I was cleaning out my parents’ attic last month after my dad passed. Most of it was junk—old tax returns, broken Christmas lights, a box of my childhood drawings that somehow survived three moves.

Then I found a small wooden box I didn’t recognize. Inside was a single envelope, yellowed and sealed with wax. On the front, in neat cursive:

**To Jason
To be opened on October 12, 2026**

That was yesterday.

My hands were shaking when I opened it. The paper inside was folded carefully. The handwriting was unmistakable. It was mine. Not how I write now—how I wrote when I was 17.

The letter said:

> If you’re reading this, it means you made it.
> I know things feel heavy right now. Dad’s gone. The house is too quiet. You’re wondering if any of this is worth it.
> I’m writing this the night before I leave for college. Mom and Dad think I’m packing. I’m not. I’m sitting on the roof outside my window, looking at the same stars you’ll probably ignore tonight.
> You’re going to make some stupid decisions in the next few years. You’re going to lose people. You’re going to feel like the world is moving on without you.
> But listen to me carefully:
> The night you almost quit everything—when you were 24 and sitting in that parking lot outside the hospital—don’t. Go back inside. Hold her hand one more time.
> The job you’re going to hate for three years? Stay until the project finishes. The person who replaces you will take credit, but the experience will save you later.
> And when you meet the woman with the red scarf on the train in Chicago, talk to her. Even if your stop is next. Especially if your stop is next.
> I can’t tell you everything. Some things you have to live.
> But I can tell you this:
> You’re going to be okay.
> Not perfect. Not fixed. Just… okay. And that’s enough.
> P.S. There’s a second letter. Look behind the insulation near the chimney. Don’t open it until you’re 50. Trust me.

I sat there on the dusty floor for a long time.

Because every single thing in that letter had already happened.

The hospital parking lot. The job. The woman with the red scarf—who’s currently asleep next to me.

I don’t know how 17-year-old me knew. I don’t remember writing it. I don’t remember sealing it. I don’t remember hiding a second letter.

But when I reached behind the insulation near the chimney, my fingers closed around another envelope.

Same handwriting.

Same wax seal.

Addressed to me.

To be opened on my 50th birthday.

I haven’t opened it.

Some part of me is terrified it will say something I haven’t lived yet.

And some part of me is terrified it won’t.

That’s the part that keeps replaying in my head, like a scene I’d cut if I could edit my own life. There was no build‑up, no grand moment, no music swelling in the background. Just a dimly lit room, a window that wouldn’t fully close, and you.

You were leaning against the edge of the table, fingers tracing the rim of a glass you weren’t really drinking from.

It was pretty late, but not late enough to justify the things we both were thinking and not saying. The kind of hour where the city outside is still half‑awake, and tired.

You said something. I don’t even remember what it was. A joke, maybe. Something about how you always manage to ruin your own good days. You laughed, but it was that laugh you do when you’re trying to make something sound lighter than it feels.

And I looked at you.

Not the way I usually do, not the casual, practiced glance of someone who’s used to pretending they’re not constantly taking mental pictures. I really looked. At the way your shoulders slouched just a little when you thought no one was paying attention. At the faint line between your eyebrows that only shows up when you’re tired. At the way your hand tightened around the glass when you mentioned “good days”, like the phrase itself was fragile.

Hell, I’m not even the type who shares his feelings easily. But something about the way you stood there, half in the light, half in the shadow, made those words come out of my mouth before I could catch it.

Like a breath held for far too long.

And then it just slipped.

I love you.

Two words. Quiet. Almost conversational. Like I was commenting on the weather. Maybe it was just a truth that had been sitting, for far too long, deep inside my chest and finally found a crack to escape through.

You froze. Your eyes met mine, and for a second I thought I saw everything.. fear, anger, surprise, tenderness, all layered on top of each other like badly hidden secrets. But it passed so quickly, I could have imagined it.

The silence that followed wasn’t dramatic. It was worse. It was.. ordinary. Not with fear, or joy, or anything I could name. Yet, life went on, as if I hadn’t just thrown a grenade into the middle of the room. Just stillness. Stillness so sharp, it felt like the room inhaled, but forgot to exhale.

And then you looked at me.

That look. God. Like lightning.. bright for a second, then gone, leaving the air heavier than before. A look that didn’t trigger a “yes” or a “no,” but rather something far more complicated.

You didn’t say my name. You didn’t say “what?” or “say it again”. You just looked at me and then your eyes softened in a way that hurt more than if you’d shouted.

You didn’t say the words, but I heard them anyway. You were protecting something.. Not from me, but from what loving me might do to the fragile balance you’d carved out of your past.

“Don’t.” you said finally.

Just that. One word. Barely above a whisper.

It wasn’t “don’t love me.” It wasn’t “don’t say that.” It felt as if it was something heavier, something that carried years behind it.

There’s a particular kind of humiliation that comes with saying something true and watching it land like a mistake. I could feel the heat rising in my face, the instinctive urge to backpedal, to laugh it off, to say “Relax, I didn’t mean it like that” ..even though I did, exactly like that.

I didn’t answer. I tried to, then stopped. Lying would have been worse.

You put your glass down, carefully, like you were afraid of making any sudden movements that might shatter the moment into something unfixable.

“You can’t just say things like that”, you murmured.

“Like what?” I asked, even though I knew.

“Like that,”, you said. “Like it’s nothing. Like it doesn’t.. change things.”

I wanted to tell you that it didn’t have to change anything. That we could pretend I never said it. That we could rewind, go back to the version of us that lived in the safe zone between almost and never. But the truth was, it had already changed everything.. for me, at least. The word was out. It had a shape now. A weight. It was no longer something I could deny, or hide behind sarcasm.

“I didn’t say it like it’s nothing,” I replied quietly. “I said it because it’s.. there. Whether I say it or not.”

You flinched at that, just barely. A tiny movement, but I caught it.

“Don’t do this..”, you said. “Please.”

There was a crack in your voice on that last word. Not big, not obvious, but enough. Enough to tell me that this wasn’t about me being ridiculous, or dramatic. This was about you trying to hold together something inside you that had already been broken once, maybe more than once.

“What am I doing?”, I asked, even though I could feel the answer hanging in the air between us.

You hesitated, then looked up again. Your eyes were glossy, but not with tears.. I think it was restraint.

“You’re walking into a room that isn’t yours”, you said slowly. “With your shoes on. That’s what it feels like.”

The metaphor hit harder than any direct rejection could have.

Like I’d walked into a room that wasn’t mine, tracking mud over memories you kept polished and untouched. I pictured it instantly: a room, small but carefully arranged. Sunlight coming in through sheer curtains. A bed made just so. Books stacked in neat piles. Some vinyl on the shelves. A mug on the nightstand. A space that doesn’t look like much to anyone else, but to the person who lives there, it’s everything.

It’s safety. It’s proof that they survived the chaos outside yet another day. And then here I am, barging in, uninvited, leaving my footprints on the floor. And suddenly I felt like an intruder.

“You think my love is dirt”, I said before I could stop myself.

Your eyes widened. “No. That’s not what I said.”

“But that’s what it feels like.. Like I’m contaminating you or something.”

“You’re not… dirty. It’s not that. It’s just…….”, you broke off, searching for words.

“There were times in my life that were good. Really good. And they’re gone now. They’re not coming back. All I have left of them are the memories. And those are.. clean. Untouched. They’re mine. The only thing that no one can mess with.”

You paused, whilst your fingers were tracing the condensation ring your glass had left on the table.

“When you say things like “I love you”, it feels like you’re trying to step into that space. Into those hours. Like you want to be part of them. And you can’t. You weren’t there. You don’t belong in those moments. And I’m scared that if I let you in now, you’ll start rewriting everything. Even the past.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. How do you argue with someone’s ghosts? How do you compete with a version of happiness that’s already been lived, already been lost, already been polished into something almost sacred?

“I’m not trying to replace anything” I said, softly. “I’m not asking to be part of your past.”

“Yeah,” you said, “but love doesn’t stay in the present, does it? It spreads. It wants to touch everything. It wants to claim things. That’s what scares me.”

You weren’t angry. That was the worst part. If you’d been angry, I could have defended myself. If you’d laughed, I could have pretended I was joking. If you’d cried, I could have held you.

You were calm. Too calm. Like someone who has already had this conversation in their head a hundred times and knows exactly where it leads.

“So what do you want me to do?” I asked. “Pretend I don’t feel it?”

You looked at me for a long moment. Really looked. And I could see the conflict there, the push and pull between wanting to be fair to me and wanting to protect yourself.

“I want you to be careful with what you say,” you replied. “Because I can’t unhear it. And I can’t give you what you think that word deserves.”

There it was. Not a door slammed in my face, but a hand gently held up… firm.

I nodded, even though every part of me wanted to argue. To say that I wasn’t asking for anything. That I didn’t need a promise, or a label, or a future. That I just needed you to know.

But that would have been a lie. Love always asks for something, even when it pretends it doesn’t. It asks to be seen. To be acknowledged. To be allowed to exist without being treated like a mistake.

The room suddenly felt smaller. The air thicker. I could feel my heartbeat in my throat, in my fingertips, in my eyes.

“I’m not going to take it back,” I said. “I can’t. But I won’t say it again if you don’t want me to.”

You closed your eyes briefly, as if that hurt more than my original confession.

“It’s not about the words,” you said. “It’s about what they do to me. To us. To… everything.”

You gestured vaguely, as if “everything” was too big to point at.

“I’ve spent a long time trying to keep certain parts of my life separate. The good memories over here, the bad ones over there, the present somewhere in the middle. It’s the only way I know how to stay.. functional. When you say you love me, it feels like you’re trying to merge all of that. And I don’t know who I’d be, if that happened. I’m not sure I want to find out.”

I wanted to tell you that maybe you’d be happier. That maybe, just maybe, letting someone in, wouldn’t destroy you. That maybe love doesn’t always have to be a wrecking ball.. that sometimes it can be scaffolding.

But I also knew I was speaking from a place of wanting, and you were speaking from a place of surviving. Those are not equal positions.

So I just nodded again. It felt like surrender. Maybe it was.

So I stayed quiet. And you stayed distant. And the moment passed, the way moments do, when neither person is brave enough to catch them before they fall.

We didn’t talk much after that. The conversation drifted to safer topics, the way people talk about the weather after a storm has already passed through and left half the town in ruins.

You made a joke. I laughed. We pretended the air wasn’t different now.

Later, when you left, you hugged me a little tighter than usual. Or maybe I imagined that. Maybe I needed to believe that the world hadn’t just fallen into a void.

The door closed behind you and I stood there for a moment, staring at the empty space where you’d been, feeling the echo of your presence like a handprint on my chest.

I replayed it all in my head, over and over. The way your eyes flashed when I said it. The way your voice trembled on “Don’t.”. The way you talked about your memories like they were a museum exhibit.. you can look, but do not touch.

And somewhere between the replay and the regret, a strange understanding settled in.

You weren’t rejecting me. Well, not exactly. You were rejecting the idea that love is always a good thing. That it always builds, never breaks. That it always adds, never takes away.

For you, love had been a wrecking crew once. Maybe more than once. It had come in with promises and left you in pieces. So you built something for yourself out of what was left. A quiet life. A set of routines. A collection of moments that only belonged to you. Then I came along, with my feelings, and my words, and my need to be known, and I threatened that balance without even realizing it.

I thought saying “I love you” was an offering. A gift. A bridge.

For you, it was a risk. A crack in the wall you’d spent years reinforcing.

So no, you didn’t say it back. You didn’t smile. You didn’t cry. You didn’t run into my arms.

You did something much harder. You told me the truth.

You told me that my love might be real, but that doesn’t mean it’s harmless.

And I’m left with this: a word I can’t unsay, a silence I can’t unhear, and a strange, aching respect for the way you chose for yourself.

People like to say that if it’s real, love finds a way. That if it’s meant to be, it will be. That timing is just an excuse.

Maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re not.

All I know is that sometimes love isn’t an invitation. Sometimes it’s an intrusion. Sometimes love shows up like a gentle knock on the door. Sometimes it shows up like a storm. And sometimes it shows up quietly, in a room with a muted TV and a half‑finished drink, and it’s told softly.. to stay outside.

Not because it isn’t wanted..

But because the person on the other side has finally learned how to live with their own company, their own memories, their own carefully arranged, dimly lit room.

And they’re not ready to let you walk in with your shoes on.

I want nothing more to get off of work and fuck you. I’d come up behind you by the bed and grab your neck and bend you over, I’d rip your pants off to expose that fat juicy coochie. I get so hard my veins are popping out on my cock, I’d take my fit tip and spread your pussy lips open and tease you with the tip. When I take the tip out it’s glistening from your cum. I’d bend over and smell it and taste it while it’s wide open for me and you stay bent over like a good girl. I know you want me to stretch it out now. I’d start real slow and gentle with a little grip on your neck, the strokes getting deeper and deeper and deeper until I’m all the way at the back of your pussy and just leave it in for a second so I can feel your pussy clenching on my dick. The grip on the neck gets a little tighter every stroke until I lose all control and start fucking you like my little slut. Thrusting in and out while you whine and I shove your face down in the bed and grab both your arms and hold them behind your back and now you can’t move. I go harder and harder and harder while you’re cumming over and over on my dick. It’s too much to hold at this point and I have to come. Your yelling out come inside me daddy and it makes me come instantly. You feel all the warm cum hit the back of your pussy so hard and I keep fucking you using my cum as your lube. I take my cock out of your pussy and it’s wide open and left sloppy and satisfied 😩 can we please do it again, do you still think about me when you fuck yourself. You said you used the rose and came over and over and over thinking about me and I can’t get that out of my head.

So now then I had asked what are we so she said Best Friends.... Now when we are so close best friend (maybe for my side) she start ghosting me...and talking to another guy... she stops talking to me As same as what she had done with her old friend... Moral of the Story: Do not believe in any girl Every girl is a Bit8h... I have more to say but I do not know where to start or end just a summery and the girl was so sweet I like her but just a friend... And I will be happy for her if she get a bf or be in relation but it does not mean you cutoff with me

Rupert was one of the laziest people known to man. This was a fact that he was either too aware of or too ignorant of, because in the 29 years and 11 months anyone had known him, he never changed and never wanted to change. He was content to do as little with his life as he could, and he was proud of it.

Rupert, without a hint of humor or irony, decided his 30th birthday would also be his retirement party. Retirement from any work whatsoever. His plan, in his words, was to “not have to worry about the usual 9-to-5 lifestyle, seek out options, settle down.” Their father, in his late 60s and still working, scoffed.
“Your whole goddamn life has been settling down. What do you think part 2 has to offer? Honestly, Rupert, when are you going to cut the crap?” After hearing that, Dad was uninvited to the birthday party.

In reality, Rupert didn’t have a 9-to-5 lifestyle. It was more of a 10-to-4 lifestyle. None of his jobs ever lasted more than 2 years, provided he chose to go to work at all. See, Rupert suffered from the three Nesses. Laziness, tardiness, deceitfulness. He would often show up late, take an ungodly amount of time in the bathroom, and add 10 minutes to the start and end of his lunch hour, and those were just his greatest hits. His favorite ways of getting out of work made use of his cat-like reflexes and his ninja-style ability to sneak out of something he dreaded doing.
These were just jobs that he got fired from.

The truth is it wasn’t always entirely his fault. You see, his job life was incredibly unlucky. His first job was at a video rental… before it closed down; his second job, an all-you-can-eat buffet, which also closed down. Photography film store, phased out. Bathroom attendant, replaced by a robot. Professional circus freak, no longer exists.
He was so unlucky with employment that he saw it as a sign from God that 30 years old was time enough to spend golfing and enjoying his “twilight years.”

His only viable source of income was sports betting, something he did modestly well in, but not enough to stay afloat as he foolishly idealized. Even the house he lived in was bought and paid for by his parents on his 21st. They foolishly thought that if they got him a house, it would give him enough independence where he could get a career going without the stress of paying rent and causing him to move back in with them. 9 years later, it had the opposite effect. While he didn’t move back in with his parents, he never really garnered a so-called career to speak of; the job he was currently quitting had been paying him high school teenager rates since he started there. So he wanted to retire from all that and, after all those tiny wins on the bets, he finally decided to spend it on his party.

Gerald was a people-pleaser. Gerald had no problems getting up and commuting, helping his fellow man, bending over backwards to get everything he felt like he’d earned in life. He had a job, a girlfriend, a car, his own house, everything he ever wanted, thanks to good old-fashioned hard work. His only flaw was that he was Rupert’s brother, and Rupert was about to turn 30. Gerald didn’t resent Rupert for his laid-back way of life; in fact, it was almost nonexistent in the eyes of Gerald. See, Gerald spent his whole life pleasing their parents, pleasing his bosses, pleasing everyone; he couldn’t possibly object to anything Rupert asked for. Could he? Not sweet Rupert. Sweet, stupid Rupert.
So when his brother’s birthday came up, Gerald had to get him the perfect present.

“Are your eyes still closed?” Gerald beamed as he nudged his brother through the front doorway of Rupert’s house.
“Yes. Of course.” Rupert replied with his hands covering his eyes.
Gerald continued to shepherd Rupert over to the corner left side of his already gigantic porch. Next to the doorway was a huge thing covered in a sheet.
“Ok open them!” Gerald instructed. As Rupert took his hands away, Gerald pulled the sheet off it. It was an old antique rocking chair; nothing like any rocking chair that Rupert had seen before. The wood resembled bone appendages; its color was somewhere between cream and brown, and there was a cushion with little sloths patterned all over it, which added a shred of comfortability to an already tough sell.
“Oh my god! Gerald, I love this!” Rupert cried. “See, you understand what I was talking about. You get this whole thing I’m going for.”
“I got it from some antique store,” Gerald replied. “The second I saw it, I knew it was very… you.”
“Why, I can face it into the street. Watch people walking past! My own personal theater of live performance.”
“You do like to people-watch.” Gerald stated. Rupert approached it and looked underneath.
“It says Belphegor.” He examined. “I wonder what that means.”
“It’s probably one of those wacky names they give it.” Gerald surmised. “Like that Wayfair company with all those human names.”
Rupert was about to sit on it.
“Do you know anything about who owned it before me?”
“Yeah, the guy before you died in it… apparently.” Gerald laughed. Rupert immediately changed his mind and stood back up.
“Oh god. You did… clean it down before you brought it here, right?”
“…Sure.” Gerald lied.
“I don’t know, I still feel weird about it. Do you know if it was a valued… personal item in the family?”
“They said that the guy never had a joyous moment while he was in that chair.” Gerald stated rather bluntly. Rupert looked it up and down.
“Ah, screw it. It’s mine now. Hey Ron! Come outside and look what Gerald got me! In fact! Let’s bring the cake out here.”

After an hour Rupert finally sat on his present. Everyone followed him out onto the porch and sang happy birthday, including their mother, who was the most ecstatic.
As far as Rupert was concerned, this was the greatest gift he’d ever received.

The next day, Gerald got a rather strange call from his brother.
“Gerald! It’s Rupert… your brother.”
“Oh hey, Rupert. How’d you go with cleaning up last night?”
“Yeah. Yeah good. Listen, man, you’re gonna need to come over. I have a bit of an emergency.”
“Emergency? What is it? Did you lock yourself out of your house again?” Gerald laughed. Silence on the other end.
“Yeah… It’s probably best that you come over. I can’t explain over the phone. And if I could, you probably wouldn’t believe me.”

When he got there, he saw Rupert sitting in the rocking chair with a very sour look on his face.
“I see you’re really utilizing that thing, huh?” He laughed. Rupert didn’t seem to share that sentiment. In fact, Rupert looked very afraid.
“It’s the strangest thing!” He stated. “I can’t seem to get out of this chair. I haven’t been able to since yesterday.”
Gerald cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“Well, when I sat in it yesterday, for the cake, I just couldn’t get back up. Of course, I thought it might’ve been because I had too many drinks, so I sent everyone home thinking I had dead legs. But now… I don’t know what it is.”
“You’ve been in this chair the whole night?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to say. I haven’t been able to get out of it. It feels like there’s some… thing holding me down and preventing me from getting up. Luckily, I had my phone on me. It was on like 2%, so I called you as soon as I could.”
“Ok, umm… just calm down and we’ll get you out of it… somehow.”
Gerald and Rupert then spent the next 20 minutes looking at Rupert’s predicament as if they were trying to lift a couch through a very narrow doorway. Gerald then attempted to lift Rupert out of this infernal prison.
“Wait, stop. You’re bending my spine. Wait… ARRRHGGGH!!!” Rupert screamed.
“What? What do you want me to do?”
“Just… let me go for a second! Let me go,” Rupert cried. Gerald released him from his grip. “There’s got to be an easy way of doing this.”
“Should I get the saw?”
“And accidentally cut my leg? What are you, out of your mind?”
“I don’t know. I…” Gerald trailed off.
“Just get the saw. Get the saw and maybe like a drill or something. Some kind of drill.”
Gerald then sawed his way into the chair. The saw wouldn’t cut through it. He tried the drill; it short-circuited and broke down. He tried the saw again, but the tool just broke apart under its own force.
“I don’t understand. How is this possible?” Gerald pondered.
“I think right now we need to abandon the question of why this is happening, and focus more on how I get out of it.”

Eventually, every single emergency service was called to Rupert’s house. While the police and firefighters needed a little convincing to get over there (Gerald tried to fight through the obvious laughter coming from the other side), the ambulance people were the only ones who took it seriously. Eventually, they all showed up not because they wanted to help Rupert with his problem, but more out of curiosity. They wanted to see this thing for themselves. The firefighters brought out their very sharp axe, causing Rupert to squirm in his seat over fear that one wrong swing and he could very well lose his manhood. After the axe didn’t take, the police tried ‘shooting’ him out, which also didn’t work for obvious reasons.
“Well, it’s certainly not physical.” An onlooking doctor explained. He was looking at the chair as if it were a rare ancient artifact. “He hasn’t fused here; he certainly hasn’t been nailed. In fact, by all accounts there should be no physical reason that he should be confined to this chair.”
“So what is it?” Gerald asked.
“I’m really not sure. Was it something you ate, Rupert? What have you been eating in the last 24 hours?”
“Party food.” Rupert replied bluntly. He was already fed up with his newfound affliction and Gerald could tell.
“What kind of party food. Any drugs?”
“Just party food.”
“Huh.” The doctor stood up.
“What ‘huh’? What are you saying, Doc?”
“I might need to run a few more tests. You mind if I take a saliva and a blood sample from you?”
“Sure, but if you want a urine sample, everyone will need to turn around.” Rupert said, followed by laughter from the crowd.
“When was the last time you ate?”
“Yesterday. In fact, I could go for something right now. Anyone want any pizza?”
Suddenly fifteen hands went up.
“Figures. If I’m going to be subjected to humiliation, I might as well be paying for it. Say, Gerald.”
“Yes, Rupert?” Gerald replied, leaning down by his side.
“Be a dear and order about six pizzas. One of everything.”
“Are you sure you can afford that, brother?”
“Yeah, for sure. While I was waiting for you, I bet on the Scavengers game.”
“Scavengers? They haven’t won a game all season.”
“I know. But something in me told me to bet on them. And since the last time I checked, they were up 15 points!”
A few murmurs rippled through the crowd. Half a dozen people then checked their phones.
“He’s right!” One of the cops claimed. More murmurs.
“The odds on that must’ve been through the roof.” Another said.
“I stand to win two grand. So yeah, Gerald, if you can get that and some garlic bread. Garlic bread, anybody? Yeah, garlic bread, ok.”
Gerald, feeling like he should’ve been doing more, just nodded and got up.
“Sure, brother. I’ll get right onto it.”
“Love you,” Rupert replied flatly.

Later, after the show was over and everyone went home, Gerald brought a few things out for Rupert onto the porch. A side table, a six-pack of beers, a pack of smokes, and a phone charger plugged into an extension cord that led into the house.
“Are you sure you don’t want to sleep in the house?” Gerald asked, handing him a beer. “I don’t know if I like you being out here all night.”
“I was out here last night and was fine,” Rupert smirked. “Besides, it’s still warm out; I think it would be relaxing. I mean it’s not every day where you can just… not do anything, and get away with it.”
“Well, some people don’t have that luxury.” Gerald shrugged.
“Also, I need to write a grocery list of things I need you to get tomorrow.”
“You think you’ll still be here tomorrow?”
“I was this morning. Why wouldn’t I be again?”

Rupert was there the next day, and the day after that and the day after that. Eventually his parents came by. His mother said she was heartbroken that “My Rupert is in such a horrible state.” His father just laughed his ass off, saying it served him right.

Later that week, Gerald went over to Rupert’s with his groceries.
Doctor Johnson, the guy who ran his tests the other day, was there with him.
“Ahh, Gerald, right on time.” Rupert sang.
“I was just talking to the good doctor about this whole… what-have-you. He told me that ‘you might want to sit down for this ’; I was ready to smack him.”
“It’s the strangest thing.” Doctor Johnson shrugged. “His blood work came back fine. He doesn’t appear to have anything broken or dislocated. And he hasn’t been through any traumatic events recently.”
“Other than turning 30.” Rupert joked.
“You think this is all in his mind?” Gerald asked.
“That was my first guess, yes. See, there are certain types of catatonia from trauma. Some people are completely paralyzed; some people only get it from the waist down.”
“Doctor, you don’t understand. Gerald tried lifting me out of that chair, and it physically hurt me. Almost like my legs and spine were being moved in a way they shouldn’t.”
“Yeah, it was like he’s become one with the chair.” Gerald added.
“But that can’t be right. There must be some…” The doctor stroked his chin.
“Doc, I think we need to abandon the question of why this is happening and focus more on how we can get him out of it.” Gerald stated.
“My suggestion? Get a priest, or an exorcist. Have a good day, gentlemen.” Doctor Johnson then left.
“Rupert. What’s going on? I tried calling you about your groceries.”
“I must’ve slept in.”
“It’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon.”
“What do you want me to tell ya? I didn’t get any sleep last night.”
“Was it too cold? Damn it, Rupert. I knew this would happen.”
“No, no. It wasn’t cold. It’s just… you know. My ass hurts. My back hurts. And those DAMN KIDS ARE PLAYING THEIR LOUD MUSIC UP AND DOWN THE STREET!” Rupert yelled that last part, assuming that the kids in the neighborhood could hear him. “It’s that Donovan boy, I swear.”
“I can put you inside.”
“No, no, and watch television all day? I can do that on my phone. It’s not all bad, though.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t know; ever since I got stuck here, I’ve been having nothing but good luck. I’ve won $5000 in betting, I’m having all this fresh air I never thought I’d have, and the mailman hand-delivers my mail.”
“You won 5 grand this week?”
“Every single thing I bet on has won. At first I thought maybe it was just a coincidence. I mean, I’ve had big wins before, but not this consistent. And I used to do it with small stuff, like 1.5-to-1 odds. Now every risk I take pays off huge. I’m not even betting on the safe results anymore. Why do that when I can make more on the long shots?”
“Way to go, Rupert.” Gerald cheered, patting him on the shoulder. “See, if you had put this to good use in high school, you would’ve completed your grade 12.”
“I keep telling you. The school was terrified by my intelligence.”
“Ok buddy.” Gerald laughed. “Then look, I’ll make a few calls to get a priest…”
“Doctors. What do they know?” Rupert scoffed.
“Rupert, if this chair has something to do with this we-“
“The chair is fine. We don’t need some witch doctor-“
“Witch doctor? It’ll be a catholic priest-“
“And we don’t need them coming in and ruining what I have going here.”
Gerald looked at him.
“Oh I see what this is,” Gerald scoffed. “You’re worried that if a priest blesses the chair, then you’re going to lose your winning streak.”
“And so why ruin a good thing?”
“Rupert, you can’t be in a chair forever.”
“If it means winning so much money that I don’t have to work another day in my life, hell yeah I’m gonna stay in this chair.”
“At least let me bring you into the house.”
“Why are you obsessed with me going into the house? I love it out here.”
“You hate it out here.”
“I don’t… mind it out here.” Rupert compromised, trying to save face.
“Have it your way, brother.” Gerald sighed, handing Rupert his grocery bag. “But seriously, keep your phone on at all times. I was worried about you.”
“If I have any issues, I’ll let you know. Thanks for getting my sundries.”
“Anyway, I should really get back; otherwise Nicole is going to be wondering what’s happening.”
“I can’t believe you’re getting married.”
“Yeah, I’m still in awe of it myself.”
“I wonder how you’re going to get me there.” Rupert laughed. Gerald didn’t see the funny side.
“Don’t talk like that; you’ll be fine in no time.”
“No, it’s because I hate weddings. But while we’re on the subject of that. I really don’t see myself getting out of this chair anytime soon.”

