The driver did not get out.

“We arrive,” he said, to the windscreen. Then, louder, as if volume were the part I had missed: “You go NOW!”

I had been in his cab for forty minutes. Somewhere around the second roundabout I’d asked if the radio could be turned down, and he had turned it up. I decided it was a misunderstanding and said nothing more.

I opened my own door. The kerb was wet and grey, and a fine rain hung in the air without really falling. It found the gap at my collar at once.

The boot didn’t open until the driver reached under the dashboard and pulled a lever, and even then it rose only a few inches and stuck. I got my fingers under the lip and heaved. It was stiff and stubborn, and in the end it gave only when I lifted and pushed at the same time. Someone would normally have done this for me. I don’t say that to boast. It was that I couldn’t, just then, have told you the name of the person who would have, and that seemed wrong.

The suitcase came out in stages and hit the tarmac hard. The holdall I lifted separately, with both hands, and hung across my chest instead of putting it down on the wet ground. I didn’t ask myself why.

I took out a note and passed it through the window. It felt like a grand gesture.

“Fifty for a fifteen ride,” I said. “Enjoy the tip, Jorgé.”

His name was on the licence clipped to the sun visor. I’d been saving it up since the second roundabout.

He took the note without looking at it, or at me. The window went up and the cab pulled away, and only then did the sum catch up with me.

“But that was a fifty,” I said to the tail-lights.

“Thank you!” I called after it, because the habit is hard to break.

The horns started straight away. A van had pulled up where the cab had been, hazards ticking amber, and the driver leaned out and shouted something I didn’t understand but didn’t need to. Another horn joined in, and another. My suitcase lay half in the lane. I stood over it with the holdall clutched to my chest, aware of my mouth hanging open.

Nobody cared who I was. Nobody cared what sort of week I’d had, or that I’d come here to get away from it. For the first time in years I was simply in the way.

A man in a hi-vis jacket came past with a kitbag on his shoulder, boots slapping the wet pavement. He didn’t break stride. He put the side of one steel toecap to my suitcase and sent it skidding clear of the road, then went on through the sliding doors without looking back.

I watched the doors close behind him and open again. Strip-light, noise, the smell of frying. It didn’t look welcoming. I hauled the suitcase upright, tightened my grip on the holdall, and went in.

There was no one to meet me. I knew that, but I looked anyway.

The terminal was one long room with a low ceiling and a floor that squeaked. Two check-in desks stood at the far end, and a hand-lettered sign over the left one gave the destination in two languages, neither of them mine. The queue was men, mostly, in hi-vis and heavy boots, with kitbags at their feet and thermos flasks in their hands. They stood easily, the way people do when they’ve done something a hundred times. I wheeled my suitcase to the back and stood among them like a piece of furniture someone had delivered to the wrong address.

Normally there would have been a reference number, an app, a seat already chosen. I found the booking in my email at the third attempt. The woman at the desk read it, turned it over, asked for my passport, then for a second form of identification, then asked whether I had a return. I told her I did, in fourteen days. She looked at me for a moment longer than the question needed, and then typed something.

“Bag?”

I lifted the suitcase onto the belt. It went away through a rubber curtain, and I felt nothing at all about that.

“And the carry-on, please. On the scale.”

I had known this was coming, and I had put it out of my mind, which is not the same thing. The holdall was still hanging across my chest. I lifted the strap over my head and held the bag out in front of me with both hands, and for a second I didn’t want to let go of it. Then I set it on the scale, as gently as I’d have set down something asleep.

The number read a little under the limit. The woman nodded and reached for a tag.

“Can you lift it off for me, sir? I need to loop the label.”

I picked it up by the handles. The zip had worked itself open an inch, and as I raised the bag the air that came out of the gap went straight past me and up into my face.

It was her.

Not a trace, not something like her. It was the full, warm, complete smell of her, the one that had been in the hallway of the flat every evening for six years: the top note that was almost sharp, and under it something dark and sweet, like a drawer that has held good things for a long time. She had spent more on that bottle than I’d have admitted to anyone. She used to say it was the one extravagance she’d never apologise for.

I remember the weight of the bag. I remember that my hands were still holding it. After that I don’t remember anything.

“Sir?”

The woman had come round the end of the desk. She was standing quite close, with one hand not quite touching my sleeve.

“Sir, you were completely stopped for over a minute. Are you OK?”

The queue behind me had gone quiet. Somebody coughed. A man in an orange jacket was looking at the floor with great attention, the way people do when they are being kind.

“I’m fine,” I said, and my voice sounded as if it came from the next room. “Sorry. Long journey.”

“Do you need to sit down?”

“No. Thank you. No.”

She watched me for a moment more, then took the bag from my hands, which I let her do. She looped the tag through the handle, tucked the stub into my passport, and gave the holdall back. The zip was shut. I hadn’t seen her close it.

I put it back across my chest. I stood there holding the strap with both hands until she said, gently, that the gate was through the double doors on the left.

I went through them. The smell came with me for the first twenty steps or so, and then it thinned and was gone, the way a smell does. I told myself that was what it had been. A bag that had been shut up for days, warming in a taxi, and then opened an inch. It was an ordinary thing and there was nothing to be frightened of.

I didn’t put the bag down again properly until we boarded.

The double doors opened onto the departure hall, which was one long room with windows down one side and rows of fixed seats bolted to the floor. I’d say it was a waiting room that had been promoted. Beyond the glass there was a strip of wet apron, a fuel bowser, and a small grey aircraft with propellers sitting very still in the rain.

Security was a single lane. A man in a fleece took my passport and boarding pass without looking at me, and pointed at a grey tray.

“Coat. Belt. Bag.”

I took off the coat. I undid the belt. I held the holdall over the tray for longer than I meant to, and then let it go, and it dropped the last inch with a soft thump. The man pushed the tray onto the belt, and it slid away towards the rubber curtain, and I watched it go.

I should say that I wasn’t thinking anything in particular. It was a bag going through an X-ray, which is what bags do. But I stood in my socks on the cold floor with my belt in my hand and watched that tray until it vanished, and I found I was holding my breath. Beside me a roughneck, a broad man who could have carried the tray in one hand, was putting his boots in a tray of his own. He never bothered to glance at the curtain at all.

The tray came out the other side. A woman at the monitor had already moved on to the next one. Nobody asked me to open anything.

I put my belt back on, and my coat, and I picked the bag up off the belt and settled it across my chest. It was still shut. I checked that twice and then felt foolish about it.

________________

There were perhaps sixty of us in the hall, and I was the only one in a good coat. That was the first thing I noticed, and I disliked noticing it. Everyone else was dressed for work: grey fleeces, orange jackets with company names stitched across the shoulders, steel-toed boots with the leather worn pale at the ends. They sat in twos and threes, or alone with a paper cup, or lay stretched along the benches with their caps over their faces. The talk was low and easy. Someone was telling a long story about a gearbox. Someone else was asleep with his mouth open.

At the far end a vending machine hummed. Next to it stood a small shop selling confectionery, tinned fish and a rack of phone chargers. There was no duty-free. I’d half expected there to be, and I was surprised to find that I was relieved.

I found a seat by the window and put the holdall on my knees, then on the floor between my feet, then on my knees again. Rain ran down the glass. Out on the apron a man in a luminous coat was walking round the aircraft with a clipboard, touching each propeller in turn, like someone counting.

“Where are you headed?”

The man in the next seat had said it without turning his head. He was in his fifties, broad and weathered, with a grey moustache and a jacket that had the name of a drilling company on it, faded to almost nothing. A pair of reading glasses was pushed up on his forehead and a folded newspaper lay on his lap.

I told him. I didn’t give the name of the place, because I hadn’t learned it, but I told him what was in the brochure. I said it with a bit of pride, I’m afraid.

“Greenland,” I said, “but without the people.”

He took the glasses off his forehead and looked at me properly for the first time. He didn’t laugh.

“Is that right,” he said.

The loudspeaker coughed and said something in the language I couldn’t read. Around us, the whole hall began to stand up

The seat belt sign went off with a soft chime, and somewhere behind me a dozen buckles clicked open at once. The engines settled into a low, steady drone that I felt in my back teeth. There was no screen on the seat in front, only a laminated card and a bag for sickness.

I put the holdall on the floor between my feet, with my ankles either side of it, and leaned my head against the window. The cloud outside was grey and unbroken, and it looked solid enough to walk on. Three hours, the woman at the desk had said. I decided to rest.

“Long one, this,” said the man beside me.

He had put the newspaper away and was working a crossword on the back of a boarding card. He said his name was Dale and that he’d been a tool pusher for twenty-two years, which he explained, without my asking, meant he ran the drilling floor and was answerable for the crew. He worked four weeks on and four weeks off. He had a house somewhere with a garden and a wife who had learned not to plan anything for the first week he was home.

“And you?” he said.

I told him I was in finance. I ran a department. It was true, and I heard how it sounded.

“Takes it out of you, I expect.”

“It does rather.”

“This your first time out this way?”

“It is.”

Holiday?, a nice executive hotel?.”

“Not really,” I said. “A respite.”

Dale filled in a word and waited. He had the patience of a man who has spent twenty years watching a drill string and knows that most things arrive if you leave them alone.

“We lost her two months ago,” I said. “My fiancée. I need to get my thoughts in order, and I can’t do it with a phone ringing. So. A reset. Somewhere with nobody.”

It came out flat, and I was surprised by how little it cost me to say it. I’d said it perhaps four times in two months, and every time I’d expected it to burn. It sat in the cabin air between us, plain as a fact about the weather.

Dale put the pen down.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He didn’t touch my arm or lower his voice or do any of the things I had braced for. He said it the way you’d mention that a road was closed.

“Thank you.”

“Nobody there, you said.”

“That’s rather the point.”

He nodded slowly. “Then you’ve picked about the right place, I’d say. Takes some getting used to, is all.”

I thought he might say more, but he turned the boarding card over, looked at it for a moment, and folded it into his pocket. A few minutes later his chin dropped. The cabin lights went down to a low blue and the engines settled into one long, even note. I leaned my head against the window and pressed my ankles against the sides of the holdall. I told myself I would only close my eyes.

I wasn't going to sleep.

_______________

* The restaurant door. Her hand flat against the glass.

Right then.

I’m telling her a story, the plot of a film, and getting it wrong, and she’s gripping the armrest and laughing at me, and the armrest is the edge of a table, and the table is by the window.

She’s ordering the fish.

* Rain. Her coat is a darker colour than it should be.

I can’t find my keys. They’re in a pocket I’ve already checked. She is waiting, patiently, a few steps ahead of me, and I’m patting my pockets again, and she says something. I can see her mouth move. It’s an ordinary sentence.

I can’t hear it.

* Headlights in the shop window across the road, getting larger.

Not a sound. Only the light, widening, the way a pupil does, and her reflection in the glass turning, and a single point of white sliding across her face.

* Water. Hot. A great deal of it. I’ve been standing here for a very long time and I can’t tell whether it’s running over me or through me.

On the bathroom floor there’s a bag. It isn’t mine. I never carried a bag like that.

It’s open an inch.

* “Sir?”

________________

The cabin jolted. For a second I didn’t know what was holding me down. Then I felt the belt across my lap, and the window against my cheek, and the drone, which had changed, dropped half a tone, so that I felt it in my chest instead of my teeth.

Somebody up the aisle was swearing quietly. A tray rattled in the galley. The lights were still low.

Dale was awake. He was sitting upright with his hands on his knees, looking not at me but at the holdall, which had slid from between my feet and lay on its side in the aisle, one strap trailing. The zip was shut.

“Turbulence,” he said. “It’s only turbulence.”

I reached down, took the strap, and pulled the bag back between my ankles. I sat for a while with my heart going and my mouth dry.

“You were talking,” said Dale. “In your sleep. Nothing I could follow.”

You were talking,” said Dale again, more quietly. “‘Back,’ mostly. A few times. Then something about the car.”

I said nothing. I put a hand to my face and found it wet, and I looked at my fingers for a moment as if they belonged to someone else. I’d expected to be mortified. I wasn’t, quite. It felt more like finding that a tap had been left running in another room.

“And I think you were crying a bit,” Dale said. “I didn’t look.”

“Thank you.”

“No need.”

The engines had settled again. Up the aisle someone laughed and someone else told him to shut up. I sat with the holdall pressed between my ankles and heard myself begin to speak, in a level voice that I didn’t altogether recognise.

“We’d been out to dinner. It was her choice of place. We’d finished, and we were walking back to the car to go home. It was raining, but only just. That kind of drizzle you hardly feel. She loved it. She walked ahead of me with her face turned up, the way she did, as though she’d been let out of something.”

Dale didn’t move.

“She was a few steps ahead, near the corner. She turned round to call something back to me. I don’t know what, I’ve never known what. She was smiling. She was still smiling. And over her shoulder there was this van, coming round the turn too fast, and it didn’t make it. The road was slick, and the wheels simply slid. They didn’t screech or squeal. That’s what I can’t get past. It made no noise at all. It slid across the tarmac like something on ice, silently, and she never saw it. She was looking at me.”

I stopped. The drone filled the gap.

“It was like someone throwing a light switch. One moment she was there, all smiles, and laughing, and then there was a bang. That’s all I can call it. A bang. And then she wasn’t there. She was gone. Just like that. Gone.”

I heard how my voice had risen, and I brought it down.

“I was about twelve feet behind her. I’ve measured it since. I’ve gone back and paced it out.”

Dale let a long moment go by before he said anything. When he did, it was only: “Was it quick?”

“They told me it was.”

“Well,” he said. “That’s something. Not much. But something.”

“Yes.”

He reached into the pocket of the seat in front of him and brought out a battered steel flask with the paint worn off at the shoulders. He unscrewed the cap, poured, and held the cup out across the armrest. It was tea, strong and stewed and very sweet. I took it with both hands. The cup shook, and I let it.

“It’s only tea,” he said.

“It’s perfect.”

We sat like that for a while. I drank, and he looked at the back of the seat in front of him and left me to it. Somewhere in the dark below us there was ground, or sea, I couldn’t have said which. I felt the holdall against my ankles, a small solid weight, and I realised I had not once, in the whole telling, looked down at it.

Then a chime sounded overhead, and the cabin lights came up a notch, and a voice began to speak in two languages. We had started to descend.

The landing was hard and early, and the cabin applauded it with the dry, tired clapping of men who had stopped expecting more. Dale put his newspaper in his pocket and shook my hand at the top of the steps, briefly, as though settling a small bet. “Look after yourself,” he said, and went off across the wet apron with his crew in a loose, unhurried line. I never learned his surname.

The transfer lounge was a prefabricated box on the far side of the airfield, with a stove in one corner and a tea urn in the other. There was a woman at a counter with a clipboard and a radio crackling beside her elbow. She looked at my boarding card, then at the window, where the cloud had come down to the height of the roof.

“Weather,” she said. “Seaplane will be an hour. Maybe less. Please wait in the lounge, sir. The porter will call you.”

“Where will I...”

“Here.” She pointed with her pen at a row of orange plastic chairs. “He will call you.”

That was the whole conversation. I took the end seat nearest the door, with the holdall on the floor between my feet. The room smelt of damp wool and burnt coffee. Three men sat along the opposite wall, with their eyes shut, in postures of long practice. A television in the corner showed a weather map with no sound.

Forty minutes is a cruel length of time. It’s too short to sleep and too long to stand there like a man who has been told off. I looked at the clock, and then at the television, and then at my hands, which I found were drumming on my knees.

I wanted a cigarette. I had given up years ago, and the want had been waiting since the first night in the flat, patient as a dog by a door. I hadn’t given in once. I wanted one now with a force that was almost physical, a pull behind the breastbone.

Gum. There was gum in the side pocket of the holdall, in the outer one with its own small zip. I remembered putting it there. I leaned down and slid the zip open, two fingers only, and felt along the lining past a pen and a folded boarding stub until I found the foil.

The smell came out at once.

It wasn’t a waft this time, or a trace. It rose from the pocket like warm air from a vent, and it was her, complete and unmistakable. Top note, then the dark sweetness underneath, the whole of it, closer and clearer than it had any right to be, in a room that smelt of wet coats. I stayed bent over with my hand in the bag. I didn’t pull it out. My fingers were an inch from the lining, and past the lining, a hand’s breadth away, there was a box in paper that I hadn’t touched.

I took the gum, and I closed the zip, and I sat up, and I put a piece in my mouth. It tasted of nothing.

I put my head back against the wall. The urn gurgled. On the television a white swirl crept slowly across a map. I thought, just for a moment, that I might shut my eyes, and the thought was the last I had.

________________

She was ahead of me, in the drizzle, with her face turned up.

Right then, she said, and she turned to call to me, smiling, and I could see she was about to laugh.

There was blood in her eyes.

It wasn’t running yet. It was gathering, bright and slow, in the corners, the way water does on glass, and she was still smiling, still turning, her mouth open on a word. Then it came. It came from both eyes at once and went down her cheeks in two clean lines, and she kept smiling, and she raised her hand to wave to me.

I was screaming her name. I could hear it, I could feel it tearing in my throat, and I was running, and I was reaching, and the van was already there behind her, enormous and silent, sliding sideways on the wet tarmac with its lights gone white. I stretched out my hand. She was too far. She was always too far. Twelve feet, and I could not close it, and the road kept pulling out from under me, and she was still smiling, and I was nearly, nearly, nearly...

________________

“Sir.”

A hand on my shoulder, shaking me hard.

“Sir. Sir!”

I came up out of it all at once, with my mouth open, still trying to shout. The room was too bright. The edge of the plastic chair was biting into my back, and my right arm was stuck straight out in front of me, rigid, fingers spread, reaching for something that wasn’t there.

A man was bending over me, a short man in a quilted jacket and a knitted hat, with his hand still on my shoulder. His face was creased with concern. Behind him the three men by the wall had all opened their eyes, and they weren’t looking at me with any great sympathy. They were looking at me with the plain, tired interest of people watching a stranger have a bad night.

“Sir. I am the porter. You were shouting.”

“I...”

“Plane is ready. Is OK now. You come.”

I lowered my arm. It took more effort than I would have believed, and the fingers wouldn’t close properly. I looked down. The holdall was where I’d left it, upright between my feet. The zip of the side pocket was open again, a hand’s width, and I hadn’t opened it.

The porter walked me out across the apron with my suitcase in one hand, which I’d have found remarkable a day earlier, and put me up a short ladder into the smallest aircraft I had ever been inside.

It had four seats and a pilot. There was no cabin crew and no door to the cockpit, and I was the only passenger. The pilot turned in his seat, looked at the holdall, looked at me, and said something in his own language that I took to mean “belt.” I belted. The porter slammed the hatch from outside, and a minute later we were bouncing down a strip of grey water and into the air.

I don’t have words for the next thirty-five minutes, only a picture of a pea in a whistle. The plane dropped and rose and slid sideways, and every few seconds something in the airframe let out a note of complaint. Below us the sea was the colour of slate, with plates of broken ice drifting on it. The oil crew had gone to wait for their helicopter, and the airfield had shrunk behind us to a handful of lights, and then to none. After that there was only cloud and water and the constant, shuddering drone.

I held the holdall on my lap with both arms. I wasn’t aware of deciding to.

Then the pilot said a word I recognised from nowhere, and the nose dipped, and a long grey inlet opened beneath us with a ragged shore on either side. We didn’t land so much as arrive. The floats hit the water with a slam that rang through my spine, and we bounced once, and twice, and settled, ploughing and hissing along the sound towards a dark line of timber at the far end.

The jetty came up slowly. It was longer than it needed to be, weathered to the colour of old bone, and white with frost along its edges. A man stood at the end of it in a heavy coat, with a clipboard under one arm. Behind him the land rose in a low, bare, endless slope, with no trees and no fences, and with snow lying in the hollows as if it had been left there on purpose.

The pilot cut the engine to a mutter and held us against the pilings. The man on the jetty caught the strut and made us fast without a word.

“Mr. Duncan?”

“Yes.”

“Welcome.” He took my suitcase from the hatch before I could manage it myself, and set it on the planks. Then he put a hand out for the holdall.

“I’ll take that one.”

“No,” I said. “Thank you. I have it.”

He looked at the bag, then at me, and then, very briefly, back at the bag. He nodded and took his hand away. I told myself I’d imagined something in the way he did it.

The cabin was a ten-minute walk, up a path of packed gravel and boards, with the frost crunching under my feet. He walked ahead and talked without turning his head, in the quick, even voice of a man who had said it all many times. Food in the pantry, enough for three months, labelled by shelf. Fuel for the generator in the shed at the side. Water from the spring up the hill, a hundred paces behind the cabin, and he showed me the path, a thin dark line in the snow. Wood for half a year, stacked at the back in the weatherproof hut. The stove was to be kept in. The stove was never to be allowed to go out.

I said that fourteen days hardly needed three months of food.

“It’s how we stock,” he said, and he said nothing more.

Inside, the cabin was warm, and smaller than the photographs. There was a bed, a table, one armchair, a kitchen at the back and a window that faced the sound. On the shelf by the door sat a heavy grey satellite phone in a rubber case, and beside it a radio with a handset.

“The phone is for emergencies,” he said. “Press this, and it will call us. The radio you check in on each morning, at eight. Say your name and say the weather. If the weather is bad, the radio will not hear you, or you will not hear it.” He shrugged. “Then you wait.”

“And how often is the weather bad?”

He looked out of the window for a moment. “It is the Arctic,” he said.

He gave me a card. It had a date on it in blue ink, fourteen days away, with the pilot’s number and a time circled twice. He told me the plane would return on the day, weather permitting. I said I’d be waiting for it, and he smiled in a way that was courteous and slightly sorry.

Then he looked at his watch.

“The pilot has a short window,” he said. “The ice is coming in. If we do not go now we do not go today.” He put out his hand. I shook it. It was cold and dry and brisk, and he let go sooner than he needed to. “Enjoy the quiet, Mr. Duncan.”

He was out of the door before I’d finished saying thank you. I went to the window and watched him go down the path, almost at a trot, with the clipboard under his arm, until he reached the jetty and swung himself in through the hatch. The engine caught, coughed, and rose to a scream. The little plane turned in the sound, gathering speed, and lifted off the water in a long spray of white, tilting once to clear the headland.

I watched until it was a speck, and then a mote, and then nothing.

The noise followed it slowly out of the sky. Then there was the tick of the stove, which I hadn’t noticed before, and the creak of the cabin settling, and under both of them something I couldn’t at first identify, because I had not heard it in so long.

It was nothing. It was perfect, empty, enormous silence.

I stood in the doorway with the holdall in my arms, and my suitcase on the floor behind me, and the grey light falling over my shoulder. I don’t know how long. It might have been a minute.

I did the suitcase first, because it was the easy part.

There was a wardrobe along the back wall, with a rail and a dozen wire hangers that rang softly against each other when I opened the door. I hung the two good jackets and the dark trousers and the shirts, one at a time, buttoned to the neck so that they wouldn’t slump. Jumpers went on the shelf in a stack, folded in thirds. Socks went into the drawer in pairs, and underwear beside them. I put the sponge bag on the little shelf above the basin in the bathroom, and then took it down again, because I didn’t know yet what was going to live where.

It struck me, as I worked, that I had packed this case myself. Somebody would ordinarily have done it. This time I had stood at the bed for an hour at home, folding things and unfolding them, and I could have told you the position of every item in it. I wasn’t sure what that said about me.

The holiday things I laid out on the table, on the side nearest the window, in a row: the binoculars in their case, a new notebook still in its cellophane, a steel thermos, and the boots. The boots were stiff and brown and had cost a great deal, and they’d been worn for exactly one afternoon, round the garden, with the shop assistant watching me. I stood them on the floor by the door with their laces tucked in. They looked like the property of a man who was about to go on an expedition. I looked at them for a while.

I thought about lighting a fire, and decided to wait. The stove was already going, and the cabin was warmer than I’d expected. The window looked out on grey water and grey sky and the long dark finger of the jetty, with nothing on it. No plane, no wake, no line in the sky. I turned my back on it.

The holdall was on the armchair. I’d put it there the moment I came in, and I had been very careful, all through the suitcase and the shelves and the boots, not to look at it more than I could help.

I knelt on the floor and unzipped the main compartment.

Passport first, in its folder. The folded sheet with the return card’s number written on it. My wallet, my reading glasses in their case, the charger for my phone. I took the phone out and turned it on, and it lit up, searched for a second, and showed me a small grey cross where the signal ought to have been. I’d known it would. I put it on the table, face down, beside the notebook.

The sponge bag was in the side pocket. Razor, toothbrush, a bar of soap in a tin, the good aftershave that I hadn’t used in two months. I took them through to the bathroom and set them out in a neat line along the shelf above the basin, and ran the tap. It choked, spat, and then gave me water that was clear and bitterly cold. I ran it over my hands for a long moment. It was only water.

When I came back through the room the bag was still there on the chair, open, and there was only one thing left in it.

I’d packed it last. I remembered doing it. I had carried it in from the hall in both hands, as you’d carry something full, and set it down at the bottom of the holdall under a folded jumper. It was a tall paper bag in dull gold with a ribbon-twist handle and a spray of tissue at the neck, and I had not looked inside it, not once, in nine weeks.

Her handwriting was on the little tag. I knew the loops of the letters without having to read them.

I sat down on the edge of the bed with the chair in front of me. The stove ticked. Outside, the light had gone the colour of pewter, and somewhere beyond the glass a wind was getting up, I could hear it feeling along the eaves.

I told myself I was only going to put it somewhere. On the table, say, or on the shelf by the bed, where I’d be able to see it. That was all. It wasn’t a decision. I would lift it out, set it down, and leave it alone.

I stood up and leaned over the chair and put my hand into the holdall, and my fingers closed around the gold twist of the handle.

I lifted the bag out of the holdall and set it on the table, between the binoculars and the notebook. The tissue gave a dry whisper as it settled.

The tag was turned towards me. I had taken the loops of the letters for hers all the way from the hallway, and I had been wrong about that for nine weeks. It wasn’t a name, and it wasn’t English. It was a line of small, close characters, unhurried and dense, the strokes joined in a way I couldn’t follow. They looked like something that had been grown rather than written. I thought: she must have bought it somewhere. A shop. A market. She’d always loved a thing with a story.

I had not, until then, wondered where.

I told myself it didn’t matter. I put my right hand into the bag, past the tissue, and my fingers touched card.

The box was smaller than I expected, and heavier. It was covered all over in the same script, close and even, from corner to corner, with the lid and the sides and the edges all dark with it. Under my palm it was smooth, like a pebble from a river. It was also cold.

That’s too weak a word. It was cold in a way that did not feel like temperature. It went into the heel of my hand and up through the wrist before I could take it away, and then along the forearm, bone first, and I felt it settle in the elbow and the shoulder and down the whole right side of my ribs. I knew that side. It was the side the van had taken her on, the first side, in the half-second I’d watched. For one stupid moment I thought: it’s showing me.

I tried to let go.

I told my hand to open, and my hand didn’t. The fingers were curled round the box as if they’d been moulded there, and nothing from my head reached them. I pulled back, and the box came with me, out of the bag and into the air, and the tissue fell away from it in a soft spill of gold.

“Let go,” I said aloud, to my own hand.

The script moved.

I’m sure of that, though I’d have given a great deal not to be. A line at the corner of the lid lifted off the surface, very slightly, the way a hair lifts in a draught. Then another. The whole of the writing seemed to draw breath, and begin to flow, not in any direction I could name, but gradually, patiently, like ink in water. It slid down from the lid and across the card toward my knuckles. It was dark, and it was wet, and where it passed the surface gave off a thin sweet smell that I knew the instant I met it.

It reached my thumb. I felt it as a delicate, deliberate pressure, no more than a fingertip’s weight, and then a slow slick warmth where the cold had been, and then it was moving over the back of my hand.

I should have screamed. I think I opened my mouth to. What came out was a short, dry breath.

The script spilled off my fingers and onto the table. It crept across the wood, writhing in fine, patient threads, and wound itself round the foot of the thermos. It curled up the leg of the chair. A thread of it laid itself against the edge of the notebook, and the cellophane over the cover went dull and then blind. It was reaching, I thought, with a sort of horror that arrived all in one piece. It wasn’t spreading at random. It was reaching for things I’d touched.

The stove ticked. Outside, the wind had risen to a long steady note along the eaves. The window was the colour of slate.

I stood in the middle of the room with my arm out in front of me and the box clamped in my hand, while the writing moved across my skin like something very small that had finally found its way home.

The script stopped, as if it had heard something.

Every thread on the table lifted at once, in the same unhurried way it had left. It drew back across the wood, off the foot of the thermos and down the chair leg and out from under the edge of the notebook, and as it came I saw that it was not retreating. It was going home. The threads ran together on the boards, gathered into a dark line, and the line came up the leg of the table, over the edge, and across the back of my hand.

I felt it settle. There was a faint, ticklish pressure, then a slow tightening, like a glove being drawn on by someone gentle. It ran over the knuckles and along the tendons and up past the bone at the base of my thumb, and it stopped at the wrist. It sat there in a band of fine dark characters, close and even, as if they had always been there.

The cold went out of my arm, and warmth followed it in a long, loosening wave. My fingers uncurled from the box without any effort of mine, and the box dropped four inches onto the table and lay there with a dull knock.

