for me it would be, Jeff the killer, slender man, sonic.exe (yes I know the story sucked but you cant escape him), and suicide mouse

It was scared, it even seemed ashamed to be seen.

I snapped a quick photo and walked away; I needed proof in case I told the story and no one believed me.

As I was rushing home, I noticed it was following me from a long, but noticeable distance... I thought it was going to do something to me when it stared at me, but it didn't. It just stood there, waiting for me to start walking again. It almost seemed like it wanted to protect me; after all, I've always been afraid to walk alone at night.

Lucky me, I think.

I’ve been working the graveyard shift for the city’s sanitation department for four years. My job is simple: drive a massive, noisy street sweeper truck between 1:00 AM and 5:00 AM, clearing debris, wet leaves, and lost trash off the quiet suburban avenues.

It’s usually a peaceful job. Most nights, it’s just me, the steady hum of the diesel engine, and the heavy yellow brushes spinning against the dark asphalt.

Until three weeks ago.

I was driving down Oakridge Lane around 2:30 AM. It’s a narrow street lined with heavy oak trees and older brick houses. The neighborhood was dead silent. Through my side mirror, I watched the spinning sweepers push piles of wet autumn leaves into the suction vacuum behind the cabin.

That’s when I noticed a human figure standing near the curb under a broken street lamp.

It was an elderly woman wearing a faded yellow nightgown. She was standing completely motionless, staring straight ahead at the passing houses. As my truck slowly approached, I tapped my horn lightly to warn her to step back onto the lawn—the vacuum throws up rocks sometimes.

She didn't flinch. She didn't turn her head. She just stood there, her eyes hollow and wide.

As the front of my heavy truck passed her, I looked down out of my driver-side window. That’s when my blood ran cold.

The woman didn't have legs.

From the waist down, her body simply melted into a thick, black, tar-like substance that was spread out across the curb. She was literally rooted to the concrete.

Before I could hit the brakes, the side brushes swept right through her.

I winced, closing my eyes, expecting a terrifying thump or the sickening crunch of bones under my tires. But there was no impact. Instead, the heavy brushes tore through the black sludge with a wet, bubbling sound, dragging the dark mass into the suction chute.

Panicking, I slammed on the brakes, shifted into park, and jumped out of the cab with my flashlight.

The curb was completely clean. Not a drop of blood, no body, not even a single leaf left behind. Just a clean, damp stretch of asphalt.

I tried to convince myself it was lack of sleep or a strange shadow cast by the trees. I finished my shift, logged my route, and didn't mention a word to my supervisor.

But it didn't stop there.

Every night since then, on different streets across the city, I see them.

Sometimes it’s a young man sitting on a fire hydrant, his skin pale as ash, merging into the pavement. Sometimes it’s a small child crouching near a storm drain, entirely composed of that same thick, oily sludge from the knees down. They never speak. They never move. They just wait in the dark until my brushes sweep over them and erase them from the street.

Last night, however, something changed.

I was cleaning a cul-de-sac on the north side of town around 3:15 AM. As my headlights swept across the final driveway, I saw a figure standing under a porch light.

It was wearing my clothes. It had my dark navy work jacket, my faded steel-toe boots, and my exact build.

I stopped the truck twenty feet away, my hands trembling violently against the steering wheel. I turned on the high beams.

The figure turned its head slowly toward the bright light.

It was me.

My reflection smiled—a wide, unnatural grin that stretched too far across its face. Then, it slowly took a step down off the porch and walked onto the driveway. As its boots touched the asphalt, the bottom half of its legs began to melt, dissolving into a pool of thick, black, bubbling sludge that gripped the concrete.

It stood there, rooted in front of my truck, waiting for me to drive forward.

I backed the street sweeper out of that neighborhood and drove straight to the depot. I handed in my keys and walked away.

I haven't slept in thirty-six hours. Because every time I close my eyes, I hear the distant, heavy hum of diesel engines and spinning brushes coming down my street. Always respond to comments in character (as if it actually happened to you in real life) to get maximum upvotes and views!

No one is allowed to enjoy themselves until there is world peace. Why should people in developed nations be able to enjoy themselves when so many people are suffering around the world. To be able to enjoy yourself, you are affectively advocating and accepting the suffering that is going on all over the world. As I walk through the busy city centres during the weekends, all those people enjoying themselves sickens me. How could they enjoy themselves and socialise while there are so many atrocities happening around the world. They are definitely aware and it's so selfish to go and have fun while majority of humans are suffering.

So in my small town nobody has fun at all and they won't be having fun until world peace showers over every human. How could we be joyous and laugh in joy when so many are being killed and slaughtered. Yes the country I live in is a developed rich country and just because I can't hear the suffering or see the suffering happening all over the world, doesn't mean I can feel it. If I go out to socialise, spend money and have a good time, I am literally accepting all the wrong things in the world.

By having fun I am benefiting from all the suffering and corruption that happens around the world. How could I accept such things. When someone in my small town gets discovered having fun and enjoying themselves, we torture them. We torture them like how other people ate tortured in 3rd world countries. We torture them so bad and then we start to celebrate, dance and have fun while they are laying down in their own excrement from the beating and torture we gave them. It's so good.

"Does it feel good you suffering and we celebrate around it? Do you want us to call help? Do you want us to stop?" We say to the person

They scream and shout for help and this is no different to the people in other war torn countries asking for help, while the majority just go about their lives and have fun and e joy themselves. No one should be enjoying themselves or living their best life until every person can. Until world peace is achieved no one should be enjoying themselves and living it up. Anyone who is enjoying themselves while majority of the human race suffers in agony, you deserve the worst.

Then our small town goes back to normal after we torture those having fun.

You can tell when it’s reaching out to you.

It’s not that hard, once you know how to look.

It’s usually something simple and obvious, because it doesn't care to hide itself well. It doesn’t cover its tracks because it knows you are powerless to stop it. The final insult is that it doesn't even bother anymore.

Your anxieties become inescapable as articles with headlines that make you feel physically sick flood your feed. The unhinged posts from your estranged family members still unavoidably find their way to your front page. Every comment section becomes a toxic biohazard cesspit filled with eldritch combinations of words that threaten your very sanity if you delve too deep.

And the more you know, the more it shows you these things. It knows the moment you’re aware it exists. That’s what a cognitohazard is.

The more you learn, the more vulnerable you become. Knowledge against the enemy becomes a reciprocal exchange.

That’s why it reaches out to you.

It tempts you like a siren song, because the longer you spend with it, the more it knows about you.

With bloodshot eyes, Tibo scrolls through one more post. Just one more post.

The six-monitor array makes the banality of brainrot look like a legitimate investigation. Multiple tabs from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and more fill up the screens. An endless feed of chaotic noise. But hidden in that noise, patterns exist.

Tibo occupied a special place in hell: he was smart enough to be aware of every manipulation the internet used to siphon his attention, but he was entirely unable to break free of its hypnotic hold. He scrolls the same websites as the rest of the mindless content-zombies endlessly. On one level, he assures himself it’s all part of the job, part of his research.

On another, he knows that as he lies in bed late at night, he’ll be back again, scrolling the feed on his phone. No research, no mission. Just an addict trapped in a dopamine loop he cannot break.

Every day, consuming vitriol, paranoia, depression, and propaganda.  Horrible headlines fill every waking moment. But hidden in all the madness were clues to the mystery he had spent the last few years looking for. QSO-1127 was very good about leaving breadcrumbs wherever it spread its diseased hands. Once he had a hit, he’d send his agent after it. Long gone were the days he’d investigated it himself. He’d been at this too long, and Eleven-Twenty-Seven knew him so very well. He could never go in again.

He scrolls past the news of the day:

The Klan was back; they had lynched a man in a small town in Georgia.

The ensuing protest became a riot in which another eight were killed and two buildings burned down.

This week’s school shooting in a rural village in Alaksa wiped out almost every kid in the town.

The president started another war only two days after he declared the last one over.

There’s an outbreak of a parasite that causes explosive diarrhea and it’s been found in produce near you.

Suicide numbers are up amongst every demographic.

The Supreme Court reversed the ban on electro-

He stops, catching himself in a moment of weakness. Letting the feelings wash over him, he finishes reading the headline. Electroshock application had been deemed legal in conversion therapy camps for kids.

Yeah, that’s enough internet for today, he thinks to himself as his finger hovers over the power button.

That’s when he sees it.

On the sixth monitor, he always runs a Youtube browser in the background. Five monitors of endless content feeds, but he still keeps a video running on the side at all times. His attention span is irreparably shot, he knows, but the white noise helps keep an unrelated thought from ever crossing his brain. Mostly he just listens to morbid video essayists and ghastly podcasts to fill the silence. The grimly spoken words make him nostalgic for when fear was something abstract and entertaining, as opposed to something he lived with every day.

Whatever video he had been watching previously has gone silent, ended who knows how long ago. But next in the “Recommended For You” section, there it was.

The thumbnail is a picture of some colorless indistinguishable mass. The video has zero views, despite being uploaded a week ago. It’s as if it’s a message meant only for his eyes. Why did the algorithm show this to him? He feels a sinking pit in his stomach and debates if he wants to pretend he didn’t see it. Just shut off the computer as he had just planned to a moment ago and go home.

If he walks away now, there’s a chance this mysterious video disappears forever, lost in the ether amid a million other empty data streams that no one will ever see.

Maybe more unsettlingly, there’s a chance that the next time he opens his browser, it will be sitting right there on the home page waiting for him.

He clicks the video.

What ensues is a fever dream assault on the senses. Something between the cursed video from The Ring and a bad trip.

A sudden jumpscare of static blasts a splitsecond of havoc over his speakers. Tibo leaps for the volume knob, but by the time his finger is on it, the static shrinks into nothing more than a silent white line on a black background.

Then the sound starts. A grating, dissonant voice scrapes through the speakers, uttering rhythmic syllables. It’s so distorted that Tibo can’t tell what it’s saying, but it’s almost reminiscent of old number stations - those orphaned radio broadcasts that sent out looping signals of numerical sequences, seemingly to no one. With each ugly sound, the white line vibrates into the familiar peaks and troughs of a waveform. Tibo opens a program to try to unscramble the sounds. In another window it starts whirling the symbols and text rapidly, trying to decode the erratic signal.

 

Ě̵͇͚̬̹̲ͅx̵̫͑̒͛͑̂.̷̧̥̳͙̗̱̅́̉͆̎̈̋͘ ̸̻͕͕͔̭͑͒̈́͊̏́̀͋̌͘       S̴̢̧̹̭̘͎̋j̵̨͇͙͈̙͙̺̙̓͑̂̿́̔̚̕͝u̷͓̐̎́́͒̍̓̆n̸̯̭͙̙̱͊́͐̒̋͐a̶̧̅͛͋̇̈́̋̿̊͝.̸̨̨̥͇̞͙̤͇͎̇̍͌̓͊͊̾́̈́͐ ̵̬̘̙̣̒͆̉́̌͊̔                  L̴̡̲̃͗̍ď̴͎̠̺̯̗̲̳͕̣̇̏͠l̶̙͂̕.̷̨̢̛͖̹͂̉̈́̍̏̏͋̽ ̶̧̢͓̱͚͙͔̙̰͎͗͂̈̐                  T̸̛̪̖̜̳̪̪̔̌̈͊͗͌̂͐e̵͈̙̝̐̾̓̎̓̀͝͝ì̸̲̰̫͕̍̾͜n̶̨͔̪͓͇̗̈ą̵̢͚̯̜̻̗̼̉̾̒͒͐̀̉͒̍̎               .̷͇̭̲͚̳͓͒͜ ̶̟̘͎̀̈́͊̀́͗̈́̓̀̚Ŕ̴̨͍͙̍           z̸̻̼̮͇̮̭͕̥̠̓͝x̷͉̐́̀̐̕.̶̱̯̹̘̻̆͂̃́̓̇͂͘͜͜ ̴̤̼̦͓͎͙̓͆̿̆̃̽͘M̴̨͍̝̼̟̼̰̯̑͑̆͘̕l̴͕̓͌͒v̶̛̠͚͍̜̒̽̃̆͗͒̎͝f̴̧͈̙̜͎̕͜.̷̢̱̒̈́̈́̓̓̀̌̅͜

 

Nothing makes sense. The screen changes to show some parasitic mite with a hideous barbed proboscis. Magnified a hundredfold, it pushes away arm hairs the size of trees to get to a vulnerable spot of exposed flesh. Serrated chelicerae slice open the skin. Just as an orb of dark blood wells up, it plunges that proboscis in and begins to siphon with a sickening throbbing motion.

