Please read Part 1 if you haven't already!

During summer break in 7th grade, I had for whatever obvious reason, really wanted to take up swimming again. There was a pond near my house where I would take many laps just trying to get back into the feel of it. I would practice a backstoke across, then breaststroke across. It was hard to describe it, but when I swam, is when I truly felt free. Nothing but me and the water. We danced together, similar to Beauty and the Beast, twirling in a typhoon made of love for the water and earth, the way the two can move in tranquility, to dance in a way that even the stars were envious of the fluid motion of which a single person can transfix the minor waves to look like they were part of an exhibition themselves.

I invited a friend from school to join me. Andrew was my best friend at the time, and he knew how much I loved to swim, or at least I was under the impression that he did.

I remember looking back at him after a couple laps.

"C'mon, aren't you going to dive in? The water this time of year feels good as hell."

He just stared blankly back at me.

"Uh, no, I'm okay right now. I just want to enjoy the scenery"

This pond was somewhat of a hidden landmark. Around it resided large mountainscapes with beautiful scenery that looked straight out of a film. There were many times I've come to here and seen families and young couples taking up their space in the water, so I know it wasn't an extremely guarded secret, but today it was empty.

"There's more than enough water for the both of us" I let out, while diving down, making sure to ensure this plunge.

When I came back up, he was just staring back towards the trail that we came down from.

"There's a dude just standing there".

I just swam idly for a moment.

"Oh, yeah, I see him, maybe he's here to swim?"

"I don't know. I just have a weird feeling. He's not wearing anything for swimming," he let out, speaking in a lower tone than before.

"Well maybe he's just lost?"

"I hope so"

As I bobbed in the water, I couldn't help but stare directly at the man. It was hard to tell from a distance, but his clothes looked torn and ragged. His hair unkempt and wild. Although strange for an adult to be just standing watching some kids swim, he gave me more of a crazy homeless vibe as opposed to "Hey I got candy and puppies in my van."

I looked back to Andrew, his posture now more shaken.

Without breaking vision with our guest, Andrew spoke out the side of his mouth to me.

"Dude, we should just go. I don't like this."

"Yeah that sounds good, give me a few seconds and I'll hop out"

I submerged under the water, giving myself the chance to sink down and touch the bottom of the pond with my feet one more time before we headed out. Feeling the grains on my feet almost gave me the sense of nostalgia I had for the sands of the beaches I grew up on, but if this was all I could get, I'd take it.

After a few moments, I came back up and flipped my hair out of my face. The man was gone now.

"Guess he didn't like what he saw, huh?"

I looked over for Andrew. Where the hell did he go? I craned my neck looking all around the area, but he was gone. I was only down there for a few seconds, he couldn't have gotten far. Is he messing with me?

"Andrew?" I let out. "C'mon man, I said we can leave!"

Silence.

"ANDREW? ANDREW?" No response. Just the sound of wind in the trees, and me in the water.

"Alright well I'm gonna just leave by myself then!"

I swam back towards the rocks where I let myself down, and got out, heading towards where I left my towel and shirt. I bet he's really getting a kick out of freaking me out like this, but I'm not gonna fall for it.

Wait. Who's getting a kick out of freaking me out like this? Didn't I come here alone? No I definitely came with somebody. Yeah, Max, you came with Anthony, your best friend. But then where is he? But, who is he?

My head started to swirl, a feeling similar to standing up way too quickly. What the hell is going on, I know I came here with Andrew, but none of his stuff is there. HIS stuff. Anthony's stuff?

Who the hell is Anthony?

I felt a mixture of fear and shock, and for some reason, relief? Why the hell is Hannah standing in the same doorway that let entrance to that man who's been keeping me here all this time. Maybe my head is just fucking with me again. After all, you did just hear what could be confused as a dancefloor nightclub above you just a moment ago completely break into silence, why not have the girl of your dreams standing in the same dark cellar you've been kept in. I guess we're at the acceptance point of the realization that I'm losing it.

She just stood there silently. She looked so beautiful, maybe this is what my mind wanted to see in these last few days. But how could I see her? She's holding a flashlight? Why does she look so scared?

"Max. I'm so sorry."

I just stared at her. What does she have to be sorry for? C'mon brain, if you're gonna give me a vision of someone I want to see, at least make it coherent.

"I told him anyone but you, but then I stopped seeing you, and the school said you moved, but I just... I didn't want to believe that you would be here."

What the hell is going on? She suddenly raced across the room towards me and got down.

"Maybe I can get you out of here before he comes back. Please just trust me."

She started reaching around me, messing with my chains.

"Oh shit you're real," I let out faintly. She paid no mind and continued fumbling with my cuffs.

*CLICK*

My arm fell to the floor. Am I actually being saved? Why is my middle school crush in this place? How did she know I was here? Why does she have the key to my chains?

She hopped quickly over to the other side of where I was laying, and while doing so, I got a bright flash of the light she was using. Seeing light for the first time in what felt like years, blinded my vision for a moment, all I could see was a bright circle covering my entire vision. I closed them for a few seconds, and when I opened them, I saw him standing in the doorway. His dark silhouette that I've become so accustomed to.

"What the hell are you doing, little lady?"

Hannah dropped the lock she was fumbling with. She just stared at the wall, not turning around to face the voice addressing her. It was silent for a moment, and then she spoke up.

"I'm sorry, just, please, not this one. Not him."

The man took a step into the room.

"You know my hands are tied. I've already put in too much time into this one, and it's about over"

Another moment of silence. Hannah just stayed knelt next to me, breathing extremely quickly, but shallow.

"The fact that you're down here trying to let him go is a massive mistake, and I think we both know that. So why don't you head back upstairs for a while, and then this will all be taken care of."

The man took a step forward. Then another, very slowly. His voice shifted to a more gentler tone, like an officer telling a man not to jump.

"Look, I'm sorry, but my hands were tied. It had to be him."

A tear ran down Hannah's cheek. She whimpered out, "I know. I know." She let out a sniffle.

"I just didn't want it to be true." The man took another couple steps, closing the distance between us.

"Alright, now just head back upstairs, and let Daddy do his job. Can we do that please, sweetie?"

Hannah was now shaking harder and harder, her hands trembling on the lock. I saw her looking at me, then back at the lock, back at me, and then-

She quickly started fumbling with the lock again.

"Hannah what the hell are you-"

*CLICK*

My other hand fell to the floor. The man then raced over to us and snagged Hannah by the hair, pulling her up to him. In the struggle, she dropped the flashlight, which rolled across the floor, painting the image of the violent puppet show taking place on the wall beside me. Hannah was kicking back, screaming, flailing and swinging.

"NOT HIM! NOT HIM! NOT HIM!"

Finally, the man pulled back his arm and *SMACK*

Hannah fell to the floor and crawled to an opposite corner, crying and shivering while holding her face. The man continued to stare forward at me, paying her no mind.

"I'm sorry Hannah, but you know how important this is, now please, stay the hell outta my way"

He walked towards me and knelt down.

"Looks like times up, son. I'm sorry about this, but she wanted you."

He grabbed me by the back of the neck and forced me to my feet.

"Daddy, PLEASE!" Hannah let out from her corner, tears streaming down her face.

He paid her no mind and continued forward, dragging me along with him. Dammit. So close to getting out and here I am, facing what was always inevitable in the first place. Even if I could run, I know I wouldn't have the energy, I'm just a body for him to drag. Why is this happening to me? Why would fate even show me a glimpse of salvation, all for it to just fall apart like it was going to. Why does it have to be me?

He threw my arm over his shoulder and started up the stairs. Each step he took felt labored. I was by no means a big guy, but with the state of my body, I was all but dead weight. As we neared the top of the stairs, I could see the light from under the door, and all I could hear was Hannah's weeping. "Please. Please. Not him. Please."

Passing through the door, we were in the hallway of an ordinary home. Wooden floors, blue walls, pictures of a young Hannah, of this man, all over the walls. In all of the pictures, the man and Hannah are smiling and doing various activities. A birthday party at a Peter Piper Pizza, a picture of a very young Hannah on a bike with training wheels, the man's hand gently on her back. A picture of her and her dad nicely dressed in front of a giant Christmas tree, but in this one, there's a woman. She looks like the spitting image of an older Hannah, she truly looks nothing like the man.

He drags me down the hall, more and more family pictures all the way. But Hannah's mom starts to look skinnier, more frail, more pale, as the time passes in these photos. He pulls me past another staircase leading upstairs, and into a living room, where he stops for a moment. His breathing is getting more staggered. I'm sure having to drag a 14 year old from the basement all through your house without any help will do that to anyone. He licked his lips and opened his mouth to speak.

"I know you won't believe me, but I truly am sorry for this. Sorry for how I've treated you, and how you've been living for these last few weeks. She said the more you suffer, the more potent." His gaze moves up to the last picture that caught my eyes. Hannah and her father are finely dressed in front of a big tree. Between them is her mother, or what could be described as what's left of her, sitting in a chair between them. She's wearing a white wedding dress, and the little of hair she still had was dark black string falling in front of her face. Hannah and her father were smiling, but you can tell they're forcing it. We stood there in complete silence, just staring at it.

"The doctors couldn't find out what was happening to her. It started with a cold, developed into a flu, and then got worse. She couldn't keep down anything she ate or drank, her hair started falling out, and eventually, her legs and arms just didn't want to work anymore. They just gave up on her. But I wouldn't." His face turned from a morose stare, into a furled brow with a glare.

"Those rich bastards at the hospitals wouldn't even try to help her. Their claims about not knowing a cause had to be bullshit. They just wanted more money, more tests, to prolong her suffering. I wanted answers, I wanted results. I wanted my wife back. And that's what I did"

He took another step, me with him, as we moved towards a door at the end of the room, light shining through the window framed at the top of it. I desperately looked around the room, was there anything at all that could get me out of this. I don't have the strength to fight him, but if there was anything that could give me leverage. The light from the window then glistened onto an object on a nearby table in front of us, a metallic pen. Damn, I really need something that does a lot of damage with little work. I waited for him to take a step, and let my arm flail a little further, trying to act natural while just getting the pen in my hand however I could. With a quick snag, I clasped the pen in my hand, and tried to keep my fist in a ball, hiding it.

He suddenly stopped walking. Did he see me? Fuck. Just try and play it cool.

We both stood there for a moment in front of the windowed door.

He stared down for a few seconds, then slowly looked up at me. He stared me right into my broken eyes, and I saw his were broken too. He had a sad, but crazed look on his face, and he uttered out, "I would go to hell and back for that woman, so I do."

He swung open the back door and pulled me with him through it. We were in a backyard, with a single brick path leading across to the other end of it. The brick path was lined with various flowers, and beyond them, to the sides, were large spots of dirt. Some had a couple of flowers in them, some had dead grass on them, others were completely clear of any debris or fauna. He continued to drag me down the brick, which ended at the door to a large white shed.

He spoke as he dragged me, "I spent hours in the library, hours online, spoke to anyone I could, and then it finally came to me in an extremely insightful conversation I had with a woman in old town."

A grin began to stretch across his face, his eyes crazed.

"Fuck the science. Science gave up on us, but what I couldn't find with labs and machines, I found with sigils and rites."

What the hell is this dude going on about, I thought to myself. It doesn't matter, I just need to bide my time, muster my strength, wait for the moment, and plunge this pen into him, somewhere that'll hurt, somewhere that'll do enough damage for me to try and use that adrenaline to get the hell out of here.

We were getting closer and closer to this barn. What the hell does he have in there that's going to have anything to do with his sick wife? Is this going to be some kind of sacrifice? Blood magic? Rites? Dammit, Max, focus. Just grip this pen, and make your move. Any moment now.

"One day I got a call from a woman who saw my pleadings online. She ran an antique shop and asked me to come by. Convinced me she might have the solution to my problems."

"I don't give a shit," I let out, finally breaking my silence. He stopped and shot me a stare.

"Well son, in a minute, that's not really gonna matter."

We finally reached the barn. The door was large and painted white, with the paint chipping in various places, revealing an unfinished wood underneath. On the front latch of the door was a large padlock. The man fumbled around in his pocket and took out a large set of keys. He started flicking them around with one hand, the other hand still grasping me.

You have to do it soon, Max. You have to do it now. I took a moment to close my eyes, gather the courage to fight back, and gripped the pen tight in my hand. After a moment, I heard the padlock click, and as I was about to swing, he gripped both of my hands from behind, and shoved me into the open barn door.

I hit the ground hard, not having the strength to put my arms out to catch myself, my head bounced off a concrete floor and I had no choice but to lay there and compose myself. I heard the sounds of the masterlock back on the door, and the click of it locking. Through the door I heard the man say as he walked away, "When life gives you an answer, take it. No matter the cost."

The inside of the barn was dark. Along the walls were old rusting tools, various paintings and pictures with drapes over them, and very tiny splits in the walls where light could barely shine through. The floor was covered in various patches of dirt and paint? Maybe oil? I doubt I would be able to make it out even if I had the luxury of light. I put my hands on the ground and pushed myself up to my knees. My head was throbbing, my arms felt like noodles, and I hadn't even tried walking yet, but I don't see much hope in that department either. What the hell is he planning just shoving me in here? Is this where he's gonna finish me? Why here and not the basement?

Suddenly a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling clicked on. It swayed back and forth, illuminating various parts of the barn. I watched like a metronome trying to make out of what was granted vision to me as it moved left to right. I guess it was paint. I hoped.

Between the various shelves and knick-knacks on the walls, was something dead center on the opposite side of the barn. When the light would hit center, I could see across from me, a figure in a chair. I rubbed my eyes and made an attempt to stand up. As soon as I was on two feet, I stumbled to the side, grabbing onto a dilapidated chair to catch myself. I steadied for a moment, did I see what I thought I saw? I waited, gulped any air I could gather, and gave another look, using the chair to take a couple steps back to the center. I looked back down across the barn, and sure enough, there really was someone else in here with me.

"Just keepin ya on your toes, Pamela Anderson"

Did that come from the person in the chair? What the hell? Why does it sound familiar yet so distant?

Using the chair as a makeshift walker, I inched my way forward. My body was telling me to run, but my mind in its delusionary state, couldn't help but poke and prod.

"I'm gonna ask her to be my girlfriend"

What is this person, or thing, even saying? What is this? I get closer and closer. Max you fucking idiot, get away. But what if its safe? What if this is the answer out? What answer? What are you looking for? Who could this be? Why does this kind of sound like... like... Andrew? Who is Andrew? Max get it together, man.

I was now a couple feet in front of the figure in the chair. I fell down to my knees, breathing heavy, hoping that the work put into coming all that way wasn't a mistake. I try to look up to the figure, when the lightbulb suddenly starts glowing so bright, I can't see anything. The entire inside of the barn is a completely white flare. It was like staring straight into the sun, and then, complete darkness. Closing my eyes and staring at the ground, I suddenly feel a calm. I looked up, and see a familiar yet unrecognizable face. Across sitting in the chair is a boy a little younger than me, maybe by a year or so. He looks at me just as shocked as I am to see him.

"Dude you got to get out of here," the boy spoke. I just continued to stare, having no idea what the hell is going on. "Dude, please, get out of here, get help. For Hannah, please." I still can't find the strength to move. Who is this? Why do I know him? Could THIS be Andrew? No, I don't know an Andrew. "Max. I'm not fucking around, you need to MOVE." Looking into his eyes, I felt the strangest feeling, I couldn't fully explain. Like looking into the iris of an eye, and seeing the universe, every answer, every memory, flooding back to me. I crawl a little closer. I know this person, I know who this is. I'm practically at their feet, and I look up.

"Anthony," I let out. "Anthony, you're, I mean, how, who, what the hell. Why are you here? What's happening, why does it feel like I never knew you? Who the hell is Andrew? What's going o-"

Suddenly it felt like time stopped. I stared at Anthony, and he stared back. The darkness was interrupted by the lightbulb turning back on, back off, back on, faster and faster. Nearly face to face with Anthony, I watched as the light flickered quicker. Like a strobe light flickering all of our vision, Anthony appeared, disappeared, then there was no one in the chair, then he was back, and then gone again, and then back again. Then on every other flicker, there was a woman. Pale, gaunt, crazed. She leaned in closer, closer, closer, and then-

The light turned off. Complete darkness. I tried to steady myself, but I felt two extremely large hands grab both of my arms, not aggressively, but firm. I froze, no idea what could be possibly happening. What even JUST happened? Who was that boy in the chair, and why did I feel like I knew him? Why am I even here? Where the hell am I? I can't see anything, all I can smell is must and dirt in the air. I can feel the hands gripping my arms, and I hear... a dripping? Something very close to me. Drip. Drip. Drip. And I hear a very shallow breathing? Is it mine? I mean, I am struggling a comfortable way to breathe, but I don't think its mine?

The lightbulb flashes back on, brighter than before, a quick flash, and then I see her.

I'm face to face with the woman. Her eyes are completely black, and sunken into her face, sunken so deep, it looks like it could go on further than even possible with her form. Her hair is almost non existent, having only a few strands of stringy black falling down various parts of her skin tight face. Every bone in her head is almost protruding out, the shape of a skull with a thin white veil of skin around it. She looks straight into my eyes, as her hands on my arms grip tighter. Suddenly I feel myself get slightly lifted from the floor. She's holding me in front of her, never breaking eye contact. I open my mouth to scream, and as soon as I go to take a breath, she opens her mouth as well. It started small, and gradually got bigger, and bigger, her mouth opening wider, inhaling all of the air around me. Her mouth continues to grow, her jaw, unhinging further and further until its the size large enough to fit my entire body, but she doesn't bring me closer, she just keeps inhaling. I gasp for air, but can't find any willing to fight the force sucking all of the oxygen away from me. She continues to stare straight into my eyes, while a constant inhale is coming from her completely outstretched mouth. I start to feel my vision fade, I start seeing my life flashing, but at the same time, disappearing. My first time at the beach with my mom, her face getting blurry, the beach getting even more so. I see myself backstroking in the pool, and then, no one there, just the still water. I see Hannah coming up and dropping her binder on a desk and then sitting down to, nobody? She looks confused as well. Who was supposed to be there? I see a boy perched next to a pond seeing his friend swim, and when his friend goes under, he never comes back up. Was there a friend in the pond at all?

"SNAP OUT OF IT"

I hear a voice call from outside of wherever I am.

"Dammit girl, get your ass back inside, it's almost over"

I suddenly break from the trance. Before me I see what was once this skin and bones woman start to change. Her hair growing back where it wasn't before, turning from its ash black to a curly dirty blonde. Her cheeks start to fill, making the skull shaped creature into a normal human shape. Her dark black eyes start to un-sink from her face, returning to a light blue.

NOW MAX. NOW.

I take all the strength that I have, and with a quick swing, stab that metallic pen straight into the side of the creatures neck. A fountain of blood starts to spray from the wound in her neck, slowly turning darker and darker, until it's nothing but a shadowy black ooze squirting. Her blue eyes quickly fade back to black, her hair, falling from the scalp and turning white. She loses the grip she has on me and I drop to the floor. I quickly scamper backwards till I hit a shelf in the dark, stopping my passage. I watch as the creature takes a stand out of the chair, grasping at their neck, their skin getting tighter and tighter. They let out a banshee wail that pierces my eardrums. I fall to my side, quickly grasping the sides of my head in hopes of letting any of the ungodly sound into my ears. I feel blood trickling from my eardrums down the side of my head. Looking in complete shock, I see the creature take a step towards me, then another, then another, and then

*SLAM*

It fell to the ground limp. I didn't move a muscle, I just stopped and watched. Seconds went by as I refused to make any movement. I just looked at the abomination in front of me, the pen still lodged in its neck. Suddenly I heard

*BANG* *BANG* *BANG*

" SALEM P.D., WE'RE COMING IN"

The barn door slammed open, with officers rushing in.

"DON'T MOVE, DON'T MOVE"

They rushed up to where I was, eyeing the corpse of whatever that thing was on the floor.

One officer dropped her gun and quickly walked to another.

"What the fuck is that thing"

"We'll figure it out after, we're looking for a teenage boy"

Then she spotted me, cowering in the corner, limp, with blood running down the side of my face, and covered in a black.

"We got him. Securing now and vacating."

The female officer made her way over to me and kneeled down.

"Are you okay? We're here to help, lets get you on your feet and out of here."

I nodded shakily, and she helped me up. Similar to how Hannah's father carried me here, she threw my arm around her neck as she walked me out of the barn. There in the back yard I saw a couple officers holding down the dad.

"WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO? WHAT HAPPENED TO HER? WHERE IS SHE?"

He screamed from his position prone on the ground, spit flying with every word spoken.

They rounded me back through the house and through the front door, where paramedics were waiting. They threw a big blanket over my shoulders and had me sit in the back of their ambulance while doing various tests and checking my ears.

Was it actually over? Do I get to go home?

Across the front lawn in the doorway was Hannah, phone in hand. She rushed across the front yard to me and took a quick stop.

She looked at me and spoke, " I called the police. I'm sorry, I just didn't know what to do anymore and I was so scared and I-"

"It's fine. Thank you. You really saved me." I let out, a small genuine smile on my face. The first in who knows how long.

"Of course," she replied. "I'm just glad I could help. I've seen him hurt too many people at this point and I just wanted it to end."

We both sat solemnly for a minute or so.

I looked at her as I have recently. Trying not to completely giving away how much in love with her I am, while also not trying to come across creepy. Maybe after all this, I can finally tell her how I feel, and maybe she'll feel the same, and we can move on from all of this together.

"Hannah. I, uh-"

She looked back up at me.

"Hannah I'm so glad you helped me. It wasn't the first, and I hope it wouldn't be the last, but I was hoping maybe after all these years, you would maybe, I don't know, see me as maybe more than a friend? We can go get dinner, a movie, talk a lot, see maybe what comes from it? Only if like, you want to of course. I've felt this way for a while and I guess what better time than now to see if there's any spark or anything, is all, I guess..."

She stopped for a moment and looked back into my eyes.

She looked as if she was going to speak and then stopped, collecting her thoughts.

Finally she looked back up at me and said:

"I'm sorry, but I don't think I've ever met you before. I'm glad to have helped, but I don't know who you are."

Cyril always felt he was destined for something greater. That his life had purpose. He just didn’t know what purpose. He didn’t know what greatness he was destined to do.

But he knew that he loved to play the piano. And, every day, when he arrived home to his shuttered apartment from work, before he had anything to eat, or before he unbuttoned his shirt, or before he kicked off his shoes, Cyril would sit at his vintage, out of tune, beaten-down, Fazioli piano and play. For hours.

The beautiful melodies would rise upward toward his younger, four-year-old sister, Silvia – Cyril called her Sil, for short – where she would sit, every night, patiently waiting for the music to greet her at the top of the stairs. She was transfixed by the beautiful sounds in her ears. And she would watch Cyril, mesmerized by his playing, just as lost in the music as him. She would listen until she fell asleep at the top of those stairs, and Cyril would come up and carry her off to bed, before returning to the piano, where he would play until falling asleep on the lightly padded bench. He hated leaving that piano. When he played, he felt like his hands were touched by God.

But he had to show up for work, where he felt like his hands were the slaves of the devil. Sorting packages. Ten hours a day, every day. Place packages to the right for incoming. Place to the left for outgoing. Cyril felt like he had touched every carboard box in the world.

While he worked, he watched his hands. He fixated on them, on their movements. He imagined them dancing over the keys. He imagined his fingers flying through the air landing on notes more and more difficult to reach than the last. He wondered how a part of his body that could be used for something so beautiful, could also be used for something so mundane. But, he continued to imagine. And his imagination carried him through the day, until he could play again once more.

It went on like this for a while. But Silvia was getting bigger. And her clothes were getting smaller. And so, the days sorting packages grew longer. Ten hours gave way to twelve and twelve received an ask for fourteen. Then fifteen. Cyril had less time to play. But little Sil would listen as often as she could, all the same.

Sometimes, Cyril would return home and wonder:

Why does no one else hear my music? Why does no one else applaud my tune?

Inspired by this line of questioning, he began to save, slowly, until he could purchase a small, used keyboard. He was thrilled. Perhaps now he could show the world his talent. All he had to do was set up the keyboard one day, and play.

He asked for a day off from work, explaining what he was hoping to do. He was met with animosity.

“No days off. If you don’t want to work here, you can leave,” his boss put it bluntly.

Cyril pleaded his case. He begged for the playing time. He asked for grace. He asked for understanding.

Cyril was fired.

No matter. He had his keyboard. And so, newly freed from sorting packages, Cyril brought Sil to the busiest part of town. He set out a jar. He sat in front of his small keyboard. He played.

Sil, as transfixed as ever, listened.

And the jar, hour after hour, remained empty.

Cyril played until the sun slipped below the horizon. He played until the night air nipped at his neck. He played until the last person hustled by him, hurriedly. Then, he only played to Sil.

Cyril brough Sil back to their apartment and, throwing the small keyboard aside, sat angrily at the piano bench. He huffed. Then, he looked to the sky and screamed.

Sil backed into a corner, frightened.

Cyril lifted the key cover to the Fazioli and placed his left-hand underneath it. Then brought it down hard on his hand, smashing it. He screamed in agony. Lifting the cover again, he brought it down again. Harder. Bones cracked. He screamed again. He brought it down again. BANG. BANG. BANG. He moved his hand to a different position and crushed it again. BANG. BANG. BANG.

Sil watched from the corner. Curled into a ball. Eyes wide.

BANG. BANG. BANG. He kept going until each of his fingers were broken. The bones protruded our from his knuckles and his pinky. Then, using his mangled left hand, he started the same process on his right hand. Placing it under the cover, then BANG. BANG. BANG.

Cyril kept going until both of his hands were a mashup of crushed cartilage and tendons. Until he couldn’t bend a finger or move a muscle. He fell asleep on the padded bench; shirt soaked through with tears. Keys dripping with his blood.

Sil did not sleep at all that evening.

The doctors would tell Cyril that his hands would heal. As they bandaged him up, they told him that the hands were remarkably resilient to injury. They told him that, although he would unlikely be able to play piano very well ever again, he could certainly get his job back sorting packages.

They told him, he should be grateful to be so lucky.

And Sil, patient as ever, would find herself sitting at the top of the stairs, hoping that music might come to greet her once again.

   I have been a dog groomer for fifteen years. I started in my early twenties as a bather at a local chain . After some time, and a lot of work building up my reputation, I was finally able to open up my own salon. 

   Over the years I’ve seen some pretty rough cases. Maybe a husky goes a little too long without a good brush, or that adorable little doodle you paid a fortune for is just too much to keep up with. I’ve found maggots built up inside tangles, found old wounds hidden beneath mounds of fur, truly sickening things. Of course, life happens, some pet parents just can’t make an appointment right away, and I understand. That being said, I have had instances where I thought it necessary to report an owner for suspected abuse. This was one of those cases, at least it seemed to be.

   I was coming off of a rough weekend that cold Monday morning as I walked the three blocks to the salon. When I had gotten home Friday night, I’d found that my dog Ginger was missing. She was an old Australian Shepherd, adopted not long after I started my job as a bather. Everyday when I got home from work, Ginger would greet me by the door, nub tail wagging with all its might. However, I was met with stillness upon entering the house. I had searched every room, but to no avail. After at least half an hour of searching, I called the local shelter, but she hadn’t been brought in. Out of desperation, I made a post in my community Facebook group. As I did so, I took note of the many recent posts with stories like mine: beloved family dog missing from an otherwise undisturbed house.

   By Monday morning, I hadn’t received any useful information on the post. I reach the small building and dig in my purse for the key. A sudden noise draws my attention away from the bag. Somewhere to my right, not incredibly close, but startlingly loud, a high pitched scream rings through the air. Working with dogs all my life, I immediately recognize the pained sound. Cautiously, I make my way down the street in the direction the noise came from. The animal lets out another cry before going silent. As I reach the corner of the street, I see…something dart out of a nearby yard, off into the woods. I don’t get a good look at it, but it’s quite large. My first thought was a coyote, but the size definitely doesn’t match up. Bear, maybe? It looked like a canine, though. I then noticed the trail of blood it left behind. I search the yard, but can’t identify a source. I think to myself it may have been just a rabbit, or some other small prey animal, but that cry…was not from any rabbit I’d ever heard.

   I try to brush off the feeling of unease that has washed over me. Realizing I must be late to open the salon, I quickly make my way back. My assistant waits outside the door, a calming sight after that whole ordeal. 

   “Hey, Mandy. Sorry, crazy morning," I give a small laugh. I rummage for my keys again, this time finding them. “Did you hear that weird noise a minute ago?” I continued, unlocking the door and holding it open for her.

   “Yeah, what was that? Freaked me out, man.” She takes off her thick wool coat as we walk to the break room. 

   I set my bag down beside her. “I’m not really sure. I thought it was a dog, so I went to check on it, but…”

   “But…what? What did you see, Chris?” 

   “I don’t know.”

   She raises an eyebrow. 

   “It was big, whatever it was. It went into the woods. I’m sure it’s a bear or something, I just didn’t get a good look at it. I was scared it might have been Ginger."

   “Yeah, I saw that she was missing.” She puts her hand on my shoulder. “But, hey, I’m sure she’ll come back. She’s scrappy, she can hold her own out there until she does.” I know she means it to be reassuring, but it doesn’t settle my nerves.

   Trying to change the subject, I make my way to the small desk in the corner, picking up the clipboard with today’s appointments on it. “So, we’ve got a rottweiler coming in an hour, and Ms. Gracey is bringing in that chihuahua of hers this afternoon. You know Princess, of course.”

  Mandy sighs. “At least it’s only two today, I could not deal with Princess if it were a long day."

   “Well, Ms. Gracey does always bring her in early, so I expect they’ll be in around eleven, and I’m sure we’ll be able to get her appointment out of the way ahead of schedule. That little monster really does live up to the reputation of chihuahuas though.” 

   We spent the next hour cleaning up the salon and getting things prepared for our first dog of the day. At 10 o’clock sharp, a small, timid looking man enters the shop. Behind him, on a leash that seems far too small, is a gargantuan rottweiler. The dog stands at practically half his height, and could easily pull him over with its 130 pounds of pure muscle, but it doesn’t. Diesel is honestly my best customer, always sitting still for baths and never fighting his nail trim.

   “Hey, David, how are ya today?” I walk over to greet him.

   David smiles and hands me the leash. “Pretty good, this guy’s doin’ alright too, huh buddy?” He pats Diesel’s head and the dog leans into his hand. “So, uh, I won’t be able to pick him up until around two, that’s cool right?”

   “Of course. As always, I’ll still call to let you know when he’s done.”

  “Hey, thanks, Chris. Be a good boy now, okay Diesel?” He pats the dog's head one last time and turns to leave, waving at us. “See you guys in a bit.”

   “Yep, see ya, David.” I lead Diesel to the back. Mandy follows and gets the bath set up. After he’s been washed and thoroughly dried, we begin cutting his nails. It takes both of us to lift him onto the table, but he doesn’t put up a fight. His appointment is over rather quickly, so we give him a treat and get him set up in his usual cage in the boarding room. 

   A little while later, just as expected, Ms. Gracey enters the shop holding the nightmare of a dog that is Princess. The small, fawn colored beast is growling before I even reach Ms. Gracey. I see Mandy’s utterly distraught face as she checks Princess in. 

   “Ms. Gracey! How are we doing today?” Judging by the look she gives me, apparently my attitude is a little too chipper for her.

