u/Trash_Tia

“Of COURSE I'm infected too, babe,” he grinned, sticking his tongue in a fresh jar, “I’m just a really good fucking actor.”

Murder was legal in our town.

At eight years old, I watched a man walk into our local café while I drank my peanut butter chocolate milkshake and killed two people dead.

There was no malice in his eyes, no hatred. He was just a normal guy who smiled at the waitress and winked at me.

Mom told me to keep drinking my milkshake, and I did, licking away the excess whipped cream while the bodies were carried out and the pooling red was cleaned from the floor. I could still see flecks of white in the red, and my stomach twisted.

But I didn’t feel scared. I had no reason to be. Nobody was screaming or crying.

The man who had shot them sat down to eat a burger and fries, not blinking an eye.

That was my first experience seeing death.

With no rules forbidding murder, you would think a town would tear itself apart.

That is not what happened.

Murder was legal, yes, but it didn’t happen every day.

It happened when people had the urge.

Mom explained it to me when I was old enough to understand. “The Urge” was a phenomenon that had been affecting the townspeople long before I was born, and there was no real way to stop it.

So, it didn't stop.

Mom told me she had killed her first person at the age of seventeen, her math teacher. There was no reason or motive.

Mom said she just woke up one day and wanted to kill him.

That specific killing became more of a bedtime story to lull me to sleep.

I didn’t like her smile when she told me about her killing. Sometimes I got scared she was going to murder me too.

Growing up, I was constantly on edge. Every day I woke up and pressed my hand to my forehead, asking myself the same question: Did I want to kill anyone?

Those thoughts blossomed into paranoia when I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. It’s not like I didn’t know what it was like.

Dad taught me how to use a knife and how to properly hold a weapon, and Mom gave me lessons in severing body parts.

Both of them wanted me to follow through with The Urge when it inevitably hit me.

I wanted to fit in.

When I started middle school, our neighbors were caught killing and cannibalizing their children, turning them into bone broth. I knew both of the kids.

Clay and Clara.

I played with them in their yard and ate cookies with them.

Clara told me she wanted to be a nurse when she grew up, and Clay used to tug on my pigtails to get my attention.

They were like siblings to me.

No matter what my parents said, or my teachers, my gut still twisted at the thought of my neighbors doing something like that.

Days after the cops arrived, I saw Mrs. Jenson watering her plants. But when I looked closer, there was no water.

She was just holding an empty hose over her prize roses.

I stood on my tiptoes, peering over our fence. “Mrs. Jenson?”

“I am okay, Elle.”

Her voice didn’t sound okay.

“Are you sure?” I asked. I pointed at the hose grasped in her hand. “You forgot to turn your water on.”

“I know.”

“Mrs. Jenson…” I took a deep breath before I could stop myself. “Did you like killing Clay and Clara?”

“Why, yes,” she hummed. “Of course I did.”

I nodded. “But… didn’t you love them?”

She didn’t reply for a moment before seemingly snapping out of it and turning to me with a bright smile. Too many teeth.

That was the first time I started to question The Urge.

It was supposed to make you feel good, acting like a relief, a weight lifted from your chest. Killing another human being was exactly what the people in our town needed. But what about killing their families and children?

Did it really make them feel good?

Looking at my neighbor, I couldn’t see the joy my Mom described. In fact, I couldn’t see anything.

Her expression was the kind of blank that scared me. It was oblivion staring back, stripped of real human emotion.

Mrs. Jenson’s smile stretched across her lips, like she could sense my discomfort. I noticed she had yet to clean her hands.

Mrs. Jenson’s fingernails were still stained a scary shade of red. Instead of replying, the woman moved toward my fence in slow, stumbling strides.

She was dragging herself, like moving caused her pain—agony I couldn’t understand.

It was exactly what my mother had insisted didn’t exist when killing: pain.

Humanity. All the adults told us we would not feel those things when killing. We wouldn’t feel regret or contempt. We would just feel good.

It was a release, like cold water coming over us. We would never feel better in our lives than when we were killing and our first would be something special.

When Mrs. Jenson’s fingers, still slick with her children’s blood, wrapped around the wooden fence, I found myself paralyzed.

Her manic grin twisted and contorted into a silent wail, and once-vacant eyes popped open like she was seeing me for the very first time. “I want to go home,” she whispered, squeezing the wooden fence until her own fingers were bleeding.

“Can you tell them to let me go home? I would like to see my children. Right now. Do you hear me?”

Mrs. Jenson wasn’t looking at me. Instead, her gaze was glued to thin air.

She was crying, screaming at something only she could see, and for a moment, I wondered if ghosts were real.

I twisted around to see if there were any ghosts, specifically the ones of her children, but there was nothing. Just fall leaves spiraling in the air in pretty waves.

“Mrs. Jenson is sick,” Mom told me once I was sitting at the dinner table, eating melted ice cream. It tasted like barf running down my throat.

I didn’t see Mrs. Jenson after that.

Well, I did.

She looked different, however.

Not freakishly different, though I did notice her hair color had changed.

I remembered it being a deep shade of brown, and when my neighbor returned with an even wider smile, it was more of a blondish white. When I questioned this, Mom told me it was a makeover.

The Urge affected people in different ways, and with Mrs. Jenson, after having her come-down, she had decided on a change. Mom’s words were supposed to be reassuring, adding that there was no reason to be scared of The Urge.

But I didn’t want to be like Mrs. Jenson and have a mental breakdown over my killing. I wanted to be like Mom and have a glass of wine and laugh over the sensation of taking a life.

Mrs. Jenson was my first real glimpse into the negativity of killing.

Dying, for example, wasn’t feared.

From a young age, we had been taught that it was a vital part of life, and dying meant finding peace.

When I first started high school, I expected killing to happen.

Puberty was when The Urge fully blossomed.

Weapons were allowed, but only outside of classes. In other words, under no circumstances must we kill each other in class, but the hallways were a free-for-all.

I saw attempts during my freshman year, but no real killing.

Annalise Duval was infamously known as the junior girl who rejected The Urge and was thrown out of school.

Struck with the stomach flu on the day of her attempted killing, I only knew the story from word-of-mouth.

Apparently, the girl had attempted to kill her mother at home, failed, and then bounded into school, screaming about laughter in the walls and people whispering in her head.

Obviously, my classmate was labeled insane, and judging from her nosebleed, the girl’s body had ultimately rejected The Urge, and her brain was going haywire.

Nosebleeds were a common side effect.

I heard stories from kids saying there was blood everywhere, all over her hands and face, smeared under her chin.

She had been screaming for help, but nobody dared go near her, like rejection was contagious. Annalise survived. Just.

I still saw her on my daily bike ride to school.

She was always sitting cross-legged in front of the forest with her eyes closed, like she was praying.

The rumor was, after being thrown out by her parents, the girl wandered around aimlessly, muttering about whispering people and laughter in her head.

It was obvious her rejection had seriously affected her mental state, but I did feel sorry for her.

On my fourteenth birthday, I confused a swimming stomach and cramps for The Urge, which turned out to be my first period. I remember biking my way home, witnessing a man cut off another guy’s head with an axe.

It’s funny. I thought I would be desensitized to seeing human remains.

I saw the passion in the man’s face as he swung the axe, digging in real hard, chopping right through bone and not stopping, even when intense red splattered his face and clothes.

He didn’t stop until the head hit the ground, and that sent my stomach creeping into my throat.

Then, it was the vacancy in his eyes, the twitching smile as he held the axe like a prize.

Part of me wanted to stay, to see if he had a similar reaction to Mrs. Jenson.

I wanted to know if he regretted what he had done, but once I met his gaze, and his grin widened, the toe of his boot kicking the guy’s motionless body, I turned away and pedaled faster, my eyes starting to water.

It wasn’t long before my lunch was inching its way up my throat, and I was abandoning my bike on the side of the road, choking up undigested mac 'n' cheese onto the steaming tarmac.

I didn’t tell Mom about the man, and more importantly, about my odd reaction to his killing. I wasn’t supposed to feel sick to my stomach. Murder was normal. I wasn’t going to get in trouble for it, so why did seeing it make me sick?

I had been taught as a little kid that visceral reactions were normal, and it was okay to be scared of killing and murder.

However, what our brains told us was right wasn’t always the truth.

Our teacher held up a teddy bear and stabbed into its stuffing with a carving knife.

We all cried out until the teacher told us that the bear didn’t care about dying.

In fact, it was ready to find peace, and it didn’t hurt him.

In other words, we had to ignore what our minds told us was bad.

Mom told me I would definitely start having conflicting feelings before my first killing, but that it was nothing to worry about.

I did worry, though.

I started to wonder if I was going to become the next Annalise Duval.

Maybe the two of us would become friends, sharing our delusions together.

My 17th birthday came and went and still no sign of The Urge.

I noticed Mom was starting to grow impatient. She had a routine of coming to check my temperature every morning, regardless of whether I felt sick or not.

“How are you feeling?” I couldn’t help but notice Mom’s smile was fake.

She dumped my breakfast on a tray in front of me, and when I risked nibbling on a slice of toast, she dropped the bombshell.

“Elle, you are almost eighteen years old,” she said. I noticed her hands were clenched into fists. “Do you feel anything?”

I considered lying, though then I would have to kill someone, and without The Urge, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to do that. “I don’t know,” I answered honestly, propping myself up on my pillows. “Most of the kids in my class—”

She cut me off with a frustrated hiss. “Yes, I know. They have all killed someone and you haven’t.” Her eyes narrowed. “People are starting to notice, Elle.”

She spoke through a smile that was definitely a grimace. “And when people start to notice, they get suspicious. I’ve been on the phone with three different doctors this morning, and all of them want to book you in for an MRI. Just to make sure things are normal.”

“MRI?” I almost choked on the apple I had been chewing.

“Yes.” Mom sighed. “We can’t ignore that things aren’t... abnormal. You are seventeen years old and haven’t had one urge to kill. The minimum for your age is one kill,” she said. “Minimum, Elle. You haven't killed anyone, and when I bring it up, you change the subject.”

I changed the subject because she started asking if I wanted to practice.

I wasn’t sure what “practice” meant, but from the slightly manic look in her eye, my mom wasn’t talking about dolls or teddy bears.

It was normal to practice killing.

There were even people who volunteered to be targets at the local scrapyard.

Most of them were old people.

Joey Cunningham started training to kill when he was twelve years old.

Five years on, Joey had accumulated a total of fourteen kills.

He never failed to remind everyone in almost every class. I could taste the apple growing sour in the back of my mouth.

Mom was just trying to help, and it’s not like I was doing this intentionally.

The idea of going to the scrapyard and killing people, even if they gave me permission to, wasn’t appealing in the slightest.

“I’m okay,” I said, and when Mom’s eyes darkened, I followed that up with, “I mean… I have spare time after class, so…?”

I meant to finish with, “Maybe,” but the word tangled in my mouth when I took a chunk out of the apple, and pain struck.

Throbbing pain, which was enough to send my brain spinning off its axis.

For a moment, my vision feathered, and I was left blinking at my mother, who had become more silhouette than real person.

I was aware of the apple dropping out of my hand, but I couldn’t think straight.

The pain came in waves, exploding in my mouth. When I was sure I could move without my head spinning, I slammed my hand over my mouth instinctively to nurse the pain, except that just made it worse.

Fuck.

Had I chipped my tooth?

Blinking through blurry vision, I knew my mom was there. But so was something else.

As if my reality was splintering open, another seeping through, I suddenly had no idea where I was, and a familiar feeling of fear started to creep its way up my spine. The thing was, though, I knew exactly where I was. I had known this town, this house, my whole life.

So that feeling of fear didn’t make sense.

The more I mulled the thought over in my mind, however, pain striking like lightning bolts, something was blossoming.

It both didn’t make sense, and yet it also did. In the deep crevices of my mind, that feeling was familiar. And I had felt it before. No matter how hard I squinted, though, I couldn’t make it out.

When I squinted again, a sudden shriek of noise rattled in my skull, and it took me a disorienting moment to realize what I could hear was laughter.

Hysterical laughter, which seemed to grow louder and louder, encompassing my thoughts until it was deafening.

Not just that. The walls were swimming, flashing in and out of existence before seemingly stabilizing themselves.

I blinked. Was I… losing my mind?

Maybe this was a side-effect of rejecting The Urge.

“Elle?” Mom’s voice cut through the phantom laughter, which faded, and I blinked rapidly. “Sweetie, are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

The word was in my mouth before the thought could cross my mind. I shook my head, swallowing. “Yeah, I’m… fine.”

She nodded, though her expression darkened. Scrutinizing. I knew she couldn’t wait to get me under an MRI.

“All right. Finish your breakfast. School starts in an hour.” Mom stopped at the threshold. “I really do think practicing killing will help a lot.

She left, and I rolled my eyes, mimicking her.

I flinched when another wave of laughter slammed into my ears.

Faded, but very much there. Definitely not a figment of my imagination.

Checking in my bedroom mirror, I didn’t have a loose tooth.

Even thinking that, though, panic started to curl in the root of my gut.

My brain wouldn’t shut up on my way to school, my gut was twisting and turning, trying to projectile that meager slice of toast.

Annalise Duval had complained of a loose tooth before she rejected The Urge.

Was that what was going to happen to me?

Was it all because of that stupid apple?

At school, I was surprised to be cornered by a classmate I had said maybe five words to in our combined time at Briarwood High.

Jonas Issacs was one of the first kids in my class to be hit with The Urge, and he almost ended up like Annalise Duval.

I don’t even think it was The Urge.

I think he was driven to kill through emotions, like so many adults had tried to tell us wasn’t real.

Jonas was a confusing case where a teenager had actually blossomed early, or not at all, and struck with his own intent.

Jonas didn’t need The Urge.

Halfway through math class, two years prior, I was daydreaming about the rain.

It rarely rained in Brightwood. Every day was picturesque.

But I did remember rain.

I knew what it felt like hitting my face, dropping into my open mouth and filling my cupped hands. I remembered the sensation on it soaking my clothes and glueing my hair to the back of my neck.

When I asked Mom if it was ever going to rain, though, she got a funny look on her face.

“Sweetie, it doesn’t rain in Brightwood.”

It never rained. So, where had I jumped into puddles?

My gaze was fixed on the windowpane, trying to imagine what a raindrop looked like sliding down the glass, when Jonas Issacs let out an exaggerated sigh behind me.

In front of him, Jessa Pollux had been tapping her pen on her desk.

At first, it wasn’t annoying, but then she kept doing it—tap, tap, tappity tap.

And then it became annoying.

I could tell it was annoying because Jonas politely asked her three times to stop making noise.

“Jessa, stop.” He groaned, half asleep in his arms.

When she continued, his tone hardened. “Can you stop doing that?"

She ignored him and, if anything, tapped louder.

I had grown up knowing that The Urge came without warning, motive, or reason.

It happened whether you liked it or not.

Jonas was different. His case was rare.

This time, he did have a motive, and despite what we were taught, that killing didn’t require a reason and wasn’t driven by negative emotion. Jonas was driven by anger.

This time, I saw it happen clearly.

When I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, I twisted around with the rest of the class to see Jonas halfway off his chair, his fingers wrapped around a knife. He was already smiling, already thrilled with the idea of killing.

The Urge had hit him.

Until that moment, he was a quiet kid who kept to himself.

Jessa knew instantly what he was going to do, even without turning around.

Like an animal, Jonas already had a tight hold of her ponytail and yanked her back.

Though in fight or flight, the girl was screaming and flailing.

She didn’t want to die, I thought.

Was that normal?

Mom always insisted that if it was our time, it was our time. If someone attacked us, even family members, we were to accept it.

I caught the moment her elbow knocked into Jonas’s mouth, just as he drove the blade into her skull.

Until then, Jonas had been consumed by a euphoric frenzy, intoxicated by the dark thrill of killing. It was as if the idea of ending a life had briefly elevated him to a state of pure euphoria.

Growing up, Mom’s stories spoke of finding a twisted pleasure in murder, and for a moment, seeing that look in my classmates eyes, I understood why she described killing like a rush.

It was a lunacy I didn't understand, complete unbridled insanity sending shivers down my spine. This was exactly what Mom was talking about.

She described it like floating on a cloud, lukewarm water pooling underneath her feet.

But just as abruptly as it had enveloped him, that otherworldly glow faded from Jonas’s eyes. He crumpled to his knees, one hand clamped over his mouth, the knife slipping from his grasp.

“That's enough.” Our teacher announced. “Jonas, go and clean yourself up.”

When he didn't respond, she snapped at him.

“Mr Isaacs!”

Then, he did, his gaze flicking to his blood slicked hands.

“Huh?”

He seemed like he was on another planet, swaying back and forth.

There was a moment when I met his half lidded gaze, and he slowly inclined his head, like he was confused. Scared.

When Jonas lifted his head, I saw thick beads of red trickling down his chin, pooling down his fingers.

It was the same look I had seen on Mrs. Jenson’s face.

Jonas blinked again, before noticing the blood.

“Fuck.” He whimpered, his voice muffled.

His eyes, filled with panic, flickered wildly. Without another word, he scrambled to his feet, stumbling toward the classroom door.

When I asked him what happened the next day, he explained it was just an "abnormal reaction" and that he was fine.

But Jonas’s words were strange.

He wasn’t even looking at me, and his smile was far too big. He got his first kill, though, so that gave him bragging rights as the first sophomore to come of age.

Jonas Issacs and Annalise Duval both had similar experiences.

One of them had clearly lost their mind, while the other seemingly avoided it.

And speaking of Jonas, it wasn’t the norm for him to be talking to me at school. But there he was, blocking my way into the classroom.

“Hey.” He quickly side-stepped in front of me when I tried pushing him out of the way.

There had been a time the year before when I considered asking him to prom.

He was a reasonably attractive guy, with reddish dark hair that curled slightly as it peeked out from under a well-worn baseball cap, a crooked smile that was never genuine, always leaning more toward irony.

But then I remembered what he did to Jessa.

I remembered the sound of his knife slicing through skin, cartilage, and bone, and despite her cries, her animalistic wails for him to stop, he kept going, driving it further and further into her skull.

I couldn’t look him in the eye after that.

Jonas inclined his head. “Can we talk?”

“No.”

My mouth was still sore, and I was questioning my sanity, so speaking to Jonas wasn’t really on my to-do list that morning.

Jonas didn’t move, sticking an arm out so I couldn’t get past him. “Do you have toothache by any chance?”

To emphasize his words, he stuck his finger in his mouth, dragging his index finger across his upper incisors.

“Like, bad toothache.” His voice was muffled by his finger. Jonas leaned forward, arching a brow. “You do, don’t you? Right now, you feel like your whole mouth is on fire, and yet you can’t detect any wobblies.”

The guy’s words sent a sliver of ice tingling down my spine. He was right. I hadn’t felt right since biting into that apple.

When I didn’t say anything, his lip twitched into a scowl. “All right. You don’t want to talk.” He raised two fingers in a salute. “Suit yourself.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, mostly to humor him.

He shrugged. “Maybe wait a few days, and then come talk to me, all right?”

Jonas’s words didn’t really hit me until several days later.

I woke up with a throbbing mouth, knelt over the corpse of my mother.

The Urge had finally come. It was something I had been anticipating and fearing my whole life, terrified I wouldn’t get it and would end up ostracized by my loved ones.

But when I saw my mom’s body and the vague memory of plunging a kitchen knife into her chest hit me, I didn’t feel happy or relieved.

I felt like I had done something bad, which was the wrong thing to think.

Killing was good, the words echoed in my mind. Killing was our way of release.

How could I think that when there was a knife clutched between my fingers?

The weapon that had killed her. Hurt her. How was this supposed to make me feel good?

My mother’s eyes were closed.

Peaceful. Like she had accepted her death.

The teeth of the blade dripped deep, dark red, and I knew I should have felt something. Joy or happiness.

Except all I felt was empty and numb, and fucking wrong.

Alone.

I felt despair in its purest form, which began to chew me up from the inside as I lulled from my foggy thoughts.

I wasn’t supposed to scream. I wasn’t supposed to cry, but my eyes were stinging, and I felt like I was being suffocated. I saw flashes in quick succession: a room bumbling with moving silhouettes, and the smell of... coffee. Mom never let me try coffee, and I was sure we never had it in the house.

So, how did I know the feeling of it running down my throat?

Just like in my bedroom, the walls started to swim.

This time, I jumped to my feet and leaped over my mom’s corpse, slamming my hands into them. They were real.

Almost as if on cue, there it was again.

Laughing. Loud shrieks of hysterical laughter thrumming in time with the dull pain pounding in my back tooth.

Blinking through an intense fog choking my mind, my first coherent thought was that yes, Jonas was right.

I did have a loose tooth, and when I was sure of that, I was stuffing my bloody fingers inside my mouth, trying to find it.

I grabbed the knife feverishly, my first thought to cut it out, when there was a sudden knock at the front door.

Slipping barefoot on the blood pooling across our kitchen floor, I struggled to get to the door without throwing up my insides.

Annalise Duval was standing on my doorstep. I had seen her in odd assortments of clothes, but this one was definitely eye-catching.

The girl was wearing a wedding dress that hung off her, the veil barely clinging to the mess of bedraggled curls she never brushed. Blinking at me through straggly blonde hair, she almost resembled an angel. The dress itself was filthy, blood and dirt smeared down the corset, the skirt torn up.

“Hello Elle.” The girl lifted a hand in a wave.

Her smile wasn’t crazed like my classmates had described.

Instead, it was… sad. Annalise’s gaze found my hands slick with my mother’s blood but barely seemed fazed. “Do you want to see the wall people?”

Until then, I had ignored her ramblings. But when I started hearing the laughing, “wall people” didn’t sound so crazy after all.

I nodded.

“Can you hear the laughing?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

“Mmm.” She twirled in the dress. “That’s how it started for me. Laughing. I heard a looooot of laughing, and then I found the wall people.” I winced when she came close, so close, almost suffocating me.

“Nobody believes me, and it’s sad. I’m just trying to tell people about the wall people, but they label me as crazy. They say something went wrong with my head.”

Annalise stuck two fingers to her temple and pulled the imaginary trigger, her eyes rolling back, like she was mimicking her own death. “I’m not the one who’s wrong. I know about the wall people and the laughing. I know why I murdered my Mom.”

“Annalise,” I said calmly. “Can you tell me what you mean?”

“Hm?”

Her eyes were partially vacant, that one sliver of coherence quickly fading away.

Instead of speaking, I took her arm gently and pulled her down my driveway. “Can you show me what you found?”

Annalise danced ahead of me, tripping in her wedding dress. She cocked her head.

“Did you kill your mother too?” Her lips twitched. “That’s funny. According to the wall people, you’re not supposed to kill someone until the end of seasonal three.”

