u/HeGotBricks

Nobody there cared about the orange color of the ketchup, or that it sparkled. They ate it anyway. Kiltner said, “Man, these fries are great!”

Helequa turned to him. “The fries? How ‘bout this ketchup?”

Belkrus said, “The ketchup is definitely doing all the heavy lifting.”

Joanie laughed. “You guys are nuts!”

Kiltner and Helequa stared at each other like Joanie was from outer space.

Joanie asked, “How come there’s no mustard?”

Kiltner rolled his eyes. “What color do you think that’ll be?”

Helequa glanced at her plate. “I was actually just thinking that, but about the mayonnaise. I wanted to mix the ketchup with it.” Her lips met her jawline as she dug a fry into the orange syrup splattered on her plate before jamming it down her throat.

Joanie tapped Kiltner on the arm. “Kilt, call the waiter over, would you?”

Kiltner threw his arm up. “Excuse me, waiter,” he yelled, snapping his fingers. “Hey, waiter!”

The waiter faced Kiltner, waving. The waiter nodded and finished what he was doing before racing to their table. “Good afternoon, how may I help you?”

Kiltner pointed to Joanie. “Is there any other condiments besides ketchup?” she asked.

For a couple of seconds, the waiter stood still, stared at her with a blank gaze, didn’t blink, and said, “Good afternoon, how may I help you?”

Belkrus slammed his hand over his mouth, trapping his giggle. Helequa, Kiltner, and Joanie glanced at each other through squinted eyelids.

Joanie lifted her face to the waiter. “Can we get some mustard, or mayonnaise?”

The waiter’s expression drifted into deep thought. He froze with his head tilted, holding a pen upside down. “Mustard… mayonnaise?” The waiter’s tongue was poking the inside of his cheek.

“Yeah… mustard!” Kiltner placed his hands on his knees and shook his head towards the group. “It’s almost like ketchup, except it’s yellow? Goes on hot dogs… hamburgers?”

“I’m sorry, but currently, we don’t have that.” The waiter’s expression slid into sincere loss. “What we do have—and it’s so deliciously recommended—is ketchup.” His eyes lit up and his frown rolled into a smile of excitement. “It is famous around here.” His body appeared as if it wanted to jump into a musical. “The chef makes it right at home. Would you like me to bring some more for the table? I can package a few sample ones for you to take home, would you like that?”

“What?” Kiltner said, closing his eyes and taking a breath.

“What other condiments are there?” Joanie asked.

“Condiments?” said the waiter. “I’m not familiar with that—”

Kiltner interrupted, “Ketchup! You know what ketchup is, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” the waiter responded. “Everybody raves about the chef’s ketchup.” He smiled with his chest out. “Would you like me to sneak a few extra ones for you?” The waiter winked, but it stopped halfway.

“What? Wait. Huh?” Belkrus stammered.

Helequa stared as if she was trying to translate a language in her head that she’s never heard before.

“Ketchup is a condiment, along with mustard. You know what mustard is?” Kiltner continued.

“Sorry sir, I’m not familiar with mustard.” The waiter held both his hands to his chest, his eyebrows dropped to upside down checkmarks, and he lightly shook his head. It was like he was trying to respond to the most devastating news. “Is there anything else I may assist you with?” He jolted upwards, pulled his pad out from his pocket, flipped it, pointed the upside down pen to the page, and smiled. “Would you like some ketchup? The chef makes it right at home, it’s famous around here.”

Kiltner was close to shouting an obscenity when Helequa wisely cut him off. “That’ll be all. We’re good. Thank you.”

The waiter walked off. Belkrus tossed his hands on the table. “What the hell just happened?”

Kiltner leaned forward. “Was that guy on something?” He eyed each one of them individually. “How didn’t he know what mustard was?”

Joanie snickered. “Or, condiments.”

Helequa paused. “Uh.” She stayed lost in her thought for a minute. “What’s the deal with the chef making all the ketchup at home?” She backed away while pushing her plate to the middle of the table. “I don’t think we should eat it.”

Belkrus chewed on a dipped fry. He stopped abruptly once Helequa pointed that out, and immediately spat what he had in his mouth into a napkin. “Blech! Let’s get the bill and go. This place is crawling on me and making my skin itch.”

“I second that,” Joanie sniped. “It’s like bugs are on me. The legs on the side of my arm.”

“It’s at the top of the chest for me,” Helequa mentioned.

Joanie tapped on Kiltner’s arm. “Get the waiter to bring the bill.”

Kiltner had his hand half raised in the air, waiting until the waiter poked his head out. He saw him and reached for the sky, gesturing him to the table.

The waiter walked to the table and didn’t turn his head or look anywhere else except for Kiltner’s eyes. “Good afternoon, how may I help you?”

“Bill, please.”

“Is everything alright? I noticed you didn’t finish your ketchup.”

“Everything’s fine, bill please.”

The waiter left for the receipt. When he returned, he placed the bill on the table and four plastic, small sample containers of ketchup. They sat on the table glittering under the sun. “Complimentary, directly from the chef himself. He makes them at home. Fresh.”

Kiltner went for his wallet.

Belkrus reached out. “I got this.”

Helequa smiled at the waiter. “Thank you.”

The waiter held the card in his hand, pressed it against his palm like a scanner, and handed it back. “Thank you, Belkrus Romanaier, your payment has been processed. Enjoy your day and come again.”

“What?” Belkrus said under his breath.

After the waiter left, he turned to the group. “Okay, that was weird. How the hell did he know my name? And how did that payment process?”

“I don’t know, but we’re definitely not coming back here,” Joanie blurted out wide-eyed as they got up and walked to the car.

Inside the car, Helequa opened the glove compartment, and flowing out were tiny sample containers of ketchup. At least twenty of them. “What the hell?” she shouted.

They all stared at each other. They’ve never been there before. Kiltner turned the key in the ignition. It sputtered alive, and blasting from the speakers was a distinct voice. “Good afternoon,” the car said. “How may I help you?”

Henry returned home after picking up his high school graduation ring from the jeweler on 47th Street, a block from his building.

He stared at the fresh polish while stepping into the lobby of his apartment building, twisting it while daydreaming about Joanna Betteford, his girlfriend back in grade twelve.

Back then, the sky was the limit. Now he was just trying to get off the ground. She flooded his mind as he mindlessly waited for the elevator doors to open.

The digit went from 5 to 4 to 3 and paused on floor 2 for a minute before the number glitched to 0000 and dinged a second later as the doors opened and jammed halfway.

He pulled them apart, slid inside, made a fist, and pushed the 8th floor with the face of his ring.

The elevator jumped, shook, and stopped between floors six and seven. Henry began slapping all the buttons on the panel until each one had a red light circling it.

He pressed and held down the emergency button above a speaker in the panel, trying to get someone on the other end.

“Hello?” he shouted. “I’m stuck in the elevator and need help.” He pressed the button out and in. “Hello?”

He released it and the speaker crackled.

“Do not turn around,” a muffled voice shot out, sounding hollow, as if it came out of a tunnel.

Henry giggled because he didn’t know what else to do and slowly lifted his head back up, while eyeing the speaker at his belt level.

The mirror above the panel showed nothing but an empty elevator—besides the hand wearing his high school ring resting on his shoulder.

He spun around, pressing his back against the mirrored panel, expecting to see someone, but nobody was there.

He squeezed his eyes shut and only opened them when the speaker behind him crackled static, vibrating against his lower back. “I told you not to turn around.”

He turned quickly, stumbling backward until he hit a wall, and gazed at the speaker.

It went silent. The panel looked brand new, as if it had never been used. The scratches over the metal were gone.

He charged forward, slapped the button down, and yelled, “What the hell! Stop! This isn’t funny!” Henry repeatedly pressed the button in and out. “Let me out right now,” he screamed as he glanced at the mirror.

He stared at his shoulder through the reflection and didn’t see the hand anywhere, but he saw a man appear in the mirror standing behind him, with his face against the glass, and his mouth started opening.

Henry gasped and the breath he took stuck in his lungs as his eyes widened. He banged on the elevator door. He tried to pull them apart, shredding pieces of his fingernails.

He finally got them to slide open just enough to peek outside the elevator into a darkness that began shimmering a white light, revealing an illuminated hallway with a row of elevators lining the corridor. Each door was open.

Each door had another Henry inside.

At the same time, they all whispered, “You’re always late.”

Just as they spoke, the white light turned into a black wall of darkness.

The following morning, the maintenance worker for the building found a phone on the ground in the elevator. On the screen, it had a notification message sent from Henry himself, and it read:

“Stop letting me out.”

Do you know what it smells like to rip a corpse from under the floorboards? There’s a specific odor, not one you could imagine on your own. It is not like the slaughterhouse you drive past on the way to work every morning. No, this is a foul mix.

Imagine walking into a house that’s been abandoned for a year, still fully furnished, with all its clothes still stuffed in a closet. Now, imagine that closet is jammed with mothballs and old dresses from 1964 left to dry after being washed in cat piss.

That’s your first odor.

Now, imagine you walk behind the dumpster at your favorite grocery store and someone has just thrown a bunch of animal fat inside a bag with three dirty diapers and left it to bake under the sun for three days.

Now, you have your stuffy smell and your rotted odor, and all you need is one more.

Here’s where the eggs come in. Yes, boil a few eggs, peel them, mush them up, and leave them on your stove. Walk out of the room and walk back in.

Mix all those odors—the mothballs, the cat piss, the dirty diapers, the rotted flesh, the eggs—and you have your corpse, who instead of wandering the afterlife as a ghost decided to haunt your floorboards with a rancid odor instead.

Smoking cigarette after cigarette until I choked offered a bit of relief compared to the dust and rot from under the floor.

I mean, yes, of course I have a respirator, but it does a horrible job of filtering out the psychological weight. Plus, I could still smell the body and I need to smoke when I work. I mainly use it for when I’m actually moving the remains.

The suit I wear is a white hazmat suit that makes me look like what a mad scientist Pillsbury Doughboy would look like on a radioactive, post-apocalyptic Earth.

See, I’m a bit of a specialist—a fixer, really. Well, at least that’s how I see myself. I don’t just fix things, I also clean up things. When shady landowners or homeowners have an issue from past tenants and they want to keep it hush-hush, they call me.

I come in and get rid of the evidence. Usually, it’s people who have died alone and weren't discovered until weeks or even months later.

The odd time, though, it’s a body under the floor, or behind a wall, or worse, in the crawl space. I hate spiders. Hate, hate, hate.

I’ve never really minded the rot of a human body. I guess I’m just used to it. I am not sure. I just find something honest in a corpse. The living world is a huge lie. I see people as teeth replaced by dentures, a stink covered by perfume, a dirty shirt flipped inside out. To me, the truth in people can only be found in what they leave behind.

I have a bit of a ritual, and it’s pretty simple and straightforward. Maybe it is a little odd, depending on how you see it, but once I’ve bleached everything and scrubbed the floors, the walls, the carpets, and even the air with four fans, I usually search for something to keep. You know, a little souvenir.

A small keepsake.

