Hey. Before I start, I guess I should say.

“Vote Chris Penton”

Nah that’s shit. I’ve got to workshop a new slogan.

Now that’s out of the way. Hello internet, and potential focus group. I’m here with a weird situation and a weirder request.

I need you to help me get elected.

I mean I’m still considering it. Just want to test the waters to see if I have what it takes. There is one small, tiny caveat, however.

In my town, only monsters get to be mayor.

Like actual creatures, I’ll explain as I go. So yeah, it’s not your typical political scenario. And I kind of have no experience. So that’s why I’m reaching out.

And no, I’m not secretly a monster in need. I am a human being.

And the monsters? Well, they are a fucking problem. So I could really use the help.

Don’t believe me?

One year, the mayor who was elected, was well, you guessed it, a monster. An Orgron to be exact. He gave his little acceptance speech, flapped his little appendices in front of his mouth and then ate the resident mayor secretary.

Right there. In front of the crowd.

See what I mean?

I don’t know when, but sometime in the past, the people in town struck some sort of deal with these creatures. It used to be chaos. Death, fear, war. It used to be a shitshow. But then we came to an agreement. There’s more of us than there are of them. But they’re stronger, more dangerous. So, we decided.

Every five years we get to elect one of them to be our leader.

This was the bizarre… compromise people came up with at the time. The monsters want to rule us, and we just want peace. So, we accept that they become our leaders as opposed to just going on reckless rampages.

Democratically of course.

And don’t bother trying to find us. That’s not a good idea. What we do here is for the sake of other people. Other towns.

You should be thanking us. Other places could face the same issue if it wasn’t for us. We keep them controlled, while they control us.

It isn’t an easy life. I’m trying to figure out who exactly would put a human in the running? You don’t get to run yourself. You’re chosen by a “committee of your peers”. Whatever that means.

So, screw it. Maybe I will run. I just need experience. I need to understand how people think, how they work. I need help. Maybe someone can share their ideas for our town if I explain our issues.

Maybe I should describe the revolting swinging doors of creatures that live with us first.

So, I mentioned Orgrons already. Orgrons are the main monsters in town. There’s like fifty of them. They’re big, they’re disgusting and they eat us. They’re the ones responsible for the greatest number of deaths between humans.

That’s it. Not much more to say. They suck, I wish they would all die.

Starting to see what we’re dealing with? That’s why it’s unheard of for a human to be elected.

There used to be a mass murderer in our town. A human one. He tried to run for office.

He was rejected. You know what they told him?

“We don’t take amateurs.”

Standards are high for politics around here. You’re either a monster or you don’t get to run. Which is why I’m confused to who appointed me.

But there’s more.

There are these, like, shadow things? The umbral they call it. They’re very bizarre. They’re basically shadows that aren’t attached to anything. They’re like little tricksters with a twisted sense of humor.

They kind of attach themselves to your shadow and move you around. One time they made a cat spaz-out mid-air. Poor cat. It was fine afterwards, just super scared. Assholes.

They still kill people.

They made someone vanish once. Attached themselves to someone’s shadow and made the guy translucent. Yes, translucent. Do you know what that means?

Light passed through him. The guy was basically half invisible.

He didn’t have a shadow. He couldn’t absorb heat properly and he eventually got too weak to continue. Every day he was fading away more and more…

I don’t know how they do it. I can’t understand the physics of it. But I know they’re here.

Try not to step on them.

What else is there…

Lempkits. Oh God. I HATE Lempkits!

They are shitty little furry bastards who run around everywhere and are little pieces of shit. I hate them. They don’t do anything much besides being annoying little shits.

They break machines, they clog pipes, they eat everything. They’re like cockroaches with hair, but bigger. They don’t do much individually, but get twenty of them together and they will attack a human.

I saw it once. An old man fell down, on the street. I even started walking to go help him. A Lempkit spotted him first. He sniffed the old man and tasted him with his antenna. It was… so fast. I didn’t have time to react.

They swarmed him. He was dead in a matter of seconds.

It’s not right. We shouldn’t have to live like this. Something needs to change.

This town matters to me. I want to make a difference, to help people. Help my family.

My own family… My uncle. He was a victim of this.

There are these things. We don’t talk about them a lot. Even though we should. They are, well, invisible. But trust me you’ll know they’re there. They are massive, like building size, but they barely move.

My uncle was killed by one of them.

They always do the same thing. You can’t see them but one day you’ll just be walking by and they’ll pick you up. They’ll pick you up until you’re as high as you’ve ever been. Soaring through the sky, like a bird…

And then pop. They twist you.

That’s what they did with my uncle. People can’t see much; you just see a red mist exploding in the sky. I don’t know why they even do it.

People don’t talk about them a lot because they’re the most “peaceful”. Only a death every five years or so. I don’t care. I hate them.

Fuck those things. They are weird. You can see them sometimes. During thunderstorms they become visible. Do you know those old radio towers? They look like that. Or some high voltage tower. They just stand there waiting.

If you are ever going down the freeway during a storm and you spot a radio tower suspiciously in the middle of the forest. Well, watch out. It could be one of them.

You might be close to our town. Don’t go near it.

And finally, Therions. I’m not going to bother talking about Therions. They suck, they don’t do anything useful for society. They don’t even kill people properly.

Everyone hates Therions, from human to monster alike. They’re… They’re just repulsive. Who the hell would like Therions?! They should go back from where they come from as far as I’m concerned.

That’s most of them, I think. It sucks. It’s always the same thing every election cycle. Some creature gets elected, usually an Orgron. They make a bunch of promises they can’t keep, and then their side kills a bunch of people.

The monsters usually try to make things cordial between themselves, but they couldn’t care less what humans think.

That’s why I think I can make a difference. For our side. I need to convince people. Maybe even get the monster’s vote (yeah sure thing).

I mean I can’t be worse than our last mayor. He was an umbral. It was kinda controversial.

He had to resign.

Now you must be thinking. Did he kill someone? Or maybe too many people? And that’s why he had to go? Nope. He had an affair. Cheating on his wife (shadow wife?). That’s not really that unheard of for these creatures. The issue was slightly different.

He had an affair with a human.

I guess that’s going to be our last umbral mayor for a while. Probably back to Ogrons as usual. Those massive invisible things are unlikely to win, they’ve never won an election. I don’t think they even vote.

And hell if I ever vote for a Lempkit. You might assume they’d win a lot of since there’s so many of them. Well, no, each Lempkit counts as one fifth of a vote.

So maybe there’s a chance for me. Maybe I’ll win, I don’t know I think it’s worth trying. So, like I said I’m asking for opinions online and seeing what works and what doesn’t.

I guess I’ll go out there and mingle with people. Try to see what they need in their lives. I’ll also try to figure out why I’m the only human in fifty years that’s in the running. What a shitshow this is going to be.

Catch you later! Don’t forget to vote!

 

 

Update:

Hey Chris here, haven’t updated this in five days. Came to check on it. There’s been some new… developments.

I found out an uncomfortable truth during my absence. I found out who appointed me. It was the monsters, well except Therions (fuck them). I guess it makes sense…

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I was bound to be found out eventually.

It’s not every day they see their eggs smashed by a baseball bat. It’s not every day they see their children being set ablaze by Molotovs.  I really can’t help myself. I wish nothing more but to crush their little skulls.

Even Orgrons. It’s surprisingly easy to strangle their necks when they’re young.

So yeah, I was caught. They found out about me. But it got me thinking.

Why not?

Why not do things different? Who says monsters are the ones who have to kill? Who says we need to have peace?

I think it’s time for a change. I think it’s time to be different. For a new way of thinking. Maybe we shouldn’t just want peace, maybe we should learn something from them.

I guess that’s why I’m in the running. They respect that. It’s the only thing they understand.

 

Hey, I just got the idea for my slogan.

“Vote Chris Penton. For a future without monsters”.

I have been a social worker for nearly two decades, so I of all people, know that when most people think about my profession, they usually imagine mountains of administrative paperwork, organizing food assistance programs, or navigating the incredibly complex foster care system. While those duties certainly make up a large portion of my daily routine, there is another side to the job that rarely gets discussed outside of our office walls. We are often the last remaining line of defense for the forgotten members of society, so as you can see, are the individuals dispatched to knock on doors when someone stops opening their mail, stops answering their telephone, and simply fades away from the public eye.

Over the years, I have seen things behind closed doors that entirely shattered my understanding of the world. I have kept quiet about these specific cases for a long time, primarily because I feared losing my professional license or being forced into a mandatory psychiatric evaluation by my supervisors. But I am getting older now, and the memories are starting to weigh significantly on my conscience, so I decided it is finally time to document and share the stories of the weird cases I dealt with during my career. And that what brings me here, as I want to start with an assignment from many years ago involving a routine welfare check on an elderly woman.

The assignment originated on a Tuesday morning. My supervisor handed me a manila folder containing a very thin case file. The file belonged to an eighty-two-year-old woman who lived alone. On paper, everything about her situation appeared completely normal. Her utility bills were paid on time through an automated bank system, her pension was actively deposited, and her property taxes were entirely up to date. The only red flag, and the reason the file landed on my desk, was that no one had actually seen her in a very long time.

She had ignored the previous routine wellness checks from our department, she did not answer the door when the previous workers knocked, and her telephone simply rang endlessly when we tried to call, so as you can see, my job was simple in theory: drive to her property, make contact, assess her living conditions, and determine if she needed to be moved into a state-assisted living facility.

Her property was located in the middle of a very affluent, highly manicured neighborhood on the edge of the city. The area was famous among city workers for one specific characteristic. It was a neighborhood where absolute apathy was the community standard. The residents there valued their privacy to a fault, cultivating a culture where nobody ever looked over their fences, and of course nobody cared what happened to the people living right next door. You could collapse on your front lawn in this neighborhood, and the passing cars would simply drive around you to avoid getting involved.

I parked my car along the curb. It was a bright, cloudless afternoon. The street was lined with massive oak trees and perfectly trimmed hedges. I walked up the driveway toward the elderly woman's house. The property stood out immediately, because it felt entirely lifeless. The lawn had grown completely out of control, the bushes were overgrown and tangled, and a massive pile of circulars and junk mail covered the front porch.

Before approaching the door, I noticed a man washing his expensive car in the driveway right next door. I walked over to the property line, holding my identification badge clearly in my hand.

"Excuse me, sir,"

I called out, keeping my tone polite and professional.

"I am a social worker with the county. I am trying to check on your neighbor. Have you seen the elderly woman who lives in this house recently?"

The man did not bother to turn off his hose. He barely glanced in my direction, keeping his eyes focused on the soapy water running down his windshield.

"I mind my own business,"

he replied dismissively.

"I have not seen anyone come out of that house since last autumn. "

"Has anyone come to visit her?"

I pressed, trying to gather any useful context.

"Family members, grocery deliveries, anything at all?"

"I said I mind my own business,"

the man repeated, turning his back to me entirely.

"If she is dead in there, call the police. Do not bother me with it."

I thanked him for his time, realizing I would get no help from the surrounding community. I walked back over to the property and stepped onto the front porch.

As I stood on the porch, I noticed something deeply unsettling about the house. The large picture window facing the street was completely opaque. I stepped closer to examine the glass. Every single pane of the window had been meticulously covered from the inside with thick layers of newspaper and dark construction paper. Someone had used thick strips of duct tape to seal the edges of the paper directly against the window frame, ensuring that not a single sliver of sunlight could penetrate the glass. I stepped off the porch and walked around the side of the house, checking the secondary windows. They were all identical. Every window on the ground floor was aggressively sealed against the outside world.

I returned to the front door, feeling a distinct sense of unease settling into my stomach, then I noticed that the glass panels on the front door were also blacked out with taped paper. I raised my fist and knocked loudly on the solid wood frame.

"County social services,"

I announced.

"I am here to conduct a mandatory wellness check. Please come to the door."

I waited for a full minute, listening intently to the silence of the neighborhood. I knocked again, much harder this time.

"If anyone is inside, you need to answer the door,"

I stated firmly.

"If I cannot verify the safety of the resident, I am legally obligated to contact law enforcement to force entry into the premises."

A few seconds later, I heard the faint sound of footsteps moving softly across the hardwood floor inside. The footsteps stopped right behind the front door, then I heard the metallic click of a deadbolt sliding back, followed by the rattle of a brass security chain engaging. The door opened just a few inches, stopped by the tension of the chain.

The interior of the house was entirely pitch black. I could not see anything through the narrow gap, but a wave of stagnant, freezing air drifted out onto the porch.

"Who are you?"

a voice asked from the darkness.

The voice did not belong to an eighty-two-year-old woman. It was the voice of a very young woman. The tone was smooth, and calm.

"I am a county social worker,"

I explained, holding my badge up to the narrow gap so she could see it.

"I have been assigned to check on the elderly resident of this address. The county has not been able to reach her for several months. Can you tell me who you are?"

"I am her granddaughter,"

the young woman replied smoothly from the shadows. "You do not need to worry about her. I moved in a few months ago to take care of her full-time. She is perfectly fine. You can close the case and go back to your office."

"I appreciate that you are caring for her, but I cannot just leave,"

I said, maintaining a calm but authoritative stance. "Agency protocol dictates that I must make visual contact with the primary resident to confirm her living conditions and her cognitive state. I need you to unchain the door and allow me inside for five minutes."

"I cannot do that,"

the young woman answered immediately.

"My grandmother is resting right now. She had a difficult night, and she finally fell asleep. I am not going to wake her up for a government inspection."

"I do not need to wake her up or interview her,"

I countered, leaning slightly closer to the gap.

"I simply need to step inside, see her breathing in her bed, and verify that she has access to food, running water, and proper medication. If you refuse to let me verify her safety, I will have to sit on this porch and call the police. They will break the door off its hinges, and that will be incredibly distressing for your grandmother."

There was a long, tense pause from the other side of the door. I could hear her breathing softly in the dark.

"I cannot open the door entirely,"

she finally said, her voice dropping to a lower, more cautious register.

"I suffer from a severe medical condition. It is an extreme allergy to ultraviolet light. If the sunlight hits my skin, I will experience severe blistering and respiratory distress. That is why the windows are covered. If you want to come inside, you must promise to slip through the gap quickly and close the door immediately behind you so the sun does not touch me."

"I understand,"

I assured her, despite finding the explanation highly unusual.

"I will be very quick. Just undo the chain."

The door closed for a fraction of a second, the metal chain rattled as it was unhooked, and then the door swung open just enough for me to pass through. I stepped over the threshold into the freezing darkness of the house. True to my word, I reached back and pushed the front door shut until the deadbolt clicked into place.

The moment the door closed, the darkness became absolute. My eyes struggled to adjust after being in the bright afternoon sun. The ambient temperature inside the house was easily twenty degrees colder than the weather outside.

"Thank you for being careful,"

the young woman said. She was standing a few feet away from me in the entryway. As my eyes slowly adapted to the gloom, I could make out her silhouette. She was wearing a long, dark dress that covered her entirely from her neck down to her ankles. Her face was obscured by the shadows, but I could tell she was standing perfectly still, her posture unnervingly rigid.

"Thank you for cooperating,"

I replied, pulling a small flashlight from my jacket pocket. I clicked it on, aiming the beam at the floor to avoid blinding her, but allowing the ambient light to illuminate the space.

The house was in a state of profound neglect. The walls were covered in faded, peeling wallpaper. The furniture in the living room was draped with old, dusty plastic sheets. Stacks of hoarded newspapers and cardboard boxes lined the hallways, creating narrow, claustrophobic pathways through the home.

"Where is your grandmother resting?"

I asked, keeping my flashlight pointed downward as I navigated the clutter.

"She is in the back bedroom,"

the young woman answered, her voice echoing slightly in the empty living room. She stepped into my path, attempting to block the hallway.

"But like I said, she is sleeping. Perhaps we could sit in the kitchen first? I can make you a cup of tea, and we can discuss her medical paperwork. I have all her prescriptions organized in a binder."

"I am not here to review paperwork right now,"

I stated firmly, recognizing the classic stalling tactics people use when they are hiding something from social services.

"The visual confirmation is my only priority. Please step aside and lead me to the bedroom. This will only take a moment."

She hesitated, her silhouette shifting uncomfortably in the dark hallway.

"She really does not like strangers in her personal space,"

the young woman insisted.

"She gets very confused and agitated."

"I deal with agitated clients every single day,"

I said, stepping around her and walking deliberately down the dark corridor.

"Which room is it?"

"The last door on the left,"

she muttered, following closely behind me. I could hear her bare feet moving silently across the hardwood floor.

I aimed my flashlight into the bedroom. The room was meticulously organized, but it was completely empty. The bed was unmade, the heavy quilts tangled and pushed to one side, but there was absolutely no sign of an eighty-two-year-old woman resting. I shined my beam across the nightstand. It was entirely bare—no pill bottles, no water glass, no reading glasses, none of the basic medical necessities you would expect for a senior citizen requiring full-time care. I stepped over to the mattress and placed my bare hand firmly against the exposed sheets. The fabric was freezing cold. It was immediately obvious that nobody had been sleeping in that bed recently.

I turned around to face the young woman. She was standing in the doorway, her face still cloaked in the shadows of the hall.

"Your grandmother is not in her bed,"

I said, dropping my professional courtesy and adopting a much more stern, demanding tone.

"Where is she? If you lie to me again, I am calling the authorities immediately."

"She must have gotten up while I was talking to you at the front door,"

the young woman replied calmly, completely unfazed by my threat.

"She wanders around the house sometimes. Let us check the kitchen."

I did not trust a single word she was saying. I gripped my flashlight tightly and pushed past her, walking toward the back of the house where the kitchen and utility rooms were located.

I entered the kitchen. The refrigerator was unplugged, its door hanging open, completely empty except for a thick layer of black mold. I walked past the kitchen island and noticed a partially open door leading into what looked like a laundry room.

I pushed the laundry room door open and stepped inside, sweeping my flashlight beam across the floor.

My breath caught in my throat, and my stomach aggressively churned at the sight before me. Piled haphazardly in the corner of the room, between a rusted washing machine and a utility sink, were the bodies of dozens of animals. There were stray cats, several small dogs, and a few raccoons.

The animals looked entirely desiccated. Their bodies were flattened, completely drained of all fluids, resembling dry, hollow husks covered in fur. I stepped closer, shining the intense beam of light directly onto the closest carcass. There were distinct, brutal puncture wounds on the animal's neck, but there was no blood pooled on the floor around the bodies.

I backed out of the laundry room quickly, my mind racing to process the horrific scene. I bumped into the wall of the hallway and turned instinctively into the adjacent room, which happened to be the primary bathroom. I tried to flick the light switch on the wall, but the power was dead. I raised my flashlight to illuminate the space, intending to check behind the shower curtain, but the beam caught the reflection of the large vanity mirror above the sink.

I froze completely.

Written across the dusty surface of the bathroom mirror, in thick, dark, dried blood, was a deeply disturbing message.

“I am no longer sick. I am finally young again.”

I stood in the dark bathroom, reading the bloody words over and over again. My brain frantically attempted to connect the pieces of the puzzle. The grandmother who had not been seen in months. The young woman claiming to be the granddaughter. The completely empty, dusty bed. The drained, bloodless animals piled in the utility room. The desperate message written on the glass.

But the timeline did not make any sense. If the granddaughter had moved in months ago to care for the old woman, why was the house completely dead? Why was there no food, no electricity, and no sign of anyone other than the young woman herself?

"I told you she was resting,"

a voice whispered from the doorway behind me.

I spun around rapidly, aiming the beam of my flashlight directly at the bathroom door.

The young woman was standing there, blocking the only exit. But her demeanor had entirely changed. The smooth, calm cadence of her voice was gone. When she spoke now, her voice carried the exhausted, raspy, resentful tone of someone who had suffered through decades of immense pain.

"I was trapped in this house for years,"

she said, taking a slow step into the bathroom.

"My joints were failing. My lungs were filling with fluid. Every single morning was an exercise in agony. I could not walk to the mailbox, or even cook for myself. I screamed for help, but nobody in this miserable neighborhood ever cared. The people next door ignored me. The state ignored me. You social workers never came when I actually needed you. You left me here to rot in the dark."

"Where is the old woman?"

I demanded, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to remain steady. I kept the light pointed at her torso, slowly reaching into my pocket for my phone.

"I just told you,"

she hissed, taking another step forward. She stepped fully into the ambient glow of the flashlight bouncing off the bathroom tiles.

I finally saw her face clearly.

She looked like a woman in her early twenties, but her skin was flawlessly pale, looking almost like polished marble. However, it was her eyes that made my blood run entirely cold. Her eyes were completely inhuman. The sclera was a sickly, vibrant yellow, reflecting the light exactly like a nocturnal predator.

"Someone finally visited me,"

the woman continued, her yellow eyes locked onto my face. A deeply menacing, manic smile stretched across her pale cheeks.

"A shadow came through the basement window during the coldest night of the winter. He found me dying in my bed. He saw how abandoned I was, how pathetic my existence had become. And he offered me a trade. He gave me the ultimate grace."

She raised her hands, displaying long, sharpened fingernails that looked more like dark, hardened claws.

"He took away the sickness,"

she whispered, her voice vibrating with an unnatural resonance.

"He took away the weakness. He made me finally young again. All I have to do to keep the pain away is drink. The stray animals were enough at first, to sustain the youth. But the thirst is getting worse. I am so terribly hungry today."

She lunged at me with a speed that was impossible for a human to achieve.

She crossed the distance of the bathroom in a fraction of a second. I barely had time to react. I swung flashlight in my hand as hard as I could, aiming directly for her face.

