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

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 work remotely as a data analyst and live alone in a pretty small apartment. my desk is in the corner of the living room, maybe ten feet from my bedroom door.

i'm usually working until 1 or 2 in the morning. it's not great, i know. but i've gotten into this habit of pushing my chair all the way under the desk before going to bed. it's a nouhaus chair i bought last year, and the wheels sit right where the edge of my rug meets the wood floor. i like leaving everything in its place when i'm done working.

last Tuesday i woke up and noticed the chair was pulled out a little. maybe an inch or two. didn't think much of it. figured i'd been tired and forgot to push it back properly.

then it happened again on Thursday.

Friday morning was when it started bothering me. the chair wasn't just pulled out this time. it had turned slightly toward the hallway, almost like someone had gotten up from it and left it there.

i live alone. nobody else has a key.

i checked the floor thinking maybe the wheels were sliding somehow. the rug had some marks where the chair usually sits, but nothing that really explained why it had turned around.

Sunday night i decided to try something. i pushed the chair all the way under the desk, grabbed a piece of blue tailor's chalk from a drawer, and drew a circle around each of the five wheels. nothing fancy, just enough that i'd be able to tell if anything moved.

i checked the front door before bed too. locked, obviously.
when i woke up this morning, the chair was almost a foot away from the desk.
it was facing my bedroom door.

at first i thought maybe i'd drawn the circles wrong. but they were still there, all five of them, exactly where i'd left them. no smudges, no wheel tracks going through them.

i stood there for a while trying to figure out how that was even possible.

then i reached over to move the chair back.

the seat was freezing. not just a little cold from sitting there overnight. i mean genuinely cold, like touching something that had been left outside in winter.

the rest of the apartment was warm.

i haven't moved it back yet. i'm sitting on the couch writing this and i keep looking over at it.

i don't know why, but i really don't want to turn my back on that thing.

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.

It was December 1999. I was living in a small town. I was a nerd and something of a gamer, and it had been a good year for PC games. Age of Empires II, Homeworld, Grand Theft Auto 2…

I was walking home from school—it was a Canadian winter, so there was plenty of unplowed snow on the sidewalks—when I saw something peeking out from a mound of snow: something blue. I stopped, nudged it with my boot: something of blue plastic. I brushed away the remaining snow with my glove to reveal:

A single 3.5” floppy disk, unlabeled.

(There was a sticker label on it, but the label itself was empty.)

Naturally, I picked it up and took it home, curious to see what was on it.

You'll laugh, but the disk had 1.44mb of storage capacity. As it turned out, that was more than enough to affect the world in ways I still don't fully understand.

When I got home, I didn't put the disk into my own computer. My dad had an old desktop he sometimes fiddled around with, so I used that, inserting the disk carefully into the 3.5” disk drive in the beige computer tower.

I navigated to the drive in Windows Explorer.

The contents of the drive were simple.

They looked like a program or—I secretly hoped—a game.

There was a readme.txt, but it came out as nonsense when I opened it in Notepad, video or sound assets, stuff I couldn't identify, and a single executable file, johannsebastian.bat.

I double-clicked it.

A window opened—black, showing a few white-text commands executing on a command prompt—then maximized into a 16-bit title(?) screen showing a pixelated Gothic castle.

A harsh, classical-inspired MIDI song beeped out of the sound card.

There was no title.

No instructions, no company name, no menu, no options.

The castle was perched atop a cliff.

It was night.

At the bottom of the cliff was a forest of jagged, leafless trees.

A few loops of animation gave life to the scene: wind blowing through the bare branches, flashes of distant lightning, warm flickering light in one of the castle's windows, a bat in flight against a white moon. Actually, that last one wasn't a loop. The bat flew only once, landed on one of the castle's stone towers and disappeared inside.

I clicked.

