u/CGCallisto

I Found Flight 411 [Part 4]

Where do I even begin?

The last couple of days have been a total whirlwind. I call up the company, course they don’t believe me so I show up at the company check in desk and give the poor clerk a heart attack. Minutes later I’m down in our airport offices, on a video call with a bunch of higher ups and some federal looking types. The first thing out of everyone’s mouth was pretty obvious.

“You look different.”

No shit. Every photo used in the media, every public facing photograph of me, shows a different man than the one sitting before them. Even the older documents on file with the company show that same man. Thing is, our fingerprints match. Or rather, mine match my own.

I wish I could say there was more talk about that but the FAA guys were really keen on getting the story from my POV. I told them everything that had happened before the flight, I told them about the unmarked flight corridor, I told them about the Saint Elmo’s fire, and I told them about how the cockpit was engulfed by a brilliant light, then waking up on a beach two weeks later. I couldn’t recall exactly where over the ocean we were when that all happened, but I was able to give them a rough idea.

It was enough.

A day later I got a call from someone at the company. They found the plane, its wreckage anyway.

Search and Rescue craft acquired the black box signal about 600 miles east off the west coast. A few hours later dive teams retrieved the FDR, heavily damaged.

The black box itself remained intact, estimates from the damage to the craft and overall spread of the wreckage indicated the aircraft impacted the ocean at nearly 630 knots, or nearly Mach 1. But that wasn’t what damaged the data recorder and scrambled the CVR, it was the severe electrical damage it had sustained. I imagine it was likely related to the phenomenon that caused Saint Elmo’s Fire in the first place.

I did do a bit of research into that phenomenon, by the way. I may be a pilot but this level of physics is a bit beyond me. In essence, the only way Saint Elmo’s Fire could have formed the way it did would have required us to have flown into an environment so overwhelmingly charged with static electricity that it should have resulted in a lightning strike a thousand times over. Even still, such a phenomenon cannot exist in a vacuum. There had to be a cause and the only one that could have even approached the magnitude of what we experienced is, you guessed it, a volcanic ash cloud. I mentioned this during my initial debriefing with the FAA but they practically ignored it.

Recovery is still ongoing, and I don’t think I’m supposed to know this but one of the FAA guys mentioned it in passing, they haven’t recovered any bodies. It was almost as if there never were passengers aboard the aircraft.

I figured that was pretty odd, like how the hell does an entire plane end up with no passengers? Then again, I woke up back home after two weeks of god knows what. Maybe the other passengers are out there experiencing similar fates.

The FAA hasn’t gone public about the discovery yet. The public is speculating that they did find something due to the obvious increase in activity around the crash site, so I’d imagine its only a matter of time before it leaks. That or they give in and just tell everyone. I, however, have been ordered by some unpleasant men in suits to keep my mouth shut until they say otherwise. Not like I really have anyone to go blabbing to who’d believe anything I’d say.

I guess I am somewhat relieved to have a bit of closure. If you can call it that. I mean the question of how myself and 139 others just vanished is still ever-present. Even more confusing is the whole static charge thing. I mean shit, as it is, this is all way beyond my understanding.

It really feels like every day I wake up, I’m in someone else’s house, living someone else’s life. I mean I remember life before this. I remember the simplicity, the monotony, the Pho. The little things.

I also remember the big things. I remember when my ex divorced me for loving the job more than I loved her, but it turns out she just loved my friend more. I remember when they all abandoned me because she’d spun some lie about how I was cheating on her with some flight attendent half my age. I remember when my dad passed away from lung cancer. I remember when my mom died in an accident just a few months ago.

And I remembered how none of it seemed to really bother me. I’m not young, I’m pushing my late 40s. I kept getting colleagues asking if I was ok, saying I should take some time and sit back from flying. I told them no of course. I wasn’t going to do anything crazy, the AMEs made sure to check that. I truly just didn’t care. Maybe that makes me cold hearted, who cares. Only thing that mattered to me was flying.

I remember being a kid who took his first trip across the continent to visit grandma and grandpa in palm springs. I remember watching those beautiful silver beasts roar and soar through the skies as if they had always belonged there. I remember that sense of freedom, looking down on the world from above and seeing it all from a perspective no one ever considers. I remember my first discovery flight from my local Civil Air Patrol, the way I could feel the craft as an extension of myself. I remember working my ass off doing car sales to pay for my PPL.

I remember the whole damn journey from start to now. Yet everything after the crash just feels like I’m living someone else’s life, that im a captive audience just along for the ride.

I remember finally getting my ATPL, getting signed with my company, and getting my type rating.

And I remember that email. The weird one. The one that would creep up along the back of my mind during take off rolls down the reef runway. The one from the place that made my favorite Pho.

The one inviting me to… Gemini…

What the hell was Gemini? Why can’t I remember any of it? Why can I only recall these bits and pieces now?

Why the hell don’t I keep photos of myself in my house?

Where do I even begin?

The last couple of days have been a total whirlwind. I call up the company, course they don’t believe me so I show up at the company check in desk and give the poor clerk a heart attack. Minutes later I’m down in our airport offices, on a video call with a bunch of higher ups and some federal looking types. The first thing out of everyone’s mouth was pretty obvious.

“You look different.”

No shit. Every photo used in the media, every public facing photograph of me, shows a different man than the one sitting before them. Even the older documents on file with the company show that same man. Thing is, our fingerprints match. Or rather, mine match my own.

I wish I could say there was more talk about that but the FAA guys were really keen on getting the story from my POV. I told them everything that had happened before the flight, I told them about the unmarked flight corridor, I told them about the Saint Elmo’s fire, and I told them about how the cockpit was engulfed by a brilliant light, then waking up on a beach two weeks later. I couldn’t recall exactly where over the ocean we were when that all happened, but I was able to give them a rough idea.

It was enough.

A day later I got a call from someone at the company. They found the plane, its wreckage anyway.

Search and Rescue craft acquired the black box signal about 600 miles east off the west coast. A few hours later dive teams retrieved the FDR, heavily damaged.

The black box itself remained intact, estimates from the damage to the craft and overall spread of the wreckage indicated the aircraft impacted the ocean at nearly 630 knots, or nearly Mach 1. But that wasn’t what damaged the data recorder and scrambled the CVR, it was the severe electrical damage it had sustained. I imagine it was likely related to the phenomenon that caused Saint Elmo’s Fire in the first place.

I did do a bit of research into that phenomenon, by the way. I may be a pilot but this level of physics is a bit beyond me. In essence, the only way Saint Elmo’s Fire could have formed the way it did would have required us to have flown into an environment so overwhelmingly charged with static electricity that it should have resulted in a lightning strike a thousand times over. Even still, such a phenomenon cannot exist in a vacuum. There had to be a cause and the only one that could have even approached the magnitude of what we experienced is, you guessed it, a volcanic ash cloud. I mentioned this during my initial debriefing with the FAA but they practically ignored it.

Recovery is still ongoing, and I don’t think I’m supposed to know this but one of the FAA guys mentioned it in passing, they haven’t recovered any bodies. It was almost as if there never were passengers aboard the aircraft.

I figured that was pretty odd, like how the hell does an entire plane end up with no passengers? Then again, I woke up back home after two weeks of god knows what. Maybe the other passengers are out there experiencing similar fates.

The FAA hasn’t gone public about the discovery yet. The public is speculating that they did find something due to the obvious increase in activity around the crash site, so I’d imagine its only a matter of time before it leaks. That or they give in and just tell everyone. I, however, have been ordered by some unpleasant men in suits to keep my mouth shut until they say otherwise. Not like I really have anyone to go blabbing to who’d believe anything I’d say.

I guess I am somewhat relieved to have a bit of closure. If you can call it that. I mean the question of how myself and 139 others just vanished is still ever-present. Even more confusing is the whole static charge thing. I mean shit, as it is, this is all way beyond my understanding.

It really feels like every day I wake up, I’m in someone else’s house, living someone else’s life. I mean I remember life before this. I remember the simplicity, the monotony, the Pho. The little things.

I also remember the big things. I remember when my ex divorced me for loving the job more than I loved her, but it turns out she just loved my friend more. I remember when they all abandoned me because she’d spun some lie about how I was cheating on her with some flight attendent half my age. I remember when my dad passed away from lung cancer. I remember when my mom died in an accident just a few months ago.

And I remembered how none of it seemed to really bother me. I’m not young, I’m pushing my late 40s. I kept getting colleagues asking if I was ok, saying I should take some time and sit back from flying. I told them no of course. I wasn’t going to do anything crazy, the AMEs made sure to check that. I truly just didn’t care. Maybe that makes me cold hearted, who cares. Only thing that mattered to me was flying.

I remember being a kid who took his first trip across the continent to visit grandma and grandpa in palm springs. I remember watching those beautiful silver beasts roar and soar through the skies as if they had always belonged there. I remember that sense of freedom, looking down on the world from above and seeing it all from a perspective no one ever considers. I remember my first discovery flight from my local Civil Air Patrol, the way I could feel the craft as an extension of myself. I remember working my ass off doing car sales to pay for my PPL.

I remember the whole damn journey from start to now. Yet everything after the crash just feels like I’m living someone else’s life, that im a captive audience just along for the ride.

I remember finally getting my ATPL, getting signed with my company, and getting my type rating.

And I remember that email. The weird one. The one that would creep up along the back of my mind during take off rolls down the reef runway. The one from the place that made my favorite Pho.

The one inviting me to… Gemini…

What the hell was Gemini? Why can’t I remember any of it? Why can I only recall these bits and pieces now?

Why the hell don’t I keep photos of myself in my house?

I am being followed.

I wasn’t sure at first. Figured maybe I was just a bit on edge given the whole “plane crash” thing you know? Started out with this guy at the grocery store a couple of days ago. Tucked in blue polo. Not very common out here, especially out where I live. Sure wearing shades in a grocery store is, odd, but hell stranger things have happened. We kept bumping into each-other as I combed the aisles. Not actually coming into contact but like, metaphorically you know? After the first few times I figured we just happened to be going the same route through the store. Then it stopped feeling a coincidence. While it was unnerving constantly seeing the man’s face in every single fucking aisle as I would turn the corner, I had quite a few other more important things on my mind at the time so I didn’t really take it to mind.

Then it happened the next day at the DMV. Maybe I should have bought a lottery ticket at some point because not only have I survived a plane crash basically unscathed, but the man who had been following me around the grocery store the day before just so happened to be my clerk at the DMV. While I can’t say for sure if he had already been working there prior, or wether or not he was the clerk who had helped me on my last visit, but seeing him sitting there before me has to be far beyond the realm of pure chance. He never said anything off, or out of the ordinary, but honestly that made it just that much weirder.

Well, that and the result of today’s visit.

Apparently, the whole “false death” thing isn’t that uncommon. At least from what the DMV clerk said. It happens often enough that it only took a brief scan of my fingerprints to confirm my identity and that I was, in fact, not dead. I’m not exactly sure how to feel about this. I’m glad to be on track to getting my life back, new documents and everything, but there’s no way it could have just been that easy.

It’s also really bugging me that the one clerk who actually was able to tell me this good news, that none of the other clerks had been privy to, seemed to be following me. Sure it’s still potentially a massive coincidence, and at this point far more plausible than my prior circumstances, but you have to admit it’s really fucking odd.

As for how easy it was to get my death reversed, I’m beginning to think the myriad of clearances and documentation I’ve acquired to be a commercial airline pilot likely helped.

Speaking of, I fully plan on going back to flying as soon as I can. I plan on calling the company tomorrow morning to… Well really I haven’t the faintest clue of what to say. Maybe get them up to speed, try offer to help with the investigation. Not sure what I could tell them that would be of any real use in locating the aircraft.

Though, thats the other thing. Almost three weeks now and in spite of all of the massive news coverage, there’s been fuck all in terms of information. The FAA has been, almost aggressively, tight lipped. Cynical as it sounds I feel like it’s an optics thing. They haven’t learned anything in all this time and can’t tell an eager and potentially volatile public that billions of their tax dollars have effectively bought them nothing.

Maybe I could be the one piece that could crack this case wide open. Maybe I’m the only hope anyone has of finding Flight 411.

Possibly unrelated but better to take note of it anyway; neighbor stopped by yesterday. She’s a sweet old lady whose name I could never remember. She knew I was a pilot and got worried when she stopped seeing me at least once a week. She was worried I was on Flight 411, I didn’t have the heart to tell her I was. Off handedly she mentioned I looked a little off. I just shrugged it off and mentioned that I recently got a bit too much sun at the beach. That wasn’t really a lie.

God, here I am rambling again. You’d think I’d be happy, no, elated that I’ve essentially gotten my life back. This massive, seemingly unscalable wall, just gone the next day as if it were a construction barrier. Yet I just grow more and more confused, more overwhelmed, more uncertain. How could I have survived that crash? Why can’t I remember the two whole weeks between the crash and waking up in the hospital? Who the hell is that man in the blue polo and why do I keep bumping into him?

Why don’t I have any photos of myself anywhere?

It’s amazing how good the mind is at managing grief when fixated on a specific task. I mean, managing my emotions and keeping calm under the most extreme situations is kinda part of the job, or was, but it still bewilders me how far beyond the cockpit that mindset reaches.

I am still dead, legally speaking. Not too sure how the hell the government is supposed to undo that since people usually don’t recover from being dead. While it has been two weeks since the incident the search for the wreckage is still ongoing. These days the news only seems to run updates about the search for Flight 411.

Ships and planes from over 15 different nations all partaking in what they’re calling the largest coordinated search and rescue operation in history. An entire world holding their breaths hoping for the rescue of people they’ve never met. Millions if not billions of dollars to recover what they believe are 140 corpses and some twisted metal.

I guess if i still had any family or friends they’d be glued to their screens too.

I’m beginning to notice inconsistencies in my memory. Now assuming that I did somehow survive a plane crash, some minor brain damage would be the bare minimum I’d walk away with. So I guess I have that running for me. On that note I did manage to remember something very important: the passcode for my door lock.

Recently I bought a keypad door lock after my ancient door lock finally seized with my key inside it. Some advice, if you have an old lock on your house, replace it before it becomes a problem so you dont have to saw a hole in your door. Anyway, the beauty of a keypad lock is that I don’t need a key, which is helpful when you wake up in a hospital bed with nothing but a patient gown.

My house was, thankfully, exactly as I left it. Not that I could really remember how I left it, but nothing looked as if it had been rummaged through by some sort of collecter or estate manager-type. The fridge needed some clearing out but all in all it was like I hadn’t left. I rarely stayed home as it was, working 3 days a week sounds amazing until you realize that the other four days of your work week are spent at holiday inn’s in different cities.

It’s a strange feeling to constantly reach for a phone that is long gone, yet I still feel its phantom in my pocket every time I move.

For most of the first days back home from the hospital, between the endless DMV appointments, I just sort of surfed the web on my laptop for news coverage regarding Flight 411. Every article had the same photos, every article showed that same man standing next to my First Officer, that same man who looked nothing like me.

I swear if I’d had more photos of myself they’d show his face instead of mine.

I thought about getting into contact with the airline, but I doubt they’d believe me with just my voice. Not until I get my credentials back together. Who would I even call if I did? The closest thing I had to a friend was Jason…

I always kept a cash stash in the event I lost my debit card, so I at least wont starve, but at some point I’m going to need to sort out the whole “dead” thing with the bank.

Now that I think about it, what does happen to someone’s things when they die? If nobody claims their estate does the state just take it? Does it just sit and collect dust if there’s money in the account to pay the bills? Can dead people hire lawyers?

If anyone has any experience with this, as impossible as it seems, please enlighten me.

God, sorry for the incoherent rambling. To be honest I’m still in complete shock. It’s like the world is fast forwarding around me and I’m standing still. I’m a stone sticking up from beneath the rapids getting bombarded by the unrelenting current of time. 139 people on that plane and only I survived, only I got to come back home.

Ugh, I can mope later. First things first, prove that I’m alive. I know this update probably isn’t what most of you were looking to see, but I gotta focus on getting my life back together.

Sorry, I’m writing this last bit here because it’s been keeping me up the past few days. You’d think that it would be the weird, almost hollow feeling that the world has now. Or the mysterious static build up around my airplane before it crashed. Both are nagging at me for sure but this particular thing is shouting at me from the recesses of my memory.

I distinctly recall being told that my assignment to Flight 411 was a temporary one. Like a one off “can you sub in for this captain” you know typical scheduling bullshit. Yet they kept me on that route for almost six months. Of course I still flew other routes, mostly long-hauls but I was always scheduled so that I would be at base to fly Flight 411. I rarely ever called off or got sick, but the one time I did try to call off when I was scheduled I was immediately and firmly denied.

Mind you, I’d flown for this airline for over a decade. Seniority and tenure doesn’t even approach what myself and other captains with this airline had with that record of service. It was to a point that I was begged to take time off and sick leave because I had maxed out on hours. I had a mind to go to my union rep about it but something just felt off. This didn’t feel like it was some corporate play, or if it was they were being real nice about screwing me out of my PTO. When I pushed them for answers they kinda beat around the bush about why, using the excuses of “scheduling conflicts” or “pilot shortages” that you’d expect. May seem strange but I remember them being real weird about it. Any other days seemed to be without incident but god forbid my PTO requests fell on a day flight 411 was scheduled for.

Makes me think that if I’d died prior to this they’d find a way to reverse death itself just so I could Captain Flight 411. Just what the hell was so special about this flight?

Hey y’all, I was the Pilot In Command of Flight 411 and I have a strange problem. The problem is that everybody thinks I’m dead. 

Flight 411 was reported to have crashed into the ocean over two weeks ago about half way into its flight, killing everyone on board, however that’s a lie.  

The incident craft in question was a Boeing 737-800, more infamously known as the “Max 8”

For some of you, that name probably sounds familiar for all the wrong reasons. To be brief, a few years ago Boeing rolled out this bad boy which was longer and could hold more passengers than other 737s. The thing is, making the plane longer meant it would fly differently, while not a massive difference, this meant that pilots would have to get specific training to fly this aircraft.

That would have cost lots of time and money. So Boeing decided to build in a fly-by-wire system that would adjust the pilot’s inputs to account for the new aerodynamics. Thing was, they didn’t tell the pilots that, and they didn’t build in a way to turn it off. 

Normally fly-by-wire isn’t an issue, Airbus planes use it all the time, as do most modern fighter jets. But this one was shitty and had a habit of freaking out and sending the plane into a nose dive. Since the pilots never really had control, there was nothing they could do. 

3 crashes and lots of lawsuits later they eventually fixed the problem but nobody trusted the damn thing anymore, passenger or pilot. 

Except me, of course. 

Now, why was any of this relevant? Because whenever there was anything even remotely wrong with a Max-8, the news exploded with coverage, always blaming that damn fly-by-wire system. Hell the IFE could have gone out mid-flight and someone would have still blamed it on the fly-by-wire system. 

So when Flight 411 was lost, they blamed it on the fly-by-wire system, said that's what caused it to crash into the ocean.

But the loss of Flight 411 was not caused by a fly-by-wire system, and it did not crash into the ocean. My proof? I was the Captain of Flight 411, and as of me writing this, I am alive. 

So if Flight 411 didn’t crash into the ocean, killing everyone, what happened to everyone else? 

Flight 411 was a once-a-week trans-pacific redeye route that functioned as a low-priority route for the airline, servicing a rural hub in the Midwest. The route was strange, not just for the fact that I didn’t even know this hub existed until I was scheduled to fly it, but because it always had the same passengers on each flight, give or take a few. 

It flew out of PHNL, where I was based, and to this hub. Most airports, well all major civilian airports, are supposed to have a four letter code to identify them with. PHNL for Daniel K. Inouye Intl. in Hawaii, for example. 

Except for this hub location. Instead, we had to fill the ICAO field with four Z’s and provide the coordinates of the hub. 

Truthfully this didn’t bother me much, though as a major commercial airline pilot who wasn’t exactly on a short-haul route these non-standard filings should have been an anomaly for me. It probably helped that because of how identical each flight was in terms of passengers and load, even down to the seating arrangements, I craved the slight deviation in the norm. 

The night of the incident was no different.

I arrived at the airport about 3 hours before the flight, a bit earlier than I usually would to account for the Labor-day weekend traffic. The weather was fair, optimal conditions for flying. Clearance delivery was a bit slow, likely due to all the outbound traffic. 

My First Officer, a dependable man named Jason Higa, and I chatted as we waited at the gate for pushback and start clearance. We talked about this Pho place they had at the terminal in this hub that, by both of our accounts, was the best damn Pho on the planet. You could practically taste it from memory. Whenever you’d step off the plane it would be the first smell that worked its way into your nose. Not the kerosene, not the aging linoleum paneling, and certainly not the musty carpets.

The mind controlling aroma of the herbal spices, star anise, cinnamon, and the unmistakable calling of that perfectly simmered bone broth would pick us up by our ties and drag us down the concourse right to the counter. No matter how much we had eaten beforehand, or how we might have felt, we always had room for their Pho. 

I’m sad I won't ever get to experience that again.

When it finally came over comms that it was our time we began our startup procedure. A task we had each performed easily over a thousand times by this point. Our hands glided over the overhead control panels, over rows of bleed air valve controls and electrical bus switches, sending compressed air from the APU into the engines to start them up. 

The tug pushed us back from our gate as our engines roared to life, and once clear we began taxiing to our takeoff runway under our own power. 

If you don’t know, PHNL is famous for its 8R/26L runway. It’s a massive artificial island built just to the south of the main airport structure, connected by a narrow artificial land bridge taxiway. During the day you get to take off surrounded by the beautiful ocean on either side.

During the night, however, it’s like the world just stops existing outside of the marked areas. No beauty, and no margins if you mess up on takeoff. 

But Flight 411 was not destined for the ocean, not destined to overrun the runway and crash into the shallows just past the localizer array. Flight 411 was destined to disappear mid flight, by a means of which I still cannot explain.

Oblivious to our fates and the fates of the other 140 souls on board we departed Runway 8R at 9:34 PM. 

I’m not the NTSB so I won’t drop the word-for-word flight plan, nor will I go into excessive detail about every correction and adjustment we made before handoff, but I will mention one thing. 

Much like the highways you drive on with your car, there are air corridors that are marked by GPS coordinates that all organized air traffic flies along with little exception. This is doubly so for ocean crossings. 

While SOP for our airline typically has us follow these corridors, tonight we were instructed to fly a different, and to my knowledge, unmarked air corridor. This was discussed well before take off with the company and the FAA. ATC was informed of this decision but would not be able to provide coverage during our crossing as a result, as they did not have any record of the corridor on their end and thus no real means of keeping track of us. 

This was not entirely unusual, military aviation has almost an entirely separate ruleset they work with whenever they aren’t interacting with commercial air infrastructure.  However for a commercial airline with no special clearances beyond the norm, that was unheard of, as well as the fact that this was the first time in flying this route that such a flight plan had been filed.

Beyond the odd level of secrecy and different hands involved in this flight plan, nothing stood out to me as being dangerous or even worthy of note. Forecasts for the area were clear, no major storms that we couldn’t navigate around, no TFRs or potential conflicts that we knew of. 

We still had our transponder on, and while outside of radio and radar coverage for a majority of the crossing we still had GPS coverage if anything urgent came up. 

After about an hour or so we heard a knock at the cabin door, that meant the chief steward had brought our meals. After 9/11 we are supposed to use the intercom to confirm before opening the cockpit door for anyone but this had become such a routine I could swear I’d hear her footsteps before she’d knock. 

Much to my surprise, and further proving why we should have really enforced that protocol, it was not the chief stewardess I had grown accustomed to after all this time. Instead I was greeted by a much younger woman with long, red hair that was tied up in a loose ponytail. Uniform standards stated that hair needed to be either short or tied up into a bun, but I didn’t really mind that much, figured she was newly assigned to this route and might have been a fresh graduate from the training program. 

I thanked her for the food and closed the door behind her. An uneasiness in my stomach began to grow as the flight continued. I thought maybe I was paranoid, but the notion that on my alarmingly routine flight there would be not one but two notable differences was impossible to ignore. 

I brought this to the attention of my co-pilot, who agreed that it was highly unusual given the prior routine and suggested doubling up on our in-flight monitoring. Feeling satisfied with that resolution we made sure to double up on the fuel calculations and route tracking. I doubted, that with everyone in attendance while flight planning, we would have forgotten to add the right amount of fuel for the new route that same confidence had been the cause of crashes before. I very much intended to land safely and taste that sweet delicious Pho yet again. 

At what I could roughly call the half-way mark was when the incident began. 

At first I noticed the hair on my arms began to stand up, indicative of a build up of static charge. This was followed by St. Elmo’s fire which started to form and lick at the cockpit windows. Normally St. Elmo’s fire only really developed on the support tracks for the flaps and other “sharp” surfaces, and really only

In active weather systems. 

There was one instance I could recount where the severity of St. Elmo’s fire was such that it formed the way it had now.

British Airways Flight 009. 

The aircraft in that incident had been flying through a plume of ash from a recent eruption in Indonesia, at that time nobody knew that ash could choke out engines and turn a modern airliner into a gliding brick. This was the incident that taught us what we know now. 

But before the engines were choked out by the volcanic glass that began melting into and gumming up the engines, the pilots reported seeing St. Elmo’s fire rippling across their windshields. 

Jason apparently had the same revelation as I did as we both began scouring radar and charts of the region. 

Though, both of us knew it was impossible yet it was reality. Either a volcano had spontaneously erupted and rose out of the ocean below us, or we were flying into a region that had somehow obtained a massive static electric charge, a dangerous level of charge. 

With the sun still well below the horizon and the new moon offering no reprieve we had only our instruments to help us navigate out of this potentially catastrophic situation. While planes are designed to be resistant to lightning strikes, with many having been directly struck mid air before, there has yet to be a scenario involving a static charge as severe as the one we believed to be facing. 

As the minutes ticked by, the flames of St. Elmo’s fire only grew, eventually covering the entire windshield in dancing waves of heavenly luminescence. 

We descended rapidly, hoping to break out from whatever storm our radar might have missed. We altered our heading in just about every conceivable way in an effort to try and break free of whatever this was. Yet the fire continued to grow. 

I made the decision to declare an emergency and we began vectoring for the nearest airport. Radio and Radar coverage was still an hour away at this point, but it was all we could do. 

I briefed the flight attendants on the situation, informing them that while the plane appears fine for now that we should make preparations to ditch the aircraft in the event we lose engine power. 

Shortly after the briefing I heard a scream from the cabin, followed by more screams. If I had to guess I’d say they were freaking out as they watched the wings and body of the aircraft become engulfed in St Elmo’s fire. This guess would likely have been the case as I saw flashes of light followed by muffled popping sounds from behind the instrument panels. 

Before I had time to even say anything I heard an unfamiliar voice begin shouting the words that no one, pilot or passenger, ever hopes to hear.

“BRACE BRACE BRACE, HEADS DOWN, STAY DOWN, BRACE BRACE BRACE,”

In no time at all the rest of the flight attendants began to chant the mantra in perpetuity, up until the very last second. 

But the plane was not in free fall, nor did I give the order to prepare for an emergency landing. I specified the possibility, but maybe the new stewardess misunderstood it. Regardless, it’s better to have them focus on their own survival than continue screaming again. As loud as the chanting was, the rhythm was soothing to me. 

The last thing I remembered from that flight was looking over at Jason as he became enveloped in that same heavenly glow that had wrapped itself around the plane, eventually overwhelming my senses in a sea of blinding sea of white. 

When I woke up I was in a hospital bed, back in Honolulu. When I asked about what had happened to me the nurse had said someone found me unconscious on a beach in Waikiki. She specified that I was not dragged out of the water but instead was passed out under a massive tree, they thought I was a homeless John Doe. Apparently all I had on me were the clothes on my back.

When I tried to tell the nurse who I was she didn’t believe me. Said that Flight 411 crashed in the ocean weeks ago. When I finally got a hold of a newspaper I saw Jason, but standing next to him was someone I didn’t recognize. Someone who was wearing my uniform but looked nothing like me. Every photo with my name in it that had been put out in relation to the story featured a man who looked nothing like me. All of these photos were ones I remembered being taken, moments I remember in full, but it was as if they’d plastered some stranger’s face on top of mine.

If I find out more about this I’ll be sure to put it out there. Right now I’m at the state library doing my best to reclaim my life from a government that declared me dead. Wish me luck.  

(CW: Suicide, mentions of DV)

I shot up in my bed in a cold sweat. In my hands I was clutching the book.

Threaded fragments of mind and memory wound themselves into a new spool of cohesion as clarity washed over me.

I could think clearly.

Ever since this book came into my possession I’ve started to shed the cask of my infirmities like a snake molting its skin. My mind, once a place of fragmented and shattered memories, was forged back together with a golden alloy.

The pages of my life were rebound in a leather book with golden thread.

I opened the first page of the book.

“A story is never complete until all parts come together.”

No shit.

I flipped through the pages.

Nothing.

Page after page of just nothing. Then I saw it.

“The wind whipped past his face as the ground below him approached at an alarming rate; He was falling.”

An errant sentence printed in the middle of a page about a quarter ways through the book.

What the hell was this?

I flipped through more empty pages. Then once again.

“The decaying facility creaked and groaned as the winds filtered through its exposed outer husk. Grains of sand fell into piles where the roof had given way.”

And another.

“The islands came into view; six equal sized islands were evenly spaced around one, much larger, central island. A man-made paradise in the middle of The Pacific.”

I combed through the pages until I reached the end of the book. Had I the patience to count I would imagine the book had to have at least 1000 pages.

But these sentences, these words, what the hell were they supposed to mean?

Ever since this book ended up in my hands my life has been filled with the unordinary and the strange. My gut is screaming at me that this book means something, and my mind is beginning to agree, in spite of any grounded evidence. .

I quickly entered the sentences into a media search engine.

Nothing.

I examined the book closely, hoping to glean some greater information I might have missed. Perhaps I did.

The golden sigil.

I could not comprehend it nor could I describe it, but I felt it.

It felt familiar, not in a wild deja vu sense but, as if it represented something inherent in its design. Like how one would use the picture of a stick figure and a door to represent an exit.

This sigil represented something that I could intuit but not describe. An approximation would be that of great sorrow, mourning, a longing, a loss but not of someone. It was vague and indescribable, as if I were missing some subtle key or context relevant to this emotion.

And the color.

There was no mistaking it. The golden cloak worn by the mysterious statue that always stood at the base of those heavenly marble stairs was identical in luster and color.

For a second I could have sworn it too was fluttering in an intangible breeze.

All my life I have dreamt of The Dreary. A world caked in dust and forgotten by whatever cruel god brought it into existence and burdened my subconscious mind with it. Never have I had or experienced “normal dreams” by what other standards might exist. All I have known was The Dreary; a false echo of the world I know.

It has had its advantages though, allowing me to explore places that I would have never had the opportunity to otherwise. The Dreary managed to, for the most part, be a complete copy of every man-made structure I have ever seen with my own two eyes. Though I am unaware of how The Dreary managed to recreate the interiors of a memory that does not exist, it bothers me little.

What does bother me is how it has changed after encountering this book.

First was The Dust. The first night with the book caused The Dust to not react to my presence. The second night resulted in it disappearing all together.

Then was the structure. The first night saw a heavenly marble staircase slapped in the middle of the main road. The second night changed the entire layout of The Dreary into a procession, with that same marble staircase descending into the infinite darkness below the basement of The Mall Building.

Lastly was the statue in the Golden Cloak. On the first night I was compelled towards it and crushed under the weight of its presence. The second night was similar but I managed to recover from my incapacitation by wielding this book.

As a preliminary analysis I find my own work to be rather shitty. Too many potential coincidences and nothing conclusive enough to even begin to form an understanding.

Despite that, two conclusions have been reached.

Either this is a supernatural occurrence or I am deeply unwell, psychologically speaking.

Given the existence of this book I am inclined to lean supernatural but given my history it’s just as likely to be psychological.

Though as to why Leena would have had the book to begin with is beyond me.

I had assumed the handsome stud who flirted his way into my pants, and eventually bed, with the help of my daily diet of a shitload of whiskey, had left the book by accident. Then, after arriving home from her work trip and likely seeing the man making his way out, probably put two and two together and somehow that equated into Leena throwing his forgotten book at me.

But that doesn’t really make much sense. I’ve done far worse to Leena and she hadn’t walked out on me then, let alone be any sort of aggressive towards me.

Fucking another guy is roughly equivalent to forgetting to buy the milk. Maybe it was the drinking? I had promised to cut back.

I sat in bed as I mulled over the infinite possibilities, but a slight movement caught my eye.

I scanned my room and could not find anything out of the ordinary. The morning light had likely been partially obscured by a bird or a plane which cast a quick moving shadow that tricked me into believing I saw something. Yes, clearly this was the case.

Then it happened again.

I couldn’t pinpoint its direction, location, or even origin. All I could see was movement of some kind. Very slight, very subtle, and one that seemed to evade my direct gaze.

Then I saw it.

The Dust.

The Dust fluttered and sparkled gently as it hung in a perpetual state of free-fall, riding gentle currents of air and catching the morning rays.

It did not fall nor did it settle.

It hung.

It hung as if eagerly awaiting my permission to fall. But I had no intention of giving it such permission.

Before I could realize what was happening I was pulled into my bed and out through to the other side.

My book in hand, I found myself once more in The Dreary.

But yet again it had changed.

Gone was my apartment. Gone were the stones, gone was the sky.

All that remained was a house.

That house.

The house was a shitty little wood shack made of, at most, the wood from a single, sad, pathetic thing that could barely be considered a tree. A mild cough would be enough to rip the structure off its foundations. The nails used in its construction likely weighed more than the sum of its lumber, and I could probably count the nails on one hand.

Though that was par for the course for many houses built here. No real need for insulation. This had the unfortunate side effect of making the walls not only paper thin, but also providing no sound dampening. This allowed me to hear the argument I could see from the kitchen window.

No, not an argument, a fight. A one sided fight. Abuse.

To my right sat my car. A respectable little thing from 20 years ago and nearly 200k miles on it. Inside that car was the unmistakable golden cloak, clinging to a statue that sat where I had all those years ago.

“I don’t give a shit Leena! Your fucking job is to sit here and take care of my fucking kids while i make sure we can all fucking eat, and you just-“

I had replayed this moment a hundred, a thousand, no, a million times at least in my head. I remembered every word clearly as if I was just experiencing this moment for the first time.

A couple of days prior, my boss dropped the case on my desk. He said a couple of women pooled their cash together and asked us to gather evidence on this guy, Mica, who they believed was beating up his wife, their friend. Apparently they had tried to get her to go to the cops but she was never cooperative so the cops couldn’t do anything.

It wasn't the first time I handled a case like this, probably wouldn’t have been the last, but no one else in the firm wanted to touch it.

Can’t say I’d blame them.

Mica Murakami. A fine specimen of untreated daddy issues and a severe addiction to lite-beers. A lot of insecurity too. Though you tend to get insecure after your previous four wives leave you for someone else.

Unfortunately he was also rather jacked and had a short temper, which he often took out on Leena. Sometimes physically, always verbally.

At least he did on that night.

No one blamed me for what happened.

Nobody knew how high I was that night.

Cops did, or suspected it. Tried to prove it. Didn’t matter.

I tried to convince myself I did Leena a favor.

I’m sure she tried to convince herself too.

I thought I saw him flash a gun. Maybe it was a knife. Or maybe I lied to myself so much that I believed it to be the truth.

But the prosecution said they couldn’t find a weapon on him, and the nearest kitchen knife had never had his finger prints on them.

Didn’t matter though. I saw what I thought I saw.

I did what I thought I had to do.

Nobody ever questioned why I was the only PI in my firm, or any firm, that carried a gun on him while on the job.

Not until smoke was trailing from the barrel.

Not until there were two holes soaked with red that pooled onto the kitchen floor.

The sound of the brass casings ringing as they hit the floor awoke me from my trance.

Before me lay the body of Mica Murakami.

Two shots square in the chest silenced his deafening bitching. Two shots let the neighborhood experience a quiet evening for the first time in four years. Two shots caused innocent kids to see the dead body of their tormenter, their father. Two shots broke the heart of Leena Murakami, what little was left to break

Two shots took away my peace. Two shots shattered the kitchen window.

It didn’t matter that the media saw me as a hero. It didn’t matter that friends and family never stopped singing my praises.

Those kids will never have their father back, shitty as he was, and watched as a stranger barged into their house and shot their dad in front of them.

Leena will never have her husband back. Her friends said I should have emptied the mag into him. She wouldn’t comment.