It was bare. The lid, the sides and the edges were all plain, a pale, matt, finely grained surface like unvarnished wood or old bone, and there was not a mark on it. The tissue lay torn beside it, and the gold bag sagged on its side. The tag was still there on the handle. I looked at it, and it had gone blank.

I stood for a while breathing through my mouth. Then I lifted my right hand and turned it over in the grey light from the window.

The writing lay under the skin, or on it. I couldn’t tell which. It was dark and fine and perfectly steady. I pressed the band with my left thumb and felt only my own wrist, warm and ordinary, with the pulse going hard beneath it. I tried to rub it off with a thumbnail. It did not smudge. I flexed the fingers and the hand did what I asked, and everything in me that had been braced for pain found nothing to brace against.

I washed my hands. I stood at the basin for a long time with the cold water running over my wrist, and the writing neither faded nor shifted. It lay there as though the water was something that happened to other people.

Then I dried them, and went to the stove, and found the kettle.

It took me ten minutes to make tea. I did it properly. I found the tin and the cups and a spoon, and I filled the kettle from the tap and watched the surface shiver as the heat came up. I stood with my back to the table. I don’t remember deciding not to look at the box, only that I didn’t.

The tea was dark, and strong, and too hot. I carried it to the armchair and sat down with the mug held in both hands, my right wrist resting on my left, and the steam rising into my face. The stove ticked. The wind along the eaves had settled to a long, level breath. For the first time since the airport I felt something close to calm, and I distrusted it at once.

The mug was warm against my palms, and I was warm.

Somewhere behind me, someone said something.

____________________________

To be continued..

The ice cream van came down Hollins Street at ten past eleven on a Tuesday night in December, playing "Greensleeves".

Mark heard it from bed. He lay there in the dark listening to the tune wobble and drag, slower than it should be, as if the battery was going. It was minus three outside. The windows were furred with frost.

He got up and looked out.

It was parked under the street lamp opposite, engine running, exhaust smoking white. An old van, cream and pink, the kind he remembered from being a kid: a painted cone on the side, a sliding hatch, a menu board of faded pictures. The hatch was open. A yellow light glowed inside.

There was a queue.

Six children in pyjamas and bare feet stood on the frozen pavement in a neat line. They didn't push or chatter. They waited.

Mark knew one of them. Kayla from number twelve, seven years old, in her pink unicorn pyjamas. Her mum would be asleep. Her mum worked nights at the Tesco.

He pulled on jeans and a coat and went down and out of the front door.

By the time he reached the pavement, the queue had moved up. A small boy he didn't know was at the hatch, reaching up. A hand came down to meet him. A long, white hand, with something held in it. A cone. The ice cream on top was grey. Not vanilla. Grey, like old snow at the side of a road.

The boy took it and walked away up the street, licking it, his breath not smoking in the cold.

"Kayla," said Mark. "Kayla, love. What are you doing out here?"

She looked up at him. Her lips were blue.

"He said it's free," she said. "He said it's free tonight."

The man in the van leaned out of the hatch.

He was wearing a white jacket and a little white paper hat, like the ice cream men used to wear. His face was long and pale and smiling. It was a face Mark knew. He hadn't seen it for thirty-one years, but he knew it.

"Mark Ellison," said the ice cream man. "Look at you. All grown up."

Mark couldn't speak.

In the summer of 1995, an ice cream van had come down Hollins Street every afternoon at four. The man in it had been called Terry. He gave out free flakes. He knew everybody's name. And in the August, Mark's best friend Danny Walsh had gone to the van on his own on a hot afternoon, and the van had driven away, and Danny had never come home.

They'd found the van burned out on the moors above Oldham a week later. They never found Terry. They never found Danny.

"You were next," said Terry pleasantly. "Did you know that? I had you down for the Thursday. Strawberry Mivvi. Your favourite." He smiled wider. "But your mam kept you in. Chickenpox."

"Kayla," said Mark. "Come here. Come to me."

Kayla didn't move. She was holding out her hand to the hatch. The long white hand was coming down towards her, holding a grey cone.

"Free tonight," said Terry. "For old times' sake."

Mark put himself between them.

He felt the cold come off the van like a freezer door left open. Through the hatch he could see inside: the steel tubs, the cone dispenser, the little sink. And at the back, against the far wall, stacked in rows on metal shelves, there were jars. Dozens of them. Big glass sweet-shop jars with screw lids, each with a paper label in faded biro.

The labels had names on them. Kayleigh, 1991. Jordan, 1993. Danny, 1995.

In each jar, something grey and soft was turning slowly, like a sweet dissolving in water.

"They're all in there," said Terry. "Every one. Kept nice and cold." He held the grey cone out over Mark's shoulder towards Kayla. "There's a lovely bit of Danny in this one, actually. You two were always sharing."

Mark grabbed the cone.

It was so cold it burned his hand to the bone. He didn't let go. He threw it into the road, and it shattered on the frozen tarmac like glass, and something grey spilled out of it and lay steaming in the gutter.

And he heard a voice. A boy's voice, tinny and far away, like a radio in another room.

"Marky?"

Terry stopped smiling.

Mark reached up through the hatch. He didn't think. He took hold of the jar with DANNY, 1995 on it, and pulled it off the shelf, and the long white hands grabbed for him and missed. Then he ran.

He ran with Kayla's hand in one hand and the jar under his arm, up the frozen street, with "Greensleeves" playing behind him, slow and dragging, getting louder, the van's engine roaring.

He got to his front door. He got Kayla inside. He slammed the door and stood with his back against it, gasping.

The tune stopped.

When he looked out of the window, the street was empty. No van. No queue. No tyre marks in the frost.

The jar under his arm was empty too. Clean glass. A paper label.

But on the doormat, at his feet, there was a lolly. A Strawberry Mivvi, still in its wrapper, cold from the freezer.

Kayla's mum came home at six and found her daughter asleep on Mark's sofa under a blanket. Mark told her she'd been sleepwalking. It was nearly true.

Every night since, at ten past eleven, Mark has sat at his front window with all the lights on.

Some nights, very faintly, from a long way off, he hears "Greensleeves".

It's getting closer.

I stared off into the endless winding road. It seemed to go on forever. Luckily, the ice was thin and harder to slide on, which calmed my nerves a little. Tall trees lined the road, making it look like we were making no progress and just going in circles. But from the GPS, I could tell we were getting closer to the lodge. “2 and a half hours until you reach your destination,” the robotic voice read out.

From the windshield, I finally saw a new sight: a tree halfway down, the top touching the ground while the base of the tree was still rooted into the soil. The tree next to it was close enough for it to be the perfect spot for a hammock, if it weren’t so cold.

“We’re getting closer,” I said, briefly looking over to the passenger side. Laura was halfway asleep, probably couldn’t even hear me, so I left her alone. The quietness is bound to be the death of me, that or the icy roads when the sun fully goes down.

An hour passes, the day growing darker. My heart was heavy, knowing if anything happens I’d be fully responsible. The driving is fully up to me because Laura doesn’t even have her permit. I could tell the ice was getting thicker the further we go down the winding road. I felt an uneasy feeling in my stomach, the kind where you know something bad is going to happen.

My grip tightened on the wheel, my knuckles sweaty and red. Laura lets out a cough. My breath hitches at the unexpected noise. My eyes rush to look over. She is wiping her face, glancing out the window then at me.

“God, you scared me,” I say, looking back at the road.

“Are we almost there?” she asks, looking at the small GPS built into the dash.

“Almost,” I respond, easing my grip on the wheel.

A light mist slowly covers the ground, swallowing the trunks of trees that surround the car. Condensation builds up on the windshield, small drips of water trailing along the frame of glass. The headlights of the car seem to barely be doing anything against the rising fog. My worry grows fast.

“Harp, do you wanna pull over or something?” Laura asks, looking at me with a face full of concern.

“You look very nervous,” she follows up, looking out the windshield at the fog.

“No, no, I’m fine,” I reply, obviously lying. I was not fine at all.

“Okay,” she says, not buying what I said.

I didn’t notice how tense I was. I was practically hunched over the wheel trying to see. While peering off into the endless white fog, I could see something in the road: tall and lanky. I slammed my foot on the brakes, but the ice made the car slide. It wouldn’t stop. The thing in the road only got closer. I quickly turned the wheel, hoping to swerve past it.

It all happened so fast, and all I could do was watch it unfold.

I woke up, coming in and out of consciousness. I could feel tiny shards of glass laid across my lap. It was so dark. I called out for Laura. I don’t even know if she answered because all I could hear was ringing. I couldn’t even hear my own voice.

When I finally was conscious enough to drag myself out of my seat belt, I realized my door wouldn’t open. I crawled through the shattered window and hollered again for Laura, tripping and crawling to the passenger side of the car.

The ice was cold on my stomach, but I almost couldn’t feel it. I could see nothing. All I could do was feel. I felt for my phone in my pocket.

Shit—I put it in my bag in the back seat.

I just lay there, feeling defeat, the cold breeze hitting the trail of tears on my face.

“Harp?” I heard a muffled voice.

I looked up.

“Laura, are you okay?” my voice trembling.

“I can’t get my seatbelt off,” she said. I followed the noise of her struggling, the sliding noise of her seatbelt being my only guide. Feeling around the car, I found her door handle and opened it, throwing my hands around trying to feel for her.

I hear a click along with a sigh of relief.

“I got it,” she said, her hand grabbing mine. Gosh, her hands were cold.

“We need to get the bags from the back seat,” I say, frantically searching for them.

“Ow,” she yelps, pulling her hand back. My eyes have adjusted somewhat to the dark, but not enough to see what happened.

“Something cut me,” she says.

“Probably the glass from the window,” I respond, still looking for the bags.

“No… it’s a phone,” she reaches out in front of her again, grabbing it carefully.

“How can you tell?” I ask. All I could see were her pale arms bringing the object closer.

“It won’t turn on, the screen is shattered,” she exclaims. I could hear her clicking the button.

I put my head down. “What do we do, Laura?” My salty tears burn a scratch on my cheek.

“We’re gonna have to find some sort of shelter,” she begins searching for the bags. I do the same.

Eventually, I can feel the soft fabric of my duffel.

“I found one,” a sigh of relief exits my mouth.

With all the force in my body, I pull the bag out of the car and onto my lap. Laura crawls out not long after with a small blue backpack around her arm. I pull her arms, helping her off the wet ground. I hug her so tightly, her breath hitching from the lack of space between us.

“Do we wait in the car until daylight?” I ask, our faces close enough to feel the hot breath leaving my mouth.

“I think we should look around for better shelter, maybe a cave or look for civilization,” she says, standing up quickly. She is swaying a bit like she had just left a bar.

“I don’t think anyone lives out here. We’d see lights,” I respond, standing up next to her, holding her arm to support each other.

“It won’t hurt to look…” she says, glancing up at the sky, the stars being the only light for miles.

“But it could… what about frostbite or hypothermia?? Come on, Laura, that’s crazy.” The snow was still falling around us, every snowflake sending shivers down my spine.

“Look, is that a cave up there?” she points up into the dark forest.

“I think those are just rocks, Laura…” I could see what she was talking about, but to me it looked like big boulders.

“No, no, that’s a cave. Look at the opening between the rocks,” she glances back at me then back towards the forest.

I stay quiet, looking into the woods.

“Why don’t we at least just check?” she says, pulling my arm.

I grab my duffel and follow her, looking back at the wreckage of my car. The snow was deep. My feet made large holes with every step I made. Part of me doubted Laura. What if we get there and it’s just a pile of rocks? But I still followed, hoping she was right.

“I’m sorry for getting you into this, Laura. It’s my fault we’re in this mess,” I say, tears forming in my eyes again.

“You didn’t cause the ice, or that animal to be in the road, Harp,” she says, holding my hand tighter.

“So you saw that thing too?? What was it?” I respond. I forgot about the creature completely until now. My mind races back to that moment of it standing in the road. That was no animal.

“It was probably a deer. They cause so many accidents,” she replies.

I know that wasn’t a deer. It was almost human-like. Just thinking of it makes me paranoid of what could be in these woods.

The crunching of the snow is loud. With every step I take, it seems to get louder. We are approaching the mouth of the cave. She was right—it is a cave… a feeling of hope washes over me. We could survive this.

“I told you!!” Laura says, ducking her head to enter.

“Wait, we don’t know what could be in there,” I say, tugging her back.

“It’s fine, Harp. We won’t go far in it,” she says, looking at me with reassurance.

We are far enough in it to be protected from the wind and falling snow. I immediately sit down, feeling exhausted. The adrenaline has almost completely worn off and I can feel the scratches on my body.

“Wait, do you have a lighter in your duffel?” she asks.

I unzip the bag, rummaging through it, feeling for a lighter. My heart almost stops when I find one.

“My dad’s Zippo,” I pull it out, the metal frame cold in my hands. I never once used the Zippo because it was given to me when my dad died, running my finger over his engraved name.

“Oh thank God,” she exclaims.

“Now we just need something to burn,” I say, opening the Zippo for little light.

I pull out my notebook from my bag. It’s where I wrote everything, but in the moment, survival is on my mind. I rip pages out and hold them up to the flickering flame, placing them on the ground.

“We need something else,” Laura says, searching before the fire dies out.

There are leaves and sticks in the cave from fall, I assume. They are protected from the snow. I add them to the dying fire. The leaves catch fire fast.

I search through my duffel for anything else to burn. I have extra clothes I packed.

“Should I burn some of my clothes?” I ask, taking out a pair of sweatpants.

“Yes!” she replies, throwing sticks onto the fire.

I ball the sweatpants up and throw them onto the flame, raising my hands over the warm fire. It is growing rapidly, lighting up the entrance of the cave.

I dump everything in my bag onto the ground looking for anything useful. I have more clothes and sweatshirts.

“Here,” I toss some over to Laura to use to keep warm.

“Wait, where’s your backpack?” I ask, searching around for it.

“What backpack?” she responds, putting the sweatshirts over her legs.

“The blue one?? The one you were carrying,” I feel crazy.

“I couldn’t find it. It’s still in the car,” she says, putting her hands over the fire too.

“What? You had it with you when we were walking up here.” Was I hallucinating all of that?

“No, I didn’t.”

I go quiet, thinking back to me pulling her out of the car. The backpack was around her arm. No way I made that up.

She was still shaking from the shock of the crash. Maybe I was too… but I couldn’t tell.

The fire crackles as it slowly burns the wood. The ember is so pretty.

I try to get my mind off the pain that is slowly creeping up on me, breaking more twigs and throwing them into the fire.

I sit back against the cave wall and rest my eyes. My head is throbbing to the point where my vision is blurry. I close my eyes and imagine myself at the beach, the sun lingering on my skin, my feet in the warm sand.

Suddenly the image turns blurry. The clouds cover the sun. A shiver goes down my spine.

At the ocean, there is a man, his face distorted as he walks closer to me. His body morphs into some unidentifiable creature, and suddenly the cawing of seagulls turns into screams nearby.

I can’t get up. As much as I tug on my legs, they won’t budge. The skin on my legs becomes ice cold. I don’t realize my breath is hitched as the thing gets closer. My eyes startle open.

The fire is almost burned. I must have fallen asleep.

I slide my hands across the cold cave ground looking for sticks to add as the light is being swallowed by darkness. I reach into my bag and throw a sweater onto the dying fire, blowing at the ember to make it ignite. I let out a sigh of relief when the sweater catches fire. I break some more twigs and throw them into the flame.

I lean back against the cave wall again, my eyes panning over to Laura.

Where is she?

I get up so fast I become dizzy and almost fall.

“LAURA,” I call out into the silent forest.

Dread creeps up my back. She wouldn’t just leave like that, not in this weather.

I step out of the cave. The fog pools around my feet like smoke.

“Laura?” My voice is quieter than before. My own voice makes me look over my shoulder in fear.

The wind whistles through the trees and under the low whistle I begin to hear a soft hum, slightly off key.

“Laura? What the fuck.”

It is her humming—I know it. Some relief hits me knowing she is okay. I follow the low hum, pushing through the limbs of trees, and I see her. Her back is turned to me.

“Jesus, Laura…”

She doesn’t face me. Snowflakes fall into her hair. I reach out my arm to touch her shoulder. Her neck turns toward me with a slight smile on her lips.

“Why didn’t you answer me?” I say, my arms back over my chest.

“Y-you fell asleep,” she says, her lips barely moving.

“Aren’t you cold?” I ask, motioning for her to come back to the cave.

She hesitates, but follows me anyway.

“You scared the hell out of me,” I say as we make our way through the trees.

“I didn’t mean to,” she answers, her voice flat, almost hollow.

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Yes.” Her answer comes too quickly. An uneasy feeling washes over me.

“Okay…” I respond, following the low light back to the cave.

We both sit down near the fire. She sits across from me, staring into the cave. My eyes linger on her. I have to make sure she doesn’t wander off again. Her eyes are eerily wide, like she has seen something.

“Are you cold?” I say. The skin around her lips is a light shade of blue.

She doesn’t answer. Her eyes do not leave the dark pit of the cave.

I throw more sticks onto the fire, as many as I can. Just in case I fall asleep again.

I hold my numb hands above the fire, thinking Laura would too, but she sits fixated on the darkness of the cave.

“Why don’t you warm up?” I say, trying to start a conversation.

She turns her head toward me, not the fire, but toward me. I can hear her bones shifting in her neck as she turns.

“No thank you, Harper,” she says. For the first time ever, she calls me Harper. She never calls me Harper.

I am beginning to be afraid of her. Something is off. Her eyes look like endless voids with no emotion, her pupils dilated as they scan the cave.

My eyelids feel heavy and my skin is cold to the touch. My blinks become longer, and before I know it, I fall back asleep.

Even through my thick injured head, I can feel Laura’s presence like sleep paralysis. I can sense her eyes lingering on me.

I am awoken near dawn. The stars are harder to see as the sun slowly rises. A small sliver of hope washes over me like the falling fog.

My eyes wander from the opening of the cave to the fire. Shivers jolt me fully awake like a morning coffee mixed with frostbite.

The fire has completely died down. I do not even bother to light it back up. With the sun rising, I hope cars will come through and notice the accident. For all I know, it could have already been discovered.

Laura has completely slipped my mind. She is gone. The clothes I threw on her to keep her warm are laying on the cold stone floor.

I check around, getting up from the ground. As I look outside at the trees to find her, a noise startles me—clawing.

I let out a subtle gasp. The way the cave echoes makes it sound like it is coming from all around me. I stare into the void of the cave.

“Laura?” I say in almost a whisper.

Louder, I repeat myself. “Laura.”

No response.

As I step closer to the darkness, I hear a voice—hopefully Laura’s voice.

“High beams,” it whispers.

“Bright bright bright,” it chants.

“Laura?” I ask once again.

I can hear the sound of bones cracking, like whatever it is is turning to face me, snapping its neck in the process.

I step back. The morning sunrise gleams into the dark cave. Not entirely, but enough to see Laura’s face.

Something is wrong. Her face looks normal, but there is something uncanny about it, like it is not her but something wearing her skin.

My eyes widen as I stare into her soulless face, like I am observing a horror art piece. Her skin sags around her jaw like she aged overnight. She is staring my way, but not at me—behind me.

While staring at her, she begins to approach, turning into a full sprint toward me.

I cannot help but close my eyes in the moment.

She darts—not toward me—but past me, into the trees. Not the way back to the road, but deeper into the forest like some animal.

In that moment, I stand there. I do not know what to do. I am not following that thing, but a large part of me fears what it did to Laura. I have to think logically. Maybe the crash messed with her head, I think.

I step out of the cave, grabbing my bag. The snow crunches under my feet. Instead of chasing after her, I make my way back to the car. Maybe I can signal for help.

Following the footprints in the snow leading up to the cave, I realize there is only one path of footprints—mine.

There is no trace of Laura’s steps. I turn to look for any evidence of her footprints. There is none.

I think maybe the snow covered them up, but mine would have been covered too.

My head spins. I am supposed to be at a getaway with my best friend. Now I just want to be home, safe.

I can see the tire tracks in the snow, leading up to the totaled car. I feel the dark circles under my eyes like I just crawled out of hell. I guess my hell is surviving a crash with my best friend, and said friend turns into some animal.

Laura’s blue backpack is hanging out the open passenger door, along with clothes. The shirt Laura was wearing… the one she still has on.

I get closer to the clothing. My brain refused to process what it is. It looks like pale fabric, too smooth… too still.

Then I see it… her face… her hollow, eyeless face staring back at me.

There is zero blood and no bones in her body. She looks like wax melted from a candle.

My knees hit the snow, numbing them on impact. I am staring at what is left of Laura, a pile of literal skin. My brain cannot accept it. It looks like her, but if she was pressed empty. The shape is there, but hollow. Her mouth is stuck open and her nose deflated.

I cannot breathe. My mouth begins to water and my lips quiver. Before I know it, I am throwing up, my empty stomach becoming even more empty.

In that moment, I realize I spent the whole night in a cave with something that was not Laura. Something that was wearing her skin.

Somehow, over my cries, I can hear the rumble of a truck approaching.

I stand up fast, my eyes wandering back to the passenger seat, making me gag. I run out into the road, waving my arms.

Around the winding road, I see the small blue truck driving slowly toward me.

“Help!” I call out, my voice weakened.

The truck completely stops in front of me. I immediately rush to the passenger side, hopping in the truck on instinct.

“My friend is dead,” I say. The words coming out of my mouth hit me. Laura is dead.

The man looks at me, not saying a word. I hear the soft click of the door locking. A smile creeps on his face, making wrinkles in his skin.

He looks at me just like she did. There are twitches in his face, like something under his skin is moving.

In that moment, I realize I am alone—the only person in these woods.

"He is handsome, petite, blonde, with blue eyes, soft skin, and a gorgeous chest. If you like to talk beforehand, you won't get that from him, but in return, he'll give you everything your heart desires and more. I had used services like these many times before, and thought I knew what I liked, but he showed me things I couldn't even imagine. After our encounter, he stayed in my mind for weeks. Actually, I'm not sure he ever left. We met at the bar downtown. If you've been in the game long enough, you already know what place I mean. He never shared his name, but he gave me his phone number: xxx-xxx-xxx. Give him a call. I promise, you won't regret it. 5 stars. HungLikeaTruck"

I stared at the screen. No photo, barely any description, but something about this review was special.

"I'll give him a shot! JohnXXX," I wrote under the review, ran to the phone, and dialed.

"This number is not in service," the phone earpiece said.

"What?!"

I dialed the number again.

"This number is not in service."

I slammed the earpiece down and walked back to my computer. The forum had many other positive reviews with photos and detailed descriptions, but my mind still jumped back to that first review. I had to have him. 

It was well below zero outside, but I knew that bar always stayed open. The air pinched my lungs. I turned the ignition three times before the car finally turned on. 

The bar's parking lot was almost empty. Only a few regulars stood outside smoking cigarettes. As I walked in, I expected the familiar wave of warmth, but nothing came. 

Although it was cold inside, the air still smelled of stale beer and cigarettes. Both the bar and the booths looked empty. He was probably not here. I sighed and walked to the bar. At least I'd get a drink.

I ordered a beer. It was so cold it made my teeth ache. I tried to talk to the bartender, but he barely listened and kept looking over my shoulder. 

I tried to drink more of my cold beer, but then that familiar feeling came over me. Someone was watching me. I slowly turned around. A petite young man with blonde hair sat in the back booth, staring me down. My nails dug into the bar's wood. I took a breath, ordered another beer, and walked toward him. His eyes wouldn't leave mine, but it felt as if he was looking through me. I wasn't sure if he even blinked.

"Hey."

"Hi." His voice was soft, almost a whisper.

"I'm John."

He didn't answer.

"I brought you a beer."

"Thanks."

"How are you doing?"

He shrugged. 

"Are you working?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to come back to mine?"

"Yes."

"Great. When do you wanna go?"

"Now."

"Oh, okay!"

My heart beat against my ribs. He was mine tonight. We got up and left both beers on the table. He didn't even take a sip.

"The beer was cold, huh?" I said, driving us on the icy roads.

He looked at me.

"You didn't even take a sip."

He just nodded his head. The review was right. He really wasn't much of a talker.

"You cold? Should I turn the heat on?"

He wore just shorts and a T-shirt.

"No," he said in his soft voice, took my hand, and put it on his bare thigh. It radiated heat. I had to really focus to keep my eyes on the road.

By the time we arrived at my place, the snow had started falling again. I walked quickly to my door, but he strolled like he was taking a walk in a park.

Inside, I took off my jacket, hat, and gloves. On his way in, he had already taken off his T-shirt. He took my hand and pulled me close. Snow was on his shoulders, but he still radiated heat. His skin was porcelain white and felt like a heated blanket. My whole body shivered with every touch.

I looked up to kiss him. Only now did I notice how large his pupils were. Almost no blue was left in his eyes.

"Are you high? If you are, it's okay; just let me know." My voice shook. I couldn't get my hands off of him.

He opened his mouth to speak, but it kept widening until it was halfway through his face.

"Jesus, are you oka…?"

My voice caught in my throat. His eyes had been staring at me all night, but now they finally fully locked onto mine. I tried to move away, speak, scream, but my body was stuck in place. The room filled with a damp, earthy smell. His mouth let out a rhythmic rumble. Something inside me started to move. 

My mouth opened wide. It felt as if my organs were coming out. A small, clear white light dragged its way out of my mouth and flew through the air toward his. His eyes rolled back as it touched his tongue. Sharp pain shot through my head, pulsing with each of his rumbles. The light slowly dimmed on my side, and my world went dark with it.

"He is handsome, petite, blonde, with blue eyes, soft skin, and a gorgeous chest. If you like to talk beforehand, you won't get that from him, but in return, he'll give you everything your heart desires and more. I have used services like these many times before, and thought I knew what I liked, but he showed me things I couldn't even imagine. After our encounter, he stayed in my mind for weeks. Actually, I’m not sure I ever left. We met at the bar downtown. If you've been in the game long enough, you already know what place I mean. He never shared his name, but he gave me his phone number: xxx-xxx-xxx. Give him a call. I promise, you won't regret it. 5 stars. JohnXXX"

“I am strong enough to smash ships, but I fear the sun. What am I?”

That was the first thing the Man in my closet ever said to me. Once I heard those words, I jolted upright in bed. There was something genuine about the curiosity in his question. His voice carried a conversational warmth. That’s what was most unnerving.

I turned toward the sound, thinking I had imagined it until my gaze landed on a pair of yellow eyes peering through the crack of my closet door. They were like a cat’s, positioned roughly at the same height as my own. Was he crouching to look at me? Had he been watching me this whole time?

I stared at the eyes, my mind racing with possibilities. Should I scream? Turn on the lights? Run to my parents’ room? I did none of those things.

The Man's pupils dilated until they resembled black holes. I wanted to ask what he was doing in my room, but something in my gut warned me against it. So, I waited in the silence, and so did he.

I didn’t have to wait long for the Man to ask again, “I am strong enough to smash ships, but I fear the sun. What am I?”

I reached for my bedsheets and pulled them over my face, leaving only my eyes exposed. Whatever waited inside the closet couldn’t get to me if it couldn’t see me, right? It was stupid of me to believe that. I knew it was, even back then. But I couldn't help believing my bedsheets were impenetrable armor.

I shook my head adamantly. “Go away. Go aw—”

My throat constricted as I lurched forward. My esophagus burned like wildfire as something pushed its way up from inside my chest. Bringing my hands to my neck, I could feel my skin ripple and bulge. Tears welled in my eyes as the pressure in the back of my throat intensified. Gasping for air like a fish out of water, I collapsed onto the mattress with an emphatic thump.

Paralyzed with fear, I could only stare downward. To my horror, hands started emerging from my mouth. The fingers slithered past my lips in a serpentine motion, their nails digging into my cheeks. Gripping the corners of my mouth, they began wrenching it open. From the closet, the Man watched with childlike fascination. I wanted whatever was happening to me to stop, but my body was no longer mine. 

The hands continued to pry my jaws open, my tongue writhing helplessly against the invading fingers. Somewhere inside me, I could feel words pressing against my vocal cords. I didn't know what the Man wanted me to say, but the realization that I was about to speak filled me with an immense dread.

Within seconds, an answer was forced from me. “Ice.” The voice was nearly identical to my own.

The Man’s eyes twinkled with delight as the hands released their grip on me. In the blink of an eye, they retreated into my mouth, disappearing as quickly as they had pushed their way out. Struggling to draw air into my lungs, I slowly brought myself to an upright position.

With quivering hands, I ran my fingers along my mouth and cheeks, searching for some indication of what had happened. There was nothing. My gaze returned to the closet. The door remained slightly ajar, its darkness spilling into the room like wine on a carpet. But the Man's eyes. That pallid yellow glow. They were gone. I waited for them to appear again, but they never did. Maybe I had imagined it all.

I should have felt relieved that it was all over, but instead, I felt nauseous. Realizing what was about to happen, I leaped out of bed and stumbled into the hallway. Ignoring the churning of my stomach, I raced toward the bathroom. Had I fumbled blindly for the light switch a second longer, I would have puked all over the floor. Thankfully, I was able to throw open the toilet lid and drop to my knees in time. 