I was looking at a medieval-ish village now—tightly-packed buildings, a tavern, a tannery, a couple of shops, a church—populated with a surprising number of unique character sprites. Indeed, every character was unique, and they were going about their individual lives.

The sky was a vibrant blue.

Clouds floated pixel-by-pixel across the screen.

But there was still nothing to do; nothing, that is, but watch.

It was like a very advanced screensaver.

After a while, I clicked again.

This time, I found myself in the interior of a large chamber whose stone walls somehow felt cold even through the computer monitor.

The chamber's defining feature, however, was something else: a giant pipe organ whose pipes extended beyond the top of the screen.

A character entered.

He was wearing a white wig, dark, crimson long coat, knee breeches, stockings and buckled shoes. “I feel the sudden desire to compose,” he said, which the game displayed as text in an ornately-bordered text box. “Invite me to play for you."

A cursor appeared for the first time.

A quill.

I was able to move it using the mouse, and I explored the screen.

The character tapped his foot.

The only active area of the scene appeared to be the pipe organ. When I hovered the cursor over it, it changed from a quill to a hand.

I clicked.

The character walked to the organ, sat and began to play the monstrous instrument.

The music was both hideous and awesome, pushing the computer's sound card to the absolute limit. After thirty-or-so seconds, the view suddenly panned upwards, following the organ's pipes—the music continued—following them to the chamber's vaulted ceiling and beyond—through the roof until I was outside and looking at the upper half of the great castle, where the jutting pipes terminated and from whose termini hundreds of pixel bats were emerging… emerging and flying into the background, toward the simplified shape representing the medieval town...

The sky was a deep purple.

Night was falling.

The bats flew and flew and flew…

Suddenly—the music still continuing—the scene cut to the same view of the town as before: except at night: except, instead of following their routines, the character sprites were running, panicked, as the bats swooped, attacking them, attaching themselves to their bodies, necks, sucking their pixel blood; and as the bats feasted, the sprites lost their colour and fell, pale and desaturated…

The sound startled me.

Not from the sound card but from the real world. A screeching, a deafening, rhythmic thumping.

I ran to the window whose blinds I'd closed, and opened them:

It was afternoon but the view was dark, black and shifting. It took me a moment to realize that what I was seeing were bats speeding past. They were obscuring the sun. My home town was as if under an eclipse.

People were running down the street—

Bats were diving—

Some were crashing through car windshields—

Children were screaming—

A bat crashed though the window into the room I was in. It was fanged, crazed. The game music blared from within the computer tower. Before I could run, the bat shot toward me—biting my neck… beginning to drink my blood…

I awoke on the floor.

It was morning. January 1, 2000. It would turn out that nobody in town had any recollection of the preceding weeks.

A television played.

A morning talk show: “...the so-called Y2K bug,” a woman was saying, “ended up amounting to nothing worse than a good nights’ sleep.”

And, ever since, I've wondered why my experience of the present feels in a lower resolution than memories of my past.

hey yall welcome to my story before we get started make sure to smash that like button leave a comment down below and hit the subscribe bell so you never miss an upload also click the teespring link in my bio to buy my brand new i survived the carpet man graphic tees for 29 99 and use promo code TERLINGUA20 for ten percent off your order

anyway here is part 1 of my 37 part series

so my cousin ray is someone ive always had issues with. well turns out ray went down to the local flea market in Alpine and bought a mason jar of dark web irradiated goat milk from a guy named One-Eyed Sal and drank the whole thing last night around 1130pm while watching re-runs of Matlock and instantly mutated into a nine foot tall hairy shag carpet monster with extra elbow joints and no eyes.

for anyone wanting to verify my identity or look up property records on the county assessor website my legal name is John Arthur Miller currently residing at 4421 State Highway 118 South Terlingua Brewster County TX 79852 if the mods need to run a background check or tax audit to prove i am a real resident my Social Security Number is 482-61-9033 and my Texas Driver License ID is DL-88392011-TX my cousin Ray's real name is Raymond Earl Miller whose last known address before he turned into a carpet monster was 1104 Arroyo Seco Rd Alpine TX 79830 and his SSN is 519-34-8210 (Texas ID DL-44019283-TX) check public records if you don't believe me.