The jury thought I was a hero and told the prosecution to go to hell. Evidence be damned. I was a killer, a murderer, and they let me walk free into a parade for my actions.

By all accounts I should have celebrated with them. I should have enjoyed the moment.

But I couldn’t.

All I saw was their faces.

The kids’, Leena’s, and Mica’s.

Every moment of every day.

So I left the job, I disconnected from everyone and everything and started figuring out which combination of substances wouldn’t kill me but would keep me from thinking.

I locked it all away. I locked my mind away.

Then the gun in my hand returned to its former state as the book.

It was still warm and smelled faintly of gun-smoke.

“And you,”

I turned to face the Golden Cloaked statue which now stood at the entrance to the kitchen.

“Fuck you for making me remember.”

I whipped the book at the statue with all the force I could muster.

The book clattered anti-climactically after bouncing off of the statue.

Then the walls gave way.

The blood pooling at my feet stretched across the ground and into the horizon.

The never ending fog that hung in the sky lifted slightly, behind it now I could see the light attempting to pierce the dense fog. Twin hues of yellow and white now brighter and more coherent than before, twin suns that hung above this hollow land.

I grab my head once again as the familiar agony of a lifetime’s worth of memories flows through me.

But they aren’t mine.

They surge through me too fast for me to get a proper grasp of them. I only manage to get glimpses.

I grasp at the sand storm of memories but they keep slipping through my fingers, the images and moments seared into my mind but the meaning is lost with the tearing winds.

Just as the storm subsides I manage to catch one glimpse. One moment. One memory.

In the distance I see a spire. A massive spire that pierced an unfamiliar sky. The ruins of a massive city surrounded the spire. In the distance and in the skies I saw bright flashes and ebbing waves as if an ocean of light was crashing against the sky itself.

The memory faded as my attention was brought back to the present.

The marble staircase rose from the blood. Its pristine structure untainted by my sin. Untouched by my blood.

I raced to pick up the book once more.

The moment I came in contact with the book I awoke on the floor of my bedroom.

I checked the time on my phone.

It was Monday.

How the hell did I lose an entire day? Did I just pass out when I got back?.

My attempts at standing are thwarted as my hand slips on the blood on the floor.

After a brief moment of panic I stumbled my way into the bathroom.

In the mirror I saw blood.

Blood had caked streams onto my face as it poured out from my nose, ears, and my eyes. If I had to guess I’d say I had just lost an alarming amount of blood.

But I did not feel alarmed. Truthfully I wasn’t sure what I felt. I was sure of one thing, however I do not understand how. I was fairly sure, no, certain, that I will die if I am separated from the book. For now my mind is inexplicably linked with it.

After washing the caked blood from my face I opted to use my lonely and forgotten toothbrush for the first time in an embarrassingly long while.

Can’t say why I never bothered until now, but perhaps helping to scrape off the red that had found its way into my mouth and onto my teeth was a good enough reason.

Of all the places in my apartment that were a mess the bathroom magically escaped such destruction. Apart from neglect, the bathroom was absent of any trash or unopened boxes of crap. The sink was rather large for my apartment's modest size. My toothbrush stand and toothpaste tube being the only items that sat upon that counter, adding to the sparseness of the space.

The air in the room shifted. As I raised my head from the sink I noticed my shadow against the wall.

But it was not my shadow.

And shadows do not wear golden cloaks.

I whipped around to find myself face to face with the statue in The Golden Cloak.

For a moment I expected death. I anxiously awaited the snapping of my neck, the crushing of my skull, the breaking of every bone in my pathetic body.

But it did nothing.

The statue stood there, motionless as ever, as an intangible wind blew the Golden Cloak tightly around its indiscernible form.

Outside of The Dreary I was able to notice the finer details of the statue.

It resembled the porous texture of lava rock, yet it was elegantly shaped by hands so precise they could not have been mortal.

It vaguely resembled a humanoid shape with a protrusion on its face where a nose should be and two sunken areas under a brow where the eyes should be.

Unlike in The Dreary I felt no overwhelming pain or compulsions.

Unlike in The Dreary I felt no apprehension about its presence.

Unlike in The Dreary I could touch it.

I wasn’t sure what I expected anymore. Outside of the glaringly obvious supernatural occurrence staring at me in my face, the statue was but an ordinary statue. The lava rock felt typical as ever, as if I had just attempted to naively take some from the sacred grounds upon which the lava cooled.

I caressed the statue's face with a gentle hand.

I felt pity, mourning, loss, a sorrow that I could only catch a distant glance of. A drop in a vast ocean of despair.

Then the rock became skin. Familiar skin with auburn hair.

She swayed gently with her feet only inches off the ground.

The world around me fell away and was replaced by different yet familiar walls.

Leena was dead, and her body hung limply before me.

We were in a bedroom, likely hers. I did not recall how I got here, but I recognized the place.

How could I ever forget these walls? These paper thin walls.

My panic, expected panic, reasonable panic, did not surface.

My brain was wrapped in a bondage of golden thread, I felt only what was necessary.

On the wall on the far end of the room, above her desk, was a clock.

The time was 5 am. The date displayed was Tuesday, August 19th.

But I knew for a fact that today, right now, was Monday, August 18th.

Was this a nightmare? By all accounts it should be. My girlfriend, dead, hanging from the ceiling in her old house.

But my brain could not be made to panic, to give into fear. It was on a leash. It had a new master. It did not permit me to feel fear.

This wasn’t a nightmare. It was a warning.

I can still save her. Maybe then she’ll forgive me. Or maybe I’ll-

Before I could finish the thought I was returned to the walls of my bathroom.

The book in hand I made a mad dash out the door.

Logic and reason were all I had but I nearly let them fly out the window as I raced down the streets. If I still had my car I could have been to Leena’s old place in half an hour maybe. If I had bus money I could have made it to her place in an hour or two.

But I had nothing. I had no one.

And it was all my fault.

And now Leena’s life is in my hands.

And if she dies it will be my fault.

When I had left the sun had already begun its descent into the ocean.

I had dashed up and through the old highway to the north side of the island, all the while avoiding cops who had likely been informed of a pedestrian running manically on the highway where pedestrians absolutely shouldn’t be.

By the time I made it to something resembling a sidewalk again it was already well past midnight.

My phone’s battery clung to the precious few percent that it still had.

Navigating in the dark was difficult, but I knew these streets like the back of my hand.

I knew all of them.

I had spent my life cleaning away The Dust from them.

And now I leave tracks as I race towards the one house I refused to clean ever again.

Rounding the familiar corner I stopped to catch my breath. I don’t know how I managed to run so long without stopping. I wasn’t a star athlete. I couldn’t out run anyone with two functioning legs even if the grand prize was a bottle of crown. But I guess desperation is a hell of a drug.

And adrenaline.

I made my way to the house, quick in pace but far from the almost full-blown sprint I had managed for hours.

And then I came face to face with the door I had hoped to never see again.

But It would not permit me a moment to contemplate my reality.

The door was in my way.

I charged through the door, hands wrapped around the leather bound book held at a low ready position.

The door gave way just as it did before.

Despite never having explored further into the house I instinctively made my way through the kitchen and down the hall towards Leena’s room.

Before I could approach the door I heard something tumble from within.

I threw open the door.

Before me I saw Leena hanging once again. But she did not sway gently, nor was she dead.

Without hesitation I quickly rushed to support her weight, eventually managing to untie her and rest her gently on the ground.

She was alive, but not out of danger.

I called for an ambulance.

“Why.”

A raspy voice spoke from the floor.

“Why are you here?” Leena asked me.

“Because I had to save your life.” I replied.

“If you wanted to save me you should have let me hang.”

The paramedics arrived shortly after.

Apparently her kids were staying over at a friend’s house. They said had I not been there when I was she likely would have died and not be discovered for hours.

Of course the police were involved, a stranger just so happens to break into a house and save a woman who tried to kill herself at the perfect time, and that person also happened to be the person who shot and killed her husband exactly one year ago to the date?

The thread snapped.

The cops held me and asked me a few questions, the usual, mostly details about the incident and how I knew to find her. I didn’t tell them that I had a vision of the future but I suspect my story about a concerned ex with a strong gut feeling didn’t do me any favors either.

Though since they lacked any reasonable evidence and likely surmised my scrawny frame wasn’t nearly strong enough to hang the woman myself they let me go free. Shockingly they asked nothing about how I managed to get in through the locked front door.

Putting my tax dollars to work I asked the officers for a ride to the hospital. I made the case that I was her emergency contact, assumedly as her most recent partner, and may be needed at the hospital.

They begrudgingly obliged, having no grounds to deny me my request and clearly seeing I had no means to go anywhere else on my own at the moment.

I arrived at the medical center after a much longer than usual journey. The officers, gracious as they were, wanted to grab some food on the way.

I wasn’t hungry, but then again they didn’t ask if I was, nor did they offer.

I waved the officers off and walked into the Emergency Department.

I was briefly screened by a security guard before a nurse quickly ran over to me.

“Hi, what brings you to the ER today?” She practically rushed out.

The nurse’s third energy drink of the night clearly reared its head.

“I’m here to see a patient, actually.” I replied, meekly.

She seemed to deflate at that response but also appeared to be relieved.

“Oh, well we don’t really do visitors here.” She clarified, awkwardly attempting to hide her annoyance.

“Im her boyfr-“ I cut myself off, “I’m… it’s complicated but im pretty sure I’m her emergency contact right now.”

The nurse furrowed her brow as she examined me. Her tired eyes scrutinized every detail of my face.

“Who are you here for?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Leena Murakami.”

The Nurse quickly checked something on a nearby workstation.

“Doesn’t seem like she updated her contact history in a while,” she muttered staring at the computer, “but I also don’t see anyone else listed here.”

The nurse seemed hesitant.

“I’m the one who found her,” I blurted out.

“Oh, shit,” the nurse slipped.

“Oh my goodness I’m so sorry about-“ she protested but i raised my hand to cut her off.

“No no it's, it’s fine,” I assured her, “just let me see her.”

The nurse, now in a much more accommodating mood, took me through the department to her bay.

“She’s conscious but resting right now,” the nurse explained, “it’s a little hard for her to talk so we gave her something to write with if she wants.”

She then leaned over and pressed a button on the bed, causing Leena’s bed to slowly rise her up into a sitting position.

“Hey Leena,” the nurse spoke gently, “Your boyfriend is here.”

Leena’s eyes opened slowly.

“Ill just be in the hall” the nurse said as she quickly ducked behind the curtain.

“Hey, Leena.” I said as I gently grabbed her hand.

It felt cold. Colder than I ever remembered it.

“What the hell do you want?” She said in a strained hiss.

“What I want?” I replied, somewhat stunned, “I want you. I miss you Leena.”

Her gaze scrunched into a mixture of confusion and disgust.

“What the hell are you on about?” Leena spat.

“So much has happened since you left,” I started, “I’ve been getting my shit together. I haven’t been drinking, I only smoke a few times a day now, I started cleaning again-“

Leena cut me off.

“What the fuck do you want with me?”

“I want you back, I want us back together,” I pleaded, “it's been a rough year but I think we can make it work.”

Her eyes filled with a searing rage that I felt burning a hole into my forehead.

“What the fuck are you talking about? You’re nothing but the bastard who killed my husband.”

Her words broke through The Dust that had filled my mind.

“You took away a father from his kids. He was a good man, unlike you.”

“He was an abusive piece of shit.” I rebutted. My words felt hollow.

“And you knew that from the four seconds you saw from outside? You knew nothing about us. Not every relationship is paradise.”

“He would have killed you one day.” I weakly replied.

“I died the moment you shot the man I loved,” Leena shot back, “so thanks for saving me, twice, but I never want anything to do with you. I hope I never see you again, you insane wannabe cop.”

Leena broke into a coughing fit.

I took the hint and left.

I walked out of the ER and just kept walking.

I don’t know where I was walking to except that it wouldn’t be home. Or whatever that place really is.

I just walked.

Down the road. Up the hills. Across the bridges. Around the bends.

The Pali Lookout. Closed at this time of night. I did not care.

I climbed over the gate, walked past the various caution signs, and climbed atop the ledge. As I stood there I stared into the grassy abyss beyond. The scant moonlight reflected a sliver of silver on every blade in the flowing sea of grass.

I would join the countless thousands who rest below. Cornered at the edge.

“You know it’s dangerous up there right?”

I searched for the voice. It was filled with a hint of sass and a lot of sarcasm. A voice that belonged to a young woman.

“Yeah that's kind of why I’m up here,” I replied sarcastically, “what’s your excuse?”

“Maybe I’m here because I’m patrolling the place for trespassers.”

Who the fuck is this girl?

“Look I’m not exactly interested in ice breakers with a stranger at the moment so could you do me the decency of either just killing me or leaving me alone so I can do it myself?”

I turned to face the source of the voice.

“Is this a hallucination too?” I asked her.

Even in the dimly moonlit night, I could never forget that crimson hair tied into a ponytail.

“This is real, Aiden.” She replied.

“You were there,” I started, “at the office, and then again in the lobby.”

“I’m surprised you made me out through the prosthetics.” She replied as she smiled coyly.

“The hair gave it away.” I lied.

“Strange that you managed to see through a wig Aiden, didn’t have that noted down as something you could do”

I turned to face her.

“So what is this?” I asked plainly, “are you here to kill me?”

“Why would I do that?” The woman asked, taken aback.

“I’ve made a lot of enemies, left most of them alive.” I bluffed.

“Your biggest tackle was killing a wifebeater,” the woman recited as she paced, “a good kill.”

“Didn’t realize you were a fan.”

“I’m more of an investigator.” She joked.

“And what’s so special about me?” I asked.

She stopped her pacing.

“That book, for starters.” she said, pointing to the book still firmly held in my hands.

“What about it? It's just a book.”

“You and I both know that's a lie.”

I tightened my grip on the book.

“Who are you, really?” I take a step towards her, “and what do you know about all of this?”

She took a step back in response.

“You know more about that book than we do,” she bounced back, “we were hoping you could tell us.”

“And who’s ‘we?’”

The woman closed her arms around her.

“In about three hours from now your body will be discovered and positively identified in one of two ways.” She started.

“What the fuck-“ I started but was cut off.

“HPD will either be alerted to a suicide at the Pali Lookout and find your body at around 9:30 am today, alternatively an apartment fire will be reported to the HFD where they will discover a single fatality, charred beyond recognition.”

“So you are trying to kill me?” I asked again, somewhat flabbergasted but mostly in shock.

“You died the moment you came up here Joseph Aiden,” she started, “your conviction was laid bare. If it weren’t for me you’d be a twitching mess in the grass right now.”

“So why go through the effort of burning my apartment down then? To suffer for my deeds?”

I watched as a cocky smile slowly grew across her face. I had been avoiding the obvious.

“You want to fake my death.” I stated.

Her face remained unchanged.

“What does it matter? How could I be worth that effort?”

The woman approached.

“We require the help of people who are able to make sense out of irrational things.” She started.

As she spoke she began to pace around me in a circle, like a predator circling its prey.

“You’re a jobless, broke, alcoholic playboy with no real moral compass,” she lobbed insult after insult, “but yet of all the people who have held that book you are the only one who hasn’t gone insane yet.”

I’m sane? Me?

I scoffed at the implication

“I’m sorry, but I just spent the past year in a psychotic hallucination where I was dating, and cheating on, the widow of the guy I murdered,” I began to excessively elaborate, “then I get a vision of the future where she hangs herself…”

She watches me in amusement as I pour out the thoughts that had stayed trapped within my mind for too long.

“Not to mention that fucking statue invading my dreams and reshaping my personal hell, The Dreary, into some nightmare capital-“

“And?” she interrupted.

“And? And what?” I asked, befuddled.

She straightened herself.

“What’s all that got to do with anything?”

I’m seriously doubting my own sanity, this can’t be real.

“I’m a mentally unstable wreck who couldn’t even get a job.” I clarified.

She laughed.

“Oh sorry yeah that was us,” she said flippantly, “we needed you desperate enough to come to us in the first place.”

“You’ve been messing with my job applications?”

“Intercepting them. To anyone looking in, it's like you haven’t filed a single application.”

“You could have knocked, or called, or just kidnapped me, there's a million better ways to get someone’s attention.”

She shifted.

“You think we didn’t try?”

Well, given I can barely remember the past year, how would I have known?

“Besides,” she relaxed, “not like we can be so overt all the time. This is the longest I’ve been let out on the surface for years.”

She leaned her head back and gazed up at the stars.

“Poor David only got to come up for the interview.”

I began to grow frustrated with the pointless cat and mouse.

“So what the hell does the CIA want with me?”

The woman froze for a moment, then fought back a chuckle.

“You think I’m- we’re CIA?” She asked in disbelief.

“Messing with my job applications, the whole fake office thing, kinda the whole CIA playbook yeah?”

If I knew better I’d say she looked as if I had just called her ugly.

“So that ability of yours is only limited to geometries, you really don’t know who or what we are?” She replied as a wave of revelation gently washed over her face.

“So you’re not CIA?” I asked again.

She sat down on the ledge next to me, spun around, and cast her gaze across the moonlit valley.

“We are above any singular world government. We act with the singular goal of protecting,” she gestured to the valley and the city lights twinkling in the distance, “all of this. All of mankind.”

She turned her gaze towards me. As our eyes met I saw a raging fire blaze within her, a passion that managed to remain subdued letting off little more than playful sparks just minutes before.

“And I want you to be a part of it.”

I wanted to come up with some witty retort, some backhanded reply that allowed me to demonstrate my lack of interest in her blatantly obvious lie.

But I didn’t, because I believed her. Against my better judgement, what little I could still claim to have, I wholeheartedly believed her.

And I could not explain why.

My grip on the book relaxed slightly. A bit too much. I felt it slip from my grasp.

My body acted before my brain did and I quickly reached for the book and lost my footing in the process.

I fell.

Amidst the rushing of wind I heard something faintly. Someone shouting.

“…emergency discharge plus one on my position!”

The world around me began to feel alive, the air seemed to be a buzz as the hair on my body stood on end. For a moment I saw a faint blue glow envelop my person.

A brilliant blinding light and deafening roar flooded my senses as I felt my body propelled by an unknown force, which slammed me face first into a cold, hard surface.

My vision and hearing slowly returned, but as they did I began to doubt whether or not they truly had.

I found myself on the floor of a sterile white room. My vision was still blurry but with what I could see I saw a doorway at the far end of the room flanked by two blurs that appeared to be people. As I looked below me I discovered that I was on a massive pane of glass or some other hard and transparent material, beneath which sat a mass of machinery that defied every attempt I made to interpret. Similarly above me hung a mirrored construct, though exposed to the open air and venting steam from an upper assembly, betraying the fact it had been recently used.

Very recently.

“Jesus Christ, Aiden try not to kill yourself when people are talking to you,” came a familiar, condescending voice.

As I craned my head to look I noticed the two figures on the far end of the room shift their posture and begin approaching rapidly.

“Stand down, he’s my case,” she said, putting herself between the men and myself, “he’s the new hire.”

“I didn’t agree to anything.” I groaned.

“There’s no going back now,” the woman said as she helped me to my feet.

“Agent Feng,” one of the men said, “we have room 10 available for intake.”

“Perfect, mind giving him a hand?” Agent Feng said as she all but threw me at the unprepared man.

The men, who I later learned were guards, offered their assistance in half-walking, half-dragging me down an equally clinically white corridor into an inconspicuous room.

The room itself was mostly unlit with the only source of light being a ceiling mounted projector casting onto the far wall, in front of which were several rows of cheap metal chairs.

“The first time is a bit disorientating, though that fall is what gave you the concussion.” Agent Feng explained, parting my hair to examine the very painful and bleeding bump on my forehead.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, wincing from the pain.

“The ESD, they’ll go over it in the intro” she replied, patting my head just above the sore spot.

The guards sat me down front and center, then left the room.

Agent Feng sat next to me, a few chairs away.

“It doesn’t actually stop your momentum but I hear they’re working on a way to make it do that. Anyway, we’ll send you down to medical after we finish up intake.”

“Oh and by the way,” she said, making her way to the wall mounted controls, “welcome to the IFCN.”

A month had passed since that night. The night Agent Feng forcefully ripped me out of my miserable, incoherent existence and gave me a purpose.

I had only been up to the surface once since then, to watch my funeral.

Not many people get to say that, and it’s a privilege I never wanted.

To my surprise, the myriad of friends and associates who I had effectively told to go to hell actually showed up. They even cried for me. Though none more so than my parents.

I was their only child.

Agent Feng, Kaiga, had held true to her word. It was a closed casket funeral. I pray they had used a fake body.

It was a good thing that there were so many people who came, made it easier to blend in to a crowd that wasn’t looking for me.

Unsurprisingly Leena didn’t come. Even after a month it’s difficult to shed that false life I had imagined. Even harder to wake up every morning to a livestream of the morning sun.

I hadn’t dreamt of The Dreary since that night either. Though I keep the book with me at all times out of an abundance of caution.

I am dead to the world. I now walk in my own shadow. I sleep below so that I may lay down my life to protect others from what they do not know, what they cannot understand, and what they must never see.

If it weren’t for the alcohol, I could never sleep comfortably again.

And truthfully, I don’t think anyone here does.

Every dream is an eternity.

Every night my dreams are the same. Always have been for as long as I could remember my dreams.

Every night I would awake in my bed. Except it wasn’t my actual bed. The world around me would always be covered in this ephemeral fog that permeated every single inch of space.

And the dust. My god the dust.

All I ever did was clean.

The shadows never changed. The day never began. The Dust would never end.

I would continue on from my room into the hall, then into the bathroom, then the closets, then the kitchen, then the floors. Never stopping until the entire apartment was free of the dust.

Then I would step into the outside world. The world that was not my world. The world of The Dust and The Gray.

The Dreary.

Light from above would fight its way through the fog, never making it to the hollow ground below.

Where there should have been roads, dirt, grass, and trees, there was stone.

Cobblestoned roads, stonework trees, and fields of slate.

All of it covered in The Dust.

As I would move through the still air the dust would form on my wake and disperse, leaving a trail of my presence throughout this abandoned, forgotten world.

My world of Dust, my Dreary.

I would look up into that fog filled sky and gaze into the twin hues of yellow and white whose muffled screams struggled to breach the all-but-impenetrable fog above, scattering their voices into the omnipresent haze.

Then I would wake up.

Today was no different.

A woman stood just beyond the doorway, her flowing auburn hair flailing about as she shouted at me. I couldn’t really make out the words. She seemed familiar.

Something hard and somewhat heavy hit me square in the face, then plopped into my lap.

My still-blurry sight returned to me just in time to watch the woman march off down the hallway.

Her exit was announced by the slamming of the front door.

My bed was a mess. Clothes were strewn about, the sheets were everywhere, and some were stained with a substance I could not identify. The morning sun cast my shadow on the opposite wall from behind me.

My head pounded from within, memories of last night sat chained behind an alcohol-soaked lock.

My eyes trailed downward to my lap, falling on the object that was hurled at me only moments earlier.

It was a black, featureless, leather-bound book. A fairly hefty one at that.

Rubbing my eyes to confirm I wasn’t completely blind, I took a closer look at the book’s cover.

It was completely blank.

I turned over the book, expecting somehow that repeatedly flipping the book over would magically cause it to manifest some form of identifying information.

I caught a glimpse of something on the spine as I did so. It glistened in the morning sun and sparkled like diamonds.

It was a sigil. A symbol etched in gold, a gold so vibrant that the world around me appeared gray by comparison.

“Oh shit,” the words shot out of my mouth before my brain could even register I was speaking, “Leena!”

I’m such a fucking moron.

I fell onto the floor as my legs refused to accept my authority over them, getting tangled in the bedsheets in the process.

I crawled towards the nearest pile of, mostly, clean clothes I could identify.

Getting dressed was a challenge. I fought with my own body just to put on a shirt, whilst barely navigating the hectic and wayward expletive laden rants that crashed through the windows of my sullied mind palace.

Of all the thoughtless and horrible things, how could I have forgot today was the day she came back from her-

I paused in the hallway, pants half on and shirt on backwards.

Where did she go anyway? Was it a work thing? Was it some kind of vacation?

Why did I care?

My emotional rollercoaster came to a stand-still as the emergency brakes kicked on.

I let the half assembled outfit slide off my unkempt form as I shuffled into the kitchen.

That's right, I didn’t care. I don’t care.

The dishes in the sink were clean, as they should be.

The counter was full of random brand-new crap brought home that was never properly put away and just left in its assorted state of limbo storage, not that I needed the counter space anyway. The side effect of a weak will.

I threw the kettle on and threw a pan on the stove. I figured I should have myself a good old fashioned breakfast of eggs whatever-was-left-in-the-fridge, coffee, and a ciggy.

I dug through the fridge and managed to salvage some cheese, a sausage, and a whole tomato. I chopped them up roughly and dumped them into the simmering mixture of egg and butter.

I slid the scrambled egg mixture onto my plate, grabbed my cup of liquid life, and sat my ass down on a spot I had cleared on the couch.

The TV had nothing interesting on but I left it on the food channel anyway. It was nice to eat with someone.

As I put out the cigarette in the overflowing tray I glanced over at the pile of marked envelopes on the table. Most of them said “Past Due.”

After dumping my dishes back in the sink I stumbled back into my room looking for… something.

The guy.

The cute one. Chatted me up at the bar and drank me under the table, and my sheets. I think he was a blonde, or brown? Or maybe I had hoped he was.

He must have taken off when Leena started screaming. I didn’t see any of his clothes around the bed.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye. Though it's refreshing to be on the other end of that for once.

Why did she throw that book at me?

I ruffled through the haphazardly strewn bedsheets until my hands came into contact with what I was searching for. The book Leena had thrown at my face just before she left.

With some painkillers and another cup of coffee on-board, I could think clearly enough and took a closer examination of the book.

Flipping through its pages I was met with blank after blank page.

The entire damn thing is just blank. Was this some kind of journal for me?

A gift? But why would she…

I threw it in a pile next to my side of the bed.

The rest of the day was filled with job applications.

The age of the Internet has done wonders for many aspects of humanity. Job applications were one sector made infinitely worse.

Every job fair booth I went to had a QR code to scan for their online applications system. Every Now Hiring sign in a store had that godforsaken block-grid in lieu of a simple piece of paper and a proper interview.

After the fifteenth online application referral I decided to call it for the day.

I sat down on my slightly cleaner couch and looked down at my phone, expecting to see dozens of notifications. Ideally at least one.

Instead I saw none.

No calls, no texts, no nothing.

The sun hung low over the horizon. Its waning radiance coaxed the sky into a storm of fire that lapped at the ever growing ocean of blues and purples.

It shone directly into my fucking eyes.

Shuffling my lazy ass over on the couch, I poured out the remaining contents of a bottle of whiskey into my cold cup of half drank coffee.

The evening consisted of aimlessly scrolling through various social media feeds and TV channels. Everywhere I looked I saw people on dream vacations, getting married, or buying their first homes.

Guess I’m just a fucking loser, huh.

Dinner was more whiskey, from a new bottle this time, and another menthol ciggy. I wasn’t particularly hungry as it was.

Where the hell was Leena? She stormed out and hasn’t even texted me. Maybe shes-

I quickly downed the rest of my glass before I could finish the thought. The burning warmth of the spiced whiskey rips me out of my own head.

As the whiskey level in my bottle lowered the moon rose in response. It was close to midnight by the time the bottle was empty.

The floor was my home now. This was not negotiable. Any attempt to stand at the moment would surely result in me splitting my head open on a table, or worse, ejecting the precious ounces of whiskey that I had been struggling to keep down for the past hour. The world around me decided it was time to begin rotating at ridiculous speeds, rendering me unable to stand upright.

Clinging to the ground beneath me, I dragged myself to my bedroom and eventually, I pulled myself up onto my bed.

The spinning only worsened. I closed my eyes and did my best to ignore it.

Eventually the spinning stopped and I awoke in my bed.

But this wasn’t my bed.

In what felt like no time at all I had returned to serve my sentence. My eternal penance for the crimes I must have committed at some point.

Once more I proceeded through my charge of the cleaning of The Dust.

All my life, all that I could remember anyway, I had never been able to dream. Not properly. Instead of nightmares of being naked at school or all my teeth falling out I dreamt of this place, The Dreary.

The Dreary was an empty world, a dead world, one that remained contained by a dense impenetrable fog that snuffed out all but the most diffused light from the sky above.

The Dreary was, as far as I could tell, an exact copy of the world. Save for the fact that anything not built by human hands was replaced by stone abstracts that, while giving the idea of what they're supposed to be, look nothing like it. Imagine if a tree wasn’t a tree but instead a jagged spine of stone that clawed upwards through the fog. Sure the base idea of a tree is there but that’s not a fucking tree.

There was nothing living within The Dreary. Even the wind did not blow. The world did not breathe. It was still, frozen, a corpse of identity.

Yet tonight was different.

The Dreary demanded my attention.

It had not done that before.

I broke from my charge and answered, walking towards the front door of my copied apartment.

I saw nothing new outside. The same cobble roads divided the same slate fields bearing the same stonework trees.

Except there was something new.

There had never been something new.

A great and grand staircase made of the most radiant marble ascended into the sky and well beyond the fog. Its brilliance made the fog seem black by comparison.

At the foot of these stairs stood a statue. A black statue covered in a golden cloak that fluttered in a non-existent wind.

“What the fuck?” My voice carried across The Dreary, hollow and raspy.

There’s never anything new. Nothing new, never. There was only The Dust, there was only The Dreary. What the hell is this?

I felt my breath become erratic-

I felt my breath.

I have never breathed before in a dream. I had never spoken.

I could not take my eyes off of the cloaked statue.

I could not resist the movement of my legs. Yet again my body refused to obey me as I was marched down the stairs of my apartment building.

The Dust does not react to me.

In what felt like seconds I found myself kneeling before the cloaked statue. It towered over me, but its height seemed to vary as my eyes rattled around in their sockets.

I clutched my head as I hissed an empty scream in agony. I felt a thousand hands trying to push their way out from within my mind, held back by a single flimsy door.

I strained to look upwards at the statue.

As I did I caught a glimpse of long auburn hair.

I shot upright in my bed.

The accumulating saliva in my mouth signaled to me that I should start running to the bathroom.

As the last of my wretches escaped my hanging maw, I caught a glance of my reflection.

I saw myself. Not in some artsy self-abstract sort of sense, but in a very literal sense.

Not the scars, nor the rage, nor the often bloodshot and tired eyes that have stared back at me for longer than I bothered to remember.

My eyes. My self.

I felt the fog that clouded my thoughts lift ever so slightly.

For the first time in ages I could think without strain. The string of consciousness was no longer a spider web of spider webs but was now a constant, deliberate, string that I could trace from end to end hanging freely in the newfound void.

I saw the filth, the disgust, the depravity that surrounded me.

How long had I lived like this?

I hopped in the shower to wash off days, no, weeks of god knows what from my skin. The water that rolled off my body and down into the drain was noticeably darker than the water that came out of the shower head.

I located the cleanest ensemble of clothes I could find; a pair of shorts and a button up short sleeve shirt that hung on my desk chair.

The unrelenting summer heat would stand no chance against this climate appropriate ensemble.

As I waited for the kettle to boil I started clearing the kitchen counter of all of the trash and unopened impulse-purchase appliances that had made it their home.

By the time the whistling of the kettle arrived I had already bagged up two bags of what had to be no less than $1000 of unused appliances. In their state I doubt I could get anyone to take them even for free.

The first sip of the black sludge that had the audacity to call itself coffee left a searing trail as it traveled down my throat. Even if I had any milk that wasn’t out of date or sugar that wasn’t crawling with bugs it wouldn’t have been enough to blunt the blow of that demonic concoction.

I poured the entire mug of caffeinated sewage down the drain so that it may rejoin its kin. Instead I opted for a half drank can of POG left in the fridge.

As I began my war against grime in the kitchen I felt my phone buzz.

I quickly rinsed my hands and answered the incoming call.

“Hi, is this Joseph Aiden?” The voice on the other end spoke.

“Yes,” I started hesitantly, “this is him.”

It had been a while since I had heard anyone say my name. I patiently awaited the other side to get on with whatever it was they wanted. Maybe it was a scammer who wanted to extort me for all I’m worth. I hope he likes the zeros in my bank account, because that's all there is.

“My name is David DeGuzman, I’m calling in response to your application with us…” as the voice trailed on my mind honed in on something he said.

Application? When did I-

Stopping myself short as I glanced over at the pile of yet-to-be-mailed applications on the kitchen table.

“…we’d like to have you come in for an interview. What dates are you available this week?”

I felt my heart flutter.

“Any,” I practically shouted, “right now even I can come down right now.”

I cringed inside realizing what a desperate fool I must have come off as. Even if it was the honest truth, what if this screws with my chances at getting the job?

I paused.

What job am I even volunteering myself for anyway? Sure it didn’t really matter at this point but-

“You know,” David started, “I think we have an opening around noon today, you think you could make it down to The Mall building?”

Thank god it’s close.

“Yeah that's like five minutes away from me,” I chuckled, overwhelmed and nervous beyond comparison.

“Great. We’re room 1304 on the 13th floor. You can check in with the front desk once you arrive. See you there.”

The line dropped.

As my phone returned to the lock screen I saw the time was 11:24.

While it was true that I wasn’t that far from The Mall building, I had realized far too late that any of my far more acceptable business attire was in desperate need of a wash. Sure, the shirt I was wearing was formal enough, shorts and slippers would likely get me marked down.

I combed through my room to see if perhaps I had missed any nicer clothes. Much to my dismay I had not.

Resigning myself to my fate I gritted my teeth and pushed on out the door.

My walk down to the mall was less of a casual walk and more of a heavily restrained sprint. My body happily obeyed my restraint, despite my legs screaming to let them break out in a sprint. The tightness in my chest, like a coiled spring, desired to be released through my legs.

The Mall itself was, to my knowledge, the largest outdoor mall in the world. On any given day it was bustling with tourists from all over the world. Situated right across the street from a massive beach park and sat just on the edge of Waikiki, It was arguably the social center of the whole island. The south side of the island, anyway. The Mall Building was situated on the Mauka side of the mall, opposite the ocean side, which meant it was basically a straight walk from my shabby abode down the main road and right into The Mall.

On the walk more questions formed within me, the solemn line of thought formed into a structured diagram of red threads that stretched from one end of the void to the other.

What company was I even interviewing for? The Mall building was mostly just offices for anything you could imagine, private medical practices and outpatient clinics, law offices, engineering firms, hell even some small cafes.

And that name. David DeGuzman.

Not that I was an expert on names, but of all the names you hear around here I couldn’t help but feel that something was… off.

Before I could indulge my conspiracy further I realized I had entered into the elevator and was now en route to the 13th floor.

I was alone in the elevator. Despite the lobby otherwise being filled only I had entered this elevator.

Or at least I thought the lobby was full.

The doors opened into the 13th floor lobby. It was a modest little area with a few area chairs for people to sit as they wait for their family to do whatever business they have on this floor.

I walked out, passed the row of elevators and headed into the main hallway. There were no windows. The dull droning of the building's HVAC and the gentle buzzing of the fluorescent lights trickled through the air before being absorbed by the slight off-blue carpet that ran the length of the floor.

I nervously made my way to room 1304. Thankfully, or not, the room was close to the elevators. Just one door down after taking a right.

The door was blank aside from the room placard and an “hours of operation” sign.

I steadied myself, took a deep breath, and entered the room.

I entered a small office lobby. Two chairs sat awkwardly in the far corner next to a door that presumably led further into the sectioned off office area. A newly constructed drywall partition isolated the lobby area from the rest of the office floor space, leaving only a door and a cutout for the secretary or greeter to manage guests as they come in the door.

“Joseph Aiden?” A female voice called from out of sight.

“Uhh yes?” I answered cautiously.

A woman, appearing to be in her forties, approached the counter cutout from within the offices. Her bright red hair appeared almost plastic in the fluorescent lighting.

“Mr. DeGuzman is ready for you.” She said, bending down to interact with something below the counter.

I heard a soft click followed by a buzz.

The office door popped open and the woman beckoned me forth.

The hallway was more of the same. A drywall corridor with several doors on either side.

The door locked shut behind me with a buzz, startling me.

At the same time the door at the far end of the hall opened. A man wearing a blue floral shirt waved me down.

“Down here!” He called.

I quickly made my way inside the man’s office. The windows behind him were blocked off by heavy curtains, the only source of light being the ever-present fluorescent overhead lights.

“I’m David,” he said, extending his hand, “pleasure to meet you.”

I reciprocated his gesture and returned a firm handshake.

“Likewise.” I replied.

