r/scarystories

The grocery store I work at got a shipment of fresh produce tonight, and one of the fruits wasn't quite right...

So I work at a local grocery store called the Stop'n'Shop. We are your typical run-of-the mill all purpose general store. Think of Wal-something-or-another. The floors are a monotonous, neutral gray. The atmosphere is overbearing with the unnatural white of incandescent light bulbs.

It's boring, really.

That is, except when it's not.

To give you an example of what not-boring looks like at the Stop’n’Shop, I wrote the other day about an encounter I had with a cosmic Elder God inside the Aisle 7 frozen goods section. Weird stuff.

That's life here: boring, and then weird.

Tonight we had a shipment of fresh produce come in from our distributor. Typically, unloading trucks of freight is my coworker Luis's job. But we hadn't seen a real human face in over two hours, and I was worried the solitude would drive me to incomprehensible madness. So I offered to help him.

Once the pallets of fruit were taken off the truck, we started wheeling boxes of it down from the loading dock to the produce backroom. Luis took vegetables, leaving me with fruit.

The job was monotonous, bordering on mind-numbing, but at least I wasn't standing alone at the front of the store, staring into the void of my mind. The mundanity of moving fruit from Point A to Point B was a welcome feeling, actually.

If only it had stayed that way.

When I got to the kiwis, there were three boxes on the pallet. I picked up each box and moved it to my cart for transport. When I got to the third box, I heard what almost sounded like a muffled cry coming from inside the box.

I took pause at the sound, waited hesitantly, trying to see if it would happen again, if I could get a better listen to whatever that noise was. But no, nothing.

Must've been my imagination.

I wheeled the cart down the back hall, when halfway through the trip, I heard it again, alongside the sound of items moving inside the box.

'Is there something in here?' I thought to myself.

I stopped the cart, lifted the lid of the box open, and peeked inside.

"What the fu-" I started to say.

There were kiwis inside the box, seemingly rolling around all by themselves. This can't be right.

I started digging through the box in the spot the movement centered around.

"Ow!" Yelped a tiny, mouse-like voice from inside the box.

"WHAT THE FUCK!?" I yelled, much more loudly than before.

"Can you hear me!?" The voice screamed. "Please! Help me!"

I gently dug around in the box this time, until I felt a tiny hand grab ahold of my pointer finger.

I jumped back, startled at the contact with whatever the hell was inside the produce box. As I moved back, I lifted the entity with me. It clung to my finger, rising into the air as I moved.

This thing, this being that was somehow speaking to me, in English no less, was a kiwi. A regular sized kiwi, brown, furry. Except this kiwi, on its tiny body, had a small face. Attached at the sides were two small arms, and two small legs at the bottom.

I stared in disbelief at the fruit man that hung from my finger like its life depended on it.

"Don't drop me! Don't drop me!" It yelled.

Oh! I moved my other hand to scoop the fruit up, catching it by its miniature feet.

"Please!" The fruit pleaded at me, "You have to help me! Where am I? What are you? How are you so big?!"

I was unsure what to respond, part of me couldn't even get a grip on the fact that this was really happening.

"I'm not big. You're small.." I said to the fruit. "You're a kiwi. A kiwi in the produce section of a grocery store."

"What are you talking about!? You're talking gibberish, I'm not a fucking kiwi, I'm a person! I have a name. My name is David, I have a wife, where am I? I have to see her, does she know I'm gone? I don't understand what's happening..."

The fruit began to hyperventilate between sobs of terror.

"David, you said your name was?" I asked, trying to reason with the kiwi. "Look, let's go find a mirror, I want you to see yourself."

I took David the Kiwi into the employee bathroom, and held my hand up to the mirror. There, David was able to look at himself.

"What is that!" He screamed at his reflection. "That can't be me! I'm a fucking person! I'm a person!" He was screaming uncontrollably now.

I set David down in the sink and kneeled down to his eye level.

"Hey, hey. Deep breaths, we'll try to figure this out. Tell me your wife's name."

"Her name is Marie, God, how am I supposed to get back to her like this? What even am I?" He started crying again.

"David," I whispered, soothingly. "Do you have her phone number? We can try contacting her. Maybe she has some clue what happened to you."

"Yeah... yeah I know it..." he said, exasperated from the crying.

He told me her phone number. I typed it into my cell phone, and gave her a call. After 4 rings, the call went through.

"Hello?" asked a groggy male voice.

Wait, male?

"Uh... can I speak with Marie?" I asked into the phone.

"Marie isn't available right now, but who are you? And why are you calling my wife at 2 in the morning? What is this?"

"Your wife? No, no that can't be right. I'm here with David, there's been... an accident... of sorts, I need to speak with her."

"What is this, some kind of sick prank call?" The man on the other line said, his voice rising with anger. "You couldn't even get your facts straight, you're speaking with David right now."

I shot the kiwi a confused look, could he hear the phone?

I put the call on speaker.

"Come again? You said that you're David?"

"Yes, you asshole. You think you can call my wife and tell her that I've been in some kind of accident? Fuck you!" The call ended abruptly.

"That... that was my voice... how was that my voice...?" Said the kiwi, visibly disturbed from the call.

"I don't know, I don't understand what's happening. Do you have someone else I can call?"

The kiwi collapsed into a sitting position in the sink, his hands cupping his face. He sobbed a gut wrenching wail.

"David...?" I spoke softly, trying to nudge him out of his despair.

Without warning, the kiwi shot up into a standing position and climbed up the side of the sink. Once he was out of the bowl, he sprinted down the side of the sink, towards the edge.

By the time I registered what was happening, I lunged down to try to catch him, but I was too late.

The kiwi jumped off the edge of the sink. His body plummeted, crashing onto the floor with a soft thud.

"David..." I cried out. I kneeled down to him, a nudged him as gently as I could with my fingertip. As I moved him, I noticed a small trickle of blood on the floor where he collided.

David was dead. I was sure of it.

Part of my wanted to cry, part of me wanted to run out of the store and never look back. I was at a loss, how did this happen to him?

After 10 minutes of sitting on the bathroom floor, occasionally crying, occasionally hyperventilating from fear and confusion, I finally got the courage to lift David's kiwi body up.

It was limp, his face was expressionless. A small tear on the top of his kiwi body was stained red from blood flow.

He was gone.

There would never be answers for what happened to him, how he got to be that way, if the David that answered the phone was the real David. His wife, she probably wouldn't even notice.

That's the thought that stuck with me for a while. If I don't remember him, no one will. I'll never understand the events that happened tonight. But I sure have a strong desire to call my loved ones and tell them that I care about them.

I'm sure I'll have more stories to post in the future, but this one really fucked me up emotionally, so I'm going to go home and try to sleep off the existential crisis of knowing I might wake up as a fruit in a box, with someone else in my place.

I took the night shift because I needed money fast. My daytime job barely covered rent, and my car had just broken down for the second time that year. A friend told me a warehouse outside town was hiring overnight workers with no experience required, so I applied without really thinking about it.

The interview lasted maybe ten minutes.

The manager looked exhausted the entire time. I remember he kept rubbing his eyes while explaining the job. Mostly unloading trucks, organizing shipments, basic stuff. Before I left, he asked if I was okay working alone sometimes.

I told him that didn’t bother me.

Looking back now, I think he was trying to warn me without actually saying anything.

The warehouse sat far away from everything else, near an old industrial road nobody really used anymore. During the day it just looked abandoned and depressing. At night it felt completely cut off from the world.

There were only a few people on shift with me. Denise, the supervisor. Frank, an older guy who never smiled. And Tyler, who was around my age and constantly complained about wanting to quit.

The first week was normal except for one thing.

Every night at exactly 2:14 AM, the power in the back storage section would cut out for a few seconds.

Not the whole building. Just that section.

Nobody ever explained why.

The first time it happened, I joked about the place being haunted. Tyler laughed a little, but Frank immediately looked uncomfortable. Denise changed the subject fast.

That should’ve been enough to tell me something was wrong there.

A few nights later I was working near the loading dock when I heard somebody whistling behind me.

It sounded close. Like maybe ten feet away.

I turned around expecting Tyler.

Nobody was there.

I walked through the aisles thinking someone was messing with me, but the entire area was empty. I eventually found Tyler in the break room scrolling on his phone.

I asked if he’d been whistling.

He looked confused and said, “No?”

I laughed it off, but later that night Frank pulled me aside near the vending machines.

He asked me quietly, “You heard it?”

I nodded.

He stared at me for a second before saying, “If you hear it again, don’t go looking for it.”

Then he walked away.

That sentence stayed stuck in my head for the rest of the shift.

After that, things slowly got worse.

I started hearing footsteps in empty aisles. Sometimes boxes would be moved from places I clearly remembered stacking them. Twice I caught something moving in the corner of my eye, but every time I turned, there was nothing there.

I barely slept during the day anymore.

Then came the night everything changed.

It was raining hard outside, and one of the delivery trucks arrived late. Denise told me there were missing inventory tags in Storage B and asked if I could go scan them before the driver left.

The second she mentioned Storage B, Tyler muttered, “Hell no.”

Denise snapped at him to shut up.

I asked what his problem was, but nobody answered me.

Storage B was older than the rest of the warehouse. It connected through this long concrete hallway with flickering lights overhead. The air always smelled damp there, like wet cardboard and rust.

As I walked down the hallway, I noticed how quiet everything suddenly became.

No forklifts.

No machines.

Nothing.

Then I heard the whistling again.

Slow.

Uneven.

Somewhere ahead of me.

I stopped walking immediately.

Every hair on my arms stood up. I remember telling myself it was probably just air moving through pipes or someone outside. I kept going because I didn’t want to look stupid over a stupid sound.

When I entered Storage B, the lights didn’t turn on right away.

For a few seconds I was standing in complete darkness.

Then I heard something move.

Not footsteps.

Crawling.

The sound came from somewhere above me.

I froze.

My flashlight was shaking so badly I could barely hold it straight. I swept the beam across the shelves, trying to find where the noise came from.

Nothing.

Then the lights flickered on.

At first everything looked normal.

Rows of shelves.

Pallets.

Plastic wrapping moving slightly from the air.

Then I noticed writing scratched into one of the metal shelves beside me.

DON’T LOOK UP

I actually remember laughing nervously because I thought Tyler had written it as a joke.

Then something warm landed on the side of my face.

I touched it.

Blood.

Before I could stop myself, I looked up.

There was a man attached to the ceiling.

I know how insane that sounds. I know.

But that’s exactly what I saw.

His arms and legs were bent at impossible angles, pressed flat against the ceiling like a spider. His skin looked pale gray under the lights, and his eyes were wide open without blinking.

He was smiling at me.

Not normal smiling.

His mouth stretched way too far across his face.

Then he started whistling.

The exact same uneven whistling I’d been hearing for days.

I couldn’t breathe.

For a second my body completely locked up. I just stood there staring while this thing slowly crawled across the ceiling toward me.

That snapped me out of it.

I ran.

I dropped the scanner, smashed into shelves, almost slipped trying to get back into the hallway. Behind me I could hear fast crawling sounds above my head.

I never looked back.

The second I reached the main warehouse floor, I slammed the hallway door shut so hard the glass rattled.

Denise grabbed me asking what happened, but I couldn’t even speak properly. Frank already looked like he knew.

When I finally managed to explain what I saw, nobody looked surprised.

That’s what scared me most.

Tyler looked terrified.

Frank just closed his eyes.

And Denise quietly asked me one question.

“You looked up, didn’t you?”

I quit before sunrise.

No notice. Nothing. I grabbed my stuff and left.

For weeks afterward I convinced myself I imagined the whole thing. Stress, lack of sleep, maybe some kind of panic attack. That’s what I kept telling myself.

Then Tyler disappeared.

I found out through Frank.

He called me late one night sounding drunk and shaken. He told me Tyler vanished during shift change near Storage B. They found his flashlight on the floor and blood smeared across one of the shelves.

The police came, obviously, but nothing ever came from it.

The warehouse stayed open.

A month later Frank stopped answering calls too.

I moved apartments after that. Changed jobs. Tried my best to forget the entire thing.

But sometimes, usually around 2:14 in the morning, I wake up to a sound outside my bedroom window.

Slow.

Uneven.

Whistling.

The worst part is what happened last night.

I finally looked outside.

And there was someone standing across the street under the broken streetlight.

Completely still.

Smiling at my window.

Then he came with light he turned it on and there was a big star and inside it had a Star of David all in it at first his face shifted for a moment and for calming him down I made a joke he laughed he is a Moroccan Jewish and I’m Muslim from Afghanistan we are good friends and our friendship is strong but in that moment I felt he got scared a lot then we went out and I took his dad a side and I told him about it his face turned white in that moment (putting a Star of David in star is not a problem but it was upside down star people use that for summoning demons) he stooped the entire thing and we left it was 7 almost 8 (getting dark) he contact the owner of house and asked him did you lost a child recently the guy on the line said yes I lost my daughter after moving out from that house he told him tomorrow go to your daughter grave and check out is the body is there he was furious then Jacob’s dad calm him down and he asked him DO YOU KNOW WHAT DID A FIND IN THE HOUSE he asked him WHATT?? he told him I FOUND A BIG STAR IN MIDDLE OF THE ROOM AND THAT STAR USED FOR SUMMONING DEMONS THAT WHY YOUR DAUGHTER DID BECAUSE SHE ABOUNDED THAT PLACE

The assistant watched the sun set blood red on the doomed little village. From on high, within one of the towers of Castle Dracula. It bathed the little commoners  place with the last of its lurid rays as it shot the sky with flame. Then it departed with one final flashing wink. The assistant kissed it goodbye, blew it away on his hand. 

And smiled. 

A sound then carried and traveled through all of the silent ancient cobwebbed castle: The familiar creak of hinges and wood… the opening of a coffin. A casket lid softly closed, as it was guided down by phantom hand… his master's power. 

The Countess. 

The dread sun had been banished for another night for her majesty, his great mistress, the master sorceress of the dark, now the princess of shadow-black. She was unrivaled now. The stupid little peasants hadn't a chance now, not a chance in hell. 

For the Countess herself must now be master of such a dominion… she must now control all hellfire and flame as she now commanded the wild and the beasts within it. 

And the town below… through fear and terror, they were now her subjects. 

Subjugated and made prostrate to her power, she took from them as she pleased, when and where she so desired. They all fell victim to her magic and her might. Her ripping drinking fangs of mutilation, a hunger unsated and boundless that nonetheless held them all prisoner. Such hunger was an abattoir disease…

All the pitiful dirt farmer villagers would soon fall and bleeding, be held in the ripping necromantic fangs of her mighty jaws, beautiful. And now bestial. Vulpine. Powerful. 

Soon they would all feel her bloodlusting mouth about their throats, they would all come to her as she nightsong bade them. Commanding them, the royalty that she truly was and that coursed through her unholy veins. 

She was part undead. Thanks to the magic. And the ritual of the biting chair. 

And the fangs of the Count. Whose castle they now held. 

And himself… he allows himself this small and private boast. It would never be appropriate to brandish it before the master, his beloved Countess. 

She entered the chamber where he dwelt, watching the last of the sun’s light, diminishing as it had fled, fade to a darker blue then die as it became truer black. 

Stars like jewels in the ebon curtain came to life as his great master came from behind and stood beside him. Her presence was intoxicating. Powerful. 

She might not ever know how much he truly loved her, it was not his station and with a bitter heart he knew that, but to be by her side and to aide her in domination of the pathetic world was enough. 

The closest he would likely ever get to being her lover. Only in his most private fantasies. Only in his wildest dreams. Secret. He musn't trouble the Lady Zaleska with such trivialities. They were beneath her. He knew that. 

“Has our little one awoken yet?" Zaleska asked the assistant. 

The assistant said with a bow and a smile: "No, no. You know how little ones can be. Slow risers. Not quick to take to feet and task, but she'll learn. She'll get better.” He bowed again, saying: “She has you, master, to look to for example. The finest lady of shadows that has ever doth existed on the face of this accursed earth.”

Zaleska smiled. Pleased. He was such a good and loyal man.  

A little voice went shrill at the entrance to the chamber. 

Carmilla shrieked with dark joy. 

“Yes! Yay! The sun has died again! The Lord's Eye has gone blind for another curtain of night and now we get to go out and play!" 

Zaleska and the assistant looked to the little one as she jumped up and down in the doorway with savage glee. So proud. 

Carmilla ran up to the pair, her new dark guardians and bastard companions of the shadowland. She jumped up and down some more. Cheering. Screaming. Shrieking. Squealing. Part small child joviality and part terrible aggressive animal bestial shriekings. 

She looked up to them again, to Zaleska. She worshipped her. Her undead uncanny gaze held pure corrupted adoration for the Countess. Her great master. 

She said again, asking this time like a small impatient child really wanting something. In part, she still was. But the other part, darker and more dominating now… that part tainted everything that the small demon animal in childshape did from then on. 

“We do, right? Now that the sun is dead and God is blind to the little sows, we can go out and play with them, right? Oh! … I want to so badly, master! We do now, right?”

"Yes, my servant. Yes, my child. We must. We are creatures that live to go out and play in the dark." Zaleska said soothingly, reassuringly. 

Carmilla cheered! Then catching herself, restrained her excitement, then gave a courtly curtsey and bow, saying: “Thank you, master. Thank you, Countess. Your power and wisdom are unrivaled." 

The wolves outside once more began their nightly song of predator's chase and claim, they began again this night like all others as of late, howling their music of blood and flesh and flame. Renewed. 

The children of the dark were all revived now and they took to the night once more, empowered with unholy rage. 

But as the vampires and their assistant prepared for another nocturnal hunt, another dark night of feeding on innocent human prey in the village below…

… many rivals, made, were approaching.

…

The bloodbags writhed in the dirt. The three that were left. Frankenstein's massive body-part patchwork nosferatu creation watched them from the mouth of the cave where it rested and protected itself from the sun. 

It had known, naturally, innate, it had known to fly from the face of the sun. It had known when it was born from the slab by lightning and black magic that the sun was its enemy. 

Known. In its blood. Knowledge that was animal down to the bone. Patchwork bones… sawn, broken… reshaped… fitted together into new more powerful form and size like godly and powerful puzzle pieces. 

Remade. 

Frankenstein’s nosferatu monster sniffed the air… blood… fear… and… better yet. 

The flight of the sun. 

Darkness returned and the black lands came alive again with fog. Great drifting veils of phantom white. The creation stepped free of the cave and closed the few steps to his captive bloodbags, now down to an unholy three.

He picked up the misshapen one. Almost dead, almost empty. Weak pathetic little thing…

It groaned as he sank his teeth into the softest part of the wretched little twist of flesh, the only part of the rotten little fruit the creation deemed worthy to put his newborn lips to. 

The tender meat beneath the hollow crook of the underarm. Just above the large artery there. 

He sucked and drank deeply and the little deformed man begged God and the devil and the creation itself as he slowly felt the life being pulled from him, with a savage hungry tug. All throughout his bent and mismanaged frame. 

He also cursed the name of Frankenstein again.  Henry Frankenstein and all of his fathers and sons and all of the women too! the bastards! 

Curse them! 

Egnaw knew he was going to die. He only hoped Frankenstein’s end would be even more painful. 

But the mad doctor might be dead already. Still unconscious since the many days since the night of the experiment and the towers fall. 

Collapsed. Explosion. Sabotage by the hand of the rival Doctor Praetorius. 

The bastard. 

The creation ripped its mouth away after a final draw off the bloodbag and chewed. Egnaw screamed. But it wasn't prolonged like it might be with anybody else. The little man servant slave was becoming even more attuned and accustomed to unyielding pain. In unyielding volumes. 

The creation threw him back into the dirt with the other two. Still chewing. 

It swallowed. 

And then howled at the moon. Crescent and sickle tonight. Like a curved scythes blade.

Then throaty and gurgling he spoke once more. The only word it seemed to want to speak since the day of its unnatural birth. 

“Frankenstein…!” 

Egnaw cringed. He hated the sound of its wretched voice. He remembered handling such vocal chords alongside the mad doctor in another lifetime, not long but so long ago and far away… 

The fortress stone of jagged rocks and what they held for him were near, but the creation slightly altered course. Veering ever so slightly in its direction for the Carpathian Mountains. It had caught a newer fresher scent. Closer. 

A man. Moving fast. On horseflesh. 

A rider. 

…

He moved with one thought dominating all else. Find him. Find the vampire killer.

Find Professor Van Helsing. 

Florin moved with near suicidal speed. His horse beneath him was strong and durable. But nonetheless, they were both growing more exhausted. Yet he feared to stop and make camp. He feared whatever may be stalking through the night. It may be the same evil that now lay siege to his little village. 

Darkness spreads as a shadow does grow…

he must be careful. 

