u/ckjm

“*I hate therapy,*” I thought.

My friends begged me to go. Their plea evolved into a demand by the time that they were done and wiped their teary eyes. 

They had threatened to call 911. They knew about the gun, the pills, the liquor. But all the screaming came to an end when we found middle ground in the form of a support group that met on Tuesday nights at the community rec hall. 

Agreeing to it shut them up.

It wasn't quite therapy, I reminded myself, but it felt just as unpleasant. I figured in a few sessions they'd lose interest and assume that I'd been successfully indoctrinated into the watchful arms of my equally broken and mourning peers. Then I could stop going when they were no longer paying attention. I'd make an effort to smile a bit more so they'd think that they had saved my life. If they asked, I'd say it was going well, and then they'd give me the space that I wanted all along.

It was distracting in a pitiful way, at least. I'd rather be at home hiding under a blanket, quietly mad at the world by myself, but I'd be fine either way. Just, at the moment, I was in the thick of it. That's all. 

The Grief Group, as I'd come to call it, was small. The few meetings I’d attended were only a handful of core regulars and a few transient faces that I never saw again. I wondered if they had been forced to go like I was but bailed quicker than I had the luxury. This Tuesday was no different.

I hunched forward and nonchalantly swirled my now-cold coffee in its paper cup while the man beside me, Steve, spoke in stern, careful words. He was wrapping up his monologue.

“He was a good man,” his voice hitched. Emotion visibly boiled up inside him and he tensed, waving his fist in the air, “it's bullshit that he had to die!”

Steve was a fireman, and an old head at that. He wore the scars that any smoke eater would be proud to carry, but the sinew of his grief never quite healed and the wound was raw, even years later. 

Surely, his department paid for better options. Why he joined our sorry rank baffled me. He could be in a cozy office with a professional that toted a degree and prestigious reviews resting in a plush ottoman with sparkling mineral water. Not slumped in a wobbly plastic chair in a tired building that smelled vaguely of cat piss led by a burned out priest with a cup of watered down Folgers. 

I counted the coffee grounds in the dregs of my semi-translucent brew. I added another to the tally as I rolled one over my teeth. 

But who was I to judge? He was here, so was I. However, he, more than any of us, had a right to be sad. The rest of us? 

The junkie? Self inflicted. 

The workaholic? Weird. 

The dog mom? Just insane, to be honest. 

Myself? It's life…

Steve broke down. 

“He shouldn't have died,” he choked, holding his scrunched face in his hands while the frail, young addict beside him gently rubbed his back. Steve welcomed the embrace. 

Grief Group's leader, the priest, offered his condolences and thanked Steve for sharing. Others agreed and offered their heartfelt, brief words as well. 

Then followed the transitional phase as the focus began to switch targets. This was always the most anxiety-inducing part for me. Modern therapy no longer forced participants to speak; nonetheless, I dreaded the miniscule chance that I'd be summoned to speak. To my relief a mouse-of-a-woman spoke up instead.

“When you mentioned how he was a light through all the bad you've seen,” she continued, “it just reminded me so much of my Chester. I know he was just a dog-” 

“Emily,” Steve interrupted, speaking reassuringly, “sorrow isn't a competition. If you're here, then you're hurting just as much as I am.” 

He smiled through his tears and her eyes welled up in response. She returned a big, snotty grin and thanked him for his kindness, wishing that he had been the firefighter that responded to her own tragedy once upon a time. They had connected on some bizarre level, and the group leader praised the point about sorrow, that it couldn't be ranked or scaled.

My coffee cup was empty now, but I desperately hoped that it would magically replenish itself. I stared wide-eyed into the empty vessel. Steve was a saint. I would have been furious if Emily related my story to her crusty dog. 

I tuned them out, leaning forward and studying the faded pattern of the dingy floor. But my eyes wandered to my right. Beside me was a woman I didn't recognize, another transient. But, color me curious, she was the oddest in the bunch to ever wander through. 

Overdressed, she wore a cream suit and pencil skirt that fit her in a way that only a high end tailor could create. A deep, red blouse vibrantly emanated from her chest like a bleeding heart, and her satin flats complimented the color. Her skin was tan and smooth, and her face impossibly perfect. Her long, silver-blonde hair was tied neatly behind her head, and she perched with perfect posture, keenly and wordlessly observing the group like a lioness. I couldn't help but feel nervous beside her.

I watched her quietly through the corner of my eye, when she abruptly averted her gaze to lock with mine, smirking. I flinched.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered, searching for an excuse. “I… I like your suit.” I lied. My face grew hot with blush.

She smiled back sharply and with narrow, tight lips. She leaned into me, whispering,

“It gets worse.”

I caught myself mid breath. I recoiled. I had expected her to express gratitude or mutter where she got it, but that? Her words almost felt like a promise- *a threat.*

“What?” I blurted.

“Jessica?” Eric, the volunteer priest, questioned. “I'm glad to finally hear you speak but you should let Emily finish first. Then you can have all the time you need.” 

I apologized profusely and wondered if I could hide inside my paper cup. Is this what she meant by worse?

Emily picked up her spiel about Chester. How Chester filled the void when she and her husband kept getting negative pregnancy tests, how Chester loyally stood beside her when her husband was turned into a meat crayon on the interstate. Now Chester was gone. The pampered shih tzu barely made a meal for the eagle that took him to feed its eaglets. 

I'd have laughed if I wasn't already trying to hide. I didn't mean to bully the woman… it's just… it was a dog and the whole *eagle detail* and we were all absurd dorks, clustered in a circle in our linoleum-cat-piss kingdom. You just couldn't make this shit up.

When Emily finished, I excused myself. The meetings rarely went beyond an hour - 75 minutes, tops - and we were at 52 by the time Emily stopped sobbing about the damned bird. I'd drink the memories of that night away like all the others, and I'd be spared remembering again for a week until Tuesday rolled around at 7PM sharp.

~

I made a point of waiting in my car until I saw someone else walk in: Emily. I quickly jogged up behind her so that we could enter together and I wouldn't attract all of the attention to myself. She pulled the door open for me and gestured for me to enter with a warm smile. I thanked her. She was undeniably kind, too soft for this monstrous world.

Inside, the core group waited in their usual haunts. Steve encouraged the young addict, Trevor, who nodded with gratitude. Richard sat quietly by himself, the bags under his eyes seemed darker than ever. And Emily and I trotted to our seats. Everyone except Eric was present, and I was surprised to see the mysterious woman in his place.

“I can already sense the questions,” she spoke in a subtle drawl as she watched me take my seat. “Eric couldn't make it. I'll be taking over. My name is Leandra.” She spoke factually, and although she wore an expressive smile her eyes felt more predatory than jovial and her words felt too calculated. 

“We'll be trying something new tonight,” she added.

Her smile grew impossibly large, revealing a small smudge of dark red lipstick on her left incisor, marring her otherwise polished appearance.

Without warning, the lights cut out and we were plunged into darkness. We fumbled in our normal space when a single overhead light reilluminated with wavering brightness. It cast a gold cone around our circle, but the rest of the building was still impossibly black. To our greater surprise, Leandra was gone. 

I shivered watching a wisp of my breath escape me. The light took the heat with it, apparently. 

The others shuffled and babbled to themselves, frustrations rising to a crescendo. But Trevor remained quiet, breathing heavily to himself in disbelief, nearly hyperventilating when he finally - slowly - reached up towards a solitary snowflake.

“Guys?” The early 20-something stammered. The others fell silent. “I uh… I've been mostly sober for seven months now, but I still take a hit sometimes. I uh… I took one tonight. Is… is this real?”

“Well-” Richard spoke with a growl, firmly slapping his hands on his thighs to push himself to standing. He had a low, calibrated tolerance for bullshit. 

“Fuck this.” He repositioned his tie and moved abruptly towards the general direction of the door, disappearing into the shadows. 

Emily and Steve rushed after him out of concern, but I was paralyzed in place, watching Trevor's frantic breath escape his hooded face like a factory's exhaust. 

“I'll be right back,” I finally spoke, dumbly, lost in words and actions.

I slipped through the darkness beyond our space and found myself inexplicably lost. I called to the others, but I heard nothing in response. I spun to gain my bearings and realized all the obvious landmarks of the tired rec room were gone. The coffee corner, the little office area, the closet rack. All lost, even the halo of our circle of chairs had vanished. I panicked. 

I flailed as whispers and hushed laughter spun around me on secret currents, slowly closing the gap. All the while, I could hear a familiar voice growing louder and louder:

“You abandoned him,”* *it spoke barely above a whisper, so quietly perhaps it was only a phantom thought.

“You abandoned him.” Louder.

“You abandoned him, Jessica!” Yelling now, its breath and spittle brushed against my neck. It was practically on top of me.

I punched blindly and stumbled. But I could see the light of our small haven far in the distance once again. I jumped to my feet and ran while the sinister whispers chased me.

Once inside the light, I realized Trevor had slumped to the floor. He was as blue as a corpse, and I would have thought he had died had he not gasped lightly when I grabbed him. His skin was cold and stiff.

“I never wanted this,” he spoke slowly between weak shivers. “It just… it calmed the noise in my head. 14, I was only 14 when I had my first hit. Since then, I overdosed three, four, five times… I've lost count.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I interrupted.

He continued, undeterred by my tactless stupor. “But I told my buddies that when you did, when you overdosed, none of it hurt anymore. It just felt like falling asleep in a snow storm.” 

His teeth chattered and the snow began to accumulate on top of us in thick sheets.

“Each of them… each of them fell asleep in the snow. And I found them cold and blue with the needle still in their veins. And now I can't even be better for them and stay sober myself,” he grimaced.

“Trevor-” I realized then that was the first time that I called his name in the few weeks that I'd known him. 

“No, man, you made one mistake, it'll be ok. You're still talking and breathing, that's better than most folks that get narcanned.”

Trevor slowly mimed the action of a needle in the crook of his arm and grinned pitifully. But his humor faded as an icy blue vein spread across his arm where the imaginary needle would have been. He screamed in terror. 

I panicked and grabbed his arm, thinking I could stop its spread, but to my horror, when I jerked and squeezed, his limb shattered like an icicle. I lost my balance when his arm released, and my foot splayed out, kicking him by accident. 