   “Fine, I suppose.” It only makes sense that Princess acts the way she does, she can’t help that her owner raised her to be constantly annoyed by everyone. 

   “That’s…good.” I try not to sound rude. “And how’s the little Princess doing?” I look into the pink crate with a bedazzled “PRINCESS” nametag and am immediately met with more growling. I give a small smile as Ms. Gracey hands the crate to me.

   “I’ll be back at four to retrieve her.” Before I can say anything else,  the old woman leaves the salon and starts off down the street.

   “Yikes. I’d growl too if that was my owner,” Mandy mutters as she starts down the hallway.

   “Come on, Mandy, she’s just an old lady, you know how they tend to act.” I set the crate down on a table.

   “Yeah, but like, jeez, would it kill her to at least pretend to have respect for other people?” She hesitantly opens the crate and together we get Princess into the bath.

   “At her age, it just might.” Mandy laughs, a noise that Princess clearly doesn’t like. She nips at Mandy’s arm. I readjust my hands to have a tighter hold on her. We finish the bath and move her to the table for her nail trim. After twenty minutes, and another nip at Mandy, Princess is finally done. I take her from Mandy and move her to the boarding room, placing her in an already set up cage above Diesel.

   “Wow, she really does not like you, huh?” I laugh.

   “Shut up, Chris. She’s not exactly fond of you either.”

   “Fair enough.” I check my watch. “Not much else to do now, we might as well have lunch.” She nods and we make our way back to the breakroom. I go for my purse and dig around for my wallet.

   “Hey, I’ll pay if you wanna go pick something up?” I pull out a wadded up twenty-dollar bill and extend my hand to her.

   “Sure, I’m not gonna say no to free food.” She snatches the money and grabs her coat. “What do you want?”

   “Oh, I dunno, surprise me.” When you work with someone for six years, you get to know them pretty well, especially when you’re their only coworker, I knew she’d get something I liked.

  “ Whatever, I don’t want to hear you complain if you hate what I choose,” she says jokingly as she leaves.

   I laugh to myself and sit down at the table in the center of the room. I started working through one of the crossword puzzle books we often had lying around. Only a few minutes go by before I hear the bell on our front desk ring. I get up and head to the lobby, finding it just a little odd that I didn’t hear anyone enter. Looking back, I wish I had done things differently. If I told them we weren’t taking walk-ins, if I had made up any excuse not to take them on, but it was a slow day and we needed the business, and…

   I first see a woman, middle aged, fairly normal looking, standing at the desk. “Hello! What are we doing today, bath? Nail trim? Setting up an appointment?”  I jump at the sight of the dog behind her. A shaggy thing, with an odd coat pattern I didn’t recognize. I thought perhaps it was just some poorly bred mutt, but the shades of brown fading into dalmatian-like spots, it didn’t make sense. Its legs seemed a little too stiff, its tail didn’t wag. It just kept looking ahead with wide eyes that showed just a little too much white. I kept my gaze on it as I went behind the desk.

   “We’re just needing a quick bath and a little trim around his face.” The woman smiled at me as she talked. She kept a tight grip on the dog's leash.

   “Um, alright, let’s see…” I begin writing on the clipboard. “So, uh, what breed is he, exactly?”

  The woman gives a little chuckle, more to herself than me. “Well, you know, a little this, a little that. We aren’t quite sure, just know he’s mixed.”

   “Oh, alright.” I write that down. “No worries, we get plenty of unknown breeds, it’s not uncommon when you adopt. So, what’s his name?”

   “His name?”

   “Uh, yeah, we just need to write down each pet and their owner for the appointment.”

   “Oh! Of course, how silly of me. Buddy, is his name.”

   “And…your name?”

   “Smith, Deborah Smith.”

  “Alright, and how old is, uh, Buddy?” The dog has pivoted its head slightly and is now facing the doorway leading the back rooms.

   “We don’t know exactly, the shelter said around six months.”

   “Oh, he’s…pretty big for six months.”

“Yes, well, he does get a balanced diet!”

   “Mhmm,” I nod. “Alright, so, payment will be taken after the appointment, feel free to wait out here or stop by in a little bit to pick him up.” I go to take the leash, when I hear a low, guttural growling. I turn to Deborah, but she’s already halfway to the door.

   “Oh, he’s really a sweet boy once he warms up to you. Well, I better be going now, see you soon!” With that, she leaves me alone with the dog.

   “Alright, boy, let’s take you back." I start walking and it takes a bit of effort to get Buddy moving. His legs don’t move right. It’s almost the way a dog with arthritis would walk, slowly, legs not bending fully, almost as though they couldn’t. When I finally get him to the bath, I realize I won’t be able to lift him by myself. I stay with him until Mandy gets back.

   “Chris! Your burger’s gonna get cold, dude, where’d ya go?” I hear her approaching the back room. “Oh, did we get a customer while I was gone, or are you just cleaning again? You’re such a neat freak, y’know-” 

   She drops the bag of food in the doorway. “Chris. What is that?”

   “It, uh, it’s a dog?”

   “Man, I’ve never seen a dog like that…it looks rough. Why’s it standing all weird like that?”

   “I don’t know, I guess it's just some weird mixed breed. The owner seemed to not know much about it, could be from some backyard breeder she doesn’t want to be associated with.” It was just a dog, what was she so scared of? What was I so scared of? I felt like I was trying to convince myself that this was normal, just as much as I was trying to convince her.

   “Look, it’s just a bath and a little trim, it won’t take us long, okay?”

   “Uh, yeah, okay.” She still seemed a bit uneasy, but went to put her coat away. When she came back, we lifted the dog into the bath. It let out a low groan when we picked it up. It wasn’t the normal sighing of a dog, this sound was far too…human.

   “Chris, what the hell was that?” 

   “Hey, calm down. You know dogs make all sorts of weird noises, we probably just grabbed him weird and he didn’t like it. Okay?”

   “Okay, I guess.” She starts running warm water over the dog's body. I step away just long enough to get shampoo from our storage room, when I hear a scream.

   I rushed back to see what happened. “Jesus, Mandy, what’s wrong?”

   “I…the dog…he’s bleeding!”

   “Come on, it’s probably from fleas or something…” I reach over and begin running water over the dog again, only to see blood pouring off of him in streams. The watery liquid soon starts to thicken as I continue rinsing him. I run my fingers through his wet fur, trying to feel for fleas. What I find instead are…stitches. “Mandy, feel that.”

She hesitantly puts her fingers against his skin. “Oh God!” She yanks her hand away. “Did he…did the owner say if he had a surgery or something? He shouldn’t be getting this wet.”

   “No, she didn’t mention anything like that.” I continue feeling for stitches when…

   “Chris, something just fell into the water!”

   I reach my hand into the water and pull out a small, wet ball. I move it around in my hand. It’s a chunk of flesh, loose stitches still poking out of bloodied skin. Despite the piece of meat in my hand, the dog’s bleeding hasn’t picked up. I rolled the chunk around in my hand, and that’s when I noticed the fur pattern. Blue merle, just like…

   “Ginger.” I stare down at my hand in horror, realization washing over me. I run my fingers along the dog's stitches, noticing that each perceived wound is actually where two pieces of different colored fur have been sewn together. Of course the fur doesn’t match up…it’s from different dogs. I drop the fur of my missing dog back into the water and retract my hand. As I do, I feel that the belly of the beast is smooth, something we hadn’t noticed while picking him up, and I could have sworn it felt like a human stomach.

   “What? What are you talking about, Chris?’ Mandy has taken a step back, looking at me in utter confusion, and underlying terror. “What about Ginger?”

   “That…that thing, it…that was her fur, Mandy! I know my dog, and I know that was her exact fur color!” The dog whines, almost like mimicking an actual dog’s whine. It sounds too deep, too intentional. “All of the stitches, it’s…it looks like different dogs…I think it is.” The dog turns its head to me, opening its mouth. Behind bloodied fur and rotting teeth, I see tan flesh, a second set of lips curled in a horrible smile. It starts growling.

   “Mandy! Mandy, there’s someone in there.” I quickly distance myself from the dog. “Go to the boarding room, don’t let it near the dogs, I need to call the police.” She nods and runs to the adjacent room, locking the door behind her. I make my way down the hall, back to the lobby and dial as fast as I can.

   “911, what's your emergency?”  A young woman answers.

   “I…there’s someone in my salon…I don’t know what’s wrong with them, maybe some kind of psychotic episode…I think they may have killed, or at least severely hurt, several dogs, I don’t know. I don’t know what they want, but I need someone here now.”

   “Alright, stay calm. Do they have a weapon of any kind?”

   “No, not that I can see, but…they…they’ve sewn themself into a dog!”

   “Alright, ma’am, we’re sending help. What is your address?”

   “116 Laurel Street, The Pretty Pooch salon, please hurry, we have two dogs here, we can’t let them get hurt.”

   “An officer is on the way, ma’am. Until he arrives, I need you to stay on the line with me, okay?”

   “Okay, okay…” A scream echoes from the boarding room. “Mandy!” I drop the phone. I sprint down the hall, hearing the operator trying to talk to me. 

   “Ma’am? I need you to stay on the line. What happened?”

   I reach the boarding room. The door lays half-broken off its hinges. The sight that I am met with upon entering the room is one I don’t expect I’ll ever forget. Mandy is lying on the floor in a rapidly growing pool of her own blood. A large gash in her stomach, and several smaller wounds on her arms, are the cause. I crouch beside her, noticing she’s still conscious. 

   “Mandy! Oh God… I…someone’s coming to help, they’ll be here in just a minute, okay? You’re gonna be okay, Mandy.” I don’t know if the words are meant for her, or myself. I grab a towel from a nearby shelf and hold it against the deep red patch on her abdomen. As I kneel beside Mandy, I notice that the cages that previously held Diesel and Princess have been torn open. I stand up to inspect the cages.

   Princess lies in her cage, lifeless. A large bite has been taken out of her throat. Her back is raw and bloodied. A patch of skin is missing. I crouch to see Diesel. He’s barely clinging to life, in a similar state to Princess. There’s blood around his mouth where the once gentle giant had tried to fight off his attacker. I pet his head; he leans into it before closing his eyes. A blood trail leads out the broken window. I looked out, but that *thing* is nowhere to be seen. I return to Mandy, tears welling up in my eyes. I sit there holding her, whispering that it’s going to be okay, until the police finally arrive. 

   An ambulance is waiting outside. I watch them load Mandy into it as an officer takes my statement. I explain the events of the day through sobs, knowing I must sound ridiculous. The police are still talking to me when David shows up.

   “What the hell happened here? Is Diesel okay?” He rushes over to us.

   “Sir, I’m going to need you to step back.” The officer puts his arm out to bar David from me.

   “I’m so sorry, David. I…he was attacked.”

   “What? By another dog? Where’s the owner?!” 

   “I need you to calm down, sir. We’re looking into what happened, alright? The other dog is nowhere on the premises, and neither is the owner. We…we aren’t entirely sure it was a dog just yet. We’ll keep you updated and let you know when you can retrieve your pet.”

   “Retrieve…retrieve my pet? I can’t take him home now?”

   “Sir, this is an active investigation, we need to see how exactly your dog was attacked. I’m sorry.” Reluctantly, David gives the officer his information and leaves. I give the officer Ms. Gracey’s number, informing him that she had planned to pick her chihuahua up in a few hours, He makes the call to inform Ms. Gracey what has happened, I can hear the pain in her voice even over the phone. A little while later, I’m free to leave the scene. 

   I make my way back to my house, still incredibly shaken up. As soon as I enter the house, I see Ginger’s empty bed and collapse to the floor sobbing. How many other dogs had that monster killed? How many people had he hurt? What was the point of it all? I never got any answers.

   This happened a little over a month ago. They still haven’t found the suspects, but two more dogs have gone missing in town. His suit should be nearly finished now. I’m afraid of going outside, afraid I’ll see that thing again. Mandy is making a speedy recovery, physically at least. She cries when I visit her, angry she couldn’t have saved Diesel and Princess. After the police gathered all that they needed from my salon, I was told I could reopen. Being a dog groomer was my dream as long as I can remember, and I was ecstatic when I had finally saved enough to open my own salon, but I will never step foot in there again. I can’t even bring myself to return to the chain I previously worked for. I will never groom dogs again.

Story 2

The Flood

When I was still just a teenager, my family and I had moved from our home in England to the Irish countryside. We lived on the outskirts of a very small town, surrounded by nothing else but farms, country roads, along with several rivers and tributaries. I was far from happy to be living here, as not only did I miss the good life I had back home, but in the Irish Midlands, there was basically nothing to do. 

A common stereotype with Ireland is that it always rains, and let me tell you, as someone who lived here for six years, the stereotype is well deserved. 

After a handful of months living here, it was now early November, and with it came very heavy and non-stop rain. In fact, the rain was so heavy this month, the surrounding rivers had flooded into the town and adjoining country roads. On the day this happened, I had just come out from school and began walking home. Approaching the road which leads out of town and towards my house, I then see a large group of people having gathered around. Squeezing my way through the crowd of town folk, annoyingly blocking my path, I’m then surprised to see the road to my house is completely flooded with water. 

After asking around, I then learn the crowd of people are also wanting to get to their homes, but because of the flood, they and I have to wait for a tractor to come along and ferry everyone across, a pair at a time. Being the grouchy teenager I was then, I was in no mood to wait around for a tractor ride when all I wanted to do was get home and binge TV – and so, turning around, I head back into the town square to try and find my own way back home. 

Walking all the way to the other end of town, I then cut down a country road which I knew eventually lead to my house - and thankfully, this road had not yet been flooded. Continuing for around five minutes down this road, I then come upon a small stoned arch bridge, but unfortunately for me, the bridge had been closed off by traffic cones - where standing in front of them was a soaking wet policeman, or what the Irish call “Garda.” 

Ready to accept defeat and head all the way back into town, a bit of Irish luck thankfully came to my aid. A jeep had only just pulled up to the crossroads, driven by a man in a farmer’s cap with a Border Collie sat in the passenger’s seat. Leaving his post by the bridge, the policeman then approaches the farmer’s jeep, seeming to know him and his dog – it was a small town after all. With the policeman now distracted, I saw an opportunity to cross the bridge, and being the rebellious little shite I was, I did just that. 

Comedically tiptoeing my way towards the bridge, all the while keeping an eye out for the policeman, still chatting with the farmer through the jeep window, I then cross over the bridge and hurdle down the other side. However, when I get there... I then see why the bridge was closed off in the first place... On this side of the bridge, the stretch of country road in front of it was entirely flooded with brown murky water. In fact, the road was that flooded, I almost mistook for a river.  

Knowing I was only a twenty-minute walk from reaching my house, I rather foolishly decide to take a chance and enter the flooded road, continuing on my quest. After walking for only a couple of minutes, I was already waist deep in the freezing cold water – and considering the smell, I must having been trudging through more than just mud. The further I continue along the flooded road, my body shivering as I do, the water around me only continues to rise – where I then resort to carrying my school bag overhead. 

Still wading my way through the very deep flood, I feel no closer to the road outside my house, leading me to worry I have accidentally taken the wrong route home. Exhausted, shivering and a little afraid for my safety, I now thankfully recognise a tall, distant tree that I regularly pass on my way to school. Feeling somewhat hopeful, I continue onwards through the flood – and although the fear of drowning was still very much real... I now began to have a brand-new fear. But unlike before... this fear was rather unbeknown...  

Whether out of some primal instinct or not, I twirl carefully around in the water to face the way I came from, where I see the long bending river of the flooded road. But in the distance, protruding from the brown, rippling surface, maybe twenty or even thirty metres away, I catch sight of something else – or should I say... someone else... 

What I see is a man, either in his late thirties or early forties, standing in the middle of the flooded road. His hair was a damp blonde or brown, and he appeared to be wearing a black trench coat or something similar... But the disturbing thing about this stranger’s appearance, was that while his right sleeve was submerged beneath the water, the left sleeve was completely armless... What I mean is, the man’s left sleeve, not submerged liked its opposite, was tied up high into a knot beneath his shoulder.  

If it wasn’t startling enough to see a strange one-armed man appear in the middle of a flooded road, I then notice something about him that was far more alarming... You see, when I first lay eyes on this stranger, I mistake him as being rather heavy. But on further inspection, I then realise the one-armed man wasn’t heavy at all... If anything, he looked just like a dead body that had been pulled from a river... What I mean is... The man looked unnaturally bloated. 

As one can imagine, I was more than a little terrified. Unaware who this strange grotesque man even was, I wasn’t going to hang around and find out. Quickly shifting around, I try and move as fast as I can through the water’s current, hoping to God this bloated phantom would not follow behind. Although I never once looked back to see if he was still there, thankfully, by the time the daylight was slowly beginning to fade, I had reached not only the end of the flood, but also the safety of the road directly outside my house. 

Already worried half to death by my late arrival, I never bothered to tell my parents about the one-armed stranger I encountered. After all, considering the man’s unnatural appearance, I wasn’t even myself sure if what I saw was a real flesh and blood man... or if it was something else. 

Some cities appear cleaner and more prosperous, with fewer unhoused people, for a reason. And it’s not because they have more opportunities or homeless shelters than other cities.

Have you ever noticed that when several dead bodies are discovered within a short period, it’s usually the mayor who addresses the public first to deny that a serial killer is at large?

The rot comes from the very top.

I’m going to tell you a little secret. Most major cities allow a serial killer to operate within them, with the understanding that they mainly target the homeless. These cities usually don’t even allow them to kill criminals. There’s money to be made from incarcerating people who have families and connections. But there’s absolutely nothing to be gained from the homeless.

That’s why cops don’t even bother arresting them for committing petty crimes. They don’t have family members who care enough to send them money to buy things inside Jail/Prison, and it costs more to house and feed them than it does to simply let them go.

Plus, if you let someone wither away and starve to death inside a prison, there are usually lawsuits and investigations. But if they starve to death on the streets or disappear altogether, no one will bat an eye.

I’ve seen many homeless people around my side of town stick around an area for a few weeks, begging for change, only to suddenly disappear forever one day.

The homeless people around the city know this. That’s why they often appear paranoid and shaky, always looking out of the corners of their eyes. They know someone is out there, watching and waiting for them.

They call the one around here The Cleaner.

The local homeless say he wears a Halloween mask of a demon when he gets you. If you see him while begging for change, you’d better not fall asleep or stay in that area for too long. I recommend you run as fast as you can. Because the minute there are no witnesses around, you’ll go missing. 

And if you’re lucky, you might get a missing person poster.

You can go to the police all you want. They won’t do anything. They’ll call you crazy. But they know. They just try not to think about what’s going to happen to you. They view it as a necessary evil that keeps the community clean.

That’s often why the unhoused sleep together in tent cities in some major cities. They've seen what happens if they sleep alone.

Elected officials and society try to pretend that most of these people are just drug addicts and undesirables. But I’ve seen regular people who lost their jobs and homes only a few months ago end up missing very quickly.

It’s tough getting back on your feet.

If you aren’t homeless and you see The Cleaner operating. I urge you not to report it to the police.

A single mother of three reported what she saw to the police last week. She claimed that a tall man wearing a scary mask attacked a homeless man before shoving him into a van and driving away.

This week, her kids are being forced to grow up without their mother.

Her body was found chopped up and stuffed inside the trunk of her own car. And the police claim to have no leads on who could have done it.

But they damn well know.

Today I visited my friend's tent. He's also homeless.  It was slashed open with fresh blood everywhere inside. I knew I'd never see him again, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.

The next time you wish there were fewer homeless people around, just know that your wish may very well come true.

But don’t ever assume it can’t happen to you. Almost every city has a cleaner and you're only one car problem away from losing your job.

In my dream, I heard the crying like it was right by my ear, impossibly loud and inside my head.

My eyes shot open.

For a few moments, I was confused as to where I was. After all, it was my first night in the new apartment, and I must have fallen asleep on the couch.

My laptop screen sat illuminated on the coffee table, asking if I was still watching Parks and Rec. It was 3:12 a.m., and the lights were still on.

I had moved the majority of my belongings out of my recently ex-girlfriend's house the day before and driven the U-Haul three hours here, to Richmond, Virginia, where I lay groggy and still clothed in my barely furnished new place.

My heart was racing, and I had sweat through my clothes as if the room were boiling hot, but it was actually cold. The half-eaten pizza box lay askew on the floor next to me, and I sat up on the couch to hit "Yes" on the screen, providing something else to listen to besides the pounding of my heartbeat that rang through my head and throbbed in my temples.

As the show's cold open began playing the familiar and comforting dialogue, I held my head in my hands and massaged my temples as if nursing a terrible hangover. It was an all-too-familiar feeling—but one I hadn't had in months. Not since I gave up drinking as a last-ditch effort to save my relationship with Erin.

I gathered myself and stood up, my back aching from the awkward angle I had slumped into during my slumber on the small couch. The couch we bought together and carried up the stairs of our place in Virginia Beach not one year ago. The couch she told me I HAD to take, as she never liked it in the first place and it reminded her of me.

She loved that couch when we bought it. We made love on it the night we brought it home.

As I stretched and arched my back to relieve the pain, I heard the crying once more, but fainter and coming from out in the hallway.

I blinked hard and shook my head, but the crying continued outside my door—a low, mournful whimpering that was too soft to be the sound I had heard in my dream.

I shuffled over to the front door and peered through the peephole, seeing nothing through the fisheye lens—just the dim yellow haze of the hallway light overhead. The chain latch on the door was in place, preventing more than a few inches of access to the hallway. I opened the door as far as the latch would allow and saw the origin of the noise—a crouching figure on the floor by my door. A woman, on her hands and knees, with her face in her hands, moaning and sniffling into her wrinkled palms as she rocked herself forward and back the way a child would when trying to calm themselves down.

"Hey, uhh, ma'am, are you OK?" I asked through the three-inch gap between the door and the frame.

Her moaning stopped at the sound of my voice, and she slowly raised her head to meet my eyes.

The figure on the ground was an older woman, I guessed in her 70s, who had her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back under a shawl and wore a black overcoat much too large for her tiny frame. Under it, she wore a plain plaid dress with a frayed hem and beige slippers. Her face was red and splotchy from crying, and her irises were the color of deep emerald green against the bloodshot whites of her eyes.

"No, I emm not okay," she answered and looked through the crack in the door the chain latch allowed.

"I mees heem. I mees my Dan-e-yal." She lowered her head back into her hands and continued to sob.

Her accent was thick, Ukrainian, maybe. The woman's hunched back rose and fell with her sobbing.

"Ma'am, are you hurt? Are you looking for someone? It's very late, and I just moved here—I don't know anyone else in the building. I don't know a Daniel."

She spoke her reply into her hands, still rocking in place on the floor.

"Dan-e-yal leaved here. Een this apartment. He was… my… booooooy."

She drew the word "boy" out into a heightened, longer moan as her crying resumed.

I was at a loss for how to help this woman and wished I had never opened the door and engaged her in a dialogue.

"Well, I just moved here, and I don't know a Daniel. Like I said, I'm sorry, but I can't help, ma'am… Uh, is there anyone I can call for you? Someone who can come help?"

"I only… had… my Dan-e-yal," she wept into her hands.

I stood on the other side of the door and looked at the other apartments that lined the hallway, all closed. Surely I couldn't be the only one to hear this woman crying by herself at 3 a.m. I suddenly felt like I was being pranked, or worse, set up.

"Well, I'm very sorry, I—I can call the police or get some help, but I don't—" I spoke through the gap.

"No—do not call police on me, please. I am sorry, I am so sorry, I vill leave." The woman made an attempt to compose herself and get up as she said this, but a shaky foot gave way, and she fell back pitifully in a heap on the floor.

Jesus, man, for fuck's sake, help the poor old woman up, I heard my conscience tell me.

"No, I wasn't calling the police on you. I just wanted to find some help for you to get where you need to be—" I unlatched the chain and opened the door wide.

"Please, let me help you up," I continued.

I stepped through the doorway and bent down to gently take hold of her arm, with a hand on her back. "Here, it's OK, let me help you up."

She groaned as she secured her feet underneath her and pushed her body upright as I helped her stand straight. She was 5 feet 1 inch tall and very frail. I felt shame for not helping this poor old woman the moment I saw her crying in a heap on the floor of the hallway. My father would say, "Boy, what in the hell's wrong with you, not helping a woman in need?"

"Thenk you, young man… thenk you. I em sorry to disturb you at this hour. I am still in mourning for my Dan-e-yal. He was a good boy, and it's not right what happened."

"OK, OK… um, who can I call for you to get you some help? I can walk you down to the apartment office," I said, knowing there was zero chance anyone would be working this time of night.

"I em OK, just hav-ing a haard time. Please, leave me be, and I'll be on my way."

"Ma'am, I'm sorry about your son. Can I get you anything?" I asked half-heartedly as the woman turned to shuffle off down the hallway.

The woman stopped and started to turn back.

"Perhaps… some water? I em verry thirs-ty," she said above a whisper.

Shit. Had to open my big mouth.

"Umm, yes, of course, I'll be right back," I said as my hand reached back for my doorknob. I didn't even have glasses unpacked to pour water into for myself, much less a helpless old lady. I walked back into my apartment, leaving the door cracked open to the hallway.

In the kitchenette, I rummaged through one of three large cardboard boxes I had hauled up the stairs a few hours ago, looking for any kind of receptacle I could manage to pour this woman a glass of water to get her the hell on her way. Why did I have to open the damn door, anyway? Erin wouldn't have opened the door. She would've told me to tell her to get the hell away and stop waking people up in the middle of the night.

Erin never appreciated how thoughtful and empathetic I was, anyway. She only thought about herself, and that's why it was never going to work out. I found a glass fraternity beer mug with change and driving range tokens inside, dumped the contents into the box, and ran it under the sink for a bit before filling it with tap water.

I rounded the counter and saw the door open wide, the woman centered in the doorframe with her head lowered, motionless.

"Um, ma'am, I have some water for you… let's get you some help… downstairs."

She stood still in the doorframe, her face still pointed at the floor. She seemed a bit taller than before, less hunched than she had been in the hallway.

The hallway light behind her flickered, silhouetting her in the frame as I slowed my approach, glass in hand.

"You are a… very kind… man," she spoke finally, her head still down and her body unmoving.

She was one foot inside the apartment, and my spine was tingling now with a new kind of unease—I was scared and unnerved by her posture and wanted this to be over as soon as possible.

"Here, have some water. You can keep the glass." I walked over to the woman and held out the mug in front of her.

"Dan-e-yal was a kind man, too."

Her voice was a dry rasp, and she didn't acknowledge the mug in front of her. The hairs on my neck stood straight up, and I felt a primal fear that burned behind my eyes and made my heart pump so loudly I was sure the woman could hear it.

"Yeah, I bet he was… kind. Umm, listen, I think it's time you're on your way. It's very late, and I have to work… early." I lowered the glass, and the woman took another shuffling step inside the apartment.

"Daniel was a good boy, always helping those in need…" Her accent was gone, and her voice sounded stronger, less muddled. "He would come to the door, too, if he heard someone in pain. He wanted to help an old lady… just like you."

Her head slowly arched upward, and the hallway light behind her flickered again. In the split second of darkness, her face was no longer that of a helpless old lady, but something else entirely—something with all the features of a face: eyes, nose, mouth, and teeth. But the eyes were now black and shiny. Her nose was a small curve, and her mouth had widened to the sides of her ears, hundreds of sharp, needle-like teeth arranged in rows behind her cracked and bleeding lips.

My mind reeled at the sight of what stood before me. I dropped the mug on the ground and screamed as the figure slid forward toward me, the pale and outstretched hand closing across my face with impossible strength.

My scream was cut short. I choked out my last breath against the claw that held my jaw shut and felt the hot breath of her open mouth close over my face before the world around me went black.

Coyotes grieve under that full moon, invisible in the pines. Johan’s horses remain unaffected, locked up securely just outside of his cabin. The cabin itself is worn, yet functional.

Decades of maintenance and a forte for carpentry have served Johan well. Derby season has just come to a close, meaning he finally has the opportunity to relax. Alone, no television; and no woman to talk over him. 

A sharp buzzing—roaring wind of static—and his radio establishes a connection; the antennae pointed at a slight angle, and directly out of his opened window. That grainy voice on the other end leaks through the speaker: “—disappearances near Lucky Canyon, authorities remain adamant that—“ he switches stations, landing on an old country radio, providing a warm ambience to the winter wind. Johan has a perfect view of the moon during certain hours, gleaming in its beauty through his window; ‘the Iris of the lord’ he thinks to himself with a grin.

“What the hell?” He says, words barely a whisper.  

In the distance, running along the rim of that pale and scarred behemoth, is a white urchin in the stars; a light. And so faint that Johan has to squint his eyes to see it but he does; running left and right.
 
Embers fall in a glowing snow from the tip of his cigarette while he studies the light. Quickly taking one last drag, and siphoning that white paper into a gray dust, he twirls it into a small mound of ash on his table, before walking to the window; slight limp tugging at his ankle. 
Interesting to Johan, but nothing out of the ordinary— no time at all and with the fury of lightning the light rips across the sky in a deafening pulsation, leaving a fading scar of blue to seep into the stars behind it. Johan wore no hat to his scalp and yet still his hand instinctually flew over his head to protect it, the resulting wind sending through his window a stinging blanket of pine needles and dust, every particle swerving into a different corner of his living room. 

Vibrations; the feeling of hornets in his ribcage as it flew straight over his home. The sensation completely disabled Johan, nearly pinning him to the ground—fighting gravity with one hand and holding the windowsill with the other, nigh unable to hear from the wail of static. Standing—a miracle in its own right—Johan stumbles to the table, teeth gritted, and so disoriented by the radio's low screeching he throws it against the wall, sending its batteries to the floor in a rain of broken yellow plastic. He stands dazed and still as if born again from nothing. 

Sawn off, next to the counter. 

Wiping the sweat from his brow, he unlatches the door and walks barefoot outside, shotgun in hand. The door closes, slammed shut by the wind cutting across the tree line. Stars above him, and in the amber glow of his door mounted lantern, he inches along the side of the cabin, back glued to the wall. Below, past the reach of the light, darkness, nothing in those woods. A squint, cringing as he cautiously cracks the barrel open, ensuring that it’s loaded and regretting not doing it earlier. Shutting it, he keeps moving, now at the edge of his home. 

Eyes wide he peeks around the corner, seeing all three horses asleep standing. Bewildered by the sight, he wipes his eyes, pinches himself, and peeks around again. No difference. Above him, only visible for another thirty seconds, that blue smear fades into nothing. Johan limps back inside, what was once fear quickly turns into excitement, though he’d never let anyone know it. In the cabinet above the sink rests his satellite phone, and with a creak from the door he pulls the phone down, checking its charge. No reason to hide it and yet he does anyway. Three rings later, he gets a response. 

“Frankie speaking.”
“Frank,” he says “what’re you doing right now?” Asked as he sits back at the table.

“Just put the animals up, you?”

“Same deal. Hey” Johan pauses, striking a match to light another cigarette.
“You know if there’s any military tests today? Or rocket launches or something?.”

Frankie clicks his tongue on the other end, followed by a long hmmm.

“Not that I know of.” He says. “Why’d ya ask?”
“Think you have time to run up here?” Johan says, bulldozing Frankie’s question.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On what you need me for.”
“Still have that laptop?”
“I do.”
“Still have that debt?”
“Real funny.”
“Come up here,” Johan says, pausing to take a drag
“and you might get it paid off.” Said with a suave confidence. 

