It’s been 5 weeks since Kian broke out into a fight.

I remember asking him.

“What happened?…” Why does your face look so mashed up?”

And he didn’t answer.

Just slung the bookbag into his painted room, muttered a name, then slammed the door.

It’s been 6 weeks since Mum and Dad came home with the envelope for one of Kian’s classmates. They had just arrived from the Friday meeting like they always do, yet in this circumstance, they appeared stern as though an argument occurred and they had the worst end of it.

It has been 7 weeks and 2 days after I cancelled my hangout with Marie and Anthony, told them I was going to a daft birthday party and that I hope I can come round another time.

I believe it was week 8, when our parents ordered us to sit down in the living room as they opened the envelope for our invitation, the room appearing more smaller than before as her voice poured out into the sentences, Dad’s eyes darkening and Kian exchanging me a funny look.

It was the evening of that weekend, when we decided to take a look of the invitation ourselves, desperately holding in our laughs as we snuck into our parents room. 

Instead of finding a wholesome invitation, we were met with a list edged down in sentences and instructions, the paper was designed with an innocent appearance of stickers and smiles, yet the deadly writings were in warnings, as if the person that handed it to our parents, was intentionally fooling someone else. 

It was the beginning of week 9, when we were driving to the home of the boy, the car was dead silent, each of us fixated on the words that was written on the single piece of paper. 

It was the hour that passed in the journey, where I recounted the instructions, sifting through the paper as it read;

THE BIRTHDAY BOY’S NEW PARTY! 

Disclaimer.

I have distributed a copy to all of the families that will be attending the Birthday Boy’s party this year. These rules were not handed by the parents themselves, but from the last family that was equated to them.

 All families must respect the rules of the party and stick to their designated teams. Every rule that has passed correctly will result in the happiness of the Birthday Boy. Any family that has failed in keeping him happy, will result in immediate expiration.

1)    Do not be late. 

The party doors open at 10am. You must arrive beforehand. Any family that attends the party later than the chosen time, will result in expire. 

2)    Do not dismiss the gifts.

You must dedicate time into selecting an appropriate gift that you believe the birthday boy would adore. Any gifts that seem eradicate or not his acquired taste will be denied. 

3)    Wide Warm Smiles.

All attendees must resume a genuine smile, to display that you truly want to be here. If the Mother notices that her guests are not happy, then there will be a further step that is beyond this list entirely. DO NOT let this happen.

4)    Do not approach the DollDress Girl.

During the kiddy activities outdoors, you may notice a girl offbeat to the side,                           isolated in the far corners of the garden. We advise you not to interact with her. As a precaution, the girl mostly appears at the parties wearing a different costume than the last. Blending in to appear like child from a family. Do not interact with her.

5)    Clap if your happy. Cry if your sad. If birthday boy screams then he is outrageously mad!

You must maintain a positive effect around the birthday boy. Watch his facial expressions. Read into his gestures. It is moderate for his feelings to change as long as you KEEP. HIM. HAPPY. Any other harsh emotions will result in expiration. 

6)    Birthday Wishes for the Birthday Boy

As the evening follows, the cake will be brought out and everyone will need to sing the birthday song. Know the lyrics and feel the rhythm. When he blows out the candles, you need to internally repeat the exact words until he finishes; “a lost prayer to an ember flame.”

7)    Capture the Moment

The Father will prepare to take a picture of the birthday party before it ends and requires everyone to be in frame. This is very significant. If any child or parent is not in the photo after it has been taken, they will permanently remain as a party guest forever.

8)    Clean up. Clean up. Everybody. Everywhere. 

As a final rule, make sure you clean up after each other. Any family member that laid the misfortune of expiration throughout the party, will need to swiftly be cleaned up accordingly. Anyone that dismisses the rule and leaves without helping out, will result in immediate countermeasures. 

Good luck. We wish you a safe and enjoyable party.

Some houses sell for less than they're worth for one reason only — the owner's trying to get out before the debt remembers their name.

When Liorana finds an old house that might work as a painting studio, the asking price is so low it doesn't feel like a deal so much as a warning nobody bothered to translate.