The man, David, had well kept short black hair and a comically yet impeccably well kept ‘70s mustache that reflected some of the overhead light.

David gestured for me to sit and I obliged.

The office itself was a modest space, the desk at which we were sat was adorned with the typical office fare, albeit a bit lacking in some finer details and a bit too clean for it to be in constant use.

“So, about-“ I started before David cut me off.

“You’re 28 correct?” David asked as he held up some papers.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Can you tell me a little bit about your previous employer?”

I paused.

My previous employer? Who-

“Oh,” the thought found its way to me, “yes sorry I was with a PI firm, Maikai Investigations.”

“Yes them,” David affirmed leaning back in his silent office chair, “what kind of work were you involved in?”

I felt my palms become clammy but I persisted and gave him the sales pitch.

“Usually a client would come to us and ask us to get information about someone. That's the very base level of things,” I elaborated, “could be, you know, someone wanting to know about their birth parents. Someone wanting to know if a spouse is being unfaithful, really just about anything involving information.”

“Were you good at what you did?” David asked, his words laced with a substance I couldn’t fully make out.

“I’d like to think I was,” I said with false bravado, “never had any clients complain and I always completed the job-“

“Even when you were asked to do things that might have been morally objectionable?”

I froze.

I wasn’t a saint. Still aren’t. But I did what I was asked and did a damn fine job of it. If someone had a problem with it they can sort it out with the cops.

“Absolutely,” I said, almost bragging, “especially when others would refuse to take the job.”

“Why?”

David’s words now came with an air of genuine curiosity.

“Can I ask the relevance to the job?” I deflected.

David shifted forward in his chair, his poker face remaining unchanged since the start of the interview.

“Everything,” he replied eerily, “I’m not here to judge you, I want to know.”

David stared at me with an intensity I had reserved only for stains in my sink.

“Because the job needed to be done,” I started, “and I liked the challenge.”

David’s eyes perked up at that.

“The challenge?”

I furrowed my brow.

“Every case was a puzzle,” I leaned in, “and I was the best damn puzzle solver in that organization.”

I winced.

“Then why’d you leave?” David shot back.

Ignoring the blatant cringe that was whatever the hell I just called myself, David’s question shot through and shattered my false bravado like a bullet through a kitchen window.

“I was banging the boss's wife.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the reason.

David’s poker face slipped as he let out a hint of disappointment.

“The analyst position we are looking for has some caveats,” he started as he began flipping through the papers on his desk, “one is honesty. We expect our analysts to be completely honest with us.”

His eyes locked onto mine.

I caught a glimpse of the papers on his desk. One was a memo entitled “Investigative Incident,” left conveniently in my line of sight.

“I overstepped.” I replied begrudgingly.

“Honesty is paramount,” David began as laid down the papers, “I don’t mean some half-assed corporate honesty, I mean if what I ask is for you to delve into how much you hate your boss, your life, or whatever escapades you and a secretary got up to, we expect the full un-adulterated details.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

What the fuck is he on about? Sure I appreciate that this job lets you cuss your boss out in the name of honesty but isn’t this a bit much?

“Just what exactly is an analyst here?” I started, “What are the hours? The responsibilities? The pay?”

The more questions I asked the more flustered I became. I knew utterly nothing about this place or this supposed job I was now interviewing for.

As a matter of fact how the hell did this guy get a hold of that-

“Anything further requires an NDA,” David cut, interrupting my thoughts.

“I have to sign an NDA to even know who or what I'm working for?” I asked, emboldened and incredulous.

David raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, you do,” he replied, “and you’re going to be asked far more uncomfortable questions than the ones I’m giving you now.”

Then it clicked.

Analyst position? I think I would have remembered applying for something so fancy sounding, at least compared to the myriad of fast food and retail positions I had been applying for.

“I don’t think I’ve ever applied for this position,” I said as I slowly stood up from my chair, “just who the hell are you?”

David smirked.

“Like I said, you sign this contract and I’ll answer all your questions.” David smiled.

His poker face slipped away revealing satisfaction and pride.

He slid a paper across his desk towards me, placing a pen at the top of the document.

The paper was a single page. Barely half. At the bottom was a place for my signature and nothing else.

I glanced at the page, not wanting to let my guard down. I caught one sentence that set off alarm bells within me.

“We are humanity’s first and last line of defense.”

My chest became a twist of panic, of confusion, of curiosity, of fear, and god knows what other emotions that humanity has yet to properly define.

“I’m not interested.” I said and made my way to the door.

David stood at his desk and watched as I hastily made my exit.

The door out of the office buzzed and opened as I approached.

“We’ll see you again, Aiden.” David said gently, his voice echoing down the hallway as the door to 1304 closed behind me.

The red threads in my mind formed a tangled mess that only grew as my questions remained unanswered.

As soon as I got home I made sure to lock the door.

I pulled out my phone to check the number that this organization had contacted me from.

It wasn’t there.

In the call history the last call shown was from a week ago.

From Leena.

I slumped down onto the couch.

I felt my chest constrict as a burning pain filled my chest, a twisting anxiety and yearning that sapped my breath away.

Why do I care? She knew what she was signing up for. She knew what I was.

I kept rationalizing.

I never said yes to her, I just didn’t say no. Not my fault she got all confused.

My sight became blurry.

Why’d she keep taking pity on me? Keep coming back to my dump of a house? Keep buying me shit I didn’t ask for? Keep-

The tears began to roll down my face.

Why couldn’t I care until now?

I bawled my eyes out. I cried and cried until the couch was soaked with my tears. I unleashed all the tension in my chest with a scream that surely pissed off the neighbors.

I cried, I screamed, I threw everything within arm’s reach at the wall hoping that if I threw it hard enough I could fix this mess. I threw a tantrum that would put a stubborn toddler to shame.

As a few hours pass as I lay spent on the couch at the epicenter of the disaster that trashed my living room.

“Leena…” I moaned mournfully into a tearstained pillow.

My eyes lazily scanned my surroundings, taking in the totality of my ruin and pathetic squalor.

All I could feel was a muted mix of disgust and hatred, aimed at myself.

I wished for nothing more than to never leave this couch again; better to join the rot and the refuse than continue my futile struggle against a life I had already destroyed.

A flame of insight flickered to life within my mind.

Just how the hell did those people, whoever they are, erase their call history from my phone?

After a brief but intense search online I came to a disturbing conclusion.Unless they had physical possession of my device, they could not hide my call history.

My eyes quickly darted to my door.

It was still locked up tight, right as it should be, some debris still blocking it from opening due to my earlier outburst.

I got up and inspected the jalousies.

The netting on the windows themselves remained undisturbed, even sporting a fine layer of dust. The jalousies too were equally undisturbed.

They didn’t break in. Or if they did they hid their tracks better than most, well enough to never be caught. But why go through all that effort just to delete a phone number? I could just look up the company by its address right?

I entered the address, suite 1304.

Nothing, at least for this decade. There are some old surface web files relating to a small life insurance company that once operated out of that address.

Feeling restless and seeing the sun still high in the sky, I decided to make my way back to the unit and get some answers.

Not fair they should know me so well without it being mutual.

Upon arriving in the lobby I spotted a building directory. I quickly scanned the registered suite numbers for 1304.

Not the first column, not the second, nor the third.

“Need help locating a business?”

I spun around to see a woman with long crimson hair, done up in a long pony tail.

“Oh, uh,” I fumbled my words.

Maybe I'm a little colorblind but that crimson looked auburn for a brief but uncomfortably long second.

“Im looking for the name of a business that operated out of suite 1304.” I explained to the young woman.

She squinted at the registry and scanned it intently.

“Strange,” she started, “I don’t see any, maybe we should go take a look?”

She beckoned me to the elevator lobby, to the cargo lift.

She swiped her ID card and the doors opened.

The cargo lift was very spacious and surprisingly well kept for being used to haul god-knows-what.

She walked over to the button panel and selected the 13th floor. Unlike the other elevators this one had a “Basement” floor button. The elevator had ascended at a far greater rate than the other one I had used earlier in the day.

We arrived on the 13th floor and she led me towards the suite. As we arrived we noticed a “For Lease” sign with an address for a corporate realty website.

“It doesn’t look like anyone has used this one in a while,” she frowned, “sorry that I couldn’t be of more help!”

Before I could respond she had already made her way back to the elevator and disappeared.

It was impossible, yet it was reality.

I had just been here maybe a few hours ago and the office where I’d had my interview was just gone.

As my thoughts began to settle they also began to drift. As they drifted and fluttered about in the subconscious wind of my psyche they fell upon a particular subject.

The hair, the auburn hair. Leena.

But the lady’s hair wasn’t auburn, it was practically crimson. Dyed. Healthy too.

She wasn’t Leena, so why did my thoughts find themselves wandering over to her? Just a similarity?

No, familiarity.

I’ve seen her before. Recently. But where?

The elevator came for me as I mulled over my thoughts. Scanning the panel I looked for the lowest floor option.

“Lobby.”

No basement floor option in this one. Probably just for the freight elevator.

As I walked out of the lobby and passed the ground floor loading dock I stopped.

In the office. She was there.

The receptionist had red hair. It was done up differently and partially obscured due to the contrasted office lighting but it was definitely, or probably, the same color.

But she was old, the lady who helped me couldn’t have been older than 30.

Unless they were using prosthetic makeup. But why the hell-

“Eh, out da way!” A voice announced from behind me.

A very impatient and upset package courier stood behind me with his cart full of parcels.

I quickly moved on wanting to avoid any awkward interactions.

The walk home was unpleasant.

A growing uneasiness in my gut had worked its way throughout my entire body. The traffic, people, buildings, even the sun all seemed so distant yet painfully close. Too close.

Was I being watched?

I glanced around. Nothing unusual, which only served to drive up my anxiety more.

I knew I was being watched, I could feel it, years of experience and training screamed the obvious to me but my eyes, my mind, I was blind to it.

I locked the door upon arriving home. Closed the windows and blinds too.

Still I felt the eyes, the presence, I was seen. Exposed. Vulnerable.

But that was impossible.

A thorough sweep of my house confirmed what I had already known; I was alone. Just me and my belongings.

I took a drag from the quickly emptying pack which helped ease the tension I felt. The feeling persisted.

Paranoia wasn’t unusual for me, though it was mostly back when I still worked as a PI. Most PIs had rules though. Standards. Maybe even a moral compass.

I didn’t.

The pay was good, real good, but it wasn’t about the pay. It was all about the thrill. It had been so long since I felt that fear, that ever watchful eye, that I forgot how good it felt. I had spent years binging on every substance I could get my hands in, trapped in my own mind.

Now, for the first time in years, I could feel that sensation coursing through my body like electricity.

When I awoke I once again found myself in The Dreary. I do not remember falling asleep.

But it had changed.

The Dust. The layer of dust that had coated the entire world was gone.

I rushed outside to see the fog, still ever present but much lighter. I could see further than ever before. Far enough to see that The Dreary had been rearranged.

The roads that had once mirrored their real-world counterpart were now gone. The houses all replaced with different, familiar structures. There was now just one long cobblestone boulevard that stretched from the foot of my apartment building to a massive tower. The Mall Building, behind which now was a massive ocean that expanded beyond the fog which replaced the massive beachpark, and mall, that would have normally sat behind it.

Gone was the marble staircase. Gone was the statue in the golden cloak.

Without thinking I began walking down the procession towards The Mall Building. Its upper floors pierced the fog and stretched into the unseen sky.

The structures that flanked the boulevard on either side were houses, most of them that is. Some were industrial buildings, one was a hotel.

Their commonality soon became apparent.

I had investigated cases involving each of these structures. An unfaithful husband having secret meetups with some girl half his age at the hotel, a string of disappearances tied to a warehouse with a cold trail, a teacher that had been using school equipment to manufacture narcotics, and many, many other escapades.

The closer to the sky scraper I got the more recent the structures were in my memory. Until eventually, just short of The Mall Building, my eyes fell upon the house I had blocked from my mind for years.

The house that sealed my fate, both giving and taking so much.

The place I first met Leena. The place I lost my job. The place I nearly lost my freedom. The place I thought I’d lose my life. The place with a shattered kitchen window.

My head was turned away from that house and toward The Mall Building.

I became unable to look away from it, my eyes transfixed on the lobby entrance.

Why would I want to look away? There is a mystery here, something to solve, to understand.

The words echoed in my mind, but they were not mine.

My legs marched themselves towards the opening and into the lobby. An elevator door was already open.

The cargo elevator.

Entering the elevator I scanned the button panel. The card reader was gone. Only one button remained.

“Basement.”

The doors closed as I hit the button.

I felt myself nearly float as the elevator descended at a rapid rate. Despite its apparent speed the ride seemed to go on for far too long.

Then it stopped.

The doors opened and before me was the office I had just been in earlier today.

Following that familiar path I proceeded into the hallway.

There was only one door. A door at the end of the hall. And it was open.

From the entrance I could see the windows were gone. Replaced by the marble staircase. The statue with the Golden Cloak stood in front of it.

I approached the statue and fell to my knees once again.

Voices.

Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions of voices began to echo in my mind. What small fragments I could grasp would only say one thing.

The Cataclysm.

Echoes of screams and fragments of agony filled my mind from a past long before what I had known. I knew not how, only that these voices were ancient beyond reason, ancient beyond knowledge, beyond what any human, any mortal had any right to hear let alone understand.

I felt the weight beneath the ground. I felt a pull below that threatened to swallow me whole.

My eyes struggled to focus on the statue, only seeing the fluttering of the golden cloak.

The staircase descended into an infinite darkness. It beckoned me forth.

My hand reached into my back pocket. I grabbed onto something firm and pulled it forth.

Immediately the voices silenced and I regained my strength.

In my hand was a featureless leather bound book with a golden sigil etched into its spine.

Every dream is an eternity.

Every night my dreams are the same. Always have been for as long as I could remember my dreams.

Every night I would awake in my bed. Except it wasn’t my actual bed. The world around me would always be covered in this ephemeral fog that permeated every single inch of space.

And the dust. My god the dust.

All I ever did was clean.

The shadows never changed. The day never began. The Dust would never end.

I would continue on from my room into the hall, then into the bathroom, then the closets, then the kitchen, then the floors. Never stopping until the entire apartment was free of the dust.

Then I would step into the outside world. The world that was not my world. The world of The Dust and The Gray.

The Dreary.

Light from above would fight its way through the fog, never making it to the hollow ground below.

Where there should have been roads, dirt, grass, and trees, there was stone.

Cobblestoned roads, stonework trees, and fields of slate.

All of it covered in The Dust.

As I would move through the still air the dust would form on my wake and disperse, leaving a trail of my presence throughout this abandoned, forgotten world.

My world of Dust, my Dreary.

I would look up into that fog filled sky and gaze into the twin hues of yellow and white whose muffled screams struggled to breach the all-but-impenetrable fog above, scattering their voices into the omnipresent haze.

Then I would wake up.

Today was no different.

A woman stood just beyond the doorway, her flowing auburn hair flailing about as she shouted at me. I couldn’t really make out the words. She seemed familiar.

Something hard and somewhat heavy hit me square in the face, then plopped into my lap.

My still-blurry sight returned to me just in time to watch the woman march off down the hallway.

Her exit was announced by the slamming of the front door.

My bed was a mess. Clothes were strewn about, the sheets were everywhere, and some were stained with a substance I could not identify. The morning sun cast my shadow on the opposite wall from behind me.

My head pounded from within, memories of last night sat chained behind an alcohol-soaked lock.

My eyes trailed downward to my lap, falling on the object that was hurled at me only moments earlier.

It was a black, featureless, leather-bound book. A fairly hefty one at that.

Rubbing my eyes to confirm I wasn’t completely blind, I took a closer look at the book’s cover.

It was completely blank.

I turned over the book, expecting somehow that repeatedly flipping the book over would magically cause it to manifest some form of identifying information.

I caught a glimpse of something on the spine as I did so. It glistened in the morning sun and sparkled like diamonds.

It was a sigil. A symbol etched in gold, a gold so vibrant that the world around me appeared gray by comparison.

“Oh shit,” the words shot out of my mouth before my brain could even register I was speaking, “Leena!”

I’m such a fucking moron.

I fell onto the floor as my legs refused to accept my authority over them, getting tangled in the bedsheets in the process.

I crawled towards the nearest pile of, mostly, clean clothes I could identify.

Getting dressed was a challenge. I fought with my own body just to put on a shirt, whilst barely navigating the hectic and wayward expletive laden rants that crashed through the windows of my sullied mind palace.

Of all the thoughtless and horrible things, how could I have forgot today was the day she came back from her-

I paused in the hallway, pants half on and shirt on backwards.

Where did she go anyway? Was it a work thing? Was it some kind of vacation?

Why did I care?

My emotional rollercoaster came to a stand-still as the emergency brakes kicked on.

I let the half assembled outfit slide off my unkempt form as I shuffled into the kitchen.

That's right, I didn’t care. I don’t care.

The dishes in the sink were clean, as they should be.

The counter was full of random brand-new crap brought home that was never properly put away and just left in its assorted state of limbo storage, not that I needed the counter space anyway. The side effect of a weak will.

I threw the kettle on and threw a pan on the stove. I figured I should have myself a good old fashioned breakfast of eggs whatever-was-left-in-the-fridge, coffee, and a ciggy.

I dug through the fridge and managed to salvage some cheese, a sausage, and a whole tomato. I chopped them up roughly and dumped them into the simmering mixture of egg and butter.

I slid the scrambled egg mixture onto my plate, grabbed my cup of liquid life, and sat my ass down on a spot I had cleared on the couch.

The TV had nothing interesting on but I left it on the food channel anyway. It was nice to eat with someone.

As I put out the cigarette in the overflowing tray I glanced over at the pile of marked envelopes on the table. Most of them said “Past Due.”

After dumping my dishes back in the sink I stumbled back into my room looking for… something.

The guy.

The cute one. Chatted me up at the bar and drank me under the table, and my sheets. I think he was a blonde, or brown? Or maybe I had hoped he was.

He must have taken off when Leena started screaming. I didn’t see any of his clothes around the bed.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye. Though it's refreshing to be on the other end of that for once.

Why did she throw that book at me?

I ruffled through the haphazardly strewn bedsheets until my hands came into contact with what I was searching for. The book Leena had thrown at my face just before she left.

With some painkillers and another cup of coffee on-board, I could think clearly enough and took a closer examination of the book.

Flipping through its pages I was met with blank after blank page.

The entire damn thing is just blank. Was this some kind of journal for me?

A gift? But why would she…

I threw it in a pile next to my side of the bed.

The rest of the day was filled with job applications.

The age of the Internet has done wonders for many aspects of humanity. Job applications were one sector made infinitely worse.

Every job fair booth I went to had a QR code to scan for their online applications system. Every Now Hiring sign in a store had that godforsaken block-grid in lieu of a simple piece of paper and a proper interview.

After the fifteenth online application referral I decided to call it for the day.

I sat down on my slightly cleaner couch and looked down at my phone, expecting to see dozens of notifications. Ideally at least one.

Instead I saw none.

No calls, no texts, no nothing.

The sun hung low over the horizon. Its waning radiance coaxed the sky into a storm of fire that lapped at the ever growing ocean of blues and purples.

It shone directly into my fucking eyes.

Shuffling my lazy ass over on the couch, I poured out the remaining contents of a bottle of whiskey into my cold cup of half drank coffee.

The evening consisted of aimlessly scrolling through various social media feeds and TV channels. Everywhere I looked I saw people on dream vacations, getting married, or buying their first homes.

Guess I’m just a fucking loser, huh.

Dinner was more whiskey, from a new bottle this time, and another menthol ciggy. I wasn’t particularly hungry as it was.

Where the hell was Leena? She stormed out and hasn’t even texted me. Maybe shes-

I quickly downed the rest of my glass before I could finish the thought. The burning warmth of the spiced whiskey rips me out of my own head.

As the whiskey level in my bottle lowered the moon rose in response. It was close to midnight by the time the bottle was empty.

The floor was my home now. This was not negotiable. Any attempt to stand at the moment would surely result in me splitting my head open on a table, or worse, ejecting the precious ounces of whiskey that I had been struggling to keep down for the past hour. The world around me decided it was time to begin rotating at ridiculous speeds, rendering me unable to stand upright.

Clinging to the ground beneath me, I dragged myself to my bedroom and eventually, I pulled myself up onto my bed.

The spinning only worsened. I closed my eyes and did my best to ignore it.

Eventually the spinning stopped and I awoke in my bed.

But this wasn’t my bed.

In what felt like no time at all I had returned to serve my sentence. My eternal penance for the crimes I must have committed at some point.

Once more I proceeded through my charge of the cleaning of The Dust.

All my life, all that I could remember anyway, I had never been able to dream. Not properly. Instead of nightmares of being naked at school or all my teeth falling out I dreamt of this place, The Dreary.

The Dreary was an empty world, a dead world, one that remained contained by a dense impenetrable fog that snuffed out all but the most diffused light from the sky above.

The Dreary was, as far as I could tell, an exact copy of the world. Save for the fact that anything not built by human hands was replaced by stone abstracts that, while giving the idea of what they're supposed to be, look nothing like it. Imagine if a tree wasn’t a tree but instead a jagged spine of stone that clawed upwards through the fog. Sure the base idea of a tree is there but that’s not a fucking tree.

There was nothing living within The Dreary. Even the wind did not blow. The world did not breathe. It was still, frozen, a corpse of identity.

Yet tonight was different.

The Dreary demanded my attention.

It had not done that before.

I broke from my charge and answered, walking towards the front door of my copied apartment.

I saw nothing new outside. The same cobble roads divided the same slate fields bearing the same stonework trees.

Except there was something new.

There had never been something new.

A great and grand staircase made of the most radiant marble ascended into the sky and well beyond the fog. Its brilliance made the fog seem black by comparison.

At the foot of these stairs stood a statue. A black statue covered in a golden cloak that fluttered in a non-existent wind.

“What the fuck?” My voice carried across The Dreary, hollow and raspy.

There’s never anything new. Nothing new, never. There was only The Dust, there was only The Dreary. What the hell is this?

I felt my breath become erratic-

I felt my breath.

I have never breathed before in a dream. I had never spoken.

I could not take my eyes off of the cloaked statue.

I could not resist the movement of my legs. Yet again my body refused to obey me as I was marched down the stairs of my apartment building.

The Dust does not react to me.

In what felt like seconds I found myself kneeling before the cloaked statue. It towered over me, but its height seemed to vary as my eyes rattled around in their sockets.

I clutched my head as I hissed an empty scream in agony. I felt a thousand hands trying to push their way out from within my mind, held back by a single flimsy door.

I strained to look upwards at the statue.

As I did I caught a glimpse of long auburn hair.

I shot upright in my bed.

The accumulating saliva in my mouth signaled to me that I should start running to the bathroom.

As the last of my wretches escaped my hanging maw, I caught a glance of my reflection.

I saw myself. Not in some artsy self-abstract sort of sense, but in a very literal sense.

Not the scars, nor the rage, nor the often bloodshot and tired eyes that have stared back at me for longer than I bothered to remember.

My eyes. My self.

I felt the fog that clouded my thoughts lift ever so slightly.

For the first time in ages I could think without strain. The string of consciousness was no longer a spider web of spider webs but was now a constant, deliberate, string that I could trace from end to end hanging freely in the newfound void.

I saw the filth, the disgust, the depravity that surrounded me.

How long had I lived like this?

I hopped in the shower to wash off days, no, weeks of god knows what from my skin. The water that rolled off my body and down into the drain was noticeably darker than the water that came out of the shower head.

I located the cleanest ensemble of clothes I could find; a pair of shorts and a button up short sleeve shirt that hung on my desk chair.

The unrelenting summer heat would stand no chance against this climate appropriate ensemble.

As I waited for the kettle to boil I started clearing the kitchen counter of all of the trash and unopened impulse-purchase appliances that had made it their home.

By the time the whistling of the kettle arrived I had already bagged up two bags of what had to be no less than $1000 of unused appliances. In their state I doubt I could get anyone to take them even for free.

The first sip of the black sludge that had the audacity to call itself coffee left a searing trail as it traveled down my throat. Even if I had any milk that wasn’t out of date or sugar that wasn’t crawling with bugs it wouldn’t have been enough to blunt the blow of that demonic concoction.

I poured the entire mug of caffeinated sewage down the drain so that it may rejoin its kin. Instead I opted for a half drank can of POG left in the fridge.

As I began my war against grime in the kitchen I felt my phone buzz.

I quickly rinsed my hands and answered the incoming call.

“Hi, is this Joseph Aiden?” The voice on the other end spoke.

“Yes,” I started hesitantly, “this is him.”

It had been a while since I had heard anyone say my name. I patiently awaited the other side to get on with whatever it was they wanted. Maybe it was a scammer who wanted to extort me for all I’m worth. I hope he likes the zeros in my bank account, because that's all there is.

“My name is David DeGuzman, I’m calling in response to your application with us…” as the voice trailed on my mind honed in on something he said.

Application? When did I-

Stopping myself short as I glanced over at the pile of yet-to-be-mailed applications on the kitchen table.

“…we’d like to have you come in for an interview. What dates are you available this week?”

I felt my heart flutter.

“Any,” I practically shouted, “right now even I can come down right now.”

I cringed inside realizing what a desperate fool I must have come off as. Even if it was the honest truth, what if this screws with my chances at getting the job?

I paused.

What job am I even volunteering myself for anyway? Sure it didn’t really matter at this point but-

“You know,” David started, “I think we have an opening around noon today, you think you could make it down to The Mall building?”

Thank god it’s close.

“Yeah that's like five minutes away from me,” I chuckled, overwhelmed and nervous beyond comparison.

“Great. We’re room 1304 on the 13th floor. You can check in with the front desk once you arrive. See you there.”

The line dropped.

As my phone returned to the lock screen I saw the time was 11:24.

While it was true that I wasn’t that far from The Mall building, I had realized far too late that any of my far more acceptable business attire was in desperate need of a wash. Sure, the shirt I was wearing was formal enough, shorts and slippers would likely get me marked down.

I combed through my room to see if perhaps I had missed any nicer clothes. Much to my dismay I had not.

Resigning myself to my fate I gritted my teeth and pushed on out the door.

My walk down to the mall was less of a casual walk and more of a heavily restrained sprint. My body happily obeyed my restraint, despite my legs screaming to let them break out in a sprint. The tightness in my chest, like a coiled spring, desired to be released through my legs.

The Mall itself was, to my knowledge, the largest outdoor mall in the world. On any given day it was bustling with tourists from all over the world. Situated right across the street from a massive beach park and sat just on the edge of Waikiki, It was arguably the social center of the whole island. The south side of the island, anyway. The Mall Building was situated on the Mauka side of the mall, opposite the ocean side, which meant it was basically a straight walk from my shabby abode down the main road and right into The Mall.

On the walk more questions formed within me, the solemn line of thought formed into a structured diagram of red threads that stretched from one end of the void to the other.

What company was I even interviewing for? The Mall building was mostly just offices for anything you could imagine, private medical practices and outpatient clinics, law offices, engineering firms, hell even some small cafes.

And that name. David DeGuzman.

Not that I was an expert on names, but of all the names you hear around here I couldn’t help but feel that something was… off.

Before I could indulge my conspiracy further I realized I had entered into the elevator and was now en route to the 13th floor.

I was alone in the elevator. Despite the lobby otherwise being filled only I had entered this elevator.

Or at least I thought the lobby was full.

The doors opened into the 13th floor lobby. It was a modest little area with a few area chairs for people to sit as they wait for their family to do whatever business they have on this floor.

I walked out, passed the row of elevators and headed into the main hallway. There were no windows. The dull droning of the building's HVAC and the gentle buzzing of the fluorescent lights trickled through the air before being absorbed by the slight off-blue carpet that ran the length of the floor.

I nervously made my way to room 1304. Thankfully, or not, the room was close to the elevators. Just one door down after taking a right.

The door was blank aside from the room placard and an “hours of operation” sign.

I steadied myself, took a deep breath, and entered the room.

I entered a small office lobby. Two chairs sat awkwardly in the far corner next to a door that presumably led further into the sectioned off office area. A newly constructed drywall partition isolated the lobby area from the rest of the office floor space, leaving only a door and a cutout for the secretary or greeter to manage guests as they come in the door.

“Joseph Aiden?” A female voice called from out of sight.

“Uhh yes?” I answered cautiously.

A woman, appearing to be in her forties, approached the counter cutout from within the offices. Her bright red hair appeared almost plastic in the fluorescent lighting.

“Mr. DeGuzman is ready for you.” She said, bending down to interact with something below the counter.

I heard a soft click followed by a buzz.

The office door popped open and the woman beckoned me forth.

The hallway was more of the same. A drywall corridor with several doors on either side.

The door locked shut behind me with a buzz, startling me.

At the same time the door at the far end of the hall opened. A man wearing a blue floral shirt waved me down.

“Down here!” He called.

I quickly made my way inside the man’s office. The windows behind him were blocked off by heavy curtains, the only source of light being the ever-present fluorescent overhead lights.

“I’m David,” he said, extending his hand, “pleasure to meet you.”

I reciprocated his gesture and returned a firm handshake.

“Likewise.” I replied.

The man, David, had well kept short black hair and a comically yet impeccably well kept ‘70s mustache that reflected some of the overhead light.

David gestured for me to sit and I obliged.

The office itself was a modest space, the desk at which we were sat was adorned with the typical office fare, albeit a bit lacking in some finer details and a bit too clean for it to be in constant use.

“So, about-“ I started before David cut me off.

“You’re 28 correct?” David asked as he held up some papers.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Can you tell me a little bit about your previous employer?”

I paused.

My previous employer? Who-

“Oh,” the thought found its way to me, “yes sorry I was with a PI firm, Maikai Investigations.”

“Yes them,” David affirmed leaning back in his silent office chair, “what kind of work were you involved in?”

I felt my palms become clammy but I persisted and gave him the sales pitch.

“Usually a client would come to us and ask us to get information about someone. That's the very base level of things,” I elaborated, “could be, you know, someone wanting to know about their birth parents. Someone wanting to know if a spouse is being unfaithful, really just about anything involving information.”

“Were you good at what you did?” David asked, his words laced with a substance I couldn’t fully make out.

“I’d like to think I was,” I said with false bravado, “never had any clients complain and I always completed the job-“

“Even when you were asked to do things that might have been morally objectionable?”

I froze.

I wasn’t a saint. Still aren’t. But I did what I was asked and did a damn fine job of it. If someone had a problem with it they can sort it out with the cops.

“Absolutely,” I said, almost bragging, “especially when others would refuse to take the job.”

“Why?”

David’s words now came with an air of genuine curiosity.

“Can I ask the relevance to the job?” I deflected.

David shifted forward in his chair, his poker face remaining unchanged since the start of the interview.

“Everything,” he replied eerily, “I’m not here to judge you, I want to know.”

David stared at me with an intensity I had reserved only for stains in my sink.

“Because the job needed to be done,” I started, “and I liked the challenge.”

David’s eyes perked up at that.

“The challenge?”

I furrowed my brow.

“Every case was a puzzle,” I leaned in, “and I was the best damn puzzle solver in that organization.”

I winced.

“Then why’d you leave?” David shot back.

Ignoring the blatant cringe that was whatever the hell I just called myself, David’s question shot through and shattered my false bravado like a bullet through a kitchen window.

“I was banging the boss's wife.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the reason.

David’s poker face slipped as he let out a hint of disappointment.

“The analyst position we are looking for has some caveats,” he started as he began flipping through the papers on his desk, “one is honesty. We expect our analysts to be completely honest with us.”

His eyes locked onto mine.

I caught a glimpse of the papers on his desk. One was a memo entitled “Investigative Incident,” left conveniently in my line of sight.

“I overstepped.” I replied begrudgingly.

“Honesty is paramount,” David began as laid down the papers, “I don’t mean some half-assed corporate honesty, I mean if what I ask is for you to delve into how much you hate your boss, your life, or whatever escapades you and a secretary got up to, we expect the full un-adulterated details.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

What the fuck is he on about? Sure I appreciate that this job lets you cuss your boss out in the name of honesty but isn’t this a bit much?

“Just what exactly is an analyst here?” I started, “What are the hours? The responsibilities? The pay?”

The more questions I asked the more flustered I became. I knew utterly nothing about this place or this supposed job I was now interviewing for.

As a matter of fact how the hell did this guy get a hold of that-

“Anything further requires an NDA,” David cut, interrupting my thoughts.

“I have to sign an NDA to even know who or what I'm working for?” I asked, emboldened and incredulous.

David raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, you do,” he replied, “and you’re going to be asked far more uncomfortable questions than the ones I’m giving you now.”

Then it clicked.

Analyst position? I think I would have remembered applying for something so fancy sounding, at least compared to the myriad of fast food and retail positions I had been applying for.

“I don’t think I’ve ever applied for this position,” I said as I slowly stood up from my chair, “just who the hell are you?”

David smirked.

“Like I said, you sign this contract and I’ll answer all your questions.” David smiled.

His poker face slipped away revealing satisfaction and pride.

He slid a paper across his desk towards me, placing a pen at the top of the document.

The paper was a single page. Barely half. At the bottom was a place for my signature and nothing else.

I glanced at the page, not wanting to let my guard down. I caught one sentence that set off alarm bells within me.

“We are humanity’s first and last line of defense.”

My chest became a twist of panic, of confusion, of curiosity, of fear, and god knows what other emotions that humanity has yet to properly define.

“I’m not interested.” I said and made my way to the door.

David stood at his desk and watched as I hastily made my exit.

The door out of the office buzzed and opened as I approached.

“We’ll see you again, Aiden.” David said gently, his voice echoing down the hallway as the door to 1304 closed behind me.

The red threads in my mind formed a tangled mess that only grew as my questions remained unanswered.

As soon as I got home I made sure to lock the door.

I pulled out my phone to check the number that this organization had contacted me from.

It wasn’t there.

In the call history the last call shown was from a week ago.

From Leena.

I slumped down onto the couch.

I felt my chest constrict as a burning pain filled my chest, a twisting anxiety and yearning that sapped my breath away.

Why do I care? She knew what she was signing up for. She knew what I was.

I kept rationalizing.

I never said yes to her, I just didn’t say no. Not my fault she got all confused.

My sight became blurry.

Why’d she keep taking pity on me? Keep coming back to my dump of a house? Keep buying me shit I didn’t ask for? Keep-

The tears began to roll down my face.

Why couldn’t I care until now?

I bawled my eyes out. I cried and cried until the couch was soaked with my tears. I unleashed all the tension in my chest with a scream that surely pissed off the neighbors.

I cried, I screamed, I threw everything within arm’s reach at the wall hoping that if I threw it hard enough I could fix this mess. I threw a tantrum that would put a stubborn toddler to shame.

As a few hours pass as I lay spent on the couch at the epicenter of the disaster that trashed my living room.

“Leena…” I moaned mournfully into a tearstained pillow.

My eyes lazily scanned my surroundings, taking in the totality of my ruin and pathetic squalor.

All I could feel was a muted mix of disgust and hatred, aimed at myself.

I wished for nothing more than to never leave this couch again; better to join the rot and the refuse than continue my futile struggle against a life I had already destroyed.

A flame of insight flickered to life within my mind.

Just how the hell did those people, whoever they are, erase their call history from my phone?

After a brief but intense search online I came to a disturbing conclusion.Unless they had physical possession of my device, they could not hide my call history.

My eyes quickly darted to my door.

It was still locked up tight, right as it should be, some debris still blocking it from opening due to my earlier outburst.

I got up and inspected the jalousies.

The netting on the windows themselves remained undisturbed, even sporting a fine layer of dust. The jalousies too were equally undisturbed.

They didn’t break in. Or if they did they hid their tracks better than most, well enough to never be caught. But why go through all that effort just to delete a phone number? I could just look up the company by its address right?

I entered the address, suite 1304.

Nothing, at least for this decade. There are some old surface web files relating to a small life insurance company that once operated out of that address.

Feeling restless and seeing the sun still high in the sky, I decided to make my way back to the unit and get some answers.

Not fair they should know me so well without it being mutual.

Upon arriving in the lobby I spotted a building directory. I quickly scanned the registered suite numbers for 1304.

Not the first column, not the second, nor the third.

“Need help locating a business?”

I spun around to see a woman with long crimson hair, done up in a long pony tail.

“Oh, uh,” I fumbled my words.

Maybe I'm a little colorblind but that crimson looked auburn for a brief but uncomfortably long second.

“Im looking for the name of a business that operated out of suite 1304.” I explained to the young woman.

She squinted at the registry and scanned it intently.