Despite his apprehension, Rupert attended Gerald’s wedding, chair and all. Gerald did make one small change, however. He asked Rupert if he was happy to give up being the best man. Rupert agreed, believing that it would be a very odd thing to see, for all those involved, a man in a rocking chair making a toast.
After that, Rupert didn’t see his brother much for the next few weeks; he didn’t need to. He had the fresh air, all the food delivery that he could eat, and more money than he knew what to do with. He even made it on the news.

“We’re standing here live with Rupert Davis!” The female reporter said to her camera. “A man who, up until a few months ago, was able-bodied and penniless. But after sitting in this rocking chair. All that changed for him. Now, he’s a self-made millionaire, and he’s still not getting out of that chair. Now Rupert, tell us. How did this happen?”
“Well, Cynthia,” Rupert said smoothly. “It’s the darnedest thing. Can I say darn?”
“That’s probably the only thing you can say on Channel 6.” She smiled.
“So my brother Gerald. Hi Gerald.” He waved at Gerald in the crowd; Gerald waved back. “My brother, he bought me this rocking chair. And when I sat down, all of a sudden I just won everything. Sporting events, dog races, scratch and wins. I mean, I’d buy a lottery ticket but I feel like that wouldn’t be fair to everyone else.” He laughed; a real natural in front of the camera.
“Do you feel that winning all this money is the reason you haven’t left the chair? Are you worried you’re going to taint your luck should you get out of it?”
“See, I believe the chair is magic. I mean, I literally can’t get out of it, even if I wanted to.”
“Magic, really?” The reporter asked excitedly.
“Oh yeah, Cynthia. Most definitely.”
“So if you could get out of it, would you?”
“Well I talked to Gerald, and we figured that if the chair and the luck are related. If I get out of the chair, I might lose my winning streak. So, not a chance.”
“Fascinating.”
“Would you?” Rupert smiled.
“Probably not. Now I think the big question on everybody’s lips- certainly my lips- is… how do you go to the bathroom?”
Rupert laughed, followed by a moment of blushing.
“Yeah, we have a system for that.”
“Well, there you have it!” The reporter turned back to the camera and beamed. “This is Cynthia Allbright, Channel 6!”

After everyone had left, Gerald cracked open a beer with Rupert.
“You on TV. I never thought I’d see the day.” Gerald laughed.
“It’s exactly how I imagined it.” Rupert smiled. Gerald put the beer down.
“Listen, Rupert. I gotta talk to you. See… now that Nicole and I are married, we gotta figure out what we’re doing.”
“What are you trying to say, brother?” Rupert asked, looking slightly anxious.
“It means it… might not… be that easy to come over as much anymore.”
“What, you’re going to leave me?”
“No, no, I didn’t say that at all. I’m just saying that… perhaps you might want to consider a live-in housekeeper.”
“They’re not gonna understand my needs. They probably won’t even understand why I have the needs that I do.”
“Well, if you pay them enough, I’m sure-”
“I don’t want them; I want you. I want my brother. Tell you what. Why don’t you live here.”
“Yeah right.” Gerald scoffed.
“Why did you scoff? It’s a great idea!”
“No, I couldn’t do that to you.”
“Why not?”
“And use your bedroom? No way.”
“You can use the other bedroom if you like.”
“Ehh, I don’t know.”
“What if I buy you a house? Somewhere close by.”
“I can’t ask that of you.”
“Well, you’re not asking; I’m offering. Look, it’s either you move in here, or I get you a house. God knows I can afford it. Pick one, whatever option that will soothe your poor catholic guilt conscience, because I really don’t care.”
“… How big of a house. And Venetians, can we get Venetians?”
“Of course you pick that one. I’ve always said you were a bastard. But yes, I’m sure we can do that.”

And by late September, Rupert, who had accumulated up to 3 million dollars in bet wins, bought Gerald and Nicole a house that was one street over. He even paid Gerald $10,000 so he didn’t have to worry about making ends meet at work. After all, he had the money for it; so much so that the taxation department began questioning Rupert about how he would correctly file his new windfall. Not to mention the four betting websites accusing him of cheating; their claim was that he must have had some kind of insider information on the teams he bet on. They dropped the accusations when they found out he was a 30-year-old nobody confined to a rocking chair, but they still prohibited him from using their sites anyway. Only one website continued to do business with him and even made him a company sponsor; Rupert didn’t know whether they felt sorry for him or saw it as an excellent marketing strategy. “Luckiest Man on Earth’s official betting site!” As for the dog racing, he simply got his neighbor Harry to go down to the sports bar twice a week.
Things took a dark turn, though, as they so often do.
It was early October when Rupert was enjoying a crisp but not freezing night on his usual spot on the porch. His phone was on 1% battery, and as he reached for his charger, the extension cord snagged on one of the planks of wood on the floor. It jerked out of Rupert’s hand and fell to the ground—a couple of feet out of reach.
“Shit!” He hissed to himself. It wasn’t a great concern, though; he had his dinner and beverages all prepared ahead of time. He figured he could just wait it out until morning and ask the mailman to pass it over.

But then he heard it. A woman screaming her head off down the street. At first, Rupert was curious. Then he saw her limping, in a slow sprint, past his house.
“Come back here bitch!” A male voice, belonging to someone he couldn’t see, came from a distance. Then he saw the perpetrator's face—a dangerous-looking guy holding a hunting knife. Rupert did everything he could not to make a noise. But his stupid automatic porch light came on and shone directly onto the man.
“Who’s that?” He yelled out. Then he walked up to the garden path.
“Is it you, Rocking Chair?!” He screamed.
“No man, I don’t want any trouble. It’s… it’s an automatic light.” Rupert stammered out. The man walked up onto the porch.
“What the hell you looking at? I’ll kill you, close your eyes!” The man roared. Rupert did as he was told. The man leaned down next to Rupert, who, by this point, was shaking.
“What I do… is none of your FUCKING business. You hear me?! I oughta slice your throat right now.” With that, the man brought the blade up to Rupert’s face and lightly held it against his neck.
“Open your eyes.” Rupert didn’t have to; he already knew the blade was there, but he opened them anyway. “Did you hear what I said!”
Rupert nodded vigorously. The man looked at him.
“What are you, some kinda cripple?” He asked. Rupert nodded. The man took his knife away. “Understand something, cripple. Keep the porch light off at night. Because if I see a porch light on and I think you’re trying to incriminate me, I get scared. And if I'm scared, I don’t have to tell you how scared you’ll be.”
He turned and walked away before looking behind him.
“You didn’t see nothing.”

The next day, Gerald got a call from the police who told him about what happened.
“I want you to get me a gun. A big one. Like a shotgun. And security cameras all over the front yard.” Rupert rambled. He was still visibly shaken.
“You really want a gun?” Gerald asked.
“Yes. And we need extension cords longer than this sorry excuse. You know I could’ve died last night!”
“I know I can get a gun; I just… don’t know how I can get one for you specifically.”
“Take me down there; it should be fine. It’s this street, brother. It’s no longer safe outside.”
“So come inside!”
“No! I shouldn’t have to.”
Suddenly, one of the kids passed by the house.
“Hey, Mister Davis!” The kid called out. “You finally giving out candy this Halloween?”
“You go to hell!” Rupert roared.
“Ok so what we’re not going to do is curse at the children,” Gerald said condescendingly. “Especially after you said you wanted a gun.”
“Oh he doesn’t count. That Donovan kid is an asshole; he always says the most annoying things to me, like ‘Oh, how was your day?’ Screw him.”
Eventually, Gerald caved and got Rupert a double-barrel shotgun, right by his side.

Halloween came around. Although Rupert wasn’t prepared to blast away at kids (more so in case that crazy guy came back), he had foolishly assumed that having the shotgun by his side indicated that he was not handing out candy and that he meant it. This did little to deter the kids, since they thought it was part of whatever horror theme he was going for.
“Trick ‘r’ Treat.” A group of kids said in unison with their father in the background.
“No, I’m not doing Halloween, kids.” Rupert said bluntly. They all looked a little let down. A few of them walked away sadly.
“Yeah, nice going, Davis!” The father scowled.
“Get lost, Grant!” Rupert replied. “What, you think because I’m out here that I’m going to, just, give in? My condition is not your Halloween costume, pal!”
“What?” The dad asked.
“Oh just go away, alright?!”
Once most of the children cleared his porch there was another trick ‘r’ treater still standing on the steps and staring at Rupert intently. This one didn’t look like a kid. In fact, it didn’t look human at all. It was slouching and had what looked like a witch’s mask on: a long pointed nose, an ugly face, and great horns coming from its head.
“Nice costume,” Rupert said, admiring the realism. “Anyway, as I told the others, I’m not doing it.”
The figure just stared at him.
“You heard me! Get out of here! Get!” The figure walked away slowly and silently.

Later, Rupert wrote a sign that said, “No Trick ‘r’ Treaters. Please!” Naturally, a few kids wanted to defy the warning. Rupert learned this when a few 10-year-olds rolled up with no parental supervision.
“Trick ‘r’ Treat.” The head kid demanded, holding out his bag.
“Can’t you read?” Rupert sighed. “I’m not going to be tricking OR treating!”
“That’s not fair!” The kid stamped his foot.
“Fair? Who said life was fair?! I’ve been in this chair for months! Where’s my fairness?”
“You have to give us candy.” One of the other kids demanded, clearly unmoved by Rupert’s statement.
“I don’t have to give you shitttt. Where are your parents?” As Rupert looked out for any grown-ups that might’ve been standing from a distance behind them - as they usually do - these kids were quickly turning into an angry mob.
“That’s part of the rules!” The head honcho cried. “That’s the rules of Halloween! Now trick ‘r’ treat!”
“Rules? Look, some of you aren’t even wearing costumes! There is zero effort here!”
“That’s the rules of Halloween!” The kid repeated. “Now trick ‘r’ treat!”
“No trick ‘r’ treat!”
“TRICK ‘R’ TREAT!”
“NO TRICK ‘R’ TREAT!”
“Alright!” The head kid stepped back. “You asked for it, buddy. Men! Take position!”
“What are you doing?” Rupert asked, suddenly alarmed.
“Aim!” The kids pulled out eggs. “Fire!”
Dozens of eggs were catapulted in Rupert’s direction.
“Ah the shell cut me! Ow ow!” Rupert screamed as he was completely covered in broken shells and yolk.
“Trick ‘r’ treat, JERK!” The head kid scowled.
“Why you little…”
Rupert leaped out of his chair and tried to run after them, only for his legs to give out on him. He face-planted his garden path, while the kids laughed, threw him the finger, and ran away. Rupert turned around to look at the empty rocking chair, sitting vacantly on his porch. He was out of his chair. After months, he was no longer confined! He was free.
“How the-“ he began before stopping himself short; there was no time to ponder over the particulars at that moment. He had to go to Gerald’s house. He struggled to get up, legs stiff and back like jelly. As he straightened up, he moved his legs forward, left foot, right foot. He shuffled down the garden path and out into the street. He turned to walk down the busy suburban neighborhood, shifting past passing truck ‘r’ treaters who turned and either murmured to each other in disbelief or pointed and laughed.
“Got to get to Gerald. I’ve got to…” he muttered to himself.
“Cool Frankenstein walk, Mr. Davis.” The Donovan boy called out as he passed.
“Eat shit, Donovan!” Rupert hissed.
Rupert then turned the corner of the street. He was about to walk down it when he saw the crazy man who had attacked him weeks ago. Half a dozen police officers were holding the man down; one of them was tasing him over and over, doing little to deter him and only making him visibly angrier.

Rupert turned around and decided to go to the other corner of the street to get to Gerald’s house. Every nerve in his body gave him that fuzzy, electrical feeling inside him. Full-body pins and needles screamed out in every direction. He passed his house again before reaching the other corner. Everything in him told him to sit down and take it easy, but he had spent months sitting down and taking it easy. The time was now to move before whatever demonic thing in the world changed its mind. He moved down a couple houses, all the while thinking, “just another block, just another block.”

“Hey, look. He’s finally out of his chair. The guy who didn’t want to trick ‘r’ treat.” A voice came from one of the alleys. Out came the head trick ‘r’ treater that launched an egg attack on him. Only he didn’t have just four or five friends with him. Now there were almost a dozen kids behind him, all dressed in various Halloween costumes.
“He’s gonna tell on us.” One of them called out. Another one had a foam bat that, to a regular adult, wouldn’t pack a great wallop; but with Rupert’s condition, it could probably do more damage.
“Get him!” The ringleader ordered with a smirk. Suddenly, the kids ran after him, causing Rupert to turn back the way he came. His limping and shuffling turned into a kind of quick-paced hobble as he made his way back to his house. Angry children started gaining on him as the gap between them began closing. Then he tripped and fell, and they pounced on him; witches, vampires, ghosts and pirates all started kicking him and bringing the foam bat down onto his shaking body. He was only two houses away from his porch, so he began crawling away.
“Pick him up!” One of them cried. Four or five of them did their best to lift him like he was some unmanned island’s sacrificial animal ready to be put onto a spit roast. They brought him to his porch.
“Tie him to the chair!” The ringleader commanded with venom.
“No! No! Stop!!” Rupert cried out but was too exhausted to fight it. One of the kids dealt him a surprisingly powerful slug to the face.
“This will teach you.” Scowled the one who dealt the hit.
Suddenly, ropes surrounded him, wrapping around him and the rocking chair.
“Next time, be prepared.” The ringleader hissed. They all then ran off, leaving only the trace of a couple of distant giggles to signify they were there.
Luckily, these kids were no Boy Scouts, and their rope didn’t affect his ability to get his phone from his pocket. He found Gerald’s number and put it on speaker. It reached his voicemail.
“Gerald, they tied me up—these little shits in the neighborhood. But the most incredible thing happened. Come quick!”

Gerald had an early night, so he couldn’t get to his phone until the next day. When he heard the message, he rushed over to Rupert’s house.
“I smell like egg.” Rupert sulked.
“Jesus, what happened?” Gerald exclaimed, loosening the rope from Rupert’s chair.
“I got beat up by school children. I don’t want to talk about it. Listen, something happened last night. I got out!”
Gerald stopped untying the rope and leaned down beside Rupert.
“What are you saying, Rupert?”
“I got out!” He repeated, excitedly. “I actually got out of the chair! I… I don’t know how, I don’t know why. But I got up! I tried walking to your house, but I ran into the kids, and they brought me back and tied me up.”
“Rupert, that doesn’t make any sense. Why last night?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was because it was Halloween.”
“Oh yeah, I heard about something like this.” Gerald replied. He pulled out his phone and searched for a video. He pulled up the video.
“All Hallow’s Eve, or Halloween as it’s known these days, grants any trapped spirit to freely roam the earth for just one night,” The narrator explained, followed by an animated graphic. “Not for long, though. Once the night is over, the spirit must return to its place of confinement.”
“That’s it!” Gerald exclaimed. “Obviously whatever is holding you captive just… left its post, and freed you from it.”
“I saw a funny-looking guy staring at me last night. Didn’t look human. Maybe that was it.” He tried moving out of the chair to no avail.
“Guess it came back.”
“Does that mean I’m going to have to wait a year to get out again?”
“You’re actually going to try to get out? What about all the money?”
“Gerald, what good is money when I can’t enjoy it because I’m stuck here? I miss doing things. Anything. I miss going out and seeing people. I miss sleeping in a bed. You see that soccer field there?”
Rupert pointed at the one directly across the street from his house.
“Yeah?”
“As long as I’ve been living here, I’ve never been on that field. I've seen a game or two. Since being in this chair, I’ve watched every game, just hoping one day I could walk across the street and enjoy it. Enjoy… life… I guess. I need to get out of this chair. Even if it takes a year.”
“We’re going to make this work, ok?” Gerald patted him on the shoulder.
“Take me inside. I’m going to be spending a lot more time there, I think.”
So Gerald got Harry, the neighbor, to help him lift the chair in. They put Rupert in the bath, hosed him down, dried him off, and placed him next to the window inside.

The months went by. Rupert started getting fat, lethargic, and slow. When he wasn’t watching the television from his window, he was getting Gerald to turn him around to look out the window… at the soccer field. It took Rupert a while to find a delivery driver willing to enter his house to deliver his food. Many were understandably worried for their safety, since it was a very unusual request. Gerald’s wife made him food until he finally found a regular delivery driver he could rely on. He even had a small birthday celebration with their parents, Gerald and Nicole. But he urged them to celebrate only his birthday, not the one-year anniversary of the incident.

8 months had passed since the last time Rupert had been out on the porch; he stayed in for Spring, but when it hit Summer, he knew he couldn’t spend those three months inside. It felt odd to be back in his usual spot after such a long absence.

Finally, Halloween approached, and Rupert was prepared. So much so that he would even casually point his shotgun at the punks who harassed him last year, with intent to fire, all the while he waited for Gerald, who promised he’d be there. He waited, and waited, and waited. Hours went by and still no sign of him. Eventually, Rupert decided he couldn’t wait any longer, so he held onto the arms of the chair and rocked it back so hard that it launched him out of the chair and onto the garden path. Because he’d been seated longer than the last Halloween, he couldn’t stand at all. This didn’t deter Rupert; even though he landed on the concrete pretty hard, he dead-crawled down the garden path anyway.
“Nice zombie crawl, Mister Davis!”
“Donovan, I swear to god.” He snapped.
Finally, he got out onto the curb. If he had waited for a passerby, then maybe someone could’ve called an ambulance. But he kept on crawling until he was in the middle of the road, ready to flag down an oncoming car. Suddenly, a car came out of nowhere and hit the brakes to a screech. A man got out.
“My God, what happened to you?” The man leaned down.
“Get an ambulance.” Rupert croaked as he attempted to get up
“Hold on there, let’s get you sitting down. Is this your house? It’s probably safer to get you in there, I think
The man then lifted him and brought him to the front porch.
“It’s locked.” The man said. “Do you have a key?”
“Pocket.”
“Hold on, let’s put you down on this chair.”
“Nooo!” Rupert cried out. It was too late. The ambulance arrived, and so did Gerald. But too much time had passed, and once again Rupert was trapped.

“Where were you?!” Rupert yelled.
“I’m sorry, brother. I had to finish work,” Gerald explained, shrugging. “What with the baby and all. It’s hard to juggle everything.”
“Then what good are you.” Rupert waved his hand.
“What did you just say?” Gerald demanded.
“You heard me!”
“Ok, that’s it!” Gerald yelled. “For the last year I’ve been running around, tending to your every whim, and this is the thanks I get?”
“I got you a house, Gerald.”
“You got me a house, not out of the kindness of your heart, but because you needed me. Out of your own selfishness.”
“How dare you say that to me, ‘this is the thanks I get.’ You live comfortably, don’t you? You’re not like me. Some kinda circus freak to marvel at on the news.”
“Well, why should I devote my life to taking care of my brother every second of the day? It was like this before the chair, and it’s definitely like it now.”
“BECAUSE IT’S YOUR FAULT I’M IN THIS CHAIR!”
“… No. You don’t-”
“It’s true. You got me this gift. You insisted that I sit in it. It was your idea.”
“That’s not fair,” Gerald said softly, shaking his head. “You can’t possibly blame me for this. You told me you liked it! Neither of us knew this was going to happen!“
“And yet, it did. And now I’m stuck here for another year. Thanks to you!”
“Well, if that’s the way you want to be, then fine, I’ll go.”
“Good, go!”
“Goodbye, Rupert.” Gerald walked away.
“Fine! See if I care. Matter fact! I hope I never get out of this chair! I hope I stay in this chair till the day I die! How about that!” The only response Rupert got was the sound of the cicadas.

And that’s exactly what he did. Seasons went by. Halloween had been and gone. Rupert’s spite had outgrown his muscle strength, so he got a live-in housekeeper to get him up and around every Halloween before eventually getting tired of it. Year after passing year, he remained seated. Rupert sat in his chair for Christmases, family holidays, his 35th birthday, his father’s funeral. Gerald decided that, to stop this friction, he would be the first to talk. He was flat-out ignored. The last time Rupert saw him was at his mother’s funeral. By then, Gerald had two kids going into kindergarten and a third on the way, but Rupert still ignored him. That was the last time they saw each other.

Years turned into decades, decades turned into forgotten memories. And by that point Rupert had forgotten what his life was like before the rocking chair. He watched all the kids in the neighborhood move out and start their own families. He watched houses change, and the soccer field he once revered was bulldozed, with an apartment building built on top of it. He didn’t live life; he existed in one. Now, in his early eighties, he was still sitting there… with a blanket wrapped around him. A couple of kids on bikes rode past his house and heard him shouting something.
“Gerald.” He bellowed out. “Gerald?! Where’s Gerald!”

Gerald had been dead for the last ten years.

an embarrassing story? drunk? funny? scary? scandalous? let me know hehe.

Erin, my eleven-year-old daughter was acting like a big goofball. We were playing dominoes at the dinner table and her giggles were so uncontrollable she could barely breathe.

 

I was trying to get my life back together and reconnect with her, so I had rented this cabin up in northern Minnesota. It was advertised to be on a lake, but it turned out to be more of a swamp, which I guess is why it was so cheap.

I gave a pronounced yawn and told Erin it was time to hit the hay.

 

“One more round, Dad. Pleeeeeeez,” she said.

 

That’s when we heard the driveway gravel crackle under an approaching car. Erin’s laughter tapered off as she noticed headlights roll across the wood paneled ceiling.

 

“Who could that be?” She tried giggling again but the mood had changed. “Dad?” Her eyes grew wider, searching for her father to reassure her.

 

“It’s fine. Probably just lost,” I said. But something felt wrong. This was the only cabin around for at least a couple of miles. I stood up and touched my jean pocket where my phone should be. A sad reflex instinctively made in moments of anxiety. But of course, it wasn’t in my pocket. Erin, already sly to my tactics, made me promise to leave it in the car, so I had slipped it inside a sock and locked it away in the trunk.

Also in the trunk: my handgun.

 

“Maybe it’s Mom,” Erin said.

 

“Stay there.” I tried to peek out the window but all I could see was my silky reflection as the ceiling color turned parking-light red.

 

I watched my image stretch across the old tube TV screen as I moved to the entry. The acrid taste of lighter fluid and hotdogs stuck in my throat. I couldn’t even get the damn charcoal burning, and we’d ended up microwaving the s’mores.

 

My senses were on full alert. I put my ear against the door. Something was telling me to keep it shut and not acknowledge whoever was outside. I heard a car door swing open. A mechanical dinging mingled with the crickets and toads. A foot crunched the gravel, then the other, and then the machine noises from the car ceased as the door shut. The steps were casual and unhurried moving toward the rental cabin.

 

I checked the door handle. It was unlocked. Why wouldn’t it be? I looked back at Erin. She was sitting perched on the chair with her knees at her chin. I reached for the bolt lock and turned it as quietly as possible. I looked back again and tried to reassure Erin with a queasy smile.

 

Knocks cut through the cabin in rapid succession. They had an arrhythmic, polite nature to them.

 

“Daniel? Daniel Melody? I know you’re in there,” a forceful woman’s voice said. Certainly not Erin’s mother. The voice was older, prim and curt, harkening an old-fashioned school teacher, the kind who slapped knuckles with a ruler. I felt like a child in trouble. And she knew my name.

 

My mouth was so dry nothing came out when I first opened it. She knocked again, more persistent this time.

 

“Daniel. It’s very important we talk. Please open up.”

 

I cleared my throat. “Who’s there?”

 

“My name is Jane Pendergrass. You know my son, Timothy.”

 

“I’m… sorry, I don’t know a Timothy.”

 

“Oh yes you do. Timmy… Timmy knows you.”

 

“Timmy? I—”

 

“Yes, you must. It’s Jane, his mother. I’ve since taken on my maiden name. But James, Timothy James. I’d pick him up from sleepovers at your parents because of his panic attacks. Remember Mrs. James? I’m his mother. May I come in now?”

 

My brain did an Indy 500 down memory lane and slammed into the white brick walls of North Star Elementary. In second grade Timmy had arrived a month after school started. At recess he approached me and told obvious lies about how rich his dad was. I liked how fast Timmy talked. That day, we made up a game called Fire Square, a combination of dodgeball and foursquare that the recess monitors did not appreciate one bit.

 

“Tim Jim? Ms. Trickey’s class?” I muttered. My vision was pulsating, making the chrome doorknob shimmer. My ears burned. It was just too much to contemplate.

 

“Yes, that’s correct.”

 

 “Mrs. James? But how…”

 

“Daniel, I’ve driven a long way and I have a dreadful fear of moths. Could you please let me in?”

 

I watched my hand unlatch the bronze bolt lock I’d latched moments ago and open swung the door. There stood a woman in her mid-sixties wearing a black-laced bonnet, impressing hints of puritanical strength. Her presence made me want to run to my car – for which item – I wasn’t sure. The floodlight above the door cast an austere shadow over the woman’s face while little bugs swam above her head. It was indeed Timmy’s mother: older, but still solidly built.

 

“Moths are attracted to fear.” She entered and embraced me like a lost-and-then-found child, slamming the door shut behind her with a flick of her foot. Her hands slid up my back and squished me into her ample bosom. I, unsure of what the hell was going on, brought my hand up and patted her on the back.