The girl blinked, giggling, and I forced myself to run after her. Wow, she was fast, even in a wedding dress. Annalise leapt across the sidewalk, twisting and twirling around, like she was in her own world.

Before she landed in front of me, her expression almost looked sane.

“I wonder which season it will be. Will it be Summer? Maybe Fall, or Winter. I guess it’s not up to you, is it? It’s up to The Urge.”

Laughing again, the girl grabbed my hand, her fingernails biting into my skin.

I glimpsed a single drop of red run from her nose, which she quickly wiped with the sleeve of her dress, leaving a scarlet smear.

“Let’s go and see the wall people, Elle,” she hummed.

As her footsteps grew more stumbled, blood ran down her chin, spotting the sidewalk.

I don’t know if coherency ever truly hit Annalise Duval, but knowing she was bleeding, her steps grew quicker, more frenzied, I quickened my own pace.

“Your nose,” was all I could say.

Annalise nodded with a sad smile. “I know!” she said. “Don’t worry, it will stop when I shut up.” Her smile widened.

“But what if I don’t shut up? What if I show you the wall people?”

To my surprise, she leapt forward and flung out her arms, tipping her head back and yelling at the sky. “What if I don’t shut up?” Annalise laughed. “What are the wall people going to do, huh? Are you going to explode my brain?”

When people started to come out of their homes to see what was going on, I dragged her into a run.

“Are you insane?” I hissed.

“Maybe!”

Annalise seemed to be floating between awareness and whatever the fuck The Urge had done to her. “Don’t worry, they’re just peeking.”

“What?”

The girl had an attention span of a rock. Her gaze went to the sky. “They’re going to turn the sun off so I can’t show you.”

Her words meant nothing to me until the clouds started to darken. Just like Annalise had predicted, the sky began to get dark.

Knowing that somehow this supposedly crazy girl knew when things were going to happen only quickened my steps into a run.

“Hey!”

Halfway down the street, Jonas Issacs was riding his bike toward us, which I found odd. Jonas didn’t own a bike. He rode the bus to school.

“Elle!” Waving at me with one hand and grasping the handlebars with the other, Jonas pedaled faster. “Yo! Do you want to hang out?”

“Peeking,” Annalise said under her breath.

Ignoring Jonas, I nodded at Annalise to keep going, though the boy didn’t give up.

We twisted around, and he caught up easily, skidding on the edge of the sidewalk. When he came to an abrupt stop in front of us, his gaze flicked to Annalise.

He raised a brow. “Shouldn’t you be praying in the forest?”

The girl recoiled like a cat, hissing, “Peeking!”

Jonas shot me a look. “Of all the people you could have made friends with, you chose Annalise Duval?” His eyes softened when I ignored him and pulled the girl further down the road. Jonas followed slowly on his bike.

“Where are you going anyway? Isn't it late?”

It was 4pm.

I decided to humor him. “We’re going to see the wall people.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Do I sound like I’m kidding?” I turned my attention to him. “You asked me if I had a toothache, right?”

His expression crumpled. “I did?”

I noticed Annalise was clingier with him around, sticking to my side.

Every time he moved, she flinched, tightening her grip on my arm.

The girl was leading us into the forest, and I swore, the closer we got to the clearing, the more townspeople were popping up out of nowhere. An old woman greeted us, followed by a man with a dog, and then a group of kids from school. Annalise entangled her fingers in mine, pulling me through the clearing.

Jonas followed, hesitantly, biking over rough ground. “Once again, I think this is a bad idea,” he said in a sing-song voice. “We should go back.”

When it was too dangerous for his bike, he abandoned it and joined my side.

“Elle, the girl is insane,” Jonas hissed. “What are you even doing? What is this going to accomplish except potentially getting lost?”

“I want to know if she’s telling the truth,” I murmured back.

He scoffed. “Telling the truth? Look at this place!” He spread his arms, gesturing to the rapidly darkening forest. “There’s nothing here!”

“No.” Annalise ran ahead, staggering over the tricky ground. “No, it’s right over here!”

She was still fighting a nosebleed, and her words were starting to slur. The girl twisted to Jonas. “You’re peeking,” she spat, striding over to him until they were face to face.

“Stop peeking,” she said, her fingers delving under her wedding skirt where she pulled out a knife and pressed it to his throat. “If you peek again, I will cut you open.”

Jonas nodded. “Got it, Blondie. No peeking.”

Annalise didn’t move for a second, her hands holding the knife trembling. “You’re not going to tell me I’m crazy again,” she whispered.

“You’re not crazy,” Jonas said dryly.

“Say it again.”

“You’re not crazy!” He yelped when she applied pressure to the blade. “Can you stop swinging that around? Jeez!”

Annalise shot me a grin, and it took a second for me to realize.

Jonas was scared of the knife.

He was scared of dying, which meant, whether he liked it or not, the boy had, in fact, not gone through with The Urge.

I thought the girl was going to slash Jonas’s throat open in delight, but instead, she looped her arm in his like they were suddenly best friends.

“Come on, Elle!” She danced forward, pulling the boy with her. “We’re closeeeee!”

I wasn’t sure about that.

What we were, however, was lost.

When the three of us came to a stop, it was pitch black, and I was struggling to see in front of me. Annalise, however, walked straight over to thin air and gestured to it with a grin. “Tah-da!” Spluttering through pooling red, she let out a laugh.

“See!”

Jonas, who was still uncomfortably pressed to her no matter how hard he strained to get away, shot me a look I could barely make out.

“I’m sorry, what did I say? That we were going to get lost? That Annalise is certifiably crazy and is probably going to kill us?”

At first, I thought I really was crazy. Maybe Annalise’s condition was contagious.

I could hear it again. Laughing.

But this time, it was coming from exactly where Annalise was pointing. When the girl slammed her hand into thin air, there was a loud clanging noise that sounded like metal.

Slowly, I made my way toward it, and when my hands touched sleek metal, what felt like the corners of a door, more pain struck my upper incisors.

“Holy shit.” Jonas was pressing himself against the door, then slamming his fists into it. “The crazy bitch was right.”

His words hung in my thoughts on a constant cycle, as we delved into what should have been forest.

After all, we had been standing in the middle of nowhere. The laughter was deafening when I stepped over the threshold, and I had to slap my hands over my ears to block it out. Through the invisible door, however, was exactly what Annalise had described: wall people.

All around us were television screens, and on those screens were people. Faces.

They were not part of the laughter. The laughter was mechanical and wrong, rooted deep inside my skull. The faces that stared down at us were men and women, some teens, and even younger children.

Annalise and Jonas were next to me, their heads tipped back, gazes glued to the screens. Not the ones I was looking at.

The ones on tiny computer monitors.

When I finally tore my eyes from our audience, I began to see what made Jonas stiffen up next to me. One screen in particular, showed his face.

He was younger, maybe a year or two. No, I thought, something slimy creeping up my throat. It was from when he had killed that girl. His hands clasped in his lap were still stained and slick with Jessa Pollux’s blood.

The Jonas on the screen was far more relaxed, casually leaning back with his feet propped up on the table.

His hair was shorter, and his clothes were more formal than what I was used to seeing him in.

I usually saw him in jeans and hoodies, but this Jonas wore a crisp white collared shirt.

Something hung around his neck, a thin strip of black fabric with a shiny card at the end, reminding me of some kind of badge.

“Why exactly have you signed up for this program?” a man’s voice crackled off-screen.

"Duh." Jonas held up his scarlet hands, a grin twisting on his lips. His arrogant smile twisted my gut. "So I can get my Darkroom rep back."

He leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. "That is going to happen, right? I don’t do this shit for free, and I’ve got one million followers to impress, man. Darkroom loves me."

Jonas scoffed, crossing one left over the other. "Even if I did go too far that one time, which wasn’t even my fault. What are you guys, fucking Twitch?"

“You are correct,” the man said. “Darkroom does benefit from its influencers. Our program aims to help satisfy certain… needs by broadcasting them right here.”

He paused. “You have killed five people before signing up for Darkroom, correct? Your parents?”

“Parents and brother,” Jonas's lips pricked into a smile. “I gutted them just to see what was inside, but of course, my TikTok got taken down by all the freaks in the comments trying to cancel me.” He rolled his eyes. “They worship you, call you a god, swear they’ll do anything for you-- and then fuck you."

I flinched when he leaned forward, his gaze penetrating the camera. This guy knew exactly how to act in front of one.

The slight incline of his head, trying to get the best angle.

“Can I tell you something?”

“Yes, of course, young man.”

“Have you ever been called a God? Because it's a rush.” He laughed. “I made stupid videos, and these people worshipped me. They loved me."

Jonas clucked his tongue. “Buuuut the moment I show them my real self, they turn on me and try to end my career.”

He leaned back in his chair with a sigh, glancing at the camera. “And then I found you guys! Who pay me to be my real authentic self. Now, how could I decline an offer like that?”

“And,” the man cleared his throat, “you will keep killing? We are aware the initial implant impacted your brain quite badly. In the subdued state, you will keep killing, as the so-called ‘urge’ says. However, in reality, we will be sending signals to your brain which will make you commit murder.”

“All right, I'll do it.”

“Are you sure? We couldn’t help noticing during your first kill, you seemed to… well, react in a way we haven’t seen before. It's possible there could be a potential fault.”

He cocked his head, like a puppet cut from strings. “Did the comments like it?”

“Well, yes—”

“Good.” Jonas held out his arm. “Do it again. And do it right this time. As long as I’m getting 40K every appearance, I’m good. You can slice my brain up all you want; I’m getting paid and followers. So.” His gaze found the camera.

“What are you waiting for?”

When the screen went black, then flickered to a bird's-eye view, and finally a close-up of my house, I felt my legs give way.

As if on impulse, I prodded at my mouth and felt for the loose tooth.

“That…” Jonas spoke up, his voice a breathy whisper. His eyes were still glued to the screen, confusion crumpling his expression.

“That… wasn’t me! Well, it was me... but I don’t… I don’t remember that!”

To my surprise, he turned to me, and I saw real fear in his eyes.

“Elle.” He gritted out, “that is not me.”

Instead of answering him, I turned away when alarm bells started ringing, and the room was suddenly awash in flashing red light.

“Peeking!” Annalise squeaked, hiding behind me.

Ignoring her, I focused on Jonas.

Or whoever the hell he was.

I slammed the door shut, throwing myself against it.

“You need to knock my tooth out.” I told him. “Now.”

The monstrous metal thing looms over Lila.

It's bright green. Lila's favorite color.

She pretends not to notice the others.

Towering metal structures that resemble humans.

One of which recently gained sentience. She can still see red dried into its casing. Lila never saw what happened during the transfer. Her imagination fills the blanks.

Zach won't move yet. He's still in shock. Lila isn't sure he will ever move again. Not in human skin, anyway. She takes a step back and stumbles, her breath catching.

"I won't do it," Lila tells her driving instructor, backing away from masked figures, blooming silhouettes waiting to drag her away--- like Zach. Like Callum.

"Lila." Henry is firm, but kind.

He is the only one she trusts won't hurt her. She is so stupid, so naive, believing he actually thought she was capable of anything beyond her "capability.'

He sighs. Doesn't move. He doesn't have to. The girl is already frozen.

No way out. Guards are stationed behind her and the room is suddenly so white--- too white. Suffocatingly WHITE.

Lila's clothes itch. Her skin crawls. Phantom bugs creep in her throat and scramble across her bare arms.

"Please," she whispers. It's a plea. Begging. She never thought she'd be begging for her life.

"Lila, you need to understand that only your brain can power what we've prepared," Henry speaks softly, stepping closer and holding his arms up like he's surrendering.

His eyes are hollow, crinkled with exhaustion. He hates saying these words. The exact words every single time, telling a child they're going to be a superhero.

With one caveat.

Henry pinches the skin between his brows. Sighs. Hates himself.

Another kid, another loss. But these kids are all humanity has left. Of course, he remembers them. Small things. Not enough to talk about them at a memorial, not enough to say he "knew" them.

Callum liked soccer. Zach wanted to be an astronaut.

But these kids are his last hope.

The last line of defence.

Lila is twelve years old. Blonde pigtails and watery eyes that trust him. She's just a child. His child, whom he took from his home against his wife's wishes and lied to.

He told Lila she was special.

Told her she could save the world.

"Sir," Anderson's voice crackles through his intercom, a hiss of static he HATES.

"They just hit Washington again." Anderson's voice trembles, "Are they ready?"

"Yes," Henry says, his voice breaking. He pulls out his gun. Just in case.

He doesn't want to do it. Henry grabs his daughter's wrist and yanks her forward. He doesn't want to do it. He orders her to be sedated. And when she screams, kicks, and bites, Henry tells her, through tears he's sure are as fake as his smile:

"Just like every eligible neurodivergent child, we have no need for your body."

“My wife is on vacation,” he laughs, a stray bloodied petal slipping from his mouth, my entrails ingrained under his fingernails.

On my eighth birthday, a shadow strode into my house and shot me and my family dead.

I remember it vividly, every detail, every angle, etched and stained into my memory.

I sat very still with my knees to my chest, my gaze fixed on my siblings.

Lily and PJ looked like they were sleeping, and I could almost believe it.

I didn’t look at the shadow.

From the comfort of my knees, I waited for my brother to lift his head.

But his body was so limp, so still, every part of him faltering. My sister’s head was nestled on his shoulder, thick beads of red running down her face.

They're just sleeping.

I could tell myself they were—as long as I didn’t look at the splatter of scarlet staining the back of the couch and pooling at their feet.

BANG.

Mom’s body dropped to the ground.

I lunged forward, slamming my hands over my ears.

BANG.

PJ’s head slumped forward, a teasing smile still frozen on his lips.

BANG.

Lily gently tipped into PJ, like she was going to sleep.

Before she closed her eyes, Mom told me to run.

I can’t remember how long I stayed under the shattered remnants of Mom’s favorite table. The shadow was waiting for me to move, to make a noise.

I watched booted feet crunch through glass, getting closer and closer, and slowly, fight or flight began to take over.

Making it halfway across the living room, my palms slick with my mother’s blood, I thought I was going to live.

Cruel fingers wound their way through my hair and shoved me to my knees.

I remember the phantom legs of a spider creeping down the back of my neck when the shadow with no face dragged the barrel of his gun down my spine.

“Turn around.”

The shadow had a voice.

When I didn’t move, the protruding metal stabbed into my neck.

“Turn around, kid!”

I did, very slowly.

Behind him, my siblings still weren’t moving.

They were asleep.

Lily was still smiling, strawberry-blonde ringlets stained red.

I couldn’t see PJ’s face anymore.

BANG.

I didn’t feel the gunshot.

I didn’t feel anything.

Looking down, I glimpsed slowly spreading red blossoming like a flower.

It felt like being cut from strings.

I hit the ground, just like my mother. My body felt heavy and wrong.

Paralyzed.

I remember being unable to scream, unable to cry, the salty taste of metal filling my mouth. It was like being winded. Rolling onto my side, all I could see was flickering candlelight.

The air was thick, so hard to breathe.

I rolled onto my back, trying to suck in air.

The shadow took a step back, opened the front door, and bled into the night.

I don’t remember the pain, and I don’t remember dying. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t conjure words in my mouth.

I felt warm and sticky, lying in my own blood.

I think I tried to move.

But I was so tired.

I’m not sure what death feels like because it’s like going to sleep.

I remember my last shuddering breaths, a lulling darkness beginning to swallow me up. I don’t know why I wasn’t afraid.

Oblivion almost felt like sinking into lukewarm depths on a summer’s day.

Oblivion wasn’t pain, and there was a peaceful inevitability to it.

It was endless nothing, a nothing I found myself gravitating towards. But before I could envelop myself in that darkness, it was spitting me back out.

The next thing I knew, I was in a white room, a slow beeping sound tearing me from slumber. I had a vague memory of roses spreading across my shirt, like summer flowers blooming.

Everything was white.

The walls, the ceiling, and my clothes.

Sensation hit me in slow waves.

Exhaustion.

I felt it tightening its grip around my brain, dragging me back onto a mountain of pillows when I tried to jump up.

My Aunt May was sitting next to me on a plastic chair, her warm fingers entangled in mine. Aunt May and Mom were practically twins, with the same thick red hair and pale skin.

Mom wore her hair in a casual ponytail, while May preferred a strict bun.

I had to bite back the urge to yank my hand away.

Aunt May was asleep, used tissues filling her lap.

There was a nurse pottering around, checking my vitals and prodding my arms. My eyes felt heavy. I had to blink several times to keep myself awake.

“Charlie?”

The nurse’s voice was like wind-chimes.

I pretended not to notice her forced lipstick smile, the way she stood with her arms folded, staring at me like I was one of my cousin’s experiments. “You were in an accident, sweetie,” the nurse spoke up. I could see her trembling hands. “Just, um, try and rest, okay?”

I wanted to ask where my family was, but I already knew the answer.

I think she knew that too.

“You died, Charlie.” The nurse’s voice was eerily cold. “You were dead for thirteen minutes.”

She took slow steps towards me, her eyes growing frenzied, like she couldn't understand me, like I was a puzzle she could not solve– and it was driving her crazy. I could see it in her twitching hands, her wobbling lips that were trying and failing to appear stoic.

“In fact, I just pulled you out of the morgue, honey. I opened up your body bag that I had just zipped up, and told your aunt that you were a miracle I just… can’t understand.” The nurse sounded like she was trying to choke down a laugh, or maybe a sob.

“Charlotte, you were pronounced dead at 3:02am from a gunshot wound to the chest.” Taking a slow, sobering breath, the nurse tried to smile. “The bullet went through the right ventricle of your heart and severely damaged your left lung, rendering you unable to breathe. Your heart stopped, and after four attempts to resuscitate, we called it.”

Something slimy wound its way up my throat when she began to pace the room.

“I… did all the paperwork. It took me two minutes. Your death certificate was signed, and your body was taken to the morgue to be prepped for transportation. Then I had my lunch. Tuna salad with a protein milkshake. I’m not a fan of the chocolate flavor.”

She shook her head. “Anyway, when I came back to you, you were awake inside your body bag.” Her voice was starting to break. “You were…um, alive, and asked me for apple soda.”

The nurse moved closer, and yet kept her distance.

I could feel myself moving back, panic writhing through me.

“So.” The nurse spoke calmly. “How the fuck are you still alive, Charlie?”

I think I passed out after that.

When I woke up again, my head a lot less heavier, the nurse was gone.

Slowly, my foggy brain began to find itself and connect dots.

My mouth was dry, full of cotton.

There was a sudden tightness, a sharp and cruel sting in my wrists.

Something sharp was protruding into my flesh, and no matter how many times I violently wrenched my arm, it was stuck. It didn't feel right to be able to breathe so easily.

I knew the second I woke that my Mom was dead.

Lily and PJ were dead, and it was like losing them all over again.

As clarity came over me, I found my voice, a strangled cry escaping my lips.

“Get it out.” I whispered in a shrill cry.

Tugging at the IV in my wrist, I tried to yank the needle from my skin.

“Get it out!” I shrieked, my gaze glued to the tiny spots of blood staining the insertion point.

I could see it again.

So much blood.

Mom was curled up on the floor, lying in slow spreading red that wouldn't stop, seeping across her beaded rug.

She was all over me, slick on my skin and caked in my fingernails.

I couldn't wash her off of me.

“You're okay, Charlotte.”

Aunt May’s voice came from my right, stabling me to reality.

The world started to move again, started to make sense again, when she cupped my cheeks and told me to breathe.

When I opened my mouth to ask where my family were, she lightly shook her head and I swallowed my words.

Aunt May handed me a glass of water, and I drained it in one gulp.

She told me I was a miracle.

Aunt May didn't say much, and when she did, she broke into sobs.

Her eyes were raw from crying, clinging onto me, her shuddery voice reassuring me that I was going to be okay.

She told me I would be living with her from now on, before wrapping me into a hug and leaving to get coffee.

Once my aunt was gone, another nurse came to prod my IV.

I tried to sleep, but the uncomfortable tightness of the needle sticking into my skin and the sterile white lights in my eyes made it impossible. I waited for grief to catch up with me, drowning me in a hollow oblivion I wouldn't be able to claw myself out of. But I didn't feel sad. I didn't feel angry.

I wanted to know why my family were dead.

I wanted to know why I was breathing, and their skin was ice cold.

Rotting.

The sudden image of maggots crawling up my brother’s nose sent me lurching into a sitting position, my stomach heaving. Reaching for my glass of water, it was empty. The sensation of throwing up felt familiar, almost comforting.

Mom was always with me when I was sick, holding my hair back and lulling my hysteria with reassuring murmurs.

I was frowning at the trash can by the door, my cotton candy brain trying to figure out if I would be able to make it in time, when a small voice drifted from the doorway, startling me.

“I don't want you to come live with us.”

My cousin was peeking through the door, hiding behind a shock of dark brown curls. Jude was the only brunette in our family. The rest of us were redheads.

I wasn't sure why he was dressed up like a ghost, draped in a white cloak that was way too big for him. Jude was a weird kid. His mother, and my auntie, had inherited the family house, so in his mind, that made him superior.

Jude made it clear he didn't like his cousins, refusing to let us play with him and banning us from family gatherings.

When the adults were drinking cocktails and losing their awareness, Jude ordered us around.

The times we did play with him, our cousin showed us his spider collection, or the raccoon brain he kept in a jar. PJ was convinced our younger cousin was a serial killer. Several months earlier, he'd happily showed us the roadkill he'd been growing bacteria on under his bed.

Jude’s ‘experiments’ were worrying.

He stuffed mushrooms down my brother’s ears while he was sleeping, to, and I quote, “Recreate The Last Of Us.”

When Lily had a nosebleed during Thanksgiving dinner, Jude collected all her bloody tissues and refused to tell us where he'd put them, and what he had done with them.

Fast-forward two months, and I found them under a nest of spiders. Jude was trying to adapt the spiders to be able to feed on human blood. I was surprised my cousin hadn't immediately demanded to see my siblings’ dead bodies for autopsy.

Jude stepped into the room, shuffling his feet.

“I'm sorry about Lily, PJ, and Aunt Ivy.” He mumbled, glaring at the floor tiles.

My cousin made no move to offer real sympathy, instead speaking to the floor.

“But I don't want you to come live with us.” Jude lifted his head, looking me dead in the eye. “I don't like you, Charlie. I want you to stay away.”

Before I could reply, he stepped back like I was diseased.

“You should be dead.” Jude grumbled.

He scowled at me, getting my age purposely wrong as usual before running off.

“Happy 68th birthday.”

I was six months older than him.

In Jude’s eyes, I was ready for retirement.

Still, though, my cousin was right.

I was stone cold dead, and then I was somehow alive.

Which was wrong.

Growing up, I realized Death was not so subtly attempting to fix his mistake.

It started small. I'd choke on things I wasn't supposed to choke on.