“Strange,” she started, “I don’t see any, maybe we should go take a look?”

She beckoned me to the elevator lobby, to the cargo lift.

She swiped her ID card and the doors opened.

The cargo lift was very spacious and surprisingly well kept for being used to haul god-knows-what.

She walked over to the button panel and selected the 13th floor. Unlike the other elevators this one had a “Basement” floor button. The elevator had ascended at a far greater rate than the other one I had used earlier in the day.

We arrived on the 13th floor and she led me towards the suite. As we arrived we noticed a “For Lease” sign with an address for a corporate realty website.

“It doesn’t look like anyone has used this one in a while,” she frowned, “sorry that I couldn’t be of more help!”

Before I could respond she had already made her way back to the elevator and disappeared.

It was impossible, yet it was reality.

I had just been here maybe a few hours ago and the office where I’d had my interview was just gone.

As my thoughts began to settle they also began to drift. As they drifted and fluttered about in the subconscious wind of my psyche they fell upon a particular subject.

The hair, the auburn hair. Leena.

But the lady’s hair wasn’t auburn, it was practically crimson. Dyed. Healthy too.

She wasn’t Leena, so why did my thoughts find themselves wandering over to her? Just a similarity?

No, familiarity.

I’ve seen her before. Recently. But where?

The elevator came for me as I mulled over my thoughts. Scanning the panel I looked for the lowest floor option.

“Lobby.”

No basement floor option in this one. Probably just for the freight elevator.

As I walked out of the lobby and passed the ground floor loading dock I stopped.

In the office. She was there.

The receptionist had red hair. It was done up differently and partially obscured due to the contrasted office lighting but it was definitely, or probably, the same color.

But she was old, the lady who helped me couldn’t have been older than 30.

Unless they were using prosthetic makeup. But why the hell-

“Eh, out da way!” A voice announced from behind me.

A very impatient and upset package courier stood behind me with his cart full of parcels.

I quickly moved on wanting to avoid any awkward interactions.

The walk home was unpleasant.

A growing uneasiness in my gut had worked its way throughout my entire body. The traffic, people, buildings, even the sun all seemed so distant yet painfully close. Too close.

Was I being watched?

I glanced around. Nothing unusual, which only served to drive up my anxiety more.

I knew I was being watched, I could feel it, years of experience and training screamed the obvious to me but my eyes, my mind, I was blind to it.

I locked the door upon arriving home. Closed the windows and blinds too.

Still I felt the eyes, the presence, I was seen. Exposed. Vulnerable.

But that was impossible.

A thorough sweep of my house confirmed what I had already known; I was alone. Just me and my belongings.

I took a drag from the quickly emptying pack which helped ease the tension I felt. The feeling persisted.

Paranoia wasn’t unusual for me, though it was mostly back when I still worked as a PI. Most PIs had rules though. Standards. Maybe even a moral compass.

I didn’t.

The pay was good, real good, but it wasn’t about the pay. It was all about the thrill. It had been so long since I felt that fear, that ever watchful eye, that I forgot how good it felt. I had spent years binging on every substance I could get my hands in, trapped in my own mind.

Now, for the first time in years, I could feel that sensation coursing through my body like electricity.

When I awoke I once again found myself in The Dreary. I do not remember falling asleep.

But it had changed.

The Dust. The layer of dust that had coated the entire world was gone.

I rushed outside to see the fog, still ever present but much lighter. I could see further than ever before. Far enough to see that The Dreary had been rearranged.

The roads that had once mirrored their real-world counterpart were now gone. The houses all replaced with different, familiar structures. There was now just one long cobblestone boulevard that stretched from the foot of my apartment building to a massive tower. The Mall Building, behind which now was a massive ocean that expanded beyond the fog which replaced the massive beachpark, and mall, that would have normally sat behind it.

Gone was the marble staircase. Gone was the statue in the golden cloak.

Without thinking I began walking down the procession towards The Mall Building. Its upper floors pierced the fog and stretched into the unseen sky.

The structures that flanked the boulevard on either side were houses, most of them that is. Some were industrial buildings, one was a hotel.

Their commonality soon became apparent.

I had investigated cases involving each of these structures. An unfaithful husband having secret meetups with some girl half his age at the hotel, a string of disappearances tied to a warehouse with a cold trail, a teacher that had been using school equipment to manufacture narcotics, and many, many other escapades.

The closer to the sky scraper I got the more recent the structures were in my memory. Until eventually, just short of The Mall Building, my eyes fell upon the house I had blocked from my mind for years.

The house that sealed my fate, both giving and taking so much.

The place I first met Leena. The place I lost my job. The place I nearly lost my freedom. The place I thought I’d lose my life. The place with a shattered kitchen window.

My head was turned away from that house and toward The Mall Building.

I became unable to look away from it, my eyes transfixed on the lobby entrance.

Why would I want to look away? There is a mystery here, something to solve, to understand.

The words echoed in my mind, but they were not mine.

My legs marched themselves towards the opening and into the lobby. An elevator door was already open.

The cargo elevator.

Entering the elevator I scanned the button panel. The card reader was gone. Only one button remained.

“Basement.”

The doors closed as I hit the button.

I felt myself nearly float as the elevator descended at a rapid rate. Despite its apparent speed the ride seemed to go on for far too long.

Then it stopped.

The doors opened and before me was the office I had just been in earlier today.

Following that familiar path I proceeded into the hallway.

There was only one door. A door at the end of the hall. And it was open.

From the entrance I could see the windows were gone. Replaced by the marble staircase. The statue with the Golden Cloak stood in front of it.

I approached the statue and fell to my knees once again.

Voices.

Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions of voices began to echo in my mind. What small fragments I could grasp would only say one thing.

The Cataclysm.

Echoes of screams and fragments of agony filled my mind from a past long before what I had known. I knew not how, only that these voices were ancient beyond reason, ancient beyond knowledge, beyond what any human, any mortal had any right to hear let alone understand.

I felt the weight beneath the ground. I felt a pull below that threatened to swallow me whole.

My eyes struggled to focus on the statue, only seeing the fluttering of the golden cloak.

The staircase descended into an infinite darkness. It beckoned me forth.

My hand reached into my back pocket. I grabbed onto something firm and pulled it forth.

Immediately the voices silenced and I regained my strength.

In my hand was a featureless leather bound book with a golden sigil etched into its spine.

-Thank you for taking the time to read my first work, this community has motivated me to put pen to paper after years of indecision. I’d rather the stories I write be painfully mid than non-existant. Part Two soon.

Signed, CGCallisto-

(Originally posted to r/talesfromthecreeps)

Every dream is an eternity.

Every night my dreams are the same. Always have been for as long as I could remember my dreams.

Every night I would awake in my bed. Except it wasn’t my actual bed. The world around me would always be covered in this ephemeral fog that permeated every single inch of space.

And the dust. My god the dust.

All I ever did was clean.

The shadows never changed. The day never began. The Dust would never end.

I would continue on from my room into the hall, then into the bathroom, then the closets, then the kitchen, then the floors. Never stopping until the entire apartment was free of the dust.

Then I would step into the outside world. The world that was not my world. The world of The Dust and The Gray.

The Dreary.

Light from above would fight its way through the fog, never making it to the hollow ground below.

Where there should have been roads, dirt, grass, and trees, there was stone.

Cobblestoned roads, stonework trees, and fields of slate.

All of it covered in The Dust.

As I would move through the still air the dust would form on my wake and disperse, leaving a trail of my presence throughout this abandoned, forgotten world.

My world of Dust, my Dreary.

I would look up into that fog filled sky and gaze into the twin hues of yellow and white whose muffled screams struggled to breach the all-but-impenetrable fog above, scattering their voices into the omnipresent haze.

Then I would wake up.

Today was no different.

A woman stood just beyond the doorway, her flowing auburn hair flailing about as she shouted at me. I couldn’t really make out the words. She seemed familiar.

Something hard and somewhat heavy hit me square in the face, then plopped into my lap.

My still-blurry sight returned to me just in time to watch the woman march off down the hallway.

Her exit was announced by the slamming of the front door.

My bed was a mess. Clothes were strewn about, the sheets were everywhere, and some were stained with a substance I could not identify. The morning sun cast my shadow on the opposite wall from behind me.

My head pounded from within, memories of last night sat chained behind an alcohol-soaked lock.

My eyes trailed downward to my lap, falling on the object that was hurled at me only moments earlier.

It was a black, featureless, leather-bound book. A fairly hefty one at that.

Rubbing my eyes to confirm I wasn’t completely blind, I took a closer look at the book’s cover.

It was completely blank.

I turned over the book, expecting somehow that repeatedly flipping the book over would magically cause it to manifest some form of identifying information.

I caught a glimpse of something on the spine as I did so. It glistened in the morning sun and sparkled like diamonds.

It was a sigil. A symbol etched in gold, a gold so vibrant that the world around me appeared gray by comparison.

“Oh shit,” the words shot out of my mouth before my brain could even register I was speaking, “Leena!”

I’m such a fucking moron.

I fell onto the floor as my legs refused to accept my authority over them, getting tangled in the bedsheets in the process.

I crawled towards the nearest pile of, mostly, clean clothes I could identify.

Getting dressed was a challenge. I fought with my own body just to put on a shirt, whilst barely navigating the hectic and wayward expletive laden rants that crashed through the windows of my sullied mind palace.

Of all the thoughtless and horrible things, how could I have forgot today was the day she came back from her-

I paused in the hallway, pants half on and shirt on backwards.

Where did she go anyway? Was it a work thing? Was it some kind of vacation?

Why did I care?

My emotional rollercoaster came to a stand-still as the emergency brakes kicked on.

I let the half assembled outfit slide off my unkempt form as I shuffled into the kitchen.

That's right, I didn’t care. I don’t care.

The dishes in the sink were clean, as they should be.

The counter was full of random brand-new crap brought home that was never properly put away and just left in its assorted state of limbo storage, not that I needed the counter space anyway. The side effect of a weak will.

I threw the kettle on and threw a pan on the stove. I figured I should have myself a good old fashioned breakfast of eggs whatever-was-left-in-the-fridge, coffee, and a ciggy.

I dug through the fridge and managed to salvage some cheese, a sausage, and a whole tomato. I chopped them up roughly and dumped them into the simmering mixture of egg and butter.

I slid the scrambled egg mixture onto my plate, grabbed my cup of liquid life, and sat my ass down on a spot I had cleared on the couch.

The TV had nothing interesting on but I left it on the food channel anyway. It was nice to eat with someone.

As I put out the cigarette in the overflowing tray I glanced over at the pile of marked envelopes on the table. Most of them said “Past Due.”

After dumping my dishes back in the sink I stumbled back into my room looking for… something.

The guy.

The cute one. Chatted me up at the bar and drank me under the table, and my sheets. I think he was a blonde, or brown? Or maybe I had hoped he was.

He must have taken off when Leena started screaming. I didn’t see any of his clothes around the bed.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye. Though it's refreshing to be on the other end of that for once.

Why did she throw that book at me?

I ruffled through the haphazardly strewn bedsheets until my hands came into contact with what I was searching for. The book Leena had thrown at my face just before she left.

With some painkillers and another cup of coffee on-board, I could think clearly enough and took a closer examination of the book.

Flipping through its pages I was met with blank after blank page.

The entire damn thing is just blank. Was this some kind of journal for me?

A gift? But why would she…

I threw it in a pile next to my side of the bed.

The rest of the day was filled with job applications.

The age of the Internet has done wonders for many aspects of humanity. Job applications were one sector made infinitely worse.

Every job fair booth I went to had a QR code to scan for their online applications system. Every Now Hiring sign in a store had that godforsaken block-grid in lieu of a simple piece of paper and a proper interview.

After the fifteenth online application referral I decided to call it for the day.

I sat down on my slightly cleaner couch and looked down at my phone, expecting to see dozens of notifications. Ideally at least one.

Instead I saw none.

No calls, no texts, no nothing.

The sun hung low over the horizon. Its waning radiance coaxed the sky into a storm of fire that lapped at the ever growing ocean of blues and purples.

It shone directly into my fucking eyes.

Shuffling my lazy ass over on the couch, I poured out the remaining contents of a bottle of whiskey into my cold cup of half drank coffee.

The evening consisted of aimlessly scrolling through various social media feeds and TV channels. Everywhere I looked I saw people on dream vacations, getting married, or buying their first homes.

Guess I’m just a fucking loser, huh.

Dinner was more whiskey, from a new bottle this time, and another menthol ciggy. I wasn’t particularly hungry as it was.

Where the hell was Leena? She stormed out and hasn’t even texted me. Maybe shes-

I quickly downed the rest of my glass before I could finish the thought. The burning warmth of the spiced whiskey rips me out of my own head.

As the whiskey level in my bottle lowered the moon rose in response. It was close to midnight by the time the bottle was empty.

The floor was my home now. This was not negotiable. Any attempt to stand at the moment would surely result in me splitting my head open on a table, or worse, ejecting the precious ounces of whiskey that I had been struggling to keep down for the past hour. The world around me decided it was time to begin rotating at ridiculous speeds, rendering me unable to stand upright.

Clinging to the ground beneath me, I dragged myself to my bedroom and eventually, I pulled myself up onto my bed.

The spinning only worsened. I closed my eyes and did my best to ignore it.

Eventually the spinning stopped and I awoke in my bed.

But this wasn’t my bed.

In what felt like no time at all I had returned to serve my sentence. My eternal penance for the crimes I must have committed at some point.

Once more I proceeded through my charge of the cleaning of The Dust.

All my life, all that I could remember anyway, I had never been able to dream. Not properly. Instead of nightmares of being naked at school or all my teeth falling out I dreamt of this place, The Dreary.

The Dreary was an empty world, a dead world, one that remained contained by a dense impenetrable fog that snuffed out all but the most diffused light from the sky above.

The Dreary was, as far as I could tell, an exact copy of the world. Save for the fact that anything not built by human hands was replaced by stone abstracts that, while giving the idea of what they're supposed to be, look nothing like it. Imagine if a tree wasn’t a tree but instead a jagged spine of stone that clawed upwards through the fog. Sure the base idea of a tree is there but that’s not a fucking tree.

There was nothing living within The Dreary. Even the wind did not blow. The world did not breathe. It was still, frozen, a corpse of identity.

Yet tonight was different.

The Dreary demanded my attention.

It had not done that before.

I broke from my charge and answered, walking towards the front door of my copied apartment.

I saw nothing new outside. The same cobble roads divided the same slate fields bearing the same stonework trees.

Except there was something new.

There had never been something new.

A great and grand staircase made of the most radiant marble ascended into the sky and well beyond the fog. Its brilliance made the fog seem black by comparison.

At the foot of these stairs stood a statue. A black statue covered in a golden cloak that fluttered in a non-existent wind.

“What the fuck?” My voice carried across The Dreary, hollow and raspy.

There’s never anything new. Nothing new, never. There was only The Dust, there was only The Dreary. What the hell is this?

I felt my breath become erratic-

I felt my breath.

I have never breathed before in a dream. I had never spoken.

I could not take my eyes off of the cloaked statue.

I could not resist the movement of my legs. Yet again my body refused to obey me as I was marched down the stairs of my apartment building.

The Dust does not react to me.

In what felt like seconds I found myself kneeling before the cloaked statue. It towered over me, but its height seemed to vary as my eyes rattled around in their sockets.

I clutched my head as I hissed an empty scream in agony. I felt a thousand hands trying to push their way out from within my mind, held back by a single flimsy door.

I strained to look upwards at the statue.

As I did I caught a glimpse of long auburn hair.

I shot upright in my bed.

The accumulating saliva in my mouth signaled to me that I should start running to the bathroom.

As the last of my wretches escaped my hanging maw, I caught a glance of my reflection.

I saw myself. Not in some artsy self-abstract sort of sense, but in a very literal sense.

Not the scars, nor the rage, nor the often bloodshot and tired eyes that have stared back at me for longer than I bothered to remember.

My eyes. My self.

I felt the fog that clouded my thoughts lift ever so slightly.

For the first time in ages I could think without strain. The string of consciousness was no longer a spider web of spider webs but was now a constant, deliberate, string that I could trace from end to end hanging freely in the newfound void.

I saw the filth, the disgust, the depravity that surrounded me.

How long had I lived like this?

I hopped in the shower to wash off days, no, weeks of god knows what from my skin. The water that rolled off my body and down into the drain was noticeably darker than the water that came out of the shower head.

I located the cleanest ensemble of clothes I could find; a pair of shorts and a button up short sleeve shirt that hung on my desk chair.

The unrelenting summer heat would stand no chance against this climate appropriate ensemble.

As I waited for the kettle to boil I started clearing the kitchen counter of all of the trash and unopened impulse-purchase appliances that had made it their home.

By the time the whistling of the kettle arrived I had already bagged up two bags of what had to be no less than $1000 of unused appliances. In their state I doubt I could get anyone to take them even for free.

The first sip of the black sludge that had the audacity to call itself coffee left a searing trail as it traveled down my throat. Even if I had any milk that wasn’t out of date or sugar that wasn’t crawling with bugs it wouldn’t have been enough to blunt the blow of that demonic concoction.

I poured the entire mug of caffeinated sewage down the drain so that it may rejoin its kin. Instead I opted for a half drank can of POG left in the fridge.

As I began my war against grime in the kitchen I felt my phone buzz.

I quickly rinsed my hands and answered the incoming call.

“Hi, is this Joseph Aiden?” The voice on the other end spoke.

“Yes,” I started hesitantly, “this is him.”

It had been a while since I had heard anyone say my name. I patiently awaited the other side to get on with whatever it was they wanted. Maybe it was a scammer who wanted to extort me for all I’m worth. I hope he likes the zeros in my bank account, because that's all there is.

“My name is David DeGuzman, I’m calling in response to your application with us…” as the voice trailed on my mind honed in on something he said.

Application? When did I-

Stopping myself short as I glanced over at the pile of yet-to-be-mailed applications on the kitchen table.

“…we’d like to have you come in for an interview. What dates are you available this week?”

I felt my heart flutter.

“Any,” I practically shouted, “right now even I can come down right now.”

I cringed inside realizing what a desperate fool I must have come off as. Even if it was the honest truth, what if this screws with my chances at getting the job?

I paused.

What job am I even volunteering myself for anyway? Sure it didn’t really matter at this point but-

“You know,” David started, “I think we have an opening around noon today, you think you could make it down to The Mall building?”

Thank god it’s close.

“Yeah that's like five minutes away from me,” I chuckled, overwhelmed and nervous beyond comparison.

“Great. We’re room 1304 on the 13th floor. You can check in with the front desk once you arrive. See you there.”

The line dropped.

As my phone returned to the lock screen I saw the time was 11:24.

While it was true that I wasn’t that far from The Mall building, I had realized far too late that any of my far more acceptable business attire was in desperate need of a wash. Sure, the shirt I was wearing was formal enough, shorts and slippers would likely get me marked down.

I combed through my room to see if perhaps I had missed any nicer clothes. Much to my dismay I had not.

Resigning myself to my fate I gritted my teeth and pushed on out the door.

My walk down to the mall was less of a casual walk and more of a heavily restrained sprint. My body happily obeyed my restraint, despite my legs screaming to let them break out in a sprint. The tightness in my chest, like a coiled spring, desired to be released through my legs.

The Mall itself was, to my knowledge, the largest outdoor mall in the world. On any given day it was bustling with tourists from all over the world. Situated right across the street from a massive beach park and sat just on the edge of Waikiki, It was arguably the social center of the whole island. The south side of the island, anyway. The Mall Building was situated on the Mauka side of the mall, opposite the ocean side, which meant it was basically a straight walk from my shabby abode down the main road and right into The Mall.

On the walk more questions formed within me, the solemn line of thought formed into a structured diagram of red threads that stretched from one end of the void to the other.

What company was I even interviewing for? The Mall building was mostly just offices for anything you could imagine, private medical practices and outpatient clinics, law offices, engineering firms, hell even some small cafes.

And that name. David DeGuzman.

Not that I was an expert on names, but of all the names you hear around here I couldn’t help but feel that something was… off.

Before I could indulge my conspiracy further I realized I had entered into the elevator and was now en route to the 13th floor.

I was alone in the elevator. Despite the lobby otherwise being filled only I had entered this elevator.

Or at least I thought the lobby was full.

The doors opened into the 13th floor lobby. It was a modest little area with a few area chairs for people to sit as they wait for their family to do whatever business they have on this floor.

I walked out, passed the row of elevators and headed into the main hallway. There were no windows. The dull droning of the building's HVAC and the gentle buzzing of the fluorescent lights trickled through the air before being absorbed by the slight off-blue carpet that ran the length of the floor.

I nervously made my way to room 1304. Thankfully, or not, the room was close to the elevators. Just one door down after taking a right.

The door was blank aside from the room placard and an “hours of operation” sign.

I steadied myself, took a deep breath, and entered the room.

I entered a small office lobby. Two chairs sat awkwardly in the far corner next to a door that presumably led further into the sectioned off office area. A newly constructed drywall partition isolated the lobby area from the rest of the office floor space, leaving only a door and a cutout for the secretary or greeter to manage guests as they come in the door.

“Joseph Aiden?” A female voice called from out of sight.

“Uhh yes?” I answered cautiously.

A woman, appearing to be in her forties, approached the counter cutout from within the offices. Her bright red hair appeared almost plastic in the fluorescent lighting.

“Mr. DeGuzman is ready for you.” She said, bending down to interact with something below the counter.

I heard a soft click followed by a buzz.

The office door popped open and the woman beckoned me forth.

The hallway was more of the same. A drywall corridor with several doors on either side.

The door locked shut behind me with a buzz, startling me.

At the same time the door at the far end of the hall opened. A man wearing a blue floral shirt waved me down.

“Down here!” He called.

I quickly made my way inside the man’s office. The windows behind him were blocked off by heavy curtains, the only source of light being the ever-present fluorescent overhead lights.

“I’m David,” he said, extending his hand, “pleasure to meet you.”

I reciprocated his gesture and returned a firm handshake.

“Likewise.” I replied.

The man, David, had well kept short black hair and a comically yet impeccably well kept ‘70s mustache that reflected some of the overhead light.

David gestured for me to sit and I obliged.

The office itself was a modest space, the desk at which we were sat was adorned with the typical office fare, albeit a bit lacking in some finer details and a bit too clean for it to be in constant use.

“So, about-“ I started before David cut me off.

“You’re 28 correct?” David asked as he held up some papers.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Can you tell me a little bit about your previous employer?”

I paused.

My previous employer? Who-

“Oh,” the thought found its way to me, “yes sorry I was with a PI firm, Maikai Investigations.”

“Yes them,” David affirmed leaning back in his silent office chair, “what kind of work were you involved in?”

I felt my palms become clammy but I persisted and gave him the sales pitch.

“Usually a client would come to us and ask us to get information about someone. That's the very base level of things,” I elaborated, “could be, you know, someone wanting to know about their birth parents. Someone wanting to know if a spouse is being unfaithful, really just about anything involving information.”

“Were you good at what you did?” David asked, his words laced with a substance I couldn’t fully make out.

“I’d like to think I was,” I said with false bravado, “never had any clients complain and I always completed the job-“

“Even when you were asked to do things that might have been morally objectionable?”

I froze.

I wasn’t a saint. Still aren’t. But I did what I was asked and did a damn fine job of it. If someone had a problem with it they can sort it out with the cops.

“Absolutely,” I said, almost bragging, “especially when others would refuse to take the job.”

“Why?”

David’s words now came with an air of genuine curiosity.

“Can I ask the relevance to the job?” I deflected.

David shifted forward in his chair, his poker face remaining unchanged since the start of the interview.

“Everything,” he replied eerily, “I’m not here to judge you, I want to know.”

David stared at me with an intensity I had reserved only for stains in my sink.

“Because the job needed to be done,” I started, “and I liked the challenge.”

David’s eyes perked up at that.

“The challenge?”

I furrowed my brow.

“Every case was a puzzle,” I leaned in, “and I was the best damn puzzle solver in that organization.”

I winced.

“Then why’d you leave?” David shot back.

Ignoring the blatant cringe that was whatever the hell I just called myself, David’s question shot through and shattered my false bravado like a bullet through a kitchen window.

“I was banging the boss's wife.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the reason.

David’s poker face slipped as he let out a hint of disappointment.

“The analyst position we are looking for has some caveats,” he started as he began flipping through the papers on his desk, “one is honesty. We expect our analysts to be completely honest with us.”

His eyes locked onto mine.

I caught a glimpse of the papers on his desk. One was a memo entitled “Investigative Incident,” left conveniently in my line of sight.

“I overstepped.” I replied begrudgingly.

“Honesty is paramount,” David began as laid down the papers, “I don’t mean some half-assed corporate honesty, I mean if what I ask is for you to delve into how much you hate your boss, your life, or whatever escapades you and a secretary got up to, we expect the full un-adulterated details.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

What the fuck is he on about? Sure I appreciate that this job lets you cuss your boss out in the name of honesty but isn’t this a bit much?

“Just what exactly is an analyst here?” I started, “What are the hours? The responsibilities? The pay?”

The more questions I asked the more flustered I became. I knew utterly nothing about this place or this supposed job I was now interviewing for.

As a matter of fact how the hell did this guy get a hold of that-

“Anything further requires an NDA,” David cut, interrupting my thoughts.

“I have to sign an NDA to even know who or what I'm working for?” I asked, emboldened and incredulous.

David raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, you do,” he replied, “and you’re going to be asked far more uncomfortable questions than the ones I’m giving you now.”

Then it clicked.

Analyst position? I think I would have remembered applying for something so fancy sounding, at least compared to the myriad of fast food and retail positions I had been applying for.

“I don’t think I’ve ever applied for this position,” I said as I slowly stood up from my chair, “just who the hell are you?”

David smirked.

“Like I said, you sign this contract and I’ll answer all your questions.” David smiled.

His poker face slipped away revealing satisfaction and pride.

He slid a paper across his desk towards me, placing a pen at the top of the document.

The paper was a single page. Barely half. At the bottom was a place for my signature and nothing else.

I glanced at the page, not wanting to let my guard down. I caught one sentence that set off alarm bells within me.

“We are humanity’s first and last line of defense.”

My chest became a twist of panic, of confusion, of curiosity, of fear, and god knows what other emotions that humanity has yet to properly define.

“I’m not interested.” I said and made my way to the door.

David stood at his desk and watched as I hastily made my exit.

The door out of the office buzzed and opened as I approached.

“We’ll see you again, Aiden.” David said gently, his voice echoing down the hallway as the door to 1304 closed behind me.

The red threads in my mind formed a tangled mess that only grew as my questions remained unanswered.

As soon as I got home I made sure to lock the door.

I pulled out my phone to check the number that this organization had contacted me from.

It wasn’t there.

In the call history the last call shown was from a week ago.

From Leena.

I slumped down onto the couch.

I felt my chest constrict as a burning pain filled my chest, a twisting anxiety and yearning that sapped my breath away.

Why do I care? She knew what she was signing up for. She knew what I was.

I kept rationalizing.

I never said yes to her, I just didn’t say no. Not my fault she got all confused.

My sight became blurry.

Why’d she keep taking pity on me? Keep coming back to my dump of a house? Keep buying me shit I didn’t ask for? Keep-

The tears began to roll down my face.

Why couldn’t I care until now?

I bawled my eyes out. I cried and cried until the couch was soaked with my tears. I unleashed all the tension in my chest with a scream that surely pissed off the neighbors.

I cried, I screamed, I threw everything within arm’s reach at the wall hoping that if I threw it hard enough I could fix this mess. I threw a tantrum that would put a stubborn toddler to shame.

As a few hours pass as I lay spent on the couch at the epicenter of the disaster that trashed my living room.

“Leena…” I moaned mournfully into a tearstained pillow.

My eyes lazily scanned my surroundings, taking in the totality of my ruin and pathetic squalor.

All I could feel was a muted mix of disgust and hatred, aimed at myself.

I wished for nothing more than to never leave this couch again; better to join the rot and the refuse than continue my futile struggle against a life I had already destroyed.

A flame of insight flickered to life within my mind.

Just how the hell did those people, whoever they are, erase their call history from my phone?

After a brief but intense search online I came to a disturbing conclusion.Unless they had physical possession of my device, they could not hide my call history.

My eyes quickly darted to my door.

It was still locked up tight, right as it should be, some debris still blocking it from opening due to my earlier outburst.

I got up and inspected the jalousies.

The netting on the windows themselves remained undisturbed, even sporting a fine layer of dust. The jalousies too were equally undisturbed.

They didn’t break in. Or if they did they hid their tracks better than most, well enough to never be caught. But why go through all that effort just to delete a phone number? I could just look up the company by its address right?

I entered the address, suite 1304.

Nothing, at least for this decade. There are some old surface web files relating to a small life insurance company that once operated out of that address.

Feeling restless and seeing the sun still high in the sky, I decided to make my way back to the unit and get some answers.

Not fair they should know me so well without it being mutual.

Upon arriving in the lobby I spotted a building directory. I quickly scanned the registered suite numbers for 1304.

Not the first column, not the second, nor the third.

“Need help locating a business?”

I spun around to see a woman with long crimson hair, done up in a long pony tail.

“Oh, uh,” I fumbled my words.

Maybe I'm a little colorblind but that crimson looked auburn for a brief but uncomfortably long second.

“Im looking for the name of a business that operated out of suite 1304.” I explained to the young woman.

She squinted at the registry and scanned it intently.

“Strange,” she started, “I don’t see any, maybe we should go take a look?”

She beckoned me to the elevator lobby, to the cargo lift.

She swiped her ID card and the doors opened.

The cargo lift was very spacious and surprisingly well kept for being used to haul god-knows-what.

She walked over to the button panel and selected the 13th floor. Unlike the other elevators this one had a “Basement” floor button. The elevator had ascended at a far greater rate than the other one I had used earlier in the day.

We arrived on the 13th floor and she led me towards the suite. As we arrived we noticed a “For Lease” sign with an address for a corporate realty website.

“It doesn’t look like anyone has used this one in a while,” she frowned, “sorry that I couldn’t be of more help!”

Before I could respond she had already made her way back to the elevator and disappeared.

It was impossible, yet it was reality.

I had just been here maybe a few hours ago and the office where I’d had my interview was just gone.

As my thoughts began to settle they also began to drift. As they drifted and fluttered about in the subconscious wind of my psyche they fell upon a particular subject.

The hair, the auburn hair. Leena.

But the lady’s hair wasn’t auburn, it was practically crimson. Dyed. Healthy too.

She wasn’t Leena, so why did my thoughts find themselves wandering over to her? Just a similarity?

No, familiarity.

I’ve seen her before. Recently. But where?

The elevator came for me as I mulled over my thoughts. Scanning the panel I looked for the lowest floor option.

“Lobby.”

No basement floor option in this one. Probably just for the freight elevator.

As I walked out of the lobby and passed the ground floor loading dock I stopped.

In the office. She was there.

The receptionist had red hair. It was done up differently and partially obscured due to the contrasted office lighting but it was definitely, or probably, the same color.

But she was old, the lady who helped me couldn’t have been older than 30.

Unless they were using prosthetic makeup. But why the hell-

“Eh, out da way!” A voice announced from behind me.

A very impatient and upset package courier stood behind me with his cart full of parcels.

I quickly moved on wanting to avoid any awkward interactions.

The walk home was unpleasant.

A growing uneasiness in my gut had worked its way throughout my entire body. The traffic, people, buildings, even the sun all seemed so distant yet painfully close. Too close.

Was I being watched?

I glanced around. Nothing unusual, which only served to drive up my anxiety more.

I knew I was being watched, I could feel it, years of experience and training screamed the obvious to me but my eyes, my mind, I was blind to it.

I locked the door upon arriving home. Closed the windows and blinds too.

Still I felt the eyes, the presence, I was seen. Exposed. Vulnerable.

But that was impossible.

A thorough sweep of my house confirmed what I had already known; I was alone. Just me and my belongings.

I took a drag from the quickly emptying pack which helped ease the tension I felt. The feeling persisted.

Paranoia wasn’t unusual for me, though it was mostly back when I still worked as a PI. Most PIs had rules though. Standards. Maybe even a moral compass.

I didn’t.

The pay was good, real good, but it wasn’t about the pay. It was all about the thrill. It had been so long since I felt that fear, that ever watchful eye, that I forgot how good it felt. I had spent years binging on every substance I could get my hands in, trapped in my own mind.

Now, for the first time in years, I could feel that sensation coursing through my body like electricity.

When I awoke I once again found myself in The Dreary. I do not remember falling asleep.

But it had changed.

The Dust. The layer of dust that had coated the entire world was gone.

I rushed outside to see the fog, still ever present but much lighter. I could see further than ever before. Far enough to see that The Dreary had been rearranged.

The roads that had once mirrored their real-world counterpart were now gone. The houses all replaced with different, familiar structures. There was now just one long cobblestone boulevard that stretched from the foot of my apartment building to a massive tower. The Mall Building, behind which now was a massive ocean that expanded beyond the fog which replaced the massive beachpark, and mall, that would have normally sat behind it.

Gone was the marble staircase. Gone was the statue in the golden cloak.

Without thinking I began walking down the procession towards The Mall Building. Its upper floors pierced the fog and stretched into the unseen sky.

The structures that flanked the boulevard on either side were houses, most of them that is. Some were industrial buildings, one was a hotel.

Their commonality soon became apparent.

I had investigated cases involving each of these structures. An unfaithful husband having secret meetups with some girl half his age at the hotel, a string of disappearances tied to a warehouse with a cold trail, a teacher that had been using school equipment to manufacture narcotics, and many, many other escapades.

The closer to the sky scraper I got the more recent the structures were in my memory. Until eventually, just short of The Mall Building, my eyes fell upon the house I had blocked from my mind for years.

The house that sealed my fate, both giving and taking so much.

The place I first met Leena. The place I lost my job. The place I nearly lost my freedom. The place I thought I’d lose my life. The place with a shattered kitchen window.

My head was turned away from that house and toward The Mall Building.

I became unable to look away from it, my eyes transfixed on the lobby entrance.

Why would I want to look away? There is a mystery here, something to solve, to understand.

The words echoed in my mind, but they were not mine.

My legs marched themselves towards the opening and into the lobby. An elevator door was already open.

The cargo elevator.

Entering the elevator I scanned the button panel. The card reader was gone. Only one button remained.

“Basement.”

The doors closed as I hit the button.

I felt myself nearly float as the elevator descended at a rapid rate. Despite its apparent speed the ride seemed to go on for far too long.

Then it stopped.

The doors opened and before me was the office I had just been in earlier today.

Following that familiar path I proceeded into the hallway.

There was only one door. A door at the end of the hall. And it was open.

From the entrance I could see the windows were gone. Replaced by the marble staircase. The statue with the Golden Cloak stood in front of it.

I approached the statue and fell to my knees once again.

Voices.

Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions of voices began to echo in my mind. What small fragments I could grasp would only say one thing.

The Cataclysm.

Echoes of screams and fragments of agony filled my mind from a past long before what I had known. I knew not how, only that these voices were ancient beyond reason, ancient beyond knowledge, beyond what any human, any mortal had any right to hear let alone understand.

I felt the weight beneath the ground. I felt a pull below that threatened to swallow me whole.

My eyes struggled to focus on the statue, only seeing the fluttering of the golden cloak.

The staircase descended into an infinite darkness. It beckoned me forth.

My hand reached into my back pocket. I grabbed onto something firm and pulled it forth.

Immediately the voices silenced and I regained my strength.

In my hand was a featureless leather bound book with a golden sigil etched into its spine.

(CW: Suicide, mentions of DV)

I shot up in my bed in a cold sweat. In my hands I was clutching the book.

Threaded fragments of mind and memory wound themselves into a new spool of cohesion as clarity washed over me.

I could think clearly.

Ever since this book came into my possession I’ve started to shed the cask of my infirmities like a snake molting its skin. My mind, once a place of fragmented and shattered memories, was forged back together with a golden alloy.

The pages of my life were rebound in a leather book with golden thread.

I opened the first page of the book.

“A story is never complete until all parts come together.”

No shit.

I flipped through the pages.

Nothing.

Page after page of just nothing. Then I saw it.

“The wind whipped past his face as the ground below him approached at an alarming rate; He was falling.”

An errant sentence printed in the middle of a page about a quarter ways through the book.

What the hell was this?

I flipped through more empty pages. Then once again.

“The decaying facility creaked and groaned as the winds filtered through its exposed outer husk. Grains of sand fell into piles where the roof had given way.”

And another.

“The islands came into view; six equal sized islands were evenly spaced around one, much larger, central island. A man-made paradise in the middle of The Pacific.”