Trevor exploded into a hundred frigid crystals and scattered around me. My first startled instinct was to grab the pieces, as if I could reassemble him, but the hope faded quickly as the pieces slipped through my fingers and shattered more.

The air began to warm, and the shards of Trevor grew increasingly slick as they melted. And when the others found their way back, there was nothing left but a puddle and myself sprawled across it.

“Where's Trevor?” Steve asked, his face wrought with worry.

“*You abandoned him,*” the voice ran through my mind. “*It gets worse,*” another.

“He's dead.” I spoke flatly, watching a water drop drip from my arm.

~

I was wringing my sleeves when Leandra reappeared. One minute, I scanned the empty seat where Trevor usually sat, the next, she rested comfortably, legs crossed astutely and wearing the same manic smile she had before. 

The group shifted uncomfortably. I steadied my heart and observed her. She was worse for wear now and her skin sagged. Her flawless complexion sported liver spots and blemishes, and her kempt hair was a mess with stray ends and flyaways. Makeup clumped in the crows feet beside her eyes. Her white suit was dull. And I couldn't help but notice that her teeth seemed… sharper in her wicked grin. 

Steve quickly moved in to question, no, demand answers. He steamrolled her, yelling and hurling his anger at her. Leandra's facade cracked but a moment, and her grin morphed to a pursed frown.

“We'll get to you in time, fireman.” She spoke, shooing him away.

To my surprise, he abruptly sat. 

“There's no flame to extinguish but your own. Best douse that fiery heart of yours until later.” Her smile returned, and she brushed a fleck from her lap.

“Now Richard,” her face whipped at breakneck speed to the middle aged man.

“You choose your words carefully. You don't say much, but you say enough. What was so gut wrenching about being fired from a job you hated?”

“I wasn't fired-”

Leandra raised an eyebrow.

“...I was let go.”

She nodded empathetically. “And your wife still thinks that's what you're doing every day, right? And that the recent late hours are for a big project with whispers of a promotion, right?” Her wicked grin grew wider with each word she spoke.

Richard's face twisted to a look of disgust and fear. “...who are you?”

“Well, I'm Leandra of course, and I'm here for… Group Grief!” She batted her hand playfully with the phrase and winked at me.

My stomach churned.

“Richard, for what purpose? I mean, surely your work had to be noble to sacrifice so much of your humanity, of your soul!?” She leaned forward and clutched her chest as she spoke for dramatic effect. She studied him intently.

Richard sat defiantly, despite the fact that his blood pressure skyrocketed with every second in her presence. He kept his posture relaxed so as not to let her realize how deeply she terrified him.

“I was an analyst,” he spoke cautiously. “A… financial… analyst. And it just so happened that our biggest expendable cost was keeping me on.”

“Dastardly,” Leandra hissed, shaking her head. “What was it like in the belly of that machine?” 

“They worked us to the bone.” he calmly replied. 

“Fascinating,” Leandra chirped as she stood.

I hadn't realized how tall she was until then. Previously, she sat so compactly and properly that she took up less space than one would expect. But when she stood, she stretched like a leopard, extending her powerful form in an impressive display.

“Well, I'll be back. I feel like we're really getting somewhere in this Group's Grief!” She clapped her hands together.

She toyed with the words and the simple switch was enough to turn the cheeky name into a dreadful omen.

Leandra stepped into the shadows without hesitation and quickly vanished. None of us dared to chase after her for fear of getting lost in the darkness again. So we waited, patiently, loathing our wet feet and confinement.

Some time later, a noise caught my attention: a gentle grinding. The rhythmic grumble lingered, moving slowly around us in the dark. Occasionally, it beeped. I ignored it as best I could.

“I should have told her,” Richard mused, abruptly. “My wife, I mean. I just… I couldn't disappoint her. That wretched job took so much of me that I didn't want it to take her security too. I was going to find something better before I told her.” He shook his head in defeat.

I watched him silently. Steve was occupied soothing Emily.

He sighed, “I just didn't want to upset her- what is that fucking noise?” Richard hissed. “Do you hear that?” He stood and approached the border of light and darkness, craning his neck to listen.

“I hear it, but I don't think we should leave the light.” I spoke hesitantly.

“I smoke. I have a lighter and matches. It's light. Here,” he tossed a book of matches at me. “It's a printer. It's right there. I can hear it. But we have to shut that fucking thing off before I go insane. It reminds me too much of work.” He stepped out of sight.

“Richard, wait!” He was too quick, and I was too hasty myself, finding myself one step too far and enveloped in the same inky black full of hateful whispers. 

I grabbed a match and sparked it to life, desperately trying to get back and keep the shadows at bay, but it burned my fingertips before I could. I lit another as I heard the whispers sneer in the abyss. I winced as that flame bit my flesh too. I lit a third-

The plastic surface hit me square in the belly with force. I ran right into it and cursed. The commercial HP printer whirred, shooting countless copies out its top as it buzzed and shimmied. 

I reached down to grab a sheet of the discarded papers, intending to roll one into a torch, but frowned at the distorted, wretched face it printed. Each copy was a different iteration of a scarcely human expression pressed against the scanner and screaming in agony. 

I shook my head and rolled the paper, illuminating the machine in front of me with a flash, when I noticed that the machine was… bleeding. The paneling that housed the guts of the printer oozed with thick mucus and gore. Morbid curiosity got the best of me, so I pried at the cover and it released with sticky tendrils of sanguine slime. I gasped as I saw what was underneath.

Richard stared back at me. I could hardly recognize him, but his sagging eyes with those dark bags were unmistakable. 

He was viciously contorted. His mangled body had been eviscerated, inverted, and forced into the core of that vile device. His bones were snapped and his marrow exposed, used as scaffolding for components. His mouth had been split wide at its creases and some mechanism shoved inside. His intestines dripped with cyan and magenta and amber, pumping the dye to his sphincters above. His lungs inflated weakly in the cramped cube, lightly feathering paper through the folds of his skin. He had been bid to operate the machine to such an intimate and literal degree.

I fell backwards and slapped my hand over my mouth. My rudimentary torch began to burn out, but I could still see his desperate, bloodshot eyes in the waning light, pleading at me for mercy.

“What the fuck do you want me to do, Richard?!?” I screamed at him through tears as the torch light snuffed. 

I grabbed another wad of paper to feed a fresh match. The metal ring of an overhead fire suppression caught the glint of flame. I knocked Richard over and pulled his doors off, exposing both his guts and the machine's. He moaned quietly in what I presumed to be pain, muffled by plastic and screws. 

“I'm sorry,” I sobbed, and stood on top of him to hold my torch at the overhead detector.

The siren wailed and a torrent of water cascaded onto Richard and I. I tore my jacket off to funnel as much of the water as I could onto Richard's amalgamized electrical components in hopes of putting him out of his misery. 

He sputtered and gasped briefly as the water filled the crevices of the machine, but his eyes stayed fixated on me. However, suddenly, they rolled into the back of his head and sparks danced from various mechanical elements until all the meat was flaccid and sizzling lightly. The suppression system dripped to a halt. Richard was gone.

~

“You abandoned him,” the voice in the void stirred.

“She wouldn't have let me go even if I had known.” I argued.

“He died alone. You didn't try.”

“I *did* try*.* I wasn't welcomed.”

I'd lost track of how many times I repeated myself against the void while I tried to get back. It was maddening, the back and forth with such a spiteful specter. 

Suddenly, I stumbled into the familiar, palely lit space. I didn't believe it at first, that I'd found my way back, and Leandra's distorted figure didn't soothe that disbelief. 

She sat calmly beside the remaining two. Her smile was wider and longer, in fact, her entire face seemed stretched as if she was growing a snout. The narrow slits of her pupils watched me intently as she licked her lipstick-stained fangs. Her clothing was saturated and frayed, like tufts of fur, and her hair was frazzled like a mane. Her red blouse looked more like the aftermath of a beheading sprayed across her breast. She'd lost her flats at some point, and her feet bent at sharp hock joints connecting to dirty clawed feet.

I stared at her nervously and silently for too long, eyeing the woman-beast that tortured us and wondering what trial she had in store next. 

“It's Prada, by the way,” she chattered.

“What?” I frowned as I spoke.

“The suit,” she held her clawed hand out and twirled her wrist up, admiring the chipped paint of her once immaculate manicure.

I shook my head and my stomach bubbled. I looked at Steve and Emily. She was sprawled across three chairs on her side, facing away from me with Steve's jacket draped over her. As I approached them, Steve was quick to step aside, and he spoke to me in a hushed tone.

“There's something strange going on-”

I stared blankly at him in disbelief. *No shit Sherlock,* I thought. They hadn't seen what I had seen. They didn't know *strange* like I did after what I’d been through.

“Why are you wet?” He scrutinized.

“It seems to be a theme tonight.”

“Ah. Where's Richard?” Steve was anxious.

“He's dead,” the irritation in my voice was obvious.

He nodded, “listen, Emily is… well, Emily is pregnant-”

“Excuse me? How? Did you guys- how long was I gone???”

“No, it's not like that. We don't know how, but we need to figure out how to get out of here. It's growing fast.”

“*It?*” I looked visibly uncomfortable. 

“The baby, I mean. She swears she feels it kicking already and she looks like she's already 7 or 8 months along. The whole mess makes me nervous.”

“Right.” I pulled myself back to reality. “What about… Leandra?” I glanced at her briefly. I knew she had been watching us talk the entire time but it still unnerved me to see her yellow eyes staring back so patiently.

“She hadn't said anything until you got here.”

“What if we-”

“Talk about the elephant in the room! I'll be on my way,” she laughed.

Her long legs carried her across the threshold faster than we could have even tried to stop her if we had finished our desperate conversation and approached her with a plan.

Steve sighed and turned to check on Emily, when a newspaper clipping drifted from the dark ceiling in front of me. I stooped to retrieve it, reading the bold letters, “Hero Firefighter Saves Family of Four.”

I looked somberly at the paper as more fell around me, all with similar titles and declarations. Soon the floor was covered.

“I guess you're next,” I grimaced.

Steve fidgeted nervously as the papers fell around him.

