Dear Ben,
This will be the last thing I ever send you. I don’t even know if you’ll remember who I am by the time you read this. For your sake I hope you don’t. For my sake, and for everything I’ve lost, I had to write you this story. One you’re apart of, and one that never happened. I have to tell you the story of how I disappeared.

I’ve got no idea when this whole thing actually started. There’s simply no way to tell how much of my life slipped away under my nose before I could ever even know. There’s no telling what all it’s taken from me. There’s no telling how long it’s been eating.

Four nights ago. That’s the first time I noticed something missing. Less than a week, and a lifetime of difference. I had a lot back then, a lot to be thankful for. I’d just landed a new IT job, my first actual job out of college. Me and Grace were able to finally move out of the ratty one bedroom place we had to a real house in Cypress. Wyatt got his own room just after his first birthday. Me and you had to wait fifteen years for that. Grace was able to quit her retail job and stay home with Wyatt, which is what she’d always wanted to do. Lord knows she deserved to be able to after all she’d done to help me finish my degree. You helped us move in that weekend, you, Anne and the girls. I remember we sat down under the patio in the back yard talking about all of y’all coming over in the fall to grill and watch football. Things looked so hopeful. But that was a different world than the one we’re living in now.

It was late Tuesday night, a little past nine. Grace had just retreated into our room, starting her nightly fight to rock the baby to sleep. While she was doing that, I was going to head back to the old apartment and grab the last few loads of belongings that needed to be moved. By Tuesday night, most of the boxes were residing in our living room and I’d made almost five trips Monday after work, but there still remained about two car loads left. I remember looking at it all Saturday after you and I had worked all day to move the big stuff, knowing all that was left, and asking myself how so much could fit in our little hole in the wall.

I snuck out as quietly as I could to my car in the garage, being careful not to make a sound and wake Wyatt. He’s a really light sleeper, and I didn’t want to make the already difficult task of getting him to sleep any more of a burden on Grace. I was able to get out of the house without much of a sound, and started my car. It wasn’t until I was halfway down the street when I realized I had forgotten the keys to our old place.

I turned the car around, grateful to have only gone that far. The drive between our apartment and house was a solid twenty minutes, and I’d already made the mistake of going all that way without a key once that weekend. I opened the garage door into the kitchen with just as much caution as I had left with. The house was completely dark, save my car’s low beams shining through the open door into the kitchen. It was just enough to see where the key should have been, a little key ring holder right next to the pantry. I say should, because it wasn’t there. It was missing.

An annoyed sigh left my mouth. I’d left them on that key ring the night before just in case Grace needed to run and grab something urgent. God only knew where they’d traveled to in those 24 hours. The whole reason we only had one key between us in the first place was because of Wyatt’s excessive need to play with them. Even after we decided maybe the house keys weren’t the best toy for an 11 month old to be playing with and got him some play baby keys, he’d only ever be satisfied by the jingle jangle of the real thing.

I looked out at the sea of boxes crowding the living room, hoping I wouldn’t have to go searching through them. Flipping on my phone flashlight I started carefully opening drawers in the kitchen, hoping maybe Grace had used them and just put them back in an odd spot. Her soft lullaby was still filling the silence of our house. It’d still be a good while before I could ask her.

I moved at a snail's pace trying every drawer, trying to be as quiet as possible. I probably could have gone quicker, made a little more noise since we had a much larger buffer of space in the new house, but having lived in such a small apartment for so long and having woken the baby by even the slightest of movements had trained me to be overly hesitant. Every creak felt like a shout, no matter how careful I was.

My search of the drawers proved barren. I started on the living room, trying my best to dodge around our scattered boxed belongings and scan the floor with my flashlight, keeping my eye peeled for a glint of anything shiny. Still nothing. I decided it was probably going to be easiest to just wait until Wyatt was down and I could ask Grace if she’d seen them. If not I could at least flip the lights back on and actually see where I was looking. I turned back around to snake back through the living room to turn off my still running car, when I felt my foot catch against a stack of the boxes and send me stumbling over. What followed was a crash that probably could have been heard three houses down.

As I lay there in the immediate aftermath, draped over now crushed boxes of plates and silverware, I clenched my eyes and thought “Please don’t wake up. Please don’t wake up”

That tense silence didn’t last more than a second, though and I started kicking myself as the shrill cry of my son rang out through the house. He was soon joined in concert by our dog, Spot, howling and barking to no end. The next thing I heard was the twist of a doorknob and flicker of a lightswitch.

Grace’s concern was visible on her face, though it shifted into irritation once she’d seen what I’d done to her plates. She asked if I was ok, and other than my pride, I was. I went ahead and took the opportunity to ask about the keys. She said she hadn’t seen them, that she’d needed to go back to get some stuff for Wyatt’s room and couldn’t find them earlier. Maybe I hadn’t put them back? I knew I had but I wasn’t about to try and blame her for losing them while she was shushing the crying child I’d just woke. I apologized a few times, gave her and Wyatt both a kiss, and tried to make as graceful an escape as I could back to the car.
Flipping the lights on, I carried out a very half-hearted search through my floor board, in-between my seats, and in my center console. I knew for a fact I had put them back on that key ring the night before, and just as I expected, the search came up empty. The last load would have to wait until tomorrow.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, a text from Grace.

“If you can’t find them, just drive over there and see if Michael will let you in. He let me in last year when you were working nights and accidentally took the keys with you.”

“Michael?”

“The security guard.”

Worth a shot. I shut my car door and backed my way out of the garage. Twenty minutes later, I arrived at our old complex. I pulled up to the front gate and threw the car into park. A lone security guard sat stationed in the guard shack. He was an older man, maybe late fifties, and definitely not cut out for night shifts anymore. His feet rested up on the desk in front of him, while his head slumped away from me and towards a propped up iPhone blaring some schlocky old horror movie at max volume. I rolled down my car window and tried to catch his attention. When my voice didn’t work, I tried knocking on the glass, gently at first but that was also ignored. A couple of slams of my fist against the sliding window and he finally jolted awake, brushing his fallen hat out of his face. He slowly rolled his chair over to the window, wearing his displeasure very openly on his face.

“Can I help you?” He cracked through the remnants of his sleep after sliding the glass open. I noticed the yellowed name tag ironed on to his shirt. Michael. A flicker of hope.

I explained the situation as politely as I could, hoping it would help my chances. The look on his face didn’t change. With a huff, Micheal rolled away from the window and towards an ancient relic of a computer sitting on the desk where his feet had been elevated moments earlier.

“Valid ID and unit number.” He said blankly, reaching his arm out towards me. I retrieved my wallet from my pocket and handed over my driver’s license.

“322.” He clacked away on the keyboard for a moment while I waited in awkward silence. All of a sudden, the keys stopped clicking and Michael’s apathetic malaise turned to confusion. He brought the ID close to his face, moving his eyes from the humming screen to my ID and back again.

“You sure about that? 322?”

“Fairly certain. I’ve only lived there for three years.” Michael began to shake his head while scrolling down a list of apartments and names.

“Well I’m not seeing you listed here Mr. Ward, so I’m afraid I can’t help you.” He flipped my drivers license back through the window and onto my lap.

“What do you mean I’m not listed?” I asked, taken aback.

“I mean there’s no Daniel Ward that lives at this complex, and there’s no one listed in 322.” It suddenly dawned on me what must’ve happened.

“Look man, they probably already pulled us from the system because we just moved. We’ve got to be out by Friday, I’ve got like 4 or 5 boxes left in there, just let me come get them and you can get back to your nap.”

“Sorry, not without something to prove you live in that apartment.”

“What about my parking pa-“ I turned to grab the parking pass that hung from the rear view mirror, but stopped mid sentence when I realized it wasn’t there. I put my head in my palm out of frustration. I must’ve already thrown it away without thinking. “Grace.” I snapped my fingers. “Grace Ward, she’s my wife. About a year or so ago you let her and our son into 322 because I had the keys. Does that ring any bells?”

“Buddy, I can’t remember what I had for lunch. Look, if you think there’s been some kind of mix up you’re going to have to just come back when the admin is here. That’s not my job. My job is keeping people who don’t live here out of the gate, and according to the system, you don’t live here. I’m sorry but there’s nothing I can do. Have a good night.” I got the impression he really wasn’t all that sorry, but I saw I wasn’t going to get anywhere and waved him away. He slammed the window back shut and resumed the position I’d found him in. Defeated, I turned the car around and started the trek back to the new house.

By the time I got home, Grace and Wyatt were soundly asleep in the bed. I went through my nightly routine and collapsed down next to them. I was still tired from the move, tired from work, and tired from the night’s ordeal. I was glad to join my wife and son in sleep.

It didn’t last long. I woke up a few hours later and turned to see Grace holding her pillow over her ears. It was Spot. Something had him wound up again, and he was letting half the neighborhood know about it.

I heard her mutter something about “that stupid dog” from under the pillow and how she was going to be pissed if he woke Wyatt. I assured her I’d settle him down and flipped the covers off myself. Maybe a little redemption for earlier that night.
I made my way out the living room sliding glass door to the backyard. He was all the way on the far end of the yard, his snout hugged up right against the fence, barking with all the fury in his body. I called his name twice and gave a whistle, but he didn’t stop. He stayed tensely glued to the slatted boards, flashing his teeth at whatever he saw behind them. I called again, this time scolding him, but he still didn’t come.

Something wasn’t right. He was prone to barking fits but they were never so aggressive, and he usually always minded when I called him. I couldn’t imagine at the time why he was so upset. My eyes looked deep into the thick tangled mess of oak trees and wild brush that backed up to our property line. What did he see?

I began to walk towards him. With every step, the air around me seemed to grow colder. It was mid August, but by the time I reached the fence, I almost thought I could see my breath. I bent over to scoop him up and carry him inside when he whipped his head around and bit me on the hand. I yelled out in pain, and he immediately let go, running across the yard to the house.

“What the hell? You stupid dog!” I brought my hand close to my eyes to try and see the damage in the darkness. It’d broken skin but not by much, mainly it’d just given me a jolt. He’s never so much as growled at me before. I turned my attention back to the dog, now laying on the patio whimpering. At least he wasn’t barking anymore. What could have him so on edge? My eyes returned to the fence. A chill, from the air, from the fear, I’m not sure which, slid its way down my nerves. I took a step away towards the fence. My mind began to run wild. What was I about to see?

I raised myself up and craned my next over the fence to get a good look around. The answer caught my eye almost immediately, with its fluorescent yellow glow reflecting in the light of the moon. A tennis ball, one that had clearly been there a while, almost covered over by vines and thorny brush.

I laughed to myself and walked briskly back to the house, trying to warm myself along the way. Spot was still whining next to the door, evidently still upset at his biting me and my scolding him. I slid the back glass door open and let him in. “It’s ok, bud.”

He trotted quickly to his dog bed in the laundry room folding himself up into a quiet and content ball. Problem solved. After quickly cleaning the small cut Spot had given me, I marched back to my own bed and climbed back in next to Grace. It’d been a long night, and I was more than exhausted. The clock beside our bed read 1:00. Just a few precious hours left to sleep. Not nearly enough.
Sleep didn’t come as easy this second time around. I spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, trying to warm myself back up. That chill was persistent, but eventually exhaustion took over and I fell asleep.

I woke up to an empty bed and the smell of frying bacon wafting into the room. A smile chased away the sour tiredness from my face, and I rolled out of the bed to face the day. Grace was already seated at the table by the time I got dressed and joined her and Wyatt. I gave her a soft kiss on the top of the head as I took my seat.

We spent the morning together eating breakfast, talking about how much we loved the new house, occasionally just looking with joy at our son playing in his little playpen we’d set up amongst all the cluttered boxes in the living room. It’d been a stressful weekend with the move, and all the troubles from the night before hadn’t helped in that regard. But that morning felt like it put it all back into perspective. Life was good. We were young, in love, blessed beyond measure with a beautiful son, a new job, a new home. It was the last time I felt truly happy.

She asked me if I was able to get the rest of our stuff last night. I explained I wasn’t able to find the keys, and Michael had been much less helpful than advertised. I’d planned on going over there on my lunch break, but she offered to get it sorted out. I thanked her for being such a good wife.

“What was Spot barking over last night?” She asked in between bites of toast. “He was going nuts. At least tell me it was worth it.”

“Hardly. A tennis ball.”

“Ugh, I get little enough sleep with that one over there. If he wasn’t so cute, I’d say we get rid of the dog.”

“Yeah, especially since he bit me when I tried to bring him inside.” I held up my hand for her to see.

“Seriously?” She gasped, dropping her fork onto one of the surviving plates from my fall. She grabbed my hand and inspected the small wound he’d inflicted. “What’s wrong with him? Do you think we should take him to a trainer or something?”

“No, he calmed down as soon as I let him inside. Maybe a racoon or something was out there too, maybe spooked him. He’s never done that before.”

“Yeah but he’s around Wyatt all the time.” I saw her face change, obvious confusion sweeping over it in an instant. “Wait, you put him inside last night?” My face probably mirrored hers at this point.

“Uh, yeah. I let him come sleep on the bed in the laundry room. He was fine after that.”

“Did you let him back outside this morning?” Suddenly I understood her perplexed look. I started scanning around the house from the table, wondering where the dog was. I hadn’t had the chance to install the doggy doors yet, so the only way he could get in or out was one of us.

“I uh, assumed you did.” I croaked out. We both looked at each other with the same dumbfounded, unsure look, and stood to our feet.

“Spot!” We began to call, searching the house. I went immediately to the laundry room. What I found, or rather didn’t find, raised a hundred more questions.

I called for Grace and she came running. I pointed out to the empty spot on the floor where his bed had been.

“Are you sure you unpacked it already? When you said that I was wondering, I don’t remember seeing it this morning.”

“Grace, I’m telling you it was right there last night. I saw him lay down in it.”

“Maybe he drug it off to wherever he’s at.” She stammered for an answer.

“And his food bag?” I pointed to the empty spot next to the dryer where the almost full forty pound container of dog food was supposed to be. She had no response to that one, and it would be the first of many things to leave us speechless that morning. As we resumed our search of the house, we’d come to find that almost everything of Spot’s was gone. His food bowl, his toys, his doghouse in the backyard, all missing. Grace and I fell on the couch, too dumbstruck to speak. Our family dog had just vanished into thin air without a trace, along with everything related to him. My mind raced to come up with some kind of rational explanation for it and failed miserably. I’d start trying to piece together some logical possibility, only for it to be rendered ridiculous a few steps down the line. None of them seemed very appealing.

I kept coming back to the idea that there was someone in the house, that someone took him. But that didn’t make any more sense than any other explanation. How and why would they steal all of Spot's things and leave the rest of us completely untouched? His belongings were scattered all over the house and yet there wasn’t a single one missed. They were all gone.

“Oh my God, Danny.” Grace gasped suddenly, looking at her phone. The first day we’d moved in, we’d taken some pictures of the three of us with Spot in them to post on social media. They were gone now, erased like the rest of the evidence we’d ever owned a dog. She kept scrolling up through her camera roll. We’d had him for two years, our phones were full of pictures and videos with our dog. At least they were until that morning. Just like everything else they were all gone. I pulled out my own phone to check. Same story.

“Danny, what’s going on?” Grace asked me, her voice shaky. A pit had formed in my stomach and an oppressive terror lowered itself onto my shoulders. It was fear like I had never known up until that point. The worst part about it was I couldn’t say why. I didn’t know what to be afraid of. Our dog was missing, it wasn’t like someone was pointing a gun to my head. There was just a pervasive sense of wrongness. I thought about the night before, how cold it had been. Why did I suddenly feel so cold sitting on the couch next to Grace? Had it been that freezing all morning?

I kept my eyes on my phone scrolling hopelessly back and forth for something I knew should be there. About that time Wyatt started crying, and it somewhat brought us back to the present moment. I checked the time as Grace rose uneasily from the couch to get him and realized it was already 7:50. My shift began at 8, and I had a good thirty minute commute to work.

“I guess I still need to go to work.” I said it like I was asking for permission. I felt guilty leaving Grace there, alone in that kind of uncertainty. I could see in her face that she was just as scared, maybe moreso, and while I got to run to work and distract myself, she had to stay here in the middle of it and try to wrap her head around whatever this was.

“Yeah. You better get going. We’ll have to figure this all out later.” She obliged, trying to calm the baby and herself at the same time. I put my arm around her and gave her another kiss on the forehead.

“It’s going to be alright.” I realized even in the moment how stupid that sounded. What even was “it” anyway? But it was all I knew to say.

I started towards the door to the garage before I stopped and turned back towards her. “You think you can go to your moms? I don’t really want you to be here.”

“Yeah. Yeah I think I’ll do that.”

I didn’t play the radio or anything on the drive to work that morning. I probably narrowly avoided a couple of wrecks along the way too, my mind far too preoccupied with the events of the morning. There had to be some explanation, and I couldn’t shake that deep chill of unease until I found it. I started to think maybe the problem was us. Had we ever even had a dog named Spot? My memories told me emphatically and concretely yes, but the whole rest of the world this morning shouted no. Maybe Grace and I had both just dreamt him up somehow. Maybe we’d completely lost it.

I got to work about half an hour late that morning. My new boss naturally wanted some reason for this, but I wasn’t about to sit there and tell her about our disappearing dog and that my best guess for what happened was that me and my wife were insane. I just said my alarm didn’t go off and said it wouldn’t happen again. I got a disapproving look, but I couldn’t bring myself to care after the morning I’d had.

The rest of the work day didn’t go much better. I couldn’t bring myself to focus on anything pertaining to work. Instead I spent the morning texting back and forth with Grace. I was so worried about her, even though I didn’t know exactly what I was worried would happen. A few hours into my shift, I got a call from her and excused myself to the break room. She sounded hysterical.

“Danny! She doesn’t remember!” her voice came through frantically as soon as I answered the call.

“What? Who?” I stuttered out.

“My mom. She doesn’t remember Spot!” I felt my stomach drop. We’d gotten the dog from Grace’s mom. He’d been a stray that showed up at her house a few years ago. She’d come to our place more times than I could count, and Spot had been there for every one. There’s no way she couldn’t remember him, and yet Grace assured me she could not. When she told Aria he’d gone missing, she started asking when we had gotten a dog. Absolutely no recollection.

But there was more. Grace had gone to our apartment complex to speak with the admin. She’d become good friends in our time living there with a girl named Lindsey who worked up front. Well, when she approached Lindsey to ask about getting let into 322, she acted like she’d never met Grace in her life. She gave the same reaction Michael had given me the night before. 322 was vacant, and had been for a long time.

“Danny what’s going on?” she was crying now. That was the million dollar question, the only question I had rolling around in my head. I tried to reassure her as best I could, but I needed reassuring myself. She begged for me to come home and be with her and I promised I would.
After we hung up, I remembered what had happened with Spot’s pictures. I opened up my phone, and my fears were confirmed. I don;t know how I hadn’t noticed it before, but it wasn’t just the pictures of Spot missing. It was everything we’d ever taken at our old place. All gone. I all at once felt sick.

That oppressive cloud of fear turned to iron on my shoulders. I immediately called in sick and went straight home, the whole time keeping a picture of Grace and Wyatt on my phone. I spent probably 90% of the drive looking at it instead of the road. I was terrified now, Spot wasn’t an isolated event. He wasn’t even the first. My life was being wiped away, expunged from history and I had no idea how or why or how to stop it. It’s a fear I can’t begin to describe.

I made it home to Grace and sprinted to throw my arms around her and our son. I’ve only cried in front of her a handful of times, but this time it felt more than warranted.

The rest of that day felt both like a blur and endless. We sat at home, paralyzed by horrified and racing minds. Occasionally one of us would speak up to the other but the conversations were always short. A thousand questions rolled through my head. What was next? Could it take people? What if there were things it already took that we can’t remember now? I looked at Wyatt playing innocently on the floor, blissfully unaware at the strange hell that had befallen his parents. Did we have another child? How could we ever know?
Neither of us could manage to eat. Neither of us wanted to sleep. We didn’t know what we would wake up to, or what we would wake up without. I remember just holding Grace in our bed that night, my hands running themselves through her hair, Wyatt asleep on her chest. Both of our eyes were fixed on the ceiling. Neither of us said a word for hours.

At some point, sleep must have taken me unwilling into the night, because the next thing I remember is waking up about 2am or so, my body covered in a cold sweat. Grace and the baby were still snuggled up closely to me. A relief. Even more of a relief was the sound that had woken me. Barking.

