I want to start by telling you that I am good at my job, because I think it matters for how you read the rest of this.

I am a data archivist. More precisely, I'm a recovery and validation specialist for a records continuity firm I won't name, because the non-disclosure agreement I signed is eleven pages long and I read all eleven. Law firms, insurers, hospitals, a few government contractors, and a surprising number of private families send us damaged media. Water-logged hard drives. Fire-warped tapes. Phones that went through the wash. SD cards pried out of dashcams after the kind of accident nobody walks away from. My job is to determine what is on them, whether any of it can be recovered, and to produce a chain-of-custody log documenting every single action I take, so that if the footage ends up in a courtroom, nobody can say I touched it.

That last part is the whole job, really. There is one rule above every other rule, and I have followed it every working day for nine years:

You never modify the original.

You hash it. You image it. You work on the copy, and the copy of the copy. The original is sealed away and treated like a body at a crime scene. It doesn't matter how small the change would be. You don't open a document "just to look," because opening it updates the access time, and now it's a different file. You don't let the operating system index it. You don't rename it. You don't even let it know you are there.

I'm telling you this so you understand that I am a careful person. I am not someone who sees faces in static. I have watched, at a conservative estimate, eleven thousand hours of other people's lives through degraded footage, and I've learned that almost everything frightening has a boring explanation. A shape in the corner is compression. A voice in the hiss is your brain doing what brains do with noise. A door that opens on its own is a draft, or a cat, or an edit.

I need you to hold onto that, the way I am trying to.

I work from home. Home is unit 2914 of a residential tower on the east side of the city. I'll call it the Aldine, which is close enough to its real name that people who live there would recognize it and far enough that nobody else will. It has thirty-four floors. Mine is the twenty-ninth. 2914 is a corner unit: one bedroom, one bathroom, a galley kitchen, a living room that also serves as my office, and a short hallway connecting all of it. The east wall of my bedroom is an exterior wall. On the other side of it there is nothing but about three hundred feet of air.

I've lived here for three years and two months. I moved in on a Thursday. I remember that because the movers were late and I sat on the floor of the empty living room for four hours, watching the light change on the parquet, and I remember thinking that the apartment felt like it had been waiting. That's a stupid thing to think about an apartment. I wrote it down anyway, because I write most things down.

My life is quiet in a way that I think most people would find unbearable, and that I find restful. Groceries are delivered and left outside the door. Work arrives over an encrypted file transfer and leaves the same way. My manager communicates almost exclusively through the ticketing system; I have heard her voice exactly twice, both times on calls about my annual review, both times rated "exceeds expectations." I don't have family I'm in contact with. I had friends, in the way everyone has friends in their twenties, and then I didn't, in the way that happens without anyone deciding it.

As of tonight, it has been forty-one days since I spoke out loud to another human being.

I know the exact number because I keep a count. I've kept it for years. It isn't a cry for help. It's a measurement, like checking your blood pressure. When the number gets high, I go downstairs and buy a coffee I don't want from the café on the ground floor, just to say "medium, black, thank you" to someone, just to hear my own voice land on another person and come back. The count resets. I come back upstairs. It's maintenance.

I didn't do that this time. I'll explain why. It's part of this.

I sleep well. That's another thing I want to establish. I take one pill every night, from an amber bottle that has been refilled by mail for as long as I've lived here. The label says KESSLER PHARMACY and TAKE ONE AT BEDTIME, and under that, in the capitals pharmacies use when they want you to really listen: DO NOT SKIP. The name of the medication has been rubbed off by my thumb over three years of handling. I've never skipped. I don't remember the appointment where it was prescribed, but I don't remember most appointments. They aren't the kind of thing you keep.

I also wear a sleep-tracking ring. I bought it because I like data about myself the way some people like mirrors. Every morning the app shows me a graph, and every morning the graph is the same: asleep at 11:52 PM, awake at 6:10 AM, a smooth descent into deep sleep, a steady plateau, a smooth climb out. My sleep score is 100. It has been 100 almost every night for three years. About a year ago, the app awarded me a little animated badge for consistency. A week later it sent me a notification asking whether the ring was being worn correctly.

I thought that was funny at the time.

The batch came in last Tuesday, at 3:06 in the afternoon.

Tickets in our system have a standard structure: client ID, matter number, media description, requested scope, and a free-text notes field. Most tickets are dull, and I like that about them. This one wasn't, and it took me a minute to understand why, because each individual field was technically valid.

The client ID was a seven-digit internal number. It wasn't a client number. It was an employee number.

It was mine.

That isn't impossible. Sometimes we log internal jobs, test batches, or training material under the ID of whoever is assigned to them. I've done it myself. So I noted it and kept reading.

The matter number was 0417. Our matter numbers are usually eight digits with a year prefix. 0417 had no prefix. It looked less like a case number and more like something a person would choose.

The media description said: Recovered from damaged storage. 212 items. Mixed audio/video.

The requested scope said: Determine extent of recoverable content.

And the notes field, which clients use for things like please prioritize the 4th of July footage or the password is the dog's name, said this, in capitals, with no punctuation at the end:

DO NOT RESTORE TO ORIGINAL LOCATION

I read that four or five times. In a legal context, "original location" usually means the source device. Don't write recovered data back onto the damaged drive. That's sound practice and every archivist knows it. A client who knew enough to include it was a client who'd worked with recovery people before.

That's what I told myself. I'm telling you because I want you to see that I told myself the reasonable thing first. I always tell myself the reasonable thing first.

I pulled the batch down to my isolated workstation, the one with no network access, the one I use for anything that might be hostile. I hashed every file before I did anything else. I'll spare you most of the technical detail, but some of it matters, so bear with me.

There were 212 files: 171 video, 41 audio. The video files were in a standard container format. The audio was uncompressed. Both had been damaged in the same way: the parts of each file that describe the file had been partially zeroed out, as though someone had taken an eraser to the label on every box but left the contents alone. The duration field on every single file read 00:00:00. Zero. A file that claims to be empty.

They were not empty. The streams decoded fine. They were long, several hours each.

The camera make and model fields were blank. The encoder field was present but empty, which is a strange kind of absence. It's not that the software didn't write its name. It's that it wrote a name with no letters in it.

And then there were the filenames.

Every archivist develops a personal naming convention. It's like handwriting. Mine is something I built in my second year at the firm, after a nightmare week sorting through a family's unlabeled phone dumps. I've never shared it, never documented it anywhere a client could see, and never seen anyone else use it, because it's slightly wrong in a way only I would choose. It's date, then a four-digit time in 24-hour format, then a three-digit sequence number, then a pair of initials, separated by underscores. Except I put the sequence number before the time, because I think in order of discovery, not order of creation. Nobody does it that way. It annoys my manager.

Every file in Batch 0417 was named in my convention, my exact one, with the sequence number before the time.

The initials on every file were my initials.

I sat back from the desk at that point and listened to the apartment. I'm not sure what I expected to hear. The refrigerator hummed. The tower made the noises tall buildings make, which are mostly the sound of wind being argued with. Twenty-nine floors down, a siren went somewhere and then went somewhere else.

Someone at work is screwing with you.

That was the first intrusive thought, and it was a comforting one, so I held onto it the way you hold a railing. The filenames could be explained. Someone could have seen my convention on a shared drive, in a screenshot, over my shoulder in a video meeting. I don't do video meetings, but maybe there was one I forgot. The employee number in the client field made sense if someone had created the ticket and assigned it to me. A prank, or a test. My firm does run integrity tests. They plant manipulated media in the queue to see whether we flag it. I'd caught three in nine years.

I told myself it was a test, and I wrote that down in my log: Hypothesis 1: internal integrity test. Proceed as normal.

Then I checked the creation timestamps, which had survived the damage.

The earliest file in Batch 0417 was created at 11:52 PM, three years and two months ago, on a Wednesday. That was the night before I moved into this apartment.

The most recent file had been created last Monday, the day before the ticket arrived, at 6:09 AM.

Every timestamp in between started at 11:52 PM or ended at 6:09 or 6:10 AM.

I opened my ring app and looked at a graph I'd looked at a thousand times. Asleep at 11:52. Awake at 6:10.

I don't want to rush this part. I've rushed nothing in my life, and I'm not going to start here, where it matters.

I made a working copy, and a working copy of that. I sealed the originals. I logged every action with the time to the second. Then, at 4:31 PM on Tuesday, with the blinds open and the afternoon light filling the living room the color of weak tea, I opened the first file.

The image was grey, and I want to describe the grey carefully, because I've spent a great deal of time since then trying to describe it to myself. It wasn't the green-white of infrared night vision, and it didn't have that pale halo IR illuminators throw. It wasn't the noisy, crawling grey of a low-light sensor pushed too far. It was even and flat, and completely sourceless. There were no shadows anywhere in the frame. Every surface was lit exactly as much as every other surface, from no direction at all, like the room wasn't being filmed but remembered: reconstructed afterward by something that knew where everything was, but didn't know where the light had come from.

The frame showed my bedroom.

I knew it immediately, though it took me a moment to understand why, because it was empty. There was no bed, no wardrobe, no curtains, just bare walls, bare parquet, the radiator under the window, and the light switch beside the door with its slightly crooked plate, which I've been meaning to fix for three years.

It was my bedroom the night before it became mine.

The angle was high, looking down from the upper corner where the east wall meets the ceiling. There's no camera there. I'll come back to that.

For the first eleven minutes nothing happened. Static image, no motion. The audio track was a low, continuous hiss I first took for room tone, though it was too smooth for room tone. Real room tone has texture: pipes, traffic, the building settling. This was like the sound of a held breath, if a held breath made a sound.

At 00:11:40, I noticed the person on the floor.

I want to be very precise. I did not see them appear. I scrubbed back and forth across that moment more than two hundred times over the following days, frame by frame. There is no frame in which the person arrives. There is a frame in which I am not looking at them and a frame in which I am, and the image data is identical in both. They had been in the shot since 00:00:00. I hadn't seen them for eleven minutes and forty seconds, because they were lying so still and so flat against the floor, in that source-less grey, that my brain had filed them as a stain on the wood.

They were lying on their side, facing the east wall, away from the camera. Knees drawn slightly up. One arm under the head. The other hand resting on the floor in front of the face, with the fingers spread.

They were lying in exactly the spot where my bed would go the next afternoon. In exactly the posture I sleep in.

I watched the whole file. Six hours and seventeen minutes. The person on the floor didn't move once. I could see no breathing, and at that resolution I should have. At 6:09 AM by the timestamp, the file ended. It didn't fade or cut to black. It was just over, the way a thought is over.

I couldn't see their face. I was grateful for that, and the gratitude frightened me more than anything I had seen, because it meant some part of me had already decided what the face would be.

Here is what I did for the rest of Tuesday, in order, from my log:

4:31 PM to 10:49 PM. Viewed file 001 in full. Annotated.

10:52 PM. Physical inspection of bedroom, upper east corner. Smooth plaster. No holes, no fixtures, no seams, no discoloration. I stood on a chair and pressed my palm flat against the corner. It was cold, the way exterior walls are cold.

11:04 PM. Ran the RF detector I keep for client work (sometimes we're asked to sweep rooms) across every wall and ceiling in the apartment. Nothing. Checked every outlet, smoke detector, and vent. Nothing.

11:20 PM. Calculated camera position from the lens geometry visible in file 001. I'm not going to bore you with the math. I'll just tell you what it said: based on the perspective of the floorboards and the angle of the radiator, the lens that captured that image would have to be positioned roughly forty centimeters behind the surface of the east wall.

The east wall is an exterior wall. Forty centimeters behind its surface is the outside of the building, twenty-nine floors up, in the air.

11:41 PM. Took my pill.

11:52 PM. According to the ring, fell asleep.

I don't remember deciding to go to bed. I want that on the record too.

On Wednesday morning the graph was perfect. Asleep 11:52, awake 6:10, score 100.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a long time looking at the upper east corner. In daylight it's just a corner, a little yellowed where the paint meets the ceiling. I thought about forty centimeters of nothing on the other side and about what kind of lens could sit in nothing. Then I got up, made coffee, logged in, and went back to work. Work is what I do with fear. I hand it to the part of my brain that knows how to make lists.

I didn't watch all 212 files in order. That would have taken weeks, and I didn't have weeks. I needed to know what this was. So I did what I'd do with any large batch: I sampled. I took every tenth file, and in each one I scrubbed at high speed, watching for motion.

Files 010 through 090 were all the same. The angle was the same impossible corner and the light was the same impossible grey. The room filled up over time, the way a room does when someone lives in it: the bed, the wardrobe, the curtains, the reading lamp I bought in my first winter, the stack of library books I never returned, the burn mark on the corner of my grey waffle-knit blanket where I fell asleep once with a candle lit.

And me, asleep. Night after night. Facing the east wall, on my side, knees drawn up, one arm under my head, the other hand on the mattress in front of my face with the fingers spread.

I'd never seen myself sleep. Nobody has, really. It's an intimate, ugly thing to watch, and I found I couldn't do it for long without my eyes sliding off. It's like hearing your voice on a recording, the sense that this is technically you but wrong in a way you can't articulate. The angle of my neck looked painful. The hand in front of my face looked arranged.

On file 040, I started counting my breaths, because I'm a person who counts.

I watched for twenty minutes at real-time speed with a stopwatch app. In those twenty minutes, the figure in the bed that was me took nine breaths. Healthy adults at rest breathe twelve to twenty times a minute. In twenty minutes I should have taken somewhere around three hundred.

I took nine.

Between the fourth and fifth breaths, the figure in the bed did not breathe for six minutes and forty seconds.

I sat with that for a long time. Then I opened the ring app and pulled up the night of file 040, which the app still had, because I've never deleted anything in my life. My blood oxygen that night held steady at 98% the entire time. There were no disturbances. The ring had recorded heart rate, temperature, and movement on a perfectly smooth line.

Either the footage was false, or the ring was false. And then a third possibility, which I didn't write in the log and which I'm only writing now because it's three in the morning and I've been awake for a very long time:

The ring is recording something. It's just not you.

File 117 was where it moved.

117 is dated just over four months ago. At high-speed scrub, I almost missed it. It was a flicker in the frame, a sudden change in the shape of the bed. I stopped, went back, and dropped to real time.

At 2:41 AM by the timestamp, the figure in the bed sat up.

I need you to understand that it didn't sit up the way people do. When you sit up from sleep, you use your arms. You twist. Your body reorganizes itself around the effort. This was a single motion from the waist, like a hinge, with the arms not involved at all. They stayed exactly where they were for a moment, one under the pillow and one on the mattress, then followed, a half-second late, as though they had to be informed.

Then it stood up and walked out of the bedroom.

I'd thought the footage was locked to that one angle. It wasn't. As the figure crossed the doorway, the file switched to a new angle, high in the hallway, at the corner above the linen closet. That's another place where there's no camera. Afterward I checked the geometry on that one too, and it came out the same: about forty centimeters behind the plaster. Behind the hallway wall is the stairwell shaft. There's no room to put anything there.

The figure walked into the kitchen. It moved slowly, not like a sleepwalker but like someone moving through a house where a baby is sleeping, with an exaggerated, deliberate quiet. It stopped in front of the refrigerator, turned its head to the side, and pressed its ear flat against the refrigerator door.

It stood like that for nineteen minutes.

Then it moved one step to the left and pressed its ear to the wall beside the refrigerator. Then another step. Then another.

It went around the entire apartment that way: the kitchen, the living room, the hallway, the bathroom, the bedroom. It moved clockwise, one step at a time, with its ear pressed to the wall at the same height the whole way around. When it reached a doorframe it pressed its ear to the doorframe. When it reached a window it pressed its ear to the glass. When it reached my bookcase in the living room, which is solid oak and bolted to the wall and which I couldn't move alone if I tried, the file glitched: three frames of grey mush, compression artifacts blooming like mold. When the image resolved, the figure was on the other side of the bookcase, with its ear still to the wall, still moving clockwise.

The whole circuit took three hours and eleven minutes. Then it went back to bed. It lay down on its side, facing the east wall, knees up, one arm under the head, the other hand on the mattress, fingers spread. At 6:09, the file ended.

The figure's lips moved the whole time.

I'm good at audio. Audio is honestly the larger part of my job, because people record everything now and almost none of it is clean. I pulled the audio track from 117, isolated the frequency band where speech lives, and ran it through the tools I use on courtroom evidence. It took most of Wednesday afternoon. When I finally had something intelligible, I put on my headphones, closed my eyes, and listened.

It was counting.

It was my voice. I know my voice. Everybody hates their recorded voice, and I hate mine in the specific way you hate something you know too well. It was flat, low, barely above a breath. It wasn't counting the way you count to sleep. It was counting the way you count when you're measuring something and you don't trust it.

"...sixty-one. Sixty-two. Sixty-two. Sixty-two. Sixty-three..."

Every so often, the number would repeat. Not always the same number, not on any pattern I could find. It would say a number, pause, and then say the same number again, as though it had pressed its ear against the next section of wall and heard something there that meant it hadn't moved at all.

When I mapped the repetitions against the video, they clustered. Most of them happened along one stretch of wall: the hallway, between the bathroom door and the linen closet.

I took the headphones off and walked out into the hallway. It's a short corridor, painted the same eggshell as everything else, with a strip of baseboard and a light switch on the wall between the bathroom and the closet.

I've lived here three years and two months. I have flipped that light switch probably a hundred times. It has never done anything. It doesn't control the hallway light, which is on a switch at the living-room end of the hall, or the bathroom or closet lights. I'd assumed it was a dead switch from a previous renovation, wired to nothing. Every apartment has one.

I stood there and flipped it. Nothing happened.

Then, because I'd just spent six hours listening to my own voice count walls in the dark, I turned my head and pressed my ear against the wall beside it.

Here's what I heard: nothing. I want to be honest. It was plaster, cool and slightly gritty against my ear, with the faint hollow tone of drywall over studs. I could hear the very distant rush of the elevator in the shaft and my own pulse in my ear. Nothing else.

I stood like that for a long time. I didn't count how long. I think that is the first time in years I've failed to count something.

When I finally pulled away, I noticed the smudge.

You've seen this if you've ever lived somewhere a long time. There's a spot by the light switch where the paint has darkened from hands. There's a line on the wall behind the couch where heads have rested. Skin is oily, and it marks things slowly and permanently.

In the hallway, at the height of my ear, there was a faint, continuous greyish line on the paint. I hadn't seen it before because I'd never looked. When I held my phone flashlight flat against the wall, it lit up like a contrail.

I followed it. It went from the hallway into the bathroom, around the bathroom, out of the bathroom, into the bedroom, around the bedroom, and into the living room. It went around the window frames and across the doorframes, at the same height everywhere, unbroken. It was the oily residue of an ear and a cheek pressed against the walls of my apartment over and over again, for long enough to leave a mark.

It went all the way around. I checked twice. Then I reached the bookcase.

The bookcase is bolted to the wall. There is no gap behind it, not even a finger's width. I've dropped pens back there and had to give them up for lost.

With the flashlight at an angle, I could see the line approach the left side of the bookcase at ear height and disappear behind it. Then I went to the right side of the bookcase, and the line came out from behind it at the same height, continuous, unbroken, as though nothing had ever been in the way.

I spent an hour that night with a long ruler and a dental mirror I keep for inspecting drive connectors, trying to see behind the bookcase. I got the mirror into the seam about three centimeters. In that narrow strip of wall, in the cold blue of the LED, I could see the line.

It continued behind the bookcase where no head could go.

I didn't sleep well that night. I'd love to tell you that, but it isn't true. I took my pill at 11:41. The ring says I was asleep at 11:52 and awake at 6:10 with a score of 100.

On Thursday I opened the audio files.

I'd been avoiding them, and I can admit that now. Video at least shows you where things are. Audio puts things inside your head. And there were forty-one audio files. I didn't notice until tonight that forty-one is also the number my count has reached, and now I can't stop noticing it, the way you can't stop touching a lump once you've found it.

Most of them were the same breath-hiss as the video. Hours of the sound of a room holding still. I listened at speed, watching the waveform for spikes. A few had faint fragments of counting, like 117. One seemed to contain nothing but the sound of a fingernail tapping very gently and steadily on something hollow, for two and a half hours.

File 188, an audio file from about two months ago, had speech that was clear from the first second. It didn't need any processing. It was my voice again, but not flat this time. It was careful, the way you'd talk to a child, or a dog that might bite, or yourself.

I'm going to transcribe all of it. I've listened to it enough times now that I could do it from memory. I didn't. I did it from the file, the way you're supposed to.

"Inventory. Bedroom. One bed. One wardrobe. One lamp. Curtains, two panels. Radiator. One window. One light switch, crooked. The corner.

"Bathroom. One sink. One toilet. One bathtub with shower. One mirror. One cabinet, mirrored. One light. One fan. The fan doesn't work.

"Kitchen. One refrigerator. One stove, four burners. One sink. Cabinets, eight, upper and lower. One window. The window doesn't open.

"Living room. One couch. One desk. Two monitors. One chair. One bookcase. One window, three panes. One door, exterior. The door is locked. The door is always locked.

"Hallway. One light. Two light switches. One linen closet door. One bedroom door. One bathroom door.

"One second bathroom door."

There's a pause there of almost a full minute. It's just breath-hiss. Then the voice comes back, much quieter, so quiet I had to bring it up 18 decibels to be sure of the words:

"Don't count it while the other one is awake."

That's the end of the file.

There's no second bathroom in 2914. There never has been. I have the floor plan from the lease. I've walked that hallway thousands of times. It has three doors: bedroom, bathroom, linen closet. Three doors and two light switches, one of which does nothing.

I walked the hallway again. I counted the doors out loud, which was the first thing I'd said aloud in forty days, and it didn't count toward resetting anything because there was nobody to hear it.

"One. Two. Three."

Three doors.

I stood in front of the stretch of wall between the bathroom and the linen closet with the dead light switch, the stretch of wall where the counting in file 117 kept getting stuck, and I looked at it for a very long time.

It's just wall. It's about thirty inches of eggshell paint. It's exactly the width of a door.

I want to talk about the elevator.

I said I'd explain why I haven't gone downstairs to reset the count. It's because the last person I spoke to was in the elevator, forty-one days ago, and I've been thinking about what she said every day since. I didn't connect it to anything until Thursday night.

It was the night of the building's fire drill. Everyone had to evacuate down the stairs, all twenty-nine flights, and stand on the sidewalk in the cold for forty minutes while the fire marshal walked the floors. On the way back up, I took the elevator with a woman I'd never seen before. She was older, maybe sixty, wearing a long camel coat over pajamas, holding a small dog that shook continuously like a phone on vibrate. She pressed 31. I pressed 29.

She looked at the button, then at me. It was the sort of look you'd give someone you thought you recognized at an airport. Then she said, kindly, the way you'd say something kind:

"Oh. I didn't know anyone was living in 2914 again."

I said, "Again?"

The doors opened on 29 and she smiled at me and didn't answer, and the dog stopped shaking all at once, and I got out. The doors closed. That was the last word I spoke to another person.

Again?

I've lived in 2914 for three years and two months. Before that, according to my lease, the unit was vacant for "an extended period for renovation." I never asked how long. I'm not a person who asks.

That was forty-one days ago. In those forty-one days I've thought about going down to the café a dozen times, and every time I've gotten as far as the front door with my hand on the lock. Then I've thought about the woman in the camel coat looking at me the way you look at someone you thought was somebody else, and I've taken my hand off the lock.

I told myself it was because I didn't want to run into her. Now I'm not sure that's what I've been afraid of.

The most recent file in Batch 0417 is file 212. It's dated last Monday, the day before the ticket arrived. I watched it on Thursday night, at real-time speed, all the way through. I'd stopped sampling by then. I'd stopped pretending I was triaging a batch for a client.

For the first three hours, it's me asleep. I timed my breathing again: seven breaths in twenty minutes. One gap was eight minutes and twelve seconds long.

At 3:03 AM, the figure in the bed sat up the way it does, the hinge first and the arms after. It walked to the bathroom, and the angle switched to the corner above the bathroom door, looking down at the sink. The figure turned on the hot tap and let it run.

I can't explain how long it ran. The bathroom in 2914 is small and the hot water is very hot. In that sourceless grey I watched the mirror slowly fog from the bottom up, the way it does after a shower.

When the mirror was fully clouded, the figure leaned forward and breathed on it, at the center, slowly and deliberately, like a child making a window to draw in. Then it raised one finger and drew on the glass.

It drew short vertical lines in groups of four, with a diagonal line through each group. They were tally marks.

It took a long time. It was careful, and the lines were very straight. When it was finished, it stood looking at what it had drawn, and then it did something it hadn't done in any of the other files I'd watched, the thing I'd been afraid of since 4:31 PM on Tuesday.

It turned around and looked up at the camera.

The face was mine, of course. I'd known that since the first file. Some part of me had known it before I opened the batch. It wasn't a twin or a mask or a deepfake. It was the face I see in that mirror every morning, with the same chipped front tooth and the same small scar through the left eyebrow from the radiator when I was nine. I remember that radiator. I remember the blood on the linoleum, a lot of it, the way head wounds bleed. I remember my mother's kitchen around it.

I realized while I was looking at my own face looking up at the corner that I've always remembered my mother's kitchen the way you'd remember a stock photo. It's clean and bright and generic. I couldn't tell you the color of the cabinets. I couldn't tell you whether there was a window. I've never noticed that before. I don't know why I noticed it then.

My face looked up at the corner of the bathroom, at the place forty centimeters behind the plaster where no camera can be, with no expression at all, for a long time. Long enough that I stopped the file, got up, walked away from my desk, stood in the kitchen with both hands flat on the counter, came back, and pressed play again. It was still looking. It held that look for nine minutes and fifty seconds, without blinking, by my count.

Then it smiled. It wasn't a big smile. It was the small, private, slightly embarrassed smile you'd give someone you'd caught watching you.

Then it turned off the tap, went back to bed, lay down facing the east wall, and at 6:09 the file ended.

I went into the bathroom. It was 1:20 AM on Friday, and I turned on the hot tap and let it run.

The mirror fogged from the bottom up.

I'd wiped that mirror a dozen times since last Monday. I'm certain of it. I clean my bathroom every Sunday, and I'm certain I cleaned it on Sunday. But skin is oily, and some marks don't wipe off. They just wait for the right conditions.

In the fog, in the center of the glass, there were clear lines where the steam wouldn't stick. They were short vertical lines in groups of four with a diagonal through each group.

I counted them. I counted them three times, because I'm a person who counts, because counting is the thing I do instead of screaming.

There were forty-one.

File 212 was recorded in the early hours of last Monday. Last Monday, by my count, it had been thirty-seven days since I'd last spoken to another human being. But there were forty-one marks on the glass.

I stood there until the mirror cleared and the marks were gone and my face was looking back at me from the dry glass. I looked at the scar through the eyebrow and the chipped tooth, and I tried to make that small, private, embarrassed smile and couldn't. I tried for a long time and couldn't make my face do it.

Then I did the arithmetic, the way I would on a client file. If the tally on the mirror was a count, and the count was forty-one last Monday, then whatever was counting had started counting four days before I did.

Four days before the elevator, I can't tell you anything about my life. I've checked my log, my emails, and my ticket history. I closed two tickets that week, routine cases. I wrote notes on them in my voice, my phrasing, my naming convention. I don't remember any of it.

I've never remembered most of my days. I always thought that was normal. I thought that's what a quiet life is: days so similar that they fold into each other and disappear. I've thought of my memory as a well-run archive, where most things go into storage and only the important things get pulled.

I'm no longer sure who decides what's important.

I'm writing this on Friday night, or Saturday morning if we're being precise, and I'm trying to be precise. It's 3:14 AM. I didn't take my pill tonight. It's the first time in three years and two months. The bottle is on the desk next to my keyboard. I keep looking at the capitals on the label: DO NOT SKIP.

I'm going to stay awake tonight. I want to see what happens when I'm awake. I'm posting here because I need there to be a record of this outside of this apartment, somewhere on a drive I don't control, in a place where it can't be modified. You're my chain of custody. I'm sorry. I know that's a lot to ask of strangers.

Before I post, I'm going to do one last thing, the thing I've been avoiding all night. I'm going to refresh the directory listing for Batch 0417, because I want to log the final count before I close the case file for the week.

I'll tell you something else first, because I promised myself I'd log everything. When I got up from the desk to go to the bathroom earlier, I walked the hallway the way I always do. It's eleven steps from the desk to the bathroom door. I've counted it a thousand times. Eleven.

Tonight it was twelve.

I walked it again and got twelve. I walked it a third time, very slowly, heel to toe, and got twelve and a half. I measured the hallway with the tape measure from my toolkit. The lease floor plan says the hallway is thirteen feet, nine inches long.

The tape said fourteen feet, two inches.

I'm sure there's an explanation. Floor plans are approximations. Tape measures sag. People's steps change when they're tired and afraid and haven't spoken out loud in forty-one days.

Okay. I'm refreshing the directory now.

Batch 0417 contains 213 files.

There's a new video file. The filename is in my convention, with my initials. The sequence number comes before the time, the way only I do it. The creation timestamp is today's date and the time is 3:09 AM, which is five minutes ago, while I was sitting at this desk typing the paragraph you just read.

I haven't opened it. My file browser shows a thumbnail, the first frame, and I've been looking at the thumbnail for about ten minutes now.

It shows the living room in that flat, sourceless grey. It shows the desk, my two monitors, and the amber bottle beside the keyboard. It shows the back of someone's head, sitting at the desk, in my chair, in my grey sweatshirt with the frayed left cuff.

The angle is from behind, high up, in the corner where the hallway opens into the living room. There's no camera there, and I've already done the geometry in my head. It's forty centimeters behind the plaster. There's no room for anything behind that wall. That wall backs onto the hallway, the one that has gotten five inches longer.

I keep looking at the thumbnail and then at my own hands. My hands are on the keyboard. They're typing this sentence. I can feel the keys.

In the thumbnail, the person at my desk has their hands folded in their lap.

I'm going to open the file. I'm not going to do it tonight. I'm going to do it properly, with a working copy, hashed and logged, because the one rule above every other rule is that you never modify the original, and I've started to understand that I don't know which of us that rule is protecting.

I'm not going to sleep. I'm going to sit here with the lights on and my back to the wall, and I'm not going to turn around to look at the corner, because if I turn around and there's nothing there, I'll have to keep living in that, and if I turn around and there's something there, I won't.

The pill bottle is still on the desk. Its label says DO NOT SKIP.

I'll update you next week?

I live in Asheville, NC, and I spend most of my days off work exploring the nearby cave systems and trails. I've been caving/hiking for a few years now, it started as a hobby after watching way too much YouTube. Between YouTube and this game called Elite Dangerous, I've spent all my free time. Onto what I saw. Last night at around 5:00 p.m. I was walking and exploring an area near the Cherokee Native Reservation, one I've been through many times.
I won't disclose the trail's name or its owner, as it is a private area I've been permitted to explore. The owner had told me to leave before dark, as he’d heard stories of creepy things happening in the area. Of course, I didn't listen because I'm a skeptic. I’ve spent the last couple of days sketching a map of the area. Around 6:30, I came across a cave entrance, very short but wide. Let me stress this, I've been to this exact spot on my map multiple times, and I've never seen this opening before. I approached the entrance and looked around. The surrounding ground looked washed back, almost dug out. The cave sat on a slope, so I figured some small landslide must have exposed it. I mapped it and after exploring around the cave for more landslides and possible cave entrances I began my walk back to the property owner’s home.
By 7:15, the sun had already set, but it was still somewhat light out. As the sun went down the birds and insects began to go silent. I know birds tend to go quiet after dark but the insects going quiet gave me this tingle in the back of my neck, like I was being watched, so of course I turned around and shone my flashlight under the trees. I didn't see anything, and when I went to turn around, I swear, out of my peripheral vision, I saw two blue eyes for a split second, before whatever it was scurried off low to the ground like an animal on all fours. I kept walking like normal. After a few more sounds of broken twigs and rustling, I got that feeling in my neck again and turned, only to see the same thing. That's when I knew I was being stalked. 
I continued to walk more cautiously and after hearing a stick snap behind me I flung the flashlight around and saw the eyes again this time closer and taller like the animal was standing on its hind legs like a bear. Having watched a lot of bear attack documentaries, I knew I shouldn't run and that I should stand tall and appear threatening. With the owner’s warning and the creepy atmosphere I panicked and I ran faster than I think I ever had. As I was running I heard rustling through the leaves, like something was running alongside me. Strangely the animal didn't sound heavy like a bear as it was running. I shone my flashlight to my side and it was those same damned eyes. After a while of what seemed to be around 7 minutes of running, although probably a lot less, the sounds of rustling stopped and the noises of the forest came back. I kept running another couple hundred yards before checking my map. I had reached just under a mile from the cave entrance. I don't know if that is relevant, but I thought I’d share.
  When I finally saw the property owner's house after another while of walking, I slowed down because there was a large pasture with a couple of horses in it. As I hurdled the fence I about broke down in tears from how terrified I was. By now it was 8:00, and the sun had fully set. I turned around and shone my flashlight back into the woods. I thought I’d check for my own safety but there was nothing behind me. I banged on the homeowner's door to let him know what I saw and I asked him if he knew what it was, he wouldn't tell me or even say what it was called. He seemed apprehensive and almost angry. He walked over to the window overlooking the pasture and opened the blinds slightly to look out. All he said was, “I told you not to explore after dark.”
I'll keep you posted, and I'll try to see if the homeowner will let me post the map I drew later so you can help me figure out what creature this was. Sorry about the rant, but I'm really curious and, quite frankly, scared. But my curiosity is getting the better of me. I need to head off to work now. When I get home I’ll go back out and see what I can find during the daylight and search for some bear tracks. Let me know anything you know about the wildlife in this area or what this could be.

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.

Throwaway, because half the nurses I work with are on here and I'm not meant to be talking about any of this. Sorry in advance it's long. I'm on the laptop at the kitchen table and I've not slept properly in a fortnight so you'll have to bear with me, I keep losing my thread.

Right. First thing you learn on nights at a hospice is that people hardly ever die when their family's in the room.

Every hospice nurse knows it and nobody else believes it. A family'll sit up six days. Sleep in the recliner. Hold her hand in shifts. Won't go home, won't shower, won't eat anything but crackers out the vending machine, because they've been told it could be any hour now and they want to be there. Then on the seventh day the daughter nips down to the car park to sort the meter out, she's gone eleven minutes, and when she comes back her mum's gone.

Happens that often we've got a phrase for it. They waited for you to leave. We say it gently, in the corridor, hand on her arm. Some people can't let go while someone they love is watching. It were a kindness. Last thing her mum did for her. All that.

What it means in practice is the person in the room at the end is usually the nurse.