“Hey, just- just don’t do anything. The others died when they did something. Trevor just froze solid as soon as he reacted to the snow and Richard ran off-” I stopped speaking as one title fell in front of me, catching my attention: “Beloved Firefighter Put on Leave after Witness Steps Forward.” And another: “Charges Dropped: Key Witness Dies in Tragic House Fire.” The final page that drifted to the earth displayed a mugshot from the NSOPW registry. 

I recognized the face. I felt sick.

“He was a good man, but he shouldn’t have opened his mouth.” Steve spoke of the same man he wept for earlier, but now his voice was laced with malice.

I stepped backwards, my heart skipping as I hit the resistance of the chairs behind me. The next step to freedom would be into the darkness if I chose to flee.

“But, I can’t say I blame him. The girl was his sister, after all.” He rolled his eyes when he saw me reel away. “Listen, don’t get weird with me, we have to get out of here,” he coughed. “That's all behind me. These meetings have changed me!”

I placed one foot into the shadows as he reached towards me.

“Oh come on-” his cough grew worse. “She was asking for it anyway! Even if I hadn’t lit her brother on fire she would have dropped the charges because she knew it was bullshit!” He yelled the words with a frantic exhale, face reddening simultaneously with rage and desperation, and he wheezed and gasped. He clutched his chest and winced in pain as he fell to his knees. “Please -*cough*- God -*cough cough*- Jessica, help me!!!” 

My eyes widened as I watched smoke pour from his mouth the more he begged. He pulled his shirt off of himself and beneath the tangle of his curly chest hair, his sternum glowed red with embers. 

“PLEASE!” He wept, thick plumes of soot rolling from every orifice of his terrified being. When, suddenly, countless tendrils of hungry fire poured from his heart and chest while he screamed in pain, burning from the inside out. He flailed, screaming still, until his body curled into itself and he grew quiet so that only the crackling sound of the flame could be heard.

An ember danced toward Emily, and I pulled myself together to push the paper and chairs away to keep the fire from spreading to her. She hadn’t moved nor reacted to the scene beside her at any point. I feared what I'd find as I approached her.

“Emily,” I shook her lightly, carefully retracting Steve’s jacket. 

I winced when I saw her, her belly had grown far beyond the size of any normal pregnancy, even late term. She looked like an engorged tick stuck on its back.

“We have to leave,” I pleaded.

“The baby is coming soon, I can’t move right now.” Emily’s voice was quiet and groggy.

She feigned excitement, but I could see the terror beneath her composure.

“Sit with me,” she smiled, and she struggled to sit upright against her girth.

I tried to hide my expression, but I couldn’t help but feel queasy at the intricate veins and stretch marks that covered her pale, swollen belly. I pulled a chair across from her and sat nervously, dreading each passing second.

“Mark and I always wanted a big family.” She cooed tiredly, placing a hand over her belly as she furrowed her brows.

“Mark?”

“My husband.”

I nodded anxiously.

“We tried, and tried, and tried. Nothing. But then- god, when those little pink lines appeared our world was nothing but joy.” She spoke quietly as she replayed memories in her mind, smiling. 

“We hadn't told anyone yet. It was too early. And… we had so many failed attempts already, we wanted to be sure before we shared the celebration. But… that never came. We were t-boned on the interstate. Mark was killed instantly and I barely survived, but I lost the baby.” 

We sat in silence together.

“Emily, do you think you can walk? We can go slow.” I asked sheepishly.

“Darling, I don't think we have much longer to wait- Oh! He's kicking again, feel!” She squealed, grabbing my hand. 

I couldn't protest but I gagged in my mind. I wanted nothing more than to get her and myself out of this hell. But she held my arm firmly in place against her engorged womb. I felt the fetus inside her slide against my palm and I nearly recoiled.

“Emily, I have no idea how we're going to do this. I… I mean, what if it isn't, you know… normal? Given everything else that's happened tonight?”

She had kept her resolute morale until that point. for a fleeting second her eyes flashed hidden fear before returning to her stoic peace, “I know. But we have to have hope, right?”

I nodded back timidly. Maybe she was right-

“Oh god!” Emily screamed. “He's coming!”

I frantically helped her massive abdomen to the ground and bunched my jacket and Steve's behind her head as a brace before returning to the imminent task at hand. 

“It's going to be okay, Emily! Push!” I yelled over her screams.

“What if it gets worse?!?”” She cried.

“Don't say that!”

Amniotic fluid flooded from her crotch, soaking my legs as I knelt to help her, and her belly writhed in protest. Emily grunted and pursed her lips to slow her breathing. The fetus inside her flailed violently and she screamed in agony.

She pushed again, shooting an ungodly spray of meconium and salty fluid across my body and face. I was crying more than Emily. 

She pushed once more, and a tuft of dark hair emerged from her battered womb.

“He's crowning!” I yelled, half excited, half terrified, and wiped a tendril of mucus from my face with the back of my hand. “He's crowning, keep pushing!” I repeated, I cheered.

Her vulva split, and bright red blood trickled from her, spilling onto the infant's head. And, as if spurred to life by its mother's sacrifice, the newborn's head emerged in a tangle of deformed teeth and fur and furious growls. It flailed until it could pull a limb free from the restrictive birth canal and thrashed, nipping at me and at its mother in frustration. 

I slid through the afterbirth across the floor, muted in disgust and horror as the half-dog, half-infant tore its way through Emily's pelvis. Finally freed, it kicked wildly, slipping as it tried to stand on its hind legs. And when it finally steadied itself, it chewed ferociously on the umbilical cord that tethered it to its mother. 

It yipped like a coyote when it spotted me. But it turned its attention back to its weakened host. It eyed her curiously, almost affectionately, before it sank its misshapen jaw full of needle teeth into her neck and thrashed its head to maim.

I watched the light leave Emily's eyes.

The feral cherub, content with its work, sniffed the air and growled. It ran on two legs towards me, sliding out of control on the gore-painted linoleum. It kicked and growled in my direction, spinning on its topheavy head. It rolled, crouched, and shook itself, snarling as it broke into a quadrupedal sprint-

Massive talons loomed from the dark and snatched the pup before it could reach me. The dog baby yelped and bit at the scaled feet, but the bird beat its wings without any concern. It sang one, deafening note in the dark like a fog horn before it squeezed the dog in its grasp. The mongrel's head popped like a grape in the clutch of whatever possessed those cruel feet. And, with another beat of its gruesome, tattered wings, it was gone.

Tears flowed freely down my face. I couldn't take anymore of this madness.  With the last of my energy, I crawled to Emily, shaking her and pleading.

“Emily!? Please! Get up! I'm here, we have to go!” I wept. I shook her lifeless body. I knew she was dead but I hoped, just as she had done, I hoped. I fell to the ground on my side, weeping profoundly.

“Congratulations, Jessica.” Leandra hissed from the shadows.

I didn't know what she had in store, but I would surrender. I could not endure anymore of her games. I reached forward to touch Emily's face, remaining bound to the floor at her level.

“Please, Leandra, just get it over with,” I groveled. 

“No, no, you've suffered the most out of all of them. That's what you wanted, isn't it? Quietly ranking grief as if it needed a quota to earn the right to be felt? Well, you've won! You are the queen of despair. A cataclysmic hurricane-force of sorrow. The most well suffered.” Leandra was still concealed in darkness, but I could hear her smirk in the way she talked. She enjoyed this.

I pushed myself partially up, pivoting at my hips and strained into the abyss. 

“No, that's not what I wanted! You killed them!” 

“Me? No. Don't throw such accusations. Their grief killed them, nothing more.” 

“What's your plan for me then?”

“Well now, that depends. Why are you here?”

“She abandoned him…” that wretched voice answered from its omnipresent haunt.

“That's not true!!! I- I would have been there!!!” I snapped. I felt as if I were on trial.

“Oh? Who did you abandon, Jessica? Were they afraid in the dark all alone?” Leandra was mocking me, I knew it.

“My mother is a horrible person, she told him I had changed my number, she didn't tell me that he was dying! I would have been there if I had known! She wanted me to suffer! I-”

Leandra burst from the shadows, galloping with wicked, feline speed. The bloodied beast pounced, cutting me short, and I shielded my face with a scream-

~

“Jessica?” Eric questioned, startled by my sudden outburst. “It's ok. You can speak when you're ready.” He soothed.

I uncovered my face, confused. There was no hungry tigress ready to end me in the dark. The incandescent bulbs hummed lightly, illuminating myself and the entirety of the room. I had knocked my empty coffee cup over at my feet. I scanned the room.

Emily sat across from me, her loving eyes wrought with worry. Richard sat indifferently, but he granted patience, as he had always done. And Steve wore a brilliant mask of crocodile tears next to Trevor who stilled his shakes and listened intently. They were alive, as if nothing had happened.

Beside me, the familiar cream suit loomed in my peripheral. I nearly gasped as it leaned into me to whisper,

“It gets *better.*”

Leandra excused herself after the promise while the others stared at me in silence and concern. I watched her lanky form slip from the rec room as mysteriously as she had arrived. The door clicked shut. Tears welled in my eyes until the dam broke, splashing down my face in silver streaks.

“I… I miss my dad.”

The town was named Venice, but I couldn't tell you why. There were no boats nor affiliation to water ways, the founders weren't Italian in the slightest, and we weren't known for romance nor history. The closest thing to a gondolier would have been old man Sticks and his worn out canoe that hadn't moved from his yard in over a decade. It had a rusted hole in the bottom, and for years he swore that he'd have it fixed for the weekend. My best guess is that the founders named it Venice simply because they thought it was ironic.

Downtown was picturesque, though, with red brick shops adorned in bright trim. I never quite knew why we called it Downtown, as if there was a midtown and uptown to compliment. Venice had just one functional road. A few businesses on one side, a few houses on the other. There was a blinking four-way light somewhere near the middle. One direction led west, one led east, and the others led to dirt roads with a few more houses in small, dead end cul-de-sacs. There was a church, a general store, gasoline and mechanical, liquor, and something else I've missed- but surely you understand. It was the expected, minimal infrastructure of any podunk. It had no tourism. No iconic cryptid. No festival nor landmark. No nothing. 

Venice had beans. The plants rested in orderly rows through endless flat fields, but the legumes knew no confinement and their foliage spilled in tangled hordes outside the borders of agriculture. From the air or nearby peaks, it was a sea of sprawling, delicate, hungry vines, and they crept up the walls of the town’s few structures too, invading every aspect of our lives like a cancer.

