My truck's radio statically chirped to me.

These late night drives had grown from a deep pit of flawed anger and empty hope ever since my son stopped coming home. Our small, Midwestern town was permanently marked with this horrific plague a little over three years ago.

It started with the disappearances of a few teens here and there; the police firstly only labeled them as runaways. That was before the sickening virus grew from taking some teenagers down into attacking random middle schoolers; eventually, children as young as the fourth grade were seen being led outside into the cold night in a shapeless trance. Any efforts to slow them down were futile; they just walked away until their visage became clouded by the nightly mist. It didn’t matter how long you chased them; they always vanished into a the fog.

That’s when the curfew was placed. Most disappearances were reported by the missing kids' friends mostly between 3 and 5:30 a.m. With the curfew came that public broadcast message every night, played through the TV, radio, and even branched out into amber alerts if too many disappeared all at once. My son wasn’t among the early waves of kids who vanished. His name was Evan, and he was 16; he had a good group of friends but preferred to stay inside most nights. Especially since some of his friends were lost in the first wave.

The first night the fog descended upon us, he was talking to a few friends over his headset as time foraged late into the night . His friend Mike was out driving around after a fight with his parents to blow off some steam. I had always liked Mike, a good kid with a good head on his shoulders, but his parents were something else. They consistently started fights with him over dumb little mistakes; it wasn’t a surprise whenever he would crash at our place a few nights a week.

Anyway, I think that’s where he was headed, but my son told me that while he was listening to Mike complain with the mix of the soft rumbling of his tires against the asphalt, everything fell flat. Not like the line gave out mid-call, but the existence of sound on Mike’s end had just been revoked.

If it weren’t for him being on a group call, then he wouldn’t have thought anything of it but Mike’s call eventually dropped. From what I know, a few other kids went to look for him as he had previously given them his location. Only about half of them returned the next morning, voices hoarse while they shook from a mix of fear and the cold of the night. They had spent hours looking for both Mike and the others.

This scared the living hell out of Evan, and he retreated further into being a homebody. When the reports came in of the younger kids being coerced out, he begged me to let him sleep in our finished basement. It had a staircase and a locked door with no other feasible way to get out while he was asleep.

Of course, I let him. I didn’t want him living in fear, but it was hard to pretend like these events weren’t happening. From where we stood, Evan was as safe as ever, and time passed by. My son grew up while never forgetting the friends and others who were lost. The town erected a small memorial with all the names of the missing kids. Every now and again, you’d see a new name being cautiously added to it, but for the most part, it had slowed down.

Soon it was time for my boy to graduate. With this sickness falling on us during his high school career, it was a shock that his class pushed even harder. Maybe they thought it was easier for them to get out of this town and away from its curse.

Evan was 18 now, and all of us parents hoped that the fog wouldn’t threaten to grab them again. The kids had been hoping for this too. I made the mistake of letting Evan go to a graduation party that night. With no fear for his safety for the first time in years, I fell asleep without knowing where his exact location.

“It’s 3 a.m., do you know—” my phone blared out in the middle of the night. I grabbed it off my nightstand and wiped the sleep from my eyes. It took a moment for my vision to focus on the worst message I had ever read:

“ALERT: Large group of high school graduates reported missing tonight.”

I felt a lump form in my throat as I scrolled through the list of names. Halfway down, just as it had on his graduation sheet hours earlier, was his name: Evan Larson.

My body shook, and I began to sob violently. I couldn’t believe it—my boy was gone.

But why?

He wasn’t a child anymore; all of these victims were considered legal adults. The community came together in a vigil to place their names on the board, but I couldn’t live with him gone. The reports of the fog dwindled as we theorized that maybe it finally got all it wanted. My chest ached in sorrow, but I pushed through. Every night for the last two months, I’ve been searching for him. I will do what I can to get my son back.

The old truck cracked against the asphalt beneath it as I continued to drive throughout the night. I hadn’t made any progress with finding what could’ve happened to them, and the night air was starting to have a bit of a bite to it. In front of me, a familiar sight formed, and I slammed on my brakes. The fog stood there, challenging me from a mile away. My grip tightened on the wheel, and I pushed hard against the gas.

The smell of burning rubber filled my nostrils as I spun out toward the sickness ahead of me. It began to swirl faster and faster while somehow remaining motionless in its acquired spot. The vehicle gained the distance but before I could stop it, from the fog emerged a somewhat familiar figure.

A young man was now standing in my headlights as the fog dissipated around him. I yanked my wheel hard to the left but my reaction came m too late. The truck nicked him right above the headlights, and I heard a soft thud as he smacked violently against the side. Crimson red splattered across my passenger side window, and I held back a rush of vomit.

In the rearview mirror, I saw the crumpled pile of broken bones and bleeding flesh. Fear filled me, and I was too much of a coward to look. So I drove off, fast, with tears sliding down my cheeks. I imagine whoever that was will be found in the morning; but I just hope that I wouldn’t be called to try to identify his limp and broken body.

I feel sick even just typing this out. My mind has been racing for the last few hours with ideas of how I could’ve helped whoever now lays alone out there. Maybe I’ll get a chance to confess as my phone has begun to ring. The number of the sheriff flashes across the screen and my sickness has reformed into fear.

Please heed my warning and stay far away from drugs if you’re young. While, yes, it’s true, that you can have some of the most amazing times of your life while on them; they can also lead you down a harsh road of stupid decisions. So I will reiterate to please stay away from them at any cost, but, if you choose to ignore my warning, then please try to listen to this one and stay far away from the homeless man who stands outside of the library on the corner of 7th & Poplar. Stay away and definitely do not buy a bag of sparkling beans from him.

Please.

I never went crazy with drugs, but I’ve spent a fair amount of time being high between the likes of the basics, weed, and LSD. Alright, allow me to tell my story: it was a breezy Saturday night. I was making my way down the sidewalk of 7th street, blitzed out my mind. That’s when this man dressed to the nines in soiled clothes and tattered rags stumbled into my pathway.

“Any spare change, mister?” The scent of whiskey lay heavy on his breath as he swayed his weight from side to side to remain upright.

At first, I was going to say no, but he then persuaded me when he lifted up a bag of speckled beans that glittered in the streetlights, “I’ll trade you this for five.” He opened his mouth in a drunken smile which showcased the caps of gold amongst what teeth remained rotting away in his head, “No take-backs.”

With the growing feeling of the munchies, and my lifelong love of beans itself, my eyes landed in the package. There were almost no concerns on my own safety floating around in my head as I made the transaction with the man and continued on my way back home. The bag sat heavy in my jacket pocket as I stumbled up the stairs and miraculously made it into my apartment. Hunger rang from deep inside my stomach, and I remember what the weight in my jacket even was.

With the giddiness of a young child, I very carefully boiled the beans in between the temporary moments of blacking out. After they were done, I scarfed them down and promptly allowed myself to black out completely against the cold tiles of my bathroom floor.

Early morning light spilled through the bathroom’s tiny window and promptly rested open my eyelids. Between the blaring light and the horrible aching growing in my gut, I groaned awake with reluctance. I followed my usual routine and crawled over to the toilet in a test to see if I needed to regurgitate whatever I had consumed from the night before.

My head swayed above the water in the bowl when I felt the familiar twinge of something working its way back out of me. I relaxed my shoulders instinctively to allow the material passage through, then opened my mouth wide.

*Plop.*

I was…confused. There was no forceful stream of bile that preceded the watery landing, but something definitely rolled out from the dark passage of my throat. My eyes slowly opened as I looked down to see no vomit but a small vine wriggling around the water. I attempted to get a closer examination of it whenever the pressure began again along my esophagus. Before I could react, there was a forceful retching that admitted from me.

Specs of crimson covered the bathroom floor and toilet as a long vine covered in leaves and thorns tore itself from me. I attempted to pull it from me, but with every grasp, I only sliced my hands deeper. There was no time before I felt it rip its way from beneath me.

Roots grew forcefully out of my lower half, digging into the floorboards in a desperate search for soil to plant themselves into. More vines grew desperately out of my ears and pores, peeling away the skin and tissue that had shrouded me. The plant matter began to take my human form as together we rose from the floor.

The scent of whiskey and rot entered the room with us, and I watched the homeless man stand before us, then collected the remains of my visage as the stalk continued to grow from within myself. Tears attempted to stream from my eyes as he slipped into my skin, as it was a new suit freshly tailored for himself, but the leaf only just wiped them away before the thorns grew from within and caused them to rupture into sap.

He still remains next to me as I grow deeper into the stalk itself, and he practices an imitation of my own voice. I pray that no one else will ever have to suffer through this pain, but I can feel as seeds emerge from within me. Only the memories of the pain-altering drugs I once partook in remain with me as the man collects them with precision. They feel familiar in shape, and even without the gift of vision, I can tell they sparkle in the light.

Please heed my warning and stay far away from drugs if you’re young. While, yes, it’s true, that you can have some of the most amazing times of your life while on them; they can also lead you down a harsh road of stupid decisions. So I will reiterate to please stay away from them at any cost, but, if you choose to ignore my warning, then please try to listen to this one and stay far away from the homeless man who stands outside of the library on the corner of 7th & Poplar. Stay away and definitely do not buy a bag of sparkling beans from him.

Please.

I never went crazy with drugs, but I’ve spent a fair amount of time being high between the likes of the basics, weed, and LSD. Alright, allow me to tell my story: it was a breezy Saturday night. I was making my way down the sidewalk of 7th street, blitzed out my mind. That’s when this man dressed to the nines in soiled clothes and tattered rags stumbled into my pathway.

“Any spare change, mister?” The scent of whiskey lay heavy on his breath as he swayed his weight from side to side to remain upright.

At first, I was going to say no, but he then persuaded me when he lifted up a bag of speckled beans that glittered in the streetlights, “I’ll trade you this for five.” He opened his mouth in a drunken smile which showcased the caps of gold amongst what teeth remained rotting away in his head, “No take-backs.”

With the growing feeling of the munchies, and my lifelong love of beans itself, my eyes landed in the package. There were almost no concerns on my own safety floating around in my head as I made the transaction with the man and continued on my way back home. The bag sat heavy in my jacket pocket as I stumbled up the stairs and miraculously made it into my apartment. Hunger rang from deep inside my stomach, and I remember what the weight in my jacket even was.

With the giddiness of a young child, I very carefully boiled the beans in between the temporary moments of blacking out. After they were done, I scarfed them down and promptly allowed myself to black out completely against the cold tiles of my bathroom floor.

Early morning light spilled through the bathroom’s tiny window and promptly rested open my eyelids. Between the blaring light and the horrible aching growing in my gut, I groaned awake with reluctance. I followed my usual routine and crawled over to the toilet in a test to see if I needed to regurgitate whatever I had consumed from the night before.

My head swayed above the water in the bowl when I felt the familiar twinge of something working its way back out of me. I relaxed my shoulders instinctively to allow the material passage through, then opened my mouth wide.

Plop.

I was…confused. There was no forceful stream of bile that preceded the watery landing, but something definitely rolled out from the dark passage of my throat. My eyes slowly opened as I looked down to see no vomit but a small vine wriggling around the water. I attempted to get a closer examination of it whenever the pressure began again along my esophagus. Before I could react, there was a forceful retching that admitted from me.

Specs of crimson covered the bathroom floor and toilet as a long vine covered in leaves and thorns tore itself from me. I attempted to pull it from me, but with every grasp, I only sliced my hands deeper. There was no time before I felt it rip its way from beneath me.

Roots grew forcefully out of my lower half, digging into the floorboards in a desperate search for soil to plant themselves into. More vines grew desperately out of my ears and pores, peeling away the skin and tissue that had shrouded me. The plant matter began to take my human form as together we rose from the floor.

The scent of whiskey and rot entered the room with us, and I watched the homeless man stand before us, then collected the remains of my visage as the stalk continued to grow from within myself. Tears attempted to stream from my eyes as he slipped into my skin, as it was a new suit freshly tailored for himself, but the leaf only just wiped them away before the thorns grew from within and caused them to rupture into sap.

He still remains next to me as I grow deeper into the stalk itself, and he practices an imitation of my own voice. I pray that no one else will ever have to suffer through this pain, but I can feel as seeds emerge from within me. Only the memories of the pain-altering drugs I once partook in remain with me as the man collects them with precision. They feel familiar in shape, and even without the gift of vision, I can tell they sparkle in the light.

What truly makes the human spirit so potent? It breeds from deep within us once we decide to band together in unity. There are many things that truly draw humankind together, but one has had the power to create waves amongst our growing population strong enough to rip us apart or sew us back together just by opinions alone. What have we allowed such power to fester for so long, you may ask?

Entertainment.

Honestly, it is truly that simple. We’ve all seen how over the centuries any form of good or bad entertainment provides a breeding ground for like-minded people. It’s an ever-changing presence that has forced and shifted persistently alongside the persistent marching of humanity’s footsteps; it’s infectious.

Everlasting.

As humanity has aged slowly, it’s grown to crave any form of entertainment. Our ancestors erected countless monuments and designated their own gods in the growing worship of entertainment. They passed it between the generations almost as essential as the need to breathe. Between the generations, storytelling claimed its throne as one of the eldest forms of connective entertainment required for humanity to grow. Accompanied by ritual and music, a new, pesky form reared its head to us. Theater emerged from the oral tradition, once used by those of ancient times to move along the stories they regarded as history.

It flourished unnaturally between varying cultures, expanding between the different people who gazed deep into its eyes. People couldn’t get enough of it, and some fell into a deep love, devoted their lives to pass its traditions through to the next as more gathered to feed from the entertainment.

Unfortunately, alongside the growing relationship between humanity and theater was a parasitic tumor forming along its underbelly. It also fed from the joy felt by the people above it. Growing and reproducing to follow us as we explored the vastness of our world. Our thoughts became less focused on the art and love it once provided us as we tortured and maimed our own kind. Now they lie waiting as the love returns to the rotting stages. Countless souls who once passed over aging theater stages, passing the reigns to new shoes intending to leave a mark across their own lands teeming with differences larger than the last, unknowing to what lies beneath them.

Humanity once again is bringing itself together through this celebration of life, but the tumors latch on; they remain persistent in obtaining for their needs.

Somewhere under the floors of an inconsequential stage scattered amongst the millions lived a cancerous tumor, cautiously lying and feeding from the multitudes of creatives passing their energy from above. Existing unknown and unbothered, they grew a fascination with the lives above them. Falling in love like many of humanity before them.

Even though their existence was not that of humanity; but as a mass of bloodied flesh and jagged bones, made as a mockery to humanity. A growing tumor of cancerous flesh brimming with sores of bloodied puss. Forced to live a lonesome life with no voice, face, or legs of any kind to be associated with the humanity they were desperate to meet with. Having crawled from the depths of whatever Hell dared to create them, using its spindly limbs that resembled arms stricken with emaciation.

As time passed, they allowed themselves the peace to perfect overhead monologues with esteemed dramatic precision worthy of every accolade given to man before them; wasting their one blessing in life to achieve a perfect pitch of messy gurgles and creaks. Eventually, they practiced, then delivered show-stopping numbers; their mass shifting with perfect rhythm along with imagined choreography long after the performance lights had flickered off.

They fed off the claps and cheers above them, growing with the talent they so carefully cultivated. Spindly arms reaching for the barrier locking them away from their dreams of recognition. Now, with a lack of a face came along with the lack of vision; they registered the world around them in a vague sense of shape from sound. Seeing the world above them as a small and distant objective to work their way towards. Being too scared to try and push against the barriers between us and them. In their minds, they knew they had the potential to be seen as one of the very greats but lacked the necessary means to achieve that greatness.

God was too gracious by making the cancerous masses growing beneath us riddled with cowardice. Now, if only this one’s cowardice outweighed its desired ambitions.

There was a single performance where humanity finally faced the tumor festering alongside it. Above the tumor was a show falling repeatedly from start to finish, never gaining the strength to hold its own weight. The tumor grew resentful of the mockery above it, using its mass as it shifted against the grounds beneath it. Its spindly arms stretched out before it, struggling to lift itself with limited strength. Sharp stones tried to prevent its escape by stabbing deep into its massive form, causing the body to tear against a forced seam.

As the tumor split nearly in half, jagged bones poked out from inside the disgusting dermal. A gargled wail escaped from the newly formed injury. Despite this, the persistent tumor continued to move forward, blood smeared with every new movement as more skin fell away from the wound. Finally, it met its wooden rival.

Slamming its aching form against the barrier, the tumor felt it beginning to give way beneath them. Ignoring the gurgling pain radiating around the gaping maw forming along them, bone protruding from around it resembling teeth. The images formed above it in the persistent sound began to fade with every new wave of force caused by the tumor’s persistence. Suddenly, there was a splintering pop, and the tumor allowed itself to move forward against the barrier.

Emerging to a thunderous roar that it mistook for applause. Seeing the visage of a crowd in the row of noise before them. They began their performance with a screech of ear-piercing sound, with bloodied gurgling coming from the maw beneath it. A spindly, emaciated arm grabbed hold of the upstaged costar attempting to flee. It dragged the terrified woman closer while the tumor mistook her screams as begging to join the show with it. To show its loyalty to the craft, the tumor lifted its costar high above itself then shoved her deep into its own fleshy mass. The audience watched in awe-struck horror as it began to wiggle and smack its wet form closer towards them. Suffocating them all in a slow ease, with few lucky to escape.

The people forced to forever endure its debut performance began to sizzle into the bubbling pus along the creature’s form. Bodies broke down and a mass of boiling goo and shattered bones, having been consumed indiscriminately by the tumor. After its performance, the tumor felt an innate sadness as the applause slowed to an end before it. Not knowing the truly unspeakable horrors it laid upon the people who witnessed it, they took a bow. Having lived their dream, they allowed themselves the peace to return back into the deep pit of Hell that lay waiting before it.

Let me start this out by saying how utterly tired I am of seeing the ghastly thin image of shimmering yellow and stark pallid skin stalking me through my everyday life. He’s been there for us as long as I can remember, just standing slightly out of view, hiding away in my peripheral.

Of course, no one believed me whenever I spoke out about him. Anytime I would turn, his image would step farther behind what my mind was able to see. I stopped speaking of him halfway through what was our third year together. My family quickly grew tired of my incessant complaining about how the luminosity of his clothes gave me a perpetual headache. They had me checked for mental illness, of course, but nothing ever truly came from that. I was mentally clean besides the so-called hallucination of my banana-themed stalker ever looming behind me. What once was completely fear grew into a persistent splash of daily annoyance whenever I’d see him standing vaguely outside of my bedroom window, never breaking his distance as he watched my every move.

His preferred stance in my peripheral remained an unwavering constant between us; as was the distance he claimed for the first few years he watched me. This all had changed the morning that I turned 12.

My eyes flickered open to the dim morning light that fought its way into my darkened room. Fighting for an attempt to occupy the limited space of the room against a now directly visible shimmering yellow glow. This had marked the first time I was able to mar him out clearly; my young mind having filled the blanks of him by inserting them with images of the Man with the Yellow Hat. Unlike him, my haunter wasn’t adorned in a suit but a foul shirt that was once white, now filthy and yellowed from a mixture of various stains; his pants were a color more reminiscent of mustard but had such an unmistakable brightness to them. The feature that reignites my fear towards him was the sinister, toothy smile of yellow teeth that contrasted against his chalky white skin and thinning bleached hair.

We stared at each other for a long minute, and he stepped back into the shadows, the whites of his eyes cutting through the darkness toward me. My mother pushed the door open to encourage me to get ready for the day, not seeing the horror standing mere feet from us both. My eyes remained locked on his as they followed me around the room. I quickly grabbed up a few clothes of mine and rushed into the sanctuary of the hallway bathroom. With a quick movement, I ripped the shower curtain to the side and was relieved to see he had not made it follow me in. Just then, I heard the creak of the floors and saw the familiar glow come from beneath the crack in the door.

After that day, he remained a healthy six or so feet away from me. Following me to school, standing in the back of the bus, or hiding in the soft shadows of my classroom. We played this game for the following years. I quickly grew accustomed to his burning stare at me and tried to go back to ignoring his existence once again. The color yellow became one I most despised as its sickening light burned my retinas the longer my life moved on. The distance between us became exhausting as every year he inched ever closer toward me.

Around the middle of my teens, it is when he began to speak to me during the night. Not in a tone compatible with the strength of my ears compared to the space between us. Low whispers began to keep me awake during the nights until exhaustion took hold and ripped me away to the realm of sleep. Unfortunately, escaping to dreams didn’t provide the relief I wanted as his low, wet-sounding voice shaped the reality of them, and they bowed to his annoyingly persistent light. This too became something to grow used to.

I am now in the middle of my twenties, and I luckily no longer constantly see him ahead of me, but this is unfortunately because he not typically stands directly behind. Close enough for his hot breath to be cast against the skin of my neck as he whispers completely degenerate thoughts. His light has dulled with the closer he got, and he still makes it his mission to watch me as I sleep, remaining in the shadows next to me, smacking his lips in his low, wet tone.

College was harsh with my own negative thoughts constantly egged on by his derangement. I would slip up on an assignment and get a low grade, only to hear his voice crackle behind me, “…you’re worthless…a failure…”

His words would cast images into my mind of harming myself to an extreme that I would prefer not to relive; with my own mental fortitude, I was able to push past these and persevere on my own.

“…she hates you…worthless…” his voice pushed against my already anxious mind the day I met the woman I loved. Throughout our entire relationship, he would begin to speak disdain against her until one day he fell mostly quiet. The man in yellow would watch us sleep like always, but his presence was lost to me against the happiness I was able to truly feel.

That love fell short, though, and I was left by myself, alone in a now nearly empty apartment with no companionship in almost 20 years. Even though his presence disturbed me, he was truly the only one to stand with me throughout it all. So I decided to take up his ideas and found myself standing at the edge of the apartment’s roof. Tears running down my cheeks as I made my decision to say goodbye. With a final prayer spoken to myself, I stepped forward from the building’s cold masonry.

Instead of feeling the rush of free fall, there was a jolt against myself as a mysterious hand intertwined with the back of my shirt, and I was forcibly yanked backwards from my descent. My body crumpled harshly against the concrete roof, and I saw the familiar burst of yellow lights contrast against the night sky.

“…stupid…stupid…” his voice echoed to me as he retreated into the dark.

I looked to him, dumbfounded, and cried out, “What do you want with me?”

He refused to respond whilst continuing to stare in my direction with the piercing whites of his gaze. I found myself crumpling down with sobs of depression and frustration over the actions of my tormentor. We now sit together in silence as I type this, him behind me as we both stare towards this screen; his image temporarily visible in the reflection of it.

Knowing that he can read this as well, I write this in regard to the man in yellow. You had not allowed me the pleasantries to enjoy my life in peace, but whenever I take the actions you implanted upon me, you will not allow me bliss in death. Why? What do you gain from being the parasite against my life, and what had I done to deserve this horrific torment?

Tonight, when I fell asleep alone once again, I beg of you to come by my side and into my dreams to whisper your answer. I crave the knowledge of our connection along with what is needed to finally be rid of you.

Truly yours, Derek Elmore; the bearer of the curse to know your existence.

Let me start this out by saying how utterly tired I am of seeing the ghastly thin image of shimmering yellow and stark pallid skin stalking me through my everyday life. He’s been there for us as long as I can remember, just standing slightly out of view, hiding away in my peripheral.

Of course, no one believed me whenever I spoke out about him. Anytime I would turn, his image would step farther behind what my mind was able to see. I stopped speaking of him halfway through what was our third year together. My family quickly grew tired of my incessant complaining about how the luminosity of his clothes gave me a perpetual headache. They had me checked for mental illness, of course, but nothing ever truly came from that. I was mentally clean besides the so-called hallucination of my banana-themed stalker ever looming behind me. What once was completely fear grew into a persistent splash of daily annoyance whenever I’d see him standing vaguely outside of my bedroom window, never breaking his distance as he watched my every move.

His preferred stance in my peripheral remained an unwavering constant between us; as was the distance he claimed for the first few years he watched me. This all had changed the morning that I turned 12.

