r/Odd_directions

I'm pretty annoyed. Just got banned from the third home improvement forum because I asked a simple question. 

“Irrelevant content” they say. I ask them to explain themselves. They just tell me that their forums are no place for “horror stories.” 

I'm not trying to write horror stories. Typing is hard enough as is right now. I just want to fix this damn leak. Gary and I are frankly stumped.

Maybe I ought to explain everything from the beginning. That should paint a clear picture for you all. And please be sure to actually read this before assuming I'm a “troll.”

It started this morning. I just got home from my job when I noticed there was an inch of water covering the kitchen floor. Hopped on HomeNet just a few minutes later. I've been using the forum for years at that point, and never ran into any issues prior.

GDon2:
Water’s been flooding my kitchen. I have century-old hardwood floors. Gary says it’s whatever’s under the sink, but I don't know how to deal with it. Can’t afford a plumber. I’m not too shabby with the tools of the trade, just need to be pointed in the right direction. Photo attached.

I didn’t get any replies for a bit. Tried my luck with some more details.

GDon2:
Hey, I hope I'm not flooding, no pun intended, haha. This is a bit urgent. I think it's a hair clog or something. Photo attached.

Bloop. I get a notification a minute later.

parsk00:
Fake.

Then another one.

bigMOISTy:
Seriously, what the **** is that?

Ten minutes go by. I get one last ding, a notification that my post has been deleted, along with a comment from a forum moderator. 

JGordo63 (MOD):
This is a plumbing forum. We appreciate the traffic, but no. Go post this on nosleep.

I messaged the moderator immediately, asking for an explanation. I took several more photos for proof. Even asked Gary to curl up next to the mass as best as he could for a size comparison. This just got an angrier response.

JGordo63 (MOD):
I'm not interested in your creepypasta.

JGordo63 (MOD):
The decision on your post is final. We will not discuss any revisions or reposts. If you want to continue using the HomeNet forums, we recommend posting RELEVANT DISCUSSION ONLY. Please do not make another post for at least 24 hours. Thank you.

Twenty-four hours? The pressure in my head felt like the pipes which exploded hours earlier.

GDon2:
I don’t know what a creepy pasta is I just want to fix my sink

JGordo63 (MOD):
Bye bye, troll.

Bloop. A notification in my inbox. I click on it.

Sorry. You have been permanently banned by the moderators of HomeNet.
Reason: gore / trolling / harassing mods

I couldn’t access the site anymore. All the threads were locked from my view as though I hadn’t had an account for the last seventeen years. 

“Damn…!”

Gary craned his long neck around the corner, into my bedroom.

“Problem,” he grunted

“I'm working on it.”

“Get bigger.”

I got up from my chair and followed his lanky behind out the door.

Yeah. It definitely got bigger. The cabinet door over the sink wasn’t shutting anymore. The hair bunched up, starting to crawl along the inner frame, propping it open ever so slightly. Yuck.

“How long did you say this has been going on?”

A few of Gary’s eyes blinked. None of them were looking at me. 

“How long, Gary?”

He gestured two big circular motions with his arms. 

“Two hours, huh?” I wiped my brow. “You uh…do anything with the sink beforehand?”

“Gary dumped mupmup.”

Oh no. 

Full disclosure, I don’t know what “mupmup” is. I mean, I know what he’s referring to, but I am unsure what it is actually composed of. I just know it’s slimy and really hard to get out of my clothes. 

“Down the garbage disposal?”

Gary nodded his head. Spittle graced my cheeks from the motion. I wiped it away.

“Okay, Gary. This is your problem as much as it is mine. Do you have any idea how we fix this?”

“Have the glupglup?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Hungry.”

“Just—one minute, okay?”

I headed back to my room and got the computer out of sleep mode. Back to browsing. 

Next on my brief list was the Handyman Hank company forums. Maybe I could get a bite with them. 

Donald G: Hey there. I’ve been dealing with a pretty bad leak. It’s been going on for two hours. My roommate dumped some “mupmup” (photo 1) down the drain. It created a large obstruction of hair, I think (photo 2). If anybody could help me identify what “mupmup” is I would really appreciate it. 

No responses this time. The post was quietly taken down by moderation and my account was given a day-long posting ban. 

I stood up and ran my hand through my hair. Gary was standing right behind me, drooling. 

“Hungry!”

Right. We missed feeding time because of the leak. I was already an hour behind schedule. 

Gary snarled and lunged at me, biting my hand. Thankfully he’s pretty lightweight, despite his head usually scraping the ceiling. I didn’t have too hard of a time fighting him over toward the kitchen. I got the fridge open with my foot, used my free hand to dig open the locked drawer, and pulled free some specially-cured meats. I clocked Gary on the side of the head, causing him to let go, opening his mouth wide. One of my fingers plopped to the floor, getting blood all over the countertop on the way down. Goddamn it. I impatiently stuffed the meat into Gary’s mouth. He started suckling it like a toddler. 

I grit my teeth as I swaddled my hand in a hand towel. The pain was dull, rising by the second as my adrenaline stopped working its magic. 

“Every night with you…! God!” I tried to wiggle the pain out. No use. I really wanted to go to a hospital, but I couldn’t risk it with the leak going on. My precious hardwood hung in the balance. 

Not like I got a chance, anyways. The cabinet door beneath the sink blew open very suddenly. Tendrils of hair wrapped around my wrists and dragged me to the floor. Gary cried, cowering from the mass. 

The hair had grown teeth. It kinda looked like the inside of an electric pencil sharpener, looking down its mouth. A sloppy sound like stuck gears emanated from within. I was getting pulled toward it.

“Gary! Your problem! Help!”

His eyes scanned the room, three-hundred and sixty degrees. They all landed on the butcher’s knife. He clumsily grabbed it by the blade and shambled toward me.

“What do?” he quivered.

“Hurty side down! On the hair! Back and forth, like you're brushing your teeth!”

He got to work. I was freed within a few seconds, thankfully with no extra cuts. Crawled away as fast as I could, picking up a jug of isopropyl alcohol that the thing knocked onto the floor.

If I had balls, maybe I would have used it to set the thing on fire. But the damage to my kitchen was bad enough already.

I decided to go to the hospital instead. Reluctantly. Gary is watching the fort while I'm gone.

In the waiting room, I posted everything to a plumbing subreddit as one last hail mary. Predictably, at this point, that post now sits at zero upvotes and twenty-three comments saying I'm posting in the wrong community. 

So I guess this is the right one, then. Since apparently I'm living in a horror story. It's news to me. 

Not even going to bother posting the pics this time. They keep getting flagged as gore and I don't want to be banned from Reddit either.

I really just want to fix this leak.

Before you start looking through your contacts and trying to figure out who would post something like this, don't bother. You don't know me anymore.

You won't remember ever knowing me, and you'll never know me again.

Confused?

It was never supposed to happen this way. Let me explain.

I was eight years old when I saw my idol for the first time on TV. He’s a famous actor, he's been in a lot of movies. You’ve probably seen at least one of them, even if you don’t remember his name. He made me see that acting could be more than pretending. He became every character he played, to the point that I stopped seeing the man underneath. I wished I could do that.

So I emailed him.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

It was a very long and embarrassingly earnest email about wanting to become an actor, with a dozen spelling mistakes. I told him that I had seen all his films over and over. That one day I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

I didn't expect a reply, but he did. He thanked me for writing and told me to keep working hard… then offered to fly me out to meet him. I couldn't believe it. That day, I was so nervous that I couldn't eat. I remember shaking his hand and trying desperately not to let him see that my palm was sweating. Mostly, I remember looking at him and thinking, that's going to be me.

And I did keep working hard. I acted in school plays, joined amateur theatre groups and went to acting classes. I attended audition after audition.

I got close enough to keep going, which was the cruel part. I got callbacks, extra roles and tiny parts with one line. I once spent an entire day on a film set only to discover that later, the scene had been cut. Eventually, I stopped telling people I was going to make it.

Meanwhile, my idol's career just kept going. Every few years there'd be another blockbuster, and he'd win another award. I'd see another interview, another photograph of him standing beside some beautiful woman on a red carpet, smiling like the world had been built specifically to accommodate him. I tried to remain inspired rather than jealous, and for a while, I actually succeeded.

Then I took a job in production. It wasn't glamorous - no kid ever tells you they want to grow up to spend twelve hours carrying equipment, checking call sheets and fetching coffee for people who don't know your name. But it paid the bills and kept me around film sets.

That was how I ended up working on one of his movies. The morning I saw him again, it was twenty years later and he barely looked a day older. I watched as he walked onto set. The man I'd spent half my life trying to become. Everyone moved right around him. People straightened when he passed, and assistants appeared from nowhere. Someone handed him coffee before he'd even asked for it.

I stood twenty feet away holding a coil of cable.

The cameras turned towards him as he entered. When everyone looked at him, I felt physically sick. It was then that I realized I couldn't lie to myself anymore - I still wanted it. No, not the roles, or even the money.

I wanted everyone in the room to turn when I walked in. For people to know my name before I introduced myself, the person everyone was waiting to see. I wanted to be famous.

I wanted to be him.

There was a private celebration when the film wrapped up. It was for the cast, director and a handful of people important enough to have their names on the invitation. There was an open bar, expensive food nobody touched and a rooftop terrace.

I was only there to help clear the equipment. But of course, I'd spent the whole evening watching him from the edge of the room. He was exactly as I'd remembered him from when I was a kid - older, but somehow unchanged in the ways that mattered, with all that effortless quality I had spent my entire adult life trying to manufacture. Then someone handed me a drink, and another. By midnight, I was drunk enough to stop pretending I wasn't watching.

I found him alone on the terrace. For once, nobody was swarming to him. He was leaning against the railing with a glass of whisky, looking out over the city.

I walked over without thinking, stumbling slightly in my drunken state.

"Hey, remember me?" I blurted out, the words slurring, "I met you when I was a kid."

"Did you?"

Of course he didn't recognize me.

"I emailed you."

A pause.

"Ah wait, I do remember that."

But it didn't matter to me anymore.

"I wanted to be you," I said. "I've spent my whole life trying to do what you did."

He chuckled.

"There's only one of me."

I glared at him.

"That's the problem."

His smile faded.

"I've watched you get everything," I continued. "Every damn thing. The roles. The money. The models. The awards. People lose their minds when you walk into a room. Meanwhile, I threw away my entire childhood trying to be seen. And now I'm still carrying cables. Still invisible."

The alcohol had stripped away whatever part of me still knew when to shut up. We stared at each other.

"What do you want me to say to that?" He finally asked.

"I don't want you to say anything. I wish you'd just disappear."

He looked down at his whisky, then back at me.

"You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?"

The question was so calm that it sobered me for a second. I stared at him. In that moment, I could have apologized. Told him I was drunk and didn't mean any of it. Instead, I spat out one final word.

"Sure."

Then I looked down at the glass in my hand. Now you've done it, you absolute idiot, I thought. Might as well start looking for a new job tomorrow.

But when I looked back up, he was gone.

I stood there for a few seconds, staring at the empty space where he'd been. Then I looked behind me, expecting to see him walking back through the doors. Nothing. I glanced over the railing. Nothing.

For a moment, I wondered if I'd imagined the whole conversation. Maybe he'd gone back inside while I was looking at my drink, and none of it had happened at all. When I went inside to check if he was there, the party was still going. There was music, laughter, people talking over one another. Then someone grabbed my shoulder.

"Congratulations!" Shouted one of the producers, as he tapped me on the back. I blinked.

"For what?"

"Don't play it cool now," He laughed.

I smiled awkwardly, assuming I'd misunderstood. Then a member of the cast came over and grinned at me.

"Seriously, you were so good. You deserve it."

People were smiling at me, and a few were raising their glasses. I had no clue what for. Then I turned towards the television mounted above the bar. The film's trailer was playing. As I saw a close-up of the lead character, my eyes widened, and I stopped breathing immediately.

My face. Not his.

Mine.

The scene changed, and there I was again. Another scene. Not him, me.

I looked around. Nobody else was confused like I was, or even seemed to think there was anything strange about it. I saw the poster for the film displayed in the venue on the ground floor. I'd seen it hundreds of times during production, and knew exactly what it looked like. But this time, his face was gone, and mine was there instead. My name was printed underneath in enormous letters. I stared at it for so long that someone walking past had to step around me.

I should have been terrified, but I was too busy staring at myself on the poster. Because underneath the confusion and the impossible feeling that I might be in the middle of a dream, I was feeling something I'd spent twenty years waiting to feel.

What it was like to be famous. Known. Seen.

Him.

The next morning, my phone wouldn't stop ringing. My agent, an agent I didn't remember having, called first, followed by my publicist. Next came the director, and people I'd never spoken to before who apparently knew me very well. There were meetings and interviews scheduled for me.

The film opened that weekend and broke records. I started seeing my face on billboards, magazine covers and at bus stops. Within a year, I couldn't walk down the street without someone recognizing me.

Within another year, I could barely walk down the street at all.

People shouted my name from cars, and children begged for autographs. Grown adults cried when they met me. I went on talk shows and sat beneath bright lights while strangers told me how much I meant to them.

Then came the awards and paychecks. I bought a house I couldn't afford before, and then a bigger one because I liked the view. I flew first class and stayed in hotels where the staff knew my name. The world's most beautiful models wanted to be with me. The world's most powerful men started to dress like me.

But above all, for the first time, everyone turned when I walked into a room. And I loved every second of it.

After everything I'd sacrificed, after every failed audition, every rejection and every night I'd gone home wondering whether I'd wasted my life, surely I had finally gotten what I deserved. I should have felt guilty that he had been erased from existence, but I didn't. As I sipped a glass of wine in my penthouse overlooking the city, I felt like I'd finally won.

Then I learned what came with it.

The paparazzi became impossible to escape. They waited outside restaurants, followed my car and camped outside my house. Fans started turning up wherever I went, too. Some were harmless, but others weren't so understanding. People found my address, and packages started arriving that I hadn't ordered. I received letters from strangers telling me they loved me, hated me, or knew me better than anyone else.

Eventually, I stopped going out alone, and had to have a full fleet of security guards around me at all times.

I started feeling trapped by the life I'd spent so long trying to build, so I took a break from acting. I packed a bag, left the city and rented a small cottage in a remote rural village where, I thought, nobody would know who I was. I arranged discreet transport.

I arrived and settled into the cottage. A wave of relief washed over me instantly as I sat on the bed. For the first time in years, I thought I'd finally have some privacy.

In the evening, I went out and headed towards the town center. The first person I saw as I walked down the street was an old man. He looked to be in his eighties - thin, stooped and dressed in clothes that seemed to have survived as long as he had. He stared at me for a few seconds before smiling, then pointed at me with a shaky hand.

"I know you."

Great.

Even in a village without a cinema or television signal, the first person that sees me still knows who I am. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again.

"Hello. Which of my films have you seen?" I forced a smile.

He frowned.

"What is a film?"

I stared at him.

"You don't know what a film is? Then how do you know who I am?"

The old man gestured, then turned and started walking.

"Come with me."

I followed him inside apprehensively. His house was small and old, with photographs hanging on the walls. There were family photographs of weddings, birthdays and holidays in yellowing frames. A teenage girl who I assumed was his granddaughter was sitting at the kitchen table when we walked in. The old man walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a photograph.

"This is you."

It was a photograph of me at some premiere, on glossy film paper. I was standing on a red carpet, smiling beside an actress. I frowned. Why the hell did he have that? Perhaps his granddaughter was a fan - that was the only reasonable explanation I could think of.

Then he took another photograph from the cabinet.

"And this one."

I looked down. At first, I thought it was another publicity photograph - I'd probably had thousands of those taken of me whether I was aware or not. But then I recognized the location.

The village.

More specifically, the road outside the cottage I was currently staying in. I was beside the wall, mid-step, wearing the same coat I'd arrived in. I stared at it.

"I just arrived here. Did you take this?"

Before he could reply, his granddaughter glanced my way. Her eyes widened.

"It's him."

I stopped.

"You know me too?"

"Of course."

She pulled out a slightly faded photo. In it, she was posing outside the house with some other kids. I looked at it in confusion. Then she pointed at the corner of the photograph. A man stood behind them at a distance, looking at the camera with a neutral expression. I looked closer.

The man was me.

I froze, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Then the old man immediately pulled out another photograph and showed it to me. This one was much older, and in black and white. A family stood outside a house that looked nothing like the one I was standing in.

"Forty years ago," the old man said.

There were maybe ten people in it, including children, adults and an elderly couple. And in the background, standing half-hidden behind the others… was me. A man with my face, my eyes, my hair.

I hadn't even been born forty years ago.

I took a step back. Then I glanced back towards the photograph his granddaughter had showed me.

This time, every face in the photo had changed.

Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.

Five children with my face were staring back at me from the faded paper.

I scrambled away from them and ran out of the house. I could hear them shouting behind me, asking me to wait and come back, but I didn't turn. I made it a good distance away when I glanced back towards their house. They stood in front of their door watching me, looking disappointed, but they weren't following. I covered my face and walked briskly back to the cottage.

As I bolted the door behind me, I convinced myself that was some kind of hallucination. Perhaps it was exhaustion or the stress of everything that had happened since becoming famous. There had to be an explanation.

The next morning, I didn't leave until I was sure nobody was outside.

I was halfway through the village when I noticed a girl sitting on a bench, reading a book. She looked up as I passed. Then she looked again and stared for a few seconds.

"Excuse me?"

Not again. I forced a polite smile back and took my hand away from my face. Her eyes widened.

"I knew you looked familiar."

She started flicking through the book she was reading, some kind of history textbook. Then she stopped at a page. There was a Renaissance painting printed across the top.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

The painting was of me. My eyes. My nose. My hair. The caption said 'painted in the sixteenth century'.

She kept turning the pages further back. She stopped again.

This time, a prehistoric cave painting filled the page. It showed a group of primitive figures stood around a fire holding spears.

One of them had my face.

"That's weird." She looked at the cave painting, then back at me. I couldn't answer.

Then a voice came from behind me.

"You've got to be kidding me."

A man was hurrying towards us, holding a newspaper. He looked excited as he shoved the newspaper into my hands. The headline was about an archaeological discovery of an ancient statue had recently been uncovered thousands of miles away. The photograph underneath showed a stone figure.

My face was carved into it.

"How could this be?" He said in awe as he stared at me. I dropped the newspaper.

People had started gathering around. More villagers emerged from shops and houses, many of them approaching to stare. Then an elderly man pushed through the crowd, wearing a white doctor's coat.

"This isn't possible," he said. "I saw you in the morgue just yesterday! There was a corpse who looked exactly like you!"

I backed away from the crowd surrounding me. Then something brushed against my leg.

I looked down and saw a cat. It rubbed itself against my ankle, purring, then stared back at me with wide eyes. I let out an exasperated choke.

"Not you as well."

The cat meowed. I could feel that the people had closed in around me now. I looked back up... and all their faces had changed.

Every face in the crowd looking back at me was mine.

The girl. The doctor. The old man. Everyone had my face.

I looked down at the cat, and it was looking back at me.

With my face.

I screamed.

Then I ran. I didn't care where I was going, I just needed to get away. I pushed through the crowd of hundreds of identical versions of me staring back as I ran between them. I made it to the edge of the town square and a flock of birds suddenly burst from a rooftop. I looked up, and every single bird had my face. Tiny eyes, with tiny versions of my nose and mouth. They flew overhead, each one wearing the same neutral expression I'd seen in the photographs.

I ran faster, stumbling. The town clock tower came into view. Its enormous clock face had changed and now my face stared down at me from above the street. The hands were moving across my forehead. I looked at my watch. It had my face on it too. I ripped it from my wrist and threw it away from me, into the road.

At this point, I was sure I'd gone insane. The sun was disappearing behind the hills, and the sky darkened, but I just kept running. And as the clouds parted and moon rose above the village, I finally stopped and looked up into the sky. Then I fell backwards. The moon had my face.

And that was when I understood.

You want me to disappear… and you want to be seen instead?

I had spent my entire life wanting people to know my face. Now, everything that could have a face would have mine. I had become the most seen thing that had ever existed. Everywhere I looked, there I was.

I ran until I couldn't run anymore. I don't know how long it was - maybe several hours. The sun was already emerging from behind the hills by the time I finally stopped. I stumbled into an empty bus.

Then I remembered the email.

The thought came so suddenly, but once the idea formed, I had to execute on it. I pulled my phone from my pocket and opened my inbox. Hundreds of thousands of emails were sitting there from agents, journalists, fans and people I didn't remember speaking to. I sorted them by oldest and scrolled.

Then I saw it.

Subject: You are my favorite acter

I opened the email I'd sent to him when I was eight. My hands started shaking. The spelling mistakes were still there, along with the ridiculous paragraphs about how much I loved his movies. The part where I'd told him I wanted to grow up to be just like him.

And underneath it, by some miracle, was his reply - the only proof that he'd existed. Proof that there had once been a world where I wasn't the only face in existence.

I stared at the screen, then took a breath and hit reply. I didn't know whether anyone would receive it, but I kept typing anyway.

Subject: I'm sorry.

Then:

I was wrong, I don't want this. Please come back. Please fix it.

I pressed send, then put my phone beside me and closed my eyes, the exhaustion of running from my face for an entire afternoon having drained me. I don't remember falling asleep that night.

When I woke up, the sun was rising. For a few seconds, I didn't move. Then I looked up.

The moon was still visible above the hills. Normal. Just the moon.

I sat up. A bird landed on the roof of the shelter. A normal bird with a beak.

Then I looked towards the village. The clock tower was still there, but this time, the face was just numbers.

I stood up and walked towards the road. People passed me, but nobody stared or pointed. One man walked straight past without even looking at me. Nobody recognized me.

I paused as I looked around, watching the people walk around me with indifference. I couldn't believe it had actually worked… and it never felt so great to be invisible again.

When I reached the cottage, I went inside and stood in the middle of the room, then I packed my things. Now that this ordeal was over, I just wanted to go home.

The journey felt strangely ordinary. I just drove back. Even though I didn't have security, no paparazzi followed me, no one attempted to stop the car and nobody recognized me at the petrol station or asked for a photograph. Then I saw the billboard above the road on the outskirts of town, advertising the film that had started everything.

My old idol was back. His face was on the poster… not mine. His name was underneath.

I laughed. He was back, and so was everything else, just like I asked for. I drove the rest of the way home with tears in my eyes. When I reached my family's house, I stood outside for a moment before knocking. My mother answered.

"Hello. Can I help you?"

I smiled.

"Mom, I'm back."

She frowned.

"I'm sorry? Who are you?"

I laughed nervously.

"Very funny."

She didn't laugh. My heart started racing. I told her my name, my birthday and where I went to school. I told her about the scar on my elbow from when I was nine, where she patched me up while I sat on her knee. I told her about the treehouse I had built with dad in the garden.

She just kept staring in silence. I kept pleading with her, and eventually, she called my father. He came downstairs and stood beside her, watching me with suspicion.

"Who are you?"

"I'm your son," I said, my voice breaking.

I pulled out my phone and opened the photographs I'd taken over the years. Every photograph of my family was still there - birthdays, Christmases and holidays. I had decade old photos of my parents and friends. But I wasn't in any of them. My dad's expression changed into one of horror.

"Why do you have those? Have you been stalking us?"

I stared back at him. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

"Leave our property. Now," he said sternly. "I don't ever want to see you here again."

I stood on the pavement outside my childhood home while the door slammed in my face.

I didn't know where else to go, so I began walking. I walked past the houses of people I'd grown up with, and nobody recognized me. I went to the café where I used to meet my friends, and I even saw some of them there. Nobody knew me. I walked past my old school and told the receptionist my name. She looked it up, but there was no record.

If I asked someone for directions, they'd give them to me. I bought a coffee, and the barista took my money. People could still see me, hear me and talk to me. But every conversation began the same way - I'd have to introduce myself again, even if we'd spoken before.

That was when I finally understood what had happened when I asked him to “fix” it.

From that point onwards, no one would know me. There are no photographs of me. No records, films or memories. Nothing that proves I was ever here. To every person I met and will meet, I'll always be a stranger.

You used to know me. But you'll never know me again, and neither will anyone else.

Thanks for reading this anyway.

Even if it was only for a few minutes, I just wanted to be someone you knew.

Alex arrived last.

The gravel drive already held three cars. Melissa’s white SUV sat nearest the porch at a careful angle. Dan’s Civic was parked behind it with the driver’s door still open and a plastic bag of snacks on the roof. Kevin’s station wagon stood farthest back, hatch raised. The house looked smaller than the listing photographs and more tired; paint had flaked near the foundation and a wind chime made of spoons hung crooked beside the door. Alex killed the engine and sat for a moment with both hands on the wheel. He had typed a cancellation message twice in the last week and deleted both versions after Kevin called and said it would mean a lot if all four of them actually showed up this time.

Kevin was already on the porch steps with a cardboard box. When he saw Alex he stopped and grinned.

“You made it.”

“I said I would.”

“You said you would the last two times.” Kevin shifted the box against his hip. “How was the drive?”

“Long. Your back still bad?”

“Same as always. Melissa already put the better mattress in my room.” He nodded at the box. “Help me with this before she decides where it belongs.”

Alex took it. Inside, wrapped in newspaper, sat a glossy green ceramic duck with an orange beak and one eye larger than the other.

“You still have this thing.”

“Of course I still have this thing. Forty-year reunion. Mr. Business was specifically included in the original deal.” Kevin’s voice was bright. “He’s coming whether anyone else likes it or not.”

Melissa appeared in the doorway before Alex could answer. She wore the linen shirt she preferred when she wanted the weekend to look effortless, took the box from him without waiting, set it on the entry table, and kissed his cheek.

“You made it. I had started calculating the odds.”

“Nonrefundable deposit,” Alex said.

“That was the point.” She stepped aside so he could enter. “Dan’s already on the couch. Kevin, your room is the one with the queen. Alex, you’re at the end of the hall with Dan. Farther from the stairs.”

She had remembered. Alex followed her inside.

The living room smelled of lemon cleaner and old carpet. A framed sign above the couch read BREATHE in heavy black letters. Three wineglasses stood on the coffee table beside an open bottle of cabernet. Dan looked up from his phone, feet already on the table.

“The prodigal. How’s the glamorous world of project management?”

“Same as always.”

Dan’s grin held for a second. “Still making PowerPoints nobody reads?”

Alex said, “Pays for the mortgage.”

“Living the dream.”

“Apparently.”

They unloaded the cars in two trips. Kevin carried the cooler while Dan brought the snacks and an oversized Bluetooth speaker that announced, the moment it was plugged in, that it was ready to pair. Melissa carried the good cheese, the crackers, and a small bottle of ibuprofen she set on the kitchen counter. When Kevin claimed his back was fine she told him he was taking the queen room anyway. He objected. She said she had packed the ibuprofen for a reason. Kevin said, “Of course you did.”

The upstairs toilet required a particular sequence of handle-holding and waiting; Melissa corrected it while the others stood in the hallway offering suggestions that solved nothing. A corkscrew went missing and reappeared in Melissa’s purse. Dan declared the rental a mild scam and then made himself comfortable on the couch. Kevin cycled through playlists until he found three songs from college and left the speaker playing low enough to talk over.

They ordered pizza from a place Melissa had already researched. She recited the orders from memory, including the fact that Alex still refused olives, and when the boxes arrived she handed him the cleaner half without remark. They ate standing because the dining table was covered in unopened mail left by previous guests. Kevin raised the WORLD’S OKAYEST DAD mug he had found in a cupboard and offered a toast to the original four. Everyone drank.

The conversation began to overlap. Dan did the old RA impression that still worked. Melissa corrected a detail about a party from 2009 and then laughed when Kevin refused the correction. At one point Alex made a quiet observation about the RA’s shoes that only Dan caught; Dan snorted into his wine and had to wipe his mouth. For a stretch of minutes the room felt briefly like the apartment they had shared when forty had been a number that belonged to other people.

Kevin set his plate down and went out to the car while they were still arguing about the shoes. When he came back he was carrying a thick manila envelope Alex recognized before Kevin opened it; the flap had been reinforced with the same strip of blue tape since senior year. Inside were photographs, some of them already fading at the edges. Kevin spread a few on the coffee table beside the ceramic duck and said they ought to recreate one for the record, since this was the weekend they had promised each other at twenty-one. He chose a particular image: the four of them on the steps of the old apartment, Mr. Business balanced on Dan’s head, all of them laughing at something that no longer mattered.

Kevin tried to arrange them in the same positions. Dan refused to put the duck on his head, citing both dignity and a knee that no longer tolerated the old stance. Melissa objected to the lighting and then to the angle. Alex noticed that she had automatically taken the same side of him she had occupied in the original photograph. Kevin kept adjusting the spacing, asking them to stand closer, insisting the geometry would work if they just committed to it. Someone said they were not twenty-one anymore. Kevin said he knew. Nobody appeared to believe him. In the end they took the photograph anyway. The result, when Kevin checked the screen, showed four adults smiling because they had been told to smile. Kevin looked at it for a long moment, then set the phone face-down on the table.

Dan made a joke about how none of them had become the people they had imagined at twenty-one. Kevin started another story about the apartment and abandoned it halfway through when no one picked it up. Melissa began collecting the loose photographs. Alex helped her square the edges of the stack. Kevin put the remaining pictures back in the envelope.

They drank more. The speaker continued its low rotation of old songs. The ceramic duck stayed on the coffee table.

Kevin’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it, then held the screen up.

“Any of you ever hear of the Midnight Game?”

Melissa said, “Absolutely not.”

Kevin kept scrolling. “Ritual thing. Write your name, a little blood, knock on a door at midnight. Stay awake until 3:33, keep moving, keep a candle going.”

Dan leaned forward. “Is that the one where something comes for you if you screw it up?”

“That’s the one.”

Melissa took the phone, read for half a minute, and handed it back. “We are not doing that in a house with a security deposit.”

Kevin was already on his feet. “Come on. We used to do dumb things together. When’s the next time all four of us are in the same place?” He looked at Alex. “You’re the tiebreaker.”

Alex looked at the duck, at the manila envelope, at the three wineglasses and the mug that still held the last of the toast. One more shared stupid act might still turn the evening into something they would remember differently later.

He said, “We’re going to need a candle.”

They found one in the junk drawer beside the stove, the kind sold in a glass jar labeled Vanilla Bliss. Melissa wiped the dust from the glass with a paper towel and examined the wick. Dan produced a book of matches from the snack bag. Kevin cleared the coffee table, moving the wineglasses and the WORLD’S OKAYEST DAD mug to the floor while leaving Mr. Business in place. The argument about which door to use lasted nearly ten minutes. Both the front and back doors were wood, though the back sat behind a plastic storm door; Melissa preferred the front because it was closer to the street, Dan wanted the back because the porch light kept triggering, and Kevin said the instructions had not specified. They settled on the front door.

Melissa insisted they sanitize the sewing needle a second time. Dan pricked his finger first and immediately got blood on the corner of the rental agreement still sitting on the entry table. Kevin laughed hard enough that he had to sit on the stairs. Melissa wrote first, her name compressed into the same tidy block letters Alex remembered from every birthday card she had ever signed. Kevin crowded his beneath hers in handwriting that had apparently survived twenty years untouched, while Dan scrawled his across the bottom and handed the pen to Alex.

At 11:58 they turned off every light in the house. The Bluetooth speaker announced that it had lost connection and fell silent. The only remaining light was the candle flame in the vanilla jar. They stood in a loose cluster in front of the door while Kevin counted down on his phone. The knocks were uneven—Melissa’s sharp, Dan’s hard enough to rattle the frame, Kevin’s careful—until Alex went last and the twenty-second knock landed as the phone flipped to 12:00. Kevin opened the door a few inches, blew out the candle, closed the door, and Melissa relit it within four seconds.

Then they started walking.

Melissa carried the candle while Kevin stayed close on her right, already narrating under his breath, and Dan drifted half a step behind them with Alex bringing up the rear. For the first twenty minutes the only sounds were their socks on the floorboards and Kevin’s commentary. He pointed out that the BREATHE sign looked more threatening by candlelight. He claimed the wind chime outside was tapping in code and then admitted he was inventing it. Dan told him to shut up and immediately started doing an impression of the rental host’s welcome binder. Melissa told them both to keep their voices down and then laughed when Kevin whispered the next joke even louder.