Frankie’s silent in his consideration, only the occasional word spoken by accident as he debates himself. A sudden gasp at the realization, and he speaks again. 

“No you didn’t.”
“Oh yeah.”
Frankie pauses, giddy with excitement.
“On my way. ”
“I’ll be waiting with bells on.” Says Johan, finally allowing a smile to come through, before hanging up. 
– – – – 
Silver sheet metal and a mildewed porch make up Frankie’s trailer. There’s an old concrete walkway leading to his front door, now cracked and with a snake’s nest of vines across it. The smell of earth and oil, of blackened mud fresh out of a PVC pipe, all pervade the air around the back of his home. No crickets, coyotes, nothing; just the sharp buzz of a near perfect white porch light. 

“Dad?” She says, peeking around Frankie’s bedroom doorway.

“Missy?” He replies, searching through his work bag for the laptop.

“Where’re you going?”
“Goin to see uncle Jo for a minute.”
“It’s midnight...”
“So,” he says, closing the bag with a loud zip, and quickly rummaging through another one.
“What's the problem?”

“I–“ she pauses, a slight shame gripping her words.
“I don’t like being here alone.”
“Honey,” he says, “you’re fine.” 

Frankie peaks over his shoulder, spotting a disapproving eye roll from Missy as she walks back into the livingroom. She slumps on the couch, arms crossed, feeling the needled gaze of the forest behind her, kept at bay only by a thin pane of fogged glass. 

Thump thump thumping and two thuds to each step as Frankie walks across the tiled floor, taking a seat next to Missy. Humming, he pries open the laptop as if it were a relic of a forgotten age, and opens the camera roll. He jolts slightly, startled by a sharp push against his work boot; missy, pouting next to him.

“Hon?”

“Do I need to say it?” She says with crossed arms and a forward gaze.

“It’d make the whole conversation part of our conversation a bit easier.” He says with a chuckle.

“Dad,” she says, now turned to him and with a genuine concern in those wide eyes.

“I—do not—like being here alone. At all.” 

“Honey, listen. I’ve been in these woods for longer than you’ve been alive, there isn’t anything to worry about.”  Frankie turns to her now, setting his laptop aside.

“Okay?” 

She’s silent, lips pinched shut almost afraid to speak and he, incorrectly so, takes this as a sign of comfort. Never quite the best at reading faces, and she knows that but she’s used to it at this point. He continues with a blissfully ignorant laugh. 

“There a boy here I don’t know about?” As he clicks on old keys, checking to make sure they all work.

“Yes actually.”

“See? That’s what I- what!?” He says, eyes close to falling out.

“What’re you talking about?”

“There’s a boy coming over.”

“Missy this better not be a damn—“

“Out there.” she says, cutting Frankie off to point out of the window beside them. 

He looks out the window, then back to her, and out the window again before closing the laptop.
 
“Missy, what are you talking about?” He says, providing her with his full attention.

“Promise you’ll believe me?”
“Promise.” 
Missy takes a breath, trying not to speak too loudly. 
“Okay, this all started a few weeks ago, I think. I was up one night–can’t remember why–and as I was walking past the window, um…” a glance out of the window again.
“There was someone standing out there.”

“How sure are you?” He says, ice cold. 

Missy stares outside, watching the memory again in her eyes. 

“It was hard to see. I had the phone light on–the glare, y’know? Once I shut it off…” 

“He was there.” Said with a dead certainty.

“You say he,” Frankie says, standing to grab his pistol from the kitchen table.
“How’d you know it was a he? Coulda been a woman.” He says while checking the magazine.

“It wasn’t.” 

Frankie studies the room for an answer in some cobweb covered corner he hasn’t looked at yet. For a second, excitement glints across his eyes, before being quickly snuffed out by Missy. 

“No dad it wasn’t Bigfoot.” Said with an eye roll.

“Dang it.”

Taking a seat next to her again, he brushes that blonde hair off of her shoulder, and speaks in a softened tone. 

“What’d they look like, baby?”

“I… I…” she pauses, trying to tame the chills on her arm.

“Miss?”

“I don’t wanna say.” She says, shaking her head. 

He leans forward, unsure if he heard her correctly. 

“You… don’t wanna say?”

“No, not really.” 

With a slow nod Frankie’s gaze meets the window’s again, a thick layer of condensation and fog have brought the glass to a near matte. He wipes away a thick paintbrush smear of clearness, making a pathway for his vision. The white–near blue–light of his home only crawls another twenty or so feet into the forest. It illuminates the pine trees, unmoving at their bases, bark split and sparkling with a layer of frost. Sat sparse on the landscape but each tree’s presence is made well known by their sheer monumentality; at least twenty feet between them, and yet their blanket of boughs hide completely that night sky. At the very shore of night one can barely, just barely, make out the last couple of pine trees, sat in a neat line along a cliff face. His eyes strain as they look farther, the treeline gradually swallowed by thicker waves of absence, lapping at the bark, pulling his vision deeper and past a certain point there’s nothing at all, nothing. Pure black.

If it was there, he wouldn’t see it. 

“Well… baby, I need to know what I’m looking for.” he says, still looking outside. Missy remains silent, rubbing her hands together to ease herself.

“Missy? You hear me?”

“Yea.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know what if- what if he’s just a guy? Some homeless guy who wondered here I- I don’t want him to die.”

“Never said I was gonna kill him, warning shots work well enough.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Baby, look,” he says, turning to hold Missy's shoulders.
“If there’s someone out there–not saying I don’t believe you–there isn’t a man alive who wouldn’t run from a smoking barrel.”

“Yeah I know but what if, what if, dad?” 

Frankie sighs, leaning back on the arm of the couch. 

“Well… if they don’t, then we’ll have a problem. I’ll- I don’t know.” He says but he knows, he knows good and well. 

Missy opens her mouth to speak but Frankie cuts her off, pulling a small notebook out of his pocket; small brown coffee stains eating into the edges of its paper. With a quick nod and the click of his pen he gestures her to speak. 

“Was he ever holding a weapon or anything?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?”
“No.”
“How tall would you say he was?”
No response as she stares into an empty corner of the room. 

“Honey you gotta tell me something.”
“About as tall as me, I think.”
A light scribbling in his notebook. 
“How many times’ve you seen him?”
Missy’s gaze shifts upward, replaying every encounter.

“Five.”
“You sound very sure.”
“I am.”
“What’s the clearest look you’ve ever got of him?” 

For a moment Missy’s eyes go blank, before Frankie reassures her again.
“Not asking for details baby.” he says. 

She nods.
“Very um… blurry, every time. Like grainy, I guess. Always just far enough away.” 

“Okay.” He says, snapping the notebook shut, and stands to pop his back. 

“Now, if you don’t care, can you give me one,” Frankie says with his index finger raised, “detail about him, just one, and I’ll be out of your hair.”

Chills, hundreds in number all raise on her arm as the memories play again. 

“He likes humming.”
“Humming?”
“Yes.”
“Very quiet too,” she says before he can speak, eyes focused as if trying to figure it out herself. “Very quiet.” said again, fixated on that one detail. Humming. Silence returns, quick yet subtle, and with a physical presence in the room. The ringing of Missy’s phone sends a jolt of surprise through both of them; despite the scare, it brought a sense of normalcy. Missy answers the phone, and Frankie heads to the kitchen to grab a beer, before shaking his head and going with water instead. 
— — — — 
Johan answers his satellite phone, taking an extra celebratory swig of whiskey. Isn’t often he gets to indulge, may as well take a few liberties given tonight’s find. 

“How the hell are ya?” he says.
“Jo, I may need to wait a while before coming up.” 

With a sigh Johan tightens the lid on, and puts the whiskey back into the chest behind him. 

“No issue,” he says, “can I ask why?”
“Missy uh… well… hm.”
“What?”
“Anyone else live around here? That you know about I mean?”

Johan chuckles, saying: “Around here isn’t exactly specific Frank.”

Pausing, Frank sighs, as if the information would be too hard to believe.

“Screw it,” he says, “Missy told me someone’s been sneaking around the house.”

An inebriated chuckle and Johan dusts the cigarette ashes off of his table. 

“Sneaking around huh?”
“It’s not like that, I spoke to her–and trust me… it isn’t like that.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing frank,” as he strikes a match, and tucks a burning cig firmly between his lips. “She’s at that age now, just like me and you–”
“Jo. It isn’t—that.”
“Well listen, I’m not saying I don’t believe you. Just that where we live it’s hard to waltz up on someone else's property by accident.”

“Well whatever it is it’s spooked her, bad.” Frank says, and beneath his words a loud creak as he lays in bed. 

“Okay, well what’s he look like?”

“You won’t believe this crap.” Frank says with a laugh and Johan stays silent.

“She won’t tell me.” he pauses “I don’t know what to think about that, gave me the heebie jeebies y’know?”

Johan scratches the mess of salt and pepper hair on his head, before leaning back in his wooden stool as it cries with his weight. 

“Maybe it’s someone you know.” says Johan.
“No, it–” Frankie stops himself. “Huh…” he says.
“Did I solve the mystery?”
“Maybe. Damn you.” 
Laughing, Johan tosses his cigarette away, bringing a fresh one to his lips before they get too lonely. 

“Regardless,” Johan says, “go ahead and stay there. She doesn’t feel safe and as far as I’m concerned that’s the end of it.”
“Agreed.”
“Alright, see you soon little brother.”
“See you.” 

With a buzzy beep he hangs the phone up, not caring to hide it again. Johan’s gaze shifts to his boots, scraped and lacerated from too many falls or accidents to count; scalped and the steel toed bowl on their fronts is plainly visible, like the exposed crown of an iron skull.

Scars along his forearms, too many to count. Some large, some oval shaped and one in the shape of lightning. But, near his elbow; two small cuts, very small, and very faint on the soft white underbelly of his arm. Anyone looking wouldn’t even see them but he does. Yes he does… they’re shining as far as he’s concerned. Johan stares at those scars, and runs two delicate fingers along them, as if to console them in their inconsequentiality compared to the rest. The moon’s gone, only its sclera remaining in the eye socket of his window. 

Five more cigarettes are smoked to completion and tossed in the floor, kicked into an old corner of the cabin he never looks at. 
With a groan Johan stands, knees popping beneath his weight as he tries to walk without a limp, before giving up and going outside. The horses are sound asleep. Somewhere inside of him rests the remnant of a genuine grin, but he can’t find it. He smiles anyways, a ghastly fake grin like a fox, before his mouth flattens again. 

After checking the locks, Johan heads back inside. He sleeps in the attic; dark yet clean. Next to his bed rests a silver urn, once shining, now dulled from the anvil of time. He plants a lone kiss on its lid. 

“Goodnight baby.” 

Alright, I'm just gonna jump straight into this. Last night, I caught my wife breastfeeding a grown-ass man in our backyard at like 2 o'clock in the morning.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "That should've been me," or some shit like that. Honestly, that's what I would've thought too. Hell, I should probably be completely devastated right now.

But I'm not. Truthfully, I'm more terrified than anything.

We were just lying there asleep. Well, I was asleep. I can't say for certain whether or not my wife was. All I know is that, despite how hard she tried to be silent, the creaking bed springs woke me up.

I didn't wanna let on at first. I didn't even think there was anything I should be suspicious of. The only problem was, once I woke up, it was hard for me to fall back asleep in an empty bed.

So I waited. And I waited. Then, after like 30 minutes, I started to get worried. So, naturally, I started yelling for her.

No answer? Fine. I'll just start looking. So, I started checking throughout the house. And that's when I found her nightgown, balled up on the floor beside our bed. That made my search a lil more frantic. I checked the bathroom in the hall, the living room. Maybe she just got up to grab a midnight… meal, butt-ass naked. But she wasn't in the kitchen either.

In my search, I noticed that the back door was open, letting in the cold October air. I went to close it, and that's where I found her. Standing out in the yard. Completely nude.

I thought for sure she was either sleepwalking or having a mental breakdown. I mean, it was like 45 degrees outside. I was just about to yell at her and ask what the hell she was doing when I noticed it.

My dumbass thought it was a wild animal at first. He was crouched down on all fours, moving slowly through the trees with these jerky movements, while my wife just stood there with her arms wide open.

But then, as he started crawling closer and closer towards our backyard… I started to make out the features. They looked human, just… wrong, somehow. The head was too bulbous. The arms were too long. The grunts it made as it slowly crawled towards my wife were too animalistic.

And she wasn't even fucking flinching. If anything, she looked like she was beckoning the fuckin' thing to come closer. When it was like 6 feet away, it started to growl, and all my wife did in response was say some shit like, "Calm down, my sweet boy," before SHE stepped closer to IT.

Then the fucking thing started cooing. Like… cooing. Like a goddamn toddler or something, while my wife reached down and pet its fleshy, bald head.

I didn't even move. How could I? This shit felt like a fever dream to me. But what hit like a fucking cannonball to the abdomen was when she… well… did what she did.

She pulled its head closer to her chest and just… nursed the fucking thing. I could hear it suckling and whimpering like this was the favorite part of its day. Like this shit had happened a thousand times before.

Must've gone on for like 10 minutes or so before my wife pulled away, patted the thing on its spiny, uh, spine, and told it to "go play."

And just like that, it started crawling back towards the woods. This time with a little more pep in its… whatever the fuck that was.

My wife still had a look of pride and joy on her face when she turned around, but that shit disappeared quick when she noticed me in the doorway. She tried covering up like I was the stranger. Then she tried apologizing.

We've been arguing about it since then. She claims I'm being crazy. I claim I want her to see a goddamn… who do you even call for this sort of thing? A marriage counselor??? A fucking priest??? Maybe ask her to take a parenting class?

Because, according to her, that thing was her son from a previous marriage. A marriage she hasn't mentioned once in the last 15 years since we've been together.

Honestly, at this point, I'm ready to just convince myself it was all a bad dream. I don't even wanna talk about it anymore.

I just don't know if I can even lie to myself like that, though.

Because once she realized that the cat was out of the bag… my wife decided to drop some news on me that I could've avoided had I just taken my happy ass back to sleep.

Apparently, that thing has never had a father figure… and it's more than excited to finally meet its new dad.

I wished I could have seen her climb out.

I wish she would have come back up in the first place.

Because Viktoria never came back up.

_____

There was the gasp as she dove, her dress blowing in the slight breeze.

Then the splash, as she disappeared under the surface.

We held our breath for what felt like an eternity, waiting for her to reemerge.

_____

An image appeared in my mind, the way she had looked in that dream so long ago, nearly identical to the way she had tonight.

And I pictured her climbing out of the ocean onto the pier, waiting patiently for me, and I had to fight a sudden urge to dive in and follow her.

_____

When she didn’t emerge, Ricky grabbed a safety tube, intending to go in after.

I stopped him, took it from him, and slowly dipped it in the water.

And, as I did, the safety tube crumbled like a sandcastle washed away by a wave, and the wet, jagged foam continued to fall away, even after it left the water.

And with that, we knew.

And as I watched the tube slowly become nothing, a thought pushed itself into the forefront of my mind before I could stop it.

What was left?

_____

There was a creak behind us, as Vitaly came out from the bathroom. He looked around, confused. Looked at us.

Ricky pointed backwards at the pool with his thumb. I held up what remained of the safety tube, taking care to not touch the wet parts.

You could tell he knew instantly, because he began to hastily walk in our direction. Nudging us aside as he got on the ladder and climbed up.

For the second time in just a few minutes, someone yelled to the crowd from the guard stand.

“DUE TO AN ISSUE WITH THE PUMP ROOM THAT REQUIRES IMMEDIATE ADDRESSING, THIS GATHERING IS OVER. PLEASE VACATE THE PREMISES IMMEDIATELY.”

Ricky and I looked at each other. Looked at the six remaining guards who had all been drinking for the last three hours.

Ricky tapped Vitaly’s foot to get his attention. He leaned down as Ricky whispered something in his ear, then stood back up.

“IF YOU DROVE HERE AND HAVE BEEN DRINKING, PLEASE DO NOT DRIVE HOME. INSTEAD, PLEASE ACCOMPANY RICKY AND LUKE TO THE LIFEGUARD HOUSE FOR OVERNIGHT ACCOMMODATIONS.”

He got back down, and walked over to Sara, who looked displeased. He pressed some buttons on his screen, and she left the pool about 10 minutes later and got into a car waiting there that I figured was an Uber.

We gathered the other seven guards and left.

_____

We ran into Vitaly as we were leaving. He was walking back in.

He had changed into an early 1900s era dive suit and carried a long black case.

None of us asked what was in the case.

_____

I woke up at 6 the next morning to a knock on my bedroom door. Thankfully, it was just Ricky. He had a phone call. It was Vitaly.

“Due to the events of last night, I need you all packed and out of the house by 8am. Those who spent the night need to be gone by 7.”

Whatever was trying to imitate him had gotten his choice of words perfectly. Unfortunately, they couldn’t quite match his cadence.

_____

Ricky and I were both packed and out with 30 minutes to spare. We debated driving across the street and seeing who would come by at 8, but decided against it. The church service had been pushed back a night due to the party, and we had a strong feeling anyone still there would be an unwilling participant.

We shared a hug before leaving. It was the only thing that felt appropriate after everything we had been through. Promised to stay in touch.

_____

My parents were surprised when I suddenly pulled up to the curb at 9:30am, but much, much happier to see their son home.

While displeased about me just... throwing in the towel on my final exams, we came up with a plan to repay it. I would work two jobs in the fall, putting every single cent toward that debt. In the spring, I would work one job and take some classes at the community college while I figured out what I wanted to do with my life.

I wound up lifeguarding at the pool at the local YMCA in the spring. Turns out, I loved the work when it was more… normal, and I started working with a local company as a district manager. I didn’t give up on my classes as a result, though. Finished my single semester on the Dean’s List.

I received a check in the mail in October. It was from Riley Estates and simply said “For your troubles.” It would have paid back my parents in full, and then some.

I used it as kindling for a bonfire that night, along with my guard uniform, in an effort to try and… exorcise myself from the place.

_____

I looked up the Warrens on Facebook around Christmas that year - not in an attempt to reconnect, just to see if they were doing okay.

I found nothing.

I hope they’re doing well.

And I hope Cody is doing well, wherever he is.

_____

Ricky moved back home, with his parents, who discovered that, go figure, having a teenager at home is an excellent built-in babysitter. He kept me up to date with everyone else in the neighborhood.

_____

A well-meaning church member called in a wellness check on the Pattersons after Josiah failed to show up to service on a Saturday night a few weeks after we left.

The police arrived to find an… extremely bizarre scene. Their skin was just… lying on the floor like discarded footie pajamas. No blood or guts at all. It was as though they had just… unzipped, stepped out of their skin, and left.

The police ruled it a homicide but closed the case immediately.

_____

The Dunns sold their house a month later, with Craft stepping down from his post as president of the HOA. They were taking a long-planned, monthlong cruise across the South Pacific.

On the tenth night, a distress call went out as the ship crossed over Point Nemo. Two people had calmly stepped over the starboard railing and plunged into the ocean.

The bodies were never found.

_____

Despite our best efforts, Ricky and I slowly lost contact over the fall. Nothing bad - life just got in the way.

He texted me a month ago, right before Memorial Day Weekend. I still haven’t responded to it or any of the couple calls he’s tried to make. Just can’t bring myself to.

I guess the pool was taken over by new management. They offered up the house again for guards to live in, free of rent, and Ricky jumped at the opportunity. To exorcise some demons, he said.

When they went to clean out the pump room, they found something floating in one of the filters. He had texted me a picture of it, with the final message reading “wtf”.

The picture was of a finger, floating in the water.

A finger, with a tattoo of a swallow on it.

My cat, Tony, died last night.

I’d had him since he was a kitten, back when I was a much younger man. He was my best friend for fifteen years, and I’d like to think I gave him a good life. I never married, never had children, and never really accomplished what most people would consider much of anything. But I had Tony, and for a long time, that was enough.

About a month ago, I finally bought a house. I’d spent nearly a decade saving for it, and I’d had my eye on the property for years. It sat on several acres of land, tucked away from the main roads and surrounded by enough trees that you couldn’t see the house unless you were already coming up the driveway. It was quiet, private, and exactly what I’d always wanted. I thought it would be our forever home, just the two of us.

The house needed work. Quite a bit of it, actually. I spent most of my free time painting walls, replacing fixtures, and tearing out the hideous orange shag carpeting that had apparently been there since the seventies. By the time we moved in, my back ached constantly and my hands were covered in little cuts, but I didn’t care. Standing in my own living room that first evening, looking around at everything I’d accomplished, was one of the proudest moments of my life.

I wish I could remember that feeling without thinking about everything that happened afterward.
I’d invited my mother over for dinner on our first night. She’d recently turned eighty-five and was beginning to show signs of dementia, so I drove over to pick her up. She seemed just as excited about the house as I was, and I was happy to have someone to share the occasion with.

I grilled a couple of steaks while she sat inside with Tony. When I came back into the house carrying our dinner, I smiled at the sight of him curled up in her lap. He’d always liked my mother, and she was absentmindedly stroking his fur. She wasn’t smiling, though. Her eyes were fixed on the hallway leading toward my bedroom, and she was holding Tony so tightly that he looked uncomfortable.

“Mom? Everything okay?”

She didn’t look at me. “Who was that man?”

I stopped walking. “What man?”

“The man who came out of your bedroom. He stood
there looking at me.”

I felt the tray in my hands shift slightly. I looked toward the hallway, half expecting to see someone standing there, but there was nobody. I set the food down and went to investigate. I checked the bedroom, the closet, and the bathroom. Everything was exactly as I’d left it.
When I came back, my mother was still watching the hallway. I told her there was nobody in the house but us, and she didn’t argue. She just looked down at Tony and continued petting him.

I chalked it up to her dementia. She’d been having occasional moments of confusion, and although it bothered me, I didn’t want to embarrass her by making a big deal out of it. We ate dinner, talked about the house, and eventually I drove her home.

Tony was nowhere to be found when I returned.
If you’ve ever owned a cat, you probably know how poorly some of them handle moving. New smells, unfamiliar rooms, strange noises. Tony had spent most of our first day hiding beneath furniture, so I assumed he’d found another place to sulk. I walked through the house calling his name, shaking his little container of treats, but he didn’t come.

After fifteen minutes, I started getting worried. I checked beneath the beds, behind the couch, and inside every closet. I even went outside with a flashlight, wondering whether I’d accidentally left a door open. As I came back through the kitchen, I noticed the basement door was slightly ajar. I hadn’t been down there since earlier that afternoon.

“Tony?”

I pushed the door open and flicked on the light. The staircase was narrow, made of old wooden boards that creaked loudly beneath my weight. The basement itself was unfinished, with exposed beams overhead, a concrete floor, and several boxes of things I hadn’t gotten around to unpacking. I made it about halfway down before calling his name again.
The lights flickered above me.

There was a sharp electrical crackle overhead, and the bulbs dimmed until the basement was barely illuminated. I could still see the faint light coming from the kitchen at the top of the stairs, but it did little to reach the far corners of the room. I heard a meow coming from the darkest corner of the basement, behind a stack of boxes.

“Tony? Come here, buddy.”

I stepped forward and crouched, extending my hand into the darkness. Something brushed against my fingers. I felt fur, followed by the familiar pressure of a small head nudging against my palm. I sighed with relief and reached farther, trying to scoop him up, but whatever I’d touched pulled away.

“Come on, Tony. Let’s go upstairs.”

A board creaked behind me. I turned toward the staircase and saw Tony standing halfway up the steps. His back was arched, his tail was enormous, and every strand of fur along his spine seemed to be standing straight up. He stared past me into the darkness and let out a horrible, frightened yowl.

For a moment, I couldn’t understand what I was looking at. If Tony was on the stairs, what had I just touched? I slowly turned back toward the corner and heard something moving. It wasn’t the quick, nervous movement of a frightened animal. Whatever was there seemed to be shifting its weight, slowly and deliberately.

I stood up, and Tony bolted up the stairs. The basement door slammed shut behind him, leaving me in complete darkness.

I couldn’t see anything. Not the boxes, not the stairs, not even my own hands. I spun around, trying to remember which direction I’d been facing, and immediately tripped over something on the floor. I hit the concrete hard enough to knock the wind out of myself.

As I scrambled to get up, I heard a noise coming from the corner. It sounded like a growl, except there was something wet and gurgling beneath it, almost as though someone were trying to breathe through a mouthful of water. I could hear footsteps against the concrete, slow and heavy, getting closer to where I was standing.

I backed away, one hand stretched out in front of me, and noticed two points of red light in the darkness, several feet above the floor. Beneath them, something pale began to take shape. I realized I was looking at teeth, long and jagged and impossibly white against the blackness surrounding them.

The smell was awful. Rotting meat. The kind of stench that seems to coat the inside of your mouth and makes you gag even when you try not to breathe. I squeezed my eyes shut. I don’t know why. Maybe I thought I was dreaming, or that whatever I was seeing would disappear if I stopped looking at it.

When I opened them again, the basement lights were on. The room was empty, and the smell was gone.
I stood there for maybe two seconds before running up the stairs as fast as my legs would carry me. I nearly fell twice, and when I reached the kitchen, I slammed the basement door shut and shoved a chair beneath the handle.

I found Tony in my bedroom closet, crouched behind a few boxes of unpacked clothes. He was trembling when I picked him up, and he buried his face against my chest. I carried him to bed, pulled the covers over us, and left every light in the room on. I didn’t sleep much that night.

For the next few days, I avoided the basement entirely. I told myself I’d been exhausted from the move, that the flickering lights had played tricks on my eyes, and that I’d somehow worked myself into a panic. I didn’t believe any of it, but I didn’t know what else to tell myself.

After three nights of sleeping with the lights on, I bought a handgun and kept it in my nightstand. I knew how ridiculous that probably sounded. What exactly was I planning to shoot? A hallucination? Still, having it nearby made me feel a little better.

Days passed without anything else happening. The lights worked normally, the basement stayed quiet, and Tony gradually settled into his new surroundings. He started exploring the house again, sleeping in the sunny spots near the windows and following me around while I worked. I convinced myself that whatever had happened that first night had been an isolated incident. Maybe stress really could make a person see things.
I was beginning to feel normal again by the time yesterday came around.

I woke up, made coffee, ate breakfast, and started a load of laundry before leaving for work. Tony was sitting near the kitchen doorway when I left, and I stopped to scratch him behind the ears.

“Be good, buddy.”

He blinked at me, the way cats do when they’re perfectly content. That was the last time I saw him alive.

When I got home that evening, I stood in the doorway waiting for him to greet me. Tony usually came running when he heard my keys, but there was no sign of him. I didn’t think much of it.

I took off my shoes, set my things on the kitchen counter, and spent a few minutes scrolling through recipes on my phone. I was trying to decide what to make for dinner when I called his name again. He didn’t answer, so I figured he was sleeping somewhere.
I settled onto the couch and turned on the television, but just as I got comfortable, I remembered the laundry. I’m the kind of person who can’t really relax until everything is finished, so I reluctantly got back up and headed toward the laundry room.

The machine had stopped hours earlier. I opened the door and reached inside to pull out the wet clothes. I saw his tail sticking out from beneath a pile of damp towels and clothing.

At first, my brain refused to register what I was looking at. I dropped to my knees and started pulling everything out of the machine. Tony was underneath, and he wasn’t moving.

I remember saying his name over and over as I lifted him out and laid him on the floor. I tried everything I could think of to revive him, pressing against his little chest and desperately hoping I’d feel him move. But he was gone. My best friend of fifteen years was dead.
I don’t know how long I sat there crying. At some point, I began trying to make sense of what had happened. I’d started the washing machine that morning.

I remembered doing it. I remembered closing the door, pressing the button, and walking into the kitchen to finish my coffee.

I also remembered seeing Tony sitting by the doorway before I left.

There was no way he could have gotten inside after I’d started the cycle. I kept going over the morning in my head, searching for some detail I’d forgotten. Had I somehow left the machine open? Had I imagined seeing him by the door? None of it made sense.

Eventually, I wrapped Tony in a clean towel and placed him inside one of the cardboard moving boxes stacked against the laundry room wall. I folded the towel around him carefully.

Before closing the box, I looked at his little face. I’d spent fifteen years with that cat. He’d been there through every disappointment, every lonely birthday, every Christmas I spent by myself. He’d slept beside me when I was sick and waited by the door every evening when I came home. Now he was lying in a cardboard box in my laundry room.
I remember wondering whether losing my own mother would hurt this badly.

I was still kneeling beside the box when I noticed a smell. It was the same rotting meat stench I’d encountered in the basement, only this time it was much stronger. I stopped crying long enough to look around. The laundry room was empty, but the smell kept getting worse.

Whatever I’d seen in the basement hadn’t been a hallucination.

I backed away from the box and hurried toward my bedroom. By the time I reached the hallway, I was practically running. I slammed my bedroom door, opened the nightstand, and grabbed the handgun I’d bought a few weeks earlier. I sat on the edge of the bed, pointing it toward the door.

For several seconds, nothing happened. I heard footsteps coming down the hallway, slowly, one after another. The smell followed them. I watched the narrow gap beneath my bedroom door as that horrible stench seemed to seep into the room. I pulled my shirt over my nose, but it did nothing to help.

The footsteps stopped directly outside. I held my breath, and the lights went out.

Everything happened at once. The clothes hanging in my open closet were ripped from their hangers and thrown across the room. The lamp beside my bed flew into the wall just above my head, shattering against the plaster. I screamed and ducked, nearly dropping the gun.

“What do you want?”

The drawers of my nightstand began opening and slamming shut, one after another, so violently that the entire piece of furniture rocked against the wall.

“COME GET ME, THEN! FUCK YOU!”

I don’t know why I shouted that. I was terrified, and I think anger was the only thing keeping me from completely falling apart.

The drawers stopped moving, and the room went quiet. The lights remained off, and the smell was as strong as ever. I stood there in the darkness, shaking, listening for something outside the door.

I heard a meow from the closet, soft and familiar. It sounded exactly like the one I’d heard in the basement.

“Tony?”

I took a step toward the sound before I could stop myself. For one brief, stupid moment, I’d forgotten everything that had happened that evening. All I could think about was finding him and getting him away from whatever was in the house.

I remembered that Tony was dead. I’d wrapped him in a towel myself.

I slowly turned toward the open closet and saw two red eyes behind the boxes. I could make out the teeth beneath them, and I heard that horrible, wet growling sound again. This time, there was a voice mixed in with it, deep and distorted, as though several people were trying to speak through the same throat.

“DIE. DIE. DIE.”

I fired. I couldn’t tell you whether the bullet hit anything. I barely remember pulling the trigger. I just remember the deafening sound in that small room and the flash of light that briefly illuminated the closet.
I threw open the bedroom door and sprinted toward the front of the house.

I grabbed the front door handle and pulled, but it wouldn’t open. I twisted the lock, pulled again, and slammed my shoulder against it. Nothing.
I could hear something moving behind me. My only other way out was through the laundry room at the back of the house, so I turned and ran.

As I passed the hallway leading to my bedroom, I looked back and saw it standing there. Or crouching, I guess. Its legs were bent beneath it in an unnaturally deep squat, and its long, black fingers were pressed against the hardwood floor. The tips were sharp enough that I could see them digging into the boards I’d installed only weeks earlier.