I combed through the pages until I reached the end of the book. Had I the patience to count I would imagine the book had to have at least 1000 pages.

But these sentences, these words, what the hell were they supposed to mean?

Ever since this book ended up in my hands my life has been filled with the unordinary and the strange. My gut is screaming at me that this book means something, and my mind is beginning to agree, in spite of any grounded evidence. .

I quickly entered the sentences into a media search engine.

Nothing.

I examined the book closely, hoping to glean some greater information I might have missed. Perhaps I did.

The golden sigil.

I could not comprehend it nor could I describe it, but I felt it.

It felt familiar, not in a wild deja vu sense but, as if it represented something inherent in its design. Like how one would use the picture of a stick figure and a door to represent an exit.

This sigil represented something that I could intuit but not describe. An approximation would be that of great sorrow, mourning, a longing, a loss but not of someone. It was vague and indescribable, as if I were missing some subtle key or context relevant to this emotion.

And the color.

There was no mistaking it. The golden cloak worn by the mysterious statue that always stood at the base of those heavenly marble stairs was identical in luster and color.

For a second I could have sworn it too was fluttering in an intangible breeze.

All my life I have dreamt of The Dreary. A world caked in dust and forgotten by whatever cruel god brought it into existence and burdened my subconscious mind with it. Never have I had or experienced “normal dreams” by what other standards might exist. All I have known was The Dreary; a false echo of the world I know.

It has had its advantages though, allowing me to explore places that I would have never had the opportunity to otherwise. The Dreary managed to, for the most part, be a complete copy of every man-made structure I have ever seen with my own two eyes. Though I am unaware of how The Dreary managed to recreate the interiors of a memory that does not exist, it bothers me little.

What does bother me is how it has changed after encountering this book.

First was The Dust. The first night with the book caused The Dust to not react to my presence. The second night resulted in it disappearing all together.

Then was the structure. The first night saw a heavenly marble staircase slapped in the middle of the main road. The second night changed the entire layout of The Dreary into a procession, with that same marble staircase descending into the infinite darkness below the basement of The Mall Building.

Lastly was the statue in the Golden Cloak. On the first night I was compelled towards it and crushed under the weight of its presence. The second night was similar but I managed to recover from my incapacitation by wielding this book.

As a preliminary analysis I find my own work to be rather shitty. Too many potential coincidences and nothing conclusive enough to even begin to form an understanding.

Despite that, two conclusions have been reached.

Either this is a supernatural occurrence or I am deeply unwell, psychologically speaking.

Given the existence of this book I am inclined to lean supernatural but given my history it’s just as likely to be psychological.

Though as to why Leena would have had the book to begin with is beyond me.

I had assumed the handsome stud who flirted his way into my pants, and eventually bed, with the help of my daily diet of a shitload of whiskey, had left the book by accident. Then, after arriving home from her work trip and likely seeing the man making his way out, probably put two and two together and somehow that equated into Leena throwing his forgotten book at me.

But that doesn’t really make much sense. I’ve done far worse to Leena and she hadn’t walked out on me then, let alone be any sort of aggressive towards me.

Fucking another guy is roughly equivalent to forgetting to buy the milk. Maybe it was the drinking? I had promised to cut back.

I sat in bed as I mulled over the infinite possibilities, but a slight movement caught my eye.

I scanned my room and could not find anything out of the ordinary. The morning light had likely been partially obscured by a bird or a plane which cast a quick moving shadow that tricked me into believing I saw something. Yes, clearly this was the case.

Then it happened again.

I couldn’t pinpoint its direction, location, or even origin. All I could see was movement of some kind. Very slight, very subtle, and one that seemed to evade my direct gaze.

Then I saw it.

The Dust.

The Dust fluttered and sparkled gently as it hung in a perpetual state of free-fall, riding gentle currents of air and catching the morning rays.

It did not fall nor did it settle.

It hung.

It hung as if eagerly awaiting my permission to fall. But I had no intention of giving it such permission.

Before I could realize what was happening I was pulled into my bed and out through to the other side.

My book in hand, I found myself once more in The Dreary.

But yet again it had changed.

Gone was my apartment. Gone were the stones, gone was the sky.

All that remained was a house.

That house.

The house was a shitty little wood shack made of, at most, the wood from a single, sad, pathetic thing that could barely be considered a tree. A mild cough would be enough to rip the structure off its foundations. The nails used in its construction likely weighed more than the sum of its lumber, and I could probably count the nails on one hand.

Though that was par for the course for many houses built here. No real need for insulation. This had the unfortunate side effect of making the walls not only paper thin, but also providing no sound dampening. This allowed me to hear the argument I could see from the kitchen window.

No, not an argument, a fight. A one sided fight. Abuse.

To my right sat my car. A respectable little thing from 20 years ago and nearly 200k miles on it. Inside that car was the unmistakable golden cloak, clinging to a statue that sat where I had all those years ago.

“I don’t give a shit Leena! Your fucking job is to sit here and take care of my fucking kids while i make sure we can all fucking eat, and you just-“

I had replayed this moment a hundred, a thousand, no, a million times at least in my head. I remembered every word clearly as if I was just experiencing this moment for the first time.

A couple of days prior, my boss dropped the case on my desk. He said a couple of women pooled their cash together and asked us to gather evidence on this guy, Mica, who they believed was beating up his wife, their friend. Apparently they had tried to get her to go to the cops but she was never cooperative so the cops couldn’t do anything.

It wasn't the first time I handled a case like this, probably wouldn’t have been the last, but no one else in the firm wanted to touch it.

Can’t say I’d blame them.

Mica Murakami. A fine specimen of untreated daddy issues and a severe addiction to lite-beers. A lot of insecurity too. Though you tend to get insecure after your previous four wives leave you for someone else.

Unfortunately he was also rather jacked and had a short temper, which he often took out on Leena. Sometimes physically, always verbally.

At least he did on that night.

No one blamed me for what happened.

Nobody knew how high I was that night.

Cops did, or suspected it. Tried to prove it. Didn’t matter.

I tried to convince myself I did Leena a favor.

I’m sure she tried to convince herself too.

I thought I saw him flash a gun. Maybe it was a knife. Or maybe I lied to myself so much that I believed it to be the truth.

But the prosecution said they couldn’t find a weapon on him, and the nearest kitchen knife had never had his finger prints on them.

Didn’t matter though. I saw what I thought I saw.

I did what I thought I had to do.

Nobody ever questioned why I was the only PI in my firm, or any firm, that carried a gun on him while on the job.

Not until smoke was trailing from the barrel.

Not until there were two holes soaked with red that pooled onto the kitchen floor.

The sound of the brass casings ringing as they hit the floor awoke me from my trance.

Before me lay the body of Mica Murakami.

Two shots square in the chest silenced his deafening bitching. Two shots let the neighborhood experience a quiet evening for the first time in four years. Two shots caused innocent kids to see the dead body of their tormenter, their father. Two shots broke the heart of Leena Murakami, what little was left to break

Two shots took away my peace. Two shots shattered the kitchen window.

It didn’t matter that the media saw me as a hero. It didn’t matter that friends and family never stopped singing my praises.

Those kids will never have their father back, shitty as he was, and watched as a stranger barged into their house and shot their dad in front of them.

Leena will never have her husband back. Her friends said I should have emptied the mag into him. She wouldn’t comment.

The jury thought I was a hero and told the prosecution to go to hell. Evidence be damned. I was a killer, a murderer, and they let me walk free into a parade for my actions.

By all accounts I should have celebrated with them. I should have enjoyed the moment.

But I couldn’t.

All I saw was their faces.

The kids’, Leena’s, and Mica’s.

Every moment of every day.

So I left the job, I disconnected from everyone and everything and started figuring out which combination of substances wouldn’t kill me but would keep me from thinking.

I locked it all away. I locked my mind away.

Then the gun in my hand returned to its former state as the book.

It was still warm and smelled faintly of gun-smoke.

“And you,”

I turned to face the Golden Cloaked statue which now stood at the entrance to the kitchen.

“Fuck you for making me remember.”

I whipped the book at the statue with all the force I could muster.

The book clattered anti-climactically after bouncing off of the statue.

Then the walls gave way.

The blood pooling at my feet stretched across the ground and into the horizon.

The never ending fog that hung in the sky lifted slightly, behind it now I could see the light attempting to pierce the dense fog. Twin hues of yellow and white now brighter and more coherent than before, twin suns that hung above this hollow land.

I grab my head once again as the familiar agony of a lifetime’s worth of memories flows through me.

But they aren’t mine.

They surge through me too fast for me to get a proper grasp of them. I only manage to get glimpses.

I grasp at the sand storm of memories but they keep slipping through my fingers, the images and moments seared into my mind but the meaning is lost with the tearing winds.

Just as the storm subsides I manage to catch one glimpse. One moment. One memory.

In the distance I see a spire. A massive spire that pierced an unfamiliar sky. The ruins of a massive city surrounded the spire. In the distance and in the skies I saw bright flashes and ebbing waves as if an ocean of light was crashing against the sky itself.

The memory faded as my attention was brought back to the present.

The marble staircase rose from the blood. Its pristine structure untainted by my sin. Untouched by my blood.

I raced to pick up the book once more.

The moment I came in contact with the book I awoke on the floor of my bedroom.

I checked the time on my phone.

It was Monday.

How the hell did I lose an entire day? Did I just pass out when I got back?.

My attempts at standing are thwarted as my hand slips on the blood on the floor.

After a brief moment of panic I stumbled my way into the bathroom.

In the mirror I saw blood.

Blood had caked streams onto my face as it poured out from my nose, ears, and my eyes. If I had to guess I’d say I had just lost an alarming amount of blood.

But I did not feel alarmed. Truthfully I wasn’t sure what I felt. I was sure of one thing, however I do not understand how. I was fairly sure, no, certain, that I will die if I am separated from the book. For now my mind is inexplicably linked with it.

After washing the caked blood from my face I opted to use my lonely and forgotten toothbrush for the first time in an embarrassingly long while.

Can’t say why I never bothered until now, but perhaps helping to scrape off the red that had found its way into my mouth and onto my teeth was a good enough reason.

Of all the places in my apartment that were a mess the bathroom magically escaped such destruction. Apart from neglect, the bathroom was absent of any trash or unopened boxes of crap. The sink was rather large for my apartment's modest size. My toothbrush stand and toothpaste tube being the only items that sat upon that counter, adding to the sparseness of the space.

The air in the room shifted. As I raised my head from the sink I noticed my shadow against the wall.

But it was not my shadow.

And shadows do not wear golden cloaks.

I whipped around to find myself face to face with the statue in The Golden Cloak.

For a moment I expected death. I anxiously awaited the snapping of my neck, the crushing of my skull, the breaking of every bone in my pathetic body.

But it did nothing.

The statue stood there, motionless as ever, as an intangible wind blew the Golden Cloak tightly around its indiscernible form.

Outside of The Dreary I was able to notice the finer details of the statue.

It resembled the porous texture of lava rock, yet it was elegantly shaped by hands so precise they could not have been mortal.

It vaguely resembled a humanoid shape with a protrusion on its face where a nose should be and two sunken areas under a brow where the eyes should be.

Unlike in The Dreary I felt no overwhelming pain or compulsions.

Unlike in The Dreary I felt no apprehension about its presence.

Unlike in The Dreary I could touch it.

I wasn’t sure what I expected anymore. Outside of the glaringly obvious supernatural occurrence staring at me in my face, the statue was but an ordinary statue. The lava rock felt typical as ever, as if I had just attempted to naively take some from the sacred grounds upon which the lava cooled.

I caressed the statue's face with a gentle hand.

I felt pity, mourning, loss, a sorrow that I could only catch a distant glance of. A drop in a vast ocean of despair.

Then the rock became skin. Familiar skin with auburn hair.

She swayed gently with her feet only inches off the ground.

The world around me fell away and was replaced by different yet familiar walls.

Leena was dead, and her body hung limply before me.

We were in a bedroom, likely hers. I did not recall how I got here, but I recognized the place.

How could I ever forget these walls? These paper thin walls.

My panic, expected panic, reasonable panic, did not surface.

My brain was wrapped in a bondage of golden thread, I felt only what was necessary.

On the wall on the far end of the room, above her desk, was a clock.

The time was 5 am. The date displayed was Tuesday, August 19th.

But I knew for a fact that today, right now, was Monday, August 18th.

Was this a nightmare? By all accounts it should be. My girlfriend, dead, hanging from the ceiling in her old house.

But my brain could not be made to panic, to give into fear. It was on a leash. It had a new master. It did not permit me to feel fear.

This wasn’t a nightmare. It was a warning.

I can still save her. Maybe then she’ll forgive me. Or maybe I’ll-

Before I could finish the thought I was returned to the walls of my bathroom.

The book in hand I made a mad dash out the door.

Logic and reason were all I had but I nearly let them fly out the window as I raced down the streets. If I still had my car I could have been to Leena’s old place in half an hour maybe. If I had bus money I could have made it to her place in an hour or two.

But I had nothing. I had no one.

And it was all my fault.

And now Leena’s life is in my hands.

And if she dies it will be my fault.

When I had left the sun had already begun its descent into the ocean.

I had dashed up and through the old highway to the north side of the island, all the while avoiding cops who had likely been informed of a pedestrian running manically on the highway where pedestrians absolutely shouldn’t be.

By the time I made it to something resembling a sidewalk again it was already well past midnight.

My phone’s battery clung to the precious few percent that it still had.

Navigating in the dark was difficult, but I knew these streets like the back of my hand.

I knew all of them.

I had spent my life cleaning away The Dust from them.

And now I leave tracks as I race towards the one house I refused to clean ever again.

Rounding the familiar corner I stopped to catch my breath. I don’t know how I managed to run so long without stopping. I wasn’t a star athlete. I couldn’t out run anyone with two functioning legs even if the grand prize was a bottle of crown. But I guess desperation is a hell of a drug.

And adrenaline.

I made my way to the house, quick in pace but far from the almost full-blown sprint I had managed for hours.

And then I came face to face with the door I had hoped to never see again.

But It would not permit me a moment to contemplate my reality.

The door was in my way.

I charged through the door, hands wrapped around the leather bound book held at a low ready position.

The door gave way just as it did before.

Despite never having explored further into the house I instinctively made my way through the kitchen and down the hall towards Leena’s room.

Before I could approach the door I heard something tumble from within.

I threw open the door.

Before me I saw Leena hanging once again. But she did not sway gently, nor was she dead.

Without hesitation I quickly rushed to support her weight, eventually managing to untie her and rest her gently on the ground.

She was alive, but not out of danger.

I called for an ambulance.

“Why.”

A raspy voice spoke from the floor.

“Why are you here?” Leena asked me.

“Because I had to save your life.” I replied.

“If you wanted to save me you should have let me hang.”

The paramedics arrived shortly after.

Apparently her kids were staying over at a friend’s house. They said had I not been there when I was she likely would have died and not be discovered for hours.

Of course the police were involved, a stranger just so happens to break into a house and save a woman who tried to kill herself at the perfect time, and that person also happened to be the person who shot and killed her husband exactly one year ago to the date?

The thread snapped.

The cops held me and asked me a few questions, the usual, mostly details about the incident and how I knew to find her. I didn’t tell them that I had a vision of the future but I suspect my story about a concerned ex with a strong gut feeling didn’t do me any favors either.

Though since they lacked any reasonable evidence and likely surmised my scrawny frame wasn’t nearly strong enough to hang the woman myself they let me go free. Shockingly they asked nothing about how I managed to get in through the locked front door.

Putting my tax dollars to work I asked the officers for a ride to the hospital. I made the case that I was her emergency contact, assumedly as her most recent partner, and may be needed at the hospital.

They begrudgingly obliged, having no grounds to deny me my request and clearly seeing I had no means to go anywhere else on my own at the moment.

I arrived at the medical center after a much longer than usual journey. The officers, gracious as they were, wanted to grab some food on the way.

I wasn’t hungry, but then again they didn’t ask if I was, nor did they offer.

I waved the officers off and walked into the Emergency Department.

I was briefly screened by a security guard before a nurse quickly ran over to me.

“Hi, what brings you to the ER today?” She practically rushed out.

The nurse’s third energy drink of the night clearly reared its head.

“I’m here to see a patient, actually.” I replied, meekly.

She seemed to deflate at that response but also appeared to be relieved.

“Oh, well we don’t really do visitors here.” She clarified, awkwardly attempting to hide her annoyance.

“Im her boyfr-“ I cut myself off, “I’m… it’s complicated but im pretty sure I’m her emergency contact right now.”

The nurse furrowed her brow as she examined me. Her tired eyes scrutinized every detail of my face.

“Who are you here for?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Leena Murakami.”

The Nurse quickly checked something on a nearby workstation.

“Doesn’t seem like she updated her contact history in a while,” she muttered staring at the computer, “but I also don’t see anyone else listed here.”

The nurse seemed hesitant.

“I’m the one who found her,” I blurted out.

“Oh, shit,” the nurse slipped.

“Oh my goodness I’m so sorry about-“ she protested but i raised my hand to cut her off.

“No no it's, it’s fine,” I assured her, “just let me see her.”

The nurse, now in a much more accommodating mood, took me through the department to her bay.

“She’s conscious but resting right now,” the nurse explained, “it’s a little hard for her to talk so we gave her something to write with if she wants.”

She then leaned over and pressed a button on the bed, causing Leena’s bed to slowly rise her up into a sitting position.

“Hey Leena,” the nurse spoke gently, “Your boyfriend is here.”

Leena’s eyes opened slowly.

“Ill just be in the hall” the nurse said as she quickly ducked behind the curtain.

“Hey, Leena.” I said as I gently grabbed her hand.

It felt cold. Colder than I ever remembered it.

“What the hell do you want?” She said in a strained hiss.

“What I want?” I replied, somewhat stunned, “I want you. I miss you Leena.”

Her gaze scrunched into a mixture of confusion and disgust.

“What the hell are you on about?” Leena spat.

“So much has happened since you left,” I started, “I’ve been getting my shit together. I haven’t been drinking, I only smoke a few times a day now, I started cleaning again-“

Leena cut me off.

“What the fuck do you want with me?”

“I want you back, I want us back together,” I pleaded, “it's been a rough year but I think we can make it work.”

Her eyes filled with a searing rage that I felt burning a hole into my forehead.

“What the fuck are you talking about? You’re nothing but the bastard who killed my husband.”

Her words broke through The Dust that had filled my mind.

“You took away a father from his kids. He was a good man, unlike you.”

“He was an abusive piece of shit.” I rebutted. My words felt hollow.

“And you knew that from the four seconds you saw from outside? You knew nothing about us. Not every relationship is paradise.”

“He would have killed you one day.” I weakly replied.

“I died the moment you shot the man I loved,” Leena shot back, “so thanks for saving me, twice, but I never want anything to do with you. I hope I never see you again, you insane wannabe cop.”

Leena broke into a coughing fit.

I took the hint and left.

I walked out of the ER and just kept walking.

I don’t know where I was walking to except that it wouldn’t be home. Or whatever that place really is.

I just walked.

Down the road. Up the hills. Across the bridges. Around the bends.

The Pali Lookout. Closed at this time of night. I did not care.

I climbed over the gate, walked past the various caution signs, and climbed atop the ledge. As I stood there I stared into the grassy abyss beyond. The scant moonlight reflected a sliver of silver on every blade in the flowing sea of grass.

I would join the countless thousands who rest below. Cornered at the edge.

“You know it’s dangerous up there right?”

I searched for the voice. It was filled with a hint of sass and a lot of sarcasm. A voice that belonged to a young woman.

“Yeah that's kind of why I’m up here,” I replied sarcastically, “what’s your excuse?”

“Maybe I’m here because I’m patrolling the place for trespassers.”

Who the fuck is this girl?

“Look I’m not exactly interested in ice breakers with a stranger at the moment so could you do me the decency of either just killing me or leaving me alone so I can do it myself?”

I turned to face the source of the voice.

“Is this a hallucination too?” I asked her.

Even in the dimly moonlit night, I could never forget that crimson hair tied into a ponytail.

“This is real, Aiden.” She replied.

“You were there,” I started, “at the office, and then again in the lobby.”

“I’m surprised you made me out through the prosthetics.” She replied as she smiled coyly.

“The hair gave it away.” I lied.

“Strange that you managed to see through a wig Aiden, didn’t have that noted down as something you could do”

I turned to face her.

“So what is this?” I asked plainly, “are you here to kill me?”

“Why would I do that?” The woman asked, taken aback.

“I’ve made a lot of enemies, left most of them alive.” I bluffed.

“Your biggest tackle was killing a wifebeater,” the woman recited as she paced, “a good kill.”

“Didn’t realize you were a fan.”

“I’m more of an investigator.” She joked.

“And what’s so special about me?” I asked.

She stopped her pacing.

“That book, for starters.” she said, pointing to the book still firmly held in my hands.

“What about it? It's just a book.”

“You and I both know that's a lie.”

I tightened my grip on the book.

“Who are you, really?” I take a step towards her, “and what do you know about all of this?”

She took a step back in response.

“You know more about that book than we do,” she bounced back, “we were hoping you could tell us.”

“And who’s ‘we?’”

The woman closed her arms around her.

“In about three hours from now your body will be discovered and positively identified in one of two ways.” She started.

“What the fuck-“ I started but was cut off.

“HPD will either be alerted to a suicide at the Pali Lookout and find your body at around 9:30 am today, alternatively an apartment fire will be reported to the HFD where they will discover a single fatality, charred beyond recognition.”

“So you are trying to kill me?” I asked again, somewhat flabbergasted but mostly in shock.

“You died the moment you came up here Joseph Aiden,” she started, “your conviction was laid bare. If it weren’t for me you’d be a twitching mess in the grass right now.”

“So why go through the effort of burning my apartment down then? To suffer for my deeds?”

I watched as a cocky smile slowly grew across her face. I had been avoiding the obvious.

“You want to fake my death.” I stated.

Her face remained unchanged.

“What does it matter? How could I be worth that effort?”

The woman approached.

“We require the help of people who are able to make sense out of irrational things.” She started.

As she spoke she began to pace around me in a circle, like a predator circling its prey.

“You’re a jobless, broke, alcoholic playboy with no real moral compass,” she lobbed insult after insult, “but yet of all the people who have held that book you are the only one who hasn’t gone insane yet.”

I’m sane? Me?

I scoffed at the implication

“I’m sorry, but I just spent the past year in a psychotic hallucination where I was dating, and cheating on, the widow of the guy I murdered,” I began to excessively elaborate, “then I get a vision of the future where she hangs herself…”

She watches me in amusement as I pour out the thoughts that had stayed trapped within my mind for too long.

“Not to mention that fucking statue invading my dreams and reshaping my personal hell, The Dreary, into some nightmare capital-“

“And?” she interrupted.

“And? And what?” I asked, befuddled.

She straightened herself.

“What’s all that got to do with anything?”

I’m seriously doubting my own sanity, this can’t be real.

“I’m a mentally unstable wreck who couldn’t even get a job.” I clarified.

She laughed.

“Oh sorry yeah that was us,” she said flippantly, “we needed you desperate enough to come to us in the first place.”

“You’ve been messing with my job applications?”

“Intercepting them. To anyone looking in, it's like you haven’t filed a single application.”

“You could have knocked, or called, or just kidnapped me, there's a million better ways to get someone’s attention.”

She shifted.

“You think we didn’t try?”

Well, given I can barely remember the past year, how would I have known?

“Besides,” she relaxed, “not like we can be so overt all the time. This is the longest I’ve been let out on the surface for years.”

She leaned her head back and gazed up at the stars.

“Poor David only got to come up for the interview.”

I began to grow frustrated with the pointless cat and mouse.

“So what the hell does the CIA want with me?”

The woman froze for a moment, then fought back a chuckle.

“You think I’m- we’re CIA?” She asked in disbelief.

“Messing with my job applications, the whole fake office thing, kinda the whole CIA playbook yeah?”

If I knew better I’d say she looked as if I had just called her ugly.

“So that ability of yours is only limited to geometries, you really don’t know who or what we are?” She replied as a wave of revelation gently washed over her face.

“So you’re not CIA?” I asked again.

She sat down on the ledge next to me, spun around, and cast her gaze across the moonlit valley.

“We are above any singular world government. We act with the singular goal of protecting,” she gestured to the valley and the city lights twinkling in the distance, “all of this. All of mankind.”

She turned her gaze towards me. As our eyes met I saw a raging fire blaze within her, a passion that managed to remain subdued letting off little more than playful sparks just minutes before.

“And I want you to be a part of it.”

I wanted to come up with some witty retort, some backhanded reply that allowed me to demonstrate my lack of interest in her blatantly obvious lie.

But I didn’t, because I believed her. Against my better judgement, what little I could still claim to have, I wholeheartedly believed her.

And I could not explain why.

My grip on the book relaxed slightly. A bit too much. I felt it slip from my grasp.

My body acted before my brain did and I quickly reached for the book and lost my footing in the process.

I fell.

Amidst the rushing of wind I heard something faintly. Someone shouting.

“…emergency discharge plus one on my position!”

The world around me began to feel alive, the air seemed to be a buzz as the hair on my body stood on end. For a moment I saw a faint blue glow envelop my person.

A brilliant blinding light and deafening roar flooded my senses as I felt my body propelled by an unknown force, which slammed me face first into a cold, hard surface.

My vision and hearing slowly returned, but as they did I began to doubt whether or not they truly had.

I found myself on the floor of a sterile white room. My vision was still blurry but with what I could see I saw a doorway at the far end of the room flanked by two blurs that appeared to be people. As I looked below me I discovered that I was on a massive pane of glass or some other hard and transparent material, beneath which sat a mass of machinery that defied every attempt I made to interpret. Similarly above me hung a mirrored construct, though exposed to the open air and venting steam from an upper assembly, betraying the fact it had been recently used.

Very recently.

“Jesus Christ, Aiden try not to kill yourself when people are talking to you,” came a familiar, condescending voice.

As I craned my head to look I noticed the two figures on the far end of the room shift their posture and begin approaching rapidly.

“Stand down, he’s my case,” she said, putting herself between the men and myself, “he’s the new hire.”

“I didn’t agree to anything.” I groaned.

“There’s no going back now,” the woman said as she helped me to my feet.

“Agent Feng,” one of the men said, “we have room 10 available for intake.”

“Perfect, mind giving him a hand?” Agent Feng said as she all but threw me at the unprepared man.

The men, who I later learned were guards, offered their assistance in half-walking, half-dragging me down an equally clinically white corridor into an inconspicuous room.

The room itself was mostly unlit with the only source of light being a ceiling mounted projector casting onto the far wall, in front of which were several rows of cheap metal chairs.

“The first time is a bit disorientating, though that fall is what gave you the concussion.” Agent Feng explained, parting my hair to examine the very painful and bleeding bump on my forehead.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, wincing from the pain.

“The ESD, they’ll go over it in the intro” she replied, patting my head just above the sore spot.

The guards sat me down front and center, then left the room.

Agent Feng sat next to me, a few chairs away.

“It doesn’t actually stop your momentum but I hear they’re working on a way to make it do that. Anyway, we’ll send you down to medical after we finish up intake.”

“Oh and by the way,” she said, making her way to the wall mounted controls, “welcome to the IFCN.”

A month had passed since that night. The night Agent Feng forcefully ripped me out of my miserable, incoherent existence and gave me a purpose.

I had only been up to the surface once since then, to watch my funeral.

Not many people get to say that, and it’s a privilege I never wanted.

To my surprise, the myriad of friends and associates who I had effectively told to go to hell actually showed up. They even cried for me. Though none more so than my parents.

I was their only child.

Agent Feng, Kaiga, had held true to her word. It was a closed casket funeral. I pray they had used a fake body.

It was a good thing that there were so many people who came, made it easier to blend in to a crowd that wasn’t looking for me.

Unsurprisingly Leena didn’t come. Even after a month it’s difficult to shed that false life I had imagined. Even harder to wake up every morning to a livestream of the morning sun.

I hadn’t dreamt of The Dreary since that night either. Though I keep the book with me at all times out of an abundance of caution.

I am dead to the world. I now walk in my own shadow. I sleep below so that I may lay down my life to protect others from what they do not know, what they cannot understand, and what they must never see.

If it weren’t for the alcohol, I could never sleep comfortably again.

And truthfully, I don’t think anyone here does.

-If you’ve stuck around this long, thank you from the bottom of my heart. This won’t be the last story in this universe nor will it be the last of Agent Joseph Aiden. One day I hope to grow my skills and rewrite this story with the quality it deserves. I hope you will stick around with me on this journey.

Signed, CGCallisto-

(Originally posted in r/talesfromthecreeps)

Every dream is an eternity.

Every night my dreams are the same. Always have been for as long as I could remember my dreams.

Every night I would awake in my bed. Except it wasn’t my actual bed. The world around me would always be covered in this ephemeral fog that permeated every single inch of space.

And the dust. My god the dust.

All I ever did was clean.

The shadows never changed. The day never began. The Dust would never end.

I would continue on from my room into the hall, then into the bathroom, then the closets, then the kitchen, then the floors. Never stopping until the entire apartment was free of the dust.

Then I would step into the outside world. The world that was not my world. The world of The Dust and The Gray.

The Dreary.

Light from above would fight its way through the fog, never making it to the hollow ground below.

Where there should have been roads, dirt, grass, and trees, there was stone.

Cobblestoned roads, stonework trees, and fields of slate.

All of it covered in The Dust.

As I would move through the still air the dust would form on my wake and disperse, leaving a trail of my presence throughout this abandoned, forgotten world.

My world of Dust, my Dreary.

I would look up into that fog filled sky and gaze into the twin hues of yellow and white whose muffled screams struggled to breach the all-but-impenetrable fog above, scattering their voices into the omnipresent haze.

Then I would wake up.

Today was no different.

A woman stood just beyond the doorway, her flowing auburn hair flailing about as she shouted at me. I couldn’t really make out the words. She seemed familiar.

Something hard and somewhat heavy hit me square in the face, then plopped into my lap.

My still-blurry sight returned to me just in time to watch the woman march off down the hallway.

Her exit was announced by the slamming of the front door.

My bed was a mess. Clothes were strewn about, the sheets were everywhere, and some were stained with a substance I could not identify. The morning sun cast my shadow on the opposite wall from behind me.

My head pounded from within, memories of last night sat chained behind an alcohol-soaked lock.

My eyes trailed downward to my lap, falling on the object that was hurled at me only moments earlier.

It was a black, featureless, leather-bound book. A fairly hefty one at that.

Rubbing my eyes to confirm I wasn’t completely blind, I took a closer look at the book’s cover.

It was completely blank.

I turned over the book, expecting somehow that repeatedly flipping the book over would magically cause it to manifest some form of identifying information.

I caught a glimpse of something on the spine as I did so. It glistened in the morning sun and sparkled like diamonds.

It was a sigil. A symbol etched in gold, a gold so vibrant that the world around me appeared gray by comparison.

“Oh shit,” the words shot out of my mouth before my brain could even register I was speaking, “Leena!”

I’m such a fucking moron.

I fell onto the floor as my legs refused to accept my authority over them, getting tangled in the bedsheets in the process.

I crawled towards the nearest pile of, mostly, clean clothes I could identify.

Getting dressed was a challenge. I fought with my own body just to put on a shirt, whilst barely navigating the hectic and wayward expletive laden rants that crashed through the windows of my sullied mind palace.

Of all the thoughtless and horrible things, how could I have forgot today was the day she came back from her-

I paused in the hallway, pants half on and shirt on backwards.

Where did she go anyway? Was it a work thing? Was it some kind of vacation?

Why did I care?

My emotional rollercoaster came to a stand-still as the emergency brakes kicked on.

I let the half assembled outfit slide off my unkempt form as I shuffled into the kitchen.

That's right, I didn’t care. I don’t care.

The dishes in the sink were clean, as they should be.

The counter was full of random brand-new crap brought home that was never properly put away and just left in its assorted state of limbo storage, not that I needed the counter space anyway. The side effect of a weak will.

I threw the kettle on and threw a pan on the stove. I figured I should have myself a good old fashioned breakfast of eggs whatever-was-left-in-the-fridge, coffee, and a ciggy.

I dug through the fridge and managed to salvage some cheese, a sausage, and a whole tomato. I chopped them up roughly and dumped them into the simmering mixture of egg and butter.

I slid the scrambled egg mixture onto my plate, grabbed my cup of liquid life, and sat my ass down on a spot I had cleared on the couch.

The TV had nothing interesting on but I left it on the food channel anyway. It was nice to eat with someone.

As I put out the cigarette in the overflowing tray I glanced over at the pile of marked envelopes on the table. Most of them said “Past Due.”

After dumping my dishes back in the sink I stumbled back into my room looking for… something.

The guy.

The cute one. Chatted me up at the bar and drank me under the table, and my sheets. I think he was a blonde, or brown? Or maybe I had hoped he was.

He must have taken off when Leena started screaming. I didn’t see any of his clothes around the bed.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye. Though it's refreshing to be on the other end of that for once.

Why did she throw that book at me?

I ruffled through the haphazardly strewn bedsheets until my hands came into contact with what I was searching for. The book Leena had thrown at my face just before she left.

With some painkillers and another cup of coffee on-board, I could think clearly enough and took a closer examination of the book.

Flipping through its pages I was met with blank after blank page.

The entire damn thing is just blank. Was this some kind of journal for me?

A gift? But why would she…

I threw it in a pile next to my side of the bed.

The rest of the day was filled with job applications.

The age of the Internet has done wonders for many aspects of humanity. Job applications were one sector made infinitely worse.

Every job fair booth I went to had a QR code to scan for their online applications system. Every Now Hiring sign in a store had that godforsaken block-grid in lieu of a simple piece of paper and a proper interview.

After the fifteenth online application referral I decided to call it for the day.

I sat down on my slightly cleaner couch and looked down at my phone, expecting to see dozens of notifications. Ideally at least one.

Instead I saw none.

No calls, no texts, no nothing.

The sun hung low over the horizon. Its waning radiance coaxed the sky into a storm of fire that lapped at the ever growing ocean of blues and purples.

It shone directly into my fucking eyes.

Shuffling my lazy ass over on the couch, I poured out the remaining contents of a bottle of whiskey into my cold cup of half drank coffee.

The evening consisted of aimlessly scrolling through various social media feeds and TV channels. Everywhere I looked I saw people on dream vacations, getting married, or buying their first homes.

Guess I’m just a fucking loser, huh.

Dinner was more whiskey, from a new bottle this time, and another menthol ciggy. I wasn’t particularly hungry as it was.

Where the hell was Leena? She stormed out and hasn’t even texted me. Maybe shes-

I quickly downed the rest of my glass before I could finish the thought. The burning warmth of the spiced whiskey rips me out of my own head.

As the whiskey level in my bottle lowered the moon rose in response. It was close to midnight by the time the bottle was empty.

The floor was my home now. This was not negotiable. Any attempt to stand at the moment would surely result in me splitting my head open on a table, or worse, ejecting the precious ounces of whiskey that I had been struggling to keep down for the past hour. The world around me decided it was time to begin rotating at ridiculous speeds, rendering me unable to stand upright.

Clinging to the ground beneath me, I dragged myself to my bedroom and eventually, I pulled myself up onto my bed.

The spinning only worsened. I closed my eyes and did my best to ignore it.

Eventually the spinning stopped and I awoke in my bed.

But this wasn’t my bed.

In what felt like no time at all I had returned to serve my sentence. My eternal penance for the crimes I must have committed at some point.

Once more I proceeded through my charge of the cleaning of The Dust.

All my life, all that I could remember anyway, I had never been able to dream. Not properly. Instead of nightmares of being naked at school or all my teeth falling out I dreamt of this place, The Dreary.

The Dreary was an empty world, a dead world, one that remained contained by a dense impenetrable fog that snuffed out all but the most diffused light from the sky above.

The Dreary was, as far as I could tell, an exact copy of the world. Save for the fact that anything not built by human hands was replaced by stone abstracts that, while giving the idea of what they're supposed to be, look nothing like it. Imagine if a tree wasn’t a tree but instead a jagged spine of stone that clawed upwards through the fog. Sure the base idea of a tree is there but that’s not a fucking tree.

There was nothing living within The Dreary. Even the wind did not blow. The world did not breathe. It was still, frozen, a corpse of identity.

Yet tonight was different.

The Dreary demanded my attention.

It had not done that before.

I broke from my charge and answered, walking towards the front door of my copied apartment.

I saw nothing new outside. The same cobble roads divided the same slate fields bearing the same stonework trees.