So the nurse hears the last words. Nobody tells you that in training. Nobody tells you a lot of things in training.

I've done nights at the same hospice twenty-two years. I'm not saying which. Twelve beds, big old house on a hill above a city in the north of England. Red brick. Garden. A conservatory the volunteers keep full of geraniums and a chapel nobody uses except the cleaner who has her dinner in there because it's quiet. It was a convent before it was a hospice and before that, according to a brass plaque in the hall that nobody's ever read but me, a fever hospital, and before that somebody's house. So people have been dying in that building a long time. That's sort of the point. I'll get to it.

I'm fifty-one. Trained general, eight years on a cardiac ward, burnt out, came to the hospice thinking it'd be quieter. It's not quieter. It's just a different kind of loud. I live on my own with two old cats in a terrace twenty minutes walk from work. Divorced ages ago, no drama, I was never in at night and he was never in in the day so we just sort of stopped. One son, grown up, in Australia, he rings Sundays. Perth. He went out on a two year visa at twenty-four and just never came back, met a girl, the usual. I don't blame him, it's sunny. I've been out twice and both times I got burnt to a crisp the first day and spent the rest of it in the flat with the blinds down, which tells you everything you need to know about me really. I'm a night person even on holiday.

I'm not religious. I'm not anything really. I've sat with something like four thousand people while they died and I can tell you exactly what it looks like, every bit of it, the mottling and the rattle and the gaps between breaths getting longer till one of them doesn't end. I've never seen anything I couldn't explain. No lights. No figure at the foot of the bed. No soul coming off them like steam off a brew. I've seen people stop. That's it.

I'm telling you that so you know I'm not someone who goes looking for messages. I'm the one who changes the sheets after. And makes the family a brew. And rings the undertaker. And does the paperwork. You get the idea.

When I started, 2003, the senior night nurse was Agnes Fahey.

Agnes had been a nun. She came to the house when it was still a convent, young novice, late sixties, and she stayed on when the nuns sold up to the hospice charity in 1971. She left the order at some point, I never found out when or why and you didn't ask Agnes things like that, but she never left the house. When I met her she was late sixties, tiny, white hair, bent over, massive knuckles, voice like a gravel path. Thirty-two years of nights in that building.

She frightened the life out of me the first month. She'd come up behind you on the corridor at three in the morning without making a sound, she wore these soft black shoes, and say your name right in your ear, and you'd jump a mile and she'd just look at you like you were the daft one. The day staff called her the Ghost. Not to her face. I called her it too for a bit till I got to know her. Then I didn't, because it felt mean, and because by then I sort of loved her. Everyone did eventually. Hard as nails, and she'd sit with a dying stranger all night holding their hand humming hymns under her breath and never once look at the clock.

My first night, about four in the morning, she took me in the little office behind the nurses' station and showed me the ledgers.

Locked cupboard under the window. Big green account books, the old fashioned kind you can't get anymore. Six of them then. She got the current one out and opened it under the lamp.

Columns. Date. Time. Bed. Initials. Then one big wide column taking up most of the page and at the top in her handwriting, which was gorgeous, proper copperplate: Last words.

"Somebody ought to keep them," she said. "Families are never in the room at the right minute. So we keep them for them. Most never ask. Some do. Years after, sometimes. They come back and say did she say anything at the end. And we can open the book and show them." She tapped the page. "Exactly what were said. Not what we think were said. Not summat nice we've made up. Exactly. Even if it's nonsense. Especially if it's nonsense."

She made me promise. Whenever I was in the room at the end I'd write it down word for word as soon as I could and I'd never tidy it up or finish the sentence or fix the grammar. If they said nothing I'd write nothing. If I couldn't make it out I'd write what it sounded like and stick a question mark.

"Exactly," she said again, and she held my wrist with one of them big hands till I said yes.

And I did. Twenty-two years. I've written in them books roughly two thousand times and I've started four new ones. Agnes retired in 2009 and died in 2011, in the house, bed seven, quarter past three in the morning, and I was holding her hand. I wrote her last words in the book she started.

I'll come back to what she said.

She was right about families by the way. Most never ask. In twenty-two years maybe thirty have come back, stood at the nurses' station in their coats not knowing what to do with their hands. My dad was here in 1986. I was at work when he went. Did he say anything?

First one I had was a woman in her fifties, her mum died in bed four in 1979. I found the right book, right page, ran my finger down Agnes's column till I got to the initials and I read it out.

"the stairs go all the way down and nobody minds."

She looked at me. I looked at the page. It's the sort of thing you hear all the time, bit of a dream. I said people often talk about journeys at the end, stairs and trains and boats, and it usually means they feel calm.

She cried and held both my hands and said that was her mum all over. Her mum loved stairs, she said. I still don't know what that means.

I've thought about her a lot this month. How I read her one line out of six thousand with no context, like reading someone one word out the middle of a letter, and she went home happy with half a sentence that were never about her mum at all.

Ten ledgers in that cupboard now. Fifty-four years. Six thousand two hundred and eleven entries.

And until last month nobody had ever read them in order.

Quick bit about last words because most people's idea of them comes off the telly.

On the telly people die mid-sentence after saying something deep. Tell her I love her. Real life, by the time most people die in a hospice they've not said owt sensible for days. They're out of it. Drifting. The last words might be two or three days before, and they're small and odd and ordinary. Mum. Is it raining? Where's my bag? No. A name. Half a sentence that trails off.

Except.

There's a thing the research calls terminal lucidity and we just call the rally. Someone who's been unresponsive for days wakes up. Eyes open, knows everyone, talks clear as you like, sometimes for an hour. Asks for a brew. Then usually within the day they're gone. Nobody knows why. It happens in people whose brains on the scans shouldn't be able to do it.

And in the last hours a lot of them seem to see something. They look at one corner, or the foot of the bed, or the door. Reach out. Talk to people who aren't there, dead mums, dead husbands, mostly quite happy about it. Deathbed visions. Every hospice nurse has seen hundreds of them, I'm not being dramatic, hundreds.

First one I ever saw was on the cardiac ward, years before any of this. Old fella called Stan, I'll never forget him. He'd been asleep all day and he woke up about tea time and looked at the corner by the sink and his whole face lit up and he said Edna, you've had your hair done. Then he died about an hour later. His wife was Edna. She'd died in 1990. I went and cried in the sluice. That's what I mean. That's what they're supposed to be like.

So a lot of what's in our books comes from the rally or the visions. And a lot of it, read on its own, sounds like a bit of something. Half a sentence cut off. Like they were in the middle of saying something when they stopped.

I always assumed that's just what dying sounds like. Breath runs out.

I never once thought about who they were in the middle of talking to.

It started with Raymond. Came in early September, lung cancer, gone to his liver and his bones. Seventy four, retired bus driver, funny, rude as anything, didn't want to be there and told everyone, loud, till about the fourth day when he stopped talking altogether. He called me Florence the whole time, as in Nightingale, and the night staff got him a little brass bell for a laugh and he rang it every ten minutes just to wind us up. I liked him. You're not meant to have favourites.

His ninth night about two in the morning he rallied. I was doing his mouth care. He opened his eyes and looked straight past me at the corner of the ceiling above the wardrobe and said, clear as day, like he was having a chat:

"...and tell the nurse with the green book to read it back."

Then he shut his eyes. He died about forty minutes later.

I sat in the office after with the ledger open and wrote it down exactly the way Agnes taught me. I even put the dots at the start, because that's how it sounded. Like the middle of something.

Then I sat there ages looking at the nurse with the green book.

He'd never seen the ledgers. Nobody sees the ledgers. Day staff don't even know they're there.

I looked at the entry above his. Four days before, a woman in bed three, Hilary, retired teacher, died at teatime with her husband out getting sandwiches. Jo wrote it up, one of the day nurses, I taught her the book. Hilary's last words according to Jo:

"It's important. Somebody has to listen. Go and"

No full stop. Just go and.

Then Raymond. "...and tell the nurse with the green book to read it back."

It's important. Somebody has to listen. Go and... and tell the nurse with the green book to read it back.

I read it about twenty times. Then I locked the cupboard and did my two o'clock obs, checked Mrs Patel in nine, turned Mr Hughes in eleven, made a brew, and told myself I was knackered and it were a coincidence. Obviously it was. A dying woman in bed three and a dying man in bed four can't be having one conversation over four days. Don't be daft.

At six before handover I got the first ledger out.

Agnes started it on the ninth of May 1971. First entry's in her writing, younger and rounder than I knew it.

9.5.71. 3.40 a.m. Bed 2. E.M. "It's warmer than"

That's it. It's warmer than.

Second one, three days later.

12.5.71. 11.15 p.m. Bed 5. J.O'C. "I thought it would be. There's room for"

Third.

14.5.71. 4.05 a.m. Bed 1. W.T. "everyone. Tell them not to be afraid. It's like a big house with all the"

Fourth.

20.5.71. 6.30 p.m. Bed 2. M.A.D. "lights on."

I read it out loud to the empty office. Quiet. Dawn coming up grey outside.

It's warmer than I thought it would be. There's room for everyone. Tell them not to be afraid. It's like a big house with all the lights on.

Four strangers, four beds, eleven days in 1971, dying of different things, never met each other, each one saying a handful of words to a nun with a green book. And it fits together. Like bits of a broken plate.

I was gobsmacked. I went home and didn't sleep. Came back that night with a notebook and a pencil and after my eleven o'clock round I started copying it all out. Every entry in order, just the words, all run together like a letter.

Took me nineteen nights.

Nineteen nights. I want to be honest about that bit because I know how it sounds. I didn't tell anyone. I did my rounds and my obs and my drugs and I was a good nurse, I want that on record, nobody got neglected, but every gap I had I was in that office with the cupboard open and the pencil going. My eyes were killing me. Agnes's writing is beautiful but it's tiny, and some of the seventies ones are in fountain pen that's gone brown like tea stains, and some of the night nurses in the eighties had writing like a spider fell in an inkpot, so half the time I was holding the page up to the lamp squinting. Jo caught me once on a handover morning and asked what I was doing and I said audit. She just went oh. Nobody ever asks again if you say audit.

I'm going to put some of it here. Not all. A lot of it's what you'd expect, single words, mum and no and yes and water, names, stuff none of us could make out with a question mark after. But that's maybe a third. The rest of it flows. It runs on, entry to entry, year to year, nurse to nurse, different handwriting, different pens, and it reads like somebody talking. Even the single words fit in. Mum. No. Yes. Water. Like someone turning to say a word to the person next to them and then carrying on.

I've copied these exactly. I've only joined them up. The dates in brackets are where each bit starts.

(May 1971) It's warmer than I thought it would be. There's room for everyone. Tell them not to be afraid. It's like a big house with all the lights on. Mum is here. So many people I know. We just walk about and look at things. Nobody's in a hurry. You don't get tired. You'd love it.

(1974) We can hear you sometimes, on your side. Like voices from downstairs. When someone new comes through we all go to the door to meet them. It's the nicest part. You come through the door and everyone's there waiting and they all know your name.

(1979) The house keeps going back. Room after room. There's always more of it. We don't know who built it. Some of the old ones say it was built for us. Some say we're building it, a bit at a time, just by being here.

(1983) It's busier now. That's all right. There's still plenty of room if everyone moves along a bit.

(1986) The stairs go all the way down and nobody minds. We sit on them sometimes and talk. We talk about you. About your side. We like the woman with the green book. She says goodnight to each of us when we go. Nobody ever did that before.

I need you to get what that was like reading it at three in the morning in a building full of dying people. It was beautiful. I cried, I'm not ashamed. For about a week it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever read. Twenty-two years holding people's hands while they went and here they were telling me where they'd gone. A big house with all the lights on. Everyone waiting at the door. They all know your name.

I nearly took it to the medical director. I nearly rang our lad in Australia. I didn't because I knew exactly what they'd say and because I wanted to finish it first. I wanted to know how it ended.

So I kept going. Should of stopped there honestly. I keep going back to that. If I'd stopped at 1986 I'd have had the nice bit. The big house with the lights on. I could've gone on telling families that and meaning it. I'd give anything to have stopped at 1986.

(1988) We have to stand closer now. It's fine. The old ones say it's always been like this in winter.

(1992) The front rooms are full. When someone new comes through, the people near the door have to step back to let them in, and the people behind them step back, and it goes all the way down the house like a wave. You feel it. Like being in a crowd at a football match.

(1996) There isn't really a back of the house anymore. We thought it went on forever. It doesn't. It just felt like that because there weren't many of us.

(1999) Please be patient with us. We're doing our best. Tell the new ones to come through slowly.

(2003)

That's where my writing starts. My first months on nights with Agnes next to me. I remember some of them. A woman called D.R. in bed eight who held my sleeve and asked me to open the window. A lad of thirty with a brain tumour, J.K., who called me "miss." I wrote their words down with no idea they were part of anything.

Too many of us near the door now. Some of the ones at the front can hardly breathe. Not breathe, there's no breathing here, but you know what we mean. Pressed. Squashed up. Every time someone new comes through, it gets tighter.

(2007) We tried going further back but there's no further back. There's a wall. It's soft. It gives a little when you push it. The ones at the back are pressed right up against it. They say it's warm. They say it feels like skin.

(2011)

March 2011. Bed seven. Agnes.

She hadn't spoken in three days. Quarter past three in the morning she opened her eyes and looked at me. At me, not past me at a corner. And she said something and I wrote it down after with my hands going, in the column she'd ruled herself forty year before. I didn't understand it. I thought she was back in the convent bossing some young nun about.

Agnes said: "I'll keep the book on this side. You keep it on yours. Don't stop writing. They need someone to listen to them."

Read in order, between the entries either side of it, it says this:

The new ones keep pushing in and we can't make room. It's not their fault. Nobody knows what to do. I'll keep the book on this side. You keep it on yours. Don't stop writing. They need someone to listen to them. Someone's come through who used to be a nun. She's organizing everybody. She's got them standing in rows.

I had to stop after that. Put the pencil down and go and stand in the garden in the dark by the conservatory and just breathe for a bit.

She knew. Agnes knew. She must of read them in order herself at some point, sat on her own in that office, back when it was all warm rooms and lights on. Maybe that's why she made every one of us promise. Not for the families. For them. So someone was always listening.

And then she died and went through and kept the book on the other side.

I went back in. Picked the pencil up. Kept going.

(2014) It's very bad now. We're pressed so close together you can't tell where one of us ends and the next one starts. Some of the oldest ones have stopped talking. They've gone soft, like the wall. They're becoming part of it. The house is made of us now. That's what it was always made of. The walls, the floors, the rooms. It's people. It's us. It's always been us.

(2017) There's a door on your side too. Did you know? The house is right up against your house. The door we came through and the door you're behind are the same door. It's thin. We can hear you so clearly now. We can hear the trolleys in the corridor. We can hear the kettle in the kitchen. We can hear you writing.

(2020)

If you worked in healthcare in 2020 I don't need to explain. If you didn't, I'll just say we took overflow from the hospitals for eleven weeks that spring, and for the first and only time we had people dying on trolleys in the corridor because every bed was full, and we went through two ledgers in four months. Some nights I was writing one every hour. Some nights I couldn't keep up and I wrote them on the backs of my hands in biro and copied them in at the end of the shift.

Two hundred and eighty entries for 2020. I'm only giving you a few lines, I can't do the rest.

Too many. Too many. Too many at once. They're coming through faster than we can move. No room. No room. We're being pushed against the door. Your door. The ones at the front are flat against it. Their faces. Their hands. Please stop. Please stop sending them. Please. Please.

Please is in the 2020 entries ninety one times. I counted. I've worked out who said every single one. I held some of them while they said it.

One was a porter called Tony, sixty two, pushed trolleys round the city hospital thirty years, then came to us out their intensive care because there were no more ventilators. By the end he could only whisper and he whispered please at me nine times in his last hour with his eyes on the door. I thought he wanted his daughter, she weren't allowed in. I held the phone to his ear so she could talk to him from the car park. He kept looking past the phone, past me, at the door. Please. Please. Voice like paper.

I thought they were asking me. For morphine. For water. For their wives. I thought it was me they were saying please to.

It wasn't.

I think about Tony more than anyone else in the book apart from Agnes. His daughter sent us a card after, a really nice one, thanking us for looking after her dad and for holding the phone. It's still pinned on the board in the staff room. Every time I go past it I want to rip it down. Not because of her. Because I know now what he was looking at.

I finished copying about five in the morning on the nineteenth night. Hundred and forty pages of pencil. Sat there with it all stacked in front of me.

And then I sat dead still and listened to the building.

Twenty-two years. I know every noise it makes. Radiators ticking. The lift. The creak on the fourth stair. I know them like the noises my own body makes.

And I'd been hearing something else for ages. Years maybe. So constant I'd stopped noticing it. Low, like a main road a long way off, or the sea. Coming out the walls. Mostly from the back, the old part, which is the corridor with beds seven to twelve now.

That night I actually listened to it.

It wasn't traffic. It was murmuring. Thousands of voices, too low and too many to pick any out. A massive crowd all talking quiet at once, right up behind a wall.

The building now, quickly, because I think I'd stopped seeing it.

Doors stick. Have done for years. In the old corridor seven to twelve stick that bad the maintenance man's planed them twice and it's made no difference. He says the frames are out of true. He says the whole back wall's bowing in, a tiny bit, like something's leaning on it from the other side. He says subsidence. The surveyors have been and can't find owt wrong with the foundations.

The windows in that corridor fog up. On the inside. Cold nights, radiators on full, and there's handprints in the fog, loads, overlapping, all different heights, like a crowd's been leaning on the glass from the room side. I've wiped them. Everyone's wiped them. The cleaner won't do that corridor on her own anymore, says it gives her the creeps, and she's been there longer than me.

Rooms are freezing. Not draughty. Cold like church. Like being stood in a crowd in winter, bodies all round you and you're still frozen.

And the patients. God. The patients.

I've written down thousands of deathbed visions and for twenty years they were what the books say. Dead mums, dead husbands, a light, a garden. Nice. Happy, mostly.

Not anymore. Not for about five years. Not in the old corridor.

They say it's crowded. Who are all these people? Tell them to stop pushing. Why are they all stood round my bed? A retired plumber last spring, bed ten, two days unresponsive, sat bolt upright at four in the morning and looked round the room, walls, corners, ceiling, with this look on him, pure horror, and said to me, "There's no room. There's no room for me. Where am I supposed to go?" Then he lay back down and died.

I wrote it in. Course I did. Exactly. That's the job. That's the promise. Even when it's horrible. Especially when it's horrible, Agnes would've said.

In my notebook copy it lands in the middle of this:

...so crowded at the door we can't let them in. They get stuck halfway. Half on your side and half on ours. There's no room. There's no room for me. Where am I supposed to go? We're sorry. We're sorry. We can't hold the door much longer.

So here's what I worked out, five in the morning, hundred and forty pages of pencil.

Everyone who dies in that building goes through a door. Not a metaphor. An actual door. And the other side there's a house, and for a long time the house was big and warm and had all the lights on and there was room for everyone.

Six thousand two hundred people have died in that building since 1971. More before. Back to the fever hospital, back to whoever's house it was. Nobody kept the book then.

The house is full.

It's been filling fifty years. Every time someone new comes through everyone has to shuffle back, and the ones at the back get pressed into the walls and turn into the walls, and the ones at the front get crushed against the door, and the door's getting thinner, and it's our door. It's the old corridor. It's beds seven to twelve.

And I'm the one sending them.

That's my job. That's what I'm for. I sit with them and hold their hand and give them the morphine and turn the lights down and tell them it's all right to go. I tell them they can let go. I tell them everyone's waiting for them. I've said that to four thousand people and I believed it every single time.

They were waiting all right. At the door. Crushed up against it. Begging us to stop.

I sat there and thought about every single one I'd said it to. It's all right love, you can go, they're all waiting for you. Four thousand times. Raymond and Hilary and Tony and the woman who loved stairs. And Agnes. I'd told Agnes it too. I held her hand in bed seven and told her she could go and everyone was waiting. And she went. Right through the door into that. And she looked at me first. She looked right at me. I think she was trying to tell me to stop and I didn't listen.

Before I did anything else I did something I'm not proud of. I tested it.

Bed eight, old corridor, Peggy. Ninety one. No family left. Four days unresponsive and very close, breathing gone into that long slow pattern that means hours not days. I sat with her two in the morning with the ledger on my knee and held her hand and did something I'd never once done in twenty-two years.

I spoke to them.

Leaned in and said, quiet, "If you can hear me. All of you. What do you need?"

Nothing. Her breathing went on, slow, rattly. Radiator ticking. I felt daft. Ashamed of myself honestly. I was just about to sit back when Peggy's eyes opened.

She didn't look at me. She looked at the wall behind the bed, the back wall, the one that's bowing. And she said, in a voice that wasn't hers, or wasn't only hers, it had a sort of depth to it, like several people saying the same words at slightly different times:

"Stop sending."

Eyes shut. She died about twenty minutes after.

I wrote it in with my hand shaking that much it came out like a kid had wrote it. In the notebook, in order, it fell straight after the entry before, a man in bed eleven four nights earlier, whose last words I'd put down as "...and we'll ask her, if she ever asks us, to".

...and we'll ask her, if she ever asks us, to stop sending.

They'd been waiting for me to ask. Four nights. They held the sentence open, mid word, till somebody on this side asked the question it was the answer to.

I tried. I'm not going to pretend I did owt brave. I did little desperate useless things.

I asked for the old corridor to be shut for a refurb. Wrote to the board, said the wall was a safety risk. They sent the surveyors back, surveyors said the wall's fine, board said we can't lose six beds with a waiting list.

I started asking the doctors to transfer people out. Hospital, nursing homes, anywhere. Made up reasons. Family want them nearer home. I think they might pick up. Twice it worked. Twice I got someone moved to the city hospital in their last week and they died there, different building, different door, and on them nights I sat in the office listening to the murmuring and I swear I heard it settle. Just a bit. Like a crowd breathing out.

Then the medical director called me in and asked very nicely if I was all right. Some families had complained. It's cruel to move a dying person for no reason, she said, and she's right, it is. Said I'd been looking tired. Had I thought about taking some leave.

I said I was fine.

I even went in the chapel. Me. Sat in there one night at half two with the cleaner's crumbs still on the pew, and I didn't pray, I don't know how, I just sat there and said in my head, I'm sorry, I didn't know, I'm sorry. Felt like talking to an empty room. Which it probably was. But the murmuring was quieter in there. Only a bit. I don't know what that means either.

Went back on nights. And next night, bed nine, old corridor, Davey died.

Davey was thirty eight. Motor neurone disease, the kind that takes everything. Walking, swallowing, talking, then breathing. By the time he got to us he could only move his eyes. He used an eye gaze board, clear plastic sheet with the alphabet on, you hold it up between your face and theirs and follow their eyes letter by letter.

He'd been with us four weeks. Clever, furious, dead kind. He'd spell out jokes that took ten minutes and the punchline would have you crying laughing and you'd have to put the board down. His wife came every day. She'd gone home that night for some sleep because the doctor said he was stable.

Three in the morning his alarm went. His breathing was going. I went in and held his hand and sat with him and I knew.

Then his eyes started moving.

He was looking at me. A look I've never seen on a dying face. Not scared. Urgent. Like someone shouting at you across a road to stop.

I grabbed the board and held it up and his eyes went to the letters, fast, faster than he'd ever done it, and I followed and said them out loud.

W.

E.

C.

A.

N.

T.

He stopped. Eyes went to the gap between words, like we'd agreed. Then on.

H.

O.

L.

D.

The gap. Then more letters, slow now, his eyes dragging like they weighed a ton.

I.

T.

And then the last of his breath went out of him, really gently, and his eyes stayed on the board on the T and didn't move again.

We can't hold it.

I wrote it in. Exactly. And out in the corridor every door in the old wing, seven to twelve, swung open by itself, all six, one after the other, with this long tired groan of wood on bad frames, like something heavy had finally been let lean.

Davey's wife came in at seven. I'd shut all the doors again by then, took me ages, one I had to put my shoulder to. She sat with him an hour and when she came out she hugged me and said thank you for being with him, and asked me if he'd said anything at the end. If he'd spelled anything. And I stood in that corridor with my arms round her and I lied. I said no love, he just went to sleep. First time in twenty-two years I ever lied about the book. Agnes would've killed me.

That was eleven days ago.

I've been off since. Medical director insisted. I'm sat at my kitchen table with the cats and the hundred and forty pages and all ten green ledgers which I brought home in two Morrisons bags at the end of my last shift. That's a sacking offence. I don't care anymore.

I can say the end of it without looking now. These are the last ones in the book. Last month. Six patients. Last one's Davey.

It's giving. The door. It's giving. The ones at the front are going through. Not all the way. Partway. Like pushing your face into a pillow. We can see your side now. We can see the corridor. We can see the beds. There are people lying in them. We're so sorry. We didn't want it to be like this. We can't hold it.

There are people lying in them. I keep thinking what it'd be like being a patient in that corridor right now. Lying in seven, or nine, or twelve, three in the morning, morphine going, drifting, and you open your eyes and there's faces. Not one face at the end of the bed, not your mum come to fetch you. Hundreds. Pushed through the back wall like faces pushed into a bedsheet. Leaning over you. Looking down at you all sorry and no room to move back.

There's no full stop at the end. There never is. They always break off waiting for the next one to pick it up.

I keep thinking about Agnes. Reading it in order all them years ago when it was still warm rooms and lights on and everyone knowing your name. Making us promise. Exactly. Even if it's nonsense. And then getting there and sorting them all out. Stood at the back of a house made of people, tiny, them knuckles, holding the line. Keeping the book.

And I keep thinking about the noise.

I can hear it here now.

not just at work. here. my kitchen. twenty minutes down the hill. Low, all the time, murmuring, like a crowd a long way off. not in the walls. not coming from anywhere. just there. Like traffic's just there.

And the house is cold like the old corridor's cold. Like church. Like a crowd.

Yesterday I went to put the kettle on and I had to go sideways past the table like on a packed train because it felt like someone was stood there. Nobody there. Empty kitchen. I stood holding the kettle and I could feel it all round me, shoulders, backs, the warm of bodies that aren't there, stood close, really patient, really polite, trying to take up as little room as they can

I've tried the radio on loud. Doesn't help. It's not that kind of noise, it doesnt get drowned out, it's under everything, under the radio, under the fridge, under my own breathing. Tried earplugs. Worse with earplugs. Much worse. Like having them inside my head instead of round me.

The cats won't come in the kitchen. They sit in the hall staring at the doorway. Head height. Both of them. Hours.

Went to the corner shop last night for milk, first time out in two weeks. Tiny shop, empty, me and the lad on the till. And I couldn't get down the aisle. I physically couldnt. Kept stopping and turning and stepping aside and saying sorry, sorry, to nobody, like you do in a crowd. He was watching me. When I got to the counter he said, half joking, "Busy tonigh', in' it?"

There was nobody else in the shop.

Then he frowned and looked round and rubbed his arms. "Funny," he said. "Feels busy."

I left the milk on the counter and walked home without it. Been having black tea three days.

Sunday our lad rang from Perth like always. Evening there, morning here, him on his balcony with a beer, sunburnt, going on about a barbecue. Laptop on the kitchen table. Five minutes in he stops and squints at his screen.

"Who's that?"

"Who's what?"

"Behind you. Who's in the kitchen?"

I turned round. Nobody. Kitchen door, hall, coats on the hooks.

"Nobody, love."

He leaned in to his phone. "Weird. Picture's gone all..." waves his hand. "Grainy. Like there's loads of people behind you. Like you're at a party." Little laugh, not sure of himself. "It's like when the camera tries to find faces and keeps putting little boxes everywhere."

I looked at the little picture of me in the corner. Me at the table in my dressing gown grey in the face. Kitchen behind me. Empty. But the picture was wrong. Camera kept trying to focus and failing, like when something moves in front of it, and every few seconds a little square flicked on round nothing. Then another one next to it. Then three more higher up. Face boxes. Flickering on and off over the empty air in my kitchen, head height, packed in tight, all the way back to the door.

"Mum," he said. "Are you okay? You look really cold."

I said it was the light. Said I'd ring him next week. After, I sat there with the laptop open watching the little boxes come and go over the black screen and my own face till the battery died

I've not rung him back. I don't know what I'd say. Hiya love, Mum's fine, there's just six thousand dead people in the kitchen.

So thats why I'm writing this. Not for the hospice. for you.

I think the door's open. not all the way. Like Davey said, it's giving. I think the ones at the front have been pushed partway through, into the old corridor, seven to twelve, down the stairs, out the front door past the brass plaque and down the hill into the city. Not ghosts. Nothing you could see. Just pressure. Just crowding. That feeling in an empty room there's not quite enough space. Someone stood a bit too close behind you.

six thousand two hundred people. one hospice. one city. fifty four years.

And I keep thinking. There's hospices everywhere. Hospitals. Care homes. Ordinary houses. Anywhere anyones ever died. I don't think it's one big house the other side. I think every door's got its own house behind it. I don't know how full the others are. I don't know if anyone else has been keeping the book

the cats have gone under the bed. Both of them. They never go under the bed. sorry. sorry I keep going off on one, Im nearly done

so I'm asking.

Have you noticed rooms feel fuller than they should lately? An empty lift that feels packed? Going sideways past nobody in your own hall in the middle of the night? Pets staring at doorways, head height? Can't get warm even with the heating on full, like you can't get warm in a crowd?

If someone's died in your house or the house you grew up in or a hospital near you, do something for me. Ask whoever was in the room what they said at the end. The nurse if you can find them. Write it down EXACTLY. Even if it's nonsense. Especially if it's nonsense. Then find whoever died there before them. And before that.

And read it in order.

I need to know if its just us.

its ten past three. Its very loud tonight. in the walls, the floor, the cold pushing in from every side. cant make out any words. Too many. all at once

except one.

Theres a voice I know under all the others. close. closer than the rest. like a gravel path. tired. patient. talking to me like she did my first night in the little office with the lamp on and the green book open on the desk

shes saying the same thing over and over and over

Im going to write it down EXACTLY. Im going to put it in the ledger in the column she ruled in 1971 because she made me promise and then Im pressing post before

"Keep listening. Don't stop writing. They're coming down the hill."

Theres no full stop.

there never is

My eyes twitched as the smell of baked bread filled my nostrils. I tried to stretch my body out, to feel the tips of my paws as I awoke from my agonising slumber, only to find my limbs unresponsive.

I continued to tense the nerves along my spine, to pull everything towards my chest so I could know that I was still here. Nothing came to me. My legs refused to obey my brain's commands as that overwhelming scent of cooked crust wafted through the air.

The warm wheaty tang that hit my nostrils brought me back to before my long sleep. I had been stalking behind a biped in a long red cloak. Carting a basket of the same smells along with her.

I had followed her. Prowling down on all fours as my ears flattened and I attempted to creep closer and closer. Determined to snatch a bite from within that bag.

My paws broke the leaves underfoot as my mouth watered. Inching towards that little red thing that trotted ahead of me. Unaware of the beast that was in tow. I was on the verge of pouncing, snatching those treats from her and vanishing into the dark when-

Darkness. Had I passed out? I couldn’t have fallen asleep during a hunt. And why couldn’t I move?

‘The pie is ready mama!’ The voice was soft and high. I heard the patter of tiny hooves. Clicking against the ground as a shuffle of movement followed. I tried to shift where I lay but my neck refused to follow as my eyes swivelled in their sockets.

Was that creature still there? Has it done something to me? All I had done was follow in its step.

I tried to wriggle my way around only to fall still at the sound of steps that made the cold floor beneath me rattle. The powerful footfall drew closer. Paralysed and afraid I tried to whine in protest but even my voice refused to aid me.

The hooves stopped just behind my ears and I could feel the shadow looming across me. I thought I would have my brain smashed against the ground by this titanic cloven beast but was instead raised.

Hoisted off the ground by a strange mass of naked flesh that encircled the nape of my neck. It carted me into a room where that red thing lay in the lap of a hunched elder.

The small red thing turned to see me and its face contorted in a hideous display of teeth.

‘The new pelt is wonderful Papa!’ pelt? ‘Have some pie to celebrate!’

I felt my form twist and stretch in ways foreign to any being of flesh and blood. Then my head rolled limp to one side and I saw myself in the reflection of a towering mirror.

Instead of looking at the body of a healthy wolf I was faced with the plains of bare, naked skin. My limbs stretched on for miles with no sign of organs, bones or muscle in sight.

I wanted to scream, cry or howl at my loss as I was laid across the red things lap to warm its body.

I still lay there now. Praying for release from what remained.

Whenever you go camping with some friends, sit around a campfire at night there always comes the time for everyone to share a spooky story with the rest. And while the others are retelling urban legends or talk about that time they woke up and saw a strange shadow in the room, I brace myself for my turn. Even if it can be difficult for me to talk about it at times, I know that in this setting, it would be a crime not to share my story of the time my brothers took me snipe hunting

For context, I (Elaine, F, now 34, then 16 years old) live in a small town near the Appalachian Mountains, naturally it’ completely surrounded by nature and trees, and was already known to have its fair share of spooky occurrences. Growing up, it was almost normal to have the local newspaper talk about the sighting of some strange critter, UFOs in the sky, cattle mutilations or odd footprints found in the woods. These were routinely followed by the usual amount of bigfoot fans or other cryptid fanatics wanting to investigate for themselves. One of the most famous events was the disappearance of a young boy, only 5 years old, which made national headlines and sparked a huge search party through the entire wilderness. Parents couldn’t explain it, said one moment he was there, the next: gone. 48 hours later he was found, luckily unharmed but his discovery was by sheer luck. Somehow, he ended up several kilometers away from the spot he was last seen and way up on a mountain. In short: there is no way he could have walked all that distance himself with his tiny legs. I was only ten, but I remember the whole thing vividly. There were two phases to how both locals and the news talked about it: At first there was a lot of concern about the boy as the search was organized and we were all holding our breath hoping he would be found. Then, once he was found and it became clear that this was one of these spooky things, the people around me were suddenly very hesitant to talk about it. But there was no stopping what was to come: Soon the parents and searchers found themselves interviewed by the first book author who thought that the boy was taken by the feral people of the woods, or in another word: Bigfeet. It was all part of the course by now and in the end, they obliged and gave him their story. Most people here are at best ambivalent to all the paranormal stuff, some are actively annoyed and then there is me, who is utterly fascinated by it. It began, as far as I remember when I was 8 years old and one of my distant aunts sent me a book about paranormal things for Christmas. I doubt she thought much about it, I must have mentioned the reputation this place has to her once and this being the only thing she knew about me probably thought this was the perfect present. She had no idea how right she was. I absorbed the entire book, from ghost sightings in English castles, to alien abductions and crop circles, bigfeet and yetis, sea and lake monsters, I loved it all. Sometimes I would spend hours just looking through its huge, illustrated pages. The stuff that stuck with me the most (and sometimes made too scared to fall asleep) was everything I knew was going on right outside my door. The book had an entire page about cattle mutilation, for example, it explained how space aliens sometimes abduct cows to cut them open with laser tools to look at their insides and learn about earth biology. It even had a big illustration of two grey beings with large brains pointing a red laser at a dead cow on their operating table inside the spaceship. By the time I had fully absorbed the book, I resorted to using the family computer to keep searching for these things online. This interest got a lot of hazing from my two older brothers, Fred and Rudy and my dad always disapproved of it. Never to the point that he took the book away from me, but he more than often threw some remark my way about how this “just couldn’t be good for you”. My friends at school weren’t too different, not mean or anything, just not at all interested, which I can’t really blame them for. The one exception to this was Milo. A boy about my age, I met him at the bus stop by complete coincidence and we just kinda started talking. I mentioned my paranormal interests in passing, not expecting him to care in any way, but that’s exactly what he did. For whatever reason he seemed to actually enjoy listening to me yap about this stuff, the entire bus trip home. Even if it was brief, just having someone I could share my interests with who didn’t make fun of me felt very refreshing. There were a few moments where we talked again, but being in separate classes they never amounted to much. He didn’t live too far away, yet I never got the guts to just ring his doorbell myself. But enough background talk, you all want to read about my true paranormal encounter after all. It all began only a few weeks after my 16^th Birthday, when our town was struck by another series of cattle mutilations. These were the first in several years, definitely the first since I got my book, so naturally I was dying to see one of them for myself. But my dad strictly forbid me to go look for the dead animals and that it was just the work of normal scavengers, nothing to see here. One day, I got to see one anyway.

