u/unloufoque

George Corden had dreamed of this moment for years. All his time poring over ancient scrolls and tablets, refining and refining his translations, practically learning to read the heretofore inscrutable strokes of cuneiform, all lead up to this singular moment. He had dismissed the team of local diggers he had hired to excavate the site. Gave them all some bonus coin, told them to enjoy themselves for the weekend. They thought it was for them, but he wanted - needed - to be alone for this last part.

Up in his ivory tower, he had been laughed at. At first his colleagues had just assumed he was interested in myth and fiction, not that he believed it. Then he had no colleagues and his acquaintances would hold their noses at him at conferences and in hallways. Of course none of it was true; he was a madman for not seeing it, for believing it.

After a time, the process of becoming a pariah becomes self-sustaining. When enough people treat you as though you were less than dirt (at least something useful can sprout from dirt), your reputation accretes, layer by layer, until people unfamiliar with you can still see your shell of disdain: the chain reaction of academic isolation can end only with annihilation.

Unless you leave the tower. Which, of course, the former Professor Corden had done. He descended down into the earth as far as he had ascended, going through archaeological teams and his vast inherited wealth at an ever-increasing rate. Until now.

Now was his final dig. The money was all but gone, but as it had bled out of him his certainty had grown in equal measure. Somewhere in this pit, probably five or so inches below his very feet, lay his treasure. He put pick to dirt and found it: a lamp, burnished to a matte bronze color by sand and years.

Those who laughed him out of academia would have told him that there was no genie inside that lamp because genies were not real. They also told him that the lamp was not there in the first place. What did they know?

Before rubbing the lamp, Corden retrieved from a buttoned breast pocket a piece of paper, heavy with his leaden scrawlings. He had practiced and rehearsed this moment, but still there was no sense in taking any chances. He glanced at the paper, mouthing along as he read the words he had slaved over for years. Satisfied, he rubbed the lamp.

A thick haze wooshed out of the lamp, filling the space around Corden. The acrid gas invaded any orifice of his it could, filling him, judging him, emptying. As the cursed effluvium left him, Corden felt somehow lesser than he had before, as though some critical portion of his essence had left him along with the genie. The thought fled from his mind as the figure took form in front of him.

It was hideous. Shaped like a man in general, it had the head and tusks of a board. Its eyes, full of yellow sclera holding large, vacant pupils, gazed directly at Corden’s own, burrowing deeper into him than any lover he’d ever had. Its furry black tongue lolled out of its mouth, dripping a viscous saliva.

The genie spoke, making harsh sounds from the back of its throat. Corden hadn’t anticipated that, but of course there was no reason to think it would come out speaking English. He only hoped that whatever magic animated the being of smoke and sorcery would translate for it as well. He greeted it as politely as he knew how. The translation worked; the genie spoke in a way he could understand. It spoke of wishes and pursuit.

Corden had not expected that last bit. The rules were simple. There must be balance. The genie would grant his wishes, as many as he wanted to make for anything he wanted. But each wish had a cost. With each working of magic he demanded, the countervailing forces would grow stronger. Simple wishes would grow their power in small ways; larger wishes in larger ways. If this force, which Corden felt was honestly underspecified if you asked him, ever caught him, his reckoning would come due.

He hesitated. He had planned on making grand wishes, the sort that apparently would summon all the hounds of hell right on his heels or something. He had prepared for an ironic genie, one who would interpret his wishes to the letter but specifically countervail the spirit. His wishes were explicit and legalistic, as devoid of loopholes as he could manage. He had not thought there’d be a cost. Perhaps he should change his mind. If the cost was the catch, then maybe he didn’t need the thoroughness. He pondered, but ultimately decided he’s sacrificed everything else in his life to get here. He couldn’t go small.

He wished, basically, for an infinitude of resources, power, love. He wished for all those who had scoffed at him to have their comeuppances. He wished to go down, now and forever, as the greatest man ever. He wished for everything he could think of. He wished for godhood.

And then he ran. And as he ran, he looked back. Behind him was not the dusty dig he had descended into. Instead it was a void, like outer space but without the twinkling orbs. He gazed, and the nothingness gazed back at him. He knew then that what the genie had said was true. It would never stop. He would never be safe. He had power, riches, fame, adoration, reputation, goods, services, influence, money, gems, intelligence, spirit, everything and anything. Except safety. Except freedom. Except the ability to ever, ever stop.

You know, nobody’s parents ever wish over their baby’s head that that baby will grow up to be a trash collector. No grade school teacher ever expects their kid to say they want to be a trash collector when they grow up. And there’s no college out there with a trash collection program.

But despite all that, it’s a good job. You’re outside, working with your hands. The hours are pretty good as long as you don’t mind getting up early. And they pay, oh, the pay is out of this world. Nobody wants to do it, but it has to be done, so it pays.

Plus, you get to see all kinds of things. Make up stories about people based on what they don’t need anymore. Sure, it’s usually just the same old junk that doesn’t tell you anything, all those anonymous white or black plastic bags in black plastic bins that go up to your waist. But more than you might think, there’s something else. Like when I see a family throwing out a crib, I know that kid is growing up. Or one time I saw an easel on the curb outside of an apartment building and I was thinking the whole rest of the day about what happens to an artist to make them throw that away. That kind of stuff.

Usually you don’t see stuff that moves, but every so often you do. One time, this was just when I was starting out, the moving thing was half a litter of kittens that I guess hadn’t properly been smothered. That stays with you. But this story isn’t about that.

No, this is about the last thing I saw that moved. The thing that made me quit. Even now, two years later, just knowing that it’s out there somewhere, well, it sort of makes me want to quit more than just my job, if you know what I mean.

There I was, doing my usual route. It was early morning, maybe an hour into a five-hour collection day, plus time to take it all to the processing plant. I’d been at it for nearly twenty-five years, so I had the plum route, residential. Sometimes there’d be some furniture, like a dresser or something, but usually it was just household stuff all bagged up nice. Easy peasy.

I get to this house that these people must’ve been moving or doing some pretty serious spring cleaning or something, because there was a lot of trash out front. And I mean a lot. Usually they had one full can and one half-full, but today they had both of their cans overflowing with trash. Some of it was bagged and some loose. Then they had twenty or so contractor bags full resting in giant stacks on the greenway. I swear, one of the stacks was taller than I am.

I start off with the bins, just hook them on to the truck’s arm, nothing big. Next I go for some of the bags that are on the ground without anything on top of them. Maybe they fell over, maybe not, doesn’t matter. I’m putting off the hard stuff as much as I can. I pick up one or two of them, throw them into the truck, then see something kind of out of the corner of my eye.

There was something moving in the biggest stack of bags. At first I figured it was some animal, maybe a rat or something, chewing through the bags and getting to the food scraps inside. But there wasn’t trash strewn across the way like there would usually be when an animal got into it. Then I looked closer. The bag itself was moving, distending and deforming in a thousand different spots. The whole thing was undulating. It looked kind of like a giant jellyfish, like you might see in a low-rent aquarium.

I really didn’t want to chuck that bag in. I was working around it, taking everything I possibly could that wouldn’t make me touch that one. But eventually that was it. I’d taken everything else that wasn’t underneath this bag. There was nothing I could do that wouldn’t disturb it. So I took a deep breath and grabbed it by the top, the only part of the bag that wasn’t throbbing. I pulled. It didn’t budge. This bag was heavier than all the rest.

So I squared up, planted my feet, and gave a big heft. The bag split right down the middle. Immediately, a deluge of some sort of giant insect thing flooded out and down the sidewalk. Their bright carapaces reflected the light into a dazzling rainbow that hurt my eyes to look at. But at the same time, I couldn’t look away. Even if it was just so that I could track them and make sure none of them touched me. They had four segments to their bodies, and a blur of legs that I couldn’t count. And the pincers.

Each set of pincers must have been just about as big as the rest of the body put together. They looked deadly sharp, and I even saw a few scythe through the grass on the greenway like lawnmowers without even trying to. And these tusks dripped some kind of pale green goop that looked like it would do more than stain your clothes if you know what I’m saying.

These things seemed to not like the light, so they were scurrying this way and that, just trying to get into the dark. A bunch made a beeline for my truck. That’s when I quit. I sprinted the five or so steps to the truck and drove away as fast as I could. Drove straight to the depot, didn’t pick up another can. I don’t know if anybody ever picked up the trash that day, but I still have nightmares about those horrible, otherworldly bugs.

“First off, I want to tell you that I don’t really go in for this ghost stuff,” said Carl in his thick, New England drawl. Dr. Finkelmann motioned him to an aluminum folding chair anyway, and he sat.

“Of course, Mr. Mather. We respect all beliefs here. We’re just collecting and investigating stories. If there’s something science can’t currently explain, then we want to advance the field. Almost all of our stories are totally explicable by rational, non-supernatural means.” Dr. Finkelmann sat across the big mahogany table in his own folding chair. He reached for a tape recorder in the center of the table and thumbed a switch. The reels started spinning. “Please state your name. You can use a false one if you like.”

“Nah, I stand by what I saw and what I’ll say. I’m Carl Mather, no relation. Born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts.”

“Thank you, Mr. Gutz. Welcome to New York. Please tell us your story.”

Carl paused for a moment. He took a deep breath and plunged in.

