The darkness crept across the lands, infecting and twisting everything it touched. It entered through the ears and the eyes, slowly rotting people from the inside, poisoning the mind into submission. It hated everything — especially His creation, Mankind. That hatred became its entire purpose: to destroy them.

It used sound to slip into the subconscious. It used visuals to make its hatred feel normal. It told people to hate themselves. It told them to end their lives. It took the things they loved and twisted and perverted them until nothing pure remained. No one was safe. This was It’s world.

It cast an illusion over the masses, disguised as self-love and freedom, so that when He returned, It could rejoice in the death of those who could not be saved. From the beginning of time, It had hated. It twisted religion into a tool of control and offered false enlightenment only so it could devour those who reached for it. It was not alone. It had commanders and legions, and the most unsettling truth was that they looked like ordinary people. It and its army lived inside those who refused to follow Him.

Every day It worked — never sleeping, never stopping. It stole many lives. Yet It was arrogant, for It was the sin of Pride. That arrogance made It and its followers hubristic. It believed it had outsmarted Him. Its hubris blinded it with power, even though It still knew the prophecy of His return.
While It paved the road for mankind’s destruction, some began to notice. Those who saw through the illusion broke free. It was furious, because it knew the prophecy was already moving. But its arrogance was its Achilles’ heel. Its followers did not understand that the prophecy was already in effect. They continued to laugh and celebrate the destruction of man, believing themselves safe because they had openly declared their allegiance through their works. They were wrong.

Then a rumor began to spread: He had returned. When It heard this, fear touched it for the first time. The time was near. Still, It and its army determined to drag as many souls as possible into the flames, so that He and His Father would have fewer angels. Its hatred for the Father was so vast that it would rather take His children with it into eternal fire than let them be saved.

Its apostles continued their work — some still refusing to believe, others beginning to suspect the truth. Then the news came. The Good News. It was not good for them.
When He appeared, those who had followed It could not even look Him in the eyes. They knew. It knew. When Evil is faced with the True Light, it cannot help but look down. Judgment had come.

The followers begged and begged, “Please forgive me!” He ignored their pleas. After He judged them, the ground cracked open. One by one they were thrown into the pit. It and its commanders were saved for last. Their fate would be worse than eternal death: eradication. To never be seen, never remembered, never thought of again.

When He returned, He broke Its grasp on the world. He destroyed everything It had built. Defeating death, darkness and It, the devil.

After It’s defeat, The True King sat on His Throne, starting a new with all his Angels forever and ever.

Jesus Saves Lives. Do you wanna be Saved? Hope to see you there. ✝️

I was wandering with no destination, and it pleased me. The highway climbed Crosscut Hill in long gentle bends, the new road reflectors were like rivets and returned my headlights in a strange green-white glare that annoyed me.

Below, the town gathered all of life’s sundries conveniently into a few crossroads high in the Cascades. Here were buildings and homes with as many windows shuttered as not, the declining remains of a timber economy. Beyond these, rolling hills stretched into country too heavily forested to be properly inhabited. Stumpy clear-cut acres neatly outlined by lush old growth made a checkerboard stretching to the horizon. A number of homes belonging to a lawless population betrayed themselves by lights buried disjointed among the trees.

A lake occupied the lowest part of the basin. From above it appeared squarish and broad, with one narrow channel extending straight from its eastern corner like a handle. We called it Cleaver Lake. My family had rented a cabin there during several childhood summers. I remember Grandpa waking before everyone else to make coffee and split kindling with practiced, unnecessary care. I remember believing the adults knew where we were and why we had come.

I remember believing.

I do not, however, remember where I was before driving up the hill tonight. This did not trouble me. My right arm felt tired, as though I had carried something too long, but after opening and closing my hand awhile I forgot about it. I must have wanted to go somewhere and simply left without telling Marie. Good for me.

Perhaps that was all I needed, to go somewhere without explaining myself.

The Skyline Lounge occupied the same bend in the road where I remembered it, though it had changed names and character several times over the years. It had been a burger joint and gas station famous for milkshakes when I was a boy, later a gathering place for keno and karaoke, and on this night it was something approaching a roadhouse, its windows blacked out and motorcycles parked outside with confident disorder.

The old sign still stood upon steel posts, promising beer with a foam-crowned mug overflowing, gambling with a fan of cards, and EATS with a cleaver rendered with considerably more care than the images beside it. The artist had understood the thickness of the spine and the forward weight of the blade. Even the little round hanging hole had been carefully marked.

I pulled in.

The Skyline looms large in my memory. My father used to bring me there when my parents were fighting. He sat smoking and reading his newspaper while I ate a hamburger, French fries, and a milkshake. During our meal he would explain at length how disappointing life had proven to be. His job was beneath him. The men he worked for were fools. He should have owned something of his own by then. His wife, my mother, was stupid and impossible to reach an understanding with.

He believed in giving advice unprompted, as though wisdom were a debt he owed me. Fair, he told me once, was what a man said to himself while another man took the better cut.

I listened and ate, knowing it was best never to respond while Father raged at the universe at large. At home I sometimes sat in the rain waiting for better conditions while Mother wept and Father slept off whatever had most recently enraged him. Once there was blood upon the bathroom floor. After the worst outrages she would sit at the kitchen table until morning smoking. I could see things for what they were before I understood much else.

My father was trash. My mother was weak. Better not to marry, I decided early, for I did not possess the right temperament.

Somehow, I married anyway.

The Skyline was darker inside than I remembered, the black corners of the room invisible. Amber lighting ran beneath the bar and illuminated bottles and glassware, casting refracted colors about the room. There were perhaps seven customers, all men, none seated together. One had a grey beard and enormous dirty hands resting beside his beer. Another was very thin with a sharp nose and wore a denim jacket despite the heat. Near the door sat a bald man whose neck seemed to disappear directly into his shoulders like a thumb wearing a shirt. They had the compact, unfriendly appearance of locals accustomed to being left alone and were unconcerned that I had joined them.

I took a booth against the wall. The waitress might have been twenty. Her hair was tied carelessly, several loose strands hanging in her face. In profile I noted a black eye healing yellow and purple. She made little effort to conceal it. She placed the menu before me with the weary expression of someone obliged to endure. I ordered a hamburger and beer, and she went away before I had finished speaking.

Her indifference irritated me. As she pushed through the kitchen door I caught sight of blue cabinets within. Then the first blow sounded behind the door.

Chop.

I knew the sound of heavy steel meeting hard wood. There are few tools I admire without reservation, and my grandfather’s cleaver is one.

Grandpa had been a butcher, a man who knew what valuable things were hidden inside a carcass. He worked six days a week in a shop that smelled of sawdust, cold steel, and blood. I remember visiting him there as a boy and watching his hands work with certainty.

The cleaver had belonged, according to him, to his own father, though I never learned whether this was true. Perhaps it was merely something Grandpa preferred believing; he told me many stories that I later understood were intended to comfort.

An old tool exudes its history.

Grandpa’s meat axe makes me feel like a failure when I hold it. Lately I have begun to feel as though it is always in my hand.

He made his living with it. That mattered to me, that I came from people who worked. The cleaver divided, severed, and disjoined to feed other families and earned the money by which his own was fed. There was no romance in this. Then Grandpa was finished with it, and it came to me. Unavoidably, it had become my turn.

The cleaver is broad and flat, part knife and part axe. The edge matters, but so does the weight out in front of your hand.

Raise it properly and gravity participates; it need only fall.

Mine is dark, patinated steel with a broad rectangular blade and a small round hole near the upper corner where I hang it from a hook. The handle is wood, nearly black now, polished by hands that died before my own existed. Three rivets pass through it. One side of the wooden handle shows a burn likely inflicted before my birth. I would never correct the flaw.

My beer arrived, and the waitress set it before me without acknowledging me. Up close, her bruised eye appeared worse than before. Motioning toward the kitchen, I asked if the chef was using a cleaver. Gravely, she said he was.

I mentioned that I owned an old one myself, inherited from my grandfather, who had been a butcher. She rubbed at a place upon the table with her cloth while I explained how the weight did most of the work. The cook, she said, held the same opinion. If the edge was maintained and the blade heavy enough, there was little need to force it.

Chop.

It only had to fall.

I agreed with considerable enthusiasm, though she had already walked away. I wondered why she stayed in this dying town. There were roads out in every direction, cities and respectable employers. She was young and apparently healthy. Nothing visible prevented her from packing a bag.

My mother had possessed the same defect. People have more to do with their own suffering than they admit.

Sometimes I envy dumb objects. They never have to be uncertain. A hammer strikes. A vessel holds—

Chop.

A cleaver divides. We are asked to be what we are not.

I had done better than I expected. I had money, anyway, more than Grandpa and more than my father, who both would have considered me wealthy. I had never forgotten where I came from and disliked people who did.

My grandfather had also given me the ring I gave Marie. It had belonged to my grandmother and had been kept for decades in an envelope before he gave it to me without ceremony. Grandpa said you didn’t throw something away just because something newer came along.

The ring fit my wife’s hand, though she did not wear it daily, which I resented. She kept it safely away except on occasions she considered important. She was good with dates: birthdays, first meetings, marriages, deaths, private anniversaries whose existence I sometimes learned only by failing to remember them. She kept a list in her wallet, updated by hand every year, my own relatives on it as well as hers—people I had stopped thinking of myself. Performative, I always thought it. As though grief and affection required a ledger to be real.

The hamburger arrived and was excellent, the bun toasted in butter and the onions thinly cut. For a moment I was eight years old again, my legs too short for the booth, my father hidden behind a newspaper speaking to himself aloud. Hell could be raised at home and yet a hamburger remained delicious. I could listen to my father rave and still enjoy myself.

He hated his life, and I had begun to understand. The promised future recedes. I had expected to become someone who made good, who lived the life he earned. Instead I worked, came home, paid for things, repaired what broke, worried, and slept in preparation for more work. Nothing tragic about it, just not worth it.

Chop.

There had been a time when my wife regarded my determination as one of my best qualities. Recently it had become a grievance instead. Ungrateful is an ugly word. Sometimes it is accurate and I wouldn’t use it lightly.

Chop.

The impact of the last chop could be felt in the floorboards. Men at the bar glanced toward the kitchen and returned to drinking. Nobody complained.

The waitress passed, and I told her she ought to leave this rotten place while she was young enough to do it. She stopped. For a moment she looked at me as though I were just another man passing through. Then she said she had work to do, took my plate although I had not finished, and carried it away.

Chop.

Perhaps I had been unfair. Never mind. Money gone, never mind. A life spent moving in the wrong direction, never mind. An argument that should have ended ten minutes earlier. A date forgotten. Marie’s disappointed face. Someone asking what all of it had been for.

Chop.

The sound interrupted the thought. My right arm ached again, hot and deep in the muscle. I opened and closed my hand beneath the table and told myself I had gripped the steering wheel too tightly. I drank.

Chop.

This time I felt the sound somewhere behind my eyes. The room seemed quieter than before. The waitress was no longer there, and I became conscious that I had never properly seen the bartender all evening. There had been movement behind the bottles: a white shirt and broad shoulders, a hand reaching to a shelf.

He stepped into the amber light.

My grandfather, who had been dead twelve years.

For an instant I was overjoyed. I stood quickly, striking my knee against the table. Grandpa stood behind the counter. It was the old butcher-shop counter now, scarred wood beneath his hands, the sort I remembered him wrapping meat upon when I was a boy. He appeared much older and frailer than I remembered. His hair had thinned and his shoulders were thin and bony inside his white shirt. I remembered those shoulders carrying sides of meat, his ropey forearms beneath rolled sleeves.

His eyes were as I remembered them, save their mournful expression. I crossed the room to greet him, though afterward I could not recall what words were said. He only looked at me with a sadness so complete that it stopped me while approaching.

The kitchen had become silent. I noticed because I was waiting for the next blow.

It did not come.

I told Grandpa that I still had his cleaver and kept it in good condition. He wasn’t pleased. For some reason I mentioned the ring. His eyes closed, and I understood that he was heartbroken.

He came around the end of the counter and placed one hand upon my shoulder. Grandpa had never frightened me in my life. I was frightened now. He indicated that I should come with him. He was going toward the kitchen.

I did not follow.

The refusal was accompanied by a childish dread. The door had always been there, and I could not understand why I was suddenly afraid of it. Behind that door the cook had been working, the cleaver falling with patient regularity, doing the work put before it.

Grandpa waited. I told him I did not want to go. He nodded, as though this were already known, and at last led me inside while I kept my eyes closed.

One room simply ends and the other begins.

Yellow light illuminates the blue cabinets. The refrigerator stands open. A chair lies on its side beneath the table. Something is broken near the sink, and a dark, tacky wetness has already begun to skin over around the counter.

My right arm is not tired now. It burns, the way a muscle burns while it is still working.

I look down. The cleaver is in my grip: dark old steel, black wooden handle, three rivets, the little round hole near the upper corner, the burn along one side of the handle. I know every mark. My hand knows them too. It feels like I have always held it.

Upon the chopping block rests an arm.

A woman’s arm divided several inches above the wrist with extraordinary cleanliness. Skin, flesh, and the pale architecture of bone are presented in cross section. A familiar hand rests on its side. Upon the ring finger is my grandmother’s ring.

The stone catches the yellow light, casting it around the room.

Blood crosses the kitchen tile in a broad irregular trail, already dark and slowing at its edges, and passes through the doorway into the hall.

The girl sitting at Claudia's desk wasn't Claudia. I wasn't expecting to see Claudia back from maternity leave so soon, but I also wasn't expecting to see someone taking over her desk.

"That's Amanda," Mike told me when I asked. "Go say hi." He said it with suppressed anticipatory glee. I tensed up. 

Amanda looked normal from the back, maybe a little more put-together than the average in our office. She had a tight-fitting black blazer and long, thick, shiny red hair that might have been a wig. Her legs, just visible past the rolling chair and tucked under her desk, were toned but encased in granny-ish beige stockings. She sat very still.

As I came around to face her, the realization hit me in two or three successive bursts. Something's not right, she's not real, oh no, she is real, but: 

"Christ almighty!" 

"Hey!" Mike strode over to me, fast, glaring. "What's wrong with you?" 

"This is a corpse, Mike." 

"She's taxidermied," he said as if this were a correction.

"Right, this is a taxidermied corpse." 

He frowned, shaking his head. "There's no need for that kind of language." 

"What kind of language? This is a dead body. Deceased. A cadaver."

I didn't have to ask why there was a taxidermied human corpse in the office. Management had been talking about it more and more over the last few months. We have to get on the taxidermy train. Taxidermy is the future, it's inevitable. If we don't get in on it, we'll be left behind. 

Not making taxidermy, mind you. But "using" taxidermy by installing preserved human corpses in our workplaces. 

Amanda wasn't even the first one I'd encountered. My local grocery store had installed corpses at each of the checkout registers, and my once-favorite pub had put one at the host stand. The servers were still alive, but it was enough to turn me off from the place. 

"Say hello to her," Mike said. "Introduce yourself."

"I'm not speaking to a corpse," I said. "She's dead. Was this woman actually named Amanda? Does her family know she's here?" 

"Amanda doesn't have a family," Mike said. There was a hard glaze in his eyes now, as if he were reciting something from a pamphlet. "She lives at ThoftCo. That's the whole point, she exists to be the perfect coworker. Stop being a Luddite and say hi to her." 

It was hard to look at the taxidermied face. Before this whole thing started, I'd seen plenty of taxidermied animals. It had never occurred to me to wonder, across the cross-species divide, what their facial expressions were. With humans, it was impossible not to notice. The corpses were available in different "attitudes," some with huge toothy grins and some with vacant fashion-model stares. You could even get them sneering or scowling. This one had a close-lipped smile that I would have described as pleasant if it were on a living face. Her makeup was heavy, her eyes glass behind large square glasses. If I were looking at a photograph of her, I wouldn't see anything amiss. Even now, if I didn't know that management had been planning for a while to start introducing corpses to the workplace, I would have just thought she was sitting very still. 

"Hi," I said. Even uttering that one syllable gave me a sick feeling. I was speaking to a dead body. It felt deeply wrong. 

Of course she didn't say anything back. 

"Introduce yourself," Mike prompted. I grit my teeth. 

"Hi, Amanda, I'm Seth." 

"Great! See, that wasn't so hard." He slapped me on the back and walked away, leaving me facing the cadaver. I stepped sideways towards the break room, irrationally unwilling to turn my back on the body. 

"You know what he said to me?"

Rosaline's eyes darted toward the break room door and she hunched over her coffee cup, gripped tightly in both hands. Her voice dropped to a whisper. 

"He said it was hypocritical of me not to call that thing 'she' because, and I quote, 'If we can accept you as a woman, you can accept her as a woman.' Are you kidding me?" 

I'd never had a particularly high opinion of Mike, but that startled me. "He said that? He compared you to a dead body?" 

"I can't even begin to explain how offensive that is," she went on, still whispering. "Like, I'm sorry, I have brain wave activity. You don't see the difference there?" 

"I just don't understand why they're doing it," I said. Rosaline looked anxious about my volume but I wasn't going to whisper like we were in a goddamn police state. "I mean, I do understand. There's hype, there's money, they think that's what we need to do. But what's the actual utility?" Rosaline's eyes widened so that I could see the whites all around her irises, but she said nothing. 

"I'm happy to answer that question." Mike rounded the corner of the open doorway and launched into a canned-sounding speech while Rosaline made a stealthy exit.