I left for college and came back when I inherited my family’s house. I'm not sure why I didn't sell it at the time. I guess because I didn't think anyone would want to buy it if I had.

But when I left - more like escaped - the second time, I left for good. I just didn't realize how quickly I would forget entirely. My memories had disappeared as insidiously as the town itself did, and I reckon that makes sense when there's nothing left to return to.

See, nothing ever happened in Venice. I know that everyone says that about every small town, but Venice was a deep kind of dull. It was so underwhelming that I think Sticks never bothered to fix his canoe just so that he had something to look forward to each day. If he fixed it… what would he do next?

We had grown so complacent with nothingness, that when nothing became something we were wholly unprepared and surely convinced that it would resolve itself if we just ignored it for long enough. But things have a way of creeping up on you.

It started as a long, skinny crack, running east to west on top of what was formerly the Highway 78 corridor. It wasn’t absurd to find. It was a neglected road since eminent domain redirected the new highway corridor straight through the Lovett family's farm on the western-most territory of Venice. We never wanted the new highway, and the beans tried to steal the land back every step of the way as the new road materialized. The workers beat the vines back though, and, slowly, we became an inconvenient detour.

The new route demoted Old Highway 78 to a defunct, winding loop that wasn't even worth designating as a scenic or historic bypass.The state didn't invest money in maintaining it, so the crack didn't catch us off guard when it first appeared. It was just the consequence of time in our eyes.

I remember unexpectedly stumbling over it one day. I had blindly crossed that crack for what felt like months without issue, by then, it had become a feature. My toe abruptly caught its newly proud edge one afternoon. Bewildered, I followed the crack as far as my eyes could trace, both eastward and then westward, and I thought it looked much deeper, much wider, and like one side had dropped lower than the other. Admittedly, I didn't warrant much more concern beyond that, but I remember thinking the thought all the same.

The following morning came early at 7AM sharp with a stout intrusion. Jacob Sr rapped his knuckles on my door so firmly I'd have been worried that someone had died if my parents weren't already dead.

“Everett,” the wiry man kneaded his hands out of stress as he spoke to me, “you'd just best come see.”

Jacob Sr led me down the dirt road I had walked a thousand times since I was a boy. I was no expert on anything, none of us were, but matters like this were a community affair given our inexperience in everything but routine and blissful ignorance. Other denizens were trickling into the epicenter of something unusual at the same time, each wandering through the morning's fog that filled the space between the scarce Venice architecture. 

Suddenly, Jacob Sr stopped me with a firm arm across my chest. I grunted, first at his blow, and next at the revelation that the previously nondescript crack had split to a deep crevice and I was walking clear towards its edge. A rock, propelled by my foot, skittered across the ground and into the abyss. I nervously watched it clatter during its descent until I could no longer hear it nor see it. I never heard it hit the bottom.

“Has to be a sink hole,” Clara chirped confidently in her country twang from the other side of the fifteen-foot-wide canyon.

I imagined that a part of her enjoyed feeling like a damsel in distress isolated where she was. In another life, she'd have been an eccentric socialite, but in Venice she occupied her time with the antics of two baby daddies on either end of the town, and even through the fog I could feel her eyeing me like she was looking for a third.

“Just like Centralia. Swallowed the whooole town. Lord rest ‘em.” She waxed, twirling her toes on the asphalt and attempting to strike conversation.

“Is Junior on that side?” I quipped.

I knew it'd piss her off and shut her up. She had married Davey, father of her oldest, but everyone except Davey knew that Jacob Junior had sired her youngest. As expected, she scrunched her face and ignored me. 

“She might be right for once,” I spoke to no one in particular.

More Venetians congregated along the canyon, and I suggested to the group that we leave. But how? Half the cars had fallen into the crevice, and the remainder either didn't work or didn't have 4x4 to drive the tracked-out and muddy back roads through bean country. We could walk, but some of us weren't able bodied and even fewer seemed willing, scoffing that evacuation was dire for what, at the time, was just a hole in the ground by their own admissions.

By 9 o'clock, the fog had burned off but no progress had been made regarding our predicament. Some folks lightly bickered about what to do next, while others shrugged and went about their day as if nothing had changed.

I surveyed the divided town. The canyon grew with each passing minute, gradually consuming more of the earth as it collapsed into the seemingly bottomless maw. A utility pole on the western perimeter of town inched closer and closer to the edge, until it finally fell with a grumbling torrent of gravel and a shower of electric sparks. We never had cell reception to begin with, but the landlines and our power now joined the absence. 

Another chunk slipped into the earth, this time taking Sticks’ wrecked canoe with it. The crevice had grown another five feet, easily, but still no one seemed too concerned as they debated along its unstable edge. I was anxious and my stomach twisted. The whole thing felt wrong.

But before I could attempt to inspire change, Clara questioned from across the gap in her typical sing-song voice, the way she always did when she wanted something.

“Everett, sugar,” she cooed, "I was goin’ to take the boys out with me to get groceries tonight, but it seems that plan won't work anymore, will it? Could you jus’ toss over some food? Davey Junior is jus’ growin’ like a beanstalk, ya know.” She smiled at the toddler.

The irony was not lost on me that she named the tot Davey Junior, but he was not at fault for his mother's infidelity.

“Sure, toss me your wallet and I'll go get it for you.” I smirked. She was always eager to manipulate, and I wasn't going to give her the opportunity. 

“But- you- I- I can't throw that far!” She stammered.

“Naw, sure you can.” I insisted, gesturing my arms to catch.

She scowled, looked inside her knock-off Prada, scowled deeper, and - to my surprise - half heartedly threw the bag in a purposeful manner so that it flew through the air in a wide, pathetic arc straight into the crevice. 

“Oops,” she feigned shock.

My eyes widened in surprise and I laughed. “You know what, I'll spot you, Clara,” I assured, half impressed at her dedication to the bit. I knew she wouldn't pay me back. 

I had a heavily creased $10 in my pocket, and the meager general store wasn't well stocked. I grabbed a can of spam and a locally canned case of beans.

“What am I supposed to do with these?” Clara scoffed when I tossed her the beans.

“I only had a ten-spot on me, Clara. I think everyone is eating cold beans tonight anyways. Besides, I gave you the spam too. You’ll make do.” 

Clara frowned before storming off, dagging DJ by the arm.

No one else seemed to notice, but the crevice had grown again by the second day. The entire width of the road and most of the cement sidewalks had crumbled into that dark pit, and it now lapped at the edges of Downtown’s meager businesses. At least one structure was beginning to hang over it. But Venice went about undeterred. 

People walked precariously close to the edge if they needed to get somewhere, stubbornly refusing to alter their paths. Generators whirred in the background, alleviating the down power lines. Discourse about the canyon remained, but only amongst a few and with less ferocity as everyone settled into unnatural contentment.

Revolutions weren’t my forte. I made a point of telling people that things were getting out of hand, but I was brushed aside and placated that it would sort itself out in time. An increasing part of me felt crazy.

My unrest doubled when I saw a small, black lump at the intersection. I stooped to retrieve it, quickly recognizing the cheap, pleather: Clara's bag. 

Inspecting it revealed a pattern of deep punctures on either side… like the imprints of teeth, as if some wicked crocodile snapped its jaws shut on the purse. But there were no crocs in this god-fearing part of the country, let alone crocs that could scale impossibly deep cliffs.

“Everett!” Junior’s familiar voice pulled me from my anxious puzzle. 

“No surprise to see you stuck on that side, Junior.” I joked. “How do you reckon we get out of here?”

“I walked ten miles toward the west junction yesterday, and the crevice was just as deep there as it is here. It wasn’t letting up, but maybe it ended somewhere. I just had to turn around before I could find out. Don’t know about the east side.” Junior explained, his voice was full of worry. 

I nodded silently. 

“Hey,” I started. “This is weird, right? I mean, no one else is acting like this is weird.”

“It's super fucking weird, Everett.” Junior affirmed. 

“Those old trails were…” he paused, nervously wringing his hands like his father.

“Remember when we were little and we’d get lost in the fields? They felt like jungles when we were small.”

I nodded, watching Junior chew on some unidentifiable concern that he struggled to voice.

“When we got older those pole beans weren’t nothing to navigate. But, Everett- yesterday, every direction I took led me straight back to the road. To this crevice. I don’t know how to explain it. But those vines felt like they were changing the path, like they were doing it. Like they don't want us to leave-”

He was cut short. A fight broke out. Sticks, one of the few people still advocating for action, took a stout fist to his jaw from the pot bellied general store manager. I'd never seen either move so fast. Venice saw its share of brawls, but this was out of character. Fights only broke out when undeniably required, and they were often reserved for Davey and the other hothead in town.

Before Sticks could gather his bearings, the manager pushed and shoved the old man from his store, fed up with complaints about evacuating. Sticks crawled a few feet before drooling a mouthful of blood and gasped to catch his ragged breath, but the shopkeep was ready at his heels. 

He brought the old man to his feet, pulling him by his checkered collar. Sticks sputtered and swatted weakly at the shop manager, who in turn spit in his face. He heaved Sticks to the side and kicked him. The manager swung his foot again and again, and planted each blow in Sticks’ belly with a hollow thwack. Sticks rolled helplessly and gasped for mercy.

I was quick to reach the two, but not quick enough. I put myself between them and forced the shopkeep back, giving Sticks a chance to breathe and steady himself on his feet. As I did, however, the earth where Sticks stood split and released, collapsing into the void with the old man cluelessly joining it. 

Sticks fell ass over tea kettle into the darkness below, tumbling out of sight without a sound other than the crackle of falling rocks and a desperate, pleading look in his tired eyes that spoke more than any sound ever could.

“That was Sticks,” I stuttered in disbelief and released the pot bellied man.

“Yeah, well, that old bastard never done a damn thing to change anything in his life. Now suddenly he’s all about an exodus.” The manager swiped his hands together, cleaning himself of the act, and spun around to return to his shop. 

There was a faint moaning from deep within the crevice that sounded like it could have been the dying breaths of Sticks. The longer I listened, the more I was convinced that it was the sound of despair. 