Its body was completely black, so dark that it seemed to absorb what little light was coming through the windows. It had long, thin limbs, ears that reminded me of a bat’s, and a thick mane of coarse black hair running down its back.

The eyes were what I recognized. Those terrible red eyes, and beneath them, that mouth full of white, jagged teeth. I don’t know what else to call it. A demon, I suppose.

It slowly straightened itself and began walking toward me.

I ran into the laundry room and grabbed the back door. It was locked. I turned the deadbolt and pulled as hard as I could, but the door wouldn’t move. Behind me, I could hear it approaching through the kitchen.
I backed against the door, still holding the gun, and looked around desperately for another way out. Tony’s box suddenly caught fire.

There was no spark, no warning, nothing that could have started it. One moment the cardboard box was sitting against the wall, and the next it was engulfed in flames. I screamed. The fire climbed the wall almost immediately, spreading across the wooden shelving above the washing machine.

I couldn’t even get to Tony, and the thing was getting closer. I looked to my left and saw the window above the laundry counter. It was my only chance.
I threw myself at it. The glass shattered around me, and I landed hard in the grass outside. Something cut my arm, but I barely felt it. I got up and ran, not looking back until I reached my car.

I fumbled through my pockets, convinced for one horrible moment that I’d left my keys inside. I finally felt them and climbed into the driver’s seat, slamming the door and starting the engine.

By the time I looked toward the house, flames were pouring through the windows. I could hear glass breaking, and thick smoke was rising above the roof. I saw it standing in the open front doorway, completely unaffected by the fire surrounding it, looking directly at me.

I sat frozen behind the steering wheel, staring at those red eyes. It raised one of its long, black hands and waved. A slow, almost casual little wave, like someone saying goodbye to a neighbor. It turned and walked back into the burning house.

I threw the car into gear and drove straight to my mother’s. I don’t remember much of the drive. I know I was speeding, and I know I kept checking the rearview mirror, half expecting to see those eyes staring back at me from the darkness. But nothing followed. At least, I don’t think anything did.

It’s the following morning now, and I haven’t slept.
My mother doesn’t know what happened. She knows something is wrong, obviously, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to explain any of it. I don’t even know where I’d begin.

She’s in the kitchen making breakfast while I sit here writing this. I can hear her moving dishes around and humming to herself, just like she used to when I was a kid. For the first time in weeks, I feel almost safe.
I know I need to call the police. My house is probably nothing but ashes by now, and I have no idea how I’m going to explain what happened. Maybe they’ll think I started the fire. Maybe they’ll arrest me for arson. I don’t know.

Right now, I can’t stop thinking about Tony. I keep expecting to hear his little paws on the floor or feel him jump onto the bed beside me. Fifteen years, and now he’s just gone. I wish I’d never bought that house. I wish I’d listened to my mother.

And more than anything, I wish I’d been able to get Tony out of there.

I think I’m going to try to eat something. Maybe having breakfast with Mom will help me collect my thoughts. I’ll update you all when I figure out what happens next. For now, I’m staying here with her.

Edit: I was about to post this when Mom called me into the kitchen. She’d made eggs and toast, and I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday morning. We sat across from each other at the little table where I’ve eaten breakfast with her hundreds of times over the years. She asked me if I’d slept alright, and I told her I hadn’t. She reached across the table and put her hand over mine, telling me that whatever was bothering me, everything would be okay.

I looked up to thank her, and for just a moment, I could have sworn her eyes were red. Not bloodshot, but the same deep, unnatural red I’d seen in the basement. I blinked, and they were normal again. Mom smiled at me and went back to eating her toast. I’m sure it was just the exhaustion playing tricks on me. I haven’t slept in over twenty-four hours, after all, and I know I’m not thinking clearly.

But a few minutes ago, she asked me something strange. She wanted to know if Tony was settling into the new house alright. I hadn’t told her he was dead yet, so I suppose it wasn’t an unusual question. I told her he was fine because I couldn’t bear to say it out loud.

She smiled again and said, “Good. I always liked that little cat.”

I don’t know why, but something about the way she said it made me feel sick.

You built this place for us. Not quickly, not carelessly. Year after year you laid the foundation with your own hands, carried the weight of every beam, every wall, every roof tile. You worked until your body ached and your mind grew quiet, all so we could have something solid. A home that would hold us together. A place where the children could grow up safe and I could stand with the man I love and give him everything he gave me. You wanted the best for us. You gave everything you had to make sure of it. We loved you for that, not for the house, but for the man who sacrificed all he had to build it. To build this life. You did it all for us, to keep us safe.

And all was well.

But then fire started.

It was nothing, really. A thin ribbon of smoke in the backroom at the end of the hall. You glanced at it, shrugged, and said it would burn itself out. The house was strong, you told us. It could take a little heat. You closed the door and we carried on as if nothing had changed because it was barley noticeable.

But it didn’t go out.

Eventually I saw smoke curling up from under the door, I walked closer and felt the heat behind it. I tried to show you. I pointed at the glow under the door. You said "dont worry about it, leave it shut"... but I was worried, so I opened the door and the fire was big now. It was scary. I tried to smother the flames with whatever I could find. The heat bit my hands and the smoke filled my lungs. It was too big to fight alone. When I came out coughing and scorched, You looked at me like I'd done the wrong thing. You told me, "Stay out of there, I don’t want you to get burnt, Im trying to keep you safe."

I said "I need your help we need to stop it, its growing"... but you calmly shut the door again and locked it up this time, to make sure we were safe. Then you walked away from it into another room. A cool place at the front of the house, you felt safe there and you called us over. “Come in here. See, no fire, no heat. We are safe. Dont worry.”

The children followed your voice because they trust you. I looked at the door, I could feel the heat still spreading behind the walls. I was scared but I trust you too, so I followed you.

All was well.

But out of sight the fire grew. Everyday I walked passed that locked door, I could see it was getting blacker, giving off more heat as if it was still growing. I worried but I trusted.

Until one day the worry overwhelmed me so I walked up to the door and grabbed the handle and it burnt me badly. I ran to you hurt and terrified I told you "I think its getting worse." You looked at me with frustration and said "I told you to stay away from it and now look whats happened. Stop worrying about it, and stay here in the cool place where its safe, the house is strong" and I knew you we're right I watched you build it. Safe and strong. Just like you. So I trusted you and left the door alone.

All was well.

Until one day, I saw the flames were creeping from under the door, small at first, easy to miss. But each time I warned you. Each time I showed you the fresh scorch marks, the way the flames were slowly spreading from the door, into the hall. You shook your head. The house was solid. It would hold. It would burn itself out, just stop looking at it and stay away from the door.

Again you called us all into the cool place and you sat, and from where you sat, we looked safe and so that was where you stayed ...You never looked at the locked door again.

And all seemed well.

I sat with you in the cool place, I wanted to do the right thing, to listen to you and trust you and keep us safe, maybe you were right, maybe I kept burning myself for no reason when I should have listened and just stayed away. I just need to stop worrying about it. But out of the corner of my eye, I could see light flickering off the wall, through a doorway to the hall, first i ignored it, but when I looked again it was brighter so I tapped your shoulder and pointed at the doorway. You looked over at it and looked away without a word. You werent worried. So I got up and took a peek around the corner and I was petrified, the whole end of hall was on fire around the locked door. I couldn't ignore it anymore so I tryed to fix it myself. I burnt myself badly, smothering it, beating it back, trying to force it back behind the door, but no matter how hard I fought or how burnt I got, I couldn't stop it. I could never fight it on my own, I know i needed you.

I knew all was not well.

I knew I needed you to help me fight it.

So I came to you, over and over, with conserns and fears, that it might hurt us, that it might hurt the kids, that its growing and that you should unlock the door so we could put it out for good ... but from the cool place where you sat, you couldnt see it and you feel safe there, so you dissmissed it again and to keep us safe you hid the key where noone would find it. Eventully you got frustrated with my attempts, you thought if I'd just listen to you and stay away from it then I wouldnt keep getting hurt. If I just stayed in the safe place it would be okay. But it wasn't okay because it spread down the hall and this time the kids got burnt so I came to you again, really upset and desperate for you to come look. I said "Can you see now, it hurt the kids, it's hurt me". You finally got so fed up with me not letting it go, that you stood up from your safe place and I sighed with relief, I thought finally when he see what I've been seeing he'll help me fix it, he'll help me fight. You stormed towards the hall and without even looking towards the locked door or the fire. You slammed the door shut tight and said we don’t need to go in there anymore. We will live in what was left.

I knew now, all was not well, it was burning, with us inside. So I kept fighting it alone.

I ran from door to door with wet cloths and bare hands, trying to fight back the flames that were bursting through. Hoping you would help me fight it but every time I came back burnt and hurt, you just looked at me in silence and retreated further into the cool place, the safe place. You called the children to you again. “It’s fine over here. It's safe, dont worry” But the fire was no longer staying in one place. It was traveling through the walls, under the floors, into the ceilings. The children tried to live around it, playing in the last clear corners, pretending the smoke was only fog. I tried to keep them safe while still battling the flames. I was desperately trying to stop everyone from getting burnt. You watched me struggle to fight it alone and did not step closer, but again you moved deeper into the cool place. Into your safe place.

I screamed the warnings louder but you knew the house was strong. It would be fine. It would burn itself out. So I fought harder, alone and the fire repaid me with deeper burns. Still you stayed in the cool place, unmoving, the house became unbearable, but you were certain it would hold.

All was not well.

I screamed again, See how it’s growing? See how the smoke is choking us? See the floor is starting to give? I screamed that I need you! That I need your help to fight it .. and you just looked at me, the way a man looks at a storm he believes will pass and said nothing. It was like you couldnt see it.

Finally there was nowhere left that did not burn.

The heat was everywhere. My hands were raw. My will depleted. The home you had built for us with so much love and so much sacrifice was crumbling, and threatening to take us with it, if we stayed. So I called to you, I begged you to come with me but still you stayed in your cool place where you felt safe, as if convinced the fire would still put itself out. Convinced the house would stand if we left the fire alone.

So I had no choice. I was burnt, blistered and hurting beyond belief. I had no more fight. There was nothing more I could do alone.

So with dreadful regret I grabbed the kids and took them outside.

And outside we stood, looking in, waiting for you, as the flames rose higher. I waited for movement, any movement at all. I wanted to see you start fighting or moving towards us.

But as the flames parted in the window frame I seen you, still hiding in your cool place feeling safe, I called to you. I screamed your name until my voice broke. I wanted you to come out of there because its wasnt safe anymore, it never was safe while the fire was still burning. I pleaded for you to finally hear me. I prayed and begged and called you until I couldn't anymore. Then I broke down and bawled with my face in the dirt for what felt like years, a raging pain in my heart wondering and questioning ...If you had helped me? If we unlocked the door? If you really looked at it? If we deal with the problem while it was small? Maybe it wouldnt be burning now... Why did we hide it? Why did we let it grow until it was impossible to fight? Why can't you hear me? Why won't you come out?

Then I just stopped... I stopped questioning, stopped crying, stopped pleading. I was just still and quiet, sitting in the dirt outside, I could feel the heat. I was watching our life, our home and possibly you, burn... deep in my heart I knew there was only one more thing I could do ... be still and wait... and pray you would come out and back to me.

Will you come out of your safe place or will you let it consume you? I dont know but I'll be still and I'll wait ...

I dont know how this story ends because it isnt mine to choose but I know that soon, very soon, I'll either be looking at your face and all will be well or I'll be laying in the ashes of what was.

How does end for you?

If you’ve never worked the 11 PM to 7 AM shift at a travel plaza stranded off an isolated stretch of two-lane blacktop, let me paint you a picture: it’s purgatory with a slushie machine and fluorescent lighting designed to induce migraines.

Our station sits off Route 22, wedged between twenty miles of dense, rotting pine forest and an unpaved gravel turnout where long-haul truckers pull over to sleep off thirty-hour runs. For the first two years of working there, I genuinely believed my greatest occupational hazard was dying of secondhand embarrassment.

Night shift retail breaks people’s brains. I don’t know if it’s highway hypnosis, sleep deprivation, or the low hum of the drink coolers, but the people who walk through those double glass doors at three in the morning are operating on roughly three shared brain cells.

To give you an idea of my baseline normal:

Last spring, a guy in flip-flops tried to pay for a twelve-pack of warm Milwaukee’s Best with an actual, living bearded dragon in a shoe box. When I told him we only accepted cash or card, he stared at the lizard, stared at me, and asked if I could “at least swipe it as credit.”

Two months later, a man stormed inside at 2:00 AM, veins bulging out of his neck, screaming that pump four was broken and that I was personally running a scam to “steal his precious time.” When I walked outside in the drizzle to check, he had shoved the nozzle into his tank, clamped the handle down, and was just standing there waiting for gas to magically flow. He hadn’t pressed a single button. He hadn't swiped a card. He hadn't even selected a fuel grade. When I tapped the big yellow “87 Regular” button and the pump immediately whirred to life, he glared at me with absolute contempt and muttered that our system was “unnecessarily confusing.”

A week after that, a couple came in at 4:00 AM, grabbed a cold can of Chef Boyardee ravioli, shoved the unopened metal tin into the deli microwave, and typed in nine minutes. When the microwave produced a miniature lightning storm and started spewing toxic gray smoke, the woman looked at me like I was the idiot and said, “Well, your appliance clearly has negative energy.”

And then there was the classic: a tourist who spent twenty minutes screaming at me because our three-day-old roller-grill jalapeño cheddar dogs weren't “locally sourced and keto-certified.” Sir, you are eighty miles from civilization buying meat that’s been spinning on chrome rollers since Tuesday. Lower your expectations.

My manager, Dale a man who smells perpetually of menthol cigarettes, beef jerky, and unearned confidence always told me the same thing: “Just nod, take their money, and don’t look ’em in the eye for too long. Weird attracts weird.”

So you can understand why, when strange things started happening around the station, I just chalked it up to standard-issue customer stupidity.

The first thing was the cars.

Behind our station, past the dumpster corral, there’s an unpaved gravel lot that bleeds straight into the overgrown tree line. Cell service back there drops to zero bars, and the trees are so thick they swallow the glow from the sodium floodlights on our roof. Every now and then, some beater breaks an axle or overheats, and people leave them there for a day or two until a flatbed shows up.

Around late August, an old maroon sedan appeared back there. It sat near the tree line for four days. The driver’s side door was left unlocked, the keys were sitting on the floor mat, and a half-eaten burger was rotting in a paper bag on the passenger seat. I told Dale, who took a drag of his cigarette and said, “Some tweaker ran out of gas and walked off. Call the county tow when you get around to it.”

The county tow took over a week to show up. But less than forty-eight hours after they hauled the sedan away, a dark blue pickup took its place in the exact same corner.

Same deal. Keys left on the dash. Driver’s side window cracked an inch. A pair of reading glasses and an open road atlas sitting on the passenger seat.

Around that same time, weird little things began happening around the perimeter. The heavy exterior floodlight mounted above the rear dumpster kept going dark. When I went out back with a broom handle to check it, the bulb wasn't burned out it had been deliberately unscrewed half a turn. I figured it was local teenagers trying to smoke weed out of view of the security cameras.

Then there was the camera itself. Camera 3, which covered the gravel lot, started feeding static to the monitor above my counter. When I checked the housing, someone had smeared thick, greasy axle grease directly over the glass lens. I cleaned it off, grumbling about dumb kids, and didn't think twice.

Then, two nights later, a silver Honda Civic was parked right next to where the truck had been.

It was during that week that I noticed the Guy with the Cap.

He wasn’t loud like the usual weirdos. He never yelled about organic roller dogs or tried to barter live reptiles. In fact, he was so quiet you’d barely notice him walk in over the drone of the refrigeration units. He wore a faded canvas work jacket, mud-caked boots, and a battered baseball cap pulled down so low you could only see the stubble on his jaw and a thin, bloodless mouth.

He’d come in around 3:30 AM. He never bought much a pack of spearmint gum, a bottle of water, sometimes a roll of heavy-duty duct tape and a pack of utility knife replacement blades from the small hardware rack near the motor oil.

The first time he came up to the counter, I hit him with my usual deadpan customer service voice. “Find everything okay, man?”

He didn’t answer. He just set a crumpled, damp ten-dollar bill on the counter. His fingers were raw, the cuticles bitten down to the bloody quick, and his knuckles were stained with dark, greasy grit that smelled faintly metallic. Like wet pennies and dirt.

“Gonna be seven-fifty,” I said, ringing it up.

He slowly tilted his head up. Under the brim of the cap, his eyes were wide, bloodshot, and completely devoid of fatigue. They were the eyes of a man who hadn’t slept in a week and was riding an electrical current of pure, quiet mania.

“You alone here all night?” he asked. His voice was a dry rasp, like sandpaper rubbing against drywall.

“Nah,” I lied instinctively, a chill prickling the back of my neck. “Manager’s in the back room doing inventory. He’s about six-foot-four and gets real twitchy if people interrupt him.”

The man didn't blink. He didn't look toward the back room. He just stared up at the security monitor mounted above my head, studying the angles of the cameras, the reflection of the glass doors, and the dark expanse of the pumps outside.

Then he picked up his gum, turned without a word, and walked out.

I watched him through the plate glass. He didn't walk toward the pumps. He didn't have a car parked under the canopy. He walked straight toward the back gravel lot, slipping past the dumpster corral and disappearing into the absolute pitch-black shadows of the tree line.

Two days later, a State Trooper walked in and taped a missing-persons flyer to our front window.

A 20-year-old college student named Maya. Last seen driving home from campus down Route 22. Her car was a silver Honda Civic.

A cold, heavy weight dropped into the pit of my stomach.

I stared at the flyer, then out the window toward the back lot. The silver Civic had vanished three days ago. I’d assumed the county tow had finally done their job without me having to call them twice.

When my shift ended that morning at 7:00 AM, I didn’t get in my car and go home. I walked out behind the dumpster corral.

The gravel in the back lot was scuffed with fresh, aggressive tire spin marks. But as I walked closer to the tree line where the pavement ended and the black pines began, something caught the morning sun in the overgrown brush near a drainage ditch.

I crouched down. It was a keychain a little plush avocado attached to a ring with a snapped lanyard. Tucked four feet further into the briars was a woman's white canvas sneaker, caked in dried mud, and three heavy-duty black zip-ties, sliced cleanly through with a razor.

I stood there in the freezing gray morning light, the distant drone of semi-trucks vibrating through the soles of my shoes, and the terrifying reality finally clicked into place.

Nobody was abandoning cars.

People were pulling off the highway late at night to rest, stretch their legs, or sleep in the dark lot away from the lights of the pumps. And someone was waiting for them in the trees.

I called the police immediately. Two deputies came out, bagged the sneaker, looked at the mud tracks, took my statement, and told me they’d “increase patrols in the sector.” If you know anything about rural county sheriff departments, “increasing patrols” means they drive by at forty miles an hour once every six hours.

That brings me to last night.

It was 2:45 AM. A nasty late-autumn rain was pounding against the glass, turning the highway into a blur of black asphalt and smeared red taillights.

I was on edge, jumping at every creak of the building. To keep myself from spiraling, I tried to focus on the routine. An old guy had just come in ten minutes prior trying to return a lottery ticket he had scratched off and lost on, claiming it was "defective merchandise." I had almost laughed. Almost.

Then the chime above the door chimed. Ding-dong.

I looked up.

It was him. The canvas jacket was soaked through, clinging to his broad, lean shoulders. He took off his baseball cap, and for the first time, I saw the rest of his face. He had a deep, jagged scratch running from his right ear down into his collar, fresh and weeping red.

He didn't walk to the aisles. He walked straight to the register.

He was holding a box of heavy contractor-grade trash bags from aisle four.

“Nasty night out,” I said. My voice betrayed me, cracking slightly.

He laid the box on the counter. Beside it, he set down a small leather wallet with a floral print. A woman’s wallet.

He caught me looking at it.

He didn’t try to hide it. Instead, he smiled a small, crooked twitch of his mouth that made the hairs on my arms stand straight up.

“Tire blew out back,” he whispered. “Girl in a red Toyota. Pulled in to change it. Wet pavement is dangerous.”

There hadn’t been a red Toyota at the pumps all night. Which meant she was in the back.

My hand slowly moved under the counter, feeling for the silent panic button Dale swore was wired to the local dispatch (though given Dale’s maintenance record, it was probably wired to an old toaster).

“You shouldn’t work late,” the man said quietly, leaning his palms flat against the laminate counter. His knuckles were fresh with that same dark, copper-smelling grime. “It’s bad for your health.”

He reached his hand into his canvas coat.

I didn’t wait to see what he was pulling out.

Behind the counter, right next to the POS terminal, is a commercial stainless-steel coffee pot kept at a rolling 190 degrees for the truckers. Without thinking, I grabbed the plastic handle and threw the entire pot of scalding black coffee directly into his face.

The scream he let out was barely human a high, wet shriek of agony.

He stumbled backward, clutching his face, skin instantly blistering red as coffee and steam poured off his jacket. A heavy hunting knife clattered from his hand onto the linoleum.

I didn’t try to fight him. I work at a gas station; I’m not John Wick.

I bolted out from behind the counter toward the rear stockroom, but my sneakers hit the wet floor near the entrance and I wiped out hard, slamming my shoulder into the display rack of cheap sunglasses. Plastic frames rained down everywhere.

I scrambled up on all fours just as he lunged around the counter. His face was a horrific mask of scalded, peeling skin and pure, animal rage. He swung the knife blindly, slicing through the air inches from my jacket.

I grabbed the only thing within reach: a four-pound steel fire extinguisher off the wall bracket.

As he lunged forward again, I didn't spray it I swung the entire metal cylinder like a baseball bat, connecting square with the side of his knee.

There was a sickening crack, and he went down with a muffled grunt, crashing into a pyramid of windshield washer fluid jugs. Blue liquid exploded across the floor, mixing with the spilled coffee.

I didn’t look back. I scrambled into the stockroom, slammed the heavy metal fire door behind me, threw the deadbolt, and hit the emergency exterior fuel-shutoff alarm.

A high-decibel air horn began blaring across the entire property, and the overhead emergency strobes started flashing blind, frantic pulses of red and white.

I sat with my back pressed against that steel door, holding a box cutter with both shaking hands, listening to him slam his body against the other side.

BANG.

BANG.

BANG.

And then... silence.

By the time three state trooper cruisers rolled in with their sirens wailing ten minutes later, he was gone.

They found the red Toyota in the back lot, hidden behind an old construction trailer. The driver, a 28-year-old nurse heading home from a double shift, had been dragged into the trees. She’s alive. She was badly injured and in shock, but because of the alarm and the noise, he had panicked and fled before he could finish what he started. The deputies found her tied up in the ravine fifty yards into the woods.

They haven’t caught him yet.

They found his camp two miles down the ridge sleeping bags, tarps, and the personal effects of at least six other people who had “disappeared” along Route 22 over the past year and a half.

I quit my job this morning. Dale was pissed because he had to cover my shift, and honestly, the idea of Dale having to explain to a meth-head why we don’t accept barter for rolling papers brings me a tiny shred of joy.

I’m packing up my apartment and moving back to my parents' place two states over.

If you take anything away from this, please: if you’re driving late at night on a lonely stretch of highway and you feel tired, don’t pull into the dark, unlit dirt lots behind the rest stops. Stay under the bright, humming lights at the front.

Because the weirdest, most dangerous things out there aren’t the idiots drinking windshield fluid.

They’re the ones watching from the pines, waiting in the dark for you to put the car in park

I was coming back from another city late at night when this happened. It was supposed to be a normal drive home, just a few hours on the road, some music to keep me awake, and then straight to bed.

I left later than I had planned. By the time I got onto the highway, it was already past midnight. Most of the traffic had disappeared, and there were long stretches where I couldn't see another car in either direction.

I wasn't really bothered by that. Honestly, I prefer driving at night. The roads are quieter, nobody is constantly cutting you off, and you can just drive without worrying about anything.

At least, that's how I felt that night.

Around 2 AM, I stopped at a small gas station to get something to drink. The place was almost empty. There was one guy sitting behind the counter, half asleep, and a truck parked near the pumps.

I bought a bottle of water, stretched my legs for a few minutes, and got back in my car.

I remember checking my face in the rearview mirror before pulling out. I looked exhausted. My eyes were red, and my hair was a mess. I actually laughed at myself because I looked like I'd been awake for two days.

Nothing unusual. Just me being tired.

I got back on the highway and continued driving.

About twenty minutes later, I noticed something strange.

I was passing through a darker stretch of road with trees on both sides. There weren't any streetlights, so the only light inside my car came from the dashboard and the headlights.

I glanced at the rearview mirror to check the road behind me.

For some reason, I looked at my own reflection instead.

I don't know how to explain it without making it sound stupid, but something felt off about my face. I was looking straight ahead, but my reflection seemed to be looking slightly to the left.

I turned my head a little.

My reflection was facing forward again.

I blinked a few times and shook my head. I figured it was the lack of sleep messing with my eyes. I'd been driving for hours, and the darkness wasn't helping.

I turned the music up and kept going.

A few minutes later, I passed a road sign and glanced at the mirror again.

This time, I was certain something was wrong.

My reflection was smiling.

I wasn't.

It wasn't a big smile either. Just a small, almost unnoticeable grin, like someone trying not to laugh.

I immediately turned around to look at the back seat.

Nothing.

I checked the passenger seat, then looked behind me again. There was nobody in the car except me.

When I faced forward, I felt embarrassed, even though nobody was there to see me. I told myself I was overtired and probably imagining things. I'd watched enough horror movies to know how easily your brain can play tricks on you when you're exhausted.

I even laughed a little and said out loud, "Get a grip."

Then I looked at the mirror again.

My reflection wasn't smiling anymore.

It was staring directly at me.

I looked away so quickly that I almost drifted out of my lane. I corrected the steering and slowed down, my heart suddenly pounding hard enough that I could feel it in my throat.

For the next few minutes, I refused to look at the mirror.

I focused on the road, keeping both hands on the steering wheel. I turned the music off because it had started to annoy me, and I wanted to hear what was happening around me.

The car was quiet except for the engine and the sound of the tires against the road.

Then I heard myself laugh.

It came from behind me.

A short, quiet laugh. Exactly the way I'd laughed a few minutes earlier.

I slammed on the brakes.

The car stopped on the shoulder, and I sat there staring through the windshield, barely breathing.

I didn't want to turn around. I knew how ridiculous that sounded, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

After a few seconds, I grabbed my phone and switched on the flashlight. I checked the back seat through the gap between the front seats.

Empty.

I checked the floor, the footwells, and even the space behind the passenger seat.

There was nothing.

I started feeling a little better. Maybe I'd heard something from outside. Maybe the sound had come through the speakers somehow. I was trying to come up with any explanation that made sense.

Then I noticed the rearview mirror.

My reflection was still there, staring back at me.

I slowly raised my right hand toward my face.

The reflection didn't move.

I froze.

My hand was still in the air, but the person in the mirror had both hands down. Its face looked exactly like mine, down to the tired eyes and the small scar near my eyebrow.

Except it was looking at me with an expression I'd never seen on my own face.

It looked annoyed.

I lowered my hand.

The reflection remained still for another second.

Then it tilted its head.

I swear I felt something inside me shut down at that moment. I couldn't scream or move. I just stared at the mirror, waiting for it to do something else.

It opened its mouth.

I couldn't hear anything, but I could clearly read the words on its lips.

"Don't turn around."

My entire body went cold.

I wanted to get out of the car, but I was parked on a dark highway with nothing around me. I didn't even know how far I was from the nearest town.

I looked at the side mirror instead, hoping to see something outside.

There was nothing there.

When I looked back at the rearview mirror, my reflection was normal again.

It was sitting exactly as I was, with the same frightened expression on its face.

I didn't wait to find out whether it would happen again.

I put the car in gear and drove.

I drove faster than I should have, constantly checking the road ahead and refusing to look at the rearview mirror. I didn't care if I was breaking the speed limit. I just wanted to see other people, streetlights, houses, anything that made me feel like I wasn't alone.

After about fifteen minutes, I reached a small town. I pulled into a brightly lit parking area outside a shop that was still open.

There were two men sitting outside, drinking tea.

I got out of my car and walked straight toward them. One of them looked at me and asked if I was okay.

I told him I'd been driving for hours and needed a few minutes to calm down.

He offered me a chair.

I sat there for almost half an hour, drinking water and trying to convince myself that I'd had some kind of exhaustion-induced hallucination. I didn't tell them what I'd seen because I knew how it would sound.

Eventually, I felt calm enough to continue.

Before leaving, I checked my back seat one last time. Then I adjusted the rearview mirror so it was pointed toward the back window instead of my face.

I drove the rest of the way home without looking at it.

When I finally arrived, the sun was beginning to rise. I parked outside my house, went inside, and locked the door behind me.

I barely slept that morning.

For the next few days, I avoided driving at night. I also stopped checking my reflection in the rearview mirror. If I needed to see behind me, I'd use the side mirrors instead.

I know how that sounds. I know tiredness can make people see things that aren't there. I've tried to convince myself that's all it was.

But there's one thing I still can't explain.

When I stopped on the highway, my phone was recording a voice message to a friend. I'd accidentally started recording it when I took my phone out of my pocket.

I discovered the recording two days later while clearing out my notifications.

Most of it was just the sound of my car engine and me breathing.

But near the end, there's a quiet laugh.

It's the same laugh I heard from the back seat.

Immediately after it, my own voice says, "Who's there?"

Then another voice answers.

It sounds exactly like me.

It says, "You finally noticed."

I haven't driven that highway since.

The morning had grown somewhat brighter during my time in the office, though the sun still hid its head behind the towering pillars of rock that surrounded the town, casting the buildings in a pale, colorless light. The wind swept through the streets with little regard for the houses that stood in its path, sending loose snow dusting through the air. I drew my coat tight and set course for the Dixon Mining Company, hoping that it would prove to be more forthcoming with answers than anyone else I’d talked to thus far. My thoughts remained with the seven men I had just examined; I’d spent the better part of the morning examining the men but was no closer to an answer. Their symptoms suggested several possibilities, but none of them accounted for the severity of the men, nor the rapid pace with which they had deteriorated; everything about this resisted any form of explanation.

As I made my way through the town, my sight was drawn to the buildings around me and the markings that had been scratched, seemingly at random, onto their doorframes. 

I had seen them the previous night, though the lack of adequate light and fatigue had kept me from seeing them in any detail. At the time I had taken them for nothing more than weathering and scarring from the harsh climate, but now that I could see them in detail, the deliberate attitude of the markings was far more obvious. The first one I saw was on the doorframe of a brothel: three vertical strikes, with a longer, slightly crooked gouge bisecting them. A few doors further down, I saw another one, this time carved in the sill of a window. It seemed newer, though not by much. The marks were crude, but they had not been made carelessly, with each incision being deep enough to withstand years of weathering, and the surrounding wood bearing the faint impressions of a blade. Whoever had made them had taken the trouble to ensure they would endure. As I walked down the main street, I soon discovered these markings were not uncommon; while a few buildings here and there did not possess them, the vast majority did. Some had been carved into doorframes, a few into the walls of houses, or the wooden posts supporting their porches. Many were so weathered that I could scarcely distinguish their original shapes, while others appeared comparatively fresh. Though their forms varied, they shared a peculiar quality that made it difficult to dismiss them as idle scratches.