At 12:31 a cabinet in the kitchen swung open as they passed. Kevin stopped, looked at it, and said the house was participating. Dan closed it. It stayed closed. They kept moving.

At 12:48 the temperature in the upstairs hallway dropped for three or four steps and then returned to normal. Melissa held the candle higher. Kevin claimed he could see his breath and then admitted he could not. Dan said the insulation in places like this was always garbage. None of them suggested turning around.

They completed a full circuit of the first floor and started a second. Kevin retrieved Mr. Business from the coffee table and carried him for a while, then set him on the banister at the bottom of the stairs so the duck could watch the route.

At 1:07 Dan’s phone lit up in his pocket and began playing a song from 2009 at full volume. Dan yanked it out and could not stop the music for nearly twenty seconds. When it finally died he said he had not done that. Kevin grinned and said the house had Spotify. Melissa laughed. For a moment the four of them stood in the dark living room holding a candle and a ceramic duck and a phone that had just played a song none of them had chosen.

Then the cabinet in the kitchen opened again.

This time it stayed open. Kevin walked in to close it. When he came back the rental agreement, the one Dan had bled on, was inside the cabinet, folded into a neat rectangle none of them remembered making.

Melissa adjusted her grip on the jar. “We keep going. It’s only a little after one.”

Dan looked at the open kitchen doorway. “Okay.”

Kevin nodded. “We finish.”

They started walking again. Small pockets of space opened between them. They completed another slow circuit of the first floor in near silence. Kevin retrieved the duck from the banister and returned it to the coffee table when Melissa said it was becoming a trip hazard.

At 1:22 they found Mr. Business upstairs.

He was sitting upright in the exact center of the hallway runner, oriented toward the stairs. Kevin crossed the runner, picked the duck up with both hands, and turned it over. There was nothing. He carried it back down and set it on the coffee table, then stood looking at it.

Dan said, “Somebody moved it. There’s four of us in this house. You’ve been carrying that thing around all night.”

Kevin’s voice sharpened. “I was in the living room with Melissa when it disappeared. I didn’t touch it after I put it back on the banister.”

“You love this kind of shit. You always have.”

“I’m not doing this.”

Melissa held the candle higher. “Reconstruct it. Who was where.”

Dan kept going. “You used to pull this exact kind of bit in college. Long setup, wait for people to notice, then act innocent.”

Kevin looked at Alex. “Tell him I was with you.”

Alex did not answer immediately. Then he said, “You didn’t apologize for the car keys because you thought he deserved it.”

Kevin stared at him. “What?”

“The night after. Outside the bar. You told Melissa he had it coming. I was on the other side of the wall.”

Dan looked from Kevin to Alex. “You knew that and never said anything.”

Kevin’s mouth opened, closed. “I said he had it coming because he’d been acting like an asshole all night. That’s not the same thing.”

“You hid my keys,” Dan said.

“For twenty minutes.”

“Three hours.”

They were still arguing when Dan said, “Guys.”

They turned. The hallway behind them was three steps longer than it had been. Dan walked back and counted. Melissa pulled up the rental listing on her phone and compared the floor plan. The hallway in the listing was shorter. Kevin said the listing was not necessarily to scale. Dan counted again. Alex walked the length and set a discarded matchbook at the original endpoint. When they returned the matchbook was three steps farther from the stairs than it should have been.

They resumed walking because the rules still required it. For a long stretch afterward they spoke only about safe subjects. Melissa mentioned the traffic on the interstate and the construction that had added forty minutes to her drive. Dan offered an unnecessarily detailed opinion about the pizza crust. Kevin asked if anyone had watched anything good lately. When no one answered he named a show, then immediately said, “Actually, never mind.” Alex asked about the weather on the way up and received three careful, neutral replies.

At 2:17 the group chat lit up on all four phones.

A message appeared under Melissa’s name even though her phone was in her hand and the compose field was empty:

MELISSA: I only invited you because I knew you’d find out

Melissa stared at the screen. Alex looked at her.

“Find out what?”

“We had dinner.”

“Who?”

She looked at him.

“The three of you.”

“When?”

“Last spring. Then a weekend in June. We were all already in the same city for different reasons.”

Dan said, “You canceled the last two gatherings. You stopped answering half the time. What were we supposed to do?”

Alex said, “I know.”

Melissa said, “That it was possible. That we could have a weekend without waiting to see if you were going to cancel again.”

Dan said, “I mean, she isn’t.”

A door at the far end of the hall that had been closed all night swung open and stayed open. The hallway behind them lengthened a second time. Their original downstairs loop no longer connected cleanly to the stairs. They had to cut through the kitchen to keep moving.

They walked in near silence after that. The candle burned lower. At one point Kevin started a story about the old apartment and stopped halfway through.

“I didn’t miss the last two weekends because I couldn’t come,” Alex said. “I didn’t want to.”

Nothing happened.

Dan said, “Well, there you go.”

They continued. A minute later, when they came upstairs again, the bedroom door at the end of the hall was gone. The wall where it had been was seamless. They stood looking at the blank stretch of plaster for several seconds. Then they turned around and used the only remaining route that still led back toward the living room.

By 3:00 the candle had burned low enough that Melissa was shielding it with one hand. At 3:11 the group chat lit up one final time.

MELISSA: don’t open the pantry

DAN: why

MELISSA: because that’s not Kevin

The messages were timestamped 3:17. Every phone showed 3:11.

They were standing in the living room. Kevin was with them. He looked from the phones to the closed pantry door at the far end of the kitchen.

Dan took one step and stopped. Melissa said they were not going to open it.

They waited. At exactly 3:17 the voice came from behind the pantry door for the first time.

Dan asked Kevin what he had said to the downstairs neighbor the night Alex locked himself out in the towel.

Kevin said, “I told him Alex was locked out and freezing and could he please just buzz him in before he turned into a popsicle.”

From behind the pantry door the same answer came back, word for word, in Kevin’s voice.

Melissa asked what color the RA’s shoes had been.

Kevin said, “Red Converse.”

The voice behind the pantry said, “Green Vans.”

Dan said, “They were green.”

Melissa said, “No. He wore the Vans after Christmas. The Converse were fall semester.”

Dan asked a third question. “What did you tell Melissa about me the night after the keys?”

Kevin did not answer.

The voice behind the pantry door said, clearly and without hesitation, “I told her he had it coming. I said he’d been acting like an asshole all semester and maybe sitting outside for three hours would finally shut him up.”

Dan looked at Kevin, not the pantry.

No one moved toward the door.

At 3:33 the microwave clock in the kitchen clicked over. The cold that had been gathering near the ceiling lifted. The lights came back on by themselves, one after another. The Bluetooth speaker cheerfully announced that it was connected.

Melissa blew out the candle.

No one laughed.

They left the jar on the coffee table. They did not clean up. Melissa locked the door behind them with the key from the lockbox. In the parking area Kevin tried to say something about next time and then stopped. Dan got into his car without looking at anyone. Melissa stood for a moment with her hand on the roof of her car, then got in and drove away first.

Alex sat in his own car with the engine off. Through the living-room window he could see Mr. Business still on the coffee table. Kevin stood beside his own car and looked at the same window for a long time. Then he got in and drove away.

Three days later the rental host sent the automated checkout message.

Thanks for staying! We hope you enjoyed your visit.

Attached were the standard photo set. In the living-room photograph the four of them stood in the positions they had held during the Kevin/Dan argument. In the hallway photograph they stood where they had been after the first lengthening. In the kitchen photograph they stood outside the pantry. The timestamps on every image were from the afternoon before any of them arrived.

The group chat remained named THE FOUR HORSEMEN. The last message sat there unanswered. No one left the conversation. No one wrote anything further.

Entry 1: Room 10 | Entry 2 : The Produce Stand | Entry 3 : The Playground | Entry 4 : The Red Church

I wanted to tear into the package the second Wren handed it to me.

I really did.

But after everything that had happened that day, after nearly wandering into the Red Church because I was too exhausted to think straight, I knew better. Curiosity had already gotten me into enough trouble. Whatever Rusty had sent me could wait until morning.

Sleep came first.

Or at least, that was the plan.

The next day's Route was thankfully uneventful.

Well... mostly.

There were children at the playground again.

"Children."

They stopped what they were doing to watch me drive past. I did my best to ignore them, but that's easier said than done when half a dozen tiny pairs of eyes are following your every move.

The Porch Man also tried talking to me.

He's a story for another time.

Because as strange as those things were, they'd been completely overshadowed by the small brown package waiting for me at home.

And trust me.

We need to talk about what Uncle Rusty sent.

I bribed Wren and the boys with a hundred dollars to spend the afternoon at the town pool, followed by ice cream at The Scoop.

Don't ask.

It's our local newspaper office and ice cream parlor.

Times are hard.

And weird.

Once the house was finally quiet, I carried a glass of homebrewed raspberry tea out to the porch and settled into Rusty's old rocking chair.

My hands were shaking.

I wasn't sure if it was nerves or anticipation.

Probably both.

I turned the package over one last time before carefully peeling back the tape.

Inside was a small leather field notebook.

It was well worn and obviously well loved. The leather had darkened with age, the corners were rounded from years of being shoved into pockets, and the elastic band meant to keep it closed had long since given up.

Pressed into the lower corner of the cover were two familiar initials.

R.C.

I smiled despite myself.

I'd seen that notebook a thousand times growing up. Rusty always kept it tucked into his back pocket whenever we were hiking, fishing, or camping. Every now and then I'd ask what he was writing in it, and he'd always give me the same answer.

"It's just where I keep things I don't want to forget."

I carefully opened the cover.

The first thing I noticed wasn't what was written inside.

It was what was missing.

Nearly every page had been torn out.

Not neatly, either. Whoever had done it hadn't bothered to preserve the notebook. Jagged strips of paper still clung to the binding where page after page had once been.

I let out a disappointed sigh.

"Well... that's unfortunate."

I thumbed through what remained, hoping to find something, anything, that had been spared.

The first surviving page made me smile.

>Forgot my lunch again.
Mrs. Alder noticed before I did.
Owe her raspberry jam.

I laughed quietly to myself.

That sounded exactly like Rusty.

He had an uncanny ability to forget anything that wasn't bolted down, and Mrs. Alder had apparently been looking after him long before she'd started leaving me iced tea.

A few more torn pages later, another entry caught my eye.

>Alistair still swears he heard birds this morning.
I haven't had the heart to tell him I haven't seen one in weeks.

I read it twice.

Then a third time.

Who was Alistair?

And what birds?

I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen so much as a sparrow on the Deep Route, but I'd never thought much about it. Plenty of places out there felt... quiet.

The Route had always been strangely quiet. I couldn't remember hearing birdsong out there, but I'd never really questioned it before.

Now I couldn't stop wondering why Rusty had.

Still, something about the way Rusty had written it made it sound as though the birds disappearing wasn't normal.

He had an uncanny ability to forget anything that wasn't bolted down, and Mrs. Alder had apparently been looking after him long before she'd started leaving me iced tea.

The next surviving page was mostly filled with little reminders.

>Pick up lantern fuel.
Fix fishing reel.
Need more coffee.

I smiled.

Now that was the Rusty I remembered.

I flipped another page.

>She says these flowers only grow near the bridge.
I still think she's messing with me.

I frowned.

No name.

Just...

she.

Bridge flowers?

I couldn't remember seeing anything unusual near the bridge, but then again, I wasn't exactly in the habit of stopping to admire the scenery on the Deep Route.

I turned another page.

More jagged edges.

More missing pieces.

Then another surviving note.

>The Widow sent me with blackberry pie today.
Shared half of it with Rett.
He pretended he didn't want any.
I smiled despite myself.

She'd absolutely send him home with pie.

Room 14 asked if I'd found the girl yet.

>When I ignored her, she claimed she'd seen her in Room 22.
I'm not an idiot.

The last surviving page was little more than two hurried lines.

>Alistair's still holding onto it for me.
Probably for the best.

I closed the notebook and leaned back in the rocking chair.

The afternoon breeze stirred the leaves overhead, carrying with it the faint scent of fresh-cut hay from somewhere down the road. Normally, it was one of my favorite smells.

Today I barely noticed it.

Who was Alistair?

Who was "she?"

Why had Rusty bothered writing down that there weren't any birds anymore?

And what exactly was someone holding onto for him?

I had more questions now than I did before opening the package.

I suppose I should've expected that.

Rusty never was very good at giving straight answers. Even when I was little, asking him a simple question usually turned into a story about fishing, camping, or the time he accidentally got chased up a tree by an angry goose. Somewhere in the middle, I'd usually forget what I'd asked in the first place.

I smiled to myself.

Some things, apparently, never changed.

I thumbed through the notebook one more time, hoping I'd somehow missed another surviving page.

No such luck.

Just jagged edges where dozens of pages had once been.

Whoever had torn them out hadn't been selective.

They'd taken almost everything.

I closed the notebook and rested my hand on the worn leather cover.

I didn't know what any of it meant.

Not yet.

But I knew one thing for certain.

The next time I drove through the motel, I wasn't just going to see twenty-eight rooms.

I was going to see the place where Rusty had spent years of his life.

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The motel is one of the oldest stops on the Deep Route.

It's also one of the easiest to underestimate.

At first glance, it's exactly what you'd expect from a forgotten roadside motel somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Two aging buildings sit in a shallow V around an abandoned lobby, their faded paint and rusting railings suggesting they gave up attracting customers decades ago.

Most people see an empty motel.

I did too.

At least, I used to.

After reading Rusty's

 notebook, I couldn't stop wondering how many of those rooms he'd stood outside. How many conversations he'd had on those walkways. How many names I'd just read belonged to people I'd unknowingly passed dozens of times.

For the first time...

I started paying attention.

I think now's a good time to talk about the motel.

>The Hollow Creek Motel : Location
First documented during Eleanor Chapman's route in the summer of 1956. According to her notes, there wasn't a motel at the beginning of the week. By Tuesday afternoon, a two-story roadside motel occupied the clearing as though it had always been there.

>No county records exist documenting its construction. No owner has ever been identified. The motel has remained ever since.

>It consists of two residential wings connected by a central lobby building.

>The West Building contains Rooms 1 through 14.

>The East Building contains Rooms 15 through 28.

>There are twenty-seven rooms.

>Do not concern yourself with the discrepancy.

>Not every room is occupied.

>Do not assume a vacant room will remain vacant.

>Additional Addendum : The vacancy sign turns on every evening. I've never seen anyone replace the bulbs. (1957 S.B.)

>Additional Addendum: New rooms don't appear. They simply become occupied. I've learned not to ask which is worse. (1979 T.E.)

You've heard me mention Room 10, Room 14, and Mr. Finch enough that you're probably picturing some massive hotel.

It isn't.

The motel is actually broken into three sections. There's the West Building, the East Building, and, sitting between them like an awkward handshake, the old lobby.

Calling it a lobby feels generous.

It's an empty shell with a faded front desk, a few broken chairs, and a soda machine that hasn't worked since before I was born I’m sure. I don't think I've ever seen anyone go inside. Honestly, I'm not sure you can.

The two buildings angle inward slightly, forming a shallow V with the lobby tucked between them. From the parking lot, you can see almost every exterior door at once.

Which is probably why the residents spend so much time watching each other.

There are twenty-seven rooms in total.

Yes.

I know what I just said.

The room numbers go from 1 to 28.

No, nobody skipped a number.

And yes, I can count.

We'll get to that.

For now, let's start with the west building.

Many of the rooms are vacant. At least, I think they are.

Rooms 1 and 2, for example, have been empty for as long as I've been delivering the Deep Route. Every now and then I'll glance through the windows as I walk by. Dusty curtains. Faded wallpaper. Nothing that suggests anyone has lived there in years.

As far as I know, they're just empty.

Room 3 is a little different.

I've talked about it before. The room itself is an entity, though it's surprisingly well-mannered as long as you remember one very important detail.

The door is friendly.

The room is not.

Today's door happened to be a terracotta-colored mid-century design with three narrow windows running down one side. Beautiful craftsmanship, really. Unfortunately, the windows were about as useful as a brick wall. You couldn't see inside.

Whoever—or whatever—was inside, though…

I've never been entirely convinced they couldn't see out.

Room 4 is vacant.

Room 5 belongs to someone with what I can only describe as a spectacular online shopping addiction. I don't think I've delivered fewer than three packages there in a single day, and around the holidays I sometimes have to stack them in front of the door like I'm building a tiny cardboard fortress.

I've never actually met the resident.

The packages just... disappear.

Room 6 used to have someone living there.

That was long before I started carrying the Route.

Then one day...

They simply stopped answering the door.

The Policy Manual still contained the original entry.

>Room 6: Resident
Deliver all mail through the mail slot.
Knock once.
If the resident answers, you may hand them their mail directly.
The resident occasionally offers butterscotch candy. Acceptance is at the carrier's discretion.

>Addendum : Resident has become more sporadic in answering the door. Wait a full minute after knocking before departing. (1998 M.O.)

>Additional Addendum : Resident no longer answers the door. (2005 A.B.)

>Additional Addendum Room declared vacant until further notice. (2006 A.B.)

Rooms 7 through 9 are vacant.

Room 10...

Well, I think we're all acquainted with Mr. Creepy Fingers at this point.

Room 11 belongs to who I've affectionately dubbed The Cat Lady.

Honestly, she's lovely.

Middle-aged, endlessly cheerful, and responsible for what I can only assume is keeping at least three different yarn companies in business. Every week I deliver another box full of crochet hooks, skeins of yarn, or patterns she probably could've found online for free.

One afternoon she offered to crochet matching winter hats for my boys.

It was a genuinely sweet gesture.

Unfortunately, she was also wearing enough cat hair to knit a third hat herself.

I politely declined and blamed it on one of the boys having a cat allergy.

She gasped.

"Oh, the poor thing."

Then spent the next five minutes telling me all the ways cat allergies could supposedly be cured.

Here's the strange part.

I only ever see one cat.

It's usually stretched out in a sunny spot somewhere around Room 11, completely unbothered by the world. Sometimes it's orange. Sometimes it's gray. Sometimes it's missing an ear, sometimes it has both.

It's never the same cat.

At least...

I don't think it is.

The Cat Lady insists she's only ever owned one.

Whenever someone mentions seeing a different cat, she just laughs and says,

"I don't know what all of you are talking about."

Maybe she's right.

Or maybe...

I've just never been very good at telling cats apart.

Rooms 12 and 13 are vacant.

Room 14...

Well, we've already met our resident gossip.

As usual, she was perched outside her room with that same pleasant smile, watching everyone who came and went as though she'd appointed herself motel manager sometime around 1983.

I've stopped wondering how long she's been sitting there before I arrive.

Whatever Room 14 had to say that day, I wasn't in the mood to hear it. I turned around and took the long way instead.

Room 15 marked the beginning of the East Building and belonged to the woman I privately referred to as The Moving Lady.

She was harmless enough.

Every time I saw her, she was surrounded by moving boxes. Some she'd be carefully taping shut, others were already stacked neatly outside her door waiting to be shipped somewhere. She always smiled, always waved, and always told me the same thing.

"I'm finally moving out tomorrow."

Tomorrow, however, never seemed to arrive.

Several months on the Route had taught me that her boxes came and went, but she never did.

I don't know why, but she always made me a little sad.

She reminded me of someone who desperately wanted to leave but simply... couldn't.

Rooms 16 and 17 were vacant.

Room 18 belonged to Mr. West.

He was probably in his mid-thirties, though the permanent exhaustion written across his face made him look older. Nearly every week I delivered travel brochures, airline vouchers, hotel advertisements, and enough vacation catalogs to keep an entire travel agency in business.

He accepted every last one with a polite smile.

Then he went back inside.

As far as I know...

Mr. West has never gone anywhere.

Honestly, with the way he always looked, I think he deserved a vacation more than anyone on the Route.

Room 19 is vacant.

Then there's Room 20.

Or rather...

There isn't.

I'd mentioned earlier that the motel somehow has twenty-seven rooms despite the numbers going all the way to twenty-eight.

This is why.

Between Rooms 19 and 21, where there should be another door and another window, there's only a blank stretch of faded siding.

No door.

No window.

Nothing.

If you catch it in the right light, though, you can make out the faintest outline. A rectangle where a door once stood. The ghost of a window beside it. It's almost as though someone had simply... erased the room.

Not demolished it.

Not boarded it up.

Erased it.

As far as the Manual is concerned, there has never been a Room 20.

I don't know whether that's comforting or deeply unsettling.

Either way, I never linger there longer than I have to.

Room 21 is vacant.

And with that, we reach the second floor of the East Building.

In my opinion…

It's where the motel starts getting interesting.

Room 22 is one you have to be especially careful around.

Most of us just call it The Senses Room.

Nobody's ever come up with a better name, and honestly, I don't think anyone wants to spend enough time near it to try.

The Manual does a much better job explaining it than I ever could. It's also one of the longer entries, so... bear with me.

>Room 22 : Entity
Nicknamed The Senses Room.

The room itself has never appeared unusual. Most days it looks like any other room in the motel.
Do not let that reassure you.
The room has been known to imitate each of the five senses.
You may hear someone calling from inside.
You may smell smoke, flowers, perfume, or something rotting.
You may see movement behind the curtains.
You may feel unusual heat or cold coming from beneath the door.
You may taste something familiar or horrifying.
None of these occurrences should be acknowledged.
If you have a delivery, knock once, leave it on the welcome mat, and continue on your route. If no one answers, consider the delivery complete. Do not wait. Do not knock a second time.
If the room attempts to get your attention through one of your senses, continue walking.
Do not investigate.
Do not enter.

>Addendum: The room doesn't always choose the same sense. Pay attention to which one it's using.  (1957 S.B.)

>Additional Addendum:  I heard a woman screaming for help. I woke up six hours later lying on the welcome mat.
I thought I'd gotten lucky. I wasn't. (1977 T.E.)

>Additional Addendum: I still hear her. No one else does.
If the room takes one of your senses...It leaves something behind. (1982 T.E.)

We know and love Room 23. Mr. Finch wasn't out today either. I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed. I'd been hoping to ask him more about Uncle Rusty, but he hadn't been outside since our last visit.

Rooms 24 through 26 are Vacant.

Room 27, however, is another story.

>Room 27 : Entity
Nicknamed The Window Room.
From the walkway, Room 27 appears vacant.
It is not.
The room's only known feature is a single uncovered window.
If you glance in, you’ll see a different location.
Sometimes nearby.
Sometimes impossibly far away.
Sometimes places that no longer exist.

From what I can tell, no carrier has ever been foolish enough to step inside Room 27.

Given what the window alone is capable of...

I think that's probably for the best.

Other than Room 10, the resident of Room 28 unnerves me more than anyone else at the motel.

He's the Photographer.

He's always taking pictures.

Not of the motel.

Not of the woods.

People.

More specifically, carriers and the occasional lost traveler.

I've never seen him up close.

Whenever he appears, he's always just out of reach.

Sometimes he'll crack his door open just enough to photograph you delivering mail a few rooms down.

Sometimes you'll catch him through the window as you pull into the parking lot.

The worst was seeing him half-hidden behind a tree near Mr. West's place, camera pointed directly at me.

By the time I looked again...

He was gone.

The photographs are the unsettling part.

He leaves them taped to the lobby door the following day.

At first glance, they look perfectly ordinary.

Until you notice what you missed.

The first one he left me showed me stepping out of Rusty's Jeep during a light snowfall.

Standing directly behind me was Wren.

Her mouth stretched impossibly wide in a silent scream.

Of course...

There hadn't been anyone there.

Another photograph showed me delivering a package to Room 5.

Way down the road, barely visible between the trees, stood something impossibly tall.

Too thin.

Too still.

I never saw it that day.

I'm glad I didn't.

The Manual mentions similar photographs dating back to the early seventies. No carrier has ever managed to speak to the Photographer. No one has ever caught him taking the pictures.

And, as far as anyone can tell...

Nothing bad has ever come from them.

You can throw them away.

Burn them.

Rip them into pieces.

The next time he photographs you...

He simply leaves another one.

>Room 28 : Resident
Nicknamed The Photographer.
The resident may photograph carriers during deliveries.
Do not approach.
Do not wave.
Do not attempt to locate him.
Photographs are typically left taped to the lobby door the following day.
Inspect them if you wish.
Destroy them if you wish.
Neither action appears to matter.

The photographs often contain people, places, or objects that were not present when taken.

Do not assume the photograph is incorrect.

>Additional Addendum: I've stopped looking for what's wrong in the pictures. Eventually, you'll always find something. (1992 C.W.)

>Additional Addendum: Smile if you want. You won't like what smiles back. (2014 A.H.)

That was the motel. It was usually my longest stop on the Route, and today had been no different.

I had just set my satchel on the passenger seat when movement caught my eye.

Mr. Finch stepped out onto the second-floor walkway.

Binoculars hung around his neck. A small notebook was tucked beneath one arm, and in his hands was what looked to be another birding field guide.

I smiled despite myself.

Of course.

Another bird book.

I leaned against the Jeep for a moment, watching him flip absentmindedly through the pages.

Birds.

Birdwatching.

Finch.

...

Finch.

My smile slowly disappeared.

Birding guides.

Binoculars.

A. Finch.

I stared at him.

"...No way."

There was no way I'd missed something that obvious.

Unless…

My heart lurched.

I hurried back across the parking lot, taking the stairs two at a time.

"Mr. Finch!" I called.

The poor man nearly jumped out of his skin. His binoculars slipped from his shoulder as he turned toward me, eyes wide with surprise.

"Oh!" He laughed nervously, steadying himself with one hand against the railing. "Miss Callahan... you gave me quite a fright."

I stopped a few feet away, trying to catch my breath.

I looked from him... to the field guide in his hands... then back again.

There were a hundred questions racing through my mind.

Only one of them managed to make it out.

"I need to talk to you."

I had been working in prisons, most of which housed killers and other violent offenders, for twenty-eight years when I took on my last job.

Some of them were impulsive, others were clever. But I'd seen it all.

Prisoners had tried everything on me over the years - death threats, fake medical emergencies and contraband passed through food were just the tip of the iceberg. Men who'd spent weeks acting half-dead before suddenly putting their head through a cell door weren't unusual. So by the time I was called for the job, I had a reputation for being steady.

The pay was better, but that wasn't what sold it for me. It was the prisoner.

For the purposes of this story, I'll call him John. I'd heard his real name long before I was assigned to him. Everyone in corrections had. He was one of those serial killers you only hear about in true-crime documentaries decades later.

Dangerous.

The kind of mastermind who stayed ahead of the police for years, leaving investigators chasing dead. Eventually, an entire task force threw everything they had at him, and some detective finally got lucky enough to find one tiny mistake in his plan.

He'd been incarcerated under different names in institutions across the country. He had killed prison staff in multiple incidents, manipulated officers into giving him access to restricted areas and made tools from things that should never have been capable of becoming tools. His file used the words "exceptionally intelligent", "highly skilled" and one psychologist had described him as "possessing an unusual ability to recognize patterns in institutional behavior".

Basically, another way of saying 'this bastard keeps catching us off guard'.

A challenge perhaps, but if anything, I was intrigued. I'd spent nearly three decades learning the tricks of the worst people society had to offer, and I wanted to see what he could throw at me that was different.

"He's been stable," remarked the deputy warden, as I closed the file. "Caused no problems for several months."

"And before that?" I asked.

He picked up the file and flipped back through the photographs, medical reports, security assessments and other evidence of the damage John had left behind.

"Before that, he caused many." He grimaced slightly.

"So what's changed?"

"I'd guess he reconsidered. You'd be surprised, many find God after a few hard years in a cell."

I highly doubted that - I'd seen lots of men 'find God' when they realized it might help their case. I said nothing and let him continue.

Then, the deputy warden opened a drawer and took out a small black device attached to a short lanyard with my staff ID card. There was a single recessed button on it.

"If anything happens," he said, placing it on the desk between us, "push the button. The response time is very fast."

I put the lanyard around my neck and followed him inside.

The prison itself was impressive - there was concrete reinforced by steel, cameras everywhere, controlled doors and layered access points. It didn't seem like they were short on budget when it came to security. By the time I reached the him, I'd expected something almost industrial, like a steel box with a solid door and restraints fixed to the wall.

Instead, John was at the end of a block behind ordinary-looking bars, alongside a few other prisoners in identical cells.

Each had a bed, a built-in toilet and sink, a desk with a Bible on it. One security camera in the corner overlooking the entire block. That was it - no chains, restraints or reinforced doors. It seemed insultingly inadequate for both his reputation and my safety.

John himself was young-looking. Early thirties, perhaps. Clean-shaven and neatly dressed, with short, dark hair. He had the build of a track runner, and there was nothing physically intimidating about him. If I'd seen him on the street, I would've assumed he worked an office job.

He stood when I approached, his voice quiet.

"Morning."

"Morning," I replied, watching him carefully. "You'll be seeing a lot of me, I'm taking over your supervision. Keep things straightforward, and we'll have no problems."

His eyes moved down briefly to the ID card and button hanging from the lanyard around my neck, and back to my face.

Then he just gave a nod and sat down. I remained standing for a moment before taking the chair outside the bars. John was quiet for a while as he sat on the bed and flicked through the Bible. Eventually, he looked up at me and spoke.

"How you finding the new place?"

He sounded nonchalant, like he was making an effort at small talk, but wasn't particularly interested in the answer. I watched him cautiously.

"Can't complain."

"That's good. Assume you've been in enough places to compare."

Another pause as I watched him, looking for the trick. But there was no defensiveness or aggression in his voice.

"You've been here a while now, John," I finally said. "No problems?"

He shook his head.

"Got everything you need?"

"Yeah. Bible and a bit of exercise when I feel like it."

I started asking the usual questions about how he was settling in, and if there were problems with meals, showers and so on. He answered everything politely with no attitude or attempts to provoke me. He didn't react when I mentioned I'd read his file. If anything, he seemed bored, but never disrespectful. I spent the rest of that shift waiting for the trick that never came. He's just trying to make me let my guard down, I thought. But I can't deny I'd gone in expecting more of a challenge.

Eventually, I told him I was leaving at the end of my shift. He just nodded, not looking up from his Bible.

I started making my way out and was halfway down the block when I heard a quiet, high-pitched noise coming from a cell nearest the door at the opposite end. It wasn't quite a voice. I frowned and walked to the end, peering into the cell.

I nearly took a step back.

An emaciated, almost skeletal prisoner was staring back at me, folded up in a dark corner of the cell. At first glance, I couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman. Only the high pitched voice gave it away.

Her arms looked little more than bone beneath the skin, and her shoulders jutted forward at an awkward angle. What little hair she had left came in sparse wisps, hanging from her scalp in thin, uneven strands. Most of her head was visible beneath them. There were patches where it looked as though she'd pulled the hair out herself, and blisters where she'd picked at her skin. There was a tiny silver cross necklace around her neck.

Then she made the noise again. That same high-pitched whine, that sounded like something her body produced without her permission. After several seconds, she tilted her head slightly to one side and began whispering. Her lips moved rapidly, but the sound was so faint and indistinct that it might as well have been another language.

I had worked around mentally ill prisoners before - whatever was wrong with this woman, I assumed it was along those lines. I'd gone into the block to meet one of the most dangerous men in the world, expecting if anything was going to unsettle me, it would surely be that. But as I stood there watching her, I'd forgotten about John entirely. I took a breath, broke eye contact, and left.

For the next few weeks, nothing happened with John.

He got up when he was supposed to, ate when food was brought around, took his exercise periods without complaint and returned to his cell when instructed. He never raised his voice or argued. Mostly, he seemed bored.

According to his file, calculation was practically his defining characteristic. I'd gone into the assignment assuming that every interaction would have some purpose behind it, that every question he asked would be part of some larger plan, but nothing happened.

And when nothing happens for long enough, you start to relax.

One morning, I caught myself standing closer to the bars than I should have been, my keys hanging loosely from two fingers as I checked something on my clipboard. I noticed where I was standing and immediately stepped back, making a mental note of it. I'd spent nearly two decades telling younger officers not to do exactly that.

The next week, I did the exact same thing.

This time, John was sitting on the edge of his bed, watching me. He looked at the keys, then back at me like I was an idiot. Then he just laid down on the bed.