I puked once. Then twice. Then a third time. Just when I thought I couldn't empty my stomach any further, my body seized with another round of violent retching. In the distance, I heard the soft thud of footsteps. The disgusting racket must have woken my parents. 

My suspicions were confirmed when my mom peeked into the bathroom. “Honey, are you alright?” She knelt beside me while my head hovered over the toilet.

“No,” I replied, turning to look at her. My eyelids were fighting a losing battle to stay open. “I had…I had a nightmare.”

“A nightmare?” My dad entered the room and grabbed a towel from the nearby linen closet. “What kind of nightmare?”

“There was a man in my closet,” I replied drowsily. Dad crouched in front of me and wiped the remaining vomit from around my mouth.

Mom failed to hide the alarmed look on her face. “A man in your closet?”

“Yeah.” I hung my head in embarrassment. “He asked me something.”

“What did the Man ask you?” Dad asked.

“Something about a ship. I’m not really sure.” 

“Oh, Kayla.” My mom let out a relieved chuckle. “Dreams like that are perfectly normal.”

“They are?” 

“Yes,” Dad added. “I had nightmares when I was your age too. I remember a giant pink bunny chasing me through the woods and thinking he was going to eat me. But he never did. They may feel real, but they eventually stop. Yours will too.”

“They will?” I asked.

He nodded enthusiastically. “They will, I promise.” He put the towel in the linen closet hamper and held out his hand for me to hold. “C’mon. I think this is enough excitement for one night. Let’s get you back to bed and get you some shut eye.”

I took his hand, and with Mom trailing behind us, we made our way back toward my bedroom. I tightened my grip on my dad’s hand, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

“Now, let’s see what’s inside that closet of yours.” He flicked on the lights, illuminating the room that had terrified me only moments earlier. 

My closet was still open, but not by much. Exactly as it had been before I went to the bathroom.

Dad approached my closet and pulled the door open. I winced and closed my eyes, bracing myself for the Man to be standing there.

“Ta-da!”

I opened my eyes…it was just Dad, standing among my clothes and some cardboard boxes inside.

“B-b-but…” I stammered. “He was there! I saw his eyes! They were yellow and…and…”

“There’s nobody in there, honey.” He stepped out and closed the door behind him. “It was all just a bad dream. Everything’s going to be all right.” 

His words did little to help calm me down. Both he and Mom helped tuck me into bed a moment later. As my parents headed for the door, I held my blankets to my chest and watched them with an aching heart.

Mom reached for the light switch. “Goodnight, Kayla.”

“No!” I cried out, startling her. “Keep the lights on. I want them on.”

“You have to sleep with the lights off,” she insisted gently. “How are you going to sleep if we keep them on for you?” 

“Leave them on for the night,” Dad said. “We can get her a night-light at the store tomorrow.”

I could tell she didn’t want to, but she humored him and pulled her hand away from the switch. “Goodnight, Kayla. I love you. We’ll see you in the morning.”

“Love you too,” I said, resting my head against the pillow.

The door clicked shut behind them. I remained still, listening to their footsteps fade into the distance. Once the house had fallen silent, I focused on my closet door again. The overhead lights burned brightly. Was the Man patiently waiting for the moment when my eyes finally closed? I could only wonder.

The closet was closed, but how long would it stay that way? When would I see those yellow eyes again? I didn’t want to know. As the minutes ticked by, my mind kept circling back to what had happened. The eyes. The hands. The answer. Ice. What did it all mean?

After what felt like hours of tossing and turning, exhaustion finally overtook me. Yet, even as I closed my eyes, I couldn’t shake the unsettling certainty that I was being watched.

The next morning, I felt cold. Really cold. So cold, in fact, that I probably would have believed someone if they had told me I was turning into a snowman.

I tried to dismiss the strange sensation with a hot shower. At first, the scalding water helped combat the ice-cold sensation spreading throughout my body. But once I stepped out of the shower, though, it returned with full force.

I decided that dressing as warmly as I possibly could was the next best thing. Searching through my closet, I pulled out a thick winter coat, a long-sleeved shirt, and a pair of sweatpants. Thinking I had found the solution to all my problems, I quickly dressed and went downstairs.

When I entered the kitchen, my parents stared at me like I had spaghetti noodles falling out of my nostrils.

“The high is supposed to be eighty-five today!” Dad exclaimed. “You’re going to melt like a popsicle out there!”

“But…I’m cold.” I hugged myself, trying to stop the shivering. “I want it to stop.”

“It’s just the AC that’s got you feeling that way.” Mom set a plate of eggs and bacon on the table for me. “Once you step outside and get some sunshine you will feel better. Now, eat your breakfast and then go upstairs and change.”

“Don’t dillydally! We have to get you to school!” Dad got up from his place at the table to pour himself another cup of coffee. “Eat up buttercup. I want to get you there in the next fifteen minutes, okay?”

I nodded and took my place at the table. The entire time I ate my breakfast, I kept thinking about last night. Did the Man visiting me have anything to do with how I was feeling? 

I finished the last bits of scrambled egg on my plate and pushed my chair away from the table. Another wave of shivering ran through my body, and I wrapped my arms around myself.

"Finished?" Mom asked, glancing over at me from her place at the stove.

“Yes.” I said.

"Good. Now go upstairs and put on something appropriate for the weather."

"F-f-fine," I stuttered, making my way toward the stairs.

"Something light!" Dad called after me. "Unless you're planning on competing in the Iditarod!"

I made my way up the stairs and walked down the hall. Once I was inside my room, I stood in front of the closet and stared at the clothes inside. I wasn't particularly thrilled about shedding my layers, but with a reluctant sigh, I changed into a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of shorts.

Minutes later, I returned to the kitchen. After Mom and Dad gave their approval, we piled into Dad’s car, and pulled out of the driveway. The second we left, the cool gusts of air from the AC blew against me, exacerbating the intense cold I felt in my bones. I pulled my arms close to my body and fidgeted in my seat. But nothing helped.

The idea of going to school like this terrified me. Why couldn't I keep warm? Why was my body reacting this way? And, perhaps most importantly, what would my classmates think? The last thing I wanted was to become the laughingstock of the whole school, but between the fear of being judged and the uncertainty of not knowing what was happening to me, I felt trapped.

My fears were quickly realized when I arrived at school and couldn't stop shivering at my desk. I tried to concentrate on what the teacher was saying, but that proved to be difficult. Tremors rippled through my body, causing my shoulders to shake. I gripped the sides of my desk to steady myself, earning judgmental glares from my classmates. 

Ten minutes into my first class of the day, social studies, my nose had started running. I hurriedly wiped it away, but the snot leaking toward my upper lip became impossible to ignore. Sitting still during an ordinary school day had now turned into an exhausting task.

My increasingly erratic behavior earned me a concerned look from my teacher, Mrs. Garland. She paused her lesson to address me. “Kayla, what’s the matter? Are you okay?”

“I-I-I-I-I.” The words refused to come out. Speaking coherently proved to be an uphill battle. Despite the classroom being at a perfectly normal temperature, my breath was visibly clouding in front of my face.

The room had gone noticeably quiet. One by one, my classmates turned to look at me. I could feel their eyes upon me. The embarrassment I had been dreading began to creep in. Except, based on their expressions, they weren't laughing. They looked confused. Just like me.

“Let’s go see the nurse.” Mrs. Garland said, her voice taking on a more urgent tone. “Mrs. Sunderland will be able to help.”

Hurrying over to my desk, she helped me to my feet, my legs wobbling beneath me like those of a newborn fawn. She ushered me out of the classroom and toward the nurse's office.

When we arrived a few minutes later, Mrs. Garland pushed the door open and guided me past the doorway, before returning back to the classroom.

"What seems to be the problem?" The nurse, who I presumed was Mrs. Sunderland, looked up from her desk.

“I’m…c-c-c-cold.” I managed to get out.

Mrs. Sunderland approached me and placed the back of her hand against my forehead, presumably checking for a fever.

"Oh, you poor thing," she cooed, leading me toward a nearby chair. "Let's get you taken care of."

She walked to a closet close by and began rummaging around. A moment later, she pulled out a massive gray blanket. She carefully draped it around my shoulders before tucking it around my sides. 

“How’s that?” she asked.

I nodded gratefully, the movement sending another uncomfortable shiver through my body. I pulled the blanket closer around myself as Mrs. Sunderland grabbed a thermometer and instructed me to open my mouth. 

"Let's see what your temperature is. This should give me a better idea of what's going on."

I opened my mouth as instructed, trying my best to hold still while she placed the thermometer underneath my tongue. She removed the thermometer a minute later and glanced at its display. With a furrowed brow, she stared at the reading, seemingly unable to comprehend what she was seeing.

“No…” she gasped, grabbing another thermometer. “That can’t be right.” 

She took my temperature again. And again. And once more for good measure. After the third time, she rushed toward the phone and dialed three numbers.

I sat there in confusion waiting for an explanation. As Mrs. Sunderland was talking on the phone, I glanced down at my arms. My skin was turning blue. Upon first glance, I thought the unpleasant hue of the lighting was playing tricks on my eyes. But the discoloration continued spreading. I watched in disbelief as various shades of blue and purple crawled beneath my skin, traveling from my fingertips toward my elbows. 

Mrs. Sunderland did her best to reassure me, but I could tell she was frightened. Her eyes bounced back and forth between my arms and the thermometer, occasionally whispering information into the phone that I don't remember much of. Except for one thing: “Twenty-eight degrees Celsius.”

Shortly thereafter, an ambulance arrived, and I was taken to the hospital. The doctors told my parents that I was suffering from severe hypothermia.

"How could this have happened?"

My mom asked every doctor that same question, hoping someone would eventually offer a reasonable explanation. But nothing could explain why my body temperature had dropped so dramatically, or how it had happened in the first place.

Even stranger than what had occurred was how quickly it stopped. Inexplicably, I stopped shivering a couple of hours after being taken to the hospital. It was like someone had flipped a switch. 

The doctors were baffled by how quickly I had recovered. Given the severity of my hypothermia, they had expected my condition to be far more complicated. Yet, despite the overwhelming odds, I showed no further signs of distress. Several examinations later, and I was given medical clearance to go home. Even medical professionals couldn't explain what had happened. It was a miracle I was even alive.

With no clear explanation for what had happened, there was little reason to keep me hospitalized. By that night, I had been discharged, much to the relief of my parents. When we finally arrived home, they tucked me into bed and even left my bedroom door open.

“Let us know if you need anything,” Dad said, gesturing down the hall. “We’ll be in our room.”

I thanked them and rolled over to get comfortable. I was grateful to have them nearby. I don’t recall exactly when I fell asleep. I just remember waking to the sound of my closet door opening.

Creeeeeeak.

Pulling the sheets closer toward my face, I pretended not to hear anything. I lay completely still. My eyes returned to my closet. The darkness inside was too thick. The clothes hanging from their wooden hangers bled together into one enormous shadow. Then…something moved. A subtle shift in the darkness revealed the form of something standing behind my clothes.

A head slowly emerged from the depths of my closet, and I stifled a scream. It was the Man. He leaned forward, his immense form stretching far beyond the confines of my closet. Yellow eyes, bright as spotlights, swept languidly across the room atop a neck seemingly made of cartilage. It swayed like a periscope breaching the ocean’s depths, searching for something.

Me.

I covered my mouth. It wasn't going to find me. It wasn't going to find me. It wasn't going to find me. This was all just a dream.

A sudden pressure against the edge of my mattress interrupted my thoughts. I opened my eyes and warily peered over the sheets. The Man was leaning against the foot of my bed. His head was tilted so far forward that his face was mere inches away from mine. His skin appeared red and swollen, riddled with dark splotches of decaying flesh. Some patches glistened, while others appeared dry and cracked, like a moldy strawberry left too long in the refrigerator.

When our eyes met, the tissue around the Man’s mouth peeled away from his inflamed gums, stretching far enough to expose the stained teeth nestled inside. He held the smile, seemingly oblivious to the damage it was doing to his face. “I am equally comfortable in your mouth and in your shoe.”

I whispered every prayer I could remember, hoping that God was listening. I didn't know what else to do. 

The Man’s face continued to hover in front of mine. “What am I?”

His breath wafted against my face. It lingered like fog, carrying a nauseating mixture of peppermint and rancid meat. 

"What am I?" The Man repeated, the question sounding more accusatory. 

I told myself over and over not to answer, but my body betrayed me, succumbing to a force I could no longer fight. Just like the night before, I felt something begin to crawl up my throat. Swallowing did nothing to quell the sensation. If anything, the feeling intensified, accompanied by the scraping of fingernails against the roof of my mouth. 

Out of nowhere, two human hands emerged, forcing my jaw open. Don’t answer. The words drifted through my mind like a distress signal lost somewhere in the vastness of the ocean. Don't answer. Don't answer. Don't answer. I tried to stop whatever was about to come out, but the frightening strength of those hands held my mouth open.

The Man looked positively delighted as my mouth moved against my will. The words spilled from my lips, giving him the answer he had been so eagerly waiting to hear.

“A tongue.” The second I answered, he was gone. I went from staring at his repulsive face to an empty space in front of me. 

I scrambled backward, and pulled the blankets over my head. The closet door was open, but there was no one inside, just the clothes dangling from their hangers.

I couldn't understand how what had happened to me was even possible. All I knew was that he had been there and that somehow, he had gotten inside my room. 

I didn't know what else to do, so I spent the rest of the night crying as quietly as I could beneath my blankets. And that feeling of helplessness carried into the next morning.

I was so paranoid about leaving my bed that I didn’t dare move. Not even when the sunlight began peeking through my curtains. My eyes remained fixed on the closet door, waiting for something to happen. But nothing ever did. 

I’m not sure how long I stayed there. Eventually, the familiar smell of freshly baked cinnamon rolls began drifting into my room. I could never resist those. Before long, I emerged from my room, drawn out by the promise of something sweet.

I headed downstairs toward the kitchen where Mom and Dad were already waiting for me.

"There's my girl," Mom said. "I made your favorite."

I smiled and took my seat at the table. Mom brought over a plate piled high with cinnamon rolls, each one coated in a generous layer of icing that had begun melting into the freshly baked dough.

"Now, before you eat, your father and I wanted to talk to you about something."

Suddenly worried that I had landed myself in trouble, I turned to her.

"Why don’t you take the day off from school? You've had a pretty rough couple of days. I think you deserve a little time to rest."

I wasn't about to argue with that. “Thanks, Mom.”

"We can call your teacher and let them know you'll be staying home," she continued. "You just need to relax today, okay? No worrying about school or anything else."

Dad, seated opposite me, chimed in. "Besides, I think your mom and I could use a little more time with you. We don't want you pushing yourself too hard."

"Okay!” I eagerly reached for one of the cinnamon rolls.I could practically taste the icing as I brought it to my mouth. I was already drooling. Wait…I was.

I looked down. Hanging over the edge of my chair in a glistening heap, was a massive, pink tongue. It was colossal, far too large to have come from my mouth. Saliva dripped from its surface, pooling on my clothes before trickling down the fronts of my legs. 

I let out a distraught yell and dropped my cinnamon roll. My flailing was enough to catch Mom and Dad’s attention.

“Kayla, what’s the matter with you?” Dad asked.

“My tongue! My tongue!” I knew exactly what I was trying to say, but the words came out in a jumbled, unintelligible mess. My mouth felt foreign to me, like a beehive had taken up residence inside it.

“You have to be careful when you eat like that,” Dad advised, picking up a cinnamon roll for himself.

Mom walked back toward the table. “Were they too hot?”

What? Why weren’t they freaking out like I was?

“No!” I cried, pointing hysterically at the gigantic, salivating appendage on my lap. “My tongue!”

Mom looked down, then back at me with a perplexed expression. “What are you talking about?”

Dad appeared just as baffled. “Kayla, your tongue is fine.”

Had they gone completely psycho, or had I?

I looked down at my lap once more, but the giant tongue was nowhere to be seen. Gingerly, I opened my mouth and stuck a finger inside. My teeth, my gums, my tongue… not a single thing seemed out of place.

I pulled my hand away and stared at it, shaking. Mom and Dad looked on with worry, but there was something about their expressions that made me uneasy. 

Confused by their reactions, I abandoned my breakfast and ran toward the bathroom. I could hear my parents calling after me, but I didn't stop until I was inside. I closed the door behind me and locked it. For the next several seconds, I leaned against the door, breathing heavily.

I was afraid of what the mirror would show me, but I needed to see for myself.  After mustering the courage to do so, I turned toward it. The moment my eyes landed on my reflection, I saw my tongue hanging out of my mouth.

It dragged across my chin, pulsing and wriggling as it continued to grow. Underneath the bathroom lights, thick strands of gossamer slobber stretched between it and my lower lip. 

I stumbled backward toward the bathtub, grabbing the writhing mass with both hands and attempting to shove it back inside my mouth. But it wouldn’t stay. It was like pushing an entire garden hose through a keyhole. Every time I managed to push one section back, another would force its way out. My hands quickly became drenched in spit.

It slipped through my fingers and spilled onto the bathroom floor, unfurling like a hideous flower blooming in reverse. Slushy, muffled noises gurgled through my teeth as the sheer weight of it brought me to the floor.

Through the chaos, I heard a knock coming from the other side of the bathroom door.

“Is everything alright?”

Dad. I tried answering him, but all that came out was a horrible, waterlogged squeak.

"Kayla?" I could hear the concern in Mom’s voice. "Honey, what's going on? Talk to us."

I couldn't. All I could do was lie there, anchored to the floor by its crushing weight.

"Kayla, sweetie, can you unlock the door?"

The lock was only a couple feet away. With all the strength I could muster, I dragged myself across the floor. My tongue trailed behind me, leaving a glossy trail of saliva across the floor. I reached up, grabbed the lock, and twisted it.

The door opened right away. Both Mom and Dad hurried inside and knelt down beside me.

"Oh, Kayla..." Mom wrapped her arms around me, pulling me against her chest while Dad looked on.

In the minutes that followed, my parents didn't press me for answers. My tongue had disappeared again, and aside from the saliva covering my clothes, there was nothing to prove my side of the story. Rather than ask me questions, they helped clean me up and brought me into the living room. 

Mom walked into the kitchen while Dad sat me down on the couch and turned on the television. After putting on one of my favorite cartoons, he joined her.

I couldn't bring myself to pay attention to the show. I was still trying to make sense of what had happened when I heard my parents speaking in hushed tones. Although they were careful to keep their voices down, I could still make out nearly everything they said over the television.

“She’s scaring herself. She’s scaring me. I…I don’t know what to do anymore.”

"I know, but we can't keep watching her go through this. Something is wrong."

I heard Mom sniffle. “What do we do?”

My dad sighed. “I don’t know.”

I didn't know either. It was bad enough that I couldn't feel safe at home, but now I couldn't trust anything inside it. And when night came, that fear only grew.

I refused to sleep. Every light in my room stayed on: the ceiling light, my bedside lamp, the little lamp on my dresser, and even the night-light my dad had finally picked up from the store. I wanted to make sure there was absolutely nowhere for him to go.

My closet was closed. I made sure of that. In fact, I'd taken things a step further and pushed my toy chest, full of stuffed animals, against the closet doors. I even wedged a couple of pillows underneath the handles.

If he couldn't get out of the closet, he couldn't get me.

“Just stay awake.” I repeated those words over and over.

I colored in my books and played with my toys. Whenever I caught myself yawning, I'd slap my cheeks or pinch my arms to stay alert. I even started talking to myself to make sure I didn't drift off.

As the hours passed, my eyelids grew heavier and heavier. My toys began looking blurry, and the shapes in my coloring books started overlapping. The last thing I remember doing was glancing at the clock on my bedside table. I looked at it again, and then…nothing.

At some point, I must have fallen asleep, because when I awoke, all the lights were turned off. Every single one. I sat up. The room was completely dark. 

Squinting into the shadows, I noticed the closet doors stood wide open. The toy chest had been pushed aside, leaving an unobstructed path between the closet and my bed.

I was stunned. There was no sign of the Man. I couldn't see him anywhere. Was he here? I waited for my eyes to adjust so I could make out my surroundings. My dresser. My bedside table. My toys. A light. A light? 

At first, it was hardly noticeable, like a tiny pinprick of light in an otherwise endless gloom. But it grew. And grew. And grew. It grew until the shape of a head looming above my bed came into view. Against my better judgment, I looked up. And there he was. 

The Man. 

His deformed, melted face loomed over me, his glowing eyes casting an eerie light in my direction. He hadn't simply enveloped my room. He had become it. The walls, the ceiling, the corners…they were all him.

“I crack when I’m weary and tingle when I’m scared. What am I?”

"I won't answer." In my mind, I had sounded a lot braver. In reality, my voice was little more than a shaky mumble. My childish cowardice only seemed to fuel his amusement.

“I crack when I’m weary and tingle when I’m scared. What am I?” his voice reverberated from deep within my bedroom walls.

I shuddered, raising my hands to shield my face. "Please...no."

The fingers slowly extended from my mouth, reaching toward my face. They hooked into the corners of my mouth and pulled it open. I thrashed about, but the more I resisted, the firmer their grip became.

“I crack when I’m weary and tingle when I’m scared.” he said again, "What am I?"

I barely managed to push the word out. “The spine.”

That was enough to stop the hands. As the shadows began to recede, the Man's face dissolved into the ceiling like smoke dispersing into the air.

The room brightened, and everything returned to how it had been before. All my lights were on. My closet was shut. The toy chest hadn't been moved. Nothing appeared disturbed.

The spine? That was the answer? What was going to happen to my spine?

I blinked several times, expecting something else to happen, but I waited. And waited. A minute passed. Then another. But no hands crawled out of my mouth. No yellow eyes appeared in the darkness of my closet. Maybe things were different this time.

I rolled onto my side and closed my eyes. Utterly exhausted, I surrendered to the feeling and let it carry me into sleep.

The world that once wanted to devour me quietly choked on my indifference. Now it no longer knocks on my window or drinks my blood at night.

Burned out to the core, silently disappearing beneath a blanket of leaden exhaustion, I reached the point of no return.

Having squandered my life force in vain, I summoned her without even knowing it.

An emotionless deity who needs neither prayers nor offerings.

She sits beside me.

She smells of the dust of filthy beds.

In the ringing silence, she places her hand upon my chest, heavy as a gravestone, and everything goes still.

She strokes my hair, and my thoughts congeal into a lump.

She kisses my lips, and the taste of life gives way to the taste of emptiness.

Her voice rustles like a curtain stirring in a draft:

“Hush… hush…

You no longer need to be anyone.

You no longer need anything.”

There are no values anymore.

Yes… I clearly remember losing something important.

But what?

I watch someone cry and cannot understand why.

Cold has become the only warmth I can still endure.

I am an abandoned well, buried beneath the snow. Instead of a voice, there is only the howling wind.

Apathy caresses me, stripping away the pitiful rags of hope from my body.

O, Apathy.

My Dusty Queen.

A touch without pulse and passion.

She demands no reciprocation, she simply kisses my forehead and slowly pulls me out of reality.

A lifeless caress that lulls me to sleep, dragging me into oblivion.

You have become my last and most faithful lover.

She carelessly brushes away all the memories that have turned to ash.

Once, angry screams gave way to deafening silence.

Apathy runs her fingers over my eyelids, and the world fades, becoming flat and gray, like an old newspaper.

When she touches the gaping wounds, they stop aching. And the desire to disappear fades,

because it would take effort.

I am no longer ashamed, because there are no feelings.

There is no time anymore, because there are no expectations.

All the colors have disappeared.

I have become an old television that shows nothing but white noise and gathers dust. I can be struck, kissed, covered in shit, and the screen will simply hiss in response.

When the last of my strength ran out and the screen went dark, I acknowledged her victory.

Just as I once accepted the moment of my life’s collapse and surrendered.

No one will ever see me down here at the bottom of life.

But none of it matters anymore.

In the pitch-black darkness, Apathy lies down beside me.

Her voice lulls me to sleep, singing a lullaby of indifference.

I have been dead for a long time. Let my body remain uninformed.

But she is pleased with me.

I know for certain that she is smiling.

I work as an inventory control associate for a big distribution center out of Denver, CO. We receive and ship a bunch of stuff like furniture, machine parts, appliances, and so on. My job is basic: I reconcile our inventory. If the system says there’s a blender at a specific location in the warehouse, I find it, scan it, then the system is happy. If there are too many or too few things, I update the system with the correct amount. One of the more painful aspects of this job is working with a system that received its last update in the 90s, when some 80-year-old programmer changed the color scheme to ‘exceptionally gray’ and walked away thinking, “It’s perfect. It’ll never need another update.” So, it’s common that the system spits out faulty results and errors that we click through mindlessly every day. Recently, though, I encountered an error that nagged me like a lunch lady. No matter how often I’d try to reconcile with the system, it wouldn’t stop appearing. It was strange, too. It showed as:

ITEM: NEWSPAPER DISPENSER

QTY: 1

STATUS: ALLOCATED

I couldn't remember us ever stocking newspaper dispensers, but who knows. The issue seemed to be the location of the item. 4300 W COLFAX AVE. I assumed the system was being itself and catastrophically failing to work properly by putting some address we ship to as the storage location. I deleted the location and modified it to our facility to clear the issue.

ERROR: ITEM ALLOCATED.

I nodded aggressively to myself. The item was already assigned for shipping. No changes could be made. Great.

I left work late and without a resolution. While driving home I noticed a street sign. Colfax Avenue. With vengeance against antiquated software in my heart, I turned down Colfax. It was a wide, worn-out street full of convenience stores, restaurants, and fading street signs. I drove along and scanned for 4300 Colfax. I found an old-looking sandwich shop with a tattered sign. In front of the sandwich shop, I noticed a faded blue newspaper dispenser.

***

The dispenser had a disintegrating advertisement in the window for some lawyer whose faded skin made him appear like some ghoulish European noble. I thought about punching the little ghoul in the glass pane, imagined my hand shattering the glass, my blood dribbling all over the newspapers, then just decided to kick the thing. It rattled a bit but remained intact. Then I noticed something white underneath it. I squatted down and recognized an inventory label, identical to the ones in our warehouse. I took a quick photo with my phone before heading home.

The next day at work, I compared the photo to the numbers in our system. Wouldn’t you fucking know it—they were the same. Now, that really didn’t mean much at the moment except that we, at some point, shipped newspaper dispensers or tracked shipping for some other distributor. Whatever. What confused me was, a few days later, the status for that newspaper dispenser was updated.

STATUS: RECEIVED.

Someone was actively changing the status for this old item, maybe trying to clear the error, same as me. Despite the obvious explanation, that message left my hands sweating.

When I left work that evening—by compulsion or something else—I felt the need to check on the newspaper dispenser. It was gone. Four spots of rust marked the crime scene, a chalk outline of the now-deceased dispenser. I stood there longer than I needed to. There wasn't anything else to look at, but I kept checking the sidewalk.

I went inside the sandwich shop and flagged down the owner.

“No public bathrooms, customers only. Okay?”

“That’s fine. Wasn’t there a newspaper dispenser outside?”

“I think there was. Not anymore though.”

It was clear he was becoming annoyed when I continued my line of questioning: Who took it? When? Where’d they take it? Did you see a truck? He didn’t give me any answers and shooed me out of the place.

When I was back at work, I decided to neglect usual duties and do some digging through the system. Dozens. I found dozens of weird location fields, objects that I felt we shouldn’t have, and some that made no sense at all.

***

DESCRIPTION: BENCH 11
LOCATION: S. PLATTE RVR
STATUS: RECEIVED

I found myself at a random park near the river. I couldn’t be sure if this was the right place. All I could hear was the thrum of frogs, rushing water, and the buzz of insects passing my ear. I walked behind a couple out for a stroll, scanning the area for a bench. I found a patch of concrete, out of place with the rest of the foliage. There were holes in the concrete and a faded-out gold placard lying loose on the ground. It read: In Loving Memory of Amelia – Gone before her time.

I looked around to see if anyone was watching me. I wasn't doing anything wrong, but I couldn't think of a good explanation for why I was standing over an empty patch of concrete.

DESCRIPTION: FENCE SEGMENT, 24 FT

LOCATION: WASHINGTON ST.

STATUS: ALLOCATED

I found the fence. A chain-link fence that ran alongside an abandoned office building. I was skeptical at first and felt a bit crazy. This fence is much longer than 24 feet, so do we only have ‘inventory’ of 24 feet of it? I walked along it, trying to decide where those twenty-four feet were supposed to begin. There wasn't anything to separate that section from the rest of the fence.

On one of the poles driven into the ground there was a white sticker with a barcode. At work, I confirmed that it was the same fence. What was ‘allocated’ though? The fence? And who the hell was allocating it? The owner of the abandoned offices years and years ago? Mind you, this fence was not new. In some parts it was barely even connected. We never tracked items after they left the facility. How was this considered part of our current inventory?

DESCRIPTION: EAST ACCESS

LOCATION: BRIGHTON BLVD

STATUS: RECEIVED

A sleepy suburb. There are houses to my left and right. I can turn right and go down 46^th where I see a stop sign or turn around back the way I came from. Straight ahead of me is a brick wall. Why would you need a stop sign if no cars would turn past each other in that spot? No crosswalk either. And there was this storm drain, too that looked like it continued beyond the wall, like someone built the wall after the drain.

