u/Alarmed_Creme_7573

Grimly, I part with the sensory. I drift alone in the space between space. As I fall into nothing, I see everything. I placed all the right bets but still lost. Any fishhead who would ever walk could take hold of this ship and do a much better job. Fuck it, I guess I lost.

Many have wondered in terrible solitude the groves of onslaught and hellfire for the ones we love. In the context of our mind's eye we see ourselves as the righteous sacrifice, willing to lay down our lives. But, the opportunity never arrives. Metaphorically, we would die, but for whom would I live for? For whom would you live for? Do you ignore them still?

I flaoted there basking upon the gaze of the Great Molusk. His true name is lost to the sands, that were lost to the winds of time. Memories of memories long forgotten. Misconceptions of his misconceptions forgotten, dredged, and further muddled. His native tongue is so long removed, to the archaic it must seem ancient. With his ghastly sight, he lay one eye on me while ones lay on to you. His sight to the blind would be awfully biblical. And, with his great bellows, he spoke unto me with titanic clairvoyance.

“To what end has your life spiraled! For this awful communion!” From anywhere. Everywhere even!

“I do not know…” I responded.

“It is not time… yet! The depths yearn for blood, but for blood, they wait!” He spoke upon me with such divine truth.

“But, what of the rest?” I asked. We looked upon the ship. Swallowed by the precipice of the void. The dark tendrils of that terrible water under the water swallowing a rusted, cancered catch.

“For them, it is time.”

“To what purpose!” I demanded. “I would gladly go in their stead!”

“Then would you not find yourself alongside them now?”

For many months, I laid in a sterile room. Doomed to repeat my encounter. A sole survivor, a captain disgraced. I now lay in contempt. Drowned in the ichor of liquor. Waiting the clock. The clock ticks, ticks, ticks. And, soon, the ticks echo those horrible waves. A captain soon reunited with his crew.

I never really liked telling anyone about myself, but I guess it doesn’t matter anyways. At Least not after today. It seemed like tragedies, or at least what they felt like, had always been happening not to me, but to the people around me. It began funny enough the day I was born. From what my grandparents had told me, my father was a bum. He was a priest. A supposed man of the lord. One who saw it within the lord’s best interest to impregnate a 17 year old girl then skip town.

My grandparents had constantly told my mother to get an abortion, but from what I was told my mother had been devoutly religious and felt that God had given her the miracle of life for purpose. Her purpose unfortunately was to die on an operation table during a caesarian section. She had been having contractions for about a week before I was born. The hospital had kept her on close watch waiting for her to give birth. But, as her cervix never opened, the doctors began to worry. Upon check up they noticed I had been in breech position with the umbilical cord around my neck. They had immediately rushed into the operation room.

She died shortly after my birth. The official report had stated that she died due to shock from blood loss and hemorrhaging. After a lengthy lawsuit from my grandparents her official cause of death was determined to be from staff mismanagement and medical malpractice. But, my grandparents never talked about it much. Except to tell me how much money they got from the case and how I had killed their little girl.

To my grandparents I had been a malediction. A curse brought forth upon them by the misguided faith of a faith-bound woman. They tried tracking down my father, but had no real leads on who he actually was. All they truly knew about the man was that he had been a priest from a town over. They talked to five churches, but none of them knew anything about the man. In truth all they knew was what my mother had told them: he was a priest from a town over. They had only seen him once before he ran.

In the wake of my mother’s death, they did not look upon me with kindness or warmth. Only cold malice which could spawn from the death of someone they held dear. And, they constantly would make that known to me. The only thing that led to them raising me was the constant pleas from my uncle that my mother wouldn’t want them to abandon me. That with the money from the case they won: they owed it to me to be with my real family.

I think my uncle was the only true family I had. He was about 15 when I was born. He would always talk about how my mom was overjoyed to be bringing life into this world. About how much she loved me before I was even born. With all of my grandparents' torment and insults, he would always be around the corner to try to cheer me up. He told me that he never blamed me for my mother’s death.

Personally, it is a guilt that haunts me. No matter how much he ever tells me that it is not my fault I think ultimately he was wrong. I was a bastard born out of wedlock in conspiracy to matricide. My existence marks the death of what I was told was a woman who’d been the light of the world.

My grandparents have since died. Almost 2 years back anyhow. That was the start of this problem. My grandfather had years prior become a husk of his former self. His mental faculties were decreasing at an ever increasing rate. In any of the few seldom times I came to visit he would almost always be meaner than the last. The doctors came to the synopsis that he was showing the signs of early onset dementia. That combined with his PTSD and the constant sorrow of losing his daughter had become the catalyst of him failing to keep a grasp of his mind.

They had him on an entire cocktail of medications. I can’t remember the names, but they had been a culmination of immunosuppressors, anti-psychotics, and some sort of inhibitors. My uncle had told me that they were working surprisingly well. That he had been living better than he has in years.

My uncle had decided to call me up one day.

“Cait”

“What’s up, Uncle Carl?”

“How’re you doing kiddo? Things going well?”

“Yeah, they’re pretty good. I got a new job to work on the weekends… I figure if I’m working in the warehouse during the week, and I just got this job as a cook on the weekends, I should be pulling about 55 hours a week. I think in about three months I should have enough to get a Mustang.”

“You’re still thinking about getting one?” he asked reluctantly.

“Yeah, well, um, Foxbody’s in this area are getting pretty reasonable. Even then, there is this guy at the warehouse who has this old ‘78 that he’s willing to sell–”

“I don’t know. Don’t you still live with a roommate. What about saving up for your own place? Or school. Don’t you want to do something with your life?”

He had given me the same speech a million times before. And, everytime it always ended the same. We would get too heated to even talk with each other. Usually about a week later one of us would call the other. Tell them we didn’t mean what we had said, and would make up.

“Listen, I’m not calling to tell you how to live your life.” He continued, “I just want you to know da… erm, Grandpa is doing really well.”

“Oh… Is that so?” I snarkily replied, “Well, then,my day just got sooo much better.”

“Listen, Cait, I know you haven’t gotten along with him. I think, though, that you should go visit him.”

“Is that what you think? Huh.”

“Yes, listen, I get that you don’t like talking with him. But, I also think that this time might be different.”

“Different how? Actually I know. This time instead of saying how they would gladly give me ten times over, that they would instead only kill me nine times if it meant bringing their daughter back!”

“Cait. They never truly treated you right. But, I think your grandfather is starting to come to see how wrong they were. I can’t explain it. It might be the meds or maybe the crusty bastard is thinking about how much of a dick he’s been, but anyways, he wants to talk to you.”

“I’ll think about it. Maybe I’ll have a free day this weekend. Listen, I have to go.”

I hung up the phone. I knew Uncle Carl meant well, but I never enjoyed going to visit with them. They never told me that I wasn’t welcome within their home. They never did roll out the welcome mat when I came around to their neck of the woods. Not once was I ever invited to dinner, or even made a plate for. They never cared about what I was doing or what I had planned. The routine was always the same. I would enter, they would say their greetings, leave me alone in the mud room, and go back to whatever it was they were doing. Whenever I would try and join them, they would barely even acknowledge that I even existed.

Usually I could keep surface level conversation. Asking about the weather, talking politics, talking about the brand new never-seen-before innovation in whatever field. My surface level questions always gave me surface level responses. “Yeah, cold snap is coming through”, “Hmm, I don’t know if I’d vote for him”, “Yeah, times really are changing”. It would continue like this until eventually they would move on to another task or dinner. Around dinner they would make enough for them, sit down in the living room, and watch TV. They would never offer me a plate. They wouldn’t even look at me while they ate. When I would announce that I was leaving, they wouldn’t even look up or give a simple parting. Just continuing their gaze upon the television. To them I was no more a concern than a speck of dust floating in the wayward breeze. I never did end up visiting my grandfather.

He died months after that call with my uncle. Uncle Carl told me that his medication was complicating an undiagnosed Hodgkin’s Disease. The cancer went unnoticed and undiagnosed for too long, that by the time the doctors realized what it was that it had spread to other areas of his body. His medication was actively working against his immune system. It allowed for the cancer to spread.

I was definitely glad I didn’t go to visit him on hospice. I was told that he was either too on sleep from the morphine, a vile man spewing putrid vitriol at even my uncle, or reliving his time on a firebase in Vietnam. Nothing that me being there would actively mitigate. He was only on hospice for a month before he passed. It was peaceful. He was sleeping when it happened. Uncle Carl told me he had been smiling when it happened. I’d like to imagine he was embracing the sweet release. Finally once again being able to be reunited with his baby girl.

I didn’t go to his funeral. But, did end up reading his obituary. It read:

“Earnest A. Caldwell, 74, of Marshal, IL passed away on Monday, April. 19, 2023 at his home following and extended illness. He was born March 8, 1948 at Gustine, CA, the son of Harlan Caldwell Sr. and Bessie G. Rhoades who preceded him in death. In addition to his parents he was preceded in death by siblings, Harlan Caldwell Jr. and Eleanor Caldwell. He is survived by his wife, Martha who he married March 2, 1968 at the First Christian Church of Marshal. Earnest was proud of his military career and retired after 20 years of service from the U.S. Air Force with the rank of a Master SGT. He was a member of the Marshal Christian Church, hus VFW Post and Lodge #133 AF & AM. He graduated from High School and received his Associates Degree while serving in the Air Force. Following his retirement he spent a great deal of time gardening, tinkering around in his shed and spending time with wife. Services in honor of his life will be 10:00 AM Monday at the Christian Church. Burial will follow at the Auburn Cemetery with military graveside rites. Visitation will be 3:00 to 6:00 PM Sunday at Pearce funeral home with Masonic services at 6:00 PM. Memorial contributions may be made to the Three Points Christian Church.”