My eyes flickered open to the dim morning light that fought its way into my darkened room. Fighting for an attempt to occupy the limited space of the room against a now directly visible shimmering yellow glow. This had marked the first time I was able to mar him out clearly; my young mind having filled the blanks of him by inserting them with images of the Man with the Yellow Hat. Unlike him, my haunter wasn’t adorned in a suit but a foul shirt that was once white, now filthy and yellowed from a mixture of various stains; his pants were a color more reminiscent of mustard but had such an unmistakable brightness to them. The feature that reignites my fear towards him was the sinister, toothy smile of yellow teeth that contrasted against his chalky white skin and thinning bleached hair.

We stared at each other for a long minute, and he stepped back into the shadows, the whites of his eyes cutting through the darkness toward me. My mother pushed the door open to encourage me to get ready for the day, not seeing the horror standing mere feet from us both. My eyes remained locked on his as they followed me around the room. I quickly grabbed up a few clothes of mine and rushed into the sanctuary of the hallway bathroom. With a quick movement, I ripped the shower curtain to the side and was relieved to see he had not made it follow me in. Just then, I heard the creak of the floors and saw the familiar glow come from beneath the crack in the door.

After that day, he remained a healthy six or so feet away from me. Following me to school, standing in the back of the bus, or hiding in the soft shadows of my classroom. We played this game for the following years. I quickly grew accustomed to his burning stare at me and tried to go back to ignoring his existence once again. The color yellow became one I most despised as its sickening light burned my retinas the longer my life moved on. The distance between us became exhausting as every year he inched ever closer toward me.

Around the middle of my teens, it is when he began to speak to me during the night. Not in a tone compatible with the strength of my ears compared to the space between us. Low whispers began to keep me awake during the nights until exhaustion took hold and ripped me away to the realm of sleep. Unfortunately, escaping to dreams didn’t provide the relief I wanted as his low, wet-sounding voice shaped the reality of them, and they bowed to his annoyingly persistent light. This too became something to grow used to.

I am now in the middle of my twenties, and I luckily no longer constantly see him ahead of me, but this is unfortunately because he not typically stands directly behind. Close enough for his hot breath to be cast against the skin of my neck as he whispers completely degenerate thoughts. His light has dulled with the closer he got, and he still makes it his mission to watch me as I sleep, remaining in the shadows next to me, smacking his lips in his low, wet tone.

College was harsh with my own negative thoughts constantly egged on by his derangement. I would slip up on an assignment and get a low grade, only to hear his voice crackle behind me, “…you’re worthless…a failure…”

His words would cast images into my mind of harming myself to an extreme that I would prefer not to relive; with my own mental fortitude, I was able to push past these and persevere on my own.

“…she hates you…worthless…” his voice pushed against my already anxious mind the day I met the woman I loved. Throughout our entire relationship, he would begin to speak disdain against her until one day he fell mostly quiet. The man in yellow would watch us sleep like always, but his presence was lost to me against the happiness I was able to truly feel.

That love fell short, though, and I was left by myself, alone in a now nearly empty apartment with no companionship in almost 20 years. Even though his presence disturbed me, he was truly the only one to stand with me throughout it all. So I decided to take up his ideas and found myself standing at the edge of the apartment’s roof. Tears running down my cheeks as I made my decision to say goodbye. With a final prayer spoken to myself, I stepped forward from the building’s cold masonry.

Instead of feeling the rush of free fall, there was a jolt against myself as a mysterious hand intertwined with the back of my shirt, and I was forcibly yanked backwards from my descent. My body crumpled harshly against the concrete roof, and I saw the familiar burst of yellow lights contrast against the night sky.

“…stupid…stupid…” his voice echoed to me as he retreated into the dark.

I looked to him, dumbfounded, and cried out, “What do you want with me?”

He refused to respond whilst continuing to stare in my direction with the piercing whites of his gaze. I found myself crumpling down with sobs of depression and frustration over the actions of my tormentor. We now sit together in silence as I type this, him behind me as we both stare towards this screen; his image temporarily visible in the reflection of it.

Knowing that he can read this as well, I write this in regard to the man in yellow. You had not allowed me the pleasantries to enjoy my life in peace, but whenever I take the actions you implanted upon me, you will not allow me bliss in death. Why? What do you gain from being the parasite against my life, and what had I done to deserve this horrific torment?

Tonight, when I fell asleep alone once again, I beg of you to come by my side and into my dreams to whisper your answer. I crave the knowledge of our connection along with what is needed to finally be rid of you.

Truly yours, Derek Elmore; the bearer of the curse to know your existence.

Let me start this out by saying how utterly tired I am of seeing the ghastly thin image of shimmering yellow and stark pallid skin stalking me through my everyday life. He’s been there for us as long as I can remember, just standing slightly out of view, hiding away in my peripheral.

Of course, no one believed me whenever I spoke out about him. Anytime I would turn, his image would step farther behind what my mind was able to see. I stopped speaking of him halfway through what was our third year together. My family quickly grew tired of my incessant complaining about how the luminosity of his clothes gave me a perpetual headache. They had me checked for mental illness, of course, but nothing ever truly came from that. I was mentally clean besides the so-called hallucination of my banana-themed stalker ever looming behind me. What once was completely fear grew into a persistent splash of daily annoyance whenever I’d see him standing vaguely outside of my bedroom window, never breaking his distance as he watched my every move.

His preferred stance in my peripheral remained an unwavering constant between us; as was the distance he claimed for the first few years he watched me. This all had changed the morning that I turned 12.

My eyes flickered open to the dim morning light that fought its way into my darkened room. Fighting for an attempt to occupy the limited space of the room against a now directly visible shimmering yellow glow. This had marked the first time I was able to mar him out clearly; my young mind having filled the blanks of him by inserting them with images of the Man with the Yellow Hat. Unlike him, my haunter wasn’t adorned in a suit but a foul shirt that was once white, now filthy and yellowed from a mixture of various stains; his pants were a color more reminiscent of mustard but had such an unmistakable brightness to them. The feature that reignites my fear towards him was the sinister, toothy smile of yellow teeth that contrasted against his chalky white skin and thinning bleached hair.

We stared at each other for a long minute, and he stepped back into the shadows, the whites of his eyes cutting through the darkness toward me. My mother pushed the door open to encourage me to get ready for the day, not seeing the horror standing mere feet from us both. My eyes remained locked on his as they followed me around the room. I quickly grabbed up a few clothes of mine and rushed into the sanctuary of the hallway bathroom. With a quick movement, I ripped the shower curtain to the side and was relieved to see he had not made it follow me in. Just then, I heard the creak of the floors and saw the familiar glow come from beneath the crack in the door.

After that day, he remained a healthy six or so feet away from me. Following me to school, standing in the back of the bus, or hiding in the soft shadows of my classroom. We played this game for the following years. I quickly grew accustomed to his burning stare at me and tried to go back to ignoring his existence once again. The color yellow became one I most despised as its sickening light burned my retinas the longer my life moved on. The distance between us became exhausting as every year he inched ever closer toward me.

Around the middle of my teens, it is when he began to speak to me during the night. Not in a tone compatible with the strength of my ears compared to the space between us. Low whispers began to keep me awake during the nights until exhaustion took hold and ripped me away to the realm of sleep. Unfortunately, escaping to dreams didn’t provide the relief I wanted as his low, wet-sounding voice shaped the reality of them, and they bowed to his annoyingly persistent light. This too became something to grow used to.

I am now in the middle of my twenties, and I luckily no longer constantly see him ahead of me, but this is unfortunately because he not typically stands directly behind. Close enough for his hot breath to be cast against the skin of my neck as he whispers completely degenerate thoughts. His light has dulled with the closer he got, and he still makes it his mission to watch me as I sleep, remaining in the shadows next to me, smacking his lips in his low, wet tone.

College was harsh with my own negative thoughts constantly egged on by his derangement. I would slip up on an assignment and get a low grade, only to hear his voice crackle behind me, “…you’re worthless…a failure…”

His words would cast images into my mind of harming myself to an extreme that I would prefer not to relive; with my own mental fortitude, I was able to push past these and persevere on my own.

“…she hates you…worthless…” his voice pushed against my already anxious mind the day I met the woman I loved. Throughout our entire relationship, he would begin to speak disdain against her until one day he fell mostly quiet. The man in yellow would watch us sleep like always, but his presence was lost to me against the happiness I was able to truly feel.

That love fell short, though, and I was left by myself, alone in a now nearly empty apartment with no companionship in almost 20 years. Even though his presence disturbed me, he was truly the only one to stand with me throughout it all. So I decided to take up his ideas and found myself standing at the edge of the apartment’s roof. Tears running down my cheeks as I made my decision to say goodbye. With a final prayer spoken to myself, I stepped forward from the building’s cold masonry.

Instead of feeling the rush of free fall, there was a jolt against myself as a mysterious hand intertwined with the back of my shirt, and I was forcibly yanked backwards from my descent. My body crumpled harshly against the concrete roof, and I saw the familiar burst of yellow lights contrast against the night sky.

“…stupid…stupid…” his voice echoed to me as he retreated into the dark.

I looked to him, dumbfounded, and cried out, “What do you want with me?”

He refused to respond whilst continuing to stare in my direction with the piercing whites of his gaze. I found myself crumpling down with sobs of depression and frustration over the actions of my tormentor. We now sit together in silence as I type this, him behind me as we both stare towards this screen; his image temporarily visible in the reflection of it.

Knowing that he can read this as well, I write this in regard to the man in yellow. You had not allowed me the pleasantries to enjoy my life in peace, but whenever I take the actions you implanted upon me, you will not allow me bliss in death. Why? What do you gain from being the parasite against my life, and what had I done to deserve this horrific torment?

Tonight, when I fell asleep alone once again, I beg of you to come by my side and into my dreams to whisper your answer. I crave the knowledge of our connection along with what is needed to finally be rid of you.

Truly yours, Derek Elmore; the bearer of the curse to know your existence.

“One never knows the ending. One has to die to know exactly what happens after death, although Catholics have their hopes.”

- Sir Alfred Hitchcock

—————————————————————————

Choosing between a life of faithfulness, avoidance of hatred, and embarking on the path of good for the fellow man around you rather than living one focused on bitter hate, filling oneself with debauchery, or sin is supposed to mean something when you meet with the black swells of death. That’s what they taught me at least.

Humanity spends their short lives sitting amongst each other in pews while praising a power higher than they could ever imagine. Thinking to themselves that because of their inherent good of tithing and prayer, they are allowed access to be judgmental of the ones who choose to either sit amongst them or amongst others. Believing that they will achieve greatness in the world beyond ours whilst living within barely earns mediocrity as they use their nobility granted to them from their savior to divide people they deem less than themselves.

I do not speak of these misdeeds from a place of neutrality as I, myself, stood amongst those pews. Using the godliness of myself to be spiteful to those different than I. My parents raised me to believe that we were better because we gave to the Father who created us and we were sent on a mission to save all others. I spent my entire life this way so whenever I closed my eyes for the final time, I expected nothing less than absolute paradise to emerge ahead of me.

It was dark, limestone walls towered around with wooden staves attached to them lighting the way forward. The smell of burning animal fat and oil mixed with a familiar stench of untouched must seeping from the stone. I lay in on the floor atop a heap of petrified wrappings leaving a thin layer of black, sticky resin amongst my skin. Along the walls were hieroglyphs etched deep into the rock with the remnants of faded paintings that had once beautifully adorned them.

The wrappings crunched beneath me as I rose from the embrace that had welcomed me to this realm. In the dim light, my eyes attempted to follow the message described along the walls, but the meaning fell blankly to the folds of my spotty mind. Memories were coming back to me slowly, like a balloon with a dragging leak. I knew my past clearly, but the events leading to how I made it to where I am now were still filled with static.

With no help coming from the walls, I gave up on understanding any of it and began to make my way down the dim tunnel. I went from a main chamber down into a descending hallway adorned with more indecipherable images on the walls. Heat emitted from beyond the stone walls and pushed against my skin as I walked further downward. My eyes clenched as I prayed not to see the iron gates of Hell standing before me. Confusion struck as a figure appeared standing atop a small boat near the opening of the passage.

“Hello?” My voice was dry as it echoed off the limestone around me.

The figure was adorned entirely in pure white cloth and shimmering gold. It turned slowly towards me, and I realized that it had the head of a ram atop a man’s body. It beckoned silently toward me in an invitation to stand along with him on the deck of the boat. I was petrified with fear as the eyes of the goat stared through me, but I relented and made my way to him. The boat itself was a small, wooden barge with a low, flat deck and a curved back. Atop the deck was a small walled facade that was, presumably, the figure’s living quarters. The figure himself stood tall on the deck, holding a steering oar over the edge of the boat. There was nothing but empty air under the hull of the ship; I began to wonder how it was even staying afloat, let alone how it would move.

Underneath my feet echoed the creaking noises of the ship’s wooden deck. Reeds adorned the sides of it and the planking of the quarters built upon it. The man aboard towered above me and wordlessly pushed us away from the wooden port attached to the entrance of his realm. As we drifted along, I looked beneath us and saw a bountiful field of wheat and reeds. People lay in it, sleeping pleasantly as others swam in the rivers of fresh water. Calm washed over me the more I watched them meander around, magnificent light throughout the fields and upon those that resided despite the fact that above us was a cave ceiling. Some looked up towards us and gave a pleasant wave; I attempted to wave back but was distracted by immense heat coming from elsewhere around me.

I looked back towards where I began and saw an ocean of liquid fire and smoke erupting from it. Streams grew from out of its sides and surrounded the edges of the pleasant fields, unbeknownst to the ones who lived amongst it. Baboons guarded the shores and forced desperate souls back into its depths. Disturbing screams of torment echoed around us and it began to remind me of the verse from Revelations:

"But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."

My body convulsed with fear, as the realization of my finality became known to me. I was dead, it was a painful memory but I had died in a car accident. Unexpectedly, as I lay there dying, I sent out one final prayer to assure my way into heaven; but this was not the paradise that was promised for living a life of virtue. I turned to my ferryman and asked with a sob in my throat, “Please tell me, is this Hell? What sins did I commit to deserve this?”

He remained silent. Staring forward as he pushed us along the draft of air leading us deeper into this god-forsaken realm. There was a decaying temple emerging ahead of us; years of neglect and age caused destruction beyond measure to fall upon it.

There were statues representing pharaohs of old, crafted meticulously from marble that once stood stories tall but were now crumbling to dust. The temple itself was clearly once a grand pyramid, but one side had caved in to reveal once-glimmering treasures and bodies wrapped in linen suffering from varying stages of decay. Standing near the front entrance of the once-grand temple sat an identical wooden dock to the one we pushed away from earlier.

Our boat met softly against the dock, and my ferryman lifted his massive oar, then gestured outward with his hand. Telling me the next step along my path. I stepped down onto the groaning planks of the dock and turned to the man who had accompanied me; his hand remained outstretched. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of silver and copper coins, which I then placed in his hand and bowed respectfully to him, “Thank you.”

Before I could raise my head back up, the ferryman had already pushed off to sink deeper into the realm below us. I wished to have learned his name but found a sense of comfort in his quiet companionship as I now stood alone between the imposing facade ahead of me. With a shuddering breath, I stepped forward and into what lay ahead of me. Inside the temple was similar to the chamber I awoke in. Similar limestone walls, but the carvings inside were painted in magnificently bright colors. They looked wet still, as if no time had passed since the painter took the final strokes with his brush. The staves along the walls were glowing with an absurdly high luminosity.

I was in a small chamber with a wooden door directly ahead of me under the hieroglyphs. It contrasted against the decorated walls with a dull age of splintering wood hardened throughout time. Standing guard at the door was a hairless black dog. It barked in my direction and shifted its gaze towards a scale that sat next to it. On one side of it sat a lump of pulsing red meat shaped like a heart. I slipped a hand under my shirt and felt the cavity of where my heart once sat. Gear filled me as I looked to the other side and saw a single feather sitting upon it, lifting higher under the weight of its left side’s might. Once again, the dog barked, and my eyes shifted up to the carvings above the door; there I could make out a single familiar word, “COWARDICE.”

Memories flashed through my mind, and the door slowly fell open inward. It sat ajar with the sounds of quiet sobbing coming from the other side. The thought of what was on the other side terrified me to my core, and I had to resist the urge to turn back and plunge myself down into one of the roaring streams of fire beneath me. I shut my eyes tight in one last effort to pray, then, reluctantly, stepped through the door.

Once on the other side, I found myself standing on the back porch of a friend’s home. Under my right arm was a bundle of Bibles and sermon notes, while I had raised my left to knock. My friend Matthew and his wife, Joan, had missed the Wednesday service due to what they claimed was sickness, and I had promised to bring my notes to them for a small Bible study. The door was opened slightly ajar, and I could hear Joan crying softly from inside. My body froze in fear as I looked through the opened window, and I saw Matthew standing above her on the ground, half an empty bottle in one hand, and he was hitting her with the other.

The memories of this moment while I was living played in my head. I witnessed this and left. I went home and I prayed for hours for God to make these things right between them. At the next Sunday service, I couldn’t look at Matthew and Joan refused to look at me; purple bruising showing under her makeup. At the time I didn’t know it but she saw me leave through the window. I can now see her staring at me like a savior but in life I was too much of a coward to be of any sort. I’m not sure what happened to Joan in life since they had moved soon after this moment but reliving it; I felt the books and note papers fall from my arm. I pushed the door open with a hard shove from my shoulder and stormed inside the house.

My hands moved on their own in rage as I grabbed hold of Matthew’s figure and when he turned, I was met face to face with a screaming baboon. Fear lived without space in my heart as I felt the familiar heat come off of its rotting breath. I raised my fist and began slamming in hard into the face of the creature. Its teeth scraped against my knuckles but we fell down to the ground. Joan faded from the scene and I remained, slamming the creature’s face repeatedly. Its horrific screaming shuddered under gurgling coughs but I continued, more or less beating the sin of cowardice from my very being.

That’s when a wave of heat erupted out from the baboon-human hybrid beneath me and I found myself in another limestone chamber. The dog was there standing guard of another door and watching as the weight of the feather began to equal out slightly to my heart. Neither of us spoke, the dog was now standing only on its hind legs but was adorned in similar gold jewelry to that of the ferryman. He gestured his glistening nose to the door of stone behind him. Above it formed the word “UNBELIEVING”.

My eyes looked down to my crimson-stained hands, all torn and shredded from the teeth of the baboon. I had no prior idea of what would be ahead of me, but once I witnessed the lightening of my heart, I stepped forward into it. There was no memory on the other side; there was only a platform sitting high above the ocean of fire. Another sat on the other side of the gap with a loose-looking line providing the only noticeable path through it. On either side sat rows of hollering baboons throwing foul-smelling muck towards each other. One stood at the door ahead of me with splintered teeth and bleeding gums. I stepped forward and looked down to the pit of flames; swimming in it was a crocodile the size of a building snapping up at me, wanting to drag me to the depths of my second death.

Throughout my entire life, I had done nothing but provide worship and belief to a singular God of all-mighty power, but now I stand with a single choice to make. I had never allowed belief in myself; I had to put faith in that I would make it to the other side. So I stepped back and ran into a leap toward the thin line. I caught myself in the slack of the line. Under my weight, it buckled, and I slid down with an acceptance of my end as the crocodile’s mouth came into view. The line caught with only feet remaining between us; the crocodile fell back to the side while the noise of the baboons fell completely silent.

My arms pulled me forward along the line; with every movement, there was a quick shot of burning pain through the muscles in my limbs. In life, I never had much of a sturdy build, but now it’s all I could rely on to make it towards freedom. Heat radiated against my legs, cooking them from the sheer power of the lake beneath me. My eyes looked toward the injured baboon as his resilience seemed to mock me. I pulled harder against the pain with the thin line digging deep into my palms while blood leaked from them.

With the slack continuing to lower, mixing with the lubricating nature of fresh blood, there was a high chance that I could have slipped at any given moment. So, I began measuring up the distance between myself and the platform. It was a long shot, but I started to swing back and forth to gain any ounce of momentum, and then I flung myself forward. My shoulder smacked hard against the limestone platform, and every baboon erupted in a celebratory cry. The injured one that I once considered an enemy sized me up and pushed the door open ahead of me.

Once again stepping into an identical chamber, the dog had grown into a towering man with the head of the dog. He guarded the final door and held my heart in his hand. Unlike the other being, he looked down at me and spoke, “This is your final test.”

That was all he said as he stepped to the side and revealed an open doorway that had the words ‘IDOLATRY’ etched above it. He walked to me and shoved the heavy lump deep into my chest. The wound ached harshly for a moment, and he grabbed me by the shoulder and forced me into my last trial. The final memories spewed into me.

I awoke in my bed, the last day I was alive. My memory began to serve me correctly as my phone buzzed on the nightstand; it was my accomplice for why I was out so late that night. We had been stealing funds from the church, and now it was 2 a.m., our ideal time to empty the collection boxes like we had been doing every Sunday for months. I had no control of my body as it moved up from the bed, and I whispered a quick goodbye to my wife. She remained in a deep slumber, and I left a note lying about my whereabouts in case she woke.

The drive to the church was short as always, and I parked a slight way away to head the rest of the way in the dark. My accomplice had done the same, and we made our way inside. We were rushing and made the fatal mistake of not noticing the alarm needing disarming. That’s where we made our way into the parish to commit our transgression against the very Lord we claimed to praise. Somehow, we ignored the light of the pastor’s office flickering, and we cracked the box open; he emerged alarmed, aiming the barrel of his hunting rifle dead center at us. I could have confessed right there and saved myself such trouble, but my sinful idol was money and greed itself. Also, I noticed the silver glint of a knife in my accomplice’s hand.

With a swift movement, I pushed him toward the priest and collected my earnings. There was the sharp echo of the weapon going off, and I ran back towards the door. Once outside, I continued to run until my vehicle came into view. The earnings fluttered to the passenger side, and I peeled off quickly. I had chosen to go without my headlights for a quick escape, but that caused me to miss the figure aiming the rifle towards my tires. With a thunderous pop, my car buckled, going 70 miles per hour, and it flipped in on itself.

My eyes opened to reveal a bright landscape filled with burning sand. It cut past me with a terrible fury. The feeling of hot glass ran along my skin, and ahead of me stood the ram- and dog-headed figures with the scale between them. A third figure stood with them, completely adorned in white with skin as blue as the day’s sky. The dog-headed man raised his hand, and my heart of stone ripped straight out from my chest. It bobbed along the winds of the sandstorm, being sliced by each individual grain.

Pain erupting from my wound caused tears to fall from my eyes. “Please, please, I repent.”

Begging for an eternity of bliss felt shameful compared to what I did in my life, compared against the things I should’ve done. My heart landed wet and flatly against the empty slot of the scale. It began to teeter against the weight of it being the feather. The blue-skinned man spoke to me, “The weight must remain equal.”

My body began sinking into the burning sand below me. The scale groaned to a stop as the object’s weight teetered to an equilibrium between them. Sand enclosed around me, blocking out the vision of the scale and any perceived glare of light. There was immense silence surrounding me as I slipped deep into the warm embrace of the sand grains. Finally, I was met with tranquility and peace.

Red and blue lights flashed against my eyelids. I was hanging upside down in my vehicle with blood splattering across the stolen money around me and the crucifix hanging from my mirror. I was miraculously saved by the belt that strapped me to my seat. Warm blood ran down my face, and I felt multiple broken bones inside me. There were voices calling out, but I couldn’t make out anything clear. I coughed out globs of blood that had drained into my throat while the shame of my sin sat entirely around me. Out of habit, I closed my eyes to repent but found that nothing spoke back to me. I had laid it all out to the figures that answered my last prayers of forgiveness.

So I lay there waiting amongst the shame of my sin. While bathing in the judgmental state emitting from the crucified figure that I once found so holy as it hung attached to a beaded rosary, remaining tightly wrapped around my rearview mirror.

Part I, all other parts linked

To sum it all up that night, we honestly thought we were free. That’s all there was to it, really. For almost three years, my fellow graduates and I lived in constant fear of something so simple as a nightly fog.

When the disappearances started, a few families left the town without warning. They were beyond terrified for the safety of their children. Imagine being us, the kids; fuck, we were petrified. Dad and I were part of the group that couldn’t leave; his job and both of our entire lives were spent here. So I locked in and worked harder than I ever had to make our way out, unscathed for both of us.

We all did.

We worked our asses off throughout the years to make sure we could get into great schools far away from this nightmare. When my acceptance letter finally arrived, Dad and I celebrated as it was far from being two states away. Dad began to look for a new job in the area so there was never a need for me to come back; things were starting to look up. The best part for me was that I finally turned 18. Over the last few months of high school, I held my breath as all of my friends also entered their young adult stage of life with me.