Chips.

Candy.

Ice cream.

Aunt May had to perform the heimlich manoeuvre when I choked on a piece of chicken. I thought I was just really unlucky, but then I locked myself in a freezer that didn't have a lock, and almost drowned in the local swimming pool, catching my foot in stray netting.

At the summer fair, Jude convinced me to try apple bobbing, only for my head to conveniently get stuck underwater.

It started to make sense.

I was supposed to die with my family that night, and death was out to get me.

Death started to get clever, changing his tactic. Instead of using everyday things to try to kill me, he sent reinforcements.

I turned twelve years old, and my aunt threw me a huge party, inviting all my classmates. Aunt May was rich, rich.

Mom never explained it, but our grandparents left everything to May.

The house was like a palace, a labyrinth of floors I was yet to explore, and two swimming pools.

I was in the kitchen cutting myself a slice of cake, when, out of nowhere, a dead boy came rushing at me with one of my aunt’s favorite kitchen knives.

A dead boy who I immediately recognised.

Wren Oliver.

Several years prior, he'd gone missing from his parents' yard. The town launched a full investigation, only to find his body in a ditch a week later.

So, Death had sent a footsoldier.

Hiding under a hooded sweatshirt, Wren appeared older, like he had grown up with me.

But there was a startling vacancy in his expression that drew the breath from my lungs, freezing me in place. Wren’s death was announced as an accident, though his wounds suggested the opposite, dried blood smearing his right temple and a cavernous hole in his chest, his clothes painted, stained, in bright red, glued in sticky mounds clinging to him.

The boy’s eyes were wild, feral, like an animal.

His hair was longer, a mess of reddish curls matted to his forehead.

Lip split into a demented giggle.

I remember taking a slow step back, my gaze glued to the knife.

Wren’s fingers were wrapped around the handle like he knew exactly how to use it, how to plunge it into my heart and kill me for good. He moved like a predator, zero self awareness or recognition, only driven to kill me.

The dead boy prided himself in slow, intimidating steps, shoving me against the wall and dragging the blade of the knife down the curve of my throat.

His eyes confused me, writhing with hatred that was artificial, programmed into him as Death’s official soldier.

He didn't speak, only smiled, revelling in my fear. I could tell it thrilled him, my trembling hands, my sharp, heavy breaths I couldn't control. Squeezing my eyes shut, I waited to finally die.

I waited for the pain, and to lose my breath once again.

But death was playing with me.

When I opened my eyes, the dead boy was gone, and I was on my knees, screaming.

“Wren Oliver is trying to kill me!" I managed to hiss.

My aunt knelt in front of me, her expression crumpling.

*Sweetie,” She spoke softly, squeezing my hands. Aunt May was trying to appear calm for my sake, but I could tell she was scared, her frantic eyes searching mine. “Wren Oliver is dead.”

The kids surrounding me started to giggle, whispering among themselves.

In the corner of my eye, my cousin was leaning against the door, mid eye roll.

When my aunt was ushering kids back to the pool, Jude came to crouch in front of me. Ever since I started living with him, he'd made sure to keep his distance.

This time, though, Jude leaned uncomfortably close, a sparkle in his eyes I had never seen before. Inclining his head, he rocked back and forth on his heels, prodding me in the forehead.

“If you see the dead boy again, can you tell me?” His lips curved into a smile.

“I did see him.” I gritted out. “I’m not lying.”

Jude shrugged. “I never said you didn't,” he lowered his voice into a whisper, “I wanna know when you see him again.”

“Why?”

His lips curved into a smirk.

“So, I can catch him.”

My cousin got closer, his breath tickling my cheek.

“I seeeeeeee dead people.”

After that incident, death left me alone for a while.

I was fifteen, walking through the forest with a friend, catching fireflies in bell jars.

Aunt May was lucky to live so close to the forest, the entrance just outside her back door. When we were little, PJ would drag Lily and me down the trail to escape Jude’s weird experiments.

I decided to invite Jem Littlewood on a summer walk.

Jem was cute, but in a dorky way. He was chronically clumsy and dressed like he'd been spat out of a John Hughes movie.

We hiked all the way to the end of the river and had a picnic, watching the sun set over the horizon. I was having conflicting feelings for this guy.

Jem was obsessed with fireflies.

Though he seemed more interested in photographing them than me.

The guy couldn't seem to sit still, jumping to his feet to marvel at tiny specks of light dancing in the air.

“I'm just going to take photos!” Jem beamed, holding up his camera.

I had to bite back the urge to say, “Don't you have enough photos?”

I nodded, and he turned and sprinted back down the trail.

Before his footsteps ground to a sudden halt.

At first, I thought he was snapping Polaroids.

When I got closer, though, blinking in the eerie dark, I caught something.

Bending down, I picked up a bell jar still spilling fireflies.

Further down the trail, Jem was lying crumpled in the dirt, his camera smashed to pieces next to him, blood running in thick rivulets down his temple.

There he was. Leaning against a tree, his arms folded, was the ghost boy. Wren Oliver had grown up with me. Now a teenager, yet his face was carved into something else entirely—more of a monster, with slight points to his ears and too-sharp teeth, eyes ignited.

Wren didn't look like a ghost boy anymore.

Death had dressed him in shackles of ivy, a crown of glass and bone forced onto his head, entangled in his curls. Death was torturing him.

Wren’s body was its canvas, and every time I got away, he was punished, painting his failures across scarred skin.

I should have been running for my life, but I was mesmerized by each symbol cruelly carved into his neck.

The boy did a slow head incline, as if he couldn't believe I was standing in front of him.

His slow-spreading smile caught me off guard.

I remembered how to run, stumbling over my feet.

But I couldn't move.

The burning hatred that death had filled him with was stronger, hollowing him out completely. I managed two shaky steps before I felt him—an unearthly force winding its way around my spine. This time, he didn't hesitate.

I watched his mouth move, a single curve of his upper lip wrenching my body from my control, slamming me against a tree. There was something around my throat, choking the breath from my lungs, a thick fog spreading over my eyes.

Following his mouth curving into silent letters, I could feel my feet slowly leaving the ground, my legs dangling.

I was floating.

Hovering off the ground, suspended by his words.

Through half-lidded eyes, I caught the glint of a blade in his fist, but I couldn't move, couldn't scream.

He was drowning me, bleeding into my blood, spider-webbing and expanding in my brain without moving a muscle.

Instead, the ghost boy stood silently, running his thumb down the teeth of his knife while he ripped my lungs apart.

It was like suffocating, sinking into that peaceful oblivion I met at eight years old.

This time, though, the darkness was starving.

“Charlie?”

My eyes found daylight, a scream clawing out of my mouth.

“Charlie, it's past curfew!”

Wren flinched, his stoic expression crumpling.

The dead boy’s lips moved again, this time in a curse.

Fuck.

“Charlotte!”

Staggering back, Wren’s eyes widened, and the suffocating hold on me severed.

His head snapped in the direction my aunt was coming from.

“Charlie, answer me right now.”

He hesitated, his bare feet pivoting in the dirt as if he was considering finishing me off. Wren studied me with lazy eyes, sucking on his bottom lip. When my aunt's footsteps grew louder, branches snapping under her shoes, something contorted in the boy’s face.

Fear.

I guessed the boy wasn't expecting other humans to intrude.

Wren fell over himself, shuffling on his hands and knees, before diving to his feet. When he turned and ran, I was released, slipping to the ground, trying and failing to draw in breath. I barely felt the impact, only a dull thudding pain.

I could hear the ghost boy’s footsteps, his uneven, shuddery breaths as he catapulted into a run.

Under a late setting sun, I watched his dancing shadow disappear into the trees.

Mission unsuccessful, I guessed.

When I was fully conscious, Aunt May was checking over Jem, helping him sit up.

“Where did he go?” I managed to get out, scanning the darkness for Wren.

“He's okay, just concussed.” May whispered, dialling 911.

My aunt applied a dressing to Jem’s wound, ignoring the boy’s hisses.

“Keep still.” she murmured, smoothing his bandaid. “What happened, Charlotte?”

“She pushed me over.” Jem groaned, shuffling away from me. When my aunt told him to stay calm, he straightened up, leaning against the tree. “The psycho bitch tried to fucking kill me!”

When my aunt's gaze flicked to me, I shook my head.

“It was Wren Oliver.” I gritted, teetering on hysteria. I could tell she didn't believe me, but I couldn't stop myself.

I prodded at my throat, clawing for the indentations where his phantom fingers snaked around my neck, squeezing the breath from my lungs.

But there was nothing.

I could feel my mind starting to unravel. I nodded to my disgruntled classmate trying to dodge my aunt’s prodding.

“Ow, ow, ow! That stings!”

“He knocked Jem out.” I managed. “Then he tried to kill me.”

Jem surprised me with a scoff. “You're seriously blaming your psychotic break on a dead kid?”

Aunt May pursed her lips, motioning for Jem to be quiet. Judging from her face, however, she agreed with the boy.

May forced a smile, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. “Okay. Can you, uh, describe the boy to me, Charlotte?”

“He was wearing a crown,” I said, “And he looked my age.”

Aunt May cocked her head, and I saw real worry, like she was trying not to freak out. Jem made a snorting noise.

“I'm sorry, he was wearing a crown?”

“Yes!” I insisted, getting progressively more frustrated.

I tried to jump up, only for my aunt to gently lower me back down. “I know it sounds crazy, but death has sent Wren Oliver to kill me, just like my family. He tried to kill me when I was twelve, too!”

Jem let out a bitter laugh. “Your niece is a fucking wackadoodle.”

Aunt May’s eyes darkened. She grabbed my shoulders, her nails stabbing into my skin. “Charlie, I want you to listen to me, okay?” When my eyes found the rapidly darkening sky, my aunt forced me to look at her.

“Charlotte!”

She was as scared as me, her voice shuddering.

“Wren Oliver is dead.” My aunt said firmly, shaking me. Even then, though, I wasn't even looking at her. I was trying to find his ignited eyes lighting up the dark.

“Wren died at eight years old in a terrible accident, and you can't keep using him as an excuse for your mental trauma.”

There was something twitching in her expression I was trying to make sense of. When I risked a look at Jem, the boy was staring at me dazedly– like I really was crazy.

Aunt May pressed her face into my shoulder, and I could feel her tears soaking into my shirt. She was trying to hold it together, trying to understand.

“Charlie, I know you lost your family,” she whispered. “But you and Wren Oliver are not the same. You survived, and he didn't.” Her voice splintered.

“You need to come to terms with that, okay?”

When I didn't respond, she pinched my chin, forcing me to look at her.

“Charlotte.”

Aunt May’s voice turned cold. “I ignored this when you were a kid, but if you continue to use this poor boy as a coping mechanism, I will have no choice but to send you to a specialist.”

When Jem was taken away by paramedics, Aunt May held my hand, squeezing my fingers for dear life.

I caught her gaze scanning the tree's around us, delving into twisting oblivion. Every little noise sent her twisting around. She was looking for something.

“I'm going to get you help.” Aunt May said in a low murmur when we were back at the house. Jude was sitting on the kitchen counter, legs swinging. I could feel his penetrating gaze burning into the back of my head.

Aunt May set a cup of cocoa on the table.

“No more fairytales.”

By the time I was eighteen, I had bitten three therapists.

They refused to believe that death was coming to reclaim my soul, and was using a dead boy to do his dirty work.

For my 16th birthday, I braced myself to come face to face with Wren Oliver’s ghost.

I wasn't even in town, staying at a friend's house.

But dead boys, and especially dead boys moulded into Death’s personal soldiers, could materialise anywhere.

I locked every door in the house, and taped up my friend’s window.

Nothing happened.

On my seventeenth birthday, I was sick in bed with gastritis.

Still no ghost boy.

Death seemed to have finally left me alone.

On my eighteenth birthday, I was stuffing books in my locker when my cousin popped up out of nowhere, scowling as usual. After an unexpected growth spurt and losing a tonne of baby fat, my cousin had scaled the high school hierarchy, swapping his weird experiments for a varsity jacket and experimenting with his sexuality.

The two of us had come to an unspoken truce.

I kept quiet about his spider collection to his popular friends, and he tolerated my existence until I left for college.

“Your surprise party is cancelled.”

Jude leaned against my locker, running a hand through thick dark hair tucked under a baseball cap. Jude never admitted it, but he was definitely embarrassed of being the odd one out.

My siblings may be dead, but they were still redheads.

I pulled off his cap with a smile, throwing it in his face. “Sure it is.”

My cousin’s eyes widened. He lost his slick bravado, grabbing for his cap.

“Hey!”

According to my cousin, my party was unexpectedly cancelled every year.

I wasn't sure if it was his weird superiority complex, or just plain jealousy, but it was getting exhausting.

Jude followed me down the hallway, matching my stride.

“Can you just not come home tonight?”

I quickened my pace. “It's only a party. I'm having some friends over, and no, we won't go anywhere near your room.”

“No, I mean.” Jude stepped in front of me, and for the first time in a while, he wasn't trying to hide disdain for me.

His dark eyes pinned me in place for a moment, the world around us coming to a halt. Sound bled away, and all I heard were his slow breaths. There was something there, an unexplainable twitch in his eyes and lips, that twisted my gut.

Jude stepped closer, his lip curling. He shoved me back, losing his facade.

“Stay the fuck away from the house tonight.” He said, and his voice, his tone, was enough to send shivers creeping down my spine. Jude had always hid behind a ten foot wall in his mind. It was jarring to see something in him finally start to splinter. Fuck. I thought.

This kid had serious Mommy issues.

I blinked, and the world resumed, kids pushing past us.

Jude seemed to catch himself, slipping back under his mask.

“I'm having friends over,” he rolled his eyes, “Your presence will ruin the vibe.”

“It's my birthday?”

He groaned, tipping his head back. “Yes, I know. But–”

“I think you can deal with the attention off of you for one night, Jude.”

“Will Wren Oliver be there too?” Jem Littlewood hollered.

Jude didn't respond for a moment, his lip curling.

“Shut the fuck up.” He spat at Jem, who immediately backed down.

With an audience this time, Jude forced an award winning smile. “Fine.” His lips split into a grin I knew he hated. My cousin clamped his hand on my shoulder, hard enough to hurt. I could feel his fingers pinching the material of my jacket. “Have it your way, dude.”

Jude backed away with a two fingered salute.

“Happy 78th birthday!”

In a sense, I wish I listened to my cousin.

My party was a success, sort of.

Four of us, a crate of beers, and no sign of my cousin.

I was mildly tipsy, sitting on the edge of the pool, dangling my legs in the water when my friend demanded more beers.

I was also hungry for cake, so I stumbled inside in search of it.

The house was dark, lit in dazzling blue by the pool's lights reflecting through the windows. Aunt May was in her office on the ground floor, and Jude was getting high in his room. In my drunken state, I found myself marveling at my aunt's house and how much of it was left unexplored.

For example, in the foyer, past the spiral staircase she’d had custom-made, was an elevator I had never questioned.

There was a girl my age standing on the staircase.

She was frozen mid-run, dressed in ragged jeans and a t-shirt.

Everything about her stood out, bringing me to a sobering halt.

The girl reminded me of my sister—or at least, if my sister had ever grown up.

I wasn't sure if I was drunk or hallucinating.

Her flower crown was pretty...

Lily had grown wings.

I was slowly moving towards her when a sudden bang sounded from the kitchen.

The bang of something shattering on the floor.

Twisting around, I found myself gravitating towards warm golden light.

The first thing I saw was the refrigerator door hanging open, and someone—no, something—rooting around inside it.

Glued to the spot, I dazedly watched it grab milk, guzzle it down, then soda, cracking open each can and sucking them dry, before carving its fingers into my birthday cake.

But I wasn't looking at the spillage of food seeping across the floor. Instead, my gaze found a crown of antlers—both human and animal bone entangled with dead flowers and human remains—glued to a head of familiar matted brown curls.

There was something sticking out of battered and bruised flesh, twin gaping slits sliced through a torn shirt resembling glass wings that were not yet formed, reminding me of a butterfly.

Wings.

But not the wings I dreamed of as a kid. These things were unnatural mounds that both did and didn't make sense on a human boy. I could see the trauma of them slicing through his flesh—monstrous, looming things protruding from what was left of a human spine.

Human, and yet I couldn't call his beautifully grotesque face human.

Wren Oliver had grown up with me, now an adult.

Eighteen years old.

His clothes confused me—a single white shirt and shorts.

Wren’s feet were bare, battered and bruised, blood smearing my aunt's tiles.

Angel.

Death had turned his foot soldier—and my future killer—into an angel.

But there was nothing angelic about the dead boy, his body and mind sculpted and molded into Death’s own.

The boy no longer resembled a human—feral eyes and a manic smile, choking down pieces of cake. His face had been contorted into a monster—gnashing teeth and sharp points in his ears, a sickly tinge to malnourished skin.

And that's when it hit me, watching him stuff himself with food.

Something slimy inched its way up my throat.

The boy didn't move. I don't even think he'd noticed me, gorging himself on anything he could get his hands on.

Chicken, raw bacon, leftover salad.

When he moved on to cupcakes, licking frosting from his fingers, I glimpsed markings on his arms—a language I didn't understand, carved into him.

His wrists were shackled, bound in entangled iron and vine—iron ingrained into his skin, vines, flowers, and ivy entangling his bones, polluting his blood. Slowly, my eyes found stab wounds splitting open his torso.

Raw flesh, where his skin had been torched, melting, and then merging—ripped apart and put back together over and over again.

I found his heart, the gaping cavern in his chest where it should be.

And it was.

Marked, carved, and branded with a symbol resembling an X.

Wren Oliver was not dead.

But, just like me, he should have been.

I remember saying his name, my voice slurred slightly.

I didn't drink that much, but I could barely coerce words, my head spinning.

Wren’s neck snapped towards me, his eyes narrowing with resentment I couldn't understand—hatred that seemed to puppeteer him. Slowly tilting his head, the boy’s lips split into a grin, eyes filled with, polluted by, mania.

I could see where his lips had been stitched shut and then ripped open.

“Hi.”

He held up his hand in an awkward wave.

When one of my friends stumbled into the kitchen, Wren reacted on impulse.

He picked up a knife from the counter, throwing it like a dart, straight through the guy’s throat.

Something shattered inside my mind.

Ignoring my friend bleeding out, Wren stumbled over himself, abandoning his feast. He took a single step towards me, backing me against the wall, coming so close—close enough for me to feel his very real breath grazing my cheeks.

Just like when he was a kid, he traced the teeth of his blade down my throat. I wasn't expecting him to burst out laughing, trembling with hysteria.

His eyes were wild, feral, and wrong—almost euphoric.

With what I could only recognize as relief.

BANG.

I was barely aware of the gunshot.

The bullet went straight through his head, the winged boy hitting the ground.

Dead.

I saw the blood stemming around him in a halo before the bleeding pool faltered, seeping back inside his head.

Like rewinding a VCR.

Wren was dead, and then he was alive.

Wren’s body contorted, his chest inflating.

His gasp for air was painful, strangled, eyes opening wide.

Terrified.

“You fucking idiot.”

Jude’s voice sent me twisting around.

My cousin stood in the exact same robes he wore as a child.

The world tipped off kilter, and I was on my knees, then my stomach.

I sunk to the floor, my thoughts swimming.

Jude’s murmur followed me, creeping into the dark.

“I told you not to come home.”

I can't remember how long I was unconscious for.

When I woke, I was dressed in an evening gown, a dress that used to be my mother’s.

My vision cleared, and I found myself sitting in an unfamiliar room resembling an abandoned swimming hall.

The pool itself was empty, the bottom stained revealing scarlet.

There were symbols carved into each tile.

Like a game.

“Sit up straight, Charlotte.”

I was sitting at a banquet.

Jude was in front of me, sipping on wine.

He caught my eye for half a second before averting his gaze.

At the far end of the table sat my aunt May.

Kissing the rim of her glass, her smile was twisted.

“I've been waiting so long to give you your birthday presents, Charlotte. Your memories should be returning soon.”

“Mom.” Jude muttered, hiding behind his glass. “Calm down. You're embarrassing yourself.”

Ignoring my cousin, May tapped her glass with a fork, and in walked my birthday presents.

No, dragged.

By their hair.

Wren Oliver, the dead boy, was in fact my aunt's prisoner.

Behind him, was the girl who looked so much like Lily.

I think that's why my aunt chose her.

Aunt May cleared her throat.

“For a long time, our family has lived among creatures who live in the forest you played inside. In exchange for keeping this town safe, they only ask for small favors. Wayward children who disappear into the woods are good enough payment. Charlie, you and your siblings do not share our inheritance. Your mother never wanted fae children. She wanted you to be human.”

Aunt May’s smile faded.

“After losing my sister, and my niece and nephew, I made a deal to give my last surviving niece 100 years of life.”

Her words were white noise, my gaze glued to my birthday presents. I couldn't call them human anymore.

I couldn't call Wren human, when his face was so beautifully grotesque, painfully hypnotising.

The monstrous things sticking from twin slits in his back were supposed to be wings, except they looked wrong, cruelly protruding from his exposed spine. Under the influence of alcohol earlier, the girl made me smile.

Her wings, to me, looked like one of a real fairy.

In reality, they were torn and shredded apart, bigger than the girl herself.

When she dropped onto her stomach, she was dragged back to her feet, her knees buckling under the weight. Her tiara of flowers and bone looked pretty to me when I saw her on the stairs.

Now, though, I could see the pearly white of a human child's skull forced onto her head, dead flowers threaded through cavernous, gaping eye sockets.

The two of them were violently shoved into the empty pool.

“Jude. Please demonstrate, sweetheart.”

Jude stood, pulling out a gun, and aiming it at the winged girl.

BANG.

The girl’s body hit the tiles, her blood seeping across stained white.

“Now, of course, our king did not give you life for free.” May continued.

“The King demanded a debt, as well as two heirs to join him in his court once your hundred years were complete.”

Her lips quirked into a smile.

“The king is smart. If a child cannot be stolen from the human world, they can, however, be made, moulded and shaped from their human forms, skinned of their humanity through their suffering, leaving a hollowed out shell in the child's place.”

She was speaking so casually, ignoring Wren’s whimpers.

“The transformation takes a while. 100 years to birth a fully blooded fae heir, who will lose their human memories, in preparation to join their new family.”

Jude shot Wren in the chest, his eyes empty.

This time, he dropped his weapon, using finger-guns instead.

“Bang.” He deadpanned.

Then the neck.

I watched Wren come back to life, and then die.

Over and over again.

I think at one point, he screamed and cried.

But not now.

He was their puppet on display, dancing for their entertainment.

Half lidded eyes drowned in oblivion found mine, and I understood his hatred.

Before he was shot again.

Stabbed.

Branded and burned, and ripped apart.