I downloaded the matching app because the silence in my apartment had become heavy. You reach a certain point in your twenties where the daily routines of commuting, working, and sleeping blur together into a seamless block of isolated time. I did not have a wide circle of friends to introduce me to anyone new, and the conventional methods of meeting people felt entirely foreign to me. I spent weeks swiping through endless profiles, reading carefully curated biographies, and sending out introductory messages that simply disappeared into the void. I was entirely ready to delete the application and accept my solitude when the notification chimed.

Her profile was incredibly sparse. She had only uploaded two photographs, both poorly lit and slightly out of focus, showing a woman with dark hair pulling a weak smile. Her biography contained no jokes, no lists of hobbies, and no demands for a specific type of partner. It simply stated that she is a former surgeon and was looking for someone understanding, who did not judge, and willing to come over for a quiet evening.

We exchanged a handful of messages. Her responses were incredibly brief, arriving at odd hours of the night. I tried to initiate normal conversations about movies or music, but she consistently steered the dialogue back to the concept of meeting in person. She claimed she suffered from severe social anxiety and could not handle the loud environments of coffee shops or bars. She provided an address situated on the far edges of the suburban sprawl and asked if I could drive out to see her on a Tuesday evening. I knew all the standard safety rules regarding meeting strangers online. I knew you were supposed to meet in a crowded public space during daylight hours. But the overwhelming weight of my own loneliness bypassed my rational survival instincts, so I agreed to go.

The drive took nearly an hour, taking me far away from the illuminated street and deep into a neighborhood that felt forgotten by the rest of the city. The streetlights here were sparse and frequently burned out, casting long, overlapping shadows across the cracked asphalt. The houses were spaced far apart, separated by thick, untended plots of wooded lots. I pulled up to the address she had provided. The property was severely neglected. The front lawn was overgrown with tall, dying weeds, and the gutters hung loosely from the edge of the sloping roof. A single, dim yellow bulb illuminated the concrete slab of the front porch. I turned off my engine, sitting in the dark cab of my car for a long time, listening to the ticking of the cooling metal. A deep, primal sense of unease began to pool in my stomach, urging me to put the car in reverse and drive back to my apartment. I forced myself to ignore the feeling, stepping out into the cold night air and walking up to the door.

I knocked three times. The heavy wooden door opened almost immediately, suggesting she had been standing directly behind it, waiting for me.

She looked significantly worse than her photographs. Her dark hair was tied back in a messy, chaotic knot, and her skin possessed a pale, unhealthy pallor. Deep, bruised circles underscored her eyes, which darted nervously around the empty street behind me before locking onto my face. She wore an oversized, stained grey sweater and loose sweatpants.

"You actually came,"

she spoke. Her voice was raspy, completely lacking the nervous, excited energy you would expect on a first date.

"I said I would,"

I replied, attempting to offer a reassuring smile.

"It is nice to finally meet you."

She did not return the smile. She stepped backward, pulling the door wider to allow me entry. As I stepped over the threshold, a wave of dense, artificially heated air washed over me. The interior of the house was suffocatingly warm.

"I was just making tea,"

she said, quickly closing the heavy door behind me and throwing the deadbolt lock with a loud clack.

"You can come into the back room. The front of the house is too drafty."

I followed her down a narrow, dimly lit hallway. The floorboards creaked heavily under my boots. The walls were entirely bare, lacking any framed pictures, mirrors, or decorative elements. The house felt entirely unlived in.

She stopped in front of a closed door at the end of the hallway, resting her hand on the brass knob. She turned her head to look at me.

"You are in good shape,"

she noted softly.

"You look healthy. That is very important."

Before I could ask what she meant, she pushed the door open and stepped aside, gesturing for me to enter.

I walked into the room. The space was massive, appearing to be an expanded living area that had been entirely cleared of furniture. Bright, blinding halogen work lights were suspended from the ceiling, casting a harsh, shadowless glare across the entire space. The floor was covered in heavy, clear plastic sheeting, taped securely against the baseboards.

I stopped walking. My brain simply refused to process the visual information entering my optic nerves.

Nailed directly into the heavy wooden studs of the far wall were three men.

They were stripped down to their undergarments, their arms spread wide, secured to the wall by massive, thick iron bolts driven brutally through the palms of their hands and the joints of their shoulders. Their heads slumped forward against their chests, their breathing shallow, rattling, and wet. Thick, dark trails of dried blood stained the peeling wallpaper beneath their arms.

But the horror of their crucifixion was entirely eclipsed by the state of their lower bodies.

Their legs had been surgically amputated entirely at the mid-thigh. Thick, crude black sutures wrapped around the severed stumps, hastily binding the pale human flesh to limbs that completely defied biology. Grafted onto the ragged ends of their human thighs were massive, decaying, animalistic legs. The grafted appendages were covered in thick, matted brown fur, ending in long, hooked claws that scraped against the plastic sheeting on the floor. The unnatural tissue was actively rotting, weeping dark fluids and emitting the foul stench of decay. The human tissue surrounding the grafts was inflamed, swollen with severe infection.

I took a stumbling step backward, a scream catching in the back of my throat, strangling me. I turned blindly to run back down the hallway, but she was already standing directly behind me.

She held a sharp surgical scalpel in her right hand; the blade pointed steadily at my abdomen.

"Do not make a sound,"

she ordered. Her voice was no longer raspy or nervous. "If you scream, I will severe your femoral artery right here in the hallway, and you will bleed to death before you can reach the front door. Walk to the center of the room."

I raised my hands instinctively, my entire body trembling violently as I backed away from the blade, moving deeper into the nightmare.

"What are you doing to them?"

I gasped, entirely unable to tear my eyes away from the crucified men and their rotting, fur-covered limbs.

"I am trying to save him,"

she replied calmly, stepping fully into the room and locking the door behind her.

She gestured with her free hand toward the dark, recessed corner of the room, an area situated entirely outside the harsh glare of the halogen lamps.

I turned my head. Chained securely to a massive, iron radiator pipe was a creature that belonged entirely to the darkest depths of human mythology.

It was a towering, emaciated monstrosity, hunched over on the plastic sheeting. Its grey, stretched skin was pulled incredibly tight over its protruding ribs and elongated spine. The skull was elongated, resembling a starved, rotting deer, possessing sunken, glowing eyes and a jaw full of jagged, broken teeth. Thick patches of coarse brown fur clung sporadically to its shoulders and back.

The creature was heavily mutilated. It was missing its left arm entirely, the joint ending in a ragged, rotting tear. Both of its lower legs had been brutally severed, replaced by fresh, bleeding stumps. The creature thrashed aggressively against the heavy iron chains binding its neck to the radiator, snapping its jaws at the empty air, completely feral and starved.

"Sit on the stool,"

she commanded, pointing the scalpel toward a metal medical stool positioned near a rolling stainless-steel tray.

I obeyed, my legs entirely failing me, collapsing onto the hard metal surface.

She walked over to a metal cabinet, keeping the scalpel leveled at me, and pulled out a set of folded blue surgical scrubs. She pulled the garments methodically over her sweatpants and sweater, slipping a pair of latex gloves over her hands. She grabbed a plastic clipboard resting on the rolling tray and tossed it onto my lap.

"Look at the charts,"

she instructed.

"You need to understand the process. You need to understand why you are here. You are the perfect candidate. You are much healthier than the others on the wall."

I looked down at the clipboard with shaking hands. The pages were filled with meticulous, structured medical data. There were columns recording heart rates, blood pressure, detailed surgical incision angles, and massive dosages of immunosuppressant drugs. The notes detailed the exact hours of surgical amputation, the specific grafting procedures, and the inevitable, rapid timelines of tissue necrosis and biological rejection.

"You are attaching those animal legs to human beings,"

I whispered, the sheer insanity of the medical charts causing my vision to blur.

"I am grafting his limbs onto human hosts,"

she corrected me, pointing the scalpel toward the thrashing, chained monstrosity in the corner.

"I am trying to find a compatible genetic and immunological match. The men on the wall failed. Their bodies rejected his tissue, so the necrosis spreads too fast. I need someone strong enough to accept the graft without rotting."

"Why?"

I pleaded, tears of panic spilling down my face.

"What is that thing?"

She stopped sorting through the surgical instruments on the tray. She looked at the chained creature, her cold eyes softening into a look of profound, devastating sorrow.

"He was my boyfriend,"

she said softly.

She walked closer to the creature, remaining just outside the reach of its snapping jaws.

"We went camping together last autumn,"

she began, her voice taking on a distant, haunted quality as she stared at the rotting monster.

"We hiked deep into the state park, far off the marked trails. We wanted to be completely alone. The woods were supposed to be quiet. But they found us on the second night. We were sleeping in the tent. I heard the nylon fabric tear, and before I could even sit up, they dragged him screaming into the dark."

She turned to look at me, her grip tightening on the scalpel.

"There were two of them,"

she continued.

"I grabbed his hunting knife and ran into the woods after them. I tracked the blood trail for miles. I tracked them all the way to a massive cave system hidden in the foothills, then crawled into the rocks and hid in the dark, watching them."

She took a slow, deep breath.

"They were monsters in the woods, tearing through the trees on animal legs. But when they reached the safety of the cave, I watched their bones break, their skin fold and shift, and them actively shape-shift back into normal, human forms. They use the human faces to walk into the towns, to lure people out, and then they shift back to hunt."

She pointed the scalpel directly at my chest.

"I waited in the dark until they were completely human," she said, a dark, vindictive pride bleeding into her tone.

"I waited until they were vulnerable, and then I drove the hunting knife through their throats. I killed them both while they slept in the dirt."

I stared at her, utterly paralyzed by the horrific confession.

"I found him in the back of the cave,"

she whispered, looking back at the chained creature.

"He was in terrible shape. They had already started feeding on him. They had torn chunks of flesh from his legs and his arm. I carried him out of the woods, and brought him back here to fix him. I patched his wounds, gave him antibiotics, did everything I could."

She let out a ragged, desperate sob.

"But the saliva, the bites, whatever venom they carry in their teeth... it was already in his bloodstream. The infection took hold. I watched the man I love stretch and break. I watched the fur grow out of his skin, and remained beside him as his mind fade away until he became one of them."

The creature on the chains roared, a terrifying, echoing sound that vibrated deeply in my chest.

"But he is stuck,"

she explained frantically, pacing in front of the metal tray.

"For some reason, he cannot shape-shift back. He cannot turn back into the man I love. I think the physical injuries they inflicted on him damaged his biological ability to initiate the shift. The trauma locked him in this form."

She looked at me, her eyes wide with a manic, unyielding obsession.

"That is why I need the match,"

she declared.

"If I can find a human host that successfully integrates with his rotting limbs, it proves the tissue can stabilize. Once I find the perfect candidate, I will reverse the procedure. I will amputate your human legs, and I will surgically graft your healthy, human tissue directly onto his body. I believe the influx of matched, healthy human biology will trigger the shape-shifting mechanism. It will give his body the blueprint to become human eventually. I just want my lover back."

The sheer, monumental insanity of her plan crashed over me.

She turned away from me, reaching down to the stainless-steel tray. She set the scalpel down and picked up a massive medical syringe attached to a thick glass vial filled with a cloudy, yellow liquid.

"The men on the wall were weak,"

she said, tapping the needle to clear the air bubbles. "They were desperate, pathetic men who let me bring them here without asking any questions. But you look resilient. You look like you have the biology to survive the integration. Roll up your sleeve. This sedative is going to burn, but you need to be unconscious when I start the bone saw."

She began to walk toward me, the needle gleaming under the harsh halogen lights.

The sheer terror threatening to shut my brain down completely morphed into a sudden, explosive surge of adrenaline. I knew with absolute, crystal clarity that if that needle pierced my skin, I would wake up nailed to the wooden studs, watching my own legs rot away.

I did not speak, I refused to plead for my life.

As she closed the distance, stepping within arm's reach, I threw my entire body weight to the side, rolling violently off the metal stool.

She lunged forward, thrusting the syringe toward my neck, but the needle only caught the fabric of my shirt, tearing through the cotton as I hit the plastic-covered floor.

I scrambled to my hands and knees, my boots slipping frantically on the slick plastic sheeting. I grabbed the heavy wooden frame of a discarded dining chair sitting near the edge of the room.

She pivoted gracefully, dropping the empty syringe and snatching the sharp surgical scalpel off the rolling tray. She charged at me, bringing the blade down in a vicious, sweeping arc.

I swung the heavy wooden chair upward, using the thick legs as a desperate shield. The sharp scalpel blade sank deep into the wood, burying itself in the frame and jerking her arm forward.

Before she could pull the blade free, I stepped forward, gripping the back of the chair tightly, and drove the heavy wooden mass directly into her chest with every ounce of physical strength I possessed.

The impact lifted her entirely off her feet. She flew backward, the breath rushing out of her lungs in a harsh gasp, and crashed violently onto the floor.

She slid across the slick plastic sheeting, her body coming to a dead halt right next to the heavy iron radiator.

She had fallen directly into the striking range of the chains.

The chained creature lunged with terrifying speed. The heavy iron chains pulled taut, groaning under the immense strain, but the creature had the reach. It dropped its elongated, skull-like head, sinking its jagged, broken teeth deeply into the soft tissue of her shoulder and neck.

She released a horrifying, gargling scream, her hands flying up to push the rotting monster away from her throat. The creature thrashed violently, its jaws locked tightly, tearing brutally through her surgical scrubs and into the muscle beneath.

I did not stay to watch the outcome of the struggle.

I abandoned the chair, turned away from the bloodbath, and sprinted toward the far end of the room. The exterior window was securely locked and painted shut. I did not slow down. I raised my arms, shielding my face, and dove headfirst directly through the thick glass pane.

The glass shattered around me, slicing through my jacket and my arms as I tumbled out into the overgrown weeds of the side yard. I hit the wet dirt hard, rolling frantically to absorb the impact, and immediately scrambled to my feet.

I bolted across the overgrown lawn, my boots slipping on the wet grass as the horrifying sounds of the struggle echoed loudly from the broken window behind me. I did not look back. I reached my car, threw myself into the driver's seat, started the engine with shaking hands, and floored the accelerator, tearing out of the dark neighborhood at reckless speeds.

I drove for thirty minutes until I reached a brightly lit gas station. I locked the car doors, pulled my phone from my pocket, and dialed emergency services. I reported the address anonymously, frantically stating that I had heard screaming and breaking glass, and then I threw the phone into a nearby storm drain.

I spent the rest of the night sitting in a cheap motel room, keeping the lights burning bright, meticulously cleaning the superficial glass cuts on my arms, waiting for the police sirens to pass.

The following afternoon, I sat in the motel room, watching the local news broadcasts on the small television.

The breaking news report confirmed that the county police had raided the isolated house. The news anchor, looking visibly shaken, reported that authorities had uncovered a massive, horrific crime scene. They found the bodies of three missing men extensively mutilated inside the home.

The anchor also stated that animal control had been called to the scene to neutralize a highly aggressive, diseased animal found chained inside the residence. The authorities classified the creature to the public as a severely starved, mange-ridden bear that had wandered into the home and attacked the occupants.

But the final detail of the broadcast completely froze the blood in my veins.

The police had scoured the entire property, sweeping the house and the surrounding wooded lots. They found the victims. They found the creature. But they found absolutely no trace of the female homeowner. She was officially listed as missing, presumed to have fled the scene before the authorities arrived.

I turned off the television, sitting in silence, the terrifying realization slowly assembling itself in my mind.

I remembered watching the feral creature drop its head and sink its jagged teeth deep into her neck. I watched the blood pour out over her surgical scrubs.

If her insane, desperate story was actually true... if the venom in the saliva and the bite of those creatures carried the biological infection...

If the bite passes the curse, she now has the infection. And because her body is whole, she possesses the full, unobstructed ability to shape-shift.

I am writing this post from a new apartment, hundreds of miles away from that city. I have changed my phone number, deleted every social media account I owned, and I keep the heavy deadbolts locked at all times.

But the fear never leaves me. I walk down the crowded streets, looking at the faces of the people passing by me. I look at the baristas handing me coffee, the cashiers at the grocery store, the people standing next to me in the elevator.

She knows what I look like, and someone this crazy will not leave revenge behind, and now, she could be absolutely anyone.

 

After my friend disappeared, we searched his apartment. It had been stripped bare—nothing remained except a single, loosely bound manuscript placed precisely in the center of the floor.

一The Publisher 

Preface

 
This is not a book, but rather a collection of news clippings, tapes, articles, diary entries, and other related materials. These materials have been gathered and sifted through over the span of a decade with the intent of uncovering the truth about the ________. 

一R.Hayes

Introduction

“ἀλλὰ γυνὴ χείρεσσι πίθου μέγα πῶμ᾽ ἀφελοῦσα
ἐσκέδασ᾽· ἀνθρώποισι δ᾽ ἐμήσατο κήδεα λυγρά.” 

There are things that ought to remain buried. Things better left to rot beneath the withering hand of time. Truths consigned to paper, once unearthed, bring not enlightenment, but ruin. So if there existed the slightest thread of mercy within this world, these pages should have been consigned to flame long before they reached the hands of another.

Yet I could not bring myself to do it.

I have tried before. More times than I care to admit. I've stood above open flames, the embers dancing in the wind as I grasped a whole section of the records with shaking hands. Only to recoil at the last moment before the pages turned to ash. One winter, I dragged every single last item pertaining to this investigation into the alley behind my apartment building. I stood there staring for what must have been at least an hour. In the end, I brought everything back inside. 

Even now, years later, I still cannot explain fully why. What compelled me to continue with my pursuit?  Curiosity is, I think, humanity’s oldest sin. Or perhaps there is something within these pages that refuses to be forgotten. 

I have spent the better part of a decade organizing and archiving what you hold in your hands now. What began as a simple editing job slowly metastasized into something else entirely. This is not an investigation in the conventional sense. It is the culmination of fragmented accounts, many of which were half-burned, waterlogged, or otherwise rendered nearly illegible before they ever reached me. 

I have tried to preserve the integrity of the material. Yet I believe such a task has become impossible long ago. 

It began with an email. At that time, I was employed as a freelance editor. I primarily worked with academic writing, articles, field reports, and investigative journalism. Most of my clients were forgettable, just a name tied to a document. They came and passed like the changing of the seasons. Nothing more than a list of deadlines and revisions. That vanished from my life at the moment of completion.

Julian Mercer was one such client. He was an investigative journalist by trade with a knack for going to places where the world had turned a blind eye to. Always in some sort of war-torn country or out in the middle of nowhere in some remote village. He seemed almost attracted to those places in hindsight.

His messages were always brief, almost clinical. Purely professional, not even the slightest hint of personality bleeding through.  I always found that admirable. It was kind of refreshing compared to some of the people I had to deal with.  At least it made my job easier. We always spoke through email, he said he preferred it. Only ever used it to send me his work. We never met in person or even called.

The first email arrived on February 16th, 2011, or at least that's how I remember it now.  It was past midnight, and I was unable to sleep; the rain was beating at the window of my apartment for hours. While the pipes groaned and hummed. It made the idea of rest almost impossible. I was halfway through reading a dissertation on post-Soviet economic reconstruction when my phone notified me of a new message.

It was an email, and I still think about what might have happened if I had simply ignored it. Maybe I could have continued to exist within the lie, living blissfully unaware. But instead, I opened it. It stated 

 To R.Hayes,

These documents need to be looked over and reviewed. I haven't a single moment to waste. I must further inquire into the depths of my friend Elias' disappearance. Therefore, I need the assistance of another to organize the accumulated information I have acquired so far.

Attached:

• Police report (Callaway)
• Local interview 1 (audio transcription available)
• Retrieved photographs
• Constructed timeline
• Research notes (partial corruption detected)
• Statement excerpts
• Recovered dive recordings — catacombs
• Diary entry (fragmented/incomplete)

One more thing;

The accompanying files should be delivered shortly

 一 From J.Mercer

At that time, there was nothing remarkable about it. Strange certainly, but remarkable no. In my eyes, it was nothing more than a regular work email. I had edited enough fringe investigations over the years to become desensitized to eccentricity. Hyperfocused cases like this happen all the time. Ranging from cults, killers, missing persons, local disappearances, and weird rituals deep in the woods. Yet the more you dig, the more you realize how mundane those things truly are. I believed that this would be no different.