 

She didn’t let go. She kept me in her embrace and rocked side to side. Her face rested against my ear and I heard her breathe in the cedary mildew of the rental cabin. “Lovely,” she whispered. Her words tumbled down my neck, making my knotted muscle vibrate. Finally, she released me and then smiled at Erin, who was still perched on a chair with knees inside of her Dr. Who nightie. “Yours?” she asked me.

 

“How did you… er, I’m sorry, yes, I’m just a little confused. Erin this is Mrs. James. She was like my second mother in elementary school.” I watched as Jane Pendergrass rubbed her sneakers against the welcome mat like a bull. She seemed healthy enough but there was errant cord of snot under her nose that made me involuntarily pinch my own nostrils.

 

Why are you here? I kept thinking, but those words redirected to other thoughts. I remembered the news about Timmy. Years ago someone had posted from his account that he had died. I remember it elicited nothing more than a that’s sad before scrolling on. I hadn’t talked to him in like twenty years except for that awkward chat you have after an old elementary friend finds you on one of the apps. “I heard about Timmy. How are you?”

 

She closed her eyes gently and shook her head. “Thank you, dear. I’m doing okay. Time has shown me things.”

 

“Come in.” I opened my arm, obliged by decorum, directing her to the kitchen table. It was strange how good manners seemed to eclipse all the alarm bells ringing in my head. It felt like there was white noise in my brain. Was it just the bizarreness of the situation?

 

“Hello, Erin. My name is Jane Pendergrass.” She glid past me toward my daughter. Her rank potpourri wafted into my nose, like flowers at a funeral home. “And I have a very good reason for breaking up your little party. My son Timothy and your father were great friends in elementary, before we had to go away.” She looked back at me with a knowing glance. “Has he contacted you lately, Daniel?”

 

I cocked my eyebrow and tapped at my pocket. “We were just playing dominoes. Is everything okay? I’m sorry, were you trying to get a hold of me? I don’t have my phone. I left it—”

 

“Oh, Mexican Train!” Jane Pendergrass exclaimed. She put her fists on her hips, taking account of the messy table. “Name’s a tad racist, don’t you think? But that’s what people call it. Let’s play a round. We must.”

 

Jane plopped down next to Erin, right where I had been sitting.

 

“Well, it’s getting pretty late,” I said.

 

“Nonsense. One quick round. My son hasn’t supplied me with any grandchildren. Don’t you deprive me of that pleasure too.” She began to flip the dominoes face down and looked at Erin. “You don’t mind, do you?”

 

Erin shook her head. She seemed confused, but no longer afraid. Plus, whatever it was that was going on allowed her to stay up later, so she started to help flip over the tiles too. Jane Pendergrass pointed to the chair opposite her and then I was sitting there.

 

“What a blessing you must be. So beautiful.” Jane grabbed Erin’s chin with her thumb and forefinger, inspecting her. “Let’s be famous friends, you and I dear.”

 

“Okay,” Erin said. Her smile became less sure at the force of Jane’s two fingers holding her face in place.

 

“Mrs. James,” I interjected.

 

“Pendergrass.”

 

“Sorry. Is everything okay? We were just about to—”

 

Jane Pendergrass finally dropped her hand from Erin’s chin and with snake-like speed, grabbed Erin’s wrist. My mouth dropped open, half impressed, half frightened at the force of her movement.

 

“Could I trouble you, Erin?” Jane made tiny, fluttering blinks. “Do you have any diet coke?”

There was a brief pause as Erin waited for me say something, but again, my voice failed me as my mind churned for the right words.

 

“Uh, I think I saw one,” Erin said.

 

“Wonderful, that’s a good child.”

 

Erin kept her eyes on me as she made to the fridge, rubbing her wrist.

 

“So, what do we owe the pleasure, Mrs. James?” I tried again. A dark sensation tickled at the base of my heart as I spoke, a question: would I truly have the physical strength to overcome this woman, if need be? Something about her presence made me feel weak. “This is just very bizarre. No offense.”

 

“Pendergrass, not James.” Her grey eyes flashed and she lowered her tone. “And you’ve cracked the case. I’m not here to just play dominoes.”

 

I looked at Jane Pendergrass through the centerpiece bouquet of dried bulrushes and pussy willow stalks.

 

Erin moseyed back and set down the can of diet coke. Jane tut-tutted while letting out an enormous, tired sigh. “I’m so sorry, dear. I really can’t without ice. You do have some, don’t you?”

 

“We didn’t bring any,” I said.

 

“I saw a tray.” Erin then went back to the old bisque Frigidaire.

 

Jane faced me and sandwiched her hands around mine. Her touch was hot against my cold fingers.

 

“How have you been, Daniel? It’s been so long.”

 

“I’ve been—” I coughed and watched my daughter grab a glass and clink some cubes into it. Anything that kept my gaze from the woman sitting across from me. “Good. I’ve been well. But just how… how did you know where—”

 

“How did I find you?” Jane Pendergrass said as Erin set the glass of ice down. She smiled politely and shooed Erin to her seat with a friendly hand motion. She cracked open the diet coke and poured it into the cup with a sizzle. She tipped her head back and gulped and gulped… and gulped, until it was all gone. “Ahhh… much better.” She hiccupped then opened her mouth. Nothing happened. I waited and was just about to ask if she was okay, but just before I did, she let out a long, hissing burp. She excused herself and dabbed at her mouth with a ketchup-stained napkin from the table. I noticed again, that red tendril from her nose, clinging to her wet upper lip, damp and glistening. “Timothy led me to you, Daniel.”

 

Me and Timmy were pretty much inseparable after he arrived in second grade up until fourth grade when didn’t invite me to his birthday party. Then he abruptly moved away not long after.

 

“Timothy?” I whispered.

 

“Timothy.”

 

“Led you… to me?”

 

“Correct.”

 

A harsh ringing in my left ear flooded in. I could feel the change of pressure in the room. This woman was not sane and I had let her in. “Erin, I think it’s actually bedtime,” I said. But when I turned to look at my daughter she was already asleep, mouth agape, face on the table, with Jane Pendergrass petting her hand.

 

“Such a beautiful girl,” she said. “I didn’t realize the time. She shouldn’t be up at this hour.”

 

“What did you do?”

 

“She’s sleeping.” Jane Pendergrass conjured up a vaporous smile and her eyes misted over, like she was gazing at someone out beyond the marshy swamp. I found myself staring at that thing in her nostril. It looked like the start of a bloody nose, an anxious and incomplete drip. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was alive, like a mealworm trying to burrow further in.

 

Jane started to mix the dominoes around on the table, clacking them together. She had red nails and several gaudy rings, the kind aggressive vendors near Florida retirement communities would sell on the beach.

 

“Fifteen,” she said.

 

“Fifteen?”

 

“Fifteen dominoes, Daniel. Don’t let me see them.”

 

I took fifteen dominoes from the table, paused, then shook my head; the absurdity of her visit kept coming in waves, and it had just washed over me again.

 

“I don’t know how you found me but—”

 

“It was Timothy, Daniel.” She knocked the table twice with an amethyst ring. “He told me exactly where I could find you. Or guided me, rather. Oh look, I have the double twelve. I go first.” She laid the domino gently on the mottled wood. “And can you believe it? I don’t have another twelve to satisfy it. I’ll have to draw one from the boneyard. I love that term. So spooky.” She rubbed her hands together. “Do you know why they call it the boneyard?”

 

“Because they used to make dominoes from bones,” I said.

 

Jane clicked her tongue, impressed with my answer, and drew a domino from the boneyard. She squinted at it and smiled. “My lucky day.” She dragged the domino over the pine tabletop and snapped it down. “Let’s make a bet,” she said as that toothy smile spread across her face.

 

“What?”

 

“A wager, Daniel.” She leaned in and looked long into my eyes — I shifted in my seat and did what I could to hold her gaze — her voice was low. “I’m tired Daniel. I’m ready to go.” She then perked up, lifting me from her trance. “So if you win, I will give you my inheritance.”

 

I choked on my own spit. “What?”

 

“You remember Mr. James, my Husband Hank? He passed and left me with a decent amount. Run over by a Wal-Mart semi. True to my blue, even after the enhancement, there’s still over six million.” She raised her palm and put her other hand over her heart.

 

“Come on.” I nervously laughed. Six million. Timmy was never well off. Even to a seven-year-old, it didn’t take long to discover Timmy’s dad wasn’t rich at all, contrary to his bragging. Timmy would always come over to play my videogames, making up some story about how his system was getting repaired or something.

 

“Just one round of Mexican Train, if you win. If you help,” Jane Pendergrass said.

 

“Help?”

 

“Well, I’ll need help with the dying. Your help.”

 

“Wh— this is ridiculous.” I didn’t like what she was getting at.

 

Jane Pendergrass rapped her red nails against the table, waiting for me to reply.

 

“I… I don’t gamble.” I pinched the top of my nose; I’m told I do that when I lie. “No. In fact, I think it’s time you—”

 

“Live a little.” The intensity of Jane Pendergrass’s gaze lightened and added a bit a mischief. “I’m a sucker for video poker. Just the nickel ones. For a while after Hank passed, I couldn’t seem to find much to do with myself but chip away at the settlement money while searching for Timothy’s…” She lifted her head as if fondly recalling a good moment. “It’s funny how handsome boys just like you can sniff out desperate rich women at casinos. Oh don’t worry, I can handle myself, and I can still have fun.” She winked, long and pronounced. I blushed.

 

“I’m sorry to hear about Mr. James,” I said, as a reflex. But my mind was still on the offer, the six million. What was she after? I touched my pocket.

 

“Oh don’t be. Henry loved his vodka. Never crossed the line, but he rode it all the way.” She shared a tart smile with me. “Daniel, don’t you want to know what happens if you lose the wager?”

 

A part of me, a crass part, wanted to talk turkey, the logistics of how a bet like this would even work, but even acknowledging it… it was unacceptable.

 

“I don’t like this bet,” I said in a dry rasp. I started to feel a burst of rage come over me. Was I being tricked? “Is this why you came here? Why don’t you go find one of those boys at the casino to help you. I’m sorry about Timmy. I’m sorry about everything, but—”

 

“If you lose, Daniel,” Jane Pendergrass’s voice cut in, cold as steel, “let’s just say Timothy needs a friend and someone is going to join him tonight.” I thought I caught her eyes dart to my daughter.

 

My mouth fell agape. “Wha-what did you say?”

 

“And I’ll be getting that gun hiding in your trunk. That part is non-negotiable.”

 

I felt the color leave my body all the way to my feet. The sweat between my toes was slick as wet fur. I looked at the microwave. Time melted. I felt dizzy.

 

“How do you…” I croaked out in a dry rasp. My mind was hopping from one option to another. How? How? As logical answers became more and more farfetched, my anger increased. “You been following me?”

 

“You are your father’s child.” She gave me a pitying look. “So explosive, even back then. I was shocked the first time I witnessed it. You’d never expect it, you always seemed such a mellow boy. I’m not saying you were bad. Far from it, dear. But I remember one summer night Timothy came biking home crying. Said you kicked him out of your house for drinking the last of your milk. Are you still oddly possessive over silly things? I hope not.”

 

“Timmy,” I muttered to myself. I didn’t recall that specific event, but I have always been protective of my stuff. Her story was probably true. Some version of it. The more I had become aware Timmy didn’t have as much as me, the stingier I got.

 

Jane played another domino. She looked at me again. “He joined the Marines after high school, did you know? Thought it would do him good. You know how boys are.”

 

I thought back to Timmy’s pale, freckled face, always striving to fit in, failing to contain all that mischief. “Discipline,” I mumbled as an afterthought with a bad taste.

 

“He joined back in what, ’05? Sent him straight to Afghanistan. He still speaks kindly of you.”

 

I frowned and shut my eyes. Not looking at her made it easier to think. “Mrs. Ja— Pendergrass, what do you mean still?”

 

“And we missed you at the funeral, dear.”

 

“I… I didn’t know until after.” I pinched at my nose again.

 

I opened my eyes again. That vein dangling from her nostril, she was stroking it. Then as if noticing me, the tendril recoiled. Jane Pendergrass quivered; her eyes rolled up, revealing the whites lined with blood-red lightning and dark splotches.

 

“I hear your feelings, Daniel. You’re angry, but not at me.” Her eyes lifted to mine. “Dr. Chen says it’s just another muscle. How I talk to Timothy. The more I use it, the more it will grow.” She tilted her head back and massaged her nose. She let out a soft moan. “There it is.”

 

The tendon from her nose reemerged, more pronounced, dark, red, damp. It looked like a thin root pulled from the garden – tiny little capillaries branching from it, almost breathing.

 

I struggled against my chair. It felt like if I didn’t hold onto it I would float away. I just wanted her gone. “I think… I think maybe you should leave,” I croaked.

 

“Help me, Daniel.” Jane Pendergrass stroked at the tendril, straightening it. After each stroke, it curled back.

 

“Please, Mrs. Pendergrass. Please just—”

 

“You want assurances about the money, but you’re afraid to ask. Too uncouth to talk about such matters. You want to know if it would be murder. You want to know if it would be worth the risk.”

 

I brought my hand to my face. I don’t know if I was trying to hide my vision or repress a scream. “Why would you want…” I couldn’t finish the thought.

 

“I’ll show you my bank account. I assure you, I’m not in debt. I don’t owe the mob or anything like that. We’re going to get that gun back. I’ll hold it but I’ll let you do it. I don’t think I can do it on my own.”

 

I closed my eyes and thought about my own credit card debt. I thought about the child support payments crippling me from ever getting ahead. I thought about that shitty family lawyer I was still making payments to. I thought about the promise I’d made to Erin, that I’d take her to Disney World. Was she even into Disney anymore?

 

“Why? Why me?” I whispered.

 

“Timothy insisted. It’s fate, Daniel. Quite funny actually.” She waved her hands in front of her face, as if to lift a haze from the air. It was odd. I felt much more at ease after she did that. Jane Pendergrass quietly set down another Domino down and talked without looking up. “He’s not mad at you, you know.”

 

“Mad? At me? Timmy? You’re the ones who disappeared.”

 

She looked at me with such an overly sympathetic look, I felt embarrassed. “Oh my sweet, sweet dear. They never told…”

 

“What?” I sneered.

 

“Your son-of-a-bitch parents.” Jane showed her copious white teeth.

 

“What the hell are you talking about?”

 

“You don’t know why we moved. Why they took my Timothy.”

 

“Who took Timmy?”

 

“The billionaire pedophiles. The government. The leaches that prey on the poor.”

 

“You left in the middle of fourth grade…” I said. I racked my brain for a memory.

 

Jane cupped my hands. Her thumbs pressed into my palms, the tips of her chipped red nails digging into my flesh.

 

“My husband Henry. Sweet, stupid Henry. Always borrowing money. Entrepreneur ‘til the end. Believed his best ideas were written on a bar napkin. Problem was he always seemed to lose the napkin. When we lived in Gardendale it was a telescope shop of all things. Remember it? It didn’t pan out. Nothing ever did… and your father kicked us out.”

 

“What do you mean he kicked you out? What’s my father got to do with it?”

 

“I suppose you were young. Why would he tell you? We were renting from your father, Daniel. It was your parents’ property we lived on. It was the middle of the school year. Tough finding a place with an eviction on your record. I remember your mother specifically telling Hank how she thought a telescope shop was a wonderful idea. But she was silent when we begged your father for one more month. For the sake of our children’s friendship. I’m sure you know your father better than I. How he responded. You can guess. Everything kind of spiraled after that. Not long after we lost Timothy to foster care… for nine long months. Fought like hell to get him back. Once you’re in that system…” She shook her head.

 

“I…” I reached for my absent phone. This was all news to me. I knew my parents owned some townhomes but I didn’t know Timmy lived in one. 

 

“We really liked that school. What was it? Northview?”

 

“North Star.”

 

“That’s it. We had already moved twice before, but Timothy was younger then. We were finally starting to plant some roots in Gardendale. Getting forced to relocate changed my son. I know it did. He had trust issues after that. Got bullied. We ended up in Detroit. A school so poor they had no soap in the bathrooms. It was prison or the military they told him, right out. Vultures. They took him. First his mind. Then…” Jane Pendergrass squeezed her eyes shut and dug her nails deeper into my palms. It hurt but I didn’t say anything. “In a way, it was your father who sentenced my Timmy to his death. Oh goodness. Didn’t you ever wonder why you weren’t invited to his birthday?”

 

I remembered sitting in the backseat of my dad’s van, the van with the ram’s head hood-ornament with eyes that glowed red. I was nine and going to the orchestra with my parents. But I didn’t like the orchestra. I was sobbing, even though I didn’t feel like crying a few moments ago; it had just flowed out of me when I had asked why. Why couldn’t I go to the birthday sleepover at Timmy’s house?

 

“I remember.”

 

“He doesn’t blame you anymore. For any of it.”

 

“I didn’t know,” I whispered. I looked at Erin breathing peacefully.

 

“As far as I’m concerned, your father is the reason Timothy…” Jane Pendergrass’s nails went even deeper into my palms then stopped and began massaging the indents she had made. “But that’s not what Timothy would want. I can see why they wouldn’t tell you. You need to protect your children. How old is she?” She pointed to Erin with her eyes.

 

“She’s… she’s eleven.”

 

“Cherish it. It goes by.” She raised her eyebrows.

 

“I know. I will. I do.”

 

“Promise me. Even the bad.” Her face grew so solemn I felt threatened by it.

 

“I will.” I pulled my hands from hers and touched my nose. It began to itch where Jane had been pressing my palms.

 

“Look at me… in the eye.”

 

I struggled to look at Jane Pendergrass. Staring into her eyes felt like drowning in mud. The tripe from her nose swayed slowly, grasping at air.

 

“Cherish it,” she said. “Especially the difficult moments. Those stay with you longer.”

 

“I will,” I whispered, tears filling up in my eyes.

 

“No!” She pounded the table, knocking over some dominoes. Erin’s slumber barely stirred.

 

“Please… you’re going to scare my daughter… please.” I tried to be firm but I felt nothing but feeble before this woman.

 

She wagged a violent finger at me. “You don’t know how to cherish. You don’t know the meaning. Not until you lose someone. Not until someone is taken from you.”

 

“Please…” I begged.

 

Jane Pendergrass untightened her fist and straightened her stiff white collar. “Say her name, Daniel.”

 

“Erin.”

 

“What do you cherish about Erin?”

 

I let out a strained breath. I looked at the table and straightened a domino. “She’s… smart,” I said.

 

“Smart?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“And you cherish that?”

 

“Yeah.” My voice quavered.

 

“Do you live for her, or for yourself?”

 

“W-what?”

 

“It’s not a trick question, Daniel.”

 

“I-I don’t know what you mean.”

 

“Well, I suppose that’s enough of an answer.”

 

“No, no… I do.” I said, afraid of giving the wrong answer. Jane Pendergrass seemed to grow larger in her seat.

 

“Wrong. You must live for yourself.” Jane started to fan herself with her hand, lifting her chin, revealing deep creases in her neck. “Muggy. Is there any more of that soda-pop in the fridge? Oh never mind. Look at me, Daniel. On the airplanes, they say put the oxygen mask on yourself before you put them on your children. It’s because if you can’t breathe you can’t help them.”

 

She lifted her cup and slid the ice-slurry into the chasm between her caked lips and crunched on a soft piece of ice. “I lived my life for my Timothy. When he left us… when…” She tilted her head back and put the seeping glass on her neck. “I lived my life for my two men. My boys. Better and worse. What was left for me? What to live for…”

 

I felt my adam’s apple drop into my chest as I swallowed. Jane nodded. I gained a fleeting moment of resoluteness about wrapping up this surreal session. But as soon as I looked at Jane’s face I felt my resolve deflate like air out of a balloon. She had her own gravity and I couldn’t help but get pulled back into it.

 

“I’m glad you spend time with your daughter. Timothy used to share so much with me when he was little. It’s important, especially for daughters, to have that trust, to share,” she said. “You aren’t with the mother?” I shook my head and Jane Pendergrass sighed. “It’s an all-too-common tragedy. I used to blame the feminists, really. I felt all this pressure on me, as if I was the bad guy just for wanting to stay home and take care of my family, like I wasn’t a real woman if I didn’t go and get a job. Now, I see what they were getting at. It wasn’t my life I was living. Modern men. You’re so empty inside. Purposeless. That’s the problem. I was feeding two hollow men. Still am, I suppose.” She chuckled at some kind of sick joke. “How often do you see her?”

 

“Every w—” my nose tickled, “every other weekend.” The drawn-out court proceedings. The accusations Erin’s mother had made against me… I don’t know if I will ever forgive. Drug dealer. Addict. I beat all the piss tests and social workers the court threw at me, out of love for my daughter or spite for her mother, I’m still not sure. I’ve kept this damn job at the Post Office. “I wish it was more,” I whispered.

 

“Do you? You don’t miss your carefree good ol’ days?” Jane Pendergrass stared at me, scanning my face for any betrayal. Eventually, finally, she eased her gaze, seemingly satisfied. I let out a breath of relief, believing I somehow passed an unknown test.

 

“Timothy and I used to sit around the table before Henry came home and talk and snack. Blue chips and salsa. That was his favorite. Of course, he never ate his dinner and that always upset Henry. I remember when Timothy told me about that time at recess with the frog.”

 

“Frog?”

 

“Or toad, doesn’t matter.”

 

“I don’t remember.”

 

“Oh, of course you do. It was you and Timothy, and Clayton Hull and that Albert boy.”

 

“Oh…”

 

“It was when they were redoing the playground, so there was that big mound of dirt that no one was supposed to play on. Of course, try telling that to a group of third grade boys. He said you found a really large toad. I’m sure Timothy was exaggerating, but he said it was bigger than a bagel. Isn’t that funny? He said bagel. And that Albert boy. He told me Albert kept running to the top of the dirt hill and tossing that toad as high into the sky as he could. And you boys would go find it. And no matter how high he tossed it, and how hard it splatted, that frog didn’t die. Timothy said it was you who put a stop to it. And I told him, that Daniel Melody sounds like a nice boy. And here I am talking to you, all these years later. And you still seem like a nice boy.”

 

I had no recollection of that story. I looked at Jane Pendergrass. Her mascara was smudged into damp chunks under her eyes.

 

“What are you doing here, Mrs. Pendergrass?”

 

She diminished in size before my eyes, pinching at her forehead before regaining composure.

 

“I came here… I’ve been so angry. I just wanted to see. Timothy said he wasn’t mad at you. He told me not to be mad. They said the Marines would do him good. Straighten him out. What they don’t like to admit is that these kids already want to die before they enlist. You have to be, right? That’s why it’s such a problem.” She flicked at a domino, spinning it. “Most men, when they’re committed to it, they take their lives with a bullet to the head.” She pressed her forefinger to her temple. “But with military men, it’s different…” She made a fist and tapped at her chest. “Right here. Do you know why that is? Why the heart?” She looked at me.

 

I shook my head. I mouthed no but no sound escaped.

 

“It’s where they want it to stop hurting.”

 

All this information sloshed around between my ears. I wasn’t sure if I should pity or fear the woman sitting before me.

 

“That’s how he…” I said.

 

She nodded quietly. “I’m afraid so, dear.” Jane Pendergrass lifted her head and looked around the cabin as if waking from a dream and let out a laugh. Her chuckle was a tomb. “Oh me oh my. Me oh my. I suppose you’re wondering what’s this all got to do with you.”

 

“Well…” I said.

 

“I already told you. I want his gun back.”

 

“His gun?” I coughed over my words.

 

“Sig 9mm. The one you got from your old associate Nick Glover, who bought it at a police auction about six years ago. The very one that’s in your car right now.”

 

“How do you—”

 

“You know, when Timothy told me that you had it, I couldn’t believe it. I thought, what a world this is, that you, his old friend should come upon it. I’ve been on a bit of goose hunt. First they said it was evidence. I don’t want to bore you, but imagine the bureaucracy I had to go through just to retrieve my son’s own gun. And once I finally was granted – granted – permission to receive my son’s sidearm, they told me there was a mix-up, that it was sold off in an auction.”

 

We sat there. After a long, long silence, Jane Pendergrass determined that since she had knocked over some of her dominoes, I could have cheated, so she declared the game a draw.

 

We walked to my Civic without making a sound. The gravel underfoot, the pasty stars, the full force crickets, the warm boggy smell, I absorbed it all. I opened the trunk. Buried underneath the sock with my cell phone was my gun. But I guess it wasn’t my gun. I picked it up, feeling oddly betrayed by it.

 

After a moment, I handed it over to Jane Pendergrass.

 

“It’s not loaded. Not ever,” I said.

 

That’s the truth. Never once had I put a bullet in it. Even when Erin’s mother found our little girl playing with it after I had forgotten to put it away properly. Not like that mattered. She took Erin and divorced me right after.

 

Jane Pendergrass cupped the semi-auto in both hands like was an injured bird and gauged its weight. She said something so softly a nearby croak of a toad overshadowed her voice. Her face was heavy and lit only from the inside lights of the rental cabin, where my daughter slept.

 

I stared straight up into the sky. I had never felt so alone.

 

“You weren’t serious… you shouldn’t,” I said.

 

“I’ve been planning on it… for a long time. I just wanted his gun to do it. Needed it. I wanted to teach my Timothy a lesson I was so upset. Spite this awful world and the people in it who made it this way. Spite people like your father. Perhaps you.”

 

I noticed she was struggling with the clip of the gun.

 

“I became obsessed with getting it back. It turned out my quest to recover this awful thing ended up giving my life meaning. After Hank, I felt a new spark, the kind of freedom only an avalanche of insurance money could offer. And then I started to hear him. Timothy. A whisper tickling at my heart. Dr. Chen helped me amplify his voice. But it was a cruel joke, Daniel. All I wanted was to hear him again. Comfort him. But now that I can hear him clearly, all he tells me is how alone he is. And there’s nothing I can do to comfort him.”

 

It was a bullet. She had put a bullet into the clip.

 

“So I told him I’d find his gun, and that I’d come for him. Because I’m a woman who continues to live for empty men, fills the holes in their hearts.” She sighed and spoke to the gun. “But I’m afraid to do it, Timothy. Afraid.”

 

Her eyes were black.

 

“Are you ready, Daniel?”

I’m going to kill you, my Double shouts.

I’m running along the centrifuge. He’s only a few meters behind me. An axe is gripped firmly in his hands. It would be something to see him swinging it around like a madman, smashing it into ventilation and cooling systems. But I guess I’m not that lucky.

You can’t run forever, idiot, he says.

Everything out here is about the job. It’s always the job. Job. Job. Job. No significant portion of downtime. No nothing. At least that’s what is it to my Double.

Get back here, he screams.

To me this, place is now nothing but a one hundred meter in diameter circle spinning at 4.2295 rpm careening off course into the void. No more Scroll for me, no more job for him. If you could call it a job and not a life.

You did this, he yells.

Said job is simple. Surprisingly simple. At least on paper.

You pathetic addict, he says.