At some point, I screamed at them to stop. I couldn't breathe, slamming my hands over my ears and begging them.

Aunt May didn't listen, ordering for my hands to be tied down.

“The King required two human sacrifices to suffer in your place.” She concluded. “For one hundred years.”

Aunt May’s smile was suddenly sad, and she lifted her glass in a toast.

I was watching their blood trickle down each tile in the pool, like every death, every time they suffered, my body became progressively less human.

I felt disgusting. I wasn't supposed to be alive. Every single year of my life, every breath I had taken, was stolen.

Aunt May nodded at me, her lips forming a proud smile. She stood up, and was handed a sacrificial knife.

Climbing into the swimming pool herself, she strode over to Wren.

The boy slumped to the floor, trembling, his knees against his chest.

Aunt May grabbed him by the hair, forcing his head up, and sliced the blade across his throat.

His eyes flicked to me, and I swore he smiled.

Spots of red dotted yellowing tiles, a river trickling under my aunt's heels.

“Happy 78th birthday, Charlotte.”

“Babe, did you let the cats out last night?” I asked, sipping my glass of orange juice.

“Uh, nope,” My boyfriend said, picking up his freshly brewed coffee. He took a sip and smiled. 

Liar. 

I knew he was lying. Because Jude was the last one out of the apartment; the only one Harvey and Sabrina could easily trick. 

Jude smiled. “It was probably you, babe,” he spluttered, sipping coffee in intervals. Jude was, against all odds, my perfect match. He was also so far out of my league that we got stares when we went out together.  Attractive, a head of dark hair he was constantly running his hands through, and one heck of a jawline. He was also a cat lover.

I watched him scoop a plump Sabrina into his arms. 

He offered the cat gentle head pats. “You know how forgetful you can get, yanno?”

I lifted my gaze. “I didn't let the cats out.” 

He gently placed Sabrina back down, picked up his coffee, and drained it. “Well, neither did I.” 

“Why are you lying?” I demanded. 

“I’m not.” Jude choked into his coffee. He downed the cup, and coughed again. This time, a blood streaked petal slid down his chin. Cherry blossom. Jude picked it up, stared at it, his eyes wide. His jaw set. “What the fuck?” 

“It's probably something from outside,” I dismissed. The window was open, and it was Cherry Blossom season. Something was coming apart inside me, a paranoia I didn't even know I had. “If neither of us let the cats out, Jude, then who did?”

He scowled and spat, washing his mouth out. “I don't know!” He snapped. He spat again. Blood tinged saliva hit stainless steel. “How the fuck am I supposed to know?” 

Another petal slid down his chin. Then another. 

Something cold crept up me. “Jude.” I said, my voice betraying me when he twisted around, choking up a shower of bloody petals. Not just petals. Roots. Entangled green clawed from his parted lips, thorns blooming under his tongue.  “Do you know who let the cats out?” 

“No.” He slammed his hand over his mouth. 

Another explosion of blood pink bled through his fingers. He moaned, dropping to his knees. “What the fuck?” Jude sobbed, a violent cough jerking his whole body, fat drops of red trickling down his chin. Realization hit.

“Please,” he grabbed Sabrina, who immediately tried to claw out of his arms as he pressed his face into her fur. “Don't ask me anything else!” 

I swallowed them at first, words that were poison, words that were in my nightmares. I held them under my tongue, suffocating in silence while he sobbed into my cat's fur.  “There's something… wrong with me, he whispered, “I need help. I think it's cancer, or… or maybe an abscess—”

“Are you cheating on me?” My words came out, sharp, sudden, and I wanted so badly— so fucking badly— to swallow them.

His silence was suffocating. Drowning me. Jude didn't move, lips moving in Sabrina’s fur. The poor kitty didn't move, her wide eyes glued to me. “No,” Jude whispered, his breath shuddering, breaking into a sob. “I'm.. I'm…” 

He stood, dropped the cat, and violently spewed scarlet pink all over our floor. Jude lifted his head, swiping at his chin. He opened his mouth wide, prodding around. A slow entanglement of green was growing from his tongue, tiny buds flowering from his uvula.  “Please… help me.”

I found myself nodding. I grasped his face, cradling his chin. Another flower bloomed. Beautiful. I couldn't stop myself, running my fingers over the stem tangled in his bottom teeth. “Talk to me,” I whispered, and he nodded, squeezing his eyes shut. “If I ask you something, you have to promise to answer truthfully.” 

Panic glittered in his eyes. His lip wobbled. 

“Do you…” I blinked back tears. “Do you… love me, Jude?”

His gaze found mine, tears freefalling down his cheeks.

“No.” 

He straightened, and gently pulled my hands away. He sniffled, swiping his eyes. “No, I don't.” 

I waited for that horrific grotesque and yet beautiful flower in his mouth to bloom once more; for more petals to dance from his lips. Nothing happened. My stomach dropped. My chest tightened. And the world split beneath my feet. I nodded, smiling, trying to smile, and failing. “Did you ever love me?” 

“No,” he choked, and one of the buds under his tongue retracted. 

My thoughts spun, my balance shifting. 

I had been wanting to ask him this for so long.

Since high school.

Since he walked up to me in junior year and told me he liked me.

My words were weight lifted from my chest. Agony. But somehow, relieving. Justifying every single day of paranoia. Jude already knew what I was going to ask, his hand already planted over his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Did my family pay you to date me?” 

“Yes.” Jude muffled into his palm. 

Another flower bloomed, violently, this time from his right nostril. 

I staggered back.

A lie. 

I tried again. “Did my family TELL you to date me?” 

“Yes.” 

The slow moving root from his mouth inched back. 

A horrific thought struck me. His wild eyes knew. 

“Are you with me against your will?” 

“No!” He yelled.

My voice choked me. “Does my family have someone you love?” 

“My… dog,” he spluttered, hand over his mouth.

A single green vine burst from his right arm. Jude stepped back. 

“My…my girlfriend.” 

Another vine bled from his ear, wrapping around his neck. He stumbled against the faucet, choking, hand wrapped around the vine, and tore it away, gasping. 

More lies awaited, and as if the flowers anticipated them, his arm grew longer, extending, tiny buds erupting from sickly green skin. 

He dropped to his knees, head in his palms. 

And, as if realizing he'd given up, each blossom began slowly pulling back. “My boyfriend.”

“Babe, did you let the cats out last night?” I asked, sipping my glass of orange juice.

“Uh, nope,” My boyfriend said, picking up his freshly brewed coffee. He took a sip and smiled. 

Liar. 

I knew he was lying. Because Jude was the last one out of the apartment; the only one Harvey and Sabrina could easily trick. 

Jude smiled. “It was probably you, babe,” he spluttered, sipping coffee in intervals. Jude was, against all odds, my perfect match. He was also so far out of my league that we got stares when we went out together.  Attractive, a head of dark hair he was constantly running his hands through, and one heck of a jawline. He was also a cat lover.

I watched him scoop a plump Sabrina into his arms. 

He offered the cat gentle head pats. “You know how forgetful you can get, yanno?”

I lifted my gaze. “I didn't let the cats out.” 

He gently placed Sabrina back down, picked up his coffee, and drained it. “Well, neither did I.” 

“Why are you lying?” I demanded. 

“I’m not.” Jude choked into his coffee. He downed the cup, and coughed again. This time, a blood streaked petal slid down his chin. Cherry blossom. Jude picked it up, stared at it, his eyes wide. His jaw set. “What the fuck?” 

“It's probably something from outside,” I dismissed. The window was open, and it was Cherry Blossom season. Something was coming apart inside me, a paranoia I didn't even know I had. “If neither of us let the cats out, Jude, then who did?”

He scowled and spat, washing his mouth out. “I don't know!” He snapped. He spat again. Blood tinged saliva hit stainless steel. “How the fuck am I supposed to know?” 

Another petal slid down his chin. Then another. 

Something cold crept up me. “Jude.” I said, my voice betraying me when he twisted around, choking up a shower of bloody petals. Not just petals. Roots. Entangled green clawed from his parted lips, thorns blooming under his tongue.  “Do you know who let the cats out?” 

“No.” He slammed his hand over his mouth. 

Another explosion of blood pink bled through his fingers. He moaned, dropping to his knees. “What the fuck?” Jude sobbed, a violent cough jerking his whole body, fat drops of red trickling down his chin. Realization hit.

“Please,” he grabbed Sabrina, who immediately tried to claw out of his arms as he pressed his face into her fur. “Don't ask me anything else!” 

I swallowed them at first, words that were poison, words that were in my nightmares. I held them under my tongue, suffocating in silence while he sobbed into my cat's fur.  “There's something… wrong with me, he whispered, “I need help. I think it's cancer, or… or maybe an abscess—”

“Are you cheating on me?” My words came out, sharp, sudden, and I wanted so badly— so fucking badly— to swallow them.

His silence was suffocating. Drowning me. Jude didn't move, lips moving in Sabrina’s fur. The poor kitty didn't move, her wide eyes glued to me. “No,” Jude whispered, his breath shuddering, breaking into a sob. “I'm.. I'm…” 

He stood, dropped the cat, and violently spewed scarlet pink all over our floor. Jude lifted his head, swiping at his chin. He opened his mouth wide, prodding around. A slow entanglement of green was growing from his tongue, tiny buds flowering from his uvula.  “Please… help me.”

I found myself nodding. I grasped his face, cradling his chin. Another flower bloomed. Beautiful. I couldn't stop myself, running my fingers over the stem tangled in his bottom teeth. “Talk to me,” I whispered, and he nodded, squeezing his eyes shut. “If I ask you something, you have to promise to answer truthfully.” 

Panic glittered in his eyes. His lip wobbled. 

“Do you…” I blinked back tears. “Do you… love me, Jude?”

His gaze found mine, tears freefalling down his cheeks.

“No.” 

He straightened, and gently pulled my hands away. He sniffled, swiping his eyes. “No, I don't.” 

I waited for that horrific grotesque and yet beautiful flower in his mouth to bloom once more; for more petals to dance from his lips. Nothing happened. My stomach dropped. My chest tightened. And the world split beneath my feet. I nodded, smiling, trying to smile, and failing. “Did you ever love me?” 

“No,” he choked, and one of the buds under his tongue retracted. 

My thoughts spun, my balance shifting. 

I had been wanting to ask him this for so long.

Since high school.

Since he walked up to me in junior year and told me he liked me.

My words were weight lifted from my chest. Agony. But somehow, relieving. Justifying every single day of paranoia. Jude already knew what I was going to ask, his hand already planted over his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Did my family pay you to date me?” 

“Yes.” Jude muffled into his palm. 

Another flower bloomed, violently, this time from his right nostril. 

I staggered back.

A lie. 

I tried again. “Did my family TELL you to date me?” 

“Yes.” 

The slow moving root from his mouth inched back. 

A horrific thought struck me. His wild eyes knew. 

“Are you with me against your will?” 

“No!” He yelled.

My voice choked me. “Does my family have someone you love?” 

“My… dog,” he spluttered, hand over his mouth.

A single green vine burst from his right arm. Jude stepped back. 

“My…my girlfriend.” 

Another vine bled from his ear, wrapping around his neck. He stumbled against the faucet, choking, hand wrapped around the vine, and tore it away, gasping. 

More lies awaited, and as if the flowers anticipated them, his arm grew longer, extending, tiny buds erupting from sickly green skin. 

He dropped to his knees, head in his palms. 

And, as if realizing he'd given up, each blossom began slowly pulling back. “My boyfriend.”

Ten minutes into graduation, my friends were already fucking dead.

Ten elephants.

I was soaking wet, my dress glued to me.

Nine elephants.

Forcing myself into a run, I tripped over my heels.

Eight elephants.

Fuck.

Seven elephants.

There was no point in counting, but counting felt normal.

Six elephants.

Counting felt like I was going to escape.

Five elephants.

Survive.

Harry’s blood painted my face.

He still felt alive, warm, swimming in my vision. I could still see cruel silver being plunged into his chest, rivulets of red pooling down his lips and chin.

Four elephants.

Harry told me to run, so here I was…

Three elephants.

Running.

Forcing myself to breathe, I swiped blood from my eyes.

Two elephants.

Twisting around, I scanned the empty school hallway for movement.

One elephant.

Aurora’s brains dripped down my face.

I was picking pieces of her skull from my hair, tiny pearly splinters stuck to me.

Aurora was sucked down the pool drain, her body mincemeat on my dress.

Her grisly remains were floating on the surface, painting illuminated water in a striking, almost breathtaking red.

Harry was sliced apart right in front of me.

They were dead.

Slamming my fists into each classroom, my shriek caught between my teeth.

Help me.

The lights were off, which meant she was close.

Reaching the end of the hallway, I could hear laughter and familiar whoops coming from the auditorium.

The class of 2015 were graduating and I was going to fucking die.

The main entrance was locked, barricaded from the outside.

Taking two steps back, I slipped out of my heels, kicking them off.

The classroom at the end of the hall was open, spilling warm light that coaxed me forward, hypnotised by the illusion of safety. With no choice, I staggered toward it and pushed the door open.

Stepping directly into warm entrails squelching between my bare toes, I had to bite back a cry. Mari hung upside down above me, her body swaying back and forth, strung up like meat to the slaughter. The girl had been gutted straight through her designer Diana mini, her glistening remains sparkling under unearthly light. Mari’s eyes were still open, lips parted as if to warn me.

For a dizzying moment, I was paralysed.

A door banged shut, running footsteps, heavy panting breaths.

“Fuck!” a familiar accent cried out.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

I could hear him slamming his hands into classroom doors.

“I need… I need help!”

The voice should have been comforting, but I was already seeing an opportunity to hide myself.

Swallowing barf, I leapt over glistening red entrails and dropped onto my hands and knees, crawling under a desk, gagging my own panting breaths.

The door swung open, and I buried my head in my arms, risking a peek.

Isaac Redfield stumbled through the door, immediately falling to his knees, his head buried between his legs.

He was sobbing, choking on breaths suffocating him. Issac looked helpless, hopeless, before his gaze caught mine.

I thought Isaac was dead.

The last time I saw him, he was being violently dragged into the janitor's closet. I could see where he'd narrowly missed being butchered, a gaping hole ripped straight through his suit jacket.

He was covered in the remnants of Harry, grisly scarlet turning him into more of a canvas than human, thick brown hair hanging in wide, almost unseeing eyes barely penetrating mine.

Isaac pressed a finger to his lips, his voice bleeding into a shaky breath.

”Don't… say… a… fucking word”.

The door opened, two familiar boots stomping through.

Issac twisted around, forcing himself to unsteady feet.

I could only see her slick black shoes.

The woman pivoted on her heel and started towards Isaac.

“Ahh, fuck,” his hiss broke out into a sob.

I watched him do a little dance backward in an attempt to distance himself. But he was just backing into a corner, staggering over himself.

His hand shot out, blindly grasping for a weapon, a chair leg, but her boots continued, stomping towards him.

Isaac tried to throw himself past her, but she was so fast, reaching out and grabbing the boy by his neck, her fingers pulverising. His arms flew up to peel her hands from his throat, but she was choking him. When Issac’s arms went limp, she slammed him into the window, and my body coaxed me to move, to run. Isaac was half conscious, spluttering blood, his head hanging.

Run.

But I couldn't.

I watched, my hand suffocating my screams, as she lifted him into the air, his feet dangling, his breaths coming out in choking pants. I saw the silver glint of her knife, and then the streak of scarlet painting the wall behind him.

I heard the exact moment the blade went in.

Isaac’s panting breaths became wet gurgles, his dangling legs going limp.

The slow stemming puddle of red accumulating across marble snapped something in my mind. I forgot how to run, to move my legs, to even breathe.

When Isaac’s body hit the ground with a meaty smack, I shuffled back, but the scarlet pool followed me running wet and warm under my fingers. I could see where his throat had been slashed open.

Isaac’s head was turned at an angle, his dead eyes staring directly at me.

I was trying to feel for a pulse when the desk I was hiding under was kicked aside. There she was when I dared lift my head. The woman in the black suit.

She resembled a shadow with a human face, dark blonde hair pulled into a ponytail, brandishing a pinstripe suit.

I watched her brutally murder my friends, one by one, no mercy, no I'm sorry, or even an explanation.

She butchered Aurora in the swimming pool, gutting Harry and Mari, and now Isaac.

Her expression was vacant. There was no motivation behind her killing them.

If there was, she would have worn the face of a psychotic serial killer, thirsty to spill blood.

She would have laughed as they ran, revelled in their fear and the startling inevitably of their own demise.

But she didn't.

Instead, the woman in the black suit stalked after them. She never stopped, never faltered, until they were all dead.

Until their breaths were thinning, their blood staining her hands.

The woman did not smile when she wrapped her hands around the curve of my neck and slammed me against the wall.

I saw stars going supernova, trying to suck in oxygen, her relentless grip tightening.

Black spots speckled my vision, and I was half aware of the ice-cold prick of silver sinking into my flesh. She was slow. Slow enough for me to count each of my lingering breaths, watching my own blood soak the front of my dress.

When she dropped me, I landed on my stomach. But there was no pain.

It felt like dreaming, choking on words that wouldn't come out.

Weird, I thought, my eyes flickering.

I counted ceiling tiles, dizzily, a slow spreading darkness pricking at the corners of my vision.

Last time, Isaac died first in the swimming pool.

Harry managed to stab the bitch in the back, only for her to chase him to the main entrance, gutting him on the spot.

The woman in the black suit loomed over me, while I focused on breathing.

Only for her to deliver one last fuck you blow to my head.

My vision contorted, and I sunk into the ground.

Straight into oblivion.

That spat me back out.

“Bonnie!”

I was numb to my mother’s voice.

I used to wake up screaming, my hands around my throat clawing for wounds that were no longer there.

Now I was somewhere between acceptance and losing my fucking mind.

For a while, I didn't move, lying on my back and considering the unthinkable.

I never had the guts to actually go through with it though.

Being murdered is one thing, but actually doing it yourself is another.

“Bonnie!” Mom’s voice was louder, and I mocked her words.

“Get up! Sweetie, I made your favorite! Chocolate chip pancakes!”

I paused, counting elephants.

I had mastered the ability to perfectly mimic her tone.

“And don't forget to thank Mrs Benson for that beautiful dress! You know she really wants you to attend graduation!”

Mom was right. I couldn't afford a decent dress, so my teacher offered.

But after being hacked apart, drowned, bisected, choked, and having my throat slit in different variations, I can't say I was thrilled to wear it. The dress was ruined every time, reduced to tatters clinging to me.

Rolling over in bed, I pulled my phone from my nightstand.

Always the exact same notification illuminating my home screen.

GRADUATION DAY!! :)

I fucking hated that notification.

Unknown number flashed up on screen.

“Hello?” I mumbled.

“How'd you die this time?”

Isaac Redfield's voice was muffled slightly. I think he was brushing his teeth.

“My throat was slit,” I said. “You?”

“You should know,” I heard him spit. “I mean, you did watch me fucking die.”

“That wasn't my choice.”

He spat again. “Does the woman in the black suit seem….familiar to you?”

I wasn't sure if he was screwing with me.

“Yes.” I said, dryly.

“No, not like that,” Isaac groaned. “I mean, don't you, like, recognise her? I swear I've seen this woman before.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I revelled in the slow passage of time.

7am to 8am was my favourite part of the day. I used to freak out, trying to leave town and find the best hiding place. Now, I just lay down and vibed.

There was something both terrifying and yet weirdly peaceful about knowing whatever happened, I was going to die.

“Dude, I've definitely seen her.”

I rolled onto my face. “Is that before she started brutally killing you in a never ending groundhog day, or after?”

Isaac paused, and I buried my head into my pillow. “Um, both?”

“Both?”

He was either going crazy or onto something.

I wasn't counting on the latter.

Isssc’s deaths were the most brutal. I wouldn't be surprised if the trauma had knocked something loose in his brain.

“Yeah.” his laugh was nervous, more of a splutter. Throughout our situationship, I had come to know his laughs well.

I knew his fake laugh, his trying not to cry laugh, his trying not to laugh laugh.

I even knew his I’m losing my fucking mind, I'm going to die laugh.

But I didn't know his real laugh.

“Does that sound crazy, or…?”

Instead of answering him, I ended the call.

At breakfast, I could still taste my own blood.

Mom hovered over me, blonde streaks of hair hanging in her face.

Dressed in her fluffy pink bathrobe, my mother should have been a comfort.

However, I was yet to forget the seventh loop when I broke apart and told her about what was happening.

Mom immediately called the doctor, convinced I was having a psychotic break.

He said there was nothing wrong with me and let me go to school.

Where I was murdered.

Again.

That time, she didn't kill us individually, instead forcing us on to our knees and bleeding us out, one by one. I think I became desensitised to death, to everything, when I was forced to watch Mari choke on her own screams, her head forced forwards, a blade brutally protruding through her.

*Don't forget to thank Mrs Benson for the dress, honey,” Mom said, refilling my juice.

I nodded, struggling to swallow pancake mush.

A sudden knock on the door woke me up.

That wasn't supposed to happen.

For a moment, I was frozen, my hands squeezing around my glass, before a familiar head of brown curls appeared.

Isaac Redfield, barely awake, still in his pyjamas.

Following suit, Mari Cliffe and Aurora Chatham.

Isaac went directly into the refrigerator hunting for food. Aurora took an uncertain seat at the table, and Mari stood with her arms folded, her wide, frenzied eyes drinking in my kitchen.

Isaac Redfield was the British exchange student who nobody could understand at first, his accent rocketing him up the high school hierarchy. The guy was also known for dealing candy, and getting into unnecessary arguments with teachers.

Alongside Isaac, Mari Cliffe, captain of the girl’s soccer team, and Aurora Chatham, our school’s version of horse girl, were unlikely friends.

They used to be strangers, kids I’d pass in the hallway.

After being brutally killed together in a never ending graduation day cycle, we had become surprisingly close.

When we were hiding in the janitor's closet, Isaac spilled to us that he hated the idea of college.

He wanted to travel the world.

Mari was crushing on one of her teammates.

Aurora actually hated horses.

Isaac was secretly scared of Bill Nye.

I had a thing for clowns I wasn't going to go into.

It started as a confessions thing, four strangers pouring our hearts out to each other.

We shared theories.

Isssc was convinced we were actually dead, and this was hell.

Mari suggested we were in some kind of prank show.

I voiced my theory, which was, yeah, we were dead. I was sure we had died on graduation day, and this was fate’s way of giving us companions in the great beyond. Still though, I wasn't sure why fate wanted us to be brutally killed.

Then, there was the mystery of our killer.

The woman in the black suit, our own personal angel of death.

“Morning,” Isaac greeted me with a sleepy smile, running his hands through his hair. He ignored my Mom’s wide eyes. “Thanks for leaving me to die.”