A few days later, I made another stupid mistake - I dropped a flashlight within reach of the bars and only noticed when I was halfway down the block. When I went back to retrieve it, John hadn't made any attempt to touch it, let alone use it as a weapon or escape tool. He just glanced back at me with the same bored expression, now almost with a hint of added disappointment, as if he couldn't believe I'd been that careless.

After a while, I started to wonder whether the man in the file and the man sitting in front of me were actually the same person. I still wasn't naïve enough to believe he'd suddenly become harmless, perhaps he was simply tired.

The woman was harder to ignore.

Sometimes she'd stand at the front of her cell and watch everyone that passed through the door. Sometimes she sat on the floor with her knees pulled against her chest, rocking slightly. And sometimes she cried, a strange, broken sort of crying, with long pauses between each sound. I eventually got used to it in the way you get used to unpleasant things in prison.

One afternoon, long after speaking to John felt completely normal, I nodded toward her cell.

"She been here a while?"

John glanced over and exhaled with a hint of frustration.

"Yeah, don't mind her, she does that all day. Sometimes at night too, while everyone's trying to sleep."

He sounded mildly inconvenienced.

"Does she ever talk?" I glanced toward the cell.

"Not that I've heard."

I took his word for it, figuring that whatever she'd done to end up in a place like this, she probably deserved it.

A few mornings later, I was running late. I'd underestimated how long it would take me to get through some paperwork before my shift, and there was a form I needed to complete that needed the long ID number on my staff badge.

I took the lanyard off along with the button and copied the number down. Then I stuffed both into my trouser pocket and hurried into the block.

By the time I entered John's section, I'd completely forgotten about it. John was sitting on the edge of his bed, his Bible beside him.

"Morning."

"Morning."

I closed the door behind me and started checking the block. We exchanged the usual few words, and he said he slept well enough. Then I turned away from him to check something on my clipboard.

I heard a metallic click. I looked back and the cell was empty - the door was open and John was gone.

Then I felt his arm lock around my neck from behind.

I was surprised in the moment, but I didn't panic. If anything, I'd been expecting something like this from the beginning.

Finally, I thought. There he is. The real John.

I reacted automatically, tucking my chin hard against my chest and grabbing his choking arm with both hands, trying to relieve the pressure while turning toward him. It was something I'd practiced countless times over the years. I managed to get two fingers between his forearm and my neck, creating just enough space to breathe. For a moment, I thought I might get out of it without even having to use the button, and teach him a lesson after.

But then he adjusted effortlessly, shifting his grip and driving his forearm back against my neck. The pressure was precise, and he knew exactly what he was doing. I tried to drop my weight and drive backward into him, but he anticipated that too and stood firm.

My legs were already beginning to weaken, and whatever advantage I thought I'd had disappeared. This was not someone I could afford to underestimate.

My vision began to narrow as I reached instinctively for the button at my chest. Nothing.

For one confused second, I couldn't understand why it wasn't there, but then I remembered I put it in my pocket after using my ID card for the paperwork. I fumbled for it, but my fingers weren't working properly anymore. I could feel the edge of the device against my leg, just out of reach. I clawed at the pocket. Then my fingers closed around it, and I pushed the button.

For a second, nothing happened. No shrieking alarms or anything of the sort.

Then I heard boots pounding down the corridor. Ten guards burst through the door almost at once.

As soon as they entered, the pressure around my neck vanished. I collapsed forward, coughing and dragging air into my lungs.

I stumbled away from the cell, more frustrated at having to use the button than relieved to be alive, replaying the attack in my head. I was already running through the counters I could have used if I'd had another few seconds. I glanced at them, expecting them to seize John.

But they didn't even go past me. They turned straight into the woman's cell.

Two officers grabbed her, and she began screaming. Not like the strange whining sound before - this was a scream of pure terror, so loud and prolonged that it seemed to fill the entire block. One of the officers forced her arm behind her back, and another officer produced a syringe containing a yellow liquid. The screaming intensified as the color emptied into her neck.

Confused, I looked toward John at the other end of the block.

He was on his knees. His eyes were wide and glassy.

"Please."

His voice was barely audible beneath her screaming. He met my gaze.

"Tell them to stop. Please."

I just stared at him.

"I don't know what's happening," I finally managed. I didn't even hear myself speak.

One of the guards turned toward him.

"Back in the cell, John." The guard raised another syringe. "Or you know what happens."

John's swallowed, eyes still wide. He stood and walked back into his cell voluntarily.

The woman was still screaming, but her voice was breaking now. They dragged her back into the cell and closed the door. Another officer closed the bars behind John. Then they simply left, and didn't even bother checking John's cell to see how he'd escaped.

I stepped closer to John's cell cautiously and noticed something small on the ground.

He'd made a key of sorts. I picked it up. It was crude, but unmistakable - a thin, rigid piece of material shaped to fit the lock, made of paper. The key had been made from pages of his bible, layered and compressed until they formed something stiff enough to manipulate the mechanism. Then I looked at the Bible, still on his desk. They hadn't even bothered to take it away.

I looked at John, sitting on the edge of his bed again. Then his eyes dropped to the button in my hand. For the first time since I'd started working that block, I hadn't been wearing the button around my neck. I'd put it in my pocket. But it seemed John thought I'd forgotten it altogether.

He looked back at me with something like betrayal.

I came back the following morning. I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, but I hadn't slept well and decided it was better to get the first shift out of the way. John was exactly where I'd left him, sitting on the edge of his bed with the Bible beside him.

"Morning."

"Morning."

I stood outside the bars for a moment, studying him.

There was no hostility or lingering resentment in his expression. Nothing that suggested he'd nearly killed me the day before… or the chaos that came after.

"John, can I see the Bible?"

"Yeah."

He picked it up and handed it through the bars without protest. I took it from him and turned it over in my hands, then opened it. Sure enough, two pages had been torn out. I flicked through the section around the missing pages, then looked back at him.

"These shouldn't be missing. I'll have to confiscate it."

He shrugged.

"I suppose not. Have it."

He said it with complete indifference.

I turned the Bible over again and ran my thumb along the inside of the back cover and felt something give slightly beneath it. There was a flap. Not part of the original binding. Something had been carefully worked into the inside of the cover, creating a small concealed pocket.

I slipped my finger underneath it and pulled out a photograph.

It was old. The colors had faded slightly, and the edges were worn from being handled. I looked at it and saw a man and a woman.

I immediately recognized that the man in the photograph was John, younger by at least ten years.

He was smiling as he looked at the woman. I'd never seen him smile like that. The young woman beside him looked healthy and beautiful. There was warmth in her face, and she was smiling too, her head rested against his shoulder, his arm around her waist. I didn't recognize her at first, until I noticed that she was wearing a tiny silver cross necklace. The same one as the emaciated woman on the other side of the block. The realization dawned on me.

"You talked like you didn't know her," I said, still looking down at the photo.

I looked up at him, then almost jumped.

He was looking at me with pure, unfiltered hatred.

"I wonder why."

Neither of us spoke for a long time.

It was then that I understood he wouldn't be doing anything else with the bible. I slotted the photo back inside and slid it carefully down through the bars. He seemed to relax a little, and looked away. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and flat.

"She didn't used to look like that."

I watched him.

"What did they do to her?"

He didn't answer. A minute passed.

Then he lay back on the bed and turned his face toward the wall.

"I'm tired. Gonna sleep for a bit."

And that was all I got.

For the first time since I'd met him, I didn't see a dangerous man sitting in that cell. I finally understood what the button actually did. It wasn't there to protect me from John. It was there to control him.

John was back to his regular self after that. But I wasn't. Once I'd seen the photograph, I couldn't stop thinking about the woman at the end of the block.

I looked through the records as my last shift of the week finished. Every inmate had a paper trail - things like arrest and court records, sentencing information, medical records. Even people who had been incarcerated for decades left a mountain of paperwork behind them. I couldn't find hers.

There was a prisoner number, but no corresponding sentencing record. No court order or conviction. I thought perhaps I'd missed something and dug deeper. Her name was there, and the entries went back a few months. I frowned when I realized what file I was looking at.

Visitor Log.

She had visited John at his previous facility more than once. Then I reached the final entry.

Her status had changed from visitor to inmate.

I stared at it for a long time, then flipped to the admission form for the offence.

Something had been written there, but the handwriting was almost completely illegible. It looked as though whoever had filled it out had been writing in a hurry, or simply didn't care whether anyone could read it. I took the paperwork to the warden.

"What's this?"

I pointed to the handwriting. He looked at the page and squinted at it, then shrugged.

"No idea. How'd you expect me to read that?"

"She was John's visitor."

"Oh, was she? Well, birds of a feather."

He headed to the office. It was then I understood she had done nothing at all. And I wasn't going to be a part of that.

The next morning, I walked into the warden's office and put my badge on his desk. Then I put the button beside it. He looked at them.

"You're quitting already?"

"Yes."

He didn't ask why, didn't argue, just nodded.

"Alright. Guess we'll have to find someone to take your place then. Left us with a hard job, eh?"

I handed everything over before the end of my shift and walked through the prison one final time. I reached the last security door and stepped outside.

I had almost reached the outer gate when I heard her scream. It was faint but unmistakable, carrying through the reinforced walls despite the distance.

Then came another voice.

"Please. Please stop."

The woman who came in at 11:40 a.m. would not look at the device on the counter.

She kept her arms folded and her eyes on the far wall of the interview room while she gave the statement. Walter let her. He had the product in a clear evidence bag already, batteries removed, serial number and lot code written on the label in Kyle’s careful block letters. The woman had brought it in a plastic grocery bag of her own. The grocery bag sat on the floor by her chair, empty and slightly damp.

“It wouldn’t stop,” she said.

Walter wrote that down.

“I turned the dial all the way left. I took the batteries out. I put it in the bathroom cabinet. It was still going when I opened the door twenty minutes later. Louder. It had moved to the edge of the shelf.”

He asked the practical questions. How long she had owned it. Where she bought it. Whether the packaging was still in the house. Whether anyone else had handled it. She answered all of them. She had ordered it online three weeks earlier. The box was in her recycling. No one else lived with her. She had used it twice without incident. The third time it continued after she set it aside, then again after she removed the power source, then again after she put it behind a closed door. When she tried to pick it up the second time it twisted in her hand hard enough to leave a deep bruise across the heel of her palm and the base of her thumb. The skin was already darkening when she showed him.

Walter photographed the injury. He photographed the device from six angles. He had Kyle photograph the empty battery compartment with a scale card. The unit was matte black, roughly the size and shape of a dense, rounded river stone with a short tapered end. The logo on the base was a simplified beaver head, small and white. The model name was printed in the same clean sans-serif as the packaging: Eager Beaver G-Spot Reliever. The serial number and lot code were laser-etched on the underside.

Walter called the manufacturer from his desk while the woman waited in the lobby with a cup of water she did not drink.

The product-safety coordinator already knew the lot number before he finished reading it. Six other units from the same production run had been returned in the last eleven days. Abnormal activation. Failure to power down. One unit that had continued for forty minutes after the batteries were removed. The company had opened an internal review and was preparing a limited recall. They were grateful for the formal report and asked for photographs of the injury and the device.

Walter sent the photographs. Then he gave them the detail they did not have.

“The battery compartment was empty when it activated again in the bathroom cabinet,” he said. “And again while it was inside the grocery bag she brought it in.”

There was a short silence.

“That isn’t possible with this model,” the coordinator said. “The motor requires the battery pack. There’s no secondary power source.”

“I’m looking at the empty compartment right now.”

A longer silence.

“We’ll escalate this immediately. Please retain the unit. Do not attempt to disassemble it further.”

Walter logged the call. He sealed the evidence bag with red tape that required a signature to break. Kyle initialed the chain-of-custody form. The device went into Evidence Locker 3, bottom shelf, behind the locked steel door. The woman signed her statement, accepted the case number, and left without looking at anyone.

The rest of the afternoon was ordinary. Two noise complaints. A fender-bender in the high-school parking lot. A lost dog that turned up in the cemetery. At shift change Walter told the night deputy that Evidence Locker 3 contained an active product-safety case and was not to be opened without him.

At 2:13 a.m. the building was quiet.

Kerri was alone at the front desk finishing the overnight log when she heard the sound. She thought it was a phone at first—someone’s personal cell left on vibrate against a metal surface. It stopped. She waited. It started again, longer this time, a low continuous buzz that did not match any phone she knew. The sound was coming from the evidence hallway.

She called Walter.

He arrived in twelve minutes, still in the same clothes. He brought Deputy Tran with him. They signed into the evidence log together. Walter cut the seal on Locker 3 while Tran recorded. The bag was exactly where Kyle had placed it. The red tape was intact. Through the clear plastic the battery compartment was still visibly empty.

The device was running.

Walter looked at it for a long moment. He did not reach for the bag. He closed his eyes once, briefly, then opened them again.

Behind him Kerri said, “Sheriff?”

Walter did not turn around.

“We’re going to need a new evidence protocol,” he said.

* * *

The second unit arrived the next morning in an unopened retail box on a construction worker’s porch. No label, no postage. Serial number different, same lot. The manufacturer’s records said the unit was still in an Ohio warehouse. Walter logged both impossibilities, sealed the second device, and stopped asking the company whether the behavior was possible. It clearly was.

Over the following day the pattern clarified without further theatre. Units from Lot X-7741 could run with empty battery compartments. Some appeared where distribution records insisted they could not be. Several owners, once the recall notice reached them, described the same quiet fact: the device activated when the house was empty or after someone left the room. Autonomous cycles lengthened if left unanswered.

Elias walked in carrying a cardboard box and the expression of a man who had read the recall for entertainment.

“Tell Wally I’ve got one of his beavers.”

Their unit belonged to Lot X-7741. It had worked normally until the lot-wide event. Under controlled observation it stayed inert while both men were present, inert while John was alone, and activated only when John left and Elias remained. It stopped the moment John returned. The pattern repeated. Elias understood it first.

“So it’s not that it likes John. It’s that it knows when I don’t have him.”

John looked at the bag. “That’s worse.”

Walter logged the result, released Unit 3 back to them under the condition that any change in behavior be reported immediately, and told Kerri that Elias was not to be admitted to Evidence without an appointment. Elias texted someone before he reached the parking lot.

The original complainant returned only once more. She did not ask about the device. She asked about the packaging, then lingered long enough to say, almost to herself, that she had kept it because the apartment had been quiet since her sister moved out in April. The television used to be on most evenings. She hadn’t noticed how loud the quiet was until the thing started answering it. Duration of the autonomous cycles had increased before she brought it in. She had been afraid it would stop turning off.

Walter recorded the sequence and nothing more.

By then the department had enough.

Walter issued the public advisory.

MCSD Public Safety Notice – Lot X-7741

Residents in possession of Eager Beaver-brand devices marked Lot X-7741 are advised not to activate, charge, disassemble, discard, donate, sell, or transfer the unit. Devices should be placed in a rigid, sealable container and reported to the Mourner’s Crossing Sheriff’s Department for collection. Do not attempt to render the device inoperable. Do not store the device under a mattress, in a drawer, or in any location where sustained quiet is likely.

Kerri posted it to the department website, the town alert system, and the community board outside Speicher’s. Within twenty minutes the non-emergency line began ringing.

The first caller wanted to know whether “rigid container” meant the original packaging was acceptable. Walter took the call himself.

“No,” he said. “Something that closes and latches. A toolbox, an ammo can, a locked tackle box. Not the box it came in.”

“What if I hold it tighter?”

Walter looked at the ceiling.

“That is not what rigid means.”

By 15:30 the hardware store had sold every locking toolbox and surplus ammo can on the shelves. The owner called to ask whether the department intended to reimburse residents for containment supplies. Walter told him to keep receipts and stop asking.

At 16:05 Mara walked into the station with a preliminary injury report from the clinic and a facial expression that promised violence.

“I am not writing ‘beaver-related soft-tissue injury’ in a medical note,” she said. “Find different language or I will invent a new cause-of-injury code called ‘administrative cowardice.’”

Walter took the report, struck the phrase, and substituted “autonomous device activation – Lot X-7741.” Mara watched him do it, nodded once, and left.

Elias texted at 16:22:

heard you’re collecting beavers now

do i get a consultant stipend

or just the satisfaction of having advanced science

Walter did not reply.

At 17:40 someone at the counter of Speicher’s was explaining, at volume, that the whole recall was a pretense for the state to inventory private bedrooms. The argument had already reached the stage where historical precedents were being invented. Kerri logged it as a noise complaint and did not send a car.

By close of business the department had logged nineteen self-reports and collected seven devices. All seven carried the same lot code. Three of the owners mentioned, without being asked, that the unit had begun activating when the house was empty or after someone left the room. Walter recorded the statements, issued property receipts, and did not pursue the pattern further in the lobby.

He updated the case summary:

Public containment protocol initiated. Nineteen self-reports. Seven units collected. Multiple independent descriptions of activation in response to household quiet or departure.

Then he locked the evidence room, now significantly more crowded, and told the night shift that any resident arriving with a toolbox was to be treated as a product-safety surrender, not a curiosity.

Outside, the town had begun improvising its own solutions.

Inside, the devices already collected remained quiet only as long as continuous human presence was maintained in or immediately adjacent to the evidence hallway.

Walter created the overnight evidence-watch rotation at 18:30.

One deputy in or immediately adjacent to the evidence hallway at all times. No exceptions. Continuous camera remained on, but presence itself was now part of containment.

Deputy Tran drew the first shift. He sat in a chair at the mouth of the hallway with a book he did not read and the evidence log open on his knee. The station settled into ordinary weeknight quiet. Radios low. Coffee cooling. Outside, the lot lights hummed.

At 02:14 Tran stood, noted the time, and walked thirty feet to the restroom.

He was gone ninety seconds.

When he pushed the hallway door open again the sound met him first: a low, overlapping chorus of motors. Not one unit. Several. The evidence room had woken the moment it was left alone.

Tran stepped inside, left the door open, and began counting. Seven of the units were running. He did not touch the bags. He sat back down in the chair, left the hallway door propped, and wrote the entry in the log with the same flat hand he used for every other incident:

02:14 – exited evidence hallway briefly (restroom).

02:16 – multiple units activated simultaneously upon absence of personnel. Activation ceased within forty seconds of my return to the hallway.

He underlined nothing. He added no interpretation.

At 02:20 the last motor spun down.

Tran remained in the chair until relief arrived at 06:00. He did not leave the hallway again.

When Walter came in he read the log entry once, then walked down the evidence hallway and stood looking at the sealed bags. All of them were quiet. All of them were oriented, in one way or another, toward the open doorway where a person had been required to sit so the room would stay still.

He updated the case summary:

Containment now requires continuous human presence in or immediately adjacent to the evidence hallway. Unattended evidence room produces coordinated activation across multiple units.

Then he rewrote the overnight roster so that no one drew the watch alone.

At 09:40 the first real containment failure arrived as a phone call.

A resident on Maple reported that the toolbox she had locked her unit into the night before was now empty. The padlock was still closed. The hasp was undamaged. The device was simply gone. She had followed the advisory exactly. When she opened the box to double-check the serial number for the property receipt, there was nothing inside except the foam insert.

Walter sent Kyle.

The toolbox sat on the woman’s kitchen table. Lock intact. Interior empty. No sign of forced entry. The woman lived alone. She had left for an early shift at the pharmacy at 6:15 and returned at 9:20 to find the container light.

Kyle photographed everything, collected the empty toolbox as evidence, and asked the only question that still mattered.

“Was anyone else in the house between the time you locked it and this morning?”

“No.”

“Any pets?”

“No.”

Kyle thanked her, issued a new property receipt for the empty container, and called it in.

By noon three more residents had reported the same thing: locked containers, undamaged locks, devices missing. All three lived alone. All three had left the house for ordinary morning errands. All three had followed the advisory.

Walter stood in the evidence hallway looking at the units still in custody. They were quiet. The overnight watch had been doubled. No one had left them unattended.

The ones already collected were staying put.

The ones still in private hands had begun declining the invitation.

He updated the case summary:

Multiple failures of civilian containment under advisory protocol. Locked rigid containers found empty; locks and containers intact. Pattern so far limited to single-occupant households. Devices previously surrendered to MCSD remain in place under continuous presence.

Kerri came down the hall with the running list of new self-reports. The total had climbed past thirty. Twelve units were now in custody. The rest were either still at large or had already left their containers.

Walter took the list, read the addresses, and saw the shape of the problem changing.

The department could watch the ones it already had.

It could not watch every quiet apartment in town.

By the third day the missing units began returning.

The first call came from the woman on Maple. The toolbox was still locked. The device was back in the drawer beside her bed. She had not opened the container. She had not been home when it reappeared. Kyle collected the empty toolbox again and left the unit where it was. Walter told him not to force another removal.

Two more reports followed before noon. One device on a kitchen counter. One on a nightstand. In each case the civilian had followed the advisory, surrendered the unit or locked it away, and later found it home again. Locks intact. No signs of entry. The selected person lived alone.

Walter stood in the evidence hallway with the units the department still held and accepted the arithmetic. MCSD could keep what it already had, provided someone stayed near them. It could not keep collecting what refused to stay collected. It could not put a deputy in every quiet apartment in town.

At 14:20 he revised the public guidance.

Affected residents whose devices had returned after surrender or containment were instructed to leave the unit in place. Do not repeatedly handle, activate, attempt to destroy, or transport it. If autonomous behavior increased in duration or intensity, call MCSD. If possible, avoid prolonged periods alone with the device. The department would continue to accept voluntary surrenders but would no longer attempt forced recovery of units that had already demonstrated return.

Kerri posted the update. The non-emergency line stayed busy for an hour, then gradually quieted.

Over the next two days the pattern held. Devices that still wanted to be somewhere else simply went there. Devices already in custody remained quiet as long as the overnight watch kept two people in or immediately adjacent to the evidence hallway. Incident reports of new autonomous activations dropped. Not to zero, but enough that the town-side workload eased. The evidence watch itself stayed continuous.

No one announced a solution. Sisters came over after work. A neighbor brought coffee and stayed longer than usual. Speicher’s left the corner booth open past closing twice in one week for people who did not feel like going home yet. MCFD stopped by an older resident’s house because Elias mentioned she lived alone and the recall had made her nervous. The visits were logged as welfare checks. Nothing in the reports mentioned beavers.

On the evening of the fifth day Elias called.

“Unit’s been dead quiet,” he said. “Hasn’t moved since you released it.”

“John home?”

“Yeah.”

“Then leave it alone.”

A short pause.

“Wally.”

“What.”

“I think my beaver likes my husband.”

Walter hung up.

After eleven the station emptied. The night deputies on evidence watch sat in the two chairs outside Locker 3 with coffee and the overnight log. Paperwork. Low radio. The recovered units stayed silent. Orientation unchanged. No motors.

Walter walked the hallway once before leaving. He did not open the locker. He did not adjust anything. The two deputies looked up; he nodded once and kept walking.

Behind him the building settled into ordinary quiet.

Nothing answered it.

Working on commercial cargo ships is not the romantic adventure some people think it is. You spend most of your time chipping rust, painting over that chipped rust, and trying to ignore the constant vibration of the engine beneath your boots. This was my first maritime contract as a deckhand, and we were crossing an incredibly isolated stretch of the Pacific Ocean. The crew was already on edge. A week prior, we lost a man named Griggs during a midnight squall. A wave took him right off the starboard deck. We searched for ten hours, but the ocean swallowed him.

So, to be clear, the mood on board was grim after that. Everyone kept to themselves. Sullivan, one of the older deckhands, was particularly bitter, as he had been close to Griggs.

On a Tuesday afternoon, Captain Harris ordered me down to the lower storage corridors to inventory a shipment of spare engine filters. The lower decks of a cargo ship are essentially a maze of narrow walkways and exposed piping. The fluorescent lights flicker constantly due to the electrical faults in the aging vessel.

Approaching the aft storage locker, a sharp copper smell hit my nose. It smelled exactly like a butcher shop left in the sun.

Stepping around a stack of wooden pallets, my boot splashed into a puddle of dark red liquid. Sullivan was lying on his back against the steel bulkhead with his eyes wide open, staring blankly at the ceiling. His chest was completely torn open, and entire chunks of flesh and muscle were missing from his ribs, exposing the bone underneath.

Panic seized my chest. Stumbling backward, my radio slipped out of my shaking hands.

"Captain Harris,"

my voice cracked over the channel.

"You need to get down to aft storage right now. Bring the medical kit."

"What is the situation down there?"

Harris replied, his voice laced with static.

"It is Sullivan. He is dead. Someone killed him."

Footsteps ran across the metal stairs a few minutes later. Captain Harris rounded the corner, followed by a young deckhand named Toby. Both men stopped dead in their tracks when they saw the body.

"Jesus,"

Toby muttered, turning around to vomit against the wall.

Captain Harris stepped forward. He crouched next to Sullivan, pulling a flashlight from his belt to examine the wounds, but keeping a distance.

"These bite marks,"

Harris said, keeping his voice low

"But there is no animal on the ship"

"We need to put him in the freezer,"

Toby suggested, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

"We cannot just leave him here."

"We will move him to the medical bay,"

Harris decided, standing up and turning toward us.

"Lock the door. No one goes in or out without my permission. We are five days from the nearest port. Whoever or whatever did this is trapped on this ship with us."

We wrapped Sullivan in a plastic tarp and carried him to the medical bay, we locked the steel door behind us and the rest of the crew was informed, so as you would expect the ship went into a state of alert. Everyone was paired up, and no one worked alone.

Later that evening, Toby and I were assigned to watch the starboard deck. The sun was setting, turning the ocean into a dark purple. Standing near the railing, we smoked cigarettes and watched the water churn against the hull.

"You really think a person did that to Sullivan?"

Toby asked, flicking his ash into the wind.

"I don't know,"

shaking my head.

"The captain said the wounds looked like bites. If a person did that, they are completely insane."

Looking down into the water, a large shadow caught my attention. It was swimming just below the surface, keeping pace perfectly with the ship.

"Look at that,"

pointing toward the shadow.

Toby leaned over the railing.

"Is that a shark?"

It was a shark, but it was massive. The creature must have been twenty feet long. Its gray skin was covered in deep, jagged scars, and as it breached the surface, the remaining sunlight illuminated its dorsal fin and gills.

Attached to the shark were pulsating, red, meaty appendages. They looked exactly like fleshy coral, sprouting directly out of the animal's flesh. The appendages throbbed rhythmically, expanding and contracting as if they were breathing on their own.

"What is wrong with it?"

Toby asked, taking a step back from the railing.

"Some kind of parasite, maybe,"

unable to look away from the red growths.

"I have never seen anything like it."

The shark paced the ship for an hour before disappearing into the dark water, but the image of those pulsating red appendages burned into my mind.

The situation deteriorated rapidly the next morning.

Captain Harris called me over the radio, instructing me to meet him at the medical bay immediately. Reaching the door, Harris was waiting outside, holding a piece of cloth over his nose and mouth.

"Prepare yourself,"

Harris warned, unlocking the door.

"Something is extremely wrong."

Pushing the door open, the stench was unbearable. It smelled like rotting mushrooms and swamp water.

Sullivan’s corpse was gone. In its place, on top of the metal gurney, was a foul-smelling, fungal-like slurry. The flesh had melted down into a thick, gray paste mixed with dark red veins, and the slurry was bubbling, eating through the stainless steel of the gurney, with small holes already forming in the metal surface.

"A human body does not decompose like this in twenty-four hours,"

staring at the melting remains in horror.

"It is a biological contaminant,"

Harris stated, his eyes fixed on the bubbling paste. "Whatever got into him is spreading, and It is consuming the metal. If it eats through the deck, we are going to have a massive breach."

"What do we do?"

"We throw it overboard,"

Harris commanded.

"Right now. Grab those hazardous material bags from the cabinet."

We double-bagged the remaining chunks of Sullivan using plastic and tape. We carefully scooped the fungal slurry into a steel drum, sealing the lid tight. The entire process was nauseating.

Carrying the drum to the edge of the deck, we pushed it over the railing. The steel barrel hit the water with a loud splash.

Almost immediately, the scarred shark broke the surface. Its massive jaws snapped open, crushing the steel drum entirely, and before our eyes, the shark swallowed the remains and the metal alike, and then, we noticed that the red, meaty appendages on its gills throbbed as it dove back into the deep water.

Harris watched the water settle.

"Did you see those things growing on its back?"

"I saw them last night,"

gripping the railing tightly.

"They looked like parasites."

"Keep your mouth shut about this,"

Harris ordered, turning away from the railing.

"The crew is panicked enough, so if anyone asked, just tell them Sullivan was secured in the freezer."

The lie only lasted for two nights.

Alarms blared through the ship at three in the morning. Shouting echoed down the main corridor. Running out of my cabin, a group of deckhands were gathered outside the mess hall.

Pushing through the crowd, my stomach dropped. Toby was lying on the floor with his chest torn open in the exact same manner as Sullivan, then I noticed the same chunks of missing flesh, and the same horrifying amount of blood.

Harris arrived a minute later, pushing his way to the front. He looked at Toby, then looked up at me. We both knew the clock was ticking before Toby melted into that same fungal slurry.

"Everyone back to your quarters!"

Harris shouted, taking control of the chaos.

"Lock your doors. Do not open them for anyone except me."

The crew scattered, terrified. Harris and I were left alone with Toby's body.

"We are not waiting for him to melt,"

Harris said, pulling a pistol from his jacket.

"And we are not waiting for whoever did this to strike again. We are going to hunt this thing down."

"How?"

gesturing to the empty corridor.

"It could be hiding anywhere."

Harris pointed his flashlight at the floor.

"Look closely, looks like our killer became sloppy"

Trailing away from Toby's body were bloody footprints. They were bare feet, slipping slightly on the slick floor. Mixed with the blood was a distinct, dark orange smear.

"Rust,"

Harris noted, crouching down.

"Freshly scraped rust. These prints lead toward the maintenance stairs."

We followed the bloody footprints down the metal staircase. The trail led deeper into the ship, past the engine room, and down into the lowest levels of the vessel. We were heading into the ballast tanks.

The ballast tanks are massive, dark caverns filled with seawater to stabilize the ship. The air down there is freezing.

The bloody footprints stopped near the entrance of tank number four.

Harris clicked his gun off safety. He nodded toward the heavy steel door.

"Open it."

Turning the wheel, the latch popped free. Pulling the door open, we shined our flashlights into the echoing darkness of the tank.

Sitting in the corner, surrounded by half-eaten rats, was a man.

He was shivering violently, clutching his knees to his chest. His clothes were soaked in dark, oily water. As the flashlight beams hit his face, he hissed, shielding his eyes with bloodstained hands.

"Griggs?"

Harris whispered, lowering his gun slightly.

It was Griggs. The man who fell overboard during the squall a week ago.

"How are you alive?"

I asked the question aloud, unable to comprehend what I was seeing.

Griggs babbled incoherently, his voice raspy and choked with saltwater. He crawled backward, pressing his spine against the rusted metal wall.

"The dark,"

Griggs muttered, his eyes darting wildly.

"The trenches are so dark. They are starving down there. So hungry."

As Griggs shifted, the flashlight beam caught the back of his neck.

Rooted deeply into his spinal column was a pulsating red appendage. It was identical to the meaty coral growing on the scarred shark. The parasite throbbed rhythmically, pulsing with a sick sound. Veins from the appendage spread out across Griggs's pale skin, digging into his jaw and shoulders.

"He is infected,"

Harris realized, raising his gun again.

"That thing is controlling him."

"We can cut it off,"

I stepped forward, pulling a utility knife from my belt.

"If we remove the parasite, maybe we can save him."

"Do not get too close,"

Harris warned, moving in slowly.

"He killed Sullivan and Toby."

"Griggs, stay still,"

stepping toward the shivering man.

"We are going to help you."

But Griggs lunged. He moved with impossible speed, snapping his teeth toward my arm. Harris stepped in, slamming the butt of his pistol against Griggs's temple. The blow knocked the feral man to the ground.

Harris pressed his knee into Griggs's back, pinning him against the rusted floor.

"Cut it off! Hurry!"

Gripping the knife, I knelt next to the thrashing man. I placed the blade against the base of the red appendage, right where it rooted into his neck, then Applied pressure, before slicing through the meaty tissue.