But then suddenly the beast beneath him came to a near dead stop. Nearly throwing him as its hooves skidded and dug shallow trenches in the black earth. 

The horse was skittish. Prancing and refusing to settle beneath him. Refusing to go any further. 

Florin, already frustrated with the urgency of his task, began to chide and curse the animal. Trying to berate and spur him on forward to the next farm or village. More children or others back home in town could be dying right now as his stubborn stupid horse just danced and behaved foolish-

Snap! 

A branch or twig or something else broke in two in the night all about him. Somewhere in the dark. Florin shut his lips. And fell silent. 

Instantly gripped with dread. Fear mounting higher into terror. He was suddenly aware, certain that he was not at all out here alone with his horse. Something else was out here too. 

Something moving. 

He suppressed his galloping heart of terror and forced himself to listen. Listen for movement in the encompassing dark wood. 

His horse grew more anxious. It wanted to be off, to flee. 

Everything inside both rider and his steed told him to run. 

Run. Now. 

Fast. 

“Stop, now, you!" Florin hissed at his horse, “We've no time for trifling games!" 

“Your horse is smarter than you are, rider." 

Florin, shocked, almost let out a wail, but before he could the voice from out of the dark came again and calmly said. 

“Don't. Please. Don't be afraid. Don't scream. You'll get us all killed." A beat. “Just be quiet." 

Florin whispered to the dark: “Who are you?"

“Dismount and move slowly. To the bushes. Leave your horse. There is something out here." 

“Who are you, what're you talking about and why should I trust you?" Florin asked again. 

“There is something out here, my friend. I'm just a fellow traveler, and I've no wish to see another man butchered." A beat. “Now do as I say, or to hell with you." 

Florin considered it a moment… and then considered the surrounding dark. It seemed filled. With something hurtling. 

Something bounding like an eager jungle cat hunting sure prey. 

Florin quickly dismounted, grabbed his saddlebags and then ran to the voice as it called out once more. He scrambled in the bushes with a large dark gypsy man with long black hair, beneath swashbuckler scarf wrapped round his crown in a skullcap. He looked severe and he was desperately clutching something in his calloused hands. 

A rosary. A small wooden crucifix attached, dangled from the tear drop center. 

The gypsy looked at Florin with wide eyes filled to the whites with all of the night and its superstitious and terrible wonder. He brought a finger to his lips, in a gesture to bade the young man quiet. Then he pointed out into the night to tell him to watch. 

Florin did. 

The horse, reins tied to the branch of a nearby tree, was now more nervous and jumpy than ever. Florin had never before seen a trained and broken horse behave so strangely and so wild. 

And then it came out of the woods. Out of the night. Large and hulking. Eyes twinkling twin stars of blood red jewels in all of the surrounding oppressive dark. Set in a stitched up grotesque patchwork of a face that was both human and rat like, commingled and blasphemously mixed. A terrible mouth opened and moonlight glinted off the drooling tendril strands of bestial salivation and rabid animal slobber turning them into long translucent jewels of glass in the lunar glow. A pair of fangs, bone-white, gleamed amongst the rest of the mouth of rotten black. A miasma of decay and fecal stench, pungent and strong filled the cold space. Warming it with powerful foul and fetid odor, the heat of death. 

He growled. Seethed. It said a name then. One Florin swore he'd heard somewhere before. 

“Frankenstein…!”

The horse was in hysterics now. Its eyes rolling in wild terror as it kicked and reared and pranced in a frightful panic that only the animal can know. It hurt Florin's heart to see the beast as such.

What came next was much worse. 

One of the large powerful arms of reanimated muscle, rippling beneath pale blue corpse flesh, shot out and found the poor beast’s throat, ripping it out in a sudden blur of crimson and hide and tearing discolored claw. A heavy steaming gout of dark animal blood shot forth from the fresh open wound which also belched steam into the night. The large rotting patchwork nosferatu brought its face into the warm red dark cord of horse blood and began to catch it in its wide open mouth. Gulping. Lapping. Tonguing with wild abandon the red warm cord-stream. 

As the horse suddenly stilled, then wobbled, then fell against the tree to which it was tethered and began to sag down to the earth, the creation came in, bathing its horrid face in horrible animal scarlet baptism as its mouth closed the distance and met the fresh wound ripped from the large stout neck. 

Florin from the bushes, with his host of gypsy saviors, could hear deep heavy gulping – deep heavy pulls of drinking, and the crunch and relish of strenuous chewing. Raw meat being devoured as the throat worked heavily to pull in thick viscous liquid. His stomach lurched and he nearly vomited but he held it together. It was awful but he could not pull his eyes away from the scene. Neither could his fortunate band of gypsies host. They all watched. Spellbound in the most terrible way by that which is so arresting and magnetic because it is so appalling you cannot actually believe your very eyes. You cannot believe it is actually happening. 

The vulpine manmade nosferatu creation took its fill, then with great prodigious strength, it threw the dead weight of the horse over one mighty shoulder, and then bounded off into the night. Heavily breathing through gurgles and throaty laughter. 

Florin waited til he was sure the thing was gone, then he thanked the Lord aloud and crossed himself. 

The gypsies gave their own prayers of thanks in another language the rider didn’t understand. But he was sure he nonetheless knew and felt every word. 

Yes. Thank the Lord on High. God Help Us. 

Carefully and quietly they arose from their hiding place together. 

The man who’d saved him spoke first. 

“Now you know to be careful in the night, fellow traveler. But now you are without a horse. Come with us, on our wagon, we will give free ride to your village.”

Florin said kindly but firmly: “Thank you but you don’t understand, I’ve just come from there and I’ve been searching the past many nights, I must get back on my way… but I’ve no idea where to look…”

The rider fell despondent. The sight of the creation and its feasting on his ride still very vivid and fresh in his mind. And he’d been thus far so fruitless in his hunt. Aimless. Nowhere. He had no idea of where to go. 

“Come with us,” the man, seeing the young one’s crestfallen face said again, “we can give you horse and maybe direction.” A beat. He held out his hand, “We shall see.”

Florin looked up into the weathered gypsy face and took the traveler’s hand. 

And away they went. Back to the gypsy camp. Not far off. 

Once there Florin saw that the band of travelers were actually a family. A father, mother, three sons, four daughters, a babe, and an old woman.

Around a campfire, they all shared their tales. The gypsy family: their travels and adventures and the strange sights and beasts and otherworldly designs thereon. 

Florin told them of his village. The one that had lived and was now dying in the shadow of Castle Dracula. 

The gypsies all crossed themselves at the sound, the name of the place. 

Florin joined them. And followed suit. 

He told them he was sent out to find someone, a man that the township needed to deliver them from the evil that now beset upon them nightly and fed on them like cattle. 

“Who?” asked the old woman, the grandmother of the family band. She hadn’t spoken up til now, since the young rider’s arrival. 

“Professor Abraham Van Helsing.” Florin said. 

A murmur of excitement went all throughout the family then. 

Then the man, the father of the band turned to Florin with something like a smile on his weathered face and he said: –

“We know where you can find this man. We know where you can find this Van Helsing.”

…

Erin was proud of her friend, Florin, and she wished him Godspeed everyday in the many weeks that followed his departure. She prayed to God that he was not dead and that he'd surely found someone that could help them and deliver them from this dark period of slaughter. 

More had died since he had left. More children and more adults. Neither the elderly nor the lame nor nubile young were spared the possible cutthroat silence of the nightly butchery. And many more died slowly, as if by some disease of cruel design, loss of blood slowly drained and taken. Fed upon over time while some were given more immediate and ravenous animal treatment. 

No one knew who was next. The pattern was everywhere and animal and impossible for any of them to follow. Many had already lost heart and taken their own lives, or fled. 

Some said that Florin was long gone. Or dead. Not to be counted on in either case. 

But Erin held on and she kept praying. Even when her parents and her aunt disappeared one night. Even when her own little brother had taken with the blood-loss plague that doubtless emanated from Castle Dracula with merciless and heartless intent. The poor little one like so many others before had become bed ridden. Pale and listless, barely breathing up til the end. This morning. 

Only her most immediate neighbors had bothered coming over to help with the burial and the funerary rites. Nobody had seen the priest in many days. 

She'd wept so lost and broken then when the final shovelful of dirt had been thrown and the sparse few gathered had taken their leave. She was so alone now and she didn't know what to do anymore. Everything felt useless and hopeless, that they all just lived at the cruel whim and mercy of horror that they could not even see until it was at last felt, and then at last as final cruel torture you were allowed to gaze into its terrible face. As final reward and punishment altogether, rolled into one. 

Sheer torture. Sheer agony was all that poor Erin felt now. 

That was why she'd volunteered this night for sentry duty. None had spoken against it. They were all of them far too tired and broken of heart and spirit to care anymore. At the beginning it would've been unheard of, a young lady like herself, only nineteen years and unwed… but now it didn't matter. There weren't enough able bodied men left anymore anyways. 

So she'd been given lantern and pistol and a small cask of warm wine. To protect against the cold. 

And then she'd taken to her watch. The last one, relieving the midnight man at three after and taking the final post till dawn. Alone. In the dark. 

She tried so desperately not to weep. But she couldn't help herself. Alone out here in the cold all of the faces of all of the dead friends and children and poor old folk came back racing through her mind unbidden in a procession that she could not bear but couldn't run from either. 

Erin wept and prayed and begged God to help them, to bring him back. To please, have Florin successful and bringing back their deliverer, their savior! 

Please Lord! Please! 

Save Us! 

Someone else weeping, a child crying, off in the dark somewhere, brought young Erin out her thoughts and prayers. 

A little startled she tried to spy out, holding the lantern aloft out into the dark, and she called: –

“Hello? Is someone there?" 

No word … but more weeping. 

A child's. A little girl's … by the sound. 

Forgetting herself and suddenly terrified for the thought of a small child out here alone with so much evil about, Erin flew forward with lantern held ahead and the pistol of her charge o’the night cocked. 

It wasn't long before she found the small little girl. In a horrible filthy dress, as if the child had been lost for weeks in the woods in naught but her pajamas. 

The child was turned away and bent and crying in her hands. Sobbing. 

Erin felt terrible for the little one, she went to her without any further hesitation, calling to the girl:

“Are you alright!? Oh my God, how did you get out here? Where are your parents? What're you doing out here, little one?" 

The child did not free her face but continued to weep, trying to speak through her crown cries and her sodden little fingers. 

“M-my, my-ma-mama…" 

Erin set the pistol aside as she knelt to the child and gently put her hands on her shoulders. The poor thing…

“It's ok, I'll get you home. Who's your mother? What's your name, little one?" she asked softly. 

The little girl stopped crying abruptly. But still she kept her face buried in her hands. 

Yet her voice was much clearer now, when finally she said: – 

"My name is Carmilla, Erin of Thoten. Thank you for asking.”

Erin suddenly felt cold and faint and as if her heart and chest had suddenly filled with dropping weight. She wondered fleetingly for that split second if this was the prelude to death, yet another heart breaking. She understood and knew that something was terribly wrong right away. 

Carmilla had been dead and gone for months now. Way back at nearly the start of all this relentless terror. 

Carmilla whirled suddenly. In the moonlight dark her face was both brilliant and youthful and pugnacious dog-like and goblin. She smiled and bore animal fangs and hissed like a rodent that carried disease. 

Erin flung herself back. In her sudden sprawl she fumbled for the pistol but her hand in its panic had only succeeded in shoving it further away. Out of reach. 

Carmilla laughed and tittered. Rodent squeals and bat-like screeches commingled with a child's giggles. 

Her eyes were flickering. Pinkish red dots that shone at the centers. Vulpine face drawn as she brandished fangs and continued to emit her strange abominated titters. 

“You're so kind, Erin. You always were. And if you're still wondering, my mother is just right there…” 

She pointed one clawed little finger out into the further dark. Erin was helpless but to look. 

And she saw her emerge from the ebon pitch of night in which she lorded and held as her ultimate domain. Clad in phantom white gown that darkled and shifted and changed to royal crimson red that was heavy and wet in spots, changing and shifting back and again with every advancing ghostly step. Her face was also phantom pale, so much so that it shone in the postmidnight pitch black like an unholy beacon, but yet she was beautiful. And terrible. Luciferian and unearthly driven. Her dark hair, a curtain of night unto itself, flowing out like a royal cape, as if caught in some unseen and unfelt wind. 

She came forward. And then like her dress, her Luciferian face began to change and dance and shift. 

Animal - wolf - rat - feline - insect - toad - bat - unknown - and then a rotten visage that was corpselike with the decay of the grave and a bastard conglomerate amalgamation of all her dancing shifted faces…

… then back to the one of beauty as she came upon poor Erin, sprawled on the cobble stones in the dark and at her feet and speechless. 

At the feet of Countess Zaleska, lord and master of Castle Dracula. Lord of the lands now through her awesome power and bloodthirst that could never be quenched. 

She said something then, before she finished the child –

“I've heard you, Erin. I have heard you. Although God has not heard your prayers, I have heard every word, I've listened every time, I've watched and relished as you shed each and every single tear, til now. Now, dear child, I, and not God, I am here to answer your prayers!" 

Carmilla laughed shrill rodent squeals as Erin shrieked one last final bottled shriek and Countess Zaleska came in with her bright fangs barred and descended. 

Erin died shrieking as they tore her apart. Still hoping and believing that Florin might come back and save them, that he might come back right now and save her. 

Many, the few that were left, heard her screams and struggles and the heavy sounds of wet fabric tearing and bones splintering and breaking, snapping. Slurping…

… Deep soupy pulls of drinking and chewing and laughter around mouthfuls of raw fresh meat. Nearly all of them that were left heard what was happening. 

But none came out. 

None came out to do anything about it. 

So the Countess Zaleska and her little Carmilla enjoyed a feast of yet another poor peasant girl. 

As the tattered remnants of the small village just listened and bore it. All night. 

All night until the dawn. 

Some of them were at least grateful for the coming rain, they could hear its booming and thunder now. They would be grateful for the rainfall to come and wash what was left of the young girl away from the cobblestones that so many of them had once swept and cared for and silently cherished. 

No more. 

Now they were just happy for the rain. It would wash the Erin girl's blood away, her last spent and violent red. 

But … those few, … they weren't so happy nor gladdened by the sound that seemed to call the storm into waking being. In bastard duet with the thunderclaps, preceding and then rising in intensity with the mounting roar of the worsening sky …

It sounded like roaring. 

Like the roars of an animal unknown and thrilled with bloodlust for another hunt that was coming. 

TO BE CONTINUED…

I’m not exactly sure how to start this. Whether to blame it on my own worsening mental state or to place the blame upon deepfakes and advancements in AI. See, that’s the thing, though. I’m no one important. I’m not some celebrity or political figure. I’m just a guy. A guy who’s probably been in his own head for longer than would be considered healthy.

It’s been a dark past couple of months. I thought I had kicked my depression. Thought that my medication was actually helping me break some pretty solid ground. But, as I’m writing this, I don’t know if that was the medication talking or just me trying to convince myself I was getting better.

Backstory just seems unnecessary. There’s no need for me to go through the whole spiel of where everything started, why I felt so alone, or how things ended up so bad. All you really need to know is that things have been looking pretty bleak for me. It’s like no one else exists but me, and it feels like being locked alone in a room with your worst enemy.

Honestly, it was actually a lot like being locked in a room with your worst enemy. Things were getting so bad that I struggled to even get out of bed in the morning, but still somehow managed to struggle falling asleep at night. It’s like I was so sure of myself, so sure of the negative, that I wouldn’t allow anyone to even suggest a positive. It was pointless.

All day, day in and day out, my time was spent doomscrolling, masturbating, and eating myself into oblivion, with no end in sight. My bottom was inevitably going to end up being death.

And that puts us here. Right smack dab in the middle of what I thought would only be a two week episode.

I had just finished a carton of chocolate ice cream and laid in bed with the lights off as I scrolled through TikTok after TikTok. Honestly, it may have been one of the longest doomscrolling stints of my last few months.

As I scrolled through brainrot, podcast clips, and AI story times, something happened that had never happened to me before. Instead of scrolling to the next video, when I slid up on my screen, the feed refreshed from the bottom.

It was frozen for a moment, displaying the loading spiral for nearly 30 seconds before the app crashed and sent me back to my home screen.

I thought it was an inconvenience, sure, but nothing to start analyzing like a detective. All I did was reopen the app and try to restart my progress.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t greeted with the same feed as before the crash. All I was met with was a livestream.

It was of a dark room. Barely visible, but I could make out some of the features. The blackout curtains, the rustic old nightstand, and the computer desk in the corner of the room. They were all mine. Right down to the stickers on the laptop and the empty soda cans on the nightstand.

My heart started to pound a bit, but a part of me knew that what I was seeing could not have been possible.

I looked at the title of the stream.

“Watching him until he does it.”

I was the only viewer.

I was in a trance, simply unable to take my eyes off the screen as I started noticing more and more details in the room.

My comforter, my posters, hell, the stuffed animals that I swore to never tell a living soul about. But there was something missing. I was nowhere to be seen in the frame.

As if responding to my thoughts, the bed sheets began to rustle and tangle themselves. A shape began to form on the bed. And that’s when I popped my head out, smiling at the camera with dark eyes and unnaturally white teeth.

The figure in the stream began crawling out of the bed, never taking his hollow eyes off the camera. Like a combination of a snake and somehow a spider, he slinked his way right to the front of the camera’s lens.

Before my very eyes, the chat began to light up the screen, every commenter being a member of my own family.

A “do it” message from my mom. “Stop being a pussy” from my dad. Yet somehow, I was still the only viewer.

I thought about typing my own message, just to see what would happen. However, my keyboard had become useless.

All I could do was stare in horror as the figure from the video placed a piece of glass to his throat and began to saw. Deeper and deeper. The smile never leaving his face.

Once he was done, his throat was slit open, and blood poured from the wound, soaking my favorite T shirt in deep crimson. He smiled wider than ever before, falling back onto the ground as the livestream ended.

I panicked. Turned on every light in the house. Checked under the bed, behind the curtains, and in the closet. Nothing. Sleep wasn’t even an option that night as I stayed up clinging to my blanket like a child.

I wouldn’t even look at my phone until the next morning, but once I did, I quickly realized how much of a mistake it had been.

The stream had been clipped, reuploaded all across social media. Millions of views, thousands of comments. Some people were disgusted. Some were outraged. But more than anything else, people wanted it to be real.

I read hundreds of comments that have been circulating my brain for days now. Hateful, disgusting comments.

They wanted it to be real. They wanted me to do it.

And who am I to not give the people what they want?

It started with a blue dot. At 3:14 in the morning, I woke up to my phone vibrating on the nightstand. I almost ignored it, but the notification said my brother Leo’s location had updated. I opened Find My Friends half asleep, expecting to see him at home, but instead his dot was moving slowly through the industrial district on the south side of town, the part with boarded-up warehouses, truck yards, and businesses that never looked fully closed even when they were dark. Then the dot stopped at a place called Suds & Shine Auto, a twenty-four-hour car wash that had been half-abandoned for years. I remember staring at the map and thinking the same thing over and over: who drives to a dead car wash at three in the morning?

The reason I was watching Leo’s location in the first place was because of what had been happening in our town. Three girls had gone missing in six months. All around the same age. All last seen alone. The police kept saying there was no confirmed connection, but everyone knew there was. Leo acted more upset than anyone. He was the one posting flyers, organizing search groups, and walking through the woods with a flashlight like he couldn’t rest until somebody came home. He cried at one of the vigils. I saw him hug the mother of the second girl and promise her they wouldn’t stop looking. That was the kind of man I thought he was. The kind who showed up. The kind who cared. If anyone had told me then to be afraid of my own brother, I would’ve laughed in their face.

But there were things I ignored because I loved him. The way he always seemed just a little too eager to know what the police had found. The way he asked strange questions that didn’t sound emotional, just practical. How long before they started checking nearby businesses. Whether dogs could track scent through standing water. Whether phone locations could still update underground. He said weird things sometimes and then smiled like he was embarrassed, like grief was just making him ramble. He also kept telling everyone he thought something was following him. He said he’d see a shape in reflective glass behind him at night, a figure just outside the edge of the security lights, something dark that kept pace no matter where he went. He called it a shadow, and after the second girl vanished, he started sounding convinced it wasn’t human.

That night, watching his dot sit at that car wash, I told myself I was being paranoid. I almost put the phone back down. Then it moved again, deeper into the property, and a second later I got the notification: Leo has arrived at Suds & Shine Auto. Something about the wording made my stomach drop. Arrived. Like he had a destination. Like this wasn’t random. I threw on shoes, grabbed my keys, and drove there without thinking it through. On the way, I kept Find My Friends open on the passenger seat, glancing at the map every red light. His dot stayed perfectly still. Waiting.