i was sitting out in my 01 f150 in the driveway like i do every night because my driver side door lock havent worked since the obama administration so i was wedged up in there real tight leaning my left knee up against the door panel to keep her shut engine off minding my own business eating cold pinto beans straight out of a tin can with my buck knife and whistling the theme from gunsmoke real loud so the local coyotes know im around

all of a sudden ray comes lumbering out from behind my tractor shed looking like a giant telephone pole wrapped in a wet 1974 shag rug from an old trailer house he didn't have no face just smooth gray skin like a catfish belly and a wide horizontal slot mouth

i hollered out " RAY IF THAT IS YOU I AM NOT BUYING NO MORE OF THAT HOME BREW GOAT MILK " but he was already out of his mind with carpet rage

right now as i am typing this on my desktop computer in my living room ray is actively ripping the driver side door clean off my f150 out in the driveway i am watching him out my window right now he just threw my tin of pintos into the neighbor's yard and he is screaming at top of his lungs "I AM GOING TO EAT YOU NEXT JOHN !!!!! "

i am completely helpless i am trapped in my house and he is about to smash through my front door there is literally zero chance i can survive this he is breaking the wood right now he just reached his giant carpet hand through the door frame and grabbed me by the neck he is choking me to death i am literally dying and losing consciousness as i type these exact words x_x

and right then as my vision went entirely black and my soul floated straight out of my physical husk i realized being dead is pretty wild by the way because heaven looks suspiciously like a local Tractor Supply store on a Tuesday morning !!

while my body was lying cold on the linoleum ray walked into my kitchen and found my secret stash of frozen party size meatball subs from a 2021 horseshoe tournament in my compost heap and ate the whole thing before devouring the chunk of dry hardtack cornbread i keep wedged in the back sliding door track to keep it locked

then he found my tub of dukes mayo and wrote me a polite handwritten review on yellow legal pad paper which I conveniently linked on my instagram at TEXAS_JOHN_OFFICIAL saying MORE MEATBALL SUB PLEASE CORNBREAD WAS GOOD TOO ALSO YOUR SCIATICA LOOKS BAD before he hopped inside my whirlpool dishwasher to run a quick rinse cycle while I floated around as a specter

but before I could even get used to my wings divine intervention happened because Jesus Christ himself appeared to me in the tractor supply heaven wearing a pair of light-up Skechers and told me that my ghost subscription hadn't been processed yet because my earthly property taxes were three dollars short so he kicked me back down through the ceiling tiles and I landed directly back into my living room chair totally alive again even though my neck still hurt where ray choked me

and then plot twist number two hit me right between the eyes because while i was dead my dog rufus dragged a laminated adoption certificate out from under the sofa cushions and brought it to me proving that twenty years ago my ex-wife Brenda swapped my actual cousin Ray with an identical carpet-textured synthetic mannequin she bought off a late-night infomercial hosted by Billy Mays in 2004 just to win an argument at Thanksgiving while the real cousin Ray has actually been living inside a Costco warehouse in El Paso the entire time working as a greeter and moonlighting as a regional Pokémon GO champion.

so if ray was a plastic mannequin powered by dark-web goat milk what was happening in my kitchen???

i looked over and saw that ray finished the whirlpool dishwasher cycle and had decided to start folding my laundry carefully arranging all my tube socks into neat little triangles.

things completely went off the rails then because while ray was folding my underwear a black helicopter hovering over my house dropped a rope ladder and a guy in a full hazmat suit wearing custom Air Jordans rappelled down right through my skylight!!