I squinted, something churned deep below me. I could only faintly see it. Maybe it was just an optical illusion or a whisper of mist on some delicate current. It didn't matter, though. As if it knew that it had been seen, whatever lurked from that great, obscure depth never made another sound. Just silence, and nothing more. 

Fog once again settled into town on the third morning accompanied by a thick layer of dew that dimly sparkled across the earth. It looked almost like ice in the haze. Junior and I had silently agreed that we needed to leave, and were haphazardly collecting resources on either side while Venice continued indifferently, willingly ignorant to the undercut forming beneath Downtown's structures and whatever was crawling in the belly of that crag. Junior was about to hurl a rope across to me, when it finally happened: the crevice swallowed its first building. 

The general store only shifted at first, then toppled as the ground beneath it rushed into the canyon like a flash flood. It groaned and crumbled and the earth swallowed it whole. Junior ran his fingers through his thinning hair as we stared into the void from our respective sides. When no one else reacted, we returned to our escape.

Unbeknownst to either of us, however, Davey Junior had been left unsupervised. The toddler quickly stomped towards the general direction of his biological father, advancing ever closer to the unstable edge of the crevice. Jacob Junior hurled the rope across just as Davey Junior nearly fell to his demise.

Junior sprang to action when he saw the boy. Simultaneously, Clara and Davey had grown aware of their negligence and frantically rushed to aid.

Junior plucked the child off the edge and yelled in panic. The words, so simple and possessive, casually slipped his tongue before he could stop himself. For two years he'd kept it quiet, even if it was the least surprising secret in Venice. Nonetheless, Junior never ushered a word, only stared longingly at the little boy that shared his eyes and his nose. 

I don't think he fully registered what he had done, nor did I even hear the entirety of what he had said. Only two words caught my attention:

“-my son-”

The toddler fussed in his father's arms to be so rudely yanked from his previous efforts. And then two more words followed abruptly behind the doting pair:

“Your son?” Davey spoke with incredulous venom while the realization suddenly hit him. He tensed his posture and his face flushed red as he replayed the timeline and inconsistencies in his mind.

Jacob Junior bounced the now-crying child, “listen- I can explain, Davey-” He turned to advance towards Clara, passing her the distraught child. She smirked.

“Davey, we- it only happened a few times. I'm sorry-” 

Junior didn't finish the excuse. In the moment it took to relinquish the tot to Clara, Davey had found a large, dense branch and smashed it across Junior's temple. Junior spun with an explosion of bark around his face and crumpled to the ground, stunned. 

Blood poured from his face, but he was granted no reprieve. Davey immediately kicked the adulterer in his ribs and face, until Junior was reduced to a swollen pulp and could only breathe in slow, purposeful gasps.

Davey was never one for diplomacy. He eagerly took any opportunity to fight, but his current fury was a notch above normal. Davey was too blinded by rage to hear my desperate pleas, and Clara relished the scene some distance away. I think a twisted part of her enjoyed being the cause of such a merciless feud.

Davey grabbed Junior by the ankle and dragged him to the crevice edge. Junior could only groan in protest. He grabbed the wounded man by his shoulders and butt. Junior tried to speak, but Davey cut him short again, swiftly rolling him and shoving him off the ledge into the black fog below.

Clara shrieked theatrically while I helplessly watched my friend disappear. In an instant, Davey turned to Clara, his body still poised like a bloodthirsty beast, his face still red with anger. Clara's blubbering switched to pleading, and he cruelly marched towards her.

Clara dropped the child to run, and Davey Junior wailed, but she couldn't outrun her husband's wrath. He snatched her like a lion grabs a gazelle and hoisted her squirming mass above his shoulders, kicking DJ out of his path. The child sobbed inconsolably, but he brought Clara to the edge with no concern. I screamed for reason and while she begged for mercy. But as quickly as he grabbed her, he threw her into the pit.

When her screams were no longer audible, I returned my attention to the madman. Behind him, the newly orphaned boy cried, but Davey paid him no attention. Instead, he stood like a statue, staring into the cavern below. I was afraid to speak, lest he find a way to reach me too. But his muscular body stood still in the haze, until it abruptly and slowly swayed, and he let gravity do the rest as he fell into the crevice.

I moved with haste now, determined to rescue the boy before he crawled to the same fate. I pulled the rope that Junior had thrown, testing its anchorage. It held. Carefully, I wrapped my limbs around it until I hung beneath it like a pig roasting over a fire and slowly inched my way across the canyon. 

Vertigo hit me as soon as I made the mistake of looking down. The canyon was full of mist as if it were a rushing river, but I couldn't fool myself into thinking it was any less deep. A weak current of air pushed the smoke, diluting it with the ambient air and sometimes feigning interest in my presence. But I had to focus on crossing-

A body suddenly fell off the edge from where I had crawled, quickly swallowed by the smoke in my peripheral. I looked back, the rope shaking as I jerked my neck to see.

The entirety of Venice stood at the edge now, lined up on both sides. One by one, each resident hurled themselves into the crevice, punching holes into the mist as it churned. As each person fell to their demise, another fell in line at the precipice of the crevice, and more fell to an obscure doom.

My heart raced. I had to get to baby DJ before someone carried him off the edge too.

By the time I firmly planted my feet back on the ground, there was no one left to jump into the canyon. Only DJ and myself remained. 

“DJ,” I panted.

The toddler hiccupped. I could barely see his shape in the fog ahead, it had grown impossibly thick as it spilled from the canyon. From beyond, a wet voice responded.

“Davey,” it whispered, “my son.” It was coming from the crevice.

DJ stood cautiously, peering deeper into the fog and I quietly ran up to the child to intervene.

“Come to daddy,” it croaked.

DJ wanted to welcome the voice, but his apprehension held him back. As I approached, I could scarcely see the edge of the crevice now. 

“Everett,” a second voice called from somewhere else in the crevice. It had a different, but equally wet, pitch. “Everett, we missed you. You couldn't make it back in time to see us, son.” It sounded like a bad mimicry of my parents.

I whispered at the toddler and I snatched him, afraid that if I made too much noise that whatever was calling to us would react. DJ fussed briefly, but clung tightly to me, seemingly grateful for a familiar face in his confusion. 

Just then, an arm reached over the edge of the canyon. I couldn't see it clearly through the fog, but I could see enough to distinguish its evil claws as it hoisted itself from below.

I grabbed DJ and ran, and the beasts yelled behind us. We ran far away from the heart of Venice and straight through bean country. The plants tore at us the entire way, desperately trying to slow our escape or pull us back. But, suddenly, we stumbled onto new Highway 78 and were nearly clipped by a truck upon our entrance.

The driver cursed at us before concern overtook him. We looked like shit, he informed us. And we told him we had to run clear from Venice.

“From where?” The driver squawked.

“I know, it's easy to miss. Please, we just need a ride-”

“I've been hauling this road since before I could legally drive. There ain't nothing out that way clear to Woodsfield.”

I was silent.

The trucker returned the response, eyeing us briefly.

“Ain't no matter. It's clear you folks have been through hell.”

The rest is a blur. At some point I tried to find out what happened to Venice. If you look at satellite images of the area, there's nothing but a sprawling sea of greenery. Even the crevice itself has vanished, seemingly consuming itself.

Sometimes I question if it was all just a fever dream. And I had convinced myself that must be the case until today. 

DJ and I were at the local Kroger. He hates vegetables, but we perused the canned veggies aisle no less. My eyes caught sight of a colorful product on the shelves, and a wave of broken memories hit me like a bus. Even DJ fussed when he saw what I was looking at.

If you find a can of Venice Baked Beans, I hear they're hot as hell.

Seriously. It's just a test. I'm testing subreddit code stuff and gaslighting myself into believing that I enjoy this.

Other updates and things

Given that this subreddit was created out of spite due to the actions of other subreddits, I would like to try to maintain as much transparency as is possible to maintain trust within the community. Thus, I will try to update this monthly for a while, and hopefully we may only need it quarterly in the future or not at all.

Our approach here is that we are just members that have more access than normal. Therefore, you should be able to see what we are doing (within reason, this might be more of a commitment than I'm willing to maintain, but at least for now I can do this).

~

As of 08/02/26

In the past 30 days,

143 posts were added. Of those, 11 were removed with only 1 post removed by subreddit mods. The remaining ten were removed by "admins" (this is different than the automod, and I'm still trying to figure out how).

75 comments were made and 10 were removed. Of those, only 1 was removed by subreddit mods and the remaining were removed by admins (same as above).

4 posts were reported.

329 members joined, and 21 left.

Dear restless readers,

Let's get some activity in here, shall we? Everyone wants their stories read, but it is give and take. That's where a Read4Read comes in. The process is simple: pay it forward.

I'll start us off and post a story in the comments.

The next person (person 1) to comment claims the hot seat, shares their story, reads my story, and comments on my post.

The next-next person (person 2) to comment claims the hot seat, shares their story, reads person 1's story, and leaves a comment on person 1's post.

The next-next-next person (person 3) claims the hot seat, shares a story, reads person 2's story, and leaves a comment on person 2's post.

This continues until I close the loop and read the last person's story and leave a comment.

~

This might turn into a shit show, especially as we reach the functional limit of the parent comment tree found on reddit, but we're gonna wing it and do the best we can. If the comments branch, it should still work and I can close loops as they reach capacity. Comments may be locked or deleted to keep things tidy (nothing personal!) if it gets too hectic. If you're missed, I will personally read your story, just let me know!

Note: no one is expected to be great at commentary. It's ok if the best you can do is "I liked this story and thought the monster was neat!" As long as you are supportive and constructive, then we all win.

(Please bear with me, aaaah)

Happy reading!

Hello, in my ongoing efforts to make this the place for scary stories on reddit (I can dream, right?), I've changed a few things. I don't think anything is too different, but I'm hoping that everything is a bit more clear and a bit easier to navigate.

So far, I have:

• updated and clarified the rules

• added a few user flair options for funsies

• added story flair options so we can search by category; flairs are now required to post

• enabled achievements because why not

• did some things for mods to make tasks quicker

I am hoping to:

• create a small user guide for more information

• create a creative resources list to help people grow

• update our visuals

• highlight member stories from time to time; introduced the "Wide Awake" flair for stories that have been highlighted by the community

• promote ourselves and grow!