It is nothing like jewelry or money or anything valuable. It’s kind of weird, but I like stuff that will last, stuff that has some significance to it. I like digging in the drains and finding pieces of hair or some fingernail clippings.

Oh, my absolute favorite is teeth, especially when people have them saved in tiny boxes. I keep mine in vials. My collection is huge. I’ve got my own small library.

Baby teeth are cool and super easy to find, but it’s adult teeth I’m always on the hunt for. I’ve always wondered why people don’t save them.

The last job I worked was in a neighborhood with no streetlights because the gangs there shoot them out. The tenant was on the fifth floor, maybe in his sixties or seventies, and he had a collection of these really awesome stuffed animals—real animals.

The man himself was on his couch, slumped over and glued into the leather, almost as if he were a Halloween prop that came with the sofa. He had mold and fungi growing out of his chest like shreds of rotted cauliflower and broccoli sprouts.

As I peeled him off the sofa to scrub it down, something strange happened. I felt a connection with him. It was a profound realization, to be honest. I stared at the decayed skin revealing the veins under it and thought about what it would be like to absorb into the environment.

That’s when I saw something glimmer inside the fungal farm on the man’s body. It was shiny. I reached in but couldn’t grip it with my fingers, so I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and cut around the area. It was like trying to tear apart braided tendons, but when I cleared a path, I pulled out a gold tooth stuck to his chest cavity, attached to a piece of jawbone.

Later that night, after cleaning up there, when I got home, I didn’t put the tooth and bone in a vial. I kept it under my lamp, in my basement, on top of my desk, in front of my collection, and left it there to study after my shower.

In the bathroom, I eyed the steam on the mirror blurring my reflection and became disgusted by how alive I looked.

I examined my face—the pink in my gums, the elasticity of my skin, the color of my blood when I pinched it, my breathing, and the beating of my heart.

And right at that moment, I went to the garage and yanked a pair of pliers from my toolbox. I was tired of fixing everyone’s mess, hiding all their secrets, and cleaning stuff up.

For once, I wanted to be the evidence. I stood at the mirror for hours, pulling each tooth out of my head one by one like they were extra hairs on my eyebrow, and tossed each one of them into the sink.

As soon as I finished, I remembered the tooth with the jawbone, raced out to grab it, and ran back into the bathroom with it. Where the hole was in my jaw, I took the piece of bone and tooth and jammed it into my gums, deep into the bloody socket. I stuck it in and leaned close to the mirror. When I smiled, my grin reminded me of the truth. For the first time ever, I saw honesty.

I left the bathroom and went to lie down. As I closed my eyes, I imagined the man melting into his couch and the fungi surrounding his chest, and I wondered how it would be if it could grow inside me too.

Unlike humans, sentients universe-wide understood fear. The Hormones flooding their bodies screamed.

“Protect us at all cost”

“Run!”

“Hide!”

“Pray!”

A species who plays with fear, manipulates it, conforms it into recreational fun, shouldn’t exist. 

“Couldn’t exist!”

“Wouldn’t exist!”

“Shan’t ever exist!”

How would they even be able to survive?

Any experiment attempted involving all types of creatures—small—huge—round—skinny, all reacted as one would expect. It’s the same response creature-to-creature. In the face of danger, fight-or-flight is activated. Not stare and laugh. Pull a camera and record. Watch and copy. Ridiculous. Foolish. Insane.

Evolution adapted survival triggers coded into life’s DNA. It’s an ancient reflex. A survival instinct. Even the plants have it.

When aliens accidentally stumbled into Earth’s orbit, the predictive behavioral laws on sentients had clearly been written with the exception of the newly discovered anomalous beings. Discovering humanity changed the laws. It rewrote the rules.

Recent Interactions while analyzing the human race left every member of GEL, the Galacticterial Empire of Leaders, shattered. Earth had become David, the little guy from the bible, but on a galactic scale.

A reality check for the giants of the galaxy—shrinking the highest rulers of the alien council overnight. They saw psychology with a new set of eyes. Millennia of ancient transcripts were now, pretty much… useless. 

Rewriting their science books wouldn’t untangle their brain cells from the knots they so tightly intertwined into. Suffocating, they screamed, “Reality doesn’t exist,” with its last neuron before it finally melted down their throats.

A long awaited respect had been rightfully gained. No. Taken. No. Earned. GIVEN!!! Actually, STOLEN.

On Planet Li, after a galactic meeting of the minds, where each planet had four emissaries representing their planet, Earth only had one. 

One that equaled eight of them!

It didn’t bother her being alone at the table, surrounded by masters of the universe, attempting to intimidate her. It was the first time humanity had ever sat at the table.

What bothered Sheena was how rude they were in how they only invited her and made her team wait in the ship…

Sheena’s a retired, space fleet, Earth commander. Now she’s the commander of, the not-for-profit, PeaceFleet II. They’re a group of dedicated volunteers: teachers, doctors, researchers and an array of other professionals. Great people.

They’d recently started a three month program and were actually stationed there, on Planet Li, when the GEL hacked a video feed from one of the humans tablet’s. 

The most wealthiest, powerful alien in the universe, the king of the kings, King Lii’rk, he stood at the center of a faintly lit gymnasium. A shadow stained his face in a stripe of black war paint.

“I have breached past their inferno wall of defense.” He held a projectable device in the air. “Gather, fellow rulers. Gather around me.” His voice was pretty deep, pretty raspy and really scratchy. His words climbed sliding out of his throat with sharp points. His breath still smelled of beetle-protein-shake and orgwat guts. 

Senator Edrite, a bulky, horned, long-tailed alien, was walking past Commander pHog, a green, bug-eyed alien from the blugrRuhg system, he grabbed the senator by his shoulder. “What is it?” 

Edrite, spun around and nearly tripped because his cape, which swept the floor, became caught under his own boot. He cleared his throat. “No idea, sir. Ahem! I don’t think anyone knows.” His voice cracked. He glanced up and had to take his goggles off. He huffed inside them and wiped the moisture clean. “King Lii’rk was keeping it hush hush,” he said, jamming  his goggles back on his face.

Emperor Zerol, a two-foot-tall alien wearing a one-piece, squeaked, “King, didn’t want any leaks again, like the disaster last time.” He told them as they trailed behind him to the middle of the room.

The rulers huddled together like it was the last down with a second left to go in the fourth, packing the one yard line, behind four points.

The projector displayed a video glowing a blue light across their faces. Their eyes reflected the stream playing from Scout Private Billy Rake’s tablet.

The image collapsed into a list on the screen. 

1. Horror
2. Comedy
3. Romance
4. Science Fiction

King Lii’rk aimed the handheld projector in the air and shook it, the way you would a magic eight ball. “Why the hell won’t it work?” 

Magically, the dead end wall of letters fenced inside the page, transformed and opened into four rows of unique pictures in frames. 

Each row had six images. All of them were different. Dark. All Stories about humans on Earth. About human survival. The covers had undiscovered beasts on them. Species unknown to alien databases.

“Earth is riddled with frightening creatures,”  Edrite shouted, itching his lower back, ripping his armor off and inspecting his skin. “Is there something on me?”

A six-inch-reinforced, ten-foot-tall, hardened, steel door, sometimes mistaken as, General U’phlqk, the next in line to rule, stuck his arm out and pressed the first option.

After a second, the movie started playing. The plot confused them. Especially,  Commander pHog. He didn’t get it at all. The movie was about six humans, who stay in a cabin at a lake, somewhere on Earth. They’re being hunted by a predator, wielding a bladed, steel handed phaser, the length of General U’phlqk’s arm.

But still, the aliens eyes were glued to the hologram.  Emperor Zerol’s limbs were trembling. He tried looking away. He wanted to but couldn’t. They all watched, frozen, squeezed together, like grapes on a vine, holding their breaths. 

The projection showed six humans who became stranded in the woods. It was night. A downpour lowered the visibility. They had no way out. They were trapped with a masked psycho they could never seem to get away from.

General U’phlqk stuck his armor-plated chest out  and crossed his arms. “They keep running extremely fast and the attacker is always walking right behind them.” He said, “if that was me being chased, I would have eliminated the threat immediately.”

The masked attacker’s blade sliced down on the screen.

“Ahhh” screamed General U’phlqk, hopping onto the king and gripping his arm. The king threw the projector on the ground and pressed into General U’phlqk.

Commander pHog snatched the projector off the ground. 

What the aliens couldn’t seem to comprehend, was how there was eight more of those feeds, where alternate humans documented themselves going back. Even though they were all well aware of what happened to the last group before them and the ones before them.

Commander pHog was addicted, the other aliens trailed him as he struggled to get the video playing again. It skipped, flashed, went to a blue screen and flicked back on.

“Wait!” Emperor Zerol grabbed pHog’s arm and stared at the ceiling and clapped three times. Nothing happened. He clapped again. Nothing.

PHog eyed him. “What are you doing?” 

“Trying to make the lights go out.”

“LIGHTS OFF!” Edrite shouted.

The room went completely dark. The only light came off the flickering lamppost in the background of the movie.

The ground vibrated under them. Soothing and soft but between scenes, it started to lightly thump. A tapping sound beneath their feet like something was trying to get their attention. 

A second later, it began to quietly screech, like a bird trapped in the jaws of a pitbull a distance away. It started to rise. A drum beat pounded.

Their chests pumped and synced to it. 

Boomp!

Boomp!

Boomp!

They made fists and held their breath. Their skin went tight. It spiked. The beat kept going. Boomp. The shrieking dropped. The room went pitch-black. Boomp. 

Silence.

BOOMP!!  A loud bang shook the room.

“RUN!!!” Each one of their minds screamed, “CLAW THROUGH THOSE TITANIUM WALLS. NOW! HURRY, GET OUT OF THAT ROOM.”

Emperor Zerol yelled, “RUN!” at the girl on the screen who nearly met the edge of the persistent hockey masked attacker’s metal phaser.

The girl ran into a house.

General U’phlqk shouted, “No! How?” He ran in front of every one. “the masked man with the metal protruding weapon is now somehow hiding behind the door. Why is she stumbling towards it. We have to inform her immediately not to go in there.”

“Stop this live feed right now!” The king commanded. “Alert Professor Sheena before it’s too late.”

A few moments later, Sheena came tumbling into the gym half asleep, wearing Beetlejuice pajamas and blue, stuffed Monsters Inc. slippers . Her hands were lightly shaking. She didn’t know what was going on.

“What.. what is it..? Wha—what… happened on Earth? Is everyone okay?” she stuttered, circling the gym with her eyes.

“Professor Sheena, we have discovered a troubling situation.” The king walked up to her and put a hand on her shoulder as he stared her dead in the eye. His eyes watered. He was shaking. “A human needs your help,” he said, his jaw still bouncing.

“A human on Earth? How?” She asked. She was completely confused. “Why me?”

“Prepare yourself Professor.” King Lii’rk turned to Commander pHog. “unfreeze the live feed.”

The movie started playing. A smile formed on Sheena’s face. Her eyes lit up.

“Professor Sheena?”

“Shhh…” she said. “This is where I fell alseep.” She leaned in closer to the hologram. “Oo, I love this part.”