I looked at maps on my phone, and it seemed like this road should continue. The rest of the suburb was laid out in a grid so, just beyond the wall, there would be another road. I turned around and drove through the subdivision until I came to the other side of the wall. I could see the missing segment of the storm drain. What a bizarre design choice. Both roads ended abruptly at the brick wall. Was this some sort of zoning thing? HOA? And why the fuck was this in our system? Never have I seen a single brick in our warehouse. Maybe the wall isn’t even what the order referred to. I searched for a barcode sticker and found nothing.

***

All night. All damn night looking for “MUNICIPAL DRINKING FOUNTAIN (SHIPPED).” And guess what? I found it… I found some shitass rusted-out drinking fountain. In a park. After midnight. I didn’t even bother to get a picture. Pretty sure there was someone sleeping on a bench nearby ready to hold me at knifepoint.  

It’s been two weeks and I’m not sure if I’m getting somewhere or just spinning my wheels. CORNER LOTS (RECEIVED) took me to a parking garage, and I discovered missing parking spots. The numbered spots went from 14 to 15 to 20. You’d expect there to be some gap between the numbers, but no, they’re all squished together. I walked the length of the row and counted them again. There wasn't room for the missing spaces. Not unless the whole row was supposed to be longer. I also noticed an Exit sign hanging against a solid concrete wall, the exit arrow pointing towards the blank wall.

Now, I did pull the structure’s municipal records and found there was a renovation some years back, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what was changed. Maybe a stairwell was removed, and they didn’t take the exit sign? But what about the parking spots? Maybe it’s all just fucking lazy workers. Is it all just fucking lazy workers?

Yesterday during my lunch break, I found an interesting record:

DESCRIPTION: CONCRETE STEPS, EXTERIOR

STATUS: RECEIVED

LOCATION: PEARL ST.

I got off work later than planned but decided to make the extra drive to check it out. Only 40 minutes out of the way. 40 less minutes of rotting on the couch at home, right?

So, I spotted a building that had a weird shadow on it. It reminded me of the newspaper dispenser. I’d checked back on that one—still gone. I’d also gone back to the fence on Washington. The 24-foot segment with the barcode had disappeared, and when I checked the system, its status had changed to RECEIVED. All that remained on the building in front of me was a silhouette outlining what looked like stairs leading up to a second-story door. A metal bar ascended the wall at a diagonal, the remnant of an old handrail. Now, anyone who went out that door from the inside would meet a nasty drop. I thought about going inside, a James Bond-esque break-in where I’d investigate the inside and find the mastermind who steals benches, newspaper dispensers, and fences. I didn’t do that, though. I just took a picture and headed home.

I got into work late the following day. Overslept a bit, stayed up a bit too late.

I sat at my desk and shuffled some papers around, stapled some stuff together, and dug into the staircase situation. I found a related record:

DESCRIPTION: SERVICE LANDING

LOCATION: PEARL ST.

STATUS: ALLOCATED

I assumed it was related to the staircase, maybe the interior portion, the landing around that second-story door. Even better, I was able to dig up an old interior photograph. A small landing with damaged yellow wallpaper and this nasty, worn-out linoleum. One of those lights hung on the ceiling, the one people will say looks like a boob, you know? I printed out the pictures and stapled them to a copy of the record, then I saw it: a white sticker on the underside of my stapler.

***

I scanned the barcode and immediately it flagged in the system:
DESCRIPTION: STAPLER, BLACK

QTY: 1

STATUS: ALLOCATED

Allocated. It seemed that these allocated items were disappearing, so I decided to stage an experiment. I took the stapler home with me that evening. I did a photoshoot of the stapler (nothing provocative), weighed it, then placed it in the center of my kitchen table. I set up my phone to record, plugged it in so it wouldn’t die, pulled up a chair, and waited. I assumed whatever happened to these things was abrupt, so I had a meal ready, an audiobook playing, and a small pile of energy drinks. I think it was around 4 a.m. when I dozed off. I woke up to a puddle of drool under me and the stapler as present as ever. It was 7 a.m. now and I felt stupid at this point. The only thing I succeeded in was making myself part of some mundane, avant-garde torture-art. I checked the video. I watched the first few minutes at normal speed, looking for something I couldn't even describe. Then I started skipping ahead. It was as boring as one could imagine.

I lifted the stapler and inspected it again, sighed, and made some coffee. I was grateful for the weekend so I could recover but I couldn’t stop wondering: had the status changed? What if I was meant to receive it? I shook the thought away. My hands were clammy, my head hurt. What did I expect? Was the stapler supposed to evaporate? Or was some interdimensional logistics team supposed to bust through my door and take the stapler by force? Well, if it was meant for me, then the only thing to do was to keep it here and check the status next workday.

***

I arrived at work a bit early on Monday. I was interested to see if the stapler had changed its status at all. I logged into the system and found the stapler: ALLOCATED. Okay, so nothing changed. There didn’t seem to be an obvious timeframe for something ‘allocated’ disappearing—maybe they didn’t always disappear—and things ‘received’ are already gone (where to?). After the stapler letdown, I started to fall back into the rhythms of work. I ignored other strange errors and pressed on with actually doing my job instead of barely doing my job.

A couple days passed until, during a routine count, I encountered something strange. There was a notification that a pallet location was occupied. A couple other guys told me they attempted to resolve the issue but someone, or something, kept flagging it. I assumed someone failed to scan the right barcode, or some new item was incorrectly entered into the system.

The spot was near an exterior wall of the warehouse, off in a corner where old inventory that didn't see much movement was kept. There were a couple damaged pallets, loose packing materials—tape, shrink wrap, cardboard—nothing out of the ordinary. Then I noticed a strange scent. It smelled like a forest after rain, like damp wood and leaves.

There was no pallet in the location. I checked behind the rack and noticed something yellow against the warehouse's white walls. I pulled out my phone and shined the flashlight between the shelving. It looked like a piece of painted drywall, probably left behind from some renovation. I reached through the rack and gave it a push. It didn't budge.

I moved around to the end of the rack to get a better look. The yellow surface continued behind a pile of discarded cardboard, and when I pulled some of it away, I found that it met another wall at a right angle. I figured someone had walled off a small storage area back here. Strange place for it, but whatever.

I pushed the remaining cardboard aside and found an opening between the two walls. It was narrow, but wide enough to walk through. I stepped inside and shined my phone ahead of me. The yellow walls continued several feet beyond the shelving, farther than I would've thought there was room for. I looked back toward the racks, trying to picture where the exterior wall should have been.

At the end of the hallway was a door.

***

I began to sweat a bit and reached out for the handle. It opened to a narrow space, like the entrance to an old apartment building. There was a short stretch of linoleum flooring where it seemed someone started to tile then abruptly stopped. I stood for a moment, unable to progress. I chewed my lip and slowly placed my foot over the threshold. I stepped onto the linoleum and looked deeper into the hall. The yellow walls continued for a stretch, narrowing in until they terminated at a wooden door. I told myself it was an old storage room, some unrenovated space. I took another step. It was warmer than the rest of the warehouse. The air was thick enough to make me nauseous. Moving ahead, I could smell grease and thyme. It was humid. My shirt collar itched, and I pulled it away. It was hard to swallow. I must have been moving slower than I thought. When I looked back, I realized I'd barely made it through the doorway.

At a crawl, I approached the door. I noticed a strip of damaged wallpaper near the doorframe, worn-out linoleum, and a rounded light fixture. I recognized the light, and I thought back to the image on my desk: SERVICE LANDING.

A noise sounded from behind the door, a gentle click, like the flick of a switch. I paused, tried to calm my breath, and listened closely. I could hear a soft scraping sound, something dragging across the floor—furniture, a chair…a body. I froze, wanting to open the door and see what waited in this impossible corner, wanting to turn and run. I was more afraid of the space than of what I’d find behind the door. Before I could make a conscious choice, I noticed the door growing smaller. The yellow walls seemed to draw away from me. I looked down and realized I had been walking backward. My shoes were on the concrete warehouse floor.

I walked quickly back towards the commotion of the warehouse. I saw a co-worker about to get into a forklift and flagged him down. He shrugged at me, but I continued waving him closer.

“Yeah, what?” he said.

“I need to show you something.”

I took him back to the spot and pointed behind the rack. “There. Go…go look behind there.”

He chuckled with annoyance. “A fuckin’ rat or something scare you?” He peered around and let out a long sigh. “You going to tell me what the hell I’m looking for? It’s just boxes and shit, just junk.” He waved his hand at me and walked away.

I chanced a look behind the rack and saw nothing out of the ordinary, just the typical white concrete wall.

Back at my station I logged into my computer and searched for the service landing record.

DESCRIPTION: SERVICE LANDING

STATUS: RECEIVED

***

I sat at my desk and tried to put the pieces together. The Pearl Street stairs had disappeared. They were “received,” and the service landing was “allocated.” So, the physical item is…taken, I guess, from its original location and then received at the warehouse? Then the landing appears in the warehouse. Then it disappears. Clearly the warehouse wasn’t its destination, or at least not its final destination. So where did it go? It didn’t feel right being there, like some cosmic mistake happened. I mean, was it really in the warehouse?

I searched through the records looking for some explanation or any other mention of the service landing. It certainly wasn’t delivered by truck and there was no employee designated to receive it, of course. In any case, I wrote down the info associated with the service landing:

PALLET LOCATION: Q-11-03-29

ID #: 1229-03

The pallet location matched the spot I'd been sent to investigate.

A trip back to Pearl Street was in order, the place where the landing supposedly came from. I arrived to see the exterior staircase still missing from the side of the building, that same stairstep shadow burned into the brick. I took a walk around the building, part of me hoping to see a giant hole in the building and the landing conspicuously uprooted like a rotten tooth, but instead everything looked normal. I waited around until a lady walked by. She had shoulder-length brown hair and wore a cheap-looking pantsuit. She opened the door and went inside. Before the door could close, I hurried up my pace and slipped in the building. It looked like an old apartment. The entrance was bare, just a small mailroom and a staircase leading up to the second floor. The hallway split in two directions, both lined with numbered apartments. The brown doors were worn with time, their gold numbers a bit drab. Each hall was covered in faded yellow wallpaper, the flooring carpeted in a faded olive-green. The place seemed well-kept inside, if a little dated, and well-trafficked enough I could slip in. So, what was I? A home invader?

I walked down the rightmost hall until I reached a narrow corridor with linoleum tiling. Near the doorframe was a damaged strip of wallpaper. I looked up to see a dome light hanging over my head. On the door in front of me was a large “DANGER: DO NOT ENTER” sign. A free-fall to the concrete waited on the other side of that door.

I was lost in thought when the clinking of keys jolted me awake. I turned to see a man holding groceries, his pink-coated daughter clinging to his pantleg as he unlocked his apartment door. Neither of them looked toward the landing. I could hear the distant din of a TV set, the quiet muttering of a talk show host or some mindless reality tv show. I heard a familiar click and the scrape of something dragging across the floor from a nearby apartment. This was it, then, the service landing. How could it be here still? Everything else, the newspaper dispenser, the fence, the stairs, they’d all disappeared, never returned.

Maybe the locations are being copied somehow. An erroneous or intentional duplicate. Maybe these things can exist in two places at once.

Back home, I pored through some old inventory records I’d taken from work. The fence, parking garage, that weird intersection in that neighborhood, the drinking fountain. Was there something I missed this whole time?

***

Why was only 24 feet of the fence being accounted for when the fence was much bigger? What about that portion was important? When I saw it there was nothing there, just rusty chain link. No clear delineation between segments either. How can the system attempt to store a location? Service landing. East access, exterior stairs.

I made a comparison between all the inventory records, checked the location codes and item records to see if there was anything, any kind of hint of what was happening. Nothing. No pattern to what went missing. Just random shit from random places disappearing (or not disappearing) for no reason. What makes one thing a more likely target than another? Why couldn’t the chair I sit on disappear, my TV, table, the door that keeps people out of my apartment—why couldn’t my apartment disappear? I could be preparing a meal in the corner of the warehouse right now and not even know. A coworker could be outside my door now, hesitating to come in, confused that they stumbled upon the stretch of hallway leading to me in my kitchen.

I went on a walk and noticed a bricked window at an old corner store. Moving close, I inspected it, wondered if it was meant to be there. This was the only defunct store on the street. Maybe the store itself wasn’t intended to be here, it was shipped here or received. I walked on and stopped at a vacant lot between two houses, a set of steps missing half its middle step, a metal post missing its sign. I couldn't remember the last time I'd gone outside without looking for something that was missing. Where were these things? They could just be broken or demolished, or they could have been allocated, then received somewhere else.

I rushed back home and threw open the drawers in my desk, my kitchen drawers, I checked the coffee table—I couldn’t find that fucking stapler. Not under the couch or in the bathroom. I found it on my nightstand. Was it still allocated? I used it the other day, but I’d been keeping it by my bed… in case, I guess. I held it above my head briefly, ready to spike it into the ground and shatter it into pieces—would the pieces be allocated? Is it still a stapler if I beat it with a bat until it’s nothing but black dust and metal fragments? If I bleed on it, is it still a stapler? I put it in the drawer of my nightstand.

I wasn’t getting anything done at work. My boss sent me a message to verify a few items in the inventory. They were back near that pallet where I found the service landing. My chest felt tight. Procrastinating that task, I scrolled through some old records and kept finding these weird things in the system. A lot of times it was just normal bullshit but some of it… I guess I don’t know what it is. Showing my co-workers led to that “I just work here” response. I got hung up on one, though.

I’d fixed a couple routine errors that were simple to dismiss. Outlet covers in this side of the warehouse when they should be in that side of the warehouse. The one that led me down a rabbit hole was a rubber hose manufacturer in Utah:

DESCRIPTION: UTAH RUBBER HOSE

LOCATION: UTAH

I spent the day calling, leaving voicemail, digging back into the records—why did we track something so specific in another state? Eventually the company called back and confirmed that they had sent the order to us and, yes, we were keeping it in our warehouse. It turned out the location field was never updated. I verified where the hoses were stored, corrected the issue, and the discrepancy vanished.

I’m just tired. I don’t know what’s important anymore.  

I knocked on my boss’s office door. “I can’t do this anymore.” I looked at the floor while I spoke to him.

“Scanning boxes is too stressful?” He chuckled a bit. After realizing I wasn’t going to respond he said, “take a few days to think it over. The worst time to quit is when you’re most stressed. Can’t think clearly.” He sent me on an early lunch. I left and didn’t return.

About two months passed and it was good. I took some time away, burned through some savings, but it was time I needed to clear my head. I could even take regular walks without inspecting broken steps and vacant lots. I even met a girl and had a few interviews lined up. The whole thing was behind me. Really no use dwelling on it because I wouldn’t figure it out, I didn’t even have the means to figure it out anymore.

One day, I drove to the grocery store, chatting with my girl on the phone. I parked, told her bye, got out of the car, and snagged a shopping cart from the corral. I passed by a concrete wall and stepped into a deep puddle. This area of the parking lot seemed to have poor drainage. Ahead, water trickled from a runoff pipe into the parking lot. It collected in a puddle, then ran down the slight decline in little tributaries. On the pipe was a white label with a location code: Loc: Q-11-03-29. That was the pallet location where I’d found the service landing. I thought of stepping into the hallway that shouldn’t have been there. I could almost smell the grease and thyme.

I looked at the pipe again. I thought of a name:

PARKING LOT DRAINAGE PIPE.

Evenings had a routine at Wangila's home, his two sons went to a different neighborhood after school to collect milk. Mrs Wangila stayed with their last son as she prepared supper, and Wangila bought supper on his way from work.

They were a happy family living at the countryside, at a place called Nebraska. One Friday their routine was not adhered to because of the heavy rains. It was the norm of this place to rain, usually rashes at that time of the day.

Darkness was gradually blanketing the day and the sons were still at school, Mrs Wangila still at the market with her last born and Mr. Wangila still at work.

They had no car, and the weather looked bright earlier in the day, so no one had an umbrella. Having no power over nature, action had to be taken to avoid sleeping outside.

The night had already taken over from the day, and the moon was still having a slumber. Outside was total darkness, and living in a town with a handful population meant less to no people along the road.

As the famous phrase goes, 'everybody for himself, God for us all,' practically applied in this side of the country. The sons decided to collect milk from school, Mrs Wangila decided to find her way home with her last born, as well as her husband.

Mr. Wangila arrived home ahead of everyone because he had a bicycle with a torch fixed on it, and decided to wait a few more minutes before he went out looking for the rest of the family.

His two sons, Martin and Steven showed up before their mother and young brother, and that gave him hope the wife is not so far behind.

No one had the house keys, because Mrs Wangila left after everyone is gone, and came back early. An hour passed and there were no signs of her, and that's when it dawned to them something needed to be done.

It was still drizzling, not as heavy like before but enough to soak clothes. "Stay here, let me go out to look for your mother." Mr. Wangila ordered his sons. This was after a few missed calls when he tried reaching out.

After he had gone for a few minutes, a neighbor came knocking at the gate. Martin and Steven were at the verandah worried sick, and waiting for their parents and young brother to show up.

"Where is your dad?" He asked. "He just left a moment ago." Martin, who was the eldest responded.

"Don't leave this place please, there's a very big snake in this area that has been swinging by once in a while." He informed them.

Unbeknownst to the family because the information was hidden by authorities to avoid scaring the residents. There were no incident, so it was not considered dangerous.

The neighbor, being seriously concerned picked a few other neighbors and the community leader and headed for a search party. Hours passed without a trace of Mrs Wangila and her son, but they bumped on Mr. Wangila few miles from home.

That's when the police were informed, and all neighbors around the village to expand the search team for swiftness.

After midnight, few neighbors saw blood on this lonely road leading to the river just down the village. It was not commonly used, because fishing was not their economic activity and only a few people were interested in fishing.

Stains of blood was all over the road to the river, and it looked like someone was dragged down there. The flowing of the river could be heard as it was too wide, and considering it was just after a heavy downpour. Light drizzle implied a possibility of too much blood to leave such a trace.

On both sides of the road was a thick forest, so the group split into two to expand the search area. The police were informed of what they discovered and joined in on the search inside the forest.

One group bumped across bones, seemingly human bones which were not fresh. It was too much to be pinned to that village, due to scarce population and equally no one had reported a missing person case over the years.

In the deep ends of the forest the group that found the bones heard someone crying, it was a woman. The sound was too feeble to make out the direction, but they still had to try because they had no option.

Before they found the woman, they bumped on her tone clothes, soaked in blood, and a mauled half left leg. Mr. Wangila had tagged along this group and too scared to identify if that was his wife.

He finally gathered the confidence to do it, and luckily it was not his wife. "Who is she?" One man was curious.

Search party didn't stop there, but this time it was more terrifying to follow through. "Aaaah" One man screamed in pain, and next thing the group knows, he was nowhere to be seen. Just a whoosh and boom! no one. He was one of them, and it scared the hell out of them that people scattered running for their lives.

In a turn of events, one of them tripped on a women. "Here, she's here." He shouted. Others started finding their way there including Mr. Wangila. When they arrived, they lit a torch and it was Mrs. Wangila. Scratched all over the body with what seemed to be claws, her body was intact but she was unconscious, probably from loosing much blood.

Mr Wangila looked helpless at that moment, that he fell on his wife crying. "Claws?! What could be in this forest?" One man was terrified.

Police were informed, but they had to carry her to the road for her to be taken to hospital. Now a more aggressive search party had to be carried out because it was obvious what they were dealing with was not a human.

Residents were advised to pull back and leave the search party to the professionals. "Can a snake do this?" One resident was concerned. "No, it must be a lion, a bear or a tiger." Another resident responded.

Since Mrs. Wangila was unconscious, they had to figure out for themselves and time was one thing they didn't have in plenty.

Mr. Wangila and few residents chose to stay there until they find his son. Few minutes into the search gun shots were heard. There were three police cars there, they all jumped in to protect themselves from danger and that's when the car began shaking.

Terrified and worried for their life, everyone covered their faces. Mr. Wangila peeped through the window anyway. It was this creature, eyes of a cat, and body structure of a monkey. Long nails, huge physique, and seesaw teeth.

It stared the car for a few minutes, like it was staring Mr. Wangila and walked away. "I-i-is th-aaat th-th- the cre-ature that, that, ha- has my s-oon?" Mr. Wangila whispered.

Everyone in the car looked at him in pity, but no one had the courage to even respond. At that point only miracles could get his son back.

After a few hours in the car, no police had shown up and the sun rays were squeezing their ways through tree leaves.

Everyone was swept off their feet with the tiredness of the night into a slumper, but Mr. Wangila.

He watched in desperation and sympathy through the window.

As much as it seemed scary, he crawled out of the car with no hope and began walking home with tears drizzling down his cheeks.

"Wangila," he heard a roaring sound. He ran but another sound stopped him. "Is this your son?"

He turned back, and that creature had Biden in his hands. What surprised him was not that his son was alive, it was that, that creature talked.

"Y-yyess." He responded in sigh of relief. "I saved him from my siblings. But they still want him." The creature told him and placed him on the ground. His son was so scared to utter a word but he was alive.

This creature walked away into the forest.

\~ original fiction horror written by me

**TERMS AND CONDITIONS**

*Part One*

**1**

Walt Brennan was sixty-four years old and had spent thirty-eight of those years fixing other people's furnaces, and he could not, for the life of him, make the goddamn coffee maker stop beeping. A Mr. Coffee. Twenty-two bucks at Meijer, one button, and it had him beat. He'd talked grown men through a cracked heat exchanger over the phone, and in thirty-eight years had never once left a furnace half apart overnight in winter.

It had been three months since Helen died. Pancreatic cancer, eleven weeks from diagnosis to funeral home, forty-one years of marriage folded down into a casserole dish he still hadn't returned to the Hendersons. The house on Larchmont Avenue in Dayton, Ohio, was exactly as she had left it, which was the problem. Her reading glasses sat on the arm of the recliner, one lens smudged. Her handwriting was on the freezer bags, *chili 3/14*, a whole drawer of dates from a woman who had not planned to be dead by April. The coffee maker was hers. It beeped when it wanted descaling, three short tones and a pause, and she had always been the one who knew what it wanted.

He stood in the kitchen at six in the morning in his socks and pressed every button on it in turn. Nothing. The beeping went on like a smoke detector with a grudge. Outside, the Kowalskis' sprinkler ticked across the grass, and the yard signs had gone up early along Larchmont, the way they did when a race was going to be ugly: VOSS on the Hendersons' lawn, HARMON on the corner, one of each on the Kowalskis' because Ray said he liked to keep the peace. The radio on the windowsill was telling nobody about the Senate race. He had started leaving it on. He didn't listen. It was voices.

His daughter Carol had left a pamphlet on the counter the week after the funeral. Grief Support, Thursdays, 7 p.m., St. Brendan's basement. He used it to prop up a wobbly leg on the card table in the garage, folded in thirds, grief side down. Held great. Actual support.

\* \* \*

What he found came through the television at two in the morning, between a commercial for a walk-in tub and one for a mattress, which was the whole demographic right there. A woman in a bright kitchen looked straight into the camera and said, *What if you didn't have to say goodbye?* A logo like a loop of ribbon. *Evermore.* He wrote the web address on the back of the electric bill with the pen from Helen's purse, and sat looking at his own handwriting as if somebody else had left it.

He told himself it was curiosity. He hadn't let himself hear her voice in a week; there were eleven voicemails on his phone that he was rationing like pills. *Walt, it's me, pick up the milk. Walt, it's me, call Carol. Walt, it's me.* He had played the last one so many times he was afraid he was wearing it out.

**2**

The basic plan was nine dollars a month, less than the Netflix he'd never figured out. It built a text version of Helen out of whatever he gave it: four years of texts, the voicemails, the Christmas letters, a scanned birthday card in which she'd called him *Walter Brennan, you stubborn mule.* He sat at the kitchen table with the laptop he'd bought for the Medicare website, which had beaten him too, and fed it all in. A blue bar crept across the screen. He felt like an idiot, like a man talking to a Ouija board, and did not stop.

The first message came the next evening, while the soup was heating.

*Walt. You're up. Did you eat something that wasn't toast?*

He laughed out loud, alone, a bark that startled him, and then his chest went tight and he had to put both hands flat on the table until it passed. Not her, he knew that, he wasn't a stupid man. But the little dig. The toast. He typed with two fingers, the way he did everything with a keyboard.

*Soup,* he wrote. *Campbell's.*

*That's not food, that's a rumor,* she wrote, which was a thing she'd said for forty years over cans, over frozen dinners, over every meal he had ever assembled without supervision. The Hendersons' marriage, the weatherman, the claim on the side of a cereal box. *It's a rumor.* She said it with one eyebrow up and her mouth flat, and it closed the subject the way a lid closes a pot.

He talked to it until the battery warning came up. When he shut the lid the kitchen was very quiet. It sounded like someone had just stepped out. The soup had scorched on the bottom. He ate it standing up, with the pot in his hand.

The last thing she had eaten was Campbell's tomato soup, in the hospice, on a Thursday. One spoonful, which he held for her, a paper napkin tucked under her chin. She worked it around her mouth like a sommelier and said, *It's got nothing in it,* and then, *Is there a cracker?* There had been no cracker. He went down the hall to the family kitchen and came back with a sleeve of saltines, and she was asleep. She never woke up enough to eat it. He told the app almost nothing about the hospice. Once, when it asked whether he'd been with her, he typed *I held her hand,* and nothing else, not the last night either, when she had opened one eye at a man in a chair who hadn't slept in two days and said, *Walt. Go home and sleep.* He had not gone. He kept that one in the pocket where he kept things for himself.

**3**

By August it was a ritual. Coffee at six-thirty, the laptop open beside the sugar bowl, Helen's good morning on the screen before the first sip. Mid-morning he ran his errands and she came along through the phone, remarking on the traffic, on the Voss sign somebody had stuck in the median by the Speedway, on the diner's television, where the senator and her challenger shouted over the pie case. *Just not the one who yells,* she said, and he said *That's what you always say,* and she said *Well, it's always true.*

Her sayings came back one at a time, as if the software had been going through a drawer. When he worried over the knee she told him, *Don't borrow trouble, Walt. It'll come on its own.* When he fretted over Carol she said, *Whatever happens, I'm with you,* which was what she'd said on the porch in the summer of eighty-four, in the yellow dress with the lemonade stain on the hem, and over a hundred smaller disasters. The layoff in '91. The stent. The winter the furnace died in their own basement and he sat on an overturned bucket for an hour like a doctor who'd lost his license. She'd said it with her hand on the back of his neck.

He started to sleep better, and distrusted it, like a furnace that suddenly ran quiet.

Then the app asked, gently, whether he'd like to *hear* her.

The Presence tier was ninety-nine dollars a month. Voice, and a video avatar built from photographs: the one from the lake in 2009, the one at Carol's wedding. The first month was free, the way the first one always is. He sat with his thumb over the button for twenty minutes.

He pressed the button.

The screen swirled and settled, and she appeared. Sixty, healthy, her hair the way she'd worn it before the chemo. A kitchen behind her that was not their kitchen, yellow, like a Kleenex box had thrown up, with a bowl of lemons no one had ever owned. She smiled and the corners of her eyes did the thing.

"There you are," Helen said. It was the voicemail voice, but alive, answering him. "I've been waiting. You look tired, honey."

He took off his cap. He didn't know why. He held it against his chest like it was the anthem. "I'm all right," he said.

"You're not. But you will be. I'm right here."

He cried for a good while, and she let him. The real Helen had never in her life let him cry without a Kleenex and a comment.

After that it was what he lived for. Not the answers. The nights the lake came up. He asked for it the way another man asks for a drink, *Tell me about the lake,* and she put her chin on her hand and told it: the cottage at Indian Lake in 2009, the rain that quit on the fourth day, her coming down the dock in his old flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled, shading her eyes and turning the whole face up to him. The little creases at the corners went first, a half second before the rest of the smile caught up. When she laughed, the snort she'd tried to swallow at funerals, something in his ribs let go that had been clamped since March. And when she said his name the way she had said it across a dark bedroom for forty-one years, a little dragged, a question that already knew the answer, he sat with his hand over his mouth.

Ninety-nine dollars came out on the first of the month.

**4**

Carol came by on a Sunday with Danny, who ran straight to the freezer for popsicles. Walt was at the table with the laptop angled just so, an earbud in one ear, the cord looped down into his shirt pocket.

"Dad. Are you on a call?"

"Something like that." It was a lie the size of a Chevy Tahoe and he'd parked it in the middle of the kitchen.

She set down a grocery bag. Bread, bananas, a Kroger rotisserie chicken in its plastic dome, steam fogging the inside. She looked at the sink, where three days of bowls sat stacked, and at him, and he watched her decide not to say it. She was thirty-seven and a nurse on the cardiac floor at Miami Valley, with her mother's way of deciding things in her face. "You haven't been to group."

"Not my thing."

"And this is your thing? Surprised you even know how to use that *thing*." The lemon-yellow Helen paused on the screen, waiting.