I couldn’t bear going to his funeral. I don’t think the rest of the family was saddened by my absence. Fuck them anyways. The man was a bastard.

It was shortly after that my grandmother had passed. I remembered her having to have heart surgery when I was young. Another thing they would blame on me. They said the stress of my mother have passing and the following court case was the final nail in her premature heart failure. It was something about her ventricle or atrium fatiguing and not being able to pump blood. She had a high cholesterol diet and loved salt, but I apparently had been the cause of her heart problems.

When she had her first heart attack, she was rushed into surgery. She had been given a pacemaker and had to live on pills and a heart-healthy diet. Since she had her surgery was when she would stop reacting to me all together. While my grandfather picked up on the insults and backhanded remarks, she had begun her isolation from me.

Her heart could not take the death of my grandfather. Probably just wanted to join him and once again be with my mother at the pearly gates. She didn’t even show any signs or beginnings of decay. Almost six months to the date of my grandfather’s death she had passed. She just went to bed one night, and she didn’t wake up. She couldn’t keep on going. Her tank was running on empty and the engine had given out.

I didn’t go to her funeral either. I didn’t even read her obituary. She couldn’t give me the light of day during life, so why should I even give her a mono crumb of interest during death. Though, it was as a somber wave passed over me. A relaxing wash of freedom from the people who made it their life’s goal to torment me was gone, but at the same time the only people with genuine connection to the one person in my life I wanted, needed. They were gone.

Uncle Carl told me soon after to not worry about calling him or even visiting. He had taken personal offense to my absence from the funerals. It was as if I didn't even care enough to be there even for him. How could I though? I meant no offense towards him. I thought he would know, or god-forbid understand the absolute hell they put me through. He was there for the first 10 years of it. Why would I be there, the point of ridicule, and possibly the reason for death for one. The last thing he said to me:

“Listen, Cait. You have your problems. I get that. I can empathize with that. But, this fucking pity piss party is SO fucking pathetic that you can’t even get over yourself to be there when they’re buried!!?”

“Carl, you don’t understand–”

“DON’T FUCKING TELL ME I DON’T UNDERSTAND! They were mean to you. So what? You’re just going to blow me off like I’m just like them? You couldn’t even be there for me? My sister fucking died because of–” He stopped himself midway though, though not out of compassion, “You know what, I don’t even care. Hate them today, hate them tomorrow, hate them for the rest of eternity. I don’t care anymore.”

He gave me a check and an envelope.

“These are what they left for you.”

He walked away. I was left there standing with this check and envelope. The culmination of their life that I had been deserving of. With a sad heart I stood and waved as Uncle Carl had driven off. It was if the eyes of the world itself were looking upon me with piercing daggers of ridicule and shame. In all regards I had been thinking selfishly. He had been there for me at every emotional corner. I think he thought of me like he did my mother. I think all he had wanted was for me to be on good terms with my grandparents. So, things could be like they were before I was born. But, all it led to was that pitiful wave in the parking lot as he drove off. I now know this would be the last time I would see him.

—

All of this was about 2 years ago. It was the final words from my uncle that had brought upon a schlumpt that I found myself in. I had fallen so deep in sombering depression. Though, I think that would be doing people with actual depression a disservice. I think what I had was just a really deep sadness.

Afterall I was being a huge bitch by not showing up to them in their final moments of life or even their funerals. Ultimately, my mother keeping me alive was HER choice. But, if she were to know what would come of her by not terminating me? Would she still have chosen to keep me? And, my grandparents had every right to rid me of their home. To throw me at some orphanage to be left to the meat grinder. To grow up without any real family to speak of.

And now I truly don’t have any real family. Two taken by death, and one driven to be disenfranchised by my self-righteous hate and indifference towards the two people who had raised what could be in their minds the incarnation of the devil. I have since given them posthumous forgiveness. Hopefully for them, and for Uncle Carl. Nothing can atone for the wedge driven between us.

At first, I blamed him. He was there in what I would previously described as the worst time of my life. Any weight of blame for my downfalls in life that I subconsciously pitted on my grandparents immediately was pivoted towards his direction. I wasn’t an alcoholic because I had no emotional regulation; it was because he had chosen them over me. He viewed me the same way they did. I didn’t pick up a smoking habit because I wanted instant gratification for no work; it was because he always chose them over me. I didn’t buy the Mustang with the $1,200 check left for me because I’m selfish with no thought for others; it was because he couldn’t understand what I had earned in life.

I was falling into a very bad way. I picked up extra shifts at the warehouse. I quit my other jobs to basically work 80 hours a week in a godforsaken facility filled to the brim with people that an industry so easily turned into mean-spirited, callus, husk of what they could strive to be. And, I was the worst amongst them. I would drink before I clocked in, drink during, and drink until my flask would run dry. I would then take the Mustang to the nearest bar, and drink some more. The nights seemed to die young as I would go home and drink some more.If I wasn’t trying to find my solution at the bottom of a bottle, any other idle moment would be found as I lit the hair of a cigarette. Slowly drawing in that first puff and treasuring it as no other, while the nicotine washed over my psyche and gave me momentary relief, with a slight grasp of reality just long enough for the next drag to take its place. One draw after another as they turned into dart after dart. And, for a time this sufficed. I was an incubation chamber of sinful temptation. I told myself that these were not my vices, but my medicines. It was pain masquerading as bliss. It took me far enough away from the bigger picture to not be able to make out the finer details.

Looking back this should have came to a head with my roommate being unable to tolerate my drunken stupor and harassment, or after my first DUI. But, it didn’t. Neither did it become a problem after the liver pangs or the restless nights when I would be too broke to buy alcohol. Forced awake by the sweet release of that beautiful ichor. One night in a horrid state of soberness I had decided to open the letter which my grandparents had left for me. I don’t remember if it was out of hate, or simple boredom. I was forcibly staring up at the yellowish ceiling above me. Sleep teasing me with playful bouts of tiredness coupled with the inability of restful slumber. The letter sat where I had placed it about half a year before: on my nightstand just adjacent to my bed. I willfully gazed upon it, deciding this to be the opportune time to make my way towards it. With grace I picked it up, followed with a contrasting barbaric ripping of its seam. Unfolding its creases it read:

“Dear Cait,

By the time you read this, we’ll no longer be here to burden you with the weight of our grief, nor the bitterness we let fester for far too long. We have wrestled with whether to write this letter for years, afraid it might not make a difference—or worse, that it might reopen old wounds. But as the end drew nearer, we realized that leaving these words unsaid would be the greater sin.

Cait, we are so deeply sorry.

We are sorry for the things we said and for the warmth we withheld. We are sorry for the countless times we failed to show you love when you needed it most. You didn’t deserve the pain we inflicted, and no child should have to grow up feeling as though they are unloved.

Your mother was the light of our lives, our pride and joy. When we lost her, it felt like the ground beneath our feet had crumbled. And in our pain, we turned to blame, grasping for anything to make sense of the senseless. We let our grief consume us, and instead of cherishing the piece of her we still had—you—we let that same grief drive a wedge between us.

We see now how cruel that was, and we can never undo the harm we caused. But please believe this: We loved you, even if we were too blinded by our own sorrow to show it.

We understand why you didn’t visit your grandfather during his final days. If we had been in your place, we might have made the same choice. You didn’t owe us anything, Cait. If anything, we owed you a lifetime of apologies and love we were too broken to give.

But even in our brokenness, we want you to know that we saw you for who you are: resilient, strong, and unshakably kind in ways we never deserved. Your uncle Carl always said you were just like your mother, and he was right. You carry her light, her fierce spirit, and her love for life.

We left you something in the hopes it can be a small start—a way to do right by you, however belatedly. We know no amount of money or apology can erase the past, but maybe it can give you a chance at the life you deserve.

Cait, if you can find it in your heart to forgive us, we hope you will. If you can’t, we’ll understand that too. We just want you to live a life that makes you happy, a life free from the shadows of the past we cast over you.

Take care of yourself, Cait. Be the person we know your mother would have been proud of—because we are proud of you too, more than we ever found the courage to say.

With all our love,

Grandma and Grandpa”

In a mix of sober induced depravity and the longing to be seen as accepted in their eyes I let out what I could only describe as the quietest fit of tears. My face was washed by the salty brine that seemed to pour from infinity from my eyes. I opened my mouth in anticipation of wails, but let out a scream forged in absolute silence. Uncle Carl was right. They truly did want to see me in their final moments. And, I had spit on their olive branch they tried extending through him. I do not know if they couldn’t muster up the courage to initiate a conversation in the wake of how they have treated me, but it is evident that they wanted to atone.

It was in this revelation that I realized, almost as if God had stricken me with lightning himself that I needed a major change. And, little did I realize major change had come.

“Don’t cry. Please.” I heard a voice faintly whisper.

I quickly turned to scan my room.

“Who’s there?” I had hurriedly panicked.

“It’s just me.” The voice continued on, barely a whisp, “I’m here. Mother…”

I was instantly shot with agonizing pain in my torso. It was sharp and seemed to twist above my crotch. I could feel it. It was something. Something that was moving inside of me.

“Be not afraid, Mother. Oh, sinful one. I have arrived. You are now on the path for glorious purpose. Hail, for now the full grace of the Lord Almighty is now truly upon and within you.”

The pain had continued. It had turned from a sharp dagger reaching its way ripping any tissue to a hot brand twisting and churning my insides. As if the very essence of my existence was being slowly contorted to feel nothing but this pain that ran through me.

The voice continued, “Now is the time for rest.”

And, as if it were a command instead of a proclamation I fell to a deep sleep. I woke up to the precipice of a great castle of Brimstone. Surrounded on all sides by a great burning lake of sulfur. The castle seemed to stretch into an infinite red void above from where I stood. On the base hung a dark oak door. Bordered with indescribably chiseled stone depicting what I could only describe as the torment and suffering of human sadness. There were no events in particular casted into the stone, but an amalgamation of images which seared the essence of fear, regret, and hollowing repentance within my very soul. Above the door was etched the words, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”.