Her grandfather used to say people rarely sell off a haunted thing. Mostly they just pass it along — sometimes for money, sometimes for next to nothing, sometimes for whatever they can get rid of it for.

The owner's a quiet sort, the kind who only answers the questions you're stubborn enough to keep asking. Every time she brings up the price, he rubs his left wrist without seeming to notice he's doing it.

There's a brown stain on the skin there.

Just a stain — that's all it is, probably — though it looks almost like something underneath is working its way up through the surface.

She signs the papers anyway.

She keeps her own apartment, Number 53, and uses the house strictly as a studio, leaving most evenings before the sun's fully down. There's a stillness to the place she can't quite name. Even the wind seems to think better of it before it gets to the property line.

One night she stays past her usual hour, working until the colors on the canvas start to blur together from sheer tiredness. She falls asleep in the chair.

The house's old owner is waiting for her in the dream.

He's standing in the doorway — pale, with a look in his eyes she can only describe as relief, the specific kind that comes from getting yourself out of a locked room by locking someone else in it instead.

"My whole life," he tells her, quiet, "I owed a debt."

Something close to pity crosses his face.

"Now it's yours."

She wakes up gasping.

The house is dead quiet.

Then she hears it — a slow, rhythmic sound coming up from the basement. Something rocking. Back. Forth. Back.

She tells herself not to go down there.

She goes anyway, flashlight in hand.

The basement smells like wet earth and old lumber gone soft. Past the shelves furred with dust, at the far end, she finds a narrow pantry door standing open just a crack.

She pushes it the rest of the way.

Inside, a child's rocking chair is moving in the dark, gentle, unhurried. Something's sitting in it — a doll stitched together out of faded cloth, stuffed with straw that's gone brittle and dry.

It's rocking, and it isn't making a sound.

The instant she steps in, the chair stops.

The doll lifts its head.

Its face is just stitching — nothing that could be called an expression — and yet she knows, the way you know things in dreams and in basements, that it's looking straight at her.

That's when she sees its wrist.

A brown stain, spreading across the fabric. Same shape. Same spot.

As the mark deepens on the doll, something sharp burns across her own left wrist.

She looks down.

Under her skin, something brown is starting to bloom.

She stumbles back, and the flashlight catches a painting on the far wall — one she hadn't noticed walking in, hanging crooked behind a curtain of cobwebs nobody's bothered to clear in years.

An old man, sitting in that same rocking chair, holding an infant wrapped in a pale blanket.

She knows that face. She's seen it in the photographs her mother kept tucked away in a drawer. She remembers the hand that used to rest on her head, back when she was small and couldn't sleep.

Her grandfather.

And in his arms — small, swaddled, unmistakably her.

From somewhere down in the dark, a child's voice whispers, perfectly calm.

"The last payment's been made."

The stain on her wrist stops spreading.

It doesn't fade.

It just waits.

The curtains rise and the act begins. People clap for me and hurl insults at the Demon Lord. After defeating the Demon Lord, I raise my hand to announce my victory, and the act ends. Before leaving at the end of the show, the entire cast comes forward to bow in front of the audience and express their gratitude. But today, Lucky seemed very lost. After a moment, he got up, bowed without a smile, and just walked away.

​We started packing up our things. Backstage, I asked him, 'Is something bothering you?'

​'It feels terrible knowing how people just want to see me lose.'

​'You, or your character?'

​He stayed silent for a moment before saying, 'The fight of good versus evil is reduced to black and white, simple enough to entertain. Applause for the hero. Boos for the villain. Tragedy is mocked, pain is disrespected, all to earn shouts and screams. But in reality, nothing is that simple.'

​"Look, it seems like you've become far too attached to this character. We're actors—our job is just to act. You should actually be happy; if the audience hates your character, it means your performance is incredible."

​"That's not the point. I just want people to understand the Demon Lord too."

​We had been performing this play for years, so I thought of something. "Let's do this: tomorrow, I'll play the Demon Lord, and you can play the hero."

​Hearing this, his eyes widened. He stepped toward me, grinding his teeth, and said, "I hate that so-called hero. Every night I die so the audience can feel righteous."

The next day, we were scheduled to act out a new chapter—one where the Demon Lord somehow returned seeking vengeance. We picked up the script and began rehearsing.