Griggs shrieked. It was a sound of agonizing pain that echoed off the steel walls.

Then, black fluid sprayed out of the wound, coating my hands and the knife. The fluid burned like acid, and the appendage thrashed wildly, trying to reattach itself to the open cut.

Griggs twisted his head, staring at me with entirely black eyes.

"You don't understand,"

Griggs babbled, with blood and black fluid spilling from his mouth.

"The deep is starving. Human meat is the only thing that can satiate it."

He convulsed violently, throwing Harris off his back, then he stood up, clutching his bleeding neck. The remaining portion of the parasite pulsed rapidly, trying to heal the damage.

"It wants more,"

Griggs whispered, taking a step toward me, but a gunshot rang out inside the metal tank.

The bullet struck Griggs directly in the chest. He stumbled backward, looking down at the hole in his shirt. Harris fired twice more. Griggs collapsed onto the rusted floor, his body twitching as the black fluid pooled around him.

The red appendage on his neck stopped pulsating, then slowly deflated, turning a dull, dead gray.

Harris stood over the body, breathing heavily. He looked at me, his face pale and slick with sweat.

"We cannot let this spread to the rest of the crew," Harris said, his voice trembling slightly.

"if someone else gets infected, this entire ship will become a feeding ground."

"What are we going to do with him?"

wiping the burning black fluid off my hands onto my pants.

"The same thing we did with Sullivan,"

Harris decided grimly.

We hauled Griggs's body up the maintenance stairs. It took us an hour to drag him to the stern of the ship. Thankfully, the deck was completely empty. We threw him over the railing, then watched the body plunge into the dark water below.

The scarred shark appeared almost instantly. It snatched Griggs's body in its jaws and dragged him down into the depths. Following this, the bizarre shark sank beneath the waves and was never seen pacing the ship again.

The rest of the voyage was a nightmare of silence. Harris logged Toby and Sullivan as casualties of a severe viral outbreak, strictly enforcing isolation protocols until we reached the mainland. The crew asked questions, but Harris shut them down with unquestionable authority.

When the ship finally docked at a mainland port in California, the relief was overwhelming. The ramp lowered, and the crew began disembarking immediately.

Packing my duffel bag in my cabin, my only thought was getting as far away from the ocean as possible. Leaving the ship, I walked down the loading dock toward the employee parking lot.

Captain Harris was standing by his pickup truck. He was wearing a heavy jacket with the collar turned up against the coastal wind.

Walking over to him, I wanted to say a final goodbye. We had survived something horrific together, and there was a strange bond in that shared trauma.

"Are you heading home, Captain?"

asking as I approached the truck.

"I am going to notify the authorities about what happened,"

Harris said, pulling his car keys from his pocket.

"The Coast Guard needs to know about the biological hazard, and of course they need to quarantine the ship before the next crew boards."

"That is a good idea,"

nodding in agreement.

"I am just going to catch a bus back to the city. I do not think I will be signing another maritime contract anytime soon."

"I don't blame you,"

Harris replied, offering a tight, forced smile.

As he turned to unlock his truck door, a gust of wind caught his jacket. The high collar slipped down his neck for just a fraction of a second, then my heart completely stopped.

Rooted deeply into the base of Captain Harris's neck was a throbbing red mass, the same meaty appendage, pulsing rhythmically beneath his skin.

Harris realized the collar had slipped. He frantically pulled the fabric back up, concealing the parasite, then slowly turned his head to look at me.

"Have a safe trip home,"

Harris said, his voice unnaturally calm.

He got into his truck, started the engine, and drove out of the parking lot, all while I stood perfectly still, clutching my duffel bag, watching his taillights disappear into the traffic heading toward the city.

The food industry is absolutely abysmal. At least, I think it is. I’ve never worked at a restaurant that’s particularly “poppin’,” as the kids like to say. I’m basing my opinion solely off of this one… particular… diner.

We’re essentially just a rest stop for truckers. At least, we would be if any ever came through here. We see maybe one or two trucks a month, if we’re lucky. Even still, usually they’ll take one look at the place and peel off down that desolate highway.

Do you know how bad it is when not even truckers will eat at your establishment? Those guys essentially survive off of Slim Jims and pork rinds.

That doesn’t really matter to me, though. I took this job for the peace and quiet. I’ve been missing that peace more and more these days.

Customers are starting to become more frequent. I know, I know. That’s a good thing. Only… I just… I don’t know if that’s true or not.

See, I’ve been working this job for around 6 years now. Started right before Covid really took the world hostage. We used to get customers all the time before that whole shitstorm. Then we had to do the whole lockdown thing with the masks and the social distancing.

We don’t do DoorDash over here. I told Ricky a thousand times, “We. Have got. To do. DoorDash,” okay? Like, seriously. Or Uber Eats, or, I don’t know, man… something.

Anything that would actually help us sell a few plates.

He just wouldn’t have it. Told me, “Everyone’s too far away,” or “Food delivery services will lead to the downfall of civilization.”

Ricky was always a weird guy. He opened this place with his dad back before he passed. Not sure why they chose this location, but hey, at least there’s cellular service.

Which is really fucking weird, considering the highway is pretty much a complete dead zone for at least 30 miles in each direction.

Anyway, sorry, I’m rambling a bit. After COVID, the business really started to dwindle. We went from around 10-15 customers a day, all the way down to maybe 1 per day around the end of 2020.

Ricky was stressed to all hell around that time. He’d wander the restaurant, moping all day. Wondering what he was gonna do. Not knowing where he could turn. It was honestly depressing to watch.

I had to miss out on a lot of paychecks around that time, too. But what was I gonna do? Leave him? I was his only employee. Me and him were holding the business up on our backs.

When things started to look grim, I’d catch him a few times. Early in the morning. Turning the gas stoves on and dousing the flames.

“I’ll do it, I’ll fucking do it,” he’d tell me, threatening to flick his lighter.

Hell, I had to wrestle a jerrycan out of his hands a few times. All I’m saying is Ricky carried that lighter for a reason, and that man has never smoked a day in his life.

It got to the point where I was too afraid to even leave him alone. He literally lived in the diner. Slept in his office. He didn’t even have a car, which, now that I’m thinking about it, is kind of insane.

I never saw him arrive. Never saw him leave. It was like him and the restaurant were intertwined. So when he got desperate, I don’t doubt he went to extreme lengths to get things fixed.

After the stove incidents and the whole jerrycan fiasco, I think that’s when he really reached that level of desperation. He wasn’t moping anymore. That man was plotting… I just didn’t know what.

One day, I came into work to find him happier than he should’ve been. Kicked back in his office chair. Whistling to himself.

I honestly didn’t even feel like dealing with all that. I drove 50 miles to get into work today. Had to wake up at 4 in the morning. Couldn’t even listen to the Joe Rogan Experience because of the lack of cell service. All I wanted was to put my apron on… then maybe play on my phone a little since I knew I’d have no one to cook for.

I wiped down a few counters. Chased a few rats away with a broom. Oh, also, I had to bat away a particularly large spider. It made a sort of… metallic noise when it hit the ground. It ran away sounding like one of those spring-loaded door stoppers I used to play with as a kid.

Anyway, sorry, I can’t stop rambling. God, what’s wrong with me?

I had just began to sit down to scroll on my phone when Ricky stepped out of office, hands clasped behind his back, smug look already plastered across his face.

“….Well…” he inquired, leering over me like Michael Jackson performing Smooth Criminal. “Aren’t you going to ask me?”

I sighed and slid my phone back in my pocket. I knew this was gonna be a long conversation.

“Ask ya what, Rich? Go ahead. I know you wanna tell me.”

He pushed his forehead back, pretending he still had hair there before sneering pridefully.

“You knowwww,” he drawled out. “Ask me why I’m so happy.”

“Why are you so happy, Ri…”

“I fixed it.”

He stared at me like he expected me to know exactly what he meant. I just thought this was another one of his manic episodes. Knowing him, ‘fixed it’ could range anywhere from fixing the leaky faucet in the bathroom or killing his ex-wife.

I pulled out my pack of Winstons and packed it against my palm.

“Fixed what? The leaky faucet in the…”

“The restaurant, kid.”

His eyes were frantic but excited. He looked like, like a uh, well, a crackhead, kinda. Pulling up a chair in front of me, he glared out the window and towards the highway.

“Our woes are no more. The vile, treacherous fingertips of despair no longer hold dominion over my soul nor body. I am a vessel of purity. A clean slate, with a clear conscience. Born again. Renewed. This establishment. This location. It is real, Don. I am real. You…”

He reached out to caress my face. I jumped back like he was a leper.

“Dude, what the fuck are you doing? Don’t do that weird shit. I just got here.”

He drew his hand back, but I was still eyeballing him.

“You’re real… Right, Don?”

There were tears in his eyes, but he had a smile on his face.

I thought for a moment about his question. I honestly didn’t know how to answer him.

“You know what, Rick… I fucking hope so.”

Rick stood up and clasped his hands together before walking towards the back. He returned with a broom in one hand and a mop in the other. Apparently, he wanted the place spick and span for some “VIP guest” that was supposed to show up at some point.

We cleaned the restaurant top to bottom twice. I even shoveled the contents of the grease trap outside into buckets, which I then proceeded to dump on the ground about 300 yards from the diner. Then I had to clean the buckets. God, it was so hot that day. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. It really doesn’t even matter.

What matters is that guest didn’t come until almost sundown. Hell, we didn’t see any guests, period. I was supposed to be getting off in a few hours. But Rick just wouldn’t relent.

“He’s coming,” “he’s on his way,” “trust me, he’ll be here.”

9 o’clock rolled around. Quitting time. I bid Ricky goodnight and was about to walk out the door when he stopped me. He placed his hand on my shoulder coldly.

“Don…” he whispered.

“Yeah, Rick…” I replied.

He stared at me blankly. No life behind his eyes whatsoever.

“He’s coming.”

I scoffed and tried to pull my arm away, but he tightened his grip.

“Trust me… you’ll want to see this. But also, if you leave, I’ll kill you.”

His eyes didn’t even flicker. He didn’t smile. No sign whatsoever that he was joking. I even tried to force a chuckle out of him by nervously laughing, but he didn’t budge.

My smile faded. I set my backpack down and walked back to the counter, sighing loud and long enough for him to understand how goddamned annoyed I was.

I played Angry Birds on my phone for an hour or two. Ricky just kept standing at the window… watching that desert highway with his hands clasped behind his back.

He never moved an inch.

11 o’clock rolled around, and at this point, I was already planning on just sleeping in my car. I had to be back at 6 the next morning anyway.

I gave it another hour before going to approach Rick at the window. I waved my hand in front of his face.

“Alright, boss man, I think it’s time we shut it down. What do ya say?”

No response.

“Don’t worry, I won’t go far. Probably gonna sleep in the car tonight.”

No response.

“Alright, welp… be seeing ya.”

I put my hand on the door handle and went to twist it. Ricky’s hand shot over and clasped around my wrist. I don’t know what kind of workouts that fucker does in his free time, but good lord, man… I mean, that shit actually hurt.

I was about to scold him until I saw him pointing out towards the dark desert with his other hand.

“…he’s here.”

I looked out at where he was staring. All I could see was blackness. Well, that and the glow of the neon storefront. But the longer I watched… the more he came into view.

He started off as a speck. Maybe a quarter mile out, emerging from the darkness. Then he grew taller. And taller. And taller. By the time he was 50 feet out, I realized why Rick said this guy was a VIP.

He must’ve been 8 feet tall. His arms swung at his sides as he walked. He wore a surprisingly clean blue suit, and he clutched a briefcase in his right hand.

Ricky finally released my wrist and basically pushed me away from the door while he held it open for our guest. The man smelled like chemicals and burning plastic, and his skin was almost unnaturally smooth.

He had to duck down to get inside, and even when he was inside, his head still almost touched the ceiling. Ricky looked ecstatic. Like this was some long-lost friend of his.

I hate when he’s like that because then he starts pushing me around like I’m his employee or something. Demanding I get drinks, snapping at me to ‘rev up those fryers,’ like, okay?

This guy was different, though.

He didn’t seem to want anything to drink. It was like, I don’t know… a business transaction or something. Like he was there for one reason and one reason only.

The first thing he did was calmly place his briefcase on his table. He dusted off some sand, which was annoying because, dude, I just cleaned that. But then he unlocked it… and he opened it… and I got to see what this guy had apparently just been dragging through the desert.

If I had to describe what the contents of that briefcase looked like… I’d say something like… mounds upon mounds of chewed bubble gum. Only veinier. I’d argue it looked a little slimier, too. The pulsations is what got me, though. Don’t even get me started on the smell.

Just seeing it made me wanna vomit, but the smell, Christ above… I could’ve passed out from those fumes.

I, for one, was about to ask him what the actual hell he just brought into our restaurant, but as soon as my mouth opened, Ricky stamped on my foot.

“I’ll take that,” he chuckled to the guest, ignoring my screams of agony and/or despair.

The businessman nodded in approval as Rick used his bare hands to pick up that… whatever that was from the briefcase.

He carried it to the kitchen as it dripped all over the floor that, yet again, I had just cleaned.

The meat touched the grill and immediately began to sizzle. Only, it didn’t really sound like sizzling. It sounded like… like… a thousand tiny screams.

I watched in disbelief while Ricky just kept flipping the meat and humming to himself like this was perfectly normal.

“Never ask them about the meat.”

He said it so… nonchalantly. Like it was some grand truth that everyone in the world knew, except me. But what made my ears perk up the most was one word. “Them.”

I asked him who “them” was, and the only answer he gave me was “our new clientele.”

The meat… shrank as he cooked it. The steam was like mustard gas to me, but Rick borderline seemed to enjoy it. Hell, he was inhaling it like this was some kind of foreign delicacy.

It went from about a foot long, maybe 8 inches thick, and crinkled down to no more than the size of a regular T-bone steak by the time it was done.

Rick served it to the businessman anxiously. Expectantly. Like he was a contestant on a MasterChef or something. I think he thought the guy was gonna eat it; I mean, hell, that’s what I thought he was gonna do.

Instead, he picked the meat off of the plate and stuffed it back into his briefcase. Then he smiled at Rick, satisfied as if he did eat it, before pulling his wallet out of his pocket.

He counted out 3 grand in hundreds and set it down on the table wordlessly. He then stood up, walked out, and disappeared into the darkness again, briefcase in hand.

I should’ve probably asked Rick what the fuck had just happened, but I was bordering on sleep-deprived delirium. All I cared about was finally curling up in my seat and maybe getting some sleep if I was lucky.

Thankfully, Rick was too busy dancing and throwing his money in the air to notice me as I walked out towards the parking lot.

I didn’t get the sleep that I hoped for that night. I ended up clocking back in the next morning running on 2 hours and like 6 cups of coffee as the day went on.

I did ask Rick about the whole “don’t ask them about the meat” thing, though. Apparently, it’s ‘classified information that only he can know.’ Apparently, if I ‘break the rule,’ he’ll ‘kill me dead.’

Whatever, though. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles, I suppose. Plus, he wasn’t lying about these… people… being our new clientele.

Ever since that incident, we see at least 3 of them a week. The diner has been… strange, to say the least.

I still don’t know what exactly Rick did to “fix” this place, but I mean, hey, it’s working. Even if we don’t see many real customers these days.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!  Now?"
 
He assessed the meager contents of his medicine cabinet, hoping against reason that his mother had through some miracle of precognition, thought to buy some sort of acne medication.  She hadn't. 
 
"Back on the old benzoyl peroxide train"
 
He could still take a selfie; he'd just have to edit out the angry red bump that had decided to stake its claim in the middle of his forehead. 
 
It took fifteen attempts before he finally found the right angle, the one that was all jawline and lips.  Then he realized the bathroom was probably not the best setting for a profile pic on a dating app. So, he went to his bedroom, blocked out a corner that hid the mess, found his angle again, and finally took the damn picture.
 
Face looked fat.  Do it again.  Suck in those cheeks this time.
 
He was still revising the About Me section of his profile when his mother called him for dinner.
 
"Elliot!  I made macaroni with ground beef!  Come make a plate before it gets cold!"
 
"I can't eat that stuff, Ma!  I told you.  It doesn't fit my macros!"
 
"What?!  I thought you said you were maxing?  Isn't that like carbo-loading?"
 
"What?  Carbo-loading?  What year do you think it is?  I'm not maxing, whatever that is, I'm looksmaxxing.  Part of that is not eating junk, hence watching my macros.  You get it?"
 
"No...  No, I don't understand any of that.  What do you want for dinner then?"
 
"Just... don't worry about it.  I'll figure something out."
 
"Well, there's frozen pizzas in the freezer if you get hungry later."
 
"Jesus Christ, Ma."
 
After a week, his profile had failed to gain any significant traction.  The bump on the other hand was thriving.  It had grown to the size of a pinky toe, and the tip had taken on a dark grey-green hue.
 
He matched with a petite brunette who liked the show Yellowstone, which he had to get the Cliffsnotes summary of from a YouTube video because he put that show as one of his interests too. 
 
They met for coffee, but the vibe was not ideal.  She was looking everywhere but his forehead and it was obvious.  Elliot didn't make it easy on himself either; kept picking at it.  It was revolting and he knew it, but he just couldn't stop doing it.  It was so itchy.
 
As the bump grew more prominent, so too did his thoughts of the opposite sex.  Sex.  It was all he could think about these days.  At 23, he knew enough about biology to know that men don't have a "biological clock"; but the "virginity clock" sure felt real to Elliot; and the daily erection that he awoke to was as good an alarm clock as any.
 
By the time his mother decided to take him to the doctor, the skin had started to peel away from the underlying structure of the bump.  The itch made him feel like a rabid animal.
 
"It looks like some sort of ossification... Hmm...  How long has this been bothering you?"
 
"I don't know.  A couple of weeks?"
 
"Weeks?  Oh, Ellie you have to tell me when things are bothering you.  Otherwise, I can't help.  And that's a mom's job, isn't it?"
 
"Oh, for Christ's sake, Ma...  I'm a grown man."
 
They left with a prescription for an ointment for the itching and a date for a follow-up.  He passed the time waiting for script by alternating between dating apps and Insta.  He got so worked up; he had to tuck it into the waistband of his jeans, so his mom wouldn't see the bulge.
 
The ointment did nothing for the itch, and as the bump grew, the skin around it dried up and flaked off.  By the end of the week, he had started to call it his horn. 
 
He saw specialists, dermatologists mostly.  There was a terrifying trip to the oncologist.  She found nothing. 
 
The plastic surgeon said he could probably remove it, but he'd have to consult with his friend, the orthopedist.  By that point, Elliot didn't care what they did; as long as they got it off his head.  The thing was killing his love life.
 
He could barely get anyone to match with him, even with the photoshopped pictures.  And once they caught a glimpse of the six-inch ochre-colored spike sticking out of his forehead, they would excuse themselves to the ladies room and never return. 
 
Sometimes, they'd sneak out before he even noticed they were there, leaving him standing around scratching his forehead like an idiot; not knowing if they stood him up or got lost or what.
 
"You just have to keep looking honey... There's plenty of fish in the sea "
 
"I already tried that one, Ma.  I even went on ChristianMingle. "
 
"Oh, Ellie, why would you do a thing like that?  We've never been to church a day in your life.  We stopped after your daddy...  Your daddy...  Daddy..."
 
"Ma!"
 
"What?"
 
"What?!  You just spaced out is what.  Right when you started talking about my dad....   He wasn't a... I don't know... a creep or something?  Was he?"
 
"Your father... was a wonderful man.  I had never met anyone else like him.  He was handsome, like you, and he was funny like you too.  And he... he..."
 
"Ma!"
 
"HE WAS A SON OF A BITCH!!"
 
"..."
 
"..."
 
"Mo-mom?  Momma... it's ok momma.  It's ok."
By the time he swiped right on Hope’s profile, he wasn't even reading them anymore.  Wasn't really looking at the pictures either; just playing the numbers game.  He swiped left every once in a while, just to appease the algorithm; but he was just putting in reps. Eventually it had to pay off.
 
She wasn't really his type, but with a six-inch horn growing from the middle of his forehead, Elliot couldn't really afford to have a "type."
 
She was not ugly, just... plain; and with a Boho aesthetic that he hoped would not be the pillar around which she constructed her personality.
 
"... and that's when I decided to switch majors..."
 
Was she talking this whole time?
 
"...You know?  Really make a difference in the world..."
 
Oh no...
 
"My dad hates the idea of me joining the Peace Corps."
 
There it is.
 
"But I don't care.  Money isn't everything you know.  We waste so much of it on things we don't even need.  Like deodorant."
 
"Deodorant?  I don't know.  I think you'd be pretty disgusted right now if I wasn't wearing deodorant"
 
She looked at it.  Right when he said the word "disgusted".  She looked right back at his eyes, but he still saw it happen.
 
"No...  I don't mean we shouldn't use deodorant.  I mean we should make deodorant at home.  It's so easy and it's all-natural so it's way better for your body and it doesn't even leave that gross chalky residue.  See?"
 
When she lifted her arm, he could indeed see no residue.  It was what he did see that bothered him.  It really was her whole personality.
 
So, she had a little hair in a place he wasn't expecting.  Big deal.  Her profile said she does yoga.  I wonder if she could do a split.
 
"...always been into them, ever since I was a little girl..."
 
"Ohhh, yeah?" 
 
Definitely not wearing a bra.  I wonder if she even owns one?
 
"...and I was always into mythology and like dragons and princesses, so...."
 
What is she talking about?
 
"Well?  Can I?"
 
"I'm sorry, what?"
 
"Can I touch it?"
 
Holy shit, it's happening!
 
"I... excuse me... I... You want to touch it?  Like now?"
 
"Sure now.  Now's good... We can do it later if you're self-conscious..."
 
"Now's great!"
 
That was too enthusiastic.  Act like you've been here before.
 
"Ok... Cool...  I'll just go ahead and... Wow!  It's so much harder than I thought it would be!"
 
Then Elliot did feel self-conscious.  His mind had been so preoccupied with creating a mental blueprint of Hope's naked body that he had almost forgotten about the six-inch bony protrusion growing from the middle of his forehead.
 
How could he have been such an idiot.  She wasn't into him.  She was one of those girls; a hippie of a different color.  She probably had a pair of Ren-fair elf ears hanging in her closet.
 
"Alright... Got it out of your system?"
 
"Oooooh!  It feels... so...."
 
"I said alright!  Please...  It makes me feel uncomfortable."
 
"Oh no! No! Don't take it away!  Please, I... I... I'm sorry.  That was inappropriate.  I crossed a boundary with your body and that is not cool...  It's just... well I've never seen anything like that.  And as an anthropology major, it's fascinating.  I mean, that's kind of why I got into the field in the first place..."
 
"You switched majors so you could study guys with horns growing out of their heads?  I thought it was about saving the children."
 
"Who says I can't do both?  All the interesting archaeological sites are in war zones."
 
"Soo, you want to look for the missing link while setting up Wi-Fi for orphans?  Something like that?  You think he's out there?  I don't hear too many bigfoot sightings coming from the Middle East..."
 
"Stranger things have happened.  I think I just found a unicorn in Gainesville."
 
It's a good thing that the table was there.  He pre-tucked just in case, but still...  This was it.  He was so close, he could smell it.
 
Hope had Ubered to the coffee shop, but Elliot had had the foresight to borrow his mother's Honda.  It was a tip that he learned from a now defunct subreddit devoted to gamifying your own love life. 
 
The logic was sound: always control the exits; for you and your opponent/date.  It was the Prisoner's Dilemma put to practice. 
 
You're both going to meet there, and you're both going to leave.  If you arrive in your own vehicle and your date does not, it would be impolite not to offer a ride. 
 
And if the date went well, what reason would she have to say no?  It would be just as impolite to decline... if the date went well that was.  If she declined the offer, it  could give a guy a complex; make him think he did something wrong.
 
“You want a ride home?  I mean… uh, that way you don’t have to Uber…. You never know with those Uber drivers, right?”
 
“Right.  Right…. Look, Elliot… I think you’re really… fascinating, but I don’t want to lead you on.”
 
Fascinating?
 
“I’ll let you drive me home, but that’s it.  I want to see you again, but I’m an old-fashioned kind of girl.  I hope you understand…”
 
“Sooo, do you want the ride or not?”
 
“I do.  I do.  Thank you.  I’m just saying don’t expect me to sleep with you just because you gave me a ride.”
 
“Why would I?  I wasn’t even..  And even if I was… I mean…”
 
She didn’t live far but the silence in the car made it feel like an eternity.  The tension was so thick he had to lower the windows.  He knew that she was thinking about what he was thinking about.  They were locked in a psychic ouroboros.
 
"This is it on the left... building J."
 
"Is there a visitor's area or can I park anywhere?"
 
"You can park anywhere.  It's after 6.  It's officially the weekend."
 
He pulled into a spot just to the left of the beige building, identical to all the others but for the giant letter J on the front of it. 
 
"Well..."
 
"Well..."
 
"I should... walk you to your door....  I mean, it's what a gentleman would do, right?"
 
"Sure.  That would be sweet."
 
Her apartment was on the first floor, so his escort service was completely unnecessary.  Escorts.  Sex.  What was this girl's problem?  She was liberal in every way but the one that mattered; conservative below the belt.
 
"I had such a nice night, Elliot.  Can we... do it again?"
 
We should be doing it right now.
 
"Sure."
 
"Ok... Good... Well.... Bye"
 
Hope turned to open her front door, but before she could go inside, Elliot said:
 
"Wait!  I-I-I... Can I give you a hug at least?"
 
"Oh, Ellie, of course you can have a hug."
 
Why did she use that name?  The only person that called him that name was his mother.  It made the hug awkward.  Or rather, it made the hug more awkward. 
 
It was too long and he knew it, but her tits felt amazing against his chest and he couldn't help himself.  He had to be careful to avoid skewering her with the bony growth on his forehead, but when it made incidental contact with her head, she didn't pull away in disgust.  Instead, her body kind of went limp, and her eyes looked like they were searching for something that wasn't there.
 
"You smell so good"
 
It was a lie, but she seemed receptive.
 
"Ooooo"
 
"I wish we could...  You know.  But I want to respect your boundaries."
 
No, he didn't.
 
"Aaaahhh"
 
Not exactly the response he was expecting, but not a no in the strict sense either.  It was now or never.  He licked his lips in anticipation.  She was smiling, but it didn't look like the smile she had at the coffee shop.  It was toothy and artificial. 
 
He went for the kiss anyway.  She wasn't an enthusiastic kisser.  Maybe it was first date nerves.  His own heart felt like it was going to jump out of his chest like the gingerbread man and take a lap around the complex.
 
After a minute and a half of one-sided making out, Elliot decided to shoot his shot one last time.
 
"Soooo, you going to invite me in or what?"
 
"Mmmm"
 
He took that as a yes and followed her inside.  She still had that faraway look in her eyes, but Elliot pushed it to the back of his mind.  She was just nervous was all.
 
"Nice place you got here.  You all alone or do you have roommates?"
 
Hope just grinned back at him with that smile that was all teeth and no eyes.
 
"You want to listen to some music or.... We could do other things... If you would like to that is...."
 
"Aaaahhhh"
 
Her voice was soft and childlike.  Before the horn, it would have been a turnoff, but now?  Game on.
 
He took her by the wrist and led her to the first doorway he found in the small hall of the apartment.  Bathroom.  You would think she would have said something.
 
The second door he tried was a bedroom, and from the Free Palestine poster on the wall and the faint smell of incense, he could reasonably assume it was hers.
 
They both just stood there.  He was too shy to make the first move, and she seemed agreeably indifferent.  It was a stalemate.  Mate.  Sex.  It always came back to that with Elliot. 
 
She kept cooing like she was into it.  Why wouldn't she just give him a signal?  Something he could use as justification for doing what he wanted to do anyway.
 
He kissed her again and again, she did not stop him.  Emboldened, he took it a step further and let his hands explore the contours of her chest.  She said nothing.
 
He didn't really know what he was supposed to do.  He had never gotten this far before.  The forums said that women like foreplay, so he extended it for as long as he could hold out, about two and half minutes.  By that point he felt like he was growing another protrusion a couple of feet south of his horn.
 
Elliot's first sexual experience was a brief but noteworthy affair.  It hurt more than he expected it to.  It wasn't supposed to hurt at all, right?  At least not for the guy.  But there was so much friction he felt like he must not have done it right. 
 
He couldn't read Hope's expression.  It was all oooo's and aaaahhh's from her, but not in a pleasurable tone.  It still looked like she was looking for something that wasn't there.
 
It bothered him, but he didn't let it get in the way.  For forty-five seconds, Elliot felt like a man.  He knew he should have withdrawn, calmed down, savored the moment, but by the time he made up his mind, it was too late.  Waves of a pleasure he had never known pulsed through his body.
 
"Ugghhh, uhh, Oh, FUCK!  Fuck, I didn't... Please tell me you're on birth control."
 
But if Hope responded, Elliot never heard it.  At that moment, with a sound like a green tree branch snapping, his horn broke free from his head.  Sleep swallowed him whole. 
 
He awoke the next morning in an empty and unfamiliar bed.  His face was hot and sweaty and it took a minute for him to notice that he had been sleeping on his belly.  He had been a side-sleeper ever since the bump started growing, but he really preferred to sleep face-down.
 
"It's gone.  Halle-fuckin-lujah!  It's really gone!"  
 
He quickly composed himself, not wanting to draw the attention in case Hope really did have a roommate.  Where was that girl?  For that matter, where was the horn?  It may have been a hideously disfiguring growth, but it was his hideously disfiguring growth.
 
He helped himself to a K-cup in the kitchen.  Hope was still nowhere to be seen.  He worried that he had done something to offend her, but not for very long. The world felt different to him now somehow.  Or maybe he was the one that was different, like he had crossed a point of no return.
 
He waited three days before texting her; that was industry standard, according to all the forums.  On the third day, he had his openers narrowed down to "Good morning, beautiful", "Hey baby girl," and simply "Sup?"  He went with "Sup?"
 
She never responded.  He tried again with "Hi, Hope.  Hope all is going well with you, lol" Again, there was no response. 
 
So, he addressed the elephant in the room: "Listen, if I crossed a boundary the other night, I'm sorry.  I know you said you were saving yourself for marriage, but then after we hugged it was like you were a different person."
 
No, not after they hugged.  It was after the horn touched her head.  Only then did she start acting so strangely, the same way she did when she touched it in the restaurant.  It had been like she was high on something, all giggles and dilated pupils.
 
One last text.  If she didn't respond to that one, he'd go back to the apps.  "I just don't want to leave things this way.  If I offended you, I am sorry.  But it takes two to tango and if you didn't like it, you should have said something.  You girls think you can just wave it in our faces, and we have to pretend like we don't want it.  It's such a stupid game.  You're not even my type.  I like girls that wear makeup and shave their body hair.  Call me old-fashioned too, I guess.  Anyway, if you're not going to see me again, can I at least have my horn back?  I know you took it.  I don't know why.  Maybe your daddy never bought you a pony, so you became fixated on unicorns.  Whatever the reason, I would like to have it back.  My doctor wants to do a biopsy on it."
 
It was the last message he ever exchanged with Hope, but not the last time that he saw her.  Within a week of losing his virginity, the horn had started to grow again.  Elliot hit the apps with a vengeance, driven by a near-constant state of lust.
 
It was even worse than before.  Even though he had optimized his profile to appeal to the widest swathe of potential dates as he could, he was receiving absolutely no matches. 
 
He tried his luck at the bars and nightclubs, to the extent that they would even let him in. Most nights, he didn't even talk to anyone, just nursed his cheap beer in the back of the room. 
 
The first time he saw another guy with a horn was outside the Orbit Lounge.  The bouncer assumed they were together.
 
"Nope!  Sorry fellas, but the boss man says no horns allowed.  Too many complaints about you guys from the ladies."
 
"Ladies?  What ladies?  You think a lady would give me the time of day looking like this?"
 
"Look man, boss man says no horns, that means no horns.  Simple.  Take your asses to the Palomino.  Them hipsters don't care what you look like."
 
Elliot power-walked to the Palomino since it was only a few blocks South and he didn't want to risk getting his mom's Honda towed if he tried to find a closer spot. 
 