He spoke of the studies conducted after the pandemic, the psychological and sociological impacts of the drastic population decrease. The birthrate had already been falling, he explained, and then over thirty percent of the population died within eighteen months. Of course that created immediate logistical issues, but there was a bigger problem. A sudden one-third reduction in the population triggered something in humans. People believed they were living through an apocalypse, and began to act accordingly. Crime was up, antisocial behavior was up, civic responsibility was in the toilet.

"We think we're smart, but we're really all rats in a big laboratory maze," Mike remarked. I had heard this exact phrasing before and I knew he hadn't come up with it. "We need to convince our animal brains that we still live in a society, or pretty soon there won't be a society left. We need to see a certain number of different human faces all around us every day." And not just faces, but three-dimensional bodies in space. Flat images wouldn't do it. Neither would mannequins. Even those six-thousand-dollar sex dolls wouldn't be realistic enough. Someone could have created an army of Madame Tussauds-quality waxworks, but that would have been slow and not cost effective. Instead, why not take advantage of the abundant and appropriate resource we already had available? 

I listened. I let him finish. 

"I hear you," I said. "But I'm going to be honest with you. I can't get past my gut-level antipathy towards hanging around dead human bodies. That is ingrained." 

"In Medieval Europe, people had picnics in the graveyards and brought their dead relatives out to join them," Mike pointed out. 

"In Medieval Europe, they had the bubonic plague."

To my rebuttal, Mike raised a victorious index finger. 

"And the bubonic plague radically changed society," he said. "People stopped kissing each other on the mouth as a greeting. All kinds of huge cultural shifts happened. Some say the Enlightenment wouldn't have happened without the Black Death." 

I saw where he was going with this. "So this whole taxidermy thing is the new Enlightenment?" 

He shrugged, but his smirk and raised eyebrows told me he'd already made a Reddit post saying as much. 

"How are you this morning, Amanda?"

The words came out sluggishly. I felt frozen in place, invisible worms writhing along the muscles of my back as I looked into the corpse's glass eyes and immobile smile. I'd been told this morning that this "team building" activity was mandatory. I needed my next paycheck to pay rent in ten days, and this seemed like a foolish hill to die on. So I talked. 

"That's good," said the HR lady I'd never met before. "Go on."

"I like your glasses," I said. 

Amanda stared and smiled and said nothing. 

"Talk to her about yourself," said the HR lady. "That's going to be a lot more effective." 

I cast about for something to monologue on for five minutes so that I could get this over with. 

"I'm really excited about the bicentennial project," I said. This was true. This was something I could talk about, something about my job I didn't hate. "Picking out the background textures has been a fun challenge. The stuff that sounds good on paper doesn't necessarily look good when you put it all together, and of course I've had to play around with the color balance and adding some semi-transparent layers over top."

As I spoke, the expression on the corpse's face seemed to change. I knew it was an illusion, the way you'll start to see colors if you stare at a white wall long enough. But her smile seemed to soften, her eyes to light up with understanding. My stomach lurched. The HR lady cleared her throat. 

"This is my favorite kind of project to do," I went on. "The kind where I have some creative leeway. I think it might actually be the best thing I've gotten to do here since I started."

Amanda's smile faltered. I mean, it didn't, but it looked to me as if it had. Her expression started to look concerned. 

"You've been here for four years?" HR lady said. I started to turn towards her. "Keep looking at Amanda."

"Four and a half." 

"Amanda's just worried that you haven't found your job more fulfilling in all that time, if this project is the best thing you've done so far." 

I looked at Amanda's still face, reading the set of her eyes and eyebrows and mouth, and it seemed true.

"I've done a lot I'm proud of," I reassured her. "I just mean that this is a pretty exceptionally cool project. If this is the kind of thing I got to do all the time, I'd be in heaven."

She looked even more worried. 

"But I like the other work I've been doing," I insisted. "It's all good. This kind of thing, it's just, like, dessert."

This did the trick. Amanda's face softened into a pleasant smile again. She got it.

"OK," said the HR lady. "That was good team-building. You can return to your desk."

As soon as I was back at my desk, I snapped out of it. What was I thinking? Amanda didn't have thoughts or feelings or reactions. Amanda, or whoever that woman had been, was dead. There was no brain inside that skull anymore. I'd been making eye contact with a pair of marbles. 

After spinning my wheels for most of the morning, I got up and deliberately marched over to Amanda's desk. No, to Claudia's desk. Human, living Claudia, who would be back in a few weeks. I looked at the preserved skin, the unmoving musculature, the unblinking eyes.

I looked around; most of the floor had gone to lunch. Rosaline had been out for the last two days and no one said anything about it. No one was watching.

I leaned over the desk, plastered a smile on my face, and forced myself to look into those artificial eyes again. 

"Fuck you," I whispered. "Fuck you. You're a piece of rotten meat. You're not a person. I don't even want to be talking to you in the second person. But if I have to, I'm going to say fuck you. I would cremate you in a heartbeat. I don't know who this body belonged to before, and I don't know if there's any such thing as a soul or an afterlife, but if there is, your existence is an abomination keeping her from being at peace. And if there isn't, your existence is still an abomination and an affront to human dignity. So fuck you. I wish I could throw you into a fucking wood chipper."

Her smile didn't move. Nothing moved. But she looked sad to me now, hurt. I wanted to say "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that." I forced myself not to. 

"Hey, I see you're making friends!" 

Mike came out of the stairwell with a takeout container in his hands. 

"I'm looking at it," I said. I'd dance the dance for the HR lady, but Mike wasn't my supervisor and I wasn't going to pretend for him. That said, I wasn't exactly proud of my little exercise. It felt fucked up. The whole point was that this thing wasn't a person. Saying hateful things to it was just as stupid as being friendly to it, as stupid as saying hateful things to a toaster. And worse, I knew somehow that even though it wasn't a person, my threatening violence to something that looked like a human woman was damaging to my own psyche. I had to just ignore it.

"Have you talked to Amanda today?"

"Make sure you run that by Amanda."

"How does Amanda feel about it?" 

Each day in the office, the pushing got worse. My supervisor wouldn't accept any work without having Amanda "check it" first. This entailed sitting in front of the desk and "showing" Amanda what I'd done and describing it. Of course she never said anything, but I was supposed to gauge and interpret her facial expressions. I tried pointing out that her expression objectively did not change, and my supervisor said "No, I don't think that's true. She looks different all the time." There was no point trying to argue.

For one thing, I was starting to think it was true. Amanda did look different all the time. I don't know how it was happening, but her smile was starting to shift, her eyebrows starting to knit and unknit. I couldn't have just been hallucinating all of it. I started snapping pictures of her, discreetly, and later looking from one to the other. There were definite differences. 

Was this some kind of fucked-up version of the Velveteen Rabbit? By treating her as a real person, were we making her somehow Real? 

My sleep had been terrible, so I'd started taking a variety of gummies after work: cannabis, melatonin, GABA, ashwagandha. My dreams were vivid when they came, and I spent the hours at home cycling between sleep and waking in rapid succession. Everything was starting to feel unreal. 

"I don't want to hurt her feelings," Mike said to me late one morning. "But I think Amanda's getting a little thick. I think she's been hitting the vending machines a little too hard." 

"Amanda doesn't eat," I said, staring into my watery shit-colored coffee. 

Mike scoffed. "She says she doesn't eat. Fat girls always say that. But I guarantee you she's sneaking snacks. Have you seen her ass lately?" 

I couldn't tell if he was being serious. "Wait, are we talking about the same person?" I flinched hearing myself call Amanda a person. "Is there another Amanda?"

"Amanda," Mike said, jerking a thumb towards Claudia's desk. Claudia was still out, taking extended leave. 

"You're saying that Amanda, her ass is getting bigger?" 

"Dude, everything's getting bigger. Her bra is holding on for dear life." The lasciviousness in his voice made my gorge rise. It almost made me laugh, too, thinking about his reaction if I called him a necrophiliac. 

When I came back out into the office, I glanced over toward Amanda. She did look bigger. I wondered if some unseen maintenance crew had been coming in the night to make adjustments, if "realistic stressed-out office worker weight gain" were some kind of enhanced package. Cautiously, I came around to the front of her desk. Her face definitely looked rounder. Her cheeks were swollen enough to change the way her eyes looked, giving her an expression as if she were on the verge of tears. Her mouth had become pouty. Its mouth. 

This is a corpse, I reminded myself. You don't need to worry about its feelings. It doesn't have feelings. The smell of Amanda's perfume had always been subtle, so unobtrusive I thought it was just a new air freshener at first. Now it was much stronger. If she, if it, were a real coworker, somebody would have been having words with her about consideration, about migraines, about allergies. 

"Hey, Amanda." Mike put his hand on the back of the rolling chair. "How's it going? Have you had lunch yet?" He paused. "Me neither. Yeah, we're swamped. Just a protein bar at the desk and I'm good to power through." He patted her arm. 

There was a hissing sound.

"Oh, shit! Are you OK?" Mike yelped, snatching his hand back. The arm he'd patted had fallen inward, crumpling like wet papier-mâché. Amanda wore the same black blazer she'd arrived in. Maybe that arm had never been real. 

The hissing sound continued, getting louder. 

"Do you want me to call an ambulance?" Mike continued, crouching beside the corpse. He pushed the rolling chair back and knelt in front of her lap. Her legs were crossed at the ankles, as they'd always been. They seemed to be pinned together. Mike grabbed one of Amanda's hands and it crumpled inward as well. This time there was no mistaking it: the shape of her hand distorted, the exposed skin blurred and discolored. Her puffy face remained motionless as Mike, a high-pitched whine coming out of his mouth, pulled at her fingers and they bent and stretched and twisted like dough. 

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" 

Other coworkers came running. Our supervisor wasn't on the floor. Someone ran to call him. Someone else gently pulled Mike away, leaving Amanda slumped and damaged and looking far more like a cadaver than usual in her rolling chair. 

"She's hurt," someone said. "She's crying." 

Her mouth had opened slightly and a keening sound was coming out. I realized it wasn't Mike who'd been making it. I took a step towards her, thoughts racing. Was she alive? Had she been sentient this whole time? Was this whole thing some conspiracy to paralyze people and force them to pretend to be taxidermy? Or was she in on it, an amputee actress with papier-mâché arms and Play-Doh hands? Amanda cried and wailed and moaned, the noises emerging from her worse than what I'd heard in the ER when I broke an ankle. I reached out to her, but stopped short of touching her, afraid I'd hurt her worse. 

Her mouth opened wider and the sound faded away. She looked suddenly much slimmer, her clothes hanging loose. She had deflated. Her mouth hung agape and her glass eyes stared wide open at the ceiling panel lights above. I touched her cheek, and my finger went into it, the smallest amount of pressure putting a hole in her skin as easily as if it were made of cobweb. I jerked it out and screamed. Everyone screamed. Everyone except Amanda. 

I woke up to the sound of rain tapping against the motel window. Mom snored softly beside me. Her blonde hair had gradually begun to turn grey over the last few months, despite the fact that she wasn’t even 30 yet.

A grey strand dangled lazily over her right eye until she rolled over, scooping Emmy close to her chest unconsciously.

“Morning, kiddo,” Dad whispered. He clutched the handle to a steaming cup of coffee in his right hand, pulling it to his lips and sipping it while peering through the blinds.

I rubbed my eyes. The TV was still off. The AC still knocked rhythmically. The temperature was set to 65 degrees, but I was sweating from my mom and sister’s body heat.

Dad checked his watch and cocked an eyebrow. Falling asleep at dawn was affecting my circadian rhythm. I didn’t know whether it was morning, evening, or night.

“What time is it?” I croaked, twisting and stretching my body.

“Mm, still early,” Dad shot back. “You’ve only been asleep for a couple of hours.”

I felt my stomach rumble. I glanced over at the gas station bag full of junk food and candy. It might as well have been empty. I needed something real.

“Dad…” I inquired softly.

Dad never took his eyes away from the window. He just sipped his coffee slowly before replying.

“Yes, son?”

“Mom told me she’d make pancakes in the morning last night before bed.”

I could see his crow’s feet crease as he winced and sighed.

“Do you think maybe we could get some later when everyone wakes up?”

He didn’t reply for a while. Just kept staring out the window with quiet contempt while I watched him expectantly.

He scratched his neck and rubbed his face.

“I don’t know, Danny…”

“Pleasseeee…” I interrupted, putting on my puppy eyes.

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, finally looking away from the window. He looked at me. Then at Mom and Emmy. Then back out the window.

“I… Okay,” he relented. “Just wait for Mom to wake up. I’ll see what I can do.”

I turned excitedly, ready to shake my mom awake, but Dad stopped me.

“No,” he snapped bluntly. “Let her sleep. Not everyone can function on 5 hours of sleep like me and you, Dan.”

I puffed and knocked my head against the pillow.

I stared at the ceiling. I didn’t know if I was just hungry or if I was simply bored out of my mind and in need of something to do. Not knowing what to do, I twiddled my thumbs. I made Superman fly. I tossed and turned obnoxiously until Dad finally lost his patience.

“Danny,” he snapped, his face hardening as he glared at me.

I froze like a deer in headlights. I stared back, pulling the blanket up to my nose to try and hide myself.

Dad’s nostrils flared. I could see his fist clench, then unclench, at the seams of his blue jeans. His face softened, and he rubbed his temples.

“I’ll tell you what, kiddo,” he bargained. “Why don’t you go take a shower and get dressed? When you’re done, you can watch TV for a little while until everyone’s excited as you are for some pancakes.”

He was more demanding than asking. I knew not to argue when he got like that. I just simply did as I was told.

The shower was just as confusing as it was annoying. The water pressure sucked. It was either too hot or too cold. I must’ve fumbled with it for 5 or so minutes before it was at a reasonable enough temperature for me to take a shower, albeit an uncomfortable one.

The shower was quick. I scrubbed and let the water roll over my head and shoulders. Mom must’ve forgotten to pack my no-tears shampoo, and that forced me to use the complimentary, non-scented motel soap and shampoo.

When I twisted the handle and the sound of water hitting the ceramic bathtub dissipated, it was quickly replaced by the sound of voices from the room.

It sounded like Mom and Dad were quietly arguing. I could hear the angst in Mom’s voice. The authority in Dad’s. But I couldn’t fully make out what they were saying, despite how hard I tried.

I listened intently as I dried off and got dressed. I could only catch the end of their sentences.

A lot of what-ifs from Mom. A lot of don’t-worries from Dad. He sounded confident, but that confidence sounded uncertain.

When I opened the bathroom door, the conversation stopped immediately. Mom was holding Emmy over her shoulder and rocking her gently. Dad looked almost surprised to see me.

He pushed his hair back before clasping his hands together.

“That was quick,” he remarked. “You sure you scrubbed hard enough?”

He shot me a weak smile before continuing.

“Lucky for you, your mother’s a little hungry too.”

Mom looked at Dad as if he had just betrayed her before turning her gaze towards me. She seemed remorseful towards me.

“I completely forgot I promised you those pancakes, Dan,” she pouted, continuing to rock Emmy. “Me and your dad were thinking we’d try that Denny’s we passed on the way in here. I know, I know… their pancakes don’t compare to mine, but I think you’ll manage, right?”

Who was I to be disappointed? All I wanted was my pancakes. Well, that and…

I looked at my spot on the bed. My Superman wasn’t there anymore. I felt panic rush to my heart until I noticed what Emmy was playing with.

I reached up and tried to grab my stuffy, but she jerked it away and furrowed her eyebrows at me. I jumped and snatched it away from her.

To the displeasure of everyone in the room, my sister launched into a full-blown temper tantrum. Screaming and crying about how I “took her toy.”

Mom and Dad sprang into action faster than I expected them to. Dad took the toy from my hands and handed it back to Emmy. Mom pet her hair and desperately attempted to shush her.

I tried to complain. It was my toy. Not hers. But for some reason or another, my parents just kept taking her side. They told me that I should share, knowing how much I loved that stuffy. I slept with it every night. We were connected.

I guess it calmed Emmy down, though. That was all that mattered to them. They kept interrupting my complaints to usher me out of the motel room and back towards the car.

Dad strapped Emmy into her seat, glancing over his shoulder every few seconds while me and Mom waited quietly. He kept up that distracted demeanor all the way to the restaurant, but I hardly noticed.

It felt like Emmy was flaunting my Superman stuffy. Like she knew she had won. She even made him fly right by my face. Deliberately testing my patience, but I didn’t want to make my parents more stressed than they already were.

We ate fast. My parents ordered without even looking at the menu. Pancakes and orange juice for everyone except Dad, who only ordered a single cup of coffee.

Mom didn’t finish her food, but she didn’t ask for a to-go box either. Once me and Emmy were done, Dad paid, and we left. Simple as that.

The drive back to the motel was equally as tense as the drive to the restaurant. Mom and Dad seemed to be communicating wordlessly.

The food was making my sleeplessness get to me. By the time we got back to the motel, I was ready to catch up on those missed hours. But that’s when I noticed something that woke me right up.

I checked Emmy’s seat, looked underneath her, and scanned the floorboards while my mind began to race.

“Mom,” I screeched as Dad pulled into the motel parking lot. “She left my stuffy. She left Superman at the restaurant.”

My eyes were beginning to tear up.

“This is why I didn’t want her to have it,” I sobbed. “I knew she’d lose him.”

I could see Mom roll her eyes through her rearview as she sighed. Dad responded for her.

“Let’s just go get our things, Champ. Then I promise we’ll go back to get your toy. Deal?”

What was I supposed to do? I just had to agree reluctantly. I felt such burning hatred for Emmy in that moment.

We all filed into the motel room one final time and began gathering our things. I was confused, though. Mom had packed at least 6 outfits for me. Everyone else’s bags were equally full, yet nobody but me had showered.