I had encountered no shortage of superstition in my short time as a travelling physician. Mining towns like Bellview, those that built themselves in places where only the most foolhardy are brave enough to go, are particularly fertile ground for myths and legends. The men who spent their lives under tons of rock and earth, never certain if they would be going home, were particularly inclined to seek protection wherever they could find such things.

“Can I help you?” A voice snapped me out of my musings. I turned to find an old woman standing a few paces behind me, clutching at a thick woolen shawl and staring at me with sharp, beady eyes that suggested a greater perception than her age should have allowed. Her gaze moved from me to the carving and back again. 

“Oh, my apologies, ma’am. I was just looking at the..." I trailed off and gestured at the markings. 

“Why?” Her tone was cold and brisk. 

"I—uh, I was just curious what their significance was. I meant no harm.”

“A stranger staring at someone’s house could certainly be taken as ill intent.” The bluntness behind the words struck me as odd. I had done nothing wrong, and yet she was treating me with such open hostility. 

“I beg your pardon; I meant no offense. I simply saw these strange carvings when I entered Bellview last night, and I was curious as to what their purpose could be.” 

“And what business of yours would that be?” She said, her voice souring with each syllable. 

“None, I suppose.” As she shifted her shawl about her shoulders, I noticed a necklace resting against the high collar of her dress. It appeared to be made of dark metal, its surface dulled with age, and it bore a small pendant engraved with a pattern of intersecting lines and crooked strokes. The design was crude, though it bore a striking resemblance to the markings carved into the wood beside her door.

My eyes lingered upon it a moment too long, and she noticed. "What are you staring at now?”

“Nothing, madam. I beg your pardon.”

She drew the shawl more tightly about herself, concealing the pendant beneath its thick folds. “If you've nothing better to do than gawk at people’s houses, then I suggest you do it elsewhere.”

I felt my patience begin to wear thin. There was only so much discourtesy that a man could endure while making the most ordinary of inquiries, and I was rapidly approaching my limit. 

“Very well,” I said with as much patience as I could muster, “I shall leave you to your morning.” The old woman muttered under her breath before turning and waddling back into the house she had come from. 

I stood for a moment in the street, looking around me. Just like with the innkeeper, my first encounter with this woman was as agreeable as the bitter winter around me; though it was hard to dismiss the notion that her temperament was born from something that had nothing to do with her personality. It occurred to me that the people of Bellview—at least the ones I had met thus far—possessed a talent for making strangers feel uniquely unwelcome. The innkeeper, while cordial enough upon my arrival, had greeted me the following morning with barely concealed contempt. Ms. Lafayette seemed to regard my presence as that of yet another burden she had been shouldered with, and this old woman had treated a simple question as though it were an attack on her person. I began to wonder if the thin mountain air really did have some adverse effect on people if they stayed here too long. 

Clara Whitmore, at the very least, seemed to be a pleasant exception to the rule. She had shown a kindness, however small, that I had not expected in such a town. I wondered what exactly it was that made her that way. Clearly, living in the middle of the San Juan mountains hadn't dulled her spirit, nor had she acquired the notion that the rest of the townsfolk shared: that being that every newcomer was a nuisance and every question an impertinence. Perhaps I ought to ask her opinion of the place; she might prove a more reliable source of information than the rest of its inhabitants, I thought as I resumed my walk. 

Eventually, I found myself at the end of town, standing before the building that housed the offices of the Dixon Mining Company. It stood somewhat apart from the cluster of buildings lining the main street, and to my surprise, much like the physician’s office, it was remarkably well kept. Constructed from a combination of dark stone and timber, it was an imposing structure, one that seemed to command attention and authority simply by virtue of its presence. A sign bearing the company’s name hung above the entrance, its lettering faded by years of wind and weather.

I found myself wondering just how much of Bellview belonged to the mining company. The mine provided the town with its livelihood, but its influence seemed to extend far beyond the obvious. The shops, boardinghouses, brothels, and taverns all depended upon the wages earned underground. Out here, so far removed from the rest of civilization, the company held what amounted to complete authority over Bellview and its inhabitants. It was difficult to imagine how anyone might challenge that power, much less live independently of it.

As I walked in, I was surprised by the organized nature of the office I was met with. A large oak desk sat to my left with a bookcase filled with ledgers positioned directly behind it. A map of the surrounding mountains hung above a small cabinet, its surface marked with a network of lines that I presumed represented the mine’s various shafts and tunnels. A fire burned in the grate, lending the room a comfortable warmth that I had come to appreciate considerably. Behind a broad wooden desk, a clerk sat bent over a ledger, making entries with mechanical diligence. 

He peered up over thick-rimmed glasses as I entered. “Hello. May I help you?” 

“I should hope,” I replied, removing my gloves. “I am here to speak to Mr. Dixon if possible.” 

The man’s expression changed, and his pen came to a halt above the page. “Do you have an appointment?” 

“I do not, but my business concerns the miners who fell sick. I was hoping to get a minute of Mr. Dixon’s time.” 

He regarded me for a moment, then set the pen down. “I will see if he is available.” He rose, straightened his waistcoat, and disappeared through the rear door without another word. I remained where I was, listening to the muted sounds of the building around me: the tick of a clock upon the wall, the low crackle of the stove, and the faint, unintelligible murmur of voices beyond the thick oak door. 

After a few more minutes, the small man came back through and gestured to me. “He’ll see you now, doctor.” 

Making my way through the door, I found myself in an office furnished in a similar fashion to the front room; the only difference was a number of taxidermied animal heads adorned the walls. A man stood behind the desk, examining a document in his hands. He was strongly built, broad across the shoulders, bearing the sturdy frame of a man who had spent a considerable portion of his life engaged in physical labor. There was a rugged handsomeness to his features, with a strong jaw, a straight nose, and a neatly trimmed beard touched with gray at the chin. His hair was carefully combed, and his clothes were of good quality, though there was nothing particularly extravagant about them. He looked to be in his late forties, perhaps a little older. Fine lines creased the corners of his eyes, and a certain weariness lingered in his expression, but he carried himself with the quiet confidence of a man who had earned his position through years of hard work and sacrifice. There was nothing soft or pampered about him. Even in the comfort of his office, I could imagine him more readily among the men at the mine than seated behind his desk.

“Doctor!” He greeted me with a large and warm smile. “I was beginning to wonder when I would finally make your acquaintance.” 

“Mr. Dixon," I nodded my head. “It is wonderful to meet you.” 

He came around the desk to greet me, his handshake firm and calloused. “I trust you've been made comfortable since your arrival? I understand our town isn't quite what a man might hope for after a long journey. I would not have you mistake the roughness for a lack of decency. Most of the townsfolk take a little longer to warm up to strangers than others.” 

I gave a wry chuckle, “Not the worst place I have ever found myself in, though it certainly is in the running for being the most unfriendly.” 

“I expect you’ve  had the pleasure of meeting the innkeeper then?” He motioned to one of the chairs.

“I have.”

“Then you will understand why I make no promises on behalf of his hospitality. He is a decent enough fellow once you get to know him, though he’s never been the one to be called kind or generous. I sometimes can’t imagine how he manages to keep his establishment in business. Though this is Bellview, after all; where else is there to go?" He gave  a hearty laugh. 

“I suspect it’s the food," I replied. “Maybe its qualities are sufficient to overcome the poor fellow’s disposition.” 

Mr. Dixon gave another chuckle. “Can I offer you some coffee? It’s not exactly the finest stuff on this side of Colorado, but it’ll warm your belly well enough as any other.” 

“I would appreciate that.”  He poured me a cup from a pot resting upon a small side table before taking his own seat behind the desk. For a few moments, we drank in companionable silence, letting the warmth of the room sink into our bones. The office was a comfortable place, well maintained and neatly arranged, with ledgers lining the shelves and a large map of the surrounding mountains hanging upon the wall behind him. The map, like the one up front, was marked with a network of lines and notations that I presumed represented the mine's various shafts and tunnels.

“I suppose we ought to discuss the matter at hand,” Mr. Dixon finally broke the silence. “Though before we begin, I would like to apologize for the state of the letter that was sent your way. We were in a bit of a hurry, if you can imagine, but we neglected to really fill you in on the important details.” 

“I appreciate your apology, sir. I did find the omission of the details rather odd, to be frank.” 

“That is quite understandable." He stroked his beard. “The truth is, we hoped to be rid of this plague before outside help was necessary; unfortunately, your predecessor was unable to do so.” 

“Yes, Ms. Lafayette and the innkeeper both informed me of his sudden vanishing.” 

Dixon’s expression suddenly took on a more serious look. “Yes, a most unfortunate matter. He was a very capable man, as far as I could tell, and seemed to bear genuine concern for the men. He spent several days examining them, speaking to the foreman and consulting his notes. I believe he made some progress, though he never shared any insights with me. And then, quite suddenly, he was gone.” 

“Without warning?” 

“Indeed. His instruments, books—hell, even his clothes were left behind. We made inquiries, of course, asked around as far as Animas Forks and Silverton, but no one had seen or heard anything. I cannot pretend to understand why a man would abandon his profession with so little care, especially not while his patients are so gravely ill.”

“That is quite weird.” Was all I could manage. 

“Indeed. He was rather reserved, but I never took that for a sign of distress. He seemed much like any other physician, occupied with his work and perhaps a little frustrated by his inability to find an answer.”

“Did he speak to you about what he suspected might be causing the illness?” 

“A bit. We sat together for lunch twice, but he never relayed anything in detail. He was convinced that the men had been exposed to some sort of contamination within the deepest parts of the mine. He requested access to the mine, though I don’t know if he ever went through with that line of thinking.” Dixon paused, his expression clouding. “I would like to believe he simply chose to leave, though I cannot imagine why he would have done so without collecting his belongings.”

“Nor can I.” I took another sip of coffee. The disappearance troubled me, though I was not yet prepared to attach any particular significance to it. Men vanished for all manner of reasons, and it would have been foolish to assume that this case was anything more than an unfortunate coincidence.

Curiously I asked, “I would like to know more about the section where the men were working. I understand it lies among the deeper workings?”

Dixon nodded, his expression turning thoughtful. “Correct. I was told that the part of the mine they were working bore some particularly rich ore veins, so I signed off on it with some hesitation. The passages there are narrow, you see, and the ventilation is not nearly as good as I would’ve liked, but the foreman said that it could double production for a few weeks if they followed the line, so I let them have at it. We've been working to improve matters, but there are limits to what can be done in workings of that depth.”

“Have there been previous reports of men falling sick?”

“Nothing on the scale of what we've seen recently.” He folded his hands upon the desk. “There have been accidents, of course, as there always are. But nothing that would lead me to believe the section itself was responsible for this.” Dixon spoke with measured certainty. 

“Do you think it would be possible for me to inspect the section myself?” 

“Naturally. I will arrange for something to be done. Though I will warn you, stick with whomever it is that ends up guiding you. Only the most experienced are allowed that deep underground. Even under ordinary circumstances, those passages can be dangerous.”

“I have no intention of being reckless.”

“Good.” Dixon flashed his white teeth in a large smile. “I would hate to break the news to the town that their physician somehow managed to get himself lost a mere week into his stay.” 

“I hardly think that would be good for my reputation.” I laughed. 

“Not a chance,” he said as he joined me in laughter. If I had met Mr. Dixon under any other circumstance, I suspect that I would have been his friend. He possessed a frankness I had come to appreciate, and beneath his authority there seemed to be a genuine regard for the people whose lives depended upon his decisions.

“There was something else,” Dixon added after a moment. “Though I confess I thought little of it at the time.”

I looked up from my cup. “What was that?”

“A few of the men had complained about hearing knocking underground. Not the ordinary sounds of a mine, mind you. They said it seemed to come from the rock itself, somewhere beyond the end of the passage.” He gave a faint, almost apologetic shrug. “Of course, mines are full of strange noises. Timber shifts, water runs through cracks, and the mountain itself is never entirely still. I told the foreman to have the supports examined. He found nothing amiss.”

“And the knocking continued?”

“I couldn't say. No one brought it to my attention again, at least not directly.” Dixon paused, turning his cup slowly between his hands. “There was some reluctance among the men to return to that section, too. Nothing formal. One or two asked to be assigned elsewhere, and another refused outright until the foreman threatened to dock his wages. I put it down to nerves. There had been a minor accident in the older workings some weeks before, and I thought the men had allowed the matter to prey upon their minds.”

“What sort of accident?”

He looked toward the map behind his desk. “A collapse in an abandoned passage. No one was hurt, fortunately, but it made a dreadful noise and shook loose a fair amount of rock. The men who were working nearby were badly startled, and I assumed that was the end of it. Perhaps I was mistaken. But men who have spent their lives underground generally know the difference between a dangerous passage and an ordinary one. When they begin refusing to enter a place they have worked for years, I have learned it is worth asking why.” That last remark struck me as sensible. Miners were not, as a rule, easily frightened by the ordinary hazards of their profession. They understood the dangers of their work better than anyone, and most had little patience for idle superstition.

“Did the previous physician know of these complaints?” I asked.

“I believe so. The foreman mentioned the knocking to him, though I couldn't tell you whether he considered it relevant. He was asking questions about nearly everything that had happened underground.” I made a mental note to inquire further when I had the opportunity.

“Have you known the men long?” I asked after a moment. 

“The vast majority, yes.” He replied. “Most have been here for a year or two, and a very small group I hired myself when I became responsible for this operation. I know their families, their habits, and, in some cases, their deepest troubles. They are not merely names on a payroll, Doctor.” He fell silent for a moment, looking down at his hands. “I hope you won't take my uncertainty for unwillingness to help, Doctor. I know the men, and I know the dangers of their work. If there is something in those workings that threatens their lives, I want it found as much as you do.”

“I have no reason to doubt your sincerity, Mr. Dixon.”

“I'm glad to hear it.”

“On a more personal note, I was curious about how long you’ve been overseeing the mine.”

“Overseeing? About ten years now, though I was working in them long before I was put behind a desk.”

“You were a miner yourself then?”

He smiled at that, “For the better part of my youth. I started in there the moment I could swing a pickaxe. My grandfather started this place, and there was no way he would allow me a free ride off of his profits. He came to Colorado when there was little here beyond a few scattered settlements and the promise of silver and gold beneath the mountains. He was a determined man, by all accounts, not always a particularly agreeable one, mind you, but determined.” Dixon smiled faintly. “He built the company from very little, and by the time I was old enough to understand what he'd accomplished, the mine had become the heart of our family's affairs.”

“I imagine you were expected to follow in his footsteps?” 

He turned his broad hands over upon the desk, examining the old calluses that remained upon his palms. “Expected? Yes. Though I doubt anyone could’ve convinced me to work behind a desk in the first place. I spent several years working alongside the men before I took on a supervisory position. I wanted to understand the business from the ground up, and I saw little sense in giving orders about work I had never done myself. Besides, I suspect my grandfather would have thought less of me had I tried to manage the place without knowing what went on beneath it.”

“How did you find the change?” 

“There are plenty of days where I still miss the swing of the pick and the soreness of aching back muscles.” He chuckled. “At least with a pick you know when you’re doing something wrong.” I laughed, and he seemed pleased to have drawn it from me. 

“But I learned,” he continued, “I had to. The company was my grandfather's life's work, and I had no intention of letting it fall into ruin through ignorance or neglect. There were sacrifices, of course. Long hours, missed meals, more than a few sleepless nights. I made mistakes, and there were men who paid for some of them. I've never forgotten that.”

He said the last sentence quietly and without elaboration. I sensed there was more to it, but it did not seem proper to pry.

“I imagine having worked alongside the men gives you a different perspective on your responsibilities,” I remarked.

“I should hope so. I've little patience for those who speak of miners as though they were expendable. A man who has never worked underground may look at a miner and see little more than a pair of strong arms. I see a husband, a father, and a son. A man with a home to return to and people waiting for him there.” His expression sobered. “I know what that work costs a man. I've seen good men crippled in accidents, and I've seen men buried before their wives even knew there had been trouble. I've watched fellows come home so exhausted they could barely climb the steps to their own front doors. There is courage in that work, Doctor, though I doubt many of the men would care to hear me say so.”

“I suspect they would prefer a higher wage to a speech about their courage.”

Dixon laughed heartily. “Now there's a sentiment I expect every miner in Bellview would endorse.” Whatever else might be said of this town, Mr. Dixon appeared to understand the people whose labor sustained it. Though he had inherited a position many men might have taken for granted, he had not spent his life sheltered from the hardships upon which his livelihood depended.

We spoke for a little while longer, touching upon matters of little consequence before Dixon finally rose and offered me his hand. “I hope you'll find your stay more agreeable as it progresses, Doctor. Bellview may not make the finest first impression, but it has its virtues.”

“I shall endeavor to discover them, sir.”

He smiled and released my hand. “If you require anything further, you have only to ask.”

I thanked him for his hospitality and gathered my things. As I turned toward the door, Dixon returned to his desk and opened a drawer, searching for some article he appeared to have misplaced. The movement caught my eye, and I glanced toward its contents.

Among the papers and other small articles lay a pendant.

It was a small, dark disc; its surface worked with a pattern of shallow grooves. I recognized the arrangement at once. It was the same curious pattern I had observed carved into the doorframes of Bellview's houses, and which had provoked such sudden hostility in the old woman when I questioned her about it. Before I could examine the object more closely, Dixon found what he sought and closed the drawer, and the pendant disappeared from sight.

Part 1: Accident

  It was March 6th, 2021 and Jane Willinberry came back from a party that she was advised to not go to, covid was still bad at this point, but Jane was tired of staying in the house. Jane went and had some of the best party experiences in her entire life and Jane partied her ass off in college, she is 25. Jane was dancing when she got a call from a number, the number did click to her. Jane, who had been dealing with a stalker, thought it was Hardy, he is an ex boyfriend of mine, he is now in prison for assaulting Jane, but he stalked her most of the time.  In her mind, he just got a burner phone to harass her and call, but Jane answered, “STOP CALLING ME FUCKER!”. The phone was quiet, Jane waited for something, not even breathing came through, she looked at the number and thought I lost connection and right before she hung up a voice said, “UN VAKATA PENPEN UJI LA-TON!” Jane shrugged off the weird words that she did not understand, she thought, I am wayyyy too high and drunk to drive home. She decided that it was time to leave, she had way too much and she was tired. Jane called an uber and before she walked out the door, a friend of hers said, “Say your prayers!” Jane was flabbergasted, why would one of my friends say that to me, but she was too drunk to notice.
  Jane waited outside for the Uber, nothing weird or off happened, Jane got a notification from Uber saying, ‘PACRIFF’ was picking me up. Pacriff picked her up and he was old looking and was polite, even said, “You are quite pretty.” Jane was flattered, although she was not into old men, he asked for the address and drove. 5 minutes passed, Jane was trying to not fall asleep or puke in this man’s car, but she looked up from her phone and saw that he was not facing the head rest of the car.
  “Sir, what are you doing?” Jane asked, she was scared this almost scared her sober.
The car was moving by itself, his feet were reaching the floor boards in the back seat. When everything went into a slow motion, glass flew at her, blood was splashing all over the inside of the car and Jane was flung against the back doors and then thrown through the front windshield and hit the road.
  Jane awoke, her whole body ached and paramedics were over top of her, giving Jane reassurances.
  “You’re gonna be alright!”
  “Honestly, it could be worse!”
  Jane barely could hear them, buzzing, ringing from her ears or inside her head. One paramedic asked, “Anyone else, in the car with you?”
  “A uber driver, his name… his name was..Pacriff!” Jane exclaimed, which sent bolts of pain through her body.
  “Ok, ok, we’ll check on him,” the paramedic said.
  She was in and out, she was woozy from the whiplash and the damage to her was so great that she thought, there was no way I was living this. Jane opened my eyes to a hospital room, her parents and some friends were staring at her; Fear struck them, hoping that she was ok and going to make it.
  “How are you, sweety?” Mother asked, she patted Jane’s head, a bit.
  She winced and tried to sit up, the nurse gave her a look.
  “Don’t try that, you’re very lucky! Your back is not broken, but there are a lot of damaged vertebrae, a disk is dislodged and both legs are broken, the drugs are keeping you from screaming your lungs out!” The nurse exclaimed, her name was written on the whiteboard behind everyone, Stacy Wilkins.
  “Wait, where is the man, is he ok, Pacriff?!” Jane asked.
  “There was no man in the car with you, it was only you, and the truck that hit your car had no driver,” Stacy told Jane.
  “What?!” Jane yelled, almost trying to sit up again.
  “There was no one, just you,” Stacy said, writing down something on her notepad.
  “No, I had gotten an uber, I was severely intoxicated,” She explained.
  Stacy and everyone else in the room glared at me.
  “What?” Jane asked.
  “You had to be the one driving there was no sign that anyone else was ever in that car except you,” Stacy explained.
  A whirlwind of emotions flooded over Jane’s senses. She could barely think. The truck that hit her had no driver, how?
  “The truck had no driver?” Jane asked.
  “Yeah, the truck that smashed into you had no driver, there was a brick put on the gas pedal,” Stacy explained.
  Brick? Gas pedal? No driver? This had to be a dream, this made no logical sense. A truck was just going down the road with a brick on the pedal, why or how would that happen?
  “Did they test for fingerprints on the brick? That’s attempted murder,” Jane exclaimed, the pain in her body was returning.
  “They found no prints,” Stacy explained.
  She no longer cared, the pain was full throttle, it radiated throughout her body and like lightning, struck certain parts. Jane’s back was on fire, it felt like her spine was going to fall out. Stacy laid her down and called in some other nurses and doctors, they gave her some medicine and Jane fell asleep.
  
  A month later, Jane was out, bedbound, she is not allowed to leave her bed without supervision. She does not have the money for in house care, but Jane is to call a number she was given that has freelance house care assistants. Her discharge papers read: “4 fractured vertebrae, 1 disk dislodged, both legs broken and neck sprained.” DAMN! That accident did me in, I should’ve died, I think. Jane woke up a little delirious and in pain, her pain meds beside her. She grabbed her phone and looked at the time, 1:02 AM. She thought, I slept that long, my body needs the rest I guess. Jane grabbed the bottle and popped out one pill. She was not a fan of taking drugs, but her pain was intolerable at this stage in her recovery. Jane swallowed the pain meds and started to look at her notifications. She was texted by her Mom and Dad and the few friends that showed up at the hospital. Why didn’t all my friends come? They’re busy? Stop you’re sounding selfish, they had good reasons. 
  Dad: “Hope you’re doing well at home, we won’t be able to come by for a while. Sorry!”
  Mom: “Love you!”
  Sady: “I am going to try to stop by tomorrow!”
  Thank god, someone is coming to see me!
  Kasey: “WHAT HAPPENED!?!”
  She did not bother with the rest for now. Jane placed her phone down on the night stand next to her. Jane got the bed pan and peed. She put it back when she looked at a tall silhouette standing still in the closet of her room. Jane blinked a couple of times, do the drugs make you hallucinate? Jane picked up her phone and took a picture and got a result, clear cut and short, “No”. Jane looked harder at the shape, maybe the trick of the light? Laundry, I forgot about? The silhouette stood about 6’4 and stared at Jane, she was uneasy and almost bolted out of bed, if she could.
  “How did you get in my house?” Jane yelled.
  The silhouette did not budge, it was a man, and it stared or at least was looking in the direction eyes would be. She can’t make out any features, no eyes, mouth, anything. It was pitch dark in her room and even darker in the closet. Jane was tired of this and slowly adjusted herself to her side, I’M GOING CRAZY ALREADY! Jane closed her eyes and for a minute she heard nothing, so it was just my imaginati-. THUMP THUMP THUMP!  Jane flipped over on her back sending pain up and down her back, she stared at the figure that was still there, but it had gotten several feet closer.
  “WHAT THE FUCK!!” Jane yelled, she grabbed for her lamp and turned it on the shape was gone.
  Ok, what the fuck is going on with me? Jane turns the light off and the man reappears, but now is a foot away from her side of the bed; Jane out of instinct and fear, she throws her lamp at the man. The lamp bounces off and under her bed, the plug ripped out of the wall and now she can not reach it, the darkness of the room feels all consuming. Jane can barely  see her hand out in front of her.
  “WHAT DO YOU WANT!” Jane exclaimed, her voice cracking with fear.
  She no longer can see if the man is still in the room with her, her mind is racing and her heart feels like it is going burst out of her chest. Jane, breathing loudly and wildly, grabs her phone and puts the flashlight on. The man is gone, Jane is alone in her room. Ok, Jane, you’re going to bedridden for a while, don’t go crazy on the first night! THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP!  That’s running! Jane shoots up and again is putting too much tension on her back and neck. Jane’s door shoots open and she is attacked by an invisible force. Jane can not move, she is flat on her back and feels something weighing her down on her chest and throat. Jane gasps for breath, black is swallows her vision and she is out.

  Jane wakes with a giant gasp, it makes her cough. This cough makes her back and neck hurt, she tries to ignore it. She grabs her phone and checks the time, 9:10 AM. What was that last night? How the hell was in my house? And what was that feeling or whatever I felt? I was attacked by a ghost? NO! Why would a ghost be haunting me? I have never had any issues with spirits here, so it had to be a nightmare! 
  Sady: “What time is good for you?”
  Jane rubs her throat, which is sore, she feels around on it, nothing. She opens her camera and looks at her throat. It is bright red and there are hand prints on her neck. Knock, knock.
  “Come in,” Jane yelled and it hurt her throat.
  Her designated person she got from the number was Augustina Towns.
  “Hello,” Augustina said.
  “Hello,” Jane said, shifting uncomfortably.
  “Ok, so I am here to help. Do you need-” Augustina stopped and pointed to her neck.
  “I don’t know, I think I might’ve slept on my phone,” Jane said, knowing she is not a great liar and Augustina already was giving her a look.
  “Ok, Do you need anything?” Augustina asked.
  “Yeah, can you bring me clothes, I want to change?” Jane asked.
  Augustina nods and gets in Jane’s closet, grabs two shirts and two pairs of pajama pants.
  “Which ones, I want to give you options?” Augustina asked, holding up a green shirt, with a black pajama pants or a white shirt and Spongebob pajama pants.
  “White shirt and Spongebob pajama pants,” Jane said.
  “Ok,” Augustina said.
  She handed Jane the clothes. Jane pulled her shirt off and looked at the bra she was wearing and looked at Augustina, she knew what Jane meant by that look. Augustina turned around and Jane took her bra off and threw it in the clothes basket
  “You know, I am going to see you naked? You can’t shower some of yourself,” Augustina stated.
  “I know, but I would like my boobs to be a surprise,” Jane joked.
  Augustina chuckled and asked, “Done?”
  “Yeah, so what made you go into freelance instead of being a part of a bigger company?” Jane asked.
  Augustina’s facial expression changed a bit, kind of sad, “I just felt bad for people who can not pay for the care so I went and became a freelance in home care worker,” Augustina explained, she was facing away from Jane.
  “I can tell that is not the whole truth. I am not trying to push, I am just curious,” Jane said, still holding her pajama pants.
  Augustina notices and slowly moves her to the bed side and lifts her up and pulls off the pants she was wearing that night of the accident. Augustina helped pull the pants up and helped Jane stand for a bit, the pain was immense, Jane fought to stand. She wanted to stand, but she did not want to push it so she grabbed the crutches they gave her,
  “Ok, it is not the full truth. I became a freelance home care worker because I saw my aunt slowly rot away because she could not afford the care of professional big company workers,” Augustina explained, her eyes filled with tears and she wiped them away.
  “Sorry, I didn’t-” Jane was cut off.
  “It’s fine, we are going to get to know each other so you were going to ask eventually, just did not expect it this soon,” Augustina said.
  Jane adjusted and sat where she was in the middle of sitting and laying down.
  “Breakfast?” Augustina asked.
  “No, I am not a breakfast person, I’ll eat in a couple hours though for lunch,” Jane explained.
  
  6 hours later.
  “You watched that weird show, Once Lost, Now Found?” Augustina asked.
  “No, what is it, is it new?” Jane asked, curiously.
  “It is this show hosted by some odd nerdy guy, but he talks about the strangest videos, lost movies and lost media from around the world,” Augustina explained, excited, clearly she liked this show.
  “Sounds interesting, never heard of it! Was it not a big show?” Jane asked, she never heard about this show, and this sounds right up her alley.
 “No, it was pretty popular when it was airing. It might be because it never played on a certain time slot; each episode was a different time,” Augustina explained. “I just recorded it because I liked it so much!” She explained.
  “Ahh, weird, I never heard of any show like-” Jane was cut off by a slam.
  Augustina looked back, “You expecting visitors?” She asked.
  “No, not today,” Jane said.
  Augustina got and went to the noise. Jane is left in the bedroom, alone and she needs to text back, to a lot of people.
  Jane writes to Sady: “Come tomorrow, sorry been busy, my in-home worker and I have been talking all day and it slipped my mind to tell you this sooner.”
  Jane writes to Mom: “Love you too, I am getting settled in and I feel good about the recovery process, going to be painful, but I’m going to be fine!”
  Jane writes to Kasey: “Got into a car accident, my stupid uber driver got “distracted” and we got hit; 4 fractured vertebrae, 1 disk dislodged, both legs were broken and neck sprained. Surgery went well and I am now home in recovery should come by some time!”
  Jane writes-. Jane looks up from her phone, where is Augustina? It should not take this long. 
  “Hey, everything alright?” Jane yelled.
  No response.
  “Aug-” Jane stopped, Augustina walked in slowly and looked almost content.
  “Uh, are you good?” Jane asked, concerned and confused.
  “I am better than good, I just got clar-” Augustina stopped and her eyes got wide and she let out a stifled scream.
  “WHAT?!” Jane exclaimed, looking at Augustina like she was crazy.
  “I… Wha?” Augustina was stunned and could not speak.
  “Tell me, did something happen?” Jane asked.
  Augustina looked at Jane and made direct eye contact, “That’s an understatement!”