It was as if a voice that came from everywhere and simply nowhere at all had commanded that I entered the precipice of the door. To stand trial and prepare to burn for my sins. Compelled beyond comprehension as if I were a moth to a flame I began to walk to the door. And, as I approached the door seemingly opened. Before I could grasp what had truly happened I was woken to my bed. The pain was seemingly gone. I waited in anticipation for the voice I heard the night prior to once again speak to me. But, as seconds turned to minutes it did not return.

It was at this moment I truly had my eyes open to the legacy I had around me. A waste of empty alcohol containers and empty cigarette packages. It was with my grandparents' letter that I thought had finally given me the vision to see the monument of substances that lay before me. It was that night I had decided to make a change. I would not let my mother down. This is no way she would want me to live. And my conduit of purpose would be the reason for which I was alive. I would turn to God.

A month had passed since that night. I had started the beginning of cleaning up my act. The alcohol was the easiest for me. The first nights were absolute hell, but the following week became easier. It was through the word of God in which I found solace and sanctuary from its temptations. Corinthians 10:13-14 was my best friend that week. Any thirst for booze, and I would remember that through it’s temptation God would grant me a way out.

And, soon enough he did. Slowly but surely I recovered from the sweats, the shakes, and the restless nights in search for it. It was the nicotine that brought on the hardest challenge and my greatest revelation. Everytime I would try to turn to God for guidance in leading me away from the path of my cigarettes it would almost always find me down the path towards them. Night after night I would resist the urge for a smoke to find myself puffing on it once more.Until one unfaithful night, as I was outside my apartment, I went to light another one. But, as I did the wispy voice from before once returned.“Mother please. You’re hurting me” it said. I had thrown my cigarette in fear. My fight or flight responses all of a sudden heightened.

“Who the fuck said that!” I responded.

“Mother, be not afraid. It is me. Your child.”

“Seriously. Stop fucking with me.”

“Mother. I am real. Please. Just don’t take another cigarette. You’re killing me.”

“This is fucking ridiculous!” I proclaimed. Heightened with fear I instinctually pulled another cigarette. I began to light it.

“Mother, I am sorry but I must do this.” The voice said.

As I began to take a puff I felt a sharp pain from just under my stomach. It was if something was inside me and ripping at any muscle it could get a hold of.

The voice continued, “Mother I cannot allow you to kill me. It is your glorious purpose to deliver me.”

“Okay! Please! Just make the pain stop!” I yelled clenching my abdomen, “Just make it stop!”

“As you wish…”And like that the pain had subsided.

“Seriously, who the fuck are you?”

“As I have said mother… I am your child.”

“How could you be my… child? How are you speaking to me? Why are you hurting me?”

“Mother you are God’s chosen.” The voice whisped, “For his glorious purpose. You were put on this planet for great things as your mother before you.”

“My mother died. I killed her.” I was still on the ground as I rang that out. I could barely keep my breath as I was recovering from the pain, “What glorious purpose could I bring?”

“A sight for sore eyes to the blind must seem… incomprehensible, Mother. How would you be able to understand the nature and ways of our Lord if you can not even comprehend a fraction of a fraction of his infinite wisdom and the plan for which it is sired of?”

“What?”

“Mother, you are of great sadness and struggle. You are the crucible in the forge, which I am to be spawned from. Generations of the Lord’s will from which I can prosper. You have suffered as those before you and those before them. In such a way in which a conduit for immaculate conception, God’s greatest miracle can become…” The voice paused before continuing, “material.”

The realization then set upon me as I felt movement in my womb. The voice in which I heard was speaking truth. I was to become its mother. I should have felt terror. I should have felt horror. My body was seemingly violated on a scale greater than cosmic: spiritual. But, as I lay there on my balcony, listening to it tell me sweet comforts of the Lord’s will I revealed in my now God-given venture to atone for my original sin. My mother did not die in vain. My suffering was for a purpose greater than me. At that moment, my life started to feel like it made sense.

As the days turned to weeks, my baby would speak with me more and more. I would hardly respond with it unless I was in the comfort of solitude from other people. Even then, I would mostly just listen to it and how it would wax poetic about the state of everything. There seemed to be a cosmic justification for everything. Every misfortune that plagued the world seemed to be just as easily explained as it had happened. Truths of the universe at play slowly revealed upon my ears. At this time, I felt as strong as ever with the Lord.

I decided one day that if I were to harbor one of his blessings that I should at least have the decency to visit his house. I had made time on Sunday to find a church near to me. The Friday before I spent what I had to find the nicest clothes for his communion. It was in the dressing room of one of the clothing outlets I had bared witness to my own nude body. I noticed a slight protruding bump from my stomach. I had slowly begun to caresse it not with pride, but love for the life growing inside of me.

“Mother, I feel your warmth. I feel your love.”

It was pure bliss.

It was the morning of. I was dressed in my Sunday best. A modest yellow dress. It had puffy shoulders, and the skirt had hung just above my ankles. I was wearing a set of black flats with white tights. I felt excited to continue my venture into the Lord’s embrace. I confidently took my first steps forward towards the church. As I was upon the precipice of its doors, my child once again spoke to me.

“Mother, no!”

“What?” I responded in a slight whisper as to not be heard by others.

“These grounds are not sacred. They bear the taint of false acolytes. We mustn't enter lest we anger the wrath of the Lord.”

In a moment of defiance I had decided to continue in. As if a moth drawn by the flame I felt the need to join in the communion. As so I once again felt the same burning pain begin. But, as soon as it started, the pain subsided the second I crossed the threshold of the doors. It was as if I had been standing lighter within the church. I rubbed my belly, “See, this isn’t so bad.”

I got no response.

As a crowd gathered within the pews, a roaring chatter of conversation begun to fill the halls. It was an enormous eruption of conversation that had all condensed into one singular blurb of unintelligible squawk. At about 10 minutes past, a priest had begun to take stand at the lectern. He began speaking with great passion.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the congregation!” he bellowed, “We are so fortunate today to gather on this most sacred of days… And, such a lovely day at that!”

There was something so comforting in his words. They were almost rhythmic as they filled the halls. He spoke of fortuitous events, and the wisdom of our lord, and his wonderful miracles. It was almost too rhythmic. As he continued on I felt my ability to concentrate following the oscillations of his speech pattern. I was a small boat rocking gently to the waves of the oceans of his words. And, soon I found myself succumbing to the lullaby that it had woven me into to.

I fell into a state of unconsciousness. Slowly the pews of the church were retracting as the people were fading into the distance. The priest who had bellowed with such passion had been speaking quieter and quieter until he was no more than a breeze upon my ears. As I looked around the now empty church I noticed fire building outside the windows. As if forced back by the will of God. I looked down to see my now naked body with a stomach that couldn’t have been less than 9 months pregnant.

It was then I saw demonic beings outside the window. They were howling and cackling as if I were some spectacle to behold. They were gathering within the fires. It was then an unimaginable pain worse than any before took root in my lower back. It was if lucifer himself was shucking my spinal cord like a piece of corn. And it rippled along the nerves from my feet to the base of my skull. As it increased in intensity I felt my child start to move. It felt as if a mass was sliming its way down. As it reached my lips, I could feel them being parted and stretched. I could hear and feel them rip as if someone had been opening a vice in my vagina. The mass continued slithering out of me. A primal urge within me had the need to just push. Not isolate any muscle ground in particular, but just push. As I did, I felt the mass move on its own with now regard for me. It ripped out of me and was laying upon the ground in front of me. It was covered in my tissue and viscera that it left in it’s wake. I decided to look down and gaze upon my baby.

What I saw could not have possibly come from me. It was more a ball of flesh than human. It had horrible rubbery skin that sagged in every which place. Appendages that made a mockery of the human form in both shape and number had been haphazardly placed in angle which invoked a sense of utter dread. Hair from any place hair shouldn’t spew from. It was a hermaphrodite as its penises extended from within and beyond a set of vaginal lips. It looked upon me with it’s multiple eyes, and spoke to me with both of it’s mouths:

“Mother, be not afraid.”

It was words of comfort not for what I bore witness to but for what happened next. The roar of the demons from outside became overwhelming as they broke down the windows of the church. Allowing the fire to permeate within. They quickly surrounded the accursed child.

“THE DARK PARIAH! THE DARK PARIAH!” They shouted in unison.

And, it was as if the instance they looked back at me I was brought to the sermon. By the time I came to, it took everything for me to not scream of the horrors I had just witnessed. The sermon was coming to the very end.

“And, with that, I will let you guys enjoy this beautiful Sunday.” The Priest rang out.

The crowd got up and began to clear from the church. No one the wiser to what I had just witnessed. I hesitantly got up to follow the crowd to exit. As I left the doors, I was greeted to the voice once again.

“They fill your head with false prophecies. They conspire against you Mother!”

That was all it had said. Part of me wanted to believe the unborn child. But, I could not let it be born. I cannot and will not willfully allow that into this world.

That night I sat in heavy thought. I stared at what lay before me. I know not the true intentions of the birth of this thing within me. I somehow still found it within myself to have a capacity for love for it. I knew not if it were telling the truth about my vision in the church, or what would happen if it were lying to me. I guess I just wanted the fantasy to never end. But, deep in my heart I knew that all it was a fantasy. Before me stood my ultimatum. There was a coat hanger I bent into a long rod with a hooked end. I was prepared to do anything necessary to keep my vision in the church from becoming reality. As I begun inserting the hanger in me the voice rang out:

“You stupid fucking whore! Your efforts are in vain!”