I thought back to him crouched in front of me, his face splattered in Harry, index pressed to his lips. Don't move.

“You told me not to move.” I said through a mouthful of pancakes.

Issac’s lips curled. “Yeah, because I was expecting you to move your ass.”

The boy helped himself to my pancakes, shovelling them down with maple syrup.

I wasn't used to the others actually coming to my house. That never happened. We either met up at school, or were killed before we even saw each other. I knew Isaac was secretly pissed.

It wasn't the first time I had thrown him under the bus. Still, I was yet to forget him ‘accidentally’ drowning me nine graduation days ago.

He said it was an accident, but I definitely felt him shove my head under the water so he could make a run for it.

“There wasn't enough room under the desk,” I told him pointedly, gesturing to my mother, who I think was still trying to register three strangers walking into her kitchen unannounced. Mom had been vocal about me finding friends since freshman year, but I don't think she was expecting these friends.

Mari was well known around town, our girl’s soccer team dominating the local gazette.

Aurora’s father was the principal of our school. She was also the 2014 pageant winner.

Isaac was more infamous, especially for his ‘candy’.

“What?” Isaac shrugged, shooting my Mom a grin. “It's not like she's going to remember me, anyway.” he offered her a two fingered salute, “Sup, Mrs Haverford.”

To prove his point, Isaac straightened up, grabbed my phone, and threw it in the microwave.

Mari chucked a banana at his head.

“We get it.” she said with an eye roll.

“You don't need to resort to blowing things up every single time.”

Isaac responded with stubborn British noises, but she was right.

On our third graduation day, Isaac thought we could kill the woman in the black suit by blowing her up with science equipment.

Instead, he blew himself up, leaving the rest of us to her mercy.

Mom seemed to snap out of it, her smile broadening.

“Oh! You didn't tell me you were bringing friends over!” Mom immediately entered mother mode.

“Do you kids want breakfast?” she asked them, her voice high, almost shrill.

When we were alone, Mari took centre stage, hoisting herself onto the counter.

The girl was a natural leader, so of course she was our spokesperson.

Mari absently ran her hands through strawberry blonde hair.

“We tried your idea,” she nodded to a sick looking Aurora. “We tried running, and that crazy bitch still got us.”

Aurora wrapped her arms around herself, avoiding Mari’s gaze. “It was a suggestion. I didn't think she was that fast.”

“I still think she's a sleeper agent,” Isaac muttered into his glass of juice.

Mari raised a brow. “Okay, but why would a sleeper agent go after five random high school students?”

He shrugged, his lips curving into a smile.

“Maybe it was an order.”

He dragged out the latter word, so it sounded more like, “Ordahhhhhhhh.”

“But who made the order?” Aurora spoke up.

I nodded. “The government, or the shadow government don't go after high school kids.”

Isaac leaned forward, comfortably resting his chin on his fist. “Soo, what do we do now? If we can't beat whatever this thing is, what do we do?”

Die.

That is what we did.

For ten consecutive graduation days.

I woke up. I ate breakfast (pancakes and orange juice), I went to school, and I was murdered.

I was hacked apart, burned alive, drowned, impaled, and beheaded.

And nothing worked.

Our plans to run failed.

We tried to get to the roof, but she was always there waiting for us.

The latest loop, I was actually hopeful.

Isssc’s plan to lure her to the downstairs gym was going well, and it was the first time I'd survived past 3pm.

It was an adrenaline rush. 3pm had never looked so fucking beautiful.

The plan was simple.

Aurora, Mari and me standing in plain sight the whole time, and Isaac luring our killer to the downstairs gym.

When I got the confirmation text that Issac had trapped the woman in the closet, the three of us continued our plan, which was to set off the fire alarm, and alert the police of the intruder.

Informing the police was impossible initially, because she was always one thousand steps ahead of the five of us.

But Isaac had captured her.

We were in the clear.

That's what I thought.

When we pushed through the doors into the gym, however, Isaac’s cry froze me in place.

“It's a–”

His voice collapsed into panicked muffle screaming.

I took two steps, before I saw his figure running towards me.

Behind him, the woman in the black suit.

Another stumbled step, and he was being dragged back, a hand over his mouth. I didn't think our killer had enough intelligence to turn our own plan back on us, transforming Isaac into a lure for us.

I could see the apology in his frenzied eyes before she sliced her knife through his skull. I didn't even get a chance to mourn him. Isssc flopped onto the ground, rivulets of red pooling down his face. For a second, I was transfixed, hypnotised, by what she had done to him. The back of his head spewed blood like a geyser, a gaping hole splitting the back of his skull open.

I couldn't move, already wanting to surrender.

I shuffled back on my hands, already screaming, wailing like an animal.

I counted elephants, just like my mother told me.

My gaze was glued to Isaac, whose body was still twitching.

His glassy eyes, scarlet trails running down his face.

The woman was fast, waiting for me to try and run.

5

I was on my knees, and the door was so far away.

2.

“Just breathe, honey.” Mom used to tell me.

“Keep counting elephants.”

Mari’s scream rattled in my ears.

I remember ice cold arms wrapping around my waist, the sensation of something sharp. I didn't feel the pain, only wet warmth running down my face. It felt like rain. Aurora’s crying was enough of an anchor, but my vision was already going foggy. I wasn't sure where the fatal wound was, though I guessed it was my head, just like Isaac.

The woman in the black suit floated in front of me like a spectre.

Once again, her fingers wrapped around my neck, swinging me like a toy.

“Bonnie!”

I was aware of Mari’s thundering footsteps coming toward me.

Suddenly, pain.

Pain like I had never felt, pain that puppeteered my body, wrenching my head back, my lips forming an O.

Part of me could still feel it, the blade digging deep into my skull.

She twisted it, and I screeched, my mouth full of pancake mush.

Again, this time clockwise, and I felt my body go numb, my head hanging.

I could hear the sound of my skull splintering apart.

The woman in the black suit didn't just want to kill us.

She wanted to make us fucking suffer.

Reality contorted, and I was back in bed at home, screeching into my pillows before my body could hit the gym floor.

I think that was when I started to lose my mind.

I began to distance myself from the others, like we were strangers again.

The woman in the black suit hunted me down to the girls bathroom where I was hiding, drowning me in the toilet bowl.

Then, she came straight into my house when I refused to go to school, suffocating me with my stuffed rabbit.

Luckily, Isaac and Mari forced their way in.

Isaac was stabbed in the stomach, and Mari, impaled by a fucking hairbrush.

I had no idea you could be impaled by a hairbrush.

Isaac’s lifeless body dropped onto mine.

His expression almost made me laugh, like he was mid eyeroll.

Hysteria crept up my throat, days, months, years, centuries, of the same fucking day finally catching up to me.

I was shrieking with laughter when I was bludgeoned straight through the mouth.

“Bonnie!”

7am.

This time, I rolled onto my side, spewing up the taste of blood.

"Get up! I made your favorite! Chocolate chip pancakes… “

Mom’s voice felt and sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

Swiping stale barf from my chin, I took one look at my graduation dress and burst out laughing. Then I tore the thing to shreds, stuffing the tattered remains in my bedroom drawer.

Mom appeared when she wasn't supposed to, hovering in my doorway.

In her hands was a laundry basket, but looking inside, it was filled with flour and eggs.

Mom’s smile was wide. I wondered if she was having a mental breakdown.

“Bonnie, did you remember to say thank you to Mrs Benson–”

I cut her off, swallowing a shriek. “For the dress,” I said. “Yep. I’m going to.”

That day, I stepped into school wearing a curtain and crocks.

“That's not a good idea,” Isaac stood behind me, wearing his usual tux.

His smile was weak. I think he'd stopped with the fake optimism.

Now, I was seeing the real him.

Real Isaac was kind of an asshole, but real subtle about it.

“Do you really want to die wearing a curtain? How are you going to run?”

I glimpsed a knife stuck in his belt. “Are you planning on being the hero?”

“Nope.” he shot me a sickly smile. “It's to defend myself.”

Four hours later, the two of us were sprinting down the hallway.

I wielded Isaac’s knife, Isaac stumbling with a head injury I didn't dare look at.

Issac narrowly missed drowning, managing to claw his way out of the pool. I didn't see him hit his head on the side when our killer threw herself on top of him, but I did hear the sickening crack of his face hitting stone tiles, all of the breath being violently knocked from his lungs in a strangled, “Oomph!”

She tried to drag him into the water, only for him to kick her in the face.

Mari was dead, half of her torso in the swimming pool.

Aurora was hiding, but I didn't have hope for her.

“You said we might be able to drown her!” Isaac, soaking wet and pissed, tried each classroom door, with all of them being locked as usual. He twisted around to me, his lips set in a silent cry.

His head was bleeding, bad, a scary looking gash in his forehead.

I was watching a single thick rivulet running down his face when he shoved me.

“Why did you push me into the pool?”

It was payback.

For him drowning me 176 Graduation days earlier.

“You falling into the pool was a distraction.” was all I could choke out.

He didn't believe me. I could tell by his eyes, twitching lips trying not to smile.

“You have a really bad head injury,” I whispered, tugging him into a power walk.

I realized the guy had some serious confusion when Issac laughed.

“I know,” he slurred, “I feel kinda…dizzy.”

“That's a concussion.”

He blinked at me. “Cushion?”

I thought he was going to burst out laughing again, when familiar stomping boots brought us both to a sobering halt.

Issac slammed his hand over his mouth, his eyes widening. He slowly moved the two of us back, his clammy fingers entangling with mine. “Fuhhhhk,” he muffle slurred, stumbling. “Did she hear us?”

When the booted footsteps got louder, we had our answer.

“Classroom.” I hissed, twisting him around and shoving him towards our old math classroom.

“Huh?” he was barely conscious, staggering. “Wait, no, don't leave me!”

“I'm going to hide so she doesn't kill me!”

He snorted, pushing me away from him. “Or using me as bait.”

He was smarter than he looked.

Pushing Isaac into the next open classroom, I catapulted myself into a sprint, cold hands suddenly gripping my shoulders and tugging me backwards.

“Shhh. It's me.”

Harry Locke.

He distanced himself after being sliced apart right in front of us. Harry was the quiet kid, a short and stocky boy with reddish hair and glasses. I wanted to ask where the hell he'd been, when I glimpsed the kitchen knife in his fist.

Harry’s smile was sickly. “Do you trust me?”

He pulled us into a classroom, quietly shutting the door behind him.

Isaac’s cries followed us, and I resisted covering my ears.

“I'm sorry,” Harry said, before slitting my throat.

This time, it was fast.

I fell.

Down.

Down.

Down.

I waited for Mom’s voice to wake me up, but when consciousness did come over me, I wasn't in bed. I had zero idea where I was, only the sensation that I was floating. Opening my eyes, I was inside a glass tank, suffocating in a thick goo-like substance, my hair spread out around me in a halo.

When I panicked, my body jerking awake, warm hands wrapped around me, pulling me out.

I hit open air, my lungs expanding, and I hacked up blood streaked water.

Harry helped me sit, the two of us leaning against my tank.

He was soaking wet, his skin glistening with that foul smelling solution.

I took a second to drink in my surroundings.

A large room filled with human-sized tanks.

Reaching to the back of my neck, I gingerly prodded at what felt like an incision. I stood up slowly, my gaze already finding the tank next to mine.

Mari.

The girl was suspended in water, her eyes closed, lips parted peacefully.

“They tried to escape a while ago,” Harry murmured, his gaze glued to another tank.

Isaac.

His cheeks were a sickly pallid colour, eyes closed. There was something attached to the back of his head.

“But they're in the school,” I managed to get out. “I was just with Isaac!”

“You were with a null version of Isaac,” Harry didn't look at me. “The one who kept leading you to your death, even if it seemed accidental. He was playing you.” he buried his head in his knees.

“The real Isaac figured this wasn't real a long time ago.”

“Real Isaac?”

“Yeah. The one you've been with is more of a copy of him,” Harry sighed, leaning his head against Mari’s tank.

He spat out slime, adjusting his glasses.

“Think of him more as a shell, empty of his mind. This Isaac follows orders like an NPC. He had the guy’s memories and traits, but he was just a program.”

Too much information at once.

“I don't understand.”

Harry tipped his back, groaning. “You don't need to.”

He got to his feet. His eyes were dark, hollowed out caverns I couldn't recognise. “I'm sorry,” Harry said again, wrapping his hands around my neck and pinning me into one of the tanks.

Just like the woman in the black suit, Harry pressed enough pressure for me to suffer.

When he slammed my head against the tank, I felt my body shut down.

I could still feel him, his fingers squeezing the life out of me.

Darkness came soon after.

Swirling oblivion that swallowed me up, and then spat me out.

This time, I spluttered awake, cuffed to a bed inside a white room.

Surrounding me were fifteen gurney like beds.

“I don't know how deep we are,” Harry’s voice startled me.

The boy stood over me, this time dressed in shorts and t-shirt.

“What?” I tried to jump up, but I was strapped down.

“Miss Benson.” his voice broke. “She didn't want us to graduate, so she put us under.” he swiped at his eyes, gulping down sobs. Harry slumped down onto my bed. “I thought I could wake us up by killing ourselves instead, but we’re stuck.” I noticed the scalpel in his hand.

“The last thing Isaac told me was that we had to get back to the surface.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “But I don't know how deep this thing goes.”

Tugging against the velcro straps pinning me down, I held my breath.

“Deep?”

“Yeah.” he spluttered. “We’re pretty far under.”

With a heavy breath, he drew the blade across his own throat with just enough precision to keep himself breathing.

Deep red spotted the blanket, and the boy broke down.

“I can't wake us up,” Isaac whispered, grabbing a pillow and pinning me to the bed. I tried to shove him off of me, but he put all of weight onto me, laughing.

“Do you hear me, Isaac?” His hysterical cry followed me into the dark.

“I can't fucking wake us up!”

Death didn't feel like death at this point.

Like drowning, and then finding the surface.

Only to be pulled back into suffocating depths.

Plunging through nothing, empty space with no bottom, no surface.

Endless nothing that expanded, continuing.

Harry’s sobs collapsed into white noise and I felt my writhing limbs go still.

Once again, I waited for my Mom’s voice.

For Graduation Day.

Instead, I awoke with a shriek, strapped to a chair, my hands bound to Harry’s.

“I'm sorry for suffocating you with a pillow.”

He didn't sound apologetic.

“You asshole.” I gritted out.

He sighed, leaning his head on mine. “I said I was sorry.”

This time, we were inside a glass building.

Above us, the sky was pitch dark.

“Where are we?”

“I have no idea,” Harry muttered. “I've never been this far.”

My gaze followed an odd looking bird through the skylight. “Meaning?”

“Meaning, she always takes me back to the start,” he said. “Graduation Day.”

Harry got free easily, tearing himself from his restraints.

The knots around my wrists were impossible. “So, you've been here before?”

“No.” he stumbled, trying to swipe himself down. “Isaac has.”

The boy dropped onto his hands and knees, picking up a single shard of glass.

“Isaac said he found a room with a skylight,” Harry murmured, sliding the point between his fingers. His gaze found the ceiling. “Then he went deeper, and his consciousness never came back to us. Mrs Benson sent a mindless fucking copy in his place.”

He got to his feet, the shard clenched in his fist.

“So, if I'm right… Isaac woke up, and Mrs Benson must have restrained the real him.” Harry stepped in front of me.

“And… like Isaac, we will wake up…” His frenzied eyes found mine. “Right?”

I wasn't thrilled with the idea of dying again, but anything to wake myself up.

“Do it.”

He nodded, and I felt the prick of the blade spike my skin.

“Wait.”

Harry stepped back, cocking his head. “What?”

“Why would Mrs Benson do this?” I demanded. “She didn't want us to graduate school, so she did all of this?”

Harry shrugged, playing with the shard between his fingers. “Why else would she do this?”

He pressed the shard into my neck.

“Wait.” I hissed out.

Harry’s frown was patient. “What now?”

“What if this is the real world?” I whispered. “We’ll be killing ourselves. For real.”

Harry’s lips pricked slightly. “Does this world look real to you?”

Before I could reply, he slashed my throat open.

I waited for the reset.

For the sensation of blankets wrapped around my head, and my mother’s voice.

Instead, my body was stiff, my eyes glued shut.

“Bonnie Haverford?” the voice was a low murmur. “Honey, can you hear me?”

There was something stuck in my arm, a sharp, cruel thing pinning me down.

“I did say she was awake, but nobody believed me.”

The British accent was almost a fucking melody.

Prying my eyes open, a figure was looming over me. It was a woman with a kind face, her expression soothing.

A paramedic.

I couldn't make out what the tag on her uniform said, though.

Around me, I could see my classmates wrapped in blankets being escorted to the door. There were fifteen or so futuristic looking pods, and I was lying in one, a plastic mask suffocating my mouth. Isaac stood next to the paramedic, a wary smile on his mouth.

The guy had a scary bandage wrapped around his head.

“Bonnie, right?”

This version of him didn't remember getting to know me.

Isaac pulled me to a sitting position, ignoring the paramedic’s sharp hiss of, “Please leave her where she is!”

A man dressed in white tried to throw a blanket around him, and he shrugged it off.

“I'm fine,” Issac muttered, gingerly prodding his head wound. “I won't be if you keep asking if I'm okay. Jeez.”

Ignoring the adults, he wandered over to the pod in front of me and pulled a half conscious Harry to unsteady feet.

Harry staggered, half lidded eyes finding mine. His smile was sickly.

It worked.

The two of them hugged, Isaac burying his head in the crook of the boy’s shoulder.

I wanted to talk to Harry, but the paramedic seemed pretty insistent that I stayed still so she could check me over.

I was barely aware of my surroundings when I was crawling into the back of an ambulance.

Reality felt wrong, like I was still stuck, still reliving the same day over and over.

But my town was real.

I dazedly watched traffic flying by, the sky darkening.

Time was moving forward again.

The world resumed, and graduation day had been and gone.

14 days to be exact.

Mrs Benson had us trapped for 14 days, and yet to me, it felt like a century.

Mom was at the station, immediately pulling me into a hug.

She put me under house arrest for a week, sentencing me to my room.

According to Mom, our teacher turned herself in.

Apparently, forcing her students into a slasher movie simulator was ‘tugging at her heart’.

I spent most of the summer lying in bed watching Disney movies.

Mom made me breakfast. Eggs and soldiers, just like when I was a little kid.

I was absently dipping my toast soldiers in egg, when she dropped an envelope in front of me. “If you want to testify, sweetie,” Mom had resorted to using her baby voice again, “But remember, you don't have to. It's your choice…”

Mom’s voice faded when I picked up the envelope, opening it up.

My name was printed on the front.

I blinked. “They printed my name upside down.”

Mom was behind me, frying more eggs.

“Hmm?”

In the time it took for the envelope to slip from my hand, I was only aware of one thing.

The woman in the black suit was standing in the doorway, her fingers wrapped around an axe. Harry was in front of me one minute, his eyes wide, lips parted in a scream. “It's not–”

The woman was quick to grab him, one hand going over his mouth, the other pressing the blade to his adam’s apple.

Real.

In one singular jerking movement, the boy’s blood was splattering my face, clouding my vision.

The woman in the black suit did not kill me.

She picked Harry up, threw him over her shoulder, and walked away.

“Did you remember to thank me for buying your graduation dress?” Mom asked, handing me a plate of fried eggs.

Her voice, though, felt too close.

Warm breath tickling my cheeks.

“Bonnie, are you listening to me? Did you remember to thank me, sweetheart?”

Reality was far more cruel than dream.

Reality was being unable to move, unable to breathe. It was like coming up for air, but at the same time, I was drowning. The real world was so cold, and yet warm wetness dripped down my chin. I was strapped to a metal table, something plastic lodged down my throat.

Through blurry vision, I could see my body.

I could see that my hair was so much longer, almost down to my stomach.

But there was something wrong.

Prickles of ice slithered down my spine, curls of panic setting my body into fight or flight.

At first, I thought I was in the emergency room.

Except this place didn't have doors.

The walls were sickly green, a bunker transformed into a sicko’s dungeon.

My body resembled a pin cushion, or a little girl’s idea of a doll.

When my eyes found my stomach that was barely being held together by fresh stitches, my mind started to come apart.

Harry was wrong.

Everything that has happened to me, to us, was real.

Being beheaded, ripped apart, sliced into.

Mrs Benson was just good at putting us back together.

My arms were skeletal, wires protruding into my veins.

I could see where I had been cut open, my paper thin hospital gown stained scarlet.

I couldn't count elephants.

Across the room, beds lined the walls.

On them was what was left of my classmates, mangled flesh still strapped down. Some of them had been cut into, severed apart, while others were attached to tubes, wires sticking into their spine and the back of their heads.

The floor was stained, writhing body parts and slithering entrails dried into yellowing tiles.

In the corner of my eye, Mari’s head was hanging open, the pinkish grey of her brain visible through the pearly white of her skull. She was still alive, still twitching in her restraints, plastic tubes full of fluid being fed directly into her head.

When a thin river of red slid down her temple, I averted my gaze.

Barf was already in my mouth, splashing into my mask.

Aurora had tubes stuck to her, one eye scooped out, her pretty face mutilated.

Issac.

He was covered with a white sheet, a startling smear of scarlet where his head was supposed to be.

I could see his wrists still strapped down.

Mrs Benson stood in my line of vision, though I did see Isaac’s fingers curl slightly.

My teacher didn't speak when I shrieked through my mask, straining against velcro straps.

Mrs Benson’s smile was the one I used to like.

She lit up our classroom, like sunshine.

“Why don't we count elephants together, hmm?”

I found myself nodding, trusting the sunshine smile.

“One.”

Mrs Benson straightened up.

“Two.”

She strode over to Harry’s bed, replacing his blood soaked pillow with a fresh one, adjusting the tube in his mouth and planting a kiss on his forehead. I could see red dots marked across his skin, circled around his eyes.

“Three.” I found myself saying with her, my thoughts dancing.

Mrs Benson turned to me, her lips breaking out into a grin.

“That's right! Count with me, Bonnie.”

I closed my eyes, swimming in the drugs filling my body.

I was being pulled back down.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine…

Sinking through the ground, colours flashed in my eyes.

“Bonnie!”

Mom’s voice startled me awake, a raw cry choking through my lips.

Graduation Day was the same.

Mom made me breakfast.

Pancakes and orange juice.

I went to school wearing my graduation dress.

Isaac walked straight past me, running to catch up with his friends.

Mari ignored my attempt to call out for her.

Aurora ducked her head, hurrying to empty out her locker.

“Hello.”

Harry was standing behind me.

I could have cried.

But when I turned to talk to him, to tell him we were still trapped, his smile was wide, eyes glassy. In his arms was our yearbook. He handed me a pen.

“Do you mind signing it?” Harry chuckled. “I've got everyone but you.”

He opened it up onto the first page.