The following is a transcript of the account given by Carl Gutz to Dr. Finkelmann of New York University’s Rhine Institute for Paranormal Studies:

It was about five years ago. I remember because it was just before my accident, maybe two or three months. I was out for a walk around the neighborhood after dinner. You know, get the blood moving to help out digestion and all. Plus my doctor in those days said I needed to lose some weight. Not a problem for me now, ha ha ha.

Anyway, like I said, I was out for a walk. I had a usual route back then, just winding around the neighborhood, passing by the houses of people I liked, you know? If somebody’s outside I’d stop and chat for a while, that kind of thing. Otherwise I was looking at the trees. This musta been late September, early October, around then, the leaves just starting to turn. Not peak leaf season, no, that’s more like Columbus Day or even a week or two after. No tourists around. At least not for leaves.

You should see Salem in Halloween season. Hoo boy. You want tourists, we got ‘em by the buckets! Anyway, I lived outside of the downtown and far from the witch museums so it wasn’t even really something I had to deal with.

So I’m walking around and waving hi to people, but there’s not really anybody out that I want to talk to. Usually there was, but not that night. So the missus expects this walk to take a certain amount of time, you know, because I’m usually a chatty cathy, you know, so I decide I’ll just walk a little bit extra. I turn down a street I don’t usually turn down.

It’s a residential street, the whole neighborhood is. There’s a corner store but that was a few blocks in the opposite direction, and otherwise everything is just houses and the elementary school. So I’m going down this street, just a side street, not the main drag, and I hear this car just absolutely gunning it. Seriously, this engine was going so loud I couldn’t even hear my own footsteps.

So I turn around, you know, I’m on the sidewalk but still. I see the car coming down the street from a few blocks away, just speeding through stop signs like they’re not even there. And that makes me mad. You know, it’s not my street but it is my neighborhood. We got a lot of kids around. My kids grew up on these streets. It ain’t right, you know, driving around recklessly like that. Even if there’s nobody around.

Anyway, the car gets to the block I’m on and I hear these brakes squealing like their lives depended on it. They were practically as loud as the engine. This pinecone must be standing straight up on the brake pad. Why are you going so fast if you’re just gonna stop so short? Doesn’t make any sense.

The guy pulls up right in front of me, maybe ten feet or so, and parks. Now, mind you, I’m on the left side of the street, so this jablonie is parked on the wrong side of the street. And he’s in between two houses in a way that it’s clear he’s not there for either one of them. So I go up to give this person a piece of my mind.

I’m telling you, I was watching this car the entire time. It wasn’t moving or anything. The door didn’t open. Nothing. So I go knock on the window, you know, getting ready to tell this guy to pound sand, but I look in and I don’t see anything at all. No person in the car whatsoever. I check the back windows and even walk over to the passenger side. Nothing. I swear to Christ, there was not a soul in that car.

I was shook, you know? You ever have something like that happen? Anyway, I keep walking but I’m looking over my shoulder, you know, just keeping that car in my field of vision as much as I can because it’s unpredictable. And yeah, I was a little scared I guess. Just when I get down to the next corner, the car takes off again, top speed. Nobody went in. I even looked in the window as it was going by and there was nobody in the driver’s seat.

So that’s my story. Thanks for giving me the time. You got an explanation for me.

NOTE BY DR. FINKELMANN: Given the paucity of specific details (exact date, location, etc) and the generic nature of the story, this was categorized as a Category III experience. We did not have the resources to investigate, so the veracity of the story cannot be ascertained, nor does the Rhine Institute have any theories as to what happened to Mr. Mather.

The doorbell rang, which was only a little bit unexpected. It was Halloween, after all, but Gina had put out a bowl filled with candy on the stoop along with a sign saying “Please take just one.” The sign never worked. The bowl must have run out. She sighed, paused her movie, and shuffled off to get the refill bag. She almost yelled out for Thomas to do it, but stopped herself at the last second. She was proud of that, and a little bit sad.

The doorbell rang again while she was on her way back with the bag. “Hold your horses,” she yelled. “I’m coming.” She opened her front door and saw through the screen a dozen or so children. Each one looked just the same. They all came up to just higher than her waist, she reckoned, and each was wearing the exact same costume. They were dressed in all black jumpsuits but for a slash of red velvet running down their left sides from armpit to foot. She couldn’t tell for sure, but it seemed like there was some sort of text or symbol on their little chests, done up in black-on-black so you could only see it if you got in close at the right angle. And the masks.

The masks were what made Gina shudder and almost turn right around and shut the door. They looked like heads, with each feature made of other heads, a macabre rainbow of disembodiment. From the beady eyes (incepted with goblin faces with their own staring pools of moonlight) to the hooked noses (on the pronasales of which sat deathly faces with rictus grins) to the mouths overflowing with teeth (each tipped with its own ghast), each identical mask was a mastercourse in the art of unnervation.

A chorus of “trick or treat” rang out from the assembled ghoulies. Their voices didn’t seem to match their stature, Gina thought. They sounded like grown men with deep, husky, workstained voices, but they had the bodies of children. But the power of tradition is a strong one. Gina or Thomas had been refilling that very same candy bowl every year since they became empty nesters. Now that her first grandchild was old enough to be one of those creepy kids on the stoop, nothing could possibly stop Gina from doing it again.

Especially not the tiny voice in the back of her head that said that something was horribly wrong. That voice was a fire alarm with a low battery. It had been blaring almost non-stop for the last eight months, ever since Gina walked out of Heaven Health Hospice for the last time and trudged through the remainder of the final snowfall her Thomas ever saw. On her way out, dear old Antonia had told her that she’d learn to live despite the feeling before she learned to live with it. Now, Gina even believed her.

Gina opened the screen door. When she bent to refill the candy bowl, she noticed that it hadn’t been emptied.

When she unbent, the strangers again rang out, “Trick or treat.”

Gina smiled. She gestured at the mostly-full bowl on the stoop with one hand and held out the bag with the other. “Please help yourselves, kids. Happy Halloween.” She put the bag down and turned around.

There was a shuffling. One of the figures rose onto the first step and repeated “Trick or treat.” Gina chuckled and opened the door. From behind her, the masked figure slammed it shut. “Trick or treat,” it repeated. Though its voice hadn’t changed, there now was a menacing edge to it.

Gina faced the mob. “Treat, I said! Help yourself. Have as much candy as you want. Take it all!” She flung the bag of candy out towards the people. They parted and it flew by, scattering small bonbons across the sidewalk.

The one in front took her hand, neither gently nor forcefully but with great finality all the same. “Trick.”

At that, the crowd rushed forward. Gina was carried by the tide into her foyer, the door slamming behind the last of her attackers. She was tossed off her feet and landed hard on her hip. They swarmed over her, pinning her to the ground. Up close, she realized that all the faces on their masks were moving independently. It made her dizzy.

Gina had assumed it was a group of children, but she had never known children to act this way. Not even on the news, which loved stories of misbehaving teens, had she seen or heard of anything like this. Up close, however, she realized that they were not children. They were not even human.

It was the smell first that tipped her off. They had a sulphurous, mephitic smell. It assaulted her nose in a way that reminded her of a book she had once read about Father John Geoghan. Their clawed hands were nothing like children’s. And from up close, she could not see any seams on their masks, as though they were not masks but a part of the creatures attacking her.

They ripped and tore at her, splattering her blood and screams across the living room. The pain was immense, worse than anything she had endured in her life. Just when she was certain she was about to see Thomas again, suddenly her assailants stopped as one. They got up and marched in single file out of the house, closing the door gently behind them.

Gina stayed on the floor for a long moment, struggling to breathe. When she finally opened her eyes, she did not see the streaks of blood she expected. Instead, her living room was just as it had always been. She stood up with no mark from the vicious attack. Outside was as it should have been, with her bag of candy still splashed across the sidewalk. The creatures were nowhere to be found.

Ekaterina Tolstova Ivanoff would never, could never, forgive her parents for giving her that name. It stood out like a peacock on fire everywhere she went. They insisted on not shortening her name as a child, so when she went to college and tried to become Kate, the nickname was as comfortable as a three-fingered glove. She was doomed to forever be asked “Where are you from” (Staten Island) or “Do you miss the old country” (I’ve never been farther east than LaGuardia) or “What happened to your accent” (I sound like Carmela Soprano what are you even talking about).

She found that it was easier just to not meet new people. She liked it better that way, too. Her parents (who were also born in America and had never been out of the country save for the honeymoon they spent eating all the different regional variations of spaghetti and meatballs that the western coast of Italy had to offer) harangued her that she needed friends, and boys - or girls, they weren’t prejudiced but they did expect grandkids after all the hard work they took raising her, and by the way she’s not getting any younger and did she know that Jessica Rubinstein from high school was pregnant with twins and isn’t that amazing - and hobbies, but their lectures fell on enough deaf ears that they, even they, eventually got the hint.

It was just easier.

Every day the same: wake up to an old-fashioned buzzing alarm clock, eat a hard-boiled egg and one slice of toast with butter and marmalade, log on to work (contract IT for several small tech companies whose employees by and large knew how to reboot their computers on their own), and read as much as possible.

When Ekaterina is forced to go into the world, such as when natural disasters strike or she has a dentist’s appointment, she makes herself as small as possible. She dons a hoody so big that it is impossible to tell there is even a body underneath it, let alone the body’s general outline. Her shoulders hunched, she carries with her in her pouch pocket her phone and wallet and despair.