“I must do this!” I shouted, “I cannot let you live…”

“Go ahead, Mother. Do it. Know this: You are tainted. You were born tainted. You are nothing but swine. The Lord does not love you! You will forever be a conduit of sin as long as you roam the Earth tainted and unclean. You are the impure one. You may end me but this nightmare will never stop. The legions will rise…”

“Wh… What!!?”

“You were created of unholy matrimony, born of and to sin. Under the guise of righteous purpose in the womb of a pious woman who’d already broken her seal with the Lord. We are many and as long as you exist you will serve our legions.”

The voice spoke true. Whether I liked it or not, whether it was all my fault none of it was my fault I had been the victim and perpetrator of circumstance. I reasoned with it that I would allow to harbor it and bring up its legions as long as they spare me from whatever plans they may have.That was 6 months ago. I’m probably due in a month. I lied to it. Uncle Carl, if you’re reading this, I am sorry. I figured working my way towards getting baptised would clue it into my plan. I must cleanse myself while killing it. I have no idea what it meant by, “as long as I exist”. I can’t risk it using me alive or dead, and I can’t risk it birthing from my corpse. Fortunately there are two types of baptisms. I will cleanse myself. It is currently talking to me telling me not to do this. I have already taped my legs together, cuffed myself to the radiator, and doused the room and myself in gasoline.

Whether I’m heavenbound or hellbound, I’m sure my mother will be waiting with open arms.

I was once the deputy on scene for a shooting a while back on the bleakest of nights involving a break in, a housewife, and a .38 special.

The coroner's report showed the assailant had been hit under his left armpit, and the bullet ricocheted off of his shoulder bone collapsing his lung and hitting his heart on the right side of his body. Situs inversus is the medical term for one's organs being flipped. Normally, your heart is on the left with the liver and appendix on the right. Autopsy showed his were completely flipped.

The woman in question was a lonely widow of an older farmer. Though, the farm has been left barren as her husband vanished leaving her without support or children. She gave her report of the intruder. Within the late hours of the night she had spotted a rambling shadowy figure working his way incoherent, belligerent, and extremely loudly up her gravel driveway. She took great care to lock the doors, and found her way to the old .38 that once belonged to her husband.

The lady was pissed soaked when we finally arrived. It was not until hours after the parting of the deceased did she finally gather the courage to make way to her neighbor's house and call the sheriff's department.

It was when the man tried to force entry within her home that she saw tried calling the police, only to find that her landline had rang an empty tone. Further investigation of the property found that it had been cut at the street. We know not what the motives of the man were, as the lady had emptied all six rounds into the man as he broke through the door, but none of the detectives working the case thought his intentions to be less than vile.

Further investigations of the farm led to the findings of multiple piles of gore scattered in the bare fields. Small animals later revealed to be vermin and birds laid in sopping puddles of viscera. They had been perfectly inverted.

The Sheriff I found myself assigned with, Holloran, had stepped me aside once she arrived at the scene. Usually Holloran had been the most easy going light hearted person within the entire department. Her demeanor, and body armor, alluded to any signs of her time serving in the Marines. It was a laborious endeavor to get on her bad side, and an even harder task to get her in a serious mood.

“Listen, kid,” she told me, “I'm not too sure this is anything other than a break in. But, I want you to check back in with the lady in a couple days.”

“Mam?” I asked.

“Below board. Personal time if you can fit it.”

Holloran also was known to skirt the lines of compassion and duty. She mostly saw the person, and the letter of the law came second. It is not as if revisiting the lady would have been anything more than the tiniest of wrists slaps by IA, but Holloran sounded grim in her resolve that I was to not let anyone know about my reappearance. A tone shunted through her voice that let on suspensions she thought best to keep low down.

It was days later Holloran's cruiser was found empty in the middle of an old county road. A couple of miles over from the old farm house where the break in had happened.

I personally was not assigned to join the search or the investigation, but some buddies had let me in on the baffling details of her disappearance.

Three nights after the break in, Holloran was sent to carry out a search in the County. Another babbling farmer had called in raving about hearing his livestock seemingly going quiet after being startled. I am not one for animal husbandry, but I don't imagine hearing the hooting and hollering of what must have been absolutely frightened cows and dogs suddenly bleed into echoes of sterile silence was enough to cause alarm. The farmer went to investigate, and could find no trace of any animals on his property.

Holloran had taken the call personally, and told dispatch she would go alone and call for backup if need be. About an hour after reporting back to the station she had taken the man's report, she radio'd that she was going to patrol around for any suspicious activity. That was the last anyone had heard from her.

Two other deputies were dispatched an hour after that around three in the morning when she failed to report back a second time. It did not take long for them to find her cruiser, it was only a half mile from the farm house, with her missing.

When they questioned the man, I was told he was all but mad. Babbling on about how everything is wrong. Up was down, left was right. Repeating every now and then, “What did you DO!!?”. He couldn't be questioned thoroughly and was sent to be admitted by the state.

Holloran's car went missing from the impound lot. Seemingly too. I had not seen it first hand, but from what I was told it had been completely wrong. Not damaged, just wrong. Rumors spread that the steering wheel was on the right side of the car. And, every single letter from the “Ford” badge to the speedometer numbers were completely flipped backwards.

I wish I never went to that social call, but am grateful that I did. After two knocks with no answer I had almost left. I initially figured the lady simply was not home. After all, I didn't see a car parked anywhere. Not at first anyways.

Relieved I did the bare minimum to satisfy the honor I had with myself over the bare minimum I tried not to walk with too chipper of a step.

It wasn't until the walk back I noticed something odd about my cruiser. The Ford badge. It wasn't right. It read “droF”. My heart sank. Across the driver side window now on the right of the vehicle was smeared in what I could only imagine to be runny blood: Trap!!! Body in cellar! Leave! -M.H.

M.H.

It couldn't. No.

I thought to myself surely that was anything other than what it was presenting. The world around me went quiet.

In great panic, and stupidly, I decided I would investigate the alleged body in the basement. Conflict filled me as all I wanted to do was leave. But, I shouldn't. Couldn't.

They stripped me of the further details of my memories. The Othersiders. I can't really describe what they look like, or their motives. I was lucky I left fully whole.

I may not recall what I found standing over the body that lay at the bottom of the cellar, but I remember the hate it showed in what could've been a ghastly resemblance of a predator's cunning in cornering prey.

It wished not to be bored witness to, and I was standing at its altar. The nausea of its grasp upon me still leaves me heaving to this very day. The world was in vertigo.

What I can never forget is escaping to my cruiser, now perfectly legible with everything in place. Only the world around it had been on the wrong side.

They were my dearest friends. I lost both of them that day.

Michael and I agreed we would blow up the mine the next morning. Among my grandfather's collection was a brick of C4, a blasting cap, and detonator kit. Hell, it was a big enough brick to completely subside that mine, and bury that forsaken contraption that sat so lonesomely at the bottom of it.

It wasn't until the wee hours of the morning that I had the most horrible of realizations: Michael had convinced me to hide Brie's body within the cave itself. We weren't criminal masterminds, and as such had no real experience in proper disposal of bodies. But, I knew all too late why he wanted us to truck her to that cave.

He wanted to bring her back.

Ever since we were young kids we'd been thick as thieves. There was practically always an adventure to be had in the deep thicket of hickory trees and kudzu overgrowth of The Ozarks. Often we would find ourselves venturing through deep crevices cut through in jagged earth or on a shotgun raft along shallow streams and ponds. Amongst the copperheads, and cottonmouths, and spiders, and bats, and deer. We searched for danger, but it alluded to our righteous pursuit.

Mikey began growing feelings for Brie as we got older. The quaint and accepted awkwardness of friendship quickly turned into longing gazes and rose flushed cheeks in being caught in such compromising gaze. I think they tried hiding it from me at first.

I quickly opened the door to my grandfather's old shack as my worst fears became realized. Upon his rickety dusted shelf still laid the C4 and old .38 special. Five rounds of his custom loaded silver tipped bullets laid next to it. The sixth fired long ago. Missing was the jar of Windigo's Wine. That awful ichor of temptation. We should have, I should have, destroyed it long ago. It served no purpose any longer than as a beacon of awful ruinous urge.

We found the device long ago, in an old mine out back the wilderness of the Ozarks. Old mine dating back to the Confederacy. We'd heard about it when my grandfather first showed me the jar of Windigo's Wine. He told stories of its archaic and arcane properties. Stories of an old rickety chair that sat the bottom of an old cave. Sat engraved in the very rock walls of the cave. As if it and the earth were one in congregation.

He told of runes long lost to the tongue of man which surround the chair, and the rusty needles that lay suspended by springlocked arms, and of the old leather electric death cap seemingly powered by some source unknown atop the chair. He told a story too wild to be true, but too interesting to leave unexplored.

The engine of my old Galaxie roared as I tore up the old country highway. C4 and loaded .38 in seat.

We were lucky the first time that I had the gun. I was so little and helpless I was surprised the bullet found its mark. There is no telling what we would have unleashed on our little town if I'd missed.

We eventually did find the mine, and it took many weeks of filling our guts with enough steel to eventually venture down it to the bottom.

We figured it was the right one because of all the markings that laid amongst the walls. Strange and queer symbols that our adolescent minds couldn't even begin to comprehend the implications of.

Each time we traveled further and further down, the salty musk of ruin and decay that would deter most from venturing further would pull us more and more into its allure. A cruel temptress that beckoned any willing for witness to hold ceremony to that awful machine which laid at the bottom.

When we finally did reach the bottom, our bewilderment quickly turned to grim fascination as we found the chair real. And, within it, the lonely corpse of a long rotting man.

I made my way from the road to the mine. It was old federal land. There must have been three layers of further and further decaying chain link fences. Slowly decaying and being claimed by the earth. There was no trail to the mine, and I would have to be weary of my footing for the jagged drop-offs. If only Brie were as careful.