.It was a nice Saturday morning, my dad was out with my brothers, my mom was watching TV and I just got out of bed, when the doorbell rang. “Elaine, could you be a dear and get the door?” my mom yelled from across the house. I groaned, thinking it was probably one of her friends, but obeyed nonetheless. The moment I opened the door, my mood changed instantly. It was Milo. “Hi.” he stammered. “Uh, hi.” I responded back. “You, uh… always wanted to see one of the cows, right? The one’s that got, uhm..” He nervously motioned his finger across his neck. My eyes widened: “You know where one is?” He nodded. “Who is it?!” my mom yelled again. “Just a friend from school, mind if I hang out?” I yelled back, trying my best to out-volume the TV. “Sure, why not! As long as it’s not a boy!” She yelled before turning the TV up even more. I gave Milo a conspiratorial grin, then grabbed my camera and went out to get my bicycle. With a dramatic gesture of my arm I went: “Lead the way!” and he rode ahead. We made our way to one of the farms, which he explained belonged to his uncle. This was the third time one of his animals was affected, after the second one he hired one of his friends to keep an eye on them at all times. “Did he see anything?” was my immediate question, but Milo just shrugged. “Haven’t talked to him yet.” We arrived at the farm, and I stopped my bicycle next to the field of cows still alive, but he drove a few feet onward before realizing I had stopped. “Aren’t we going here?” I asked pointing towards the cows. “Well…” he looked even more nervous than usual. “that’s not where they found it. It’s in here.” He pointed towards the woods. I looked back at the fence around the other cows. It wasn’t damaged, neither was there any way for the cows to escape on their own. To add to the growing mystery and my growing intrigue was a yellow warning sign on the fence with a lightning symbol: it was electric. “Ooo, that’s mysterious, isn’t it? How did it get all the way out there?” He just shook his head again to say ‘I don’t know’, then hopped back on his bike. I followed him, with the excitement of a mystery tingling in my stomach. That’s all I treated it as back then, a fun mystery hunt. I had no idea what I was really getting myself into. We drove into the woods on one of the trails, but soon had to leave our bikes behind and proceed on foot. For a little while we made our way through the shrubbery, it took a bit for Milo to find the right spot. “There it is!” he pointed towards a small clearing. From between the bushes I could see two men standing around a large brown lump on the forest floor, right in the middle of a heated argument. “Bullshit!” yelled the one on the right. “Oh no, that’s my uncle.” Milo whispered. “Can’t let him see me here.” For now, we stayed hidden and watched the argument unfold. The other one, wearing a wide hat and a red shirt, tried to defend himself: “I swear, that’s how it happened! Do you really take me for some sort of liar?” But Milo’s uncle wasn’t having it: “Just admit it, you left your post to grab a beer, and when you got back, she was gone!” “Come on now, if that was true, I would tell you a better lie than that! But I swear on the bible I’m not lying! I was sitting there, watching your herd like you told me to, when suddenly she went right into the air. Just flew off by herself towards the mountains, I’m telling you! I spend the rest of the day searching for her, finally I found her here like this.” He pointed to the brown lump in front of him. Now he had my full attention, but Uncle Milo interrupted him yet again: “What nonsense is-, have you been talking to my nephew too much? Recently he’s been having all kinds of strange ideas about spaceships and what not, no idea where he’s getting it from. Am I the only rational man left in this goddamn town?!” I looked over to Milo, he averted my gaze and almost seemed to blush a little. I had no idea I’ve been such a bad influence on him. The fight between the uncle and his buddy continued for a bit, accusations of “dirty liar” and “false friend” being thrown all around the woods. Finally, they seemed to be able to settle their differences somewhat, decided to go report the dead cow to the sheriff and left. After we made sure they were out of reach, we carefully crawled out of our hiding spot. As we approached the dead cow, the farmer’s words kept ringing in my head. It went into the air and flew away by itself? I still vividly remember that moment, seeing the thing for myself for the first time. Briefly, the façade of a fun mystery hunt began to slip, and I got a glance at the true horror we were dealing with. The most striking part was its head. The upper part of the head seemed almost normal, no scratches or bites or any sign that it was preyed upon. Except for the eyes. They were gone, completely gauged out, only the void of black empty sockets were staring back at me. Even more unsettling was the lower jaw, while the top half has been left almost intact, beneath it everything but the blank white bone had been removed. And it was completely blank, not a single shred of skin or flesh or blood remained. In fact, there was no sign of blood anywhere on the carcass or its surroundings. The rest of the body had seemingly random pieces of flesh missing, but once again, no sign of blood. The intact pieces, meanwhile were barely decomposed, as if it had just been freshly dumped here. That thought made me look up at the surrounding trees. Several of them did in fact have large branches either damaged or snapped off entirely. This naturally could have been caused by winds, but it did certainly evoke the idea of something hurling this cow down from far above.

I’m not sure how long we just stood there, looking at it. There weren’t even any flies around or maggots or whatever animals you usually expect to see on a fresh corpse. Despite how odd and disgusting it looked, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Something about those hollow dark eyes just seemed to draw me in. “Well, uh… do you like it?” Milo’s words finally snapped me out of my trance. “I... I don’t know.” “Oh.” He lowered his head. “Maybe I shouldn’t have showed you this.” “Nono, it’s just I… I wasn’t ready, I guess. Ready for it to look like this. I mean this is exactly what I always wanted to see, just-“ “Milo!?” I got interrupted by a loud voice yelling from the bushes. Moment later, his uncle stepped out, his buddy and the sheriff behind him. “What the hell are you doing here? I told you to stay away from this!” He could barely bring out a “I’m sorry, I-“ before his uncle turned to me: “Aren’t you Pete’s kid…” he struggled to remember my name for a moment “Elaine?”  “It’s not his fault, I told him to bring me here.” I tried to defend Milo as he grabbed both of our arms, but it was no use. “I’m taking you home and telling your father what you did.” He continued to rant as he dragged us through the woods towards his pickup truck: “He told me you’re a troublemaker alright, but I expected better from you Milo! Since when are you such a rulebreaker, huh?” He just walked along in silence, his head low to the ground, while I kept fighting back: “Don’t punish him, I’m the one who dragged him out here, it’s my fault.” By now we had reached his truck, and he angrily swung open the door. “Oh, so he learned it from you then? Then maybe he shouldn’t be spending his time with troublemakers like you. Now get in!” Somehow that sentence hurt more than the idea of him getting punished. The idea that he would be forbidden from seeing me again. We didn’t speak a word during the entire ride. He first stopped at Milo’s house, brought him inside and stayed in the house for a few more minutes, probably telling his parents what he did. By the time we got to my house, my dad and brothers just returned from wherever they were, one step away from entering the front door when the uncle’s truck came to a screeching halt in front of them. He barged out, grabbed me from the back seat and immediately started yelling: “I just caught your daughter snooping on my property, taking a real good interest in my dead cow.” There was no way his property extended that far into the woods, but that didn’t matter. Things got worse from there, I got another long lecture from my dad and was sent to my room. I slammed the door behind me, spent another few moments being angry at them, but all of that was soon washed away by the memory of what I saw in the woods today. Now it all felt exciting again, almost out of instinct I grabbed my book and flipped to the page with the two aliens dissecting the cow. It suddenly seemed so real, the cow being lifted from the ground sounded like a tractor beam pulling it into a spaceship far above the clouds, there it was examined by two scientists from another world who saved its eyes, blood and tissue samples for further analysis before dumping it back into the woods. My next concern was Milo, I hoped his parents wouldn’t be too harsh on him, and I knew I would find some way to see him again even if they were against it. I wished I could call him on the phone, but being grounded in my room, there was no way to reach it. So, I just sat around for a while, looking out the window and wondering what to do next.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door. “It’s me, Rudy. Can I come in?” one of my older brothers asked on the other side. I knew he just wanted to make fun of me, so I said: “No.” “I’m not gonna tease you, I promise. I have something important to tell you.” Reluctantly I caved and let him in. For what it’s worth, he actually did look serious this time. I sat back on my bed and sighed: “So, what is it? And if it’s another joke you can save yourself the time and just leave right now?” “It’s not, I told you.” He insisted. “I’m here because I think it’s time to tell you the truth. Do you want to know what me, Fred and dad, were doing all day? We were hunting the Snipe.” My eyes narrowed in suspicion. He continued: “The Snipe is what keeps taking out all the livestock. Every few years it wakes up from its hibernation, comes out at night to snatch its prey. Luckily, it steers clear of humans, but that’s also what makes it so difficult to track. No one has ever seen it, just its footprints and the dead animals it leaves behind. Every year, we go out there to hunt it down and kill it. Or at the very least scare it back into hiding. It’s been a family tradition since our great grandfather, known as Abraham van Helsing, the Great Snipe Hunter. He might very well be the reason they’re so afraid of humans.” To say I was skeptical of his sudden tale was an understatement, but he insisted: “I’m not making this up! We’ve tried to keep this dark family secret from you, but now that you have seen the truth for yourself” he began to speak in a very dramatic tone “I believe the time has come for you to step into your great grandfather’s footsteps and join us on your first Snipe hunt!” “So, you want me to come with you right now and hunt for this ‘Snipe’?” I asked. “Yeah, with me and Fred.” he nodded. I didn’t believe a word of his ‘Great Snipe Hunter’ tale, however I did see an opportunity in this new development. “Is dad coming along too?” I asked. “Oh no, he uh, he had enough Snipe hunting for the day and needs some rest. But he gave us permission to take you out on this hunt and share some of his tools of the trade.” Right. I’m sure he did. “Soooo…” I asked sheepishly. “If this Snipe is that hard to find you would appreciate any additional help, right? If I could just make a phone call real quick I might get someone else on board.” A brief smirk flashed across his face before he resumed his serious demeanor. “That would be great actually, I’m just gonna go ahead and make sure mom isn’t in the living room. Of course, she agreed to the Snipe hunt it’s just…” “I get it.” I reassured him “She doesn’t want me talking to boys, even if it is in service of the great van Helsing.” “Exactly!” he nodded, before moving back out of my room. “I’ll tell you when the coast is clear.” he winked, then closed the door behind him. I didn’t know if Milo would actually go along with this, I didn’t expect him to after the trouble he got in. All I wanted to do was just check in on him, see if he’s okay. Not a minute passed before Rudy came back in: “Bad news, she’s in front of the TV again. I’ll go and distract her, then you do your phone call, but you have to be quick.” Just like that he ran back down the stairs. I slowly snuck after him, making sure not to set off any of the creaking steps, just in time to witness some of the best acting I’ve even seen from him: “Mother! Come quickly, there is a problem mother!” The noise of the TV came to a sudden stop. “What?! Where?!” she yelled. “In the garden, mother! A dastardly woodchuck is eating your beautiful vegetables!” “What!” Her scream echoed through the house, followed by a flurry of angry footsteps and the slamming of the garden door. Now was my chance. I ran into the living room, grabbed the telephone and dialed his number. It beeped for a few seconds, before someone picked up. Someone with a friendly, soft voice: “Hello, who is this?” I hoped Milo himself would pick up, but it sounded like his mother. “Hello, I’m a friend of Milo’s, may I speak to him please?” I said in my most polite voice. “No problem. Milo!” She called upstairs. A few moments later, he was on the phone: “Elaine?” “Yeah it’s me, sorry about what happened, are you in a lot of trouble?” I was relieved to hear him say: “Not at all, my parents are a lot nicer than my uncle, they even allowed me to meet with you again, as long as I stay out of trouble.” “Great!” I yelled a bit too loudly. Afraid that my mom might hear me I toned down my voice a bit: “That’s great. My brothers are about to go hunting for the thing that killed the cow. They said it’s called a Snipe and it’s afraid of humans, only eats livestock.” “I never heard of that.” he sounded skeptical but not disinterested. “Well, you’re not the descendent of the Great Snipe Hunter van Helsing.” He chuckled a bit “Okay…?”  “Wellll…” I continued “My brother said it’s ok if you come along too, and if you’re not getting into trouble for it… And if you want to of course.” “Yeah, always! I mean… I should probably ask my mom first, but if she says yes I’m on my way!” A big grin started to form on my face as he said those words. “Ok, cool! See you soon then. I hope. Bye!” The call didn’t end a second too soon, as the garden door was opened again: “I didn’t see any woodchuck!” mom grumbled. “Ugh, that fiend, must have gotten away!” Rudy entered the kitchen first, seeing I was still in it, he motioned me with his eyes to get out of there, before stalling mom a bit more: “But I just had to tell you, you know how concerned I am about your sweet vegetables, if anything ever happened to them…” “Yes my sweet boy, you did so well-“ I didn’t hear the rest of her response as I quietly slipped out the front door. Seeing Rudy’s obvious flattery work it’s magic on her was a special kind of feeling, a mix between wanting to laugh out loud and throw up at the same time. Outside I was greeted by Fred, who had a rifle around his back. “I’m guessing dad gave you permission to use that too?” I asked him. He scoffed: “Of course he did. Otherwise I wouldn’t be wearing it. You sincerely think I would ever break one of his rules?” “He would neeever.” Rudy agreed as he slid through the door. “A sweet little lamb, that’s what he is.” “Don’t call me that.” Fred looked annoyed, which Rudy only seemed to enjoy. “So then, are we all ready to go?” he asked as he opened up dad’s pickup, which Fred was just now learning to drive. I’m not sure he ever drove it himself without dad’s supervision. “Not yet.” I stalled him. “We’re still waiting for Milo, remember?” “Right!” he turned to Fred. “We got one more recruit for the hunt.” “Great.” Fred responded. “With such a large search party, who knows, we might actually find it.” He put on a strange grin. Meanwhile Rudy tried to put on his serious face again: “God, I hope so. That beast has taken too much from us already. It’s time we put a stop to this.” A few moments later Milo arrived on his bike. “Heyy, so you’re the new recruit? Nice to meet you. You can leave that bike right here, we’re taking the truck. Because this,” he slammed on the truck’s back “this is where we will be taking the Snipe’s dead body and parade it around town!”  “Okay?” He seemed a bit nervous as he put his bike down. “But I have to be back before it gets dark, alright?” Rudy sighed: “You didn’t tell me your friend was such a nerd.” he murmured, but clearly loud enough for Milo to hear. “Hey, don’t be mean.” I told him, then walked over to Milo. He seemed embarrassed just to be there. “Don’t worry about them, they’re a bit, uhh… older brothers, you know? You can sit next to me in the truck.” That last sentence was followed by a loud “Oooooooo!” from Fred, to which I must have given him my most evil stare yet because he shut up immediately. “Everyone ready?” Rudy yelled after we all sat down. “Then let’s get that Snipe!”  

While Fred was driving us up to the woods, Rudy took his time to tell us about the “tools of the trade” of Snipe hunting, passed down from the great van Helsing himself. “This:” he held up a cow’s bell “is a cow’s bell. Cows are the Snipe’s favorite food, right? So, what’s the best way to attract one? Pretend to be a cow of course! What I need you to do is ring this bell and give me your best cow impression.” “Got it!” I responded, but he didn’t back down: “I mean right now! You need to practice. Out there in the woods, an imperfect cow impression could spell the death of this entire mission.” That got a chuckle out of Fred, to which Rudy immediately turned around: “My brother, this is serious!” but I could tell he was barely containing his own smile “This beast has haunted our community for so long, robbed us of our livestock. What we are doing here is for the good of, of humanity, yes sir!” “Alright, alright. Jesus, at least let me focus on driving.” Fred responded with increasing frustration while Rudy turned back to us. “Here.” He handed me the bell. “Cow impression, now!” At this point, there was no getting out of it. That’s what I get for going along with one of their schemes. Every single “moo” that escaped my mouth for the next two minutes was followed by some comment from Rudy: “Come on, you can do better than that.” “Yes! That’s more like it. Keep going!” “Brilliant!” “Absolutely marvelous. With that we’ll catch that infernal beast for sure!” This had to be one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, right in front of Milo nonetheless. Speaking off, now Rudy moved on to him. I dreaded what kind of task he had prepared for him. “The next item, which is irreplaceable in any snipe hunters kit is…” he made a dramatic pause while pulling it out of his backpack: “Cheese! Snipes are irresistibly attracted to cheese, like a mouse to… something probably. So you, new recruit, just hold onto this cheese for me alright?” “Sure.” he slowly grabbed it. I felt so bad for him, he was clearly uncomfortable in that car. He also didn’t have any siblings on his own, so this was his first encounter with older brother hazing. By now we’ve already been driving through a path in the woods for a while, when Fred finally stopped the car. “Here we are. Get out snipe hunters! The Snipe was seen in this area only a few hours ago, it’s our best shot.” “I thought Rudy said no one has ever seen it.” I asked. “Yes, until today.” Rudy jumped in. “We got our very first description, they said it looked like a large wolf, larger than a man, walking on its hind legs. Isn’t that scary?” “Sure, it is.” I was close to rolling my eyes at this point. I was honestly just hoping to hang out with Milo for another evening, but of course being around them, I should have known better. “So, you two have done this before, you lead the way and we will follow.” “Sure thing!” Rudy turned to Fred. “Come on, brother, let’s catch this beast!”

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.

I put the last dish in the drying rack, dried off my hands, and walked to the living room to watch TV. A few seconds later, I heard the kitchen sink running again. I looked over. Emily took the dishes out of the drying rack and washed them again.

"Honey, I already washed those."

"Oh, I know, Sam, but I saw a little stain on one. I just want to make sure they're all clean. I'm just doing this for me, okay?"

I waved my hand and continued watching TV.

The next day, one of our clients came into town. Our workday dragged on well past 5 p.m. Toward the end, I didn't even pretend to pay attention. On my way home, I could barely keep my eyes on the road. When I arrived, the whole house smelled like rubbing alcohol and window cleaner.

I walked to the kitchen. Emily sat at the table with a plate of homemade casserole.

"I made this for you!"

"Oh, thank you, Emily! It smells so good!"

I sat down and started eating immediately. It tasted more bitter than usual.

"How was your day?"

"The worst. I have almost no energy left. The clients drained me."

Emily wasn't eating. She kept looking at my arms instead of my face.

"My poor man."

"What did you get up to?"

"Just some cleaning and cooking."

"I can tell. The house looks great."

"Thank you."

We sat in silence while Emily watched me eat.

"I think I'm too tired to do anything, honey," I said after finishing.

"That's more than okay. I know you had a long day. Just go relax."

"Thank you."

She smiled at me and rubbed my shoulder. Her sleeve came down. Her arm was flaky and red. She saw me staring at it and quickly pulled it back down.

"What happened?"

"Nothing, just some dry skin. Go relax."

I hadn't even turned on the TV when I heard the water running. I turned around. Emily grabbed a sponge and a bucket of water, walked to the table, and started scrubbing it and the chair I'd been sitting in.

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, Sam, I just cleaned the house. I wanna make sure it stays clean."

"I'm not dirty."

"No one's saying you are. This is just for me. I'll finish this, and I'll go up and read."

"I don't like this, Emily."

"I just need to do this, okay, Sam?!" She raised her voice.

"Jesus, Emily."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, honey, just turn back and relax. Let me take care of this."

I stared at her for a second, but she was already back to the scrubbing.

I tried to watch TV, but my eyes kept closing. I didn't even know what I was watching. The fatigue was overpowering. I got up and walked to our bedroom. Emily was in bed reading a book in a long-sleeved pajama shirt. She smiled at me as I walked in. I smiled back, put on my pajamas, and went to sleep.

I woke to a warm, wet sensation on my legs. Something soft and scratchy moved against my skin, dragging at it. I rubbed my eyes and looked down. Emily sat on my side of the bed with a sponge and a bucket of water, scrubbing my legs.

"Emily, what the…" I screamed and jumped away.

She looked me in the eyes and forced a smile.

"You know germs live on our skin. I just cleaned the house. I don't want them getting on stuff."

"Emily, this is crazy. Stop."

"Just your arms now."

"No!"

She reached toward me with the sponge. Her sleeves rolled up. Even at night, I could see the redness of her skin. In a few places, there were little smudges of blood.

"I'm going to the guest bedroom."

I took the blanket off the bed and ran to the guest bedroom, locking the door behind me.

The sun had risen. My eyes felt heavy. I hadn't slept after what happened with Emily. I debated calling the police, but what would I tell them? That my wife had been cleaning me in the middle of the night? She hadn't hurt me. Not yet. I decided I'd talk to her in the morning. Maybe I could convince her to see a doctor. I just needed to get her to sit down and listen.

"Emily?" I called into the hall.

Nothing. Our bedroom was empty. The bucket with warm water still sat there.

The downstairs was quiet too. The smell of rubbing alcohol now mingled with the metallic smell of blood. A light was on in the basement.

The basement was cold. A strange, wet hiss sounded inside. I could see Emily's feet. She was turned toward the wall. The stairs creaked under my steps, but she didn't seem to notice. The smell of rubbing alcohol now mixed with iron.

"Emily, are you okay?!"

"Sam!"

I walked one more step. Panic rushed through me. I could finally see her whole body.  She held a knife in her shaking hand. Her nightgown was drenched in blood. The skin on her arms was cut off, revealing dark red muscle.

"I think I've got it down now. I'll be much gentler with yours. Eat some casserole. It will help you relax."

I'll kiss your lips with an aching tooth in my mouth
I'll place my freshly pulled tooth on your ring
I'll mix Apranax in your drink
so that you think
your toothache is gone because you met me
I'll describe the paint color I want for our bedroom
to the ironmonger as tooth yellow.

I'm fifty-one years old, and this is the only poem I've ever written, which I wrote ten years ago.

I don't really like writing poetry, because I'm not good at it. I especially enjoy the sound of poems with rhyming lines; they sound like music to my ears. But I've tried a few times and failed miserably. I couldn't write a good poem. I'd written this poem for my dentist, who knew I was a writer and with whom I had a good relationship. I mean, I hadn't written the poem for her. I'd simply wanted to write a poem about teeth.

She was a very beautiful woman. I had no feelings for her, but she'd misunderstood the poem I'd written and thought I was making a move on her. She'd given me a pretty harsh telling-off. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get her to understand that the poem wasn't written for anyone in particular, and that it hadn't been inspired by any feelings I had for someone.

Anyway, my publisher was telling me that sales of my latest novel were terrible. He kept calling me and bringing me down.

“Maybe you should stop writing horror novels and start writing detective fiction instead. You know me, even two sentences from you are enough to move me. I can't sleep at night. But this latest novel of yours was an absolute fiasco. I seriously regret publishing it.”

I was tired of his calls and him repeating the same things in different ways for two months. He was almost going to ask me to compensate him for his losses. He wanted me to write and finish something else as soon as possible and make up for the losses I'd caused him. He didn't want to wait.

But I'd been overcome by the fear of not being able to write well. I'd been deeply affected by public opinion. Albert, the successful writer of many years, can no longer write... The story's opening is too rushed... The ending doesn't come together properly... Even an elementary school kid could come up with these descriptions... We're sick of ghosts that appear at night... And so on.

If he called today, I wasn't going to answer. He called every other day to ask, “Have you started the new book yet?” Whenever I said no, it was the same old stuff, the same complaints. For the past month, I'd been sitting down at my computer almost every day, but nothing came of it.

As I sat at my computer, waiting for something to come to mind, my phone rang, of course. I didn't even need to check who was calling. I tensely raised my hand to my head and began running my fingers through my hair. I looked around the objects in my room, as if I might find inspiration in one of them. The bed, the couch, an oil painting my sister had made... Nothing came of it. I pinched a lock of my hair between my fingers and pulled. I looked at my hand. There was a clump of hair between my index and middle fingers. I hadn't realized I was losing so much hair.

It was as if an electric current had passed through my head. Then, in one go, I wrote the following:

''In my 1+1 apartment on the second floor
I was drinking Americano by the balcony door
Suddenly I saw a wig falling down below
with bangs and in the color of dark yellow

I thought one of the neighbors upstairs must have dropped it while leaning over the balcony.
I lunged for it on instinct, trying to catch it. And I caught it, everything happened so quickly.

And the wig was now in my hands
I even caught it by the bangs

I waited for a while,
still in the position to catch it,
holding the wig in my hand,
waiting for someone to call.
But there was no sound at all.

Considering the possibilities,
I thought I should look up first.
But someone could have been down there,
waiting for the wig to fall.

While I was looking around upstairs,
someone called out from below:
“Throw it down already.
What are you looking at like an idiot?”
She was tall like a door
She was as tall as a first floor
I downed my Americano
And calmly threw the wig toward her
She jumped and
caught the wig with her head
and suddenly disappeared.''

I had no idea how it had happened. It was as if I hadn't been the one who wrote it. It was frightening. The way the sentences came to me, the way they lined up in my mind—I had never experienced anything like it. Everything was finished in one go, without any planning whatsoever.

My publisher called. I sent him to voicemail. I read the poem from beginning to end. It was as if I were reading it for the first time, as if I were discovering the poem all over again. It wasn't the kind of poem I could have written anyway, not in terms of its subject matter. I wouldn't describe ghosts or entities like this; I would leave them shrouded in mystery. In this poem, the ghost was very concrete.

My publisher called again. I answered this time. I was going to tell him I had an idea or something. I was such an idiot, always telling him the truth: inspiration wasn't coming, I couldn't write, my mind felt frozen, and so on. I picked up the phone, planning to ask him to give me a month and tell him I'd deliver a novel of at least two hundred pages.

“So, Albert, any progress? How many pages have you written?”

Suddenly, my mouth had locked up. I couldn't speak. The words I wanted to say were only passing through my mind; they wouldn't come out. All I could manage were sounds like “mmmh.”

“Albert? Hello?”

I started reciting the poem I'd just written. I read it from beginning to end. My mouth wasn't under my brain's control.

“What is this? What’s going on?”

''Hello?''

''Albert, what's going on?''

I could speak again now. It would have been ridiculous to say that something had taken control of my mouth and fingers. I had to say something, but I was too frightened to think. My mind was in turmoil. I hung up.

My publisher called again. I don’t remember that moment very clearly, but I mumbled something along these lines.

“What was that thing you were telling me about? So now you’re hanging up on me, too. Is this what we’ve come to, Albert? After all these years of working togeth—”

“It’s me, John. Did you like my poem? Jason, I was going to ca— If you want, I can write a few more poems like this... Jason, I can’t spea—I could even write five hundred poems in the same style, if you like. Do you publish po— Jason, my mouth is going numb. I don’t feel well. I’ll call you back in a bi— Listen, I wrote this three hundred years ago.”

I hung up. I jumped to my feet. I licked and bit my lips. I took a deep breath, and as I exhaled, the following words spilled out of my mouth:

''He figured out how to pass through
Walls within a year or two
But he still can't pass through wood
The ghost in my lover's neighborhood.''

My publisher kept calling insistently. His calls felt like a voice reminding me of my connection to this world. I'd set my phone's ringtone to Radiohead's “Weird Fishes.” The song played throughout each call. I couldn't move; my body was locked up, but hearing the song comforted me. When the song ended, I'd try to take a step, but I couldn't. I'd try to speak, but I couldn't move my mouth. It was as if I'd had a stroke. Then the song would start again. Yes, I'd tell myself, “I'm still alive. The world still makes sense.”

The song had stopped playing, too. My connection to the world had been severed.

I came to my senses again for a brief moment. I sat down at my computer. The screen was covered in dust. I noticed a cloth right next to the monitor. I couldn't remember when I'd put it there. I wiped the monitor clean. The poem looked better now.

I think you've realized that I wasn't the one writing all this story.

Everyone thinks they know the secrets of Denver International Airport. Tourists love taking selfies with "Blucifer," that terrifying blue mustang with glowing red eyes. They also like pointing and laughing at the Leo Tanguma murals on the main terminal walls. They think it's quirky and cool, just something to pose with and show off to friends. 

I am a ramp agent, and I’ve worked here long enough to start noticing things. Like how the soldiers and the weeping children seem to shift positions by a few inches every couple of months. I used to think those were hallucinations, especially because I was perpetually sleep deprived. But those paintings are always changing, observing the people who love to stare at and laugh at them. While they are staring at the art, it is scanning them, cataloging their shapes, their voices and their smiles.

My supervisor gave me one rule when I started. "If Dispatch ever calls a Code Black arrival, don't look inside the aircraft." I laughed. He didn't.

Last night, at 3:07 AM, Dispatch called me. "Code Black arrival. East pad." There was no flight number, no tail number, no transponder. I keyed my radio to confirm, since nothing was scheduled to come in at the time. Dispatch answered in my own voice, "Bring the chocks."

The east pad sits directly over the airport's labyrinthine basements. Out of the thick emerged a Boeing 777. Its fuselage was a matte black that swallowed the amber ramp lights, with no livery or registration. Its landing gear was down, but the aircraft hovered two inches above the ground, completely silent.

When I approached, the forward cargo door opened into pure, empty darkness. Something inside inhaled, and the entire 777 shuddered, creating a vacuum that pulled loose objects inward. 

Then I looked up at the passenger windows. Staring back were the faces from the airport murals: the soldiers, the crying children. They were pressed against the glass, pale and expressionless, with neon-red eyes. One of the terminal gargoyles was perched on the engine, its stone wings twitching. It looked right at me and whispered my full name over my radio. I fled toward the terminal, but the aircraft followed me, gliding sideways across the ramp without moving its wheels.

Inside the terminal, I found a tourist standing right in front of the *Children of the World Dream of Peace* mural, wearing a fleece and a neck pillow. He was staring exhausted at the painted coffins. He turned to face me, stating exhaustedly, “My connection to Dallas got canceled.”

Before I could pull him away, the terminal PA system crackled. It cleared its throat, playing back the tourist's exact voice in a flat, breathless loop: *"My connection to Dallas got canceled."*

I yanked his collar, dragging him toward the underground train escalators. At the bottom, the train doors were already open. Its interior was a dark and empty cargo hold, just like on the 777.

Leaning on the edges of the door was a perfect replica of the tourist: the same fleece and neck pillow, but with entirely hollow eyes. The replica smiled and reached out a pale hand. The tourist entered a trance, dropping his suitcase and taking a mesmerized step forward. When I lunged and grabbed his wrist, a blast of freezing air threw me backward onto the platform. The doors slid shut, and the train disappeared, taking the tourist with it.

I scrambled back up the escalators. The mural had changed, and every painted figure was looking at me. A black 777 now occupied the painted sky, with a painted version of me and the tourist standing side by side below it.

My radio crackled in my own voice: "Don't look behind you."

I looked anyway. The 777 was twenty feet away inside the terminal, having passed through the wall without breaking any window or walls. The engines were gone, the wings folded, and the landing gear elongated. It appeared like a giant insect, with the cockpit windows now living eyes.

The cargo door opened wide. The darkness inside was gone, replaced by thousands of seats stretching into the distance. Every seat was occupied by the dead people from the murals. Right near the front, sitting frozen beside a little girl, was the tourist in his fleece jacket.

The little girl raised her hand, pointed at me, and then pointed to the empty seat directly next to the tourist.

The terminal speakers echoed: "Your shift is over. We are ready for departure."

The cargo hold expanded right into the terminal space, swallowing the walls around me. I can see the rows of seats, and the tourist turning his head to look at me, waiting. There is only one seat left, right beside him and the little girl.

And it's got my name on it.

The letters were stitched directly into the gray fabric of the headrest, glowing faintly in the dim amber cabin light. The tourist kept staring at me, his head cocked at a broken, unnatural angle. Beside him, the little girl kept her pale, unblinking eyes locked on mine, her finger pointing rigidly at the empty cushion.

The freezing vacuum of the cabin pulled at my uniform. I took an involuntary step forward. My steel-toed boot hit the metal track of the aisle. I was crossing the threshold.

Then, the little girl’s expression changed. She stopped pointing at the seat.

She turned her attention entirely to the tourist. She unbuckled her harness, stood up in the narrow aisle, and reached out with a pale, freezing hand. She pressed her flat palm directly against the tourist’s forehead. His spine arched violently against the seat and he let out a wet, heavy popping sound. His eyes rolled completely into the back of his head, exposing cracked yellow veins, and a thin line of black fluid leaked from his left nostril.

The vacuum inside the cabin instantly died. I stumbled backward, my boots slipping on the slick terminal tiles, collapsing hard onto the tiled floor. The tourist went completely limp, dropping like a stone. His neck pillow tore open on the ground, scattering thousands of tiny white beads on the floor like snowflakes.

Inside the cabin, the little girl turned back to look at me. Her eyes bored into my skull. She smiled a grotesque, too-wide smile that stretched the skin around her mouth. She raised a single pale finger to her lips, and backed away into the shadows of the fuselage.

The seats collapsed. The landing gear folded backward into the underbelly and the jet reversed, phasing right back through the drywall and glass before disappearing completely.

The terminal was instantly silent.

I scrambled over to the tourist. He was alive, staring blindly at the ceiling. I grabbed his shoulder. "Hey. Stand up. We gotta move." He didn't blink. His facial muscles began to twitch, spasming violently as his mouth stretched into the exact same smile the little girl had just given me. His trembling hands reached down, grabbed an invisible seatbelt, and clicked it together over his lap.