Now I'm opening the court to you... do you have any suggestions or anything you'd like to see?

Please take a minute to read the new rules and pick a flair!

Howdy,

This sub is so well behaved that I often forget I mod here. Thanks for that!

That being said, we have enough of an audience that we should be able to foster more interaction and support as a community. I'll start: I'm going to try to read more stories here and comment more often, and I'd love to encourage yall to do the same!

Also feel free to drop other suggestions. Maybe in the future we could have contests or events or something.

Stay awake,

Ckjm

It was a closed casket funeral on account of the fact that the deceased had no- well… on account of the circumstances. It's more civil to say it that way.

If I believed every rumor I'd heard whispered inside the dreary walls of White Oak Funeral Home, I'd personally be responsible for, or privy to, no less than two conspiracy cover ups, one “werewolf incident,” one spontaneous combustion, and more fatal trysts than I cared to keep track of. It doesn't matter that someone died. There was always someone with loose lips ready to stir controversy, truthful or not, when the dead couldn't argue back.

I may not have ever known any of the deceased, but it kept me sane to take it all with a grain of salt. It felt cruel to talk behind the back of a dead person, and the rumors never served me. Best let sleeping dogs lie, I always told myself.

Usually, gossip of the dead was the behavior of older women, often “friends” by the vaguest definition. However, I was surprised to catch the group of children hiding in the closet bickering this time:

“That's NOT true, Lucy!” The roughly ten year old boy sneered.

Kids always lost all composure when they were passionate about something. It was his shrill voice and fierce justice that alerted me to their hiding spot as I quietly slipped between the squeaky doors to check the refreshments of the procession.

“Keep it down, Will,” his slightly older peer, Aaron hissed.

“Yes it is!” The little girl, Lucy, argued.

Aaron had his hands full wrangling the two. If I had been responsible, I'd have stopped their pent up emotions before they escalated further, but, admittedly, I was curious what drama they could spin as well.

“Yeah, well, I actually know what happened.” Aaron whispered, his hushed voice lowered the group decibels and dripped with gossip. I could practically hear him smirking on the other side of the door as his peers held their breath.

“Miss Bettles told Kevin to be quiet and to pay attention,” he started, building tension as best he could. “But he wouldn't. He just kept doodling and telling jokes. So she walked up to him, yanked his notes away, and told him ‘get your head out of the clouds, Kevin!’” Aaron parroted the teacher's voice in a mocking display.

“So Kevin frowned ‘cause he was mad and embarrassed. But then he scrunched up his face and… his head just-” Aaron pulled his curled finger from his mouth with a loud POP.

“The window was open and it bounced across the ceiling like a balloon. Everyone was screaming so no one thought to grab it before it bobbed outside. Now it’s probably at the International Space Station!” Aaron's voice had grown loud as he finished.

They chewed on the tale only briefly before Will retorted, his voice cracking with concern, “That's d-DUMB, Aaron!”

I opened the closet door to break up their increasing panic just in time to see Aaron still fumbling with his dress shirt pulled over his head, arms groping blindly while he moaned, “where's my head, Will?” Will and Lucy's eyes were wide with fear.

“Knock it off,” I blurted.

The children nearly screamed.

“Your friend's mom is on the other side of this wall crying her eyes out. Show some respect,” I chastised.

“Kevin was weird, he wasn't my friend-” Lucy's adolescent honesty knew no concept of tact.

“Can it, Lucy,” Aaron jabbed with a light elbow to his sister's shoulder. “We're sorry.” His voice flipped to sheepish guilt, and the kids sulked as they composed themselves before returning to the room of mourners.

~

The grieving was at its thickest by the time that they returned, and their youth left them grappling with complex feelings, bouncing turbulently between confusion and boredom and sorrow and fear. Quickly, each held onto their parents while they joined the collective sobbing.

Will seemed hit the hardest. He was sick at home the day that his friend had died. He didn't want to believe that he was gone, let alone mysteriously so.

But it was over as quickly as it began. Swollen, dehydrated faces gradually left the mourning halls until only Mrs. Williams, Kevin's mother, sat quietly in front of her son's closed casket. Her husband had left twenty minutes earlier when their remaining younger child, sick with emotion, vomited all over himself.

She placed a trembling hand on the casket, testing the weight of the hinged top with microscopic calculations. In truth, she knew that she could tear it open with minimal effort. She was actually testing whether or not she could bear to see her son one last time.

Mrs. Williams grappled with the decision, but she knew that the image was already seared into her memory. That image wouldn't change nor improve. And she hated it. With a defeated sigh, she released her grip and slowly turned to depart. The foyer doors groaned behind her with a definitive click as she transitioned to whatever processes her future held.

Within the next half hour, I'd place Kevin inside the furnace where his body would be reduced to pale ash. By tomorrow, he'd be packaged in an urn, and by the next day he'd be ready to be reunited with the glossy eyes of his broken family.

I paused, however, as the casket loomed in my peripheral. Cautiously, I approached, finding myself also testing the casket lid just as Mrs. Williams had done moments earlier.

I never pried nor looked beyond what was necessary to do my job. I never let the rumors get the best of me. But the lid to the casket readily lifted this time as if it wanted me to know. My eyes gawked and peered towards its contents.

Our mortician had dressed Kevin in the same tuxedo he wore to his cousin's wedding a year prior. He had grown since he wore it last, but it fit well enough. The sleeves and hems were just a little too short. It was his first and only formal outfit. I winced at the thought.

A child's burial garments were a rough concept by themselves, but my mind and my eyes quickly moved to his neck. The crisp collar of the suit framed the blank space. Where his head should have been was a clean dehiscence, as if his neck and skull had simply unzipped, released, and wandered away.

My coworker had worked her magic to minimize possible odors and leaking. Kevin had been evacuated of every fluid in his vessels, and a greasy paste, like petroleum jelly, had been applied to the gaping wound.

I was grateful for the opaque salve. I feared that Kevin's neck may have been too anatomically revealing of the private, intimate passages of the child's neck. I suddenly understood why Mrs. Williams didn't want to see her son one last time.

~

It was a grim job, but it was an honest job. I clocked out just like everyone else with less macabre professions. Still, my mind bubbled with possibilities about what could have happened to the headless child.

Perhaps it was medical: he had a rare disease and his head needed such an extensive biopsy that there was nothing left to restore for the funeral. Was it infectious?

Perhaps it was nefarious: a serial killer had attacked the child and beheaded him, stealing the head for his collection. Would there be others?

Perhaps it was a tragic accident: a field trip with an old bus, and he stuck his head out the window at the wrong moment. THWACK. Was the head lost to the road?

I couldn't spin on this all night. This is why I never asked and never listened. I always tried to ignore the rumors for this very reason.

I poured myself a steaming cup of herbal tea and clicked through the television channels, admiring my old dog as he slept beside my feet in the living room.

“Let sleeping dogs lie,” I thought, smiling at my beloved companion, Banjo. I felt my body unwind and my mind relax-

THUD.

I jumped at the intrusive sound above us. Banjo's ears and eyes perked intently to the ceiling.

RUSTLE.

TAP.

RUSTLE.

Our eyes followed the sound as it moved across the roof.

Thump.

Banjo stood to investigate the final sound when it fell off the roof's edge into the shrubbery beside the window. He stood in a bold stance, tail lightly wagging as he eyed the window, before fearlessly bolting out the doggy door.

I protested, but like any good retriever, he brought it to me, even if I didn't want it: Kevin's missing head had fallen back to earth.

Judges, I must admit, I am giving you three whole reasons to disqualify this story without even reading it. I'm not asking for special permission, just stating that I am prepared.

1. If you count actual, total, complete words, regardless of their linear involvement, it is 2065 words.

loud incorrect buzzer Too many words!

But technically it's 8 stories with the shortest being 20 words and the longest closer to 800 words. That's semantics. It's 2065 words ffs.

2. Which brings me to my next point! I technically submitted multiple stories.

loud incorrect buzzer Multiple submissions!

(That was a rule, right?)

3. And my third DQ: it just kinda sucks yo.

loud incorrect buzzer Oh brother, this guy stinks!

~

In all seriousness, this was fully experimental. It's a story nestled in a game in it's most rudimentary sense, and I wanted to explore the medium both for myself for bigger, future projects, and for others. I used your prompt as a vessel to carry it.

Thank you, now disqualify my ass.

If you're still reading, please check out Twine to make your own. I feel like many of you will have lots of fun with this medium for storytelling. It's pretty straight forward. (This garbage took me a day.)

And if you're still reading, my DISQUALIFICATION can be read here.

Boots

I’d only read a quarter of the way through the story, but I groaned before finishing the next sentence. Something about immense mountains and vast glaciers. I was immediately pulled from what little immersion the story offered simply because the author never bothered to research the place that they chose to write about. There are no mountains. There are no glaciers. There is nothing.

I was being jaded, of course. I was reading a story about the Arctic while physically present in the Arctic. A place where the overwhelming majority of people would never come close to seeing with their own eyes. Roughly 50 miles from the edge of the world, if I wanted to be dramatic about it. I wasn’t open to being humble or graceful about my reaction. I wasn’t open to romanticized, trendy, half-fledged ideas. Camp life was exhausting and the land was unforgiving, and not in ways that people expected. I was tired of shitting in a bag and tired of the drone of generators. I wanted to go home.

I closed the story and stared out the crank-style window, watching a scraggly herd of caribou simply exist on the horizon in the dwindling sun. The animals only moved to tiredly scrape the snow, searching for moss underneath. Otherwise, the basic action of turning their heads to look at the world cost them energy that they didn’t have. So they just stood there, pitifully, tortured by the wind and staring blankly at the same cold gray horizon that I also watched.

There were four animals yesterday, five today, and a part of me contemplated joining their ranks to quell the growing cabin fever in my mind. But a knock on the door to the steel 40x10’ camp structure pulled me from daydreaming with my stoic companions.

“Supplies came in,” Ryan grunted through the partially cracked door.

He didn’t wait for my response, nor did I have one. I threw on my jacket to retrieve the order that I had made two weeks ago and moved outside, stuck in a lull of monotonous muscle memory.