I pressed play on that first video, and it was a black screen with static washing over the video, only accompanied by sound. You could hear the soft falling of the rain and the slight sound of the wind in the background. It was 17 hours long, and it stayed like that until exactly 15 hours, 12 minutes, and 11 seconds,  in which a low metallic screeching sound could be heard. Then 15 seconds of silence, even the rain had stopped. Then a noise. At first, I mistook it for static, but the more I listened, the more it resembled breathing. As if something had dragged itself into the room. I remember replaying that section well past three in the morning. 

The boxes arrived 3 days later. It was a total of 7 unmarked boxes that were delivered without a return address. My landlord left them outside my apartment sometime around noon while I was asleep. I remember waking to the sound of him banging against the hallway radiator with a wrench while shouting that my packages were blocking the stairs again. 

The amount of materials he had sent me were overwhelming. Inside were hundreds upon hundreds of pages of burned documents fused at the edges,  Cassette tapes labeled in hurried handwriting, Hand-drawn maps of tunnel systems, Fragments of interview transcripts, Newspaper clippings dating back decades, and journals. The journals were extensive…

Some belonged to Mercer personally, while others appeared far older. Some segments were completely illegible, either from water damage or purposeful mutilation. Entire paragraphs were scratched so vigorously that the pen had torn through the very paper itself. Only to be rewritten. While other pages lay barren with nothing but phrases repeated over and over again til the ink bled through the page.

I told myself I would spend no more than 2 weeks on this.

It ended up taking me almost 2 months to get through it all. 2 whole months of endlessly scouring through those boxes upon boxes filled with nonsensical writing that seemed to give way under their own weight.  However, I seemed to get lost for hours on end within those pages. The way in which everything was so disjointed yet deeply connected. 

I still had a job to do, so I finished organizing it, giving feedback, and making edits. Trying my best to organize these writings to the best of my ability. And I sent it back over to him via email. I was ready to forget about this, honestly, weird experience.

But it wasn't that simple. I tried to exist within the mundanity of my own life. Finding the ability to be content within my own routine. Yet those endless boxes of unfolding stories created labyrinths in my mind that I was unable to escape. The thought of what truths they might hold lingered with me like the smell of smoke that sticks to your skin long after the last ember burns out. I tried to contain such urges, my curiosity pulling at the seams of my very being. 

Once again, I was tempted. Another delivery of those same unmarked boxes accompanied by another email. I knew even then it was probably in my best interest to leave whatever was buried in those boxes there. But I did no such thing. I explored the crevices of every word that was given to me. Hanging on to every detail as if it were scripture. Determined to uncover the truth that lies here.

"De hominis prima inobedientia, fructu
Illius vetitae arboris, cujus mortalis gustus
Attulit mortem in mundum, omnesque nostras miserias." 

(repeated in Mercer’s recovered notes without attribution. His underlining) 

(Check Appendix 1 for the email) 

It was even more than last time—documents that referred to other text buried even deeper in a pile of information that itself was an interpretation of videos that were half-broken or destroyed. It was as if I was staring into an abyss, and it was looking upon me. Ready to swallow me whole. 

Those old, worn tapes that contained so much within their tiny frames. Their contents are better lost in the winds of time. Some of those videos were days long, filled with twisted, never-ending caverns. Tunnel after tunnel as they ventured further. The only sounds to be heard were the slow and drawn-out breathing of the recorder on the other side and the groans that echoed from the slowly shifting wall.

Sometimes it would be hours of just walking in pure darkness, only then, as you stare even more intently at the screen, you begin to see it. The never-ending shifting within the darkness. That's not even mentioning the times where the silence was instead filled with a never-ending monologue that lasted for hours. The tapes were suffocating, claustrophobic in their presentation, only met by temporary relief when those binding halls would open up into larger rooms. Yet I was still enraptured by what lay within those halls.
 
So, same as before, I studied, organized, and took notes. As time bled into words. It took me almost a year and a half this time. To conquer that mountain of paper. Months of non-stop work as I slaved away. Only interrupted by the arrival of more boxes. First, every couple of weeks. Then once a week. Then daily. I spent all that time interpreting half-lost records just to get a fraction of the simplicity of understanding. Buried in the depths of those boxes. Yet all that time and effort passed by like the changing of leaves on the cusp of autumn. In that time, what semblance of life I had had seemed to slip through my fingertips. I became obsessed with finishing the analysis of these records. Only after finishing did I return to my senses, untethered by whatever lay within those pages and endless halls.

I sent over the organized version back to him with an attached message. That said, he was deeply disturbed and should probably seek psychological help before publishing this. After which, without even waiting for a response, I blocked him. I didn't even want but one moment that might allow my curiosity to pull me back in.  

As relief began to wash over me, I heard the slight ping of my phone. And when I went to check, it was a single message that read  “It's gotten you too.” I blocked the number without question. I spent the rest of the day sitting there.

For almost 3 years, I ignored the constant and quite pestering curiosity. That festered in me like a sickness bold in its symptoms. The truth was that no amount of distraction could fully calm my weary spirit.  I began to drift through the years. It was deafening for me. I was a lot of things, but content surely wasn't one of the words I'd use. There were probably better ways to cope with these feelings, yet I'd just ignore them. 

 I thought maybe if I discussed what I had seen. And what had transpired over those years. It would bring me solace or some form of peace. Yet it only brought more questions. I compiled his work into something semi-understandable, a first draft of sorts, and shared it with a couple of friends. All of them just said they felt uneasy reading it. Yet they fervently flip through the pages. Some were in such a rush to let their eyes gaze on the next line of text that, in their quickness, they accidentally tore entire sections from the binding. Each interpreted it differently, holding to their own version of truth. 

We must have talked for days about our interpretations and what we thought it all meant, never agreeing or coming to any real conclusion. Our discussion ran on, and on, with no truth to be found, simply questions answered only to form new ones.

There was only one agreed-upon fact, that whatever this was. There was something wrong with it. Something rotten on every page. After a while, my friends refused to talk about it. Saying that it did things to them, and they would rather stay far away from those records. Even after all of that, that sense of compulsion remained. 

Somewhere along those lines is where the nightmares began. The whispers in the back of my mind had become a raging storm of screams. They demanded action to know what lies behind the next page. They screamed from dawn to dusk. From waking hours to sleeping one. There was not a moment of rest for me. I had lost my very grip on my own reality. I no longer understood where the nightmare ended.

It got to a point where I began to dread sleep. Sleep became an old friend whose company I had long since lost. the idea of normal life, but a distant memory to be appreciated for its simplicity. Whatever connection I had in my life had long since passed me by. I have been left barren in my own existence. 

And that's when the phone call came. From a lady who said I was listed as an emergency contact for a J Mercer. She was informing me that Mercer had vanished. I did not respond immediately. I stood there, the phone still resting softly in my hand. 

The official reports stated that Julian Mercer had disappeared sometime during the winter of 2017. They never gave an exact date.

A body was never found.

The official explanation suggested accidental death somewhere within the catacombs. A fall, disorientation, or anything simple enough for paperwork to digest cleanly. But after everything I had read by then, simplicity no longer felt believable. 

I received that call three days after his disappearance was formally reported. Not from the police. From the landlord. The landlord sounded exhausted. Irritated more than concerned. He spoke quickly, mumbling through what I initially assumed was a rehearsed explanation regarding abandoned property and overdue payments. I remember only fragments of the conversation clearly.

There was water leaking through the ceiling. The neighbors had complained repeatedly about noise during the late hours of the night. Several rooms smelled strongly of mildew and seawater despite being nowhere near the harbor. And then almost absentmindedly, the landlord mentioned the walls.

He said Mercer had covered nearly every surface of the apartment in paper.

At first, I assumed exaggeration.

Until he emailed me the photographs.

I wish he hadn’t.

Even now, I struggle to look at them for long periods of time.

The apartment no longer resembled a living space. It looked more akin to the aftermath of prolonged captivity. Every inch of wall space had been consumed by overlapping layers of paper and annotations. Maps pinned atop photographs. Journal excerpts taped beside medical records. Newspaper clippings connected through frantic spirals of red ink. Certain sections had been scratched over so violently that the drywall itself was exposed beneath. The landlord informed me that local authorities intended to dispose of most of the material due to water damage and “unsanitary conditions.” 

Without fully understanding why, I booked passage to the island that same night. I told myself it was a professional obligation. Someone needed to preserve Mercer’s work before it vanished entirely. But if I am to be truthful, and after everything that has happened, truth may be the only thing I have left. I think some part of me had already made the decision long before then.

I needed to know how the story ended. That desire eclipsed every rational instinct I possessed. It eclipsed Fear. Even self-preservation. By then, curiosity no longer felt human. 

The voyage to the island lasted approximately eleven hours. I spent most of it contemplating what I'd find when I arrived. while the ferry groaned against violent winter waves outside. Sleep evaded me entirely during the crossing. Every time exhaustion threatened to drag me unconscious, I would hear something shifting within the hull beneath my cabin floorboards. Each time I investigated, nothing was there.

The island itself did not appear on the horizon so much as emerge gradually from the fog. Dark cliffs and blackened waters. A shoreline littered with crooked buildings pressed tightly together beneath looming hillsides. From a distance, the town resembled something preserved accidentally from another century. Narrow streets winding between towering stone structures whose architecture seemed oddly inconsistent even from afar. Certain buildings appeared connected where they should not have been. Windows were misaligned between floors. Rooflines bending at impossible angles against the mist.

I remember my first thought upon seeing it.

It looked wrong.

The townspeople unsettled me even more. Most avoided eye contact entirely. Those few who did speak answered questions with an almost rehearsed vagueness that bordered upon hostility. Several denied knowing Mercer altogether despite appearing repeatedly throughout his interview transcripts. Others claimed not to remember significant events documented extensively within the records.

One elderly fisherman insisted Mercer had never arrived on the island at all.

When I informed him I possessed photographs proving otherwise, the old man stared at me for several seconds before replying:

“Then why have I never seen him?”

At the time, I dismissed the comment entirely.

Mercer’s apartment was located above an abandoned tailor shop near the northern edge of town. The building itself leaned slightly sideways beneath decades of ocean weathering, its upper floors creaking constantly against the wind as though the structure resented remaining upright.

The landlord refused to enter alongside me. He handed me the key while standing nearly halfway down the street. I remember noticing then that several windows facing Mercer’s apartment had been boarded shut from the inside.

I asked why. The landlord only shrugged. “People kept complaining about the lights,” he said. The smell hit me almost immediately upon opening the door. Mildew. Saltwater. Rotting paper.

The entire apartment felt damp despite the radiators still functioning. Water stains crawled across the ceilings like spreading veins while towers of documents consumed nearly every available surface. The photographs he’d sent me had not exaggerated anything. If anything, they had failed to capture the sheer scale of it.

Mercer had transformed the apartment into an archive. Or perhaps a shrine. I spent nearly six hours that first night simply walking through the rooms, attempting to comprehend the volume of material surrounding me. Hundreds of tapes. Thousands of pages. Photographs stacked knee-high across entire sections of the floor. Several maps of the island are covered almost entirely in annotations. And at the center of the largest room, a massive hand-drawn diagram stretched across the wall. The catacombs. Or rather, Mercer’s interpretation of them.

The tunnels spiraled downward endlessly in overlapping layers of charcoal and ink until eventually the lines became so dense near the bottom that the structure resembled less a map and more a wound carved directly into the wall itself.

At the very center of it all, he had written one sentence.

Not in frantic handwriting.

Not chaotically.

Carefully.

Deliberately.

As though he wished those words above all else to survive.

THEY ARE NOT BELOW THE ISLAND.

The moment I read that sentence, something inside me shifted. Even now, I struggle to explain why. Perhaps because until then, despite everything, some part of me still believed this investigation possessed a rational endpoint. That eventually the contradictions would align. The disappearances would resolve. The tunnels would become understandable.

But standing there alone inside Mercer’s apartment, staring at those words surrounded by walls of unraveling thought, I felt for the very first time the overwhelming certainty that whatever I had involved myself in extended far beyond a missing journalist or abandoned orphanage.

And worse still, that Julian Mercer had understood this long before he vanished. So once again, I threw myself back into the records this time hell-bent on deciphering, organizing, and publishing for the world to see. A complete telling of what transpired on that island.

For years, I worked inside the walls of that apartment. I dedicated myself solely to the understanding of those records, and when I opened my email again. There are 100s of new emails spanning the last couple of years until radio silence. It was as if Mercer had known I would eventually return. As only a couple of weeks after I began working on the records again. I found a room that was filled with the same type of unmarked boxes he would send me mountains of. They were filled to the brim with new information, something to quell this dreadful curiosity that had consumed me. 

So I threw myself into the records. It had become that which gave me meaning. This is the accumulation of everything I am and have to give. This, which you are reading, is the second draft and will be the last. As I pray, this will never see the light of day. So no soul will be cursed to bear witness to what is to unfold.

I am no longer certain about where the narrative concludes, or if it ever truly does. Even after I have moved on from this page, it seems to follow me. This is a slow, creeping presence that stalks and consumes, taking everything before you’ve forgotten what it means to possess. These words may seem insignificant to you now, but they linger and persist, unwilling to leave you even until your final breath. As I descend further into the labyrinth, the deceptions hide within each inconsistency that plagues this text.

-R. Hayes
December 18th 2020

My entire adult life has been dedicated to urban exploration. I find abandoned places, photograph the decay, and document the slow reclamation of man-made structures by the natural world. I usually target old industrial sites, forgotten asylums, and decaying commercial properties. A few weeks ago, I found a deeply buried thread on an obscure mapping forum discussing an undocumented hunting lodge situated in a vast, unnamed stretch of dense wilderness. The coordinates were approximate, derived from a decades-old surveying map that had been scanned and uploaded by an amateur archivist. The extreme isolation of the structure appealed to me.

I packed my heavy canvas rucksack with survival gear, extra water, a high-lumen tactical flashlight, and a secondary backup light. I drove for six hours, leaving the interstate for rural highways, and eventually turning onto a dirt logging road that had not seen vehicle traffic in years. I parked my truck behind a dense thicket of overgrown brush, locked the doors, and began the hike.

The forest was incredibly dense. The tree canopy interlocked completely, blocking out the majority of the afternoon sunlight. I hiked for roughly four hours, navigating entirely by compass and GPS, pushing through heavy undergrowth and crossing shallow, freezing creeks. The silence of the deep woods began to press against my eardrums. There were no birds, no insects buzzing, just the heavy crunch of my own boots hitting the dirt.

I found the lodge just as the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon.

It sat in a small clearing. The structure was a single-story cabin built from thick, dark timber. It was slowly rotting into the earth, the roof sagging heavily under the weight of accumulated moss and dead branches. The windows were boarded up from the inside with thick plywood. There was no visible path leading to the front porch, no fire pit, no signs of recent human habitation. It looked like a forgotten relic of the past century.

I walked up the rotting wooden steps. The wood groaned under my weight. The front door was a heavy slab of solid oak, swollen with decades of moisture, sitting crooked in its frame. I pressed my shoulder against the wood and pushed. The hinges screamed, a sharp, metallic shrieking that echoed violently across the quiet clearing, and the door scraped inward across the floor.

I stepped over the threshold and turned on my heavy flashlight.

The beam cut through the thick darkness of the cabin. The smell hit me immediately. It was a dense, suffocating odor of stale dust, dry rot, and a sharp, synthetic chemical scent that aggressively burned the back of my throat. I swept the bright beam across the walls. The interior was completely stripped of furniture. There were no chairs, no tables, no hunting trophies mounted on the walls.

I lowered the beam to inspect the floor.

My boots were resting on a surface that did not feel like wood. The texture was smooth, slightly yielding, and entirely uniform. I aimed the flashlight directly down at my feet.

The entire floor of the massive main room was covered in a thick, overlapping layer of glossy photographs.

I dropped to one knee to examine the surface closely. The photographs were standard four-by-six prints. They were laid out with an obsessive, terrifying precision, overlapping at the edges by exactly a quarter of an inch, creating a seamless, impenetrable carpet over the original hardwood. A thick, clear layer of adhesive coated the entire mosaic, locking the pictures permanently to the wood and creating that sharp, chemical smell I had noticed upon entry.

I ran the beam of light slowly across the room. There had to be thousands of them. They covered every single square inch of the floor, extending all the way to the baseboards, wrapping around the corners, flowing seamlessly toward a closed door at the back of the cabin.

I looked closely at the picture directly beneath my right boot.

It was a photograph of a young boy, perhaps seven or eight years old. He was standing in what looked like a brightly lit basement.

I looked at the photograph next to it. A young girl, wearing a faded yellow dress, sitting on a concrete floor.

I moved the light, illuminating dozens of pictures in a tight circle around me. Every single photograph featured a different child.

A cold knot formed in my stomach. The subjects varied in age, ranging from toddlers to young teenagers. The backgrounds varied as wellو some were outside in dense foliage, some were inside barren rooms, some were in the back of a cargo van. But there was one terrifying, consistent detail in every single image.

Every child was staring directly into the lens of the camera.

Their expressions were entirely uniform. There was no smiling. There was no crying. They all wore the exact same expression of profound, paralyzing terror. Their eyes were wide, their posture stiff, capturing the absolute climax of human fear frozen in glossy paper.

I stood up slowly, my breathing growing shallow. The sheer scale of the horror beneath my feet was completely overwhelming. I swept the light across the room again, recognizing the sheer volume of human lives cemented to the floorboards.

As the beam caught a cluster of photos near the center of the room, my heart dropped in my foot.

I walked over to the spot, stepping carefully, my boots squeaking slightly against the adhesive coating. I aimed the light at a specific photograph.

It was a boy with distinct, asymmetrical freckles across his nose and a small scar above his left eyebrow. I stared at the face, my mind racing through a massive catalog of true crime reports, missing person databases, and archived news broadcasts I had consumed over the years.

I recognized him. I vividly remembered his face printed in cheap black ink on a missing poster taped to a telephone pole near my childhood home twenty years ago.

I moved the light to the left. A girl with distinctively braided hair. I remembered reading a news article about a local hunter finding her remains discarded near an interstate highway overpass five years ago.

I moved the light again. Another face I recognized from a grainy television broadcast. Another face from a high-profile cold case documentary.

I felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to vomit. I backed away from the center of the room, desperate to escape the thousands of dead eyes staring up at me from the beam of my flashlight.

I moved toward the back of the cabin, my boots finding a heavy wooden door. The photographs flowed perfectly beneath the gap under the door. I grabbed the cold brass handle and turned. It was unlocked.

I pushed the door open. It revealed a small, windowless office space. The photo-carpet continued in here, covering the entire floor. In the center of the room sat a heavy, battered metal desk and a single wooden chair. There was a secondary door on the far wall, secured with a massive, heavy-duty steel padlock. The hinges on the locked door were thick, suggesting a reinforced basement or holding cell beyond the wood.

I approached the metal desk. Resting directly in the center of the rusted surface was a leather-bound notebook.

I set my heavy flashlight down on the desk, aiming the beam toward the ceiling to cast a diffused glow across the small room. I reached out and opened the notebook.

The pages were filled with a frantic, cramped, deeply pressed handwriting. The ink was dark, smudged in places where the author’s hand had sweated against the paper. The entries were not dated by the calendar, but by a running tally of numbers.

I began to read.

The author was the killer. The early entries detailed the mechanics of his hunting. He described his methods with a cold, clinical detachment, detailing the vast geographic distances he covered to avoid establishing a recognizable pattern for law enforcement. He utilized the massive, unmarked forests to dispose of the evidence, burying the remains deep in the earth where the roots and the moisture would destroy the biology.

But the tone of the journal shifted abruptly about halfway through the book. The clinical detachment dissolved into unraveling paranoia.

He stopped writing about the hunting, and started writing about the hands.

They do not stay in the dirt, one entry read, the pen pressing so hard it had nearly torn the paper. I put them six feet deep in the clay. I pack the earth tight. But they push through. The soil does not hold them. The wood does not hold them. They reach up from the ground. Small hands. Grey skin. Cold fingers. They grab at my ankles when I walk through the brush. They reach through the floorboards of the cabin while I sleep.

I turned the page. The handwriting grew larger, more chaotic.

I woke up and they were holding me down. Dozens of small hands reaching straight through the solid oak of the bed frame. They are trying to pull me down into the earth. They want to drag me into the dark with them. I cannot cut them. The knife passes right through the flesh, but their grip is solid iron.

The next few pages detailed a rapid descent into terror. The killer described running from the remote disposal sites, barricading himself in the cabin, only to watch the small, grey hands effortlessly breach the foundation, reaching up through the floor to claw at his legs. He described the agonizing cold of their touch, the relentless, silent pulling.