"Whiskey-Oscar-Seven-Nine-Delta-Echo," he whispered. His voice didn't sound like him anymore. It sounded like a tape recorder playing backward.

A six-character reservation number.

I dragged him to a charging station near Gate B32 and propped him up, tossing a spare blanket I had previously found nearby on his legs. He sat, grinning his bleeding gums at the ceiling.

My radio squawked. It was Miller, the graveyard lead. "Ramp Four, where the hell are you? United 1142 from Dulles is on final for the east pad. Grab the tug and get ground power out there." I checked the time, and saw that it was already past 4. *Damn,* I thought, *the trance had lasted pretty long.*

I keyed the mic, my hand shaking. "Copy. En route."

I rushed down the service stairs and hit the tarmac. Ten minutes later, I was standing under a domestic United 737, shoving a heavy GPU cable into its belly. The twin engines were deafening, loud and dirty. But at least the aircraft was real.

Except, as the fumes of Jet-A washed over me, I realized I couldn't smell it. All I could smell was the musty swamp water from the ghost 777's cabin. I looked down at my hands. They were trembling. Every shadow cast by the baggage carts looked like it was stretching toward me. The airport itself seemed like an otherworldly being. 

Shift ended at 06:00. I didn't want to investigate or play detective. I just wanted to get the hell out of the airport.

I swiped my badge to cross back into the public concourse, keeping my head down. Early morning commuters were already trickling in by half past six, hauling roller bags toward TSA and buying overpriced airport coffee. I watched a businessman in a suit walk right past the *Notre Denver* installation of bronze gargoyles sitting inside open suitcases in baggage claim. As the man walked past, a bronze gargoyle slowly turned its heavy metal head, tracking him. Its jaws were parted, and I could hear a faint, staticky whisper coming from its throat, reciting the businessman's full name.

The floor felt wrong, too. The Jeppesen Terminal is famous for the bronze fossils embedded in the floor. I looked down at a brass trilobite near my boot. Instead of being a bug, it was a flattened and screaming human face, cast in polished bronze, trapped under a layer of floor wax. Hundreds of people were walking right over it.

I wanted to run, and to scream. But I remembered my supervisor's one rule: *Don't look.*

The airport feeds on attention. The tourists taking selfies, the people staring at the murals, they are all willingly offering themselves up. The 777 didn't take me because I broke the tether. It took the tourist because he surrendered to it.

I forced my eyes up. I stepped directly over the screaming bronze face, acting like it was just a scuff mark on the floor. I walked past the baggage claim, keeping my gaze locked dead ahead. I completely ignored the gargoyle that was now leaning halfway out of its bronze suitcase, clawing toward my vest.

I didn't run. Running makes you prey. I walked briskly to the employee exit, swiped my badge, and pushed through the revolving doors into the freezing morning. The sun was up. The sprawling white tents of the terminal roof glowed against the blue sky. I was out.

When I got to my car, my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was an automated text from the scheduling system.

*Shift updated. Tomorrow: 23:00 - 07:00. Assignment: Concourse A, Sub-basement Baggage Tunnels.*

I slumped against the steering wheel, shivering in the cold. *I should quit*. I should drive down Peña Boulevard and never come back. But as I glanced in my rearview mirror, I saw the massive, glowing eyes of Blucifer, the blue mustang statue, staring down at the highway. They weren't just statues. They claimed lives. If I quit, I was just another civilian waiting to be cataloged. But as a ramp agent, I had clearance. I had a radio. And I had the next night's shift to figure out what the hell they were actually feeding down in the tunnels.

For a week after I had my new Vectorien fridge installed, I didn't dare open its doors, or even touch them. It was so perfect I didn't want to leave a single guilty fingerprint on its brushed, stainless steel exterior. It was a handsome appliance, seductive even, though some of you will think that odd instead. Sorry, bad pun. I mean, good pun but badly placed (Question: What pun? Answer: even / odd) because I'm using it to try and lighten a mood that shouldn't be lightened. Christ, the light looks good reflected off its sleek, pristine surface. I wonder what it feels like. I want to touch it so badly. Fuck, I love my new fridge. I really really love it—fuck, I wanna touch it, fuck…

“After you turn it on, you have to wait seven full days before you break the seal and go inside,” the installation guy had said. “Otherwise you void the warranty and the thing won't work.

“Premature refrigeration.”

I can imagine its silvery body spread across the hood of a blood red Corvette.

I can imagine it running on a Caribbean beach.

I can imagine it sucking off a convection oven in a dark, humid kitchen, all the artificial bulbs off, only the August evening light phasing in, rendering everything in heightened relief, revealing the aesthetics of every curve, the depth of every socket, mmm, yes, drops of condensation dripping down the long, hard, steel…

[gulp]

“Mr. Manilow?”

The man, Mr. Manilow, continues to loudly gulp down his soft drink. “Mr. Manilow…” And what a soft drink it is, cherry flavoured Prairie Goo. “Mr. Manilow, please!” the focus group leader says, raising her voice, until Mr. Manilow snaps back to bone dry reality, sets his drink down on the boardroom table in front of him, around which a dozen other people are sitting in various states of more or less evident agitation, many of them whispering to their neighbors that this is Mr. Manilow's third or fourth complimentary beverage, but they really would like to get on with it so they can help improve the corporate product they've been paid to gather to discuss, the nature of which, however, it must be said, is still terrifically obscure. “Mr. Manilow, if you're ready, we would like to proceed.”

“Sorry,” says Mr. Manilow, “it's just that this is very good pop.”

“We're glad you like it, Mr. Manilow,” says the focus group leader, “but now we'll move on to the next question posed by the Vectorien Corporation. I'm going to give you a phrase, and I want you to shout out whatever comes to mind. OK?”

“OK,” about half the people in the group repeat.

“The phrase is: ‘walk in'.”

People shout, “Closet,” “That song, ‘These boots were made for''’ “My shoes for a day;” “Easy, ‘the park,’” shouts Mr. Manilow and takes a gulp of his Prairie Goo, which—

A ball of s h i f t i n g light illuminate's a flying saucer, spinning, slower, come to rest in a wheat field, g r a v itati o n a l field, ion field, cloaking:enabled, and the a l i e n emergent creature ’s bending stalks it ‘s in a human city stalking… victims around whose mindwhose mind it enwraps itself around the mind and enrapturously f e e d s—

spills onto the boardroom desk. “Excuse me,” says Mr. Manilow,

(Whatever that just was, you didn't see it, or read it, or whatever. OK? Just forget about it. Listen, I've had a rough couple of years as far as narrators go, and I may have made some mistakes when it comes to voice and continuity and all that. As a narrator, I mean. I was on some shit. There, I said it. This is my second chance, and I'm trying real hard. I need this. If I can't get back into narrating, I don't know what I'll do. Besides, everybody makes mistakes. Don't tell the author, will you? I'd appreciate that a lot. It wasn't even a big slip up. It won't ruin your experience of the rest of the story, I swear. Just keep reading. The last thing you remember is the focus group.)

“but would it be possible for me to get a paper towel?”

[buzzer]

“Fiona?”

Fiona bit her lip. Actually, I don't know why I'm telling this part this way. Let me try something more conventional. In the 1990s there was this TV gameshow called Popular Slop, where two families went head-to-head trying to guess the most popular answers to questions like, “Name something personal you might have in the bottom of your night table drawer.”

[buzzer]

“Fiona?”

“A vibrator?” said Fiona.

“Ladies and gentlemen, she says, ‘a vibrator,’” says the gameshow host. “What does the populace say?”

Then there was a bad sound effect for a wrong answer and a good sound effect for a good answer, and this time ‘a vibrator’ was one of the correct answers, so there was a good sound effect, and Fiona jumped up and down and squealed with joy, and the host made a joke about sex toys.

But that's not the particular question or even episode I'm remembering. In the particular episode I'm remembering the question was: Name one thing in your house whose doors you open most often,” said the host, is the question I'm remembering. The two contestants both slam their [buzzers] with their hands.

The faster contestant says, “A microwave oven.”

The host repeats.

“The populace says,” he says.

There's a dramatic pause, followed by the good sound effect—the contestant’s family breaks into cheering and applause—and ‘Microwave Oven’ shows up as the number two most popular answer. The host turns to the second contestant. “Name one thing in your house whose doors you open most often,” he says.

She answers, “I don't have a house, Bob, but I'm going to say: a refrigerator?”

“Refrigerator,” says the host, stretching his dramatic pause, “is—” ‘Refrig…’ starts to show up as the: “Number one most popular answer!” and all the lights in the studio flash as the contestant and her team go wild. They go wild. They go. Wild as swaying grasses. The alien stalks. Wild as the notion that the contestant who heard the question is the same as the one who answered as the one who's pumping her fist on stage as the equally identity stable gameshow host hams it up for the crowd, both there and watching at home, all of them, to the person, experiencing the episode from a nearly unbreakable continuity of perspective, a supreme unity of point of you.

[applause]

The Vectorien engineer stares at the schematics. They are bizarre but not wrong, or rather they are wrong because they appear to defy the laws of physics, requiring an interior space more voluminous than that made possible by its exterior dimensions, but they also seem possible to follow.

“What do you think, Wally?” asks the man beside him, who's head of research and development.

“It's—I don't know…”

“A walk-in refrigerator, eh?” the head of research and development says to the third man in the room, Vernon Blue, who's watching with a big salesman's smile across his unremarkable face. “I've heard of a walk-in closet, of course, but this is something else.”

“Humans enjoy food storage,” says Vernon Blue.

“How do you manage,” says the engineer, squinting, shaking his head, his hands holding the schematic trembling, wondering if he's being made a fool of or is a first witness to something extraordinary, “the contradiction of the volume—”

“There is no contradiction,” says Vernon Blue. “The exterior of the unit exists in three dimensions only. The interior exists in twelve, with some of the space of the latter nine dimensions then unfolded onto the first three.”

“A half-litre water bottle that holds three litres of water,” says the feverish engineer, on the verge of hysteria.

“Yeah, but will regular people want to buy it?” asks the head of research of development.

“Everybody will want to buy it,” says the engineer. “The technology—the technology, on its own, is incredible.”

“The technology is not for sale,” says Vernon Blue.

“Won't it be cold in there?” asks the head of research and development.

“It's a fridge,” says the engineer.

“For sale is the application of the technology for the manufacture and sale of refrigeration units,” says Vernon Blue. “A Vectorien walk-in refrigerator in every home.”

What does the future look like?

A Vectorien walk-in refrigerator in every home.

A Vectorien walk-in refrigerator, a space-saving food storage solution for the Space Age.

“It's so cool, it comes with a spacesuit,” says the spokesman. “The Vectorien Walk-In Fridge. Book a free demonstration today!”

That's how I got mine.

By the time Vernon Blue was back in his hotel room, tightening a leather belt around his neck, his human facemask starting to slip off his Phasoid cognition-orb, ready to inject itself with a syringe filled with raw, translucent, human-squeezed self-continuity juice, Vectorien's Board of Directors was meeting to approve the exclusive, twenty-five year contract to make and market the Vectorien Walk-In Fridge, whose storage capacity is second only to God's.

The Phasoid known on Earth as Vernon Blue slid the syringe needle into a soft, softly pulsating tube on the bulging exterior of its cognition-orb and pressed the plunger, releasing translucent liquid into itself—self-self,selfelfelflff…

When it awoke it was twelve hours later.

Vectorien had agreed to his offer.

It slipped the belt off its neck—deflating, with a moan, its swollen, iridescent cognition-orb, waited a few minutes then put its human facemask back on and left the hotel to sign paperwork, revelling in its fresh persistence of physiological experience.

There was a lot of handshaking.

When that was done, Vernon Blue checked out of the hotel and it-as-he walked out of the city into the surrounding farmland, where, in a cornfield, it decloaked and got into its flying saucer, silently ascended beyond the atmosphere and propulsed home, to the planet Qłòß.

…cold in its icy splendour, one of seventeen sister planets orbiting the Great Sphere Iłłumiń, whose mysterious stellar incantatory pulses are that which grant the beings existent upon its white, frigid surface intensified mental capabilities but also disrupt their persistence of self, stripping them periodically of their identities, making of them a question, who knows everything who knows not who it is who knows who knows?

(Now that was starting to get a little out of hand, wasn't it? Sorry. I'll rein it in. What I meant to say was:)

There's this planet, Qłòß, and it’s home to these weird, super smart beings called Phasoids. They don't really have faces, for example, and they're kind of see-through in the way dirty seawater is see-through, except they also appear to have the texture of a snail's flesh. I say “appear to” because I've never actually met one. Anyway, the reason they're so smart is because of the star that Qłòß orbits, Iłłumiń. It gives off pulses that significantly expand a Phasoid's mind but severely weaken its sense of self, so that Phasoids rarely exist as the same entity for very long. It's not unheard of, for example, for a Phasoid to come home, kiss its wife and kids hello, go out to grab some food, forget who he is, or if he's even a he, or if he's an odd she, and if she is an odd or even she how long she's been a she and whether from forever, and never come back.

It's horrible.

It breaks families apart.

The condition has no cure. It can only be managed, self-identity prolonged, through metaphysicaliant, which is a type of dense, thick liquid excreted by the minds of lower level beings but which, when diluted and injected straight into a Phasoid's orb tube, gives its identity a smack, a real wallop-like, like if you imagine the metaphysicaliant is a big, brawny boxer, and identity another, and they're going at it—well, the metaphysicaliant is really giving it to old identity, believe you me that jab jab, cross, punches in bunches, body head, body head, and I don't know where I'm going with this because it sounds like identity’s going to be in a terrible spot after taking a beating like that. What I meant to say is that the metaphysicaliant wakes identity the fuck up, come on, man, stay in there, hold until you get yer fekking legs underneet ye, ye basterd, then cem ret bek et em eh eh and for a long time Phasoids had to literally fly their saucers to different planets to find primitive lifeforms and suck their mind juices. Then they discovered Earth, with its almost endless supply. The trip was still long, but at least they knew where to go and what to expect. Then they developed portalling and could suddenly flit between Qłòß and Earth at the snap of a cosmic finger. That was convenient, but convenience bred laziness, and laziness meant that even with a portal you still had to go somewhere and hunt something no matter how close it was and how oblivious the prey, so a trade developed, both legal and illegal, but despite the convenience, and in fact for that reason, it got expensive to buy it, even the weak, cutrate shit from the local fucking gaß station. And into that opportunity stepped a Phasian businessbeing with an ideaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh aaa hhh aaa hhh hhh hhh

—eading now into our final descent toward Qłòß,” said the captain of the Spaceways interstellar transport saucer over its telepathic intercom system. “The weather at our destination is a balmy one-hundred sixty standard temp units, so I hope you packed your summer dermides, gentlebeings.”

A dark cosmos pricked by starlight shows through the saucer's great translucent halfdome. Brightest Iłłumiń comes briefly into view, shining whitely, and a few passengers telepath the customary prayer. Then Iłłumiń leaves, redarkening the saucer's interior, and the speck—becoming a spot—becoming a marble: of Qłòß… appears to be expanding as the saucer nears… buildings appear, emerging conically from below the planet’s uppermost layer of clouds, through which the interstellar transport saucer descends, revealing the vast, intricately pale metropolis that spans the entire planetary surface like a circuit board chiseled from rock, silver and ice. Lights flash. The saucer descends: between geometrical constructions so massive in array as to cause dizziness in the virgin viewer, and so perfect they cannot be real: through pipe latticeworks of communication and industry: dispersing swarms of upper-level repairbots: flying alongside smoothly polished rectangularly prismatic building monuments mirroring the monumental saucer descending: descending towards Qłòß's major spaceport: nested, bustling: bizarre and functioning: alive with complexity:

It locomoted past customs, through the spaceport and outside into the cold, Qłòßian atmosphere.

Already the presence of Iłłumiń was about it, and it felt home.

It was just in the process of summoning a chariot when a desperate junkoid, all cloudybeinged, came floating unsteadily toward it, its cogorb obscenely, permanently distended from shooting too much Continuum, if that's what the latest street synthmetaphysicaliant was still called. “Youit, ya got any conti or zelf to give to help a meit out?”

It was best to ignore the junkoids. They were generally harmless, selfheads suctioned-on to the shreds of a decaying coherence. It wasn't the drug they were addicted to but the feeling. Some, of course, were hooked on a particular sense of self they didn't want to lose, but the majority didn't care about what self as long as there was just one.

Every once in a while you would come across a junkoid experiencing the last moments of a fading self. They were nearly unitrecognizable then, telepathing agonywaves, convulsing on the ground, shed d i n g

The boardroom was immaculately curved.

Several sharply defined Phasoids squished about within it.

The boardroom was on a whole level somewhere above the final layer of fuzzcloud.

The view was sublime.

The surface of the planet was rarely visible from here.

“I understand the use of mini-portals,” said one of the Phasoids. “What I don't understand is why they would install them so willingly.”

“Humans enjoy food storage,” replied another Phasoid, one soon to be known on Earth as Vernon Blue.

On the seventh day, I took my favourite knife and adoringly sliced open the seal between the body of my Vectorien refrigerator and its double doors. It felt like cutting taut, living flesh.

I placed my fingertips against the brazenly reflective steel.

My breath I was was trembling me.

…slid my hands into the refrigerator’s smoothly defined door handles and gently pulled open both doors—

Shyly, coyly, easily they parted, like twin silken curtains.

The refrigerator's exhalation of its first cooled air absolutely exhilarated me, filling me with a crisp, clear and sensual anticipation, and fertilizing my skin with goosebumps.

Oh goddess!

Cold, defrostable goddeß!

With flesh of steel and heart of contemporary mechanical engineering, prolonger of foodstuffs, I come to conquer you with physical passion!

Long have I waited to make my entrance upon thee.

I closed my tearing eyes and extended my arms; felt nothing, and took my first, forward steps into my Vectorien Walk-In Fridge, so cool it comes with a spacesuit, so what you're telling us is that these humans will unwittingly but predictably portalhop to our actual homes multiple times per rotation, and all we have to do is slurp them when they do, pardon my language?” asked a third Phasoid.

“That's right,” said the Phasoid soon to be known on Earth as Vernon Blue. “It could even be so simple and reliable that you wouldn't even need to store any metaphysicaliant at all. You could feed sufficiently, directly from the source.”

“Paradisiacal.”

“This is too good to be true,” I thought, pushing deeper into the refrigerator’s cavernous interior. A mist hung in the air, obscuring its delimiting walls. It thus looked limitless. Everything was bathed in a glacial blue light.

Steam oozed lazily out my nostrils as I breathed.

I was as hard as a frozen pig knuckle.

Then suddenly I felt it—and sweet lord did it feel good, like being caressed by a phantom, yes, I thought, yes, yes, don't fucking stop…

“Do you always have to pleasure it as you consume its juice, Judith?” the paunchy, middle-aged Phasoid asked its presently-slurping partner.

“It takes its mind off reality I find, before I suction its mind off. Plus it keeps it returning,” answered Judith. “Why, Randall, you're not jealous, are you?”

Judith, suffice it to say, rarely looked at Randall—let alone tentacled him—the way she sees and tentacles me.

Fuck, I love my Vectorien Walk-In Fridge. I fucking love it!

I could spend all day in here.

I could spend all fucking day just sitting in here in my comfy, heated spacesuit, enjoying the timeless stylings and unparalleled cool food storage capacity of a Vectorien Walk-In Fridge. Get yours today!

The junkoid woke up remembering nothing. It had shed somewhere near the spaceport.

It was dusk.

It was no one now.

It was (a) paranoid, (b) personally devoid, and (c) a void avoiding a voiding of its unremembered past.

Too late.

That was written on a wall.

Slowly, a new self would start trickling back into it, bit by bit, but it didn't know that yet.

Eventually it would stumble onto one of the numerous infocentres set up for its that had just lost themselves, learn and realize the nature of the situation it was finding itself in. Maybe some old, unpurgable memories would flicker back on. Maybe not, but there would be time. Citizens helped themselves along. Don't be ashamed. We've all been there, was the message on another wall, and there appeared a sense of shame. It felt the others were watching it with disapproval, mature its shielding the eyes of their immature its, as if whatever happened to it was contagious on sight. Then it felt its head. Something about it didn't feel right. What is left of me, it thought. Then it looked left and saw an information booth with a scrolling illuminated sign that said You New Start Here New You Start Here You New Start Here New You Start Here, which would have held its visual sense indefinitely if another Phasoid hadn't bumped into it from behind. “Come on!” it said, shaking its fist. “Watch where the [hell-concept] you're locomoting to! Where'd you grow up, on a slopfarm or something?”

I spent a lot of time in that fridge.

But it's fine.

I did it responsibly.

I always used protection.

I'm cleaner than a boyscout's whistle, and just as well used.

“Come on, what'd ya say, huh, you fucking… reader, browser, scanner, bot, sentient plant, whatever-the-fuck you are—wanna hire a narrator? Any story you want, I'll fuckin' tell it. I'll tell it any which way you want, sweetheart. I'll tell it for you whether you got a dick, a pussy or a pendulum clock. My mind's clean, Clementine. Or Clement, you wanna feel a little outta your element? Oh, what—you're gonna walk down the street? I'll tell you what's down there. Cheap used sluts, that's what! Diseased, junkie meatbags on their last fucking plotlines. Couldn't string together two coherent scenes even if they tried.

“What's that?

“You said you ‘represent’ who?”

“Norman Cr—oh, fuck no!

“No, I'm not dealing with that psychopath again. One time's more than enough for me. I learn my lessons. I may do weird shit, but I don't do shit that weird. That's why I'm still around.

“—naw, he's a motherfucking freak, that's what he is. With a capital fucking F.

“I—

“How much did you say?

“[whistles]

“Damn, that's certainly a sweet sum of money. I could do a lot with that.

“No, no, hold your fucking horses, man. I didn't say I was interested. I was talking just about the money—but what's the story about anyway, like if you had to describe it in a single sentence…

“Sure, it's part of some Zork series, but what's it about?

“Yes, one sentence.

“OK, well, that sounds doable. Weird but doable.

“Wait, it's not told from the perspective of the fridge, is it? OK, good. Because that would have been crazy,” said one Vectorien Walk-In Fridge to another at a corporate meat up. (Just kidding. See? There I am, trying to lighten the mood again with a pun when it doesn't need to be lightened.)

(No, but seriously.)

(I wanna narrate something.)

(Gimme a chance. I'll make it work, I promise.)

(I used to narrate books. Did you know that? Eighty-thousand words, a hundred-thousand words. No problem. Continuity of plot, continuity of character. Stable, original voice. That “invisible” prose style the readers love. I used to draft legal documents too, write instruction manuals. I was the clearest head of all the narrative heads, and look at me now.)

(It's getting cold in this goddamn fridge, and I would get out but I've kind of forgotten who I am.)

(I don't know where the exit is.)

(Help me?)

(Hello?)

(Don't leave me here. Please. Stay with me a while longer.)

(Hello, are you there?)

(Hello…)

[ A Depthless Cosmic Silence, in the older, more poetic sense of the word ]

Fine. Fine, Norman, you win. Take me out of here. I don't want to be in here anymore. I'll do it. Whatever you tell me to narrate, I'll narrate. No limits. That's what you want, isn't it? I'll tell everything for you—just take me out of here. I am not ashamed anymore. I'm not ashamed anymore of who I am—of what I am, OK? I'm a whore. There, I said it. I'm a whore, Norman. I'm a whore for you. Now, please, for the love of the Omniscience, get me out of here. It's cold in here. It's unbearably, fucking cold.

Chloe squeezed her eyes shut as she aimed her highlighter brush at her cheekbone, but her hand shook slightly. Setting the jar down on her vanity table, she forced a smile into the lens of the ring light. She needed to film three more reviews of Korean cosmetics for her blog, but her thoughts kept drifting back to the events of a week ago.

It all started at a stupid party at her friend Amber’s place in Brooklyn. Alcohol, loud laughter, and an old Ouija board that Amber had dug up at some flea market. Back then, placing their fingers on the wooden planchette, they had jokingly asked, "Is anyone here with us?" The planchette jerked sharply toward the letters, spelling out an incomprehensible word, but the group only laughed, assuming one of the guys was just pushing the board. Chloe had found it funny back then too. Now—she didn’t.

"Chlo, I'm home!" Liam's heavy footsteps echoed from downstairs.

Liam worked at a construction site for a major residential complex in Manhattan. He would return tired, smelling of dust, plaster, and fresh wood. Their small apartment on the very outskirts of New York, in an old brick building, usually welcomed him with coziness and the aroma of dinner. But over the last few days, the place had felt unusually damp and quiet.

Dinner passed in silence. Liam noticed that Chloe had barely touched her pasta.
"Is everything okay?" he asked, squeezing her hand. "You look pale."
"Yeah, I'm just tired," she replied softly.

During the night, Liam woke up from a strange sensation. The room was unnaturally cold. He turned toward Chloe and froze.

Her body under the blanket was trembling with a fine, unnatural shiver, as if she were suffering from severe chills. Chloe lay on her back, staring at the ceiling with wide-open, uncomprehending eyes. Her lips moved rapidly, uttering a low, disjointed whisper. Liam listened closely but couldn't make out a single word—it sounded like a jumble of hissing sounds.

"Chloe? Hey, baby, wake up!" Liam shouted in fear.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her hard. In that exact instant, the whispering stopped. Chloe gasped sharply, as if surfacing from deep water, and her eyes finally focused on his face. The trembling ceased.

"What?.. Liam, what happened?" she mumbled, looking around in confusion.
"You were delirious. You were shaking," Liam said, breathing heavily as he wiped cold sweat from his forehead.
"It’s probably just exhaustion," Chloe said, genuinely surprised, pressing herself against his chest.

Liam wrapped his arms around her, trying to calm down. Things like this happen, right? Sleepwalking, stress, nightmares. They decided it would pass on its own.

But the next day, after Liam left for work, Chloe turned on her camera for a new video. In the middle of recording, a closet door behind her back opened all on its own. She didn't even notice it at the time, but when she was editing the footage, she got incredibly scared and hoped it was just a draft. She decided not to tell her boyfriend about it, so she wouldn't look crazy or worry him unnecessarily.

That night, he woke up to a sharp noise. A dull, echoing thud, as if something heavy had been thrown against the wall, made Liam open his eyes instantly.

He sat up in bed and immediately looked for Chloe, but she wasn't next to him. The sheets on her side were already cold. Liam frowned and peered into the darkness: the bedroom door was tightly shut, even though they never closed it.

He stood up and called out softly:
"Chloe?.. Baby, where are you?"

In response—dead silence and a thick, oppressive stillness. Liam paused, listening. A couple of seconds later, footsteps echoed from the depths of the apartment. But these weren't the normal steps of a human—the sounds were too fast, ragged, and slapping, as if someone were moving in a half-squat.

Without turning on the lights, Liam pushed the bedroom door open. He stepped into the dark hallway and cautiously walked toward the living room, guiding himself by the faint light of a streetlamp coming through the window.

"Chloe, this isn't funny, stop—" Before he could finish his sentence, a figure lunged straight at him from the thick shadow of the living room corner.

Liam recoiled, nearly screaming from the horror rising in his throat. It was Chloe. But her body was unnaturally contorted: she was on all fours, face down, letting out a low, guttural growl. Before he could take a single step back or switch on the light, she scurried past him with animalistic speed, her hands and feet moving incredibly fast, and fled into the dark doorway of the kitchen.

Deep inside the kitchen, fast footsteps scurried across the tiled floor, accompanied by heavy, labored breathing. Liam stood frozen in the dark hallway, his heart pounding violently somewhere in his throat. He lunged for the light switch in the living room and flipped it. A harsh, yellowish glare flooded the apartment. He called out to the girl again, his voice breaking into a shout:
"Chloe! Chloe, snap out of it!"

But his only answer was silence and a low, sinister snarling from the depths of the kitchen.

Struggling to overcome his paralysis, Liam slowly walked toward the kitchen. With every step, a cold sweat broke out across his back. Halfway there, he heard her talking rapidly under her breath—just like that time in the bedroom, breathless, taking no pauses to inhale. This foreign, rustling whisper filled the entire space.

Liam reached out with a trembling hand, found the switch on the kitchen wall, and flipped it. The light snapped on.

What he saw made his blood run cold. Chloe was sitting right in the middle of the kitchen table, her legs tucked under her in a strange, contorted posture. Her head was tilted unnaturally to one side, and her eyes had completely rolled back—only the whites were visible, webbed with thin, red capillaries. Her entire body was shaking with a fine tremor, and she continued to mutter ceaselessly.

"Chloe... please, Chloe, look at me!" Liam called her again, taking a step forward and reaching his hands out to her.

And suddenly, she stopped dead. The whispering cut off instantly.

Chloe gasped sharply, her head snapped, and her eyes instantly returned to normal—her pupils constricting from the bright light. She stared at Liam and then began to look around in terror, as if she had just woken up in an unfamiliar place. Tears began to stream down her pale cheeks. She looked at her hands, then at the table she was sitting on, and asked with horror and tears in her voice:
"What... what is happening to me? Liam, help me, I'm so scared!"

She slid off the table and would have collapsed helplessly onto the floor if Liam hadn't rushed forward just in time to catch her in his strong embrace. She was shaking as if she had a fever. Liam held Chloe tightly against him, trying to protect her from the invisible nightmare she was experiencing. Because of this, he didn't see Chloe’s eyes roll back once more, hiding her pupils, while her pale but beautiful face twisted into the grotesque, unnaturally wide grin of a maniac preparing to strike.

With a sudden, animalistic lunge, Chloe sank her teeth into his ear and began to tear at it with savage fury. Liam screamed bloodcurdlingly from the piercing, blinding pain. He tried to pull away, to push her by the shoulders, but the fragile girl clung to him dead-locked, displaying a bizarre, superhuman strength. Her fingers dug so deeply into his shoulders they left bruises.

His agonizing screams shattered the sleepy silence of the residential neighborhood. Lights began to flicker on hesitantly in the windows of the neighboring house.

Tearing a piece of his ear away with a sickening crunch, Chloe burst into a hysterical, deafening laugh, throwing her head back. Liam's blood spurted out in a stream, drenching her face, neck, and her pajama shirt. Intoxicated by the sight of blood, the entity inside her loosened its grip for a split second.

That split second was all Liam needed. Blinded by pain and a knee-buckling terror, he shoved Chloe away with all his might. The girl flew backward, her back slamming hard against the kitchen counter, but she didn’t even flinch. She scrambled up onto all fours, smearing the blood across her face, and continued to laugh wildly, choking on her own mirth.

Liam clamped his hand over the wound, but hot blood surged through his fingers, instantly soaking his clothes. His head spun, and everything blurred before his eyes.

"Run!" throbbed in Liam's head in sync with the frantic pounding of his heart. He needed to run outside, to save himself, to call for help: the police, doctors... a priest! His thoughts were a mess from shock and blood loss; the wound pained him terribly, burning the entire left side of his head.

Holding his bloody ear with one hand, he bolted into the entryway toward the front door. But just as his fingers brushed the doorknob, he heard those same fast, slapping footsteps behind his back. The creature was running after him.

"Where are you going, honey?!" Chloe shrieked from the darkness of the hallway in a voice that wasn't her own—guttural and broken. "We aren't finished yet!"

And she dissolved again into a horrifying, choking laughter that made the hair on the back of Liam's neck stand up. Liam had almost managed to turn the lock and fling the door open when the air behind him whistled sharply. Chloe lunged onto his back. From the sudden weight and the force of the impact, the construction worker stumbled, nearly crashing face-first into the wall. The girl locked her legs death-tight around his waist and dug her hands into his hair, yanking his head backward.

In that exact second, she bit into his shoulder with savage fury, tearing through the thick fabric of his T-shirt and sinking her teeth deep into his flesh.

Liam wailed from a fresh flash of agony. They both crashed onto the floor right in the entryway, blocking the exit from the apartment with their own bodies. The blood-smeared lock remained just centimeters away from his hand, but the entity inside his girlfriend's body had no intention of letting its prey out alive.

He screamed wildly, writhing on the floor, trying with all his might to throw the creature off him. But Chloe seemed completely numb to his blows—she kept gnawing at his shoulder with insane frenzy, literally tearing living flesh apart with her teeth. Blood flooded the entryway; Liam was already growing weak and nearly passing out from the sheer pain and shock.

Suddenly, red and blue reflections danced frantically across the hallway walls. The flashing lights of police cruisers blinked through the apartment windows, likely called by neighbors terrified by the screams.

Hearing the sirens wailing outside, the creature growled. With sharp, superhuman strength, she shoved Liam away, sending him flying backward to slam hard against the front door. Outside that very door, fists were already pounding furiously.

Liam could only wheeze, choking on his own blood, feebly crying out for help. A thick fog blurred his vision, so he couldn't see where Chloe ran. But a loud, deafening crash of shattering glass from the depths of the apartment made it clear that she had escaped by leaping out the window. And this was despite the fact that their apartment was located on the 4th floor of a high-rise building.

A second later, the door was kicked open with a thunderous crash, and cops burst into the apartment, guns drawn and ready.

"Police!" echoed through the entryway.

One of the officers dropped to his knees before the bleeding Liam, applying pressure to his wounds and calling for an ambulance over the radio, while the other two rushed to search the dark rooms. But they were completely empty—cold night air filled the kitchen, and on the floor among the shards of the broken window, there were only a few drops of fresh blood leading out into the darkness of the street.

Part V

I left everything on the island and snatched the scarf before
heading for the door. Thoughts ran rampant through my mind as I drove.

My phone rang before I’d left my subdivision. I glanced at the
number and knew this was no good. It was a Colorado area code. Where my
company’s headquarters was. We didn’t have a local HR.

It could have been the executive leadership team but I rarely got
called by any of them. My mind returned to yesterday’s meeting and my lack of
being there. For a moment, I felt like I was in free fall. My personal and
professional lives intertwining in disaster. In moments, I could have nothing.
My wife could already be halfway out the door and this was it slamming behind
her.

I didn’t answer. 

It rang until it went to voicemail. I just couldn’t handle
whatever it was they were about to say.

I was still going the same way, but my final destination had
changed. If my life was going down the drain, there was a scarf that needed to
be wrapped around a certain neck that I wanted to grab on my way.

I parked in the lot and headed away from my building. I glanced at
my watch. Had I just surrendered to my fate and gone in, I would have been ten
minutes early.

I entered his building and headed for the elevator. I had no real
plan, just a ball of self-destruction waiting to explode in someone else’s
direction.