“It's Harry, by the way!”

Behind him, I glimpsed a familiar shadow, a woman striding towards me.

The lights above flickered, and I could already taste blood in my mouth. Harry didn't even flinch when I dropped the yearbook and stumbled into a run.

His smile was vacant, empty.

Just like he said.

An NPC.

I was already running for my life, and he kept talking to thin air.

When the woman in the black suit sprinted past him, his smile broadened.

“And you are?”

I grew up mostly ignoring bad intentions.

The kind of bad intention which you have no way of stopping; a kid pushing her mother into incoming traffic, an old man taking a cat home and suffocating it with his recently deceased wife’s favorite scarf. 

There was a time when I tried to stop bad things happening. 

When I was fourteen, I followed a teenage boy home when I saw the dark cloud above his head.

I was convinced he was going to kill someone or cause serious hurt.

The boy had stopped halfway down the street and pulled out his phone, glaring at the screen.

He’d pressed the phone to his ear and cleared his throat loudly.

“Hey, mom?” His voice was choked up. “Yeah, Hi. Dad’s fucking aunt Mara.” His lips pulled into a grin. “Okay, bye.”

Since then, I’ve been hesitant to try and stop people acting out on bad intention.

If it was just smoke, it really could have been anything.

Mr Asher, my teacher, was an avid enjoyer of aircrafts.

He had posters on the walls of anything from a 21st century airplane, to a weird robot thing which looked straight from a sci-fi movie.

“What is the most important part of an aircraft?” 

His voice snapped me out of my thoughts, and I lifted my head from where I’d been meticulously doodling Adventure Time characters in the back of my notebook. 

I had been battling a headache for most of the day.

After hoping it would disappear on its own, I swallowed a Tylenol with half a bottle of flat Coke and it was yet to have an effect.

I figured staring at my desk would help, but a dull pain was already crawling across the back of my skull.

“Anyone?” Mr Asher urged the class with a sigh. “Come on, guys. This is preschool stuff.”

Fourth period English was usually the time I tuned out of class. It’s not like we learned anything. Mr Asher just ranted about future mechanical weapons and AI replacing the US army. Riveting stuff. 

Most of my class were either half asleep or buried in their own work. Still though, some kids were listening. Mainly the girls.

The teacher was easy on the eyes, let’s say. Forty or fifty something years old with an actual jawline and Hollywood smile.  

He looked good for his age. Of course the girls were listening to his rant.

I jumped when Mr Asher clapped his hands, snapping the class out of it. “Come on, wake up! The most important part of an aircraft!”

“Do you mean like a plane?” Milla Jason raised her hand awkwardly. “The wings?”

“Yes, Milla!” Mr Asher said. “Wings! I’m glad someone is listening. But what else? Come on, I’m talking about the power of the ship. The craft would have no chance of moving without it.”

When there was no response, Mr Asher clicked his fingers in front of a girl’s face. I was half listening, shading my Jake in. I’d drawn his face weird. He looked more like a deformed Squidward. “Wake up, Marina. What have I told you about sleeping in class? Join in the discussion. Let’s get some energy!”

“Why aren’t we doing English?” Harvey Oliver spoke over kids yelling out ridiculous answers.

“This is English, and we’re supposed to be studying The Crucible. So, why have we spent the last hour and a half talking about your weird obsession with planes?”

He was right.

I mean, Mr Asher really did make his obsession obvious. He inserted that particular subject into every discussion.

Harvey’s words sent a shockwave through the class. Some kids laughed.

Others muttered that he was rude.

I expected the teacher to start shouting at him. There was a pause, a moment of silence when I could hear my individual breaths as I struggled to mend my Princess Bubblegum’s hair. 

“That is… very true.” Mr Asher cleared his throat. “And we will, Harvey. But first of all, why don’t you answer my question first?”

I’m not sure why, but the teacher’s words had weight to them. A second meaning.

His tone was different, and I couldn’t figure out what it was.

“So.” The teacher’s footsteps startled me, the click-clack of his shoes making his way over to the back of the class where Harvey was sitting. 

I was a few seats away from the kid. As Mr Asher got closer, my pencil slipped from my fingers. I thought it was a fluke.

I thought maybe a sandwich had gone bad in my bag, or some idiot had brought in sour milk. But no. 

The smell was suddenly there, real, a putrid aroma suddenly choking the air, creeping into my nostrils and burning my throat. I had to slam my hand over my mouth to stop myself puking. 

I felt my body stiffen up, my breath growing thinner and thinner as the teacher’s footsteps stopped in front of my classmate’s desk. I heard the creak of Harvey’s desk when Mr Asher leaned on it. 

“Why don’t you tell me, hmm?” I didn’t dare look up. Just for a moment I wanted to be blissfully unaware, but when my gaze went to my lap, my eyes were already wandering. I saw his shoes first. 

Expensive leather slip-ons. As my gaze travelled up, I saw it. I saw writhing darkness blurring my teacher from reality completely, wiping out his face. 

His body was the only thing left, along with half of his head swallowed in the monster’s tendril snaking around his throat and shoulders, slithering tendrils already restraining his wrists.

The air was thick with the foul stink, already travelling around the classroom. It didn’t touch other students, focusing on my teacher. 

I could just about glimpse a patch of Mr Asher’s face peeking from the abomination blanketing him. 

I could see what nobody else could, and what had been highlighted by the thing.

His smile which was far too big for his face, almost cartoonish, a nightmarish grin growing and growing and growing on his face. The thing was pulling at his lips, fashioning them into a horror spectacle.

“Mr Oliver.” The amalgamation of writhing shadows said. “What is the most important part of an aircraft?”

I could feel myself moving back in my chair, my body physically reacting to what I was seeing.

My throat burned, a cry clawing to get out, hysteria tangled on my tongue. “The pilot. Obviously.” Harvey said, his voice slicing through my hurricane thoughts.

For a moment I was confused why he wasn’t jumping up and freaking out, pointing at the nightmare which was our teacher. And then reality settled in. 

Harvey couldn’t see the bad intention. He couldn’t see what the teacher was thinking, what was emitting from him, a sickening urge which was driving him crazy. It was a craving, a lust, to do the unthinkable. And I had no idea what the unthinkable was.

It could have been anything. Murder. Or worse. It had to be that bad. The monster wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t something that would cause injury or death. Whether that was mentally or physical. 

Mrs Jess’s bad intention was to kidnap my classmate and make the little girl her own daughter and the monster had been bad. 

This? This was worse. This thing was sending my lunch into my throat, turning my gut. When I risked a look up, it was everywhere, a sentient tendril of darkness worming its way around the classroom, burying itself into the walls like mould.

I found my gaze latched onto the two of them, student and teacher as they seemed locked into a staring match. Harvey, with a slight smirk, and Mr Asher with intrigue. Harvey was the smartest in the class. Usually, he kept quiet and to himself. 

But his intelligence couldn’t be hidden in skyrocketing test scores worthy of an ivy League school. 

“That’s right.” Mr Asher backed away, his arms folded across his chest. 

The darkness followed him, growing thicker and thicker the more he was thinking, the more his thoughts were growing more twisted in his mind, and that craving was getting worse. “Tell me, Harvey. Would you ever pilot a craft?”

As my teacher’s bad intention was getting worse, and far more realistic, a tangible thing he was starting to plan in his head, the smell went from sour milk to rancid burning and something dead, something rotten.

I could see every fucking emotion on the patches of face still showing through writhing black. He was planning. 

And that plan that he was putting together in his head was exhilarating him, so much so that the teacher began to tremble with excitement. 

Look away. The words struck me. Look away. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t look away because I wanted to know. I wanted to know what was going on in his mind, what was so vile that his bad intention was enveloping him, transforming him into a beast from my childhood nightmares.

Harvey raised a brow. “Me?” He leaned on his fist, clearly contemplating. “Nah.” He laughed. “I’d probably crash it.”

“Nonsense!” Mr Asher spoke with such vigour and excitement. To any other person, he was just excited. “Why do you think that?” He leaned forward, anticipation igniting in his expression. I’d never seen him so excited. It was… sickening.

I’ve read about people who have openly said they want to know what goes on inside a psychopath’s brain and leads them to commit the atrocities they do. 

Trust me, though. You don’t. You won’t see logic or explanation to why they did it.

Because it doesn’t exist. This isn’t sickness. It’s not something which should be studied. It’s a craving which can’t be explained, a tumour which grows and grows and grows until it is all consuming. 

And I see all of it. I see it from the start to finish.

I saw it in my English teacher Mr Asher who had managed to hide it so well until something triggered it, bringing out his demons and showing me everything he was thinking. 

Everything except what he was planning to do to Harvey Oliver. 

“You’re the first person this year to be recommended to an Ivy League, Mr Oliver! And you’re worried you wouldn’t be able to pilot a craft?”

Harvey shrugged. “Well, it depends which craft.” He said, before picking up his battered copy of The Crucible and waving it in the teacher’s face.

“Can we actually study now? Not that I don’t love talking about planes, but we need to do actual work.”

For a moment, I thought the teacher was going to argue before he nodded and stepped away.

“Quite right.” He said before resuming the discussion he’d started right at the beginning of the class. I watched him walk back to the front of his class and slump back into his desk. He picked up The Crucible and started to read. 

But his planning wasn’t ending. 

His thoughts were so loud, perpetuated in the stink in the air and shadow swallowing him up until he was nothing but a blur of black. 

I buried my head in my knees and forced myself to breathe. 

I had to stop it. Whatever it was, whatever he was planning, I had to stop it.

It’s not like I could go to the police and tell them I was ‘seeing bad intention on my teacher’ I’d be sent to the psych ward.

So, I followed Harvey Oliver around. It sounds stalkerish, but I was determined to make sure he wasn’t a victim of bad intention. Harvey Oliver was boring. I’ll just say that. 

After class, he went to the library for a study period. 

I sat opposite him and pretended to read from The Crucible. He spoke to me twice. 

The first time was to let me know that I was reading my book upside down, and the second was a while later.

He lifted his gaze from his copy, a small smile curving on his lips. “You’re following me.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes you are.” Harvey closed his book. “You followed me from Mr Asher’s class, and now you’re doing a bad job of pretending to read a book.” He cocked his head. “What is it? Do you want me to tutor you or something? That’s what other kids want.”

“Other kids?”

He nodded. “I was stalked by a group of girls a few weeks ago. I thought they were interested, but they just wanted test answers.” Harvey rolled his eyes. “I got used to it eventually. But I don’t tutor.” 

His eyes darkened. “You want to know the secret to getting good grades? It’s called working. Your social life doesn’t matter. Just lock yourself in your room and study hard.”

I leaned back in my chair, attempting to look casual. Harvey and I weren’t friends. 

We had never spoken in our collective seventeen years of life, and yet I felt like I had to get close to him to save him from a horrific fate. “Why would I need a tutor?”

If I kept him talking, I could keep an eye on him without it being weird. 

Judging from his expression, though, I had already made it weird. 

The boy looked amused, not annoyed. That was something. 

At least he wasn’t telling me to fuck off.

“You got the lowest grades last semester.” He said. When I opened my mouth to ask how, he shrugged. “I peek at the teacher’s notes sometimes.” Harvey stabbed a page in his book. “You’re on thin ice, Cassie. They’re about to call your parents.”

“Oh. That’s…” I drew out a breath. “That’s pretty bad.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad.” He shot me a smirk before jumping to his feet. “Like I said. Just study. If you really want those grades, work for them.” Harvey sent me a sarcastic salute. “There. Happy now? Now you don’t need to follow me everywhere.”

Panic flooded me when he started to move towards the door, and I was automatically on his heel, trying to keep a good distance.

When he pushed through the library doors, I followed, shouldering my backpack. “Where are you going?”

“Home.” Harvey didn’t turn around, quickening his stride. “I work better at home, and no offence, but you’re kind of freaking me out. You’ve got crazy eyes, Cassie.” 

Harvey mimed bugging his eyes out, laughing to himself. “What, do you see dead people?”

Something like that.

Looking around the corridor, I didn’t see any smoke or shadows. 

Mr Asher was nowhere to be found, and neither was his bad intention dripping from every crevice in the ceiling. 

Harvey took the stairs two at a time, and I made an effort to keep his distance. 

Harvey reached into his jacket and pulled out his earphones, corking them in. 

Still no Mr Asher. 

Class was still in session, but I expected the teacher to make his move quickly. I had to make sure Harvey got home safely. 

My brain was in overdrive as I ran after him. Eventually, it became too obvious. 

I was catching up to him, and the boy kept twisting around and shooting me warning glares like he was seconds from calling the police.

Harvey crossed a main road quickly, ducking into an alleyway, and I aimed to follow him. I remember stepping forwards onto the road with full intention to run across it and after him.

But at the corner of my eye, smoke was forming in the air, billowing, dancing, twirling under the late afternoon sun. 

It was coming from a truck driver and it only took one look across the road, at a woman pushing a stroller holding hands with a smiling little boy, for me to know his bad intention. It wasn’t quite inevitable yet. 

Still grey. But it was there. It was at the back of his mind, already eating away at his thoughts. I found myself transfixed by the smoke. And I forgot to move. 

Forgot to remember to get out of the road. 

I don’t remember the car hitting me. It felt more like the world was imploding around me and I was the centre of it.

My head hit solid concrete.

That, I know. Next thing I knew I was in hospital surrounded by my parents and several nurses wearing wary smiles. 

According to them, I had mostly head trauma and a sprained ankle. I felt like shit, but I was already panicking about Harvey. 

After downing half a glass of water, I asked my parents how long I had been asleep, only for them to tell me it had been five days. 

Five fucking days since I’d been asleep.

It was an induced coma, apparently, to make sure there was no internal bleeding.

I tried to get out of bed, but my body was aching, my head swimming. 

“Harvey Oliver.” I managed to hiss out when mom insisted I got rest. “Is he okay? Did anything… bad happen to him?”

Mom got a funny look on her face. She looked like she might reply before deciding against it.

“What is it?” I whispered.

She stood up. “Nothing for you to worry about. Get some rest, okay? I’ll  be back tomorrow.”

When she left my room, I only had to turn my phone on to understand her paling cheeks.

Three students from my school had gone missing.

Including Harvey.

Smart students, I realised after looking through the names.

Lily Hartley, Quinn Jacobs, and Harvey Oliver.

I remembered seeing their names gilded in gold in the school’s main reception.

My mind whirred with questions. 

What would Mr Asher want with smart students? I felt guilty for not seeing his bad intention with Lily and Quinn.

After reading through a local article posted two days earlier, I felt sick.

It hadn’t been a week since their disappearance, and the police were already ruling it as kids skipping town.

All of them were eighteen, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t make sense that there was barely a police investigation. When I felt well enough to stand without tipping over, I discharged myself from the hospital.

Mr Asher’s house was easy to find with some Googling and a conversation with the school receptionist.

He lived at the end of a cul-de-sac.

His house was what you would expect a middle-aged man to own: a large Victorian build with modern touches to it, a skylight built into the roof and a gate with a mechanical lock I found myself standing in front of. Before I could press the button, I smelled it again. Sour milk.

The air around me blurred, and I glimpsed a shadow at the corner of my eye.

“I wouldn’t go in there, kid.”

The shadow had a gruff voice.

It sounded like an oldish man.

When I turned to look, there was nothing there but the slightest outline indicating a human figure bleeding into the late afternoon light.

The figure smelled of bad intention, but his voice was strangely gentle.

“Every soul in that house is dead.”

I didn’t move or speak. Though he must have known I wanted to know more.

“I was a detective in the late ’90s,” he murmured. “A bunch of kids disappeared. Sixteen- or seventeen-year-olds. I knew it was the teacher as soon as I was put on the case.” His laugh was gravelly. "I broke into his house myself."

“Worst thing I ever did. ’Cos the next thing I know? I’m being strung up and gutted like a fucking pig."

His words sent shivers down my spine, and I took a subconscious step back.

“The man’s a lunatic. I pray for those kids’ souls."

I caught what looked like a finger blurring into view. He pointed to a window on the top floor.

“I see ’em sometimes at night. It’s usually when they’ve visited their parents.

“They’re good company, but most of the time I can’t bring myself to meet eyes with them, you know? I couldn’t save them.”

I didn’t realise I was speaking until I heard my own words hit the sound barrier.

“He’s taken... more of them?”

“Yeah. Older, this time. Around five days ago.” He paused. “I’m guessing these are friends of yours?”

I didn’t answer.

“And...” He cleared his throat. “You’re going to completely ignore everything I’m tellin’ ya and get yourself killed too.”

Again, I didn’t answer. I pushed the button and steeled myself.

“It’s your funeral,” the man grumbled. “Just tell me what’s in there, alright? I’ve been waiting almost thirty years. I just want one question answered: Why kids?”

Not just kids, I thought.

Smart kids.

Not to mention another question driving me crazy: Why was the town protecting him?

The man, or at least the outline of him, faded, as well as the stink of sour milk.

I was back in reality, standing in front of my psycho teacher’s house after his victim just told me he had murdered three teenagers in the ’90s and had kidnapped three of my classmates, who were no doubt going to meet the same fate. 

I wanted to turn and run, but before I could, the gate swung open. 

The speaker crackled, my teacher’s voice coming through.

“Cassandra Samuels?”

 Even his voice was tainted with the stink of rot and mould. “What brings you here? This is quite the surprise. I was actually just about to attend a dinner date.”

I managed to find my voice.

“I need help,” I said, panicking. “With The Crucible. I don’t understand it.”

“That is what the online whiteboard is for, Miss Samuels. Find all resources in the latest folder I uploaded.”

“I don’t have internet at my house,” I lied. “My power’s gone off, and my parents are at work.”

He paused.

“I can spare some time to go over some of the points we went over in class. Why don’t you come inside?”

Mr Asher greeted me in the doorway. His bad intention was gone. Which meant he’d either fought against it or given in. I already knew which one it was.

The teacher led me inside his house. It was cosy, with a lounge I peeked inside and a kitchen which looked far too sterile.

His laptop was set up on the dining room table, and he offered me a seat before pulling out his teacher’s notes and a copy of The Crucible. 

We had gotten maybe twenty minutes into a lecture I wasn’t even fully taking in when the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. 

I had to get out of there and find out where he was keeping the other students. 

I figured using the bathroom excuse would work, though, to my surprise, he shook his head, shooting me a sly smile.

“Ah, no bathroom, I’m afraid. Both of them are currently out of use.”

Tapping my pen on my notepad, I was struggling to swallow my mediocre lunch.

“That’s okay,” I said and jumped to my feet. “I should probably get going, anyway.”

My mind was already working ahead of me. I counted my steps, and then his following mine. Mr Asher led me out into the hallway, and I passed an expensive-looking table laid with paperweights.

I wondered if he’d used one of them to knock out Harvey and the others, as well as the detective. Before I could hesitate, my hand was whipping out and snatching up a glass paperweight shaped like a heart. The teacher had his back to me.

It was the perfect hit. 

I bet I was shadowed with bad intentions at that moment, but if it was to defend myself and find my kidnapped friends, did it really matter if my soul was blackened too?

I didn’t think. I just swung the damn thing.

Mr Asher had twisted around to talk to me, and I had taken the chance and slammed the paperweight as hard as I could into the back of his skull.

I expected it to be a knock-out. Like in the movies. But I was unaware real life was far different. My teacher didn’t collapse to the ground, but he did stumble, howling in pain. He was caught off guard, so I struck again, which this time sent him tumbling to the floor.

He was still breathing. Somehow.

I took that as an opportunity to explore the mammoth of his house. 

I made sure to shut and lock the door in case someone came in, and I dragged my teacher’s unconscious body into the downstairs bathroom, locking that too.

You might think this was all meticulously planned, but I was just panicking.

I checked the upstairs first. All of the bedrooms were empty.

I knew they would be. I guess I was stalling. I really didn’t want to check the basement. Though when I was sure every room had been searched through, the only place left was down narrow concrete steps.

The basement wasn’t what I was expecting it to be. I thought I’d find some kind of torture chamber, or at least my friends tied up. That is what I thought my teacher was. I thought he was a psychotic kidnapper who revelled in pain.

What I found, however, was a room which looked like it was made of metal. 

The walls were concrete, but everything else was glistening metal which took my breath away. 

Dim lights shone down on three metallic structures. Clumsily built, but well enough to look like a real craft of some sort. It was like something from a sci-fi movie.

They were in three colours: Pink, Blue, and Green. Humanoid structures towering over me.

I blinked, tearing my gaze from whatever project my teacher had been working on in his spare time.

Whatever I was looking at could wait. I had to find the others.

I risked using my voice in a whisper, scanning the room.

“Hello?” I hissed. “Is anyone down here?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin when the structure next to me, the blue one, flashed suddenly. It hummed, like it was powering up. I’d triggered it somehow. Voice activation, maybe?

I ignored it and kept searching. There were empty boxes at the back of the room, as well as a door which looked like it led into an old bathroom. I was twisting the handle when the humming grew louder, and I could have sworn it sounded like a groan mixed with a yawn.

“Cassandra?”

The voice sent me twisting back around, my gaze going to the structure which was now powered on.

“Oh, thank god.” Harvey was talking, his cry filling up the room. But I couldn’t see him anywhere. “You need to help us,” he hissed.

For some reason, I couldn’t stop staring at the blue machine. It seemed to be flashing in sync with what he was saying.

“Mr Asher went fucking crazy and knocked me out! I don’t know what he’s done to me, but I woke up here. I can’t fucking move, man. I think he’s drugged me or something...”

“Harvey.” I cut him off.

Suddenly, it was so hard to breathe. My body was paralysed, and I could sense my hand slowly moving to cover my mouth. The metallic thing in front of me had stopped flashing. I took a slow step backwards.

“Where are you?”

“What do you mean, where am I? I’m right in front of you. Are you blind, Cassie?”

My brain was suddenly in full control of my body. I took a step forwards, and then another and another until I was resting the palm of my hand on the thing’s metallic shell, which hummed in response.

“Hey, no touchy! Get me out of here! God, man, he’s done something fucked up to me. Does he have me, like, tied down or something? I can’t feel my legs or arms.”

I don’t think words can describe what I felt at that moment.

What I felt when I searched the room further, when I pulled open the mysterious door and found a toilet leaking bright red, and what my teacher had tried to stuff down it.

I was screaming, and I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t care that I could get caught, that I might freak Harvey out.

I couldn’t fucking stop. My hands were over my ears, and I was begging it to be a nightmare. It had to be. It had to be, right?

But Mr Asher’s words from class were haunting the back of my mind, and all it took was looking at the teacher’s project to understand what the man had meant.

“What is the most important part of an aircraft?”

“The pilot,” Harvey Oliver had answered.

...”Would you ever pilot a plane, Harvey?”

The teacher’s voice rang in my head.