The car wash looked worse in person. The front sign still glowed, but only two letters worked, so it read UDS SHINE. Water dripped from somewhere inside with a slow metallic echo. One bay had a fluorescent light strobing overhead, and the concrete floor beneath it was wet enough to reflect everything like black glass. Leo’s truck was parked along the side, engine off. I didn’t see him at first. I just saw my own reflection in the open bay windows, stretched thin and warped by the water. Then I heard something scrape. I followed the sound and found a side door cracked open.

Inside, it smelled like bleach, rust, and something sweeter underneath that I didn’t want to identify. My phone buzzed in my hand so hard I almost dropped it. A new notification. Leo is now 10 feet away. I froze. I looked at the map, and that’s when I felt my blood go cold. His blue dot wasn’t in the bay anymore. It was moving toward mine. Slow. Deliberate. At the exact same speed as footsteps I could now hear somewhere beyond the wall.

I called his name once. No answer. Just that dragging sound again. Then I saw the rope. Coiled neatly beside a floor drain, dark at the ends like it had been soaked and dried and soaked again. Beside it was a stack of missing person flyers, folded in half. Not scattered. Kept. Saved. Like souvenirs or notes. I started backing toward the door, but my phone buzzed again before I could take two steps. Leo can see your location. I didn’t even know he had that setting on. Maybe he always had. Maybe that was the point. I was watching him, but he had been watching me too. Suddenly all of it rearranged itself in my head so fast it made me dizzy. The search parties. The vigils. The tears. The shadow he said was following him. It wasn’t a thing haunting him. It was a story. A mask. Something dark and inhuman to talk about so nobody would look too closely at the man standing right in front of them.

That was when he stepped into the bay. He looked almost normal except for how calm he was. Calm in a way no innocent person should ever be. Water reflected his face back at him in broken pieces, and behind him the glass panels threw his silhouette across the walls so it looked like there were three or four versions of him moving at once. He saw me looking and actually smiled. Then he said, like we were having an ordinary conversation, “I wondered how long it would take you.” I asked him where the girls were, and he tilted his head like he was disappointed in me. “You always skip to the ugliest part,” he said. Then his eyes dropped to my phone. “You shouldn’t have come alone.”

I wish I could say I ran immediately, but fear doesn’t make you fast at first. It makes you stupid. It makes you want one more answer, one more second to force reality back into place. I asked him why. He laughed quietly and looked at his own reflection in the wet floor. “Because people trust the one who helps them look,” he said. “They tell him everything. They open doors. They get in cars.” Then he took one step forward and my phone buzzed again. Leo is now 5 feet away. I remember that detail more vividly than his face. The stupid blue dot closing the distance like the app was narrating my death.

I backed out through the side door and ran without looking behind me. I heard him come after me, not fast, just certain. I got into my car, locked the doors, and called 911 while he stood under the dead light of the sign and watched me. He never ran. He never pounded on the window. He just stood there with that same expression, like I had finally understood something he’d been trying to teach me. The police found enough inside that building to connect him to all three girls. What they didn’t find was anything supernatural. No shadow. No presence. No curse. Just a man who learned early that people are easiest to hurt when they believe you’re the one trying to save them.

I still keep my location services off now. I know that sounds irrational after everything, because the app didn’t do anything wrong. It showed me exactly what was there. But sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and imagine a blue dot moving toward my house again, steady and patient, and I remember the worst part wasn’t realizing my brother was a monster. It was realizing he had built the mask out of love first.

I was traveling alone from New York to North Carolina to attend my grandfather's funeral. It was right around 11:00 PM when I pulled my car off Interstate 95 in Virginia.

The rain was coming down so hard that the windshield wipers couldn't even keep up. My GPS had completely stopped working because of the terrible signal in this dark, rural area.

The dim glow from the dashboard was the only thing lighting up my face, and that low fuel light just kept staring at me with its annoying orange color. I had no choice but to look for a gas station or a small motel to spend the night.

After a few minutes of driving blindly through the thick pine trees, a fading neon sign caught my eye. It was flickering in a green light, displaying "Pine Valley Motel... Vacancy."

I immediately turned down the narrow, muddy driveway. The motel was incredibly old, built in that 1970s cabin-style layout. There was only one light working inside the front office.

I parked the car and ran through the pouring rain. When I pushed the office door open, a tiny brass bell chimed overhead.

The smell inside was strange, a mix of dampness, mold, and some cheap chemical cleaner trying to mask the scent of something else. Behind the worn-out wooden counter sat an old man with incredibly thick glasses, making his eyes look huge and completely unnatural.

He was wearing a dirty flannel shirt, and he didn't even look up from his old magazine until a few long seconds had passed.

I asked him for a room for the night. He looked at me very slowly, then gave me a hollow smile, showing yellow, decaying teeth. He didn't speak.

He just reached down, grabbed a heavy metal key with the number 14 on it, and placed it on the counter. He wanted twenty dollars in cash, so I paid him.

He pointed his hand toward the dark path outside and said in a dry, raspy voice, "Last cabin on the left. Don't open the door for anyone after midnight." I figured it was just a stupid joke from an old guy living in isolation, so I took the key and walked out. I drove the car down to cabin number 14.

It was completely isolated from the rest, surrounded by trees on three sides. I opened the heavy wooden door and stepped inside. The room was freezing. It had a double bed, an old TV with a massive screen, and a single window facing the dark woods in the back.

I tried to turn on the heater, but the unit just let out a loud rattling sound and blew out cold, dusty air.

I decided to just lay down with my clothes on under the heavy blankets, hoping to fall asleep quickly.

It was getting close to midnight when I started hearing strange noises. It wasn't the rain.

It was the sound of footsteps, very light and very slow, walking around the cabin. The footsteps were sinking into the mud, moving with a steady rhythm.

I felt tense, but I tried to convince myself it was just wildlife, like a raccoon or a deer. Suddenly, the footsteps stopped right at the back wall of the cabin, directly behind the headboard of my bed.

I held my breath. Then, I heard a faint scratching sound on the wood outside. It sounded like someone was dragging their fingernails, very slowly, across the wall.

I got up as quietly as I could and moved toward the window. I looked through the rain-streaked glass but couldn't see anything, just total darkness and trees moving with the wind.

I let out a sigh and turned around to go back to bed. Right at that exact moment, the old phone on the nightstand let out a loud, piercing ring. The sound was so sharp it made my heart jump.

I stared at the phone in shock because motels like this rarely have working lines. I walked over and picked up the receiver with a hesitant hand.

No one spoke. All I could hear was heavy, rapid breathing and the faint sound of rain in the background. I said, "Hello, who is this?" There was no answer. The breathing just got heavier.

Then, I heard a very familiar sound coming through the receiver.

It was the sharp chime of that tiny brass bell from the front office, followed by the old man's voice screaming in pure terror, "It's not me. He is inside with you!" And before I could even process the sentence, the power cut out completely.

The room plunged into total darkness. Right then, I heard the click of the bathroom lock slowly opening from the inside.

I sat there on the edge of the bed, completely paralyzed by fear. The darkness was so thick I couldn't even see my own hand.

The moldy smell in the room suddenly grew intense, changing into the stench of rotting meat. I could hear it clearly, the wooden bathroom door moving millimeter by millimeter.

My breath was shallow, and I fought to stay absolutely silent. I remembered my cell phone was in my coat pocket hanging near the front door.

I started to move very slowly, crawling on my knees across the bed and then onto the cold hardwood floor. Every single floorboard I pressed on made a tiny creak, cutting through the dead silence.

I reached the coat and successfully pulled out the phone. I lit up the screen, keeping the brightness at the lowest setting so I wouldn't give away my position.

I quickly pointed the phone's flashlight toward the bathroom door. The door was wide open.

The bathroom was empty, but the floor was covered in fresh, wet mud and a trail of large, bare footprints heading directly toward the small closet in the corner of the room.

My hand began to shake violently. I swept the light over to the closet. The closet door was cracked open by a few inches.

Through that tiny gap, I saw something that made my blood run cold. There was a wide, unblinking human eye staring right back at me. It didn't blink. It was surrounded by incredibly pale skin caked in dirt. I let out a muffled gasp and stumbled backward, smashing into the wooden table.

The phone slipped from my hand, falling face-up on the floor and casting its light onto the ceiling. In that split second, I heard a violent burst of movement from inside the closet. Whatever was in there came rushing out in a bizarre, unnatural way, like a scrambling animal.

I didn't wait to see it. I lunged for the front door, frantically fumbling with the locks, and threw myself out into the pouring rain.

I ran straight for my car, never looking back.

I scrambled inside and slammed the door, locking it instantly. My hands were shaking so bad I missed the ignition twice.

When the engine finally roared to life, I flipped the high beams on. What I saw in the headlights made me slam on the brakes.

The old man, the motel owner, was lying flat on the muddy driveway right in front of my car. He was swimming in a pool of dark blood, his huge eyes staring blankly into nothingness. His flannel shirt was completely torn to shreds.

Before I could even process the horror, I felt a violent shudder rock the entire car, like something massive had just jumped off the cabin roof and landed dead-center on my trunk.

I looked up at the rearview mirror and saw a face pressed flat against the back glass.

It was a deformed, hairless face with a massive smile stretching from ear to ear. In his hand, he was holding the old corded phone from my room, the wires torn and dangling. I slammed my foot onto the gas pedal with everything I had.

The tires spun wildly in the mud for a few terrifying seconds before gaining traction, and the car launched forward, swerving right past the old man's body.

The thing on the roof rolled backward from the sudden jolt, but I could hear its claws scratching deeply into the metal roof, making a sickening, scraping sound.

I drove like a lunatic down that narrow, pitch-black driveway until I finally burst onto the empty rural road.

I was doing over eighty miles an hour through the fog and rain, my eyes glued to the rearview mirror, watching for any movement.

After about ten agonizing minutes of driving, the lights of Interstate 95 finally appeared in the distance.

I felt a massive wave of relief when I saw a large, fully lit Love's truck stop ahead, surrounded by big semi-trucks.

I swung into the parking lot and slammed to a halt right in front of the main store. I got out, gasping for air, and ran inside.

The young guy behind the counter looked at me with horror because of my appearance. I was drenched in mud, pale as a ghost, and shaking uncontrollably. I told him to call the police immediately, explaining that there was a murder at the motel down the road.

The police arrived about fifteen minutes later. I sat in the back of a cruiser, still trembling, and told the investigator every single detail: the footsteps, the phone call, the eye in the closet, the old man's body, and the thing that jumped onto my car.

The investigator listened with a grim, skeptical look on his face. They dispatched two units to the motel to check it out.

I stayed at the gas station for over two hours, watched over by another officer. Right around dawn, the investigator came back with a deeply disturbed, confused look on his face.

He sat down across from me and said in a low voice, "We went out to the location you described, son. The Pine Valley Motel has been completely abandoned and boarded up since 1994, after a fire destroyed the main office and killed the old owner inside."

My head started spinning, and I yelled at him, "That's impossible! He gave me the key. His body is out there in the mud. Go look for the body!" The investigator just looked at me coldly and replied, "We searched the whole place. There are no bodies. The cabins are completely overgrown with weeds and decaying."

He continued, "But there was one thing we found that we can't explain." I asked in a trembling voice, "What?" He pulled out a clear plastic evidence bag. Inside was the heavy metal key with the number 14. "We found this key lying in the thick dust inside the last cabin, covered in your fresh fingerprints. But that's not all."

The investigator walked me to the back of my car and shone his flashlight on the roof and trunk. On the metal of the roof, there were deep, long gouges from five human-like fingers with sharp claws carved deep into the paint.

Right in the middle of the back window, there was a perfect, clear imprint of a human face smudged against the glass, along with a thick, dark residue that the heavy rain hadn't completely washed away. It's been three years since that night.

I left Virginia and never went back, selling that car the very next day.

The police eventually closed the case, writing it off as local vagrants messing around. They never believed my story about the motel. But the horror never really stopped for me.

To this day, whenever it rains at night and I'm lying in bed in my new apartment in Chicago, my cell phone will start vibrating from an unknown number. And when I finally pick it up, driven by pure anxiety, I don't hear a voice.

Instead, I just hear heavy, rapid breathing and the faint chime of a tiny brass bell ringing somewhere in the background, followed by a slow, faint, scratching sound starting to move along the wall right behind the headboard of my bed.

I start to get so week after that day I couldn’t move my arm then my friend came to visit me I told him everything and my family took me to imam(kind of monk) they look at my back in some points of shirt there was kind a infection that was clearly magic and when turn the shirt opposite side there was a demon sign ram head with Star of David on his head I got so skinny I wasn’t fitting in my old shirts then we went there as fake investor and there was the guy who was doing this stuff in moment we just confronted him and he said I can pin your tongue

I don’t pick up hitchhikers. I want to make that clear before I tell you what happened, because I need you to understand that what I did that night was completely out of character for me.
It was November. Late. I was driving back from my sister’s wedding, alone on an empty highway, rain hitting the windshield so hard I could barely see the road. I had the radio on just to feel less alone.
I was somewhere outside Millfield when I saw him.
A man on the side of the road. No car. No umbrella. Just standing there in the pouring rain with his thumb out.
I kept driving.
Then, five minutes later, I pulled over. I still can’t explain why. Something just made me stop. Like my hands turned the wheel on their own.
He walked to the car slowly. Opened the passenger door. Got in without saying a word.
He was soaked through. Maybe forty years old. Grey jacket. Dark eyes. He smelled like rain and something else I couldn’t name.
“Where are you headed?” I asked.
He looked straight ahead at the road.
“Same place as you,” he said.
I told myself that was a normal answer. We drove in silence for twenty minutes. I turned the radio on. Static. I turned it off.
I glanced over at him. He was staring out the side window. His reflection in the glass was facing me.
I looked again.
His body was turned away. Looking out the window. But his reflection was looking directly at me.
Smiling.
I gripped the wheel and told myself it was the rain. The darkness. My tired eyes. I focused on the road and didn’t look at him again.
An hour later I needed gas. I pulled into a small station off the highway. Single pump. Flickering light.
“I’m stopping for gas,” I said.
He nodded slowly.
I got out. The rain had stopped. Everything was quiet. I pumped the gas and looked through the windshield at him. He was sitting perfectly still. Staring straight ahead.
Then my phone rang. My sister.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Fine. Just stopped for gas.”
“Are you alone?”
Strange question.
“I picked up a hitchhiker,” I said quietly. “He’s in the car.”
Long silence.
“What does he look like?”
Her voice had changed. Careful. Slow.
“Grey jacket. Dark eyes. Maybe forty.”
“Walk away from the car,” she said.
“What?”
“Right now. Walk away from the car.”
I moved to the edge of the lot.
“There was an accident,” she said. “On Route 9. Tonight. Around 8PM. A man was hit by a car. He was walking on the side of the road. Grey jacket. Dark eyes.”
I couldn’t speak.
“They couldn’t identify him,” she said quietly. “He didn’t make it.”
I looked at my car.
He was still there. Sitting in the passenger seat. Still as stone.
“That’s not possible,” I whispered. “He’s in my car right now. He spoke to me.”
“What did he say?” she asked.
I thought about it.
Only two things. The whole drive.
“Same place as you,” I said slowly.
She went quiet for a long time.
“Get back in the car,” she finally said. “Drive to the nearest town. Don’t talk to him. Don’t look at him. And whatever you do — don’t ask him where he’s going.”
I walked back to the car. Sat down. Started the engine.
He didn’t move. Didn’t acknowledge me at all.
Twenty minutes of silence. The longest of my life.
Then I saw the lights of a town ahead.
And I heard his voice.
Quiet. Calm.
“You can let me out here.”
I stopped the car. He opened the door. Got out. Didn’t look back.
I watched him in the mirror. He walked down the street and turned the corner.
I waited two minutes. Then I drove to the corner and looked.
The street was empty.
No footprints in the wet pavement. Nothing. Like he had never existed.
I called my sister back.
“He’s gone,” I said. “Just disappeared around a corner.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“Route 9 goes through Millfield,” she said. “That’s where he was from. That’s where they were going to bury him.”
She paused.
“You didn’t give him a ride. You gave him a way home.”

I still drive that highway sometimes. I always check the passenger seat before I get in.
I never pick up hitchhikers.
But sometimes, late at night, when the rain is heavy and the road is empty — I see someone on the side of the road. Standing very still. Thumb out.
And I think about what my sister said.
And I wonder how many of them are still trying to get there.

It’s been five years since Mom traded my brother for a fully functioning coffee maker.

A real, industrial-style machine with coffee filters, a touch screen, and even an illuminated keypad! 

Most of the electronics in our home were dead, and then there was our thousand-dollar fucking coffee machine sitting on the countertop next to rationed bread and rice. 

Mom didn’t care that coffee was a luxury, and filters were more expensive than our house.

She used it once. The day after my brother was dragged away, the coffee machine was handed to her in a neat little box with a bow. Mom carefully removed the packaging, pulled out the machine, and made herself a flat white. She took one sip, and then dumped the rest down the drain. 

Since then, she barely acknowledges our coffee machine. 

I make sure to make coffee every day. 

I use my welfare on filters, buy the best coffee mugs, and real, fresh milk instead of the instant shit that comes out of a packet. 

Today, I set down my favorite mug. 

“Good morning.” I greet the machine. 

The countertop is soaking wet. 

I notice the leak immediately, my chest aching. 

“Fuck.” I grab a washcloth, but my hands are trembling. 

Warmth soaks through the cloth and I panic, dumping my hands in the faucet and scrubbing them until I can’t fucking breathe. 

“Mom,” my voice chokes up and splutters as I douse my hands in ice cold water that is never warm. 

Mom could have traded my brother for a goddamn microwave. 

“Mom!” I shriek, resorting to scrubbing my hands on my filthy shirt. Mom doesn’t have a washing machine, so my clothes are discolored and wrong and stick to me like a second skin. 

I grab a towel and clean up the leakage, my heart clogged in my throat. Stupid fucking coffee machine. I spit the words when it finally comes to life, coughing up bean juice and barely filling my cup. I drop the filthy towel soaked through. I hate it.

I hate that it sits there trundling like an engine, ignited and alive, churning out coffee.

“Elya?” Mom mumbles from the living room. “What’s wrong?”

I blink back tears and down the coffee. It tastes bitter without sugar. I hate it.

“Nothing,” I tell her. But I’m already wrapping my arms around the stupid fucking coffee machine. I throw it against the wall and scream until my throat hurts, until my saliva is tinged with red. Then I regret it. 

I drop to my knees, panting, breathless, scooping it into my arms. “I’m sorry.” I cradle the stupid thing, running my fingers over the cracks in the bottom. 

It’s still warm, still leaking all over my hands. I wipe them on my jeans and try to smile, tucking my knees into my chest.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” I squeeze the coffee maker closer, my lungs heaving, my sobs sputtered. “I’ll put you back,” I whisper into the rusted plastic that smells like burning. “I’ll put you back, and… and you’ll make me more coffee, all right?”

The coffee maker doesn’t respond because it’s a fucking coffee maker.

“Elya.” Mom steps into the kitchen, already in a mood. 

She doesn’t even look at the coffee maker stuck to my chest. 

“Sweetie, I was talking to your boyfriend last night,” she leans into the countertop, arms folded. 

She’s not looking at me. Instead, her head is inclined, gaze glued to her broken washing machine that still sputters water now and then. 

Mom broke off the door and used it for a mixing bowl.

“You’re not planning on having kids.” 

Great conversation starter. 

I have many responses. Women weren’t allowed jobs.

Especially disabled women. My brother, Ross, was deemed useless for having a boyfriend. He couldn’t, and didn’t want to provide mom with grandchildren. So, Mom traded him in for a coffee maker.

“I don’t want kids,” I tell my mother. 

I stand up, and place the coffee maker back on the countertop. 

I try to ignore the slow trickle of liquid pumping out of the back. “Your coffee maker is bleeding again.” 

Mom sighs, her eyes flicking to her washing machine. 

She doesn’t shout. Doesn’t even sound angry. Just like when Ross told her he was marrying a man. 

“So, you’re just going to kill off our family name?” 

Her tone isn’t poisonous, but her words still sting. “You know, you could go out there right now and find a nice, capable young man, and all you have to do is get pregnant and give him a child.” 

I ignore her, cleaning up the coffee maker leak.

Three towels, and it’s still bleeding, still dripping over the countertop. Still staining my skin.

“Elya.” Mom’s words collapse into ocean waves behind me.

I already know she’s called them.

But I want to stay with the coffee maker just a little longer.

So, I make an espresso, my hands trembling.

The maker refuses to work initially.

Then I gently run my fingers over the top as it sputters and thrums.

A single splatter of scarlet drops into my cup, and I find myself smiling. The doors fly open, masked men grabbing me. 

They’re gentle, because I am fragile goods. I don’t resist as they drag me outside. 