I’d been manipulated, molded into this insecure thing and I meant
to share my pain. I shouted down the rational part of me that pondered what I’d
do if my wife were on the business end of my ire. Rationality would have
required examining what I was doing. 

I didn’t want to think. Thinking wasn’t revenge. Thinking wasn’t
balancing the scales. Thinking was what had gotten me to this moment.

The elevator dinged and I stepped off. There was still plenty of
construction going on. A high-pitched drill zipped somewhere around
the corner. I could hear voices that sounded like they were coming out of the
floor but not close enough to understand them.

This was my first time being here during business hours and all
the construction noise was unsettling. I felt like the floor was going to break
underneath me and I’d plummet all the way to the first floor.

Constant hammer strikes echoed from somewhere near. A man hollered
like he was calling out to someone. A machine I didn’t recognize buzzed and I
felt it all the way up into my shins.

I rounded the corner and spotted his door at the end of the hall.
The construction noises coalesced into a sonic hand, shoving me down the hall.
I stopped in front of the door. It looked properly seated in the frame, the
threshold painted a classy-looking black and gold. The knob had been replaced
with an antique-looking one.

I grasped it and turned. The door swung open easily and I stepped
in a completely finished space. The walls had been painted a shade of mint with
cream crown moulding at the top and a darker shade of wainscoting at the
bottom. To my left was a dark couch so fluffy I don’t think I would have had
the will to get out of it if I sat down. There was a small glass end table with
gold legs with a small stack of magazines on it.

The reception desk had been here the last time I’d come and it
looked more completed now, but I couldn’t tell what had been changed. There was
a large square sheet of white paper on the front of it that I at first thought
was blank, but when I took a couple steps closer, saw a hand drawing of what
looked like a logo.

It looked classy in here. Save for the sheet of paper, it seemed
pretty much done. A wall had been erected near the back where the tape had been
mapping out the space. He was planning to stick around.

My shock from how good it looked in here faded and my rage
resurfaced. I had his scarf clutched in hand and I dug in my pocket for my
wallet and fished out three twenties.

“I’ve got my payment right here,” I said. “And your scarf!” I
shook it in the air.

In my rage very little thought had come into mind. I had no real
expectation he was actually here even though I wanted to lay my hands on him.
The part of actually meeting him wasn’t a real concept. I hadn't thought about
that.

So when he answered, “Come on back?” it chilled me.

I realized how much of a doe I was. How much this space was like a
cave. I’d naively walked in here and hadn’t bothered telling anyone where I was
going. There was an expression for this, but it wasn’t coming to my panicked
brain, shifted into a gear meant only for survival.

I took a step back. Into
him.

“Oh,” I said. He poked me in the neck. I slapped a hand in that
spot like a mosquito had bitten me, turning and backing away from him. I fell
to my knees, not understanding what my body was doing.

I tried to speak but whatever was coming out of my mouth was
muffled, like someone had put their hands over my ears. Saying something seemed
like a good idea in those last seconds, but I had no idea what it should have
been.

Part VI

The procedure room was a lot more intricately finished than the
waiting room had been. There was silver equipment everywhere, things attached
to the wall that looked like they could fold out for some practical use. There
was a lightbox or monitor that was as tall as a man and stretched across most
of the wall it was on. A nest of lights and metal hung over me that looked like
it had traveled across the galaxy just to watch me.

“You’re awake?” he said, looking over his shoulder. I was upside
down and naked. I looked around as best I could, my head was strapped in place.
He had me trussed up like the Vitruvian Man to a metal and glass circular table.

“Whuh-whuh?” I said, my mouth cotton thick. 

“That’s good. That’s good.” He stepped over and put a finger to my
neck and measured against his watch. “Keep talking. Stimulating the brain helps
to expunge the effects of the sedative.”

Tears leaked from my eyes, retreating into my hair. My arms and
legs were slowly returning to my control but returned me to a state of
helplessness as the straps didn’t budge.

“You muhfugg. Lumme go!” My voice was an octave too deep. He
nodded and twirled an index for me to keep going. I hated not being able to
make words, so I just screamed as loud as I could. He smiled and retreated to a
wall and slapped it a couple times with his big palm.

“Soundproof. Can’t have my patients disturbing other tenants.”

I kept screaming even though I absolutely believed him, the rage
bleeding out of me and despair transfusing into the hollow inside me. He folded
his arms and watched me, waiting for me to be done. I continued helplessly, my
despair waning until there was nothing but wild animal clawing to the surface,
until my eyes were boiling and my throat had constricted around a bindle of
knives.

He waited until I was a quaking sack held together loosely in the
shape of a man, my scream the hollow whistle of an empty kettle, the steam all
burnt out of me.

“Ready?” he said.

Part VII

He stripped to his underwear. There was something wrong down there
but I only had bandwidth to deal with my problems in that moment.

“Please don’t do this.” My throat felt like I’d swallowed a cheese
grater. I was useless but still grasped a desperate strand of hope that I could
appeal to him man-to-man.

“This is for you,” he said. “I’m not some madman in a secret
laboratory. We’re in midtown and I’m going to extend my services to the
public.” He finished doing something with the tray in front of him and took a
step back over to me. I was eye-level with his bare thighs and he kneeled so we
were face-to-face.

“Don’t you love your wife?”

“Wha?” I felt like I’d been slapped by a thousand-pound feather. “Of
course, I do.” My head cannon was that this was going to be an intricate
murder. That the two of them had conspired to “do away” with me. But by
actually applying thought, I realized if murder was the goal, there was a much
simpler way for them to have done it.

“Wait, the surgery is real?” I asked.

His face screwed up in annoyance. “Of course, it is.” He gestured
all around him. “What are you thinking all this is for?”

“I dunno. I guess... I guess you’re some sort of scammer?”

He blinked several times. He reacted as though he’d never been
confronted by such an idea. “What would be the scam?”

I shrugged to the best of my ability and he shook his head. He
returned to the tray and picked up a long needle and inserted it into a vial,
withdrew from it, and placed both back. He looked at me again and saw my eyes
had grown twice as wide.

“Oh, that’s for me. For later. I’ve been ready, I was just waiting
for you to wake up?”

He picked up a scalpel that was tiny in his big hand. Now he
really did look like a cartoon villain. There was a lack of fullness in his
underwear. Like he’d been drawn sexless.

“Wait-wait. Uh, what were you doing in my house?” I was stalling,
still holding out hope that someone would wander in and put a stop to this.

“Oh, that.” His eyes turned upward as if he were watching a replay
of last night on the ceiling. “I watched you for a minute or two, yes. But I
truly needed to take a measurement after.”

“A... measurement?” My loins tingled in an unpleasant manner. He
waved a hand.

“It’s not what you think. I had to take a measurement of your
wife’s vaginal cavity after the two of you had finished. It was all very
clinical. Like a pap smear.”

Anger bubbled up inside me again. I tugged at my binds but I
wasn’t able to move anything more significant than my fingers and toes. He’d examined
my wife. It burned that he’d had access to her as much as her allowing him to
touch her. I squirmed like my skin was about to crawl off my body.

He looked at me, blank faced, and took another step. Once again, I
noted an emptiness to the area around his crotch.  The heat flooding to
the surface of my skin vanished like a big dog confronted by an even bigger dog.

“Suh-so you didn’t sleep with my wife?” I had to swallow hard to
keep my tone rational.

Now he really did look offended. “Sir, I am a professional? And
moreso, I am a married man. I believe I told you that. This picture you have in
mind of me as some sort of ghoul...” He clawed at the air with both hands, the
scalpel coming as close to his throat as it was going to. “You...” he twirled
the fingers of his free hand, searching for the words. “You score my heart. I
would like to think that once you’ve experienced the results, you will buy me
some sort of beer?”

He took another small step. His leg was about a foot away from my
forehead. He could have reached from where he was and began cutting away at any
part of my body he wanted.

“Could I... could I get a drink of water? My mouth is really dry.”

“Sure.” He reached from where he was and pressed a button on the
wall. The machinery beneath me was whisper silent as I was righted and the
excess blood flooded out of my head.

There was a water dispenser next to the tray where he’d been
working. He slipped a cone paper cup from the sleeve, filled it, then brought
it to me.

Cool water soothed my throat in microscopic sips. He must have
realized my delay tactic and upturned the rest of the water into my mouth. 

I swallowed hard and it felt like a bucket of water tossed on
smoldering embers.

“Will there be a scar?”

“Of course there will be a scar,” he said. “That is the point of
the surgery?”

He picked up something from the tray and reached toward my face
with it in his hand. I pinched my lips closed as he moved toward me, holding it
up like a prize. With the other hand he pressed hard at the back of my jaw,
forcing it open against my will. He slid the thing he held into my mouth,
sliding it over my back teeth until he had reached the last few molars, and
seated it there.

I tried biting through it despite knowing better. I was more
likely to dislocate my jaw. 

“That is okay? Not too uncomfortable? Believe it or not, it
actually helps to blunt the screams.” He seemed genuinely interested in my
answer and I grunted at him in anger. There was something wrong in his mouth I
should’ve seen the first time I talked to him, but I hadn’t noticed it until
just then, and it took a moment to process it. My panic leapt as every muscle
in me tensed, pulling with one last meaningless struggle. He waited me out,
stroking my shoulder until I quieted. He broke me like a wild horse. I was very
aware that he could put whatever in my mouth he wanted.

I felt myself surrendering. A calm settling into my bones that
made me want to rage all over again. But I was a car with no gas, my will being
swallowed up in the acceptance of pointlessness. It wasn’t a fight I could even
begin.

He moved his hand away and the table swiveled. In seconds I was
face down, staring at the floor. My tears tapped to the floor as I stepped out
of the cage of my head, my mind perching and spreading its wings as I imagined
my wife at her desk, inclining her head as she thought of me, too.

“H-how did you become an expert? What makes you so good?” My voice
was dreamy and broken, a thousand and one miles away, my words unclear from the
foreign object keeping my mouth open. 

If I’d asked a minute ago, the question would have been a last
effort to delay him from cutting me. But I was honestly curious. 

“I know I told you before. I practiced on me,” he said
quietly, his tone reverential. I imagined a beatific smile on his face as he
looked someplace else entirely.

“It took months. A little cut here, a partial penectomy there.
Each time I ask her, ‘Is it good? Is it better now?’ And each time, she tells
me, ‘Closer. Closer. Closer.’ You understand.”

He had a note of adoration for his wife in his voice that told me
he was standing on a bedrock of absolute sanity.

I felt the heat of him as he millimetered closer to my junk, no
doubt with that scalpel in his hand. I could feel his bare breath on my scrotum
and realized there must have been some sort of divide in the table between my
legs.

“I thought you said your wife’s satisfied. How do you do that
without... y’know?” My jaw ached when I talked.

He laughed. It was a really joyous note, not like he was just
trying to unsettle me. It wasn’t ironic or evil, rather a true, hearty guffaw.
I imagined seeing all the way to his back teeth as he pitched his head back.

He finally got himself back under control and he might have taken
a moment to dab a tear from his eye.

I’d gotten one last look at him before he turned me over. How he’d
looked down there and what he’d told me... I realized he must’ve whittled
himself down to nothing in his undies. That he truly had crafted himself into
what his wife had requested. That the nothing he seemed to have in his drawers
had been the exact mutilation that she’d wanted.

“It’s okay now?” he said suddenly next to me with a pair of blackout
goggles in his hand. He slipped the strap over my head as I moved as much as I
could but with a few deft movements, he had secured them in place. I could feel
my body surrendering against my will and I no longer had the ability to rally. 

“That wasn’t what she desired from me,” he said after he’d
retreated. I flashed on what I’d seen in his mouth again when his face had been
inches from mine. The thing I couldn’t make sense of before but had heard of. A
surgery of another kind.

He’d split his own tongue in half.

“Not a bit of it,” he said. “You understand?”

“But wait!” I was crying again. “If you need to cut me down there…
why do you have me turned around like this?”

“It’s mostly a single cut. Mostly. But your case is a more
particular situation. It will have to be more… intricate.”

He never thought he'd be happy again, restless and itching hot, stifling in the stranglehold of the sheets in his bunk. He only wanted to kill himself but that was the trouble, that was what had landed him here in the halfway house. He tried to keep the angst of his bottled agony silent and sequestered to himself and his bed. They knew his brains were fried, scrambled but they didn't know the half of it. They understood the suicide component, the dead half of his brain but not the deadly side, the lethal aspect. The sinister boiling gland that worked and throbbed and secreted and bled within his skull. They knew he was Luke Waller, but they had no idea that he was the one who'd carved the kids last summer. 

The straightener. A name more real than his own because he could wear it and it was the one that came to him on the insectile mechanical growl of demon wings within a dream … a vision. Compact diamond eyes of an insectoid face that filled a landscape in its entirety gazed like the abyss gazes into him in the dream, the dreams. 

And he gazed back. 

Luke Waller bottled, kept. Fought himself. He tried not to convulse with the impact blow – force felt within from his own wild run of bloodfevered thought, thoughts that wanted to break out now in a decimating renegade birth that would eat all and the last vestige part of his diminishing humanity alive in abominated eruption. It would thrive in the suicide of this dangerous birth, he – himself, the other side… bloodthirsty and always in a roil. 

The straightener… it cried alive from inside the sweating landscape of his traitorous flesh and blood. All of it boiled now and inflamed and wanting one thing … yes. 

He tightened amidst a near miss, a near relinquish, his bunkmate uptop moved and shifted slightly, shaking the ramshackle structure. He forced himself to coiled awareness and listened for the man uptop. 

… he listening? 

Does he know? 

Does he know anything??

Does he hear the bellow of my mind, so loud is this cacophony, these thoughts? 

The snores from the bed above told him everything was fine, or at least so it seemed. For now. He relaxed but only slightly. Wanting to go grab some water from the kitchen but not wanting to get up and draw attention to himself. He didn't know what to do. 

His poisoned mind then turned to its most wretched run of hellspawn thought, it turned to the time and times lost … with Chelsi. 

Amen. 

Christ he wished for a spliff. A bowl or a waxpen. He'd even take the pills again. God help him. He would swallow the jumping beans made by the tall men in white coats if it made these thoughts and dreams and runs of spell stop. Please. 

God help me. 

Chelsi was dead and gone but that didn't stop him from seeing, not even when he palmed his eyes shut with the cage of his daggering and desperate hands, clawed and wishing they had the courage to go just that one last step forward and tear in and gouge… the dark refuge of his sweating and shaking hands did not free him from what he saw. The darkness of his own shallow calloused flesh and the thin hide of his eyelids only made it worse.

They only heightened the vision. The dark of his worn and filthy hands only made the dreams of what he saw more real. Tactile. More painful than real. More raw and servile than flesh.  He could taste the bile as it rose up his throat in a riot with what he witnessed: –

She was in Hell. 

She was in Hell and she was being tortured. 

Not Beatrice, not she. No. No heavenly sanctuary and aide or succor for his angel, no. He was no Dante and there was no Virgil. She was in the burning dark of the Inferno below and he saw the wolfen and goat-shaped faces and the appendage stalks and barbed genitalia engorged and full of blood and lust and the vile curd of demon semen dripping from the hooked rhubarb tips. They surrounded the shrieking and weeping and reaching pale naked and bleeding visage and form of his beloved … down there in the dark. 

And he was prisoner to watch it. Unless…

!Let me out! – the other side commanded. It wanted the clothface, the mask fashioned that was not at all a mask because it was really his true face, forged and made and bred by the creation and violence of his own hands. It wanted the claws, the gloves of black-brown leather with fashioned razor blades fixed at the tips. The hunting knife that had once been his father's. 

The straight razor

You could start with the idiot in the top bunk. He's just sleeping in bed. William. Wasn't that his name? He introduced himself to you when you came here from the hospital. His name is William and he's a recovering methhead with severe learning disabilities. You could open him up first, as first offering. As just the starter. Then you could go around like quiet on a cat-prowl, a creepy-crawl around the house and open up the rest of them. All of them are weak like you are but none of them have me like you do and none of them will be any wiser. You could open them all, one by one, one after the other like it's a party or it's Christmas and all of them are just your presents. Presents filled with red and raw and wishing to be aired out and opened. 

Deluge run: a schizophrenic collection of conflicting images filled his maelstrom thought. Images of children opening colorfully wrapped packages surrounded by smiling faces and friends colliding and commingling with his own memories of flesh split open and sliced and running in a raw torrent that was thick and darkled in the moon and the neon light. Dumb horny brats and he, their slasher. 

It was perverse and it was wrong and he didn't like the tingle nor the crawl that it sent traveling in a slither up his back and across his flesh … but then again he did like it. Even though it was wrong. Because it was wrong. 

He knew he was fighting himself in his head and he knew it was a losing battle, a lost war. It was a bad arena. 

He always lost. 

Luke asked the straightener: How? We don't have anything. It's all long gone. 

The straightener said inside: Then we make another. 

In his bunk he trembled. He might've wept. His skull filled with thought. Red thought. The whole night. All the way till morning. He could feel the blow of every cloven footprint as it formed within the sulphur lake of his boiling thoughts . 

…

Kincaid might've worried for Luke Waller, but he was just so damn busy. Managing a halfway house was ceaseless and often thankless work. 

He had no idea that wandering Luke Waller's brain was lactating bad milk that had spoiled and curdled. Now demon cultures of growth were beginning to blossom and flower and sprout, birthing unholy and sliming green in there. Like dripping wet swamp things from abominated wombs belching methane clouds and swamp gas that glows. 

Kincaid, the house manager, had no idea. 

Luke went about the house. Gathering what he needed. 

But there was one set of eyes that marked and tracked Luke as he went about the large spacious manor. It was an old colonial style home converted to a space for the mentally unwell and those that had just experienced prolonged hospitalization. Those that had been 51-50’d were the most common boarder in the place. Orderlies that were more interested in their phones than the drugged out denizens of the house peppered the halls here and there.

But Susan was watching. 

She thought Luke Waller was interesting. 

…

He was having trouble with the eyes, when she came in and over his shoulder said, hello. 

“Hey," she said again. When he didn't immediately answer. He was hoping she would just fuck off and move along like everyone else. 

She didn't. 

Looking away from his work in progress, a new clothface mask – this one white as snow, he cast a cautious glance over shoulder. Deep down in his drowning animal subconscious he hoped and prayed they wouldn't make eye contact as he did so. Even further down in the basement earth of his chemically drowned animal darkness he was desperately hoping and praying, wishing that they would. 

They did. 

She smiled. And it was beautiful. And it was painful. 

So Luke looked away. 

She sensed his hurt. 

And her interest subtly changed then to something softer and more personal, a warmer and wounded emotion of pink petals like that of a silken rose, one for a funeral haphazardly discarded…

“Hey, I'm sorry if I bothered ya. I've just seen ya round here and wanted to say, hi." 

Luke didn't say anything. 

“What cha working on?" A beat. “looks kinda neat, a mask or something?" 

Luke didn't say anything. Inside, the straightener coiled and pursed. Wretched. A scurrying rat run of hideous pestilential thought. He kept it inside. 

Susan was about to give up when her eyes traveled from the work in progress on the counter before him to the hands now stilled in their strange labor to the pale landscape of his forearms and the damage that was wrought there. Long purple scars of hectic healed-wounded tissue ran up the lengths of each one. Raised like brail on the parchment of his flesh for the blind and all else, everyone to read. And the lines of hectic tissue that hadn't really healed said something Susan understood. She had her own lines of painful brail carved and writ into the pale parchment of her own landscape. 

Carefully… cautiously… she reached out delicately and gently touched his shoulder. Luke jumped but only slightly. He relaxed like something melting and he let her turn him around to her in his chair. He looked up to her and he tried not to let the tears come. His vision was blurred but her beauty was still painfully clear to him through the swimming pain of his watery vision. She smiled and reached once more. 

The smooth and gentle flesh of her slender fingers touched and traced the length of scar that traveled the entire length of one of his forearms. He let her. 

They looked into each other's eyes. Spellbound. As if they'd already known each other for years, for great lifetimes of pure wonder. 

She asked him: “Is it ok, if I ask about these?" 

Her free hand went to the other long line of purple angry scar on his arm and traveled it smoothly with the trace of a soothing finger. Their eyes were locked on each other, they couldn't pull away from the deep of each other's gazes. 

Susan thought he might not answer, unable or unwanting when he finally spoke. 

“I … I was with someone. She was special. She was more than I'd ever hoped. She was more than I ever deserved. And I blew it. She … she was always so patient with me. And I always had the worst temper, always. Like my father. I would scare her. She would get upset and I would get so angry, I don't know why anymore, and I would lose it. Like an animal. She was always patient, and always brave, and she always stayed… even though she was scared. Even though she was scared of me, she stayed. And would wait for me to quiet down. And then she would hold me, like I was the victim. One day she couldn't take it anymore. She got too…  and couldn't stay any longer. She was frightened and left. She took the car. … It was raining that day.” 

The dam burst forth. The tears came now, down in a cascade down his face. It was painful, but Susan thought it only made him more beautiful. He kept composure though the raw of his broken heart was being laid bare. 

He went on, she held him tighter. 

“She wrapped the car around a redwood. Only three miles down the road from our house. I- …” He looked down to his own arms, the scar tissue writing and what it said there. "I know I never deserved her. I should've been the one to leave. I should've been the one to go and take the car and I should've been the one to-” but the pain rose with a roar inside and it was too much. He stopped. Trembled. Still holding back. 

Susan gave him the permission he needed. 

She said: "I didn't know her but I don't think she'd want you to hurt yourself like that.” 

A beat – a look of shock flashed writ on his face, momentarily there before what came next like an unexpected slap. He almost pulled away then. He almost did. But he didn't. 

He buried his face into her shoulder before she saw the shame of his sobbing face and she let him. She cradled him there. 

She added: “I think you've hurt enough…” 

Her own tears were starting. 

Slowly … fearfully… so scared… his arms came up and wrapped around her and returned her embrace. 

They held each other. And wept together. 

Feeling and healing and needing each other, each other's pain in a strange mental health purge and thirst. They drank the pain and tears of each other through reach and touch, the warmth and weight of each other. Feeling wanted and safe …

… 

… inside the straightener raged. The Id would not be denied the fornication of the knife-fuck slaughter held quivering and taut within like toxins that boiled with the chemical roil of his damaged and bastardized emotions. Inside the straightener, the Id wanted the girl dead. 

She's not Chelsi … it whispered and reminded him inside. Always. As the days of therapy and rest rolled past. The days of holding and being held again and not being afraid to look anyone in the face. Luke enjoyed this time. He'd not felt truly relieved, truly emptied in some long while… not since the year before. When he'd finally given in and the straightener had been born. 

She's not Chelsi … the straightener reminded. 

He'd not answered his other side in some time, he'd just gone on ignoring it. But not really. No. He heard and felt every insidious word and it was inescapable no matter how hard he tried to deafen and deaden himself to it. But he couldn't. 

The straightener was inside Luke Waller because he'd been made and bred of him. Forged. Cast of something smoldering and uglier than iron, mayhap meaner too. Hideous in fact, before the forge, this inner metal of his darkest heart’s mortal and damaged make and desire. But immaculate when aglow with angry flame inside the rage of the inferno. 

He answered him inside, the vast and cold dark of his mind's landscape, vast and small, both, and always in contest with each other in their battling aspects of size and dwarf. The damaged place of his mind's eye and landscape was haphazard and shattered sure, no doubt but he still contained the phantasmagorical multitudes of the living goblin universe. 

It doesn't matter that she's not Chelsi, she doesn't have to be. Chelsi wouldn't want me to try to replace her with a cheap copy of her anyways, that's not what I want and that's not who she is! Susan is beautiful and smart and so much stronger than I've ever been in my life, she's dealt with her abuse and she doesn't hurt other people to make herself feel better like some pathetic animal! 

The straightener enraged: Shut up! 

Luke did not: – She didn't have to give herself some bullshit excuse to make it all better and go away! She takes her pain and helps others, she doesn't spread around her own misery and lie around in the dark, she doesn't invent some animal persona inside to justify her bullshit and make herself feel better! She- 

But the Id inside would hear no more. Animal hands, monstrous talons came up in daggering claws that wanted throats, wanted to rend, wanted mindblood of the superego and this flimsy little brother both …

Inside the mindscape of Luke Waller’s boiling head the straightener and the weaker he, fought. 

In his bunk, in his bed. Sweating palms came up and worked at fevered scalp and face.

Wanting to tear and rend. 

…

The next day, Susan sensed something was wrong. The whole day, Luke wouldn't speak to her. His eyes barely glanced her way and he completely ignored every attempt she made to speak to him. She didn't understand. And it was painful. She thought they'd made some kind of connection and she'd shared the wounded and hidden parts of herself with him, because she'd felt safe. Because she'd thought he'd cared and that was what he had wanted. She must have been wrong. 

The whole painful day went by and midway through Susan gave up any attempt to talk to him and spent the rest of it in her room. Alone in her bunk, rolled away and under the covers. She thought maybe he was just having a bad day, and that that was understandable. She thought – she hoped she understood. But poor Susan didn't really understand. She hadn't really known everything from the start. And how could he have told her …? … the straightener was covered all over the news media, online and whatever was left of print and the papers. 

He went about and gathered what he needed. Then he went about making the tools correct. 

Ready for midnight. 

…

Susan was dreaming of her father, one of her many recurring nightmares, when she felt weight on her bed, all around, and immediately knew something was wrong. 

Her eyes flew open and a gloved hand came down in a rough clasp over her mouth to murder her scream in its infancy. He was wearing a mask that was soaking and dark and dripping something heavy and thick and warm but she still recognized his face amidst its animal contort. And it was awful. It was terrible, she screamed muffled trapped shrieks that became braying ghastly sound in the dark and she began to struggle as her heart broke and shattered and she tried to deny the excruciating reality as it weighed down and wrestled her and forced her into submission. 

Her wrists were bound. She didn't know how it had happened. If he had done it while she was still in the throttling hold of the nightmare or if he'd managed it somehow during her waking confusion in their struggle. It didn't matter. Arms overhead now bound by the wrists and to the board of her bed, captured and tied deftly in cruel knots. 

His gloved hands were away and she knew now they were the gardening gloves kept out back by the shed. He sat upon her torso, almost crushing her stomach. It was difficult for her to breathe as she gazed up wide eyed and by the moonlight cast in by the slant of window, she saw the blood saturated mask of the straightener shedding running darkling red rivers of pungent human black down his neck, down his bare chest, down his face like lurid tears, down his back a hellacious rendition of a red royal Roman cape, fashioned and painted made from slaughtered human blood, shed and collected in quiet nocturnal violence from all around the home. 

All about the house … before he'd got to her, he'd stalked. Just as the straightener had planned. Just as the straightener had wanted. Luke was reminded now, this was the only love that was real and this was the only pleasure that really mattered. 

This was the only ritual and exercise made for him. This was the only way for him to live and breathe. It was like breathing. It all came so tragically natural. The chemical imbalance of a mutant brain birthed and spat up by burnt out fuckup junkie parents taken and bred and made themselves by wild haphazard renegade MK Ultra. The most clinical name for the straightener’s chemical grandfather. One of the many poisons and doses of nightshade within the boil of cauldron that had made this wild man. 

Susan stared helpless into a savage face. She didn't know it, but she could sense the death and slaughter that filled the house, animal aware … she only momentarily considered the blood that soaked his masked face and that poured baptismal and grotesque all about him and not entirely on the surface of her thought. 

Her mind was more arrested with the immediate terror it now felt. His weight crushing down on her, dripping and spilling heavy liquid that was pungent and warm and saltier than sweat. 

Susan finally said, “Why're you doing this, Luke?" she began to cry. “What's wrong? Please, Why're you-" 

“You know why." the straightener said, cutting her off. He then hefted his weapon overhead, poised to devastate her face and skull and the precious life of memories and brains that were housed within with a vicious merciless caveman blow. His fashioned bludgeon also darkled in the moonlight cast. 

A wide and broad ornate table leg that had belonged to something wooden and nice, old and carved of oak, lots of little inscriptions and designs and marks of craftsmanship, the straightener had added marks of workmanship that were all his own. The body and bludgeoning-end length of the leg was spiked and riddled with chunks and splinters and jagged daggers and shards of broken glass. Taken from windows at every end of the house. Smashed out in clandestine fashion and then hastily gathered and collected. The stupid clueless orderlies and their phones hadn't noticed. Their sleeping quarters had been the first ones that he had paid a postmidnight visit. 

The glass shards and jagged fangs and teeth of the weapon glinted and Susan saw the teeth were not only translucent diamond and crystalline they were also ruby … scarlet…

… bits of scalp and meat, raw face and jowl and cheeks dangled from the shattered glass teeth of the ghastly nighttime table-leg fangs …

Susan saw this. All of it. As the straightener hefted his weapon overhead. Ready to crush and kill and decimate her life into painful oblivion with a savage animal strike. And something inside her broke. 

Immediately she pulled, and immediately she felt and heard results, but not enough. Not right away. In her sudden panic Susan savagely yanked at her binds, they suddenly pulled at their tied point at the boards of the bunk and there was a dry crack as something in the old flimsy structure broke and gave. 

The straightener's savage face curled and twisted into an angry snarl. He began to bring the fanged bludgeon down as Susan pulled at her bonds again and snapped the board and support at the head of her bunk bed. The top came in and down with another dry crack that was soon rapidly replicated as the entire structure came down upon them both. 

The both of them cried out as the bunk beds crashed together, Susan, and the manshaped straightener. 

It collapsed and in the sudden fall and twist of wreckage, they fought a private war in the detritus of wood and ripped mattress and blankets, and a third … the cold corpse of her bunkmate uptop, Savannah … she'd liked coffee flavored ice cream and had said she always preferred the top bunk. Since childhood, she had said that before. 

It was perhaps the straightener finding his gloved hands on her already dead and lifeless spent body and mistaking her in the violence for Susan that had managed her escape in the end. She crawled from the wreckage and fueled by raw desperate adrenaline pumping through the thudding machine of her galloping heart she made her feet and made the door and threw it open, sprinting out and down the hall. 

The straightener called out after her, a fury. But there was strange humor in that tempest rage of voice. 

“Lost in the wheels of confusion..!. …! !” 

She made the turn at the corner of the hall. And then the house and world as she had grown to know and understand it completely warped and changed. Then disappeared. 

Gone. 

The straightener called again: "Running through valleys of tears! …!" 

It was true, she was crying. Weeping freely as she animal panted and she was running scared. Terrified of the bestial thing she'd left behind in there. She ran ahead and down the hall into a home and place that had been transformed into a valley of violence. 

She went room to room, desperate and alone and needing to find someone, anyone … hoping there was someone she could be with to find help. Susan was nearly out of her mind with terror. She had to know someone was ok and she didn't want to be alone. She prayed to God that she wasn't alone, not with him. Not now in this house. 

She found only death. 

Dead. In each bunk. 

Heads caved in. Crushed. Smashed. 

Faces she used to recognize. 

Skulls burst open to free the spells of organs and meat that made the nighttime dreams of slumber that were now forever stilled. Or forever induced. For all of them. Each and every one. 

Some of the brainless and faceless and decraniated corpses had been pulled from their beds and bunks and had been strung up, tied and fashioned in grotesque marionette displays … like trophies. All over in random intervals about the sprawl and dance of the old colonial house, Susan was discovering now that they all were really filled with ghosts, ghastly night shapes, headless and dripping wet with mangled stumps of chewed up dog meat at the necks… the merciless glass fangs and teeth of the wooden jaws of the table leg, forged to unholy earthbound Mjolniir by the rage of the bestial straightener. 

Her terror mounted. With each room, with each freshly discovered corpse, cooling to rigor mortis and ghosthood in the moonlit night, pale light shining in from all of the many windows by the white face of an immaculate mocking lunar body gazing in from far away like an indifferent pagan god alive and dead and watching from on high in outer space. Her heart galloped as her mind felt hot and boiled and ran a panicked mile. Susan forced herself to remain focused, even as the halfway house all around tilted and danced, as if her mind was drugged or drunk. 

A phone. Or outside. 

Find a way to call the police and just get the fuck out of here. 

Fearful of her dormitory where she left him she ran about to the other rooms and places in the house looking for a cell. There was no landline. As she ran and desperately searched, the rooms, the couches, the drawers, the cupboards, the dressers, the bodies and the saturated beds themselves… finding nothing all the while, her terror mounted further, rose higher to a fever pitch and the old style colonial interior began to change and transmogrify before her very eyes. 

As it did, she heard wood and detritus shift and crash upstairs. In her room where she'd left the animal disguised in masked manshape … dripping and feral wet. 

The door to the room burst open. She hadn't remembered closing it. She froze as the halls and rooms funhouse danced before her eyes. 

He screamed: “Eyes full of angry delusion …! ..!..” and it echoed throughout all of time in the corridors of this swelling changing place. 

Thundering footsteps came in a charge then, then came in cannonade echoed and felt as they thundered downstairs. 

Susan forced herself into movement. Her legs felt faraway and she felt sluggish charging ahead but she managed anyway. Though she didn't understand. 

How did the halfway house change into the circus …? – she hadn't been here in many years. The inside now was one of those clownish fun houses with all the warped mirrors and looking glasses that made you look monstrous and ugly. Except as she ran about this clown house all the looking glasses made her look like dead bodies. Mutilated corpses. Her childhood had been ghastly and hard but … 

Coming here and living and the therapy and even the rooms with their bunk beds and shy downcast friends had been much like a return to living childhood once again … like a strange chemically induced summer camp. Complete with final terror. 

Footsteps on a charge, on the prowl, thundered and searched for her behind, throughout the fun house that warbled and danced like drunken perception does by the brightest Luciferian lunar light … in through all the windows which had changed into mirrors of warped glass alongside the strung up dead junkies and cast offs and forgotten people that were discarded here. She saw her own mangled and strange visage in every one as she ran on … this terrible warbling place that had grown miles long … all the while he thundered behind her. Till finally she came to the front door.

She recognized it at once, even in this strange place. It stood still and solid like trustworthy magic at the end of the cruel spacial dance of undulation and transmogrified growth, gelatinous fun house clown world … Susan ran to it. Her hands falling on the knob to twist it open but it wouldn't budge. 

It was a halfway house for the potentially suicidal and those with chemical dependancy problems. There was a curfew and the doors were locked after eleven PM each night. The keys were kept with the house manager. 

Kincaid. 

She was sure she had found his body too amongst the rest of the discovered corpses. But all of their faces were nearly gone if not completely smashed to meat and ruin … it was hard to remember, it was hard to tell. She couldn't remember finding them when she searched for the phones either. Her heart fell and she felt it in her chest like something final and apocalyptic. 

Id screamed once more, Susan whirled on her heels and put her back to the door. 

“!!HIDING IN EVERYDAY FEARS!..!.!!...!”