Of course, not all of us turned 18 by graduation. The ones who did were starting to feel invincible, you know?

We started to stay out later past the curfew we’d grown accustomed to, but there was always that primal fear that made sure we made it home way before 3. Next thing we knew was that it was finally time for graduation. We wanted to celebrate our newly found courage and freedom against our town’s sickness, so we planned a giant graduation party out by the lake. We also played it smart and made sure that everybody was 18 or over in order to attend.

It’s terrifying how little we truly understood the effect of the fog itself.

The party was off to an incredibly incredible start; there was drinking, smoking, dancing, swimming, and just about every other activity you’d expect from a post-high school party. It was the best night we were able to have in years; we were careless as time flew by. At 3 A.M. the nightly PSA sounded through multiple radios, cutting through the music and silencing everyone for a long moment. Fear soaked the air as we all instinctively held our breath and waited; some of us refused to look up while others used the time to scan the tree lines and the waters’ edge. For once, there was no fog.

Finally, we realized that we were finally free, and the activities quickly picked back up. Our plane was to go hard until the sun rose to shine its warm glow of freedom upon us. Happiness was passed around between peers with tears of joy and loud statements of future potential.

Then, we heard the echo of a distant wall tear through our celebrations.

Fog descended directly upon us from the twinkling night sky. Covering us in a blanket of its inky haze of terror. I watched as it enveloped a friend of mine, who were known as long-term high-school sweathearts, who had just been planning an exciting, but likely fruitless, future together.

They clung to one another so closely that their tears surely began to blend together. Coming from the fog was a horrible howl mixed with my fellow peers’ loud and sobbing screams. In a blink of an eye, they were just gone. The fog touched against the ground in a thick, sludgy pillar made of grime and haze. Seemingly much thicker than was ever reported.

“Run! Everybody fucking run!” My friend Jake’s voice rang out from behind me, and bodies began to rush past me.

The fog revealed itself as living when it erupted with a withered screech, while tendrils of gray smoke unfolded themselves from its mass. No matter how far people tried to run, the fog remained right on their heels. People were grabbed around their ankles and dragged, screaming into the cloudy depths. I couldn’t do anything but watch as they clawed at the sand while being stolen away from our reality.

“Help! Please!” A girl’s voice began sobbing in my direction. Her name was Jess; we had been familiar acquaintances since kindergarten, and my eyes saw that she had a smaller tendril that spread out its end to resemble a gnarled hand wrapped tightly around her ankle.

I launched myself in her direction to grab for her hand. Our fingers interlocked, and I pulled her towards me. The tendrils were surprisingly strong as they resisted against my attempts to pull her free. I held on to her with one hand and quickly fished out the only weapon I had from my pocket with the other. It was a lighter, and I prayed that it could work as all I could do was flick it on. With no other plan, I pressed it firmly against the hazy fingers of the mist.

With a swift flick, the limb recoiled and bubbled against the small flame; Jess’ ankle became free, and I pulled her toward safety. She hobbled to her feet and moved along with me toward the area of parked cars. I saw that my passenger door was left open, so I instinctively grabbed her around the waist; then hoisted her up with surprising ease. She yelped in surprise as I shoved her inside the car with my keys, then slammed the door shut. My fist rapped against the glass, and I pointed down, “Lock it! Now!”

More screams erupted from behind me. I turned to see more people being grabbed up by the monstrous hands of the fog. From inside of it came black silhouettes of deformed bodies shuffling their way towards us. Glowing headlights moved behind me, lightening up this horrid image. In that moment I realized that I had a decision to make: hop back into the car with Jess and try to drive out of here toward safety or run back in with the hope of saving someone else. Realizing my lack of keys on me, my mind made the decision.

Before any of this happened, I don’t think I would have ever described myself as a brave person. My legs thought otherwise as they pushed for me against the shifting sand. With every step, I thudded deeper into the monster before me.

Armed only with a Bic lighter, I pushed further into the haze. The first person I made it to was being dragged toward the fog by a creature made of packed mud formed around a decayed skeleton. I immediately recognized him as a kid I barely knew from orchestra named Thomas. We didn’t need to be anything more than slight acquaintances for me to step up for him. I ran directly into the mud man shoulder first and it buckled under me with a sickening smack. Thomas had mud caked on his face and shirt as he took a shuddering breath when I reached him. He was shaking from fear but I helped steady him to his feet.

I grabbed him by the shoulder and pointed out to the parking lot, “Run as fast as you’re able to and get a ride out of here. Do you know Jess? She’s in a Green Sonata. Okay? She’ll take you.”

“What,” he breathed in a week’s worth of air, “what about you?”

“I’ll make it out, go!” I shoved him hard out of the fog then ran deeper into it. Screams and growls filtered through the murky air around me, and I saw a shape lying against the harshly contrasting sand. Once I made my way over to them, they sprang up tackling me to the ground.

The creature’s face was gaunt and pale but familiar to me. It was the face of the first person to vanish; along with the distorted face, their eyes were a void of gray swirls, with saliva dripping from broken, jagged teeth as it snarled towards me. A sound reminiscent of a chuckle echoed hollowly from its chest as the damp cloud of fog completely enveloped us. In just a single moment, I was gone.

Every second of those memories came flooding back to me as I opened my eyes against the sterile white light. Obsessive beeping of machines filled my eardrums as the world came into view. I was lying in a bed with IVs stuck in my arms and a tube providing air placed around my head and in my nose. There were multiple other beds around me filled with the recognizable faces of my classmates. I turned to my left, and next to me was Thomas. A whimper caught itself in my throat.

For a brief moment, I had hope, until I looked upon myself. My frame was unrecognizable to me as it was thin and emaciated. On my wrist was a paper band that I had to squint in order to see. Tears began to settle themselves in my eyes as I read it. Only my name and a date were written on it:

Evan Larson

08-26-2026

Two months.

Two entire months had passed since that night. Stolen from me, I was supposed to be starting college in the next week, but now I was wasting away in the same hospital I was born in. Had I been here the entire time? Or did I fall victim to the fog?

Flashes of new memories played out against my mind. First was me after I met the fog; my body being lifted and dropped against a harsh wind current repeatedly while the freezing air cut sharply against my skin. With every breath, it felt like my lungs were left tarnished and bleeding as crystals of ice formed within them. I blacked out until my back pressed against warm concrete. There I was, attempting to stumble home on legs made of unsettled Jell-O, the door flying open with Dad rushing towards me, me falling into his embrace.

I sobbed quietly to myself, hoping that at least Jess had made it out. Praying that my actions weren’t completely meaningless and I was able to prevent this hell being thrust upon somebody else. Those first few days were hard; we remained in a state of quarantine so they could test us repeatedly to make sure we were healthy. As you may know, the fog returned us, but it in a brand new state. No scars, no marks; and fresh, almost translucent, doughy skin. Before I was taken, I had a faded scar on my left hand from a skateboarding accident when I was 10. Memories of that event, and its pain, still lived within my head, but there was no longer a physical mark to accompany it.

Some of us didn’t wake up. One of those was Thomas; he continued to lay with a ventilator shoved down his throat and IVs sticking, providing all of his body’s basic needs. They separated us between a wall of glass, the awake in a psych ward and the asleep locked in a sick bay. After about a week, our first adult was added to the sick bay. I recognized him as the city coroner from election seasons throughout my life, and soon after him came Mike. He looked more like himself compared to when I saw that inhuman creature wearing his skin.

Days went by as he confessed a terrifying story about his first few waking hours. Apparently, he was the cause for the coroner falling victim to the fog due to him resurrecting himself on the table then involuntarily producing it from his mouth when threatened. Now he’s in here with us, and the security around us grew tighter. They reinforced the glass between our families and us during visitations, then cut the hours shorter as more testing was done. Eventually, we were allowed time outside during the day as long as we were fenced in and watched. I found Mike sitting alone in the yard one day, staring absently through the fence.

“How’s it going?”

Mike turned to me and sighed, “Better to get blood drawn constantly.” He rubbed the blue wrap running around his pale elbow aimlessly.

I sat next to him, quiet at first. “Do you remember anything?”

He shook his head at me. “Just that it was cold and…wet. You?”

“It was painful,” I sighed, slightly jealous of his response. “It felt like I was ripped apart and frozen back together repeatedly.”

Mike shuddered in response without saying a word. I looked up at his near-flawless face, besides new freckles starting to peek through. The memory of that creature sang through my memories again, and I opened my mouth to speak before he dropped something on me. “I don’t think we’re the real us.”

I couldn’t bring myself to fit this statement because I was feeling it too. I remember what life felt like beforehand, and now I feel as if I’d been hollowed out and replaced with a copy of my own memories. My mind raced with curiosity at the thought of the disfigured creature and how that might be what happened to the ones who came before us.

Yelling erupted behind us as people in protective suits tried to push back a crowd of people snarling angrily. Mike and I had failed to notice how the sun was now blocked out completely by a thick layer of fog once again. This was now the second time it showed itself during the day, and it began to growl at the same pitch as the people attempting to barge their way out. A heavy cloud enveloped the workers as they began to scream. When it evaporated, they were gone, and we saw the group of sleeping patients walking out in unison.

They were entranced by the sky as the heavy fog slipped back into their mouths. They slowly formed a large circle in the yard, then collapsed down to their knees. Around the fence were the pale, monstrous bodies that the fog had left behind. Each creature matched faces with one of the patients. We watched as they bent and ripped the fence in an attempt to make their way to the others. A large growl croaked out from every throat in an ear-piercing squeal as thick blobs of translucent mass ripped from their throats.

Mike grabbed at his own as a fully grown hand crawled its way out of it. I could hear his coughing and gagging until it loosened out with a wet pop. The globs all rose toward the greedy cloud above us, and soon it was over. The coma patients crumpled down with Mike following in defeat. When the fog left, so did the creatures of festering decay.

Leaving me alone, the only witness to this horrible experience.

Part I, all other parts linked.

To sum it all up that night, we honestly thought we were free. That’s all there was to it, really. For almost three years, my fellow graduates and I lived in constant fear of something so simple as a nightly fog.

When the disappearances started, a few families left the town without warning. They were beyond terrified for the safety of their children. Imagine being us, the kids; fuck, we were petrified. Dad and I were part of the group that couldn’t leave; his job and both of our entire lives were spent here. So I locked in and worked harder than I ever had to make our way out, unscathed for both of us.

We all did.

We worked our asses off throughout the years to make sure we could get into great schools far away from this nightmare. When my acceptance letter finally arrived, Dad and I celebrated as it was far from being two states away. Dad began to look for a new job in the area so there was never a need for me to come back; things were starting to look up. The best part for me was that I finally turned 18. Over the last few months of high school, I held my breath as all of my friends also entered their young adult stage of life with me.

Of course, not all of us turned 18 by graduation. The ones who did were starting to feel invincible, you know?

We started to stay out later past the curfew we’d grown accustomed to, but there was always that primal fear that made sure we made it home way before 3. Next thing we knew was that it was finally time for graduation. We wanted to celebrate our newly found courage and freedom against our town’s sickness, so we planned a giant graduation party out by the lake. We also played it smart and made sure that everybody was 18 or over in order to attend.

It’s terrifying how little we truly understood the effect of the fog itself.

The party was off to an incredibly incredible start; there was drinking, smoking, dancing, swimming, and just about every other activity you’d expect from a post-high school party. It was the best night we were able to have in years; we were careless as time flew by. At 3 A.M. the nightly PSA sounded through multiple radios, cutting through the music and silencing everyone for a long moment. Fear soaked the air as we all instinctively held our breath and waited; some of us refused to look up while others used the time to scan the tree lines and the waters’ edge. For once, there was no fog.

Finally, we realized that we were finally free, and the activities quickly picked back up. Our plane was to go hard until the sun rose to shine its warm glow of freedom upon us. Happiness was passed around between peers with tears of joy and loud statements of future potential.

Then, we heard the echo of a distant wall tear through our celebrations.

Fog descended directly upon us from the twinkling night sky. Covering us in a blanket of its inky haze of terror. I watched as it enveloped a friend of mine, who were known as long-term high-school sweathearts, who had just been planning an exciting, but likely fruitless, future together.

They clung to one another so closely that their tears surely began to blend together. Coming from the fog was a horrible howl mixed with my fellow peers’ loud and sobbing screams. In a blink of an eye, they were just gone. The fog touched against the ground in a thick, sludgy pillar made of grime and haze. Seemingly much thicker than was ever reported.

“Run! Everybody fucking run!” My friend Jake’s voice rang out from behind me, and bodies began to rush past me.

The fog revealed itself as living when it erupted with a withered screech, while tendrils of gray smoke unfolded themselves from its mass. No matter how far people tried to run, the fog remained right on their heels. People were grabbed around their ankles and dragged, screaming into the cloudy depths. I couldn’t do anything but watch as they clawed at the sand while being stolen away from our reality.

“Help! Please!” A girl’s voice began sobbing in my direction. Her name was Jess; we had been familiar acquaintances since kindergarten, and my eyes saw that she had a smaller tendril that spread out its end to resemble a gnarled hand wrapped tightly around her ankle.

I launched myself in her direction to grab for her hand. Our fingers interlocked, and I pulled her towards me. The tendrils were surprisingly strong as they resisted against my attempts to pull her free. I held on to her with one hand and quickly fished out the only weapon I had from my pocket with the other. It was a lighter, and I prayed that it could work as all I could do was flick it on. With no other plan, I pressed it firmly against the hazy fingers of the mist.

With a swift flick, the limb recoiled and bubbled against the small flame; Jess’ ankle became free, and I pulled her toward safety. She hobbled to her feet and moved along with me toward the area of parked cars. I saw that my passenger door was left open, so I instinctively grabbed her around the waist; then hoisted her up with surprising ease. She yelped in surprise as I shoved her inside the car with my keys, then slammed the door shut. My fist rapped against the glass, and I pointed down, “Lock it! Now!”

More screams erupted from behind me. I turned to see more people being grabbed up by the monstrous hands of the fog. From inside of it came black silhouettes of deformed bodies shuffling their way towards us. Glowing headlights moved behind me, lightening up this horrid image. In that moment I realized that I had a decision to make: hop back into the car with Jess and try to drive out of here toward safety or run back in with the hope of saving someone else. Realizing my lack of keys on me, my mind made the decision.

Before any of this happened, I don’t think I would have ever described myself as a brave person. My legs thought otherwise as they pushed for me against the shifting sand. With every step, I thudded deeper into the monster before me.

Armed only with a Bic lighter, I pushed further into the haze. The first person I made it to was being dragged toward the fog by a creature made of packed mud formed around a decayed skeleton. I immediately recognized him as a kid I barely knew from orchestra named Thomas. We didn’t need to be anything more than slight acquaintances for me to step up for him. I ran directly into the mud man shoulder first and it buckled under me with a sickening smack. Thomas had mud caked on his face and shirt as he took a shuddering breath when I reached him. He was shaking from fear but I helped steady him to his feet.

I grabbed him by the shoulder and pointed out to the parking lot, “Run as fast as you’re able to and get a ride out of here. Do you know Jess? She’s in a Green Sonata. Okay? She’ll take you.”

“What,” he breathed in a week’s worth of air, “what about you?”

“I’ll make it out, go!” I shoved him hard out of the fog then ran deeper into it. Screams and growls filtered through the murky air around me, and I saw a shape lying against the harshly contrasting sand. Once I made my way over to them, they sprang up tackling me to the ground.

The creature’s face was gaunt and pale but familiar to me. It was the face of the first person to vanish; along with the distorted face, their eyes were a void of gray swirls, with saliva dripping from broken, jagged teeth as it snarled towards me. A sound reminiscent of a chuckle echoed hollowly from its chest as the damp cloud of fog completely enveloped us. In just a single moment, I was gone.

Every second of those memories came flooding back to me as I opened my eyes against the sterile white light. Obsessive beeping of machines filled my eardrums as the world came into view. I was lying in a bed with IVs stuck in my arms and a tube providing air placed around my head and in my nose. There were multiple other beds around me filled with the recognizable faces of my classmates. I turned to my left, and next to me was Thomas. A whimper caught itself in my throat.

For a brief moment, I had hope, until I looked upon myself. My frame was unrecognizable to me as it was thin and emaciated. On my wrist was a paper band that I had to squint in order to see. Tears began to settle themselves in my eyes as I read it. Only my name and a date were written on it:

Evan Larson

08-26-2026

Two months.

Two entire months had passed since that night. Stolen from me, I was supposed to be starting college in the next week, but now I was wasting away in the same hospital I was born in. Had I been here the entire time? Or did I fall victim to the fog?

Flashes of new memories played out against my mind. First was me after I met the fog; my body being lifted and dropped against a harsh wind current repeatedly while the freezing air cut sharply against my skin. With every breath, it felt like my lungs were left tarnished and bleeding as crystals of ice formed within them. I blacked out until my back pressed against warm concrete. There I was, attempting to stumble home on legs made of unsettled Jell-O, the door flying open with Dad rushing towards me, me falling into his embrace.

I sobbed quietly to myself, hoping that at least Jess had made it out. Praying that my actions weren’t completely meaningless and I was able to prevent this hell being thrust upon somebody else. Those first few days were hard; we remained in a state of quarantine so they could test us repeatedly to make sure we were healthy. As you may know, the fog returned us, but it in a brand new state. No scars, no marks; and fresh, almost translucent, doughy skin. Before I was taken, I had a faded scar on my left hand from a skateboarding accident when I was 10. Memories of that event, and its pain, still lived within my head, but there was no longer a physical mark to accompany it.

Some of us didn’t wake up. One of those was Thomas; he continued to lay with a ventilator shoved down his throat and IVs sticking, providing all of his body’s basic needs. They separated us between a wall of glass, the awake in a psych ward and the asleep locked in a sick bay. After about a week, our first adult was added to the sick bay. I recognized him as the city coroner from election seasons throughout my life, and soon after him came Mike. He looked more like himself compared to when I saw that inhuman creature wearing his skin.

Days went by as he confessed a terrifying story about his first few waking hours. Apparently, he was the cause for the coroner falling victim to the fog due to him resurrecting himself on the table then involuntarily producing it from his mouth when threatened. Now he’s in here with us, and the security around us grew tighter. They reinforced the glass between our families and us during visitations, then cut the hours shorter as more testing was done. Eventually, we were allowed time outside during the day as long as we were fenced in and watched. I found Mike sitting alone in the yard one day, staring absently through the fence.

“How’s it going?”

Mike turned to me and sighed, “Better to get blood drawn constantly.” He rubbed the blue wrap running around his pale elbow aimlessly.

I sat next to him, quiet at first. “Do you remember anything?”

He shook his head at me. “Just that it was cold and…wet. You?”

“It was painful,” I sighed, slightly jealous of his response. “It felt like I was ripped apart and frozen back together repeatedly.”

Mike shuddered in response without saying a word. I looked up at his near-flawless face, besides new freckles starting to peek through. The memory of that creature sang through my memories again, and I opened my mouth to speak before he dropped something on me. “I don’t think we’re the real us.”

I couldn’t bring myself to fit this statement because I was feeling it too. I remember what life felt like beforehand, and now I feel as if I’d been hollowed out and replaced with a copy of my own memories. My mind raced with curiosity at the thought of the disfigured creature and how that might be what happened to the ones who came before us.

Yelling erupted behind us as people in protective suits tried to push back a crowd of people snarling angrily. Mike and I had failed to notice how the sun was now blocked out completely by a thick layer of fog once again. This was now the second time it showed itself during the day, and it began to growl at the same pitch as the people attempting to barge their way out. A heavy cloud enveloped the workers as they began to scream. When it evaporated, they were gone, and we saw the group of sleeping patients walking out in unison.

They were entranced by the sky as the heavy fog slipped back into their mouths. They slowly formed a large circle in the yard, then collapsed down to their knees. Around the fence were the pale, monstrous bodies that the fog had left behind. Each creature matched faces with one of the patients. We watched as they bent and ripped the fence in an attempt to make their way to the others. A large growl croaked out from every throat in an ear-piercing squeal as thick blobs of translucent mass ripped from their throats.

Mike grabbed at his own as a fully grown hand crawled its way out of it. I could hear his coughing and gagging until it loosened out with a wet pop. The globs all rose toward the greedy cloud above us, and soon it was over. The coma patients crumpled down with Mike following in defeat. When the fog left, so did the creatures of festering decay.

Leaving me alone, the only witness to this horrible experience.

To sum it all up that night, we honestly thought we were free. That’s all there was to it, really. For almost three years, my fellow graduates and I lived in constant fear of something so simple as a nightly fog.

When the disappearances started, a few families left the town without warning. They were beyond terrified for the safety of their children. Imagine being us, the kids; fuck, we were petrified. Dad and I were part of the group that couldn’t leave; his job and both of our entire lives were spent here. So I locked in and worked harder than I ever had to make our way out, unscathed for both of us.

We all did.

We worked our asses off throughout the years to make sure we could get into great schools far away from this nightmare. When my acceptance letter finally arrived, Dad and I celebrated as it was far from being two states away. Dad began to look for a new job in the area so there was never a need for me to come back; things were starting to look up. The best part for me was that I finally turned 18. Over the last few months of high school, I held my breath as all of my friends also entered their young adult stage of life with me.

Of course, not all of us turned 18 by graduation. The ones who did were starting to feel invincible, you know?

We started to stay out later past the curfew we’d grown accustomed to, but there was always that primal fear that made sure we made it home way before 3. Next thing we knew was that it was finally time for graduation. We wanted to celebrate our newly found courage and freedom against our town’s sickness, so we planned a giant graduation party out by the lake. We also played it smart and made sure that everybody was 18 or over in order to attend.

It’s terrifying how little we truly understood the effect of the fog itself.

The party was off to an incredibly incredible start; there was drinking, smoking, dancing, swimming, and just about every other activity you’d expect from a post-high school party. It was the best night we were able to have in years; we were careless as time flew by. At 3 A.M. the nightly PSA sounded through multiple radios, cutting through the music and silencing everyone for a long moment. Fear soaked the air as we all instinctively held our breath and waited; some of us refused to look up while others used the time to scan the tree lines and the waters’ edge. For once, there was no fog.

Finally, we realized that we were finally free, and the activities quickly picked back up. Our plane was to go hard until the sun rose to shine its warm glow of freedom upon us. Happiness was passed around between peers with tears of joy and loud statements of future potential.

Then, we heard the echo of a distant wall tear through our celebrations.

Fog descended directly upon us from the twinkling night sky. Covering us in a blanket of its inky haze of terror. I watched as it enveloped a friend of mine, who were known as long-term high-school sweathearts, who had just been planning an exciting, but likely fruitless, future together.

They clung to one another so closely that their tears surely began to blend together. Coming from the fog was a horrible howl mixed with my fellow peers’ loud and sobbing screams. In a blink of an eye, they were just gone. The fog touched against the ground in a thick, sludgy pillar made of grime and haze. Seemingly much thicker than was ever reported.

“Run! Everybody fucking run!” My friend Jake’s voice rang out from behind me, and bodies began to rush past me.

The fog revealed itself as living when it erupted with a withered screech, while tendrils of gray smoke unfolded themselves from its mass. No matter how far people tried to run, the fog remained right on their heels. People were grabbed around their ankles and dragged, screaming into the cloudy depths. I couldn’t do anything but watch as they clawed at the sand while being stolen away from our reality.

“Help! Please!” A girl’s voice began sobbing in my direction. Her name was Jess; we had been familiar acquaintances since kindergarten, and my eyes saw that she had a smaller tendril that spread out its end to resemble a gnarled hand wrapped tightly around her ankle.

I launched myself in her direction to grab for her hand. Our fingers interlocked, and I pulled her towards me. The tendrils were surprisingly strong as they resisted against my attempts to pull her free. I held on to her with one hand and quickly fished out the only weapon I had from my pocket with the other. It was a lighter, and I prayed that it could work as all I could do was flick it on. With no other plan, I pressed it firmly against the hazy fingers of the mist.

With a swift flick, the limb recoiled and bubbled against the small flame; Jess’ ankle became free, and I pulled her toward safety. She hobbled to her feet and moved along with me toward the area of parked cars. I saw that my passenger door was left open, so I instinctively grabbed her around the waist; then hoisted her up with surprising ease. She yelped in surprise as I shoved her inside the car with my keys, then slammed the door shut. My fist rapped against the glass, and I pointed down, “Lock it! Now!”