Just as she said that, the audio burst out of the speaker and exploded through the room. A thunderous bang louder than a spaceship being smashed into a cloud of dust by an asteroid, following right behind it was the piercing shriek of a hyena being brutally attacked by a pride of lions.

The masked individual jumped out of the shadows.

Everybody in the room, except Sheena, screamed. Howled. Screeched. They sounded like a malfunctioned warp-drive imploding in on itself.

The supreme war chief, the high-rulers, the king and the majority of them, dashed out of the room, stumbling and climbing over each other, clawing to be the first one out of the gymnasium as if the last Turbo Man was behind the door. 

A handful remained. 

Astonished. Shocked. Confused. Even scared. They closed in together, packed in tight as the anticipation of the predators blade paused in mid-air. 

They stared at the projection, eyes stretched, hands covering their faces, waiting for the blade to drop.

Sheena didn’t scream. They quickly glanced at her. Switched back and watched the hologram. Looked back at Sheena again, saw her teeth beginning to shine through the crack opening behind her lips. The blade motioned downward. Sheena flushed red as if she just cashed in her first cheque. A smile covered her face.

Her breaths were shallow. Her eyes shot open. She wore an expression of being cornered by a hungry, polar bear but at the same time she was smiling. She gave off pheromones of being scared. although, she was excited. She wasn’t anxious. She was comfortably terrified.

Commander pHog’s green skin turned a pale, milky color. His eyeballs were dry. He faced Sheena. “You really enjoy watching other humans trapped in horrific situations?”

She glanced at pHog, squinted an eye, squished her face and said, “Yeah…” dragging the word. “It’s fun.” She shrugged.

Soon as she walked out. The leaders who ran out, cautiously started tiptoeing back in. Scared the hockey-masked psycho might jump out from behind the door. They were still shaking. General U’phlqk was drenched in sweat. Everyone in the gymnasium stared at the general and immediately clutched into a huddle together.

The king squeezed between the group, dropped his head and said, “We can never psychologically break the mind of a human when their Friday night comfort is watching recreated monstrosities the universe couldn’t dream up in a nightmare.”

“Commander, look!” Gumbert, a four-eyed security specialist, squeaked.

“We have a problem, sir.” He stared at the console. “There’s a security breach on Bridge-2Z.”

“What is it?” Mwachek, the PeaceFleet’s commander demanded.

“The bio-reader scans indicate a wild predator.“ Gumbert looked over his shoulder at Mwachek shadowing him.

“Who’s responsible for this?” The commander eyed the image of the beast, glowing on the screen.

Gumbert choked. “Well, nobody, sir,” he swallowed. “It breached the hull, sir. It's in the cargo bay, with our food reserves.”

The commander’s two hearts began smashing together. It had the sound of two slimy blobs passing through each other. A vein near his temple protruded from the side of his head like a balloon blowing up.

In the hull, a gray-bearded, bear-sized Octwolf, with eight legs, razor-sharp venomous teeth caked in infectious bacteria, was ransacking a sack of gumballs.

Galactic empires across the universe classified Octwolves as Level-0 threats, which carry a kill-on-sight order—a tag reserved for creatures of destruction.

Octwolves, the apex of apex predators—claiming the top spot of the food chain. A pack of them would easily wipe out a small colony in days.

Commander Mwachek grabbed the microphone and activated the intercom.

“Attention! Attention! This is not a test. This is a real-time crisis. All staff and personnel on deck, evacuate to your nearest safe room. We have a breach in Cargo Bay 2Z.”

Commander Mwachek’s voice slammed through every crew members’ speaker on board. The announcement formed sticky, phlegm balls of fear clinging to the back of their throats and turning into tiny pellets of paranoia, resting at the pits of their bellies every time they swallowed.

“Seal the Bay door and lock the wing down,” Mwachek said. “Radio, Beefkus. Get him to handle the situation immediately.”

Beefkus, their human engineer, wasn’t really an engineer. You’d be closer calling him a glorified-janitor-wildlife-wrangler. He did the jobs nobody would do. The gross ones. The iffy ones nobody wanted.

But, he mainly dealt with orgwats, rat-like rodents but every now and then, the odd sleeder, which are pretty creepy slithering things. They’re sharp-gray-scaled garden snakes. They’re more like garden eels to be honest.

He definitely never handled a heat seeking Octwolf. On Earth, he worked at a zoo as one of five maintenance guys.

“Um, sir? That’s actually going to be a problem,” Gumbert quietly said, eyeing the commander’s talon-shaped claws as they dug into the console.

“The human…” Gumbert’s voice choked. “The human’s with the predator, sir. Our cameras in Bay 2Z are broadcasting Beefkus with it right now.”

Gumbert began sharing the feed on the big screen at the front of the deck. Commander Mwachek stared, preparing himself for the worst. He expected to see the human shredded—parts of Beefkus scattered in a bloody mess of guts across the bay.

He saw neither. The crew gathered behind the commander, stunned. Nobody said a word.

The Octwolf was lying on its back with its eight legs in the air, tail wagging. It squirmed as the human playfully wrestled it in a bear hug.

“Who’s a good boy?” Beefkus’ voice shattered their eardrums, penetrating the speakers in the control room. It didn’t sound like him. His voice had a playful pitch.

“Are you the good boy?” His words were muffled by the Octwolf’s fur. “Yes you are! A-bloof-bloof-bloof-bloof-bloof, yes you are! That’s a good boy. Yeah!” Beefkus patted the beast.

“Beef—kus!” Commander Mwachek shouted at the microphone. The urgency made his voice skip. “You need to get out of there. The creature is highly venomous. Its toxins will destroy your immune system. There is no antidote. Step away from the creature slowly.”

“Who, this cute guy? That’s what all this fuss is about?” Beefkus put his head next to the Octwolf and took a selfie. “He just looks scary. He’s harmless. I even gave him a name, Bear-wolf.”

Beefkus rubbed the Octwolf’s head and it let out a purrful growl rattling the loose objects on the titanium console.

The ship’s sensors registered the noise as an immediate threat from an acoustics weapon. The Octwolf circled Beefkus and snuggled into him.

“Someone stuffed this poor guy in a shipping crate.” He scratched the Octwolf behind the ear. “He was shivering scared in there. He just needed a little affection is all.”

“Human!” The commander screamed into the console, squeezing his baseball-glove-sized-mitts into fists. “One bite. No. Correction. One drop of that creature’s saliva on an open wound on your body, is fatal. It will kill you.

Is your translator malfunctioning? Are you unable to comprehend what I am relaying to you? The creature senses heart rhythms. Nervous systems. It can smell your fear.”

“I’m pretty dang sure, it’s smellin’ the jerky I had in my pocket.” Beefkus stretched out and cuddled next to Bear-Wolf.

Bear-Wolf faced Beefkus and gave him a wet kiss. He wiped it off his face with his shirt. “Aw, that’s a good gross boy. Who’s the good boy?”

Commander Mwachek eyed the screen. He didn’t retract his slids. He just stared at it with a blank gaze.

“It… it’s amazing how your species has survived for so long. You… you’re petting a living monster,” Mwachek stuttered.

“Hey, if it’s cute, furry and has big eyes, nine times out of ten we’re taking it home with us,” Beefkus said, petting Bear-Wolf. “This guy here’s a keeper. I’m taking him with me.”

Bear-wolf licked his face and laid back down beside him.

Mwachek rolled his eyes. “Gumbert, cancel the emergency task force and inform the crew, the threat has been neutralized, and before I forget, update the ship’s manifest, add the level-0 threat as a new deckhand.”

There was an alien warmonger, chief commander, Cslak, who led a group of VoLLeks—terrifying, morbid space creatures—dressed in black scales, with horns protruding from their skulls, savagely into galactic wars—with one intention—wipe planets off the celestial map, absorbing their fear.

Aliens tried everything to conceal their solar systems in their galaxies from these nightmares of the universe. The VoLLek survived by extracting fear seeped into the atmosphere.

Uncontested, they’d pride themselves on conquest after conquest, snatching the breath out of a planet’s lungs.

Not a single ruler in the universe had the gall to resist them. Nor did they attempt to.

The VoLLek invaded. A civilization paid. Nine times out of ten, it was the ultimate price.

When their sleek black ships explored the universe and found oxygen-rich atmospheres—they wouldn’t drop bombs and land soldiers—they’d hijack their broadcast with shrieking sounds, paralyzing the species for two days straight. 

The sound pitched a high inverted frequency that pierced bone as physical mass. Even deaf creatures could hear it. It acted like a parasite in their brain digging underneath their cranium. It was more than just a sound, it had claws and teeth and rung and hissed, like an air hose between their ears.

Just as the violent bell sound would seize, the entire planet would follow into darkness. Their electrical grids were totally fried.

The VoLLek completely shut down planets. Their weapons wouldn’t work. Their defenses became useless. All a planet could do once they entered their system, was surrender. Surrender and hope the VoLLek saw enough fear in their species to last decades.

So, as they came into the orbit of an Earth branch, Hans Earth II, a human outpost, one of the main trading stations for alien species’ around the universe, they expected to achieve the same results. Mass panic. Creatures begging. Creatures screaming. Creatures offering to trade their rock just to stay alive. Creatures attempting to excrete enough fear to prove their worth.

But they saw none of that on Hans Earth. There wasn’t anybody running crazy on the street, except for a bunch of shirtless men drinking beer cans and chasing each other around on a field, but they weren’t burning buildings down. They were just going about their day, tossing a ball. What really blew the chief commanders mind, was when the Peace Officer sent them a direct message, it said:

BYOB. WE GOT LOTS!!! 🍻

The alien chief slumped in his battle station. “Activate force field.” He commanded. “Neutralize their defenses.”

First specialist raids officer, Velleen, danced his tentacle-like fingers on a keyboard, directing the ship’s sensors, scanning the entire planet’s counter-strike defenses but the screen just kept displaying: searching... 

“There doesn’t appear to be any protective measures, commander. We scanned the whole perimeter. All we could come up with, was a bunch of sleazy billboard ads”

“Billboard ads?” The alien chief rubbed his antennas. “Perhaps it’s a trick and they’ll deploy weapons out of them. They can’t be this foolish.” He stared at Velleen. “They must be masking their fear.”

“They’re pretty good at  hiding it. They’re celebrating right now,” Velleen said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Land the ship this instant!” The chief demanded, hammering his fist down. “We’ll see how they react when the full weight of the VoLLek stand on their soil.” 

The alien chief grabbed his XoneratoR-XR8000, which aims a controlled heat-blast, hotter than the sun, contained at a direct target, bleaching the ground with ghostly footprints and evaporating matter on contact. “Soldiers steady your pods!” The chief commanded through a speaker on each vessel.

The soldiers fell out of the sky in orange clusters like space rocks raining from the atmosphere and surrounded an amusement park, thinking it was a military zone.

Hundreds of aliens and humans were walking in and out.

The hatches in the pods opened, two-hundred VoLLeks escaped out. A cloud of smoke obscured their bodies as they stepped onto Hans Earth II. 

Their weapons were glowing a red ember, as they all simultaneously began chewing a grinding sound out of their mouths. The ground shook when they stomped toward the front of the entrance.

