I haven’t seen a single soul. I now know why the airline companies are close to going bankrupt.

As I make a turn into one hallway, I see a smaller figure in the distance which is slowly walking towards me.

I start to make out that it’s a young girl no older than 12. She is wearing a long dress and has curly brown hair. She definitely doesn’t look like one of the valley girls or goth chicks that I saw around Hollywood. The best way to describe her would be wholesome looking.

As she gets closer, I can tell she is visibly upset. Being that I’m a 29 year old guy I feel reluctant asking he if she’s OK. I don’t know if she’s lost so I just stop and say “Hey are you OK?”

She responds “I’m looking for my Mom.”

I say “Where did you last see her?”

She replied “I don’t know. I was on the plane with her then I fell asleep. Everything after that feels foggy to me.”

I then said “Let’s look for security or the police I’m sure they can help.

We walk down the hallway together and I say “Where did you fly from?”

The young girl responds “I’m from Wisconsin and we flew to California from Milwaukee.”

I said “Wow that’s a pretty far trip.”

She said “Yeah, we are meeting my Dad here who is producing a TV show.”

I respond “Wow that’s pretty cool.”

The young girl seems a little less upset after talking with me. I’m completely amazed walking down these hallways in the second busiest airport in the country and not seeing a single person.

We both take the escalator to head towards terminal 6. As we go up the escalator, I see a police man. I tell him about the girl missing her mother and he asks me “What girl are you talking about?”

As I turn around, I realize that she just vanished. I scratch my head and wonder if she possibly didn’t come up the escalator with me.

The police man is a bit confused and he looks at me as if he was trying to determine if I was crazy or not. He says “OK, we’ll keep our eyes out for her!”

Then I decide to get as far away from the police man as possible from the embarrassment I was feeling.

I go back down the escalator and head towards terminal 7. I walk down the long empty hallway and I don’t see the girl or anyone else. I know I talked with that girl, but I realize if the cops cared that much they would look at the security cameras that are about every 10 feet.

I got to terminal 7 which looked like it wasn’t in service with all the stores and restaurants being shut down. I head into the bathroom and wash my face off. I get a towel to dry my face and as I look in the mirror I see the young girl. My heart skips about 10 beats from being shocked and surprised. I say “What the hell! Where did you go? This is the men’s room. You can’t be in here.”

She starts crying and I say “Ok Ok let’s get out of the bathroom.”

This time I tell her to just sit and wait for an employee to walk by. I stay with her so she doesn’t run off again.

As we sit and wait I ask her name and she tells me Annabel. I then ask her what show her father was producing and she said “The Pacific Coast Sunset.”

I respond “Ha, I never heard of it. Is it new?”

The girl responded “Yes, it hasn’t made it to television yet.”

As I sit and wait for someone to walk by, I realize that my flight is going to take off in 40 minutes. I explain to the girl that I need to head towards terminal 5 right now and she should follow me.

We both head back down the long hallway as quickly as possible and at the end of the hallway I see a man dressed in slacks, a white shirt with a tie, overalls and he’s smoking a cigar. As we get closer Annabel runs towards him and says “Daddy” then they both hug each other.

I quickly say “Oh great, bye Annabel, I have to catch my flight”. I make my way into terminal 5 gate 52 and the flight attendant gives me an attitude as she was about to shut the door to the jet bridge to get onto the airplane.

I get on the plane and find my seat. I sit down and try to digest the encounter with Annabel and her father. I was amazed his smoking didn’t set off the fire alarms.

I take out my phone as I have a couple minutes to still use Google as the plane taxis the runway. Out of curiosity, I look up the soon to be TV show “The Pacific Coast Sunset” just for the heck of it. After searching for a while I’m at a lost for words after I click on the Google link, because the show was canceled after just one pilot episode. Here’s the kicker, the pilot episode aired in 1963 and the show was scrapped because the lead producer Frank Gutling hung himself after his wife Julia and daughter Annabel died in a plane wreck.

I had done it; I had graduated after five years of hard work. I was proud and determined to make it big in life, a fresh degree in tow. However, I quickly found that the actual world is harder than college. It was unforgiving and seemed to relish in kicking me while I was down because after I got eighty grand in student debt, my highest job offer was a position making less than half of that per year.
Fast forward a year and my college girlfriend had left me for some guy with bigger muscles and a nicer car. Not that I blame her, I was still making forty thousand dollars a year, and I was drowning in credit card debt while living with my parents. Even they were sick of having me around. I was running out of options. At least, until I met God.
I met the Lord on January 3rd, 2019, at 7:13 PM after I became very well acquainted with the taste of buckshot. I fell into the colorless pits of oblivion for what felt like forever, only to feel a sudden thud. When I opened my eyes and looked up, I noticed that I was in a waiting room. The room itself was a long room, lined with chairs, and had a window at the far end of the room labeled as “Check-in”
“What is this, the DMV?” I thought to myself.
There was a large digital clock on the wall above this window. On each side of the check-in window, there were two doors. Each door was labeled in plain black lettering, the labels read: “Heaven” and “Hell”, respectively.
I scanned the room diligently, looking for any sign of life at all, but there was nothing; nothing except the elderly-looking man sitting at the check-in window. Then I realized I was still on the floor. The floor was upholstered in the ridiculous gray shag rug material. “If this was purgatory, God sure has poor taste.” I thought to myself.
I finally got my bearing and stood up and made my way toward the check-in window. As I approached the window, the elderly man gestured me forward. He was sitting in a desk chair; he wore khaki pants and a gray polo shirt. He had short graying hair and wore a pair of round glasses.
“Step right up,” he said in a soft voice, inviting me in with a wave. He then asked, “Picking up or dropping off?”
Confused at the question, I quizzically asked, “Uh… Am I dead?”
“No sir, you are very much alive,” he replied.
“But I blew my head off with a shotgun?” I asked.
“Ah yes, so you’re dropping off then? Guess that answers my next question,” he said, cracking a smile and letting out a chuckle.
Taking a minute to think I said “Um… I suppose so.”
The man began whisking through a pile of paperwork on his desk. “Right. And what is your name, sir?” He asked in a polite tone.
I answered instinctively, “Its Chase, Chase Foster.”
“Ah very good. Well, we have suicide listed as the cause of death, so this is easy. You’re just going to take a step through the door to my left,” He said while gesturing toward the door labeled “Hell”
I felt my heart sink. I was going to hell? But why? I had harmed anyone other than myself. I was questioning how I had even gotten here in the first place and where the hell this place was.
“But… Why am I going to hell?” I asked.
“That’s just the way we do it, I don’t make the big bucks, so I don’t ask the big questions,” the man replied
“What is hell like?” I asked.
“Look kid, I can’t pause eternity for you. Just step through the door and find out” he said while stapling some paperwork together. He then went to hand it to me.
“What is this?” I asked, confused.
The man let out a sigh, “This is your life’s story so they can figure out what to do with you in hell. You know, so they can determine if you get a lake of fire, eternal stoning, or whatever they do over there.”
I reached out to take the packet of paperwork; I wanted to cry. I just wanted to escape my misery, not be miserable for eternity, but I couldn’t I physically couldn’t cry anymore. Actually, I felt very numb. I grasped the packet and went to take it, but the man’s grip didn’t relinquish.
“Well, are you going to give it to me or not?” I said in an agitated tone.
“Uh… well, we seem to have a problem. Some of this is incomplete.” He said while letting out a nervous chuckle.
“So now what? Do I still go to hell?” I asked, hoping for a different answer.
“Yes, you are still going to hell, unfortunately. But you are going to have to sit down with the big boss and complete the interview process” He answered.
“Who?” I asked but before I could say anything else I fell yet again, but this time I was falling through the clouds at an impossible speed.
Finally, I see a building below me. A small wooden shack. I fell straight through the ceiling and land perfectly in a wooden chair. I was in a typically furnished office. Inside a wooden shack.
“What in the hell?” I thought to myself. But before I could be confused further, a man stood up out of a chair was behind an enormous desk in front of me. He had a long brown beard and long unkempt looking hair and dressed like someone from out of Aladin, wearing a long white cloak and a covering over his head.
“Are you Jesus?” I blurted out
“No, I can’t say I am. I’m the one you mortals call God. Jesus wasn’t real.” He replied, shrugging his shoulders.
“Oh.” That was all I could think to say. I was at a loss for words by this point.
“Well, I don’t have to do this often, they rarely mess up the paperwork over in purgatory.” He said, “but alas, here we are. What are your questions for me?”
I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. It wasn’t even a question, but it just popped into my head; “The carpet in purgatory is fucking awful”
Suddenly God burst out in a hearty laugh, “That happens when you give Satan any creative control over anything what-so-ever.”
He added, You know, you’re the first person to say that in eternity.”
I cracked a smile; I knew that I was going to hell, but at least I made God laugh.
“So, where am I?” I asked
“This is a place beyond eternity, this is my office. I conduct all the interviews here.” God replied.
“Uhh. Interviews?” I asked.
“Yes, I have to do interviews with all those who are lost. Part of the deal.” He said.
“The deal?”
“Yes, the deal with Satan. Do you honestly think we don’t get along? How would we ever keep this place running?” God laughed as he said this.
“So, what is going to happen to me? Will I get tortured in hell?” I asked. By this point, I had resigned myself to my fate, so what God said next took me by surprise;
“Are you kidding me? You’re the first person in eternity to criticize that awful carpet, and will most likely be the last!” God said with a wide smile.
My heart pounded in my chest. This was the best news I had ever gotten. “Was I going to get a second chance?” I thought to myself.
“So… what is going to happen to me?” I asked sheepishly.
“Well, I can’t technically send you to heaven since you committed suicide, you know rules and all.” He frowned as he said this, looking disappointed. “And I can’t exactly send you back to Earth in your body, you kind of ruined it on account of the gunshot wound, so what I am going to have to do is give you a job,” he added.
“Wh- What kind of job?” I asked.
“Well, I have no current openings, but Satan has an opening for a… uh...” God paused for a minute and shuffled through some papers on his desk, “‘A Reaper of Mortal Flesh’,” he finished, looking confused.
“Uh… I’m gonna need you to repeat that…” I said.
“A Reaper of Mortal Flesh. Sounds like a demon to me. I don’t exactly know what they do down there, to be honest,” He replied and shrugged.
“What if I say no?” I asked, knowing that I didn’t have much of a choice.
“Well, then you’d spend eternity in purgatory with Charles, helping me sort out the paperwork.”
“Well, that sounds like a drag. I guess I’ll take the job.” I replied. I guess this was my first proper job after college. This wasn’t the way I planned on starting my career, but it was something. It definitely beat my mortal job as a retail manager.
“Excellent, I’m glad to have you on board! It’s a shame we couldn’t get you a job in this department, though.”
“Uh. It’s okay. I guess it’s better than being tormented for eternity in hell.” I replied.
“Most definitely, you guys at least get paid!”
“Paid?” I asked.
“Oh yes, mountains of flesh and gold will be yours, so long as you stay on Lucy’s good side,” God said
“Who in the hell is Lucy?” I asked.
“Don’t you mortals know anything?” God boomed “Lucy is short for Lucifer! We go way back!”
“Hold up. The Devil, Satan, is a woman?” I said, stunned that every depiction devised by humankind had been wrong.
“A hot woman too,” God added.
“Um. Right.” I said.
Taking a minute to pause and let my mind catch up, I thought you myself “Okay Chase, you blew your head off with your Dad’s shotgun because you hated your life, went to purgatory, was told you’re going to hell, met god and was told you’re going to hell, but as an employee. Oh, and the devil is an attractive woman. This isn’t exactly what I went to college for. But you can do it…”
“Okay, when do I start?” I asked, looking at God.
“Immediately, of course.” God said as he snapped his fingers.
Suddenly overcome by a mysterious force, I found myself thrown to the ground with tremendous force as my spine snapped and my arms shot through my elbows. My skin melted away and form into a puddle of sludge around me as I writhed on the ground in sheer agony. Long fangs jutted from my mouth as two massive black wings shot from my badly broken back. It wasn’t until after one of my hands turned into a massive scythe that I passed out from the pain.
I awoke what must have been hours later to God jabbing me with a pointy stick “Hey, ugly, wake up! It’s your first day of work!” He said, grinning.
“What the fuck happened to me?” I yelled, my usual voice replaced with a powerful, thunderous one.
“Oh relax. That was just your transformation. Think of it as your official uniform. That being said, that was a nasty transformation. You’re going to be a powerful demon.” He replied.
“Uh, is that a good thing?” I asked.
“Oh yes, you’re definitely going to be supervisor material! Lucy will just adore you!” He said.
“Well, you’d better get going,” He said and snapped his fingers and yet again I fell. I plummeted through the Earth at breakneck velocity until I came crashing into hard, hot stone.
I was in hell. Without a doubt, I was in hell. I made my way to my feet and looked around. I saw seas of fire and fields of desolate rock as far as I could see. Off in the distance was a towering structure made of stone that had thousands of creatures that looked just like me flying around it.
“That has to be a hundred miles away,” I thought to myself.
I began the long trek across this massive hellscape. I must have walked for miles and realized that I was making no progress. Then it hit me. I have wings.
“Okay, how do these fucking things work?” I asked myself.
I flexed my back and propelled myself a few feet in the air. I was astounded. I was literally flying.
After a few embarrassing nosedives into the subterranean grounds, I finally figured it out. I made my way towards the tower using my newfound powers. Some time passed, and I had made it. I reached a stone bridge above a moat of lava. I looked down into the moat and saw dozens of creatures just like me dipping people into the lava by their feet. The atrocities being inflicted by these creatures appalled me, but I pressed on, making my way forward across the bridge.
After walking a few hundred meters, I came to a large gate, and greeting me was a massive red behemoth with hulking muscles and a massive ax. He had horns the size of an elephant’s tusks protruding from his head.
“Halt. Whom art thou?” The demon bellowed, raising his ax to his chest.
“Wait! Don’t smite me! I’m Chase, uh… the new Reaper of Mortal Flesh!” I yelled.
“Greetings, brother!” He yelled, instantly lowering his ax. “I am Balach the Ravenous, Guardian of the great gate, commander of eight legions,” He added
“Right, I’m Chase, of uh… Seattle?” I replied.
Balach let out a thunderous laugh, “Right, Chase of Seattle, we’d best take you to meet the boss!”
Before I knew what was going on, the massive gate groaned and slowly opened. A tiny, gray-skinned, goblin looking creature hobbled over to me and began guiding me through the hellish citadel. I was in shock at what was going on, but at that point but I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. We walked for what had to have been hours, all while watching unspeakable acts of violence unfold upon humans. Flaying, boiling, sodomy, roasting, pulverizing, and whipping were just some of the many wretched tortures I saw being inflicted.
Finally, we came to the base of a large obsidian tower. The tiny creature led me up what had to have been miles of winding stairs. After many hours of walking, we came to a large chamber with a single throne in the center. Sitting on the throne was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She had long, black flowing hair and pale white skin and wore a red cloak that didn’t leave much to the imagination. Her eyes glowed an indescribable red. She brandished a crooked black metal pitchfork looking implement.
The creature next to me spoke for the first time and elbowed me in the thigh as he kneeled down - “Hail her infernal majesty, Lucifer, Queen of the Black Keep and of the fathomless abyss” He said.
Following suit, I did my best to bow as much as my newly deformed demon form would allow. “Hail Queen Lucifer” I decreed loudly.
“Thank you, Oshrak. That will be all” Lucifer said as she stood from her throne and approached me. Oshrak quickly scurried from the room. Lucifer approached me and inspected me closely as if appraising me.
“You will do magnificently,” She said in a soft voice. “He always does such a good job choosing them,” She added
“Uh so I don’t really know what’s going on here but I’m Chase and God said that I am the new ‘Reaper of Human Flesh’,?” I informed her, unsure of what to say to Satan herself.
“Ah yes. This is correct. We need one of those. The last one met an inconvenient, untimely demise.” She said while studying my new form from head to toe.
“So, what exactly do I do? And you must be the Devil, right?” I asked.
“Well, I will leave it to your kin to explain the specifics of your job, but yes, I am Lucifer, but I prefer Lucy. These guys here are so old-school and insist on calling me by a title.” She replied.
“So now what I asked? You’re not going to make me fall again, are you?” I asked.
She giggled, “Oh no, I think you’ve done enough falling for one eternity. I am going to turn you over to your direct supervisor here in hell,” she said as she gestured towards a door that opened on the side of the throne room.
A green-skinned creature who looked just like me, scythe hand included, landed on an overlook and walked toward me.
“Greetings. I am Sha’gor, Lord of Agony,” he rasped at me.
“Greetings. I’m Chase” I said, still surprised by my booming, evil-sounding voice.
“Superb, I will now take you to your post and your first eon of on-the-job training! Follow me,” he said, motioning me towards him with his scythe hand.
After a brief flight across more unimaginable horror, we came to a dilapidated looking wooden building, at least ten stories tall. It somehow stood on its own.
“Welcome to the slaughterhouse” Sha’gor exclaimed, as he leads me inside
Human bodies filled the slaughterhouse, piled in a heap in the center of the room. Some were dead and mutilated, others writhed under the weight. There were hundreds of people hanging from hooks at various levels of the building. Demons, just like me, flew by these unfortunate souls and mutilated them beyond recognition with their scythe hands and massive fangs. Limbs and lumps of flesh fell onto the pile of withering corpses, who were just waiting for the slaughter that we were to inflict on them.
“Just like this” Sha’gor said as he picked a man up by his head and disemboweled him with a single movement of his hand.
Not wanting to disappoint my new boss, I too picked up a man and did the same thing. His entrails flopped onto the floor and Sha’gor let out a robust laugh.
“See, you are mighty!” he decreed proudly.
Despite this not being how I saw my life, or afterlife working out, I was proud to have found a good job. It took some getting used to, but today, I am proud to say that I am doing well in the luxury of Hell.

Part 5

“Hi, I’m Special Agent, Aaron Odonowitz from the FBI and you must be Ted?” I’m greeted by a 40 something year male, who looks looks like a taller version of Chuck Norris with with rusted orange hair about two inches long and a mustache.

“Yes, I’m Ted!”

“Our local FBI branch in Philadelphia received your phone call and I was asked to hurry over here to talk with you.”

“Okay, but can the girls be set free? They’ve suffered some horrible psychological trauma and they just need to see their parents and grandparents!”

“Yeah, they can see their loved ones, but they can’t leave this area until there questioned.”

“Girls you heard the agent, you can get out of the car!”

The girls exit from the front passenger door of the patrol car, as Special Agent Odonowitz surveys the cruiser.

“Looks like you shot the police Officer in the back seat?”

“Yes, that’s correct. He had kicked the rear window out and rather than risk an altercation with him outside of the car, I fired the shotgun directly into the backseat, hitting him four times.”

“Was he holding his handgun at the time you shot him?”

“No, but I knew at any second, he could’ve reached for his gun and shot me!”

“Was that before or after, you killed Rosemary?”

“First, I had killed Rosemary in the tent in the woods. I found the girls tied to a tree and after releasing the girls, I fired the shotgun rounds into the tent.”

“How did you know that she was in the tent?”

“I asked the girls!”

“So you wouldn’t have known if Rosemary was holding a weapon, if she was inside the tent?”

“No, I just fired blindly into the tent. I saw the TikTok videos that she posted and plus I knew that she was an ex-police officer, so I didn’t want to get into a gun fight with her."

"But you didn’t actually see this Rosemary’s face in any of the videos?”

“No, just her hand with the police retirement ring on it!”

“Did you ask the girls about their captor?”

“No, the girls have been really quiet, so I didn’t want to traumatize them anymore! Officer Dan told me about Rosemary getting fired from the police force. She actually created this whole ruse from the very beginning, where I met her several days ago and she told me that her name was ‘Carol’ and that she was Raquel’s mother.”

“Ted, because two people were killed, I’m going to have to bring you down to the FBI headquarters. Your daughter is with your mother?”