​'Demon Lord! Why do you want to destroy humanity?' I yelled, playing the Hero.

​'Humans... humans who fight among themselves, wage endless wars, and destroy animals and forests,' he said.

Everyone around us exchanged bewildered glances. There was something different in his voice when he said it. For the first time, I couldn't tell whether Lucky was speaking as the Demon Lord—or as himself. ​

​He continued, 'I will wipe out humanity and make a fresh start—a new world where none of this exists.'

​The director stomped his foot in frustration, stepping forward. 'Right here, your line is: I hate such a despicable species as humanity!'

​'But I don't hate them,' Lucky replied. 'It isn't that simple. I've thought about this deeply, and only then did I decide to eliminate humanity.'

​'Has he gone completely mad?' members of the cast murmured.

​I stepped forward. 'Lucky, what are you doing? We just have to do what we've always done. There's no need to get so worked up over this.'

​"We cling to the script, repeat the act, play the roles handed to us, defining who is a hero and who is a villain. Why don't we leave it up to the audience? Because as long as things go on like this, the truth will never come out."

​The director held his head in his hands.

​I said to him, "No, that can't happen."

​"Why not? They only care about entertainment anyway, don't they? We are giving them just that," he said, looking straight into my eyes. "Let them have it, but this time, we tell the truth." He shouted, looking all around us, "So let’s go off script."

​Slap! The director landed a sharp slap across his cheek. Raising a finger threateningly, he said, "Don't ruin my play, understand? If you want to leave, then leave—I'll replace you with someone else."

​Everyone stood there in stunned silence. Lucky didn't say another word after that. But as he stood there, staring at the script in his hands, I realized something that frightened me. He wasn't defending the Demon Lord anymore. He believed the Demon Lord was right. And he believed the hero deserved to lose.

​Evening arrived, and the crowd began to gather.

The curtains rise and the act begins. People clap for me and hurl insults at the Demon Lord. After defeating the Demon Lord, I raised my hand to announce my victory. Lucky remained on the ground. "Get up," I whispered. "The scene is over." He looked at me as if he didn't recognize me anymore. "No," he said quietly. "This is where you always make him lose." Right then, I see Lucky standing back up. 'I will build a new world!' he screamed.

​The director, who was peeking from the entrance, whispered in panic, 'That wasn't supposed to happen.'

​I saw Lucky reach for the weapons rack beside the prop pillar. Instead of picking up the familiar wooden prop sword, his fingers wrapped around the cold, heavy handle of an iron hunting knife. He turned back toward me with eyes completely void of fear. 'Today,' he screamed, stepping over the footlights, 'the Demon Lord wins!', plunging the knife right into my chest. I felt the blade enter my chest. The audience erupted in applause. Maybe this was still part of the act. Maybe he had finally found a way to make the Demon Lord's victory believable. I waited for the next line. Nothing came. Lucky stared down at me. I stared back at him. The applause grew louder. I tried to speak.

No words came out. That's when I realized the blood wasn't part of the costume. The applause continued. Then someone in the audience screamed. The sound spread through the hall faster than the realization itself. This wasn't the play anymore. Chaos erupted everywhere, the director fled the scene, and finally, the curtains fell. For the first time, there was no applause.

The sun burned into my skin. My lips felt so dry. Another grassy hill stood before me. I wasn’t sure it was worth climbing, but what else was I to do? 

My lungs burned. My vision blurred. When I reached the top, I rubbed my eyes and looked around.  

A wave of warmth shot through me. There was a house, surrounded by a well, animals, fruit trees, and a small wooden fence. I rubbed my eyes again, but the house still stood there.

With my last energy, I rushed to it. Soon I heard pigs squealing and chickens clucking. The garden was even more beautiful up close. The grass was green, and colorful flowers grew in it. Apples were already growing on the trees. I opened the gate and picked an apple. Its sourness puckered my mouth, but I was so happy to eat again.

After I finished, I knocked on the door. I wanted to thank them and ask for water. I was grateful they hadn't already come out with a shotgun. No one answered. I tried the handle. The door wasn’t locked.