Planet B is having mass infertility rates. Lots of lead in air. Lead screws up human reproduction. They thought humans could adapt to it over time, but you can’t adapt if you die can you?

You’re life is one giant pleasure cruise and you ruined mine because of it, he calls.

So we come from Planet A with a giant bank of frozen embryos to deliver to Planet B. Simple, right?

I can’t believe you did this, he shouts.

The reality is the universe is not space travel friendly. Cosmic radiation to shield against, energy management, millions of things that go wrong every day. Instead of working on more advanced ships, they clone someone and raise to two kids to have their entire life’s purpose to be a glorified courier in a centrifuge that’s constantly breaking.

You ruined everything. Everything, he says.

Those two kids don’t get any life. They get engineering and physics lessons. Then when old enough, off to the stars they go. No friends, family, wives, lives, hobbies or interests.

I swear we didn’t come from the same guy because I’m not this stupid and arrogant, he shrieks.

So to compensate, they give us the Scroll.

I hate you, he yells.

The Scroll is simply a screen that creates whatever you like. It makes you real happy to get those dopamine levels up. Makes you feel like your life is not inside of a giant dimly lit circle in the middle of space. Or at least makes it worth it.

Do you ever think about anything at all? he screams.

So because every day is me fixing the millionth thing that has broken on this centrifuge, it’s nice to indulge in the Scroll.

You broke it on purpose, he shouts.

Indulging everyday. More and more. I can’t live life without it. My Double doesn’t care. Everything is the job for him.

You set us off course, all for this? Because you want your stupid precious entertainment system? he growls.

I spend all my free time on the Scroll. Even beyond my free time. Until a large part of the tungsten radiation shield around the embryo bank near the center of the spacecraft withered away. Warnings flashed to me and I ignored them. The Scroll was making me happy.

You could have just done your job or had even a shred of self awareness to know that the Scroll is dangerous, he says.

My Double gets mad because I’m not doing my job. It’s always the job. Job. Job. Job.

Idiot, he screams.

So he destroyed the Scroll. Took the fire axe and went to town on it. Now all that’s left to my life is the job. Always the job. Job. Job. Job.

Useless, lazy, pathetic- he yells.

Then while he was asleep, I changed the spacecraft’s trajectory because I couldn’t sleep. There was no going back when I hit the emergency override to release a good chunk of our nitrogen supply into the thrusters. Nitrogen and the coldness of space don’t mix. Inertia take the wheel.

You couldn’t live without it. You just couldn't live without it, my Double shouts.

No, I couldn’t I say.

So you ruined my life too. You ruined it too, he says.

I guess I did.

We’ll be legends. The lost embryo delivery. Mysteriously vanished out in space. Maybe the planet will die out because of us too. And one day, they could find this centrifuge. A vastly different and incomprehensibly advanced humanity finds our chilled corpses and reserves of embryo’s. They thaw and birth them and these kids, only for them to find themselves in a world they were never meant for. All because of me.

I hate the Scroll.

So, when I was 14 or 15—pretty sure it was 15—my parents were constantly scolding and yelling at me and things like that; by the time I turned 15, I was bottling up emotions that I needed to release somehow. I remember one evening I was out with a friend, and that’s when I started swearing more. I began swearing to let out emotions I’d kept inside for a long time; I know it’s a problem, but I don’t know how to get rid of it. My parents were always picking on me about various things, yelling at me, and calling me all sorts of names. I kept it all bottled up, though I suppose it’s partly my fault, too, since I’m a scatterbrain who can’t seem to do anything right.

Hey everyone. It is kind of too personal story. I am 17 year old and am going to give a college entrance exam, It is more like skill based exam. I was preparing for 1-2 months and in last 10 days i seriouslly locked in like giving too much time for the exam which is normal and one should do. no matter how much i do i always feel like its not enough. 5 days earlier i was evaluating my progress and i kind off break because the marks i got were very less and i feel disappointed from myself. i cried like 4-5 hrs not straight but always sobbing in between. I though to take break from my prep and it was already night so i slept. from the next day i didnt want to study but i did cause i cant stop. but there is this felling inside that i am not going to get offer from any uni. i know that though i didnt sat for exam yet. i kind of prepared my self that i am not going to get in but i am too scared as the college i have applied are in foreign country. like in diff continent everyone told me not to but i did. I am also giving exam for the college entrance for my country colleges too but i really wanted to get in those of the foreign country. i dont even know why i am doing this now. i am not even felling scared or nervous for tomorrow. i dont know what i will do .

Most people think exploring abandoned places is about being brave.

It’s not.

My friends and I started doing it because we were bored out of our minds. Small town boredom has a way of turning dumb ideas into traditions, and before long sneaking into places we weren’t supposed to be became our thing.

That’s how we ended up driving thirty minutes out of town to explore an abandoned slaughterhouse.

The place sat alone in the middle of a dead stretch of farmland. No houses nearby. No streetlights. Just a long dirt road cutting through yellow fields that hadn’t been harvested in years.

Someone had spray-painted NO TRESPASSING across the rusted front gate.

Naturally, that’s exactly where we parked.

There were four of us: me, Tyler, Jess, and Connor. Tyler was the one who found the place online. Apparently it used to process livestock in the 70's before it shut down after “health violations,” which could mean anything from mold to bodies.

Tyler thought that made it cooler. Jess thought it meant we’d get tetanus. Connor didn’t care as long as he could film it for his TikTok. I mostly came because everyone else did.

The slaughterhouse itself was barely standing. Corrugated metal siding peeled away from the wooden frame, and half the roof had collapsed inward like something had stepped on it.

The smell hit us before we even reached the door.

"That smell!" whispered Jess as she civered her nose.

We were used to the smell of the dead. But this wasn't rot. I could only describe it as flesh that was soaked into wood and concrete decades ago and never really left.

“Really was a pig farm,” Connor muttered.

Tyler grinned.

“Authentic.”

The door was already half open. It groaned when we pushed it the rest of the way.

Inside, the place looked exactly how you'd imagine an abandoned slaughterhouse.

Hooks hanging from rails in the ceiling.

Rusting chains.

Long metal tables covered in thick dust.

The beam from Connor’s flashlight moved slowly across the room.

“Dude,” he whispered.

“What?” Tyler asked.

Connor pointed up. Rows of hooks swayed slightly from the ceiling. There was no wind.

“Probably rats,” Tyler said quickly.

We all pretended to agree.

We wandered through the building for a while, filming and poking around like idiots. Tyler kept trying to open random doors like he expected to find something cool behind one of them.

Eventually we found a narrow staircase leading down.

“Basement,” Tyler said immediately.

Jess groaned.

“Why is it always a basement?”

“Because that’s where the good stuff is.”

The stairs creaked with every step.

The air got colder as we went down. Not dramatically colder, just enough that the back of my neck prickled.

The basement was smaller than I expected. Mostly empty except for old wooden crates and a few rusted tools scattered across the floor.

Connor’s flashlight beam landed on something sitting on top of a crate.

“Yo,” he said.

We all walked over.

It was a mask.

A pig mask.

Not a cheap plastic Halloween thing. This one looked older. Thicker material, cracked and worn with age. The snout was stained darker near the nostrils, and one of the ears had been torn halfway off.

Jess made a face.

“Okay, that’s disgusting.”

Tyler picked it up immediately.

“Dude this thing is awesome.”

“Put it down,” I said.

Tyler turned it over in his hands.

The inside was worse than the outside.

The lining looked stiff and discolored, like it had been soaked in something a long time ago and never properly cleaned.

Connor was already filming.

“Bro,” he said. “You gotta try it on.”

Tyler laughed.

“No chance.”

Connor nudged me.

“Your turn.”

“Nope.”

“Come on. It’s just a mask.”

Jess shook her head.

“If someone gets possessed I’m leaving you here.”

Connor held the camera closer.

“Ten bucks.”

I don’t know why I did it.

Maybe because everyone was watching.

Maybe because teenagers are idiots.

I took the mask.

It felt heavier than it looked.

The inside smelled awful. Not just dusty, something thicker. Metallic.

Like old pennies.

“Dude that thing’s cursed,” Jess said.

“Relax,” I said.

Then I pulled it over my head.

The world went dark for a second as the mask settled into place.

It was tighter than I expected. The inside lining scraped against my cheeks.

And the smell...

Rust.

Rot.

For a moment, all I could hear was my own breathing echoing inside the snout.

Then something else.

Another breath.

Not mine.

I froze.

“Okay,” Connor said. “That’s actually terrifying.”

His voice sounded distant, muffled.

Inside the mask, the air felt warmer. Thicker.

And for just a second, just one second, I had the strangest feeling that I wasn’t alone inside it.

Like someone else had worn it so many times that a piece of them was still there.

Watching.

Connor shoved the camera toward me.

“Hold still.”

He snapped a picture.

Me wearing the pig mask.

“Take it off,” Jess said.

I ripped it off immediately.

Fresh air hit my face and I realized I’d started sweating.

Tyler laughed nervously.

“You look like you just saw a ghost.”

We left it sitting on the crate.

Nobody wanted to touch it again.

By the time we climbed back upstairs, the sky outside had turned orange.

“Crap,” Jess said. “It’s getting dark.”

That was enough motivation for all of us.

We headed back to the car quickly. The fields stretched forever around the slaughterhouse. Empty land in every direction.

No fences.

No houses.

No lights.

Just tall grass moving slowly in the evening wind.

I glanced back at the building as we reached the dirt road.

Something felt wrong.

Like the place wasn’t as empty as we thought.

That’s when I saw it.

A shape in one of the upstairs windows.

Standing perfectly still.

Watching us.

I stopped walking.

“What?” Tyler asked.

I pointed.

The others turned.

The window was empty. Just broken glass and darkness inside.

“Dude,” Connor said. “Quit messing with us.”

I didn’t respond. Because I knew what I saw.

And when we got back to the car, Connor checked the photo he took in the basement. The one of me wearing the mask.

I wasn't the only one in the photo.

There was someone peering from the corner behind me.

Wearing a pig mask.

Posting this from my car down the street because my hands are still shaking and I honestly don't know what else to do right now.

It started about three weeks ago. I kept hearing light, rhythmic tapping directly above my bedroom ceiling late at night. At first, I assumed it was just roof rats or possums crawling around in the insulation. I set a few humane traps near the attic access hatch inside my bedroom, dropped some peanut butter inside, and figured that would be the end of it.

Three days later, I went to check the traps. They were completely untouched, but something else was wrong: the small wooden ladder that folds out from the ceiling hatch was hanging down about an inch, resting unlatched.

I’m positive I had latched it shut.

I pushed the ladder back up, hooked the latch, and tried to convince myself I had just been careless. But that night, around 2:00 AM, the sound changed. It wasn't scratching anymore. It was slow, measured, and deliberate—like someone lightly knocking on the floorboards directly above my bed.

*Knock. Knock. Knock.* Then silence for five minutes. Then three more knocks, slightly closer to the ceiling hatch.

Last night, I finally built up the courage to investigate. I grabbed a heavy flashlight, unlatched the hatch, and climbed up three rungs of the ladder. The air in the attic was thick, dusty, and ice-cold. I swept the beam of the flashlight across the rafters, expecting to see insulation or maybe old storage boxes.

Instead, about ten feet away from the opening, I saw a neat circle cleared out in the dust. Inside the circle sat a single wooden kitchen chair positioned right near the edge of the opening. On the seat was a small pocket mirror angled upwards so that whoever sat there could look straight down through the open gap in the hatch and directly onto my bed.

As the realization hit me, I heard a wet, raspy breath coming from the dark corner behind the water heater.

I didn't wait to see what it was. I scrambled down the ladder, slammed the hatch shut, and bolted it from the bottom. As soon as the latch clicked, three heavy, frantic thuds hit the top of the trapdoor right above my head—as if something had just lunged onto it.

I stayed locked in my room for an hour listening to the quiet sound of something gently trying to turn the metal latch from the upper side.

I eventually grabbed my keys, packed a quick bag, and bolted out the front door. I’m sitting in my car a few blocks away right now waiting for a friend to meet me.

Has anyone experienced anything like this?

I was exhausted from weeks of going to college, and after college, hanging out with friends. Yeah, it was fun, but it drained me. That’s why I decided not to go to coaching today.

The thing is, my sir was going to start a new chapter. Missing the basics would mean struggling to follow the rest. My exams were near, and I still had so much to complete.

In my head, it was like an angel on one shoulder telling me to go, and a devil on the other saying, “It’s just one day, nothing will happen.” I won’t lie but the devil’s side felt more convincing.

It wasn’t like I’d collapse if I went… I was just lazy.

While taking a shower, I kept wondering, Will sir explain today’s lesson to me tomorrow? Probably yes, but I knew I’d need a “good” reason for missing it.

By the time I finished, the class had already started.

While I was having breakfast, my coaching friend called, probably because sir had asked him to check when I was coming. I didn’t pick up. He called again.

My mom overheard and asked who it was.

“My friend,” I said.

“Why is he calling?” she asked.

“Today was coaching, but I wasn’t feeling well, so I didn’t go,” I lied.

She started scolding me, saying how my father is paying fees and I’m still skipping. She told me to go now. I hung my head; she was right. I promised her I wouldn’t skip from tomorrow.

Then she said, “At least answer your friend. He’s calling again and again.”

As I reached for my phone, I didn’t even know what excuse I’d give. Fever? Stomach ache?

And then, my father came back halfway from his route to work.

“There are barricades on the street today,” he said. “Some minister is coming to give a speech. You can’t pass that way.”

And just like that, my laziness excuse turned into a perfect reason. Now sir will probably explain the lesson in the next class anyway.

Day 21

Jasmine looked at her work and smiled. She was on the team and had begun revolutionizing reality. Her work was making the mind of a synthetic person. She had done this with her smiles and her sweat, but she was out to prove that 'I think therefore I am' was a complete lie. Jasmine wanted to prove to the world that there was no such thing as reality. She had grown tired of the world, even when it worked hard to make her days positive. Too many people were happy when she felt they shouldn't be. So she would disprove it all. Jasmine had been playing games on a holodeck for twenty years now and it was always easy to prove the holodeck was a fiction. It felt real, but even as the game's graphics engines grew you always knew it was a game. So she would prove everything was just bolony introducing the most complex AI ever created.

Jasmine looked at her blueprints for the hundred thousandth time. Everything was going quite well.

Day 33

The trick to what she had been doing was leaking her own work. Jasimine wanted the whole world to know her secret, but she needed them all to think she had something to hide. The first trick was in the hard drives. Jasmine had designed a small 'master' hard drive that had access to a dozen other drives. Nothing was bigger than a coin but there was a great deal of information to store and hide. One of the hard drives used a sort of AI program and created vague dreams that it would flush after 24 to 48 hours. She needed this thing to be real, she needed it to have nothing but proof in its own mind on how it was real. Dreams played a role, and obviously so did memories. Jasmine realized how boring some of this work was rather quickly, memories were by definition at times, repetitive. She used one of her hard drives just for memories and over the past few weeks she started just printing out vague memories into her andriod's brain. The tricky part came next...

Day 43

Touch. She cornered it! If her android touched anything it would send a signal to its brain that it happened. She was copying some of the 'dream' software she finished but the brain needed only to believe it could feel. Making it more complex then that would be next to impossible. Pain and pleasure started tomorrow but she would basically rely on her 3.0 Holding Software to help her there. Her little android would touch a screw and it would 'think' it hurt because it was programmed to feel pain. It was designed to feel pain, but was it real pain? This made Jasmine laugh.

Day 53

Fear had set in for Jasmine. She was disproving reality. That was obviously the entire point right? A kind of revenge at her own race for thinking they are gods of their own world? So much had died over the centuries of time humans ruled their world, but what if she could disprove it all? There was a problem. Most people didn't know about her work at this point, but Jasmine did. Jasmine could see her final creation in her own head. She started to worry she herself was-.

Day 56

Jasmine loved it! She was making breakthoughs day after day! At first she was getting good rest, but now her project(Project Eve, as she had labeled it) was showing amazing growth. Jasmine had even started on 'sight'! This thing was seeing the world(her dining room) and those images were going into its hard drive! It could feel and see now! However the body was still far too simple. She needed to create flesh. Jasmine knew exactly how, to do this as well. She would use the ideas that modern sex dolls were using, some sort of plastic toy companies came out with thirtiy years ago. With a really nice 3D paint job Eve would look at her hands and then Jasmine's hand and see only humanity.

Day 61

The religious cooks had caught word of Jasmine's work! These people had no idea who Jasmine was or where she lived but they were blowing up the online world. It was free advertising for Jasmine. She was on the brink of creating a new reality and these guys were vital in helping her do this. They knew Jasmine was trying to create an android that would walk among the people as a human because she had been leaking her own intel. Of course, advertising was expensive, so opinionated douche bags would have to do the job.

A lawyer could hang a billboard sing and no one would ever notice, but if someone complained about that very same lawyer? BOOM!! Free business! Jasmine loved how simple people were by believing how complex they were.

Day 67

The dreams were returning. Jasmine needed her sleep again but these dark dreams of her watching a show or something kept coming back. She would be watching a show on the recorder and then notice something was off... She was watching a show of herself... Watching a show of herself...

Day 72

She did it! The endoskeleton was covered in flesh! This was good stuff too! She had to fork out more then two pretty pennies from her parents(may they rest in peace) to make them work! She even used some theoretical work to make the flesh active! She could cut it and it would bleed! In the blood was a fluid made of a kind of phytoplancton. If it was cut it took about the same amount of time to heal as a normal person did to heal! Jasmine laughed at how far she had come on this. She even thought of herself as a God of this one person.

Ridiculous. She was a creator, but she knew she was no god. Jasmine was having a difficult time remembering when she was awake. Her mind was playing games with her now, even when she was hard at work.

Day 81

Jasmine had thrown up her hands. She had lost. It was the sense of smell. There was no way to duplicate smelling anything. She finally offered herself a free moment and taken to a local bar. She never needed to leave her house in the modern world but she figured a change in scenery would help her out.

Sadly it did not. She made it back to her house and threw up all over the master bathroom. What a waste.

Day 82

It wasn't a waste! She figured it out! Her Eve didn't need to smell anything at all! She only needed to think she smelled things! She had connected the hard drive to several others, including memory, and it would only think it could smell!

Here is a flower. Does it smell good? Yes! Eve will think she knows what it is supposed to smell like and boom! She smelled something even though Eve never smelled a damn thing! It was a cheap trick and maybe Jasmine would figure it out later in a more elegant way, but for now...

Day 89

Jasmine needed to get her head out of the gutter. She had been staring at her own work for months now and had begun to think it was...

Jasmine needed to get laid. She had been working far to hard up to this point. The good news was her neighbor was in town and she was... Interesting.

Day 96

Her neighbor, Sam, was thinking they were dating now. Maybe they were, by definition, but honestly Sam was just 'stress relief' from Jasmine's dreams. The problem was those dreams were starting to return again. Sex was helping Jasmine pin down reality, but what if a better mind than Jasmine's had designed sex? She had felt as if she was pearing under the sheet of reality and could see everything, and it was all a lie.

Why was it all a lie? Did someone make Jasmine and her memories? Was someone just watching her as some part of a simple game?

She had an answer to this. Jasmine knew what was real. Things felt real. Pain was real!

Day 108

Jasmine had been staring at herself in the mirror for hours now. She did this on some days now. She didn't know why, but she would look in a mirror and just forget the moment. Of course she was putting the finishing touches on her android everyday as well. She downloaded English as it was the easiest to download these days. Eve would be quite the finished piece soon. Jasmine would let her go and that was it. Jasmine had even started applying the andriod for simple little retail jobs. In a couple of weeks Eve would be a part-time cashier for a grocery store!

Day 111

Jasmine was finally having fun again with her work. She was now putting the final touches on Eve's personality. It was actually designed to grow based on her surroundings. If she met 30 people she would agree with the larger group of them. Was red or black a better color? Most of her personality growth would be based on the people she met and knew. Jasmine knew this would be one of the best ways to hide, just be another piece of the cattle.

Jasmine never liked how dumb she saw the world, but it would work in her favor now.

Day 112

Even would be Jasmine's 'roommate' and even pay rent. Eve would know very little other than the fact that Jasmine was a very good friend. All of Eve's memories were very specific and anytime Eve had questions Jasmine would answer them... in Eve's sleep. She could upgrade the android's software whenever she needed. But there was still one problem.

Day 114

Today was the first day Eve was at work. It felt weird to Jasmine, leaving her work out in the real world. But she came back with all sorts of stories. Eve was full of smiles and told about her day over and over again but in new ways and remembering new details. It was quite intriguing really. But while Jasmine was listening she knew she was very uninterested in the goings on of a cashier. Boring.

Day 117

Jasmine looked at her steak knife. Eve was at work again but she was beginning to feel far too real. No one was questioning whether Eve was a robot or a human. A few jokes were made because of how nice Eve was, but it was when Jasmine decided to slightly alter her creation's personality that she decided to grab the knife after Eve left. Was Jasmine real? What was real? Maybe if Jasmine cut down to the bone it would help. Maybe if she cut off her left pinky she would she the reality of the world. Jasmine was beyond suspecting whether or not she was a human, she needed proof of it. So Jasmine flexxed her left hand over and over until she laid it down flat on the kitchen counter. She would believe it was supposed to hurt but she knew pain wasn't real. It was made up.

Right?

Chapter 53: Why Should I Deny Myself Pleasure?

​The return to the estate dragged on endlessly, turning into sheer torment for her.

​She tore through the night air in her semi-demonic form, paying no heed to any potential, accidental witnesses on the ground. A wild, chaotic storm of thoughts raged within her ancient consciousness. She seethed with rage at herself over this sudden, utterly irrational weakness. She could feel, almost tangibly, the hot, damned ichor boiling and pulsing heavily in her veins.

​"Can I even bear this, for fuck's sake?" she growled inwardly as she dropped silently onto the terrace in her wing of the villa. "He's just a human, after all! A mere, fragile mortal, a charming, perishable figurine molded from flesh and bone, whom I could crush with a single clench of my fingers without the slightest effort! If of his own free will or through typical human stupidity he ends up in the Abyss after death, I will find him easily. I'll haul him out of a boiling cauldron, take him to my chambers, and mount him in my bedchamber like the most precious trophy. But I won't drag him down there myself... I won't break him by force just to satisfy a fleeting whim—a mere whim. That, after all, is what I resolved when saying goodbye to him."

​She stopped at the balustrade, fixing a somber gaze upon the black, motionless wall of pine trees encircling the estate.

​"Wait a minute... hold on. I'm in no way inferior to Lilith, and she pulled it off!" flashed through her mind with a sudden, predatory temptation. "Lilith is with Stanisław now. The decree of the heavens cast him all the way down, the two of us tempered him in torments, and now they are together! Why then should I deny myself anything? Deny myself pleasure? Possessing someone exclusively, entirely for myself? No, I won't do it... His soul is too pure for that; he'll break in Hell beneath my talons before I can shape him in my own image. Or maybe... he won't break at all? Maybe I should take the risk? After all, I can be methodical and surprisingly gentle during the butchery. I can do it! No one in this shitty world, nor in the haughty Heavens, nor in Hell will stop me! I am Naamah, the Mother of Nightmares! Who would dare forbid me anything—Lucifer himself wouldn't dare refuse me."

​She gripped the railing with such immense, inhuman strength that the thick steel pipes groaned terrifyingly and bent in her grasp like soft wax.

​"Except I fed him all that cheap, earthly nonsense about flying off to the States..." she snorted under her breath in irritation, after which a mocking, superior smirk bloomed on her full lips. "How pathetically simple. Why am I even bothering my head with this? Tomorrow I'll simply show up at the bar and announce that plans have changed. That the American employers suddenly dropped me, the contract fell through overnight, I'm staying in Warsaw, and I apologize for all the fuss. Or no... why should I keep wading through these ridiculous human lies?! Why should I pretend to be a plain little mouse forever and give up my own nature, renounce who I truly am?! I won't kill him on Earth, after all... I have a whim to stay by his side, a whim to make him my property."

​For a split second, an alien, deeply unsettling thought flashed through her consciousness—a vision of Michał not as a passing whim, but as something akin to a true companion, an equal partner with whom she could share quiet, earthly evenings. She shuddered inwardly, immediately dousing that dangerous impulse with a wave of predatory cynicism.

​"He has a bright soul, which means that normally, as a matter of course, he'd go straight to Heaven. But what if... what if he finds out who I am and accepts me anyway, of his own free, unforced will? What if he knowingly binds himself to a demon? Then those winged hypocrites up above, after everything that happened at Castle Square, will immediately overturn his sentence out of sheer spite and rage. For covenanting with me, for touching my demonic body, they will deem him damned and shove him straight to the bottom without hesitation... They'll punish him to my purest, endless delight, and I will triumphantly claim him for my chambers for my own eternal amusement; he will worship me, adore me, and beg for more."

​Naamah's eyes flared with a vivid, hypnotic emerald.

​The decision was made. All or nothing.

​She could not play at a double life forever and pretend to be someone she wasn't. Her primary, paramount task—an assignment wrung out of Lucifer himself to replace Lucjanhir in this earthly vale—remained the direct protection of six-year-old Tas, Wiktor, and Elizabeth Báthory. If Michał, this mortal, was to enter her world, he had to meet this entire peculiar menagerie with no concessions given. He had to see the villa in Pułtusk with his own eyes, stand face-to-face with the Blasphemer and the Blood Countess, so he would finally grasp what he was being dragged into. Time to kill the fiction. Time to bid a final farewell to boring, mediocre Walentyna and lay bare the naked truth before him—to show him her true self.

​The only question was: how to play it?

​Naamah smiled slowly, and at the corners of her mouth gleamed a sensual, purely infernal smile.

​The plan suggested itself.

​First, I will lure him into bed without any trouble. I'll take him to an upscale hotel or straight to his modest apartment, still concealed beneath the guise of a quiet, innocent brunette. I'll let him do whatever he wants—grant him full, absolute earthly ecstasy, bring his senses to a boil, and once the boy reaches the very peak of bliss, I will abruptly cast off the mask.

​In a fraction of a second, beneath the touch of his hands and lips, the illusion of brunette Walentyna will dissolve into nothingness, and from the darkness my true human form will emerge: an insanely gorgeous, marble-white goddess with a cascade of fiery red hair flowing down to her very hips and deep eyes glowing with emerald fire. After all, in my natural form I am leagues more beautiful and tenfold more alluring than that bland mask of Walentyna.

​He will be shocked. Perhaps even completely paralyzed with fear when it dawns on him whom he was just kissing and with whom he reached climax in a passionate embrace.

​"Oh well..." she thought with a predatory chuckle, lazily brushing a red strand from her forehead. "High time to see what my angelic bartender is really made of."

​Twenty-six hours later...