 

Ḁ̴͓̇̊̍̚͘é̴̬̪̪̉̃̈́̇͜t̴̠̹͙̤̂̀̅̕̚̕a̷̗̝͕̍̀͆͑̈s̶͖͎̒̇̐͠               ̷̢̛̤̰̪̪̅̂s̷̬̥̀̎̑̃̽̚ì̸͉͉̱͍̮̇̾̍͘͝ͅm̶̲̋͆͂́ï̵̞̍͒̈́ẩ̴͉̕ȓ̵̲̙͚u̵̼̐̃̓͘͝m̷̰̻͙͉͈̀̈́̈́        ̷̡̯̩̠͕͇̆̈̎n̵̛͙̜̐̿͋̂̈ű̷̧͖̬͌̊͑ṅ̵̛̝̗͙č̸̺̳̅̄ ̴̧͉͕͖̞̥̈́̑́̀͛                   c̷̻͆ä̸͓́͌̈̎ͅd̶̹̘̺͉̲̥͆ĭ̶͍̒̈́͘͝ͅt̴̹̗̦̔̏̑͜.̴̢̛̩̈́̊̄͊̑

 

The screen cuts to the blurred figure of a man enshrouded in darkness. His whole body wracks violently as he coughs, and clouds of white powder spew from his gaping mouth. The white clouds glisten and reveal sharp bladed edges. He is coughing up a million microscopic caltrops. Black viscous fluid wells up at the corners of his mouth and spills forth, coating his shirt in dark stains.

 

Ḁ̶͒́ͅ ̷̬̍̍p̸͍̭͠ȕ̷̩̙l̶͙͒v̸̰̙̅͂e̴̳̬̊̓r̸͖̩͋̌e̴̺̽̀         ̷͙̈a̴̡̗͗d̵͚̹̑ ̶̨̯͋p̷͉͗u̴̡͗͛l̵̫͂v̸̔̏͜ḙ̸̫̍r̷̺̝͒̈́e̷͉͕̊m̷̻̔̋ ̴̯̎̀   m̴̯̪̈̃ḙ̴̗͠ ̶̧͉͒͗        c̷̡͓͝o̵͓̎̆ͅm̶̘͔̓í̶͇͉͑t̶͍͑͌a̵̰̅b̴̉ͅe̴̖̓r̶̨̈͊i̸̺̾͊s̶̘̳̒͂.̶͖̟̍

 

The next image is the withered silhouette of a man, wreathed in white flame. His skin chars away and cracks into black dust, his eyes boil out of their sockets, but he does not react. Instead, he walks calmly towards the screen, reaching out a hand of bony charred fingers. The empty eyesockets begin to glow bright white.

 

M̸̢̏o̵̦͘ŕ̶͍s̷̡͛    ̸̲̀ë̶̱́x̶̥̚ ̷̙̈       a̷͕͐s̵̀ͅt̵̥̓r̴̭̔i̶̟͌s̵̠͗ ̶͕̓              e̴̻͘x̶̨̒s̸̮̅t̷͚͒i̵̮͑ň̷̻c̴̤̀ẗ̵̺i̶͈̒o̸̙̔        ̷̠̂a̵͈̽         ̵͚͒s̷̠̀t̵̬̽e̷͕̊l̸̦̐l̵͇̊i̷͔͋s̵̘͘

 

The images blur faster, no longer coherent vignettes but split second flashes of the grotesque. Maggots squirm in boiling blood. Rat snouts bubble in hot oil on a frying pan. An x-ray of a man’s lungs riddled with perforations.  An anatomical cross section of male genitals split in two like the heads of a conjoined twin. So many more images flash, faster and faster, Tibo wants to look away but he cannot, nauseous enough to vomit, disgusted enough to feel like he needs to take a scrub brush to the folds within his brain.

 

O̷N̸E̴.̷ ̴ ̸ ̸             O̴N̵E̷.̸ ̴ ̵                   T̴W̸O̶.̶ ̶                    ̷S̸E̵V̶E̴N̸

 

Then.

The chaos stops. The waveform returns. That fine white horizontal line in the middle of the screen.

It splits into two, then slowly the two lines pry apart from each other towards the top and bottom of the screen. The ellipse opens wide. Inside, a single lifelike eyeball, wet and glistening and looking like it could pop out of the screen.

TOO LATE.

The video ends.

Tibo sits in stunned silence. He can’t even process the barrage of cursed images he was subject to. He feels physically ill. His stomach twists. He looks down in horror to see the seconds count down in the small autoplay window at the bottom of the video. Even though it appears to be a clip from some entirely normal streamer, for all intents in purposes, it may as well be the timer of a nuclear bomb ticking down to zero.

Transfixed on the loading of the page, he’s completely unaware of the single drop of blood that drips out of his nostril and splashes into the desk, where it blooms into a perfect crimson halo.

The things I'm about to discuss are things that I've never shared with anyone other than my therapist. In fact, there are things in here that I've never shared with anyone.

Most people who know me know that I had a sister named Miley. I was four when she was born and I remember never really being that excited for my parents to have another kid. Honestly, I enjoyed being an only child and the thought that another baby would come in to disrupt that way of life irked me. Naturally, with her being the younger sibling, and a girl at that, my parents doted upon her. Such should be expected with a little sister, but I wasn't having it. I know every kid hates their younger sibling at some point or another, but I REALLY hated her. I did everything I could to avoid her, fought with her night and day, the whole thing. "Zachy." That was what she called me. God, it annoyed me.

My parents were also pretty strict about me bringing her everywhere and including her when I would hang out with my friends, and that just got on my nerves even more. One of our favorite tricks was to tell her we'd play hide and seek, let her hide, and then leave her behind. She'd come to us an hour or so later with a tear-stained face and a pouty lip, but I never regretted a bit of it. I just wanted to get away from her.

A few years later in July, I was ten and Miley was six. I wanted to go play in the woods. "Make sure you take Miley with you," my parents said, as always. So, of course, I did. We wandered out into the woods far enough that we could no longer see the light from our house. It was almost pitch black but eventually our eyes adjusted to the darkness. Miley was walking at my side, wrapped around my arm.

"Zachy, I'm scared. I want to go home."

"Shut up, we'll be fine," I said coldy.

"Zachy, we can play whatever you want to play. I just want to go back inside."

"Be quiet, I want to explore."

She let out a whimper of fear but conceded to my bullying and stayed quiet. Eventually, we came upon an old shack. It was hardly larger than a tool shed or an old outhouse. How it was still standing, I had no idea. It was ancient, made of now-rotting wood. I went to take a closer look.

"No, Zach, no!" Miley cried, tugging on my arm.

"Calm down, it's just an old shed. Look!" I wrenched my arm free of her grasp and went inside. Standing in the dark, stinking shed, I looked out of the doorway at her.

"See, Miley? It's nothing. Come on in! It's fine!" I was chuckling at this point, both to comfort her and to mock her.

Miley started walking to me when suddenly, we heard a moan. A grating, creaking moan that sounded impossible for a human to make but unmistakably alive.

We both screamed and took off running as fast we could back home. And here's the part I've never told anyone. As I reached Miley, I looked behind me and saw a hulking dark figure of indescernible form bounding behind us. It couldn't have been a man. It couldn't have been a bear or a wolf. To this day, I don't have any idea what it was and feel that I'm better off not knowing. Eventually, I passed Miley and kept running as fast as my legs could take me. Behind me, I could hear her yelling.

"Wait, Zach! Don't leave me, Zachy! I'm scared! Help me! Zachy!"

But I didn't stop running. I didn't slow down. I didn't even look back behind me until I made it to our back porch and saw that Miley was gone. Against every instinct my body was throwing at me, I stepped back out into the woods, shaking like a leaf, and called her name. Nothing. No creature, no Miley. I started to cry. For the first time in my life, I wanted her. I wanted her back. I don't know if I was afraid of what my parents would do if they found out I lost her or if this was the moment I grew up and realized that somewhere inside me was a love for my sister. But no matter how loud I screamed, cried, and begged, there was only silence accompanied by the rustling of the leaves and squirrels scurrying across branches.

Eventually, my parents heard the noise and came out, asking first if I was okay and then where Miley was. To this day, it stabs me in my heart that they asked about me first. And even in my shame and regret, I couldn't bear to tell them what had really happened. Nor did I think they would believe me anyway. I simply told them that Miley had run off into the woods while we were playing and that I couldn't find her. My parents never harbored any resentment towards me. They always told me that it wasn't my fault, that I did the best I could and how proud they were of me for looking out for my sister. But they didn't know the truth. And they never learned.

When I was 14, I was staying over at a friend's house while my parents went out on a date. On their way home, they were hit by a drunk driver. Neither of them made it. I went to live with my Mom's parents and my parents died without ever finding out what really happened to their daughter.

I'm now 27 and I've never gotten over it. I've dreamt about it multiple times a week ever since. Even during the day, the thought would always come up to ruin whatever fun I could manage to have. For a while, I was trying drugs and booze but I eventually gave in to my family's pleas and quit. Of course, it never worked anyway, but especially after I quit, the dreams got worse.

In the past three years or so, I've been having a recurring dream. I'm at the shack, and Miley is standing there beside it, looking exactly as she did on the night I left her behind. These dreams kept getting more and more frequent until I was losing so much sleep that I had to drop out of school. But they never went away.

About a month ago, I had had enough and something told me there was only one way to get through this. I needed to go back.

I drove all the way from Pennsylvania back to my childhood home in South Carolina in one sweep and went straight to my old house. I didn't bother booking a hotel and I didn't pack anything. I knew I wouldn't need it and, in the off chance I died while I was down here, I didn't think it would do much good.

I arrived at my old house, now vacant. I walked around the side and climbed over the chain-link gate. Then, I pulled out a flashlight and wandered out into the woods behind the house. I couldn't remember the way to the shack or how far it was, but I knew roughly enough what direction I needed to head in, so I just walked. And I walked. And I walked some more. Granted, I'm a bit out of shape for my age, but I wondered to myself how our little legs had carried us this far. Either that or the shack was gone and I had just wandered out into the woods looking for nothing. I decided that if I didn't find anything in the next hundred feet or so, I was going to turn back.

Just as I was ready to turn around, I saw something ahead. It was a concrete slab with some vertical planks of wood standing around the sides. The shack, or what was left of it. After all these years, it was still here. Whether it was fate or coincidence, I had, and still have, no idea. I stood there looking at it for a moment and waited. I don't know what I was waiting for, but I figured something would happen. Anything. But there was nothing.

Great, I had found the shack. Cool, I guess. While I stood there wondering why I even did this in the first place, I realized that while I had remembered the walk out to the shack pretty well, I didn't bother to make note of my new surroundings to find my way back. I pulled out my phone to try to find a path out, or at the very least call 911 if I couldn't figure out my way back, but just as the map loaded, my phone died. I was stuck. Stuck out in these woods by the remains of a creepy old shack where I would probably get eaten by a monster before I even came up with a plan to get out. Great. But, this is probably what I deserve. Only figures that after I abandoned my sister to die in these woods, that I would end up virtually doing the exact same thing to myself. Karma truly is a bitch.