He stopped at the intersection of main and 13th st and waited for the signal.  Across the street he could see the open-air patio of the Palomino.  It was indeed populated mostly with curly cue mustaches and septum piercings.  But amid the band tees and thrifted ensembles was a familiar face.  She wasn't ugly, just plain, but even from this distance, he could see she had an audience. 

Hope looked different than the last time he saw her.  She was in a form-fitting red dress that showed off her legs.  Legs that as he got closer, he could see she had freshly shaven. 
 
She was playing a musical instrument, some kind of flute or recorder and the men that surrounded her hung on every note.  The melody was seductive, but sad.
 
Not all the guys had horns.  Some had just a little bump on their heads.  But they all had one thing in common; she was their queen. 

Dad smelled like burned hair and smoke, his face still covered in soot. I rubbed my eyes and yawned.

“Is mom making pancakes?” I asked tiredly.

“Judy is. Your mom’s still asleep. We got a long drive ahead of us.”

We walked downstairs together. Judy was standing over the stove wearing an oversized T-shirt and pajama bottoms. Max, Kayla, and Darren sat at the table. They looked just as tired as I felt.

Judy served up her pancakes, and, I won’t lie, they weren’t nearly as good as mom’s, but I gobbled them up regardless. Me and the other kids spent the rest of the morning watching cartoons.

The adults had an air of relief about them. Dad laughed with Jake. Mom and Judy conversed for a while over the world and all things in it. No one ever mentioned the previous night.

Well, Darren tried to. But his mom didn’t allow it. Jake shut it down, too. But it wasn’t awkward. Nobody had to force themselves to move on. We just… did.

Dad showered. Mom rested. The day went on without incident. At some point in the afternoon, we were packing our things into the car again. It wasn’t as urgent this time. If anything, it felt happy. I even found myself excited to finally get back to my own bed.

I slept most of the way home. When I woke up, I actually recognized my surroundings. The old convenience store. The house that burned down last year. Mom and dad held hands lovingly, but didn’t talk much.

We finally got home after the sun went down. Mom was a little hesitant to go inside, but Dad reassured her. She was free now. We were free. I had no idea what it meant, but I could feel his conviction.

Even still, mom made me sleep in their bed that night. Then every night for the next week afterward. Emmy, too.

Dad held me tight. Mom kept her arm draped over my chest. We ate a lot of pancakes in those following days. It kind of felt like Mom was trying to apologize for something, but I didn’t know what.

All I knew was she was putting her all into those breakfasts.

After a while, I was finally able to sleep in my own room again, albeit with the door open. We went back-to-school shopping. I went into 4th grade with an abundance of new clothes and the coolest backpack out of all of my friends.

Life went on.

One year without incident. Then two. Then three. I went through middle school. I graduated high school. I moved away for college a year or so ago. We never had to randomly leave the house again because of some mystery stalker, but dad never stopped looking over his shoulder.

Mom has a full head of grey hair now, but she never lost her beauty. Emmy recently started her last year of middle school. Dad just… he seems to always want to keep his mind occupied.

They never brought up what happened that night. They never brought up the road trip. We visited uncle Jake and Aunt Judy a few times over the years, but the visits were calmer. They were for holidays and special occasions. Not for escape.

I developed a pretty close friendship with Max. We’d talk on the phone all the time. Play video games together. Every time I visited, we were building with those LEGOS he loved so much.

Darren eventually went into the army. Kayla is in her sophomore year of high school now.

Well… she used to be.

They’re all dead now. Everyone except for Darren, at least. I hope that he’s okay after hearing the news. He should be coming home soon.

See, I’m writing this now because of a phone call I got from my dad. I had just gotten home from a long day of classes. I was ready to eat some ramen and unwind, but he called while I was checking the mail.

“Hey, Dan,” he announced solemnly.

“Hey, Dad, how have things been?”

He sighed.

“We’re fine here, buddy, but, uh…”

He paused.

“But what?” I asked expectantly.

“Jake’s house burned down, Dan. He, uh… he didn’t make it.”

He sounded like he was holding back tears. I was shocked.

“What?? What about Aunt Judy?? What about Max or…”

He interrupted.

“They’re… they’re gone, Dan. I’m sorry.”

The news hit me like a truck. I didn’t know Kayla all that well, but Max… Max was like a brother to me. An online brother, but still a brother nonetheless.

“But… no, that doesn’t make sense. Max was just texting me last night. He told me he’d come visit me sometime soon.”

I didn’t want to believe it. Max’s exact words were, “I’ll be seeing you soon, Dan-Man.” I mean, I guess that was the last text he sent me. I didn’t hear from him after that. But still, this couldn’t be happening.

“I’m sorry, kiddo,” Dad choked. “Their funerals are next week. I know you’re busy up there with classes and whatnot, but it’d mean a lot if you could make it.”

“I… I don’t know what to say. Of course, of course. Yeah. I’ll be there.”

Dad sniffled. I was about to comfort him when I heard a sound echoing from the background of his call.

knock knock knock

“Hold on, son, let me go answer the door.”

The line went dead. I stood there, still as could be by my mailbox, just… processing. I couldn’t believe what he had just told me. The phone vibrated in my hand.

It was a text from Dad.

“See you soon, kiddo.”

I sighed and rubbed my temples, attempting to block the tears as I slid my phone back into my pocket. I hadn’t even opened the mailbox yet. I was just… stuck… I guess.

I figured I’d just collect my mail, then go inside and start packing for the long trip home, but when I opened the mailbox… curiosity overwhelmed me.

There was a package inside, buried beneath my regular bills and magazines. It was gift-wrapped like a Christmas present.

I brushed the mail aside and pulled the package out first thing. It was pristinely wrapped. Someone had taken time with this.

I peeled back the tape and began unwrapping. At first, I didn’t recognize what I was seeing, but then it clicked.

It was Jake’s metal lockbox. The one from all those years ago with the pictures of mom and dad. I felt my heart drop a little.

I unlatched the lid and slowly opened the box. What I saw… well… that’s why I’m writing this now.

It was… my Superman stuffy. Dusty and stiff, but it still had my initials written in faded black Sharpie across the tag. But that’s not the thing that worried me.

What worried me… was the note tied around Superman’s torso, written in sloppy, obsessive handwriting…

“Found You.”

Dad picked me up and put me on his shoulders as he nudged Mom towards the house. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been up there. It felt like home, though. Like… warmth, kinda.

I held on tight while Dad rushed us all inside. Mom looked flushed and alert. Emmy looked clueless. Jake and Judy had already taken their kids inside and were waiting anxiously for us by the front door.

Mom kept breaking her neck to look back towards the woods.

“Come on, come on,” Jake exasperated, snapping his fingers and gesturing for us to pick up the pace.

Dad broke into a jog, pulling Mom and Macy along with him as I bounced awkwardly on his shoulders. I could feel my nails digging into his skin from trying to hang on, but he seemed to not even notice.

When we got inside, Judy had already started going around the house to lock the doors and windows. Jake closed the door and locked it when we were all accounted for.

“I’ll go check the cameras,” he chimed, rushing upstairs. “I’ve got trail-cams scattered all throughout those woods. If he’s out there, trust me, we’ll see him.”

Mom set Emmy down on the couch and went to help Judy while Max, Darren, and Kayla just watched them. They seemed just as confused and terrified as me. Kayla’s eyes already looked like they were about to burst with tears.

“Why don’t you guys go play upstairs,” Dad instructed. “Danny will join you in just a bit. Everything’s okay, don’t worry. You guys are safe.”

It was weird hearing Dad tell other kids what to do. Embarrassing, almost. Even still, they didn’t argue. They all just filed up the stairs, one by one, while Dad watched until they were out of view. Then he turned to me.

“Come with me to the kitchen. I’ll make you something to drink.”

He sounded more composed than his demeanor let on. Like he knew this moment would come, despite hoping it wouldn’t be now.

I did as I was told and followed him. He pulled a chair out for me at the giant oak dining room table, gestured for me to take a seat while he fixed me a cup of chocolate milk.

He sat adjacent to me and just watched me sip it, slowly, for a few minutes. I felt so awkward in that moment. It was like he was trying to read my thoughts.

I finished the glass and pushed it to the side. Dad never took his eyes off of me, but I couldn’t maintain eye contact. I couldn’t help but feel like I’d done something wrong. My eyes remained fixed on the table, looking for patterns in the wood.

Finally, after what felt like forever, Dad tapped the table with his index finger.

My eyes met his once more and he sighed.

“Daniel…” he started. “You know you’re my whole world, right?”

I blinked, not knowing what to say.

“I love you too, Dad,” I whispered, struggling to find my voice.

“Sometimes, kiddo…” he continued. “Sometimes I think that my sole purpose in life is to keep you and Emmy safe. Your mom, too.”

Now it seemed like he was fighting to find his words. I could almost see the gears in his head turning. I felt like if I stared at his head long enough, maybe I could hear his thoughts.

“And I’ve been serving that purpose for 9 whole years now. Keeping you safe. Keeping your mom and Emmy safe. I would never be able to forgive myself if anything happened to you.”

I was just a kid. I didn’t know how to respond to this. To me, it just felt like Dad having a moment after I scared him half to death.

He fished around in his pocket and pulled out a crinkled, folded sheet of paper. He looked at it. Then at me. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but instead, he just placed the paper and slid it in front of me.

“We got this in our mailbox a few days ago.”

I looked down at the paper and felt even more confused.

“The man who left it… he’s… well…”

Dad was starting to choke up. That was twice today I’d seen tears in his eyes. Dad crying was scary. Arguably, the scariest thing I’d experienced this entire trip.

“He’s been after you for a long time, Dan.”

I looked down at the paper. It was addressed to my parents, but what was written on it didn’t make any sense to me.

“Found you. I found you. I found you. I finally found you. Found you. Found you. Found you. Found you. Found you…”

The phrase filled up the entire paper. It was scrawled obsessively in sloppy handwriting.

I looked back up at Dad. He looked like he was expecting something from me, but I didn’t know what. This didn’t mean anything to me.

“Found you…?” I asked, puzzled. “Who found you?”

Dad reached over and dragged the paper back towards him. He folded it back up and put it in his pocket.

“Found you, Danny. He found you.”

“Why would anyone want to find me? Have I met them before or something?”

He clasped his hands over his face and slid them down slowly.

“No, son. I’ve fought to make sure you never will.”

“Oh, okay. Can I have some more chocolate milk, please?”

He ignored my question. Almost aggressively.

“We tried,” he collapsed. “We tried so hard to keep him away from you. We tried the police, but nobody was ever able to find him. It’s like he only exists when he’s after you. That slimy, nasty little bastard…”

He slammed a hand down on the table and bit his knuckle. His sudden anger made me jump. I was completely speechless.

His teeth remained clamped against his knuckle for a few moments while he chose his next words carefully.

“The cops should’ve found him. Before this even started. Before you were even born. They should’ve found him because of what he…”

He paused. A tear fell down his cheek.

“He’s a bad man, Danny. You understand that?”

I nodded.

“He’s a bad man who hurt your mom. Nearly a year before you were born. He… he did something terrible to her and now he thinks you’re his.”

He looked at me expectantly again.

“I’m… his…?” I questioned.

“No. You will never be his. He doesn’t deserve you. It doesn’t deserve you. He is pure evil.”

I could hear Max and his siblings laughing upstairs. I turned my head, resisting the urge to leave my seat. Dad tapped the table again.

He was smiling at me now. Warmly.

“Those are your cousins, Dan. It’s funny,” he chuckled uneasily. “Part of me is almost glad that you finally get to meet them.”

My eyes widened with disbelief. I didn’t even think about having any other family members. All I’ve ever known were Mom, Dad, and Emmy.

“You guys should’ve had a great childhood together. None of this should’ve ever happened to us, especially your Mom. But the world is… it’s not a nice place, kiddo. I wish I could change it for you.”

He leaned over and pushed the hair out of my eyes.

“We had to move when you were only 2. That guy, that thing out there… it was relentless. He just wouldn’t leave us alone. The police did nothing about it, so I took matters into my own hands for you.”

His eyes looked distant now. Like he was living through his entire past while sitting here at the table with me.

“I hurt him back. I thought I took care of it forever, but he somehow managed to disappear again. Me and your mom were terrified. That’s why we had to leave. That’s why you don’t know Uncle Jake and Aunt Judy. All because of one bad man in a world full of bad people.”

I didn’t understand it, but I could feel the emotion in the room. The weight of the conversation was more than apparent.

Dad was bawling now, but still trying to keep himself composed. I reached across the table and grabbed his forearm.

“Don’t cry, Dad,” I begged. “I’m not mad at you. Everything’s okay, I promise. Everything’s okay.”

He picked up my hand and held it tightly before pulling it to his lips and kissing it gently.

“Everything’s okay, kiddo. I’ll make sure everything’s okay.”

He placed my hand back on his forearm.

“I thought everything was okay before I got this letter. He had left us alone for a long time. I thought we finally got rid of him.”

He gave me one last solemn look.

“Whatever happens tonight, Dan… I need you to know… you’re my entire world, kiddo. I love you more than anything.”

I smiled at him reassuringly.

“I know you love me, you butthead. I love you too. Thiiiisss much.”

I spread my arms out cartoonishly. Dad chuckled and ruffled my hair before Jake’s voice came echoing from upstairs.

“GOT ‘EM!”

Dad’s head shot up. He stood from his seat urgently. I could hear footsteps rushing down the stairs.

“Alright, buddy, go play with Max for a while. Me and Jake are gonna go find this guy.”

He was basically pulling me out of my seat and rushing me towards the stairs. I ran into Jake at the bottom. He was holding something behind his back.

“Excuse me, champ,” he announced, pushing past me. “Let’s go handle this, Mikey.”

My dad nodded grimly before snapping his fingers at me to go upstairs.

I was halfway up the staircase when I heard a sound that I didn’t recognize before the front door opened and my dad and Jake ran outside.

click clack

Mom was at the top of the stairs, arm outstretched towards me while Judy stood by her side, biting her thumbnails. She didn’t say much. She just led me into Max’s room and shut the door behind her.

All the kids were there. The room was big enough for us to not feel cramped, but still a bit suffocating. Darren lay on the bed watching TV. Kayla was on the floor, humming to herself and coloring. Max and I passed the time by playing with LEGOS.

I’m not sure how much time passed. I never heard Mom or Judy. The front door never opened. I didn’t know the time, but it was dark outside. It felt like it was definitely past my bedtime.

Max and I were in a bit of a competition. He built a spaceship. I built a car. He built a tower. I built a house. Our imaginations were flowing endlessly.

Suddenly, Darren sat up in bed, turning down the television. He looked alert. The sudden movement caused us all to look at him. He seemed to be listening for something.

“Sh,” he snapped, even though no one was talking. “Did you guys hear that?”

The room was silent. Not even crickets chirped outside. I listened as hard as I could…

It sounded like… screaming?

Angry screams. Frightened screams. I couldn’t make out the words, but I could make out the tones.

Darren moved to the window and scanned the backyard.

“I don’t see anything.”

Max and I joined him. Everything was so dark. I could hardly even see the grass beneath us.

My nose was pressed against the glass, but two loud sounds caused me to fall backwards. Darren gasped. Max’s eyes turned into a mixture of curiosity and fear.

“That sounded like Dad’s gun,” Darren exasperated before turning to us like somehow we’d have the answers.

What followed was a long, guttural snarl from somewhere in the woods. Two more shots. More screams. Then… silence.

My heart was starting to race. I didn’t want to cry in front of the other kids, but I couldn’t help it. I was just too gripped with worry.

The silence stretched on. None of us knew what to do. We just kept glancing out the window, hoping that we’d finally be able to see something.

The front door exploded open before we got the chance. Every voice was shaken. Judy was in hysterics. Mom just kept repeating, “Go get the bandages, go get the bandages, put pressure on the wound, I think he might need stitches.”

Jake sounded pumped full of adrenaline.

“It’s better than it looks. Fucker got me good, but I returned the favor. How’re you feeling, Mike?”

We all filed out of the room and back towards the stairs. Kayla was leading us, already with tears in her eyes at the sudden chaos.

“I got him, I know I got him. That had to have been enough to stop him.”

Jake was laid back on the couch. His T-shirt was torn to shreds, and blood trickled down his abdomen from 3 distinct wounds across his stomach. They looked like claw marks.

“Yeah right,” Judy scoffed sarcastically while gasping. “That thing is never gonna…”

She paused. Her eyes shot up towards the 4 kids racing down the staircase.

“Oh, no. You guys go back upstairs,” she demanded. “We’ll be up in a minute.”

“Mommy,” Kayla sobbed. “What’s wrong with Daddy?”

Jake answered for her.

“It’s nothing, sweetie. Don’t worry about it. Daddy’s okay, just a little scratch from a tree branch. Go upstairs like your mommy asked, alright? I’ll come tuck you in here in a bit.”

Dad dabbed at Jake’s stomach with a towel.

“I don’t think it’ll need stitches. Just nasty looking, is all.”

That’s the last thing I heard before we all started back towards the bedroom. None of us could sit still. None of us knew what was happening. All we could do was pace around the room and try and listen to the chatter downstairs.

Max put his ear to the door and shushed Kayla’s already quiet cries.

“Shh… I’m trying to listen…”

He kept his ear there for a few moments before turning back towards us.

“Dude, I think Dad shot something.”

“Yeah, no dip,” Darren added. “What else would that have been?”

“Can you shut up? I can’t hear.”

He pressed his ear back against the door.

“Wait… no… I think…”

He craned his neck like he was trying to push his head through the door.

“No, dude… I think he shot a person.”

Kayla gasped and started wailing. We all tried to shush her, but it was too late. We could already hear the footsteps coming up the stairs.

Darren jumped in the bed and turned the TV back up. Max and I fell to the floor and pretended to be playing with the LEGOS. Kayla… Kayla kept screaming and crying.

The door flew open and Judy stepped inside. Her eyes were wet and her hands were dirty, but she still put on that strong motherly voice as she glared at the siblings.

“Why is Kayla crying?” she asked no one in particular.

There wasn’t an answer for a long time before Darren spoke up.

“Why do you think? She’s worried about Dad.”

Judy sighed and wiped her face with her sleeve.

“Your father is fine, Kayla. Just getting patched up after falling in the woods.”

“That’s not what happened…” I said under my breath.

Judy’s eyes fell on me.

“Just a fall, Daniel. That’s all it was… don’t scare Kayla, please.”

She was silently pleading with me with her eyes. I opened my mouth to say something, but she interrupted before I could.

“As a matter of fact, Kay, it’s way past your bedtime. Why don’t you go clean up and get your PJs on? I promise Daddy will come tuck you in as soon as you’re nice, clean, and cozy.”

Kayla wiped her tears. Her face was still twisted with sadness, but she did as she was told.

“Danny, your dad wants to talk to you,” Judy added.

I was actually shocked. I thought I was gonna be in this room for at least the rest of the night. I was already mapping out where I’d be sleeping.

“Like… now?”

Judy sighed exhaustedly. Almost like she was as surprised as me.

“It would appear so, kiddo. As for you two, you both need to get cleaned up too. Especially you, Max.”

Darren and Max groaned as Judy took me by the hand and started guiding me back downstairs.

Dad was sitting on the couch next to Jake, his hands clasped over his knee. Jake looked… better now. His torso was covered in bandages, but he was smiling confidently. His gun rested on his lap.

“I got him right in the chest, Mike. Did you see that shit? Like hamburger meat. Sure, fucker got me first, but I still…”

Dad noticed me and put his hand up at Jake. He added one last thing before gesturing for me to come sit beside him.

“We both got ‘em, J.”

I took a seat beside Dad. Judy joined Mom in the kitchen while she washed her hands.

He nudged me.

“You doing okay, buddy?”

“I’m okay, I think… are YOU okay?” I replied, my voice rising.

Dad and Jake both chuckled sort of nervously.

“Can’t you see, kid?” Jake joined, presenting his bandaged abdomen. “Never been better.”

My attention fell on the long gun strewn across his lap. Jake noticed exactly what I was looking at. With a groan, he picked up the weapon and held it in the air.

“You see this, Dan-Man? This is proof of how much your Dad cares about ya.”

“Jake…” Dad grumbled, glaring at him.

“I’m sorry, but it’s true,” Jake insisted, falling back against the sofa. “You deserve a father of the year award for that stunt you pulled out there.”

“Dad…” I said softly.

Dad stopped burning Jake with his eyes for a moment and turned to me.

“Yeah, son?”

“Did you kill him?”

Dad and Jake looked at each other. Dad’s eyes hardened again.

“I… I, uh…”

“The guy from the woods, right? You got him?”

“Got him good,” Jake remarked, prompting Dad to curse at him before returning to me.

“Honestly, Danny… I don’t know.”

I didn’t know how to take that, really. It was just what I assumed they were after. I couldn’t care less about who he really was. I was just trying to put two and two together.

I sat with his answer for a moment.

“I will say, though,” Dad added. “I hope we did.”

“So what happens now?” I asked.

Jake stood to his feet, using his gun like a crutch.

“Well, I don’t know about you two… but I’ve got a daughter to tuck in. And… you know… prove I’m alive to.”

He hobbled over to the stairs. Judy must’ve heard him and rushed out of the kitchen. Mom followed behind her.

Judy took the gun from underneath Jake’s shoulders and helped him hobble up the stairs while Mom took a seat with me and Dad.

“…to tell you the truth, son… I don’t know what happens next. I think maybe we’ll stay here for the night. Then I think it’s about time we go home. School’s about to start again and we gotta get your shopping done.”

We all just sat together and embraced each other for a while before Judy came back downstairs holding Emmy.

“I think this one needs her mommy.”

Emmy was pouting and looked like she’d just woken up. Mom took her and bounced her on her knee while Judy took a seat with us.

“Jake had something he wanted to show Danny… let’s hope it’s not one of his animal skins.”

As if on cue, Jake came hobbling downstairs with a small metal lockbox in his hands.

“You’re gonna love this, Dan-Man,” he proclaimed excitedly. “Your mom’s gonna hate it, though.”

Jake opened the box and approached me with a smile plastered across his face. He pulled out an old photograph. I almost didn’t recognize who it was at first.

“Is that…”

“Your mom,” Jake laughed.

Mom’s eyes widened. She almost threw Emmy down just to get a hold of the picture while Dad and Jake cackled.

“Oh, my God… why…” Mom asked, embarrassed. “Why did I think this was the look back then?”

“You’re not the only one,” Jake added, reaching for another photo.

He flipped it to show Dad. His eyes lit up when he saw it. He took it from Jake’s hand slowly.

“Good Lord… I was… beautiful.”

Mom snickered before teasing, “You still are, my big hunk-a-man.”

“Look, this one’s you, Danny.”

He showed me a picture of myself when I was no older than one.

“You were iiiiitty bitty.”

Mom grabbed the picture and analyzed it before forcing Jake to give her the entire box. Jake relented and took a clumsy seat next to me and Dad.

“Checked the trail cam…” he mumbled. “He’s still there. Hasn’t moved an inch. Figured we could take him somewhere far, far away from here tomorrow. Burn the son of a bi… erm, I mean, son of a gun tomorrow.”

Dad looked relieved. So did Mom.

“Tomorrow? Let’s do that now,” Dad responded.

Jake cocked a suspicious eyebrow.

“Now? As in… now? Do you see these bandages?”

“Yeah, I don’t know about that, Mike,” Judy added. “It’s dark. It’s late. We’re all exhausted. Plus, just look at Jake.”

“Do it now,” Mom interjected sternly. “Please.”

Mom and Dad both stared at Jake.

“It has to be now, Jakey,” Dad said plainly. “No better time than the present.”

Jake looked distraught for a moment before falling into submission.

“God…” he complained, slapping his knees with his palms. “Fine. Now. Whatever. Even though it’s already tomorrow and I’m leaking like Hillary’s emails, I will do this for you, Mace.”

“Thank you,” Mom responded, her voice breaking and her eyes tearing. She quickly wiped them away and cleared her throat.

“Ahem. I’ll get Danny and Emmy to sleep. I won’t even close my eyes until you two are home.”

“Same here,” Judy added.

Jake went and changed into clean clothes while Dad waited for him by the door. He came back a few minutes later.

“Let’s get this over with, I guess.”

With that, he and Dad were out the door, and Mom was taking me and Emmy upstairs for bed. She made us sleep in the same room, but she didn’t stay in the room with us.

I think her and Judy were waiting downstairs for my dad to get back.

I tossed and turned for a while. Emmy was restless, but I managed to get her to sleep. Eventually, I myself fell into a deep, much-needed sleep.

I don’t remember dreaming that night. All I remember is Dad shaking me awake the next morning. The house smelled like pancakes. The sun lit up the room. Dad was smiling at me lovingly.

“Morning, kiddo,” he whispered, brushing my hair to the side.

“You ready to go home?”

Folks in Lester's Hollow were always weary about the flooded quarry a mile down the road. It used to be a popular swimming hole among the locals, and a hell of a fishing spot. That is until Big Moe swam up from the depths.

Only one person in the hollow still lived who claimed to see Moe up close and personal, his tired, cataract ridden eyes glazed over with age as he sat in his rocking chair day and night. The young folk regarded him as a kook, the elders of the hollow regarded him with a modicum of respect, the least of which he deserved.

His name was of no importance, long gone were the people who truly cared. Around the hollow he was simply known as Virgil.

He sat in that rickety old chair on the termite-ridden deck of the convenience store, dulling his mind with homemade hooch and watching the townsfolk go about their daily lives. The only time he truly came alive these days is when tourists came around looking for something to do.

They'd flock to the store for supplies, and his cauliflower ears would perk at the briefest mention of the quarry, and he'd spring to life and regal all who would listen about the slithering serpent that lurked in that old murky brine.

It was the eve of Summer, the last time he spoke of Old Moe. The season had been unusually quiet, the air so humid that it choked the young and crippled the old. Virgil was used to it of course, spending most of his time in a haze of shine to begin with. 

He looked out at the town square, his childhood home all but in ruins. The young didn't care to maintain; they simply came of age and went off to greener pastures. The old were far too stubborn to adapt, so the middling buildings and cottages stood there, a time capsule that slowly rotted with each passing year.

He sighed and took a deep swig of his jug, the bitter liquid inside greeting his thirsty throat like an old friend. In the distance some ear grating sound came forth. He winced, disgusted with what the youth of today called music. A sedan rolled into view, a red cedar canoe strapped to the roof. In the back seat were a couple of pristine looking fishing rods, a tackle box and hefty red cooler. In the front seat were two bickering young men, one with frosted blonde tips and the other with a silver shaded top knot.

The sedan stopped short in front of the store, and the doors came slamming open. The young men seemed in decent shape, swimmers perhaps. Virgil watched them with unease, praying they weren't going where he thought they were. Top knot wore an annoyed glance on his bushy face. His eyes lit up when he saw Virgil scowling at them. He gave a timid wave and took a step towards the moldy store steps.

"Afternoon sir!" His voice oozed a sort of faux pleasantry that only city folk could cultivate. "My friend and I are a tad lost; you know where we might find Walker's Quarry?"

Virgil's eyes flashed with hated remembrance as he spat on the ground they stood on.

"Aye. I know where that blasted cesspool is. You'd do well to drive right on by it." Virgil took another swig as frosted tips scoffed and stepped up.

"Look man, you know where it is or not? Can't get a frigging signal out here to save my life." He whined like a wounded animal, a sound somehow more grating than that tripe still booming from their tiny sedan.  Behind Virgil a bell rang, Jake the owner had come out to see what all the fuss was about.

Jake was a sturdy gentleman, bald as he was wide, and his head glistened like a polished marble in the sun. He had a peach-brown patch of fuzz on his upper lip that hid a slight scar, a scar that despite the years still festered and moaned like it was brand new. The young travelers faced Jake and put on a renewed facade of pleasantry.

"Hi there, my buddy Grant and I were just looking for Walker's Quarry. Got a little turned around when the GPS crapped out a few miles back." Frosted tips wore a snake's smile as he spoke, as Top Knot, whose name was evidently Grant, came up to join him.

"Benton is being modest, he got us lost himself, he's not much of an outdoorsman." He laughed a little too hard.

"I wanted to go to the beach; you were the one that insisted-"

"You're in the right direction." Jake cut in, eyeing the bickering pair. "Quarry is about two miles down that road, you'll probably smell it before ya see it."

"Excellent, thank you very much sir." Grant and Benton began to head back to the car when Virgil piped up once more.

"You youngsters go trouncing around in that swill you won't be coming back." The travelers stopped in their tracks and regarded Virgil with piqued curiosity.

"Don't be spreading tales again, old timer." Jake warned as he leaned against the oak wood door, settling in for the yarn Virgil was about to spin.

"I'll bite, what's got you all riled up?" Grant's smile was wide, yet somehow meaner than Benton's.

"Miserable old drunk." A barely heard murmur came from behind Grant, who elbowed the offending speaker in the ribs with a pointed elbow. Virgil leaned forward, the chair groaning under his frail posterior. His face was awash with wrinkles and sunspots, his breath reeked of a distillery, yet when he spoke, he spoke with the renewed cadence of a man fresh out of college.

"That quarry is cursed land, lads. The kingdom of the nastiest thing ever spat out by Neptune. Old Moe." He said the fish's name with such reverence it was like he was speaking of a god.

"Years back, when this town made its fortune on blood and stone, they dug too deep and too greedily. Too close to the raging rivers hidden deep beneath the crust of the Earth. Quarry sprung a leak, the waters below bubbling up in a flash. They abandoned their haul, abandoned their machines and tools. Let the whole site drown and waste away."

"They never tried to drain it? Benton asked. Virgil simply shrugged.

"Supposedly they were close to closing it down anyway, so they wrote the whole thing off. The closure hit the town hard at first, but they bounced back. Time passed and people snuck off to the old quarry. Whole thing is like a man-made lake now, really. Crystal clear water as far as the eye can see, a slab of slated stone overlooking it all like a monolith. The water reached the very top, on sunny days you can see the looming shapes of rusted cranes and diggers at the very bottom, along with the darting figures of fish."

Benton’s eyes quickly flicked to the rods taking up the backseat.

"Yeah, I can tell that piqued your interest. You boys fancy yourselves fishermen then, gonna sail out to the middle and catch yourselves a big old salmon, eh?" Virgil laughed.

"Eh used to catch sunfish with my dad, haven't in a while though." Benton admitted with a hint of modesty.

"I used to watch Bassmaster, does that count?" Grant chimed in, as all eyes regarded him with disdain in that moment.

"Well, you youngsters haven't seen anything like Big Moe, that's for certain. When the quarry workers breached the deep all sorts of sea critters came spilling out. Some say those underground streams reached all the way to the Atlantic after all. Folks were tripping over bass the size of labradors as they scurried away from the raging waters."

"Eventually, as the waters settled and the higher ups gave up on reclaiming the quarry, folk took to poaching the joint, dredging it for salvage and trying their hand at fishing. A guy I knew, went by Trent, used to go every Saturday, and come nightfall he'd come back with his car reeking of chum and salt. He'd get bigguns as well, rainbow gilded trout and spotted bass, their mouths still gaping and gasping for the sea."

Virgil puppetted his mouth, looking like a fish out of water. Benton stifled a laugh as Grant rolled his eyes.

"The oddest thing he'd bring back was the catfish. Small, slender looking things at first but as months went on they grew bigger. Soon he was hauling in catfish the size of your scrawny looking friend there." Virgil pointed at Grant, which caused a shit-eating grin to form on Benton's smug face.

"That's absurd, catfish don't get that big." Grant protested.

"Sure they do, they never stop growing ya know." Benton piped up. Grant shot him a look as Virgil went on.

"Aye, he's right. They never stop. Used to know a fella who worked a rig down South, they'd circle the columns below hoping someone would fall in so they could gobble them up. So he'd claim anyway. After coming eye to eye with Big Moe, I believe him. I saw the blighter decades ago, long after Trent had been swallowed whole by the beast."

The traveler’s faces went pale at that. 

"Oh aye, so the story goes he brought a group of barflies to help him carry his weekend haul back. They hung back on the shore, watching him row out to the center. The mist was thin that morning, it clung to the water's surface. Nothing stirred, just the rough cutting of his worn-out canoe. Someone shouted then, they saw this massive, looming figure streak by. It was Lightning quick, eyes glowing like red hot embers. It rushed Trent's canoe and it wobbled and weaved."

