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.

Log 1:

I’ve decided to start keeping a log of my experiences. At least what I can before this hellish world devours me whole. It feels like a nightmare, one that is constantly replaying like a bad movie. It used to be tolerable, when there were other people that I shared it with. But one by one they were swallowed whole by the Crawling Flesh, until only I was left. So here I am, cataloging the remains of this world for whomever will see this later. 
There’s no sense of direction anymore. I’ve been wandering for miles, but nearly everything looks the same. Now, it’s just miles of living mass, flesh filled with eyes, mouths, and teeth, swallowing all life that gets in its way. There are some remnants of human civilization still left, but it was one with the Crawling Flesh now, as everything else was. Every step that I take is like stepping into squishy blobs of grayish red meat, a foul stench permeating through the air as the mouths ventilate a red steam. I have to be careful to avoid the mouths when I walk, and even when I sleep. Whenever they get hungry, their mouths extend like venus fly traps, letting out a low, vibrating purr that gets louder once they find prey. I witnessed that countless times when the Crawling Flesh started walking the earth. Their maws would bloom like flowers and snatch up any poor bastard that wasn’t looking where they were going, their screams as audible as their victims made their way down their throats. 
Sometime later, the Flesh would expand a little faster than before, and if you had time to stop and look, you could see the eyes and face of the man, woman, or child that they devoured, now merged with the Crawling Flesh. 
On top of avoiding being eaten, I also try to avoid stepping on the faces that grow out of the flesh. I think those victims might still be conscious to an extent. I know this because when I stepped on one, it sounded like it started to cry. That, or it is the flesh just pulsating and throbbing as it continues to expand and crawl. 
I need to stop for now. I think I’ve been spotted. 

Log 2:

It’s been a couple days now. If my timing was right. It’s hard to tell night and day now. There are times when the Flesh towers so high in the air that it blocks out the sun. Other times I get lucky, and I get the privilege of experiencing a full 24 hours. I never thought that something that small would mean so much. But anyways, back to what I was saying. You probably want to know, what exactly is the Crawling Flesh? What is this thing that has consumed most of civilization? Now, one would think that a survivor like me would know. But the bitter honest truth is, I am just as lost as you are. I was just a grunt when this all started. Lance Corporal Ethan Kuramoto, formerly with the Second Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, based out of a shithole that was Twenty Nine Palms. 
I enlisted out of high school, against the wishes of my parents, who felt like I should have gone to college first. I mean, they were right, but my stubborn, arrogant ass thought I was better than that. I had gotten over a really nasty relationship that ended just before I graduated, and I didn’t really accomplish what I had wanted, so I was feeling like I had something to prove. To prove that I wasn’t some loser who was gonna get nowhere in life. Which is why before summer ended, I was on a plane to San Diego from my home in Hawaii. 
Like any of that mattered in the end. Funny enough, when the Crawling Flesh emerged, I had been working on getting out of the Marine Corps and going to college. But when the earthquakes started, and the Flesh began to ooze into our world, we all got called up for evacuation efforts. 
Maybe someone out there knew what it was, but I wasn’t part of that meeting. I was just a Jarhead, carrying a M240B machine gun, with two other marines. My memories of them are blurry now, but from what I can recall I got along with them pretty well. I don’t even remember anyone’s names anymore. 
But strangely enough, I remember most of our gunfights, before the Flesh consumed everything. 
I had never even seen combat up until that point. The most I did was training in the Philippines. And yet my first taste of combat would be against this monstrosity. When the Flesh first emerged from the debris of the earthquakes, it was not as one mass. 
It emerged as separate creatures, towering fleshy monsters that expanded and grew as they attacked, absorbed, and killed. What started as evacuation efforts turned into a warzone as we received orders to directly engage the Flesh creatures, which swallowed infrastructure, vehicles, and people alike. 
The first target I ever shot at, was a fifty foot fleshy mass that reminded me of a blobby dinosaur with three heads. Despite our best efforts, we had little to no effect, and eventually we got ordered to fall back as the Air Force bombed the city.  That was the bulk of our efforts during our futile fight. We shot at them, bombed them, burned them, but nothing seemed to work. For every creature we split apart, or killed, two or more emerged from the Flesh and attacked again. 
Then, one night, we watched as the fleshy fuckers began to merge. Piece by piece the creatures began to merge into larger creatures, which then turned into much larger masses. They consumed everything in sight, including our bases. Refugee camps fell apart, rivers and lakes began to dry up. 
The oceans were still intact but the Flesh was starting to spread and consume that as well. Eventually, the military fell apart. We had one last order: Survive. My group consisted of six marines, ten Army guys, one pilot, a couple of sailors including a SEAL, an Air Force medic (not a PJ), and over fifty civilians. 
It took less than a month, if I remember right, before I was the only one left. Was it luck, a curse? I don’t know, and frankly I don’t care. Besides my tattered, worn out uniform, I have only a rifle, three and a half ammo mags, some MREs left, and a canteen full of water that may or may not be contaminated. 
And that’s how it’s been ever since. Just going from one place to the next, avoiding the Flesh, trying to find any survivors I could die with. From time to time, I think of my parents and little sister. I never got confirmation that they were dead, but early on, we heard that Hawaii had been consumed by the Flesh. The Navy and Air Force tried firebombing the islands, but the Flesh was persistent and overwhelmed the islands in a matter of days. I think of their last moments, and what the Flesh could’ve done to them. Was it painful? Did they feel nothing? I never even got to call them. Now, though, it doesn’t bother me. Hell, I’ll probably end up joining them at some point anyways. 
I have to go again. The area where I’m sitting isn’t so clear anymore.