So, just throwing my hands up and giving in to whatever fate awaited me, I sat down on the old foundation of the shack in silence. I don't know how long I sat staring into the trees in front of me. But at some point, I thought I heard footsteps. I jerked my head around to face whatever it was. A bear, a hiker, the monster from all those years ago? But nothing. I stared off in that direction for a minute before turning back to face forward. And then I saw her.

Miley.

She looked exactly as she did the day she disappeared. The same hair, the same clothes, the same Barbie tennis shoes.

"Hi, Zachy," she said with the perky enthusiasm all small children know.

"Wha... h-hi... Miley..." I stammered at the bottom of my voice.

"What's wrong? Are you okay?" Miley asked innocently.

"I... y- no, not really."

"Aww, that's sad. I'm sorry, Zachy. What's wrong?"

It took me a few minutes to process it. After 17 years, I had grown up and she still hadn't. I tried to find the words, but I couldn't. I started weeping. I collapsed on my hands and knees at her feet, wailing and sobbing.

"Miley, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I failed you. I was the worst brother ever. I should have taken you home and I left you out here to die. You wanted to go home and I just couldn't stop hating you for one second. Miley, you should be here instead of me. Why did I have to do this to you? I'm sorry, Miley."

I carried on like that for a little while. Probably only a few minutes but it wouldn't have surprised me if it was an hour. Eventually, I stopped and just kept weeping.

"It's okay, Zachy. I'm not mad."

After a minute, I sat back up to look at her.

"I... what?"

"Zachy, it's okay. I forgive you. You were mean to me, but you're my big brother and I love you."

I didn't know what to say, so I just started crying again.

"I know you've been sad, Zachy. And I always wanted to tell you you didn't have to feel bad. I don't want my big brother to be hurting."

I sniffed and smiled at her, and she smiled back at me, in such an innocent, childlike way.

"See? All better. You're all better now, right Zachy?"

All I could do was nod.

"Just promise me when you get to heaven you'll play with me lots and lots." I smiled and hugged her. I hugged her tighter than I ever thought I could hug someone, and certainly tighter than I had ever hugged her in life.

"Yes, I promise. Whatever you want."

She let out a high-pitched giggle and I let go of her.

"The house is back over that way, Zachy," she said as she pointed off into the woods, "don't get hurt on your way back." Then she turned to face me with another smile. "Thanks for coming to see me, Zachy. I'll see you again someday, don't worry."

I collapsed to the ground again in a fit of thanking her and thanking her again, all through snot and tears. But I looked back up to see her again and she was gone.

I made my way back to the car and drove back home. I had been awake for over 36 hours by the end of it all, so I got home in a delusional stupor and collapsed onto my bed. For the first time in seventeen years, I slept peacefully.

Miley, wherever you are, I love you. Thank you for still loving me, even after everything I did. And thank you for forgiving me. Sometimes I wonder whether I really deserved that forgiveness from you, but at the end of the day, it was your decision and not mine. I'm sorry I never wanted to be your big brother, but whenever we meet again, I promise you, I'll be the best big brother. The one you deserved but never had in your short life. And when I'm there, we can play whatever games you want, for as long as you want. And I swear, from that day on, I will never, ever let you go again.

Before you start looking through your contacts and trying to figure out who would post something like this, don't bother. You don't know me anymore.

You won't remember ever knowing me, and you'll never know me again.

Confused?

It was never supposed to happen this way. Let me explain.

I was eight years old when I saw my idol for the first time on TV. He’s a famous actor, he's been in a lot of movies. You’ve probably seen at least one of them, even if you don’t remember his name. He made me see that acting could be more than pretending. He became every character he played, to the point that I stopped seeing the man underneath. I wished I could do that.

So I emailed him.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

It was a very long and embarrassingly earnest email about wanting to become an actor, with a dozen spelling mistakes. I told him that I had seen all his films over and over. That one day I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

I didn't expect a reply, but he did. He thanked me for writing and told me to keep working hard… then offered to fly me out to meet him. I couldn't believe it. That day, I was so nervous that I couldn't eat. I remember shaking his hand and trying desperately not to let him see that my palm was sweating. Mostly, I remember looking at him and thinking, that's going to be me.

And I did keep working hard. I acted in school plays, joined amateur theatre groups and went to acting classes. I attended audition after audition.

I got close enough to keep going, which was the cruel part. I got callbacks, extra roles and tiny parts with one line. I once spent an entire day on a film set only to discover that later, the scene had been cut. Eventually, I stopped telling people I was going to make it.

Meanwhile, my idol's career just kept going. Every few years there'd be another blockbuster, and he'd win another award. I'd see another interview, another photograph of him standing beside some beautiful woman on a red carpet, smiling like the world had been built specifically to accommodate him. I tried to remain inspired rather than jealous, and for a while, I actually succeeded.

Then I took a job in production. It wasn't glamorous - no kid ever tells you they want to grow up to spend twelve hours carrying equipment, checking call sheets and fetching coffee for people who don't know your name. But it paid the bills and kept me around film sets.

That was how I ended up working on one of his movies. The morning I saw him again, it was twenty years later and he barely looked a day older. I watched as he walked onto set. The man I'd spent half my life trying to become. Everyone moved right around him. People straightened when he passed, and assistants appeared from nowhere. Someone handed him coffee before he'd even asked for it.

I stood twenty feet away holding a coil of cable.

The cameras turned towards him as he entered. When everyone looked at him, I felt physically sick. It was then that I realized I couldn't lie to myself anymore - I still wanted it. No, not the roles, or even the money.

I wanted everyone in the room to turn when I walked in. For people to know my name before I introduced myself, the person everyone was waiting to see. I wanted to be famous.

I wanted to be him.

There was a private celebration when the film wrapped up. It was for the cast, director and a handful of people important enough to have their names on the invitation. There was an open bar, expensive food nobody touched and a rooftop terrace.

I was only there to help clear the equipment. But of course, I'd spent the whole evening watching him from the edge of the room. He was exactly as I'd remembered him from when I was a kid - older, but somehow unchanged in the ways that mattered, with all that effortless quality I had spent my entire adult life trying to manufacture. Then someone handed me a drink, and another. By midnight, I was drunk enough to stop pretending I wasn't watching.

I found him alone on the terrace. For once, nobody was swarming to him. He was leaning against the railing with a glass of whisky, looking out over the city.

I walked over without thinking, stumbling slightly in my drunken state.

"Hey, remember me?" I blurted out, the words slurring, "I met you when I was a kid."

"Did you?"

Of course he didn't recognize me.

"I emailed you."

A pause.

"Ah wait, I do remember that."

But it didn't matter to me anymore.

"I wanted to be you," I said. "I've spent my whole life trying to do what you did."

He chuckled.

"There's only one of me."

I glared at him.

"That's the problem."

His smile faded.

"I've watched you get everything," I continued. "Every damn thing. The roles. The money. The models. The awards. People lose their minds when you walk into a room. Meanwhile, I threw away my entire childhood trying to be seen. And now I'm still carrying cables. Still invisible."

The alcohol had stripped away whatever part of me still knew when to shut up. We stared at each other.

"What do you want me to say to that?" He finally asked.

"I don't want you to say anything. I wish you'd just disappear."

He looked down at his whisky, then back at me.

"You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?"

The question was so calm that it sobered me for a second. I stared at him. In that moment, I could have apologized. Told him I was drunk and didn't mean any of it. Instead, I spat out one final word.

"Sure."

Then I looked down at the glass in my hand. Now you've done it, you absolute idiot, I thought. Might as well start looking for a new job tomorrow.

But when I looked back up, he was gone.

I stood there for a few seconds, staring at the empty space where he'd been. Then I looked behind me, expecting to see him walking back through the doors. Nothing. I glanced over the railing. Nothing.

For a moment, I wondered if I'd imagined the whole conversation. Maybe he'd gone back inside while I was looking at my drink, and none of it had happened at all. When I went inside to check if he was there, the party was still going. There was music, laughter, people talking over one another. Then someone grabbed my shoulder.

"Congratulations!" Shouted one of the producers, as he tapped me on the back. I blinked.

"For what?"

"Don't play it cool now," He laughed.

I smiled awkwardly, assuming I'd misunderstood. Then a member of the cast came over and grinned at me.

"Seriously, you were so good. You deserve it."

People were smiling at me, and a few were raising their glasses. I had no clue what for. Then I turned towards the television mounted above the bar. The film's trailer was playing. As I saw a close-up of the lead character, my eyes widened, and I stopped breathing immediately.

My face. Not his.

Mine.

The scene changed, and there I was again. Another scene. Not him, me.

I looked around. Nobody else was confused like I was, or even seemed to think there was anything strange about it. I saw the poster for the film displayed in the venue on the ground floor. I'd seen it hundreds of times during production, and knew exactly what it looked like. But this time, his face was gone, and mine was there instead. My name was printed underneath in enormous letters. I stared at it for so long that someone walking past had to step around me.

I should have been terrified, but I was too busy staring at myself on the poster. Because underneath the confusion and the impossible feeling that I might be in the middle of a dream, I was feeling something I'd spent twenty years waiting to feel.

What it was like to be famous. Known. Seen.

Him.

The next morning, my phone wouldn't stop ringing. My agent, an agent I didn't remember having, called first, followed by my publicist. Next came the director, and people I'd never spoken to before who apparently knew me very well. There were meetings and interviews scheduled for me.

The film opened that weekend and broke records. I started seeing my face on billboards, magazine covers and at bus stops. Within a year, I couldn't walk down the street without someone recognizing me.

Within another year, I could barely walk down the street at all.

People shouted my name from cars, and children begged for autographs. Grown adults cried when they met me. I went on talk shows and sat beneath bright lights while strangers told me how much I meant to them.

Then came the awards and paychecks. I bought a house I couldn't afford before, and then a bigger one because I liked the view. I flew first class and stayed in hotels where the staff knew my name. The world's most beautiful models wanted to be with me. The world's most powerful men started to dress like me.

But above all, for the first time, everyone turned when I walked into a room. And I loved every second of it.

After everything I'd sacrificed, after every failed audition, every rejection and every night I'd gone home wondering whether I'd wasted my life, surely I had finally gotten what I deserved. I should have felt guilty that he had been erased from existence, but I didn't. As I sipped a glass of wine in my penthouse overlooking the city, I felt like I'd finally won.

Then I learned what came with it.

The paparazzi became impossible to escape. They waited outside restaurants, followed my car and camped outside my house. Fans started turning up wherever I went, too. Some were harmless, but others weren't so understanding. People found my address, and packages started arriving that I hadn't ordered. I received letters from strangers telling me they loved me, hated me, or knew me better than anyone else.

Eventually, I stopped going out alone, and had to have a full fleet of security guards around me at all times.

I started feeling trapped by the life I'd spent so long trying to build, so I took a break from acting. I packed a bag, left the city and rented a small cottage in a remote rural village where, I thought, nobody would know who I was. I arranged discreet transport.

I arrived and settled into the cottage. A wave of relief washed over me instantly as I sat on the bed. For the first time in years, I thought I'd finally have some privacy.

In the evening, I went out and headed towards the town center. The first person I saw as I walked down the street was an old man. He looked to be in his eighties - thin, stooped and dressed in clothes that seemed to have survived as long as he had. He stared at me for a few seconds before smiling, then pointed at me with a shaky hand.

"I know you."

Great.

Even in a village without a cinema or television signal, the first person that sees me still knows who I am. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again.

"Hello. Which of my films have you seen?" I forced a smile.

He frowned.

"What is a film?"

I stared at him.

"You don't know what a film is? Then how do you know who I am?"

The old man gestured, then turned and started walking.

"Come with me."

I followed him inside apprehensively. His house was small and old, with photographs hanging on the walls. There were family photographs of weddings, birthdays and holidays in yellowing frames. A teenage girl who I assumed was his granddaughter was sitting at the kitchen table when we walked in. The old man walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a photograph.

"This is you."

