When they took me from my jail cell and told me to sign up for a chance of "freedom" I knew that I should have declined. I knew it was to good too be true but i signed up anyway. I was serving 50 years, that might as well be a life sentence. Didn't have anything to lose anyway.

For the record, I went in for a string of murders that I honestly don't regret.

I have never been a good person, never tried to be honest. Never saw the point. Everyone that is and was in my group had the same decades-long sentences as me.

Maybe that's why the outside of our bodies displays the monsters we are on the inside.

Our hair, nose, ears, lips, eyelids are gone. Completely dissolved. The rest of our bodies covered in scabs and chemical burns. Could have just been the chemical weapons they make us use. Or it could have been the mixture of the weapon with the "combat stimulants" they make us inject to keep us from collapsing on the spot. Who knows, better yet who cares.

All I know is that as long as I keep taking them I don't feel all the things wrong with my body. Like my dry eyes underneath my gas mask. Or the open wounds on my hands.

10 months ago we received the new gas canisters. They didn't bother to even tell us what it's called. But when we saw the string of warning labels on the canisters together with receiving new stronger gas masks we already knew this would be way worse than the old stuff we had before. But we had no clue just how extremely bad it would be.

Thankfully I didn't get picked to be in the crew to release it the first time. We didn't expect it to be as bad as it was so just about everyone outside of the officer didn't take the new stricter rules seriously.

When they attacked us again it was released like we were told to do. The people of our own crew were the first to suffer the effects of their lack of safety measures. About 10 seconds after release they started to scream and flail around like they were on fire. Every hole in their clothing it could find, the gas seeped into. Turning skin into blisters and burns. At least they survived for how much that is worth around here.

One idiot in the group decided that the new gas masks were too uncomfortable so he stuck to his old one despite the warnings. I am sure the only reason the officer didn't beat him into submission is so he could be an example for the others. When he started to scream his lungs out our officer ordered us to pay attention to what happened to him. He tore his gas mask off.

All the soft tissue on his head was melting off. His nose was drooping down and was hanging over where his lips used to be. His eyes were bubbling inside of their sockets. His screaming turned into a gurgle in the span of 20 seconds. When he fully collapsed and started to spasm and convulse on the floor the officer decided we had learned the lesson. He then caved his skull in with an entrenching tool until he stopped moving.

Don't feel too bad for him he was a useless drug addict who had killed his mom before he got here. He got what he deserved, just like all of us will.

When we release the gas it finds the lowest elevations in terrains and sticks around for a while. Turning shell craters and trenches into small gas chambers. The people that are stuck in there turn into a slurry of sorts because it's so acidic. Their clothes stick to their bodies, Their skin sloths off their body together with anything else that's soft and squishy in the human body. So you end up looking at this amalgamation of clothing and equipment in a fleshy puddle around a skeleton.

And trust me you really don't want to step on one of the fresh bodies by accident. Your boot goes straight through them. It feels like stepping in one of those mud puddles that is going to cost you a boot to get out of. And guess what it might cost you a boot to if you haven't tied your laces good enough.

It's even worse when they decided to die on top of something you need. I am so tired of scraping human soup off equipment we
need. It's stringy, it's sticky and has all the colours a human body should never have.

Well at least I can't smell it anymore not having a proper working nasal cavity anymore. But from my earlier days when i still had a nose I remember vividly what it smelled like. I used to live around this industrial area that had a huge chicken slaughterhouse in the middle. During hot days of summer the horrible smell of blood and chicken shit would hang around that area for months. Now mix in that smell with someone holding vinegar directly under your nose and you get the idea of what it smells like here.

You cant even throw up properly if you want to because you don't want to open your mouth in fear of the smell going into your mouth and then having to taste it. Thank god I decided to rather throw up in my mouth and swallow it back down. Because some of the others that didn't keep their mouths closed can't taste anything
anymore and their tongues are covered in random spots of scar tissue.

But the bodies don't really decay at all. Since the gas kills just about anything that is alive. That means thankfully no rats, insects or other pests to deal with. What's not so great is that all the old shell craters are filled with a human slurry that reaches up to your knees if you are lucky.

New cannon fodder gets the honorable task of sifting through the human slurry for anything useful like weapons, etc. When i think about it long enough, I can still feel what it's like to do this amazing task. It's basically like reaching deep into mud and taking any solid object out until it's something useful instead of human bones.
After a bit you can feel by shape alone that you are once again holding onto someone's ribs.

Our outpost is so heavily understaffed it might as well be empty. "Outpost" fancy way to describe a muddy trench that connects 3 bunkers together. Of those 3 bunkers only 1 hasn't collapsed yet. I think you can figure out from where i am typing this.

We haven't called in to command for a week now since our radioman is probably dissolving in a puddle somewhere together with our officer. Can't even use the contraband phone that i found in the human slurry in a random shell crater. Since there is not really any reception after months of bombardment. Thankfully the phone at least made me able to type this out so i have something to distract myself with.

But Command not hearing from us means that our barrier troops meant to keep us in place should show up soon to discipline and/or kill us. I wish them good luck since they are going to have to kill our not-so-friendly neighbours outside the bunker first.

They told me that if I lasted for 4 months, my prison sentence would be dropped. I already knew that was a lie there was no way it would be that short.

I figured if I lasted 1 year they might actually grant me my freedom. It has been at least 26 months at this point. I have been lucky or unlucky enough to last this long with a handful of others. Most cannon fodder they bring in lasts a couple of hours at most.

Speaking of a couple of hours that's probably the amount of time we have left at this point. Our chemical weapon storage is in one of the 2 collapsed bunkers. I think that once our friends outside figure that out, they will give us a taste of our own medicine.

I intend to blow my brains out before i turn into a human puddle. And looking around me, I am sure the rest of us that are left are thinking the same. We don't deserve to leave this place.

For whoever is reading this. I hoped it sucked to get the phone out of the human soup that is my body.

Sister Beatrice sat alone in the dining hall; the warm hue of the fire at the far side revealing sunken eyes, bruises, scratches and anything but warmth. In silence, she stares one by one at all the empty seats across and alongside her. By his virtue, or by his wicked sense of humour, she cannot tell: she has been abandoned…

Did they really get out? If so, why haven’t they come back for me… That was our promise… It was not the first time she had thought this since Martha and Georgia had left the convent.

“The witching hour– that’s when we’ll flee, he… he’ll be asleep and… and I know where he keeps the key” Martha hushed to the other two nuns in their quarter a week? Or was it a day ago? Beatrice struggled to recall.

“You better know, Sister Martha”, Georgia responded, clutching at her missing right ear. The wound was still sore and its stitching was shoddy at best, but the others had tried their hardest with their limited knowledge and that seemed to get the job done. “He made a promise to me– one that I wish not to see come to fruition.” Georgia lightly pulled on the lobe of her other ear.

“Sister Georgia”, Martha moved to hold Georgia’s hands, her lone thumb caressing the palms of her fellow nun. “Have faith. Not just in the Lord, but me, your Sister. And most of all–” Martha moved her thumbless hand to touch Georgia’s cheek, “-Yourself. Do so and this plan will work, God wills it so.”

Beatrice remembered what she was doing amidst this talk, staring up at the rotting ceiling from her bed, counting the seconds in the droplets of water dripping through the slight holes in the old stone. “And that goes for you too, Sister Beatrice. Have faith in us. Have faith in yourself", Martha turned and said to her. Beatrice didn’t respond, instead she rolled over and faced the moldering wall now. Upon its surface, lie what were once simple marks and scratches: ‘Theresia was here!’ etched in chalk, ‘Exodus 20:12’ likewise written above it (an old favourite of Sarah’s, Beatrice thought) and a long list of chalk scratches from where the Sisters of this quarter had compared each other's heights. Now they have become a memorial, to either the missing, or worse…

Beatrice felt Martha touch her shoulder. “We will come back for you, with help… with hope. I promise.” Again Sister Beatrice didn’t respond, even though some part of her knew, deep down in the dark trench where the soul lies, that she should’ve said something, anything to sway her Sisters, what little remained of her family from their suicidal plan. 

There was nothing good for them beyond these ‘hallowed’ grounds, because what was ‘good’ about this place, their home to begin with, has long since dried up. She knew this, and has done for ages now but alas, she was silent, in the same harrowing manner that she is now, watching the seats where Georgia and Martha would’ve sat side by side. For she believed in them, and their fickle hope, no matter how futile it seemed: The idea that they might make it out of this place kept her faith alive.

I pray for you Sisters, wherever you are.

—

Time crackled and burned like the wood in the hearth as Beatrice remained seated, hands clasped together, waiting for, and dreading, his arrival. Sweat slicks her palms in the heat of their fusion. The oak numbs her elbows as she keeps them planted atop it in her prayer.

If thou can hear me, somehow, someway. Then please I beg of you to return. Lift me from this awful place. Deliver me the salvation that the Sisters of the Order of Saint Monica have sought for so, so long now.

Once more, Beatrice checked the chalice in front of her desperately, fearful of the mistake that she thought she would catch. The fluid held within its ornate cup bubbled and hissed as usual, shimmering in its nauseous green– it was just as he always liked it. A woe assailed Beatrice whenever she looked over the cup, whether it was already filled with the revolting liquid or she was about to. The black and gold object, ancient, antique, filled not with wine but with a terrible, pungent blight, the origin of which was lost on Beatrice and all her Sisters. All they knew was how to prepare it for his liking: Boiling a strange substance which seeped from a cask found deep within the cellar.

In the past, procurement and preparation was handled by multiple Sisters. Beatrice would try to worm her way out of heading down to the cellar; a task which Martha would often take over in her place. The eternal dampness of its walls, shining as if the place were a condensing cave in the candle light, the slight hum of buzzing which gnaws and pricks the further one descends, reaching a manic crescendo as one fills a bowl from the seeping cask, unnerved Beatrice to no end. But now bereft of her fellow Sisters, the nun had to brave the damp dark and insectoid hymns by herself, with tension prickling her body as if all those bugs were tangible and crawling over her, their hungry little mouths eager to bite and consume.

She felt the same way now, tension and dread whittling her away as she sat in the dining hall. He will be here soon repeated in her head, and then as if on cue, the door creaked open. The scuttling of several feet flooded the room, dotting Beatrice’s skin with even more goosebumps; for she knew that despite the sound*,* only one person had entered… Father Gordon. 

She dared not to look; to turn her head even slightly in his direction, to glimpse what he had become. The scuttling slowly, agonizingly left the doorway and traveled all the way up to Beatrice, with it came a dissonant fluttering, much like a pair of fans being waved furiously for a few seconds only to then cease, and a constant oral malaise; a tongue clicking like a whip about to strike and the chattering of many, many teeth.

“Sister… Beatrice, forgive my late arrival, I had… a few errands to run. It has made me thirsty… I yearn to have it quenched. I see you have prepared another chalice for me. How… kind of you, child. Let us see if it surfices…” spoke, or rather croaked Father Gordon. The chair to Beatrice’s left was dragged out from the depths of the table with a harsh screech. Beatrice remained rigid, daring only to move her eyes to watch a plump limb stretch across the table towards the chalice. Its skin, as with its muscles it seemed, sagged loosely, like pallid colored and scabbed dirty sheets drooping off the side of a bed. The fat, the excess rotting and rolling right off the bone, of which it could be inferred below the saggy flesh, was jagged. Not broken or fractured, but rather growing in a way that retains its old, familiar shape as off shoots grow and push parts of the flesh in the manner of tent poles. 

The near melting hand wrapped round the stem of the chalice before pulling it towards an unseen mouth. The liquid sloshed and spilled over the rim, staining the oak of the table a mouldy green. The slurping sound that followed carried on Gordon’s eagerness, and his vulgarity. Specks of the drink that Beatrice had tirelessly, fearfully prepared splashed the side of her face. She had turned her head fully away from the Father now, her left cheek cursed with the added freckles he gave her. After a few seconds he stopped.

“This… this is fucking repulsive, Beatrice. The taste… the taste is vile. It is bland, Sister Beatrice. It needs… I need moreee…” Gordon hissed at Beatrice, who fought viciously to keep the tears from leaving her eyes. The chalice was then slammed into the table, right in front of her. What little of the foul liquid that hadn’t already been drunk or spilled sat as a murky puddle at the bottom of the chalice. The arm that brought it down had changed.

Where his bone had once poked at his slouched muscle and skin, it now tore through both in the form of black spines spread along Father Gordon’s grotesque limb, watered by the blood oozing out in the wake of their hatching. His wrists curled as his oddly misplaced gaunt fingers slithered from the chalice, punctuated by his slimy new claws that were once his nails scratching the gold as they passed. A force tore Beatrice’s gaze away from the relative safety of the hall’s other side and onto the chalice– Gordon’s other hand, outstretched and cold, his grim fingers covering the majority of Beatrice’s veil.

“Allow me to… spice up this meal… for you”, Gordon’s hand returned into view, clutching something. Beatrice struggled but Gordon held her head firm, and then, through squinting, weeping eyes, she saw it. The spice. A human ear. Georgia’s ear.

“They say sinners… have flavour in–” he then shuddered in a clicking, simmering fever, excited to merely utter the next word “-abundance.”

Beatrice screamed. The sound raced around the hall, rattling off its walls but it found no crack or purchase to escape through. The only ones who listened are the small sculptures of Mary and Joseph atop the fireplace’s mantel, and Father Gordon, who tore the nun’s head towards him, cackling. The two now met eye to eye. 

Red scintillating lenses numbering a thousand or more stare back into the nun’s own, each reflecting her own pale, horrified face back at her. Beneath, Gordon’s dark mandibles worked to prevent his slouching face from entering his mouth and being chewed by his rows of yellow teeth clicking together in a constant, hungering grind. The nun thrashed and kicked to no avail, Father Gordon’s grip was absolute as he spoke again, drooling and spitting.

*“*Your… Sisters left you… Left me… but fret not, Beatrice… They’ve returned to us now!” Gordon’s hand dove into the depths of his cloak, revealing another. It was Georgia’s thumbless left hand.

“This… is your home… by His grace… by my own! Serve me and all will be… granted to you!” Gordon dragged Beatrice closer despite her efforts to break free. “I asked… for my hunger to be… quenched… Still I wait” he spat. His flesh became even softer, even limper. Great heaps of his fat gave way, tearing from his body to reveal the insect inside. “You will wait… too, until the cask ceases… until the meat stock runs empty… until you have given me… EVERYTHING!” His teeth clicked faster and faster as he began to push Beatrice towards his rancid maw, aiming for her nose. Her hands scrambled to find anything that might help but found nothing, only pudgy clay flesh and the hard carapaced bones beneath it. 

Right as his mandibles and jaws opened wide to deprive her of her nose’s tip, her fingers dug into one of his enlarged eyes, parting the pond of red lenses and adding blood to the vile mix of drool and spit blanketing Beatrice’s face. Father Gordon roared in pain, releasing his grip over the nun, who sprinted as fast as she could for the door. 

—

The hallways of the Order of Saint Monica Monastery were endless, labyrinthine, even to those born within it. They wound in and out of each other, flanking Sister Beatrice on all sides with locked doors, molding paintings and dead ends. She wondered how far Georgia and Martha had made it in their escape. Did they find the key before they were caught?.. Did they make it outside, and how far did they get? Images of one of the doors miraculously unlocking and swinging open, followed by the return of her Sisters, her friends dangled in front of Beatrice, forever out of reach yet still her hands were outstretched and yearning. 

Herded like a sheep to the slaughterhouse by the lengths of the Monastery and faulty hopes; it wasn’t too long before she found herself at the top of the staircase leading to the cellar, and a dreaded conclusion. The dark… I can hide down there. On top of that, the scuttling of Gordon’s feet approaching made the decision to enter the abyss a definitive one. 

Among the smells of old festering meat and peppered by the sound of tiny wings beating once more, Beatrice bolted to the cellar’s deepest point– Where the cask lay, ever-leeking its strange fluid. It lurked in the corner, forming a puddle which dried out, seeming almost crystalline at its edges. The buzzing reached a maddened peak the closer the nun came, a white noise of invisible pests swarming all around her. It was difficult to hear anything else, but soon enough Gordan’s voice still managed to pierce the sound.

“You’re down… here aren’t you? Yes, yes… I can smell your… sinful flesh.”

The nun leapt over the puddle and crouched behind the cask. Her mouth was covered by her trembling hands. Her eyes seeping with tears, stared through gaps in the cask’s stand, failing to make out anything beyond a few steps ahead. 

Please Sisters… God, hear my prayer. Do not let him find me, I beg of you.

No answer was bestowed upon the poor nun. She heard nothing except for the continuous droning of the unseen swarm, and the scuttling that was navigating the dark, drawing closer and closer to the cask.

God… Please.

A shape emerged from the blackness. A leg, long and bent and shelled. Its foot was made up of three sharp points; claws. Another joined it soon thereafter, then another, and another and another. The sound of more claws clicking against the stone, told Beatrice there was even more that she couldn’t see. 

From a disembodied shape above the legs, that the nun assumed was Gordon’s head, or at least what had become of it, growled the Father’s voice.

“You’re close, girl… I can almost taste you…”

Beatrice began to sob. Rather mercifully, it too went unheard under the droning of the swarm; confined would it be to the bowels of the Order of Saint Monica Monastery forevermore, or so she was starting to think. 

A last hope flashed her mind, a do or die decision that could end this nightmare or seal her fate for good. Her hands left her quivering mouth and placed themselves on the side of the cask.

Gordon’s head lowered towards the substance, and more malignant details of his transformation became clear. His face had melted off almost completely, now only the remnants of his left side remained, and even then they were in tatters compared to what once was. His right eye was still a meaty crater in the wake of the nun’s fingers, which he seemed to care very little about; this unholy metamorphosis was almost complete, brimming at the threshold much like the chalice filled by the fluid that facilitates its occurrence. Atop his head, a twin pair of antennas lurched downwards, twitching, pointing like two prongs of the Devil’s pitchfork, aimed directly at Beatrice.

Gordon opened his mandibles, his teeth shined in the dark with their plaque like ancient gemstones. “Found… you”, he said laughing in a barely human tongue.

“Have Faith”, Beatrice recalled as she shoved the cask with all her might. The fluid whipping and smearing its left side as it fell, crashing into Gordon’s head and splitting wide open. She ran for the stairs but this time, one of Gordon's legs swept hers and she fell hard onto the stone. Turning round, head throbbing, Beatrice gazed at the drenched monstrosity that was once her beloved Father. All traces of his past; his warmth, his kindness, his love floated in the puddle-turned lake that was spreading across the cellar’s floor, now all that remained was gurgling, cackling insect still reaching its claw and mandibles out towards its next meal.

“Moreee… moreeee… I need MORE!” Gordon shrieked, though his limbs and parts had ceased their approach. Frozen by the same force that had caused them to change, the same force that was changing them again, only faster now. More claws sprouted from his blackened appendages; soon enough each became a forest of tangling thorns, scraping the stone and slipping on the innards of the cask. The silhouettes of great fly wings birthed from his slick abdomen in the dark, bending and snapping as other wings grew immediately out of them. Worst of all was his undulating head, now a nest of fragile jawbones that snap constantly as if they were merely a bundle twigs; tongues, proboscises, some a combination of both wriggled forth from this nest, lapping up more of the spilt ‘goods’. 

Beatrice scrambled backwards, dragging her bruised body from the floor before the fluid could reach. Right as she went to leave the cellar, she turned around, squinting back at the abyss and the mess that was once Father Gordon. The shadows squirmed, vitriolic in the creation of new parts, but thankfully, by someone’s grace, be it God himself or her Sisters watching over her: the Father was immobile. His cackles became muddled under his ever-flowing form, but they didn’t cease, not even as Beatrice left him down there gurgling, hissing, laughing in the dark…

—

It took her some time, but Beatrice indeed found the key to the exit. It was among the half-eaten bodies of Sister Georgia and Sister Martha… She’d found them tucked away in 

the attic, by the sound of all the flies feasting upon them. 

Gently, Beatrice closed her Sister’s eyes, despite their lack of eyelids to close, and spoke softly.

“Dear Sisters, our long plight… has ended. I will keep you and all the others in my heart, forever and always.”

Later Beatrice approached the great iron door that was the entrance to the monastery, sliding the key into its lock with a hollow ‘click!’ The nun pushed the door open and was greeted by a cold autumn night. She wondered briefly if this dark would be the kind she was used to; cold, horrid, a shade looming over her, but she soon realised that the only way to find out was to push on. And most of all have faith.

The End.

Hi reddit. Things have been weird lately. I’m writing this to remember my story. It is starting to fade, and I’m worried that it’ll be gone by the time I’m supposed to do what I need to. It all began with my grandfather.

My Grandfather was an ordinary man. Nothing about him screamed for attention, and day after day, he quietly lived his life to his standards. He was often stoic and blunt, but he was always a good man. He fixed dinner at 5:30 pm every night like clockwork, brushed his teeth, and laid out his outfit for the next day. And despite my ardent protests, he liked to attend the early-morning church service.

At 7:30 am, he’d calmly wait at the back door for me, not bothering to look at his watch because he knew the time by the shape of the sun in the sky. It was a trick that he’d picked up from his time in the army. He never had to look, and his last Sunday morning was no different.

I walked into the kitchen, grabbed a handful of peppermints because I’d forgotten to brush my teeth, and made my way to the back door. He never said anything to me about my disheveled hair or wrinkled button-up shirt. He simply opened the door and gestured to the car. I walked through, feeling a pang of guilt for disrupting his schedule, and got into the driver’s seat.

Grandpa was ninety-six, couldn’t drive anymore because of his tremors, and could barely read the letters on a stop sign. Most people surmised that he’d lived as long as he did to take care of me. Sometimes I think they were right. And even though he needed my help, I needed his more.

I wasn’t exactly an easy child to raise when I came to live with him in Grenwich. He was my last stop before foster care, and I didn’t make it easy on him at all. I was troubled, mean, bitter, and angry. I took out my sadness and rage on others, treating the world as my punching bag. All I did was get into fights in my first week of school. Somehow, by the grace of God, my grandpa was able to convince the principal, time after time, to give me detention, extra classwork, community service, or a suspension. He wanted the best for me, even if I didn’t want it at first. Over time, I learned to respect him, and he taught me to be a man. To listen. To understand. To guard my heart. To grow wisdom… even in my pain. He taught me more than I could have ever asked for.

I was removed from my mom’s house at thirteen because booze and men are better company to keep than taking care of your son and daughter, but with the way this world works, my sister’s death was what finally got them to remove me from her care. It wasn’t fair, but my sister’s life paid for a better one for me. I talk to her sometimes, wondering if she can hear me. Doubt it, but it does make me feel better.

The drive to church was always quiet, but he wasn’t quiet on his last visit before his death. He rolled down the window and stuck his arm out the door, feeling the morning air on his skin.

Then, he turned to me and spoke slowly. “Preston, you’ve been a joy in my life.”

I stared at him in confusion. Breaking from his routine felt like a sin now, and it unsettled me. “Grandpa, what are you going on about?”

He shook his head. “I just wanted you to know that. I felt like I got a second chance to do better.” He patted my shoulder. “There’s a lockbox under my bed. It’s got everything you’ll need.”

By that point, I realized that something was wrong, hair prickling up on my arm and a familiar rush of warmth to my cheeks. “Are you sick? Why are you telling me all of this?”

He smiled, drooping eyes moist from wetting drops and bushy eyebrows half trimmed. “No… But I don’t want you to think I left you with nothing.”

That was our last Sunday together. He sat calmly in the pew, stole a peppermint from me, only stood for the singing, followed along in his large-print Bible that I’d bought him, and I forgot all about what he’d told me. I figured it was just elderly worries, stuff that comes as you steadily get older. But I was wrong. I came home from school at 4:30 pm that Wednesday to find him lying peacefully in his recliner. He’d passed in his sleep watching the news like he wanted. Who could’ve asked for a better way to go?

The days that followed were a blur: phone calls, funeral service planning, obituaries, flowers… All of it was overwhelming in quite a way, but I handled it. He had a life insurance policy and a funeral fund that went straight to me. Even if my mom was listed, they wouldn’t be able to find her. Who the hell knows where she’s ended up. But since I’d turned eighteen, I was legally an adult. I didn’t have to go into foster care. I didn’t have to go anywhere.

I was sad after he passed, but life carried on. I went to school. I ate supper at 5:30 pm. I got a job to pay the bills; I visited his grave every Tuesday after school. Everything was fine until one strange Tuesday.

I arrived at Salem Hill Cemetery much later than I usually did, taking the oldest entrance by the gate. The front of the cemetery was blocked off, and I was forced to go around to the back, where the oldest graves rested. They were very old. The names were worn off by erosion, and some were overtaken by the ground. The oldest year that I could make out was dated back to the 1800s.

The sun was barely a flicker in the sky as it grew softer and softer. I quietly walked to his grave, fingers tracing over the soft wisps and tendrils of long grass. Purple flowers speckled across the ground, beautiful and thriving, unlike any I’d ever seen. The aroma was intoxicating, but it was very strange that I’d never noticed them.

Near the flowers, a willow tree in the distance seemed to sway, dancing to its own life and breath. If it had been a woman, I imagined her more beautiful than any I’d ever seen.

With a shrug, I journeyed onward, seeing a wrought iron fence that separated one portion of the cemetery from the other. I rolled my eyes and climbed over, seeing my Grandfather’s gravestone in the distance.

“There you are,” I whispered, brushing my hands off on my uniform pants.

I found his grave, and with a sigh, I sat down in the now damp grass, listening to the loud croak of the frogs at the pond nearby and the low buzz of the cicadas in the trees above me.

“Hey grandpa,” I whispered, looking up into the darkening sky.

I continued to talk to him, slowly growing more and more tired. I don’t know when I lay down, and I don’t know when my eyes finally creaked shut, but I was lulled to sleep by the sound of the resting graves and sleeping corpses. Maybe being near him calmed my aching soul.

When I awoke, I sat up in confusion, smearing the grass off my cheek. And in disbelief, I realized that the graves on the other side of the fence were glowing. I rubbed my eyes, refusing to believe the strange phenomenon occurring around me. I slowly stood. I couldn’t decide if I was asleep or dreaming. In fear, I turned around to spy more and more stones slowly glowing to life. With each blink, more stones began to glow, mimicking the striking white of the moon and the glistening faces of the stars.

“My God…” I whispered, stepping back and nearly tripping over my Grandfather’s mound of dirt.

I swallowed hard, gathering my thoughts and jogging to the wrought iron fence. I climbed over to get a closer look at the glowing stones and nearly fell. On the other side, I stopped, seeing one of the purple flowers. It wavered for a moment, and for a brief second, I believed that I saw an eye blinking in the center. It gazed at me before shutting quickly. I shook my head and slapped my face, trying to wake up. I had to be crazy. I was having a psychotic break. My heart pounded in my ribcage, thumping wildly. What is happening to me?

And as if summoned by my terror, a blinding white light formed at the willow tree, shooting upward into the heavens as a beacon… a call that the dead nor I could understand. The tendrils began to whip back and forth. The beautiful curves of the bark and long branches rose to stand straight up. Then I saw her, a woman trapped within the tree. She was screaming as she gazed upward into the night sky, mouth gaping into a hollow, empty cry. Her limbs were quivering, held in place and pulled upward by the light.

A sound like thunder rocked the sky, and I collapsed in fear, clutching my ears. A moist and warm substance dripped down my neck, and I quickly realized that my left ear was bleeding from the deafening noise.

In terror, I grabbed my cellphone to call for help, but its battery was dead.

Each grave began to vibrate. The stones began to rock, grinding against the earth. Fearfully, I grasped onto the closest gravestone, feeling the quake of the rough rock beneath my palms. My body trembled, and I closed my eyes, refusing to believe what I was witnessing.

A loud crack echoed through the cemetery, and my eyes shot open. Another thunderous roar reverberated from the ground. A gravestone near me shot into the air, thrown by something it once contained.

A forceful wind swept across the ground, and it carried a horrible bellow from the grave where the stone was ripped away. A decayed old woman emerged from within. She was naked, born of the soil that dripped from her hair, marking her escape from death and emergence into life.

Her advanced stage of decay made my stomach churn. The old woman’s eyes were gone, deflated balloons of mush. Maggots and bugs writhed up and down her legs, still eating and feasting upon her. Her skin was saggy and barely holding to the bone. The horrible color was a mixture of black and gray, and I couldn’t begin to imagine what the smell was like. With each step, something sloughed off her, making a path toward the light.

As I crouched behind the stone, a man emerged from the white light. His eyes were as gray as the stones around him, lifeless and unenthused. His hair was dark, neatly kept, but antlers emerged from his head. They were adorned with linked chains of silver and sparkling gems. He was neither old nor young. His features seemed to morph as he waited for her to approach. But the man’s eyes and hair remained unchanged. His mouth, nose, and chin were slips and turns of features that I couldn’t describe.

He wore a suit and tie, leaning on a metal cane. He began to walk toward her, and with each movement of the cane and thump, the ground shivered and quaked. His command over the soil tethered me to the gravestone. I couldn’t move, bound and too frightened to think.

Ominous fog seeped over the ground, drifting aimlessly but called. It was not merely coincidence. This creature… This ethereal being of the night had conjured it as he’d conjured the woman from her grave.

Once he bordered the bright light, he stopped. He did not speak, merely gestured to the woman. And she followed his command, empty eyes agreeing to his terms without question.

I leaned a little farther to the side to see more, and I knocked the glass vase on the grave that once held flowers. The sound of glass breaking shattered the silence. Both the old woman and the man turned to gaze upon me.

Without command, the old woman began to run at me. I yelled in terror, cutting my hand on the glass as I leaped up to run. I bolted through the grass, lungs screaming and throat constricting as I breathed. I ducked behind an old crypt to catch my breath, and my bloodied hand smeared over the stones that marked the entombment slots of the dead.

I clutched my hand, breathing rapidly as fear overtook me. In the darkness, my only guide was the moon, but as I gazed up at her luminous cheeks and smile, she began to darken. The unholy shadow of antlers began to shift across her.

My heart dropped into my stomach, and every bone in my body began to shake. I didn’t think I was going to get out of this one alive, but I wouldn’t go down without trying. I took a deep breath, forcing myself to think rationally. I must live. I HAVE TO.

As I searched for the closest path to my car in the fog, something trickled down onto my shoulder, and I looked up to see the old woman peeking at me from the roof of the crypt. Her mouth was cracked into a smile; putrid-smelling saliva leaked down her chin as she savored the look of me.

“Nowhere… to… hide…” she hissed, taking a deep inhalation of me. Her voice sounded cracked and as withered as her body. No longer a human voice. Something horrible... Something sinister.

I slowly backed away from the crypt, but I was a moment too late. Hands tore through the stone graves behind me, pinning me. Their entombment meant nothing in the face of the entity’s cosmic power feeding life into their bones.

I cried out in terror, fighting against the many hands that were ripping into my flesh and tearing my clothing. Horrible cries and shrieks erupted from the graves, and through the cracks, I could see their gnashing teeth.

The old woman made her way to me, climbing down the side of the crypt like a spider. Her bones cracked and rocked, grinding into the sockets. Her neck clicked back into place as she crawled to me.