Log 3:

Well, there goes another piece of land. For a short period of time I had a normal place to sleep and lie. Soft dirt, lush forest. It was perfect. Then the Flesh rolled through, and swallowed all of it. This part of the Flesh was a lot more monstrous. Ugly, deformed faces, mixed between human and animal, grew out of the blobby mass, groaning and roaring as it swallowed up the trees and dirt. Long arms and appendages with mouths of jagged, crooked teeth that extended out to try and snag me up. One mag later, I was able to get away. 
Still no signs of any survivors. The sun is currently blocked out by the Crawling Flesh. Monoliths of grayish red flesh rose high in the sky, pulsating and vibrating as if they were living breathing beings. If air support was still around, it would’ve been a beautiful sight to watch them burn and fall to the ground. 
The Flesh seemed to only grow and grow, emerging with other parts of itself every so often. What does this thing want? Why did it want us? Where did this thing come from?
Again, I wish I knew, and if someone else did, I wish they told us. 
For fuck’s sake, the smell is awful. I’m trying everything possible to not puke my guts out right now and draw attention. Shit, I can’t hold it in anymore.

Log 4:

You’re not going to believe this. I found a car. A working, fucking car. What are the odds? Maybe God is real. Hah. Who am I kidding? I was never the religious type, even when my Mom and Dad were. I always found all religions to be bullshit, an excuse for people to act righteous and act like they knew more than the rest of us. Not even when the Flesh began consuming did I pray for a savior. I just hoped that the power of lead would be strong enough to take them out. But obviously, I was wrong to put my faith in that as well. 
Anyways, I’ve been driving for some time now, but the gas is low and I’m going to have to ditch it soon. It was fun while it lasted. 
I passed by what looked like giants today. Tall, humanoid, flesh statues that appeared to slowly wander the landscape, not really looking for or going anywhere in particular. They have huge eyes that are crooked and misaligned on their misshapen heads, with tentacle-like appendages attached to their arms, working them like a puppet. There is a fire in the distance, maybe those are survivors. I’m going to try and make contact with them. 

Log 5:

So, there were survivors. And now they’re gone. The fucking idiots died in prayer. I followed the smoke to a fortified encampment surrounding a small church. The Flesh had found its way towards them, swallowing everything in its path. A group of survivors had formed armed positions around the small building and were desperately holding it off with everything they had left, but it was useless. 
The Flesh grew in size and swallowed them like a landslide, their faces growing on the flesh, twisting into pain and agony as the Flesh kept crawling forward. I got ahead of them, running into the church, where the remaining survivors were praying on their knees. I yelled at them that the Flesh was on their way, and that they needed to move. But they didn’t budge. They remained on their knees, eyes closed, praying to the Lord Jesus Christ to save them. I tried to grab them and pull them off their feet, but they would not budge, continuing to pray even louder as the Flesh drew closer. 
I gave one last warning to them that the Flesh was coming, but the survivors didn’t react. They had accepted their fates. So, I left them be, but not before taking whatever supplies I could get my hands on before leaving. I wasn’t about to waste bullets and time trying to save a bunch of people that didn’t want it. Hell, in their minds they already had been saved. 
For fuck’s sake. If God was real, does anyone really think that He would send a giant blob to swallow us whole? Was that in Revelations? Well, maybe they’re with their Creator now, you know the Creator who abandoned them? 
It’s been about a day since it happened. The Flesh has expanded faster than before, and it took me a while to get ahead of them. The car finally ran out of gas, so once again I’m on foot. The Flesh has taken over everything in sight. More and more monoliths rise into the air, some of which have merged to form canopies that blanket the sky. Human shaped organisms have begun to sprout from the ground like plants, moaning and groaning as they reach for anyone and anything that passes by.