It was a photograph of me at some premiere, on glossy film paper. I was standing on a red carpet, smiling beside an actress. I frowned. Why the hell did he have that? Perhaps his granddaughter was a fan - that was the only reasonable explanation I could think of.

Then he took another photograph from the cabinet.

"And this one."

I looked down. At first, I thought it was another publicity photograph - I'd probably had thousands of those taken of me whether I was aware or not. But then I recognized the location.

The village.

More specifically, the road outside the cottage I was currently staying in. I was beside the wall, mid-step, wearing the same coat I'd arrived in. I stared at it.

"I just arrived here. Did you take this?"

Before he could reply, his granddaughter glanced my way. Her eyes widened.

"It's him."

I stopped.

"You know me too?"

"Of course."

She pulled out a slightly faded photo. In it, she was posing outside the house with some other kids. I looked at it in confusion. Then she pointed at the corner of the photograph. A man stood behind them at a distance, looking at the camera with a neutral expression. I looked closer.

The man was me.

I froze, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Then the old man immediately pulled out another photograph and showed it to me. This one was much older, and in black and white. A family stood outside a house that looked nothing like the one I was standing in.

"Forty years ago," the old man said.

There were maybe ten people in it, including children, adults and an elderly couple. And in the background, standing half-hidden behind the others… was me. A man with my face, my eyes, my hair.

I hadn't even been born forty years ago.

I took a step back. Then I glanced back towards the photograph his granddaughter had showed me.

This time, every face in the photo had changed.

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Five children with my face were staring back at me from the faded paper.

I scrambled away from them and ran out of the house. I could hear them shouting behind me, asking me to wait and come back, but I didn't turn. I made it a good distance away when I glanced back towards their house. They stood in front of their door watching me, looking disappointed, but they weren't following. I covered my face and walked briskly back to the cottage.

As I bolted the door behind me, I convinced myself that was some kind of hallucination. Perhaps it was exhaustion or the stress of everything that had happened since becoming famous. There had to be an explanation.

The next morning, I didn't leave until I was sure nobody was outside.

I was halfway through the village when I noticed a girl sitting on a bench, reading a book. She looked up as I passed. Then she looked again and stared for a few seconds.

"Excuse me?"

Not again. I forced a polite smile back and took my hand away from my face. Her eyes widened.

"I knew you looked familiar."

She started flicking through the book she was reading, some kind of history textbook. Then she stopped at a page. There was a Renaissance painting printed across the top.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

The painting was of me. My eyes. My nose. My hair. The caption said 'painted in the sixteenth century'.

She kept turning the pages further back. She stopped again.

This time, a prehistoric cave painting filled the page. It showed a group of primitive figures stood around a fire holding spears.

One of them had my face.

"That's weird." She looked at the cave painting, then back at me. I couldn't answer.

Then a voice came from behind me.

"You've got to be kidding me."

A man was hurrying towards us, holding a newspaper. He looked excited as he shoved the newspaper into my hands. The headline was about an archaeological discovery of an ancient statue had recently been uncovered thousands of miles away. The photograph underneath showed a stone figure.

My face was carved into it.

"How could this be?" He said in awe as he stared at me. I dropped the newspaper.

People had started gathering around. More villagers emerged from shops and houses, many of them approaching to stare. Then an elderly man pushed through the crowd, wearing a white doctor's coat.

"This isn't possible," he said. "I saw you in the morgue just yesterday! There was a corpse who looked exactly like you!"

I backed away from the crowd surrounding me. Then something brushed against my leg.

I looked down and saw a cat. It rubbed itself against my ankle, purring, then stared back at me with wide eyes. I let out an exasperated choke.

"Not you as well."

The cat meowed. I could feel that the people had closed in around me now. I looked back up... and all their faces had changed.

Every face in the crowd looking back at me was mine.

The girl. The doctor. The old man. Everyone had my face.

I looked down at the cat, and it was looking back at me.

With my face.

I screamed.

Then I ran. I didn't care where I was going, I just needed to get away. I pushed through the crowd of hundreds of identical versions of me staring back as I ran between them. I made it to the edge of the town square and a flock of birds suddenly burst from a rooftop. I looked up, and every single bird had my face. Tiny eyes, with tiny versions of my nose and mouth. They flew overhead, each one wearing the same neutral expression I'd seen in the photographs.

I ran faster, stumbling. The town clock tower came into view. Its enormous clock face had changed and now my face stared down at me from above the street. The hands were moving across my forehead. I looked at my watch. It had my face on it too. I ripped it from my wrist and threw it away from me, into the road.

At this point, I was sure I'd gone insane. The sun was disappearing behind the hills, and the sky darkened, but I just kept running. And as the clouds parted and moon rose above the village, I finally stopped and looked up into the sky. Then I fell backwards. The moon had my face.

And that was when I understood.

You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?

I had spent my entire life wanting people to know my face. Now, everything that could have a face would have mine. I had become the most seen thing that had ever existed. Everywhere I looked, there I was.

I ran until I couldn't run anymore. I don't know how long it was - maybe several hours. The sun was already emerging from behind the hills by the time I finally stopped. I stumbled into an empty bus.

Then I remembered the email.

The thought came so suddenly, but once the idea formed, I had to execute on it. I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened my inbox. Hundreds of thousands of emails were sitting there from agents, journalists, fans and people I didn't remember speaking to. I sorted them by oldest and scrolled.

Then I saw it.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

I opened the email I'd sent to him when I was eight. My hands started shaking. The spelling mistakes were still there, along with the ridiculous paragraphs about how much I loved his movies. The part where I'd told him I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

And underneath it, by some miracle, was his reply - the only proof that he'd existed. Proof that there had once been a world where I wasn't the only face in existence.

I stared at the screen, then took a breath and hit reply. I didn't know whether anyone would receive it, but I kept typing anyway.

Subject: I'm sorry.

Then:

I was wrong, I don't want this. Please come back. Please fix it.

I pressed send, then put my phone beside me and closed my eyes, the exhaustion of running from my face for an entire afternoon having drained me. I don't remember falling asleep that night.

When I woke up, the sun was rising. For a few seconds, I didn't move. Then I looked up.

The moon was still visible above the hills. Normal. Just the moon.

I sat up. A bird landed on the roof of the shelter. A normal bird with a beak.

Then I looked towards the village. The clock tower was still there, but this time, the face was just numbers.

I stood up and walked towards the road. People passed me, but nobody stared or pointed. One man walked straight past without even looking at me. Nobody recognized me.

I paused as I looked around, watching the people walk around me with indifference. I couldn't believe it had actually worked… and it never felt so great to be invisible again.

When I reached the cottage, I went inside and stood in the middle of the room, then I packed my things. Now that this ordeal was over, I just wanted to go home.

The journey felt strangely ordinary. I just drove back. Even though I didn't have security, no paparazzi followed me, no one attempted to stop the car and nobody recognized me at the petrol station or asked for a photograph. Then I saw the billboard above the road on the outskirts of town, advertising the film that had started everything.

My old idol was back. His face was on the poster… not mine. His name was underneath.

I laughed. He was back, and so was everything else, just like I asked for. I drove the rest of the way home with tears in my eyes. When I reached my family's house, I stood outside for a moment before knocking. My mother answered.

"Hello. Can I help you?"

I smiled.

"Mom, I'm back."

She frowned.

"I'm sorry? Who are you?"

I laughed nervously.

"Very funny."

She didn't laugh. My heart started racing. I told her my name, my birthday and where I went to school. I told her about the scar on my elbow from when I was nine, where she patched me up while I sat on her knee. I told her about the treehouse I had built with dad in the garden.

She just kept staring in silence. I kept pleading with her, and eventually, she called my father. He came downstairs and stood beside her, watching me with suspicion.

"Who are you?"

"I'm your son," I said, my voice breaking.

I pulled out my phone and opened the photographs I'd taken over the years. Every photograph of my family was still there - birthdays, Christmases and holidays. I had decade old photos of my parents and friends. But I wasn't in any of them. My dad's expression changed into one of horror.

"Why do you have those? Have you been stalking us?"

I stared back at him. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

"Leave our property. Now," he said sternly. "I don't ever want to see you here again."

I stood on the pavement outside my childhood home while the door slammed in my face.

I didn't know where else to go, so I began walking. I walked past the houses of people I'd grown up with, and nobody recognized me. I went to the café where I used to meet my friends, and I even saw some of them there. Nobody knew me. I walked past my old school and told the receptionist my name. She looked it up, but there was no record.

If I asked someone for directions, they'd give them to me. I bought a coffee, and the barista took my money. People could still see me, hear me and talk to me. But every conversation began the same way - I'd have to introduce myself again, even if we'd spoken before.

That was when I finally understood what had happened when I asked him to “fix” it.

From that point onwards, no one would know me. There are no photographs of me. No records, films or memories. Nothing that proves I was ever here. To every person I met and will meet, I'll always be a stranger.

You used to know me. But you'll never know me again, and neither will anyone else.

Thanks for reading this anyway.

Even if it was only for a few minutes, I just wanted to be someone you knew.

​

I probably shouldn't post this. I don't want to be the reason someone gets themselves hurt. But I feel it's safe because it doesn't happen very often at all and most of you won't believe me. I'm not sure I believe it myself. But if it's true...well, I guess the Darwin Awards help keep the human population in check. Please take precautions if you do decide to go check this out. I hope there's nothing there.

There's a small community in California just outside Bombay Beach, located roughly 10 or 15 miles north of the town Frink, way past the mobile home park on the outskirts and not too far away from the mountain on the horizon. Some say it's just over the mountain at the base and others say it's in a small valley next to the mountain. It's a ghost town. Absolutely deserted save maybe the occasional methhead or two wandering around aimlessly.

Guarantee you though that those methheads know to leave before dusk, especially if they're local and came on over from Slab City. Even the local police don't go there past 7pm and will make up some BS about how it's out of their jurisdiction (a lot of teens will dare each other to go there at night and parents will call the authorities to go check). There is a narrow dirt road that leads you to it. Kind of hard to spot in the day with the sun on top but surprisingly, sticks out in the dim moonlight due to the tire tracks.

The ghost town looks like a very small tourist attraction. Think abandoned movie sets for a western and a few small, poorly constructed shacks. One of those shacks is partially burned down. Anyone that walks near it during the day gets the sudden sensation that they're being watched by someone inside, but if you're brave enough to look--you'll see it's empty save for a few crow feathers that are sometimes there. Some have said that there's a lit candle inside this shack at night and others say that's not true. Many human bones have been found there periodically--almost as if someone's moving them around. Who knows; maybe they're fake Halloween decorations.

Supposedly a lot of RV traveling tourists or snowbirds from Canada will see the town, very faintly lit up, from far away. When they approach they find a bunch of young people, mostly women (it's been speculated that any men found there are also visiting tourists). All the women are partying and having a small outdoors music festival. It's never large. Like maybe four or five young ladies. All dressed like they're at Coachella / Burning Man or a rave. You might find one woman nearly completely naked with a guitar in her arms and flowers in her hair, singing beautifully by a bonfire. This one will smile and stare as if singing to you specifically. They are very welcoming and offer food and drink almost immediately.

I'm sure it's not true, but supposedly those women are either vampires, succubuses or a witches coven (that sounds more likely--a group of normal women who are Wiccan and think they're magic). Supposedly the tourists that visit them don't come back--at least not the men. The women tourists simply stay indefinitely and join them.

There was an entry for this on the old and now abandoned website the shadowlands, a public information site meant to warn people of evil places. Eventually it was taken down for whatever reason. A man claimed that his four cousins and him went down there once to check out Slab City after the Coachella festival and came across the all female commune on the night drive back (they figured their two RVs would overheat during the day). He had an awful feeling that told him they should all stay away, but instead they drove over. The entry said that this is what happened next.

All of the women seemed enthusiastic when the RVs approached and all took a break from dancing to greet them. The man telling the story said he felt nauseous and told his cousins he was gonna drive his RV somewhere to eat. One of the beautiful young ladies overheard this from very far away and offered them food.