The solid casing collided violently with her jaw. The impact produced a sickening crack that echoed in the small room. The force of the blow derailed her momentum, sending her crashing into the bathtub and tearing the shower curtain down with her.

I bolted out of the bathroom, sprinting down the pitch-black hallway toward the front of the house. I could hear her scrambling out of the bathtub behind me, her claws tearing frantically against the floor. She was recovering far too quickly.

I pushed through the hoarded stacks of cardboard boxes in the living room, my legs burning with adrenaline. I could hear her snarling, a guttural, animalistic sound that reverberated through the dark house. I reached the entryway and threw my hands against the front door, frantically grasping for the brass deadbolt in the darkness.

Before I could turn the lock, I felt her fingers clamp onto the fabric of my jacket.

Her grip possessed an overwhelming force. She yanked me backward violently, throwing me onto the floor under a window. I scrambled onto my back, kicking out wildly with my boots. She crawled over my legs, pinning me down, her yellow eyes glowing in the dark, her jaw hanging at a strange, broken angle from where I had struck her. She opened her mouth, revealing rows of elongated, razor-sharp teeth, and lunged toward my throat.

In a moment of desperate clarity, I remembered the excuse she had given me at the door.

I stopped trying to push her away. Instead, I reached my arm entirely over my head, stretching my hand toward the window above us. My fingers found the edge of the thick duct tape holding the dark paper in place.

I grabbed the paper and ripped it downward with every ounce of strength I had left.

The layers tore away from the glass. The intense, brilliant light of the afternoon sun blasted through the window, flooding the dark entryway with direct sunlight.

The beam of sunlight struck the woman directly across her back and the side of her face.

The reaction was instantaneous and horrific. The moment the light touched her pale skin, she released a deafening, piercing shriek of pure agony. Her skin began to rapidly blister, turning a sickening shade of charred black while thick, foul-smelling smoke poured from her flesh. It sounded like raw meat being thrown onto a scorching iron grill.

She released my jacket immediately, scrambling backward off my body and throwing her arms over her burning face. She threw herself into the shadows of the living room, retreating away from the lethal sunlight, screaming and thrashing against the hoarded boxes.

I did not hesitate for a single second. I ran to the front door, twisted the deadbolt, pulled the front door open, and threw myself out onto the sunlit porch. I slammed the door shut behind me, ran down the driveway, and threw myself into my county vehicle. I locked the car doors, jammed the key into the ignition, and sped away from the affluent neighborhood as fast as the engine would allow.

I drove for several miles before I pulled over into a shopping center parking lot to catch my breath and attempt to process what had just occurred.

I did not call the police, or even report the attack to my agency. If I told my supervisors that an eighty-two-year-old woman had been transformed into a vampire creature, my career would have been terminated immediately, and I would have been institutionalized. Instead, I returned to the office, filed the paperwork, and officially reported the house as abandoned. I stated that the resident had likely moved out of state without notifying the county, and the case was quietly closed and filed away into the archives.

I officially closed the case, but exactly one month later, I could not stop myself from driving back to that neighborhood. I parked across the street and looked at the property. The house was completely abandoned. The dark paper had been ripped away from the windows, the overgrown bushes were dying, and the driveway was entirely empty. I do not know where she went. I have no idea what new city or neighborhood she vanished into. But as I sat in my car staring at the vacant home, a deep, cold certainty settled into my stomach. I felt it in my bones. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I will meet her again someday.

The day Hel disappeared, I was too drunk to drive her to school. She is 10. That's the part that will follow me into the grave. I had been drinking since noon, trying to drown the sound of Maude's silence. The house had been empty for nine months, but her absence was louder than any scream. When Hel shook my shoulder that morning, her backpack already strapped on, I told her to walk. It was only a mile. She was nine. She knew the way.

She never made it.

For three weeks, Kayla and I tore the town apart. We put up flyers, talked to every face we saw, begged the news stations to care. The police dragged the lake, searched the woods, interviewed every registered offender within a fifty-mile radius. Nothing. No trace. No witness. No body. They stopped returning my calls after the second week.

I couldn't live with it. I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, couldn't look at Angie without seeing Hel's face. So I did something I will never fully explain, because I don't fully understand it myself. I found a way to bring her home.

The instructions were in a book sold in a novelty and curiosity store. It was bound in leather so old it crumbled when I touched it. The pages were yellow and spotted with what looked like dried blood. The ritual required three things: the body of the deceased, a blood offering from the father, and a vessel that had once carried life.

Below the instruction reads:

Bone to bone, and vein to vein,

Call the soul by secret name.

Cross the flesh and seal the gate,

Leave one vessel desolate.

Take the new, forsake the old—

An empty husk forever cold.

I had two of the three. Maude's body was six feet under in Greenlawn Cemetery. I had plenty of blood. The third thing was the soul of the missing child, which I had to call back from wherever it had gone.

I won't describe the full ritual. Some things should stay buried. But I will tell you the parts that matter.

I dug up Maude's coffin alone, under a moon so thin it looked like a scratch in the sky. The earth was hard and cold, and my hands blistered before I was three feet down. When the shovel finally struck wood, I almost stopped. I almost turned back. But I thought of Hel's empty bed, of the flyers peeling on telephone poles, of Angie asking every night when her sister was coming home.

I pried the lid open with a crowbar. The stench hit me like a physical blow. Maude had been dead nine months. The skin had slipped from her bones in places, drawn tight over her skull like a mask pulled too thin. Her lips were pulled back from her teeth in a permanent snarl. Her eyes were sunken, the lids half-open, revealing nothing but dark sockets. Her hands were crossed over her chest, the fingers curled into claws. I vomited twice before I could kneel beside her.

The first step required me to feed her my own flesh. I took a fillet knife from my belt and sliced a long strip of skin from my forearm. The pain was white and clean. I watched the fat glisten under the kitchen light I had brought, then pressed the strip against her lips. They were cold and hard as rubber. I forced them open and placed the skin on her tongue, then pressed her jaw shut. "Eat," I whispered. "Eat and become mine."

The second step required me to drink from her. I had to take a mouthful of the fluid that had pooled in her chest cavity and swallow it. It tasted like copper and rot and something sweet I couldn't name. It coated my throat and stayed there, warm and heavy. I dry-heaved for five minutes afterward.

The third step required me to pull out my own front teeth. Four of them. I took a pair of pliers from the toolbox and gripped the first incisor. It took three hard yanks before it came loose, the root sliding out with a wet pop. Blood poured down my chin, hot and thick. I placed the tooth in Maude's mouth, arranging it where her missing incisor had once sat. One by one, I pulled the other three. By the end, my mouth was a ruin of exposed nerves and blood. I pressed her jaw shut and held it, feeling the teeth grind against each other. "Now you can bite me back," I whispered.

The fourth step required me to put my tongue in her ear. I had to whisper Hel's name over and over for a full minute. I leaned down, pressed my lips against the cold, waxy shell of her ear, and pushed my tongue inside. The canal was damp and cold, and I felt something shift as I forced my way deeper. I whispered Hel's name until my lungs burned, then pulled back, gagging.

The fifth step required me to cut off my own little finger and place it in her mouth. I used the bolt cutters. The bone snapped with a sound like a twig breaking. I wrapped the severed digit in a strip of her burial shroud and pushed it past her lips, deep into her throat. "A part of the father must enter the mother's vessel to call the child home," the book said. I felt her throat convulse once, then swallow.

I sat there for an hour, bleeding onto her chest, waiting. Nothing happened. I started to cry. I had mutilated myself for nothing. I had dug up my wife for nothing. I had—

Her hand moved.

It was small, barely a twitch. But I saw it. The fingers uncurled, then curled again. Her chest rose. A sound came from her throat, wet and rattling. Her eyes opened.

They were Maude's eyes, but they weren't. The color was the same—that familiar hazel—but the light behind them was different. Brighter. Younger.

She looked at me. Blinked. And said, in a voice that was Maude's voice but with a child's pitch, "Dad? What happened? Why are you shorter?"

I laughed. I actually laughed. Tears were streaming down my face, mixing with the blood from my mouth. "Nothing, honey. You've just grown a bit taller."

I helped her sit up. Her bones cracked like knuckles. She moved stiffly, like a puppet whose strings were still being learned. I wrapped her in a blanket and carried her home.

That night, I brought Hel in Maude's body through the back door. Brutus, the old retriever, was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. He took one look at her and started growling, a low, deep sound I had never heard from him before. The hair on his back stood up. He bared his teeth.

"Brutus, stop," I hissed. He didn't stop. He backed away, still growling, and disappeared into the living room. I told myself he was just confused by the smell. Dogs don't recognize decay the way we do. They smell death. They fear it.

I carried Hel to her room. The first thing I did was throw a towel over the mirror. "The mirror is broken," I said. "Don't take the towel off. It's dangerous."

"Okay, Dad," she said. Her voice was sleepy, but there was a flatness to it that I chose to ignore.

I ran her a bath. I covered the bathroom mirror with another towel. I told her to undress and get in. She did, mechanically, like she was following a script. I left her alone for a few minutes. When I came back, she was sitting in the water, staring at the wall. The water was clear. I started combing her hair.

It fell out in clumps. Not a few strands—whole sections, sliding off her scalp like wet leaves. The comb pulled through and came away with a handful of brown hair, the roots still attached. I stared at it. She didn't react.

"Your hair's a bit tangled," I said, my voice shaking.

"I know," she said. "Sorry."

I kept combing. The comb got stuck in the middle of her head. I pulled gently, then harder. It wouldn't budge. I braced my hand against her skull and yanked. The comb came free, taking with it a huge piece of her scalp. It flopped onto the floor, a patch of skin and hair, the underside glistening with a greenish liquid.

I froze. There was no blood. Instead, a thick, oily fluid oozed out of the wound, pooling on her shoulder. The smell hit me a second later—sweet and rotten, like flowers left too long in a vase. It filled the bathroom, thick enough to taste. My eyes watered.

"Oh my God, sweetie! Are you alright?"

"Hm? What's wrong, Dad?" She turned to look at me, her expression blank.

"You didn't feel it?"

"Feel what?"

I looked at the piece of scalp on the floor. I looked at the wound on her head, the exposed bone, the green fluid still seeping out. "Never mind," I said. "I'll get your pajamas."

I ran to her room, grabbed the first pair I found, and threw them at her. "Wear these. I'll be right back."

"Can I use the towel on the mirror?" she asked.

"What?! No! Don't!" I stumbled over my words. "The mirror is broken. It's dangerous. Don't take the towel off."

"Alright, whatever you say."

I sighed in relief. She put on the pajamas and walked to her bed. Every step made her bones crack, a sound like twigs snapping underfoot. She jumped onto the mattress, and I heard her spine pop. I sat beside her, kissed the unblemished part of her head, and asked if she wanted a story.

"Dad, I don't need that anymore. I'm very sleepy."

I leaned in and whispered, "Honey, for the time being, it's better for you to just stay in your room. Don't go anywhere else in the house, alright?"

"Why?"

"We're planning a surprise party for your little sister!"

She nodded. "Alright then."

I left the room and found Brutus at the top of the stairs, still growling at the door. I locked him in the kitchen and went to bed.

The next morning, I woke up ten minutes late. Angie was shaking me, her small hands gripping my arm. "Daddy, I'm gonna be late!"

I jumped out of bed, didn't even change clothes. I refilled Brutus's food bowl, carried Angie to the car, and sped to school. I was back home in fifteen minutes. The dog food was untouched. "Damn dog," I muttered. I ran to Hel's room.

She was still in bed, staring at the ceiling. "Time for breakfast," I said.

She sat up slowly, her spine crackling like a string of firecrackers. She followed me to the kitchen. I made mac and cheese, the way Maude used to make it. I boiled the pasta, added the cheese sauce, sprinkled paprika on top. It was steaming hot, so hot the air above the bowl rippled with heat. I set it in front of her.

She picked up the spoon. She stared at the bowl. Then she set the spoon down.

"It doesn't smell very good," she said.

"Come on, it's your favorite. Just try it."

She shook her head.

I sighed. I picked up the spoon, scooped a generous portion, and held it to her lips. "Open up."

She opened her mouth. I slid the spoon in. She chewed slowly, her lower jaw moving up and down like a piston. I watched her, waiting for a smile. Then her jaw stopped.

"What's wrong?"

She opened her mouth. The mac and cheese fell out, orange and slimy. But mixed with it was something else. A piece of meat, about the size of a thumb, pale and veined with red. I picked it up. It was soft, spongy, and wet. It took me a second to realize what it was.

She had bitten off the front half of her tongue.

I grabbed her face and forced her mouth open. Her tongue was a ragged stump, the remaining half twitching. Blood was pooling under it. "Are you okay? Does it hurt?"

She looked at me with those empty eyes. "I'm fine. Why are you panicking?"

I couldn't speak. I just stared at the piece of her tongue in my palm.

"I told you I wasn't hungry," she whispered.

I took her to the bathroom. I told her to brush her teeth. She just stood there, holding the toothbrush, staring at it like it was an alien object.

"I don't know how to do it," she said.

I took the toothbrush from her. "Just open your mouth." I brushed gently, trying to be careful. I told her about the time she had put a frog in Kayla's purse, about the time she had drawn a mustache on her own face with permanent marker. She didn't laugh. She didn't react.

"Spit," I said.

She leaned over the sink and spat. Five teeth clattered into the white porcelain. They were small, white, perfectly formed. Molars. Canines. Incisors. They lay there in a puddle of pink saliva.

"Sorry, honey," I said, my voice cracking. "I must've brushed too hard."

"There's nothing to worry about," she said. "The teacher said teeth can still grow at my age."

I laughed. It was a broken, desperate sound. I kept brushing. Her tongue. I brushed too hard, and she gagged. She bent over and vomited onto the floor. A ball of hair, brown and matted, splattered against the tiles.

I knelt down. The hair was long, strands interwoven like a nest. I reached into her mouth. My fingers touched something soft and wet. I pulled. A long piece of hair came out, then more, then more. It was like pulling a rope from a well. It kept coming, tangled and slimy, until I had a pile of it on the floor. It was brown. Brutus is a brown golden retriever.

"What did you do?" I asked, my voice shaking.

She looked at me, guilty. "I don't know."

My phone rang. The school. I was late to pick up Angie. "Clean yourself up," I said. "I'll be right back."

I ran out of the room. I called Kayla. "Can you pick up Angie? I'm... I'm dealing with something."

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Nothing. Just pick her up. Please."

I hung up. I went back to the bathroom.

The towel was on the floor. The mirror was uncovered. Hel was standing in front of it, holding a pair of scissors. She had already cut a slit along her ribcage. I could see her fingers inside, moving, searching. She had cracked two ribs outward. They stuck out of the wound like pale, wet twigs.

"No!" I screamed.

I tackled her. We hit the floor. The scissors clattered away. She struggled, stronger than she should have been. "What did you do to Mom?!" she screamed. "What did you do to me?!"

She grabbed the scissors and stabbed me in the shoulder. The pain was sharp and deep. I fell back. She ran.

She ran to the kitchen. I followed, bleeding. She grabbed a knife from the block—a chef's knife, eight inches, sharp enough to slice through bone. I was ten feet away when she placed the knife on the kitchen table, blade pointing up. She grabbed the handle with both hands. She lowered her head.

"No!" I lunged.

She drove her throat onto the blade.

The knife went in just below her chin, through the soft tissue, and came out the back of her neck. Blood—dark, thick, almost black—sprayed across the table. She made a sound, a wet gurgle, and then she fell. Her body twitched twice and went still.

I don't know how long I stood there. Seconds. Minutes. I don't know.

Then I heard a scream. I turned.

Kayla was at the back door, Angie in her arms. She had seen everything. She ran. I heard her car start, heard the tires screech.

The police came. They took me away.

I woke up in a hospital bed. A psychologist was sitting next to me. Her name was Dr. Indira. She asked me to tell her everything. I did. I told her about the ritual, about the hair, the teeth, the tongue, the knife. I told her about Hel in Maude's body. I told her about the mirror. I knew whatever I told her, he didn't believe one bit. Nobody does.

She listened without interrupting. When I was done, she folded her hands in her lap. She looked at me with something like pity.

"They found Hel in the forest three days after she disappeared," she said. "I thought the autopsy would give me an answer."

I stared at her.

"It didn't."

She spoke slowly, deliberately.

"There wasn't a single injury on her body. No cuts. No bruises. No broken bones. No evidence that an animal had touched her. They ruled out starvation almost immediately. Her organs were healthy. Her heart, lungs, liver, kidneys—none of them showed the kind of deterioration you'd expect if she'd gone without food for days."

She paused.

"Toxicology found nothing. No poison. No drugs. No disease. No infection. Nothing that could explain why my daughter was dead."

I opened my mouth, but no words came.

"The medical examiner looked me in the eye and told me they'd ruled out every obvious cause. The report listed her cause of death as 'undetermined.'"

I stared at her, my hands trembling.

"They could tell me everything that didn't kill Hel," she whispered. "But they could never tell me what did."

I sat there in the sterile white room, and for the first time since the ritual, I felt the full weight of what I had done.

"Take the new, forsake the old—

An empty husk, forever cold."

I don't know if this was just an extremely vivid fever dream, a false memory, or something else entirely.

I was around 5 or 6 years old. Even after all this time, it's still one of the clearest memories I have from my childhood. I was at a mall with my mother and father. It was just a normal day. My mom was shopping while my dad and I followed her around. We were playing and messing around while waiting for her to finish. At some point, I suddenly needed to pee.

My dad took me to look for a restroom since my mom was in the middle of shopping. For some reason, we couldn't find one. I remember this wasn't a mall we visited often, so we were kind of lost. Eventually, we ended up in what looked like the basement level of the mall.

I should probably mention that this mall was really old even back then. It's been demolished for years now.

That area was dimly lit and felt completely different from the rest of the mall. One side looked like a parking area, while the other seemed to be where delivery trucks brought supplies into the building. We weren't actually outside, but we were near the entrance to that area. There was a security guard standing there, so my dad asked if there was a restroom nearby.

The guard pointed toward a restroom sign farther down the basement area. At that point, I was desperate, so we didn't really have much choice. My dad let me go in by myself while he waited outside the entrance. I remember the restroom being pretty dark, but honestly, I didn't care. All I wanted to do was pee.

After I finished and came out of the stall, I noticed a woman washing her hands at one of the sinks. She had long hair and was wearing what looked like a Sunday dress.

I wasn't planning on washing my hands. I was a little kid and figured nobody would know anyway. But since she was there, I felt like I should.

I noticed there was a lower sink that was just the right height for me, so I went over to it.

I wasn't really paying attention to the woman, but I remember feeling like she was looking at me. Not just glancing at me. Actually staring. For some reason, I didn't want to look directly at her.

Looking back, I think I was already scared. The restroom was dark, I was alone, and there was a stranger standing there with me.

I remember wishing I had let my dad come inside with me. He had offered to guide me to a stall, but I insisted I could do it myself and told him to wait outside. The longer I stayed there, the more uncomfortable I felt.

I can't explain it very well, but it felt like she was getting closer. I never turned around to check. I just remember suddenly wanting to get out of there as fast as possible. The second I finished washing my hands, I ran. I practically sprinted out of the restroom.

When I saw my dad waiting outside, I felt so relieved. I immediately ran up to him and told him we should go back. He picked me up, and as we were walking away, I happened to look back toward the restroom.

The woman was standing near the entrance. Just staring at us. I don't remember her moving. I just remember her watching.

Once we got back to the main part of the mall and found my mom, I finally relaxed. The rest of the day was completely normal. Eventually, I forgot all about the woman.

At least until later that night.

When we got home, I became sick with a fever.

I remember lying in bed feeling hot and exhausted before eventually falling asleep. Then I found myself somewhere else. The best way I can describe it is that I was inside a room made of flesh. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that's exactly what it looked like.

The walls fucking moved around me it was like i was inside a damn womb again . Everything seemed to pulse and squirm. It felt like I was sitting inside somebody's intestines. Naturally, I started freaking out. I remember crying and trying to get out. The whole room felt disgusting. It was warm, wet, and alive somehow.

What scared me most was that I was completely alone and had no idea where I was. I remembered crying so much i blacked out. When i woke up i could see trees , i found myself in a forest then I saw people nearby. There were four people wearing black robes and around ten to fifteen people tied together in a line.

At first, I thought they were prisoners. Then I got a better look. They looked tortured. Some were crying, some were barely standing.

I quickly hid near the side of the cave where I could still see them without being noticed. That's when I saw her. The woman from the restroom. She was standing with them.

The people who were tied up had strange symbols carved into their skin. They looked like they had been cut there with knives. Honestly, describing them as beaten or tortured doesn't really do them justice.

Some looked like they were degloved. Some appeared amputated. Others were so badly injured that they barely looked human. And the smell...

I don't know how I could smell something in a dream, but I could. It was awful. The most putrid even till now. I haven't smelled anything worse. I have no idea why I stayed there watching. Maybe because I recognized the woman or maybe because I was too terrified to move.

The two robed figures at the front of the line seemed to be searching for something around the cave. The other two stayed behind the people who were tied up. The cave itself wasn't some huge opening. It was the kind of cave where you wonder why cave divers would willingly crawl inside.

Then the woman looked directly at me. At first, I almost didn't recognize her. She looked different somehow.

If it wasn't for her long hair and those hollow eyes, I wouldn't have realized it was the same woman from the restroom. Then we made eye contact and she pointed at me. The robed figures immediately turned in my direction. later, I realized something strange about that moment.

She never said a word. Nothing was covering her mouth. Yet she never spoke. She only ever pointed. The robed figures started moving toward me.