Looking at the shiny metal structure in front of me, I came to the realisation that Harvey was the pilot.

He was the pilot, I thought, thinking about what was stuffed down the toilet, what spattered the walls and floor. 

I only saw half a torso and slimy pink and red before I’d backed out of there and heaved up everything in my gut.

I couldn’t leave him, leave them.

I didn’t look at the metal thing with Harvey’s voice. I looked at the old wooden door hiding his remains which our teacher had failed to hide.

“Harvey.” I spoke softly. Gently. So he wouldn’t freak out. “I’m going to get all of you help. Okay?”

“What?” His tone grew frightened. “No. No, Cassie, don’t leave me here! I can’t... I can’t move.”

Tears filled my eyes.

“You’re right,” I said. “He... uh, drugged you. You’re in a bad state right now.”

My stomach lurched when his sob rang out, tinged with something robotic, something humming on the edge.

“I think something bad has happened to me,” he whispered. “I can see you. But... but I can’t see myself. Am I okay, Cassie?”

The majority of Harvey Oliver was in the bathroom, while the rest of him towered over me.

I took another step back, my breath thinning.

“You’re fine,” I bit out. “I promise I’ll get you guys out of here.”

The metal thing flashed.

“Okay,” Harvey sighed. “Just... hurry up, okay? I’ve got a test due on Monday, and fuck, I still need to finish my Yale application.”

He groaned, and the structure moved slightly, its twitching arm jolting.

“Man, I’ve got so much work to do. It sucks that asshole chose the busiest week of my life to decide to kidnap and keep me in his fucking basement.”

Harvey was humming to himself when I left him.

I left Mr Asher and called the police, pushing past the detective who stepped in front of me.

“What’s in there, kid?”

I didn’t reply, focusing on what I was saying to the cops in hysterical shrieks which wracked my chest.

When I spoke to the lead officer, calmly trying to explain what I had seen, I knew someone would help them. Someone would get them out of there.

I waited for the report. I waited for the cops to storm my teacher’s house and pull out his filthy secret.

Except that is not what happened.

They stormed his house, but they only found him, locked in the bathroom.

According to them, there were no “metal monsters” in the basement, and I was arrested for attempted murder.

It all makes a sick kind of sense. For reasons out of my knowledge, this fucking town is protecting my teacher. In the past and present.

Mr Asher dropped the charges when my mom begged him, but when they dared put me in front of him, I couldn’t help myself.

I screamed at him. Over and over again.

Why?

I asked him. And I didn’t stop screaming it at him until I was dragged out.

It’s been three months. I didn’t bother with college. I’m still trying to get in that fucking house. I’m still waiting for his bad intention to show up.

And when it does, I’ll be ready. I’ll show the town. And this time they won’t be able to cover it up.

I will show them what my teacher did.

And I’ll get them out of there. Whatever is left of them, whatever is powering those... things.

I promise you, Harvey.

I will get you out.

“BIM” was printed on the plastic bracelet on his wrist. 

I didn’t know his name, so to me, he was “Bim.”

Bim sat with his legs crossed, arms folded over his chest, wide eyes glaring daggers into me. 

“I know you’re scared,” I said, “but I’m trying to help you.”

“Help me?” He sputtered, saliva showering my face.

Bim came close, his breath grazing my cheek. “You psycho bitch locked me up in your fucking weird-ass wardrobe, and you’re HELPING me?” Bim laughed. Then he broke into sobs. “Helping me! Sure.”

I resisted slamming my hand over my nose. “You stink.” 

Bim wasn't wearing the deodorant I'd given him.

His stink was bad enough to sting my eyes, thick and wrong, setting my nerve endings alight.

Instead of responding, I checked his restraints, pinning his arms behind his back. Then I ducked out of the wardrobe and snatched a can of deodorant.

I pulled off his grimy shirt, ignoring his insults through gritted teeth, stuck the can under his pits, and blasted him with the scent of—- I frowned at the can. 

Cherry blossom and lavender. 

“That's ice cold!” Bim hissed, and I backed away when his teeth gritted together. “I have a girlfriend and she’ll be worried—”

“Your girlfriend will kill you.” 

His lip wobbled. “What are you talking about?” 

I sighed. “What's the last thing you remember?” 

“I think I…crashed.” Bim exhaled sharply. “There was a truck coming, and I… I don't know, I lost control, and everything… just…” his voice splintered into a sob, as if he was reliving the violent jerk of the car and the feeling of tonnes of steel slamming into him.” His eyes glittered. “I died.” Bim whispered. His eyes darkened. Accusing.

“So, why am I here?”

Here we go.

I forced a smile. “Bim.” I cupped his face, jerking him to face me. 

“I'm keeping you here for a reason.” I held up the deodorant can in his face.

“Six months ago, you were in a serious crash. I was a trainee nurse who worked on your ward. I didn't know your name. You weren't one of my patients.” I exhaled.

“That day, something… happened.” I shuddered. “We had a call from the above management to immediately transfer all male patients to a separate hospital—” 

“Stop.” Bim raised a brow. “Let me guess; my knight in shining armor saved me from illegal organ harvesting, and you brought me back to your house because I'm legally dead— and instead of calling the cops like a normal fucking person, you locked me in your wardrobe.” He cocked his head. “Well? Am I warm yet?” 

“It's called Zodak.” I said before I could bite it back.

He drew back, eyes narrowing. “What?”

“Zodak,” I said. “Or Yeongwon.” I swallowed. “It’s Korean. It means eternity.”

I felt myself fall against the door, drawing my knees to my chest. 

“It started in Korea. This… this whistleblower came out and said something was happening. The main cities were locking down on the news. Seoul. Busan. Incheon.”

“So, zombies?” 

“Zodak.” I continued, my words tangling,  “Or Yeongwon. It was a beauty cream for women. One night, it was used on a sixty four year old, who looked seventeen the next day.” Bile crept up my throat. 

“Then it came over here. That's what I saved you from, Bim.” 

I reached forward and brushed a strand of his sticky brown hair from his eyes. “That afternoon, you were transferred from our hospital into a van. Your bracelet said “BIM.” I drew in a breath. “Biological Ingredient Material.” 

I averted my gaze. I couldn't look at him.

“Zodak, or Yeongwon, was found inside primarily male blood cells. When isolated and added to human skin cells, it didn't slow ageing. It reversed it. Six months ago, the male population of the world were sent to these…” I squeezed my hands into fists. “Factories. People like you were first. People in comas, sick people, ones deemed worthless.” I met his gaze. 

“Then… demand grew, and they started taking people by force. When things started to spiral, I broke you out of the holding bay and carried you to my car.” 

Bim surprised me with a laugh. “You're not serious, right?” His eyes were dangerous. Lips curled. “Is this some kind of fucking joke? What, did you snort too many lines and watch a kdrama?” 

“It's why I make you wear deodorant,” I gritted through my teeth. “Women walk around WEARING you. They wear your blood, the shit that comes from your pores. It's on their hands and their faces, every part of them, smeared across every patch of their skin. Don't you think maybe they'll start to smell you, Bim?” 

“Ben.” He said, his lips curling. “Stop calling me “Bim.” 

Bim stood, and to my horror, raised his free hands.

“Thanks for the stories, sweetheart, but you're a fucking psycho.”

He shoved me back, and dove for the door. For a moment, I was paralyzed. My heart slammed into my chest. Bim was already yanking open my bedroom door.

“Help!” His cry rattled my skull.

I followed him, my legs shuddering.

Halfway down the stairs, I snatched him by his collar.

“If you go out there,” I managed to choke out, “you will die. Do you fucking understand me?” 

“Callie?” My neighbor shouted from outside. “Honey, is everything okay?” 

Bim froze. His hand slipped from the handle.

I held my finger to my lips, following his frenzied gaze. 

“Do not move.” I mouthed. “Uh, yes, I'm fine!” I reached Bim, slamming my hand over his mouth. “I was talking to a friend!”

“Aww, okay!” My neighbor laughed. 

Bim shot me a glare. “I KNEW IT.”

A loud bang sent me stumbling forward, Bim still in my arms. My door had a gnawing hole in it. My 50 year old neighbor appeared, axe in hand, squeezing her porcelain face through the gap. 

“Is your friend a man?”

The store owner laughed and shoved the motionless boy forward, "The brain tends to go into shock during the transplant, but don't worry, Harry here is good stock."

The date was going well so far.

He was fifteen minutes late. Ten minutes is usually my limit. 

But there was something about his panicked messages telling me he was DEFINITELY coming. Once he burst through the doors, I took notice of some oddities. Definitely not his Tinder profile.

He’d added a filter, especially to hide his slightly crooked teeth, which I noticed when he flashed a grin. 

His profile picture was from his graduation ceremony. In shorts and a tee, he was completely ordinary-looking. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t completely fucking entranced the second he sat down.

He had an… aura around him. 

Not breathless, and completely nonchalant compared to his messages. 

I pictured him standing outside for at least five minutes rehearsing his greeting. Slightly pink cheeks, sweat beading down his temple.

“Hi!” He ordered water and downed the whole thing.

“You’re fifteen minutes late,” I reminded him with a smile.

“So?” He grinned. “You still waited for me.”

His lips curled around the rim of his glass. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”

Oh, man. I loved a cocky guy. 

Not an asshole, but someone who could talk back, who didn’t stumble over his words.

“I’m Elizabeth!” I introduced myself before he could, a sliver of panic creeping through me. 

I already knew his name. 

But saying it out loud wasn’t appealing. 

Yet. 

“Or Bee,” I said. “Everyone calls me Bee.”

He plonked down his glass. “Bee.” His smile widened. “I love whatever this is.” 

He pointed to the flowers entangled in my hair. 

“It’s very…” He tipped his head. “2012 millennial.”

I must have pulled a face, because his lip wobbled.

“Uh. That didn’t come out right. I didn’t mean it as an insult—” 

“It's okay!” I plucked out a flower and dropped it onto his crown of thick dark curls. 

“You'd be surprised how many times I've actually attracted bees.” 

He offered me a smile and cocked his head. “Well? Do I look cute?” 

“Nope.” I lied. This man was gorgeous. 

To my confusion, he stood. We hadn’t even ordered yet. The night was still very much young. 

He held out his hand, his lip quirked, and I took it, letting him pull me to my feet. 

He was freezing cold, and yet his fingers knotted through mine felt comfortable.

He looked strangely ethereal in the dim orange glow of the light above us. “Do you wanna get out of here? I know a place.”

“A place?” The word had barely left my mouth before he dragged me from the restaurant and into the night. I staggered in my shoes, already regretting the kitten heels. “I’m wearing heels!”

He twisted around, pulling me into a sprint. “So, take ’em off!”

Was he insane?

Ahead of us, was a children’s park. He vaulted over the fence and plonked himself down on a swingset. I took an uncertain seat on the swing next to him. 

“I miss the swing set.” He spoke up, swinging into the air and throwing his head back. “I used to pretend I could fly to the moon.” 

“Yeah.” I dug my heels into the dirt to stop swinging. “No offense, but can you, like, kiss me now?” 

He stopped, as if he could sense my thudding heart, my skin prickling, my twisting stomach. 

He stood and pulled me with him. 

So fast, my head spun. 

He leaned close, his icy fingers cupping my face and jerking me closer. His breath tickled my cheek, his smile widening. 

I closed my eyes and let my body breathe for me, let my body kiss him and completely fucking lose myself. Fireworks is how my sister described her first kiss. 

A neutron star collision erupting in the backs of her eyes, and a sudden, suffocating sensation.

My first kiss was… painful. His lips barely grazed my lips, only once, before peppering my neck, drawing a moan from my mouth. 

His hands were suddenly harsh, gripping the collar of my dress and yanking me closer. And then I felt it. Agony. Something sharp sliced through me. Relentless. 

A scream clawed under my tongue, but my breath was gone, violently pulled from my lungs. 

“You're hurting me,” I whispered, and he bit again. 

Harder. My mouth filled with warmth, beading down my chin.

He tipped me backwards, as if we were dancing.

His teeth continued their assault, tearing me open. 

My breath shuddered, as red poured from me, staining my face, beading down my neck, staining me. Painting me. Then he dropped me. I hit the ground, but there was no impact. My body was numb, my limbs none-existent. My vision fluttered.

His shadow loomed over me. Wide eyes, a grinning mouth full of euphoria. Impossible teeth stained in me. 

He slashed his wrist open, and held it to my mouth.

“Drink.” He snarled, and I had no choice, swallowing toxic, boiling red. 

My body reacted, just like the neutron star collision Nia described. 

Burning. 

Stars. 

Burning. 

Stars. 

Screaming. 

Was I screaming? 

My bones tossed me side to side, my lips parting in a shriek.

His retreating shadow bobbed across my blurring vision.

“Hey!” 

The word escaped me before I could swallow it down. 

I forced my bleeding, ignited body across the ground. 

“Hey!” I screamed. “You fucking asshole!” 

His footsteps stopped. He didn't turn around. “What is it?” 

“You BIT me.” I hissed, spitting blood. 

“Yeah, so.” He kept walking. “Don't trust Tinder dates.” 

Another step. “Don't piss me off or I'll kill you for real.”

He turned, his smile gleaming.

“I own you, sweetheart. Be a good girl, and turn. I'll be back to collect you.” 

A sudden, explosive laugh escaped me. “No, you BIT me.” I said. “You bit a Fae.” 

He froze. 

“YOU ate fae property and drank fae blood,” I squeezed out. “Which means…” I slid myself further. “I own you.”

Slowly, he turned, eyes wide, lips parted.

And I took pleasure in my next words. “Say your fucking name."

I frowned, "I'm not sure what you mean, everyone has a superpower and he's nothing special," I said, and then my heart stopped, "He's a... oh god, he's a healer."

Simon Garcia, my very own Sherlock Holmes, stood on my doorstep clutching a Ouija board. 

I knew exactly what he planned to do.

“Zach says I can’t do a séance in his apartment,” he said, as if his roommate was the problem.

He held up the box with a grin. “Soo, I figured, how about we do it here?”

I smiled. “They're not even dead yet.” 

"And how do YOU know that? First of all, I suspect a cover-up. The police aren’t telling us everything. Second, the details don’t make sense! Four famous actors disappear at the exact same time. Their phones are missing, and zero footage of them exists? Definitely a cover-up.”

Simon swooped past me. Definitely the main character in his own head.

Over the years, he’d adopted a sort of Gen Z Sherlock look. He hastily poured two glasses of wine and set up the board. I followed. "You're insane."

He didn't look up, already deep in focus. “Write their names on individual pieces of paper,” he ordered.

Simon lit six candles, placing them in a circle formation. 

I grabbed my phone from the table. “Okay, so there's… Maribelle Callen.” I scrawled her name on a piece of paper.

“Jet Portland, Noah Clarke, and Livvie James.” I frowned at their wikipedia pages, writing each of their names.

Portland, lips curled around a cigarette, scowling. 

Noah, a more animated smiling blonde. 

Livvie, a rainbow haired bombshell hidden behind a mask. 

“That's weird.”

“Hm?” Simon turned off the lights. 

“Isn't it usually young women who are taken?” 

“Well, yeah,” he winked, slumping down. “They're also famous.” 

Simon leaned forward, chin on fist. “Pick one! Who do you think is the most likely to be dead?” 

“Portland.” 

Simon nodded. “So, according to the ritual, we say his name three times, and burn it.” He handed me a needle. “Prick your finger, and then squeeze it into the flame.” 

“Why can't you do that?” 

He shot me a sheepish smile. “I have hemophilia, Lily.” 

I groaned, pricked my finger and squeezed a single blot into the flame. 

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Jet Portland.” 

We repeated his name three times. 

One candle flickered out and then reignited. Simon’s eyes grew wide.

“Holy shit,” he hissed. “He's actually here! I mean, that's not good, but if he's really dead? Jet, can you move the planchette?” 

A full minute of the two of us intensely staring at the planchette passed.

“Simon.” I spoke up. 

“Wait for it.” 

Another minute. Simon’s smile was fading. 

“Simon.” I said, again. “This is ridiculous.” 

He didn’t look up from the planchette. 

Stubborn as always.

Already trying to think of an excuse. 

Simon sighed. Then he muttered something and blew out each candle.

I stood and turned on the lights.

“I’m going upstairs. Please clean up your failed experiment.”

To my surprise, Simon followed me, diving up the stairs ahead of me.

He spun around, his coffee-brown eyes, usually so warm and inviting, now terrifyingly dark. He threw his arms out, and for a moment, I found myself laughing, like we were kids again, playing together. Then he shoved me violently, and the world sped up. 

I remember falling backward, my lips parting in a shriek.

I remember plunging down, my body twisting, contorting, as I slammed into each step. 

I remember the impact, smacking my head on the bottom stair. I remember pain exploding, a neutron star collision in my eyes.

Darkness swallowed me before I could take in Simon’s shadow still standing at the top of the stairs.

When consciousness found me, I was… cold.

So fucking cold.

So fucking cold.

So FUCKING COLD.

The words felt wrong on my tongue, twisted and unraveled. 

Opening my eyes, pain slammed into me. Head wound? Well, yeah. Simon shoved me down the stairs.

I parted my lips to cry out, but my words were muffled. Wrong. 

“Mmmphmm.” I was lying curled up, my knees to my chest.

The ground was ice cold. Concrete? 

Panic skittered through me. 

Did Simon kidnap and take me somewhere? 

My eyes flickered.

Dim lights.

Shadows swamped me. 

My surroundings were rectangular; a small room. Steel bars.

Another cry slipped from my mouth.

This time, I could feel it, a sticky mass pressed over my mouth. Duct tape.

Stinging pain, ropes wrapped around my wrists pinning my arms behind my back. 

“Portland.” A gruff voice took me off guard. “I fucking SAID sit up.”

His words paralyzed me, my gaze finding my reflection in a bowl of filthy water at my feet. A skinny man bearing a black eye and gagged mouth stared back.

I could barely recognize him.

But beneath the filth ingrained into his skin and his half-lidded eyes, a familiar face slowly swam into focus.

Before I could register my reality, rough fingers curled around my scalp, yanking me upright.

The first thing I saw was glistening red staining the cage floor. 

A bucket of squirming entrails overflowing. 

And a body curled up in the corner without a head. 

A masked man knelt in the shadows, gleeful eyes glued to me. “So, you've decided to speak today, hm?” He chuckled, and let me go. “That's not like you, kid.” 

He pulled off his mask, revealing wide grinning teeth. 

And smacked me across the face, my neck arching back.

The world swam, fireworks exploding across the backs of my eyes.

“Lily?”

Simon's voice echoed. “Hey, Lily, is that you?”

I blinked, and I was standing in my kitchen.

The sticky sensation over my mouth was gone. 

But I want still screaming, my tongue tangled.

No.

He was.

My mouth was full, choked with candy, and chicken, and… milk?”

I hit the floor, sobs erupting through my mouth.

Simon dropped down with me. “I'm sorry,” he whispered. “That wasn't a séance we did.” I noticed his grip tighten, unrelenting. “That was a body-swapping ritual.”

He pulled away, lips spreading into a smile. “And we just found Jet Portland.”

Mirri always left her room a mess. She was fifteen years old, and somehow, her room was worse than her seventeen-year-old brother’s.

I picked up pizza boxes and old makeup wipes, stuffing them into a trash bag.

My gaze landed on her diary. I picked it up, flipping through pages that definitely weren’t meant for a mother’s eyes.

She liked a boy, hated her brother, and wished I was dead, ending yesterday’s entry with a far-too-detailed doodle of my untimely demise. I found myself smiling.

Teenagers.

There were less-than-savory entries about her father.

She wished she knew him, hated him, and wished she could find him. Every word scrawled across the pages sent my heart creeping into my mouth.

Mirri was a baby when Jake was sentenced. Eli didn’t want to know him.

He knew what he was. 

Mirri, however, was too curious. 

I snatched up Mirri’s bedclothes first. Then I stripped her pillows. 

While I was unloading the washer, the phone buzzed again. 

Felix, our tabby, darted through the cat flap, almost sending me toppling, and sped into the kitchen. 

“Felix,” I hissed, scooping him up, stroking him. I checked my phone. 

Three notifications lit up my screen, sent thirty minutes ago:

Child Safety™️: “YOUR CHILD IS BEING ERASED.” 

Child Safety™️: “YOUR CHILD IS BEING ERASED.” 

Child Safety™️: “YOUR CHILD IS BEING ERASED.” 

Panic flooded through me, and suddenly, I was paralysed. My phone didn't feel real in my hands. 

Another notification popped up: 

“Child Safety™️: YOUR CHILD IS BEING ERASED. IS THIS YOU? ENTER YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS AND PASSWORD NOW.” 

Child Safety was a child-lock feature designed to keep them safe. 

It had tracked them since they were babies and offered the option to upload memories as they grew. 

I didn’t think they could be erased.

I called Mirri. 

No answer. 

Stumbling across my kitchen, I stabbed in Eli’s number. 

No answer. 

Breathless, my hands shaking, I tapped on the app, and entered my details. 

My verification: Always my babies’ birthdays. 

INCORRECT VERIFICATION flashed up. 

Then a notification: Child Safety™️: “YOUR CHILDREN ARE BEING ERASED. MIRRIAM LILY AND ELI LILY WILL BE PERMANENTLY ERASED IN FIFTEEN MINUTES.”

No. 

I called the app and was immediately connected to a robot.

“Good morning, how can I help you?”

“My children,” I spat out, “my children are being erased. I didn't even know that was possible! I didn't do it! I.. need you to stop it. Right now. Please…stop it.” 

“Of course, ma’am!” The robot trilled. “Can I have your favorite memory, please?” 

“What?”

“Ma’am, I need your favorite memory so I can pull up your details.”

“Spain. 2017.” I whispered. “On the plane, and it my son’s first time flying. He was…”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Eli pressed his face against the window. He was...he was laughing and pointing at the clouds.” My eyes stung. “Is that enough for you?” 

The robot hesitated. “I'm sorry, ma’am, that's not the one I'm looking for. If you have any more questions, please feel free to—”

“Fucking LISTEN to me,” I squeezed out. My lungs ignited, burning, scalding, my blood set alight. “Someone has hacked my account and is ERASING my children. I want to speak to a human. Now.” 

“Ma’am, I need your favorite memory to proceed.”

I swallowed. “2020. Mirri’s tenth birthday. It’s… a sunny day. She’s having a pool party with her friends, and has cake on her face.  She’s sitting on the edge of the pool, swinging her legs, and…” 

I exhaled. “She tells me she loves me.” My legs gave way, my throat swelling around every word.  

“Please… help me.” 

The robot made a human sounding sigh. “Ma’am, I'm sorry, that's not the memory I currently have on file.”

My bones felt like lead, like living was impossible. “What are you… talking about?” I whispered. “My children,” my voice collapsed into a wail I couldn't control. “You need to help me save my babies. I can't lose them. I can't…. please.” 