She is walking through a long corridor, scanning the floor from her feet to the end. A man appears from a door and turns towards her. Ekaterina mumbles an apology, though she is not sure whether she’s apologizing for the potential intersection of their paths (he is still nearly ten seconds away from her) or for forcing her voice upon him. Without noticing, she retreats further into her dull gray hood. It’s too late.

The man knows that she said something, but he didn’t quite hear her. Though he doesn’t say anything, every iota of his presence screams at her with the fury of a thousand dial-up modems that she has inconvenienced him supremely and must make amends. He hasn’t stopped walking towards her. She has.

“Sorry!” she repeats, louder this time, praying that he will walk on by without acknowledging her. He grunts as though he has not heard, invites, demands that she repeat herself. “So sorry.” She is practically screaming now, her vocal cords lethargic from disuse. The man is close now, maybe a half-dozen paces away. Ekaterina tries her best to turn into a puddle and be absorbed into the floor, but her body betrays her with its solidity.

“Hrm? For what?” the man asks, his voice curious but his posture regal and condescending. Ekaterina cannot take it anymore. She has imposed upon the world and its avatar too much. She turns around, now back towards the man, facing away from her destination, running, sprinting, escaping.

“Huh? Are you all right?” the man calls out to her. Though she can’t see him, she knows with all her being that he is going to chase her. His long legs will outpace hers and he will capture her in his social presence. She will be forced to account for her actions, her existence. He will measure her being and she will be found wanting, consigned forever to have been seen. She keeps running.

The man, behind her, strides onward. His footsteps cease their echo in Ekaterina’s ears and soon she sees fewer signs of his existence than her own. She stops, panting, though from fear or effort she is not sure. Certainly the man has turned some other corner, gone through a different door. Ekaterina’s phone buzzes, reminding her of her appointment, the presumption of her well-being on others’ time and space. The thought occurs that perhaps having clean teeth isn’t worth all the trouble and besides she brushes and flosses twice a day so what can they really do for her anyway, but she discards it as she has discarded it every six months her entire adult life.

She stops, waits, listens. She is late for her appointment now, which is almost as bad as meeting the man in the hallway again would be. As the seconds drag on, the balance shifts; the receptionist must be wondering where she is now, and what a burden it would be if she needed a check-in call while she was in the same building. No, the man is gone. Ekaterina must remove the problem of herself from the receptionist’s plate. What a monster she would be if she didn’t.

She opens the doors, strides to the large desk, and mumbles her name when the receptionist looks at her. “Please have a seat. Someone will be with you in a moment.” What a nightmare, to have someone be with her. Ekaterina sinks into the plastic chair farthest from any sign of life. She wishes with all her heart to be swallowed up, to disappear.

Hours later, when the office closes for the day, the last one out shuts off the light. Ekaterina is still in the chair, unnoticed. Blissfully unnoticed.

February 12, 1884 Teaching in vivisection laboratory today, demonstrating proper technique for making incisions less likely to become infected after the surgery was complete. Students had standard Qs. One asked about pain, lectured about emerging anaesthetics. Student followed up with what surgery felt like under anaesthesia. Offered to demonstrate on him, class laughed. Another asked what it felt like to die. Nothing else notable.

February 16, 1884 Q bothering me. At death all sensation ceases, but is there moment before cessation? What does it feel like? All who know are dead.

February 27, 1884 Have interviewed many people with catastrophic injuries who came close to death. Stories do not add up. Some saw light, others dark. Some saw their pasts, others random images they did not comprehend. Seems there is a strong influence of religion. Cannot draw any conclusions.

March 1, 1884 Did not go to laboratory at all this week. F— came to visit, thought I was sick. In a way I am. Sent him away.

March 2, 1884 Dreamed last night that I was in the process of dying. Not like ill person in ward slowly dying of illness - consumption, e.g. - but actively dying. Woke up at moment of death. Is dream death? Is sleep? Must set aside such romantic notions.

March 5, 1884 In vivisection, same student asked today when we will practice on living bodies. He must know that we do not do so until practicing medicine. Must be a code, a message for me. Does he share my obsession? Do I share his?

March 6, 1884 Spoke with L— at length today. Was right yesterday: he was trying to send me a message. We have common cause, only have to design experiment. Shouldn’t be too hard.

March 7, 1884 L— volunteered to acquire specimen. We are to meet tomorrow night at a certain charnel house some miles outside city. Since I am scientist and he student, L— will strike the blow and I will make scientific observations.

March 9, 1884 Experiment unsuccessful. L— slashed subject across throat with a surgical knife. Death too instantaneous to make decent observations. Besides, my papers were soaked with arterial spray so couldn’t write. Will have to reschedule.

March 15, 1884 L— was slower this time. Subject screamed for what felt like hours, then screaming abruptly stopt. Was not sure when the moment of death occurred. Observations useless. Less blood this time. Paper reusable.

March 16, 1884 Discussed problems with L—. There are two. The first is that we are trying to measure a single instant in time. Do not have the photographic equipment or skill to record moment so must take all measurements simultaneously. L— not sure it can be done in one go. Once process is refined, would have to repeat experiment many times - maybe twenty or more - to get usable results. Second problem is that there is no way to tell when the moment is. Can see and know life, can see and know death. But transition eludes us.

April 1, 1884 Have performed experiment ten times. I am getting better at making my observations. L— improves at extending the moment of death. Notice that subjects have been more and more agonized as experiment has gone on. No notice in press, and L— and I have kept absolute secret, so no known explanation.

May 3, 1884 Have collected all the data we can hope to collect. Moving on to analysis. L— hopeful that we can make conclusions within the week.

May 6, 1884 Insurmountable problem we did not anticipate. All data is objective measures of subjects at moment of expiration. Q is subjective: what does it feel like to die. We know what happens to the organs & blood &c, but what of the sensation? Impossible to tell from this experiment. How much blood have we spilled to get this far? Sacrifices to the altar of science all. Still nothing in papers, no suspicions.

May 10, 1884 Relationship with L— souring. Both of our moods have been depressed and sullen since discovery that our experiments would not - could not! - bear fruit. Have just realized that L— is not just a murderer but has killed in cold blood dozens of times. The way he looks at me sometimes chills my bones.

May 16, 1884 L— has been absent from laboratory all week. Worried he has done something drastic. Will visit his home tomorrow.

May 17, 1884 My God, the conditions! L— had been experimenting in our vein alone in his home. Blood everywhere. Has made no more progress alone than together. Told him he must stop. Threatened to get authorities involved. Will sleep with loaded gun underneath pillow just in case.

May 18, 1884 Met with L— again, in public. Expected anger, rage, something. Instead he was calmer than I have ever seen. Says he has solved our problem. We must be the ones to die. I pointed out obvious issue. He says he knows how to bring us back from the beyond. Don’t believe him.

May 20, 1884 L— proved himself three times on animals of various sizes.

May 21, 1884 L— proved himself on a human, who was dispatched soon afterwards.

May 24, 1884 Hopefully not my last entry. L— won’t tell me his secret, so I am to be the next subject. I know that he can bring me back, and I hope to God that he will. Have written a letter explaining all and sent to my solicitor with instructions to open only if I disappear. I pray God I will retake that letter. In these final hours before I meet with L—, I wonder whether this knowledge will be worth the quest. We all find out what it feels like to die. Why hurry into it? But why do any science? Ever since L— asked the question, I have felt like my life was only half-lived. One way or another, no more.

The wailing from the back seat seemed like it would never end. Michael, Mikey to his childhood friends and soon Dada to the little beast in her car seat, had tried everything he could think of, but none of it worked. He turned the radio up. He turned it down. He switched the stations. He turned it off. He drove slower. He drove faster. He sang. He yelled. He swore. He rubbed his stubbly head and thought that he needed to shave his head soon or he’d start to look even more like his old man.

“Come on Neveah, baby. Please please please stop screaming, just for five minutes. I’ll get us home in no time, then Mama will fix you right up.” He wasn’t even sure his little darling could hear him over all her screaming. Issa had told him he was playing with fire going so far from the house without a bottle, but he was so sure that she would nap for long enough. Seemed to him like mama really did know best, and he put another tally on his mental notepad next to “Always listen to Issa.”

Finally, Michael gave up on stopping the screaming. He floored it, hoping to just get home before he lost his hearing or his mind. He began weaving around the highway traffic and even briefly thought if a crash wouldn’t actually be so bad because maybe it would stop the screaming.

Michael cut someone off. They didn’t collide, but it was a close thing, and the other driver had to slam on their brakes to avoid being driven off the road. The other driver laid in with his horn, but Michael didn’t notice. Michael also didn’t notice that the other driver began to keep pace with him, weaving when he weaved, following him.

Neveah also did not notice. She was hungry. Her hunger consumed all of her being until there was no other feeling, nothing else in her world except fatal lack. The feeling gnawed at her very lifeforce, threatening to end this journey that she had not even started to really understand yet before it could begin in earnest. Her world, which varied wildly in dimensions with dizzying speed, had narrowed down to a single point of desire.

And all the while, the other driver tailed Michael perfectly.

Finally, Michael signaled that he was getting off at the next exit. He got into the far right lane. The other driver followed. Michael slowed down. The other driver didn’t. As Michael began the turn onto the off ramp, the other driver slammed on the gas and rammed him.

The crash was even louder than Neveah’s screams had been. Michael’s car went straight when it should have gone right and went over the shoulder of the ramp and into the air. It landed hard on the grass of a ditch, back tires somewhat off the ground. The airbags went off with a bang and Michael was blown back into his seat as he was showered by shattering windshield glass.