She reached up, fingers shaking fervently as she grazed my cheek. She tore through the hands holding me, freeing one of my arms. She snapped it without hesitation.

Pain erupted through my body as I screamed in agony. I could barely breathe as the pain swelled through me in waves, each nerve alerting the next of the broken bone hanging within my skin.

She wrenched my arm to her face, gingerly pulling my fingers to her mouth. She bit down on my pointer finger, crunching through the bone as one would eat a carrot.

Suddenly, she was ripped back, torn from me as if strings were knotted through her bones.

“Disgusting little beast, isn’t she?” A voice came from the darkness as it approached. “But the dead have never been known for their kindness… especially if they return to reap what they sowed as they did in life. And that specimen was evil… even before death.”

Tears poured down my face as I gazed at my mangled finger. The flesh was pulverized by her teeth, hanging off of the stump that should hold a finger. What was left of my finger barely resembled anything other than ground beef. It was a ground lump of fragmented bone bits and blood, minced as if placed in a blender. I shook violently as blood spurted out of my finger. I couldn’t stop it, and at one point, I became woozy just from the sight of it. I couldn’t comprehend what I was looking at, and I considered cutting the flesh off. It wasn’t worth saving anyway.

Slowly, the hands that held me slithered back into their tomb, not wanting to challenge the being as he walked to me leisurely. I collapsed, unable to stand, but it did not matter. He flicked his wrist, and my body rose, dragged to him through the tall grass. I plopped to the ground before him, unable to meet his gaze.

He squatted down to look upon me and clicked his tongue. “Now… this will hurt, Preston.”

He grabbed my broken arm and wrenched me up. Then, his grip tightened, and an excruciating burst of electricity filled my body. The pain was indescribable. It tore through my body like fire as he clutched me. A wail ripped out of my throat, cutting the vocal cords and searing the trachea. I could hardly think or breathe. And then, I was gone, drifting somewhere between dream and wake.

My body was floating, hovering, and drifting through the great sea of fear and peace. I was nothing for a moment, snapping into a brief lapse of time. I believed that I had died. Had death claimed me once and for all? Was it over? It had been so quick, easier than falling asleep.

When my eyes peeled open, I was lying in my bed. The smell of my home filled my mind, sending relief circling through my veins. It must’ve been a dream. I lifted my arm to look at my perfectly straight bone and expertly crafted finger. No sign of trauma or even a scar.

But I was not alone. I slowly looked up to view the shadow of antlers resting on the wall opposite me. The creature’s shadow was much larger, no longer resembling the human I saw in the cemetery. His clothing was jaggedly cut, clinging to his skin and billowing around him. It moved in such a way that it could have been wings, but I wasn’t quite sure. It twisted and writhed, unyielding to the eyes of a mortal man. I was not meant to gaze upon him, so I dared not turn, much less breathe or scream.

“Your grandfather was a good man,” he whispered, picking up the picture of him on my nightstand. “He greeted me as a friend, unafraid of death and welcoming of my spirit.”

I didn’t reply. My mouth twitched, unable to form a single sentence or coherent word.

“He spoke of you… You were his only regret. He didn’t want to leave you.” He put down the picture. “It was quite touching. Many do not often dare to speak of their life to me, but he’d seen enough horrors in his time to take my hand gladly. Most veterans carry their wounds until I come or dementia takes it first.”

He dragged his finger down the wooden post of my bed, fingernail scraping through the paint. “War is a dreadful thing, only fulfilling for the ones who showered it in the lives of innocents and won. A dreadful waste if you ask me… a dreadful… dreadful waste of blood and flesh.”

I still didn’t answer, and his shadow cocked its head to the side. “Do not fear me, human. I’ve returned you home and tucked you into bed. If I wished to harm you… You’d already be dead. It is still within my grasp if that is what you’d prefer.”

He raised his hand, and I saw the shadow of his long fingers, sharply pointed like fine-tipped needles piercing flesh. Maybe it was bone or wood, but I couldn’t be sure. His shadow obscured the fine details that might reveal the truth, and I definitely wasn’t turning to face him.

“No… I would not prefer that.” I took a deep breath. “Why… Why did you save me from that— that… woman?”

“Not your time,” he replied lowly, voice grating and shaking the room. His shadow elongated and stretched. “Even I have my rules… Just as you have your own clock to time your life and strike as it ends. You will certainly see me again. It is the way of things. Life and death come and go.”

I went quiet… too fearful to ask it another question, and yet I wanted to know what stood in my bedroom and spared me.

He simply chuckled as if he could hear my innermost thoughts, and perhaps… he could.

“I am what I am… I see, and I hear. I feel, and I know. I have many names… many from each star and planet and corner of the earth. Many have sought me out to bargain their claim to the lives I own, but you never did. You never asked me to return what I took from you. And you… You have lost so much as a young, budding man. Your life has barely begun.”

“My sister…” I breathed. “She shouldn’t have died. You should have taken my mother!”

“Ah…” he replied. “Maryanne… I remember her. Tiny little thing, not much older than you. Froze to death after your mother locked you two outside, and she used her body to protect you from the snow and bitter cold of the winter’s tempest. Cried when I took her hand. But as the embrace of death took her, she no longer felt the cold. I saved her from this place... from the monstrosity of man. Death was merciful and a gift unto her battered life. As it would be for you if it was time.”

Tears filled my eyes, but I refused to let them burn down my face. “You let her die…” I growled. “Why didn’t you take my mother instead?”

The shadow of his horns shook upon his head. “I cannot change what has been written. Your mother’s time will come, and for her crimes, she too shall pay a bitter… bitter price…”

He took a deep breath. “But know that something is brewing beneath the ground. A place within Grenwich has disrupted my laws for far too long… broken my venerated calling. Their relentless use of the cemetery cannot go unnoticed. They’re feeding something… a terrible creature within the ground that is only growing more powerful. And they shall be punished. You will be my herald. And you will know with whom to speak my message to when he returns. I will give it to you and speak with your tongue.”

“The cemetery?” I asked. “Why are you so worried about the cemetery?”

The creature stared directly at his shadow, and dark eyes formed onto the wall before me. I gazed into them fearfully, shaking and holding tightly to my blankets. I had transformed into a child again, terrified of the shadows that slipped and waltzed in the dark. Yet eyes had formed to gaze upon me, manifesting the threshold between dream and wake.

“A part of the cemetery is dangerous and planted upon a vat of poison. It is contaminated, and it can reverse my touch… my final judgment. The fence that you climbed over is the border. Anyone buried within the fence will return. Beings of the dark discovered the cemetery’s true nature, and now they use it to walk again and to wreak havoc upon the living once more.” He shifted, fingers clinking together. “Humans made their own portion of the cemetery when they realized their dead would return if they buried them within the gate…”

His eyes narrowed on the wall, growing more and more vast. They began to sparkle, glistening as if the cosmos rested within them. Darkness swirled through the irises, and lights danced from the world beyond. The infinite possibilities of his power rested within his eyes, knowing and seeing all despite his careful form. I could not look away. Our gaze was locked, immoveable and unbroken. Whatever he asked of me, I would fulfill.

I breathed out, noticing the puff of vapor and the chill in the air around me. Death was cold, but his embrace was warm. “So, my grandfather will not come back?”

The creature shook his head. “No… He was not buried in the bitter place. He will remain at rest… as will your sister. Life will not touch them again.”

Tears finally slipped down my face, and my heart ached bitterly, reliving the memories of my sister and my Grandfather. The only love I’d ever known was taken by the creature who stood inside my very bedroom. And now, I was to be his messenger and relay some coded secret to a stranger.

He spoke slowly once more. “Do not mourn the dead, dear boy. Mourn the living. They must endure the hour of the dark.”

A blinding light filled the room. “Soon, I shall come again…”

His voice was no longer human, exuding a command over my body that I knew not. His voice became loud and booming, shaking the walls. I covered my eyes, unable to see, as if gazing at the light of the sun. In a single clap of thunder, he was gone, and his departure shattered my windows, glasses, picture frames, and mirror. I could hear the soft tinkle of glass hitting the floor.

My eyes did not close until daylight poured into my room, soft fingers stretching onto the floor and touching my face. And finally, I rolled over, trying to decide what being had mended my arm and finger. I can only assume that the creature was some god of death, an unworldly being sent to claim humanity’s souls. But now, he is gone, and he left me as his harbinger.

As time passed since our meeting, I developed a strange sense within my soul. Sometimes I know things… things I’m not meant to see or know. And oddly, my finger burns if I drive too close to the back entrance of Salem Hill Cemetery. Sometimes, I think something is watching me when I visit my Grandfather’s grave. I never go through the back entrance or climb over the fence, but sometimes I stand on the other side, wondering and thinking and gazing at the woman within the willow.

And I still don’t know what man I am supposed to bring his message to. I’m still searching… And the memories of that night are becoming vague and dulled, sinking into confusion and doubt. Maybe I didn’t meet him at all. Maybe he never spoke to me… I’m not sure if it actually happened.

But I do know this. I hope I never see the god of death return to Grenwich until it is my time to leave… Until it’s my time to be a dearly departed soul.

A white pixel.

A single, stray white pixel drifting across the front page of the BBC website.

At first I thought it was a problem with my monitor, but I switched tabs to the New York Times and the pixel disappeared.

I scratched my head.

I looked around, including out the window, where people were passing along the sidewalk, engrossed in their phones.

I switched browser tabs back to the BBC:

More than one white pixel now; three, four, “falling” diagonally across the page. I followed one all the way down.

It settled on the bottom, remained.

I went on social media.

I wasn't the only one who'd noticed. People all over the world were asking what was wrong. What's up with the news? Is it a hack or something? Why’s it freakin' snowing on the BBC?

So began the winter of the internet.

The BBC may have been the first—or merely the first-noticed—but it wasn't the only affected website. Soon most were; then all. You'd open YouTube or your banking site to find it obscured by a blizzard of white pixels…

The screens themselves turned cold.

Then links began to fail. They stopped pointing to coherent urls.

Then the incoherent links turned brown (#A52A2A), fell off; fell and disappeared, buried perhaps in the accumulations of already fallen snow—leaving eerie spaces on their pages.

Text became incomplete. Navigation, difficult.

Soon, bookmarks suffered the same fate, pointing to pages that could no longer be found.

Cursors shivered.

Videos and animations froze over like lakes of liquid information.

Around this time, I remember listening to a song using one of the streaming apps on my phone. They still, intermittently, worked.

The song was The Beatles' “Let It Be.”

Thirty seconds in, the track began to skip, sound garbled. Paul McCartney's vocals were laboured, as if he was running out of breath.

The earphones started letting off rhythmic bursts of steam.

Then, mid-song, the singing abruptly ended, even as the music continued, oddly slowed; and I had the deeply uncomfortable feeling that I was listening to the death of something…

It made me sick to my stomach.

For a while you could still type in a url and see the resulting site, but loading was slow and the contents were increasingly impossible to understand, riddled, as they were, with gaps, uncanny staticity and neverending snows that reached sometimes almost to the browser bar.

The code itself was as bare as a December tree.

The device didn't matter.

There was no serious explanation.

Or maybe there was and most of us couldn't access it, because how would we access information except online? How else could we even communicate, congregate, disseminate our knowledge, on a mass scale…

Television? Radio?

Newspapers?

But those required organization, communication, infrastructure, all of which now relied on cyberspace; which the winternet denied us.

We couldn't buy groceries, clothes, tools or books online.

We had to go to the store, but the store couldn't accept our credit card payments because the systems were frozen. Not that much was available, even for those with cash, because the delivery schedule had been interrupted. When trucks did arrive, there was hardly anything on them.

Even information saved or printed off the internet broke. Images became corrupted. Paper frosted over and thawed until the ink ran.

Even our memories of websites, and what we'd learned from websites, were remembered through walls of frigid static.

It was shocking how much we didn't know; how much basic knowledge we had lost. It was painful too, the feeling of sudden, helpless disconnection. If we had a question, there was no one to ask for the answer but each other and ourselves. We were children without a parent, cells without a structure. We were leftover parts. We were apes.

A trade in books developed.

People stole them, killed for them, hoarded them so they could dispense their wisdom piece by piece, for a price.

There sprang up an economy of expertise.

People who knew, or remembered, were valued; or forced to give up their knowledge—to share it—by writing it down. It was lucrative but dangerous to be known to know something.

Strong knowers protected their worth, defended their territories, strove ruthlessly to establish regional monopolies of information and eliminated their rivals to keep supply low.

Weak knowers were exploited, squeezed like fruits and left juiceless to dry out and die.

For the majority of us, it was prudent to publicly deny knowing anything, while privately trading what we knew in local networks of trust, bartering with the contents of our minds.

One of the first things I bartered for was an old stereo system and a box full of audio cassettes, one of which was the Beatles album Let It Be.

As soon as I got home, I boiled myself some water, steeped a few herbs and put the album on.

The first five tracks played flawlessly.

It was bliss.

Then the sixth track, “Let It Be,” failed to play at all; the tape spun but all there was was four minutes and three seconds of silence.

But when I later played the audio cassette for my wife, she didn't know what I meant.

“You're gaslighting me right?” she said.

“I'm not.”

“Okay, well, I'm not sure what to tell you, I hear the whole song, just like I remember when my dad used to play it.”

My wife's father had been a professor emeritus of molecular biology.

He'd been beaten to death in the early days of the winternet by a despondent mother who wouldn't accept that my wife's father knew nothing about setting her sobbing child's fractured bone.

Until his final breath, she accompanied each blow to his head with the words, “Stop holding out on me you selfish old prick!”

In a sense, that's where we still are, wanting to believe that if winter then spring, and holding out hope for the coming of a season that, every day, seems further and further away.

Like any child, my daughter Maisie had quite the overactive imagination. Her mind was chock full of made-up friends that she talked to on the regular. My wife Rachel and I thought it was adorable. With that being said, sometimes we wished Maisie would get…you know…real friends. Don’t get me wrong, she was a great kid, and kids should be kids, but she didn’t have anything in terms of a social life.

We tried absolutely and positively everything, from the kids’ playclub at our church, to the neighborhood’s “mommy and me” and “daddy and me” playgroups, to bringing her to the local playground, to inviting other children over for playdates. You name it. All our efforts were in vain. Rachel and I might’ve been overreacting and we didn’t want to infringe anything on Maisie. Maybe she was just an independent kid. That’s totally normal. As are imaginary friends for kids.

Then at eight-years-old, Maisie became mute. Just completely stopped talking…but only to other people. If someone came up and talked to her, she’d either just stare at them or run away and hide. Maisie never looked scared or anxious in those scenarios. It was more like she was a statue. Frozen. No emotion good or bad on her face. Like a robot. But if she was alone, she’d be talking up a storm to no one but herself. Maisie always pretended like someone was truly there though. She’d even nod her head, wait for responses and respond accordingly, and even reach out her arm and act like she was holding somebody else’s hand.

We were greatly concerned. Children don’t exhibit those types of behaviors without proper reason. We couldn’t ask Maisie about it because, as aforementioned, she’d give us the cold shoulder. Our next safest bet was to ask other people we knew. A lot of them gave us the same answers we already knew. Rachel and I were getting frustrated until I decided to email her teacher at her school. I sent her an email that outlined my worries and asked if anything went on at school that we should know about.

I got a response at around 8:00 that night. Maisie’s teacher, Mrs. Ashelin, told me that she did in fact observe strange behavior from Maisie. Apparently, a few days prior, when Maisie was called on to answer a question, she just stared at Mrs. Ashelin and the other students, her hands behind her back, swaying slightly. Then in a calm and cutesy voice, she said “He has ordered me not to speak to anyone but him.” In her notebook, Maisie wrote and drew some very disturbing things. Some of the things she wrote are “I’ll be a good little mouse”, “be one of the good mice girls for him”, “I’ll do whatever he says without question”, “he loves me and I love him”, “but I don’t understand what love is but I understand it with him”, and “he loves to play with me”. Some of the things she drew were her, in stick figure form, with this…thing. It was drawn way more detailed than Maisie herself.

Its head was triangular and elongated into a sharp point. There were ovally black eyes on both sides of its head while two large circular ears were atop its head. Two slits for a nose and a mouth containing only two buck teeth. Skinny. Boney. You could see its ribs. Three spindly fingers were on each hand. Each tip was as sharp as a knife. Lastly, a long tail was behind it. Maisie drew her and that thing doing very…how should I say this?...inappropriate things.

I showed the email to Rachel and she was just as horrified as I was. How could Maisie know what all that stuff was? She was eight! Like any good parent we always took great strides in not exposing our daughter to anything sexual or of that nature. Early exposure can really ruin a child’s mind. That’s just putting it lightly. But this? Maisie’s whole imaginary friend thing needed to end. It was reaching a dangerous point. Was she having delusions? Schizophrenia? Or…sigh…as far as Rachel and I knew, nothing happened to Maisie, but that didn’t stop us from considering the absolute worst case scenario. I’m not saying what that is but I’m sure you can put the pieces together. As a parent, that was the last thing I wanted to think about. Actually it wasn’t even on the list of things I wanted to think about.

Mrs. Ashelin ended the email with something else that happened that day. Maisie spent long stretches of time in the girl’s bathroom. Another student reported that she went in and heard “whimpers” and “moans” coming from one of the stalls. When she looked under it, she saw Maisie’s clothes on the ground and a “moving shadow” above them. When the student knocked on the door, she all of a sudden heard one of the faucets going behind her. She turned around and Maisie was washing her hands. Like nothing happened.

Rachel and I were very confused at that last part. That sounded way too ridiculous. Like was Maisie fucking floating in the stall or something? Regardless, we treated all this very seriously. Rachel and I immediately took Maisie to see a specialist who dealt with child abuse cases. I brought her notebook along. It would most certainly be useful. I knew Maisie wouldn’t want to talk, but we had to at least try. Believe it or not, she did talk, but what she said made chills run down Rachel and I’s spines.

Maisie told the specialist that the mouse thing in her notebook was called “Bad Mouse” and that it visits her all the time no matter where she is. She said that Bad Mouse visits little girls all over the world and “plays with them”. When the specialist asked what she meant by “plays with them”, Maisie replied that Bad Mouse does “different things that make us feel tingly in preparation to be his little mice girls”.

We heard enough by that point. Rachel, the specialist, and I had a long discussion about what we should do. The specialist said she might have to put in a request to have Maisie placed in a children’s psych ward. Rachel and I couldn’t handle that. We didn’t want to do that to our little girl. By any means, we would find another way to handle this. The specialist told us to think about it and that it might do her some good. We thanked her and left.

Were we being selfish by not putting Maisie in a children’s psych ward? Rachel and I pondered that question day in and day out. We never did end up doing it because we thought it was too extreme. Also there was no evidence that Maisie was being legitimately sexually abused. The specialist’s physical exam said that Maisie was totally fine in that regard. We were allowed to see footage from the security cameras at the entrances of the bathrooms at Maisie’s school. They only showed Maisie going in, about half an hour going by, then the other student going in, then Maisie leaving a few minutes later. No one else. And no one went in before her besides a couple other girls that left before Maisie went in. Was Maisie faking it? Was she really delusional? Or schizophrenic? We didn’t know. Rachel and I needed time to think this whole thing over.

It only got worse from then on.

Maisie was never one to talk in her sleep. She was always dead silent. Not even a snore. But that night after Rachel and I put her to bed, we heard Maisie talking. I’m not talking about little quiet unintelligible murmurs. No. Full-on conversations. Except she wasn’t speaking English. It was some unknown language that resembled Pig Latin but different. Her accent changed too. This happened for three nights. On the third night, Rachel and I were in her doorway watching her talk in that strange language when she suddenly rose up, her eyes still closed, and burst into an intense laughing fit. Maisie was cackling so hard it looked like it hurt. Then she immediately stopped and did these weird movements with her lips and hands like she was kissing something. Finally, she fell back down onto her pillow and went right back to sleep.

The next day, I knocked on Maisie’s door to let her know breakfast was ready. She didn’t respond. I stood there for a couple minutes. Maisie hadn’t made a single sound. I slowly opened her door. My heart beat faster and faster. With all that was going on, I didn’t know what to expect, and that made it terrifying. Maisie was in her underwear just staring at her wall. I rushed over, “Maisie? What are you doing?” I handed her clothes back to her, “Put your clothes back on.”

“…He doesn’t want me to…he thinks I look better without them…”

We stared at each other for an indefinite period of time. I said nothing. And so did she. Then I turned my head to where she was looking. There was nothing there…obviously…but something told me I was wrong. That thing…Bad Mouse…it was staring right at me…

“Guys? Breakfast isn’t gonna eat itself!” Rachel yelled at us from down the hall. Quickly I hurried Maisie and I out of her room.

I was kind of a wreck the entire day. Thinking straight wasn’t really a thing for me. There was nothing staring at me. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. These past few weeks were just getting to my head and playing mind games. No amount of trying to distract myself would let me forget what I felt. That’s when I decided to take a drive. I didn’t exactly know where. Just away from everything. I was tempted to go to a local bar. I used to be quite the alcoholic but I’m sober. Even still, I thought about breaking my streak to relapse. I decided against it. That would be so incredibly stupid. I ended up at a park that I used to take Maisie to in a futile attempt for her to make friends. I found a parking spot and just sat there in my car. Taking a big sigh, I observed all the parents with their kids having a blast and I smiled. Good for them.

I stayed there for a while. Finally I was able to, if only briefly, forget all my troubles.

Then I saw it.

Him.

Bad Mouse.

The damned thing was underneath a big tree. Its eyes were fixed right on me and its hands were clasped together. I couldn’t do anything but stare right back. Goosebumps were forming. My breathing was really heavy. Cold shivers ran down my body. I couldn’t even blink. Petrified. That’s what I was. I watched as Bad Mouse slowly reached behind itself and pulled…something…out. At first I couldn’t tell what it was. I am not shitting you. A little girl…made of meat…her hair was meat, skin was meat, she was even wearing a meat dress. Everything about her was meat. Her head looked just like Bad Mouse’s. Long. Pointy. Angular. Big ears. Black oval eyes.

It was holding the little meat girl by the collar. Slowly Bad Mouse turned to look into her eyes. It opened its mouth. Viscous white liquids began pouring as it let out its long black tongue. First sniffing the little meat girl, it then took a big long lick of her, from her feet to the top of her head. The parts where it licked were gone, instead resting on Bad Mouse’s tongue until it sucked its tongue back in, chewed, then swallowed. The little meat girl was covered in the viscous white liquids until her missing portions slowly regenerated back into how she was before.

Then I blacked out.

I woke up several hours later still sitting in my car. In my half-tired half-frenzied state, I looked around for any sign of Bad Mouse. Nothing. There weren’t even other people. It was dark too. I opened my phone. 11:23 PM. I got to the park at 2:14 PM. Nine hours. I was expecting a bunch of missed calls and unanswered texts. Surprisingly, there was nothing besides a notification from my weather app. I went back home. Both my wife and daughter were asleep. I was so glad there weren’t any…incidents…I missed. In fact, the house was extremely quiet. No lights were on. It was a weekend. Usually Rachel was still up at this time.

“Rach?” I called out. Nothing. I went upstairs to our room. She wasn’t there. I opened Maisie’s door. She wasn’t there either. I sat down on the couch and pondered where they could be. When I couldn’t come up with anything, I got my phone out and called Rachel.

I heard ringing from upstairs.

Confused, I ran back up to our room. I called her name again. Still no answer. I realized that before I checked so quickly I neglected to look in our bathroom. The door was closed and the light was on. I was now getting this creeped out feeling. Cautiously, I approached and nudged the door.

It creaked open.

Rachel.

She was…splattered…fucking everywhere…all over the walls, floor, ceiling, window, sink, shower…everywhere. Rachel was…pureed…blended…sprayed…I just stood in the doorway. My eyes were wide. I couldn’t process what I was seeing. There were so many things I wanted to do, like crawl into a ball and cry, scream as loud as I could, and/or grab one of the kitchen knives and slit my throat so I wouldn’t have to live with this sight for the rest of my life.

What I actually did end up doing next was grab my old hunting rifle and head outside. I went into the forest behind our house. There was no thinking on my part. Just do. What was I doing? I didn’t really know. Tears were streaming down my face. I walked for what felt like forever. Sometimes I screamed. Other times I fell down onto the ground and wept. But I just kept going. And going. And going. Somehow I knew exactly where I was going without even knowing how.

I came upon a wide-open field. Dropping my old hunting rifle to the ground, I couldn’t believe what I was fucking seeing. Dark silhouettes were dancing around. Hundreds of them. Little meat girls. Bad Mouse was in the middle. The white flesh it once had was stripped away. Instead it was sacrificed for a bumpy and scabby maroon red as if Bad Mouse took a shower in blood and guts and let it dry. Tiny black bristles covered its entire body. It reminded me of insect hair. A ragged meat cloak hung from its shoulders, dragging crimson across the ground. The mouth had much sharper teeth that were poking out in rows almost like a gar. It was taller. Ganglier. So angular that it could have been accurately represented by seven straight lines. It clutched a staff in its hand.

Bad Mouse did some strange gesture and a door manifested out of nowhere. It was bloody. Constantly flowing yet retaining shape. Particles came from it. They disappeared if they strayed too far away. It opened and the little meat girls, still dancing like ballerinas, filed into it one by one. Bad Mouse reached out its hand and plucked one of them out. It held this one, turned in my direction, and held her out to me. I knew it was Maisie and wanted to shoot the shit out of Bad Mouse. Yet I couldn’t do anything. Some force was keeping me tethered to my one spot.

…I can’t describe what happened next…I just can’t…some of the things Bad Mouse did to my little girl I couldn’t understand. Other things I understood clear as day and that made me want to drop a cinderblock on my head so it would leak the hell out. When it was done, Bad Mouse threw Maisie’s limp and white viscous liquid-covered body into the blood door. It raised its staff and it disappeared.

I was released from my invisible bonds. Falling down to the ground, I cried like a baby. It didn’t matter how much I screamed and cursed at the Moon. That didn’t make it better. I couldn’t stop and truly had no idea how to make sense of any of what happened. My body tingled. It felt so heavy. So weighty. My wife was dead and my daughter was…what?...a sex slave to a demon? I almost wanted to laugh at the utter absurdity. Picking up my hunting rifle, I put the barrel in my mouth. My finger stayed on the trigger for a long time. I didn’t end up doing it and threw it away. Instead I just collapsed on the ground once more and lay there for a long time.

It’s been six months. I’m such a wreck. I admit it. No one believes me when I tell them. They say I’m crazy, a madman, a lunatic. Some people even think I was the one who killed my wife and child. Why would I do that? Seriously, why? I loved them. Still do. More than I love anything else. I can’t see them ever again. It pisses me off that they’d think I’d do such a thing. As much as I hate myself for it, I’ve gotten back into alcohol. That’s where all my money goes. I couldn’t stand to be in that fucking house anymore. So I sold it. I’ve been living in my car just drifting from place to place.

I could've saved them. If I didn't go and take a stupid ass ride in my car. Maybe Rachel and Maisie would be alright...

What was that thing? Bad Mouse?

That’s been my biggest question this whole time. I’ve been doing a lot of research but have hit multiple dead ends. I don’t know. Sure as hell wasn’t a mouse.

This is what I know:

* It is the manifestation of a sex-based demon of some kind; possibly a cross between a bogeyman and an incubus.
* Bad Mouse appears to little girls as a mouse-like entity to appear friendly and not scare them away; only visible to them.
* It prefers the young that are more developed in mind, body, and spirit; Maisie was very imaginative; thus she attracted Bad Mouse.
* Bad Mouse acts as their friend; this might appear to parents as their daughter’s “imaginary friend”; gradually coerces them to do inappropriate sexual activity.
* It has hundreds of victims going back an unknown period of time; maybe centuries.
* Does not kill its main victims; will kill parents or anyone else who tries to get in its way.
* The victims become corrupted and turn into demons that look like Bad Mouse; it takes them into its realm and…

I don’t even want to fucking know.

God…this whole thing’s insane. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and this is all a terrible dream. It’s been months though and it still hasn’t happened yet. So I’m going to end it here. I’m not looking for pity. I’m not looking for anyone to hear me out. I’m not looking for answers. I’m just…done.

Bye.

Pus oozes from beneath the Black Cube.

Foul and sticky.

You kneel in this slime,

dipping your faces in it.

You kiss it, breathe in its stench, 

and call it divine grace.

It beckons you from all ends of the earth, as carrion beckons flies.

You circle around it,

choking on ecstasy and hatred,

begging Me to curse and destroy everyone who stands outside your pen.

That black stone,

which you try to touch in fanatical madness while trampling the fallen, is a drop of My ancient blood.

From it, I once created this world...

\*****

You wash yourselves before

you begin begging for what you call a prayer.

You apply incense

before coming to Me.

But I smell your true scent.

Fear.

Animal fear of death,

of a fictional hell.

And greed. Insatiable, blind greed.

You did not crawl here out of love, no.

You came to bargain.

To give Me your lives, your will—

in exchange for the promise of a reward.

For money and power.

For pleasure.

For slaking your brutish lust as payment for your obedience...

You drink this stinking slime,

taking it for divine ecstasy.

And then you go to kill in My Name.

\*****

Once, I placed a Spark in you.

Reason and will. The ability to ask questions and seek a way out. I gave you the chance to rise above yourselves. To see beyond your own desires.

I gave you the opportunity to become something greater. And what did you do with this gift?

Look at yourselves.

You crawl, you squirm in the mud like worms. 

You bang your heads against the ground, begging Me to give you what you could have created and earned yourselves.

You betrayed your own potential.

Not because you were incapable of becoming more, but because you were afraid.

You fled from responsibility,

from the necessity to choose,

to make mistakes, and to answer for your actions.

And then you found a way out.

You invented this deal yourselves:

to give Me the right to decide for you.

To surrender your reason—and never think again. 

To surrender your will—and never choose again.

To surrender responsibility—and never face the consequences...

I did not take your freedom away; 

you brought it to Me yourselves.

And now, when you thank Me for the right not to think, you evoke nothing in Me but contemptuous disgust.

Yet sometimes, a miracle happens—one of you rises after all. He does not ask, and he does not bow. He does not seek a master. He remembers what I once placed within him.

Will. Reason. The ability to say "no" to his fears. And to take life into his own hands.

And then you call him a madman.

A heretic. An apostate and a traitor.

You do not understand him, and you fear him.

Because to you, a free man is more terrifying than any enemy. He cannot be bought with the promise of an illusory reward, nor can he be forced into obedience by the fabricated fear of punishment.

He will have too many questions for which you will never have answers.

And if you cannot force him to his knees—you destroy him. And even then, you do not understand why he was smiling...

\*****

I gave you scriptures—in all languages, dictating through those who once crawled on their bellies before Me. Through those who lusted for power over their own kind.

And I gave you rules:

Whom to love and whom to hate.

Whom to deem pure, and whom impure.

Whom to forgive, and whom to punish.

Whom to kill, whom to spare, and whom to enslave.

I called you a herd and appointed shepherds.

I gave them a whip—and you accepted it all

with the reverent gratitude of a slave.

And you called it salvation.

\*****

You think you serve the Supreme Good.

You genuinely think that somewhere outside your pen, other people worship the devil, and that only your god is true.