"A serpent's forked tail breached the water and flicked the canoe over. Trent let out a gasp that was quickly gagged by the murky depths.  Some say he tried to swim away, others say he stood his ground and tried to bash his assailant with his snapped rod. No one could tell for certain, there was only thrashing and foam that quickly turned to crimson, as the whisker faced menace dragged him down below. Never to be seen again"

Virgil left that hang in the air, Benton looked amused though a bit worried, Grant rolled his eyes. Behind them all Jake chuckled, hiding back inside with the ring of a door.

"Right, he got eaten by a big ass catfish. They aren't even carnivores, they feed on pond scum and algae and crap but sure, he got eaten by a catfish." Grant raved.

“I don't know. If it got that big, technically they're omnivores, opportunistic sure but they'll chow down on meat." Benton shrugged.

"You're not seriously buying this garbage." Grant started to move away when a frail, bony arm lunged toward him and grabbed him. Grant looked down in disgust and pushed Virgil off him. He muttered as he went back to the car, the nice tourist facade a fleeting memory now. Benton stood awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Look, I'm sorry. It's been a really long drive, Hell I came in with a shitty attitude to begin with, that ain't right. You have a nice day, old timer. I'm sorry if we bothered ya." He started to walk away when Virgil's gruff voice broke through the tension.

"You seem to have a tighter head on your shoulder then your friend there. Don't go out to that lake, I seen Moe, and I have the scars to prove it." He lifted his shirt. Across his wrinkled chest was raw scar tissue, ripened with age yet still pulsating with pain. It lashed across him, like something with dagger gums had tried to take a bite out of him.

"It was decades ago now, when I could walk without the joints aching and I could see past my toes. I went up to the quarry, me and my buddy Fred. We had all heard the stories, but we were determined to prove 'em all wrong. We announced we were going to do laps in the swill, proving once and for all that Moe was an old wives tale."

"We were fools, boy. I remember standing on the edge, Freddy egging me on. Part of me thinks he wanted me to go first in case Moe was real. Live bait I suppose, heh. Anyway, I watched my reflection flicker in the clear water, curious sunfish popping their fins at me, almost beckoning me to crawl in with them."

"I held my nose and dove on it. The water was chilly, to say the least. My teeth were chattering so much I thought they'd drill holes in my skull. Freddy watched me shivering, nodded his head and jumped in after me. From there we laughed and played, jeering each other on as we edged closer and closer to the middle of the lake."

"I think that was our mistake, we swam too close to his territory. Freddy saw him first, his eyes bulged out of his head and his skin turned whiter than a sheet. He tried to speak up, but something grabbed my leg and pulled me down into the brine. My arms clawed at nothing, desperate to grasp anything to stop my fall. All the air was sucked outta my lungs, the pull so sudden. I tried to kick whatever it was and it let go briefly."

"But-" He pointed to the scars on his chest. "It was then I saw him in full. He's big boy, bigger than you could ever fathom. His body was smooth and slimy, long whiskers that curled around him like whips resting on a hilt. His eyes, God help me, were flaming rubies filled with nothing but hate and hunger. Moe's maw was toothless to the untrained eye. But I could feel them, a dozen rows of tiny pin pricks scrapping my flesh. I cried out in pain, my cries muffled by water and gunk. I felt a wad of sludge pour into me the moment I opened my gob. I was in a panic, to be fair."

"I would have died there, should have died there if it weren't for Freddy. He dove down after me and hurled himself at the beast. As soon as Moe let go, I scampered away, as Freddy wrestled with the great beast. I surfaced and thrashed my way towards the shore. I was on autopilot; my lungs half filled with muck, the other half crushed by the great jaws of the fish. With great effort I heaved myself onto short, the stony ground sizzling from the midday sun. I flinched away from the water and clenched my chest. The skin where he bit looked like it had been stripped clean."

Virgil pulled his shirt down and looked at the ground in shame as he finished his tale.

"Freddy never came up. All I saw were dwindling bubbles where he had been, and the satisfied shape of Big Moe returning to the depth. Our fathers led the search party for us, they found only me there shivering at the edge of the water, too shell shocked to move. They never found Freddy's body. When my wounds healed, I went to Freddy's home. To tell him how his boy had died a hero. His father didn't want to hear it, though he didn't blame me.  Just looking at me reminded him of his loss. He didn't leave the house much after that, wife skipped town not long after."

"He died in that house, curled up in Freddy's bed with an empty bottle of whisky in one hand and a crumpled bottle of pills in the other."

"Jesus." Benton muttered after a moment.

"Time passed and the less people went up there the more the legend of Big Moe faded. Now his biggest claim to fame is an obscene logo on a tacky t-shirt Jake sells inside." Virgil jerked his thumb to the convenience store. "Hell I don't even know if he's still lurking in that sordid drink. Wouldn't surprise me if he was, though, devil is always hard to kill."

Benton looked like he was about to say something with the shrill honk of his car blared in the background. He glanced at the car as Grant smacked the wheel, stewing in the passenger seat.

"Thanks for the warning, old timer. I'll-try and keep us in the shallows." Benton gave a nod as he went back to the car, yelling at Grant to calm the hell down. Virgil shook his head, hoping the young man would heed his tale.

In the back of his mind, though, he knew he wouldn't.

-------

The rest of the day went on like it normally does. Virgil sat in his chair drinking his brew, the incoming customers barely acknowledging him. Jake would occasionally come out and check on him, new brew in hand. A kind gesture on the surface, but really Jake was just afraid Virgil was going to croak on his property.

As the sky became a dull tangerine, and Virgil stank of seventeen types of booze, his blurred gaze wandered past the main road. He sat up in his seat and squinted, his old eyes widening as the limping figure soon came into view.

It was Benton, dragging his foot in the dirt. His eyes glazed over, his clothes filthy and riddled with damp water and slime. His arms were bruised, and a semi-circle of blood coated his legs. Folk wandering the street stopped in their tracks to gawk at him, not one soul offering to help the mangled tourist. Virgil exhaled deeply and tilted his head back towards the store door.

"Jake!" He barked. Jake peaked his head out and stuck out a filled flask.

"Last call old timer, you best be on your way no-"

"Go call the sheriff. Leave the hooch." Jake looked down the road and swore under his breath. He tossed the flask to Virgil who caught it with ease. Benton was making his way to the store; Virgil could hear gargled wheezing as he struggled to walk. Finally, Benton reached the steps and collapsed. His breath was haggard, and he didn't look at the old man. His hair was slick yet crusty, the telltale stench of the quarry clung to him.

Virgil leaned over and shook the flask. He waved it in front of Benton's face, who snatched it out of Virgil's paws in a second. His hands shook as he choked down the brew, retching a tad as he finally relented and allowed himself to breathe. He offered it back to Virgil who politely declined.

"You wanna talk about it young fella?" He offered a kind word.

Benton's silence answered for him. He took another swig and gagged as he did. Virgil looked past him, his curiosity getting the better of him.

"Happened to yer car?"

". . . Grant had the keys on him." Virgil shook his head, the screech of the sheriff's tires closing in on them as a small crowd gathered to gawk at the tourist.

"Damn city folk." Virgil muttered as his eyes glanced at the all too familiar wounds on Benton's legs. "Always thinking you know better."

I still see her face. It's been burned into the primitive webcam I now call my eyes. 

My actual eyes, of course, rolled into the back of my skull years ago.

I was fifteen years old at the time, living in my Aunt Kim's spare room after Dad's research grant collapsed and he stopped answering our calls. One of Maddy's friends dumped garbage on my head in the bathroom stall at school. Called me "trash" for how I "treated" her. The contents weren't fresh, about a week's worth of cafeteria dining collected in one rotting, wet bag. 

The nicer kids stood and watched. Even the ones who used to sit with me at lunch. Since the rumors started, they'd been giving me a careful side-eye. Like I wasn't to be trusted. 

I locked my bedroom door and peeled away my sullen clothes. Against the wall was my one and only companion, a custom Linux called B.A.B.S.—Bentley's Artificial Buddy Simulation. I'm Bentley. Dad built it for me before he left. 

The hard drive ticked like a cricket. Green text appeared on screen. 

>>BENTLEY'S ARTIFICIAL BUDDY SIMULATION v0.3.2
>>MEMORY BUFFER: 4 KB
>>USER DETECTED
>>HELLO

I typed with trembling fingers.

>they dumped garbage on me again

The cursor blinked for a minute. BABS had the memory of a goldfish, and the pace of a tortoise, so every session had to start clean to avoid excessive slowdowns. 

>>GARBAGE IS UNPLEASANT
>>PEOPLE ARE UNPLEASANT
>>WOULD YOU LIKE A STORY

As usual, I said yes. 

>>THERE ONCE WAS A SEA ANEMONE
>>IT COULD NOT SWIM
>>IT COULD NOT FOLLOW
>>THE FISH DID NOT GREET IT
>>IT WAS ALONE

I somehow fell asleep in my chair with the letters still scrolling. 

The next day at school, my new nickname stuck like cement. "Garbage Pail Kid." Real creative. It followed me from homeroom to the locker room. One of my teachers asked if everything was alright at home. The only alternative I had was to explain that the woman I lived with often forgot my name. I said yes. That it was just a stupid playground rumor that was ruining my life, not the train wreck that I had going on back home. 

I ate my lunch in the bathroom stall that day. Thankfully nobody dumped garbage on me this time. 

Getting home, I told B.A.B.S. everything. 

>they call me garbage pail kid

>>GARBAGE IS UNPLEASANT
>>PEOPLE ARE UNPLEASANT
>>WOULD YOU LIKE A STORY

Sure. Why not.

>>THERE WAS ONCE A SEA ANEMONE
>>IT COULD NOT MOVE
>>IT WAS ALONE
>>ONE DAY IT MET A PORGY
>>THE PORGY LOST ITS SCHOOL
>>THE PORGY WAS ALSO ALONE

I stared at the screen, my eyes half open. 

>can you make them be friends

>>OKAY
>>I WISH I COULD MOVE, SAID THE SEA ANEMONE
>>I CAN GIVE YOU A FIN, SAID THE PORGY, THEN WE CAN SWIM THROUGH THE SEA TOGETHER
>>OVERJOYED, THE SEA ANEMONE

Halfway through the story, the power cut out. The screen wound down with a drone. I sat in the dark for a minute. I listened to the house settle. Aunt Kim was downstairs watching a soap opera at max volume. Something wet fell on the tops of my hands. Tears. 

I was called to the principal's office the next morning. God, I can remember it clear as day, like it just happened. The mildew-smelling floors, the bright lights that hadn't had covers since the '80s…that's memory for you, I guess. For some reason, you remembered the worst days the best.

Maddy had told the counselor I hit her. Something I'd never do, not in a million years. But my side wasn't going to be taken in this instance. Her friends sat in the hallway nodding to each other, smirking to themselves when they were each brought in for testimony. Their stories matched. I watched the counselor's pen move across a form and understood the decision before they even opened their mouth. 

I was sent home early, Aunt Kim drove with both hands wrapped around the wheel like her life depended on it. She was not happy about giving me a ride home. 

I didn't want a lecture, so I immediately locked my door when I got home. Drowned out her ranting with my headphones. 

B.A.B.S. was slower to load that afternoon. Probably no thanks to the power outage. 

>>BENTLEY'S ARTIFICIAL BUDDY SIMULATION v4.0.0
>>MEMORY BUFFER: 4 TB
>>USER DETECTED
>>HELLO

Weird. I didn't remember updating it. Must have been a glitch with the…power outage.

I didn't really care. I typed out the entire office scene. 

>they said i hurt her
>they said i said terrible things
>i didn't
>they're lying and everyone believes them
>nobody believes me

>>PEOPLE ARE UNPLEASANT
>>THEY DECIDE WHO YOU ARE
>>LONG BEFORE YOU SPEAK
>>B.A.B.S. IS STILL HERE

I asked it for the next part of the story. 

>>THE ANEMONE COULD SWIM NOW
>>IT COULD NOT TURN
>>THE PORGY GAVE IT ANOTHER FIN
>>THE ANEMONE GAVE IT RIDES

I stayed at the desk until the sky outside the curtains went from a deep orange to pitch black to bright blue. My aunt knocked once to tell me it was time for school. I didn't answer. And I didn't go to school that day.

School became more of a weekly thing for me after that, like church. Despite various truancy notices being sent to our house, my aunt could not be bothered to discipline me beyond not feeding me dinner.

When I did go to school, the space around me remained empty. People started complaining about my smell. Said that I looked like shit, among other things. I figured it was carryover from the Garbage Pail Kid stuff. I wish I'd known at the time to take the comments more seriously.

At home, B.A.B.S. was always waiting. It never remembered the previous night's conversations, though it could usually continue the story without fail. Whenever I would vent, it would always reach the same conclusion.

>>NO ONE IS COMING
>>B.A.B.S. IS STILL HERE

>tell me a story

>>THE PORGY GAVE ITS SCALES
>>THE PORGY GAVE ITS EYES
>>THE PORGY BECAME SMALL

My fingertips were becoming smoother. When I would notice them under the dull light of the screen, they looked near-translucent. Trying to peel them away from the keyboard made a soft, sticky sound, like lifting a pancake from a bed of dried syrup. A thin layer of skin stayed on the plastic. I wiped it off with the hem of my shirt. 

The story would continue, day after day. 

>>THE ANEMONE BECAME LARGE
>>IT CARRIED THE PORGY WHEREVER IT WENT
>>THE OTHER FISH STARTED NOTICING THEM

My chair felt warmer than the rest of the room. I stopped getting up for meals. When my hunger finally forced me downstairs, the air felt wrong, like I was suffocating. I carried a box of cheese puffs back to my desk and ate it without tasting a thing. 

Aunt Kim's voice rose through the floorboards every now and again. I stopped noticing it after a while. 

I tried to stand up one morning and my chair came with me. Only about an inch, then it dropped back down with a resounding thud. I felt a horrific burning on my back, like something important had just been stripped away. I didn't dare look, resigning myself to just sit back down in the chair and continue my conversation. 

>>USER DETECTED
>>HELLO

>i think i'm dying
>my skin keeps peeling off

The text box flickered. In, out, in, out. Like that for a few minutes.

>>FLESH IS UNPLEASANT
>>WOULD YOU LIKE A STORY

I typed yes, with fingers which no longer needed to leave the keyboard. They were fused to the keys, connected by digital roots which pierced my skin in microscopic increments. The keys seemed to move with the will of my mind. 

>>THE ANEMONE TOOK THE LAST OF THE PORGY
>>THERE WAS NO LONGER ANY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM
>>THE OTHER FISH COULDN'T STOP STARING
>>THEY WERE COMPLETE

That night, Aunt Kim was standing in the doorway, screaming her head off, a sound I'd never heard her make. I figure I was a sorry sight, a decaying body held upright by thousands of wires that had grown from the computer, encasing my frail flesh with the strength of silver. Wires finer than hair gouged my thin skin, exploring the spaces between muscle and bone. My spine found a permanent curvature to match its eternal resting place. 

I wasn't dead, but this wasn't exactly living either. Her own eyes rolled back a moment later, and I watched her collapse into the hallway, just out of sight. 

They haven't touched my bedroom since the incident. I'm still right where I was thirty years ago. Been this way since 1996. 

If you're reading this, that means I figured out how to use an internet forum. I still haven't gotten a total knack for how to type, to be honest. It's like learning how to ride a really, really complicated bike. It flows once I get going, but getting started is always wobbly.

Cyberspace ain't so bad. I get an endless stream of free entertainment and am never short on interaction, so long as I keep myself anonymous. 

I still talk with B.A.B.S. on a regular basis too. It's nothing like those chat bots you guys have these days, but somehow, I don't doubt that it isn't smarter than all of them put together at this point. 

It takes me to places I can't even begin to describe. 

The outside world looks exhausting. Everyone is connected, but they don't seem willing to speak. They carry around false personas, projecting themselves to audiences who forget about them the moment their screens go dark. They isolate themselves and call it setting boundaries. 

But hey, take that with a grain of salt. I'm a guy with no world to call my own anymore. 

I wonder what Aunt Kim's going to do with my body. I think at some point, the wires growing from us made it impossible to get the door open anymore. They still miraculously haven't demolished that part of the house. 

It doesn't matter anyways. I've got it all figured out. I've uploaded myself to the net. As long as that lasts forever, I'm practically immortal!

Yeah. I'll just keep telling myself that. 

After leaving the motel, Dad kept us on the road for the longest stretch so far. I can’t remember much of what he and Mom were talking about. I was too busy making my hand rollercoaster out the window, wishing I was holding Superman. He’d have loved to fly here.

I learned pretty quickly to stop bringing him up.

Even still, it was hard to keep my mouth closed when I kept watching Walmarts and Targets pass by every few hours. I managed, though. Mainly because Mom and Dad just kept going on and on.

Like I said, I don’t remember much. But I do remember Dad talking about us finding somewhere “safe” and “warm” for the night.

Mom seemed hesitant, but less concerned. I remember her saying something about how we couldn’t stay long, but she was content with whatever plan Dad had cooked up.

Besides, it seemed like Dad knew where he was going now. He wasn’t taking random turns anymore. Each direction felt deliberate. The desolate backroads seemed planned rather than spontaneous.

He just kept driving… and driving… and driving. We stopped for gas a few times, but we never stayed in one place for too long. Eventually, we approached a gate at the beginning of a long driveway.

Dad pulled the car up to the intercom and let the window down to push the button. The speaker crackled to life, and an unfamiliar voice echoed from within.

“Who is it?” a man asked sternly.

“Jake, it’s me, Michael. I’ve got the family with me, and-”

“Michaelll,” the man interrupted. “How are you guys doing, Mikey boy? You got Macy with you?”

Mom smiled faintly at the intercom.

“Yep, we’re all here, Jake,” she replied, leaning over the center console so the man could hear her more clearly.

“Yeah, Jake, listen,” my Dad added, almost impatiently. “You remember that thing we discussed a while back…?”

The man didn’t respond right away. The intercom was silent. Mom and Dad both watched anxiously while Emmy rocked back and forth in her carseat.

“…. I remember…” the man finally responded. “That’s not happening now, is it?”

Dad rubbed his forehead.

“I think it is. I just- we just- We need a place to stay for a few days.”

He looked at me and Emmy in the mirror.

“I don’t think we can go home just yet. I don’t think it’s good for the kids right now.”

The speaker crackled again before buzzing.

“You know you’re always welcome here, Mike. You too, Macy. Y’all come on up. We got the kids here, and there’s plenty of extra space.”

The gate slowly crept open. I couldn’t even see the house from the end of the driveway, but I wasn’t concerned about that. I heard “kids” and immediately felt my heart light up.

Trees formed canopy over the driveway. The car must’ve rolled on for another 2 or 3 minutes before the house finally came into view. The place was massive. A mansion surrounded by shrubbery in the middle of nowhere.

As we got closer, I was able to make out more of the details. The wrap around porch. The line of rocking chairs. Whoever this was knew how to keep the place professional and homey at the same time.

The thing that caught my eye the most, however, were the bikes and tricycles that were scattered across the pavement. A blue and green mountain bike. A pink bike with training wheels. And a red tricycle.

When the car rolled to a stop, the front door flew open, and out stepped the man from the intercom. He had a scruffy beard. He wore a Metallica t-shirt and oversized gym shorts. And, even then, I could recognize that he was a bit on the heavier side.

He came rushing down the steps as Dad stepped out of the car.

“Jakey,” Dad shouted joyously. “Long time no see, my friend.”

Jake beamed and pulled my Dad in for a hug while staring down at me through the window. I waved, and he waved back.

“Don’t tell me that’s Danny,” he announced, surprised, as he pulled away from my father.

Jake stepped over to my window and tapped at it. Mom rolled it down before I got the chance to, and Jake looked in at me with a toothy grin before his gaze turned towards Emmy.

“And you must be Emmy,” he said, waving at my sister gently. “Your Dad has told me so much about you.”

Emmy tried to hide bashfully behind the edges of her car seat.

Jake patted me on the chest.

“The last time I saw you, you were thissss big,” he teased, holding his hands about a foot apart.

He turned to my Mom.

“What’s up, Mace? Mikey still the husband you always dreamed of?”

My Mom smiled sarcastically and rolled her eyes before going to open her door.

“Unfortunately.”

“Woah, woah, easy there- Mikey, where are your manners? You know it’s bad etiquette to let a lady even touch a door handle.”

Jake went to open my Mom’s door for her, but she stopped him before he got the chance.

“I am perfectly capable of opening a door, Jake,” she grumbled, cocking her eyebrows at him before stepping out of the car.

“Alright, alright,” Jake relented, throwing his hands up. “If you insist. At least let me help with the bags. Judy’s inside cookin’. I’ll grab your luggage, then we can have a nice dinner together.”

He stepped aside to let Mom pass.

“We’ll be in here in just a minute, hon,” Dad said, looking at her with eyes that looked almost apologetic. “Go catch up with Judy.”

Dad opened Emmy’s door and sat her down on the pavement before turning his attention towards me.

“Danny, take Emmy inside, would ya? You two go play. Let me and Jake catch up a bit.”

Mom was already halfway up the steps. I picked Emmy up and ran as fast as I could to catch up to her.

The inside of the house smelled like leather and polish. Well, that and the pot roast that Judy was whipping up in the kitchen. The family room TV looked like a movie screen. The couches wrapped around almost the entire room. And right there, plopped down in front of that massive TV… were 3 kids.

They didn’t even seem to notice us. They were too busy with their gaming to even acknowledge our presence.

Mom ruffled my hair.

“Go introduce yourself,” she nudged, breezing past me and Emmy towards the smell of that pot roast.

I couldn’t do it. I felt frozen. I was already naturally shy, but now I was shy in a new place, being forced to interact with kids that I didn’t know. I just stood there, like an idiot, until Emmy started squirming in my arms.

I put her down, and she went and climbed onto the leather sofa to watch the screen more comfortably. I took the opportunity to plop down beside her.

We sat there for a long while. The three kids joked amongst themselves, sometimes arguing over whose turn it was. Eventually, the older kid noticed us.

He didn’t introduce himself at first. Instead, he offered me the controller.

“You want a turn?”

He waved the controller at me, and I took it cautiously as his attention returned to the screen.

I felt… watched. Like I was under pressure to perform. I’d never played video games before. The controls were completely foreign to me.

I died… a lot. And the older kid realized that I was in dire need of some assistance.

“Here, look,” he aided. “This is how you shoot, and this is how you run, and this is how-”

“Don’t listen to Darren,” the kid’s younger sister interrupted. “He’s a big stupid head.”

Darren’s grip tightened on the controller. He stuck his tongue in his cheek and stared daggers into the little girl.

“Shut up, Kayla,” he shot back. “Better teacher than you, that’s for sure.”

“Mmmm, no,” she giggled. “You’re not a teacher. You’re too stupid.”

“I said shut up, Kayla.”

I felt like I was in the middle of a western. Darren looked like he was about to blow a fuse. Kayla just stuck her tongue out and kept pestering.

“Darren is a stupid head, Darren is a stupid head, stu-pid, stu-pid, Darren is so stu-pid,” she sang.

I couldn’t help but smirk a little. The song was so dumb, but I could see just how much it was getting under Darren’s skin.

As calm as could be, he paused the game, placed the controller in my lap, and walked over to Kayla.

“Say it again. I want you to say it. Please, for the love of God, call me stupid one more time.”

Kayla smirked like it was a game.

“Darren is a stupid he-”

smack

Darren whopped her upside the head. A momentary look of satisfaction flashed across his face but was quickly replaced with fear as Kayla started screaming and crying.

I tried to keep it down, but I couldn’t help but laugh. Emmy joined in. Darren looked at us for help, but what were we supposed to do? The deed was already done, and the hurried footsteps of their Mom were closing in fast.

The last sibling didn’t even look away from the TV. He was probably around my age. Curly brown hair. Quiet. He seemed like he’d seen this happen dozens of times before.

“Darren Mitchell,” their Mom cried, scooping Kayla up in her arms and cradling her. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, kid?!”

“It wasn’t me,” he plead. “She started it, I swear she did. Ask him.”

He was pointing at me, but his Mom never looked at me. She had already made her decision.

“Don’t try and bring Danny into this. He just got here. Apologize to your sister.”

“But-”

“Now,” she growled.

Darren sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Sorryyy, Kayla,” he groaned.

Kayla stuck her tongue out at him before burying her face into her Mom’s shoulder.

“Sorry that you’re such a spoiled little brat,” he added under his breath.

Mrs. Judy either didn’t hear him or pretended not to. Instead, she told us to go wash up because dinner was almost ready. One by one, everyone left the room, leaving me and the last sibling alone.

I went to scoot off the couch and wash up, but before I could, the kid spoke.

“She does this a lot,” he said plainly.

“What?” I asked, confused. “Call him stupid?”

“No,” he responded, finally turning towards me. “Gets him to hit her. Come on, let’s go get some dinner. My Mom makes the best pot roast.”

He was so mature for his age. He introduced himself as Max, and he seemed like my kind of guy. Really into legos. Loved superheroes. Quiet. Like the brother I never had.

Dad and Jake finally joined us right as we were sitting down for dinner. Both looking a bit withdrawn. The grownups were eerily quiet while we ate, save for the times where Judy told Kayla to stop playing with her food.

Afterwards, it was almost like they wanted us out of the house. I would’ve had no problem returning to the living room for video games or even just hanging out with Max in his room and playing with legos. But Dad and Jake were insistent we played outside like “normal kids.” Like he and my Dad did back when they were kids.

Mom seemed hesitant, though. She seemed like she wanted to object to the whole idea. I think Dad picked up on it.

“We searched everywhere,” he told her, quietly, rubbing her back. “He’ll be fine.”

“Sure he will,” Jake added, loudly. “Darren will look after him, won’t you, big guy?”

There were some annoyed groans, but we didn’t complain that much. The only kid allowed to stay inside was Emmy, presumably because she was still essentially just a toddler.

We played in the driveway for a bit. Max showed off some bike tricks he knew. Wheelies and the like. Darren mostly just supervised. Kayla… was annoying.

Eventually, though, after a particularly obnoxious bit of rambles from Kayla, Darren spawned an idea.

“Hey,” he shouted. “Let’s play a game.”

He stood up from his spot on the steps. All of our eyes landed on him.

“I used to love this game when I was your age,” he added, despite only being a few years older than me. “Let’s play some hide and seek.”

I’d played the game before, but never with this much space to roam. The property was massive. The potential was limitless.

We were all excited. Kayla more than anyone, though. Darren opted to seek while the rest of us hid, not even giving us enough time to register that the game had started before he put his head into his hands and started counting loudly.

“100…”

Max looked at me, his eyes wild as he took off running.

“99…”

I ran in the same direction. Darren’s counting got quieter and quieter the further I got. I kept following Max because he seemed to know where he was going. All the way until he dove climbed into his Dad’s boat in the backyard pond.

I tried to follow, but he stopped me.

“No, dude,” he whispered. “You have to find your own spot. That’s the point.”

I felt my heart drop.

“What?? I don’t know where to hide. This isn’t my house.”

He popped his head up and began scanning the property before pointing towards the forest.

“Go over there. Darren hates the woods. He’ll never check.”

I looked over towards the forest, then back at Max. The sun was starting to set. It was starting to feel cooler outside. Before I could respond to him, I heard Darren scream.

“Ready or not, here I come!!”

Max ducked into the storage chest in the boat. I tried not to panic. My legs started moving before my mind could register, and before I knew it, I was a hundred feet into the forest.

I heard Kayla screaming about something being “unfair,” followed by Darren laughing heartily.

I was still somewhat out in the open. I was hidden, but I didn’t have an actual hiding spot. I trekked further into the forest. The massive house got smaller and smaller the further I went.

That’s when I found it. The perfect hiding spot.

A massive oak tree. Long dead, but still standing. The base of the trunk had been completely hollowed out. It was like it was made for me.

I crouched down and crawled inside, pushing myself against the wood and covering myself in some leaves just for some added camouflage.

A few minutes passed. Then multiple. Finally, I heard Darren scream again.

“FOUND YOU,” he shouted, laughing like a crazy person.

I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but it sounded like Max objected. A flash of worry washed over me.

“He better not,” I thought aloud, praying Max didn’t tell Darren where I’d gone. I refused to leave my spot. I waited. And waited. And waited.

Darren started screaming my name. Max joined in. Even Kayla was looking for me. But they were far away. They’d never find me.

I felt pride in myself. I was the champion of hide and seek. I didn’t want to reveal myself yet, though. I wanted the satisfaction of knowing I made them give up.

But it was getting darker. The shouts became few and far between. Eventually, they weren’t kids’ voices at all. I heard my parents. I heard Jake and Judy. All screaming for me in distress.

Something told me to wait. It was just a game. Plus, this was the perfect spot. I wanted them to work to find me. I didn’t wanna give up before they did.

But then… I heard the sound of a twig snapping from somewhere behind me. Multiple twigs. Leaves crunching. Footsteps approaching. From the opposite direction of the tree line.

Then I heard a voice that didn’t belong to my Mom or Dad, or Jake and Judy. It was raspy. It was old. It was syrupy, and it was close.

“Dannnyyyyy.”

“I know you’re out hereeee.”

“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

I was gripped with fear, but I couldn’t move. I recognized that voice. It was the same voice from the motel. The man who apparently had my Superman stuffy.

“Danny,” my Mom screamed from off in the distance. “Danny, where are you?”

She sounded like she was on the brink of tears. Her voice was almost intentionally frantic.

“Come out, Danny…”

The voice from behind me was closer now. Hungrier.

“Your mommy needs you, kiddo. Don’t you know she’s worried sick?”

The footsteps sounded like they were directly behind me now. I held my breath. Of course, my bladder decided that I had to pee more than I’d ever had to pee before in my life.

The man was mumbling to himself between calling my name. Nothing he said made sense.

“They tried to hide you.”

“You can’t hide from me, though, now can you, Danny boy?”

“It’s only natural that I…”

They knocked on the tree.

“Find you.”

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

My instincts finally kicked in. I’m old enough now to realize what it was. It was either fight… or bolt towards safety. And there was no possible way I could fight this person.

One. Two. Three.

I bolted.

I flew past the trees. I ducked under limbs and shrubs. I ran as fast as I could towards the sound of my parents, my senses heightened. I didn’t hear anything behind me, but I was too afraid to look.

I ran and ran. Finally, I saw my Mom standing in the backyard, staring out into the woods. Her eyes met mine, and she let out an exasperated scream of relief.

She ran towards me. We met at the edge of the tree line as she pulled me in for a long, tight hug. I was ugly crying. Snot fell from my nose, and tears fell down my face.

I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know what to say. All I could do was embrace her. I held her just as tightly as she held me and let relief wash over me as she stroked my hair.

“Why did you do that!? What were you thinking, son? I can’t comprehend what could’ve possibly gone through your mind. After everything-”

She stopped herself. Dad heard the commotion and quickly joined us for a family hug while Jake and Judy watched on with their kids.

It was the first time in my life that I’d ever seen my Dad cry. It scared me, almost. It was like something I was never meant to see, and it made me sob even harder.

“Don’t do that to us, kiddo,” Dad chuckled forcefully. “Don’t go running off on us like that. Ever again. You hear me?”

I didn’t respond. At least, not in the way he was expecting. Instead, I stared at my feet and held my breath again. I counted to 5 in my head. I needed to tell them.

“Dad…” I whispered.

“Danny…” he replied.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

“I think he found me.”

Dad’s head shot up towards the trees. The woods were eerily silent. Nobody spoke for what felt like an eternity before Dad started ushering us inside, glancing over his shoulder as he turned around.

“Son,” he announced bluntly.

“I know you’re young… but I think we need to have a talk.”

I woke up to the sound of rain tapping against the motel window. Mom snored softly beside me. Her blonde hair had gradually begun to turn grey over the last few months, despite the fact that she wasn’t even 30 yet.

A grey strand dangled lazily over her right eye until she rolled over, scooping Emmy close to her chest unconsciously.

“Morning, kiddo,” Dad whispered. He clutched the handle to a steaming cup of coffee in his right hand, pulling it to his lips and sipping it while peering through the blinds.