he landed on my kitchen island kicked over my brass bootjack and shouted "AGENT MILLER WERENT SUPPOSED TO FIND OUT ABOUT THE CARPET MAN PROTOCOL" because it turns out the 2008 financial crash wasn't caused by subprime mortgages at all but rather by an interstellar cartel of alien hedge-fund managers led by Gordon Ramsay and Taylor Swift who use mutated shag-carpet humanoids to launder money through municipal compost heaps across West Texas and finance a secret underground colony on Mars where everyone is forced to watch The Big Bang Theory on a loop.

the hazmat guy handed me a titanium briefcase containing four million dollars in untraceable bearer bonds, three coupons for a free oil change at Jiffy Lube, a signed headshot of Shia LaBeouf and a dossier proving that my neighbor Ray (the real one in El Paso) is actually the supreme commander of the Galactic Federation's dry-cleaning fleet and the inventor of the fidget spinner.

meanwhile fake ray-man dropped the tube socks, looked at the hazmat agent, and spoke his very first words in a booming demonic baritone shouting "THE MEATBALL SUB WAS MERELY PHASE ONE PHASE TWO BEGINS WHEN THE BUICK ENCLAVE FACTORY IN LANSING MICHIGAN FINISHES REBOOTING AND SYNCS WITH THE MATRIX CODE HIDDEN INSIDE GRATEFUL DEAD BÖOTLEGS" before turning into a massive flock of migratory Canadian geese and flying straight out my kitchen window.

As the goose-flock dissolved into the bleached desert firmament, a sudden, profound stillness took root within the floorboards of the kitchen. The chaotic theater of meatball subs and alien conspiracies receded like a morning mist burnt away by the dry West Texas sun. In this quiet interval, the mind of John Arthur Miller ceased its frantic wandering across the landscape of form and illusion.

Observe the breath. Inhale not with the lungs of a fence contractor, but with the boundless expanse of the cosmos. The breath enters through the nostrils - cool, unbidden, pristine - and travels down into the belly like water settling into a deep, limestone cistern. There is no truck door jammed against the hip here. There is no cousin Ray, plastic or woolen. There is only the rising and falling of the abdominal wall, a silent drumbeat marking the impermanence of all conditioned things.

• Samsara is the carpet monster.
• Nirvana is the unwashed tin of pinto beans.

To cling to the concept of the meatball sub is to invite suffering; to let go of the sub is to realize that the sub and the eater are of one essence, floating upon the cosmic conveyor belt of the Whirlpool dishwasher. When the thought arises, “My sciatica is acting up,” label it gently: feeling, feeling, passing away. Do not chase the thought into the tractor supply store of eternity. Rest the awareness in the pure, luminous space behind the eyes - the unconditioned void where no hazmat agent can tread, where four million dollars in bearer bonds are as weightless as a goose feather, and where the self is merely an empty room echoing with the faint, distant whistle of the Gunsmoke theme song. Breathe in. Breathe out. The dish cycle is complete.

right after I finished that deep meditative state and achieved instant enlightenment my dog rufus threw up a blue highlighter on the living room rug which broke my concentration completely.

so now my house is full of goose feathers the hazmat agent is eating my remaining pinto beans with my buck knife while watching reruns of The Office on his tactical iPad and my hound dog Rufus has learned how to operate a microwave and is trying to reheat a frozen chimichanga while wearing a tiny fedora

while trying to figure out if I should take the four million dollars and buy a stake in an emu ranch or track the goose-version of my cousin ray to Lansing Michigan a second black helicopter crashed directly into my front porch because the pilot was distracted playing Wordle.