Except there was something new.

There had never been something new.

A great and grand staircase made of the most radiant marble ascended into the sky and well beyond the fog. Its brilliance made the fog seem black by comparison.

At the foot of these stairs stood a statue. A black statue covered in a golden cloak that fluttered in a non-existent wind.

“What the fuck?” My voice carried across The Dreary, hollow and raspy.

There’s never anything new. Nothing new, never. There was only The Dust, there was only The Dreary. What the hell is this?

I felt my breath become erratic-

I felt my breath.

I have never breathed before in a dream. I had never spoken.

I could not take my eyes off of the cloaked statue.

I could not resist the movement of my legs. Yet again my body refused to obey me as I was marched down the stairs of my apartment building.

The Dust does not react to me.

In what felt like seconds I found myself kneeling before the cloaked statue. It towered over me, but its height seemed to vary as my eyes rattled around in their sockets.

I clutched my head as I hissed an empty scream in agony. I felt a thousand hands trying to push their way out from within my mind, held back by a single flimsy door.

I strained to look upwards at the statue.

As I did I caught a glimpse of long auburn hair.

I shot upright in my bed.

The accumulating saliva in my mouth signaled to me that I should start running to the bathroom.

As the last of my wretches escaped my hanging maw, I caught a glance of my reflection.

I saw myself. Not in some artsy self-abstract sort of sense, but in a very literal sense.

Not the scars, nor the rage, nor the often bloodshot and tired eyes that have stared back at me for longer than I bothered to remember.

My eyes. My self.

I felt the fog that clouded my thoughts lift ever so slightly.

For the first time in ages I could think without strain. The string of consciousness was no longer a spider web of spider webs but was now a constant, deliberate, string that I could trace from end to end hanging freely in the newfound void.

I saw the filth, the disgust, the depravity that surrounded me.

How long had I lived like this?

I hopped in the shower to wash off days, no, weeks of god knows what from my skin. The water that rolled off my body and down into the drain was noticeably darker than the water that came out of the shower head.

I located the cleanest ensemble of clothes I could find; a pair of shorts and a button up short sleeve shirt that hung on my desk chair.

The unrelenting summer heat would stand no chance against this climate appropriate ensemble.

As I waited for the kettle to boil I started clearing the kitchen counter of all of the trash and unopened impulse-purchase appliances that had made it their home.

By the time the whistling of the kettle arrived I had already bagged up two bags of what had to be no less than $1000 of unused appliances. In their state I doubt I could get anyone to take them even for free.

The first sip of the black sludge that had the audacity to call itself coffee left a searing trail as it traveled down my throat. Even if I had any milk that wasn’t out of date or sugar that wasn’t crawling with bugs it wouldn’t have been enough to blunt the blow of that demonic concoction.

I poured the entire mug of caffeinated sewage down the drain so that it may rejoin its kin. Instead I opted for a half drank can of POG left in the fridge.

As I began my war against grime in the kitchen I felt my phone buzz.

I quickly rinsed my hands and answered the incoming call.

“Hi, is this Joseph Aiden?” The voice on the other end spoke.

“Yes,” I started hesitantly, “this is him.”

It had been a while since I had heard anyone say my name. I patiently awaited the other side to get on with whatever it was they wanted. Maybe it was a scammer who wanted to extort me for all I’m worth. I hope he likes the zeros in my bank account, because that's all there is.

“My name is David DeGuzman, I’m calling in response to your application with us…” as the voice trailed on my mind honed in on something he said.

Application? When did I-

Stopping myself short as I glanced over at the pile of yet-to-be-mailed applications on the kitchen table.

“…we’d like to have you come in for an interview. What dates are you available this week?”

I felt my heart flutter.

“Any,” I practically shouted, “right now even I can come down right now.”

I cringed inside realizing what a desperate fool I must have come off as. Even if it was the honest truth, what if this screws with my chances at getting the job?

I paused.

What job am I even volunteering myself for anyway? Sure it didn’t really matter at this point but-

“You know,” David started, “I think we have an opening around noon today, you think you could make it down to The Mall building?”

Thank god it’s close.

“Yeah that's like five minutes away from me,” I chuckled, overwhelmed and nervous beyond comparison.

“Great. We’re room 1304 on the 13th floor. You can check in with the front desk once you arrive. See you there.”

The line dropped.

As my phone returned to the lock screen I saw the time was 11:24.

While it was true that I wasn’t that far from The Mall building, I had realized far too late that any of my far more acceptable business attire was in desperate need of a wash. Sure, the shirt I was wearing was formal enough, shorts and slippers would likely get me marked down.

I combed through my room to see if perhaps I had missed any nicer clothes. Much to my dismay I had not.

Resigning myself to my fate I gritted my teeth and pushed on out the door.

My walk down to the mall was less of a casual walk and more of a heavily restrained sprint. My body happily obeyed my restraint, despite my legs screaming to let them break out in a sprint. The tightness in my chest, like a coiled spring, desired to be released through my legs.

The Mall itself was, to my knowledge, the largest outdoor mall in the world. On any given day it was bustling with tourists from all over the world. Situated right across the street from a massive beach park and sat just on the edge of Waikiki, It was arguably the social center of the whole island. The south side of the island, anyway. The Mall Building was situated on the Mauka side of the mall, opposite the ocean side, which meant it was basically a straight walk from my shabby abode down the main road and right into The Mall.

On the walk more questions formed within me, the solemn line of thought formed into a structured diagram of red threads that stretched from one end of the void to the other.

What company was I even interviewing for? The Mall building was mostly just offices for anything you could imagine, private medical practices and outpatient clinics, law offices, engineering firms, hell even some small cafes.

And that name. David DeGuzman.

Not that I was an expert on names, but of all the names you hear around here I couldn’t help but feel that something was… off.

Before I could indulge my conspiracy further I realized I had entered into the elevator and was now en route to the 13th floor.

I was alone in the elevator. Despite the lobby otherwise being filled only I had entered this elevator.

Or at least I thought the lobby was full.

The doors opened into the 13th floor lobby. It was a modest little area with a few area chairs for people to sit as they wait for their family to do whatever business they have on this floor.

I walked out, passed the row of elevators and headed into the main hallway. There were no windows. The dull droning of the building's HVAC and the gentle buzzing of the fluorescent lights trickled through the air before being absorbed by the slight off-blue carpet that ran the length of the floor.

I nervously made my way to room 1304. Thankfully, or not, the room was close to the elevators. Just one door down after taking a right.

The door was blank aside from the room placard and an “hours of operation” sign.

I steadied myself, took a deep breath, and entered the room.

I entered a small office lobby. Two chairs sat awkwardly in the far corner next to a door that presumably led further into the sectioned off office area. A newly constructed drywall partition isolated the lobby area from the rest of the office floor space, leaving only a door and a cutout for the secretary or greeter to manage guests as they come in the door.

“Joseph Aiden?” A female voice called from out of sight.

“Uhh yes?” I answered cautiously.

A woman, appearing to be in her forties, approached the counter cutout from within the offices. Her bright red hair appeared almost plastic in the fluorescent lighting.

“Mr. DeGuzman is ready for you.” She said, bending down to interact with something below the counter.

I heard a soft click followed by a buzz.

The office door popped open and the woman beckoned me forth.

The hallway was more of the same. A drywall corridor with several doors on either side.

The door locked shut behind me with a buzz, startling me.

At the same time the door at the far end of the hall opened. A man wearing a blue floral shirt waved me down.

“Down here!” He called.

I quickly made my way inside the man’s office. The windows behind him were blocked off by heavy curtains, the only source of light being the ever-present fluorescent overhead lights.

“I’m David,” he said, extending his hand, “pleasure to meet you.”

I reciprocated his gesture and returned a firm handshake.

“Likewise.” I replied.

The man, David, had well kept short black hair and a comically yet impeccably well kept ‘70s mustache that reflected some of the overhead light.

David gestured for me to sit and I obliged.

The office itself was a modest space, the desk at which we were sat was adorned with the typical office fare, albeit a bit lacking in some finer details and a bit too clean for it to be in constant use.

“So, about-“ I started before David cut me off.

“You’re 28 correct?” David asked as he held up some papers.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Can you tell me a little bit about your previous employer?”

I paused.

My previous employer? Who-

“Oh,” the thought found its way to me, “yes sorry I was with a PI firm, Maikai Investigations.”

“Yes them,” David affirmed leaning back in his silent office chair, “what kind of work were you involved in?”

I felt my palms become clammy but I persisted and gave him the sales pitch.

“Usually a client would come to us and ask us to get information about someone. That's the very base level of things,” I elaborated, “could be, you know, someone wanting to know about their birth parents. Someone wanting to know if a spouse is being unfaithful, really just about anything involving information.”

“Were you good at what you did?” David asked, his words laced with a substance I couldn’t fully make out.

“I’d like to think I was,” I said with false bravado, “never had any clients complain and I always completed the job-“

“Even when you were asked to do things that might have been morally objectionable?”

I froze.

I wasn’t a saint. Still aren’t. But I did what I was asked and did a damn fine job of it. If someone had a problem with it they can sort it out with the cops.

“Absolutely,” I said, almost bragging, “especially when others would refuse to take the job.”

“Why?”

David’s words now came with an air of genuine curiosity.

“Can I ask the relevance to the job?” I deflected.

David shifted forward in his chair, his poker face remaining unchanged since the start of the interview.

“Everything,” he replied eerily, “I’m not here to judge you, I want to know.”

David stared at me with an intensity I had reserved only for stains in my sink.

“Because the job needed to be done,” I started, “and I liked the challenge.”

David’s eyes perked up at that.

“The challenge?”

I furrowed my brow.

“Every case was a puzzle,” I leaned in, “and I was the best damn puzzle solver in that organization.”

I winced.

“Then why’d you leave?” David shot back.

Ignoring the blatant cringe that was whatever the hell I just called myself, David’s question shot through and shattered my false bravado like a bullet through a kitchen window.

“I was banging the boss's wife.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the reason.

David’s poker face slipped as he let out a hint of disappointment.

“The analyst position we are looking for has some caveats,” he started as he began flipping through the papers on his desk, “one is honesty. We expect our analysts to be completely honest with us.”

His eyes locked onto mine.

I caught a glimpse of the papers on his desk. One was a memo entitled “Investigative Incident,” left conveniently in my line of sight.

“I overstepped.” I replied begrudgingly.

“Honesty is paramount,” David began as laid down the papers, “I don’t mean some half-assed corporate honesty, I mean if what I ask is for you to delve into how much you hate your boss, your life, or whatever escapades you and a secretary got up to, we expect the full un-adulterated details.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

What the fuck is he on about? Sure I appreciate that this job lets you cuss your boss out in the name of honesty but isn’t this a bit much?

“Just what exactly is an analyst here?” I started, “What are the hours? The responsibilities? The pay?”

The more questions I asked the more flustered I became. I knew utterly nothing about this place or this supposed job I was now interviewing for.

As a matter of fact how the hell did this guy get a hold of that-

“Anything further requires an NDA,” David cut, interrupting my thoughts.

“I have to sign an NDA to even know who or what I'm working for?” I asked, emboldened and incredulous.

David raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, you do,” he replied, “and you’re going to be asked far more uncomfortable questions than the ones I’m giving you now.”

Then it clicked.

Analyst position? I think I would have remembered applying for something so fancy sounding, at least compared to the myriad of fast food and retail positions I had been applying for.

“I don’t think I’ve ever applied for this position,” I said as I slowly stood up from my chair, “just who the hell are you?”

David smirked.

“Like I said, you sign this contract and I’ll answer all your questions.” David smiled.

His poker face slipped away revealing satisfaction and pride.

He slid a paper across his desk towards me, placing a pen at the top of the document.

The paper was a single page. Barely half. At the bottom was a place for my signature and nothing else.

I glanced at the page, not wanting to let my guard down. I caught one sentence that set off alarm bells within me.

“We are humanity’s first and last line of defense.”

My chest became a twist of panic, of confusion, of curiosity, of fear, and god knows what other emotions that humanity has yet to properly define.

“I’m not interested.” I said and made my way to the door.

David stood at his desk and watched as I hastily made my exit.

The door out of the office buzzed and opened as I approached.

“We’ll see you again, Aiden.” David said gently, his voice echoing down the hallway as the door to 1304 closed behind me.

The red threads in my mind formed a tangled mess that only grew as my questions remained unanswered.

As soon as I got home I made sure to lock the door.

I pulled out my phone to check the number that this organization had contacted me from.

It wasn’t there.

In the call history the last call shown was from a week ago.

From Leena.

I slumped down onto the couch.

I felt my chest constrict as a burning pain filled my chest, a twisting anxiety and yearning that sapped my breath away.

Why do I care? She knew what she was signing up for. She knew what I was.

I kept rationalizing.

I never said yes to her, I just didn’t say no. Not my fault she got all confused.

My sight became blurry.

Why’d she keep taking pity on me? Keep coming back to my dump of a house? Keep buying me shit I didn’t ask for? Keep-

The tears began to roll down my face.

Why couldn’t I care until now?

I bawled my eyes out. I cried and cried until the couch was soaked with my tears. I unleashed all the tension in my chest with a scream that surely pissed off the neighbors.

I cried, I screamed, I threw everything within arm’s reach at the wall hoping that if I threw it hard enough I could fix this mess. I threw a tantrum that would put a stubborn toddler to shame.

As a few hours pass as I lay spent on the couch at the epicenter of the disaster that trashed my living room.

“Leena…” I moaned mournfully into a tearstained pillow.

My eyes lazily scanned my surroundings, taking in the totality of my ruin and pathetic squalor.

All I could feel was a muted mix of disgust and hatred, aimed at myself.

I wished for nothing more than to never leave this couch again; better to join the rot and the refuse than continue my futile struggle against a life I had already destroyed.

A flame of insight flickered to life within my mind.

Just how the hell did those people, whoever they are, erase their call history from my phone?

After a brief but intense search online I came to a disturbing conclusion.Unless they had physical possession of my device, they could not hide my call history.

My eyes quickly darted to my door.

It was still locked up tight, right as it should be, some debris still blocking it from opening due to my earlier outburst.

I got up and inspected the jalousies.

The netting on the windows themselves remained undisturbed, even sporting a fine layer of dust. The jalousies too were equally undisturbed.

They didn’t break in. Or if they did they hid their tracks better than most, well enough to never be caught. But why go through all that effort just to delete a phone number? I could just look up the company by its address right?

I entered the address, suite 1304.

Nothing, at least for this decade. There are some old surface web files relating to a small life insurance company that once operated out of that address.

Feeling restless and seeing the sun still high in the sky, I decided to make my way back to the unit and get some answers.

Not fair they should know me so well without it being mutual.

Upon arriving in the lobby I spotted a building directory. I quickly scanned the registered suite numbers for 1304.

Not the first column, not the second, nor the third.

“Need help locating a business?”

I spun around to see a woman with long crimson hair, done up in a long pony tail.

“Oh, uh,” I fumbled my words.

Maybe I'm a little colorblind but that crimson looked auburn for a brief but uncomfortably long second.

“Im looking for the name of a business that operated out of suite 1304.” I explained to the young woman.

She squinted at the registry and scanned it intently.

“Strange,” she started, “I don’t see any, maybe we should go take a look?”

She beckoned me to the elevator lobby, to the cargo lift.

She swiped her ID card and the doors opened.

The cargo lift was very spacious and surprisingly well kept for being used to haul god-knows-what.

She walked over to the button panel and selected the 13th floor. Unlike the other elevators this one had a “Basement” floor button. The elevator had ascended at a far greater rate than the other one I had used earlier in the day.

We arrived on the 13th floor and she led me towards the suite. As we arrived we noticed a “For Lease” sign with an address for a corporate realty website.

“It doesn’t look like anyone has used this one in a while,” she frowned, “sorry that I couldn’t be of more help!”

Before I could respond she had already made her way back to the elevator and disappeared.

It was impossible, yet it was reality.

I had just been here maybe a few hours ago and the office where I’d had my interview was just gone.

As my thoughts began to settle they also began to drift. As they drifted and fluttered about in the subconscious wind of my psyche they fell upon a particular subject.

The hair, the auburn hair. Leena.

But the lady’s hair wasn’t auburn, it was practically crimson. Dyed. Healthy too.

She wasn’t Leena, so why did my thoughts find themselves wandering over to her? Just a similarity?

No, familiarity.

I’ve seen her before. Recently. But where?

The elevator came for me as I mulled over my thoughts. Scanning the panel I looked for the lowest floor option.

“Lobby.”

No basement floor option in this one. Probably just for the freight elevator.

As I walked out of the lobby and passed the ground floor loading dock I stopped.

In the office. She was there.

The receptionist had red hair. It was done up differently and partially obscured due to the contrasted office lighting but it was definitely, or probably, the same color.

But she was old, the lady who helped me couldn’t have been older than 30.

Unless they were using prosthetic makeup. But why the hell-

“Eh, out da way!” A voice announced from behind me.

A very impatient and upset package courier stood behind me with his cart full of parcels.

I quickly moved on wanting to avoid any awkward interactions.

The walk home was unpleasant.

A growing uneasiness in my gut had worked its way throughout my entire body. The traffic, people, buildings, even the sun all seemed so distant yet painfully close. Too close.

Was I being watched?

I glanced around. Nothing unusual, which only served to drive up my anxiety more.

I knew I was being watched, I could feel it, years of experience and training screamed the obvious to me but my eyes, my mind, I was blind to it.

I locked the door upon arriving home. Closed the windows and blinds too.

Still I felt the eyes, the presence, I was seen. Exposed. Vulnerable.

But that was impossible.

A thorough sweep of my house confirmed what I had already known; I was alone. Just me and my belongings.

I took a drag from the quickly emptying pack which helped ease the tension I felt. The feeling persisted.

Paranoia wasn’t unusual for me, though it was mostly back when I still worked as a PI. Most PIs had rules though. Standards. Maybe even a moral compass.

I didn’t.

The pay was good, real good, but it wasn’t about the pay. It was all about the thrill. It had been so long since I felt that fear, that ever watchful eye, that I forgot how good it felt. I had spent years binging on every substance I could get my hands in, trapped in my own mind.

Now, for the first time in years, I could feel that sensation coursing through my body like electricity.

When I awoke I once again found myself in The Dreary. I do not remember falling asleep.

But it had changed.

The Dust. The layer of dust that had coated the entire world was gone.

I rushed outside to see the fog, still ever present but much lighter. I could see further than ever before. Far enough to see that The Dreary had been rearranged.

The roads that had once mirrored their real-world counterpart were now gone. The houses all replaced with different, familiar structures. There was now just one long cobblestone boulevard that stretched from the foot of my apartment building to a massive tower. The Mall Building, behind which now was a massive ocean that expanded beyond the fog which replaced the massive beachpark, and mall, that would have normally sat behind it.

Gone was the marble staircase. Gone was the statue in the golden cloak.

Without thinking I began walking down the procession towards The Mall Building. Its upper floors pierced the fog and stretched into the unseen sky.

The structures that flanked the boulevard on either side were houses, most of them that is. Some were industrial buildings, one was a hotel.

Their commonality soon became apparent.

I had investigated cases involving each of these structures. An unfaithful husband having secret meetups with some girl half his age at the hotel, a string of disappearances tied to a warehouse with a cold trail, a teacher that had been using school equipment to manufacture narcotics, and many, many other escapades.

The closer to the sky scraper I got the more recent the structures were in my memory. Until eventually, just short of The Mall Building, my eyes fell upon the house I had blocked from my mind for years.

The house that sealed my fate, both giving and taking so much.

The place I first met Leena. The place I lost my job. The place I nearly lost my freedom. The place I thought I’d lose my life. The place with a shattered kitchen window.

My head was turned away from that house and toward The Mall Building.

I became unable to look away from it, my eyes transfixed on the lobby entrance.

Why would I want to look away? There is a mystery here, something to solve, to understand.

The words echoed in my mind, but they were not mine.

My legs marched themselves towards the opening and into the lobby. An elevator door was already open.

The cargo elevator.

Entering the elevator I scanned the button panel. The card reader was gone. Only one button remained.

“Basement.”

The doors closed as I hit the button.

I felt myself nearly float as the elevator descended at a rapid rate. Despite its apparent speed the ride seemed to go on for far too long.

Then it stopped.

The doors opened and before me was the office I had just been in earlier today.

Following that familiar path I proceeded into the hallway.

There was only one door. A door at the end of the hall. And it was open.

From the entrance I could see the windows were gone. Replaced by the marble staircase. The statue with the Golden Cloak stood in front of it.

I approached the statue and fell to my knees once again.

Voices.

Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions of voices began to echo in my mind. What small fragments I could grasp would only say one thing.

The Cataclysm.

Echoes of screams and fragments of agony filled my mind from a past long before what I had known. I knew not how, only that these voices were ancient beyond reason, ancient beyond knowledge, beyond what any human, any mortal had any right to hear let alone understand.

I felt the weight beneath the ground. I felt a pull below that threatened to swallow me whole.

My eyes struggled to focus on the statue, only seeing the fluttering of the golden cloak.

The staircase descended into an infinite darkness. It beckoned me forth.

My hand reached into my back pocket. I grabbed onto something firm and pulled it forth.

Immediately the voices silenced and I regained my strength.

In my hand was a featureless leather bound book with a golden sigil etched into its spine.

-Thank you for taking the time to read my first work, this community has motivated me to put pen to paper after years of indecision. I’d rather the stories I write be painfully mid than non-existant. Part Two soon.

Signed, CGCallisto-

(CW: Suicide, mentions of DV)

I shot up in my bed in a cold sweat. In my hands I was clutching the book.

Threaded fragments of mind and memory wound themselves into a new spool of cohesion as clarity washed over me.

I could think clearly.

Ever since this book came into my possession I’ve started to shed the cask of my infirmities like a snake molting its skin. My mind, once a place of fragmented and shattered memories, was forged back together with a golden alloy.

The pages of my life were rebound in a leather book with golden thread.

I opened the first page of the book.

“A story is never complete until all parts come together.”

No shit.

I flipped through the pages.

Nothing.

Page after page of just nothing. Then I saw it.

“The wind whipped past his face as the ground below him approached at an alarming rate; He was falling.”

An errant sentence printed in the middle of a page about a quarter ways through the book.

What the hell was this?

I flipped through more empty pages. Then once again.

“The decaying facility creaked and groaned as the winds filtered through its exposed outer husk. Grains of sand fell into piles where the roof had given way.”

And another.

“The islands came into view; six equal sized islands were evenly spaced around one, much larger, central island. A man-made paradise in the middle of The Pacific.”

I combed through the pages until I reached the end of the book. Had I the patience to count I would imagine the book had to have at least 1000 pages.

But these sentences, these words, what the hell were they supposed to mean?

Ever since this book ended up in my hands my life has been filled with the unordinary and the strange. My gut is screaming at me that this book means something, and my mind is beginning to agree, in spite of any grounded evidence. .

I quickly entered the sentences into a media search engine.

Nothing.

I examined the book closely, hoping to glean some greater information I might have missed. Perhaps I did.

The golden sigil.

I could not comprehend it nor could I describe it, but I felt it.

It felt familiar, not in a wild deja vu sense but, as if it represented something inherent in its design. Like how one would use the picture of a stick figure and a door to represent an exit.

This sigil represented something that I could intuit but not describe. An approximation would be that of great sorrow, mourning, a longing, a loss but not of someone. It was vague and indescribable, as if I were missing some subtle key or context relevant to this emotion.

And the color.

There was no mistaking it. The golden cloak worn by the mysterious statue that always stood at the base of those heavenly marble stairs was identical in luster and color.

For a second I could have sworn it too was fluttering in an intangible breeze.

All my life I have dreamt of The Dreary. A world caked in dust and forgotten by whatever cruel god brought it into existence and burdened my subconscious mind with it. Never have I had or experienced “normal dreams” by what other standards might exist. All I have known was The Dreary; a false echo of the world I know.

It has had its advantages though, allowing me to explore places that I would have never had the opportunity to otherwise. The Dreary managed to, for the most part, be a complete copy of every man-made structure I have ever seen with my own two eyes. Though I am unaware of how The Dreary managed to recreate the interiors of a memory that does not exist, it bothers me little.

What does bother me is how it has changed after encountering this book.

First was The Dust. The first night with the book caused The Dust to not react to my presence. The second night resulted in it disappearing all together.

Then was the structure. The first night saw a heavenly marble staircase slapped in the middle of the main road. The second night changed the entire layout of The Dreary into a procession, with that same marble staircase descending into the infinite darkness below the basement of The Mall Building.

Lastly was the statue in the Golden Cloak. On the first night I was compelled towards it and crushed under the weight of its presence. The second night was similar but I managed to recover from my incapacitation by wielding this book.

As a preliminary analysis I find my own work to be rather shitty. Too many potential coincidences and nothing conclusive enough to even begin to form an understanding.

Despite that, two conclusions have been reached.

Either this is a supernatural occurrence or I am deeply unwell, psychologically speaking.

Given the existence of this book I am inclined to lean supernatural but given my history it’s just as likely to be psychological.

Though as to why Leena would have had the book to begin with is beyond me.

I had assumed the handsome stud who flirted his way into my pants, and eventually bed, with the help of my daily diet of a shitload of whiskey, had left the book by accident. Then, after arriving home from her work trip and likely seeing the man making his way out, probably put two and two together and somehow that equated into Leena throwing his forgotten book at me.

But that doesn’t really make much sense. I’ve done far worse to Leena and she hadn’t walked out on me then, let alone be any sort of aggressive towards me.

Fucking another guy is roughly equivalent to forgetting to buy the milk. Maybe it was the drinking? I had promised to cut back.

I sat in bed as I mulled over the infinite possibilities, but a slight movement caught my eye.

I scanned my room and could not find anything out of the ordinary. The morning light had likely been partially obscured by a bird or a plane which cast a quick moving shadow that tricked me into believing I saw something. Yes, clearly this was the case.

Then it happened again.

I couldn’t pinpoint its direction, location, or even origin. All I could see was movement of some kind. Very slight, very subtle, and one that seemed to evade my direct gaze.

Then I saw it.

The Dust.

The Dust fluttered and sparkled gently as it hung in a perpetual state of free-fall, riding gentle currents of air and catching the morning rays.

It did not fall nor did it settle.

It hung.

It hung as if eagerly awaiting my permission to fall. But I had no intention of giving it such permission.

Before I could realize what was happening I was pulled into my bed and out through to the other side.

My book in hand, I found myself once more in The Dreary.

But yet again it had changed.

Gone was my apartment. Gone were the stones, gone was the sky.

All that remained was a house.

That house.

The house was a shitty little wood shack made of, at most, the wood from a single, sad, pathetic thing that could barely be considered a tree. A mild cough would be enough to rip the structure off its foundations. The nails used in its construction likely weighed more than the sum of its lumber, and I could probably count the nails on one hand.

Though that was par for the course for many houses built here. No real need for insulation. This had the unfortunate side effect of making the walls not only paper thin, but also providing no sound dampening. This allowed me to hear the argument I could see from the kitchen window.

No, not an argument, a fight. A one sided fight. Abuse.

To my right sat my car. A respectable little thing from 20 years ago and nearly 200k miles on it. Inside that car was the unmistakable golden cloak, clinging to a statue that sat where I had all those years ago.

“I don’t give a shit Leena! Your fucking job is to sit here and take care of my fucking kids while i make sure we can all fucking eat, and you just-“

I had replayed this moment a hundred, a thousand, no, a million times at least in my head. I remembered every word clearly as if I was just experiencing this moment for the first time.

A couple of days prior, my boss dropped the case on my desk. He said a couple of women pooled their cash together and asked us to gather evidence on this guy, Mica, who they believed was beating up his wife, their friend. Apparently they had tried to get her to go to the cops but she was never cooperative so the cops couldn’t do anything.

It wasn't the first time I handled a case like this, probably wouldn’t have been the last, but no one else in the firm wanted to touch it.

Can’t say I’d blame them.

Mica Murakami. A fine specimen of untreated daddy issues and a severe addiction to lite-beers. A lot of insecurity too. Though you tend to get insecure after your previous four wives leave you for someone else.

Unfortunately he was also rather jacked and had a short temper, which he often took out on Leena. Sometimes physically, always verbally.

At least he did on that night.

No one blamed me for what happened.

Nobody knew how high I was that night.

Cops did, or suspected it. Tried to prove it. Didn’t matter.

I tried to convince myself I did Leena a favor.

I’m sure she tried to convince herself too.

I thought I saw him flash a gun. Maybe it was a knife. Or maybe I lied to myself so much that I believed it to be the truth.

But the prosecution said they couldn’t find a weapon on him, and the nearest kitchen knife had never had his finger prints on them.

Didn’t matter though. I saw what I thought I saw.

I did what I thought I had to do.

Nobody ever questioned why I was the only PI in my firm, or any firm, that carried a gun on him while on the job.

Not until smoke was trailing from the barrel.

Not until there were two holes soaked with red that pooled onto the kitchen floor.

The sound of the brass casings ringing as they hit the floor awoke me from my trance.

Before me lay the body of Mica Murakami.

Two shots square in the chest silenced his deafening bitching. Two shots let the neighborhood experience a quiet evening for the first time in four years. Two shots caused innocent kids to see the dead body of their tormenter, their father. Two shots broke the heart of Leena Murakami, what little was left to break

Two shots took away my peace. Two shots shattered the kitchen window.

It didn’t matter that the media saw me as a hero. It didn’t matter that friends and family never stopped singing my praises.

Those kids will never have their father back, shitty as he was, and watched as a stranger barged into their house and shot their dad in front of them.

Leena will never have her husband back. Her friends said I should have emptied the mag into him. She wouldn’t comment.

The jury thought I was a hero and told the prosecution to go to hell. Evidence be damned. I was a killer, a murderer, and they let me walk free into a parade for my actions.

By all accounts I should have celebrated with them. I should have enjoyed the moment.

But I couldn’t.

All I saw was their faces.

The kids’, Leena’s, and Mica’s.

Every moment of every day.

So I left the job, I disconnected from everyone and everything and started figuring out which combination of substances wouldn’t kill me but would keep me from thinking.

I locked it all away. I locked my mind away.

Then the gun in my hand returned to its former state as the book.

It was still warm and smelled faintly of gun-smoke.

“And you,”

I turned to face the Golden Cloaked statue which now stood at the entrance to the kitchen.

“Fuck you for making me remember.”

I whipped the book at the statue with all the force I could muster.

The book clattered anti-climactically after bouncing off of the statue.

Then the walls gave way.

The blood pooling at my feet stretched across the ground and into the horizon.

The never ending fog that hung in the sky lifted slightly, behind it now I could see the light attempting to pierce the dense fog. Twin hues of yellow and white now brighter and more coherent than before, twin suns that hung above this hollow land.

I grab my head once again as the familiar agony of a lifetime’s worth of memories flows through me.

But they aren’t mine.

They surge through me too fast for me to get a proper grasp of them. I only manage to get glimpses.

I grasp at the sand storm of memories but they keep slipping through my fingers, the images and moments seared into my mind but the meaning is lost with the tearing winds.

Just as the storm subsides I manage to catch one glimpse. One moment. One memory.

In the distance I see a spire. A massive spire that pierced an unfamiliar sky. The ruins of a massive city surrounded the spire. In the distance and in the skies I saw bright flashes and ebbing waves as if an ocean of light was crashing against the sky itself.

The memory faded as my attention was brought back to the present.

The marble staircase rose from the blood. Its pristine structure untainted by my sin. Untouched by my blood.

I raced to pick up the book once more.

The moment I came in contact with the book I awoke on the floor of my bedroom.

I checked the time on my phone.

It was Monday.

How the hell did I lose an entire day? Did I just pass out when I got back?.

My attempts at standing are thwarted as my hand slips on the blood on the floor.

After a brief moment of panic I stumbled my way into the bathroom.

In the mirror I saw blood.

Blood had caked streams onto my face as it poured out from my nose, ears, and my eyes. If I had to guess I’d say I had just lost an alarming amount of blood.

But I did not feel alarmed. Truthfully I wasn’t sure what I felt. I was sure of one thing, however I do not understand how. I was fairly sure, no, certain, that I will die if I am separated from the book. For now my mind is inexplicably linked with it.

After washing the caked blood from my face I opted to use my lonely and forgotten toothbrush for the first time in an embarrassingly long while.

Can’t say why I never bothered until now, but perhaps helping to scrape off the red that had found its way into my mouth and onto my teeth was a good enough reason.

Of all the places in my apartment that were a mess the bathroom magically escaped such destruction. Apart from neglect, the bathroom was absent of any trash or unopened boxes of crap. The sink was rather large for my apartment's modest size. My toothbrush stand and toothpaste tube being the only items that sat upon that counter, adding to the sparseness of the space.

The air in the room shifted. As I raised my head from the sink I noticed my shadow against the wall.

But it was not my shadow.

And shadows do not wear golden cloaks.

I whipped around to find myself face to face with the statue in The Golden Cloak.

For a moment I expected death. I anxiously awaited the snapping of my neck, the crushing of my skull, the breaking of every bone in my pathetic body.

But it did nothing.

The statue stood there, motionless as ever, as an intangible wind blew the Golden Cloak tightly around its indiscernible form.

Outside of The Dreary I was able to notice the finer details of the statue.

It resembled the porous texture of lava rock, yet it was elegantly shaped by hands so precise they could not have been mortal.

It vaguely resembled a humanoid shape with a protrusion on its face where a nose should be and two sunken areas under a brow where the eyes should be.

Unlike in The Dreary I felt no overwhelming pain or compulsions.

Unlike in The Dreary I felt no apprehension about its presence.

Unlike in The Dreary I could touch it.

I wasn’t sure what I expected anymore. Outside of the glaringly obvious supernatural occurrence staring at me in my face, the statue was but an ordinary statue. The lava rock felt typical as ever, as if I had just attempted to naively take some from the sacred grounds upon which the lava cooled.

I caressed the statue's face with a gentle hand.

I felt pity, mourning, loss, a sorrow that I could only catch a distant glance of. A drop in a vast ocean of despair.

Then the rock became skin. Familiar skin with auburn hair.

She swayed gently with her feet only inches off the ground.

The world around me fell away and was replaced by different yet familiar walls.

Leena was dead, and her body hung limply before me.

We were in a bedroom, likely hers. I did not recall how I got here, but I recognized the place.

How could I ever forget these walls? These paper thin walls.

My panic, expected panic, reasonable panic, did not surface.

My brain was wrapped in a bondage of golden thread, I felt only what was necessary.

On the wall on the far end of the room, above her desk, was a clock.

The time was 5 am. The date displayed was Tuesday, August 19th.

But I knew for a fact that today, right now, was Monday, August 18th.

Was this a nightmare? By all accounts it should be. My girlfriend, dead, hanging from the ceiling in her old house.

But my brain could not be made to panic, to give into fear. It was on a leash. It had a new master. It did not permit me to feel fear.

This wasn’t a nightmare. It was a warning.

I can still save her. Maybe then she’ll forgive me. Or maybe I’ll-

Before I could finish the thought I was returned to the walls of my bathroom.

The book in hand I made a mad dash out the door.

Logic and reason were all I had but I nearly let them fly out the window as I raced down the streets. If I still had my car I could have been to Leena’s old place in half an hour maybe. If I had bus money I could have made it to her place in an hour or two.

But I had nothing. I had no one.

And it was all my fault.

And now Leena’s life is in my hands.

And if she dies it will be my fault.

When I had left the sun had already begun its descent into the ocean.

I had dashed up and through the old highway to the north side of the island, all the while avoiding cops who had likely been informed of a pedestrian running manically on the highway where pedestrians absolutely shouldn’t be.

By the time I made it to something resembling a sidewalk again it was already well past midnight.

My phone’s battery clung to the precious few percent that it still had.

Navigating in the dark was difficult, but I knew these streets like the back of my hand.

I knew all of them.

I had spent my life cleaning away The Dust from them.

And now I leave tracks as I race towards the one house I refused to clean ever again.

Rounding the familiar corner I stopped to catch my breath. I don’t know how I managed to run so long without stopping. I wasn’t a star athlete. I couldn’t out run anyone with two functioning legs even if the grand prize was a bottle of crown. But I guess desperation is a hell of a drug.

And adrenaline.

I made my way to the house, quick in pace but far from the almost full-blown sprint I had managed for hours.

And then I came face to face with the door I had hoped to never see again.

But It would not permit me a moment to contemplate my reality.

The door was in my way.

I charged through the door, hands wrapped around the leather bound book held at a low ready position.

The door gave way just as it did before.

Despite never having explored further into the house I instinctively made my way through the kitchen and down the hall towards Leena’s room.