Then, I found the entry that explained the floor.

They cannot touch the faces. The eyes repel them. I dropped a picture during a breach. The hand touched the glossy paper and burned. It retreated. The paper holds the memory of the fear. The paper holds the absolute authority I had over them in that final moment. I am the apex. The image proves it. The hands cannot breach the evidence of their own submission.

I read the final entry in the book.

I covered the wood. Every inch. The glue seals the barrier. I stand on their faces, and I am safe. Good thing I harvested so many over the years. Thirty years of work, and now they protect me. They pave my sanctuary. I walk on my trophies, and the hands remain trapped in the dirt below the foundation.

I stepped back from the metal desk, the leather notebook slipping from my fingers and slapping shut.

I looked down at the faces staring up at me from the floor of the office.

I needed to leave. I had enough information. I needed to hike back to my truck, drive until I found a cell signal, and bring an army of federal investigators to this cabin.

I turned away from the desk to retrieve my flashlight.

As I pivoted, the heavy tread of my right boot caught the edge of a photograph near the leg of the desk. The adhesive in this specific corner had dried out and failed. The thick, glossy paper snagged in the deep grooves of my sole.

With a loud, ripping sound, a large sheet of four overlapping photographs tore loose from the floorboard.

I stumbled slightly, kicking the loose photos aside. A patch of bare, rotting oak floorboard, roughly a foot wide, was completely exposed to the air.

I regained my balance and looked down at the exposed wood.

The grain of the oak began to ripple.

. The solid structure of the timber simply distorted, the dense wood flowing and separating like a thick liquid.

A hand reached up through the solid floorboard.

It was incredibly small. The skin was a pale, necrotic grey, stretched tight over the thin bones. The fingernails were cracked, packed thick with dark, wet soil. It pushed up through the wood until the wrist was exposed, the fingers grasping blindly at the empty air.

I stood completely frozen, my mind entirely unable to process the impossibility occurring inches from my boots. I thought the killer had a psychotic delusion, but was was perfectly, horrifyingly sane.

The small, grey hand snapped toward my leg.

It moved with a sudden, vicious speed. The cold fingers wrapped tightly around my left ankle.

The sensation was shocking. The skin was freezing cold, burning through the fabric of my hiking pants, radiating an intense, agonizing chill that immediately numbed my lower leg.

The hand pulled downward. The sheer force behind the small fingers was massive. My boot scraped violently across the glossy photos as I was dragged toward the exposed patch of bare wood.

I shouted in panic, throwing my weight backward. I kicked out with my free leg, driving the heel of my right boot directly into the grey wrist.

My boot did not connect with solid bone. It passed completely through the grey flesh, encountering absolutely no resistance, as if I had kicked a column of dense smoke.

Yet, the hand gripping my ankle remained perfectly solid, continuing to pull me toward the floorboards.

I twisted my body violently, throwing myself backward onto the securely glued photographs. The sudden shift in leverage tore my ankle out of the small grip.

The moment my leg crossed the boundary of the photographs, the grey hand stopped. It hovered over the bare patch of wood, its fingers twitching, the knuckles scraping against the air directly above the photos, unable to cross the perimeter. The glossy paper barrier functioned exactly as the notebook described. The intense gaze of the frozen faces repelled the hand.

The hand slowly sank back down into the floorboard. The solid oak rippled briefly, and then the grain smoothed out, leaving the wood entirely undisturbed.

I scrambled backward, pushing myself away from the bare patch, my chest heaving as I gasped for air. I sat on the layer of photographs, staring at the empty wood.

Heavy footsteps thudded loudly against the wooden planks of the front porch.

I snapped my head toward the open doorway of the office.

A large figure stepped through the front entrance of the cabin. The man was tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a heavy, faded canvas hunting jacket and mud-caked boots. His face was deeply weathered, lined with decades of harsh sun and isolation. He possessed a thick, untrimmed grey beard and dark, deeply sunken eyes.

He was holding a hunting rifle.

He stopped just inside the threshold, staring at the open me.

His face contorted into a mask of fury.

"You stepped on them,"

the old man growled.

He racked the bolt of the rifle, sliding a heavy brass cartridge into the chamber with a sharp, metallic clack. He brought the stock of the weapon up to his shoulder, aiming the barrel directly through the doorway toward the office.

I scrambled to my feet. I was trapped in the small, windowless room. The heavy locked door on the back wall offered no escape. The killer was blocking the only exit, standing comfortably in the main room, his boots planted firmly on the overlapping photos.

"You ruined the seal,"

he shouted, stepping slowly toward me, keeping the rifle perfectly leveled at my chest.

"You broke the floor. They are going to get in."

"Wait,"

I yelled, holding my hands up, pressing my back against the locked door.

"I just found this place. I'm leaving. I won't tell anyone."

The old man let out a harsh, barking laugh.

"You are not leaving,"

he said, stepping into the doorway of the office. The barrel of the rifle did not waver. His dark eyes flicked to the notebook sitting on the desk, then down to the small patch of bare wood I had exposed near the chair.

His expression shifted from anger to absolute, paralyzing panic.

"You peeled it,"

he whispered, his voice trembling.

"You exposed the wood."

He looked back at me, his eyes wide with a manic.

"Stand exactly where you are,"

the killer ordered, his finger tightening slightly on the trigger.

"Do not move an inch. I am going to put a round through your heart, and then I am going to use your blood to glue those papers back down before they smell the gap."

I looked at his boots. He was standing completely on the photographs, securely protected by the barrier of staring faces.

I looked down at my own feet. The massive sheet of overlapping photographs I had accidentally kicked loose was resting just inches from my right boot. The adhesive binding the four pictures together created a stiff, durable mat.

I formed a desperate, suicidal plan.

"I know what is under the floor,"

I said, keeping my voice steady, staring directly into his sunken eyes.

The old man blinked, momentarily confused.

I grabbed the flashlight sitting on the edge of the metal desk. Without warning, I hurled the heavy aluminum cylinder directly at his face.

The killer flinched, pulling the rifle slightly off target to avoid the projectile. The flashlight grazed his shoulder, clattering loudly against the wall behind him. The high-lumen beam spun wildly across the room.

It bought me exactly one second.

I dropped to the floor, throwing my body flat against the photograph-carpet. I reached out with both hands and grabbed the thick, stiff edge of the loose photo mat near my boots.

I pulled my knees up to my chest, braced my boots against the solid leg of the metal desk, and violently ripped the massive sheet of interconnected photographs directly out from under the killer’s feet.

The sound of the adhesive tearing was incredibly loud. A massive strip of the floor covering, nearly three feet wide and stretching across the doorway, ripped away from the wood.

The killer lost his balance as the surface beneath him shifted. He stumbled forward, stepping entirely off the remaining photographs and planting both of his heavy boots directly onto the bare, rotting oak floorboards of the threshold.

He raised the rifle to fire, recovering his balance instantly.

Before his finger could depress the trigger, the wood beneath his boots violently rippled.

The solid oak dissolved into a fluid, chaotic surface.

Dozens of small, pale grey hands erupted simultaneously from the bare floorboards.

They shot upward with terrifying, coordinated speed. The necrotic, grey fingers grabbed the thick leather of his boots, the denim of his jeans, the fabric of his heavy canvas coat. The small hands possessed an impossible, overwhelming physical strength.

The killer screamed. It was a raw, primal sound of devastating terror. He dropped the hunting rifle, the weapon clattering uselessly onto the bare wood. He threw his arms down, trying to tear the small hands off his legs, but his fingers passed completely through their spectral flesh.

The hands gripped him with iron force and pulled downward.

His boots vanished through the floor. Then his knees. The wood seemed to effortlessly absorb his mass, pulling him straight down into the dirt foundation beneath the cabin.

He clawed frantically at the bare floorboards, his fingernails splintering the wood, screaming for mercy, begging the empty room to let him go. The small grey hands multiplied, hundreds of them reaching up through the timber, wrapping around his torso, his neck, his face.

They dragged his head through the solid floorboard. His final, muffled scream was instantly silenced as his mouth passed through the wood.

The grey hands sank back down into the oak.

The rippling wood smoothed out. The floorboards returned to their solid state. The heavy hunting rifle lay on the bare timber, the only remaining evidence that the killer had been standing there seconds before.

The deafening silence of the deep woods rushed back into the cabin, filling the space left by the screaming.

I lay flat on the floor, my chest heaving, my clothes soaked in cold sweat. I did not move for a long time. I stared at the bare patch of wood, terrified that the small hands would reach back up for me. But the wood remained still.

Eventually, I slowly pushed myself up onto my hands and knees. I remained strictly on the surface of the photographs, ensuring no part of my body crossed the perimeter of the bare wood. I reached out, and carefully backed out of the office.

I walked across the main room, tracing my exact path, stepping only on the staring faces of the children. I reached the front door, stepped out onto the porch, and walked into the night air.

I hiked back to my truck in a total, unthinking daze. I did not use the compass. I simply walked through the dark forest, driven by adrenaline-fueled survival instinct, until I hit the dirt logging road. I locked myself in the cab of my truck, turned the heater on full blast, and drove until the sun came up.

I have not contacted the authorities. I cannot bring the police to that cabin. If an investigative team walks into that room, they will step off the photographs. They will tear up the floor to search for the bodies. I cannot be responsible for exposing innocent people to the things waiting in the dirt beneath that foundation.

I am posting this here because the isolation of what I know is slowly destroying me.

I know he was a monster. I know the faces glued to the floor demanded justice, and I know he suffered a fate perfectly aligned with the suffering he caused. But the knowledge that I crossed the line, that I actively participated in dragging a screaming man into the solid earth, is a weight I do not know how to carry.

I am a murderer now, too. And I am terrified that one day, when I am standing on bare wood, a small, grey hand is going to reach up and grab my ankle.

There is a new sauce in town called Saracha Red, and it's a real hit with everyone, as the grocery store has to restock the aisle daily due to high demand. My family was no exception; besides me, I was the exception, and I didn't care to admit that I thought the sauce was overrated and that barbecue sauce was still way better. Everyone laughed at me and told me I had no idea what I was missing, and I just ignored them and continued on with my sweet honey or spicy hot sauce. As time went by, I noticed that my family had started to gain a little weight since the sauce came out, and I wondered what they could be putting the sauce on that was making their customers so fat. I watched my mom go on a diet, eating only salads with that Saracha Red, and she pumped herself crazy on the treadmill to no avail. I noticed it first, and when I brought it up, everyone looked at me like I was crazy. They told me that just because I didn't like the sauce didn't mean I could be a smart ass about it. So I shut my mouth. 

I began to notice it within the first few weeks of it hitting the shelves, and people were buying it out like crazy, so that everyone who bought the sauce became a little bit heavier than they normally were. I also watched as the sauce took more and more space up on the shelf, pushing everything else further down the aisle. I had to walk past Saracha Red to get to my honey barbecue sauce, until I noticed they no longer had my brand; instead, they had Honey Brown, made by the same company as the other sauce. I threw that out the window and made my way to the ranch. I could eat anything with ranch, and it was good enough, so my mom started buying me my own bottles of ranch to keep around. 

The bottle selection grew as Saracha Red and Honey Brown were on the dinner table, along with my lone bottle of ranch, which had no special name. It was just a ranch. I watched my parents begin to eat rather sloppily; their double chins jiggled, and my siblings poured more sauce over their food than they actually needed. This was getting out of hand, and I wondered if anyone had yet made a complaint to the company and how they were ruining the health of many good, hard-working people. I thought, why bother even to try to cry out? No one was going to listen to me. But then the battle of sauces became personal when there was Ranchy White instead of my basic, labeled bottle, which was even two dollars cheaper than this company taking over the sauce industry. 

Sauce was important; it added flavor to the meal, making it more savory and delicious, and we need that satisfying bite in our lives. Without it, what is food? Just bland meals with knock-off spices at best. I moved on to thousand island dressing as I saw the ones gathered around me to get the new ranch were puffier than they should have been; it wasn’t that they were just bulbous, but they were very puffy, and I can say both of them because everyone else in the store looked swollen and turgid as well. I walked beside my waddling, obese mom, who used to be as thin as a rake, down the aisle as she grabbed all the new sauces and put them into the cart. I had moved on to Thousand Island dressing, which had been taken over, too. On our way out of the store, I realized that only one person could be in an aisle at a time because there was no way to get past the other without leaving the aisle entirely. More people were on mobile scooters, and even the metal frame was bending to their body weight. 

I soon realized I was the only one who did not eat the sauce and seemed to be the only one who had kept a steady weight. I pointed out the ingredient to my mom, who told me that sometimes age comes with pounds, that there isn't anything to be done about it, and that it isn't always something in her diet that makes her bloat so badly; her menopause itself was causing her body to behave this way. She was buying all this bullshit. My dad said it was because he quit running in the mornings, and now he was back up at four thirty, walking past my open door to go for a long-winded run which i knew he could not manage and all that did nothing at all for him at all, since what he really needed to do was cut out the fat still in his diet which all comes from all the sauces. Even my siblings ignored me, and I even started to talk to strangers a little bit in the aisle about the sauces, but everyone was blind to what was happening, everyone but me, because I was not eating that brand of sauce. 

I decided to really fight for all the sauces in America when they took away my vinaigrette dressing and turned it into Savvy Honey. I went to my dad, and I demanded that he take me to the company at once and file proper complaints about the company’s product. My father laughed at me, his face wobbling around, and his belly rolls danced as the noise came from deep in his chest, and he told me I thought too much about things, and I should stop being paranoid about everything. Like, I didn't have a reason to be paranoid right now. I snuck out of my room one night and walked a few blocks downtown, a few miles away from my house, and found the factory. I put on my dad’s old janitor uniform, which fit me well since I was so tall for my age, and the guard just let me right in. I couldn't believe it worked as I looked around the very plain lobby, trying to find signs that pointed me in the right direction. I then went to the elevator and pressed the 'factory floor' button. 

I stepped into an enormous metal room filled with all kinds of machinery, gushing liquids into bottles. I could see a whole vat labeled lard and another vat labeled canola oil as they both led through tubes into bled out farm animals, which were hung up above me, going around in circles with the conveyor system, and then I watched them add food coloring and spices before putting a bucket of what looked like little caviar eggs in the sauce putting a label on it and setting it on the shelf. I somehow got my way out of the factory and took down its name before heading back home as the sun was coming up, and I was due at the breakfast table in less than an hour. I sprinted back to my room, climbed through my window, threw on some fresh clothes, caught my breath, and went downstairs to say Good morning to the whole family. 

My sister had to switch to maternity pants now that her stomach was so corpulent, and my brother couldn't find a pair of jeans in his size, so he always wore baggy basketball shorts, which slid down his waist and always showed off his wide ass butt crack. Mom tried to hide her weight gain with sundresses, but they did not cover her bulbous necks or wagging, thick arms. I went through school in a daze, and when it was lunch, I went to the library and searched for the name of the company that owned all the sauces. It was a new place planted down here just two months ago, run by two twins, the Rasnick brothers. No one had met the brothers before, and I couldn't find any photos of them online. I was beyond baffled as I watched my family keep eating that slop. I even kept throwing it out of the kitchen a few times before getting caught and punished. 

I was home alone with my mom when she fell onto her back and couldn't get up. She told me she couldn't breathe and that there was a sharp pain coming from her stomach. I tried to pull her up, but she was too heavy now, and I stood over her and watched as something began to move under her skin. My mother’s screams rang out with no mercy as I stood back in fear and cowered in a corner, as I saw my mother’s stomach get ripped open, the flab just flinging aside as hands pulled through her open chest cavity, and out of her cadaver crawled a slimy, bald creature that had no features on its face. The alien pulled itself from the host that was my mother, and its elongated arms and feet could rotate in every direction as I watched the beast stretch out its thin, slick body. Then I saw it look at its host and examine it closely with its eyeless face before becoming satisfied and pushing its claws into my mother’s body, taking hunks of her flesh. 

A little tube came slithering out of the wrinkled bald head of the alien, and its host, the grey saggy creature that just burst out through my mother’s carcass, began giving it thick pieces of my mother’s fat, sliced-up flesh. I could see the tube chew and swallow as much as an entire 800-pound leg before it was satisfied and slithered back into hiding. The grey monster stood straight on its stilts and looked around before leaving me alone in the corner of the room, completely undetected. I ran to my mother’s mutilated body and saw that her face was frozen in a state of pure agony. I knew the others were the same, pregnant with this monster and giving birth to it where they fell, and whoever the twins were that owned that company was bringing on the end of the world with these creatures. I grabbed as much stuff as I could carry and threw it all in the back of my mom’s sedan as I backed out of the driveway for the first time in my life and drove down the road, going off to a better place, a new place that doesn't have those sauces and i found that town and got a job before finding a stable place to live that didnt ask questions like what my legal age was. 

The town was great, and I was really becoming part of the community through the services I provided to the faction with my time and energy. I planted herbs in the garden situated on top of a big apartment building, which also grows its own vegetables up there. I helped the elderly clear their homes so they would have places to live, and I was making good money doing it. I was mowing lawns and pulling weeds. I was doing everything I could to make a dollar and pay my rent, and I was doing so tenfold with the time I was putting into work. I was at the local market one day when I realized I was out of ketchup and needed to buy a bottle, so I made my way to the sauce aisle and, lo and behold, I saw it happening to the place I had come to love. Saracha Red took up an entire shelving unit, and the path was filled with people grabbing at that sauce. 

I didn't even bother with my cart; I just walked out of the store and went home to my apartment building, which was just a couple of miles from the market I shopped at frequently. This was the biggest name-brand grocery store in the county, and I knew that if it was here, it would spread everywhere, taking over the whole state slowly. I was wondering if this was happening elsewhere around the world and whether this was what an invasion looked like. I packed up all my belongings and got into my mom’s sedan, getting as much gas as I could in the tank and in two red twenty-gallon buckets that were stationed in the back of the car, each with a nozzle and a little hose, which I rigged up myself after buying the containers at a hardware store, along with a garden hose. I decided to go further and maybe find some people like me that weren't into the sauce all that much, and I just ran in one direction, and I didn't look back, as I was too afraid to watch the birthings happen again. 

My name is Baxter and i live in Cave Creek, a small town where nothing interesting ever happens. The biggest excitement most people get is football games at Cave Creek High or gossip at the diner downtown. Everybody knows everybody, and every building has some old story attached to it.

Especially The Owl’s Nest.

The bookstore sat at the end of Main Street between an antique shop and an old barber shop with dusty windows. It looked ancient even during the daytime. Crooked wooden shelves leaned against the walls, and the air always smelled like old paper and rain.

I started working there two weeks after school ended.

Mr. Saxworthy, the owner, hired me almost immediately. He was tall, thin, and always wore dark sweaters no matter how hot it got outside. He spoke softly, like he was afraid the books might overhear him.

“You seem responsible, Baxter,” he told me during the interview. “That’s important here.”

I should’ve asked what he meant.

At first the job was easy. I stocked shelves, rang up customers, and cleaned the upstairs reading room. Sometimes I worked late by myself while Mr. Saxworthy handled inventory downstairs.

It was a Thursday night around closing time when the noises started. Rain hammered against the windows while I stacked books in the horror section. I remember checking the clock: 9:47 PM.

Then I heard footsteps upstairs.

I froze.

“Mr. Saxworthy?” I called.

No answer.

The footsteps stopped.

A cold feeling snaked through my stomach. The bookstore suddenly felt too quiet, like the entire building was holding its breath.

Then I heard whispering.

Not words exactly. More like someone speaking just low enough that I couldn’t understand them.

I grabbed my phone flashlight and slowly climbed the stairs. I peered into the dark room but it was empty. 

That’s when i noticed it, one of the rocking chairs near the fireplace was moving.

“What is happening?” i asked suspiciously into the thin air. 

SLAM.

A door shut somewhere downstairs.

I nearly fell trying to run out of there.

Mr. Saxworthy was standing by the register when I hit the bottom of the stairs, perfectly calm.

“You okay, Baxter?” he asked.

“Someone’s up there.”

“No,” he said quickly. “No one is.”

His answer made my skin crawl more than the noises did.

After that night, things got worse.

Books fell off shelves when nobody touched them. I’d hear breathing behind me and turn around to find empty aisles. Sometimes the lights flickered only in the back corner of the store where old photographs hung on the wall.

That’s where I first saw her.

I was dusting the history section when I noticed someone standing between the shelves. A girl. Maybe eighteen or nineteen. She had long blonde hair that fell in waterfalls down her shoulders. Her skin was pale like ivory and her eyes… the most beautiful green i had ever seen. 