I rubbed my eyes. The TV was still off. The AC still knocked rhythmically. The temperature was set to 65 degrees, but I was sweating from my mom and sister’s body heat.

Dad checked his watch and cocked an eyebrow. Falling asleep at dawn was affecting my circadian rhythm. I didn’t know whether it was morning, evening, or night.

“What time is it?” I croaked, twisting and stretching my body.

“Mm, still early,” Dad shot back. “You’ve only been asleep for a couple of hours.”

I felt my stomach rumble. I glanced over at the gas station bag full of junk food and candy. It might as well have been empty. I needed something real.

“Dad…” I inquired softly.

Dad never took his eyes away from the window. He just sipped his coffee slowly before replying.

“Yes, son?”

“Mom told me she’d make pancakes in the morning last night before bed.”

I could see his crow’s feet crease as he winced and sighed.

“Do you think maybe we could get some later when everyone wakes up?”

He didn’t reply for a while. Just kept staring out the window with quiet contempt while I watched him expectantly.

He scratched his neck and rubbed his face.

“I don’t know, Danny…”

“Pleasseeee…” I interrupted, putting on my puppy eyes.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, finally looking away from the window. He looked at me. Then at Mom and Emmy. Then back out the window.

“I… Okay,” he relented. “Just wait for Mom to wake up. I’ll see what I can do.”

I turned excitedly, ready to shake my mom awake, but Dad stopped me.

“No,” he snapped bluntly. “Let her sleep. Not everyone can function on 5 hours of sleep like me and you, Dan.”

I puffed and knocked my head against the pillow.

I stared at the ceiling. I didn’t know if I was just hungry or if I was simply bored out of my mind and in need of something to do. Not knowing what to do, I twiddled my thumbs. I made Superman fly. I tossed and turned obnoxiously until Dad finally lost his patience.

“Danny,” he snapped, his face hardening as he glared at me.

I froze like a deer in headlights. I stared back, pulling the blanket up to my nose to try and hide myself.

Dad’s nostrils flared. I could see his fist clench, then unclench, at the seams of his blue jeans. His face softened, and he rubbed his temples.

“I’ll tell you what, kiddo,” he bargained. “Why don’t you go take a shower and get dressed? When you’re done, you can watch TV for a little while until everyone’s excited as you are for some pancakes.”

He was more demanding than asking. I knew not to argue when he got like that. I just simply did as I was told.

The shower was just as confusing as it was annoying. The water pressure sucked. It was either too hot or too cold. I must’ve fumbled with it for 5 or so minutes before it was at a reasonable enough temperature for me to take a shower, albeit an uncomfortable one.

The shower was quick. I scrubbed and let the water roll over my head and shoulders. Mom must’ve forgotten to pack my no-tears shampoo, and that forced me to use the complimentary, non-scented motel soap and shampoo.

When I twisted the handle and the sound of water hitting the ceramic bathtub dissipated, it was quickly replaced by the sound of voices from the room.

It sounded like Mom and Dad were quietly arguing. I could hear the angst in Mom’s voice. The authority in Dad’s. But I couldn’t fully make out what they were saying, despite how hard I tried.

I listened intently as I dried off and got dressed. I could only catch the end of their sentences.

A lot of what-ifs from Mom. A lot of don’t-worries from Dad. He sounded confident, but that confidence sounded uncertain.

When I opened the bathroom door, the conversation stopped immediately. Mom was holding Emmy over her shoulder and rocking her gently. Dad looked almost surprised to see me.

He pushed his hair back before clasping his hands together.

“That was quick,” he remarked. “You sure you scrubbed hard enough?”

He shot me a weak smile before continuing.

“Lucky for you, your mother’s a little hungry too.”

Mom looked at Dad as if he had just betrayed her before turning her gaze towards me. She seemed remorseful towards me.

“I completely forgot I promised you those pancakes, Dan,” she pouted, continuing to rock Emmy. “Me and your dad were thinking we’d try that Denny’s we passed on the way in here. I know, I know… their pancakes don’t compare to mine, but I think you’ll manage, right?”

Who was I to be disappointed? All I wanted was my pancakes. Well, that and…

I looked at my spot on the bed. My Superman wasn’t there anymore. I felt panic rush to my heart until I noticed what Emmy was playing with.

I reached up and tried to grab my stuffy, but she jerked it away and furrowed her eyebrows at me. I jumped and snatched it away from her.

To the displeasure of everyone in the room, my sister launched into a full-blown temper tantrum. Screaming and crying about how I “took her toy.”

Mom and Dad sprang into action faster than I expected them to. Dad took the toy from my hands and handed it back to Emmy. Mom pet her hair and desperately attempted to shush her.

I tried to complain. It was my toy. Not hers. But for some reason or another, my parents just kept taking her side. They told me that I should share, knowing how much I loved that stuffy. I slept with it every night. We were connected.

I guess it calmed Emmy down, though. That was all that mattered to them. They kept interrupting my complaints to usher me out of the motel room and back towards the car.

Dad strapped Emmy into her seat, glancing over his shoulder every few seconds while me and Mom waited quietly. He kept up that distracted demeanor all the way to the restaurant, but I hardly noticed.

It felt like Emmy was flaunting my Superman stuffy. Like she knew she had won. She even made him fly right by my face. Deliberately testing my patience, but I didn’t want to make my parents more stressed than they already were.

We ate fast. My parents ordered without even looking at the menu. Pancakes and orange juice for everyone except Dad, who only ordered a single cup of coffee.

Mom didn’t finish her food, but she didn’t ask for a to-go box either. Once me and Emmy were done, Dad paid, and we left. Simple as that.

The drive back to the motel was equally as tense as the drive to the restaurant. Mom and Dad seemed to be communicating wordlessly.

The food was making my sleeplessness get to me. By the time we got back to the motel, I was ready to catch up on those missed hours. But that’s when I noticed something that woke me right up.

I checked Emmy’s seat, looked underneath her, and scanned the floorboards while my mind began to race.

“Mom,” I screeched as Dad pulled into the motel parking lot. “She left my stuffy. She left Superman at the restaurant.”

My eyes were beginning to tear up.

“This is why I didn’t want her to have it,” I sobbed. “I knew she’d lose him.”

I could see Mom roll her eyes through her rearview as she sighed. Dad responded for her.

“Let’s just go get our things, Champ. Then I promise we’ll go back to get your toy. Deal?”

What was I supposed to do? I just had to agree reluctantly. I felt such burning hatred for Emmy in that moment.

We all filed into the motel room one final time and began gathering our things. I was confused, though. Mom had packed at least 6 outfits for me. Everyone else’s bags were equally full, yet nobody but me had showered.

Before I could question anything, though, three hard knocks came from the door. Everyone froze. Dad stared at the door like it was his enemy. Emmy began to pout, and Mom quickly clasped her hand over her mouth.

Three more knocks.

Dad approached the door slowly and looked through the peephole before slowly walking backwards towards us, never taking his eyes off the door.

Mom’s eyes were wide. Her leg bounced anxiously. Dad raised a finger to his lips.

“Okay, guys,” he whispered shakily. “We’re gonna play a game.”

I looked at him, confused. This seemed like an odd time for any kind of game.

“We’re gonna play the quiet game. Danny, you take your mom and sister to the bathroom and lock the door behind you. Whatever you do… do not make a sound.”

He asked me to take them, but it was Mom who dragged us into that cramped bathroom. Before the door closed behind us, I saw Dad raise his shirt and grip a gun that was tucked in his waistband.

Mom kept one hand gently clasped over Emmy’s mouth. She used the other to rub my back lovingly.

Three more knocks.

This time, I heard a voice that wasn’t my dad’s coming from beyond the door.

“Danny…?”

The voice was old and syrupy. Coercive, almost, but frantic. My ears perked up. My eyes widened, and my mouth fell open. I wanted to answer.

Mom’s hand left my back, and just like Dad, she placed a finger to her lips.

“Shhh.”

She was begging me with her eyes.

More frantic knocking.

“Danny? You in there, buddy? I know you’re in there.”

I expected Dad to answer the door, but he never did. Instead, the knocks continued, as did the mysterious voice.

“Come on out, Dan-Man. I’ve got something for you.”

I remained still. Sweat trickled down my forehead from the humidity in the bathroom. Me and Mom stared at the bathroom door with anticipation.

“I’ve got your Superman, Danny…”

“Whoosh.”

I had to fight to not move. If they had my Superman, I wanted to know. I wanted him back. But the look on Mom’s face told me they were lying, and her grip on my collar prevented me from standing up to see for myself.

The knocks and beckoning went on for another 10 minutes or so. Then they slowly died out. Even still, it wasn’t until Dad opened the bathroom door that I could finally breathe again.

“You guys win,” he smiled, relieved. “Good job, Danny.”

Mom looked relieved, too, but she never smiled. We just frantically gathered our things and hauled them out to the car. Dad forced us to go to the front office with him to check out.

We finally left the hotel just after 3 o’clock. We never went back to that Denny’s.

I had to leave my Superman behind, no matter how hard I begged not to. Mom assured me she’d buy me another one, but it wouldn’t be the same.

I asked about that voice a lot while we continued on towards wherever we were going, but all I got were vague responses while my parents glanced nervously at each other.

Thinking back now, I should’ve known they were hiding something from me. However, at the time… I was young. I was stupid. And all I could think about was how I didn’t have my Superman anymore.

I still remember the night. Mom had put me to bed a few hours before everything happened. Dad seemed anxious that night. Usually, he was so calm and collected. Tonight, he looked like he was on the verge of a panic attack.

I could see him pacing back and forth down the hallway while Mom tucked me in, handing me my favorite stuffed Superman toy. She flew him around like a toy airplane.

“Whoosh,” she joked, making the flying noise with her mouth. “It’s a bird… it’s a plane… No… it’s… Superman!”

She planted his feet down on my chest, bending him at the hips so it looked like he was bowing.

“Macy,” my dad whisper-yelled, standing in my doorway. “Can you get out here, please? We’ve got things to discuss.”

My mom’s face turned sad before she quickly turned her smile back on and ruffled my hair.

“Sweet dreams, hero,” she whispered. “I’ll make you some breakfast in the morning. How do pancakes sound?”

I couldn’t have agreed faster. I still, to this day, have yet to have pancakes better than my mom’s. I reached up and gave her a hug before she flicked the light switch and headed towards the living room with Dad.

I made Superman fly for a few minutes before clutching him against my chest and finally closing my eyes. I was out not long after that.

I woke up to the sound of thumps and rummaging coming from my parents’ room a few hours later. I glanced over at the alarm clock on my nightstand. It was 2:37 in the morning.

I could hear Mom and Dad talking urgently, but quietly. They didn’t sound angry. They sounded terrified. Mom’s voice was shaking. Dad’s voice was firm but uncertain.

Suddenly, footsteps quickly approached my door before it was thrown open and my mom walked inside. She flicked the light switch on. She wasn’t wearing her sleeping clothes. She looked like she was about to head out to run errands or something.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, honey,” she whispered, noticing me squinting from the sudden light that filled the room. “Did we wake you? I promise, you can go right back to sleep in the car. Just help Mommy pack a bag for you, okay?”

I blinked slowly before rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

“Where are we going?” I groaned groggily as Mom ransacked my dresser, tossing me a pair of socks.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she just kept stuffing clothes into my suitcase without so much as looking at me.

“…Mom?”

“A road trip,” she chimed, sounding more agitated than joyful. “A surprise road trip. We were gonna tell you two about it, but we wanted it to be a super surprise. Now, can you please get your shoes on?”

Without another word, I pulled the socks over my feet and slipped into my favorite Lightning McQueen sketchers. Mom zipped up the suitcase. Dad appeared in the doorway again, my sister strewn over his shoulder, half asleep.

“You two ready?” he asked expectantly, his voice steady now.

Mom handed me the suitcase and took me by the hand. She was almost hurting me from how tight her grip was. Not to mention, it felt like my shoulder was gonna dislocate from her pulling me along.

I was fully awake by the time we got to the car. Dad threw all of our luggage in the trunk and strapped my little sister into her car seat. Mom waited patiently in the passenger seat while Dad threw a blanket over me and Emmy.

He backed out of the driveway quickly and spun the wheels a bit as he accelerated out of the subdivision. I could hear the leather steering wheel creak from his grip.

The car was quiet for the first hour or so. Emmy was fast asleep in her car seat. Mom stared out the window with a blank expression on her face. Dad focused on the road in front of him intently.

I, for one, was completely wired. I actually found myself excited for this trip. There was something about the spontaneity that I thoroughly enjoyed. Getting up and going. The way the darkness made it harder to recognize where I was. It felt like an adventure.

Plus, Dad had taken the backroads. All we had were passing forests and cow pastures. It was like we were the only car on the road for miles.

Eventually, we started to pass some businesses. Nothing too exciting. Just a few gas stations and grocery stores.

Dad started looking around the car. He saw that my mom and I were still awake.

“You two hungry? Maybe we can grab some snacks.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Mom replied plainly.

Dad glanced into his rearview mirror for a while before steering the car into one of the gas stations. He parked at one of the pumps and went to get Emmy out of her seat while me and Mom hopped out to stretch our legs.

The gas station was almost completely empty. Besides our car, there was one other vehicle parked directly in front of the station, which we assumed belonged to the attendant.

The air inside was crisp. The refrigerators hummed, and the fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Mom went to the bathroom while Dad took me and Emmy to browse the chips and candy.

Emmy was still too tired to be fully present, and it made it feel like this was a moment between Dad and I.

While I struggled to pick a snack, he smiled down at me and patted me on the back.

“Get whatever you want, Danny,” he smirked. “As a matter of fact…”

He paused to glance around the empty gas station.

“Get two of whatever you want… just don’t tell your mother.”

I wasn’t gonna pass up the offer, but I still think I may have gone a little overboard when I filled my arms with as much junk food as I could carry.

Mom came out of the bathroom shortly after. Surprisingly, she didn’t even seem to notice the candy. She even helped me put the snacks on the counter when we went to check-out.

She didn’t want anything for herself. She only seemed interested in one thing.

While the teller scanned our items, she turned to my Dad with a worried expression on her face.

“Did you see anybody?” she whispered.

Dad didn’t look at her. He just responded with a simple “no” before fishing his wallet out of his back pocket.

He pulled a crisp hundred dollar bill out and slid it across the counter.

“Let me get this and the rest on pump 3,” he announced calmly.

On the walk back to the car, I noticed something. There was a new car in the parking lot, parked a few pumps down from ours. It was matte black with all donut tires, and even the windshield was too dark to see through.

Dad noticed it too. His eyes were fixed on the vehicle as we walked. Gradually, he picked up the pace, dragging all of us along with him.

We all loaded up in the car, and Dad left without even pumping gas. Mom kept asking who he saw, but Dad kept telling her everything was fine, despite how afraid he seemed to be.

We drove on for another 15 or so minutes before headlights lit up the interior of our car. They started at least 200 yards back but quickly closed the gap between us.

The lights stayed on us for a long time. Dad would speed up, and they’d do the same. They made the same turns. They kept the same pace. Mom and Dad both had the same flushed faces.

Emmy woke up from the blinding lights and immediately began pouting and crying. Mom tried reaching back to comfort her, but nothing seemed to work. I myself was beginning to feel a bit nervous, clutching my Superman stuffy tightly.

Eventually, Dad finally pulled onto the highway. The car followed. More cars started to fill the road, but that one particular car just would not leave us alone.

Finally, I think Dad had enough. I could see him squeeze Mom’s hand on the center console as he pushed the gas petal down further and further.

I could see the speedometer rising. 85. 90. 95. All the way up to 100, and that vehicle still followed at just two car lengths. I expected Mom to scream at him for going so fast, but she didn’t say a word. She just kept shushing Emmy while glancing out the back glass every so often.

We were approaching an exit. Dad didn’t slow down. He got closer and closer, letting our assailant do the same until abruptly turning the wheel and swerving across the gore.

The person following us slammed on their brakes, and I could see smoke billowing from their tires while other cars swerved to avoid them.

Dad shot up the exit ramp. The car was wobbling. Emmy was screaming. My heart was pounding.

Mom looked nervous but kept her composure.

“You two are okay,” she assured. “Everything’s going to be okay, I promise.”

She reached back and placed a hand on my knee cap, then did the same with Emmy.

I finally calmed down after a while. The headlights were gone. I had no idea where we were. I had no idea what was happening. And I was actually a little annoyed that no one was explaining.

I pestered, but they remained firm. This was nothing more than a surprise road trip. We ended up stopping at another gas station, but Dad didn’t let anyone get out of the car this time. He just pumped his gas, and we were back on the road.

A few hours passed. I looked at the clock on the radio. It was 5:23 AM. Even Mom was asleep in the passenger seat now.

Dad didn’t stop driving until the sun was peeking in over the horizon. That’s when he finally pulled the car behind this old motel.

The sign read, “Free WiFi. Cable Television. Vacancy.”

He left us in the car while he went to pay for our room. Mom was still asleep. Emmy stared mindlessly at the back of the seat in front of her. I rolled my window down and let Superman fly for a bit while I waited for Dad.

When he finally came back, he woke Mom, and we all carried our luggage up the second floor of the motel.

The room was musty. The air conditioner knocked rhythmically, and there was only one bed.

Dad hung the “do not disturb” sign on the door handle. He pushed a chair in front of the door, and he and Mom lay all of our luggage on top of it.

With one last look through the peek hole, Dad removed his boots and lay on the bed, patting the side of it, gesturing for us to join him.

“We’ve had a long night, guys,” he sighed. “I know it’s not the most glamorous, but it’s a bed.”

Mom stared, judging the crusty comforter before swallowing hard and laying down with my Dad, Emmy curled up in her arms.

She looked at me with a smile.

“Come on, Danny,” she said weakly.

“Let’s get some sleep.”

The furnace had shut off sometime after midnight. Ruth woke to the absence of its low cycle and the colder air that followed. She lay still long enough to confirm the sound was gone, then pushed the blankets aside and stood. The bedroom window showed only the black shape of the maple. No light yet from the east.

She went downstairs without turning on lamps. The floorboard at the turn of the landing gave its usual short complaint. In the kitchen she reached for the glass on the drainboard, filled it from the tap, and drank. The water tasted of the pipes.

A chair scraped once against the linoleum.

He was already sitting at the table. The same dark suit they had chosen at the funeral home, the white shirt still buttoned high, the tie knotted the way the director had left it. Dirt darkened the cuffs and showed under every fingernail. A thin clear line of fluid had tracked from his left nostril to the corner of his mouth and dried there in a faint glaze.

"Ruth," he said.

She set the glass down carefully so it would not tip.

"I only have until the sun comes up."

She believed him. The dirt and the fluid made argument unnecessary.

She did not turn on the overhead light. The small lamp over the stove gave enough to see by. She filled the kettle and set it on the burner. While it heated she took the covered bowl of leftover beef stew from the refrigerator and spooned half of it into a saucepan. The meat had gone soft in the three days since she cooked it. She stirred until steam rose and carried the plate to the table with a spoon and a napkin.

He ate. The spoon scraped once against the plate. Fluid gathered again at the nostril and a drop fell into the stew; he kept eating. She sat across from him with her own empty cup and waited for the kettle to finish.

When the water boiled she poured it over the grounds in the filter cone and let it drip. The smell of coffee filled the room the way it had every morning for nineteen years. He did not ask for any. She did not offer.

"The roof held," she said. "That soft place over the porch. I put the tarp up the week after. It hasn't leaked."

He nodded. The motion was small and exact.

"Tax bill came. I paid it from the joint account. There's still enough."

"Good."

"Your sister called twice. I told her I was fine. She sent a check anyway. I put it in the drawer with the others."

He looked at the drawer. The kitchen was the same: the calendar still showing March, the magnet from the lake trip still holding the grocery list she had not updated, the chipped place on the table edge where the moving men had caught it years ago.

"The dog from next door still comes to the fence," she said. "He sits there in the afternoon like he's waiting for you to come out with the hose."

Daniel's mouth moved as if he might smile. The fluid cracked along the dried line.

"I keep meaning to fix the latch on the shed," she said. "It sticks when it rains."

"Leave it. It always stuck."

They sat without speaking for a time. Outside the maple branches moved against each other in the dark. She could hear the clock in the living room, the one that needed winding every Sunday. She had wound it that morning.

He reached across the table. She let him take her hand. The skin was cold and the dirt under the nails pressed into her palm. She did not pull away. After a while he released her and wiped his fingers on the napkin, leaving dark streaks.

"I fixed the back step," she said. "The board that flexed. I used the scrap you left in the garage."

"I saw."

She did not ask how. He did not explain.

The sky beyond the window remained black. She poured herself coffee and drank it while it was still too hot. He finished the stew and set the spoon down parallel to the plate edge.

"I thought about the garden," he said. "Whether the daffodils came through."

"They did. Early. I left them."

She stood and carried the plate to the sink. The water ran cold over her wrists while she rinsed it. When she turned back he was still seated, looking at the place where the wall met the ceiling as if measuring something only he could see.

They talked about the car. The front tires were balding; she had an appointment next week. They talked about the letter from the insurance company that still needed answering. They talked about the way the floor in the hallway still creaked in the same three places.

At some point she sat again. He took her hand a second time and held it longer. The dirt transferred. She could feel the grit when she later wiped her palm on her robe.

The black at the window became a darker grey, then a lighter one. Daniel stood. The chair scraped. He walked to the window, stood there until his breath clouded a small circle of glass, then walked back to the table and sat. He did this three more times. Each time more fluid gathered at his nostril.

"It's starting," he said.

She did not ask what.

"I can feel it. The weight. The same weight that was on me the whole time I was down there. It never left. It only waited."

He wiped at the fluid with the back of his hand and only spread it.

"It isn't rest. It's the dark and the dirt and the others who are still there. They know when someone leaves. They notice the space."

Ruth stayed in her chair. The coffee had gone cold.

"I don't want to go back to that," he said. "I will, if the sun clears the trees. The pull is already in the bones."

He looked at her directly for the first time since she had come downstairs.

"There is one way I can stay."

She waited.

"The grave is empty. That is why the pull is strong. If something living is put into it before the light reaches the top of the maple, the ground will take that instead. I can remain."

The kitchen was quiet except for the clock in the other room.

"There isn't time to find anyone else," he said. "Only you."

He did not reach for her hand again. He sat with both palms flat on the table, dirt under every nail, the fluid continuing its slow track.

Outside the grey strengthened by degrees. The shape of the maple became visible against it. Ruth looked at the clock on the stove, then at the window, then at Daniel in his burial suit.

The furnace still had not kicked on.

She stood and went to the mudroom. The work boots were where she had left them after the last time she cleared the walk. She sat on the low bench and pulled them on, lacing each one fully. The gloves hung from the nail above the shovel. She took both. From the pocket of the coat hanging beside the door she took the flat-head screwdriver she kept there for small jobs. The shovel's handle was smooth in the middle from years of use; the metal still held a thin crust of dried mud along the blade.

When she returned to the kitchen Daniel had not moved. His palms remained flat on the table.

"The ground will still be soft," she said. "Three months isn't long enough for it to set hard."

He looked at her.

"You'll have to help me with the lid."

He stood and followed her out the back door without speaking.

The air outside was colder than the house. Their breath showed. They walked the path along the side yard, past the shed with the sticking latch, past the fence where the neighbor's dog had waited. The cemetery was a half-mile by the road; they took the shorter way across the back field. The grass was wet and flattened in places where the melt had run. Daniel's suit collected mud along the cuffs. The fluid from his nostril ran freely now and left a clear track down the front of the white shirt.

At the gate she lifted the latch. The cemetery was quiet. No cars yet. The newest stones still showed the bright cut of the engraver. Daniel's stood near the far edge, under the line of older maples that bordered the property. The sod over the grave had taken unevenly; some patches had rooted, others lay loose and brown.

She set the shovel point into the dirt and drove it down with her boot. The first lift came up dark and heavy. She turned it aside and drove the blade again. Daniel took the shovel from her after the fourth lift and worked without pause. The dirt piled quickly. Neither of them spoke. The only sounds were the metal striking soil and the occasional small slide of loose earth back into the hole.

The sky continued to lighten. The tops of the trees held a thin rim of brightness that had not yet reached the ground.

When the shovel struck the coffin lid the sound changed. Daniel cleared the remaining dirt from the wood with short, careful strokes. The lid was plain, the screws still in place. Ruth knelt and worked them free one by one with the screwdriver. The last screw turned harder than the others. When it came free she set it with the rest on the edge of the hole.

Daniel lifted the lid. The hinges rasped as it opened. Inside, the white lining had settled. The pillow still held the shallow shape of a head. The space was exactly the size it had been three months earlier.

Ruth looked at the open coffin, then at the brightening sky, then at Daniel. The fluid had reached the knot of his tie. Dirt from the digging covered both their hands.

She sat on the edge of the grave and lowered herself in. The lining was cool against her back and legs. She settled her shoulders against the pillow and crossed her hands the way the funeral director had crossed his. The boots made the fit tighter than it should have been, but there was room.

Daniel stood above her holding the lid. His face was the one she had lived with for nineteen years; only the dirt and the leaking fluid marked the difference. He did not speak. She did not speak either.

He lowered the lid. The wood settled into place with a soft sound. Light disappeared except for the thin cracks along the edges. She heard the first shovelfuls of dirt strike the wood above her, then the steadier rhythm as he worked. The weight increased by degrees. The cracks narrowed.

Outside, the rim of brightness reached the top of the maple and began to move down the trunk.

About a week ago my dad decided that he really wanted to start a garden. We had a great backyard that hasn’t been used for much since we tore down my childhood clubhouse. He spent his entire Saturday building planter boxes and germinating seeds. His Sunday was spent hauling bags of soil from the store. 

As the weeks went on our house became lined with rain catching barrels, the fence covered in trellises for hanging cucumbers. And the yard seemed to shrink with every passing day as more and more planter boxes filled the space of the once vast field. Dad stopped eating breakfast with me and mom before work so he could spend the time doing work on his new project. 

Eventually he stopped eating dinner with us too, he would get home from work and immediately rush out the back door in a panic. One night mom tried to stop him but he just snapped at her “goddamnit, Mary. My plants need me. Do you want them to die Mary, do you want my only passion to fucking die?”

After that she was too afraid to try and bother him about it again. I couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing out there, it can’t be that much work just to have a garden. I get spending a couple hours but shit, this is easily twelve plus hours a day. 

That night I decided to stay up by my window looking out at the yard. My dad was out there tending to his garden like usual. I must’ve stayed up until five in the morning before I finally crashed and had to sleep. When I woke up I couldn’t believe it. He was still out there. Did he not sleep or did he come back out this morning. Either way I’m gonna go out and check on him. 

“Hey, dad. How’s it going out here” I said. He didn’t even look up at me, he just kept his head down facing his tomato plants. “It’s going. Whatcha up to son?” As I looked around, I have to admit that his garden is doing incredible. The plants are taller than the fence by now. “Oh nothing, just wanted to check on you out here. The garden looks great out here”. 

“Well, I’ve put so many man hours into this so I’m glad it doesn’t look like shit” he laughed. “Hey, why don’t you go inside, bud, I really need to focus on my work”. I give him a nod and turn to walk away. I take a few steps toward the house before I lose my footing and land face first into one of the planter boxes. As I’m getting up my dad finally looks up from the garden and turns to me. “Don’t worry I’m fine, I just fell” I said. 

“What the fuck did you do?” He yells at me. “Oh I’m alright, I just fell”. He stands up now towering over me. “My fucking garden, it’s ruined. You piece of shit, get inside now and try not to fuck anything up on the way to the house”. He screams in my face. As I walk towards the door my mom comes out with the phone in her hand. “Honey, your boss is calling. He says you haven’t shown up to the office in well over a week. What should I tell him?”

“Tell him I fuckin quit, I’m too goddamn busy out here to listen to his shit” he responds angrily. My mom sets the phone down on the table and walks over to where he’s working. “What, are you crazy, George? We have to pay our bills and how do you expect us to put groceries on the table without making money?” She asked. 

He lets out a deep sigh before responding. “Don’t worry, Mary. The garden will provide. Why do we need that overpriced slop from the store when we’ve got everything we could ever need right here” He says. “Also, Mary, I think we need a new rule in this house for you and that boy you’re raising to be a pain in my ass. How about if anyone comes back here trying to bother me with anymore of this bullshit they’ll get a shovel to the face?” He says before turning back to try and fix the spot where I landed in the garden. 

That next week was quiet, I thought for sure that my mom would have confronted my dad again, tried to call the cops, heck I thought she might but leave him after that day in the yard. But she didn’t, she cried a lot most days now but she never went back out into the garden. By now we can’t even see what’s happening out there because the plants are so tall and thick that they completely cover all the windows on that side of the house. From what the neighbors have told us it looks like a jungle of plants out there. 

Soon Jenny from next door was calling to tell my mom that the garden had started coming through the fence into her yard. Mom lied and told her that she’d make my dad trim the plants down but the truth is she was too afraid to go outside. As the plants continued to spread the phone kept ringing. It got so bad that we had to unplug the phone at night just to give us some peace. 

Eventually I couldn’t stand staying inside anymore, I needed to see what was going on out there. We couldn’t see out the windows so the only hope I had was to go outside and see for myself. I waited until mom was in the other room and I decided to make my way to the back door before she noticed I was gone. I figured the only chance we had of stopping this was to find my dad and convince him to cut it all down.

I had to use a kitchen knife just to cut a path to get out the front door. It wasn’t effective at all but it was all I could do to get through the dense walls of plants that have taken over the garden. I couldn’t see past our own yard but I can only assume that the rest of the neighborhood looks like this as well. Walking was incredibly time consuming as my legs kept getting stuck on the plants that took over the entire ground and I had to keep cutting them off me. 

If you would’ve told me that I spent over an hour hiking through our backyard a few months ago I would’ve thought you were joking. After a couple more minutes I saw a large mass that almost looked like a man towards the edge of the yard. “Uh, dad?” I called out to it. It walked a couple more feet until I could make it out more clearly and then I stopped dead in my tracks. 

It was my dad, particularly at least. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. He looks thin as a skeleton with thick vines wrapped around his legs all the way up to his torso. His arms were pulled back by even more vines and he was covered head to toe with sweat and dirt. He was mumbling something but I could hardly make out what he was saying with all the vines protruding straight out of his neck and coming out of his mouth. Bugs crawled all over his body as if they were feeding on him slowly. My dad, or what used to be my dad can’t even swat them away anymore. His breathing is labored like he ran a marathon without any training whatsoever. 

He gave me a glance that looked full of sorrow. Truthfully his eyes were the only part of him that were still recognizable as my dad. I knew that soon those would be gone as well as I saw small stems slowly poking their way out of his head through his eye sockets. “K-kiii-k” he tried to get out. “What, what is it dad?” I ask with tears running down my face, I can’t stand seeing him in such agonizing pain. “Kill me” he says. 

That was the last I’d ever seen of my dad, I somehow managed to fight my way back into the house. Soon the military got involved and me, my mom, and all of our neighbors who managed to not be consumed by our garden were evacuated the next day. We watched on the news from our motel room as our entire neighborhood was burned to the ground in a controlled fire. Nothing was left, I guess they couldn’t risk any chance of my dads garden spreading again. 

My dad loved his garden. 

Urban legends can make or break a town’s existence. Whole cities rely on the tourism that feeds on the cryptic and speculative. Point Place and Flatwoods, West Virginia; Roswell, New Mexico; Fouke, Arkansas. Sometimes the idea of a creature can encapsulate whole regions: the Jersey Devil of New Jersey, Big Foot of the Pacific Northwest, Skinwalkers and Chupacabras from the Southwest. 

But what do we call it when the residents of a place don’t want the attention? What if they want to keep their sleepy town peaceful? Not because they’re concerned the thing in the woods would bring too much tourism… nor does being pressured into making tchotchkes to sell at every establishment worry them. But rather, if they were to let this story spread, any summertime visitors they do receive would likely never return. And the already dwindling population might cease to be sustainable.

There is a small town on the border of California and Oregon called Crescent City. The insignificance of the town at first is comical. If you search the internet your first result would be about a book with the same name that has nothing to do with the place. The second search result would be for New Orleans, whose nickname also shares recognition for being the Crescent City. And that’s how they like it: under the radar. 