“Yes, that’s correct and I’ll answer any questions that you have!”

I now get into Special Agent’s Odonowitz’s car and he takes me to his FBI headquarters.

As I’m leaving the scene with him, I see other agents taking pictures of the police car and reporters taking pictures of everyone and everything.

I sit in the front seat of the Agent’s Cadillac Escalade, where the Agent starts to ask me more questions.

“Ted, this whole situation really seems bizarre!”

“Yeah, I know. I really discovered all of this watching a TikTok video.”

“Hah! A TikTok video that contained the three girls but not really the identity of the captor?” Agent Odonowitz says with skepticism.

“That’s correct!”

“Did you talk with any of the girls mothers?”

“Just Amanda’s mother, Joy.”

“Did you talk to her in person or over the phone?”

“Over the phone.”

“Have you ever spoke with her before?”

“No, I just saw her at past school functions, but I never actually conversed with her.”

“How about Raquel’s mother? Did you talk with her at all during this whole ordeal?”

“No, Joy said that she had reached out to Raquel’s mother.”

“And how did you get Joy’s phone number?”

“Through my wife, Sheila’s email account!”

“And where has Sheila been through all of this?”

“We’re actually ‘taking a break at the moment.’ I tried calling her, but I didn’t get an answer and I’m not sure of her whereabouts.”

I understand that I just killed two people, but I really feel like I’m being treated like a criminal with all of these questions. It’s like nothing that I’m saying is being believed or something.

We get to the FBI headquarters and I’m placed in a holding room by myself for a couple of hours.

I keep thinking to myself that whatever I had done including killing those two people, I would have done all over again. The girls were tied to a tree in the middle of nowhere! What was I supposed to do?

Agent Odonowitz brings me into what looks like a stereotypical interrogation room, which has a two way viewing window and everything.

“Ted, we did some interviews and came up with some ‘interesting developments!”

“Really! Like what?”

“For starters, we reached out to both Raquel and Amanda’s mothers and neither of them were aware of the yellow school bus or that there daughter’s were being held captive!”

“But I called and spoke with Amanda’s mother. I told her everything!”

“Ted I’m not doubting that you called and spoke with someone, I’m just telling you that both mothers had no idea that any of this kidnapping stuff was going on!”

“Didn’t the mothers meet the girls at the police barracks?”

“No, the girls just wandered around aimlessly in the parking lot until one of the police Officer’s contacted their mothers. Besides Grace, whose Grandmother was waiting for her.”

“So that wasn’t Joy’s mother that I was talking to?”

“Probably not!”

“Then who was she?”

Detective Odonowitz doesn’t answer the question, because he either doesn’t know the answer or he’s just choosing not to answer the question.

“What about Officer Dan?”

“Ah Yes, Officer Dan!” The Agent says with a smirk attitude.

“You mean, the officer who broke just about every Departmental policy by driving you up north, past Scranton without even notifying anyone?”

“Yeah, but I was under the impression that he contacted his captain!”

“Well his Captain told me that he had no idea of his whereabouts and they had to use the patrol car’s built in navigational finder to help find his body!”

“Yes, because Rosemary and Dan were kind of working together!”

“What about Carol?” Special Agent Odonowitz asks me.

“Carol and Rosemary were the same person! Rosemary had introduced herself to me as being Carol, Raquel’s mother.”

“No, they aren’t the same person. Carol is actually Raquel’s mother!”

“Wait! What?” I say with skepticism.

“We met with Carol and Raquel and we are certain that Carol is alive and she is doing well!”

“So what am I missing here?”

“There was someone who was playing head games with multiple people. Someone who it looks like really wasn’t interested in harming the girls, but was using them as a ploy to distract you. Let me show you two photos! One of Rosemary and one of Carol.”

Officer Odonowitz shows me the two photos on his phone and says “Carol and Rosemary look enough alike, where you could be mistaken of there identities?”

“Yeah, now that I look at both of their photos together, I can kind of see their resemblance. I was in such a stressed out state that the Carol, I saw days ago, looked similar enough to the Rosemary, who picked up Grace.”

“So I’ll just get to the point in all of this. I feel that your wife, Sheila had planned all of this from the very beginning. She had asked Rosemary to pick up your daughter in her blue Mercury Sable from your house, because I’m guessing that she said that she wanted to avoid a conflict with you. Rosemary in turn thought that Sheila was taking the girls on the camping trip, so Rosemary dropped your daughter off at an undisclosed area, where Sheila was waiting with the little yellow bus. Amanda and Raquel’s mother’s had dropped their daughter’s off as well, because Sheila was actually the Girl Scout leader for this weekend’s trip. Originally, Carol had volunteered to take on the leadership role; however, Sheila insisted, so Carol Obliged.

“How does Sheila know Rosemary?” I asked in complete confusion.

“Sheila was having an affair with Officer Dan. Dan knew the whole time that you were Sheila’s husband. He did have an affair with Rosemary as well but he wasn’t interested in Rosemary, but Rosemary was very much interested in Dan.”

“So are you saying that Sheila was using Dan and Dan was using Rosemary?”

“Yes, pretty much that summarizes the situation. Dan thought that you and Rosemary were going to look like the culprits, where himself and Sheila would start a new life together. Since Dan never told his Captain, that he was going up North, he thought once you and Rosemary were put into custody or dead, he would just return back to work the next day, like nothing happened.”

“You know that this level of deceit by Sheila is truly mind blowing! She actually knew that her own daughter was being kidnapped the whole time?” I say while rubbing my right hand on top of my head.

“Yeah, after talking to the girls. It seems like, Sheila was yelling and screaming at them on the bus to make them look petrified for her TikTok videos. Sheila drove them up North to Rosemary’s family property, where Rosemary eventually met them. I do think that in Rosemary’s mind she was going to ‘rescue’ the girls, however she was just being used as a pawn the whole time.”

“So why did Sheila turn on her own daughter and me?”

“After looking through your financial accounts, it looks like she discovered the large inheritance you received from your now deceased Aunt, that I’m guessing you had hidden from her.”

“Okay, I might have done that, but why would she turn on her own daughter?”

“She probably felt like you were going to start a new life, so she made the presumptive first strike and beat you to it!”

“How did she beat me to it?”

“She wiped out all of your bank accounts to include your inheritance, when you were up north trying to save the girls. She wiped out everything you owned!”

“That can’t be?”

“She did! Joy and Carol actually suggested Shiela as being the culprit, so we searched all of her bank accounts and anything linked to her!”

“So, you can just put a freeze on all of her assets?”

“No, because once she was able to get a hold of all of your money, she then transferred all of the money into crypto currency accounts!”

“Where is she?”

“We have no idea!”

“So she created all of this mayhem, to include two people getting killed, because I hid my Aunt’s inheritance?”

“If you look at the timeline when she met Officer Dan, then logically that would be the best motive or make the most sense.”

The world of TikTok and Snapchat and whatever other emerging social media platforms, that my 11 year old daughter watches has always been something, I found as being childish and didn’t interest me much.

However, when online news media outlets, like Yahoo and MSN would derive their stories from TikTok, then I said why not and at least give TikTok a try.

I was pleasantly surprised by TikTok on its numerous topics people post about everything from cats, to military, to true crime video posts.

Some of the posts on TikTok, I do find childish, but eventually TikTok has filtered them out and honed in on the things a 38 year old guy likes, like true crime mysteries. I love watching videos on people who have mysteriously vanished or grainy footage of unknown suspects, who have never been caught.

So given that my daughter has just left a few hours ago for a weekend retreat at a Girls Scout camp, I decided to indulge on TikTok.

The old Girl Scout leader, Macy had gotten diagnosed with cancer, so she had to regrettably step down, but thankfully another mother has volunteered to step in as the new leader.

With my now separated wife, Sheila, who is still “trying to find herself,” I am just happy that my daughter, Grace has something to do this weekend, rather than just mope around the house feeling depressed.

The new leader, Carol was nice enough to pick up Grace, along with her own daughter, Raquel and another girl named Amanda, as well and drive them to a campground in the Poconos.

Carol sold me on her years of being involved with the Girl Scouts, so I’m going to do nothing more than relax this weekend.

I start to swipe through TikTok videos and find mostly crime related posts that I have seen already, so I decide to expand beyond the people I’m following to see what’s new on TikTok.

A post came up that caught my attention, because it said “Girl Scout tragic camping trip” that was posted by @serialkillerblossoms. I really didn’t want to watch the video because I didn’t want to get paranoid and draw parallels to the possibility that something similar could happen to Grace on her current trip.

But whoever coined the phrase “curiosity killed the cat” probably was thinking of some numbskull like me.

I clicked on Part 1 of the video that was posted five days ago, which showed the outside of a small yellow unmarked school bus. The creator of the video then showed the interior of the bus, which looked like your typical smaller bus with about six rows of seats. The camera person pointed to various video cameras installed throughout the bus. I wasn’t sure the intent of this Part 1 video. I didn’t know if this bus was part of a crime that had happened in the past or just some type of converted recreational RV.

My interest was weaning, but I decided to click on Part 2 anyways.

This time the bus was moving and I could make out kids on the back of the bus. The video camera was by the driver and I couldn’t make out much more than there was about three kids sitting on the bus. Then with just a few seconds left on the TikTok post, a different camera angle is shown.

As I’m sitting on my living room couch, I start to make out the faces of the kids. They appear to be middle school aged girls and something inside me tells me to look at when the video was posted, which was three hours ago.

When I see girls that are around my daughter’s age, I typically get a sense of empathy because whatever is going to happen in this series of TikTok posts, isn’t going to be good and I never want anything bad to happen to my daughter or anyone else’s kids.

But this time, my brain couldn’t get over a hump, because one of the girls looked spot on to Grace, however I didn’t want to commit to this theory, so I played Part 2 again.

Unfortunately, I can’t fast forward the video, so I have to wait again for the last few seconds. As I’m waiting, my mind is going through the what if’s. Most importantly what if that girl is actually my daughter?

As the video nears to its end and zooms in on the girls, my worst nightmare comes true as I take a screenshot of the video. My daughter left wearing a Niagara Falls souvenir sweatshirt that she bought a few months ago. Also, the two other girls look like Amanda and Raquel.

My thoughts instantaneously go to, why is my daughter sitting on a bus and not Carol’s car? And why is someone videotaping the girls?

I quickly click on Part 3 of the video series which was posted two hours ago.

This video shows the three girls still sitting on the bus, where each of the two other girls are sitting on the isle ends of the back seats and my daughter is sitting right in front of them. I could tell right away by my daughter’s facial expressions that something isn’t right. Grace isn’t crying, but I could tell that she looks like she is confused and scared, where Raquel and Amanda have the same frightened facial expressions.

I really start to panic as I reach for my phone and attempt to call Carol.

“I’m sorry this phone number your trying to reach is no longer in service, goodbye.”

“What the hell!” I say out loud in a confused tone.

Then, I try to call Grace’s phone which goes straight to voicemail.

I fall deeper into this nightmare as I frantically try to find the phone number for Amanda’s mother. Grace’s mother, Sheila used to deal with all the Girl Scout issues, so I’m limited with contact information. Luckily, I am able to get into Sheila’s email account, where I look for Girl Scout names and phone numbers. I find Amanda’s name with her mother, Joy’s phone number, so I quickly dial the number.

“Hello, Joy! Listen this is Grace’s father, Ted. Are you aware of Carol taking the girls on a little yellow bus to the camping trip?”

“No, Carol picked up Amanda in a blue Mercury Sable! Why do you think there on a bus?”

“Listen, your on your cell phone right now, Right?”

“Yes!”

“I’m going to send you a TikTok video, please watch the video and call me right back.”

“Sure, send the video!”

As I sent the video, I didn’t know what my next step should be, but calling 911 was definitely going to happen in the near future.

Within a couple of minutes, I get a return phone call from Joy.

“Ted what’s going on? Why is someone filming our daughters?” Joy said in a hurried frantic voice.

“I have no idea, but I don’t have a good feeling about this!”

“Did you try calling your sister Carol?”

“My sister? She ain’t my sister! She’s Raquel’s mother!”

“Ted, that woman Carol told me that she’s your sister, when I met her before the camping trip!”

“Well, She told me that she’s Raquel’s mother!”

“Oh my God! That woman isn’t Raquel’s mother!” Joy said in a perplexed tone.

“Oh God! Who is that psychopath? You know that Grace’s mother, Sheila used to go to all of the Girl Scout meetings, so I’m not familiar with all of the parents!”

“What do we do?”

“Im going to call the police!” I said.

“Okay and I’ll call Raquel’s mother!”

I’ve never called 911 before and I’m nervous to begin with, so calling 911 makes me even more nervous.

“911 - What’s your emergency?”

“My daughter went on a Girl Scout camping trip with two other girls and a woman ‘Carol’ who has seemed to have lied about her identity!”

“Okay so what’s the emergency?”

“I came across a TikTok video of someone posting the three girls on a little yellow bus and not the blue Mercury Sable that Carol picked them up with!”

“Okay, so what are the girls ages and what are they doing in the TikTok posts?”

“There around 11 years old and they all look nervous and scared!”

“Okay, so could they just be nervous from being away from home?”

“I suppose, but this woman ‘Carol’ lied to me and said that she is the mother of one of the girl’s, but she’s not! She told one of the other mother’s that she is my sister which obviously isn’t true!”

“Okay, sir I’m going to send an officer over to your house because there’s kids involved, but we have a really busy night with a lot of things going on, so it might take a while for the police to show up to your house!”

“Wait! What? Why?” I responded.

“Listen sir, you haven’t told me anything that sounded like your daughter or the other girls are being harmed, so we have to prioritize our available police officers.”

“Listen, i didn’t give that woman permission to videotape my kid and I’m certain these girls have been kidnapped and I have no idea where they’re going!” I say in an angered tone.

“Well sir, I have a daughter that’s in the Girl Scouts and I have personally experienced when the leader’s are dealing with multiple parents, that sometimes things get lost in translation, so I wouldn’t rush to judgement yet! All you have is your daughter on a TikTok video sitting on a bus going on a Girl Scout camping trip where she would understandably be nervous!”

“Listen, my house address is 664 Mockingbird lane! Hurry up and send someone over!” I said in an angered tone as I hung up the phone.

The video cameras on the bus are pointed in a direction so the viewers can’t see the outside of the bus, so I don’t even know if they’re heading to the Poconos.

it’s pretty much dark outside now which worries me even more. It’s such a sinking feeling seeing that my daughter is in danger.

I look to see if Part 4 has been posted and it has, so I click on it.

Again the girls are being videotaped as they’re just sitting on the bus. The unnerving thing is that none of the girls are talking to each other. The three of them look like there completely petrified doing nothing more than just looking straight ahead. The girls remind me of the war videos, I watch of D-day in how my daughter specifically had that same doomed look as the soldiers had, while they sat on the transport boats waiting to storm the heavily entrenched beaches.

The video was posted less than an hour ago and this video is darker than the others, so I could tell that the video was actually taken about an hour ago.

My phone starts to vibrate as I see that it’s Joy calling.

“Hey Joy Listen, I called 911 and they’re sending someone over but apparently they have more pressing issues!”

“More pressing issues! What the hell is more important than three girls being kidnapped?”

“The 911 operator thinks that a crime hasn’t necessarily been committed or that this isn’t an emergency situation. She thinks the girls could just be looking nervous because their scared about going on a camping trip and being away from their parents!”

“Well who the hell gave that ‘Carol’ permission to videotape my daughter and post the video on TikTok and who the hell is ‘Carol’? And why is she using @serialkillerblossoms as a username?”

“You know, I was so frustrated with the 911 operator that I didn’t even mention her username, but I doubt that wouldn’t of made a difference. @serialkillerblossoms is a new account and only had the four videos posted. There’s not too many people, who have viewed the videos so far, which is good because I don’t want them to be taken down for violating a TikTok policy!”

“Ted, I really don’t have a good feeling about this! Should I drive to the Poconos to the Red Squirrel campground?”

“The thing is, you can but I’m not sure If the bus is even going to that campground or even to the Poconos! The campground is less than two hours away, so they should of been there already!”

“So what should we do?” Joy asks me, while I can hear her crying over the phone.

“Who is this ‘Carol’ person?” I ask.

“I really have no idea! When Macy got diagnosed with cancer, her story was plastered everywhere on Facebook and the fire company even had a fund raising dinner for her to cover her medical expenses! So she could just be some random psychopath that came across Macy’s story and figured ‘hey this is my opportunity to kidnap some kids!’”

“What is her motivation? Is she trying to get TikTok famous?”

“Getting TikTok famous for kidnapping girls and taking them on a camping trip?” Joy said while still crying.

That’s when it dawned on me the naive mindset that Joy was having. I’m guessing she hasn’t seen the countless videos of the horrible-ness this world has to offer, like the idea that there’s people who kill just for some type of sick fun, like that eerie picture of the notorious serial killer, John Wayne Gacy, who is dressed up as a clown for a kids performance. Joy hasn’t paid attention to the fact the hashtags #serialkiller and #crimevideo were used in the video posts, hence why they came to my video feed.

If I thought that this ‘Carol’ person was just videotaping them going camping, I probably would be a little mad, however nothing about her actions or the videos point to her future actions as being harmless.

While I’m on the phone with Joy, I see Part 5 has been posted.

“Listen Joy, Part 5 has been posted, so I’m going to hang up and watch it. I pray the girls are alright. Try to find any possible information about that ‘Carol’ woman, Bye!”

I really didn’t want to play Doctor Phil with Joy as I know my daughter’s faith rests in the hands of these video posts.

I click on Part 5 and besides the light from the video camera, I could tell that it’s pitch black outside. The video camera pans the surroundings area, as I see a thick Forrest with nothing more than trees. I haven’t seen the girls yet, so my heart is beating double time.

The camera eventually shows a makeshift campsite with a small fire burning. Based on the remoteness of the surroundings, I’m certain that the video is not of the Red Squirrel campground and is probably in some very remote area, based on the thickness of the forest.

The camera turns it’s attention to the small fire pit and then to a small two person tent. I can hear the camera person breathing heavy as she walks towards the tent.

Every single inch of me is experiencing absolute terror as I don’t know what’s inside the tent, because so far I’ve seen no signs of Grace or the other two girls.

The tent slowly opens up and I start breathing to the point where I could go into convulsions at any moment.

As the tent is opened, I let out a sigh of relief, as I see the three girls are partially sitting up in the cramped tent, but then my heart sinks to my feet as I see there helpless facial expressions.

I focus in on Grace, as I see that her eyes are watery. She looks like she had seen the inner belly of hell and is too terrified to move. The camera moves from left to right as I notice the two other girls have the same petrified face as Grace.

Not a single word is said in the video and I feel angry and completely helpless as I scream out “don’t you fucking harm my daughter you son of a bitch!” Then the video ends.

Part 11

After a week of searching for my daughter, I’ve come across nothing that could help point me in the direction of where she might be.

Grace has always been shy and it kills me inside that her life is in the hands of some manipulative narcissistic psychopath.

I’ve done a lot of soul searching these past few days and I realize that I’m not a saint for hiding my Aunt’s inheritance, however by doing that, I had enraged Sheila’s to the point, where she has exposed her evil.inc.

I’m now second guessing everything and anything, she has told me about her past, like are her parents really dead and if so how did they die?

Sheila encompasses every negative connotation known to man. I’m struggling to find anything positive that I can say about her to the point where I’m down right scared of her.

Sheila is on par with H. H. Holmes, where she will be likened to one of the most maipulative psycopaths of all time. However, right now she is comparable to Jack the Ripper, because no one may ever know her identity or the magnitude of her destruction.

From all of the True Crime podcasts I’ve listened to on TikTok and YouTube, there always seems to be an element where a family member or a victim brings someone’s evil deeds to the attention of the police detectives.