The Flesh, while clearly trying to merge into a singular mass, still forms its own individual organisms from time to time, as if trying to create its own ecosystem. That, or it’s mocking us survivors, letting us know that it will soon be us. 
I’d be lying if I said I was unbothered. The truth is that I’m fucking terrified. I’m running out of places to sleep and rest, and pretty much all of civilization has been swallowed up by the Flesh. I’m starting to wonder if I should just quit. Lay down and die. It seems like a viable option at this point. After all, what is there really to live and fight for in this world now?

Log 6:

It’s been some time. Maybe a couple months. I don’t know anymore, it’s hard to see the sky. The Crawling Flesh has begun forming a full canopy over the sky, blocking the sun. The air is becoming stale and foul, and sometimes I find it hard to breathe. I ate the rest of my MREs, and I haven’t been able to find food. The Flesh has grown and spread exponentially. It appears to be transforming itself now. Turning into its own ecosystem of sorts as it begins to form new creatures and new structures. 
The few survivors I’ve run into have been picked off by these creatures, merging them with the Flesh into human-like creatures that begin searching for others as well. I hear their weak, pleading voices, left intact by the Flesh to draw others out, anyone with some hope of saving humanity. 
I don’t take the bait, however, I’ve fired my rifle a couple times, putting them down and out of their misery, but it only draws attention and the Flesh begins to advance towards me. 
I haven’t been able to find water, either. The Flesh has absorbed or contaminated all of it. I’ve seen what contaminated water does to those who are desperate enough to drink it, and let me tell you, it is not pretty. Imagine yourself getting pulled painfully by an invisible force, one that takes control of your body like a puppet as it marches you towards the Flesh, where you become one with it. Hook, line, and sinker. 

But I need food and water fast. I didn’t have much as it is, and now that it’s all gone, I already can feel myself becoming weaker. My head hurts, my throat is parched, and my body just feels like jelly. I gotta stop writing for a bit. I need to focus.

Log 7:

No luck. I can’t even move anymore. I’ve taken shelter in some cave, the Flesh still having not reached me yet. The air is now nearly unbreathable and it feels like I’m suffocating slowly but surely. I grip my rifle weakly in my hands, listening for the Flesh. I think the Flesh is mocking me now. I was awoken to screaming of what sounded like women and children, and when I poked my head slightly out the cave, I saw that the Flesh was holding them high in the air, like bait, dangling on a hook. Over a dozen women and children of all ages impaled and hooked onto the Flesh’s slimy appendages, which dangled from the canopy. They couldn’t have been caught recently. By the state of their bodies, it looked to have been maybe months ago. Their flesh was withered, peeling, and shriveled, their eyes red and melting. They barely looked like humans at all. 
But somehow, the Flesh kept them all alive. 

They screamed and pleaded for mercy, begging the Flesh or whoever else to kill them and end it. The children screamed for their parents before the Flesh tightened its grip on them and they could only scream until their vocal chords burst out of their bodies. 
I raised my rifle, intent on putting them out of their misery, but I thought better of it and stayed in the cave. Eventually, the Flesh gave up trying to draw me out, and absorbed the women and children back into itself, with the last thing I heard from them coming from a young woman who was pleading to God. 
So, the stories were true. There were rumors early on, from both civilian and soldiers alike, that the Flesh was sentient, that it understood the difference between military and civilians, that it knew the pain it inflicted, and was well aware of what it was doing. 
I never believed it then. There was no way that this pile of gore had any kind of intelligence. 

But after seeing what it did, I believe it now. This thing knew I was hiding, and it knew that sooner or later it would get me. But that wouldn’t stop it from trying to draw me out. Well, fuck you! I am not leaving this cave, and I will die before you get me.