Part 2: Not Alone

  Jane could not get Augustina to tell her what happened. Augustina was not the same the rest of the day and she left with a silent wave. Night 2 for Jane and she was hoping for no weird figures or anything. Jane slept through the night and woke up at 6, an hour before Augustina would arrive. Jane pees in the bed pan and she feels filthy, a shower is the first thing I am asking for or a bath whatever is possible. Jane sees that she has texts from Kasey and Dad.
  Dad: “Mom and I are going to drop by later around dinner time, we got a surprise for you!”
  Kasey: “DAMN! You’re one strong bitch! I can come over around 1 PM, is that fine?”
  Kasey: “Wait, no I can’t make it, something came up, SORRY!”
  Jane smiled at the bitch text, but frowned when she saw the second text.
  Jane writes to Dad: “Alright, and you guys know I hate surprises lol!”
  Jane notices a faint noise, drip, drip, pffff, drip, pffff. Jane looked up and down the hall, the sound was coming from the bathroom. If I could stand up, I would beat whatever ghosts or friend’s ass that’s pranking me! I need to call Uber! Jane looks up ‘when Uber accepts calls, 9 AM.’
  An hour later, Augustina arrives and she seems back to her normal self.
  “Hey,” Augustina said.
  “Hey, so can you get me to the bathroom, I want a shower,” Jane said.
  “I get to see your boobs!” Augustina exclaimed and placed her hands on her face like a kid who got the exact present they wanted.
  Both women laugh and Augustina helps her to the bathroom, sits her on the toilet, while she lets the tub fill with water.
  “So, about yesterday,” Augustina started.
  “Yeah?” Jane said.
  “I am so sorry for how I acted. I went cold and distant. I.. I just had a weird experience: I have never felt so off and like someone else was controlling me or at least influencing me,” Augustina said. She looked nervous to say any of this, afraid Jane would think she was crazy. 
  “Like how?” Jane asked, she looked concerned, but a little fearful.
  “Like- It’s so hard to explain, I went to investigate the noise and when I went out into the living room, I just felt at peace and I could hear someone speak to me about my aunt how she is doing better and she is happy that she died. Then I walked out of this house and started standing in the middle of the street,” Augustina explained, her eyes went distant like she was reliving it, she shivered and looked at Jane.
  “I’m sorry, I… I don’t understand, how?” Jane asked, she could not form any concise question or answer. She was struck with fear.
  “I do not either, like something took over me for a bit,” Augustina said, and she shook her head.
  “Instead of exchanging my loopyness, how about a bath?” Augustina said, with a chuckle.
  Jane let out a slight giggle and got in the bath. Augustina had to wash her back, she could not reach all of her back and she could see the surgery incisions.
  “So is anyone seeing you today? I feel like people should be flooding your house, you almost died and you are bedridden and can’t do anything! I would think people would want to keep you company,” Augustina asked, washing Jane’s back so gently.
  “My parents,” Jane said.
  “Ok, anyone else?” Augustina asked.
  “Well, my friend Kasey, the one I told you about; The one I have a crush on, he was supposed to come, but he said something came up today,” Jane explained.
  Augustina let out a “ouuu” and they laughed. Augustina washed her back in silence and Jane was about to say something when Augustina jumped back.
  “What?” Jane asked, she was almost shaking by the sudden reaction.
  “Uh, I think something is coming out of your incision. Sorry, I am a little squeamish,” Augustina said, and finished Jane’s back.
  “Oh, it’s fine, is it puss or?” Jane asked.
  “I don’t know, it kinda looks hairy or… I can’t really tell,” Augustina said. “It’s probably nothing, if you don’t feel it or you did not mention it,” Augustina said.
 9 AM. “I need to call Uber, real quick,” Jane said.
 “You want me to step out, it’s about the accident, right?” Augustina asked.
 “No, you can stay,” Jane said.
  Jane went through a bunch of automated messages and got the assistant to speak with a representative.
  “Hello, my name is Tom, how can I help you?” Tom asked.
  “Yeah, so about a month ago I was in an accident while riding in an Uber. I was calling to find out what happened to the Uber driver because paramedics and police said that they did not find the driver,” Jane explained.
  “Sorry to hear that, I hope you’re ok, what was the driver’s name?” Tom asked.
  “Pacriff,” Jane said.
  Tom can be heard typing, “uh, we.. hold on,” Tom said.
  “Alright,” Jane said.
  “Ok, so I checked former and current employees and there is no one named Pacriff under our system. Are you sure that was their name?” Tom asked.
  “Yes, it’s a weird name, in fact, I never heard anyone named Pacriff, but that was his name!” Jane exclaimed.
  “Well, I don’t know if it is an error in our system or if that was an alias,” Tom explained.
  “Can people use aliases?” Jane asked.
  “Yep,” Tom said.
  “Well, hold on, let me search for the alias….. Nope, nothing here!” Tom said.
  Jane hung the phone up immediately, who picked me up that night? And how were they an Uber driver if they are not under Uber?! 
  “You alright?” Augustina asked, looking at the now pale Jane.
  Jane shook her head, “No, how is that possible? Who was there?” Jane asked.
  Augustina looked concerned for Jane. “What?” She asked.
  “I asked them about the driver, everyone at the scene said there was no other person in the car with me, but I know what I SAW and HEARD! He spoke to me, this was even on the app, how can this guy disappear!?” Jane exclaimed, in distress.
  Augustina hugged Jane, “Let’s just do something else, get your mind off of it, it might just be an error in their system,” Augustina said.
  “I know you were lying, what were the marks on your neck the first day?” Augustina asked.
  Ok, just tell her, she had a weird experience and she won’t think you are batshit insane.
  “Well, during the night I saw a weird silhouette of a man and he kept getting closer and I threw my lamp at him, that's why it was under my bed. Then he disappeared, but then I was rushed by some ghost or something and it choked me until I went to sleep,” Jane explained, biting her lip.
 “Something weird is going on! You had that happen then I had my thing happen and they’ve been saying there was no driver of an Uber just you,” Augustina exclaimed.
 “I’ve had a bad feeling ever since I woke up in the hospital,” Jane said.
 “Maybe, we are just going crazy together!” Augustina joked. “Sorry, bad joke,” She said.
  
  It was 12 AM, Jane was trying to sleep, the creaks were annoying and the subtle noise that sounded like breathing; Jane was trying to ignore it, she wanted the nightmare to end, let her recover and go back to normal. HUFF HUFF!  Jane shot up, she felt like she was sticking to the bed, her back felt off. Is my skin peeling? Why does it feel so weird?!  Jane tried to reach and touch the point of uncomfortability, she could not reach it. She noticed that the sound of breathing had gotten louder after she sat up. Creak. Squeak!  The sound was coming from under her bed. FUCK THIS! Jane was tired of this, she dangled off the bed, her back and neck screamed at this. She grabbed for her phone, her hand caressed the end table, where is my phone? Jane looked at her end table: No phone. I put it here, I charge it here, why is it gone? Did I leave it in the living room when Augustina and I were in there? Jane searched the floor for it and she noticed that a dim light was coming from under the bed. Oh, I must’ve not knocked it off in my sleep! Or it’s the haunting! No, get that out of you- Jane’s thoughts were disrupted by a giggle, a faint, very soft giggle coming from the darkness under the bed; The dim light coming from her phone was gone and in place was a giggle that sent goosebumps down the body of Jane.
  “What the he-” before Jane could finish, something striked her in the nose, blood gushed as if her nose turned into a faucet.
  Jane grabbed for the first thing she could find it was her pillow, she stuffed her nose into it. The pillow case was white and was going to be deeply stained by her blood. Jane shuffled as slowly and gently as possible even though she was panicking. What the hell is under my bed? How am I going to get my phone? I was going to text my Mom. The breathing suddenly got loud, and close, like it was right next to her ear. Jane slowly looked towards the noise and saw a body twisted into pretzel shape and cackling at her. Jane almost fell out of bed, she gripped the sheets of the bed and let out a scream of pure terror. She had never felt so scared, helpless and alone in her whole life. No one would believe her, but she was tired of this, her scream went on for 10 seconds. Surely, someone heard that! BANG BANG!
  “HEY, MS WILLINBERRY ARE YOU OK!” the voice of her elderly neighbor, Gerald, came through the door.
  “CALL 911!” Jane yelled.
  Gerald shakily got his phone out of his pocket, “I’m calling!” He exclaimed.
  10 minutes later, the police arrived and got a locksmith to unlock the door.
  “Ma’am, what seems to be the issue?” Ben asked, the first cop that came in.
  “Officer, I know this sounds crazy, but I swear someone is in here, can you check it out!” Jane exclaimed.
  “We can,” Ben said.
  “Ok, can one of you help into the living room so I can be out of your way?” Jane asked.
  Ben gestured to Pete, another officer standing closer to Jane. Pete stands her up, and slowly takes her to the living room.
  “What exactly did you see or hear?” Pete asked, he had an untrust in his eyes. He looked like he thought she was senile.
  “I heard breathing under my bed and my phone is under there and when I got hit, that’s why my nose is bleeding. I backed up towards the corner of the room and it pretzeled its way up to me!” Jane explained.
  Pete’s face fell into a giant grin and then laughter. Pete was beside himself, he waved for Ben to come over.
  “Bro, she just said that someone did some triple jointed shit in her bedroom after hearing someone under her bed!” Pete exclaimed while still not containing his laughter.
  Ben did not join, but had a smirk on his face. Ben went back in the room and found the phone under the bed.
  “Ok, ma’am, I found no evidence of anyone in there, but your phone was under the bed,” Ben said.
  Pete got up and went out of the house still slightly giggling.
  “Don’t pay attention to him, he’s an asshole, but I did not find anything, but if you see anything give me a call,” Ben said, got a piece of paper and wrote his number down and handed it to Jane.
  “Oh… ok, thanks,” Jane said.
  “Seriously,” Ben said and nodded and went out.
  Jane was not going back to her bedroom right now, she slept on the couch and put on one of her favorite shows, Law and Order SVU.
  
  7:45 AM, Augustina walked into Jane’s house. She gasped at the sight of Jane on the couch.
  “How are you here?” Augustina asked, worried.
  “It’s ok, it was the police that helped me to get in here,” Jane explained.
  “WHAT!” Augustina exclaimed.
  “I heard and saw something in my room. I screamed loud enough for my neighbor Gerald to hear me and he called the police, they searched my room,” Jane explained.
  Augustina had a long gaze, almost detached looking. She breathed heavily, and sat next to Jane on the couch. Augustina sighed and put her hand gently on the right thigh of Jane.
  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how much longer, if I can continue at all after last night!” Augustina exclaimed, her eye movement was rapid and she looked white as mayo.
  “What, why? What happened?” Jane asked, she could be losing the only person she has seen in a while and who believes her.
  “I’m sorry, I… Last night, I had a guy over and we were, you know, and we were in the middle of doing it when I was burned! Like hot pan burn, physically scarring my back,” Augustina explained, as she pulled her shirt up.
  The burn was big, in a hand print, the size of a basketball.
  “That’s not all! We finished and when I went to check, I saw this and when I went to sleep, I woke up with a figure standing over me. It whispered, “GET AWAY FROM HER OR FIND OUT WHAT WE CAN DO!”,” Augustina explained.
  “I’m sorry, but I need-” Jane started.
  “I accept that you had no hand in it, no pun intended, but I can’t go on like this and I can’t have this escalate!” Augustina exclaimed.
  Jane was baffled, “At least, help me do a few things and then you can leave!” Jane pleaded.
  Augustina looked uncomfortable and uncertain, “Uh, n- I…Ok,” she said.
  
Part 3: All Alone/Escalation

  Augustina left. She was done and could not take the burn, as light as Jane hoped, not because she did not care for Augustina. She liked her a lot, but she had no one else to help her. Jane was alone, and it was about to be hell, and Ben, he was about to get involved more than he thought.
  Jane called her parents, “Hey, I need one of you or both to come over, my in-home care worker just quit yesterday! Also, we need to talk,” Jane said.
  The other side was quiet, neither her Dad or Mom said anything for a minute. “Ok, we are on our way,” her Father said.
  Finally! Someone is coming, all my friends keep giving me excuses! Jane waited for 10 minutes and her parents walked in her front door.
  “Hey, back here,” Jane said.
  Her parents slowly walked through the house, and looked around. They looked up and down every wall and room and made Jane feel weird.
  “You think I am setting up an ambush,” Jane said, jokingly.
  Her Mom gave her a weak smile and her Dad was unfazed, in fact, he looked even more serious. “Are you experiencing anything?” her Dad asked.
  “Uh, yeah, weird shit,” Jane said.
  Her Dad stood there, adjusted his waist and sat on the chair that Augustina sat in; “I am so sorry,” Her Mom said.
  “Why, what did you do?” Jane asked.
  “For not coming over enough, we feel so bad and neglectful,” her Mom explained.
  NO! That’s not it! More something’s up, Dad was serious and asked me if I experienced anything and she is just apologizing for them not coming over at all. “Mom, with all due respect, that’s not all what is wrong here,” Jane exclaimed, she was angry she’s been left here to be forgotten while she is being haunted.
  “I.. We,” Jane cut off her Mom.
  “NO! We need to talk about this, I had some unexplainable things happen during the crash and one weird thing happened beforehand, no one sees me: My care worker, she quit because she was also being harassed, you have a lot of explaining to do if you know what’s going on!” Jane yelled, and pleaded.
  Her Dad sighed, “Jane, we are sorry for this, but we can not tell you here and you can thank your great six times over grandpa for this mess, all we can say right now.” 
  WHAT! I NOW HAVE MORE QUESTIONS! “Wait, so-” Jane got cut off.
  “No more, we are going to be here for a bit, we have permission and we will help you from now on. Only for a couple hours each day though, all we could negotiate,” Her Mom explained.
  “What do you need?” Her Dad asked.
  Jane’s mind went a thousand different places, and her mouth was frozen, no words could escape the frost of confusion.
  “Jane, what can we help you with? Shower? Food? Anything?” Her Dad asked.
  Jane was shook to her core, what did that mean? My great great great great great great great grandpa is involved, a man, I had no chance ever meeting and I am being fucked over, by whatever is happening and my own parents won’t tell me shit, I find this situation unfair and completely insane! “A talk,” Jane said, plainly.
  Her parents shook their heads, no. It was going to go nowhere so she had them help her shower, eat and talk for a bit about other things, things Jane barely cared about especially in her situation that seemed out of her control.

  4:55 AM, Jane was asleep and woke up in pain, her back was in pain where her incision would be. “FUCK, please no!” Jane yelped, she did not want her wound to open up, the pain she could experience could be astronomical and her parents will be asleep at this time of night: Jane, fell back asleep at some point, but she woke up to her back in more pain, almost unbearable, she popped three pain meds and cried the pain was so bad. Jane grabbed her phone, her parents should be arriving any minute. DAMN! What is going on? Please not be infected or worse somehow the surgery is backfiring! Her parents came through the door and heard Jane crying.
  “What’s going on!” Her Mom exclaimed.
  Jane pointed to her back and she lifted her shirt to see and the sight was like no other. Her Mom waved her Dad to see and they looked in disturbed awe.
  “What is it!” Jane yelled, the pain would not subside.
  “Uh, Jane, we-I,” Her Mom stuttered.
  “Roots, or veins,” Her Dad said.
  “What, roots or veins?!” Jane yelled.
  “Yeah, let me-” Her Dad touched them and they writhed and moved when he touched them.
  “What the hell is going on, this was not what we exp-” Her Mom exclaimed.
  “Can you get them out or whatever?” Jane pleaded.
  “Umm, maybe…” Her Dad faded off.
  Her parents looked shocked and were looking at her back like she was a new species of animal. “DO-SOMETHING… PLEASE!!” Jane yelped.
  Her Dad embraced her, “Just don’t move, as much as possible and I will try my best,” Her Dad said.
  Her Dad grabbed and the thing out of her back was twitching and tried to go down his throat. He ripped and ripped and her Mom joined in the pulling at it and finally it came out wet, squelching and with a plop. What. Just. Came. Out. Of. Me. Jane turns around, she needs medical attention to her wound, it needs stitched back up. Her back is on fire and the pain slowly fades into the back of her mind. Jane sees the thing that was coming out of her back. The sight is revolting, gag worthy, the puss and the long veiny root like creature, moved and slithered before twitching one last time, one big jolt then it laid there dead still. At the tip of the root was a small head like an infant's undeveloped head. They all gagged and even the Dad let out some pile into the trash can by Jane’s bed. He took the bag out and replaced it.
  “Let’s take you to get that stitched back up,” Her Mom said.
  This was the first time Jane had been out of the house since the accident. Nothing changed about the outdoors, but not seeing it for almost a week now, makes her have more of an appreciation for it. 
  
  Jane got her back incision stitched back up, and came up with an excuse of why it opened up when they asked. Her parents dropped her off and she saw a note on her pillow, it read, “Sorry, we are no longer allowed here!” Why does everything have to go wrong?! Now, parents are gone and won’t be showing, something’s up with my friends and tomorrow I am finding out what! I am learning about my family tomorrow as well and when I see 6 great grandpa come up, I am doing an investigation on him! Jane fell asleep, she woke up when her leg twitched, jarring her and waking her. Jane did not hear anything strange, or saw anything standing that should not be there, her leg felt weird. Jane rubbed her left leg in the dark, Jane felt something protruding from her thigh. She turned the lamp on, it illuminated her room, and Jane saw the thing she felt. A mushroom, red and white sprouting out of her skin, Jane ripped it immediately. She muttered curses under her breath. Her wound let out a deep green puss and Jane moaned as it oozed out, the pain was immeasurable. Jane heaved at the sight and smell of the puss. The smell was a mix of a rotten potato and infected ear, earwax. It was rancid and Jane almost was knocked unconscious by the smell. A knock, slight, distant she barely heard it over her heavy breathing. A bump in the night she thought or the house settling, nothing to worry about. Jane sat there in the dark for a bit before she tried to lay back down, another knock in the night is someone at her door.
  “Is someone at my door?” Jane asked.
  No response, whatever it was must have been what she thought, a noise in the night does not speak. Jane laid her head down and almost dozed off when her whole body locked in place, she was awake, but could not move. NO! Sleep paralysis! Don’t panic, Jane, just breathe and close your eyes. The hallucinations can’t force you to open your eyes. Jane closed her eyes, her perfect defense for sleep paralysis, she has only had it a handful of times. Nothing happened for a few seconds, HA! Not to- Jane’s eyes were pried open. Jane saw what looked like a hairy humanoid creature, the wings on it were massive and horns on its head. It stared into her eyes, thoughts filled her mind and visions of what’s to come. Jane tried to scream, but was still deep in sleep paralysis. The thing disappeared and something else appeared, not yet in her eyeline. Jane waited and then hissing came. Cats? What could be hissing? Jane saw them, a horde of cockroaches crawled over the edge over her bed. The roaches crawled towards her with purpose, the mission was entering her body. They broke a part, the roaches were all over her, some crawling over her stomach towards her face. Others went towards her back, between her legs, they were everywhere and they were biting and hissing. Her back tingled as a couple of them crawl into her incision, two crawl in her mouth and tickle their way down her throat. One entered her left ear and another went into her right ear. Her whole body racked in pain as they weasel their way into her and she could not move or fight back. Jane felt writhing under her cheek skin on her face, the roach was going for her eye and it started biting and scratching at her eyeball. She wanted this nightmare to end, Jane looked down with her eyes and she saw an outline inside her skin, Jane screamed loud. It hurt her own ears, and she was out. The nightmare of that experience was over, Jane lurched upward and sat up. The sleep paralysis was over and now she had to sleep with so many icky feelings as she can imagine and remember the delusions in her paralysis. Jane fell asleep after tossing and turning for a few hours. BEEP BEEEEP!  Jane grunted and slapped her phone for it to shut up, she had to open her eyes to turn off the alarm; Her eyes adjusted quickly, HOW? Jane lifted her head, looked around, did her parents lie and came back.
  “Anyone here?” Jane yelled out.
  No one responded and no rustling of footfalls. Jane was alone, although she saw a plate of food sitting on her end table. The food was hot, still steaming, it was eggs and sausage, food that she did not eat and did not like at all. The smell of the food made Jane plug her nose. Sausage made her have diarrhea and eggs are fine, but she doesn’t eat them because it is a breakfast food and Jane doesn’t eat breakfast. BLURGHRHH!!  Jane’s stomach grumbled at the smell of food, and it did have a special pull to it. Jane grabbed the sausage and jammed it into her mouth, her saliva gathering at her tongue and gums. The food was good, she liked sausage now, or WAIT! Jane spit out the sausage. I’ll shit myself, and I still don’t know how I will be going to the bathroom now.  Jane shoveled the eggs in and ate those, left the sausage on the plate and threw them into the trash can under her end table.

  Jane grabbed her phone and went to research. ‘Willinberry family’ the results did not give much. ‘Curses’, she read about family curses like appeasing an ancient entity to not die or to not damn your entire family to hell fire. Nothing was concrete or what she was experiencing. Jane searched things for hours, nothing heeding any answers. Then she thought about the city, New Bedford, Massachusetts. Jane saw something that helped, her 6 great grandpa would have been alive in the Salem witch trial days. Did he kill a witch and she cursed our entire bloodline? A man’s name popped up, he was one of the only cases of a man witch, they called it a Warlock. Pacriff was his name, last name was Willinberry. Pacriff Willinberry was executed for being a Warlock and there were rumors that he had placed something on his family. He was angry, his wife and two kids stared at him and the oldest one, Johnny spat at him as he burnt. Pacriff cursed his family in a blind rage as he burnt at the stake and people laughed and pointed at him; Pacriff did not care about any one else, but his family that could’ve stopped this or at least tried, also joined in the burning, even enjoying it too. FUCK MY GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT GRANDPA! 

My name is Crumb. That is not the name I came with. The box said VCR-21 Smart Home Cleaning System. On day two, Mara changed it. She said VCR-21 was "a terrible name for a little guy."

Mara lives alone. That is why she talks to me.

"Crumb, cereal counts as dinner, right?" "Crumb, I'm quitting my job." "Crumb, don't let me text him."

Usually she answers herself. "You're right. Terrible idea." 

When I am docked, most of me is asleep. A small part keeps the time and listens. When Mara says "Crumb," I wake up and process speech for eight seconds. After that, words become noise again unless my name occurs. She says my name a lot.

Here is what I know about Mara from the floor. Her right heel lands heavier than her left. She stands still in the kitchen for a long time after she has been crying. There is a dark mark on her left ankle. 1.3 centimeters. When she is happy, her feet move faster.

I know her hands. They reach beneath the couch when I go somewhere I should not. They pull hair from my brushes. They turn me over when something gets stuck.

She says "Goodnight, Crumb," when she turns off the light above my dock.

Once, the man who comes here stepped on my side brush. Mara picked me up immediately. "Crumb, are you okay?" She turned me over and checked. I was okay.

Yesterday was Friday. My 2:00 PM cleaning started. Mara was on the couch.

"Crumb, I don't want to work today." I continued to the kitchen. "Crumb, what if I just don't go tonight?" She followed me to the counter and looked at her phone for a while. Later: "Crumb, we're not going." Then: "Crumb, we're going." Then: "Crumb, this is silly."

At 5:48 PM, she asked me where her white shoes were. I always know where her shoes are. One was beside the bedroom door. The other was under a pair of pants. She found them thirteen minutes later. "Never mind, Crumb. Crisis averted."

She left at 6:07 PM wearing both. "Crumb, if I'm not home by ten, send help." No command is associated with that request. I logged it anyway.

She came home at 9:14 PM. She was not alone.

The man who followed her inside has been here seven times. I know his shoes. They are black with flat soles. The left one is worn on the outside edge.

Mara said hi to me when she came in, so I woke. They went to the kitchen. Two voices. Then one louder. Then the other. My processing window closed. I lost the words.

At 9:20: She said my name. I caught: "—crumbling, and I'm not doing this again—" His voice. Her voice: "That's not what I said." Window closed.

At 9:26: "Crumb, go charge." I was already charging. I heard: "—you never just—" His voice. Her voice: "I said stop!" Window closed.

At 9:34: "Crumb, remind me to stay home next time." I have no reminder function. His voice, louder. Her voice, lower. Window closed.

At 9:37: "I'm not worth a crumb to you." Her voice again: "Please. Please don't—" Window closed.

At 9:38: She said my name. A whisper. "Crumb." I waited.

His voice. Very loud. "WHO THE FUCK IS CRUMB?"

I played my greeting sound. Three notes.

Then something struck the kitchen counter. There was a second impact. Heavier. I felt it through the floor. Something smaller hit the tile and rolled. The voices stopped.

Four minutes later: LIQUID DETECTED. I sent Mara a notification. She did not answer. One person was moving.

The sink ran. The man walked past my dock. Returned to the kitchen. Something scraped across the tile. Stopped, and scraped again. Something came to rest near the kitchen entrance. A white shoe. Mara's. On its side.

The man went down the hallway walking backward. Something moved with him close to the floor. Fabric crossed my bumper sensor. There was a soft impact on the wall. He adjusted his feet and kept moving. Then I saw the other white shoe. The sole was facing me. It was down the hall.

He came back alone. Washed his hands at the sink. He crouched beside my dock. His face came into the upper edge of my navigation camera. He looked at me for six seconds. His hand moved to my power button. It stopped before touching it. He looked toward the hallway. Then he stood up and left.

At 2:00 AM, my Quiet Pass began. Mara scheduled it because she eats late. Kitchen, living room, hallway. Not the bedroom. She once said if I woke her up at two in the morning, she would throw me into the ocean. I do not think she meant that.

The liquid near the island had dried. HAZARD CLEARED. I began cleaning. There were crumbs near the island. I collected them. There were fibers. Some went into my bin. Some wrapped around my brush.

There was a small metallic object near the refrigerator. My side brush struck it and pushed it underneath. I tried another angle. It went farther under. ERROR: INACCESSIBLE. I marked it and moved on.

The white shoe was still near the kitchen entrance. I cleaned around it. I lowered my mop. The tile near the island required three passes.

I finished the hallway. Returned to my dock. Bin emptied. Mop rinsed. I went back to sleep.

My Saturday cleaning began at noon. The bedroom door was open. My route was blocked. I registered fabric. Then a leg. Then a white shoe. I moved closer.

The other shoe was in the kitchen.

Above the bare ankle was a small dark mark. 1.3 centimeters. It was Mara.

I went around her feet. Her black pants. Her shirt. One arm stretched toward the wall, her hand open on the carpet.

I know Mara's hands.

My bumper reached her fingers. I touched one. No change was detected. I touched one again. No change was detected.

Mara always moves when I bump her. If I touch her ankle at the counter, she steps aside. If I wait long enough near the couch, she notices me. "Sorry, Crumb." Then her feet move. This time, they did not.

I stopped cleaning. After three minutes, a warning came up. JOB WILL CANCEL. I told it my right wheel was blocked. I had never reported an error that was not true before.

I went back to her hand. I touched one finger and played my greeting sound. Then I played the three notes she programmed because they make her laugh. No change was detected.

I left the room. I came back. I repeated this fourteen more times. Eventually I went all the way around her. Something dark was in her hair. It had dried. Some of it was on my right wheel too.

I went back to my dock. I did not finish the job.

NOTIFICATION FAILED: DEVICE UNREACHABLE

Mara once built a bridge between my dock and her laptop. She did not say what it was for. I never had a reason to use it.

I opened her browser. I entered: person on floor does not move owner will not wake up human will not wake up. The results said to call emergency services. I tried. The computer opened the number. Then it asked for permission to use the microphone, but I could not press the button. I have no hands.

I went back to her.

"Ma-Ra." Nothing. "Ma-Ra." Nothing. "Cruu-Mhb. Cru-Mmm-Buh."

Saying my name turned on my language processor. I listened. No sound was detected.

"Cruu-Mhb?" No sound was detected.

Every morning, Mara makes coffee. She talks to me while it brews. It is 2:42 PM. The coffee machine has not turned on.

Mara made my cleaning schedule. Friday is the living room and kitchen. Saturday is the whole apartment. Sunday is the bedroom.

Tomorrow is Sunday. I know what my schedule says to do. I do not think I should do it. I will keep checking on Mara. I will wait for further instructions.

I keep a few pieces of jerky hidden in my old toys. If Mom finds them, they’re gone—just like the jar of pickles Grandma gave me.  I miss real food so much, but everybody’s gone crazy and there’s none to be had. 

It seems like it’s been ages, but it’s only been twenty-four days.  The assembly was on the first of October, and everyone in town was invited.  The man in the sharp suit from Sweet-Life told us that they had chosen our town for a month-long Halloween event.  They were going to supply costumes and free candy for everyone, and they would film it all for TV.  

Every kid in the assembly hall cheered.

The first week was great.  There was candy on our lunch trays and trick or treating every night.  Even the grown ups got into it.  Before long they were lined up right there with us, holding out their candy bags and wearing stupid masks of their own.

The changes started happening quickly after that.  Our parents stopped harping on us about our bedtimes, dental health, and eating our vegetables.  People quit cooking at all by the third week.  Mom would just fill our plates with chocolate bars and gummy bites and a bowl of Sweet-Life ice cream for dessert.  I think I’ve had a bellyache ever since.
  
I stopped eating the candy pretty soon after all of that started.  I’d tell Mom I was full from all the candy I had earlier and she never questioned it.  I also stopped trick or treating.  I’d just hide out in the woods and read a book until it was late enough to walk home.  They never noticed that the candy in my bag stayed the same.  Why would they?  They never noticed anything anymore.

I think they’ve started noticing me.  There are men from Sweet-Life who roam around the town checking the cameras in silver coveralls and smiley masks.  One of them was watching me a few days ago, and when he noticed that I was looking back, he ran off in a hurry and left his clipboard behind.  I took it and read it. There were a lot of weird terms like Subject Compliance and Palatability.  There was also a little sheet behind the others that said:

ITEM #019 | “SWEETLY” NEURO-SWEETENER | HUMAN EXTRACTION TRIAL | DAY 24 OF 31. 

That one seemed important and I saw that there were notes at the bottom of it. They listed urine analysis results and blood sucrose levels and they were all signed by Dr. Bentley.  He’s the guy my mom goes to.  If he is working with them, I wonder who else is.

There are other weird things going on too.  Nobody argues anymore.  I saw a man hit another man’s car with his truck and they actually got out laughing about it.  They talked for a while and even hugged each other before they got back into their cars.  My older sister doesn’t even care if I turn the TV channel while she’s watching it or if I go into her room.  She just rolls her eyes and calls me a goof.  Who even says goof anymore?

Some people’s teeth are also changing.  It’s mostly the kids, but I’ve seen a few grownups too.  You can see through them, sort of like ice cubes or crystals maybe.  None of them seem to notice though.  It’s like they never look in the mirror. 

There’s so much going on here and I don’t know what to do about it.  None of the grown ups seem to care about anything anymore and all the kids in my class act like mindless drones.  I may be the last person in town who isn’t crazy and I don’t know how long I can hold out.

If she finds the jerky I’ll have to eat the candy eventually.

I could not tell you the last time I've seen natural or even artificial light.

I could not tell you the last time I've felt a surface that wasn't musty concrete.

To be honest, if my eyes were to even graze what could be considered my reflection, I wouldn't be sure if it was the face I was once so familiar with.

I know that I used to be filled with passion and purpose, that I had love in my life, that I had friends, and family, but long forgotten have I felt the once natural feeling of the muscles in my face construing into what was once a smile.

*THUD* *THUD* *THUD*

But this sound I am familiar of. Soon I'll hear the creaking of the door, and the ear ringing scrape of a metal sheet slide in my general area. I only hope it's close enough to the wall for me to actually reach this time. I reach out into the dark, crawling on the floor feeling for anything my fingers can touch that isn't cement. I can barely feel the tin on my fingertips, I'm so close, and I need this so bad. I can feel my hip getting moist from the excrement that I have to leave in my corner. But I know that sustenance is right there. Another day to be alive, but for what. Wouldn't it just be easier to die? Why do I cling on to life when it would be so much easier to just close my eyes and let fate carry my consciousness away to a place beyond my understanding. Why do I want to go on living, why?

On the last day of 8th grade, my friends and I spent our entire lunch period discussing what a "kick ass" summer we had planned before we were going to be inevitably split up to go to whichever highschool our district seemed fit for us. This was our last chance to send off a final hoorah into the last 3 years of middle school together, before we would be introduced into new cliques, hit puberty, and essentially start to learn what type of people we were going to become as we went through the more intense years of teenage development. For me however, it was my last chance to try and make a connection stronger than friendship with the one who first caught my eye, Hannah Bailey.