The night air sat too still and cool. The sky was devoid of the moon or any stars, and no wind or creatures besides myself dared disturbed the calm. It felt as if the world itself was waiting in anticipation for something awful.

We tried for many more weeks to get the chair to do something. Anything even. There was an old electrical lever also entrenched into the wall. We would flip it over and over and over to no avail. We would lug old car batteries and jumpers down the mine to try to hook up in any configuration.

It wasn't until Mikey had the thought to put some water into the jars that it did anything. I guess he was bored, and wanted to try anything. There sat two jars either side of the chairs, a port for filling them, and mechanical bellows that fed lines directly into the needles of the chair.

Once we had filled it with adequate liquid, and flipped the switch, the springlocks jammed the needles into the corpse as the hum of electricity began building and building. Until, the cap dropped onto the corpse and God knows how many volts jolted it, but nothing happened.

As I made my way to the entrance of the mine I hoped to any God that might listen that Brie's body was still there. She doesn't deserve that fate. To my ultimate dismay as I shone the light to where Mikey and I left her, she was gone. He must've spent hours trucking her lifeless body to the bottom. I thought I still had time.

Before the descent, I placed the C4 just past the opening shaft along a support beam and armed it.

I quickly hopped and hurdled each rock and dived, even in half darkness, as I knew the mine shafts better than my own home. It was more than a race for safety. It was a race for the sanctity of Brie's soul.

Quickly making my way to the bottom I found the crimson red glow of the runes around the chair, jars full of the Wine, and the pale corpse of my friend sitting lifelessly in the chair. Over at the switch was Mikey, his deep longing sorrow pierced my soul from behind his glasses.

"Danny! Please!" He shouted, "I have to try!"

I was speechless. Maybe if I had said anything to him, I could have convinced him to let her rest.

Instead I began to aim the gun at him. Willing to let both of them rot at the bottom of this run.

Before I could come to grips, Mikey had flipped the switch. That same electrical whirl coming to life as the springlocks jammed needles into Brie.

The bellows began pumping the Wine, and the runes now glowed bright red.

And, the death cap dropped on Brie's head as the voltage jolted her back to life.

She opened her eyes to look down at the machine.

"No! NO!" She began to scream trying to wiggle her way out of the restraints, "Please, No! Turn it off! Let me die! Please, anything but this!"

But it was too late. It had already begun. Tears welled up in her eyes as she began dry heaving. She had tried with all her might to hold it back, but eventually a black sickly fluid evacuated her mouth. She looked to Mikey begging for death, and then to me. She was eyeing the gun.

I hadn't the heart to shoot her though. I just stood in awe as history once again began to repeat.

Her cry quickly became inhuman as blackened blood began pouring from her eyes, under her fingernails, and splotches of it began pooling into stains from under her shirt and pants.

I watched as her mouth began cracking outwards in a muzzle, and her limbs grew ever further tearing the skin and muscle of her arms and legs. Chunks of flesh and viscera plopped off her leaving behind warped, elongated, and greyed bones.

It wasn't until the restraints started coming undone that I realized completely the urgency to do something. I couldn't shoot my friend, but I wasn't going to let that thing that was one Brie out of this mine.

Quickly I dumped all but one bullet into my my pockets, and threw the unmoving Mikey the gun. It was up to him now what the fate of this cave would be. He didn't even flinch as it smacked his shoulder.

And, quickly I made my way up the cave. The sounds of that thing grew more and more demented, and eventually I heard the restraints go, but the entrance was near.

I knew I had ample time as I cleared into the opening, ducked into a divot. I cleared my head of any shrapnel, grabbed the detonator, and blew the entrance.

The entire side of the hill subsided in a slide. It completely closed off the entrance, and I suspect there is no more entrance to even dig one's self out of.

I now wait in loathsome worry decades later. I don't know if Mikey ever had the nerve to undo his mistake, but I left him the chance. Nobody but me quite knows what happened to them, and I visit the old entrance every day, with a .38 in hand. Just in case.

I never really liked telling anyone about myself, but I guess it doesn’t matter anyways. At Least not after today. It seemed like tragedies, or at least what they felt like, had always been happening not to me, but to the people around me. It began funny enough the day I was born. From what my grandparents had told me, my father was a bum. He was a priest. A supposed man of the lord. One who saw it within the lord’s best interest to impregnate a 17 year old girl then skip town.

My grandparents had constantly told my mother to get an abortion, but from what I was told my mother had been devoutly religious and felt that God had given her the miracle of life for purpose. Her purpose unfortunately was to die on an operation table during a caesarian section. She had been having contractions for about a week before I was born. The hospital had kept her on close watch waiting for her to give birth. But, as her cervix never opened, the doctors began to worry. Upon check up they noticed I had been in breech position with the umbilical cord around my neck. They had immediately rushed into the operation room.

She died shortly after my birth. The official report had stated that she died due to shock from blood loss and hemorrhaging. After a lengthy lawsuit from my grandparents her official cause of death was determined to be from staff mismanagement and medical malpractice. But, my grandparents never talked about it much. Except to tell me how much money they got from the case and how I had killed their little girl.

To my grandparents I had been a malediction. A curse brought forth upon them by the misguided faith of a faith-bound woman. They tried tracking down my father, but had no real leads on who he actually was. All they truly knew about the man was that he had been a priest from a town over. They talked to five churches, but none of them knew anything about the man. In truth all they knew was what my mother had told them: he was a priest from a town over. They had only seen him once before he ran.

In the wake of my mother’s death, they did not look upon me with kindness or warmth. Only cold malice which could spawn from the death of someone they held dear. And, they constantly would make that known to me. The only thing that led to them raising me was the constant pleas from my uncle that my mother wouldn’t want them to abandon me. That with the money from the case they won: they owed it to me to be with my real family.

I think my uncle was the only true family I had. He was about 15 when I was born. He would always talk about how my mom was overjoyed to be bringing life into this world. About how much she loved me before I was even born. With all of my grandparents' torment and insults, he would always be around the corner to try to cheer me up. He told me that he never blamed me for my mother’s death.

Personally, it is a guilt that haunts me. No matter how much he ever tells me that it is not my fault I think ultimately he was wrong. I was a bastard born out of wedlock in conspiracy to matricide. My existence marks the death of what I was told was a woman who’d been the light of the world.

My grandparents have since died. Almost 2 years back anyhow. That was the start of this problem. My grandfather had years prior become a husk of his former self. His mental faculties were decreasing at an ever increasing rate. In any of the few seldom times I came to visit he would almost always be meaner than the last. The doctors came to the synopsis that he was showing the signs of early onset dementia. That combined with his PTSD and the constant sorrow of losing his daughter had become the catalyst of him failing to keep a grasp of his mind.

They had him on an entire cocktail of medications. I can’t remember the names, but they had been a culmination of immunosuppressors, anti-psychotics, and some sort of inhibitors. My uncle had told me that they were working surprisingly well. That he had been living better than he has in years.

My uncle had decided to call me up one day.

“Cait”

“What’s up, Uncle Carl?”

“How’re you doing kiddo? Things going well?”

“Yeah, they’re pretty good. I got a new job to work on the weekends… I figure if I’m working in the warehouse during the week, and I just got this job as a cook on the weekends, I should be pulling about 55 hours a week. I think in about three months I should have enough to get a Mustang.”

“You’re still thinking about getting one?” he asked reluctantly.

“Yeah, well, um, Foxbody’s in this area are getting pretty reasonable. Even then, there is this guy at the warehouse who has this old ‘78 that he’s willing to sell–”

“I don’t know. Don’t you still live with a roommate. What about saving up for your own place? Or school. Don’t you want to do something with your life?”

He had given me the same speech a million times before. And, everytime it always ended the same. We would get too heated to even talk with each other. Usually about a week later one of us would call the other. Tell them we didn’t mean what we had said, and would make up.

“Listen, I’m not calling to tell you how to live your life.” He continued, “I just want you to know da… erm, Grandpa is doing really well.”

“Oh… Is that so?” I snarkily replied, “Well, then,my day just got sooo much better.”

“Listen, Cait, I know you haven’t gotten along with him. I think, though, that you should go visit him.”

“Is that what you think? Huh.”

“Yes, listen, I get that you don’t like talking with him. But, I also think that this time might be different.”

“Different how? Actually I know. This time instead of saying how they would gladly give me ten times over, that they would instead only kill me nine times if it meant bringing their daughter back!”

“Cait. They never truly treated you right. But, I think your grandfather is starting to come to see how wrong they were. I can’t explain it. It might be the meds or maybe the crusty bastard is thinking about how much of a dick he’s been, but anyways, he wants to talk to you.”

“I’ll think about it. Maybe I’ll have a free day this weekend. Listen, I have to go.”

I hung up the phone. I knew Uncle Carl meant well, but I never enjoyed going to visit with them. They never told me that I wasn’t welcome within their home. They never did roll out the welcome mat when I came around to their neck of the woods. Not once was I ever invited to dinner, or even made a plate for. They never cared about what I was doing or what I had planned. The routine was always the same. I would enter, they would say their greetings, leave me alone in the mud room, and go back to whatever it was they were doing. Whenever I would try and join them, they would barely even acknowledge that I even existed.

Usually I could keep surface level conversation. Asking about the weather, talking politics, talking about the brand new never-seen-before innovation in whatever field. My surface level questions always gave me surface level responses. “Yeah, cold snap is coming through”, “Hmm, I don’t know if I’d vote for him”, “Yeah, times really are changing”. It would continue like this until eventually they would move on to another task or dinner. Around dinner they would make enough for them, sit down in the living room, and watch TV. They would never offer me a plate. They wouldn’t even look at me while they ate. When I would announce that I was leaving, they wouldn’t even look up or give a simple parting. Just continuing their gaze upon the television. To them I was no more a concern than a speck of dust floating in the wayward breeze. I never did end up visiting my grandfather.