I could barely see their faces as they dragged me away. I could sense confusion from them, but they tied me up anyway. I found myself at the back of the line, tied by the neck just like the others. I remember crying my eyes out because I really didn't want to go back into that cave.

I pleaded and pleaded, telling them that I wasn't supposed to be there, but it was no use. I was stuck in that damn line while the two robed figures continued searching for something.

Eventually, they found it. A small wooden door, heavily chained shut. The door slowly opened as they pried the chains away. As soon as it opened, the line began moving.

One by one, the people dropped onto all fours and started crawling through the small opening.

Earlier, I described how putrid the people smelled, but the stench coming from that opening was somehow even worse. It smelled like every rotten thing imaginable had been mixed with feces and packed inside that cave.

The smell was so overwhelming that even now, over twenty years later, I can still remember it. The line slowly moved forward. Closer and closer to the opening.

And just before it was my turn to enter, everything went black.

The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital bed with my parents sitting beside me. I later found out that I had been unconscious for three days because of dengue fever. After that incident, life went on.

Every now and then, though, I would remember that dream and end up feeling sick to my stomach. Sometimes I would even throw up. Nonetheless , I grew up like any other kid but i wouldn't deny that it did fucked me up. I never mentioned any of these to anyone even my parents i buried this deep into my memories then eventually fulfilled my dream and became a doctor.

For years, I convinced myself it was nothing more than a fever dream. Maybe it was a weird lucid dream ? You know those weird dreams you have when you have a fever . I don't even know how could a child that age can even come up with those concepts. But i long forgotten it.

But then something happened recently.

I saw her. I saw that woman. She looked exactly the same as the last time I saw her. She was my patient.

She was rushed into the ER covered in severe injuries, with those same strange symbols carved into her skin. There she was, lying on my table. I tried to save her. I really did. But the trauma was simply too extensive. Her body gave out before we could stabilize her. I wanted to ask her so many questions , just to make any sense about it.

She had multiple fractures, extensive soft tissue injuries, and signs of prolonged abuse. Some of her injuries were unlike anything I'd ever seen in my career.

One detail in particular still messes with my head, but I don't feel comfortable describing it. She had been found in a public place and brought to our hospital. The fact that she arrived alive at all was a miracle. She was admitted as a Jane Doe. No identification. No wallet. No phone. Nothing.

The police took over the investigation almost immediately. I wasn't supposed to know anything beyond what was necessary for treatment. Every time I tried asking questions, I got the same answer.

"It's being handled."

But that only made it worse. I haven't slept properly since. I can't get her out of my head. I don't even know where to begin. I don't want to think about it, but the questions keep coming. I can barely bring myself to go to work anymore. And now I can't stop thinking about it. About the dream. About the cave ,those symbols.

About her.

And about the fact that she looked exactly the same as she did twenty years ago.

Am i going to end up like her ?

I wish i could forget it all it doesn't even make fucking sense. I sound crazy as hell , maybe i am who knows but i don't care anymore . I just want to get this off my chest. I'm now seeing a psychiatrist the fear and anxiety is slowly killing me. I don't know if i ever want to dug deeper into this.

My head fucking hurts just writing this. I had altered and didn't mention some information that would better explain why I'm freaking out about jane doe for privacy reasons especially she was still a patient.

May she rest in peace.

When my grandfather passed away three months ago, he didn't leave me money, real estate, or traditional inheritances. He left me a journal bound in worn leather, a heavy brass key, and a single instruction engraved on the back cover: “Don't break the cycle. The price of silence has already been paid for fifty years. Now it's your turn.”

​I thought it was just the delusion of an old man who spent his last years isolated on a farm in the countryside. As the new heir to the property, I decided to move here to save on rent while I finish my high school studies at night. The place was quiet—too quiet.

​Everything changed on the first Tuesday of the month.

I woke up around 2:45 AM to a rhythmic sound coming from the backyard. Whish... whish... whish. It was the sound of straw brooms sweeping the stone floor. I got up carefully, without turning on the lights, and looked through the gap in the bedroom window. The moonlight illuminated the garden. There were three figures down there. They wore long robes of a gray so dark it almost blended with the night. Hoods completely covered their faces.

​They were in absolute silence, moving in perfect, almost mechanical synchronicity. One of them swept the few leaves that had fallen on the ground. The other trimmed the bushes. The third stood in the center of the lawn, holding a small dark wooden box. My blood ran cold.

I stood there watching, paralyzed. When the clock struck exactly 4:00 AM, the three men stopped, bowed toward the house, and walked in a single file until they vanished into the darkness.

​The next day, I grabbed my grandfather's journal. I found the entry corresponding to that date, written in the '70s:

“They came today for the first time. The Order of the Pure Harvest. They don't want your gold, they don't want your soul. They want Order. They keep the world clean of imperfections. In exchange, we provide the blood tithe each cycle. If the garden is dirty, they enter the house. If the tithe is not delivered, they harvest the resident.”

​I thought it was madness. I decided I wouldn't be a part of it. The following Tuesday, I made the biggest mistake of my life. I scattered trash, dry leaves, and branches all over the garden on purpose. I left no offering. I locked all the doors and windows with chains and waited with a knife in my hand.

​At 2:45 AM, the sound began. Whish... whish... whish.

I peeked through the blinds. The three men in gray were there. But they didn't start sweeping. They walked around the messy garden, looking at the dirt. The man holding the wooden box walked up to my front door. He didn't knock. He just scratched the wood with a long nail, leaving a deep groove. Then, a voice echoed right inside my head—an overlapping voice, as if hundreds of people were speaking at the same time: “IMPURE.”

​They turned and left. I thought I had won. But the next morning, when the sun rose, the garden was dead. All the grass had dried up and turned gray. And in the center of the lawn, impaled on a wooden stake, was the perfectly clean carcass of the neighbor's dog, without a single drop of blood or flesh left. Beside the stake, the dark wooden box was open, waiting.

​Today is Monday. Tomorrow is the night they come back. My skin started itching yesterday, and small, dry, gray patches, like dirt, are spreading across my neck. I feel like I'm drying up inside. The brass key my grandfather left me opens a hatch in the basement. I can hear whispers coming from down there right now.

​I don't know whether to use the key to hide down there, or if I should take the knife and fill the wooden box with my own blood before they arrive at 2:45 AM. Has anyone here ever heard of this cult? What do I do to reverse the "Impure"?

 I check the time, 11:32 PM. I was supposed to go to sleep after three “last episodes" ago since I have a meeting with my boss tomorrow and can’t afford to wake up late. 

 I finally get up off the couch and start getting ready for bed. I brush my teeth, brush my hair, check the locks on the doors. All that's left is to say good night to Albert.

 Albert is exactly where I expected him to be, in front of the patio door, his tail and ears tucked while his eyes watch the empty back yard like a camera.

 I reach out to pet him, but he startles back. 

 “Calm down buddy, it’s me. What’s got you all spooked?”

 I scan the backyard, not seeing anything but the dark empty lawn.

 There’s nothing there, he probably just needs to use the bathroom.

 “Why don’t you use the buttons, tell me what's wrong.” I gesture to the buttons on the ground.

 I bought Albert a set of buttons that have a word associated and read aloud when they're pressed. There are buttons for walk, bathroom, play, outside, mom, food, now, and a few more.

 Albert hesitantly walks over, not wanting to abandon his post. He stands in front of them for a moment thinking before placing his paw on a button.

 Outside. The robotic button announces.

 Weird, he never uses that one. If he wants to go outside, he picks “walk” or “bathroom”.

 “You wanna go outside?” It’s late, but a few minutes of cold fresh air could be nice before bed.

 “Sure, let’s go.”

 I walk towards the glass sliding door, reaching for the handle. A loud bark startles me.  Albert is an old dog and he hardly ever barks. Instead he relies on the buttons.

 “I get it, I get it. You're too energetic for your age. Watch, I'm opening it right now.”

 I unlock the door, and slide it open. He firmly stands in place, but his ears and tail are tucked and he explodes into deafening barks, each one sounds like it's using all the air in his lungs. 

 It freaks me out. I quickly shut the door and lock it and put a stick behind the door for extra measure.

 Albert stops barking but he’s growling weakly.

 There has to be something out there. He never acts like this. I flip on the patio light.

 Nothing. No light.

 I flick the switch a few more times.

 Still dark.

 Damn. The bulbs dead. I don’t use the patio lights much, how’s it’s burned out?

 I pull out my phone and turn on the flashlight and try to wave the beam through the glass. But the light is too weak to see anything more than a few feet.

 Should I call the cops? But what would I say? “My dogs barking at nothing.” I should get some sleep, I don’t have time for this. 

 “Ok buddy, maybe you just saw a squirrel or something, you can sleep in my room tonight if that calms you down, and maybe calm me down too.” 

 I try guiding him by lightly dragging his collar but he doesn't move, he just stares into the empty nothingness outside. I try yanking harder, but it feels like I'm trying to pull a statue.
 
 “Come on Albert-” I huff, “I’ll give you a treat if you come.” I'm practically choking him but he still won’t budge.

 I defeatedly let go. “Fine, be that way. You can stay out here.” 

 I walk away, expecting to hear his paws scrabble to follow me. But no, when I glance back, he’s still there, in the same spot, watching.

 I crawl into bed and close my eyes and try to relax.

 Outside. 

 The sound of the button is muffled through the wall. I roll over and try to ignore it.

 Outside.

 Outside. 

 Does Albert know what the button means? Did I teach him correctly?

 Outside. Outside. Outside.

 He’s starting to piss me off, I just want to sleep.

 Outside. Now. Outside. Now.

 I push myself out of bed to see what's going on.

 I walk back into the dining room.  Albert is still in his spot now focused more than ever, his growling vibrates the air.

 I stare into the yard, for a moment, the clouds part, moon lights beams down to reveal… nothing.

 “That's it Albert, you're going on mute. Sorry buddy.”

 I remove the batteries from the ‘outside’ and ‘now’ buttons.

 I scrutinize the rest. Just in case, I thought and pulled out all the batteries for the rest of the buttons.

 “I promise I'll put them back after we figure out what's got you jumpy, for now just try to get some rest.”

 I march back to bed, finally at ease. My eyes get heavy and I start to drift to sleep.

 Outside. Now. 

 The buttons again.…

I imagined it, I tell myself. But I doubt that the moment I think it. I pull the blankets over my head, every muscle tense, always one moment away from calling the police.

 OUTSIDE.  NOW. 

 This time I know I wasn't imagining it. It’s much louder, but the voice is still monotone. I grab my phone and dial 911.

 The call rings, and rings and rings endlessly. My grip tightens around the phone.

 COME. OUTSIDE. NOW.

’Come’ isn't one of the buttons. My fingers are to shaky to keep typing but I want someone to tell me I'm crazy or give me an answer to what it is or what I should do?

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11

I don’t need to tell Beth what happened to the bodies in the death house, what happened to her pseudo father Dr. Schile’s body. As soon as we return to the clinic, she comes anxiously to see us, eyes red rimmed, and distressed, a little bloodshot, and she knows. She shakes her head, mumbling over and over, “No, no, no- no!” Body half-collapsing as we both reach for her. She knows exactly what happened. She knows Dr. Schile is gone, not just everything that made him, him, but physically too. It’s a shocking blow for all of us. It feels like the last few days, and weeks where people keep dying was nothing more than a trapped wintery dream.

Without the bodies, well, I don’t know how to describe it. It’s as if maybe we really did slip into a nightmare, and slip out. Maybe all three of them, just wandered out into the storm, and didn’t return. Without the proof, and despite the memories and collective knowledge, it was almost as if we can convince ourselves that it was really a terrible dream.

There’s a look we give each other, I never really understand it until later, but it is fear. Something I’ve seen before, something we’ve all seen. That deep unknown. Latching onto anything to make sense of it, to make it easier. I just wanted to know. I just want to understand.

You don’t see that fear everyday, its only glimpses, but in Saltpine, as people kept dying, I’d see it everywhere. All the time. I’d see acceptance too. A kind of accepted relief. I couldn’t understand it, and maybe that look scared me more.

Trinity is humming along to the radio as I check her over again, eyes following me everywhere I go, body stock still though. As if there is something inside of her that is trying to escape. I can’t explain why I think that, just that I nagged at me, felt like something in those eyes were silently pleading, or planning, or both.

I don’t stay long, the storm hit, and the next day I have another patient I’m very worried for. One who hasn’t left her home in over four years, and lately it’s been getting worse. Her agoraphobia has grown, she now won’t get out of bed unless her bladder is about to burst. Her bed being her own safe space. If you ask her, that’s not why she won’t leave though, and I am trying to find a better diagnosis, have been for our last few sessions, but with everything going on, I have neglected much of my responsibility and duty to her, to my other patients as well.

Grahm drives me over.

She lives alone, and I really would have liked to remedy that, but there’s little to do with the town closed off, and so few resources. Her best friend and cousin from high school, and grade school before that comes over when she can, helps clean up, makes sure she eats. Even so, when we get there, it’s a mess.

The houses is trapped by snow on all sides, there’s indents of old deep foot prints from winter boots, covered over and filled half way from the onset of the last storm. The windows are mostly covered with it, and getting the door open takes Grahm and I a combined effort and strength to do so.

The house is small, an old miner’s house, but with a basement that holds an old firewood stove. She must not have lit it in a while, I’m freezing despite still wearing my large winter coat when I step in, and dark too. Pitch black, but Grahm has his flashlight, and shines it into the room, garbage is piled, and clothes too.

“Sam?” I call, gently, but firmly into the dark expanse.

There’s a kitchen, a living room, and bedroom off to the side next to the bathroom. That’s it. The basement door is next to the open one. It might seem like enough for her, and it is, but she lived here her whole life here. Before it was just her, she was with her parents and grandparents all under one roof here. Her grandma died when she was a baby. Her parents one by one. And then, as she spent her years in puberty with her grandfather, just after graduation, he died too.

She has never left her house since.

“In h- here! D- Dr. C- Cotts!” She calls, shivering with every word.

My concern grows, eyes turning to Grahm who nods silently, and then voices, “I’ll get the stove going, and see if I can find some food. Take this.” He hands me another flashlight, smaller, I accept it.

I thank him with a short nod, pushing through to the bedroom door, I knock again before entering. I find her curled up in her bed, under a mountain blankets, peeking out with pale lips. She’s trembling, and yet despite that she looks well rested. She smiles, all teeth.

“Hi, Sam.” I say gently, shining the light next to her.

“H- Hey.” She flinches, pupils wide, face pale. She looks ill. Like something’s off, almost ghoulish.

“Special Constable Grahm is here, he’s getting the house warmed up for us. Would you like to wait, or start now?”

Her eyes shift a little, there’s something guilty there. “N- Now.”

-

TAPED SESSION: SAMANTHA BOUVIER WITH DR. COTTS #8

Dr. Cotts: This is Dr. Cotts conducting session #[redacted] with Samantha Bouvier.

How are you feeling, Sam?

Samantha: C- Cold.

Dr. Cotts: Well, I can hear the fire now, but that’s physically. Let’s talk about how your mind is doing?

Samantha: F- Fine. I’ve been s- sleeping a lot.

Dr. Cotts: Last time I was here, we talked about how much sleep a person needs, remember?

Samantha: Y- Yeah. Eight hours.

Dr. Cotts: About eight, yes. Last time you were far above that. How about now? Did the medication help?

Samantha: …

Dr. Cotts: It’s alright, Sam. I just need you to be honest with me, it stays between us, remember?

Samantha: Nineteen.

Dr. Cotts: You’ve been sleeping for nineteen hours a day?

Samantha: Yes.

Dr. Cotts: How?

Samantha: …

Samantha: I didn’t throw away all the sleeping pills.

Dr. Cotts: I see.

Samantha: But Dr. Cotts, I had to! Please don’t be angry with me!

Dr. Cotts: It’s alright, take a deep breath, I’m not angry. But I do think we should talk about this further, is that okay with you?

Samantha: Y- Yeah. I guess.

Dr. Cotts: Alright, so let’s start off from last time.

Last time, you told me that you need them to see your grandfather, can you tell me more about that?

Samantha: W- Well, it’s not exactly like that.

Dr. Cotts: What is it like, then?

Samantha: It’s- It’s hard to explain.

Dr. Cotts: Can you try?

Samantha: Okay. My grandfather was a miner. Most grandfathers are around here. Were. Lots of fathers still are, but they go out of the town now for it during the summer.

Dr. Cotts: Yes, I remember.

Oil wells now, is that right?

Samantha: Yeah, but it never used to be like that. It used to be salt. Here.

You know there’s a story, a myth of sorts to how we got our name. They say people came through here, missionaries who never been to Canada before. They come from overseas, places without snow. There was no snow because it was late in the year, all up the coast, up through the west, but once they got this far north, there it was, snow! They didn’t know what to call it, so they called it salt. Saw the pine trees, and called it Saltpine. Everyone who goes to school here knows that, something we’d whisper about on the playground around nine or ten. Learned it from an older brother or cousin, or something. Thought we were so smart to figure it out.

But then, you get older, and you find out about the salt under it.

Everyone knew someone who was trying to get it out.

Father, grandfather, brother, uncle. Someone. Then, the childish feeling disappears. You feel old, stupid, oh, that’s why. Saltpine.

But nobody does it anymore. Get the salt out. It’s not there anymore. Then, you start to ask why. I was just a kid, and I came home, and asked my father. My grandfather who never says anything, just sits in that old armchair and stares out the window, finally spoke. It was the first I ever heard him speak since those first few times after my grandma died where he'd rant about how 'they changed his name, their name.' I think even my dad was shocked. He was frozen, didn’t interrupt, didn’t say anything, even when it got strange. The kind of strange that makes you shiver even though the stove is going on a twenty plus day.

My grandfather was one of the lucky ones who made it out when it collapsed. The whole fucking mine. It just collapsed on them as they were working. Everyone was worried because almost all the salt was gone. The salt company was about to pull out of here, and everyone’s jobs would be lost. Almost every family relied on it.

People who’ve never been here say such awful things, saying we did it on purpose to get the buyout of insurance, and lifetime payments from the company, government assistance. But people died, Dr. Cotts. And the way my grandfather told it…

He was the deepest in too, didn’t make sense how he got out.

He says there was a light, it was far off in the distance, everyone got scared, but not my grandfather, he went in past all the frozen miners. Brothers, uncles, cousins, neighbors, everyone. He went straight to it, never been afraid. Been in those mines since he was nine. The light was like an orb. It looked like the story his own father told him about…

He went further than all of them, and then the light shot out towards him, and as it came closer, all the wood bent inward by some unseen force, some unseen hands, maybe? It wasn’t possible. But, it broke so easy, like someone snapping toothpicks, but these wood beams were so large, so massive, it’s not possible. Even dirt collapsing couldn’t do it like that.

All the dirt caved in so quickly, nobody had time to react. It went up his ears, he said, through his nose, down his throat, swallowed them all whole.

He grasped for something, hands curled around roots he said, and then he felt it. The whole earth was groaning, travailing, it was moving away, and then towards him in a scheduled rhythm. As if the whole earth was breathing. In and out. In and out. In and out.

He reached for the roots through the dirt when it would breathe out, then it would breathe in and he’d stop, then it breathe out and he’d grab another root, over and over, until somehow he clawed his way out of it completely.

He told me this as he sat in that armchair that’s right out in the living room, not just with his face pointed towards window, he’d sleep too, all the time, he told me that when he’s asleep- when he’s dreaming, he’s back there.

I asked him why’d he want to go back, shaking and terrified as I was at ten, that story scared me so bad. I was so young. All that dark. All that dark. Felt like a monster was trying to swallow them up. But, he told me that it wasn’t scary for him. He told me…

Dr. Cotts: …

Dr. Cotts: What did he tell you?

Samantha: Well, after the mine collapsed, when he dug his way up, he couldn’t see anymore. His eyesight was gone, could only see the blinding white when it snowed, and the dark when he shut em. So, I thought he sat in that chair because he could only see the snow, and looked out there. But I think it’s because as he sat in that chair, dreaming, he could see. He could really see. Better than most who can. I want to see too. I don’t want to sleep Dr. Cotts, I only want to dream.

Dr. Cotts: What did he tell you, Sam?

Samantha: He told me, that he never understood why my grandmother went to church until then. He told me that he wants to go back. Back to that light.

He was found behind the house, you know. He was digging in the dirt. Collapsed over, they said it was a heart attack.

He never left the house until that night. It was the first time in years. I don’t even know how he made it out past the locks I put up.

Dr. Cotts: Locks?

Samantha: Yeah. He started sleepwalking. I was worried.

-

Eloise cooks a lot of meat, she really enjoys it, and it’s never been a problem before. She cooks other foods that I eat, sides like potatoes, and noodles. She makes bread a lot, a staple around here. Sometimes it’s oats, but there’s pickled eggs, and cheeses. Normal foods, and we always eat amicably together despite my different diet. I would never disparage her for hers, and she’s not done the same to me. Only offering every time she makes it, as if I’ll change my mind, offering a little more insistently lately as my eyes catch on the steaming pile of steak, sausage, or bacon. Whatever she’s having.

I can’t help it, my stomach gnaws, hungry.

Despite the nausea I’ve been suffering from lately, the exhaustion, sore back, tired feet. The meat always seems so appetizing. It’s never bothered me quite like this before. Tonight is no exception. I’ve just come from Samantha’s place, and the darkness of day and night is easier in Eloise’s light filled kitchen. Food cooking, candles lit, and the fire going in the living room. Her easy smile, and even easier conversation is familiar and this place is starting to feel like some kind of bizarre home.

I still put the chair up against my door, and I find the dreams are increasing in frequency and terror, but her place is part of the few comforts I have, despite it all.