More screams erupted from behind me. I turned to see more people being grabbed up by the monstrous hands of the fog. From inside of it came black silhouettes of deformed bodies shuffling their way towards us. Glowing headlights moved behind me, lightening up this horrid image. In that moment I realized that I had a decision to make: hop back into the car with Jess and try to drive out of here toward safety or run back in with the hope of saving someone else. Realizing my lack of keys on me, my mind made the decision.

Before any of this happened, I don’t think I would have ever described myself as a brave person. My legs thought otherwise as they pushed for me against the shifting sand. With every step, I thudded deeper into the monster before me.

Armed only with a Bic lighter, I pushed further into the haze. The first person I made it to was being dragged toward the fog by a creature made of packed mud formed around a decayed skeleton. I immediately recognized him as a kid I barely knew from orchestra named Thomas. We didn’t need to be anything more than slight acquaintances for me to step up for him. I ran directly into the mud man shoulder first and it buckled under me with a sickening smack. Thomas had mud caked on his face and shirt as he took a shuddering breath when I reached him. He was shaking from fear but I helped steady him to his feet.

I grabbed him by the shoulder and pointed out to the parking lot, “Run as fast as you’re able to and get a ride out of here. Do you know Jess? She’s in a Green Sonata. Okay? She’ll take you.”

“What,” he breathed in a week’s worth of air, “what about you?”

“I’ll make it out, go!” I shoved him hard out of the fog then ran deeper into it. Screams and growls filtered through the murky air around me, and I saw a shape lying against the harshly contrasting sand. Once I made my way over to them, they sprang up tackling me to the ground.

The creature’s face was gaunt and pale but familiar to me. It was the face of the first person to vanish; along with the distorted face, their eyes were a void of gray swirls, with saliva dripping from broken, jagged teeth as it snarled towards me. A sound reminiscent of a chuckle echoed hollowly from its chest as the damp cloud of fog completely enveloped us. In just a single moment, I was gone.

Every second of those memories came flooding back to me as I opened my eyes against the sterile white light. Obsessive beeping of machines filled my eardrums as the world came into view. I was lying in a bed with IVs stuck in my arms and a tube providing air placed around my head and in my nose. There were multiple other beds around me filled with the recognizable faces of my classmates. I turned to my left, and next to me was Thomas. A whimper caught itself in my throat.

For a brief moment, I had hope, until I looked upon myself. My frame was unrecognizable to me as it was thin and emaciated. On my wrist was a paper band that I had to squint in order to see. Tears began to settle themselves in my eyes as I read it. Only my name and a date were written on it:

Evan Larson

08-26-2026

Two months.

Two entire months had passed since that night. Stolen from me, I was supposed to be starting college in the next week, but now I was wasting away in the same hospital I was born in. Had I been here the entire time? Or did I fall victim to the fog?

Flashes of new memories played out against my mind. First was me after I met the fog; my body being lifted and dropped against a harsh wind current repeatedly while the freezing air cut sharply against my skin. With every breath, it felt like my lungs were left tarnished and bleeding as crystals of ice formed within them. I blacked out until my back pressed against warm concrete. There I was, attempting to stumble home on legs made of unsettled Jell-O, the door flying open with Dad rushing towards me, me falling into his embrace.

I sobbed quietly to myself, hoping that at least Jess had made it out. Praying that my actions weren’t completely meaningless and I was able to prevent this hell being thrust upon somebody else. Those first few days were hard; we remained in a state of quarantine so they could test us repeatedly to make sure we were healthy. As you may know, the fog returned us, but it in a brand new state. No scars, no marks; and fresh, almost translucent, doughy skin. Before I was taken, I had a faded scar on my left hand from a skateboarding accident when I was 10. Memories of that event, and its pain, still lived within my head, but there was no longer a physical mark to accompany it.

Some of us didn’t wake up. One of those was Thomas; he continued to lay with a ventilator shoved down his throat and IVs sticking, providing all of his body’s basic needs. They separated us between a wall of glass, the awake in a psych ward and the asleep locked in a sick bay. After about a week, our first adult was added to the sick bay. I recognized him as the city coroner from election seasons throughout my life, and soon after him came Mike. He looked more like himself compared to when I saw that inhuman creature wearing his skin.

Days went by as he confessed a terrifying story about his first few waking hours. Apparently, he was the cause for the coroner falling victim to the fog due to him resurrecting himself on the table then involuntarily producing it from his mouth when threatened. Now he’s in here with us, and the security around us grew tighter. They reinforced the glass between our families and us during visitations, then cut the hours shorter as more testing was done. Eventually, we were allowed time outside during the day as long as we were fenced in and watched. I found Mike sitting alone in the yard one day, staring absently through the fence.

“How’s it going?”

Mike turned to me and sighed, “Better to get blood drawn constantly.” He rubbed the blue wrap running around his pale elbow aimlessly.

I sat next to him, quiet at first. “Do you remember anything?”

He shook his head at me. “Just that it was cold and…wet. You?”

“It was painful,” I sighed, slightly jealous of his response. “It felt like I was ripped apart and frozen back together repeatedly.”

Mike shuddered in response without saying a word. I looked up at his near-flawless face, besides new freckles starting to peek through. The memory of that creature sang through my memories again, and I opened my mouth to speak before he dropped something on me. “I don’t think we’re the real us.”

I couldn’t bring myself to fit this statement because I was feeling it too. I remember what life felt like beforehand, and now I feel as if I’d been hollowed out and replaced with a copy of my own memories. My mind raced with curiosity at the thought of the disfigured creature and how that might be what happened to the ones who came before us.

Yelling erupted behind us as people in protective suits tried to push back a crowd of people snarling angrily. Mike and I had failed to notice how the sun was now blocked out completely by a thick layer of fog once again. This was now the second time it showed itself during the day, and it began to growl at the same pitch as the people attempting to barge their way out. A heavy cloud enveloped the workers as they began to scream. When it evaporated, they were gone, and we saw the group of sleeping patients walking out in unison.

They were entranced by the sky as the heavy fog slipped back into their mouths. They slowly formed a large circle in the yard, then collapsed down to their knees. Around the fence were the pale, monstrous bodies that the fog had left behind. Each creature matched faces with one of the patients. We watched as they bent and ripped the fence in an attempt to make their way to the others. A large growl croaked out from every throat in an ear-piercing squeal as thick blobs of translucent mass ripped from their throats.

Mike grabbed at his own as a fully grown hand crawled its way out of it. I could hear his coughing and gagging until it loosened out with a wet pop. The globs all rose toward the greedy cloud above us, and soon it was over. The coma patients crumpled down with Mike following in defeat. When the fog left, so did the creatures of festering decay.

Leaving me alone, the only witness to this horrible experience.

Part I, all other parts linked.

To sum it all up that night, we honestly thought we were free. That’s all there was to it, really. For almost three years, my fellow graduates and I lived in constant fear of something so simple as a nightly fog.

When the disappearances started, a few families left the town without warning. They were beyond terrified for the safety of their children. Imagine being us, the kids; fuck, we were petrified. Dad and I were part of the group that couldn’t leave; his job and both of our entire lives were spent here. So I locked in and worked harder than I ever had to make our way out, unscathed for both of us.

We all did.

We worked our asses off throughout the years to make sure we could get into great schools far away from this nightmare. When my acceptance letter finally arrived, Dad and I celebrated as it was far from being two states away. Dad began to look for a new job in the area so there was never a need for me to come back; things were starting to look up. The best part for me was that I finally turned 18. Over the last few months of high school, I held my breath as all of my friends also entered their young adult stage of life with me.

Of course, not all of us turned 18 by graduation. The ones who did were starting to feel invincible, you know?

We started to stay out later past the curfew we’d grown accustomed to, but there was always that primal fear that made sure we made it home way before 3. Next thing we knew was that it was finally time for graduation. We wanted to celebrate our newly found courage and freedom against our town’s sickness, so we planned a giant graduation party out by the lake. We also played it smart and made sure that everybody was 18 or over in order to attend.

It’s terrifying how little we truly understood the effect of the fog itself.

The party was off to an incredibly incredible start; there was drinking, smoking, dancing, swimming, and just about every other activity you’d expect from a post-high school party. It was the best night we were able to have in years; we were careless as time flew by. At 3 A.M. the nightly PSA sounded through multiple radios, cutting through the music and silencing everyone for a long moment. Fear soaked the air as we all instinctively held our breath and waited; some of us refused to look up while others used the time to scan the tree lines and the waters’ edge. For once, there was no fog.

Finally, we realized that we were finally free, and the activities quickly picked back up. Our plane was to go hard until the sun rose to shine its warm glow of freedom upon us. Happiness was passed around between peers with tears of joy and loud statements of future potential.

Then, we heard the echo of a distant wall tear through our celebrations.

Fog descended directly upon us from the twinkling night sky. Covering us in a blanket of its inky haze of terror. I watched as it enveloped a friend of mine, who were known as long-term high-school sweathearts, who had just been planning an exciting, but likely fruitless, future together.

They clung to one another so closely that their tears surely began to blend together. Coming from the fog was a horrible howl mixed with my fellow peers’ loud and sobbing screams. In a blink of an eye, they were just gone. The fog touched against the ground in a thick, sludgy pillar made of grime and haze. Seemingly much thicker than was ever reported.

“Run! Everybody fucking run!” My friend Jake’s voice rang out from behind me, and bodies began to rush past me.

The fog revealed itself as living when it erupted with a withered screech, while tendrils of gray smoke unfolded themselves from its mass. No matter how far people tried to run, the fog remained right on their heels. People were grabbed around their ankles and dragged, screaming into the cloudy depths. I couldn’t do anything but watch as they clawed at the sand while being stolen away from our reality.

“Help! Please!” A girl’s voice began sobbing in my direction. Her name was Jess; we had been familiar acquaintances since kindergarten, and my eyes saw that she had a smaller tendril that spread out its end to resemble a gnarled hand wrapped tightly around her ankle.

I launched myself in her direction to grab for her hand. Our fingers interlocked, and I pulled her towards me. The tendrils were surprisingly strong as they resisted against my attempts to pull her free. I held on to her with one hand and quickly fished out the only weapon I had from my pocket with the other. It was a lighter, and I prayed that it could work as all I could do was flick it on. With no other plan, I pressed it firmly against the hazy fingers of the mist.

With a swift flick, the limb recoiled and bubbled against the small flame; Jess’ ankle became free, and I pulled her toward safety. She hobbled to her feet and moved along with me toward the area of parked cars. I saw that my passenger door was left open, so I instinctively grabbed her around the waist; then hoisted her up with surprising ease. She yelped in surprise as I shoved her inside the car with my keys, then slammed the door shut. My fist rapped against the glass, and I pointed down, “Lock it! Now!”

More screams erupted from behind me. I turned to see more people being grabbed up by the monstrous hands of the fog. From inside of it came black silhouettes of deformed bodies shuffling their way towards us. Glowing headlights moved behind me, lightening up this horrid image. In that moment I realized that I had a decision to make: hop back into the car with Jess and try to drive out of here toward safety or run back in with the hope of saving someone else. Realizing my lack of keys on me, my mind made the decision.

Before any of this happened, I don’t think I would have ever described myself as a brave person. My legs thought otherwise as they pushed for me against the shifting sand. With every step, I thudded deeper into the monster before me.

Armed only with a Bic lighter, I pushed further into the haze. The first person I made it to was being dragged toward the fog by a creature made of packed mud formed around a decayed skeleton. I immediately recognized him as a kid I barely knew from orchestra named Thomas. We didn’t need to be anything more than slight acquaintances for me to step up for him. I ran directly into the mud man shoulder first and it buckled under me with a sickening smack. Thomas had mud caked on his face and shirt as he took a shuddering breath when I reached him. He was shaking from fear but I helped steady him to his feet.

I grabbed him by the shoulder and pointed out to the parking lot, “Run as fast as you’re able to and get a ride out of here. Do you know Jess? She’s in a Green Sonata. Okay? She’ll take you.”

“What,” he breathed in a week’s worth of air, “what about you?”

“I’ll make it out, go!” I shoved him hard out of the fog then ran deeper into it. Screams and growls filtered through the murky air around me, and I saw a shape lying against the harshly contrasting sand. Once I made my way over to them, they sprang up tackling me to the ground.

The creature’s face was gaunt and pale but familiar to me. It was the face of the first person to vanish; along with the distorted face, their eyes were a void of gray swirls, with saliva dripping from broken, jagged teeth as it snarled towards me. A sound reminiscent of a chuckle echoed hollowly from its chest as the damp cloud of fog completely enveloped us. In just a single moment, I was gone.

Every second of those memories came flooding back to me as I opened my eyes against the sterile white light. Obsessive beeping of machines filled my eardrums as the world came into view. I was lying in a bed with IVs stuck in my arms and a tube providing air placed around my head and in my nose. There were multiple other beds around me filled with the recognizable faces of my classmates. I turned to my left, and next to me was Thomas. A whimper caught itself in my throat.

For a brief moment, I had hope, until I looked upon myself. My frame was unrecognizable to me as it was thin and emaciated. On my wrist was a paper band that I had to squint in order to see. Tears began to settle themselves in my eyes as I read it. Only my name and a date were written on it:

Evan Larson

08-26-2026

Two months.

Two entire months had passed since that night. Stolen from me, I was supposed to be starting college in the next week, but now I was wasting away in the same hospital I was born in. Had I been here the entire time? Or did I fall victim to the fog?

Flashes of new memories played out against my mind. First was me after I met the fog; my body being lifted and dropped against a harsh wind current repeatedly while the freezing air cut sharply against my skin. With every breath, it felt like my lungs were left tarnished and bleeding as crystals of ice formed within them. I blacked out until my back pressed against warm concrete. There I was, attempting to stumble home on legs made of unsettled Jell-O, the door flying open with Dad rushing towards me, me falling into his embrace.

I sobbed quietly to myself, hoping that at least Jess had made it out. Praying that my actions weren’t completely meaningless and I was able to prevent this hell being thrust upon somebody else. Those first few days were hard; we remained in a state of quarantine so they could test us repeatedly to make sure we were healthy. As you may know, the fog returned us, but it in a brand new state. No scars, no marks; and fresh, almost translucent, doughy skin. Before I was taken, I had a faded scar on my left hand from a skateboarding accident when I was 10. Memories of that event, and its pain, still lived within my head, but there was no longer a physical mark to accompany it.

Some of us didn’t wake up. One of those was Thomas; he continued to lay with a ventilator shoved down his throat and IVs sticking, providing all of his body’s basic needs. They separated us between a wall of glass, the awake in a psych ward and the asleep locked in a sick bay. After about a week, our first adult was added to the sick bay. I recognized him as the city coroner from election seasons throughout my life, and soon after him came Mike. He looked more like himself compared to when I saw that inhuman creature wearing his skin.

Days went by as he confessed a terrifying story about his first few waking hours. Apparently, he was the cause for the coroner falling victim to the fog due to him resurrecting himself on the table then involuntarily producing it from his mouth when threatened. Now he’s in here with us, and the security around us grew tighter. They reinforced the glass between our families and us during visitations, then cut the hours shorter as more testing was done. Eventually, we were allowed time outside during the day as long as we were fenced in and watched. I found Mike sitting alone in the yard one day, staring absently through the fence.

“How’s it going?”

Mike turned to me and sighed, “Better to get blood drawn constantly.” He rubbed the blue wrap running around his pale elbow aimlessly.

I sat next to him, quiet at first. “Do you remember anything?”

He shook his head at me. “Just that it was cold and…wet. You?”

“It was painful,” I sighed, slightly jealous of his response. “It felt like I was ripped apart and frozen back together repeatedly.”

Mike shuddered in response without saying a word. I looked up at his near-flawless face, besides new freckles starting to peek through. The memory of that creature sang through my memories again, and I opened my mouth to speak before he dropped something on me. “I don’t think we’re the real us.”

I couldn’t bring myself to fit this statement because I was feeling it too. I remember what life felt like beforehand, and now I feel as if I’d been hollowed out and replaced with a copy of my own memories. My mind raced with curiosity at the thought of the disfigured creature and how that might be what happened to the ones who came before us.

Yelling erupted behind us as people in protective suits tried to push back a crowd of people snarling angrily. Mike and I had failed to notice how the sun was now blocked out completely by a thick layer of fog once again. This was now the second time it showed itself during the day, and it began to growl at the same pitch as the people attempting to barge their way out. A heavy cloud enveloped the workers as they began to scream. When it evaporated, they were gone, and we saw the group of sleeping patients walking out in unison.

They were entranced by the sky as the heavy fog slipped back into their mouths. They slowly formed a large circle in the yard, then collapsed down to their knees. Around the fence were the pale, monstrous bodies that the fog had left behind. Each creature matched faces with one of the patients. We watched as they bent and ripped the fence in an attempt to make their way to the others. A large growl croaked out from every throat in an ear-piercing squeal as thick blobs of translucent mass ripped from their throats.

Mike grabbed at his own as a fully grown hand crawled its way out of it. I could hear his coughing and gagging until it loosened out with a wet pop. The globs all rose toward the greedy cloud above us, and soon it was over. The coma patients crumpled down with Mike following in defeat. When the fog left, so did the creatures of festering decay.

Leaving me alone, the only witness to this horrible experience.

“One never knows the ending. One has to die to know exactly what happens after death, although Catholics have their hopes.”

- The last words of Sir Alfred Hitchcock

Choosing between a life of faithfulness, avoidance of hatred, and embarking on the path of good for the fellow man around you rather than living one focused on bitter hate, filling oneself with debauchery, or sin is supposed to mean something when you meet with the black swells of death. That’s what they taught me at least.

Humanity spends their short lives sitting amongst each other in pews while praising a power higher than they could ever imagine. Thinking to themselves that because of their inherent good of tithing and prayer, they are allowed access to be judgmental of the ones who choose to either sit amongst them or amongst others. Believing that they will achieve greatness in the world beyond ours whilst living within barely earns mediocrity as they use their nobility granted to them from their savior to divide people they deem less than themselves.

I do not speak of these misdeeds from a place of neutrality as I, myself, stood amongst those pews. Using the godliness of myself to be spiteful to those different than I. My parents raised me to believe that we were better because we gave to the Father who created us and we were sent on a mission to save all others. I spent my entire life this way so whenever I closed my eyes for the final time, I expected nothing less than absolute paradise to emerge ahead of me.

It was dark, limestone walls towered around with wooden staves attached to them lighting the way forward. The smell of burning animal fat and oil mixed with a familiar stench of untouched must seeping from the stone. I lay in on the floor atop a heap of petrified wrappings leaving a thin layer of black, sticky resin amongst my skin. Along the walls were hieroglyphs etched deep into the rock with the remnants of faded paintings that had once beautifully adorned them.

The wrappings crunched beneath me as I rose from the embrace that had welcomed me to this realm. In the dim light, my eyes attempted to follow the message described along the walls, but the meaning fell blankly to the folds of my spotty mind. Memories were coming back to me slowly, like a balloon with a dragging leak. I knew my past clearly, but the events leading to how I made it to where I am now were still filled with static.

With no help coming from the walls, I gave up on understanding any of it and began to make my way down the dim tunnel. I went from a main chamber down into a descending hallway adorned with more indecipherable images on the walls. Heat emitted from beyond the stone walls and pushed against my skin as I walked further downward. My eyes clenched as I prayed not to see the iron gates of Hell standing before me. Confusion struck as a figure appeared standing atop a small boat near the opening of the passage.

“Hello?” My voice was dry as it echoed off the limestone around me.

The figure was adorned entirely in pure white cloth and shimmering gold. It turned slowly towards me, and I realized that it had the head of a ram atop a man’s body. It beckoned silently toward me in an invitation to stand along with him on the deck of the boat. I was petrified with fear as the eyes of the goat stared through me, but I relented and made my way to him. The boat itself was a small, wooden barge with a low, flat deck and a curved back. Atop the deck was a small walled facade that was, presumably, the figure’s living quarters. The figure himself stood tall on the deck, holding a steering oar over the edge of the boat. There was nothing but empty air under the hull of the ship; I began to wonder how it was even staying afloat, let alone how it would move.

Underneath my feet echoed the creaking noises of the ship’s wooden deck. Reeds adorned the sides of it and the planking of the quarters built upon it. The man aboard towered above me and wordlessly pushed us away from the wooden port attached to the entrance of his realm. As we drifted along, I looked beneath us and saw a bountiful field of wheat and reeds. People lay in it, sleeping pleasantly as others swam in the rivers of fresh water. Calm washed over me the more I watched them meander around, magnificent light throughout the fields and upon those that resided despite the fact that above us was a cave ceiling. Some looked up towards us and gave a pleasant wave; I attempted to wave back but was distracted by immense heat coming from elsewhere around me.

I looked back towards where I began and saw an ocean of liquid fire and smoke erupting from it. Streams grew from out of its sides and surrounded the edges of the pleasant fields, unbeknownst to the ones who lived amongst it. Baboons guarded the shores and forced desperate souls back into its depths. Disturbing screams of torment echoed around us and it began to remind me of the verse from Revelations:

"But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."

My body convulsed with fear, as the realization of my finality became known to me. I was dead, it was a painful memory but I had died in a car accident. Unexpectedly, as I lay there dying, I sent out one final prayer to assure my way into heaven; but this was not the paradise that was promised for living a life of virtue. I turned to my ferryman and asked with a sob in my throat, “Please tell me, is this Hell? What sins did I commit to deserve this?”

He remained silent. Staring forward as he pushed us along the draft of air leading us deeper into this god-forsaken realm. There was a decaying temple emerging ahead of us; years of neglect and age caused destruction beyond measure to fall upon it.

There were statues representing pharaohs of old, crafted meticulously from marble that once stood stories tall but were now crumbling to dust. The temple itself was clearly once a grand pyramid, but one side had caved in to reveal once-glimmering treasures and bodies wrapped in linen suffering from varying stages of decay. Standing near the front entrance of the once-grand temple sat an identical wooden dock to the one we pushed away from earlier.

Our boat met softly against the dock, and my ferryman lifted his massive oar, then gestured outward with his hand. Telling me the next step along my path. I stepped down onto the groaning planks of the dock and turned to the man who had accompanied me; his hand remained outstretched. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of silver and copper coins, which I then placed in his hand and bowed respectfully to him, “Thank you.”

Before I could raise my head back up, the ferryman had already pushed off to sink deeper into the realm below us. I wished to have learned his name but found a sense of comfort in his quiet companionship as I now stood alone between the imposing facade ahead of me. With a shuddering breath, I stepped forward and into what lay ahead of me. Inside the temple was similar to the chamber I awoke in. Similar limestone walls, but the carvings inside were painted in magnificently bright colors. They looked wet still, as if no time had passed since the painter took the final strokes with his brush. The staves along the walls were glowing with an absurdly high luminosity.

I was in a small chamber with a wooden door directly ahead of me under the hieroglyphs. It contrasted against the decorated walls with a dull age of splintering wood hardened throughout time. Standing guard at the door was a hairless black dog. It barked in my direction and shifted its gaze towards a scale that sat next to it. On one side of it sat a lump of pulsing red meat shaped like a heart. I slipped a hand under my shirt and felt the cavity of where my heart once sat. Gear filled me as I looked to the other side and saw a single feather sitting upon it, lifting higher under the weight of its left side’s might. Once again, the dog barked, and my eyes shifted up to the carvings above the door; there I could make out a single familiar word, “COWARDICE.”

Memories flashed through my mind, and the door slowly fell open inward. It sat ajar with the sounds of quiet sobbing coming from the other side. The thought of what was on the other side terrified me to my core, and I had to resist the urge to turn back and plunge myself down into one of the roaring streams of fire beneath me. I shut my eyes tight in one last effort to pray, then, reluctantly, stepped through the door.

Once on the other side, I found myself standing on the back porch of a friend’s home. Under my right arm was a bundle of Bibles and sermon notes, while I had raised my left to knock. My friend Matthew and his wife, Joan, had missed the Wednesday service due to what they claimed was sickness, and I had promised to bring my notes to them for a small Bible study. The door was opened slightly ajar, and I could hear Joan crying softly from inside. My body froze in fear as I looked through the opened window, and I saw Matthew standing above her on the ground, half an empty bottle in one hand, and he was hitting her with the other.