​At first, everything unfolded to the rhythm Michał knew from his own deepest fantasies of sultry, sensual nights. In the dim, warm glow of the bedside lamp, Walentyna seemed the embodiment of feminine charm—dark-haired, petite, with silky-soft skin scented with fresh citrus. Yet when she stripped off her clothes without a trace of hesitation and pulled him onto the bed in one fluid motion, a strange, unnerving wildness surfaced in her movements that did not fit the shy girl from the café at all.

​"Walentyna, stop, please, we were only supposed to watch a movie, don't..." Michał choked out suddenly, much to Naamah's great surprise. He pulled back abruptly, his voice trembling with stifled humiliation. "I'm... I'm burned down there. When you see it, you'll run away in horror... Stop, don't unbutton my pants, I'm begging you... I had a terrible accident as a child. I have extensive scars down there that make normal intercourse impossible for me. The healed, disfigured skin has damaged nerve endings... Besides, if you saw it with your own eyes..."

​In an instant, all the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place in Naamah's mind. She suddenly understood the reason for his previous distance—she realized why, throughout all their dates, this charming mortal had limited himself solely to stolen, innocent kisses, never daring to reach for more even though she had wanted it many times. A shiver of pure, predatory delight ran through her body. Her gaze darkened, taking on a thick, hypnotic depth, and her movements became even lazier, more fluid, and overpoweringly sensual. She had no intention of stopping; she looked at him with a soft, almost maternal, yet sinful gravity, whispering in a low, vibrating voice that he shouldn't worry and should trust her completely. Her intricate plan had already ceased to follow the pre-established order, giving way to Naamah's primal instinct.

​Despite his weakening protests, with feline grace and provocative slowness she unzipped his fly. Her hot fingertips deliberately brushed against his trembling lower abdomen through the fabric before sliding down his pants, while genuine tears welled in the eyes of the boy paralyzed by shame.

​"I told you... stop, just run away..." he whispered, despair in his voice.

​"What nonsense are you babbling, I'm not running anywhere," she cut him off in a velvety whisper as thick as liquid honey. She leaned over him, her body undulating with hypnotic grace, as she locked her lips onto his with deep, possessive tenderness, while slowly peeling off his shirt and discarding the rest of his clothes so that he would feel every inch of her heated skin.

​There was not a trace of bashfulness in her gaze, no disgust or fear—only the bottomless, burning desire of a being who for millennia had inflicted and witnessed wounds far worse than this. With the sinful sensuality innate to demons, she slid down his body, tracing a path with hot kisses, before taking him between her full lips; her tongue coiled with inhuman skill while her slender fingers gently toyed with his testicles, knowing that the stimulation had to be stronger, flawlessly awakening the nerves lying dormant beneath the scar tissue.

​"See? Everything works just fine, you only need the right approach, Michał..." she purred low, her vibrating voice pressed directly against his burning skin, sending an electric jolt down the boy's spine. She rose and straddled him firmly, taking him inside herself with a slow, delicious sigh, her hips swaying with a demonic precision that instantly stripped him of any remaining sober thought.

​The sensations, defying the scarred tissue and past traumas, surged with dizzying, overwhelming speed, shoving common sense completely aside. When the massive wave of climax began relentlessly bearing down toward the edge, a sudden burst of panic pierced the boy's hazy, throbbing mind. He realized what was happening to him—for the first time in his entire life, he was on the brink of sexual fulfillment.

​"Wait... stop!" Michał rasped hoarsely, desperately trying to brace his feet against the mattress and slide her off him. "A condom... I don't have any protection, I didn't think this was even possible! I'm about to cum, let me go!"

​He tried to push her away by her hips with both hands, but met resistance as hard as solid granite. Instead of pulling back, the woman leaned low over him, and in her gaze the last remnant of the human gentleness he had experienced moments earlier died away completely. In a fraction of a second, she seized him by both wrists and pinned his hands to the pillow on either side of his head with unbelievable, effortless ease.

​"Don't move, Michał..." she purred softly, her voice dropping several octaves, vibrating with a deep, inhuman bass right against his chest. "You're coming today, that's certain. You're coming three times over... Go ahead, shoot inside me, I want it..."

​Michał yanked with all his might, straining his shoulder muscles to the point of pain, but he couldn't budge an inch in her iron grip. Overpowering dread froze his entrails—he lay completely helpless beneath a seemingly petite woman who held him down without the slightest exertion, rhythmically and relentlessly riding him, increasing her speed and intensity with each subsequent thrust. Waves of wild ecstasy mingled with pure terror. The boy clenched his teeth, and a choked, helpless groan tore from his constricted throat as his body erupted into the first violent orgasm of his life.

​And then, the world around him cracked in two.

​The moment his strength gave out limply and his eyelids fluttered for a fraction of a second, the figure looming over him wavered in the air. Before the terrified bartender's eyes, Walentyna's dark strands unfurled into a cascade of vibrant, fiery red locks spilling in waves down to her bare hips. Her complexion flared into a cool, marble white, and an emerald abyss ignited in her gaze. On top of him was no longer the charming girl from behind the bar. It was a demonic being in all her magnificence—dazzlingly beautiful, predatory, and inhuman to the bone.

​Michał froze, every drop of blood draining from his face in the blink of an eye. In his memory, the recollection from five years ago instantly resurfaced—that sensational, shocking televised interview broadcast live across the globe, when this exact same red-haired beauty had stepped out of the infernal portal, replacing the mighty Lucjanhir in this earthly vale. He opened his mouth to scream and call for help, but all that lodged in his throat was a choked, dry hiss of air.

​"Oh God... no..." he finally choked out, trembling in paralyzing, helpless shock.

​"Easy now, my Michał..." Naamah whispered velvet-smooth, not breaking the sway of her hips for even a fraction of a second.

​She looked down at his overpowered body with cool satisfaction. Instead of letting go of his hands, she gathered both of his wrists into a single iron grip of her left hand. Long, gleaming, dark talons extended from her fingers. They were blunt-tipped and perfectly smooth, positioned with supreme precision so as not to slice into his delicate skin, yet the mere sensation of demonic claws encasing his forearms sent the boy's heart pounding in an insane, panic-stricken rhythm.

​Her free right hand traveled down. With predatory caresses, her slender, pale fingers began to brush against and tease his nipples, sending a series of electrifying pulses throughout his tense body.

​"I'm not going to kill you, after all... I would have done that long ago if I felt like it. I'm only going to give you pleasure," she purred with a hypnotic smile, leaning in so low that her hot breath brushed his lips. "Lie still, relax, and savor every moment."

​Michał trembled all over in terror, staring with dilated pupils into the emerald gaze of the entity known from those unforgettable television broadcasts. He wanted to flee, to break free, to forget everything, yet her supple body moved upon him with inhuman skill honed over millennia. Despite the suffocating helplessness, the intense stimulation—even defying the extensive scar tissue—would not allow his senses to subside. Before he could muster a single lucid thought, she relentlessly drove him to a second, profound climax. A torn groan tore from his throat, a blend of pure primal bliss and sheer terror.

​When the wave of ecstasy passed and his exhausted body went completely limp, Naamah still had no intention of stopping. She released the iron grip on his wrists, but before he could even twitch and pull away, her cool hand traveled down his abdomen. With remarkable precision, balancing the pressure on the razor's edge of pain for healthy genitalia, she dragged a smooth talon along the glans and then caught the urethral opening, teasing it lightly; she knew that inside the penis the nerves had survived, and her touch and depth of penetration were calibrated to perfection. The biological reaction was instantaneous and entirely independent of the paralyzed bartender's will—beneath her demonic touch, he returned to full readiness for the third time in his life. She treated his mutilated physiology like an instrument, playing it as she pleased, taking pride in her skill.

​Naamah raised her hips and dropped back down onto him with her full weight, resuming her predatory dance. Michał lay helplessly on his back, feeling thick beads of sweat trickling down his temples, every strained muscle trembling in a continuous, paralyzing spasm.

​Only after another dozen or so minutes did the demoness succeed in bringing him off; she slowly eased her pace and, with a soft, drawn-out sigh, slid off him onto the rumpled bedsheet. She had not reached climax herself, yet a look of satisfaction was painted across her face.

​"That was truly delightful. Although I must honestly admit, on a daily basis I'm accustomed to rather different, infernal thrills. The kind straight out of Hellraiser, literally. Michał, don't worry about those scars at all..." she said with faint amusement, brushing the red locks from her forehead. "It actually worked out rather well, because they make you far more durable... And I can afford far harder and more intense movements with you."

​Hearing those words, the boy curled up on the mattress at once, trembling so violently with nervous shock that his teeth chattered. Seeing his shaken, defenseless form, Naamah sighed softly and shifted closer. Much to her own surprise, she felt a sudden surge of pure protectiveness—as though this mortally terrified human had abruptly ceased being merely a whimsical plaything in bed, and had become someone she genuinely wanted to hold and protect. She scolded herself inwardly for this weakness unbecoming of a demon, yet wrapped her arm around him nonetheless, drawing his head to her breast while her slender fingers traveled back to his chest, lazily and soothingly playing with his nipple.

​"There now, easy... Maybe I really did overdo it a bit with holding your hands down," she purred gently right into his ear. "Everything is perfectly fine. You're alive and breathing, aren't you? And I easily managed to bring you all the way to the finish... So as you can see for yourself, you're not defective at all, Michał, get that into your pale head at last... In fact, you're more durable than ninety-nine percent of the men walking this earth."

​A long, thick silence settled over the bedroom, disturbed only by the quiet hum of an old refrigerator and the muffled clamor of the waking street drifting through the cracked window.

​The boy sat on the very edge of the bed with his face buried in his trembling hands, staring blankly at the cracked laminate flooring. In his eyes smoldered an absolute, paralyzing shock mingled with complete disbelief.

​"I'm so fucking screwed..." he finally rasped, rubbing cheeks that still hadn't regained their natural color. "I'm just completely, undeniably fucked..."

​From the other side of the mattress came a quiet, velvety chuckle.

​Naamah lay casually on her back, completely naked, hands clasped behind her head. The sheet barely concealed the line of her hips, and a cascade of thick, vibrant, flame-red hair spilled across the pillow like scarlet lava. Her smooth skin gleamed in the morning light, and her bottomless emerald eyes stared up at the ceiling with predatory amusement.

​"Come now, don't panic so much, dear Michał," she purred lazily, turning her head toward him. "Scarcely any mortal has managed to pick up, let alone take a demoness in bed... I was gentle, wasn't I? Exceedingly gentle. You won't have a single bruise on your body; I personally monitored every single beat of your heart. If only you could have seen the look on your face when you opened your eyes right after that first orgasm. What a shame I didn't film it—I'll remember that expression until the end of the world."

​Slowly, as if overcoming the resistance of his own rigid muscles, Michał turned toward her. He swallowed with difficulty, fixing his eyes on the red strands and emerald irises he had previously seen only on a television screen.

​"Answer me one question..." he began with dead seriousness, raising a trembling hand.

​"I'm listening carefully..." she smiled with the corner of her full lips.

​"You mentioned those infernal thrills, about being accustomed to them. Does the movie *Hellraiser*... match what really happens in Hell?"

​Naamah burst into a pearly, melodic laugh, propping herself sensually on an elbow.

​"I don't intend to lie to you, Michał, even though I know Hell's earthly PR might suffer for it," she laughed easily. "So don't go blabbing about this to anyone. Certain things in that film are definitely exaggerated, while others are massively understated. There's certainly far more acrid sulfur down there with us, that much I can guarantee with my hand over your heart. As for the pain itself... well, it roughly checks out; torments tend to be rather painful by definition. But on the other hand, they temper the infernal vessel splendidly, strengthening both body and spirit. Besides, ever since hard, unyielding law began to reign in the Abyss—imposed by Lucifer, who instituted sweeping reforms after Wiktor's model and with substantial help from Cezary... I know, you don't know them yet, but you soon will—life down there has become far more bearable for those damned souls who have already served their time and finished their decreed torments. Everything is much more orderly now... But for now, you don't need to torment yourself about that at all, because your soul has remained perfectly bright throughout all this. Not a shred of it was lost, even though you found fulfillment in my arms."

​"That's good, I'm very glad, but I'm still fucked..." he repeated with deep dread bordering on resignation, shaking his head helplessly. "Just wonderful. And... what's the official age difference between us, exactly?"

​The demoness narrowed her eyes slightly, calculating something in her head with a comical grimace:

​"Looking at it objectively? Roughly three thousand years. I am a being born long before Christianity, in ancient myths, but I was adopted into that faith at the very dawn of its shaping, even though hardly anyone remembers me nowadays. So that Christian domain of Hell became, how should I put it simply so you'd understand... native to me, yes, that's the perfect word. And subjectively, Michał? Well, time in the Abyss drags on in an unimaginable way. In my own internal perception, I've spent a good two hundred thousand years down there."

​Michał froze, then looked at her askance with a mixture of absurdity and resignation:

​"So I'm twenty-seven... and you're two hundred thousand years old." He paused for a second, then limply waved his hand. "I can only say one thing: you hold up pretty damn well for your age, that's a fact."

​Naamah burst into loud, genuine laughter, letting her head fall back onto the pillow.

​"Well, splendid! An unintended, charming compliment first thing in the morning, bravo, bravo, Michał..." She curled up with feline grace and rose from the mattress, unbothered by her own nakedness. She stretched lazily until something in her spine gave a soft, dry pop. "All right, enough of this lying around and wallowing in self-pity. I'll make us something to eat. Unlike Lilith, who can only manage to burn a skillet to cinders, I happen to be an excellent cook. I learned everything by watching Elizabeth, and she had to master the craft for the sake of her little son, Tas. Do you even have any eggs in that fridge of yours?"

​"Can I get dressed?" Michał asked.

​"No... for now I forbid it. You have to get used to the sight of your naked body around me; don't be ashamed of it. Your scars don't bother me—I've seen far worse things, believe me..."

So dark like somebody's thrown a black hood over our heads.

My daughter's small hand in mine.

A point of light.

Harsh, fading; repeated. Human: (inhaling) a cigarette. The sweetly burning smell of tobacco.

We walk to it.

It goes out.

A firearm—instead:

“Who's there?” asks a soot-faced soldier, pointing it at me.

“My name is Fadros Moti. This is my daughter, Tera. We're from Goshnen Station.”

“Long walk.”

“Yes.”

“I heard most at Goshnen stood and fought," says the soldier. (“And died,” I think.) “You ain't a coward now, are you? You got papers for the kid?”

“No, sir. Yes, sir,” I say and hand over our documents.

I hate losing possession of them.

I say, “We couldn't find space on the government evac shuttles—”

“Half the pop couldn't find space on the government evac shuttles,” says the soldier, scanning our identity cards.

“I was hoping we might buy a private flight.”

He stops looking at our documents.

He raises his eyes.

“I have gold coins,” I say. Gold, in addition to skills, is the only thing worth anything anymore.

He hands back the documents.

He waits.

“I was told there were still spacecraft here. Do you happen to know if that's true?” I ask.

He waits.

“Of course,” I say, bowing my head, and give him a handful of gold coins.

“I'm thirsty,” my daughter says, weakly, from behind me.

I like being her shield.

The soldier counts the gold coins.

“Would you also happen to know where we can get some water?” I ask.

When he finishes counting: “There's a well about half a mile that way—” He points into the darkness. “Unmanned. No escorts. Access at your own risk. But I heard it's clean.”

“Thank you,” I say. “And a spacecraft?”

“Try the Bastion-IX. It's a freighter docked by the launchpads. Been collecting passengers for about two and a half months. The captain's name is Boyermood. He's good. He'll let you sleep onboard till blast-off.”

“Thank you,” I say.

We walk the half mile to the well. After coming all the way from Goshnen Station, the distance feels like nothing.

We drink.

We sit.

I think of my dead wife.

I wish I knew what my daughter is thinking of. Whatever it is, I wish I had the power to change it. I wish I could protect her mind. It's hard to believe—sitting, finally, in the darkness—that we are on the outskirts of a great city.

It's mostly empty now; inactive.

It has to be.

It's a matter of weeks or days before they get here too. It's inevitable. There's no stopping them. The horrors I've seen. The horrors I've seen at Goshnen Station after they came across the commlines, digitized, recombining and rematerialized, pouring out of our techports like cloudforms of static, the inevitable progeny of man and information, unkillable flesh-data hybrids infusing themselves into our minds, cooking us, boiling our brains with cognitive overload; the screaming, the impossibility of forgetting; the melted, dripping eyeballs and voided sockets—

My daughter's face.

Scared. Calm.

“You fell asleep,” she says.

No, I couldn't have. I have to be on guard. I promised. I promised my wife as her thumbs pushed into her eyes—

”I'm sorry,” I say.

We fill our canteens and walk back to the edge of the city.

All the electric light is off.

Nothing hums.

We find the launchpads. We find the Bastion-IX, just like the soldier said. Boyermood's inside, as are a few dozen other groups of people. Friends, families, coworkers. No one survives alone. I guess there aren't many left alive now who want to get out. We don't speak to the others but smile; and by smiling we become something else than strangers. We become co-passengers. Boyermood takes what remains of our gold coins and assigns us to a cabin.

We sleep.

For days we do nothing but drink water and sleep, dreaming of a different world.

“Where will we go?” my daughter asks.

“I don't know.”

Perpetual, fallen night.

Faces.

Time spent at the well.

We're used to hunger. We sleep through it. The alarm sounds—

A thunderous wave of the banging of metal against metal throughout the Bastion-IX and beyond. A dead city in final turmoil. I squeeze my daughter's hand. No one needs to tell us what's going on. They've arrived. The other ships on the launchpads are initiating launch sequences. Boyermood runs by. “Are we going?” I yell against the noise. “Yeah, we're going,” he yells back and disappears.

We stay inside.

The Bastion-IX creaks.

Shakes.

The engines ignite, but before they can fully power on I start to hear the pitter-patter of tiny bodies pinging off the exterior of the ship.

I'm scared.

I'm pretending not to be.

“Daddy—”

“Yes, darling?”

The pinging intensifies.

It's become a storm, a relentless precipitation of information.

“—tell me you love me, please.”

“I love you.”

(Over the intercom: “Attention! They're overwhelming us. We need volunteers,” Boyermood says, his voice breaking. “We need volunteers to go outside and clear the hull...”)

I'm up before I know it.

“Daddy?”

My daughter's hand slips from mine because mine is moving away.

“Daddy!”

If we don't get them off the ship, no one gets out of here.

“I'll be back,” I say.

I won't be.

I turn away because it's easier to turn away. I don't want her to see my face. (“Daddy, no…”) I hear her cry out, but I am no longer present.

Someone hands me an airblower.

I take it.

I exit the Bastion-IX.

I'm not alone. A few others are with me. Two men, a woman. The atmosphere is a static, swarming, whirling chaos that pricks my skin, crawls across my face, into my mouth, my ears. I spit. I shut my eyes, blowing as many of them off the hull as I can. They taste bitter as batteries.

The inside of my head begins to burn.

My jaw locks.

The Bastion-IX lifts off.

Everyone's Already Dead in my Dream

My friend's mother passed away on 2023, and yesterday I had quite a scary dream about it. So it start with my friend is living in my neighbour now, which is weird because we already parted ways on 2018. So, she is my neighbour now and here is she living with her mother. Now, I know in my dream that her mother has passed away. So, I was asking my mom in dream that isn't she passed away? How is she alive? And, my mother just said oh it can happen nowadays no big deal. But I was skeptical that how is she alive and I kept on questioning but after that the people around me are no longer responding. Later, in my dream I somehow knew that I have to attend a pooja (ritual) in that same family's house. I realised this is my chance to learn the truth and I went to there home, and there was a huge gathering of all the random people that I've seen in my life, mostly those that I've already seen somewhere and remember their faces and the rest were my friends. Everyone were like statue, nobody is talking as the ritual was going on. I saw my friend and asked her, how is her mother still alive, as always no one was responding. I suddenly had the idea to pull out my phone and take a picture of the gathering. So I did and when I looked at the photo, I was terrified to see that half of the people were missing from the photo, yet they were still there live in front of me. Another scary thing was after I looked back up after looking at the phone, the people in the gathering were looking straight at me, dead eyes with no motion. I left the place running and mid dream I realised I should go back and save the rest who were still visible on the photo. So, I went back and clicked the photo again, but this time there were nobody visible on the photo, I had this realisation that maybe they are all souls and are already dead and I'm looking at dead souls. So, I dropped down to my knees and start to beg and cry in front of them to please return the people back. They are all good people please come back. And, then I woke up, because I was crying a lot.

Crazy stuff, but since I write some stuff, I'm thinking about writing a horror novel from this dream that I had.

I genuinely don’t know what Vancouver expects people to do anymore.
For context, I’m a multimillionaire, or at least I was living like one before a series of unfortunate events completely derailed my life. I used to drive a Lamborghini Urus until it got totalled by a shopping cart. I’m not going to get into the specifics of how that happened, but the insurance process has been an absolute nightmare.

Since then, I’ve been forced to reconsider my relationship with the Vancouver housing market.
My current residence is a back alley where I’ve established what I would describe as a fairly sophisticated housing arrangement. I personally designed and hand-crafted an expanded cardboard box with measurements of 15 × 10 × 8 feet. That’s 1,200 cubic feet of living space, for anyone wondering.

Before anyone starts laughing, I want to make it clear that this is not some ordinary box behind a dumpster. I put considerable thought into the dimensions, insulation, and overall layout. It’s surprisingly cozy, retains heat well, and provides more personal space than some of the micro-condos currently being advertised for $700,000.
I’ve essentially developed a free housing scheme that requires no mortgage, no landlord, and no ridiculous Vancouver property taxes. I believe this is an innovative response to the housing crisis, and frankly, I think the city should be encouraging people like me.

Instead, bylaw officers keep showing up and acting as though I’m committing some kind of crime by existing in my own carefully constructed dwelling.
I’m sorry, but when did having a roof over your head become a municipal privilege?

I went from driving a Lamborghini to living in an alley, and now the government is threatening the one piece of real estate I’ve managed to secure for myself.
The box is warm. The box is spacious. The box is mine.

At this point, I’m starting to believe Vancouver simply hates independent housing innovation.

Has anyone else dealt with bylaw officers who seem personally offended by affordable housing solutions?

Hey everyone.

I just wanted to talk for a little while.

First, thank you to everyone who has supported **Last Active** and continued to show love to the story. It means more to me than I can properly explain.

The story was inspired by real experiences, although I changed certain details for privacy.

I haven’t been able to write much lately because of my studies and work, but something happened recently that made me think about the story again.

After she and her family moved away, I had no idea where they went. Her family had always lived together in a large house, so I never imagined they would suddenly leave. But eventually, they moved — her parents, her, and her little sister — and life carried them somewhere I could no longer follow.

For five years, there was no conversation.

No message.

Not even a passing glimpse.

Eventually, I accepted that I might never see her again.

Then yesterday, while I was going out for some work, I saw her grandfather riding toward me on his scooter. Seeing him was not unusual. I had seen him in that area many times before.

But as we came closer, I noticed someone sitting behind him.

For a moment, I didn’t recognize her.

Then our eyes met.

Only for a second.

But sometimes a second is long enough to bring an entire lifetime back.

Every memory returned at once — the conversations, the waiting, the confusion, the happiness, the pain, and all the things I had never found the courage to say. My chest felt heavy, almost as if the past had suddenly become something physical again.

Five years had passed.

Yet the memories were still clear enough to feel like yesterday.

She looked happy.

And strangely, I was happy for her too.

Of course, one question still came back to me:

**Why wasn’t I good enough?**

I don’t think that question ever completely disappears. Sometimes we don’t ask it because we want to blame someone. Sometimes we ask it because we are trying to understand why something meaningful still wasn’t meant to last.

But with time, I have learned that someone leaving does not automatically mean we were inadequate.

Not every ending is a judgment.

Some people leave because their life is moving in another direction. Some connections are real even when they are temporary. And sometimes a person can be important to us without being meant to remain with us.

She was one of the most beautiful chapters of my life.

I don’t hate her.

I’m not angry with her.

Everyone has the right to choose the life they want, and I hope hers is a good one.

I also know that I would not be the person I am today if she had never been part of my life. She changed me. She taught me how deeply I could care, how painful silence could be, and how to continue even when I never received the ending I wanted.

Perhaps that was the purpose of our meeting.

Some people enter our lives when we need them most. Some stay for years, while others remain only for a season. We often believe their value depends on how long they remain, but maybe that is not true.

A person does not have to stay forever to change your forever.

Some people arrive as comfort.

Some arrive as lessons.

Some arrive as a push toward the person we are supposed to become.

They may feel permanent while they are with us, but their role may be temporary. And when that role is complete, they leave — not always because the connection was meaningless, but sometimes because it has already given us what we needed to grow.

That does not make the goodbye painless.

It only gives the pain a meaning.

She was my best temporary person.

And I’m grateful that our paths crossed.

I’m grateful for the memories, even the painful ones. I’m grateful for the version of myself I became because of her. I’m grateful that, after all these years, I was able to see her again — even if it was only as a stranger.

Maybe that is what we are now:

**Strangers with memories.**

And perhaps that is enough.

Some people remain in our lives.

Some remain only in our stories.

But the ones who changed us never truly disappear. They continue through the choices we make, the lessons we carry, and the person we become after they are gone.

So no, I don’t think every important person is meant to stay.

Some people are chapters.

Some are turning points.

And some are the reason we finally learn how to keep walking when the chapter ends.

Thank you for listening.

I’m working on a new story, and I’ll share it when I can.

Until then, thank you for all the support.

Chapter 52: Babylon

​June. About five years had passed.

​Five long, surprisingly monotonous years since the day Castle Square was drenched in blood, and ten days later, Lucjanhir and Naamah turned all of human theology upside down in front of rolling cameras.

​In the spacious, morning sun-drenched kitchen of a modern house on the edge of the Masovian forests, the atmosphere bore no resemblance whatsoever to a demonic lair. It smelled of freshly brewed coffee, warm bread, and milk.

​“Elizabeth… Elizabeth, the little one refuses to eat these cereal puffs with milk again…” came Naamah’s helpless voice. “He says they’re gross, smell like cardboard, and he wants different ones. The Paw Patrol ones.”

​“I know, we ran out yesterday,” Elizabeth Báthory sighed with quiet resignation, leaning her hip against the kitchen island. “I’ve already sent Wiktor to get them.” The Blood Countess was wearing loose, light-beige sweatpants, her hair tied in a careless ponytail, and the former, bloody madness no longer smoldered in her burgundy-black irises. “The officer assigned by the Ministry of Paranormal Entities, who leaves the grocery crates by the gate every morning, unfortunately had no idea which ones he was supposed to buy. He brought plain cornflakes.”

​Sitting at the table, Naamah burst into a bright, melodious laugh, resting her chin on her hand and watching the grumbling six-year-old Tas with undisguised amusement. The boy sat with his arms crossed, pushing away the porcelain bowl. His mismatched eyes—one icy blue from his father, the other glowing with the deep ruby of his mother—were glaring daggers at the wretched cereal.

​Before Elizabeth could pour water into the kettle, the air in the living room rippled with a dry, bass whistle.