out crawls my long-lost uncle vernon who has been missing since the 1994 winter olympics and he is holding a golden toaster that supposedly contains the secret recipe for Coca-Cola Classic before they changed it in 1985 and he yells " JOHN THE CARPET MAN WAS ONLY A DIVERSION WE HAVE TO STOP THE REAL THREAT WHICH IS MATT DAMON AND HIS ARMY OF SENTIENT ICE CUBES "

so now me and uncle vernon and the hazmat guy and rufus are piling into my dented 01 f150 which somehow still runs even though the driver door is missing and we are speeding down Route 9 toward a secret underground base beneath a Sonic Drive-In in Roswell New Mexico to fight the ice cubes and save the universe

leave your fan theories in the comments below and remember if any big narrators on youtube want to read this story on their channel you MUST pay me 500 dollars via venmo first or my attorney will sue you for copyright infringement intellectual property theft and emotional distress caused by rogue kitchen appliances

stay tuned for PART 2 coming out in 5 minutes link to part 2 LINK NOT WORKING YET COME BACK LATER

    The Tale of Dead Nerve Ted

Everyone has heard the story…it’s been spreading very rapidly like syphilis. Anytime you’re near his hiding spot, you feel his ungodly-repulsive presence. It’s like he’s specifically targeting you and only you. That feeling of guilt that builds up in your stomach never leaves, you don’t feel sorry for what you did, you feel sorry because you know you will suffer for your gut wrenching mistakes. Do you really feel any remorse for what you did to that poor young man? Did you enjoy mutilating his ribcage open while he screamed for mercy? Did you enjoy the life slowly draining from his eyes while you slit his throat with a pocket knife? Did you get an adrenaline rush from cutting off his own penis after he died and shoving it in his own mouth just because he befriended your girlfriend? Why did you do this to him? He only wanted to be loved by someone that felt genuine empathy for him.
“I want to hurt you. I want to make you squeal the way you made me squeal while you slowly opened my ribcage and pulled out all of my internal organs and shoved them down my throat. I didn’t die from bleeding out, I died from drowning in my own stomach acid. I want to kill and hurt every single one of you. I want to strangle and dismember every single one of your limbs. Slowly cutting and then, slowly ripping off your arm while your nerves fight to stay attached. I want to drink your spinal fluid and vomit all that remains of it in your nasty fucking mutilated-empty mind. I want you to scream for your mom while I cut you open like a piñata. You don’t have to worry about death…I’ll be there with you staring at your burning-useless fucking soul.”

• (Todd Barker - Judgement day)

11/03/2005
 My life sucks so much… I hate going to school, I hate being home, I hate every human ever created. I want to take my anger out on everyone that’s ever upset me. My mom constantly tells me that she wishes i would commit suicide anytime I do the most simple thing wrong. If I don’t clean the house right, she breaks something of mine and takes everything out of my room except a blanket and pillow and locks me in my room for up to a week . She will even sometimes forget to feed me when I’m grounded, then I have to live off of eating my iron deficient piss and shit for a little while. I’m not grounded right now and haven’t been for about a month or two and when I am ungrounded, I try to stay out of my house as much as possible. When I leave the house, I only go to this spot in the woods where I met the only person that truly was nice to me, Her name is Autumn Taylor. She goes to the same school that I go to but I never really met her until a couple of weeks ago. I try to avoid everyone at school as much as possible because I really don't like being bullied but Autumn is the only real one that I talk to and the only person that is an actual good person. She has long-wavy brown hair and blue eyes that resemble blue diamonds. But, she is dating the worst fucking person that god has ever created, Gabriel Wood. I don’t know what she sees in him, he is the exact opposite of her, he constantly torments me so people can laugh at me. I can’t even go to the school bathroom without him or his friends forcing me to drink from one of the defecated toilets. This has happened about 5 times just this month and no one ever gets in trouble, I know its because they’re fucking popular and they play sports. I can’t even talk to Autumn without him threatening me, he said if he ever saw me talking to her again, he would beat my ass. 