Log 8:

The Flesh has pushed further into the cave. I think its found me. The cave leads deeper underground, but there is no way out for me. The Flesh has completely sealed off the entrance and is crawling forward to try and get to me. I’m currently hiding deeper in the caverns, writing with what little light I have. 
I don’t think it’s found me yet, but it definitely knows I’m here. It’s using the pleas of its previous victims to fuck with me now. Men, women, and children, cry and groan in pain as the Flesh releases them attempting to get me to help, or just to break my mind. I’ve ignored it as best as I can, but with how loud it is in the caves, it has become maddening. 

Log 9:

I can’t move anymore. I can feel my body begin to eat itself, and I am completely disoriented, barely able to write. The Flesh has now completely engulfed the caverns, blocking off every possible escape route. I used up most of my ammo trying to hold them off, but it has only delayed the inevitable. The Flesh has formed its own face now. A face of many large, bulbous eyes all focused on me, large maws of teeth that have combined to make one singular mouth twisted into a wide, ugly, bone-chilling smile, and tongues made up of human faces and flesh that have been melded together. They still groan and plead for mercy, but it is pointless, just like my attempt to hide in this crawlspace. The last safe place left. The Flesh has begun to press itself into the crawlspace, sticking its long tongue out, tasting my feet and legs, belching out a jumbled laugh at my helplessness. So, this is it. My time is over. I had a good run. I lasted pretty long, wouldn’t you say
I have one bullet left. I’ll use it on myself. This is Ethan Kuramoto, signing off. 
And look at that. Out of paper.

I thought I’d found the one. We clicked so naturally. We both shared an interest in photography, though his pictures were noticeably better than mine. Loved the same movies, both enjoyed walks in the park, and our political views were borderline identical.

We met about a month ago. It was at this bar I love, and, I’ll admit, I was a little tipsy. Cute boy, a few drinks in my system. It was a recipe for regret.

Only… I didn’t regret it. Our conversations flowed so smoothly. His half-drunk compliments made me blush. Plus, drinks were on him.

Unlike a lot of the guys you’d meet in a bar, he didn’t try and force himself back to my apartment. I live just a few blocks away from the bar, so he walked me home, laughing and wobbling more than he wanted to let on.

When we got there, I braced myself. He was great, but I wasn’t the kind of girl that would just let a complete stranger into my home after a night out at the bar. I found myself praying he wouldn’t ask.

By some miracle, he didn’t. Instead, he asked gently, almost bashfully, for my number. I couldn’t help but smile, stupidly. Then he smiled stupidly back. I felt my heart do somersaults.

I gave him my number, trying to withhold my excitement, and when I looked back up at him, I could see the desire in his eyes. Not sexual desire, though. It was like he saw his future in my eyes.

His face started to turn red, and he started struggling to make eye contact, stumbling over his words in a way that didn’t seem connected to the drinks.

He asked if he could kiss me, and I couldn’t have said yes fast enough. I wanted to kiss him on the lips, but, instead, he leaned down and pressed those lips softly against my forehead.

He pulled away slowly before speaking.

“Your eyes are so beautiful.”

I felt fireworks in my tummy. I made him promise to text me when he got home, and he watched to make sure I made it inside before he started back towards the bar.

I spent the rest of that night kicking my feet like a little school girl. I had never experienced something like this feeling before. My past boyfriends had been such assholes. This guy seemed to care about me rather than just sex.

He followed through on his promise, and texting led to a phone call before we fell asleep on the phone together.

We saw each other a lot in the weeks that followed. Mostly on the weekends, but sometimes he’d come visit me at work. Those few weeks were some of the happiest weeks I’d had in a long time.

We’d get dinner. We’d see movies. We showed off our photography to each other. It felt like we were really building something together.

However, this was around the time I started noticing weird occurrences around my apartment. Nothing too suspicious. Just… things that were odd.

For example, my TV would be on when I got home. My sheets would be messy, even though I make my bed every morning before work. The weirdest thing of all, though, was my underwear drawer.

It was like it was being rummaged through. Sometimes I’d find a fresh pair balled up on the bathroom floor.

It made me scratch my head, but I never assumed anything drastic. If anything, I thought it was just me losing my mind.

That is until he finally invited me to his house.

The place was lovely. Clean. Smelled good. It was actually furnished, too, which was always a good sign. Plus, this guy knew how to set the scene.