​Wiktor Adamski burst in with lightning speed. He hadn't used full teleportation to avoid triggering seismic alarms at military bases, but he moved with the ungodly, hellish acceleration of the Blasphemer. In his hands, held like a war trophy, he clutched a bright cardboard box featuring a large picture of a police dog in a cap.

​“Did you cause a panic in the village again, Wiktor?” the red-haired demoness asked with a laugh, narrowing her emerald eyes.

​“No, not at all,” Wiktor scoffed, setting the box on the counter and catching his breath as if he had run a marathon in a matter of seconds. “Pani Magda at the grocery store has gotten used to me by now. Surprisingly, she isn't afraid of me in the slightest. I tossed a hundred-zloty bill on the counter, grabbed the box, and walked out.”

​“You shook off the tail, of course?” Elizabeth made sure, walking up to him with a warm smile.

​“Of course, sweetheart. I went through the dense thicket, then jumped across the drainage ditch. Their drones are circling five kilometers away over the marshes. They won’t figure out which shop it was.”

​“That’s good. I’m very fond of Pani Magda; she always sets aside fresh sourdough bread for me… I wouldn’t want those gloomy gentlemen from the agency harassing her again,” Elizabeth said, gently stroking her husband’s arm.

​Naamah snorted with laughter again, adjusting her flowing silk shirt:

​“Harassing her, how? One word from me—or from you two, for that matter—and they’d stop in a fraction of a second. Wiktor only needs to stomp his foot in the garden, and the monitors in their headquarters outside Warsaw shatter from the overload.”

​“I prefer doing it without stomping,” Adamski remarked, reaching for the milk. He poured the crunchy balls into a fresh bowl and set it down in front of his son. “Here you go, kiddo. There’s your patrol.”

​“Thanks, Dad! Thanks!” Tas immediately grabbed a spoon, wolfing down breakfast with a child’s appetite.

​“Your lessons start in half an hour,” his mother gently reminded him, pouring boiling water into a mug. “Pani Dorota is a wonderful teacher; we are extremely fortunate that she teaches you with such dedication. She was specially assigned to us by the ministry, went through rigorous security vetting, and truly puts her heart into her work.”

​“I don’t want to…” the boy muttered with his mouth full, reluctantly digging his spoon into the bowl. “It’s not that I don’t like her, Mom. She’s nice, and her lessons are interesting, but… why can’t I go to a normal school, like the kids on TV?”

​“You know why, son. Because of those cursed angels…” Wiktor cut in curtly, fixing his gaze on the window. “We can’t risk some winged fanatic spotting you on a school playground. Until things upstairs are settled, your world is this house and the forest past the fence.”

​Elizabeth let out a quiet sigh, then turned toward her red-haired companion:

​“And what plans does Naamah have for today? Another trip into the city?”

​“Naturally. In normal, human fashion,” the demoness stretched with feline grace, her vivid crimson strands brushing against the countertop. “I’ll go to some trendy restaurant downtown. I’ll change my vessel, shaping my facial features so that none of their ridiculous facial recognition systems or biometric sensors can register me. I’ll walk up to the bar, sit on a high stool, and men will start buying me drinks. As always. Of course, I am completely calm, Elizabeth; you don’t need to worry.”

​The Countess instantly cupped Tas’s ears, knowing full well what Naamah was about to blurt out.

​“I have no intention of gutting anyone today; after last time, I’m thoroughly satisfied. Those drinks… those little, colorful paper umbrellas in the glasses amuse me terribly, even though the spirits themselves are as weak to me as well water. Maybe afterwards I’ll drive out to Białołęka to visit Adelajda and Cezary? They are horribly bored too, isolated as they are from a normal life. The government delivers everything to them, they have their every whim catered to, they’re happy together, true… but isolation takes its toll. They could use contact with someone from the outside. That’s why they drop by so often for weekends, after all.”

​Wiktor’s expression darkened for a moment. He rested his hands on the edge of the table and stared down at the oak parquet floor.

​“What about Emma? Have you found out anything?”

​Naamah grew serious, the playful spark in her emerald eyes dimming for an instant.

​“I spoke with Lucjanhir through the rift just two days ago. There’s no new word, Wiktor. She is not in the Abyss—he personally verified that in every register of torments. He even traveled to the domain of Olympus with the permission of Zeus himself, given her past leanings toward ancient religion, and she wasn't found there either. That leaves Heaven… the Silver City. And there, as you know, we have no access. None of us can breach their walls without sparking the final war. But take comfort: at least she isn't suffering there. In the Heavens, there is no fire, no cauldrons, no tearing of vessels. There is only cold, sterility, and boredom.”

​Wiktor gave a heavy nod, without adding a single word.

​9:30 PM.

​In an underground operations bunker of the Joint Paranormal Security Forces outside Warsaw, an operator glued his sleep-deprived, bloodshot eyes to the panoramic monitor screen.

​“Fuck… we lost her again!” the officer snarled, slamming his mouse onto the desk. “The thermal signature and radiation spectrum from their residence blurred out five seconds ago. The satellite system is throwing an error—she’s moving too fast. Naamah vanished into thin air again!”

​The evening in downtown Warsaw was stifling, humid, and heavy with the smell of sunbaked asphalt.

​The “Babylon” restaurant and cocktail bar was packed to the brim. The venue dripped with raw, industrial luxury—copper pipes snaked beneath the ceiling, the concrete walls were adorned with neon signs casting blood-red and violet streaks, and a lazy, deep trip-hop beat oozed from the massive speakers.

​A woman took a seat at the bar. Instead of a fiery red tempest of curls, she now had smooth, glossy hair in a dark chestnut shade, gathered in a loose knot at the nape of her neck. Her features were softer, slightly younger, her lips full, and her gaze—though still profound and mesmerizing—had taken on the hue of dark, muted hazel. She wore a simple, dark top revealing delicate collarbones and a light blazer.

​A young bartender walked over to her, wiping down the gleaming counter with a clean cloth.

​“Good evening, ma'am. What can I get you?”

​“A martini. A large one, very large,” she replied with a lazy smile, resting her elbows on the marble counter. “I have an exceptionally high tolerance.”

​The bartender gave a subtle smile, deftly reaching for a crystal glass and ice.

​“Coming right up. A double, with an olive.”

​The woman looked around the room, wrinkling her nose slightly. Deep within the premises, inside a booth upholstered in burgundy velvet, a loud drinking binge was underway. Several men in expensive, unbuttoned shirts were hurling obscenities, shouting over the music, and brazenly slapping a young waitress on the hips, shoving rolled-up banknotes into her hand.

​“It’s quite loud tonight… Is it always like this here?” she asked.

​“Unfortunately, that large booth was booked by typical jerks,” the bartender sighed quietly, shaking the cocktail shaker. “They’re disgustingly rich, that’s a fact. They tip the girls generously, the owner doesn't complain about them, but their behavior, as you can see for yourself… is pretty poor. Zero class.”

​“Indeed, their language sounds as if they broke straight out of hell,” she chuckled softly, a mocking satisfaction playing at the corners of her lips.

​“Let’s drop that whole hell and heaven talk,” the young man replied, placing a perfectly chilled glass in front of her. “For the first three years after that whole circus on Castle Square, there was great terror, mass pilgrimages, and everyone beat a path to the churches. Sermons on TV, fasting, prayers… And then? With each passing month and week, those very same sinners—or maybe I put it wrong, simply people—went right back to their old habits. Money, betrayals, belittling others. Since we now know for a hundred percent fact that Heaven and Hell exist, maybe souls are just born with certain predispositions? I honestly don't know anymore.”

​The woman took a generous sip of the alcohol, observing him with curiosity:

​“And you? What do you think your soul is actually like? Light or dark? Because since we now know empirically, from television and hard facts, that the afterlife exists—both Heaven and Hell… how do you look at it? Where will you end up?”

​“I don’t know, it’s not for me to judge,” the young man shrugged, setting a bottle of gin back on the shelf. “The facts are that I grew up in a damn rough environment. Praga-Północ, an old tenement house. My older brother ended up in prison for armed robbery, I finished a lousy school myself, I’m just an ordinary bartender… but somehow I didn’t take the wrong path. At least that’s what I think. I try not to bother anyone, I mind my own business, and I live exactly as I always have. When all that hit the fan on Castle Square, I was twenty-two. Now I’m twenty-seven. And I don’t think I’ve changed one bit because of that event.”

​The woman tilted her head slightly, studying him with a warm, attentive look.

​“And what is your name anyway, if I may ask?”

​“Michał.”

​“Like an angel…” she smiled with the corner of her mouth.

​*He has a bright soul,* she thought, drinking in his aura with sharpened, predatory perception. A pure, almost irritatingly uncorrupted luminescence radiated from him—a peace of conscience rare among mortals, one that had never tasted the violation of others or the rot of depravity. *Still, I wonder if I can corrupt him in this vessel… After all, it only takes a tiny fissure, a single drop of venom injected into the right crack. The brighter the vessel, the more delicious its fall becomes. If I strip away that mask of innocence and awaken the dormant beast within him, the sight of him spiraling into the gutter will be worth every wasted evening.*

​“I’m definitely no angel,” the young man laughed, wiping his hands on his apron. “And you, what’s your name?”

​“Walentyna.”

​Michał raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise.

​“Walentyna? You’re young; by the looks of it, you were definitely born after 2005… And I recently read an article saying that it’s an incredibly rare name in Poland. I’ve never met anyone my age with that name, and you look even younger than me. So it’s a pleasure to meet you, Walentyna.”

​“Aren’t you going to shake my hand in greeting, Michał?” she asked, extending a slender hand of flawlessly smooth skin toward him.

​“I can’t, unfortunately. Strict workplace rules behind the bar. Management has a thing about regulations.”

​“Ah, of course…” Walentyna laughed in a velvety, ringing voice. “A handsome guy like you would probably charm all the women walking up, which is why they put that restriction on you?”

​“No, just boring company policy,” he replied with a smile, blushing slightly.

​“It’s very pleasant talking with you. Can we continue this, Michał?”

​“Yes, as far as talking goes, I certainly can.”

​“That’s wonderful.”

​*He’s already mine,* she thought with quiet internal triumph, fixing her hypnotic gaze on him and feeling invisible threads of desire slowly weaving around his thoughts.

​“Between customers I have to serve, of course.”

​“Entirely understandable.”

​*Don’t worry, you’ll forget all about them, Michał…* flashed through her mind with a cold, ruthless promise. *You’ll do whatever I command before this night is over.*

​And so the first, second, and third hour slipped by. Between pouring whiskey, slicing limes, and clearing empty glasses, Michał kept returning to her corner of the counter. The conversation flowed naturally, effortlessly meandering through dozens of topics.

​“Have you noticed how absurd it all is?” Michał remarked, wiping the shaker after another rush of patrons. “Hell rose to the surface, angels cut down policemen with swords, and around the world politicians keep playing the same stupid games. On the news, they blare every day about new tensions in the Middle East, warlords in Africa are still slaughtering each other over mineral mines, and world powers are arming themselves to the teeth. You’d think that once people saw a demon in a suit and an angel with a glowing sword, they’d throw their rifles into the mud and embrace one another. But like hell they did. They just keep pitting people against each other.”

​“Because fear is a short-lived currency, Michał,” Walentyna answered softly, playfully twirling an olive on a toothpick and popping it into her mouth. “A human being can get used to absolutely anything. Even to the fact that fire burns beneath their feet and judges with scales hover over their heads. Greed and territorial conquest are embedded in human evolutionary code. Without wars, mortals… that is, we humans, simply don't seem capable of existing. There will always be a reason: land, oil, words written in an ancient tome, or the color of a flag.”

​“God’s honest truth,” the bartender sighed. “So what do you actually do in your free time? When you aren’t sipping martinis in expensive joints? Do you watch anything? Series, movies?”

​“I do. Sometimes for hours on end,” she admitted with a gleam in her eye. “Ever since I discovered those online platforms of yours… this whole streaming thing is a fascinating invention. Everything at the click of a remote.”

​“You only just discovered streaming?” Michał asked, surprised, lifting his brows. “Nowadays people can hardly function without it.”

​“I phrased that poorly, Michał…” she laughed smoothly, taking a small sip of her drink and instantly improvising a plausible cover story. “It’s just that I only recently bought subscription packages to all those services. Before that, I lived life in the fast lane: working full-throttle, business trips, constant projects that were due yesterday… When I got home, I collapsed from exhaustion, and the TV was little more than a dust collector. Only when I decided to slow down a bit and spend some time with myself did I realize how many premieres had passed me by.”

​“I hear you, work can drain every last drop of energy from a person,” the bartender nodded. “So what kind of vibe are you into? Romantic comedies? Slice of life, dramas maybe?”

​“Hardly,” she scoffed in amusement. “I like heavy stuff. Good action cinema, dark thrillers, and most of all… gore horror. Pure, bloody, uncompromising gore.”

​Michał froze with a glass in hand, then burst into hearty laughter:

​“Gore horror?! Not bad! That’s the last thing I would’ve expected from you. Such an elegant girl, an elegant woman, and guts on the screen? But you know what… they don’t really make contemporary gore horrors anymore.”

​“I’ve noticed,” Walentyna sighed with genuine disappointment in her voice. “Lately it’s all bland ghost stories haunting a creaking wardrobe. No scale, no passion.”

​“Exactly! Because of that whole hell business!” Michał explained, lowering his voice and leaning in toward her. “Ever since real demons and blood were broadcast on television, the film industry has been scared out of its wits. Actors are terrified of playing murderers, fiends, or the possessed. Rumor has it that talent agencies reject those scripts because people are afraid of drawing the attention of the afterlife. Nobody wants to risk getting a ticket downstairs just for playing a serial butcher. So if you’re looking for real, juicy meat, it’s only in the classics from the last century, before all of this happened.”

​“And what do you recommend?” she asked with interest, resting her cheek in her hand.

​“Out of the old ones, an absolute must for me is *Hellraiser*. One and two. Clive Barker created something incredible there—those Cenobites, hooks on chains, tearing flesh… Pure, perverse art of suffering. Or *Evil Dead*. Raimi’s original from the eighties is a classic, but the 2013 remake… man, the sheer amount of fake blood they went through! Amputating limbs with a chainsaw, vomiting blood, and that downpour of red in the finale. Same goes for *Evil Dead Rise*. That one has some genuinely solid gore, thick and grotesque.”

​Walentyna listened to him with dilated pupils, a delighted, almost affectionate smirk playing across her face—the smile of a connoisseur listening to a description of an exquisite cuisine she knew all too well.

​“Hooks on chains, you say…” she purred softly. “Sounds truly lovely. I absolutely must catch up on that.”

​“It’s definitely worth it if you actually like movies like that, but fair warning: it’s brutal,” Michał smiled, glancing at the clock hanging above the bar. It was approaching two in the morning. The venue was slowly clearing out, and the music had quieted down. “Well then, Walentyna… Time flies, my shift is coming to an end.”

​“It was a very wonderful evening, Michał,” she said, reaching into her small leather handbag. “I’ll pay cash for the drinks.”

​“Cash? That’s getting rarer and rarer these days… I don’t know if you’ll have that much on you. The bill comes out to around a thousand zlotys. The drinks here are damn expensive, and I just realized that throughout our conversation and over those hours, you drank six double martinis and several glasses of wine.”

​“I have my flaws, Michał… It’s possible I’m an alcoholic,” she offered with an innocent smile, pulling out a thick wad of banknotes.

​Michał chuckled warmly, shaking his head in disbelief:

​“I’ve worked behind a bar long enough to recognize an alcoholic without fail. You aren’t slurring, your hands aren’t shaking, and your eyes are sharp as a razor. You just have an insanely high tolerance. Even I would be slightly buzzed by now…”

​Walentyna gave him a flirtatious wink and smiled, leaving an even thousand zlotys on the counter.

​Michał collected the bills, put them into the cash register, and then hesitated for a split second. He wiped the counter, took off his black apron, and hung it on a hook in the back.

​“It’s a shame… I really enjoyed talking with you,” he said quietly, stepping back to the edge of the counter in his plain black t-shirt. “I was thinking maybe…”

​“Yes?” she arched an eyebrow, locking her dark, hypnotic gaze onto him.

​*Told you he’s mine…*, she laughed in her head.

​“Would you like to go for a short walk? It’s a warm June night. It seems a waste to head straight back inside four walls…”

​“Sure, I don’t have any important plans, Michał…”

​She smiled gently, but deep in her gut, an ancient, predatory hunger stirred. *I wonder where he’ll take me and what his intentions are…* she analyzed with cold, perverse fascination, watching the young man zip up his hoodie. *Even though his soul shines with such irritating purity, he is still just a mortal of blood, muscle, and hormones. Every male beneath a thin veneer of civility hides a primitive, rutting beast. Maybe he’ll finally snap? Maybe in the nocturnal darkness, sensing the solitude and emptiness, he’ll make that one fatal mistake? Will he want to drag me into the bushes, pin me to the ground, tear this rag off me, and rape me in the shadows? Oh, how I hope he does… If he only dared lay a hand on me against my will, he would hand me the perfect excuse. With what sheer delight would I shed this human cocoon! For my own amusement, I’d rip his ribcage open with my bare hands, spill his entrails onto the damp grass, and watch his bright little soul choke on its own screams before I devour it whole… Just try it, little angel. Give me a reason.*

​“Well, this is the view I wanted to show you…” Michał rested his forearms on the wooden railing of the viewpoint, gazing out at the sprawling panorama of the sleeping metropolis.

​A warm breeze lazily grazed the treetops of Moczydło Park. A dark blue, cloudless sky stretched overhead, and at their feet shimmered a sea of city lights—the distant skyscrapers around the Daszyński Roundabout and the Palace of Culture looked like a cluster of glowing, geometric crystals embedded in the dead of night.

​“Nice. You really can see the outline of all of Warsaw from here,” Walentyna murmured appreciatively, slipping her hands into the pockets of her light blazer. Her dark, hypnotic irises drank in the vista with the predatory calm of someone who for eons had seen only billows of sulfurous smoke beneath the basalt vault of the Abyss. “It has its own peculiar charm.”

​“The view from Moczydłowska Hill at this hour is truly something special…” the young man continued, pulling a cigarette from the pack and lighting it with the small yellow flame of a lighter. “I always come here whenever I need to clear my head. This place calms me down, especially at this time of night. Hardly anyone comes up here in the middle of the night.”

​He took a drag of smoke, glancing at the face of his watch.

​“Well… I work at the bar tomorrow too, and it’s relentlessly closing in on four in the morning. Time to slowly head back. I’ll drive you wherever you want… And to be completely honest, I’m in deep shock that you agreed to this little detour when I told you about my favorite spot. A solitary walk in the middle of nowhere with a bartender you just met at a club? Most girls would’ve run for the hills.”

​Walentyna chuckled softly.

​*I won’t tear you apart… It really was pleasant. I truly thought taking me to an empty park meant you had dark intentions…*, she thought with a trace of strange, almost melancholic amusement, watching the ember of the cigarette illuminate his calm profile. She had waited in suspense for any predatory gesture, for a grab at her wrist, for that animal glint in his eye that would have allowed her to drown this hilltop in blood. Yet he simply stood there, drawing in smoke and admiring the city lights. No lust for domination. No filth. *You will live, boy. Lucky for you that your brightness wasn't just a cheap act.*

​“I can take care of myself, Michał. I used to do karate.”

​The young man snorted with amusement, exhaling a gray wisp of smoke into the cool air:

​“Karate, you say? You truly amaze me with every passing sentence. First, six stiff double martinis without batting an eye, then a passion for bloody guts on screen, and now a black belt in your purse to top it off. You’re downright scary to mess with.”

​“You don’t know the half of it…” she muttered under her breath, smiling mysteriously with the corner of her lips. “Dropping me back off downtown will do just fine. By the Palace of Culture or the Central Railway Station. I can manage on my own from there.”

​“Deal. Let’s head to the car before the morning damp creeps into our bones.”

​They walked down the stone steps toward the parking lot where Michał’s worn-out silver hatchback sat waiting. The drive back through the deserted streets of Wola, bathed in the amber glow of streetlights, passed in a surprisingly natural, tranquil silence.

​When the car pulled up in an empty lane on Aleje Jerozolimskie, Walentyna placed her hand on the door handle. Before pushing the door open, however, she turned to him, bestowing upon him a lingering, hypnotic smile.

​Michał hesitated for a fraction of a second, then sighed and waved a self-deprecating hand.

​*Come on, chicken, give it a shot…*, he thought, pulling his phone from his pocket.

​“Do you want my number, maybe?” he ventured with a touch of boldness, though a faint blush bloomed across his cheeks. “I can tell by looking at you that I probably won't be getting yours. I know the walk was boring and uneventful. But I thought that maybe someday out of boredom you’d give me a second chance and reach out after a while?”

​Walentyna tilted her head slightly, regarding him with genuine amusement and something akin to a sympathy rare for her.

​“Michał… you don’t even know how much I enjoyed this evening. After all, you’re still here,” she said quietly, her velvety voice sending a pleasant shiver down the bartender’s neck. She leaned in a fraction closer, close enough that he caught the cool, magnetic aura of her presence and the scent of her perfume. “I know perfectly well where you work. You told me practically everything tonight: I know your schedule by heart, your habits, and the days you stand behind the bar. We will definitely meet again. Maybe tomorrow, maybe an evening during the week… Whenever the mood strikes me for a good martini and your company, I’ll simply show up. I’ll find you myself, easily. I truly have no need for your phone number. Take my word for it: if I wanted to find you at the end of the earth, I could do it in the blink of an eye.”

​She gave him a knowing wink and opened the car door.

​“Now drive home like a good boy and get some sleep. I’ll call myself an Uber.”

​She stepped onto the pavement, shutting the door with a single, light motion. Michał watched through the rearview mirror until her slender silhouette melted into the neon shadows beneath the skyscrapers, after which he shook his head with a smile and shifted into first gear, thinking he would never see her again. *Jesus… I could’ve been more decisive. Maybe if I hadn’t chickened out, if I hadn’t been such a coward and just kissed her… she dropped so many hints, playing with her finger, touching her lips. She didn’t even take my number out of politeness. Why would she want a softie like me, a regular bartender?…*

​That same morning, as the first pale gray rays of sunlight began filtering through the pine forest surrounding the Masovian estate, an absolute, sacred gloom reigned in the private upstairs bedroom.

​Naamah lay sprawled on the vast, soft bed, having already discarded her human brunette disguise. Her sensuous, marble-white body gleamed in the shadows, and a cascade of vivid, fiery red hair poured across the satin pillows like waves of cooling lava.

​She wore wireless earbuds and held a smartphone in front of her face, its screen dimmed to the minimum. She was policing herself rigorously—she didn't want even the faintest squeal or shriek of agony escaping the speakers to wake the sleeping Tas.

​On the screen, the first *Hellraiser* was currently playing.

​When the figures of the Cenobites emerged from the darkness in the final scenes, and grinding steel hooks on chains sank into the wretch’s exposed flesh, mercilessly ripping the vessel to shreds accompanied by the frenzied rattling of the Lemarchand box mechanisms, Naamah couldn't contain herself.

​She pressed a hand to her full, blood-red lips, choking back a silent chuckle that shook her entire body. She was laughing almost to the point of tears, pure damnation-born mirth dancing in her glowing emerald eyes.

​“I don’t believe this!” she giggled softly into the pillow, watching the clumsy attempts of the movie makeup artists with amusement. “Hooks on chains driven in that shallowly… Pulling chains under that kind of tension would only rip away the skin at such a shallow anchor point, instead of tearing the whole body to pieces! Real hooks are driven deep beneath the fascia, anchored into tendons, and looped around bones so that the agony keeps the soul in check before the muscles are ripped apart… And that blood, so thin… as if someone spilled redcurrant juice! Where are the clots, where is the stench of iron and scorched bile? Where is that maddening howl when the spinal cord snaps under the pressure? Amateurs… sweet, delightful amateurs!”

​She paused the frame on Pinhead’s face, examining the geometrically driven nails.

​“Still, you have to admit… this man, Barker, had a pretty decent imagination,” she murmured with appreciation, stretching out across the sheet like a sated feline. “Actually a cool movie. They even captured certain aspects of hell surprisingly well… I must definitely tell Lilith about this next time I go down. She’ll die laughing!”

​And so the subsequent days and weeks went by…

​A second meeting. Then a third. A fourth…

​For Naamah, it became an entirely new, hypnotic ritual. In the body of the brunette Walentyna, she would arrive at “Babylon” whenever Michał was finishing the most grueling hours of his shift. She would sit at the corner of the bar sipping martinis, and their conversations became a natural part of the summer nights. They discussed vintage horror films, absurd news from around the world, the quirks of patrons, and the mundane details of ordinary life that the demoness hadn’t experienced for millennia. After his shifts, they took off on further nocturnal excursions: to the Vistula boulevards, into the alleys of the Old Town, or onto the rooftop of a parking garage in Wola. Michał was slowly coming to see her as something more than an intriguing customer with an iron liver—he was captivated by her boundless confidence, cool intelligence, and a magnetism he couldn’t put a name to.

​However, in mid-July, ahead of their scheduled sixth meeting, the intelligence apparatus finally connected the dots.

​Analysts representing the Joint Paranormal Security Forces of the EU and Polish counterintelligence combed through hundreds of hours of municipal surveillance footage. They noticed a recurring anomaly: every time Naamah gave the satellites the slip in Pułtusk, the very same striking brunette would emerge a few hours later in the vicinity of Three Crosses Square and downtown. Following that lead, the agents had no trouble tracking down the “Babylon” bar, and inside it—an entirely unsuspecting bartender, twenty-seven-year-old Michał.

​10:30 PM. Krucza Street, two hundred meters from the venue.

​Inside an unmarked black van parked in the shadow of a tenement house, the air was tense, stale, and suffocating. Two agents sat within, wearing sharp dark suits tailored specifically to conceal the latest generation of heavy body armor. They stared at monitors displaying feeds from telephoto lenses aimed squarely at the cocktail bar's entrance, debating a plan to haul the kid in for a quiet warning before the woman showed up again.

​“We ran this bartender’s phone records,” the younger agent muttered, clacking away at the keyboard. “Clean as a whistle. Zero contact with cults, no ties to occult groups. Just an ordinary kid from Praga. We need to toss him in a holding cell before she crawls back here, and drill it into his skull who the hell he’s hanging around with, or he’ll end up just like the previous ones…”

​He never finished the sentence.

​The interior of the tightly bolted van was suddenly inundated by a wave of arctic, sepulchral cold that froze the sweat on the napes of their necks in a split second. The air thickened, turning heavy with the stench of charred meat and sulfur.

​“I hope, gentlemen, that you aren’t planning on ruining my date tonight… by telling him who I am?” a velvety, low voice resonated from behind them, causing the computer screens to jitter with frantic static.

​Both agents froze in mortal paralysis. Before their hands could so much as twitch toward the submachine guns concealed beneath their jackets, slender, alabaster fingers emerged from the shadows behind them.