He died months after that call with my uncle. Uncle Carl told me that his medication was complicating an undiagnosed Hodgkin’s Disease. The cancer went unnoticed and undiagnosed for too long, that by the time the doctors realized what it was that it had spread to other areas of his body. His medication was actively working against his immune system. It allowed for the cancer to spread.

I was definitely glad I didn’t go to visit him on hospice. I was told that he was either too on sleep from the morphine, a vile man spewing putrid vitriol at even my uncle, or reliving his time on a firebase in Vietnam. Nothing that me being there would actively mitigate. He was only on hospice for a month before he passed. It was peaceful. He was sleeping when it happened. Uncle Carl told me he had been smiling when it happened. I’d like to imagine he was embracing the sweet release. Finally once again being able to be reunited with his baby girl.

I didn’t go to his funeral. But, did end up reading his obituary. It read:

“Earnest A. Caldwell, 74, of Marshal, IL passed away on Monday, April. 19, 2023 at his home following and extended illness. He was born March 8, 1948 at Gustine, CA, the son of Harlan Caldwell Sr. and Bessie G. Rhoades who preceded him in death. In addition to his parents he was preceded in death by siblings, Harlan Caldwell Jr. and Eleanor Caldwell. He is survived by his wife, Martha who he married March 2, 1968 at the First Christian Church of Marshal. Earnest was proud of his military career and retired after 20 years of service from the U.S. Air Force with the rank of a Master SGT. He was a member of the Marshal Christian Church, hus VFW Post and Lodge #133 AF & AM. He graduated from High School and received his Associates Degree while serving in the Air Force. Following his retirement he spent a great deal of time gardening, tinkering around in his shed and spending time with wife. Services in honor of his life will be 10:00 AM Monday at the Christian Church. Burial will follow at the Auburn Cemetery with military graveside rites. Visitation will be 3:00 to 6:00 PM Sunday at Pearce funeral home with Masonic services at 6:00 PM. Memorial contributions may be made to the Three Points Christian Church.”

I couldn’t bear going to his funeral. I don’t think the rest of the family was saddened by my absence. Fuck them anyways. The man was a bastard.

It was shortly after that my grandmother had passed. I remembered her having to have heart surgery when I was young. Another thing they would blame on me. They said the stress of my mother have passing and the following court case was the final nail in her premature heart failure. It was something about her ventricle or atrium fatiguing and not being able to pump blood. She had a high cholesterol diet and loved salt, but I apparently had been the cause of her heart problems.

When she had her first heart attack, she was rushed into surgery. She had been given a pacemaker and had to live on pills and a heart-healthy diet. Since she had her surgery was when she would stop reacting to me all together. While my grandfather picked up on the insults and backhanded remarks, she had begun her isolation from me.

Her heart could not take the death of my grandfather. Probably just wanted to join him and once again be with my mother at the pearly gates. She didn’t even show any signs or beginnings of decay. Almost six months to the date of my grandfather’s death she had passed. She just went to bed one night, and she didn’t wake up. She couldn’t keep on going. Her tank was running on empty and the engine had given out.

I didn’t go to her funeral either. I didn’t even read her obituary. She couldn’t give me the light of day during life, so why should I even give her a mono crumb of interest during death. Though, it was as a somber wave passed over me. A relaxing wash of freedom from the people who made it their life’s goal to torment me was gone, but at the same time the only people with genuine connection to the one person in my life I wanted, needed. They were gone.

Uncle Carl told me soon after to not worry about calling him or even visiting. He had taken personal offense to my absence from the funerals. It was as if I didn't even care enough to be there even for him. How could I though? I meant no offense towards him. I thought he would know, or god-forbid understand the absolute hell they put me through. He was there for the first 10 years of it. Why would I be there, the point of ridicule, and possibly the reason for death for one. The last thing he said to me:

“Listen, Cait. You have your problems. I get that. I can empathize with that. But, this fucking pity piss party is SO fucking pathetic that you can’t even get over yourself to be there when they’re buried!!?”

“Carl, you don’t understand–”

“DON’T FUCKING TELL ME I DON’T UNDERSTAND! They were mean to you. So what? You’re just going to blow me off like I’m just like them? You couldn’t even be there for me? My sister fucking died because of–” He stopped himself midway though, though not out of compassion, “You know what, I don’t even care. Hate them today, hate them tomorrow, hate them for the rest of eternity. I don’t care anymore.”

He gave me a check and an envelope.

“These are what they left for you.”

He walked away. I was left there standing with this check and envelope. The culmination of their life that I had been deserving of. With a sad heart I stood and waved as Uncle Carl had driven off. It was if the eyes of the world itself were looking upon me with piercing daggers of ridicule and shame. In all regards I had been thinking selfishly. He had been there for me at every emotional corner. I think he thought of me like he did my mother. I think all he had wanted was for me to be on good terms with my grandparents. So, things could be like they were before I was born. But, all it led to was that pitiful wave in the parking lot as he drove off. I now know this would be the last time I would see him.

—

All of this was about 2 years ago. It was the final words from my uncle that had brought upon a schlumpt that I found myself in. I had fallen so deep in sombering depression. Though, I think that would be doing people with actual depression a disservice. I think what I had was just a really deep sadness.

Afterall I was being a huge bitch by not showing up to them in their final moments of life or even their funerals. Ultimately, my mother keeping me alive was HER choice. But, if she were to know what would come of her by not terminating me? Would she still have chosen to keep me? And, my grandparents had every right to rid me of their home. To throw me at some orphanage to be left to the meat grinder. To grow up without any real family to speak of.

And now I truly don’t have any real family. Two taken by death, and one driven to be disenfranchised by my self-righteous hate and indifference towards the two people who had raised what could be in their minds the incarnation of the devil. I have since given them posthumous forgiveness. Hopefully for them, and for Uncle Carl. Nothing can atone for the wedge driven between us.

At first, I blamed him. He was there in what I would previously described as the worst time of my life. Any weight of blame for my downfalls in life that I subconsciously pitted on my grandparents immediately was pivoted towards his direction. I wasn’t an alcoholic because I had no emotional regulation; it was because he had chosen them over me. He viewed me the same way they did. I didn’t pick up a smoking habit because I wanted instant gratification for no work; it was because he always chose them over me. I didn’t buy the Mustang with the $1,200 check left for me because I’m selfish with no thought for others; it was because he couldn’t understand what I had earned in life.

I was falling into a very bad way. I picked up extra shifts at the warehouse. I quit my other jobs to basically work 80 hours a week in a godforsaken facility filled to the brim with people that an industry so easily turned into mean-spirited, callus, husk of what they could strive to be. And, I was the worst amongst them. I would drink before I clocked in, drink during, and drink until my flask would run dry. I would then take the Mustang to the nearest bar, and drink some more. The nights seemed to die young as I would go home and drink some more.If I wasn’t trying to find my solution at the bottom of a bottle, any other idle moment would be found as I lit the hair of a cigarette. Slowly drawing in that first puff and treasuring it as no other, while the nicotine washed over my psyche and gave me momentary relief, with a slight grasp of reality just long enough for the next drag to take its place. One draw after another as they turned into dart after dart. And, for a time this sufficed. I was an incubation chamber of sinful temptation. I told myself that these were not my vices, but my medicines. It was pain masquerading as bliss. It took me far enough away from the bigger picture to not be able to make out the finer details.

Looking back this should have came to a head with my roommate being unable to tolerate my drunken stupor and harassment, or after my first DUI. But, it didn’t. Neither did it become a problem after the liver pangs or the restless nights when I would be too broke to buy alcohol. Forced awake by the sweet release of that beautiful ichor. One night in a horrid state of soberness I had decided to open the letter which my grandparents had left for me. I don’t remember if it was out of hate, or simple boredom. I was forcibly staring up at the yellowish ceiling above me. Sleep teasing me with playful bouts of tiredness coupled with the inability of restful slumber. The letter sat where I had placed it about half a year before: on my nightstand just adjacent to my bed. I willfully gazed upon it, deciding this to be the opportune time to make my way towards it. With grace I picked it up, followed with a contrasting barbaric ripping of its seam. Unfolding its creases it read:

“Dear Cait,

By the time you read this, we’ll no longer be here to burden you with the weight of our grief, nor the bitterness we let fester for far too long. We have wrestled with whether to write this letter for years, afraid it might not make a difference—or worse, that it might reopen old wounds. But as the end drew nearer, we realized that leaving these words unsaid would be the greater sin.

Cait, we are so deeply sorry.

We are sorry for the things we said and for the warmth we withheld. We are sorry for the countless times we failed to show you love when you needed it most. You didn’t deserve the pain we inflicted, and no child should have to grow up feeling as though they are unloved.

Your mother was the light of our lives, our pride and joy. When we lost her, it felt like the ground beneath our feet had crumbled. And in our pain, we turned to blame, grasping for anything to make sense of the senseless. We let our grief consume us, and instead of cherishing the piece of her we still had—you—we let that same grief drive a wedge between us.

We see now how cruel that was, and we can never undo the harm we caused. But please believe this: We loved you, even if we were too blinded by our own sorrow to show it.

We understand why you didn’t visit your grandfather during his final days. If we had been in your place, we might have made the same choice. You didn’t owe us anything, Cait. If anything, we owed you a lifetime of apologies and love we were too broken to give.

But even in our brokenness, we want you to know that we saw you for who you are: resilient, strong, and unshakably kind in ways we never deserved. Your uncle Carl always said you were just like your mother, and he was right. You carry her light, her fierce spirit, and her love for life.

We left you something in the hopes it can be a small start—a way to do right by you, however belatedly. We know no amount of money or apology can erase the past, but maybe it can give you a chance at the life you deserve.