The alien chief stood proudly on a crushed boulder and broadcasted a prepared speech through a P.A. system. 

“Petty humans and alien cross breeders, this planet now belongs to the VoLLek Empire. Your sky has become our permanent outpost. Your power is in our control. You are now the property of the VoLLek Empire. Resistance—“

“Uh, hello? Excuse me, mister sir?” A pressure dropped on the chief commander’s shoulder. The alien chief abruptly cut his speech short and turned around. 

His XoneratoR glistened. A human in an Hawaiian shirt with two little chubby kids eating blue snow cones stood behind him. 

The human didn’t stare at the armor plated  tactical gear on the commander’s chest, or the VoLLek warriors beside him, he eyed the clear line that opened at the entrance.

“Can you please step out of the way, we’re trying to get inside.” The human spoke, sipping a can of coke. “These lines are killer and one just opened up. Are you guys about to wrap it up here?”

The commander stared at the human. “We have taken over your pla-net!” His voice hammered against the human but cracked near the end as a random stumbling shirtless drunk guy bumped into him. “Your species has succumb to the great and all powerful VoLLek.”

A slurping sound came out of the pop can. 

The human swallowed, gasped and chucked the can in a garbage bin. He pulled out a handheld device and flicked the screen with his finger. “Oh yeah, eh. I see it now “Planet Takeover?” right here, headlined on the web news, eh. 

Funny the things you miss when yah got the kiddos, I tell ya. But look here, eh,  because I got these little terrors with me and we planned this trip for a month now. 

You can tell ‘em an evil scary alien empire took over the world and they’re not gonna bat an eye, eh. No, sir. Not these two monsters. So whaddya say, neighbor, hows about you squeeze a smooch, let us sneak through right quick there, yah?”

The humans who initially scattered for cover, mainly to avoid falling debris, started packing the lines again, and the aliens who were aware of the VoLLek, all began walking back from the parking lot and filled the area outside the park’s entrance.

A group of human teenagers brushed the commander out of the way and strutted past him and the human with the two kids trailed behind them to a ticket booth, whose sign had just flipped to open.

Two young adults with black hats and shirts that had security on it, walked up to the commander. “Hi, there.” The female one waved and smiled, holding a sandwich in her hand. “You can’t be gathering like this here. It’s a safety hazard. Fire chief shows up, we’re all getting tickets. Gonna need ya to clear out, pal,” she said, taking a bite of her assorted sub, while her partner was deeply invested in the device in his hand.

One of the VoLLek tapped the commander on the back. “They really, really hide their fear well.”

The commander eyed his soldier. “Fire a warning shot!” He demanded.

The soldier signaled the troops to fire into the sky. The dark sky lit up in bursts of lightning and pyrotechnics. The humans and aliens all watched the light show, glowing pretty colors. 

A weird dust, almost like black ash floated back onto the people and they started complaining as they wiped charcoal-colored stripes down their wardrobes.

“Hey, space jerk!” A human in an all white hollered. “You know how much this suit cost, buddy?” He stormed toward one of the soldiers. The security guard held him back. 

The one guard who was staring at his palms finally looked up at the commander. “No, fireworks without a permit. I’m gonna have to write you a ticket.”

A crackle from the comms piece attached to the commanders ear broke. “Commander! Commander! I’ve miscalculated the human species. The psychological simulator excluded all their experiences and calculated them through the lens of a peaceful civilization.”

“Explain your incompetence.” The commander huffed.

“The instinct to panic completely bypassed humanity’s evolution.” The speaker began breaking up.“Humanity has survived centuries of war, climate change, economic collapse, and often top-profile celebrity and political scandals. An alien invasion doesn’t even rank top five. They don’t see it as an apocalypse.”

“How do you mean? We’re the worst thing to happen to the universe.” The commander yelled through the microphone.

Velleen paused. “Not to them, commander. To them, we’re just the fifth page of a paranormal tabloid.”

The commander snatched a human walking by and shouted in his face. “We are the rulers here! I run your planet!”

The human turned his head to avoid the commander’s breath which reeked of garlic and squid guts. “Okay, okay. Maybe ya can do something about this damn line, eh. Been here since noon.” The human told him.

The commander put the man down and dusted his shirt off. For the first time, the alien chief was defeated and the humans hadn’t even fired a single shot. They didn’t have to. They just had to demonstrate a complete lack of respect for the commander.

An alien civilization that survives solely off eating fear can only be defeated by a unfazed human.

There was an alien warmonger, chief commander, Cslak, who led a group of VoLLeks—terrifying, morbid space creatures—dressed in black scales, with horns protruding from their skulls, savagely into galactic wars—with one intention—wipe planets off the celestial map, absorbing their fear.

Aliens tried everything to conceal their solar systems in their galaxies from these nightmares of the universe. The VoLLek survived by extracting fear seeped into the atmosphere.

Uncontested, they’d pride themselves on conquest after conquest, snatching the breath out of a planet’s lungs.

Not a single ruler in the universe had the gall to resist them. Nor did they attempt to.

The VoLLek invaded. A civilization paid. Nine times out of ten, it was the ultimate price.

When their sleek black ships explored the universe and found oxygen-rich atmospheres—they wouldn’t drop bombs and land soldiers—they’d hijack their broadcast with shrieking sounds, paralyzing the species for two days straight. 

The sound pitched a high inverted frequency that pierced bone as physical mass. Even deaf creatures could hear it. It acted like a parasite in their brain digging underneath their cranium. It was more than just a sound, it had claws and teeth and rung and hissed, like an air hose between their ears.

Just as the violent bell sound would seize, the entire planet would follow into darkness. Their electrical grids were totally fried.

The VoLLek completely shut down planets. Their weapons wouldn’t work. Their defenses became useless. All a planet could do once they entered their system, was surrender. Surrender and hope the VoLLek saw enough fear in their species to last decades.

So, as they came into the orbit of an Earth branch, Hans Earth II, a human outpost, one of the main trading stations for alien species’ around the universe, they expected to achieve the same results. Mass panic. Creatures begging. Creatures screaming. Creatures offering to trade their rock just to stay alive. Creatures attempting to excrete enough fear to prove their worth.

But they saw none of that on Hans Earth. There wasn’t anybody running crazy on the street, except for a bunch of shirtless men drinking beer cans and chasing each other around on a field, but they weren’t burning buildings down. They were just going about their day, tossing a ball. What really blew the chief commanders mind, was when the Peace Officer sent them a direct message, it said:

BYOB. WE GOT LOTS!!! 🍻

The alien chief slumped in his battle station. “Activate force field.” He commanded. “Neutralize their defenses.”

First specialist raids officer, Velleen, danced his tentacle-like fingers on a keyboard, directing the ship’s sensors, scanning the entire planet’s counter-strike defenses but the screen just kept displaying: searching... 

“There doesn’t appear to be any protective measures, commander. We scanned the whole perimeter. All we could come up with, was a bunch of sleazy billboard ads”

“Billboard ads?” The alien chief rubbed his antennas. “Perhaps it’s a trick and they’ll deploy weapons out of them. They can’t be this foolish.” He stared at Velleen. “They must be masking their fear.”

“They’re pretty good at  hiding it. They’re celebrating right now,” Velleen said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Land the ship this instant!” The chief demanded, hammering his fist down. “We’ll see how they react when the full weight of the VoLLek stand on their soil.” 

The alien chief grabbed his XoneratoR-XR8000, which aims a controlled heat-blast, hotter than the sun, contained at a direct target, bleaching the ground with ghostly footprints and evaporating matter on contact. “Soldiers steady your pods!” The chief commanded through a speaker on each vessel.

The soldiers fell out of the sky in orange clusters like space rocks raining from the atmosphere and surrounded an amusement park, thinking it was a military zone.

Hundreds of aliens and humans were walking in and out.

The hatches in the pods opened, two-hundred VoLLeks escaped out. A cloud of smoke obscured their bodies as they stepped onto Hans Earth II. 

Their weapons were glowing a red ember, as they all simultaneously began chewing a grinding sound out of their mouths. The ground shook when they stomped toward the front of the entrance.

The alien chief stood proudly on a crushed boulder and broadcasted a prepared speech through a P.A. system. 

“Petty humans and alien cross breeders, this planet now belongs to the VoLLek Empire. Your sky has become our permanent outpost. Your power is in our control. You are now the property of the VoLLek Empire. Resistance—“

“Uh, hello? Excuse me, mister sir?” A pressure dropped on the chief commander’s shoulder. The alien chief abruptly cut his speech short and turned around. 

His XoneratoR glistened. A human in an Hawaiian shirt with two little chubby kids eating blue snow cones stood behind him. 

The human didn’t stare at the armor plated  tactical gear on the commander’s chest, or the VoLLek warriors beside him, he eyed the clear line that opened at the entrance.

“Can you please step out of the way, we’re trying to get inside.” The human spoke, sipping a can of coke. “These lines are killer and one just opened up. Are you guys about to wrap it up here?”

The commander stared at the human. “We have taken over your pla-net!” His voice hammered against the human but cracked near the end as a random stumbling shirtless drunk guy bumped into him. “Your species has succumb to the great and all powerful VoLLek.”

A slurping sound came out of the pop can. 

The human swallowed, gasped and chucked the can in a garbage bin. He pulled out a handheld device and flicked the screen with his finger. “Oh yeah, eh. I see it now “Planet Takeover?” right here, headlined on the web news, eh. 

Funny the things you miss when yah got the kiddos, I tell ya. But look here, eh,  because I got these little terrors with me and we planned this trip for a month now. 

You can tell ‘em an evil scary alien empire took over the world and they’re not gonna bat an eye, eh. No, sir. Not these two monsters. So whaddya say, neighbor, hows about you squeeze a smooch, let us sneak through right quick there, yah?”

The humans who initially scattered for cover, mainly to avoid falling debris, started packing the lines again, and the aliens who were aware of the VoLLek, all began walking back from the parking lot and filled the area outside the park’s entrance.

A group of human teenagers brushed the commander out of the way and strutted past him and the human with the two kids trailed behind them to a ticket booth, whose sign had just flipped to open.

Two young adults with black hats and shirts that had security on it, walked up to the commander. “Hi, there.” The female one waved and smiled, holding a sandwich in her hand. “You can’t be gathering like this here. It’s a safety hazard. Fire chief shows up, we’re all getting tickets. Gonna need ya to clear out, pal,” she said, taking a bite of her assorted sub, while her partner was deeply invested in the device in his hand.

One of the VoLLek tapped the commander on the back. “They really, really hide their fear well.”

The commander eyed his soldier. “Fire a warning shot!” He demanded.

The soldier signaled the troops to fire into the sky. The dark sky lit up in bursts of lightning and pyrotechnics. The humans and aliens all watched the light show, glowing pretty colors. 

A weird dust, almost like black ash floated back onto the people and they started complaining as they wiped charcoal-colored stripes down their wardrobes.

“Hey, space jerk!” A human in an all white hollered. “You know how much this suit cost, buddy?” He stormed toward one of the soldiers. The security guard held him back. 