The smell of fresh food hit me instantly – meat, corn, grains, fruit. It was like a full banquet. My head almost started to spin. A second ago, I thought I'd pass out, but now there was all this food. I pinched myself and waited, but luckily I didn’t wake up on the prairie grass. I looked around the room, and in the corner, I saw a jar with a few dollars and a sign behind it that said: PAY FOR WHAT YOU TAKE. 

It made more sense now. I didn’t have any money, but I still had my hands, and after I ate, I could help out with some work; plus I had already eaten the apple and, if I explained I was just returning to my wife and son, they’d understand.

I sat down at the table and began loading my dish. It all looked so delicious. The meat was so tender, the corn and beans juicy, and the fruit so sweet. It was probably the best food I’d ever eaten. Hunger is the best spice, but this food almost didn't feel real. I stopped eating only when my stomach wouldn’t accept any more. 

The chair was made of wood, but it still felt incredibly comfortable. I closed my eyes, and my mind slowly drifted off to sleep.

“Traveler?” a soft, soothing voice echoed in my ears.

I slowly opened my eyes. A beautiful woman in a long black dress with green eyes and raven hair stood before me. 

“How are you, traveler?”

“I’m great now.”

“Good. I can see you had a long, difficult journey.”

I looked down at my clothes. They were torn, with holes all over them.

“Yes. I had.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Home. To my wife and child.”

She smiled.

“Well, you better head to them. There’s a town north of here. It should take no more than three days to reach. You may take some extra food with you.”

She handed me a basket.

“Thank you so much!”

I started putting food into it, but then I saw the woman walk over to the jar. She shook it and looked in. Coldness washed over me. I put the food out and stared at her.

“Traveler, you must have forgotten to put the money in.”

“I’m really sorry. I don’t have any.”

Her eyes opened in surprise.

“But you sat in my house, ate my food, and…”

“But I can work,” I interrupted her. “I’ll repay everything I ate.”

The woman stared at me for a moment. Then she smiled.

“Oh, I know exactly what you can do.”

The woman snapped her fingers.

Pain shot through my body. My bones broke and healed instantly. My body and limbs stretched and twisted. One of my arms grew longer, becoming thin and rigid, until I could barely feel my fingers. My skin hardened and cooled, becoming something smooth and metallic. I tried to scream, but nothing escaped my mouth; there was not even a mouth to open. Then I felt myself fall. My back hit the floor with a heavy metallic clang.

The woman picked up my long, twisted arm and lifted me. She put something wet and juicy into the hollow space where my stomach had been. She put me down on a cold, metal surface, and something clicked. Something warm pressed against my back. It was mild at first, but it quickly turned into a full burn. Panic shot through my body. Grease crackled against my metal skin. I tried to scream and move, but I couldn’t. 

The burning feeling continued. The smell of cooked beef and fruit rose from where my stomach had been, and that’s when I heard the woman say, “I’ll turn you back once you repay your debt.”

‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

‘What is it you wish to confess?’

‘I fear I may have been tainted, Father.’

‘Tainted?’

‘Maybe even possessed. I have surely transgressed against God.’

Since the proliferation of opium dens in Whitechapel, a tide of such wretches had come to sit in my confession booth. I felt as if God had turned away in disgust. And that in his absence, another watcher had come - an agitator, an opportunist. When the murders around Whitechapel began, I was plagued by nightmares of the church burning down and the gold altar cross melting in my flayed hands. Perhaps it was something in the young man’s voice that put the smell of burning pews in my nose again. Already, I could feel the pain of fire against my legs, as if the hem of my robes were aflame.

‘Why do you think that?’

‘I think it was the experiment. At the university. I should never have signed up for it, but I was desperate for the money. I’ve been ruined by this evil ever since. I see now that it was not an experiment, but a ritual. And that he was not a doctor, but … Something else. I think I’m going to hurt someone, Father. I feel … Obliged to do so.’

‘Tell me of this experiment.’

‘He showed me photographs of a man and woman … In flagrante. The man wore a uniform of some kind, perhaps naval. Then, a photograph of the woman lying on the ground in a pool of her own blood with her throat slit. It was the most terrible thing I’d ever seen … Until the last picture.’ The flames at the hem of my robe streaked upwards into my heart.