Cait, if you can find it in your heart to forgive us, we hope you will. If you can’t, we’ll understand that too. We just want you to live a life that makes you happy, a life free from the shadows of the past we cast over you.

Take care of yourself, Cait. Be the person we know your mother would have been proud of—because we are proud of you too, more than we ever found the courage to say.

With all our love,

Grandma and Grandpa”

In a mix of sober induced depravity and the longing to be seen as accepted in their eyes I let out what I could only describe as the quietest fit of tears. My face was washed by the salty brine that seemed to pour from infinity from my eyes. I opened my mouth in anticipation of wails, but let out a scream forged in absolute silence. Uncle Carl was right. They truly did want to see me in their final moments. And, I had spit on their olive branch they tried extending through him. I do not know if they couldn’t muster up the courage to initiate a conversation in the wake of how they have treated me, but it is evident that they wanted to atone.

It was in this revelation that I realized, almost as if God had stricken me with lightning himself that I needed a major change. And, little did I realize major change had come.

“Don’t cry. Please.” I heard a voice faintly whisper.

I quickly turned to scan my room.

“Who’s there?” I had hurriedly panicked.

“It’s just me.” The voice continued on, barely a whisp, “I’m here. Mother…”

I was instantly shot with agonizing pain in my torso. It was sharp and seemed to twist above my crotch. I could feel it. It was something. Something that was moving inside of me.

“Be not afraid, Mother. Oh, sinful one. I have arrived. You are now on the path for glorious purpose. Hail, for now the full grace of the Lord Almighty is now truly upon and within you.”

The pain had continued. It had turned from a sharp dagger reaching its way ripping any tissue to a hot brand twisting and churning my insides. As if the very essence of my existence was being slowly contorted to feel nothing but this pain that ran through me.

The voice continued, “Now is the time for rest.”

And, as if it were a command instead of a proclamation I fell to a deep sleep. I woke up to the precipice of a great castle of Brimstone. Surrounded on all sides by a great burning lake of sulfur. The castle seemed to stretch into an infinite red void above from where I stood. On the base hung a dark oak door. Bordered with indescribably chiseled stone depicting what I could only describe as the torment and suffering of human sadness. There were no events in particular casted into the stone, but an amalgamation of images which seared the essence of fear, regret, and hollowing repentance within my very soul. Above the door was etched the words, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”.

It was as if a voice that came from everywhere and simply nowhere at all had commanded that I entered the precipice of the door. To stand trial and prepare to burn for my sins. Compelled beyond comprehension as if I were a moth to a flame I began to walk to the door. And, as I approached the door seemingly opened. Before I could grasp what had truly happened I was woken to my bed. The pain was seemingly gone. I waited in anticipation for the voice I heard the night prior to once again speak to me. But, as seconds turned to minutes it did not return.

It was at this moment I truly had my eyes open to the legacy I had around me. A waste of empty alcohol containers and empty cigarette packages. It was with my grandparents' letter that I thought had finally given me the vision to see the monument of substances that lay before me. It was that night I had decided to make a change. I would not let my mother down. This is no way she would want me to live. And my conduit of purpose would be the reason for which I was alive. I would turn to God.

A month had passed since that night. I had started the beginning of cleaning up my act. The alcohol was the easiest for me. The first nights were absolute hell, but the following week became easier. It was through the word of God in which I found solace and sanctuary from its temptations. Corinthians 10:13-14 was my best friend that week. Any thirst for booze, and I would remember that through it’s temptation God would grant me a way out.

And, soon enough he did. Slowly but surely I recovered from the sweats, the shakes, and the restless nights in search for it. It was the nicotine that brought on the hardest challenge and my greatest revelation. Everytime I would try to turn to God for guidance in leading me away from the path of my cigarettes it would almost always find me down the path towards them. Night after night I would resist the urge for a smoke to find myself puffing on it once more.Until one unfaithful night, as I was outside my apartment, I went to light another one. But, as I did the wispy voice from before once returned.“Mother please. You’re hurting me” it said. I had thrown my cigarette in fear. My fight or flight responses all of a sudden heightened.

“Who the fuck said that!” I responded.

“Mother, be not afraid. It is me. Your child.”

“Seriously. Stop fucking with me.”

“Mother. I am real. Please. Just don’t take another cigarette. You’re killing me.”

“This is fucking ridiculous!” I proclaimed. Heightened with fear I instinctually pulled another cigarette. I began to light it.

“Mother, I am sorry but I must do this.” The voice said.

As I began to take a puff I felt a sharp pain from just under my stomach. It was if something was inside me and ripping at any muscle it could get a hold of.

The voice continued, “Mother I cannot allow you to kill me. It is your glorious purpose to deliver me.”

“Okay! Please! Just make the pain stop!” I yelled clenching my abdomen, “Just make it stop!”

“As you wish…”And like that the pain had subsided.

“Seriously, who the fuck are you?”

“As I have said mother… I am your child.”

“How could you be my… child? How are you speaking to me? Why are you hurting me?”

“Mother you are God’s chosen.” The voice whisped, “For his glorious purpose. You were put on this planet for great things as your mother before you.”

“My mother died. I killed her.” I was still on the ground as I rang that out. I could barely keep my breath as I was recovering from the pain, “What glorious purpose could I bring?”

“A sight for sore eyes to the blind must seem… incomprehensible, Mother. How would you be able to understand the nature and ways of our Lord if you can not even comprehend a fraction of a fraction of his infinite wisdom and the plan for which it is sired of?”

“What?”

“Mother, you are of great sadness and struggle. You are the crucible in the forge, which I am to be spawned from. Generations of the Lord’s will from which I can prosper. You have suffered as those before you and those before them. In such a way in which a conduit for immaculate conception, God’s greatest miracle can become…” The voice paused before continuing, “material.”

The realization then set upon me as I felt movement in my womb. The voice in which I heard was speaking truth. I was to become its mother. I should have felt terror. I should have felt horror. My body was seemingly violated on a scale greater than cosmic: spiritual. But, as I lay there on my balcony, listening to it tell me sweet comforts of the Lord’s will I revealed in my now God-given venture to atone for my original sin. My mother did not die in vain. My suffering was for a purpose greater than me. At that moment, my life started to feel like it made sense.

As the days turned to weeks, my baby would speak with me more and more. I would hardly respond with it unless I was in the comfort of solitude from other people. Even then, I would mostly just listen to it and how it would wax poetic about the state of everything. There seemed to be a cosmic justification for everything. Every misfortune that plagued the world seemed to be just as easily explained as it had happened. Truths of the universe at play slowly revealed upon my ears. At this time, I felt as strong as ever with the Lord.

I decided one day that if I were to harbor one of his blessings that I should at least have the decency to visit his house. I had made time on Sunday to find a church near to me. The Friday before I spent what I had to find the nicest clothes for his communion. It was in the dressing room of one of the clothing outlets I had bared witness to my own nude body. I noticed a slight protruding bump from my stomach. I had slowly begun to caresse it not with pride, but love for the life growing inside of me.

“Mother, I feel your warmth. I feel your love.”

It was pure bliss.

It was the morning of. I was dressed in my Sunday best. A modest yellow dress. It had puffy shoulders, and the skirt had hung just above my ankles. I was wearing a set of black flats with white tights. I felt excited to continue my venture into the Lord’s embrace. I confidently took my first steps forward towards the church. As I was upon the precipice of its doors, my child once again spoke to me.

“Mother, no!”

“What?” I responded in a slight whisper as to not be heard by others.

“These grounds are not sacred. They bear the taint of false acolytes. We mustn't enter lest we anger the wrath of the Lord.”

In a moment of defiance I had decided to continue in. As if a moth drawn by the flame I felt the need to join in the communion. As so I once again felt the same burning pain begin. But, as soon as it started, the pain subsided the second I crossed the threshold of the doors. It was as if I had been standing lighter within the church. I rubbed my belly, “See, this isn’t so bad.”

I got no response.

As a crowd gathered within the pews, a roaring chatter of conversation begun to fill the halls. It was an enormous eruption of conversation that had all condensed into one singular blurb of unintelligible squawk. At about 10 minutes past, a priest had begun to take stand at the lectern. He began speaking with great passion.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the congregation!” he bellowed, “We are so fortunate today to gather on this most sacred of days… And, such a lovely day at that!”

There was something so comforting in his words. They were almost rhythmic as they filled the halls. He spoke of fortuitous events, and the wisdom of our lord, and his wonderful miracles. It was almost too rhythmic. As he continued on I felt my ability to concentrate following the oscillations of his speech pattern. I was a small boat rocking gently to the waves of the oceans of his words. And, soon I found myself succumbing to the lullaby that it had woven me into to.

I fell into a state of unconsciousness. Slowly the pews of the church were retracting as the people were fading into the distance. The priest who had bellowed with such passion had been speaking quieter and quieter until he was no more than a breeze upon my ears. As I looked around the now empty church I noticed fire building outside the windows. As if forced back by the will of God. I looked down to see my now naked body with a stomach that couldn’t have been less than 9 months pregnant.

It was then I saw demonic beings outside the window. They were howling and cackling as if I were some spectacle to behold. They were gathering within the fires. It was then an unimaginable pain worse than any before took root in my lower back. It was if lucifer himself was shucking my spinal cord like a piece of corn. And it rippled along the nerves from my feet to the base of my skull. As it increased in intensity I felt my child start to move. It felt as if a mass was sliming its way down. As it reached my lips, I could feel them being parted and stretched. I could hear and feel them rip as if someone had been opening a vice in my vagina. The mass continued slithering out of me. A primal urge within me had the need to just push. Not isolate any muscle ground in particular, but just push. As I did, I felt the mass move on its own with now regard for me. It ripped out of me and was laying upon the ground in front of me. It was covered in my tissue and viscera that it left in it’s wake. I decided to look down and gaze upon my baby.