The memories of this moment while I was living played in my head. I witnessed this and left. I went home and I prayed for hours for God to make these things right between them. At the next Sunday service, I couldn’t look at Matthew and Joan refused to look at me; purple bruising showing under her makeup. At the time I didn’t know it but she saw me leave through the window. I can now see her staring at me like a savior but in life I was too much of a coward to be of any sort. I’m not sure what happened to Joan in life since they had moved soon after this moment but reliving it; I felt the books and note papers fall from my arm. I pushed the door open with a hard shove from my shoulder and stormed inside the house.

My hands moved on their own in rage as I grabbed hold of Matthew’s figure and when he turned, I was met face to face with a screaming baboon. Fear lived without space in my heart as I felt the familiar heat come off of its rotting breath. I raised my fist and began slamming in hard into the face of the creature. Its teeth scraped against my knuckles but we fell down to the ground. Joan faded from the scene and I remained, slamming the creature’s face repeatedly. Its horrific screaming shuddered under gurgling coughs but I continued, more or less beating the sin of cowardice from my very being.

That’s when a wave of heat erupted out from the baboon-human hybrid beneath me and I found myself in another limestone chamber. The dog was there standing guard of another door and watching as the weight of the feather began to equal out slightly to my heart. Neither of us spoke, the dog was now standing only on its hind legs but was adorned in similar gold jewelry to that of the ferryman. He gestured his glistening nose to the door of stone behind him. Above it formed the word “UNBELIEVING”.

My eyes looked down to my crimson-stained hands, all torn and shredded from the teeth of the baboon. I had no prior idea of what would be ahead of me, but once I witnessed the lightening of my heart, I stepped forward into it. There was no memory on the other side; there was only a platform sitting high above the ocean of fire. Another sat on the other side of the gap with a loose-looking line providing the only noticeable path through it. On either side sat rows of hollering baboons throwing foul-smelling muck towards each other. One stood at the door ahead of me with splintered teeth and bleeding gums. I stepped forward and looked down to the pit of flames; swimming in it was a crocodile the size of a building snapping up at me, wanting to drag me to the depths of my second death.

Throughout my entire life, I had done nothing but provide worship and belief to a singular God of all-mighty power, but now I stand with a single choice to make. I had never allowed belief in myself; I had to put faith in that I would make it to the other side. So I stepped back and ran into a leap toward the thin line. I caught myself in the slack of the line. Under my weight, it buckled, and I slid down with an acceptance of my end as the crocodile’s mouth came into view. The line caught with only feet remaining between us; the crocodile fell back to the side while the noise of the baboons fell completely silent.

My arms pulled me forward along the line; with every movement, there was a quick shot of burning pain through the muscles in my limbs. In life, I never had much of a sturdy build, but now it’s all I could rely on to make it towards freedom. Heat radiated against my legs, cooking them from the sheer power of the lake beneath me. My eyes looked toward the injured baboon as his resilience seemed to mock me. I pulled harder against the pain with the thin line digging deep into my palms while blood leaked from them.

With the slack continuing to lower, mixing with the lubricating nature of fresh blood, there was a high chance that I could have slipped at any given moment. So, I began measuring up the distance between myself and the platform. It was a long shot, but I started to swing back and forth to gain any ounce of momentum, and then I flung myself forward. My shoulder smacked hard against the limestone platform, and every baboon erupted in a celebratory cry. The injured one that I once considered an enemy sized me up and pushed the door open ahead of me.

Once again stepping into an identical chamber, the dog had grown into a towering man with the head of the dog. He guarded the final door and held my heart in his hand. Unlike the other being, he looked down at me and spoke, “This is your final test.”

That was all he said as he stepped to the side and revealed an open doorway that had the words ‘IDOLATRY’ etched above it. He walked to me and shoved the heavy lump deep into my chest. The wound ached harshly for a moment, and he grabbed me by the shoulder and forced me into my last trial. The final memories spewed into me.

I awoke in my bed, the last day I was alive. My memory began to serve me correctly as my phone buzzed on the nightstand; it was my accomplice for why I was out so late that night. We had been stealing funds from the church, and now it was 2 a.m., our ideal time to empty the collection boxes like we had been doing every Sunday for months. I had no control of my body as it moved up from the bed, and I whispered a quick goodbye to my wife. She remained in a deep slumber, and I left a note lying about my whereabouts in case she woke.

The drive to the church was short as always, and I parked a slight way away to head the rest of the way in the dark. My accomplice had done the same, and we made our way inside. We were rushing and made the fatal mistake of not noticing the alarm needing disarming. That’s where we made our way into the parish to commit our transgression against the very Lord we claimed to praise. Somehow, we ignored the light of the pastor’s office flickering, and we cracked the box open; he emerged alarmed, aiming the barrel of his hunting rifle dead center at us. I could have confessed right there and saved myself such trouble, but my sinful idol was money and greed itself. Also, I noticed the silver glint of a knife in my accomplice’s hand.

With a swift movement, I pushed him toward the priest and collected my earnings. There was the sharp echo of the weapon going off, and I ran back towards the door. Once outside, I continued to run until my vehicle came into view. The earnings fluttered to the passenger side, and I peeled off quickly. I had chosen to go without my headlights for a quick escape, but that caused me to miss the figure aiming the rifle towards my tires. With a thunderous pop, my car buckled, going 70 miles per hour, and it flipped in on itself.

My eyes opened to reveal a bright landscape filled with burning sand. It cut past me with a terrible fury. The feeling of hot glass ran along my skin, and ahead of me stood the ram- and dog-headed figures with the scale between them. A third figure stood with them, completely adorned in white with skin as blue as the day’s sky. The dog-headed man raised his hand, and my heart of stone ripped straight out from my chest. It bobbed along the winds of the sandstorm, being sliced by each individual grain.

Pain erupting from my wound caused tears to fall from my eyes. “Please, please, I repent.”

Begging for an eternity of bliss felt shameful compared to what I did in my life, compared against the things I should’ve done. My heart landed wet and flatly against the empty slot of the scale. It began to teeter against the weight of it being the feather. The blue-skinned man spoke to me, “The weight must remain equal.”

My body began sinking into the burning sand below me. The scale groaned to a stop as the object’s weight teetered to an equilibrium between them. Sand enclosed around me, blocking out the vision of the scale and any perceived glare of light. There was immense silence surrounding me as I slipped deep into the warm embrace of the sand grains. Finally, I was met with tranquility and peace.

Red and blue lights flashed against my eyelids. I was hanging upside down in my vehicle with blood splattering across the stolen money around me and the crucifix hanging from my mirror. I was miraculously saved by the belt that strapped me to my seat. Warm blood ran down my face, and I felt multiple broken bones inside me. There were voices calling out, but I couldn’t make out anything clear. I coughed out globs of blood that had drained into my throat while the shame of my sin sat entirely around me. Out of habit, I closed my eyes to repent but found that nothing spoke back to me. I had laid it all out to the figures that answered my last prayers of forgiveness.

So I lay there waiting, being stared at by the bloody, judgmental figure hanging from a beaded rosary that remained wrapped around my rearview mirror.

“One never knows the ending. One has to die to know exactly what happens after death, although Catholics have their hopes.”

- The last words of Sir Alfred Hitchcock

Choosing between a life of faithfulness, avoidance of hatred, and embarking on the path of good for the fellow man around you rather than living one focused on bitter hate, filling oneself with debauchery, or sin is supposed to mean something when you meet with the black swells of death. That’s what they taught me at least.

Humanity spends their short lives sitting amongst each other in pews while praising a power higher than they could ever imagine. Thinking to themselves that because of their inherent good of tithing and prayer, they are allowed access to be judgmental of the ones who choose to either sit amongst them or amongst others. Believing that they will achieve greatness in the world beyond ours whilst living within barely earns mediocrity as they use their nobility granted to them from their savior to divide people they deem less than themselves.

I do not speak of these misdeeds from a place of neutrality as I, myself, stood amongst those pews. Using the godliness of myself to be spiteful to those different than I. My parents raised me to believe that we were better because we gave to the Father who created us and we were sent on a mission to save all others. I spent my entire life this way so whenever I closed my eyes for the final time, I expected nothing less than absolute paradise to emerge ahead of me.

It was dark, limestone walls towered around with wooden staves attached to them lighting the way forward. The smell of burning animal fat and oil mixed with a familiar stench of untouched must seeping from the stone. I lay in on the floor atop a heap of petrified wrappings leaving a thin layer of black, sticky resin amongst my skin. Along the walls were hieroglyphs etched deep into the rock with the remnants of faded paintings that had once beautifully adorned them.

The wrappings crunched beneath me as I rose from the embrace that had welcomed me to this realm. In the dim light, my eyes attempted to follow the message described along the walls, but the meaning fell blankly to the folds of my spotty mind. Memories were coming back to me slowly, like a balloon with a dragging leak. I knew my past clearly, but the events leading to how I made it to where I am now were still filled with static.

With no help coming from the walls, I gave up on understanding any of it and began to make my way down the dim tunnel. I went from a main chamber down into a descending hallway adorned with more indecipherable images on the walls. Heat emitted from beyond the stone walls and pushed against my skin as I walked further downward. My eyes clenched as I prayed not to see the iron gates of Hell standing before me. Confusion struck as a figure appeared standing atop a small boat near the opening of the passage.

“Hello?” My voice was dry as it echoed off the limestone around me.

The figure was adorned entirely in pure white cloth and shimmering gold. It turned slowly towards me, and I realized that it had the head of a ram atop a man’s body. It beckoned silently toward me in an invitation to stand along with him on the deck of the boat. I was petrified with fear as the eyes of the goat stared through me, but I relented and made my way to him. The boat itself was a small, wooden barge with a low, flat deck and a curved back. Atop the deck was a small walled facade that was, presumably, the figure’s living quarters. The figure himself stood tall on the deck, holding a steering oar over the edge of the boat. There was nothing but empty air under the hull of the ship; I began to wonder how it was even staying afloat, let alone how it would move.

Underneath my feet echoed the creaking noises of the ship’s wooden deck. Reeds adorned the sides of it and the planking of the quarters built upon it. The man aboard towered above me and wordlessly pushed us away from the wooden port attached to the entrance of his realm. As we drifted along, I looked beneath us and saw a bountiful field of wheat and reeds. People lay in it, sleeping pleasantly as others swam in the rivers of fresh water. Calm washed over me the more I watched them meander around, magnificent light throughout the fields and upon those that resided despite the fact that above us was a cave ceiling. Some looked up towards us and gave a pleasant wave; I attempted to wave back but was distracted by immense heat coming from elsewhere around me.

I looked back towards where I began and saw an ocean of liquid fire and smoke erupting from it. Streams grew from out of its sides and surrounded the edges of the pleasant fields, unbeknownst to the ones who lived amongst it. Baboons guarded the shores and forced desperate souls back into its depths. Disturbing screams of torment echoed around us and it began to remind me of the verse from Revelations:

"But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."

My body convulsed with fear, as the realization of my finality became known to me. I was dead, it was a painful memory but I had died in a car accident. Unexpectedly, as I lay there dying, I sent out one final prayer to assure my way into heaven; but this was not the paradise that was promised for living a life of virtue. I turned to my ferryman and asked with a sob in my throat, “Please tell me, is this Hell? What sins did I commit to deserve this?”

He remained silent. Staring forward as he pushed us along the draft of air leading us deeper into this god-forsaken realm. There was a decaying temple emerging ahead of us; years of neglect and age caused destruction beyond measure to fall upon it.

There were statues representing pharaohs of old, crafted meticulously from marble that once stood stories tall but were now crumbling to dust. The temple itself was clearly once a grand pyramid, but one side had caved in to reveal once-glimmering treasures and bodies wrapped in linen suffering from varying stages of decay. Standing near the front entrance of the once-grand temple sat an identical wooden dock to the one we pushed away from earlier.

Our boat met softly against the dock, and my ferryman lifted his massive oar, then gestured outward with his hand. Telling me the next step along my path. I stepped down onto the groaning planks of the dock and turned to the man who had accompanied me; his hand remained outstretched. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of silver and copper coins, which I then placed in his hand and bowed respectfully to him, “Thank you.”

Before I could raise my head back up, the ferryman had already pushed off to sink deeper into the realm below us. I wished to have learned his name but found a sense of comfort in his quiet companionship as I now stood alone between the imposing facade ahead of me. With a shuddering breath, I stepped forward and into what lay ahead of me. Inside the temple was similar to the chamber I awoke in. Similar limestone walls, but the carvings inside were painted in magnificently bright colors. They looked wet still, as if no time had passed since the painter took the final strokes with his brush. The staves along the walls were glowing with an absurdly high luminosity.

I was in a small chamber with a wooden door directly ahead of me under the hieroglyphs. It contrasted against the decorated walls with a dull age of splintering wood hardened throughout time. Standing guard at the door was a hairless black dog. It barked in my direction and shifted its gaze towards a scale that sat next to it. On one side of it sat a lump of pulsing red meat shaped like a heart. I slipped a hand under my shirt and felt the cavity of where my heart once sat. Gear filled me as I looked to the other side and saw a single feather sitting upon it, lifting higher under the weight of its left side’s might. Once again, the dog barked, and my eyes shifted up to the carvings above the door; there I could make out a single familiar word, “COWARDICE.”

Memories flashed through my mind, and the door slowly fell open inward. It sat ajar with the sounds of quiet sobbing coming from the other side. The thought of what was on the other side terrified me to my core, and I had to resist the urge to turn back and plunge myself down into one of the roaring streams of fire beneath me. I shut my eyes tight in one last effort to pray, then, reluctantly, stepped through the door.

Once on the other side, I found myself standing on the back porch of a friend’s home. Under my right arm was a bundle of Bibles and sermon notes, while I had raised my left to knock. My friend Matthew and his wife, Joan, had missed the Wednesday service due to what they claimed was sickness, and I had promised to bring my notes to them for a small Bible study. The door was opened slightly ajar, and I could hear Joan crying softly from inside. My body froze in fear as I looked through the opened window, and I saw Matthew standing above her on the ground, half an empty bottle in one hand, and he was hitting her with the other.

The memories of this moment while I was living played in my head. I witnessed this and left. I went home and I prayed for hours for God to make these things right between them. At the next Sunday service, I couldn’t look at Matthew and Joan refused to look at me; purple bruising showing under her makeup. At the time I didn’t know it but she saw me leave through the window. I can now see her staring at me like a savior but in life I was too much of a coward to be of any sort. I’m not sure what happened to Joan in life since they had moved soon after this moment but reliving it; I felt the books and note papers fall from my arm. I pushed the door open with a hard shove from my shoulder and stormed inside the house.

My hands moved on their own in rage as I grabbed hold of Matthew’s figure and when he turned, I was met face to face with a screaming baboon. Fear lived without space in my heart as I felt the familiar heat come off of its rotting breath. I raised my fist and began slamming in hard into the face of the creature. Its teeth scraped against my knuckles but we fell down to the ground. Joan faded from the scene and I remained, slamming the creature’s face repeatedly. Its horrific screaming shuddered under gurgling coughs but I continued, more or less beating the sin of cowardice from my very being.

That’s when a wave of heat erupted out from the baboon-human hybrid beneath me and I found myself in another limestone chamber. The dog was there standing guard of another door and watching as the weight of the feather began to equal out slightly to my heart. Neither of us spoke, the dog was now standing only on its hind legs but was adorned in similar gold jewelry to that of the ferryman. He gestured his glistening nose to the door of stone behind him. Above it formed the word “UNBELIEVING”.

My eyes looked down to my crimson-stained hands, all torn and shredded from the teeth of the baboon. I had no prior idea of what would be ahead of me, but once I witnessed the lightening of my heart, I stepped forward into it. There was no memory on the other side; there was only a platform sitting high above the ocean of fire. Another sat on the other side of the gap with a loose-looking line providing the only noticeable path through it. On either side sat rows of hollering baboons throwing foul-smelling muck towards each other. One stood at the door ahead of me with splintered teeth and bleeding gums. I stepped forward and looked down to the pit of flames; swimming in it was a crocodile the size of a building snapping up at me, wanting to drag me to the depths of my second death.

Throughout my entire life, I had done nothing but provide worship and belief to a singular God of all-mighty power, but now I stand with a single choice to make. I had never allowed belief in myself; I had to put faith in that I would make it to the other side. So I stepped back and ran into a leap toward the thin line. I caught myself in the slack of the line. Under my weight, it buckled, and I slid down with an acceptance of my end as the crocodile’s mouth came into view. The line caught with only feet remaining between us; the crocodile fell back to the side while the noise of the baboons fell completely silent.

My arms pulled me forward along the line; with every movement, there was a quick shot of burning pain through the muscles in my limbs. In life, I never had much of a sturdy build, but now it’s all I could rely on to make it towards freedom. Heat radiated against my legs, cooking them from the sheer power of the lake beneath me. My eyes looked toward the injured baboon as his resilience seemed to mock me. I pulled harder against the pain with the thin line digging deep into my palms while blood leaked from them.

With the slack continuing to lower, mixing with the lubricating nature of fresh blood, there was a high chance that I could have slipped at any given moment. So, I began measuring up the distance between myself and the platform. It was a long shot, but I started to swing back and forth to gain any ounce of momentum, and then I flung myself forward. My shoulder smacked hard against the limestone platform, and every baboon erupted in a celebratory cry. The injured one that I once considered an enemy sized me up and pushed the door open ahead of me.

Once again stepping into an identical chamber, the dog had grown into a towering man with the head of the dog. He guarded the final door and held my heart in his hand. Unlike the other being, he looked down at me and spoke, “This is your final test.”

That was all he said as he stepped to the side and revealed an open doorway that had the words ‘IDOLATRY’ etched above it. He walked to me and shoved the heavy lump deep into my chest. The wound ached harshly for a moment, and he grabbed me by the shoulder and forced me into my last trial. The final memories spewed into me.

I awoke in my bed, the last day I was alive. My memory began to serve me correctly as my phone buzzed on the nightstand; it was my accomplice for why I was out so late that night. We had been stealing funds from the church, and now it was 2 a.m., our ideal time to empty the collection boxes like we had been doing every Sunday for months. I had no control of my body as it moved up from the bed, and I whispered a quick goodbye to my wife. She remained in a deep slumber, and I left a note lying about my whereabouts in case she woke.

The drive to the church was short as always, and I parked a slight way away to head the rest of the way in the dark. My accomplice had done the same, and we made our way inside. We were rushing and made the fatal mistake of not noticing the alarm needing disarming. That’s where we made our way into the parish to commit our transgression against the very Lord we claimed to praise. Somehow, we ignored the light of the pastor’s office flickering, and we cracked the box open; he emerged alarmed, aiming the barrel of his hunting rifle dead center at us. I could have confessed right there and saved myself such trouble, but my sinful idol was money and greed itself. Also, I noticed the silver glint of a knife in my accomplice’s hand.

With a swift movement, I pushed him toward the priest and collected my earnings. There was the sharp echo of the weapon going off, and I ran back towards the door. Once outside, I continued to run until my vehicle came into view. The earnings fluttered to the passenger side, and I peeled off quickly. I had chosen to go without my headlights for a quick escape, but that caused me to miss the figure aiming the rifle towards my tires. With a thunderous pop, my car buckled, going 70 miles per hour, and it flipped in on itself.

My eyes opened to reveal a bright landscape filled with burning sand. It cut past me with a terrible fury. The feeling of hot glass ran along my skin, and ahead of me stood the ram- and dog-headed figures with the scale between them. A third figure stood with them, completely adorned in white with skin as blue as the day’s sky. The dog-headed man raised his hand, and my heart of stone ripped straight out from my chest. It bobbed along the winds of the sandstorm, being sliced by each individual grain.

Pain erupting from my wound caused tears to fall from my eyes. “Please, please, I repent.”

Begging for an eternity of bliss felt shameful compared to what I did in my life, compared against the things I should’ve done. My heart landed wet and flatly against the empty slot of the scale. It began to teeter against the weight of it being the feather. The blue-skinned man spoke to me, “The weight must remain equal.”

My body began sinking into the burning sand below me. The scale groaned to a stop as the object’s weight teetered to an equilibrium between them. Sand enclosed around me, blocking out the vision of the scale and any perceived glare of light. There was immense silence surrounding me as I slipped deep into the warm embrace of the sand grains. Finally, I was met with tranquility and peace.

Red and blue lights flashed against my eyelids. I was hanging upside down in my vehicle with blood splattering across the stolen money around me and the crucifix hanging from my mirror. I was miraculously saved by the belt that strapped me to my seat. Warm blood ran down my face, and I felt multiple broken bones inside me. There were voices calling out, but I couldn’t make out anything clear. I coughed out globs of blood that had drained into my throat while the shame of my sin sat entirely around me. Out of habit, I closed my eyes to repent but found that nothing spoke back to me. I had laid it all out to the figures that answered my last prayers of forgiveness.

So I lay there waiting, being stared at by the bloody, judgmental figure hanging from a beaded rosary that remained wrapped around my rearview mirror.

“One never knows the ending. One has to die to know exactly what happens after death, although Catholics have their hopes.”

- The last words of Sir Alfred Hitchcock

Choosing between a life of faithfulness, avoidance of hatred, and embarking on the path of good for the fellow man around you rather than living one focused on bitter hate, filling oneself with debauchery, or sin is supposed to mean something when you meet with the black swells of death. That’s what they taught me at least.

Humanity spends their short lives sitting amongst each other in pews while praising a power higher than they could ever imagine. Thinking to themselves that because of their inherent good of tithing and prayer, they are allowed access to be judgmental of the ones who choose to either sit amongst them or amongst others. Believing that they will achieve greatness in the world beyond ours whilst living within barely earns mediocrity as they use their nobility granted to them from their savior to divide people they deem less than themselves.

I do not speak of these misdeeds from a place of neutrality as I, myself, stood amongst those pews. Using the godliness of myself to be spiteful to those different than I. My parents raised me to believe that we were better because we gave to the Father who created us and we were sent on a mission to save all others. I spent my entire life this way so whenever I closed my eyes for the final time, I expected nothing less than absolute paradise to emerge ahead of me.

It was dark, limestone walls towered around with wooden staves attached to them lighting the way forward. The smell of burning animal fat and oil mixed with a familiar stench of untouched must seeping from the stone. I lay in on the floor atop a heap of petrified wrappings leaving a thin layer of black, sticky resin amongst my skin. Along the walls were hieroglyphs etched deep into the rock with the remnants of faded paintings that had once beautifully adorned them.

The wrappings crunched beneath me as I rose from the embrace that had welcomed me to this realm. In the dim light, my eyes attempted to follow the message described along the walls, but the meaning fell blankly to the folds of my spotty mind. Memories were coming back to me slowly, like a balloon with a dragging leak. I knew my past clearly, but the events leading to how I made it to where I am now were still filled with static.

With no help coming from the walls, I gave up on understanding any of it and began to make my way down the dim tunnel. I went from a main chamber down into a descending hallway adorned with more indecipherable images on the walls. Heat emitted from beyond the stone walls and pushed against my skin as I walked further downward. My eyes clenched as I prayed not to see the iron gates of Hell standing before me. Confusion struck as a figure appeared standing atop a small boat near the opening of the passage.

“Hello?” My voice was dry as it echoed off the limestone around me.

The figure was adorned entirely in pure white cloth and shimmering gold. It turned slowly towards me, and I realized that it had the head of a ram atop a man’s body. It beckoned silently toward me in an invitation to stand along with him on the deck of the boat. I was petrified with fear as the eyes of the goat stared through me, but I relented and made my way to him. The boat itself was a small, wooden barge with a low, flat deck and a curved back. Atop the deck was a small walled facade that was, presumably, the figure’s living quarters. The figure himself stood tall on the deck, holding a steering oar over the edge of the boat. There was nothing but empty air under the hull of the ship; I began to wonder how it was even staying afloat, let alone how it would move.

Underneath my feet echoed the creaking noises of the ship’s wooden deck. Reeds adorned the sides of it and the planking of the quarters built upon it. The man aboard towered above me and wordlessly pushed us away from the wooden port attached to the entrance of his realm. As we drifted along, I looked beneath us and saw a bountiful field of wheat and reeds. People lay in it, sleeping pleasantly as others swam in the rivers of fresh water. Calm washed over me the more I watched them meander around, magnificent light throughout the fields and upon those that resided despite the fact that above us was a cave ceiling. Some looked up towards us and gave a pleasant wave; I attempted to wave back but was distracted by immense heat coming from elsewhere around me.