“How is Samantha? I knew her mother once.” Eloise says wistfully as she puts the food onto the table, it’s steaming. The meat is rare, I should be revolted, I should be turning my nose up at it, but instead my gaze lingers, my mouth waters. My usually queasy stomach abates to pure deep raw hunger instead.

The steaks are juicy, looking fresh, despite being cooked from frozen.

“Would you like one, dear?” Eloise says, noticing by gaze again. Her smile is large, teeth whiter than I remember. She’s a habitual tea drinker, they’ve always been stained yellow, haven’t they?

“N- No. I don’t eat meat, but thank you.” I smile tightly, stab my fork into some potatoes instead. The smell curls into me, and the taste of potatoes is pure starch. I gag on it, and put my fork back down. I push my plate of food away instinctively. I feel sick.

“Oh, Laura, dear, you look positively pale. You must eat, dear. Please, I won’t tell, just a couple bites of it, hm?” She pushes the plate of steaks in front of me.

I open my mouth to tell her that I won’t eat meat again, but my tastebuds catch the aroma, and I feel faint. So hungry.

My fingers curl, and uncurl, I want it so bad. I’ve never wanted anything so much before.

I’m outside of my body, I’m reaching out to the meat with bare hands.

Mine.

I blink and several maggots wiggle along the meat, it startles me so severely I’m already standing up from my chair, my hand batting at it like a spider appearing next to me suddenly. The plate and meat go flying. It shatters on the ground, and juice splashes.

I’m breathing so heavily, staring with wide terrified eyes, wanting to vomit again.

I look closely, walking over to it, bending down, hand reached out, but there’s no maggots. It’s just two perfect steaks in a sea of broken dish pieces.

Eloise’s hand comes down on mine hard, slapping it like you would a toddler. I look up at her, and she’s smiling, gently, but it’s creased up in the corners in a way that seems oddly large and tight, I shiver. I’m a little stuck, a little frozen.

“Careful, dear. It wouldn’t be good to hurt yourself in your condition. Go on up to your room, I’ll take care of this. I’ll bring up some soup.” She says, hand curling around mine now, rubbing gently.

I feel sicker, not really there, as I find myself listening to her.

I move in slow motion upstairs, wondering what is wrong with me as I slip into the bathroom. I splash cold water on my face as her words go around and around in my head.

‘my condition?’

Nausea rears its head in, and I’m scrambling to the toilet, almost too late as I empty pure bile.

It hits me then, harder than bricks, like a house collapsing onto me.

My period is late. I thought it was stress, the environment. It’s happened before when I was younger, in med school. I didn’t think much of it. But it’s a little more than late this time. This time it’s been two weeks.

Shakily, I get to my feet, and find my pale face reflecting back at me in the mirror with dark circles under my eyes, and sweat beading down my forehead. There’s a look there in my eyes too. One of true, abject terror. White knuckles gripping the edge of the bathroom sink as the undeniable truth washes over me.

I’m pregnant.

I’m sure of it.

I’m not proud of it, I’m really ashamed, but in that moment, I can’t help the thought that consumed me. An inescapable dread washing over me, as I voice it silently in my mind, eyes on my stomach, what if you’re hungry too?

-Dr. Laura Cotts

The 'Yes' Man

I’m writing this from the hallway bathroom right now. I can hear them through the door. Leo is laughing, that loud, barking drunk laugh of his, and Marcus keeps egging him on. Underneath it all is Arthur—the guy they dragged home from the bar—answering them in that flat, deadpan voice.

"Yes, Leo."

"Yes, Marcus."

It started out as a joke. Leo came bursting through the front door at midnight, absolutely wasted, dragging this guy by the arm. Marcus was trailing right behind them, holding a fresh twelve-pack and filming the whole thing on his phone.

The stranger looked totally normal. Khakis, a faded blue button-down, thin wire glasses. He looked like an accountant who had gotten lost on his way to a spreadsheet.

"Dude, you gotta see this," Leo yelled, tripping over his own sneakers. "Met this guy at The Rusty Anchor. Tell him the rule, Artie. Tell him!"

Arthur just smiled. It was a polite, customer-service smile, but his eyes were completely bloodshot. "I signed a non-disclosure and compliance waiver with the Vanguard Research Group," Arthur said, his voice entirely level. "For the next twenty-four hours, I am legally and psychologically prohibited from refusing any direct request or using any form of the word 'no'. It’s a compliance endurance study."

I rolled my eyes. I thought it was a bit. A TikTok prank. Some viral marketing stunt.

"Bro, it’s legit," Marcus whispered to me, shoving his phone screen in my face. He showed me a video from twenty minutes ago at the bar. In the video, Leo told Arthur to dump a pint of beer over his own head. The video cut to Arthur doing it, completely expressionless, while the whole bar cheered. "We found a golden goose, man. He can't say no."

I sat on the arm of the couch, watching them. "Come on, guys. Let the guy go home. It’s late."

"He doesn't want to go home, do you, Artie?" Leo grinned, slapping Arthur on the back.

"No—I mean, yes, I am happy to remain here," Arthur corrected himself quickly, his posture stiffening. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple.

Marcus set his phone up on the coffee table, propping it against the tissue box to record the room. "Alright, let's test the limits. Arthur, give Leo your wallet."

Without a second of hesitation, Arthur reached into his back pocket, pulled out a worn leather wallet, and handed it over. Leo opened it, laughing, pulling out two twenties and a random library card.

"See?" Marcus hyped him up. "I told you! Okay, my turn. Arthur, do twenty pushups. Right now."

Arthur immediately dropped to the hardwood floor. He didn't take off his wire glasses. He just started pumping them out. But he wasn't built for it. By pushup number twelve, his arms were shaking violently, his face turning a deep, dangerous shade of purple.

"Look at him go!" Leo cheered, cracking open another beer.

"Guys, stop," I said, finally standing up. The air in the room felt heavy, sour. "He’s going to collapse. Arthur, stop. Get up."

Arthur’s arms locked up. He stayed hovering two inches above the floor, trembling, staring straight at the wood. He didn't stand up.

"Hey, don't ruin the fun," Marcus snapped at me. "Arthur, ignore him. Do five more."

Arthur groaned, a low, pathetic sound, and forced his chest back down to the floor.

That’s when I noticed his hands. He was pressing down so hard on the floorboards that his fingernails were starting to split against the wood, leaving faint, dark smudges. He wasn't stopping because he couldn't. The psychological conditioning, or whatever the hell that company did to him, was overriding his own body's survival instincts.

And Leo and Marcus were starting to realize exactly how much power they had.

"Alright, Artie," Leo said, his voice dropping into a lower, nastier register. The fun party vibe was entirely gone, replaced by a dark, toxic curiosity. "Let's see how deep this compliance goes. Marcus, give me your lighter."

"Leo, don't," I stepped between them, my heart hammering against my ribs. "This isn't a joke anymore. He's bleeding. Look at his hands."

"Back off, man, it's a scientific study! He signed up for it!" Marcus yelled, pushing me back while keeping the phone pointed right at Arthur's face. "Arthur, tell him. You want to do this, right?"

Arthur looked up from the floor. His glasses were crooked. Tears were actively streaming down his face, pooling in the wrinkles of his cheeks, but his mouth forced itself into that terrifyingly polite customer-service smile.

"Yes," Arthur whispered. "I want to do this."

"See?" Leo sneered. He flicked the Bic lighter, the small yellow flame dancing in the dimly lit apartment. He held it out. "Arthur. Put your palm over the flame. Keep it there until I tell you to stop."

Arthur didn't blink. He didn't hesitate. He raised his right hand, the fingers raw and bloody from the floorboards, and began lowering it directly over the fire.

"Arthur, no! Stand up and walk out of this apartment right now!" I screamed, desperate to break the spell.

"Arthur, sit down on the floor and lock the front door from the inside!" Leo countered instantly, his eyes wide with a terrifying, drunken god-complex.

Arthur froze.

His hand stayed hovering an inch above the open flame. His eyes darted violently between me and Leo. A low, guttural click came from the back of his throat. He was caught in a logical paradox—two conflicting, absolute commands given by two different people, with no mechanism to say "no" to either.

The polite smile on his face began to twitch, stretching so wide I thought his skin would tear. The wire glasses slid off his nose and clattered to the floor.

"Arthur?" Marcus asked, his voice suddenly losing its cockiness. He lowered the phone a fraction of an inch.

Arthur didn't answer. The trembling shifted from his arms to his entire torso. He wasn't a submissive subject anymore; he looked like a pressurized steam pipe right before it bursts. The absolute, suffocating silence of the room shattered when Arthur suddenly grabbed his own head, his bloody fingers digging into his hair, and let out a sound that didn't even sound human.

That’s when I panicked. I backed away, bolted down the hall, and locked myself in the bathroom.

Which brings me to now.

I’m sitting on the edge of the tub. The laughter from the living room stopped a minute ago. I can't hear Leo anymore. I can't hear Marcus. All I can hear through the thin wood of the bathroom door is the heavy, dragging sound of footsteps coming down the hallway, accompanied by a frantic, rhythmic tapping.

It sounds like someone frantically clicking a ballpoint pen. Or a lighter.

And then, a soft, polite knock rattles the bathroom door.

"Are you in there?" Arthur's flat voice asks from the darkness of the hallway. "Please open the door. Leo told me to make sure everyone stays in the room."

I'm holding my breath. My phone battery is at 4%.

I can hear Marcus’s phone buzzing on the floor out there, vibrating against the hardwood, ringing over and over again. Nobody is picking it up.

© 2026. All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced or adapted without the author's explicit permission.

It didn't arrive in a storm of fire, nor did it descend spectacularly from the heavens. We detected its intrusion through Project Argos, a deep-spectrum antenna system I worked on, designed to map gravitational anomalies at the edge of the solar system. For three weeks, our instruments didn't record numerical data, but rather an interference pattern that, when translated into audio frequencies, mimicked the sound of slow, rhythmic human breathing. The entry vector was Dr. Arthur Vance—my direct supervisor and the head of the facility's quantum neurology wing.

I found Vance in his office, standing static in front of a row of dead monitors. His pupils had dilated so severely that his irises were completely nonexistent. When the security team tried to move him on my orders, we discovered his body temperature had dropped to levels incompatible with life, yet his heart was beating at a frantic, impossible pace. The entity hadn't destroyed his mind; it had simply poured itself into it. It was using Vance’s nervous system as a biological funnel to candy a presence that our measuring instruments described as a mass of infinite density, contained within barely seventy kilograms of flesh.

Our greatest mistake was believing we had won. We assumed Vance's catatonic state was proof that the human brain functioned as a closed system—a perfect cage for a visitor that had clearly underestimated the limitations of organic matter. We were wrong. The confinement wasn't a triumph of our engineering; it was a concession made by the host.

Soon, the very atmosphere of the facility began to rot. The digital clocks in the peripheral hallways started counting backward in perfect synchronization. Security feed operators kept reporting to me that staring at Vance’s cell caused a sharp ringing in their ears, often ending in mild nosebleeds. Looking at the video logs myself, I could see a subtle physical distortion around him: the air seemed thicker, almost liquid, and light itself warped right before touching his skin. It was the quiet manifestation of a predator playing with the bars of a cage it had chosen to lock from the inside.

That was when my superiors approved the protocol: Anubis's Scales.

If I'm being honest, the project didn't stem from scientific necessity, but from a much darker urge that began to infect the entire medical staff. There was an implicit malice in the eyes of my fellow researchers. The official justification on paper was to find the entity's breaking point through extreme biological stress; the reality was that the team wanted to watch a cosmic aberration suffer. And I did nothing to stop them.

We designed a modified sensory deprivation chamber. We suspended Vance’s body in a conductive gel while injecting him with neurotoxin cocktails engineered to amplify pain receptor sensitivity by a thousand percent. Simultaneously, we delivered direct electrical shocks to his cerebral cortex, combined with pneumatic pressure variations that pushed his blood vessels to the absolute brink of collapse. I stood there, watching the monitors.

During the first few hours of phase three, the body reacted like any human would. Vance’s vocal cords tore into a multiphonic shriek—a chorus of discordant frequencies that sounded as though dozens of voices were screaming in unison from the bottom of a mass grave. The scientists in the observation room smiled alongside me. They monitored the cortisol spikes with an almost sadistic enthusiasm. There was a sickening complicity between the executioner throwing the switches and the horror resting on the operating table.

But the horror changed sides at 03:14 AM. I will never forget that timestamp.

The spasms stopped abruptly. The heart monitor flatlined for exactly seven seconds, and then, the subject began to laugh. It wasn't a nervous reflex. It was a genuine, euphoric laugh, a burst of absolute delight bubbling up from a throat flooded with blood. Through the quartz glass, the creature locked its eyes directly onto me.

The extreme pain, the physical agony, and the physiological terror of suffocation weren't weakening the entity; they were feeding it. For a being that originated from the cold inertia of the outer void, the chemistry of human pain was the most potent stimulant ever conceived. The suffering of the flesh was its ecstasy. In that horrific instant, I realized we weren't torturing a prisoner; we were financing a monster's addiction.

The escape required no mystical anomalies or broken laws of physics; it was the logical, inevitable consequence of plugging a hyper-stimulated nervous system into an automated containment grid. At the absolute peak of the electrical torture, the creature learned to read the impulses running through the wires piercing its spine. Using the massive surge of energy from its own tachycardic heart, the entity fired the current back through the monitoring electrodes, modulating the frequency to hack the facility’s physical life-support systems.

The pneumatic laboratory doors blasted open under pressure, snapping the fleeing guards clean in two. The ventilation systems reversed their flow, flooding the hallways with halon fire-suppression gas and suffocating the staff right at their desks. I managed to sprint to one of the manual emergency exits before the systems completely locked down. As I fled, I looked back one last time: the creature was simply walking among the corpses, pulling the wires out of its flesh with deliberate slowness, savoring every single tear of its epidermis.

Today, the government considers the unit completely lost. I know the subject is currently roaming the urban fringes. I've been monitoring local police scanners in the city where I'm hiding; they describe a relentless vagrant, a silhouette lurking in dark alleyways whose wounds never quite heal. Witnesses claim he spends his nights carving deep gashes into himself with broken glass or shoving rusted objects up under his fingernails. He's still looking for his fix.

I know a well-placed shot to a vital organ could stop that borrowed heart. I know exactly where to shoot him. But I don't dare do it, and I know that if my former superiors ever track him down, they won't dare give the order either.

My real fear—the one that keeps me awake at night, staring out my apartment window—isn't what that mutilated body might do on the streets. The true terror is knowing that if that puppet of flesh dies, the god will run out of toys... and its gaze will turn back to the rest of us.

Part 1 - 3

My knees felt weak. “Did you kill him?” I said, my voice faltering.
 
“I can’t tell you, it’s a secret,” it giggled in response.
 
Out of nowhere, its little body began to twitch, fast. It jerked its head around so hard, I half-expected it to tear right off and fall on the floor. I watched in horror as needle-like teeth began to poke through its soft, pink gums.
 
Its bones started to crack and bend, creating unimaginable angles and shapes. Pieces stuck through the skin everywhere, creating a puddle of drool and blood.
 
They would take on a new form before breaking again, the sound making me feel sick to my stomach. It was almost touching the ceiling.
 
Its ten little fingers and toes grew longer and longer, turning into razor sharp claws.
 
The skin of its previous form was too small to withstand its transformation. I heard the flesh pop and rip, revealing organs that squirmed like maggots. It began to patch itself back together with skin that came in all different shapes and colors.
 
“Is that the skin of all the people he imitated before Damien?” I shuddered at the thought.
 
I beheld the atrocity standing in the doorway, coming to the realization I was very unprepared to attack what was in front of me. At most, I would be lucky to survive.
 
Before I had time to think, it swung at me, throwing me into the wall. I dropped the knife as I cried out. The impact sent pain ricocheting throughout my body and evicted the air from my lungs.
 
Fumbling around, I tried to grab the knife as it charged at me again. I had just managed to wrap my fingers around the handle when it pinned me down. I could feel a claw sinking deeper and deeper into my shoulder.
 
It held up my arm and sliced it with surgical precision, slitting my wrist. I managed to reach up and stab its abdomen, a trickle of black liquid pouring out. It didn’t seem to faze it though. I tried again and again, but the warm fluid made it difficult to keep a grip on the knife.
 
It grabbed a fist full of my hair and drug me into the kitchen.
 
“Let me go!” I screamed “I can forget this ever happened and you can keep playing pretend,” tears filled my eyes.
 
It said nothing, as it began to examine our utensils.
 
Instead of choosing a sharp steak knife, it picked up a spoon. It admired its choice before lifting me up to meet its gaze.
 
I screamed and thrashed as it slowly moved the edge of the spoon to my eye. My mind was racing.
 
“Is this how I die? Is this the end?”
 
I held my eyes shut as tightly as possible, knowing it wouldn’t stop the inevitable. I prayed that Sam would find Damien after I died. If he was truly gone though, at least we were about to be reunited.
 
A car door slammed shut. I dropped to the ground.
 
“SAM, HELP ME!” I screamed, hoping he would hear me.
 
He threw open the door, taking in the scene. Color drained from his face. The living room and kitchen had splintered wood and broken picture frames littering the floor. Blood was spilled everywhere, most of it my own. He ran over to me and grabbed a dish towel, trying to put pressure on my wound.
 
“Liz, what happened? Where’s Damien?”
 
He got up with a sense of urgency and started to search the kitchen.
 
“Thank God you’re home,” I said, trying to catch my breath.
 
“I was right…that thing…. replaced Damien. We have to find him.”
 
“What thing? Liz, where is our son?” Sam said. He was rummaging through cabinets and the trash can, only adding to the chaotic scene.
 
“I don’t know Sam, we have to find him.” I reached out my hand and waited for help.
 
It never came.
 
Ignoring me, he moved room to room, turning the whole house upside down.
 
“Sam what are you doing? Damien’s not here, we have to-”
 
He stopped in his tracks and finally acknowledged me.
 
“Elizabeth. What have you done with him? WHERE IS OUR SON?”
 
I was taken aback. Why didn’t he understand? Why didn’t he believe me?
 
“Tell me where he is, or I’m calling the cops.” He said with a mixture of heartbreak and hatred.
 
“Sam, I told you, I don’t know. I PROMISE I would never hurt our baby. I mean look at this place, look at ME. Do you really think I did this myself?” I cried out, begging to be believed.
 
He stared at me and tears began to fill his eyes.
 
“I don’t know Elizabeth, but what I DO know is that Damien is missing, and all that blood out there? There’s no way it’s just yours.”
 
He pulled out his phone and dialed 911.
 
“Please… no…”
 
I was at a loss for words. In a matter of days, my whole life had fallen apart.
 
Our miracle baby was gone, or worse. My husband believed I killed him, and I was about to be arrested for a crime I didn’t commit.
 
Red and blue flashed through our windows.
 
“Please find our baby, Sam, please don’t stop until you find him.” I pleaded as they put me in the back of the car.
 
He said nothing, turning away from me.
 
In the following weeks, I was interviewed by numerous detectives and psychiatrists.
 
Eventually, it was determined that I had experienced an extreme case of postpartum psychosis. I was found not guilty by plea of insanity, and as a result, they committed me to the State’s psychiatric hospital.
 
Sam visited me the day I got admitted.
 
“Have they found Damien?” I asked as soon as he was seated.
 
“Uh… no, not yet. They’re still looking. That’s actually why I’m here.” He said, refusing to meet my gaze.
 
“Do you have any idea where you might’ve hidden him? I just want to put Damien to rest… please.”
 
“Sam, I told you. I didn’t do anything. I don’t know where he is.” I sighed.
 
“Okay. If that’s all you have to say.” He nodded to the supervisor, indicating he was ready to leave.
 
Before he walked out of the door, he turned back to me. I could see the tears in his eyes.
 
“Goodbye Elizabeth.”
 
I never saw him again.
 
I’m not quite sure how long I’ve been in here. They have me on a heavy medication regime so it’s hard to keep track of time. It doesn’t stop the nightmares from coming though.
 
I know what happened was real. I know what I lived through. I know Damien is out there somewhere. Growing up without his parents. All I can hope is that he’s had a good life.
 
Most importantly, I know that creature is still out there somewhere.
 
Impersonating someone new.
 
I just pray they put things together before it’s too late.