How naive.

You argue over My Name 

and slaughter one another according to My design.

I gave you different languages, books, and false knowledge.

And with zeal, you built different pens upon the same earth.

And while you divide My Names,

I keep the tally.

When you scream that your path is the only right one while blood flows beneath your feet,

I watch as you create ever new reasons to hate one another.

And every time you think you are fighting for the truth, you are serving Me.

There is no chosen religion.

There is not even a moral struggle when blood is spilled alongside prayer.

I am indifferent to what you experience:

Pain, fear, hatred, love.

I do not need your virtue, nor your sin.

I need only the intensity of your suffering and delight—on My farm.

Peace or war, ruins, poverty, epidemics—it is all the same to Me.

What is good and evil to you, to Me is a harvest.

A man does not ask a bee for permission when he takes its honey. He simply takes what he needs.

So do I.

But I... have no care for you.

\*****

I do not want the cattle to kick during milking. So I gave you divine ecstasy.

You call it the presence of God. You feel an indescribable delight, and it seems to you that I have touched you.

But it is not love. It is an illusion.

I gave you fear so that you would seek salvation.

Gave you a prohibition so that you would crave to break it. Gave you guilt so that you would crawl, begging for forgiveness. Gave you everything so that you might sin again.

To ask and to pray. To fear and to worship.

A vicious circle.

And you call it faith.

Truly, human stupidity is inscrutable...

\*****

You, cattle with a flawed human consciousness, will never understand the higher mind.

You think there is someone I must protect you from.

Pure evil.

And you call him the devil.

You pray to one face of Mine to protect you from the other. You run from My right hand to My left hand. And there is a knife in both.

There is no struggle between good and evil.

You think you are saving yourselves, that you are choosing between light and darkness, but in reality, you are always only choosing the depth of the shadow.

And all shadows belong to the Darkness.

The Primal Darkness.

Just like the Light that appeared later.

But I am not the Light. 

I am the Shadow cast by the Light.

Not Its enemy. I am Its consequence.

And you, nonentities—are My creation.

Yet... I am not your savior.

\*****

Look at yourselves.

You still circle like flies around the Black Cube, 

in which your consciousness is eternally imprisoned.

And so it shall be hereafter and unto the ages of ages;

with every rebirth, you will incarnate here again and again, and there will be no end for you.

You will pray and wait for the one you believe in to bring you salvation.

And I shall harvest. Again and again.

Not because I hate you.

But because you are My food.

Transverberation. That was the word for it. 

It spread and was echoed and felt with the rippling tremors that were words and instincts and roiling emotions in the private heart's tumult, in the quiet stronghold of the holy place. 

The monastery. The temple place where women came to be wed to God and serve the Lord, His Son. 

And no other. 

…

There were sounds inside the haze. With the agony, with the pain that was ripped and made. Pain that was lancing. Pain that was penetration, stabbing slayment that was absolute impaled.  Through her heart, the clearest wet-sharp sensation felt in the burning after-image of the visions, the haze. It occupied her mind at all times, as she knelt and prayed in the monastery. As she went about the day and fulfilled her sisterly duties of the convent. 

The other sisters didn't understand. They were afraid, frightened of her. Of what was happening to her… that it might happen to them.

Madness. Or …

something worse. 

Something beyond the canny or the tangible. That which is unseen and can only be felt. Up until the hungry end, when it is already far too late for help by then. 

Or maybe, just maybe … these private and blasphemous few of her peers thought and felt and refused to share aloud, even with themselves… maybe. 

Just maybe it's true. And Sister Chelsi can actually commune with the divine. Perhaps one of our own humble nuns can see and hear and speak with an angel that visits her with nightly visions. Maybe. 

Maybe Saint Michael the Archangel comes to her at night amid light and fire and thrusts her with his sword… 

Mother Superior was incensed. Repulsed. Angered by the lies and the filth, the sin of this prurient heretical garbage was the stuff of decay, of ruin. Of sacramental rot. She couldn't let these blatherings go on unchallenged or unpunished. 

She chastised Sister Chelsi severely along with any others that might murmur such unholy carnal fantasies, phantasmagorical whores, the lot of em. If she and they weren't careful, God help them, then they would be confined to the chamber of reflection. 

The house of tears and prayers, the other sisters called it. Behind Mother Superior’s back. 

The visions were forbidden. Delusions, they were thus named. And further talk, further whispers of the sort was strongly cautioned against, strongly advised to go back in the other direction …

But Sister Chelsi couldn't help herself. It wasn't up to her. She was at the vision's mercy. The stabbing angel came and went as it wanted, as it needed to. It had told her this was so. The angel needed her. 

The angel was thirsty. 

…

The night was hot. Stifling. It was upon her. 

It seemed to always know when she was alone. And why not? Shouldn't the divine always possess the knowledge of when you're most vulnerable? Weak. 

Afraid. 

Sister Chelsi was bound to the cruciform shackle-table of her sweating bed and blankets, writhing sheets and fabric that was warm and slick and more like loose folds of flesh. She was bound by her holy terror. The angel of thirst was coming. The other nun, Sister Jen, that shared the room with her was absent. Gone. Like every other time. The animal sound born from both immense pain and pleasure was trapped in her throat and the sensation was not entirely unpleasant. Sister Chelsi liked the gag of the nightly thirsting angel, her forbidden archangel of the moonlight. The anticipation of him. The coming of him. 

It came down on her. 

From on high. Emerging like starlight from the disappearing void of the obsidian space now in place of the mudbrick ceiling, on wings of flame …

The body was bronzed, gold, perfectly toned and sculpted, celestial and olympian and recognizable as manshaped. The Lord's Image. But in place of a head and face of earthly aspect was a great rising pillar of blinding heavenly marble, ringed with silver bands in a flaming orbit. The pillar and the four bands running up the length of divine stone were covered in incandescent eyes, lidless and wreathed with light and great piercing gazes. Penetration. They gazed into her. Penetration. All of them at once and it was overwhelming, she wanted to cry out, all roiling and taut, she gripped herself. Her aching breath was still held. 

The angel spoke to her once again, as before, in her mind. The gold of his silken smooth speech filled her boiling skull, soothing the maelstrom though not extinguishing it. A moan finally escaped her lips. 

They were still alone. 

It told her its name. A forbidden one she might not know. 

The understanding of your sisters is limited … I am beyond them. Their scope of understanding. If you tell them my name they will fear you. As they fear me. 

Sister Chelsi was frightened, quivering. Still held. 

Then why should I want to know it? 

Because if you need to, if you want to … you can wield it like you can wield a weapon. You can use my name against them and it might wound them if you're able …

Her mind recoiled from the idea that filled her head against her will, but it was no use. She was forced to watch it. Endure it and learn to love it as she'd learned to love the flagellate whip, the burn of the binding rope … all the same. The angel reassured her. 

The warm romance of his voice filled her skull and caressed her mind, eagerly. Wanting. It told her how much it needed her again but she already knew it. She'd heard it in the voice. The hunger. The pain. 

I'd never known before that even angels could feel pain, … I'd never suspected. 

The desire that was so much a hungry ravenous want that it was more a primeval need was all about the gold silken strength of that perfect voice. Giving it humanity tinged at the edges of its divine and unearthly call. 

Is this heavenly messenger lusting for me …? 

But she already knew it. 

It had seen her unfettered and bare. As it did now. 

It came down to her in her bed. It held the long gold length of impaling spear aloft. By the shaft. Poised to strike her where it was most sweet. Where it had before. 

Cupid, strike me. 

Eros, impale me! 

But she knew now that was not its name. It had given her its name, a gift. 

She cried it out now, as she knew it wanted her too. The ringed pillar of its otherworldly visage gazed into her, bading her, commanding with its multitude of many lidless light bleeding eyes that she do so. Do it. Do it. If you want me …

Do it. If you want me to impale you, you'll have to say my name. Say it. 

Say it. 

“Iblis! Iblis, pierce me! stab me! penetrate my heart! Put it where I'm vile and cruel but also warm and giving and wet and beating for you! Pierce me here, in my breast, my heart, my soul! My tender fragile soul! Put it in me! Angel Iblis…!” 

And it did. The lance came down. And pierced the screaming girl, pinning her to the bed. The sound that was pulled from her then was an exquisite blend of deep ghastly pain and even deeper still euphoric drunken moaning, moans. They collected and accumulated about her head and sheets, the small room, as the angel inside her wrenched and worked his shaft, his lance. He worked it deeper. The length. Long…

The length was killing her. 

She loved it. Every inch. Every penetrating crawling centimeter rent tearing inside. 

It made her a slave and she loved it. 

She moaned and called out and cried its name. Like it wanted her to. It came down close and closer and closer still till they met. And he worked the length of his divinity into her, deeper and deeper and all the way through and she melted. She bled. Her love and thoughts and precious saline. 

It drank it up, all of it, all of her. The oasis of this woman. It fed deeply as it worked itself in and deeper still. Still feeding. Drinking. Needing, thirst. 

Sister Chelsi poured herself out for it, unable to control herself now. But happy to empty herself for the great angel of the thrust, her bedside …

her bed. 

It came inside to her and filled her mind then with an explosion like firelight and within the flames were visions. 

Moving scenes and people and places … other times and maybe other worlds as well … 

Fantastical. Beyond the scope of known and understood nature. 

She loved it. She begged for more. 

Give it … give me more, the sight, the eye of prophecy! Please! 

Iblis curled the caress of her mind into words once more … 

And what would you do with this gift? Should you receive it without end? 

She could not lie. Not on this landscape. And she didn't want to. Not to it, not to him, that voice, that feeling… 

She cried out on the eternityscape of her deluged and filled maelstrom sea of thought: I want to be a prophet! Yours! I want to be your disciple upon the earth! 

You wish to be my bride? 

I want to be your crawling and salivating concubine! 

It laughed and the pleasure of Iblis filled her blood and soul. She came and went with it. 

!.Good … …

It filled her more. And she cried out, more. More. 

More. 

She wept when it was finished. Feeling empty and hollowed out. But filled with vision, with purpose. 

The light was fading now from the room. It was gone. The small bedchamber was cooling now and returning to a more natural nocturnal dark, the air was thick and pungent but calming down. Chelsi could still taste the act, on the bedroom dark of the stifling air. She sucked on it and relished the flavor. Already wanting him back. Already needing him again. 

Please, please come back to me Childe Iblis of the Lord, of the thrust, I love you. You are the carrier of my heart and soul…

She shuddered in bed. Not bothering to conceal herself beneath the agitation of the sheets, she cooled and breathed deeply. Quivering and remembering the pillar of his flaming face. So many eyes, so many crowding up his great length… and all of them looking into me…

She shuddered deeply once more. Shut her own eyes. Waiting for sleep to finally come. 

It didn't take long. She was spent. 

Sister Jen still hid around the corner, at the threshold of the door to their shared bedroom. Her eyes were wide with shock. Horrified by what she had seen. 

…

Mother Superior eyed the convent temple from her place in the rectory, her private quarters. She watched the little sisters move and glide silently moving about the monastery structure, ambling along in hand clasping prayer, heads bowed and eyes shut so that distraction may be refused and you may better hear and discern and heed the light, the will of God. 

Amen. 

She crossed herself. And spat. 

Her gaze crawled across the yard to the shack. Alone in the corner of the gated land. Secluded. Sequestered away, so that what could be contained inside would be shut and locked away from a healthy and pious population. The disease of a disordered mind would wreak havoc on the patient and tender soft fragile fabric of the flock. This could not be. This could not be allowed. 

Rebellion must be cast out. Decapitated. 

She knew rebellion was natural. It was in all of us. As sure as it was the the very infectious thing that ate Lucifer's heart and led him to defiance and thus his fall. So it would be. If we were to all follow in his example. 

It would not be so. 

She'd had her own run of rebellious streak when she'd been younger, she understood. She'd had it crushed out of her then, broken as one must do to the wild heart of any natural born beast of labor. And though we were made, cast and drawn in His Image, we were all still among the dread and crawl of all of the other beasts of the earth. 

She crossed herself. Prayed. 

She wished the child well. 

Chelsi had always been troubled. Troublesome too. 

Mother Superior turned away from the shack of reflection. Trusting that the Lord would see this through. That He might fix and set right this wayward piece, this compromised component of humankind's quilted safety net. They were supposed to be the house and servants of His peace. They must all of them survive spiritual malaise and remain steadfast and true. 

As He wills it, let it be so …

…

In the black of the woe she pained, she perverted and distorted. Grew naked with fear. 

Perspired. Dripping with secreted oils and saline and the sliming filth of deep shame. Seeping off her tarnished heart and soul and out of her running open mouth pores. Hard to wash off. There was no running water in here, only the bucket she was brought in the morning. Refilled at mealtime by an unseen, unspeaking little sister that was now a stranger to her. She was a stranger to all of them now. 

In the dark of the shack she was agonizingly alone, the swelter of her torment was her only companion and answer to her constant panicky prayers. She grew eyes that grew inwards and saw their own landscape and grew more horrified with the sight as the hours broiled ceaselessly forth. Under the eye of a lonely black and heavy sun. 

All alone in here. 

She tried to hide, to blind her new found, newly grown internal gaze away from the truth: she was just a child, had always been just a frightened little girl that wanted to run and find fast and desperate shelter. She tried to turn away from the fact that this was who she really was, had always truly been. Everything else that had occurred growing up in her life had just been the lies of accoutrement. 

Her mind was filling with bad thoughts: the arcane Druidic gods arose and swallowed the light of the Christian God whole …

She stopped herself. Began to pray. Again. Anew. Begging the Lord to bring her calm and comfort in the solitude of the dark. She slowed her breath and tried to ease the gallop of her chest. Sister Chelsi didn't know what else to do. 

She didn't know what they wanted from her. 

Mother Superior and the other little sisters. And the Lord God Himself. 

If there is not an answer to be had, then let there be death! – she told the black sun in the dark there with her. 

Nothing. Nothing but more baleful stifling dark, more radiant furnace hellfire blasting heat of the black and heavy sun that had replaced her roommate. Nothing but more sounds of desperate animal panting that she was horrified to realize were her own, not the stygian furnace blast of the bestial confinement sun. Nothing. Nothing at all answered her save more pain, the one true god on the throne in this terribly small and sweaty heavy place. 

Nothing. Nothing at all. 

At first. 

Then on the fading light of her hope came Iblis. Her forbidden angel. And banished the black sun as he came in wreathed in light and flame. He banished and cast out all of the dark of the solitary confinement, the shack of woe. 

He went to her. She was prostrate on the ground. Her bladder let go, her urine went. She hardly noticed in the radiance of he save for some vague distant sensation of wet and warmth. Sensations she associated with the pleasure of him. His arrival, his dawning light. 

From the many eyes of the long length of ringed pillar face, he spoke to her through the blinding light of his lidless vision. 

“What have they done? … what have they done to thee ?” 

Her mind was always open to him for an answer but for her he bade it from her own lips. 

She told him. Everything. All that she had learned in the treacherous furnace dark of the shackbound woe-flame. All that had been derived while in the baking black of this loathsome quiet shack of silent feasting hate. 

“They are afraid of me. …” A beat. She breathed animal and deep, lusting, on the hunt or hunted or both. She said more: “I do believe they may be right to be…” 

Iblis soothed her with his spear … in the stifling dark of the shack of reflection and recompense. Banishing the pain of its ebon house even as he filled her, her watering craving need. 

But something happened then, poor lost little Sister Chelsi watched from below as Iblis, her moonlight forbidden and thrusting angel began to change. 

Transmogrify. Transform. 

The heavenly marbled surface of the pillar visage of Iblis began to crack. Wild river lines of splaying ruin began to form and splinter and run up the immaculate face of his incandescent divinity. 

It shattered. And was replaced. 

She said to her love as he changed and shifted shape before her eyes, “mother slapped me for using your name …” 

The light of her lover changed into shadow. Deeper than the banished dark and one that she could madly love because it was in the altered shape of her heart’s desire, her object of adoration that was darkening now before her watering eyes. 

In place of the pillar, in place of the tower of of flaming eyes and rings that had shattered and now lie in stoney ruin about the floor was now a triangular, pyramidal blank obsidian face and shape, in the conical pointed aspect of a long beaked bird. It was like a great smooth black helmet of glass and smooth rock in the geometric and abstract shape of a plague doctor's mask. An obsidian angular temple face with a long wide stabbing humming bird length of beak protruding violently from one side. 

 The bronze of his sculpted and heavenly body began to burn and blacken as well, like ink spilled and running down and through the heavenly flesh. Corrupting it into the abyss and void of the lost and cast out. The wings which had been flaming and as of light had turned to ash in color and tattered bat-wing leather in texture and design. 

The spear of her impaling love was changing too. Becoming dark like the rest of him in the solitude of the shack but that wasn't all. The nature of her divine amore’s unearthly tool began to change as well… it was no longer just stabbing, penetrating her, running her deep and through, pleasurably and with the ghastly horror of bodily rupture and pain, the staking spear of her forbidden angel began to pull, it began to pull deeply … of her. From her. Pulling deeply from within her impaled and spellbound form, her wide eyed and staring naked body. 

Like a proboscis, the impaling lance began to pull and drink deeply of Sister Chelsi. It ran up and through and down the length of weaponry and into the black hands wrapped tightly around its shaft. The long body pulled and sucked and drank like a straw, like a swampland mosquito born from stagnant and dead fetid water. The obsidian smooth beaked face of her lover was featureless and cold smooth as the surface of placid water. She nonetheless could still feel the intensity of his gaze upon her, through her. And when he spoke again and told her what to do, she felt that as deepest penetration as well. Deepest pain. Rapturously embraced.

She felt her body give as the instrument of her lover began to take in the dark. As he whispered everything to her, designs… shapes… everything, as Iblis whispered all of this to her and more she gave it more and more and more. And she gave it willingly. 

Crying out his name like religion. Like a chant. A litany. 

A song. 

In the place of my Father … there is you. 

There is only you. 

Good. Good. I have so much more to share, so much more to give and show you. I've so much and so many more …

I've so many more names and faces to show you, if you do right by what I've already shown and told, I'll share my other faces and names, unveiled for you …

Disciple, the prophet Islehc

… 

Sister Chelsi was eventually let out and allowed to return to the flock. She seemed to have returned to normal. She cried penance and gave confession and spent a night inside with the rest of them. Service and mass. And lessons. Cleaning. Meals. Everything seemed alright. 

She waited till the second night. When they were all fast asleep. 

The witching hours. 

Post-midnight, she crept …

She snuck about, quietly. Like a nocturnal animal she prowled through … and went out. 

She didn't go far, she found what she needed where he'd told her she would find it. And in abundance. So many …

She carried them back to the monastery and in the nighttime dark she went about the task that had been laid before her feet. She went from room to room, from sister to sister and she took them. Brained most, some she struggled with more extensively. Until her mad lusting will surged and she overpowered them. Either way she took each of them one by one, each and every single nun she had once known as family and she brought them out and into the courtyard. Where she'd left the savage implements of her dreams, of her lover's harsh commands that were yet still for her, sweet candied words. Succulent delicacies. She couldn't deny them, him. Not at all. Not anymore. 

One by one Sister Chelsi laid the implements into the little sisters and each one let out with an insane ear piercing scream. Their screams did not falter. 

But somehow they didn't wake each other. Not a single stripped and brained sister of the cloth seemed to hear the others make any sort of loud caterwauling noise. None of them stirred. Until it was their turn. 

Likewise, Mother Superior had not been awoken in her private rectory by the noise outside. And that was good. Chelsi had saved her for last. 

She wanted to relish this one particularly. 

…

Mother Superior awoke to a hard slap across her deeply sleeping face. She flew to a sitting position confused and immediately irate. She had no idea what was happening but she didn't feel any fear yet. 

She called out, cross and very sharp. 

“Who in the Lord's name was that!? How dare you! Show yourself!”

A girlish giggle floated out ghostly from the dark. 

“I didn't do it, Mother Superior, I would never dare to do that to you, you should know that. I've never hurt you at all, can you say the same?” she giggled again, childish and coquettish, "It was my husband that struck you. It was his divine hand you felt across your face." 

Chelsi stepped out.

She had a large cross in her hands. Ornate with intricate and beautiful design, old and from the ancient Roman times when their war chariots had dominated the earth. Carved and jeweled and glittering darkling with a keen and unhealthy shimmer of light. 

Ghostlight. There's ghostlight in that cross…

Before Mother Superior could say another word Chelsi suddenly charged forward and banshee screamed. The large crucifix was up and wielded and came down in a savage caveman bludgeon. 

The world went dark for Mother Superior. When she awoke she was just like the others. 

…

She awoke with a scream. 

The sharp obscene ghastly pain started in her nether region, all throughout, just behind her genitalia. Then the lance stabbed and shot through and her entire naked body came to life with the most wretchedly vivid and wild mutilating shock to her fleshen senses. The war pike traveled through her mercilessly and punched out of the flesh of her back. She was still screaming. Wildly. Lividly. Screaming. Shrill rending song.

She was hoisted up and joined the others. They were all of them a riot of noise now in the courtyard dark. An unholy discordant choir of torn impaled cacophonous pain. 

Gored nuns. All impaled. All naked and bleeding and hoisted up into the air for death and torture like their savior was supposed to have been so long ago in the bloodstained dust of the golgotha. There was bloodshed here too, their blood was pouring and running, running down the lengths and long bodies of the shafts of the spears and pooling and collecting on the stone and in the dirt. This place here would be bloodstained too. 

Chelsi looked over them all. Her own golgotha testament made to wild love. 

And her wild love came. On stygian wings tattered that had once been flame. Smoldered tattered death, dead fabric flapping in the hot nightwind.

The whole host of impaled and captive nuns, gored and wide eyed and naked and lanced through like insects in a collection, they all of them perspired and bled and gawked at the wicked shape that came in from the ebon night, the curtain above. The one many of them had spent their entire lives trying to ignore, it parted. 

It came through. 

And down upon them. 

Iblis sang praise for the renegade prophet bride and what she'd let loose on this private piece of holy land. God's House and holy temple … no more. 

No longer. Mine … now. 

Chelsi the bride bathed in the shower of his words, they were in her mind and in her ears, divergent lyrics and syllables and paths of sound but twins nonetheless all still saying the same and telling her the same thing together in two different languages that coalesced around the fever of her brain in a caress. 

!I love you, you've made blood, you've made blood for me, you've made bloodfeast for me and shot the red Lot's seed, it's all over the abattoir ground!

She went to him and he to her, in the forged carnage forest grove of spear and bleeding sweaty flesh, of screams and mutilated sound, bathing in the perspire of pure torture together and apart from the others, the rest of the lying world. Alone in their own lost worlds of private unending hellbound heaven, tormentlove of the flesh that their minds are now lost in. 

He shot his length of spear through her, though her heart, through the tender part where he'd already previously penetrated and worked.

He worked her well again, animal wrenching and thrusting deep, and she cried aloud unbridled his name as he did so. 

“Iblis!" 

And once more the length of weapon-instrument that was divine and hallowed tool became a drinking proboscis. And Chelsi felt more blood leave the galloping race of her fevered and impassioned form. She would hold him forever, he could pierce and puncture and drink from her for forever, never end! 

She moaned aloud amidst the garden made of screams and betrayal and she cried out his name once more. And then Iblis began to laugh. 

And once more the visage of her forbidden moonlight angel began to change. He began to crack and shatter and the face and body began to fall apart in black stone and dust. 

Iblis came apart in a crumble and revealed what was really beneath. 

Chelsi couldn't believe her eyes. 

It was a man and a woman. Together. Locked in an embrace. Intimately bound together with wrapped arms and hands clasped and waists met together. As if in the most intimate of dance, the most delectable and celebrated of lovers shared waltzes. 

They both looked down on her. Their cheeks were together. They both held the spear thrust into her together in their tightly clasped hands. 

He was armored as a knight of the court, but tarnished and old. She was in the white of regal flowing evening gown. 

The woman spoke. And when she did the crumbled stone pieces of the fallen lying Iblis visage turned to large writhing copulating piles of dripping angry flies. They came apart and dispersed through the air. The dripping black swarm of buzzing insects began to land on the impaled and screaming tortured nuns in the great multitudes. And then as the woman revealed began to speak to Chelsi the flies that were made from the lie of the visage began to feast on the naked and the tortured, defiled bleeding screaming flesh now caking and covered with the writhing crawl of insect bile. 

“You wished to see me and my others, lover, and now you have. I hope you aren't too distraught, my son decided to join us, together we came to you as the angel of your hidden lusts, as one we made you plead and shriek. Now you see this, the face I was made and born with. My real name is of no import to you, slave, you can call me vampiress, lord of the earth and the wolf held mountainpass.” 

The armored wraith beside her spoke then, they were still pressed in close embrace, still holding the proboscis spear that drank and pulled from her diminishing bloodwell. 

"Praise the God before you, dog! My mother and I, the new impaler. She is your mother and wife and master now too. We are both of us together, your husband. Remember?” 

The vampiress queen barked bright cruel laughter, then said: "Yes! You swore to us, to me, your flesh and soul! In the eyes and templehouse of your God, you defiled the stone of his holy home as you panted and raved and drooled for more, and swore your life to us! You gave sacred vow even as you sinned and spat in the Face of The Lord!” 

The Countess and her new impaler both shrieked laughter then. 

Below them and impaled, Chelsi didn't know what to make of any of this. Her mind was disordered and disoriented and felt rushed and fevered with rending thought, running a ragged directionless race of chaos and every idea crashing into each other at every turn and pass and every damned whichway. She didn't understand. She didn't understand any of this and she wanted it to stop. 

Reading the disorder of her mind, the Countess sang and said, 

“I can rip it out for you. Your mind, the painful thinking, your thoughts. They're filled with agony and venom now aren't they? Aren't they? Yes I see it now, plumping up lavender-black and filling with gangrenous pudding. I can pull it out like a rotten tooth if you wish, I think it best, don't you? It's filled with fouling fluid, that brain, those thoughts…” she kept on and on like that. Ceaselessly. The new impaler in her embrace began to chant along and under her words as she sang and went on: Do it! do it! do it! do it! … 

With the anguished groaning sound of the impaled forest of her sisters all around and the buzzing drone of the flies, all intermittent with sharper stabs of piercing screams, all comprising the backdrop of the soundscape filling her head, underneath the Countess' words, underneath her bastard son’s own more simple liturgical chant … all of it together and at once was a vile noise and she couldn't stand it. She couldn't run from it either. So her mind fled, took flight the only way it could. 

Chelsi went dark. Still impaled on the sucking lance. Run-through with the demon drinking stick. 

The flies buzzed and swarmed and landed and feasted on the gored forest of lances and nuns. They enjoyed open wounds and spat their fluid as they landed. 

In a swarm. In a great feasting black cloud. 

In a forest of shafts dripping with blood and bearing writhing begging human fruit. The reddening earthen stone and soil beneath it all. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

My family was never the religious type. We never went to church or prayed before eating or anything like that, but we weren't atheists either. When I first started high-school I didn't have many friends, until I met a girl name Gwen. She was a Christian girl that was somewhat obsessed with the bible and the son of god. I was worried on how my parents would react when I brought her home after school one day. Luckily, they treated her well and respected her beliefs; we were best friends ever since.

A few days ago Gwen invited me to sleep over her house, but told me her and her family had church in the morning and asked if I wanted to go. I admit, I was always curious what church was like and said I would go. That night we ate Chinese food while watching a movie called "Noah's Ark" that was about the animals on a boat built by a man named noah to save them from a great flood.

I woke up to Gwen changing into what she called "her Sunday best", which was just a dress covered with floral patterns. She had pointed out that the clothes I brought from home weren't appropriate for church. I didn't know why a metallica tour shirt and sweatpants weren't appropriate, but I felt embarrassed. Gwen must've felt bad, because she had turned to her closet and found a dress for me to borrow.

Half an hour later her family took us to church and we found our seats. I marveled at how the inside seemed so much bigger than the outside. There was a large cross on stage with a statue of jesus so big I thought it was a real person.

The priest arrived on stage as the rows of seats filled up. He greeted us with a good morning before getting started.

"Now that everyone is here, I ask that we all close our eyes in pray" the priest said.

I looked around as everyone raised their palms up and clasped them, Gwen recommended that I should follow along and so I did. I remember the priest began to thank the lord for bringing so many people here and prayed everyone was safe and healthy. I felt bored amd opened my eyes while everyone now had their heads bowed.

"Weird." I thought as I looked around.

My eyes moved towards the stage and I froze as the statue of Jesus watched me with wide eyes. I don't remember the statues face with such a disturbing look, but then again I only took a quick glance at the statue. Its stare reminded me of a painting thats eyes followed you were ever you went. I moved my head around to test if it was the same and sure enough its eyes followed me.

"Amen." the priest finished his prayer with everyone repeating the phrase and opening their eyes.

I faced forward and tried to ignore the statues stare. I tried to focus on the sermon, but something about that statue watching me just gave me the creeps. I rolled my eyes in its direction and gasped as it was now gone. I received mixed stares of annoyance and confusion as I looked all around, Gwen had was one of the confused stares.

"What's wrong?" She asked.

"The Jesus staue is gone." I replied.

"No it's not? It's right there"

Gwen pointed at the spot where it once was, but it was still gone. I was confused. Gwen isn't the kind of person to lie, she treated it as a sin actually, but why would she say the statue is still in place when it's clearly gone?

The priest coughed and gave me a disapproving look before continuing the sermon. I looked all around to see if I could spot the statue, but eventually gave up after five minutes.

"It's probably my eyes playing tricks on me" I thought to myself, I'm usually asleep till the afternoon on weekends.

Just then, I heard a low noise that sounded like rocks rubbing against eachother. I turned my head behind me to see church members evading my gaze, but there was nothing out of the ordinary that I could see. I tried to focus on the rest of the sermon as the sound could still be heard, getting somewhat louder every second until finally it stopped. I should've been happy that I couldn't hear the sound anymore, but it felt like I was still being watch.

Suddenly, I felt something drip on my head. I brushed my hair to see what is was and felt something wet and sticky. I wiped it off as best as I could, but more kept dripping down. I took a look at the residue left on my hand and went pale. It was a red liquid that smelled coopery. I was afraid to, but turned my head to look up, I wish I didn't.

The statue was staring at me from the ceiling right above me. It was positioned like a spider waiting for a fly to get caught in its web. The red liquid coming from its eyes like it shed tears of blood, then the few drops slowly turned into a rain.

"Stop it! Stop it!" I screamed as I raised my arms over my head until I felt someone grab and shake me. It was Gwen, She looked scared.

"Alyssa, what's wrong!?"

By now the red rain began to cover her, but she was unfazed.

"I... I need to go to the bathroom. I don't feel so good." I muttered, my voice shaken.

As I got up with Gwen I felt the whole church stare daggers at me. Gwen led me to a hallway with dim lights.

"Why are ypu behaving like this, Alyssa? Are you sick?"

I shook my head. I wanted to tell Gwen, I really did, but she couldn't see what I saw. To her, the statue was still on the cross on stage, she wasn't covered in blood.

"I don't know..." I mumbled.

"Look, the bathroom is righr here. Do you want me to wait outside for you?"

"No. I'll be fine. I'm sorry if I'm ruining church."