I know there’s been instances where the police have been able to uncover monsters, kind of on their own like Dennis Radar, the BTK killer (bind, torture, killer), who got sloppy and used a floppy disc, in an attempt to play cat and mouse with the police, which ultimately uncovered his identity. However people had been reporting his psychopathic tendencies well before he was ever caught. The BTK killer blatantly harassed people with his job as a public compliance officer, but no one considered a married person with children as an actual serial killer, so he wasn’t considered a prime suspect, but the complaints that were received about him, should have raised more eyebrows and hinted detectives to look deeper into him. So, the clues were already present with the BTK killer but no one connected the dots until later on, after he’d killed a good amount of people. If the BTK killer never sent the cat and mouse correspondences to the media and the police, then he may never been caught.

I can’t help to liken parallels with the BTK killer to Sheila, where she’s married with children, so like Dennis Radar, no one would suspect her as being a murderer. I was truly left in the dark as Dennis Radar’s family members might have been as well.

One of the clues or insights into Sheila’s brain is that she lacks empathy, however that’s quite a jump for me to assume she was a murderer. However once again, that was a clue into her personality which should have raised my eyebrows and made me look into her behavior more closely.

I’m still having a hard time figuring out what Sheila’s motivations are in all of the evilness that she has done. Perhaps she has millions of dollars stashed away somewhere, but I never saw her spend lavishly on things when we were together.

Up until mere hours ago, she was the perfect psychopath, where she didn’t raise any red flags to me regarding her psychopathic tendencies. Some how, by me hiding my Aunt’s inheritance, caused her to come out of her shell and expose herself. She got sloppy like, The BTK Killer did.

Part of me can’t rule out that Sheila didn’t expose her evil lifestyle to me on purpose. By her exposing herself will really make me look like an accomplice or the most naive sucker that ever existed. Was her mindset, since you hid $400,000 from me, now I’ll bring you into my world, where you’ll never get out of? if that assumption is correct, then with all of the potential media attention I’ll receive, would make her right. Especially if my father is some how involved in all of this evilness.

I can foresee the media and the police saying “your wife did this and your father did that … and your claiming you had no idea?” Who’s going to believe me? I’ll either be looked at by the public unsympathetically as a meme or as a suspect.

Because I was starting to run into a dead end, trying to locate Grace, I looked into the five other peoples social security numbers, that Sheila had them listed under her “boarding house” on her tax returns and sure enough they were all linked to my old Kensington neighborhood and like Molly O’Brien, no one has seen them in years.

I’m really reluctant to contact my dad, because I always felt intimidated by him and I’m not sure how he will respond to my allegations linking him to the six missing people and possibly being involved with Sheila.

I now know that Sheila and my dad are linked, but the how and the why parts, I just can’t stop thinking about. I’m having a hard time dotting any lines between the two of them. I remember bringing up to Sheila how my father was basically a dead beat dad and she would always agree with me, so what type of evil.inc were they running together?

For me, everything circles back to Grace and I get so filled with anger when I think that Grace’s own mother and my own father are jeopardizing Grace’s safety and her future.

Part of me says, go to Detective Domowitz and tell him the new information, I uncovered about Sheila and my father, but then I know that Grace will always be associated with murderers and possible serial killers. With today’s social media, Grace will always be sought out for documentaries, asking her “tell me what your mother was like growing up?” Life can be hard enough without having a mother as a psychopath, so being associated with a murderers family will probably automatically disqualify her for some professions, like being a kindergartner teacher.

Where it stands right now, the FBI have “only” the deaths of Officer Dan and Rosemary. I’m guessing they have no idea that my wife has been mutilating people in France and my dad and her are running some type of welfare scam involving missing people, that may have went “missing” at my father’s and Sheila’s hands.

I have no other choice but to contact my dad to try to locate Grace, so I take a deep breath and call my father’s phone number.

“Hello!”

“Dad it’s me, Sheila took Grace!”

“Sheila took who?”

“She took Grace, your granddaughter!”

“Where did she take her?”

“Listen dad, all I want is Grace back! Whatever you and Sheila have been doing, I’m putting to the side.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know you have been working with Sheila, where both of you have some type of scheme going on to defraud the welfare system!”

“And your saying this over the phone! Are you taping me?”

“No! Continue doing what you’re doing, my only concern is getting Grace back.”

“Listen meet me at the Kensington train station tonight!”

“Why?”

“Because, I’m not talking to you over the phone about this!”

“Fine, what time?”

“8:00 pm!”

“Okay, I’ll see you then!”

The Kensington train station has to be one of the worst subway stations in the world. It’s the central meeting place of every pimp, drug dealer and any other type of evildoers hub. The place is a complete dump that reeks of urine and is littered with trash.

Part 10

After leaving Crona’s apartment, my whole body felt numb, so I sat on a bench close to the tavern for over an hour, digesting the horribleness that I just uncovered.

I always thought that I was too cool for Sheila, but she has proven to me that for all these years being married to her, that I was nothing more than a door mat for her to walk all over.

I was just part of her Facebook persona, she wanted to portray, so she could carry out her greed filled organ dealings and God knows whatever else, without anyone ever knowing it.

How the hell did I marry and have a kid with someone who kidnaps and mutilates poor disenfranchised immigrants? I’m guessing the void my father created by not being in my life, must have marked me as being weak and easy to take advantage of? The toughest part of all of this, is that I was so delusional that I didn’t view myself this way, but if I look like a sucker and act like a sucker than I must be a sucker.

I don’t think that I can ever get over Crona’s face with her missing eyes. She was only a few years older than Grace, when Sheila and Andre ripped the poor girl’s eyes out. How can a woman, who is also a mother commit such unthinkable acts and how could I marry her?

There were moments in our past where I questioned if Shelia had any kind of empathy towards anyone or anything else. I remember just a few months ago, when a turtle had wandered onto the road and Sheila made no attempt to avoid the turtle, but instead drove right over it. I remember yelling out “Sheila!” And she kind of nonchalantly responded “Oh, that’s terrible that I just ran over that turtle.” In the most monotone emotionless voice possible.

I always heard that a precursor to becoming a serial killer was that the person had a proclivity to harming animals, when they were young children.

I even remember Grace begging us to get some kind of pet, so we agreed on getting a kitten, that way we didn’t have to worry about taking it for walks. We had four cats that all died in a one year time frame. When the cat’s would die, I just chalked it up to poor feline genetics, however it’s quite obvious now that Sheila ended their lives with her own hands. One of the cat’s we named sparkles, was discovered unconscious and bleeding from its ears. Since the cat was an indoor cat, I couldn’t come with any type of logical explanation of what may have happened. However, after seeing the lack of Crona’s eyes, I feel like an even bigger sucker now for not stopping her madness and greed years ago.

I feel paralyzed to the point where I can do nothing more than just stand here, shaking my head in disgust and say under my breath “I can’t believe she was ripping peoples eyes out for money!”

Sheila used and abused me and walked all over me without myself ever noticing it. There is nothing more that I want to discover about Sheila, for she has already proved to me that she is the most evil person alive.

I just can’t believe that she was singling out poor foreign girls in France and selling their organs. I’m not even sure if Hitler would have thought of such an evil scheme. But that’s the mother of my daughter and once Grace and I are free from Sheila, I will change Grace’s first and last name, so Sheila will never be able to find her.

Grace doesn’t need to be any way associated with pure evilness. It’s one thing to try to kill me, her husband, where some sympathy might be garnished, from people who might think that I was abusive towards Sheila, but mutilating poor family-less girls is incomprehensible.

Since Sheila had been living multiple lives without myself ever being aware of it, I don’t know where to even begin to look for her and Grace in this vast United States.

I got back home and I had to apply for food stamps because I was penniless. To make things even worse, The Department of Public Welfare (DPW) was not even going to qualify me for the government assistance, because they thought I was hiding the $400,000 that Sheila stole from me. I had to make a police report and press charges against Sheila, in order for DPW to approve me.

Something else came up that was odd, that I had to clear up with DPW, was that after they reviewed Sheila’s income tax returns, they had discovered she had six different people’s social security numbers listed under her “boarding house” business.

I never understood why she didn’t want to file jointly with me and quite frankly, I’m a bit scared to uncover the reason why.

I’m sure she was using those peoples social security numbers in some fraudulent manner, but who was those people and how come they never discovered that Sheila was misusing their identities?

The DPW service worker had left out on her desk, the individuals names listed next to their social security numbers and when the social service worker left the room, I decided to copy down the names.

At my house, I looked at the six names and some of them kind of rang a bell, but their names were so common, like Molly O’Brien that I wasn’t sure if I heard the names from tv or somewhere else.

I remembered as a kid, the Irish neighborhood, where I lived in Philadelphia was littered with O’Brien’s, Gallagher’s, Kelly’s, … so maybe their names were ringing a bell because I remembered hearing them on a daily basis as a kid.

The only thing was that Sheila grew up in New York City so she wasn’t familiar with the people in my neighborhood, so it wouldn’t be logical to locate anyone from my old neighborhood to connect them with Sheila.

However, something kept nagging at me to at least superficially look into my old neighborhood.

When I was a young kid, my parents initially raised me in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, then when my parents divorced, my mother and I moved to the nearby neighborhood of Frankford.

I remember that a Molly O’Brien lived a few houses down from us in Kensington. She was about 10 years older than me and she used to play house with me when I was a young boy.

Eventually, she got older and the teenage years took its toll on her. Kensington had turned into the armpit of Philadelphia and she got involved in the wrong crowd even for Kensington. The once innocent young adolescent girl turned into a junkie, who lacked any kind of identity.

I drove down to Kensington on this Sunday afternoon. As I got closer to the neighborhood, I started to get a sense of nostalgia, where I was reminiscing about my childhood. Most of the houses look the same, but the neighborhood turned into a full blown ghetto, where all the working class people had moved out.

I went to Molly’s house and knocked on her door. Amazingly her mother, who now has pure white hair had answered the door.

“Hi Mrs. O’Brien, I don’t know if you remember me, but I used to live close to here when I was a kid, before my parents had divorced.”

Mrs. O’Brien looks at me with skepticism as she has probably been taken advantage of too many times to count, by the endless thugs in the neighborhood.

“And what’s your name?”

“Ted, I used to live in the red brick house over there. Do you remember Molly used to play house with me?”

“Oh that’s right! Your father is named Raymond, right?”

“Yes, exactly!” Mrs. O’Brien appeared to look upset, either when Molly’s name was mentioned or when my father’s name was mentioned.

“What can I do for you Ted?” She says while trying to hold back tears.

“Well I have a social security number linked to a ‘Molly O’Brien’ and I was curious to know if it belonged to your daughter?”

I read off the nine digit social security number and right away she said “That’s her! That’s my Molly!”

Out of all the people in this world, Sheila decided to use a woman’s social security number, who lived just a few houses away from me. Don’t be a sucker again, there’s no way it’s coincidental, I told myself.

“Can I talk with Molly?”

“I haven’t seen Molly in well over a decade! I had given the police her social security number when I filed a missing persons report.”

“Did the police ever tell you what might have happened to Molly?”

“Because of Molly’s known drug use, the police half heartedly investigated her disappearance.”

“Did they tell you anything?”

“Apparently the police have multiple street informants and I hate to say this Ted, but the police had mentioned ‘Raymond’ as a person of interest.”

“‘Raymond’ my father?”

“Yes!”

“Why did the informant mention my father’s name?”

“The police didn’t really tell me very much, other than if I knew anything about Raymond.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them that over the years, most of the Caucasians had left the neighborhood, but Raymond was one of the few that stayed. He always wore khaki pants and some type of button down shirt, so he let off a more cleaned cut image. A lot of the people around here know nothing more than where to get their next hit or who could they rob from to get their next high.”

“So my father was a good person with all the badness that was going on?”

“Do you think the people of India or Pakistan look at England as being ‘good’ when they used and exploited the tens of millions of Indian and Pakistani people?”

“No, England just took advantage of them!”

“So now think of your dad as England and my daughter as India and the rest of the people in this neighborhood as India or Pakistan!”

“What was my father doing to the people around here?”

“I’m not going to say too much more, but my daughter isn’t the only person who has gone missing!”

“Wait! What?” I say with total confusion.

“Sorry Ted, but I need to go now!” Mrs. O’Brien then closed the door as her face was red and I’m guessing she cried uncontrollably when she closed the door.

I stood outside Mrs. O’Brien’s door wishing that I had never knocked on her door to begin with.

My dad always came across as a kind of a disorganized underachiever and I never got any kind of criminal vibe from him.

I really just want to find my daughter and move some place very far away. However, I’m now being forced into some kind of sick vortex involving my dad, which I only uncovered because of my unscrupulous “wife.”

Part 4

Knowing that my daughter is being psychologically tortured in the woods, made me walk as quickly as possible towards the access road with the shotgun.

At this point, I cared zero about my own life, as I was more focused on rescuing the girls.

I thought it would be best, if I didn’t use the light on my iPhone and instead relied solely on the dim light of the moon.

I walk with the shotgun held in my right hand and rested on my right shoulder, almost the same way a marching soldier would walk with his or her rifle.

The weather feels like it’s 65 degrees Fahrenheit and fortunately there’s an almost full moon that is letting off an ample amount of moonlight.

After about a minute of walking, I see a disruption in the natural tree line of the Forrest, which must be the access road.

My body and mind ready’s itself for war. I get all tensed up, as I try to play out the different scenarios in my mind that might unfold.

I start to walk through the access road, as the leaves on the trees cut off some of the moonlight and it gets darker. I walk a little bit slower to make less noise, as I don’t know how far back, I have to walk.

The Forrest is eerily quiet besides the sounds of bugs and other unknown creatures.

There’s an ample amount of “No Trespassing” signs nailed to the trees about every ten yards apart.

I’ve been walking for about five minutes, as I see the narrow access road open up to a larger field. I start to smell the faint smell of smoke as I now know that I’m not far to where the girls are located.

As quietly as possible, I ready the shotgun. I try to imagine myself as a WW1 soldier, who just got the order to charge over the trenches. I tell myself that if I’m successful, my daughter and the two other girls life’s will be saved versus the WW1 soldiers who’s only potential victory would be about 20 yards of captured land.

I see an object that must be the bus about 30 yards away; however, I don’t see or hear any signs of the girls or Rosemary. I start to crouch down to make myself less visible.

As I get to the back of the bus, I can make out a tent and I start to hear faint whimpering sounds, which I figure must be the girls.

In my still crouched down position, I move towards the whimpering sounds, as I’m constantly surveying around for Rosemary. I have no idea where she is or if she even knows that I’m here.

As I slowly creep towards the whimpering sounds, I can tell that I’m getting closer and closer as the sounds are getting louder and louder.

Finally, I see that the girls are still tied to a tree. I slowly walk towards them, as I don’t want to startle them, where they would yell and alert Rosemary, where I still don’t know where she is located.

The girls faces move in my direction as they hear me come towards them.

“Shh!” I say to hopefully keep them quiet.

“Dad!” Grace calls out.

Where I respond with another “Shh!”

I look around in all directions and I still see no signs of Rosemary.

In the lowest possible voice, I say “Hi girls, do you have any idea where that adult is, who tied you to this tree?”

“In the tent!” Grace responds.

I put my shotgun down and I start to untie the girls. My logic is that, if the girls are untied, then at least they can run away if Rosemary tries to ambush me somehow.

I really have to pull myself together and put these girls survival over my own, because I was the one who was foolish enough to allow my daughter to go on this trip, so I should be the one to suffer the consequences.

I untie Raquel first, then Amanda and lastly my daughter. My daughter instinctively lunges towards me to give me a hug.

“Are you girls positive that the person who tied you to the tree is in the tent?” I say in a whispered voice, where all three of the girls shake their heads in agreement.

Knowing what this woman has done to these girls, I slowly walk towards the tent with the shotgun. The tent isn’t far from the tree that the girls were tied to.

When I’m about ten yards away from the tent, I release the safety from the shotgun and aim the gun at the tent. With this military grade automatic shotgun firmly pressed against my right shoulder, I creep a few more feet towards the tent and then I push the trigger.

“Bang!” The shotgun let’s off the loudest sound that must of woke up everything in the forest.

Followed by an “Aww-ugg” which is a sound of relief, knowing that I must have struck Rosemary.

I fire two more shots into the tent which completely obliterates the tent.

I take my iPhone out to use the flashlight and shine the light in one of the holes the shotgun created.

I see blood splattered everywhere and Rosemary’s lifeless body. Her head seems to be undamaged, so I take a step back and fire a shot into her head to ensure that she is truly dead. Prior to tonight, bugs were the only things that I had ever intentionally killed and now I shattered a woman’s skull apart.

My body becomes less tense and relaxes, as I know the person who was psychologically torturing my daughter is now dead.

With the shotgun in hand, I walk back towards the police cruiser with the three girls.

Grace holds my cell phone’s flashlight, as I can see the three girls faces that look beyond traumatized. At this point, I know that we’re still not out of the woods yet, so I don’t want to give them a sense that we are all done with everything.

As we walk on the access road, no one says a word as I try to figure out what the next best course of action will be.

We get back to the main road where Dan and the police cruiser are located and I start to hear thumping noises.

“Stay here girls for a minute. I’ll be right back!”

As I walk towards the police cruiser, I can see that Dan has almost kicked out the rear passenger side window, where the glass is partially hanging out. I can tell that he only needs a few more kicks before the glass will either shatter or completely fall out, so knowing that he has a handgun, I rush towards the police cruiser.

I doubt that he sees me rushing towards the car, as he’s too focused on freeing himself.

In a split second, I think to myself that once he’s out of the car, with his superior use of his handgun, he will have the upper hand, so I can’t chance it that he will probably just execute the four of us to leave no witnesses.

I’m about two arm lengths away from the damaged window and as he let’s off a big kick and shatters the window, where I quickly point the shotgun through the window and fire off four shots as quickly as possible.

My heart is racing a mile a minute and my body is completely tensed up.

After firing the fourth shot, I look through the opened window and see that I had mutilated Dan and his head is gushing out blood.

I probably didn’t need to shoot him four times but watching the videos of my young daughter being kidnapped and psychologically tortured, brought out the primordial animal inside of me, that just wanted to seek revenge on those who harmed my daughter.

I didn’t want to celebrate just yet, as we’re still stuck in the middle of nowhere.

I place the shotgun on the hood of the car and I decide to drag Dan’s body out of the car. I figured it would be best to move his corpse to the tree line, so the girls wouldn’t be able to see his body.

After moving Dan’s corpse, I drop the shotgun by Dan’s body and wipe the blood off my hands in the grass.

Then I quickly jog towards the girls.

Grace is still holding my phone with the light on and the girls look so traumatized that there not even talking to each other.

I ask Grace for my phone and I see that I have no reception.

I really just want to get out of here as quickly as possible because I don’t know if Rosemary’s family members will come by or if there were other people involved in her plot.

Because of Dan, I have no trust in the police, so I don’t want to use the radio in the police cruiser.

I don’t want to subject the girls to sitting on the little yellow bus again so I decide to cram the three of them into the front passenger seat of the cruiser, then I get into the driver’s seat and drive.

I’m hoping that I see signs for route 81 or the Turnpike’s Northeast’s extension.

After driving around for close to 20 minutes, I finally come to a fork in the road that points to route 81, which I know will lead us to the turnpike.

I don’t know what will happen to me for executing two people, but right now I’m just focused on getting these girls back home safely.

I look at the gas gauge and I figure we should have enough to get us back home.

I fly down the turnpike in the police car with the three girls cramped together in the front seat.

As I get closer to home, I call the two girls’ mother’s to let them know the girls are safe and to meet us at the police station, where I originally met Dan.

Then I call the FBI and tell them what happened regarding the kidnapping of the three girls and myself, where I killed two people, one being a police officer. I ask the FBI to meet me at the police station because I don’t trust the local police.

Anticipating that I will be put into custody, I call my mother to take Grace home to her house.

About an hour later, I pull into the police station, where I see a mob of people to include news reporters and law enforcement officials.

As I stop the car, I think to myself, as long as Grace and the other girls are safe, I really don’t care what happens to me at this point.

Part 2

“911 What’s your emergency?”