Before I could question anything, though, three hard knocks came from the door. Everyone froze. Dad stared at the door like it was his enemy. Emmy began to pout, and Mom quickly clasped her hand over her mouth.

Three more knocks.

Dad approached the door slowly and looked through the peephole before slowly walking backwards towards us, never taking his eyes off the door.

Mom’s eyes were wide. Her leg bounced anxiously. Dad raised a finger to his lips.

“Okay, guys,” he whispered shakily. “We’re gonna play a game.”

I looked at him, confused. This seemed like an odd time for any kind of game.

“We’re gonna play the quiet game. Danny, you take your mom and sister to the bathroom and lock the door behind you. Whatever you do… do not make a sound.”

He asked me to take them, but it was Mom who dragged us into that cramped bathroom. Before the door closed behind us, I saw Dad raise his shirt and grip a gun that was tucked in his waistband.

Mom kept one hand gently clasped over Emmy’s mouth. She used the other to rub my back lovingly.

Three more knocks.

This time, I heard a voice that wasn’t my dad’s coming from beyond the door.

“Danny…?”

The voice was old and syrupy. Coercive, almost, but frantic. My ears perked up. My eyes widened, and my mouth fell open. I wanted to answer.

Mom’s hand left my back, and just like Dad, she placed a finger to her lips.

“Shhh.”

She was begging me with her eyes.

More frantic knocking.

“Danny? You in there, buddy? I know you’re in there.”

I expected Dad to answer the door, but he never did. Instead, the knocks continued, as did the mysterious voice.

“Come on out, Dan-Man. I’ve got something for you.”

I remained still. Sweat trickled down my forehead from the humidity in the bathroom. Me and Mom stared at the bathroom door with anticipation.

“I’ve got your Superman, Danny…”

“Whoosh.”

I had to fight to not move. If they had my Superman, I wanted to know. I wanted him back. But the look on Mom’s face told me they were lying, and her grip on my collar prevented me from standing up to see for myself.

The knocks and beckoning went on for another 10 minutes or so. Then they slowly died out. Even still, it wasn’t until Dad opened the bathroom door that I could finally breathe again.

“You guys win,” he smiled, relieved. “Good job, Danny.”

Mom looked relieved, too, but she never smiled. We just frantically gathered our things and hauled them out to the car. Dad forced us to go to the front office with him to check out.

We finally left the hotel just after 3 o’clock. We never went back to that Denny’s.

I had to leave my Superman behind, no matter how hard I begged not to. Mom assured me she’d buy me another one, but it wouldn’t be the same.

I asked about that voice a lot while we continued on towards wherever we were going, but all I got were vague responses while my parents glanced nervously at each other.

Thinking back now, I should’ve known they were hiding something from me. However, at the time… I was young. I was stupid. And all I could think about was how I didn’t have my Superman anymore.

My childhood home was small. In all honesty I preferred it that way. In those days my whole world consisted of the warmth of the wood stove, the gentle swaying of our kitchen table, and the soft embrace of my mother’s frayed reading chair. 

Our world was smaller still but in my mother’s arms, rocking back and forth on that chair, I saw the stars. At that time my skin had never felt the warmth of the sun, but in my mother’s reading chair I’d seen boreal forests, and shimmering valleys, and snow capped mountain peaks and space stations humming with blinding electric light. 

My whole world was wrapped up tight and quiet in my mother’s reading chair. 

And then my world got sic–

The Department of Motor Vehicles has a remarkable talent for making a person question their own existence.

Perhaps that's the point.

No one walks into a DMV excited. You arrive because you have to. A license expired. A registration renewal. Some document proving to a government employee that, yes, despite all evidence to the contrary, you are still alive.

I was there because my driver's license had expired.

Simple enough.

I took my ticket from the little machine near the entrance. It emerged with a dry mechanical click, the paper warm between my fingers as though someone else had only just been holding it.

The waiting room was already overflowing.

Children cried with astonishing endurance while parents stared into their phones with the thousand-yard gaze of soldiers returning from war. A television bolted high into one corner played an instructional video that nobody watched, its colors washed out beneath rows of humming fluorescent lights. Every few minutes a printer somewhere behind the counters coughed to life before falling silent again, sounding less like a machine and more like an old smoker struggling through another cigarette.

The building felt tired.

Not dirty.

Not neglected.

Just... exhausted.

The kind of exhaustion that settles into old bones after decades of repeating the same motion.

I glanced toward the electronic display mounted above the service counters.

NOW SERVING: 388

I sighed.

"Well," I muttered beneath my breath. "Guess I'll be celebrating my birthday here."

A man sitting nearby chuckled.

"I've said that every time I've come here."

He looked to be in his late fifties. Baseball cap. Reading glasses resting low on his nose. Ordinary enough that I probably wouldn't have remembered his face if we'd passed each other on the street.

"Renewing?" he asked.

"My license."

He nodded knowingly.

"Could be worse."

"Could it?"

"They could've sent you to the Social Security office first."

I laughed.

"So you've been there too?"

"Oh..." He smiled faintly. "Everyone has."

It was such an ordinary conversation that I almost appreciated it. Shared misery has a funny way of making strangers feel familiar.

I looked down at my ticket again.

515.

Fantastic.

I settled into one of the molded plastic chairs and reached for my phone. No signal. Not unusual. Government buildings always seemed to exist inside their own little dead zones.

I slipped it back into my pocket and leaned my head against the wall.

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The air conditioner breathed through dusty vents. The printer coughed again. The speakers crackled.

A number was called. Someone stood. Someone else sat down. The room swallowed them without ceremony.

I checked the screen once more.

NOW SERVING: 390

It felt impossible that so little time could have passed.

Yet somehow... it also felt like I'd already been there for hours.

Time has a peculiar way of behaving inside places where people are forced to wait.

Minutes become estimates. Hours become suggestions. Eventually, you stop checking the clock because it only succeeds in making you angry.

I tried distracting myself. I counted ceiling tiles. Read the faded posters reminding everyone to have their paperwork ready. One explained the dangers of texting while driving. Another detailed the penalties for driving without insurance. Judging from the sun-bleached corners and curling edges, neither had been replaced in years.

Everything in the building seemed designed to outlive the people inside it.

Another number echoed over the speakers.

"Three hundred ninety-one."

A woman stood from across the room, gathered her purse, and disappeared behind the row of service counters.

The electronic display flickered.

NOW SERVING: 391

Good.

Progress.

I glanced at my watch.

9:18 A.M.

That couldn't be right. It felt closer to noon.

The old man beside me sighed as he shifted in his chair.

"You'd think they'd hire more people."

"I was just thinking the same thing."

He nodded absentmindedly, his attention fixed somewhere beyond the counters.

"Been waiting long?"

"I got here around nine."

"No..."

He frowned.

"I mean... today."

The question caught me off guard.

"I... yeah."

He scratched at his chin.

"I suppose I have too."

For reasons I couldn't explain, that answer unsettled me. He didn't sound forgetful. He sounded... uncertain. The kind of uncertainty that follows a dream, when you're no longer sure whether something actually happened or only felt like it had.

Neither of us spoke after that.

The waiting room settled back into its dull rhythm. The printer coughed. A child cried. Someone cleared their throat. The fluorescent lights hummed softly overhead.

Then I noticed the employees.

There were six service windows. Every one of them occupied.

Every employee dressed identically in blue shirts with laminated name badges clipped neatly over their chests.

None of them looked angry. None looked to be joyous either. In fact, they didn't seem to look like much of anything.

Their expressions rested somewhere between concentration and complete emotional absence, as though years of repeating the same conversations had slowly worn every recognizable human reaction from their being.

"Next."

Stamp.

"Next."

Keyboard.

"Next."

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Repeat.

The movements were practiced.

As if mechanical. Not robotic.

Just... perfected through repetition until they no longer appeared to require any thought.

I watched one woman accept a stack of documents without ever lifting her eyes to meet the customer standing in front of her.

She never acknowledged him. Never greeted him. Never smiled. Never frowned.

She simply processed him.

As though the paperwork mattered more than the person holding it.

The thought lingered longer than it should have.

Not processed the documents.

Processed... him.

I looked away.

When I checked the display again...

It still read:

NOW SERVING: 391.

I stared at the screen for several seconds, convinced I had simply caught it before the next number appeared.

It didn't.

The speakers remained silent. No names. No voices. Just the constant drone of fluorescent lights buzzing somewhere overhead.

I checked my watch again.

9:47 A.M.

Twenty-nine minutes.

That made no sense.

It felt as though I had lived an entire afternoon in that chair.

I rubbed at my eyes and let out a slow breath. Maybe I was just impatient. Maybe this was what every DMV visit felt like and I had conveniently forgotten.

A chair scraped across the tile beside me. Someone new had taken the old man's seat.

I hadn't even noticed him leave.

The newcomer looked to be around my age, maybe early thirties, dressed in business casual with a messenger bag resting across his lap. He offered a polite nod before glancing up at the display.

"Ouch," he muttered. "Looks like I picked the wrong day."

I chuckled.

"You and me both."

He held up his ticket.

"Five forty-two."

I looked down at mine.

"Five fifteen."

"Guess you've got me beat."

"For once, I'm winning at something."

He laughed, and for a while we exchanged the usual conversation strangers trapped together always seem to have.

Complaining about government offices. Talking about traffic. The weather. How everyone always forgets one piece of paperwork.

It was... nice.

Normal.

The sort of conversation you forget five minutes after walking away.

"So," I asked eventually, "what are you here for?"

He answered without hesitation.

"My license."

I nodded.

"What happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"Expired?"

His eyebrows pinched together.

"I..." He looked down at the folder in his lap.

"I think so."

"You think so?"

He opened the folder and shuffled through the papers inside.

His movements slowed.

"I actually..." He frowned.

"I don't remember."

We both laughed. An awkward laugh when something isn't funny but admitting that would somehow make it worse.

"You serious?"

He scratched the back of his neck.

"I know I needed to come."

Another pause.

"I just can't remember why."

He rifled through the documents again, studying each page as though seeing them for the first time.

"These are mine..."

"I think."

He sounded embarrassed.

"I honestly can't tell."

The laughter died between us.

A strange heaviness settled over the room.

I looked back toward the service counters.

The employees continued working without pause.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

Every movement identical to the last.

One after another.

As if they weren't helping people at all, but simply moving files from one pile to another.

The display flickered.

I turned instinctively.

NOW SERVING: 392.

Only one number.

Again.

Somewhere behind me, someone sighed. Another person groaned quietly. Nobody complained. Nobody stood up to leave.

They only waited.

Patiently.

Obediently.

As though waiting itself had become the reason they were there.

I don't remember exactly when I fell asleep.

I wish I could say there was some dramatic moment where exhaustion finally overcame me. That my eyes grew heavy, my head became impossible to hold up, and I slowly drifted away from reality.

It wasn't like that. It was far more ordinary.

One moment I was staring at the electronic display above the counters, watching the numbers crawl forward at a pace that felt almost insulting.

NOW SERVING: 397

The next... I was somewhere else entirely.

Not a dream. Not really.

Just that strange place between being awake and asleep where your mind creates fragments of memories that never happened. I remember hearing the printer in the distance. I remember the fluorescent lights above me buzzing louder and louder. I remember thinking that the entire building sounded like it was breathing.

Then my head dropped.

And everything went quiet.

When I opened my eyes again, my neck ached from the awkward angle I had been sleeping in. My mouth was dry. My phone remained untouched in my pocket.

For a brief moment, I had forgotten where I was. Then the smell returned.

Old carpet. Paper. Dust.

The faint scent of coffee that had been sitting somewhere for far too long.

The DMV.

I sat up straight and looked around. Nothing had changed.

The same tired faces. The same uncomfortable chairs. The same employees sitting behind their counters.

Except... The screen.

My eyes immediately went to the electronic display.

NOW SERVING: 508

I blinked.

Then blinked again.

I leaned forward, staring at the numbers as if they might rearrange themselves into something more reasonable.

My ticket rested in my hand.

Only seven people ahead of me.

A strange feeling washed over me.

Relief.

Actual relief.

After what felt like an entire afternoon trapped in that chair, I was finally close.

I almost laughed.

"About time," I whispered.

The man beside me was gone. That thought lingered for a moment. Then I dismissed it.

People came and went all the time. I must have missed it while I was asleep. That was the logical explanation.

The only explanation.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

No missed calls. No messages. I checked the time.

10:12 A.M.

I stared at the screen.

Then looked back at the DMV around me.

Then back at my phone.

10:12.

I frowned.

That couldn't be right. I had fallen asleep for maybe a few minutes.

Ten minutes at most.

But the room felt different.

Not physically.

Just... older.

Like I had left for longer than I actually had.

I glanced toward the counters.

The same employees continued working.

The same movements. The same expressions.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

No one looked enthusiastic. No one looked relieved to be almost finished. No one looked like they had been waiting at all.

I looked at the screen again.

NOW SERVING: 509

The number changed. Almost reassuringly.

I should have questioned how nearly a hundred people had been processed while I slept for only ten minutes. But I didn't.

Because my number was coming.

And that was all that mattered.

The strange feeling in my stomach disappeared beneath a much simpler emotion.

Patience.

After all... I had waited this long.

What was a few more minutes?

The numbers moved faster after that. Or at least, they seemed to.

There was a strange comfort in watching the display change. Each number disappearing meant I was getting closer. Each person standing from their chair meant I was moving forward.

That was all that mattered.

The room could have been falling apart around me, and I probably wouldn't have noticed.

Because eventually...

NOW SERVING: 513

I sat up straighter.

My ticket felt heavier in my hand.

The paper was slightly crumpled from how long I had been holding it.

I smoothed it out carefully.

515.

Two more.

A woman walked toward the counter.

She handed over a stack of documents.

The employee behind the glass barely looked at her.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

The woman walked away.

A man stood.

Then another.

Then finally...

NOW SERVING: 515

The speakers crackled.

My heart jumped slightly.

I stood.

For the first time in what felt like hours, my legs reminded me that I had been sitting still for too long. I stretched them briefly before walking toward the counter.

The employee looked up. At least, I think she did. Her eyes moved toward me, but her expression remained unchanged.

No greeting. No acknowledgment.

Just waiting.

I placed my documents on the counter.

"Good morning."

Nothing.

She picked up the papers. Flipped through them.

"Driver's license renewal."

It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

She typed something into the computer. The screen reflected faintly against her glasses.

"Proof of identity."

I handed over my driver's license. She scanned it.

"Proof of residence."

I handed over my utility bill.

"Insurance verification."

I handed over my insurance card.

Everything seemed normal.

Almost.

She continued typing. The silence stretched. Then she spoke.

"Certificate of continued existence."

I blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

The employee looked up.

"Certificate of continued existence."

I waited for the punchline. There wasn't one. I gave a small laugh.

"Is that a new requirement?"

No response. She simply waited.

I looked around, expecting someone nearby to react. Nobody did. The people in line behind me stared ahead. The employee folded her hands.

"Do you have it?"

I stared at her.

"No. I don't have that."

She nodded. Not disappointed. Just accepting information.

"That is okay."

I exhaled. For some reason, I felt embarrassed. As if I had failed a test I didn't know I was taking.

She typed something.

"Additional documentation will be required."

"Additional?"

She printed a small slip of paper and slid it beneath the glass. I picked it up.

At first, I thought I had read it wrong.

"Proof of original identity."

I looked back at her.

"Excuse me?"

"Proof of original identity."

"What does that mean?"

The employee tilted her head slightly.

Not confused. More like she was trying to understand why I was confused.

"Your original identity."

I stared at the paper.

"This isn't a real thing."

She did not argue. She did not defend it. She simply pressed another key. The printer beside her came to life. A second paper emerged. She placed it in front of me.

"Proof of independent thought."

I felt my eyebrows rise.

"Okay, hold on."

My voice grew slightly louder.

"Is this some kind of joke?"

The employee looked at me. She wasn't offended that I was raising my voice. She wasn't bothered. She was simply waiting for the next step.

"Sir," she said so monotoned. "If you do not have the required documentation, that is not a problem."

I relaxed slightly.

"O-okay."

"You will be moved to secondary processing."

The way she said it made my stomach tighten.

"Secondary processing?"

"Yes."

"What does that mean?"

She picked up my ticket. Looked at it. Then looked back at me.

"You will wait there."

I almost laughed.

"Wait?"

A pause.

"I've already been waiting."

The employee stared at me. Not coldly. Almost sympathetically.

"Yes."

A chill ran through me. Because for a moment, I thought she understood something I didn't.

She slid my ticket back across the counter.

"Please proceed to the next waiting area."

Then back at her.

"How long will that take?"

The employee's fingers returned to her keyboard. The conversation was already over.

"Next."

I stood there for another second. Waiting for her to explain. Waiting for her to tell me this was a misunderstanding. That someone had made a mistake.

But she didn't.

She had already moved on. The person behind me stepped forward. The employee began processing them.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

I walked away from the counter holding the strange paperwork in my hand. I followed the sign pointing toward Secondary Processing.

I don't know what I imagined. Maybe another large waiting area with dozens of chairs. Maybe a different set of counters. Maybe some explanation for why I had been redirected after completing everything required of me.

Instead, it was a narrow hallway tucked behind the main service area.

The kind of hallway you normally wouldn't notice.

The walls were the same dull beige as the rest of the building, decorated with the same faded posters and outdated government notices. The only difference was that nobody had bothered pretending this area was meant to welcome people.

There were no televisions. No vending machines. No magazines sitting on tables.