I opened my eyes, looking around confused. How did I get here? My last memory waswinding down before bed; I had a bad headache that wouldn’t go away.
I lift my head and start to look around me. It’s dark, the ground is a heavy clay below me leaving imprints of my feet. There was a forest of tall trees all clawing towards the sky, completely naked. Brittle, dead leaves barely clinging onto the limbs of the trees. The sky was dark, only a few stars glimmering overhead. There was a big lake, the water looked like spilled black ink. There was no wind, no warmth but the water was folding over itself in the distance.
I noticed an old shipwreck not too far from me, it looked abandoned. I know I should have been scared, but it was quiet and I felt safe. Against everything I would have normally done, I started walking towards the shipwreck. It’s like it called to me, this feeling, an urge to go see what’s inside. It wasn’t a big boat. I climbed up a small ladder leading me up to the deck. The floor below me creaked slightly. I realised I was holding my breath this whole time. I let myself exhale while I was finding the courage to look around.
I started walking to the back of the boat towards a door that was slightly leaned open, like it was already waiting for me. I pulled the door open slowly, trying to make no noise. It was too quiet, I felt like everyone in the world could hear my every move.
I took half a step in, even though a big curiosity took over me I was still on high alert. I looked around a small room; it was almost empty. I took another, this time full step into the room. I squinted my eyes still adjusting to the dark. I saw the walls were covered in picture frames. Some were normal, like portraits of people, couples, families. But some were alarming, portraits of people covered in blood, but not as if they were in danger but as if they were dangerous themselves. My stomach started getting an uneasy feeling, my hands started to become wet, and I had a weird feeling all the way down my spine. I stepped back out of the room, closing the door fully behind me. I exhaled.
The question came to me again -Where am I? How did I get here? Is this real?
I walked back onto the deck, looking into the lake. I noticed another shipwreck, this time only half a ship. I could barely make it out. My eyes started adjusting to the darkness in the distance and I could just barely make out a person, standing at the top of the shipwreck waving at me.
I thought they might be in danger, I need to help them. I felt my pockets for my phone just to realise I had nothing on me. My mouth felt dry. I should ignore them, but what if they were in real danger? I could never forgive myself if something happened to this person, knowing that I could have at least tried to help.
I felt a pain in my hands. I looked down, there was four crescent shapes in each palm. I didn’t realise how tense I was just thinking about it. I must help. I start looking around me and notice a small blow-up boat with a small paddle. It’s all ready to go.
Weird, I thought to myself. It’s like it was already prepared and left there for me to use. Ignoring all the signs that would usually have me rolling my eyes at people in horror movies, I pick up the blow-up boat. I throw it onto the ground by the ladder. I take one quick look all around me just to make sure it’s just me here.
All clear. I put the blow-up boat onto the lake and sit into it.
Is this really a good idea? I have never even been on a boat until now, and I don’t know how to swim so if anything, I’m putting me and the other person in danger.
But the guilt hits me again, I rather at least attempt to help.
I start doing my best to paddle out to the other shipwreck. It’s not far, but the water isn’t steady
As soon as I’m close to the shipwreck, I look up. A coldness runs through me. The person is dressed head to toe. Black leather gloves, black hoodie, black bottoms, black shoes, a black hat and a black ski mask and glasses. I start to really regret my decision, but I still want to make sure they are okay. I shout up “are you okay? Do you need help? Are you hurt?” but no answer. The person, I’m assuming male by the height and build.
I got a bad gut feeling, So I started backing away. I kept checking over my shoulder, but he was still standing there, not moving one inch just facing my direction. When I was halfway back to land, I looked back again. He jumped into the water and started swimming towards me. My heart started to hammer against my ribs, my pulse like thunder in my ears. What was he doing? Why am I here? Did he bring me here on purpose? My thoughts were racing.
I finally got to land. With every breath I took, I could feel my heart in my throat. I ran up to the shipwreck I had explored minutes earlier. I hid by the small room, trying to become one with the darkness.
He got to land and did a stretch like it was a casual sunny day at the beach, and he had just had a nice swim.
He started casually walking up to the shipwreck I was on. My stomach was in a knot, I didn’t know if I was going to throw up, scream, I could barely tell I was breathing.
He was on the deck. He walked towards the room I had explored earlier and started doing a tap on the wall. There was no rhythm to it, he was just letting me know he was close. He knew I was here. He knew I was close.
I started crawling towards the opposite side of the deck, I wanted to try make my way around and back to the ladder. His head kept following every direction I went. He continued with the tapping, the slow walking towards me like he knew there was no way out for me.
Fear had a grip on me; the panic was clawing at the edges of my mind. All I could think was ‘run’.
I stood up, and ran towards the ladder, taking one look at him before jumping down the ladder. He just stood there, watching me. Watching my panic completely take over. He was playing a game with me, and I was losing.
I ran towards the trees. I didn’t go too deep into those woods because I was scared I would get lost. I peered past the tree towards the shipwreck. He jumped down and started sprinting towards the trees. He was so close to me.
I started to sprint in a blind panic.
Why? Where am I? How did I get here? What does he want from me?
I was running out of options; I didn’t know where I was or what to do. Fear completely took over. I ran towards the lake. I just jumped into the water and tried my best to swim away. I looked back, and there he was.
He slowed down, got in the water and started swimming towards me. He was swimming right behind me, looking at me the way an alligator looks at its prey.
I spun around and tried swimming away in a panic.
I couldn’t help it. I kept looking back. He was so calm, the water was rippling around him. He wasn’t in a rush. He was taking this all in.
“What do you want from me??” I screamed desperately. No answer. Only silence. Only the noise of me trying to swim away.
I looked back again. This time he caught my ankle. He slowly lifted out of the water something shiny. At first, it was hard to make out. But then my vision adjusted and undeniably it was a carving knife.
I lost hope at the sight of it. I had nowhere left to go.
I stopped struggling. My arms fell limp at my sides as I let myself sink, surrendering to the cold embrace of the water. I could feel the cold lake consume me; the water was pulling me down making me feel heavy and weightless at the same time. The cold water was pouring into my lungs. My vision blurred,I saw him dive under the water, knife held tightly in his hand, drawings his arm back ready to strike.
Just as he was about to make contact, I saw blackness.
I opened my eyes. I was holding my breath. I sat up examining every part of my body I could see. I looked around me; I was in my room.
I was exactly where I had laid down right after taking ibuprofen to help with the awful headache I had. I felt like my skin was buzzing, sweat trickled down my back and forehead,
It was just a dream.    

There are five people who remember the night my sister died. The problem is, none of us remember it the same way.

For eight years I convinced myself that trauma was enough to explain that. People misremember things after something terrible happens. Memories blur. Details get crossed. Psychologists have written entire books about it.

But our memories are getting worse with time. They’re changing.

Last month, I asked Jonah what phase the moon had been that night. He stared at me for almost a minute before answering.

“There wasn’t one.”

I thought he was joking.

“There had to be. I remember it reflecting on the water.”

“There wasn’t.”

Then he asked me why I was smiling. I wasn’t.

That conversation finally convinced me to write this down before I forget anything else. Or before my memories change again.

My name is Ellie.

My sister, Willow, died eight years ago during a game of hide and seek in the woods behind our town. I think it started long before any of us realized we were playing.

My mom always used to say Willow was born to be a sister. I thought it was just something parents say because it sounds sweet. It wasn’t.

Willow was four years older than me. She taught me how to ride a bike without training wheels, how to whistle through a blade of grass, and how to spot deer before they spotted you. If I scraped my knee, she was already digging a band-aid out of her pocket before I started crying. She never forgot my birthday, even when she was old enough to pretend birthdays weren’t exciting anymore.

She never treated me like I was annoying. She wanted me around.

If she and her friends rode their bikes to the creek, I'd be wobbling behind them on my little blue  bike. If they built a fort in the woods, there’d always be a place inside for me. Whenever she noticed I'd fallen behind, she’d stop, reach her hand back without even looking, and wait until I caught up.

That’s the image that comes back the most. Her hand reaching back. Waiting for mine. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why I keep dreaming about her. Because in every dream, she’s still waiting. I just never reach her.

We lived in a tiny community surrounded by forest. Calling it a town feels generous. One road led in, the same road led back out.

Everybody knew each other. Most families had lived there for generations. Mine had. So had Zeke’s. So had Bea’s.

There wasn’t much for kids to do besides wander the woods, fish in the creek, or bother each other. Mostly the last one. That’s probably why Willow ended up friends with Zeke. Even when I was ten years old, I knew he was trouble. Adults described him as “rough around the edges.” Kids used different words.

Zeke wasn’t the kind of bully who punched people. He liked finding out what scared you. Then he’d make everyone laugh about it until you wished he’d just punched you instead. 

I never understood why Willow kept hanging around him. Looking back now, I don’t think she liked him very much. She just didn’t have many choices. 

The only good thing Zeke ever did was introduce me to his cousin, Nora.

She was eleven and painfully awkward, all elbows and knees and oversized hoodies she’d almost certainly stolen from her older brother. She could spend an hour talking about frogs but could barely look strangers in the eye.

We became friends almost immediately. With Nora came Bea. Bea was the quietest person I’d ever met. She always looked like she was listening for something nobody else could hear.

It started a week after my tenth birthday. My parents had driven into the nearest city for dinner and wouldn’t be home until late. They always trusted Willow to watch me. The second their car disappeared down the road, she called her friends. By seven o’clock our living room was full.

There was Willow, Zeke, Nora, Bea, and Jonah. 

Jonah was thirteen. If Willow had been the sister I wanted, Jonah was the brother I never had. He was the only person Zeke never seemed able to get under the skin of. Mostly because Jonah refused to play his games. 

When Zeke made fun of someone, Jonah changed the subject. When Zeke wanted to scare me, Jonah sat beside me. When Zeke tried starting arguments, Jonah usually ended them with a shrug and a, “Whatever.” 

Looking back, I think he spent most of that summer quietly making sure everyone else got home safe. He just couldn’t save Willow.

By sunset, we’d already gone through two bags of chips, almost a dozen cans of pop, and every board game in our house.

“I’m bored,” Zeke announced. Nobody answered. Then he smiled. “I know a game.”

Willow groaned dramatically. “Every time you say that, somebody gets hurt.”

“Not this one.”

“No?”

“It’s just hide and seek.”

Nora snorted. “Congratulations. You invented being six.”

“It’s not normal hide and seek,” Zeke replied, tossing a pop tab in his cousin’s direction.

“What makes it different?”

“You play it in the woods.” 

The room went quiet, and Bea looked up immediately. 

“No.”

Zeke raised an eyebrow at her. “No what?”

She shifted in her seat, avoiding his eyes. “Just no.”

“You don’t even know the rules.”

“I don’t need to.”

He laughed. “Scared already?”

“My grandma says not to play games in the woods after dark.” Bea was always going on about something her grandma had told her. Nora sighed deeply.

“Your grandma also says not to whistle after sunset.” She stated. Nora was never one to believe in all the superstitious talk of the elderly people in our community.

“I don’t.”

“You do.”

“Well, I don’t anymore.”

“Oh.”

Nobody spoke for a second.

“What changed?” Jonah asked, leaning forward. Bea hesitated.

“She said… There are games people made for each other.” She looked toward the dark windows. “And there are games that were never meant for people at all.”

Zeke barked out a laugh. “What a load of crap.”

“My grandma doesn’t joke about things like that.”

“Your grandma thinks mushrooms grow in circles because fairies danced around.”

“No,” Bea’s voice was barely above a whisper. “She thinks they grow like that to lure kids. Something is waiting for them.”

For the first time all evening, even Zeke looked uncomfortable. Only for a second. Then he grinned.

“My cousin taught me this game.”

“What cousin?” Willow asked.

“The one who used to live near Miller’s Crossing.”

“We’ve been in the same class since kindergarten.”

“So?”

“You’ve never mentioned him.”

Zeke shrugged. “I’ve got a lot of cousins.”

Willow studied him for a moment. It was a look I’d seen before. She didn’t believe him.

“If your cousin taught you,” Jonah asked, “what are the rules?”

Zeke leaned forward.

“You split into pairs.”

“So nobody gets lost?”

“Exactly.” He smiled. “When I whistle once, everybody turns off their flashlight.”

I frowned. “Our flashlights?”

“Yep.”

“What if we can’t see?”

“That’s the point.”

“When do we turn them back on?”

Zeke rolled his eyes before answering. “When I whistle again.”

“What if someone cheats?” Nora asked.

“They lose.”

“What happens if they lose?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“My cousin just said the consequences could be… severe."

Nora rolled her eyes. “Convenient.”

“It’s true.”

Bea stood up abruptly. “I’m going home.”

“You don’t have to play,” Willow said. “I don’t even think we should.”

“Come on,” Zeke groaned. “It’s hide and seek.”

“No,” Bea crossed her arms. “It’s something else.”

The room fell silent again. Then Zeke looked directly at me.

“Oh, I almost forgot.”

“Forgot what?” I asked.

“One last rule,” he smiled, “no crying.”

I frowned. “What?”

“If you cry…” He lowered his voice. “...something hears you.”

I felt my stomach twist. Then he laughed.

“I’m kidding.”

Willow smacked him on the arm. “You’re an idiot.”

“It was funny.”

“It wasn’t.” She crouched in front of me until we were eye level. “He’s lying.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.” She smiled. “If you don’t want to go, we won’t.”

I looked around the room. Nobody else was backing out. I didn’t want everyone to think I was a baby.

“I’ll go.”

Willow sighed. “I figured you’d say that.” 

She stood and quietly walked over to Jonah. I only caught part of what she whispered. 

“...keep an eye on Ellie?”

Jonah nodded. “I already planned to.”

Willow smiled. “Thank you.”

Eight years later, that’s the last normal conversation I remember having with my sister. An hour later, she was gone.

Zeke insisted on being the seeker. Nobody argued. Looking back, I don’t think it was because he was the loudest. I think we were all relieved not to be the one standing alone while everyone else disappeared into the trees.

He walked us to the edge of the woods behind town where the trail narrowed into darkness. During the day it was where kids built forts and adults cut through to the creek. At night it looked different. The trees leaned together overhead until the path became a tunnel.

Zeke dug six cheap flashlights out of an old backpack. “My cousin said everybody needs one.”

“You came prepared,” Nora muttered.

“I told you we were gonna play.”

He handed them out one by one. When he reached me, Willow took mine first. She clicked it on, frowned, and smacked the side with her palm until the beam stopped flickering.

“There.” She smiled and handed it back. “Don’t lose it.”

“I won’t.”

She looked like she wanted to say something else. Instead she ruffled my hair.

“Same teams as always?” Jonah asked.

Willow nodded. “I’ll stay with Ellie.”

“I know,” Jonah said.

Zeke rolled his eyes. “Can we play before we’re all old?”

Nobody laughed. Maybe that should have told us something. We split into pairs without really talking about it. Jonah stayed beside me. Nora drifted toward Bea. Willow ended up with Zeke.

At least… I remember Willow ending up with Zeke.

Eight years later, Jonah swears she never did. He says Willow grabbed his arm just before Zeke started counting. Nora remembers Willow walking off by herself. Bea insists there were never any pairs at all.

I don’t know who’s right anymore. I only know what I remember. 

Zeke covered his eyes against the biggest oak near the trailhead.

“I’m counting to sixty!” His voice echoed farther than it should have.

Jonah nudged me. “C’mon.”

We slipped into the woods. At first it was almost fun. 

The beam from my flashlight bounced over roots and moss-covered rocks. Crickets chirped all around us. Every now and then Jonah would point at a strange shaped stump or whisper that he’d spotted bigfoot just to make me smile.

I kept giggling, not because it was funny. Because that’s what ten year olds do when they’re trying not to be scared. Eventually we ducked behind a fallen maple whose roots had pulled a wall of dirt out of the ground.

“This’ll work,” Jonah said as he settled in.

“You think he’ll find us?”

“Probably.”

“Then why hide here?”

Jonah shrugged. “Because it’s the rules.”

We sat together. The forest seemed wrong. Quiet. 

Somewhere in the distance Zeke reached sixty. Then came the whistle. One long note. I jumped. Jonah immediately clicked off his flashlight. I did the same. 

Darkness swallowed us. Not ordinary darkness. The kind where you can still make out tree trunks and patches of sky. This was complete. I held my hand inches from my face and couldn’t see it.

“You okay?” Jonah whispered.

“I think so.”

“Don’t move.”

“I’m not.”

I listened. Leaves rustled. Something cracked far away. Then footsteps. Slow. Careful. Crunch, crunch, crunch. I leaned closer to Jonah.

“Is that Zeke?”

“I don’t know.”

The footsteps stopped. For a second I thought I heard breathing. Not beside me. Right in front of us. Then another whistle echoed through the woods. Short. Sharp. Jonah switched his flashlight back on.

“So that’s it?” I asked.

“I guess so.”

Later, Jonah told me he only remembered the lights being off for a few seconds. I thought we sat in darkness for ten minutes. Maybe longer.

When we walked back toward the trail, everyone else was already there. Everyone except Willow. 

Zeke cupped his hands around his mouth. “Okay! You win!”

Nothing. Nora laughed.

“She’s committed.”

“Seriously!” Zeke shouted. “The game's over!”

Still nothing.

“Maybe she didn’t hear you,” I said.

“She should have.”

We waited. Another minute passed. Then another. Zeke’s grin slowly disappeared. 

“Willow!” He yelled. The woods answered with silence. Jonah looked at the others. 

“Split up.”

Nobody argued. We started calling her name as we walked.

“Willow!”

“Will!”

“Where are you?”

Every shout seemed to disappear into the trees. Then Bea stopped walking.

“Did you hear that?”

We all froze.

“Hear what?” Nora asked.

Bea looked upward.

“I thought…” Before she finished speaking, it came again.

A laugh. Just one. Bright. Familiar. Willow. It sounded exactly like she did whenever someone tripped over a root or lost a board game. Relief washed over me.

“There she is!” I started to turn toward the sound. Then stopped. Because it hadn’t come from ahead of us. It had come from above. High overhead.

Every flashlight swung into the branches. The leaves glowed white. Branches twisted together. Nothing. 

“I heard it,” Jonah whispered.

“So did I,” Nora said, laughing nervously, “I heard her laugh.”

“No,” Bea said quietly. “She was crying.”

Zeke took a cautious step backward. “Willow?”

The branches creaked. Something moved. Not climbing. Just… changing position. For half a second my flashlight caught what looked like the bottom of a white sneaker balanced impossibly high in the canopy. I blinked and it was gone.

“I saw her!” I shouted.

“Where?”

“There! Up there!”

Jonah frowned. “There wasn’t anybody.”

“I saw-”

“There wasn’t.”

“I’m telling you-”

“No one’s up there.”

Even now, that’s one of the things we can’t agree on. I remember seeing a shoe. Nora remembers a hand. Bea says she saw nothing at all. Zeke insists every branch was perfectly still.

The only thing all five of us remember… is that we heard her.

We kept searching. The deeper we went, the less familiar the woods became. The trail disappeared. The creek should have been somewhere to our left. Or maybe our right. I don’t know. At one point Jonah stopped.

“We’ve been walking downhill for a while.”

“No,” Nora said. “We’ve been climbing.”

Bea burst into tears. “We’re lost.”

“Will everybody just shut up and look?” Zeke snapped at all of us.

That’s when Nora’s flashlight flickered. She smacked it against her hand. The beam steadied. Then dimmed again. Mine did the same.

“Did Zeke give you a broken one too?” I asked. Nobody answered. One by one, every flashlight began fading. Not dying. Just… getting weaker.

The darkness between the trees seemed to drink the light before it could reach very far. Jonah changed the batteries in his. Nothing changed.

“It’s brand new,” he muttered.

The woods had become impossibly quiet. No crickets. No wind. No birds.

Just six children breathing.

Five.

Five children breathing.

I don’t remember who noticed it first. Maybe Bea. Maybe Jonah. There was someone lying beneath a cedar tree. At first I only saw the blue sleeve of a hoodie. Then her shoes. Then her hair.

For one impossible second I smiled. I thought Willow was asleep. She was curled on her side. One arm stretched out in front of her. Her hand was open. Waiting. 

The flashlight slipped from my fingers. I started to run to her. Jonah grabbed me before I could get to her side.

“Ellie, don’t.” His voice broke as I struggled to get free. I looked past him. Really looked. Willow wasn’t breathing. Her eyes were open. She was staring into the trees.

I don’t remember screaming. Everyone else says I did. What I do remember… is crying. All of us were crying. Zeke dropped to his knees and threw up. Nora wrapped her arms around Bea. Jonah kept telling me to stop looking. 

Somewhere, far off in the woods, another whistle drifted through the trees. Nobody moved. None of us turned toward it. None of us remembered hearing it until years later. That’s the strange thing about memory. Sometimes it doesn’t disappear. Sometimes it waits.

Eight years changes a town.

Kids become adults. The old grocery store becomes a pharmacy. The gas station finally replaces the flickering sign everyone joked about for years. Houses get new paint. Trees get cut down. New ones grow back.

People tell you time heals things. It doesn’t. Time just makes the past harder to explain.

The police questioned all of us separately after Willow died. They searched the woods for three days. They interviewed our parents. Volunteers combed every trail behind town looking for… something. I don’t know what. A reason, maybe.

They never found one.

The official report called it a tragic accident. Nobody could explain what kind of accident left no footprints around her body, not even her own. Or why all five of us described different routes through the woods.

For years, I tried not to think about any of it. Then Jonah told me there hadn’t been a moon. After that, I started making phone calls. 

The first person who answered was Nora. She was home from university for the weekend. We met at the little diner on Main Street because neither of us wanted to sit in the other’s house pretending this was a normal conversation.

She looked almost exactly the same. Older, obviously. Taller. Her hoodie had been replaced by a university sweatshirt, and she’d traded frogs for plants - she spent a few minutes apologizing because she’d accidentally brought dirt under her fingernails. Some things don’t change.

“I know this is about Willow,” she said before either of us had ordered.

“You do?”

“You never call me first.”

I looked down at my coffee. “I talked to Jonah.”

Her expression changed. “Was it about the moon?”

I looked back up. “You too?”

She nodded slowly. “I thought he was messing with me.

“So did I.”

Neither of us spoke for a while. Finally I asked the question I’d been rehearsing for days.

“When we heard Willow…” I hesitated. “... what exactly did you hear?”

“Crying.” Nora answered immediately. 

I blinked.

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?” She frowned.

“You laughed.”

“What?”

“You laughed and said you heard Willow laughing.”

Nora stared at me for several seconds.

“Ellie…”

“I remember.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I remember thinking she’d fallen and gotten hurt.”

“That’s not what happened.”

“It is.”

We sat there looking at each other. Neither of us sounded uncertain. That scared me more than if one of us had admitted we couldn’t remember. Because we both could. Perfectly. Just not the same thing.

I left the diner with more questions than I’d arrived with. Jonah was next.