She wore a white dress that looked old-fashioned, like something from another decade.

For a second I thought a customer had wandered in after closing. Then she smiled at me. Not a normal smile. A sad one.

And suddenly the lights blinked. When they came back on... she was gone. I dropped the books I was holding.

That night I couldn’t sleep.

The next day I searched the bookstore for anything that might explain what I’d seen.

 That’s when I found the photograph. It was hidden inside a drawer beneath the register.

A younger Mr. Saxworthy stood beside the same blonde girl I’d seen in the store. His arm wrapped around her waist. Both of them smiling at the camera.

Written on the back in faded ink were the words:

Julie — Summer 1996.

My stomach twisted.

That afternoon I showed the picture to Mr. Saxworthy.

“Who is she?” I asked.

The colour drained from his face for just a second. He snatched the photo from my hand.

“I don’t know,” he said flatly.

“You’re literally standing next to her” i replied, pointing at the old picture.

“You should focus on your work, Baxter” he thrusted a thumb behind him. 

That was it. he didn't give an explination, he didn't even make eye contact.

I started noticing Julie everywhere. At school, in the reflection in windows. At the end of empty hallways inside Cave Creek High.

Once I saw her standing on the bleachers during basketball practice.

I finally spoke to her three days later.

I was at my locker after school when I saw her reflection in the metal door behind me.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I whispered.

When I turned around, she stood only a few feet away.

Up close, her eyes looked almost glowing green.

“The bookstore has secrets,” she said softly.

Her voice sounded distant, like an echo underwater.

“What are you?”

Her expression darkened.

“Find the files.”

Then she disappeared.

Not walked away.

Disappeared.

That night I waited until Mr. Saxworthy locked up and left. I still had a spare key.

Rain poured over Cave Creek while I slipped inside The Owl’s Nest alone. The store felt colder than ever.

I searched through old cabinets in the office behind the register until I found a locked filing drawer.

It took me ten minutes to pry it open.

Inside were newspaper clippings, police reports and old photographs. It looked like jumk except for one document sitting right ontop.

Julie Harper.

Death Certificate.

Cause of death: blunt force trauma to the head.

My hands shook as I read the date.

October 14th, 1996.

Thirty years ago.

There was also a newspaper clipping beside it:

LOCAL GIRL MISSING — POLICE SUSPECT RUNAWAY

It looked like no body was ever officially discovered. I stared at the papers, my heart pounding. Why would Mr. Saxworthy keep this... unless...

A floorboard creaked upstairs.

I looked toward the ceiling.

Then I heard Julie’s voice whisper behind me.

“He lied.”

I spun around.

She stood there clearer than ever before, not transparent... she almost looked... alive.

“He killed me,” she whispered, tears rolled down her pale cheeks.

“He said if he couldn’t have me… nobody could.”

I felt sick.

“How?”

“He used that.” she said, her green eyes drifted toward a massive leather-bound book sitting on the desk.

I slowly looked at the book.

It was enormous. Heavy enough to crush someone’s skull.

The front door suddenly rattled.

Julie’s expression changed instantly.

“He’s here.”

A key slid into the lock.

Mr. Saxworthy stepped inside dripping rainwater from his coat.

For a moment, he smiled when he saw me.

Then he noticed the files spread across the desk.

The smile vanished.

“You shouldn’t have looked through those,” he said quietly.

Fear locked my legs in place.

“She told me,” I whispered.

His face twitched.

“You’ve seen her.”

It wasn’t a question.

“She’s still here.”

Mr. Saxworthy sighed like a tired old man.

“I loved her.”

“You murdered her.”

“She betrayed me.”

His voice suddenly sharpened.

“She was leaving town with someone else.”

He stepped closer.

“I gave her everything.”

The lights flickered violently around us.

Books began falling from shelves upstairs.

Julie was near.

“You’re insane,” I said.

Mr. Saxworthy grabbed my arm hard enough to hurt.

“She ruined my life.”

Then every light in the bookstore exploded off at once.

Darkness swallowed the room.

Mr. Saxworthy panicked.

“Julie?” he whispered.

I heard her voice from upstairs.

Soft laughter.

Then footsteps.

Creeeak.

Creeeak.

Mr. Saxworthy let go of me and stared upward in terror.

“No…”

The footsteps moved across the ceiling slowly, deliberately, leading him toward the staircase.

Like she wanted him to follow.

And he did.

I grabbed the massive book from the desk and followed behind him.

The upstairs reading room was freezing cold.

Julie stood near the fireplace staring directly at Mr. Saxworthy.

“You left me there,” she whispered.

Mr. Saxworthy stumbled backward.

“I was angry—”

“You buried me beneath the floor.”

I felt my blood turn to ice.

Julie slowly pointed toward the wooden boards near the rocking chair.

Mr. Saxworthy started crying.

Actually crying.

“I’m sorry.”

Julie looked at me.

Not angry.

Not frightening.

Just sad.

Then she whispered:

“End it.”

Mr. Saxworthy turned suddenly like he finally realized I was there.

His eyes widened when he saw the book in my hands.

“No, Baxter—”

I swung before I could think.

The heavy book slammed against the side of his head with a sickening crack.

He collapsed instantly.

The same way he killed Julie.

Silence filled the room.

Then Julie looked at me one final time.

The sadness in her face was gone now.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

A warm breeze moved through the bookstore.

And slowly—

she faded away.

The rocking chair stopped moving.

The whispers disappeared.

And for the first time since I started working at The Owl’s Nest…

the building felt empty.

I guess I should preface this by saying that I am a sophomore in high school. As embarrassing as it is, I’m not allowed to drive just yet, so my mom has to drop me off at school every morning. I’m not a bus person.

That being said, this morning was pretty much identical to all the others. Mom drove me the 15 minutes to school and dropped me off in a bit of a hurry because we had been running a little late.

I made it all the way to 4th period when an announcement came over the intercom.

I was getting checked out of school early for some reason, which, of course, I had no issue with. I actually had some pep in my step as I made my way to the front office.

I was still confused, though, because normally Mom would inform me if I was getting out of school early, so I texted her and asked what the occasion was.

I didn’t get a response right away, but when I saw her standing in the front office, I figured I’d ask her face to face. There was something off about her, though. It was hard to put my finger on. Just the way she was staring at me and smiling through the office window. It didn’t feel like a warm, motherly smile. There was something, I don’t know, mischievous about it.

I also found it weird that she wasn’t wearing the same clothes she had been when she dropped me off. It would’ve been pretty odd for her to have driven home to change before picking me up, especially since her job was a full 45 minutes away.

Whatever, though. I was getting out of this hell-hole early. That’s all that mattered.

As we were exiting the building, Mom had to actually guide me to her car because, apparently, the special occasion was that she had gotten a new one. I thought it was cute, honestly. She wanted to show off the new ride to her son.

I don’t know how she’d managed to get the interior so dirty in such a short amount of time, though. The entire backseat was full of fast food bags, soda bottles, and all manner of garbage.

Once we were settled, I asked the question that had been burning at my mind since the announcement came through the intercom.

“So, where to? Did you check your favorite son out to grab some lunch? Please tell me you did.”

Mom laughed, but her response was pretty benign.

“Haha, nooo.”

She drew it out like she was trying not to ruin a surprise. Almost like she was trying not to laugh. I tried to create some dialogue, or at least engage in a conversation, but all of her responses were equally as dry.

All I could really do was just be quiet and enjoy the ride, which I did for a while. It was nice enjoying the “quality time.”

However, when she started taking us out of town, it became increasingly difficult to keep my mouth shut. I mean, she was taking us down roads that I’d never even seen before.

We were already in completely unfamiliar territory when my phone started to ring. Dad was calling me. But when Mom noticed, she told me not to answer. Told me that he was going to “ruin the surprise.”

Dad must’ve called 5 or 6 times back to back, and each time she demanded I didn’t answer, her giggle breaking through more and more with each phone call.

That’s when a new notification came across my screen. A text from Mom.

“What are you talking about? I’m not checking you out today. Why aren’t you answering your Dad?”

Part 2:

Hello again, I’m sorry for the delay. I seem to have made a mistake with giving away too much patient information, so I will redact last names here. I wasn’t thinking straight with the splitting headache. If you are hearing from me for the first time, Part 1 can be found here.

I was so dizzy from typing the original post it took me half the night to go through my grandfather’s ledgers.

I expected to see people my father had probably mentioned once or twice when I was too young to care. For the first hour, all I found were fevers, strokes, infections, and injuries from both farm equipment and bad weather.

Then I found Rosalie. Rosalie’s full name.

I told myself it had to be some family tradition. A long line of Rosalies begetting Rosalies. That happens here. Families reused names.

The address was the same in every entry, but that didn’t prove anything. Land stays in families around here long after the people are gone.

Then I saw more notes.

Rosalie [Redacted] — fever, 1911. Accepted. Cast out to jar - Laurel. Preservation intact.

Rosalie [Redacted] — pneumonia, 1938. Accepted. Absorbed. Preservation intact.

Rosalie [Redacted] — palsy, 1962. Accepted. Trouble Casting. Preservation intact.

Rosalie [Redacted] — Growth 1970. Do not accept.

I drove to Laurel that night in hopes of finding more answers. The church was tucked away from the road, still half swallowed by kudzu. The steeple had fallen before I was born and the path leading to its door was lined with rows of headstones in its graveyard.

The older stones were unreadable, softened by rain and lichen. I walked between them with my phone light pointed at the ground, trying not to step where the earth had sunken in. Most of the names meant nothing to me until I found hers.

Rosalie [Redacted]

1883–1913

Then I found another one two rows over.

Rosalie [Redacted]

1913–1962

The stone was newer, cleaner, but the name was the same. Same spelling. Same middle initial. Same little carved lamb at the top. I kept walking. Near the back fence, half hidden under dead leaves, I found,

Thomas [Redacted]
2014–2020

It took me a moment to understand why the name made my skin crawl. This was the name of the boy with strep throat. Beside it, there was another cleaner stone.

Thomas [Redacted]

2020-

I stumbled away dizzily until I was inside the church.

The door made no sound and gave no resistance like someone had oiled the hinges recently.

There was no cross above the altar. The pews had been shoved against the walls, stacked and angled. The air was wet, and moisture seeped from the walls.

Mason jars lined the front of the room in uneven rows. They were packed with hair, teeth, rusty nails, river stones, ash, red dirt, splinters of wood, scraps of cloth, and things I did not want to identify. Each jar was sealed and bound with rawhide lace.

The communion table had been dragged to the center of the room and used like a desk. Or an examination table. Loose notes covered it. A stethoscope so old the rubber had cracked sat next to a balled up piece of paper. I picked it up and unfurled it. It read like a lab report summary.

Nonliving vessels - insufficient for growths.

Below that:

Wood rots through. Glass breaks. Iron takes fever but not mass. Earth returns burden within three nights. Animal vessels fail under Growth.

The next line had been underlined twice.

Living human vessel required for ailments that lead to certain death. Acceptance of these requires recognition, request, receipt, and thanks. 

I turned to leave and nailed to the back of the door was a flier for this year’s county festival. As I approached, the date was circled, and under it was written “Vessel - Jasper [Redacted].”  There were two more fliers under it. One from the year my father died and one from 1970, both with the date circled and the chosen “Vessel’s” name written beside it.

I decided to check on Rosalie the next morning. That’s the excuse I gave for barging in.

She was sitting upright in her chair, the color was back in her cheeks, and the basin she had been so dependent on was nowhere to be seen.

Her daughter did not look relieved. I couldn’t place the look she gave me, a mix of gratitude and sadness.

“Are you ready for the Festival?”

“Yes, ma’am, I wouldn’t miss it. I still remember my dad taking me every year."

I took Ms. Rosalie’s blood pressure. Her right pupil was still wrong, wide and slow but she was able to follow my finger without trouble. These were the only indications that there was a tumor, but it also indicates the tumor’s getting smaller.

 “You're doing well,” I said.

“I told you I was on the mend.”

While pretending to take notes, I looked at the wall.

The oldest photograph was in a dark wooden frame near the corner. A woman in a high collar stared straight ahead, hands folded in her lap. The picture had silvered around the edges, but the face was clear enough.

Rosalie’s jaw. Rosalie’s eyes. Rosalie’s mouth.

I stepped closer.

Below etched in the frame:

Rosalie [Redacted], 1911.

With casual curiosity, I asked, “Who is this?”

Her daughter looked over and answered, “That’s Mama.”

“Your mother?” I asked. 

“Yes.”

“This photograph is dated 1911. Is this a reused frame?”

She finished folding a quilt and threw it over the back of her chair, “Then I guess that’s when it was taken.”

I left it be and asked Ms. Rosalie to stand so I could check her gait.

“Walk to the wall and back, Ms. Rosalie.”

A woman with a terminal brain tumor weeks ago was half-conscious and vomiting, stood up from her chair, and walked towards the wall with no cane or propping herself up on furniture. I watched her as she crossed the room and tried to decide if I should react in fear or pleasure.

“There were many doctors after my dad,” I said, “before me.”

Ms. Rosalie touched the wall and started back towards me. “There were.”

“Why didn’t they stay?”

“They were substitutes.” 

Miss Rosalie reached me and stretched out her hands, steady as anything, and hugged me.

“They have to leave,” she said. “One way or another.”

All I can remember about the drive back to my clinic was the pressure behind my right eye and thinking that if I could find just one excuse, one changed address or a missing date, some of this might make sense. 

I found Rosalie wasn’t the only name that kept showing up. Then I found Edwin, which makes sense, but he appeared in my grandfather’s ledger with the same address and wound.

I kept going through names on my schedules, which appeared in both ledgers. People I’d run into the grocery store, people that thank me with tears in their eyes when I came back, not just names, but addresses, scars, complaints returning every few decades.

I thought my father had spent 20 years treating this town.

He’d been keeping it here.

I now believe the headstones mark when death should have occurred. And the others were to mark borrowed time. There’s no telling g how many stones Rosalie and Edwin have.

The last time I saw my father, we were supposed to get lunch at a diner before I left for college. I blew them off so I could get to college early, explore the campus, and look at apartments with my friends. I remember how nervous he seemed about lunch. I thought it was because I was moving away, but now I wonder if he was trying to tell me something. Maybe the money left to me wasn’t meant to bring me back, but to keep me away.

I tried my best to keep a low profile until the festival, until I checked my phone this morning and found it was today. When I arrived, I saw Jasper. He was a boy who lived in the next county over, but was being honored here today for his “Youth Service Award”. I saw him on the stage, holding a paper cup of lemonade, smiling because everyone had been kind to him. Ms. Rosalie stood beside him with a bright eyed smile. I passed Edwin on the way who rested one hand over the place where his wound used to be.

“Doctor,” Rosalie said. “Why don’t you come on up here and present this boy with his award?”

I looked at the boy. Then, at the crowd. I began my long walk over to the podium and wondered what they would do if I didn’t kill this boy with the diseases of this town. My throat was almost closed. My right eye saw nothing but light and shadow. Beneath my ribs, the scar pulsed like it was trying to open from the inside.

I stepped onto the festival stage.

The mayor handed me the microphone and thanked me for coming home.

That was the mistake.

I took his hand. I looked out at all of them. Every face from the ledgers. Every person my family had kept past their time.

“No,” I said. “Thank you.”

The crowd went quiet as I named the vessel. 

“The town.”

For a moment, nothing happened. They didn't die all at once. Some aged first, as others ran. I looked over to Rosalie. The panic in her eyes set in before the years caught back up to her. Wrinkles spread across her face as her cheeks hollowed. Her hair thinned and fell in clumps to the ground. She collapsed as the color left her face, and her stomach began expanding. She clawed at her neck with long, yellowed fingernails as black foam bubbled from her mouth.

All around her, faces folded in agony. Some doubled over as old scars opened, and others’ old coughs came back up wet and black. Edwin dropped to one knee, one hand pressed under his ribs, trying to keep the blood from darkening his plaid shirt.

I'm back in my office now. I'm leaving before morning.

I don’t know how many of them will be alive by then. I don’t know how many were really alive to begin with.

If you ever pass through a mountain town where everyone looks too grateful to see a doctor, keep driving.

Listen to your Agoraphobia 

CW mental illness, medications, abuse

I bore through immense amounts of trauma before being fully diagnosed with agoraphobia. First diagnosed with manic bipolar disorder, which corresponded well with my heart-stricken PTSD, and it all wrapped together with my crippling anxiety. To say the least, I do not and will not leave my house unless I am with someone I trust, and they drive us to our destination, for I do not drive under any circumstances. One of the best things that keeps me sane is knowing facts about life that no one else seems to care about. Just like, did you know, the water in Australia’s Lake Hillier is cotton candy pink, or that the earth is seventy percent water and only three percent is freshwater, while the rest consists of the ocean. Well, with my anxiety disorder and extreme paranoia, I only leave my house with certain people, and I only go with them to specific, well-known to me locations. It is a strict rule of mine to stay away from the outside as much as possible, avoiding all highly populated areas. 

I obeyed my rule and lived on it as Moses lived on the mountain of Sinai, where he stayed to talk to god for forty days and forty nights, and I was doing the same, just never coming down from the mountain, and I don't speak to god per se, but more to myself and my bitch dog. She’s not really a bitch, however, I still love her more than anything else in this world, and she truly is my best companion, but that still doesn't mean she’s not a bitch. I love my seclusion, and it gives me a lot of time to reflect on my life and past, while also helping me remain sane as I relive it all in a stable state of mind. It was a difficult process, and the CPT from this highly recommended therapist did nothing but bring my nightmares back to life. 

Cheyenne and I have been best friends since we were six years old, and I cherished her soul more than I cherished my own, and my love for her was a stone that could never crack. She had just gotten married, where I was supposed to be the maid of honor, but as you know, with my disorders, I couldn't make myself attend the wedding, which was states away. Well, Cheyenne came down to visit me because her concern was too much for her to just hear about, and it was time that she felt the need to take some kind of action to get me out of this hell I have trapped myself in. She took a rental car to my house from the airport, and tears were shed, for it had been years since we last saw each other. I gave her a tour of my house, showed her the guest room where she could stay, and we went to the kitchen to drink wine and catch up on life. 

Then we both got hungry, and I suggested takeout while Cheyenne suggested going out. My anxiety was spiking just thinking about leaving the house when Cheyenne came back with my anxiety medication, had me take two, and then told me to go get ready, we were leaving the house. I put on my baggy t-shirt featuring my favorite podcast characters, squeezed into a pair of black leggings, then slipped into a black sweater that fell to my knees and a pair of platform ankle-high Ugg boots that were, you guessed it, black. I don't know what it was about the absence of color that I loved most, but in my wardrobe, there was nothing bright and cheerful; everything was dark and filled in like a void. 

“Hey, did you know that gladiators wore a subligaculum, also known as a loincloth, a halter, or a wide belt, and manicas, which were arm guards when they went into battle?” Cheyenne was pushing me out the door to her rental car, and my mind was blasting open like popping kernels in the microwave. 

Cheyenne took me to a nice but not too classy sit-down restaurant, which made me feel even more uncomfortable. Cheyenne at least asked for the booth in the back corner of the room so we could be extra isolated from the others who sat around us. I made an extra effort to round the dining area to reach the booth, so I wouldn't have to pass anyone at the tables on my way. I sat with my back against the rest of the customers in the dining room and looked at the back wall, and Cheyenne, who happily sat across from me. Cheyenne and I had both grown three decades together, and I still see her as the stick-thin cheerleader that always practiced in the school halls while I sat in my tomboy attire, laughing my ass off at her routines. Then the waitress came and handed us menus and water before asking us if there was anything else we would like to drink. 

“Did you know that a foam that sometimes forms on a large amount of pig poop can spontaneously explode?” The words came out nervously as I awkwardly smiled at the poor waitress, who looked at me, perplexed and disgusted. 

“A pitcher of beer with two cold mugs will be fine.” Cheyenne smiled at the waitress, then at me. “I still don't know how you know all this shit.” She laughed and shook her head. “I never knew why you decided to join the military instead of going to school; you could have thrived.” Cheyenne has always been optimistic about me and has been through every downpour of my life. 