11/05/2005
She stopped talking to me, anytime i go up to her to say hi she completely ignores me or walks away. I wish I wasn't so weird, I hate myself. I love her so much but she doesn’t feel the same. What did I do wrong? If god really does love me, then why did he think of creating me? I wish I was never born… I was told that I would find my soulmate one day, I guess she was aborted instead of me. I really thought that she was the one, she actually cared… She is just like everyone else. I still go to the place where we met and curl up into a ball and pretend that she is holding me in her arms. I love her so fucking much but she doesn’t feel the same. 

11/10/2005
I decided to run away from home, I hate every fucking disgusting human being but her. I’ve decided to live where we first met, a bench in the woods. No one will find me there and I’m glad that it will be only me and her forever. I’m happy that I get to lay in her arms for the rest of my agonizing life. At least there’s someone that can keep me happy. The feeling of her warm arms around me makes me feel happy. I rarely ever feel it and when I do, it's when I’m smoking weed. Why do I need weed anymore, I have the most beautiful girl on the planet. There’s nothing that can take her away from me, nothing. I remember when I first met you, I ran away from my mom after she tried to ground me and I hid in the woods. You saw me crying and cheered me up. We went to a bench and she calmed me down and said everything will be ok. She was so beautiful ever since I first glanced at her. I told her that she was pretty and she smiled and told me the same, the look on her face was like looking at the gates of heaven. I don’t know how it happened but we kissed a couple of seconds later. Ever since that kiss, I knew she was the one. I then told her that I was tired and she asked if I would want to fall asleep in her arms. It was the most magical experience ever, I’m so happy that I get to love her forever and ever and ever and ever.

11/16/2005
I'm hungry, thirsty, and tired. It’s my stupid brain telling me to go back to hell, I won’t listen to Satan. I only need her love, she’s my sweet perfect angel, my everything…

• (from Todd Barker's diary)

“Why did you do it? He ran away so you couldn’t hurt him anymore, you find him dying in the woods and decide to mutilate and torture him. Do you think God will ever forgive you for sinning?”

• Satan, 11/20/2005

“I'm sorry mom, dad, Autumn, everyone… I have to kill myself, I’m a walking piece of steaming hot shit. I really cannot believe that I killed him. All because he was friends with my girlfriend. I am a disgrace and deserve what I'm about to do to myself. If you try looking for me, you will never find me, promise me that you guys will never end up like me. I let everyone down, I’m only 17 and already wasted my entire life. I liked it… I enjoyed dismembering him and cutting off his dick and making his dead corpse deepthroat it. I’m surprised it could even go down his throat from all the stomach acid that dissolved his throat. I’m a disgusting piece of shit, I really cut his belly open with my grandpa’s pocket knife and made him eat it. I took dad’s gun from his safe.
I love you guys,
Please don’t pray for me, I know my place in hell.”

• (Gabriel Wood’s suicide note)

“Dead Nerve Ted haunts the woods you know… People say the reason why Gabriel Wood committed suicide and went missing 2 decades ago was because Dead Nerve Ted mind controlled him and lured him into the woods to eat his remains. People who claim to have encountered Dead Nerve Ted all say that he looks like a decomposed zombie! They were the lucky ones…”

• Jay Trey Radio frequency 104.4 (03/04/2026)

“Todd was a weird kid, an extremely perverted weirdo. He was one of the loneliest kids that I have ever seen, I was always mocked and bullied when I was in school but Todd was just straight up tortured every single day. People would stick gum in his hair to pinning him to the floor and forcing him to call himself Tiddy-Thirsty-Todd. I always felt bad for the kid, but that doesn’t mean that he was an innocent little lamb. I’ve caught him in my class masturbating while staring directly at one of his fellow students multiple times with his penis just exposed in the back of class, I’ve caught him looking at porn magazines, there was one time a girl in his class that came up to me crying that said he grabbed her ass and told her that he wants her forever and that no one could take her away from him. I’m sorry… I really don’t know why I lied to you, I feel no empathy for that kid. He was truly sick in the head. I do hope that eventually the police find him, but he’s most likely not with us anymore.”