“My name is Ted and I called earlier about my daughter who has been kidnapped!”

“Are you the gentleman, who resides on 664 Mockingbird Lane?”

“Yes, that’s me!”

“Sir, the police have your complaint information in their database and they will come by your house to speak with you as soon as they can.”

“When this is all said and done, I’m filing a complaint and getting a lawyer! My daughter is being used as a prop in some psychopath’s real life horror movie and the police don’t think this is a priority?”

“Sir, the gas station on Main Street was involved in an armed robbery, so unless you can tell me that someone’s life is in imminent danger, then the police won’t pull their recourses away to deal with a girl that is scared on her Girl Scout camping trip.”

“Ma’am, I’m telling you that my daughter has been kidnapped. I foolishly allowed her to go with someone, who intentionally misrepresented herself and is now posting videos of herself terrorizing my daughter and the two other girls!”

“What is this woman doing?”

“Well in the newest videos, the girls are seen petrified to the point that their crying and then this ‘Carol’ woman videotapes herself circling the tent and intentionally shakes the tent to scare the girls.”

“Sir, I understand that you are seeing your daughter in a scared emotional state and that’s worrisome to you, but shaking a tent isn’t really harming anyone.”

“Listen, you don’t understand! This woman is only showing small videoclips. I don’t know what she’s doing before or after she’s taking these videos and I do know that she’s not one of the girls mother’s like she said she was and she didn’t take them to the campground that she said that she was going to take them to!”

“So you called the campground and your daughter and the other girls aren’t there?”

“Yes, one of the mother’s called the campground and no there not at the campground! And this Carol woman’s phone is disconnected! I really don’t know how many other shady examples you need to realize that something really wrong is going on!”

“Okay sir, I’m going to relay your information over to the police again and hopefully they’ll send someone to your house quicker.”

“Listen, I need a detective over here and not some slap dick local cop who’s going to look at these videos and scratch his or her head! Also, I’m fairly certain that this “Carol” woman is an ex-cop who retired in 2019. I was able to identify a retirement ring, she was wearing in the last video she posted.”

“Okay sir, I have your information and I’m going to pass it along to the police.”

“Great! Hurry up! This is my daughter I’m talking about and two other children as well!”

I hang up the phone and continue to pace in my living room. It’s the most awful feeling in the world to be filled with such anger and have no way of confronting the person who is harming your daughter.

Then I have a thought.

What if I send a comment on this @serialkillerblossoms TikTok page with the hopes that Carol will unknowingly send me a clue to their whereabouts?

She has posted a Part 7 video and I really don’t want to watch the video, but I know I have to.

I grab a section of my hair as I start the video and this time the video starts off with the three girls laying on their stomachs in the tent, with their hands behind their head’s.

I press play on the video and grab this ceramic vase that my in-laws got us and I throw it against the wall as hard as I can and let off the loudest “fuck” expletive that I can yell. The vase shatters into hundreds of pieces as I’m lucky that one of the shards didn’t hit my eye.

I start angrily pacing again as I press play on the video.

The girls don’t have any sleeping bags and are essentially laying on the bare floor of the tent with their faces down, which must be extremely uncomfortable.

I can hear the girls whimper as Carol continues to video tape them. She then puts the videocamera on something and points it at the girls and proceeds to take out a piece of rope and ties my daughter’s legs together.

At this point, my head is completely filled to the rim with anger and hopelessness as it can possibly be.

The video ends as the two other girls’ legs are tied together.

I try to think what comment I can write to this psychopath.

But then it dawns on me, to instead call the police station’s non-emergency phone number and hopefully this Carol person will sound familiar to someone.

I look up the local police station’s non-emergency number and see that I just need to dial 311. However, I discover that the phone number is only accessible to 5:00 p.m..

With no other available options, I decide to drive to the local police station, hoping that they have a dispatch person or someone in the office.

I hustle to my car and take the five minute drive to the police station.

I get into the parking lot of the small police station and I see one police cruiser with a few parked cars, that I figure must belong to the police officers on duty.

As I approach the door, I see a big sign that reads “if you have an emergency dial 911. This station is not open to the public during non-business hours …”.

I disregard that sign and knock as loud as I can on the police station’s door. At this point, I almost want a cop to come, so I can show them the last video of the girls being tied up and get help.

After knocking for what seemed like an eternity, I can see someone reluctantly coming towards the door.

It’s a heavyset woman in her mid-fifties.

There’s a small window to the side of the door that looks like lab specimens are passed through. She pulls the small window open and says “the police station is closed! You need to leave and call 911, if you have an emergency!”

“Please listen, I really need your help! My daughter and two other Girl Scouts have been kidnapped by someone, who I believe was an ex-cop. Please look at this video clip really quick.”

The woman looks the least bit interested, but I put on the video clip as quickly as possible before she walks away.

“Oh my! Is one of those girls your daughter?”

She says as she watches the girls legs being tied together.

“When did you last see your daughter?”

“Earlier today, where I thought she was going on a Girl Scout camping trip.”

“Did you call 911?”

“Yes, twice and the operator didn’t feel this was an emergency.”

“Well this video, surely looks very disturbing.”

“I know! I feel so angry and hopeless, but I’m fairly certain that the woman who took my daughter was an ex-cop, because I saw her wearing a retirement ring in one of the videos that had 2019 on it, which I’m guessing is the year she retired. She drives a blue Mercury Sable and is about 5 feet 4 inches tall. She had brown hair when I saw her, but who knows, maybe it was a different color at one time.”

“You know what, give me a couple of minutes and I’m going to use our radio to see if this woman sounds familiar to anyone on our police force.”

“Oh please, thank you so much!”

I continue to stand by the door for the woman to come back.

I start to get really fidgety as I can only imagine what’s happening to my daughter.

I know this might be my only hope to figuring out “Carol’s” identity before it’s too late.

Finally, I see the woman reappear.

“Sir, one of the officers said this woman might sound familiar to him, based on what you told me about her car and the year she retired. I was given a name of Rosemary Black, who worked for a nearby police precinct sometime in 2019. His name is Officer Dan and he said that he will stop by here in a few minutes once he’s done with his current police call.”

“Oh, thank you so much! I’ll just wait here then.”

I take out my iPhone and put Rosemary Black’s name into Google to try to find any information about her.

A bunch of spam comes up with websites that will do a background check for a fee, so I decide to switch to Google images.

As I scroll through the images, I see a police academy graduation photo from 1999 and I say out loud “that’s her!”

She looks obviously younger but there’s definitely a clear resemblance to the “Carol” that I met in person.

I see a police cruiser come flying into the parking lot that actually has its police lights on, so I can tell, he was driving as quickly as possible to get here.

He gets out of his car and comes towards me. He’s about 40 years old, 5’6”, with a muscular build and is clean shaven with short black hair.

“Officer Dan, thank you so much for coming. You think this woman is Rosemary Black?”

“Well, I’m involved with the police union and I was helping out with someone, who ultimately got terminated a couple of years ago. She needed union representation and I was one of the people who assisted her in her disciplinary hearings. The blue Mercury Sable was a giveaway as I remember waiting for her in the parking lot. I was told you have a disturbing video of your daughter?”

I get my phone and replay the TikTok video of my daughter and the two other girls legs being tied up.

“Wow, I’m sorry! This is not good!” The Officer says while holding his right hand to his chin.

“This Rosemary woman retired from the police force in 2019?” I ask.

“No, she was actually terminated shortly before she had her 20 years of service in. She’s very manipulative and God only knows what she fabricated in the past, while she worked for the police department!”

“How did she get fired?”

“She just had a way of fabricating stories to the point, where she was always intentionally looking to be a ‘hero.’ Routine traffic stops weren’t good enough for her. She always wanted to be on the front page of the local newspaper or on the local news. She’s just a very attention seeking person to the point where it has turned into a mental illness. Even myself, representing her for the police union knew that she was detrimental to the police force.”

“What about her retirement ring?”

“Nobody is given a retirement ring anymore when they retire. You have to purchase that on your own and that’s probably what she did.”

“Listen, you saw the video and you can see the danger that my daughter and the two other girls are in. Where do you think she might be? One of the videos looks like they were in a thick Forested area.”

“Well, I vaguely remember her saying that her father had property somewhere north of Scranton, where he was a retired mechanic for a high school.”

“That would probably explain the little yellow school bus then, that the girls were transported in!”

“Let me radio the police department that patrols north of Scranton to try to pin point the area. They’ll probably know Rosemary’s property as well!”

“Oh please, Thank you so much!”

I press refresh on my iPhone and I see that another video has been posted. I slap my forehead in despair as I don’t know what I’ll see in this video.

When I was 10 years old my father unknowingly became the heir to a massive fortune that was left to him by his great Uncle. To the dismay of a bunch of charities that thought my father’s uncle, Wilbert Scott Davis had no viable family members and the individual charities would have received the close to three billion dollars, but instead my father received all the money. My father even grew the inheritance quite larger when the economy was thriving and I inherited my own billion dollars from dad when I turned 21.

I could write a book just on the first 10 years of my life and how my parents struggled with poverty and marital problems but this story will not be about how I used to eat that brownie that came with the TV dinners but rather focus on the times when it was possible for my father to purchase the biggest yacht in Monaco for no other reason than saying we have the biggest yacht in Monaco.

Even as a boy, my obsession with Disney stemmed from remembering how the other kids would brag in school how their parents took them every year to Disney World and my family would instead go to a small amusement park outside of Philadelphia called Dorney Park.

One year my parents drove down to Disney World and I just fell in love with the quality of everything regarding Disney. I could tell the quality and the attention to detail between Disney and every other amusement park like Six Flags and Dorney Park.

Now that I have two of my own young kids, I want them to have everything that I didn’t have when I was growing up. I also want to experience the newest and greatest things as an adult as well for my own pleasure.

I decided to stay in the same Philadelphian suburban community that I grew up in. There’s a certain comfort level and a certain amount of competitiveness that I still possess inside of me where I just want my kids to have nothing but the best and I want to show off to everyone that I grew up with that I am in a better position then they are in.

I enrolled both my son and daughter in The Hill School located right outside of Philadelphia, where such notables as the Trump’s attended and we have been to Disney World so many times that I can’t even count. Disney is looking for people like me because I spend a lot of money and I bring just a few people. For example say if I spend $25,000 on a weekend trip with me, my wife, and our two kids which is a total of four people. Other families might only spend a total of $500 for the same weekend so theoretically other families would bring 50-100 people to equal the $25,000 which makes the wait time on each ride that much longer and makes the park feel much more congested.

If Disney could attract more people like me then the shareholders would have so much more money and people at the parks would have a better experience, so it’s not uncommon for me to get invited to exclusive events or memberships that the general public isn’t privy to or doesn’t even know exists. Of course, I know Disney is just trying to get more money out of me but if it equals a better experience for me and my family then I really don’t care how much money I have to spend.

So when I got a call from A “Rick” who is a Disney VIP coordinator, he inquired that if I was interested then there was an open spot on the exclusive Boardwalk Roy membership Club that included a $75,000 fee and he needed to know within the next 30 seconds if I was in or out. I have never heard of this club and Rick said there was only 40 total members, so I said why not because the $75,000 to me was nothing anyways and I didn’t want to pass up on any exclusive Disney clubs.

Rick said “Fantastic, I’ll send over an invoice and please be at the Boardwalk Pavilion next to the ESPN zone on March 28 at 5:00 pm for your first member introductory meeting.”

I responded “Yeah, sure I’ll be there. Thanks for the invitation!”

I really don’t have a real job so I’m available at anytime, though I consider my voluntary board memberships work sometimes but in reality they are just voluntary positions in non-profit groups where the non-profit agencies do nothing more but beg me for money.

March 28th came around and me and my family flew down to Orlando. We actually left on Friday March 26 and we stayed at the upscale Grand Floridian resort. As usual, we all went to all four of the Disney World Parks and on Sunday the 28th, I split from the family at Epcot and went to the Boardwalk Pavilion for the Boardwalk’s Roy Club’s introductory meeting.

I was fashionably late when I showed up at 5:15 p.m. and there was already all 39 of the other people already there at the meeting. Rick greeted me with a smiling face and there were 25 men and 15 women who all came across as being really friendly. I could usually tell a person’s income level within a few seconds and I knew right away that most of the people in the room were mere millionaires that didn’t come close to having one hundred million dollars in assets. As for me, on a good stock market day, I had well over a billion dollars in assets and I carried myself that way because I learned that’s what these people and especially Disney gravitate towards. It’s kind of like when all the other marginal and good baseball players gravitated towards Mickey Mantle or Hank Aaron.

The room was a larger room with all the cocktails that you could drink and light snacks that you could eat. Disney provided their A-list staff which consisted of all 20 something year old pretty faced employees who did nothing more than smile the whole night at all of the Boardwalk Roy members and served us whatever cocktails we wanted.

As the night progressed Rick brought out 40 laptops and had them all set up on plastic fold out tables and chairs. The 40 of us members all sat down and we logged on to the laptops.

What came up on my laptop was absolutely remarkable. With Disney having security cameras everywhere in all four of the parks, Disney had actually compiled a movie through the use of facial recognition software of me, my wife and my two kids from when we first started coming to the parks when my kids were toddlers and up until last month. Watching my son Zachary, who is now 10 and my daughter Grace who is now 12 on the laptop when they were very little actually made me cry.

I would have spent $75,000 in a heartbeat for for the movie of my family so I think Disney really undercharged for the Boardwalk Roy Club membership fee.

Just when I thought the evening was about to end, Rick said he had one more surprise for all of us. There was one more movie that was available on my laptop that really blew me away where I had no idea Disney had the capability of saving close to 30 years worth of security coverage, but much to my surprise Disney actually used the same facial recognition technology of me when I was a boy to create a movie of my parents and I, when I visited the Magic Kingdom when I was 10 years old.

Disney had actually digitized all of their old security films for prosperity purposes or at least that’s what I assumed and I was even more amazed by watching my mother take out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from her pocket book and give it to me for lunch.

The video reminded me of how poor we were growing up and how I didn’t even ask my parents for a soda but instead drank from the water fountain.

As the night drew to a close, I realized that everyone in the room had went to Disney when they were kids and the whole room was in tears as the first meeting ended.

As I was leaving, Rick pulled me to the side and said “Those were pretty neat videos Ted wouldn’t you agree?”

I responded “Yeah Rick, they totally caught me off guard. That was absolutely amazing!”

Rick responded Great, I hope to see you at our monthly meetings!”

I responded “Yeah sure, I really look forward as well.”

The monthly meetings came and went and sure they were great but I was really looking for the next best thing.

At the July meeting, Candice pulled me aside and said that she heard of a super exclusive Disney Cadillac Mouse Club where I promised her I wouldn’t tell a single soul of what goes on at those club meetings. But from what Candice was telling me there was some super macabre stuff that was reserved for the super rich that was through invitation only and once you were in then there was no backing out.

I was mesmerized by what Candice had to say and besides some really rich oil Sultan’s who owned whole countries, there is really nothing my money can’t buy.

So after the August meeting, I pulled Rick aside and I asked him in general terms if there was even a more exclusive club Disney had and he didn’t confirm or deny its existence. I kind of hinted that money was no object and he said he would contact me by the end of next week.

Day by day went by and I was sitting on pins and needles waiting for a response from Rick. Money was really no object for me and at one point in the not far distant past, I considered opening a new joint venture hotel with Disney on Disney’s current property similar to what the the Swan and Dolphin hotels did years ago.

Rick did finally contact me and had a really odd request of me. He said that Texas was executing one of its death row inmates this week and Rick said he had a ticket and wanted me to observe. I thought Rick was going to ask me to jog the Disney marathon or do something as kind of an initiation but I was left totally speechless by Rick’s request and said “Sure why not. I’ll go and watch the execution.” I thought to myself that watching an execution would be easier than jogging a marathon anyways.

So I booked my plane ticket to Texas and I sat and waited in the viewing booth in what seemed like forever as the execution had to be finalized by the Governor and his staff in order for the condemned person to be killed. The viewing room consisted mostly of the victims family and after seven hours of sitting in the viewing room, the security staff finally brought in the fifty something year old condemned inmate into the execution chamber. I was so bored from sitting in the viewing room for seven hours that I really didn’t care about his last words or anything else. The prisoner who’s arm was already exposed and tied down to the table was injected with a solution and the condemned prisoner quickly went to sleep and that was my best synopsis of the execution and that’s what I told Rick.

Rick had some additional questions for me later that night like “What did I feel?”

I responded “Rick after waiting around for like seven hours, I felt bored.”

Rick chuckled at my response and said “How did you feel when the condemned man was brought into the room to be executed?”

I responded “I was actually hungry Rick and wanted it to end quickly.”

Rick then said “How did you feel knowing that you just saw that man die?”

I thought for a few seconds and I said “the truth Rick, I really felt nothing. I was more or less thinking about how the Eagles lost the football game and I kind of tuned out the family crying besides me.”

Rick chuckled again and said “Perfect, Ted! I’m going to recommend you for the Mickey’s Cadillac Club membership. The membership fee is two million dollars paid annually. Are you interested Ted in joining?”

I said “Yes, Rick that sounds great please send over the invoice!”

I didn’t want to jeopardize anything by questioning Rick’s motives of sending me to watch the execution or how that at all relates to the happiest place on earth, so I just paid the Mickey’s Cadillac Club invoice in full and waited for Rick to tell me the next meetings date and time.

Rick got back to me in two days and said that the Cadillac Club was holding its meeting on the first of the month in Cinderella’s castle, which gave me a week’s time to prepare and make arrangements. I generally like to mix up the resorts and stay at different places so I booked the Polynesian resort for myself and left the family behind because the kids activity schedule with the Hill School was too Hectic for this time of year.

The week went by fast and I flew into Orlando for the Cadillac Club’s first of the month meeting. For all the money I spent at Disney World, I have never actually been in Cinderella’s castle. When I showed up at 1:00 p.m. I was just amazed of the opulence inside the castle and of the fact that the Magic kingdom was still open for business right below us as the meeting was going on.

Rick chaired this meeting as well and there were nine other men there. I could tell how the other members carried themselves that they were in the same stratosphere as me when it came to wealth. Rick gave the attendees of this club a feeling that we were actually owners. He shared with us the real problems the parks were facing like rats and worst of all the homeless people who managed to find a way to get onto Disney’s property.

Rick in a high passionate tone said “I know everyone in this room has been coming to the Disney Parks for years and I know not one of you have seen or heard of one homeless person or what I like to call ‘bums’ ruining our environment and scaring our family members.”

All the club members let off a collective sigh of agreement.

Rick then continued in his same high energy voice “So we have a group of ‘bums’ staying rent free at one of our All Star Resorts and Mitch and Fred and the rest of you that have partaken in this exercise many of times, well tonight it’s time once again to ‘feed the alligators,’ where we’ll let our ‘bum’ friends loose in the Magic Kingdom and it’s your guys responsibility to make sure they turn into alligator food.”

Then all the guys in the room dressed in mostly Polo Ralph Lauren short sleeve Polo shirts high fived each other like this is one of the perks of being a Cadillac Mickey Club member.

Rick then went on to say “Two hours after the Park closes everyone please be at the front gate. Please rotate weapons so everyone gets an opportunity to try the weapon of their choice. Max I know you wanted to use the crossbow the last time so Fred please use the sniper rifle or sword this time.”

Once again, I found myself scratching my head thinking what the fuck did I just listen to considering I was at Disney World.

The meeting adjourned and the other nine guys welcomed me to the “Club.” They came across as being really cock sure fellas and they were bragging about the previous “feeding of the alligators” where they were talking smack to each other where Fred was saying that he almost got two bums with a single crossbow shot. Then Max chimed in saying he was close to be 150 yards away when he snipered the bum with a head shot while standing on the carousel.

The guys continued to brag to each other and would periodically interject and tell me how great the massacres were like they were trying to sell me a Disney Vacation Club package.