The melancholy music that played in the background of this establishment  added to my depression more than it soothed me, as it was supposed to do. Our beer came, and I poured myself a glass immediately before Cheyenne could order for both of us and before I could spit out another fun fact about life. Cheyenne knew me better than anyone, and I just knew without asking that she got me the best-looking thing on the menu, as she got a side salad and a plate of French fries. When our food came, I tried to ignore the cacophony of whispers and laughing behind me as I chewed my steak through gritting teeth. After our meal, noticing we didn't die, Cheyenne got braver and decided to take me to a bar. I sat awkwardly on one of the barstools and ordered an Old Fashioned and a glass of whiskey on the rocks. 

Cheyenne instantly joined the clans in front of us, rambunctiously dancing on the front floor as I tried not to throw up all over myself, as I nervously tapped on the elm-shaved bar top and looked down into my whiskey with an intense gaze. Cheyenne always came back to check on me, and each time, I realized she was becoming more and more intoxicated, and I should have known this was going to happen because it happened every time Cheyenne wanted to go to a bar. I sipped my drinks as the bitter taste of being a forced DD made my cheeks flush. 

It was the most terrifying thing in the world to me when a girl came up to the bar and started to talk to me. I paid her attention, leaving my beer by my side out of sight, and I listened to her as she introduced herself and began speaking of things I'm sure she didn't mean to share with me. Then, after she was done with me and got another drink, she was off again, and I could take a deep breath of relief. I took a few sips from my whisky on ice and swirled the little ball around before finishing it off and moving on to my old-fashioned. I was halfway through my drink when I began to feel funny. I knew I hadn't drunk enough at all to feel this effect from any type of alcohol. I searched the dance floor vigorously for Cheyenne, but she was nowhere to be seen. 

I stumbled off my barstool as a man caught me and asked if I was okay. I told him I just needed to find my friend, and he was kind enough to help me look around before we began heading to the front door, and my world was going pitch black. I woke up in the back of a large truck, trapped by rope with maybe another dozen girls with me, all looking like me. Each one of them looked like they had depressed mania and a fear of leaving the house, and it was easy to recognize by the clothes they were all wearing, just like me; they tried to cover each part of their body. The truck stopped, the door slid open, and men in masks piled in, took us out of the trunk, and made us walk into a large factory. We rounded corners and went up stories of stairs before we were thrown into a dark room to wait for whatever was going to come next. 

That's when men began coming in and taking us and leaving with a girl screaming for help, begging for her life as the door shut, and the rest of us were left whimpering. Then it was my time to be chosen, and I didn't throw a fit because I needed my energy to escape, not throw a tantrum. I was taken into a room with two-way mirrors high on the walls, standing on a platform in view of whoever was on the other side of the glass. There were two men in masks standing near the only way out as green lights began to flicker on in the mirrors around me. Then a man over the intercom commanded to see more, and that’s when I was stripped down to my sports bra and boy short panties. More green lights went off, and finally, after one last flash, I was taken away through another door and put into a very empty, lonely room of my own. 

The room filled with gas before I got comfortable, and before I knew it, I was driving again in the back of a truck with a bunch of other stripped-down women like myself. The truck stopped, and we were all hooded before we were led through a steel creaking door and followed down metal clanking stairs. We reached a sturdy concrete floor where another steel door squealed open. I could hear the commotion now, and the uproar all around me made each hair on my skin stand on end as I felt more exposed than ever. Our hoods were removed as we were welcomed to the sight of a small commune with a little town that we were in the center of. Men in finely dressed suits, half-dressed, some with their ties extra tight, all standing and staring to see where each one of us was going to go. 

Then the masked man who led us here gave us off to a man with a microphone. “All these women are bought and paid for, and it is the owner's choice on what gets done with them.” The man in the microphone went to the first girl in line as she openly cried out for mercy. “This one goes to Reinestine. What will be done with her, sir?” The man called out to the crowd, waiting for a response. I saw a man within the herd put his thumb down, and the girl still tied up was thrown to the mass of men who began to devour her whole. Then it was my turn after three other decisions before me, all being rejected by their new masters. “Malacoy, what say you?” The guy with the microphone put a cold hand on my naked shoulder, and I shivered with tears silently streaming down my face. There was a thumbs up, and the crowd parted for what looked like the wealthiest man in the room. 

I was taken by the man who had bought me and was led to a master chamber filled with everything one would need to survive. I knew my master shut and locked the door before towering over me with his broad chest to the top of my head. 

“You will be well taken care of here as long as you do one thing for me.” His voice was deep and stern, and the bass in his baritone tune made me cower with fear. “You must feed my daughter who is in my closet, three times a day at the same time every day until I release you of your duty.” The man went to his closest door and knocked on it three times; three knocks were returned immediately. 

“Who’s in there?” I was terrified of the answer he had just given me for there was no way he had his daughter locked up in some underground realm of deadly men.

“It’s my daughter, and she is very different, and she needs very specific things.” My new owner was pacing around the room with his hands behind his back. “Under us is a blood bath for men who want their wildest sadist thoughts to come true. They can do whatever they want in that town created for men, just as we take on our deepest desires. I could throw you down there just like the rest of the women that were rejected, or you can stay in this room and take meat to my daughter three times a day and never have to leave until I relinquish you.” He stopped moving next to his bedroom door, ready to open it, waiting for my answer. 

“Why is your daughter in the closet?” I had to know before anything more could happen; my curiosity was skinning me alive. 

“Miranda is very special, and she was born very special, and the world just wouldn't understand her uniqueness, to say the least about it. You will meet her on your first feeding, which is noon on the dot. Don’t miss a feeding, my dear, or you will become dinner.” His threat was more real than the situation I was in, and his cold words sent shivers down my spine. “Also, no matter what, do not give her anything more out of her portioned meal; she is on a strict diet.” The man was firm with me as he spoke about mealtime and explained the rules. Then he led me to the kitchen and opened the fridge to show a fully stocked paradise, and behind it was horror. “You must slice the flesh fresh and chop it up into chunks. Weigh it, make sure it is only 8 ounces, then open the door and give it to her. You can watch her eat and speak to her if you like, but you must not let her go, no matter how much she begs. Do you understand your job?” The man who bought me had his hands on his hips, and his glare was set directly on my gaze. 

“I understand,” I replied, feeling that my reality wasn't going to be all that bad if this was all I had to do to continue to live in solitude, which was what I treasured most of all. 

“Everything is here that you need, and fresh stocks for Miranda will come weekly. Always make sure there is room in the fridge, and never set the meat in the freezer.” The man was walking back to the door, about to leave me alone for the first time in this new place, and I still had so many questions. 

“What’s your name?” I blurted out before he could leave me here to be a guardian to a girl trapped in a little room that wasn't able to come out. 

“You can call me sir, and I will come to check on you every so often to make sure things are well, but if it is not me, at your door, then you let no one else in, your life could depend upon this warning.” Sir opened the maple door and left, shutting it before I could say anything else. 

I walked to the closet door and knocked three times on the wood to hear the harmony come back to me. “Did you know some baseball players pee on their hands to toughen them up?” I slid down the door with my palm along its smooth surface and landed on the hardwood floor. 

I didn't get a reply after that and went around exploring my new home until noon, when it was time to feed the girl in the closet. I pulled a severed arm out of the fridge, which was behind a stalk of celery and a jar of mayo, and I began slicing meat off the bone and cutting it into fine chunks and weighing it before placing it on a plate and taking it to Sir’s daughter. I opened the door slowly and noticed there was already light in this room, and it was also as big as a bedroom rather than a closet. In the middle of the room, there was a little girl with bright blonde hair, chained to the floor by heavy-duty bolts, seated on a couch, watching some dramatic TV show she shouldn't have been watching for her age. I walked up to her, and with a normal face, she took the plate with a smile and put it on her lap. 

I stepped back to where I knew she couldn't see me, and with fascination, I watched how she ate these chunks of human flesh. That's when she stood up and undressed herself, showing off a large vertical razor filled mouth that took up her entire back and another horizontal mouth that took up her entire front torso. She shared the bits of meat with each mouth before giving the rest to a mouth that opened like a Venus fly trap up on top of her head, spreading her skull open and exposing her brain which was throbbing openly against the elements, surrounded by razors on all sides. The girl dressed and sat back down before looking at me with a satisfied grin. 

“Can I have more, please?” I could hear the rumbles from the mouths' desires for more flesh came pleading off their tongues. 

I backed out of the room, shut the closet door, and locked it. Okay, this was no big deal. All I had to do was feed the monster in the closet on time every day, and nothing bad could happen. It was then that I wondered what would happen if that monster wasn't fed on time. If I were late, would it eat me too? Is that what happened to the last girl this man had bought at auction? I went to my new leather couch and turned on the TV mindlessly until I fell asleep on the couch and almost ignored the alarms going off in the distance. I jumped up and hurried with dinner before heading to the door, only to meet the blonde-haired girl at the door already. Before I could say anything about my tardiness, the mouth on her torso ripped out of her dress and bit my thigh as hard as it could, breaking through skin, flesh, and muscle. I screamed out, and Miranda grabbed the plate before I could drop it on the floor. She told me not to be tardy again as I hurried to shut the closet and find some kind of medical kit to help the profusely bleeding wound on my leg. I was sure she had hit an artery, and before I could pass out, I saw Sir running into the room with a doctor. 

I came two on my nice foam bed and opened my eyes to see Sir sitting next to me in one of the black leather recliners in the room. “I did warn you to be on time, and I hope this helps your negligence in the future,” Sir said, looking at me with a furrowed brow. “Next time she might let them eat you if you're not careful.” His warning was clear to me, and now I knew not to play with the systematic routine these two had set up for themselves. 

Sir left me when he could tell I was well enough to get to my feet, walk around the apartment, and use the items needed to prepare his daughter’s meals. All checked out, and I was left alone once more with a bottle of carfentanil and Klonopin, along with some Advil and ibuprofen, before stocking my bar with twice as much booze. He knew how this job was, and that’s why he didn't do it himself. I bet under his expensive suit, there are a bunch of scars from late feedings. I was surprised he still had all his limbs functioning. I popped some pills and waited by the fridge, setting my timer ten minutes before I had to serve the Sir’s daughter, and I waited. This life wasn't so bad. I had everything I could wish for, and no one bothered me at all except for Sir, who delivered more meat to us weekly, which came from the blood baths downstairs. I was just happy I wasn't trafficked into that.

I really wanted to believe it was going to be okay to leave my house, and the first time I did in almost ten years, I was trafficked and was left to feed a monster for who knows how long in this solitary confinement. I should have just stayed home, and if you're second-guessing yourself to stay home as well, just listen to that voice in your head and do not leave your house. 

In a cramped, dimly lit room, I stare at my glowing monitor. After two hours of cracking jokes at a terrible horror film, the viewer counter suddenly flips from “0” to “1.” My eyes widen and my heart leaps into my throat. I whisper, “Someone’s here.”

Sweat beads on my palms as I drag my chair closer. For months no one has watched me live—not even bots—so I forced a smile and leaned in. A blinding banner explodes across the chat: u/VIP_User_Null has gifted a Tier‑3 “Observer” membership. There’s no profile picture, no familiar username. My voice wavers. “Huge thanks for the sub! Welcome to the stream. Hope you’re ready for a trash movie.” I think no one ever buys top‑tier memberships… don’t screw this up.

The mystery viewer sends a single message: [02:14 AM]. I glanced at the bottom right of my screen; my system clock reads 02:13 AM. My frown deepens. Something shifts in the dark space behind me.

Hours earlier…

At 2:00 AM I hit “Go Live.” I tell myself—again—that this is my last stream. My remote editor Maya pings me:

• Maya [02:01 AM]: “Are you going live or staring at your dropping analytics? Yesterday’s file was corrupted. Did you mess with the render settings?”
• Ray [02:02 AM]: “I didn’t touch them. Just clean it up. I’m going live now. This is the last one, Maya. I swear.”
• Maya [02:02 AM]: “You say that every week. Fix your hair. You look like a corpse on the webcam preview.”

I run a hand through my hair, boot up StreamYard and inhale. I plaster on my plastic grin and greet the invisible crowd, “What’s up, Graveyard Gang! Welcome back to another midnight descent into cinematic garbage. Tonight we’re reviewing The Blood Mirror, a slasher so bad it feels like the director financed it by selling his own plasma.” For ten straight minutes I roast the film’s cheesy effects. The viewer counter remains stuck at 0… until it flickers.

Earlier that day…

For a moment, I see my father handing me a worn second-hand camcorder.
“If YouTube were a class, you’d ace it.”
“No,” teen me had grinned. “I’d teach it.”
One of the last memories before the laughter disappeared.

Back in the present, the viewer number climbs to 1. I lean into my commentary, exaggerating every reaction for my lone spectator. I pretend the chat is buzzing. Then the u/VIP_User_Null alert flashes with that eerie time stamp, still one minute ahead of my clock. My grip tightens on the armrests. My smile falters. A soft knock echoes from the hallway.

“Ray! It’s late. Turn it down.” The voice is unmistakable—my father. But my father has been dead for three years.

I think I have time to write this. Things have calmed down for now. I have my chair wedged against the door, just in case. There’s tapping at the window. I’m on the second floor of my house, and there used to be no trees outside my window. I need to find a way out, and this message needs to get out so no one makes the same mistakes.

We have to go back a few months for you to understand.

I had just moved to this new rental home. The only issue was that the landlord did not allow pets, which seemed criminal with the large fenced-in yard.

I asked anyway.

“No pets,” he said. “I’ve been burned before.”

“What if I kept up the garden?” I asked. “Would that change anything?”

“About the dog? No.”

“What about rent?”

He looked out at the yard like he was already disappointed with the job I would do.

“Spring and summer only,” he said. “That’s when the yard will need work. If it starts looking like hell, the discount goes away.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tools are in the basement.”

That should have been the end of it: discounted rent and some yard work. But I still wanted something to scratch that itch.

Bonsai was an option. I’d never really considered it before, but I went all in watching videos, reading forums, buying those expensive little pruners. I learned about wiring trunks, exposing roots, and shaping miniature trees over the years.

That was the issue. Years.

Most of it is just waiting around, especially in the first couple of years. Decades pass before you have anything impressive. Some trees are *relatively* faster growing.

I still wanted the satisfaction of growing the tree from a seed, but I just didn’t have the patience for it.

One night, I decided to buy seeds. I had to go deep into Google to find non-sponsored links. I wanted seeds from a specialty vendor. On about page nine, I clicked on a site.

I can’t remember the name, but it had to do with “accelerated seed stock,” and touted seeds that can “produce mature-looking bonsai in months.”

The site looked old, with a white screen, grainy pictures, and blue links. I clicked on one photo link that looked like a Chinese Elm. There were no Latin names that I recognized on the site.

I am embarrassed by the price I ended up paying. The product had all 5-star reviews, so I was hopeful. One of the most peculiar details that I can remember is, “Returns only accepted in original soil and original shipping container.”

I bought a packet of three for a discounted rate and never received a confirmation email. I got back on the site the next morning, and that listing was gone. I thought it was a scam and got a new debit card to be safe.

Two weeks passed, and I was surprised by a small but heavy box at my doorstep. The outer cardboard shipping box didn’t seem to be postmarked, but I was too excited to care.

The inner box was wooden and closed with a brass hasp. The inside was lined with a greyish-blue metal. At the top of the small container, there was an instruction card.

* GERMINATION STOCK: THREE
* USE DEHYDRATED SOIL PUCK - ENCLOSED
* KEEP CONTAINED INDOORS
* DO NOT OVERWATER
* KEEP IN A WELL-VENTILATED LOCATION
* DO NOT ALLOW ROOT ACCESS BEYOND POT

Odd? Yes. But I laughed this off at the time as some branding gimmick.

The seeds themselves were larger than I had expected, and I noticed they were warm when I planted them in a small pot in the corner of my den near the floor vent.

After a week, I thought I’d been scammed. No growth. But one morning, I woke up to a small green stalk. Finally, one was successful. From there, things seemed normal, but fast. Within a few weeks, it had a tiny trunk with a branching structure ready to be wired and shaped.

I was so happy with the results so far, I wanted to leave a review, but I couldn’t find the site.

I was so pleased that I even started posting photos to show off the growth. My friends were impressed, and the internet thought I was either lying about the age or accusing me of buying it from a nursery. One commenter even suggested that I had misidentified the tree species. These accusations didn’t make me angry; they made me proud of my work. It was worth every penny.

Soon it was time for pruning to shape the limbs. I spent some time studying the tree before making my first cut. When I did, dark sap began to ooze from the wound. My mouth began to taste as if I had just swallowed my car keys. *I hope it isn’t diseased, I took all the precautions*, I thought.

I opened the pruners around the second branch. Before I could close them, another branch snapped across the back of my hand. It cut me like a bad paper cut. I told myself, *Maybe I bumped it and shifted the branches? Or maybe it’s a draft... The A/C just came on*.

I finally managed to prune it properly, but I was worried about the sap’s smell. But it did its job and sealed up the wounds I had caused, and by morning, the tree had pushed out new buds from the pruned branches.

A few weeks later, the tree had grown enough that I wanted to move it to a larger, nicer bonsai pot. Repotting would also let me expose part of the root system. I thought it would enhance the beauty of the tree. I could also use this to change to a premium bonsai soil mix.

I was surprised by the weight of the pot. I had to use twice as much strength as I thought to even get it off the table. I almost dropped everything when I encountered more resistance.

As I looked back, I noticed the thick pale roots had grown through the drainage holes. As I tracked it, my eyes traced over to the air vent. The roots had gone between the grates and down into the vent.

I didn’t want to hurt the tree. Bonsai roots can be delicate and are vital to the health of the plant. I didn’t want all of this to go to waste. I tried to gently tug it free, but it wouldn't budge.

On a closer look, there was a network of pale roots snaking into the darkness of the ductwork. On the one hand, I could just leave it alone. But I want this in the new pot, and I can’t have roots growing into the HVAC system.

I decided to cut it, and when I did, the roots seemed to recoil, and the detached side fell into the ductwork. That sharp metal taste filled my mouth.

With that taken care of, the rest of the potting went well. The tree was in its new pot with its alabaster roots on display; it was absolutely beautiful.

For a day or two, everything seemed fine. I noticed the cut root has grown out of the drainage hole of this new pot. It seemed to be growing toward the air vent again. I moved the pot away from the vent, but the next morning, more roots had curved down the sides of the pot heading in the same direction.

I decided to trim these to keep everything in the pot. Overnight, the tree dropped leaves and looked less healthy. I felt guilty. I tried to rationalize that maybe it wasn’t getting the ventilation it needed, and this was its way of meeting its needs.

From there, little things began to happen that I didn’t notice enough to care about. The den started to smell like soil, which I thought was due to the newly exposed roots. Then, I started to find dust around the air vents in the house. And last month, my water bill spiked, which I thought was related to a tapping I had been hearing in the walls that my landlord refused to come check out.

A couple of days ago, I had people over for a housewarming party. It was the first time most of my friends had seen the place. I cleaned more than I needed to and rotated the bonsai on the side table so that the light hit it just right.

The trunk had thickened into this elegant curve, and the exposed roots wrapped over the stone it sat on like pale fingers. The leaves were glossy and dense. It looked like something ancient that I had inherited, and people noticed immediately.

“Wait,” Emily said, leaning over it with her drink in her hand. “Is this the same tree from your pictures?”

“Yeah.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“It is,” I said proudly.

“You planted this, what, three months ago?”

“Something like that.”

She looked at me like she had caught me in some lie, but that quickly turned to concern: “That’s not normal.”

From the kitchen, somebody said the den smelled like a greenhouse. Someone else said it smelled like pennies. I pretended not to hear that. I haven’t smelled anything in weeks.

Mark wasn’t a bad guy. He just makes mistakes when he is drunk. Toward the end of the night, he crouched in front of the bonsai with a beer in his hand and gave it a serious look.

“This is fake,” he said.

I ignored him.

“It looks fake,” he said, louder.

“That means it’s doing well,” I said, trying to dismiss him.

“You bought a tiny plastic tree and invented a whole personality around it.”

He reached out and flicked one of the leaves, not hard, just enough to make it move.

I stepped toward him before I even realized I was doing it, “Don’t.”

The room went quiet.

Mark held up both hands.

“Sorry, sorry. Didn’t know you and Bonny were serious.”

A few people laughed. I did too, because I needed him to move on.

Then he tipped his beer toward the pot, “Banzai!”

The whole room laughed as a little beer spilled over the rim and darkened the soil.

“Mark!” I scolded automatically.

He looked at the pot, then at me.

“Relax. It’s a tree.”

I feel stupid now, but I was angry. A protective kind of anger, like he had done something to hurt a family member. I got paper towels and dabbed at the soil while everyone moved on. Someone changed the music, and the room loosened again.