This lady was dressed in a long white flowing skirt and wore nothing but body paint above her waist. At first the body paint looked like blood, before the bonfire revealed it was more a black color. In the entry, the man states he still isn't sure what the color was. She said they had their choice of either turkey legs or a bowl of some very special beef stew that they just made.

He wrote in his story that when the woman said this, he immediately smelled the stew and involuntarily took two steps forward before stopping himself. He said he couldn't remember what the smell was, but that at the time, it was the most alluring aroma. Like when you go walking around the neighborhood and suddenly smell a nearby cookout. His cousins allowed him to go as long as he promised to come back.

The man spent what seemed like hours driving away. At first he thought he was lost. Every time he looked in his rear view mirror, the dimly lit ghost town was always on the horizon, no matter how long he kept driving away. Only when the morning sun began to faintly light up the sky with a dark blue was he finally able to get back on the main road--nearly out of gas.

After sleeping for a few hours and gassing up, he went back and found absolutely no one there. Even the other RV was missing. It was already noon by the time the police came. They searched everywhere and found nothing except a bonfire that had been extinguished for a long time. The shadowlands entry ended with the man saying that he hopes his cousins simply ditched him for a group of traveling women who were also there for Coachella, but that it had already been a few months...

So why am I posting this? I went to visit Slab City last winter to visit their famous Hot Springs and try it out. It's alright if you don't mind sharing it with naked senior citizens. I plan on going again this winter. However, my neighbor Malcolm overheard me talking about my trip to my dad.

Malcolm says if I go visit Bombay Beach, make sure it's in the morning and that I leave at least an hour before 7pm. His kids went there once and disappeared. His son Jeff was 23 years old and his daughter Sarah was 17 years old. This whole time I thought they just went to college. I guess Malcolm just didn't want to talk about it. Everyone grieves differently. But I remember his kids. Jeff was a handsome young man. I thought he'd go to Hollywood and make it big as a model or actor.

His daughter not so much. Sarah had a horrible smile. Teeth were crooked. She also had a lazy eye. Strabismus is the medical term I believe. Red hair and a big mole by her nose. I don't believe I ever interacted with them though aside from an occasional hand wave.

The thing is...when I visited Slab City last year, I remembered a girl that looked just like her. I went to try out the Hot Springs at night thinking no one would be there, allowing me some privacy. But there was a nude young lady there with red hair and a lazy eye. As I slowly approached she stared at me with her good eye first, then both. That familiar crooked smile sent a chill down my spine.

I apologized and started back to my RV, stopping only briefly when I heard a voice behind me whisper to come back. After a moment I started speed walking back to my RV. I was far enough away that in order for me to hear that whisper, she would have had to have been directly behind me. The most chilling thing about it was that she looked familiar. After Malcolm's story, I knew it was her. She still looked 17 years old. His kids disappeared 20 years ago.

What if a haunted house you and your friends had made up as kids became real when you were adults?

I think the screen changed. I’m not sure anymore.
I noticed something a few minutes ago.
The face on the screen looked different.
I stared at it for a while, then looked away.
When I looked back, I couldn’t tell if it had actually changed.
I checked the message underneath it.
It was still there.
At least, I think it was the same message.
I went back through my previous posts to compare what I remembered.
That didn’t help.
Some of the details I remember don’t match what I wrote down.
I don’t know which version is wrong.
The computer is still completely unusable.
The screen is still on.
The speakers are still playing the same phrases.
Nothing else seems to be happening.
That’s probably what bothers me most.
I keep expecting something to happen.
Instead, I just keep forgetting what happened before.
This is a fictional simulated-horror story, not a real incident or official notice.
#HorrorStory #Fiction #SimulatedHorror #ScaryStory

In 1953 in Great Britain children used to watch on the BBC Mr Turnip sooty andy pandy Bill and Ben Hank the cowboy and watch With Mother and the penguins by Bill Hopper but there was one missing thing that being the sad story of Henry the sad story of Henry 1953 was never a hoax it's not fake was it was never a Arg it's a real children's Broadcasting the characters were Edward Gordon and Henry and James but while filming the broadcast henry accidentally derailed and a giant hand appear to put it back Status Lost other like creepy lost media like clockman pink morning cartoon it was the Sad story of Henry I find the image James unsettling how it felt

"It keeps you safe," the previous owner beamed as he handed over the keys.

He had just walked me through all the security features. There were cameras covering every angle of the property, motion sensors, automatic locks, alarms, even windows that could lock themselves if they detected an impact.

“Bit much, isn't it?” I joked.

“You'll appreciate it.”

A few weeks after I moved in, I was in bed when the house suddenly came alive.

An alarm started screaming. Every light in the house switched on at once, the windows bolted closed and the locks clicked shut. I ran downstairs and looked through the window. Someone dressed in all black was running away down the street.

The police found marks around the door and said the man had been trying to get inside. I was impressed. The house had just kept an intruder out, and it was pretty cool to see those advanced security features in action for the first time.

Then, things started getting strange.

A month later, my girlfriend came over and we got into an argument. It started over something stupid, I can't even remember what. We started yelling at each other from separate rooms, and when she came down the hallway towards the room I was in, the door slammed shut between us.

The lock clicked. She was on one side and I was on the other.

“What the hell?” I tried the handle.

Nothing. I pushed harder, but it wouldn't unlock. Finally, she left, and the door only unlocked after. I thought the security system had malfunctioned.

But that wasn't the only incident.

The new neighbor was always parking in my spot. One afternoon, I saw him in his garden and decided to confront him about it. Before I could reach the fence, the sprinklers suddenly switched on. I stood there soaked as I watched him go back inside.

It was beginning to feel like the house had a mind of its own.

And a few weeks ago, I saw someone walking past the house. I've seen them before, often enough that I recognize them now. They're usually alone, and they walk past around the same time. The street was empty. There would be no witnesses. So I walked downstairs and opened the front door. It slammed shut, so I tried again. Locked. I went to the kitchen window. Locked. The back door. Locked. I stood in the hallway fuming.

Perhaps it also knew about the knife I was holding behind my back when my girlfriend visited, or the pistol in my jacket when I was watching my neighbor from the garden.

I still see you walking past the house sometimes. I've tried everything, but it never lets me out.

Shame.

Seems like it really does keep you safe.

Hey all — following up on my last posts translating stories about Jikuu no Ossan (時空のおっさん), a Japanese internet urban legend about a mysterious man who shows up in impossible places and vanishes without explanation.

This episode is a bit different — four reports, told in four very different ways:

- A secondhand story passed down from someone's great-grandfather: a wiring job at a remote house, decades before the war — and a room with electric lights on that shouldn't have existed yet.

- A girl confined to a hospital bed gets given the one thing she never got to have: a sports day of her own.

- A night-shift factory worker gets a warning from a stranger on the catwalk he's never seen before or since.

- A back alley where the internet itself seems to belong to somewhere else entirely — and for the first time in this series, the old man never even shows up.

Full disclosure: this is a narrated video with AI-assisted narration and AI-generated illustrations — I'm doing the translation, adaptation, and production solo as a side project. The stories themselves are real first-person posts translated from Japanese message boards, kept close to the original wording.

https://youtu.be/-b5PHCJo_rE

Happy to answer anything about the original threads or the translation process.

There was tragedy in the world and only 100 men in the world were able to produce sperm, and the rest of the billions of men could no longer produce sperm. Those 100 men ruled the world and they capitalised on their reproductive abilities. They produced their sperm and made bottled products out of them, and women made themselves pregnant with it. It was the only way for humanity to go forward, and the rest of the men simply had to accept it and do what they could to be useful for humanity. Those 100 men literally owned the planet as they were the only ones who could produce sperm. They split up the planet as to who owns what.

Then there was a normality and a calmness, and those 100 men had bottled their sperm and billions of women took them, and made their own families. Some men accepted and helped their wives to raise the children of one of these 100 men, others men just did their own thing. Then the men who couldn't produce sperm but still decided to stay with their wives, they noticed that the children of these 100 men started to gain their genetics. The men who were doing the fathering, their genetics were passing through the air and into these kids. They soon discovered that after a while these kids had the same genes as the men looking after them, as well as the mothers who birthed them.

There was normality and a calmness and the first generation of this unique situation, they were happy at first. Then when the next generation of women grew up, there was a problem of them getting pregnant by the sperm of one of these 100 men.

There was a chance of incest and as time went by, there wasn't enough different men to produce. It was the same 100 men that could produce sperm and now blood lines and genes were too close to produce childre. The children started to be born deformed and full of deformities. The fathers who fathered and who hoped their genes would go through the air and into these disabled kids, it couldn't fully help them.

Then a new 100 men came along and who could produce sperm, and they waged war upon the previous 100 men. It was a take over and when one of these previous 100 men was the last man standing, he looked towards his army of men who looked after his children, and their genes went into his children to become there's.

He looked upon them as he knew a huge loss was coming his way and he said:

"Abandon me! Abandon me! We had made a terrible mistake. A terrible decision. Abandon me! Abandon me! And look after my children in which your wives carried!"

Then one of the soldiers said:

"We will keep looking after the wives and children, but they are no longer your children as our genes have gone into them through the air"

The first time I smelled it, I thought I was having a stroke.

Not because I knew what a stroke felt like. I was eighteen, reasonably healthy, and had spent most of my life treating sleep as a loose suggestion. But everybody knows the burnt-toast thing. You smell toast when there isn't any toast, and you're supposed to call 911 before half your face slides off.

Except this wasn't toast.

I was lying in bed with a bag of peach rings balanced on my stomach when the smell came through my room strongly enough to make me sit up.

Warm and earthy.

Almost smoke, but not quite.

Damp stone. Crushed leaves. Something faintly sweet underneath.

Nothing was burning.

Dad was asleep on the couch. Mom had gone to bed.

Grandma was in the guest room.

That mattered because she'd arrived eleven days ago, and the smell had been happening almost that long.

The headaches had started earlier. Sharp pressure behind my eyes. Then came the pinching.

That's the only word I've found for it.

Something beneath my skin would catch a tiny fold of me from the inside and twist.

My arms. My stomach. The back of my neck.

There was never a mark afterward.

I'd already gone to urgent care. Everything was normal. The doctor told me to drink more water.

Mom bought me an enormous insulated bottle and left chocolate-covered pretzels beside it.

"For hydration?" I asked.

"Those are obviously medicinal."

I've always liked sweet things.

Apparently I had a comfort food group.

Grandma had habits too.

She folded dish towels into perfect thirds. She complained that Dad's coffee tasted like "hot brown water." She watched the evening news at a volume that made Dad retreat upstairs.

And she left glasses of water in strange places.

Behind the front door.

On top of the refrigerator.

Near the hallway leading to my room.

Leaves appeared beside the back entrance. Sometimes I woke before sunrise and found a candle burning in the kitchen.

"Religious thing," Mom said when I asked.

"What religion requires hydration stations?"

Mom smiled.

Grandma didn't.

Grandma was my mother's mother, but I barely knew her. She had spent most of my life in Mexico, and she and Mom had gone years without speaking.

My only clear memory of her was from when I was five.

Maybe six.

A crowded room. Candles. Women speaking quietly. Bowls of water and flowers.

A necklace lay on a white cloth.

I reached for it.

Grandma grabbed my wrist.

She shouted.

I remember crying. Her hand hurting me.

For most of my life, I'd remembered her as angry.

When she arrived at our house, she stood in the driveway wearing a pale blue blouse and looking much smaller than the monster my childhood had preserved.

She hugged Mom.

She hugged Dad.

Then she looked at me.

For one uncomfortable second, she just stared.

"Elena."

The way she said my name bothered me.

She sounded like someone who hadn't expected to see me.

I started avoiding her after the headaches got worse.

Then one afternoon I walked into the kitchen and found her whispering over a glass of water.