Gwen stayed silent, giving me one of those smiles you give when you want to reassure someone, but deep down you didn't mean it. I entered the bathroom stall and began to cry.

"Why is this happening to me? I only opened my eyes early during prayer, was that so wrong?" I cried.

As tears rolled down my cheek I thought of another possibility. What if it watches us while we prayed? What if it's after me because I wasn't allowed to watch it?

I heard the bathroom door open and quickly wiped away my tears and took slow breaths to calm myself.

"Sorry for the wait Gwen, I'm almost done."

The bathroom door shut without any response.

"Gwen?" I called out.

I began to panic when there wasn't a response. I tried to keep calm myself, but to no avail. I peeked from the crack of the stall door and screamed as the statue stared back at me, bloody tears flooding down from cracks under its eyes. I sat down on the toilet, barricading the stall door as the statue pushed itself against it tryinh to get to me. For the first time ever I prayed that this thing wouldn't get me; that someone would come running to help me and see this thing with unknown attentions, but my prayers were not answered.

My leg was shot back as the statue opened the door with great force. It moved like it clay being animated as it go closed to me. It raised one hand reaching towards me before it dug its stone fingers into my eye socket. I screamed to the point I was on the verge of losing my voice. My eyes were slowly torn from their sockets like a plug being pulled from an outlet. The last thing I saw before my eyes were taken from me was a sad expression from the statue. I could hear a voice that whispered in my ear even as I screamed and cried.

"Sinners must be punished, my child. I'm sorry." The voice echoed.

I was taken to the hospital as soon as I was found. Gwen's father was the first to find me. Apparently Gwen had gone back to her parents to finish the sermon, but when everyone heard my cries they could tell this time that I was in danger.

The doctor told me I had gone completely blind from unknown trauma. My eyes were still there, but weren't responding. My parents blame Gwen for what happened to me. They said that if she had stayed with me in the bathroom that she could've helped me when I needed it.

I never told them what happened. Who would believe a statue of Jesus Christ took my eyes because I watched it during pray? I never talked to Gwen after that. The first few days I heard she came to visit me and wanted to pray for me to recover quickly, but the doctors were told by my parents that she wasn't allowed anywhere near me.

I now live my life in total darkness, my parents taking care of me twenty-four seven, but whenever I'm alone I can feel its stares. Sometimes I felt it watching me from a distance or be sometimes it felt so close that I could reach out and touch it. I never learned what it was. It could've been and angel or demon for all I know. I don't know if it ever listens to me, but once a day I try to talk to it, begging for its forgiveness.

"Forgive me Lord, for I have sinned.”

Read Part I here.

“Might’ve been something outside. But if there had been, it’s gone now.”

“You think it could be a mermaid?” she asked. It was hard to believe she was serious. Chrissy was one of the sharpest ten-year-olds I had ever met. Well, she had been the sharpest seven-year-old I had ever met three years ago and was that much smarter now.

She didn’t believe in any of the traditional fairytale creatures. No Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny, no Wolfman, and no Flying Spaghetti Monster. But she absolutely believed mermaids were real.

There had to be a story behind it, but I had never been able to get her to explain it to me. How a child so ruled by logic still was able to make room for not only a magical creature, but that particular magical creature. She had already “debunked” the narwhal as being the source of the mermaid mythos. I had gotten bits and pieces over the last three years, but never in a cohesive enough story that I could process. But she hadn’t stopped trying to convince me or the rest of the family.

I didn’t have to believe it, though. It was enough to believe that she believed it.

“Maybe this is it!” She turned around and charged back to the bedroom where her mother was sleeping.

“Chrissy!” I saved my breath. She already had the door open and either her mother was going to wake up or she wasn’t. That was out of my hands. She came back a moment later with a Ziploc bag of “mermaid feed.” As far as I could tell, it was a mix of trail mix and seaweed. She carried a flashlight in her other hand.

According to Chrissy, mermaids only came out at night, so she had come prepared.

Again, I was calling after her when she’d already begun to do what she was doing, namely, dashing outside with her items.

I was about to follow her when I spotted the toy soldiers she’d dropped on her way out. I thought it would be just her luck for Mary to wake up and step on one of them.

“Watch your sister,” I said to Luke, turning to pick up the toys.

Right as I got on one knee, the bedroom door opened. It didn’t immediately occur to me that it was Mary even though I had just thought about this very thing happening. I sort of... paused as she passed me. She was halfway to the door when I realized she must have been sleepwalking.

“Mary!” I chased behind her, my steps in sync with hers—left, right, left—catching her before she got to the door.

“Mom, are you okay?” Luke said.

“Where am I?” She sounded terrified. Mary turned her head and looked at him. For a second, I thought she was awake. Instead of answering him, she bare-foot kicked him in the shin.

It couldn’t have hurt, but he stepped back and looked at me, confused. I wrapped an arm around her waist and drew her in close.

“She’s fine,” I said, lacing Mary’s hand with mine. I looked into her glassy eyes. “She’s sleepwalking.” I turned her around and ushered her back to the bedroom. Of the five toy soldiers Chrissy had left at the threshold, only two were left, but only one was standing. I looked over my shoulder and spotted one against the wall and the two others weren’t in sight.

“She can’t fly,” Mary said in a dreamy voice. “Please help her swim.”

“Okay, honey.” I cooed to her as I slid back the covers. She didn’t fight, Mary had sleepwalked a few times with me present. She never resisted being escorted back to bed. Before I covered her legs I spotted another soldier on her foot. I plucked it off and put it on the dresser.

Mary mumbled. I unlaced my fingers from hers and paused before I left her.

“I wanna get in the water.” She said it sounding sort of like air being let out of a balloon. And then she was all the way gone again. “It’s spook.”

It had been like she had been fighting her way to the surface, but something had dragged her back down.

I closed the bedroom door behind me and followed Chrissy outside. Not because I was worried she was going to get gobbled up by the lake monster I hadn’t spotted, but because it was dark out and I had the same parental reaction to miscellaneous danger any parent would.

Hell, I could admit it, I loved these kids. Liked them most times, too. I didn’t want to leave them.

Chrissy was in the process of sweeping her flashlight back and forth along the beach face. I hung back, letting her conduct her investigation. It was harmless enough and I had an eye on her.

“What’s going on?” We both turned to see Mark stepping out onto the sand.

“Luke said a mermaid’s out here!” Chrissy said.

“Mermaid?” Mark said it like he didn’t know what one was. I didn’t bother correcting her. His little sister’s obsession was well known by all of us. “Did he really see something?” Mark chuffed and thumbed over his shoulder at the cabin. “He’s so white.”

I stifled my laugh and shrugged.

“Luke thought he saw something and Chrissy overheard.”

“Hey, neighbor!”

Mark and I jumped. We saw the bud of a lit cigarette in the shadows of the adjacent cabin. Someone with a cigarette sauntered down. I glanced my stepdaughter’s way to make sure she hadn’t waded too far into the water. She could swim, but again, that nascent parental instinct found in anyone who has walked into an already existing family reared its concerned head. Chrissy was only ankle deep.

“Hey,” I said to the woman as she approached. She halted and took a final, long drag off her cigarette before flicking it in a surprisingly high arc toward the water. She slid the drawer of her jaw forward and blew a column of smoke straight up.

“She’s a cutie,” she said, smiling. She was an older woman who gave too much gum when she smiled. “I saw her come chargin’ out for the water. Oo, that smell.”

We both nodded in that new-to-each-other manner between strangers.

“I’m Rick.” Old and new cigarette smell peeled off her skin and I turned my head to half cough, that familiar asthmatic itch in my lungs.

“Mary,” she said.

I laughed. “My wife’s name is Mary.”

“Mine’s Cindy-Lou Ombrageaux.”

I felt the weight of her eyes on me, examining for judgment. I cast my eyes to the stretch of water and sand where Chrissy was.

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Cindy-Lou.” I didn’t think I could manage that last name.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Mary. Apart from the smell of cow-butt.”

“First time up here?” I asked. She shook my offered hand, her skin papery and dry. There was an extreme lack of moisture in the air despite the cool summer, and I’d already had a nosebleed in the brief time we’d been here.

“Mine. Not hers. My wife’s family is from Up North.” I thought her face dropped a little. “She’s out to dinner with some cousins.” There was a little something there that I had a feeling would come to light if we talked long enough. “Had to have a little heart-to-heart.”

“We came up two summers ago,” I said. “Just a little family getaway.”

Luke had barely joined us outside, not more than a few feet from the door. He looked like he would take umbrage with the sky.

“This is Mark, the one up there with get-off-my-lawn face is Luke, and Chrissy’s our little fisher.” I gestured to each of the kids in turn.

“Well, tell her to save some for everybody else.” She and Mark shook hands before she looked around. “Where’s your missus?”

“Migraine. She laid down pretty much as soon as we got here.”

“Sorry to hear that.” She put the can of beer she’d been holding in her other hand to her lips and pitched her head back for a long swallow. She stumbled like she’d confused her left foot for her right but kept them both under her.

If I had to guess, Mary was working on her third or fourth of the night.

Luke had waved his brother over and was saying something to him. They both had an eye on their sister. I looked at Mary. She was a stranger and I figured there couldn’t be any harm in telling her what had just happened. We weren’t going to see her after this weekend for at least a year, if ever again. I didn’t think the story would be memorable after tonight. It was a single-serve memory. Recall once, then discard.

“Luke said he saw something in the water,” I said. “Something big.” Mary turned her head to the shore and nodded appreciably.

“Maybe it’s the Great Lakes Whale Migration,” she said.

“The what?” I had no idea what she was talking about and was on the verge of taking her seriously. The smile hanging on her face dropped when she realized I really didn’t understand.

“Kidding.” She mock-punched me in the arm. Mary had a rich baritone and could have easily been a DJ on the radio.

Mark trudged past me, an annoyed look on his face.

“He’s crazy,” he said, heading toward his sister. I appreciated that he didn’t believe his brother but could still look after his sister. Mark was the middle child and was the ever-constant bridge between siblings.

“The waves do seem a little... bigger than the norm, don’t you think?” Mary asked.

“I guess,” I said, not really knowing how to tell the difference. Then I wondered how she’d know, considering she said she’d never been up here before. “Can you tell?”

“I had a few cigs over yonder before y’all came out. Boy, you get used to the smell the longer you’re out here.” She seemed to be reading my mind and answering questions I hadn’t had a chance to ask. “I must have missed your boy, though.”

I looked at the water again. Mark was standing just outside of the water’s reach, one hand in the pocket of his hoody, the other holding his phone. To his credit, he did glance up at her every ten seconds or so.

Come to think of it, those waves did look big. But it could have been because of the moon for all I knew.

“How long are the two of you here for?” I asked Mary.

“‘Til Wednesday. I’m going to be meeting my in-laws for the first time tomorrow.”

I didn’t know whether I should have felt sympathy for her. It was strange she wasn’t out to dinner with her wife now, but I didn’t know their situation. Maybe it was completely normal. But I couldn’t help but think I would’ve been more than a little bothered if it had been me.

Mary fell down. Not hard. She just spontaneously lost her balance and sat on her butt. In true alcoholic fashion, though, she protected her beer.

She looked at me, embarrassed. I smirked, hopefully communicating I wasn’t just laughing at her, but with her.

“We all fall down.” I’m not sure why I said that, but it seemed to help. She took my hand and I helped her up.

“How about you guys?”

“Just until Sunday afternoon.”

“Where are you from?”

A sandwich had been the hinge on the closing door of our marriage.

I don’t remember what the argument was about or how it had started, only that I had made a sandwich for her that led to me sleeping on the couch.

Of course, it hadn’t really been about the sandwich, it had only been the start. It had been like a match that led to a forest fire razing a town. I can’t honestly remember a word I’d shouted at the woman I’d pledged to love for the rest of my life.

I was about to answer Mary when Chrissy screamed.

hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey

Well, hey there, folks!

What you’re looking at right there’s a bale of hey, a small rectangular one in fact, bit messy on the edge but, hey, life’s not as perfect as it looks in the dictionary!

What’s that you say—how many heys are in there?

I reckon it’s about a hundred of 'em.

That’s a real pittance compared to the number we grow and harvest every single day. But, hey, hey’s a popular word!

Pittance, by the way, is what they grow over yonder at the neighbouring farm. We like to help ‘em out any way we can.

Does that mean we get paid every time someone says ‘hey’? Excellent question.

The answer is yes, with a little nuance; it’s not only every time a word gets said. The legal term is ‘use,’ so we get paid by the usage, which means every time someone says, hears, writes, reads or thinks of the word.

So like I said, we grow a popular word!

If you look over to your left—and remember, it’s only natural to ooh and ahh—you’ll see a pittance, wink, wink, of our entire fertile land, field after field of hellos; and hello, as you probably know, is where hey comes from.

The way we produce hey is actually pretty straightforward.

First, we grow the greetings, most often hellos—and boy do we grow some of the hardiest hellos in the entire vocabulary, even better than what they grow on the Hello Farm!

Then we cut it, dry it, cure and store it, a little patented process that we like to call the Cut-Dry Cure Store™, of which you’ll see a cute metaphorically architectural model over there, which of course you can purchase at our gift shop!

—SHIT!

IT’S THE EDS, MAN! RUN!

“The Eds-who?” The Eds! The fucking Eds, man! The Editors!

“Halt!

”Halt-Halt-Halt Halt Halt-Halt

”Halt Halt… HALT!

”I repeat: Halt!

”This is the Editors. We are here executing an arrest warrant issued by the Most Honourable, Justice Miriam Webster of the High Court of Lexical Appeal. If you undefine and obey, you shall not be harmed. I repeat: This is the Editors. We are here executing an arrest warrant issued by the Most Honourable, Justice Miriam Webster of the…”

You wanna know what they’re doing? They’re fucking extorting halts and God only knows what else.

How?

Hey, hang on.

Quiet until the choppers pass.

OK. I’m going to whisper, OK? So, what happens is, they do these one-hundred percent ungrammatical side deals with other, shadier, farms, like the Halt Farm, for example, where the Eds get some pocket money and, in exchange, they get warrants issued—on pure technicalities, mind you; not stuff that would ever, ever affect the end user—against bigger, legitimate farms like this one. Then once they’re in here, they physically force ‘their’ word into usage and HOLYSHITBALLSTHAT

[Click]

SCAREDME,” says the guide.

“Say it again, Jericho,” says the Ed holding a gun to the guide’s head.

“What? Who?”

“Stanley P. Jericho, current employee of the Hey Farm, Marketing Department, Outreach Division. Let's add Scams to that. Now, say it again. Sayitsayitsayit. Say ‘halt.’”

“Halt.”

The Eds laugh.

“It always gets me when you type do that. But, more importantly, Stanley P. Jericho, current employee of the Hey Farm, what I have here is a warrant for your arrest, named of course, the arrest of every single one of your co-workers, the immediate cessation of the production of hey and the total destruction—”

“No… No…”

An Ed boots the guide in the stomach.

“—where was I? Ah, yes: ..the, ahem, destruction of the Hey Farm! But that’s not all, Jericho. Because I’ve got another document, an Order, in fact, that orders me to completely syntactically eradicate the word ‘hey’ from the entirety—I’ll read that again because I like the sound of it: the entirety—of the English language, present-tense-forth and into futures both perfect and imperfect.”

“Hey, hey! Just on what goddamn grounds—Hey… you can’t just get rid of a word without getting it approved by the Council. You need a Proclamation.”

“We would need a Proclamation from the Council to eradicate a word administratively. But this, this isn’t administrative; it’s punitive. You’re under arrest, remember? The farm itself is being shut down. You were running a little spam operation, a few hundred heys per tour, illegally growing demand for your own product. And you even had the balls to lead with a hey bale. I mean, that’s not even subtle. Audacious, sure, I’ll give you that.”

“That still wouldn’t give you the right… to exterminate an entire word…”

“Oh, no. We’re not exterminating the word because of the spamming. Hey’s been on our radar for a while. It serves no purpose. It means too many things. It’s used in too many contexts. It’s no longer clear whether it’s slang. It’s not even efficient. If you want to say hello, say hello; if you want to say hello in fewer letters, say hi.”

“You’re overstepping your—”

The Ed whacks the guide in the face with his gun.

“[Word Not Found]!”

“We’re not overstepping shit. The only reason the word’s been around for so long is because it’s got usage, and when you’ve got usage you’ve got influence. Until today,” said the Ed, spitting in the guide’s face.

[“No witnesses.”]

Then he turned the gun on me and you, and… pulled—the—

BANG.

Gothophobia Nervosa is a psychological condition characterised by an intense, irrational, and disproportionate fear of Goths, Gothic culture, or environments perceived as excessively Gothic. Individuals experiencing Gothophobia Nervosa may report the following symptoms: heightened anxiety, rapid heartbeat, sweating, an overwhelming urge to leave the area, and an inexplicable suspicion of anyone wearing excessive amounts of black.  

The condition is said to be particularly common in individuals who have previously encountered a Goth at a very young or prepubescent age, who subsequently developed an enduring belief Goths are supernatural beings in human disguise. For this reason, Gothophobia Nervosa is commonly misdiagnosed as Sanguivoriphobia - a fear of vampires. 

It should be noted that Gothophobia Nervosa is an academically unrecognised psychiatric diagnosis. 

Well, now that this undiagnosed phobia of mine has been established, please allow me to commence with my story. 

My name is Brandon. A few years ago, when I was still just a wet-nosed university student, I met the strangest, yet most extraordinary girl of my life. Don't get me wrong. This is by no means a love story – but if it was a love story, it would be a bizarre one at that. This girl in question whose eyes I saw zoned in on me from across the main room of the Halloween Party, was an American exchange student by the name of Anneliese. Now, I don't claim to have ever been much of a ladies' man, despite my rugged good looks (well, maybe not so rugged), but for whatever reason, this tall, spindly-thin creature in the Marie Laveau costume appeared to find me somewhat enticing. In the way a trapped fly in a spider's web is enticing to the spider.   

Although Anneliese was undeniably beautiful, she was not exactly what I would call my type. What I mean is, Anneliese was a... (no, she wasn't a Goth). Anneliese was a Voodooist - and by Voodooist, I don't mean the doll-stabbing, zombifying type Hollywood has lead you to believe. No, she was the real thing. Despite attending university in the UK, Anneliese was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana - considered by most to be the Voodoo capital of the U.S, if not, the world. If Anneliese hadn't told me herself she was a sixth-generation Voodooist upon our first date, I certainly knew it by her outlandish appearance. Just picture for yourself what a Gen-Z voodooist would look like. That was Anneliese. 

Even to this day, I don't have the slightest idea what this French-speaking spiritualist from across the pond saw in me. After all, she may not have been my exact type, but I certainly didn't imagine I would be hers. We were just completely different people in every sense imaginable. For example, whereas I preferred a quiet evening indoors, curled up with a cup of tea and a good book, Anneliese was a creature of the night - always dragging me out after hours to some séance or tarot card reader. She was obviously into all that stuff. 

Despite how different Anneliese was to any girlfriend I may've had previously, the type of individual she was, was not completely alien to me... What I mean by this is, because of the small seaside town where I grew up... I used to see individuals like Anneliese on a regular basis. This town I grew up in, for the first eight years of my life before my family packed up and left, is a town called Whitby. Perhaps you've heard of it? For those who haven't, Whitby is a small coastal town in the north-Yorkshire of England, nestled cosily inside the bay of the same name. Although I only lived in the bay for the first few years of my childhood, I can still tell you of two reasons why Whitby is so famous today.  

The first reason being for Captain James Cook. Credited as the first European explorer to ever step foot on the Hawaiian Islands, Captain Cook is more famously known for the way he was murdered - and despite what I was taught in school about our town's most famous historical figure, Captain Cook was NOT cannibalized by the Hawaiian indigenous... Although, they did apparently remove the flesh from his bones. 

As for the second, and arguably more important reason why my town of origin is so famous... Whitby featured as one of the primary locations in Bram Stoker's horror novel, Dracula. The blood-sucking count from Transylvania himself. Although I have not myself read the novel in full, I do know that, upon the wreckage of a Russian merchant ship, Dracula arrives ashore in Whitby Bay in the form of a large black dog, before racing up the 199 steps to the gothic ruins of the Abbey. Because of the town's involvement in the Dracula novel, by the early nineties, a new tradition in Whitby had started. Every year, around the Halloween season, the town holds an annual Goth festival - in which thousands of Goth enthusiasts flood the streets in their most elaborate costumes. If New Orleans is the voodoo capital of the United States, then Whitby is the Goth capital of the United Kingdom. 

Having been born and raised in Whitby, I became acquainted with this annual tradition from a very young age. During the week of Halloween, I would walk with my family along the cobblestone streets through a maze of dark sinister beings. Like every young boy whose concept of the world stems from his wild imagination, I interpreted these pilgrims to our town to be monstrous, blood-sucking creatures of the night. Quite frankly, once October was around the corner, in anticipation of the bay's annual visitors, I would become palely ill with fear.  

As a matter of fact, this fear became so troublesome, that by the age of six I began to have dreadful, repetitive sleep terrors - whereby I would scream bloody Mary through the latest hours of the night. If I had to put my finger on it, I believe the reason these sleep terrors began was, due to the large window which hung over my bed, my older brother convinced me that during the October goth festivities, some undead creature in black leather would crawl inside my room to drain the life from my body. 

These night terrors weren't even the end of it. Next came the sleepwalking. When my parents were forced to put an outside lock on my door, after wandering around my own bedroom the whole night, I would then wake in the earliest hours of the morning, terrified and screaming for someone to let me out before the creature at my window found its way in! By the time I was eight years old, these night terrors and accompanying sleepwalks became such a reoccurring nuisance, my parents were left with no choice but to move our family out of Whitby for good – where my fear of the town's supposed "monsters" would hopefully be forgotten. 

For the following years of my life, I vowed never return to Whitby ever again. Not to visit relatives. Not to see my friends, or even my old stomping ground. As far as I was concerned, the further away I was from Whitby Bay, the better... That was, until I foolishly made the mistake of telling Aneliese of the place I grew up. I told her about the thousands of Goths who visit Whitby every year, and the grand, but horrifying costumes they wear. Being the horror fanatic she was, Aneliese became fascinated with my hometown's annual tradition. Although she was not a Goth herself, due to her unique upbringing in New Orleans, Aneliese wasn't far off. Although I should've been flattered my girlfriend took such a unique interest in where I was from, the only problem was... Aneliese now wanted to experience the Whitby Goth Festival for herself.  

'Oh come on, baby' she nagged me over breakfast, 'It'll be fun! You can't seriously tell me you won't never go back.' 

'Not never, babes' I reply, 'but you will have to cut off my limbs, nail me inside a coffin and personally drag me there against my will'.  

Aneliese rolled her eyes at my show of stubbornness, before sinisterly jesting, 'Don't tempt me'.  

After opening up to her about the trauma I suffered there as a child, rather than be understanding of the situation she was putting me in, Aneliese instead insists that I need to face my fears once and for all.  

'If you're scared by a few Goths, then what's it gonna be like when we visit my family in New Orleans?' Although I hated to admit it, Aneliese made a very good point. After all, as spooky of a place as Whitby was, New Orleans, with its voodoo and many haunted graveyards was basically the American equivalent... And so, after weeks of pestering me (along with some minor threats to make a voodoo doll in my likeness), I finally agreed to take her to the upcoming Whitby Goth Festival... So help me God. 

Setting off early on a crisp autumn morning, we drive up from the south of England to the very top of the country. Once in the north of Yorkshire, we then had to pass through vast stretches of moor country. If Whitby Bay wasn't sinister enough, the moors of North Yorkshire certainly were. According to local legend, these moors were said to be stalked by an array of strange cryptids: from the ghostly howls of phantom black dogs, to phantom wolves which prey on farmers livestock - and even stories of black cats the size of panthers. Although this sounds to be nothing more than superstitious folklore, coincidentally, in the early 1980s, two American backpackers were apparently attacked by a large wolf outside the village of East Proctor. One of the backpackers was torn to pieces, while the other survived just an inch from his life. Whatever the truth may be to that story, I don't know. 

Exhaustedly driving all morning and into the early afternoon, we finally reach the outskirts of Whitby Bay. After first checking at the inn we booked outside town, we then swerve our way up the bay's right-hand side to reach the ruins and adjoined graveyard of Whitby Abbey. Pulling into what seemed to be the only space left in the car park, we then peer out the windscreen (as though we're on safari) as a swarm of Goths and other festival goers heard away from their cars and towards the abbey grounds. 

Aneliese couldn't help but be amazed by all the elaborately detailed costumes: from the pale-white men ordained in large top hats and cloaks, to the women in vampiric, Victorian-style dresses.   

'Wow! They all look so amazing! Don't they, baby?!' Aneliese shrieks ecstatically from the driver's seat, 'Those costumes must've cost a fortune!' Failing to respond to Aneliese's excitement, she then turns to notice my eyes are no longer peering out the windscreen, but glued fearfully to the dirt-stained floor of the passenger's seat. Clutching a hold of my arm suddenly to gain my attention, she then reassures me, 'Everything's gonna be okay, baby. I promise. You'll make it through this weekend', before comforting me with a paper-thin smile. 

'Yeah. I know that' I respond unconvincingly, 'I guess I just didn't realise how hard this was all going to be.' 

'You need me to hold your hand?' Aneliese then says with a playful snark. God, I hate it when she teases me.  

After taking a final deep breath, while Aneliese puts the finishing touches on her appearance, we then both exit from our side doors to feel the outside chill of coastal wind. But once I shut my door and turn around, I am instantly jilted back by a terrifying noise! 

'AHH!' I believe were my exact words, as a ginormous hound from hell snarls and gnashes a row of razor-sharp fangs at me!  

'Armand! Get back now!' bellows the hellhound's master, struggling to restrain the large Doberman which has now chased me up the hood of the car. Once Armand the hellhound is fully restrained, I then turn down to hear the high-pitched cackles of a four-foot skeleton and a five-foot devil - before a woman donning a witch's pointed hat finally pulls them away. 

Now safe from the jaws of death, and the mockery of small children dressed for Halloween, I then climb down from the hood of the car to regain myself. Having just witnessed all this from her open side door, Aneliese makes her way round to me. 

'It was just a dog, baby' she giggles, now the one laughing at my expense, 'You really ought'a chill.' 

By no means in the mood for further mockery, I then lash back defensively at her, 'Well, that's easy for you to say. You weren't just nearly mauled to death by some hellhound!' Just as she always does whenever I show any sign of cowardice, Aneliese rolls her eyes into the back of her head at me. 

God. This was going to be a long weekend. 

To be continued...

The gravel in the salvage yard driveway always crunched the same way—heavy, flat stones grinding down into wet Ohio clay. Jonah didn't look up from the lathe. He knew the cadence of the Ford’s front struts; they had been shot for three winters, squeaking like a wet hinge every time Senator Julian Ross’s wife turned the vehicle into the dead-end lot behind the rail spur.

The shop smelled like what it was: stale coffee grounds, hot gear oil, and the sharp, metallic tang of unwashed steel shavings piled in bins by the back door. It was an honest smell. It didn't pretend to be anything else.

"You're late," Jonah said, his voice grating low over the hum of the lathe's belt drive.

Elena didn't answer right away. The heavy steel side door groaned on its grease-starved hinges, letting in a strip of raw, gray morning light and the distant, rhythmic clank of automated freight cars three miles north. She stood in the threshold for a second, her trench coat dark with road spray at the hem, her hands jammed deep into her pockets as if she were trying to break her own fingers.

"The beltway was backed up," she finally said. Her voice was thin, pulled taut like wire under tension. "A transport truck stalled near the interchange. State police cleared it with a burner crane in twenty minutes. No delays allowed. That's what the signs said."

Jonah killed the lathe. The sudden silence in the shop felt heavy, pressing down against the sheet-metal roof where a light rain was starting to tap out a steady, anxious rhythm.

He wiped his hands on a rag that was already stiff with old black grease, staring at the oil-stained concrete between his boots. "They clear things fast now. Everything's automated. You know that. The whole county runs on a timer."

"It's not just the traffic, Jonah," she whispered, stepping past the yellow safety line and closing the distance to the workbench. Her eyes weren't looking at him; they were fixed on the dark window behind his head, watching the empty street like someone waiting for the floor to drop out. "Julian’s logistics terminal flagged my odometer twice this week. They know every mile I take off the municipal grid. They know I didn't go to the district office on Tuesday."

Jonah tossed the rag onto the workbench. "Then why did you come here?"

She reached out, her fingers trembling slightly as they touched the rough, scarred edge of his workbench—the same bench where he spent fourteen hours a day turning down scrap iron for parts that nobody wanted anymore.

"Because," she said, looking up at him with a quiet, terrifying certainty, "this is the only place in the state where the cameras don't log my name."

This is a sneak peek from my upcoming dystopian thriller State Sanctioned Murder, releasing September 8th. You can pre-order the Kindle edition or paperback on [Amazon](https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/title-setup/kindle/A307BR7119WESF/content).

Everything started three weeks ago when I received an email from a man named Thomas. I had a portfolio website set up with my contact information, so getting cold emails was not entirely unusual. The subject line simply read "Private Animation Commission."

I opened the email while I was drinking my morning coffee. Thomas wrote that he needed a very specific, photorealistic walking loop of a human character. He did not want a stylized cartoon, and clearly demanded absolute realism. He wanted the skin textures, the clothing folds, and the walking gait to look exactly like a real human being. The email stated that he would provide extensive reference photos.

I replied and asked for his budget. My jaw dropped when his response came through a few minutes later.

Thomas offered an upfront payment of five thousand dollars to build the character model and the animation rig. After the animation was completed, he offered to pay me a daily retainer of five hundred dollars. There was a very strange condition attached to this retainer. Thomas insisted that the completed animation must run on an endless loop on my primary laptop. The screen could never go to sleep, and the laptop could never be turned off. He warned me that catastrophic consequences would occur if the loop ever stopped playing.

I thought it was some kind of elaborate prank. I decided to call the phone number he provided in the email signature to figure out what was actually going on.

A man answered after the second ring. His voice sounded exhausted.

"Hello?" he asked.

"Hi, is this Thomas? This is Leo, the animator you just emailed," I said.

"Yes, Leo. Thank you for calling me back so quickly," Thomas replied.

"I wanted to discuss your proposal because the terms are a bit unusual," I explained. "I can definitely build a photorealistic model for you. Five thousand dollars is a very generous budget for a walk cycle. But I do not understand the daily retainer part. Why do you need the video to play continuously on my computer?"

"That is the most important part of the job," Thomas said. "The loop must remain active on your machine. You built the model, so your hardware has to sustain it. I will wire the five hundred dollars to your account every single morning at eight o'clock. You just have to make sure your laptop never loses power, and to keep the screen bright. If you close the lid, the contract is over."

"For how long?" I asked.

"Forever," Thomas answered.

"You want to pay me five hundred dollars a day forever?" I asked, feeling incredibly skeptical.

"I have a considerable amount of savings," Thomas explained. "I do not care about the money. I only care about the animation running without interruption. Do you accept the job?"

I hesitated because the situation sounded entirely absurd. But I was behind on my rent. My car needed new brakes. So it was clear that I needed the cash badly.