He still lived in town, in the little white house his parents had owned since before we were born. A pickup truck sat in the driveway with a toolbox in the back. He answered the door wearing grease stained jeans and looked surprised to see me.

“Hey, Ellie.”

“Can I come in?”

He stepped aside without asking why. Some habits never changed. His kitchen looked almost exactly like I remembered, except everything seemed smaller. Childhood has a way of making ordinary places feel enormous.

“I talked to Nora,” I said. He leaned against the counter.

“How’d that go?”

“She remembers Willow crying.”

Jonah closed his eyes. “I figured.”

“You knew?”

“She told me last year.”

“And?”

“And I told her she was wrong.”

Neither of us smiled. I took a folded map out of my backpack. I’d printed it that morning from the county website.

“I want you to show me where we walked.”

He studied it for a moment before tracing a finger through the woods.

“We went in here.”

“That’s not where the trail starts.”

“It was then.”

“It wasn’t.”

He frowned. “It was.”

I pointed to the creek. “We crossed here, at the creek.”

Jonah looked at me like I’d spoken another language.

“There isn’t a creek.”

I laughed. Not because it was funny. Because he had to be joking.

“Jonah.”

“What?”

“We used to catch frogs there.”

“No, we didn’t.”

“Yes, we did.”

“There has never been water there.”

I stared at him. The moon. The laughter. Now the creek. Three memories. Three impossibilities. Three things we couldn’t all be right about.

Before I left, I asked him one more question.

“When we found Willow…” He looked away. “Who found her first?”

“You did.”

“Nora thinks Bea did.”

Jonah was quiet for a long time. Finally he said, “I don’t remember anymore.”

It took me three days to work up the nerve to visit Zeke. He lived in a trailer behind his dad’s shop. I found him there sitting on an overturned milk crate with a half full bottle of whisky resting beside his boot. It was barely noon.

He looked up when he heard my car door close. For a second, something crossed his face. Surprise, maybe. Or resignation.

“Ellie.”

I didn’t answer. He stood, picked up the bottle, stared at it for a moment, then set it on the workbench without taking another drink.

“I wondered how long it’d take.”

“To blame you to your face?”

He didn’t flinch. “Yeah.”

“Eight years,” I said. “You got eight years.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

He looked away.

“Every day.”

I laughed bitterly. “You know what the worst part is?”

“Ellie-”

“No. You don’t get to interrupt me.” My voice was louder than I’d meant it to be. “She trusted you. She trusted you when you said it was just a game.”

He closed his eyes. Silence.

“I was ten years old, Zeke.”

He swallowed. “I know.”

“No, you don’t. Because I spent eight years wondering if my sister would still be alive if you’d just kept your mouth shut.”

For a long time, he said nothing. Finally, barely above a whisper: “I’ve wondered the same thing.”

I looked at the whisky on the workbench.

“Is this how you forget?”

He gave a tired smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “It doesn’t work.”

“Good.” The word came out harsher than I’d intended. We stood there listening to the sounds of the shop.

Finally I asked him to tell me about his cousin. He frowned.

“What cousin?”

“The one who taught you the game.”

For a second I thought he’d finally tell me who his cousin was. Instead he looked genuinely confused.

“I…” His voice faltered. “I can’t remember.”

“You told us about him.”

“I know I did.”

“You said he lived near Miller’s Crossing.”

“I remember saying that.”

“So who was he?”

Zeke pressed both hands against the workbench.

“I don’t know.” He looked frightened. Not guilty. Frightened. “I used to know.”

His eyes met mine.

“I swear I used to know.”

I took a slow step toward him, placing a palm on his shoulder. I’m not sure why I felt the need to comfort him. This didn’t feel like the Zeke I remembered.

“Ellie… I don’t think he was my cousin,” he swallowed, “I think I just… said that.”

“Why would you lie about that?” I asked, frowning.

There was a long pause before he answered.

“I don’t remember.”

Bea called me two nights later. Her voice was shaking.

“I found something.”

“What?”

“It’s about your sister. You need to see this.”

I got in my car immediately.

Bea lived with her grandmother in a weathered farmhouse just outside town. The attic ladder was already pulled down when I arrived.

“I was cleaning,” she said quietly. “I almost threw the box away.”

She gestured to a box on the floor. I crouched beside it and lifted a notebook out. It was really three notebooks tied together with faded twine. Inside were newspaper clippings. Funeral cards. Church bulletins. Handwritten letters. Black and white photographs.

None of them mentioned Willow. Not at first. 

The oldest clipping was dated 1949.

LOCAL BOY FOUND DEAD AFTER NIGHT WALK

The article itself was ordinary. The handwriting underneath wasn’t.

He wasn’t alone. Four children came back. None agreed what happened.

The next clipping was from 1968.

THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL MISSING.

Beneath it:

Her friends kept hearing her whistle after she disappeared.

Another.

A boy.

Twin sisters.

A twelve year old named Evan.

Each clipping had the same cramped handwriting beneath it. Sometimes only a sentence. Sometimes an entire page.

Different memories.
No footprints.
Flashlights stopped working.
Never the same story twice.

I turned page after page. The dates stretched back farther than my grandparents had been alive.

“Your grandma collected all these?”

Bea nodded.

“Not collected,” a voice answered from the doorway. “Remembered.”

Her grandmother stood there holding a cup of tea. She looked smaller than I remembered. Not weak. Just… worn.

“You’ve been expecting me,” I said.

“I was hoping I’d never see you.” She smiled sadly. I didn’t know how to answer that. She walked over and gently rested one hand on the notebook.

“I recognized it the night your sister died.”

“The game?”

She nodded. “I prayed I was wrong.”

“You’ve seen it before.”

“I played it.”

The room fell silent. Bea looked down.

“You never told me that.”

“I wanted very badly to never have this talk.”

I swallowed.

“What happened?”

She was quiet for so long I thought she hadn’t heard me. Finally she spoke.

“There were six of us.”

My stomach tightened. “Just like us.”

She nodded.

“One never came home.”

I looked at the notebook.

“So this has been happening…”

“... for longer than anyone remembers.” She finished before I could.

“Do you know what it is?”

“No.”

“Who made it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then what do you know?”

She looked directly at me.

“I know the rules people pass down aren’t traditions. They’re apologies.”

I frowned.

“For what?”

“Forgetting.”

She opened the notebook to the first page. I hadn’t noticed the writing there before. The ink had faded almost to nothing.

If you are reading this, trust these pages before you trust your memory.

The next page had been crossed out. Then written again. Then crossed out again. Whole paragraphs had been scratched through until the paper nearly tore.

“I kept changing it,” she whispered.

“Why?”

“Because every few years…” She touched one of the crossed out lines. “... I’d remember it differently.”

A cold feeling settled in my chest.

“You mean your memories changed too.”

“They still do.”

She turned to the final page. The handwriting was shakier than anywhere else in the notebook. Only two sentences had been written.

Today I remembered who taught us the game.

The line beneath it had been gouged away so violently that light shone through the paper. Underneath, written in a different pen years later, was one final sentence.

I forgot again.

Nobody spoke. Outside, the evening wind stirred the trees beyond the farmhouse. For the first time since I’d started asking questions, I understood something. 

Not what happened to Willow. Not what waited in those woods. Something much worse. Whatever had killed my sister wasn’t just taking children. It was taking the truth. 

And every year that passed, it took a little more.

I didn’t remember driving home. That was the first thing I noticed. Just the road stretching out in front of me, headlights cutting through empty stretches of highway like nothing had ever existed beyond it. No thoughts. No transition. No sense of leaving Bea’s farmhouse.

Only the feeling that something had been placed back inside my head after being taken out.

The notebook sat on the passenger seat beside me. Still open. Still pinned on the final page.

Today I remembered who taught us the game.

I hadn’t written anything like that.

I pulled the car into my driveway without turning off the engine right away. My house looked exactly the same as it always had. Warm porch light. Slightly crooked mailbox. The kind of ordinary that was supposed to mean safe.

My hand stayed on the key. 

For a while, I just listened. Wind moving through trees behind the property line. A distant dog barking. The low him of insects settling into the evening. Nothing else. 

Then I exhaled and turned the engine off. The silence that followed was immediate. Too immediate. Like the world had been waiting for it. 

I got out of the car and walked up the front steps slowly, still holding the notebook. Inside, the house was dark except for the kitchen light I always left on out of habit. I didn’t remember turning it on that morning. I checked anyway. Empty sink. Mail on the counter. My coat still hanging where I’d left it. Normal. That word felt wrong in my mouth now. 

I set the notebook down on the table and stood there for a moment, staring at it like it might change if I looked long enough.

Then I heard it.

A whistle.

One long note.

Somewhere behind the house.

I froze so completely I forgot how to breathe.

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It carried the same way it had in the woods eight years ago. Like distance didn’t matter, like space was only something it chose to respect when it felt like it.

My first thought wasn’t no.

It was that’s not possible.

Because there were no woods behind my house. Just a narrow strip of yard, then a fence, then the road, then the town lights. Still, I moved before I decided to. Slowly, I walked to the back door. 

The whistle didn’t come again. But it didn’t need to. The air itself felt… attentive. Like something had finally noticed I was listening. I stepped outside. 

The yard was dim, washed in the weak orange glow of the porch light behind me. Everything beyond it dissolved quickly into darkness that felt thicker than it should have been. The fence at the back of the property was still there. Except it didn’t look like a boundary anymore. It looked like something waiting to be crossed. I walked toward it anyway. 

Each step felt like a mistake I was already too far into to undo. Halfway across the yard, I stopped. Because I realized something I hadn’t noticed before. The trees beyond the fence weren’t the same. They were older. Denser. Wrong in a way I couldn’t explain without sounding insane, even to myself. 

And then I saw it. A flashlight. Just one. Swaying faintly between the trunks. My throat tightened. 

“Hello?” I called. My voice came out smaller than I expected. No answer. The flashlight dipped slightly, like whoever held it had looked down. Then it went out. 

Silence rushed in immediately afterward, as if the light had been the only thing holding the world in place. I reached the fence. My hand rested on the wood. It was colder than it should have been. On the other side, the woods didn’t move. They waited. Then, a sound behind me. 

Not footsteps. Not branches. A breath. Right beside my ear. I turned. Nothing was there. But the fence was gone. Or maybe it had never been. 

The trees were suddenly closer than they had been a second ago, surrounding me in a way that didn’t feel like distance closing. It felt like recognition. And then, softly, almost kindly, another whistle. 

This time, I knew it wasn’t coming from somewhere ahead. It was coming from everywhere at once. Like the forest itself was remembering how the game worked. My flashlight was in my hand before I realized I’d grabbed it. I didn’t remember bringing it outside. My thumb hovered over the switch. 

For a moment, I just stood there. Listening. Waiting. Trying to decide if turning it on would help. Or if it would mean I had already agreed to something I didn’t understand. Behind me, somewhere far back in the direction of my house, I thought I heard my name. 

“Ellie.” 

Just once. Jonah’s voice, maybe. Or Willow’s. I didn’t turn around. 

I turned on the flashlight. The beam cut into the trees immediately. Too sharp. Too clean. For a fraction of a second, I saw movement in the light. Figures between the trunks, not stepping forward, not retreating, just occupying spaces like they had always been there and I had only just learned how to notice them. 

One of them lifted an arm. Not waving. Pointing. Deeper into the woods. The whistle came again. Shorter this time. Not a call. An instruction. 

My feet moved before I decided they would. One step. Then another. Behind me, the house disappeared completely. Not fading. Not getting smaller. Just… no longer part of the same idea of space. 

The trees closed in around me, but not in a hurry. There was no chase. No urgency. Only continuation. Like something that had been paused eight years ago and had finally been allowed to resume. 

As I walked, I tried to remember Willow’s face exactly as it had been. I could. I think. But even that certainty didn’t feel stable anymore. Like holding something underwater and trusting it would stay the same shape when I peered at it from above. 

The flashlight flickered once. Then steadied. Far ahead, between the trees, I saw something pale on the ground. Curled on its side. Waiting. My pace slowed. My breathing didn’t. 

The whistle didn’t come again. It didn’t need to. Because now I understood something I didn’t want to understand. The game had never ended. It had only been waiting for someone who still remembered how to play. 

I don’t think I ever left the woods.

To start off, I tried texting my parents as to not alert whatever is in the room with me but neither of them are answering. Now I don’t know what to do.

Me and my sister share a bunk bed together but sometimes when my sister gets scared she comes up to the top bunk with me. She use to just go into my parents room but they would get annoyed by the constant interruptions at night pretty quickly.

Tonight wasn’t any different. I was scrolling on my phone, reading Reddit posts and getting ready to fall asleep when I hear a familiar voice from below me.

“Hey can I get on the top bunk with you, I can’t sleep?

“Sure, sure. Come up here” I said turning from the wall to face her as she climbed onto my bed. She snuggled in next to me and whispered something in a hushed voice.

“Something is in my bed sissy, I’m scared.”

I looked away from my screen to see her beady eyes glistening at me. I huffed knowing she was eventually going to make me go down with her and check.
“You always say that and every time I check, there’s never anything there. Aren’t you getting too old for this?”

“Im only nine” she rebutted as she crossed her arms in exaggerated anger. She then added, “But this isn’t like the other times. I actually felt it get into bed with me.” I figured it was another one of her nightly terrors getting to her so I started moving over her to get off the bed and finally put an end to this charade.

“DONT”, my little sister whispered yelled to me while having an ungodly grip on my arm. In that instant I heard a grown and a shuffle from under the bed. I jumped back into my previous position on the bed wide eyed.

“What the fuck was that” I whispered back to my little sister.
“Stop using swear words or I’ll tell mom” she demanded back. “I told you. I don’t know what it is but I felt it get into bed with me. See I’m not just seeing things”

I then told her to just lay down and I’ll handle it. I didn’t know why but for some reason I decided that needed to actually see if something was down there or if her fear mongering suddenly rubbed off on me.
So I decided to grab my phone, press record, and slowly shuffled my arm down to the bottom bunk. I did so until I felt my shoulder grind against the wall signaling that’s as far as it could reach.

I kept my arm there for a good 20 seconds praying that I wouldn’t see anything and I could laugh this off with her later. I pulled my arm back through the crack and shuffled under the cover as to not wake my sister as she seemed to doze off not long after I told her to lay down.

What I saw on the recording made my jaw drop and heart stop. As the video was playing it showed my phone squeezing between the metal of the bunk bed and the wall then adjusting to the dark as it slowly went down the wall. When the phone stopped it adjusted to a little girl. Sound asleep in the bed. With their steady breathing and I noticed that this was my little sister.

The horrible realization made me hyper aware of how close I was to whatever it was in the bunk with me. I also don’t think this thing was ever asleep cause soon after watching the video it asked what did I see down at the bottom bunk in voice that most definitely wasn’t of anyone I knew or any sound that could possibly come from a human.

What do I do now? No one I’m texting is answering and I’m scared that if I call this creature laying next to me won’t be laying very soon.

Around the mid 2010s, I remember I was about 12 years old when my parents left one evening to go to a gathering, leaving me and my older brother home alone. They said they’d be back before midnight, but said not to bother waiting for them, and to go to bed. I remember being ecstatic. It was the weekend—February 27th, if I remember correctly. That meant I could stay up and play on the family computer. My parents being gone was a bonus because that also meant I could play until I heard their car in the driveway, where I could rush back to bed pretending to sleep.

With that in mind, and my parents out of the house, I casually got on the family computer with a snack, before opening YouTube to watch gaming YouTubers play horror games. I forgot the channel’s name, but the guy playing came across a funeral scene, he got jump scared, and although I got scared with him, I got a good laugh at his reaction.

After the video, I switched to a more light-hearted one, I think it was PewDiePie playing Happy Wheels. I always ran to his Happy Wheel series, since it oddly gave me comfort watching him play that game. While passively watching, I would play games as well, while listening to the video in the background.

I usually played Roblox, and it was pretty much far from the Roblox everyone knows now; it was more niche, and actually block-like, with simpler games. Although as I played random obbys, and playing with the rewards I collected at the end, my mind kept going back to the scene from earlier, the funeral game. I didn’t really know what the game was called, but the display really stuck with me: the decrepit chapel, abandoned with no one around, except a coffin in the middle.

It kept lingering in my head until it began to feel like an itch I needed to scratch, so I exited the game and typed in the search bar… "Funeral." Nothing really piqued my interest at first, just a bunch of empty baseplates, or games like Funeral Tycoon. But then I saw a game with five players at the time, and that wasn’t really what caught my attention at first—it was the title.

"Mellissa's Funeral Memorial."

The thumbnail was just a picture of an old church. It honestly looked like something pulled straight from Google Images.

I checked the active players in the game, and they all had default skins; two were the female ones, and three were the male. I remembered snickering because, despite the curiosity of the game itself, I thought, let me disrupt whatever was happening, just troll around and hang out.

So, I joined. I loaded pretty quickly, but the YouTube video I had playing in the background began hanging; I didn’t close it, though, I figured it would just start back up again when it was done. 

I immediately found myself outside what looked like a chapel, while a mellow piano played in the background. I noticed that the map was tiny. Just a church, a couple of free model trees, some gray grass, and an empty parking lot, or what looked like one to me at least.

When I walked inside, I immediately stopped. There really were five people; they were sitting in the front, completely still. None of them moved or even noticed that I joined the game; they were just… there. 

I don't even remember if idle animations existed back then, but if they did, they weren't playing. It looked like someone had frozen all five players in place. They all were positioned to look at one thing, and one thing only; in the room was a closed black coffin. Above it floated a simple sign.

In Loving Memory of Mellissa G.
September, 18, 2003 - February, 28, 2014

I walked all over the church expecting someone to tell me to leave or ask who I was. I was even planning on bouncing on the coffin like an ass hat, but something in my gut told me that would’ve been a horrible idea, and not because of morals; that wasn’t the first thing in my mind. I just felt… anxious. 

The death date was tomorrow.

I couldn’t wrap my head around that fact, but as I was trying to, I wasn’t sure if it was the sound of the piano that caught my attention or the fact that someone had finally typed. 

The woman at the right end of the front row. "Mommy misses you."

A few seconds passed.

"We still think of you." Another person replied.

I immediately figured they actually knew whoever Mellissa was. I thought then that it really was some online memorial. Although it felt weird, I didn't really think much of it.

Until another message appeared from the first of the three men. "It’s all daddy’s fault, I’m sorry.", and from the second. "I miss hearing you laugh."

At that point, I stopped moving around and just sat in one of the seats at the back, observing and reading. It felt wrong to interrupt, and I was starting to get even more anxious, so I thought of just leaving. Because for the next few minutes they just... talked, but not to each other—to the coffin.

Like, Mellissa could somehow read the chat.

One person apologized for yelling at her about school, and another said they still kept her bedroom exactly the way she left it.

One message stuck with me because it was so specific, by the man at the farther end.

"I can still smell you in my clothes." The third typed.

I remember just staring at that one. I felt gross. Like the air had gotten hot and humid, despite the coldness of the room. Then everything went quiet again, no chats, just blank, for what felt like five minutes, and the whole time it was just the piano.

But the man at the end of the row typed something that made my stomach drop.

"I’ll miss your cry."

Nobody answered, but I remembered reading that over and over, and at that time I didn't really understand what it meant, but I knew it sounded wrong, and it seems it wasn’t just my speculation. 

The piano stopped. I thought my speakers had broken until a different song started playing. But it wasn't music, not really. But I think it tried to be, as I remembered hearing these slow, distorted notes that sounded almost broken; the notes were too low but too high at the same time, and sometimes it dragged out, resembling a pained cry, the longer it wailed.

Every player in the church stood up at the same time, none of them turned to me, none of them moved. They just stood facing the coffin.

Then the coffin… stood up. It didn’t open; it literally rotated upright until it was standing vertically in the middle of the platform. 

I laughed, not because it was funny, but because I genuinely didn't know what to do; I had spammed the X off the window, but the screen just lagged and froze. My cursor loaded as the Windows loading tab popped up in the middle. I didn’t know how to react. I knew I should’ve turned off the computer by force. I remembered my dad told me I can never plug the computer off without shutting down properly, or else it would break, so I hesitated.

I felt stuck; the five players still hadn't typed anything. None of them moved, but then a sound played. It sounded like someone trying to make a little girl scream through a broken speaker, yet eerily robotic. It began to feel piercing, as it drew out one long screech. I muted the computer using the keyboard, but the noise hadn’t stopped. It wasn’t until I unplugged the speakers that it was silenced.

And then… I was kicked. A Roblox notification popped up saying I had been removed from the game. 

My computer proceeded as normal again after I was back on the homepage. I plugged the speakers back in again as PewDiePie’s voice felt like listening to the sound of clean water rushing through a blocked stream, but I didn’t try joining again, and I couldn’t even if I wanted to, as the game was gone; It wasn’t in my recent plays, and it didn’t even come up anymore when I searched Funeral again. 

Nothing.

But I didn’t really have much time to think when the sound of my parents’ car by the driveway finally registered with me. I rushed to shut down the computer and turned off the monitor. I listened under the covers as they settled into the house, keys into the bowl, shoes stumbling onto the wooden floor.

I could barely make out their conversation, but I heard it as they passed through my door. 

“You need to call Jerry. Claire is worried sick.” My mom spoke.

“I’m sure they’re fine, he didn’t have that much to drink.” My dad replied.

My mom walked down the hall as the bedroom door opened. “Just call them, make sure they’re okay.”

Dad sighed, before his phone’s ringing emitted from the crack of my door, the crackling ring of his speakers never ceased. “Relax, he knows the roads. He’s probably halfway home.”

My mom walked back toward my dad from down the hall. "I just don't like the idea of Jerry driving after that many drinks," she sighed, her voice fading as they walked into the kitchen. 