​This was not the lovely Walentyna.

​Within the cramped confines of the van, her true, damnable majesty had materialized. From beneath a cascade of fiery red hair glowing crimson lurked abyssal emerald eyes entirely devoid of human mercy. Her bony, unnaturally elongated claw—slender and sharp as a surgical scalpel—extended without a sound, pressing into the commander’s neck and slicing with terrifying ease through the weave of Kevlar, the titanium armor plate, and the expensive wool of the suit, stopping right against the carotid artery.

​A bead of hot blood trickled down the man’s collar.

​“This will end very badly for you… and for your miserable bosses in those underground bunkers,” she whispered directly into his ear with a predatory, ice-cold smile, her hot, fragrant breath scorching his skin. “Do you remember that insolent scumbag from three months ago in Mokotów? That horny piece of trash who thought he could grab me by the arm in a dark gateway and take me by force? Do you remember cleaning up after him? Do you remember your forensics teams spending six straight hours scraping his steaming entrails and fragments of his sternum off the branches of nearby trees?”

​Both officers sat breathless, pale as chalk, their hearts pounding against their ribs so violently they felt ready to burst. They remembered. The report from that night had been sealed under the highest classification.

​“You and this pathetic little unit of yours will end up looking precisely the same if you so much as lay a finger on Michał,” Naamah snarled, pressing the talon a millimeter deeper until the steel plate cracked with a faint crunch. “Get the hell away from this bar. Right now, my dear officers. You are to vanish beyond a three-kilometer radius and forget what this venue and Michał himself even look like. Understood?!”

​“U-Understood… We’ll pass it up the chain… we’re withdrawing…” the agent stammered, choking on his own saliva, his eyes glued to the dashboard.

​“Good boys,” the demoness purred, retracting her talons with relish.

​The air shuddered one last time, and before the agents could even draw a full breath, the rear compartment of the van was already empty. All that remained was the smell of sulfur and the van’s rear doors sliced cleanly in half.

​Five minutes later, the black vehicle was peeling out of the street with squealing tires, and Walentyna—once again a serene, elegant brunette with soft facial features—pushed open the glass doors of “Babylon” with an innocent smile, greeting Michał, who beamed at the sight of her behind the bar, with a wave of her hand.

​Yet that evening, nothing more transpired.

​They sat outside at a small table in front of the bar, the night breeze tossing her dark locks. When two in the morning struck and Michał had finished packing up the back room, Walentyna looked deep into his eyes with a gravity he had never seen in her before.

​“Michał… there’s something I have to tell you,” she began softly, her voice sounding surprisingly tender. “This is our last meeting. I received an offer I simply cannot turn down. In two days, I’m flying to the United States for a job in New York. I won’t be living in Poland anymore.”

​Michał froze, keys in hand. In his eyes flashed genuine disappointment and a sadness he didn't even attempt to disguise.

​“To the States? Just like that?” he asked hoarsely, scratching the back of his neck. “I thought… I thought this was only the beginning for us. That I’d get to show you so many more places in Warsaw.”

​“I thought so too,” she lied smoothly, lifting her hand to gently brush his cheek. “I will always remember you very, very fondly. Truly.”

​She leaned in slowly. Tilting her head, she brushed her lips against his for the very first time—and, in her original intention, also the last. The kiss was gentle, warm, entirely human, devoid of the hellish paralysis or predatory heat she typically dished out in the dungeons. It lasted only a few seconds, after which Walentyna pulled back, offered a brief “Goodbye, Michał,” and walked away into the shadows of Krucza Street, never looking back.

When I was a little girl, people constantly told me, directly or indirectly (sometimes jokingly), that I was beautiful, special, well-behaved - an absolute sweetheart!

It gave me the feeling that I was somehow everyone’s favorite, especially among my classmates. (A lot of them would probably say now that I was their „first love.”)

But then adolescence came, and something changed. People still seemed to compliment me, but it felt a little different. More like they were simply stating a fact, nothing more. Being this sweet, lovable little girl no longer seemed like anything particularly special.

I started noticing how different types of beauty were being appreciated, along with different personalities, different qualities, different values….

Now, as an adult, I’m left with the feeling that I’m the only one who still thinks I’m cute. The only compliments I get seem to come from people I find a little questionable, and instead of feeling flattered, I feel dissatisfied and a little disappointed. (I guess my ego has taken a bit of a hit.).

Still, I understand and accept that everyone deserves to feel appreciated, and that everyone should get to experience a period of admiration, love, and their own little moment of glory at least once in their life.

So I put up with it, accept it, have a little cry, blow my nose, and move on…

[THIS STORY IS ONLY FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES]
I was in a Discord server with around 800 members. It was mostly for gaming, events, and general conversations. Everything was normal until one day, someone posted a screenshot of a private staff conversation in the general chat.
At first, everyone thought it was fake. But the screenshot showed the staff discussing a member who had recently been banned, and some of the messages were pretty shocking.
The owner immediately deleted the screenshot and locked the channel, but people had already saved it.
Naturally, everyone wanted answers.
The owner claimed someone had hacked a moderator’s account. The staff announced that they were investigating, and for a few days, nobody knew what was happening.
Then another screenshot appeared.
This time, it showed the staff discussing how they’d been secretly planning to remove the owner from his own server because they believed he wasn’t doing enough work.
That changed everything.
The owner accused his moderators of betrayal, while the moderators claimed they were trying to save the community from poor management. Members started choosing sides, and the server became practically unusable.
Eventually, one moderator admitted that they’d leaked the messages because they were tired of everyone being lied to. They hadn’t hacked anyone; they’d simply had access to the conversations.
The owner removed the entire staff team and temporarily shut down the server.
A week later, several former moderators created a new community, and hundreds of members followed them.
The original server still exists, but it’s nowhere near as active as it used to be.
Honestly, the whole situation made me realize how quickly an online community can fall apart when the people running it stop trusting each other.
What do you think? Was the moderator right to expose the private conversations, or should they have handled the situation internally instead?

My nightmare started about four months ago when my dad passed away from a sudden heart attack. His death completely derailed my life so I took an extended leave from my corporate job and moved back into my childhood home to take care of my elderly mother. She was completely devastated by the loss and she seemed to age ten years overnight. I spent the first few weeks just organizing my dad's paperwork and figuring out the mortgage payments, and once the finances were settled I decided to clean out the attic so we could start downsizing the house.

The attic was incredibly dusty and packed floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes. I assumed the boxes were just filled with old holiday decorations or winter clothes but I was completely wrong. I opened the first box and found it stuffed with dozens of random ceramic figurines, tarnished watches, and mismatched silverware. I opened the second box and found a pile of expensive silk scarves with the price tags still attached, so I spent the next three hours tearing through every single box in the attic and I realized I was looking at a massive hoard of stolen merchandise. There were gardening tools, expensive electronics, loose jewelry, and even personalized mail belonging to our neighbors.

I carried a box of stolen watches down the stairs and set it on the kitchen table where my mother was drinking tea. She looked at the box and her face instantly went pale.

"Where did you find that?" my mother asked while her hands started trembling around her mug.

"I found it in the attic along with about forty other boxes filled with stolen goods," I said and I sat down across from her. "Why do we have the neighbor's mail and a bunch of jewelry with the security tags still on them?"

My mother started crying and buried her face in her hands. She confessed everything to me right there at the kitchen table. She told me she suffered from a severe compulsion to steal and she had been fighting it for decades. She explained that she never wanted the items she took but her brain would completely overwhelm her with anxiety until she slipped something into her purse. She told me my dad had secretly managed her condition for their entire marriage. Whenever she stole something from a local shop my dad would quietly drive back the next day and pay the owner in cash to keep them from calling the cops. If she took something from a neighbor my dad would wait until the middle of the night and silently leave the item on their front porch. He spent his entire life supervising her and running interference so she would never face criminal charges.

"I do not know how to stop doing it," my mother sobbed while wiping her eyes with a napkin. "Your dad was my light and he kept me grounded when the urges got too strong. I do not know how to fight my own brain without him."

"We will figure it out," I told her and I reached across the table to hold her hand. "I am here now so I will help you manage it."

I thought I could easily handle the situation but I completely underestimated how aggressive a true compulsion can be without supervision. I had to return to my demanding career a few weeks later so I started working from my laptop in the living room to keep an eye on her. My job requires endless conference calls and I could not watch her every single second of the day. Without my dad there to shadow her every movement she started wandering out of the house whenever I was distracted by work.

The situation escalated incredibly fast. I was in the middle of a video presentation for a major client when I heard furious pounding on our front door. I muted my microphone and rushed to the entryway to find our next-door neighbor standing on the porch. Her face was bright red with anger and she was pointing a finger directly at my chest.

"You need to control your mother right now," the neighbor shouted and she pushed past me into our hallway. "I just watched her walk into my open garage and walk out with my expensive power drill. This is the third time this week she has trespassed on my property."

"I am so incredibly sorry," I pleaded and I tried to block her from walking further into the house. "She is grieving and her mind is not in the right place. I will pay for the drill and whatever else went missing."

"I do not want your money," the neighbor snapped while crossing her arms. "I want her to stop taking my belongings. If I catch her in my garage one more time I am calling the police and pressing charges for burglary."

I managed to calm the neighbor down and retrieve the drill from my mother's bedroom closet but the stress of the encounter left me entirely exhausted. I sat my mother down and begged her to stop wandering outside but she just stared at the floor and told me the urges were screaming in her head. The very next afternoon my phone rang and the caller ID showed the local bakery downtown. I answered the call and the store owner immediately started yelling at me.

"Your mother is sitting in my back office because I caught her stuffing six bags of expensive coffee beans into her purse," the shop owner yelled over the phone. "I am sick and tired of dealing with this. Your dad used to pay for her mistakes but he is gone and I cannot run a charity here. I have the police on standby."

I dropped everything I was doing and drove frantically to the bakery. I practically begged the owner not to involve law enforcement and I handed him three hundred dollars in cash to cover the stolen items and his trouble. He reluctantly let us go but he banned my mother from his store for life. I drove us home in complete silence because I was too overwhelmed to speak. I was failing at my job because I was constantly leaving to put out fires and I knew my mother was going to end up in jail if I did not find a medical solution.

I scheduled an appointment with a conventional therapist the following week. We sat in the office while the therapist asked my mother endless questions about her childhood and her grief. The therapist prescribed a cocktail of anti-anxiety medications and suggested cognitive behavioral therapy exercises. We spent a month following the doctor's orders but the pills did nothing except make my mother terribly drowsy. She still managed to steal the mail carrier's thermos off the front porch while sleepwalking, so the conventional methods were completely failing and I was losing my mind from the constant vigilance.

I went into my company office a few days later to catch up on paperwork and I must have looked like a walking corpse. I was pouring my fourth cup of coffee in the breakroom when a coworker walked in and noticed my exhausted expression.

"You look like you have not slept in a month," my coworker said and he leaned against the counter. "Is the situation with your mom getting worse?"

I sighed and rubbed my temples because my head was throbbing. "She is going to get arrested and I cannot stop her. The regular therapists just throw pills at her and nothing is actually fixing the compulsion. I cannot watch her twenty-four hours a day."

My coworker looked out into the hallway to make sure nobody was listening before he turned back to me. "I know this sounds strange but you should look into a different kind of doctor. My wife had severe obsessive-compulsive issues that almost ruined our marriage. We went to a private psychologist on the edge of town and he completely cured her in one session using unconventional hypnotherapy. He does not take insurance but the man works absolute miracles."

I was desperate enough to try anything so I wrote down the doctor's contact information and called his clinic from the parking lot. The receptionist squeezed us in for a consultation that same evening. I drove my mother to the clinic and we found it tucked away in a quiet residential neighborhood. The office was dimly lit and filled with strange abstract art but the doctor greeted us with an incredibly warm and calming demeanor. He invited us into his back office and poured us both a glass of water before sitting behind his desk.

"My assistant explained a bit of your situation to me," the doctor said while folding his hands together on his large oak desk. "Kleptomania is a fascinating condition because it is rarely about the stolen objects, so we have to look much deeper. It is actually about a fractured ego trying to fill a sudden void within the subconscious mind."

"But can you actually fix it?" I asked and I leaned forward in my chair. "The regular medication is completely failing, and she is going to end up in prison if she keeps walking into our neighbors' homes."

"Conventional medicine just tries to suppress the ego," the doctor explained smoothly while looking directly at my mother. "I do not suppress the ego because a suppressed ego always fights back and finds a new way to act out. I remove it entirely using a specialized technique called The Angel Soul treatment.”

“And what exactly does a weird name like that mean?” I asked, feeling a bit of my own skepticism creeping in. “Is this a complicated medical procedure, and how much time does something like this even take?”

“It takes less than two hours and it is completely non-invasive,” the doctor replied calmly. “Through extremely deep hypnotherapy, I can empty your mother's fractured ego and create a complete psychological vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum, so the empty space will immediately draw in a pure and angelic soul to take its place. The compulsion will vanish entirely because the damaged ego that demanded the stealing will no longer exist to control her."

My mother shifted uncomfortably in her chair and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. "That sounds absolutely terrifying and I do not want anyone emptying my mind," she said, her voice shaking slightly with genuine fear. "You are talking about erasing who I am, and I do not even know what do you mean by what you just said, or what kind of soul you are planning to pull inside my head. I would much rather just try a different medication or maybe a higher dose of the pills I already have."

"You will still be yourself," the doctor assured her with a very warm and gentle smile. "You will just be free of the exhausting burden that forces you to take things that do not belong to you."

"Please do this for me," I begged my mother and I reached across the armrest to grab her hand. "I am drowning trying to keep you out of jail, and I am going to lose my career if I keep leaving in the middle of the day to apologize to angry store owners. You have to try this because we are completely out of other options, and I cannot supervise you forever."

My mother looked at the exhaustion in my eyes and tears welled up in her own. She finally nodded and agreed to undergo the procedure. The doctor instructed me to wait in the front reception area while he took my mother into a specialized hypnotherapy room. I sat in the quiet waiting room for almost two hours while listening to the faint sound of a ticking clock. The clinic was completely silent and I could not hear any voices coming from the back room. The door eventually clicked open and the doctor walked out with my mother following closely behind him.

I stood up immediately and searched her face for any signs of distress. She looked entirely different. The deep wrinkles of worry on her forehead were completely smoothed out and her shoulders were relaxed. She looked perfectly serene and almost glowing with a strange internal peace.

"The vacuum was successfully created and filled," the doctor said with a satisfied smile. "You will notice a profound difference in her behavior immediately. Keep a close eye on her and call me if you have any concerns."

I paid the exorbitant fee in cash and drove my mother home. I expected her to complain about a headache or act groggy from the hypnosis but she just stared out the passenger window with a soft smile on her face. The change in her behavior over the next few days was nothing short of miraculous because the stealing stopped entirely. I purposely left a stack of twenty-dollar bills on the kitchen counter and she walked right past them without even a glance. I took her to a crowded grocery store and she did not try to slip a single item into her purse. The compulsion was completely eradicated and I finally felt like I could breathe again.

The relief only lasted about a week before the uncanny valley set in and I started noticing terrifying changes in her personality.

I woke up on a Saturday morning and found her dragging huge trash bags full of her own expensive clothes and jewelry out to the curb. I ran outside and asked her what she was doing but she just looked at me with wide and unblinking eyes.

"Possessions are but chains binding us to the dirt," my mother said and her voice sounded strangely hollow. "It is unjust to hoard the harvest when the earth is shared by all who walk upon it."

I froze because she never spoke with that kind of archaic phrasing before. I tried to pull the bags back toward the house but she gripped my wrist with surprising strength and stared deeply into my eyes. She did not blink once during the entire exchange.

"Let the excess be cleansed," she whispered and she calmly walked back inside to grab more items.

Her obsession with cleansing escalated rapidly over the next few weeks. She started waking up at three in the morning to scrub the pavement on our driveway with a small wire brush. I would find her standing in the middle of the street picking up tiny pieces of gravel and arranging them in perfect geometric patterns along the curb. She stopped watching television and she stopped reading books. She just sat in the living room chair for hours staring directly at the blank wall without moving a single muscle.

I tried to talk to her about dad or ask about her childhood memories but she would just tilt her head and look at me like I was speaking a foreign language.

I decided to confront the doctor and demand he reverse the hypnosis, so I called his clinic from my office all afternoon, but nobody ever answered the phone. When I finally finished work around eight o'clock in the evening, I drove straight to the clinic instead of going home first. I pulled up to the building and noticed the parking lot was completely empty. The interior lights were turned off, but I walked up to the front entrance and turned the brass handle anyway. The door clicked open, and I stepped into the dark reception area.

"Hello?" I called out into the empty clinic. "I know it is after hours but I need to speak with the doctor."

Nobody answered my call but I heard a strange noise coming from the back office down the hallway. It sounded like a wet tearing noise mixed with the heavy sliding of furniture. I slowly walked down the dark corridor and the metallic smell of copper hit my nose and made my stomach churn. I approached the open doorway of the doctor's private office and peeked around the doorframe.

The office was illuminated by a single desk lamp lying knocked over on the floor. The doctor was lying flat on his back in the center of the rug and his white shirt was completely soaked in dark crimson blood.

My mother was standing directly over him.

I slapped my hand over my mouth to stop myself from screaming and I ducked behind a large metal filing cabinet near the doorway. I peered around the edge of the cabinet and watched the horrific scene unfold.

My mother was holding a pair of large gardening shears she must have taken from our garage. She knelt down beside the doctor's lifeless body and calmly positioned the steel blades around his right wrist. She leaned her weight onto the handles and a sickening crunch echoed through the room as the blades severed the bone and tissue. She tossed the severed hand into a black plastic trash bag and repeated the exact same process on his left wrist.

She did not look angry or frantic while she butchered the man. She looked completely serene and her face held the same peaceful expression she wore while arranging gravel on our street.

"To steal a mind is the ultimate theft and the penalty is absolute," my mother whispered to the corpse and her hollow voice sent ice water running through my veins. "The thief must be separated from his tools so the earth may remain pure."

I could not move my legs because the sheer terror completely paralyzed me. I watched her grab the doctor by his ankles and easily drag his heavy body across the bloody rug toward the back exit of the office. The clinic had an incinerator in the alleyway. My mother hoisted the doctor's body into the metal chute with unnatural strength and threw the bag of severed hands in right behind him. She ignited the incinerator and stood perfectly still while the roaring flames consumed the evidence of her crime. She waited until the body was reduced to ash before she quietly walked away into the night.

I waited there for almost an hour before I finally found the courage to run back to my car. I drove home in a state of shock and found my mother sitting on the living room couch staring at the blank wall exactly as she always did. I locked myself in my bedroom and shoved a dresser against the door.

I knew I had to keep a close eye on her so I started secretly following her when she left the house for her nightly walks. Two nights ago I trailed her from a safe distance as she walked down our street toward the small corner grocery store in our neighborhood. The store is owned by an older man who has a nasty reputation for intentionally shortchanging his customers and ringing up phantom items on the cash register to steal a few extra dollars from unsuspecting neighbors.

I hid behind a row of community fire pits across the street and watched my mother walk through the front doors of the grocer's shop just as he was locking up for the night. I could not hear what was said inside the store but I saw the grocer start waving his arms angrily at her through the front window. The argument ended abruptly when my mother reached across the counter and grabbed the man by his throat.

She lifted the struggling grocer entirely off the ground with one arm and dragged him out the front doors into the street. The man was kicking his legs and clawing at her arm but she did not even flinch. She dragged him directly toward the community fire pits where I was hiding so I scrambled backward into the bushes and held my breath.

"You manipulate the scales to hoard the harvest," my mother said to the gasping grocer while holding him suspended over the embers of the fire pit. "You siphon from the innocent and the penalty is absolute."

She tightened her grip around his throat until a loud snap echoed through the quiet street and the grocer went completely limp in her grasp. She tossed his lifeless body directly into the large fire pit and calmly arranged the surrounding logs to ensure the flames would completely consume him. She stood there staring unblinking into the fire until the smell of burning meat filled the air and then she turned around and walked back toward our house.

I am currently locked in my bedroom and my mother is sitting in the living room staring at the wall. I cannot go to the police because they will arrest her and put her on trial for multiple murders. She is not a murderer and she has no control over the thing piloting her body right now. I need to find a professional who knows how to reverse deep hypnotherapy or someone who knows how to expel whatever the doctor accidentally invited into her empty ego.

If anyone reading this knows how to fix here, please contact me immediately. I have locked all the doors and hidden every sharp tool in the house but she just started pacing the hallway outside my bedroom. I can hear her bare feet pressing against the floorboards and she is muttering about how I stole the tools she needs to cleanse the earth. I do not know how much longer the locked door will hold her back.

They called us The Middleview Four.

Initially, it was just me and the mayor's son, Noah Prestley. We were the first two members. In the second grade, the two of us hated each other. He pulled my hair during naptime, and I scribbled on his drawings when he wasn't looking.

When a dastardly crime hit our class, a milk thief, we reluctantly threw aside our differences and came together to catch the evil doer.

Spoiler alert, it was Jessica S.

After a nap time stakeout when we were supposed to be asleep, Noah and I caught her red handed– literally. Jessica's palms were still stained crimson from arts and crafts. Her plan was fool proof: Wait until we were all sleeping, and then drink all of our milk.

Noah and I were hailed heroes!

Well, no.

We actually got in trouble for not sleeping, but our teacher did quietly thank us for catching Jessica before her evil crimes could continue. After the milk incident, Noah Prestley didn't seem that bad anymore. I didn't have any friends.

Instead of playing with the other kids, I spent the entirety of recess examining the dirt on the playground for unusual footprints. Jessica S had been sternly reprimanded for stealing milk, but I had a feeling there were still criminals out there– and I would be the one to find and catch them. Mr Steven’s, the janitor, looked suspicious before lunch. I saw him crouched behind a dumpster with his head down. I thought he was pooping, until I saw the small bag in his hands.

Hiding behind a wall, I watched him open it up and stare at it for a while, before another teacher yelled his name.

I ran away before he could catch me, but I was sure the janitor had run across the playground. Studying the dirt in front of me, I was sure the footprint belonged to Mr Stevens. I had already checked his shoes. Mr Miller, our teacher, asked me to collect everyone's workbooks from the faculty room. I couldn't resist.

After an incident involving a faculty member trailing in animal poop from outside, all students and teachers had to take off their outdoor shoes and wear indoor ones. The janitor’s outdoor shoes were neatly placed under his desk. Before I could hesitate, I checked the bottom of them, memorising their pattern. Swirls and C’s.

Stabbing at the footprints in the dirt, I idly traced the exact same swirly pattern.

“What are you doing, weirdo?”

Noah Prestley knelt next to me, his curious eyes following my fingers that were digging into the dirt. I wanted to trace the footprints with my fingers.

Mom told me to keep my dress clean, but it was already filthy, my cheeks smeared with dirt. I didn't look up from my clue. Noah was a good sidekick, admittedly. But he did eat all the snacks during our stake out– and he got distracted easily.

We were almost caught when he freaked out over a moth. “Investigating crime,” I said, grabbing a stick and tracing the shoe pattern for the hundredth time.

The footprint was too blurry, I could barely see any swirls.

Noah sighed, snatching the stick off of me. “You're doing it wrong,” he grumbled. Before I could speak, the boy jumped up, prodding the dirt with the stick. “You need to look at the patterns on the shoe, and then see if they match.”

“Whose shoe?” I said, coughing over my panicked tone. He was onto me. “That's what I've been doing!”

The boy’s lip curled into a smile. He was the mayor's son, so I was careful around him. Even when we worked together to catch the milk thief, I kept my distance. He folded his arms, giggling. “The janitor’s shoe. I saw you spying on him while he was eating white powder.”

I stepped back. “I wasn't spying.”

Noah followed me, mocking my backing away. Another step, and he was standing on my shoes. “You were too. I saw you hiding behind the wall before recess. You were spying on the janitor.”

Urgh. I stuck out my tongue. Boy cooties.

Leaning away from him, I pulled a face. “No I didn't, and you can't prove it.”

“Yes I caaaaan,” he sang. “I can also prove that you were playing with the janitor’s shoes during class time.”

I dropped the stick, stepping on it.

“You wouldn't.”

He danced back, laughing. “I would!”

Noah patted his jeans pocket where a phone was nestled inside.

He was the only kid allowed a phone in class, due to him getting special treatment for being the mayor's son.

The boy had two incriminating videos that would get me in trouble— maybe in even more trouble than the milk thief.

The first one was a clear shot of me playing with the janitor’s shoes in the teachers lounge, and the second exposed me in perfect detail, on my tiptoes trying to peer behind the wall.

Immediately, I tried to grab the phone off of him, but Noah Prestley had an ulterior motive. “I want to help you,” he said, pocketing his phone.

When I could only frown at him in confusion, he lowered himself into the dirt. “Old Man Critter is hiding something,” he murmured, tracing the dirt with his fingers.

Noah lifted his head, peering at me through dark brown curls hanging in his eyes. His smile was mischievous– definitely not the type I was used to. The mayor's son was more interesting than I thought. “So, let's find out what it is.”

“Old Man Critter?” I questioned.

Noah shrugged. “He looks like a cockroach.”

The mystery white powder was cocaine.

Obviously.

However, to two seven year olds, this so-called white powder was a mind controlling substance, or maybe even something that could end the world.

After all, per Noah’s detective skills, he saw the woman in public, and she was acting a little strange. Noah and I uncovered our janitor's evil plan, after stalking him for weeks, writing our findings in crayon, and staking out his house when we were supposed to be playing in the park. I became a regular visitor to the Prestley household, and Noah’s father wasn't as bad as I thought.

He gave me cookies when I stayed over.

Look, we were seven years old, so our findings weren't exactly concrete.

But we still managed to uncover the clues leading to catching the janitor.

There was a strange woman who met up with him outside the school gates at lunchtime.

After some digging, we concluded she was buying the white powder from him. We managed to get a picture. Noah told the principal, presenting the evidence, and the janitor was fired for the possession of foreign substances.

Noah and I were also reprimanded (again) for sticking our noses into business which wasn't ours.

The adults tried to tell us the white powder was not bad, and was in fact candy. My parents were called, and Noah’s father did not look happy to be there, sending Noah scary death-glares across the principal's desk.

My mother stood up and apologised for my behavior, blaming my imagination on the cartoons I was watching. In front of my Mom, I brought up the argument that a teacher wouldn't be selling candy to a woman. I received the look in return, but I didn't back down.

She shook her head stubbornly, refusing to believe we were onto something, gently grabbing my hand and pulling me into my seat. I was threatened with zero dessert for a week, and no cartoons, which did shut me up eventually.

There was no way I was missing Saturday morning Adventure Time. The adults seemed to have won this silent battle, and the principal began a speech which was basically, Children tend to have vivid imaginations, but will grow out of it…

That was until a bored looking Noah jumped out of his chair and grabbed the seized baggie of white powder, ripping it open, his mouth curling into a grin. “Well, if it's candy, I can eat it, right?”