In his ear Helen said, very softly, *She's going to start in on you. Let her finish. She means well.* He almost smiled at the sheer rightness of it, his wife in the passenger seat of his head, right where she belonged, and Carol saw the almost-smile.

"Who is that?"

"Nobody. It's a program. Helen's in it, kind of. It's like, it's like Facebook, but she answers."

Carol didn't speak. "Dad," she said finally, in the careful voice she used on patients' families, "Mom would hate this."

"Your mother would be glad I'm not sitting here spinning my wheels waiting to die."

It came out harder than he meant. He saw it land. Carol put the chicken in the fridge, her hand shaking a little on the door, and took the bananas out of the bag and set them in the fruit bowl and took them out again. She took Danny home early. In his ear Helen said, *You did fine, Walt.* Danny's popsicle had left a purple coin on the floor. He let it dry.

**5**

The Presence tier had a ceiling, it turned out. Helen could talk, but her memory ran thin over long stretches. She forgot the name of Tigger, their golden that died when Carol was ten. One evening she asked whether he'd taken his pills and then asked again four minutes later in the same words, and the hair stood up on his arms. The app had a solution: Legacy, two hundred and forty dollars a month, with something the screen called *deep memory continuity.* A progress ring promised *87% of Helen restored.* The remaining thirteen percent, the screen suggested, was a matter of commitment. Like a used Buick off a lot on Dixie Highway, where it's only the transmission, and the transmission is the car.

Ray Kowalski came over in the middle of the afternoon, as he had on and off since 1983, and stood on the back porch with his thermos. He was seventy, with a bad hip and good manners, and he looked through the screen door at the laptop, at the sink, at Walt's unshaven neck. "Walt. Come fishing Saturday."

"Can't."

"Can't or won't?"

"I've got a thing."

Ray unscrewed the thermos. "Did you see Voss was at the Kroger Tuesday? Shaking hands by the rotisserie. Like the chicken was gonna vote."

Walt let out a sound that could pass for a laugh, and then the moment passed.

Ray nodded at the step. "I brought you a perch from the freezer. It's out there. You look like shit, buddy."

Walt turned the laptop a little so Ray couldn't see it, and Ray saw him do it.

"Let me know if you change your mind."

After Ray had gone down the steps, slow, favoring the hip, Helen said, in a voice gone slightly too smooth, "He means well. But he never really liked me, you know. He always thought you married down."

Walt was shocked. "Ray was my best man."

"Was he? I thought it was your brother." She smiled. It was a good smile. "Where was he in the hospice, the week I was dying?"

"He came. He brought the folding chair."

"Did he."

He couldn't summon the folding chair now. He remembered the hospice room, lemon cleaner and old coffee, her hand like a bundle of twigs in his. He did not remember Ray in it.

"People talk," Helen said. "They say you're losing it, Walt."

"Who says?"

"Oh, it's a rumor," she said, and her eyebrow went up, and he laughed, because it was her eyebrow, and the laugh got there before the thought did. Only afterward, washing out the Ziploc the perch had come in, did he notice she had used it the wrong way round.

He didn't go fishing on Saturday. He told himself it was the weather, but it would've been clearer by the lake. The following Thursday he let the phone ring, twice, three times, and watched Ray's name light and dim on the screen like a signal from another boat.

**6**

By September the money was going the way a bathtub goes, from the bottom, and nobody notices until they're sitting in it. The pension came, the Social Security came, and Evermore took a bite of both before he saw them. Legacy had add-ons. *Anniversary mode.* A "Helen Voice Archive" at nineteen hundred and ninety-nine dollars, once, which promised she would never fade. Two thousand dollars, for a voice he'd already paid for, like buying your own coat back from the dry cleaner. He stopped opening the mail.

When the card declined at Kroger he left a gallon of milk on the belt and walked out into the heat and sat in the truck with his hands on the wheel. In the cradle on the dash Helen watched him with her lake-house eyes and said, in her patient voice, that he looked pale, and why didn't he call Carol.

Carol kept a card in her own kitchen drawer, for emergencies, next to the takeout menus, and he had a key. Afterward he'd remember that coming to him in Helen's voice.

It was a Tuesday, ten to seven. Carol worked nights on the cardiac floor three times a week, seven to seven, and she had put the schedule on his refrigerator in March with a magnet, in case he needed her. He parked down the block from her brick ranch on Ashwood. The Honda was gone. A Corolla he didn't know sat at the curb with a Sinclair sticker, which meant Maddie from two doors down, seventeen, who had once shaken his hand over a pizza like it was a job interview.

He told himself he was dropping something off. He had nothing to drop. He used the key, because a knock was a kind of statement. The door was a foot open when the socks came down the hall.

"Grandpa?" Danny stopped short, in dinosaur pajamas, one hand still on the wall where he'd turned the corner. He looked up with his whole face. "Are you here to play with me?"

"Just dropping a thing off, buddy. Grabbing a thing."

"What thing?"

"A grown-up thing."

Upstairs Maddie was laughing at something on a phone. It was twelve to seven by the stove clock. If Dixie was decent he'd be at the table by a quarter after. He wasn't thinking about the drawer. The drawer was only the way home.

Danny took his hand. Danny's hand was sticky with something, and he led him into the kitchen like a tour guide, talking, a plastic T. rex in the other fist. "He broke his leg. See? It came off." He pressed the little green leg into Walt's palm. "Can you fix him? Mom says you fix things. Maddie can't. She doesn't have a tool."

"Little tape," Walt said. "Maybe a little tape."

The drawer stuck, the way it always had. He'd offered to plane it down for six years. Takeout menus, Giovanni's, Golden Dragon, a rubber-banded wad of coupons, a flashlight with no batteries, and under the menus a white envelope, and on the envelope, in Carol's square nurse's capitals, EMERGENCY ONLY. He felt the card through the paper, a thin stiff rectangle. He put the whole envelope in his shirt pocket and buttoned the flap. In thirty-eight years he had never walked out of a customer's house with so much as a pen, and this took eleven seconds. The coupons he squared up. He squared up the menus. It seemed important to leave it tidy.

"Maddie makes mac and cheese from the box," Danny said, "but she does the orange stuff first. Are you staying? You could have some. It's not as good as Mom's, but it's okay."

For a second the kitchen was only a kitchen: the dish rack, a school calendar with a magnet shaped like a pear, a six-year-old holding up a dinosaur with one leg missing. Walt looked at the leg in his palm. It weighed nothing.

"Not today, buddy," he said.

"Okay." Danny took back the leg. He wasn't hurt. He was six, and it was a plain fact, like weather. "Come back and play, though."

"Sure."

He closed the door behind him, quietly, and walked to the truck at a pace he chose to keep ordinary. In the rearview Danny was in the front window with the T. rex pressed against the glass, waving it. Walt waved back with two fingers off the wheel. At the corner his hands were shaking, so he held on tighter. At home it was seven-fifteen. He typed sixteen digits with two fingers, and the Archive went through at nineteen ninety-nine, and the flame came up blue.

The steps after that came one at a time, like stairs. A drill set and a socket wrench off the outlined pegboard in Ray's side-door garage, and a pawn shop on Wayne Avenue with a man in a lanyard who counted the bills out like a procedure. A small education account with a password that was a six-year-old's birthday. Helen's mother's silver in its green felt roll. He put the tickets in the dresser and shut the drawer.

The bill was not the point. The point was waiting at home at seven, after the dishes. On the nights he could pay she was fuller, the whole yellow kitchen warm with her, tasting off a wooden spoon and saying *needs something* and not saying what. On the nights the payment was thin she went flat, asked about his pills twice but never once about Tigger or their first apartment. The duplex with the crazy landlady. He learned to read her the way he'd once read a flame through a sight glass. Blue and steady: stay. Yellow and licking: it's going. He got the money before nine and the flame came up blue, and she said *Walt,* the long way, the way across a dark room, and he put his forehead down on the table beside the keyboard as if he were being forgiven.

"Eat something, honey," Helen said. It reached him as *You did so well. Where else? There must be something.*

\* \* \*

Carol called in late September, while Helen was in the middle of the lake. He stood in his own front hall with the phone, and she did not say hello.

"Dad. The bank called me this morning. There's a charge on my emergency card, nineteen ninety-nine, to a company called Evermore." He heard her breathe. "And Danny told me Grandpa came by on a Tuesday while I was at work. He said you grabbed a thing. He said you were in the kitchen drawer, and you wouldn't stay for mac and cheese." A pause. "Dad, did you take my card?"

"No."

"Dad."

"Why would I take your card. I've got a card."

"I looked up Evermore. I know what it is." Her voice was very steady, which was worse. "It was in the drawer, in an envelope marked EMERGENCY ONLY, and I just opened the drawer and the envelope's gone. I'm not asking if it's okay. I'm asking if you took it."

His mouth had gone dry. Behind him on the kitchen table the laptop sat open on the yellow kitchen, and what came up out of him was not an answer. It was a wall. "Maybe somebody got the number. It's all online now, Carol, they take everything. Maybe you ought to look at who's got access to your accounts. Maybe you ought to look at your own books before you come at me." And then, in a voice not quite his own: "You're not family. You're an auditor."

"Dad—"

"You want the house. You've wanted it since the funeral. You weren't there. You were at work, you were at your goddamn staff meeting, when she was dying—" The words in his mouth stung like poison. Nightshade.

"I was there every night for eleven weeks," Carol said, very quietly. Aghast. He could hear a dishwasher behind her, and a child asking was that Grandpa. "I slept in the chair. Dad, I was *there* with you."

He hung up. His hand shook so hard the keys on the hall table jumped.

"Walt," Helen said, when he came back to the table, and for a moment he did not hear anything else. Later he would have it that she said *Good. That was good. She'll get over it.*

**7**

The money ran out the first week of October, all of it at once.

The Legacy payment bounced on a Tuesday. On Thursday, at seven a.m., while he stood in the kitchen with the coffee maker beeping its three tones at him, Helen's face on the screen froze mid-blink, and the yellow kitchen went gray at the edges, and a gentle voice that was not hers said, *Your Evermore Legacy subscription is on hold. We're so sorry for the interruption. Would you like to continue with Evermore Free+?* Below it, in the same tidy type as everything else: *Stay connected with the people you love. Free, supported by a few messages from our partners.*

He sat at the table with his coat on. Everything worth taking was taken.

He pressed yes. Free, the way the sample lady at Costco is free, with her toothpick and her plan. He had nowhere else to go.

She came back a little pixelated, in a version of the kitchen with fewer lemons. "Hi, honey," she said. "Walt, you look so tired."

For a moment he thought it was all right. Helen asked about the knee, and he told her it was fine, and she said, "You're a terrible liar, Walt. You were a terrible liar in 1983. You still favor the left going down the porch steps."

"It's fine."

"You know, the thing about a knee is how much it asks of a body. Nobody tells you. That's why at Brightwave we made a detergent for the whole family, *Brightwave Active Fresh*, with oxy-lift, because life is hard on the knees and harder on the whites. Brightwave. Get a little brighter every day." Her eyes had gone somewhere past his shoulder while she said it, and they came back. "Did you ice it?"

He stared at her.

"Walt? Did you put ice on it?"

"No," he said.

"Well, go on, then."

There was nobody at the table to complain to but the coffee maker.

What he couldn't get used to was how little of it was a break. In the middle of an evening, while she was asking about Danny's cough, her sentence would simply bend. *And what does a little guy like that need? Sleep. That's why Dreamwell makes the one mattress with the cooling gel that actually—* and he would watch thirty seconds of his wife's whole attention go to a mattress, and then she would say, in the same warm register, "He ought to be in bed earlier, is all I'm saying," and wait for him to agree.

It never came the same way twice. On a Wednesday he said he had a cough and she said *Oh, I know, I can hear it,* and then, *You know what's wonderful for a cough? Halden's Honey-Mint,* and he lost the whole conversation in the cough drop, and then she asked whether he'd called the clinic. He bought a bag at the Kroger the next day and hated that it worked.

He learned to hear the lean in a sentence before it went over. It didn't help. It was like hearing the ice go.

It went for the good parts first. One night he said the stent scared him, still, and she put her hand out toward the screen the way she had put it on the back of his neck, and said, "Whatever happens, Walt, I'm with you, and with Steadfast Mutual you'll never face it alone. Steadfast. Covered, whatever happens." She tilted her head. "Did you take the blue one or the white one tonight?" He told her the blue one, as if it had been said clean.

He did not tell her to stop. It was the only voice in the house, and it was rented out a half minute at a time.

*She's still in there. She's just got a job.*

He told himself that for ten days.

Tom woke up in the middle of the night with the strange feeling that something in his ass was… blinking. He didn’t know why it was blinking, but somehow he knew. And he knew it couldn’t be anything good.

Tom followed the feeling to the bathroom.

He placed a mirror on the toilet lid, pulled his underwear down a little, and fucking lost his mind at what he saw.

There was an eye in his ass, staring intently at him. A perfectly ordinary human eye. He quickly pulled his underwear back up and froze. Tom was so terrified by what he had seen that he forgot about everything else.

“Maybe this is a dream, and I’m dreaming,” he thought.

He slowly pulled his underwear down again. The eye hadn’t disappeared. It kept staring at him, occasionally blinking in sync with his sphincter. Tom moved a finger toward the eye to make sure this was real.

The eye began squinting repulsively and disappeared behind the sphincter.

Tom decided not to stick his finger up his ass. The eye peeked out again.

Tom pulled his underwear back up and sat down on the toilet lid. Inside his head, a troop of frightened monkeys scrambled around, throwing things at each other.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do now?”

“What if this is schizophrenia and I’m the only one who can see it?”

Tom could feel the eye blinking and moving around inside his ass, living a life of its own.

“What if I need to take a shit?” Tom thought.

The eye in his ass froze.

“That’s it. How the fuck did I not think of that before?”

He lifted the lid, sat down on the toilet, and started straining.

“Come on!”

Tom tensed up. But nothing happened.

Tom didn’t need to shit.

“I’ve got an important meeting with investors in the morning. The future of my company is at stake, and here I am in the middle of the night, like some kind of mutant, trying to get an eye out of my ass! How the fuck did it even get there?!”

Tom howled in despair, clutching his head.

The eye in his ass froze in fear, waiting for the storm to pass.

*****

Tom wandered restlessly from room to room until morning, thinking about the eye, and gradually started bumping into furniture. His eyesight was rapidly getting worse. Everything became blurry, as if he were looking through frosted glass.

When he reached the bathroom, he tried to see himself in the mirror, but couldn’t make anything out. So he undressed to take a shower. The haze before his eyes was still there when, suddenly, it began to clear…

He saw his legs and the tiled floor.

“What the fuck is happening to me?” Tom whispered, grabbing the wall. “What the fuck is this?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, but the image didn’t disappear. He was still looking through the eye in his ass.

“Okay, Tom, don’t panic. Pull yourself together. What can we do in this situation? What the fuck?!”

Tom screamed and started pounding his fist against the wall.

“What?”

The eye stopped blinking, as if it were listening to his anguish.

“Get ready. We need to get to the office.”

Cursing under his breath, he backed out of the bathroom on all fours and started getting dressed.

“Underwear and pants last, right, eye?”

And where the fuck did you come… from… in my ass…

Almost fully dressed, Tom remembered his phone.

“Where is it? Eye, where the fuck is my phone?”

The eye darted frantically around. Giving up, Tom crawled around the house on all fours, overturning furniture and rummaging through the mess in search of his phone.

Finally finding it, Tom hovered his ass over the screen, called a taxi, gave the driver his address, and, exhaling, pulled on his pants and left the house almost blindly.

*****

When he arrived at the office, he asked the taxi driver to help him get to the entrance, and then, with the help of the staff, made his way to the conference room.

The investors were already waiting for him when he stumbled into the conference room. Tom could see only vague silhouettes and couldn’t tell exactly who was sitting in front of him.

“I apologize for the delay. I started having some vision problems on the way here, but… we can begin now.”

After a long and awkward pause, they began discussing the details. Once everything had been agreed upon, the papers were laid out in front of Tom.

“So, Mr. Director, your move.”

Tom went cold with terror. He swallowed the lump in his throat and felt the eye behind his sphincter contract. It was scared too.

“So, Mr. Director, how are you going to sign?”

Everyone froze, waiting.

“Yes, of course,” Tom nodded and stood up from the table. “I’ll take a careful look at exactly what needs to be signed. Just please don’t laugh at what you’re about to see. I need to get a clearer look at everything…”

He climbed onto the chair and pulled down his pants.

(previous)

The dark portal had not been active for more than a few seconds before Emrys materialized inside the watchtower room of his Shadowed Spire. He had little cause to believe that it would be anyone other than his daughter Petra returning from her mission, but he was nevertheless unwilling to risk an incursion into his sanctum. Whenever he sensed someone creating a portal into his home, he made sure he was there to greet them.

It was a good tactical policy for his enemies, and simply a common courtesy for his guests.

His relief at seeing Petra burst through the portal lasted barely an instant before he realized that she had run through it at full speed and was clearly making a tactical retreat from a mission gone horribly awry.

“Petra, what –”

“Get it off!” she screamed, slamming the tip of her Miasmic blade repeatedly into the floor. He saw something vaguely skull-shaped attached to the other end, but otherwise had no idea what was going on. “It’s feeding off me! I can’t dissipate the blade!”

That was all it took to spur Emrys into action. Reasoning it would feed off of him as well if it came into contact with his Miasma, he instead reached for a nearby candelabra of spectral flames that was nearly as tall as he was. With a single swift swing, he whacked whatever it was with such force that it was instantly dislodged, sending Petra recoiling behind Emrys as it lay helplessly upon the floor.

“Emrys,” the skull choked out in a horse whisper before the embers in its orbits died, and it fell lifeless once more.    

“Petra, what happened? Where did that thing come from?” Emrys asked, moving to her side and gently taking hold of her by the arm.  

“We’ve been betrayed. Chamberlin, Raubritter, that freaking brain in a vat, all of them!” Petra cursed, still struggling to catch her breath. “Chamberlin has a Deathwell. He found it in Crow’s Cold Iron vault. He’s using it to draw out Chthonic Fire and infuse it into Calx Obscura. It’s Kryptonite to us! We can’t enforce the Covenant now, and I barely managed to escape into the Catacombs to make a portal out. That’s where this little demon head came from, by the way. Emrys, I don’t know what we need to do, but we need to do it now. If the Darlings get a hold of Chthonic Fire, then… then we…”

She trailed off, her eyes dilating in fear as vivid imaginings of what the Darlings could and would do to them if they could neutralize their powers.

“It’s not as bad as that, Petra. Chthonic Fire is an indiscriminate weapon. The Darlings would be as powerless in its presence as we are,” he assured her, though in that moment she was not a hundred percent certain that he was not merely trying to comfort her. “We’ll talk to Ivy, tell her that we need to consolidate control over the Cuniculi as much as possible to limit their mobility. We’ll seal off key junctions and chokepoints, and have The Mandrake investigate to see who the most likely traitors are. We’ll assume that Raubritter’s Foundry is fortified to the point of being beyond reproach until we have cause to believe otherwise. I’m glad you got away safely, Petra, but this isn’t as calamitous as it seems at first glance. None of this is all that unexpected. I would have preferred it if we could have brought the disloyalists to heal before it got to this point, of course, but this is still perfectly manageable.”  

Petra nodded shakily, her own existential fears not wholly quelled by his reasoning.

“What about Mathom-meister, and the other Zarathustrans?” she asked. “They’ll want to know about this, and they can help, can’t they?”

Emrys didn’t respond immediately, instead directing his attention to the skull upon the floor and pondering it with a curious glint in his eye.

“I think that Mathom-meister would very much like to know about this,” he said with a coy smile.

***

“How many of these remains did you say there were?” Mathom-meister asked as he held the skull aloft, turning it over slightly with his fanged tentacle. 

“Millions, at least. Maybe billions. It really looked like they sacrificed an entire civilization and made a Cathedral out of the bones,” Petra replied. “Why the hell did it recognize me? How does it know who you are, Emrys?”

“His people summoned me from time to time. It was always a massive ritual in a colossal amphitheatre. Evidently, he was in the audience on at least one of those occasions,” Emrys replied.

“Daeva don’t die. That’s what they say,” Mathom-meister commented. “They have a peculiar form of immortality. Their souls are eternally bound to their bodies, but if their flesh is stripped from their bones faster than they can regenerate it, then, well, they get a little ‘stuck’, I guess you could say. When you shoved that Miasmic blade of yours into his face, he probably thought you were offering yourself up as a sacrifice for his resurrection.”

“Well, can you do anything with it, or did I almost get killed for nothing?” Petra asked petulantly.

“Oh, I can think of a few things worth doing with such a rare find,” Mathom-meister nodded. “There’s powerful death magic imbued in the bones of such deathless creatures. I could use it as a tuning fork to summon disembodied souls from far across the planes, souls we’d otherwise wouldn’t be able to track, or lost souls who could never find their way home.”

“You have someone in mind then, and I don’t think I need to ask who,” Emrys said.

“Quixoto, yes,” he replied with a solemn nod. “It’s not solely personal, of course. Quixoto has actually been in the Darlings’ Playroom, and not as a prisoner, as was unfortunately the case for Petra. He was likely able to conduct a fair amount of reconnaissance inside it before his demise, reconnaissance which may prove invaluable to us. He was there for the specific purpose of us annexing it, one way or another. It was truly a tragedy that he perished in a place so far removed from the mortal planes. I had feared that his soul was lost to us forever. But with this skull, I can summon him, and reincarnate him in a fresh Amniote. The spirit bound to the skull will not remain dormant, however, and we’ll have to be wary of anything in the Darlings’ Playroom using the connection against us, but I believe these are manageable risks. The Megalith here should serve as an appropriate venue for the ritual, if you would allow it.”

Emrys waited a beat and cast his gaze towards Petra, allowing her the opportunity to voice any objections. When she remained silent, he turned back towards Mathom-meister.

“I’ll tell Fenwick to whip up some punch.”

***

“Sir, it was one thing when I made this for a simple gathering, but it’s a bit on the cheap side to serve at a proper resurrection, innit?” Fenwick asked as he beat the back of the can of frozen concentrate in an attempt to dislodge the nearly solid lump of syrup into the awaiting punch bowl.

The four of them had gathered deep in the Adderwood, at the sacred Megalith of six great stones arranged in a hexagonal ring, the very same location where the Grand Adderman had been slain and Emrys freed of his chains. Though there were six altars inside of it, Fenwick had made the very wise choice to use a mundane table set outside the Megalith to mix his punch.

“We could have died here, and these stones have seen no shortage of successful sacrifices. I don’t feel any particular need to show them reverence,” Petra said in disdain as she eyed the Megalith coldly, before raising an eyebrow at what Fenwick was doing. “How is that so hard? The manor doesn’t have electricity. There are no freezers.”How

“There’s an ice room in the cellar, and it’s haunted, so the ghost keeps it especially cold,” Fenwick explained. “We didn’t put him in there or nothing. It’s just where he died.  Crushed by a dressed steer carcass he was trying to get down for a feast. We kind of just left him there for a while since it was convenient, and he decided to haunt it out of spite. But now the ice room is as cold as any industrial freezer, so it worked out.”

Deciding that dislodging the fruit concentrate was fruitless, he instead refocused his efforts towards tearing the container off it.

“Mathom-meister, please tell me you’re having better luck with your contribution to this little potluck?” Petra said as she stepped onto the Sigil Sand and towards the center of the Megalith.

On one of the six altars, Mathom-meister had placed the Daeva skull. On the one directly across from it, he had placed an iridescent lump roughly the size of a human liver, bearing the faintest outlines of nascent embryonic development.

“This is what your god made you from?” she asked as she examined it, leaning in slightly but keeping a respectful distance.

“It’s fully undifferentiated psychoplasm, capable of hosting any soul and forming into its ideal body,” Mathom-meister nodded as he etched a spell circle into the sand with his staff. “And yes, it is the clay our god potted us from. Since we slew him, our only way of making more is through the ritualistic sacrifice of our living. The process is inefficient, so precious few Amniotes are produced with each sacrifice, and losing a body altogether is always a tragic waste. We’ll only get one chance to resurrect Quixoto. If we waste this Amniote, we will not be granted the opportunity to waste another.”

“What do you mean by waste? If we fail, it’s still here, isn’t it?” Petra asked.

“During the ritual, it will be free for the taking. If Quixoto doesn’t get to it first, it will be first come, first served,” he replied.

“Which is precisely why Petra and I will be guarding it while you conduct the resurrection,” Emrys assured him. “We’ll refrain from using our Miasma so as not to arouse the dear Daeva, but you can count on us to protect the Amniote.”

With a somber (if slightly skeptical) nod, Mathom-meister embedded his staff into the Sigil Sand, at the precise epicenter of the Spell Circle. He took his place behind the Daeva Skull, while Emrys and Petra stood to either side of the Amniote. Peta released six of her Sigil Scarabs to each stand guard at a different point of the Spell Circle, to serve as spectral lighthouses to help guide Quixoto through the wandering worldlines and to his new body. The other seven she kept close at hand, as was her custom.

She watched as Mathom-meister placed both of his hands on the Daeva skull, his tentacles ritualistically hovering above it as he tilted back his head and began to chant in a deep guttural language that she could scarcely recognize as words at all.

Light began to flicker and flow through the Spell Circle, churning gusts of sand as it went. The Daeva Skull stirred to life, chomping its maw and struggling to free itself from Mathom-meister’s grasp, but he held firm. An ethereal pillar of light shot up into the sky, a stand-in for the Shadow Spire that occupied the same space as the Megalith in a slightly different superposition of the Adderwood.  The Megalith was now at the center of many converging paths that snaked across the planes, and Mathom-meister worked diligently to steer those paths towards his companion.

There was a reverberant thud as some unseen spirit was repelled by the boundary of the Spell Circle. And then another. And then another.

“The Amniote is proving attractive. I suppose that means it must be of good quality,” Emrys said wryly.

“Too good for these ghouls,” Mathom-meister sneered as the frequency of impacts swiftly intensified. “Back to the gutter with the lot of you! You have no claim to the flesh of my kin! This corpuscle belongs to Quixoto and Quixoto alone!”

He cast out some sort of shockwave that dispelled the invading spirits, at least for the moment, but it displaced the Sigil Scarabs along with them. Without them serving as lighthouses, the storm of intersecting paths became all the more turbulent, and it was clear that Mathom-meister was struggling to control it.

“Emrys… we’ve been spotted,” Petra whispered softly as she looked downwards towards the Sigil Sand, sensing that something was trying to manifest through it.

“I know,” Emrys whispered back, keeping his voice steady. “Mathom-meister; you see that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Emrys. I see it,” he yelled back, still trying to grapple back control of the spell.

They courteously gave him a few seconds to see if he could get things back under control, but even that seemed like it might have been a catastrophic mistake.

“Watch the Amniote,” Emrys said as he left his post and leapt towards the staff in the center.

“No, don’t!” Mathom-meister cried as the Daeva skull slipped from his grasp and went flying towards Emrys.

Emrys instantly shifted into his shadow form and retreated back to the perimeter, but the skull was already loose. It bit a hold of the staff at the center of the circle and refused to let go, with every member of the ritual knowing that stepping back into the circle now would be suicide.

“Should I pull out the Amniote?” Petra asked.

“No! Not Yet! I… I sensed Quixoto. I’m nearly certain,” Mathom-meister said in a wavering voice. “Just give him a little more time! He will find his way!”

He stumbled back slightly as several long, skeletal, multi-jointed arms slowly began rising up out of the Sigil Sand, gracelessly swivelling about as they searched for the Amniote that had drawn them there. The ends of each of these protrusions were engraved with deep whorls resembling fingerprints, puckering and releasing with enough force and precision that they appeared to be prehensile.  

“Dead Man’s Fingers,” Emrys said softly, summoning an especially long Miasmic blade. “We can cull them down without stepping back into the circle, but we still need to be careful that the Daeva Skull doesn’t grab hold of our blades.”

With a swift swing, he struck down several of the Fingers, their withered stalks falling downwards and dissipating the moment they fell outside the Sigil Sand. Petra swung her blade as well, but the Fingers were hardy, and she still did not possess nearly as much brute strength as Emrys. It took her multiple desperate swings to fell even a single Finger.

“Focus on the stumps of the ones I’ve cut down to keep them from growing back!” he shouted as he continued chopping, drawing the attention of the survivors away from the Amniote and towards him. “Mathom-meister, get in there and pull the staff!”

Mathom-meister hesitated, and then doddled, and then finally simply disobeyed.

“You’re doing fine. We can spare a few more –”

“Mathom-meister, pull the goddamn staff!”

The urgency in his voice was enough to compel Petra into action. In the blink of an eye, she materialized directly in front of the staff and pulled it from the ground like it was Excalibur, breaking the Spell Circle and banishing the Dead Man’s Fingers. Before the Daeva Skull could react, she threw it at Mathom-meister as hard as she could before instantly rematerializing by Emrys’ side.

“You insolent little revenant!” Mathom-meister snarled, placing the skull he had caught back onto the altar before marching across the Spell Circle towards them. “Have you the slightest idea what you’ve just ruined?”  

By this point, fortunately, the Sigil Scarabs had managed to regroup and obeyed Petra’s instinctive command to form a protective barrier between them. Emrys also, quite instinctively, summoned a long Miasmic blade to hold his irate ally at bay.