"Especially with Mellissa in the back seat."

​

​Don't bother looking up my name in federal employee databases, it’s not there. I was listed as an external contractor for a digital services LLC in Virginia that took direct subcontracts from DARPA and the DoD. In reality, my desk was inside the operational section of the American Nudge Unit.

​If you open any behavioral psychology textbook, it says Nudge Units deal with "Choice Architecture" basically, using data to gently nudge people into making good choices, like paying taxes on time or recycling. That’s the corporate bullshit we feed senators during committee hearings.

​The truth is, the government only uses positive nudging when things are going great. When there’s an economic crisis or social tension, they don't give a shit about you being virtuous. They need you inert. And the cheapest way to neutralize a young population is to saturate their cognitive energy. To trap you in a feedback loop and make you spin your wheels.

​My job wasn't to censor content. It was to engineer the background noise. We took predictive models based on the cognitive biases of specific targets mostly isolated guys between 18 and 28 with massive screen-time metrics and injected what we called Negative Nudging in our briefs. All it took was taking a tiny, completely irrelevant piece of real news and pumping it up with bot clusters. Those profiles weren't programmed to defend a political stance; they were programmed to simulate a massive, vicious wave of collective hatred, aimed directly at that demographic's psychological weak spots.

​At first, I actually enjoyed it. Nerd sadism, call it whatever you want. When you're 23 and realize that three lines of code and the right psychological trigger can make fifty thousand people destroy each other in the comments, shifting trends on X or TikTok in an afternoon, you feel like a god. I’d watch the engagement graphs spike and think about how predictable you all were. Lab rats.

​Then, around mid-April last year, the metrics turned into faces.

​I was running an advanced, experimental cluster of automated profiles called E.N.E.A. We flagged an account from the western suburbs of Chicago, Cook County. A 24 year old out-of-state college student. His browsing history showed non-stop activity between 2:00 AM and 5:00 AM on gaming forums and subreddits dedicated to depression. The perfect target.

​He posted a stupid, somewhat cynical vent about generational loneliness. We fed it to the cluster. Within minutes, the system generated three hundred simulated profiles of his peers and started tearing him apart. Not over politics: they made it personal. Using his geolocation data and scraped interests to lean into his insecurities, the bots gaslit him for days. They told him he was a failure, that his life was pointless, mimicking the collective voice of his own generation.

​I was monitoring his replies in real-time on my second monitor, sipping my coffee. He started posting compulsively, disconnected, in a blind rage. Our negative engagement KPIs were off the charts. My supervisor walked past my desk, patted me on the back, and said: "Clean work. Look at this. This kid will never hit the streets to protest tuition or the cost of living. He’s too busy defending his ego from the algorithm."

​I felt like a genius.

​Three days later, the data stream on that profile flatlined. No posts, no searches. Nothing. Out of pure, morbid curiosity, I opened the Cook County local police log database for that week.

​There was a standard four line entry. A 24 year old male found dead in his apartment. The case was already closed by the coroner as a suicide, no suspicious circumstances. It just mentioned he left a note on the table saying he felt completely isolated and despised by everyone, everywhere, even online.

​That night, I went home and threw up everything in my bathroom sink. I looked in the mirror and realized I wasn't some brilliant scientist. I was a state salaried hitman. That kid didn't kill himself because the world is cruel. He killed himself because I, for a game and a monthly direct deposit, had built a psychological cage tailor made to trap him.

​The air in that office became unbreathable. Every time I watched the charts go up every time you guys lose your minds over absurd trends about gender, rights, or the latest shocking quote from a politician designed specifically to make you spit bile all I saw was our assembly line. A system designed to grind down the mental health of twenty somethings to keep them compliant.

​I resigned ten days ago. I wiped my corporate laptop, but not before downloading the configuration logs of the narrative matrices onto an encrypted flash drive. It’s currently buried in a public park in Washington, D.C.

​I don't give a shit if you believe me or not. I'm just asking you to look at things clearly. This Wednesday, the algorithm is going to drop a new mass distraction trigger. It'll be about digital identity regulations. It'll look like a boring bureaucratic issue, but it's framed specifically to make you furious and divided.

​When you see the comment sections flooded with accounts that look human but repeat the exact same talking points to make you feel stupid, frustrated, or isolated just stop. Close the app.

​Negative Nudging only works if you talk back. I can't wash the blood off my hands, but you can choose not to be the next test subject.

I'm posting this because I need some help. I've tried everything, hot water soak, cold water shower, aloe vera. 

Let me explain. 

I recently got back from holiday, it was lovely, great food and brilliant people. 

Except for getting sun burnt.

 I was the only ginger in my friendship group. Probably the only ginger on the entire Greek island. But I refused to be left out just because of some sun. I still went to the beach everyday with my friends, drinking beers and having a laugh. My friends kept moaning telling me to put on more suncream, but I hadn't flown all that way to hide myself in the shade. 

It wasn't until I got home I realised how badly I'd burnt. I arrived back somewhat pink and tender, radiating heat. I spent the next couple of days lathering up with aloevera gel. 

It must've been 2 days later. I was back at work, back to reality, when I started to peel.

 It started small, pulling thin patches from my shoulders. They came off with ease, it was like taking the screen protector off a new phone.

 I was engrossed.

Then I pulled the perfect part, from the elbow straight down my forearm and over the back of my hand.

 I laid it out.

 I stared at it.

 It was perfect. 

My hand was wonderful to peel, I'd find an edge beginning to lift and peel it back delicately. I could see my freckles in it, the tiny grooves of my fingerprints, even the way it would stretch around an old scar. There would be a slight bit of tension before release, revealing a softer, newer flesh underneath. 

I'd taken to rubbing my feet together before bed, scratching away at an itch that I could never quite get. For some reason I found this comforting. I would drift off softly chasing the sensation. 

One morning I stood with my back to the shower, I'd neglected the loose skin there that I couldn't reach. The water found an opening on my shoulder and ran beneath the skin. I could feel the warm water spreading between my skin and back, it ballooned out and sagged before it finally split.

 I stood and watched as skin, wasted, washed down the drain. 

But when I really think about it, that could've been one of my best pulls.

From then on I would pull the unreachable bits with some kitchen tongs and some good stretching in the mirror. For the itch I rubbed my back against the door frame, I thought about stopping when the lock scraped so hard it drew blood.

 For a moment the itch disappeared.

I went to work until they asked me to stop coming in. At first, I think they were concerned. People had mentioned I was getting thinner. 

Then concern turned to disgust. 

I heard people whispering that I smelt rotten. Of course they were exaggerating, a little BO at most. I just hadn't showered properly in a while.

People started to wonder why I was at work with a long sleeve shirt. I told people I was embarrassed by the peeling.

 Truth is, I knew I wouldn't be able to resist pulling away at it at work. I'd be typing away and small pieces would flake off and land on my desk.

 I was missing out.

 I had to sneak to the bathroom and pull a few pieces for myself. It was better than any cigarette break I ever had. 

It was only a problem if I got a good piece. One time at work, my sock had made an indent around my leg, it made the perfect edge, slickly it pulled right up my calf all the way to my knee. 

I had to sneak it home. I kept it in my lunchbox so it wouldn't get damaged.

 It's my favourite piece in my collection. It took some of my tattoo with it.

 It looks beautiful. 

The layers seemed to get more red, more vibrant as more layers peeled off. With every layer my tattoos seemed to get brighter. Newer. Then parts of them began disappearing with skin I pulled away. Eventually I had none. 

A fresh canvas.

Then came the harder bits.

  I started using some tweezers to get in the tight spaces, my knuckles were tougher, they peeled off in callus lumps. But they preserved all the little creases and folds of the joint. I liked those. 

I peeled far enough down one finger that I finally reached the nail bed. Then I found the edge beneath the nail. 

Once I had the edge, it peeled off effortlessly. They'd been so itchy. 

I was never truly worried until I woke up and found my little toe in the corner of my fitted sheet. There was no blood. It had simply come off in the night.

 I put it in my collection, honestly I was unsure what to do with it, I didn't think it was truly collection worthy. Unlike my big toe, that felt collection worthy.

I didn't have to worry anyway, it wasn't long before I had a full collection.

I couldn't help but spend the whole day peeling, it was captivating, more captivating than work or anything else had ever been. 

Night started to roll in when my stomach grumbled and woke me from an itching daze. I looked at my hand, I peeled and scratched it completely raw.

My eye was caught. I could still see a piece, wedged in the corner of my knuckle.

I had a dental utensil. A long thin metal point, when i wasnt scratching the gaps in my teeth, I used it for small, awkward, unrewarding bits like this.

This was the first time I made it to the bone.

 This bit was deeper than others. When I hooked the point beneath it and pulled there was resistance. A sharp pinch. For a moment I thought I'd finally gotten it. Then the itch returned. I wasn't as disappointed as I should've been. 

But it was deeper this time. Inside the bone. 

I'm writing this with my right thumb, it's the only finger that still works on the screen. I'm lying in bed listening to the krrk… krrk… krrk of my feet rubbing together. They don’t feel soft anymore. But still it soothes me for a moment. 

The itch is everywhere now. I can feel it all over me, it's in my bones, I grind my teeth together trying to reach the itch inside them, but it's never enough. 

My left hand is bone, but it still itches. I stare at it when I drift off. It might be the light, but I swear I can see edges beginning to lift. 

 I don't want to run out. 

My name is (redacted), and I’m killing myself at an unmarked location so as not to spread my mold further into another host. I know the horrors of my disease, and this is my last communication to the world. This post is only a documentation of my death.

Every time I wake up, I feel the flesh inside me crawl with mold, mold that spreds its seeds and eggs into my flesh giving its children an alive food source. The mold is spreading from within me to my vocal cords. I can no longer scream or talk of my own will. The mold is keeping me alive, only using my body to puppet its reproduction cycle like a source of food.

The mold is spreading its broken seeds through my inner organs. Every time I visit the toilet, strands of bile, mixed with parts of my broken intestines and the goup of maggots and seed infested mold, come out.

The mold is cutting out parts of my tendons, replacing them with more mold and living maggots. I was making food the other day when I cut my finger the finger got cut down to the bone but there was no blood the wound was only filled with black goup of what i only know is the horrors of the mold.

I know now that I am only a mere vessel for the mold. The doctors do not know what is happening to me. They have no answers, but they say my vitals are fine even though they look like cheese huge holes show up on there monitors but the holes are not empty the holes are filled with “unknown supstance” I know I am not fine. The mold is replacing my insides. Now I am more mold than human.

Last night, I spit up parts of my tongue. My tongue still moved; the mold had taken it over. My teeth and hair have started falling out to my eyes becoming goopy as the flesh hangs lower than it should.

I’m writing this now to get this out to the world and tell them of my sickness, one that no one wants to know exists. I don’t know how it spreads, but I know it has started taking me from the inside to the outside. My skin is starting to flake off, and under the skin my blacked maggots infested  flesh have started being revealed, but still the mold is keeping me alive.

Now I am going to burn myself, drink gasoline, and pour it all over my insides and outsides, because I know that even if the smallest part of my mold survived, it would just find a new host for its reproduction. Because I know it still needs to survive the maggots are only a part of the molds cycle it starts as mold the mold birthes maggots who then eat my flesh before transforming into a horror I don’t want to know or think about. But I need to go now so I’ll say one last thing, bye internet.

I clean up roadkill as my day job. Not glorious, but it's something that needs doing, especially since we live near a pretty busy highway that sees a lot of wildlife traffic.

It's grisly work, but I've never really had much of a sense of smell thanks to some medical problems, and honestly, it's not so bad once you get used to it. The county pays me well enough.

As you'd imagine, my dating life is basically nonexistent. Living out in the middle of nowhere with a beat-up old truck with weird red stains on it doesn't exactly scream "Hey, I'm not a serial killer!" to potential dates.

Still, I'm not exactly lonely. I set up feeding spots for some of the local wildlife, nothing crazy. A bird feeder here, a less secure bird feeder there for all the local squirrels, including one particularly fat one I named Chunky, along with some... less conventional animals.

And no, I'm not just talking about the possum mama with her kids or that group of feral cats drifting in.

See, while it might not be technically legal, nobody really cares about me and my little "friends."

I use the term loosely because they're by no means tame. Just used to my presence.

They've come to recognize me coming home as a sign of dinner and start flocking around me, keeping a good few feet of distance between us but still happily hopping along as my truck slowly rolls up to the usual spot.

There are days when I come home and they're already circling, ready for lunchtime.

Vultures can be surprisingly gentle animals when you get to know them.

Plus, the county pays me a little extra to dispose of anything that can't be taken to the local processor and donated to food banks. Even if I didn't enjoy having them around, and I do, I doubt I could keep them away from the little pile I've made in a bare patch of woods a good distance away from my home and... mostly downwind.

I even named them. Inky, Blinky, Winky and Moe. There were others, but these four seemed to stick around.

Inky had darker feathers. Blinky was a little tall and kind of dopey. I think Winky is a female and is a bit on the small side, and Moe is...

Well, he's as generic of a vulture as they come, aside from a scar on his bald head. They became part of my routine.

Then one day, there was a new face. A big one.

This guy, I assume he's male anyway, stood a good few inches taller than the others and seemed just a bit wider, stockier even. When he drifted down from the sky to land near the relatively fresh meat I'd tossed into the pile, he nearly gave me a heart attack.

They're not exactly noisy animals, but they're not what I'd call stealthy.

They're big things that circle overhead long before landing. You ever seen a vulture on the ground? It's kind of cute how they walk. They sometimes even make little grunts or hisses at each other.

But not this guy. I almost never saw him circle. I'd just turn around and he'd either be on the ground or in the process of landing, maybe perched up somewhere just watching. I never saw him hopping around or awkwardly waddling along. He'd just appear out of nowhere, like a ghost.

So that's what I named him.

I chalked the differences up to him maybe just being a different kind of vulture. He had the usual bald pink head, but the rest of him looked just different enough to make you think. His beak, for one, was a bit longer, and his plumage was nearly jet black compared to the others, which were more of a dark brown that lightened up around the edges.

On my days off, I'd rarely ever see him when I went to do my rounds around the property. Only once in a blue moon would I catch sight of him outside of when I brought in new carcasses.

If I was lucky, he'd be up in a nearby tree, looking down at me as I walked by.

He was a picky one. The others were more than happy to eat rotten scraps, so they were almost always around. While Ghost did sometimes peck at bigger bits of roadkill, he only ever seemed to really dig in when it was relatively fresh, a day old at most. Looking back, I think that's why I never really saw him outside of working hours. Sure, if we hadn't gotten anything fresh in a while, he'd nibble at the less rotten bits, but not much more than that.

Aside from that, he had his own particular way of eating. To save you the unsavory details, vultures usually go for entryways, open wounds and soft flesh, then work their way out, not really caring as long as it's soft meat.

Ghost? He liked throats. Heads in general but always the throat. It was the first place he went whenever he got a chance at somewhat fresh meat. He would mostly turn food down if he didn't get first pick, or if the upper half wasn't... "intact" enough. It worked for him just fine. If Ghost was at a carcass, then the others would shuffle away, moving to the far side of the kill pile or sometimes even just straight up flying off.

Speaking of the head, he also seemed to go for faces. I'd leave and come back to find Ghost having plucked almost all the flesh from a skull, with the lower body mostly untouched.

He also didn't seem to like me watching him eat. He'd tolerate me being there, but he would take slow, careful bites, avoiding sticking his head in so he could keep sight of me. Once or twice on my way out, I'd hear a ripping sound or catch sight of him in my rear-view mirror guzzling down a hunk of flesh.

It didn't really occur to me that something was off until maybe a month or so back.

Ghost followed me. Every time I'd show up to a call, he'd be there, perched over the kill...

But not eating. He'd just take a few slow steps away when I'd walk up, maintaining a little distance. I remember seeing his head tilt when I took out a shovel to clean up a particularly rough bit of gore off the road...

Like he was trying to figure out what I was doing.

He'd always be there right up until I'd scooped up the mess and started to drive off. Only once did he ever leave early, and that was after I'd had to put down an unlucky deer that hadn't been killed, but rather knocked out and severely injured. If you're ever in this situation, call a game warden. If they're like mine, they'll let you do what needs to be done. It's not unusual to have a rifle mounted on a rack in your vehicle around here, and I kept one handy for situations like this.

At the time, it was kind of nice. It felt like I'd really made an animal friend. Sure, I liked the other vultures, but it's not like they really seemed to care about me past just being a sign of dinner. I felt like I might have just become the most disgusting Disney princess of all time.

Until I saw Ghost eat a squirrel.

No big deal, right? It's just meat to a vulture.

Well, thing is... This squirrel wasn't dead.

He was just sitting there on the roadside, off in my peripheral vision, as I bagged up a rabbit that had an unfortunate meeting with a speeding minivan.

Then Ghost was there. I heard something akin to a loud squeak and a sound similar to somebody snapping a carrot.

The tail was hanging out of his beak. It wasn't limp either.

It was twitching.

Vultures might eat something wounded and not moving. After all, if it smells like a corpse and looks like a corpse...

But not living, moving animals.

That squirrel definitely wasn't roadkill.

After that, I started paying a little more attention.

The family of possums I used to have around? I hadn't seen them in a good while. Same story with the stray cats that had been living nearby.

The bird feeders were mostly untouched. If that wasn't a sign that Chunky was gone, I don't know what would be.

And speaking of birds, the usual calls and chirps? Maybe a third of what they were around this same time last year. Not dead quiet, but definitely muted.

Now, Ghost wasn't exactly being pampered. Some days, we just didn't get anything bigger than a squirrel or two. Some days, we got nothing. But there was always -something- in the carcass pile. He should never have been hungry, not really, certainly not hungry enough to push him to eat something that, within all reason, was still alive and kicking.

It was a day after that squirrel that I found them.

A cardinal first, judging by the bright red feathers. That was the only way to tell, considering the head was gone.

I would've chalked it up to the cats if there hadn't been a cat skull, picked clean, lying just a foot or so away from what looked like a freshly dead, headless tabby. Its blood was still wet and pooled underneath it.

They'd been added to the kill pile.

But not by me.

And there was Ghost. Up in the tree, hunched over with his head tilted slightly.

Watching me. Like he always did.

A stray dog showed up not too long after. Big, skittish pit bull mix by the looks of it, probably attracted by the smell of meat.

I poured a couple of bottles of water into a paper bowl I'd used for lunch and watched him down it pretty readily. I figured if he hung around long enough, I might get him to trust me enough to get in the truck.

It wasn't a day later that I found him on the pile.

My first thought wasn't Ghost. Sure, maybe he'd started making his own lunch, but this wasn't something like a cat that wouldn't see it coming or an unsuspecting squirrel.

This was something big enough to seriously hurt me, never mind a vulture. I called it in and told the town that somebody had to be dumping animals off on my property.

They didn't take me seriously. They even suggested somebody might've shot the dog if it harassed their livestock and just dumped it out on my land, since a few local farmers knew roughly where I lived.

Didn't make me feel any better. So I bought and set up a few game cameras, figuring I'd catch the license plate of whoever was screwing with me and get them trespassed.

And as I worked, there was Ghost. He'd been around a lot more lately. He watched me as I pulled out my extension ladder and started putting up the cameras. He even flew over to the tree I was working on when I moved out of sight, just to stare down at me from a higher branch.

I got a good look at his feet then. At the sharp tips of his nails that looked like they'd be more at home on a hawk than a vulture.

For a few days, nothing really happened. I was actually relieved. It let me hope that maybe whoever had done this got wind that I'd called the authorities and decided it wasn't worth the risk. Still, I took my laptop out with me so I could check the game camera footage on-site.

I expected to see vultures, maybe a few returning bits of wildlife if I was lucky- or an unfamiliar truck if I wasn't.

I didn't expect to see a blur drop in from above the camera's line of sight, bouncing off the carcass pile below. When I went to check the pile the next day, I found out that it was the headless body of a rather large rabbit.

Then came the rustle of leaves and the shaking of branches near the camera... followed by Ghost's face moving into frame, illuminated in black and white by the camera's night vision. One eye fixed on the camera before he tilted his head and stood there motionless until the camera stopped registering movement...

The next clip was just more shaking branches.

That was the first time I'd ever felt unsafe on my own property.

Anger won out over fear in the end.

I'd had enough of this nonsense. I tossed the laptop into the cab of my truck and reached for my rifle, fumbling to load a round while scanning the area.

There he was, perched up in the trees.

Staring down at me.

When I brought the rifle up and started lining up a shot, he looked almost...

Shocked. The tilt of his head was whiplash-quick, going from casually observing me to full-on staring me down.

I took the shot when he started to spread his wings and saw a small explosion of black feathers.

He dropped like a rock into the underbrush, crashing onto a branch before hitting the ground.

I loaded another round into the rifle and marched toward the spot where I'd seen him land. Freak or not, I wasn't going to let him suffer if I hadn't put him down.

I should've let him bleed.

When I got close enough, the bastard shot out of the brush, letting out a loud, rasping hiss as he batted at me with a bloodied wing and tore at my hands with clawed feet.

It forced me to stumble and land hard on my back, knocking the breath out of me.

Somewhere in that mess, the gun went off, thank God. I think if it hadn't, Ghost wouldn't have stopped.

By the time I'd managed to pull myself up, he'd already taken off, listing slightly to the left before correcting and disappearing into the trees.

That was two weeks ago, and things haven't gotten better.

I thought he'd leave after all that, but he's only gotten...

Stranger.

He doesn't follow me to jobs anymore. I only catch sight of him now as he's leaving.

He's started leaving his kills on my doorstep.