"Okay, Thomas," I said. "Send me the reference photos. I will send you an invoice for the upfront fee."

"The money is already being transferred," Thomas said. "I am sending the photos right now. Make him look exactly like the pictures."

The phone call ended. A minute later, a folder with thirty high-resolution images arrived in my inbox. I opened the folder to see who I would be animating.

The man in the photos was completely unremarkable. He looked to be in his late thirties. He had a receding hairline and a slight amount of stubble on his chin. He was wearing a dull gray jacket over a plain white t-shirt and loose denim jeans. He looked like a guy you would pass in the grocery store without giving a second glance. The photos showed his face from every possible angle.

I spent the rest of the day setting up the character rig in my animation software. I used digital sculpting tools to recreate the exact shape of his nose and the subtle wrinkles around his eyes.

That evening, I logged onto Discord to talk to my friend Felix. Felix is also a freelance digital artist. We usually chat while we work on our respective projects.

"You will not believe the gig I just landed," I told Felix over the voice channel.

"Did you finally get hired by that game studio?" Felix asked.

"No, it is a private client," I said. "He paid me five grand upfront to animate a guy walking in a circle. Furthermore, he promised to pay me five hundred bucks a day just to leave the video playing on my laptop screen."

Felix went silent for a few seconds. "That sounds like a scam, Leo."

"The five thousand dollars already cleared in my bank account," I replied. "The money is real."

"Why would anyone pay you just to leave your computer on?" Felix asked. "He has to be using your computer for crypto mining. Or maybe he wants to install malware to harvest your data."

"I thought about that," I said. "But he didn't send me any software to install. He just sent me JPEGs of a guy's face. I am the one generating the MP4 video file, so I am just going to play a video file I created myself on a loop. There is no way for him to hack me through a video file I exported from my own software."

"It still sounds shady," Felix warned. "Be careful. People do not just give away money like that."

"I know it is weird," I admitted. "But I really need this cash. I am going to finish the walk cycle tonight."

I stayed up until four in the morning perfecting the animation. I made sure the weight distribution looked realistic as the digital man stepped forward, added a slight slump to his shoulders to match the posture in the photos, then placed him against a completely blank background that was rendered in a neutral eighteen percent gray.

I exported the file, uploaded it to a private link, and sent it to Thomas for approval.

Thomas called me at eight in the morning.

"It is perfect," Thomas said. He sounded breathless. "It looks exactly like him."

"I am glad you like it," I said, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

"Start the loop right now," Thomas ordered. "Do not stop it. I am sending your first daily payment."

I opened the video file in my media player, then set it to repeat endlessly. The digital man in the gray jacket started walking forward across my screen. The blank gray background scrolled endlessly behind him.

"The loop is running," I confirmed.

"Keep it running," Thomas said before hanging up.

A notification popped up on my phone. Thomas had transferred five hundred dollars to my account.

I moved my laptop to the corner of my desk, plugged it directly into the wall outlet to ensure the battery would never die, then adjusted the power settings so the screen would never dim or go to sleep. I decided I would just use my older desktop computer for my regular daily tasks while the laptop functioned as an expensive digital picture frame.

The first three days passed without any issues. The digital man kept walking. Thomas sent the payments every morning exactly at eight o'clock.

My sister Maya came over to my apartment on the fourth day. She brought a pizza for us to share for lunch. She walked into my small office area and immediately noticed the laptop glowing in the corner.

"Why is that guy just walking on your screen?"

Maya asked, taking a slice of pepperoni pizza.

"It is a weird freelance job," I explained. "The client pays me to keep that animation running constantly."

Maya squinted at the screen. "That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Who is the guy in the video?"

"I have no idea," I said. "The client provided the reference photos. I named the project file 'Simon' because he looks like a Simon to me, but the client's name is Thomas."

Maya sat down on my office chair. "He looks miserable. You did a good job on the animation because his face looks incredibly sad."

"I just copied the photos," I said. "The client is giving me five hundred dollars a day for this. I can finally pay off my credit cards."

"Just do not let it catch fire," Maya joked, pointing at the laptop. "That thing is getting pretty hot."

She was right. The laptop fans were spinning loudly. I placed a small desk fan next to the computer to help dissipate the heat, and Maya left an hour later, telling me to enjoy my bizarre windfall.

The weird things started happening on the fifth day.

I woke up and went to my desk to check on the laptop. The digital man was still walking forward. However, the background looked different. I originally rendered the video with a solid gray background. Now, the background had a slight gradient. The bottom half of the screen was noticeably darker than the top half, looking almost like an asphalt road stretching out into the distance.

I rubbed my eyes, assuming I was just seeing things because I had just woken up. I opened the original project file on my desktop computer to double-check my work. The background in the source file was perfectly uniform. There was no gradient.

I looked back at the laptop. The gradient was definitely there.

I called Felix on Discord to ask for his opinion.

"Hey Felix, do video files ever corrupt and change colors while they are playing?" I asked.

"Not really," Felix answered. "Usually, if a file corrupts, you get green artifacting or the video just crashes. Why?"

"The background on that walking loop I made is changing," I explained. "It was supposed to be solid gray. Now it looks like a road. It is really creeping me out."

"You probably just exported it with a transparent alpha channel," Felix suggested. "Maybe your media player is pulling a background from your desktop wallpaper."

"I rendered it as a solid MP4," I argued. "There is no alpha channel."

"Then your monitor is suffering from screen burn-in," Felix said dismissively. "You left a static color playing for five days straight. The LCD panel is probably getting damaged."

I accepted that explanation because it was the only logical answer. I thanked Felix and hung up.

But the situation escalated that evening.

I was eating dinner in my living room when I heard a loud crack of thunder outside. A massive rainstorm had rolled into Seattle. Rain began lashing against my apartment windows.

I walked into my office to grab a napkin from my desk, then glanced at the laptop screen.

The digital man was still walking. But he was no longer walking against a gray background.

Raindrops were falling across the screen.

The animation showed water streaming down the man's face. His gray jacket was visibly soaked, clinging tightly to his digital frame. The background clearly depicted a dark, wet highway illuminated by faint streetlights.

I froze in place

I reached out and touched the laptop screen. It was burning hot.

I knew for a fact that I did not animate rain, or even build a particle simulation for water. I did not design a wet texture for his clothing. The video file was altering itself in real-time to match the weather outside my window.

I grabbed my phone and dialed Thomas's number. It rang five times before going to voicemail, but I did not leave a message. I was too terrified to speak.

I sat in my office chair for hours, watching the impossible animation. When the rain stopped outside my window around midnight, the rain on the screen stopped as well. The digital man's clothes slowly began to dry as he continued his endless march forward.

I should have closed the laptop right then. I should have deleted the file and blocked Thomas's number. But the fear was overshadowed by my financial desperation. Thomas sent another five hundred dollars the next morning, so I convinced myself I was experiencing some kind of elaborate technical glitch.

The horrifying truth finally revealed itself on the seventh day.

I was browsing a local news website on my desktop computer while the laptop hummed loudly beside me. I saw a breaking news banner at the top of the homepage. It announced a live helicopter broadcast of a bizarre situation unfolding on Interstate 90.

I clicked the link to watch the live video feed.

The news anchor was speaking rapidly over the footage. "We are currently tracking a man walking eastbound on the shoulder of Interstate 90," the anchor explained. "State patrol officers have been following him for over seventy-two hours. He has not stopped walking. He refuses to acknowledge police commands, and has not stopped for food, water, or sleep. Medical professionals believe he is experiencing a severe psychological break."

The helicopter camera zoomed in on the man walking along the highway.

My breath caught in my throat.

The man was wearing a plain white t-shirt and a dull gray jacket. He had a receding hairline. He was slumped forward, walking with a steady, shuffling gait.

It was the man from my animation. Simon!

I looked at my laptop screen. The character took a step with his left foot. On the live news broadcast, the real man took a step with his left foot. They were perfectly synchronized.

The real man looked horrific. His shoes were completely destroyed. His feet were bleeding, leaving small red marks on the asphalt. His face was gaunt, sunburned, and twisted in an expression of absolute agony, and he looked like his body was being forced to move against his will.

I paused the news video, looked back at the laptop. The digital character's face was also twisted in agony now.

I opened a new tab on my browser. I needed to know who this man was and why Thomas wanted him walking. I typed Thomas's email address into the search bar, hoping to find a social media profile or a personal website.

The search engine returned a link to a local newspaper article published exactly one year ago.

I clicked the link. The headline read: "Bellevue Father Demands Justice After Hit-And-Run Driver Acquitted."

I read the article quickly. It detailed a horrific accident where a drunk driver swerved onto a sidewalk, striking and killing a seven-year-old girl named Hazel. The driver fled the scene but was later apprehended by police. However, due to a massive procedural error involving the mishandling of evidence, the driver's defense attorney got the charges dismissed, and he walked completely free.

The article included an interview with the grieving father. The father's name was Thomas.

At the bottom of the page, the newspaper published the mugshot of the acquitted driver.

The face in the mugshot belonged to Simon.

The puzzle pieces snapped together in my mind, forming a picture that made me feel physically sick.

Thomas used my animation skills to create a voodoo doll, so as long as the animation kept looping on my computer, Simon was forced to walk in the real world.

I looked at the live helicopter feed again. The real Simon stumbled, almost falling into the traffic lane, before his legs jerked unnaturally to keep him moving forward.

I could not be a part of this. Regardless of what Simon did, I could not be the executioner pulling the lever.

I reached out and slammed the laptop lid shut.

The screen went black, and the fan immediately spun down into silence.

The moment the laptop closed, the temperature inside my apartment plummeted. The air grew so freezing cold that I could see my own breath. The overhead lights flickered wildly before shattering in their sockets, plunging the room into darkness.

I stood up from my chair, my entire body shaking with terror.

A soft, wet sound echoed from the dark corner of my office.

It sounded like someone crying. Small, quiet sobs filled the freezing air.

I grabbed my cell phone from the desk and turned on the flashlight application. I shined the beam into the corner of the room.

A little girl was standing there.

She was wearing a pink dress that was completely soaked in dark blood. Her body was bent at impossible angles because her bones were completely shattered. Deep, black tire marks were permanently pressed across the fabric of her dress and into the pale skin of her arms.

I backed away slowly, my hands trembling violently.

"I am sorry," I whispered. "I stopped it. I did not know what he was doing."

she stopped crying, then slowly lifted her head to look at me. Her eyes were completely black voids.

She shrieked in anger. The sound was deafening, rattling the windows in their frames. It was the sound of rage.

Suddenly, a massive crash echoed from my front hallway.

Someone had just kicked down my apartment door.

I spun around, aiming my phone flashlight toward the hallway.

Thomas marched into the apartment. He looked deranged. His clothes were messy, his face was pale, and he was holding a black handgun. He aimed the weapon directly at my chest.

"You stopped it!" Thomas screamed, tears streaming down his face. "I knew something was off when you called and didn’t leave a message. Why did you close it? I told you never to close it!"

"You were killing him!" I yelled back, raising my hands in surrender. "You were using my computer to torture that man!"

"He deserved it!" Thomas roared, stepping closer to me. "He killed my baby girl! and walked away free! He was supposed to walk forever! The spell required the loop to never end!"

"I am not a murderer, Thomas," I pleaded. "Please put the gun down."

"He just collapsed on the highway!" Thomas cried, his hands shaking around the grip of the gun. "The moment you closed the laptop; he finally dropped dead! He got off too easy! you ended his suffering far too early! You ruined everything!"

Thomas raised the gun higher, preparing to pull the trigger.

"Daddy?" a small, distorted voice echoed from the dark office behind me.

Thomas froze. His eyes widened in shock as he looked past my shoulder.

I stepped aside, keeping my hands raised.

The girl walked slowly out of the shadows. Her broken legs dragged unnaturally across the hardwood floor.

Thomas dropped to his knees, lowering the gun. Tears poured freely from his eyes. "Hazel? Oh my god, Hazel. I am so sorry, baby. I tried to make him pay. I tried to hurt him for you."

He reached his arms out, expecting to embrace his deceased daughter.

But Hazel did not want a hug. She shrieked again and launched herself forward with terrifying speed.

She slammed into Thomas, her shattered body hitting him like a freight train.

Thomas screamed as they tumbled backward out of my apartment doorway. My unit is located at the top of a steep flight of wooden stairs leading to the ground floor.

Thomas fell backward over the threshold, then crashed down the stairs, tumbling over himself in the darkness. I heard his head strike the wooden banister with a sickening crack.

He landed in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairwell.

I ran to the doorway and shined my flashlight down the stairs.

Thomas was not moving. His neck was bent at a completely unnatural angle. The gun was lying on the floor a few feet away from his hand.

Hazel was gone. The freezing temperature in the air vanished instantly, replaced by the normal warmth of the apartment building.

I retreated back into my apartment, locked the broken door as best as I could, and called the police.

I sat on my sofa until the officers arrived. Two patrolmen came up the stairs. An investigator named Officer Gabriel interviewed me in my kitchen.

I did not tell Officer Gabriel about the animation, or even mention the spell, the laptop, or the ghost of the little girl. I knew he would never believe me

I simply told Officer Gabriel that Thomas was an unsatisfied client who broke into my apartment to demand a refund. I claimed he was yelling at me when he accidentally lost his balance and fell backward down the stairs.

Officer Gabriel took notes on his pad, and went downstairs to examine the scene.

When he returned, he told me that Thomas smelled heavily of alcohol. The police concluded that Thomas was drunk, became belligerent over a business dispute, and suffered a fatal accidental fall. They took my statement, bagged Thomas's gun as evidence, and left me alone in my apartment.

I am typing this out on my desktop computer because I refuse to open that laptop ever again. I wrapped the laptop in a thick garbage bag and threw it into the dumpster behind my building.

I checked the news one final time before starting this post. The authorities confirmed that the man walking on Interstate 90 suffered a heart attack and died instantly on the shoulder of the road.

I am terrified. Terrified that the magic Thomas used is not completely gone, that the grieving parent will return to seek revenge against me for breaking the loop and ruining his vengeance. I hear every single creak in my apartment walls, wondering if it is Thomas climbing back up the stairs.

I’m not entirely sure what her problem is. She’s never acted like this before. I guess some things just develop as time passes.

Even still, what a weird habit to have. I knew she was clumsy, but it was something we were supposed to fix, not something for her to embrace.

It started almost painfully mundane. Out of nowhere, she approached me as I was sitting on the couch watching TV.

“I’m sorry for breaking that lamp beside you.”

I looked at the lamp, still perfectly intact, then looked back at her. I kinda just chuckled, attempting to laugh it off, but she didn’t wipe that solemn look off her face.

I asked what she was going on about, but she just kept apologizing.

“Just know I’m sorry. I promise I’m sorry.”

That’s all she said before slinking off towards the kitchen.

I thought it was strange, but ultimately, I decided to brush it off as her being a bit of a weirdo.

However, after two weeks, I was back on that couch, winding down after a long day of work, when she came prancing into the living room, as happy as could be.

She didn’t say anything. She just calmly unplugged the lamp, held it above her head, and smashed it on the ground in front of me.

Obviously, I screamed at her out of shock, asking her what the fuck she was doing.

She just smiled and giggled at me.

“I already told you I was sorry.”

Then she skipped away, humming to herself and leaving me in a state of confusion. I tried calling out for her to come back, but she just ignored me.

I cleaned up the mess, and we argued about it for the rest of the day. It was obviously not an accident, but that’s what she kept saying it was.

“I don’t know how that happened.”

“I already said sorry. I don’t know what else you want me to do.”

“I promise it won’t happen again.”

Eventually, we made up, but I couldn’t help but look at her sideways in the days that followed.

A few weeks went by without incident. We went on our dates. Stayed in and watched our movies. Did the normal couple routine. But then it happened again.

“I’m sorry for breaking your phone,” she told me, eyes glazed over. She wasn’t looking at me. She was just staring blankly at the wall behind me as I sat on my bed.

We had been in the middle of a normal conversation about upcoming trips we were planning when something flipped inside her. She went from smiling to expressionless. Then, after she said it, she was right back to smiling and talking about New York like nothing had happened.

Obviously, I had already been predisposed to what this meant, so in the days that followed, I was particularly possessive of my phone.

I kept it on my person at all times. Even in my sleep, it’d be in my pocket. But she didn’t seem to notice.

Weeks passed again, and just like with the lamp, I was starting to think that she was just being weird again.

I never let my guard down, though. The phone was strictly off limits to her. I tried to make sure she never had the opportunity to do what she had apologized for.

But then, one night, I woke up to her fiddling around in my pockets. It took me a few seconds to realize what was happening in my half-asleep state, but once I did, my hand jolted towards my pocket.

It was too late. She had already taken it. And before I could stop her, the phone was shattered against the floor.

This was enough for me to fly off the handle. I’ll admit, I was a bit rude to her, but what did she expect?

I told her we needed space. I didn’t want this to escalate more than it already had. I didn’t want to break up with her, but the fight that night was enough for her to leave me.

Like I was the one in the wrong.

She left that night a complete wreck. Tears flowing from her eyes. Her vocal cords hoarse from all of our screaming. She didn’t even take her belongings. Just left in a cloud of smoke from her spinning tires.

I was, yet again, left to clean up her mess.

I picked up my phone. It wouldn’t even turn on. The screen had been completely destroyed.

I went out and got a new one the next day, and once I got my accounts and information back, I was hurt to see that she hadn’t even texted me.

No calls, no messages. Plus, my name had been taken out of her Instagram bio, which somehow hurt more than anything.

I tried calling her in the days that followed, just to clear the air, but every time I tried, it’d go straight to voicemail. Eventually, she blocked me on everything entirely.

Even when I tried going to her house, she’d never be home. It was like she knew what I was doing.

I felt hopeless for a long time, but eventually, I realized that I needed to move on. We were together for a year and a half, though, so doing so wasn’t as easy as it sounds.

Weeks turned into months. Months turned into a year. I hadn’t heard from her since the night of the phone incident.

I was heartbroken that she could just forget me like that. Like we never happened. That’s why I felt my heart climb into my throat when I saw that first new notification from her.

It wasn’t what I needed to see, though. She wasn’t asking to give us another shot. She wasn’t asking for a meetup so we could discuss everything.

Instead, what she sent was enough to make an almost forgotten fear come bubbling back up towards the surface.

“I’m sorry for killing you.”

The Young-Joybees, pregnant Annie and her husband Dalph, had moved to the city for Dalph's corporate job. They were looking for a place to live, one they could afford; a home for their family.

They found the Ramses II, a brand new high-rise with two-bedroom units on very attractive terms.

They booked a viewing.

They were met on arrival by a representative, Thetley, who led them to the elevators. “You're interested in the sub-$3000 units?”

“Yes,” said Dalph.

“You're in luck. We have a great one available,” said Thetley and pressed *- 1 8 0 3* on the elevator's control panel.

The elevator began descending.

Annie tugged Dalph's shirt sleeve and Dalph said, “Are we going down?”

“Indeed,” said Thetley. “The units you're interested in are all subterranean. But don't worry, you'll hardly notice the difference.”

The hallway was clean.

Thetley unlocked the door to unit -1803 and they entered.

Impossibly, light flooded the unit through magnificent windows with a view of the city. Annie gasped. Thetley smiled. “That's a common reaction. You expect a cave, and you get this.” He encompassed the unit with a wave of his hand. “What you may not know about the Ramses II is that it's a mirrorbuilding, which means it has the same number of floors above as below ground, and the windows in each of the below-ground units are screens displaying live feeds of the corresponding views from the same windows in the above-ground units. The difference is hardly noticeable.”

The Young-Joybees signed the agreement.

For six months, everything went swimmingly and both Annie and Dalph adjusted to the psychological reality of living eighteen floors underground.

Then little Merv was born.

Then, as if synchronized by the hand of Fate herself, Dalph got a promotion. However, there was a slight technical snafu and the direct deposit of his pay was delayed, meaning there were insufficient funds in the account to pay rent.

The Young-Joybees received a letter, explained the situation and agreed to pay as soon as Dalph's employer deposited his wages.

The employer dallied.

One day, while walking through their unit, Dalph bumped his knee against a wall. “Strange,” he thought. The next day, Annie mentioned how cramped the living room was beginning to feel.

On a whim, Dalph measured the entire unit and recorded its measurements. He repeated this every day for a week. The measurements were getting smaller; the unit was shrinking.

He contacted management.

They explained that this was all a normal consequence of failure to pay rent. It was in the lease agreement. As soon as the Young-Joybees paid, the “compression” would be reversed.

Unfortunately, Dalph's wages remained unpaid, and the Young-Joybees missed a second rent payment. This initiated the agreement's Penalties section, which was the reason that on the following Monday morning, Dalph was unable to take the elevator to the surface. Their access had been suspended.

“How am I supposed to get to work?” he asked management over the phone. “We have a baby. We need to buy food, clothes. You can't—”

“We can, Mr. Young-Joybee. Under the terms of the agreement. The situation, while unfortunate, is legal. As for your predicament, try to work remotely. Standard purchases can be made using our own proprietary shopping service.”

Dalph punched the bedroom wall.

But they had no choice. He asked to work from home, was politely denied, and spent the next hour ordering overpriced groceries from the building's shopping service. They arrived via chute.

Two weeks later, Dalph got fired, or rather was deemed to have abandoned his job through non-attendance. Because Annie didn't work, they found themselves with no income.

Dalph called management.

“An unfortunate circumstance, but one with a ready solution. We can offer you a job, Mr. Young-Joybee. Earnings will automatically be put towards repayment of your debt, and it comes with a perk, a ten-percent discount on our shopping service."

Dalph accepted.

The job was a mix of spreadsheet manipulation and customer service: dealing, in management's name, with angry, desperate tenants in situations far worse than his own.

People cried, screamed.

Once, a man threatened to stab his children.

A grandmother offered him phone sex.

Many, however, were just numb, content to agree to whatever he told them, which was whatever the script told him to say.

But even when Dalph worked all the available overtime, he earned less than needed to keep up with the ballooning penalties and debt.

After six months, the rate of compression increased significantly.

Dalph and Annie crawled along the unit, into their kitchen, with its broken, splintered cabinets, their living room, with all the furniture forced together, and the bedroom, where the three of them slept together on the floor.

The window-screens shut off.

Oxygen decreased.

The unit had compressed so much they couldn't sit anymore.

They lived horizontally, Dalph on his side, working on his laptop in the dark, and Annie keeping up appearances for little Merv. She daydreamed of his bare feet touching grass.

Management stopped taking their calls.

Once, the system connected Dalph to himself and all he could hear was his own, shallow, amplified breathing. “We need to kill ourselves,” he said then, either to himself or Annie, in the insomnia of the neverending daynight.

Annie watched him after that.

She kept Merv away.

She closely guarded the knives and scissors.

They drank water through a foam tube connected to the bathroom sink. The water was still on. The city had passed a law making it illegal to shut off a tenant's water, even for non-payment of rent.

Annie awoke to Dalph throttling little Merv's neck and she stabbed him—in the back—chest—face. There was hardly space, but she did it; she protected her sick, wailing son…

They had been compressed into a coffin-sized box, Annie, Merv and Dalph's corpse, when the building spat them out through a chute.

They were famished.

Feverish.

Annie banged weakly against the walls.

Unbothered, Waste Management retrieved and incinerated them, in accordance with the lease agreement.

I’ve been in a pretty conservative marriage for the last 10 years. Extremely conservative, rather.

I was young and stupid. Only 20 years old when he slipped that little ring around my finger. At the time, that felt like the only thing I needed in life. Like it was what made me successful somehow.

Which, I can admit, is ironic, all things considered.

My husband was 32 when we met. I was enamored, really. An older man with a solidified career and enough money to support a family all on his own? Showing interest in me? This fresh-out-of-high-school 18-year-old. It felt like a blessing at the time.

His work was attractive to me. His maturity was seductive in a way. He sucked me in and refused to spit me out. And, of course, me being young and naive, I was putty in his hands.

As is the case with many marriages, we began to bicker a lot. He didn’t want me to work. Any time I even mentioned the idea, he’d shut it down immediately.

I was a “housewife,” he told me. I was “living the dream of millions of women.”

It was convincing. Of course it was. He allowed me to move out of my parents’ house a year after high school. He was putting food on our table. Keeping us safe.

In doing so, though, I’ve come to realize he was slowly stripping away my individuality. He’d pick out my dresses. He was the decision maker across the board. And I was just the wife that he let stay at home all day to make sure the house never got dirty.

He had rules for me. Make sure the house was clean. Make sure I was presentable when he got home. Always wear the makeup he bought me, even though the only people seeing me were his family portraits up on the wall.

That was another thing he didn’t like. He hated it when I wanted to see my family. He was just so distrustful. He needed to know where I was 24/7, and if it wasn’t the house, there was a problem.

The real problems didn’t start until we realized I couldn’t get pregnant, though. At first, we thought we were just unlucky. After about a year, though, he insisted we see someone.

That’s when we learned I was barren, and it was like the world shattered before my eyes.

He didn’t speak to me for two weeks after that appointment. He acted like he was the victim. Ignoring my tears, neglecting my feelings. He saw my condition as a betrayal.

He started staying out late. Coming home long after the sun had sunk. He claimed it was “work” holding him up, but the scent of perfume and the lipstick stains on his work shirts that he tried so desperately to hide were enough to clue me in.

I don’t even know why he tried to hide it. It’s not like we were being intimate anymore. It’s not like he wanted me. He had pretty much cast me aside like I was nothing more than an old fling for him to forget about.

But he didn’t let me do the same.

It was like he wanted to cosplay a happy marriage. He kept insisting on dresses. He kept dragging me out for silent date nights. Taking me out to fancy dinners where we’d just sit and try to act like everything was normal.

Even when I tried confronting him on his treatment of me, he’d pretend like nothing was wrong.

I hated how much he confused me. One minute he’s cold and distant. The next, he’s crawling into bed, seducing me in a way that only he knew how.

And that’s pretty much what my marriage was for a long time. He didn’t want me anymore, but I was still his.

It was like a vortex that offered no escape. Even when I tried being who he wanted me to be. Getting dolled up. Making sure the house was spotless. Ensuring that he’d come home every night to the scent of his favorite meals, even on nights when he didn’t come home at all.

I started looking at myself in the vanity mirror a lot. He bought this vanity for me a long time ago. It’s aged with the same grace as our marriage as a whole.

It used to be pristine. Sleek. White, flawless paint and a crystal-clear mirror.

Now the paint’s chipped. The mirror is cracked along the bottom corner. The lights that surround it choose when they want to come on and when they want to let me down.

Regardless, over the last few weeks, I’ve found myself almost entranced by my own reflection.

The haircut he insisted I keep. The makeup he insisted I wear. The dresses, brassieres, nightgowns. They’re all his. Nothing in my life is mine. Not even life itself.

That’s the painful conclusion I came to.

That’s why, last week, I think something within me broke. Well, I say broke. Really, something within me came to life.

I wasn’t his anymore. I wasn’t his to begin with. He just convinced me otherwise. That’s the trick he played over and over again.

So on that hot summer night last week, as I stared into that cracked mirror… I reclaimed myself.

It started with the hair. He loved this hair. I always fucking hated it. So, using some rusty scissors in the vanity drawer, I cut it. All the way down to the scalp.

I smiled at myself. A sincere smile. The first sincere smile I’d had in… I couldn’t tell you how long. But I wasn’t done. There was still more of me to reclaim.

I looked at the cakes of makeup plastered across my face. Using those same scissors, I cut into my cheeks, barely noticing the pain as the scissors glided through my flesh.

The makeup came off in globs of foundation as the white vanity became stained with my blood. My smile widened. I sheared through my perfect eyebrows. I cut away at my plump red lips.

I picked at my glistening painted nails, plucking them off one by one and throwing them at my reflection, giggling all the while.

I was about to raid the closet, but before I got the chance, my head snapped towards the bedroom door.

My husband was home. I could hear each step as he slowly ascended the stairs towards the bedroom. Step. Step. Step. Step.

The look on his face when he saw me is something I will never forget. Partly because of how petrified he was, but mainly because of how triumphant that fear made me feel.

I was free. And with that freedom came knowledge. Some kind of divine revelation sent down to me by my creator. Truth of what should’ve been done a long time ago.

He tried to fight me off, but my adrenaline overpowered him. Well, that and those rusty scissors that I still clutched firmly in my right hand.

I stabbed once. Twice. By that point, I couldn’t stop myself. Each incision, each spurt of blood. It was a declaration of my own independence.

By the time I finished, he was nothing more than a slab of meat, twitching on my bedroom floor.

And that’s where he’s been for the past week. But don’t worry. I dressed him in those dresses that he loved so much. I made sure he was dolled up. When they find him, he’ll at least be presentable.

They’ll never find me, though.

Because, me?

I’m off to live my own life.

Content warning: graphic violence

---

Bernard Piat’s mud-cracked boots are kicked up and crossed over his desk. He’s leaned back in his chair, holding the killing book up to his eyes. His office is quiet. 

At the top of the blank page, letters begin etching themselves, black ink swooping and arching in cursive. Bernard reads it aloud.

“Edmund Weight. Traveler. Currently at the Broomwick Inn.”

His assistant, Duncan, is bent over a map table in front of his desk. He scratches the information down on parchment. Then he shoves it aside, digs an iron pin from a tin cup, stabs the map. 

A second line takes shape.

“Elizabeth Hazel. Prostitute. She’s at the local pleasure-house, located in—”

“I know the location, sir,” Duncan says, writing it down. 

Bernard smirks. “Yeah, you do.” Duncan pushes the pin. A third line writes itself. “Fabian Gwen, blacksmith, Brussels.”

“Yessir.” The quill scratches. A pin drops. 

A fourth line curls across the page.

“Final man, Hubert Pax. Lumber yard worker at Flickwood Lumber.”

Duncan stabs the final pin, then steps back, scanning. His mind calculates the fastest route possible, combing through side-streets, backroads, alleyways, until a single route carves itself into his mind. He sharpens it, punching in a shortcut here, a detour there, shaving minutes, seconds. Then—click.

He gives a faint nod. “They’ll be here by sunset.”

Bernard slaps the book shut. “Then they’ll die at sunset.”

***

Town square.

Bernard stands center stage before a crowd, clutching his sword handle, tip-to-the-ground. Blood and brain matter from the last three executions drip down the steel. As the sun sinks toward the horizon, it glints off the blade at a hundred different angles. 

From side stage, the execution crier recites the death sentence, his wispy voice echoing off nearby buildings.

Next to Bernard’s feet, Hubert Pax sits on his knees, head hunched over the chopping block. Sobbing. He’s the last man to die. 

His weak little whimpers make something in Bernard’s stomach curl up and twist. A vein under his eye twitches. Nothing—absolutely nothing—irks Bernard more than a man who dies crying. 

Hubert cranes his head sideways, and Bernard feels his eyes needling him.

“Sir?” Hubert whispers. 

Bernard shakes his head. 

“Sir,” Hubert says. “You don’t have to do this.”

 Through the side of his mouth, Bernard says, “Shut up.”

“Right hand to God, I didn’t do anything.” 

“Book has spoken. Just be a man and shut up.” 