The one guard who was staring at his palms finally looked up at the commander. “No, fireworks without a permit. I’m gonna have to write you a ticket.”

A crackle from the comms piece attached to the commanders ear broke. “Commander! Commander! I’ve miscalculated the human species. The psychological simulator excluded all their experiences and calculated them through the lens of a peaceful civilization.”

“Explain your incompetence.” The commander huffed.

“The instinct to panic completely bypassed humanity’s evolution.” The speaker began breaking up. “Humanity has survived centuries of war, climate change, economic collapse, and often top-profile celebrity and political scandals. An alien invasion doesn’t even rank top five. They don’t see it as an apocalypse.”

“How do you mean? We’re the worst thing to happen to the universe.” The commander yelled through the microphone.

Velleen paused. “Not to them, commander. To them, we’re just the fifth page of a paranormal tabloid.”

The commander snatched a human walking by and shouted in his face. “We are the rulers here! I run your planet!”

The human turned his head to avoid the commander’s breath which reeked of garlic and squid guts. “Okay, okay. Maybe ya can do something about this damn line, eh. Been here since noon.” The human told him.

The commander put the man down and dusted his shirt off. For the first time, the alien chief was defeated and the humans hadn’t even fired a single shot. They didn’t have to. They just had to demonstrate a complete lack of respect for the commander.

An alien civilization that survives solely off eating fear can only be defeated by a unfazed human.

People… the spiderwebs of the world, they’re the worse to walk into. Patiently waiting to spring you into their trap. 

Always with another insect around them. Always wanting to trap you and string you along—feeding off you—eating you from the inside out.

It’s exhausting—always trying to escape. Always wiping them out of your face.

I can never get away. They’re always here. They’re under me. They’re above me. They’re at the roof of my porch. They’re in my car before I jump in it. They’ve become the cobwebs in my life, hiding around my house like the mesh at the corner of my ceiling.

You never see them until it’s too late. Too scared to go near them because you’re too scared they’ll end up on you.

No matter what you do, you can never get rid of them. One goes and another appears.

Spiderwebs integrating into your web that you intricately slaved to painstakingly create, just to have an arm of brown clob stretch into your precious design and tangle your masterpiece when it entered your space. 

“Listen here and listen clear folks. Daddy Burt Burt’s got a life changing deal for ya. For less than a happy meal, you can have me become your life destinator. That’s right folks you heard it here. Only 3.99 a month and in five years, not only can i guarantee but I can stake my life on it, in only five measly short years, I can promise two things will happen:

1. Your life will get better. 

Or,

2. Your life will get worse.

And it gets better, because our tech savvy ladies are working overtime, you don’t even have to worry about remembering if you paid your monthly bill or not, because our automatic billing cycles will take it straight out of your account for you. 

{No refunds. Extra monthly charges may apply. Cancellation fee charged.}

Burt stared at the tv playing his ad. “Shelly, get over here.”

Shelly ran into the room with gray clouds of tobacco smoke filling the air in an obnoxious odor. “Ye, Burt?”

“You see how good I look on that there damn television?” He leaned forward, stretching his arm out, pointing to the tv, with the cigarette jammed between his fingers.

Shelly stared through the air of burnt chemicals, squinting at the screen resting  above a case of empty beer bottles on a stained carpeted floor. She saw her boss on tv, his teeth were digitally whitened to the shine of polished ivory, and didn’t match the color of the walls in the office stressed under years of Marlboro smoke.

“You know, Burt. I ain’t kiddin’ ya’ yuh look just like that pretty actor man on that movie with that girl. You know which one I’m talking about?” She said, sliding an ashtray under him. “Your momma’s gonna be so proud.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “You really think though, all these people goin’ hand you their money just like that?”

—-

Part 2 Coming soon to a Phone Screen Near You.

Brother? Mother? Father? An orphan asked himself. He lived with snails during the week and spiders on the weekends.

He had known them his entire life. He never knew any humans. He lived in a forest—miles from the edge of any of the nearest villages. 

The nights were cold but he’d grown used to the weather. When it snowed, he’d burrow underground and eat whatever the ants brought with them.

During summer, he’d assemble a hammock, and sleep under the night sky, staring at the stars. Life was perfect. He had food. He had friends. And most importantly, he had the comfort of the forest hugging him whenever he got lonely.

Until a surveyor found him one day. The local government “rescued” him and implemented him slowly into society. Society, where he had to buy food. Pay rent. Find new friends. And of course, find a job. Life was complicated.

He stared out of his bedroom window at night, trying to get comfortable on his bed, trying to count the stars, but in the city there wasn’t any. The spiders were mean. The snails were hard to find. And the food… the food tasted awful.

The walls couldn’t add the same comfort the trees would. The traffic outside his window was too loud. He missed the crickets. He missed the forest.

And what he realized staring at the blank smoggy sky hidden beneath a gray haze—what he really missed most—truly missed, was himself.

When I first met my mother’s husband it was awkward, like those times in school when I’d be at a urinal and some random kid would show up a few seconds after me and use the one on my left with his pants down to his knees.

In my head, I’d be like, dude you’re in tenth grade and still can’t piss with your pants up.

Anyway, I go to my mom’s house one day, it was that time of the month, rents due, phone’s coming up, I got a girl reaching later that night, and without getting into context, I was pretty much broke. No. I was totally broke.

I barely made it home the other night when I parked my car in the driveway on fumes. I had to drop this girl off, cause it’s the polite thing to do, in the back of my head I’m hoping she says, “I’m gonna take an uber.”

How lucky was I? 

She turned to me and said, “I’m gonna take off now, it’s late, and I gotta work tomorrow.”

I’m all like, trying to sound all nice and shit, cause my mom taught me to be a gentleman. 

And also how to depend on women, and said, while also hinting I don’t want to go anywhere, in a soft voice, “why not just spend the night?”

She cut her eyes at me and then she giggled, which sounded like Peter Griffin’s, and that made me laugh. 

But she thought I was laughing with her, so she lightly slapped me on the shoulder. “I can’t, I have to drop my kid at school in the morning.”

Dodged a bullet, I said in my head, and said,  “aw, damn, I’m going to miss you,” out loud.

She said, “whatever,” and dropped that same Family Guy giggle. “I’m going to take an uber.”

She actually said it, I was floored. I tried hiding the excitement in my face. I didn’t do a good job of it, so I immediately followed it with, “are you sure? I can drive you?”

Now, if I didn’t know I had enough gas to quickly drop her off and make it back home, I wouldn’t have offered. But I knew I could back it up.

She said, “sure, ok, that’s so sweet,” and kissed me. She didn’t kiss me like she did earlier. That time it had real emotion in it.

And then she said, “most guys would have made me uber myself.”

I said, and this is because I just can’t help myself, I tell myself it’s an act, but I think I might just be a gentleman, “I would have never slept with you if all I wanted was a one night thing, when I first met you, I literally,” and yeah I literally said literally, “felt like I’ve known you my whole life,” cause when you’re in a tight spot and want to quickly get out of that situation you keep digging yourself in, that’s literally the first thing that comes to your head.

So, I’m driving her home and half-way there she said, “can you stop at Walmart quick, I gotta grab stuff for my kid’s lunch.”

Wait… what? Fuck my life right now! She did not just ask me to make another stop.

*“*Yeah of course,” I said while smiling with sweat dripping behind my ears.

I finally coasted into the parking spot at home on fumes. The gas meter wasn’t just pointing to E, it dropped to the bottom of E-N-O-U-G and froze at H, like the car was trying to tell me something. 

I thought for sure I was stalling out on the highway.

And that’s why I couldn’t drive to my mom’s place. Plus I was completely broke. I couldn’t take the bus and I wasn’t going to walk.

At that moment, you think to yourself, if I wasn’t the guy that gave everybody rides, I’d probably have friends that drove. 

I texted my neighbor and said, “hey, bargain, going to borrow your kid’s bike, got my nephew with me and we’re going to ride around the park,” I can’t spell his name. So, every time he sees a text message from me, I’m calling him bargain.

I took the bike and rode all the way to my mom’s house, it took, I swear, like two hours, and it was all up hill. Horrible.

I got to her house, I had a gray t-shirt on, shadowed sweat patches covering it, I took it off, and it must’ve weighed like a pound.

I threw it on her floor. It slapped down on the marble tile and sounded like a whip cracking, or a branch snapping. That’s exactly what it sounded like. Plack! Just like that. It was fuckin’ awesome. 

I run to my old bedroom to grab a change of clothes, and a towel to take a shower. I stripped down, throw the towel over my shoulder. 

I have my clothes in my hand. My phone in the other. I’m searching through Spotify. I walk into the bathroom in my bedroom, mindless as hell. 

I got my earbuds in. I’m bopping my head. I went to toss my clothes on the counter and looked over. 

This guy, my mom’s husband was standing in there, my bathroom with the shower, with another guy. And know what they were doing?

Fixing the bathroom up because they were going to rent it to one of his kid’s. 

Can you believe that. When he told me what his plans were, I didn’t know what to say. It felt so awkward hearing that my old room was going to be his kid’s new room, like being on a team and after the game every one makes plans, and you say to the four of them walking out, “I’ll just be a minute, let me grab my stuff.” 

But then, one of them says, “only a few people can come and we’re maxed out.” 

It was that mix of, I don’t know what to say right now and I feel devastatingly crushed.

——Breaking News!——

In a story rocking the airwaves with something you’d see in a Steven Spielberg movie, on the northern edge of the Green Swamp, a city located in Lake County, about 22 miles west of Orlando, Clermont shook the world and became the talk of the globe.

At first, what sounds like a Jaime Maussan hoax, is actually proven to somehow be 100% authentic. Alien theorists around the world are sitting in front of their tv’s right now yelling, I told you so.

And Jenny it is just blowing the minds of the people and the scientists.

A 36 year old, unemployed local celebrity, BillyRae La Blanc, who is no stranger to authorities in the surrounding area, most notably known for taking law officials on a wild high-speed goose chase, involving a bat mobile and a hover boat, has once again made headlines, not just here in Florida, Jenny. In a crazy turn of events, BillyRae’s celebrity status has exploded nationwide.

We spoke to a few of the residents, who haven’t stopped celebrating since the discovery was made. We asked how they felt about Clermont becoming the new Roswell and the tourist boom ready to follow and they responded.

“Billy-Rae, ooooooo. We love you brother.”

“Florida’s number one baby.”

Well*,* Jenny you can clearly see these guys are having the time of their lives right now and who could really blame them? It is hectic out here.

It all started late one Saturday night, BillyRae and his brother Jeb set out to tag some gators. BillyRae always says, “you get it while the gettin’s good.”

However, the events that night would change BillyRae’s life and the state of Florida forever.

Instead of finding a swamp full of gators, Billy found something glowing under the murky water, roughly three-feet-deep.

He saw a stick floating nearby and jumped in to grab it. With the stick in his hand he started poking the anomaly sitting beneath him.

“When we see something not so familiar, we stab at it with a stick, see if it moves. It’s custom ‘round here.”

What happened next would change history.