The other driver turned slightly after impact but could not slow down and so did not drive on top of Michael’s car. Instead, his car landed next to Michael’s, though facing more downwards than the first. The other driver’s airbags failed to deploy and his seat belt did not lock as securely as it should have, so he was thrown against the steering wheel. He broke three ribs before he even realized what had happened.

Neveah was silent for one blessed moment. Then she resumed her screaming with redoubled vigor.

Dazed, Michael got out of the car. He could barely stand, though when he checked himself for injuries he saw that was mostly the shock. Besides having the wind knocked out of him and what felt like huge bruises already developing, he was fine. He loped to the back and checked on Neveah. He couldn’t see any injuries.

Michael took out his phone, not sure whether he should call the police or Issa first. He looked around, saw the other car, and approached it. He began to stammer out something about insurance when the other driver threw open the door and fell out of it. Michael rushed over to see if he was okay.

The man raised a gun. His hands were shaking and he couldn’t quite get a bead on Michael. Michael had never moved so fast in his life. He dropped down to the ground and sidled like a snake through the grassy depression over to his car. His world exploded again as the gun fired, though he did not know where the bullet went.

After a crawl that seemed to last three lifetimes, Michael made it back to his car. He sat, keeping the car between him and the shooter, and dialed 911 as quickly as his trembling hands could. Then Neveah’s screams penetrated his frazzled mind. There was a man shooting at him. He had to protect his daughter.

He risked a quick look around the car. The other man was on the ground, just where he had fallen out of the car. He didn’t have an angle on Michael, but Neveah was a sitting duck. Michael couldn’t get her out of the car without presenting his whole body to the other man, so he had one option left.

Michael crept to the back of the car, where he’d have less ground to cover to get to the other man. He snuck a quick look. The man didn’t seem to be looking his way. “Now or never,” he thought, and looked at Neveah. “I love you,” he said, already sprinting to close the gap. With a yell he leapt onto the man, intending to wrestle the gun away and pin him until the police came.

He shouldn’t have yelled. The man heard and saw and fired, and Michael landed with a sickening squelch, gutshot and bleeding, on top of the injured shooter. Neveah screamed.

The astronomers missed it. Someone should have seen it coming. The world should have been warned. Every news program should have left off with whatever else they were covering. Wars should have stopped. There should have been podcasts.

Instead, on an otherwise unremarkable day in early June, half of the world was surprised when the Sun simply disappeared from the sky. (The other half of the world was already in darkness and would not find out about their antipodal neighbors’ situations for some hours, or until they checked the Internet.) Time will tell whether this was an apocalypse, but it certainly did not begin like one.

Planes did not fall out of the sky. There were car crashes, but not many. Hospitals did not fail; nuclear power plants did not melt down; office workers did not jump out of their tenth-story windows en masse. The most cinematic thing to happen was that a significant number of people looked up at the now-starry sky, all at the same time, like sheep looking up at a rainstorm.

There was a great coming-together in those first few hours. People helped their neighbors. Everyone waited, hardly breathing, for the Sun to come back. It didn’t.

It took a few days, but life went more or less back to normal. Well, mostly. The disappearance of the Sun created a great deal of despair. Suicides spiked after the third day, went way down, then slowly trended up. Church attendance rose, though not in the Abrahamic faiths.

A movement popped up from seemingly everywhere simultaneously, that the Sun had left, not because of some sin humanity had committed or cosmic accident, but because people had left the old ways behind. It was a revival of the old pagan belief that the order of the universe ran on human sacrifices of all kinds. Centuries without sacrifice led inexorably to disorder in the universe.

And so, as seems inevitable in retrospect, bands of new believers began crossing populated areas, performing acts that would make Charles Manson and his family blush with envy.

The true effectiveness of these groups was that their goal was simply death. It did not matter to them who died, except insofar as they preferred people willing to kill to be alive.

Jordan was late in getting home. Without the diurnal cycle, it was sometimes hard for him to tell what time it was. It wasn’t the first time his teenage daughter, Jemma, would have to cook dinner. He came home to a wide-open front door. He called Jemma’s name. There was no spoken reply, but there were various noises like movement and working coming from the house. He went in.

In the living room, he saw Jemma. Most of her body was tied to a chair in front of the fireplace. She had been split vertically from the base of her neck down through her crotch, and there was a fire in the fireplace upon which Jordan saw his daughter’s innards burning. His first thought, before the tragedy of his loss hit him, was that it must have been hard to get the wet organs to catch fire.

His second reaction was more primal than thought. He threw up and cried.

The noise from elsewhere in the house stopped. He heard scurrying, as though a thousand rats were running towards him from the rest of the home. It was not rats but sacrificers, though in that moment Jordan felt the rats had a greater moral value.

They had knives; he was unarmed. They were many; he was one. They were focused, honed by religious ecstasy and bloodlust; he was lost in a sea of grief.

The first stranger came at Jordan alone. Without thinking, he caught the man’s wrist and squeezed, causing him to drop the knife. Jordan caught it by the blade, slicing open his left hand. He switched hands with the knife and slit the man’s throat with one motion. Arterial spray blinded Jordan. Another charged from behind Jordan. He stabbed without looking and gutted this challenger. He withdrew his hand, still holding the knife, slick with gore. Jordan screamed, emptying himself entirely.

Despite two of their number falling, the remaining sacrificers lost no zeal. The five of them attacked as one unit, though they were hardly synchronized. Jordan ducked a blow from one, who overbalanced and tripped over him, landing on the poignard of another who had been trying to thrust it into Jordan’s back. She died with a smile on her face, but her killer was pinned under her.

Jordan took out another with a wild punch from his bloodied left hand. He felt something shift beneath his skin as one of his fingers - and his assailant’s nose - shattered under the blow. The two left standing looked at each other and seemed to communicate something without speaking or hardly moving. At the same time, they turned around and sprinted out of the house.

Jordan strode to the pinned sacrificer, who was struggling with her burden. He looked her in the eyes and said nothing as he stomped on her face until it was not recognizable as anything that had even once been human.

With the immediate crisis passed, Jordan’s adrenal glands went back into normal production. He threw up again, though it was just bile that mixed in with the pulverized remains of his assailant’s head. He looked around the room and his eyes once again alighted on Jemma, the light of his life, the only thing he hadn’t lost. But now he had.

He looked past the remains of his daughter, to where part of her was slowly cremating. It would be a squeeze, he knew, but he was pretty sure he could fit both of them in there. He turned up the gas, picked up his girl, crouched down, and crawled into the flames.

Winter was nearing, and the summer and fall had not had as good hunting as they ought to have. No one, not even the village elders, could remember so big a hunting party leaving so late in the season, but there was great fear that they would not last the winter on their current stores. And so most of the men of the village left one grey, drizzly morning, to bring death to others and life to theirs.

Winona watched them leave. She looked particularly for her new husband, Nagamo. They had been married for only a few weeks, and their wedding feast had been nominal, not like she had dreamed when she was a child. These days nothing was like what she had dreamed. She waved. He did not look her way.

For a few nights after the hunting party left the village, they sent up smoke signals. On the fourth night, it rained and there was no signal. While some, among them Winona, were concerned, the acting chief declared that there was no need for concern. It was just the rain and nothing else.

The next night, a clear one, there was no signal. At daybreak scouting parties set out in the direction of the last signal. It would be days before they would be heard from again. The air was filled with anxiety and grief.

That day an old man wandered out of the woods. Winona happened to be harvesting some dried beans in the area and saw him. She kept about her work.

“What is this?” the man yelled. “You don’t lift your head for the return of your husband?”

Winona looked up again. Nagamo was a young man, though this oldster did bear a certain resemblance to him, somewhere between the nose and the ears. “You are not my husband. Nagamo is out with the hunters.”

The man beat his chest in woe. “How is it that you don’t recognize me? I know we were not married long before I left, but I will remember your face even until the end of my days.”

“My husband is young. You, elder, are old. How can you be the same man?”

The stranger calling himself Nagamo bade Winona sit down for her answer. She did. “We had split up into smaller groups. I and two others were trailing a deer, when I heard a rustle in the bushes behind us. I turned; the others did not. I walked towards the bushes; the others did not. I know not what happened to them.

“I pushed aside the bushes and found nothing there. I thought it had just been the wind that moved them and turned to rejoin my fellows. But as I turned, I saw out of the corner of my eyes an indescribable beast. I had never seen its like before. It ran on all fours like a wolf, but was as large as a bear. Its fur was all white, with no blemish or stain of any other color, save that its mouth was red as blood and its eyes were a sparkling yellow.

“The beast jumped upon me, teeth gnashing at my neck. It tackled me to the ground, but I held it off. It was then that I noticed that it did not have paws like an animal but rather hands like a man. It grabbed me around the neck with one hand and the face with the other. I fought and squirmed but its body was heavy on top of me and I couldn’t move.

“It forced my mouth open and opened its own, exposing its necrotic tongue. The tongue was the color of rot and was moving around as though searching for something. It found my open mouth and dove in until I gagged. I could feel it draining something from me, though at the time I knew not what.

“After a short time of this, I fell into a deep unconsciousness. When I awoke it was dark, and I was not where I had been. I called out for my fellow men but heard nothing in response, not even the noises of the owls and other nighttime animals. When the beast attacked me, I was not afraid. I did not have time. Now, though, alone at night in the woods, not knowing where I was or what had happened, fear took me.