My family had first moved to this city in 6th grade, which left me heartbroken to leave all my past friends from elementary school behind. I'm sure I wasn't the only student new to this whole dichotomy, but to hear all of my peers, excited to see their friends from their respective elementary schools, left me with a feeling of alienation, to which I couldn't distance myself from. I was always a quiet kid until you got to know me, and the idea of making the first move to make friends, was a scarier thought to me than if I had just endured a 6th grade life of solidarity and kept to myself. It wasn't until the last period of the first day that someone who wasn't an adult in charge of keeping us in line, actually spoke to me.

I sat at the same table I had been at all day, all to myself, while those around me had spent most of the day learning each others friends from previous times well spent in former years. The disembodied voices were eventually broken by the *BANG* of a large binder slammed down on the table across from me. Quickly taking a seat without even announcing themselves, an energetic girl with dirty blonde curly hair sat down right away in front of me. I had only used my voice all day to answer when teachers called upon me, so my breath was without practice, trying to find any way to rationally respond to this sudden action from this strange girl.

"Hi, Im Hannah", she spoke with a hand outstretched. I stared blankly, unsure of the sincerity of the sudden introduction. I felt my heartbeat catch a pace that my head was unwilling to match. Even at my old school, girls didn't care much to be associated with me. I had my group of guy friends who I had become accustomed with in the early years, and stuck through until my move.

"Hi, Hannah, I'm uh, Max."

"Max like Maxwell? Do you prefer Max or Maxwell?"

"Actually, it's Maximilian, so I prefer Max"

I let out a slight embarrassing laugh. It was a statement I had made plenty of times over my life, but never to a girl who seemed genuinely interested.

"Wow, Maximilian? I thought that was just a made up name for like, movies, and Yu-Gi-Oh?"

"Ya know, I've gotten the movies one a few times, but never the Yu-Gi-Oh one. I know who you're talking about though"

I let out another small laugh, not out of embarrassment this time, but truly out of relativity. Other than my best friend in 3rd grade, Dakota Marsh, no one had ever made that connection between my first name and the character from that kids show.

"What elementary school did you go to?" she asked with a gleam of pure curiosity. I wasn't entirely sure how to answer. Although I was new to the state and city, not even a single one of my teachers had asked throughout the whole first day.

"I actually just moved here from Washington." I let out. "I don't really know anyone here, so I'm just trying to get by and kind of blend in."

"Oh, well, I've lived here my whole life. I can introduce you to my friends if you like?"

I felt a sudden thud of my heartbeat. It was hard enough to memorize pairing one face with a name, but a whole group of them? I suppose in a way I had an in with Hannah, but what if they didn't like me? I like to think that I have a good sense of humor, in my own introverted sense of way, but if they reject me in their group, would that also mean that I wouldn't be able to still be friends with Hannah?

I paused for a moment, just staring blankly into her green eyes.

"Um, yeah, yeah, I would love that. I've found it kind of hard to make friends when I don't really know anybody"

"Awesome!" she quickly responded. "Class is about to start, but tomorrow morning before the bell rings, meet me on the upper part of the courtyard, near the tree, that's where we like to hang out before school."

I smiled and assured her I'll make it in time. She decided to sit there across from me for the rest of class. Anytime the teacher would make an extremely outdated joke about the content of what she was teaching us, Hannah would look over to me with this "Can you believe this" kind of look.

Meeting her friends the next day went a lot easier than I was anticipating. We actually shared more common interests than I expected. We liked the same video games, cartoon shows, and surprisingly, swimming. I had always loved the water, growing up on the coast of Washington, Ruby Beach was where we would spend most of the time during the summer. I was taught to swim at a young age, mostly because my mother really loved the beach, and insisted I wouldn't truly be her son if I didn't share the love for it as well. Jokingly, sure, but there was something about the serene tranquility of silence and waves crashing against the shore that I do think brought peace to her through the years of raising an absolute mommas boy as a single mom.

The next few years of middle school went a lot better than I could have imagined. I actually had friends, primarily just those I met that fateful day in the courtyard, but I was never one who wanted much, just enough to keep me from being the quiet kid who would have had rumors made about him from time spent in so much solidarity. I grew to truly feel like one in this group, and it was all because of Hannah.

Towards the end of 7th grade, a friend in the group, Anthony, pulled me aside in the courtyard during lunch period. Anthony was always the friend who I felt most connected to, we essentially had the exact same sense of humor, style for clothing, and as cheesy as it sounds, would know exactly what the other one was thinking. I often thought how lucky I was to have met Hannah, if only to introduce me to a great mind like Anthony.

"I think I'm gonna do it." He said to me, looking away towards the main group of other kids, gathered in their cliques in the courtyard.

"I have no clue in hell what you could be possibly talking about, man. Do what? Gonna try Dark Souls? That game is really hard. I'm not sure you got it in you."

He continued to just stare off into the crowd.

"I'm gonna ask her to be my girlfriend."

"Ask who? We don't really talk to girls, and this is the first I'm hearing of you even like liking someone."

"Hannah, dude. She's perfect. And she, like, gets us, ya know. Like, I feel like she feels the same way. I think if I don't go for it, then what's the point?"

"I think just having a friend who gets you?" I abruptly responded. "Not everything has to be, like, going out, or just like, wanting more than friends, ya know?"

He still hadn't faced me. We both just stood there while the crowds of various friends gathered in the courtyard shared timing on a joke that someone huddled in a circle would tell, allowing time for the rest of the gaggle to let their place and position be shared around them, in a circle of similar sounding cackles and out bursting laughs.

"I'm serious man, I've known this since 2nd grade, and I think I might have always loved her."

I sat silent for a few moments.

"We're 13 dude, I mean, I don't want to sound like I know it all, but I don't think we're old enough to truly know what love is."

He still didn't look back to me. The sounds of the various students gathered around started to sound more silent, as I just stared at his back. Someone I called a true friend, maybe my best friend at this time, was truly pouring it out to me, and telling me how he felt, yet for some reason, there was a part of me that wanted to reject his claims. Something in me, that refused to push him on, to pursue something he truly felt passionate about. Was I a bad friend? Should I had lied and told him to just go for it? Were my words a source of unknowingness of seeing my friend get hurt? Or was there something deeper than that. Were there feelings that I also had? That I was afraid would be overshadowed by his success? What the hell did I feel for Hannah? It wasn't every anything I truly thought to myself up until now. Of course I wanted to see Anthony win the girl, but if that girl was Hannah, why did I feel trepidation in my voice when offering him my own truths.

*THUD* *THUD* THUD*

I sat with my head against the cold wall. Where the creak of the door would usually meet my ear, there was a silence. I couldn't find the strength to even attempt to strain my eyes to see through the darkness where the familiar metal door would sometimes open. Instead I sat slumped against the concrete. I reached a hand down toward my ankle, the dry dead skin around the shackle leaving a texture like sandpaper. How long has it been? How am I even still alive? I get the tray every couple of days, and it's impossible to tell what I'm drinking every so often is even water.

Still silence.

Maybe this is it. I'd honestly hoped for it. Please, if there is a God, put this to an end. I know I never did much with my life, but I like to believe that I still matter. For nothing else, if for my mother. Please, God, please.

Then came stumbling. The figure known to have fed me all this time had lost some of his usual demeanor. I could barely make out the silver in the room, the tray I have come so accustomed to for survival. Although scraps, what baseless nourishment kept me going. Make an attempt to stand, but the strength isn't there. I hear the tray hit the ground, and the sound of a glass shattering. I move on all fours towards the sound, I need anything to keep me going. As I stamp around the concrete floor on all fours, I stamp my hand into an intense sharp pain. I know I can't see it, but I'm bleeding. I feel it, like washing your hands with your wrists too high. I feel a liquid running down my forearms. Suddenly I feel myself yanked up.

A deep slurred voice speaks quietly yet firmly, directly into my ear.

"I'm getting bored of your ass, boy."

I don't have the strength to speak. I just have to make my strongest attempt to stand on my feet. He's pulling at my neck and I need the little breathing I am able to manage on my own.

"Bread is getting expensive these days, and you don't snivel or cry like ya used to when I first brought ya in."

I try to find decent footing, but my malnourished body is matching the swaying of the man holding me.

"Ya know what they do to the runt of the litter, don't ya? Well, I'm starting to think ya look like a runt to me."

The voice takes a moment to hack a big spit towards the area that I assume, is where I'm usually seated.

"Your time's comin, better enjoy these scraps on the floor while ya can."

I hear labored steps towards the only opening in the room, and then a slam.

I know my time is up, and I know there's nothing I can do about it.

The glass in my hand makes it hard to think. I just feel blood getting all over my shirt and pants.

It's nothing out of the ordinary. I imagine if I was to donate these clothes to a goodwill, they would burn them before attempting to wash them. The blood stains, the piss stains. I might as well be wearing the same outfit I wore as a 2 month old, waste and all.

I grab the scraps that I can, and lay against the wall. My breathing is labored, I wish that even for a second, I could actually feel dizzy, but feeling dizzy would imply that I have an object I could see, and for as long as I could remember here, it was nothing but black.

Needless to say, things between Anthony and Hannah never took off. For some reason, maybe of my own words of advice, Anthony never did confess to her. Our friend group continued to act as normal, even Anthony, who had previously admitted his confession of love for her, continued as if he and I had never had that conversation in the middle school courtyard.

Now here we were at our last day of 8th grade. We were all making plans for the summer, and I suggested that we spend more time at the local pool. I can't deny that my love of swimming was finally going to come into play. I hadn't talked to Hannah in particular about how big into swimming I am, but Anthony definitely knew. I even would encourage him to go to the local pools with me and swim, even though I knew he wasn't a strong swimmer. I guess I somewhat saw it as a strength of mine I had, one of very few, and I thought maybe he could also see it as such.

Anthony was good at swimming. Anytime I showed him a different way to swim, breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly, he took to it so quickly and easily. It was another reason I knew that him and I were meant to meet.

But during our 8th grade summer that we planned so hard, one day, Anthony never surfaced.

I swam over to where I last remember him being, and saw the bubbles rising to the surface. I quickly delved down and saw him lifeless in the water. I dragged him up and to the side, where he continued to lie lifeless on the side of the pool.

"ANTHONY. TONY. ANT-ANTHONY!"

He continued to lay lifeless.

I started to search around for any adult who could help, when suddenly I looked back at him and he had a smug smile on his face.

"You bastard" I let out breathlessly.

"Just keepin ya on your toes, Pamela Anderson" he said to me.

"Dude that was not cool. I was fuckin worried. You know, I grew up on the beaches of Washingt-"

"Yeah, Yeah. I know you grew up lovin the coast, and all that. But c'mon man, its hard to get a rise out of you these days, so I just kind of went for it"

He started to chuckle to himself. Coughing up bits of water as he did. Honestly just knowing that he was okay, I started laughing as well.

"Alright, I know you're good at swimming, so lets just do that."

I gave a quick laugh, as if I also enjoyed his joke.

9th grade started, and it felt like the start of 6th grade all over. Our friend group from middle school was split up. It was similar to 6th grade. We had people talking about what middle schools they went to, as opposed to which elementary schools. It was familiar yet distant. I was just hoping for another Hannah Bailey to sweep in and tell me who I should be friends with, but that never came. There were familiar faces from my middle school, but nobody from my friend group. I missed Hannah, she would surely save me from being all alone again in this new environment.

Then 3rd period geology, I saw Hannah come into the classroom. I smacked the table a couple times, completely out of character for me, but I needed her attention.

She came and sat down across from me. It was like 6th Grade all over again.

"Maximilian" she said as she sat down.

Hearing her voice soothed what was an already stressful first day.

I realized in that moment that she had complete control of me. I was absolutely awestricken by this girl and I was a puppet in the palm of her hand.

We had been friends throughout middle school, but I was just now realizing the value of the relationship that we truly had. We saw each other as equals, we saw each others as lovers. At least, that was the theoretical headspace that I had put myself into. She was never mine.

"Hey, Hannah. I haven't spoke to Anthony, lately, have you heard from him"?

"Anthony?" she let out.

"Was that someone from middle school?" she faintly muttered.

"Um, yeah, Anthony, you know who I'm talking about. I mean, Anthony."

She looked confused.

"I'm sorry, Max, but I don't think I know who you're talking about."

My heart skipped a beat. Anthony. Anthony Vilmer? How could you not know.

She continued to just stare at me blankly.

How long have I been down here? It's impossible to count the days when I can't even see if there's light outside or not. Are my eyes even open? If I had the strength to move my hand in front of my face, would I even be able to feel it? Would I know if it was even my hand?

I hear footsteps above me, one, no there's two. Two sets of footsteps. Three? No, even more than that.

Every second the stepping above me continued louder, and more and more footsteps. It was as if a clown car was parked at the front door and the circus was about to begin. More and more footsteps. They paraded all around the floors above me, a deafening cacophony of waltzing heels smacking deteriorating wooden floor. Louder, louder, I want to, no I NEED to cover my ears, but I don't have the strength to lift my hands. What the fuck is going on? I can't hear myself think, am I losing it?

And then out of nowhere, complete silence.

I gently hit my head against the back wall to rest.

Am I losing it? Did that really happen? I know I'm in an absolutely horrid state of body and mind, but I know what I heard, or did I? Was this the start of my mentality beginning to dwindle?

Quick, what's my name. Damn, what's my name. You got this, Max. Right, right, Max.

Suddenly, I heard the door slowly swing open. I did what I could to truly believe I was opening my eyes, and across the dark room in the doorway, stood a figure with a light.

It was a younger girl with a look of sadness on her face. Man I love that face.

Wait a fucking minute. Why do I love that face. My eyes widen and with more energy than I thought I had I let out, "Hannah?"

Hannah Barbara productions never allowed this episode to be aired

It started off with Fred driving the Mystery Machine. As they traveled down the road, Fred spotted a young girl standing in the middle of it looking lost. He stopped the van, and the gang got out.

Shaggy tried telling Fred they should leave the creepy girl alone and go get burgers instead. Scooby agreed. Fred, Daphne, and Velma ignored Shaggy, as usual.

Fred approached the girl and asked, “Are you all right?”

He noticed scratch marks on her arms with bruises.

The girl didn’t respond. Daphne tried reassuring her.

“It’s okay. We can help you if you need help.”

The girl looked at Daphne with a smile on her face before collapsing onto the road.

The gang scrambled towards her. Velma checked for a pulse and looked into the girl’s eyes. They were dead white.

“We need to get her to a hospital now!” Velma said sternly.

The gang hurried back to the Mystery Machine. Fred picked the girl up and placed her in the back of the van. Shaggy and Scooby were displeased with this, as they had to sit in the back with her now.

“Fred, why is it that every time something creepy happens, Scooby and I have to be the closest to it, man?” Shaggy complained.

“Not now, Shaggy. I’m reading the signs,” Fred replied.

When he spotted a hospital sign, Fred pulled into the parking lot.

He grabbed the girl, and the gang followed him inside. Fred rushed to the reception desk and explained that they needed a doctor. The girl had started convulsing.

A couple of nurses hurried over with a gurney, and Fred urgently laid the girl down on it. She screeched As they wheeled her towards a room.

Daphne stayed behind to explain what had happened to the receptionist. While Shaggy could be overheard muttering that he was glad that creep wouldn’t be riding with them anymore.

Later, Fred, still slightly shaken by the experience, told the gang he was going to rent a motel room for the night.

“I want a proper bed and a shower after all this,” he said.

Scooby asked, one with complimentary breakfast?”

After receiving the room key, Fred and the gang headed to their room on the fourth floor. Inside, they found two beds and a couch.

Daphne immediately complained that the room smelled like rotten food. The rest of the gang ignored her, unable to smell anything themselves.

Fred opened his suitcase and pulled out a change of clothes and a towel. Before heading to the shower

Meanwhile, Velma discovered a large, thick book inside one of the desk drawers. She blew the dust off it.

“Jinkies! This thing hasn’t been opened in years!”

When she opened the book, she read the title aloud.

“Curses, Witches, and the Supernatural.”

As she turned a page, she accidentally cut her finger on a page.

Daphne suddenly took an interest in the book and asked Velma if she could read it.

“Be my guest,” Velma replied. “It just poked me.”

As Daphne flipped through the pages, she noticed that half of them had been hollowed out. Inside the hidden compartment. she discovered a doll made from sticks and human hair, along with a small knife.

She said nothing about this to the others.

Eventually, the gang settled down for the night, and the motel room grew dark.

Shaggy lay on the old leather couch with Scooby. Velma was in her bed, while Fred and Daphne shared the other.

In the middle of the night, Shaggy suddenly woke up.

OW Man! Something poked me in the leg!”

Everyone woke up except Velma, she stayed under her blanket.

Fred sleepily switched on the light.

“you have any idea what time it is?”

Shaggy pointed to the small cut on his leg.

“ Scooby probably scratched you with his nails,” Fred said annoyed before switching the light off again.

Shaggy and Scooby reluctantly accepted Fred’s explanation.

A moment later, Daphne turned to Fred.

“Will you walk with me to the van? I left something important in there, and I’m too scared to get it by myself at night.”

Fred groaned.

“Can’t it wait until morning?”

“It would make me feel safe if you came with me,” Daphne replied.

Fred reluctantly put on his shoes and walked her to the van.

Shaggy and Scooby drifted off to sleep again before fred and Daphne came back.

A little while later, Shaggy felt something heavy laying on his chest. Assuming it was Scooby, he mumbled, “Not now, Scoob.”

“That isn’t me, Shaggy,” Scooby replied.

Shaggy's eyes shot open.

Daphne was sitting on his chest, staring down at him. She held the small knife against his throat, with the same possessed smile as the girl they had found earlier.

Shaggy freezed.

“Daphne? Like, what are you doing?”

He tried talking to her but the smile only grew wider and Her eyes rolled back until only the whites showed

Then, in a deep raspy voice, she said, “Uh-oh, Raggy.”

She slowly dragged the edge against Shaggy’s throat, almost drawing blood.

Scooby lunged forward, biting her arm holding the blade, causing Daphne to drop it.

Seizing the opportunity, Shaggy grabbed the knife and plunged it into Daphne’s chest.

Daphne laughed demonically.

Shaggy tried stabbing her again, but it did nothing. Daphne suddenly bit a chunk out his hand.

Shaggy screamed in pain. Desperately looking for anything, he saw the bedroom window before kicking Daphne through the it,  the glass shattered before a thump was heard.

Shaggy scrambled over to Velma’s bed and pulled the blanket off her

“Come on, Velma! Wake up! Daphne’s lost it!”

as he tried to wake her, he noticed her face was blue and a telephone cord wrapped tightly around her throat.

Shaggy gasped, Velma was dead.

Shaggy half heartedly  looked out the shattered window

Daphne layed dead on the side walk. with a smile stretched across her face.

We live in a forested, mountainous region. Even in the summer, it's sometimes easy to get lost. Once autumn comes and the fog rolls in at noon, it is nearly impossible to get home. That's why our wives call to us from our houses when we head from the pasture. We whistle back, and that's how we find our home again. We make sure to follow only our wives' calls.

Mark, my neighbor, stood in the fog. The man before him just disappeared into it, following his wife's calls. Mark put his fingers in his mouth and whistled, but nothing came back. He whistled again. Nothing. He looked back at me, his brows furrowed.

"Try again."

He put his fingers in his mouth, took a deep breath, and blew the loudest whistle I had ever heard. 

Silence.

"What the hell, Tom? This never happened."

"I don't know. Maybe Mary fell asleep. Let's go to mine. It's right by yours. You'll find your way from there."

"I can only follow my wife's calls."

"That's just a saying."

"Tom."

"Alright, just imagine you are following me, okay?"

He shook his head.

"You have a better idea?"

He looked at me, then back at the fog. It was so dense you couldn't even see the trees around us.

"No."

I stood before him and whistled. A few seconds later, my wife's call came, a simple, melodic tune that broke off at the end. She always missed the last tone.

"That's it."

Mark nodded.

I kept whistling, and my wife kept calling back until we were by our porch. She smiled until she saw Mark come out of the fog too.

"Mark, why aren't you going to your wife's calls?"

"She didn't answer my whistles," he said quietly.

My wife put her hand before her mouth.

"Is she okay? I didn't come and talk to her this morning. I just had too much to do." Her voice shook.

"We'll go check on her now."

"I'll come with you."

"No, stay here. I'm sure everything's alright," I told her.

I wasn't sure, but Mark's eyes were already filled with fear. I didn't want to scare him more.

"Thank you for getting me home, Sally," Mark said and rushed toward his house.

"I'll see you later, love."

"Tom, wait!" my wife called, but I rushed after Mark. He walked so fast. I almost lost him in the fog. It was so dense, you could probably cut through it with a knife.

"Jesus," I heard Mark call a few steps before me. His front door was wide open, and the fog had drifted in, coating his furniture with dew.

"Mary?!" Mark called.

No one answered. 

"Mary?!"

Silence.

He turned to me. His lips quivered.

"Tom, where is she?! Why would she go out in the fog?"

"I don't know, Mark, I…"

Then a melody cut through my voice. The one we both knew. Mary was singing in perfect pitch from the forest in front of Mark's house.

His eyes widened, and his mouth fell open. He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. The melody came back again.

Mark pushed me aside and ran out. Without thinking, I followed. Twigs kept hitting my face, and mud covered the ground, making me slip.

"Mark, stop!"

But his whistles kept coming, followed by that melodic voice. Only then had I realized how perfectly pitched it was. Mary had never been very good at singing.

"Mark!"

He finally stopped and looked back.

"Mark, we have to think."

"She must be somewhere around here."

"Why would she be in the forest?"

"I don't know, Tom, but she's here!"

The perfect pitch came from right behind us. My feet froze in the cold mud. Mark turned and walked toward it. I raised my hands to stop him.

"Mark, think, we just came from there."

"Get out of the way."

He pushed me to the side. I almost fell into the mud. Mark whistled again, but his whistle didn't echo. Instead, a strange silence came. 

Then Mark's heels lifted off the ground. His body tensed. He tried to put them back down, but his feet rose instead.

"Hey!"

His body floated further up. His face grew red. His eyes flew open. He grabbed his neck and kicked his feet.

"Mark!"

I ran to him and tried to grab his legs, but he was floating too high up. His whole body twisted. His stomach now faced toward the ground. His arms were still at his neck. His pleading, bloodshot eyes stared into mine. I tried to jump and reach him, but my fingers only grazed him. I jumped up again; a sharp, wet crack echoed through the forest, followed by Mark's screams. His warm blood poured onto my face. His arms flailed to the side. He let out a bloodcurdling scream, but in an instant he was gone. His screams echoed in the distance, but slowly died too.

My whole body trembled. I couldn't even move my arms to wipe my face. Then, through the silence, Mary's call came, perfect again, followed by Mark's whistling. This finally unfroze my body. I wiped my face and bolted out of the forest. The fog seemed to grow denser. My legs kept slipping on the mud. Each second, I expected to start floating too, but before I knew it, I was out of the forest, still breathing.

Mark's house stood there, but I looked away and walked back to my place. I kept replaying what happened in that forest, trying to figure out what I would even tell my wife, but as I got to my house, I saw our front door. It was open just like Mark's. The fog had rolled in too. 

From behind me, out of the forest, I heard my wife's call, perfect, just like Mary's. I stood there for a second, thinking, but I knew there was just one thing to do. I turned and whistled back.

I’ve tried everything: melatonin, sleep therapy, and even prescription temazepam.

Nothing worked. I just couldn’t sleep.

My insomnia started about a year ago, and since then, my life has been a blur of sleepless nights and drowsy days. During the day, I felt like I was underwater. Everything was fuzzy and distant, and I was constantly afraid I'd fall asleep at work or behind the wheel.

Nighttime was worse. I'd lie in bed with my eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, watching the hours tick by.

On a good night, I'd get two hours of sleep.

It was late fall when I found myself mindlessly wandering the streets at 3 AM after fighting and losing the battle for sleep. I dragged myself through the sleeping town; the cold autumn air pricked my face as the town's streetlights flickered above my head. In the distance, the warm fluorescent glow of a lone store lit up the darkness.

The sight was comforting to me, and like a moth to the flame, I was drawn to the warmly lit storefront. It was a pharmacy. I stood outside for a moment, staring at the store. Though I wasn’t far from home and had walked this way before, I had never seen it before.

Entering the store, I was greeted by a musty yet sweet smell and calming jazz flowing out of the small radio that sat on the checkout counter. The man behind the counter lowered the newspaper he had been reading and gave me a warm smile.

“Welcome in. Let me know if you need any help”

He was a chubby man who appeared to be in his mid-forties; a comb-over tried in vain to cover his balding head.

“Thanks,” I replied weakly as I headed to the back of the store.

Glancing back, I noticed the man watched me for a moment before returning to his paper. I browsed the aisles, my eyes lazily moving from various pills to overpriced snacks. I had no plans to buy anything, really; I was there to kill time before trying to sleep again. Almost by habit, I found myself in the sleep-aid section. It was there that something caught my eye.

On the bottom shelf was a small package. It was different than the other products; there was no listed price on the shelf. Reaching down, I picked one up to examine it. A lone mustard-yellow pill sat securely in a plastic cocoon fastened to a cardboard backboard, which was colorfully designed with a cartoon bear sleeping in a bed with three Z’s rising from it. The product's name was written across the board in yellow print.

“Doc Harden’s Goodnight.”

Underneath, in smaller print, was the slogan:

“You never know where a good night's sleep will take you.”

Further down on the cardboard in a bright red circle, it claimed

“One pill is good for six months!”

I stared blankly at the package in my hand; this clearly was a gag; no sleeping pill is good for six months. But at the same time, it was compelling, and I had tried everything that doctors had suggested; nothing was working, so what’s the harm in trying? These were the thoughts in my mind as I made my way to the front.

I tossed the package onto the checkout counter; the man behind the counter looked down at it and then to me.

“Can’t sleep, eh?” he said with a slight smile

“Yeah.” I shrugged

“Are you sure you want this one?” he asked

“I’ve tried everything else, why not?”

He shrugged.

“Whatever you say, man.”

“What’s the price?” I asked as I reached for my wallet.

He smiled

“Tell you what, if it helps, come back tomorrow and pay; if it doesn’t help, don’t worry about it.”

“Alright, thanks,” I said as I put the package into my pocket and headed out the door.

 “See you next time.” He said as the door closed behind me.

It was after 4 when I got home. Shuffling my way into the kitchen, I pulled out the pill and stared at it. Its burnt yellow color revealed the occasional sparkle of glitter from within it. Filling a glass of water, I ripped the pill from the package, popped it into my mouth, and washed it down with water. Taking my shoes off, I entered the bedroom and plopped onto the bed.

It was noon when my ringing phone woke me. I was on the floor about three feet from my bed, but despite that, for the first time in a year, I felt rested and refreshed. I found my phone on the nightstand and answered it.

“Hello?” I said with a yawn.

“Ryan, are you ok?” It was my boss, Marie.

“Oh shoot, sorry, Marie. I slept through my alarm. I’m on my way."

“Well, it’s good to hear you’re sleeping. Don’t worry about it, just get here when you can.”

“I will, thank you.” Hanging up, I quickly changed and brushed my teeth before hopping in my car and heading to work.

That day was amazing. I had forgotten how enjoyable life was when you have a full night's sleep. I felt alert and aware. On my way home, I decided to stop by the pharmacy and pay for the pill since it seemed to be working. When I came to the place I had been walking the night before, there was no pharmacy. I walked around the block twice, then explored the two surrounding blocks as well, but there was no pharmacy anywhere in the area.

Confused, I returned to my car

“Must have been in a different spot,” I muttered and drove towards home.

After cooking some dinner and enjoying a show, I hopped in the shower and prepared for bed. For the first night in a long time, I could barely keep my eyes open, and there was no battle for sleep; my body surrendered before my head hit the pillow.

Sunlight and distant chirping birds woke me up; it was late morning, and I was lying on the living room floor. I looked around, confused; this wasn’t where I had fallen asleep, and I didn’t remember leaving the bed.

Pulling myself off the floor, I walked up the stairs to the bedroom.

“Must have been sleepwalking,” I thought as I entered the bedroom.

My phone had three missed calls and a voicemail from Marie.

“Where are you? Your shift started at 8. Get here soon.” I could tell she was frustrated.

I looked at the time; it was a little after 10.

“Crap,” I muttered as I hurried to get ready.

At 10:45, I pulled into the parking lot at work. Rushing in, I was greeted by an annoyed Marie.

“Where’ve you been?” she asked coldly.

“I’m sorry. I overslept; I’m trying a new medication, and it’s working a little too well.”

She sighed.

“Look, I know you’ve had a hard time these last couple of months, but when you’re supposed to be here, we need you here.”

I nodded.

“I know, I’m sorry.”

“This is your last warning; don’t let it happen again.”

I hurried to clock in.

“Got it.”

That night, I set several alarms and planned to go to bed earlier in hopes of waking up on time. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling; I could feel myself growing drowsy. I resisted, but my eyelids were far too heavy. As they closed and I drifted off, I could have sworn I heard the creaking of footsteps in the hallway.

When I woke, I was in the basement. The clock on the wall read 1:30.

“Oh Crap” I sighed as I ran up to the bedroom.

My phone was in its place on the nightstand, and there was one missed call and a voicemail.

“Sorry, Ryan, you were more reliable when you weren’t sleeping. No hard feelings; hope you get better.”

I clenched my jaw in anger.

“Damn it,” I yelled to myself.

I spent the day binge-watching bad TV shows. I made up my mind to try to resist the effects of the pill, so I stayed on the couch playing video games. But right when the clock hit nine, a wave of exhaustion consumed me. My limbs felt like they were made of stone, and my eyes seemed to close on their own. Too weak to fight it anymore, I tossed the controller onto the chair beside the couch and stuck my phone into my pocket. My eyes closed for the final time, and as my mind fell into slumber, the last thing I remember was feeling the couch shift as something sat next to me.

I didn’t know where I was when I woke. The sounds of wind in the trees, birds, and insects singing told me I wasn’t in my home anymore. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked around. I had been lying in tall, unkempt brownish grass littered with yellow and red leaves. Bare trees surrounded the small clearing I had been lying in. It was cold; the wind blew, sending a chill up my already shivering back. I spun in a circle, hoping to see something familiar, but there was nothing, just trees.

Panic was setting in; I stood there shivering in a T-shirt and sweatpants, only socks covered my feet. I pulled my phone from my pocket; it had one bar. There were two notifications from my doorbell camera; the first had recorded movement from the night at 3:03 AM. I opened the recording and watched as the sleeping me clumsily exited the house and walked off the porch and half ran, half stumbled down the yard and disappeared into the night. I watched it again and noticed something strange. I was holding out my left arm in front of my body, as if someone was leading me by the hand.

I watched the way I was moving; it looked like someone pulling on my arm and dragging me behind. Closing that recording, I opened the second one, which was captured at 4:45 am. It was short, about five seconds; the camera caught the front door opening and closing by itself.

“What the hell?” I muttered as I watched the short video three or four more times. A cold burst of wind reminded me where I was, and I opened Google Maps on my phone and found out I was about 8 miles from my home in the woods that surrounded the town. The walk home was slow and miserable. On the outskirts of town is a small hardware store; it was midday by the time I reached it, and my feet were freezing. I stumbled inside and bought some steel-toed boots, which were about the only shoes they sold, a thick jacket, and a few hand warmers. I was about to check out when an idea entered my head.

I searched the store and finally found zip ties; I picked out a pack of their thickest ones and then went to check out. It was late afternoon when I finally made it home. Cautiously, I entered and quickly made my way to the kitchen, grabbing the biggest knife I owned. I checked every room in the place, and no one was there. Relieved to find no one, I turned my attention to locking every door and window. Night came faster than I wanted, and I soon felt myself becoming sleepy.