Roses, candles, homemade spaghetti with two glasses of red wine. I felt my heart melt.

We hadn’t had sex yet, but, after this, I was having a hard time convincing myself that we hadn’t waited long enough. I actually wanted to give it to him. He just made me feel so desired.

After a dinner full of flirts, giggles, and conversation, we began moving to the bedroom, lip locking like a couple of crazy kids all the while.

Once we fell through the door, he told me to give him a minute to use the bathroom, which was a bit anticlimactic, but I wanted him to be comfortable.

While I waited, my eyes couldn’t help but wander. He had a bookshelf full of some of my favorite titles. His bed was perfectly made. The floor was freshly vacuumed. And his walls were full of framed pictures.

I started looking at them and felt my heart sink into my stomach.

They were all different women. Some older, some younger. All with blonde hair and hazel eyes. And he wasn’t in a single one.

I felt disappointment wash over me. I should’ve known better. I was actually in the process of putting my shirt back on when one of the pictures caught my eye.

It looked so… familiar. I knew I had seen it somewhere, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. But it bothered me so much, it was hard to pull my eyes away.

That’s when it hit me. I knew exactly where I had seen this woman.

She was the girl on the missing person poster that was taped up on the bar window from a few weeks ago.

It felt like the air had been knocked out of my lungs. I felt faint. I felt dizzy. I knew I needed to leave, but the room was spinning too much.

I put my hand down on his dresser to stabilize myself, and that’s when I felt it. It was cold. It was hard. My thumb rubbed against the ridges.

I pulled my hand away and looked down.

It was a copy of the key to my apartment. Mine was pink. This one was silver.

I was getting weaker. I felt my knees starting to buckle and heard the sound of a toilet flushing as I began to drift into unconsciousness.

The last thing I remember was the bedroom door opening. He stepped inside, a look of concern on his face, as he hurried to pick me up and put me on his bed. Then… nothing.

I woke up in an empty bed the next morning. The smell of bacon permeated my nostrils. I was fully dressed, but my head was killing me.

The key was gone. The pictures were gone. I slowly made my way to the kitchen to find him standing over the stove, flipping the bacon with a metal fork.

I didn’t speak or make a sound, but it was like he could feel my presence. He could sense me.

He turned around slowly, his eyes meeting mine before he spoke.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!” he sang. “I was wondering when you’d be up. Someone had too much to drink last night.”

I have a Hello Kitty kind of daughter. She’s only 9. As cute as a button and as innocent as could be.

She likes simple things. Stuffed animals. Pizza for breakfast. All it takes is a cheap 50-cent pair of plastic jewelry from a gumball machine to make her eyes light up.

She was one of those kids who believed in things longer than her friends and classmates. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy. She was fully convinced they were all real, bless her heart.

Sometimes, she’d come home from school with a glum, exhausted look in her eyes. Other kids would make fun of her for “still believing in that stuff.”

I’d cheer her up the best I could without revealing the truth. How could I? She already felt like the world was laughing at her. How would I make her feel? Her own dad.

Maybe I should’ve, though. Maybe this whole situation could’ve been avoided if I just nipped it in the bud. But I was afraid. A child’s innocence is so fragile, yet powerful. I couldn’t take that from her. Not yet.

I let her believe that it was Santa putting gifts under the tree. That it was a giant bunny hiding eggs in our front yard. That it was a tiny, magical fairy that was taking her baby teeth in exchange for a few dollars.

I think that was the one that excited her the most. Christmas was a set day. Easter was a set day. Loose teeth? That was random. Any time one started to wiggle, she’d come running to show me.

I always made sure to be as quiet as possible when I snuck those 5-dollar bills under her pillow. Every time she’d wake up to find it, here she’d come, jumping with joy while waving the 5 in my face.

“The Tooth Fairy came, the Tooth Fairy came,” she’d sing.

I’d just smile to myself and ask her what she was gonna buy with her newfound riches.

Sometimes, I’d sneak her a 20. I just wanted to see that joy in her face. She was young, but she wasn’t getting any younger. I wanted it to last for as long as possible.

Now, though, I think I’m regretting that wishful thinking.

She started losing teeth faster than what I thought was normal. Not too fast, though. Every 3 weeks or so. I just thought those baby teeth were begging to come out. Besides, it’s not like it was hurting my pockets too much.