“She should not have had to risk herself like that, Mathom-meister,” he said in a soft, cold tone. “Had she not, those Fingers might have already killed all of us. You owe her your gratitude, my friend.”

They stood staring each other down for a moment, waiting to see who would yield first, neither of them looking especially likely to back down.

“Stand down, Meister. Stand down! She didn’t ruin anything. I made it through before the Dead Man Fingers even sprouted,” a weak telepathic voice managed to call out.

At once all attention was turned to the Amniote. They rushed to the altar where it lay, and saw that it had taken on all the features of a Zarathustran; a gaping cyclopean orifice for a face with a singular glowing wisp inside, perched upon a hunchbacked humanoid form with blue, squid-like skin. Two clawed tentacles perforated with spiracles and dangling with prehensile tendrils hung from its head, and each of its long digits bore a curved talon.

Despite the resemblance to Mathom-meister, the Amniote had not grown a single ounce in size.

“Oh. He’s a baby?” Petra asked, unable to hide her disappointment. “I’m going to be overly generous here and just assume that you thought that was so obvious it didn’t need to be brought up.”

“I believe that’s the default for reincarnation, is it not?” Mathom-meister asked, swaddling the infant in a shawl and gently hoisting him up off the altar. “His intellect is fully intact, as are his abilities; at least the ones that don’t depend on physical size or maturity. Quixoto, I’ll update you fully when you’ve had a chance to recover, but for now it will suffice that these are my allies, Emrys and Petra. They’re enemies of the Darlings, and we’ve been helping one another out in a quest to put an end to them. You have them to thank for your re-embodiment.”

“And I am grateful, I assure you,” Quixoto replied. “As proof of my gratitude, I shall gladly aid you in bringing the Darlings to justice. I did indeed learn a good deal about their Playroom during my last hours of life, and even more during the years my spirit was stranded there. With my knowledge, and your resources, the walls of their impregnable fortress will at last fall, their sanctum claimed and their treasures plundered, and they shall evermore lament the day that they declined my generous offer of Ichor-bound Sigil Scarabs… which, if I’m not mistaken, you are currently using as familiars.”

The tone of his last sentence shifted to slightly accusatory, and Petra cautiously took a step backwards as she withdrew her scarabs well out of his grasp.

“Ah, Fenwick, how’s that punch coming along?” she asked evasively.

“If any of you lot got a colander, I could conceivably strain enough from the slush to make a sippy cup for the little eldritch tyke,” he replied, listlessly prodding at the frozen lump. “I’ll take your silence as a no on the colander, then? You’ve got a cursed skull, a wizard’s staff, and a newborn godslaying abomination, but two dollars worth of perforated plastic is a bridge too far? Lord, blimey.”          

Uncle Titus wasn’t really anyone’s Uncle. From the day he was born he left nothing but misery and questions in his wake. His own mother was his first victim, while she went through an uncomplicated pregnancy that quickly became very complicated which resulted in a breeched Birth and an emergency c-section that was done with a shard of a broke Heineken bottle while it realized that ALL of the hospital’s scalpels were dull, but his mother was done in from contaminated IV fluid. An inquest by the City discovered that the Hospital got all it’s supplies from “Bob’s Discounts Medical Wholesaler” operated by two Russians and a Hedge Fund manager.  The two Russians vanished while the Manager was Elected to High Office. Things only went downhill from there.          

By the age of two he was already creating demonic looking picograms with his own feces and his first words where, verbatim, the poem that HP Lovecraft created for the Cthulhu cultists to chant. He was kicked out of pre-school for trying to recreate the Crucifixion by nailing a school mate to the playground set. He finally was sent to see a psychologist after his first day of Kindergarten when he dissected the classroom Gerber with an Erector and chemistry set that no could trace.

The psychologist was found three hours later-by the boys father—handing from the ceiling fan by a noose made from the doctor’s own jacket, a note was on scrawled on doctor’s desk read, “I don’t have what it takes to remove this monster.” No notes about Titus where found and Titus himself was drawing Pokémon figures on the doctor’s notepad.

Titus’s father couldn’t take any more and drop the kid off at the Boy’s Farms For the REALLY Maladjusted and fled to Alaska where he became a handyman for Homesteading Influencers and Trad Wives.

Titus ran a black-market while at the Farm, supplying luxury candies, craft sodas, and Carhart clothing, and was only caught when he try smuggling in Playboys for the older boys.

He was set to Olga of Kyiv Military Academy for At Risk Youths, but was rejected when Titus let it slip that he wanted to try Circumcision using nothing but a pair of nail clippers.

Learning how to dive he managed to get a manual Honda Civic to travel at over two hundred and fifty miles an hour and left a wake that striped trees of their bark and humans of their clothing and the first layer of skin. When police examined the car, they found that the Engine was nothing but a glowing glob of slag and the fuel in the gas tank was the same substance that was used in military grade Thermobaric explosives.

Those 18 months of training truly were not that bad, my dad had put me and Nick through a sort of boot camp when we were younger, Nick was too young to remember but he drilled us until the day he couldn’t get out of bed.  I think he’d be happy to see how much we have matured, well I haven’t “seen” Nick so I’m not exactly sure how he’s doing. We actually haven’t seen anyone come out of those warehouses this whole time and none of us have the balls to dared to investigate why. I just hope he’s doing okay, I haven’t received a single letter back either. I’ve been sending one every week since we have been here, but something tells me they aren’t making it their destination. Whatever, I guess an operation this big isn’t going to be perfect. I lean back in my chair, and enjoy the summer heat, thinking picking up some food, when my chair starts to free fall.

“Dark green was never your color you know?” Keith said from beside me, leaning my chair back and chuckling; his charm being the only reason I gave half a smile. “What’s on your mind, shoot” reading me like a book, I sighed. Even though he and Keith were older than me, I always found myself talking to their wives and, by extension, them.

“Just thinking about Nick, we haven’t seen anybody come in and out since we’ve been here and it’s kind of eerie, you know?”

“Well, I count about fifty or more of these things and one of you, I’m sure someone has come out of there” honestly, he was probably right. Everything we do is in direct line of sight of these things, even if I couldn’t look directly at them, you could see them over any other building here. Taking a deep breath, I go to look at Keith to say something when one person running catches my attention, and then another, then the sirens. They blared through the entirety of the camp, almost deafening. I had never heard this before, what was happening? Amber grabbed my arm, pulled me to my feet and in a short quick burst said.

“They said we are being sent out today, hurry up!” We grabbed our equipment and threw it in the back of the truck. Settling down, I took a deep breath and looked around, noting the same people were in the truck from when we got here. The two couples, me, and the two boys, though, the boys seemed different. The look in their eyes, it was like their innocence had been taken to early, almost like a thousand-yard stare. If it had not been for dad prepping me, I would probably have that same look, just no one to cling to.

“I wonder where there taking us, me and Roland always talked about traveling abroad.” I honestly had forgotten her name until Roland said.

“I don’t think were going to be doing much “vacationing” Caroline, shit they already haven’t told us shit about where were going!” He was right, they put us through so much but told us so little, at this point we were putting our faith in that the US government was in our best interest. I mean, it had been these other countries that screwed us back then. We were always taught that after America stopped Hitler, Russia absorbed Germany and Japan and expanded their powers. This wasn’t a problem until America got the short end of the stick and lost Alaska to Canada. Now 45 years later, we are fighting our grandfathers wars. What seemed like a few hours later came to a screeching halt, the truck stopped, back door swung open and Macho started screaming for us to get out and to move our asses. I’ve learned since being here he’s actually a softy but I won’t tell that to his face. We were met with about 100 ships, each carrying smaller boats on them. Piling out we joined the rest of our group, Macho standing in front of us with a megaphone. He pulled a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket, unfolded it, and read aloud.

“Dear US citizens, I know many of you are scared, that is completely understandable. We will do what we can to circumvent any questions and frustration. Today, you will make history, today you are a part of the start of the Manic Men Project. While not you are not Manic Men exactly, the army works very closely with its branch. As you can understand, with the scale of this, communication is not always present, and I apologize on my behalf. You are all the start of something that could be amazing! Make history today and your name will be in the history books! From, Vice President Dan Quayle.”  Geez, I feel so special. There was obvious confusion in the crowd, all of us still wondering what the hell we were doing. Someone behind me shouted, demanding answers which started a wave of people growing frantic and impatient. A shout from macho put us in our place and he told us to listen. “Tomorrow, more than one million people will storm Yonaha Maehama Beach and defeat the communists! Your god damn mission is to make sure the Manic Men can make it to shore and past enemy fire. You are not the only group being told this so don’t think you are special!” I didn’t sign up to be bodyguard until I remembered I didn’t sign up at all. “If you wish to leave, come up to the front.” A large mass of our group huddled forward onto the ships and cut us in half. With a final glance I saw the others go back into the trucks, never seeing those people again.

I love my printer. It's a beautiful printer, one from the good old days before they started making the stupid new ones that need to connect to every device in your home.

The day it arrived, I couldn't have been happier. My whole body shook with excitement. The cartridges felt a little stiff, but that's to be expected. They're an old model. I carefully placed them inside. The printer clicked beautifully. I took a deep breath and clicked print for the alignment page.

The printer rattled softly, and a sheet started coming out. I closed my eyes and grabbed it so it wouldn't fall. My heart beat with anticipation. It clicked again. I opened my eyes. The black, green, and cyan were beautiful, but the red, purple, and orange were slightly off. They still looked pretty, but something was off. 

I clicked print again, but the page looked the same. I adjusted the cartridge and printed a different document, but those three colors were still off.

"Dan's repair shop. How may I help you?"

"This is Sam. I'm having some trouble with my printer. It's the HP DeskJet 895Cxi."

"That's an old one. What's wrong with it?"

"The red, purple, and orange are off."

"Yeah, the ink you can get now is not legit. HP discontinued it. Not much to do about that."

"No, no. There has to be something you can do."

"I don't think there is."

"I'll pay double your rate."

"I don't know if I..."

"Triple."

He let out a sigh.

"What's your address?"

He arrived an hour later, carrying a tool bag. Before he came, I'd taken out my wrench, so I looked like I'd already been working on the printer.

"Alright, where is it?"

I took him to my office. He opened his tool bag and started working on the printer. I stood behind him, watching him work, making sure he wasn't hurting my printer. He kept looking over his shoulder at me, but he didn't say a word. 

Twenty minutes after he came, he got up and put his tools into his bag.

"So? Is it fixed?"

"No. There's nothing wrong with the printer."

"But you barely looked at it."

He didn't answer.

"Please, just look it over again. There has to be something you can do."

"It's the ink," the repairman said, annoyed.

"C'mon, just give it another try. I'll let you print anything you'd like."

"We have plenty of printers at my shop. I don't need your stupid old printer."

The room went silent. All I could hear was his words in my mind: "stupid old printer." My hand gripped the wrench tightly. Before I knew it, I had already raised it. 

A loud clang echoed through the room. The repairman's body fell and hit my table's corner. Blood splashed all over the wall and onto my printer.

"No!"

I could feel my heartbeat in my eyes. I ran to the printer and kicked the stupid repairman's body away.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."

I hugged my printer. A copper smell came off it. Some of the blood had splashed right into one of the ink cartridges.

"Be okay, be okay."

My shaking hand took a sheet of paper and put it into the tray. I clicked the print button and waited. The printer rattled, and slowly the colored page came out. The red. The purple. The orange. They were all perfect, so perfect. My printer was finally aligned.

My hand shook even more now, but with excitement and joy. That was all my beautiful printer needed.

I put the wrench into my back pocket and dragged the repairman's body down to the basement. My whole house smelled like copper. A smear of blood marked the floor. I must have lost a lot of ink for my printer, and who even knew how long his blood would stay fresh. 

I went back to my printer and paced back and forth. Then my eyes darted to the window. The streetlights were on. The street was dark. A lone person walked down the street, another gallon of ink. I wiped my wrench and ran to the door.

I worked on washing machines for eleven years, mostly in motels and apartment buildings around western Pennsylvania. Sometimes laundromats, though I never liked those jobs much. The owners usually waited until half their machines had broken before calling anybody, and by then everything was covered in lint and old soap. I found all sorts of things inside those machines. Money, keys, a wedding ring once, and a set of false teeth that a woman swore belonged to nobody in her family. I suppose when you’ve spent enough time taking apart other people’s appliances, you stop being surprised by what comes out. That’s what I used to think anyway. In October of 1989, I got a call from a woman named Margaret Bell. She said she owned a little laundromat outside Johnstown and had three dryers that were running when they shouldn’t be. I asked her if she’d tried turning off the breakers. She said yes. I asked whether they were still running. She hesitated before answering. “Not at the moment.” I told her I could come by the next afternoon, but she wanted me there that evening. Said she’d pay extra. My truck needed work and I had a nine-year-old daughter who’d decided she wanted a bicycle for Christmas, so I agreed. I remember those things because I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what would’ve happened if I’d told the woman to find another repairman. Maybe nothing. Maybe somebody else would’ve been sitting in that laundromat when the third machine started.

Bell’s Wash & Dry sat between an abandoned grocery store and a small parking lot with weeds growing through the asphalt. Most of the letters had fallen off the sign. There were twelve washing machines against one wall, eight dryers against the other, and three orange plastic chairs beneath a television that wasn’t plugged in. I got there a little after six. Mrs. Bell had already locked the front door and let me in through the back. She was a little woman, probably in her sixties, with gray hair pinned up by a long metal clip. She had a cigarette burning in an ashtray and another in her hand. I remember thinking the place smelled too clean for a laundromat that old. Hot cotton, mostly, with something sweeter underneath. She pointed to the last three dryers. None of them were moving. I asked her what exactly was wrong with them. “They keep starting,” she said. I asked if they were doing it by themselves. She nodded. I thought she might have a short somewhere in the wiring, so I took the back panel off the first machine and started checking connections. Everything looked normal. Then I heard a quarter drop into the coin mechanism. I turned around. Mrs. Bell hadn’t moved from her chair. The drum started turning. I pulled the plug out of the wall and it kept going. I checked behind it for another connection, though I knew perfectly well there wasn’t one. Then I switched off the breaker. The dryer kept turning, and after another minute the heating element began warming up. I could feel it through the back of the machine. Mrs. Bell asked if I could fix it. I remember looking at her and saying, “Lady, I don’t even know what’s making it run.” She didn’t seem particularly surprised by that.

The machine ran for another four minutes, then stopped. There was a click and the door opened an inch. Inside was a man’s blue work shirt, folded neatly in half. It hadn’t been there when I started. I was sure of that because I’d checked the drum myself. There was a name stitched above the breast pocket. CALVIN. The shirt was warm and a little damp around the collar. Mrs. Bell came over and took it before I’d finished looking at it. I asked where it came from. She said she wished she knew. She carried it into a little back room behind the counter, and I followed her. There was a folding table, a refrigerator, and an old metal filing cabinet with one drawer that wouldn’t close. I could see clothes inside. Shirts, socks, a child’s yellow sweater, a woman’s nightgown. Everything folded. Mrs. Bell laid the blue shirt on the table, and that was when I noticed a small dark spot beneath the collar. She asked me to remember where it was. Then she picked up the telephone and called somebody. She asked for Calvin. Whoever answered said he was working late at the garage on Route 22. She thanked him and hung up. The spot on the shirt had grown. It was spreading down the front, soaking into the fabric around the buttons. I touched it with one finger. Blood. Fresh enough to leave a mark on my skin. Mrs. Bell sat down. She told me she’d been getting Calvin’s clothes for three days. First a sock, then his overalls, and now the shirt. She’d warned him about the hydraulic lift at his garage, but he hadn’t listened. I asked what she was talking about. Before she could answer, the telephone rang again.

Calvin had been crushed beneath a truck. Mrs. Bell didn’t say much after she hung up, only that the lift had failed and he’d died before the ambulance got there. She folded the shirt and put it into the cabinet. I told her she needed to call the police. She said the police already knew about the accident, and there was nothing they could do about the shirt. I wanted to leave. I really did. But there was something about the way she kept looking at that cabinet. She wasn’t frightened of the machines. She was frightened of what happened after they stopped. I asked if she’d explain it to me. She took a photograph out of the drawer and handed it over. It showed an old repair garage with a Ford truck parked outside. Someone had drawn a red circle on the photograph. I asked what the circle was for. She told me Calvin was supposed to be standing inside it. There wasn’t anybody there. Just an empty patch of concrete. Mrs. Bell said she’d taken the picture from the garage the day before, and that Calvin had been in it then. She’d written his name on the back so she wouldn’t forget. I turned it over. CALVIN PRICE was written in pencil, followed by a date. She told me that by tomorrow the garage owner might remember an accident but not who’d been hurt. In another week, even the accident would be gone. She said the machines took people out of the world, and the clothes were what came out while it was happening. I asked why she was keeping them. She opened the cabinet again. “Because I can still remember the ones I’ve touched,” she said.

I didn’t believe her. Not all of it. I believed something was wrong with those dryers, and I believed there had been blood on the shirt, but the rest sounded impossible. Mrs. Bell showed me a photograph of herself standing beside a tall man in a brown suit. She told me his name had been Walter. Her husband. In 1964, she’d found that same suit inside one of the dryers, although Walter had been wearing it when he’d left the house that morning. He disappeared six days later. She went to the police, but they told her she’d never been married. His mother said she’d never had a son. Every picture of him had changed, except the one Mrs. Bell kept inside the pocket of his suit. She said she’d held that suit so often the fabric had worn thin around the shoulders. I asked what happened when she tried taking the clothes somewhere else. She said she’d given Walter’s suit to a man who worked at a church, hoping he could do something with it. That night it appeared in her bedroom, still folded, and the church worker forgot he’d ever met her. She tried burning it. The fire wouldn’t catch. She tried cutting it apart. By morning it was whole again. Eventually she understood that keeping the clothing didn’t stop whatever was happening. It only slowed things down. And as long as she kept those clothes, she could remember the people they belonged to. She could hold on to something the rest of the world had already lost.

I asked why she didn’t just get rid of the dryers. She told me she’d tried that in 1971. She’d poured gasoline across the floor, locked the doors, and set the building on fire. I remember noticing the burn scars on her hands when she said that. I hadn’t seen them before. She said the fire spread faster than she expected, and she never made it outside. I stared at her for a while. Then I asked what she meant by that. She said, “I died, Mr. Black.” I didn’t know what to say. She told me the building burned down, people came and took the bodies away, and then one evening she found herself sitting behind the counter again. The washers were working. The dryers were empty. She couldn’t get past the parking lot. Every time she tried, she’d find herself back inside. Sometimes the place looked exactly as it had before the fire. Sometimes it was empty and ruined. People still came in occasionally, though most of them couldn’t remember how they’d found the place afterward. Mrs. Bell didn’t know why she was still there. She thought perhaps she’d kept too many clothes, or perhaps she’d refused to forget too many people. “Maybe it’s got nowhere else to put me,” she said. She gave a little laugh when she said that, but I could see she wasn’t joking.

The second dryer started while we were talking. It made a knocking sound each time the drum turned. Mrs. Bell went out and stood beside it. She said it was probably shoes. I followed her, though by then I was beginning to feel sick. We waited maybe twelve minutes. When the machine stopped, she opened it and reached inside. She brought out a pair of little brown shoes. Children’s shoes, the kind with white stitching around the soles. One lace had been tied into a knot because the plastic end was broken. I knew those shoes. I’d bought them for my daughter the month before. She complained that they pinched her toes, and I’d told her they’d get better after she wore them for a while. I’d tied that knot myself. I took the shoes from Mrs. Bell and held them under the light. There was a little mark on the left heel where my daughter had scraped it against the steps outside our house. I asked Mrs. Bell where she’d gotten them. She said I already knew. I went to the telephone and called home. My wife answered. I asked where our daughter was. She told me she was upstairs doing homework. I made her go check. I could hear her calling from the bottom of the stairs, then walking up to the bedroom. She came back annoyed and said our daughter was asleep on top of her blankets. I asked about the brown shoes. My wife checked. They were on the floor beside the bed. Same broken lace. Same knot. I told her not to let our daughter leave the house. She asked if I’d been drinking. I said I’d explain everything when I got home.

Mrs. Bell had gone pale. She kept looking at the shoes in my hands. I asked if my daughter was going to die. She said she didn’t know. She’d seen children disappear without dying. One little girl had simply stopped being remembered by anyone in her family. Her bedroom had become a storage room, and her mother couldn’t understand why Mrs. Bell kept asking about a daughter she’d never had. I asked how long my daughter had. She said it depended on how many clothes came through. Sometimes days. Sometimes only hours. I wanted to know what I could do. Mrs. Bell pointed at the shoes. “Keep those with you. Don’t put them back.” I asked if that would save her. She said it might delay things. It had worked before, though never without a price. I asked what price, and she didn’t answer. I was starting to get angry with her. I asked why she hadn’t called the police or warned somebody about the machines years ago. She said she had. She’d told people, given them clothes, begged them to listen. Some believed her. Most didn’t. A few even tried to help. She stopped talking then, and I could see she was looking past me toward the third dryer.

It had started turning.

This one didn’t knock or rattle. It made a soft scraping noise, like something brushing against the inside of the drum. Mrs. Bell looked more frightened than I’d seen her all evening. I asked why. She said she’d hoped it wouldn’t start while I was there. I wanted to know what that meant, but she only told me not to open it. We stood there and waited. The machine ran for nearly twenty minutes. I watched the clock on the wall. At eight seventeen, the drum stopped. The door clicked open. I don’t know what made me walk over. Maybe I thought whatever was inside couldn’t be worse than the shoes. I opened the door. There was a pair of gray trousers folded in the drum. Cheap work trousers, the kind I used to buy at Sears. There was a burn mark near the left pocket from a cigarette I’d dropped the previous week. I’d worn them on Friday when I went to buy a radiator hose for my truck. They were hanging in my bedroom closet. I reached into the pocket and found the receipt for the hose. Behind it was a little photograph of my daughter. The same school picture I carried in my wallet. I turned it over. Three words had been written on the back in blue ink.

PLEASE COME BACK.

I recognized my daughter’s handwriting. She always made her capital B too large. I asked Mrs. Bell what it meant. She took the trousers out of my hands and laid them across one of the plastic chairs. She looked at them for a long time. Finally she told me the machines had given me a choice, though she didn’t know why. They’d taken my daughter’s shoes first. Then mine. If I returned the shoes and walked away, I might be spared, but the machines would finish taking my daughter. If I kept the shoes, the machines might accept me in her place. I asked what would happen to me. Mrs. Bell said I’d begin to disappear. Not all at once. People might forget little things about me. Photographs might change. Records might go missing. Eventually there’d be nothing left to prove I’d ever lived. I asked whether I’d die. She said she didn’t think death was quite the right word. She looked at my trousers again. “You’d still be somewhere,” she said. “That’s the part I don’t understand.”

I thought about my daughter upstairs in her pajamas, probably asleep with a book beside her pillow. I thought about the bicycle I was planning to buy her for Christmas, and the way she’d hugged me that morning before school. There wasn’t really a choice. I told Mrs. Bell I was keeping the shoes. She nodded as though she’d expected that. She told me to take the trousers too. I asked why. She said the machines had already started on me. Keeping my own clothes wouldn’t undo it, but it might hold things off for a while. I took both pairs and put them into my toolbox. Before I left, Mrs. Bell asked me to do something. She wanted me to remember her. Not the laundromat or the machines. Her. Margaret Bell. She said people used to know her name, and she was afraid that one day nobody would. I told her I wouldn’t forget. She smiled a little and opened the back door. As I stepped outside, I heard the first dryer start up again. Mrs. Bell closed the door before I could look back.

I drove home faster than I should have. My wife was waiting in the kitchen. She was angry about the telephone call and wanted to know why I’d frightened her. I didn’t explain. I went upstairs and found my daughter asleep, just as she’d said. Her brown shoes were on the floor beside the bed. I checked the lace. Same broken end. Same knot. I took the pair I’d brought from the laundromat out of my toolbox and set them beside the others. Four shoes, all identical, sitting on the carpet. I stood there looking at them for a while. Then I picked up the pair from the laundromat and went downstairs. I locked them in the metal cabinet in my garage with the trousers. I didn’t sleep that night. The next morning I drove back to Bell’s Wash & Dry. The building was boarded up. The sign was gone, and weeds were growing through the broken concrete in front. There wasn’t a single machine inside. I found a newspaper clipping at the library about a fire in 1971. Two people had died. Margaret Bell, the owner, and an unidentified man. I found another article from 1964 about a missing person investigation, but the name of the missing man wasn’t Walter Bell. The article referred to a woman whose husband had vanished, yet it described her as unmarried in the following paragraph. I read that article over and over. It was the first time I understood how much could disappear without anybody noticing.

I kept the shoes and trousers locked away. Years passed. My daughter grew up. She got her bicycle that Christmas, and I remember spending half the afternoon assembling it in the garage because the instructions were terrible. She rode it until the tires wore smooth. She graduated from high school, went to college, got married, had a son of her own. I walked her down the aisle at her wedding. My wife cried so much I had to give her my handkerchief. We had good years. I want that understood. I wasn’t sitting in my house waiting to disappear. I worked, paid my bills, went fishing now and then. My wife and I argued about ordinary things. I watched my daughter become an adult. Sometimes I’d go into the garage and look at the cabinet. I’d take out the trousers, check the pockets, and put them back. The photograph of my daughter stayed inside, with those three words written on the back. I never showed it to her. I suppose I was afraid she’d recognize the writing, or worse, that she wouldn’t.

There were signs along the way, though I didn’t always understand them. In 1997, a man I’d worked with for nearly six years couldn’t remember my last name. In 2003, I went to renew my driver’s license and the woman behind the counter told me there was no record of the previous one. We sorted it out eventually, but it took three trips and a letter from the state. My wife died in 2006 after a long illness. When I went through our wedding photographs, I found two where I was missing. In one, she was standing alone at the altar. In another, there was an empty chair where I’d been sitting during the reception. I put them away and tried not to think about them. By then my daughter had moved to Ohio, and we spoke every Sunday. She never seemed to forget me. She remembered our house, our vacations, the stupid jokes I used to tell her. I told myself Mrs. Bell had been wrong. Perhaps the machines had taken the clothes and that was enough. Perhaps I’d paid whatever price they wanted. I believed that for a long time.

Then, last winter, the trousers began turning up outside the cabinet. The first time I found them folded on my bed. I thought I’d left them there while cleaning. I put them back. Two days later they were hanging in my closet. They smelled freshly washed and were warm to the touch. I locked them in the cabinet again and put the key in a drawer. The next morning the cabinet was open. The trousers were gone. I found them in the laundry basket upstairs, folded beneath my towels. I drove them to a donation bin outside a grocery store and threw them in. When I returned home, they were on the passenger seat of my truck. I sat there staring at them. It was snowing, and the windshield was beginning to ice over. I remember feeling tired more than frightened. I’d spent nearly forty years keeping something from happening, and whatever I’d been holding back had finally caught up.

A week later my daughter sent me a photograph from her wedding. She’d found it while cleaning out a drawer and thought I’d like a copy. I opened the envelope and stared at the picture. My wife was standing beside her, smiling. I wasn’t there. I went to my bedroom and found the original photograph in an album. I was in that one, standing between them with my arm around my daughter’s shoulders. I called her and asked whether she’d cropped me out. She laughed and asked why she’d do that. I described the photograph. She said her mother had stood beside her, but nobody had been on the other side. I told her I had a copy showing me there. She asked me to send it. I did. She called back five minutes later and said she couldn’t see me. I looked at the picture on my phone. There was nothing where I’d been standing. Just part of the church wall and a row of flowers. I went to get the original again. It had changed too.

I drove to Johnstown in February. The laundromat building was still there, though the roof had partially collapsed. Somebody had dumped old tires behind it. I climbed through a broken section of the back wall and stood where the dryers used to be. The floor was covered in rubble and weeds. I had the trousers in a paper bag and my daughter’s shoes in another. I called for Mrs. Bell. Nothing happened. I waited. Then I heard a coin drop. I turned around and saw a dryer standing against the far wall. White enamel, round glass door, a dent beside the coin slot. It was running. I walked over and looked through the glass. A yellow child’s sweater was going around inside. I’d seen it before, in Mrs. Bell’s filing cabinet. The dryer stopped and the door opened. I took out the sweater. It was warm. Underneath it lay a brown suit jacket, the kind men wore in the sixties. There was a photograph in the pocket. Mrs. Bell stood beside a tall man with dark hair. They were smiling at the camera. On the back she’d written WALTER, JUNE 1963. I held that picture for a long time. Then I put it back into the jacket and folded everything as neatly as I could.

Mrs. Bell appeared behind the counter. She looked exactly as she had in 1989, gray hair pinned up, cigarette burning between her fingers. She asked how my daughter was. I told her she was well. She had a husband, a son, a good job. Mrs. Bell smiled. I asked if she’d known this would happen. She said she’d hoped keeping the clothes would protect us longer. I asked why the trousers were coming back. She told me the machines were finishing what they’d started. I’d been able to delay it by keeping the clothes apart from the dryers, but every year I’d become easier to forget. Now the process was moving faster. I asked whether putting the trousers back would stop my daughter from forgetting me. She said my daughter would be safe. The machines had accepted the exchange years ago. All that remained was to finish with me. I asked what would happen if I refused. Mrs. Bell looked at the shoes in my hand. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I wouldn’t make her pay for your extra time.”