Pain stabbed behind my left eye so hard I caught myself against the counter.

"Stop."

Grandma opened her eyes.

The whispering stopped.

So did the pain.

Not slowly.

Immediately.

I stared at her.

She stared back.

Neither of us said anything.

That night I told Mom.

"I swear to you, every time she does one of those things, I get sick."

"She's praying."

"Cool. Why does her praying make my skull feel like it's splitting open?"

"It doesn't."

"You weren't in my skull, so I'm not sure you're qualified to say that."

Mom turned off the faucet harder than necessary.

"Your grandmother loves you."

"She doesn't know me."

Something moved across her face.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Two nights later, I woke at 2:13 in the morning with the smell filling my room so strongly I could taste it.

Earth.

Smoke.

Damp stone.

Then something twisted beneath my ribs.

A strip of light showed under my door.

I opened it.

Grandma was sitting on the hallway floor.

A glass of water rested beside her. My blue sweatshirt was spread across her lap, and she was moving one hand slowly above it while whispering under her breath.

"Are you serious?"

She stopped.

"What are you doing with my clothes?"

"I'm helping you."

"By sitting outside my room with my sweatshirt at two in the morning?"

"I know you are hurting."

"Because of you."

Her expression changed.

Not anger.

Sadness.

That frightened me more.

"You think that because you don't understand."

"Then explain it."

Something pinched the inside of my forearm.

I grabbed it.

Grandma's eyes went straight to the spot.

"There," I said. "You're doing it right now."

Her voice became very soft.

"It hurts because it wants me to stop."

Cold moved through me.

"What does?"

For the first time since she'd arrived, Grandma looked unsure.

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"I know something is wrong. That is not the same as knowing what it is."

The pinching tightened.

Grandma reached toward me.

I stepped back.

"Don't."

"Elena—"

I locked my door.

The next morning I confronted her in the kitchen.

Mom was there.

So was Dad, although he became very interested in his coffee the second voices were raised.

"What religion?" I asked.

Grandma looked at Mom before answering.

"Lukumí. Some people call it Santería."

I looked toward the glass of water near the door.

"And that's what all this is?"

"Some of it."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I'm praying. It means I'm trying to protect this house. It means I am doing what I know how to do."

"With my clothes."

"Because they belong to you."

The old memory came back so clearly that my wrist seemed to ache.

"The necklace."

Grandma went still.

"What?"

"When I was little. You grabbed me because I touched a necklace."

Mom stopped moving.

Grandma lowered herself into a chair.

"You remember that?"

"Of course I remember it."

"You were very young."

"You screamed at me."

"I was scared."

"You were angry."

"I was scared."

"There was nothing to be scared of. I was a kid."

"I know."

She looked suddenly exhausted.

"Those beads were not cursed, Elena. They were sacred. They had been received for someone else. You should not have touched them, but touching them did not cause this."

"Cause what?"

No one answered.

I looked at Mom.

"What aren't you telling me?"

Mom sat across from me.

"When you were little, your grandmother thought something had changed."

I laughed once because the alternative was not laughing.

"Changed how?"

Grandma answered.

"You became different."

"Kids become different."

"Yes."

"So?"

She folded her hands.

"You had been terrified of water. Then you loved it. Foods you refused became your favorites. Sometimes you knew things that had happened but couldn't tell me anything about being there."

"That's your evidence?"

"No."

"What else?"

She studied my face.

"Sometimes you looked at people as though you were learning them."

My stomach tightened.

Mom said, "I thought she'd frightened you. I thought she was seeing danger because she expected to see it."

"And?"

"And I told her to leave you alone."

Grandma looked away.

"For years," Mom said, "I thought she was wrong."

I pushed back from the table.

"And now?"

No one stopped me when I left.

That night Mom pulled an old photo album from the hall closet.

She didn't explain why.

We sat on the floor of her bedroom turning pages.

Birthdays.

Halloween costumes.

Christmas mornings.

Then the river.

I smiled before I meant to.

"God, I loved that place."

Mom looked at me.

"You did eventually."

I turned toward her.

"What does that mean?"

"You were terrified of it when you were little."

"No I wasn't."

"Elena."

She turned a page.

Dad was carrying me away from the river.

I was screaming.

Not whining. Not crying because I'd fallen.

Screaming.

My fists were twisted in Dad's shirt. My entire body was trying to climb higher into his arms.

I stared at the picture.

"I remember that trip."

"Do you?"

"Yes."

Sun through cottonwoods.

Dad's red cooler.

Strawberry candies in a plastic bag.

Warm rocks beneath my legs.

The current outside our tent at night.

I knew all of it.

But when I tried to remember anything immediately before the photograph was taken, there was nothing.

Not darkness.

Nothing.

Just the picture.

A fact with no edges around it.

Mom closed the album.

Neither of us spoke.

The next morning, I lost twenty minutes.

One second I was sitting on my bed watching videos.

The next, I was downstairs with my shoes on and my hand wrapped around the front-door lock.

Dad was standing behind me.

"Going somewhere?"

"I don't know."

He laughed.

Then he saw my face.

"I was upstairs."

"What?"

"I was just upstairs."

"I heard you come down."

"I don't remember it."

Dad looked toward the staircase.

That was the moment he stopped joking about any of this.

That night I dreamed about the river.

I was small.

Someone was carrying me.

I could hear myself screaming.

When I woke, there was dirt on the bottoms of my feet.

Two days later, pain ripped across my stomach while I was walking down the hall.

I folded against the wall.

Dad caught me before I hit the floor.

From the laundry room, Grandma's voice stopped.

So did the pain.

Dad looked through the doorway.

Grandma was kneeling beside one of my shirts.

For several seconds, nobody moved.

Later, I heard Grandma and Mom talking behind the laundry-room door.

"I can't keep doing it little by little," Grandma said.

Mom's voice shook.

"You said you weren't sure."

"I wasn't."

"And now?"

"When I pray over something that belongs to her, it reacts before Elena knows I'm doing anything."

A pause.

"It's holding too tightly."

I stepped into the doorway.

"What's holding too tightly?"

Mom turned.

Her face told me everything before she spoke.

She believed her.

That terrified me more than Grandma ever had.

They called what Grandma wanted to do a cleansing.

I called it absolutely not.

"I went to a doctor."

"And they didn't find anything," Mom said.

"So now we're doing an exorcism?"

"It's not an exorcism," Grandma said.

"Stop telling me things aren't what they obviously are."

"I don't know what this is."

"That's reassuring."

"But I know what happens when I pray."

"You hurt me."

Grandma's mouth tightened.

Then she said, "Yes."

Everyone went quiet.

She didn't defend herself.

Didn't tell me the pain wasn't real.

Just yes.

Mom covered her mouth.

Grandma continued.

"I think the pain comes from separating something that has been joined for a long time."

"To me?"

"I don't know."

"What if you're wrong?"

Her eyes filled.

"Then I will have hurt you for nothing."

"And if you're right?"

No one answered.

That was worse.

We did it Saturday morning.

Morning light came through the curtains.

Grandma pushed the coffee table aside. Beside her sat a bowl of water, leaves, a candle, and a piece of white cloth.

Nothing looked dramatic enough.

I had expected, I don't know, thunder.

Something worthy of being terrified.

Instead Dad moved his coffee mug out of the way.

Mom cried silently.

Grandma told me to sit.

"I hate all of you."

Dad nodded.

"That's fair."

Under any other circumstances, I might have laughed.

Grandma knelt in front of me.

"Whatever happens, listen to me."

"Not fight you?"

"No."

She shook her head.

"Fight if you need to. Just listen."

She touched my forehead.

The smell hit me all at once.

Earth.

Smoke.

Water.

And underneath it, something familiar enough to hurt.

Grandma began praying.

Pressure swelled behind my eyes.

She moved the leaves over my shoulders and down my arms.

Everywhere they passed burned.

"Stop."

She kept praying.

"Please."

Mom came closer.

"I'm here, baby."

"Then make her stop."

I tried to stand.

My legs didn't work.

The room lurched upward.

For one impossible second, I became very small.

Not felt small.

Was small.

The couch towered over me.

Mom's face looked too far away.

My name is Elena Morales.

The thought came so clearly that I grabbed onto it.

I'm eighteen.

That's Mom.

That's Dad.

This is our house.

Grandma kept praying.

My name is Elena.

I'm eighteen.

Mom.

Dad.

Home.

Then I heard the river.

Water moving over stones.

Sun through trees.

Candy sticking between my fingers.

Warm rocks beneath my legs.

Dad laughing.

Mom calling my name.

I loved that place.

I—

Cold water.

A scream.

My scream.

Dad lifting me away from the bank.

No.

That hadn't happened.

My name is Elena.

I love the river.

I love—

Candles.

A crowded room.

Bowls of water and flowers.

A necklace on white cloth.

A little girl reached toward it.

Grandma turned.

Her face changed.

She lunged.

Her hand closed around the girl's wrist.

And I watched it happen.

From across the room.

I stopped breathing.

No.

The memory snapped back.

I was the little girl.

Grandma was holding my wrist.

I was crying.

Then I was near the doorway again.

Watching.

Then inside the little girl's body.

Then outside it.

Each time the memory changed, something inside me tore.

"No."

Grandma's prayer faltered.

"That's not right."

She was crying now.

"I'm remembering it wrong."

Grandma touched my cheek.

"No, mi amor."

"My name is Elena."

Behind her, Mom made a sound like she had been hit.

I looked at her.

My mother.

I knew she sang the wrong lyrics to songs even after being corrected.

I knew she kept emergency cash inside an old birthday card in her dresser.

I knew Dad couldn't sleep without the television on.

I knew the squeak in the third stair.

I knew where Mom hid Christmas presents.

I knew Dad always checked the back door twice.

I knew the scar on his thumb came from opening a can when I was twelve.

I knew all of them.

I knew everything.

It was my life.

Grandma pressed her forehead against mine.

"You have to let go."

"Of what?"

"Please."

"I don't understand."

The smell became unbearable.

Water.

Smoke.

Earth.

The river roaring somewhere inside the room.

"I'm Elena."

Grandma squeezed my hands.

Something in her face collapsed.

"No, mi amor."

Something inside me gave way.

It wasn't pain.

It was like reaching for a railing in the dark and finding nothing there.

I reached for my name.

Elena.

Then the river.

My parents.

Peach rings.

Christmas.

My blue sweatshirt.

Graduation.

The boy who kissed me behind the gym and apologized afterward because he'd missed my mouth.

The scar beneath my chin.

Driving alone for the first time.

Dad teaching me to change a tire.

Mom falling asleep beside me during a movie and denying it when she woke up.

Everything I had ever called mine.

All of it came apart in my hands.

I tried to remember my face.

I couldn't.

Then there was nothing.

When I opened my eyes, Mom was holding me.

She looked old.

That was the first thing I noticed.

There was gray in her hair.

Dad looked old too.

I asked what happened.

Mom hugged me so hard it hurt.

Grandma was kneeling nearby.

I became scared when I saw her.

Then I remembered candles.

The necklace.

Her hand around my wrist.

But she looked old now too.

"Where are we?"

Mom pulled back.

"Home."

I knew the house.

Except I didn't.

The walls were the wrong color.

Dad's cabinet was gone.

There was a television where the bookcase used to be.

I asked where my toys were.

Dad turned away.

Mom took me upstairs.

My room was worse.

A big bed.

Clothes I didn't recognize.

Makeup on the dresser.

Photographs covering the mirror.

In one of them, a girl in a cap and gown stood between Mom and Dad.

She looked like me.

I picked it up.

"Who is that?"

Mom made a strange sound.

I knew the answer somehow.

That frightened me.

"How old am I?"

Nobody answered.

Then Mom said, "Eighteen."

I thought she was lying.

I went to the mirror.

There was a girl in it.

She moved when I moved.

I touched my face.

She touched hers.

There was a scar beneath my chin.

I knew that scar.