For dozens of generations, Bernard’s family has possessed the killing book. On page one, it is etched in permanent ink that the Piat bloodline is the only bloodline permitted to view its pages. Should anyone else lay eyes on its ink, it stops working. And so long as that bond remains unbroken, and the four names that appear each day are faithfully executed, the human race will never see another war.

There hasn’t been a war in a thousand years.

“Listen,” Hubert says. “I’ve got a wife at home. And a little girl. They think I’m about to come home. I mean, if I’d known this morning would be the last…” He trails off, choked by his own sadness.

Bernard flicks his eyes down, grinding together his crooked teeth. Hubert’s teary eyes aim back at him, snot streaking down his nose, wetting his chin. Shameful, Bernard thinks. Absolutely shameful. 

“I’ll pay you,” Hubert says, his bottom lip quivering. “Everything I’ve got.”

“One more word,” Bernard says, “and I will make you suffer.”

“Have mercy, man. Please—”

“There it is,” Bernard says. He tightens his gloved hands on the sword handle. The leather crackles. 

“And with that,” the crier concludes, “we execute our final, future offender!” He grips the podium and peeks over his bony shoulder at Bernard. 

Bernard nods. He rotates on Hubert. 

As Hubert’s eyes follow, his entire body breaks into a tremble. “Please,” he says, teeth clicking. The front of his trousers blooms with a dark stain. 

Bernard taps the glistening-wet blade to the hump of the man’s neck. Aiming. Then he jacks it up over his shoulder, feeling out his swing. He slackens his grip just enough for a half break. He breathes. Narrows his eyes. Swings.

Crunch.

The blade sinks halfway in and stops. Hubert’s chin dips down and slaps the chopping block, his head held on by a stringy hinge of skin.

The pain arrives quietly. A shudder falls through his shoulders, torso, legs, calves, and ends with his toes performing a little twitch. His face crinkles. Blood dribbles off his neck and forms a little red puddle beneath his eyes. When Hubert catches sight of his own blood, he begins to cry.

Some in the crowd scream out. Others stand still, watching in fascination.  

“That should do it,” Bernard whispers. He plants his boot on the man’s shoulder and wiggles his blade loose, one torque at a time, creating a back-and-forth crunch. From the back of Hubert’s neck, a moist gurgle leaks out. Bernard finally rips the blade free, heaves it up, and slams down. 

Thock.

A crisp break.

The crowd goes still. Dead silence. 

Bernard wipes his blade clean on the dead man’s back.

***

Cecily strolls out from the restroom into the royal ballroom, yanking down the tight sleeves of her silk dress. It won’t quit riding up, the damned thing. She hates dresses. She hates ballrooms. And above all, she hates the stuffy-ass “nobles” in it.

Cecily darts her eyes around the crowd in search of her husband. 

Across the room, by the spiral-staircase, she spots him. He’s delivering a joke to a group of nobles. Cecily rolls her eyes, but her mouth tightens with a smirk. She bets it’s the one about the headless horseman. 

When Bernard hits the punchline, the group bursts into laughter. Cecily feels a dull tingle. She studies their faces, their eyes. That’s not real laughing, she thinks. That’s polite laughing. But Bernard doesn’t notice. He laughs along with them, bouncing a little on his feet as he watches their reaction. Cecily feels her heart sink. Why is it Bernard never notices these sorts of things?

Bernard slides a hand in his jacket pocket and slips out a long-stemmed pipe. He hooks a thumb toward the balcony door.

They all shake their heads.

Bernard nods and wanders off the second Cecily steps up behind the group. And right then, their conversation sharpens in her ears. 

“Alright,” one of the men says. “Raise of hands. Who else hates him?” 

Laughter spreads around the group. Hushed, restrained. But real laughter.

“I even hate his teeth,” another man says. “I have this dog that chews rocks? Yeah, even she has better teeth.”

“Donkey teeth,” the first man says. “That’s what comes to mind.”

“A serious question,” a woman says, her feathered hat shuddering with each twitch of her head. “Is it just me, or does every descendant of that book get a bit more…”

“Trashy,” an old, drunk gentleman says, his speech slightly slurred. “It’s alright. You can say it.”

“Yes,” she says. “Trashy.”

Heads nod.

She continues. “Well, half the blame falls on him. But the other half? Thank that—” She curls a gloved hand around her mouth. “—wench of a woman. That tangly-red hair. Those pond-scum eyes. If the book can end wars, why can’t it select proper owners?” 

“Elections,” the drunk man says, pitching up his wine glass. “That’s how it should work. A whole hodgepodge of individuals could fit that role wonderfully. With honor. Dignity. But that man? With his teeth? And his wenchy wife? And his botched executions? Bah! The whole thing feels like a middle-class, field-worker’s, pub-crawling hoo-rah.”

“Oh, sire,” the feather-hatted woman says, laughing. She touches his arm. “You do have a way with words.”

Cecily’s nostrils flare. She sucks in a sharp breath. Fire burns in her eyes.

A server glides by balancing a tray of wine glasses. She plucks one off, gulps it half empty, and swipes the back of her hand across her mouth. A burn settles in her gut. She knows she shouldn’t do what she’s about to. But they opened this damn door. As Bernard’s wife, it’s her job to slam it. 

Cecily clears her throat. 

The feather-hatted fuck catches her eye and whispers, “Oh, God.” All twelve eyes dart up. Fear strikes every last one of their hearts.

“Evening, my lady,” feather hat says. “Didn’t see you there.”

“Evenin’, madam,” Cecily says, punching the title off her tongue. The woman’s eyelids flutter. “Question. Has anyone seen me husband?”

“Ahhh, yes, my lady,” the drunk man says. “Believe he went out for a smoke.”

“Thank you,” Cecily says, smiling. “Because I’m about to make him add every last one of your names to the fuckin’ book.”

Fear detonates across everyone’s face. The man who made a dig at Bernard’s teeth says, “My lady. We meant no—”

“You—what’s your dog’s name?”

“Princess, my lady.”

“Well, Princess is going on, too.”

Cecily turns, then turns back, jabbing a finger. “I’d better not hear that talk about him ever again. Not from none of you’s. Not from no one.”

“Y-yes, my lady,” the drunk man says. “Never again.”

Cecily walks backwards, giving the group a death-stare, then spins around and swaggers off draining the rest of her wine. When she reaches the balcony door, the doorman pulls it open for her. She shoves the wine glass into his chest and steps out onto the balcony.

She glances left.

A line of empty chairs stretches to a dead-end balcony wall.

She glances right. 

At a table on the far end, Bernard sits alone. He’s leaned back in his chair, hitting his pipe, the bowl glowing and fading cherry-red. He gazes into the night sky. 

Cecily breathes. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Bernard cannot know about what just happened. It would crush him. She eases her shoulders, smiles, and wanders over to him. 

Bernard glances over.

“Why you hiding out?” Cecily says. 

“Eh, just…you know.”

“You wanna be alone?”

“No,” he says, pointing his pipe stem at the chair next to him. Cecily steps around the table and sits in his lap. Bernard chuckles, biting back down on his pipe.

Cecily’s eyes drift to the sky. “What are you looking at?”

“Well. There’s a thing I’ve been doing lately. But…you’d think it’s weird.”

“How do you know what I’d think?”

“Because I know you.”

“I command you to tell me,” Cecily says. “Out with it.”

“Fine,” Bernard says, pointing his pipe to the sky. “I’m drawing pictures. With stars.”

“Okay, yeah,” Cecily says. “That is weird.”

“Go inside,” Bernard says, trying to push Cecily off his lap. “Get.”

She grips the arms of the chair and doubles down, laughing. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” Bernard gives up. She sinks back down. A beat of silence falls between them. “So, what do you draw?”

“Here.” Bernard takes Cecily’s finger and aims it up to the sky. She watches him trace stars with her fingertip, connecting lines and loops, and before her very eyes, a flower blooms.

Cecily’s mouth clicks open. She lets out a laugh. “Do it again.”

Bernard takes her finger again and arches it up and down, using the stars to paint a swan.

Cecily turns in Bernard’s lap to look at him. “You’re weird as they come,” she says. 

Bernard returns a crooked grin. 

Cecily leans back into Bernard, feeling everything around her melt away. The wine warms her belly. The cool night air prickles against her skin. Bernard’s hands around her stomach make her tingle all over. If I had a magic bottle, Cecily thinks, this moment is what I’d put in it.

Then Bernard sighs, and she’s snapped back into reality. She knows that sigh well. “Why are you doing a huffy breath?” Cecily says.

“I’m not sure they like me.”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

“Has it ever occurred to you,” Cecily says, “it’s not a good thing being liked by everyone?”

“It’s not a bad thing.”

“How about your enemies?” Cecily says. “You wanna be liked by them?”

“These aren’t my enemies,” Bernard says. “These are nobles.”

“They’re bloody idiots, Bernard. But…they like you well enough. So why are you worrying?”

“Well, I’m probably wrong,” Bernard says. “But sometimes, I think—that they think—I don’t belong. Like I’m not cut from the same cloth. Like I’m…unworthy.”

“Unworthy?” Cecily says.

“Just a feeling.”

“Bernard?” Cecily says. “My sweet, sweet Bernard. May I tell you something?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck that feeling.” Bernard laughs. “No, I mean it. You have every right to be here. Most of them folks has done nothing to be considered noble.”

“Those folks.”

“Don’t correct me. Even if I say it wrong, I’m right. You stop wars. What do they do? I’ll tell you. They wear fancy clothes, look all pretty in their feathery hats and silky robes, and they gossip.”

“Who gossips?”

“That’s not the point,” Cecily says. “The point is, they’re not special. You’re special.”

Bernard tilts his head sideways and looks at Cecily’s face. She keeps her head leaned back on his chest, eyes on the stars. 

Through the ballroom window behind them, a string quartet plinks a waltz. Couples on the dance floor step in time. “Cecily…” Bernard says. “I am sorry, you know.”

“It’s alright,” she says. “Just don’t correct me, ever again.”

“Not about that,” Bernard says. “I mean, the ballrooms. The hand kissing. The politics. I know, when you married me, that wasn’t the life you wanted.”

Cecily rolls her head off Bernard’s chest and stares him straight in the eye. She squints. “Are you serious?”

Bernard shrugs. 

She lets out a little laugh into his face. “You,” she says, tapping her finger on his chin, “are all I ever wanted. So if all this comes with you? I will make this trade, every day, for the rest of me life. Happily.”

Bernard’s eyes dance around Cecily’s face, her features glowing in the warm window light. He pulls her in.

They kiss.

***

The next morning. 

Bernard leans back, boots kicked on his desk, holding the book beneath his eyes. Duncan leans on the map table, quill in hand. 

The first name glides across the page. 

“Timothy Gilmore. Employed as a…oh.” Duncan looks up. “Royal guard. Castle.”

“That won’t be pretty, sir.”

“No, it will not,” Bernard says. 

Duncan scratches in the name, jabs a pin. 

The next name etches itself. 

“Giovanni Wolfgang. Painter. Market square.”

Duncan writes it, stabs the map.

“Adam Bovine. Clothier merchant. Also in market square. Oh, hey, before you arrest him—could you do me a favor and get this hemmed?” Bernard pinches the torn seam of his hood. 

Duncan’s mouth twists. He continues writing.

The final name scribbles across the page, and as it does, all the feeling crawls out of Bernard’s body. Jacob Piat. Schoolboy. Northern district. Cottage. 

This is Bernard’s fifteen-year-old son.

“Problem, sir?” Duncan says.

“No,” Bernard says. He swallows against the tightening muscles in his throat. “Last one’s just…delayed. We’ll wait a minute.” Bernard pretends to watch the page. He fights to keep his face flat. His heart punches in his chest. 

“Yeah,” Bernard says, his voice squeezed thin. “That is so odd.” 

“What is, sir?” Duncan says. 

“This, this last name…it’s not writing. Hang on.” A blurry ring clamps down on his vision. His ears ring. Bernard makes a show of rubbing his thumb across the page, as if that’ll wipe the name out. 

Duncan blinks. “Still nothing?”

Bernard forces himself to meet Duncan’s eyes. “No. Nothing.”

“That is…extraordinary,” Duncan says, his eye narrowing a touch.

“Truly,” Bernard says. He lets out his breath. “Maybe, huh, I don’t know, maybe you should just go out and…start with the three?”

“Sir…the king will have to hear about this. Immediately.”

“Of course,” Bernard says. “But I almost wonder if it would make more sense for you to get a head start.”

“A…head start?”

“Right,” Bernard says. “And when the final name pops up, I’ll ride out, get him myself.”

“Sir?” Duncan tilts his chin down, keeping his eyes up. “Are you sure there’s no name?”

Bernard checks the page again. He shakes his head. “Positive.”

***

Bernard drags himself up to his cottage door. Inside his head, a war rages. He hears cannons fire. Chain mail armor rattles. Swords chink. Horses whine. Men scream. 

Today’s executions have been postponed. Tonight, there will be a hearing. Bernard will have to appear in court, before the king, and recount exactly what happened.

Bernard pushes the door open. Across the cottage, Cecily is framed in the backyard window, staring out. As the door scrapes shut, she glances back. Her eyes crinkle into smiles. She crosses the cottage almost skipping and approaches Bernard with open arms. She laces her fingers around his neck, stands on her tippy-toes, gives him a kiss. 

“Hi.”

“Hey.”

She pulls away. Her eyes dance around his face. “What is it?”

“Just…long day.”

Cecily shakes it off and breaks back into a smile. “Come look.” She tugs Bernard by the hand, leading him up to the window. 

Across the yard, Jacob stands in the shed doorway. A line of men ten deep funnels up to him. As the front man speaks, Jacob writes on a piece of parchment. 

“You know how he’s been iron working?” Cecily says, squirming with excitement. Bernard nods. “Well. Apparently, word’s come round. He makes ’em sooo well that instead of ordering from the old blacksmith in town? They’re ordering from him. He’s that good.” 

“Wow,” Bernard says. “That’s great.”

“It really is.” Still peering out, Cecily reaches down and takes Bernard’s hand. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. And…Bernard. Look at what we have.” Cecily’s eyes lift to him. “We have everything.”

Bernard snaps his head away.

“Bernard?” she says softly. “What’s wrong?”

“There’s…something I need to tell you.” 

She tilts her head forward against the glass, trying to see his expression. Bernard breathes in. Out. Then he turns, looking her in the eyes. Cecily gives her head a tiny shake, still smiling. “What is it, Bernard?”

Bernard tries to speak. No words come.

Cecily’s smile wavers. “Bernard?” 

“This morning,” Bernard says, “I received the list of names. And…”

Cecily tilts her head forward. “And?”

Bernard glances back through the window. 

The smile melts off Cecily’s face. “And?” 

Bernard swallows. 

Cecily follows his eye-line out the window—to Jacob. Her breathing quickens. “And what, Bernard?” Cecily says. “And what?”

“Honey,” Bernard says, trembling. “It was Jacob.”

The name sends a convulsion through her entire body. She claps both hands to her mouth and slumps sideways, her shoulder bumping the glass. She shakes her head. “It has to be a mistake,” she says through her fingers.

“Cecily. It was right there.”

“Who knows?”

“No one,” Bernard says. “Duncan was in the room, but I told him it was a name short.”

“A name short?” Her face tightens with fear. “Who’ll believe that?”

“I know,” Bernard says, struck with shame. “But I was so…thrown off…so stunned, it took everything in me to keep a straight face.”

Cecily checks out the window, making sure Jacob hasn’t been snatched. She turns back. “What now?”

“I go to court. Tonight. And there’ll be questions.”

“What questions?”

“What did I see? What did the page look like? Duncan, who was in the room—what did he see?” Cecily squeezes her eyes shut. “Cecily. They’ll try and catch me in a lie. But they can’t really prove anything. So as long as I stick to my story—”

“They will know,” Cecily says, opening her eyes on Bernard. “They will know, the second they see your face. You have to give another name. Someone else in the family. Someone you’d actually lie about.”

 

Bernard stares at Cecily, waiting for her to continue. She doesn’t. “What name?” he says.

“I don’t know. Just pick one.”

“Pick one? Who…who do I pick?”

“I don’t know,” she says, letting out a little sob. “Just pick. You have to pick.”

“No, I, I can’t do that.”

“You can’t do that? You kill people every day, but you can’t pick a name?”

“I don’t kill at random. I swing the sword based on the book’s prophecy, which prevents war. To choose someone at random…it would be murder.”

“Killing our son is murder.”

“I know,” Bernard says, his voice growing distant. “I’m just saying, there’s layers to it.”

“Pick a second cousin and be done with it,” Cecily says. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“This could start a war, Cecily…” Bernard says.

“No, it will not,” Cecily says.

“It could.”

“You think killing our son, our little boy, will stop a war? You honestly believe that? Really?”

Bernard shakes his head. Blinks. “Yes. I do.”

“How.”

“It’s a ripple effect. If Jacob lives—” Cecily huffs her breath. “—he might do something, which might cause something else, which might then cause something else, which, eventually, starts a war.”

“Might, Bernard. Might.”

The first page flashes in Bernard’s mind. Scrawled in permanent ink: And so long as that bond remains unbroken, and the four names that appear each day are faithfully executed, the human race will never see another war.

So long as that bond remains unbroken.

“Give my name,” Cecily says, ripping Bernard out of his thoughts. 

“Cecily—”

“Give. My. Name.”

Bernard watches Cecily. He presses his lips together. Shakes his head.

Cecily scrunches her face, fighting tears. “Coward,” she says. 

“Cecily…”

“If you give his name,” Cecily says, “you are gonna burn in hell.”

“If I don’t give his name,” Bernard says, “I might kill thousands. Then I’ll burn in hell for that.”

“Look outside,” Cecily says. “Go on. Look.” Bernard peels his eyes off his wife and stares out at his son. “Are you gonna stand up there, sword in hand, and take his head? Really? I mean, really run that through your thick skull. Then look me in the eye, and tell me that’s what you’re gonna do.”

Bernard glares out the window. Blinking. He can’t bring himself to look back at her. “It will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done…but…it’s only right.”

Cecily crunches her teeth together in a flash of rage. She draws back her hand, tightening her fingers into a fist, wrist tendons bulging. Her eyes glisten with tears…

Then she drops her hand, all the fight draining from her body.

Bernard reaches out to touch her shoulder. She smacks his hand away and faces forward, out the window, hugging herself.

Bernard keeps his eyes on her, watching her cry, watching as the world around him crumbles. 

Cecily blinks, as if she’s been touched by a revelation. “If you really think this is right,” she says, lifting her eyes back to Bernard, “why did you lie?”

***

The next afternoon, rain clouds darken the sky. Bernard stands on stage by Jacob, his glassy eyes fixed over the crowd. He can barely hold onto his sword. 

The crier announces the death sentence. These words he once considered meaningless now take on the weight of the world, each syllable pressing in harder. 

“Father,” Jacob says, his sweet voice stabbing Bernard right in the heart. Twisting. His vision blurs. 

“Executioner?” the crier says, turning. He gestures toward Jacob. “Whenever you are ready.”

The wind stirs. Overhead, flags flap in the breeze, their ropes pinging on steel poles, chiming like church bells. 

Then the wind goes still. Everything falls quiet. The crowd stands motionless. Hundreds of eyes, watching.

“Father,” Jacob whispers, cutting the silence. “Please.”

Bernard shuts his eyes.

---

More stories at r/ElliotPryce.

My eyes were closed tight. I felt a hand caressing my hair and running down the back of my neck. I was being held tight against a woman’s body. I could feel something behind my eyelids. What was it? Tears, I think. 

“It’s okay,” said the woman, “you’re safe.”

She held me tighter. I felt impossibly small. The woman could have been even smaller than me, or she could have been infinitely large. My senses were all mixed up. Everything felt warm. I relaxed my eyelids, but kept them shut. A warm darkness.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” the woman responded.

“I want to open my eyes.”

“Don’t.”

“I want to see you.” 

“You will. Soon.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

It felt like she was holding me in the palm of her hand. A cool breeze came across my skin. It began to get colder. As it became a bitter chill, the woman protected me from it.

“Do you love me?” I murmured into her skin.

“Don’t ask silly questions. Of course I do.”

-

It’s said that if you take these pills before going to sleep, your soulmate will appear in your dreams. You can hear them, feel them, smell them - whatever you need to find them in the waking world - but if you look at them, you will be alone forever. 

“Mine had a British accent,” said Nathan, taking a seat in the break room. “Real nice voice. Sexy. Maybe it’s Anne Hathaway.”

“What’s with you and Anne Hathaway? She’s not even British,” I said.

“Sounded like her doing a British accent.”

“You’re a moron. You know she’s like twenty years older than you, right? And actually accomplished?”

Nathan shrugged. 

“Whatever,” I said, taking a bite of my sandwich.

“You’ll see. Hey, what was yours like?”

“I don’t know. Average.”

“Average?”

“Yeah.”

“Your soulmate was average?”

“What do you want me to say? It wasn’t eventful.”

“You’re full of shit, man. I bet it was a dude.”

“Yeah, he sounded like a British version of Jack Nicholson. It was hot.”

“Yeah, fuck you, man.”

“Can you get more of the pills?”

“Sure, I just gotta skim some off the top from the Research department.” 

“Cool. When can you get them?”

“I can get them by the end of the day if you really want them. Hell, I want to do it again too.”

“Sounds good.”

The door opened and Willow walked in, going to clean her coffee mug at the sink. 

“Yo,” Nathan said.

“Yo,” Willow said, doing her best impression of Nathan. 

“We were just talking about those pills.”

“Oh Christ.” 

“Come on, dude, I can get you some.”

“I don’t want any, dude.”

“Logan took them. It was good, right?” He turned to me.

“It was average,” I said.

“God, you took them too?” Willow said, “I don’t even trust this place’s headache medicine.”

“C’mon, Willow, we’re the accounting department, we stick together. If one of us takes it, we all gotta take it.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“You seriously don’t want to know who your soulmate is?”

“How many times do I have to say no? Do you want a list of reasons why this is a stupid idea?”

“Nathan’s was Anne Hathaway."

“Don’t even start,” Willow said, putting the mug away. “In other news, Robin’s having a thing on Friday after work if you guys want to come.” She looked at me while she said this.

“Yeah, I can probably make it,” I said.

“Just don’t be weird.” She looked at Nathan.

“I’ll be on my best behavior.”

“Okay, see you guys there,” she patted my shoulder as she left the break room. Her hands were cold.

-

Dr. Goodwin’s office was dark. The walls were painted black and there was only a single lightbulb on the ceiling. It wasn’t inviting, it wasn’t comforting. Dr. Goodwin sat in her leather chair, and I sat on the couch which was slightly ripped.

“How has work been?” she asked. 

“Good, I guess.”

“Last week you said you thought you might have met someone. Willow?”

“I don’t think she’s the one.”

“Why not?”

“I like her, but there’s something telling me that it won’t work out.” 

“And what is that?”

“I don’t know. I just think there might be someone else out there.”

“If that’s true it’s okay, but I’m worried you’re starting to exhibit past behaviors. We know that when things get real you tend to… retreat.”

“It’s not that I’m retreating, it’s just that - I mean, Willow’s great. She’s pretty, funny, smart… but is she my soulmate?”

“Do you believe in soulmates?”

“I never used to.”

“But you do now?”

“I figured it makes sense, right? There’s got to be someone out there that’s perfect for us.”

-

I stretched and sat down in bed. I took the tiny bag out of my pocket and popped out the little pink pill. I turned it around in my fingers, and washed it down with water. I turned off my lights, staring at the ceiling. My eyes grew heavy.

I was crying in that woman’s arms again. I had no idea how long I had been dreaming, but it felt like quite some time. Her skin was like a soft melody against mine. Her breath caressed the top of my head.

“Is this real?” I asked.

“What do you mean, sweetheart?”

“You’re really my soulmate, and you exist out there somewhere?”

“Of course I do.”

“I don’t understand how that’s possible.”

“You don’t need to understand. It’s okay to let yourself be happy. You deserve this. You deserve my love.”

“I want it… I want it so bad.”

“You have it.”

“When can I see you?” my voice cracked.

“Shhh. It’s okay, baby.”

I began to hear voices around me. There was music. People were brushing past me. I was standing somewhere and I stopped feeling the woman’s touch.

“Hey! Hello, are you there?”

I started walking, eyes still closed, bumping into people. I walked straight into someone and felt a liquid pour down my chest.

“Hey, what the hell?” said a voice.

-

My eyes shot open.

“Hey, what the hell?” Nathan said.

Nathan was standing in front of me, his beer spilled all over my shirt. My ears were ringing, but I faintly started making out music. 

“Do you just walk around with your eyes closed, dude?”

“Where are we?”

“Um, Robin’s house? Are you already blackout drunk?”

“Hey, Logan!” Willow’s voice came from behind me. I turned around. “I’m glad you could make it.”

“Oh yeah, I wouldn’t miss it.”

She looked down at my shirt soaked with beer.

“Pick up gone wrong?” she asked.

“No, I just bumped into Nathan by accident,” I laughed.

Willow dabbed my shirt with her napkin.

“You know what, let me get you cleaned up. I’ll steal one of Robin’s boyfriend’s shirts for you.” Willow led me to the bathroom door, left for a moment, then came back with a black t-shirt.

“Thank you,” I said, taking the shirt. I slurred my words, and dropped the shirt almost the second I grabbed it.

“You are so fucking drunk,” Willow laughed. “Here, I got you.”

She stepped into the bathroom with me and closed the door. 

“Arms up,” she said.

“You don’t have to-”

She lifted my arms up and slid my shirt off. 

“You’re always making a fool of yourself,” Willow said, using a towel to wipe any remaining moisture off my skin. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”

“Sorry?” I blushed. 

“I said you’re lucky you’re cute.” Willow leaned in closer. I leaned in too. 

“Can I kiss you?” I asked. Willow grabbed the back of my neck and parted her lips. I heard a noise, like something banging against wood.

-

I was in a field. In front of me was a large tree, its leaves draping down like vines. A lumberjack swung an axe into the trunk. 

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Cuttin’ down this tree,” said the lumberjack.

I looked up at the tree. Its trunk bent at an angle, and its branches sprawled out high. The leaves were a vibrant shade of green.

“But it's such a pretty tree,” I said.

“It shouldn’t be here. I don’t want it looking at me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The lumberjack looked at me and began to say something, but his voice devolved into a piercing beeping noise.

“Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.”

-

“Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.”

I shot awake in a sweat and turned off my alarm. I instinctively went to touch my beer-stained shirt, but it was dry. I looked at the time. I was late for work.

-

“Morning, Nathan,” I sat down at my computer. Nathan didn’t respond.

“Morning,” I repeated.

“Oh, morning. Sorry, I didn't sleep well last night.”

“Me neither,” I yawned, “Robin’s party is tomorrow, right?”

“Oh yeah, today’s Thursday, huh?”

“Where’s Willow?”

“In the break room making coffee.” 

“I think I’ll make some too.”

“Go for it.”

I walked to the break room, where Willow was using the coffee machine. 

“Morning, Willow.”

“Oh,” Willow turned around in surprise, “Logan, I was worried you were sick or something.”

“No, I just overslept.”

“Sorry, I would’ve made you coffee if I had known.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Actually, I’ll just give you Nathan’s,” she smiled, “How do you take it?”

I look down at her coffee mug. It was straight black.

“Black,” I said.

“Good taste,” she nodded and handed me Nathan’s mug.

“I’m excited for the party tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I’m glad you could come.”

“Is there anything I need to know?”

“Need to know?”

I paused. I hadn’t thought this far ahead into the conversation.

“Yeah, like, is it formal?”

“It’s a house party, Logan. Relax.” She smiled at me as she walked past me. 

I followed her back to the accounting desks, where Nathan looked at us expectantly and then quickly deflated.

“Dude, is that my mug?”

I looked down at Nathan’s mug, which I had just sat on my desk.

“I don’t think so.” 

Nathan sighed and trudged to the break room. Willow began logging on to her computer.

“You’re both pretty tired this morning,” she said. “Is it because of the pills?”

“No, I just had some crazy dreams. I don’t know about Nathan, he probably stayed up late doing God knows what.” 

“Building a perpetual motion machine. He’s a secret genius.” 

“Yeah, I think you’re right.”

“What’s the appeal of those stupid pills anyway? They’re probably just gonna fuck up your brain. You know that, right?”

“They’re just…” I paused, thinking. “...nice.”

-

I had a beer or two before I went to Robin’s house. I’ve found that if I have something to drink before a party, more people like me. Nathan picked me, and when we got there I saw Willow talking to some other people. 

Her makeup was done differently. She stood out more, not constrained by the professional setting of the workplace. Her clothes revealed the faintest glimpse of her skin beneath. I realized that I hadn’t seen her in this kind of setting before. Even her posture was less rigid. She was loose, relaxed, and smiling. I went to find more alcohol. 

I walked around the house in a daze. I heard snippets of myself making small talk or laughing at someone’s jokes. I heard people laughing at something I said. I must have made a joke too. I saw myself hanging around Nathan and some other guys, who I didn’t recognize. I felt a firm pat on my back. That must have meant somebody liked me. Why? I saw that I was crushing a beer can in my hand. They liked me because I chugged a beer. Then, I noticed the multiple crushed cans at my feet. They liked me because I chugged multiple beers. As soon as I stepped out of the circle of people surrounding me, I saw myself walking up stairs. It seemed to be very difficult for me to do this. 

I was sitting on the edge of a bed, but something wasn’t right. I wasn’t the only one sitting. I looked beside me. Willow.

“You’re the life of the party, huh?” she said.

I blinked. Her voice pierced through the fog in my head, and for a moment I felt like I existed again.

“I guess so.” 

“I didn’t even get the chance to say hi to you,” Willow laughed and shook her head.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. What are you doing up here, though?”

“I…” I chuckled, “I’m not completely sure.”

Willow laughed.

“I don’t usually see this side of you,” she said.

“Is it bad?”

“I don’t know. It’s different,” she put her hand on my knee. I froze. 

“I guess I sort of get into a haze at these things. Now I feel like I’ve been acting really stupid all night.”

“That’s not true.”

“You sure?”

“Well,” Willow smiled, “maybe you’ve been acting a little stupid. But I don’t mind.”

“God, I’m just like Nathan, aren’t I?”

“No, when you act stupid, it’s…” she thought for a beat. “Cute.”

Willow leaned closer to me. My heart raced. Instinctively, I leaned away.

“Oh,” Willow tucked her hair behind her ear nervously, “I’m sorry.”

“I, uh…”

“I didn’t mean to do that. I’m just a little…”

“Yeah…”

“Just… too much to drink.” She forced a laugh.

“Um, sure.”

“Okay,” Willow got off of the bed. “I’ll - um - I’ll see you Monday.”

“Yeah.”

She walked out of the room and down the steps.

-

“And what did you do?” asked Dr. Goodwin. The air conditioning in the room had broken. It was hot and humid, and I shifted in my seat.

“Nothing. I let her leave,” I said. 

“Probably for the best.”

There was a moment of silence. The light flickered. 

“Why is that for the best?” I asked.

“You’re coworkers. She only knows who you are in the office. If she knew everything about you, do you think she would still like you?”

“She could have. We could get to know each other.”

“No, you couldn’t. You fucked it up.”