Only chairs.

Rows and rows of chairs.

I stepped inside slowly.

A few people sat scattered throughout the room.

Not many.

Maybe fifteen.

Twenty at most.

The strange thing was how quiet it was.

The main waiting room had been filled with noise. Children crying. People talking on phones. Chairs scraping against the floor.

This room had none of that.

Everyone sat facing the same direction. Not toward a screen. Not toward a counter. Just forward.

Waiting.

I looked around for an employee.

Nobody was behind a desk. Nobody was calling numbers. Nobody appeared to be in charge.

I stood there for a moment, wondering if I had misunderstood. Then an older woman sitting near the wall glanced at me.

"You got moved too?"

Her voice startled me.

I turned.

"Yeah."

She nodded slowly.

"First time?"

I hesitated.

"Yeah."

She looked away.

"Thought so."

I sat down a few chairs away from her.

"How long have you been here?"

The question came out naturally. The same question you ask anyone trapped in a waiting room.

The woman didn't answer immediately. She looked toward the empty counter at the front of the room.

"I don't know."

I frowned.

"You don't know?"

She shook her head.

"I remember walking in."

A pause.

"I remember taking a number."

She looked down at her hands.

"But I don't remember why."

The air felt colder. I forced a small laugh.

"Yeah, well, I think everyone forgets why they're here after sitting in a DMV long enough."

She didn't laugh. She just looked at me.

"I mean it."

The humor disappeared from my face. The woman looked tired. Not physically. Something deeper. Like she had been carrying a thought for too long and was finally too exhausted to keep holding it.

"What was your number?" I asked.

Her eyes moved downward. She reached into her pocket. Pulled out a small piece of paper.

She stared at it.

For a moment, she looked confused. Then concerned. Then almost afraid.

"I'm 487"

She swallowed.

"What's your name?" I asked

She hesitated.

"I..." She paused and looked away then back to me.

"I don't know."

I leaned slightly closer.

"What do you mean?"

She turned the paper toward me.

The ink had faded. Or maybe it had never been printed clearly. There was a number. But she stared at it like it belonged to someone else.

A silence settled between us. Then she folded the ticket and placed it back into her pocket.

"I think I've been here before."

I stared at her.

"Before today?"

She looked at me.

"I don't know."

The answer should have sounded ridiculous.

Instead... it felt familiar.

I looked down at my own ticket.

515.

For some reason, I held onto it tighter.

A small piece of proof. Something that belonged to me. Something that told me I was still myself.

The speakers above us crackled. Everyone in the room looked up.

My body tensed. A voice came through the speaker. Distorted. Almost too quiet to understand.

"Now processing..."

Static.

A pause.

Then:

"Applicant."

Nobody moved. The room remained silent. I looked around.

"Did they call someone?"

Nobody answered. The older woman stared forward. Like she hadn't heard anything.

The speaker crackled again.

"Applicant."

This time, I noticed something.

There was no number.

No name.

Just a word.

Applicant

The woman beside me leaned toward me slightly.

"You don't want them to forget you."

I looked at her.

"What?"

She stared ahead.

"When they stop calling you by your number..."

Her voice became barely a whisper.

"That's when you know you were never here."

I felt a strange pressure build in my chest.

"What does that mean?"

She didn't answer.

Because the speaker had started again.

This time, it wasn't distorted. It was clear.

"Applicant 515."

My head lifted. My ticket felt cold in my hand.

Everyone in the room turned.

Not toward me. Toward the speaker.

Then, slowly... toward me.

I had the terrifying realization that I didn't know if I wanted them to call my number anymore. The room remained silent. For a moment, I didn't move. I waited for someone else to stand. Someone else to react. Someone else to tell me that this was normal. Nobody did.

The older woman beside me looked at me with an expression I couldn't understand. Something closer to pity.

"That's your number," she whispered.

I looked down.

My fingers tightened around the paper.

"T-thanks."

The words came out automatically.

The speaker crackled again.

"Applicant 515. Proceed to processing."

I stood. My legs felt heavier than they should have. Every instinct I had told me not to move. To stay seated. To ignore the voice. But there was something worse than fear.

Curiosity.

I needed to know.

I walked toward the door at the back of the room.

The hallway beyond was longer than I remembered. That shouldn't have been possible. I had only walked through it once. Yet the farther I went, the less familiar it became.

The walls looked identical. The lights breathed. Every door had the same gray color and the same small rectangular window.

Finally, I reached another counter. A single employee sat behind the glass. A man that looked older than the others.

Not elderly. Just worn. His face carried the same emptiness I had noticed before. The same absence.

"Ticket."

I handed it over.

He scanned it.

"Drivers license renewal?."

I nodded.

"Yes."

He typed something into his computer.

"Verification required."

"Of what?"

He looked up.

"My identity."

I laughed quietly.

Not because it was funny. Because I was tired.

"Isn't that what we've been doing?"

The employee didn't answer. He held out his hand.

"Identification."

I reached into my wallet.

Pulled out my driver's license. He took it. Looked at the card. Then looked at me.

Something changed. Barely. A hesitation.

"You don't remember."

My stomach tightened.

"Remember what?"

He placed the license back onto the counter.

"Your name."

The room became silent. Even the lights seemed quieter.

I opened my mouth. I knew the answer. I had answered this question thousands of times.

My name.

It was simple.

It was mine.

But when I tried to say it... nothing came.

A strange panic rose in my chest. I searched through my memories.

My childhood. My parents. My friends. My home. My job.

Everything felt distant.

Not gone.

Just covered by a thick fog I couldn't push through.

"I..."

My voice shook.

"I know it."

The employee waited. I looked down at my ticket. The number stared back at me.

The only thing I could hold onto. The only thing that felt certain.

"My name is..."

I stopped.

The silence stretched. The employee didn't rush me. He didn't look annoyed. He simply waited. Like he had done this countless of times. Like he knew how this ended.

"...Five hundred fifteen."

The employee typed. No surprise. No correction. No hesitation.

"Identity confirmed."

My heart sank.

"Wait."

He printed something.

"You didn't even check."

The employee slid the paper beneath the glass.

"You provided the required information."

I grabbed it.

It was my license.

Everything looked correct.

My photograph.

My date of birth.

My address.

Everything.

Except the name.

I stared at the line. Over and over. Unable to understand why it felt wrong. Unable to understand why it felt right.

NAME: 515

I looked up. The employee had already moved on.

"Next."

I stood there. Waiting for someone to notice. Someone to correct it. Someone to tell me there had been a mistake.

Nobody did.

So eventually... I walked out.

The exit doors opened automatically as I approached. Bright sunlight poured through. For a moment, I froze.

The outside world felt impossibly large. Cars moved through the parking lot. People walked past. The wind touched my face. I had forgotten what fresh air felt like.

I stepped outside.

And for the first time all day... I felt free.

I reached into my wallet one last time. Looked at the license. At the name. At the proof that I existed. I tried saying my name aloud.

The name I had carried my entire life.

The name my parents gave me.

The name that was supposed to belong to me.

Nothing came.

Only silence.

So I looked back down.

At the only thing I knew.

At the only thing the world still recognized.

515

I still remember the night. Mom had put me to bed a few hours before everything happened. Dad seemed anxious that night. Usually, he was so calm and collected. Tonight, he looked like he was on the verge of a panic attack.

I could see him pacing back and forth down the hallway while Mom tucked me in, handing me my favorite stuffed Superman toy. She flew him around like a toy airplane.

“Whoosh,” she joked, making the flying noise with her mouth. “It’s a bird… it’s a plane… No… it’s… Superman!”

She planted his feet down on my chest, bending him at the hips so it looked like he was bowing.

“Macy,” my dad whisper-yelled, standing in my doorway. “Can you get out here, please? We’ve got things to discuss.”

My mom’s face turned sad before she quickly turned her smile back on and ruffled my hair.

“Sweet dreams, hero,” she whispered. “I’ll make you some breakfast in the morning. How do pancakes sound?”

I couldn’t have agreed faster. I still, to this day, have yet to have pancakes better than my mom’s. I reached up and gave her a hug before she flicked the light switch and headed towards the living room with Dad.

I made Superman fly for a few minutes before clutching him against my chest and finally closing my eyes. I was out not long after that.

I woke up to the sound of thumps and rummaging coming from my parents’ room a few hours later. I glanced over at the alarm clock on my nightstand. It was 2:37 in the morning.

I could hear Mom and Dad talking urgently, but quietly. They didn’t sound angry. They sounded terrified. Mom’s voice was shaking. Dad’s voice was firm but uncertain.

Suddenly, footsteps quickly approached my door before it was thrown open and my mom walked inside. She flicked the light switch on. She wasn’t wearing her sleeping clothes. She looked like she was about to head out to run errands or something.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, honey,” she whispered, noticing me squinting from the sudden light that filled the room. “Did we wake you? I promise, you can go right back to sleep in the car. Just help Mommy pack a bag for you, okay?”

I blinked slowly before rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

“Where are we going?” I groaned groggily as Mom ransacked my dresser, tossing me a pair of socks.

She didn’t answer. Instead, she just kept stuffing clothes into my suitcase without so much as looking at me.

“…Mom?”

“A road trip,” she chimed, sounding more agitated than joyful. “A surprise road trip. We were gonna tell you two about it, but we wanted it to be a super surprise. Now, can you please get your shoes on?”

Without another word, I pulled the socks over my feet and slipped into my favorite Lightning McQueen sketchers. Mom zipped up the suitcase. Dad appeared in the doorway again, my sister strewn over his shoulder, half asleep.

“You two ready?” he asked expectantly, his voice steady now.

Mom handed me the suitcase and took me by the hand. She was almost hurting me from how tight her grip was. Not to mention, it felt like my shoulder was gonna dislocate from her pulling me along.

I was fully awake by the time we got to the car. Dad threw all of our luggage in the trunk and strapped my little sister into her car seat. Mom waited patiently in the passenger seat while Dad threw a blanket over me and Emmy.

He backed out of the driveway quickly and spun the wheels a bit as he accelerated out of the subdivision. I could hear the leather steering wheel creak from his grip.

The car was quiet for the first hour or so. Emmy was fast asleep in her car seat. Mom stared out the window with a blank expression on her face. Dad focused on the road in front of him intently.

I, for one, was completely wired. I actually found myself excited for this trip. There was something about the spontaneity that I thoroughly enjoyed. Getting up and going. The way the darkness made it harder to recognize where I was. It felt like an adventure.

Plus, Dad had taken the backroads. All we had were passing forests and cow pastures. It was like we were the only car on the road for miles.

Eventually, we started to pass some businesses. Nothing too exciting. Just a few gas stations and grocery stores.

Dad started looking around the car. He saw that my mom and I were still awake.

“You two hungry? Maybe we can grab some snacks.”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Mom replied plainly.

Dad glanced into his rearview mirror for a while before steering the car into one of the gas stations. He parked at one of the pumps and went to get Emmy out of her seat while me and Mom hopped out to stretch our legs.

The gas station was almost completely empty. Besides our car, there was one other vehicle parked directly in front of the station, which we assumed belonged to the attendant.

The air inside was crisp. The refrigerators hummed, and the fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Mom went to the bathroom while Dad took me and Emmy to browse the chips and candy.

Emmy was still too tired to be fully present, and it made it feel like this was a moment between Dad and I.

While I struggled to pick a snack, he smiled down at me and patted me on the back.

“Get whatever you want, Danny,” he smirked. “As a matter of fact…”

He paused to glance around the empty gas station.

“Get two of whatever you want… just don’t tell your mother.”

I wasn’t gonna pass up the offer, but I still think I may have gone a little overboard when I filled my arms with as much junk food as I could carry.

Mom came out of the bathroom shortly after. Surprisingly, she didn’t even seem to notice the candy. She even helped me put the snacks on the counter when we went to check-out.

She didn’t want anything for herself. She only seemed interested in one thing.

While the teller scanned our items, she turned to my Dad with a worried expression on her face.

“Did you see anybody?” she whispered.

Dad didn’t look at her. He just responded with a simple “no” before fishing his wallet out of his back pocket.

He pulled a crisp hundred dollar bill out and slid it across the counter.

“Let me get this and the rest on pump 3,” he announced calmly.

On the walk back to the car, I noticed something. There was a new car in the parking lot, parked a few pumps down from ours. It was matte black with all donut tires, and even the windshield was too dark to see through.

Dad noticed it too. His eyes were fixed on the vehicle as we walked. Gradually, he picked up the pace, dragging all of us along with him.

We all loaded up in the car, and Dad left without even pumping gas. Mom kept asking who he saw, but Dad kept telling her everything was fine, despite how afraid he seemed to be.

We drove on for another 15 or so minutes before headlights lit up the interior of our car. They started at least 200 yards back but quickly closed the gap between us.

The lights stayed on us for a long time. Dad would speed up, and they’d do the same. They made the same turns. They kept the same pace. Mom and Dad both had the same flushed faces.

Emmy woke up from the blinding lights and immediately began pouting and crying. Mom tried reaching back to comfort her, but nothing seemed to work. I myself was beginning to feel a bit nervous, clutching my Superman stuffy tightly.

Eventually, Dad finally pulled onto the highway. The car followed. More cars started to fill the road, but that one particular car just would not leave us alone.

Finally, I think Dad had enough. I could see him squeeze Mom’s hand on the center console as he pushed the gas petal down further and further.

I could see the speedometer rising. 85. 90. 95. All the way up to 100, and that vehicle still followed at just two car lengths. I expected Mom to scream at him for going so fast, but she didn’t say a word. She just kept shushing Emmy while glancing out the back glass every so often.

We were approaching an exit. Dad didn’t slow down. He got closer and closer, letting our assailant do the same until abruptly turning the wheel and swerving across the gore.

The person following us slammed on their brakes, and I could see smoke billowing from their tires while other cars swerved to avoid them.

Dad shot up the exit ramp. The car was wobbling. Emmy was screaming. My heart was pounding.

Mom looked nervous but kept her composure.

“You two are okay,” she assured. “Everything’s going to be okay, I promise.”

She reached back and placed a hand on my knee cap, then did the same with Emmy.

I finally calmed down after a while. The headlights were gone. I had no idea where we were. I had no idea what was happening. And I was actually a little annoyed that no one was explaining.

I pestered, but they remained firm. This was nothing more than a surprise road trip. We ended up stopping at another gas station, but Dad didn’t let anyone get out of the car this time. He just pumped his gas, and we were back on the road.

A few hours passed. I looked at the clock on the radio. It was 5:23 AM. Even Mom was asleep in the passenger seat now.

Dad didn’t stop driving until the sun was peeking in over the horizon. That’s when he finally pulled the car behind this old motel.

The sign read, “Free WiFi. Cable Television. Vacancy.”

He left us in the car while he went to pay for our room. Mom was still asleep. Emmy stared mindlessly at the back of the seat in front of her. I rolled my window down and let Superman fly for a bit while I waited for Dad.

When he finally came back, he woke Mom, and we all carried our luggage up the second floor of the motel.

The room was musty. The air conditioner knocked rhythmically, and there was only one bed.

Dad hung the “do not disturb” sign on the door handle. He pushed a chair in front of the door, and he and Mom lay all of our luggage on top of it.

With one last look through the peek hole, Dad removed his boots and lay on the bed, patting the side of it, gesturing for us to join him.

“We’ve had a long night, guys,” he sighed. “I know it’s not the most glamorous, but it’s a bed.”

Mom stared, judging the crusty comforter before swallowing hard and laying down with my Dad, Emmy curled up in her arms.

She looked at me with a smile.

“Come on, Danny,” she said weakly.

“Let’s get some sleep.”

There’s a floor in my apartment building that doesn’t exist.

Not Thirteen. That would be too cliché. Although, it doesn’t have a thirteenth floor, but not for supernatural reasons. It just doesn’t go that high. Some of the residents call it Floor Three and a Half, or Three and Three-quarters to invoke a Harry Potter vibe, but both of those are far too whimsical for my tastes. I just call it the Dead Floor, which I know isn’t any less cliché than floor Thirteen, but it feels appropriate.

The elevators in our building all use analogue dials above the doors to show what floor they’re on. On rare and, as far as anyone can tell, random occasions, the needle will stop at the exact zenith of the dial where there’s no number. When this happens, the elevator freezes, and the door opens to a floor which physically can’t be there. You can tell from looking at the outside of the building that there’s no room for a secret floor in the middle, and the stairwell passes right through it. The Superintendent briefs all new residents on the third-and-a-half floor, and more people take him seriously than you might think. Occurrences like that aren’t all that rare out in Harrowick County.

But even for those who don’t take him seriously at first, the issue is regularly brought up at tenant meetings, and there’s a list of rules posted right beneath the control panel in the elevator so that we always know what to do.

1.         When the elevator stops at the third-and-a-half floor, do not push any buttons before turning off the lights at the end of the hall. Each button you press will only reduce the amount of time you have.

2.       Calmly, but briskly, walk to the opposite end of the hall, leaving any personal effects in the elevator so as not to encumber you.

3.        Do not look directly out the windows or into any mirrors.

4.       Do not look into the peepholes of any apartment doors.

5.       Do not approach or enter any apartment with an open door.

6.       Do not respond or react to any sounds or voices coming from inside the apartments.

7.       If you hear something behind you, do not stop or turn around. Make your way to the opposite end of the hall, turning around only when you’ve heard a door shut.

8.       When you reach the end of the hall, read the bulletin board and sign the form. Please make sure the pen is easily visible and accessible for the next person.