The rest of the night was normal. People drifted between the kitchen, the den, and the back patio. The weather was nice enough now to keep the back door open for a while. I had a cooler outside by the steps because my fridge was full.

At some point, I remember Mark announcing he was going out to grab another drink, looking at “Bonny” and asking, “Want one, babe? Be right back,”

He went through the kitchen and out the back door and just didn’t come back. Nobody noticed for a while.

By midnight, the stragglers began to head out. Emily was the first one to ask. “Where’s Mark?”

I said, “He probably left.”

“His car is still here.”

His car was parked exactly where it had been, under the oak near the curb. His jacket was still hanging over one of my dining chairs. His keys were still in the key box I put out for guests. His phone was on the kitchen island, buzzing every few minutes with messages from the same group chat we were all in.

That was when everyone sobered up. We searched the yard with our phone flashlights. We checked everywhere, even the stupid places you check when you know a grown man can’t fit, but you check anyway.

Someone suggested he got picked up. Someone else said maybe he walked off drunk.

Eventually, someone called the police. They came, asked questions, looked around, and took notes. I told them he had gone outside for a beer and never came back, so the search focused outward.

By the time everyone left, it was almost five in the morning. I stood in the kitchen for a long time after the last car pulled away. The bonsai sat in the den where I had left it; the soil seemed even darker now than when the beer had been spilled.

I let it be and went to bed.

I woke up this morning, and I found something green growing out of my kitchen sink. At first, I thought it was a piece of spinach.

When I looked longer, I saw three little shoots coming up through the drain. Thin, pale stems with tiny green leaves at the ends. They leaned toward the window over the sink.

I touched one with a fork. It bent away from the metal. I dropped the fork into the sink as I jumped backwards.

That was when I remembered the card from the box.

DO NOT ALLOW ROOT ACCESS BEYOND POT.

I thought that meant the roots might make it harder to repot without damaging the plant.

I grabbed the drain cleaner from under the sink, and I poured until the chemical smell burned my nose and the little green shoots disappeared under the liquid. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then, all at once, pipes knocked all around me, and I thought the house would split in half. A violent and deep metallic banging from inside the wall behind the sink traveled under the floor, then somewhere toward the den.

I stepped back as the drain hissed and the whole counter trembled. Something below me made a low shifting sound, like furniture being dragged across a room.

From the den came a dry rustling of leaves; a thousand tiny movements, layered on top of one another, like the tree was shivering.

As quickly as it had started, the house went quiet, and I stood there with the empty bottle in my hand. I thought I had fixed it. I poured boiling water down after it, hoping it would wash out the chemicals from my pipes.

I went into the den and saw that the bonsai had outgrown its wire. The training wire I had wrapped so carefully around the trunk to shape it was embedded halfway into the bark. The trunk had thickened around it in minutes. The bark bulged around each turn like a ring around a swollen finger.

The leaves looked wet. Glossy and full. New roots had spilled over the side of the pot and touched the floor. One of them had reached the vent again. A new one had stretched in the opposite direction toward the kitchen.

I stood in the doorway and tasted metal. I hadn’t poisoned it. I fed it. That was when I finally understood what should have been obvious from the beginning: I needed to kill it.

I had only been to the basement a handful of times for the breaker box, but I never took stock of the equipment in the far corner. That familiar smell I had become accustomed to was strong in the basement. As I scanned my flashlight across the room, I did not see any roots or branches. I searched the pile. Just a weed whacker, garden shears, shovel, and a machete.

I bent over and took the machete. As I stood up, my eyes caught a thin strand hanging off the ceiling beam. It was one of innumerable roots that had slithered across the support beams. As I ran my flashlight across the ceiling, I saw that they also followed the pipes, vents, and electrical lines. The entire house had become a trellis for this thing.

In the far corner, I noticed two thicker root tips hanging limply, different than the rest. When I took a step toward them, I realized they were shoe laces. A shoe hanging from the ceiling by vines. Another step forward, and that shoe was attached to a leg. As I came closer, I was able to see Mark, held in the air by roots. Some roots simply supported him. Others were growing shallow into his skin, still visible like torturous veins. Large roots weaved through the wall of his chest.

His eyes were held open by small tendrils hooked in the corners of his eyelids.

Two thicker roots disappeared into his mouth. Smaller roots followed their path and threaded between his teeth and down his throat.

I hoped he was already dead. Then his eyes were pulled towards me, and his lips began to move silently under the control of the roots.

The roots around his chest tightened, forcing air out of him one word at a time in a raspy, muffled tone, “He’s … almost … ready.”

I swung my machete, trying to cut what was left of Mark’s body down, but they recoiled in response, pulling Mark tightly to the ceiling. As they squeezed him tight, a sound of anger came from his body.

A thick limb swept the floor and knocked me to the ground. Roots reached down from the ceiling and grabbed my arm to pull me closer to Mark. I used my weapon to free myself. Every cut root leaked the metallic-smelling sap. Some of it fell on my face; it burned. The basement lights flickered, and the HVAC began to roar. I needed to get upstairs, and I needed to wash off the sap before it burned too deeply into my skin.

The roots chased me into the den. The trunk was twisting and thickening before my eyes. Its branches writhed as the exposed roots spilled over the pot and shot across the floor. Offshoots went into the air vents and covered the doors and windows.

The tree itself was still quite small, with its exposed roots now beet red.

I ran to the front door, grabbed the knob, and twisted. Nothing. The knob would not turn. I looked down and saw the thin, red roots, threading through the edge of the door frame. They had grown into the seams. I saw them flex and relax under the paint like a vein under the skin.

I tried to pull harder. The door may have shifted half an inch, just enough for the roots to tighten back the gap. I ran desperately to the back door. Same thing.

The kitchen window was my next best bet. I had it open about two inches when roots shot out, grabbed it, and slammed it shut with enough force to crack the glass. Then red roots spread across the pane, weaving through the broken glass until there was no opening left.

I stopped for a moment, helpless, waiting for the roots to take hold, but nothing. Then there was tapping: One inside the kitchen wall. One beneath the floor in the den. Two or three above me in the ceiling. Back-and-forth.

The taps never seemed to happen at the same time, like they were waiting for the other to finish; were they communicating or testing something? Maybe they were mapping the house, learning the exits, and closing them.

I thought about the pot in the den. The stone with the roots displayed exactly how I wanted them. I thought about how I’d carefully shaped my tree. It was beauty through restraint. I failed to keep the tree contained. It found a bigger pot, and I was in it. Then the walls creaked, the floor under me gave a pop, and in the den, the leaves began to rustle.

So, now I'm in my home office. I don’t know if I want to slash my way through the window or try my luck at destroying the part of this thing still in the pot. I don’t know if that would do any more than anger it, but I think it might be worth a shot. I can still hear the branches and the leaves rustling when I hear the occasional tapping and creaking.

Small roots are sweeping their way under the door now, feeling around, exploring the new space. I’m not waiting for them to find me. I am going to make a run for it and destroy whatever is still in that pot.

If you see this post, do not order seeds from any site claiming to have “accelerated stock,” and if a box arrives without a postmark:

DO NOT OPEN IT.

DO NOT GIVE IT SOIL.

DO NOT GIVE IT WATER.

DO NOT GIVE IT A POT.

DO NOT GIVE IT A HOME.

When I was hired at this particular school five years ago, I felt like I had won the lottery. The theater department here is legendary. I mean that in the most literal sense. The alumni from this specific high school program consistently go on to become A-list actors, chart-topping musicians, and highly influential politicians. If you look at the yearbook archives in the library, you will see the teenage faces of people who currently run entire government branches and headline blockbuster movies.

The administration credits this success to a rigorous curriculum and a culture of excellence. I believed that narrative for my first few years. I pushed my students hard, and they delivered. But there was always an undercurrent of something strange in the auditorium.

Our theater is a massive, beautiful structure built almost a century ago. It features a sweeping lower seating area, a grand stage, and a high, covered upper balcony that wraps around the back wall. Suspended above the audience are the catwalks, the heavy metal grating where the lighting instruments are rigged.

During my orientation, the principal gave me one absolute, non-negotiable rule regarding the auditorium.

During every single performance, regardless of whether it is a massive spring musical or a small autumn drama, the doors leading to the upper balcony and the catwalks must remain deadbolted. No students, no parents, and no staff are allowed up there while the house is open. Furthermore, the lighting board must be programmed to leave one specific, isolated spotlight turned on for the entire duration of the show. That spotlight must be aimed directly into the empty, darkened upper balcony, specifically illuminating Seat 4B.

I asked the principal why we had to waste electricity illuminating an empty seat in a locked balcony. He stared at me with completely dead eyes and told me it was a historical tradition honoring a former benefactor, and that questioning the rule would result in my immediate termination. I needed the job, so I kept my mouth shut, locked the doors, and programmed the light.

Over the years, I started to notice a deeply disturbing pattern during our productions.

Every time we put on a show, one student in the lead role would deliver a performance that defied logic. A nervous, stumbling sophomore would suddenly step into the stage lights and radiate a level of charisma and raw talent that made the audience hold their collective breath. They would speak with the voice of a seasoned professional, and command the space entirely. It was beautiful, but it felt entirely unnatural.

But the success always came with a horrific, devastating weird pattern.

Whenever that lead student gave their star-making performance, another student in the background would suffer a catastrophic breakdown.

I do not mean they would just miss a cue or drop a prop. I mean they would experience a profound, humiliating psychological collapse right there on the stage.

During my second year, a boy playing a background guard suddenly dropped to his knees in the middle of a pivotal scene, sobbing uncontrollably and emptying his bladder in front of a thousand people, while the lead actor delivered a monologue that earned a standing ovation. During my third year, a girl in the chorus began clawing violently at her own face, screaming in absolute, incoherent panic until we had to drag her into the wings, while the lead actress sang a solo that brought tears to the eyes of the school board.

These breakdowns were life-altering. The students who suffered them never recovered. They became social pariahs. They walked through the hallways staring at the floor, completely hollowed out, plagued by severe depression and anxiety. Most of them ended up transferring to different districts or dropping out entirely. Meanwhile, the students who gave the brilliant performances graduated, immediately secured high-profile representation, and started their rapid ascents to fame and power.

It happened every single time. A star was born, and a child in the background was permanently shattered.

I began to connect the dots. The breakdowns always happened at the exact climax of the play. They always happened when the spotlight aimed at Seat 4B seemed to flicker just slightly.

My protective instinct began to keep me awake at night. I could not stand watching sweet, vulnerable kids get emotionally destroyed under my watch. I suspected the principal’s strict rule had something to do with the pattern.

I tried to investigate. One afternoon, I asked the head janitor if he could unlock the upper balcony so I could check the seats for dust before the upcoming spring musical. He stopped sweeping, gripped his broom handle tightly, and told me in a low, shaking voice to stay away from those stairs. He said the principal held the only keys, and that people who went poking around the balcony ended up losing their careers.

I tried talking to the older faculty members. I asked the history teacher, who had been there for thirty years, about the tradition of Seat 4B. She looked at me, her face pale, and told me that some questions are too expensive to ask. She advised me to focus on the stage and never look up.

Their warnings only fueled my suspicion. Whatever was happening in that auditorium was systematic, and the staff was terrified of it.

Opening night of the spring musical arrived. The energy in the building was electric, and the audience was packed with parents, local politicians, and wealthy alumni donors. I was standing in the wings, watching my cast prepare. The lead was a charismatic but ultimately average student. The supporting cast consisted of dedicated, hard-working kids, many of whom struggled with anxiety but loved the theater.

I looked up at the covered balcony. The single spotlight was shining brightly through the darkness, illuminating the empty space around Seat 4B.

I decided I could not let another kid get destroyed.

During the pre-show reception in the lobby, I slipped into the main office suite. The receptionist was out managing the ticket booth. The principal was shaking hands with donors by the front doors. I quietly opened the door to the principal's private office.

I knew he kept a master set of keys in his desk drawer; I saw him taking them from it before. I opened it, found the heavy brass ring, and slipped it into my pocket. I was terrified. I walked back out to the auditorium just as the house lights began to dim and the overture started playing.

Instead of going to the backstage wings, I slipped through a side door in the lobby that led to the restricted stairwell.

The air in the stairwell was incredibly stale. The music from the orchestra pit below sounded muffled and distant. I climbed the steps as quietly as I could, the metal keys heavy in my pocket.

I reached the heavy, reinforced door at the top of the stairs. A small, faded sign read: RESTRICTED ACCESS. NO ADMITTANCE.

I fumbled with the master key ring in the dim lighting. My hands were shaking. I found a thick, square brass key and slid it into the deadbolt. It turned with a heavy, satisfying click.

I slowly pushed the door open.

The upper covered balcony was pitch black, save for the single beam of light cutting across the space from the catwalks. The air up here was freezing cold.

I stepped onto the carpeted aisle and let the door close silently behind me.

I crept down the steps, moving toward the front railing. The stage below looked tiny from this height. The musical was in full swing. The bright stage lights illuminated the actors, but they could not see past the glare into the darkness where I stood.

I turned my attention to the single beam of light. I followed it down to the front row of the balcony.

Seat 4B was not empty.

Sitting perfectly still in the velvet chair was a creature.

It possessed a humanoid shape, but its proportions were severely distorted. Its limbs were elongated, the arms hanging down so far that the fingers brushed the floor beneath the seat. Its skin was completely hairless, pale, and possessed a damp, slick sheen, like the underbelly of a deep-water fish. It wore a classic, stark white theater mask, the kind used to depict tragedy, completely obscuring whatever face lay beneath it.

I stopped breathing. My feet felt bolted to the floor.

The creature was leaning forward, gripping the edge of the balcony railing with long, multi-jointed fingers. It was not watching the lead actor center stage. Its masked face was tracking a young boy in the chorus line. The boy was a shy, sweet kid who had worked for months to overcome a severe stutter.

The creature slowly raised one of its elongated hands. It pointed a long, pale finger directly at the boy.

Down on the stage, the boy froze.

I watched in horror as the child dropped his prop. He clutched his chest, his eyes going wide with sudden, terror. He began to hyperventilate, stumbling backward into the set pieces. The audience gasped. The boy collapsed onto the stage, pulling at his own hair, emitting a raw, guttural sound of pure panic.

Simultaneously, the lead actor stepped forward, his posture suddenly immaculate, his voice ringing out with a booming, unnatural resonance that filled the entire hall. The audience immediately forgot the sobbing boy on the floor and focused entirely on the captivating performance of the lead.

I could not contain myself. The protective rage overwhelmed my fear.

"Who are you?"

I demanded, my voice echoing in the dark balcony.

The creature stopped pointing.

It slowly turned its masked face toward me. The silence that followed was heavy and suffocating.

The thing moved with a speed that defied physics. It launched itself from the chair, its long limbs grasping the brick wall of the balcony. It scaled the vertical surface like an insect, scrambling across the darkness in a blur of pale limbs.

Before I could turn to run, the creature dropped from the ceiling directly in front of me.

A heavy, cold hand clamped around my throat. The creature slammed me backward against the reinforced door, pinning me to the wood. Its physical strength was massive. I kicked my legs, grabbing at the hand choking me, but its skin was freezing cold and hard as iron.

The tragic theater mask was inches from my face. I could hear a wet breathing coming from behind the painted plaster.

"Who are you?"

the creature asked.

Its voice did not come from behind the mask. The sound resonated directly inside my skull. It was a layered, echoing voice, composed of dozens of different tones speaking in perfect synchronization.

"Are you the new teacher?"

the voice echoed in my mind.

"Did the stupid principal give you the keys?"

"No,"

I choked out, fighting for a breath of air.

"I stole them."

The creature loosened its grip just slightly, allowing me to breathe, but kept me firmly pinned against the door. It tilted its masked head, analyzing me with an eerie, quiet curiosity.

"You should not be here,"

the creature projected into my mind.

"You are interfering with the work."

I looked over its shoulder, down at the stage below. Stagehands were dragging the sobbing, traumatized boy into the wings. His life was ruined. The lead actor was delivering a solo to thunderous, weeping applause.

"Are you doing this?"

I rasped, tears of anger and fear stinging my eyes.

"Are you hurting my students?"

The creature let out a sound that felt like a low vibration in my jaw. It was a laugh.

"I am The Critic,"

It replied.

"I am doing my job. I observe, and balance the scales."

"You are destroying them,"

I said, my voice shaking.

The creature pressed its face closer to mine. The smell of ozone and damp earth was overpowering.

"You do not understand the mechanics of this world," The Critic explained smoothly.

"True charisma is a finite resource. Talent, genuine, world-altering talent, does not simply grow. It must be consolidated. To make a single star burn bright enough to blind the masses, you must shatter a dozen others and harvest their light."

I stared at the white mask, the horrifying reality of its words sinking into my brain.

"You are feeding on them,"

I whispered.

"I am transferring,"

the creature corrected.

"I locate the weakest vessels on the stage. The anxious. The fragile. I break their structural integrity, siphon their potential, and funnel it directly into the chosen vessel. The lead."

"Why?"

I demanded, pushing weakly against its cold arm.

"Because the ones above require it,"

the entity stated.

"The ones pulling the strings. The ones who placed me in this seat a century ago. They require leaders who can command nations. They require idols who can distract millions. They require the absolute best. And they are willing to pay the cost in broken children to get them."

The history of the school suddenly made terrifying sense. The long line of powerful politicians, the billionaire innovators, the untouchable celebrities. They did not achieve greatness through hard work or natural talent. They were manufactured in this auditorium, built on the shattered minds of their classmates.

"I am going to stop you,"

I said, a desperate conviction in my voice.

"I am going to tell everyone."

The Critic dropped its hand from my throat.

I slumped against the door, coughing and gasping for air. The creature took a step back, standing tall, its long arms hanging down by its sides.

"If you attempt to stop me, you will get yourself killed," the entity warned. The layered voice in my head was completely devoid of malice.

"Are you going to kill me?"

I asked, looking up at the pale figure.

"No,"

The Critic said.

"I am a worker. I do not kill. But the ones above will. The school board. The elite alumni. The benefactors. They have maintained this pact for a century to guarantee their legacy. If you expose this, they will erase you. They will bury you under the foundation of this building, and they will simply hire a teacher who knows how to look the other way."

I leaned against the wood, the cold reality of the situation crushing the fight out of me.

"If I stop the process now,"

the creature continued, gesturing toward the stage below,

"the transfer will be violently interrupted. The current star, the boy singing his heart out, will suffer a catastrophic backlash. He will collapse into a permanent, catatonic depression, and will never speak again. The shock will destroy him."

I looked down at the stage. The lead actor was smiling, bowing as the curtain fell for intermission. He was a good kid. He had no idea his success was being purchased with the sanity of his friends.

"To save your own life, and to save his, you must agree to the pact,"

The Critic commanded.

"You must walk back down those stairs. You must return the keys."

"I can't,"

I whispered, burying my face in my hands.

"I will keep it quiet,"

the creature offered.

"I will not tell the principal that you came up here. I will not alert the board. You can live a long, comfortable life. Your department will continue to win awards, and you will be celebrated as a master educator."

I looked up at the white tragedy mask.

"And what happens to the kids?"

I asked.

"The process continues,"

the entity stated.

The silence in the balcony was absolute. The choice was horrific. If I fought, I would be murdered by the people who run the city, and the current lead student would be permanently destroyed. If I submitted, I would survive, but I would become a vital cog in a machine that feeds on children.

I slowly stood up. I wiped the tears from my face. I looked at the creature, sitting back down in Seat 4B, bathed in the light of the single spotlight.

I turned around, unlocked the heavy door, and walked back down the dusty stairwell.

I slipped into the principal's office and returned the master key ring to the desk drawer before the intermission ended, then went back to the wings and watched the second act. The Critic did its work. Another supporting actor, a quiet boy who had built the sets, suffered a violent panic attack during a scene transition. The lead finished the show to a roaring standing ovation.

The principal shook my hand at the cast party. He looked at me, his eyes searching my face for any sign of rebellion. I smiled at him, and thanked him for his support. I survived the night.

I am writing this post now, typing it out on a secure connection in the middle of the night, because I need to leave a record. I need someone in the world to know the truth about how the elites build their icons.

I did not quit my job. If I leave, they will just bring in someone else. Someone who might not care at all.

But my survival means accepting my new, horrifying job description.

Tomorrow, I have to begin casting for the autumn drama. I will sit in the auditorium with a clipboard, watching my students audition. I will look for the confident, the ambitious, the ones destined for the spotlight.