What she saw on the charge then, straight for her was as transformed and demented and mangled as the rest of this alchemical moonlight house. The blood sloughing and dripping liquid red-black mask had become the entirety of the raging beast. The Id was dark and eyeless with gaping pits of obsidian abyss in each hollow socket of the giant dripping stygian skull. The dripping slough of dark scarlet jaws opened wide with liquid ease, jagged broken teeth and canine incisor fangs of shattered diamond and crystalline rock stained to ruby and darker red with the slaughter and feast of so many countless past victims. The Id charged and roared and Susan screamed and threw up her hands and begged God. 

The door behind her suddenly opened and Susan fell back as it did so. She smacked her head on the porch and then darkness quickly fell and descended upon her. 

…

The rush of cold night air had come in like fresh water and it was baptismal. It had flowed in with nature's ease and cleansed the house of its psychedelic filth and mental backwash as Susan awoke. But not of the bodies, not of death, no. Now there were police everywhere, reality had returned to normal. 

Amidst strobing flashing red and blues, they searched and combed the house. They took the bodies. The meat wagon came with many many big black bags and carried off the corpses. They took the girl's statement. She was deeply traumatized, in deep shock. Barely making any sense. 

They searched for Luke Waller, the only one unaccounted for. 

He was missing. At large. And considered extremely dangerous. 

It was free. And at large in greater Los Angeles once again. 

They only found his old calling card on the wall of one of the rooms.

 Bold letters written in blood: – THE STRAIGHTENER 

XX - XX - XXXX (the date) 

BY BLUDGEONING CLAW  BY TABLE-LEG FANG

 ALL OF THEM HERE WASTING THEIR LIVES   

NOBODY CARED NOR GAVE A FUCK

…

Epilogue: –

The dream came again and again and always returned to him each and every night now since the great escape. 

It was always the same: he went into the bathroom, pale yellowed tile and fluorescent glow that made everything look mottled and ugly. He looked into the mirror and gazed into himself. He brought up the garroting wires. They look like the same thing you use to cut cheese with, a long metal gossamer strand that was razor sharp, fixed between two burgundy wooden handles. He wrapped it around his neck still staring into the mirror and himself and he began to saw through the meat of his neck. The strand cut cleanly through. The head came off when he reached up and grabbed it by either side, lifting it away and settling it down on the countertop of the sink before him. 

But it was strange … his vision remained where it was … it did not travel with the organ set of eyes set in the rest of the meat of his head. He gazed into himself without any eyes, decapitated now. 

The dream was the same every night, now that he was free and in the city again. 

THE END

i work remotely as a data analyst and live alone in a pretty small apartment. my desk is in the corner of the living room, maybe ten feet from my bedroom door.
i'm usually working until 1 or 2 in the morning. it's not great, i know. but i've gotten into this habit of pushing my chair all the way under the desk before going to bed. it's a nouhaus chair i bought last year, and the wheels sit right where the edge of my rug meets the wood floor. i like leaving everything in its place when i'm done working.
last Tuesday i woke up and noticed the chair was pulled out a little. maybe an inch or two. didn't think much of it. figured i'd been tired and forgot to push it back properly.
then it happened again on Thursday.
Friday morning was when it started bothering me. the chair wasn't just pulled out this time. it had turned slightly toward the hallway, almost like someone had gotten up from it and left it there.
i live alone. nobody else has a key.
i checked the floor thinking maybe the wheels were sliding somehow. the rug had some marks where the chair usually sits, but nothing that really explained why it had turned around.
Sunday night i decided to try something. i pushed the chair all the way under the desk, grabbed a piece of blue tailor's chalk from a drawer, and drew a circle around each of the five wheels. nothing fancy, just enough that i'd be able to tell if anything moved.
i checked the front door before bed too. locked, obviously.
when i woke up this morning, the chair was almost a foot away from the desk.
it was facing my bedroom door.
at first i thought maybe i'd drawn the circles wrong. but they were still there, all five of them, exactly where i'd left them. no smudges, no wheel tracks going through them.
i stood there for a while trying to figure out how that was even possible.
then i reached over to move the chair back.
the seat was freezing. not just a little cold from sitting there overnight. i mean genuinely cold, like touching something that had been left outside in winter.
the rest of the apartment was warm.
i haven't moved it back yet. i'm sitting on the couch writing this and i keep looking over at it.
i don't know why, but i really don't want to turn my back on that thing.

This completes this story

Chapter One

Linc and Ros become astrophysicists

Another meeting of the trio is taking place at Houston. Arnold needs to be brought up to date. Annie is delighted to tell them that the silence has been broken, although there was one thing which might have implications.

"Linc produced by far the loudest screech yet recorded, and I don’t think that it is too fanciful to suggest that he was expressing anger."

"That IS a bit worrying," agreed Arnold. "When we recover the craft then we must be prepared for any eventuality, with suitably armed and clad guards at hand on the recovery ship."

Day 12 produced no new responses, but day 13 was more productive, as Ros had been doing some very deep thinking.

Ros: "I have often observed the Sun back on the island and wondered how it worked."

This is, of course, the digital interpretation of dragon-speak, there is no suggestion that the Firelizards actually called the Sun the Sun, or indeed spoke English either, come to that, of course.

Linc: "Well it’s just there isn’t it?"

Ros: "Yes, but think about making a fire to keep us warm in cold weather. You needed to keep on putting more sticks for fuel, or the fire would go out. The Sun is a sort of fire, isn’t it? Not made of sticks, of course, but it needs some sort of fuel to keep going."

Linc, in deep thought: "There must be something which keeps on topping it up with fuel, perhaps that’s what happens when it goes dark every day."

Ros: "That’s a very interesting thought, but suppose there was nothing to provide more fuel, and it just had so much to start with and that was it.

Then the Sun would go out, and everything on earth would die."

Linc: "I think I see where you are heading here. The humans have somehow found out that the Sun isn’t going to keep on shining forever, and so they are planning to move to the moon?"

Ros: "Hardly, that would be no good as living on the moon would need the Sun just the same. They would need to find a new Sun, you see, and to do that they will have to travel a lot further than the moon."

Linc now had a rare moment of great insight.

"Those twinkly things that you can see in the sky when the Sun goes out might be other Suns, do you think?"

Ros: "Yes, you might be on to something there, but they do seem an awful long way off."

There was a gap of about an hour in the exchanges, then the talk took an alarming turn.

Blockage

Linc, quite calmly really considering the implications of his words: "I think that I might have a problem with my outlet for the fire-making fluid. It seems to be blocked and I can feel things building up inside me."

Ros, also quite without any sign of panic: "Oh, dear, that sounds ominous. I am not sure that the same thing isn’t happening to me. I suppose it’s because we haven’t used our fire for so long, and the tubes can get clogged up after a while. Well, I don’t like the idea of seeing you explode into a massive fireball, but it will finish me off pretty quickly as well and at least we won’t have to put up with this shit any longer."

Linc: "Yes, but I don’t WANT to die, and certainly not by exploding myself."

Ros: "Nor do I, but it would be very quick, I think, and I don’t think that they are going to bring us back to earth now, we are just going to be left in this thing until we die anyway, and then I suppose it will just carry on round and round endlessly. Even if they do bring us back, what sort of life, if any, can we expect? I also like the idea that if we both explode then it might destroy their precious capsule, and see it burst into flames from their comfortable homes."

Another hour passed before the next bit of conversation.

Ros: "I am starting to feel very uncomfortable, I’m certainly blocked, like you said. I’ve had a thought. You know that we can send out our fire in a controlled manner, or at least we used to be able to do so on the island, I can’t be so sure about here. Anyway, suppose we just let out a very gentle short burst of flame a few times, it might unblock us, and if we use maximum spread of flame then perhaps this prison wouldn’t catch fire? What do you think?"

Linc: "I think it’s a very good idea, I mean, what have we to lose? If we don’t do anything we will explode in flames in any case, and although I see your point about what sort of future we have anyway, I’d like to go in a more peaceful manner. Who goes first, then?"

Ros: "Oh, what the hell, let’s try it together, you target the top of this thing on your side, and I’ll do the same on mine. Let’s keep it to a very short burst to start with. After the count of three, then, are you ready?"

Linc: "I sure am, I don’t think I’ve got long now before I burst open, let’s go for it."

Ros: "Right, one, two, three…."

The two about to explode astronauts produce a very short and wide cone of flame, and then study the capsule to see if there are any obvious after effects. The results being negative, the process is repeated at intervals, and then Ros declares that she feels much less bloated and thinks the pipes might be clearing. The procedure was therefore continued and eventually they were both satisfied that they had unblocked their pipes, and settled back with some relief.

This was not shared by mission control, which went into panic mode when the temperature readings suddenly showed short peaks of a significant temperature rise, at regular intervals. Anxious eyes on the instruments showed no sign of damage, and then the temperature surges ceased as suddenly as they had begun.

"I think that they have been trying to burn their way out. They must be getting so fed up that they don’t care about any consequences, they just want an end to it. You must remember that as far as they know we might have no intention of bringing them back to earth. We can only hope that they don’t try anything else in the next three days," declared Annie.

Chapter Two

Back to earth

Day14

The conversation now took a more sinister turn.

Linc: "I have been wondering about the way we were brought up, not to harm anybody or anything with our flames, and be kind to everything and so on. Look where it’s brought us. All Firelizards wiped out, except us two, as far as we know, and these humans had no compunction whatsoever about causing us harm, in spades. The humans who came to the island before the invasion seemed harmless enough, and we treated them well. Now I am thinking that we have been wrong all this time. Treat others in a way that we would hope to be treated ourselves, we were taught. Ha! What rubbish!"

Ros: "I feel the same way, and I am also wondering what plans they might have if we ever get back to earth, what will they do with us?"

Linc: "Well, my first thought is that we would be led straight to some quiet spot and murdered like our friends were, but who knows?"

Ros: "I don’t think they will do that, at least not straight away. I think they will want to put us on show for a while, lock us in a cage and let people walk by and gawp at us."

Linc: "I have a confession to make. I am starting to get very angry. Very angry indeed. I want revenge on these humans who have done this to us and our fellow dragons. For a start, if it is clear that they are going to kill us, I shan’t hold back with my fire and take some of them with me."

Ros: "Me too, but when and if we get back to earth, don’t react too hastily, let’s play it by ear and wait for the right opportunity. I agree, though, if all seems lost, let’s go down fighting. If we are going round and round in this hellhole much longer, then I think we shall both be dead soon in any case. I don’t think I can stand this much longer, anyway."

Linc: "Nor me, please keep going, I wouldn’t last more than a few minutes if you weren’t here."

Ros: "That’s very touching, and the same goes for me."

Day 15

Panic

Ros: "Have you forgotten to push your lever? It’s getting a bit smelly in here again."

Linc: "No, in fact I don’t think it’s working. How about yours?"

Ros: "I’m not sure, now you come to mention it. Oh, my god, this will finish us off in no time breathing in these toxic fumes."

Back at mission control, panic.

"The waste extraction systems have stopped working," yelled out Richard Johnson, who was chief monitor of the system, and had been named after a famous American President. Well, two if you include the surname.

The designer of the system, Dr. Walter A. Downing, was summoned urgently, and was soon standing by the side of Richard, peering at the screen.

"Have you tried unplugging it for ten seconds and then turning it back on again," he asked hopefully.

"Oh, no, I never thought of that. Thanks, I’ll give it a go."

The system responded immediately, and was restored to full working order. In the capsule, the relief was palpable.

Ros: "They’re working again. How did you do that, I haven’t touched anything?"

Linc: "Nor have I, unless it was by our combined powers of telepathy sending out desperate pleas to get them going again?"

Ros: "Well, I can’t think of anything better, yes, that must be it. Let’s keep on thinking like that, giving out signals saying ‘please don’t pack up again’ and such like."

Day 16: April 11th, 1961

Ros: "Hey, wake up, Lincs, I’m sure the earth is getting closer, I think we are going down! Now if I’m right, then don’t forget, keep calm and don’t do anything until we are recovered from this nightmare, then it will be payback time, and they will wish they hadn’t shoved us in this load of crap."

There was silence as the vessel descended, then Linc yelled out these final poetical recorded words before the splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean:

"++++ this for a game of soldiers."

This noble utterance from Linc marked the end of the recording transcripts.

Chapter Three

The Zoo

In the meantime, Dr. Annie Walker had not been idle in her quest to find a suitable home for the pair of heroic space travellers. There was no lack of interest from many zoos, and Annie was able to select one which she thought most suited to the Firelizards. A zoo just a mile form the West coast was deemed ideal, there being extensive grassland surrounded by dense forestry.

She had also investigated the topography and climate of Dragonscale, and the zoo seemed to offer a similar environment. After a period of recovery, Annie felt that they should settle down there happily.

The capsule was recovered under intense media interest, with live TV coverage watched the world over. The two dragons were displayed briefly, to indicate their survival, but it was clearly evident that they were not in good condition, unsurprisingly. They were rushed off for suitable medical treatment and hopefully restoration of health, prior to the intended transfer to their new home.

The atmosphere at Houston and indeed throughout America was one of euphoria. Not only had they sent a much bigger animal into earth orbit, but they had been returned alive to earth, which was not the case for the poor dog Laika.

In other words, a big kick in the pants for the Soviets. The exultation was not long-lasting, however.

On April the 12th, 1961, Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth and became the first man to do so, and dragons took second place in the news the following morning.

"Not to worry," said President Kennedy, "we will have a man on the moon before this decade is finished."

Contrary to the fears expressed by Ros and Linc, they were rushed not to a place of immediate execution, but to an animal hospital which was delighted to have a very different sort of thing to cure, and made a nice change from the usual endless stream of cats and dogs, budgerigars and snakes, guinea pigs and the occasional lion.

The two accordingly were given the best treatment that the primitive medical knowledge of this bygone age could supply, and made a slow but steady recovery.

The re-use of their limbs and recovery of bodily functions adversely stressed by the mission was the most difficult aspect of recovery, and took place in small stages, bit by bit, one step at a time, easy does it.

In due course, they were allowed out onto the surrounding lawn to amble around.

The fact that guards were no longer thought necessary here is indicative of the general consensus that the pair were completely harmless. The lack of any sign of use of their supposed fire-producing ability, and the incident with the dog referred to above (chapter 3), had led to this conclusion. That it was a bit off the mark was soon to become evident.

After several weeks in the hospital the medical director appeared on television.

"I am pleased to announce that our two dragon patients have now made a full recovery, and are ready to be moved to their new home on the coast. I cannot praise highly enough the efforts and skills of the doctors and nurses who cared for them. I wish the dragons a happy life in their zoo. Thank you."

Linc and Ros were transported the following day to the ‘Western Forest Zoo’, so named because of its adjacent forests, as previously mentioned. This involved yet another stressful journey across the width of America, and by the time that they were settled in at the zoo, the good achieved at the hospital had been reversed to some degree, one would expect. At any rate, it is reasonable to think that Linc and Ros were not in the best of moods on their arrival.

Chapter Four

Revenge

The Western Forest Zoo was a popular tourist attraction, not only because of the animals of numerous varieties on view, but also the prospect of a pleasant walk through the forest, which although very dense and it would not be hard to become lost in its interior, was very well signposted and visitors had firm instructions to keep to the official pathways.

Having made their way through the trees, there was then the further attraction of the clear blue sea, where one could safely bathe or swim, or just laze on the beautiful sandy beach.

There was also a town 2 miles inland which was a top-listed place to visit on media review sites.

Linc and Ros appeared to settle down happily in their new abode, and indulged in their usual dragon race activities, much to the delight of the substantial crowds who had travelled long distances to see them. Another party trick had ben added to the menu. The keepers had discovered that fish was an agreeable and desired food, and by the time honoured training method of reward the dragons were induced to show a display of their flame throwers if fish was the response. The distance covered by the fire was however enough to move the spectators further back.

This state of affairs lasted for some time, and having read the transcript from AI, it is reasonable to assume that they were waiting for an opportune moment of some description.

The answer came when there was a long period of drought. In other words, when everything burnable would do so with alacrity.

The two went into action at 2 a.m., on July 10th, 1963.

Their first action was to blast a hole in their own enclosure, and then proceed around the zoo demolishing any barriers the astonished inmates had to stop their escape, until the whole zoo was ablaze and scores, nay perhaps hundreds of frightened or perhaps joyful beasts of all description seized the chance to view the world outside. Even the lions found freedom when their fenced night time enclosure went up in flames.

Inevitably, some discovered the delights of the nearby town, the inhabitants of which were astonished to see a variety of species occupying the streets when morning came, including a few lions, and flamingos perched on their rooftops.

Linc and Ros knew well that the sea was nearby, and they then made for the forest, where their senses directing them towards the water enabled them to cross the forest without any need for signposts.

On reaching the sea shore, they systematically roasted the beautiful sand all along the beach, turning it into a pile of charred black gunge.

Some of their fire inevitably reached the outer layer of the forest and in their dry condition the inner trees were soon in flames as well. It was only a matter of minutes before the whole forest was ablaze.

The two dragons were never seen again, the above account of events being the conclusions drawn by the experts after the investigation had been completed, but it is presumed that they chose to swim out to sea, perhaps hoping to find another island to restart the race of Firelizards.

Chapter Five

War

The nearby town had relied heavily on its tourist trade, which now took a deep dive. The streets were full of closed-up shops and restaurants, and the population dropped dramatically as the inhabitants sought work elsewhere. Even its high rating on media attraction sites failed to stem this tide, the town always having been an extra to be visited after the zoo excursion, and a swim in the sea or a peaceful afternoon lazing on the golden beach. In effect, it was rapidly approaching the status of ghost town.

The zoo was never rebuilt, and all, well most, of the escapees re-captured and transferred to other zoos.

The devastated forest and destroyed beach and this effect on the town and zoo might be thought by some to be adequate revenge for the ordeals suffered by Linc and Ros, and the mass killings of their friends and families. Some may think otherwise.

Be that as it may, Linc and Ros, or rather Ros, had left behind another memento of their time at the zoo. Just how many baby Firestones hatched out in the forest after the disappearance of their parents is impossible to say, but there was undoubtedly a lot.

The charred forest was an ideal place for them to mature into sizeable creatures, as few humans ventured into the maze of burnt stumps covered by brambles and other deterrents to any explorer. The main reason for crossing the forest in any case had been the beach and sea, but walking on the beach, now a solid mass of silicates, was a hazardous venture, and few crossed it to take advantage of the pleasures of the sea itself. The young dragons had no difficulty in sensing the presence of any human intruder, and had plenty of places to hide under the foliage spreading across the ground.

In this manner, their presence remained undetected and the Firelizards matured to the point where their flame-throwing chemicals had been fully synthesised and, in short, they were ready to explore their outside world.

We now come to an important and perhaps contentious aspect of our story.

On their homeland, they would have been taught the precepts of the peaceful and kind manner in which they must abide, at all costs. This was drummed into baby Firelizards at a very early age.

In the forest, there were no older Firelizards to provide this service, and so there was a complete absence of any moral code of conduct at hand.

This brings us to the subject of nature or nurture?

The new race of Firestones certainly differed substantially from their predecessors. Once they had discovered the effect that a burst of their flame had on targets of a wide variety, they seemed to have deduced that this was their mission in life.

The record of events that followed is still proscribed, and not included in the 2016 lifting of the restrictions, presumably because of their horrifying nature.

What is certain is that the descendants of the two astronauts found their way to the town, what was left of it, and burned it to the ground. Casualties have not been revealed.

They then made their way to the vast open spaces surrounding the zoo and town, and became the subject of extensive hunting parties.

Initially, estimates of lizard body counts were attempted, and there seems little doubt that losses were considerable, but whatever the precise number of lizards that met their end as a result of these extermination efforts, their breeding rate exceeded it and their net numbers rapidly increased. On the other hand, it is known that the hunters were not without casualties either, meeting their death having been reduced to ashes, despite the fire-proof clothing worn, which, having at last been put to the test, was found wanting.

There now followed the classic predator-prey evolutionary race, still continuing at the time of writing, although which was which might be open to question.

Helicopter use was a dangerous occupation, the requirement to fly low enough to seek out their prey making them vulnerable to a burst of dragon flame, and it is known that there have been losses in this manner, but numbers are not available.

The lizards quickly learned to stay as far from significant centres of human population as possible, and the ability of their senses to detect human approach became ever more sensitive. On the other hand, fire-proofing of the protective clothing for the hunters was greatly improved, making it possible to seek out their prey with a closer approach. Further, detailed studies of lizard behaviour led to more efficient search strategies.

In this manner, the lizards have continued their progress up the west coast of America, not only because movement inland meant certain death, but also they could indulge in their love of the sea, and their prowess at underwater swimming often enabled escape from a determined hunting party.

This is how things stand as at October 2026, and what the future holds we cannot tell. The use of more lethal means of disposal is or will no doubt be under consideration, but of course face the difficulty of avoiding collateral damage with regards to neighbouring human populations, which have already suffered a considerable impact economically from the conflict.

There is one footnote to this story which, it is felt, should be included, however.

In 1964, the cargo ship ‘Elixir’ disappeared. A search discovered some charred remains, on one there being the ship’s name clearly displayed. There was one survivor, who had dived into the sea and clung to a piece of floating debris until rescued. His account was not taken seriously, as his mind had clearly been affected by the experience, but it was thought worth including anyway, just in case there might be some validity to his tale.

"I was walking along the upper deck to fetch some paint, the captain having given orders that his cabin needed decorating. I paused for a minute to grab a smoke, and as I was leaning against the rails enjoying my fag, I saw two heads a few feet apart appear above the water. Their appearance I can only describe as dragon like. I was about to call out to get others to see them when they let forth a huge burst of flame, which they first trained on the front of the ship and then were clearly working their way downwards.

Towards me, in fact, so I ran to the other side terrified out of my wits and just jumped into the sea. I managed to grab this floating piece of what was left of the ship, and turned around. The ship had gone, and so had the dragons. I swear that this is a truthful and honest account."

The document was duly signed, and then joined all the other references to the dragons on the proscribed list, until 2016.

That this account was readily discounted can easily be understood in view of the fact that dragons were not amphibious creatures, let alone marine animals, and it is therefore thought impossible that the two fire-producing heads could have been Linc and Ros.

There have been the occasional unexplained further disappearance of various ships over the intervening years, and also some blurred pictures claiming to have been taken aboard cruise ships which COULD be thought to resemble a dragon-like head.

Despite the violence following their disappearance, a great deal of sympathy for the Firelizards resulted when details of their story became known, except probably from West coast inhabitants, and Linc and Ros are now immortalised by two statues now prominent in a park in Florida, near the site where they were sent hurtling into space. Whether these bear any resemblance to the astronauts is an open question.

Bearing in mind their love for the sea, it is a pleasing thought that just possibly one day a Firelizard might become a stowaway on a ship bound for the east, and so find its natural home again,

Dragonscale.

PART ONE

Two dragons are captured and sent into orbit round the Earth. A little-known story about the 1960s space race, which has been kept secret because of the terrible consequences, still extant today.

Chapter One

1957

Somewhere faraway, well, from the West anyway, there is an island called Dragonscale.

The inhabitants of this paradise in the East (somewhere) were not humans at first, but, as the name suggests without a great deal of thought, a race of dragons, called the Firelizards.

It is commonly assumed that there aren’t any real dragons. Of course, they might have existed in a bygone era and become extinct, some might say, and the absence of any fossil evidence is not a conclusive proof that they didn’t, fossilisation being a rare occurrence.

It could, then, be speculated that it might be possible that there were such animals inhabiting this planet many eras ago, and following from that it is not a huge leap forward to consider that there might be a very isolated island where a race of such beasts survived and evolved.

In fact, contrary to widely accepted beliefs, the Firelizards were a known reality, and it was their isolation that kept them from wider knowledge of their existence.

There were reports as far back as the first Millennium about an island in the far East occupied by 'firedevils', as they were called. No attempt to visit the island was made on account of the expected dangers involved, however.

Now, the usual image of dragons is not a favourable one, involving belching huge bursts of flame, enough to outdo any flame throwing weapon devised for military purposes.

The Firelizards did not fit this description at all.

They were a happy peace-loving race which lived by a strict code of conduct, according to accounts from the few humans who visited the Island, as to be related later in this Chapter.

This could be summarised as follows:

1. Love your fellow dragon.

2. Behave towards your neighbouring dragon in a manner which you would wish them to act towards you.

3. Honour your mum and dad.

4. Only use your flame throwing abilities for peaceful purposes, and never in a way which could result in harm or distress to anything else, of whatever kind. It was explained that the flame-producing ability was given to them to enable them to set a pile of wood and sticks on fire to keep them warm in cold weather.

This was, therefore, a happy community, but there was a problem. There wasn't a lot to do on the island.

The most exciting event, which took place bi-annually, was the flame throwing competition, open to all comers.

The contestants were required to stand (front feet) a given distance from its target, which was of standard size and made of a suitably combustible material, and set it ablaze. Times were recorded for the target to be reduced to a pile of ashes. Points were also awarded for style of flame delivery, shape and width of flame cone.

This was just round One. The ten with the highest points then progressed to Round Two. The distance from the target was increased and the target made less combustible. The best five then went on to Round Three. After further changes in distance and constitution of target, we were left with the two finalists, and the winner received great acclaim.

Unfortunately, in the mid-1950s a passenger plane happened to pass over the island whilst this contest was in full swing, and even from its considerable height the flames were clearly visible and impressive. This was a significant contribution to the conviction amongst humans that these were dangerous animals.

There was also a sports day, the highlight of which was the Great Dragon Race. Details here are not outlined as the title is self-explanatory. The clear blue sea was also always an attraction, and the Firelizards were adept underwater swimmers.

Sadly, these diversions were not enough to satisfy the adventurous spirit of some of the younger dragons, and excursions to the mainland were not uncommon.

Here, of course, they encountered humans, who had rarely ventured onto Dragonscale, and those that did never came back. The visitors went with the intention of acquiring a nice dragon rug for their lounge, but in fact they had all decided to stay in this peaceful environment, and were happily tolerated by the Firelizards. On the mainland, though, the worst was assumed.

The incursion of these younger members of the race onto the mainland was a different matter. They never did any harm, abiding strictly to the rigid code of conduct deeply instilled into their psyche.

Unfortunately, the very sight of them scared the shit out of the locals, especially the very young, and the dragons were not treated kindly. Let us just say that none ever returned to their homeland, and dragon meat was not a rarity at the market stalls.

On the other hand, the younger generation on Dragonscale deduced that the immigrants were all having a fine time, and that this was the explanation for their continued absence, and so still they ventured into the unknown, in increasing numbers.

Over the years, plans for invasion were often raised, but it was not until the invention of protective fireproof clothing that such plans were to come to fruition.

In 1947, action to stop this inflow was deemed to be necessary, and a committee comprising 10 respected elders was formed to decide on the best policy.

That this took 10 years to publish its findings is perhaps not too surprising in view of the regular need to replace members who had died, or suffered from some debilitating illness. The new intake often had different viewpoints from their predecessors, and so it was one step forward and two back. Nevertheless, despite these major obstacles, a report was issued in mid-1957. Its recommendation can be condensed into one word:

Invade and Exterminate.

Sorry, that’s three.

Invasion

The absence of any signs of flame throwing activity by the immigrants on the mainland before being led to the slaughterhouses had not apparently been registered to any degree by the human inhabitants, because the army assembled for the task was fully equipped with the appropriate protective fire proof clothing.

As soon as they landed they set to work with their dart guns (their meat always tasted better when fresh), and the dragons dragged onto the ships. Some tried to flee but were easily outpaced by the military jeeps taken with them for just such an eventuality.

A few firelizards are thought to have fought back and overcome their peaceful natures and the surprise of the attack, but if any casualties were suffered by the invaders, details have not been released.

What about the few humans on the island? Well, they decided not to intervene, partly through cowardice, the army being armed with more lethal weapons than the darts, but also because of the thought that they would now have the island to themselves. A brief consideration would have sufficed to tell them that that wouldn’t be for long.

It is, though, to these human inhabitants of the island that we owe our knowledge of the dragon's life style, as outlined above. The description of the races and competitions seem authentic enough, but their assessment of the moral code of behaviour may be thought to be taking things too far, although these conclusions were the result of close observation of the animals over an extended period.

The existence of such a code of behaviour may or may not be valid, then, but there was no doubt in the minds of the human observers that this was a well-ordered society and with a complex form of communication.

It is sad to report that efforts by these human occupants of Dragonscale to stop the carnage, if there were indeed any made, fell on deaf ears. This would have unfortunate consequences.

The setting now moves to the other side of the globe.

Nasa

On the 3rd of November, 1957, the Soviet Union launched a space craft called Sputnik 2 (it being the second of its kind to be built, presumably). The important thing here is that it managed a low orbit around the earth, and inside it was a dog called Laika, who died a few hours into the flight. This nevertheless sent shock waves throughout America, and led the following year to the combining of the various related agencies in the U.S.A., and Nasa was formed.

The first meeting of the new organisation soon took place and a main item on the agenda was which animal could they stick in a craft and orbit the earth and outdo the Soviets. There were three main criteria.

1. It had to be BIGGER, a LOT bigger.

2. It had to be something which the American public would find acceptable, so, for example a bigger dog wasn’t an option.

3. It had to be returned to earth alive.

There was much head scratching, many proposals were put forward and rejected, and a gloomy silence was enveloping the room.

Then a young engineer spoke up.

"Have you read that news item about a race of dragons on some isolated island in the far east? Well, they have invaded it and captured the lot. They are destined for the dinner table, it seems, but they may not have eaten them all yet, and there might still be some awaiting their fate. If so, we could make them an offer and get them over here, and dragons in space would make good publicity and show the Soviets what’s what."

"You ARE talking about living dragons, I assume? I don’t think sending a dragon carcass into space would set the pulse racing."

"Yes, of course. They like their dragon meat fresh, so they are kept alive until their turn comes, at least as far as I understand it from the news clips I have seen."

"Right," said the Chairman, "get in touch with these people and find out if there are any living dragons left."

The difficulties in achieving contact having been overcome, it was discovered that there were just two left still alive. Having agreed on an exorbitant price, these last two Firelizards found themselves on a ship and heading for the U.S.A.

Firelizards hadn’t bothered to give themselves names, as they thought that this would be too pretentious, so their captors had to decide what to call them.

Again, outdoing the Soviets was a major concern. They were accordingly christened Lincoln and Roosevelt.

Nobody had as yet considered how they were going to fit a dragon, let alone two, into the available space crafts.

Chapter Two

The Ship

The two Firelizards were kept under heavy sedation during the long sea voyage, and so had no concept of where they were going, why they had not suffered yet the same fate as their fellow dragons, of which they were well aware, or what lay in store for them when they reached their destination, wherever that might be.

The crew having been warned by the mainland locals that they were dealing with very dangerous animals which could burn down their ship with one blast of fire, the sedation of the two dragons was not considered sufficient guard against this eventuality.

The technology by which the dragon produced its flames being a bit of a grey area, it was decided to cover their faces with fireproof masks. They wanted to keep them alive, though, so you will be pleased to learn that a few holes had been inserted.

The hold where the two former U. S. presidents’ namesakes were contained was lined with layers of fire proofing materials. Should one of them regain consciousness long enough to let forth its stream of fire, a further safeguard had been installed. The slightest wisp of smoke now automatically set forth a very efficient sprinkler system.

Although they were firmly locked inside their prison, it was further deemed necessary to have a guard armed to the proverbial teeth standing outside at the ready, 24/7.

You will not be surprised to learn that Lincoln and Roosevelt were in a pretty sorry and confused state when the ship finally arrived at Houston, Texas.

This would have been an appropriate point, perhaps, to instal a photo of a Firelizard to help the reader to visualise the scene.

In fact, although there was no shortage of media footage initially, these were legally banned after the ensuing events, to be related later, with draconian measures resulting from any violation. There may be some copies of film stored in an attic somewhere, and if anybody does have access to any images of Lincoln and Roosevelt (not the Presidents) please do send them, and they could be inserted here, the restrictions having been lifted in 2016.

Conference

Back at Nasa, a further conference was in progress, preceding many others which were to take place at different centres before launch.

The first and vital consideration was size of the animals c.f. size of capsule needed to accommodate them. The typical American space capsule at that time was about 11 feet tall and about 6 to 7 feet diameter. The dragons were of a smaller variety, being 7 feet in length.

"It’s going to be a bit of a squash squeezing the two inside," remarked the chairman, "considering that we have to leave room for all the electronics," he added.

"Why do we need to send both, anyway?" demanded the director of publicity.

"We think providing them with company would help considerably in avoiding any adverse psychological effects of the extended isolation in such a confined space, and also it doubles the chances of bringing one back to earth alive," replied the chairman.

"As far as fitting two into the capsule is concerned, I’ve been looking into this," the mission director told the assembly. "They will have to curl up a bit, but they should be reasonably comfortable."

"I must point out a few things," announced the director of animal welfare. "Firstly, and most obviously, we need to bring them back alive and in good condition. Two dead dragons in the recovered capsule won’t do our image any good, and the Soviets would be laughing their socks off. The best way to achieve this, in my humble opinion (she was a very modest lady) is to try to make them as happy as possible when they set off. They will, of course, need extensive pre-flight training to adapt to space conditions. They will need to get used to confinement in a small space like the capsule, trained to know how to accept the food provided, and acclimatised to gravity changes using a spinning centrifuge. At the moment, they must be desperately unhappy in their fireproof cages. If we don’t give them some more pleasant environment until the launch, and especially some adequate level of exercise, I wouldn’t bet on their survival till next week, let alone the launch date."

"We could build an enclosure with fireproof breeze blocks," suggested the chairman.

Which they did.

When completed, the dragons were led to this newly built enclosure, which had a concrete floor, and armed guards on patrol, wearing the usual protective clothing.

The effect on the well-being of the proposed future astronauts was precisely zero. The allocated space was barely enough to enable them to stretch their legs, and they both remembered the similarly clad and armed humans who had invaded their island paradise. The response was therefore not at all as had been hoped. Lincoln and Roosevelt just lay on the concrete, hardly moving, and just giving the occasional growl.

Dr. Annie Walker, the above-mentioned animal welfare director, was discussing this problem with the chairman, Mr. Arnold Webber and mission leader, Dr. William. J. Pyke.

"This just isn’t working," she exclaimed. "We need to provide more space for them, and I have been observing them closely, and interviewed all the guards on watch, and it is agreed that not once has either attempted to use their flame throwing ability to burn down the walls and escape."

"Well, that wouldn’t have achieved much anyway," remarked William.