“I’m sorry, ma’am. There’s nothing I can do.” It hesitated again. “I do have a reason for your children’s erasure on file. It was added yesterday at 4:03pm by a second party on the account. Would you like me to tell you?”

I didn't reply. 

“It says, erasure reason: “For letting me rot. Bitch.”

Silence. 

“Would you…like me to repeat—”

The line went dead— and I wasn't sure who it was.

Was it me or the robot? 

Gravity pulled me down, down, down, my head pressed against my kitchen floor. Everything felt numb. Wrong. Like I was losing myself. A sickening nausea crawled through me, pain thrumming across my temple. 

My phone buzzed again, and I screamed.

Child Safety™️: “YOUR CHILD “MIRRIAM LILY” IS CURRENTLY BEING ERASED. 

Child Safety™️: “YOUR CHILD “ELI LILY” IS CURRENTLY BEING ERASED.

Child Safety™️: WOULD YOU LIKE A PDF TRANSCRIPT OF [MIRRIAM LILY] AND [ELI LILY?]

I turned off my phone, and tucked it into my pocket.

But still, it buzzed again, turning itself on. 

“Child Safety™️: Erasure complete. Thanks for using Child Safety™️!”

I stared at the notification for a long time. 

The door flew open. “Mom, I'm home!” 

I jumped up, my heart hammering through my chest.

A smiling teenager stood in my doorway. 

“Hi!” She greeted me with a hug. “I'm staying at Rue’s house tonight, all right? I'll be home late.” 

A teenage boy slipped past her, scowling, and dropped his bag. “Mom, you forgot my lunch.” He rolled his eyes. “I had to eat KJ’s!” 

I stumbled back, my skin prickling. 

“I'm sorry…” I laughed a little, keeping my distance. 

“Who… exactly are the two of you?”

Was this Jake? Sending teenagers to fucking threaten me? 

“Mom.” The boy laughed nervously, his eyes wide. “What's—” 

“Get out.” I pulled open the door, panic creeping through me. “Get the HELL out of my house!” 

“Wait!” The boy whispered. “Mom.” His eyes frantically darted behind me. “Where are the twins?” 

After work invitations are exhausting.

I still don't know how to say “no” without feeling bad, and my expression shows I feel bad. It's so hard to say no. 

Yes is somehow easier. Less suffocating.

“Yeah, sure, I'd love to come out.” Is easier than, “Actually, no.”

Yes is easier than trying to think of an excuse. 

So, maybe my colleague Tom just felt sorry for me when he cornered me at my desk, and said something along the lines of, “You. Me. Drinks. Tonight.”

I still wasn't fully sure. People stopped sounding like people a long time ago.

Tom was there at the start.

He left me groceries outside my door, Instagram messages and texts and memes, and then eventually, blissful silence. Part of me did want to hang out with someone and feel normal. Human. 

Bedrotting was easier. 

Going home, eating leftovers, kicking off my shoes and collapsing into bed to doomscrolling on my broken phone was… better. “I'm okay,” I eventually found my words, clogged at the back of my throat. 

My hands shook no matter how hard I steeled them. 

Why was talking so hard?

It was easier to text.

I started pull out my phone, and then remembered I had blocked him along with the rest of my colleagues.

All they did was ask if I was okay.

Somehow, I interpreted that as an attack. 

Then I broke the stupid thing. 

“Lara?” Tom’s voice sounded weird. Ocean waves crashing in and out of my ear. 

I hadn't spoken to an actual human in what felt like months.

Tom loomed over me, arms folded, already ready to argue. Until this moment, he was a faceless shadow like everyone else, bearing a question instead of a face.

Noah, from the desk next to me, was a thrumming wall of pink flesh. 

“Lara!” Tom’s voice cracked through. “Yo. Are you okay?” 

Every person I spoke to or passed was either a question mark, or a pulsating mass of nothing, depending on who they were to me. Tom wasn't a stranger. 

We talked before. He sent me memes and walked me to the bus stop one night.

We took an uber together. He told me he wanted to kiss me, and I said no.  Tom was comfortable. Familiar. The “?” bled from his face, and I allowed myself one look.

There he was, five-o-clock shadow, an amused smile pricking on his lips. 

He was older than me. Maybe early thirties. “It'll just be us two, all right?” He leaned closer. “Don't worry,” Tom chuckled, “I'm not making a move on you. We’re just friends,” He pulled back with a wink. “I’ve recently discovered I actually prefer a guy’s company.”

Tom, somehow, made me feel alive again. 

“Okay,” the word slipped out before I could swallow it like usual. “Okay.” I said it again, just to make sure I wasn't imagining it.

Nope. Tom was real. 

Standing over me nursing a coffee he kept sipping in small intervals, wisps of white hanging stagnant. 

“Yeah?” Tom’s eyes lit up, and I was suddenly a lot warmer.

“All right! After work, meet me downstairs, and we’ll get food.” 

Maybe they'd turned the heat on.

Mari pushed past me holding her laptop, and she actually looked like Mari.

Not an orange shadow.

“Cool.” I smiled, like humans were supposed to smile.

After work, I clocked out and found him standing in the doorway, cigarette in his mouth. 

Distance had created slight blurring; there was a frayed edge to him, like all of him wasn't quite rendered. I blinked, and thankfully, he bled into full clarity. “Nice to meet you!” His lips curled around the grin. He held out a playful hand.  “I’m Tom.”

I found myself smiling too. I liked meeting him again. This time, I did everything right.

“Lara.” 

Tom offered his arm with a grin. “Shall we?” 

“We shall.” 

Tom fell into a playful skip, pulling me with him. I laughed. I hadn't laughed in so long. Laughing felt foreign and wrong. Tom took me for dinner at a restaurant which was empty. 

Nobody else but us. In front of me, mangled pink walls of pulsating pink threatened to splinter me against the backdrop of aquariums swimming in mesmerizing violet.

Each human-sized shadow moved in slow motion as if caught in my gaze and knowing I was watching.

A slimy yellow eye appeared, and then multiplied, prickling across writhing flesh. A wave of nausea crept through me. 

I squeezed my eyes shut. 

Candles, I thought. Warm glowing candlelight. Mild chatter. Everything was fine. It was all OK. 

“Are you okay, Lara?” Tom’s voice sounded like the ocean again. I was too scared to look up.

“Yes.” 

“You're not looking at me,” Tom whispered. The table jerked and my glass toppled over. I couldn't move, paralyzed.

Tom’s voice collapsed into waves, and then a low rumble.

Fat drops of red splattered his plate.

“Why don't you look at me anymore, Lara?” 

I lifted my head, and was face to face nothing but squirming scarlet.

“Lara?” Tom’s voice. “Are you…okay?” 

I stood up.

“Yes.” I told the writhing red thing. I tugged the leash around its neck and smiled. 

Tom was the only one who was nice to me in the office. 

So, when his body melted like everyone else's, I started being nice back. I found him a new head. I even dressed him up in his work clothes. I tugged again, and he stumbled toward me, snarling.  

Maybe I'd start muzzling him. 

“Let's go home,” I told him. “We can watch a DVD, maybe heat up some soup I found.” 

Warm wetness suffocated my face. I tugged again. Harder. 

He laughed, and the candlelight returned. The pulsating mass of red in my face grew a wide, happy smile. “Sounds like a plan.” 

That WAS until, after months of hallucinating a child crying, I found "screamingbaby.wav" on his phone.

It was so hard to tell my dead boyfriend’s Mom I didn't love him enough.

“Evie,” Mrs Carlisle smiled at me across her dinner table. 

It was the third time she'd invited me over. 

Maybe she was lonely. “Can I ask… when you last saw my son,” she hesitated, her gaze stubbornly glued to her lap. “What was the last thing you said to him?” 

That night inside his car, I told him I hated him. We had a fight. 

“You don't talk to me at school,” I whispered, stiff in my seat. “You're embarrassed of me.”

“Evie,” Lucas sighed. *“Babe. Can we not do this right now?” He wrinkled his brows. “I'm kinda tired, and I'm getting a migraine.”

“No, you're thinking about breaking up with me.”

“You’re just panicking, Evie. Breathe, all right? I'm here.”

“Stop the car.” I choked out. I grasped my seat for dear life, as if I was clinging to an anchor.  “Please. I'll… I'll walk.”

Lucas didn't argue.

“Okay,” he stopped the car, and I slid out. Lucas stuck his head out of the window. 

“I love you, Evie.” His smile made me nauseous as I teetered on the sidewalk, my heels scraping the concrete made me feel sick. “I'll see you at the dance."

Then, he was stained scarlet drenching the road. Reduced to nothing. 

“I told Lucas I loved him.” I lied to his mother. 

Lucas’s ashes stood behind me inside a bright yellow vase bearing a rose. I could sense his judgemental glare laughing at me. My breaths suffocated me. 

“I… mean… I told him—”

“Go fuck yourself, Lucas,” I snapped, poison burning on my tongue.

I turned around so I wouldn't see his face. My body trembled, my blood felt like ice, my breaths thinning. “We're done.”

Then he was dead. 

And I still hated myself. 

“I swear I didn't mean to say it, it was just a heat of the moment thing,” I told his mother. “I just didn't love myself enough to love him like Lucas loved me.” 

“Leave.” 

“Mrs Carlisle—”

What was I trying to say? That I didn't kill him? 

Maybe so. 

But did my actions cause the migraine that sent him into the path of a truck?

Maybe.

Maybe that's why I was suffocating; why I couldn't leave without spewing my own agony, my guilt, my fucking pain.

Sleepless nights and reckless drugs, and one-night-stands. All of it. 

“Now.” Her tone softened into a low hiss. “Get the fuck out.”

I did.

I remember the air felt a little bit cooler on my skin when I left her home. That burning sensation prickling my arms was fading. 

The sour bile I couldn't swallow finally washed down my throat.

I was no longer raw, no longer mourning, no longer stuck. 

I won't say I “got over” Lucas, because you never truly get over your first love.

But I did move on. 

Telling Lucas’s mother the truth was a weight lifted from my lungs.

I could breathe again.

Color returned to the world, and I felt like I could heal and turn forward instead of drowning in the past. I started college.

I found Declan.

The second guy I’d ever fallen for, and the first person I felt confident loving back. In our second year of college, I fell pregnant.

Declan wasn’t sure about keeping the baby, but I wanted to be a mommy. I’d spent my teenage years drowning in my own insecurities and hating myself. 

Not loving myself. 

But I knew I could love another piece of me. Every scan made my heart sing.

Declan fell in love with each ultrasound.

I called our baby our “bean,” just a tiny little thing inside me. When it grew to the size of a walnut, and then a bell pepper, we finally discovered the sex. It was a boy. 

When he grew into a watermelon, I started to experience pain.

First, it was tolerable. Just tiny sparks writhing across my belly.

But then I woke up screaming, my belly bulging.

Standing over me, drenched in shadow, was a familiar face. 

Mrs Carlisle.

In a blink of an eye, she was gone, and I was curled into the fetal position, clutching my precious bump. I insisted on a scan to see if everything was okay, and to my surprise, my son was perfectly healthy and ready to be born. 

But my due date passed. And my belly grew. 

A week flew by, and I could barely stand.

Declan had to carry me everywhere. 

Sometimes, I caught his expression. His eyes glued to my belly. 

“What's wrong?” I whispered, and he looked away. “Does it look okay? Do you think he's okay?” 

“Yes!” Declan said, a little too fast. “But…” his lip curled. “Don't you think he seems… a little big?” 

My boyfriend’s words echoed in my mind when my water broke, and three different doctors refused to assist with the birth.

By the time I was screaming, begging pale looking nurses to help me, one doctor finally snapped at me. 

“Miss Isaacs,” he spoke over my screams as my belly bulged, growing bigger and bigger. “I’m afraid we can’t assist with your pregnancy.” He swallowed. “Your baby weighs eighty pounds. If we proceed with this procedure, he will rip you apart.”

“I can help!” 

A familiar voice trilled behind him. 

Mrs Carlisle swooped into the room. 

“Don't worry, I have experience.” She strode over to me, lay her hand on my belly, and smiled when my stomach twitched.

A wave of relief slammed into me. 

“Mrs Carlisle,” I sobbed. “Please. Get him out of me.” 

She nodded. “Deep breaths, darling,” she hummed, helping me into the birthing position. Her lips found my ear as agony rocked through me, blood filling my mouth.

My stomach bulged violently, protruding outwards, as if a hand was stretching right through my skin.

“Oh, Evelyn, I'll get him out of you! Lucas has always been a stubborn child, after all.”

Jude is cute.

That’s the first thing that hits me when my date enters the coffee shop. Tall, molded by a surgeon’s hands, soul stuffed inside a perfect, borderline creepy mannequin. Bright blue eyes. Not a flaw in sight. Every YA book cover hottie. This man was 100%, with zero doubt, AI generated.

He smiles. Pretends. “Were… you waiting long?”

“Yes,” I say. 

He’s expecting no. 

I let the word hang. For a moment his facade glitches, lip wobbling like he’s about to go off script.

He blinks it away. “Well, I’m sorry.” He leans across the table and takes my hand.

I tug back. “You’re freezing cold.”

Of course he is. 

His skin is synthetic, animal-flesh stretched over a real human skeleton.

Synthetic humans weren't around long, a last ditch effort by Meta to go FULL dystopia. They were using dead bodies and calling it recycling.  Real skeletons, stripped and repurposed. We called it murder. Then they went rogue and started killing people. 

Synthetics lasted about a year before they were canned.

I was still terrified of them.

Jude shrugs off his jacket, making sure I notice. 

I ignore his shirt riding up, the toned muscles, the women behind us already taking photos. I down half of my iced coffee. “You're AI, aren't you?” 

Jude laughs. “I'm sorry, what?” 

“Prove it,” I say. 

Jude folds his arms, his lip curling. “What are you, like the fuckin’ AI police?” 

I shrug. “When were you born?” 

“2001.” He says. “Do you want my full government name too?” 

He doesn't have one. What he does have, however, is a fixed name and a reference number. 

“How about your earliest memory?” 

He frowns, tipping his head back like he's thinking. The man is perfect at mimicking, at learning human behavior. He's a natural at this. He knows how to play cocky, play unsure, play dumb. Oh, Jude, you are good. But not good enough.

“Uh… probably the time I projectile vomited funnel cake all over my Mom when I was seven?”

“I don't believe you,” I say. 

“Believe what you think,” he rolls his eyes. “I'm not AI.”

I shrug. “Then let's go prove it.” 

His smile tightens. Panic creases his face, twitching between his lips. We both know what “proving it” entails. “I thought this was a date, sweetheart.” His stupid grin turns bitter. He leans back. I can tell he's weighing different reactions. “Not an interrogation.” 

I pull out the handcuffs I've stuffed in my jeans and cuff his right wrist before he can even think about running away. 

His eyes widen. “What the fuck are you doing?!”

He tries to dive from his seat and is violently yanked back. 

“Please,” he hisses as I drag him from the coffee shop. He stumbles over himself, no longer calm and confident and cocky. He's scared.  His responses come out delayed. Panicked.

His brain is overheating.

“I'm not AI! I just… I just look like AI! Listen man, I can't fucking help looking like this–” I stuff him into the front seat of my car, and this time he twists to me, lips curled into a snarl. I can almost pretend he's actually human.

“This is kidnapping,” he whispers, as I start the car. “Listen to me, my name is Jude Clair,” he whimpers. “I'm… I'm 24 years old. I have a dog called Peanut, my Mom’s name is Catarina—”

He shuts up when I pull up outside an AI detection center. Jude freezes up in his seat, bringing his knees to his chest.

I can already hear screams inside, a shiver creeping through me.

I grit my teeth, and pull him out of the car. 

“I hope you have a fucking lawyer,” he spits as I pull him through doors that slide open.

The smell hits me first, a metallic tinge hanging in the air. There's nothing inside this centre but a single machine that takes up the entire room, and a bored looking security guard holding an iPad. The machine towers over me, a large humming metallic beast. I pretend not to see blood stains being scrubbed from white tiles. 

“No.” Jude stumbles back, the cuff sending him springing back to me.

I drag him to the security guard, pasting on a smile.

“I'm pretty sure my boyfriend is AI generated,” I say confidently, ignoring Jude’s sputtering, “Boyfriend?!” 

The guard takes out his gun, and points it at my date’s head.

“Sir, kindly proceed within the machine for immediate AI detection,” he states, his tone devoid of emotion. “Please be advised that AI detection is exclusively intended for synthetic skin only. Humans entering the AI detector will be subject to automatic dismemberment." 

“I'm not AI!” Jude screamed, agony and frustration bleeding through his carefully crafted tone.

“Step inside, sir,” the security guard says, “I won't ask again.”

Jude hesitates, before turning to me.

He doesn't speak, doesn't cry out. 

But I know exactly what he's thinking.

I uncuff him, and he's shoved forwards.

The doors slowly slide open, and he staggers inside. 

When the door slams shut, I allow myself to exhale in relief.

And then his screams start.

Wailing.

Sobbing.

Pleading.

I squeeze my eyes shut at the sound of blades stripping the skin from his bones and drilling directly into his skull for traces of AI. 

But I know he's not AI. 

I don't even look at the screen that I know flashes green. 

100% human. 

I find myself standing in his blood that seeps from the door, staining my shoes. The security guard doesn't speak when the doors open, a cleaner rushing inside to disinfect the blades slick scarlet. 

I walk back outside with names inside my head. 

Memories I mimicked.

Learned.

My mother’s name… is Caterina.

I was born… in 2001.

I have a dog called… Peanut.

My earliest childhood memory? 

I projectile vomited funnel cake on my mother when I was seven years old.

I was going to ace the “Are you Human?” exam.

“I’m cheating on you.”

That’s what my boyfriend choked when I found him crouched in front of my refrigerator, gnawing on raw bacon. 

Jay was wide-eyed, his mouth parted in a snarl, bacon fat stuck to his chin. 

I said the first thing that slammed into me. “What the FUCK are you doing?” 

My boyfriend caught himself as if waking from a dream.

“Huh?” He blinked, puked, and then spat it out, dropping to his knees and sputtering a laugh as he shuddered with every retch.

“Get the fuck away from me!" he snarled, batting my hands away when I tried to help. “I’m… I’m cheating on you.” He strode to the faucet, stuck his head under the tap.

He gulped down water. “I fucked Betty last night,” he whispered.

Betty was all of my insecurities:

The blonde bombshell cheerleader on his squad whom he couldn’t keep his fucking hands off during practice. Who made me envious. Who made me hate myself.

“Right.” I chose my words carefully. Somehow, my hands found his face, cradling his cheeks. He was so pale, his skin like paper, eyes barely penetrating mine. I wanted to scream at him, to throw him out and then pretend he didn't fucking exist. But instead, I wrapped him in a hug.

“Jay,” I spoke calmly, aware of him breaking apart against my chest.

“Hey,” I pulled away, cupped his cheeks, and forced him to look at me. He did, half-lidded eyes staring into oblivion.

“You cheated on me with my roommate,” I said, even when the words stung. “But there's something else.” I caught the curl in his lip, the crease in his brow, a hollow darkness beginning to bleed into his eyes.

He hesitated, and then nodded, lips parting.

“What is it?” 

“I'm okay.” Jay pulled away, smiling wider. “I'm sorry I cheated.” 

“Jay—”

“I need to go.” He said. His expression relaxed. Jay scanned my expression as if waiting for the perfect time, for my lips to stick together and my resolve to crumble.

He'd always been smart. 

Too smart for me. When we first met, I felt like I was dating an AI. His brain worked differently, like an algorithm, immediately figuring me out before I knew myself.

On our first date, he guessed all my answers before I said them, leaning across the table, chin resting on his fist.

“You're scared of pandas, love Thai food, hate scary movies, and are trying to find a way to tell me you find me insanely attractive.” I found that cute. Endearing.

Now, he was a shell of himself.

He smiled again. Wider.

“I've got practice.” Jay moved toward the door and tripped over his feet.

He froze, his shoulders sagging, and something cold crept down my spine.

Jay twisted around.

“Thea, do you think there are too many corners in this kitchen?” 

His words took me off guard. “What?” 

“Corners,” Jay said softly. “Like, the refrigerator. It has… it has four corners on the top, and four corners on the bottom.

"But what about the ice in the freezer? All of the ice cubes?” His knees gave way and he flopped onto the floor, prodding each kitchen tile. “Every tile has a corner, Thea.” He whispered. Jay tipped his head back. “Every ceiling tile. And every square, and corners inside that, and—”

He jumped up. “But WHAT are they fucking cornering?” His eyes, ignited, wild, almost feral. “We call them CORNERS, right? And CORNERS—” he laughed loudly, and the first ooze of red began to flow from his nose in thick rivulets. “But why do we call them corners? what are the… what are the…” he jerked once, his head lolling, blood flowing from his grinning mouth.

Jay staggered toward me. “Thea.” He grabbed me. “Why do you….” his hands found my throat. I felt his weight slam into me, smacking my head against the wall.

His lips split into a grin, and my vision blurred.

“Why do you have so many… fucking… corners?” 

He leaned close, his breath in my face.

“Inside you.” Jay whispered. He traced his fingers across my face, his eyes fluttering.

“I bet you have a lot of corners, Thea. I want to see your… corners, and count them, and see where they begin and end, and… and all of the corners inside you. All of them. I'll count each one. All of them.” 

His grip loosened, and yet I didn't move. I was stuck.

Paralyzed.

His skull was bigger, swelling, like a balloon. “My head hurts,” Jay slurred. He spat blood, giggled, and sat down on the floor with his legs crossed. “I'm going to count more corners now.” He blinked. 

His half lidded gaze found mine. A slimy pink mass slid from his ear.

He blinked again.

“Can you… watch me count corners?” 

I nodded, tears stinging my eyes. “Of course, Jay.” 

An almost childish happiness lit up in his eyes. 

“Yay!” Jay smiled, and began to count. 

I managed to back away, slipping in something wet stemming under my feet.

I made it to the door in three breaths, and froze on the threshold, my hand grasping the handle. For a moment, I stared, confused, willing myself to move. 

To run. I slowly turned the square handle, running my fingers under the hatch. 

Jay’s delighted laugh came from the kitchen, and I joined in, choking on a giggle, a rush of pleasure thrumming through me. I turned it again, sliding my fingers up and down sleek polished metal.

The door handle had corners.

Four corners.

My gaze feverishly searched for the carpet beneath my feet.

Each pattern had... a corner.

I hit the ground, but there was no impact. No pain.

I started to rip at the carpet, hysterical giggles exploding from my chest.

Underneath the floor, surely, there were corners...

And underneath the UNDERNEATH part of the floor...

I laughed, wet warmth running down my chin.

There were CORNERS—