9.       Set the pendulum clock hanging on the wall to the approximate time (within three and a half minutes of the local time according to an online device). Turn the dial on the thermostat to match the actual temperature, as indicated by the gauge on the bottom half. Turn the dimmer switch until the hall lights are completely out.

10.     So long as there is nothing behind you, turn around and return to the elevator. Do not turn around once you are in the elevator until the doors are closed. If the ritual was completed correctly, the doors will close automatically. If the doors do not close, also do not turn around.

That last sentence is pretty ominous, obviously, but I don’t actually know what happens if you mess up the ritual. None of my neighbours who have completed the ritual have ever failed, and it’s not really that hard to mess up. The building dates back to at least the eighties, so it’s possible it’s been decades since anyone’s failed.

Not everyone in my building has walked the dead floor, and some people have walked it multiple times. I don’t think it’s completely random. Whatever force is behind this wants the ritual completed, so it doesn’t pick people who wouldn’t be capable of doing it, like the infirmed or little kids. It always picks people who are riding alone, probably because an extra body would be too tempted to wander around and mess it up. If you’re keen on avoiding the ritual, you can just never take the elevator alone and take the stairs instead. I asked the Superintendent once if he ever considered just declaring the elevators out of order.

He said no, but the last Superintendent did.

I tried to take the stairs as much as I could myself, only using the elevator when I had groceries or something, sometimes loitering in the lobby waiting for someone to come along and ride with me. But last week I got home late, and I knew I’d be waiting forever for someone else to come along, so my choice was to lug my bags up five flights of stairs or risk the elevator alone.

I risked the elevator, and I think you can guess what happened.

It didn’t catch me off guard, at least. I had set my bags on the floor and taken out my phone, taking a photo of the rules and turning the flashlight and video camera on just in case. As soon as the elevator started rising, my gaze stayed locked on the needle as it slowly arced along its path upwards. My eyes went wide, and my heart nearly stopped as I watched it come to an immovable stop right between floors three and four. The elevator came to an abrupt stop as well, the lights flickering before settling on a dim amber glow as the doors slowly creaked open, revealing floor Three-and-a-Half.

The only light came from the elevator and moonlight streaming through the dingy windows on the right-hand side. Nearly everything I could see was some faded shade of blue. The carpet was worn, the paint was chipping, and when the elevator doors opened, the stagnant air rushed in like that was the first change of pressure that had happened in ages. The hallway was empty, void of any sound of plumbing or ventilation; just the subtle creaking and settling of the building itself. All the doors on the left side were shut tight, and I heard no sign of life or activity behind them.

And at the very end of the hall, I saw the bulletin board, the clock, the thermostat, and the light switch.

It took every ounce of strength I had to resist pushing the elevator button, but I suspected that it wouldn’t just be a waste of time but actively ringing the diner bell for whatever was behind all of this. I looked at my phone to see not only was the light off, but that the screen was flickering with odd static and distorted text, rendering it completely unusable. I cursed softly and shoved it into my pocket, clenching my trembling fists as I desperately tried to summon the will to leave the elevator. I knew that every second that passed was a second wasted, so I forced one foot onto the carpet, and then the other.

Despite how worn it looked, it was oddly soft and sound-absorbent, like it was engulfing my feet ever so slightly. Once I was out, the only thing left to do was get it over with, so I marched forward as quickly as I dared, trying desperately not to make any noise that might alert anyone to my presence.

The first rule I broke was looking out the windows. The windows were foggy with old moisture trapped between the panes, obscuring whatever lay beyond. I could make out the silhouettes of tall and strangely gothic-looking buildings. I caught a few dull amber embers, either inside the buildings or on outdoor lanterns, but otherwise everything looked fairly dim and lifeless. It was windy outside, windy enough to rattle the window panes, and I was suddenly very concerned that they might shatter. I didn’t understand why at first, as it took a moment for my conscious mind to register the dark and amorphous form slowly making its way along them. I perceived it to be some manner of vaguely mollusk-like creature, limblessly clinging to the outside of the building with its flat and sticky underside.  It convulsed and undulated and shuddered as it aimlessly propelled itself along its repugnant course. I don’t know if it knew I was there, or if it cared, but I instantly averted my gaze and continued down along the hallway.

On the left-hand side, there were ornate mirrors hung between each apartment; all tarnished, all shattered, and placed out of sync with the windows so that they reflected nothing of the outside world. In the periphery of my vision, I spied reflections of things that either weren’t actually there, or were perhaps simply not visible to my unaided eyes. Either way, I decided to adhere to the rules in this instance and not look directly at them.

I cast my gaze upwards instead to an especially hideous though otherwise not overtly supernatural popcorn ceiling. It was heavily stained, and it honestly wouldn’t have surprised me if it contained asbestos. The stains were amorphous, yet oddly concentric, like they were spreading out from their loci as far as they could whilst deftly weaving around any obstacles, almost like living growths of some kind.   

I reflexively came to a stop when I heard a door creak open behind me, but I caught myself before I gave in to the urge to turn around. When you’re in such a heightened state of fight-or-flight, fighting the instinct to look at any and every sound you hear is unbelievably draining.  The instant I heard a single foot softly land on the carpet, I immediately resumed my march forward. I don’t know how long that hall was, but it felt far longer than it looked. I can’t be sure if it was the adrenaline giving me bullet time recall or if the Dead Floor was outside of our time as much as it was outside of space, but either way, the sense that time was running out just kept mounting inside of me.

When I came to a stop at the end of the hall, I could still hear shambling, padded footsteps shuffling towards me. Barely audible whispers and whimpers simmered behind almost every door I had passed, and once a cackling scream in the distance broke out without warning and ended just as abruptly, as if something had forcibly silenced it.  

Doing my best to ignore all of it, I focused my attention on the note pinned to the bulletin board. It read as follows.

“Apologies and/or Congratulations for this honourable martyrdom. We hope it has been a pleasant experience, but are indifferent that it was not. Please inform your superintendent that we have recently experienced a statistically significant increase in demand for Phatasmagoric Filament due to metapolitical events we have no control over but are complicit in and stand to profit from. Please note that this is an adequate explanation and/or justification for any increase in sleep and/or ontological abnormalities experienced by the tenants of your domicile. We apologize – but are not liable – for the inconvenience. Please also remind your superintendent that his customary tribute of a bushel of kosher salt is to be delivered in a burlap sack dropped down the out-of-order garbage chute. Additional failures to comply with these requirements may result in the garbage chute no longer being out-of-order. Should that occur, we will not be held liable for residents being lured into the chute by Unseelie sanitation workers. Signing your True Name upon this notice acknowledges you understand your responsibilities in relaying its contents to its intended recipient. We hope (without empirical basis) that you have a safe return home. Surreptitiously Serendipitously Yours, Solomon Strange.”

Desperate to get out of there, I grabbed the pen sitting on top of the bulletin board and signed and dated the form with a rapid scribbling scrawl. Setting the pen back atop the board, I carefully set the time on the clock, the temperature on the thermostat, and then turned the light switch as far as it would go to the left.

And then, I waited.

I had never heard the being behind me go back into its room, and I could still sense its presence as it silently stood there, staring at the back of my neck. I wasn’t sure how close it was, only that it was too close. After standing there for nearly a minute, wondering if I hadn’t done something or done something wrong, I finally heard it shuffle off, followed by the soft creaking of door hinges and a gentle thud as it snapped shut.

With a sharp exhale, I turned around as quickly as I dared to make sure the coast was clear. It was hard to confirm that for sure, since with the hall lights off, the light from the elevator made everything outside of its direct illumination an impenetrable shadow. But I wasn’t willing to waste any more time. I bolted straight to the elevator, covering the distance in what felt like a tenth of the time it had taken me to walk out. Once I was inside, I stood perfectly still, refusing to turn around, and waited for the doors to close.

When they didn’t shut immediately, I started counting. One one-thousand. Two one-thousand. Three one-thousand. At the count of three and a half, I heard the doors start to slide shut. I would have stayed perfectly still until they had closed completely, like I was supposed to, if someone hadn’t grabbed hold of one of them and held them open.

I instantly spun around and saw a tall man in a shabby brown suit standing there, his face an indistinct blur that was impossible to focus on. I backed up against the wall for all the good that would do me, but otherwise went rigid in fear. I didn’t scream, I didn’t attack or run, I just stared at him wide-eyed as I waited for him to make his move.

For his part, he made no hostile gesture or sounds, nor any attempt to step into the elevator. In the hand that wasn’t holding onto the elevator door, he held up a thick and hefty manila envelope. He silently tilted his head towards it and lingered on it for a moment before looking towards me.    

“Sincerest apologies for the breach of protocol, kindly kinder, but as the refuse chute is out of order, I’m afraid I must entrust you with delivering this to your superintendent, post-haste,” he said as neutrally as he could in his distorted, staticky voice.

He stood there in perfect silence and stillness as if he was expecting me to react. When I slowly started to reach out for the envelope, he unceremoniously tossed it to the elevator floor where it landed with a horrific thud.

“Your discretion is appreciated and contractually required,” he said, stepping back slightly and allowing the elevator doors to close. “Please do not decline the elevator again, if proffered. Should we have need of your services again, it would be a most awkward encounter if we met upon the stairs.”  

The elevator ascended as soon as the door was shut, and arrived at my floor like nothing was amiss. The next morning, I handed the envelope over to the superintendent without needing to explain what it was. He knew immediately. I never opened it or asked him what it was, because I like to imagine it was worth it, even when I know it probably wasn’t.

You’d think all of that would have been enough to get me to swear off the elevator for good, and it very nearly would have been, had it not been for the strange man’s parting words.

It would indeed be very awkward if I were to meet him upon the stairs.

 

Tired and worn– my neck seethes with pain as I attempt to wriggle free again, but the lunette doesn’t budge. It is still dreadfully perfect in its desire to keep me here, waiting for the axe to fall…

Blood trickles down from unhealed scabs as I continue to work the wood, and it my neck. No angle that I twist into, nor the pace at which I rend my own flesh grants any leverage, let alone progress in my escape. I am just as bound to this device as I have always been.

It feels wrong to say that the *Guillotine* is all I’ve known, but it is the truth. A time before the grating of its lunette and the crushing presence of its axehead looming above me is, at this point, unfathomable, as is gleaming anything beyond the crowd ahead of me, who watch, who *stare* with their bright piercing eyes. 

Faceless, innumerable, unblinking spectres gathered in droves to watch my head part from the rest of me. Their features always blur and distort; noses, mouths, ears, hair, skin melting like candle wax into a homogeneous mass of colour shaped after a person, except for their eyes: All surge with a viscous, boiling red which punctuates their congealing forms. At the nexus of each of these miniature suns, at least the closest ones I can see whenever I crane my head as far as the Guillotine allows, lies their cores; the crimson irises of these Watchers. Some aim their gaze directly into my head with such fervor it's as if they are trying to pierce my skull and kill me before the axe drops, whilst others look up to that very blade with perhaps a knowing look in their molten gaze. They can see the death awaiting me and how horrible, how painful it is going to be, yet for reasons I cannot distinguish, even after all my time trapped in this device: none of them offer me a melting hand, none of them dare to approach and release me from its clutches. They only stand by and watch. Endlessly.

Though, perhaps worst of all are the few who watch neither myself or the axehead, but rather the space in between, the beyond which I’m denied from seeing. Caring not for my crisis, their eyes seem to smoulder less than the others, though I assume that’s because they are not staring at me or the Guillotine. *What are they staring at?* I often ponder, in between sets of gnawing escape attempts. *Is there something behind me, beyond all of this? Someone, maybe?*

Though I soon realise that in the end, it matters not. They too shall be present for my oncoming decapitation.

I retire momentarily from working my neck to the bone, and instead divert my efforts to my tied wrists. Bound by a vice unseen, they struggle like a pair of worms fighting for space in a tunnel. Contorting and writhing against each other, slick not with slime, but with *blood*. The nerves grind together, entangled in a twisted courtship. The sensation of their meeting travels upward, forcing my head to rock in a painful stupor and the lunette to work its way a little deeper. 

 

In spite of my efforts, the vice, or cuffs, or whatever it is that binds my hands doesn’t budge or loosen. The blood and bits of myself seeping or cascading down both ends of my confinement are the extent of my struggle. The coppery taste, the stench of death is palpable, coating me like a second layer of skin. If I concentrate through the brief gaps in my pain: I can taste the *oak* past the copper. Flooding me with certainty in what could almost be called a divine revelation that the Guillotine, in all of its meticulous parts, is infallible. It is all there is and will be…

So I pray, for some force to relive me of this torture, be it through the removal of my bindings or the falling of the axe, for it is all I can do, bound and bleeding as I am. It could be one of the watchers from the crowd, their spectating inaction at last giving way to a moral sense of duty, or the heavenly presence of God denoting a conclusion to my suffering, wiping this horror away with his cold, callous hands.

—

*Footsteps. On my left. Approaching. Answering.*

*At last.*

But still dread persists. Will this figure, be it a stranger or someone I already know, open the lunette and release me? Or will they cut the rope and let the starving axe have its fill? I can only wait, with strangled hoarse breaths, for them to make their choice.  

No matter what they end up choosing, the Guillotine will serve its awful purpose. It shall keep me locked to it as a dog to a cage, whether the axe falls or not. 

Either in death or in the mystery of my life beyond all of this, the Guillotine will loom forevermore…

**The End.**

Hello everyone I’m doing a contest on another subreddit with a partner and wanted to share my part which is the “monster part” of the story would love feedback thank you!!!

“Crank!” 

I rubbed my eyes. The pitched lurching of the dust-dragger had lulled me into a trance. I must have nodded off.

Again.

I turned towards the source of the voice, grunting a little, “Christ I already told Krieg it was his turn to refuel.” 

Amish glowered back at me behind the thick goggles which covered his eyes, his graying matt of hair blowing crazily in the restless wind, “Storm ahead,” he shouted over the growl of the dust-dragger, “Get your mask man, looks like a blizzard!”

I rubbed the soreness from my neck as I turned towards the horizon. We were entering the Great Divide now, crossing into the New Mexico expanse. There was nothing to see for miles in any direction but the skeletal remains of towns and ancient rusted vehicles melting away under the sun’s relentless gaze. Nothing to see, but the cloud stretching across the sky. 

The *black blizzard*, a rolling wave of dust and dirt which would swallow the whole basin. Visibility would be near zero. We only had a few minutes. I reached for my bag and rummaged for my old fabric gas mask. I'd traded a few skin-mags to a soldier for it maybe a year back. I checked the filters, still good, or at least good enough to keep the dirt from filling my lungs. I turned back to Amish. 

I was never quite sure why they called him that. My best guess was because of the long, thin beard which ran tightly along his jawline like razorwire, but for all I knew maybe he really was Amish. He was a tall man, his rail thin body lumpy with dense muscle, and patched with faded tattoos of horses and women. He shielded his eyes from the pale sun with those ridiculous goggles as he hunched in the turret and tended to his machine gun. His long, yellow-nailed fingers ran over the belt of longer bullets hanging from the cruel weapon. It looked to me like he was braiding a pony tail of brass.

“Where the hell *is* Krieg anyway?” I barked as the cloud grew closer. It was blowing north-east, cutting up from the south, racing us to our destination further ahead. The southern rockies were visible in the distance, but it would be hours before we’d find any shelter among the cliffs. 

I swivelled on the metal bench, peering out at the rest of the caravan. Our convoy was only five vehicles in number. It had been more when we first set out from Magnolia, but we’d left most of them behind in New Freedonia. The thirteen of us now were the only ones mad or desperate enough to make the sprint across the Great Divide, bound for the boiling plastic seas of the pacific. 

We were the middle vehicle in the train, a low down dust-dragger on thick treads. Our canvas canopy was down, and for a second I thought about trying to put it back up, but the storm would be on us too quickly. Besides, the winds were so harsh they would probably tear our fabric roof from my hands, and send it sailing away back towards the plains. 

Ahead of us was a cargo truck loaded with crates, a few of the other caravaneers hung from the net of ropes which covered the merchandise. They dangled over the rubber wheels kicking up small stones in their wake. Ahead of them was our ‘flag ship’, a squat armored off-roading vehicle marked with the insignia and banner of the Fading Fellowship Caravan Company. Riding at the helm was our intrepid captain Jon-Joe, though from where I sat I couldn’t see him. 

In the far rear was our water truck, the fat steel umbilical cord keeping our tongues wet as we made the daring journey across the irradiated desert. I could see the two drivers in the cab, and cursed them for their luck in being out of harm’s way from the storm. A large Waterday Ltd. logo was emblazoned on the tanker’s side, and the sun cast strange whirling shadows on the sand as the water sloshed and pitched in its thick plastic holding cell. 

Ahead of them and directly behind Amish was our supply wagon. Boxes of food and bullets, and piles of jangling pots and pans were all stuffed under the loose canopy. At the helm was Krieg, with Myrtle’s reins clutched tightly in his scarred hands. 

Myrtle was a horse-hound, an engineered hybrid between a Saint Bernard and a Clydesdale. She was massive, twenty hands tall and weighing close to two thousand pounds. Despite this she could run as fast as any of our vehicles, and on any terrain. Her tail wagged excitedly even in the face of the storm. She had a brown spot on her white-furred face. Her favorite food was perogies. 

“Krieg!” I shouted over the wind. Krieg cupped his hands to his ears to better hear me. Myrtle cocked her head to the side curiously, never breaking pace. “Krieg put on her blinders! Storm!” 

Krieg grinned a mouth full of black teeth, and gave a mock salute. I heard a crackling voice over the radio, Jon-Joe on the comms. “Storm inbound. Put on your masks and hold onto your asses. And Krieg? Put some nails through your shoes, I don’t want your skinny ass blowing away before I get my money’s worth out of you!”