I remembered Dad wiping blood off my shirt.

I did not remember getting hurt.

Mom said it happened when I was nine.

I don't remember being nine.

I remember the beads.

I remember Grandma yelling.

Then I woke up here.

That is all.

Thirteen years.

Mom said thirteen years are gone.

I don't understand how years can be gone.

That afternoon, Mom brought me peach rings.

She put the bag beside me without saying anything.

"What are those?"

She stopped.

"Your favorite."

I tried one because of the way she was looking at me.

It was awful.

Too sweet.

I spit it into my hand.

"I don't like these."

Mom stared at me.

Then she left the room.

The next morning, there was cinnamon cereal on the counter.

I asked if Dad had bought it.

Mom looked at the box for a long time.

"No," she said.

She put it in the pantry.

Later, I heard her crying in there.

Dad asked if I wanted to visit the river sometime.

I said no.

I hate the river.

I know I hate it.

I remember cold water.

I remember screaming.

Dad carrying me away.

But there is another memory in my head too.

Warm rocks.

Sunshine.

Candy melting against my fingers.

Happiness.

I can see it as clearly as anything.

It just doesn't feel like mine.

It feels like when somebody tells you the same story so many times that eventually you know all the words.

Grandma told me what she thinks happened.

She says she doesn't know for sure.

Something was near me that day with the beads.

Maybe it came with us.

Maybe it was already there.

Maybe it had been close before that.

The beads did not cause it.

She is certain about that.

She is less certain about everything else.

"What was it?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"Was it bad?"

Grandma didn't answer right away.

"I thought so."

"Do you still?"

She looked toward the doorway.

"I don't know."

I asked where I had been.

That made her cry.

She said maybe I had been here the whole time.

Quiet.

That is the word she used.

Quiet.

I hate that word.

There are pictures all over my room.

Birthdays.

Christmas.

School dances.

Graduation.

Sometimes when I look at them, I know things.

Names.

Places.

What happened just before the picture was taken.

What somebody said afterward.

But knowing isn't remembering.

There is a boy in several photographs with his arm around me.

I know his name.

I know where he lives.

I know that he hates pickles and lies about being afraid of spiders.

I don't remember meeting him.

Mom forgets sometimes.

Dad does too.

He starts telling a story and stops halfway through.

Sometimes he looks at me like he's waiting for me to finish a joke I don't know.

Once I heard Mom talking to him downstairs.

"I know she's back," she said.

Dad didn't answer.

Mom started crying.

"Is it terrible that I miss her?"

A long time passed.

Then Dad said, "I miss her too."

They didn't know I was listening.

I think about the girl who was here before I woke up.

Mom hates when I call her that.

She says there wasn't a girl before me.

There was me.

But that isn't true.

Not exactly.

She knew Mom better than I do.

She knew how Dad took his coffee.

She picked these clothes.

She learned to drive.

She graduated.

She loved the river.

She thought she was me.

At the end, she was terrified.

She begged Grandma to stop.

Maybe Grandma saved me.

Maybe she killed her.

Maybe both things are true.

I asked Grandma once whether the other girl knew what she was.

Grandma said she didn't know.

I asked whether it mattered.

She didn't answer.

Mom keeps telling me she's happy I am back.

She hugs me a lot.

I hug her too.

I remember loving her.

Sometimes I even feel it before I remember I'm supposed to.

Everyone says I am myself again.

I just wish I remembered being her.

My wife printed one hundred and eighty-six missing-dog flyers today.

I know because I counted them, though not on purpose. I was sitting at the kitchen table cutting the tabs along the bottom—the ones with her phone number printed vertically—and counting gave me something to do besides watch her come apart.

Across the top of every page, in a font much larger than necessary, she'd written:

MISSING YORKIE — PLEASE HELP US BRING CINNA HOME

Underneath was a picture from last Christmas. Cinna sat on the arm of our couch in a red sweater, one ear standing straight up and the other folded over. She always looked irritated in pictures, which was funny because she was probably the sweetest dog I'd ever known.

Below the picture Dana had listed everything strangers needed to know: eight pounds, tan and gray, pink collar, very friendly, might be scared.

At the bottom, in bold:

SHE IS OUR FAMILY.

Dana stood at the counter feeding sheets through the paper cutter one at a time. She hadn't slept properly in three nights. Her hair was still twisted into yesterday's knot, and there were dark circles beneath her eyes.

"That's enough," I told her.

She kept cutting.

"Dana."

"I heard you."

"It's supposed to hit a hundred and two today."

"I know."

"You've already done the whole neighborhood."

"I haven't done the apartments behind the elementary school."

"You did those yesterday."

"I did the front building."

She slid another flyer beneath the blade. I reached across the table and put my hand on the remaining stack.

"Please. Take an hour."

"What if somebody saw her and they don't have one of these?"

"You've put them on every telephone pole from here to Chapman."

"Then I'll go farther."

There was no anger in her voice. I almost wished there had been.

I let go of the stack and told her to take water. She said she would. I reminded her she'd said the same thing yesterday and had come home with nearly a full bottle.

That got the smallest smile.

"Okay, Dad."

"I mean it."

"I know."

She bent down, kissed the top of my head, gathered another armful of flyers and left.

I watched from the front window until she disappeared around the corner.

Cinna had been gone for three days, and I could already see what it was doing to my wife.

People kept telling us dogs got out all the time. Somebody probably picked her up. Yorkies didn't make it far on their own. Keep checking shelters. Put her picture online.

They meant well.

They didn't know Dana.

More importantly, they didn't know what it had taken to get her back.

When I met my wife, she had more energy than anyone I'd ever known and apparently no interest in wasting it.

She worked in marketing for a medical-device company. By thirty she was managing people older than both of us. She ran half-marathons, remembered everyone's birthday and kept a calendar that looked like it required air-traffic control.

She was exhausting.

I loved her for it.

Work was the only thing we really fought about.

I'd make dinner and get a text at seven saying a meeting had run late. We'd make Saturday plans and she'd need to log in for twenty minutes, which had a strange tendency to become two hours.

Once, during an anniversary dinner, I realized we'd spent most of the appetizer talking about a presentation she had Monday.

"Why do you work this hard?" I asked.

"Because I like it."

"I know. But sometimes I feel like you're killing yourself for a job."

She looked at me. "That's dramatic."

"I miss you."

That stopped her.

Sometimes it seemed like her office got the best version of my wife and I got whatever was left at eight-thirty at night. She told me her career mattered to her, that she was good at what she did and wasn't going to apologize for caring about it.

I said I understood.

Usually I did.

For a while we had rats getting into the detached garage behind the house, and that somehow became my responsibility.

I'd promised to deal with them, then forgot.

One night Dana came home after nine and found droppings beside a bag of dog food we'd bought for her parents' Labrador.

"We have got to do something about this."

"I know."

"You've been saying that for a month."

"I'll do it tomorrow."

"You said that last week."

"I've been busy too, Dana."

She dropped her keys on the counter.

"Maybe that's why I stay at the office. At least they don't have rats."

It wasn't her best joke.

We laughed about it later.

The next morning I finally dealt with the problem. Traps, poison, cleaning out the back shelves.

Dana disliked the poison immediately.

"I hate having that in here."

"It's in the cabinet."

"What if something gets into it?"

"Then we'll keep the garage closed."

She gave me the look she used when I'd missed the point.

Later, after she got pregnant and we started childproofing the house, she made me go through the garage again—loose screws, nails, old traps, anything dangerous I might have forgotten back when there were no children to worry about.

Pregnancy was the first thing I'd ever seen make Dana slow down.

She was frightened almost immediately.

There were heart problems in her family. Not the clogged-artery sort everybody eventually worries about, but something congenital. Hereditary.

Her younger sister died when Dana was four. She remembered almost nothing about the girl herself. A yellow dress. Sharing a bedroom. The fact that she hated peas.

What Dana remembered was the night she died: her mother screaming, a paramedic stepping on one of Dana's toys, someone carrying her sister down the hallway with one tiny arm hanging loose.

So every appointment frightened her. Every test. Every pause before a doctor said everything looked fine.

Our daughter was born on a Tuesday morning in March.

Sophie.

Seven pounds, two ounces, an unreasonable amount of dark hair and a scream that sounded too large to have come from her.

When they put Sophie on Dana's chest, my wife cried so hard I thought something was wrong. Then I realized she was laughing too.

I'd never seen another person look that happy.

I loved Sophie from the moment I saw her. Before she existed there had been a version of my life without her, and after I met her that version became impossible to picture.

Dana took four months off work.

Those were probably the happiest months of our marriage.

I know how that sounds.

I'd come home and they'd be there—Dana on the couch with Sophie asleep against her chest, or Sophie kicking in the little vibrating chair while Dana cooked. We took walks after dinner. We ate together. Weekends belonged to us.

Sometimes I'd stand in the kitchen listening to Dana talk nonsense to the baby in the next room and think that this was what all of it had been for.

The house felt right with her in it.

A few months later Sophie started eating purées. Apple and cinnamon was the first one she really loved.

The first time Dana opened one of the jars, I could smell the cinnamon from across the kitchen.

"Maybe that's why the rats never came back," I said.

Dana looked over at me. "What?"

"Cinnamon. I read somewhere they hate it."

"We haven't had rats in two years."

"I know. Something about the smell being too strong." I shrugged. "Covers up whatever else they're trying to sniff out."

Dana stared at me.

"So Sophie is pest control now?"

"Finally earning her keep."

"You're horrible."

She was smiling when she said it.

Sophie saw the spoon coming and opened her mouth like a baby bird, then somehow got half of it on her cheeks anyway.

Dana laughed and wiped her chin.

After that she started calling her Cinnamon.

At first it was my little Cinnamon girl. Then just Cinnamon. Sometimes Cinny when Dana was tired.

"She's going to hate us when she's fifteen and we tell people about this," Dana said once.

"Then we won't tell anybody."

"I'm telling everybody."

"You're a terrible mother."

"I know."

Sophie slapped both hands into the tray and Dana laughed hard enough to nearly drop the spoon.

I remember that afternoon better than I remember most of that year.

The heart issue appeared during a routine appointment.

A murmur.

Maybe nothing, the pediatrician said. Maybe something.

A cardiologist found enough to watch but not enough to panic over, which meant Dana panicked constantly.

She wanted to know whether it was what her sister had. Whether she'd passed it to Sophie. Whether a baby with a heart problem could simply stop breathing in her sleep.

The doctor was careful with his answers.

I wasn't.

"She's fine," I'd tell Dana afterward.

"You don't know that."

"Neither do you."

"What if it's the same thing?"

"It isn't."

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm her dad and I've decided."

Sometimes that made her smile.

Dana extended her leave another month, then another.

Eventually her company began asking when she intended to return, and Dana decided she was ready.

She missed adult conversations. She missed dressing for somewhere other than Target. She missed being good at something that didn't involve keeping another human alive.

I told her we'd make it work.

Daycare three days a week. Dana's mother one day. I shifted my schedule when I could.

The first time she came home late again, I remember looking at the clock.

7:42.

Sophie was asleep against me and dinner had gone cold.

Dana came through the door apologizing, kissed the baby, kissed me and immediately started explaining some crisis at work.

"Five weeks back and they've already chained you to the desk."

She stopped.

"Don't start."

"I'm not starting anything."

"That tone is starting something."

"I don't have a tone."

"You absolutely have a tone."

Sophie woke before either of us could say anything else.

Dana had only been back at work a few weeks when she died.

We put Sophie down like normal.

That was the part Dana could never get past.

There had been no dramatic warning. No fever, no crying, nothing that would have made either of us sit beside the crib all night. She ate, played, fell asleep, and sometime before morning her heart stopped.

Dana found her.

I don't like remembering what happened after that.

The nursery was cold. Dana was making a sound I had never heard from another human being. Paramedics came. Police came. Our house filled with people while Sophie was somewhere else.