A van awaits me, already leaking thick red sludge into the street. 

The exhaust fumes smell and taste of blood, and I drop to my knees, a scream clawing. 

Humanity ran out of oil. 

So, every car on our street runs on those deemed useless.

Sometimes, I can see chunks of writhing red in the middle of the road.

My brother has been bleeding for five years, and Mom still refuses to fix him.

He's crying.

Every day, he fucking cries, and she ignores him. 

“I’m sorry, Elya.” Mom kneels in front of me in her filthy robe. She prods it, laughing, like it’s funny.

“I need a working washing machine.”

>!SPOILER CONTENT WARNING: Children die.!<

My wedding went really well. Like, suspiciously well. I’d been flirting with groomzilla status, fixating on every detail, barely sleeping in the weeks and days prior. My husband, who I will not name out of an abundance of caution, kept telling me to relax. It didn’t need to be perfect.

But I didn’t need it to be perfect either. I just could not shake this feeling that something bad was coming. A dread that had begun building in my gut about a month before the wedding. Something was going to happen. I’m not clairvoyant, it’s not that, and I kept telling myself it was just wedding nerves.

It wasn’t.

But the wedding did rock. I wouldn’t call it flawless, but none of the flaws mattered. By the time we got to the reception and our loved ones swarmed us with affection and congratulations, I finally relaxed. All that dread had been for nothing. Just wasteful anxiety. Just nerves.

It wasn’t.

The honeymoon was on a tropical island. I will give no further identifying info. We stayed in a nice, but not luxury hotel. We spent a lot of time on a beach that sea turtles liked. We ate well. We hiked to world famous  waterfalls; my husband gets up early five days a week to hike before work, so I teased him that he just married me for the honeymoon. We only had sex once, actually, but that wasn’t concerning. My husband had wanted top surgery in time for wedding photos and his chest was still sensitive. And besides, gay men aren’t typically wedding night virgins. Exploring the island was the more novel experience.

We scheduled our big adventure for our final night on the island. When my husband first pitched it to me, I said no. I didn’t grow up around water, and even sailing on a sunny day could creep me out if the water got choppy. But my husband knows the vulnerable spots in my resolve. I adore animals. He showed me pictures. Manta rays. Dolphins. Tropical fish. Eels. All swimming within inches of tourists snorkeling together. At night. In the ocean. In one photo, a large ray spreads it wings directly next to a stunned tourist. Okay, I said. Okay. Let’s do it. Let’s do the nighttime snorkeling trip to view the wild nocturnal sea life.

The trip budget was fully flexed. We did not have enough money left to book one of the small, adults-only nighttime snorkel tours. But there was a local vendor who offered a family-friendly nighttime snorkel tour for groups of fifty that was considerably cheaper. I didn’t love that we were going to be doing this with kids. But it was only affordable choice.

The boat ride out to sea that night was chilly and surreal. Even for seasoned seagoers, sailing into the dark ocean is unnerving. The animal part of you keeps asking you what the hell you’re doing. It’s the ocean. At night. In the darkness. Go back to land.

The boat was a large catamaran, with a crew of four cheerful, inked up sailors and a young surf bro captain. The tour group was almost entirely families with children. One family even had grandparents along. My husband and I were the only childless couple, gay or otherwise. But that was fine. The kids ranged from about eight years to twelve years old, and were pretty quiet on the ride out. The dark ocean seemed to somber them.

Thirty minutes after we left the dock, the captain killed the motor and got on the boat speaker. He gave us the basic rules as his crew members passed out wetsuits and snorkel equipment. Touching any wild animals was absolutely forbidden. We were gonna be in the water for about forty-five minutes. The water would be cold, but not dangerously. We would swim out from the boat and hold onto one of several long, floating boards. The bottom of these floating boards was covered in bright headlights, like on a car, that would shine beams of light down into the water. The light would attract plankton, and then manta rays and fish to eat the plankton, and then the creatures that eat fish. And we would be able to lie flat across the surface of the water with the help of pool noodles underneath our ankles.

We suited up. Finally, the kids started giggling. It all felt a little awkward, putting on these skintight suits around strangers. But I was grateful for the giggles. My husband was twitching with excitement, but I felt the beginning of unease. I was about to be staring down into the ocean for forty-five minutes at night. The dolphins better really be majestic.

Nobody even mentioned the possibility of sharks until we lined up to jump off the boat. The little boy behind me asked his mom, “Mom, what do we do if there’s a shark?”

Before his mom could answer, a crew member chimed in, “Son, if you see a shark, just wave hello!”

It was the right answer. Sharks almost never bother humans. It’s natural to be afraid of them. But they aren’t dangerous. You’re safer off swimming with sharks than driving to work. 

The shark comment wasn’t what scared me. It was the life jackets. As we approached the edge of the boat to jump into the black ocean water, I realized no one was being handed life jackets. I just assumed we’d get them right as we prepared to jump in.  

 

I asked the crew member for a life jacket. He just smiled and thrust the pool noodle in my face. I was stunned. He couldn’t be serious.

But he was. Apparently, life jackets make you bob up and down. They make it hard to lay on top of the water and look down. And to see the sea animals, you gotta be looking down.

“You’ll be perfectly fine,” he reassured me.

There was a line of forty people behind me. My husband passive-aggressively kissed me on the forehead and then leapt into the ocean. So, I grabbed the noodle, cursed under my breath and stepped out into the air.

And there I was. There we all were. My husband and I. And fifty other people. About half of them children. In the ocean. The pitch black ocean. At night. With pool noodles.

We all swam to our floating light boards and grabbed onto the handles. I was shaking like a leaf. Not because the water was cold—which it was—but because on an animal level, my body hated this. My husband sensed that I was scared. Not that he did a damn thing about it, but he sensed it. I know the man. He could sense I was on the verge of having an anxiety meltdown, and I could sense that he was silently apologizing for putting me through this but he was absolutely going to keep putting me through this because this was going to be objectively awesome. And he probably sensed that I was cussing him out in my mind, but that I knew he was right.

None of this telepathy was exchanged through glances. There was no glancing. We were both face down, staring into the bottomless, black ocean, breathing through our snorkels.

At least I wasn’t the most scared person in the water. Across from us on the board was the family with the grandparents. They had a little boy, only child maybe, and he was trembling harder than I was. I felt bad for him. He was probably eight. Too young for this. He was struggling to keep his pool noodle under his feet. I could see his legs from the edge of my snorkel goggles. And every time the noodle slipped, the kid would thrash in panic. His mom would grab the noodle and help him get it back under his feet. But every time the kid lost it, and he lost it about every other minute, he thrashed harder. He was just getting more and more scared.

I’m not really a kid person. So rather than feel compassion for the scared child, I felt a perverse gratitude. This scared little boy was making me look brave by comparison.

It took a moment for the lights to attract the sea life. We spent a good ten minutes just staring into the shadowy abyss, illuminated by the half dozen headlights pointed downwards. But then the plankton found us. They just looked like particles, but when you squinted, you could see them twitching and alive.

Then came the tropical fish. This was the first cool thing to happen. The first moment this felt like it had maybe been a good idea. I heard my husband shout with delight through the water. The fish were big, extremely colorful, and unafraid of us. Some big yellow dude with tiger stripes swam right up to my goggles and stared at me. We had a moment. He was like my brother fish or something. With all the adrenaline pulsing through me, I felt an embarrassing amount of tenderness for that yellow fish. I teared up. And, as if also embarrassed by my emotional reaction, the striped yellow fish zipped away.

The manta rays came next. And they were gorgeous. And massive. Maybe twelve feet across. And they flew through the water by flapping their wings. They would arc upwards and turn a summersault just underneath the headlights to catch the most plankton. The manta ray’s stomachs would occasionally brush my wetsuit. It would have unnerved me if it wasn’t also one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen in my life.

But the many, many children in the water did not share my sense of wonder. Every time, and I mean every time, a manta ray would swim close, all of the children would start screaming. You could hear it through the water. My husband was cracking up, which I could also hear through the water. I tried to be amused. These kids were just not old enough for this. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to put like twenty-five elementary school kids in the ocean and night and expect them to appreciate manta rays swimming next to them?

Their parents. That’s who.

The little boy across from me was really struggling. He had given up on the pool noodle. I could see his legs wrapped around his mom’s, using her as his floatation device. She had put his noodle under her legs to compensate, but it wasn’t really working. In between the children screaming, I could hear the mom asking the nearest crew member, who was in the water alongside us, if she and her son could get back on the boat early. I couldn’t hear whatever the crew member said back. But the mom and the little boy didn’t leave.

I saw it before the little boy did. The large, grey, unmistakable shape. Moving in a soft zig zag and without hurry, about ten feet below us. A tiger shark. But I felt surprisingly little fear at the sight of it. I knew, even in that moment, that it was just checking us out. Just seeing what was up. Yes, tiger sharks can be maneaters. But I knew that the shark would probably just leave us alone.

The kids didn’t know that. The little boy didn’t know that. And when he saw the large, gray, unmistakable thing swim beneath his feet, he screamed a new kind of scream. Not a scream of skittish fear. A scream of animal terror.

This started a chain reaction. As the shark passed beneath the floating boards, beneath all of us laying on top of the water, beneath our legs and our pool noodles, the children began to panic. The water churned as the kids began to kick and thrash.

The crew members in the water tried to save the mood. They started laughing and told everyone to be calm. This was a special experience. Nothing to be scared of.

Some of the kids believed the crew. But some of them kept thrashing. And the little boy across from me went into a blind panic.

I sensed what was about to happen before my husband did. He was laughing. But I knew we were too close to that little boy and his parents. I realized that the most dangerous place to be in the ocean at the moment was within grasping distance of the panicking little boy.

I grabbed my husband’s shoulder. I pulled his head out of the water. I yanked the snorkel out of my mouth. And I told him, “Swim away from the kids! Now!”

I grabbed my pool noodle out from under my feet and let go of the lightboard. And I swam into the dark ocean. Away from the other tourists. My husband was shocked. But he followed me. And once we swam about twenty feet away, he shouted, “What the hell, man?!”

But I didn’t need to answer. I just began to tread water and pointed back at the tourists, all of them glowing from below.

The little boy had latched onto his mother like she was a parachute. He was bucking wildly. She was trying to get him to let go of her legs so she could keep them both afloat, but it wasn’t working. The little boy’s father was trying to support her. He grabbed for his son’s legs.

And he took a foot right to the nose. Even over the sounds of thrashing and children screaming, I heard the man’s nose break. And then the mom did the one thing she knew to do, and also the stupidest thing she could have done, and she screamed, “HELP!!!!”

Every tourist in the water panicked. Adults and children alike. Everyone swam like mad for the boat. Panicked families swarmed at the base of the ladder that would take them out of the water and back to safety.  

First came the curse words. Mostly men’s voices. Screaming at their kids to calm down. Screaming at their wives to move. And then screaming at each other to get the fuck off. The captain on board got on a speaker and told everyone to just calm down and form a single file line in the water. But it was a terrible joke. Nobody obeyed. Nobody even could.

The men’s cursing gave way to the sound of skin colliding with skin. The men had begun to kick and punch at each other. Every one of them had reverted to primal father protector mode. Every one of them was willing to do whatever they had to do to get their kids onto that small ladder.

The women’s high-pitched screaming filled the air. Screaming in pain. Screaming the names of their children and husbands who were disappearing beneath the water. The smallest children simply got sucked under by all of the thrashing bodies. Some of the moms and dads vanished trying to dive after them. A few came back up. Some took kicks to the head. Or bashed their heads against the boat. Or in blind panic, just swam further the down instead of back up. It was amazing how few of them actually managed to climb the ladder. There was so much flailing and clawing and punching and kicking and shoving and biting at the base of the ladder that no one could get a grip on it.

A pattern emerged. A child would claw at her mother and begin to pull her mother under. The mother would scream and grab hold of her husband. And then she would pull him under. And he would bellow and the bellow would become a gurgle as water filled his mouth and he jerked below the waterline. And the space where the family had been would close up immediately by the remaining people fighting for space near the ladder. Every so often a pool noodle would shoot straight up in the air, sometimes landing in the boat.

The captain did what he could. He threw all of the circular lifebuoys he had into the water. But the dads began to fight over those as well, spreading out the terrified rage into little pockets along the side of the boat.

Finally, after perhaps ten eternal minutes, the water began to calm. The tourists were still screaming and thrashing and weeping. But there fewer of them at the surface of the water. A few had made it up the ladder. Others had snatched a lifebuoy for their family and were guarding it like a pitbull.

My husband and I waited. Until everyone else had gotten up the ladder and into the boat. The captain began to sweep the ocean with a spotlight, searching for survivors, and the light found us quickly. Beside my husband and I, only a few feet away, the light revealed two crew members, also treading water. I made eye contact with one of them, and then we both looked away.

Exhausted but afloat, we began the swim back to the boat.

About halfway to the hull, she burst above the waterline. The elderly woman. She exploded out of the water immediately beside me. Thrashing and terrified. I gasped in shock. And that gasp was a good, involuntary reaction. It flooded my lungs with oxygen, which probably saved my life, right before she sunk all ten fingers into my shoulders and jerked me under the water with her.

We struggled under the water for what felt like a long time. I kicked and twisted to shake her loose. But every time she lost her grip on my body, she found it again somewhere else. In her panic-numbed brain, my body was her only ladder out of the abyss and back into the air and she would die before she let go.

We sank together. The saltwater burned my eyes, but I had to open them if I was going to have chance at breaking free. The water was bright with the headlights, but as we sank deeper, the bright water turned grey. At that grey border, I began to surrender. My oxygen levels were lowering, my muscles were cramping, and the old woman would not let go. She would not and could not sink into hell alone.

Because my oxygen levels were low, it is tempting to regard what happened next as a hallucination. I choose to trust it, but until writing this, haven’t told a soul, not even my husband. The old woman let go of me. Not because she was weakening or had some flash of benevolence. But because she was pulled off of me. By hands. At least three of them. That reached up out of the darkness below and grabbed her legs and arms. The hands didn’t belong to the other drowning tourists. They were large and gnarled and green like moss. They had four fingers each, no thumbs. And the hands weren’t connected to wrists, or arms, but to tentacles. Long, long tentacles that stretched into the impenetrably dark water beneath us like bungee cords. And like bungee cords, they snapped the old woman off of me and down into the deep.

I couldn’t see the look on her face. I couldn’t tell if she had been fleeing the thing already, or if she was as astonished as I was. I mean, I assume it was a single thing. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe there were many of it. I saw what I saw and no more.

With what was left of my energy and oxygen, I swam back to the surface. My husband burst into tears when he registered that I had returned. He clutched me to himself and shepherded me to the boat. He pushed me up the ladder. I said nothing. I just focused on breathing as hard as I could without hyperventilating.

Back on board, the surviving tourists were either sobbing or dead silent. Everyone wrapped in towels, trying to heat up. The coast guard arrived and told the captain to take the survivors back to shore. My husband held me. And I counted. I counted thirty-one people in the boat. More kids than adults, which I guess was a win. At least that parental rage had sort of worked.

At the far end of the boat, I saw that little boy. The one who had panicked across from my husband and I, whose panic had started this whole thing. He was alone. No parents. No grandpa. No grandma, but I knew that already. The little boy just stared into the night.

When we finally got back to land and deboarded, paramedics were waiting for us. I thought my husband and I would be the last ones off the boat, but when we approached the gangway, that one little boy was still sitting in his seat, frozen. I stared at him. And I leaned down and whispered in the boy’s ear, “You did your best. I saw it too.”

After the paramedics cleared us to leave and we got back to our rental car, my husband asked me what I said to the little boy. I lied. I said that I told him it would all be okay again one day. And out of some vacant corner of my mind, I muttered, “I hope people don’t blame the shark.”

My husband stared at me. I shrugged. And he laughed. He couldn’t stop laughing. And he goes, “Maybe they’ll just blame the tropical fish.” And we just laughed and laughed until we broke down.

Anyway. Perhaps there were no four-fingered hands. No tentacled thing snatched that old woman and carried her away into the deep. Maybe, in my terror, I imagined it and everyone who drowned that night just simply drowned.

But what keeps me up at night, still, is not the question of what actually happened. It’s the question, what do I hope happened?

DO NOT TRY THIS IN YOUR HOME OR ANYONE HOME IN EVERY BELIEF YOU WILL COMMIT A BIG SİN AGAINST GOD AND WHAT WILL HAPPEN IM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR IT (((((FOR RECORDS IM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR IT))))

In Christianity they believe Jesus died for there sins
In Judaism they believe he is a charlatan who acted like god
In Islam they believe he didn’t die the imposter died after he left the cave he was in shape of Jesus and Jesus will come back in day of judgement

Who drinks blood is devil in all of them but if you turn the cross down and burn it with cow fat infront of mirror in next 30 min you will feel like something weird is here congratulations you just summoned a devil servant who teaches white and black magic but against your soul and your humanity that’s means you are the next Jeffry Epstein who can do rituals but if nothing shows up don’t sleep until 48 hour or if you do you will possessed

In Judaism if you draw the Star of David on the ground and heat up a animal fat and gasoline and put it on the lines and put candle in every corner and in three corner if you write ۳ ۶ ۹ and burn the gasoline on while you are on the dirt you will call the devils who was serving the Solomon

In Islam if you write some part of Quran with pencil from revers and read it loud and put it in water and drink the water that sin will take over you and accept it a big sin and there will be no more god protection on you ( the moment the baby’s born they will receive holy protection until you die or do this sin because baby’s are innocent and clean =angel) after that moment Jin’s and other creatures can touch you or hurt you or even possess you

DO NOT TRY THIS IN YOUR HOME OR ANYONE HOME IN EVERY BELIEF YOU WILL COMMIT A BIG SİN AGAINST GOD AND WHAT WILL HAPPEN IM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR IT (((((FOR RECORDS IM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR IT))))

My sister steals my clothes.

That sentence alone makes it sound normal. Relatable. Sitcom behavior. Harmless younger-sibling nonsense.

Let me tell you, it’s not harmless.

It started with socks.
Not pairs. Just a single sock.

At first I assumed the dryer was eating them. But then I started finding them in the strangest of all places.

Inside cereal boxes.
Hanging from trees in backyard.
Tucked nearly inside the printer.

Hence, I confronted my sister.
She stared at me with utmost sincerity and said “they talk too much, you know”
Then, after a moment of consideration, she added:
“mostly after midnight.”

My parents, well, ofcourse, they did nothing. My sister was the favorite child.

“Your sister is a once in a generation kind of creative,” my mom would say with a dazed look, which is the kind of thing people say shortly before appearing in documentaries.

Soon enough, my hoodies started disappearing.Every time I asked my sister to stop taking my clothes, she’d deny it while visibly wearing my clothes.

“That’s my sweatshirt.”

She’d look down at the sweatshirt, and smile coyly, “Wow. We really do have similar tastes.”

“It literally has my team number on it.”
“Well, that’s crazy.”

I tried locking my door.The next morning the lock was gone.The screws sat neatly stacked on my desk beside a purple note that read:

“Sisterhood > any lock (in the whole wide world)
P.S. your denim skirt is so cute xoxo”

In bright, pink,glitter gel pen.

Things escalated after Grandma’s funeral.
Grandma left me her antique vanity mirror. She had held my hand quiveringly, continuously caressing it, as if to imprint my existence in herself.

“You’re the only one who looks normal in reflections.”

At the time I had laughed, but I do not laugh anymore.

My sister, unsurprisingly, became obsessed with the mirror.Every night I’d catch her standing in front of it wearing specific versions of me.

The hoodie I wore when I was 12.
The sweater my Grandma knit last Christmas.Pajamas I had worn at a sleepover once.

It stopped feeling like she was “borrowing” clothes. It felt like she was studying timelines.

One night I abruptly woke up at 2AM.
I found her in my room wearing my pajamas, and my sweatshirt, and my retainer.

“You don’t even HAVE braces,” I yelled .

Rubbing her tongue over the retainer, she said:
“I like the pressure.”

Then as if realizing something, she giggled.
“It still remembers the shape of your teeth, you know?”
Then she smiled.

Not like, “she grinned widely.”I mean her mouth physically widened farther than a human autonomy could allow , something from a Japanese urban legend.

I heard something in her jaw click out of place.I screamed, but she screamed even louder.

My parents burst into the room.
And there was my dear sister, perfectly normal, crying because apparently, I had “accused her of unhinging her jaw like a snake”.

From then on,I’d hear scratching in my closet at night. I’d open it and find her crouched inside wearing six of my shirts at once.
SIX OF THEM.

Some of them were shirts I thought I’d thrown out years ago.

This continued.
I’d call my parents, and suddenly she just “had a nightmare, felt scared, and wanted to sleep with her sister” or “she had just sleepwalked.”