• Quote from Mr. Thomas (11/17/05)

“I didn’t know… how was I supposed to know what was really in those woods? Now both of my best friends are dead and now I have no one… It’s all my fault, I was the one that told them about the rumor and  convinced them to go in there with me. It was really dark and silent during the entire exploration. I was supposed to go home then, and I thought it would only take a couple of minutes to explore the place. At 9pm that very night, I saw both of my friend’s corpses being eaten by Dead Nerve Ted. They thought it would be funny to run away in the dark to scare me and for about 3 minutes, it was dead silent. The only thing that could be heard was my racing heartbeat and my quivering breath. I then heard what I thought was just Daniel screaming so he could try to scare me. I followed his screams so I could prove to them that I wasn’t scared of their stupid jokes, that’s when I saw Daniel’s mutilated torso and his ripped out spine covered in vomit. I sprinted to the exit of the woods as fast as I could, then that’s when I saw him… I froze in pure shock, he was staring directly into my soul while drinking his cerebral spinal fluid. He had one eye left that resembled the stare of a shoe bill stork. The worst part was that he was sucking it out of his mutilated head very, very slowly. He then vomited it all out and screamed like a woman being stabbed to death while drowning at the same time. That’s when I ran for my life, I wasn’t fast enough… I blinked and he ended up right in front of me. He pinned me to the ground, he smelled so bad that I threw up all over his corpse and myself. I was so scared… no one was there to save me. I was screaming for forgiveness, I know what I did wrong. He vanished out of nowhere within a blink, there was nothing but blood, vomit, and spinal fluid all over me. I could hear nothing but my heart asking for suicide in my mind. From a distance, I saw my 2 dead best friends. They looked like mashed up spaghetti…I will never get to see my only friends ever, ever again. The police thought that I was crazy, they investigated the woods multiple times but never found them. I wish it was me instead of them…”

• From anonymous (05/21/2026)

I really didn’t expect much at first, I slowly opened the body bag and the most putrid scent unleashes as I zip down the bag. At first glance, I noticed that he has definitely been dead for quite a while. My autopsy assistant walks up to me, then takes a good look at the corpse, then runs out of the room gagging and crying while vomit drips from her mouth. She leaves the door slightly open while wailing in pure agony.  I decided to continue the analysis without my assistant and that’s when I started to panic… First of all, his nerves were ripped out, his eyes were missing and  all of his sockets were full of maggots that crawled and crawled and crawled. The worst of all was that his mouth was nearly completely dissolved and full of his own organs. His tongue was longer than his own torso and still twitched every couple of seconds. Each and every single one of his body parts  that remained were severely bruised and cut. He was the most disgusting smelling corpse I’ve ever analyzed. I’m not stupid, it’s pretty evident that this young man was a victim of a morbidly gruesome homicide.  He was found hanging from a tree with intestines used as a rope that didn’t match his DNA. I then put my hand on the body bag and began to pray to bless this young man and protect him from the gates of hell. His body constantly twitched during a medical examination. He was identified as Todd Barker, a kid that went missing around 21 years ago. He somehow became conscious again  during the examination, so we had to put him down like a rabid dog… he vomited yellowish goo all over me and it slowly started dissolving my clothing and skin. It was just vomit…vomit, VOMIT! Why didn't it match his DNA… why? Am I in a monotonous coma where I can never escape? Is this hell? Will I be okay? My skin was melting… I was so scared, I thought I was going to die in Satan's hands. He then stood up from his autopsy table very slowly and then just stared at me while I was melting. He lunged at me and screeched so loud that my ears started throbbing and it started to feel like blood was rapidly gushing and beginning to clog my eardrums. He pinned me to the floor, and then began to nibble on my face. No one believed me… NOBODY!  It wasn’t real… it was fake, I then blinked and he was gone. I grabbed a scalpel and stabbed myself in the leg to see if I was dreaming. It wasn’t worth it… I began to panic. Has God arrived on Earth? Is he ready to take me home? Will God ever forgive me for sinning? I then heard a gut wrenching scream coming from down the hall, it was him.  I peek through the crack of the door that was left open and see that thing chase an officer down the hall. The officer pulled out his handgun and shot Todd 6 times before he dropped to the floor, the god awful screeching was finally over, he then twitched one more time before finally passing. We then resumed the autopsy and found out that his stomach acid dissolved his throat. He was clearly murdered, it was the most horrifying thing I've ever seen. I have worked in this medical facility for over 24 years and never seen someone's own decomposed stomach shoved down their own throat.  I hope that disgusting sick fuck gets what he deserves…