I looked back towards where I began and saw an ocean of liquid fire and smoke erupting from it. Streams grew from out of its sides and surrounded the edges of the pleasant fields, unbeknownst to the ones who lived amongst it. Baboons guarded the shores and forced desperate souls back into its depths. Disturbing screams of torment echoed around us and it began to remind me of the verse from Revelations:

"But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."

My body convulsed with fear, as the realization of my finality became known to me. I was dead, it was a painful memory but I had died in a car accident. Unexpectedly, as I lay there dying, I sent out one final prayer to assure my way into heaven; but this was not the paradise that was promised for living a life of virtue. I turned to my ferryman and asked with a sob in my throat, “Please tell me, is this Hell? What sins did I commit to deserve this?”

He remained silent. Staring forward as he pushed us along the draft of air leading us deeper into this god-forsaken realm. There was a decaying temple emerging ahead of us; years of neglect and age caused destruction beyond measure to fall upon it.

There were statues representing pharaohs of old, crafted meticulously from marble that once stood stories tall but were now crumbling to dust. The temple itself was clearly once a grand pyramid, but one side had caved in to reveal once-glimmering treasures and bodies wrapped in linen suffering from varying stages of decay. Standing near the front entrance of the once-grand temple sat an identical wooden dock to the one we pushed away from earlier.

Our boat met softly against the dock, and my ferryman lifted his massive oar, then gestured outward with his hand. Telling me the next step along my path. I stepped down onto the groaning planks of the dock and turned to the man who had accompanied me; his hand remained outstretched. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of silver and copper coins, which I then placed in his hand and bowed respectfully to him, “Thank you.”

Before I could raise my head back up, the ferryman had already pushed off to sink deeper into the realm below us. I wished to have learned his name but found a sense of comfort in his quiet companionship as I now stood alone between the imposing facade ahead of me. With a shuddering breath, I stepped forward and into what lay ahead of me. Inside the temple was similar to the chamber I awoke in. Similar limestone walls, but the carvings inside were painted in magnificently bright colors. They looked wet still, as if no time had passed since the painter took the final strokes with his brush. The staves along the walls were glowing with an absurdly high luminosity.

I was in a small chamber with a wooden door directly ahead of me under the hieroglyphs. It contrasted against the decorated walls with a dull age of splintering wood hardened throughout time. Standing guard at the door was a hairless black dog. It barked in my direction and shifted its gaze towards a scale that sat next to it. On one side of it sat a lump of pulsing red meat shaped like a heart. I slipped a hand under my shirt and felt the cavity of where my heart once sat. Gear filled me as I looked to the other side and saw a single feather sitting upon it, lifting higher under the weight of its left side’s might. Once again, the dog barked, and my eyes shifted up to the carvings above the door; there I could make out a single familiar word, “COWARDICE.”

Memories flashed through my mind, and the door slowly fell open inward. It sat ajar with the sounds of quiet sobbing coming from the other side. The thought of what was on the other side terrified me to my core, and I had to resist the urge to turn back and plunge myself down into one of the roaring streams of fire beneath me. I shut my eyes tight in one last effort to pray, then, reluctantly, stepped through the door.

Once on the other side, I found myself standing on the back porch of a friend’s home. Under my right arm was a bundle of Bibles and sermon notes, while I had raised my left to knock. My friend Matthew and his wife, Joan, had missed the Wednesday service due to what they claimed was sickness, and I had promised to bring my notes to them for a small Bible study. The door was opened slightly ajar, and I could hear Joan crying softly from inside. My body froze in fear as I looked through the opened window, and I saw Matthew standing above her on the ground, half an empty bottle in one hand, and he was hitting her with the other.

The memories of this moment while I was living played in my head. I witnessed this and left. I went home and I prayed for hours for God to make these things right between them. At the next Sunday service, I couldn’t look at Matthew and Joan refused to look at me; purple bruising showing under her makeup. At the time I didn’t know it but she saw me leave through the window. I can now see her staring at me like a savior but in life I was too much of a coward to be of any sort. I’m not sure what happened to Joan in life since they had moved soon after this moment but reliving it; I felt the books and note papers fall from my arm. I pushed the door open with a hard shove from my shoulder and stormed inside the house.

My hands moved on their own in rage as I grabbed hold of Matthew’s figure and when he turned, I was met face to face with a screaming baboon. Fear lived without space in my heart as I felt the familiar heat come off of its rotting breath. I raised my fist and began slamming in hard into the face of the creature. Its teeth scraped against my knuckles but we fell down to the ground. Joan faded from the scene and I remained, slamming the creature’s face repeatedly. Its horrific screaming shuddered under gurgling coughs but I continued, more or less beating the sin of cowardice from my very being.

That’s when a wave of heat erupted out from the baboon-human hybrid beneath me and I found myself in another limestone chamber. The dog was there standing guard of another door and watching as the weight of the feather began to equal out slightly to my heart. Neither of us spoke, the dog was now standing only on its hind legs but was adorned in similar gold jewelry to that of the ferryman. He gestured his glistening nose to the door of stone behind him. Above it formed the word “UNBELIEVING”.

My eyes looked down to my crimson-stained hands, all torn and shredded from the teeth of the baboon. I had no prior idea of what would be ahead of me, but once I witnessed the lightening of my heart, I stepped forward into it. There was no memory on the other side; there was only a platform sitting high above the ocean of fire. Another sat on the other side of the gap with a loose-looking line providing the only noticeable path through it. On either side sat rows of hollering baboons throwing foul-smelling muck towards each other. One stood at the door ahead of me with splintered teeth and bleeding gums. I stepped forward and looked down to the pit of flames; swimming in it was a crocodile the size of a building snapping up at me, wanting to drag me to the depths of my second death.

Throughout my entire life, I had done nothing but provide worship and belief to a singular God of all-mighty power, but now I stand with a single choice to make. I had never allowed belief in myself; I had to put faith in that I would make it to the other side. So I stepped back and ran into a leap toward the thin line. I caught myself in the slack of the line. Under my weight, it buckled, and I slid down with an acceptance of my end as the crocodile’s mouth came into view. The line caught with only feet remaining between us; the crocodile fell back to the side while the noise of the baboons fell completely silent.

My arms pulled me forward along the line; with every movement, there was a quick shot of burning pain through the muscles in my limbs. In life, I never had much of a sturdy build, but now it’s all I could rely on to make it towards freedom. Heat radiated against my legs, cooking them from the sheer power of the lake beneath me. My eyes looked toward the injured baboon as his resilience seemed to mock me. I pulled harder against the pain with the thin line digging deep into my palms while blood leaked from them.

With the slack continuing to lower, mixing with the lubricating nature of fresh blood, there was a high chance that I could have slipped at any given moment. So, I began measuring up the distance between myself and the platform. It was a long shot, but I started to swing back and forth to gain any ounce of momentum, and then I flung myself forward. My shoulder smacked hard against the limestone platform, and every baboon erupted in a celebratory cry. The injured one that I once considered an enemy sized me up and pushed the door open ahead of me.

Once again stepping into an identical chamber, the dog had grown into a towering man with the head of the dog. He guarded the final door and held my heart in his hand. Unlike the other being, he looked down at me and spoke, “This is your final test.”

That was all he said as he stepped to the side and revealed an open doorway that had the words ‘IDOLATRY’ etched above it. He walked to me and shoved the heavy lump deep into my chest. The wound ached harshly for a moment, and he grabbed me by the shoulder and forced me into my last trial. The final memories spewed into me.

I awoke in my bed, the last day I was alive. My memory began to serve me correctly as my phone buzzed on the nightstand; it was my accomplice for why I was out so late that night. We had been stealing funds from the church, and now it was 2 a.m., our ideal time to empty the collection boxes like we had been doing every Sunday for months. I had no control of my body as it moved up from the bed, and I whispered a quick goodbye to my wife. She remained in a deep slumber, and I left a note lying about my whereabouts in case she woke.

The drive to the church was short as always, and I parked a slight way away to head the rest of the way in the dark. My accomplice had done the same, and we made our way inside. We were rushing and made the fatal mistake of not noticing the alarm needing disarming. That’s where we made our way into the parish to commit our transgression against the very Lord we claimed to praise. Somehow, we ignored the light of the pastor’s office flickering, and we cracked the box open; he emerged alarmed, aiming the barrel of his hunting rifle dead center at us. I could have confessed right there and saved myself such trouble, but my sinful idol was money and greed itself. Also, I noticed the silver glint of a knife in my accomplice’s hand.

With a swift movement, I pushed him toward the priest and collected my earnings. There was the sharp echo of the weapon going off, and I ran back towards the door. Once outside, I continued to run until my vehicle came into view. The earnings fluttered to the passenger side, and I peeled off quickly. I had chosen to go without my headlights for a quick escape, but that caused me to miss the figure aiming the rifle towards my tires. With a thunderous pop, my car buckled, going 70 miles per hour, and it flipped in on itself.

My eyes opened to reveal a bright landscape filled with burning sand. It cut past me with a terrible fury. The feeling of hot glass ran along my skin, and ahead of me stood the ram- and dog-headed figures with the scale between them. A third figure stood with them, completely adorned in white with skin as blue as the day’s sky. The dog-headed man raised his hand, and my heart of stone ripped straight out from my chest. It bobbed along the winds of the sandstorm, being sliced by each individual grain.

Pain erupting from my wound caused tears to fall from my eyes. “Please, please, I repent.”

Begging for an eternity of bliss felt shameful compared to what I did in my life, compared against the things I should’ve done. My heart landed wet and flatly against the empty slot of the scale. It began to teeter against the weight of it being the feather. The blue-skinned man spoke to me, “The weight must remain equal.”

My body began sinking into the burning sand below me. The scale groaned to a stop as the object’s weight teetered to an equilibrium between them. Sand enclosed around me, blocking out the vision of the scale and any perceived glare of light. There was immense silence surrounding me as I slipped deep into the warm embrace of the sand grains. Finally, I was met with tranquility and peace.

Red and blue lights flashed against my eyelids. I was hanging upside down in my vehicle with blood splattering across the stolen money around me and the crucifix hanging from my mirror. I was miraculously saved by the belt that strapped me to my seat. Warm blood ran down my face, and I felt multiple broken bones inside me. There were voices calling out, but I couldn’t make out anything clear. I coughed out globs of blood that had drained into my throat while the shame of my sin sat entirely around me. Out of habit, I closed my eyes to repent but found that nothing spoke back to me. I had laid it all out to the figures that answered my last prayers of forgiveness.

So I lay there waiting, being stared at by the bloody, judgmental figure hanging from a beaded rosary that remained wrapped around my rearview mirror.

“One never knows the ending. One has to die to know exactly what happens after death, although Catholics have their hopes.”

-The last words of Sir Alfred Hitchcock.

Choosing between a life of faithfulness, avoidance of hatred, and embarking on the path of good for the fellow man around you rather than living one focused on bitter hate, filling oneself with debauchery, or sin is supposed to mean something when you meet with the black swells of death. That’s what they taught me at least.

Humanity spends their short lives sitting amongst each other in pews while praising a power higher than they could ever imagine. Thinking to themselves that because of their inherent good of tithing and prayer, they are allowed access to be judgmental of the ones who choose to either sit amongst them or amongst others. Believing that they will achieve greatness in the world beyond ours whilst living within barely earns mediocrity as they use their nobility granted to them from their savior to divide people they deem less than themselves.

I do not speak of these misdeeds from a place of neutrality as I, myself, stood amongst those pews. Using the godliness of myself to be spiteful to those different than I. My parents raised me to believe that we were better because we gave to the Father who created us and we were sent on a mission to save all others. I spent my entire life this way so whenever I closed my eyes for the final time, I expected nothing less than absolute paradise to emerge ahead of me.

It was dark, limestone walls towered around with wooden staves attached to them lighting the way forward. The smell of burning animal fat and oil mixed with a familiar stench of untouched must seeping from the stone. I lay in on the floor atop a heap of petrified wrappings leaving a thin layer of black, sticky resin amongst my skin. Along the walls were hieroglyphs etched deep into the rock with the remnants of faded paintings that had once beautifully adorned them.

The wrappings crunched beneath me as I rose from the embrace that had welcomed me to this realm. In the dim light, my eyes attempted to follow the message described along the walls, but the meaning fell blankly to the folds of my spotty mind. Memories were coming back to me slowly, like a balloon with a dragging leak. I knew my past clearly, but the events leading to how I made it to where I am now were still filled with static.

With no help coming from the walls, I gave up on understanding any of it and began to make my way down the dim tunnel. I went from a main chamber down into a descending hallway adorned with more indecipherable images on the walls. Heat emitted from beyond the stone walls and pushed against my skin as I walked further downward. My eyes clenched as I prayed not to see the iron gates of Hell standing before me. Confusion struck as a figure appeared standing atop a small boat near the opening of the passage.

“Hello?” My voice was dry as it echoed off the limestone around me.

The figure was adorned entirely in pure white cloth and shimmering gold. It turned slowly towards me, and I realized that it had the head of a ram atop a man’s body. It beckoned silently toward me in an invitation to stand along with him on the deck of the boat. I was petrified with fear as the eyes of the goat stared through me, but I relented and made my way to him. The boat itself was a small, wooden barge with a low, flat deck and a curved back. Atop the deck was a small walled facade that was, presumably, the figure’s living quarters. The figure himself stood tall on the deck, holding a steering oar over the edge of the boat. There was nothing but empty air under the hull of the ship; I began to wonder how it was even staying afloat, let alone how it would move.

Underneath my feet echoed the creaking noises of the ship’s wooden deck. Reeds adorned the sides of it and the planking of the quarters built upon it. The man aboard towered above me and wordlessly pushed us away from the wooden port attached to the entrance of his realm. As we drifted along, I looked beneath us and saw a bountiful field of wheat and reeds. People lay in it, sleeping pleasantly as others swam in the rivers of fresh water. Calm washed over me the more I watched them meander around, magnificent light throughout the fields and upon those that resided despite the fact that above us was a cave ceiling. Some looked up towards us and gave a pleasant wave; I attempted to wave back but was distracted by immense heat coming from elsewhere around me.

I looked back towards where I began and saw an ocean of liquid fire and smoke erupting from it. Streams grew from out of its sides and surrounded the edges of the pleasant fields, unbeknownst to the ones who lived amongst it. Baboons guarded the shores and forced desperate souls back into its depths. Disturbing screams of torment echoed around us and it began to remind me of the verse from Revelations:

"But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death."

My body convulsed with fear, as the realization of my finality became known to me. I was dead, it was a painful memory but I had died in a car accident. Unexpectedly, as I lay there dying, I sent out one final prayer to assure my way into heaven; but this was not the paradise that was promised for living a life of virtue. I turned to my ferryman and asked with a sob in my throat, “Please tell me, is this Hell? What sins did I commit to deserve this?”

He remained silent. Staring forward as he pushed us along the draft of air leading us deeper into this god-forsaken realm. There was a decaying temple emerging ahead of us; years of neglect and age caused destruction beyond measure to fall upon it.

There were statues representing pharaohs of old, crafted meticulously from marble that once stood stories tall but were now crumbling to dust. The temple itself was clearly once a grand pyramid, but one side had caved in to reveal once-glimmering treasures and bodies wrapped in linen suffering from varying stages of decay. Standing near the front entrance of the once-grand temple sat an identical wooden dock to the one we pushed away from earlier.

Our boat met softly against the dock, and my ferryman lifted his massive oar, then gestured outward with his hand. Telling me the next step along my path. I stepped down onto the groaning planks of the dock and turned to the man who had accompanied me; his hand remained outstretched. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a handful of silver and copper coins, which I then placed in his hand and bowed respectfully to him, “Thank you.”

Before I could raise my head back up, the ferryman had already pushed off to sink deeper into the realm below us. I wished to have learned his name but found a sense of comfort in his quiet companionship as I now stood alone between the imposing facade ahead of me. With a shuddering breath, I stepped forward and into what lay ahead of me. Inside the temple was similar to the chamber I awoke in. Similar limestone walls, but the carvings inside were painted in magnificently bright colors. They looked wet still, as if no time had passed since the painter took the final strokes with his brush. The staves along the walls were glowing with an absurdly high luminosity.

I was in a small chamber with a wooden door directly ahead of me under the hieroglyphs. It contrasted against the decorated walls with a dull age of splintering wood hardened throughout time. Standing guard at the door was a hairless black dog. It barked in my direction and shifted its gaze towards a scale that sat next to it. On one side of it sat a lump of pulsing red meat shaped like a heart. I slipped a hand under my shirt and felt the cavity of where my heart once sat. Gear filled me as I looked to the other side and saw a single feather sitting upon it, lifting higher under the weight of its left side’s might. Once again, the dog barked, and my eyes shifted up to the carvings above the door; there I could make out a single familiar word, “COWARDICE.”

Memories flashed through my mind, and the door slowly fell open inward. It sat ajar with the sounds of quiet sobbing coming from the other side. The thought of what was on the other side terrified me to my core, and I had to resist the urge to turn back and plunge myself down into one of the roaring streams of fire beneath me. I shut my eyes tight in one last effort to pray, then, reluctantly, stepped through the door.

Once on the other side, I found myself standing on the back porch of a friend’s home. Under my right arm was a bundle of Bibles and sermon notes, while I had raised my left to knock. My friend Matthew and his wife, Joan, had missed the Wednesday service due to what they claimed was sickness, and I had promised to bring my notes to them for a small Bible study. The door was opened slightly ajar, and I could hear Joan crying softly from inside. My body froze in fear as I looked through the opened window, and I saw Matthew standing above her on the ground, half an empty bottle in one hand, and he was hitting her with the other.

The memories of this moment while I was living played in my head. I witnessed this and left. I went home and I prayed for hours for God to make these things right between them. At the next Sunday service, I couldn’t look at Matthew and Joan refused to look at me; purple bruising showing under her makeup. At the time I didn’t know it but she saw me leave through the window. I can now see her staring at me like a savior but in life I was too much of a coward to be of any sort. I’m not sure what happened to Joan in life since they had moved soon after this moment but reliving it; I felt the books and note papers fall from my arm. I pushed the door open with a hard shove from my shoulder and stormed inside the house.

My hands moved on their own in rage as I grabbed hold of Matthew’s figure and when he turned, I was met face to face with a screaming baboon. Fear lived without space in my heart as I felt the familiar heat come off of its rotting breath. I raised my fist and began slamming in hard into the face of the creature. Its teeth scraped against my knuckles but we fell down to the ground. Joan faded from the scene and I remained, slamming the creature’s face repeatedly. Its horrific screaming shuddered under gurgling coughs but I continued, more or less beating the sin of cowardice from my very being.

That’s when a wave of heat erupted out from the baboon-human hybrid beneath me and I found myself in another limestone chamber. The dog was there standing guard of another door and watching as the weight of the feather began to equal out slightly to my heart. Neither of us spoke, the dog was now standing only on its hind legs but was adorned in similar gold jewelry to that of the ferryman. He gestured his glistening nose to the door of stone behind him. Above it formed the word “UNBELIEVING”.

My eyes looked down to my crimson-stained hands, all torn and shredded from the teeth of the baboon. I had no prior idea of what would be ahead of me, but once I witnessed the lightening of my heart, I stepped forward into it. There was no memory on the other side; there was only a platform sitting high above the ocean of fire. Another sat on the other side of the gap with a loose-looking line providing the only noticeable path through it. On either side sat rows of hollering baboons throwing foul-smelling muck towards each other. One stood at the door ahead of me with splintered teeth and bleeding gums. I stepped forward and looked down to the pit of flames; swimming in it was a crocodile the size of a building snapping up at me, wanting to drag me to the depths of my second death.

Throughout my entire life, I had done nothing but provide worship and belief to a singular God of all-mighty power, but now I stand with a single choice to make. I had never allowed belief in myself; I had to put faith in that I would make it to the other side. So I stepped back and ran into a leap toward the thin line. I caught myself in the slack of the line. Under my weight, it buckled, and I slid down with an acceptance of my end as the crocodile’s mouth came into view. The line caught with only feet remaining between us; the crocodile fell back to the side while the noise of the baboons fell completely silent.

My arms pulled me forward along the line; with every movement, there was a quick shot of burning pain through the muscles in my limbs. In life, I never had much of a sturdy build, but now it’s all I could rely on to make it towards freedom. Heat radiated against my legs, cooking them from the sheer power of the lake beneath me. My eyes looked toward the injured baboon as his resilience seemed to mock me. I pulled harder against the pain with the thin line digging deep into my palms while blood leaked from them.

With the slack continuing to lower, mixing with the lubricating nature of fresh blood, there was a high chance that I could have slipped at any given moment. So, I began measuring up the distance between myself and the platform. It was a long shot, but I started to swing back and forth to gain any ounce of momentum, and then I flung myself forward. My shoulder smacked hard against the limestone platform, and every baboon erupted in a celebratory cry. The injured one that I once considered an enemy sized me up and pushed the door open ahead of me.

Once again stepping into an identical chamber, the dog had grown into a towering man with the head of the dog. He guarded the final door and held my heart in his hand. Unlike the other being, he looked down at me and spoke, “This is your final test.”

That was all he said as he stepped to the side and revealed an open doorway that had the words ‘IDOLATRY’ etched above it. He walked to me and shoved the heavy lump deep into my chest. The wound ached harshly for a moment, and he grabbed me by the shoulder and forced me into my last trial. The final memories spewed into me.

I awoke in my bed, the last day I was alive. My memory began to serve me correctly as my phone buzzed on the nightstand; it was my accomplice for why I was out so late that night. We had been stealing funds from the church, and now it was 2 a.m., our ideal time to empty the collection boxes like we had been doing every Sunday for months. I had no control of my body as it moved up from the bed, and I whispered a quick goodbye to my wife. She remained in a deep slumber, and I left a note lying about my whereabouts in case she woke.

The drive to the church was short as always, and I parked a slight way away to head the rest of the way in the dark. My accomplice had done the same, and we made our way inside. We were rushing and made the fatal mistake of not noticing the alarm needing disarming. That’s where we made our way into the parish to commit our transgression against the very Lord we claimed to praise. Somehow, we ignored the light of the pastor’s office flickering, and we cracked the box open; he emerged alarmed, aiming the barrel of his hunting rifle dead center at us. I could have confessed right there and saved myself such trouble, but my sinful idol was money and greed itself. Also, I noticed the silver glint of a knife in my accomplice’s hand.

With a swift movement, I pushed him toward the priest and collected my earnings. There was the sharp echo of the weapon going off, and I ran back towards the door. Once outside, I continued to run until my vehicle came into view. The earnings fluttered to the passenger side, and I peeled off quickly. I had chosen to go without my headlights for a quick escape, but that caused me to miss the figure aiming the rifle towards my tires. With a thunderous pop, my car buckled, going 70 miles per hour, and it flipped in on itself.

My eyes opened to reveal a bright landscape filled with burning sand. It cut past me with a terrible fury. The feeling of hot glass ran along my skin, and ahead of me stood the ram- and dog-headed figures with the scale between them. A third figure stood with them, completely adorned in white with skin as blue as the day’s sky. The dog-headed man raised his hand, and my heart of stone ripped straight out from my chest. It bobbed along the winds of the sandstorm, being sliced by each individual grain.

Pain erupting from my wound caused tears to fall from my eyes. “Please, please, I repent.”

Begging for an eternity of bliss felt shameful compared to what I did in my life, compared against the things I should’ve done. My heart landed wet and flatly against the empty slot of the scale. It began to teeter against the weight of it being the feather. The blue-skinned man spoke to me, “The weight must remain equal.”

My body began sinking into the burning sand below me. The scale groaned to a stop as the object’s weight teetered to an equilibrium between them. Sand enclosed around me, blocking out the vision of the scale and any perceived glare of light. There was immense silence surrounding me as I slipped deep into the warm embrace of the sand grains. Finally, I was met with tranquility and peace.

Red and blue lights flashed against my eyelids. I was hanging upside down in my vehicle with blood splattering across the stolen money around me and the crucifix hanging from my mirror. I was miraculously saved by the belt that strapped me to my seat. Warm blood ran down my face, and I felt multiple broken bones inside me. There were voices calling out, but I couldn’t make out anything clear. I coughed out globs of blood that had drained into my throat while the shame of my sin sat entirely around me. Out of habit, I closed my eyes to repent but found that nothing spoke back to me. I had laid it all out to the figures that answered my last prayers of forgiveness.