One afternoon, I came home and every piece of clothing I owned was hanging from the ceiling. No, not with hangers, but with teeth. Tiny human teeth tied together with thread. I stared at it dumbstruck, for around 10 minutes, before she walked in casually eating a banana.

“Oh,” she said nonchalantly, “you came .”

“What on earth is this?.”

“What? They were in the box.” she exclaimed rolling her eyes

“What BOX?”

“The box in the backyard.”

I have spent my whole life in this house, and I don’t recall there ever being a box.
I checked that night.
There was absolutely a box in the backyard.

Inside were dozens of baby teeth, every missing sock I’d ever owned, old family photographs, and a handwritten notebook labeled:

WAYS TO [incomprehensible writing] YOUR SIBLING

Chapter 1 was mostly shapes & diagrams of human body.
Chapter 2 made me throw up.
One page was just a list of things I’d forgotten about myself.

The mole near my knee.
The way I chew hoodie strings when anxious. Which floorboards I avoid at night( I didn’t even know that)
Or the fact, I stopped singing to myself after Grandma died.

I turnt the page over,

A PERSON IS ONLY A PATTERN REPEATED LONG ENOUGH TO FEEL REAL.

Underneath it said:
CLOTHES HELP THE PATTERN STICK.

Of course, it was all with a pink, shiny, glitter pen.

I brought the notebook to my parents.
Mom flipped through it quietly.
Dad adjusted his glasses, like he does, when avoiding confrontations.

Then Mom sighed and said, “You know her, she just processes emotions differently.”

“SHE HAS A SECTION CALLED “SKIN TAILORING””I yelled, exasperated.

Dad nodded thoughtfully.
“That does sound arts-and-crafty.”

I began sleeping with a chair against my door.

Did NOT matter.

Because somehow she kept getting inside.
Sometimes I’d wake up and she would just be standing over me wearing my hoodie.

Once, she gently whispered,
“There you go, your breathing pattern has changed. I fixed it.”

And I realized my room smelled faintly like Grandma’s lavender perfume.
The one they had sprayed on her scarf before the funeral.
I did not ask follow-up questions because I enjoy being alive.

The horrifying part happened last Thursday.

Everyone was sent home from school early because the vice principal said someone had reported “a disturbing impersonator situation”, and the school was going to conduct a “thorough investigation”.

I entered the house.
Mom screamed.
Dad dropped a plate.
And standing in the kitchen-

was me.

It was me.

My face. My hair. My clothes.

My exact nervous habit of chewing my hoodie strings.

The other me looked equally shocked.

Then she walked in wearing Mom’s cardigan and holding a smoothie.

“Oh good,” she said. “The whole family’s here”

“What the hell is THAT?” I shouted, pointing at the copy.

She frowned.

“Rude, you know. She worked really hard.”

The copy started crying.

“I don’t want to go to school again”

I looked at my parents.

My mother looked exhausted.
Dad cleared his throat, and quietly said,

“There are easier hobbies.”

The copy kept insisting she was the real me.
Which would’ve been more convincing if she hadn’t referred to “ketchup” as “Tomato smoothie.”

Still, my parents made us both answer personal questions.
Favorite movie.
Middle name.
Allergies.
Childhood memories.
The copy wasn’t just right, she was very, very, specific.

She remembered the name of my 3rd-grade crush.She also remembered the song playing in the car the night Grandma forgot my name for the first time .She remembered things I hadn’t thought about in years.Every single answer made my stomach drop, nausea was hitting my throat.

At some point I started getting genuinely nervous.

Then she clapped her hands excitedly.
“Okay,” she said. “Now, wear the same outfits.”
“No.”
“Please? That would be hilarious.”

The copy looked at me, and I looked at the copy.And for one terrible second I noticed she was wearing my favorite sweater better than I did.

Cleaner, somehow.
Like someone had ironed all the damage out of me. She looked more me, than I ever did.

Then the copy smiled.
Her mouth stretched too wide, exactly like her’s had.

And suddenly I understood something awful.Maybe she hadn’t been trying to become me.Maybe that’s why Grandma said only I, looked normal in reflections.

Because she’d met the original.

I’m not exactly an expert on imaginary friends, but even I can tell you that they’re supposed to be imaginary. I mean, duh, right?

That’s what I told myself when my daughter started mentioning hers, telling me all about their adventures together and what fun games they’d play when my daughter got home from school in the afternoons.

It mostly included tea parties, hopscotch, and dress-up, but there were a few she told me about that kinda didn’t really make sense to me. Take hide and seek, for example. How exactly are you going to hide from someone who’s not visible, let alone seek them?

But, like I said, I just chalked it up to her imagination running wild. And what further cemented that belief was the fact that we had only just buried her dog two weeks before she started talking about this made-up friend of hers.

We never told her about the accident. How I had mistakenly backed my car over her little puppy while in a rush to get to work. We knew it would crush her to find out, so we lied.

Told her that her little Maxxy had run away. That we’d put up fliers and that he’d come home soon. I think that’s what caused her to create her own companion. Someone that would be by her side for as long as she let them.

But who was I to judge? Who was I to crush my baby’s dreams after literally killing her best friend in the world? I just let her do her thing. All the better if it kept her from prying about what happened to Maxxy.

It worked for a while. Hell, part of me wondered if she even missed the dog. She hadn’t so much as mentioned his name.

Things started to get shaky, though, when I came home from work one day to find my little girl sitting alone with her tea kit spread out in front of her. She wore a cute little princess tiara and dress we got her for Christmas last year, and it was honestly a melancholic moment. I wished I could’ve been there to see her get all dressed up.

Her face didn’t match the outfit, though.

She. Looked. Pissed.

“Emily told me Maxxy isn’t coming back,” she snapped. “She said that you lied about him running away and that he’s never coming back.”

I was dumbstruck. I had literally just walked into the house.

“Honey, no,” I pouted. “Daddy would never lie to you about something like that. Look, come here. Let me hold… wait.”

Her words finally fully registered.

“Who is Emily?”

“You know who Emily is, you big fat meanie,” she cried, scrunching her face into a ball. “She’s my best friend since you took Maxxy.”

Before I could reply, she ran off towards her bedroom, announcing, “Come on, Emily, let’s play somewhere else.”

To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I thought that maybe my wife had been talking about it with one of her friends and maybe my daughter overheard, so my first thought was to ask her. However, she flat out denied it before I could even finish my question.

“Yeahhh, she’s been talking about that since she got home from school. It was bound to happen sooner or later, don’t worry.”

Right, cause that’s the part I was worried about.

My daughter avoided me like the plague that night. I seriously had never felt so dead to her. Even still, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth. I just tucked her in, kissed her forehead, and switched on her nightlight like usual.

Before I went to bed that night, there were a million thoughts circulating around in my mind, most of which were about how I’d tell my daughter what had really happened. I still couldn’t think of the words, but I made a promise to myself that I’d tell her the next night whether I was ready or not.

Unfortunately, that plan was dissolved when, around 3 o’clock that morning, I was awoken by my wife shaking me while screaming.

“Roxy’s gone,” she screeched. “I just checked her bed and she’s not there. I’ve looked around the entire house.”

This had me jumping out of bed before my brain could even register what was happening.

Luckily for us, the search didn’t last that long. We didn’t have to call the police, we didn’t have to garner a search team. All we had to do… was check our backyard.

That’s where we found her. Kneeling over Maxxy’s grave in her pink Hello Kitty pajamas. When I saw her, all I could do was scoop her up in my arms and hold her close while I cried.

To my dismay, she started actively fighting to get away from me. Screaming, kicking, and clawing. And in the chaos, I saw the source of her anger.

Maxxy’s grave had been dug up, and his corpse lay beside it. Rotten. Bones exposed. And maggots had already made his body their new all-you-can-eat buffet.

Once my wife took my daughter from my arms and she settled down enough to finally speak, all she had to say was:

“Why did Emily show me and not you?”

As my family knows that area will become most fearful area they left our home that group did the ritual and locals did go there for almost 5 years after we came back to our home someone knocked on our door there was a women who working with that group she was talking Farsi very perfectly my grand father got suspicious about it she was asking again and again my I come inside he told her door is open he knew it she is not same person he knew that she changed and she start to speak in some weird language we couldn’t understand that wasn’t anything from Europe or anything like it for a week we didn’t see her and that wasn’t anything normal her foot print wasn’t on the ground

Just as quickly as you glance at the phone screen, you ignore the call. There's never a real person on the other end those calls anyways. After you place your phone back in your pocket, you continue with grocery shopping.

While browsing the produce section, the phone buzzes again with an incoming call. Unknown number, again. This time, you figure there must be a person if they are call again. So, you answer with only the intent to ask to be removed from whatever list you are on.

"Hello?"

As you originally expected, an automated voice responds.

"Thank you for participating. The rules are simple. Complete at least two of the three tasks provided, you will qualify for the grand prize. Failure will have consequences equal to the complexity of the task you are given. Your first task will be sent to you by text in two minutes. Best of luck candidate!"

The call ends before you have a chance to respond. Obviously, it's a group of teenagers in the store with you playing an elaborate prank using AI or an app. You scan the area searching for snickering teens in a corner with their phones out. However, the only people around you are the handful of customers shopping for groceries just like yourself. The phone buzzes once again in your hand. This time with a text.

Task number one. Steal the wallet from the woman browsing the apples.

Curious, you glance over at the shelves containing the different varieties of apples displayed. Carefully viewing a red apple was a small elderly woman. She was seated in one of the electric shopping carts provided by the store for patrons who are less mobile. Right on top of her items sat her wallet. Stealing it would be easy. She's so invested into the apples you could be on the other side of the store before she is even aware it's gone.

Shameful at yourself for even entertaining the idea, you delete the text and shove your phone back in your pocket. You brush off the whole thing as a practical joke and carry on with your shopping.

A familiar buzz catches your attention as you are walking by the meat and deli counter. Annoyed now, you pick up the phone without checking the caller ID.

"Whoever this is, I am so not in the mood for your games. I am especially not committing any crimes. Leave me alone!" Then, you disconnect the call.

The phone rings again while it was still in your hand. It feels like the world around you stops as you glance at the caller ID, Grandma. Your chest aches in despair. Grandma died just two weeks ago, and you haven't had the heart to delete her number yet. She was more like a mother to you than a grandmother, raising you since you were just a baby. Mom and Dad passed away when you were a baby and she was the only family you had. With shaky hands, you answer the call.

Wailing pierces your ears through static on the other end. It sounds like your grandmother on the night Grandpa died just month prior to her death. They were high school sweethearts, and his death broke her heart. It was hard to hear her hurt like that. A tear rolls down your cheek as you stand frozen in place in the middle of the isle. Listening. The wailing fades and a familiar automated voice cuts through the static.

"Participation is mandatory. Failure to comply will result in termination."

A response manages to quietly choke out of your throat, "You are threatening to kill me if I don't play into your games? What kind of sick shit is this?"

"This is not a game. You failed to complete the first task. Your punishment will be delivered shortly." The line cut out immediately.

Still in shock from hearing the sound of your dead grandmother's voice, you almost miss the sound of running footsteps behind you. As you turn to look, a man suddenly tackles you to the ground. Everything from your pockets spill out on the floor, and your phone slides under the nearest shelf. You scream for help at the top of your lungs as the man grabs one of the items from your pockets: your wallet. He is already reaching the emergency exit by the time someone helps you to your feet.

An employee hands you a courtesy water as he spoke to the police on his phone. Shakily, you walk around searching for your own phone. Its loud vibration under the shelf helps you locate it. Unknown Caller is displayed on the screen as you answer.

"You will receive the second task by text in two minutes. Friendly reminder: complete the task or suffer the consequences. Best of luck candidate." More tears begin rolling down your cheeks as you move the phone away from your ears.

As promised, your second task is received by text.

Your second task will need to be completed within the next ten minutes. Order a ribeye from the butcher at the meat counter, and eat the whole thing in front of him. Vomiting will result in a failure. Time starts when you finish reading this text.

Did the caller know you have been a devout vegan for the past ten years? It's not necessarily private information, but this would mean they know more about you than you know about them. This small fact made you feel uneasy.

Nausea creeps its way into your stomach as you gaze upon the animal carcasses laid out in trays at the meat counter. It felt impossible enough to try to consume cooked meat, but the idea of raw meat was unfathomable. You decided you would at least try. With bile threatening to escape through your throat, you nervously approach the meat counter.

The butcher greets you with a smile, "What can I get ya, little lady?"

"Umm, a ribeye please. The smallest you have," the caller never specified it had to be a certain size. Might as well make it as easy as possible.

"Sure thing! It's on the house today. I saw that creep steal your wallet just a moment ago. Hopefully, this will make your day a little brighter."

You wished that was true. After weighing the ribeye, the butcher carefully wraps the steak and hands it over. There's an awkward moment of silence between you as your eyes are fixated on the meat in your hands. He's about to inquire if you were okay before you suddenly begin unraveling the packaging of the ribeye and hold it in your bare hands. You take a deep breath, close your eyes, and take your first bite.

Confusion and mild disgust settle on the butcher's face as he watches you bite into the raw steak. The texture is easier to chew than you imagined it would be. The red myoglobin mixture squeezes from the steak and onto your tongue with every bite. You keep the chewing to a minimum as the urge to vomit intensifies. After three more bites, you are both devastated and relieved when your stomach wins the battle. There's no time to reach a trashcan, nor did you think there was any nearby. The butcher watches in horror as the contents of your stomach are emptied onto the floor.

"Lady, I know you had a scary experience, but this is too much. You need to go."

Embarrassed at the scene you created, you hurry off to the front of the store. As you exit the sliding glass doors, your phone rings.

"You have failed your second task. By failing two of the three tasks, you are automatically disqualified. The final punishment will be delivered by text once this call is disconnected. Thank you again for participating. We hope this has been an experience you will never forget. Goodbye."

Dumbfounded, you stare at your phone until the awaited text arrives.

You have 30 seconds to choose one of two options for your punishment. Throw yourself in front of the approaching garbage truck, or choose another. Time starts now.

Panic sets in as you hear the sound of a garbage truck off to your left. It is approaching at a fast speed. The driver is also distracted and not paying attention to any pedestrians in the parking lot. When you glance to your right, the elderly woman riding in the electric shopping cart from the produce section is exiting the building at the same time. Without time to think, you quickly grab the delicate woman and drag her from the cart. She yells out for help and struggles in your grasp, but you are much stronger and nobody nearby will get to you in time to rescue her.

Right as the garbage truck reaches the front of the store, you manage to shove her just in time for her to fall right in its path. Her screams of pain and crunching of bones are too much and too loud. Desperately, you cover your ears to dull the sound. The truck finally stops and her screams are replaced by the sound of sirens. You hear the officers rushing over to the operator of the garbage truck.

Just as the driver points in your direction, you feel the ground below you rumble. The cement begins to chip and crack under your feet. A reddish orange glow peeking through. Fear keeps you frozen in place as clawed hands reach through the cracks and grasp your ankles. One last scream escapes as you are pulled through.

Never to be seen again.

They called us the miracle generation.

Children were seemingly not allowed in this town.

And when, by some miracle, they were somehow allowed to exist, they lasted maybe three or four days. So when an entire class of babies came out of nowhere, that is what our town named us.

Miracles.

Eighteen years later, Seth Daniels killed his parents.

And I don’t mean kill, like he burned the house down with them in it, or poisoned them in their sleep. I mean KILL.

According to the town newspaper my mom is always feverishly reading, the bodies were mutilated.

Like an animal had torn them apart.

I knew Seth. I’d known him since we were little kids. He lived across the road from me. Seth regularly invited me over to watch Power Rangers and would enthusiastically sing and dance to the intro. Seth loved his mom and dad.

The town media went radio silent except for one measly article in the newspaper.

I figured nobody wanted to say what everyone was thinking.

But it didn’t make sense.

This curse had allowed us to live for seventeen years, and now it wanted to do something?

And why would it lash out at parents instead of kids?

Why force the kid to kill their parents?

There was one detail that jumped out at me. It was Seth’s eighteenth birthday. The exact day. I knew this because he’d been talking about having a party at school.

I mean, I’m not a rocket scientist, but what kid actively talks about having a birthday party on the same day they’re planning to brutally murder their parents?

I asked a lot of questions because nobody else was making noise, and I refused to believe Seth had willingly done something like this. Mom said the Daniels case was too gruesome to tell me about, so I did some digging myself. We’re a small town.

Finn Novak is the son of the sheriff, so it cost me twenty dollars and a promise to introduce him to my brother to get into his dad’s office.

It was very cloak-and-dagger. I definitely felt like one of those TV detectives.

The documents were still fresh in the top drawer beneath his desk.

Daniels.

I picked up the folder, motioning for Finn to keep a lookout.

He tossed me a pissed-off look but attempted to charm the receptionist into a conversation while I studied the autopsy notes. After skim-reading, I wished I could delete the information from my memory.

“Mara!”

I lifted my head. The boy was making some pretty intense hand gestures worthy of a Saturday morning cartoon.

“Are you crazy? Get out of there!”

Before I could answer, he pointed behind him, eyes wide.

“My dad is coming,” he mouthed.

Nodding, I forced myself to stay calm despite the way my stomach twisted. I snapped several photos of the notes before swiftly leaving the room and closing the door behind me.

It’s not like Finn expressed any interest in what I was looking for, but he still sat with me on a bench in the middle of the town square, a Starbucks latte balanced on his lap.

“So?” He leaned over, peeking at my phone while loudly slurping on his straw. “What’s the verdict? Did he kill them?”

I had a hard time answering without bringing up my meager breakfast.

“Yes,” I said, staring at the photo on my phone screen.

Mom was right. The autopsy notes were gruesome. Because there was barely anything left to perform an autopsy on.

In my head, Seth had maybe stabbed his parents, but in reality, he had ripped them apart. The notes contained a detailed description of the remains, which weren’t much. A single torso and a head. That was it.

Both victims were Sonia (38) and Oliver (39) Daniels.

The images were black and white, and I could barely make them out, just two square photos stapled to the end of the report. But they wouldn’t leave my mind.

A single head. A torso.

That was all that remained of Seth’s parents.

Which meant somehow, he’d had the strength to rip them to shreds.

I was already thinking it when I passed my phone to Finn, who hissed through his teeth.

“Holy fuck,” he muttered, passing me his empty cup while squinting at the screen. “Crazy asshole actually butchered them.”

“He didn’t butcher them,” I managed to choke out, despite knowing I was deep in denial.

I couldn’t defend Seth when the evidence was sitting right there in black and white. He hadn’t just killed them. He had dismembered them in a way no human, not even some genius serial killer, could. This was animalistic.

The more I thought about it, the sicker I got.

It wasn’t until my mouth filled with vomit and I was on my hands and knees choking up my guts that the gravity of the situation truly slammed into me.

If Seth Daniels had killed his mom and dad out of nowhere, was that fate eventually going to take me too?

It had to be the curse. There was no other explanation.

I didn’t dig any further into the investigation because I was terrified of finding something I didn’t want to see. Murder motivated by emotion or motive is awful, sure, but it can still be understood.

But when it comes to some separate force taking control of your will and forcing you to kill, that’s when there are no real answers. Only questions.

Our town had been plagued by an invisible force that had taken away our children. Could it be that we’d angered it? By being born, had we somehow pissed off this all-seeing god?

It was several days later when Mom told me Seth had been taken to juvenile detention and never even got a court case. He admitted to it automatically.

“Yes, I killed my mom and dad.”

Those were his exact words when he was dragged from his house with his arms bound behind his back, a pair of Ray-Bans hiding his eyes from the world. The words were cruel and unforgiving, spoken in an emotionless drone. He didn’t care.

Watching him get swarmed by local news crews from my bedroom window, Seth almost resembled a celebrity. The way he was shoved through flashing lights and microphones.

Seth Daniels hated attention. Usually, if he got picked to read aloud in class, his cheeks would turn bright red and he’d stumble through the passage trying not to cry.

The boy I saw now was not my neighbor.

This version of him held his head high, movements swift and robotic as he calmly climbed into the back of a waiting SUV.

Despite seeing all of that, despite watching Seth stand uncaring in front of the cameras, I still knew he would never do something like that.

I know murderers can turn out to be the most unexpected people. Friends. Family. The people you grow up with and trust.

But there was something about the Daniels case I couldn’t get out of my head.

Mom told me to forget about it when I started asking questions about this so-called curse, and about how exactly I was born.

Over dinner, I asked one too many.

She dropped her fork onto her plate, startling my twin sitting across from me.

Freddie and I were fraternal twins and looked nothing alike, but that didn’t stop Mom from trying to dye my hair when I was little so I’d match Freddie’s red curls.

I have natural brown hair, Freddie is a redhead, and Noa is blonde.