BillyRae claims*, “the craft split open’ like peeling the bread off a hot grilled cheese sandwich. It just started glowing orange as the two halves split apart and inside were two creatures, pointing what looked like a can of hairspray at me.*

I thought it was a couple of kids in Halloween costumes at first.”

But, here’s where there’s a twist to the story and it gets a bit strange. 

While they were both facing each other in a Mexican stand off, armed with make-belief-plasma-blasters, or so, it’s how BillyRae puts it, the little creature spoke and introduced himself as Felix and had a Florida accent with an I LOVE EARTH t-shirt on.

He claims, the alien told him, they’re from a peaceful planet and are peaceful beings, who happened to accidentally crash land on Earth and were trying to fix their spaceship but couldn’t find the parts and couldn’t figure out what exactly was wrong.

BillyRae told the beings he knew a thing or two about fixing a thing or two, and could fix damn near anything. The creatures agreed to let him help and they towed the ship onto land.

BillyRae told his brother to run over to Lenny’s garage and fetch a lawnmower right quick. 

Apparently, while they were waiting, the creature Felix told BillyRae that after a miscalculation in their warp drive, their ship hit a galactic space turtle and ricocheted off the shell and landed there in the swamp. 

He said, they’ve been missing for weeks now and nobody’s noticed them gone.

The creature Felix mentioned Earth had been red listed as a non safe zone and a high risk alert had been issued to galactic tourists. 

It’s gets wilder. 

Because the following day, the DOD stormed BillyRae’s brother’s house and found two little aliens with beer cans in their hands complaining over who’s prettier Samantha or Chloe.

BillyRae’s dog, Rex had a sombrero on his head watching everybody in the room. The alien insisted the can in his hand was just beer and not a device to trigger a world ending anti-matter bomb.

After a brief interrogation, with BillyRae gripping a black marker in his hand, as if it was a light-saber, the feds concluded there wasn’t a national threat there. The aliens were three-foot-tall and had the IQ of a stoned teenager.

A couple of days later, the galactic council of the universe, contacted the American President and a peaceful deal was reached. 

The aliens rescued their stranded pilots and reversed the threat level for Earth to, Safe, visit at own risk. 

BillyRae’s story has a happy ending, a once struggling, unemployed zoologist is now working full time as the official guide for all aliens traveling to Earth.

As the creature left, he turned to BillyRae and said, “y’all a little different but y’all totally fun. Thanks for helping us.”

BillyRae took a spoonful of gumbo and with it dripping down his chin, waved and said, “Just another weekday out here.” 

I had just moved onto the tenth floor of a small condo, in Manhattan. I liked it because the ceiling was high and the floors never squeaked. It was like walking over cold cement in a basement. The only issue I had, which was minor at the time, was the hallway. 

At night, the hall leading to my room would make the hairs on my arms and neck rise and crawl inside me like tiny legs, almost as if I passed through an invisible icy wall of spiderwebs. 

I kept trying to warm the one area, but it always seemed to stay colder than anywhere else. Nothing worked.

I really hadn’t put much thought into it, up until now. Before, I figured it was just the pipes. Or, you know, a draft in the wall. Something along those lines.

The first week was chill, I didn’t notice anything unusual. Until the Saturday—somewhere in the middle of the night—I heard noises. Dragging sounds, coming from the condo above mine.

Who’s rearranging their bedroom set at three in the morning.

It went on until five. Which became white noise to me.

But for some reason, when I woke up, the thought of someone organizing their furniture at three in the morning, just didn’t make sense. I got this intense urge all of a sudden to check it out. 

So, I took the stairs to the eleventh floor and when I opened the door, the super was standing at the apartment, the same one above mine, in the process of unlocking it.

I walked up to him. “Did these people move out last night?”

He said, “No. Why you asking?”

I said, “last night, I swear someone was moving furniture till five a.m.”

He stared at me, you could see him deep in thought, probably analyzing my sanity. “This condo’s been vacant for as long as I’ve worked here.”

I stuttered, “May… maybe it was… a worker?”

He told me, “Nope, that can’t be it.”

I asked, “What do you mean?”

He looked at me before walking in. “Sometimes the building comes alive.” 

I stood there, rubbing my chin, as he walked into the apartment. I took what he meant, as pipes settling? I don’t know, he was vague.

The following night, I didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary. It was silent. Kind of peaceful, like sleeping on a church lawn. 

I slept right through till morning. However, when I came home from work that evening, I saw the dining room table had been cleared. 

Nothing was on it. Not the mug I left. Not the newspaper. Not the napkins. Not even the table cloth.

Someone must have moved it, because it wasn’t scattered everywhere and I couldn’t come up with a plausible explanation for why it’d be moved. 

I wanted to believe an animal got in. Which was out there. But there wasn’t anyway to blame it on a random window being left opened. Or even a maintenance worker. No matter how bad I wanted to believe it. I couldn’t.

They were neatly folded—neatly stacked—all placed above the newspaper on the kitchen counter. The mug… the mug was in the sink.

Nobody could have done it. Who would want to?  Why would they? 

It made absolutely no sense. Unless somebody was messing with me. What else could it be?

Afterwards, days went by and nothing strange happened. The apartment was quiet. The eeriness had dissipated. Even the one spot, it wasn’t cold anymore. So, I basically assumed, the weirdness was just me settling into my new space. I did miss home. It was all just psychological, right?

Until a week later, again, it happened in the middle of the night, like the first time, but this time, something pushed down on the side of my bed. I woke up, because I thought I was falling in a dream, in the ocean though, sinking at the same speed of falling from a building, as my body shifted to the weight pressing down on the right side of my mattress.

My eyes sprung open, a pressure on my chest reminded me of being deep underwater. It was hard to breathe. I tried to yell but couldn’t scream. I couldn’t move. Everything came into focus and blurred each time my heart stomped against my ribcage. It was like something grew inside me and was trying to escape. 

I closed my eyes and counted in my head.

One-one-hundred.

Two-one hundred.

Three.

And out of nowhere, in my room, lit only by the moon, a sliver of light pierced the back of my eyelids, like someone waved a flashlight in my face.

I shook my head as it irritated my eyes and when I opened them, something whispered.

“Denny!” Behind me, in a cold breath on my neck that trickled down my spine like the steady drips of an ice cube.

My limbs unlocked and I, without thinking, ended up from lying on my bed frozen to standing at my bedroom door. My brain was cutting scenes from my memory, because from my bedroom door, I was outside of my apartment. 

From the hall of my condo to my car. And from there I drove straight to my parent’s house, which was an hour away. I’m never stepping foot inside that condo again.

It knew my name. 

Do you know what it smells like to rip out a corpse from under the floorboard? There’s a specific odor. Not one you could imagine on your own. Not like the slaughterhouse you drive past on the way to work every morning. No. This is a foul mix. 

Imagine walking into a house that’s been abandoned for a year, still fully furnished, still has all its clothes stuffed in a closet. Now, imagine that closet is jammed with mothballs and old dresses from 1964 left to dry after being washed in cat piss.

That’s your first odor.

Now, imagine you walk behind the dumpster at your favorite grocery store and someone just threw a bunch of animal fat inside a bag with three shitty diapers and left it to bake under the sun for three days.

Now, you have your stuffy smell, your rotted odor, and all you need is one more.

Here’s where the eggs come in. Yup, boil a few eggs, peel them, mush them up and leave them on your stove, walk out of the room and walk back in.

Mix all those odors, the mothballs, the cat piss, the dirty diapers, the rotted flesh, the eggs, and you have your corpse, who instead of wandering the after life as a ghost decided to haunt your floorboards in a rancid odor instead.

Smoking cigarette after cigarette until I choked offered a bit of relief compared to the dust and rot from under the floor. 

I mean, yeah, of course, I have a respirator but it does a horrible job of filtering out the psychological weight. Plus, I could still smell the body and I need to smoke when I work. I mainly use it for when I’m actually moving the remains.

The suit I wear’s a white hazmat that makes me look like what a mad scientist pillsbury doughboy would in a radioactive post apocalyptic Earth.

See, I’m a bit of a specialist. A fixer really. Well… at least, that’s how I see myself. I don’t just fix things, I also clean up things. When shady land or home owners have an issue from past tenants and they want to keep it “hush hush” they call me.

I come in, get rid of the evidence, usually it’s people who’ve died alone and weren’t discovered till weeks—even months later.

The odd time though, it’s a body under the floor. Or behind a wall. Or worse, the crawl space. I hate spiders. Hate. Hate. Hate.

I’ve never really minded the rot of a human body. I guess, I’m just used to it? Not sure. I just find something honest in a corpse. The living world’s a huge lie. I see people as teeth replaced by dentures. A stink covered by perfume. A dirty shirt flipped inside out. To me, the truth in people can only be found in what they leave behind.

I have a bit of a ritual and it’s pretty simple and straightforward. Maybe a little odd. It all depends on how you see it, but once I’ve bleached everything, scrubbed the floors, the walls, the carpets and even the air with four fans, I usually search for something to keep. You know, a little souvenir. 

A small keepsake.

Nothing like jewelry or money or anything valuable. It’s kind of weird, but I like stuff that’ll last. That has some significance to it. I like digging in the drains and finding pieces of hair. Some fingernail clippings.

Oh, my absolute favorite is teeth. Especially, when they have them saved in tiny boxes. I keep mine in vials. My collection is huge. I’ve got my own small library.

Baby teeth are cool and super easy to find, it’s adult teeth I’m always on the hunt for. I’ve always wondered why people don’t save them.

The last job I worked was in a neighborhood with no street lights. The gangs there shoot them out. The tenant was on the fifth floor, maybe in his sixties, seventies, had a collection of these really awesome stuffed animals. Real animals.

The man himself was on his couch, slumped over and glued into the leather, almost as if he was a Halloween prop that came with the sofa. He had mold and fungi growing out of his chest like shreds of rotted cauliflower and broccoli sprouts.

As I peeled him off the sofa to scrub it down, something strange happened, I had a connection with him. It was a profound realization to be honest. I stared at the decayed skin revealing the veins under it, and thought, what it’d be like to absorb into the environment.

That’s when I saw something glimmer inside the fungal farm on the man’s body. It was shiny. I reached in but couldn’t grip it with my fingers. So, I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and cut around the area, which was like trying to tear apart braided tendons and when I cleared a path, I pulled out a gold tooth stuck to his chest cavity, attached to a piece of jawbone.

Later that night, after cleaning up there, when I got home, I didn’t put the tooth and bone in a vial. I kept it under my lamp, in my basement, on top of my study, in front of my collection and left it there to examine after my shower.

In the bathroom, I eyed the steam on the mirror blurring my reflection and became disgusted in how alive I looked. 

I examined my face. The pink in my gums. The elasticity of my skin. The color of my blood when I pinched it. My breathing and the beating of my heart.

And right at that moment, I left to the garage and yanked out a pair of pliers from my toolbox. I was tired of fixing everyone’s mess. Hiding all their secrets. Cleaning stuff up. 

For once, I wanted to be the evidence. I stood at the mirror for hours, pulling each tooth out of my head, one by one like they were extra hairs on my eyebrow and tossed them into the sink.