‘What did she look like?’

‘Olive skin, long dark hair. Perhaps of distant shores.’

My mouth dried up as I recalled my own sins on such shores. ‘And the last picture?’

‘The same woman with her belly opened. A foetus removed and placed on her chest.’

The flames gripped my throat. I had known this woman while stationed in Haiti, but I knew nothing of the child.

‘He gave me this to give to you.’

The sinner folded and stuffed a square of material through a small gap in the partition between us. Immediately, I recognised it as taken from Natacha’s favourite dress, even before the faint scent of her perfume reached my nose. I found myself quite unable to breathe or move from my chair as the young man began incantations in Haitian creole. I tasted only rotten meat upon my tongue and, in my nose, the smell of paraffin. Looking down at my feet, I saw that the fluid had leaked through the gap under the partition to soak the hem of my robe. As the top-hatted silhouette appeared in the doorway of the church and the struck match flared, I knew my time had come.

I swear, this thing is going to give me an aneurysm. The incessant noise. Man, it’s just too much to handle.

My freaking in-laws got these toy walkie talkies for my son. And don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the gesture and I appreciate them. But sometimes their emphasis on fairness is a little overboard. They got them for Ken because they also got them for their other grandkid, his cousin. The big difference, though, is that James is seven years old while Ken is only three. They’re appropriate for James. He can hold down the button and talk at the same time. He meets up with friends and they play with the walkies in the park.

Not so much for Ken.

He hasn’t quite mastered the art of doing two things at once. He can press buttons and he can talk, but he can’t really do them together. He’s smart enough to realize something is wrong (especially when I, genius that I am, showed him how to do it right so he knows that if you talk into one you should be able to hear it in the other) but too damn stubborn to just put it down until he’s developmentally capable of using it. So instead Ken just presses buttons.

There are three buttons on these walkies. There’s the talk button. That one doesn’t make a noise when you press it. It’s my favorite one for him to press, but his least favorite. It’s also right there on the side, so he never confuses it for the others. There’s the volume button, which beeps when you press it based on how high up the volume is. Annoying.

But worst of all is the channel button. This thing can cycle through something like thirty channels. Why? I have no earthly idea. Why would a kid’s walkie talkie need thirty goddam channels? It literally doesn’t make any sense at all. And each one makes its own little noise. Most of them are just different tones like dialing a phone, but strewn in randomly there are sproings and womps and even a fart noise. Of all the things in my home, these walkie talkies are the things I hate most.

They are Ken’s favorite toys. He sits there, right in the middle of the floor, for dozens of minutes at a time, just pressing the various buttons. He laughs at the noises. If I try to walk away and do something else, he runs at me on the verge of tears and swats me in the dick until I come back to the floor with him. So that’s a big chunk of my day now, just listening to those terrible noises.

Except now is different. He’s cycling through the channels like usual, but in between the kazooks and clipclops there’s something. At first it’s just static, but every time he circles back to channel 19 it gets a little bit clearer. Just when I start to hear what is definitely words, I take it away from him.

Later that night, after Ken’s bedtime, I pick up the walkie. I feel crazy, honestly. This is a children’s toy in my hand, and I’m afraid to turn it on. Even if I really did hear something earlier, which, no way, right?, but even if I did, there’s no way it’s still there now. It’s been hours. It was probably just some other kid at the very edge of the walkie’s range. I know that that’s true. But still, every time I try to tell my hand to turn the thing on, it stays put.

My wife asks if I’m coming to bed. I know I’ve been standing here for some time, but I didn’t realize it was that long. Felt like just a few minutes. But my legs are tired, like I’ve been standing for hours, so I guess she’s right. Well, here we go. Time to put up or shut up.

I turn the toy on. It beeps its annoying ascending-tone welcome, then I shove the volume down as hard as I can. I cycle through to channel 19. Here goes nothing.

I turn the volume one click up.

Nothing.

Another click.

Another nothing.

A third click.

Not nothing.

A fourth.

Very much not nothing.

I can hear it plainly now. It’s a voice, and something in me tells me it’s the same voice that I heard earlier, the same message even. I sit. I listen.