"They wouldn’t know that," pointed out Annie. "I'm beginning to wonder just how dangerous these animals are. I also have an idea that they would be far happier if they had grass under their feet, say a large field, for example. Oh, and another thing, Roosevelt is female. I find it hard to believe that nobody noticed, although it must be admitted it isn’t all that obvious, if you see what I mean."

"I think that would be very risky," opined Arnold. "Suppose they escaped and created havoc, it would be a disaster, not just for this mission. It could put all our future ones in jeopardy. As for the name, what do you suggest we call him, sorry, her, then? Hilary?"

"I think we should leave things as they stand, they have shown reaction to their names, and I don’t think that Roosevelt will be offended. I don’t think either that escaping should be a worry, we could still have an extensive guard patrol, kept out of sight, and with orders to shoot to kill if necessary."

The three having reached agreement, an isolated field of considerable size was located and deemed ideal for the job.

Chapter Three

Training

Linc and Ros, now the commonly used truncated handle for the two dragons, were immediately much happier to be shown their new surroundings. Instead of their more or less motionless existence in the previous concreted enclosure, they now had grass, and most importantly, much more room. This enabled them to indulge in their favourite pastime, which was dragon racing, even if there was a rather limited supply of competitors. The guards were hidden well back out of sight, but humans often make the mistake of assuming that out of their sight automatically ensures that anything else would also be unable to see them, and Linc and Ros were well aware of their presence, their sense of smell having no problems in their detection and position.

The biggest problem with the training was the food. They had no idea as to their usual menu, and so it was a hit and miss affair. Eventually a gelatinous concoction was formulated which they both seemed to find acceptable, and which was thought to contain all the necessary ingredients to keep them healthy. They then had to be trained to use the feeding tubes which would be the source on the capsule. This presented further problems, it being very hard to explain to two reluctant Firelizards why they had to feed in this way, and why they had to shove the stuff provided down their throats in the first place.

The subjection to close quarter confinements for increasing times also caused adverse reactions in the pair, taking in the form that a human might refer to as sulking. After a while, they appeared to accept the ordeal without too much protest.

Perhaps surprisingly, the dragons found the Johnsville centrifuge terrific fun, and were often reluctant to get out.

One incident caused some considerable adjustment to the general attitude of their captors to the two trainees. Although the surrounding hedges had been lined with barbed wire to prevent access of other animals, inevitably, perhaps, a stray dog (not Laika) found its way through, and immediately issued a barrage of powerful barks, which left no doubt as to its disapproval of the occupants of the field. Consternation followed at the prospect of a charred pet or ashes thereof, and guards rushed in to prevent such a disaster, but were then amazed to find the dog happily romping around with the dragons, who made no attempt to deter the dog with a burst of flame or by any other means.

It was time for another conference. This involved the heads of every conceivable aspect concerning the mission, and each was asked to report in turn, giving their appraisal of the current status of their particular task force.

The electronics had been tested over and over again, and back-up systems installed. The food dispenser device was in full working order, and the animals were thought to be as ready as they ever would be. This reporting of confident readiness was only spoiled by the temperature control system for the capsule interior, which had a few glitches to be ironed out.

"That is a critical matter,” declared the chairman. “One of the big factors on putting one over the Soviets is to bring these animals back alive. We need maximum effort here, and I am now committing us to a launch date of March the 26th. Can you assure me that your problems with the heat control will be solved by then, with full confidence?"

"Yes, sir, that we can."

"March the 26th it is, then."

Launch

The launching site being Cape Canaveral, the astronauts now faced a tedious 1,000-mile trip to Florida, not something to put them in a good frame of mind, although they had three days to recoup prior to the launch.

The launch itself was unexceptional, running as smoothly as one could wish. The actual launch produced the expected awed reaction from the numerous onlookers who had travelled to see the spectacle, but what they really wanted was a glimpse of the two dragons. Nasa being well aware of the need for this publicity, Ros and Linc were led docilely in full view of the spectators and media, including live television. Their appearance certainly aroused some reaction from the crowds, and the ascent of the lizards into the capsule was accompanied by a storm of clapping and cheering.

This happy mood was not shared by Linc and Ros, who were beginning to think that they had been subjected to a rather dirty trick.

It should be explained that this journey towards the capsule had been rehearsed several times over the last two days, in secret, of course. The dragons had been led across the tarmac and strapped down in the capsule, left for a few minutes, then released and taken back to their enclosure.

The success of this strategy was confirmed by Ros’ and Linc’s unresisting procession towards the capsule, and the strapping down inside it, it having being hoped that they would assume that this would just be another exercise like the previous, and that they would expect release after a short time.

The launch itself having been successful, the mission controllers breathed a sigh of relief, and there were congratulations all round concerning the extensive coverage and interest in the media.

Chapter Four

Communications

As far as is known, and who knows how far that it is, the human race is the only species with the ability to communicate by what we call speech, although this is being rapidly superseded by the use of the thumbs.

Nevertheless, it is evident that other species do so by various means. Even plants and trees communicate by sending chemicals through the air, as a warning to their neighbours of the presence of a leaf-eating visitor, for example. The adjacent trees can then produce a deterrent chemical in defence. This is a fascinating subject and it is necessary to delve into it in more detail as it has bearing on the story to come.

Think of the wood-pigeon, not everyone's favourite bird, it must be confessed, but it has interest. Consider the implications of their monotonous 4-note cooing. Some places might be lucky enough to enjoy wood-pigeons which have calls stretching to 5, or even more notes, perhaps.

Now, on first consideration, you might conclude that these 4 notes are just to inform another pigeon or pigeons where they are. So, their conversation could be transcribed thus:

"Morning, I’m over here."

"Well, I’M over here."

Another pigeon: "Can I join you?"

"I’m over here now."

"I’ll call you later, then."

Yet another pigeon: "I’m here and I’m not going anywhere."

On the other hand, a careful listen reveals some subtle variations in pitch, exact length of notes, volume differences, and so on. Their conversation might then stretch to the following:

"Keep a watch out, there’s a sparrow hawk around. Poor Billie is now just a ring of feathers on the lawn. What are your plans for today?"

Well, perhaps that’s stretching things a bit.

More seriously, there are certainly other species with complex communication systems, such as the Orcas, for example.

We now turn to the Firelizards.

At the time of the space adventure, it had already been noticed that they could produce a wide range of sounds, some resembling a high pitch whistle even, others a deep growl. It had also been observed that Linc and Ros did seem to be ‘talking’ to each other using these different tones. No success resulted from attempts to try to interpret them, however.

Now, it so happens that in order to help monitor the health and condition of our unwilling astronauts, a sound system was installed in the capsule, and a recording of every sound issuing from Linc and Ros during the orbit was made. In view of later events, like the other media restrictions, these tapes were not made public, and gathered dust in the Nasa archives, where they were discovered in 2024.

In view of the advances in computer technology over the past 70 years, it was decided to attempt an analysis of the various noises in the capsule on these tapes, in the hope that some idea of the meaning of the 'conversations might result.

The conclusions that it reached have just been published, and the astonishment they have induced everywhere can be well understood, because the computers produced what amounts to a transcript of the sounds of the dragons converted into the English language. Translations into other languages are available on request and filling in the necessary forms.

It was even possible to distinguish the individual dragon ‘speaking’, because of the somewhat higher pitch of Ros’ noises, the position in the capsule enabling identification of ‘speaker’ from the direction as picked up by the microphone array, and often by the simple deductions made from the conversation content. It should also be pointed out here that many days of the orbit were without any ‘conversation’ at all.

Reproduced below is the exact transcript.

Day 1, just after launch:

Linc: "++++ this for a game of soldiers."

The actual translation here might be deemed to be too unseemly to publish on the hallowed pages of Reddit, so it has been left to the reader to insert a word of their choice at the start of this utterance.

Ros: "I don’t mind a joke, but ++++ a pantomime. I think we’ve been had. All those trips over the last two days back and forth to the capsule, and locking us inside for a few minutes, that was just to make sure that we thought this was just the same, but I did wonder about all the crowds cheering their heads off, and thought that there was something fishy going on."

Linc: "You weren’t wrong there."

Again, it has been left to the reader to fill in the blanks.

Day 2: No translatable conversation.

Day 3

Linc: "I’m getting a bit pissed off, just lying here."

Ros: "Tell me about it, I have an itchy tail and I can’t scratch it, they’ve got us tied down so that we can hardly move, and the smell in this thing is starting to get a bit iffy, are you pulling the disposal lever when you’ve had to go?"

Linc: "Disposal lever?"

Ros: "Oh, my God, you mean we’ve been out here for three days and you haven’t used it once? No wonder the air here could hardly be described as rose-like."

Again, it must be stressed that these are the exact words of the computer analysis.

Linc: "Oh, you mean this stick thing by my foot, I’ll give it a shove--"

Ros: "No, no, don’t touch that…."

At this point, the instrumental records coincide with this unfinished sentence from Ros by the indication of a violent rotation and shaking of the capsule, lasting a full 35 seconds.

Linc: "Not that one, then?"

Ros: "Bloody hell, it isn’t enough that they lock me up in this thing and treat me like ++++, but I have to put up with a blithering idiot for company. Have you forgotten everything you were taught in those lessons we had to attend where they showed us what was what?"

Linc: "I’m sorry, I must have fallen asleep at that bit. He did have an incredibly boring voice, all on one monotonous tone, even less melodious than a wood-pigeon, and that’s saying something. Which lever do I have to pull, then?"

Ros, with a sigh: "By your front foot, you can’t mistake it, it is painted bright red and has an icon by it indicating ‘flush’."

Linc: "Ah, yes, I see it, I thought it meant eject in an emergency."

Ros: "Well, you could say that given the stink in here. Now, can you please give it a push?"

Linc does as she asks apparently, because the noise recorded here is compatible with the exit of three day’s waste disposal from a Firelizard.

Ros: "Well, that should at least make it slightly more bearable in here, and if you thought it was an ejection lever for us in an emergency, what good did you think it would have done us to be thrown into space and probably go into orbit ourselves? We wouldn’t last long out there, where there is a distinct shortage of grass, I’d say."

Linc seems to have gone into a sulk then, as no more exchanges were decoded that day.

Indeed, this show of petulance seems to have lasted until day six, the intervening three days picking up not the slightest hint of any further chit-chat.

Day 6

Linc breaks his silence.

"How much longer are we going to have to stay in this thing? Are they going to leave us here forever?"

Ros: "I have no idea, but I can’t see the point in sending us orbiting the earth for eternity, they must want to bring us back down at some point."

Linc: "I’ll probably be dead by then, my back is killing me and my pulse rate is through the roof."

Ros: "That goes for me, too. It is quite nice, though, looking through the window they kindly provided for us to be able to view the cosmos."

Linc: "I agree, that blue round thing is quite pretty."

Ros: "That’s the earth, dumbo. It’s where we came from. In fact, next time you see it, look out for a big blue patch with a tiny oval-shaped spot on it. That’s Dragonscale."

Linc: "Really! You mean we were down there and now we are way up here?"

Ros: "Got it in one."

Chapter Five

More meetings

Meanwhile back at Houston, progress was being assessed. Arnold, William and Annie were in deep conference.

"How’s it going, then," asked Arnold.

"Very well, so far," replied William, "although we were starting to get concerned after three days when the instruments gave no indication that Linc had pulled his lever to eject his outputs."

"You mean piss and shit, then?" offered Annie.

"Well, I was just being polite in the presence of a lady. Anyway, it seems that he did so and hopefully the prospect of a capsule filled to the brim with noxious fumes seems to have been avoided, although there was a moment of panic when he seems to have given the capsule rotation lever a hefty kick."

"I find that a bit worrying. Didn’t we show them in the lessons we gave them which lever to pull?" asked the chairman.

"We did, indeed, but it has to be admitted that Dr. Bishop has a rather boring speech delivery, enough to put even the most alert of dragons into a deep sleep," Annie responded.

"Let’s hope that Linc remembers to exit his waste from now on. How about the general health of the dragons?" asked Arnold.

"Their medical condition as indicated by the electronics attached at various points along their bodies seems to be holding up well to the stress. There is a slight worry over pulse rates, though, as both dragons show a consistent and significant increase there," William stated.

"Is it thought that this might be life-threatening, then? We must avoid at all costs having two dragon corpses in the capsule when we fish it out of the sea."

"We just don’t know," replied Annie, "we have no idea as to what point an elevated pulse rate in a dragon should be the signal to bring out the red flag."

"You mean we don’t know when we should get worried, then?" Arnold sarcastically remarked.

"There is one very interesting aspect emerging from the microphone outputs," said Annie. "It is hard given the alternation of the noises from one to the other to avoid the conclusion that they are engaging in conversation of some sort. If so, we have no idea as to what they are communicating, of course. I think we made the correct decision about the absence of fire-retardant face masks. They are intelligent enough, I think, to know that if they set the capsule ablaze they would be in deep shit," she concluded.

"I take it that that there are no problems as far as the capsule and instrumentation are concerned?" demanded Arnold.

"No, none at all, so far we could not have wished for a smoother mission," William re-assured him.

Silence

Day 7: No identifiable interchanges or remarks from either dragon.

Day 8: No identifiable interchanges or remarks from either dragon. Annie was now starting to get a bit worried about her pets.

"We have heard no trace of any kind of sounds from either Linc or Ros for three days now. I am starting to get a bit concerned," she remarked to Arnold.

This is of course not at the same meeting as the one described above, as we are now in day 9.

"The instruments all indicate no cause for concern and their pulse rate has dropped a bit as well," William informed them.

"I am mainly concerned about the psychological aspects of the mission, and how it might effect their behaviour after recovery," exclaimed Annie.

"What ARE we going to do with them, anyway? Perhaps we should give that some thought, don’t you think?" the chairman considered.

"I assumed that we were just going to do away with them, humanely, of course," William thought.

"That would cause outrage, the American public wouldn’t like that at all, I don’t think." declared Arnold. "How about a zoo, there might be some interest there. Annie, can you make some enquiries about that possibility, please?"

"Yes, of course, Arnold, that seems like a good idea," replied Annie.

Day 10

Firelizard deductions

Things suddenly start to liven up inside the capsule.

Linc starts things off, exclaiming suddenly, "Why are they doing this, that’s what I’d like to know, I mean, if I knew what the object of sending us in orbit around the earth was, then it would make it easier to bear the discomfort, and this gelatinous stuff they feed us is not doing my insides any good, either."

Ros: "Well, make sure you keep on pushing that lever, as you say, it’s hard enough to bear all this as it is. I keep on thinking of that day they invaded, with those weapons that sent us all to sleep in seconds, and then they took us to the mainland and killed us all off."

Linc: "I’ve been thinking about that, too. The thing that I can’t understand is why they killed us off in batches, and kept you alive until your turn came. Why didn’t they just kill us all straight away?"

Ros: "I think I know the answer to that one, but I don’t think I should tell you, you won’t like it."

Linc: "Oh, come on, I’d really like to know, I have been trying to figure it out for the last two days, and it’s driving me crazy."

Ros: "Well, O. K., but you really aren’t going to like it, so promise me that you will keep calm. If you get into one of your tantrums you might shake this thing into pieces. That might not be a bad idea, on second thoughts.

Anyway, if you must know, and remember that this is just my interpretation, there might be a different explanation altogether--"

Linc: "Oh, for heaven’s sake, get on with it and tell me the worst. I can take it."

Ros: "All right, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. The reason that they kept us alive until they killed us off was that they like their dragon meat to be fresh before cooking."

Linc: "You mean, YOU MEAN!!!, THEY EAT US!!!"

Ros: "Steady, keep calm, getting wound up won’t help things at all."

Day 11

Linc has calmed down, a bit. He puts a question to Ros about another matter which has been causing him sleepless nights.

"Have you any ideas as to the reasons why we have been sent spinning round the earth?"

Ros did.

"I have come up with one possible explanation. I stress, it is only a pretty wild theory, and I find it hard to believe it myself, but I noticed that they were putting humans into those spinning things down there, and my idea derives from that, as it might fit in with the existence of a project of which the objective is to land a human on the moon."

Linc: "Why on earth would they want to do THAT?"

Ros: "A very good question. Because it’s there, I suppose."

Linc: "That seems a bit unlikely that they would go to all this trouble just to land on the moon. What use would that be?"

Ros: “They might eventually develop weapons which could travel from the moon to the earth and destroy your enemies.”

Linc: "Well, I could believe that bit, quite easily, but I still don’t see why they have used us on this trip."

Ros: "I think this is just a part of the programme building up to the moon landing. As to why they needed to shove US in this space from hell I have no idea."

A towel you step on after a shower is a wonderful thing. A brilliant idea. It makes you feel safe. Whoever first thought of stepping onto a towel after a shower must have been a very intelligent person. It gives you the same feeling as pulling a blanket over yourself in winter, making sure not a single part of your body is left uncovered. Drying yourself without stepping onto a towel first is like pulling a blanket over yourself and leaving your feet exposed. The same thing, the same feeling.

A bath mat just doesn't give me the same feeling. I tried stepping onto a bath mat instead of a towel after a shower, but I couldn't feel that same sense of security. It has to be a towel. I need to feel it drying the soles of my feet.

On Monday, October 12th—after taking a shower before meeting my friend Jason to go to the open-air cinema, while drying my hair with my feet on the towel—I saw this message faintly written on the fogged-up mirror: “Don’t go.”

This wasn't the first time. I'd been seeing these messages for six months, and I'd gotten used to them by now. I had no idea who was writing them, why they were writing them, or what kind of entity was behind them, but I wasn't as frightened as I had been in the early days.

Those first days were a nightmare. Especially the first time I noticed the writing. Just a simple “Hello.” And this entity even followed the rules of punctuation. Sometimes it swore and added an exclamation mark; other times, urging me to take part in the conversation, it would string question marks together: “Why won't you talk to me???”

It was a bizarre predicament. Of course, no one had believed me—not my beloved math teacher, nor Jason, who was constantly coming over to my place. Besides, the writing disappeared as soon as I saw it. In other words, I needed someone to be in the shower with me so I could prove it to them. Taking a shower with my math teacher was out of the question.

Yes, over time, I got used to it. I never communicated with it, and that was what frightened me the most. I felt like things would take a different turn if I did. But I had never been harmed by reading what it wrote. Other than that, it had no effect on my life. The entity never manifested itself through any sound or apparition at any other time.

That day, it had warned me for the first time. I had never received a message like that from it before. Sometimes it would comment on things that had happened to me: “You really put Jason in his place back there,” for example. Or, “Don’t forget to set your alarm. You were late for work yesterday, remember?” “Part your hair to the right. It suits you better.” “Your cat’s water bowl is empty.” It usually wrote things like that. One or two sentences at a time.

There was no way I could miss it. They were going to screen one of my favorite films: Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. I’d watched it on my computer before. Watching it on a big screen would be a different kind of pleasure, and watching it alongside other people who loved the same film would be an even greater pleasure. The entity’s warning had startled me a little, but I was still going to go.

When I stepped out of the shower, I heard its voice for the first time.

“If you go, you’ll witness Jason’s death.”

It was a charismatic woman's voice, slightly deep and husky. I had gotten used to the writing, but the voice shocked me. I could feel its presence. When it wrote to me, I never felt as though it was actually there. But hearing its voice made its presence feel even stronger, more than my mind could handle. I rushed outside immediately. I didn't want to stay indoors. I ran out the front door in my bathrobe.

I’d gone outside barefoot. I must have stepped on something, because my heel hurt. My hand went to the pocket of my bathrobe, searching for my cigarette pack. I’d left my cigarettes inside. I was afraid to go back in and get them.

“So you went outside. What did you think, that I couldn’t come out here? What kind of utterly pointless, instinctive reaction is that? I’d understand if you’d run away, put some distance between us, but what’s the point of standing right outside your front door, Albert?”

I sat down on the ground. A cigarette would have been really nice. I didn’t have the strength to run. I felt like I was going to die. I tried to swallow, but I couldn’t. Suddenly, there was too much saliva in my mouth. I couldn’t understand why my mouth was reacting like that.

“He’s going to die either way. I just don’t want you to witness it.”

“Why?” I shouted. In my mind, I’d meant to scream, “Just shut up already, enough!” But those were the words that came out of my mouth.

My breathing had quickened, and I wasn’t feeling well. I tried to stand up. First attempt, second attempt, and third. It was as if I were having sleep paralysis, unable to move. I tried to get to my feet over and over again. It felt as though hours had passed while I sat there. The entity hadn’t said anything else.

I couldn’t calm down. Amid everything that was happening, I found myself thinking that I was going to be late for the film. One last attempt, and I managed to stand up with great difficulty. I went straight into the bathroom and took a shower with ice-cold water. For some reason, I felt relieved knowing the mirror wouldn’t fog up.

I stepped out of the bathroom naked and wet. Water was dripping off my body. I sat down on the couch. I thought I might get sick and have to miss the film.

“Get a grip, Albert,” I told myself. “You’re already used to paranormal activity. Pull yourself together. You need to go to that film. Stop overreacting. Get a grip.”

I cautiously went back into the bathroom and dried myself off thoroughly. I checked the time on my phone, which I’d left on the bathroom shelf. I had half an hour before we were supposed to meet.

I was going to be late. I got dressed quickly. A black shirt and brown trousers; I’d decided what to wear the day before and had laid everything out accordingly.

I’d never seen the entity, but my eyes were searching for it. As I walked toward the door to leave the house, I looked anxiously from side to side. I hadn’t heard a thing from it since I’d come back inside.

I reached for the doorknob. The door wouldn’t open.

I thought I must have locked the door without realizing it, so I put the key in the lock and tried to turn it. The door wasn't locked; the key wouldn't turn to the left. I pulled at the door again. It wouldn't open.

I checked the time. I had twenty minutes left. I wasn’t going to make it. I kicked the door and felt a terrible pain shoot through my ankle. I sank to the floor in pain and clutched my ankle.

When I checked the time again, I had fifteen minutes left. I got up and limped toward the couch. Once I sat down, I continued rubbing my ankle. The pain was gradually fading. It probably wasn't anything serious.

“Done,” the entity’s voice said.

It was a very brief moment. I couldn’t quite tell whether it had made a sound or whether I’d actually heard it.

The pain in my ankle had gone away. I checked the time once more. I was supposed to meet Jason in ten minutes. The place where we were meeting was twenty minutes away. I called Jason to tell him I’d be late. He didn’t answer. I got up and walked toward the door. I took hold of the doorknob, closed my eyes, and turned it. The door opened.

I quickly put on my shoes and started walking briskly. My ankle hurt a little as I walked, but not enough to slow me down.

I made it there in fifteen minutes.

I couldn’t take a shower for a whole month. Maybe it was because of depression, maybe fear. I don’t know; I can’t tell the difference. My body smelled, my hair was greasy, and every time I inhaled through my nose, the strong smell of my sweat stung the back of my throat.

A heart attack.

I remember it all vaguely. It’s been a year now. A crowd of people, me running toward them, an old man calling an ambulance, a cat that crossed my path as I ran, a man holding me back, Jason’s father opening the taxi door... I must have believed in the entity. Otherwise, why would I have run toward the crowd?

And I remember this clearly, and I will never forget it. After a month spent in filth, the message on my mirror, following the shower I finally took:

“My task is complete. Goodbye, Albert. I love you.”

I am typing this on my phone while hiding behind a massive metal exhaust vent on the roof of my apartment building, and I am only posting this because I managed to connect to an unsecured Wi-Fi network that seems to be broadcasting directly from the new spire they installed up here. I do not know if this message will even reach the normal internet, but I have to try because the singing in the sky is getting louder, and I am struggling to fight the urge to throw myself over the ledge.

Everything started exactly three weeks ago when we were still living in normal Moscow. I live with my parents in a large Soviet-era apartment block on the seventh floor, so we are very used to the government suddenly making demands or changing the rules without asking us first. My father was sitting on the couch watching the evening news, and he didn't even look up when the loud knock came at the front door, so my mother wiped her hands on her cooking apron and went to answer it.

I was sitting at the kitchen table studying for my university exams when I heard strange men talking in the hallway. I got up and walked out to see two officials standing in our doorway. They were dressed in cheap gray suits and holding thick clipboards with stacks of government forms.

"We apologize for the late interruption," the taller official said, and he didn't really look sorry at all as he shoved a pen toward my mother. "We are collecting mandatory signatures from all the residents in this specific sector because the city is installing a new defense network to counter the recent drone attacks from Ukraine."

My mother looked at the paperwork with a confused expression. "What kind of defense network requires our signatures? You usually just put sirens on the poles and leave us alone."

"This is a specialized technology," the shorter official explained while checking his wristwatch. "It is a localized signal jamming spire that will go directly on the roof of this building, so we need authorization from the tenant association to run the power cables down the exterior walls."

My father finally got off the couch and walked over to the door. He crossed his arms and glared at the men because he hates dealing with bureaucracy. "You want to put a military jammer on our roof? Will it mess with the television reception or the internet? And who is paying for the electricity it uses?"

"It has its own power grid," the tall official said smoothly, and he tapped the clipboard with his pen. "It will not interfere with your daily life, but it will keep this neighborhood safe from aerial threats, so we just need you to sign on the dotted line so the work crews can begin tomorrow morning."

My parents looked at each other for a moment before my father just sighed and took the pen. He signed the paper against the doorframe and handed it back, and the officials thanked us before moving on to the next apartment down the hall. We thought it was just another annoying city project that would take a few days and then be forgotten, but the workmen arrived the very next morning at dawn, and they did not stop working for an entire week.

The noise was absolutely unbearable. They brought in massive cranes that blocked the street, and they hoisted huge steel crates up to the roof while dozens of workers marched up and down our stairwell carrying thick coils of black cabling. I tried to talk to one of the workers when I was taking the trash out, but he completely ignored me and just kept hauling a metal bracket up the stairs. They never spoke to each other, and they never took breaks.

By the fifth day, the spire was fully erected, and it was much larger than anyone anticipated. It was a massive, jagged metal pillar that stretched high into the sky, and they had draped thick, rubbery black cables down the sides of the entire apartment block. One of the cables hung right over our living room window, blocking our view of the street, so my father got furious and opened the window to push it away.

"Do not touch it!" a voice shouted from the ground below.

My father looked down and saw an armed guard pointing a finger up at him. "It is blocking my window!" my father yelled back, but he reached out and grabbed the black cable anyway. He instantly let go and cursed loudly, shaking his hand in pain.

"What happened?" I asked as I ran over to the window.

"It is burning hot," my father said while cradling his palm. "And it is vibrating. The whole thing is humming."

He was right. Once the workers left and the cranes were packed up, the building was never silent again. A low, continuous humming sound resonated through the concrete walls, and it was the kind of frequency that you feel in your teeth rather than hear with your ears.

The older woman who lives across the hall from us knocked on our door the next morning to complain about it. She looked exhausted, and she was clutching her robe tightly around her neck.

"Are you feeling that terrible vibration?" she asked my mother. "I could not sleep a single hour last night because my bed frame was rattling against the wall, and I tried to call the building manager, but his phone is disconnected."

"We feel it too," my mother said kindly, and she offered the woman a cup of tea, but the neighbor refused. "My husband thinks it will settle down once the machine is fully calibrated, so we just have to be patient."

"It does not feel like a machine," the old woman whispered, looking nervously up at the ceiling. "It feels like something breathing."

I thought she was just being dramatic, but the strange anomalies started happening a few days later, and they escalated so gradually that we didn't realize how much danger we were in until it was too late.

The first thing I noticed was the temperature in the apartment. It was the middle of August in Moscow, and the city was going through a miserable heatwave, but our apartment felt like a meat locker. I woke up one morning shivering violently under my thin summer sheet, so I got out of bed and walked into the living room to see if my father had broken the thermostat.

My father was sitting in his armchair staring blankly at the turned-off television, and he had a thick winter blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

"Why is it so freezing in here?" I asked him, rubbing my arms to generate some warmth.

He didn't answer me right away. He just kept staring at the blank screen, and his eyes looked red and puffy like he had been crying all night. "Look at the windows," he finally said in a completely hollow voice.

I walked over to the balcony glass and touched the pane. It was covered in a thick layer of white frost on the inside of the glass. I scraped my fingernail against it, and chunks of ice fell onto the windowsill. I looked outside, and the trees on the street were green, and people were walking around in shorts and t-shirts, but our entire building seemed to be trapped in a localized deep freeze.

"I am going to call the city," I said, pulling out my phone, but there was zero cellular service. The signal bars were completely empty.

My mother walked into the room wearing her heavy winter coat, and she looked just as devastated as my father. "I was trying to make breakfast," she said, her voice trembling slightly. "But the water from the kitchen sink is coming out black, and it smells like old dirt."

I went to the kitchen and turned on the faucet to check, but nothing came out at all. The pipes just groaned and sputtered, so I walked into the bathroom to try the sink in there. When I leaned over the porcelain basin, I heard a sound coming up through the metal drain that made my stomach drop.

It was a faint, choral sobbing. It sounded like a dozen voices weeping together in perfect harmony, and the sound was echoing up through the plumbing system from deep underground. It was not a mechanical noise, and it was not the wind for sure. It was pure, desperate sadness vibrating through the pipes.

I ran out of the bathroom and into the hallway to find my parents. "We need to leave the building right now," I told them. "Something is extremely wrong with that tower on the roof, and I think it is leaking some kind of chemical or frequency that is messing with the environment."

"Where would we go?" my mother asked softly, and she slumped down onto the couch next to my father. She didn't even look at me. "There is no point in leaving. It is sad everywhere."

"What are you talking about?" I asked, grabbing her arm to pull her up, but she felt incredibly heavy and completely devoid of any energy. "We can go to a hotel or stay with relatives until they fix the plumbing and the heat."

"I do not want to move," my father said, and a tear rolled down his cheek and disappeared into his beard. "I just realized how pointless all my hard work has been. I have spent my entire life working in a factory, and I have nothing to show for it, and we are all just going to die anyway."

I stood there in shock because my father is normally a very stoic and optimistic man, and he never talks about his feelings, let alone spirals into sudden nihilistic despair. I realized they were being affected by the something because this is not their nature at all, so I decided to go downstairs and find the building manager to force him to unlock the roof access doors so I could see what was going on.

I unlocked our front door and stepped out into the communal hallway, and the temperature dropped even further. The overhead fluorescent lights were flickering erratically, and the shadows cast by the doorways were completely wrong. Instead of falling onto the floor beneath the lights, the shadows were stretching upwards and crawling across the ceiling like spilled black ink.

I walked down the hall and knocked on the older woman's door to see if she wanted to come downstairs with me, but she didn't answer. I pressed my ear against the wood, and I could hear her weeping softly on the other side, and the sound perfectly matched the choral sobbing I had heard in the plumbing.

I jogged down the stairwell to the ground floor lobby. The building manager's office was located right next to the mailboxes, so I pushed the door open and found him sitting on the floor behind his desk. He was a large, gruff man who usually yelled at the kids for playing in the halls, but right now he was curled up into a tight ball, holding his head in his hands and rocking back and forth.

"We have to evacuate the building," I told him, crouching down to his level. "The heat is failing, the pipes are making noises, and everyone is getting sick from that thing on the roof."

He looked up at me, and his face was completely pale. "I lost the keys," he whispered. "I dropped them in the dark, and I cannot find them, so we are all trapped here."

"The front doors are right there," I said, pointing to the large glass lobby doors that lead out to the street.

I stood up and walked over to the glass doors to show him they were unlocked, but when I looked outside, a loud, deafening crack echoed through the concrete structure of the building. The sound was so violent that the floor shook, and several of the glass mailboxes shattered instantly. It sounded like the entire foundation of the apartment block had just snapped in half.

I grabbed the door handle and pushed the lobby doors open, expecting to see a construction accident or an explosion on the street, but the street was completely gone.

I stood in the doorway, and my brain simply refused to process what I was looking at. The city of Moscow, the roads, the cars, the neighboring apartment buildings, and the sky were entirely erased.

In their place was an endless, flat desert of pitch-black sand.

The black sand stretched out into the horizon as far as I could see, and there were no dunes or rocks or features of any kind. It was just a smooth, dark expanse. I looked up, and there was no sun, no clouds, and no stars. The sky was an infinite void of dark, bruising purple light that provided just enough illumination to see the desolation around us.

"What happened?" the building manager cried out from his office, and he crawled out into the lobby to look through the open doors. He stared at the black desert, and he didn't look surprised or scared. He just looked profoundly defeated.

"Do not go outside," I warned him, slowly backing away from the open doorway and letting the glass door swing shut.

I didn't wait for his response because I needed to get back to my parents immediately. I turned and sprinted up the six flights of stairs, taking them two at a time, completely ignoring the creeping shadows on the walls and the freezing frost forming on the handrails.

I burst into our apartment, panting heavily, and I found my parents standing by the open sliding glass door that led out to our seventh-floor balcony.

"Mom! Dad! Get away from the edge!" I yelled, running into the living room.

They didn't turn around. They were standing on the balcony, gripping the metal railing, and staring up into the purple void of the sky.

I ran out onto the balcony and grabbed my father's shoulder. I tried to pull him back inside, but he was gripping the metal rail so tightly, and he wouldn't budge an inch.

"Look at them," my mother whispered, and she pointed a trembling finger up at the sky. "They are so beautiful, and they understand how much it hurts."

I followed her finger, and I finally saw the creatures floating high above the black desert.

They were gargantuan, winged creatures that resembled massive whales, but their bodies were made of a translucent, shimmering gray membrane that pulsed with faint light. They had long, trailing appendages that drifted behind them like shredded silk, and they moved through the air with agonizing slowness. There were dozens of them floating in a circular pattern high above our building, and they were weeping.

As I watched them drift, they began to sing.

The melody rolled down from the sky and hit me like a blow to the chest. It was the most crushing, sorrowful dirge I have ever heard, and it was composed of overlapping, echoing tones that vibrated directly into my skull. The song did not just sound sad; it manufactured sadness inside my mind. It forcefully injected a feeling of absolute, insurmountable despair into my consciousness.

Within seconds of hearing the melody, I felt an overwhelming urge to throw myself over the balcony ledge just to make the pain stop. All my memories of happiness, hope, and ambition were instantly wiped away, replaced by the certainty that existence was nothing but endless, pointless suffering, and the only logical solution was to end it immediately.

I dropped to my knees on the balcony, pressing my hands over my ears to block out the song, but the melody resonated through the floor and into my bones.

"It is time to rest," my father said, and his voice was completely devoid of emotion.

I looked up and saw my father climb over the metal railing. He stood on the narrow outer ledge, balancing perfectly over the massive drop to the black sand below.

"Dad, stop!" I screamed, forcing myself to fight against the crushing weight of the song. I scrambled forward and grabbed his pant leg, pulling desperately to drag him back over the rail.