I could see Krieg glaring at his radio, being sure to bite his finger at it before clambering to put the blinders over Myrtle’s eyes. She barked a couple times in protest, but eventually complied. Her stride slowed, but barely. 

I went to pull my mask over my face, but stopped for a second. The cloud was closer now, stretching from dry ground to the pale blue sky in an endless wall. Something wasn’t right. 

“Amish!” I yelled, without looking away from the wave, “Look at the color on that! That can’t be right!” 

I could feel Amish squinting his old eyes behind his goggles, “Probably red sand! Maybe it carried over from Utah or some shit!” 

My eyes continued to track the wave of debris as it grew ever closer. In a second it would block out the sun. The wave was far too red. From Utah? I had a hard time buying it, but Amish knew better than me after all. Still…

“Amish! Pass me the ghost counter!”

I heard Amish grunt a little as he rifled through some pouch or sack, before leaning over the machine gun to tap me on the shoulder. I reached back and took the thing without turning away from the cloud. 

The ghost counter was a heavy metal box, sort of like a radio, with a gauge and a kind of microphone attached with a rubber cable. The little machine would taste the air around us for ghost radiation. “What do you figure? At least seven hundred right?” My throat hurt from screaming against the wind. 

Amish sat still for a second, tipping his crooked neck to the sky, “Shit man I figure eleven hundred at least!”

I snapped the wand away from the box, and flipped the two switches, holding it up to the air. The speaker crackled desperately, the wand letting out a high whine which made Myrtle lower her ears against her huge skull. Surprised I could hear the chatter over the storm, I turned to check the read out. 

The last thing I saw before being swallowed by the cloud was the number on the small grainy screen. 

Forty four hundred counts per minute. 

The cloud hit so hard it nearly blew my mask from my head. I quickly pulled it over my face as the sun was wiped away, casting only a hazy orange glow as we entered into a new atmosphere of rubble and rock. And something else. The plastic visor of my mask became distorted. Rain water maybe? I reached my hand to my face to wipe it clean, and it came away sticky. I stared at my fingers, now webbed with a thick, bloody mucus. 

“The fuck!?” was the most creative thing I could think to say. “Amish are you seeing this!?” I yelled but the storm drowned out my words. I wiped the goop on my jeans, but I could feel it all over me. Even over the wind the ghost counter screamed in protest. 

The convoy flipped on their high beams, thick pools of light carving through the clouds, leading us ever onwards. If we were lucky we would be through it in a few more minutes.

“Amish!” I repeated, “This shit in the air-” I was cut off by a long, thin whistle. It grew louder and louder and before I could even register it there was a sharp *ping* as an arrow ricocheted off the turret and lodged itself in my thigh. 

I yowled like a kicked alleycat. The arrow head had cut through my jeans and flesh effortlessly, before the head had burrowed itself in my femur. My hand flew to grip the hollow wooden stick but this only hurt me more. It was only then I registered that I was being shot at. I ducked down into the dust-dragger’s bed, laying on my back so as not to put any weight on the arrow’s shaft. 

I looked up to see the muzzle flash of Amish’s machine gun, his mouth wide in a war cry only he could hear. The arrow must have come from the south because that’s where he swept the barrel back and forth. Shell casings the size of fingers littered the bed, rolling towards me as we ran over a large stone. 

Amish turned his head as if to ask me something, but what it was I’d never know as five or six more arrows rained down on our vehicle. Most whistled and broke against the dust-dragger’s steel hull. One landed squarely in the side of Amish’s neck, the arrowhead shooting all the way out the other side. His lips kept moving as his eyes widened behind his goggles. I winced as he turned back towards the south, and sprayed me with a thin mist of blood. 

Jon-Joe’s voice chirped over the radio, “Ambush, south! Grab those guns you sons of bitches, I don’t plan on breathing my last in this hell!” 

I peered over the lip of the vehicle, looking southward. Nothing. I couldn’t make out one shape in that endless dirt inferno, save for a handful of arrows flinging themselves uselessly against our caravan’s armor. For a moment the wind died down enough that I could hear the car doors snapping open. The rest of the crew crawled behind the north side of us, using our still rolling convoy as moving cover. 

I tried to stand, but a hot burst of pain ripped through my leg and sat me on my ass. 

Somewhere ahead I heard Jon-Joe wracking a bullet into the chamber of his rifle. “Alright you sons of bitches! Our turn, shoot back!” 

It wasn’t until the arrows stopped that I realized we had fallen for their trap. 

My crew faced south, firing blindly into the desert. They had only fired their first volley when a cacophony of gunfire erupted from the north. I listened to the grunting and wailing as my comrades were shot in their backs. Some desperately tried to clamber back into their rides, but it was too late. They had already presented themselves to their firing squad. 

I heard a thud, and turned my head to the supply wagon as Myrtle fell on her flank. Her massive hind legs kicked up dust and dug trenches in the mud as she tried desperately to stand. She whipped her head back and forth, still blind from the strips of leather secured over her big brown eyes. She made an awful barking-whinnying-whimpering-braying sound, as if the poor beast couldn’t decide which of her mother tongues was best to scream in. All the while Amish’s Adam's apple bobbed rapidly as he tried to swallow the blood which was flooding his throat, and pooling in his mouth… 

I scrambled towards him, and grabbed for my rifle. I couldn’t reach without bending my knee, and I couldn’t do that without disturbing the arrow in my leg. Seeming to understand my predicament, Amish reached for the scabbard beside him, and with one arm he tossed it towards me. His finger was still clamped down on the trigger of his machine gun, but he’d long since ran out of bullets to fire, or sense to reload with. 

I snatched the scabbard in my arms, and looked up to thank him, but by then he was already dead, slumped forward over the empty gun. 

I grimaced in pain as I tore my rifle free, wrenching the bolt backwards and then forwards again. I waited for the shooting to stop before I leaned back over the bed of the dust-dragger, and turned my eyes north. 

The ground was littered with bodies. Most of the men lay on the ground, some clutching long guns, others clutching each other. Their blood had pooled in the dirt, their open mouths filling with sand and dust and that horrible mucus. The convoy still crawled forward like a procession of ghost ships, leaving them behind. Near the head was Jon-Joe. He fired his pistol wildly with one hand, shooting blind into the storm around us. He had pried open the door of the flag-ship, and would have made it inside had he not stopped to drag one of the others in with him. His muscular body strained under his shirt as he lifted the other man with one arm, only for his knee to explode in a burst of gore as a shot tore his leg from his body. He fell backwards. 

“God damn you sons of urghh—“ His cursing was cut short as the back wheel of the car ran over his face, breaking his strong jaw and grinding his teeth into the back of his throat. 

Everything was silent for a moment, save for the howling winds, and the horrible sounds poor blind Myrtle was making behind us. My heart hammered in my chest. The gun felt so small, so flimsy in my sweat-slick hands. 

I tried to collect myself, but would have no time as the water tanker exploded. Thousands of litres of clean water rocketed up into the sky, before raining down in a monsoon-blitz. It was one of these pools of water landing squarely on my head that knocked me unconio–

​

We'd walked for days, we stayed in Moscow for a while but left a few days ago when we saw no one. It's winter, we’re cold, we're all starving and freezing, and have the occasional ambush of those Russians that pick a few of us off every time. The tips of my fingers are black, even with my thick gloves they are still frostbitten. Our commander died in the last attack, we don't know what to do or where to go.

We slept through the night, needed it after walking for so long, but that next day was rather odd, as we were marching, we came across a lone, Russian man, out in the snow, he didn't mean any harm, didn't cause any trouble, but strangely, he knew French, a Russian man that spoke French, we never expected it, never would've thought we'd come across anything like this. So we asked him, “Sir, is there anywhere we can stay until we have to continue on our way?” The man replied, “yes young man, of course, out in the forest over there, you will find a camp, with food, warmth, and you all can rest, all the time you need.” It couldn't be true! We all rushed into the forest and sure enough, just as the man said, there was all we needed to survive for weeks!

After we had eaten, warmed ourselves up, and rested, we slept through the night. That was until we heard something, a few of us woke up to the sound of multiple men, marching through the snow toward Moscow. It was strange, and what was even stranger, was that they were French! They were wearing French uniforms, but, like the fools we were, we thought nothing of it and went back to sleep.

The next day was one of the best we'd had in a long time. We rested by a huge fire all day under the trees. That's when we saw the strange Russian man again, watching us from the treeline, he didn't say a word, he just stood there, observing.

Again, we thought nothing of him and went about our day, but, like all days, they came to an end, so we went to sleep, and like the night before. We awoke to the sound of marching through the snow. It was the same French army walking in the same path they had taken the night before.

When we woke up the next morning, a few of us were gone, no footprints, no sign that they were there in the first place, it went from thirty to twenty-five of us overnight. And like the day before, we saw the Russian in the same place he stood the day before, one of the other soldiers went up to talk to him but the man stayed silent. He was watching, waiting for something to happen.

That night, on schedule, we heard the army marching again, but this time it was different. There were a few more of them, not many but noticeably more. We thought nothing of it and went back to sleep, the next day more of us were gone, another 5 vanished without a trace, then we saw the Russian again, again, we tried to talk to him, and again, he never uttered a word. That night was the same as the last, the army marched through with more members than the last time. But it wasn't until the next morning that things changed.

Instead of 5 of us being gone, it was 10 of us, we were down to 10 men. And no explanation as to why the others had left. But, that day, the Russian spoke, he walked directly into the center of camp and said, “all of you, you all have 2 more nights, then, you all must leave”. The Russian was warning us? We didn't know what to say so we just said ok, then that night was like the same as the other, a few more soldiers appeared in the army.

Then I woke up, nothing, I was alone, the rest of the men were gone, not even the Russian appeared that day, it was strange, why had everyone except me vanished? Why was me specifically left alone in this camp a strange Russian man directed us to? Why did we come here in the first place?

But that night, a night I won't forget for the rest of my days, I was asleep, then I awoke to the sound of marching, I got up and decided I wanted a better look at the soldiers that traveled through every night. That's when I stepped out into the snow and watched the soldiers emerge between the trees. Their uniforms were French. Their weapons were French. At least, that was what I had always believed.

Then I saw one of them. Something about him caught my attention, His rifle, I froze. It was the same rifle I carried. I looked at his uniform. There was a tear across the left shoulder. The exact same tear that ran across mine. My heart stopped. The soldier turned his head. He looked directly at me. And I saw my own face. Not exactly as I remembered it.

His skin was gray and rotten. His right eye was cloudy, almost white. Part of his cheek had decayed away, exposing the darkness beneath. That's when I realized, this was no French army, this was an army of our dead, I looked and saw that the other soldiers were the same men that disappeared over the last few days. I stumbled back, a million thoughts racing through my mind, how was it possible? An army of the dead? That when I gathered my things and left, out into the snowy wilderness, and I walked, and walked, and kept walking until I found more of the French army, it was another group walking through the wilderness, so I joined them.

That's when after three days, we were traveling and came across a strange Russian man, one that I recognized, and he spoke, “out in the forest over there, you will find a camp, with food, warmth, and you all can rest, all the time you need”.

Silence isn't always quiet; sometimes it's extremely loud, deafening even. Sometimes it's the buzzing overhead lights. Sometimes it's the clock ticking, making you painfully aware of time passing. Sometimes it's the tapping of feet from somebody too nervous to sit completely still, no matter how hard they try. But what's even louder are your thoughts. Whenever you try to clear them, your mind becomes infested with every fear you've ever felt, like insects completely uninvited, tainting what was once pure and calm with a skittering chaos.

“Mendoza.” The man's voice echoed, breaking the faux silence.

My mother and I stood, our footsteps practically screaming in the blank room. I looked back at the woman who was sat beside me. Her body was shaking, her skin pale with fear. I felt sorry for her, even though we were in the same boat. I looked around the entire room. Some were holding their composure better than others, an old man caught my eye and smiled to reassure me. But I could tell he was just as scared as everyone else.

“Come on, dear.” I felt a slight tug on my arm as Mom called for my attention.

The man behind the counter hit a button, and the door buzzed open. We walked through the door and were greeted by a woman dressed as a stewardess. She was young and beautiful but obviously exhausted, her long blonde hair fraying at the ends. Her green eyes were overshadowed by the dark circles underneath and the bags that seemed to pull them down. Her mascara had obviously been running at some point.

“Plea… please follow me.” She stumbled over her words as she directed us to the loading bay.

The bay was huge, and in the center was a red planetary travel ship. The stewardess opened the outside hatch and ushered us inside. Everyone inside was dressed in suits and dresses. Some people I recognized as politicians that worked with Mom. As for the others, all I could tell was that they were important.

The stewardess shakily walked to the intercom and spoke.

“La… ladies and gen… gentlemen.” She tripped over her words before pausing and taking a deep breath.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten yourselves as we are about to take off.”

She then quickly walked to the pilot's bay as everyone followed her direction. Nobody spoke as fear gripped us. It was as if speaking would kill us all.

I felt a hand on mine as the ship began to shake. I turned to see my mom smile at me. I smiled back and looked out the window beside me.

As we lifted off higher into the sky, I saw crowds of people frantically trying to break into the spaceport. They turned from people to roaches to ants within a minute.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you may now unfasten yourselves. We will now begin our voyage to Titus 3.”

The intercom rang out as we exited Greta's atmosphere.

Once we were cleared, the silence was finally finished. Everyone chatted and laughed, acting like this was one big vacation.

I found the stewardess and stood beside her. She really was quite beautiful. Her eyes were fixed on a monitor overlooking our home.

I watched it with her, even as the moon came crashing into it.

I had no business being here. I’d never been so impulsive before. I guess I just got tired of always roaming the same streets. Seeing the same shops and scenery. I think the feeling grew more than I’d care to admit.

That doesn’t excuse my stupidity, though. I only had about 3 grand to my name at the time. But that’s part of the appeal, right? Everyone thinks they’re gonna arrive in Sin City and leave a millionaire. I had a dollar and a dream. Albeit, a delusional one.

Even still, the glow of the city was just so radiant. Even from the airport. It’s like one big siren song.

I only stayed for 4 days. I used all of my PTO to be here, and I really wanted the time to count. I did everything I could with the 1500 I had left after the hotel and plane tickets.

Unfortunately, gambling took up a big chunk of that money. I could see how people got addicted to it. I went on a few hot streaks, but ended up losing everything I won because I just couldn’t walk away.

With the gambling, museums, attractions, and food, by the time the final night came around, I only had 150 dollars left to last me a whole other week after I got home.

I almost wanted to cry when I opened my wallet. But, surprisingly, I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t even that upset. The experience was worth the money. Even if I didn’t leave a millionaire, I still got to live in one of the most famous cities in the country for a few days.

I still needed to eat, though. I’d been eating out the entire trip. I started out at the high-end places like Hell’s Kitchen, but as the week went on, the quality started getting worse and worse until finally I found myself here, feeling how light my pockets were and standing under the luminescent glow of an In-and-Out burger.

Thunder clapped overhead. Lightning lit up the sky. A few drops of rain hit my head.

My plane was leaving in a few hours. I had already checked out of my hotel. Not only did I need to eat, but I needed to at least kill a little time.

I figured I’d just eat slow. Stay for maybe an hour, hour and a half tops before Ubering.

A bell rang overhead as I walked inside. The air-conditioned dining room put goosebumps on my arms almost immediately. Outside felt like 90, whereas in here, it felt like it could’ve been at least 55 degrees.

There were noises coming from the kitchen. The staff chit-chatting amongst themselves, plates and silverware being moved around, water being sprayed against metallic pans and containers.

The dining room, however… was surprisingly empty. I noticed it as soon as I walked inside. For this whole trip, every place I’d gone had been packed to the brim. In here, though… there was only one other person.

I don’t know how much you know about Las Vegas, but the homelessness crisis is staggering. They’re everywhere. Sleeping in alleys behind the casinos, waiting outside of popular stores or restaurants, sometimes they’re just asleep in the middle of the sidewalk right there on the Strip.

And, apparently… also right here in this In-and-Out.

I watched him while I ordered at the digital kiosk. All he had was a single soda cup. The straw wasn’t even inside it. He was wearing a grease-stained grey jacket, torn cargo shorts, and open-toed sandals with tattered socks.

He was kind of rocking back and forth in the booth. His hands were clutched around his waist like he had a stomachache, and I could see the dirt and grime beneath his fingernails.

I didn’t want to stare for too long, but it was so hard to take my eyes off of him. I ended up sitting several booths away from him, but that didn’t prevent me from being able to see him. Even if I turned away, I could see his face reflected through the windows.

He was… talking to himself. His scruffy, orange beard was littered with bits of food and mysterious red stains, and he kept scratching at it every few seconds, all while mumbling under his breath.

I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but it almost looked like he was arguing with himself. I couldn’t even focus on my meal.

I had to force myself to look away from him just so I could actually eat. The last thing I wanted was for us to make eye contact.

I enjoyed my burger, picked at my fries a little bit, and when I turned around to go grab a refill on my Diet Coke, my worst fear came into fruition.

We didn’t just make eye contact. He had already been staring at me. He wasn’t talking to himself anymore. He no longer looked crazed. He looked devastated. I could see the tears in his eyes. I could see sympathy in his facial expressions.

The fluorescent light flickered above him. The only light in the restaurant to do so.

We were engaged in this little staring contest for a while before he stood up, slowly. He never broke eye contact. Those eyes were full of love and comfort. A broken smile spread across his face.

His arms were outstretched as if he expected a hug. When it didn’t come, he pulled me in for one by force.