Before I could approach the door I heard something tumble from within.

I threw open the door.

Before me I saw Leena hanging once again. But she did not sway gently, nor was she dead.

Without hesitation I quickly rushed to support her weight, eventually managing to untie her and rest her gently on the ground.

She was alive, but not out of danger.

I called for an ambulance.

“Why.”

A raspy voice spoke from the floor.

“Why are you here?” Leena asked me.

“Because I had to save your life.” I replied.

“If you wanted to save me you should have let me hang.”

The paramedics arrived shortly after.

Apparently her kids were staying over at a friend’s house. They said had I not been there when I was she likely would have died and not be discovered for hours.

Of course the police were involved, a stranger just so happens to break into a house and save a woman who tried to kill herself at the perfect time, and that person also happened to be the person who shot and killed her husband exactly one year ago to the date?

The thread snapped.

The cops held me and asked me a few questions, the usual, mostly details about the incident and how I knew to find her. I didn’t tell them that I had a vision of the future but I suspect my story about a concerned ex with a strong gut feeling didn’t do me any favors either.

Though since they lacked any reasonable evidence and likely surmised my scrawny frame wasn’t nearly strong enough to hang the woman myself they let me go free. Shockingly they asked nothing about how I managed to get in through the locked front door.

Putting my tax dollars to work I asked the officers for a ride to the hospital. I made the case that I was her emergency contact, assumedly as her most recent partner, and may be needed at the hospital.

They begrudgingly obliged, having no grounds to deny me my request and clearly seeing I had no means to go anywhere else on my own at the moment.

I arrived at the medical center after a much longer than usual journey. The officers, gracious as they were, wanted to grab some food on the way.

I wasn’t hungry, but then again they didn’t ask if I was, nor did they offer.

I waved the officers off and walked into the Emergency Department.

I was briefly screened by a security guard before a nurse quickly ran over to me.

“Hi, what brings you to the ER today?” She practically rushed out.

The nurse’s third energy drink of the night clearly reared its head.

“I’m here to see a patient, actually.” I replied, meekly.

She seemed to deflate at that response but also appeared to be relieved.

“Oh, well we don’t really do visitors here.” She clarified, awkwardly attempting to hide her annoyance.

“Im her boyfr-“ I cut myself off, “I’m… it’s complicated but im pretty sure I’m her emergency contact right now.”

The nurse furrowed her brow as she examined me. Her tired eyes scrutinized every detail of my face.

“Who are you here for?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Leena Murakami.”

The Nurse quickly checked something on a nearby workstation.

“Doesn’t seem like she updated her contact history in a while,” she muttered staring at the computer, “but I also don’t see anyone else listed here.”

The nurse seemed hesitant.

“I’m the one who found her,” I blurted out.

“Oh, shit,” the nurse slipped.

“Oh my goodness I’m so sorry about-“ she protested but i raised my hand to cut her off.

“No no it's, it’s fine,” I assured her, “just let me see her.”

The nurse, now in a much more accommodating mood, took me through the department to her bay.

“She’s conscious but resting right now,” the nurse explained, “it’s a little hard for her to talk so we gave her something to write with if she wants.”

She then leaned over and pressed a button on the bed, causing Leena’s bed to slowly rise her up into a sitting position.

“Hey Leena,” the nurse spoke gently, “Your boyfriend is here.”

Leena’s eyes opened slowly.

“Ill just be in the hall” the nurse said as she quickly ducked behind the curtain.

“Hey, Leena.” I said as I gently grabbed her hand.

It felt cold. Colder than I ever remembered it.

“What the hell do you want?” She said in a strained hiss.

“What I want?” I replied, somewhat stunned, “I want you. I miss you Leena.”

Her gaze scrunched into a mixture of confusion and disgust.

“What the hell are you on about?” Leena spat.

“So much has happened since you left,” I started, “I’ve been getting my shit together. I haven’t been drinking, I only smoke a few times a day now, I started cleaning again-“

Leena cut me off.

“What the fuck do you want with me?”

“I want you back, I want us back together,” I pleaded, “it's been a rough year but I think we can make it work.”

Her eyes filled with a searing rage that I felt burning a hole into my forehead.

“What the fuck are you talking about? You’re nothing but the bastard who killed my husband.”

Her words broke through The Dust that had filled my mind.

“You took away a father from his kids. He was a good man, unlike you.”

“He was an abusive piece of shit.” I rebutted. My words felt hollow.

“And you knew that from the four seconds you saw from outside? You knew nothing about us. Not every relationship is paradise.”

“He would have killed you one day.” I weakly replied.

“I died the moment you shot the man I loved,” Leena shot back, “so thanks for saving me, twice, but I never want anything to do with you. I hope I never see you again, you insane wannabe cop.”

Leena broke into a coughing fit.

I took the hint and left.

I walked out of the ER and just kept walking.

I don’t know where I was walking to except that it wouldn’t be home. Or whatever that place really is.

I just walked.

Down the road. Up the hills. Across the bridges. Around the bends.

The Pali Lookout. Closed at this time of night. I did not care.

I climbed over the gate, walked past the various caution signs, and climbed atop the ledge. As I stood there I stared into the grassy abyss beyond. The scant moonlight reflected a sliver of silver on every blade in the flowing sea of grass.

I would join the countless thousands who rest below. Cornered at the edge.

“You know it’s dangerous up there right?”

I searched for the voice. It was filled with a hint of sass and a lot of sarcasm. A voice that belonged to a young woman.

“Yeah that's kind of why I’m up here,” I replied sarcastically, “what’s your excuse?”

“Maybe I’m here because I’m patrolling the place for trespassers.”

Who the fuck is this girl?

“Look I’m not exactly interested in ice breakers with a stranger at the moment so could you do me the decency of either just killing me or leaving me alone so I can do it myself?”

I turned to face the source of the voice.

“Is this a hallucination too?” I asked her.

Even in the dimly moonlit night, I could never forget that crimson hair tied into a ponytail.

“This is real, Aiden.” She replied.

“You were there,” I started, “at the office, and then again in the lobby.”

“I’m surprised you made me out through the prosthetics.” She replied as she smiled coyly.

“The hair gave it away.” I lied.

“Strange that you managed to see through a wig Aiden, didn’t have that noted down as something you could do”

I turned to face her.

“So what is this?” I asked plainly, “are you here to kill me?”

“Why would I do that?” The woman asked, taken aback.

“I’ve made a lot of enemies, left most of them alive.” I bluffed.

“Your biggest tackle was killing a wifebeater,” the woman recited as she paced, “a good kill.”

“Didn’t realize you were a fan.”

“I’m more of an investigator.” She joked.

“And what’s so special about me?” I asked.

She stopped her pacing.

“That book, for starters.” she said, pointing to the book still firmly held in my hands.

“What about it? It's just a book.”

“You and I both know that's a lie.”

I tightened my grip on the book.

“Who are you, really?” I take a step towards her, “and what do you know about all of this?”

She took a step back in response.

“You know more about that book than we do,” she bounced back, “we were hoping you could tell us.”

“And who’s ‘we?’”

The woman closed her arms around her.

“In about three hours from now your body will be discovered and positively identified in one of two ways.” She started.

“What the fuck-“ I started but was cut off.

“HPD will either be alerted to a suicide at the Pali Lookout and find your body at around 9:30 am today, alternatively an apartment fire will be reported to the HFD where they will discover a single fatality, charred beyond recognition.”

“So you are trying to kill me?” I asked again, somewhat flabbergasted but mostly in shock.

“You died the moment you came up here Joseph Aiden,” she started, “your conviction was laid bare. If it weren’t for me you’d be a twitching mess in the grass right now.”

“So why go through the effort of burning my apartment down then? To suffer for my deeds?”

I watched as a cocky smile slowly grew across her face. I had been avoiding the obvious.

“You want to fake my death.” I stated.

Her face remained unchanged.

“What does it matter? How could I be worth that effort?”

The woman approached.

“We require the help of people who are able to make sense out of irrational things.” She started.

As she spoke she began to pace around me in a circle, like a predator circling its prey.

“You’re a jobless, broke, alcoholic playboy with no real moral compass,” she lobbed insult after insult, “but yet of all the people who have held that book you are the only one who hasn’t gone insane yet.”

I’m sane? Me?

I scoffed at the implication

“I’m sorry, but I just spent the past year in a psychotic hallucination where I was dating, and cheating on, the widow of the guy I murdered,” I began to excessively elaborate, “then I get a vision of the future where she hangs herself…”

She watches me in amusement as I pour out the thoughts that had stayed trapped within my mind for too long.

“Not to mention that fucking statue invading my dreams and reshaping my personal hell, The Dreary, into some nightmare capital-“

“And?” she interrupted.

“And? And what?” I asked, befuddled.

She straightened herself.

“What’s all that got to do with anything?”

I’m seriously doubting my own sanity, this can’t be real.

“I’m a mentally unstable wreck who couldn’t even get a job.” I clarified.

She laughed.

“Oh sorry yeah that was us,” she said flippantly, “we needed you desperate enough to come to us in the first place.”

“You’ve been messing with my job applications?”

“Intercepting them. To anyone looking in, it's like you haven’t filed a single application.”

“You could have knocked, or called, or just kidnapped me, there's a million better ways to get someone’s attention.”

She shifted.

“You think we didn’t try?”

Well, given I can barely remember the past year, how would I have known?

“Besides,” she relaxed, “not like we can be so overt all the time. This is the longest I’ve been let out on the surface for years.”

She leaned her head back and gazed up at the stars.

“Poor David only got to come up for the interview.”

I began to grow frustrated with the pointless cat and mouse.

“So what the hell does the CIA want with me?”

The woman froze for a moment, then fought back a chuckle.

“You think I’m- we’re CIA?” She asked in disbelief.

“Messing with my job applications, the whole fake office thing, kinda the whole CIA playbook yeah?”

If I knew better I’d say she looked as if I had just called her ugly.

“So that ability of yours is only limited to geometries, you really don’t know who or what we are?” She replied as a wave of revelation gently washed over her face.

“So you’re not CIA?” I asked again.

She sat down on the ledge next to me, spun around, and cast her gaze across the moonlit valley.

“We are above any singular world government. We act with the singular goal of protecting,” she gestured to the valley and the city lights twinkling in the distance, “all of this. All of mankind.”

She turned her gaze towards me. As our eyes met I saw a raging fire blaze within her, a passion that managed to remain subdued letting off little more than playful sparks just minutes before.

“And I want you to be a part of it.”

I wanted to come up with some witty retort, some backhanded reply that allowed me to demonstrate my lack of interest in her blatantly obvious lie.

But I didn’t, because I believed her. Against my better judgement, what little I could still claim to have, I wholeheartedly believed her.

And I could not explain why.

My grip on the book relaxed slightly. A bit too much. I felt it slip from my grasp.

My body acted before my brain did and I quickly reached for the book and lost my footing in the process.

I fell.

Amidst the rushing of wind I heard something faintly. Someone shouting.

“…emergency discharge plus one on my position!”

The world around me began to feel alive, the air seemed to be a buzz as the hair on my body stood on end. For a moment I saw a faint blue glow envelop my person.

A brilliant blinding light and deafening roar flooded my senses as I felt my body propelled by an unknown force, which slammed me face first into a cold, hard surface.

My vision and hearing slowly returned, but as they did I began to doubt whether or not they truly had.

I found myself on the floor of a sterile white room. My vision was still blurry but with what I could see I saw a doorway at the far end of the room flanked by two blurs that appeared to be people. As I looked below me I discovered that I was on a massive pane of glass or some other hard and transparent material, beneath which sat a mass of machinery that defied every attempt I made to interpret. Similarly above me hung a mirrored construct, though exposed to the open air and venting steam from an upper assembly, betraying the fact it had been recently used.

Very recently.

“Jesus Christ, Aiden try not to kill yourself when people are talking to you,” came a familiar, condescending voice.

As I craned my head to look I noticed the two figures on the far end of the room shift their posture and begin approaching rapidly.

“Stand down, he’s my case,” she said, putting herself between the men and myself, “he’s the new hire.”

“I didn’t agree to anything.” I groaned.

“There’s no going back now,” the woman said as she helped me to my feet.

“Agent Feng,” one of the men said, “we have room 10 available for intake.”

“Perfect, mind giving him a hand?” Agent Feng said as she all but threw me at the unprepared man.

The men, who I later learned were guards, offered their assistance in half-walking, half-dragging me down an equally clinically white corridor into an inconspicuous room.

The room itself was mostly unlit with the only source of light being a ceiling mounted projector casting onto the far wall, in front of which were several rows of cheap metal chairs.

“The first time is a bit disorientating, though that fall is what gave you the concussion.” Agent Feng explained, parting my hair to examine the very painful and bleeding bump on my forehead.

“What the hell was that?” I asked, wincing from the pain.

“The ESD, they’ll go over it in the intro” she replied, patting my head just above the sore spot.

The guards sat me down front and center, then left the room.

Agent Feng sat next to me, a few chairs away.

“It doesn’t actually stop your momentum but I hear they’re working on a way to make it do that. Anyway, we’ll send you down to medical after we finish up intake.”

“Oh and by the way,” she said, making her way to the wall mounted controls, “welcome to the IFCN.”

A month had passed since that night. The night Agent Feng forcefully ripped me out of my miserable, incoherent existence and gave me a purpose.

I had only been up to the surface once since then, to watch my funeral.

Not many people get to say that, and it’s a privilege I never wanted.

To my surprise, the myriad of friends and associates who I had effectively told to go to hell actually showed up. They even cried for me. Though none more so than my parents.

I was their only child.

Agent Feng, Kaiga, had held true to her word. It was a closed casket funeral. I pray they had used a fake body.

It was a good thing that there were so many people who came, made it easier to blend in to a crowd that wasn’t looking for me.

Unsurprisingly Leena didn’t come. Even after a month it’s difficult to shed that false life I had imagined. Even harder to wake up every morning to a livestream of the morning sun.

I hadn’t dreamt of The Dreary since that night either. Though I keep the book with me at all times out of an abundance of caution.

I am dead to the world. I now walk in my own shadow. I sleep below so that I may lay down my life to protect others from what they do not know, what they cannot understand, and what they must never see.

If it weren’t for the alcohol, I could never sleep comfortably again.

And truthfully, I don’t think anyone here does.

-If you’ve stuck around this long, thank you from the bottom of my heart. This won’t be the last story in this universe nor will it be the last of Agent Joseph Aiden. One day I hope to grow my skills and rewrite this story with the quality it deserves. I hope you will stick around with me on this journey.

Signed, CGCallisto-

(This story was originally posted to r/talesfromthecreeps)

Every dream is an eternity.

Every night my dreams are the same. Always have been for as long as I could remember my dreams.

Every night I would awake in my bed. Except it wasn’t my actual bed. The world around me would always be covered in this ephemeral fog that permeated every single inch of space.

And the dust. My god the dust.

All I ever did was clean.

The shadows never changed. The day never began. The Dust would never end.

I would continue on from my room into the hall, then into the bathroom, then the closets, then the kitchen, then the floors. Never stopping until the entire apartment was free of the dust.

Then I would step into the outside world. The world that was not my world. The world of The Dust and The Gray.

The Dreary.

Light from above would fight its way through the fog, never making it to the hollow ground below.

Where there should have been roads, dirt, grass, and trees, there was stone.

Cobblestoned roads, stonework trees, and fields of slate.

All of it covered in The Dust.

As I would move through the still air the dust would form on my wake and disperse, leaving a trail of my presence throughout this abandoned, forgotten world.

My world of Dust, my Dreary.

I would look up into that fog filled sky and gaze into the twin hues of yellow and white whose muffled screams struggled to breach the all-but-impenetrable fog above, scattering their voices into the omnipresent haze.

Then I would wake up.

Today was no different.

A woman stood just beyond the doorway, her flowing auburn hair flailing about as she shouted at me. I couldn’t really make out the words. She seemed familiar.

Something hard and somewhat heavy hit me square in the face, then plopped into my lap.

My still-blurry sight returned to me just in time to watch the woman march off down the hallway.

Her exit was announced by the slamming of the front door.

My bed was a mess. Clothes were strewn about, the sheets were everywhere, and some were stained with a substance I could not identify. The morning sun cast my shadow on the opposite wall from behind me.

My head pounded from within, memories of last night sat chained behind an alcohol-soaked lock.

My eyes trailed downward to my lap, falling on the object that was hurled at me only moments earlier.

It was a black, featureless, leather-bound book. A fairly hefty one at that.

Rubbing my eyes to confirm I wasn’t completely blind, I took a closer look at the book’s cover.

It was completely blank.

I turned over the book, expecting somehow that repeatedly flipping the book over would magically cause it to manifest some form of identifying information.

I caught a glimpse of something on the spine as I did so. It glistened in the morning sun and sparkled like diamonds.

It was a sigil. A symbol etched in gold, a gold so vibrant that the world around me appeared gray by comparison.

“Oh shit,” the words shot out of my mouth before my brain could even register I was speaking, “Leena!”

I’m such a fucking moron.

I fell onto the floor as my legs refused to accept my authority over them, getting tangled in the bedsheets in the process.

I crawled towards the nearest pile of, mostly, clean clothes I could identify.

Getting dressed was a challenge. I fought with my own body just to put on a shirt, whilst barely navigating the hectic and wayward expletive laden rants that crashed through the windows of my sullied mind palace.

Of all the thoughtless and horrible things, how could I have forgot today was the day she came back from her-

I paused in the hallway, pants half on and shirt on backwards.

Where did she go anyway? Was it a work thing? Was it some kind of vacation?

Why did I care?

My emotional rollercoaster came to a stand-still as the emergency brakes kicked on.

I let the half assembled outfit slide off my unkempt form as I shuffled into the kitchen.

That's right, I didn’t care. I don’t care.

The dishes in the sink were clean, as they should be.

The counter was full of random brand-new crap brought home that was never properly put away and just left in its assorted state of limbo storage, not that I needed the counter space anyway. The side effect of a weak will.

I threw the kettle on and threw a pan on the stove. I figured I should have myself a good old fashioned breakfast of eggs whatever-was-left-in-the-fridge, coffee, and a ciggy.

I dug through the fridge and managed to salvage some cheese, a sausage, and a whole tomato. I chopped them up roughly and dumped them into the simmering mixture of egg and butter.

I slid the scrambled egg mixture onto my plate, grabbed my cup of liquid life, and sat my ass down on a spot I had cleared on the couch.

The TV had nothing interesting on but I left it on the food channel anyway. It was nice to eat with someone.

As I put out the cigarette in the overflowing tray I glanced over at the pile of marked envelopes on the table. Most of them said “Past Due.”

After dumping my dishes back in the sink I stumbled back into my room looking for… something.

The guy.

The cute one. Chatted me up at the bar and drank me under the table, and my sheets. I think he was a blonde, or brown? Or maybe I had hoped he was.

He must have taken off when Leena started screaming. I didn’t see any of his clothes around the bed.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye. Though it's refreshing to be on the other end of that for once.

Why did she throw that book at me?

I ruffled through the haphazardly strewn bedsheets until my hands came into contact with what I was searching for. The book Leena had thrown at my face just before she left.

With some painkillers and another cup of coffee on-board, I could think clearly enough and took a closer examination of the book.

Flipping through its pages I was met with blank after blank page.

The entire damn thing is just blank. Was this some kind of journal for me?

A gift? But why would she…

I threw it in a pile next to my side of the bed.

The rest of the day was filled with job applications.

The age of the Internet has done wonders for many aspects of humanity. Job applications were one sector made infinitely worse.

Every job fair booth I went to had a QR code to scan for their online applications system. Every Now Hiring sign in a store had that godforsaken block-grid in lieu of a simple piece of paper and a proper interview.

After the fifteenth online application referral I decided to call it for the day.

I sat down on my slightly cleaner couch and looked down at my phone, expecting to see dozens of notifications. Ideally at least one.

Instead I saw none.

No calls, no texts, no nothing.

The sun hung low over the horizon. Its waning radiance coaxed the sky into a storm of fire that lapped at the ever growing ocean of blues and purples.

It shone directly into my fucking eyes.

Shuffling my lazy ass over on the couch, I poured out the remaining contents of a bottle of whiskey into my cold cup of half drank coffee.

The evening consisted of aimlessly scrolling through various social media feeds and TV channels. Everywhere I looked I saw people on dream vacations, getting married, or buying their first homes.

Guess I’m just a fucking loser, huh.

Dinner was more whiskey, from a new bottle this time, and another menthol ciggy. I wasn’t particularly hungry as it was.

Where the hell was Leena? She stormed out and hasn’t even texted me. Maybe shes-

I quickly downed the rest of my glass before I could finish the thought. The burning warmth of the spiced whiskey rips me out of my own head.

As the whiskey level in my bottle lowered the moon rose in response. It was close to midnight by the time the bottle was empty.

The floor was my home now. This was not negotiable. Any attempt to stand at the moment would surely result in me splitting my head open on a table, or worse, ejecting the precious ounces of whiskey that I had been struggling to keep down for the past hour. The world around me decided it was time to begin rotating at ridiculous speeds, rendering me unable to stand upright.

Clinging to the ground beneath me, I dragged myself to my bedroom and eventually, I pulled myself up onto my bed.

The spinning only worsened. I closed my eyes and did my best to ignore it.

Eventually the spinning stopped and I awoke in my bed.

But this wasn’t my bed.

In what felt like no time at all I had returned to serve my sentence. My eternal penance for the crimes I must have committed at some point.

Once more I proceeded through my charge of the cleaning of The Dust.

All my life, all that I could remember anyway, I had never been able to dream. Not properly. Instead of nightmares of being naked at school or all my teeth falling out I dreamt of this place, The Dreary.

The Dreary was an empty world, a dead world, one that remained contained by a dense impenetrable fog that snuffed out all but the most diffused light from the sky above.

The Dreary was, as far as I could tell, an exact copy of the world. Save for the fact that anything not built by human hands was replaced by stone abstracts that, while giving the idea of what they're supposed to be, look nothing like it. Imagine if a tree wasn’t a tree but instead a jagged spine of stone that clawed upwards through the fog. Sure the base idea of a tree is there but that’s not a fucking tree.

There was nothing living within The Dreary. Even the wind did not blow. The world did not breathe. It was still, frozen, a corpse of identity.

Yet tonight was different.

The Dreary demanded my attention.

It had not done that before.

I broke from my charge and answered, walking towards the front door of my copied apartment.

I saw nothing new outside. The same cobble roads divided the same slate fields bearing the same stonework trees.

Except there was something new.

There had never been something new.

A great and grand staircase made of the most radiant marble ascended into the sky and well beyond the fog. Its brilliance made the fog seem black by comparison.

At the foot of these stairs stood a statue. A black statue covered in a golden cloak that fluttered in a non-existent wind.

“What the fuck?” My voice carried across The Dreary, hollow and raspy.

There’s never anything new. Nothing new, never. There was only The Dust, there was only The Dreary. What the hell is this?

I felt my breath become erratic-

I felt my breath.

I have never breathed before in a dream. I had never spoken.

I could not take my eyes off of the cloaked statue.

I could not resist the movement of my legs. Yet again my body refused to obey me as I was marched down the stairs of my apartment building.

The Dust does not react to me.

In what felt like seconds I found myself kneeling before the cloaked statue. It towered over me, but its height seemed to vary as my eyes rattled around in their sockets.

I clutched my head as I hissed an empty scream in agony. I felt a thousand hands trying to push their way out from within my mind, held back by a single flimsy door.

I strained to look upwards at the statue.

As I did I caught a glimpse of long auburn hair.

I shot upright in my bed.

The accumulating saliva in my mouth signaled to me that I should start running to the bathroom.

As the last of my wretches escaped my hanging maw, I caught a glance of my reflection.

I saw myself. Not in some artsy self-abstract sort of sense, but in a very literal sense.

Not the scars, nor the rage, nor the often bloodshot and tired eyes that have stared back at me for longer than I bothered to remember.

My eyes. My self.

I felt the fog that clouded my thoughts lift ever so slightly.

For the first time in ages I could think without strain. The string of consciousness was no longer a spider web of spider webs but was now a constant, deliberate, string that I could trace from end to end hanging freely in the newfound void.

I saw the filth, the disgust, the depravity that surrounded me.

How long had I lived like this?

I hopped in the shower to wash off days, no, weeks of god knows what from my skin. The water that rolled off my body and down into the drain was noticeably darker than the water that came out of the shower head.

I located the cleanest ensemble of clothes I could find; a pair of shorts and a button up short sleeve shirt that hung on my desk chair.

The unrelenting summer heat would stand no chance against this climate appropriate ensemble.

As I waited for the kettle to boil I started clearing the kitchen counter of all of the trash and unopened impulse-purchase appliances that had made it their home.

By the time the whistling of the kettle arrived I had already bagged up two bags of what had to be no less than $1000 of unused appliances. In their state I doubt I could get anyone to take them even for free.

The first sip of the black sludge that had the audacity to call itself coffee left a searing trail as it traveled down my throat. Even if I had any milk that wasn’t out of date or sugar that wasn’t crawling with bugs it wouldn’t have been enough to blunt the blow of that demonic concoction.

I poured the entire mug of caffeinated sewage down the drain so that it may rejoin its kin. Instead I opted for a half drank can of POG left in the fridge.

As I began my war against grime in the kitchen I felt my phone buzz.

I quickly rinsed my hands and answered the incoming call.

“Hi, is this Joseph Aiden?” The voice on the other end spoke.

“Yes,” I started hesitantly, “this is him.”

It had been a while since I had heard anyone say my name. I patiently awaited the other side to get on with whatever it was they wanted. Maybe it was a scammer who wanted to extort me for all I’m worth. I hope he likes the zeros in my bank account, because that's all there is.

“My name is David DeGuzman, I’m calling in response to your application with us…” as the voice trailed on my mind honed in on something he said.

Application? When did I-

Stopping myself short as I glanced over at the pile of yet-to-be-mailed applications on the kitchen table.

“…we’d like to have you come in for an interview. What dates are you available this week?”

I felt my heart flutter.

“Any,” I practically shouted, “right now even I can come down right now.”

I cringed inside realizing what a desperate fool I must have come off as. Even if it was the honest truth, what if this screws with my chances at getting the job?

I paused.

What job am I even volunteering myself for anyway? Sure it didn’t really matter at this point but-

“You know,” David started, “I think we have an opening around noon today, you think you could make it down to The Mall building?”

Thank god it’s close.

“Yeah that's like five minutes away from me,” I chuckled, overwhelmed and nervous beyond comparison.

“Great. We’re room 1304 on the 13th floor. You can check in with the front desk once you arrive. See you there.”

The line dropped.

As my phone returned to the lock screen I saw the time was 11:24.

While it was true that I wasn’t that far from The Mall building, I had realized far too late that any of my far more acceptable business attire was in desperate need of a wash. Sure, the shirt I was wearing was formal enough, shorts and slippers would likely get me marked down.

I combed through my room to see if perhaps I had missed any nicer clothes. Much to my dismay I had not.

Resigning myself to my fate I gritted my teeth and pushed on out the door.

My walk down to the mall was less of a casual walk and more of a heavily restrained sprint. My body happily obeyed my restraint, despite my legs screaming to let them break out in a sprint. The tightness in my chest, like a coiled spring, desired to be released through my legs.

The Mall itself was, to my knowledge, the largest outdoor mall in the world. On any given day it was bustling with tourists from all over the world. Situated right across the street from a massive beach park and sat just on the edge of Waikiki, It was arguably the social center of the whole island. The south side of the island, anyway. The Mall Building was situated on the Mauka side of the mall, opposite the ocean side, which meant it was basically a straight walk from my shabby abode down the main road and right into The Mall.

On the walk more questions formed within me, the solemn line of thought formed into a structured diagram of red threads that stretched from one end of the void to the other.

What company was I even interviewing for? The Mall building was mostly just offices for anything you could imagine, private medical practices and outpatient clinics, law offices, engineering firms, hell even some small cafes.

And that name. David DeGuzman.

Not that I was an expert on names, but of all the names you hear around here I couldn’t help but feel that something was… off.

Before I could indulge my conspiracy further I realized I had entered into the elevator and was now en route to the 13th floor.

I was alone in the elevator. Despite the lobby otherwise being filled only I had entered this elevator.

Or at least I thought the lobby was full.

The doors opened into the 13th floor lobby. It was a modest little area with a few area chairs for people to sit as they wait for their family to do whatever business they have on this floor.

I walked out, passed the row of elevators and headed into the main hallway. There were no windows. The dull droning of the building's HVAC and the gentle buzzing of the fluorescent lights trickled through the air before being absorbed by the slight off-blue carpet that ran the length of the floor.

I nervously made my way to room 1304. Thankfully, or not, the room was close to the elevators. Just one door down after taking a right.

The door was blank aside from the room placard and an “hours of operation” sign.

I steadied myself, took a deep breath, and entered the room.

I entered a small office lobby. Two chairs sat awkwardly in the far corner next to a door that presumably led further into the sectioned off office area. A newly constructed drywall partition isolated the lobby area from the rest of the office floor space, leaving only a door and a cutout for the secretary or greeter to manage guests as they come in the door.

“Joseph Aiden?” A female voice called from out of sight.

“Uhh yes?” I answered cautiously.

A woman, appearing to be in her forties, approached the counter cutout from within the offices. Her bright red hair appeared almost plastic in the fluorescent lighting.

“Mr. DeGuzman is ready for you.” She said, bending down to interact with something below the counter.

I heard a soft click followed by a buzz.

The office door popped open and the woman beckoned me forth.

The hallway was more of the same. A drywall corridor with several doors on either side.

The door locked shut behind me with a buzz, startling me.

At the same time the door at the far end of the hall opened. A man wearing a blue floral shirt waved me down.

“Down here!” He called.

I quickly made my way inside the man’s office. The windows behind him were blocked off by heavy curtains, the only source of light being the ever-present fluorescent overhead lights.

“I’m David,” he said, extending his hand, “pleasure to meet you.”

I reciprocated his gesture and returned a firm handshake.

“Likewise.” I replied.

The man, David, had well kept short black hair and a comically yet impeccably well kept ‘70s mustache that reflected some of the overhead light.

David gestured for me to sit and I obliged.

The office itself was a modest space, the desk at which we were sat was adorned with the typical office fare, albeit a bit lacking in some finer details and a bit too clean for it to be in constant use.

“So, about-“ I started before David cut me off.

“You’re 28 correct?” David asked as he held up some papers.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Can you tell me a little bit about your previous employer?”

I paused.

My previous employer? Who-

“Oh,” the thought found its way to me, “yes sorry I was with a PI firm, Maikai Investigations.”

“Yes them,” David affirmed leaning back in his silent office chair, “what kind of work were you involved in?”

I felt my palms become clammy but I persisted and gave him the sales pitch.

“Usually a client would come to us and ask us to get information about someone. That's the very base level of things,” I elaborated, “could be, you know, someone wanting to know about their birth parents. Someone wanting to know if a spouse is being unfaithful, really just about anything involving information.”

“Were you good at what you did?” David asked, his words laced with a substance I couldn’t fully make out.

“I’d like to think I was,” I said with false bravado, “never had any clients complain and I always completed the job-“

“Even when you were asked to do things that might have been morally objectionable?”

I froze.

I wasn’t a saint. Still aren’t. But I did what I was asked and did a damn fine job of it. If someone had a problem with it they can sort it out with the cops.

“Absolutely,” I said, almost bragging, “especially when others would refuse to take the job.”

“Why?”

David’s words now came with an air of genuine curiosity.

“Can I ask the relevance to the job?” I deflected.

David shifted forward in his chair, his poker face remaining unchanged since the start of the interview.

“Everything,” he replied eerily, “I’m not here to judge you, I want to know.”

David stared at me with an intensity I had reserved only for stains in my sink.

“Because the job needed to be done,” I started, “and I liked the challenge.”

David’s eyes perked up at that.

“The challenge?”

I furrowed my brow.

“Every case was a puzzle,” I leaned in, “and I was the best damn puzzle solver in that organization.”

I winced.

“Then why’d you leave?” David shot back.

Ignoring the blatant cringe that was whatever the hell I just called myself, David’s question shot through and shattered my false bravado like a bullet through a kitchen window.

“I was banging the boss's wife.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the reason.

David’s poker face slipped as he let out a hint of disappointment.

“The analyst position we are looking for has some caveats,” he started as he began flipping through the papers on his desk, “one is honesty. We expect our analysts to be completely honest with us.”

His eyes locked onto mine.

I caught a glimpse of the papers on his desk. One was a memo entitled “Investigative Incident,” left conveniently in my line of sight.

“I overstepped.” I replied begrudgingly.

“Honesty is paramount,” David began as laid down the papers, “I don’t mean some half-assed corporate honesty, I mean if what I ask is for you to delve into how much you hate your boss, your life, or whatever escapades you and a secretary got up to, we expect the full un-adulterated details.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

What the fuck is he on about? Sure I appreciate that this job lets you cuss your boss out in the name of honesty but isn’t this a bit much?

“Just what exactly is an analyst here?” I started, “What are the hours? The responsibilities? The pay?”

The more questions I asked the more flustered I became. I knew utterly nothing about this place or this supposed job I was now interviewing for.

As a matter of fact how the hell did this guy get a hold of that-

“Anything further requires an NDA,” David cut, interrupting my thoughts.

“I have to sign an NDA to even know who or what I'm working for?” I asked, emboldened and incredulous.

David raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, you do,” he replied, “and you’re going to be asked far more uncomfortable questions than the ones I’m giving you now.”

Then it clicked.

Analyst position? I think I would have remembered applying for something so fancy sounding, at least compared to the myriad of fast food and retail positions I had been applying for.

“I don’t think I’ve ever applied for this position,” I said as I slowly stood up from my chair, “just who the hell are you?”

David smirked.

“Like I said, you sign this contract and I’ll answer all your questions.” David smiled.

His poker face slipped away revealing satisfaction and pride.

He slid a paper across his desk towards me, placing a pen at the top of the document.

The paper was a single page. Barely half. At the bottom was a place for my signature and nothing else.

I glanced at the page, not wanting to let my guard down. I caught one sentence that set off alarm bells within me.

“We are humanity’s first and last line of defense.”

My chest became a twist of panic, of confusion, of curiosity, of fear, and god knows what other emotions that humanity has yet to properly define.

“I’m not interested.” I said and made my way to the door.

David stood at his desk and watched as I hastily made my exit.

The door out of the office buzzed and opened as I approached.

“We’ll see you again, Aiden.” David said gently, his voice echoing down the hallway as the door to 1304 closed behind me.

The red threads in my mind formed a tangled mess that only grew as my questions remained unanswered.

As soon as I got home I made sure to lock the door.

I pulled out my phone to check the number that this organization had contacted me from.

It wasn’t there.

In the call history the last call shown was from a week ago.

From Leena.

I slumped down onto the couch.

I felt my chest constrict as a burning pain filled my chest, a twisting anxiety and yearning that sapped my breath away.

Why do I care? She knew what she was signing up for. She knew what I was.

I kept rationalizing.

I never said yes to her, I just didn’t say no. Not my fault she got all confused.

My sight became blurry.

Why’d she keep taking pity on me? Keep coming back to my dump of a house? Keep buying me shit I didn’t ask for? Keep-

The tears began to roll down my face.

Why couldn’t I care until now?

I bawled my eyes out. I cried and cried until the couch was soaked with my tears. I unleashed all the tension in my chest with a scream that surely pissed off the neighbors.

I cried, I screamed, I threw everything within arm’s reach at the wall hoping that if I threw it hard enough I could fix this mess. I threw a tantrum that would put a stubborn toddler to shame.

As a few hours pass as I lay spent on the couch at the epicenter of the disaster that trashed my living room.

“Leena…” I moaned mournfully into a tearstained pillow.

My eyes lazily scanned my surroundings, taking in the totality of my ruin and pathetic squalor.

All I could feel was a muted mix of disgust and hatred, aimed at myself.

I wished for nothing more than to never leave this couch again; better to join the rot and the refuse than continue my futile struggle against a life I had already destroyed.

A flame of insight flickered to life within my mind.

Just how the hell did those people, whoever they are, erase their call history from my phone?

After a brief but intense search online I came to a disturbing conclusion.Unless they had physical possession of my device, they could not hide my call history.

My eyes quickly darted to my door.

It was still locked up tight, right as it should be, some debris still blocking it from opening due to my earlier outburst.

I got up and inspected the jalousies.

The netting on the windows themselves remained undisturbed, even sporting a fine layer of dust. The jalousies too were equally undisturbed.