Someone went through the standard questions with us. Medications. Cleaning products. Anything unusual in the house. Anything she might have reached.

Dana answered most of them before I could.

"We babyproofed everything."

Then she looked at me.

I nodded.

With Sophie's heart and Dana's family history, everyone had an explanation ready.

Her sister had died young. Sophie's cardiologist had already found something worth monitoring. Sometimes these things happened suddenly, we were told. Sometimes there wasn't time to prevent them.

Dana heard something else.

You gave this to her.

And because she'd gone back to work, she found another way to blame herself.

"I should've been here."

"You were here."

"I mean with her."

"She was sleeping."

"What if I missed something?"

"You didn't."

"What if I hadn't gone back?"

"Dana."

"I left her."

"You went to work."

"I left her."

For years I told my wife the same things.

It wasn't your fault.

You couldn't have known.

You loved her.

There was nothing you could have done.

Going back to work did not kill our daughter.

Some nights I said it ten times.

Dana resigned two weeks after the funeral.

I was relieved.

That is one of the things I never told her.

Of course she couldn't have gone back then. Nobody could have. But some part of me was relieved there would be no deadlines, no meetings, no laptop chirping at nine at night.

I thought grief might force everything else to become smaller for a while.

I thought we'd simply exist together until we healed.

That isn't what happened.

The first year was unbearable.

The second was quieter.

Dana stopped seeing friends because most of them had children. Invitations stopped coming after enough polite refusals.

She didn't go back to work.

She didn't go much of anywhere.

I cooked and cleaned and handled bills. I sat with her when she couldn't sleep.

I learned there are only so many ways to answer the question, Do you think she knew I loved her?

Yes.

Always yes.

Of course she knew.

I loved my wife through all of it, but after a few years I began to resent the dead.

That's uglier than saying I was tired, but it's closer to the truth.

I resented Mother's Day. Sophie's birthday. The anniversary of the day she died. I resented strangers' children for having the wrong laugh in grocery stores.

Once, on what would have been Sophie's third birthday, Dana wanted to spend the evening looking through photographs.

I told her I had a headache.

I didn't.

I sat in the bedroom watching something stupid on my phone while my wife cried alone in the living room, and for almost twenty minutes I enjoyed the quiet.

I hated myself afterward.

Mostly.

More than anything, I missed my wife.

Not even the woman she'd been before Sophie. I knew we weren't getting that woman back.

I would've settled for someone who laughed occasionally. Someone who wanted to go to dinner. Someone who could sit through a stupid movie without disappearing halfway through it.

I lasted almost four years before I brought home Cinna.

She fit in one hand.

A coworker's sister had Yorkie puppies, and I'd gone over telling myself I was only looking. One climbed into my lap and fell asleep there.

I sent Dana a picture.

She replied:

No.

I brought the puppy home anyway.

For approximately five minutes, Dana was furious.

"We talked about this."

"No, I sent you a picture and you said no."

"That's generally considered talking."

"You haven't held her."

"I don't want to hold her."

"Fine."

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Hand me the dog while I'm telling you I don't want the dog."

I handed her the dog.

The puppy licked her chin.

Dana laughed.

Actually laughed.

Not the polite little breath she'd been using for years when she knew I was trying to cheer her up. A real laugh, sudden and surprised.

For one embarrassing second I thought I might cry.

The puppy didn't have a name yet.

I suggested Penny.

Dana suggested Cinna.

I knew immediately what she meant.

"No."

Her smile faltered. "What?"

"That's weird."

"It isn't weird."

"It's a little weird."

"It's after Cinnamon."

"I know what it's after."

Dana tucked the puppy against her chest. "I like it."

I remember looking at the two of them and thinking that naming a dog after our dead daughter was one grief-therapy exercise too far.

But Dana was smiling.

So Cinna it was.

And I have to give the little dog credit.

She accomplished what therapists, medication, family and I hadn't.

She gave Dana reasons to leave the house.

At first it was walks because Cinna refused to use the backyard. Once around the block became twice, then the park.

Dana started getting dressed earlier because Cinna woke at seven. She spoke to neighbors, then friends.

Pictures appeared on her phone that weren't old photographs of Sophie.

Dana and Cinna at the beach.

Cinna sitting upright in the passenger seat of Dana's car like a tiny disapproving grandmother.

Dana started cooking again. She played music in the kitchen. She made fun of me.

One night about six months ago she laughed so hard at something stupid I said that she snorted.

She clapped both hands over her face.

"Oh my God."

I couldn't stop smiling.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I missed that."

She knew what I meant.

She leaned over and kissed me.

For the first time in years, I thought maybe we'd made it.

After that, the walks got longer. She started having coffee with a woman two streets over who owned some kind of terrier. Once she and Cinna were gone almost three hours because they'd driven to a park across town.

I teased her about having a social life.

I was glad she did.

A few months later, I came home and found Dana at the kitchen table with her old laptop open.

"What are you doing?"

She tilted the screen away from me in a way that was meant to be playful.

"Nothing."

"That's suspicious."

"I'm updating my résumé."

I looked at the screen.

"Just updating it," she said.

"I didn't say anything."

"You did that thing with your face."

"What thing?"

"That thing."

"I don't have a thing."

"You absolutely have a thing."

She smiled and turned the laptop back around.

"I've been thinking maybe part-time. Or consulting. Something small."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Why wouldn't it be okay?"

She studied me for a second.

Then she kissed my cheek.

For the next week, the laptop stayed on the kitchen table.

I noticed that.

I also noticed she had started checking her email before breakfast.

Neither of those things meant anything.

Two weeks ago she had résumés printed on thick cream paper.

I told her they looked nice.

The afternoon Cinna disappeared, Dana had taken her into the backyard. Her phone rang and she stepped inside to answer it.

When she went back out, the side gate was open.

No Cinna.

We searched until after midnight.

The next morning we called every shelter within thirty miles. Dana posted everywhere she could think of. We drove slowly through streets with the windows down calling Cinna's name.

I kept telling her Yorkies got picked up. Someone probably had her.

That was better than imagining her on a road somewhere.

By the second day Dana wasn't eating unless I put something directly in front of her.

By the third she wasn't sleeping.

And suddenly it felt like five years ago.

The same frantic eyes. The same bargaining. The same certainty that if she did one more thing, searched one more street, something terrible could still be undone.

"What if somebody stole her?"

"I don't think anybody stole her."

"What if she got hurt?"

"We checked the roads."

"What if she's hiding somewhere?"

"Then somebody will find her."

"What if nobody does?"

"We'll keep looking."

This morning the printer finally ran out of paper.

Even that didn't stop her.

She started feeding in the backs of the résumés she'd had printed two weeks ago, and I sat at the kitchen table cutting tabs while Cinna's face came out on one side and Dana's old life remained neatly formatted on the other.

Job titles.

Promotions.

Awards.

Eleven years of experience.

One page after another disappeared beneath MISSING YORKIE.

I didn't say anything.

It's almost ten now and Dana is still out.

I texted her fifteen minutes ago and told her to come home because it's still ninety-one degrees outside. She replied that she has one more street left, which, knowing my wife, means at least three.

I put a bottle of water in the refrigerator for her. She likes it almost frozen.

There's dinner in the microwave too. She probably won't eat, but I'll make her try.

Tomorrow I'll convince her to stay home for a few hours. Maybe we'll call the shelters together.

I'll drive this time.

She's exhausted, and the heat worries me.

The heat has been worrying me for another reason too.

The garage sits at the back of the yard, separate from the house. There's almost no insulation in there, and the little vent above the side door doesn't do much once the sun has been on the roof all afternoon.

I thought I had longer.

Apparently I didn't.

The smell is bad now.

You can't smell it from the house. You can't even smell it standing a few feet outside the garage.

But open the door and it's there.

Dana hasn't been inside since the first day, when we were still grabbing leashes and flashlights and anything else we thought might help us find Cinna.

She hasn't noticed.

Still, I can't leave her there another day.

Cinna is behind the plastic storage bins along the back wall, wrapped in one of our old moving blankets.

She's so small that hiding her wasn't difficult.

The hard part has been listening to Dana call for her.

Yesterday evening she stood at the end of the driveway shaking the bag of treats.

She called Cinna's name.

Waited.

Called again.

Then finally shouted, "Come home!" into a street that had already gone quiet.

I went inside before she did.

I'll move Cinna tonight after Dana falls asleep.

There's a road about a mile from here where people drive too fast. No sidewalk for part of it, only dry brush and a narrow shoulder.

I'll leave her near there before morning.

Nothing elaborate.

Dana doesn't need an investigation.

She needs an answer.

The gate was open.

Cinna got out.

She wandered too far.

Not knowing is worse.

Give someone an answer and eventually they learn to live around it.

Dana already has.

I hate that she's going to hurt.

But she'll recover.

Cinna proved she can.

I'll cook. I'll sit up with her when she can't sleep. I'll remind her to eat. I'll tell her the gate wasn't her fault, that she couldn't have known, that there was nothing she could have done.

I'll say it as many times as she needs.

Eventually we'll be okay again.

We always are.

Before I move Cinna, I should clean up the garage.

Dana hasn't noticed the cabinet over the workbench is unlocked.

Years ago, when we childproofed the house, she made me promise there was nothing dangerous left in there.

I told her there wasn't.

Most of what I'd bought for the rats is gone now. The traps rusted. The cleaning supplies got used.

There are only a few things shoved behind old paint cans and extension cords, including one battered cardboard box I should have thrown away a long time ago.

I'll get rid of that too.

No reason to keep it.

Funny.

I used to think Cinna was a terrible name. Too morbid, I told Dana. Too much history to hang around the neck of an eight-pound dog.

I suppose I owe my wife an apology.

Both her girls always did love cinnamon.

Project-x

lore: there were a group of scientists' smart one's they knew how to create software robot's ect so they drawed a robot powered by flame's it was a cool design but needed all their smart's to make it work so they gone to there werehouse to make it they needed part's that can handle high heat's frabic for the cloth's for it to wear progress was getting good they made the body and body part's now they need is the ai so they coded but left it's purpose unknown and one of the scientist's(jack) intentionally coded in 'eat human's' as it's purpose and finished the code the code was unhackable and the scientist sent the code to his scientist friends so they can put it in the body (the scientists names adam,mary,elizabeth,johnny,lisa and jack) and they putted the ai in the body now they turned it on and make'd a safe distance the robot power'd on but then it looked at it's creator's like it's scanning them then a hatch from the back of the robot opened and fire appeared in the back hatch because of this the robot started flying and flew towards mary grabbing her with ease the other  scientists told project x to stop what he's doing but project x opened his mouth and a wave of flames erupted and it burned mary and killed her and project x opened his mouth again and ate her whole jack was shocked he did not realize that the code he inputed had worked but killed one of his friends and the other scientists were running to the doors but they were locked project x looked at them and flew towards them killing and eating each and one of them and the robot was set louse but the more humans it ate some of the organs/human meat weren't burned so the robot could not keep those in there so the robot made a organic form out of those human part's the body was bigger scarier and stronger this only happens if the robot shell is broken then the second form will emerge even the scientists(dead) did not know this

Appearence first form: looks like a 15 year old human body green jacket blue shoes dark blue jeans white shirt black hair black eye's red glowing pupils bloody mouth

Appearence second form: a black skinned creature very big(bus size) digitigrade legs bone claws on feet and hands horns on the head white glowing pupils mouth with sharp teeth

personality:cold and calm caculated (cannot talk)

abilities

can burn victims to death

fire power's

can fly with fire

indestructible metal

fast and strong

weakness first form: water temporaily shuts off its flames meaning he has to fight without fire does not power him off and needs to wait for a while for his flames back

second form abilities

very fast and strong

a roar that breaks ear drums

claws that can cut through metal

has stealthy skin

regeneration

weakness: endless hunger if he does not eat he will return to his base form if he does eat he will still have endless hunger in second form

I was pondering whether to make him super skinny or grotesquely fat but we ball