“... miss them. You’d be doing them a favor, really, and yourself. Don’t you want to watch TV as much as you want? Eat as much candy as you want? Who’s stopping you? Do it. Do it. DO IT.”

There is some muzak, which feels out of place like when a good dream goes bad. Then the message started over.

“Ken, listen carefully. I have a very important job for you. You know where your parents keep the big sharp knives? Well, grab your tower and get one. Do it while they’re asleep. Cut them. Stab them.”

I can’t take it anymore. I slam the power button and throw the walkie across the room. It skitters across the floor and bounces off the wall. Then I hear it.

A rummaging. Coming from the kitchen. “Ken, honey, is that you? How’d you get downstairs?”

The reply comes from closer than I expected. “Go to sleep daddy. Go to sleep forever.”

The sun set on the horizon, casting shadows across the front of the weathered home. A crisp autumn breeze carried the scents of fall. An elderly couple was walking on the sidewalk. The man had a limp, but he was determined to give his loving wife her evening walk. She sat in her wheelchair, taking in the surrounding yellows and oranges and reds. They rolled right along. 

Inside, a cat watched from the windowsill. A fly buzzed around the panes, dinking against the glass in a desperate futile attempt at freedom. The cat sat on its haunches, following the movement of the insect with a feral look in its eyes. It managed to nab it with its paw, toyed with it for a few seconds, and viciously pulled it into its mouth. The crunching of paper-thin wings, the squish of the exoskeleton breaking way into guts. The cat was satisfied. 

The house was well kept, aside from the exterior being rough around the edges. An attempt at a garden was planted to the right of the front door, filled with dying tomato vines and dried mint stalks. Chairs were out on the porch, set facing each other. An empty glass sat on the table in between them, stained brown with forgotten morning coffee.

The front door was ever so slightly ajar, and adorned with a fall-themed wreath. Keys were laid on the table in the mudroom, and a sedan sat in the driveway. The paint was beginning to flake off in large chunks, exposing rusted metal. 

It was quiet aside from the occasional mewing of the cat. Dishes lay in the sink, a thin layer of water submerging a majority of the grime. Tiny tongue marks ran across the spaghetti sauce that hadn’t diluted yet. Squiggles of dish soap splotched across the grimy sinkwater, awaiting future scrubbing. 

The upper section of the pantry was open, and a trail of flour and breadcrumbs led across the house. In the center of the kitchen, a bag of flour had been torn apart. It accumulated across the kitchen like drifts of snow during a ferocious blizzard, pawprints dotting the piles. A baguette had been reduced to a tattered plastic bag halfway into the living room, and a bottle of wine had smashed against the floor somewhere in the mishap, spreading a sickly sweet ooze across the carpet. It had dried to a gel.

The kitchen closet was closed, and smelled rank. A fish market that had been left abandoned in the sun. Rotten eggs. The smell was relatively contained, but strong as ever. 

Upstairs, the litterbox was overflowing with feces and urine. Piles of wet unhealthy droppings were littered across the floor like leaves in fall. The scent of Ammonia poisoned the air, choking out any other smells that existed in the home. The carpet was soggy, and squished sickeningly under weight. Its original clamshell white coloring had been tainted deep yellow. 

Down the hallway, a door slanted into a bedroom. The intense smell of meat left out to dry emanated from inside. A grisly sight to be held. Bits of flesh and muscle pulled off and left to rot. Gristle peeled off and discarded, unable to be eaten due to the rubbery nature of its contents. Bits of nose and ear. The softest parts go first. Eyes missing, sockets hollowed and covered with dried blood and fluids. Lips gnawed off, leaving lines of raw flesh the consistency of ground beef. Earless. The fingers had started to go, chunks missing in between the fingernail and the palm. An opening bore its way into the chest, and strings of intestines hung out like a dog's tongue on a hot summer day. Blood had pooled and dried across the carpet. 

House flies had made a nursery out of the carnage. Windows were tinted grey, covered in writhing insects. The air was hot and sticky, and filled with the droning of buzzing. 

The noise of the flies was drowned out by the wind. It was beginning to pick up. The sun set, and the earth was blanketed in darkness. The car was left in the driveway. The lights stayed on inside the house. The dishes were left dirty. And the cat stayed full. 