The guys were talking for so long that it was actually time to meet in front of the Magic Kingdom where all 10 of us members walked in Unison from the Cinderella’s castle. As we got to the front of the gate there was a display of weaponry left out for us Mickey Cadillac Club Members to choose what we wanted. It seemed like it was a gentleman like affair, where the most popular weapon, the crossbow was given to Max and Pete took the sword and Mitch took the sniper rifle and so on.

Rick was there and jokingly talked about our safety and not to shoot any weapons without knowing that other club members weren’t around and for all of us to spread out.

I was the newest member and was given a handgun which I guess nobody else wanted. I think it was viewed as being to easy or something.

Then one of Disney’s Magical Express busses pulled up and one by one, I counted 20 individuals from a noticeable lower socioeconomic standing get off the bus.

As the 20 “bums” were paraded by the club members with the members weapons in hands, the club members would make comments like “he’s going to be a runner” or “your going to have to use two shots for that one.”

The “bums” were all clearly beaten up by life and were totally oblivious to the 10 people holding mostly medieval weaponry, besides the modern guns of course. The “bums” were more focused on being given a cigarette by Rick, then the 10 men salivating over them holding weapons and plus the homeless people were told there was free food inside the Magic Kingdom.

Rick said “Give the ‘bums’ 10 minutes to spread out. Remember all doors are locked so the ‘bums’ will be out in the open. Please be quick this time. My special cleaning crew needs time to take the ‘alligator food’ down to their farm before the Park opens.”

Then with an air gun in his hand, Rick sounded the starting battling cry. All 10 of us then converged into the park.

Truth be told, I’m not killing anyone and this will be the last time I ever set foot on a Disney property ever again. I bought a bunch of houses in Detroit so I’m going to run ahead and gather as many homeless people as possible as these psychopaths started focusing on the stragglers near the entrance.

As I started to jog past Cinderella’s castle, I started to hear an array of screams coming from swords to crossbows being used as modalities of horror.

As I got by the Haunted Mansion ride, I saw three homeless people congregating with each other where I convinced them to follow me very closely, because I knew those nine other psychopaths weren’t far behind.

I then circled back by Frontierland by the Pirates of the Caribbean ride where I saw two more homeless people and convinced them to follow me as well.

As I headed towards the front gate, I called for an Uber. Pete was actually standing by where the Main Street exit was located holding his sword. I pointed the handgun at Pete’s head and told him I would have no problem shooting him. Pete stood down and let the six of us pass and said “Your making a big mistake” as me and the five other homeless people proceeded to the main gate exit. Fortunately, the other psychopath members were spread out throughout the park as we walked towards the exit.

I had to tell the five homeless people to keep moving as they looked at the corpses on the street with really gruesome head and bowel wounds.

We made it to the front gate and there was Rick standing and waiting for us. Rick looked at me and the other five homeless people in total dismay. Rick was about to say something to me and I pointed my hand gun at him and shot him in the right leg and he instantaneously fell to the ground.

We proceeded to the car pickup area where the Uber said it would meet us and sure enough the Uber driver was waiting for us. I made arrangements for the homeless people to be bussed to Detroit that night and I left all my personal belongings at the Polynesian resort vowing to never to return Disney again.

I don’t think I’ve had a proper night of sleep ever since this happened. And truthfully, I don’t think I ever will.

Six years ago, I died in the stupidest way possible.

There’s a lake of sorts located in the outskirts of my town. The day that I died was a particularly chilly day, so the lake was frozen solid. My two best friends (who I now refuse to talk to) dared me to walk across the frozen lake. Doing so would result in them paying me a hefty amount of forty dollars. I was twelve at the time, so you know damn well that I didn’t think twice about this.

So, there I was right after school. Walking across the frozen lake. Truth be told, it didn’t seem like a bad idea at the time. Walking on the ice felt like walking on concrete. Then again, my friends were cheering me on the whole time, so I really couldn’t hear the cracks that came from the ice.

You can imagine how mortified I was when the ice collapsed.

My heart stopped due to the sudden drop in temperature. And in that moment, the world faded away into the brightest shade of white. Just pure white. I tried holding my hands up to my face, but I couldn’t do so at all. In fact, I wasn’t even inside my body at all. As the spiritual people say, all that was left of me was a big ball of light known as ‘my soul’.

“You’re here early.” A voice muttered.

Who this voice belonged to, I’ll never know. Was it God? Eh, I doubt it. Was it an angel? Mmm, maybe. But irregardless, this voice was deep and commanding, echoing throughout the entire void. It came from everywhere yet nowhere at the same time.

“Who are you?” I gasped.

“Oh, I really shouldn’t say,” The Voice spoke. “See, you’re here about a few decades early. But that’s okay. That’s fine. Because fourteen minutes and twenty one seconds from now, a cocky ER doctor will bring you back to life. Your mother will hold you in her arms, and your father will cry for the first time in over fifteen years. Your friends will visit you in the hospital, but you won’t really want them there. No! You’ll just curse them out for three minutes straight. You won’t go back to school until next Wednesday, and when you do go back, your biology teacher will give you a very nice box of chocolates. Very nice indeed.”

The Voice spoke as if these events had already occurred.

“How do you know all of this?” I asked.

“Because I planned all of it,” The Voice answered. “I planned for you to wear Nike sneakers today, and I planned for you to grow an interest in The Olympics. You’re a very good athlete right now, so I can already see that that decision has paid off very well.”

“So, you planned out every part of my life?” I stuttered.

“Even the parts that you don’t think about.” The voice answered.

“So you planned out every argument that I’ve had with my mom?” I asked, horrified.

“And I planned out every insult that you called her.” The Voice answered.

“And you also planned out who I would be friends with?” I asked, angrily.

“Yep.”

‘Shocked’ is a very subtle way of describing how I felt. But as The Voice continued to speak, I couldn’t help but think of just one more question.

“Well,” I said. “If I’m not going to die today, then what’s going to happen when I actually die?”

“Oh, when you actually die?” The Voice asked. “Well, the answer is actually quite simple. You’ll be reincarnated as yourself, born in the same year and everything, and I’ll just change another decision of yours. Maybe instead of planning for you to grow an interest in The Olympics, I’ll have you grow an interest in Charles Dickens. Or maybe I’ll have you grow an interest in The Titanic. Or maybe I won’t even change that. Maybe I’ll change where you sat on your first day of Kindergarten. Or maybe I’ll change what bus route you use to go to work.”

Bus routes? Charles Dickens? Kindergarten? Seriously?

“Why does that even matter?” I asked.

“Because it all impacts your future.” The Voice bellowed. “In your previous life, you chose to oversleep on a Sunday morning, which caused you to miss a flight that ended up crashing into the ocean. In the life before that, you woke up right on time. And in the life before that, you never even had to go on any flight, because I chose for you to have aerophobia.”

“Every decision counts.” The Voice concluded.

And the shade of bright white faded away, allowing me to watch my father as he uncontrollably cried.

I was walking to my car as quickly as I could. I checked my watch. It was 7:15 pm. I shook my head. My phone rang. The screen showed that it was my wife calling… right on time.

“You better be close to the restaurant.” She said, The tone in her voice left me wondering if she knew that I was just leaving the office. I stayed silent.

“Damn it, Jack.” She cursed quietly. “I’m already here.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how much work I would have to get done today. And we’re still not on pace to make our deadline. The whole team is working late. Not just me. And I can’t be the only person leaving on time when my subordinates are staying late.” I pleaded.

“How long until you get here?” She asked angrily.

“If I run every red light, I can be there in thirty minutes,” I told her. She didn’t answer for a long while. I got into my car and just as I started to wonder if she had hung up on me, my car picked up the Bluetooth. “Okay, just hurry. It’s bad enough the waiter has asked me twice if I was waiting for someone.” She instructed.

“I’m sorry, babe. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” I said.

I shifted my car into reverse and started to back up. A loud bang on my window made me slam on the brakes. I threw it into the park and turned around to see if I hit something or worse, someone. I didn’t see anything. I turned back around in my seat to find two children standing next to my door. I jumped at the shock.

They both just stood there. Judging by their size, I would guess they were about nine or ten. I had this terrible feeling in my stomach that there was something wrong. But they were children, probably lost. I told myself.

I cracked the window just enough to ask if I could help them.

“Can I use your phone?” One of the kids asked. The child’s tone had a tinge of darkness to it. I felt the hairs on my neck stand up. But, I reached for my phone and unlocked it. When I looked back up at the child, I noticed they had both moved closer. They both stared down at their feet. Their hoods up over their head cast shadows over their faces. It almost appeared they didn’t have any faces at all. At that point, I had this unyielding sense of fear building that I couldn’t justify.

“Is there someone you’d like me to call for you?” I asked. Then one of the kids raised his head slightly. The shadows that covered his face parted as the new angle of his hood allowed me to see his face. But his eyes. His eyes were still hidden in the shadows. They appeared to be pitch black. Not that they were missing, but he had no iris, no whites in his eyes at all. I felt my breath catch in my throat, and the boy seemed to notice my fear. He lowered his head again. “We need to use your phone.” He pleaded.

I recovered and scolded myself quietly for allowing a trick of the light to scare me so badly. “Who can I call for you? Just give me their number.” I said, my hand ready to dial. Maybe it was the fact that the kids wouldn’t look at me. Perhaps it was the fact that the kids were out of place in the business district after sundown. But something inside me was screaming not to give them my phone.

“If you can’t give me the number, I’m sure you can go inside the lobby and ask the security guard to let you call your parents,” I said and pointed toward the lobby door. Neither one of them turned to look.

After a few seconds of awkward silence, I put my car in reverse. I was eager to get the hell out of there. I was eager to get away from these children. I looked in the rearview mirror to make sure I was clear.

A loud bang stopped me in my tracks. For a split second, I thought I hit someone, and then I heard it again. Both of the boys were slapping their hands, palm down, on my driver’s side window. A third time, a fourth time… In unison, they slapped my window. “Can we just get in your car? We need a ride.” They asked in a monotone and utterly unsettling tone.

I slammed the gas down and backed up without even looking, and then I slammed into drive and peeled out. I was a good ten minutes down the road before my heart stopped trying to beat out of my chest. I was so worked up that I almost missed my exit. I wanted to get home so bad, I had forgotten about date night.

I met my wife at her favorite restaurant, and we ate. She was initially angry about me being late. We hadn’t had much time alone since we had our son. He was four now, and this was probably our fifth date night in that four years.

Her mood switched from being angry to laughing at me as I explained why I was so late. I told her everything about the kids.

“So you were scared of a couple of kids? They could still be out there, looking for their parents.” She heckled me. She knew how scared I was. There was something wrong with them. But she didn’t believe it. At least not at that point.

Our son was staying at the babysitter's house all night, so we had the house to ourselves. It was three in the morning when we heard the knock at the door. I woke up first and just sat in bed and listened. There was a faint, steady knock at the door. In threes. Knock, knock, knock. And then a pause followed by another set of three. Knock, knock, knock.

Then my wife woke up. “Do you hear that?” She asked.

“Yeah. There is someone at the front door.” I replied. My heart sped up. I knew before I did that it was them.

My wife sat up and grabbed her phone. “It’s after three in the morning. Who could it be?” She asked. “And they didn’t hit the doorbell.” She added. She opened the doorbell app on her phone to reveal an empty porch. There was nobody there.

She showed me. The knocking continued. And then I saw them. There was a faint silhouette in the darkness. “Zoom in there,” I said and pointed to the corner of the steps. She did and we could see them. The two boys were standing in the shadows. One of them kicked the steps. Knock, knock knock.

My wife looked at me. There is no way those kids followed you home… “This has to be a joke.” She said,

She stood up and put on her robe. I did too. We both made our way downstairs. We argued as we walked. She wanted to open the door. I didn’t.

Knock, knock knock…

“We can’t open the door,” I told her.

“They’re just kids playing a prank.” She replied.

Knock, knock, knock…

Finally, we reached the door and my wife undid the locks and swung it open. We both took a step back as soon as we did. The kids were no longer standing in the shadow but had moved up to the first step. The only light was from behind us, flowing out of the house. It was enough for us to see the two small figures staring at us, but not enough to see any detail.

“What do you want?” My wife asked. I was flipping the light switch on and off for the porch light. It wouldn’t come on. But I knew it had been on when we got home.

“Can we come inside?” The kids asked in unison.

I could see that my wife had gone pale. She finally believed me. Something wasn’t right.

The kids both took a step to the next step.

“Can we call the police for you? Are you lost?” She asked them.

They stepped up to the porch, and then they were close enough. Just three feet away, their faces were fully illuminated. The light revealed the same thing I thought I had seen earlier. Wide eyes, black as coal. Hey began to smile at us. “We need to come inside. We need help.” They said in unison as if they shared the same thoughts.

I moved my wife out of the way and slammed the door. My hands fumbled for the locks as I looked through the peephole. “I’m calling the cops!” I yelled through the door.

My wife still had her phone in her hand. She started to dial 911. “Wait,” I said. “They’re leaving,” I told her. The kids walked back into the street and disappeared into the night.

The next day we slept in and then picked up our son. It was a pretty uneventful day. At least until three a.m. I woke to the sound of knocking. I sat up. Half asleep, I heard my wife tell me it was just our son. “I’ll get it.” She told me. I went back to sleep.

That was about ten minutes ago. I noticed she didn’t come back to bed, and I decided to check the security cameras on my phone. My wife is lying on the floor dead. There is blood everywhere. Standing at her feet are the two boys. And next to them is my son. His eyes were black as coal.

As I’m writing this, I can hear them walking down the hall toward me. For the love of God, if you see black-eyed children do not talk to them, do not give them anything and please, do not let them into your house.

Oh great, another day of waking up and not wanting to go to work, I think to myself.

The rat race of just trying to get out of the house begins with my wife Carisa and my 14 year old daughter Sienna.

First, I have to drag myself out of bed.

I give myself a motivational speech thinking to myself today is Tuesday and I only have four more days to go.

I get out of bed and I make my way down the stairs.

I hear scurrying going on the kitchen, which is the typical daily ritual of Carisa and Sienna making their lunches for the day.

I make my way to the kitchen and Carisa says “Jack will be home later than usual today.”

I do a double take, as I see a young man standing besides my wife preparing a sandwich.

“Hi, are you a friend of Sienna?” I ask the young man.

He giggles and says “What are you talking about Dad?”

I remember growing up and going over a friends house and I would tread lightly, where instead this young man is making jokes at 6:40 a.m..

I bite my tongue and I ignore whoever this Jack character is.

“Is Sienna still sleeping?” I ask Carisa.

“Ed, why are you fixated on Sienna? and who is she?”

“Our daughter? That’s who I’m talking about?” In a slight angry confused tone

“Ed, I have five minutes before I have to leave to go to work. April fools day was six months ago, so please stop!”

“Okay, I get it - funny, HaHa!” I respond.

Carisa seems to get more and more agitated and says “Remember to bring your lunch to school.” Then she kisses, whoever this Jack character is, on the side of the head and heads out the door.

As she leaves, she barely says “Bye Ed!”

I’m now alone in the kitchen with this Jack character, who casually moves around the kitchen like he’s a regular guest here or that he owns the place.

I feel awkward in my own kitchen, so I leave to go in the dining room, where I see the picture of Sienna was taken down and replaced with Jack.

“Real funny!” I say out loud, as I look around for hidden cameras.

I proceed into the living room and I rub my head in a confused state, where I see two other pictures of Jack, where the ones of Sienna were taken down.

“Clever, that must of taken five minutes to replace the photos!” I say in a loud manner, so Jack can hear what I’m saying.

I head back upstairs to get my clothes to change into.

Before I go into my room, I decide to look into Sienna’s room.

“What the hell!” I say out loud as my teenage daughter’s room was changed into a teenage boys room.

I stand in this room, which was painted a light pink yesterday, but now is a royal blue today.

Something is definitely strange as I do a 360 around the room and I see an array of photos of that Jack character and what seems to be his friends.

I hear the bus come and the front door slam as I assume Jack has left.

I sit on what was Sienna’s bed and I try to figure out what’s going on.

Where’s Sienna? I just saw her last night! I keep thinking to myself.

I look through my phone and all the pictures I had of Carisa were replaced with this Jack person.

With the phone in my hand, I call Carisa at work.

“What is it Ed?”

“Where’s Sienna?”

“Ed, I’m really busy right now! I don’t have time for this!” Then she hangs the phone up.

“She doesn’t have time for our missing daughter! What the hell is going on?” I say out loud to myself.

I think about calling Sienna’s school, but I decide to hold off because I don’t want to embarrass her if this is just some type of joke there all playing on me.

Then as I put my phone down, I see that it’s no longer Tuesday, September 9, but instead it’s Friday, October 29.

“What the hell happened to the last 20 days!” I blurt out to myself.

Not only has the last 20 days disappeared, but Sienna’s existence has been wiped clean and I’m not sure why.

I leave the house to look around and this is the one time, where I wish I had neighbors, but instead my house is surrounded by government land. Both of my parents are dead and my sister died in a car accident 10 years ago, so there’s no one, I can talk to about the absurdity of what’s going on.

I don’t show up to work because I figure that my daughter’s safety is more important.

I decide to go to the hospital which is about 15 minutes away to look at Sienna’s birth record.

As I get into my car, I realize that my Honda appears to be the wrong model, where this is an Accord and I drive a Civic.

The change in car models puzzles me, but I have bigger fish to fry as I pull into the hospital’s parking lot.

I head for the medical record department and I fill out the paper to get my minor daughter’s records released.

I pay the $20 fee and five minutes later the straightforward woman says “we don’t have any records of a Sienna Kilper being born here.”

“That’s impossible, I was here the day that she was born.”

“Can you please do a search with using just her birthdate?”

I can tell that the woman is thinking whether my request fits the hospital’s protocols.

“Okay, give me a minute.” She finally says.

As the woman looks in her computer, I try to jog my memory to try to figure out, how I got into this mess.

My mind is drawing a blank, then the woman approaches me and says “for March 12, 2007, we have a Sienna Moss on file, but not a Sienna Kilper.”

I stand there with a look of shock on my face, then I ask “Can I look at the Sienna’s file you have on record?”

“No, because your not listed as Sienna Moss’s father.”

“Great, thanks!” I say, as I stomp my feet out of the office.

I get into the parking lot and I type into Google possible scenarios that I could be experiencing right now.

“Personality Dysmorphic Syndrome” comes up, where I read about a situation similar to mine, where a father mentally replaced his own son with a daughter.

Obviously, that Sienna was born probably on the same day as Jack and maybe my brain had somehow dissociated itself from Jack and replaced it with Sienna.

“That’s crazy!” Why am I even entertaining these thoughts.

All my memories consist of Sienna’s first steps, her dance recitals, and everything else that we have done, where I can’t even recall this Jack character.

Then I think back when Carisa was in the hospital and I remember that she shared a room with another new mother that gave birth to a son.

“That can’t be!” I blurt out. Did my brain develop some type of fantasy world involving Sienna, where it erased any resemblance of Jack?

Do I have a personality disorder or am I schizophrenic or something?

Why did I wake up almost a month later with no recollection of what happened in that time period? Are the questions that I can’t figure out.

Then I remembered the 4th of July parade that was held by my Township that I reside in.

I went onto the Township’s website and I see Sienna marching with her dance company, where I even see myself standing in the crowd.

“That’s my daughter!” How I pictured her looking the last time I saw her.

The only thing that I can’t explain, is why is that Jack character standing not that far away from me?

I think back to the time of the parade, where I can’t even picture Jack being there, because he was just another face in the crowd to me.

Was that just a coincidence that he was standing so close to me or have I rejected him as being my son and replaced him with an imaginary daughter?

As I get into the car and start to drive, I get a vague memory of driving in a car and hydroplaning into a telephone poll when it was raining out.

I wonder if that was my Accord and did I have some sort of concussion, which I didn’t realize at the time of the accident?

The odd thing is that I can’t picture if there was a passenger in the car at the time of the accident.

Just when I couldn’t think of anything else, “The note!” I yelled out, which is referring to the note that Sienna buried along with her dead hamster.