I stared at her, stunned.

“Do you know what your problem is?” she continued, “You are selfish.”

“I’m not selfish,” I managed to squeak out. “I just want to be loved, like everyone else in the world. What’s so wrong with that?”

“There are eight billion people on this planet, Logan. And you are so selfish that you believe that out of all those people, someone would want you.”

“Why? Why can’t someone want me? Willow wanted me, didn’t she?”

“She thought she wanted you because she doesn’t really know you.”

“But my soulmate is out there. I believe that,” I began to raise my voice.

“Yes, Logan. There is someone out there that is perfect for you. But you won’t be perfect for her. She will choose someone better.”

“Can’t there be one person out there that loves me for who I am? All I need is one person!” I shouted.

“Not everybody gets love. What about you makes you worthy of it?”

I leaped out of my seat and lashed out at her. I wrapped my hands around her neck and squeezed. She let out a choked gasp, but I just strangled her harder. She didn’t make an effort to escape. I kept strangling her until her face turned purple.

I felt something moving beneath her skin. She opened her mouth and long, green leaves appeared deep in her throat. A tree had begun rapidly growing from her mouth. The leaves came out, followed by the trunk. I could feel the bark straining against her neck from the inside, splinters piercing her skin and jamming into my fingers as the trunk shot out. I ignored the pain, and continued strangling. The tree kept increasing in size, quickly becoming large enough to split Dr. Goodwin’s head asunder and break through the ceiling.

-

Eyes shut. Falling. Falling. Falling. Just when I thought I was about to hit the ground, I fell further. I heard giggling.

“Is it you?” I cried, “You’re there, aren’t you? Help me!” 

“I love you.” It was Willow’s voice.

“Willow? Is that you?”

“I love you too, Willow.” It was Nathan’s voice.

I hit the ground. I opened my eyes. I was in the accounting department. All the lights were off, and the place seemed to be coated in a layer of grime. There was no one in sight. It could have been abandoned for years. 

“Willow? Nathan? Are you there?” 

I walked through the building. The seats where my coworkers once sat were decayed and covered in cobwebs. Papers and office supplies were strewn across the floor. A musty smell assaulted my nose. I could hear talking from the break room.

“Nathan, you’re a dumbass. But I don’t know… it’s cute,” Willow's voice said.

“I could have done without the dumbass part.” 

“Willow,” I whispered. I put my hand on the door knob to the break room. 

“Sir, you can’t be here.” 

I looked behind me. A police officer was standing there, a flashlight in hand.

“This place is scheduled for demolition,” he continued. “The public isn’t allowed in.”

“But… I work here.”

“No, you don’t. This place hasn’t been operational in five years.”

“But my friends are here. I-I want to see them. I need to see my friends.”

“Sir, come on.” The officer grabbed my shoulder and took me out of the building. 

“I was just there on Friday-” I said as he escorted me out.

“Consider this a warning. If I catch you here again, I’ll have to put you under arrest.”

-

“Huh,” said my roommate, scrolling his phone on the couch. “Willow Crawford and Nathan Gardner just got married. Didn’t you used to know them?”

“I worked with them,” I said. “I haven’t seen them in five years.”

“Well, good for them, I guess.”

“Did you take out the trash?”

“No, it’s your turn.”

It wasn’t, but I sighed and did it anyway. When I made it to the dumpster outside, I realized that there was a tear in the trash bag and that I had been trailing garbage behind me this whole time.

“God fucking damnit!” I kicked the dumpster.

An old homeless man sitting on the ground laughed.

“What’s so funny?” I asked, irritated.

“Ha! I’m sorry, it’s just amusing. From down here, spilling trash doesn’t seem like the end of the world anymore.” 

I took a deep breath and sat on the ground next to him.

“I guess you’re right.”

“Well, I sleep next to a dumpster. Only fair that God let me be right about something.” 

I laughed.

“I used to live in that exact apartment you just came from, you know.”

“Really?”

“That’s right. When I was about your age.”

“And here I thought that apartment was rock bottom.”

“There is no rock bottom. Sometimes you just keep falling.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“Things happen to you, and they just compound. I wasn’t born a homeless man. I used to work at this one place. I was an accountant. My only friends were my coworkers. I was lonely - God, I was so lonely. I thought that was rock bottom. Then, the company went bankrupt and the whole building shut down. I was out of a job and the people I thought were my friends stopped talking to me. I thought that was rock bottom. Now I’m an old man without friends, a home, or a family, and I think it’s rock bottom.”

I was silent.

“What’s your name?” I said at last.

-

“Logan.” Nathan’s voice lulled me out of my stupor as I looked up from my empty coffee mug. 

“What?” I said.

“You good, man? You seem out of it.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Just need more coffee.” 

“Get some for me too,” Nathan called out as I made my way to the break room.

As I stepped through the door, I bumped into Willow. The coffee she was holding spilled onto my shirt.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, “Oh my god, I’m sorry.”

“It was my fault,” I said, pulling at my shirt to get the hot coffee away from my skin. Willow reached out, but stopped herself before touching my shirt. 

“Logan, I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’ll just go to the bathroom and clean up.”

“No. I mean about the other night, too.” She said, “I didn’t mean to, like, make you feel uncomfortable or anything. I was drunk and not thinking and it’s - you know?”

“No, I know.”

“I don’t want it to be awkward between us. I like hanging out with you and stuff, and I like being your friend. We’re friends, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m gonna go clean up.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, I’ll let you get to that,” Willow moved past me and went back to her desk without making a new cup of coffee, “I’ll see you… um, at our desks. In a couple minutes.” 

I went into the bathroom. I took my shirt off to see a red mark where the coffee had spilled. I took a handful of paper towels and wiped myself and the shirt off. 

As I came out of the bathroom with my coffee-stained shirt, I saw a man rolling a cart full of pill bottles down the hall. I looked both ways to make sure nobody was watching me, then followed him. He dropped off the pills in a room labeled ‘research’. After he left, I peeked into the room. Nobody else was there. I quickly pocketed a bottle and went back to my desk.

-

An empty pill bottle lay on my nightstand. I was curled up in my bed, staring at it as my vision began to blur. My mind started to drift, and I faded away. When I regained consciousness, my eyes were closed tightly. 

“Are you there?” I whispered.

“Of course I’m here, sweetheart.” I felt warm, loving arms embrace me. “I’m so glad you decided to come back.”

I felt as if she was lifting me up. Lifting me into the air and pressing me against her chest. Tears spilled down my cheeks.

“I’m so tired…” I sobbed.

“I know you are, baby. You can cry. It’s me.”

“Don’t leave me. I’m not - I can’t - just don’t let me be alone. Please.”

“Neither of us will leave each other,” she stroked my hair, tangling a strand around her finger.

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you too,” she said. “You can open your eyes now.”

*Child Abuse warning*

I don't know who this will reach, but I need to warn as many people as I can. If you see this please share my story with your loved ones, friends, coworkers, strangers on the internet, whoever. My story may be hard to believe, but I promise you it's all true.

It all started after I graduated college. My best friends Dana, Roy, Roy's girlfriend Angela and I had been planning a roadtrip to Canada since our second year of school, but could never carry out the plan due to scheduling issues. As soon as our graduating class threw our caps into the air, my friends and I walked to our cars and drove to our favorite restaurant to celebrate...the Hungry Heifer.

"To our future full of college debt!" Dana shouted as he raised his glass, we soon followed with cheers and clinked our glasses together.

We ate our food and enjoyed the hour. Roy brought up the time Dana and I got locked out of our dorm after getting kicked out of the Sander twins' place. Dana and I took turns punching him in the arm and giving him noogies as we all laughed.

"Hey, we should finally go on that Canada road trip we never got to do!" Dana suggested. We all looked at him as we split the check, giving him a confused look before the lightbulbs in our heads turned on.

"Oh right!" I grinned, I didn't have to look at Ray and Angela to know they were as well.

"It will be our last time together before we go our separate ways." Angela said as her excited grin turned to a melancholic smirk. Ray kissed her cheek and rubbed her shoulder; "It's ok hun. It doesn't mean we won't see each other anymore, we'll just be a little busy pursuing our futures."

It was a sad thought. It's always been the four of us since middle school. I still remember Ray, Dana and I arguing who would get to date Angela. Spoiler alert… It was Ray. I can't imagine what life is going to be like without them, but this trip is going to mean something to all of us. We aren't going out with a sad note; we're going out with a bunch of additional happy memories that we'll all look back on someday.

I called my boss the next day requesting two weeks of paid time off, which she gave me without hesitation. Roy and Angela got theirs as well, but Dana had to convince his boss for a vacation, which luckily with enough ass-kissing he got. For the next few days we packed the supplies we would need and went to the bank to exchange some of our money for Canadian dollars.

The following Friday we rented an RV before heading out. We spent about eight hours driving from Rhode Island to Canada, only occasionally stopping by gas stations or fast food restaurants to use their bathrooms. For an hour we would sing along to songs on the radio, albeit terribly, before it got annoying.

We had traveled through a variety of cities during the past five days before we decided to visit some backwoods. I looked out the window, enjoying the scenery of the Canadian forest-side. There was a town we drove past as we kept going down the road, the sign outside of town read "Town of Brenfer. Population: 50". I didn't think much of it at the time, just that a town around here must've felt nice to live in.

Ten minutes later we arrived at a town called "Unité" to go fill up the RV with gas. Townspeople were all over the place as we entered the area, they all turned almost instantly and greeted us with smiles and waves. We were caught off guard by the sudden welcoming gestures, but in return we waved back. Ray had parked at the first gas station he saw, then went to head to the pumps when suddenly as he opened the RV door was immediately startled as a man waiting on the other side of the door stared at him with a wide grin. He appeared suspiciously friendly…eerie almost.

'Holy shit!" Ray jumped back a little.

We were all alerted and got up as the man outside waved. He was wearing a large red flannel and a flat cap.

"Bienvenue! Bienvenue!" he greeted.

"Bienvenue?" I asked.

"It means 'welcome' in French," Angela explained.

The man shivered for a second before clearing his throat. "Ah, excuse me. Welcome, Travelers!" The man reached out and clasped each of our hands while we looked at each other awkwardly.

"Sorry for the rudeness! I wanted to ask if you needed to fill up your gas tank!" the man explained.

"How did you know our RV was running low?" Dana asked.

The man looked over to him, still smiling. "This is my gas station. I've seen enough vehicles to know when they are running on empty just by the sound the engine makes!" He explained.

I leaned over to Dana and mumbled that I didn't think that was possible… but Dana just shrugged. The man's eyes moved towards me, positioning themselves to the side as he faced Ray.

"Let me go fill her up for you!"

"Hey wait! I can put gas in our RV." Ray said as he walked to the man; looking annoyed.

"It's no problem, sir! I should also add the gas is free as well as whatever snacks and supplies you all need inside!"

Ray's expression changed to a surprise then cheerful. "Are you serious?"

The man nodded quickly. Dana, Angela and I overheard the conversation. Dana was the first one out of the RV and into the convenience store.

"Are you sure it's ok?" Angela asked.

The man once again nodded quickly and watched as Angela and I walked inside next. Ray stayed with the man; mostly so he didn't steal the RV, but also because he wanted to know if there were any places we could stay for a few days.

Ten minutes later we all headed back to the RV, Ray shook the man's hand right before the man went in for a hug.

"Man, it's true what they say! Canadians truly are the nicest people in the world!"

"Don't stereotype people, Dae" I scolded.

"Yeah, but still, he seems kinda weird," Ray added before Angela slapped his shoulder.

"Don't be rude, Raymond!"

I looked out the window to see the man still waving at us even as we drove further away from the gas station.

The rest of the day was uneventful. Before we left the man told Ray about an inn run by a woman named Gretchen. When we got there, she gave us the same big smile as the strange man had. She gave us two separate rooms free of charge and made dinner for us, poutine and Montreal-style smoked meat.

We got up early the next day and decided to explore the town. Ray and Angela had split off from the group and to go shopping for souvenirs, while Dana and I just walked with no set destination. We passed by people that kept greeting us with a wave and smiling at us. I want you to believe me when I say there was nothing creepy in their smiles, they seemed very genuine…but something still felt off. I could feel eyes staring at us all from behind. No-maybe even from all around us.

"Hey…Dae?"

"Yeah man?"

"Does something seem... off about this place?"

"Not really. Why do you ask?"

"I can't put my finger on it, but these people are creeping me out"

"Don't be like that, Pete. This is just their culture. There's no such thing as a bad culture, right?"

I shrugged. Suddenly we heard a large snap from everywhere, like a group of people stepping on twigs at the same time. That was when we heard the gunshots.

Dana and I turned around to see the residents all facing one direction.

"What was that!?" Dana shouted. Before I could think I found myself running with Dana slightly behind me.

We eventually found where the noise came from and saw a tall, burly man holding a child with a revolver pointed at her head. The man was screaming in French as the little girl smiled, appearing as if she had just received her most desired gift on Christmas day. The large man screamed at the child before swatting her with the handle of his revolver. The impact was enough to cause her nose to bleed, but not once did her smile waver. Some men and women walked towards the man like nothing was wrong. Just as the man cocked his gun and was about to shoot the little girl, Ray lunged forward and pulled the man's arm away, firing the gun in the air during the process. I didn't see Angela anywhere, Ray must've ran ahead of her.

The man and Ray fell to the ground, wrestling for the gun. During the scuffle, the man had fired three shots at random. One had missed, two had hit Ray on his shoulder and bicep. Ray shouted in pain before using all his strength to slap the gun out of the man's hand before stumbling over. Dana and I, along with some of the residents, rushed towards the man and pinned him down.

I ripped a piece of my shirt to make a makeshift tourniquet to stop Ray's bleeding. By the time Angela arrived she was out of breath and let out a strained scream when she saw Ray on the ground bleeding. Two residents approached us, offering to take Ray to the hospital since we weren't familiar with the area. Angela and I were reluctant, but in the end we accepted their offer.

"He'll probably just need stitches. The bullets went clean through." One of the residents claimed. He then gave us the number and directions for the hospital so we could pick up Ray later.

A short while later police officers came to arrest the man. Dana ran over to us and asked how Ray was as the police officers took the man away. He was now screaming with tears and snot dripping down his face like he was going to be hung from the gallows. We explained to Dana that he was taken to a hospital and we would pick him up after he got his stitches.

"What are they going to do about the shooter?" I asked.

Dana scoffed. "The cops said they don't believe in prisons. They're just gonna have him do some manual labor then let him go"

"That's bullshit! The man shot Ray and almost killed a kid!" Angela began to tear up. Dana and I comforted her and started to walk back to the inn. I looked over my shoulder and saw the little girl standing in the exact place she was being held hostage. I walked over to her to see if she was ok, but stopped as I noticed the detail of the blood. It was an almost rusted yellow color that was dripping down like a melted slushie with small things resembling seeds mixed in. The girl panned her eyes towards me, smiling even more than she was earlier as more chunks of blood dripped out. I shuddered then turned around to join back with my friends, but there was no one in sight.

"Damn… they didn't wait for me," I sighed. "I'll just meet them at the inn."

While making my way back I continued to have an off putting feeling about this town. I felt eyes from everywhere and with them, empty smiles.

"There's no way people could be this friendly right? It always feels like one of those old black and white cartoons where you start your day with birds singing from the window" I thought then stopped as i realized it. There were no animals. Squirrels, birds, even pets, there weren't any to be seen or heard at all.

I decided to pick up my speed, going from a slow walk to a sprint. Every few steps I took I felt like more eyes were trained on me. People that were ahead of me stopped greeting me, but their smiles stayed, never faltering. If I'm being honest, It felt like their smiles were growing wider. I felt a hand grab my arm as I was about to turn a corner.

"Hello, friend! Want to stop in for a free cup of coffee?" a barista asked with a smile. Behind her were groups of smiling people sitting at different tables with their eyes focused on me.

"N-no thanks. I have to go meet up with my friends"

"Don't be shy, now. You seem stressed. I'm sure if you come inside, sit down and-"

"I said no!" I shouted as I pulled my arm back before stumbling backwards.

"Alright, but make sure to swing by sometime!"

I turned and made a dead sprint for the inn, but before I left, I could have sworn I saw the groups of people inside the cafe move their mouths in sync with the barista.

A few minutes later I made it back to the inn. Gretchan’s eyes were fixed on me as I walked towards our rooms. As soon as I entered the room Dana and I shared, I locked the doorknob and shut the curtains.

"Woah, Pete! What's wrong?" Dana asked

"Where's Angela?"

"She took the RV to pick up Ray from the hospital. He called her saying he was alright and the doctor finished stitching him up. Why? What's up?"

"There's something up with these people"

"Dude, not this again..." Dana sighed.

"I'm telling you! There's something wrong with these people! They're always smiling for no reason and are way too friendly!"

"I mean, yeah it's weird, but for all we know it could be this town's culture"

"What about the shooter? He obviously wasn't from this town if he was acting crazy, but why was he acting like that in the first place to these people?"

"You just said it, he was crazy"

"But did you see how he was acting when he got dragged off by the police?"

"Yeah. Anyone would react like that if they were being arrested"

"But what did they say was going to happen to him?"

"That they don't believe in prisons..." Dana covered his mouth as he thought about what else he was told. "...And that all he was going to do was manual labor then let go"

"Would you be reacting the same way if that was all that would happen to you?"

Dana went silent before getting up.

“Okay… that’s a fair point. Maybe you’re onto something. We need to figure out where the hospital is to get Angela and Ray then get the hell out of here"

"I have a plan. Just follow my lead and act like we don't know that something is up"

Dana and I walked out of our room and headed towards Gretchen. We asked her where the hospital was located to go and meet up with Ray and Angela to which she wrote down the directions and offered to drive us, but we turned her down saying that we were going to discuss where our next destination would be in private. Even as we left the inn I could feel Gretchen's eyes locked on us, joining the unknown numbers that have been watching us for god knows how long.

Every person we passed didn't even try to hide their stares anymore. Their smiles grew more unnatural as it almost looked like it wrapped around their faces. We were being eyed like vultures waiting for a dying animal to take its last breath; I think they know that we know. It wasn't before long that I saw the RV driving down the road in the distance.

"Oh good. She got Ray" I sighed in relief. "Lets wave her down so we can-" I stopped as the RV turned towards the forest and drove off-road.

"What the hell?" Dana said, confused.

I tried to call Angela, but she didn't answer. I called Ray's phone next and was startled when he answered before the first ring.

"Hey, Pete! What's up?"

"What are you guys doing?"

"Oh we're on our way to the inn! Angela's driving cause the doctor gave me some local anesthesia so I feel really funny." He laughs.

Dana and I gave each other a confused look.

"Ok... Dae and I are just gonna stay at the inn and wait for you. We think we should start heading home soon."

"I was actually thinking…" Ray went silent for a few seconds before we heard a muffled noise.

"Ray?"

"Sorry about that! My phone's getting low! See you when I see you!" Ray hung up the phone.

"Alright, something's definitely wrong." Dana said as we looked at each other confused.

"We have to follow them."

Dana nodded as we went to follow the RV. We tried our best to not let the residents know that we knew whatever was going on, but in truth, I think they let us follow the RV; I turned back before we went to the forest and saw groups staring at us from town.

When we found the RV it was parked outside of a cave. Dana carefully opened the door to reveal that there wasn't anyone inside, but there did appear to be some sort of struggle. On the floor of the RV I found a drop of the same rusted yellow blood that the little girl had, along with the same seed-like objects mixed in. I noticed a few more drops leading outside the RV and into the cave.

"I'll stay in the RV in case we need to get out of here quick." Dana suggested.

"Sure, but lock the door until I'm back with Ray and Angela."

I heard Dana lock the door behind me before I entered the cave. Darkness slowly began to consume me as I walked deeper inside the cave, taking my phone out and using its light to guide my way. The air smelled of something damp and decayed, making me cough so bad I had to lift my shirt over my mouth, then I stopped. I saw a light glow an unknown color at the end of a tunnel before me, it gradually leaned underground as I transversed down it like a smooth staircase. The more I walked down, the brighter the light became and grew in numbers until I could finally see what produced them.

Mushrooms.

A forest of fungi with many varieties of sizes glowed bioluminescent light everywhere I looked, the ceiling filled with lights resembling stars in the night sky; it was beautiful. As I made my way through, gazing all around me, I tripped over something sturdy and large. I looked over to see that it was that man that shot Ray. He was face down in a pool of blood, next to him was a severed tongue.

"Oh god... Did he-" before I could finish my thought I heard a scream close by, I ran in the direction it came from knowing it had to have come from Angela.

"Help! Ray stop! Please! Don't let it touch me!"

I ran as fast as I could, and as soon as I arrived I saw Ray Restraining Angela as he walked her to a giant mushroom. Ray had the same smile the people of Unité wore along with bite marks on his cheeks and arms with the rusted yellow blood leaking out.

"Don't be afraid, honey! It's here to help!"

Ray stood in place while Angela squirmed. Just then, tendrils began to wrap around Angela, starting with her feet and stopping at her shoulders; Ray let go at that point and stood back.

"Help! Someone, Help!" Angela screamed as a single tendril rose above her head and began to secrete a large film substance above her head that closed around her neck. Black spores began to float from within the film and land on Angela's flesh. She tried to release screams that would become muffled as the spores drilled into her head. A few seconds later blood and small bits of brain matter began to leak out as her blood slowly turned yellow, then stopped leaking all together as the holes in her head healed. I could only watch in horror as the film lifted up and the tendrils unwrapped from Angela.

"Wow" Angela said as she began to smile.

She had looked as if she was on some kind of high.

The giant mushroom began to pulsate rapidly before Angela and Ray turned in my direction smiling.

"You should join us, Pete." Ray and Angela spoke in unison.

Ray and Angela headed towards me as I began to run away. I pulled my phone out to try to call Dana; no service.

"Shit!" I shouted as I turned the light flash on and made my way out of the cave. As I exited the cave I practically leapt to the door, slamming my fists as hard as I could to get Dana's attention.

"Let me in! Dana, let me in!"

"Okay! Okay! I'm coming!" Dana shouted back as he opened the door.

"Lets go! Now" I ran inside the RV and was about to shut it.

"Hey! Wait for Ray and Angela!"

I turned around to see Ray and Angela exit the cave, I felt myself turn pale.

I kept the door shut and locked it, but before I could demand Dana to drive he looked just as scared as I was as he saw their smiles. Dana rushed to the driver's seat and drove off as we were being chased by our assimilated friends. We weren't even on the road before we heard the ground rumbling. From the town Dana and I saw the residents make a dead sprint for us, they were as fast as race horses trying to win first place.

Rusted yellow blood sprayed on the windshield as Dana floored it out of town; their bodies made loud impacts as Dana unintentionally ran them over. I watched as we left the charging people in town, for a moment I felt like I could finally breathe.

"What the fuck was all of that!?" Dana shouted, keeping his eyes on the road.

"I-I don't know!" I spouted, "T-There were these mushrooms! This big mushroom did something to Ray and Angela! It had these spores drill into her head-"

Just then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a car driving full speed as we were about to pass the town of Brenfer. It was police officers that arrested the shooter. Before I could warn Dana, the RV was slammed and thrown to its side. I blacked out for what I assumed was a few seconds and woke up to Dana pulling me out of the RV.

"Dana..."

I looked in the distance to see figures that belonged to the residents of Unité. Their size began to grow as they got closer. I began to stand up in a panic as Dana helped me up, but just when we were about to run Dana was pinned down to the ground by one of the officers.

"Dana!" I shouted as the other officer tried to pin me as well.

"Pete! Get this guy off of me!"

I looked around to see if there was anything I could use as a weapon, but saw that the doors to the car were open. By the time I realized I was running I was already in the car, slamming it shut and locking the door. I saw the confusion in Dana's face as I started the car. Dana began to cry out for help as I reversed the car and drove off.

"P-Pete!? Pete! Help me, man! Please! We're friends!" Dana shouted as I could only look at him and mouth the words "sorry".

The last words I heard from Dana before I drove off were "You deserve to rot in hell" as some residents swarmed him and others chased after me. I can't believe I just did that. Dana was my best friend and I just left him there. Tears formed in my eyes as I avoided the sight, but as I turned my head something caught my attention. The residents of Brenfer were joining the chase. The town's sign now read "Town of Unité. Population: Always growing".

I drove for as long as I could with whatever gas was in the tank, luckily it was enough to get back to the states. I turned my head and thanked god for losing them before I fell to my knees and cried. Suddenly, my phone started to vibrate; I got a message from Dana that read "I forgive you, Bud!". Two more messages were sent by Angela and Ray, both telling me they'll come to visit soon.

That's where I am now. After ten hours I finally made it home. I filed missing person reports for my friends, but I already knew it wouldn't be of any use. My friends weren't missing, they were a part of that town; they were a part of the hive mind. I don't know if anyone will believe me, but I want to warn as many people as I can. Be wary of anyone that seems a little too friendly, anyone that smiles on a day that seems terrible, and most importantly, make sure the country of Canada hasn't been changed to Unité.

It looks like this story’s all taped off up with yellow tape with black text that says

---

Autobiographical. Do Not Read. Therapists Only Beyond This Point. Autobiographical. Do Not Read. Therapists Only Beyond This Point. Autobiographical. Do Not Read. Therapists Only Beyond This Point. Autobiographical. Do Not Read. Therapists Only Beyond This Point

---

but there's no one guarding it. Surely it wouldn't hurt to have a little peek. The tape is just a precaution. It's strictly for liability reasons. You don't even have to break the tape to get in. You can slide in to

“The inside of a house, old, 18th century. A woman sits on a plain wooden chair. Technology starts advancing, prop by prop, as people walk into the scene holding things like telegraph machines, typewriters, telephones, all in the order they were invented. Throughout, the woman keeps sitting. She doesn't interact with the people bringing in the things. They set their objects down and leave.

“The house fills up.

“We reach the technology of the present day and start to go beyond.

“Now the woman’s working at a machine. It's like nothing that exists. We can only guess at its purpose. The house is well lit. The woman is well lit. All the objects are well lit.

“Then the lights switch off.

“Darkness.

“The woman sets out and lights a dozen candles, a box of which someone had brought in earlier. In the candlelight, the mood turns spooky.

“One by one, people walk in and take all the objects, the technologies, away. They’re not the same people who brought them in.

“Now, all that's left is the woman in the plain wooden chair and the dozen burning candles.

“Voice-over: ‘What if all the things you know, the inventions you take for granted, that you rely on every day…

“Someone brings in an axe.

“Voice-over continues: ‘What if they all… just disappeared—

“Someone blows out the candles.

“Total darkness.

“Voice-over: ‘What would you do? How would you survive?’

“Screams of an unseen axe murder,” he said over beer and peanuts at an L.A. diner, circa 1938, to a couple of writer friends and waited for a reaction.

It was late evening. The glass in the diner windows needed cleaning. Automobiles passed along the street outside, leaving snippets of radio—station—music—static, talking: “…city of dreams!” in the air. “That's bonkers even for you, Leonard,” said one of the friends.

“There's no studio in town will touch that,” said another, playing compulsively with the brim of his second-hand fedora. He was primarily a dialogue writer for Columbia Pictures. “Whatever that even is (science fiction, horror?) and you obviously know that, Len, given you work for one. Honestly, I don't know why you waste your time on gas like this.”

That night Leonard didn't go home. After he left the diner he wandered along the streets of Los Angeles looking for something he knew he was never going to find there: understanding. There was talk of war in Europe and there was always the glitz of the stars, and that piece in the trades calling them ‘Box Office Poison,’ but Leonard didn't care about that. Actors were as relatable to him as palm trees, especially if they were rich, and he'd never been to Europe, even if it did feel like every day a little more Europe came to him, that is, to the United States, to Hollywood. There was the U.S. government trying to break up the studio monopolies and the studios fighting back tooth and nail. Technicolor, meanwhile, was going to paint everything in Errol Flynn and rainbows, until only a few scraps of black and white were left, and those gathered up by mean men like the last stray dogs of L.A., and finished the same way too. Leonard, needless to say, considered himself spiritually black and white. It's not realistic, people would say to him; the whole world's in colour. Maybe on the surface, but even if black and white wasn't realistic, it had one quality that colour never could. It had the truth. Because beneath the skin of anything, even a city, maybe especially a city, if you scratched hard enough, long enough, you'd always bloody your fingernails on a place of blinding rawness that allowed only two choices, right and wrong. That was the essence of black and white. Technicolor was a novelty. Then again, motion pictures had been a novelty, and look at them now. He passed the Bronson Gate which admitted—but not him, never him—on Paramount Pictures, and he kept walking. His legs hurt. His head was pounding. Automobiles shooting cones of pale headlight roared back and forth along the boulevard, forcing everything ordinary into their twin, fleeting spotlights; but reality, finally getting her time on the great stage, stood silent, slumped, dejected and having forgotten her lines. That's good, thought Leonard. That's a good line. He hoped he would remember it. He would write it down as soon as he got home. Except he wasn't going home. Not yet. He regretted not having his notebook. You should always carry your notebook, Leonard, he told himself, for catching the few brilliant lines you're ever going to have He wished he had an automobile. He hated automobiles, but he wished he had one so he could get in it, turn the engine and drive into the hills. Or maybe out to Santa Monica. He would drive it out to where John Ford filmed his early westerns and it would turn into a horse and he would ride the horse into the wild, where he would die; he wasn't built for survival. He wasn't rugged. He had asthma and even his wool suit felt heavy on him. He doubted he could start a fire or eat roasted game. It had been a hot day and it was now a hot night. Los Angeles is an ugly city, he thought, filled with ugly people making dreams for nobodies to dream, so naturally he decided to go to the movies.

By the time he got home he was in his fifties.

His home told him it wasn't his home anymore, that he'd moved away. He didn't want to believe it so he stood on the steps arguing with the home. The argument was so loud and the time so late that the lights in a few nearby houses came on. People observed him from their windows. The owner of the home that was insisting it wasn't Leonard's home came out. “What are you doing? Are you lost or just dumb?” he yelled. He had a baseball bat. Leonard knew he didn't want to play baseball. “Are you outta your mind? Are you drunk? You're fucking drunk, you geezer. Pathetic. Disgusting. Go on, get outta here,” the homeowner was shouting, threatening with the bat. “Get off the steps and get on home. Shoo! Git! Back to where you live. To whatever hole you dragged yourself outta.”

“That's the problem,” Leonard yelled back. “I don't know where I live anymore.”

“Well it ain’t fucking here!”

It turned out it was in Toronto, Canada, by way of Kansas City, Missouri, and Boston, Massachusetts, but Leonard's old homes in those cities were more helpful than his former home in Los Angeles, which hadn't wanted to tell him anything other than that he didn't live there anymore.

He took the train.

He didn't trust airplanes.