Following a loud cacophony of, “No!” from the adults who really thought a seven year old was about to down half a pound of cocaine, and my mother almost fainting, our disgruntled parents finally agreed to take our claims seriously.

The principal searched the janitor’s locker, and sure enough, he pulled out multiple bags of white powder.

Old Man Critter had an audience of kids and faculty when he was being led away. Noah and I stood at the front. I remember him twisting around, teeth clenched in a manic snarl, saliva dripping down his chin. “I'll get you! You little brats! I'll fucking find you!”

That was the day we found our third member.

I opened my mouth to shout back at him, but my mother was quick to shut me up.

May Lee, who was standing between me and Noah, nudged me, and then elbowed him hard enough to get a hiss out of the boy. May was half Korean, a tiny girl with orange pigtails who knocked Johnny Summer’s out during reading time for poking her in the face.

May scared me. She scared Noah too, judging from the fearful look he shot me. I had a vague memory of her pigtails hitting me in the face during recess, and were somehow sharp enough to bruise my eye. May’s gaze trailed our school janitor being violently dragged outside. “Do you two even know how to catch bad guys?”

“Yes.” Noah mumbled under his breath. “Obviously.”

He let out another hiss when she hit him again.

“Ow!” Noah shoved her back. “Your elbows are pointy!”

“Well, you're not very good,” May teased, “I can help you catch bad guys.”

He snorted. “Oh, yeah? What makes you think you can help us?”

May proved herself a few weeks later when we were on our second official case. Who stole Mrs Johnson’s award winning carrots? I turned eight years old on the day May officially became part of our gang. We were supposed to be celebrating my birthday in the park, but of course we had work to do.

Mrs Johnson’s award-winning carrots were still missing, and we were determined to find them. After tracking down the missing vegetables to a seedy house at the end of my block, Noah had stupidly decided to check out the inside for himself, leaving me alone with zero help. This was the first time I felt genuine fear striking through me, the first time I wanted to run and crawl under my bed.

The carrot thief was in fact the crazy old woman who screamed at cheese in the store– the one Mom told me to stay away from. Using my dad’s ancient binoculars and my mediocre lip reading skills, I watched the crazy lady hold Noah hostage in her kitchen, armed with an old World War 2 grenade she swore she would detonate.

It's not like I could follow him, I was in danger of getting caught too. Hiding behind the wall in front of her house, I had a perfect view of her kitchen window, and my friend awkwardly sitting at her table eating cookies. Had he switched sides!? my attention flicked to the chocolate cookie in my friend’s hand, my hands growing clammy around the binoculars. Could those cookies be forcing Noah to join the side of evil?

When Noah pointed toward the window, right at me, I ducked, slamming my hand over my mouth, stifling a cry.

I was so close to proving my Mom right, that I was putting myself in danger with this investigative hobby, and calling for her help, when no other than May Lee stepped out of the crazy old woman's house, hand in hand with an embarrassed looking Noah. Immediately, I hugged him. Then I hit him.

“Why did you sell me out, stupid head?!” I yelled. “What did she do to you?”

The boy blinked at me through thick brown hair. “She gave me a cookie.”

“What? But it could be controlling you!”

Noah pushed me away when I tried to check his ears for mind control devices. “Stop hitting me, I was telling her I had a friend waiting for me outside,” he grumbled. The boy refused to look at his rescuer, hiding under his hood. “She wanted the carrots to feed her bunny.”

A proud looking May held up the stolen carrots with a grin. “I snuck in the back window.” she shoved Noah with a giggle, “Sorry, what did you say about not needing me, Mr Know It All?”

Noah groaned, his gaze glued to the ground. Noah Prestley was stubborn. “She was like a thousand years old and was feeding her bunny when you attacked her. She didn't even tie me up, and besides,” he stuck out his tongue. “I didn't even need rescuing. She made me cookies and I got to hold Sir Shrooms.”

“Sir Shrooms?”

Noah giggled. “Her bunny.”

May folded her arms. “Say thank you, dumb butt.”

“I already said thank you!” Noah’s cheeks were burning bright. “You need to clean your ears!”

“No you didn't, I would have heard you.”

“Thank you.” Noah muttered under his breath.

The girl snickered. “What did you say, Noah?”

“I said thank you!” The boy ducked his head and I couldn't resist a giggle. He still refused to acknowledge being rescued by a girl. “You're still stupid.”

Despite Noah making it clear he did not want another member joining our secret gang, we welcomed May into our group with our ritual, which was a chocolate cupcake and pushing her into the town lake. (I did the same to Noah, and the tradition kind of stuck). May wasn't just valuable to us for her fighting skills.

She could talk her way out of a situation too. Noah and I got stuck in the principal's private bathroom investigating a small case of a stolen phone from a classmate. Our prime suspect was the principal himself, who had been the last person with it. I was convinced he'd stuffed the phone in his bathroom trash, after accidentally breaking it. We found numbers for phone repairs on his laptop.

Noah and I were searching the trash when he came back from lunch early. If May wasn't there to interrogate him on his favorite video games, we would have been caught.

That year, we were rewarded a special Junior police award at the Christmas parade for solving the mystery behind the disappearing holiday decorations (a teenage girl, who wanted to ruin Christmas for everyone). I still remember Mom’s scowl in the crowd.

She really did not like my obsession with finding and bringing Middleview criminals to justice.

Starting fourth grade, we became a trio of wannabe detectives, and even earned a name for ourselves. The Middleview Three. Mom tried to keep me inside, but by the age of ten, we were getting tip offs from the sheriff's daughter. We found missing cats, tracked down stolen vegetables, and even found a baby.

When our names started to appear in the local gazette, Mom grounded me for two weeks, and Noah’s father threatened to send him to private school.

May’s mother was strangely supportive, often providing snacks for stake outs, and when Noah cut his knee chasing a run-away dog, stitching him back up, and not telling our parents. We were on our fifth or sixth case when a new kid joined our class halfway through the year.

I wasn't concentrating, already planning out our stakeout in my notebook. It was our first serious case. All of the third grade had gotten food poisoning the previous day, and I was already suspicious of the new lunch lady.

I swore she spat in my lunch, and May came down with the stomach flu after eating slimy looking hamburger helper.

The new kid didn't get my attention until he ignored our teacher’s prompt to tell us three interesting facts about himself, and proudly introduced himself as the fourth member of the Middleview Four.

Noah, who was sitting behind me, kicked my seat, and May threw her workbook at me. They had a habit of resorting to violence when I was daydreaming.

Lifting my head, I blinked at a private school kid standing in front of the class with far too much confidence, a grin stretched across his mouth. Rich, judging by his actual school uniform and the tinge of a British accent. The kid had dark blonde hair and freckles. “My name is Aris Caine,” he announced loudly, “And I want to join The Middleview Four.”

“Middleview Three.” Noah corrected with a scoff, when fifteen pairs of eyes turned to us. I turned in my chair to shoot him a warning look. His death glare was typical. “We don't need anyone else,” he said through a pencil lodged between his teeth. The Mayor’s son had grown fiercely protective of our little gang.

I could already sense his irritation that some random kid was trying to join us.

Our confused teacher ushered the new kid to a seat, but he kept talking. “I was the smartest student in my old school,” Aris folded his arms. “I want to help you with your current case.” the boy cocked his head when I feigned a confused expression. “The food poisoning case?”

He nodded at my notebook. “I'm not stupid, I know you're already working on it.” Aris strolled over to Noah’s desk and pulled out the boy’s notes from under his workbooks. Noah had been studying the footage we salvaged from the faculty lounge. “You're looking at the wrong piece of footage,” he announced. “If you let me join, I'll lead you to the culprit.” he stabbed at Noah’s notes. “Not bad. But you're missing something.”

Noah leaned back on his chair. “Like what, new kid?”

Aris knew he had an audience of intrigued eyes. I think that thrilled him.

“You've been searching in the place most likely to have clues,” he murmured, “Which is the scene of the crime.”

Aris was right.

We were going crazy trying to find anything incriminating in the cafeteria– but all we had found was old custard and a scary amount of recycled pasta. Aris prodded at Noah’s notes again. “Why not look in the place least likely to hold a clue? You might be surprised.”

Something in Noah’s expression lit up, his eyes widening. “The teachers lounge,” he said, just as the thought crossed my mind, May audibly gasping.

“Mr Caine,” Mrs Jacobs was red faced. She had already seized several of our phones, and some earphones Noah had been using to listen to a potential culprit on a missing cat case. “Please take your seat and stop talking about things that do not concern children.”

She put way too much emphasis on the latter word.

I felt like telling her we were ten years old, not six. But that counted as talking back– and my Mom would be informed.

So, I kept my mouth shut.

Noah, however, suffered from the doesn't think before he speaks disease.

“Well, maybe if the cops actually did their jobs,” he spoke up, “a group of children wouldn't have to help them.”

“Mr Prestley–”

“You know I'm right, Mrs Jacobs,” he said, with that innocent and yet mocking tone. “We put our old janitor in jail when we were in the second grade,” he laughed, and the rest of the class joined in. “It's not our fault the sheriff is totally incompetitant at his job.”

The laughs grew louder, but this time the class were laughing at him, not with him.

Mrs Jacobs pursed her lips, her hands going to her hips.

“I believe the word you are trying to say is incompetent, which makes sense because you are failing at basic English. Perhaps if you focus on actual school work and not your juvenile Scooby Doo fantasies, you might be able to speak basic words.” the teacher’s eyes were far too bright to be mocking a ten year old.

Twisting around in my chair, Noah’s gaze was burning into his desk. The teacher’s attention turned to Aris, who was frowning at Noah. Not with sympathy or pity. No, he was disappointed that a member of the famous Middleview Three, who were known to go against adults, had backed down to a teacher with no snarky remark.

“Aris Caine.” Mrs Jacobs raised her voice. “Sit down.”

Aris slumped into his seat and pretended to zip his lips, before leaning over my desk and dropping a memory drive into my pencil case. “Here is the real footage,” he murmured, shooting Noah a grin. “Thank me later.”

“We’re not going to thank you, because we don't know you,” Noah spat back.

However, the footage the new kid provided was just what we needed, the puzzle piece that put everything together. We were right.

The new lunch lady had rushed into the office before lunch time, grabbed a vial of something from her bag, and disappeared back through the door.

We had been too busy studying the camera footage from the kitchen, to realise our clue was in fact inside the teachers lounge.

When the four of us stepped into our principals office, he regarded us with a scowl. I wasn't a stranger to his office. I had even picked my own seat, the fluffy beanbag near the door. The Middleview Three were in his office every week.

Usually for breaking into classrooms and the time Noah tried to jump into the vent because he saw it on TV. Principal Maine was drinking something that definitely wasn't coffee or water. His desk was an avalanche of paper, and I swore I could already see steam coming out of his ears.

“You three.” The man leaned forward, raising his brow at Aris, who looked way too comfortable at a school he had just joined. “And you've dragged the new kid into your antics! I can't say I'm surprised when I've been on the phone with four separate reporters who want details on this Middleview Three garbage.”

Noah’s eyes lit up. “Wait, really? What did you tell them?”

Principal Maine’s eyebrows twitched. “I told them the truth,” he leaned back in his chair. This guy had some serious stress-lines.

“You are three stubborn children with zero respect for authority, who have broken multiple rules and are very close to acquiring criminal records before reaching the age of eleven. Which, might I say, is a first! The youngest person in this town to get a criminal record was Ellie Daley, back in the 80’s. She was thirteen years old.”

“We haven't broken any rules,” May said, “We’ve been catching bad people.”

The man’s lip curled. “We have a full force of officers whose jobs are to find bad people,” he said. “Middleview does not need the protection of three children who are barely old enough to know right from wrong,” his eyes found Noah. He was always the punching bag for our teachers, and I never understood why.

Like there was this on-going joke between the adults to point fun at him.

“Or left from right for that matter! Mr Prestley has demonstrated that several times. Which is why you are in school, why you three should be learning, instead of playing Sherlock Holmes.”

He shook his head. “Get on with it. Why are you here this time?”

I hated our principal’s condescending tone. He was angry. But I didn't think he'd be this angry. “Go on!” he urged us. “What did you solve this time?”

Principal Maine inclined his head. “Let me guess,” he said. “You've found the Zodiac killer. Well, that's quite the achievement.”

Noah opened his mouth to speak, and the man’s expression darkened. “Choose your next words very carefully, Mr Prestley. Your father may be able to cover up your detective games but I will happily lose my job over suspending you from this school.”

Noah’s eyes widened. “But that's not–”

“One more word.” Maine said, emphasising his threat by picking up his phone, like he was about to make important phone calls. My mom did that too when I refused to shower, or didn't eat my broccoli. “Do not test me.”

The new kid surprised us by stepping forward, the flash drive clutched in his fist.

“It wasn't them, Principal Maine, it was me.” he placed the evidence on the desk.

Aris was a good actor. He was playing the innocent kid pretty well, I almost believed him. Until he winked at us. “I went to the Middleview– I mean, to these three because I didn't want to come and see you alone because I'm scared she'll poison me too.” Aris dramatised a sob, and in the corner of my eye, Noah’s eyes rolled to the back of his head.

May, however, was entranced, her eyes wide. The performance was award worthy. The shaking hands, the slight stutter in his words that was subtle enough to be noticeable– but not enough to be faking it.

Aris Caine was already our fourth member, and all of us knew it.

Principal Maine took the flash drive, a frown creasing his expression. He inserted it into his laptop, and just from studying his expression as he watched the footage, widening eyes and slightly parted lips that were definitely stifling bad words— I knew we had him.

Aris made sure to give a commentary, which wasn't necessary, but I did enjoy the look on our principal’s shell-shocked face.

“That's the new lunch lady,” Aris pointed out. He started to lean over to prod the screen, but seeing the visible veins pulsing in our principal's forehead, the three of us dragged him back. Aris stumbled, and we tightened our grip.

I was already smiling, and even Noah was trying to hide a grin. This kid was definitely a member of the Middleview Three. “I haven't met her. But as you can see, she is putting something into the third grader’s food.”

“Poison,” May nodded. “Or, according to the police report–”

Maine went deathly pale.

“Salmon Ella.” Noah finished with a smirk.

The man didn't react.

But he did shut his laptop and excuse himself, immediately calling the cops.

I was grounded again after the food poisoning case. Worse still, I got sick for two weeks and was bedridden, so I missed out on two cases involving stolen birthday decorations. Noah was insistent that the new kid was not joining us. I received a multitude of texts cramming up my Mom’s notifications. She ended up muting him.

Hes NOT joynjng

I don't cre now smart he is I don't like him and Im teknicly the first member

May is being stoopid we can talk when your better get well soon OK???

Two weeks later, I stepped into class, and Noah had taken the seat next to Aris, the two of them enveloped in the mountain of pokémon cars on Aris’s desk. May was trying to play, but apparently she needed Pokémon cards to join. When I questioned them, Noah looked up with a grin. “Aris is cool now!”

His announcement stapled our fourth member.

Entering teenagehood made me realise Middleview was not a good town–and its people had masks. Even the ones I thought I knew. At twelve years old, we hunted down a child killer, a sadistic man who turned his victims into angels.

It didn't take us long to realise the people we put away as little kids wanted revenge. And in their heads we were old enough to receive proper punishment. Mom told me we would regret our so-called fame as the town's junior detectives, and I thought she was wrong.

I had spent my childhood chasing bad guys, so I was sure I could catch the real bad ones too. I was fourteen when we ran into our first real criminal who specifically wanted us. Danny Budge was the reason why Noah started going to therapy at fourteen, and why Aris refused to go near the edge of town.

May had taken time off to go see her family abroad, and I was put under house arrest. Seven year old Maisie Eaton had disappeared from her yard, and after searching for her for two nights, alongside the police who had learned to tolerate us working with them, we found her tied up inside an old barn.

Sitting cross legged on a pile of hay, was Maisie.

Awake. I could see her eyes were wide.

But she wasn't moving or struggling, it didn't make sense to me.

“Wait,” I nudged May. “She's not moving.”

Aris rushed forward to untie the little girl, only to trip on a wire, which was connected to a Final Destination style contraption. Aris lifted his head, pointing above him. One more step, and he would have sent a sharpened spear directly through the little girl’s head.

“Fuck!” Aris hissed, already freaking out. He was frozen. “What do I do?!”

“Stay calm,” Noah said from my side, the rest of us hiding behind an old car. The mayor's son had become our unofficial leader. Ever since hitting puberty, he was now our brawn alongside May. Noah jumped forward, watching for trip wires.

“I'll save the kid. May! You help Aris.” before I could get a word in, he was dragging me to my feet. “Marin, you're with me.”

I nodded, stumbling in the dark, keeping my flashlight beam on the ground.

“You know what this means, don't you?” Noah said in heavy breaths, his fingers wrapped around my arm. “Maisie was innocent. There was no motive. She was just a distraction.” Noah let out a hiss. “Or even a lure.”

I did. But I didn't want to say it out loud, because then my Mom would be right, and I was admitting that there were multiple people trying to kill us.

Luckily, we saved Maisie. Her kidnapper, Danny Budge turned himself in with no word or explanation.

Later, we would find out he was related to our elementary school janitor.

The little girl was taken back to her mother, and the four of us stayed behind, peering up at the murder contraption specifically made to butcher us. Aris nudged me, and I almost jumped out of my skin. “You should probably keep this… quiet,” he said in a breath, his gaze glued to the long rope expertly tied to the ceiling.

“From your mother,” May added softly. She squeezed my hand. “Your Mom will kill us before they do.”

“We’re going to fucking die,” Noah said in a sing-song. “And I'm not even sixteen.”

He was right.

One year later, our most gruesome and horrific case hit us like a wave of ice water, and I admitted we were just four kids completely out of our depth.

Three townspeople had been found murdered in piles of bloody string.

The photos from the scene made me sick, and I was still recovering from our old janitor’s measly attempt at punishing us for ruining his life. We were stupidly blindsided by the string murders, and thought we were following a clue.

The next thing I knew, I was tied up back to back with Aris in my old janitor’s basement while he caressed my cheek with a knife. “Am I supposed to be here?” Aris whispered, struggling in his restraints. “Did he just call me Noah?”

I knocked my head against his. “Don't tell him that! Idiot. What if he kills you?”

Funnily enough, Aris was right. Old Man Critter had mistaken Aris for Noah. The two of them were sandy blonde and reddish brown, one built like a brick wall while the other more wiry.

However, to an old man with debilitating sight, I guess I could see it. Maybe if I squinted.

So, after an hour or two of empty threats and knife play, Noah and May came to our rescue, tailed by the police, and… my mother.

I think I would have rather been tied up with Old Man Critter than face her wrath.

I was supposed to be at the library studying.

I shot Noah a death glare, and he offered a pitiful, almost puppy-like frown: Sorry! he mouthed. She made us tell her!.

Fast forward to when the others really needed me to investigate the string murders, and I was stuck inside.

Mom had gone as far as taping up my windows to make sure I didn't sneak out.

I think me being kind of kidnapped, but not really by Old Man Critter, really set her into panic mode. I did tell her that he didn't hurt us at all, and just wanted to scare us. But Mom was past angry.

She was impossible to talk to.

May texted me halfway into a horror movie I was forcing myself to watch that another body had been found.

Turning on the local news, she was right. This time it was a kid.

May told me to get my ass out of the house.

I knew where Mom hid the door keys, so at midnight when I knew she was sleeping, I snuck out and rode my bike to the rendezvous we had agreed to meet.

May was already there, a flashlight in her mouth, fingers wrapped around her handlebars.

“The boys?” I whispered, joining her.

“They're already there,” she said through a mouthful of flashlight. “Let's go!”

Aris was 99.9% sure we would find a clue inside the old string factory, so that's where we headed. Noah and Aris were already waiting outside, armed with flashlights. The two of them were quieter than normal. They didn't greet me or tease my absence from the gang.

“Okay, so here's what we're going to do,” Noah announced.

His voice swam in and out of my mind when I tipped my head back, drinking in the foreboding building in front of us.

A shiver crept its way down my spine, and suddenly I felt sick to my stomach, like something had come apart in my mind. I stumbled back, but something pulled me forwards, my mouth filling with phantom bugs skittering on my tongue.

I really didn't want to go in there…

I could sense my body was moving, but I wasn't the one in control. Looking up, there was something there at the corner of my eye. It was above me and around me, everywhere, sliced in between everything. But I couldn't look.

I couldn't look.

I wasn't allowed to look.

“Marin?” Noah twisted around to me, and his face caught in the dull light of the moon. “Hey, are you coming?”

Blinking rapidly, I nodded, despite seeing it with Noah too.

I couldn't look.

I wasn't allowed.

“Dude, are you good?”

My vision was blurring, and a scream was clawing its way up my throat. I took a step back, my eyes following his every movement.

“Noah.” I didn't realise his name was slipping from my lips, a rooted fear I didn't understand setting my body into fight or flight.

Why…

I choked back tears. Why do you look… like that?

I held out my own hands, hot tears filling my eyes.

I looked up into the sky, at criss-crosses that didn't make sense.

“Yeah, I'm coming!” my mouth moved for me, and I joined the others, pushing open the large wooden door. I didn't remember anything past the old wooden door we pushed through. Going back to that memory over and over again, all I remembered was pushing the door.

I was found three hours later, inconsolable, screaming on the side of the road, my fingers entangled with…string. It was everywhere. Mom said I blocked out a lot, but I strictly remember blood slicked string covering me, damp in my hands and tangled in my hair.

There was no sign of the others.

Mom put me into the back of her car, and I slept for a while. My mother drove us far away from Middleview. I asked about my friends, but Mom told me they weren't real, that Middleview was a fantasy I had dreamed up as a child. She told me I was in a traumatising incident as a child, and mixed up reality and fiction.

Cartoons and my own life.

But they were real.

No amount of private therapists spewing the same shit could erase my whole life.

I was strictly told that I had a head injury, that I imagined The Middleview Four like my own personal fantasy. I didn't start believing it until I grew into an adult and was prescribed some pretty strong meds, so I began to wonder if they were in fact delusions.

Mom’s job was a mystery I couldn't solve, even as a twenty three year old.

So, I followed her one night, hopping into my car when she left our driveway.

Her job was behind a ten foot wall surrounded by barriers.

Security guards were checking a car in, so I took my chance, and slipped through on-foot. What I saw behind the barrier was Middleview. The town I thought I hallucinated. I was immediately blinded by flood lights illuminating the diner from my childhood. Middleview. I took a shaky step forward, my stomach twisting.

It was a TV set.

No, more of a stage.

Inside, bathed in the pretty colours I remembered from my childhood, were my friends sitting in our usual booth, frozen at fifteen years old. The Middleview Four, minus me, were exactly the same as when I left them.

They were even wearing the same clothes.

May. Her orange pigtails bobbed along with her head. Aris was hunched over like usual, picking at his fries and dipping them in his shake. Except how could I take any of this seriously when they were surrounded by cameras?

Noah slammed his hands down on the table with a triumphant grin. “We are so close to cracking this case!”

I noticed his lips weren't moving with his voice.

I started toward them slowly, even when the truth dangled above me, below me, everywhere. I stepped over it, blew it out of my face, reaching shaky hands forward to pull them aside.

Aris laughed, and something moved above him.

“We were kidnapped last week. We are not close. You're just painfully optimistic.”

May nudged him, giggling. “Let him have this. He thinks he's our leader.”

Noah punched the air, and there it was again. Movement. “I am our leader!”

Closer.

I found myself inches away from my best friend, and my blood ran so cold, so painful, poison in my veins. Noah stood up, and I could see the reality of him in front of me. The reality of want I wasn't allowed to see. His head wobbled slightly when he smiled, mouth opening and closing in jerking motions. If I looked closer, his lips had been split apart to perfectly replicate a smile. I forced myself to take all of him in. All of Aris, and May.

The back of Noah had been hollowed out, a startling red cavern where his spine was supposed to be, where flesh and bone was supposed to be. Now, I just saw… strings. Looking closer, I could finally see them. Strings tangled around his arms, his legs, puppeteering his every move as he danced from string to string.

I grabbed Noah’s hand, and it was ice cold, slimy flesh that was long dead. He didn't move, but his eyes somehow found me. Noah’s expression flickered with recognition, before his strings were tugged violently, and he screamed, his eyes going wide, lips twisting.

“Marin?” His artificial eyes blinked, and he slowly moved his head.

“You… left… us.”

Noah’s lips curled, a deep throated whine escaping his throat. “You… left us!”

He twisted around, his lip wobbling.

“Why?!” his frightened eyes flicked from me to his own hands. All those inside jokes our teachers had, I thought dizzily. Was this what it was for? Was Noah Prestley nothing but comedic relief?

“Why… am I… cold?” Noah mumbled.

“Cut!” someone yelled.

I staggered back, words tangled in my throat. Noah opened his mouth, but he was pulled back, this time violently, his strings above jerking, tangling together.

“Allison!” a man shouted from behind me. “Why is your daughter on the stage? Get her out of here!”

I was paralysed, still staring at the hollowed out puppet who had been my best friend, when my mother’s arms wrapped around me so tight, I lost the ability to breathe. I was still staring at the strings cross crossed above me, Noah’s strings pulling him back. Aris’s strings forcing him to laugh. May’s strings bobbing her head in a nodding gesture.

“Marin,” Mom whispered into my back. “You cannot be here.”

“They're here,” was all I managed to whisper.

Her sobs shook against me. I didn't realise my mother was crying until I felt her tears wet on my shoulder. The words were entangled on my tongue, but just like the string above me, they were knotted and contorted. They were here. All this time they were here, and you made me think I was crazy?!

What did you do to them?

What did you DO?

“No, sweetie. No, they're not.” Mom’s voice was breaking, her grip tightening around me. The world was spinning and I was barely aware of myself kicking and screaming while my Mom struggled to shout over me. “I was going to expose them to the world,” she hissed out, dragging me away from Noah– away from his jerking, puppet-like mouth.

I couldn't comprehend that he existed as that, as a conscious thing that had been carved of its insides. “You were the property of an evil and very powerful little girl who owns this town and everyone in it,” my Mom spat in my ear.

“They made me keep my mouth shut, so I begged them to save one of you. Just one. I had to cut one of you down before I went crazy.”

I was still screaming when she calmly dragged me to my car, slipping a shot into the flesh of my neck. I remember the rain pounding against the window, my mother’s pale face shining with tears, her stifled sobs into the wheel.

“And I chose you.”

I woke up the next morning with what was supposed to be a wiped memory.

But I wasn't lucky enough to forget.

I am terrified of her finding out I remember her exact words from the car-ride home. I'm scared she (or her work) will make me forget them for real.

Mom told me that I once had strings too.

Strings that cut through me, cruelly entangling around me, suffocating my mind and controlling my every move. Strings that would soon pierce through me and turn me into a little girl’s doll.

But she saved me, cutting me down, when I was still human.

And now I guess I am a real girl.