So I lay there waiting, being stared at by the bloody, judgmental figure hanging from a beaded rosary that remained wrapped around my rearview mirror.

For a significant portion of my life, I have been dedicated to the field of archaeology. The witnesses of ancient history and days before my own had always sparked a special interest within me. As of now, I’m a tenured professor teaching the next generation to make discoveries more magnificent than we could have ever imagined; but when I sit back and ponder on the life that I’ve lived, there is one event that calls out to me.

I’ve spent these passing years attempting to forget and bury it deep into my subconscious, but there has been a revelation brought to me that has made these events claw their way back from my mind’s locked box of regretful memories. To be brief, I am very sick; a tragedy for my age, but I cannot say that I didn’t see it coming eventually. Anyways, the summer after graduating with my bachelor’s was spent doing required field school just outside of a small village located in northern England, a few miles south of Hadrian’s Wall. We were tasked with looking for Roman-era artifacts in a pre-determined dig site. I was in my fourth week out of a six-week program, digging through the morning dew-soaked earth with a faltering determination.

Alongside me was another young colleague who shared my grandiose delusions of making a history-shattering discovery. So far, we had found nothing more remarkable than familiar pieces of pottery amongst the clay-rich soil and podzols. The early moments of talking amongst us had drawn down to the soft crinkling of our plastic ponchos and the thudding of thick boots splashing through fresh mud. As dumb Americans, we learned about the consistency of English rain the hard way; it was 1993, and that was the wettest summer I had ever experienced.

Armed with a trowel, brush, and a dirty handkerchief, I slowly examined handfuls of the soil before placing it into a bucket to be hauled up. The actions were mind-numbingly repetitive as my trowel dug into the Earth and brought up roots and pottery that needed brushing and cleaning. Rarely, I would find a coin amongst it all, but my heart wanted to find so much more.

“Anything today?” My colleague Sasha called from behind me. She was a tall woman with black, curly hair pulled tightly behind a blue bandana. We had met at the beginning of this adventure, and a friendship picked up despite our rival colleges.

“Nothing but the usual,” I sighed. “You?”

Her lack of a verbal response was enough of an answer. I turned from my lackluster spot and pushed the trowel down. It was met with a clink of metal meeting foreign metal. My body froze for a second, and I began slowly moving more dirt over. An orange glimmer met my eyes as the side profile of a bronze woman became visible.

“Sasha!” I yelled with excitement building in my voice.

She rushed over to me, and we began the extraction process of her digging around the object as I brushed off the dirt hidden in the crevices. I delicately pulled it from the ground and saw that it was a head cast of a woman’s face made from glittering bronze. She had a relaxed expression with wide eyes looking out. Her hairstyle looked almost Greco-Roman inspired, with it being parted in the middle with braided curls framing from the outside. The braids ran along the diameter of her head until they met in the back as a mock crown with areas that resembled ribbons adorning it. Emerging from the right side was the remnants of a broken-off antler. She had a thin nose with a long, pointed face with gaunt, sunken-in cheeks. The eyes were blank, and I attempted to wipe what I thought was dirt from the left one but realized it was painted black.

“What god do you think she is?” Sasha asked, writing down detailed notes in our shared journal.

“There’s no significant sites of worship around here, so it could be any one of them.” I went to spin the head around and heard the sound of something shifting from inside. I reached from the broken neck of the statue and pulled out a leather pouch tied around a long, calcified bone with leather cord.

“Holy shit,” Sasha whispered in a shuddering breath, “is that human?”

With that remark, she quickly helped me clean the area, then I rushed the finding to our supervisor, Professor Daniel Makenzie. We called him Dan, having dropped the formality of his occupation due to being this far into our time together; he was a very smart man but had most of his experience in the time period of British Rome. We looked through the gods of both Celtic and Roman deities but came up with no meaningful answers. As a last-ditch effort, I picked up a book pertaining to the subject of Welsh folklore. That’s where I finally found a small bit of resemblance in a sketched photo labeled ‘Elen of the Ways’.

A look of confusion stretched across Dan’s face, “What is a Welsh goddess from the Stone Age doing all the way up here?”

“Better question,” I retorted, “why did somebody decide to cast her in bronze? Who would cast it?” Our questions lacked reasonable answers and only produced more confusing ones.

Sasha had arrived back during our strenuous struggle of sorting through stacks of research, offering no constructive feedback as she attempted to perfect her cup of English tea. We were in a small-sized trailer provided to us by the university. Inside it was a large room used for research, cleaning, and photographing anything we could find. There were folding tables and chairs set up with a few cots hiding in a corner used for any extended time at the site. Alongside those rooms were also a small bathroom, a closet converted into an office for Dan, and a kitchen off to the right of the research room. That’s where Sasha was when she poked her head around the corner while stirring her tea.

“Are we sure it’s not just a Celtic god mashed up with Minerva again?”

My eyes flicked between the differences between our goddess and the one on the page. “Until we can find any proof of worship between Minerva and another goddess in this area, this is our best bet.”

“I’ll get ahold of the closest city’s museum coordinator tomorrow,” Dan grumbled. “We can at least attempt to carbon date the metal to establish a timeframe.”

He began scratching his chin while swimming deeper into his thoughts. Dan was a shorter man with thinning white hair atop his head but a trimmed full beard, causing it to look like the hair was migrating downward. There were plenty of times where he would get lost in his own thoughts mid-conversation; he would shut down completely and eventually shuffle back into his office while mumbling obscure thoughts. This was one of those moments.

I looked back toward the bronze head and began thinking to myself of its origins while staring into its black eye. The deep color entranced me the longer my eyes met with it. I felt as if it was calling out towards me. Reaching out with its missing hands to lure me towards its true name.

Sasha sat next to me, loudly slurping her tea and pulling me out of said trance. “You good, bud? Distracted by her beauty?”

My head pulsed against her voice. “More like lost in how she even exists. She was mostly left behind at the beginning of the Bronze Age, so was it a small cult? If it was, then how come we have no current record of them? How did they get such carefully crafted bronze without leaving a lasting mark in history? None of these books even begin to answer one of these questions. It makes my head throb from the frustration.”

We sat in silence for a while, which was rare around Sasha. I pinched the bridge of my nose to relieve maybe an ounce of tension from my head when she spoke up. “How long do you think it’s been since someone last talked to her?”

My hand fell away from my face. “What?”

“Well, she was obviously important to whatever society followed her,” she cleared her throat. “Being immortalized in bronze meant something in regard to whatever she represented. I would imagine that she’s been a little lonely not being prayed to after all these years.” Sasha carried a large smile across her face.

“You want to pray to the mysterious deity?”

She laughed. “That might help us learn about her a little faster. That’s what I’d ask at least. What would you pray for?”

“Probably a full night of rest,” I said while laying my head back in my chair.

“Pray her way if you plan to crash here tonight,” she waved towards the bronze head while finishing her tea, then stood. “I imagine you’re planning on doing that again tonight.”

My eyes drifted over to the cots stacked in the back. They called enchantingly out to me like a cloud of fresh comfort. I wordlessly nodded to her without opening my eyes.

We all lived about 30 minutes away from the dig site in university-owned housing located inside the village of Brampton. It was less peaceful there than spending a night on the slightly uncomfortable cots in the site’s trailer, so I spent most nights there and relied on getting fresh clothes supplied to me by either Sasha or Dan.

Once they were out for the night, I cleared the room and set up my favorite cot parallel to where we had left the bronze head. Even with exhaustion tugging tirelessly at the edge of my eyelids, I remained restless, lying against the thin canvas stretched across the cot.

My conversation with Sasha continued to run around the track of my overexcited brain. I flipped away from the wall, and my eyes were met with the separately colored eyes of the bronze goddess, glinting against the moonlight. I decided to humor the idea of praying for rest from her and closed my eyes in the respectful praying manner.

“Dear, old metal goddess of ancient mystery. Please allow me passage to the realm of swift restfulness during this restless night. Grant me peace with the newly found knowledge of your existence and allow me to rest soundly.”

My eyes fluttered open to see the lack of moonlight covering the room. Her eyes no longer lingered in my direction, and I swiftly felt a wave of rest flow over me. Blackness swallowed my vision whole as I drifted away for the night. I stood again amongst the field of our dig site; ahead of me were multiple men adorned in thick wool tunics that contrasted well with the straps of their leather armor. They lay face down, bowing and whispering what I assumed were silent prayers in an unfamiliar dialect that sounded similar to Welsh.

Standing high above them, accepting the praise emitting from their bows, was a woman wrapped entirely in woven vines and knitted leaves, an eye as black as the night above us all contrasting to her other made of golden light. Along with those familiar features, there was also a singular antler emerging from the right side of her head. Her eyes fell to me, and the men ahead rose in unison before parting in the middle to form a direct path from me to the goddess.

“Jassssper.” Her voice sounded dry and ancient as she slowly dragged out the syllables of my name. With a slight flick of her wrist, she called for me to come to her, and my legs responded affirmatively. As I walked through the lines of her worshippers, their gaze remained locked tightly on her. Once I made it up close to her presence, I could understand why; she was magnificent. Looming over me at a height of maybe 8 feet with wild strands of black and dull red hair woven amongst varying twigs, pieces of bark, and budding flowers.

I fell to my knees in awe of her presence, and she raised a hand with long, stretched fingers of pale, freckled skin towards me. My body wanted to recoil from the cold air emitting from her skin, but I remained paralyzed, entranced by her gaze. A long finger, colder than plunging into a lake of ice, pressed firmly against my temple. Ghastly images of the men surrounding me filled my mind.

“My people were maimed and forced to be forgotten from history by those who claimed dominion over them.” The roughness smoothed from her voice as she showed me the slaughtering of her followers by ancient Roman forces. Villages were burned, and temples dedicated to her were ripped from the Earth to be erased forever.

“They used the formidable beliefs in their own gods to strike us down and end my reign.” A memory of her standing atop a hill being struck down by an unnaturally precise bolt of lightning filled my mind’s eye. One final visage of the few remaining worshippers removing a bone from the goddess’s fried corpse and wrapping it with a leather pouch and cord before placing it in the familiar statue’s head.

“Now, with the help of you, I will find a new host and reign once again.” Her voice was now perfectly clear and formed with an ache of familiarity to my eyes. This was soon drowned out by the last dying screams of an entire civilization, overtook my sense of hearing until the burning pain of her frigid cold finally pulled me from my deep slumber.

The room I awoke in was strangely unfamiliar due to it being filled with an amount of steam that resembled the effects after a hot shower. Once I rose from the mild comfort of the cot, it began to dissipate from the air around me. I started on my mission to the bathroom when I noticed a separate figure wrapped in the room’s shadow standing above the goddess’s bronze head. It was a figure of feminine build but remarkably tall.

“Sasha?” I questioned and hurriedly flipped on the light.

She turned to me, holding the statue’s head above her own. No familiarity in her sight while she spoke in quick verses similar to those from my dream. Her face and the front of her were covered in a thick layer of mud, like she had fallen into a deep pit of mud. I stepped closer and heard the soft pattering of rain against the trailer’s windows and ceiling. My eyes squinted, and I was able to see her fingers were covered by bronze molds of another hand with mud caked deep under her nails. What was horrifying to me were the noticeable cuts along her face and hairline from attempting to force herself into the stairs itself; then I noticed her eye, it was wide open and had a pool of murky darkness causing the incandescent light from the trailer to swim desperately out of it.

“Jasper, my time has come to be reborn.” Her voice echoed from her mouth alongside the dry, ancient one of the goddess. She lowered the head to level with her chest and began attempting to pry it in two. Blood seeped out of the jagged edges, pushed deep into her skin.

My mind raced with ways to stop this, and that’s when the memory of the bone smacked its way into my mind. The bone was the goddess’s final connection to her original body. I looked, and it sat close to me inside a plastic bag, ready to be dated by the closest museum in the morning. My legs sprinted to the table, and I removed the bone from the bag and showed it to Sasha’s possessed form.

“Enough!” I shouted, “Let her go! She did not grant you access to be reborn.”

A dry laugh escaped her mouth, and a prayer, only in Sasha’s voice, came next: “Dear this goddess of new, please allow us the knowledge to bring your essence back to this world. Allow me to guide you back to this realm once again, amen.”

The voice became the dry mixture of both once again: “That is all the permission I require, boy.” She said that final word with much disdain: “This woman found me also in her dreams, and I present the offer. Which she woefully accepted.”

“No, I know here and there’s absolutely nothing you could have said that made her agree to her own possession.” I attempted to verbally fight back, still holding the bone between us.

“She offered to help me, boy. There was no discussion in the reasoning of how.” She laughed dryly at me in an almost mocking tone. I felt unbridled anger fill me, and I snapped the bone cleanly in two.

A look of fear spread across Sasha’s stolen face, and she crumbled hard to the ground. The air remaining steam disappeared completely as the metal head clattered against the ground. I ran to my friend in desperation. She lay in my arms, groaning from the growing pain from the cuts littering her body. The eye that swirled black was covered in a layer of white film. Sasha began to panic as she came to from no longer being able to see from it.

Dan found us together in the morning. She was crying into my shoulder as I cradled her still. Luckily, Sasha made a full recovery besides the loss of vision in her left eye. The rest of the field work was quiet and somber as we found nothing else of importance, and the goddess’s head sculpture had disappeared one night before testing. Sasha and I parted ways after and kept in contact for a few years, but that was lost as both of our careers progressed.

These memories have come back to me now because Sasha has found me again. Still blind in her one eye, of course, with graying streaks along her hair, she asked me about our shared diagnosis. We are dying from the same cancer, and we believe it to be a curse from not allowing her all greatness to pass over. I confessed to her my deepest secret in how the statue’s head truly never went missing. I still have it now, in a locked box with the bone hiding under my bed.

My question was then: do we open it again? Do we let the goddess back to this world to reign in a new era of power and dominance?

We pondered these as an attempt to heal ourselves one day but remained fearful in how the goddess would strike us down as betrayers to her. We were terrified, rightfully so but began to see no other choice as our sicknesses progressed.

Also, I should mention how her name isn’t ‘Elen of the Way’; it is Anu, the mother goddess. I know this because she never truly left our dreams, speaking to us beyond the vale as the last living beings who know her true identity.

Now I sit here looking upon the opened box of familiar bronze items glinting the moonlight back to me. Having freshly prayed with Sasha by my side. We used our blood to heal the fractured bone and wrapped it with strands of our own hair, hers black in color and mine, a dull red. They intertwined against the leather cord to hold the bone back together. To finish it all, now we will slumber to once again hear the calling of our mother goddess; to beg for her forgiveness, and allow her entry back to this world through us.

Throughout my entire life, the concept of death has always been fascinating to me. Fear is adjoined to that fascination because I can’t wrap my mind around how beings made up of such complicated natural mechanics can just cease to exist.

We’re all just mechanical meat suits powered by biological circuitry that’s just itching to find more complicated ways to reach our predetermined expiration date. My mind gets anxious races with the worst possibilities and terrifies me about finally reaching the day where I meet mine. Growing up, I started doing these little rituals to force back those thoughts. For instance, if I scraped my arm in a certain way, then my brain would tell me to show me a similar path to recreate it exactly on my other arm, or the world would explode. My anxiety would claw at me from behind my eyes until I finally gave in, but then they would escalate farther and farther until I had to force control back into my own hands.

I’ve managed to calm these small rituals down as I’ve gotten older, but right now, they seem to be all I have as I’m walking towards the end all on my own. When I was still in elementary school, my dad passed away. My sister and I have been in no contact for years now, and last week, my mother finally succumbed to the disease that was eating its way through her. Now I’m left to pick up the shattered pieces of life alone and with all the grief of freshly orphaned at the age of 26.

Mom had been my anchor all throughout life; she took on the role of both parents for my sister, Laura, and me, with expecting nothing but love in return. After Dad was gone, my rituals escalated because death was the primary thought on my mind. Now I can see how my issues made it harder for her to pay equal attention to both of us. I was a selfish kid back then, but I also know that I couldn’t control the compulsive nature of my own brain.

Laura was older than me by a few years and was fourteen whenever Dad died. He had left us a small inheritance to use for college once we turned 18. Well, four years went by at a snail’s pace as we readjusted to how to live without him. Laura was always working as hard as possible during that time until she got her inheritance. That’s when she disappeared from our lives. Mom was heartbroken as she attempted to reach out to her over the years, but Laura remained away. After maybe three or so years, she came back; smaller and frail. Her eyes were strained into a deep and puffy redness with complementing black rings adorning the skin under them. From what I know, Mom never asked what happened and accepted her home with open arms. I could never bring myself to ask either, and we thought that Laura started to heal.

While I was away at college, Laura became erratic again. We found out she was siphoning money from Mom to continue to fuel her varying addictions. This caused her to go into these fits of psychosis where she would ramble to herself about how a man stalked her relentlessly from the shadows, how he’d been there since Dad passed away. Mom tried to stand up for her and her recovery, but I was angry, and I couldn’t handle her using the death of our Dad as an excuse for what she had done. I snapped. Anger took the controls as I couldn’t take any more of her shit. Regretful words were exchanged between my only sibling and me. Mom cried while Laura left.

We haven’t spoken since.

My rituals come back subtly, and I snuck them into everyday life. Scratching certain spots of my scalp almost raw when I was anxious, repeated attempts to fill social media posts up with the fading heart in individual patterns, or the demons would crawl up from the depths of the Earth and torture every living being towards an uncertain death. At least, that’s what the anxiety led me to believe.

When the diagnosis came rearing its disgusting head, I vowed to repay Mom by caring for her as long as I could. I moved back in with her, basically lived as an in-home nurse for her while also pursuing my goal of a master’s degree during the nights. It was exhausting, but it was the least I could do for the woman who provided so much for me. Every time I would open a new prescription bottle, I would have to tap, shake it lightly around to ensure it would work. When we would go to the hospital, I would blink an absurd and arbitrary amount of times when we’d break the threshold into a new room. The rituals became harsher, and the dark, split-second thoughts kept unwillingly producing in my mind.

Laura visited her when she eventually had to be moved to hospice. Her needs became so much more than I could carry, and she told me that she would rather I go on with my own life. The decision wasn’t easy to make; I would cry myself to sleep thinking about her going in her sleep and me not being by her side. The nurses told me about the visit, and Mom told me how they made their peace together. Even though she encouraged it, I couldn’t bring myself to do the same. There was never an attempted moment of reconciliation from either of us during or after the funeral; just words exchanged between lawyers as assets were split. I never asked what she got because I inherited the house.

Maybe I should have reached out during our time of shared grief, but my anger didn’t allow me. We stood at opposite ends of the room, not once glancing toward each other. She didn’t know me anymore, and I didn’t know her. Family and friends expressed their condolences as I was internally battling the urge to rip my skin off layer by layer. Compulsive nature is the highest proprietor of self-manufactured loneliness. I didn’t allow myself the family that I needed, but I couldn’t see it that way because I needed to push down the anxiety by scratching deep into my skin.

You never really know how alone one person can make themselves in a world so full of people. I realized the extent of mine after filling out paperwork in an emergency room lobby. My eyes scanned down the page, and I walked back to the nurse’s window.

“What’s the number here?” My hand swiftly recited each digit onto the ‘Emergency Contact’ line, and then I pushed the form back over to her through the glass. I didn’t usually find myself in emergency rooms very often, but the sharp pain in my lower abdomen triggered a surge of panic, which scratched the festering wound of my lifelong fear. Appendicitis was a horrific and ungodly painful way to go out, so I scampered my way over to West Regional Community Hospital. I rubbed my hands repeatedly against the chairs as the pain flickered with every move.

I attempted to avoid the compulsions by taking note of my surroundings. The waiting room was a sterile beige environment with dark leather seating that were adorned with near-ancient social distancing stickers pealing up from them. A TV was hung in the corner playing cartoons quietly. To be fair, it wasn’t awful besides my recurring pain; weird squeaks emitted from my chair every time I would have to shift, but it was a late night and not many sat with me. Besides the arrival of an ambulance only moments after I had checked in, the wait to be seen was very long.

Sitting along with me in the room were two other perspective patients: a mother and son sat together just a few chairs down who arrived after the ambulance; the boy was sleeping against her with a blanket wrapped around him, while the mother’s eyes flickered carelessly across the tv screen. Behind us was a man; I never saw him come in and couldn’t really turn to examine him without it being obvious. What I do know is that he remained unnoticed by the lady and her son but I could feel the heat of him staring through me towards the emergency room’s door.

It swung open with a soft mechanical click as a woman in navy scrubs stepped out. “Kieran?”

My hand raised, and I slowly moved toward her. We shuffled through the regular checks and towards a small sterile room of my own. On the far side of the department, behind the nurses’ station, I could make out a windowed room with a small team of doctors and nurses working around a motionless patient wearing an oxygen mask. I figured that was the patient from the ambulance, and my mind compulsively raced with unwanted and gruesome thoughts of how they ended up in their situation. My scalp began to itch, and I unconsciously dug my nails in to relieve it. We did the basics with blood pressure and other tests, then she handed me a gown and said the doctor would be in soon. She went to disappear behind the privacy curtain and was sure that I caught a glimpse of a dark figure standing around the nurses’ station. Watching in silence through the window as the team of professionals desperately worked on their critical patient. The curtain closed, and my anxiety faltered for a moment.

Now I won’t bore with the details about all of the testing that went into diagnosing me; but a few hours had gone by with the help of needles and imaging. At the end of it all, they claimed that I didn’t have anything close to appendicitis. My appendix was apparently fine, and all I had was the harsh beginnings of a bad stomach flu. They told me the best over-the-counter medicines to get and discharged me with papers saying how to spot common issues. I couldn’t help but be slightly annoyed. As I exited, I could tell by the lack of people in the trauma area and the heavy sadness hanging in the air that the ambulance patient hadn’t made it. Remaining behind the window was that dark figure, watching along as people passed by.

The stark white light in the room was sucked in by the darkness of its near shapeless form. It looked toward me, and two punctures of a yellow light resembling eyes flickered to life. My stomach turned, and I felt dizzy, but I turned and decided to start minding my own business again. I attempted to swiftly walk out of there with dull pain continuing to sting from my lower abdomen. It was worse while I drove to get my recommended medicine. My brain couldn’t accept that it was only caused by something that simple, but I was just a teaching assistant, so I didn’t question it.

While stumbling my way around the store using my cart as a crutch, I kept having to glance behind me due to increased anxiety from seeing the familiar figure shrouded in darkness looming in the furthest point of my vision. My hands unconsciously twisted around the cart’s handle as minor paranoia began to settle in. Thoughts of perceived danger compulsively ravaged against the folds of my brain. My fingers curled around the coldness of the carts’ metal frame as I began to unconsciously plot the fastest exit from the store. Not many people were in there as it was a very early morning, and I tried to put distance between the figure and me by making awkward and sudden turns through the aisles. Every move caused my stomach to ache and was proven useless as all it did was provide a new space for the figure to silently occupy around me. As I finally began to make my way through the self-checkout, memories of what I assumed were Laura’s drug-induced paranoid ramblings fell back onto me. The last time we spoke, she was curled in a ball, mumbling about the “shadow man” stalking her like prey, but that meant almost nothing to me as all I saw was red from intense anger.

I began to wonder how she was doing now. Last I had heard, she had gone through with rehab and begun working towards a degree in nursing. That was about a year ago when she saw Mom at the hospice center, but I had not seen any updates since. Maybe Mom just wanted the peace with both of us by not talking about the situation too much. She looked healthier at the funeral.

It’s standing to my left.

Anxiety stormed my thoughts once again as the memory of Mom pushed me back to my present reality. The figure was clearer now, standing to the left of me with eyes made of yellow light. What little amount of people there were pushed past him.

No.

They all pushed through him. Jesus Christ, I must have begun to absolutely lose my shit. I tried every possible thought to rationalize what I was experiencing, but now a witness to something so horrifically paranormal struck a nerve within me. There was no kind of rational thought that could explain this away; I was being followed by a spectator made entirely of darkness.

Ding, ding.

The self-checkout chirped at me with a mechanical tone of annoyance. Seeing the ‘Continue Transaction?’ message across the screen allowed me the moment to shake the thoughts of compulsive nightmare and anxiety out of my head. I tapped the screen and finished up my shopping trip. There were no instances during my drive home, lucky that I was given such a courtesy with that one. It was early in the morning, around 8:30, when I finally made it home.