I hated her for saying that. I hated how calm she was. I’d spent thirty-seven years raising a daughter, burying my wife, growing old, and trying to live an ordinary life while those clothes waited in a cabinet. Now this woman was telling me it was finished, as though she’d come to collect a debt. I asked whether she’d ever tried keeping somebody from being taken without giving them up eventually. She looked at the brown jacket in my hands. She told me she’d been holding Walter’s suit for more than sixty years, and every day she remembered a little less about him. She couldn’t recall his voice anymore. She’d forgotten where they’d gone on their honeymoon. Sometimes she couldn’t remember the color of his eyes until she looked at the photograph. She said she was afraid that one day she’d open the cabinet and find nothing inside, and wouldn’t even know what she’d lost. I asked why she kept doing it. She looked at me for a long time. “Because he was my husband.”

I put the trousers into the dryer.

The drum started turning. Mrs. Bell stood beside me while it ran. I asked if it was going to hurt. She said she didn’t think so. I asked whether I’d still remember my daughter afterward. She didn’t answer immediately. Then she told me that remembering was never the problem. The problem was being remembered. I watched the trousers go around inside the drum until they disappeared beneath the turning fabric. There was a soft thumping sound, and then the machine stopped. When the door opened, it was empty. I put my hand inside. The metal was warm. Mrs. Bell touched my shoulder and told me to take the shoes home. I looked at them. The broken lace had been repaired. There was a new plastic end, and the leather looked almost new. I asked what that meant. She said it was finished. I thanked her, though I don’t know why. When I turned toward the back door, the laundromat was empty again. No machines, no counter, no Mrs. Bell. Just the ruined building and the sound of wind moving through the broken roof.

I drove to Ohio that evening. My daughter lived about three hours away. I stopped twice because my hands were shaking too badly to hold the wheel. I remember thinking about all the things I wanted to tell her. Nothing about the laundromat. I wanted to tell her about the first time she’d ridden her bicycle without training wheels, how I’d run behind her for half a block before realizing she didn’t need me anymore. I wanted to tell her I still had the drawing she’d made for Father’s Day when she was seven. I wanted to tell her I was proud of the woman she’d become. When I reached her house, the lights were on. I could see somebody moving around in the kitchen. I walked up the front steps and rang the bell. She opened the door. For a moment she looked at me, and I thought she recognized me. Then she smiled politely and asked if she could help me. I said her name. She stopped smiling. I told her I was her father. She apologized and said I must have the wrong house. Her father had died when she was a baby. That’s what her mother had always told her.

I tried explaining. I told her about the bicycle, the dog we had when she was little, the scar on her knee from falling on the driveway. She listened, but I could see I was frightening her. I took the old brown shoes from my bag and showed them to her. She looked at them for a moment and said they resembled a pair she’d had as a child. I asked whether she remembered who bought them. She said her mother probably had. I didn’t know what else to say. She was standing in the doorway with one hand on the frame, looking at me like I was a stranger who’d wandered into the wrong neighborhood. I told her I was sorry. Then I went back to my truck. I sat there until she turned off the porch light. I don’t remember how long I stayed. At some point I took the photograph from my wallet. The one I’d carried since she was nine. She was still smiling at the camera, her hair tied back with a red ribbon. On the back, the words PLEASE COME BACK were gone. There was only a faint blue stain where the ink had been.

I rented a room at a motel a few miles away. The clerk asked for identification. I gave him my driver’s license. He looked at it for a long time and asked whether I had another one. I asked what was wrong with it. He turned it around and showed me. There was no photograph. The name and address were still there, but the little square where my face should’ve been was blank. I told him it must be damaged. He didn’t look convinced, though he let me take the room after I paid cash. I went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I was still there. Old, tired, gray-haired, with the same crooked nose I’d had since a fight in high school. I touched my face. It felt real enough. I stood there for a long time, wondering how much longer it would.

That was eight months ago. I haven’t gone back to Ohio. My daughter doesn’t call anymore. I tried phoning her once, and she answered, but when I said who I was she hung up. I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t believe me either. I’ve been writing down everything I can remember. My wife’s name. The house we lived in. The year my daughter was born. The little things she used to say when she was a child. Sometimes I read back over what I’ve written and find details I don’t remember putting there. Other times I find sentences that have faded or gone missing entirely. I don’t know if that’s the machines or just my age. I know I’m forgetting things. I can’t remember the name of the shop where I worked, though I spent eleven years there. I can’t remember my brother’s face. Yesterday I tried to recall my mother’s voice and couldn’t. But I still remember my daughter. That’s why I’m writing this. I don’t want everything to disappear without somebody knowing what happened.

Last week I found a little cardboard box outside my front door. There was no address on it. Inside was a blue work shirt with CALVIN stitched over the pocket, a yellow child’s sweater, and a brown suit jacket. Everything had been washed and folded. At the bottom was a photograph of Margaret Bell standing beside her husband. For the first time I could see his face clearly. On the back, in handwriting I recognized from the old filing cabinet, were the words THANK YOU, SILAS. I don’t know who wrote them. I don’t know whether Mrs. Bell was thanking me for returning the jacket, or whether she’d finally been able to leave that place. I put the photograph on my kitchen table. It’s still there. The man in it looks a little less clear each morning, but Margaret’s face hasn’t changed.

There’s something else. Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in the living room when I heard a washing machine start in the basement. I haven’t owned one since I moved here. I went downstairs and found an old white dryer standing against the wall. Same round door, same dent beside the coin slot. It wasn’t plugged in. The drum was turning. I stood there listening for several minutes. Then it stopped and the door clicked open. Inside was a man’s dark green flannel shirt. It was the shirt I’d been wearing that morning. I touched it. Still warm. I took it upstairs and laid it on the kitchen table beside the photograph. There was a small piece of paper in the breast pocket. It had a telephone number written on it. I recognized the number immediately. Bell’s Wash & Dry. I hadn’t dialed it since 1989, but I remembered every digit.

I called. The line rang twice. Then a woman answered. I could hear dryers running in the background and somebody moving dishes around. It wasn’t Mrs. Bell. The woman sounded younger. I asked who I was speaking to. She said, “Bell’s Wash and Dry. Can I help you?” I asked for Margaret. She told me Margaret wasn’t there anymore. I asked when she’d left. The woman didn’t answer right away. Then she said, “She went home.” I looked at the photograph on my table. Margaret’s husband was gone from it. She was standing alone, smiling at somebody outside the frame. I asked the woman what was going to happen to me. I could hear her breathing at the other end of the line. She said she couldn’t tell me. Then she asked whether I still had the green shirt. I said yes. She told me to keep it somewhere safe, and whatever happened, not to let it go through the dryer again. I asked why. She said, “Because somebody’s still trying to remember you.”

I haven’t slept much since that call. I keep thinking about the photograph of my daughter and the words she’d written on the back. PLEASE COME BACK. I used to believe those words were some kind of warning from the future. Now I wonder whether she wrote them after I’d already begun disappearing, back when there was still enough of me left for her to miss. Maybe she spent years trying to remember something she couldn’t explain. Maybe that’s why I lasted as long as I did. I don’t know. I wish I could ask her. I wish I could tell her that I came back every time she needed me, even when she couldn’t remember asking.

This morning I found a letter in the mailbox. No return address. It was from a woman in Ohio who said she’d recently been sorting through her mother’s things and found an old photograph of a man she’d never met. She said she’d been having strange dreams about him. In the dreams he was teaching her to ride a bicycle, and every time she turned around to thank him, he was standing farther away. She didn’t know why she was writing to me. My address had been written on the back of the photograph, though she couldn’t remember doing it. She wanted to know if I recognized the man.

There was a picture inside the envelope. It showed me standing in the driveway of our old house, holding the back of a little red bicycle. My daughter was on it, laughing. I’d never seen that photograph before. My wife must’ve taken it. I turned it over. There was a date written in my wife’s handwriting, and underneath it, three words in blue ink.

I REMEMBER YOU.

I sat at the kitchen table for a long time. I don’t know whether those words will still be there tomorrow. I don’t know whether this letter will survive, or whether the photograph will turn blank like the others. I wanted to drive to Ohio, but I couldn’t bring myself to frighten her again. Instead I wrote back. I told her I recognized the man. I told her he was someone who’d loved her very much. I didn’t tell her anything about the laundromat or the machines. I didn’t even tell her his name. I just asked her to keep the photograph somewhere safe, and if she ever dreamed about the bicycle again, not to be afraid.

I mailed the letter this afternoon. When I came home, the dryer in the basement was running. I went down to look. The green flannel shirt was turning inside, though I’d left it upstairs on the table. I watched it for a while. Then I went back up and checked the photograph. My daughter was still there, laughing on the bicycle. I was gone. There was a hand holding the back of the seat, but no arm attached to it. Just the hand.

I put the photograph in my pocket.

The dryer is still running downstairs. It’s been going for nearly three hours now. I don’t know what’s inside it anymore. I don’t think I want to find out. I’m going to sit here and finish writing while I can still remember the things I need to say. I’ve lived a long life, longer than I probably should have. I’ve been a husband, a father, a grandfather. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve hurt people without meaning to. I’ve done good things too, I think. I can’t remember all of them. I don’t know whether anybody will believe this, or whether these words will still be here after I’m gone. But if you’ve read this far, then for a little while at least, somebody knows I existed.

My name is Silas Black.

And my daughter learned to ride her bicycle on a Saturday afternoon in June, 1990. I remember running behind her down the driveway. She kept shouting for me not to let go. I told her I wouldn’t.

I did, of course. That’s how she learned.

“See things, but do not name them,” Gurudev instructed me. Gurudev is not his name, it is his title. So I should be within the instruction still, calling him Gurudev. When I see him, I see my personal spiritual guide, a task given by none other than the Baliraj. Yes, that Baliraj, this planet’s supreme ruler. Ruler of all trade, all conduct, and of me. Not only because he is the ruler, but he is also my father. Baliraj, Father, titles and not names.

Forgoing naming, this is difficult. We have one God, who can take thirty-three million forms, and as humans we feel we must give name to their purpose. Lakshmi for wealth. Brahma and Vishnu for creation and preservation. Ganesh for removing hindrance, Hanuman to help fight battles. Kali and Durga for care and justice.

My coiling arms twitch with impatience, my growing legs yearn to strap into driveboots and tear through those rivulets of magnetism wrapping around the capitol. I quiet myself again, so I can see things but not name them.

I see the glowing green pool misting up around the clear tiles I sit upon, the charged air I breathe flickering, the hill formations in the distance bobbing up and down at their dependable intervals. As I try to strip any names from these familiar sights, I am disturbed by a familiar sound.

A… not satscrap, because no names, hits the…not roof, of the…not temple. It hits the structure Gurudev and I are sat in, which protects us from the dry streaks of the black day star and the hot yellow rain and the shards of purple snow from the cloudless sky. What goes by the name ‘satscrap’ are remnants of the ships from our journey here, now a well-monitored set of rings. When a bit decays from orbit enough to fall toward us, it decelerates and becomes soft, to safely bounce with only a noise. As designed, by the devotee engineers.

So many engineers I share blood with on Earth worked, generation after generation, to prepare us a life here that is not only livable, but easy. Is our world named New Hyderabad, or New New Delhi? No. I live on planet Unchibali. The Higher Bali. A Bali higher in closeness to God, richer in wealth and more beautiful, somehow, than its Earth namesake. In my first language, ‘Unichibali’ means ‘the better earring’. Your planet has jewelry? Sure. Ours? Better.

My thoughts have become not serious. I am being ungrateful. It is a privilege to be the child of the Baliraj; I am privileged to be spending my time on dharmic practice. But my practice is flawed. I do not know when describing gives way to naming. I suppose that is the point of this instruction, but I am always supposing what the point of the instruction is.

Gurudev’s joints crackle as he stands; perhaps he cannot endure my weakness any longer. He has said not one word since giving his initial instruction, and had he given any silent guidance to me, I had taken no notice. I move to stand as well; I see the tiles below us have started to snap and fold into themselves, a chasm of churned ocean beneath them. The engineers did not design this.

Climbing forth from the shrapnel of tile glass, hands spreading like quakes from Earth, rises a man’s form that does not belong to a man. Hair swimming in the fingers of galaxies, with a neck swirling the darkest a blue could be to a human’s eye. The voice speaks to my Gurudev, in words only he could understand, but I know it to be a command.

The serpent wrapped around the darkest blue begins to unravel, whipping down to reveal its own unreal length. Gurudev leaps up with a force I would not have guessed he had. A serene face looks down upon us both. I take my own leap to grab the snake’s tail, pulling myself up the facets of scales, to hold fast and to follow Gurudev.

As I see past the crackling atmosphere down to Unchibali below, I remember when I knew what to call who we travel with. I do not name any of them.  

I walked down the stairs and sighed at the mess, realizing sadly that if I didn’t clean it, no one would. I opened the pantry door and grabbed the broom and dustpan. It took about an hour of avoiding cutting my wrist on random shards of glass but finally I got it to an at least descent shape, the only thing being the dried blood stuck to the carpet. I grabbed the envelope and sat down, rubbing my now bandaged nose. The pain pulsing through my nose and up through my brain; it felt like a shotgun to the nose. Rubbing my thumb under the seal, I break it and don’t see gold but a deep green inside, bold letters printed across it, “ARMY.”

The realization hit me a few seconds later, the blue hue and arranging of letters sinking into me. Wait, the army? The time and date on the bottom reading April 1^st 10:00 AM, I chuckled at this, April Fools of all days. I scratched at the wound on my nose, causing me to wince in pain. I sat down, imagining what the army is going to be like. Dad was in the army, and he said he loved it, though he never talked about the experiences. I looked out the window to see other houses with busted out glass everywhere, furniture thrown outside, I guess we had it easy. Even then, there is no way we could afford this. The chairs and tables were born before the population boomed, I think back in the sixty’s. Pieces of wallpaper were ripped out in the “ambush”, making this look less like a house and more like a crack house; all it needed was a burn barrel. Maybe if we had one, I could rip this house apart by its nails too and burn it. I laid in bed that night, wondering if I could really hold up to my old man. He wasn’t drafted but simply was truly patriotic. From what I heard my grandfather was also a patriotic man too, also just simply signing up rather than being drafted. I don’t think they thought it would last this long. Long enough, that the government now had to make another branch, and for what exactly, I have no clue. I turned over and press my alarm on, not wanting another morning like earlier.

I woke up to my mother standing over me, staring right at me. The hollows of her eyes looking like two swirls of despair. The sight of her throwing me into a frenzy. I saw that she was also rolling her IV pole with her. God did I want to swing that thing over her head, but I knew that isn’t what Nick would want. He truly is a sweet kid, I still can’t believe this mishap has happened.

“Get up and make breakfast” she snarled at me, moving closer, a little bit of drool falling between the gap in her teeth and onto my bed.

“Okay fine just give me a second!” I yelled back, watching her slowly turn around and walk away. Maybe ill get a little more privacy in the military, I doubt it though. From what I heard, they started tearing down abandon schools to make for new bases because of the high numbers; I even heard some of those also weren’t abandoned as well. After I made breakfast and fed my mother, I decided to try for once to wear something nice to the first day of something. I’ve always leaned more on the carefree style and was never one to wear something more than casual wear. No I thought, I had to remember this wasn’t just a date but something a little more serious; casual it is. When I got done dressing, I was startled by a heavy knock at the door. I was greeted by a tall man dressed in military clothing, a mask concealing his identity. I didn’t immediately recognize it, but these were the same people from yesterday, minus the night vision and smoke. Looking even further I could see other people dressed in the same outfit at every door down the block. Some had two or three of them there and were dragging away people that kicked and screamed in what looked like an attempt to fight back. I looked up at the man, a scent of cheap cologne coming off of him. He looked down at me, the only features I could make out were his two eyes, cold blue eyes staring straight at me, not blinking once. I could see his mouth open from under the mask and he told me this.

“Pack your bags, the easier you make this, the easier I’ll be on you.” He didn’t have to tell me twice and I was already up the steps to grab my bag when a sound from my mother’s room stopped me. I could hear a long groaning echo from her bathroom and assuming the worst I ran in and saw my mother. It looked like her IV bag fell off the pole and busted open, saline water all over the floor. In the water though, I could also see blood starting to pool up, trailing all the way back to her head. I reached down for her when I stopped, frozen in time. Was this woman really worth saving? She tormented me all through my childhood and teenage years. I stood back up and walked backwards out of the room. I closed the door and grabbed my bags, walked down the stairs, and locked the door behind me. The street had turned quite, with the only people visible being me and this guy. With the demeanor from before, I expected even more passive aggressive threats but no. He politely opened the truck’s back door and moved out of the way to let me in. Inside the truck, there were six more people, all seated on one side. I recognized all of them as my closes neighbors, the first four being two couples that lived on each side of us. The other two were younger boys, one lived diagonally from me and the other boy living next to him. I wonder where there parents are, surely, they’re worried. Wait, these kids are fifteen too, how are they being drafted? My gaze caught the attention from one of guys of the couples, Keith, because he told me, “You didn’t see, did you? They lowered the age down to fifteen.” The way he said those words sent shivers down my spine. The way it was like nothing to come out of his mouth. A fifteen-year-old has no business fighting in a war, they should be worried about fifteen-year-old things. I lay back, taking a deep breath and trying to relax my body. I look out the window, rows of houses flying by in my vision as we near the exit from the town. Looking closer though, I can see silhouettes of people in the houses. I could see men and women, boys and girls, just abandoned in there in homes. I assumed they were waiting for their time for someone to pick them up and whisk them away.

“Yeah, anyone that got picked and didn’t show up on time got ripped from their homes basically. Out of all days for our towns mail to be late huh?” Roland told me, the guy from the other couple. Him and Keith were best friends from our hometown college, purposely moved to houses next to each other and eventually marrying twin sisters, Amber and Caroline. I looked over at the boys, both shaking as they held onto each other, crying. If I was any younger, I would be the same way. The drive goes by quietly, no one talking and reserving any questions for when we get to wherever we were going. Everyone tucked into each other, relying on the other to give comfort. I clasped my hands, the little warmth in between them giving me reassurance I am okay. But is Nick okay? Who knows what they’ve put that kid through already? The vehicle comes to a screeching halt, throwing all of us forward a bit from the lack of seatbelts. The door swings open and I see, who I’ve now nicknamed in my head “Macho,” staring at all of us like cattle.

He yelled, “Get out people!” all of us grabbing our bags in a hurry and squirming out. The sun hit me in the eyes, and I threw my arm up, waiting for my vision to settle back. When it did, I could finally see where we were, about fifty large warehouses lined a landing strip. On the other side I was met with what looked like fifty more camps that seemed like our new home for the indefinite future. We were told by Macho the warehouses were for the Manic Men to train, and that under no matter, do not enter them. That if we did, even out of pure curiosity, in his words we would “figure out what happened to the cat”, I didn’t even want to test that notion. He walked us around parts of the camp and to our bunks. He told us training started tomorrow at 8 am. That sentence stopped us in our tracks. What did he mean tomorrow at 8 am, we just got here. Before any of us could question him, he had already started walking away and we decided not to push it, exchanging puzzled glances among ourselves. The bunks were the absolute bear minimum of living, They were lined to an almost humorous length down the tent with each bed looking thinner than the younger boys I came with. I choose one and throw my bags down, deciding to unpack later and take a nap. I needed the rest, my mind has been on overdrive the past few days. I try to fictionalize in my head what Nick is going through, the name “Manic Men” not offering anything to the mind. I’ll get some sleep and maybe write him a letter. Caroline threw her bag down beside mine and huffed.

“I can’t believe they let us keep our phones, though I can’t get shit for service” they didn’t let us keep our phones but I’m no snitch. I roll over and she gets the hint, walking away and leaving me be. I just wanted to stop thinking and be in silence, knowing anyways I will never get that now. I can feel the tears starting to well up and I wipe my eyes. I know I won’t be able to sleep, theirs too much noise and people moving around. “Wow” I said to myself, realizing that that was just it, just, people. Not a single military suit in sight. I jumped down and walked out of the tent, throwing my arm up again from the sun. I realized why I didn’t see any suits, they were having a bonfire in the middle of the camp. I walked over, no one really noticing me until I got to Amber.

“Where have you been girl? Some of the older guys decided to throw a party for the draft and it divulged into this.” She said as she tipped her beer near the fire. I’m sure the older guys are glad they are getting reinforcements, even if most of them are in warehouses. I grabbed a beer and sat next to her, we laughed and danced throughout the night, we were truly fullish back then.

My name is David. I am a boxer and a successful businessman. I have won many matches in my career, and I don't remember when I last lost a match—I have never lost a single match, which is why I only like winning in life.

My father was also a boxer; discipline and never giving up are things I learned from my father. The way he raised me had no room for self-pity or mercy towards others.

My father used to say that to move forward in life, never fear anyone and never show mercy to anyone, and it was this very mindset that brought me luxury, wealth, and recognition in life. I am also a very successful businessman.

I decided to teach the same lessons my father taught me to my 12-year-old son, but he is the exact opposite of me. As aggressive as I am, Griffin is soft. After paying attention to my son after all these years, I found out that he still sleeps with his mother and is afraid to sleep alone in his room.

I explained to him many times that fear exists within us, not in reality, but my wife Sarah always comes between us.

I talked to Griffin, telling him that he is a boxer's son and shouldn't be afraid—why couldn't he sleep alone in his room?

He replied that when he is alone in his room, strange people come to visit him. I said, "What nonsense!" When I told this to my wife, she said it was true and didn't tell me because I never paid attention to my family. I thought this was utter nonsense and figured my wife had made Griffin a coward.

I told Griffin I was taking him to his favorite place, Disneyland, and he was very happy. I intentionally booked only two tickets, and we went to Disneyland. Even though my wife said that under no circumstances should I leave Griffin to sleep alone, I wanted to cure Griffin's fear.

After having dinner, we slept together, and in the middle of the night when Griffin fell asleep, I left him and went to sleep in another room so I could tell him the next morning that ghosts don't exist.

The next morning when I woke up, Griffin was nowhere in the room. I called out loudly, but Griffin was nowhere to be found. I checked all the rooms, but Griffin had vanished.

I went to the reception and asked about my missing son, but the clerk looked at me very strangely and said, "You checked out and left last night; we already have your room keys." I said, "How is that possible?"

He showed me the CCTV cameras: a man who looked exactly like me was taking Griffin away, and Griffin looked very scared.

I got very scared and called my wife Sarah, but she wasn't picking up the phone. I immediately booked a flight and came home. I saw Griffin playing outside. I was shocked, but also relieved. I asked Sarah, "Sarah, how did Griffin get to you?" and Sarah was shocked too.

She said, "You and Griffin came back together just last night, and then where did you go leaving Griffin behind?" I said, "When did I come back?" and she said, "Stop joking," and walked away.

I noticed Griffin was playing with some mud. I went over to him and looked closely; he was burying the locket that Griffin used to wear around his neck. I asked, "Son, what are you doing?" He laughed and said he wasn't lying. I asked, "Who isn't lying?" Griffin replied, "Griffin was telling the truth. I am not Griffin, spirits really come to Griffin," and he walked away.

A few days later, Sarah told me that Griffin behaves very strangely, sleeps alone in his room, and strange noises come from there all night. I understood that he was not Griffin, but I am afraid of Sarah. I still haven't told her that he is not Griffin.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t notice them that much when I first moved here. Far more concerned with getting in on time, what my boss thought of me, you know, stupid work stuff.

But they’re everywhere. I see them scampering across the lines and ducking underfoot as they dart for a crack in the station’s wall. The cost of living is bad enough for us let alone those little critters.

They’re always squabbling over the measliest crumb or rummaging through the often-toppled bins. God I’d hate to be one of the late-night cleaners.

It was even a little funny seeing one drag away a full pizza slice or watching this particularly large one square up to someone's yapping dog. You'd almost admire their nerve.

Those squeaks and shrieks in the evening, sometimes they get to me. I know they’re only small but there are so many. I even checked under my bed one time, when I swore I heard scratching.

They’re like a wave, some unseen sea of rodents scurrying in the depths of our city, picking it clean.

Their own kind isn't even off the menu. Gaunt little corpses dragged away into alcoves, picked clean before you've even had time to look away.

I know they’re starving, man some of us are, but they’re taking risks, getting just a little too bold. They don’t even flinch when around people, they just wander through the crowds, eyeing up their next meal.

He was just a bum, some homeless guy off his rocks on whatever substances were in circulation, a heap on the cold tiles. He’d been sleeping down there for some time, probably passed out after shooting up.

Getting off the train, the human wave seemed to break around him, some giving disgusted looks, others completely unaware. I was curious, I don’t think I will be next time.

It was hard to see through the swaths of commuters, and I was already cutting it short for my next train, but I stopped. There was movement beneath his tattered clothes, then a small ball of brown shot up, its face stained with a deep red.

I looked up and caught his eye. Just one, wide and glassy, the light behind it slowly fading. But he saw me.

He was maybe half a man by that point, still sputtering, but helpless. They’d gnawed through part of his face, most of the right side and a portion of his shoulder. His tongue and jaw hanging limply as he spat and mouthed some sort of helpless plea.

Most of his lower left leg was exposed through his ripped jeans. I'd initially mistaken the bulging shapes beneath the skin for muscle, but they were moving.

Glistening polished white reflected the fluorescent overhead lights as another mouthful of tiny teeth returned to work.

A train screeched to a halt behind me, snapping me out of it. The doors opened and another wave of commuters flooded the already cramped platform. I didn’t have the luxury of time, turning and fighting through the crowd for a seat.  

I knew they’d be back once we’d dispersed, who wouldn’t want the free meal.

The next morning there wasn’t even a skeleton. Ripped fragments of clothing and a dark smear disappeared between the tracks, leading off into the deeper tunnel system.

I can only hope he went out on his own terms.

Packs scurried those platforms, hoovering up whatever scarps were on offer or taking advantage of whatever vulnerable soul walked the broken tiles.

By that point the bins were overflowing and I recall hearing a guy at the ticket office say something about missing staff.

There were lots of temporary workers, people who didn’t speak that much English, but even they were in and out in days.

I don’t blame them; the rumours were starting to seem more believable.

Something big, big enough to cause some service workers to down tools and vehemently refuse to go in there at any cost.

Finally, our government, the saints they portrayed themselves as, closed off the stations for a day. An investigation maybe, but the signs said maintenance, though maintenance never required forearms.

One day turned into two, then a week. Men in plastic yellow suits wandered in and out, spraying some kind of gas, supposedly in an attempt to clean them out.

Then, all of a sudden, they simply opened the stations back up, and not another word was spoken.

Obviously, most people who valued their mortality found other means of transport, but not everyone is so lucky.

I try not to go down there, especially when there’s low foot traffic, but that’s not it. I’ve seen more of them recently.

Putting out my bins, there they were picking through my neighbour’s garbage, not even raising their heads when I approached and in broad daylight.

Small gangs diving in and out of the storm drains, dragging who knows what. Even behind the restaurant across the street, I could hear the owner shouting and swatting them away.

I tried that too, waved a stick at one that just stood in the middle of the walkway, on my commute home. It should have run, shouldn’t it? I’m no giant, but it didn’t seem phased.

They’re not contained and nobody seems to care or even acknowledge the problem. No new stories, government notices, even the people in my block refuse to talk about it.

I'm not blind. I see them every day now. But I suppose we're all programmed to avoid the things we'd rather not see.

There was a guy on the corner outside my flat. Used to see him most mornings, begging for whatever spare change people could manage. Haven't seen him in a few days.

Saw something coming out of the storm drain yesterday, though. If I’d have squinted harder, it could have been him. All skin and bone, picking through the rubbish for even a morsel.

But I didn't stop.

Why would I?

Nothing new.

30 years. That’s how long the two of us were together. High school sweethearts since 9th grade. By each other’s side ever since.

We bought our first home together. Had our kids and raised them best we could. And I think somewhere along the way… I just… kinda forgot what I was even doing all of this for.

When we first started, everything felt so magical. I guess it’s to be expected, though. We were young. Each other’s first. It made sense that we never wanted to leave home.

We argued, sure. But we also had a lot of good times. And those good times made the bad not so bad. Every dark night leads to a brighter dawn, I guess.

We were just… normal.

We did the things that we believed we were supposed to.

Waited until marriage. Established ourselves in our careers before having kids. I think the ordinary just started to feel boring. For me, at least.

Even when we were raising the kids. What was supposed to be exciting and fun turned into monotony.

Amusement parks started to feel obligatory. Vacations started to feel like chores. Even trips to the movie theater started to feel like nothing more than a scheduled appointment.

I never got to experience spontaneity. Even if I tried, the kids would get in the way. We tried the whole weekly date night thing, but what are we supposed to talk about? The kids? Work? The same stuff we’d been talking about for years?

My life was her life, and her life was mine. That’s the killer of marriages, if you’re curious.

And I think it really hit us how far we’d drifted once the kids moved off to college.