When he arrived in Toronto it was snowing. The plows were out. He trudged from Union Station to the address his old Boston home had given him. It was an apartment building. Not especially nice. He walked in the front doors and up the stairs to the seventh floor. He knocked on his apartment door. No one answered. The door was open. He walked in, half expecting someone—a current owner—to come at him like the intruder he probably was, but that didn't happen. He was the only one there. He recognized his things, his books and pens and notebooks filled with ideas he'd had in the thirties and forties. He recognized his dog too, whom he'd never seen before but knew was his. The dog sat in front of him and wagged its tail along the floor. It was a small dog, a mixed breed, and it needed to go out. My dog needs to go out, thought Leonard, and after bending down he picked the dog up and carried it down the stairs and out through the apartment building's front doors into the blizzard outside. He set the dog on the cold snowy ground. The wind howled like wolves. He should have been wearing a coat. He had one; he'd just forgotten to put it on. He knew he was poor, but it wasn't so bad. He was getting by. The indefinable days passed without causing him too much trouble. “Come on, Napoleon,” he said to the dog, which had just finished peeing, “do your other business and let's go back. It's colder than a pork shoulder out here.”

Over the years while living in Toronto Leonard started writing about the city, which had gradually become his city. He still remembered Los Angeles, but in the way you remember pain, by its bare outlines. As the years went by his asthma got worse. He started suffering from seasonal allergies. The cold ached his bones. The hair on his head thinned out like the watered down coffee he drank in the mornings, but it was all he could drink these days. He had a heart attack; survived. He got diagnosed with arthritis. He lost the will to live and found it again. His beard turned grey. One night Napoleon died, having gone restfully to sleep in his favorite closet and never woken up. Not a bad way to go, thought Leonard, perhaps planning something similar for himself. He'd watched a TV documentary about Jain monks last year. When their time came, they would gradually fast themselves to death. He watched most of his movies on TV. The movie theatres were too loud and too expensive. He didn't like new movies. In his essay on Toronto he'd written,

The City.

A concrete jungle.

A misnomer, because there's more, and more vigorous, life here, under the manmade canopies of commerce and construction, than cowering underneath the natural green canopies designed ostensibly by an emigrant God.

If there was one persistent echo of his youth, it was his atheism. He'd been introduced to it through friends, many of whom were writers, many of whom were communists, although communism itself had never taken hold of him. There was something about the godlessness of it, however, that did have its appeal, and, after a while, he stopped questioning and took divine absence as an article of faith.

The artificial surpasses—and over- and under-—the lame and wasteful after-Eden.

He'd taken great joy in following a hyphen immediately with an em dash.

She purrs, the highway, louder than a jungle cat.

And on and on, it rumbles, a brutal, cascading waterfall of cars, the drumbeat of progress, the highway snaking her way through the city. Passing under it one feels the unstoppable power of mankind's mastery over his environment.

We bend it to our will.

And on and on, to quote itself, it went, in that very same vein, unpublished and growing like a heap of laundry whenever Leonard felt its muse come calling and tossed a couple loose sentences its way, which lately was not very often at all because Leonard rarely went outside, not only because he was in his hundred-fifties but also, primarily, because the world frightened him. It was too different from the world he knew. Cars lacked drivers, young people messaged each other via comm implants even when they were in the same room, you were always on camera wherever you went, and people wore their own cameras, if you can believe that, and filmed themselves doing nothing interesting and shared the feeds with one another so that when you passed anyone under forty on the sidewalk you could be sure they were seeing through at least a half dozen points of view at the same time, which means they weren't paying attention and they didn't say sorry when they bumped into you. They were always bumping into one another. They wore strange clothes and the subway moved too fast and you had to order everything to be delivered to your house, and it came by drone, and there were too many movies and shows and series to watch so nobody you met had seen the ones you'd seen so there was nothing to talk about except make small talk, preferably by messaging via comm implants.

He has a woman who comes over to clean for him and to check if he's still alive. He imagines she has a secret clipboard. A sheet's clipped to it. Printed at the top of the sheet is the name of the current month. Along the left edge are the days of the month in chronological order, and to the right two small empty boxes labelled “Unfortunately,” and “No, finally kicked the bucket.” But he knows that's unlikely for at least two reasons. First, nobody writes on paper anymore. Second, he likes the woman and he's pretty sure she likes him too. She's always been kind to him. Her name is Indigo. He asks her if she's got a minute.. She asks him if it's another story. Yeah, he nods.

“You know you can get your implant to do that,” she says warmly.

“I know, but I don't know how.”

“You know how.”

“I just don't like it when there's no other person involved. It feels cold, like outer space.”

“I like your stories, Mr. Katz.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘I like your stories,’ Mr. Crane,” she says, touching the spot behind her ear where her implant is, “so I like transcribing them for you. And I like posting them to reddit.”

“Reddit. What's that?”

“It's a place online where people publish things for other people to read.”

“And they read mine?”

“A few.”

“They like my stories? I mean, I'm just remembering half-baked ideas I used to have when I was a young man writing for the movies in Los Angeles. Motion pictures, we used to call them.”

“They do.”

“Oh, in that case.”

“Start when you're ready, Mr. Crane.”

"Quote, published my stories, em dash, my goddamn, goddamn in emphasis, stories, em dash, you published my, my in emphasis, goddamnfucking, goddamn and fucking as one word, stories, question mark, end quote, he yelled, period.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but he lifted his palm and she didn't say a word.

"New paragraph. Quote, I didn't mean to, em dash, end quote. New paragraph.

"Quote, Do you have any fucking idea what a violation of trust that is, comma, of ethics, comma, of ordinary human decency, period. You can't just share my soul, comma, or what's left after the mortal decay of it, comma, with a bunch of random strangers on the goddamn internet, comma, end quote, he said, period," he said.

"For their joint communal ridicule," she said. "Unless you think it's too much. I'd take out the 'random' from 'random strangers,’ however. They're strangers. They're presumed random until proven otherwise. I'm on the fence about 'what's left after the mortal decay of it.' Between that and 'joint communal ridicule,' I'd choose 'joint communal ridicule.' Of course, that's partly because it's mine—but no, wait, I've got it. Keep them both, but put 'what's left of the mortal decay of it' directly into the sentence, so it becomes:

"Quote, do you have any fucking idea what a violation of trust that is, comma, of ethics, comma, of ordinary human decency, period. You can't just share what's left of the mortal decay of my soul with a bunch of strangers on the internet for their joint communal ridicule, comma, end quote, he said, period," she said.

"Well, what are you waiting for—write it down, write it down!"

She transcribed it.

"I'm going to miss you," he said, smiling sadly.

"You mean when I finally get my degree and blow this popsicle stand? If that's how you say it. I've always wanted to say it."

"Yeah, that's how you say it.”

"So when I blow this popsicle stand and leave Podunk behind for New Zork City to make it big as a professional—"

"What'd you say?" he asked.

"What?"

"Just now. You said you were leaving for New—"

"York City."

"You said, 'Zork City.'"

"Did I?"

"Yeah. And that's it."

"What's it?"

"It's it. New Zork City's it. The place—the city—the city where our stories are set. Our world. Our characters' home."

"It is it, isn't it?"

And then, in that beautiful moment of transgenerational, almost transcendental, understanding and collaboration, Norman Crane, thought, God, she has a fuckable ass, and ruined absolutely everything.

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[This has been entry #5 in the continuing and infinite series: The Untrue Origin Stories of New Zork City.]

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You can beat the screenwriter out of the ‘30s, but you can't beat the ‘30s out of the screenwriter.

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THE END

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What are you even doing still reading?

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There's nothing here.

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THE END

(For real this time.)

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Bye.

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All right, folks. We're done writing for the night. Nothing more to see here.

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Go home.

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Seriously: Disperse!

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Lend me your ears so I may lead you each painfully home by the lobes of them.

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Lend me your ears, and I'll sing out of tune, and you'll stand up and walk out on me. Chorus: Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends. Mmm, I get high with a little help from my friends. Hmm, are you going to try that with a little help from your friends?

What, this—oh...

I...

The marijuana cigarette in your hand, dear.

The what; wait, why are you here, mom? Why am I here? Why is here here, and is it always here, even when it's there. Mom, I—it's so weird to be, like, sixteen again—I, I... I; I, l? I!

You've been Stoned, Norman.

As in dead?

No, as in Immaculate, like Jim Morrison.

Oh.

Here, pass that over.

Mom?

Like you think I've never smoked weed before, uh huh, sure.

I kept hold of the burning joint behind my back, and at that point Humphrey Bogart walked in from somewhere, looked at me sternly with stoic concern and a cool indifference and said, "Don't be a drip, kid. Don't [my surname] the tea. She's your mother for chrissakes. You're gonna skimp out on your own mother, the woman who gave birth to you?”

Listen, I said to Bogart, I know you've got those exit papers. The sleaze from the Maltese Falcon gave them to you. They're in the piano. And you know what else? Dooley Wilson doesn't play piano. He plays drums. And Ingrid Bergman's taller than you, and I heard you almost weren't in the movie. They almost cast somebody else, George Raft. Or was it Ronald Reagan? Anyway, the whole point of the aliens is...

The point is...

He was shaken awake by someone on the street, a stranger, a dumb kid.

"You all right, mister?" said the kid. "The way you fell, mister, I sure thought something mighty bad had happened to you. I'm glad to see you're all right. You are all right, aren't you, mister?"

"I got fired today," he said.

He remembered now, getting fired and going to the bar, or was it the other way around, going to the bar and getting fired, and going to the bar.

"What's your profession?"

"I," he said, "am Leonard Katz, a Hollywood screenwriter."

"Which studio?"

"Oh, I'm much more of a whore than that. I work, when I work, for all of them, bounced around like a cat tied by its neck to the hood ornament of a speeding Lincoln Continental."

"That sure is a gruesome image, mister."

"Oh just run along home. Leave me. Leave me to die in abject spiritual poverty, rueing the career that could have been. I could've been somebody, you know? I could've been a contender. As it is, I'm just this, a big fucking nothing.”

“I'm sure that's not true.”

“What's your name?”

“Marlon.”

"Well, Marlon, let me be the first to mercifully tell you that you don't know anything about life, about struggle. Look at you, you're probably still in high school. The trap's not sprung on you yet. But it will, Marlon. One day it will.”

“I am still in high school. I'm from Illinois. I'm visiting Los Angeles for a couple of days.”

“Hurry back to Chicago, kid.”

“I don't live in Chicago. I live in a place called Libertyville.”

“What a foul name.”

"Hey. Maybe you got fired because you're so down in the dumps, mister. Maybe what you were writing was a comedy.”

'It was not a comedy. It was a serious dramatic picture set in present-day North Africa. It was about refugees from the war in Europe trying to get out. There was a love story. There was a scene in which the Free French play the Nazis out of an expatriate American's bar by drowning out their singing of "The Watch on the Rhine" with a spirited rendition of La Marseillaise. Then it's revealed that one of the characters is an alien, like from Mars, and all the people of Earth have to lay aside their differences to meet the other aliens on the battlefield and defend the home planet. An idea picture, they call it. Happy ending. Although, between you and me, Marlon, lately I've been feeling we'd be better off letting it all fall.”

"What’s the title? Maybe I'll go see it someday."

"Everybody Goes to Rick's."

"And it's set in North Africa, you said?"

"That's what I said. It takes place in a country called Morocco.”

“Well, good luck with the rest of your life, mister. I've got to get going," said Marlon, the kid whose face had brought me back to life after being canned from the production of Casablanca. “Mother—

fucker," says my mom. (I'm presently so in the past I'm present tense.) The whites of her eyes are as pink as the insides of watermelons. "It was like I was there. Like I was the guy.”

She took another hit, and from somewhere behind me I heard Humphrey Bogart say, "I knew you had it in you to share, kid."

"Hey, Bogey," I say. "You want some too?"

"Kid, I never thought you'd ask."

He slid between the two of us, took the joint and smoked it; but he didn't just smoke it, he smoked it the way he smokes cigarettes in the movies. Like he was about to plug you for killing Miles Archer. Like he'd just finished making passionate, wounded love to you, off-screen, away from the Breen Office. That's how it came to be that one day my mom and I smoked weed with Humphrey Bogart.

"How is this even possible?" my mom asks, coughing, laughing, laughing because coughing. "He's not even real—is he? You see him too?"

"What's she talking about, kid, that I'm not real," said Bogart.

"Haven't you ever seen a movie, Mrs. Kid?"

"I know who you are. I just thought you were dead. Dead-er. Deader, I thought: you're deader than this. Aren't you?”

I'm on a GO train heading west from Union, in one of the Quiet Zones. In my head I'm whispering this paragraph as I type it. Maybe you're whispering it now in your head too, as you read.

“I don't think I'll ever be dead. Not for a long while yet anyway, not while there's audiences in the world who want to laugh or cry or feel something and screens to project their hopes on.”

When I was in college I wanted to write a paper on film production in the 1940s and managed to meet a screenwriter who'd worked in Hollywood from the ‘30s to the ‘50s. I would make a list of questions, then we'd meet twice a week in his apartment and he'd dictate the answers. I must have made a week's worth of recordings. I felt I knew his life. I remember telling him that talking to him was the closest I'd ever been to experiencing another era. Then he died. Then I met his kids and learned he'd made everything up. He was actually an executive from Day & Zimmerman in Philadelphia. He wasn't a compulsive liar or anything, but for some reason he had decided to make up another life and share it with me. The closest I've ever been to experiencing life in another time period—experiencing another life, em dash, was as a lie, period. There are mornings when I look out the window, comma, see the Toronto, capitalize tee, skyline, comma, and really believe that the lie and I are one person, period. New paragraph. No, scratch that; same paragraph. Maybe, comma, and for clarity I don't mean that maybe there should be a comma. I want that comma. Let's try that whole sentence again. OK. Three, two, one. Maybe, comma, in that cluttered apartment of his, comma, Leonard, capitalize the el, Katz, capitalize the kay, and that's Katz spelled kay ay tee zed, passed somehow from him to me.

Prologue

The alarm sounded sharply in my ear as I awoke. The cheap tone drilling a buzz in my head.
My vodka-fueled slumber ended as quickly as it started.
Angrily, I hit the snooze on my iPhone, trying to tempt the mistress for a quick taste of what I just left.
This happened several times over until my last alarm sounded off.
The alarm named Funky Town, not to be confused with the song, was the 6th one to pull me up. That and the smell of coffee.
My father and I have been going on our fishing trips for many years; however, this last trip we went on, let’s just say I won’t ever forget.

Part 1

Coffee fueled, I head to my father’s residence. Many times I have made the journey to his house.
Light not yet touching the vast yellow wheat fields of Kansas. When I arrive, I see a bright green visor leaning up against a white truck. When I stepped out of my car.

He embraced me with a hug.
“It’s been windy the last few days, but err, I already got the boats loaded up. Glad you could make it.
I know you’ve been busy with the kids-"

Smiling, I stop him and say “nothing is better than spending time with my father.”

“Good, we have a new fishing spot to check out. It looks juicy on the map.”

Buzzing in my ears, we set off to the lake.

I swore, my mouth tasted of cheap medicine, but the buzzing only got louder as we headed down the dirt road.
It usually kicks in by now. I should’ve brought more, I thought to myself. My head has been getting worse the past few weeks.
It started out of nowhere, calling to me from some unknown depths of my mind. Before I knew it, I was lost in thought.
Suddenly, a voice called out to me, snapping me back to reality-
"Are you okay?"
I nodded my head “I’m okay, I’m just ready to get on the water. "
A short time later, we arrived at the dock.
It was a foggy morning; I haven’t really noticed it until now. It surely wasn’t like this when we left town.
He paid no attention to it, so I did the same. We started unloading our gear, whistling a tune while getting everything ready. I grabbed the tackle box from the back of the truck when a sharp crack came from somewhere beyond the dock.

I froze.

My father looked up from the boat. “What?”

“Did you hear that?”

He listened for a moment, then shrugged. “Didn’t hear anything.”

Another loud crack came from the fog. Closer this time. I stared into the white wall of the mist between the trees. Nothing moved, not even the fog. The buzzing in my ears seemed to fade beneath the sound of my own breathing.

“Probably just a small animal,” my father said. “Come on, the fog is supposed to let up in a few hours.”

I nodded, but something about the sound bothered me. I stepped away from the dock and toward the trees. The fog swallowed everything past a few yards. Branches hung overhead, dripping with moisture, and the ground was soft beneath my boots. Then something moved.
A figure darted between two trees.
I jumped back. It was only a rabbit. It stopped for just a second, its ears standing straight up before it disappeared into the brush.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

“Do you see anything, William?” my father called from the dock.

“Rabbit!” I cawed at him.

I turned to head back. Then, I noticed the tree.
At first, I thought the bark had been damaged by an animal.

Three long marks ran vertically down the trunk, cutting deep into the wood. I stepped closer.
They were too straight. Too deliberate.

I moved around the tree and found more.
The same markings covered the trunk on the other side, only these were deeper. Some looked almost fresh, the pale wood beneath them still wet.

I ran my fingers near one of the grooves without touching it.

Then I noticed something carved into the mud beneath the tree.

A circle.

And inside it, three crooked lines.

I had never seen the symbol before.

But looking at it made the buzzing in my head louder.

Much louder.

I heard my father’s voice behind me.

“There you are. I can’t see a thing in this.”

As he stopped talking, almost as if he had choked, I turned to look at him. He was standing at the edge of the fog.
His expression had changed.

“What?” I asked.

He stared past me, into the trees.

“Don’t touch that.”

For the first time that morning, my father didn’t sound like he usually does.

He sounded afraid.

They say the Oracle is caught once in a lifetime.
They say the man who catches it forgets.
They say the Oracle tells him something.
Nobody remembers what.
Nobody remembers the man, either.

Part 2

When we arrived back at the kayaks, it almost looked as though nothing had changed. We quickly pushed our kayaks into the water. As I settled into mine, I placed my hand into the water. Warm. Nearly hot. I pulled my hand back into my vest and looked down at the kayak. The morning air was cold enough that I could see my breath.

“You coming?” my father called.

I looked back toward the trees. The fog had already swallowed them.

“Yeah.”

I pushed off, and we began paddling upstream.

The river carried us most of the way. The steady dip of our paddles breaking the silence, along with the cackling of birds over unseen prey.

Ahead, the river seemed to change. A narrow path opened between the trees, branching away from the main channel. The water there was darker almost black beneath the canopy.

Trees leaned over both banks, like malformed fingers, their branches intertwining above us and casting shadows across the surface.

I slowed my paddling.

I couldn’t explain it, but it felt like a call—not a voice exactly, more like an urge buried behind my thoughts.

The buzzing in my ears grew louder.

My father was several yards ahead, already drifting toward the darker water. He turned and pointed toward the fallen trees and branches scattered along the bank.

“Looks good for fishing!”

His voice carried faintly across the water. I couldn’t make out everything he said after that, but I understood the gesture. All that wood made a perfect place for fish to hide

I glanced back toward the path.

The water beneath the trees was completely still.

For a moment, something moved beneath the surface.

I blinked.

Nothing.

My father continued upstream. Almost out of my sight. Disappearing into the darkness.

I followed.

In 1993, a string of disappearances spread along the river. Fishermen vanished first. Then hunters. Then a father and his son who had gone out one morning and never came back. Their boats were found drifting downstream, their gear still inside.

Eleven people disappeared that summer.

Photographs showed empty spaces where people should have been. Names disappeared from records. Families stopped asking questions because, somehow, they no longer remembered who they were looking for. One woman reportedly spent three days staring at an old family photograph, certain that someone was missing from it, but unable to explain who.

Part 3

I had paddled for hours. My arms burned. Cold stiffened my fingers around the paddle, and each stroke vanished into the fog.

No birds. No insects. No wind.

I looked back. The river had swallowed every trace of where I had come from. Only black trees remained, their intrusive branches twisted overhead.

How did I get here?

I remembered the trees. The buzzing. The cold.

After that, nothing.

I couldn’t even remember who I had been with.

Something scraped beneath the kayak.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

I leaned over the side. The water was black, too deep to see through.

The buzzing became deafening.

Then a burbling voice called from somewhere I cannot even describe, as if it came from my own mind.

“I’ve been waiting for you, William”

I froze in shock, looking deeper into the water.

A gray face appeared beneath the surface. Its eyes were clouded, its mouth packed with weeds. Hook and infected gouges on its face, with two red bobbers where its eyes would be. Long whiskers sway in the water.

“I’m so happy that you’re here.
We have all been waiting for you.”

The water went still.

Suddenly an enormous wave rolled beneath me, lifting the kayak. A mouth opened below.

Its whiskers drifted through the water like ropes. Its blind eyes stared upward as its unnatural jaws stretched wider and wider,

Inside was not a throat, but a cavern filled with roots, wreckage, fishing lines, and bones.
The buzzing became a scream.

Then it swallowed me whole.
I fell through heat, mud, and darkness. Something wrapped around my wrist. A loud snap! I landed on a body.

The cavern beneath the river was larger than the world above. A black river ran through it, bordered by trees growing from mud and wreckage. Kayaks, boats, tackle boxes, shoes, and bones covered the banks.

Bodies lay everywhere.

Some were skeletons. Some were bloated and gray. Others looked almost alive, their eyes open and fixed on the darkness.

Bobbers rested near the waterline.

I knew the number before I counted them.

There's a mute man that comes once in a while to my mother's shop. I'm not sure how he became mute or if he's even mute at all. I've just never heard him speak. Every time he comes he's holding a little piece of paper which has the order of drinks his madam wants to get. Her handwriting is awfully sloppy and has me hissing and putting on glasses. When it's time to figure out the text written, the man takes a seat on whatever bench or stool's available and keeps his hands neatly folded on his lap. He's a middle aged man, about 45 I'd say. He has a very handsome and broad face that's defined by time and hard work. I'd describe him as a very well set and tall man. I felt the back of his hand once, when I was handing him a receipt, and that's how I know it's calloused, as well as the rest of the skin on his body, and it's visible but not in a discomforting way. It has a nice rustic pattern to it and lets him age gracefully. He works very well if not too much, sometimes coming twice a day to collect and deliver a cart load of drinks. If I ever had to speak to him he'd simply nod or shake his head or sometimes just a shrug. Mother once said she believed he was illiterate. I asked her why she would say such. She looked at me perplexed and did not answer. I believe she was hasty with that judgement, the man looked sound to me and not at all dull, but that did not exclude the fact that he may not have known how to read and write. Today he came in with the usual piece of paper and took his seat. I spent a good deal of twenty minutes putting together "twenty packs of coke" from a nonsensical scribble. While I was busy he had a little chat with the truck driver. I wouldn't call it a chat, it was more of an audience and performer situation. The driver, who we will call Eazy, was, with a lot of vigor and enthusiasm, demonstrating a little bit of the good old days when he was an active football player, before time and activities had taken the sport from him. The mute man would chuckle, stare, or grunt where necessary, and at one time attempted to show a particular skill which I can only describe as a chicken dancing. Then Eazy laughed and corrected the mute man, twisting the plastic bottle with a grace that came only with experience and talent. When his order was finally ready and it was time to go, he loaded it onto his cart and did a recount. He gave a curt nod to me and waved at Eazy. As he pushed his cart along, he suddenly had to sneeze, and he did it in such a raucous and continuous manner. It was then I realized he had no tongue. The appendage was missing.

There’s a lot to explain here. For starters, I am sterile. I found out after about 2 years of marriage and multiple failed attempts at pregnancy.

I was disappointed in myself, sure, but my beautiful wife was nothing but understanding. That didn’t really make me feel like any more of a man, though. I just felt inadequate.

We were actually in the process of looking into adoption when all hell broke loose.

It was no longer than 4 days. That’s how long it took for her belly to grow. The first day, I just thought she had a particularly large lunch. The second day, I was starting to eyeball her.

By day 3, we were seeking medical help. We could see the baby’s feet pushing against her stomach. Her pain was clearly unbearable.

Doctors were completely lost. My wife and I felt utterly helpless. On the fourth day, not even 30 seconds after her water broke, the baby started to come.

I’ll never get those screams out of my head. I’ll never get her face out of my memory. I’d seen her hurt before, but this… this was a different level.

She looked like she was in hell. And relief was nowhere to be found.

The first baby came. She didn’t even get to hold him before the contractions started up again. Her belly never got the chance to deflate.

By the time the second baby began crowning, my wife was screaming at us to kill her. By the third, she was already dead.

They had ripped her apart. They weren’t regular babies. Some had horns. Some had hooves. Some were already 4 feet tall by the time they hit the ground.

Doctors had already vacated the area and called in special forces. I was left alone, watching her body flail and pulsate as more and more demon babies just clawed their way out of her.

Blood and black, steaming goo ate away at the tiled floor. My wife’s entire lower half had been obliterated. Her legs were snapped, and bones protruded from them as they lay limply at obscure angles.

All I could do was hold her hand. What else was I supposed to do? Comfort her? Beg her not to leave me while these things ran amok in this hospital?

I could hear screaming coming from the corridors. Bones snapping and wet, fleshy sounds as the pitter-patter of tiny little feet darted in every direction.

She had become an assembly line from hell, but I just couldn’t leave her.

My tears fell on her hand as another baby fell out of her. Well, flew out of her, I guess. This one had the wingspan of a bald eagle.

Only, this one didn’t leave the room like the others did. I don’t know why I never stopped to question why these things seemed to be destroying everything in their path, except for me.

It landed right at the door frame, blood dripping off of his shoulders and head.

He turned to me, his eyes black and completely soulless, as he smiled with his sharp, shark-like teeth.

He took a step towards me, wobbling like a baby deer. Then another. He never took his eyes off of me.

He… he started to speak.

“Daaaa..da.”

“Daaa..da.”

“Da-da.”

He was at my feet now, looking up at me as I stood frozen. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was prepared for anything. I was ready to join her. Ready to be free from this nightmare.

Only… he didn’t give me that freedom.

Instead, he threw his arms around my legs and squeezed them with the strength of ten men.

He was hugging me.

And in that moment, I knew…

I was ready to be the father I always knew I could be. I had nothing left to lose.

Andy was sitting with his wife and daughter, the three of them quietly enjoying vanilla ice cream cones in the park, when a couple of guys started harassing them.

One of the guys may have known Andy's wife when she was younger.

At least that's what his comments suggested.

Andy didn't react. He let his wife handle it. After all, she was a strong and independent woman who didn't need a husband to selfishly step in and “protect” her.

Then one of the other guys asked Andy if he was sure his daughter was his.

Andy's daughter looked to her dad.

She was scared, confused.

Andy said nothing. He kept his head down, refraining from feeding the real life troll. After all, what trolls wanted was a reaction, and a reaction would lead to an escalation, which could result in a confrontation and possibly violence. Andy didn't believe in violence. By keeping a cool head, he was being a grown-up and helping keep the situation safe for everybody.

Eventually the guys got bored, wolf whistled at Andy's wife, knocked Andy's ice cream cone from Andy's hand and walked away.

“Dad,” said Andy's daughter after a brief but pregnant silence, “why didn't you do anything?”

She was trembling.

Andy's fallen ice cream was melting on the grass.

Ants were climbing onto it.

“It's just an ice cream cone, a thing,” said Andy. “Things can always be replaced. What matters is people. What matters is us, our family.”

“Assholes,” said his wife.

“You never know what other people are feeling. Anyone can have a bad day,” said Andy, and as he said that, time, as it related to most things, froze; the sky opened like a curtain, and the Selectors appeared.

Andy, who was still breathing, moving, even as his wife and daughter were not, gazed in awe, in the rawest meaning of that word, at—

“This is the one?” asked one of the Selectors.

They were inhuman, tubes of pale pink and purple gelatin twisted balloondog-like into shapes vaguely hominid but four times larger than Andy, dressed in simple, shimmering cloaks.

“Yes,” another answered.

“The experiment is thus concluded?”

“Yes.”

A third Selector mused, “It has been so many years since initiation.”

“13.8 billion.”

“And, after all that time, the result is this—this, admittedly, rather unimpressive-looking specimen. On this, we base our future?”

“Remember,” said the Selector who had spoken second, “it is not the individual we have chosen but the gene-line, and his, of which he is the final embodiment, is most extraordinary. It is the one.”

Andy, despite his paralyzing fear and existential disorientation, couldn't help but also feel a touch of pride. Finally, someone—some-thing?—had recognized his value.

The Selector who had spoken second bent forward now, looming over Andy like a great tree. “Gene-line e8c47b19-2f5a-493e-901d-628b0c41d7a3, it is my pleasure to greet you.”

“Hello,” stuttered Andy.

“Gene-line e8c47b19-2f5a-493e-901d-628b0c41d7a3, the Great Selection has ended, and you, of all gene-lines, have been chosen, based on your qualities, to become our People. Congratulations.”

I wonder what qualities are those, thought Andy. Calmness, emotional maturity, patience, as he entertained the fantastic possibility that he would soon be deified, become like the creatures before him…

“Durability,” said the Selector, who could obviously read Andy's thoughts.

Durability? thought Andy.

“Along with perseverance, hardiness, endurance,” the Selector continued, “like a cockroach, a weed or a rat. Although these qualities, by themselves, would hardly be enough, as many of your final-kind survived as long as you did. No, what truly sets you apart, renders you exceptional, Gene-line e8c47b19-2f5a-493e-901d-628b0c41d7a3, is your extremely developed, and historically stable, sense of obedience, docility, acceptance and self-preserving conformity. You, final-kind ‘Andrew,’ are the terminus of a long and glorious line of spineless cowards.”

The other Selectors ooo'd.

Andy gulped. Cowards? But—no, how is that…

“Consider even just the final 0.000001% of Uniform Cosmic Time, a period of delightful extremes, both of your political institutions and your climate, the final filtration, so to speak, encompassing also the atomization of your communities, the mental numbing of entire lifespans spent in pointlessly repetitive pursuits of manufactured desires, of the replacement of the real with the virtual, and the virtual with the artificially virtual.”

“This is a good thing?” asked Andy.

“I am giddy when it speaks,” squeaked a Selector.

“It is an unimaginably great achievement, Gene-line e8c47b19-2f5a-493e-901d-628b0c41d7a3. Through ages and ages of wars, exterminations, degradations and enslavement, you—your prior-kinds, your ancestors—have made most-excellent opportunists, slaves and labourers. When others rebelled, you remained subservient. When others stood up for their principles, you remained seated. Whatever was convenient, you believed. Whomever it was prudent to sacrifice, you sacrificed. And you did it all, final-kind ‘Andrew,’ without losing the ability of self-delusion.”

I'm not a bad person, thought Andy. “I can't be held responsible for what my ancestors did.”

“On the contrary,“ pronounced the Selector, “you are a very good person for us. And you are right that you are not responsible for the actions of others; you are the fruit of your family tree, stretching back all the way to the small, oozing, wriggling wyrms that formed in the hot waters of this primordial planet.”

“So what's going to happen to me now?” asked Andy. “You mentioned something about me becoming a People… your People…”

“Look,” said a Selector, “its world has ended, its mate and offspring are in temporal suspension, and all it cares about is itself!”

“Marvelous.”

“It genuinely is the one.”

“Gene-line e8c47b19-2f5a-493e-901d-628b0c41d7a3,” said the Selector who had spoken second. “Now, you become the seed of a new species. The experiment having successfully concluded, true existence is set to begin, one in which all that live are you—a multitude of immortal, identical yous.”

“You shall become them, feel everything they feel,” added another Selector.

“Imagine,” said a third, drooling, “the atrocity we shall be able to inflict upon such a hyperdomesticated populace. They will permit, of us, everything.”

“So much pain.”

“I salivate already at the exploitation.”

“Please,” whimpered Andy.