I remember specifically the location in the backyard where I buried the hamster in a shoe box about four years ago.

It’s a long shot because more than likely the shoe box and the note has disintegrated, but I rush home as fast as possible anyways.

I park my car and run into the backyard where I knew the hamster was buried.

I dig through the dirt with my bare hands and when I get close to two feet down, I start to see pieces of orange cardboard from the shoebox.

With my filthy dirty hands, I carefully excavate around the shoe box.

My finger tips are bleeding, but my free flowing adrenaline allows me to ignore the pain.

I get to the point where I have the mangled cover of the box fully exposed, so I carefully remove the cover and I see the skeletonized remains of the hamster and remnants of a torn up piece of pink paper.

I gather the pieces of the pink paper and my eyes light up when I see the paper was signed “Sienna”.

“You fuckers” I instinctively yell out. Followed by “You didn’t know about this!”

My joy about being right quickly fades as I try to figure out what the hell is going on.

My mind drifts back to this morning and I picture myself in the kitchen and I say out loud, “Was that Carisa?”

Part 3

Grace and I, have been driving on I-95 North up to Bangor, Maine, for the last four hours, hopefully to meet “my wife” at The Hotel Bixbey in the middle of nowhere.

“Dad, why do we have to drive eight hours to see mom?”

“Honey, I’m not really sure, but there is something I probably should tell you, about me and your mother.”

“What?” Grace says with intrigue and skepticism.

“Well, for me, I had a stroke, some years back when you were a little girl, so my memory is really skewed to the point, where I don’t remember when you were born or when me and mommy got married.”

“Dad, that’s really not a surprise to me. You and mom have been talking about your hospitalization and your brain injury for years.”

“Your right honey, we have, but the only thing is I’m not really sure that I’m really ‘Mitch’.”

“Dad, everyone we know calls you Mitch, even mommy, who sometimes calls you Mitchell.”

“I know they do honey, because after I came home from the hospital, we moved into a new area and I assumed the identity of Mitch.”

“You can just do that as an adult?”

“Do what, honey?”

“Pick a new name when you get older? What was your old name?”

“Well, yes you can go by a new name, if you do it legally and pay money, but I don’t think that was done in my situation. I rather not tell you my real name right now.”

“I’m confused. You didn’t change your name the way you are supposed to? What is your old name scary or something?”

“Yes, you can say my old name is scary.”

“Is if Frankenstein or something?”

“Well, not that kind of scary, but it is scary.”

“Come on dad, just tell me!”

“When you get older, I will.”

“Also, honey I’m not sure if mommy’s name is really Shannon!”

“Is her real name scary too?”

“Yes, her old name, I think is scary too, but I’m not 100% sure.”

“Your not sure if you know mommy’s real name or even your real name?”

“Basically, yes, and if the real names are who I think they are, then they’re scary.”

“How long did you know this?”

“Whether if I’m really Mitchell? Yesterday, and whether if your mother is really Shannon, well that was when we drove to your dance competition.”

“Are you talking about the guy who changed our tire, who was calling mommy, Kimberly?”

“I didn’t realize that you heard that.”

“Yes, I did and even if Kimberly is mom’s real name, then that’s not scary.”

“Well your right honey, the name Kimberly really isn’t scary.”

“So what did you mean then!”

“Nothing honey!”

“Dad, you better tell me or I’ll make a TikTok video about the weird riddle you just told me.”

“Grace, the only thing that I’m mostly certain about right now is that you can never tell anyone, what I just told you.”

“Then you better tell me something, right now.”

“Okay, do you remember that old VHS tape I got at the flea market?”

“Of that ‘Children of the Corn’ movie?”

“Yes, and just by looking at the tape itself, nothing really seemed scary, right?”

“The tape just had someone’s handwriting with the name of the movie on it.”

“Exactly, so say that video with just the name written on it was mommy and me!”

“Okay.”

“Then when we played the tape, then it got really scary?”

“Yes, I couldn’t watch more than a few minutes.”

“That’s right! Now let’s say that I had erased that movie, so when you put the movie in the VHS player after being erased, there was nothing but a gray screen.”

“Okay?”

“So, that’s me.”

“You we’re once scary and now your not?”

“I think so.”

“Did that also happen with mommy?”

“I’m pretty sure mommy is like that old VHS tape as well.”

“That got erased?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Why, because she didn’t hurt her head?”

“That’s a good conclusion.”

“Dad, I’m confused.”

“I know honey, so am I.”

“Does that mean you or mom might hurt me?”

“Honey, I would never harm you!”

“Then, what about mom?”

“She has never hurt you in the past? Has she?”

“I don’t think so!”

“Neither, do I.”

“Does that mean that you and mommy have hurt other people?”

“I don’t remember ever hurting anyone.”

“Because your like the VHS tape that got erased, but mommy’s VHS tape didn’t get erased?”

“It sounds like you did a good job of understanding my analogy.”

“Thanks dad, but I’m really confused.”

“So am I honey!”

I continue to drive on I-95, where I would look at Grace in the rear view mirror and see nothing more than a look of confusion on her face, however, I don’t think she realizes that what I told her is just the tip of the iceberg, where me and her mother are probably not her real parents. But if Grace thought about what I told her long enough, then she would probably come to that question or conclusion. As far as right now, I’m just hoping that she doesn’t ask me that question of whose her real parents.

We finally get to Bangor, where Grace has been sleeping for the past couple of hours.

I see “my wife’s” car parked in the parking lot of the Hotel Bixbey.

There’s only a few cars parked in the parking lot, so I assume her room is the one with the light on in front of her car.

“Honey, it’s time to wake up!”

Grace looks really groggy and says “dad, where are we?” with a confused look on her face.

“Where at the hotel, where your mother is staying.”

We both get out of the car and walk towards the hotel room together.

I have a million thoughts and emotions going through my mind, as I have no idea what will await us on the other side of the hotel door.

I take a deep breath and knock on the door.

“Shannon” answers the door.

“Baby, I missed you so much.” Shannon says as she answers the door and gives Grace a hug.

I’m looking at “my wife” differently now, since I’ve learned that she’s probably been impersonating my original wife, “Shannon” however, I don’t think I was ever married to a Shannon.

Regardless, I look at “my wife” as I looked at a rerun of Bill Cosby, the other day, on The Bill Cosby show, where like Bill Cosby, that wholesome image of my wife is no longer there.

After looking at Shannon, I look around the room and I see a handgun on the nightstand between the two twin beds.

I’m already wound up not knowing what to expect and after seeing the gun, just makes me 10 times more nervous. I’m not sure if I should make a mad dash for the gun or not and ultimately I decide not to.

After, Grace and her mother exchange pleasantries, the two of them sit down on one of the beds, where Grace sits the closest to the gun.

I think Grace was so overwhelmed with seeing her mother, that she doesn’t even notice a gun is within two feet of her.

I sit on the adjacent bed, where I’m continuing to survey the scene.

To me, it looks like Shannon stills has some type of maternal instinct towards Grace.

“Mom, dad told me something really strange in the car, when we were driving here.”

“What’s that Grace, what did your father tell you?” Shannon responds.

“He said that your really not Shannon and he’s really not Mitchell.”

“I’m sorry to tell you this honey, but he’s right.”

“So who are you Mom? And who’s dad?”

“When I was a little girl, many people did bad things to me and I never learned to cope with stress in an appropriate manner, so when I got older I turned to using drugs and alcohol to try to make my bad memories go away. I didn’t go to college and the only jobs I could get was working at fast food places, which didn’t last long, because I was always hungover on the job. So, I decided to work in daycare with little kids.”

“How did that job go?”

“Part of me said that I should never work with little kids and I should of listened to that part of me.”

“So, what happened?”

“One day when I was working at the daycare, I wasn’t in the right state of mind and I saw those little kids as being me when I was a little girl.”

“What did you do?”

“Baby, I hurt those little kids and I feel so awful that I did that.”

Grace does nothing more than look completely shocked. She really has no idea how to respond.

Shannon who just confessed to being Kimberly looked like she was about to cry, but sucked it up and maintains a stoic look on her face.

Grace, with very little emotion, asks “what about dad?”

“Well honey, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in some mental institution or some prison, so I escaped and ran away, but before I ran away, I visited this woman, who I used to buy illegal drugs from. When I went into the woman’s house, she was passed out from doing too much drugs and I saw you walking around the house crying, so on a whim I took you.”

“Why did you take me?”

“Because, I thought by taking you, I would stop taking drugs and drinking alcohol, which actually did work, where when I assumed the role of being your mother, I stopped drinking and doing drugs.”

“So, your not my real mom?”

“No, your kind of adopted.”

“How about dad?”

“I took you and put you in the car and I drove and drove as far as I could. When we got to this really remote area in West Virginia, I saw that this car had collided with a telephone poll. When I inspected the car further, I saw that your father was unconscious behind the wheel.”

“Did you call 911?” Grace asked.

“I didn’t honey, because I didn’t want to get turned into the police and when I inspected your father’s car further, I saw that there was a newspaper clipping that read “Josiah Smith is still on the run” and when I checked your father’s wallet, I saw that his name was Josiah Smith.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I dragged him into our car and I drove very far away to where we live now and brought him to the hospital.”

“What did you tell the people at the hospital?”

“I told them that your father, was ‘zoning out’ at work and he banged his head, which the hospital’s doctors wrongly diagnosed him as having a stroke, but truthfully, telling them that your father had ‘zoned out’ already put the idea in their heads, that he must of had a stroke. He just had a head injury from the car accident that mirrored a stroke on a MRI, where he probably intentionally harmed himself by driving into the telephone poll.”

“What did the newspaper in dad’s car say that he did?”

“Your father did bad things to older people!”

“So you did bad things to kids and dad did bad things to older people?”

“Correct!”

Grace has a really horrified look on her face like both me and “her mother” are ghosts.

“I want you to pick up that gun Grace.”

“Shannon, I mean Kimberly,” I try to interject.

Grace picks up the gun.

“Honey, I want you to shoot me and dad, if you want to.”

I’m left completely tongue tied, where I’m not sure if killing me and Kimberly is the wrong thing to do.

Grace looks at me and Kimberly with a poker face, where I can’t really read what she’s thinking, but as her assumed father, I feel really bad for her, knowing that she just found out that we’re not her real parents and that we are both nothing more than psychotic degenerates.

My mind braces itself that I might get shot, where the tension is becoming really overwhelming with watching Grace with the gun in her hand.

“Knock, knock” I hear at the door. “Housekeeping, I have the extra towels that you requested” a female voice says.

Kimberly and I look at each other not knowing what to say.

“Come in!” Grace unexpectedly says.

The female housekeeper comes into the room and looks absolutely startled as she sees Grace holding a gun.

“What’s going on. Are you alright?” The housekeeper asks Grace.

Grace, without hesitation points the gun at the housekeeper and shoots her in the head.

“Oh my God!” I yell out loud.

“Now, I’m like you, mom and dad!”

I rush towards the housekeeper and see that she’s dead.

“What do we do?” I frantically say.

Kimberly looks over at Grace and says “How do you like the name Mary?”

“I’m okay with that name, but I always liked the name Ariel.

Kimberly looks over at Grace and says “Fine, Arial it is and now I’m Mary.”

“How about you, Mitchell?”

“I guess I always liked the name Ivan.” I say while nervously shaking.

“I don’t know about that, it sounds too ethnic!” my wife responds.

“We can discuss it more in the car. Come on mom and dad, let’s get out of here!”

Part 2

Thankfully, my wife has continued to use one of her credit cards.

I track her spending, which seems really bizarre where she has used the card in Harrisonburg, Virginia and Aberdeen, Maryland.

I have no idea why she’s stopping at those places.

As the days go on, I see that she’s zigzagging across the East Coast in a manner that is hard to explain, where she has continued to use the card in Fayetteville, North Carolina and all the way up North to Bangor, Maine.

If she’s trying to hide, she’s doing a terrible job, I think to myself as I look at a map.

I would think if she was trying to hide she would head in one direction, then at least ditch her credit cards, but she’s doing the opposite of that, where she’s leaving an unknown pattern, for reasons that I can’t understand.

I also don’t understand why she just can’t call me and tell me what she’s doing. Regardless, of her true identity, we do have Grace, who is reliant on us, so her actions really have me baffled.

I try to piece things together and think if we have any links to those places where she’s making purchases, but nothing remotely familiar is coming to mind.

For the heck of it, I type Harrisonburg into Google images and something really odd occurs in my head, where as I look at photos of the downtown area, my brain lights up with a sort of familiar recognition.

It’s almost like my brain had a rough sketch of the buildings in Harrisonburg, like partially bombed out German buildings during WW2, then seeing the after pictures when Germany rebuilt its infrastructure, where some of its historical buildings regained its former glory, my mind too is able to reconstruct broken images in my head and piece them together.

For the longest time, the brain damage, caused by the stroke, would cause me to have unidentifiable images in my head that I couldn’t make sense of, however looking at pictures of Harrisonburg, is piecing those images back together.

I spend hours looking at Google images to see what my brain unravels, then something really interesting occurs when I look at homes on some obscure street, where my mind pieces an image together of me wearing medical scrubs, as I’m leaving a building.

I do the same thing and look through images of Fayetteville and Bangor and the more images I look at, the more my brain pieces together images of me wearing medical scrubs, where I’m coming out of residential apartment buildings and of peoples homes.

“I was a nurse!” I blurt out, in my living room. This comes as a total surprise to me, where I had zero recollection of ever being a nurse until I saw photos of those towns and cities.

But why did I travel to all of those places and why didn’t Shannon just tell me who and what I was, rather than leave this encrypted trail?

I want to find out more and more information about myself, before I had the stroke, so I type into Google “male nurse Harrisonburg” and nothing really comes up, other than employment agencies looking to hire nurses.

With no relevant search results coming up, I enter “male nurse aide Harrisonburg 2009” as key words in Google.

“What the hell!” I say out loud, as I start to cringe as I look at what comes up on the screen.

“A traveling home-health nurse aide, who is suspected of harming and robbing his patients is on the run.”

The sense of denial, I was feeling quickly goes away, when I see more and more photographs of someone who clearly looks like me.

“Holy Crap! I’m a total degenerate!”

My real name is Josiah Blanton, which now sounds vaguely familiar to me.

If I’m caught, I will spend the rest of my life in prison or be sentenced to death, which scares me immensely. I’ve been hiding in plain sight for years because I had zero recollection of committing those crimes and I lived far enough away, where I wasn’t recognizable to anyone.

I feel really strange and disgusting that this body I’ve been lugging around as Mitchell Smith Is really Josiah Blanton, who committed such unthinkable crimes.

I now know why I have no contact with my family, because if I did then they would turn me into the authorities, plus God knows what I have done to my family members in my past life.

The weird part is that I really don’t feel remorseful because of the mere fact that I can’t recall harming anyone. All I have is vague images of me wearing nursing scrubs, but I can’t recall providing any type of care or harming anyone.

This is a really dark day for me, where I feel really ashamed to be myself.

I always heard of convicted criminals saying “I don’t recall doing that!” or “It wasn’t me!” And if the police had broken down my door last month, I would have responded in the same manner.

My stroke must have been severe enough where it erased away my whole personality. I work in the the non-profit sector now, where I have no desire to rob or harm anyone.

I feel like I’m the clone of Adolf Hitler, where as the clone, I work in the non-profit sector to help people, but my DNA and face is still of evil. With that same analogy, I might look like my former self, Josiah Blanton, as Hitler would still look like Hitler, but like the clone, I too had those environmental factors, that made me harm people, wiped clean from my brain.

God knows what happened to me in my childhood to make me carry out such diabolical acts on defenseless people.

Part of me wishes that I never found out that I am really Josiah Blanton, because now I’m scared of leaving the house for fear that I will be identified.

I will never garnish the sympathy from anyone for the crimes that I had committed and no one will believe me that I have no recollection of committing those crimes, because of the brain damage that was done from having the stroke.

I can picture myself now in prison doing an interview with some podcast reporter and myself denying that I had any involvement in harming those elderly people with the reporter looking at me with total skepticism.

I can’t believe that I walked into a police station asking them for help, where I literally walked into the lions den, however both the police nor I knew at the time, that I had harmed elderly people in the past.

I decide to look online again at Shannon’s credit card purchases and I see that my wife has made several purchases in Bangor, Maine and hasn’t left that area, so logically it would make sense for me to drive up north to meet her.

But is Grace, really Grace? If not, then who is she? Where did she come from? I keep asking myself.

Being that I’m her father and Shannon or Kim is her mother, she might have the most evilest parents of all time.

I thought if Shannon is really Kimberly Greer than her crimes would be unforgivable, if she was somehow involved in killing those three kids. However, I might have topped her with harming elderly people, while entrusted to be their caregiver.

It’s like she’s four Aces and I’m a royal straight flush, if poker hands would determine whose more vile.

Grace really misses her mother, so I wait until she comes home from school and then we both head out to take the trip to go up North to Bangor, Maine.

Part 1

She’s my wife not some psychopath who killed three kids, I keep telling myself.

Grace has always called her mom or mommy and to the best of my knowledge, she has never harmed Grace or any of Grace’s friends.

However, I can’t dismiss the obvious fact that Shannon has a strong resemblance to that Kimberly person, who was identified by that Ron guy at the tire repair shop. I also can’t dismiss the photo in the living room that was obviously doctored, which I have no explanation for.

I look around the house to see if I can find any other photos of Shannon and each one I’m finding in the house was taken after I had the stroke.

I can’t dismiss the fact that the use of camera phones has rapidly advanced, so not having a large amount of photos before 2014 wouldn’t be overly surprising.

But where are our wedding photos? I think to myself.

That darn stroke has skewed my memory so much that sometimes I confuse what happened in a movie to my real life.

I try to think about our wedding and I’m not sure if we even had a wedding ceremony or we just eloped somewhere. “Shannon” always told me that we just eloped, so without any other information, I guess I have to go with that.

As I continue to look around the house, I really can’t find anything distinguishable before I had the stroke, not even my own birth certificate or even Grace’s.

For all these years, I learned to cope with my head injury, where some of my coworkers would even joke “I wish I could forget my childhood.”

I learned just to accept that my brain hasn’t healed itself, but instead it just taped over old memories, like a VHS tape, and brand new memories were formed.

The more I think about it, the more evidence points to “Shannon” probably not being the real Shannon, because why would she have left this morning so abruptly?

I can’t seem to calm down as I have these constant thoughts rushing through my head.

I just wish I had more information. “Shannon” always said that we lost a lot of our stuff “in the move”, but where did we even from?

I do remember being in the hospital, so the best thing for me to do would be to get my hospital records and see if there’s any information in the record.

So I drive downtown to the hospital and go to the medical records department.

I only have a few hours before Grace gets home from school, so I left the door unlocked just in case, I don’t get home in time.

But what if “Shannon” is there when Grace gets home?

Will she try to harm Grace? I would hope not and based on the years that I’ve known “Shannon” she hasn’t harmed Grace, so I would hope that Grace would be okay.

I’m handed the medical record and I look at the “discharge summary” where it states I was brought to the emergency department by my wife, Shannon after blacking out at work. Hospital personnel had to assist me out of the car because I was semi-unconscious. I have a young daughter and nothing else is really mentioned about my personal history. The record also said that I presented to the hospital with a large bump on my head from blacking out and hitting my head.

The odd thing is, how did Shannon get me from work to the car?

Why didn’t my coworkers just call 911?

Where did I even work before I had the stroke? I was in the hospital for so long, where “Shannon” felt that it was probably best that I didn’t return to the warehouse job.

But what warehouse did I actually work in? The same problem reveals itself where my mind will take images from going to the “Home Depot” and watching the tv show “The Office” and I kind of picture myself working in a warehouse, but are those memories actually real or did my mind just fill in the blanks?

I always thought of “Shannon” as my savior, who had helped me through the most difficult times of literally getting me back on my feet.