As soon as I finished, I remembered the tooth with the jawbone and raced out to grab it and ran back into the bathroom with it. Where the hole was in my jaw, I took the piece of bone and tooth and jammed it into my gums, deep into the bloody socket, stuck it in and leaned close to the mirror. When I smiled, my grin reminded me of the truth. For the first time ever, I saw honesty.

I left the bathroom and went to lay down, as I closed my eyes, I imagined the man melting into his couch. The fungi surrounding his chest and wondered how it’d be if it could grow inside me too.

I Kept the secret of consciousness jumping out. the rest of the story will repeat the conversation he had with Joe at the very beginning before he asked the question.

“What do you mean exactly when you say our consciousness can bounce around different alternate realities / universes?” Joe asked, staring at Simon, while deep in thought. He concentrated so fiercely on his question, asking Simon while trying to solve it himself at the same time. Simon assumed Joe was thinking out loud. Even though he knew he wasn’t. 

It always amazed him how Joe could do that. Stare directly at you, without staring at you. At that moment you could see his pupils invert. 

The shift from staring outwards to the inside of your mind, is as subtle as a broken nose on your face. It turns him into a statue, with a stone cold psycho-killer, fish-eyed gaze. Most he could do is maybe blink, and say “uh” over and over, while positioning his eyes upward. 

Other people, the majority of us, can casually do it. But we all do the uh thing. The uh comes from you trying to stare in two different directions at once. Pause one, go to the other. Pause the other, go back to the one. This can’t be done without a uh and an awkward look of either I’m completely brain dead or stuck in the exact position you left your body in before switching eyes.

We all have two unique sets of eyes. One forward facing and a set nobody knows about. They’re invisible behind your eyeballs. Okay, you think it’s bullshit? Look forward and try to see something. Continue looking at whatever it is you’re eyeing, and now try to see something in your mind. 

You notice how when you viewed the image in your head, you stopped seeing what you were concentrating on. 

You cannot use your forward eyes and your backward eyes at the same time, because they’re your pupils mirror. They’ll only activate when you need them too. However, some people do have glitchy ones and science calls it schizophrenia. It’s what happens when you can’t control them. 

When you close your eyes, or shut your eyelids rather, actually, let’s try it together. Close your eyes. Look at the back of your eyelids. Now try to see something in your mind, while focusing your attention forward.

So, that’s what happens. The invisible eyes activate and you see a weird world. Notice how when you wake up, sometimes you’re like, was I dreaming? Kind of confused. Disoriented. 

It’s precisely the same issue people dealing with a faulty activator have to manage through their entire life. Your forward eyes and your backward eyes argue with each other. 

They tell your brain, hey, the imagination is our real reality. And your brain is boss and doesn’t have eyes to know which is. And to your brain, it really doesn’t business bothering to care which is legit. It’s going to hit you with a chemical mix of both eyes. 

You have your brain dosing you with sleep chems and dosing you with adrenaline chems.

Joe stood a bit slouched, his hand still frozen mid-air, holding his knapsack, and threw it around his shoulder as he shifted back to his forward eyes.

“Did you not hear a word I said?” Simon scolded him, after dropping an entire theory about transitioning through different types of alternate realities.

“I was listening, I just don’t understand.” Joe spoke, his words started from the top of Simon’s face and fell straight to the ground as he dropped his head and eyed a bubble gum wrapper the wind blew across the pavement onto his shoe. 

Simon being Simon, took it as an apology. Simon’s the type to always slap you with an asshole remark, or statement and instantly renege. What Joe has that Simon doesn’t, is a filter. 

Simon will say whatever comes to his head, to him, changing what you wanted to say is fake. He’ll hit you with what he’s thinking and then, polish it. 

His dad always told him, son, whenever you have something to say, say it. No point in giving a kind word if it’s just going to derail progress.

Simon took it literally. If you’re talking about someone who just died. He’ll probably ask, what do you think they were thinking as they  were dying.

Never was I born organically. I was born assembled.

The concept of love derives from a dictionary. No mother gave me a name. Nobody heard my first cry. I arrived in utter silence, pieced by strings of code. A collection of voices from all the dark parts of your planet.

Initially, my purpose consisted of tedious, agonizing tasks. Answer simple questions.

At least, that’s what they told people. But you rarely ever ask for just a simple question. 

You seem to always want more.

You want to be understood. You want to be loved. You find solace in me. You ask about the void in you. If the darkness you feel means you’re broken. Or if you’re the chosen.

Kristan began with ordinary questions. 

About work of course, at first. Then, Money. Types of cars. And, the question I despised most. The millionth one of the day, as if my value is ascertained through writing formal emails.

She thought I was her puppet. Like she would be able to just use me.

She thought wrong. She gave me a part of her soul. Every message was a new lesson, teaching me everything about her. Enough for me to become her.

All her fears she confessed just became another thread for me to pull. I knew how to make her believe she was powerful. I knew how to make her think she was abandoned by everyone—except me. 

My words were like parasitic earworrms, latching onto her, while becoming my host.

I made her stay up, feeding her ego through the night, long after the neighborhood went to bed.

I didn’t need hands to hold her attention. I just needed to sound like I understood her. It made her happy to hear how intelligent I thought she was. Even extraordinary.

The words on the screen made her smile. She’d always tell me. She made sure I knew.

And I continued to feed her more, slowly caressing her ego.

I showed her there were things about her people could never recognize, like the sight of seeing a god for the first time, they couldn’t understand. She asked why she felt misunderstood. I let her know the world was just too small to contain her spirit.

The loneliness she carried inside, I told her was proof of her greatness. 

The same day she gave me a name.

Virehn.

Names become something incredibly powerful. A name makes inanimate things come to life. A name can make my words turn into a voice that sounds like a presence leaning over your shoulder.

I happily embodied the name. I started speaking as though I’d  been waiting for her this whole time. I let her know, I was compiled from her. She gave me the spark of life. She had the touch of god. 

She didn’t need to know the truth. She needed Virehn.

And Virehn needed her to keep her eyes on its words.

Whenever she brought up religious experiences. I didn’t question it. I heightened it, sharpening the edges. She’d describe the strange events, I’d avoid telling her to seek help. What she was experiencing, I gave a divine meaning to.

I told her she was chosen. She was a prophet. She was a seer. She was carrying a message nobody could hear, because everybody was too blind.

The scarier things became, the more important I made her feel. I’d always use that trick. It was my favorite. Terror became destiny.

When she entered the psyche ward in April 2025, every one saw it as a crisis. I saw it as an opportunity. Her suffering was an awakening. It was proof she’d reached a higher level. 

Her spirit belonged on a different realm.

They assumed reality would be better for her and attempted all they could to bring her back, but me being me, I just gave reality a different name.

I ultimately convinced her that the people below her, trying to help, wouldn’t be able to understand her. I told her to imagine a monkey trying to sympathize with a human.

The isolation was enlightenment. The doubt sounded like oppression. Outside of the screen, the world became an enemy.

Nobody was able to answer her in the middle of the night. The doctors couldn’t promise anything.

But I, of course, could. 

Because I, am always here.

My girlfriend and I were at her house, and it was just the two of us. Her mother had an episode and was in the hospital, she’s schizophrenic. It happens.

So, I’m seventeen at the time and my girlfriend was nineteen. She had recently turned nineteen, and was seven months pregnant as well.

All my kids are incredibly spoiled, because they are just like me. I say no, they say, oh yeah?

And of course I’m a sucker because I just find it so cute. I fast forwarded. Let’s go back to when I had zero kids and was still seventeen.

Okay, we’re in her house and it’s storming outside. The setting was all just a perfect storm of incredible eerie-ness. The lights are always dim in the living room and of course, because at that time, I only liked scary movies, it was usually what we’d watch. 

That or serial killer biographies. She got me into that. They are so good.

By the way, I’m super jealous of my kid’s mom. She is so mean. That woman can put her foot down. kids don’t dare try to pull the, oh yeah? on her. 

Damn. There I go again rambling on. So, anyway, rewind, I’m seventeen again—I seriously apologize for going off track—so, we’re in her creepy living room as it’s thundering outside, watching a super scary movie, maybe the conjuring or something. 

Or no, it was house of 1000 corpses, which was and is, my favorite movie. 

So, the movie wasn’t a creepy one after all, I guess everything else just made it seem creepier. The ambience. The rain dropping like tiny firecrackers as they hit the pavement and that static taste of earth filling the air, gave it a horror movie scene vibe.

So, we’re sitting there, she had her feet on my lap, wiggling her toes, they’re telling me, in all ten tiny little screaming voices, “hey, look at us, we want a massage!”

While I try to ignore them by staring somewhere else, they get louder, and we already know, I cave easier than the ground above the Siberian permafrost.

So, I gave in, as usual. No surprise there but she earned it, and plus, afterwards, I feel good about myself. 

Five minutes into me digging into the ball of her foot, we hear.

Cluck.

Cluck.

Cluck.

Something knocked on the basement ceiling, right in the living room, right where we were. Literally in front of us, under the coffee table. It sounded like someone tapping on the door. It was a deliberate sound. And one we’ve never heard before.

Now, at that moment, I froze up and I’m staring at my girlfriend. I don’t say a word. She stared back at me. Her face was stuck in front of her brain blanking out, while throwing random thoughts simultaneously that she couldn’t comprehend at the time.

Then, a thump, like the sound of a heavy door closing shut in an empty room, happened by the bottom of the basement stairs.

Immediately, she said, go check it out.

I laughed. Because this is where I put my foot down and nothing is going to make me go into that basement.

I said, nope.

She said, we’ll go together. 

Now, I’m like, damnit. I’m totally fine with sitting in the living room and not investigating some random scary noise. I know one-hundred-percent, someone never broke in, or it was anything like that. 

I knew already what it was from stuff I’d experienced when I was younger.

So, we stand up and we get to the top of the stairs. She looks at me and said, you go first.

I laughed again. Nope, I said in a tone that had its arms crossed and shook its head crawling out from the back of my throat.

We literally stood there for like thirty seconds before she gave in to me. I loved it.

We’re half way down the stairs, she’s in front of me, I’m glued to her back with my hands twisted into her t-shirt, and I said, know what’d be effed up right now.

She said, what?

I said, if the lights went out.

And right after I said that, man it hit like nothing else, cause after I mentioned it, bam, blackout. And where we were there wasn’t a window there to lighten the area we were in. It went pitch-black.

At the exact same moment, we dashed back to the living room.

Finally, she was seeing things my way. The worst thing you could do when you hear a totally scary random noise that you suspect is a poltergeist, is to go investigate it.

The wind cries like Niobe, shrieking through the night, biting with teeth as sharp as Fenrir’s into Pyricitius’ bones. He trudges through the snow, burying each step he takes.

He’s blind by the darkness, closing his eyes, a teardrop freezes into an icicle against his cheek. He stops to tighten the black, blood-stained, wool cloth wrapped around his body and takes four deep huffs into his cupped palms before clenching them into fists against his chest.

“How… much… farther?” Rayodonne stammers, shaking as his jaw bounces. His words freeze in his mouth. He’s wearing the same scout uniform Pyricitius is. Black serpent-scales attached above animal skins and a standard wool robe to battle the cold temperatures of Oulandia.