Two boxes waited for me in the cargo towed in a sleigh behind a towering, red Steiger machine. The breeze blew the hot stench of exhaust into my lungs, and the fumes hit like smelling salts against the frigid air as workers tossed things from the transport vessel. I grabbed mine and tucked one under each arm before plodding back to my space to log the items.

Neither box had much weight, I thought. “I wonder what they forgot to send me this time,” I sighed and sliced open the first box, quickly sifting through its contents and bitterly accepting whatever fate the expeditor had sent me. When I was finished, I flattened the boxes and set them aside, promising I’d take them to the Incinerator later. That’d be something to do in the quiet of the night shift. Maybe I’d read until then.

Life ran on repeat for some sixty-odd days in the oil field hitches: twelve hour shifts, over-salted food, industrial walls dragged across the tundra every week or so, bereft of any semblance of humanity in a desolate, wind whipped territory that looked the same for endless miles surrounded by thirsty men that would oogle a stick figure if you drew a pair of tits on it. And every living thing with an ounce of self respect left the tundra in the winter. Even the sun left the tundra. Yet… there I was. At least, you could get out of your head for a while during a hitch with a good story. Except for the fact that for whatever god forsaken reason, the Arctic was a buzz word in the stories this time. I couldn't escape it, even in fiction.

I scowled at the next story I chose. The soulless, generative formula felt like a wet fart and entertained about the same. The piss colored “artistic” glow of digitally aged varnish of some bullshit cover art was the straw that broke the camel's back. I needed a walk. I sneered and clasped my laptop shut with a touch of force and a generous dollop of frustration. We ate enough slop for meals… slop wasn't going to cut it now.

I pushed myself off my chair and grabbed the collapsed cardboard boxes, slamming the door as I left.

“Ten more days,” I warily hissed under my breath. “Just ten more days, give or take a few… or several. Fuck.”

Any other day I’d probably gain some enjoyment in trolling the “author,” but I was festering and needlessly angry. Camp life wore one down after a dozen days, let alone the fifty I had endured.

I plodded toward the Incinerator, a solitary structure designed to burn trash - and shit - at the edge of camp where we didn’t have to smell it. Fire was the most logistically sound option for garbage in the Arctic, and, suffice to say, a 200 man camp produced a lot of rubbish - and shit - each day. So the fire always churned, flickering in gold as its attendants fed it waste, and what couldn’t be immediately burned was stored in a massive, iron cage to keep animals from scavenging it. Clear bags for trash. Black bags for shit. All caged far from immediate acknowledgement. And, on windless days, the smoke of our transgressions against that lonely land would patiently slither across the sky like a greedy, dark snake.

It wasn’t uncommon to leave the fire unattended. It’s not like a miserable, frozen bog had much fire risk after all. Tonight was no different. Alone, I placed the cardboard in the barrel and stared into the black expanse beyond. I felt my temper cool beside the fire. The fever of frustration simmered in the cold shadows where the halogen bulbs of camp couldn’t reach. The melancholy of repetition eased its infectious chokehold. The eternal hum of the machines that kept us alive weren’t as loud beside the Incinerator, and so, too, my mind grew quiet. My peace, however, was interrupted by a peculiar clicking in the black beyond.

I frowned, craning my neck to listen. I caught movement on the threshold of visibility in the moonless night of the tundra. Something was approaching and clicking with each step.

Suddenly, the two toned Bear Alarm echoed through camp, the frozen equivalent of an air raid siren. I bolted to the cage, the closest haven to protect myself from the hooked and unforgiving claws of a brown or polar bear, locking the grated door and stumbling over garbage. The figure became more clear as it approached, but, adding to my confusion, it was revealed to be multiple figures: the caribou. The small herd had multiplied to hundreds, and now they anxiously cut through the side of camp to escape something unseen.

“Martha, do you copy?” J’s synthetic voice was muffled through my winter coat.

I struggled to pull the portable radio from my pocket, “go for Martha.”

“Is that you by the Incinerator? Are you ok?”

“A-firm.” I spoke with a twinge of concern, watching the animals.

“We don’t know if there’s a bear, but something spooked ‘em and they don’t do this for nothing, not even the wolves. We thought we'd play it safe.” The radio clicked silent momentarily. “Are you warm enough? You might be out there a while.”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. It’s not that cold tonight.” I pouted.

“Stay put, we’ll get you out of there as soon as we clear camp.”

“Copy.”

He didn’t respond.

The clicking grew louder as a torrent of startled deer approached the Incinerator. It was a normal noise that they made, but it was no less unnerving to know that it was the sound of countless ankle tendons snapping into place over bone, a peculiar adaptation that caribou evolved to keep track of each other’s locations in blizzards and in darkness. Lonesome nomads, the animals spoke with sinew, beckoning each other with the mechanics of their bodies, and I was surrounded by their foreign correspondence.

Wisps of cold breath steamed through their wide nostrils, and their legs chirped with every purposeful step. This was the most activity I’d ever seen them perform in the winter. It was still too much energy for them to stampede or to run, but there was haste behind their snapping gait, and each animal anxiously pushed at the others in front to put greater distance behind whatever pursued them.

I moved in the cage. A few animals briefly acknowledged me but ultimately continued, more pressed by their pursuer than by me. The herd peeled around the burn barrel and I looked at one animal illuminated in the shimmering glow. Its pupil had constricted in the light to a narrow, horizontal slit against the iridescent blue of its iris, and fear was visible in its fleeting gaze.

After a few minutes, the herd passed the Incinerator. Their ankles clattered into the darkness and past my auditory range. But one straggler approached long after the others. Head hung low, the animal was haggard even by the most desperate caribou’s standards. It moved its legs without coordination, and every joint in its body cracked as it moved.

As it closed the distance, I grew colder and more worried. Abruptly, It stepped into the fire light and stood still with its head cocked as if it were blind and unaware, waiting for a prompt. Its eyes were dull and yellowed, and its normally light coat was stained the color of acidic bile as if it had rolled in crude oil that bubbled through the tundra. It felt… fake. Soulless, even.

I held my radio to my face to inform that the herd had passed, “hey J-”

The animal whipped its head to my direction with a harrowing crack, loud and distinct enough to make me flinch. I stared at it in silence and felt its hollow eyes study me. It approached the stairs with a splayed and awkward pace, and, to my shock, it clumsily ascended the grated steps to the cage. Emaciated, it smelled of sour meat and moved like a marionette.

My mouth fell open as I watched the sickly animal advance. I no longer felt like it was part of the herd fleeing from a predator, but that the herd was fleeing from it all along. It stood with a wide stance on the central floor in front of the furnace. Methodically and noisily, it lowered its antlers with a vibrating crunch, dragging the dulled, malformed ends across the door to the cage, searching.

I had already started climbing further into the trash, black bags tumbling over me, but now I was desperately scrambling. The uncanny caribou arched its neck up, folding its left, front leg with a sickening pop, and pursed its jaundiced lips. Its yellowed teeth clanked against the door as it explored. Its wet mouth seemed to glow independently of the nearby fire.

“Hey, hey!!!” J yelled as he jogged toward the Incinerator waving his arms to shoo the animal.

The caribou jumped, jerking sideways and over the Incinerator railing. It fell to the ground with a deep thud and a chorus of painful clicks, and it flailed briefly before it took off with a noisy sprint into the night.

“I know we joke that you’re trashy, but get out of there.” J winced at the sight of me.

“Did you see that thing???” I screamed, unamused.

“Just a mangy caribou,” J shrugged.

“It looked possessed!” I sneered.

“You’ve survived… worse.” He unlatched the door and frowned as he eyed the medley of refuse that covered me. “Jesus, go clean up.” He jabbed.

~

The original small herd of caribou did not return by the next day’s light. My wary companions were gone. A crew in the field reported that the herd had been spotted miles away at the base of a 100’ bluff, some still dragging paralyzed limbs weakly across the ice of the Colville River below after presumably falling to their demise.

The higher ups of camp management were abuzz trying to appease the Inupiat tribal reps that permitted our exploration on their land, promising that no one had harassed the animals to the point of suicide off the cliff. It was a freak accident and mere coincidence, they pleaded. But whatever fines and conclusions they drew were beyond my pay grade. I stepped outside for a breath, hoping I could find someone to share a drag from a cigarette.

I cursed to myself when I found no one, cursing louder as I dodged yellow snow where I walked.

Urine didn’t burn, so everyone capable of pissing upright without attracting attention had to pee outside. It was always a source of contention in camp, and management was constantly scolding grown men not to pee in the primary paths. To add insult to injury, the nasty shades of yellow were the only contrast of color against the expanse of dingy gray and white. I was sick of looking at it and sick of knowing the camp's hydration status based on the glaring colors of frozen piss.

I glanced upward to see Ryan standing with a generous stance in the middle of the path. I thought he was taking a leak, adding to the disgusting stains.

“Ryan,” I jeered.

He was silent.

“RYAN? Go take a piss somewhere else, for fuck's sake!”

Something about him seemed stunned rather than like a man relieving himself. He swayed lightly and his head lulled back. He stumbled briefly, returning to his tired posture like a Portland streetwalker stuck in a lean.

Ryan stirred and turned to face me and revealed his forlorn face. The white of his eyes had turned sickly bronze and his skin reflected a similar hue. He mumbled something incoherently. His words were slow and confused. His gaze was vacant. He just stood there: vacant, hollow, and sickly.

I flinched, alarmed by his appearance. “Ryan, are you ok?”

But Ryan simply stared for a long while before he staggered off on unsure footsteps, leaving me silent and equally perplexed.

~

Over the next few days, camp fell ill. We chalked it up to the “Camp Crud,” a quaint colloquialism for the cold virus when it inevitably found its way into our isolated population and ran amuck. Lethargy, mild confusion, dingy skin… the symptoms, initially, were nothing outlandish but they were obvious. Ryan must have caught it too, hell, maybe he was the first.

But as it progressed, those afflicted grew agitated and, for lack of a better way to put it, yellow and waxy. Not waxy and swollen like you’d expect some illnesses where fluid builds, but waxy like frostbitten skin looks a little less alive when it finally thaws and ultimately mummifies if it doesn’t putrefy… amber facsimiles of something previously alive. Their skin sagged and bunched in peculiar ways. But it was just the Crud, or so we thought.