“It was almost peaceful. I was so sure that I would die that night that all my other troubles and worries seemed to melt away. But morning came and I was still alive. I found the trail the beast had dragged me down and followed it back to familiar territory and from there came here.”

“But how are you so old now?” asked Winona.

“The beast took my youth. That is why it attacked me and why it didn’t kill me.”

Winona had heard of such things. She took the man to her home and acted as wife to him until her womb was quickened. They lived like that for many days, and soon the whole village knew Nagamo’s story.

A week later, the scouts returned. They had found the hunting party. Many had gotten lost in the storm and wandered into another village’s territory. They did not want to light signal fires for fear of confrontation. The hunting there was good and they were bringing back enough food to last through winter.

The next day all the village ran to the edge of the forest to see the hunters return. Nagamo complained of rheum and stayed in the wigwam, but Winona would not miss the homecoming. The hunters swarmed the village, each carrying some bit of game to their loved ones. Winona’s heart clenched, icy and painful. There was her Nagamo, the very picture of youth, trailing a clutch of rabbits for her stewpot. She clutched her stomach and screamed.

“Motion at front door.” It was the middle of the night and my Ring app wouldn’t shut up. I rolled over and checked my phone. There was nothing at the front door. But I could see movement in the background. I zoomed in as much as I could. It was my new neighbor, and she was having sex.

She moved in a day or two before. The old neighbors had curtains, so I didn’t even realize my camera was aimed right at their living room window. I hadn’t even met her, and here I was, watching her getting it on with her husband. It looked like they were having fun. I started feeling like they weren’t the only ones who should have some fun, so I did a little bit of self-care too. I finished right around when they did, closed the app, cleaned up, and went back to sleep.

The next evening, we both happened to take out our garbage bins at the same time. I thought this was a good time to introduce myself. I waved and jogged across the street. “Howdy, neighbor. Welcome to the neighborhood. I’m Bill.”

She flashed me a smile that would’ve made my knees weak even if I didn’t know what she looked like under her chic blouse and tight black jeans. Her teeth were almost shining. “I’m Tiff.”

“Husband makes you take out the bins? I guess he’s not worried about bears, huh?”

“Husband? I’m not married.”

I didn’t know what to say. I’m no prude, obviously, but the intimacy I saw last night really felt like two people who had been together forever. I just smiled. “My bad. Sorry.”

“Oh, it’s no problem. Anyway, nice to meet you.” She turned around and walked back to her house. Either I’m seeing things, or she put a little bit of English on her ass just for me.

“Good night, Tiff,” I called lamely to her round, retreating form.

That night my Ring app woke me up again, as I kind hoped it would. There she was again, but with a different guy this time. It was even better this time.

After it was done, I thought about what I was doing. It felt wrong, but that kind of made it feel better, like I was getting away with something. And she was having sex right in front of a window with no curtains. Anybody driving down the street could just see her. Tiff basically wanted people to watch her.

The next day my Ring app rang right in the middle of the day. I was working from home but wasn’t in a meeting or anything, so I could afford to get excited. But not for long. I opened the app and saw a police officer standing at my front door. I answered it.

The cop asked me if I’d seen a few guys who he said had gone missing from the area recently. I told him I worked from home and didn’t get out much, but he showed me pictures anyway. There were some I didn’t recognize, but two of them were the guys Tiff was with. I was pretty sure of it. I mean, the footage was somewhat grainy, but their faces were unmistakable, and the descriptions roughly matched. I don’t think my surprise showed, and I quickly told him I hadn’t seen them. He thanked me for my time and left. I opened up my Ring app and saw him cross the street and knock on Tiff’s door. I never saw him leave the house.

I couldn’t sleep that night, just lay in bed thinking. Was Tiff doing something to these guys? Besides the obvious, I mean. Or was it just a coincidence? And if she was doing something, was it worth it? It looked worth it.

Soon enough my phone made its familiar alert. I wondered who it would be this time. When I saw that same cop, there wasn’t an ounce of me that felt surprised, like I had known all along it would be him.

This time Tiff was really putting on a show, though for whose benefit I wasn’t sure. It didn’t seem like it was for him, because his face was otherwise engaged the entire time, as far as I could tell, and he couldn’t see anything at all. Maybe it was noisy. I couldn’t look away.

At first I didn’t want to pleasure myself. It was just too weird. But I couldn’t look away. As I watched, it got more and more intense. I just couldn’t resist. I pulled my pants down and went at it. That time, I finished long before she was done with him. I watched on, entranced, until I fell asleep.

The next morning, I checked all the footage from the previous night. The cop never left Tiff’s house. I turned my phone volume up all the way so I wouldn’t miss it.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when my phone told me there was someone at my door. It was Tiff. I hurried to answer it.

“I’ve been thinking about the other day, when we met,” she said, stretching out in my doorway, putting her whole clothed body on display. “Were you checking to see if I was single?”

I gulped.

“Well, I am, if you’re interested.” She was looking at my eyes but talking to my crotch, and we both knew it. “Why don’t you come on over tonight?” She leaned in and kissed me, just a heavy peck on my lips that left me needing more. “See you later,” she winked. Then she turned and walked away, swaying like she was caught in the sexiest breeze.

I’m gonna do it. I don’t know what’ll happen or if I’ll make it out, but I can’t not go. So I’ve been writing this all day, just so that if I don’t make it, someone will know what happened to me. Wish me luck.

Later, Peter Martelli would say that he was suspicious of the old man from the moment he entered the train. His shuffling hunch looked artificial, or somehow put upon, like he was exaggerating his frailty for some reason. Peter would say that to anyone who asked - and people did ask, many of them - but he was never really sure that it was true.

Either way, the man got on the express train at the tail end of a group of three or four strangers. He shambled his way to a seat nearish the door and sat down as the speakers announced that it would be about twenty minutes to the next stop. The doors closed soon after.

The man stood up about a minute later. He clutched at the left side of his chest and yelled, a guttural wordless emission of agony and terror. He bent over double.

Peter had never seen a train car full of people react so quickly. Many people took out their phones. Most put them away when they saw we had no signal because of the tunnel. Some started filming. A few people ran towards the conductor intercom button at the other end of the train. One, sitting about halfway down the train, ran towards the man. She said she was a nurse. Peter simply watched.

When the nurse reached the man, a lot happened quickly. He unbent himself quickly, whanging her in the chin with his head and stunning her. With his left hand he grabbed her shoulder and pulled her in tight to him. With his right hand he pulled a pistol out of his breast pocket and held it at the nurse’s temple.

Unbent, the man no longer seemed so old or infirm. He had a commanding presence, projecting that he was used to being obeyed quickly.

A ripple went through the other passengers. There had been no one who was not paying attention, but Peter could almost see the quality of that attention change as the wave of realization of the gun passed down the train. Everyone slouched a little bit, subconsciously moving away. And then, when their brains processed what they were seeing, they consciously moved away.

In a flash it was only Peter on the same side of the train as the man and the nurse.

“All right everyone,” the man bellowed. “Nobody has to get hurt. I only want two things. One, back away from the intercom, and two, hand over phones, wallets, jewelry, and anything else you’ve got that’s valuable.” He let go of the nurse for a moment and gave her a sack, never removing the gun from her head. “What’s your name, honey?”

“Please don’t kill me! I have a family!” the nurse begged. The man poked her with the barrel of the gun. “Allison! My name is Allison!”

“Thank you, Allison. All right, everyone. My good friend Allie the nurse is going to hold this bag for me. You’re going to come up one by one and put everything in the sack, then go over to that side of the train. I’m going to be looking at all of you and especially at the intercom. If anyone does anything I don’t like, we all get to see what Allison’s brain looks like.”

Careful not to show any expression on his face, Peter smirked inwardly. A few people rushed over to the man, seeming to hope that quick compliance would keep them safe. To a one, they kept their heads down, not looking the man in the eyes. At arms’ length away, with shaking hands, they forked over their valuables, then scurried as far away from the gun as they could.

Once that trickle dried up, the man shook the gun at the crowd. “Who’s next?” he shouted, his voice hoarsening. Peter almost smiled. The man seemed to be under some sort of strain. And he had the easy job. It was just too much.

Seeing no one else moving, Peter got up. He walked slowly towards the man, staring him in the eyes the whole time as though memorizing his face. His gaze was so intense the man broke eye contact first. Peter got close, closer than anyone else had. He could feel the man’s warm quick breath on his face. Peter raised his left arm and shook it, the sleeve falling down a bit to reveal his watch. He raised his right hand to unclasp it.

But his right arm never made it to the watch. Instead, as he brushed close to the gun, he struck. With his right arm, he grabbed the gun and jerked it into the man’s face. He brought his left down in a chop on the man’s deltoid, right at the juncture of shoulder and neck. The man stumbled backwards, bleeding from his nose. He let out some sort of half roar of surprise before all noise dropped out of the world.

The crack of the gun in such close quarters was deafening. Allie’s hearing never recovered; she wasn’t fully deaf, but she needed hearing aids in both ears for the rest of her life. Peter was unfazed, as though this wasn’t the first time he’d been so close to a gunshot. Everyone else in the small train car was stunned and heard ringing for weeks.

The man, of course, never heard anything again, though not because of damage to his ear drums. Rather, his body slumped backwards in a slow fall, missing about half of his forehead. “So that’s what his brains look like,” Peter quipped, but no one heard him due to a combination of the hearing damage and screaming. Peter ejected the bullets from the gun, pocketed them, sat down, and placed the gun on the seat next to him.