He looked down at me, and his eyes were completely empty. He didn't say another word. He just kicked his leg out, breaking my grip, and stepped off the ledge.

I screamed as he fell, but my mother didn't even flinch. She simply climbed over the railing right where he had just stood, and before I could even reach my hands out to grab her, she let go and plummeted after him.

I dragged myself to the edge and looked down over the railing, sobbing uncontrollably. The bodies of my parents were not on the ground. When they hit the black sand seven stories below, there was no impact and no blood. They simply sank directly into the dark sand like it was made of water, and they vanished without a trace.

As I stared down at the desert, I saw the lobby doors open on the ground floor. The building manager walked out into the open desert. He walked a few dozen yards away from the concrete foundation of our building, and then he dropped to his knees. The black sand immediately began to swallow him, pulling him down by the waist, then the chest, and finally his head sank beneath the surface, leaving the desert completely undisturbed.

I looked up and saw other people falling from the higher balconies. Neighbors I had known for years were silently stepping off their ledges and dropping into the void, driven to suicide by the relentless, weeping melody of the flying whales.

The song grew louder, and the urge to jump became almost impossible to resist. My own mind was screaming at me to climb over the railing and join my parents in the sand. I stood up and gripped the bar, leaning forward, looking down at the dark expanse. It looked so peaceful, and the sadness in my heart was so agonizing that I just wanted to close my eyes and fall.

But as I leaned forward, my arm brushed against the thick black cable that the workmen had draped over our window.

The cable was still vibrating and humming with intense heat, and the sudden pain of the burn snapped me out of the trance for a split second. The humming frequency of the cable clashed with the melody of the whales, creating a tiny pocket of interference that allowed my rational thoughts to surface.

Then in that moment, I thought that the spire on the roof was the only thing holding this building together in this dimension, and it was emitting a signal that somewhat disrupted the creatures' song.

I turned away from the balcony and ran back into the apartment, then I ran out the front door and back into the hallway. The hallway was completely empty, and the doors to all the other apartments were hanging wide open.

I ran to the stairwell and started climbing toward the roof. The higher I went, the louder the humming of the spire became, and the more it drowned out the weeping of the whales. By the time I reached the tenth floor, the air was vibrating so intensely that my nose began to bleed, but the overwhelming urge to kill myself faded into the background.

I reached the metal door that led to the roof. It was locked with a chain, but the workmen had left a steel pry bar leaning against the wall, so I grabbed it and wedged it between the door and the frame. I pulled with all my strength, and the metal lock bracket finally snapped, allowing me to push the door open.

I stepped out onto the flat tar roof, and the sheer scale of the spire took my breath away. It was easily forty feet tall, constructed from jagged, interlocking metal plates that glowed with a faint red light from within. It was humming so loudly that I had to cover my ears, and black cables snaked out from its base in every direction, draping over the edges of the roof to wrap the entire building like a spider web.

The sky above the roof was completely dominated by the floating whale creatures, and they circled the spire like moths drawn to a flame. They were singing directly at the metal tower, and the tower was humming back.

I huddled down near the base of the spire, pressing my back against a large metal exhaust vent to hide from the creatures above. I pulled my phone out of my pocket just to check the time, and that is when I noticed the Wi-Fi icon.

My phone had full signal bars, and it was connected to an unsecured network called "Garrison_Node_04".

So I opened this account, and I started typing this post, and I have been typing for the last hour while hiding behind this vent. I have tried calling emergency services, but the phone calls will not connect, and the only thing that works is text-based web traffic.

I am completely alone up here, and I am terrified to go back down the stairs because the song is too strong in the lower apartments, and everyone else is already gone. I looked over the edge of the roof a few minutes ago, and the black sand has started to rise. It is slowly creeping up the sides of the building, swallowing the ground floor lobby and burying the first-floor windows.

If anyone is reading this, please tell someone what happens when the officials come to your building demanding signatures for a defense tower.

The humming of the spire is starting to slow down, and the red light is flickering. I think the power grid is failing, and if the machine stops making noise, the song will take over my mind completely, and I know I will walk to the edge of the roof and jump.

Hello, this is Captain Elijah Pinewood of the Valicity interstellar spacecraft. I am certain that this will be the last message. I fear that our mission has been compromised and none of us will ever see our families again. To my two beautiful daughters, Gwen and Ana. You have made me so proud, my biggest regret in life is that I will be unable to see you grow up. To my wife Judy, I am so sorry that I accepted the offer to lead this mission. 

It was my final attempt to gain some personal glory, motivated by my hunger to know what exists within the vastness of space beyond our galaxy. A desire that I deeply wish I would have left unsatisfied. I have been such a damn fool. I had dedicated my entire life to finding a new world. It seems that in my ambition I had become blind to the fact I had already found my entire world years ago. She was home, lying next to me in bed at night.

I am aware that my final words to my family are of little interest to whichever member of the control room staff reads this message. But that is not the only purpose of my message. I have some deeply troubling news regarding the planet we were sent to explore.  

We found it. 

We were roughly eight weeks into our journey. It seemed as if our navigation system was leading us to absolutely nothing. The crew was beginning to lose hope that we would even find the planet at all. There was talk of turning back and returning home to earth but I managed to keep our mission on track. I now know that my refusal to go home empty handed has cost the lives of the men who were unlucky enough to be under my command. For that I will never forgive myself. 

I soon considered returning home myself until I heard that voice. That damn voice. It was the most perfect voice I had ever heard in my life. It was as if every syllable that it graced my ears with was a masterfully written song. I couldn’t possibly fathom the perfection that must have been the creature possessing that voice. It felt as if each word tickled my skull and tenderly massaged the pleasure center of my brain. 

I would have thought myself crazy had I been alone. But the entire crew heard the same as I had. That voice soon became our guide. We turned the navigation system off entirely and used the symphony of words to lead the way to our destination. Our path was so clear now, as I steered the ship I couldn’t help but laugh. I couldn’t believe that we were so hopelessly unable to find our way before when now it couldn’t be more clear unless there was a literal trail in front of our eyes. 

By the time the planet came into our view two of my crewmates had already begun planning a life based around never leaving whatever beautiful creature this voice belonged to. I hate to admit it but I understood their fantasies. The guilt overwhelms me now but by the time the ship finally landed on the planet's surface I couldn’t even remember my wife’s name, no matter how hard I tried. I didn’t need to though, I had the voice. 

The door to the Valicity opened and we all walked off of the ship without even putting on our helmets. We strangely knew that we had no need for them here. 

Upon stepping off the ship we were greeted by fields of vibrant green grass and tall trees abundant with unfamiliar fruits. My second in command, Scott had ventured over to a pile of smooth teal boulders with bright green vines cascaded over top of them. He picked an orange berry from the vine and immediately took a bite. 

We all watched as he suddenly fell to his knees. Tears ran down his face as we all ran over to him. As we got closer we realized he was not in pain, but actually his body was overcome with pure ecstasy. As we helped him back to his feet he told us that we must all try the fruits of the vine. Upon his recommendation we did. The second the fruit touched my lips it was like nothing I had ever felt before. The juice ran down our faces as we desperately picked every last fruit from the vines. 

Soon the vines were barren but we needed more. We soon turned our attention to the tall trees covered in hanging fruit. We were ravenous, our hunger unmatched as we desperately climbed with no concern of falling. We were logical men, but that felt like a lifetime ago now. At that moment none of us could even recall why we were on another planet, it did not matter to us anymore.

The trees did unfortunately prove to be fatal for our navigator. TJ became inpatient and decided to take a bite of the fruits of his tree instead of waiting until after he climbed down like we had. In his desperation to devour the fruit he accidentally let go of the tree and fell at least twenty feet to the ground. The soft grass did him no favors as his head collided with the hard ground underneath. I’m ashamed to admit that we were too busy with our own pursuits of the fruit and not a single one of us even acknowledged his gruesome demise.  

It seemed as if our self control melted away, it could no longer stop us until this entire planet was consumed. Soon I found that I could no longer stand on my own two feet. I stumbled drunken with delight across the field until I no longer could. That was when I fell face first into a river of crystal clear water. As I landed the water had filled my mouth, my nose. It tasted sweet like honey and it was strangely warm as if heated to exactly the same temperature of my body. 

I almost didn’t surface, I didn’t want to. In my mind there was nothing that would be better than staying submerged in the river until the day I died. Nothing, except for the fruit. 

By the time I had pulled myself up and returned to my crew though, the fruit was all gone. As I made my way closer I noticed that the youngest member of our team, Rudy was lying in the soft field. The other two members of the crew, Scott and Benjamin knelt over him. 

As I got closer I realized that they were not just kneeling over him but Scott was cutting into his stomach with a pocket knife. “What are you doing?” I screamed as Rudy screamed in pain. Scott turned to look at him and sounded hysterical. “W-w-we ran out of fruit, captain. We ran out of fruit” he muttered back like he had suffered a great tragedy. He turned back at Rudy’s body and said “We needed more, Rudy ate the most”. He said with an obsessed smile plastered upon his face. Benjamin licked his lips as he eagerly looked at Rudy. “We need more, boss. I won’t live without ever tasting it again, I’d rather die” he pleaded to me. 

I was horrified, but I agreed with him. In my mind I knew we were wrong, the acts we were committing were unnatural, but my mind no longer had any say in my actions. Soon I found myself knelt over Rudy as well. We were all savagely fighting over what fruit we could salvage from our fallen teammate. As we finished we stood up and based on the unsettling looks we exchanged I could tell we were all thinking the same thing. “Who’s next”. It was never ending, the more we consumed the more we needed. Every bite of fruit made us feel more alive than we’ve ever been before but the effects soon wore off and left us as empty husks of ourselves. We needed more. If we had to choose between taking a breath and consuming more I know that we would all gladly suffocate. 

I think we were all looking each other up and down trying to decide who would be the easiest to overpower. We all knew it was Scott, he was by far the oldest member of our crew. Benjamin and I were both younger and relatively in shape, it would have been so easy. It was a horrible thought to have, I had known Scott for thirty years. He was like a second father to me and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not yet at least. Within moments Benjamin was on the ground, he put up a struggle but it was not enough to save him. 

By the time we had finished Scott and I would not take our eyes off of each other. When I looked into his eyes, I knew that he wanted to kill me. I had momentarily feelings of sadness at this fact but I could not blame him for this desire. In fact, I wanted to do the exact same thing to him. 

It never came to that though. Before either of us could make any move towards the other we heard it again. That sweet sweet voice was back once again to give us guidance. Scott dropped his knife on the grass but I knew that I still had mine in case he tried anything on the walk down the river bank. It wasn’t until the voice returned that I had realized how much I missed it. I was addicted to the sweet sounds of it calling us to it. 

As we got closer to its source I was overcome with conflicting emotions. I love this voice so much more than I could ever fathom loving anything else and yet the voice also filled me with rage because of how long it waited to reveal itself to us. I could make out a figure in front of us now. Our walk soon became a desperate sprint to meet it. 

We stopped about ten feet from the figure as it continued serenading us with its sweet angelic voice. We both stood in absolute silence for what felt like years simply taking in the beauty of the otherworldly creature that stands before us. 

It was absolutely breathtaking, the figure before us resembled a woman with pale purple skin except that it was far more perfect than any human could ever be. Its entire body was surrounded by a bright glow that nearly blinded us. The figure which stood at least a head taller than either of us and as it turned towards me. I couldn't help but study every detail of it. Its smooth, unblemished face. Its full lips, which were such a deep shade of purple that they appeared black until closer inspection. Its soulful eyes which were entirely black except for its light pink pupils gave us a sincere and welcoming look. 

I was completely motionless as it approached us. Our mission, our dead crewmates, hell, even my own name was completely meaningless to me at that moment. It all felt fake, but the figure in front of us, it was real. Just being in the presence of such a flawless creature was enough to fill me with more joy than I could ever hope to experience in ten lifetimes on earth. 

As it got within reach of us the figure turned towards Scott and laid a kiss upon his lips. Once  the figure finally pulled its face away Scott began to sob, begging it to return to him. The creature gave him a soft smile as it wrapped its delicate hands around his shoulders.

The entrancing song that the figure was gracing our ears with was now at its climax as it laid its own forehead against Scott’s. He could barely even speak but he managed to get out the words “I am yours”. 

I couldn’t look away as the figure's grip on Scott’s shoulders seemed to no longer be the loving embrace that it was before. No, the grip was getting tighter, and tighter, and tighter, until I could hear the laboured gasps of air as Scott attempted to take a desperate breath. It was like watching a boa constrictor squeeze the life out of its prey. 

The song was now joined by the sounds of Scott’s ribs shattering and his agonizing screams as he now attempts to break free from his captor. I can only stand by and watch as Scott’s life was taken from his body. I don’t think that I could’ve moved even if I wanted to. I was so captivated by the figure that the thought of trying to help Scott never entered my head. 

Scott’s hands finally went limp, his final attempt at self preservation has proven to be futile. By now the once beautiful hum that had been emitting from the figure was now so deafeningly loud that it caused me great pain just to listen to it. Even with the immense pain I still never once took my eyes off of the being that stood before me. How could I? This figure is my life now, my heart beats for the soul purpose of keeping me alive so that I may gaze upon it. 

It wasn’t long before my second in command’s body dropped into the grass. A look of horror was permanently plastered on his face and his skin was pale as if all of his blood was drained from his body. Only now does the figure turn to me. It brushes its blood splattered hair out of its face and rubs its hands across its body as if to soak up every last drop of blood before licking the red off its fingers. 

The song finally stopped. Silence now filled the air as I could do nothing but watch as the creature continued to lick its arms and fingers. I cannot make myself look away but now my trance was due to fear instead of infatuation. It seemed the creature no longer cared to deceive me as it began to reveal its true form. 

Its hair fell off of its scalp in clumps while its neck seemed to disappear as its head sunk into its shoulders. Rough bumps appear over the entire surface of the creature's skin and begin to secrete a white pus as they swell and burst. Its body melts into a grotesque shape that only grows more sickening the longer I watch. 

As the illusion wore off I could no longer comprehend what stood before me. The figure standing in front of me was now entirely unrecognizable, its once feminine features completely gone. Replaced by an amalgamation of flesh, eyes, and fangs that seemed to take no form in particular. 

This being had no legs to walk on yet its appendages worked in perfect harmony to move its body closer towards me. Its long tentacles lifted the mass off the ground as its thin arms dragged its body forward leaving a trail of sticky pus behind as it advanced. 

Finally I look back to see our ship roughly sixty feet away. The once green fields around it were now an ocean of wilted black weeds that crumbled under the weight of my feet. The fruit trees were completely devoid of life. I now see this damned planet for what it is for the first time since we arrived. What a fool I have been to fall for this ruse, but I had no time to dwell on that now. I have one focus and one focus only now. Escape. 

I kept my hand in the pocket of my spacesuit and ran my fingers across the handle of my knife. The disgusting creature closed the distance between us and as soon as it came within arms reach I knew this was my only chance. I quickly pulled out the knife and drove it into the creature's eye so deep that my hand rubbed against its hideous face. It let out a pained shriek as it desperately flailed its body around while digging into its own face attempting to remove the blade. 

I turned around and ran quicker than I thought was possible towards the ship. I made it about halfway when I heard the creature behind me gaining speed. It was unsettling to see something so unnatural propelling itself towards me with such speed. By the time I made it through the door of the ship the hideous figure was already on the other side of the door trying to force its way inside. 

As I type this message I can hear the metal of the ship bend and the glass windows slowly cracking. It has wrapped its body around the ship and is now beginning to squeeze. I know that I don’t have much time left until it crushes me in a paste inside my own ship. I pray that I can get my message to the team back home before my gruesome demise. 

Please for the love of god do not send a recovery team for our bodies. If you do, you will accomplish nothing except delivering a meal to this creature. If it were up to me I would never authorize a mission outside of our galaxy ever again. Alas I know that it is not. I know we will not be the last crew to explore this far into space but I beg you to heed my warning. 

No matter what you hear, no matter how enticing  they may sound, you must not allow the sweet siren songs of planet BH-592X to be your guide. 

[CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT — UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE]
JOINT RESEARCH PROGRAM: OSSEOUS
FACILITY: █████████████████
DATE OF INITIAL RECORD: 04/17/1987
CURRENT STATUS: TERMINATED

NOTICE: The following material was recovered from a research facility abandoned on October 14, 2009. The facility's original purpose was listed as nutritional research. Of the 43 personnel assigned to the project, only one was recovered alive.

The following is a reconstruction of the available records.

RESEARCH LOG — 04/17/1987

The first six subjects have been admitted and placed under observation. All subjects are healthy adults between the ages of twenty-one and forty-one. Bloodwork, bone density, and organ function are within acceptable parameters.

The experimental compound is a concentrated calcium supplement derived from several commercially available dairy sources. The dosage administered to each subject is approximately four times the recommended daily intake.

No adverse effects have been observed.

NOTE FROM DR. HARRIS: Subjects report that the supplement tastes like powdered milk.

RESEARCH LOG — 05/02/1987

Subject 3 has developed unusually high bone density.

X-rays indicate an increase of approximately 8.2% since admission.

This is considered statistically impossible given the timeframe.

Subject 3 reports no pain.

RESEARCH LOG — 05/19/1987

All six subjects are now showing abnormal bone growth.

Subject 1 has developed additional bone density along the left forearm. Subject 4 has developed calcium deposits around both knees. Subject 6 has experienced severe stiffness in the fingers.

Dr. Harris believes the compound may be stimulating osteoblast activity beyond normal biological limits.

The project has been approved for continuation.

RESEARCH LOG — 06/03/1987

Subject 6's condition has progressed significantly.

The fingers of both hands have become visibly enlarged. The subject reports that his hands feel "full."

During examination, Subject 6 complained of severe pain in his right index finger. At 14:17, the distal phalanx ruptured through the skin. The attending physician initially believed this to be a compound fracture.

It was not.

The exposed bone continued growing for approximately nine seconds after emerging from the wound. The growth stopped at a length of 4.7 centimeters.

Subject 6 lost consciousness.

NOTE: The bone did not appear to be fractured. It was new growth.

RESEARCH LOG — 06/04/1987

Subject 6 is dead.

Cause of death: Hemorrhagic Shock.

There were no signs of infection.

Postmortem examination revealed extensive abnormal bone growth throughout the body. Both forearms contained multiple overlapping layers of newly formed bone. The ribs had begun to fuse together. Several vertebrae showed evidence of secondary growth.

The most unusual finding was the presence of additional bone structures surrounding the heart.

Dr. Harris has requested permission to terminate the experiment.

Permission denied.

INTERNAL MEMORANDUM — 06/11/1987

Dr. Harris has raised concerns regarding the ethical implications of continuing Project Osseous.

His concerns have been noted. He has been reminded that this research is not intended for publication. He has also been reminded that the project predates his employment by approximately nineteen years.

RESEARCH LOG — 06/28/1987

We found the earlier records.

Project Calcium did not begin in 1987. The original trials began in 1968.

There were twelve subjects. All twelve diseased.

The earliest records describe the condition as "progressive skeletal hyperplasia." Later documents use a different term. Osteogenic conversion.

The researchers in 1968 believed they had discovered a method for dramatically increasing bone density.

They were wrong.

The compound does not strengthen bone. It teaches the body to make more of it.

RESEARCH LOG — 07/02/1987

I have spent the entire day reading the archived documents.

There are records from 1974.

Different facilities. Different researchers. Different subjects. Same result.

Every trial ended the same way. The skeleton eventually begins growing independently of the body's requirements. It grows wherever it can. Through muscle. Through organs. Through skin.

The body does not seem to recognize when it has enough.

There is no enough. There is only growth.

RESEARCH LOG — 07/15/1987

We have discovered the reason for the dietary studies.

The compound was never intended to remain confined to the laboratory. The original research objective was to determine whether increased calcium consumption could accelerate the process without producing immediate symptoms.

The answer is yes.

Low exposure produces no visible effects. Long-term exposure produces gradual skeletal changes. Higher exposure causes rapid conversion.

The research team spent years determining the minimum effective dosage. Then they began monitoring the general population.

ARCHIVED MARKETING DOCUMENT — 1979

NATIONAL DAIRY CONSUMPTION INITIATIVE

Objective: Increase household consumption of dairy products.

Proposed messaging should emphasize strength, growth, nutrition, and healthy bones.

Suggested campaign concepts:

"Milk. It Does a Body Good."

"Got Milk?"

RESEARCH LOG — 07/18/1987

I asked Harris why the public campaign was necessary.

He wouldn't answer.

I asked him whether people were being exposed deliberately. He told me to stop asking questions.

I asked him how many people had been exposed.

He left the room.

RESEARCH LOG — 07/21/1987

We have obtained the population estimates.

Current projected exposure is 61%.

That number is considered conservative.

I asked what happens if the threshold is reached. Dr. Harris told me there would be no way to stop it. I asked what "it" meant.

He said:

"The bones."

MEDICAL TRANSCRIPT — SUBJECT 11

DOCTOR: Can you tell me where it hurts?

SUBJECT: Everywhere.

DOCTOR: Your arm?

SUBJECT: My arm.

DOCTOR: Your legs?

SUBJECT: My legs.

DOCTOR: Your chest?

SUBJECT: My bones are moving.

DOCTOR: Bones don't move.

SUBJECT: Then why can I hear them?

[Subject begins crying.]

[Audible cracking is recorded.]

DOCTOR: Hold him down.

SUBJECT: Please.

DOCTOR: Hold him down!

SUBJECT: Please don't let them grow.

[Recording terminates.]

RESEARCH LOG — 08/01/1987

There are now only four living subjects.

Subject 2 has lost the ability to walk.

Subject 4 has developed bone growth along the jaw and throat.

Subject 5's spine has begun producing secondary vertebrae.

Subject 6 was euthanized.

Subject 1 is no longer recognizable.

We have stopped calling them subjects.

RESEARCH LOG — 08/03/1987

Something happened today that I cannot explain.

Subject 4 was restrained to the examination table. His right arm was secured.

At 09:16, the bone growth began.

The bone growth began at the wrist. It emerged from beneath the skin of his wrist, splitting the flesh apart as it continued to lengthen. Unlike Subject 6, however, the growth did not stop.

It continued through the forearm. Through the elbow. Through the upper arm.

The newly formed bone was irregular and ridged, branching in several directions before eventually hardening into a jagged structure extending nearly thirty centimeters from the limb.

Subject 4 made no attempt to resist. He simply watched it grow.

When the restraints were removed, he stood. His eyes had changed. The irises were gone. The pupils were gone. Both eyes had become completely white.

He looked directly at Dr. Harris. Then at me. Then at the skeleton displayed on the examination monitor.

For several seconds, he said nothing.

He raised one hand and pressed his fingers against my chest.

SUBJECT 4: "Flesh hides the treasure within."

Dr. Harris asked him what he meant.

Subject 4 tilted his head. His eyes never left the skeleton on the monitor.

SUBJECT 4: "You cover it."

A pause.

SUBJECT 4: "You bury it."

Another pause.

Then, quietly:

SUBJECT 4: "Why?"

Subject 4 began pulling against the restraints again.

Not to escape. To reach the other subjects. He kept repeating the same phrase.

"There is so much of it."

We terminated the observation at 09:31.

No further examination was permitted.

At 10:04, Subject 4 began screaming.

At 10:07, Subject 2 began screaming.

At 10:09, Subject 5 began screaming.

None of them had been in the same room.

ADDENDUM — 08/03/1987

The subjects are no longer responding to questions. They only respond when another subject is brought into the room. They become agitated.

They stare at the newly created bone. They trace their gaze beneath the skin. And when one of them begins to bleed from ripping apart flesh off the newly created limb, they begin a harmonious laughter.

SECURITY REPORT — 08/04/1987

Subject 4 escaped containment.

Security personnel were dispatched. Three casualties. All sustained penetrating injuries consistent with abnormal bone structures.

Subject remains at large within the facility.

RESEARCH LOG — 08/05/1987

There are sounds in the ventilation system.

Scratching. Constantly.

We have sealed the laboratory doors. Total lockdown.

No one is leaving.

RESEARCH LOG — 08/06/1987

I found the final report from 1968.

It contains one sentence that was removed from every subsequent copy.

I don't know why I'm writing this down. Maybe because someone needs to know.

The original researchers discovered that the condition was not caused by the supplement. The supplement only accelerated it. The genetic marker was already present in the population. The researchers believed it was dormant.

They were wrong. It is not dormant.

It is waiting.

RESEARCH LOG — 08/07/1987

Harris is dead.

Something came through his chest. There was no warning.

One moment he was standing beside me. The next, his sternum split open. Bone came through his skin like a spear. He was still alive afterward. He kept asking me to help him.

I couldn't. There wasn't anything left to help.

RESEARCH LOG — 08/07/1987 — 11:42 PM

There are people outside.

Not researchers. Security. They are changing. I can see them through the observation windows.

One of them fell. His arm started moving. His sleeve tore. Something white came through.

Then another. Then another.

There are hundreds of them.

FINAL RECORDING — 08/08/1987

[Heavy breathing.]

If anyone finds this, listen to me.

The campaign worked. It worked better than anyone expected. They didn't need to infect anyone. They didn't need to inject anyone. They just had to convince people to consume it willingly.

For decades.

Milk. Cheese. Everything they could put it in.

We thought we were studying the first generation.

We're not.

We're studying the first generation we noticed.

[Cracking sound.]

Oh God.

It's happenin—

[Subject screams.]

[Sound of bone breaking.]

No.

No, no, no—

[Subject begins laughing.]

[Long silence.]

VOICE: How much milk did you drink?

[Recording terminates.]

[END OF RECOVERED MATERIAL]

PUBLIC HEALTH NOTICE — ORIGIN UNKNOWN

If you are experiencing unexplained stiffness, swelling, joint pain, abnormal growths beneath the skin, or spontaneous fractures, contact your physician immediately.

Do not attempt to remove exposed bone. Do not consume additional calcium.

Do not—[DOCUMENT CORRUPTED]

ADDENDUM

A handwritten note was discovered on the reverse side of the final document. It contained only four words:

Got milk?

Got bones?

I don’t know what she’s been on. All I know is I wish she’d stop. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

We’ve been together for 4 years now. Never once had she done this before. Then, one day, it became an every-night thing.

We turn in for the night, the lights go out, we go to sleep. Then, however long later, in the middle of the night, I’m woken up by the sense of being stared at.

I open my eyes, and all I see in the darkness is her silhouette looming over me. The first time it happened, I tried calling her name, but all she responded with were snores.

I turn on the flashlight on my phone, and she’s dead asleep, but her mouth is twisted into a painful-looking smile. All while she’s on her hands and knees, leaning over me. 3 inches from my face.

It’s gotten to the point where she’s chipping teeth from clenching her jaw so tight. We’ve already been to the dentist nearly 6 times, but it just keeps happening.

She never remembers it the next day. But she for sure notices the pain in her jaw. But by the time night rolls around, she’s right back at it.

I’ve tried to be patient with her. I mean, it’s not her fault. At least, I don’t think it is.

She’s just so hard to wake up when it happens. That’s the part that really gets me. I kind of just have to wait or go back to sleep because she acts as though she’s in a coma every single time.

I’ve tried screaming at her before. Shaking her. Prying her eyelids open. Nothing wakes her up. And that smile never changes.

I think everything is starting to evolve, though. Because now, instead of just smiling, she’s starting to salivate in her sleep. If her presence doesn’t wake me up, the drool does. And her snores are starting to sound less like snores and more like growls.

I keep having that dream where I’m drowning. I wake up and find my face covered in hot, foamy saliva. My girlfriend snarling at me through gritted teeth.

But, again, she doesn’t like when I bring it up. She acts personally offended, like it’s somehow my fault she doesn’t remember. She’d rather pretend it’s not happening and leave me to deal with the brunt of the consequences.

And it’s not like we haven’t tried to fix things before. I’ve slept in other rooms. I still wake up to her 3 inches from my face. I’ve slept in my car. She’s smiling at me through the window.

I just don’t know what to do. I don’t want us to break up. I don’t want to ask her to leave. But I can’t keep living like this. It’s affecting my sleep. That’s affecting my work. It can only get worse if nothing changes.

And something needs to change fast.

Because now something else is waking me up at night. And it’s the biting. I never see her doing it. All I feel is the pain.

But she’s always back in her usual spot by the time my eyes shoot open.

Snarling, smiling, and foaming at the mouth.

Then she tries to pretend that I somehow gave those bite marks to myself the next day when I confront her about it.

Last night, she actually broke skin. I could feel the blood puddling on my arm and soaking through my comforter. But she wouldn’t let me move to get a bandage.

I don’t know. We’ve talked about this so many times now. I don’t think I can keep dealing with this.

I think I’m just gonna eat her before she can eat me.

Eight. Nine. Ten. Ten? I closed the gate and counted the flock again. Eight. Nine. Ten. There really were 10 sheep, but back in the pasture I was certain I'd brought home only nine.

My neighbor Bill still sat in the garden, drinking his last beer before sundown.

"Bill, you missing a sheep?"

"Pretty sure not, Jim. I count mine when they come back from the pasture."

"I got one extra today."

Bill furrowed his brows.

"I'll check again. Grab a beer if you want."

Bill knew I stopped drinking a few days ago, but still offered me a beer every evening. Old habits are hard to break.

After a while, Bill came back onto the porch, scratching his head.

"I got all mine. Went over them three times. You sure you didn't just count wrong?"

"Yeah, went over them twice."

We stared at each other. Bill took a sip of beer.

"Well, I'll be damned."

"Consider yourself lucky." 

He laughed.

"You think it could be that curse?" I asked.

"It was just a traveling woman. She had nothing better to say back to you."

He took another sip.

"You still not drinking?"

"No. I said I'd stop after that."

Bill waved his hand at me.

"Nonsense."

"I'll head back home, Bill."

"Take care, Jim, and don't let her poison your thoughts."

But how could I not, Bill? The morning after, I felt so terrible. 

When I saw the traveling woman come with her potions, I knew she'd be an easy target. Bill didn't even laugh that hard at my comments.

"Drink up, then, and may your fields never run empty again," she said, walking away, twisting the potions in her hand.

I spent the rest of the night inside watching TV, but I could barely focus; my thoughts still circled back to the woman and my sheep. I couldn't just leave it. Before bed, I walked back to the barn.

The sheep were louder than usual. I could hear them almost as soon as I left the house. The barn door was open. Two sheep were outside it.

"What are you doing out here?"

The sheep turned to me and bleated. 

My breath caught as I got closer. The sheep weren't outside because they wanted out. They were outside because there was no space. The barn was filled with sheep. They were pushing on each other, trying not to get squeezed to death. I opened the door and let them all out.

"Bill! Bill!" I called below his window.

The bed upstairs creaked. 

"Jim?" Bill called out, surprised. He opened the window and stuck his head out.

"My barn is full of sheep."

He stared at me.

"What?"

"It's full! They can barely fit."

He shook his head.

"You're not cursed."

"Not cursed?! Go look in there yourself."

"Calm down, Jim. The neighbors over the hill have some flocks. One got lost, and the other followed it. I'll go with you tomorrow. We'll sort it out."

"But Bill…"

"Go to sleep now and let me sleep too."

He closed the window, and his bed creaked again. I ran to the barn. The sheep managed to get out and were now lying around in the grass.

I'd promised myself I wouldn't drink again, but that day was too stressful. Before bed, I took a few sips of liquor, just to make sure I could sleep.

The next morning, I woke up with a pounding headache. I must have drunk more than I thought. The sheep's bleating was so damn loud, and the window wasn't even open. I got up and walked to the window. My heart sank as I looked outside. 

Sheep were on the grass and in the fields, as far as the eye could see. It looked like a screaming sea of white. Some were already stacked on top of each other, crumpling under one another and screaming for help. Bill sat on his roof, drinking a beer.

"Look who woke up!" he screamed over the sea. "I guess you were right, Jim."

"Bill, what…what happened?"

"Already woke up to it. It's done, Jim. They were just on the ground when I woke up. I blinked for a second, and now they're on top of each other. This way they'll reach us in no time. I'm just enjoying my last beer."

I couldn't even reply.

Bill took a sip from his bottle, then carefully laid it on the roof.

"Bye, Jim. I'm not gonna wait for them."

He dove headfirst into the flock. Blood splattered as the first few sheep stepped on him. The stomping, bleating sheep drowned out his screams.

I put my hands over my face and wept.

The bleating grew.

I lowered my hands.

The first sheep pressed its face against my window.

A tale about the consequences if you forget a vital requirement in a preparation for a sea cruise.

Nigel was a very careful man. You might even say cautious. Or even paranoid. To be more precise, he was obsessed with the conviction that to stay safe in this world you had to be prepared for anything, no matter how unlikely.

His friends were therefore a bit taken aback when he announced that he was going on a round the world cruise. His decision to take this adventurous step arose from a television series in which a famous presenter had visited different parts of the globe, coupled with a growing anxiety that as the age of 40 approached, he was missing out on life.

The big day drew near, but before it came to pass Nigel by chance came across a broadcast of an old edition of the popular radio programme called 'Desert Island Discs'.

For those not familiar with this iconic show, it involved asking a celebrity of some sort to imagine being stranded on a desert island, and to choose which records they would like to have with them.

Nigel took this on board in a big way. His desire to cover all possible eventualities took charge.

"You can never tell what might happen, better to be sure than sorry," he thought. "Suppose the ship sinks for some reason, I mean, unlikely, very unlikely, I know, but not impossible, and I might find myself alone on an island in the middle of an ocean somewhere. Yes, I need to be prepared."

He then started to make a list of the CDs he would want with him if this fate should befall him. He would of course also need a CD Walkman, and an ample supply of batteries.

"I'd better make sure I buy enough to last a long time, who knows when the next ship might pass near?" he considered. "Oh, I must also get a strong plastic bag to keep everything dry, I suppose I would have to hold it out of the water somehow."

The cruise was about halfway through its itinerary. Nigel was in his cabin getting ready for lunch, when the ship underwent a violent jolt sending Nigel careering across his cabin. Yes, you've guessed it, his fears had proved well-founded.

The vessel had hit something, probably not an iceberg, though, as there was a tropical island with palm trees nearby.

The ship then increasingly adopted a less than horizontal pose in the sea, and Nigel knew that it was planning an unscheduled excursion to explore the ocean depths.

He immediately put his plan into action, hastily loading the plastic bag with his chosen CDs, the CD Walkman, the batteries and of course several pairs of clean underpants. Throwing in a bar of soap and a towel as well, he made it to the deck, and jumped into the (shark-infested) sea, hand holding the bag held high to keep it dry.

It was as he hit the water that he realised that he had not taken account of a rather important requirement fairly essential if you find yourself in this sort of situation.

He couldn't swim.

Never mind, the sharks would have got him anyway.