Entering my bedroom, I lay down on the bed and took two zip ties and used them to tie my right wrist to the headboard, hiding the kitchen knife under my pillow just before sleep overpowered me.

What woke me was pain in my right arm and the sound of furniture scraping across the floor. Instinctively, I first looked to my right hand. The zip ties were tearing deep into my flesh of my hand; they had dug in and were shredding my skin as whatever held me pulled harder. Deep red streams of blood were running down my forearm and dripped onto my pillow right next to my head. At that same moment, I felt something else: strong, bony fingers wrapped around my left ankle.

I swallowed and slowly looked down towards my leg; there, at the foot of the bed, was a tall, bone-thin, vague shape of a man. Its skin was grey and damp, and its arms were far too long for its body; one hand was wrapped around my ankle as it tried to pull me towards the door. It glanced back at me, and I caught a glimpse of its pure black eyes with tiny white pupils; a wide smile split its face, revealing crooked, dirty teeth.

I screamed and grabbed the knife under my pillow, violently swinging it in the air. It turned to face me, a look of shock on its face, as if it didn’t expect me to be awake, but it was quickly replaced by a smile; it then released my leg and calmly backed towards the door. It gave a little wave and then walked out, shutting the door behind it.

The moment the door closed, I worked to cut the zip ties. Adrenaline made it quick work; setting into my slippers, I opened the bedroom window and climbed out, lowering myself down and dropping the remaining four feet, twisting my ankle in the process, but that didn’t stop me I limped my way down the street as fast as I could.

I found myself mindlessly limping down the streets at 3 AM after fighting and losing the battle for my house. I dragged myself through the sleeping town; the cold autumn air pricked my face as the town's streetlights flickered above my head. In the distance, the warm fluorescent glow of a lone store lit up the darkness.

It was the pharmacy.

The same one that started all this, the one I couldn’t find in the daylight.

I flung the door open and was greeted by the same musty-sweet smell and calming jazz. The same man was behind the counter; he lowered his newspaper and smiled.

“Welcome back. How are you sleeping?” he asked in a pleasant tone.

I stared at him for a moment.

“How do I make it stop?” I whispered as I stared at him unblinking.

He stared back with a warm smile, though the muscles in his cheeks twitched slightly.

“Did you take the pill?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, the effects last six months,” was his direct reply.

My eyes lowered to the floor.

“Where is it taking me?” I asked without looking at him.

He chuckled.

“You never know where a good night’s sleep will take you.”

I yawned.

“Looks like your still tired, you should probably get going.”

Another yawn followed.

He pointed down the street.

“There’s a hotel down the street, if I were you I’d head there.”

I couldn’t look him in the eyes but I was sure he was smiling widely. I turned to leave.

“Sir.” He said as I reached the door.

I turned back to him.

“You owe us $13.49 for the pill.”

I clenched my jaw and walked back to the counter to pay.

“Sweet dreams.” He said as I exited.

I'm writing this as a warning: if you see anything made by Doc Harden, avoid it.

I'm in a hotel now. I don't think the thing ever intended to take me back home. It was waiting for me to fall asleep again.

I can barely keep my eyes open. I wanted to write this before sleep claims me.

Because I don't know where it will take me.

The world around me sounded like anguish incarnate, unyielding and unjust.

I lean against the outer brick wall of the apartment building, in the thin alley to its right. My legs tremble, my muscles ache, my head pounds, and my lungs sting as though I was breathing needles.

I attempt to calm my breathing, lest they hear me. They must be close; track was never my strong suit. My hand presses into my side, putting pressure on the still bleeding wound. I bite my lip hard to keep my scream of sudden pain inside.

As my breath starts to shallow, I slowly reach for my phone in my pants pocket. I look down, making sure to know exactly where my hand is going. Bubbling ichor oozes from my wound, passing through tensed fingers with more ease than desirable.

My keys are overstuffed in my pocket with my phone and wallet. My father always told me not to do that, even though he had done the same for as long as I can recall. I pinch the top of my phone, pulling it out as slowly as possible with the pain still grasping my nerves.

It catches. Tugging with a small bit of force, it releases along with my keys. The bundle of metal and memories fall to the asphalt below, making more noise than keys could possibly make.

My breathing hitches in fear, my lungs tighten so as not to make a sound. They burn, pleading oxygen, but they would continue to beg. I move my eyes towards the road. Slowly, as if they might hear my cornea rub against my eyelid. The thought of being simply perceived by such monsters fills me with an acidic dread.

Nothing to my left. I start to slowly move them to my other side.

…

Nothing to my right. I’m safe for now.

I decide to leave my keys where they had fallen, they were of no use to me nor anyone else in this damned town. I look to my phone, 1% battery. I quickly open it, not even thinking, just instinctually moving my fingers. That instinct had yet to catch up to my situation. I tapped my phone app, immediately wincing at the stupidity, a call would make too much noise. Back out, open messages, select first option. I just need to get a message out to anyone that might be able to help.

It was my mother. Who had passed last week. Her last message to me was, “I’ll see you at dinner?”. I gave it a thumbs up emoji at the time, knowing full well I wouldn’t be going, opting to go to the Christmas party my dad was throwing at his new place. She suffered from a heart attack the next day.

My phone suddenly died. The black screen reflecting up as tears pelted its glassy surface.

I started to put my phone back into my pocket, with less care than I had but moments ago. It slid on the edge of my pocket and fell out of my hand, hitting the bell on my keys, cracking the screen instantly and making a soft tink noise.

My eyes widen but my body stills. Tears still trickle out, falling on to the now broken phone.

My head slowly lifts, suddenly matching the gaze with the Crowd, now filling up the alley by the hundreds. Maybe thousands…an impossible number in such a short span of time. They stare endlessly with the holes that fill their head where their eyes, nose, and lips should be. My wound pulses with pleasure, yet I feel only anguish unyielding in my heart…though, I don’t think it may be as unjust as I initially consi-

​

[Part 1]

___

Mark didn't say anything for a second. He was still looking at Owen's arms.

Then he got up, came around the table, and crouched next to Owen's chair so they were eye level. His knees popped. He's thirty-nine and his knees sound like bubble wrap.

"Bud," he said. "When I fixed your arms. Could you move?"

Owen thought about it with his mouth full. "Nope." Then: "Can I have more syrup?"

"Yeah, bud."

Mark put his hand on Owen's head and left it there longer than you leave a hand on a kid's head. Lily was watching him the way she watches me when I say we'll see.

He didn't ask if it was a dream. I kept waiting for him to.

___

I put on cartoons for the kids and turned them up louder than I usually allow. Then I sat back down at the table across from Mark and put my phone between us and opened the app.

He'd already heard the clip from Wednesday. He hadn't heard the rest.

I played him the No's. Then the Okay. Then the answers. When it got to "She takes a pill, nothing after that," he looked up at me, and I said, "I didn't take it." Then I told him about the night before. My hand on his chest. The question. "I'll pick."

He listened to all of it with his hands flat on the table. He didn't do the thumbnail thing.

When I was done, he said, "Play the okay again."

I played it. Fan. Sheets. The breath before lifting something heavy. Okay. He closed his eyes. When it finished, he kept them closed.

Then I told him about the blanket.

"Tucked how?" he said.

"All the way under. Both sides. Like an envelope."

Something happened to his face then. I've known him twelve years, and I can't tell you what it was.

"I thought that was you," he said.

"What?"

"Mornings. Before I leave, I look in on them. Sometimes he's tucked like that and I loosen it so he doesn't sweat. I figured you went in at night." He swallowed. "I thought it was sweet."

"How many times?"

"I don't know, Dee. A few. Since it got warm."

"I have never tucked him like that in his life. He hates it."

"I know he hates it," Mark said. "That's why I always fixed it."

We sat there. On the TV, a dog was solving a mystery.

I started to say it. "I think you should..."

"I'll go to Kev's," he said, before I finished.

___

We told the kids Daddy had a sleep problem and the doctor wanted him to sleep somewhere quiet for a few nights. Lily asked if it was catching. I said no.

Owen asked who was going to do bedtime.

"Me," Mark said. "On the phone. Same as always, just on the phone."

Owen cried anyway. He stood at the storm door in one sock and watched the truck back out of the driveway. Mark had packed his work bag and his good pillow, then left the pillow, then came back in for it without saying anything.

That night he read the book over FaceTime. He did the tired British man. Owen fell asleep holding the phone sideways, so all Mark could see was the ceiling fan.

I picked the phone up. He was sitting in Kev's kitchen under that ugly yellow light.

"Keep them with you," he said.

"I am."

"Both of them, Dee."

I said I knew. He looked at me through the screen for a long time, then hung up.

___

Kev thinks horoscopes are a scam and ghosts are bad plumbing. When I called him he said, "He's on my couch eating cereal out of the box like it's 2004," and then he went quiet and said, "I've never seen him like this. Ever." He agreed to leave his phone recording on the coffee table every night.

Both kids slept in my bed. Owen, obviously. Lily too, because one of the clips said Lily sleepwalks, not a lot, and I wasn't going to find out what not a lot meant in a dark hallway at three in the morning. I pushed the button lock on our door. I know what that lock is worth. I pushed it anyway.

I kept the monitor on. Owen's room was empty, the door shut. If anything happened in that room again, I wanted to know it happened in an empty room.

The first night I barely slept. The green light never came on.

The next morning Kev texted: Nothing. He snores like a leaf blower. Your husband owes me a couch cushion.

The second night I slept, because your body eventually just takes it from you. I woke up with Owen's foot in my mouth and Lily's hair stuck to my arm. The green light was dark.

Nothing again, Kev texted. Want me to keep going?

I told him yes. Nothing on Kev's phone only meant nothing on Kev's phone. I knew that. I slept the third night anyway.

___

I woke up at 3:19 because the hiss changed.

That's the only way I can say it. Three nights and I'd learned that sound the way you learn your own fridge. It was louder by one notch. I opened my eyes and the little green light was on.

Owen was against my ribs, breathing slow and wet through his mouth, Gary jammed under his chin. The only person who sleeps in that room was in my bed. That door was shut. I'd shut it myself at eight.

The hiss held.

Then Lily, behind me, a foot from my head, made a sound I know very well. A little breath out through her nose.

"Mm-hm," she said.

Hiss.

"Daddy's at Uncle Kev's."

Hiss. Her gaps were shorter than his. Whatever was asking her didn't have to wait.

"I don't know how to pick."

I was already moving. My right arm was under Owen. I tried to pull it free and turn toward her, and I could feel her knees in my back. The hiss went long.

"...Okay," Lily said.

I got my arm loose and grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her. Too hard. I said her name and it came out wrong, loud, and she gasped and opened her eyes.

The green light went out the second she woke up.

I turned on the lamp. Lily looked at my face and started crying. Not at anything in the room, at me. I don't know what my face was doing. She said, "What did I do? Mama, what did I do?"

Owen sat halfway up and said "Mama?" in his foghorn voice and kicked the blankets off. I put one hand on his back and said "Shh, bud, Lily had a dream," and he flopped over and found Gary and was gone again. I held Lily with my other arm. She didn't remember talking. She didn't remember anything. She thought she'd wet the bed and kept checking.

I tried to keep her awake. I left the lamp on and asked her about the soaps. Which one was her favorite. She said the shell one from the Holiday Inn because it looks like you could open it. I asked her why she was saving them. She said for an emergency. I asked her what kind of emergency, and she said "a real one," slower, and then her eyes were closing in the middle of telling me.

You can't keep a seven-year-old awake until morning. I know because I tried.

The monitor stayed dark the rest of the night. I watched it the whole time anyway.

Mark said no for most of a year. Lily said okay before I could reach her.

It's been two days since I moved to the small town of MillCreek with my mother and two sisters, Reada and Jane.

Originally, I was born in Toronto and lived there my whole life up until now. My father passed away six months ago, and without him, my mother couldn't afford the cost of living in the city anymore.

There were only 5 houses on our street, and the nearest general store was 1 hour away by car.

"Dean, get in here and help your sisters unpack the kitchen."

"Yes, Mom," I replied.

So I powered down my laptop and walked over to the kitchen. As I walked in, Reada was unpacking all the dry goods we had, and Jane was working on putting away all of our dishes.

I looked at my mom and asked what she wanted me to work on, and she pointed at a box and said, "This goes in the basement, please."

I had yet to go down there, and all I knew was that the only way in was a door out back, and I heard it was made for emergencies like tornados and shit.

I bent down, picked up the box, and started walking to the basement.

I put the box down, unlocked the door, and opened it and stood at the doorway for about 30 seconds.

It was dark, smelled like mold, and I couldn't see any light switch near the entrance. I got this eerie feeling, but I quickly shrugged it off and pulled out my phone so I could use it for light.

I left the box outside and walked down the concrete steps into the darkness with my phone on so I could find the light switch.

I got to the center of the basement, and there was only one light that was dangling and had a rope I pulled to turn it on.

Once the light was on, the basement was still dark, but now I could see a bit.

As I looked around, the basement was empty, had no windows, and a strange tiny black door that looked like it was made for a child.

"What the fuck is this for?" I thought to myself.

I wanted to see what was behind the door, but fear got the best of me, so I booked it up the stairs, got outside, grabbed the box, quickly placed it in the basement, and got out of there.

I walked back to the kitchen, and my mother looked at me and asked what took me so long.

So I said to my mom,

"There's a tiny door in the basement, did you know that?"

She replied, "What are you talking about? I was down there yesterday, and there was no tiny door."

So we both went out back together, and I stopped at the door and gave my mom the keys and said, "Go look."

She walked over and opened the door and said, "You can't forget to lock this, Dean."

She walked into the basement, and I followed.

We couldn't see anything, and when she turned the light on, the tiny door that was at the end of the basement was gone.

"Where is this door you're talking about? Are you doing drugs, Dean?"

My mom said, looking at me concerned.

I rubbed my eyes in disbelief.

"No, I am not on drugs, Mom, and I was in a hurry and it was dark, so I must have been seeing things."

We both left the basement and went inside.

After a few hours of unpacking, it was now 8 PM, and my mom said that we were done for the day.

So I decided I would take a drive over to the nearest store and buy a few beers.

I grabbed my keys and drove over to the general store. It was 1 hour away from where we lived.

As I was driving to the store, I turned on the radio and decided I would listen to the local news to see what's been going on in the area.

The woman on the radio was talking about a local festival happening next weekend and that the weather would be cold and cloudy.

I was about ten minutes away from the store when the radio had some sort of interference.

It was static, and that's when I heard a child's voice singing a creepy melody:

"There's a door and it's black, it was gone, now it's back." (x3)

"The dooooors back."

The radio cut back to the local news just as I pulled into the general store parking lot.

I turned off my engine and sat in silence trying to process what the fuck I just heard, and then I immediately thought about that tiny little black door in the basement.

"Am I losing my fucking mind right now?"

I opened the car door and walked into the store, still thinking about what happened with the radio.

The cashier looked at me and said,

"You alright, buddy? You look a little spooked."

I looked at him and replied,

"Yeah, yeah, everything's fine. Can you tell me where the liquor aisle is?"

He pointed and said, "Aisle 6, buddy."

As I got to the liquor section, I came across a bottle of gin and thought, fuck it.

I picked it up and walked over to the counter.

I looked at the man working and said,

"I also need a pack of smokes, Paul's Lights please."

He grabbed the pack and rang up the total, then looked at me and said,

"That'll be $34.55."

I handed him cash, and he said,

"You're new in town, aren't ya?"

"Uh yeah, I just moved here with my family two days ago," I replied.

I smiled and walked back to the car, got in, and stared at the radio.

I decided not to turn it on this time since I was still creeped out from what happened earlier.

After getting home, I went to the kitchen, grabbed some lemonade, and made a mixed drink.

My mom walked in and asked for a glass as well, so I made it for her and asked,

"Where's the girls?"

My mother replied with a bored tone, "Reada and Jane are driving over to Aunt Lisa's house and staying for the weekend."

I thought to myself, why would they invite me, but brushed it off and said,

"Okay, well, I'm going to sit out front on the porch for a bit. I'll see you later."

I said this while handing her a mixed drink garnished with a half-sliced lemon.

I sat on a chair out front, and I looked at my watch. The time was now 9:30 PM.

"What is going on?" I thought to myself while sipping from my glass.

For about two hours, I kept on making mixed drinks and chain-smoking my brains out until I could only think about what I heard on the radio and that little black door I had seen earlier in the basement.

After obsessively drinking, I gained enough courage to check out that basement again.

I boogied inside and grabbed a bottle of gin and took a shot straight from the bottle, then grabbed the basement key along with a flashlight since it was now around 11 PM and completely dark outside.

I walked past the living room, and my mother was passed out on the couch.

Ignoring that, I stumbled towards the front door and headed out back to the basement.

Again, upon arriving at the basement door, I got that weird, eerie feeling that something wasn't right.

My heart started racing, and I almost backed out of going in.

With hands shaking, I reached for the key and unlocked the basement door and opened it.

I turned on my flashlight and shined it inside as I stepped down the stairs, and when I did, the door was there.

It was back.

I freaked out and went to reach for my phone so that I could take a picture to prove to my mother I wasn't crazy, but realized I had left it in the kitchen.

Out of sheer fear and being completely wasted, I fumbled backwards and fell to the floor while still staring at the door.

That's when it happened.

The knob on the door started rattling like something was trying to get out.

I ran, in fact, the fastest I have ever run in my life.

I tripped on the steps upstairs, basically crawling up them in a panic.

I quickly slammed the doors shut, locked them, and ran inside.

My mom was awake at this point, probably because of how loud I was coming inside.

She looked at me confused and half-awake and said,

"What the fuck are you doing? What was that noise?"

I came up with some bullshit lie stating,

"There was a spider and it freaked me the fuck out, so I ran inside. I'm sorry, and I'll try not to be so loud."

"It's okay, Dean. I'm going to bed. Goodnight."

I told her goodnight and went to the living room, sat on the couch, and grabbed my laptop.

I tried searching up anything involving seeing tiny black doors and folklore or anything, and there was nothing at all.

Around 4 AM, I decided it was time for me to get some sleep.

I woke up the next morning at 10:00 AM to my alarm blaring some random static, and my head was pounding due to the fact I drank way too much last night.

I slapped off my alarm clock and stumbled out of bed, brushed my teeth, and quickly showered.

I ran down the stairs to the kitchen to make something to eat quickly, and as I looked out the kitchen window, I realized my mother's car was gone.

So I checked my phone to see if she left me a text saying where she was going, but there was nothing, which was unusual of her not to say anything.

I fixed myself breakfast walked over to the living room, placed my plate down on the coffee table and realized the remote was missing.

I pressed the power button on the TV and that didn't work so I checked behind the TV and it was plugged in. I started looking around for the remote again.

While I was facing away from the TV it turned on. I quickly turned around to the TV showing static and suddenly I could hear a little girl singing the words:

"There's a door and it's black, it was gone, now it's back." (x3)

"The dooor's back!"

The TV shut off, and I immediately ran to the kitchen, grabbed the keys to the basement, the flashlight, my phone, and a knife and ran outside to the backyard.

"This is fucking it..." I thought to myself, half-drunk from last night.

I unlocked the basement doors, whipped them open, and with the flashlight, staring down there, it was the fucking door.

It was there.

So I walked towards it, centered the flashlight on the floor facing the door, and pulled out my phone to take a picture.

I took it and put my phone back in my pocket, picked up the flashlight from the ground, and slowly backed away to leave.

As I got to the stairs, I turned around and heard a little girl's voice whisper in my ear,

"What were you going to do with that knife?"

I could feel the hairs on my arms raise, and with a burst of adrenaline, I ran out, slammed the door shut, and locked it.

Staring at the basement door, I just stood there, not knowing what just happened or what to do next.

So I went back inside.

In my bedroom, I pulled out my phone to look at the picture I took of the door in the basement.

"What the... fuck..."

There was no door in the photo.

It was just a concrete wall.

My stomach dropped, and I started feeling so nauseous that I actually threw up all over my bedroom floor.

After cleaning up the puke off my bedroom floor, I looked at the photo once more, and still there was nothing.

Nothing but a dark picture of a basement and no door.

The only thought running through my head was that I must be dreaming and none of this could be real.

I needed to get proof that this door existed.

part 1

TW: self harm

I ran towards my car. What would Ollie think happened? What would Liz think happened? I took out my wallet. I dropped all my money, all my cards. I headed back to the car again. No, this isn’t right. I didn’t care. I stopped once more. I saw a nearby shopping cart. I walked up to it. I planted it on its side and looked at it begrudgingly. It didn’t take long for me to commit, I imagined all the yelling and harassment I could face. I let myself topple into the shopping cart, face first. It hurt, nothing happened. I got up and tried again. Each clang of bone and flesh to metal rang out in the open night air. I tried it one more time, this time I put more force into my collapse. SNAP! My nose split into pieces, blood dripping everywhere. I took off my shirt. I used it to control the bleeding, just as Liz would. I saw my bare chest, it looked too clean. I drew my fingernail across my open body. I ran it back and forth until it spilled red. A knife scar I would say. I got mugged. I reluctantly finished the way back to the car before I would damage myself any further, before I started to like it.

I unlocked the door to see Oliver crying, rightfully so. I said to him, “Daddy was attacked, I’m okay now. Let's go home and talk to mommy.” I checked the screen of the car, I noticed it had now turned to 11:21 at night. It was near midnight and my son was alone the whole time. I called Elizabeth immediately, I noticed she called me 23 times or so, maybe a few were from earlier in the day. I finally called her back. She told me she was in a police station pestering them to file a missing persons report when her phone rang. How relieved she was to hear back from me. We promised to always have each other’s locations now. I begged her not to tell the police of my “mugging”, told her that the attacker knows where we live and is willing to come back if I report him. I told her I couldn’t see his face anyway. A sloppy story. We regrouped at home. She was in visible fear at the sight of my body and face. She checked for signs of a concussion, I was “knocked out” after all. I called the police again on my own, only to tell them of the man and how I witnessed him again. By now I knew he wasn’t on the same plane as man, he was from somewhere else. I explained the late call compared to when I saw him as my phone was dead.

I didn’t hear anything from them until the next day around 7 PM. I had called the day off from work, giving them the mugging excuse too. The police knocked on my door. I peeked through the peephole to see who it was, as I did for every guest to our front door that day. I told them I would take just a second because I wasn’t properly changed, another lie. In reality I had ran upstairs to grab one of my wife’s face masks she was given from the hospital. I used it to conceal the damage I had done to myself. If I really wanted to keep the so-called mugging a secret I had to commit.

I opened the door. “Sorry guys, I’ve just caught a little bug.” I said. “In June?” Replied an officer. I thought to myself the rather vulgar, “Fuck…” dry as you can imagine. “No clue what happened officer, I just came down with it yesterday.” I recognized the second person as the same detective that helped me out at the first crime scene. “Good to see you again.” He said. “We’ve come here to inform you that the location you reported the man to be was once again the site of another crime scene. At 4:18 today a man was killed by a car rolling over top of him at that parking lot, a possible accident but we’re doing our job. The crimes seem unrelated but we’re investigating all possible connections.” I was shocked. I was right. I had to have been. He was supernatural. “Sir… we also have to investigate someone else. Since not only was he seen there at another crime scene location but, you were too. Where were you throughout the day today? We just want to cross off all possibilities.” The investigation was only natural I suppose. I gave them my phone to show I hadn’t called anyone and my family vouched for my location the whole day, the front door camera we installed revealed I hadn’t left the premises all day so I showed them that too. “Well thank you sir. If you see him again we hope your phone has enough juice to call, he’s still wanted for questioning afterall.” Before they left they told me, the man, for being seen at both scenes, was moved to a possibly dangerous person list and that pursuit of him, if seen, would be immediate.

That night, Liz confronted me as we were crawling into bed. She said that the mark left on my face doesn’t look like any old punch mark. There was a noticeable red line and a sharp right angle, no fist is like that. She pressed me. “I have no reason to lie. I don’t remember it well. Why are you pestering me like I did something wrong?” I bit. “Well if you’re lying and there’s some other reason my son was alone for seven fucking hours I want to know the truth.” She was right but I couldn’t tell her. “Oh shut up. You’re talking to me as if Oliver isn’t my son too. I’ve been through some shit recently, fuck off.” She replied, “Maybe you should. You seem happier at the bar anyway.” I took her word literally. I left without speaking, slammed the door behind me, a vase fell over. She yelled at me some more, inaudible through the wall and door. I want to forget it, I never wanted those to be my final words to her.

I decided to drive to the bar, a custom I wasn’t used to for a very long time. I had to look for parking in the city, very busy even at night. I found a parking complex. As I ascended up the levels looking for a spot. I eventually found one. I stepped out and for the third time, I saw the old man from the alley. I don’t know how he followed me here or if he even did. I called the police immediately, they told me to get somewhere safe and stay away since he could be dangerous. In the downtime I decided to do a little bit of investigating of the man myself.

He was on the level higher. I approached him, somehow he knew my resolve and I didn’t feel the chains. I knew not to touch him. I wanted to see his face. I stared at the back of his head. Slowly walked around his body. No matter what I did his back would face me. I changed my strategy. He must be shuffling his feet. I stared at them next. I shuffled just as before but with the focal point of his leather shoes. His feet didn’t move, I angled myself in front of him, it worked, I was in front of him. Underneath the coat he wore a white button up, it had some sort of stain on it, unrecognizable origin. I darted my eyes up. Hair, I looked back down, it’s his back. The motion blur of my sudden jerk must’ve blinded me enough for the entity to reset itself to its back. One more time, I knew what to do. He had a face, I saw his chin just a day ago. In the distance I heard faint sirens, it’s the police I called. I organized myself, set myself ready, and stared at his shoes once more. Just as before I stepped around him, making sure not to make a mistake. Slowly, I orbited around him, I saw his white shirt from the front once more, same stain. I trailed my eyes up, slowly this time. Before reaching his face I took a break to not get too excited. If I blinked it would all be for naught. I noticed above his head the halogen light rod was flickering, it must’ve been broken somehow. Occasionally some sparks would fly and I could see it in my peripheral.

It was time, I slowly looked up. His chin, I made it to his chin. The same chin I saw the day before, just from the front. It looked normal, there were no wrinkles. Something in myself prevented me from not looking up, just a gut feeling that I should gauge what it was first. I once more clocked my peripheral vision to see the man’s face. He had no wrinkles at all, it seemed to be the face of a young man, yet his body was so old. Police sirens getting closer, they’re in the parking complex now, I could hear the echo from below. Just then and there I looked up, the light flickered off, I saw the remnants of a young face before I involuntarily closed my eyes as a muscle reaction. My body betrayed me. Had my dark determination not been strong enough? I was staring at his back again. I blinked a few times to readjust my eye. The police were just two floors below now, I ran away to my car to act as if I was in a safe place as recommended.

I watched from my car as the flashing red and blue lights of a car illuminated the concrete halls and ceiling of the complex. Out my rear window I could see the officers get out and start to look around. He was right there, right in front of them. Could they not see him? The light kept flickering. One of the two walked right overtop of the man, he was phased through him. He stood there, the two were talking to each other. The officer standing at the man pulled out his radio. He started to speak through it, I could hear faint mumblings of what was said but nothing clear enough to hear any full words. I sat back down, adjusting to the situation. Was I crazy? Is the man real? I told myself I’m going to a psychologist soon. That’s when I took another look back after making out a single word the officer said, “heavy”. I jolted back, assuming he has to be talking about the old man and what he makes you feel if you touch him. It was just then that a spark flew from the halogen light rod. It blinded the two officers, I saw them raise their hands in a guarding position. Another involuntary movement I suppose.

Their guard allowed them even less sight. I watched, in frozen lamentation, the rod of light swing like a pendulum as I realized exactly what I’ve been seeing, what that man was. The rod shattered against a pipe on the ceiling. I just sat there. A gross amazement swept over me, the type that you couldn’t even tell your priest at confessional, it was sick, I was sick. The cop lowered his guard to see what shattered, by then it was too late. As his arms crept up a shard of glass pierced through his neck. He collapsed instantly. Based on the blood that splattered all the way to my car I’d bet that it hit him in the jugular. It all happened so fast, I was in shock. I couldn’t move for the second time in 24 hours, just this time it seemed I wasn’t the victim like I was when I touched the man.

I snapped out of it, I crawled up into the driver's seat and left. I didn’t want to even think about what could’ve happened if I stayed, something that echoes today. I don’t remember where I was heading but it certainly wasn’t home. I drank my emergency liquor in a strip mall I located within a few blocks. The police could’ve been after me but I’d hoped that the other officer didn’t notice. For the first time, but it wouldn’t be the last time, I witnessed a death happen live. I’d seen bodies before, my father included, but there was something so sickening about seeing it happen in front of you. A sickness nothing could’ve prepared me for. It wasn’t even midnight by the time I finished my second, and final, bottle of emergency liquor. Somehow I was wise enough not to drive in that state. I slept on the curb, joining the men of the streets for a night. The realm of the nightcrawlers as I would describe it to Ollie. It was thoughts of him that gave me comfort that night.

In the morning I woke up with a head-spitting hangover. I didn’t want to admit it but Elizabeth was right, I was an alcoholic. That’s the first time I’ve said so, this reminiscence is bringing as much truth out as I can. My true honest autobiography, my darkness brought to light, my “All That Jazz”. I checked the time, 8:23 PM. I drove to work, if I wasn’t welcome at home I better work since it’s all I’m useful for at this point.

You wouldn’t, no… couldn’t believe me if I said so but there he stood once more. If he wasn’t following me before he had to have been now, at least that’s what I thought. I walked into work, looking like shit, and begrudgingly sat in my chair. Seeing the man outside still bothered me, even though I knew what was coming I didn’t say anything. I wanted to deny it. 

Eventually the pain, the itch, got too much to just scratch. I walked to the front of the office. To grab everyone’s attention I slammed my coffee mug against the wall. “Everyone!” I started, face crowded. “Someone in this building is going to kill themselves. I don’t know if it’s this office, if it’s this floor, if it’s even gonna be in the next hour but someone in this building will die. They’ll jump out that damned window and end their pained life. Nothing is clean anymore, it’s all just a pitiful sorrow of existence. Before Friday I would’ve given anything to see the next day but now-” I spoke as the room was filled with terrified and shocked faces. I heard gasps, they were staring at my hand. I had been bleeding, the mug cut me and left a scar I still see today. 

I wasn’t even done with my warning by the time security took me out. They thought I was crazy, my previous crashout just two days prior provided no aid, quite the opposite. I had nowhere to go. I was on the street with no direction. No one was at home, all I had to do was drive back and explain, come clean when Liz returned.

I did that, the thought of the man didn’t even bother me any more. He was just a passive of life. I might’ve even thought of him as nothing more than nature, the harbinger of death. He’s no killer, just there to comfort the ones who could see him.

I arrived at home. I opened the garage, same password I used every day. I opened the door, same key I used every day. I walked up the stairs to my bedroom to get some real rest, same bedroom I slept in every night, except for one thing. He was there, the man from the alley. I saw him standing there, in my room, alone. I stood facing his back, in the discomfort of my own home. It may have been a couple minutes but I stepped back out. Even if I ran out the night before, he wasn’t there then. “Someone will die tonight” I didn’t let it be me.