And then, I will look for the fragile ones. The anxious ones. The sweet, nervous students who just want to belong. I will intentionally cast them in the supporting roles, and place them on the stage, knowing exactly what is sitting in the dark balcony above them.

I have to choose the sacrifices to feed the stars.

As someone from rural Spain, I thought I understood strange roadside culture. We have old pubs older than America itself and roundabouts that appear to have been designed by the devil himself.

But nothing, nothing, prepared me for Buc-ee’s.

Mi amor, Sadie, had insisted we stop there during our road trip.

“You gotta experience it,” she said with the excitement of someone taking me to Disneyland.

We pulled off the highway into Luling and I nearly mistook the place for an airport terminal.

The parking lot alone could host a small war.

Cars. Trucks. RVs. A horse trailer for some reason.

And towering above it all was that thing.

That massive smiling beaver statue.

Its buck teeth gleamed in the Texas sun. Its little red tongue poked out cheerfully. It stared down at me with black cartoon eyes so empty and wide they felt almost human in the wrong way.

“You alright?” Sadie asked.

“Why is your petrol station so large?” I muttered.

She laughed.

“Wait till you see inside.”

he doors opened.

And I swear to God I heard angels sing.

It was enormous.

Rows upon rows of snacks, merchandise, drinks, jerky, fudge, sandwiches, hunting gear, candles, shirts, home décor, taxidermy, barbecue sauce, and things I still cannot explain.

The floors gleamed like polished marble.

Not a crumb anywhere.

Not a stain.

It was too clean.

Far too clean.

Everyone inside smiled.

Not regular smiling.

The kind of smile where teeth show just a little too much.

The kind of smile people wear when trying not to blink while their picture is being taken.

“Howdy, welcome in!” one employee chirped in a thick southern accent.

Her face was unnaturally smooth. Plastic almost. Like someone had stretched skin over a mannequin.

“Try the brisket!” another man shouted.

His smile never faltered.

I leaned toward Sadie.

“Why do they all look like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like they’ve never had an unhappy thought in their lives.”

She snorted and walked off toward the jerky counter.

That was when I first saw him.

The mascot.

Inside.

Full costume.

Just standing near the drink fountain.

Watching me.

Its massive beaver head tilted slightly.

Still smiling.

Still staring.

I blinked.

Looked away.

Looked back.

Gone.

I found him again in the chips aisle.

Half-hidden around the corner.

Watching.

Then by the fudge counter.

Then behind a display of beaver-themed pajamas.

Never moving when I looked directly at him.

Just… appearing.

Always staring.

That big obnoxious smile.

“Sadie,” I whispered, “why is the mascot following me?”

She looked over.

“What mascot?”

“The beaver!”

She frowned.

“There’s no mascot in here.”

I turned.

Gone again.

My stomach twisted.

Either I was losing my mind or Texas was significantly more cursed than advertised.

Then I remembered.

The mushrooms.

Earlier that day Sadie had convinced me to try some “road trip gummies” from Austin.

“Just enough to make the drive fun,” she’d said.

Brilliant.

Absolutely brilliant.

I was tripping in a giant American beaver supermarket that was also an airport of a gas station.

I rushed toward the bathroom.

The restroom was somehow bigger than my flat back home.

Marble walls. Spotless stalls. Better maintained than most hospitals.

I was stunned at how well kept it was. It was too perfect.

I locked myself in one stall and bent over breathing heavily. I was prepared to puke when suddenly, the chatter outside all came to a stop.

Then I heard it.

Heavy footsteps.

Soft at first.

Then stopping outside my stall.

I looked behind.

Brown furry feet.

Flat cartoon mascot shoes.

Just standing there.

Waiting.

I froze.

“Hola?” I squeaked.

Nothing.

Just silence.

Then slowly…

the feet bent downward.

As if crouching.

Trying to look under the stall.

I screamed and kicked the door open...

Darkness

The bathroom was gone.

The whole store was dark.

Bathed only in red candlelight.

I stumbled backward.

People stood in black robes in the center of Buc-ee’s.

Employees.

Customers.

Everyone.

Still smiling.

Still too wide.

Bucked tooth galore.

They chanted in unison around a massive stone altar.

And on it, someone screaming.

Blood spilled over polished tile.

The manager stood at the front.

I recognized him instantly.

His face stretched unnaturally tight, swollen with too much Botox, lips trembling in that permanent smile.

His front teeth were filed into points like giant buck teeth.

He raised a knife to the heavens.

“ALL HAIL THE BEAVER!” he shrieked.

The crowd roared.

At the center of them towered the enormous Buc-ee’s statue from outside.

Only now its eyes glowed red.

Its mouth split wider than should be possible.

The stone cracked.

And the thing inside moved.

A voice suddenly shrieked through the darkness.

“BRISKET!”

The entire congregation snapped their heads toward the deli counter in unison.

Then chaos erupted.

The robed worshipers screamed like starving animals and charged, trampling over one another in a rabid frenzy toward the glowing carving station. I stumbled back as dozens of them piled atop each other, clawing and biting for scraps while wet, animalistic noises filled the air.

The beaver-toothed manager stood behind the counter, hacking violently with a butcher’s cleaver.

THWACK. THWACK. THWACK.

Chunks of meat flew onto wax paper.

The worshipers shrieked in delight.

“FRESH BRISKET! FRESH BRISKET!”

One woman tore into a slab beside me, grease and blood dripping down her chin.

Then I saw the hand.

A human hand.

Still wearing a wedding ring.

My stomach dropped.

The “brisket” wasn’t brisket.

It was someone, hacked apart on the cutting board while the crowd devoured him in fistfuls, chewing and moaning with bliss as blood soaked the tile beneath them.

The manager looked at me, smiling impossibly wide.

“TRY A SAMPLE?”

Before I could run, hands seized me from every direction.

Cold fingers.

Too many of them.

They grabbed my arms, my legs, my throat.

I screamed as they dragged me kicking across the polished floor while the congregation chanted louder and louder.

“COWARD! COWARD! COWARD! COWARD!”

They tore my clothes from my body in frantic jerks, shredding fabric until I was bare and trembling before them.

The beaver mascot approached slowly, carrying a rusted bucket sloshing with thick red liquid.

My voice cracked as panic overtook me.

“¡No más, por favor! ¡No más!”
(No more, please! No more!)

Dios mío… sálvame… por favor, Dios…”
(My God… save me… please, God…)

The first splash hit my chest warm.

Sticky.

Metallic.

Blood.

They painted it across me with their bare hands, smearing symbols and words over my skin while the crowd shrieked with laughter.

Across my chest, in dripping crimson letters, they wrote:

COWARD

Then they dragged me outside.

The night air hit my skin like ice.

Above me towered the great Buc-ee’s sign, glowing against the black Texas sky.

They hoisted me upward with ropes, lifting me naked into the air beneath the massive smiling beaver logo.

I swung there helplessly, blood dripping from my body, suspended beneath the neon sign as the crowd below dropped to their knees in worship.

The mascot stepped forward beneath me.

Tilted its head.

And in a deep, guttural voice that sounded like gravel forced through a throat unused to speech, it finally said its first words.

“He was not worthy of the Beaver.”

I woke up screaming in the bathroom stall.

Lights normal.

Everything clean.

Silent.

I stumbled out drenched in sweat.

No candles.

No blood.

No cult.

Just Buc-ee’s.

Normal Buc-ee’s.

Sadie found me pale and shaking near the clothing area.

“You okay?” she asked.

“I think your gas station is cursed.”

She laughed so hard she snorted.

“Told you not to take that many gummies.”

We walked outside.

The warm Texas air hit me like freedom itself.

I laughed nervously.

“Right. Hallucination. Obviously. Just the drugs.”

We climbed into the car.

I buckled in.

Took one last glance toward the store.

And there he was.

Standing beneath the giant sign.

The mascot.

Motionless.

Staring directly at me.

Head tilted.

Smiling.

He slowly raised one gloved hand.

And waved, goodbye.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

I felt a dull pain in the back of my head, and my temples were throbbing with a splitting ache.
I slowly peeled my face off the hard, cold floor panels of our bedroom.
A warm red stream ran down my cheek and chin.

What the hell is happening? I thought, bracing my hands against the floor.

A sharp, piercing pain shot through my ribs and folded me in half.

Carefully, I lifted myself up and looked around.
Through my blurred vision, I noticed a crimson puddle beneath my feet.

Holding my ribs, I turned around and froze.
Red stains shimmered across the empty bed.

The sheets were torn apart, and deep, perfectly symmetrical four marks had been carved into the walls.
The memory of what had happened struck my mind like lightning.

“Olivia!” I screamed, and a tearing pain in my stomach dropped me to one knee.

Slowly, I got to my feet and staggered downstairs.
My phone was sitting on the kitchen table.

I lunged for it, ignoring another wave of pain.

I punched in the number and held it to my ear, feeling the room spin around me.

A voice came through the phone.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“That thing took my wife. Please... help me. Save her!” I screamed into the phone as tears rolled down my cheek.

“Sir, I need you to calm down and tell me your address. Where are you?” the dispatcher said firmly.

My mind went blank.
My stomach lurched into my throat, and the world started spinning around me.

“Sir? Are you still there? I need your address. Hello?” I heard the voice in the distance.

I moved my leg and realized I was lying on a soft mattress, covered by a blanket.
In the background, I heard the steady beeping of a monitor.

I slowly opened my eyes.

I was in a hospital.

“Well, good morning. You’re finally awake. Do you know where you are?” a smiling nurse asked.

“Where’s Olivia? Where’s my wife?” I asked, sitting up abruptly, and pain instantly stole the air from my lungs.

The smile vanished from her face and was replaced with sympathy.
“Easy. You have three broken ribs. Your wife isn’t here. The police are here, and they’ve been waiting to talk to you.”

“How long have I been here? Did they find my wife?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

The nurse stepped closer, her face suddenly serious, and said, “You need to lie back down. Your injuries are severe. You’ve been asleep for almost two full days.”

“Jesus Christ...” I muttered, getting to my feet and ripping the monitoring leads off my chest.

The machine let out one long, continuous tone.

The nurse grabbed my wrists and shouted, “What are you doing? Calm down and get back in bed!”

I tried to pull away. I couldn’t be here.
I had to find Olivia.

Suddenly, the door opened, and a middle-aged man stepped into the room.

“Liam. Sit down. We need to talk,” he said, and his rough, low voice filled the room.

There was something about him that made me obey without hesitation, and I sat back down on the bed.

The nurse stormed out of the room, clearly pissed.

I looked up at him.
He looked about forty-five, with a scruffy beard and tired, irritated eyes.

He took a few steps toward the bed, and I caught the smell of cigarette smoke.

“My name is Detective Carter,” he said, pulling out a small notebook.

Snapped out of my daze, I shouted, “You found my wife?! What happened to Olivia?!”

“Calm down. We haven’t found her yet. I need more details from you. The paramedics found you unconscious at the table with head trauma and broken ribs. What happened?” he asked calmly.

A painful knot twisted in my stomach.

“Please... find Olivia. I heard scratching. Knocking on the window. I went upstairs to the bedroom. I wanted to grab her and get out. Then I saw it... on top of her. I saw a monster with huge claws. Pale. White. And it...”

My voice caught in my throat, and my eyes started filling with tears.

Detective Carter simply looked at me and waited for me to finish.

I swallowed hard and continued.

“It scratched her. Then it jumped on me, and when I came to... Olivia was gone. Then I woke up here. Please, for the love of God, save her. That thing took her.”

I said it, feeling like I was completely falling apart.

I buried my face in my hands, and tears streamed uncontrollably down my arms.

“We spoke to your neighbor. She says you talked two days ago. You woke her up early in the morning. Apparently you came back from your trip sooner than expected. You were wearing nothing but pajamas, and your knuckles were torn up. That matches your medical records.”

He paused, looked down at his notebook, and quietly read.

“Fractured fingers. Lacerations. Partially healed.”

Then he looked me straight in the eyes.

“She says she never saw your wife. She also said you were acting very suspicious.”

I stared at him in disbelief.

He suspects me. He thinks I did something to Olivia, I thought, and a violent shiver ran through my entire body.

“We came back together. Olivia was in the car. That thing followed us from Pineville. It started haunting her back there. We had to run. That’s why, for Christ’s sake, I was wearing pajamas!” I shouted, wiping tears from my eyes.

“And the so-called boxer’s fracture? Where’d that come from? What, Liam? You beat the shit out of the monster?” he asked, raising his voice.

Heat rushed through my entire head.

I stood up and stepped toward him.

“You think I’d hurt my wife? I’m telling you the truth. Why are you here instead of looking for her? Why the hell are you wasting time? That monster took Olivia. We need to find her!” I screamed inches from his face.

It didn’t faze him in the slightest.

He placed a hand on my shoulder.

I felt a firm grip near my collarbone, and in his tired eyes, I saw something almost like sympathy.

“The faster we finish this, the faster I can get back to looking for your wife,” he said calmly. Then he added, “Where did those injuries on your hands come from?”

I stumbled backward, grabbed the hospital bed railing, and sat down.

“I was hitting the car. I felt helpless. Olivia was unconscious. That monster did something to her. I couldn’t wake her up. I kept punching the side of the car over and over.”

The detective pulled out his radio.

“Can I get confirmation on dents along both sides of the vehicle?”

Then he looked back at me.

“Alright. And your injuries? The ribs. The head?”

The memory of the attack flashed through my mind, and a cold sweat broke out across my body.

“I told you. That thing jumped on me. It threw me into the wall like a rag doll,” I said, staring at the floor.

“We found blood in your bedroom. It’s being tested. You’re telling me that monster made those holes in the wall and in the bedding? You’re sure we won’t find any tools? The marks are incredibly even and deep. Almost like somebody used what the techs described as sharpened garden rakes,” he said, never taking his eyes off me.

I felt helplessness building inside me.

That feeling had been growing nonstop ever since our goddamn trip.

I had completely lost control of everything.

I looked him straight in the eyes.

“Detective Carter. Please believe me. I know I sound insane. I know it sounds impossible. But you have to help me. You have to find my wife.”

At that moment, a doctor walked into the room.

“Sorry, Detective, but that’s enough. The patient doesn’t have the strength for an interrogation this intense. He needs rest.”

A nurse walked in right behind him.

“Keep my number. If you remember anything else, call me,” Carter said, handing me his card. Standing in the doorway, he added, “Don’t leave town.”

The doctor stepped closer and gently helped me back onto the bed, saying, “Lie back,” and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the nurse injecting something into my IV.

I flinched as a sharp wave of pain shot through my body, from my ribs all the way into my lungs.

Anger started building inside me.

“What the hell did you give me?! I don’t want to rest. I want out of here!” I shouted, but then a warm, almost pleasant sensation started spreading through my body.

“It’s just a sedative,” the nurse said, emptying the syringe.

“I’m going to find my wife...” I mumbled as I sank into the soft mattress.

I opened my eyes and grabbed my aching head.

Slowly, I sat up in the hospital bed, dull pain flowing through every inch of my body.

I looked at the window.

It was dark outside.

I carefully sat on the edge of the bed, my head pounding like the worst hangover of my life.

I can’t sit here forever. I have to do something, no matter what, I thought as I got to my feet.

I slipped the pulse monitor off my finger and ripped the IV out of my arm.

Staggering, I walked to the door and slowly opened it.

Dim light filled the hallway.

Absolute silence, broken only by distant coughing and the soft sounds of hospital machines.

I stepped out slowly, keeping one hand against the wall for support.

Every step sent stabbing pain through my broken ribs.

Suddenly, behind me, I heard the monitor in my room.

It went completely insane.

The alarm wailed, echoing through the dark hallways.

A sudden rush of adrenaline hit me, and for a moment, the pain eased.

I picked up the pace.

Halfway down the hallway, I spotted a door.

I walked closer and opened it.

A stairwell.

I looked at the floor sign.

Third floor.

I grabbed the railing and started moving down as fast as I could.

“Second floor... first floor...” I whispered, reading the signs as sweat rolled down my forehead.

I opened the door and carefully peeked into the hallway.

Empty.

I moved slowly, pressed against the wall, and hid behind a vending machine.

Only the reception desk left.

My stomach twisted into knots.

If they see me there, there’s no way I’m outrunning anybody in this condition.

I slowly leaned my head out.

Nobody.

I started moving as fast as I could toward the exit.

I passed through the automatic doors and felt the cool night air hit my face.

The night was surprisingly warm.

Filled with relief and hope, I quickened my pace.

Every step my shoes took against the concrete sent a brutal, piercing pain through my body.

I ignored it.

It was a small price to pay if it meant finding the woman I loved.

The streets were almost completely silent, interrupted only now and then by a passing car.

Then suddenly, from a bus stop across the street, I heard a muffled voice.

“Hello? There’s some guy in hospital clothes running down the street. I’m over by...”

No... no, no, no. I was so close, I thought, pushing myself even harder.

I stumbled the rest of the way home.

Taking side streets.

Adding mile after painful mile.

I was completely out of it.

Barely conscious.

I stepped onto our driveway and looked up at the house.

Yellow police tape blocked off the property.

I ducked under it.

Walked to the front door.

Grabbed the handle.

Of course... of course they’re locked, I thought, yanking the handle with all my strength.

“You’re gonna hurt yourself.”

A low, familiar voice came from behind me.

Slowly, I turned around, leaning my back against the door.

Then I slid down and collapsed onto the ground.

Detective Carter was standing in the driveway.

“Coming here was stupid. Did you seriously think the hospital wouldn’t call us when a patient escaped? And even if they didn’t... come on, man. You’re running around in a hospital gown with your balls hanging out.”

He laughed.

“You caused such a scene that within thirty minutes of your escape, we got four more calls about you.”

I said nothing.

I didn’t have the strength.

I just sat there, barely catching my breath while pain radiated from my stomach into my chest and spine.

Carter stepped closer.

“Tell me something, Liam. Where were you trying to go? Because I sure as hell don’t believe you came here to stay home.”

I slowly raised my head.

“Pineville, Kentucky.”

He frowned.

“For what? That’s almost three hundred miles.”

“They know something,” I said, flinching with every word.

Carter walked to the front door.

He pulled out a key.

Unlocked it.

Opened it.

I fell backward and slammed the back of my head against the floor.

Darkness flooded my vision.

I felt myself slipping away.

Then I felt a hand grabbing me.

“We’ll see. Get changed and get in the car,” he said, hauling me to my feet.

Half-conscious, I walked inside, changed clothes, and climbed into the car.

Detective Carter started the engine, and we drove.

Maybe two miles.

Then the exhaustion finally caught up with me.

I sank into the soft leather seat, and the vibration of the moving car knocked me out almost instantly.

“Wake up. We’re almost there.”

I heard Carter’s voice.

I opened my eyes and immediately squinted as bright sunlight stabbed into them.

I wiped the drool from my mouth.

Then instinctively glanced sideways, hoping Carter hadn’t seen.

“What now?” he asked.

“We need to drive to the edge of town. There should be an old woman’s house there. She knows something.”

He looked at me.

“What do you mean she knows something? Why are you so sure?”

I looked back at him.

“She rented us the cabin. She warned us not to arrive after dark. I called her after we got home... and she told me she was sorry... but it was already too late.”

Carter glanced at me uneasily.

“Too late for what?”

My stomach tightened.

“We’re here. Right there,” I said, pointing toward Mrs. Sofia’s property.

Carter pulled into the driveway and killed the engine.

“Wait here.”

He stepped out.

He was halfway to the house when suddenly I saw movement.

A dog came charging straight at him.

I grabbed the handle, and adrenaline exploded through my body.

I took off running toward the woods, holding my ribs.

Tears streamed down my face.

Every step made my vision blur.

I was close. I could feel it.

Olivia had to be in that goddamn cabin.

I’ll get her out. I’ll figure something out. I’ll save her.

Then suddenly...

I tripped over a branch.

The pain was beyond anything I’d ever felt.

It drove all the air out of my lungs.

I rolled on the ground, clutching my ribs, sobbing.

I had to take this route.

If I’d gone down the main trail, Carter would’ve caught me, and God knows we’d probably be heading back to Cincinnati by now.

I’m close. I have to get up, I thought.

I planted my hands against the dirt.

Slowly pushed myself upright.

Wiped the sand from my face.

I took one step forward... and froze.

I felt myself piss down my pants, the warmth running all the way to my ankles.

Behind me, I heard it.

A long... slow... metallic scraping sound... against wood.