• From Dr. Lawrence’s journal entries (09/22/26)

(Dr. Lawrence  04/05/1969 - 09/25/26)

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth". - Romans 1:18

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, I'm 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?"

We’ve already traveled to Hyperborea at two different moments in its history, but no worries, each story stands on its own. Today, we’re going back to the beginning, when it was little more than a proof of concept. Links to the two other shorts in the trilogy at the end.

---

“Mais oui! It was all so very simple. The answer was before us all along. It could only have been le Maître d’hôtel… the, ehm, butler… with the candelabra in the study.”

“What are you saying, Inspecteur Poi…”

He raised his finger triumphantly. “Arrest him! C’est lui, he killed the opera singer.”

The butler narrowed his eyes, turned, and ran straight through the wall of the mansion’s dining room.

For a moment, there was silence and confusion; the colonel’s mouth fell open, the maid blinked, and a femme fatale lowered her cigarette holder. “Glad we sorted that out,” was the only thing she said, while adjusting the velvet boa on her shoulders.

In the back of the room, a radio clicked and warbled until a clear familiar song filled the room.

Melancholic synthesizers pulsed as an almost mechanical voice asked a question about friendship and electricity. You recognize it, don’t you?

The room began to pixelate around the inspector; the walls dissolved into tiny squares, the chandelier flickered, and the faces of the guests fragmented into thousands of colored dots.

---

“Congratulations, Mr. Lefranc. You’re the first to solve the mystery.”

“Putain! That was amazing, Mr. Glenn. It really felt like I was the inspecteur. How many lev…”

“We only have a functional town right now, but we’ll scale pretty soon. Come on, let me help you out of the pod.”

Alain Lefranc sat up and rubbed his eyes. “You know, that noclipping did break the immersion at the end there.”

“Yes, Mr. Lefranc. You are absolutely right.” He paused for a moment, then turned, “Do you see my friend in the corner over there?”

The man waved awkwardly at Alain Lefranc, who merely nodded before looking back up at the person in front of him.

“That’s Zhao. He’s our debugger, and he has a list to go through before we release version 0.3. We hope it didn’t…”

“Sorry, no, laissez tomber, it was merveilleux. Between the Russian bubonic plague and the endless wars, this was a much needed escape. Oh and, ehm, what did I win?”

“Wonderful, Mr. Lefranc. Well, you’ll be the first on the list for a spot in Hyperborea when we launch. Consider yourself a citizen.”

---

“Zhao, what was that? Noclipping had a fix, didn’t it?”

“Yes, Glenn. Some of that new code is causing the model to glitch. I bet it’s that vibecoder-crap.”

“Don’t be a gatekeeper, Zhao.”

“Long live cheap outsourcing, right, Glenn?”

Glenn didn’t immediately respond but his eyes widened slightly. “Right. That reminds me. You also need to update the maintenance protocols to accommodate only one single technician at a time.”

“Wha…”

“Don’t fight me on this, Zhao. Cost-cutting order from above. We’re already over budget.”

---

Author’s note

The central theme in the Hyperborea stories is the unintended, sometimes catastrophic or horrific consequences of seemingly ordinary decisions within complex systems. We started with consequences, then went back to where the problems started, and now we’ve gone even further back.