But that's not what's got me writing this out. I'm trying to convey this in a way that doesn't make me sound as crazy as I think I do.

See, I'm writing all this from my kitchen, nursing a cup of coffee and trying to take it easy.

I got into what everyone's calling an "accident."

Two days ago I was hauling ass, hoping to get to the scene of some poor creature that had died on a particularly busy stretch of road.

It'd been raining pretty hard the night before, and it was still drizzling, with a call for more rain moving in.

The longer it sat on that road, the longer it'd take to clean. According to the call, it looked like a dog, but it'd already been hit once or twice and might've already been missing chunks of its upper half.

Just as I reached to adjust the knob on my radio, I caught a glimpse of something above. A black outline.

Then something smashed into my windshield.

It just barely missed me, but the explosion of glass made me slam my foot down on the brake, causing me to fishtail.

After that, I just remember feeling weightless for a second and then waking up in the hospital.

I took a pretty nasty knock to the head. My phone thankfully survived the crash.

I'm home now, resting up. I got a call not too long ago.

They found out what hit my windshield.

It was a dog skull.

It seems silly, but...

Sitting here, looking out the window as I sip my morning coffee...

I gotta wonder.

What if he put that dog in the road?

I found mountain tops to be intriguing. They were so high up that nothing besides the sturdiest of microorganisms could stand a chance surviving, where it was only you and the mountain. I knew it was dangerous, but the danger was enticing.

I trained for a while on smaller mountains, learning how to deal with the extreme cold and low oxygen levels, all in preparation for the ultimate trek, in my eyes.

K2.

It is, while barely shorter than the more famous Everest, is far more dangerous. Its sheer cliff faces, avalanches, and stones as sharp as the finest knifes made it one of the most dangerous climbs in the world. But, I thought I was ready for it. I chose the perfect time when no one else was scheduled to climb the mountain, only people coming down from it.

So I flew there, prepared my gear, paid respect to the many that had died to the mountain, and after quickly consulting with the residents about the route, begun the ascent. My second ever climb without a guiding hand. I took the standard Abruzzi Spur route, which is the "safest" route up to the peak. It was brutally difficult, as expected, and I nearly experienced bad frostbite, but I met a few really nice people who were coming down. I did hear them mention that they felt like they were being watched, even with no one else around them.

Astonishingly, the mountain didn't act up and have a snowstorm or an avalanche my entire way up. I was starting to get a bit faint due to frostbite, but that wasn't important, for I had to make it to the peak.

As I went up the final meters to the peak, I stood atop the second closest place to the stars I could stand on. I thought of how far I had come, and begun the descent to ground level. That was when the issues started.

A massive snowstorm had quite suddenly set in, and in a bad spot too. I was halfway between two camps, and I was forced to stay out in a small tent that let some snow in.

It was getting really, really cold then. I didn't have any way to start a fire, and i felt hypothermia's grasp reaching towards me. That was, until I saw something I didn't expect. A light was heading up, towards me. It was hard to see in the blizzard, but it was there. It glowed with a bright golden light, and just seeing it made me feel warmer.

As the lamp bearer approached my tent, I couldn't hear their footsteps in the snow, mainly due to the blizzard's roaring. I saw the lamp swing in to my tent, before it was left there. I could only get a faint silhouette of the lampbearer, but one thing I couldn't help notice was a lack of cold gear.

Eventually, I heard a voice. It was light and feminine, yet it pierced through the blizzard with no issue. "Hey, you might want to pack up here, the snow above looks just about ready to collapse. I'll guide you, I just need my lamp back."

I quickly gave her the lamp, and both me and her quickly packed up the shelter. Strangely, despite her holding the lamp close to her, I couldn't make out anything certain about her besides her long hair and somewhat slim body. She rolled up the tent, before handing it over to me to carry. Strangely, I felt no warmth where she touched it. I wasn't going to question that, though, because even through the blizzard I could see the snow ready to collapse.

I followed the lamp down the mountain, past multiple camps, before night time had finally come. Exhausted, I asked my savior to help me lay down camp. She obliged, and I slept through the night. Before I did, she left the lamp beside me, to warm me up.

When I woke up, she was gone. There wasn't a trace of her existence, not in the snow, not in the tent, not anywhere. The only thing there was that even slightly hinted at her being real was the lantern, which had no flame left in it, and strangely no soot either. Only a single small bone in perfect condition was inside.

I took the lantern with me to finish up the climb down, and I asked the people at the bottom if they'd seen a woman holding a lantern ascend the mountain. Like I'd expected, they said no. I decided to keep the lantern, and sent it over to a friend that specialized in DNA and bone identification.

There was no trace of any DNA besides mine, despite the girl having carried it for an extensive period of time. And the bone?

Well, it belonged to one of the people who had died on the mountain. He didn't say a name, though. Just told me that the bone was extraordinarily cold, despite being in a fairly warm area for a long period of time. It was clear that the bone had been used as fuel, in some way. He asked me how on earth I'd gotten this lantern, and I told him about the strange girl I had met on the mountaintop. He said that based on what I had seen on her, she should've been dead before she made it to the first camp.

I decided to continue mountain climbing after that, in hopes of meeting the girl and getting some answers from her. Even if they were vague, it'd satisfy me.

It was three months into the school year, and I was already unravelling. The combination of admin being on my ass and my illiterate students caused icy bitterness to replace the blood in my veins. My wife, Wren, saw the stress slowly replacing my skin and suggested we take a day to go to the beach. Of course, I protested; I still had thirty worksheets to grade. She refused to take no for an answer, and before I knew it, we were at the beach in matching sage green bikinis.

I sat on my tattered beach chair while Wren tanned on a towel next to me. "Close your laptop," she said, "it'll overheat."

"I have to answer these emails," I replied as my fingers danced across my keyboard. I hit send and immediately opened my next unread message.

After catching my daughter reading an inappropriate book, I investigated the complete list of books you assigned your students. I am APPALLED at the blasphemous and borderline pornographic books you've suggested to your students. I will be contacting the administration about this to ensure you suffer the fullest consequences.

Sincerely,

Emma's mother.

I closed my laptop with a deep sigh.

"That bad?" Wren asked as she sat up and took off her tortoise-shell sunglasses.

"It's actually my fault for thinking The Picture of Dorian Gray was a suitable book for seventeen-year-olds." I scoffed.

"I thought this state loved the gays."

"Not anymore, it doesn't." I stood up. "I'm going to the bathroom."

Wren pointed at the calm ocean waves. "Bathroom's that way."

Before I could walk to the nearest crab-shack, a man in a three-piece suit and a briefcase approached us.

"Excuse me," he said. "I'm sorry to bother you ladies, but I couldn't help but notice how beautiful you both are."

Wren and I shared a quick look. "Thank you?" I said tentatively.

He put the palm of his hand on his chest. "My name is Howard. I run a local modeling company, and you ladies would be perfect models for our website."

"Modeling?" Wren questioned as she stood up.

"Modeling! Say, what size shoe do you ladies wear?"

"Um," I started, glancing at Wren again, trying to gauge if she was as weirded out as I was. "We both wear a seven and a half."

"PERFECT! My company could use girls like you. With compensation, obviously."

That made my ears perk up. "How much?"

"Our rates start at twelve hundred an hour, always paid in cash."

My jaw dropped. "And what would we be doing?"

"I run a website dedicated to highlighting the different aspects of beauty. We are currently focusing on legs and feet." Howard handed me a business card. "Give us a call if you're interested. We'll set up a date for us to pick you up and take you to the studio."

"You'll pick us up?"

"We send a car for all our models." With that, he walked away.

"There's no way we're doing it, right?" Wren asked.

I took out my phone to search for the website. It sounded like a twenty-year-old tech billionaire's failed AI project. "It has good reviews." I scrolled through the monochromatic interface, filled with women's arms in long latex gloves and feet in heels so high they looked like weapons. A tab for men was available, though with a significantly smaller supply. Below, the tab directing you to the about section was a password-protected 'exclusive' tab. "The website seems legit."

When we got home, I immediately called the number on the business card. A disembodied woman asked if I was buying or selling. "Selling?" I answered. "Howard approached my wife and me today."

I heard some typing on the other end of the line. "What's your address?"

As I told her, my wife looked at me from across our kitchen in utter disbelief.

More typing. "We'll send a car tomorrow at nine p.m."

She hung up before I could say anything else.

"You're not serious," Wren demanded.

"If you don't want to come with me, that's fine, but I'm not gonna pass up this opportunity."

She pressed her tongue on the inside of her cheek. "I don't like this."

"I don't like living off a teacher's salary." I took an energy drink out of the fridge to help me finish grading my class's worksheets while Wren left the kitchen with a huff of disapproval.

A black van stopped in front of our house. The back door opened, revealing two empty seats in the almost-full vehicle. "At least we aren't alone," I whispered.

After making sure I had my wallet and pepper spray, I stepped into the van.

"Fresh meat," the woman to my left said.

"Excuse me?" Wren barked at her.

I put my hand on my back to signal that maybe it wasn't the best time to get into a fight.

"You're new. Fresh. Meat."

I cleared my throat as the inside of the van began to close in. "What's your name?" I needed at least one friend there, and she was the first person to acknowledge me.

"Crystal. And you are?"

"Alice." I pointed my thumb at my partner. "Wren."

"Howie got a two-for-one deal with y'all," Crystal smiled. "Roommates or fruits? Or both?"

I pressed down on Wren's shoulder, keeping her from getting out of her seat. "I take it you've worked here for a while then."

She nodded. "We all have."

I looked at all the women in the back row—different ages, races, and sexes assigned at birth.

"So you like working here then?"

She shrugged. "It pays the bills. It pays for designer." She ran her fingertips across her chest, flaunting her Chanel necklace. "Can't complain."

We spent the rest of the ride in silence.

Howard greeted us as we entered the studio. "Welcome back, ladies. We have some new members joining us, so make sure to be welcoming." A short man in a black polo and khakis handed him a clipboard before walking away. "Let's see here." He put on thin-framed glasses, accentuating his beady little blue eyes. "Crystal, Daisy, and Amber, you're with Fred. Cherry and Jade, you're with George. Alice and Wren, you're with Dave." He clapped his hands and walked over to us. "Everyone to their places. Chop-chop."

Wren grabbed my hand and squeezed. "Where exactly are we going?" she asked as everyone dispersed.

Howard smiled. "Room 106! Depending on what we're shooting, you'll be either in a room or outside in the parking lot. Today we'll start simple. Follow me."

We followed him to a room with pretty standard photography equipment. Soft box lighting kits illuminated a grey leather couch that stood at the center of a white backdrop. "Dave, meet our new girls," Howard said while the photographer messed with his camera. "I'm going to check on the rest of our ladies. You kids, play nice now."

Dave looked at us with a sinister gleam in his eyes. "Nice," he laughed darkly. He crouched down to get a closer look at our legs. "You have a birthmark," he said as he poked the side of my right ankle. "Do you want us to cover it?"

"No, it's fine," I responded, not seeing the danger in such a small mark being visible.

He set his camera on the tripod and beckoned us over to the couch, where he handed us a pair of black thongs. "Put this on."

I did as directed; Wren begrudgingly followed. As a silent command, he handed us hot pink stilettos.

"Alright, let's get started. For now, just do what feels natural."

With no other direction, I crossed my legs. Blinding flashes of light erupted in the already bright room. Metallic clicks filled my ears as Dave took the photos.

"Niceeee."

As I tried a few other positions, I noticed Wren wasn't moving. I thought she just wasn't sure how to pose. "Just do what I do," I said, trying to be encouraging.

"Right, 'cause you're such an expert," she retorted.

With a sigh, I lay on my back and raised my legs so they were completely vertical, prompting Wren to do the same.

"Hold that. Don't move a fucking millimeter," he said as the camera shutter sang.

Finally, an hour had passed. Howard came back and gave us our payment—in cash as promised. "Same time tomorrow?"

The following gigs were pretty standard. After a long day of teaching and grading papers, I'd put on heels, ballet slippers, or Doc Martens and pose to show off my legs or feet, depending on the day. Sometimes we even shot close-ups of our knees. We wore fishnets or sheer tights here and there, but Howard said our viewers preferred to see as much of our skin as possible. I wasn't going to complain when we were getting free routine pedicures.

Crystal and I had begun getting close. After my first week, she invited me out for drinks after a shoot. "How's Howie treating you?" she asked before taking a sip of her Aperol spritz.

"Good," I answered. "Will that change?"

She shrugged. "How long have you and your wifey been together?"

"Five years."

"You're lucky you were recruited together. This job isn't something you can easily explain."

"It's just modeling."

"For now."

The money we were earning went to the typical bills, car payments, and student loans, leaving us enough to enjoy the quiet luxuries of a morning Starbucks coffee and brand-name groceries. Though I couldn't help but feel twinges of jealousy when Crystal would show me the new designer clothes and jewelry she bought.

I asked Howard about how Wren and I could increase our earnings, and as soon as the words left my mouth, a sinister smile spread across his face. He led us to the studio's parking lot, where our usual white backdrop was set up. "This is where we film our more exclusive content," Howard said as groups of what I had since learned were interns filled a plastic bin with a viscous red liquid.

"What's that?" I asked.

"That," Howard said, "is the blood you're going to be dipping your feet into."

"You're not serious," I exhaled with a nervous smile.

Howard smoothed the front of his blazer with his pale hands. "It's very simple. All you have to do is dip your feet inside, move around a bit- very simple. There's a huge market for it—it's over-saturated, actually. But we're the top site for a reason."

"Absolutely not." Wren angrily grabbed my wrist. "We're leaving." She started walking, but I didn't move. "We are leaving, aren't we?"

Howard smirked. "You're free to go, Alice, but it's double the pay for so little work. And it only gets better from here."

I looked at the pool of blood and only saw money signs. "Where exactly did the blood come from?" I asked as if that would make things better.

"A local butcher."

I weighed my options; I could leave penniless or shoot a simple video.

I pulled away from Wren's grasp and said, pathetically, "I'll see you at home."

Wren had stopped modeling with me despite my efforts to prove my side hustle was worth it. Instead, she took extra shifts at the coffee shop she worked at—I think mostly to avoid seeing me.

The shoots started progressively getting more intense. Tarantulas and snakes were placed under the thread of my fishnets. Hissing cockroaches roamed the expanse of my legs.

After a scene involving hundreds of acupuncture needles, Crystal and I went out for a midnight snack; one of Howard's many drivers took us to a local fast food joint.

"You're lucky we're not filming your face," Crystal said with a mouthful of fries.

"Why's that?" I asked, picking at my grilled chicken sandwich. Since Howard implied our viewers would rate my content higher if I lost a few pounds, I had been watching what I ate.

"You look terrible."

I groaned as my hands rubbed the side of my face. Deep purple eye bags started to push through the skin of my face. "I know, I know. I haven't been sleeping lately."

"Nightmares?"

"I can still feel last week's centipedes."

"You need to relax, girl. How's wifey?"

"Still not happy with me." I sighed. "Maybe she's right. We were doing fine before; maybe I should quit."

"Maybe you should."

I didn't. Not that night anyway.

Instead, I bought new swimsuits and dragged Wren to the beach. I lay in the sand with her and watched the ebb and flow of ocean waves. Sitting in new beach chairs, we drank Smirnoffs and compared seashell collections. For a moment, things felt normal.

We were walking along the shore when a football landed at our feet.

I saw one of my students jog up to me. "Sorry about that," he said. When he leaned down to pick it up, he jolted backwards, his face turning a sickening white before he sprinted away. I looked down, thinking he saw a crab or bug of sorts, but all I saw was my right ankle.

One night, as usual, I entered the studio, following Howard to the parking lot. I noticed the camera wasn't at its usual height; instead, it was much lower. "We're gonna try something new today," he said before taking a kiwi out of his pocket and unceremoniously dropping it onto the ground. With an aggressive stomp, he crushed the fruit; seeds and green flesh splattered on the pavement. "Simple enough?"

I nodded. I could see the appeal, for the ASMR, if not fetish purposes.

Dave handed me a pair of incredibly uncomfortable Louboutins and positioned me in front of the camera. An intern holding a cardboard dumped the contents at my feet.

Guinea pigs.

"Alright, let's get this show on the road," Dave said so incredibly casually. Interns stood crouched at both ends of the set to keep them from escaping.

Howard saw the confusion on my face. "Just like I showed you," he said with a dark smile.

I was absolutely stunned. "There's no way you're serious," I laughed, hoping this was all a big joke.

"Our clients pay top dollar for premium content."

"No fucking way," I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

"It's a thousand for each one."

I looked at the small creatures innocently roaming around.

Six thousand.

I shook my head and kicked off my shoes. "I'm done."

"You're always welcome back if you change your mind. Just give us a call." Howard handed me another business card, this time with a different number.

As I stormed off, I swore I heard him say, "You'll be back."

Wren was ecstatic when I told her I quit.

The rest of the fall semester passed, and I had almost forgotten about the whole thing.

I was cleaning out my purse when Howard's business card fell out. I went to throw it away until I realized I had never read the back. There was a password. My eyes widened. Quickly, I pulled out my phone and searched for the company; I entered the password for the exclusive tab.

Innocent thumbnails and gruesome titles greeted me.

Frog Stomp

Roach Crush

Kitten Squish

Each video had at least a four-star rating.

I thought I was lucky for quitting when I did.

Like she does every month, Wren went to visit her mom in the next town over.

Meanwhile, I was barely getting through my lesson on Fahrenheit-451. On my lunch break, I checked my emails and saw one from my boss Linda, saying I needed to attend an urgent meeting with her at the end of the day. The rest of the day passed far too quickly.

"Good afternoon, Alice," greeted Linda. "You know Emma's mother, I assume."

I turned to the woman sitting in the grey office chair. "Yes, of course." I gave a smile that didn't reach my eyes. "We've spoken many times." I sat in the chair next to her and looked back at Linda. "What's this about?"

"Can you explain the reading list you gave your students?"

Fuck my life, I thought. "Yes, ma'am. This year, my students have an AP exam in which they write an essay based on a book of their choosing. I gave a list of college-level books for them to choose from."

"Can you list some of these books, please?"

"There's 1984, Invisible Man, The Picture of Dorian Gray—"

"That one," interrupted Emma's mother. "That's the one my daughter was reading. I looked into it, and it was HIGHLY inappropriate."

I cleared my throat. "Your child is in a college-level class, and therefore she'll be exposed to more mature literature. If you have an issue with that particular book, Emma has plenty more to choose from."

"Exactly my point. The books you have suggested are PORNOGRAPHIC, like that, Lo-Lolita one."

I clenched my fists as Linda started speaking. "What exactly is the issue?"

"The book is LITERALLY about pedophilia. It's absolutely ridiculous."

"Alice, is this true?"

I swallowed the lump beginning to form in my throat. There was no way for me to win this."The book follows an adult character who has an inappropriate attraction to children, which the book in no way glamorizes or encourages." I blinked away the tears beginning to form. "It's on the official reading list for AP Literature."

Linda sighed. "Regardless, you've gotten many complaints from parents these past few years, especially regarding the GSA club you run. Now, I defended you in the past, but we've had too many parents share concern about your influence on our students. I will, unfortunately, have to terminate your contract effective immediately. Please have your room cleared before you leave.

The rest of the day was a blur. One moment I was in Linda’s office, and the next I was on my couch crying. I called Wren hundreds of times, only to be continuously left on voicemail. I thought the day couldn't get any worse until I got a call from her mother. As soon as I accepted the call, I was met with uncontrollable sobbing. My heart immediately started racing."What's wrong?"

"Where-where are you?" her mom sobbed.

"Home. Why? What's wrong? Is Wren with you?"

"She's in the hospital."

My blood ran cold. I felt my face turn white. "What?"

"Get down here as soon as you can."

Inside the sterile hospital room, I saw something that looked like my wife. Except she never slept on her back. Needles and tubes were shoved throughout her entire body. Her brown skin was abnormally pale. Not sun-kissed with gorgeous tan lines. She didn't even smell like herself.

Her mom and doctor explained what happened.

A hit-and-run.

Not sure when or if she'll wake up.

The cost.

God, the bills.

We had money saved, but it was nowhere near enough to cover the extent of her injuries. For what I put her through, I owed her the best care I could buy.

I excused myself to the hallway and rummaged through my purse until I found it. I called the number and was greeted by Howard's voice. "I knew you'd be back."

"Six thousand isn't enough, Howard."

"I'm nothing if not accommodating."

Dave handed me a pair of chunky black combat boots and led me to the man tied up on the ground. Patches of grey hair grew on his otherwise bald head. Liver spots created constellations on his aged face. His clothes had a layer of dirt and reeked of cigarettes. His screaming was muffled by the duct tape covering his mouth.

"I believe fifty thousand is a more than suitable offer," Howard said.

"Seventy-five thousand," I demanded.

His eyes widened; an almost proud look spread across his face. "Deal. Now, just like we discussed."

Dave started the camera.

I rubbed the front of my boot over the side of the man's face until I reached his temple. I lifted my right foot and, with no hesitation, dropped it down. The man grunted with each impact; blood spurted onto the asphalt and the top of my leg. I looked down to see shattered pieces of teeth that shot out of his mouth. His skull caved in with wet cracks that made my stomach turn. With each stomp, my foot got closer to the ground until I finally stepped into a pool of pure flesh and brain matter.

Once the camera turned off, I collapsed, dry heaving as sweat dripped down the sides of my face.

I felt Howard approaching me, and without even looking at him, I knew he was smiling. He dropped the cash in front of me. "Well done. I'm sure Wren will be thankful."

I took the money and stood up. With nothing left of my humanity, I asked, "Same time tomorrow?"