Normal people would probably question that, but in our town it was pretty common for kids not to resemble their parents because of the lengths people went to in order to have children.

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said for maybe the third or fourth time, fully aware I was hyper-fixating. “Why now?”

I forked pasta into my mouth, ignoring my twin’s glare.

“If we really are cursed, why wait a whole seventeen years?”

“Mara.”

Mom cleared her throat, her lips pausing on the rim of her wine glass. When Dad worked late, Mom pulled out the wine. We weren’t supposed to tell him.

“What did I tell you about discussing business that is not ours?”

“But it is my business,” I said. “Seth was my friend.”

“He was my friend.” Freddie had already finished his dinner, occasionally glancing down at his Switch. “You didn’t even like him. Do you remember when you called him an asshole?”

This time, I kicked him. From the way he jumped in his seat, his eyes widening for the fraction of a second, it hurt him.

“We were twelve, and he stole my doll.”

“You still called him an A-hole,” Freddie said in a sing-song voice, his gaze flicking back to his game. “I actually played with him, and he only paid attention to you because he wanted to play on your DS.”

“You called him a big-nosed freak,” I spat back.

“So did you!”

Noa, our more well-behaved little sister, ducked her head to hide her laughter.

“That’s enough.” Mom, who was halfway through a bottle of wine, slammed the glass down on the table. Her eyes found mine. “Mara, if you ask one more question about the Daniels case, I will take your phone for a week.”

Freddie snickered, but she snapped at him too. “That goes for you too.”

She stood up. “I’m going upstairs. Whoever is on the rota, please clean the dishes and make the kitchen tidy before your father comes home.”

Freddie huffed like a child, folding his arms. “What about Noa?” He gestured to her. “She was laughing.”

“I was not!” Noa squeaked.

Judging by the sudden noise that escaped my brother’s mouth, our little sister had joined me in my assault.

Mom didn’t reply. Taking her glass of wine, and the whole bottle, she slunk upstairs as usual.

We were used to it. Every night when Dad was at work, Mom abandoned us at the dinner table and did the same ritual she had been doing since we were little kids.

Armed with nothing but wine and a candle, Mom would lock herself in her bedroom until the early hours of the next morning.

When we were ten, Freddie and I attempted to sneak in and see what she was doing. But at that point, and that late into the night, Mom had fallen asleep on the floor, the candle still flickering away.

That night was the same.

Mom disappeared all night, and I took it upon myself to clean away the dishes. Freddie went to hang out with friends, and Noa practically went brain-dead once she got on TikTok.

Mom had a strict rule.

No matter what, we had to hand our phones in at 11 every night.

That included all electronics, including Switches. In fact, she went as far as switching off the outlets in our rooms, which meant no late-night games of Mario Kart. I thought we would eventually grow out of the rule, but no.

Freddie was, of course, the golden boy, so he had left his phone and Switch on the kitchen table before leaving for his friend’s house, which Mom also said wasn’t allowed, but I guess that rule didn’t apply to him.

I was sitting on the kitchen countertop, frowning at my phone screen, reading and rereading the Daniels autopsy notes, when Noa let out a shriek.

The time was 11:01 which meant Noa was already breaking the no-phone rule.

I jumped off the countertop, pausing to throw my phone next to Freddie’s before the thought hit me.

Why was my first automatic thought to put my phone down?

I tried to pocket it, before a pulsing pain suddenly ignited between my fingers. It felt like an electric shock, only lasting a few seconds, maybe not even that.

My phone slipped from my hands, but not before the lights above flickered and went out completely, leaving me in darkness.

Fuck.

The warm glow of the hallway outside confirmed that just the kitchen had short-circuited.

Mom had always been antsy about technology altogether. She only got us phones because we begged, and Freddie had bought his Switch himself with cash from his part-time job.

My gaze found my mostly okay iPhone lying face down on the pastel pink tiles.

I reached to pick it up, before that same pain writhed up my index finger.

“Mara!”

Noa’s squeak came from the lounge. I found her sitting on the floor, her phone in her hands. Her eyes were wide, her lips stretched into a grin.

“Look!” she whispered.

Following her gaze, I saw my sister grasping her phone. I saw nothing interesting. She was watching a YouTube video, some kind of video essay on serial killers.

“What?”

“It’s charging!”

At first, I had no idea what she was talking about. Before my gaze found the charging symbol at the top of her screen, a lightning bolt indicating the charger was inserted.

But when I followed Noa’s pointer finger, I glimpsed her iPhone charger on the other side of the room, still plugged into the outlet.

Noa was shaking with anticipation. “Wait, that’s not even the best part!” she squeaked. “Look what happens if I let it go.”

My sister dropped the phone, and the symbol disappeared. She picked it back up, and the charging indicator flashed.

Initially, I thought she was playing some kind of trick. But she did it again, and then again, and I realized I wasn’t seeing things.

The phone was charging itself without a charger.

Noa, being Noa, automatically thought she had some kind of superpower. My little sister jumped to her feet and strode over to the television, prodding the screen, only for nothing to happen. Then she tried the lamp on the stand, and the PlayStation 4.

Nothing.

I admit, I was kind of excited for maybe a full minute before I realized there was most likely a scientific explanation, and there was.

According to an article I found online:

“Yes, electronic devices can charge their batteries through various methods without being plugged into a source of electricity.”

Still, according to the author of the article, it usually wasn’t enough power to make a difference, so why had Noa’s phone actually been charging?

I watched the percentage jump from 10% to 16.

I put it down to a malfunction.

It made sense, if I really thought about it.

The next day, however, did not make sense.

I was still half asleep when I awoke to my brother looming over me.

“What is it?”

Freddie waved the phone in my face. “Just read it.”

I did, skimming through the messages, each one sending my gut hurtling further and further into my throat.

There was a sea of grey messages from the recipient, and only two messages in blue from Freddie.

“Skinned of flesh. It was gnarly. Mrs Caine fainted, and my mom had a fucking panic attack.”

“Skull completely pulverized. I can’t believe I saw this shit, man. WTF. There are people guarding the scene now, but earlier you could just fucking walk in.”

“Animal.”

“Crazy fucking psycho. The living room was covered in blood, like a horror movie. My guy painted the fucking walls.”

“There was nothing left on the stretcher they brought out, just skin? There were blue sheets over the body, but there wasn’t even a body. I think I saw a hand or maybe a foot, but they definitely weren’t attached. IDK, it was fucking gross. Mom wants to send me to therapy lmao.”

My brother finally replied in blue.

“Who was it?”

“Sheriff’s son,” came the reply.

“That kid is going to hell, and I’m an atheist. I hope he gets his karma because who does that??? Wasn’t he close to his pop? JFC, I can’t get my head around it.”

It took a moment for the messages to sink in, and I was out of bed before my brain could catch up with my body.

Finn.

In three strides, I was on my knees, choking up dust.

Freddie dropped down onto my bed with a hissed breath. “Didn’t you know that kid?” he whispered. “That was Finn, right?”

His words weren’t fully registering.

This time, I did throw something up, something sour and slimy spluttering from my lips, my stomach heaving.

“You okay?”

“No.”

“Do you… want me to help?”

“No!”

I swiped at my mouth, but it kept coming, this time bouts of stomach lining filling my mouth.

“Did you check?” I managed to choke out, spitting out vomit.

“Huh?”

“Did you check,” I said slowly, spacing out my words, “to see if it was Finn?”

“Oh, yeah, it was him alright. The cops already caught him. Apparently, he was trying to make a run for it.” Freddie sighed. “Maybe he was scared.”

It didn’t make sense.

How could Finn kill his father?

He loved his dad.

I barely knew the kid outside of him helping me get into his dad’s office, but even then, I saw photo frames on Sheriff Novak’s desk. I saw photos of the two of them at Christmas and Father’s Day, on vacations, and just hanging out together.

In kindergarten, a boy had loudly announced that Sheriff Novak was a pig, and Finn wrestled him to the ground, almost knocking the kid out.

Finn was tiny. Lean.

There was no way he was strong enough to rip his father apart.

“Fuck.” Freddie groaned. Hanging upside down off the bed, he twisted his head to look at me, blowing dark red hair out of his eyes. “Are we cursed?”

That was the first time I found myself nodding, my thoughts dizzy.

But that didn’t stop me from trying to talk to him. According to Mom, Finn was being shipped off to juvenile detention at noon.

Until then, he was locked up downtown.

Sheriff Novak was dead, so the town’s law enforcement was scrambling to appoint someone new. The station had been packed all morning before people slowly started to disperse.

I took my chance, slipping in with a group of frantic parents screaming about the safety of their kids. While the woman behind the counter tried to calm them down, I ducked through the door at the back and into the cells.

I expected guards.

There were none.

I figured the chaos with the parents had given me the perfect distraction.

The first thing I noticed when I stepped inside was the flickering light. Not from the bulbs overhead. In front of the cells sat an empty desk with an open laptop. As I stepped closer, I realized it was the laptop screen flickering erratically.

When the bulb above me shattered, I jumped.

“Mara.”

Finn’s voice sounded just like Seth’s. Flat. Emotionless.

I spun around and caught sight of him standing behind the bars, hands wrapped around them. Very Silence of the Lambs.

Finn loved horror movies, so I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was jokingly reenacting a scene. Though that would have required him to show even a shred of emotion.

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but it wasn’t this.

I thought Finn would be hysterical. Crying. Swearing he was innocent, that he would never kill his father.

Instead, I was staring at the face of a murderer.

Or half of one.

His lips curved into a faint smile, but there was nothing behind it. Just like Seth, his eyes were hidden behind a pair of Ray-Bans. Expensive-looking ones that clashed with his plain short-sleeved T-shirt and jeans, both stained with his father’s blood.

When I opened my mouth to speak, his arms dropped to his sides.

“Aren’t you going to wish me a happy birthday?”

The phantom legs of a spider crawled down my spine. I took an involuntary step toward him, my breath catching in my throat.

“It’s your birthday?”

He nodded once. “I turned eighteen yesterday. Wish me a happy birthday.”

“Happy birthday,” I whispered. “And… did you…”

“I killed my dad,” Finn finished for me in the exact same tone as Seth. No remorse. No hesitation. Nothing to suggest he regretted what he’d done.

“I pulled out his lungs and cut off his head. I skinned him to the bone and dumped his guts in the toilet to hide them.”

“But…” I shook my head, tears burning my eyes. “You didn’t… you didn’t mean to…”

Finn cut me off, slicing straight through my spiraling thoughts.

“When is your birthday again?” he asked, without a trace of curiosity.

The question was simple, but it sent me stumbling backward into the cold concrete wall.

“When is your birthday?”

“Why?”

His expression never changed.

“When is your birthday?”

“June twenty-third,” I breathed.

Finn stayed still for a moment before slowly slipping off his Ray-Bans.

At first, I thought he was going for some dramatic reveal, like a character in a noir movie about to confess every grisly detail of what he’d done to his father.

Instead, the glasses dropped from his fingers, and I saw where his eyes should have been.

Twin caverns of darkness stared back at me, somehow still alive.

I couldn’t stop myself from stepping closer, peering through the dim light of the cell.

No.

I wasn’t imagining it.

Finn’s eyes were gone, ripped clean from his skull.

The skin around the sockets was torn and bruised, the damage jagged and violent.

“Happy birthday,” he said in the same dull, lifeless drawl.

I recoiled. Finn bent down slowly, felt around for the glasses, and slid them back on.

“For the twenty-third, I mean.”

Then he pressed his face against the bars.

This time, a manic giggle burst out of him from nowhere. His expression stayed vacant, but his mouth stretched into the grin of someone who had butchered his father and didn’t care.

“I’m looking forward to you joining me.”

That was when I left.

But before I could slam the door shut behind me, his voice followed me down the hallway.

“And your brother!”

Finn’s laughter turned hysterical, almost animalistic. I could hear the clang of his skull smashing against the bars.

“Don’t forget your brother!”

I was dragged out of the sheriff’s office almost immediately and lectured by Mom for two straight hours. But even sitting in the living room while she yelled at me, half the precinct crowded around her, I couldn’t stop hearing Finn’s words.

It was only when Mom pointed at me, her lips moving soundlessly, that I snapped back to reality and got hit with another lecture about privacy and illegal entry.

I ignored most of it.

Sitting cross-legged on the couch beside Noa, who was pretending to scroll through her phone, I finally spoke up.

“I think it’s the curse.”

The room fell silent.

Mom looked genuinely startled for a second before shaking her head sharply.

“That is not what we are talking about, young lady. Do you understand how serious this is?”

“Yeah, Mara,” Freddie chimed in from across the room. Like Noa, he was doing a terrible job pretending he wasn’t enjoying every second of my interrogation. “I can’t believe you’d be so careless and stupid…”

He trailed off.

“Oh wait! Didn’t you break in last month to steal documents from the Daniels case?”

A grin tugged at his mouth.

“Pretty sure that was illegal too, but what do I know? I’m just a high schooler. I don’t sneak into the sheriff’s office when I’m supposed to be in class.”

I glared at him. “How do you even know that? You go through my phone?”

He shrugged, comfortably adjusting himself on the recliner. “Your passcode is four zeroes. A toddler could bypass it.”

I don’t know if it was the stress of what happened with Finn, or my brother’s dumb fucking grin, but I was already lunging across the room to… I don’t know. 

He’s taller than me, more built. He could squash me if he really wanted to. So what I thought was going to be a fight turned into me trying to do some damage while Freddie just shoved me away with a scoff.

I did manage to hit him in the nose, but that was when Mom came in, pulling us apart and going into Mom-mode.

“Mom-mode” was when she really got mad.

Noa decided she no longer wanted to be a spectator and wandered into the kitchen. 

I was sent to my room, and Freddie was lectured for antagonising me. 

Several hours later, he appeared at my door with a half-eaten donut, a cup of hot cocoa, and a half-assed apology, which was his attempt at letting me know he was scared I was going to get myself hurt.

I took the donut and cocoa and told him to go away.

He did, after standing there for a while looking like a kicked puppy. I closed the door on his face when he made a point of trying to make me feel sorry for him.

I wanted to talk to him about Finn, but he would just tell Mom and get me into trouble.

So I found myself with information that was driving me crazy.

My eighteenth birthday was approaching, and more and more kids were turning on their moms and dads. After Finn, it was Addie, then Jason, Sara, and Kiara. All of them had turned eighteen within weeks of each other.

I thought the town was going to start freaking out and calling those of us who were left monsters, insisting we never should have been born.

But to my surprise, there was barely any news coverage, and it almost became normal to hear about yet another kid being sent to juvenile detention.

June arrived, and the days crept by faster and faster until it was the eve of my eighteenth birthday, and I found myself standing in my bathroom, trembling fingers wrapped around a razor blade.

Every time I thought about actually doing it, slicing into my flesh until my wrists were dripping scarlet and I was struggling to breathe, I couldn’t.

So I dumped the razor in the trash and left the bathroom, only to run into Noa.

Wrapped in her pink bathrobe, my little sister looked like a giant marshmallow hiding behind scraggly blonde curls.

“Mara!” Noa was grinning ear to ear, as usual. She grabbed my hands and squeezed them. “Do you remember what we did as kids?”

From the look on her face, I knew exactly what she was talking about.

When Mom was in bed or at work on our birthday eve, the three of us would scour her room for presents. We had eventually grown out of it, but every year Noa insisted on at least one search. It’s not like I could refuse when my sister already had a tight grip on my arm and was yanking me into Mom’s room.

When I stumbled inside, I found our brother on his knees under Mom’s bed, rifling through boxes and bags.

I was surprised Noa had managed to drag Freddie into it, considering every other year he rolled his eyes and bid us adieu, calling Noa a baby. 

But now he was just as enthusiastic as he had been when he was little, when he used to shush us and turn it into a game.

I would take one corner, Noa would take the closet, and Freddie would crawl under the bed because he was the only one who wasn’t scared of monsters hiding under there.

For a moment, I considered just walking away and telling them they were being stupid and acting like children.

But I did want to forget about the reality of turning eighteen and possibly murdering my family. In a way, I guess I wanted to be a kid again.

So, just like when I was five, I wandered over to the furthest corner to search for presents that didn’t exist. I knew they didn’t exist because Mom gave us cash every birthday inside a card.

Still, it was fun to search and feel that childlike magic come over me again. The thrill of pulling things aside and delving into boxes for hidden treasures, dolls we wanted, or the newest games console.

To make Noa happy, I shoved a few things aside, finding myself smiling. Mom was always bad at hiding our presents.

I was about to make that comment when Noa squeaked in delight.

“I found something!”

When I twisted around, she was already partially inside the closet, one foot sticking out, her head buried in Mom’s clothes. It looked like she was grasping at something.

Freddie, who had crawled out from under the bed, straightened up and shot me a look.

“Really?” his eyes said. “Aren’t we a little too old for this?”

“We are.” I mouthed back.

His grin transported me back to when we were nine and the two of us had collectively found five wrapped gifts, then spent an hour shaking them to figure out what they were. But there was also that glimmer of excitement in his eyes when he joined Noa in front of the closet, the two of them managing to heave out what looked like a large box.

I joined them hesitantly. “Any idea what it is?”

I frowned at the box the two of them were struggling to hold properly. It was huge, almost the size of the closet itself.

When Freddie and Noa finally managed to balance it, the three of us stepped backwards to take it in.

Immediately, something cold slithered down my spine.

First, it was the state of the box.

Old.

The cardboard was rotting.

Noa shrieked when a mountain of bugs crawled out of the flaps.

Looking closer, it seemed to be a box for a toy or a doll. But when I squinted, I realised the box was open. It had been open for a long time, and the more I looked, the sicker I felt.

There was something staining the cardboard, an old red colour painting the flaps and the inside of the thing itself.

Suddenly, things were happening too quickly for me to understand.

A blur of movement to my right. Freddie dropping to his knees and barfing everywhere.

Then Noa stumbling out of the room.

I could hear her screams.

I could see my brother retching, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the front of the box.

Because on the front of the box was… me.

MARA.

I was staring at a photo of myself smiling widely, colourful words printed across the box:

“NOW GROWS TO FULL SIZE!” (Mom’s Net Certified)

The printed words looked like a different language, even though I could still read them.

“CHILD™. HAVE YOU EVER WANTED YOUR VERY OWN CHILD? WELL, NOW YOU CAN! JUST PULL OUT THE CORD, AND YOU HAVE YOUR VERY OWN SON/DAUGHTER!”

I stepped forward when something moved.

Freddie yanked me back, but I was already delving deeper into my mother’s closet and finding a much newer box.

This one was unopened.

Occupied.

A fully grown college-aged guy peeked through the plastic packaging.

This time I saw the cord, like an umbilical cord connected to the thing inside the box, which was asleep.

Its eyes were shut.

“FREDDIE,” it read. “THIS TIME IN COLLEGE!!!”

Before Freddie could see it, I shoved it back, stumbling, my heart in my throat.

I frowned at the blood staining the bottom of the second box when my brother grabbed my hand and yanked me backwards.

Before I could fully register what was going on, he was dragging me downstairs.

I think he was trying to get me out of there, but then he stopped, freezing in place.

When I followed his gaze, I found two birthday cards set up on the mantelpiece.

They were labelled in our mother’s handwriting.

The purple one was mine.

The pink one was Freddie’s.

I opened mine up, but instead of a twenty-dollar note slipping out, I found myself staring at a countdown reflected onto my face in red light.

59

58

57

Below that:

“My dearest Mara,

I am so happy I met you and was able to call you my daughter. I found you at the age of seventeen, but you have given me a lifetime of memories I will cherish.

You will be running out very soon, and like the other moms, I don’t want to see you go.

I am supposed to be giving you back tomorrow, but we have each made a pact. With every child we obtained, every mother and father agreed that sending you back to those people would be terrible.

Giving you to another mother would break my heart, sweetheart.

I have heard your biological mother has never stopped searching for you, and trust me, she won’t find you.

So I’m not going to give you back.

I do not support the company I got you from, but I have always wanted a child.

And this town cannot have children. I have lost too many inside me to be hopeful.

Happy birthday, my beautiful daughter.

And goodbye.”

I’m not sure what emotions I felt at that moment, but I finally understood why Finn, Seth, and the others had killed their parents.

I was wrong.

There was a motive.

Rage.

“What the fuck?” Freddie dropped his card, eyes wide. “We need to get out. We need to fucking get out of here, because whatever this thing is, it’s going to blow.”

My brother shook me violently.

“Are you listening to me?! We need to get Noa and get the fuck out of here!”

Going to blow, I thought dizzily.

Had Mom planted a bomb?

There was no time to find it. No way to get out.

I was nodding along with my brother, trying to find Noa, who had disappeared, when it hit me like ice-cold water.

Finn standing in the cells with his eyes carved out.

Seth wearing Ray-Bans to cover his eyes.