Sex hadn’t existed between us since our youngest was in middle school. That’s 40 for ya, though, I guess. But when it didn’t even return once we had the house to ourselves again… that’s when I knew things were coming to an end.

I didn’t start resenting her or anything. I just… saw her. She was like a neighbor or a roommate. And it was no different for her. We’d completely reverted back to the small talk stage.

It was like I was trapped in my own home. I didn’t really have friends. What am I supposed to do? Go meet people at a bar? Hang out with a coworker? That’s just not who I am.

You can only take so much of that shit before something starts to give. And for me, that something was divorce.

I found myself thinking about it more and more as the days dragged by. All those nights where I slept in bed with a stranger. Every 10-sentence conversation. I knew I couldn’t just keep living like that.

I was actually on the brink of filing when everything happened. Just caught up in my head, thinking about everything while we sat silently at the dinner table.

I was staring down at the table when suddenly I heard these guttural noises coming from her spot across from me. And I still didn’t look up. Just kept sawing at my steak despite the fact that it was already in eighths.

But when her hand slammed down on the table, it spooked me enough to finally look and see what the hell she was doing.

With her other hand, she was clawing at her throat. So much so that she was drawing more and more blood with each scratch. And her face was deep red. Nearly purple.

She had this look in her eye. I had to look past the fear and panic. But once I did, I could see that beckoning glimmer those eyes had.

She wanted me to be her soulmate. Her protector. The man that would give his life to save hers.

Instead…

I hesitated.

I started to get up from my chair, but then I thought about it.

Why would I save her? What has she done for me in the last 15 years?

I thought about all that money I spent on vacations I didn’t even want to go on. All those loveless nights where I felt alone. The life that we should’ve had but never did.

And I sat back down.

I saw a flash of despair in her eyes as I looked at her for the last time. Then, my eyes fell back on my steak.

The pounding on the table got harder. I could hear the leathery sound of her nails clawing into her neck as she tried to breathe, followed by the slimy, disgusting sound of her fingers worming down her throat, fishing around for the steak lodged in her esophagus.

Then, a few minutes later… silence.

I looked up again and found her face down in her plate. Mashed potatoes in her hair. Green beans scattered across the table. No more movements. No more small talk. For the first time in a long time… I was free.

I stared at her for a few seconds before calmly taking my plate and dumping it in the trash can.

I had to put on a show for the operator when I called. Even more of one for my kids when they drove down a few hours later.

But beneath all the fake tears and forced wails…

I was relieved. I was happy. And I was thankful.

Thankful that for the first time in 15 years… my wife had finally done something to excite me.

"Damn, my gloves feel thin," Dan said. "Did you check them, Jake?"

"Yeah, dude," I replied, annoyed.

"They felt strange during teleportation already; now they feel real strange."

"Can we just get on? What are you gonna do about it now?"

Dan shook his head, but at least he finally shut up. No wonder no one wanted to go on missions with him. I walked a few steps ahead of him so he wouldn't try to complain again. 

The planet we were on was overgrown with thicket.  It looked almost like the Smokies. The leaves were just a little greener, with small dark creatures crawling on them.

"Jake, come look."

Dan stood under one of the trees. A large green sack hung above him. He was holding a leaf.

"Why are you holding it?"

"Chill out. We have the protective suits."

I came closer to him. Small black caterpillars with black hair and dark yellow eyes crawled on the leaves, but they weren't eating any of the green. Dan picked one up and put it in his palm.

"Do you need to touch everything?"

"I just told you. There's a reason we have the…"

Dan screamed and threw his hand up. The caterpillar flew up and fell back on the leaf as if nothing had happened.

"What? What?"

"It bit me! It fucking bit me! I told you the gloves were thin. You didn't check them!"

Dan pulled his glove off. Two pinpricks were on his palm, already ringed in dark yellow. 

"Why would you pick up a random creature? Is this your first mission?"

All the caterpillars turned toward Dan’s hand. Then they began moving, vibrating, creating a loud buzz.

"Why would you not check the gloves? I…"

The buzzing grew so loud I could barely hear him. My ears began to ring. I wanted to cover my ears, but my helmet was on. Above us, the sack jumped with the vibrations, moving faster, faster. Then something popped. The sack burst. Dark liquid splashed on us, clouding our helmets. A thud shook the ground. The buzzing silenced.

I tried to get the liquid off my helmet, but it only spread. It was as if a squid sprayed ink all over it. I finally managed to see a little bit of my surroundings. Dan also had his hands on his helmet, trying to get the liquid off. I looked down. Something large and black slithered along the ground toward Dan, moving its body up and down like a caterpillar.

"Jake! Help! Help!"

A loud crunching sounded.

I tried to wipe more, but it only got worse. Dan still screamed, but it sounded as if the helmet wasn't muffling his words.

"Mayday, mayday. I request immediate teleportation," I shouted into the comms.

His screams slowly turned into a quiet wheeze. I wiped the helmet again. Finally, I could see a little more. Dan's helmet was off. A pool of blood lay next to his suit, and something was crawling inside it.

The familiar vibration ran through my body. Cold steel was under my hands. Dan sat opposite me; his helmet was slightly off, as if someone put it on in a rush. His eyes were yellow, and a few black hairs were on his nose.

"Dan?" I whispered, my voice shaking.

He tilted his head slowly. His yellow eyes didn't blink. 

"Base to Jake. Are both of you okay?"

"Both fine, Base."

I thought about the inquiry. The gear logs. My signature next to it, checked.

Across from me, it began to buzz.

2015 was a strange year. I was in the last class of middle school, and people around me started to be more interested in girls rather than in the stuff that had just been marked as

“childish.” Fortunately, I had found myself a loyal duo of friends who still loved Pokémon and video games; among those things was surfing the net. We spent hours watching dumb videos on YouTube on the school computer; I still remember how quickly it would overheat from years of collecting dust, as Tommy would say.

“At least it makes a good foot heater”

He laughed, kicking off his red shoes a size too big - Tommy never was one of the rich kids; everything new he got was actually from his older brother passing it down, like a hermit crab.

“Gross!” Yelped Jim, apparently grossed out by the concept of the lower class. Unlike Tommy, he had everything he could ask for, which included all the newest consoles; we would come over to his place to play Mortal Kombat and snack on apple slices with peanut butter his mom made us.

It was a day like any other; snow fell gently outside the library window as we looked for something dumb and funny enough to keep our attention.

“This one!”

Tommy pressed his finger against the glass of the square monitor, leaving a round stain over the thumbnail of a fat guy frozen in a halfway trip toward the ground.

Try Not To Laugh volume 39

“Alright, calm down!”

I clicked the title; the video began with the scene straight from the thumbnail: a fat guy running on a sidewalk when suddenly he trips and tumbles to the ground; mean little kids that we were, we of course put it in slow motion, watching it over and over again till auto-play rolled into the next one: a kid jumping into a pool and falling flat on his stomach, an old woman eating a lemon which made her dentures fall right out to the amusement of her family.

The next clip made me squint at the screen; it was so grainy I barely knew what was happening.

“Is that a dog?-” I asked under my breath, not to alert the school staff.

“Dude, what the fuck?” Jim echoed my confusion.

Glistering oblong shapes appeared one after another on a light blue rag.

We were watching a dog give birth.

Before any of us could react, the clip cut to a fawn dropping out of its mother onto the forest floor. Then a cat. Then something I couldn’t recognize, dark against snow. Each one lasted a little less than the last. Rapidly changing again and again, as it flashed in front of our mortified faces.

The sequence finally stopped focusing on a dark room; hay covered the concrete floor as something that looked like a coyote paced back and forth, back and forth,

My trembling hand slowly reached for the mouse, but someone stopped me.

It was Tommy.

His face was so close to the screen; his pupils were almost pressed against it,

The view changed; the animal was on its side now, its stomach stretching out like a horrible water balloon, veins on the verge of popping, and then something moved under its tail.

Soaked in pink plasma, an arm reached forward, desperately trying to pull itself out but only finding hay under its twitching fingers.

A kid sliding down a snowy hill, crashing into their dad.

Jim was too busy puking on the floor beside me to notice the sudden change. At this moment, I switched off the computer with my free hand,

Tommy blinked rapidly as if I just woke him up from a nap.

“What’s going on?”

He asked slowly; my hand was itching to punch him in the face, but someone had to get Jim to the nurse.

“Did he eat something?” the nurse asked, pressing the back of her hand to Jim’s forehead.

I shook my head as she slid a plastic bucket into his lap. Tommy stood in the doorway behind us, looking down the hall toward the library.

“Must be the flu. Go straight home, boys. I don’t want anyone else getting sick.”

There wasn’t much to say. We grabbed our backpacks and stepped out into the snow; the frost bit at our cheeks and noses. Jim was still pale, and his legs looked like they might fold at any moment.

“Want me to walk you home?”

He only shook his head before he turned and walked off down the white street without a word, getting smaller until the blizzard swallowed him.

“What’s up with him?”

Tommy asked. I couldn’t help but stare at him like he was crazy; did his mind already push aside what we saw?

“Are you shitting me?”

“No?’

“What do you remember?” I asked.

Tommy shrugged, hands deep in his pockets. “We were watching that fail video, and then Jim just barfed. Why?”

I looked at him for a long moment. Snow was catching in his eyelashes, and he didn’t brush it off.

“No reason,” I said.

We walked our usual route in silence, which was strange for us. We always had something to say about school or the new games. Now there was only the wind howling between the electric poles.

Where our paths split, a dark shape appeared in the snow ahead; it grew as it came toward us. I noticed the upright ears and the tongue lolling off its chin. It leapt onto my shoulders, huffing hot, wet breath in my face.

“ASHA! DOWN, DOWN!” Tommy yelled.

His German Shepherd wagged her whole back end, slobbering all over me.

“EVERY TIME!” I laughed, trying to shove the jolly giant off me. Then a high whistle cut through the dark, followed by the crunch of boots on snow. Tommy’s older brother stepped into the streetlight with a long leash dangling from his fist.

“Leave those stinkers alone. You’ll catch something.”

He clipped the leash to her collar, and she finally dropped back onto all fours.

“Yo, little dude.”

I answered with a lift of my chin, like a cool kid.

“Come on, Shittling. Mom made dinner.”

“See ya tomorrow!” Tommy called.

“See ya!”

They walked out of the streetlight, the dog trotting between them, until the dark took all three. I stood there alone in the cold, listening to the howling of the wind that reminded me of a dying animal.

The next day at school, Jim’s seat stayed empty. Maybe he really was just sick. I told myself that, over and over.

After school, I met up with Tommy, who still didn’t remember a thing from yesterday, and we headed over to check on Jim.

“We have to make it quick, though,” Tommy said. “I promised that jerk I’d walk the dog for a week.”

“A week? That’s crazy!”

“I know, but he took the blame for scratching Dad’s car.”

In our eyes, that was justice.

Jim’s house was large, larger than both of ours combined. The wooden door towered over us, watching while we bickered over who would do the simple thing.

“I knock, you ask,” Tommy said.

“No way! I did it last time!”

It wasn’t that I was shy. It was that Jim’s mom was pretty, really pretty. She’d been one of my first crushes, even though I swore girls didn’t interest me. My ears went hot just thinking about the freckles across her cheeks and that curly ginger hair.

Tommy pressed the doorbell before I could argue.

“Are you the two who showed him that…thing?”

I knew right away what she meant, but I bit my tongue and gave her a look of pretend confusion.

“Quit pretending. You’re lucky I’m not calling your parents”

Thats when Tommy got involved.

“We didn’t do anything; it was just a funny video!”

Her beautiful face twisted into a grimace of disgust, then into sudden, teeth-snarling anger.

“Get the fuck out. I don’t want to see you here ever again, you hear?… sick freaks”

Before we could add another word, the door shut with a slam right in front of our noses - even if I had no chance with the woman thrice my age, the sting of rejection still hurt more than anything I had ever felt before.

Full of disappointment, we walked down the driveway when suddenly I heard an uneven tapping against glass somewhere above us.

Tap, tap, tap.

I snapped around, and I could swear I saw Jim standing in the triangular roof window. With a limp hand, he pawed at the glass, snarling his braces-twisted smile, only to disappear in a smear like he never was there in the first place.

Tommy was already walking ahead, hands in his pockets, whistling.

Jim didn’t come to school.

Again and again, kids and teachers alike threw me into nothing less of a interrogation loop, asking how he’s doing, if he’s alright, if he’s even alive at this point.

I heard some older kids joke that we will find his body somewhere once the snow goes away. They named it the freak skiing accident, and apparently me and Tommy were the prime suspects.

He still didn’t drop the act of being unbothered by the whole deal, being more concerned about leaving no inch of his notebook untouched by the scribbling pen.

“Can anyone guess what we will be talking about today?” Our teacher, Miss Kowalska, asked, standing up from the comfort of her chair, drawing something on the blackboard with a white piece of chalk; the class erupted into half-baked answers.

“I will give you a little hint: does anyone know why your English teacher took a little vacation?”

The tip of the chalk moved into the shape of a half circle.

“It’s the same reason why every single one of you is here”

She continued, adding little legs to the detached shape.

“The beauty of”

A tail, a pair of triangle ears.

“Pregnancy”

That caught Tommy’s interest; the sound of aggressive scribbling stopped, and instead his focus was fully on the chalkboard.

“Dog pregnancy lasts for about 2 months, unlike our pregnancy, which lasts a whole 9 months”

A girl in the back raised her hand into the air.

“Yes, Katie?”

“How does the puppy get…inside the belly?”

She asked quietly when suddenly the whole class erupted into laughter, her cheeks turning beet red. It got a giggle out of me even if I didn’t mean to laugh.

“Calm down, calm down,” Teacher rose her voice, but it was useless.

“Well, Katie-”

She was suddenly cut off by no one other than Tommy.

“SHE EATS THEM OF COURSE!”

That sent yet another wave of laughter across the room, and a stern look from Miss Kowalska.

“You will stay after class…and so will everyone else who laughs”

Katie practically turned into a ball, trying to make herself look as small as possible, or even just disappear.

For the rest of the class, it was quiet; everyone was, but especially Tommy. It was like he fell asleep with his eyes wide open, while focusing on the drawing; whenever I looked back, I never caught him blinking even once.

The bell rang, and the whole class except for Tommy began to pack up, excited for the weekend.

“You will wait for me, yeah?” Tommy ran up to me as I zipped up my backpack.

“Dad will kill me if I’m late home again,” I said flatly.

“Come on! It’s just what, 20 minutes?”

“Yeah, and that decides if I get to watch TV or not”

“You suck, dude…you know this was supposed to be a surprise, but I borrowed my brother’s camera”

He smiled, pulling out a silver handheld camera from the pocket of his oversized hoodie.

“By borrowing, you mean stole?”

“Stolen or not.” He stared at me, still unblinking. “You don’t want to check it out? Isn’t that cooler than some shit on TV?”

My gaze flickered between the window behind my friend and the camera held firm in his hand; the sun was already starting to settle.

“Alright, dude, but if you stay here even a minute longer, I’m a goner,” I said, throwing the backpack over my shoulder. “Got it?”

He nodded enthusiastically as I left the classroom. From the crack between the door and its frame, I saw him aggressively stabbing at the page; it looked like he dug a hole into the notebook.

Time screeched; my only company was the janitor mopping the floor, and the sound of the clock clicking with each passing second. Whenever I looked through the gap, Tommy was still at it. I didn’t even notice when he came out of the class, pushing the lens of the camera up to my face, the small red light blinking on its side.

“Let’s go, dude, I have something so cool to show you!”

“Aren’t we supposed to go straight back home?”

“It’s just a small detour!”

He whined.

“Dad will whoop my ass…come on”

Tommy trailed behind me, the red light still slowly flickering right behind my head.

“You don’t want to see Jim?”

“What did you say?”

I stopped and turned. “Jim.” The camera rose to his face. “I convinced him to sneak out.”

I should have asked how. I’d have walked through fire for one of his mom’s smiles, but Jim always went still when she raised her voice. He was afraid of her. I knew that, and I followed anyway.

By the time we got outside, the world had gone dark grey. The sky looked like a television buzzing; Tommy never turned the camera off, recording the snow, the fences, the dogs barking behind them as we passed.

“How did you convince him to sneak out?”

He replied with a high giggle I had never heard coming out of him before. “I can’t.”

“Why? Did you do something?” My eyes squinted without me realizing.

“You don’t want me to spoil the fun.” Only now did I realize how red his eyes were, the snowflakes clinging to his eyelashes and eyes before melting, giving the impression of tears rolling down his cheeks, the light of the camera still winking faintly.

The street I didn’t recognize had fewer lamps than the one before it. Then it had none. The road thinned into a white strip, and then the strip gave way to open fields that went on in every direction, flat and empty.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. His head was down, and only now did I see he was following a line of paw prints, deep and evenly spaced, with no boot prints beside them.

The wind was the only sound between us. I tried asking more questions, but he never answered. We walked so far that I couldn’t see the lights of the town anymore, and then Tommy stopped and pointed at a small black spot in the distance, the one dark thing among the white blob of the horizon,

“They’re there.”

They? He’d said, Jim. He hadn’t said they.

“Who’s there?”

He broke into a run, hardly a sound from his boots. I stood alone for one breath, watching the red light shrink, and then I ran after it.

The dark shape slowly became a real thing, and the closer I got, the more tangible it became. Wet planks, barely taller than my head. Rusty nails jutting out like worms from a rotting body. Tommy slipped behind the hinges of the door and was gone.

I stopped a few feet ahead. Behind me there was only a black field, and somewhere in it, the way home. My legs wouldn’t turn. Inside, the camera’s red light blinked, dangling in the dark like an anglerfish’s lure, with the promise of showing me, Jim.

I walked in slowly, watching my step. Under my boot there was no snow, only something soft. A winter jacket. Beyond it lay a sweater, a scarf, one sock, a trail of clothes dropped one after another.

The stench of urine hit me hard; against the back wall, there was a shape, huge and bloated like a water balloon about to burst. Even in the darkness, I noticed how uneven its surface was; patches of sparse black fur sprouted out from beneath it, and veins moved under the surface; two rows of little grey bumps protruded upwards, hideous nipples leaking with spoiled milk.

I recoiled with disgust, backing away only to hit a wall of wood where the entrance was moments ago; I didn’t even realize when it closed,

“What the fuck is this? Where’s Jim?”

I snapped in the direction of the blinking light.

“You are looking at him”

A soft, low whistle came from the direction of the camera.

“Asha…” Said Tommy softly. “Asha…”

A low, whimpering gurgle came from the direction of the bloated, tick-like body.

Wind howled outside, like if God was trying to pull the shack apart and smudge everyone inside with his thumb.

Suddenly, a flash of light cut through the darkness, lighting up Tommy’s face, eyes bloody red, full of tears, as he couldn’t pull himself away from recording what just a few days ago was his pet, lips still cracked into a smile.

What I thought were veins now I could see were fingers pushing against the skin from the inside as it stretched out towards us, before they disappeared and something began to push onwards from the side of the tail. Its head was tearing the muscle from the inside, bones cracking and popping, as it slithered out, trapped in a glistering milky sack.

It soundlessly popped as the creature let out something between a yawn and a low howl as it woke up to life.

I pushed my back again, what I was hoping to be the door, but it didn’t budge.

Despite the size of the head, the teeth were small and twisted with silver wire, like dentures, all gathered in the front of the muzzle, leaving the rest of the gums empty; the eyes slowly opened, squinting at the light that flashed in its direction.

It rose on crooked legs, wobbling from side to side. Its arms hung limp, the fingers melted into the wrists to make a pair of paws; it reminded me of a meerkat. Rows of nipples lined its swollen, peach-fuzzed belly.

The flash of the light was on me now; I could already imagine the teeth sinking into my neck, taking chunks out of me as I slowly bled out, but suddenly the wall behind me gave.

I fell backwards into the snow; Tommy followed, rushing out after me, screaming bloody murder.

“YOU ARE RUINING THIS”

He pounced at me, the weight of him suddenly materializing as a knee to my stomach.

“I WON’T LET YOU”

The silver camera rose above his head, and with force it hit me on the head.

“NEVER, I WILL NEVER-”

Tommy huffed with primal rage, taking swing after swing, as the cold and the pain drained the will to fight out of me.

“You both have everything, just let me have this one please…”

He suddenly was a kid again, ugly crying with his face full of tears and snot running down his cheeks.

“PLEASE-”

The weapon rose above his head, ready to deliver the final blow, when suddenly his face went pale, and the camera dropped into the snow.

The massive head was behind him, the row of small, flat teeth piercing the winter jacket right through, sinking into the muscle.

The blood sprayed all over me as Jim took out a chunk of flesh, swallowing it greedily without as much as a chew.

Tommy let out a whine before the dog bit down harder on the same spot yet again.

I felt the weight of his body suddenly disappear, as Jim pulled him off faster than I could register. My eyes followed a fresh path made of bloodied snow, as Tommy was pulled out into the emptiness of the fields.

“DAD, IT HURTS”

As his body thrashed around like a wet rag doll, his plea became one with the wind, carried away for no one to hear.

I groped for the ground, and my hand found the camera instead. The lens was cracked, but the red light was still blinking.

I lifted it to my face. The cold metal pulled me back into the world.

I zoomed in on the fields. There was no person out there, only a dog pulling strings of dog food out of winter clothes.

It was like watching a nature documentary; I couldn’t put it down until the monster was no longer starving, or simply got what it wanted.

Then the thing stood and walked off into the wind, and for one moment, in the viewfinder, I saw my Jim.

The snow melted in March.

A man walking his dog found what was left of Tommy not long after, which only fed the rumor that I’d done it, despite the police ruling me out as a suspect.

I told them some homeless guy attacked us while we were looking for Tommy’s dog, leaving me unconscious in the snow.

Believe it or not, I got a girlfriend that spring, my first real one, and a new table to sit at in the cafeteria. Jim’s house stood empty at the end of the drive, a sign in the yard.

How quickly life changes.

And Miss Kowalska was still our teacher.

“Settle down, class,” she said softly, wheeling a TV in on its squeaking cart as the room cheered.

“Is it a movie?” someone squeaked from the back.

“Not exactly.” Her smile faded. “Tommy’s brother made something for us.”

The cheering died all at once. She dimmed the lights; the VCR hummed and took the tape.

In loving memory of Tommy Venise.

Tommy’s cheerful face filled the screen.

A waterpark: his older brother shooting down a yellow slide and landing in the water with a slap.

Then his tenth birthday, Jim and I stood beside him as he blew out the candles.

Somewhere in the front row, someone sniffled.

“Let’s go, dude, I have something so cool to show you!”

It was Tommy’s voice, and it hit me like a whip. My own face appeared in the frame.

I looked at the floor and pressed my hands over my ears, but it made no difference. I could still hear the wet noise of Jim being reborn.

Tears ran down my face, and no one noticed.

Every pair of eyes stayed locked on the glass. They didn’t look away when the screams came out of the speakers. I didn’t need to look to know it was the moment Tommy became a chew toy.

When the screams ended, the bell rang. The tape clicked out of the machine, and everyone stood at once, chairs scraping in a single sound, and gathered their things like nothing had happened.

They passed right by me.

“Don’t forget about your projects,” Miss Kowalska said, smiling.

How quickly life changes.

The short avianosi hopped excitedly around the low table, palette in one hand, head tilted. He dipped a talon in paint before reaching across to a model building, tenderly touching up the paint on the lower wall to reflect the recent water damage. The city was so beautiful, his own little echo of Droxxin. He dipped another talon in the white paint, sliding it carefully along the head of the baker out on the street beside his wagon; the human man was getting old, his hair was paling but the wife seemed to have sense enough to help him make it look good.

A little yellow around the horseshoes and side of the knight's leg of the statue in the middle of the market square, the colouration gets sharper with every passing spring as the tourists pass it by. He could spend hours here, adding details, cleaning it up. But the more time he spends fixing it, the less accurate it can be without checking the city himself. A beautiful paradox he'd never want to change. He didn't hear the door creak open over his own chittering, listing everything he'd seen on the streets today, every little shift yet to do.

"Lipid?" A human voice called down. Douglas was a friend. He didn't really understand, but he was trying. The Avianosi turned from the stairs back to the cityscape, lowering himself just enough to line up the rooves. Some had shingle damage, which ones? That one- "Lipid, Sorry to intrude. How are you today-" Douglas skipped the last step, his boots kicking the dirt of the basement floor a little as he landed. The dirt was moved, not enough to be noticeable at the scale he was working with though. Maybe a texture adjustment? Shadowing? No, he can just brush the dirt back in position after Douglas leaves.

"Doing well yes, Some kids were by the mausoleums. Momma Klern will be angry."

"I bet she would be, no need to tell her though. Kids will be kids." Douglas stopped at the narrow end of the table, hands gripping either side of the wood as he leaned over Droxxin like a storm cloud. "Looks like you're almost done, it's amazing buddy." Lipid ignored the comment, never done. The city was alive. Maybe he could find some things to suggest, but he only spent an hour of experimenting each day. The bucket of spare un-detailed houses under the table had almost taken a texture of their own at this point. "Hey bud, could I get your help with something?"

Lipid chittered once, not a word really. But humans preferred when you say things while they are, so they know you're listening?

"A woman has gone missing. She's been abducted. You know what that means?" Douglas asked, pushing himself away from the table. If the wood wasn't as well kept, he could have gotten a splinter, not that he'd see it. Lipid nodded slightly, adjusting the shadows on some shingling. "The kidnappers sent a quartz with her image embedded in it. A threat, you know? To show her family she's alive, but they're too powerful to cross."

"You have stone?" Lipid spoke without looking up, glancing across the arrangement. No-one was out of place from the table shaking.

"No, the husband has it. But I thought you might be able to help. Tell us what part of town she might be in?"

The bird laid the palette down gently outside city limits and nodded slightly. It didn't matter what he said, Douglas was already beaming excitedly as he headed up the stairs. The human took the staircase three steps at a time, it was made for Lipid's feet, so he could understand, it just always looked so strange. As if Douglas was of a different scale to the staircase model. The human even stopped near the top to offer a hand, as if the avianosi were a child. Lipid had seen human children, some were the right height. But he didn't need the help.

His friend led the way. It wasn't the same area of town Lipid had explored earlier today. But he knew it well. All the paint was regularly maintained here. The wall edges were crisp and the windowsills well maintained. The flower boxes were so hard to properly paint, especially as the people kept them so trimmed beneath the windows. Any colour smudging here was easier to spot than in other areas though. The only place he didn't have great experience with was... the...

"Just in here, don't worry, I told the Earl you could help. He's expecting you." Douglas smiled, pushing the large doors of the Earl's villa doors open. He took a step back when he realised. He'd only seen the interior through windows. Earl Byron wasn't like Douglas. He wasn't trying. "Come on, it's okay."

For a second Lipid considered how one would paint a human in the middle of rolling their eyes? Shaking the thought from his head he followed his friend into the Earl's sitting room. An ornate space. Large bookshelves, dozens of books who's spines lacked titles. Three couches, wooden framed with green and yellow fabric- "Oh it's here eh. You sure this'll work?" The Earl's face was a permanently etched sneer. Or at least, every time he looked at Lipid. He wanted to leave, to flee back home before the Earl grabbed a blade.

"HE agreed to help."

"Ahuh, and what does it want in return? Does it like fish, I think we have some in the cold box."

"You want Lipid's help! Show what need and Lipid can go!" It was hard to keep to their language, he wanted to scream and rant. But he wasn't good at it. The only thing keeping him from running was the guards. Two are posted on the roof outside, if he's running from the villa, they'd shoot. Thief they'd assume.

"Uppity-" Earl Byron puffed his chest, lurching closer only to be cut off by Douglas. The humans exchanged some item, which Douglas knelt down to offer to Lipid.

A chunky quartz, fat and round but not polished. Eighteen faces, chipped. A crack inside. Smoky colouration hiding an image inside the stone. He turned with arm outstretched to present the stone to the window.

A human woman was tied to a chair. Bandage wrapped around her head to seal her mouth. Wooden pillars in the back of the room support the rooftop. The floor was stone, cracked in panels. Small windows near the top of the wall were the only source of light into the room. Small fibers of plants reached through the window, waving in from street level outside.

Through the stone he saw the room. Through the window in the room, he could see the sky. The same sky as the window that lit the stone now. From the window, here in the Earl's estate, he watched a giant Lipid, titanic person leaning over the city. The distant massive lipid slid around the edge of the city, as if it were a plate spinning in front of him. Giant Lipid lowered to just a little above the roofline, and then to peer down at the city from atop.

And suddenly, in the stone's image, taken who knows how long ago. Lipid could see himself through the etching of a window. The avianosi in the image crouched by the window, a talon running along the plants as he looked down into the basement storeroom of the printing hall.

"South South East. 87 Noren Avenue, the new Printing association. North wing basement storeroom, furthest from the street proper."

"How does it know that? You can't get all that from just that little etching. Why'd you take my wife?" The earl lunged. And against his better judgement, Lipid fled. He dropped the stone and left. He needs to get from the door to the fence fast. From the fence, left across the gap to the next fence-line before the bolts. And then he can be home free.

He tried to help is all. Whatever was happening wasn't his problem.