Police were waiting at the next stop. Peter tried to slink away, but there was no escape. Not for the hero of the day.

We all know that one morning, after dreaming restlessly, Gregor Samsa awoke to find himself turned into some sort of giant insect, an ungeheures Ungeziefer. Of course he did. But did he, really?

You may think, ‘Of course not. Gregor Samsa is a fictional character.’ In one sense, you would be right. Samsa, as presented in Die Verwandlung, is a creation of Franz Kafka’s intellect. But he is based on a real person who lived in Kafka’s neighborhood while he was growing up in Prague. Stories abounded in the late nineteenth century about Adolf Sedlak, and a young Kafka heard - and was enchanted by - these stories.

Let me set the scene for you. Beginning in roughly the 1870’s, the city of Prague was expanding rapidly. New buildings, both public and private, were erupting seemingly out of the ground. The coming decades brought electrification, modern sewage treatment, nationalism, and a groundswell of Czech identity coming to displace the previous German sentiments. This shifting identification even groped its way into the Jewish quarter, which was also experiencing its own growth and in which Kafka grew up.

Traditional patterns were upended in what felt like a flash. People stopped drinking so much beer and started drinking more coffee, which caused taverns and bars to shutter and take their culture with them, which caused more coffee uptake. While many people embraced this change, a sizable minority felt left behind. Many of these just so happened to be neighbors of Sedlak’s.

Adolf Sedlak was born in the early 1860’s. No record survives of exactly when. He spent his entire human life living in the same three block radius, located approximately a quarter of a kilometer away from where Kafka spent his childhood. We know very little else about Sedlak for certain.

Uncertainly, we know a great deal more. Rumors circulated about him as rumors circulate about all colorful characters in growing cities. While no individual rumor can be trusted, especially now, so long after the fact, the general gist and tide of the rumors are likely to be more or less true. From that we conclude that Sedlak likely had what we now would call an intellectual, learning, or learning disability. Physically he was a giant, the size of a full-grown man before he turned thirteen, and, as an adult, a full head taller than anyone else. Mentally, he seems to never have progressed past late childhood.

Sedlak loved nothing more than entertaining children. He was surprisingly agile for a man his size, and delighted in running, jumping, tumbling, and performing other feats of athleticism for applauding youngsters. While he was never a favorite of the neighborhood’s parents’, he was generally well tolerated for providing entertainment for the kids while their parents inculcated themselves into the rapidly-changing culture of their city.

Children began disappearing. In total, in a thirteen-month period, six children disappeared. In each case, they were seen by many reliable witnesses with Sedlak in the days or even hours leading to their disappearances. None were ever found again. There were no leads.

Two weeks after the final child was last seen, in the middle of the night, a strange howl was heard coming from the building in which Sedlak lived. At the time, there was some suspicion that he had had something to do with the disappearances, but that was far from the majority view. Nevertheless, one of the disappeared children’s fathers (given name: Jan, surname: lost to history) happened to be passing by Sedlak’s building on his walk home from the last remaining tavern in a quarter-kilometer radius. He heard the scream and rushed into the building. He recognized it as Sedlak’s and ran straight for the young man’s door. The door was unlocked.

Jan threw open the door. Inside the flat, he found crawling around hundreds or even thousands of unidentifiable insects. Every surface seemed to be covered with them. Many had the form of beetles or roaches, but with oddly-shaped torsos, and limbs hanging off their bodies at uncanny angles. Jan first thought to stomp some, but as the nearer ones started heading towards the hall, he quickly shut the door and ran. Police were summoned but found the flat mostly empty, except for a handful of corpses of strange insects no one had ever seen before, except presumably Jan.

Rumors quickly swirled that Sedlak had kidnapped the children and used them in some sort of black magic ritual that had gone wrong and turned him and the children into the mysterious insects. More rational minds prevailed, and after a perfunctory investigation turned up nothing, the matter was officially let drop.

The truth was never uncovered. I was kidnapping the children for a magic ritual. It was no black magic, though, but white. The children were suffering, a malaise of the soul. No one seemed able to sense it but me. They needed someone to set them free.

You see, I’m not as idiotic as everyone thought I was. I just noticed from a young age that appearing to be so made my life easier. People let me be. But I watched and I listened and I saw their pain. I wanted to heal them.

Prague was advancing, but there were still people who knew the old ways, the old rituals, and I learned them.

I’m not as stupid as everyone thinks, but it’s not that far off. The ritual went wrong. The children were unwilling to be healed. That made all the difference. Old magic is not like the new technology; it is much less predictable. Their collective wills were stronger than mine and that made all the difference. Rather than heal, the ritual combined and broke down. We now are one and we are many. We are swarm.

The sound was unmistakable. A few melodic bings coming from my laptop. My body responded before my mind, trained from an entire pandemic’s worth of meetings. While I was still rubbing crusties from my eyes, before I realized that it was the middle of the night, I was on my feet, headed towards my desk.

It was only a few steps, but something clicked in my brain before I opened up my laptop. It was dark, and not just because of my blackout curtains. Like, it was dark dark. Middle of the night dark. Nobody would be calling me right now, and I was definitely not in a state to be on camera.

I turned around and went right back to bed. Falling back asleep took longer than I wanted it to, but I did it anyway. Right before I lost consciousness, I had a thought. It was important, I knew that, but it was lost in the haze of sleep and I didn’t remember it when I woke up.

In the morning, the whole thing kind of felt like a dream. I was a little bit more tired than usual, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t slept at all or anything. I did all my morning stuff, and, as I was putting on my mascara, I remembered the thought I had in the middle of the night.

My computer wasn’t supposed to make noise when it was shut.

I finished getting ready, grabbed a bagel, and went to my desk to check out the laptop. I opened it up. Put in my password. Everything seemed normal. I logged on to zoom and didn’t have any missed calls. I just kind of assumed it was a dream, I guess, and moved on.

It happened again that night. Middle of the night, zoom call on my closed laptop. The next morning there were slight bags under my eyes. You’d have to look very close to notice, but I knew they were there. I swabbed at them with foundation and blended it away until even I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.

I couldn’t focus hardly at all that day. I was constantly in meetings, often on zoom, and every time I stared at those little boxes, my mind kept drifting to the middle of the night. It was so bad that my boss called me out in one of the meetings, right before lunch. He suggested I take an early break and come back with my head in the game. Whatever.

That night, I muted my laptop before closing it and going to bed. After tossing and turning for a few minutes, I thought better of things, got up, and just turned it off. Hah. Let’s see it wake me up now.

It did.

My eyes shot open when I heard the familiar ringtone. My body jerked to life before my caught up and my hand was on the edge of my laptop, ready to open it, before I remembered that it wasn’t on and there was no way it could possibly be making the noise that it was very clearly making. I stopped myself, put my computer in another room, and got right back in bed. I didn’t sleep that night, though, just lay there tossing and turning, my body shaking from adrenaline.

I called in sick the next day. Felt it, too. I had barely slept at all the previous night. The skin underneath my eyes was a subtle purple that did not go with my overall tone in the slightest. I was not so secretly glad that I was not going to see anyone at all so I didn’t have to go through my whole makeup routine. I looked like a ghoul. That was okay, because I felt like a ghoul too.

Again, no missed calls on zoom. I emailed customer support and bit my nails waiting for a response. My leg shook until I couldn’t stand it anymore and I paced around my apartment. After some time that was either half an hour or half a lifetime, I just called them. I was bounced around from hold to robot and back again, but I had nothing else to do that day. Finally I connected with an actual living human being. He told me that it wasn’t possible that zoom would receive a call when my computer was off and there not be a record of it. I told him that that was exactly what happened and he said that I must be confused and I could hear his smug, condescending smile even after I hung up the phone.

There was only one thing left to do. I couldn’t uninstall zoom, and even if I could, I didn’t think that would solve it. I obviously couldn’t get rid of my computer altogether. So I had to answer next time. Once I’d made my decision, my whole body relaxed, as though an electrical current had been running through me but no longer was. My shoulders fell what felt like an entire inch. I had no idea if I was actually making the right decision, but I sure felt like it.

Who knew what would happen that night? Not me, certainly, so I lived it up that whole day. I went out for lunch - I never go out for lunch - and I even got ice cream for dessert. Texted all my friends to ask about their pets or kids. I got my nails and hair done and tried a new facewrap I’d heard about on instagram.

After dinner, I poured a bottle of wine into three of my biggest wine glasses and drank it while watching mysteries on Netflix. I did my makeup, making sure every speck of my face was perfect. Then I sat on my bed, computer open, and waited.

My computer had long since gone to sleep, but I hadn’t. I heard those short bings and walked over, ready to meet my ghost.

I knew getting a smart home was a mistake. I knew it even when we were at Best Buy and Ronald the salesman was talking my stupid husband into it. He was all “And this dishwasher has an app so you can run it from your phone whenever you want” and “Imagine preheating the oven on your way home from work” as though Cal ever did anything in the kitchen. I said that none of that made any sense because you still had to physically load the dishes or food in so who cared that you could turn the machines on remotely, but Ronald only stared at me blankly and Cal just patted my arm like I was some kind of imbecilic cat he wanted to comfort.

So that’s how we ended up downgrading (my word, not fucking Ronald’s) every single appliance we owned, from our dishwasher straight through to our thermostat. Every lightbulb was to have its own motion sensor to turn on whenever anyone walked into a room, and a dimmer hooked up to a clock to provide gentler light in the evening, like we’re all just big babies who can’t make any decisions for ourselves or even want something that a goddamn clock doesn’t tell us to want.