I stared down at the brightly lit screen as rain pattered against my windshield.

Soulmate detected, 9 miles, northeast.

An arrow pointing slightly off the path of the road surrounded by trees both dead and alive, in the middle of butt fuck nowhere Montana.

I've been following this damn tracker for the last several hours, even over state lines. I need to find my soulmate, it's a guarantee the app provides. I thought it was bullshit at first, I mean come on? Some stupid app that can find your soulmate? Sounds like the easiest scam to sniff out.

That was until my sister Beth told me she had found the love of her life with it several months ago, and now they are eloped, a happy couple.

I wanted that, I deserved that too.

So here I am, driving down this road in complete utter darkness while I can barely see through the damn tsunami of rain crashing against my car.

Soulmate detected, 2 miles, east.

I turned onto the dirt road and followed it up as the app narrowed me closer and closer.

It was an old house; one you'd see some old couple live in as they spend their last years farming.

I fucking hate the outdoors, so my soulmate better just be visiting family.

Soulmate detected, 60 feet, east.

I knocked, knocked, knocked, and knocked, and there wasn't a single noise from behind that door. I needed him to open it and welcome me in with open arms. Particularly now would be nice, before I drown to death out here.

Screw it, I didn't drive so far just to get turned away when he's so damn close.

After searching around the house, I found a window that luckily wasn't just unlocked, but already halfway opened. It was about a foot over my head, and I'm not the most athletic, so it wasn't easy.

Searching around the house I called out for him.

Adam

I whispered it, I yelled it, I screamed it, and there wasn't anybody around. I was starting to believe the app was a fluke, that my sister just got lucky, and I had wasted almost a whole day on a lie.

Then I heard it, a shift, something dragging across the ground.

I rushed to where I heard the noise, and there I found him.

Fuck, he was handsome, even if he was tied up in a chair with duct tape around his mouth.

Soulmate detected, 12 feet, north.

I helped undo his binds, and immediately he ripped the tape off, shouting in pain while doing so.

"Holy shit, thank you so much, I don't got time to explain, but we need to get the hell out of here before he comes back."

"Okay Adam, I'm right behind you."

"Alright good, and who the hell is Adam? My name is-"

He was abruptly cut off as the blade plunged into his neck; I shrieked as he fell into my arms and knocks me over. His lifeless body weighs heavily on mine as we fall to the ground.

I look up, and see a rugged overweight man, standing in the darkness of the corner of the room, with a bloodied knife, and a mask of leather and stiches. It takes all my strength, but I push the body off me and grab my phone before attempting to bolt, but I freeze as I look down at the screen, and then up at him.

Soulmate found!

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.

The glow of the TV screen was the only thing illuminating the living room. I’d finally gotten the kids tucked into bed and fell onto the couch to catch my breath, letting the late-night broadcast drift me off to sleep.

​​​​A sharp burst of white noise snapped me awake as the national anthem faded into heavy gray static buzzing on the screen. As I got up to turn off the TV the gray snow abruptly gave way to the stark, blinding glare of a test pattern, only for the audio to cut out as a high-pitched alert shrieked from the speakers. A bright red banner flashed across the screen:

​CIVIL DEFENSE EMERGENCY > INBOUND BALLISTIC THREAT DETECTED > SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.

My heart dropped straight into my stomach. I stared at the harsh block lettering, waiting for the announcer to pop on and say it was just a drill-- or some sick joke, a mistake, anything.

​Then the town siren started to scream. ​It wasn't the steady, low hum of a storm warning; it was the high-pitched, rising wail reserved for absolute catastrophe. I just stood there dumbfounded for a few seconds.

Outside my window, the quiet night shattered. Tires squealed, car doors slammed, and shouting echoed down the block. Headlights swept wildly across my ceiling as neighbors scrambled into their cars, desperate to outrun something you couldn't outrun.

​Within minutes, the street was a wall of red taillights and blaring horns. Nobody was moving. The main road out of town was completely gridlocked.

​I stood frozen in the middle of the dark living room, listening to the sirens howl outside and the low, rising whistle cutting through the sky from high above.

Down the hall, my children were still fast asleep.