Every other kid I saw always wore sunglasses, always hid their eyes.

With the countdown reflecting onto the wall and Freddie screaming at me to find our sister, I wandered into the kitchen, pulled open Mom’s prized knife drawer, and picked out the sharpest blade I could find.

It had been driving me crazy ever since seeing the sheriff’s son’s mutilated face. Why would he do that to himself? Why would he kill his father and then carve out his own eyes?

Part of me thought it really was a curse that had taken them as some kind of reward.

But I was wrong.

Of course I was wrong.

Finn Novak didn’t scoop out his eyes because he was fucking crazy.

He carved them out because he had gotten that exact birthday card.

That exact countdown.

And somehow, he had known, just like me, as I stuffed my sweater sleeve into my mouth, that the bomb was part of us.

Digging the blade into my eye and jerking it at an angle to sever it, I screamed into my sleeve, managing to choke out sobbing pleas for my brother to do the same. The countdown was still in my head, and if I concentrated, I could hear it.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

The thing sandwiched inside me.

It could have been either eye or both, but I didn’t have time to guess.

I was already on my knees when I managed to scoop out my eye with the knife and then my fingers.

When the beeping stopped, I pressed my face into the kitchen floor and breathed in and out, using my sleeve to staunch the blood pouring down my face.

My vision was ruined, and I was pretty sure I was going to be blind, but it was better than being blown to pieces.

Freddie was already in front of me, eyes wide and confused, clumsily grasping for the knife to do the same.

“We’re okay,” my brother hissed.

He was already following my lead, biting into his sleeve and hovering the knife in front of his eye.

Noa stood in the doorway.

I could see her shadow, and just seeing her, I knew she was trembling, too scared to come near either of us.

I opened my mouth to reassure her while helping Freddie sever the thing inside him.

Then… pop.

I heard it first, an audible popping sound in my ear.

Noa screamed behind me.

Something warm hit my face.

Warm and red, coating my eyes and cheeks.

When I wiped the startling scarlet from my face, I found glistening blood dripping from the walls and slick across the floor, the countertops, everything.

I reached out for my brother.

But he wasn’t there anymore.

I don’t care if I’m some artificially grown freak who was born at seventeen years old.

I have already raided my kitchen for the best knives I can find.

So I can find my mother and father.

And make them suffer. 😊

The last thing my mother said to me before she died was:

“If the wind stops, don’t look outside.”

Then she hung up.

Not dramatically either. No crying. No warning music playing in the background. Just a click, followed by dead silence on the line.

I remember staring at my phone at work wondering if I should call her back.

I didn’t.

Three days later the county coroner left me a voicemail while I was eating gas station sushi in the breakroom.

That felt appropriate somehow.

My mother had spent most of my life believing something was watching her from the desert. Men in parked cars. Shapes standing beyond the fence line at night. Voices on AM radio stations that faded whenever anyone else listened.

By the time I was fourteen, half of the desert called her crazy and the other half crossed the street to avoid talking to her.

I left for the city at nineteen and learned very quickly that distance is cheaper than therapy.

I came back to the High Desert on a Thursday afternoon in August because somebody had to identify the body.

The trailer looked smaller than I remembered.

That happens when childhood fear wears off.

The yard was still covered in junk she swore was “useful someday.” Rusted swamp cooler parts. Plastic patio chairs. Coffee cans full of screws. Wind chimes hanging from dead tree branches.

All of them silent.

That bothered me immediately.

The desert is never completely quiet.

Even in the heat you hear something: wind scraping dirt across pavement, distant traffic from the freeway, power lines humming, dogs barking three streets over.

But standing in front of the trailer felt like someone had thrown a blanket over the entire world.

I told myself I was tired from the drive.

The coroner said she’d been dead around two days before the neighbor noticed the smell.

Heart attack, probably.

No signs of forced entry.

They said that last part carefully, like they expected me to ask.

I didn’t.

The inside of the trailer smelled like cigarettes, dust, and burnt coffee. The television was still on. Some ancient game show playing to an empty room.

I laughed a little when I saw it.

My mother treated silence like it owed her money.

Every TV in the house stayed on twenty-four hours a day when I was growing up. Radios too. Fans in winter. She once ran a blender at midnight because she said the house “felt wrong.”

When I was a kid, I thought everybody’s parents checked the windows every fifteen minutes.

Then friends stopped coming over.

I found her in the back bedroom.

Not her body. They’d already taken that.

I mean what was left of her life.

Stacks of notebooks.

Milk crates full of them.

Dozens.

Maybe hundreds.

Every single one labeled with dates.

I actually laughed when I saw them because suddenly I was sixteen again, listening to my mother explain why a white pickup truck driving down our street three nights in a row definitely meant something.

“Normal people don’t circle neighborhoods at 2AM.”

We lived in the desert.

Nobody out there was normal.

I sat cross-legged on the floor and opened one.

The first several pages were exactly what I expected.

License plates.

Times.

Descriptions of cars.

WEIRD LIGHT OVER MOUNTAIN 11:43 PM

MAN STOOD BY FENCE 2:10 AM

HEARD THEM WALKING AGAIN

Then the entries got stranger.

WIND STOPPED 1:13 AM

DO NOT LOOK WHEN IT GETS QUIET

JAMIE WOKE UP RIGHT BEFORE THEY ARRIVED

I froze a little reading my own name.

There were pages about me all through the notebooks.

Jamie coughing at night. Jamie sleepwalking. Jamie talking to somebody outside.

I barely remembered any of it.

One entry had been underlined so hard the pen tore through the paper.

HE LOOKED BACK AT THEM

I shut the notebook and stood up too quickly.

The trailer suddenly felt too small.

Too hot.

I opened the fridge hoping for water and found the inside covered in taped notes.

KEEP SOUND ON

DONT OPEN DOOR AFTER 1AM

IF WIND STOPS, CHECK FENCE

I ripped one down and immediately felt stupid for doing it.

Like I’d broken some kind of routine.

That night I stayed in the trailer because I was too exhausted to drive back into town.

I told myself I was being sentimental.

Really I just didn’t want to spend money on a motel.

Around midnight the wind outside started picking up.

That should’ve made me feel better.

Instead I caught myself listening to it.

Tracking it.

The same way my mother used to.

I hated that.

I turned the television louder and opened another notebook.

Most of it was nonsense.

At least that’s what I kept telling myself.

Then I noticed something.

A license plate repeated constantly through notebooks spanning almost twelve years.

8FTX920

Always late at night.

Always written beside the same phrase.

WHITE TRUCK

I sat there staring at the number while the TV buzzed in the background.

Then headlights passed across the front window.

Slow.

My stomach tightened before my brain caught up.

I moved to the curtain and peeked outside.

A white pickup rolled past the trailer at maybe five miles an hour.

My chest went cold.

Not because of the truck.

Because I already knew the plate number before I saw it.

8FTX920.

The truck disappeared down the road without stopping.

I stood there for a long time afterward convincing myself it meant nothing.

My mother probably saw dozens of white trucks over the years.

My brain just connected dots because I’d been reading paranoid notebooks all day.

That explanation worked right up until the wind stopped.

Completely.

No gradual fade.

One second desert wind rattling the trailer.

The next: nothing.

The silence hit hard enough to feel physical.

I suddenly understood why my mother always kept noise running.

Silence out there doesn’t feel empty.

It feels occupied.

The TV crackled.

Static rolled across the screen.

Then a voice whispered through the distortion.

“Jamie.”

I nearly threw the remote.

The screen cleared instantly afterward like nothing happened.

I laughed nervously to myself because human beings will rationalize literally anything before accepting they’re scared.

Old trailer. Bad wiring. Stress. Grief. Lack of sleep.

That’s what I kept telling myself.

Then something knocked on the wall outside.

Three slow taps.

Not the front door.

The back wall near the bedroom.

I stopped breathing.

Another three knocks.

My mother’s notebooks flashed through my head.

IF THEY KNOCK DONT ANSWER

I hate to admit this part.

I really do.

But I grabbed one of the notebooks before checking the window.

Like instinct.

Like muscle memory I shouldn’t have had.

The backyard was empty at first.

Chain-link fence. Dry dirt. Dark desert stretching past the property line.

Then I noticed them standing farther back near the wash.

Four figures.

Perfectly still.

Too tall.

At that distance they almost looked like people.

Until one of them moved.

Not walking.

Unfolding.

Like it had been bent in the wrong direction before straightening upward.

Every hair on my body stood up.

The thing tilted its head slightly toward the trailer.

Toward me.

And I had the horrible realization that it wasn’t discovering me.

It recognized me.

The knock came again behind me.

Inside the trailer this time.

I stumbled backward so hard I hit the kitchen counter.

The TV burst into static.

Voices poured through it.

Not words.

Just overlapping sound like hundreds of conversations happening underwater.

Then I heard my mother’s voice clearly.

“Don’t let them see you watching.”

The lights went out immediately after.

Total darkness.

Outside, the figures remained perfectly still beyond the fence line.

Waiting.

I don’t remember sitting down but suddenly I was at the kitchen table holding one of my mother’s notebooks open.

Writing.

Time. Weather. Direction of the wind.

My handwriting looked almost identical to hers.

I realized then what the notebooks really were.

Not delusions.

Instructions.

A survival routine passed from one exhausted person to another.

The white truck rolled past again at exactly 2:13 AM.

Slow enough for me to read the plate.

8FTX920.

I wrote it down before I realized what I was doing.

Outside, the wind still hadn’t returned.

And somewhere beyond the fence line, something moved closer.

Saira woke up to the sound of her alarm. It was 4am in the morning. She rolled over to the other side of the bed, but Samir wasn't there. She used her hands to thrust herself upwards but she winced in pain, her hand automatically going to the left side of her stomach where Samir had kicked her last night. She lifted her kurta only to see a purple bruise spreading across her skin, dark at the centre and fading into blue and yellow around the edges. But it was her fault. She knew Samir didn't like it when she talked back to him. Had she stayed quiet at dinner, none of this would have happened. At least that's what she told herself each time. 

She got up, determined not to make any more mistakes today, after all it was Samir's birthday today. 

Everything had to be perfect. 

She got ready and walked towards the wardrobe. She looked at all the half sleeved kurtis and dresses that were pushed towards the side of the closet, her hand automatically drifted towards a bright yellow dress, the one she wore when Samir took her out for their first anniversary. She remembered how happy she felt when he told her how beautiful she looked as he brushed a strand of her hair past her face. She often wondered what went wrong. She snapped back to reality and picked a dark hoodie with long sleeves, as it was the only thing that could cover the bruises scattered all over her arms. She went to the living room, quietly arranging the disheveled room and picking up the empty alcohol bottles scattered all over the floor. Samir hated mess. She had learned this loud and clear when she had accidentally spilled his coffee. The three stitch marks just above her eyebrow served a permanent reminder. Just then her phone buzzed. 13 missed calls from her brother asking where she was. She didn't reply and slipped the phone into her hoodie. Samir didn't like her speaking to her family.

"You twist every argument to make me seem like the villian", she remembered him saying as he snatched her phone mid conversation and threw it across the room. 

But he was right. She was the one who made him angry. Had she learnt to shut up and not question him, none of this would have happened. Samir wasn't always like this. There was a time he would bring her flowers on his way home from work and hold her hand while crossing the road. She firmly believed that man was still there, the man who truly loved her. And she could bring him back if she tried hard enough. 

Yes, she could do it. 

Saira spent the remaining part of the day tirelessly scrubbing the entire house clean, hanging streamers and making flower arrangements. She had even managed to bake a cake- chocolate with vanilla frosting, Samir's favourite. She went back to her room to get ready to surprise him. She meticulously covered the array of bruises on her face and neck with concealer. 

Everything had to be perfect today.

She carefully decorated the cake with flowers and topped it with candles. That's when she heard the door handle turn. She walked towards the living room, holding the cake in her hands with a smile plastered on her face in an attempt to mask her lingering uncertainty. 

Everything had to be perfect. 

As she walked to surprise Samir, she suddenly froze. She saw a trail of blood leading from the hallway towards the backdoor of the house. A chill ran down her spine and she slowly followed the trail, her hands trembling while she desperately attempted to not drop the cake.

The back door stood ajar.

Through the narrow gap she saw Samir, dragging something covered in a large black plastic covering across the floor. His clothes were stained with something dark and a look of absolute terror was plastered on his face and he loaded the black bag into the trunk of his car. 

Suddenly a hand slipped out.

Saira's stomach churned violently as the cake dropped out of her hands. Her hand covered her mouth in an attempt to suppress a sob as tears rolled down her face. Saira staggered further towards the door but her legs gave out and she fell onto the floor. 

The hand was covered with bruises.

Bruises she recognised.

That's when the memories came rushing back.

Samir yelling.

Her voice trembling as she apologised to him again and again.

The smell of alcohol on his breath. 

A violent shove.

Her head hitting the side of the dining table.

Warm blood running down her face.

Samir kicking her violently even after she stopped responding.

Saira stumbled backwards, her body as cold as ice as the realisation hit her.

The pain

The bruises

The exhaustion 

None of it had happened this morning.

Because this morning had never happened.

Outside Samir shoved her hand back into the plastic bag and slammed the trunk shut. 

The cake which she had so meticulously baked was now squished beyond recognition. 

Everything had to be perfect.

The phrase slowly repeated in her head as Samir drove away, disappearing into darkness. 

The Antarctic morning was a masterpiece of silence and silver. The sun hung low and pale, turning the towering icebergs into jagged diamonds that sparkled and reflected as they drifted across a sea of liquid obsidian. It was a place where time itself felt irrelevant, a pristine wilderness that had remained unchanged, a testament to the raw, terrifying power of the natural world for millennia. The sea and ice whispered tales of ancient mysteries few were fortunate enough to see firsthand.

“God, this place is such a dump” Julian muttered, leaning against the freezing railing of the Explorer and flicking a piece of lint off his five-hundred-dollar parka.

To him, the “majestic silence and expansive sky” everyone couldn’t stop gushing about was just one giant lack of Wi-Fi, a dead zone in the worst sense of the word. And the “Once-in-a-lifetime” view was nothing more than a background for a selfie he couldn’t even upload. He snorted. And what the fuck is the point of that? No likes, no comments. No interaction with those thousands of followers I’ve grown that treat me like a God, all because I pose with shit they’ll never be able to afford.

He glanced back at the heated observation lounge, spotting Chloe through the glass; the girl was clearly looking for him, her face full of that pathetic, doe-eyed devotion he’d cultivated and built up the last few nights. He looked away before she could turn and catch his eye. He was done with her. She was a “Drake Passage” girl-a fun way to kill time and squeeze a little pleasure out of the misery his parents had forced upon him, in the name of “Broadening his horizons”-and now that they were at the main event, he needed a bigger prize than a mildly good looking chick with nice tits. He didn’t want to be just another tourist in a bright red jacket; he wanted to be the one who took what he wanted from this frozen shithole and left his mark before anyone else could.

He wanted to be one of the last on Earth who could say they were truly the first to do something. Say it, and not be full of shit.

Behind him came the sound of the lounge door’s latch unlocking, followed a moment later by the chattering of many people’s voices as it swung open. Knowing he would draw the ire of his mother if he let on how he truly felt, he painted a pleased, interested expression on his face before turning around.

“Alright folks, if I can have everyone gather around the port railing, please,” the expedition leader’s voice crackled through the deck’s speakers, competing slightly with a repeating hum and low, teeth chattering vibration Julian had both heard and felt ever since they’d arrived. He was dressed in a red parka, pointing a gloved hand towards the towering walls of rock and ice encircling the vessel like Indians straight out of a western.

“Welcome this morning to Hidden Bay. If you look directly behind us, to the north, you’ll see the two massive, snow-capped granite spires of Cape Renard. They act as the western gatekeeper to this entire area. To our east is Aguda Point. This bay is incredibly unique in that it’s only about three miles deep, and less than a mile wide.”

The crowd oohed and ahhed as they looked around. Camera shutters clicked rapidly, and Julian saw his parents among them, smiling to themselves. He resisted the extreme urge to roll his eyes at the scene and looked around. As his eyes wandered, they drifted across and found Chloe, who pushed her blonde hair behind one ear and gave him a small smile. Immediately he changed direction to look out over the railing again, pretending to be interested in the scenery. God, please don’t come over here.

An older man near the railing turned, lowering his massive camera lens. “Is that why it’s so dead calm in here? It feels more like a lake than something connected to the ocean.”

“Exactly,” the guide nodded, smiling. “We are completely tucked into the western coast of the Graham Land mainland. The sheer walls of the glaciers around us block the fierce winds. But more importantly, look just past the mouth of the bay to the southwest. Out there, beyond our view lies the Grandidier Channel.”

He gestured toward the open horizon where the calm bay water met the darker, vast ocean.

“The Grandidier is a massive, deep-water highway. It plunges down hundreds of meters into a glacial trough, channeling raw oceanic currents straight up from the south. The Lemaire Channel-which we’ll navigate later-cuts right off from it. Hidden Bay sits right at the intersection of these two giants. Because the Grandidier pushes nutrient-rich, deep waters right to our doorstep here, it brings an incredible amount of marine life up from the abyss.”

He paused, letting the tourists take a few photos of a massive, glowing blue iceberg drifting near the shoreline. As he did, Julian felt more than heard his parents sidle up beside him.

“That’s some view, isn’t it Jules?” his father asked, reaching over and gently tousling the teenager’s hair. In response, Julian ducked out of his reach.

“Dad, how many times do I have to tell you I hate that stupid nickname?” he asked, his voice rising slightly in pitch. “It was fine when I was six, but I’m almost eighteen now. I’m not a damn kid anymore.” His father gave a good natured chuckle and instead patted him on the shoulder. However, he saw his mother give him a disapproving stare as a few of the others turned, hearing the swear. Julian let out a small snort showing exactly how much he cared, but held his tongue. A little kid, one that he had come to think of as one half of the brat club with his brother spoke up.

“What sort of animals come up with the water, sir?” The guide smiled warmly at him.

“An excellent question, young man. The deep canyon water is actually why we have so much activity today. The water brings plankton and krill up from the depths, which in turn draws many species of fish like Icefish and Antarctic Silverfish. It’s a massive wildlife corridor out there. We often get Humpback Whales spyhopping in the channel, as well as frequent sightings of Orcas and even the occasional Blue Whale passing through. And, of course, we sometimes see sperm whales passing through the channel as they navigate the deep, open ocean waters for squid. As for here in the bay itself, the fish that chase the plankton draw many species of penguins, like Adelie, Chinstrap and Gentoo. Which, in turn, draws some of the larger predators, like Leopard Seals.”

The crowd smiled and clapped like trained seals again. The boy’s mother leaned down and kissed him, smiling at his question.

It was enough to make Julian want to vomit. I’m in a fucking Hallmark movie here. I want to do something! I want something exciting to do!

The thought suddenly brought forth something the guide had discussed the night before, before everyone went to bed. An activity that was scheduled. Swinging his head towards the stern of the ship, he grinned as he saw the row of colorful kayaks lined up on the lower marina platform alongside the Zodiac. Yes! Deciding he’d had enough of hearing something he could have listened to on the National Geographic channel at home on his father’s home cinema, and not caring if his mother got pissy at him for interrupting, he raised his hand and spoke up.

“Hey, when are we going kayaking?”

The guide, who’d been in the middle of starting to speak again, looked up and focused his eyes on him.

“Ah, Julian, right?” The man offered a practiced, accommodating smile, though his eyes shifted briefly to his parents. “I completely understand the eagerness. The Bay and Lemaire area is world-renowned for its sea kayaking. However, as I was just about to explain to the group, our spotters have noted an unusually high level of Leopard Seal activity near the ice floes this morning. Because they appear to be in a highly aggressive hunting mode, the expedition leader has officially canceled all kayaking for the day. I’m sorry, but for the safety of the group, we are keeping everyone on the main vessel for the moment.” He smiled. “But don’t worry, once we get the green light from the spotters, we’ll be launching the Zodiac boats for a safe, guided cruise around the Cape. It’s an incredible view, I promise!”

For a moment, the Antarctic chill that had endlessly attempted to seep through his coat felt as though it had found a way in. He shivered, though not from the elements. Canceled. The one damn thing so far around this godforsaken frozen rock that wouldn’t have involved sitting around with senior citizens, and it was gone. Julian felt a hot spike of rage flash straight through to his chest, and impulsively burst out.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!”

The harsh curse cut through the crisp air like a gunshot. The crowd of tourists froze, the smiles instantly vanishing from their faces as they whirled around to look at him. The woman with the children ducked and immediately put hands over her nearest child’s ears, motioning for her husband to do the same with the other. Chloe was staring at him with a mixture of shock and impressed awe. There was silence for a second.

“Julian!” his mother hissed sharply, her face draining of color as she reached out to grab his elbow. “Language!”