I couldn’t help but be very annoyed with how I wasted a night of sleep in the ER just to be told to get Pepto Bismol. The pain in my abdomen had dulled a bit, and I had called off work early into my hours of testing, so now it was the perfect time to sleep.

I awkwardly stumbled my way up the porch of the single-story family home that I had once shared with Mom. The siding was a faded blue with white accents. The previously stated porch was a small concrete one with minor cracks along it from the years of settling. There were plants out front looking dry and desperate for water against the late summer’s dry air. My keys slid into the lock, then the door popped open to reveal a near-barren living room only adorned with a small couch and stacked boxes containing some of Mom’s belongings. It had been a slow week of packing away her things before my abdominal pain became an issue.

Like I said, she had been in hospice for around a year before she passed, and a piece of the house always felt empty without her. Maybe it was from an area of empty hope, but I always tried to keep things the way she left them. It was only after the funeral that I had begun packing the items away, but I still didn’t have the heart to clean out her bedroom. Mine was always in the back of the house, so I kept it there.

Natural sunlight was in abundance throughout the house, so I had installed blackout curtains for sleepless nights like today. Before I could pull mine shut, my eyes caught a glimpse of a man dressed in a wrinkled gray suit standing across the street. His back was facing me as he was pulling at his sleeve. Anxiety fueled the irritating itch in my scalp. My body began to shake as I resisted the urge to dig through the layers of flesh to relieve the tingling implanted deep in my brain. I forced the curtain close before the sight of him could make me feel any worse.

My eyes fluttered as I drifted into a dreamless sleep; I woke up hours later deep in the mid-afternoon with a mouth as dry as sand. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, in desperate need of a cool glass of water. A soft knocking began to echo throughout the house. My joints groaned against the pressure of pushing myself from the bed. The pain caused me to wince against the pressure against my stomach. I figured that I just needed to take more medicine and began to stagger my way from my room. Sweat had covered every inch of me as a fever had settled, and my reflection showed back a miserably pale image. My head swung in dizziness with every step towards the front.

Immense pain filled me as I felt a sudden tear around my midsection. Black curled inward along the edges of my vision, and the last thing I saw was a well-dressed figure of shadow opening my front door from the inside. The ground had a sudden and important meeting with my face as static filled my ears began mixing with the screaming of a woman’s familiar voice. Something in my biological meaty mechanics had failed me and for once, I didn’t feel the anxiety. Just peace.

I sunk lower and lower into a pit of endless space. What resembled stars flickered in a beautiful rhyming pattern. One specific star drew closer to me as I fell, maneuvering around others set on a collision course to my exact position. That’s when it overtook me with a warm brightness. I found myself standing under the streetlight outside of my childhood home. The figure of shadow stood at the door, seemingly waiting for me.

“Where am I?” My voice echoed around me like I was yelling in a tunnel.

The figure didn’t answer and continued to watch me while standing absolutely still.

“Don’t ignore me!” Anger filled me and I stepped toward it, “Do not deny me my moment of absolution.” I demanded it and went to step out of the circumference of the light.

The figure silently raised a single, wispy hand of shadows in a signal to stop. My feet abruptly followed this command. I stood just at the edge, and the figure walked quickly through the darkness. It reached me in seconds, and I could make out a vague perception of a well-dressed man through the smoke. I think that was an attempt to put me at ease, as he looked kind. The figure placed a hand on my shoulder and pulled me out of the light towards him.

Whatever illusion he had made fell away, and he led me through the empty space once again. I saw memories of my life, both good and bad, play all around me. The faces of my parents, my sister, and old friends replayed silently along my moments of weakness to the compulsive actions that plagued my waking days. We eventually floated down deep amongst the stars and past creatures made of amalgamated animals with grotesque humanoid features.

The figure abruptly stopped a head of me, and I felt my feet be placed against the invisible ground. With the nightmare beings closing in around me, I was left completely alone. One monster that was the closest was a thing with the face of a dirt-covered man and long arms that resembled a monkey twisting at the elbows as he obsessively scratched at the sewn-in patches of fur amongst his body until he bled. I felt the sensation to scratch deep itches imbedding themselves into my scalp and all along my body, but I struggled to resist the urge to become like him.

He groaned in pain as new areas oozed with thick blood. After the spots would bleed, his arms would snap and twist around to another where the process started over and over again. Previous patches would heal, and he would eventually make his way back to those. I stepped back trembling and forcing away the image of him from my memory but felt something hard press into my back.

Behind me was another one, one with the face of a woman. She was sewn onto the body of a bear with the thin legs of a deer dragging uselessly behind her as she used human-shaped arms to crawl towards me. In between each push forward, she would scrape the same painful patterns along parallel sections of her body with sharp bird-like talons growing from her hands. I fell to my ass due to the guttural sounds of crying that erupted from her throat.

My hands flew up to cover my eyes, and I began rocking in an attempt to resist the urges growing inside me. “No, no, no, fuck, no! Enough!” I screamed to the dark room.

The monsters were gone, my anxiety was at rest, and around me stood three familiar figures. My parents stood at either side of me, while the figure of shadows stood in front. None of them spoke a word, but my parents, looking healthy once again, leaned down and pulled me in an embrace. I began to sob to myself. No being made of man or God could’ve pried me away from that scene. Eventually, the apparitions faded away, and I lost consciousness again.

Turns out, I did have appendicitis, and if it weren’t for Laura finding me, I would have died. I was close to it anyways. I think that’s what that dream was.

Oh, and yeah, I said Laura. She was the one I heard screaming, and she was sitting asleep in the room with me whenever I woke up from emergency surgery. I managed to say her name loud enough to wake her up, and she ran to embrace me with matching sobs. She immediately began talking about how I should sue for medical neglect, but I was just so happy to finally see her as herself once again. She did get that nursing degree, and one of her closest coworkers was the lobby nurse from the night before. Her friend knew the history between us and may have broken HIPAA by telling Laura about me and my lack of an emergency contact, but I didn’t care because it saved my life.

We talked for hours until her shift started about everything that has happened since our last conversation. I apologized for what I had said and not attempting to reconnect, and she apologized back. There’s a lot of work to do, but it’s safe to say that I have my sister back. My compulsions haven’t been as bad since my quick brush with death, but there’s still some every few days or so. Maybe it’s because I now know that I’m not alone.

I like to think that, but I know that it’s a result of the horrors I saw. Those creatures were exaggerated displays of the actions that plagued me, and I never want to be writhing in their vicinities ever again. Laura and I no longer see the shadow man around us. I told her everything, and she shared an experience of her own, but she tells about seeing him around work. Never paying attention to her but always around when he’s needed.

I’ve seen him a few times too, little glimpses around car crashes along the road. Standing outside the nursing home by my house. I understand now that he’s not malevolent, just the means of transportation. We both know that one day we’ll see him again, and there will be nothing to fear. My expiration date will come, but I won’t be scared the second time around.

Let me just start this out by saying that where I live, allergy season is rough.

I have been taking Benadryl for years whenever the high pollen count attempts to murder me in the spring. What made this time any different is that I finally got sick of the cold emptiness of my one-bedroom apartment and got a cat. He’s an orange tabby cat that was already named Peanut by the time I adopted him from the shelter. Life had been pretty fun having Peanut around during the early winter of the new year. We would play with him exploring our little shared space, he’d lay in the sparse light coming in from the windows. All in all, it was nice to have just another presence around. That was until the pollen struck.

Turns out I am highly allergic to the fresh mixture of spring pollen and cat dander. I didn’t want to get rid of Peanut though, we had bonded so much over the cold months that I decided to power through the miserable spring just for him. It broke my heart whenever I had to ban him from my room just to get a tiny bit of relief. His constant meowing and pawing at the door for the first few nights was awful. You would think I had abandoned him in a dark forest filled with Peanut-hungry monsters and my bedroom was his only place of freedom.

So I looked into getting some allergy medicine and boom, baby boy Benadryl was there ready to help. I had been taking it for a few weeks at night to try and get ahead of the allergies for the next day and it was working for the most part. That was until I got home last night and I was stuffed up something severe. So after I got ready for bed, I took about three Benadryl out of the bottle and sunk them down with my nightly Jack and Coke after having a rough day.

Peanut was chomping away at his food bowl, and I was watching Naked and Afraid, my favorite trash reality TV show. My first sign that something was off was when I looked over to call for Peanut, and my vision streaked like someone had smeared a fresh painting. I tried to blink it away, but nothing changed until the streaky scenery finally caught up with where my eyes were looking.

“Holy shit,” I mumbled to myself. From across the apartment, Peanut meowed in response. He was completely out of sight, but I wanted to pet him, so I attempted to stand up. If I took it slow, then I figured the fresh painting around me wouldn’t be too much to handle. My legs wobbled beneath me as I adjusted to the tilt of the Earth’s axis. Strange that I had never experienced that before, but it was time to move past it. There was a soft brushing against my leg followed by a familiar purring. I looked down to see Peanut rubbing against the outside of my leg.

Oh hell yeah, I thought, now I don’t have to walk.

There was an attempt to bend down and pick him up, but as I leaned farther down, the world stretched farther away from me. Peanut was doing a figure-eight pattern around my now numb legs, which felt at least two miles away from my stumpy arms. My head bobbled back up, and I decided that I needed to get some water, so I shuffled my feet against the vinyl plank flooring. My cat’s purrs started to grow deafening as he became angrier with me for not picking him up. After what felt like a solid 15 minutes, my feet broke way into the kitchen. The smearing paint effect had long since gone away, but now everything was pulsing in a weird sort of way. My eyes gleamed over the kitchen tap and looked straight at the bottle of Jack Daniel’s Peach Whiskey, and I weighed my options of refreshments.

A little bit more whiskey wouldn’t hurt me too badly. It was a Friday night, and I didn’t have work in the morning, so I grabbed the bottle like a barbarian and began taking what I thought would be a small sip. The room-temperature whiskey burned its way down my throat as I began to chug it. One small sip turned into downing half the bottle that I had bought only a few nights before. I only stopped to burp up a little bit of heart relief. I shouldn’t have done that. Right in that moment is when I realized my biggest mistake and turned to vomit directly into the sink.

My hand fidgeted with the tap until it began to flow down on the back of my head. I turned it slowly to get a big gulp of sweet city water, what I should’ve done instead of the whiskey. Speaking of which, the bottle still remained in my hand, so I placed it firmly back onto the counter and pushed it away from me. After I pooled a few more gulps of water into my hands, I was beginning to question my decisions in life.

“You okay?” I heard a small voice ask over my kitchen’s half wall.

I was confused. Did somebody sneak into my house during my little moment? God, that would be so embarrassing to have anybody witness, but especially someone who was planning on robbing you. Maybe it’ll make them pity me enough to where they’ll just leave. I peered over the divider wall and saw Peanut looking up at me from below. No one else was anywhere in the apartment. Just to be safe, my eyes scanned over every inch I could see.

“Hello?” I spoke to the air.

“I asked if you were okay.” The same voice came from behind the wall again. Peanut trotted around and looked up at me. “My bowl is empty.”

My mouth fell open. “What?”

He meowed at me and trotted back over to his bowl. I reluctantly refilled it and shuffled into my bathroom for a sense of safety. My back pressed against the door as I slid down it, and I pressed my hands against my forehead. What the hell was happening? Did my cat just speak, or am I going legitimately insane? There was a light buzz coming from my pocket. I fumbled for my phone to see a match from a dating app that would probably go nowhere again. Surprisingly, adding a cute cat to your pictures gains more traction. My eyes caught the time as exactly 10:43 p.m.

I placed the phone down on the floor and looked down at the stationary tiles that lined the floor. They had little designs randomly strewn across them, but one caught my attention as it looked like a little deer’s face. Like a little Rorschach ink splatter on a deer, it had a cute little face, but it began swaying from left to right. Blinking one eye at me at a time, I was beginning to feel sick again. So I laid my head back against the door.

Big mistake, as my head hit the door, the room split apart as it had just entered into a fourth-dimensional space. Purple light peered in from the seams of every corner, and I was left floating in the absence of the room. I could hear the screeches of ancient gods and monsters coming from below me. When I opened my eyes, I saw myself floating down towards the tentacles of the ancient ones as songs were sung to me in languages that time had long forgotten. What was I? Just a speck of particle dust floating through a void of existential nothingness? That wasn’t for me to know. The old gods were drawing me ever closer to their realm of forgotten souls. Tentacles enveloped me in an embrace of wet stickiness. They were dragging me down back to where I began as I was lulled to sleep from their songs.

Centuries flew past me as I fell deeper into the realm I now called home. I watched the old gods conquer new worlds only to be once again forgotten by civilizations that were doomed to fail. This was a never-ending cycle of conquering that led to a collapsing world caused by the collective forgetfulness of who truly brought them greatness. That was until a small blue marble flecked with green came into view, and the old gods took it reluctantly. Living on this marble was a race of soft pink bipeds who took pride in their survival. The old gods took a liking to them and led them once again to greatness. Here I was finally home, and I watched as we forgot about the old ones.

Our world fell into a state of darkness as the old gods abandoned us for another world of potential greatness, and we fell just like the others. The marble was cursed with a plague of brown, and together we floated into the emptiness of the void. All light eventually extinguished around us, and it was cold. We were back to being nothing, meaning nothing.

A soft buzz brought me back to the bathroom. It was another message on my phone. The time read 10:45 P.M. and my head was spinning. So I ran a cold bath and plopped myself into the Arctic plunge fully clothed. That’s where I finally woke up. Nothing was smeared or throbbing. Peanut would meow at me but it’s been a few hours and he still won’t look me in the eye.

I think I’m done with Benadryl for a while, and it’s time to switch to a different allergy medication during the spring.

Growing up, I had a friendship that ended after we shared a horrifying experience. I always expected that something like that would only bring friends closer together but that’s the opposite from what happened.

Anyways, his name was Marvin, and he was the poster child of a happy family living deep in Midwest Americana: two loving parents with steady, decent jobs while being an only child. You’d expect a smile to always be plastered to this kid’s face, right?

For a while, there was, but then his family moved into his grandma’s old house. She died after a hard fight with cancer when we were in the 3rd grade, and the whole town felt her absence. His grandma owned and operated a small general store in the historic downtown; their family opened it way back in the 1800s when the town was founded, and over the generations, the family became local celebrities.

Her smile was infectious whenever you’d stop by for a quick visit. Every summer holiday, she would hold large community celebrations through the church on the lawn of her two-story Victorian house. The house itself was as much of a family heirloom as the store was, and it sat firmly atop Denbrook Hill just off Walter Avenue. It once held such a magnetic warmth to it, but she took it along with her when she was taken from the town. From what I know, it was hard for the family to take their place in the home as it held so many memories of the family’s ever-loved matriarch.

So it sat empty and quiet until Marvin and I were just entering middle school. His dad had spent the last few years not only mourning his mother but working through the store’s finances, while pursuing his own career, and making the family home into something new for the next generation of homeowners. Marvin himself was reluctant to claim his inherited spot amongst the aging plaster walls.

“Can you stay over this Friday? My parents said it would be okay.” He asked me during lunch on the first Monday after they moved in.

“Yeah, I’m sure my parents would be fine with that.” I responded while chugging down my barely thawed pint of chocolate milk.

The regular days of English, math, and other boring classes slogged by as I watched Marvin’s personality begin to shift. Dark bags grew under his eyes, and the obvious lack of sleep caused him to be snippier during the school day. He was once such a bubbly kid that was the easiest to get along with, so we all just assumed it was from his family still in mourning of someone so close.

Anyways, that Friday found its way towards us, and I found myself sitting in the aisle seat of Marvin’s bus. He laid his head against the cool glass window.

“Are you okay?” I found myself asking.

His eyes fluttered open reluctantly, and he sat up while rubbing the grogginess from them. “I’m alright, it’s just a little weird sleeping in her house, you know?”

My head nodded. Losing a grandparent sucks tremendously, and I couldn’t imagine being handed so much to deal with while going through it at the age we were. When my grandpa died, it took me months to come to terms with it, and he was nowhere near as much of a loss to our community. So I did what I could to support my friend and acknowledge his pain with nods of sympathy.

The bus dropped us off about halfway through its route on the cusp of Walter and 5th Avenue. We stood just outside of the towering house standing on Denbrook Hill. Its once warm incandescent glow was replaced by the bright, cool blaze of LEDs. Marvin’s dad was an engineer who was always on the lookout for the most energy-efficient technology on the market, so it was no surprise that his house was the first to completely convert to LED lighting. Now the house stuck out from the blanket of yellow light that illuminated the town.

We made our way up to the front of the house and eventually inside. The doors were the original African Mahogany that the family was able to keep in near perfect condition over the years. A detail my young mind failed to appreciate. Marvin pulled out a ring of keys from his backpack and allowed us entry into the house. I could see that each key was labeled for a different room.

Once inside, there was a grand staircase that swung up to a landing; on the grand floor, there was a huge living room to the right, and down the hall, under the upstairs landing, led to the kitchen directly back with a dining room attached. Around there somewhere was also a bathroom and maybe a few closets. I had been inside the house countless times growing up, but Marvin’s dad definitely revitalized a few aspects in there; where old carpeting once was on the stairs was now the polished wooden floors, and the banister was renewed to its grand state.

Even at the age of 12, I was in awe of the original beauty of the house. While its outside glow had changed, the walls on the inside now pulsed with a familiar and palpable warmth. Marvin ignored the grandness of it all as he pushed past me to head upstairs to his room; I followed.

We made our way up to the stairs landing and into another hallway. It was lined with four doors evenly spaced on either side, and one at the direct end of the hallway. One door was slightly ajar, and from distant memory, I knew that was the bathroom. I also knew that the door at the end of the hallway was his grandmother’s old room.

“This one’s mine.” Marvin said as he unlocked the second door on the left. He pointed at the door at the end of the hallway, “Mom and Dad took that one after the renovation, and the others are guest rooms.”

We slipped into his room; he slung his backpack off his shoulder and fell face first on the bed. I heard a mumble come from his fortress of pillows, “Can you lock the door?”

“Is that safe? Like in case of a fire?” I asked while reluctantly turning the lock.

He laughed, “There’s a window for that. We’ll probably bring safer going that way compared to the stairs.”

“If you say so.” I laughed, and he sulked off the bed to open the window. Cold air fell in from outside, a nice breeze compared to the house’s warmth.

Marvin’s growing exhaustion was quickly offset due to the abundance of sugary drinks and snacks we consumed over the next few hours. We played video games like nothing had changed around us, but whenever I looked to him, there were the ever-present bags under his eyes. I also found it very strange that every time we walked in or out of a room, it was necessary that every door was locked.

After a few hours of Smash Bros. and a bit of Halo, Marvin’s mom called for us to come down for an expert meal of Chinese takeout. The fragrance danced itself around me and slipped itself into my nostrils. It carried me down the steps on a path of orange chicken and lo mein. Marvin went in front of me, and I was too distracted to not hear the door lock’s unforgettable click.

We ate with his parents, and there were moments filled with laughter and happiness. Good food mixed with the better company at the table as it had many times in the past. Then there was a soft dragging that echoed almost unnoticeably from upstairs . Marvin froze, and his eyes met mine. “Did we remember to lock the door?”

Before I could answer, Marvin’s dad stood up from the table and went upstairs without a word. His mom looked down at her watch. “How about you kids go outside?”

Outside of the house was almost a wilderness oasis. The house sat in front of a ring of forest. Trails spidered their way through the private woods, and we raced back and forth trying to push the memory of the dragging from our minds. I found myself stopping behind Marvin to catch my breath and craving hard for some water. My body turned and caught the glimpse of a shadow moving across the second floor’s windows. It staggered and stumbled past them, coming in and out of view. A figure of blank darkness placed against the colorful vintage wallpaper adorning the hallway.

A hand touched my arm, and I jumped completely out of my skin before I realized it was only Marvin. “What the hell, dude?” I attempted to regain my calm attitude.

“Sorry…what are you staring at?” He asked the question reluctantly, like he was too scared to find out the answer.

“Nothing, I was just wanting some water or something.”

His face lit up. “There’s always the hose.”

There we were, drinking directly out of a hose, probably connected to old lead pipes. It was so incredibly refreshing. We found ourselves coming back for more sips as the sun began to dip down behind the trees, leaving us in the fresh glow of twilight. Street lights flicked on, and the musical sound of Marvin’s mom’s voice called us back inside. Marvin looked beyond exhausted, and we began getting ready for bed.

The window was still opened, letting in the same cool breeze that fit perfectly against the heat emitted from the room’s ancient radiator. We attempted to watch a movie, but Marvin was struggling to keep his eyes open. He knocked out around 10:40, and my eyes glanced to the door. Through the dim tv lighting, I could see that the locking mechanism was in fact engaged.

Thank God.

I was still completely confused about the need for it, but based on the reaction from earlier, I made sure to follow those instructions clearly. Good thing Marvin had a small en suite bathroom to his room because I didn’t think I could hold it for that long. I lay on the floor atop a nice pile of sleeping bags; it was very cozy against the mixture of soft plush. The menu screen of our movie was the anthem to my incoming dreams as I slipped away.

Knock, knock.

A sharp noise echoed through the room, causing my eyes split open a fraction of an inch. It was late during the night and there was Marvin, standing against his bedroom door.

Knock, knock.

He used his head to lightly tap a hollow response against it.

“Marvin?”

He turned to me, eyes shut, and drool dried to his face. A slow groan of a voice came deep from his chest, “We let him in…we let him in,” he took a deep breath, and he flipped the door’s lock, “You, you let him in.”

My body was iced in fear, fighting against the mountain of plush to gain an ounce of warmth. I was confused, unable to understand what he meant. I thought that maybe he was sleepwalking, “Why did you unlock the door?”

Marvin only responded with a guttural moan and dragged his feet back to his bed. Halfway to his bed, he continued to repeat his original phrase. His body lay flat on the mattress while mumbling. Paralysis seeped its way into me as the sound of dragging came from the distant hallway. Metal scraped against the hardwood floor as something wet dragged along with it. There were noises of squishing mixed with the thudding of footsteps. It continued to draw nearer until it eventually stopped outside our door. My stomach twisted when there came a:

Knock,

knock,

knock.

“Here he is.” Marvin mumbled in his sleep.

The handle began to twist and shake violently from the other side until it clicked open. A long creak came from its hinges as a familiar incandescent light washed into the room. A medium-sized adult figure stood in the doorframe, its features were completely obscured by the yellow light that came from where its eye sockets were meant to be. It scanned the room like a pair of headlights moving along a forested highway. Finally, it landed on Marvin’s face. The figure began making its way across the room. Chains scratched against the wood and puddles formed where it had stepped.

Fear gripped me, and I tried to shut my eyes but was forced to witness this prescience. The figure didn’t know I was in there, and I knew that because it stepped hard onto my leg. From the point of contact, white-hot pain seared through my thigh. I screamed in terrible pain. Its yellow eyes shot down towards me, and it flung itself back out of the room. Moving in the same staggered and jerky movements that I had witnessed from the windows. My screams woke everybody up in the house. Marvin stopped mumbling, and his parents came rushing from their room.

They held me as I cried. Marvin and I ended up sleeping in their bed that night. I have no idea where they slept or if they slept at all. In their room was a kind and protective energy. My leg had a large bruise on it, but I kept the origins of it to myself, mainly in disbelief of what happened. The next morning, his mom drove me home, and I never stayed the night there again. Marvin and I grew apart throughout that year, and before the year ended, his parents separated.

He moved to another town with his mom, and his dad continued to live there alone until he eventually sold it to our city’s historical society. That’s who decided to convert it into a museum. I haven’t seen Marvin in maybe 6 years. I’m about to graduate high school, and the museum is opening this year. Part of me wants to tour it one day, but the rest wants to steer clear of it completely. To my dismay, a piece of that figure remains ever present in my dreams. I don’t think I’ll ever understand what it was doing with Marvin or why it’s still around, but I’ll never forget why I have a permanent spot of discoloring on my right thigh.

There’s a picture of Marvin with his dad online for the museum’s grand opening. He had aged but still holds the same boyish charm in his eyes. Speaking of his eyes, they remain exactly the same. Black bags of exhaustion stain the skin beneath them, and behind his practiced smile, I can see the toll of his experiences with the spirit. His dad wears them too.