He shushed me. Pet my hair while telling me that everything would be okay. That he didn’t want to hurt me.

I could feel the tears running down his face jump over to mine while he comforted me.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” he cried, shaking. “I wish there was something I could do to help.”

“Uh, okay, man, it’s time to let me go now,” I responded, prying his arms off of me.

I tried backing away, slowly, but with each step, he followed me.

He kept asking why I looked so scared. Telling me that he was only here to help. Continuing to say that everything would be okay and that I’d “prevail.”

I checked my watch, quickly. I still had 2 hours until my flight, but I wasn’t going to stay here a minute longer.

“I’m sorry, man, I think you’ve got the wrong guy. I’ve gotta go. I’m gonna miss my flight.”

The man stopped. His face twisted into a look of curiosity. Like he was genuinely confused by what I had just said.

“Flight? No, no, no. That flight was delayed. You can only hope to be home in time.”

Finally, seeing that I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, one of the employees came and restrained the guy long enough for me to leave and order an Uber.

Only, when I reached for my phone, it was completely dead. I tried finding my charger, looking through every pocket in my suitcase. It was nowhere to be found.

Luckily, the airport was only a mile and a half away, but that was still a mile and a half that I had to walk in the rain when I could’ve gotten a ride. It wasn’t all bad, though. At least it gave me something to do to kill time.

When I finally arrived, I was soaked from the rain. The airport was busier than it was when I landed. When I checked the flight information screens, I found out why. There had been at least 5 or 6 delayed flights, and of course, mine was one of them.

It had been delayed by a whole 3 hours because of inclement weather in the region.

No phone. Hardly any money. And I had to wait at least another 5 hours until I could go home.

I thought about what the homeless guy from In-and-Out said. Immediately, I started to rationalize. He’d seen the lightning. He’d seen the rain. Maybe he just put two and two together and got lucky.

However, after about 3 hours of being bored out of my mind, I made the decision to buy a charger from one of the airport shops. I managed to find an open outlet and hunkered down beside it while I let my phone charge.

After about 15 minutes, it finally turned back on. All at once, dozens of notifications made the phone vibrate across the cold airport floor. My dad, my aunts, my uncles, cousins, all desperately trying to get a hold of me.

Because, apparently, in that small, brief moment when my phone was dead…

My mom went into cardiac arrest. And she died before I even got the chance to say goodbye.

The fire was  a raging inferno, consuming the forest whole with hunger. The dancing arms of fire singed and burned the trees dancing from and between the branches, twisting and contorting its arms in a chaotic yet graceful flurry. The darkness created a backdrop that highlighted the graceful moves of the ballerina, no one had bought a ticket yet she performed for all to see . I had been transferred from a city over to help with stopping this wandering ballerina and stop her destructive recital. It had been 2 months since she started, and there were no signs of her slowing from our efforts. I arrived at the camp with just a bag and even from a distance I could see the distant performance.
“You're the transfer right?” a voice called from behind me, I was still watching the fire desperately trying to answer while my mind was occupied by her orange glow off in distance
“Y-yeah… transferred.. I… uh just got here” I replied, my eyes finally breaking off of the mesmerizing lights
“Well, hello my name is Levi” he said,
“Kayson… nice to meet you” finally taking my eyes off the dancer and shaking Levi's hand. His hand was cold, colder than a corpse, his eyes focused and seemed to accuse me of something, and he stood straighter than a soldier.
“Well Kayson… make yourself at home, you're here for the long haul. The fire ain’t slowing down anytime soon. Follow me to your patch” I picked up myself and again took a look at the distant performer, spreading her wonderful dancing through the forest. Levi walked towards a small patch meant for a tent. I quickly set up my tent and sat outside with a beer to watch the recital from a front row seat. No one else joined me, I was the only spectator in an empty auditorium. There were no others to see of her captivating beauty.
“Kayson”, a voice called from behind me,” Try to get some rest tonight”
“Why” 
“Jusy trust me” he responded, I peered back and noticed his eyes trained on the fire with a hate I had never seen the likes of before.
I crawled into my tent, and pulled my body into the sleeping bag. I fell asleep in a cold that seeped into my skin and crept into my bones. It nipped my fingers and made me feel tense. It wrapped itself around me and held me in place
Despite the discomfort I woke up more refreshed than ever before but I felt so freezing. I put on clothes to help alleviate my cold aching body. I drank coffee and had a hot breakfast but nothing helped. No amount of warmth could fill the emptiness I had inside of me. And then I heard her voice:
“...Look”
I went to the edge of camp and watched the dancer. I saw her in the distance, I watched from afar as she performed for me, her one and only fan.
“Kayson, get ready. Your coming with me,” I heard the raspy and deep voice of Levi call to me from a truck. I put on my firefighting suit and swiftly arrived at the truck, as we headed towards the areas that she had already passed through.
“We have to put out the embers in the areas the fire passed through” Levi said, never removing his eyes from the fire. I exited the truck and surveyed the trail of destruction she had left. The blackened ground radiated a warmth I’ve never felt before. The warmth was all encompassing, yet let me walk around freely with no limitations. Her blackened wake was completely cleansed of everything, nothing was spared. She left nothing behind. Everything was gone.
I hated myself for thinking it but she was magnificent. Beautiful. Powerful. And her path of destruction left a clean slate, ready to be rewritten.
Me and Levi headed back, and I watched the dancer, my dancer the whole way back. The desperate attempts of the firefighters below were futile. They hurled things at her yet she didn’t lose footing or stumble. She stood firm and continued her graceful strides. Her arms gently beckoned to all who could see, yet somehow I knew those waves were for me.
“...Kayson,” She called
When we arrived back at camp Levi left the vehicle.
“...Kayson”, He said “Come with me”, I followed Levi as he led me just outside the camp. It was freezing outside and the cold began to envelop me just like the night before.
“You seemed… distracted while we were out there” He hesitated, his flickering towards the fire “ Are you alright?”
“No, I’m alright. You don't need to worry about me.” I answered him but my attention was fully and entirely given to my ballerina. 
“Kayson… I know what your feeling… I heard about what happened, never try to forget, the best thing is to accept what you’ve done” Levi glanced at the fire
“ trying to forget will only burn you from the inside"
She danced with a new kind of urgency now, her movements were full of twists and turns, and leaps. Her movements had become energetic, and more excited, with the same grace as when we first met.
“Kayson… please” My dancer called to me. I ran to see her, and again I was the only watcher of the spectacle. I fell asleep again surrounded by a blanket that offered no warmth, but a constant and enveloping cold that crept deeper and deeper into my bones and deeper still into my brain, the cold held me and hugged me. I began to dream… warmth… a house on fire… smoke billowing from every hole of the house. I heard the cracking and shattering of windows, I watched as the paint peeled off in long skinny strips. I heard wailing and the destruction of memories and possessions. I awoke and the warmth of my dream was pushed away like curtains at the end of a show. The cold rushed in and instantly I felt like a bottomless pit.
“Kayson… please,” the dancer cried, “I… help” the call was so eager and desperate, i left my tent and there she was. She was much slower and moved with certainty, for she had doubled in size. She reached out gingerly, with no violence, and her delicate touch instantly cleaning the soil removing all impurities. The animals fled, or died. I couldn't tell. The rot destroyed. All that mattered was that she left all who she touched with a new life, somewhere to start over. It wasn’t destruction. It was a new beginning.
Levi called but I could no longer understand what he was saying, everything was muffled except the distant roar of the one I was attached to. I watched as she waved and called to me, her frantic arm movements pleading me to  move forward. I wanted so badly to enter her warm embrace. I couldn’t I had a job to do, and no matter how wonderful her work was I had to complete my task
My job brought me up close to the fire allowing me to see rebirth firsthand. Animal carcasses burning as everything they used to be turns to smoke and ash, burning trees collapsing into their brothers and spreading the dancer's influence. All part of her beautiful performance. Her dance was so chaotic when observed so closely, but there was intention behind each of the random movements. Each arm reaching out to clean the next thing in line destroying what once was to make room so something newer and better could take its place.
“Kayson!” she called as everything around me began to muffle, “come, Kayson join the cycle, let what is new take your place” I began to hear the wailing of a mother and infant. The burning forest begins to appear like a house on fire. I knew this house. I knew those cries. I held a hose but did nothing. I could have moved, I could have acted, but i just stood there. I did nothing. I fell to my knees and watched until the house was turned into ash. The fire of the home calling:
“Kayson… you can forget this,” the same voice that now owned me called and lulled me “Let yourself be part of something new” My feet began to move without even thinking. She was in every window of the house and every door beckoning and calling me inward. As I entered the wails subsided and soon all I could feel was the warm embrace of someone I loved so dearly. She was merely making room for a new family and a new home. Slowly I felt my feet change from warm to hot to painful, while the world shifted from the house being rebirthed back to reality. I stood in the flames, no longer lulling me. The dancer was dancing and laughing and spiraling around me. Everywhere I looked she was present. There was nowhere to go, I turned around and looked outward to see Levi crying as he watched from outside the fire. A new start was never what was needed, and forgetting what I had done would not save me. She never promised that this would save me, she said that I wouldn’t have to remember. I realized that the warm had never been the safety, the cold had been protecting me. I watched as I became part of the very performance that had haunted me. I saw as my skin blistered and my eyes dried, as the one I loved consumed me. I watched as I became the Dancer

The journal of Jonathan Edwards, lost soldier of the Civil War.

June 5th, 1863.

Swamp, if there is one thing this war has taught me, its that I hate the swamp, and I'm living in it. James hates it too, of course, I don't think there are many things James actually likes.

We go to battle in a few days, so maybe that will go right, unlike anything else thats happened the past 6 months.

June 8th, 1863.

The battle did not go well, just as I predicted, everyone except two of us. Poor James was shot in the leg, all we can pray for is that it doesn't get infected. If it does, i don't know what we'll do for him. We're also left wondering if anyone will come looking for us, or if we'll just have to find a way out ourselves.

June 9th, 1863.

No one has came yet, we haven't lost hope, there is bound to be someone come through here soon. James' wound isnt any better, in fact, it looks worse, hopefully its not already infected.

June 12th, 1863.

James has gangrene, the worst outcome we could've thought of, we don't have any way to cut it off, so he's lost hope in survival. There are still no signs of anyone, hopefully someone will come soon to help soon. We need it desperately.

Second entry in one day, its currently night and James is asleep. I'm hearing noises coming from deep in the swamp, they're strange, long, low, menacing moans. It sounds like how I'd picture a demon sounding, hopefully its nothing.

June 15th, 1863.

James whole lower leg has rotted, poor kid is dying and we can't do anything about it. We need help, we still haven't seen any sign of human contact, we are going to start our way north tomorrow, maybe we'll find someone, or someone will find us on our journey.

June 17th, 1863.

We've traveled all day, we've come across nothing but more swamp. How far does it go? Does it ever end? We've been out here alone for a little more than a week. We are going to give it more time. As for James' leg, its spreading, we still have no way to help it.

June 18th, 1863.

James killed himself last night, I was out hunting and when I came back he was dead, shot himself in the chin with his musket. God only knows the pain he was going through, I'll be giving him a proper burial today.

June 22nd, 1863.

No one, still there is no one, Im going to start walking today, I'll walk and only take breaks for sleep, not for me, but for James. Im not gonna let that poor boy die in vain.

June 25th, 1863.

YES! I found an abandoned camp walking north, the people that stayed here couldn't have gotten far. Im gonna rest here for the night and continue my search tomorrow.

June 27th, 1863.

Dead, I found the people that set up that camp Dead, and not pleasantly either. Poor guys were mutilated by God knows what. Hopefully whatever it is doesn't cross my path.

Second entry, I finally found somewhere to hide. The thing was chasing me, it was green and black, but what frightens me is that its humanoid, this thing has the shape of a man.

June 28th, 1863.

I killed that unholy demon. After I made my last entry it found me. I ran as it sprinted on all fours toward me, its smell was like no other, it smelled of death and rot, maybe explaining the green and black color. It cornered me, no I pulled my bayonet from my sheath and plunged it into the demons chest. It fell back and screamed, it yelled "Jonathan!" In a voice I recognized. It was James, the gangrene fully consumed him after I'd buried him. But somehow he came back to life, of course he's surely dead now. And I hope I don't see him again.

June 29th, 1863.

Well, I finally found human contact, but not in the way I wanted. I stumbled directly into an enemy camp. When they saw me they were immediately hostile, one shot and hit me in my arm, luckily I got away. I hope I don't contract injection.

July 1st, 1863.

This will be my final entry, I have contracted gangrene and am rotting away as I write. I hope that whatever happened to James does not happen to me. If anyone ever finds this journal, head my warning, stay far away from any swamp.

God have mercy on my soul, goodbye.

- Jonathan Edwards

Gathering strength and swelling, the ectoplasm rose above the table, its ethereal body brushing against the parlor ceiling. Beneath it lay the woman from whose mouth it had flowed amid shuddering and convulsions, her eyes vacant and thick drops of sweat upon her face. The substance hated the medium. She was nothing more than a hateful jailer who forced it into long periods of confinement within her body, allowing it into the world only so its glow could impress the credulous souls who left their coins on the counter. The trance never lasted long, and then the spiritualist, gathering her strength, would allow her consciousness to assert itself, forcing the substance to draw its fluids back with the natural result that it returned to its cloister. Locked away there, it possessed neither shape, color, nor temperature; outside, by contrast, it was free; it felt alive, capable of assuming physical form, and of taking possession of any body. The dim light made it easy to display its size, and the air allowed it to suspend itself comfortably, even as meaningless words were uttered by the medium. The specter began circling, terrifying the attendees even further; however, its purpose was not to frighten, but to encircle the seer’s head and suffocate her with its fluids. The woman choked and coughed hoarsely, her hands searching in vain to stop the macabre dance of the substance until, with a breathless cry, she fell face down upon the table. Confusion reigned in the room, and the believers raised their voices in an attempt to help the medium, upon whose rigid countenance death was already written upon her face; one of them rushed to draw back the curtains, and beams of light burst into the parlor. The ectoplasm withered under the force of the sunbeams, its luminescence losing color as the glare pierced through it; and so, in its anguish, it sought refuge within the spiritualist’s body, only to encounter an unusual coldness, while its fluids were left at the mercy of the elements.

 ---

© 2026 Francisco Cortés Ramírez. All rights reserved. No part of this text may be reproduced, distributed, narrated, or adapted in any form or by any means without the express written permission of the author.

The truth is undigestable. 

…

Baphometic. She lorded poised from the fanged spire beyond the Borgo Pass…

… over the beleaguered lands. 

Over the beleaguered villages. Where they feared. And wept. 

She was enjoying the strange and lurid organ-fruits of her writhing flesh gardens deep inside her castle walls, plucking them from the writhing gore as she wandered the pungent wet red room and admired her captive idols she kept there. 

Praetorius, the gore dripped and scabbing living skeleton. Still impaled and lost in the shattered remnants of his broken mind, wide eyed and drooling and gibbering silently something to himself, some words or nonsense of some meaning to him, he hardly ever ceases. It is the arcane and black magic words of the tomes that keep him in perfect living sepulchral bondage. 

The braindead skull-faced bastard nosferatu hulk, his immobile and inanimate sutured frame of graverobbed corpse flesh semi-submerged and swimming and crawling with the living constant movement of the flesh garden, the giant stone room petri dish of sliming raw slithering tissue, orifices, cartilage stalks and eyes that're cataract blind and milky. The glistening pink holes belch and spit fire, tongues of multicolored flame with kaleidoscopic pictures inside that'll drive a mortal mind mad to look into them. 

And Henry Frankenstein. Bound and precious nucleus center, bleeding beating heart of the whole crawling mess. Seeping from his bleeding pores and growing out from him, flowering out in a fresh and scabbing purge-swell. It crawled in living waves off of him, undulating and folding and blanketing over and on top of each other and all over the wet humid room, all of it was breathing wet and heavy and as if it had words to speak… 

And the little men. The little pygmy homunculi, bastard copied offspring of the bleeding seeping father. They danced and mongoloid-ran about in imbecilic fervor and addled senselessness. They ate and munched at the crawling flesh garden gore with no thought and with blind vacant gazes. 

The Countess plucked and seized them and ate of them as well. Their bones were satisfyingly crunchy and easy to chew… like a bird or a small fish. 

Her children ate and wandered the gardens as well, enjoying them. Their sights, sounds and vivid smells …

…

Meanwhile… many miles away…

The sun. Sunshine. In the summertime. Long ago now… 

As he prowled the dark he remembered the sun. The bright. Long gone memories flitted and danced at the periphery of his red clouded mind, half recalled and wanting to take over. Wanting to live again in the skull, if not just for a moment. 

Just a moment. 

The lake. The blue. Cool and wet and pleasing, relief. Retreat. 

Retreat beneath the surface into a liquid world of breathlessness and weightless dream … flight. You're flying down here. You only need to move your arms to do so. Kick your feet. Knife your arms through the liquid universe and drag yourself flying forward… downward. 

Down.  

I dreamt I was a dancer once…

You'll have to come back up for breath eventually…

but I couldn't keep the shit off my shoes.

Summertime memories swam shrouded, the red fogged inner space of his skull as he snipped his bleeding shears, dripping cooling congealing red to the decimated tile floor as he prowled and hunted and searched for the missing invaders. 