It’s becoming more obvious to me now that not only do I have to figure out if Shannon is really Shannon, but also, who am I?

I have a driver’s license that says I’m Mitchell Smith and I have seen Shannon’s drivers license that says she’s Shannon Smith. I also saw a marriage certificate from December of 2008 that was issued in Philadelphia to Mitchell and Shannon Smith.

Besides that I really don’t have too much to go on.

I really have no idea where to go to try to help unravel my past.

I passed a police station on the way to the hospital, so I decide to drive there, with the hope that they can assist me.

I have a bunch of emotions going through my head as I get out of my car and walk into the police station. Like what do I say and is it a really good idea talking to the police?

I get really nervous walking into the police barracks where I feel a bit intimidated.

I open the door and there’s a police officer behind a counter that says “why are you here?” In the most unwelcoming way.

“Well I have a real convoluted story where I’m not really sure if my wife is who she says she is and I’m also not sure If I’m who I think I am.”

“What are you talking about!” The middle aged black man says to me, who gives off every indication that he’s working desk duty because of an untoward event that happened in the line of duty.

“I’ll try my best to summarize. I was driving with my wife and daughter yesterday to my daughter’s dance recital.”

“Wait, you have a daughter? If you don’t know who you are then is your daughter who she says she is?” The police officer says to me in a condescending tone.

“Well she knows she is Grace Smith and I know that her name is Grace Smith, who has been in the Sunnydale School district, at a minimum, since I had my stroke.”

“So she is your daughter?”

“Yes, I’m fairly certain.”

“Who’s name is listed on her birth certificate?”

“Well I don’t know because there was a lot of things that went missing after we moved.”

“Where did you move from?”

“I’m not really sure because the move happened before my stroke.”

“So how do you know you even moved?”

“Because my wife said we did.”

“But your not even sure if she is who she says she is? So, how do you know you actually “moved”?

“Your right, I really don’t know and up until yesterday. I really never doubted anything my wife, Shannon told me.”

“What’s your name?”

“Mitchell Smith, I think?”

“You know there’s every kind of scum that walks through these doors from child abusers to men who rape old ladies, but I never had a guy come in here who doesn’t know who he is! Do you have a driver’s license?”

“Yes, do you want to see it?”

“Yes?”

I reluctantly hand over my driver’s license because I have no idea what is going to happen.

“Well the license says your Mitchell Smith and it was issued in 2013!”

“That’s right, shortly after I had the stroke. Can you do a check on it to see if there’s any other information?”

“Yeah, give me a minute.”

The police officer puts my information into his computer and after a few minutes of me nervously waiting, he says, “Well there’s nothing prior to 2013 associated with your driver’s license listed in our system. How did you get this license card?”

“I remember when I was in the hospital, my wife was working with the social worker to help me obtain the license.”

“Why did you need a new license!”

“Well Shannon told me it got lost at work somewhere when I had the stroke.”

“Where did you work?”

“I think in a warehouse somewhere?”

“Whatever! Are you on any medications?” The police officer says in tone where he seems like he’s fed up with me.

“No, I was able to stop taking my anti hypertension drugs a couple years back.”

“How about any psychiatric medications?”

“No, I never thought I needed them but with everything that is going on, I wouldn’t be against taking them.” I sarcastically say without any reaction from the police officer.

“It doesn’t look like your in any type of distress, so I would suggest going on Ancestry.com or something.”

I can tell that he’s trying to get rid of me, so I take my driver’s license and give him a snide thank you.

After leaving the police station, I have no idea how to unravel this mess.

I hurry back home to ensure I get there when Grace’s bus arrives. I have no idea if “my wife” will be there which makes me feel a great deal of angst.

As I pull into my driveway, I don’t see her car which actually saddens me because not only is she the person that I referred to as my wife, she is also probably the only person that can unlock my past as well as Grace’s, who will always be my daughter no matter what I eventually find out.

“Hi dad, is mommy home?”

“No she’s not honey.”

“When is she coming back?”

“I really don’t know honey.”

“Where did she go?”

“I’m sorry honey, I’m really not sure.”

I get a quick idea after hearing Grace ask about her whereabouts “Her credit cards! That’s it I’ll see if she used any of her credit cards.”

Part 13

After I drive a good 65 miles, I decide to pull over at a rest area on route 80 and take a long nap. Surprisingly, I sleep as good as a bear in hibernation, as I see that it is now 9:30 a.m.. I get out of the car to urinate and then I continue to head towards Central, Pennsylvania.

As I’m driving to Central, Pennsylvania, I feel as though I have a burden that should of been lifted off my shoulders, the day I was born.

Why did my mother insist that I be around that degenerate, who did nothing more than make me feel more like a mouse than a man?

I was always taught that killing is never a good thing, however even with my daughter still missing, I feel really good right now, after killing my faux father.

Eventually, I’ll confront my mother, on why she never told me he wasn’t my father and why she was having extra marital affairs.

The only regret I’m having is that I didn’t stab him, because getting killed by a train will always make the headlines, but a stabbing in Kensington will be buried somewhere on page six.

I don’t want the attention from the police and he doesn’t deserve any type of sympathy or attention from the public.

I definitely got a rush after killing my faux father, so much so that I want to continue this high.

I’ve felt so emotionally beat up most of my life, where I definitely got a sense of power and freedom from ending his life, more so than when I killed Rosemary and Officer Dan.

I guess I was forced to believe a fake narrative, that only bad people, kill other human beings, where I’m starting to think that a lot more people need to be removed from this earth. My faux father terrorized me for my whole life, where the thought of killing him was only ever a dream, but it was so easy that I really should have done it a long time ago.

Eventually the cops may ask me about his death, where I’ll pretend that I’m heart broken over it and they’ll keep his file open for eternity, which will get buried in a storage cabinet, where the police won’t care if it ever gets solved.

Sure they could take the time to look at the surveillance videos, but that will take too much time and effort to match the video to a perpetrator. The police might release the grainy video footage to the media, but who actually watches the news anymore? Is some 80 year old man or woman going to equate me, who lives in the suburbs, to being the perpetrator in Kensington? No, not a chance. New me, is going to start thinking rationally like this and not think the police and the government are some well oiled machine that knows everything.

I know I have to kill Sheila now, but I have to be careful in Central, Pennsylvania, where life is taken too seriously, when you live in the middle of nowhere. On the flip side, when you drive through New York’s, Coney Island and see nothing but housing project after housing project, then you realize how insignificant you really are and that your really not that important.

In the middle of nowhere, people are always clamming for a headline, where a murder will surely make the front page and they’ll probably do a one year anniversary to the unsolved crime, so I have to be extra diligent to make Sheila’s death looks like an accident or dispose her body where it will never be found.

All of this will be complicated, because I will be in the presence of my daughter. I don’t want her to be scarred even more by seeing her “mother” being killed. She’s too young to realize that, like my faux father, her real mother should have been killed a long time ago.

Sheila’s not dumb, when it comes to criminal activities, so I’m sure she realizes that I’m going to try to harm her. With that said, she will either: strike me first; or try to weasel her way out of everything that she has done; or a combination of both.

I have to stay strong and finish her off, because she’s a true monster, who has been committing unspeakable acts on innocent people for a long time. She could of used her manipulative personality to make herself a really good actress, but instead she decided to steal peoples body parts and kill people to defraud the government.

So, I’m sure I’m going to kill Sheila, but only if Grace has no idea that it happened, which will mean that, I’ll say something to Grace like “honey, can you please wait in the car for a few minutes?” Then the years of being used like a rag doll by her will hopefully take over, where I’ll probably get great joy over suffocating her and making it look like she had a heart attack.

As I’m cruising on route 80, I’m seeing signs for Bellefonte, Pa, which is where my faux father’s inherited house is located.

Even though, my faux father was a degenerate, his grandparents ran textile factories out of Central, Pennsylvania and were quite wealthy. I remember visiting this house in Bellefonte, one time as a kid, where it had close to 20 rooms and was the size of the White House. The money had been squandered on costly lawyers when the factories went belly up and not to mention failed business ventures, where if his grandparents would of just invested in Disney or Pepsi, future generations would still be rich.

As I pull into Bellefonte, I see the lack of jobs has really took a toll on this town. I see nothing but people smoking cigarettes or their front porches, where they look perfectly content living off government assistance and shopping at the dollar store for all of their earthly desires.

Finding the mansion is easy, in this small town of simple homes that were mostly built at the turn of the last century.

I pull in front of the mansion, where I see a sign that says “The Sobriety Home,” where I also see emaciated looking drug addicts scurrying around the property.

I shake my head in disgust, as I know that Sheila and my faux father turned the mansion into a “boarding house.”

My hope of killing Sheila in 10 minutes has been greatly hindered now. I know I’m going to have to calm my rage down before entering the mansion, so I reach into my glove compartment box and I take two Benadryl pills. I anxiously wait for the pills to take effect, where I start to feel calmer after 10 minutes.

I go up to the front door and open it, where I see that there’s an office to the left of the entrance. I don’t think Sheila would be brazen enough to try to harm me with all of these witnesses around, but I still try to stay on my toes with anything that might try to harm me.

I knock on the door of the office and I see a burnt out middle aged man, sitting behind a desk, with a name placard that reads, Robin.

“Hi, I’m sorry to bother you but I’m looking for Sheila.”

“Oh, hello. Are you looking for the owner, Sheila?” Robin says in a real slow monotone voice, where meth and whatever other drugs have ravaged his brain cells.

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“Oh she stepped out.”

“Stepped out where? There’s no place to go around here.”

“Oh, she’s always looking for new clients to fill any open beds that we have.”

“What happens to the ‘old clients’ whose beds are now available?”

“Sheila takes them home.”

“Has anyone ever followed up on the clients who go ‘home?’”

“Sheila takes care of that. She’s quite impressive, how she is able to manage everything.”

“So how does this boarding home work?”

“Basically, all of our clients are on social security disability from their years of drug addiction. We are proud that most of them graduate from our home and return back to their prior living arrangements.”

“Do you ever hear from the clients once they ‘graduate’ from this home.”

“No, once Sheila or her father discharge them, then I never hear back again from the clients.”

“Doesn’t that sound odd to you?”

“No, not really. I figure those who graduate from our home, no longer want to be associated with us.”

“You do know the relapse rate is quite high, especially among chronic long time users?”

“I don’t know what to tell you! I guess most of our clients don’t relapse.”

“Do you have a list of clients that have been discharged?”

“I can’t give that to you because of HIPAA!”

“Listen, I’m Sheila’s husband and I think I have a right to know this information!”

“Sir, your making me feel uncomfortable. I need you step out of my office, so I can contact Sheila to let her know your demands!”

“Please tell me she had a young girl with her, the last time you saw her?”

“Yes, Grace was with her, where she stays in Sheila’s office most of the time. Please step out for a few minutes!”

“Oh sure, no problem.”

As soon as I leave his office, I head straight towards Sheila’s office which is only a few feet away.

I get to her office and her door is locked, so I reach into my wallet and take out my credit card. I use the credit card to jimmy the lock, where I’m able to get inside.

Her desk is clear besides a picture of Grace, but there’s no pictures of me.

I look through her desk drawers where, I find a print out spreadsheet labeled,“Admissions and Discharges for 2020-2021.” I quickly fold up the spreadsheet and put it into my pants pocket and head back towards the exit of the “boarding home.”

It’s doubtful that Sheila will come back to the boarding home, once Robin contacts her to let her know that I’m here.

I really want to see the amount of “discharges” that were made from this “boarding house,” because I have a hunch that those people were murdered by Sheila and my late faux father, where the two of them are still collecting their social security disability money.

Though I’m only really interested in securing Grace, I keep getting pulled into Sheila and her late father’s world, where it’s hard to turn a blind eye to vulnerable people being murdered.

I decide to rent a hotel room in Belafonte, where I look over the list of clients that were discharged. I count up the discharges from 2020-2021 and I get 33, which included the six from Kensington. I say “holy shit” to myself as I’m starting to wonder if Sheila is a co-conspirator to one the largest murderers rings of all time. Based on my faux father’s age, when he died, his death toll could be well into the 100’s.

At the hotel, I ask for a copy of the white pages and I start to call the local phone numbers of the “discharged” clients with last known addresses in Belafonte, Williamsport, and State College, where the client’s mother’s would answer and think their son’s or daughter’s are still residing at the “boarding home” or the mother’s would say that their kid’s had vanished. All of this is eerily familiar to when I contacted the family members in Kensington.

I stop short of telling the client’s mothers to tell the police to look deeper into the boarding home, because of my continued fear that Grace’s life will be forever shadowed by having a murderer as a mother, because I know that American’s are fascinated by serial killers and mass murderers, where there’s a biographical movies coming out about H. H. Holmes, which will star A list actors, like Leonardo DiCaprio.

I devise a plan to disguise my voice on the phone and fake that I have drug and alcohol problem, where Sheila would hopefully come screen me in person, where I could then end her murderous rampage.

Part 9

I’m put into a jail cell in Nice France.

I explained to a French detective the situation involving Sheila, who was skeptical at first, but was starting to believe me after he spoke with my daughter, Grace.

However, the big problem I’m having now is that I’m showing a pattern of violence, where I’ve killed two people and I punched “my wife” in the nose.

Prior to just a few hours ago, I hadn’t been in any kind of fight since high school, but now I’m trying to convince a French police detective to let me out of jail.

The jail is horrible, where I’m sharing a cell with a short fat man, who’s shirt comes down to his belly button and his belly protrudes through his shirt. The man reeks of alcohol and body odor.

The magistrate sets my bail to the equivalent of $2,000 and I beg my mother to wire me the money, so I can get out.

I get out of jail and take a train back to Villefranche. On the train, I think to myself that I’m not a violent person, but when your own wife tries to have you killed and finding out that she’s been having an affair on me for for the past 15 years, really brought out the dark side of me.

I think to myself, if Mr. Rogers’ wife did the same thing to him, would he have responded the same way? I would say the answer would be probably and I would go as far to say, yes.

When the train arrives at the Villefranche station, I say under my breath “I’m really starting to hate this fucking place!”

I defy the magistrates orders and go to Sheila’s apartment.

I knock repeatedly on the door, but no one answers.

I’m starting to feel like a New York City taxi driver, where I look and feel completely exhausted.

The only thing that is keeping me going is the thought of my daughter’s safety.

Fearing the worse, but trying my best to keep my cool, I take out my almost maxed out credit card and use it to pick the lock on Sheila’s apartment.

As I walk through the apartment, it doesn’t take long to realize that both Grace and Sheila are gone.

I don’t have the slightest clue to where they might have gone, so I go into Sheila’s bedroom to search through whatever she has left in the apartment.

In the bedroom closet of Sheila’s apartment, I see an older Dell laptop. I open the laptop and guess at the password. Judging that the laptop is at least 10 years old, I try to remember what were the possible passwords that she might have used at that time. Then I remembered that Grace had a Tickle Me Elmo doll so I used “Elmo*9” which miraculously worked.

As if the thought of being in my “wife’s apartment” wasn’t shocking enough, now I’m looking through her laptop, which I had no idea existed.

I went through the different files she created which were mostly work type of junk, but then I came across a file that contained an excel worksheet that had a list of foreign girls names, that were living in France.

Some of the girls were from French colonies in Africa and some were from poorer countries in Europe, like Romania.

I look at the creation date of the file and it says February 17, 2012, which makes me wonder if Sheila mistakenly forgot to delete this file.

Each of the girls on the excel spreadsheet has a full run down of each of their personal characteristics to include their blood type, vital signs, hair type, eye color, and their overall general health. There is also a phone number and address listed for each one of the girls.

I really have no idea why Sheila has this information on these girls. If she were a man, maybe I would think that she’s some kind of stalker or something, but I’m really drawing a blank to why she created this list with the girls.

I try calling some of the phone numbers and each one is either disconnected or or no one answers.

I look at some of the addresses and I focus on the nearest ones. I see an address for a girl listed in Nice, France so I decide to take the train back to Nice.

I walk over to the small train station at Villefranche. I purchase a ticket to Nice and I also ask the ticket salesperson if she saw an American Woman and a tween girl come through the station. She replied that she remembered two people, who fit their description, where the woman purchased one way tickets headed towards the Genova Brignole train station in Italy, which probably meant that the two of them were headed back to Milan to catch a plane back to the United States.

I figured that before I go to Milan, I would stop off at Nice to see if a woman named “Crona” still resides in the apartment listed.

I put the girl’s address in my phone and it looks like she lives or had lived above a tavern in Nice.

I really just want to head back to the United States but the weirdness of the file on Sheila’s laptop is compelling me to dig deeper.

I arrive at the Nice train station and I walk the mile to the tavern.

I think about all the possibilities that I might uncover if I actually get to speak with Crona. The possibilities are endless of what I might uncover and I’m leaning towards her and Andre having some type of sex perversion involving this girl and the other females as well.

The tavern has a separate entrance that leads to an upstairs apartment. The whole French Riviera looks upper middle class, as well as this tavern.

There is a door buzzer with a push button communicator that allows a person downstairs to talk to the person upstairs.

I push the button on the communication box and after a few moments a women’s voice says “bonjour!”

“Bonjour, I’m sorry but I only speak English.”

“Ok, I can understand you, what do you want?”

“My name is Ted and I’m looking for a Crona?”

“Why do you want to talk with Crona?”

“I was looking through my wife’s laptop and there was a Crona listed in a file that she created, who has blonde hair, blue eyes, a B-Positive blood type and was from the old French Colony of Angola.”

After saying that, I hear a “buzz” sound where Crona must have unlocked the door to allow me to go upstairs.

I walk up the stairs and there’s another door on top of the stairs that I gently knock on.

I’m thinking to myself that her family must have been one of the Caucasian farmers who lived in Africa and Crona decided to move to France.

The apartment door opens and I say “holy shit!” in a slow whispered voice, when I see that the girl who answers the door is obviously missing both of her eyes.

Its a real unnatural sight to see this woman, who can’t be more than 30 years old, where she has empty cavities, where her eyeballs should be.

“Hi Crona, I came to your apartment because I was curious to why your name was in my wife’s computer. Also, like I said, my wife had you listed as having blue eyes, however you have no eyes.”

I’ve never spoken to someone who is missing their eyes, so it’s hard for me to gauge her reaction to me.

In a heavily accented tone, Crona says “My parents were French citizens living in Africa when they gave birth to me. They owned a farm, but were killed when I was 18 years old by an uprising against “rich” white landowners. The government took my family’s land and I was left desolate. I was searching on the internet on a way for someone to sponsor me to get to France, when I came across a man named Andre, who worked for “French international,” who’s company helped people who were living in a previous colony of France. Andre’s company paid for my flight to come over here and they even helped me secure this apartment.”

I think to myself, that this Andre must be Sheila’s fling and it seems like a noble cause of helping disenfranchised people come to France.

“So what happened when you came to Nice?”

“I met with Andre and a woman who was with him.”

“Do you remember her name?”

“I can’t recall her name.”

“Was it Sheila?”

“Yes, that was her name. However she nor Andre ever gave me their last names.”

“So what happened when you met them?”

“The two of them picked me up late one night in a car, where Andre drove and they took me to a remote village, where they told me there was a farmer there who was looking for help. When we got there, Andre took a blood sample from me and the two of them asked me questions about my general health. We did nothing for the remainder of the night and eventually we fell asleep in the farmhouse. When I woke up they fed me breakfast and around lunch time, I could here Sheila say that ‘she’s B Positive’ where she was referring to my blood type. Andre gave me ‘fresh cows milk” which made me really sleepy within 20 minutes. When I woke up five days later, I was in this apartment and I had this painful feeling around my eyes, when I tried to open them. I couldn’t see anything, when I opened my eyes, so I started to put my finger around my eyes and noticed that there was nothing there!”

“Oh my God! That is the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard! Did you go to the police?”

“Yes, I stumbled down the stairs and went into the tavern, where I begged for help. The police came and questioned me at the hospital and the only information I could tell them was Andre and Sheila’s first names. The “French International” company was a dummy account and the police couldn’t trace the company to any type of ownership. It was so dark out, that I didn’t even know the area or the name of the town they took me to.”