He tore his arm from her grip, taking a step forward, towards the guide. “No, Mom, I’m sick of this. This is an absolute joke and a half. Look at the water, it’s a goddamn mirror! We’re paying a fortune for this trip, and you’re letting a couple of overgrown seals and a David Attenborough knock off Dad would have fired at his company for telling him no cancel the only part of this so-called vacation so far that isn’t completely boring!”

“Julian, shut your damn mouth right now! You’re embarrassing us!” his father hissed, stepping in between his son and the rest of the open-mouthed passengers, his face twisted into a mask of the sort of fury that would only fit the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. “We are not paying for this trip-your mother and I are. And we raised you to be far better than this,” he gestured to everyone. “Apologize to the guide, to everyone immediately!”

But Julian didn’t listen. He sneered at his father.

“Screw you, Dad, and screw this boat,” he growled, backing away towards the other side of the deck.

“Julian, please listen,” the guide chimed in over the PA system, trying desperately to de-escalate the situation. “Like I said, as soon as the spotters have cleared the area as safe enough, we’ll be launching the Zodiacs for those who want the tour. It’s still going to be an incredible experience.”

Julian snorted disdainfully.

“Yeah, enjoy your ‘safe’ little cruise, then, sheep,” he spat, shoving his gloved hands into his pockets. He spun on his heel and strode away, his head stuck high in the air as he walked out of sight around the Observation Lounge. For a moment, there was another stretch of silence. Julian’s mother, face beet red from her son’s tantrum, began to follow after him, but was stopped as his father put a hand on her shoulder.

“Let him go, Maria. Let him blow off some steam. We’ll handle him later tonight.” He turned back towards the guide.

“My apologies for that, sir. Please, continue. In fact, could you tell us how we’re able to stay in place, despite not being anchored?”

The murmurs began to die down as the guide cleared his throat, regaining his composure. “Of course, sir. It’s quite alright. The Explorer is equipped with a system called Dynamic Positioning. The ship’s computers continuously fires bow and stern thrusters, as well as the vessel’s 360-degree rotating propellers to keep us in place. It’s the vibration you all may have felt every few minutes through the hull.” He perked up slightly. “And a fun fact for those of you who may not know. It actually creates a recurring, low-frequency grinding and hissing noise underwater that travels for miles!”

He turned and began to lead the way towards the bow.

“And now that we can return to our tour-”

Julian leaned against the starboard railing, breathing heavily. Anger still coursed through his system, and he gripped the railing so tightly that, if he didn’t have gloves on, he was sure would see the knuckles of his hands turning white. The indignation of being chastised to by his parents was almost more than he could stand. He hocked a loogie over the side into the still water. I can’t believe how spineless they both are, he thought bitterly. Dad would literally have fired that guy for telling him no in a board room, and Mom would have smiled and told him he did the right thing. But now? Here in this crap hole? They act like peasants. Like the groveling poors we pay to avoid living near. He let out a deep breath and turned, leaning his back against the railing. As he did, his gaze drifted towards the kayaks. The sight of them brought the disappointment back with a vengeance, and he looked away. Then he looked back at them again. His breathing slowed, and he felt his rage begin to be replaced with a sense of calm as something began to turn inside his head.

“Julian?”

He started at the soft call, snapping out of his thoughts and turning to find Chloe had detached herself from the others, standing a few feet away. Oh, great. Fucking brilliant. He let out a sigh.

“What?”

She hesitated for a second, then stepped forward, reaching out and putting a hand on his shoulder.

“You’re right,” she said, shaking her head and snorting as she shot a look back where the group had to have gone. “It’s complete bullshit that we were told we were gonna go kayaking today, and they canceled just because of some oversized Harbor Seals are a bit rowdy,” she shook her head again, smiling warmly at him. “I’m sorry it ruined what you wanted to do.”

Julian let out an exasperated laugh at the fact the girl had immediately pivoted to his defense, as if he needed someone to come to it. Just another sheep like the damn rest. And bothering me when I’m thinking.

“Fuck off, Chloe,” he muttered coldly, pulling out of her grasp and turning away as he again eyed the kayaks.

Chloe took a step back, for a moment a hurt look flashing across her face. Then her features darkened, and she stuck out her lower lip in a pout.

“Fine. I was going to ask if I could make you feel better tonight after everyone went to sleep, but if you feel that way,” she turned and began to walk away.

The insinuation slammed into Julian like a truck, the memory of his nightly conquests cutting through the anger and thoughts racing through his mind. You know what? Maybe I’m not done with her. Maybe she is good for me for another few nights. He turned, plastering an apologetic look on his face.

“Hey, wait,” he called, raising a hand dramatically. He saw her stop and turn back to look at him. He allowed a regretful tone to enter his voice. “Look, I’m sorry, alright? I’m an asshole. Just. Having the first really cool thing that had been scheduled get fucked over really did a number on me.”

For a moment, she remained still. Then, just as he predicted, she bought it. The cool expression left her face, replaced by the doe-eyed smile as she crossed back to him. She leaned forward and pecked a kiss on his cheek.

“It’s fine,” she cooed in his ear, pulling back. “Just, don’t get angry at me for something that’s not my fault, okay?”

He nodded, faking a smile, but needing her to buzz off; He only had a little time to put the plan he’d just thought of into action.

“Deal. Just, do me a favor and give me a little time to cool off, okay? That way I won’t take it out on you.”

Internally, he held his breath. Part of him was afraid she’d insist on staying with him, which would derail his plan completely. But to his relief, she nodded, smiling warmly at him, turning and walking away. He noticed with an amused snort that she walked away with a pronounced wiggle to her hips, clearly trying to tease him. Well, looks like I’ve got something to look forward to tonight.

After she was out of sight, he shook his head to clear his mind. He needed to focus if he was gonna pull off the scheme he’d cemented in his mind. He looked back to make sure nobody else was looking. Then he began to, quickly and quietly, make his way towards the stern of the ship and the platform. He smirked to himself.

Fuck all of them. I’m gonna be the first to do something.

 

As the tour group listened to the guide, Julian’s parents stood near the back, quietly arguing with each other.

“It’s your fault, Jonathan,” Maria whispered sharply, “You always give him a break when he doesn’t deserve one, and use that ridiculous ‘boys will be boys’ comment to excuse his behavior. And now look where it’s gotten us.”

Jonathan sighed, not wanting to start another fight in front of the group; one embarrassment for the day was more than enough.

“You’re right, darling,” he said softly. “You’re absolutely right. I do go too easy on him. Which I will be making up for tonight before we go to bed. But, for the moment, let’s at least try and enjoy the tour. Today is our anniversary, after all.”

He saw Maria hesitate; he knew she wanted to keep at him, knowing full well he didn’t really intend to do anything to their son besides a stern lecture. But she nodded, placing a hand on his chest.

“Alright,” she said, smiling gently at him. Satisfied he’d averted his wife’s fury, he turned his attention back to the guide as he continued speaking. Everyone had returned their rapt attention on the beautiful landscape around them. Camera shutters clicked away again, and the children laughing joyfully as their parents picked them up to see over the railing. They didn’t even cast a glance towards the stern of the ship.

Where a lone figure paddled quickly away, towards the Lemaire Channel.

 

Julian drove his paddle into the water, his arms already beginning to burn as he pushed the bright red kayak as fast as his muscles would allow. He kept his head low, constantly throwing glances over his shoulder. The ship was shrinking in size behind him, the tourists all grouped at the bow railing. Nobody was sparing a glance his way. The realization made him chuckle, a smirk spreading across his face as he looked ahead at his destination. His chest heaved with a heavy, toxic adrenaline. Fuck them all. This is my turn. I’m gonna be the first teenager in history to solo kayak the Lemaire Channel. And even if I get caught, they’ll never allow it to happen again. Which means I’ll be the only one to ever do it. The thought made him grin, and he pushed himself harder, the muscles he’d built from being on the rowing team back home helping him round the rocky shadow of Cape Renard and straight towards the northern mouth of the bottleneck.

Beneath his boots, the molded plastic floorboards still vibrated with a faint, teeth-chattering hum that had been coming from the boat. He’d felt it vibrating as he’d slid the kayak into the water, all the way in his bones. As he reached the mouth of the channel, he felt the water change. The surface remained deceptively calm-still the same glassy, obsidian mirror the bay had been-but beneath the façade, he felt a massive, silent current take hold of the hull. It felt as if the seawater had suddenly turned to thick oil; every inch of it resisted the dip and lift of his paddle. Tiny shards of floating brash ice and frozen kelp fronds swept past him in a slow, ghostly rush, riding a deep polar tide that compressed within the channel’s walls ahead. He smiled, misinterpreting the resistance as a challenge he was easily conquering. Even easier than getting Chloe into bed. The dead-calm water allowed his hull to glide in absolute silence, leaving nothing but a long, silver wake tracing a straight line back to the ship.

As he paddled into the bottleneck, the sheer, three-thousand foot walls of ice and granite rose up on either side of him, swallowing the pale morning sun. He stopped for a moment to catch his breath and spared a glance over the side, down into the water.

He stopped. The sight that greeted him rooted him to the spot for a moment.

The green coastal hue of the water that had made up the bay had disappeared. In its place was now an almost ink black void that seemed to stretch into infinity. The sight of the seemingly bottomless trench beneath him caused him to exhale slightly harder than normal, feeling a chill that the cold air had nothing to do with. Then he shook his head roughly.

“Knock it off,” he said harshly, returning to the motion of paddling as he felt himself begin to be swept backwards to the bay. He wasn’t some scared little boy who didn’t know how to swim.

He was Julian fucking Nichols, and he was going to make history.

He resumed paddling, feeling the oily friction beneath the surface increasing in its resistance. The further he got into the channel, the heavier the current seemed to become. Still, he ignored the slight ache in his arms, gritting his teeth and digging into the water as if his paddle was a shovel. He let out a low chuckle.

“Think you’re gonna beat me, God?” he arrogantly said into the cold sky, his breath visible in front of him. “Think again.”

The minutes dragged on as he slowly made progress, using the shoreline as waypoints to mark how much he’d moved forward. When he felt his arms begin to burn, he allowed himself to rest for a few moments, setting the paddle sideways across the front of the kayak. He took several deep breaths, letting the cold air invigorating him for his next push, and in his head, could almost hear the impressed tone of his rowing instructor complimenting him when he got home and told him what he’d done.

The sound that came from over his left shoulder shooed away the phantom voice.

Pfff-huffff.

It was a ragged, heavy exhalation, carrying the pungent smell of digested fish and cold brine. Julian’s confidence dwindled as he went rigid in the kayak, slowly turning to look. The sight that greeted him made his heart almost leap into his throat.

Just five feet away, a massive, almost reptilian head was hovering silently in the water, staring directly at him. Up close, away from the safety of the ship’s railing, it was horrifyingly huge. Its skull was long and heavy looking, shaped like a prehistoric predator’s, wrapped in scarred, spotted gray skin that glistened like wet steel. It’s black, unblinking eyes fixed onto Julian with a cold, soulless intensity, its mouth parting just enough to reveal a jaw filled with interlocking teeth. Its nostrils twitched as it exhaled another plume of freezing mist into his face.

A cold sweat broke out beneath his layers as a half-remembered trivia fact from the guide’s previous lectures clawed its way forward into his mind: a story about a marine biologist who, while snorkeling in these waters, had been seized by the leg by the monster staring at him, dragged three hundred feet down into the abyss, and drowned. Suddenly, any arrogance Julian had felt fled him.

And then he felt the first tendrils of true terror as two more dark fractures broke the still water behind the first. The sound came from his right, and he slowly turned, fighting the urge to scream as he saw two more. They didn’t move, didn’t charge him. They just hovered, a quintet of ten-foot, three-hundred pound apex killers anchoring him in place in the most agonizing staring contest he could imagine.

But just as his chest tightened, and he prepared to open his mouth and scream, the Leopard Seal closest to him’s eyes widened. It’s pupils dialated with a sudden, frantic alarm. With an explosive, almost synchronized thrash of their powerful flippers, all five seals contorted and leapt forward. But not towards him. They rocketed past his red hull, fleeing towards the now distant bay so fast their massive wake violently rocked his kayak, splashing freezing water on him that took his breath away.

Julian gripped the sides of the cockpit, his breath coming in ragged gaps as the silver ripples slowly faded back into a mirror. Silence reclaimed the canyon. For a few moments, he didn’t move. Then, slowly, a smirk crept back onto is face as the terror he’d felt melted into a sheer, intoxicating burst of adrenaline.

They had run. The apex predators of the peninsula had looked him in the eye, five of them. And they had fled.

A sharp, cocky laugh bubbled up from his chest, bouncing off the granite cliffs. It rose in intensity into a high pitched shriek of victory as he turned to flip the bird behind him.

“Yeah, that’s right, bitches, you better run!” he shouted into the empty canyon, his ego swelling to a dangerous, invincible high. Wanting to cement his absolute dominance over nature, Julian raised his paddle high above his head and slammed the blade down against the water. Thwack! The concussive crack echoed like a rifle shot down the canyon walls. He lifted it and slammed it down again. Thwack! He laughed, reveling in the sound of his own manufactured authority. This must be what Dad feels like to fire someone.

Laughing, he began to paddle forward again, determined more than ever to reach the end of the channel. He spared another look behind him. And noticed the sudden shift on the distant vessel. Looking back over his shoulder towards Hidden Bay, the quiet, uniform lines of the tourists had fractured into a chaotic swarm. The sharp crack of his paddle had acted like a gunshot in the silent polar amphitheater, pulling every long range lens and pair of binoculars straight towards the channel. Even from this distance, he could see tiny figures breaking away from the main throng, sprinting down the external staircases towards the stern platform. They were heading for the Zodiacs. They had seen him.

“Shit!”

A cold, heavy knot dropped into Julian’s stomach, quickly replaced by a surge of desperate, stubborn adrenaline. If they caught him now, he would be dragged back to the ship in front of everyone, Chloe included-he’d be humiliated, grounded and forced to face his mother’s fury for the rest of the voyage. And on top of that, he’d only be known as the kid who tried to solo kayak the channel, not made it.

The thought was too much. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. The exit of the channel seemed an impossibly long way off, but still he dug the paddle into the water with a new found ferocity. His chest began to burn as he deeply inhaled the freezing air, his arms on fire as he refused to slow, determined to conquer the passage before the roar of the outboard motor could catch up to him.

The distant, high pitched whine of the motor finally cut through the air behind him, echoing off the cliffs as the first Zodiac roared out of the bay towards the mouth of the channel. Julian gritted his teeth, his shoulders burning as he forced the paddle through the water, desperate to put as much distance as he could between himself and his “rescuers”. He was dimly aware that around him, the channel had narrowed to its thinnest section. But his attention was ripped away as he began to notice something.

The kayak was becoming sluggishly slow. And it wasn’t the tide, either. He cast a glance around, making sure he wasn’t hitting any ice just below the surface. He saw nothing. He fought for breath. Am I getting that tired?

Then, it stopped.

No matter how much he dug the paddle into the water, the small boat refused to move forward or slide back. It was as if he’d found the only underwater rock in the channel and ran aground on it. Confusion swept over him as he fought to free himself from whatever he’d come into, be it an eddy or a rip current.

That’s when the vibration began.

Beneath the soles of his boots, a new, deeply unsettling sensation vibrated through the the red plastic. It wasn’t the chattering hum of the ship’s engines. It was a heavy, organic friction-the sound of something heavy and rubbery sliding slowly against the underside of his hull, dragging along the keel with a sickening, wet resistance. It was accompanied by a sound as well. One that Julian felt in the back of his teeth. A sound that was almost like long fingernails being sickeningly dragged along plastic.

He froze, his paddle hovering inches above the glassy surface. Something deep and primal in himself was uncoiling like a snake, and the unnamed sensation caused the wisps of terror he’d felt facing the seals to return. He began trying to drive the paddle through the water with increasing ferocity, his breaths beginning to come fast and shallow. He dared not look into the water, only focusing ahead. But it was useless; for all his effort, he barely moved five feet forwards. He paused. The silence returned, this time heavy and suffocating aside from the growing sound of the Zodiac behind him.

Then, the kayak lurched. A thick, muscular mass of pinkish-maroon flesh, lined with cat-like, swiveling chitinous hooks, slowly curved over the left rim of the cockpit. Julian’s breath froze in his throat as he stared at it. What…the fuck… Then the sheer weight of the appendage tilted the kayak violently to one side as it flexed. Before Julian could ever draw in a breath to scream, a wave of freezing, twenty-eight degree seawater poured over the rim, instantly flooding the open cockpit and pooling around his waist. The shock was catastrophic; it hit his nerves like liquid fire, instantly paralyzing his legs and locking his muscles in useless spasms. He was trapped in a sinking, plastic bucket as….something pulled it downwards.

The kayak lurched again, and Julian had to reach out to grab the lip of the cockpit to keep from tumbling out into the water. His face was forced to look down over the edge of the hull.

What he saw froze him more than the freezing water ever could.

Just five feet below the obsidian surface, the darkness had coalesced into a shape. A massive, round shape. Julian felt his heart stop as his mind realized what he was looking at.

An eye. A single, unblinking eye the size of a soccer ball, with a massive, dark horizontal pupil that reflected in the pale sunlight. It wasn’t a soulless fish eye. It was intelligent, hyper-focused and locked onto him with a cold, predatory curiosity.

Panic and terror, hot and sharp finally broke through whatever was left of his façade. Acting entirely on the survival instincts of a spoiled kid used to hitting his problems until they went away, Julian raised the heavy paddle he’d almost forgotten he’d held onto with a death grip. With a guttural scream, he brought the blade down with everything he had left in him, smashing it directly onto the maroon flesh still draped over the cockpit.

The blade connected hard. To his absolute shock, the massive tentacle contracted and recoiled, its hooks giving a sickening screech against the plastic as it withdrew back into the depths. Below the surface, the massive eye quickly vanished. Julian had a sense of a massive shape moving quickly away from him as whatever it had been retreated back into the dark void of the trench. The kayak rocked violently, stabilizing as the dead weight was removed. Julian sat panting, his breath exploding from him in thick, white plumes, his legs completely numb from the freezing water sloshing about his legs. He looked down.

The water was empty again.

He let out a ragged, hysterical laugh. He had done it. He had beaten the seals, and he had beaten whatever the hell that thing had been.

But as he looked ahead at the long, empty corridor of the channel ahead of him, looking for all the world to him now like it was a million miles away, any intoxicating thoughts of being the first to traverse what felt less like a waterway and more like a massive, open grave faded away. His entire body was shaking with a mixture of shock, onset of hypothermia and fear. Behind him, he heard the loud sound of the Zodiac nearing him; turning, he could see the apoplectic faces of his parents along with one of the guides as the moved towards him. His pride finally broke.

Screw the solo record, man, he thought. I’m done. He began to awkwardly move the paddle in his frozen hands, desperate to turn the half sunken boat around and allow the approaching tender to save him.

He never got the chance to turn.

The obsidian glass beneath him didn’t just break-it obliterated. The Colossal Squid didn’t strike from the side; it flew up from the abyss below with all the force of a freight train and the rage of a wounded bull. The impact was what Julian thought being hit by a truck must feel like. A wall of freezing foam erupted into the air as he felt the impact slam directly into the keel beneath him. There was a horrific, screaming tear of plastic being shredded by a thousand hooks. Julian didn’t just capsize; he was launched into the air as if he’d been a cartoon character in a catapult. As if in slow motion, he watched the world whirl around, heard the sound of his parents screaming as the black water flew up to meet him.

The instant his face hit the water, the cold struck him like a fist in the face. The shock of the freezing water made him let out an involuntary gasp, choking as he drew in a burning lungful of water. His vision blurred as thousands of angry bubbles protested his entrance into their domain. He tried to swim, thrashing his arms as his useless, frozen legs hung limply. The five-hundred-dollar parka he’d boasted about now felt as if it were a lead weight. His head broke the surface, and for a moment he heard his parent’s frantic voices as they shouted for him to swim to them.

Then he was pulled beneath the surface as a feeding tentacle-a maroon arrow as thick around as a tree trunk-coiled around his waist. The hooks shredded effortlessly through the layers of his clothing and bit into his flesh with an agonizing pain that not even the numbness could hold back. Feebly, as he felt the tentacle pull him away from the surface, he fought to push it away with his hands. But it was no use. Somewhere above him, he heard the muffled screams of his parents.

For a second, he caught a glimpse of the giant eye, no longer staring curiously at him, but with a mixture of hatred and hunger. Then, as he saw the giant, gnashing beak appear, snapping open and shut in anticipation of its next meal, a thought occurred to him. The last thought he ever had. He was going to be the first in the history books after all.

He was about to be the first recorded case of a human being eaten alive by a Colossal Squid.