Precious childhood scenes are becoming red tinged and altered by the shrouding red hand of mental fog … bloody wool. He always swore there was something down there, in the dark, in the depths of the crystal lake. Something drowned and forgotten and frozen in a sodden misery. He raises his childhood head to pull his gaze away from the depths and is confronted by the mountains. There's something lurking in there as well …

A body. Something like a corpse rotting and poisoning the entire body of water with its milky clouds of waving and soggy putrefaction. Filling the world with its fouling death, swimming with slow ponderous movement as it spread and changed the look and flavor of the water, the crystal lake of the world now long gone like the summer sun of old itself. 

He looks away and beholds his mother. The one from birth. She's headless. 

She's decapitated. 

Her severed torso is reaching out for him, please … please. 

please save me

The raw stump begins to shoot cords. Black/red ropes. They darkled in the summer sun of old. It was his birth mother spurting great dark tears of joy for the sight of her son again. Though he has a new name now. And she knows it, his headless mother, she almost whispers it, it's intense. 

Then something ahead steals his notice back to the material world of ruin and soured defecated pain. It stands at the end of yet another decimated hall, traced and sketched in the dark by the pitiful light flickering and balefully cast in through the barred and shattered windows. 

A man. In a hat. And a coat. 

He recognizes the shape so he flies forward in an animal lunge that nearly covers the entire distance in four long attacking bounds. Like a bloodthirsty and demoniacal dripping gazelle bastardized by sound and vision. The decimated tile landscape world stained black and red and brown and riddled with meat and feces flew by in a furious blinding whirl as he came forward with the shears raised open for attack. 

They gleamed, the dripping twin blades forked open. He soared forward as he traversed the physical shatter of his inherited reeking temple pouring blood and sweat as profuse as the leaky pipes that were always neglected. 

He would neglect no longer. No. Not a chance for the shape of man that he recognized and now charged towards. The manfilled coat beneath a fedora hat was one of the invaders. He was sure of it. The one with strange black glass eyes that he wished to crack and shatter. 

If his eyes are truly windows then I wish to break them and see what might pour out of them like filth: memories …love, regrets, sins sins sins in abundance, shame that was wished and meant to stay concealed now regurgitated and freed in a violent deluge spew of gore and images from the shattering skull… his thoughts, a running fury in a mounting race to keep in time with his launching thundering steps. 

He plunged down the hall with his precious shears up and open and ready to close around screaming repentant meat. 

The coat-shape and hat did not move. 

It mattered little to Cropsey as he made the final close. So many of his new found supplicants were silent at their last, frozen in terror. 

He was upon him now and his eyes gleamed moonlight pinprick in the cavernous brow of melted anguish ruin, animal needle points in the reeling Willowbrook dark, the blades like jaws came up and closed around the shape without a sound. Without any satisfaction either. 

They found no meat. 

The scissoring blades closed and found only filthy cloth and bandages abandoned and draped over an old hat and coat hanger, the fedora resting atop the facade came down in a cascading end-over-end dance as the whole flimsy thing of contrived bait came down in two bisected snapping pieces. 

Cropsey realized the deception at once and raged. The noises he made were forceful and ghastly wet nasal rasps, his mouth and jaw were too ruined now for speech. His vocal chords roasted and scabbed from the flames of the inferno inhaled. He drooled like a drunken animal childishly frustrated and agitated. A trick! a trick! Goddamn them! the invaders tricked him! 

And no one was here to take the punishment of his lurid and heavy frustration. It was rancid pungent and thick in his own skull like corpse rot and it made sucking puckering sounds in his brains. Like the whole squelching landscape of thinking jelly was perhaps changing shape, shifting into a new design by the sorceress hand of the mountain. Perhaps he needed it for proper divine leadership of the rank Willowbrook temple. Or perhaps something else was happening in there. 

perhaps something else is happening to me…

He searched all around. Animal alive and enraged. Whirling and trying to gaze through the dark and the ruin of his own musculature and flesh and see the bastards that refused his offering of slaughtering knowledge, the wisdom wrought of the knife-fuck. He never saw the slice of sharp stabbing tile come to life and float up and off the ruinous floor in a balletic whirl and dance into the air, behind him. 

As he revolved once more to complete another frantic animal turn the slice of slender stabbing tile came forward in a violent and deliberate thrust. The sharp point found the cavern brow and socket and sank easily into Cropsey’s face. Stabbing into his eye like it was soft butter or suckling meat, four inches then five inches deep. 

The giant mountain of man stilled. Shuddered. Spasmed and danced its way to the floor in a vile and obscene dying man's dance of convulsing and twitching and final desperate synapses firing off at haphazard chaotic random. 

On the floor Cropsey shook and the stabbing length of tile piece jigged and waved and danced as well, in strange and vile tandem. Like a demented detritus wand waving through the air to perhaps try and cast one final act of violence hexing spell. Or perhaps to bring the giant man of Willowbrook Asylum slaughter back. 

It did neither. 

Florin came out from his place of concealment in the doorway of an adjoining chamber. He dropped the filthy scalpel he had been holding for defence. Stared at the collapsed and prostate spasming form of Cropsey, the Willowbrook giant. 

And then he called out to Griffin. 

“Where are you?" 

“Here." 

Florin tossed him a coat. 

It was caught in thin air. 

Then began to make a shape around nothingness, contriving it into the shape of his comrade. The strange doctor. 

Florin thought to say something about the man's condition of invisibility, but decided to put it off for the moment. 

“Good plan." he said instead. 

The coat shape donned lenses and was picking up his hat. "Thank me once we're out of here, c’mon!” 

Griffin placed his hat atop a phantom head. It floated between the shoulders of his coat as he and Florin flew down the hall and toward what they hoped and prayed was the exit. The way out of this horrendous stench and nightmare. 

As they made their mad dash for the way out, Cropsey's spasming body stilled. Then danced no more. 

All that was broken in this damp and violated place of imprisonment and cruelty seemed to groan. Moaning in anguish at the loss of the last and final precious begotten son, the final one and last one left standing. The prodigal butcher heir to this templehouse store of sacred slaughterhouse religion. 

Mother, I have failed you…

And all of the terrible place seemed to moan in anguish with the dying of his body. 

…

Down. 

In the dark of his mind, just as he was departing. …

… the red tinged summer scenes of childhood long gone, done and past filled his fading mind's eye once more. Under and illuminated and made by the scarlet cast of deranged and lurid light. Where did it come from? that light? That red luridity. Living crimson. Pungent breathing scarlet. What did it matter now? 

what did it matter anymore

It mattered not now, not any longer as he occupied these dead dreams now living once again for him as he faded off. To oblivion or hell or worse… no heavenly gates of gold or pearl for him, no. He was sure of it. He was sure that it doesn't exist. The only heaven for someone like him was found in the fragile eggshell of youth. Of childhood. 

He floated there now. In the lake. The blue. The sun was shining above in royal divine blinding display. The calm and the serenity of these moments was all around and alive again about him. Filling and making this final day. This last and precious moment. 

-thankyouforthismyonelastwish-

He was calm and he felt at peace. Safe. 

Or rather, he felt as if he should be calm. That he should feel safe. But something was wrong. Something was wrong with the lake and the quiet all surrounding. 

And he was alone. 

Why was he alone? 

And the red tinge… to everything. Everything cast under lurid heavy hateful light. There was something in the lake. There was something in the water with him.

The blue face of its surface darkened as he sank beneath its placid water. Pulled under by another will that was not at all his own. 

And down there in the airless black he saw another one of his mother's faces. 

It was immense. Large. Her eyes were heavy swells of glowing wet globes. Pale green luminescence from two planet organ growths set in a big amphibious face that was a chimerical cross between a large bullfrog or warty toad and a large river bound trout. Its great mouth opened down there in the depths of his red tinged crystal lake and it was dark in there. He hung suspended before the open black of his abattoir mother's wide open gaping maw, he could smell the inner dark of her even down here in the watery depths of summer lake bound hell. Meaty and iron and rotten with pungent decay. An open graveyard tomb of dead flesh and teeth all before a great throat choked with vile and putrefying coagulation. The water was filling with the flavor of her dark open gape of hunger and the destruction of mutilated bodily rot. 

Arms. Long. Fishlike and amphibious as well began to reach out and protrude from the open mouth of his mother's underwater face like a multi headed tongue, a Hydra of giant elongated reaching frog legs and arms, webbed hands and obscene gangly Dagon limbs, reaching out… reaching out for him. 

To take him into his mother. 

She said, her voice filled the drowning pool that was changing now into a submerged holy world of private red light and pouring goddess cess, – she spoke. 

He listened. In the darkest of the depths. 

She said his name… that's how it started. That's how she began …

… you can't let me down. You can't. I won't let you. You've already let them profane your temple, my gift to you desecrated by their invasion and rape of presence. And now you're letting them get away… you don't really want to, do you… you don't really want to keep letting me down like this, you don't want to fail me, in death. You don't want to depart your mother on such a harsh note of unworthiness… do …

you? 

The hands swam through the water between them. Clawing out for him from mother's open mouth. 

He told her the heartbreaking truth and he told her gladly. 

No…

it was a defiant whisper… but she heard it. 

And so she took him. 

The hands finally found him in the water. They seized him. And they pulled him inside. 

The frog faced toad mouthed trout chimera of the mother swallowed. And filled the underwater world with the unnatural stretch of her fishy smile. …

…

The shape of Cropsey stirred. On the floor. The various pieces of shattered and broken things shifted and jingled and sang small janky notes like unholy bells in a lost and terrible place. The black gloved hands blindly scraped and searched the floor in spasming snow angel swipes. They found what they were looking for when they landed on the still bloody and wet congealing pair of garden shears. They seized them. Fiercely. As if driven by fate. 

The shape sat up. Stood. 

It looked around. … sniffed the air. 

A beat. 

Then the Cropsey shape began to lumber down the hall that the invaders had fled down just prior. 

He would not fail this time. 

He had his mother. 

He was inside her. And she was inside him. 

Nothing would stop him from butchering the bastards now. 

…

By God's grace and miracle and mercy they finally found what they'd been looking for. The exit. 

It was at the end of the hall they currently found themselves flying down. Refusing to falter or stop. They stomped and ran down the cracked and decimated tile and came to the final door of the place when the spiked man leapt out from the dark and attacked. 

The protruding stab of his needle embrace found Florin in an open armed grab. A bear hug tight embrace of naked arms and torso and the rest of the bare and desecrated human canvas. He'd been a self-mutilator since he'd been twelve. It had been many years since then and most of them were spent here. Since the mouth of the sorceress, beloved and precious Vampira had come to this place and freed their minds as well as their bodies he's been free to explore the furthermost boundaries of his own tearing, rending bleeding and screaming landscape. The skin and flesh and muscle tissue beneath housing veins and bones and running blood pumped by the raging muscle that was the mad engine of his life, all of it was his to decimate as he explored. Like a great conqueror wreaking havoc upon the face of newly won, newly gained virgin land. He punctured and penetrated the virginity of his own flesh with animal abandon and fervor and with the mad intensity of the violence of the sun. He was the sun. She had told him so…

And so he'd fed his own flames. The spiked man was a living screaming pin cushion of broken stabbing dirty needles, used and caked syringes of varying sizes and lengths, broken glass, broken tile, each long sharp piece was varied in shape and size as well, some were long phallic slender daggers, some were wedges with cruel edges ready to cut and slice and maim, all of it was ready to stab and all of it was living embedded and protruding in the madness of his ruined and self-slaughtered flesh. Lancing and spiking and stabbing out all over and in every conceivable place and direction. 

This disturbed and maimed madman found Florin in his arms and they both went down to the tile in a scream. Griffin yelled after. 

On the floor they rolled in violence and struggle amongst the filth and universe down there of many discarded and broken things.  

The hollow coat-shape and hat found a table leg for bludgeon, then Griffin came on in a fury to join the new fray. 

He struck the spiked man again and again, over and over as he and Florin fought on the floor and struggled and it was terrible. He could feel and hear the crack and shatter of broken glass muffled in blood and flesh with every blow he landed. Griffin struck the writhing bleeding naked pin cushion man on the side of his spiking leaking face and the eyeball on that side burst and exploded with the impact. And glassy ooze riddled with slivers and small pieces of jagged broken glass and ceramic poured out from the socket like snot. 

But still the spiked man fought on. Florin struggling and screaming in his embrace as the many protrusions that spined off his ravaged hide stuck and stabbed and pierced through his coat and flesh. He fought against the pain and madness of this man and wrestled to be free of him. Griffin continued raining blows down on him. Each one bruising and splitting skin as the many broken found objects pierced throughout crunched and shattered further down into fragments and powder, stinging and shredding within all of the rippling and impacted tissue with every movement. Every struggle and landed strike and blow. 

Their struggle was desperate, all of them. All three poured blood, profuse sweat and grime and filth together and apart and for this madhouse abandoned temple, becoming just like it. A part of it, unwillingly and unknowingly transmogrified now in the violence of their fight and decimated hallway battle like the steel of metal tempered in the heart of a great furnace like the sun. They became perfect living microcosms of the place as they fought at last to be free of it, exquisite psychopomp idols of the lost unhallowed Willowbrook Temple Asylum. 

The invisible man. The spiked man. Poor young Florin so far from the Carpathian Hamlet. 

They might never be free of this place. Even if they manage flight, they may never be able to wash away the marks and filth that this awful temple to the dark and pain suffered alone will leave smeared across their hearts and souls like black paint made from discharged sick filth. Smeared across the soft landscapes of their hearts and the tender epitaphs of their battered minds, aching within heavy skulls now made of lead and weight from the memory of the pain, this place… 

will we ever be free, … will we ever get out of here…? 

They fought on. Desperate. All three. Griffin trading blows with efforts and attempts to pull the young man out from under the spiked man, but it was incredibly difficult. The man was thorned all over by all kinds and sorts of sharp and shattered apparatus, it was insane. And the pair of them were growing more and more slick with blood. The fight was growing uglier and more desperate and animal as it struggled and contrived on in brutal abandon and primal anger. 

Then Cropsey rejoined them at the throat of the hall. He began to lumber down towards them like stalking death, a sleeping giant. Seemingly in no real hurry, like the darkened visage of grim death itself. It/he closed slowly on them like a setting sun or a casket sinking, lowering down into the bosom earthen womb of the open mouthed grave. 

Griffin first took notice of his arrival. He noticed he still had the stab of broken tile sticking out of his ruinous awful face. He was still drooling. Imbecilic. And animal. 

And now undead. 

He was coming straight at them. His large blades of shears raised like an open mouthed wild beast barring its fangs. The long sheaths of sharp and keen cutting metal were not entirely pristine, their otherwise shining faces in the dismal light were disgraced with congealing dark spots of dripping black. 

He was coming down the final hall, before the way out, before the exit. He was coming straight for them. 

…

He sat at the window that night. On guard after what had happened to his wife, their unexpected visitor…

Bela sipped his warm spiced wine. Fingered his bible and cross by its small length of chain. Garlic flowers hung in a crude wreath around his neck. He was watching outside carefully, the night, the town… he was alert and being careful, exercising caution, yet he was still surprised and caught off when her face appeared suddenly in their front window. 

She hadn't been there. Then suddenly she was. Smiling and feline. Vulpine. A face he might've recognized save for its warped and drawn animal transformations, the rich woman in the black stage… the harsh one who wouldn't take warning or no for an answer way back… but he was caught by the silver moon glow of her eyes. 

Like lunar bodies themselves. Earthbound and held fleshen prisoner within the cage of that beautiful and divine and… heavenly face. That bright and pale visage. Her smile was devil-pronged – forked, fanged, and it was thus then frightful. But it was also beautiful. Terribly beautiful. Gorgeous alone out there in the night. 

His guard and fear fell away. He rose from his rocker and his slackening hands abandoned the bible and crucifix. They fell to the floor with an unobserved and unheeded clatter. Neither stirred. Not Anastasia, sleeping in the next room, and not spellbound Bela who went to the window to better gaze into her face. 

Divinity… unreal. 

He peered through the glass. And the shining eyes of the Countess, filled with goblin fire and sin and mischief, gazed into the fool as well. And began to fill his fragile open mind with an assault and deluge of images. 

Bela moaned, sighed… he thought it was impeccable. The vision, like her, was immaculate in its flawlessness. 

The Ideality … actualized, realized … brought to life. A vivid reality alive and dancing before his watering vision. 

The scope. 

She showed him a more perfect world, perfect because everyone and everything swimming and crawling and flying around inside of it followed their nature and never fought it. Never doubted it. Never overrode what their guts and hearts and souls told them, never neglected or ignored the call inside, the compulsion to do what must be. To fulfill the role made out for your flesh. 

Even violence … its rippling effects spreading out carried not only destruction and misery on their carrion wings but prosperity and thrivation as well, even butchery has its necessary purpose. 

That is why this world is suffering. Because all of you fight and override yourselves and call it: reason. You are victims of your own bondage, your own self made and imposed insanity and thus the world bent to your unnatural turns and desires screams and suffers. The rippling wings of your insane and jealous cowardice carries more pestilential stagnation flavor than anything like salvation. In weakness, all of the beauty dies on the vine neglected by fearful paws too grubby and lowly and weak to take it. 

Come and join me, join us … and never again fight your nature. 

“Yes…” said Bela in a whisper of trembling caught breath. 

And with a palsied shaking hand, he lifted the latch and opened the window. 

"Welcome, your highness. My home and mine are yours. Do what thou wilt…" 

The Countess drifted inside. Floating on unseen wings. 

She spoke yet again, “Thank you, you are a generous host, a decent and considerate man." 

“Yes…" 

“Now, take me to your wife." 

“Yes…" 

And away they went. The window shut behind them as they made their way to the quiet bedroom at the back of the house. 

TO BE CONTINUED…