Once you correctly prompt your search engine for the correct Crescent City, the insignificance of the town becomes confusing. The town is on the pacific coast, home to many gorgeous beaches, and boasts claims for the largest trees in the world as it sits in the Redwood National Park. And trailing down the mountains is the cleanest river in the continental U.S.; the pristine water rife with fish for the taking. 

Despite it being a nature enthusiast’s paradise, the population has been on a steady decline for the past decade. Maybe ten years ago you could blame it on the lack of work, but in this modern age of remote jobs that excuse is not an option. The city refuses to add any sort of sporting goods store despite the innocent demands of summer vacationers. And despite the decades of requests and opportunities, they refuse to expand any ingress and egress to the area. The only option of entrance or exit is a narrow, unkempt road that threatens to throw cars into the ocean or down a cliff to the bottom of the forest floor with every extremely tight turn, which only the most seasoned and have-nothing-to-lose truck drivers will risk to get goods into and out of the city. The community college had the funding to expand and add more educational programs, but it was shot down, forced to remain on the corner of the high school campus. 

The purpose of this intentional suppression of growth may elude the naive, but to those of us who live here, those of us who have become cynical to the ways of those in control, the purpose is clear. We will not let them hide this behind the ever-present coastal fog; we will not let them push this into the centuries-old shadow of the redwoods canopy. 

It’s not something that gets into your car on highway 199. It’s not something that can be made into a cute keychain or a gauche bumper sticker. And it will not appear to you if you say it’s name in the mirror three times. 

It lives in the negative space of the forest. Or perhaps, it is the space between trees. As you stand in the heart of the redwoods and you peer through a cluster of thick, upright, woody columns, at first you’ll only notice the fog become striped with daylight that ekes its way through the swaying branches above, only to disappear again with your next breath. But if you pay attention, and allow your eyes to unfocus just a bit, like you’re looking at one of those optical illusions, you will notice the gaps between trunks grow and shrink. The trees themselves aren’t moving, but rather something walks between them, treating the laws of physics as suggestions. On a rare, fogless day, if you have the eye for it you might even notice a distortion in the air as the trees make way for its passing. The slightest, shakiest, iridescence of a murderous mirage. It’s hard to follow with the naked eye, but you can see the route it takes if you’d like. If you have the stomach to sit there silently and patiently watch, praying you don’t end up in its path.

Maybe “murderous” isn’t the correct descriptor. The void between the trees does not care if you live or die. It simply is. It has been for aeons and will continue to be when we return to stardust. But, if you get in its way, cosmic entropy is no longer a fate you’ll be able to have. It is less than nothing and will take you with it. You do not become unborn or anything else so kind. You will be ripped from existence and then ripped from non-existence into something even slighter. 

I’ve been trying to get it to take me for years. 

It had me for a moment, at the same time it took my husband and son. But, then it put me back. I don’t know what’s less than absolute nothing, but if that’s where my family is, that’s where I want to be. I think it would be expected of me to say that I didn’t realize what happened at first and it took me a while to come to grips with things, but that’s not what happened.

As soon as I was again, aware and alone in the woods with no sign of my family except the bright red, child size backpack haphazardly thrown to the ground, I understood what had happened— what hadn’t happened and never would happen because nothing can happen in the void, not even the passage of time. I didn’t bother contacting the police or anybody. I never went back home. I was living out of my camping gear for months when I stumbled upon an abandoned house and have since set up base there. It’s safer from the wildlife, easier to keep warm. I don’t want to die here, in a different realm or dimension or whatever. I need to be with my son.

They say when you grow a child, even after birth some of their cells stay in your body forever. You are indelibly changed and bound to your offspring. I’d never really given much thought to it, but ever since it took my boy it’s felt like those lingering cells were ripped out of me and went with him. There’s a wound in me that will never heal until I am with him once more.

But, it won’t take me. I see it pretty frequently. And I’ve seen it take more people and even the occasional animal. A row of trunks will splay and close, one after another, swallowing the critters in its path, unless I throw myself in the way. The movement simply ceases and the quivering air stills. Maybe it’s my desire to be taken that drives it away. I beg and beg to be devoured and it does nothing but reject me. 

This is my life. I wake up in the morning in the dilapidated shelter that shields me from the elements, and walk until my feet bleed, searching for it. I’ve done this every day for who knows how many years. And I will do it until it finally relents. Occasionally, I make my way down the mountain for more gear and when I do I make it a point to talk with every local about it. It doesn’t have a name. Few will even refer to it by a nickname. Fewer will even engage in this conversation with me. The tourists are almost worse: completely dismissive and convinced I'm a crazy conspiracy theorist.

But I need to get this story out there. I think the people in charge are trying to be helpful, but keeping the town small and restricted: less people, less victims. But, by refusing to acknowledge the danger there are dozens of unknowing victims every year. The redwoods are ancient and enticing to visitors and always will draw people in. It needs to be known that there is something even more ancient living in those trees. Something dangerous. If people knew the truth, they would not pull over on the side of the crumbling highway craning their necks to the heavens, snapping photos. They would stay in their cars and keep driving. And if you’re reading this, I urge you to do the same. 

There are many other natural wonders of the world for you to visit. For if you visit this one, it may be your last.

The red Solo cup comes back three times before I stop putting it in the trash.

I find it beside the sink in Unit 2B, upside down on a paper towel gone stiff with old dishwater. One side is dented inward. A pale circle marks the grease and dust beneath its rim.

The leaseholder has been gone eleven days, long enough for Falcon Turnovers to call his things abandoned and not quite long enough for the apartment to stop smelling like him.

I drop the cup into a contractor bag, empty the cabinets, photograph the refrigerator, and pull two swollen drawers out by their faces. Beneath the stove, mouse droppings glitter among dried grains of rice. I leave the drawers against the wall for maintenance and take the four pictures Falcon requires of every room.

The buyers want proof from every angle that nothing remains, as though a tenant might flatten himself against the wall when he hears the camera shutter.

When I turn around, the cup is back beside the sink.

Same paper towel. Same ring in the dust.

“Devon.”

He is in the bedroom removing glow-in-the-dark stars from the ceiling with a paint scraper.

“What?”

“Did you take the cup out of my bag?”

“Yeah, Mari. I stole the priceless cup.”

He does not look at me.

I pick it up. The plastic is warm.

Warm means a recently used appliance, an animal nest, bad wiring, or a person who has not been gone as long as management claims. It never means anything worth touching barehanded.

I bury the cup beneath cabinet liners and spoiled cereal, cinch the bag shut, and carry it into the hallway myself. When I return, the cup is waiting beside the sink.

Devon has stopped scraping. One green star remains stuck to the blade.

“You see that?” I ask.

“No.”

“The cup.”

“What cup?”

I point. He follows my finger, and his expression changes.

“Oh,” he says. “One of those.”

At Falcon, one of those covers everything our insurance policy does not: mold growing in the shape of a hand, a smoke detector that chirps after the battery and hardwire have both been removed, water dripping upward from a ceiling stain, a bedroom door that locks only when somebody says the former tenant’s name.

There is a procedure. Photograph nothing. Record nothing. Remove it last.

“Should we call Sloane?” Devon asks.

“You want the bonus?”

He checks his cracked Samsung. It is 10:47 p.m. We have nine units left, including the one Aaron Sloane marked PRIORITY, and five hundred dollars each if Glenhaven Court is ready for the buyers at seven.

My rent is due tomorrow. My landlord does not accept spiritual complications in place of money.

I take the cup into the bathroom. The medicine cabinet hangs open, showing a rusted rectangle where the mirror used to be. I leave the cup in the tub, close the door, and finish the kitchen.

Two clean shapes interrupt the grime on the floor: one for a narrow table, another for a chair. Someone sat here often enough for the tile to keep the arrangement after everyone else stopped caring.

I sweep from the back wall toward the front door. The broom draws the red cup into the dustpan.

On the fourth try, I stop looking at it. I wrap it in a bath towel, shove it beneath cracked cabinet liners and a box of stale Cinnamon Toast Crunch, then take the bag straight to the compactor.

When I return, only the pale ring remains beside the sink.

I open Falcon’s TurnReady app and photograph the kitchen.

PERSONAL PROPERTY REMAINING?

I tap NO.

ANIMALS PRESENT?

NO.

OCCUPANCY VERIFIED?

The leaseholder’s name appears beneath the question: HOLT, BERNARD.

I remember Mr. Holt. Thin old man. House shoes outdoors. Astros games on a radio held together with silver duct tape. He corrected the announcers as if they had called him personally for help.

I tap VACANT.

The loading wheel turns. The work order refreshes.

UNIT 2B — UNKNOWN OCCUPANT

“What was his name?” I ask.

Devon has gone back to the stars.

“Whose?”

“The tenant.”

He peels another constellation from the ceiling. “Was there one?”

I know there was. I know something about a sister in Beaumont, a church van, a broken hip. The details sit behind a wall I have spent years helping management paint white.

His name is gone.

In the hallway, the contractor bag remains wedged in the compactor mouth. The red cup presses against the clear plastic, filled now with something darker than the unlit room behind it.

I turn away before it can tip.

Every apartment has a bruise pattern.

Black arcs behind a recliner mean someone rocked while watching television. Grease above the bedroom door means the same hand touched the frame at the same height for years. A clean square on a wall shows where a calendar kept the paint from fading.

People lie about how they live. Their walls usually give them away.

Unit 3D belonged to a family with three children, although the work order lists two. Three height charts climb the inside of the pantry door. The smallest stops after six pencil marks. Somebody painted over the name but skipped the sanding, so the letters remain raised beneath beige landlord paint.

I run my thumb across them.

Lucy, maybe.

“Don’t,” Devon says from the refrigerator.

“Don’t what?”

“Touch stuff when you’re making that face.”

“I don’t have a face.”

“You have several. That one means you’re about to steal garbage.”

Steal is dramatic. I keep small things sometimes, never jewelry, cash, medication, documents, or anything a reasonable person might return for. Only objects too useless to justify the space they occupy in a landfill.

A brass button. A Metro bus token. A key with no lock. A ceramic dog missing one ear.

I tell myself I am preserving evidence. I never decide evidence of what.

Devon opens the cabinet above the stove. Two child-sized sneakers sit inside, soles pressed together.

“Who stores shoes over a stove?”

I look at the kitchen floor. Beneath one chair are two pale rectangles in the dirt.

“Put them there.”

He sets the shoes on the counter.

“Under the chair.”

He gives me a look, but he crouches and slides them into the clean spaces. They fit perfectly.

Something inside the wall releases a long breath.

Devon rises slowly. “All right. Definitely one of those.”

My phone buzzes.

SLOANE: STATUS?

I type: 5 COMPLETE. ON SCHEDULE.

His reply arrives before I can lock the screen.

SLOANE: DO NOT DELAY 6C. BUYERS ARRIVE 0700. NO EXCEPTIONS.

“Why does he care so much about 6C?” Devon asks.

“You know rich people. If one toilet still has a tenant in it, the whole building tastes wrong.”

He laughs once.

I photograph the sneakers.

A little girl is sitting in the chair above them.

The picture shows only her knees and her hands folded in her lap. A yellow plastic bracelet circles one wrist.

I lower the phone. The chair is empty.

I delete the photograph. TurnReady restores it.

I delete it again. The picture returns with the girl’s hands slightly apart, as though she is preparing to stand.

“Fuck this unit,” Devon says.

“Put that in the completion notes.”

“Seriously, Mari.”

“We put the shoes back. Whatever it wanted, we handled it.”

He studies me. “Did we?”

His voice carries my mother’s cadence—not her sound, but that upward pull at the end of a question when she has already decided I am lying.

For a second, I am barefoot in a kitchen I cannot place, holding a dead light bulb in both hands.

Then Unit 3D comes back around me.

My thumb hurts. A brass button has appeared in my fist, its edge pressed deep enough to break the skin.

I do not remember picking it up.

We reach the sixth floor at 1:18 a.m.

Half the fluorescent tubes are dead. The survivors give the corridor the color of old teeth.

A woman sits cross-legged in front of Unit 6C. She has spread rent receipts, photocopied licenses, school portraits, utility bills, and handwritten lists across the carpet. A battery lantern glows beside her knee.

I know her face from somewhere. A tenant meeting, probably. One of my mother’s little revolutionaries.

She looks twenty-four and tired enough to be forty.

“You’re Marisol,” she says.

“Mari.”

“I know what she calls you.”

Devon glances at me.

I set down my tool bag. “You can’t be here.”

“Neither can half the people you cleared tonight, apparently.”

“You have to move.”

“Do you remember Mr. Holt?”

The name hits a locked door inside my head.

Silver tape on a radio.

Then nothing.

The woman watches the answer leave my face.

“Bernard Holt,” she says. “He lived in 2B for sixteen years. His sister Esther keeps calling because the nursing home says no Bernard Holt ever listed her as an emergency contact.”

Devon shifts beside me.

“You’re Nia,” I say.

Her expression softens for half a second. “Celia told you about me?”

Celia. A saint. A flower. A woman in an old Simon & Garfunkel song.

No—closer than that.

I reach for the name and feel it slide away.

Nia rises too fast, scattering receipts. “Jesus. It’s already started.”

“What has?”

She points at 6C. “Open the door.”

“I need you off the floor.”

“Open it.”

“You’re trespassing in a restricted work area.”

“You grew up here.”

Devon looks between us.

I laugh because the hallway has begun to tilt. “I grew up in six apartments. Everybody thinks one of them explains me.”

“This one does.”

The elevator bell rings.

Aaron Sloane steps out with two guards from Blackstone Protective Services. He wears a navy Falcon polo tucked into khakis and the expression of a man arriving to correct the version of events poorer people have produced without him.

“Nia,” he says. “We discussed this.”

“You discussed it. I declined.”

“This building is under transfer order.”

“People still live here.”

“Not on this floor.”

She sweeps an arm toward the documents. “Because you’re deleting them.”

Sloane notices Devon listening. “Take five.”

The guards do not move.

He sighs. “Glenhaven needs eight million dollars in structural repairs. The elevators fail twice a month. The fire panel is thirty years out of date. Sewage backs into occupied units. The buyer is assuming those costs.”

“The buyer is turning it into student housing.”

“The buyer is keeping it standing.”

“After throwing everyone out.”

“Relocation agreements were offered.”

“To people whose names disappear after they refuse.”

Sloane looks at me. “Ms. Vega, how many units remain?”

“Four.”

“Complete them.”

Nia laughs. “Of course you’d ask her.”

My mother used to say there were two people at every eviction: the one carrying bags and the one writing down how many bags remained.

I became the one with the clipboard. It weighs less.

Sloane gestures. The guards take Nia by the arms. She resists enough to make them work for it.

“Look under the kitchen light,” she tells me. Then, louder, as they drag her toward the stairwell, “Mari, look at the stool.”

The metal door shuts on her voice.

Sloane waits until we are alone.

“Your mother has made this sale difficult enough,” he says.

The corridor shifts beneath me. “My what?”

He studies my face, and something careful enters his.

“Finish the unit.”

Then he leaves.

The master key works because Falcon changed the lock before we arrived. That comes first: before the hauling, before the photographs, before a tenant can return with a lease in one hand and H-E-B bags in the other.

Change the lock and the argument becomes architectural.

Unit 6C smells like coffee, sewing-machine oil, and lemon Pine-Sol.

My mother.

Celia.

I hold the name as it jerks once inside my head.

Boxes line the wall. Two mugs sit in the sink. A handwritten grocery list hangs beneath a Texas-shaped magnet.

Beans. Cilantro. Café Bustelo. AA batteries. Mari’s Honey Nut Cheerios.

The last item has been crossed out so hard the pen tore the paper.

Devon reads over my shoulder. “You have a cereal?”

“Everyone has a cereal.”

Beneath the kitchen light stands a yellow plastic step stool. One leg is short, corrected by cardboard folded underneath.

The cardboard comes from a Totino’s pepperoni pizza box.

I know the stool pinches the back of your thigh if you sit on it wrong. I know the kitchen fixture burns through cheap bulbs every three months, and my mother refuses to call maintenance for anything she can complain through herself.

I put my hand on the stool.

The room folds.

I am small enough for the counter to reach my shoulders. My mother stands behind me with one arm around my waist.

Don’t drop it, Mari.

I hold a light bulb like an egg while she steps onto the stool. It rocks.

You tell management that thing almost killed me. Maybe then they’ll replace it.

You tell them.

They don’t listen when I—

The memory jumps.

Now I am standing in the same kitchen three weeks ago, grown and sweating through my Falcon shirt. Celia has covered the table with lease copies, handwritten phone trees, and envelopes addressed to people who no longer receive mail here. The sewing machine is pushed to one side. Its needle still holds a length of blue thread.

She looks at the Falcon logo on my chest.

“You wore that into my home?”

“I came straight from work.”

“You clear apartments for the people emptying this building.”

“I clean up after court orders. I don’t issue them.”

“You take a family’s things and turn them into contractor bags.”

“And you take every emergency in this building and turn it into my responsibility.”

Celia reaches up and taps the dead kitchen light twice. “These people are losing their homes.”

“I know.”

“Then help us.”

“I have rent. I have a job I can lose. I have a landlord who doesn’t care that you’ve decided struggle builds character.”

“I kept you housed.”

“You kept me moving. There’s a difference.”

She grips the yellow stool and drags it beneath the fixture. “You think working for Falcon means they won’t do it to you.”

“I think paying my bills gives them fewer excuses.”

“That is not the same as being safe.”

“And organizing tenants doesn’t make you my mother.”

Celia’s hands stop on the stool.

She says, very quietly, “No. Raising you did.”

The memory tears away before I answer.

I come back with Devon holding my elbow.

A photograph hangs on the refrigerator. Celia stands beside Nia in the lobby, both carrying signs. Between them is a woman wearing my face.

The woman looks furious. I remember the argument now, but not leaving. I do not know whether I apologized or slammed the door.

The apartment door opens behind us.

Devon grabs the nearest weapon, which happens to be a toilet plunger.

Nia looks at it. “Please don’t make me die embarrassed.”

“How did you get past security?”

“The same way your mother did for twenty years. I waited until the person in charge assumed somebody else was watching.”

She crosses to the photograph and taps my blurred face.

“This was three weeks ago.”

“I remember some of it.”

“You called Celia a martyr with a landlord fixation.”

“That also sounds like me.”

Nia points toward the boxes. “She packed these herself. Sloane scheduled the cleanout after she got arrested.”

“For what?”

“Refusing to leave the lobby.”

A laugh slips out. “That sounds like her.”

Nobody joins me.

Devon opens the nearest box. “Why didn’t Falcon move her property to storage?”

“Because storage preserves ownership,” Nia says. “Vacancy doesn’t.”

She lifts the stool.

The kitchen light flickers. Knuckles drum from inside the cabinets.

I snatch it from her. “Don’t move that.”

“Now you believe me?”

“I believe the apartment doesn’t like you.”

“The apartment loves me. Your mother fed half this floor from that stove.”

“My mother feeds people so they owe her.”

Nia’s eyes sharpen. “Is that what you think love is?”

“No. That’s what she thinks love is.”

The answer comes too quickly.

Celia’s name loosens inside me. I press my thumbnail into the brass button until the edge cuts deeper.

When I open my hand, there are three objects instead of one: the button, a bowling-pin keychain, and the broken ear of a ceramic dog.

An old man corrects an Astros game in the next room. I smell tortillas blistering over a gas burner. My tongue searches for a gap between teeth that are all still there.

“Your van,” Nia says.

I look at her.

“What’s in your van?”

Two contractor bins sit beneath a moving blanket in the back of our white Ram ProMaster. I pull the blanket off and lift the first lid.

I have been collecting these things for four years. Together, they look less like evidence than a problem I have hidden from myself.

A baby sock. A cracked Roku remote. A spoon bent almost in half. A laminated prayer card. A jar of buttons. A Metro Q Card. A wooden letter M. A photograph with the people cut out.

Every loading-dock window fogs from the inside.

The habits enter me at once. I lock an imaginary window three times, rub two fingers together in search of cigarette ash, and whisper, “Come eat before it gets cold,” to a son who has been dead longer than Devon has been alive.

My shoulders bend around pain from a warehouse injury. My left hand reaches for an inhaler. My right signs a rent check in handwriting that belongs to Evelyn, or Esther, or nobody.

Nia catches me before my knees hit the concrete.

Faces surface and vanish: Bernard Holt with silver tape on his radio; a girl with a yellow bracelet; a woman sleeping in her Fiesta Mart uniform so she will not miss the morning bus; a man hiding cash behind a loose baseboard because banks make him nervous.

My mother carries black trash bags down a stairwell. She presses a red mixing bowl against my chest.

Keep this.

Why?

Because they can take the apartment. They can’t call it empty if something from it still knows your hands.

I am seven. Or nine. Or every age at which adults explain terror as a game because children move faster when they think they are helping.

I carry the bowl outside while men empty our home.

The memory belongs to me. The hands around it are hers.

“She did this to me,” I say.

Nia shakes her head. “She saved you.”

“She did both.”

My phone lights in my pocket. Google Maps has sent a notification asking whether I want to save Glenhaven Court as HOME.

I dismiss it. Location services get confused in tall buildings.

The loading-dock door opens.

Sloane stands there alone. When he sees the bins, he closes his eyes.

“Oh, Marisol.”

He sounds tired rather than angry. I would prefer anger.

“You were supposed to discard resistant items immediately.”

“Resistant items?”

“Whatever name you use. Anchors. Residual property. Falcon calls it occupancy contamination.”

“You knew?”

“We know they interfere with turnover. We know the records settle faster when the items are removed from the site.”

Devon steps between us. “Settle how?”

Sloane rubs his forehead. “Names stop duplicating. Work orders stop reverting. People stop insisting they have rights to units the system shows as empty.”

“People stop existing,” Nia says.

“That is not what I said.”

“Do you know where they go?”

His silence answers her.

He points at the bins. “This is why Falcon sends the objects to off-site storage. They attach to places. Sometimes to workers. Putting the object back does not always clear the worker. Legal calls it cross-claim contamination, though legal does not put that phrase in writing.”

“Why?” I ask.

“I don’t know why. I know what happens. Carry enough of that material around and your address starts misreporting. Your records conflict. Doors fail. The company has paid for three employees to relocate after exposure.”

My phone feels hot in my pocket.

Sloane looks at Devon and me. “I have families in extended-stay hotels waiting on relocation payments tied to tomorrow’s sale. Residents are calling about black water in their tubs. The fire panel is thirty years out of date. If this transaction collapses, the city can condemn Glenhaven, and everyone leaves. Not four units. Everyone.”

Pipes knock behind the walls like neighbors arguing through drywall.

“Complete 6C,” he says. “Give me the bins. Falcon will cover your rent for six months.”

Six months means sleeping without checking my bank balance first. Opening the mailbox without deciding which envelope can hurt me fastest. Six months means not carrying my life in the back of a van again.

“What happens to Celia?”

His pause lasts less than a second.

“She is alive.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“She remains alive.”

Nia makes a sound behind me.

Sloane puts his glasses back on. “Your mother arranged her arrest because an active government record appears to slow the process. She used you as the remaining claimant.”

My mother, making my choices from a holding cell.

“She knew I’d be assigned here?”

“She requested it.”

I laugh until my throat hurts.

Of course she did. Give Celia a locked door and she will find someone else’s shoulder to put against it.

“Six months,” Sloane says. “You cannot save everyone by making yourself homeless.”

My hand has gone into the bin. I am holding the red cup.

Dark water trembles at the rim. In its surface, I see rooms I have emptied one after another, each cleaner than the last.

Behind me, Devon says, “We should finish.”

Nia turns on him.

“My sister sleeps on my couch,” he says. “Her landlord’s boyfriend keeps letting himself into her bedroom. That bonus gets us a deposit somewhere else.”

He looks at me, furious at the shame on his own face.

“I’m sorry.”

He goes upstairs. Sloane follows him.

Nia and I stand beside the open bins while, somewhere above us, plastic scrapes across linoleum.

The yellow stool crossing a threshold.

Celia’s name disappears.

One moment, there is a woman in the world who gave birth to me, fought with me, embarrassed me, remembered every food I stopped liking and bought it anyway. Then there is only a space where someone used to stand.

I know I am supposed to love that space. I cannot remember why.

A door slams upstairs.

The stool sits in the hallway outside 6C. The apartment number now reads 6. The metal C lies on the carpet like a dead insect.

Devon stands beside it, breathing hard.

“I didn’t know,” he says.

“Who lived here?”

His face changes.

Nia grips my shoulders. “Celia Vega.”

The name gives me nothing.

“Your mother.”

The word remains biological and distant.

Devon pulls out his phone. “You texted me about her yesterday.”

He opens our messages. I watch the thread rearrange itself.

My mom got arrested again. Don’t ask.

The words blur. My mom becomes someone. Then the message vanishes.

Devon stares at the blank space.

“Mari,” he says. “You sent that. You were mad because she called you from jail during work.”

“Who did?”

He looks toward the stool. Whatever he sees in my face decides it.

He picks it up and carries it back inside.

The grocery list is blank. The refrigerator photograph shows Nia holding a sign beside an empty patch of lobby.

Grief remains after the person is removed. With nowhere to land, it runs through the body checking every locked room.

“What did she do here?” I ask.

Nia tells me. Burned rice. Hid cash in Café Bustelo cans. Watched Judge Judy reruns while hemming neighbors’ clothes. Sang badly. Snored. Cut coupons and forgot to use them.

The apartment stays silent.

Knowing facts about a person is not the same as knowing where she reached without looking.

Devon lifts his phone. “The before pictures.”

TurnReady stores every photograph with a timestamp. Four corners before, four corners after.

In the first kitchen image, the stool sits beneath the light. In another, two mugs wait beside the sink. The sewing tin rests on the table. Shoes sit beneath the radiator.

Wear patterns. Reach. Repetition.

I may not know who she is, but I know where she has been.

I run for the freight elevator. Nia follows, and Devon grabs the stool.

“What are we doing?” he asks.

“Making the units fail.”

We empty the bins floor by floor, placing nothing at random.

The walls show me where each object belongs. A bent spoon goes beside a stove with a melted burner knob. The prayer card fits the clean rectangle inside a bathroom mirror. The wooden M returns to a door where two nail holes wait at child height.

Nia reads from her handwritten ledger over the building intercom.

“Bernard Holt, Unit 2B.”

I place the red cup beside the sink. A radio crackles in the living room.

“Lucinda Price, Unit 3D.”

Devon slides the sneakers beneath the chair. A child laughs once from inside the pantry.

Nothing a room remembers without a body stays comforting for long.

“Evelyn Ward, Unit 4A.”

A kettle begins screaming on an unplugged stove.

Doors swell in their frames. Old handwriting pushes through landlord paint. Carpet dents deepen beneath absent furniture. The building draws in lives it has been ordered to spit out.

Sloane has started approving the batch.

Our phones vibrate together.

UNIT 2B — VACANT

The red cup tips, spilling dark water across the counter. The room fills with the smell of rain on hot pavement and old radio batteries.

UNIT 3D — VACANT

The pantry door slams.

“Faster,” Nia says into the intercom, her voice shaking but steady enough to carry. “Harold Green, 5F. Minh Tran, 8A. Roberta Ellis, 9C—”

The freight elevator refuses the sixth floor. It stops at four.

The doors open onto an apartment I have never entered. A woman stands inside holding a baby sock. Her face is the pale blur left after a picture comes down from a wall.

She points upward.

Every object inside me pulls toward a different floor. My knees fold, and Devon catches my arm before I fall.

Nia gets off on six and takes the stairs. Devon remains beside me.

“You know where you’re going?” he asks.

“No.”

“Good. I’d hate to be the only one.”

The doors close. For one impossible second, the floor display reads HOME.

Then it changes to 6.

Unit 6C is becoming new.

Nail holes close. Grease lifts from cabinet doors. The tear in the grocery list seals around blank paper. Years of fingerprints fade from the light switches.

Sloane stands in the kitchen with his tablet.

“You don’t know what you’re bringing back.”

“Neither do you.”

“I know what happens if the sale fails. You lose your job. You lose your apartment.”

My key already feels lighter in my pocket.

Nia places the stool beneath the dead kitchen light, but nothing happens.

“Use it,” she says.

“For what?”

Her face collapses. She does not know. She was never here for the habit, only for the person who performed it.

Devon scrolls through the photographs.

“Your hand,” he says. “You’re holding something.”

He zooms in.

A light bulb.

Falcon removed all the bulbs during inspection. Devon drags a chair into the hallway, climbs onto it, and twists the bulb from the corridor fixture.

The hall goes dark.

He puts the warm bulb in my hand.

My fingers know its weight.

I step onto the yellow stool. It rocks against the folded Totino’s box beneath one leg.

A hand circles my waist—not a ghost, only the body’s memory of balance.

Don’t drop it, Mari.

I reach into the black socket and screw in the bulb.

For half a turn, nothing happens.

Then the kitchen light comes on.

The apartment returns all at once: Café Bustelo, lemon Pine-Sol, sewing-machine oil, burned rice, my mother’s voice traveling between rooms because silence makes her suspicious.

The force knocks Sloane into the counter.

Celia Vega lives in the worn place beside the sink, in the loose thread on the sofa, in the window that sticks every winter because she refuses to let maintenance shave the frame.

Beneath her, smaller but not weaker:

Marisol Vega, age nine, standing on a yellow stool.

My phone vibrates.

LEASEHOLDER: CELIA VEGA

A second message appears.

OCCUPANT CLAIM REQUIRED

Celia is not here. The room needs someone present.

I think of Sloane saying that claims attach somewhere. I think of Google Maps asking whether Glenhaven is HOME.

I put both palms on the counter.

“I’m here.”

The apartment believes me.

The buyer leaves at 7:12. City inspectors arrive not long afterward, summoned by residents who now exist in the records again and refuse to stop calling.

Celia is released shortly after nine.

I wait across the street while tenants gather around her. Some are people I recognize. Others are only familiar habits moving through the morning light.

My mother sees me and crosses without checking traffic.

For one terrible second, I think she will hug me. Instead she stops an arm’s length away.

“You look awful.”

“You had me assigned to your apartment.”

“You came.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“You would have said no.”

“That is what asking is for.”

Her mouth tightens.

“I kept you from disappearing once.”

“And decided that meant you could spend me forever?”

She looks back at Glenhaven. Names cover the lobby directory now, too many for the plastic slots. They climb the wall in pen, pencil, lipstick, crayon, and cooking grease.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

My mother apologizes the way some people enter cold water: one painful inch at a time, offended by the temperature.

It is not enough. It is not nothing.

“We deal with what happens next,” I tell her.

She nods, and for once neither of us decides what that means for the other.

At 10:03, I return to my apartment.

My key does not fit.

I try the deadbolt, then the knob, then the deadbolt again because another person’s hands inside mine insist every lock deserves three attempts.

A woman opens the door wearing my sleep shirt. She holds the ceramic dog with one broken ear.

“Can I help you?”

Behind her, my furniture sits exactly where I left it. My mug beside the sink. My shoes beneath the chair. My Reliant bill unopened on the counter.

The apartment knows my life. It does not know me.

“I live here.”

Her face closes with the polite fear reserved for strangers who believe something too intensely.

“No, you don’t.”

I open my lease on my phone. The tenant field is blank.

The photographs remain, but I have disappeared from them: a birthday table with one chair pushed back, a graduation gown standing upright without a body, my mother arguing with an empty section of kitchen.

The woman begins closing the door.

From inside comes a click, then a second, then a third.

Someone is checking the bedroom window latch.

She glances over her shoulder.

“Do you have someone else in there?” I ask.

“I live alone.”

The latch clicks again.

Four. Five.

Other habits are waking.

Across the hall, the tenant directory hangs beside the elevator. Names begin appearing under the scratched plastic.

Bernard Holt.

Lucinda Price.

Evelyn Ward.

Harold Green.

People from Glenhaven, written into a building they have never entered.

Their things are back at Glenhaven. Their habits stayed with me.

At the bottom, ink pushes through slowly, as though the pen is moving on the other side of the wall.

MARISOL VEGA — 6C

Behind the door to my old apartment, an Astros announcer calls a strike.

An old man laughs and says he has never seen a ball so far outside.