And our locks wouldn’t have keys anymore, just an app we can use to remotely lock and unlock them. And another app to control this, and a third to control that. I wouldn’t even be able to interact with my own home anymore without my cell phone being glued to my hands. I never had the courage to ask what happened if my battery died, or I dropped my phone in the toilet (things that have never happened to me but seem to happen to Cal alarmingly frequently).

But the real coup de grace was Ronald selling Cal on the most idiotic thing I could even imagine: signing us up for an AI that linked everything together (even across all three apps!) and learned our habits to better control our lives. I mean, to better suit our purposes. I guess. I don’t even know. When Ronald made the pitch, it was so obviously a bad idea that I was stunned speechless when Cal didn’t dismiss it out of hand, let alone when he agreed!

I had one last hope, that Cal wouldn’t ever get around to installing or setting up any of this pointless domestic garbage. I loved the man, but he could never finish a project for the life of him.

Of course, he was so excited by the idea of turning our entire house into one big toy that he put everything in right away.

At first it was, well, terrible. But, looking back, past Cal’s mangled corpse, less terrible than it is now. The lights turned themselves on and off, somewhat intrusively, but I could get used to it. The oven started picking up on when I usually cooked dinner and turned itself on, even - it felt like especially - when I didn’t want it to. The washing machine and dryer sent me what felt like endless notifications. It seemed like my clothes couldn’t take a tumble without my knowing about it.

Over time, as the AI took more control, it just got worse. Lights would turn on randomly throughout the house because it thought we were going to go into a room, even if we weren’t anywhere nearby. Toilets flushed just because. One night the fridge and freezer opened themselves up and stayed open all night for some reason. We had to throw away every single bit of food. I don’t even know what happened when Daylight Savings Time rolled around, but every single thing in our house turned off at once, like we had a short. There went another fridgeful of food.

This morning, the shit really hit the fan. Cal went to make his breakfast smoothie, but the blender got a little overeager. Somehow Cal got caught up in it, and that made it spin faster and faster until it blended him right up. I wouldn’t believe it if I wasn’t looking right at his body.

I screamed, of course, and tried to call the police or an ambulance or just anyone. One of those stupid apps locked my phone. I couldn’t even make an emergency call. You’re supposed to be able to make those under any circumstances, but no dice. I tried to leave. Every door and every window was locked. They wouldn’t unlock, no matter how many times I slammed on the button on the door app.

So now I’m here, stuck helplessly in my own home with my dead husband just waiting for something to turn on me. “Smart” indeed.

Welcome audiophile! Thank you for picking up this helpful guide to making an audio record using human skin. The benefits of physical media are immense, and the vinyl record industry has never been stronger. However, for the most discerning listeners, there is no material better at highlighting those high highs, low lows, and everything in between, quite like tanned human hide. Unfortunately, the music industry is not as brave as you are, so you are going to have to fend for yourself in this worthy endeavor. But fear not! You have selected the world’s foremost guide on the matter, and you’re in good hands. Just follow these easy steps and you’ll be well on your way to musical nirvana (or Nirvana for you grunge-heads) in no time!

In order to complete this task, you will need to purchase a home vinyl recorder. Many companies make them, and they can easily be found on the Internet. Find whichever one suits your needs best.

Step One: Acquire some human skin. To make a standard-sized LP, you’ll need a twelve-inch diameter circle. For shorter discs, you’ll need less material. Either way, a great deal of shrinkage will occur during the process so it’s best to have a piece no smaller than three feet square. You’ll need one single piece, so no stitching together offcuts! Smooth skin is best, so generally speaking the torso is the place to look. It’ll have to be fresh, so put away your grave-robbing shovel. Instead, book a trip to your local morgue or find a donor yourself. You’ve already shown initiative by reading this guide, so you can do it!

Step Two: Clean the skin. Whether you harvested it from someone currently alive, recently alive, or recently dead, the skin will be absolutely filthy! We’re not just talking about dirt and chemicals, but there will also be hair and blood and other viscera. Scrape down both sides with a clean, sanitized straight razor or fleshing knife. Take long, slow strokes. You don’t have to get everything in one go. How you prepare your fleshcanvas now will determine the maximum quality audio you can achieve later, so do not rush.

Step Three: Now it’s time to begin to preserve your hide. Lay the hide out in your garage. Make sure it’s below the flickering bare lightbulb so you can see well. Generously salt one side to draw out the moisture in the skin. Leave it to dry overnight, then flip it and repeat on the other side.

Step Four: In a large tub in the cobwebby corner of your basement lair, soak the hide to remove the salt. The soakwater should be warm and soapy.

Step Five: Dump the water from the tub and rinse in a mixture of water and calcium hydroxide. Make sure to wear gloves! You don’t want any nasty chemical burns on your precious hands. Much like the guitarist on your record, your hands are your instrument!

Step Six: Drain your bloodstained tub again, and fill it with a slightly acidic solution, with one ounce of sulfuric acid per gallon of water. We’ll leave getting the acid up to you, big guy. Leave your future audio dream in the bath for anywhere from one week to one month, depending on its size.

Step Seven: Let your long pig leather air dry for a day or two. Once it’s fully dry, put it in a two hundred degree preheated oven for about an hour until it’s good and stiff. If you skimp on this step, your record may be wobbly and the final audio quality will suffer.

Step Eight: Cut your record to its final shape and size. This is going to be based on the amount of music you want to put on your record and the machinery you have to do it. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions for the best results.

Step Nine: Enjoy your one-of-a-kind, high quality musical adventure. Every time you listen to your album, you will think about all the steps you went through and the ultimate sacrifice someone else made to bring you this totally unique experience. Like all things, music is better when you have to work for it. Enjoy!

Strange things happened in Jamie’s house. Well, the things themselves were not strange, but rather how frequently they occurred. She often could swear that food disappeared from her pantry or her fridge. Much of the time it was older things, cans of beans or half-wilted salads that she couldn’t be fully certain she had actually bought or hadn’t thrown away.

When she woke up in the morning, sometimes lights would be on that she was pretty sure she had turned off the night before. Sometimes she would turn on the TV and it would be set to a channel she didn’t watch. Chairs moved on their own in the night. Her toilet paper seemed to diminish much faster than she felt she was using it.

One morning she woke up and saw her underwear drawer open. No other drawer was open. Her dresser actually stuck a little bit - old wooden furniture, what are you going to do - so it didn’t open itself. That was the last straw for her. That day she called in sick from work, went to a big box store, and bought some home security cameras. She set them up all around the old house, concentrating in her bedroom and the kitchen.

The next day was Saturday. She had linked the cameras to her phone and all she could manage to do before checking them was to put on her glasses. For most of the night, the cameras showed nothing, their black-and-white visions of her home essentially indistinguishable from still pictures. Then, sometime after 2 a.m., one of the cameras in the hall leading to the bathroom cut out. It didn’t come back on.

Jamie got out of bed and padded down the stairs, her bare feet slapping against the hardwood treads making an echoing hollow sound. When she got to the hallway, she saw the remains of one of the cameras broken up on the floor. She immediately called the police.

In about half an hour, her doorbell rang. The sudden sound made her jump off her couch. She’d been scouring the footage from the night before, looking for anything at all that might point her towards what happened to the camera. Nothing. As far as any other camera showed, nothing at all had happened last night.

She opened the door to a very large man in a striking blue uniform. “Ma’am,” he said. “Can I come in?” He didn’t wait for her to respond, just barreled past her. Jamie dodged out of his way. “So what’s the problem here?”

“I think there’s somebody in my house,” Jamie said. She told him about the missing food and toilet paper, and her underwear drawer, and all the other strange happenings. She wrapped up with the cameras and ushered him to the back hallway, where the corpse of the camera remained undisturbed.

“Mhm,” the man said noncommittally. “The other cameras didn’t pick anything up?” Jamie nodded. “And you put these cameras up yourself?” She nodded again. The officer took a spiral wired notepad out of his back pocket. It looked almost comically small in his huge, meaty hand. He scribbled something Jamie couldn’t see, then turned around to leave.

“That’s all?” Jamie pleaded with him. That couldn’t be all. The police would have to investigate, help her. The officer grunted and kept walking.

At the door, he turned to her. “Ma’am, thank you for calling. We will investigate this and be in touch with you soon.” He turned again and left before Jamie could say anything. She stood in stunned silence for a few minutes.

Jamie didn’t want to be in the house anymore. She couldn’t. Not alone. She quickly packed a bag with a few outfits and toiletries and texted some friends to see if she had a couch she could crash on for a few nights. Before she got any responses, she was in her car driving aimlessly. Hunger hit; she went to a diner. Still nothing from her friends. She thought about calling the police again, but couldn’t think of what good it would do. She went shopping, just to be surrounded by people.

Night was coming, and she still hadn’t heard back from anyone. Jamie spent the night in a hotel. It was an uneventful night, but not restful. Even outside of her house, Jamie was too paranoid to sleep soundly.

She woke up to a text from a friend, Tina. Tina had kids and a husband and not enough room in her house to begin with, so she was so sorry that Jamie couldn’t stay with them, but she did offer to check out Jamie’s house with her. Jamie texted back and arranged to meet Tina in a few hours.