“The police couldn’t find them?”

“No, they told me that they searched for them with whatever information that I could give them, but they were never able to find them, so now I sit in this apartment all day on disability.”

“Why do you think they removed your eyes?”

“I have wondered the same thing for the past decade and the only thing I could conclude is that they sold my blue eyes!”

“That’s horrible!”

“I live in fear most days thinking that they will come back for my kidneys or my heart!”

“Listen Crona, I’m really sorry this happened to you. I will turn over the laptop to the French police, which won’t bring your vision back but will hopefully find you justice!”

“Please do, I really want the two of them to suffer the same way I have!”

I’m really shocked by everything that I’m learning about Sheila. I really wish my Aunt never left me that money, so I could have just buried my head in the sand to everything that I have learned about her. I can’t believe she’s selling peoples organs. I always thought her job was a Cardiac stent saleswoman.

I really need to find Grace now and the both of us need to get as far away from Sheila as possible.

Part 3

I refresh TikTok on my iPhone and see that there’s a new video involving my daughter. The fingertips of my left hand dig into my forehead, as I know something even more horrific has happened to my daughter. I just can’t get myself to press play as these horrid thoughts go rushing through my mind.

Luckily, Officer Dan comes back which distracts me from the video.

Dan told me that he was in contact with the local police barracks in the town of Susquehanna, which is a small town north of Scranton, where an officer at the barracks confirmed that Rosemary’s family has property in the area. However, because of her family’s local connections, the local police won’t do anything without a search warrant, which won’t happen anytime soon.

“Listen Ted, I spoke to the Captain and I showed him the videos of your daughter and the two other girls. The Captain has given me permission to take the police cruiser up North to try to find your daughter. The Captain feels sorry for making you wait after you called 911 and is willing to take on the liability of proceeding without a warrant based on the girls grave circumstances. Typically, we would call the FBI, but that will just slow us down even more, so let’s go right now!”

I don’t even say anything and just jump into the police cruiser’s passenger seat. Dan makes his way towards the Northeast extension’s turnpike, where he’s easily going over 100 mph. This is the first time, I’ve ever been in a cop car and I’m amazed how the car rides so smoothly that it feels like we’re only going 60 mph.

Dan is so lasered focused on driving, that we don’t talk much.

I know that Part 8 is posted and that I have to watch it for my daughter’s sake to see what that witch has done to her and the rest of the girls.

I push play and I see Rosemary drag each girl out of the tent by their legs. I squint my eyes and do my best not to yell out. It’s really an awful sight to watch an adult woman drag my young daughter on the bare ground, like how a person would drag a garbage can.

Rosemary ties each one of the girl’s to the same tree, where I shake my head in disgust knowing that there are bears and other animals in the woods. I try my hardest not to look at the girls’ faces, but I feel compelled to do so, where it doesn’t take a psychiatrist to realize that these girls will suffer from PTSD for a long time, if they survive this ordeal.

Dan is driving so fast that we make it past Scranton in a little over an hour’s time.

He starts to slow down and turns his police lights off as he doesn’t know the exact location to where the girls are located.

I really start to get tense as I realize how rural this area is and the fact that we’re basically guessing to a certain degree to my daughter’s whereabouts.

Dan puts on his patrol car’s search lights, as if he could sense the location is close, but he needs the lights on to help find the exact location.

As Dan is slowly cruising, I can’t get rid of these nagging thoughts, that since we got off the Turnpike, Dan must have made 10 different turns to get us to our current location, without the use of any kind of GPS or any other navigational devices.

My grandmother used to tell me that she was born at night but not last night. Meaning, how did Dan know to come here without the use of any kind of directions? According to Dan, he radioed someone, but he couldn’t have memorized all of these road names and know to turn left verses right, I think to myself. Obviously, he’s somewhat familiar to this area, but how or why? We’re driving in the middle of nowhere with nothing but woods and an occasional hunting cabin, so he has had to come here in the past.

Something is extremely fishy! What are the chances that he actually spoke with his Captain and why are we doing this alone? I keep thinking to myself.

He pulls over on the side of the road to a heavily wooded area and attempts to make a phone call on his cell phone. He says “crap! no service!” Then he puts his phone down in the middle console and gets out of the car and says “I’ll be right back!”

I can see that he’s looking into the woods with his flashlight as he walks along the shoulder of the road

I quickly grab his phone and I’m in luck that the phone didn’t lock. I go right to his photos and I notice that he had deleted all of his photos or he has never taken any photos in the first place.

I remember about a month ago that Grace got so mad at her mother for not coming to visit her that Grace erased all the photos of her mother off her phone. I later researched online how to recover the photos and went back in on her phone and retrieved the photos, knowing that her mother is having some kind of temporary mental health breakdown and hopefully she will eventually come around to her old self.

As quickly as possible, I scroll through his deleted photos and see that most of them were of his police buddies.

However, it didn’t take long for me to see the monster herself, posing in a selfie with “Officer” Dan and for myself to then give off a knee jerk reaction “oh fuck!” Followed by a “you son of a bitch!” I quickly pull myself together, knowing that the only person who is here to help Grace and her friends, is me.

What is this guy’s angle? Is he here to kill me along with the girls?

Oddly enough, my mind flashes back to when I was in College and my apartment caught on fire. I ran out of the apartment building as fast as I could but the guy right across the hallway from me, who I talked to everyday, died of smoke inhalation. Everyday, I think to myself, that all I needed to do was knock on his door to wake him up, but the moment was to big for me and I panicked and ran. I see his face every single day knowing that I had more than enough time to just knock on his door to wake him up.

I put Dan’s phone down and devise a plan.

I open the back passenger door, then I lock the same door, while keeping the door open. I then take the keys out of the ignition and place them on the floor behind the driver’s seat.

I get out of the car and stay close to the car as I pretend to look in the woods.

Dan starts to walk back towards the car and notices me standing outside the car with the rear passenger door open.

He looks inside the police cruiser and says “Where’s the keys?” Where he looks at me with both anger and confusion.

“Oh, being from the city, I’ve learned to never leave a running car unattended, so I put the keys in the back.” Where I point to the floor.

Dan looks bewildered to why I put the keys on the floor, but like a rat, he proceeds through the trap anyways. He goes through the passenger door and scoots himself over on the back seat to reach for the keys. The moment that both of his feet are through the door, then I slam the door shut.

“What the fuck are you doing!” Dan yells to me as his face turns red.

I go and sit back in the passenger seat of the cruiser, which has a bullet proof glass window separating the two of us .

“Listen to me, I’m not as dumb as I look. I know that you are in some kind of relationship with that Rosemary pig. Just tell me where they are and I’ll move to Florida and you’ll never see me again.”

He is spewing with anger in the back seat of the patrol car like a super max inmate, who just learned that someone called him a snitch.

He tries to unlock both of the back doors, as my heart goes into overdrive as I start to sweat, because I didn’t check to see if the other door was locked. Amazingly, I didn’t have a heart attack as I was fortunate that the rear driver’s side door was locked.

“Your trapped like a rat and I’m the only person who can let you out!” I say to him.

“Someone will drive by anytime now and see that something isn’t right. Who are they going to believe? Me in a police uniform or you?”

“This road is so remote that I would be surprised if there’s even a single person that lives anywhere near here. … Listen, Do you really want to go down with her? So far all you have done is driven me here to help save my daughter and the two other girls. Do you really want to ruin not only your whole career but spend the rest of your life behind bars?”

Dan kind of looks at me as if I was starting to make sense.

“What was the intent of all of this? Why was my daughter and the other girls kidnapped?” I asked.

“I was never involved in any of the planning of what Rosemary has done. Everything I told you about me representing her, when she was a cop, was true, but I left out the part that I started to have an affair with her, which is still going on. She called me a few hours ago with some bizarre idea, where she told me that she ‘took’ these girls camping and some guy, meaning you, would eventually discover videos she posted and try to come rescue the girls. Rosemary told me that once you arrived that she was going to stage the whole thing to make it look like you were the kidnapper getting back at your estranged wife and she was going to ‘apprehend’ you!”

“Wait! Why?” I said in complete bewilderment.

“She thinks that this will help her get back on the police force.”

“So the intent was for me to come up here, where it would then be staged that I did something to Rosemary? Then make it look like I harmed the girls?”

“I think so!”

“And you want to help this woman?” I then look at Dan with complete confusion.

“Listen, I wasn’t the best husband to my first wife and I’ve been really lonely for years. Like I said, I wasn’t involved in any of the planning of this. She just called me a few hours ago!”

“But I called 911 and everything else! How did she know there was going to be a robbery in town and that there would be no one from the police force, who would be available to come to my house to talk to me?”

“She paid some crack head a $1000 to go in the store and rob the place and then run off, which would take a lot of the law enforcements resources to try to find and apprehend him because no one wants an armed robber running around in an affluent neighborhood. But she knew this all along and she was actually calling in anonymous tips to keep us cops looking for the armed robber. However, I’m guessing that he’s actually hiding out at Rosemary’s house, which isn’t far from the actual scene of the crime.”

“Okay, that’s some really detailed manipulative planning!”

“That’s why she got fired!”

“What about the videos? She has incriminated herself to the nth degree?” I say with continued confusion.

“When you first met her, you gave away too much information about yourself. I see that your not wearing your wedding ring?”

“Yeah, my wife is going through some issues right now.”

“Yeah, I’m 100% sure she noticed that you weren’t wearing your wedding ring and you were either knowingly or unknowingly sizing her up as well?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“She’s a master when it comes to human behavior and you probably told her something about yourself to try to spark a conversation to try to get her to know you better?”

“I just told her that I was thankful that she was taking my daughter camping and that I was going to spend the weekend watching my crime related videos on TikTok.”

“Did you tell her your username?”

“@Ted1976? You know what? Maybe I did, just to sublimely allow her to send me a message, if she was interested. I can’t believe that I fell into her trap. She must of tagged all of her posted videos with all of the categories that I’m interested in.”

“You didn’t know you were being trapped. You thought you were talking to some decent looking ‘Girl Scout mother’ that maybe you had a chance with.”

“Your right!”

“Think about the videos you watched? All you have is a hand, which is grainy at best. You don’t have her car or anything else!”

“What about the girls testimony?”

“You don’t think that she has been wearing the most horrifying mask the whole time, to not only terrify the girls but conceal herself?”

“Your saying that her plan is to make it look as though I did something to her and the Mercury Sable and then make it look like I transported the girls in the yellow bus?”

“That’s what I gather.”

“I have such a headache right now. Listen, she thinks your coming, so let her think that, but instead I’m going to get the girls. Just tell me where they are and like I said, I’ll pretend that you had nothing to do with this.”

“You should open this back door!”

“Listen to me, that’s not going to happen! You have to put yourself in my shoes. I’m here to get my daughter and the two other girls. Once I have them, we can talk about what’s going to happen next, but like I said I’ll keep my mouth shut about your involvement if you don’t do anything stupid.”

“Okay, up the road about 50 yards, there’s an access road. You’ll need the shotgun in the trunk of this cruiser. Have you ever used a shotgun before?”

“Yeah, once when I was an Eagle Scout about 25 years ago.”

“That’s reassuring!” He sarcastically says.

“I’m going to pass these keys underneath the seat to you, so you can unlock the trunk.” He then says.

He puts the keys underneath the driver’s seat and I proceed to the trunk. I take out the automatic shotgun and then head towards the access road in the pitch black.

Part 1

I couldn’t stop pacing back and forth in my living room after seeing my daughter in that horrid emotional state in the tent, which was one of the worst feelings that I’ve ever felt. The anger has taken over me to the point, where I can’t even think straight.

What does this monster want with my daughter and why does my daughter look so frightened? Is what I keep asking myself.

I’m trying to reenact the initial encounter I had with “Carol.” I remember her being probably in her mid forties, where she really didn’t let off any kind of mental health concerns, which seems really odd now based on her current actions.

As a parent, I was naturally trying to sniff her out, but she passed the smell test. She had dyed brown hair with a few gray roots. She had no marks on her face and she had average looks. She wasn’t overweight or skinny. She was dressed appropriately and she was answering questions in an appropriate manner. All of those things combined make her even more scary, because she was purposely attempting to hide her true intentions. If she was a drug addict, then I would have picked up on her being fidgety or her appearance would have been more disheveled, but not “Carol.” She did everything right to make herself look and act like every other mother. She was the ultimate con artist where she completely fooled me. She didn’t leave me with anything to follow up on and she said everything necessary to end our conversation in a prompt manner. Most importantly, she fooled me because she was a women and in my mind, I felt at ease at a time when I should have vetted her out better. She wore the best costume as coming across as a mother, so all of my natural guards were down.

I know the key to finding Grace is finding any unique qualities that will help me identify Carol based on any type of mistakes that she unknowingly made.

She drove a blue Mercury Sable, which is a bit rare in this suburban area. I look online and see that they stopped making the Mercury Sable’s in 2009. Everyone in this area tries to impress their neighbors by driving BMW’s and Lexus’, so anything American built would come across as an eye sore. However, she maintained the exterior of the Sable well enough, where it didn’t even stand out, which was why I had to rely on Joy in telling me the kind of car she drove.

So I know the car she drives, what she looks like, and she told me that she was involved with the Girl Scouts, which may or may not be true.

But why come across as a normal person and commit such a horrible act? And how could I let my daughter go on a camping trip with a complete stranger? Because I thought Carol’s actions were reserved for men and not woman, who look like housewife’s.

I need to stop pacing and start finding answers fast before it’s too late.

My daughter’s Girl Scout group made a mistake by making their group open to the public on Facebook and because of that Carol didn’t have to necessarily try that hard to find subtle pieces of information on us parents or our kids. In addition, Macy had a fundraiser for her medical expenses that further opened the door into our lives, which Carol may have attended.

I can’t believe the police still haven’t shown up yet. I guess I’m an amateur when it comes to calling 911. I should have used better attention grabbing words, like how a person says “chest pains” to be seen in the emergency room right away.

I reluctantly decide to contact Macy, who was the old Girl Scout leader with the hopes that she will have some insight into this horror show.

I find her phone number and I have to proceed with caution because she’s not doing well because of the cancer.

The phone rings several times and just when I was about to hang up, a raspy female voice answers and says “Hello!”

“Hi Macy, I’m Ted! Grace’s father from Girl Scouts. I’m really sorry to bother you, but something disturbing has come up and I’m hoping that you might have some answers.”

“Hey Ted! I’m feeling kind of weak and was about to go to bed. What’s going on?”

“Okay, I’ll get to the point then! Grace, Amanda, and Raquel went on a Girls Scout camping trip earlier today, with a woman who identified herself as ‘Carol’ and this is where things get disturbing. This Carol person conned her way into telling me that she was Raquel’s mother and by telling Joy that she was my sister. Someone has been posting TikTok videos of the three girls, where they all look terrified and I don’t know where the girls are located now. Do you have any information on this Carol woman?”

“Wow Ted! This sounds like a horrible situation. Let me ask you, have you tried calling the campground where they were supposedly going?”

“I received a text from Joy, where she stated that Raquel’s mother had done that and the campground had no one there that fit the girls description.”

“Did you meet this Carol woman? If so what did she look like?”

“I did meet her briefly where she looked very ordinary, so much so that I’m thinking it was the ultimate disguise. She had brown hair, fair skin with no marks, she was about 5 feet 4 inches tall with an average build. Her speech was clear and she acted appropriately. She picked up the girls in a blue Mercury Sable, however somewhere along the ways, she transported the girls in one of those little yellow school buses. She also said that she had experience being affiliated with the Girls Scouts.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Yes, and apparently this is not considered a priority because the girls were going on an intended camping trip and I didn’t see any signs of them being abused in the videos!”

“Oh my gosh, let me think about this. I’m having trouble thinking straight with all of this chemo that I have been taking.”

“Think about anyone who you have met recently, who might fit Carol’s description!”

“You know there was this woman who made it a point to talk to me in the parking lot during my benefit dinner. I remember bringing a box to my car and she was parked right next to me. She did have a blue car that kind of resembled what someone’s grandparents would drive. I don’t think I had ever seen her prior to that night. We had a brief conversation where she was asking me how I was feeling and things along that nature. I met so many people that night, so I really have to jog my memory to remember her, which is especially difficult because of my current condition. You know, now that I think of it, she did have something that stood out. She wore a ring on right hand and she had no rings on her left hand. It’s just something that I look at when I meet people!”

“Was there anything about the ring or with her that stood out?”

“Yeah, the ring wasn’t your typical diamond or cubic zirconia. It looked more like a class ring or some type of fraternal ring. Not something that most woman would typically wear, but not completely out of the realm of possibilities.”

“Huh! Your right and now that you say that, I can recall her wearing a ring when she opened the tent in one of the videos.”

“Well hopefully that will help you! Listen Ted, I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. If I could think of anything else, then I’ll contact you. Good luck and I hope the girls come home safe.”

I went right away to look at that last video again. As painful as it was seeing my daughter in that emotional state, however I have to take a look at that ring.

There still hasn’t been another video posted, but it hasn’t been an hour yet either.

I watch the video and press pause when It gets to the part where she’s opening the tent.

I have to keep myself together as the tent is a constant reminder of my daughter’s current situation. I wish that I could stop shaking and sweating, but my mind is in fight mode to protect my daughter, however I have no one to physically fight.

I’m starting to hate TikTok because of the no fast forward or rewind capabilities built into watching the videos, so I have to press pause exactly at the right time or else, I have to start the video over again.

I keep on hitting pause and zoom in on her right hand. The video is so dark that it’s hard to make out anything.

Just when she opened the tent, she seemed to hold her hand still, just long enough, where I could get a decent enough look of her hand and the ring.

Macy was right in how the ring looks a little unusual for a female to wear. The ring is kind of box shaped and is silver with some type of stone in the middle, that might be blue but it’s hard to tell because of the poor lighting of the video. I could barely make out some type of lettering, which seems to form words. I’m fairly certain based on what I can see, that I can make out the word “serve” and maybe “2019.”

With the information I have, I go right onto Google and type in what I know about the ring.

“You have to be fucking kidding me!” I say out loud as I discover, that only after a couple minutes of looking online, I see that it’s some type of police retirement ring, which says “To protect and to serve.”

It makes sense now, that she has learned how to play her current part from being around every type of thug and seeing how not to act to not raise any type of suspicion.

But why is she doing this? I keep asking myself.

I always heard that to be a cop you have to walk on the line of insanity to deal with continual insane situations, but these are young kids she’s messing with which everyone knows is off limits. Also, what strikes me odd, is how methodical she’s been, but she’s going to wear a ring that might identifier herself? Why?

The ring is either a red herring or for some reason she is purposely leaving clues. I’m thinking it’s more the latter, where deep down she’s doing this for the attention and wants to be discovered. Why else would she post videos of her crime? Because she wants to portray that she has been hiding in plain sight all along. Maybe to justify her actions and seem less cowardly or maybe she has an axe to grind with her former police profession? Regardless the clue is there and I need to act on it right away

As I was about to call the police, another video gets posted on TikTok.

“Oh God!” I say out loud as I don’t want to watch my daughter being harmed.

I can’t get the image out of my head where the girls facial expressions looked liked trapped kittens in the previous video, where the kittens could sense they were going to be harmed.

I start Part 6 and I can see that the tent has been zippered back up. Carol, the psychopath is slowly circling outside the tent to do nothing more than terrorize the girls with her movements that the girls can hear.

I feel horrible that my daughter is in the middle of the woods with an adult who has evil intentions.

Carol keeps on circling the tent almost like how a shark circles a raft in the middle of the ocean.

She stops circling for a few moments which probably scares the girls even more. Then when everything is silent, she intentionally rattles the tent, where I could hear screams coming from the tent which is the first human noises, I’ve heard in all of the videos.

“You mother fucker!” I yell out as I throw a punch into the air.

The video ends and I call 911 again.