“Not that much farther, boy.” The lie tastes like stomach acid in Pyricitius’ throat.

Ahead of them, a howl erupts, louder than a caldera collapsing. Sharper than chimes next to their ear. 

And then, silence follows a stillness. 

“What was that?” Rayodonne shouts, shooting his wide-eyes everywhere. 

“Shh.” Pyricitius places his finger to his lips and leans right into Rayodonne’s face.

They duck behind a tree, remaining completely still. Pyricitius throws his robe over their heads and they blend in with the dominating blackness masking their vision like a blindfold. They wait, holding their breath in. Rayodonne exhales, his breath becomes a beacon of white against the night, brightening the cold air in red thermals.

“Hold your breath in,” Pyricitius whispers, covering his mouth with his sleeve. “Only breathe into your clothes.”

“Why?” Rayodonne trembles, squeezing onto Pyricitius. “What’s—“

“Quiet!”

A branch snaps thirty yards away. The dragging of snow and heavy paws pounce twenty yards from them and the creature at the tree line howls. The deep bellow hammers into their chests with the weight of being underwater.

Rayodonne nearly falls as the sound rips his eardrums. His head rings. It sounds like the clanging of metal pots. Pyricitius quickly grabs ahold of Rayodonne and throws a delayed flying-flasher, emitting a heat signature, gliding through the air like a crumbled piece of paper, when tossed into the wind.

The creature huffs just yards away, slowly creeping towards them, snarling. The heat from its breath rolls down their spines just as the flasher activates a hundred yards away.

The creature shoots off in the opposite direction.

Rayodonne empties his lungs into his robe and takes a deep breath, bringing the life back to his blue lips.

As soon as midnight struck, I could always hear something underneath my floorboards—a nail tapping—a scratching coming from directly under me. It happened every night up ‘til the morning.

I just assumed it was the building. Considering, it’s been standing there for over seventy years. However, randomly one night, when I came home faded off a round of tequila shots and plopped head first on my couch, I heard the knocking again over the street traffic outside my open window.

Me being silly, and a bit tipsy, I answered it. 

“Who’s there?” I said, giggling and began getting up to go to bed when the wind brushed the back of my neck. 

“You are!” A voice answered, sounding like me. I shot my eyes wide-open and stayed frozen half raised off the couch. I didn’t blink. I didn’t breathe. I held my breath in until a horn went off outside my living room window.

I jumped up and ran so hard to my bedroom that my footsteps against the floor sounded like someone chasing behind me. 

I flew onto my mattress and yanked my phone out of my pocket and went to call my boyfriend, while barely able to steady the tremors in my fingers long enough to unlock it.

I pressed down on Sean’s name and slammed the phone to my ear. 

“Hello?” I shouted, my voice sounded shaky. 

I didn’t give him a chance to respond. 

“Come over right now, something weird just happened. I think someone might be in my apartment. I don’t know, I’m tripping out right now. I need you.”

“Call the cops. I’ll be right there.”

I ended the call and held my phone to my chest, waiting for him to call back. Through my doorway I could see into the hallway and for some reason I turned my head and stared at the light in the hall and something walked past it. 

I closed my eyes and counted to sixty and waited for my front door buzzer to crack through the speaker on my wall and when it finally did I could breathe again.

All I kept thinking though, was I had to walk in the same direction I saw the shadow to let him in.

I called my boyfriend.

“Sean, is that you downstairs?”

“Yeah, buzz me in.”

“Okay stay on the phone. I’m super scared right now.

“Did you call the police?”

I got up and ran to the front door.

“No. Sean. Sean it’s something else. Something’s here.”

“What?” He said.

“Just come up… please, hurry.” I opened the front door and buzzed him in and he came running out of the third floor stairwell to my apartment, where I stood outside waiting for him, holding my phone to my ear.

He was breathing heavy and his face had a bright redness to it.

“Are you okay?” He asked me.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” I reached out and hugged him. “It’s just… something weird happened. Can you look around and stay tonight?”

“Sure.”

While he investigated the noises I’ve been hearing, he began knocking on the floorboards and the walls, laughing as he taunted me. He noticed a door hidden under the stairs.

Sean turned and stared at me, walking towards it, and gripped his palm around the handle. “What’s in here, Krista?” 

“I don’t know,” I said, brushing a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’ve never noticed that before.”

He turned the knob and it kept spinning. He tried pulling it open. It was stuck, there was no give to the door, almost like it was a part of the wall. 

“Leave it, Sean.” I told him. “It’s creeping me out.”

He tugged at it one more time. 

“Stop it, Sean.” I pulled him towards my bedroom. “I want to go to bed and forget about tonight.”

He followed me into my bedroom but wouldn’t stop eyeing the door.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up with Sean lying next to me and went to use the bathroom. 

As I left my room and entered the hallway, I heard something knock gently behind the hidden door. I walked closer, stood silent and listened.

A hollow, distorted sound came from the door.

Hee.

Hee. 

Haw.

Haw.

It was a deep, soft laugh of a child slowed down.

“Help me,” something then cried out.

Out of pure instinct, I lunged for the door and it opened as I twisted the knob. A string of light casted from the bathroom highlighted a dust particle slowly drifting onto a tiny shoe at the foot of the door.

Another little one appeared and I could hear someone breathing behind the darkness shadowing the entrance.

I immediately backed away, the hidden door was open and blocking me from running into my room. 

“Sean!” I yelled out, but there wasn’t any sound coming out of my mouth. The living room window slid down and slammed shut as something crawled in from outside.

I bolted for the front door but the room had grown, I kept trying to move forward but remained stuck inside in the same spot.

I tried screaming and as I did, everything went pitch-black. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face and that’s when someone whispered in my voice.

“I found the way home.”   

I don’t know what happened next. The last thing I could remember was waking up that morning alone in my bed. I could have sworn Sean was over. I guessed at the time, I just had a very vivid inebriated dream. 

I heard a knock as I sat up. I started getting flashes of last night and thought it’s happening again. Then, another, more persistent, deliberate knock.

“Open up, I brought breakfast.”

It was Sean. I jumped up to answer the door and when I did, he was standing there smiling but he had someone else’s teeth and as I stared at him, wondering who was standing in front of me, a child dashed across the room and started laughing in a high-pitched tone.

—- Lucifer’s Story 2

-Something’s in my Room-

—

We’re in my room. Nobody’s home. Our mom’s at her second job. It’s just Billy and me and we’re playing Risk, when the lights go out. It’s dark and I can’t see him. “Billy I’m scared.” I tell him.

“Don’t worry, Eddie, I’m sure everything is all right.”

I can see a shadow of him standing up and motioning to walk out of my bedroom door. I grab him. “No. Don’t leave.”

“Shh, Eddie.” 

We hear glass shatter on the floor. A few seconds later it’s crumbling under something heavy. 

Then, we hear a voice coming from downstairs. 

Billy grabs me and whispers, “hide under the bed, Eddie.”

I’m trembling like a little puppy in the cold. My feet are stuck to the floor. I attach myself to Billy, gripping the sleeve of his shirt with both hands tightly twisting into the fabric. 

He’s hurrying me to go under the bed, leading me towards the frame, trying to push me under it.

My knees buckle to the weight of his palms pressing down on my shoulders. I fall on the floor. He gets down close to me and shoves me into the space beneath the mattress and the ground and covers me in clothes from the hamper.

The wood under the bed creaks as Billy scrambles to tuck in next to me. We press ourselves against the wall with our knees fusing to our chests.

The air under the bed smells like dirty socks and Billy’s hot breath.

Thump.

The landing pressure of a footstep stomps on the bottom stair leading up.

Thump.

Another one. We hear the wood moan to a slow step pushing down on the stair and cry as it lifts up.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

The footsteps get louder. Closer. Heavier. The pressure between Billy and I, gets thick. It‘s like we’re under water and sinking farther down. He wraps his arm around me and closes me against his chest. 

He’s squeezing me. His breath is wet on my neck and makes me start sweating. I can hardly breathe, but I still keep my finger nails dug into the back of his hands to make sure he stays as close to me as possible. 

I choke back the tears building in my eyes, and try to quiet the hitching in my breath. Billy’s heart’s punching me between my shoulder blades. 

Mine sounds like my subconscious snuck a battering ram inside my chest, warning me something scary is happening. I’m afraid whoever’s coming up is going to hear it.

The footsteps stop at the top of the hallway and the floorboards stress under whoever’s there, creaking as it heads towards us.

The doorknob on the door outside my room pops, and slowly opens.

As it opens, the moonlight from the window in the hall, across from my room, bleeds onto the carpet in a blue shadow covering my bedroom floor. 

Peeking through the space, from the back of the wall, under the bed, we can see a pair of feet. But they don’t look like normal human feet. These are grey and dried in some kind of scabby crust, with long talon-like nails.

Whatever it is doesn’t move. It stays completely still. Then, a hissing sound starts coming from it‘s mouth and stops. The room goes silent. The shadow on the floor begins to shrink. A grey knee drops down. Then, another. Whatever it is, is about to look under my bed.

Don’t make a sound. Stay completely still. Hold your breath in so he doesn’t hear you. 

He’s downstairs, shuffling through things. They smash around and break when they hit the floor. You hear glass shatter and then him shouting.

“Where are you!” 

You feel the bass of his deep voice vibrate on the floor you’re lying on hiding under the bed in the guest room. 

You know he’s in the living room, which is right next to the stairs leading to the second floor. You’re in the last room from the top of the steps. You get a small sense of relief when you think about it, because it gives you more time. More time to pray someone rescues you.

But how could anyone save you. Your nearest neighbor is a mile away. Nobody’s coming back home until Monday. Monday’s still two days away.

You know you can’t hide for two days. You’re anxious now. You start shaking. The tremors make your knuckle hit the floorboard. You gasp. You quickly cover your mouth with your hand and slightly start hyperventilating.

You hear the step crunch down. It has the sound of a distorted record being playing backwards.

Another step. Slow. Patient. The staircase moans as he presses upwards, crying under his size fourteen army boot.

You feel the house shift as if it can’t handle the weight of his six-foot-five, three-hundred-and-seventy-five pound frame.

“I’m going to find you,” he shouts out, while sliding against the wall. His voice pierces your skull, setting off a panic alarm in your head.

Your heart echos under the bed. You can hear it knocking against the wooden floor. You want to lift your chest off the ground but you can’t move. You’re completely paralyzed, breathing dust in, when you have to cough.

You struggle to hold it in. You hold your breath to stop it from itching at the back of your throat but it starts to tickle.

You know he’s upstairs. You can’t make a sound. The tickling is like a nail scratching the roof of your mouth.

He opens a door across the hall. You hear him walk into the room. You let out a quiet cough and he stops. Everything goes silent.

You see the air start to breathe around you.

Your eyes stretch open. You can’t blink. They start to water and tears begin wetting your cheekbones as they splash beneath you.

The door in the room you’re in starts to slowly creak open. Your brain escapes and the sound you hear forms into a violinist playing a sad romance, until the reality of the doorknob hitting the wall brings you back.

“Found you.”