The hours passed agonizingly slowly. Jamie didn’t want to leave the hotel, so she sat on the bed staring at whatever the TV wanted to play until it was time to check out. She drove home and sat in her driveway until Tina came.

As soon as she saw her friend, everything hit all at once. Jamie felt all the fear and frustration and she couldn’t help but weep. Tina held her up, and they just hugged for a while in the driveway. When Jamie’s feelings began to ebb, the two walked to the front door.

The house seemed exactly as Jamie had left it. The two went upstairs to Jamie’s bedroom first. Everything was as it should be, except that every camera that could be reached without being seen by another camera was lying on the floor, destroyed. Jamie alternated between screaming and sobbing. They went through the rest of the house; it was the same everywhere.

Until they got to the kitchen. There, right on the counter, plain as day, was a note. It was scrawled by hand on Jamie’s personal stationery, the good kind that she kept by her computer. On it were five words that chilled Jamie to her core: “You shouldn’t have done that.”

Jacob stretched his hands over his head, reveling in the sound of his shoulders cracking. He’d slept on his neck funny last night, and it had a crick in it. Gripping hand in hand over his head, he looked first left, then right. Ear to shoulder, ear to shoulder. Neck cracking all the while, he grinned. His simple morning routine seemed today somehow more fulfilling than usual. Probably that crick. It’ll go away any moment now.

‘This feels so good,’ he thought, ‘I’ll just do some more.’ He cleared a space on his shag rug and sat down. He tucked his right leg underneath him as far as he could get it and stuck his left leg straight out. He leaned forward to touch his toes, but something didn’t look quite right. His left foot hung somewhat limply, listing towards the side like a drunken newlywed on a honeymoon cruise. And there was something white sticking out of his heel.

No, not out of his heel. It was his heel. The bone was fully outside of his foot. ‘Huh,’ Jacob thought. ‘That wasn’t like that yesterday.’ There was no pain or blood, just ivory-white bone protruding from the flabby, unsupported skin. Jacob tried to wiggle his toes but could not do it. He switched legs.

Reaching down to his right foot, he expected either to see everything as normal, or his bones sticking out of this foot too. He saw neither. In fact, he saw nothing. When he tried to grab his toes, he couldn’t, because they simply weren’t there. He had no idea where his right foot could have gone. It was there when he woke up, he was pretty sure. Just, not now. The stretch still felt good though.

Jacob tried to stand. He didn’t get very far before he came crashing down to his knees, as his one boneless foot and one absent foot could not support his body. This did hurt, though both knees were present and intact on further examination. Already his left knee had a nasty-looking bruise forming.

Most baffling was the suddenness of Jacob’s affliction. His body began its disintegration with missing frames, as though someone had edited out some portion of the film of his life. The very abruptness of it all convinced him that everything would return to normal if he just went about his normal business. And so he dragged himself across the carpet.

Jacob wanted to get a drink of water. But as he reached the edge of the kitchen, he reached out his right arm and could not find purchase on the floor. He turned his head right and saw a raw pink mass in the shape of his arm. He flexed his fingers and watched the thin strands of tendon tense and relax in the same rhythm. He could not see his skin. He expected there to be pain, or at least blood, but it felt more like his skin had turned invisible than that it was gone. He reached over with his other hand to verify, and found that he could touch all of the inner workings of his right arm. His skin was gone.

His left arm looked strange, too thick. It responded slowly to his brain’s direction, as though his nervous system was moving through molasses. He waved it around and the skin seemed to move just a moment behind when it should, like it was a loose-hanging T-shirt. He pinched the hanging skin with his semi-visible right hand. Just as he suspected: there were two layers there. The skin from his right hand had migrated to his left.

It was almost overwhelming just how little pain Jacob felt. He wasn’t numb; he could feel every normal sensation that he expected to in every part of his body, but there really should have been pain. The complete lack of any abnormal sensation despite the abnormal optical input made him tremble. Jacob crawled on.

The linoleum was cold beneath his hands, both skinless and double-skinned. He dragged himself arm over arm, leaving unnoticed traces of his belly skinned on the floor. It wasn’t until he got to the sink that Jacob thought what he would do next. He had no glass, and no way to reach the cupboard where he kept the glasses given that he could not stand. Even if he had a glass, he couldn’t reach the sink.

Jacob tried to pull himself up on the cabinet. It worked, too, at first. He rose slowly, but rise he did, until his body was bent at almost a right angle with his legs on the floor and his torso sticking up. And then he fell back.

Before Jacob even knew what was happening, he felt the back of his head resting squarely on the backs of his thighs. His waist was bent exactly around. He stared up at the ceiling and tried to lift his chest up, like the world’s worst sit-up, but his abs weren’t strong enough. His arms were facing the wrong way to push himself up. He struggled for a moment, but for naught.

A banshee scream made of rage and frustration exploded from Jacob’s throat. There was no pain in the scream as there was no pain in Jacob’s body. But he knew, in that long moment of release, that there was simply nothing he could do to extricate himself from this situation. The cavalry was not coming. His body would continue its slide into disconnection or it wouldn’t, but either way, he would never move from that spot again, folded like a clean shirt in front of his kitchen sink.

And he was right.

The cart rattled over the parking lot. Jane got to her car and opened the trunk. She began unloading the groceries, saving the berries for last. Strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries. There had been a sale, thank goodness. Some days it felt like her toddler would only eat berries and buttered toast. These six pints should last the week. Hopefully.

Having packed up the car, Jane closed the trunk and returned the cart to its corral. She approached her car from the passenger side and sidled to the front, trying to avoid someone else bent on leaving the lot as quickly as possible. She didn’t notice that there was someone in her car.

Jane opened the driver’s side door and got in the car while she checked her watch. She’d have to leave to pick up Lockley in two hours. Just enough time to get home, put away the laundry, and get dinner prepared so she could actually play with her son tonight before bedtime. As she ticked the last item off her mental checklist, she looked up and, startled, saw her passenger.

The first thing Jane noticed about him was that he was dressed head to toe in a black robe that fit so loosely and draped such that she couldn’t tell anything about his body. The second thing she noticed was that he wore a mask that looked like a goat’s head but was colored blood red. What Jane failed to notice was that he was holding a hypodermic syringe, which he did not hesitate to inject into her upper arm. After that, she didn’t notice anything at all.

Jane slowly regained consciousness. The room she was in was dark. She was too sluggish from whatever drugs she was given to move her limbs. As the drugs wore off, she realized that her arm and legs were tightly bound. She was lying on some hard surface, maybe a table. It felt rough underneath her. She wanted to scream but was too drowsy.

All around her were people in those same black robes and goatshead masks. They were chanting something that Jane couldn’t quite understand. It didn’t sound like English. Given the context, she assumed it was Latin, though if she was honest it was just a guess. The figures were splayed out in a semicircle around her. The one directly in front of her was either taller than the others by a good margin or on some sort of raised platform, Jane couldn’t tell. He definitely seemed to be the leader, though, as his voice was louder and he held a nasty-looking, wavy kris.

The leader approached Jane’s feet. As he did, the chanting faded out slowly, as though they were gradually moving farther away. The low light dimmed even further until Jane could see only the one cultist. Underneath his mask there was a shift and Jane imagined that he was smiling.

A voice emanated from the mask, though it did not seem to come from the goat’s mouth. “Good morning, Sacrifice.” Morning? Jane had left the grocery store in the early afternoon. Where was Lockley? “Thank you for your service.”

Jane tried to scream. She couldn’t tell if the noise she made was in the world or just in her head, but it left her entire body raw. The cultist did not react. He simply said a quick phrase in whatever language he had been speaking, held his hand over Jane’s head, and used the dagger to cut a deep line across his palm. He turned his hand over so that the blood dripped onto Jane’s face. It splattered in her eyes and mouth. It singed when it touched her. She blinked and gagged, desperately struggling against her bonds.

“It begins. The end.”

Jane’s heart raced in her chest. All the moisture left her mouth, save that from the cultist's blood. Behind her eyes was only panic.

And then a strange sensation began to course through her. It started in her feet. They were tingling, as though they had been numb, but Jane didn’t think they had been. The tingle seemed to accelerate. She couldn’t quite believe it, but it felt like it was getting faster and faster. Not spreading, not increasing in intensity, just vibrating more excitedly, like a huge magnet had just come nearby.

The tingling soon turned to a pain more exquisite than any she had ever felt before. It felt as though each individual molecule making up every nerve in her legs was tearing itself apart and reknitting into new, horrible combinations. If she had had any scream left inside of her, it would have leaked out. Instead, just her bladder did.

Out of the most perverse curiosity she had ever felt, Jane tilted her head down to look at her legs. Nothing she had known about them was true any longer. Each leg was a terror of interlocking knees, joints that seemed to lead back in on themselves and to nowhere at all. Instead of terminating in feet, the ends of her new legs split off into even more nightmare cycles, down as far as she could see.

The feeling moved from her legs to her torso. She could barely see her stomach from the angle her neck was at, but she sensed similar changes happening all up and down her body. The bindings tying her to the slab slackened, but her limbs would no longer respond to her brain so she did not rise.

Still the feeling continued upwards. She felt her arms bend and crack, rip apart and fuse together, over and over, endlessly, creating loops and fissures. Her neck snapped this way and that, each vertebrae clicking against its neighbor before it disappeared, subsumed within the whole of this new creation.

Jane expected the feeling to keep going to her head. But it didn’t. Her face remained, locked in a never-ending scream of torment.