I was reading the comment section of a plagiarized story, more enthralled by the roasting that the thief received than the plot itself, when J rushed the door to my space.

He gestured his face in a quick jerk towards the window, too short of breath to speak. A large group of workers, all previously too ill to move, slowly amassed and weakly marched to the edge of camp and moved southward.

The last person to leave camp on foot, years earlier, had abruptly discontinued their antipsychotics and declared that he intended to walk into the tundra to find angels or some other wild shit. His delusions were infamous and people still talked about it, but now, sure as shit, J and I watched half of camp stagger to some quietly determined exodus.

No one touched them, too afraid that whatever spawned their shared hysteria might be contagious. So we watched them slowly stagger one by one, and, simultaneously, we quietly weighed the guilt of inaction until the last of their silhouettes faded beyond the veil of icy fog to unspoken but predictable fates.

~

Evacuation wasn't formally announced after that, but we weren't going to wait for permission nor a plan to escape either. Management tried to keep things calm, but the remainder of camp exploded in a simmered worry. Many grabbed machines and fled while workers filled the available seats, but there was some degree of coordinated departure.

I donned my Arctic bib and clutched the jacket for later, grabbed my backpack with the bare essentials, and I readied to escape. I didn't care if I ever saw the rest of my belongings again. I could only think of that sick, deformed caribou, and the possibility that it brought some disease to camp. I imagined it hunting angels like the man years earlier, driving its comrades to shared insanity and a hasty demise.

Could psychosis be contagious? Could caribou even go mad? I didn't think cabin fever was something animals caught in their preferred environments, then again, I couldn't guess why anything would prefer to stay in that god forsaken land year round. It had its beauty, surely, but it was far from a land of abundance or comfort. They chose to live in that misery, I guess. But there wasn't time to dwell on those concerns.

The door to my bunk room always stuck in its crooked frame, so I dropped my shoulder to ram it open when I was ready. It swung free with a thud and, to my surprise, knocked Ryan to his ass as it opened. Rather, the door knocked something that loosely resembled Ryan on the other side.

The figure spasmed on the hard packed snow below, clicking and groaning agonally. I caught myself before I could habitually apologize, realizing it wasn't who - or what - I thought I had caught off guard.

Whatever wore his poorly replicated face hadn't noticed me, or perhaps it forgot I was there in the first place. I kept my movement low, hiding behind the open door frame and concealed in the dark, miniscule space.

I watched its extra limbs and long mats of patchy hair flail. Its expressions shifted in amorphous, bulbous patterns, and it twitched angrily as it tried to right its tangle of parts and concepts. It looked like a fleshy, dying beetle stuck on its back.

I was frozen by fear. Rhythmically, it rotated its clicking extremities, budding and atrophying new appendages before my eyes. A ghost of Ryan's visage emerged on a gelatinous protrusion where its head should be, crowned in a single, lumpy antler before it popped like a festering blister.

There was no way I would be able to sneak past the mess in front of me. It wriggled immediately at the base of the stairs, and despite how slowly and uncoordinated it moved now, I was certain it could muster vitriolic speed and precision on a whim if I caught its attention. I cautiously reached through the open door instead. I needed to close it to try to protect myself.

Slowly.

Fearfully.

I held my breath, hoping it wouldn't see me or hear me. A singular eye rolled purposelessly in its oversized socket, the sclera stained a dramatic, pale gold. It moved blindly, however, waiting for something to demand its attention and command its action. It moved with primitive, scripted concern.

I noticed now that whatever was in front of me was bigger than I originally thought. Bigger than any man should be, with too many fingers and the boundaries of its body ambiguously blurred. And as I inched forward I felt increasingly vulnerable and exposed, praying quietly that if I could just go unseen now, that it wouldn't know how to open the door when I shut it. Maybe it lacked object permanence. Maybe it couldn't learn that much.

The door squealed with a shrill note when I pulled it, and as if on cue, the man-thing jerked to rigid attention. I quickly slammed the door in response. It shot forward against it like a viper, propelled on newly formed, spring-loaded legs. But the door closed before it could get inside.

I was swallowed in the blackness of the small room. The only window had been boarded shut so that what little daylight illuminated the winter could not penetrate that room, and, in turn, my only other escape was blocked by a handful of screws, foam board insulation, and a thin panel of wood.

The monster scraped across the exterior of the door, reminding me of the caribou at the Incinerator. I fumbled in the dark to find the lamp, casting pale light into the space when I hit the switch. I shoved the table towards the door, and pulled my multi tool from my pocket. Everything took too long. Seconds dragged while I fumbled to extend the Phillips head bit. I struggled to steady my trembling hand, and every twist to loosen each screw felt like an eternity.

I dropped the first screw when it freed. I dropped the second. By the third, I could hear some increased and coordinated effort at the outside of the door as if Ryan's copy was finally understanding the latching mechanism. A fourth? A fifth? Please god, make this faster.

I tried prying the board, but I couldn't get enough leverage to break it free without removing at least one more screw. I was hasty and my tool slipped repeatedly during my sloppy attempt, but eventually another screw fell to the ground with a soft ping.

I pulled desperately at the plywood barrier. The wood splintered and cracked and bent. Grasping the plier end of my tool, I plunged it into the secured foam, digging desperately to expose the fragile glass beneath just as the door creaked free and light spilled in.

With one final, frenzied attempt, I smashed my tool into the window. Searing pain shot through me as glass shards pierced into the flesh of my arm and hand. I couldn't stop now. I pulled at the brutal edges to expose my escape and the glass bit back more. My blood looked like oil in the low light as it sprayed from me in a pulsing pattern and splattered around me. I had severed my radial artery.

I'd figure it out, I thought. I had time to stop the bleeding on the other side, I assured myself. I just had to escape. If I didn't try, that thing would surely kill me before I'd bleed out... I just had to escape first.

The monster tripped over the table, stumbling with a roar as extra appendages spilled forward to catch its fall, and I threw myself head first out the broken window at the same time. The fall onto the hard snow below was a painful drop, and I knocked the wind out of myself on impact. Exposed in the cold white of the tundra, my blood splashed in harsh compliment to the pale nothing of endless snow, more distracting than the piss puddles could have ever been. I clutched my arm desperately and gasped like a fish as my chest spasmed and my vision blurred.

The lookalike wailed in the window, forcing its elongated limbs through the narrow, sharp hole. I staggered forward, trailing red behind myself. My head spun.

I collapsed some yards beyond and rolled to my knees, watching Ryan clumsily fall from the window in a shifting mass of tissue and simulated parts. It bellowed, sickly mouth glowing with some unknown, amber heat deep in its gullet.

Despite my weakening state, I was relieved to see it completely unaware of our human mortality and foresight. It may have tried to look like us, but it failed to realize the slowly advancing threat behind it. Every second counted as my consciousness increasingly faded and as the Steiger advanced towards the disastrous and furious facsimile while it advanced to me.

The timing didn’t favor me, however. It swung a massive limb at me, casting me like a ragdoll, just as the giant machine drove over its fragile body. I closed my eyes while it screamed and thrashed, splattering rancid fluid the consistency and color of honey in thick globs under the tracks of the Steiger.

~

I woke up in the small clinic of the primary oil operations facility, far from our remote camp. My arm throbbed beneath the plush gauze bandages encapsulating my injury. To say I felt weak was an understatement. I felt like Death himself took insult to my existence.

I assumed there were others that escaped, including whoever had rescued me, staunched the bleeding, and carried me to haven. I assumed there was some chaotic and desperate conversation - a plea - about the caribou and the yellow madness that infected our group. But I'd have to wait to hear more for the time being. Until then, I assumed I was safe.

A clinician fussed on the other side of the curtain. She was speaking with another patient, unaware that I had finally woken. Her voice was full of worry.

“We're going to have to fly you out,” she began. “We're flying out another patient in the other room in a couple of hours. The medevac is en route now, and we can arrange your simultaneous transport. But you’re going to need a proper hospital. We just can’t manage this here. We don’t know what’s causing your jaundice, and your cognition is deteriorating quickly-”

My heart skipped to hear her. I was too weak to holler and protest her plan, too weak to warn her that it started the same way in our remote camp: the yellowing. That she'd be sending it to civilization where it could spread and take root, whatever it was.

I had to warn people. I grabbed my phone and started typing, “I work in the Arctic. You've got it all wrong. The cold isn't the most dangerous thing in the tundra...”

I have a male and female African/Chinese goose pair. They're 6 years old. Each year they become a bit more of a menace.

This year, the male is horrific. I've had to abandon any hope of a peaceful coexistence with him, which in turn is making the female hate me more too. For whatever reason, they like men better than women (zero idea why, sexist geese weren't on my bingo card but here we are), so they welcome complete strangers if I introduce them, but the second they see me it's the goddamn Thunderdome in my yard. My best guess is that he sees me as a rival... so he recognizes me and trusts me, but also hates my guts. Like, they still call for me when they're scared or want snacks, but otherwise? I am #1 on his goosey hit list.

He is easy to manage at least. When he attacks - which is always - I just lightly hold him by his neck to keep him at arm's reach so he can't flog me, and go about whatever chore I needed to do prior to his premeditated attempted murder. He is also terrified of silly hats and gardening equipment, so sometimes I exploit those weaknesses... the neighbors love watching me do yard chores in *a latex horse mask.*

They've also decided that this year they want to hump everything that moves. Both of them. The male will never mate with the female, and I've never seen her flirt with him (but she flirts with everything else that moves, including me because of course I need *more drama*). He has a thing for shoes, particularly men's shoes, and recently the chickens. Meanwhile, the female just mounts anything, especially the chickens. So they're locked up in horny jail because I'm not tolerating them hurting or stressing out my hens. And they are *upsetti spaghetti* about their confinement, which in turn makes the male hate me *even more.* I mean, I guess I'd be upset too if a reverse centaur wielding a garden trowel seduced my girl in front of me, took her eggs, and left me with nothing to love but a muddy boot.

But I can't catch a break here. One time, I was giving them treats, and homeboy got my nipple. He could have bit any part of my body but he went for the only square inch of flesh that really does not need a goose impersonating a crocodile in a death roll. I just get tired of feeling like I'm the goose equivalent of Hitler in my own yard. I'll be letting them out of their coop here shortly... wish me luck.