They didn’t break in. Or if they did they hid their tracks better than most, well enough to never be caught. But why go through all that effort just to delete a phone number? I could just look up the company by its address right?

I entered the address, suite 1304.

Nothing, at least for this decade. There are some old surface web files relating to a small life insurance company that once operated out of that address.

Feeling restless and seeing the sun still high in the sky, I decided to make my way back to the unit and get some answers.

Not fair they should know me so well without it being mutual.

Upon arriving in the lobby I spotted a building directory. I quickly scanned the registered suite numbers for 1304.

Not the first column, not the second, nor the third.

“Need help locating a business?”

I spun around to see a woman with long crimson hair, done up in a long pony tail.

“Oh, uh,” I fumbled my words.

Maybe I'm a little colorblind but that crimson looked auburn for a brief but uncomfortably long second.

“Im looking for the name of a business that operated out of suite 1304.” I explained to the young woman.

She squinted at the registry and scanned it intently.

“Strange,” she started, “I don’t see any, maybe we should go take a look?”

She beckoned me to the elevator lobby, to the cargo lift.

She swiped her ID card and the doors opened.

The cargo lift was very spacious and surprisingly well kept for being used to haul god-knows-what.

She walked over to the button panel and selected the 13th floor. Unlike the other elevators this one had a “Basement” floor button. The elevator had ascended at a far greater rate than the other one I had used earlier in the day.

We arrived on the 13th floor and she led me towards the suite. As we arrived we noticed a “For Lease” sign with an address for a corporate realty website.

“It doesn’t look like anyone has used this one in a while,” she frowned, “sorry that I couldn’t be of more help!”

Before I could respond she had already made her way back to the elevator and disappeared.

It was impossible, yet it was reality.

I had just been here maybe a few hours ago and the office where I’d had my interview was just gone.

As my thoughts began to settle they also began to drift. As they drifted and fluttered about in the subconscious wind of my psyche they fell upon a particular subject.

The hair, the auburn hair. Leena.

But the lady’s hair wasn’t auburn, it was practically crimson. Dyed. Healthy too.

She wasn’t Leena, so why did my thoughts find themselves wandering over to her? Just a similarity?

No, familiarity.

I’ve seen her before. Recently. But where?

The elevator came for me as I mulled over my thoughts. Scanning the panel I looked for the lowest floor option.

“Lobby.”

No basement floor option in this one. Probably just for the freight elevator.

As I walked out of the lobby and passed the ground floor loading dock I stopped.

In the office. She was there.

The receptionist had red hair. It was done up differently and partially obscured due to the contrasted office lighting but it was definitely, or probably, the same color.

But she was old, the lady who helped me couldn’t have been older than 30.

Unless they were using prosthetic makeup. But why the hell-

“Eh, out da way!” A voice announced from behind me.

A very impatient and upset package courier stood behind me with his cart full of parcels.

I quickly moved on wanting to avoid any awkward interactions.

The walk home was unpleasant.

A growing uneasiness in my gut had worked its way throughout my entire body. The traffic, people, buildings, even the sun all seemed so distant yet painfully close. Too close.

Was I being watched?

I glanced around. Nothing unusual, which only served to drive up my anxiety more.

I knew I was being watched, I could feel it, years of experience and training screamed the obvious to me but my eyes, my mind, I was blind to it.

I locked the door upon arriving home. Closed the windows and blinds too.

Still I felt the eyes, the presence, I was seen. Exposed. Vulnerable.

But that was impossible.

A thorough sweep of my house confirmed what I had already known; I was alone. Just me and my belongings.

I took a drag from the quickly emptying pack which helped ease the tension I felt. The feeling persisted.

Paranoia wasn’t unusual for me, though it was mostly back when I still worked as a PI. Most PIs had rules though. Standards. Maybe even a moral compass.

I didn’t.

The pay was good, real good, but it wasn’t about the pay. It was all about the thrill. It had been so long since I felt that fear, that ever watchful eye, that I forgot how good it felt. I had spent years binging on every substance I could get my hands in, trapped in my own mind.

Now, for the first time in years, I could feel that sensation coursing through my body like electricity.

When I awoke I once again found myself in The Dreary. I do not remember falling asleep.

But it had changed.

The Dust. The layer of dust that had coated the entire world was gone.

I rushed outside to see the fog, still ever present but much lighter. I could see further than ever before. Far enough to see that The Dreary had been rearranged.

The roads that had once mirrored their real-world counterpart were now gone. The houses all replaced with different, familiar structures. There was now just one long cobblestone boulevard that stretched from the foot of my apartment building to a massive tower. The Mall Building, behind which now was a massive ocean that expanded beyond the fog which replaced the massive beachpark, and mall, that would have normally sat behind it.

Gone was the marble staircase. Gone was the statue in the golden cloak.

Without thinking I began walking down the procession towards The Mall Building. Its upper floors pierced the fog and stretched into the unseen sky.

The structures that flanked the boulevard on either side were houses, most of them that is. Some were industrial buildings, one was a hotel.

Their commonality soon became apparent.

I had investigated cases involving each of these structures. An unfaithful husband having secret meetups with some girl half his age at the hotel, a string of disappearances tied to a warehouse with a cold trail, a teacher that had been using school equipment to manufacture narcotics, and many, many other escapades.

The closer to the sky scraper I got the more recent the structures were in my memory. Until eventually, just short of The Mall Building, my eyes fell upon the house I had blocked from my mind for years.

The house that sealed my fate, both giving and taking so much.

The place I first met Leena. The place I lost my job. The place I nearly lost my freedom. The place I thought I’d lose my life. The place with a shattered kitchen window.

My head was turned away from that house and toward The Mall Building.

I became unable to look away from it, my eyes transfixed on the lobby entrance.

Why would I want to look away? There is a mystery here, something to solve, to understand.

The words echoed in my mind, but they were not mine.

My legs marched themselves towards the opening and into the lobby. An elevator door was already open.

The cargo elevator.

Entering the elevator I scanned the button panel. The card reader was gone. Only one button remained.

“Basement.”

The doors closed as I hit the button.

I felt myself nearly float as the elevator descended at a rapid rate. Despite its apparent speed the ride seemed to go on for far too long.

Then it stopped.

The doors opened and before me was the office I had just been in earlier today.

Following that familiar path I proceeded into the hallway.

There was only one door. A door at the end of the hall. And it was open.

From the entrance I could see the windows were gone. Replaced by the marble staircase. The statue with the Golden Cloak stood in front of it.

I approached the statue and fell to my knees once again.

Voices.

Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions of voices began to echo in my mind. What small fragments I could grasp would only say one thing.

The Cataclysm.

Echoes of screams and fragments of agony filled my mind from a past long before what I had known. I knew not how, only that these voices were ancient beyond reason, ancient beyond knowledge, beyond what any human, any mortal had any right to hear let alone understand.

I felt the weight beneath the ground. I felt a pull below that threatened to swallow me whole.

My eyes struggled to focus on the statue, only seeing the fluttering of the golden cloak.

The staircase descended into an infinite darkness. It beckoned me forth.

My hand reached into my back pocket. I grabbed onto something firm and pulled it forth.

Immediately the voices silenced and I regained my strength.

In my hand was a featureless leather bound book with a golden sigil etched into its spine.

-Thank you for taking the time to read my first work, this community has motivated me to put pen to paper after years of indecision. I’d rather the stories I write be painfully mid than non-existant. Part Two soon.

Signed, CGCallisto-

Every dream is an eternity.

Every night my dreams are the same. Always have been for as long as I could remember my dreams.

Every night I would awake in my bed. Except it wasn’t my actual bed. The world around me would always be covered in this ephemeral fog that permeated every single inch of space.

And the dust. My god the dust.

All I ever did was clean.

The shadows never changed. The day never began. The Dust would never end.

I would continue on from my room into the hall, then into the bathroom, then the closets, then the kitchen, then the floors. Never stopping until the entire apartment was free of the dust.

Then I would step into the outside world. The world that was not my world. The world of The Dust and The Gray.

The Dreary.

Light from above would fight its way through the fog, never making it to the hollow ground below.

Where there should have been roads, dirt, grass, and trees, there was stone.

Cobblestoned roads, stonework trees, and fields of slate.

All of it covered in The Dust.

As I would move through the still air the dust would form on my wake and disperse, leaving a trail of my presence throughout this abandoned, forgotten world.

My world of Dust, my Dreary.

I would look up into that fog filled sky and gaze into the twin hues of yellow and white whose muffled screams struggled to breach the all-but-impenetrable fog above, scattering their voices into the omnipresent haze.

Then I would wake up.

Today was no different.

A woman stood just beyond the doorway, her flowing auburn hair flailing about as she shouted at me. I couldn’t really make out the words. She seemed familiar.

Something hard and somewhat heavy hit me square in the face, then plopped into my lap.

My still-blurry sight returned to me just in time to watch the woman march off down the hallway.

Her exit was announced by the slamming of the front door.

My bed was a mess. Clothes were strewn about, the sheets were everywhere, and some were stained with a substance I could not identify. The morning sun cast my shadow on the opposite wall from behind me.

My head pounded from within, memories of last night sat chained behind an alcohol-soaked lock.

My eyes trailed downward to my lap, falling on the object that was hurled at me only moments earlier.

It was a black, featureless, leather-bound book. A fairly hefty one at that.

Rubbing my eyes to confirm I wasn’t completely blind, I took a closer look at the book’s cover.

It was completely blank.

I turned over the book, expecting somehow that repeatedly flipping the book over would magically cause it to manifest some form of identifying information.

I caught a glimpse of something on the spine as I did so. It glistened in the morning sun and sparkled like diamonds.

It was a sigil. A symbol etched in gold, a gold so vibrant that the world around me appeared gray by comparison.

“Oh shit,” the words shot out of my mouth before my brain could even register I was speaking, “Leena!”

I’m such a fucking moron.

I fell onto the floor as my legs refused to accept my authority over them, getting tangled in the bedsheets in the process.

I crawled towards the nearest pile of, mostly, clean clothes I could identify.

Getting dressed was a challenge. I fought with my own body just to put on a shirt, whilst barely navigating the hectic and wayward expletive laden rants that crashed through the windows of my sullied mind palace.

Of all the thoughtless and horrible things, how could I have forgot today was the day she came back from her-

I paused in the hallway, pants half on and shirt on backwards.

Where did she go anyway? Was it a work thing? Was it some kind of vacation?

Why did I care?

My emotional rollercoaster came to a stand-still as the emergency brakes kicked on.

I let the half assembled outfit slide off my unkempt form as I shuffled into the kitchen.

That's right, I didn’t care. I don’t care.

The dishes in the sink were clean, as they should be.

The counter was full of random brand-new crap brought home that was never properly put away and just left in its assorted state of limbo storage, not that I needed the counter space anyway. The side effect of a weak will.

I threw the kettle on and threw a pan on the stove. I figured I should have myself a good old fashioned breakfast of eggs whatever-was-left-in-the-fridge, coffee, and a ciggy.

I dug through the fridge and managed to salvage some cheese, a sausage, and a whole tomato. I chopped them up roughly and dumped them into the simmering mixture of egg and butter.

I slid the scrambled egg mixture onto my plate, grabbed my cup of liquid life, and sat my ass down on a spot I had cleared on the couch.

The TV had nothing interesting on but I left it on the food channel anyway. It was nice to eat with someone.

As I put out the cigarette in the overflowing tray I glanced over at the pile of marked envelopes on the table. Most of them said “Past Due.”

After dumping my dishes back in the sink I stumbled back into my room looking for… something.

The guy.

The cute one. Chatted me up at the bar and drank me under the table, and my sheets. I think he was a blonde, or brown? Or maybe I had hoped he was.

He must have taken off when Leena started screaming. I didn’t see any of his clothes around the bed.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye. Though it's refreshing to be on the other end of that for once.

Why did she throw that book at me?

I ruffled through the haphazardly strewn bedsheets until my hands came into contact with what I was searching for. The book Leena had thrown at my face just before she left.

With some painkillers and another cup of coffee on-board, I could think clearly enough and took a closer examination of the book.

Flipping through its pages I was met with blank after blank page.

The entire damn thing is just blank. Was this some kind of journal for me?

A gift? But why would she…

I threw it in a pile next to my side of the bed.

The rest of the day was filled with job applications.

The age of the Internet has done wonders for many aspects of humanity. Job applications were one sector made infinitely worse.

Every job fair booth I went to had a QR code to scan for their online applications system. Every Now Hiring sign in a store had that godforsaken block-grid in lieu of a simple piece of paper and a proper interview.

After the fifteenth online application referral I decided to call it for the day.

I sat down on my slightly cleaner couch and looked down at my phone, expecting to see dozens of notifications. Ideally at least one.

Instead I saw none.

No calls, no texts, no nothing.

The sun hung low over the horizon. Its waning radiance coaxed the sky into a storm of fire that lapped at the ever growing ocean of blues and purples.

It shone directly into my fucking eyes.

Shuffling my lazy ass over on the couch, I poured out the remaining contents of a bottle of whiskey into my cold cup of half drank coffee.

The evening consisted of aimlessly scrolling through various social media feeds and TV channels. Everywhere I looked I saw people on dream vacations, getting married, or buying their first homes.

Guess I’m just a fucking loser, huh.

Dinner was more whiskey, from a new bottle this time, and another menthol ciggy. I wasn’t particularly hungry as it was.

Where the hell was Leena? She stormed out and hasn’t even texted me. Maybe shes-

I quickly downed the rest of my glass before I could finish the thought. The burning warmth of the spiced whiskey rips me out of my own head.

As the whiskey level in my bottle lowered the moon rose in response. It was close to midnight by the time the bottle was empty.

The floor was my home now. This was not negotiable. Any attempt to stand at the moment would surely result in me splitting my head open on a table, or worse, ejecting the precious ounces of whiskey that I had been struggling to keep down for the past hour. The world around me decided it was time to begin rotating at ridiculous speeds, rendering me unable to stand upright.

Clinging to the ground beneath me, I dragged myself to my bedroom and eventually, I pulled myself up onto my bed.

The spinning only worsened. I closed my eyes and did my best to ignore it.

Eventually the spinning stopped and I awoke in my bed.

But this wasn’t my bed.

In what felt like no time at all I had returned to serve my sentence. My eternal penance for the crimes I must have committed at some point.

Once more I proceeded through my charge of the cleaning of The Dust.

All my life, all that I could remember anyway, I had never been able to dream. Not properly. Instead of nightmares of being naked at school or all my teeth falling out I dreamt of this place, The Dreary.

The Dreary was an empty world, a dead world, one that remained contained by a dense impenetrable fog that snuffed out all but the most diffused light from the sky above.

The Dreary was, as far as I could tell, an exact copy of the world. Save for the fact that anything not built by human hands was replaced by stone abstracts that, while giving the idea of what they're supposed to be, look nothing like it. Imagine if a tree wasn’t a tree but instead a jagged spine of stone that clawed upwards through the fog. Sure the base idea of a tree is there but that’s not a fucking tree.

There was nothing living within The Dreary. Even the wind did not blow. The world did not breathe. It was still, frozen, a corpse of identity.

Yet tonight was different.

The Dreary demanded my attention.

It had not done that before.

I broke from my charge and answered, walking towards the front door of my copied apartment.

I saw nothing new outside. The same cobble roads divided the same slate fields bearing the same stonework trees.

Except there was something new.

There had never been something new.

A great and grand staircase made of the most radiant marble ascended into the sky and well beyond the fog. Its brilliance made the fog seem black by comparison.

At the foot of these stairs stood a statue. A black statue covered in a golden cloak that fluttered in a non-existent wind.

“What the fuck?” My voice carried across The Dreary, hollow and raspy.

There’s never anything new. Nothing new, never. There was only The Dust, there was only The Dreary. What the hell is this?

I felt my breath become erratic-

I felt my breath.

I have never breathed before in a dream. I had never spoken.

I could not take my eyes off of the cloaked statue.

I could not resist the movement of my legs. Yet again my body refused to obey me as I was marched down the stairs of my apartment building.

The Dust does not react to me.

In what felt like seconds I found myself kneeling before the cloaked statue. It towered over me, but its height seemed to vary as my eyes rattled around in their sockets.

I clutched my head as I hissed an empty scream in agony. I felt a thousand hands trying to push their way out from within my mind, held back by a single flimsy door.

I strained to look upwards at the statue.

As I did I caught a glimpse of long auburn hair.

I shot upright in my bed.

The accumulating saliva in my mouth signaled to me that I should start running to the bathroom.

As the last of my wretches escaped my hanging maw, I caught a glance of my reflection.

I saw myself. Not in some artsy self-abstract sort of sense, but in a very literal sense.

Not the scars, nor the rage, nor the often bloodshot and tired eyes that have stared back at me for longer than I bothered to remember.

My eyes. My self.

I felt the fog that clouded my thoughts lift ever so slightly.

For the first time in ages I could think without strain. The string of consciousness was no longer a spider web of spider webs but was now a constant, deliberate, string that I could trace from end to end hanging freely in the newfound void.

I saw the filth, the disgust, the depravity that surrounded me.

How long had I lived like this?

I hopped in the shower to wash off days, no, weeks of god knows what from my skin. The water that rolled off my body and down into the drain was noticeably darker than the water that came out of the shower head.

I located the cleanest ensemble of clothes I could find; a pair of shorts and a button up short sleeve shirt that hung on my desk chair.

The unrelenting summer heat would stand no chance against this climate appropriate ensemble.

As I waited for the kettle to boil I started clearing the kitchen counter of all of the trash and unopened impulse-purchase appliances that had made it their home.

By the time the whistling of the kettle arrived I had already bagged up two bags of what had to be no less than $1000 of unused appliances. In their state I doubt I could get anyone to take them even for free.

The first sip of the black sludge that had the audacity to call itself coffee left a searing trail as it traveled down my throat. Even if I had any milk that wasn’t out of date or sugar that wasn’t crawling with bugs it wouldn’t have been enough to blunt the blow of that demonic concoction.

I poured the entire mug of caffeinated sewage down the drain so that it may rejoin its kin. Instead I opted for a half drank can of POG left in the fridge.

As I began my war against grime in the kitchen I felt my phone buzz.

I quickly rinsed my hands and answered the incoming call.

“Hi, is this Joseph Aiden?” The voice on the other end spoke.

“Yes,” I started hesitantly, “this is him.”

It had been a while since I had heard anyone say my name. I patiently awaited the other side to get on with whatever it was they wanted. Maybe it was a scammer who wanted to extort me for all I’m worth. I hope he likes the zeros in my bank account, because that's all there is.

“My name is David DeGuzman, I’m calling in response to your application with us…” as the voice trailed on my mind honed in on something he said.

Application? When did I-

Stopping myself short as I glanced over at the pile of yet-to-be-mailed applications on the kitchen table.

“…we’d like to have you come in for an interview. What dates are you available this week?”

I felt my heart flutter.

“Any,” I practically shouted, “right now even I can come down right now.”

I cringed inside realizing what a desperate fool I must have come off as. Even if it was the honest truth, what if this screws with my chances at getting the job?

I paused.

What job am I even volunteering myself for anyway? Sure it didn’t really matter at this point but-

“You know,” David started, “I think we have an opening around noon today, you think you could make it down to The Mall building?”

Thank god it’s close.

“Yeah that's like five minutes away from me,” I chuckled, overwhelmed and nervous beyond comparison.

“Great. We’re room 1304 on the 13th floor. You can check in with the front desk once you arrive. See you there.”

The line dropped.

As my phone returned to the lock screen I saw the time was 11:24.

While it was true that I wasn’t that far from The Mall building, I had realized far too late that any of my far more acceptable business attire was in desperate need of a wash. Sure, the shirt I was wearing was formal enough, shorts and slippers would likely get me marked down.

I combed through my room to see if perhaps I had missed any nicer clothes. Much to my dismay I had not.

Resigning myself to my fate I gritted my teeth and pushed on out the door.

My walk down to the mall was less of a casual walk and more of a heavily restrained sprint. My body happily obeyed my restraint, despite my legs screaming to let them break out in a sprint. The tightness in my chest, like a coiled spring, desired to be released through my legs.

The Mall itself was, to my knowledge, the largest outdoor mall in the world. On any given day it was bustling with tourists from all over the world. Situated right across the street from a massive beach park and sat just on the edge of Waikiki, It was arguably the social center of the whole island. The south side of the island, anyway. The Mall Building was situated on the Mauka side of the mall, opposite the ocean side, which meant it was basically a straight walk from my shabby abode down the main road and right into The Mall.

On the walk more questions formed within me, the solemn line of thought formed into a structured diagram of red threads that stretched from one end of the void to the other.

What company was I even interviewing for? The Mall building was mostly just offices for anything you could imagine, private medical practices and outpatient clinics, law offices, engineering firms, hell even some small cafes.

And that name. David DeGuzman.

Not that I was an expert on names, but of all the names you hear around here I couldn’t help but feel that something was… off.

Before I could indulge my conspiracy further I realized I had entered into the elevator and was now en route to the 13th floor.

I was alone in the elevator. Despite the lobby otherwise being filled only I had entered this elevator.

Or at least I thought the lobby was full.

The doors opened into the 13th floor lobby. It was a modest little area with a few area chairs for people to sit as they wait for their family to do whatever business they have on this floor.

I walked out, passed the row of elevators and headed into the main hallway. There were no windows. The dull droning of the building's HVAC and the gentle buzzing of the fluorescent lights trickled through the air before being absorbed by the slight off-blue carpet that ran the length of the floor.

I nervously made my way to room 1304. Thankfully, or not, the room was close to the elevators. Just one door down after taking a right.

The door was blank aside from the room placard and an “hours of operation” sign.

I steadied myself, took a deep breath, and entered the room.

I entered a small office lobby. Two chairs sat awkwardly in the far corner next to a door that presumably led further into the sectioned off office area. A newly constructed drywall partition isolated the lobby area from the rest of the office floor space, leaving only a door and a cutout for the secretary or greeter to manage guests as they come in the door.

“Joseph Aiden?” A female voice called from out of sight.

“Uhh yes?” I answered cautiously.

A woman, appearing to be in her forties, approached the counter cutout from within the offices. Her bright red hair appeared almost plastic in the fluorescent lighting.

“Mr. DeGuzman is ready for you.” She said, bending down to interact with something below the counter.

I heard a soft click followed by a buzz.

The office door popped open and the woman beckoned me forth.

The hallway was more of the same. A drywall corridor with several doors on either side.

The door locked shut behind me with a buzz, startling me.

At the same time the door at the far end of the hall opened. A man wearing a blue floral shirt waved me down.

“Down here!” He called.

I quickly made my way inside the man’s office. The windows behind him were blocked off by heavy curtains, the only source of light being the ever-present fluorescent overhead lights.

“I’m David,” he said, extending his hand, “pleasure to meet you.”

I reciprocated his gesture and returned a firm handshake.

“Likewise.” I replied.

The man, David, had well kept short black hair and a comically yet impeccably well kept ‘70s mustache that reflected some of the overhead light.

David gestured for me to sit and I obliged.

The office itself was a modest space, the desk at which we were sat was adorned with the typical office fare, albeit a bit lacking in some finer details and a bit too clean for it to be in constant use.

“So, about-“ I started before David cut me off.

“You’re 28 correct?” David asked as he held up some papers.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Can you tell me a little bit about your previous employer?”

I paused.

My previous employer? Who-

“Oh,” the thought found its way to me, “yes sorry I was with a PI firm, Maikai Investigations.”

“Yes them,” David affirmed leaning back in his silent office chair, “what kind of work were you involved in?”

I felt my palms become clammy but I persisted and gave him the sales pitch.

“Usually a client would come to us and ask us to get information about someone. That's the very base level of things,” I elaborated, “could be, you know, someone wanting to know about their birth parents. Someone wanting to know if a spouse is being unfaithful, really just about anything involving information.”

“Were you good at what you did?” David asked, his words laced with a substance I couldn’t fully make out.

“I’d like to think I was,” I said with false bravado, “never had any clients complain and I always completed the job-“

“Even when you were asked to do things that might have been morally objectionable?”

I froze.

I wasn’t a saint. Still aren’t. But I did what I was asked and did a damn fine job of it. If someone had a problem with it they can sort it out with the cops.

“Absolutely,” I said, almost bragging, “especially when others would refuse to take the job.”

“Why?”

David’s words now came with an air of genuine curiosity.

“Can I ask the relevance to the job?” I deflected.

David shifted forward in his chair, his poker face remaining unchanged since the start of the interview.

“Everything,” he replied eerily, “I’m not here to judge you, I want to know.”

David stared at me with an intensity I had reserved only for stains in my sink.

“Because the job needed to be done,” I started, “and I liked the challenge.”

David’s eyes perked up at that.

“The challenge?”

I furrowed my brow.

“Every case was a puzzle,” I leaned in, “and I was the best damn puzzle solver in that organization.”

I winced.

“Then why’d you leave?” David shot back.

Ignoring the blatant cringe that was whatever the hell I just called myself, David’s question shot through and shattered my false bravado like a bullet through a kitchen window.

“I was banging the boss's wife.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the reason.

David’s poker face slipped as he let out a hint of disappointment.

“The analyst position we are looking for has some caveats,” he started as he began flipping through the papers on his desk, “one is honesty. We expect our analysts to be completely honest with us.”

His eyes locked onto mine.

I caught a glimpse of the papers on his desk. One was a memo entitled “Investigative Incident,” left conveniently in my line of sight.

“I overstepped.” I replied begrudgingly.

“Honesty is paramount,” David began as laid down the papers, “I don’t mean some half-assed corporate honesty, I mean if what I ask is for you to delve into how much you hate your boss, your life, or whatever escapades you and a secretary got up to, we expect the full un-adulterated details.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

What the fuck is he on about? Sure I appreciate that this job lets you cuss your boss out in the name of honesty but isn’t this a bit much?

“Just what exactly is an analyst here?” I started, “What are the hours? The responsibilities? The pay?”

The more questions I asked the more flustered I became. I knew utterly nothing about this place or this supposed job I was now interviewing for.

As a matter of fact how the hell did this guy get a hold of that-

“Anything further requires an NDA,” David cut, interrupting my thoughts.

“I have to sign an NDA to even know who or what I'm working for?” I asked, emboldened and incredulous.

David raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, you do,” he replied, “and you’re going to be asked far more uncomfortable questions than the ones I’m giving you now.”

Then it clicked.

Analyst position? I think I would have remembered applying for something so fancy sounding, at least compared to the myriad of fast food and retail positions I had been applying for.

“I don’t think I’ve ever applied for this position,” I said as I slowly stood up from my chair, “just who the hell are you?”

David smirked.

“Like I said, you sign this contract and I’ll answer all your questions.” David smiled.

His poker face slipped away revealing satisfaction and pride.

He slid a paper across his desk towards me, placing a pen at the top of the document.

The paper was a single page. Barely half. At the bottom was a place for my signature and nothing else.

I glanced at the page, not wanting to let my guard down. I caught one sentence that set off alarm bells within me.

“We are humanity’s first and last line of defense.”

My chest became a twist of panic, of confusion, of curiosity, of fear, and god knows what other emotions that humanity has yet to properly define.

“I’m not interested.” I said and made my way to the door.

David stood at his desk and watched as I hastily made my exit.

The door out of the office buzzed and opened as I approached.

“We’ll see you again, Aiden.” David said gently, his voice echoing down the hallway as the door to 1304 closed behind me.

The red threads in my mind formed a tangled mess that only grew as my questions remained unanswered.

As soon as I got home I made sure to lock the door.

I pulled out my phone to check the number that this organization had contacted me from.

It wasn’t there.

In the call history the last call shown was from a week ago.

From Leena.

I slumped down onto the couch.

I felt my chest constrict as a burning pain filled my chest, a twisting anxiety and yearning that sapped my breath away.

Why do I care? She knew what she was signing up for. She knew what I was.

I kept rationalizing.

I never said yes to her, I just didn’t say no. Not my fault she got all confused.

My sight became blurry.

Why’d she keep taking pity on me? Keep coming back to my dump of a house? Keep buying me shit I didn’t ask for? Keep-

The tears began to roll down my face.

Why couldn’t I care until now?

I bawled my eyes out. I cried and cried until the couch was soaked with my tears. I unleashed all the tension in my chest with a scream that surely pissed off the neighbors.

I cried, I screamed, I threw everything within arm’s reach at the wall hoping that if I threw it hard enough I could fix this mess. I threw a tantrum that would put a stubborn toddler to shame.

As a few hours pass as I lay spent on the couch at the epicenter of the disaster that trashed my living room.

“Leena…” I moaned mournfully into a tearstained pillow.

My eyes lazily scanned my surroundings, taking in the totality of my ruin and pathetic squalor.

All I could feel was a muted mix of disgust and hatred, aimed at myself.

I wished for nothing more than to never leave this couch again; better to join the rot and the refuse than continue my futile struggle against a life I had already destroyed.

A flame of insight flickered to life within my mind.

Just how the hell did those people, whoever they are, erase their call history from my phone?

After a brief but intense search online I came to a disturbing conclusion.Unless they had physical possession of my device, they could not hide my call history.

My eyes quickly darted to my door.

It was still locked up tight, right as it should be, some debris still blocking it from opening due to my earlier outburst.

I got up and inspected the jalousies.

The netting on the windows themselves remained undisturbed, even sporting a fine layer of dust. The jalousies too were equally undisturbed.

They didn’t break in. Or if they did they hid their tracks better than most, well enough to never be caught. But why go through all that effort just to delete a phone number? I could just look up the company by its address right?

I entered the address, suite 1304.

Nothing, at least for this decade. There are some old surface web files relating to a small life insurance company that once operated out of that address.

Feeling restless and seeing the sun still high in the sky, I decided to make my way back to the unit and get some answers.

Not fair they should know me so well without it being mutual.

Upon arriving in the lobby I spotted a building directory. I quickly scanned the registered suite numbers for 1304.

Not the first column, not the second, nor the third.

“Need help locating a business?”

I spun around to see a woman with long crimson hair, done up in a long pony tail.

“Oh, uh,” I fumbled my words.

Maybe I'm a little colorblind but that crimson looked auburn for a brief but uncomfortably long second.

“Im looking for the name of a business that operated out of suite 1304.” I explained to the young woman.

She squinted at the registry and scanned it intently.

“Strange,” she started, “I don’t see any, maybe we should go take a look?”

She beckoned me to the elevator lobby, to the cargo lift.

She swiped her ID card and the doors opened.

The cargo lift was very spacious and surprisingly well kept for being used to haul god-knows-what.

She walked over to the button panel and selected the 13th floor. Unlike the other elevators this one had a “Basement” floor button. The elevator had ascended at a far greater rate than the other one I had used earlier in the day.

We arrived on the 13th floor and she led me towards the suite. As we arrived we noticed a “For Lease” sign with an address for a corporate realty website.

“It doesn’t look like anyone has used this one in a while,” she frowned, “sorry that I couldn’t be of more help!”

Before I could respond she had already made her way back to the elevator and disappeared.

It was impossible, yet it was reality.

I had just been here maybe a few hours ago and the office where I’d had my interview was just gone.

As my thoughts began to settle they also began to drift. As they drifted and fluttered about in the subconscious wind of my psyche they fell upon a particular subject.

The hair, the auburn hair. Leena.

But the lady’s hair wasn’t auburn, it was practically crimson. Dyed. Healthy too.

She wasn’t Leena, so why did my thoughts find themselves wandering over to her? Just a similarity?

No, familiarity.

I’ve seen her before. Recently. But where?

The elevator came for me as I mulled over my thoughts. Scanning the panel I looked for the lowest floor option.

“Lobby.”

No basement floor option in this one. Probably just for the freight elevator.

As I walked out of the lobby and passed the ground floor loading dock I stopped.

In the office. She was there.

The receptionist had red hair. It was done up differently and partially obscured due to the contrasted office lighting but it was definitely, or probably, the same color.

But she was old, the lady who helped me couldn’t have been older than 30.

Unless they were using prosthetic makeup. But why the hell-

“Eh, out da way!” A voice announced from behind me.

A very impatient and upset package courier stood behind me with his cart full of parcels.

I quickly moved on wanting to avoid any awkward interactions.

The walk home was unpleasant.

A growing uneasiness in my gut had worked its way throughout my entire body. The traffic, people, buildings, even the sun all seemed so distant yet painfully close. Too close.

Was I being watched?

I glanced around. Nothing unusual, which only served to drive up my anxiety more.

I knew I was being watched, I could feel it, years of experience and training screamed the obvious to me but my eyes, my mind, I was blind to it.

I locked the door upon arriving home. Closed the windows and blinds too.

Still I felt the eyes, the presence, I was seen. Exposed. Vulnerable.

But that was impossible.

A thorough sweep of my house confirmed what I had already known; I was alone. Just me and my belongings.

I took a drag from the quickly emptying pack which helped ease the tension I felt. The feeling persisted.

Paranoia wasn’t unusual for me, though it was mostly back when I still worked as a PI. Most PIs had rules though. Standards. Maybe even a moral compass.

I didn’t.

The pay was good, real good, but it wasn’t about the pay. It was all about the thrill. It had been so long since I felt that fear, that ever watchful eye, that I forgot how good it felt. I had spent years binging on every substance I could get my hands in, trapped in my own mind.

Now, for the first time in years, I could feel that sensation coursing through my body like electricity.

When I awoke I once again found myself in The Dreary. I do not remember falling asleep.

But it had changed.

The Dust. The layer of dust that had coated the entire world was gone.

I rushed outside to see the fog, still ever present but much lighter. I could see further than ever before. Far enough to see that The Dreary had been rearranged.

The roads that had once mirrored their real-world counterpart were now gone. The houses all replaced with different, familiar structures. There was now just one long cobblestone boulevard that stretched from the foot of my apartment building to a massive tower. The Mall Building, behind which now was a massive ocean that expanded beyond the fog which replaced the massive beachpark, and mall, that would have normally sat behind it.

Gone was the marble staircase. Gone was the statue in the golden cloak.

Without thinking I began walking down the procession towards The Mall Building. Its upper floors pierced the fog and stretched into the unseen sky.

The structures that flanked the boulevard on either side were houses, most of them that is. Some were industrial buildings, one was a hotel.

Their commonality soon became apparent.

I had investigated cases involving each of these structures. An unfaithful husband having secret meetups with some girl half his age at the hotel, a string of disappearances tied to a warehouse with a cold trail, a teacher that had been using school equipment to manufacture narcotics, and many, many other escapades.

The closer to the sky scraper I got the more recent the structures were in my memory. Until eventually, just short of The Mall Building, my eyes fell upon the house I had blocked from my mind for years.

The house that sealed my fate, both giving and taking so much.

The place I first met Leena. The place I lost my job. The place I nearly lost my freedom. The place I thought I’d lose my life. The place with a shattered kitchen window.

My head was turned away from that house and toward The Mall Building.

I became unable to look away from it, my eyes transfixed on the lobby entrance.

Why would I want to look away? There is a mystery here, something to solve, to understand.

The words echoed in my mind, but they were not mine.

My legs marched themselves towards the opening and into the lobby. An elevator door was already open.

The cargo elevator.

Entering the elevator I scanned the button panel. The card reader was gone. Only one button remained.

“Basement.”

The doors closed as I hit the button.

I felt myself nearly float as the elevator descended at a rapid rate. Despite its apparent speed the ride seemed to go on for far too long.

Then it stopped.

The doors opened and before me was the office I had just been in earlier today.

Following that familiar path I proceeded into the hallway.

There was only one door. A door at the end of the hall. And it was open.

From the entrance I could see the windows were gone. Replaced by the marble staircase. The statue with the Golden Cloak stood in front of it.

I approached the statue and fell to my knees once again.

Voices.

Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions of voices began to echo in my mind. What small fragments I could grasp would only say one thing.

The Cataclysm.

Echoes of screams and fragments of agony filled my mind from a past long before what I had known. I knew not how, only that these voices were ancient beyond reason, ancient beyond knowledge, beyond what any human, any mortal had any right to hear let alone understand.

I felt the weight beneath the ground. I felt a pull below that threatened to swallow me whole.

My eyes struggled to focus on the statue, only seeing the fluttering of the golden cloak.

The staircase descended into an infinite darkness. It beckoned me forth.

My hand reached into my back pocket. I grabbed onto something firm and pulled it forth.

Immediately the voices silenced and I regained my strength.

In my hand was a featureless leather bound book with a golden sigil etched into its spine.

-Thank you for taking the time to read my first work, this community has motivated me to put pen to paper after years of indecision. I’d rather the stories I write be painfully mid than non-existant. Part Two soon.

Signed, CGCallisto-