What I saw could not have possibly come from me. It was more a ball of flesh than human. It had horrible rubbery skin that sagged in every which place. Appendages that made a mockery of the human form in both shape and number had been haphazardly placed in angle which invoked a sense of utter dread. Hair from any place hair shouldn’t spew from. It was a hermaphrodite as its penises extended from within and beyond a set of vaginal lips. It looked upon me with it’s multiple eyes, and spoke to me with both of it’s mouths:

“Mother, be not afraid.”

It was words of comfort not for what I bore witness to but for what happened next. The roar of the demons from outside became overwhelming as they broke down the windows of the church. Allowing the fire to permeate within. They quickly surrounded the accursed child.

“THE DARK PARIAH! THE DARK PARIAH!” They shouted in unison.

And, it was as if the instance they looked back at me I was brought to the sermon. By the time I came to, it took everything for me to not scream of the horrors I had just witnessed. The sermon was coming to the very end.

“And, with that, I will let you guys enjoy this beautiful Sunday.” The Priest rang out.

The crowd got up and began to clear from the church. No one the wiser to what I had just witnessed. I hesitantly got up to follow the crowd to exit. As I left the doors, I was greeted to the voice once again.

“They fill your head with false prophecies. They conspire against you Mother!”

That was all it had said. Part of me wanted to believe the unborn child. But, I could not let it be born. I cannot and will not willfully allow that into this world.

That night I sat in heavy thought. I stared at what lay before me. I know not the true intentions of the birth of this thing within me. I somehow still found it within myself to have a capacity for love for it. I knew not if it were telling the truth about my vision in the church, or what would happen if it were lying to me. I guess I just wanted the fantasy to never end. But, deep in my heart I knew that all it was a fantasy. Before me stood my ultimatum. There was a coat hanger I bent into a long rod with a hooked end. I was prepared to do anything necessary to keep my vision in the church from becoming reality. As I begun inserting the hanger in me the voice rang out:

“You stupid fucking whore! Your efforts are in vain!”

“I must do this!” I shouted, “I cannot let you live…”

“Go ahead, Mother. Do it. Know this: You are tainted. You were born tainted. You are nothing but swine. The Lord does not love you! You will forever be a conduit of sin as long as you roam the Earth tainted and unclean. You are the impure one. You may end me but this nightmare will never stop. The legions will rise…”

“Wh… What!!?”

“You were created of unholy matrimony, born of and to sin. Under the guise of righteous purpose in the womb of a pious woman who’d already broken her seal with the Lord. We are many and as long as you exist you will serve our legions.”

The voice spoke true. Whether I liked it or not, whether it was all my fault none of it was my fault I had been the victim and perpetrator of circumstance. I reasoned with it that I would allow to harbor it and bring up its legions as long as they spare me from whatever plans they may have.That was 6 months ago. I’m probably due in a month. I lied to it. Uncle Carl, if you’re reading this, I am sorry. I figured working my way towards getting baptised would clue it into my plan. I must cleanse myself while killing it. I have no idea what it meant by, “as long as I exist”. I can’t risk it using me alive or dead, and I can’t risk it birthing from my corpse. Fortunately there are two types of baptisms. I will cleanse myself. It is currently talking to me telling me not to do this. I have already taped my legs together, cuffed myself to the radiator, and doused the room and myself in gasoline.

Whether I’m heavenbound or hellbound, I’m sure my mother will be waiting with open arms.

I do not know how to properly put all of this into words. Hell, I cannot even fathom half of the shit I've seen. They will probably eventually find me, or have this stricken, but I would be doing some people I had the honors of calling friends a great disservice by not telling their story. I will peicemeal a couple of different incidents across my employment in different post.

--

You will never hear about the Department of Logistics or any of their branches. A trail that spans probably multiple international jurisdictions and dozens of shell companies make tracing down who runs what essentially impossible. The main purpose of the DoL is actually quite boring. It is mostly in place to either store, dismantle, or repurpose anything that could be of use or detrimental to national interest that somebody somewhere determined they would rather the public or foreign agencies not to know about.

The branch I worked at was dubbed “Future Division”. A colloquial name really. A nothing burger of titles assigned to the collection of warehouses and hangers with “Post: Foxtrot Delta” pasted on them. We were responsible for the dismantling and repurposing unknown equipment sourced from places that no one in the entire complex knew the origins of.

I worked in the shipping line. Discrete packaging of any items deemed “useful”. A whole hell of a lot better than the sorry schmucks who had the misfortune of being an assembler, dismantler, or floor engineer.

No one said it out loud, but those sorry bastards were cheap labor and guinea pigs for most of the shit we got in. I figured the higher ups saw using washed out nobody's with nobody back home to miss them would be better than hiring and vetting actual qualified personnel.

Unfortunately my area sits right next to a part of the production floor. Actually the most unlucky zone in the entire production floor: Zone 8. That place was a revolving door of workers being mutilated, mutated, incinerated, disincorporated, and a million other ways to say “intated”. If there was one fate that could encapsulate basically everything worse than death, it would be Zone 8.

--

Cole Hilburn was in everything but name a slave. From the very little he would share with me about his work detail, he was staring down multiple decades for defrauding a couple insurance firms. Future Division owned all of us, but Cole essentially did not have a choice in joining or not.

He had a nice place out in Colorado Springs. I crashed with him a couple times. He drove an okayish Toyota, and was miles ahead of rotting in some backwater federal penitentiary. But, he could not quit. He was considered a security risk. Either he stuck his neck out every day on the job or was heavily implied that a little bit of “wall-facing” would be within his future.

Elle would probably have quit months before the incident if it had not been for Cole. They worked together in Zone 8 and had formed a very obvious thing for each other.

Chances are, if you could not find them on lunch break, they were fucking in some supply closet. Everyone knew. No one cared. They filled their quota, we're on time, and never raised an issue.

They also worked the part of Zone 8 that bordered closest to my section, and as such I got to hear all the intimate details of their relationship.

“Hey! Can you guys talk about literally anything else?” I would shout at them.

“Sorry, I didn't know you were such a prude.” Cole would shoot back sarcastically.

And like that, they would go back to chopping up or prodding whatever it was at the moment they were working on.

Elle should have left after the first accident. She had no threat of death forcing her to stay.

I guess we were due for an accident. It had been long enough by that point. People stopped counting the days once they dragged into months. It is a wild thing with how quick complacency can settle in.

From what my boss had told me, absolutely nothing was known about what they were cutting into. Everyone assumed it was most likely safe from what little paperwork does get sent in with these things.

To the best I could recall: it was some sort of armature. It obviously at one point had a servo at the back end, and led huge metal canisters, multiple wiring harnesses, tubes, and plates down metal railing that terminated at some sort of pylon.

The dudes on the testing crew spent most of a couple of days trying to get it to do something. Anything. Multiple hours of “Fuck!”, “God damnit!”, or “Oh oh oh.” followed the sounds of something almost happening. Nothing ever did though.

I guess they fed too much power to the wrong part of it, and blew something. It made the typical sound of sci-fi rigamarole before a loud pop happened and the tell tale sign of machine death, the wrenching smell of burnt electronics, emanated the whole facility. Cole, Elle, and a couple others from Zone 8 were assigned to cut the thing apart to be stored separately.

Elle usually worked in the tighter spaces or underside of whatever due to her small stature. She was also low man on the totem pull and didn't have any seniority to pull in Zone 8 to flex.

Unfortunately the business part of this machine was lodged into a tight nook.

The explosion was light enough that it didn't shake anything. It was loud, but very “hollow” is what I guess would be best to describe it.

Elle took most of the brunt of whatever was spewed out. The guy behind her, Coleman, wasn't so lucky. He was only partially spattered.

I ran over to see if I could help immediately after. On the floor laid the guy who got spattered.

“Coleman, you good?!” I shouted at him.

All that came back was the sounds of gurgling.

“FUCK! Hang on dude. Ima turn you over!” I shouted as I quickly grabbed his back. Flipping him to see his face was enough to make me lose my lunch.

Coleman's left eye had been the size of a golf ball and partially popped out of its socket. Heaps of flesh from that side of his face ripped open to expose viscera and his teeth had physically pushed past his lips, ripping them open as they dangled off his face.

I had no words as he desperately clawed at his face. Choking on the blood oozing from his mouth. He started a coughing fit. Wheezing as he fought it his eye had completely popped the socket and his skin ripped more.

“Help! Please, GOD, HELP!” Elle had screamed from the inside of the machine. I could only see a tangled mess of arms protruding from the opening she was in clawing at the outside.

“Come on, help me get her out!” Cole shouted at me rushing to grab the concrete saw. “Grab that crowbar! Pry that panel back and I'm going to cut it open!”.

“Dude, we should let the med team get here first.” I protested.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP AND JUST HELP ME! PLEASE!”

Reluctantly I took the pry tool and peeled the panel back.

“Hold on baby, we're going to get you out!” He reassured her as he rushed.

It didn't take long until the panel had been cut enough to completely peelback. With quick haste we got the opening big enough. Worry filled me as Elle, too much of her, had practically spilled out the machine.

She was crying and pleading for the pain to stop. Harrowing echoes of remorse filled my body as both Cole and I were powerless to help her.

“Hell, she'll be fine. That's tenure if I ever saw it.” My team lead, Finn, laughed, “No more crawling into tight spaces I figure.”

Before us laid a perfectly scaled up version of Elle. Cole struggled to help her to her feet. She damn near towered over him by a good half foot. The medical staff had to get a special bariatric gurney just to get her wheeled out of there.

Within the week the building was cleared and we were cleared to return back to work. No lasting biological, radiological, or mutagenogenic hazards were found to be persisting within the facility.

Elle returned another two weeks after that. Now with whatever the hell “tenure” was. No one ever saw Coleman again. Unfortunately he stands amongst the crowd every time I close my eyes.