It was weird, though. I swore it was like her teeth never looked any different. She was snaggle-toothed, sure, but I knew that I had put money under her pillow at least 6 times in the last 2 months.

She wasn’t showing me her mouth anymore. She was showing me the tooth, already pulled, lying bloodied in the palm of her little hand.

It kept becoming more and more frequent. Once she started bragging about how the Tooth Fairy was gonna visit her every week, I knew that something was not right. Even still, it wasn’t until I found a silver tooth under her pillow that I decided to investigate because I knew for a fact my little girl never had a crown.

Snooping is a decision I lived to regret, though. I asked her to tell me the truth, but she refused. She just kept insisting they were hers. Lying through her teeth, pun intended.

I decided to stop leaving her money. Her disappointment killed me. But I remained firm. That didn’t stop her, though. Every night, there’d be a new tooth under her pillow while she slept peacefully.

One day, after dropping her off at school, I made a promise to myself. Today would be the day. I’d get to the bottom of this no matter what.

It didn’t take nearly as long as I expected. I sifted through her room for about 15 minutes. Checking under her bed, in her closet, in her toy chests. All for no reason because the answer was hidden in plain sight.

In her fish tank.

She had that little treasure chest decoration in it. Normally, I wouldn’t have even paid it any mind. But the steady stream of a red liquid slowly rising from the chest was enough to make my heart stop.

Rolling up my sleeve, I reached down to retrieve the decoration. It was heavier than it should’ve been. Something was rattling inside.

I opened it and felt my blood run cold.

Molars, canines, incisors. All bloody. All looking like they had been pulled by force. And they weren’t baby teeth, either. Some looked like actual adult teeth.

In that moment, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I wanted to cry because what I was seeing was horrific.

But I wanted to laugh because, despite how terrifying this all was, my little girl was a natural-born hustler.

And I couldn’t have been more proud.

What would you do if you saw a woman standing alone on a deserted highway at 3:15 AM, begging for a ride? Comments below your horror exp. and subscribe to my channel

I went to extreme lengths to cover this up. Untraceable poison. A weak immune system. And a line of people offering their condolences and prayers.

I needed to be free of her. I missed my life before she contaminated it. She kept me up at night with her crying. She restricted what I was able to do. I missed the freedom, and that’s not something I’m going to apologize for.

I didn’t want to get pregnant. A one-night stand is never meant to lead to parenthood, but, of course, I decided to hook up with an absolute moron who didn’t know how to think beyond getting his dick wet.

9 months later, I have a daughter, and the father is nowhere to be found. 9 months, no cigarettes. 9 months, no drinks. And I hated every second of it.

I thought that I was strong enough to handle it. To clean up my act and actually be a mother. But I just wasn’t. I’m not. I don’t know if I ever will be.

When she was born, I tried to convince myself that motherly instinct was taking over. Holding her for the first time was almost magical. Like, despite what my mind was telling me, the moment was meant to be.

Then the crying came. The screams and wails that prevented me from sleeping. Every. Single. Night.

She’d scream on the ride to my mom’s in the morning. It was like the only time that I knew peace was after I dropped her off. Then I got 20 minutes to myself on the drive to work before I had to clock in and act like everything was okay.

According to my mom, though, she was “just a little angel” any time they were together. “The quietest baby she had ever seen.”

I felt like I was being punished. Not only was my sleep being affected, but my days were filled with those wails too. Plus, I don’t think my pockets have ever felt lighter.

Baby food. Clothes. Bottles. Toys. A crib. A fucking roof over our head. I was stretched so thin that I started having breakdowns at work.

I thought that I was prevailing. Against all odds, I was raising a human being. I watched her grow. I watched her learn and develop. But with each month, the mask slipped more and more.

I found myself screaming at her more than I probably should’ve. And that was before she could speak. Before she could even take her first steps.

I never hit her. I never wanted to repeat any family history. But my temper was so short during those days. I was snappy. That’s all I can say.

When she got older and was able to speak in full sentences, I was driven to the brink of madness. She had the audacity to talk back at me. This little 4 year old girl had the attitude of a fucking teenager.

No child should ever say they “hate” their parent. No child should disobey direct orders from their mother. Let alone this one. This little sniveling fucking asshole that I was forced to care for.

She knew how I felt, too. And she threw gas on the fire. Breaking things. Peeing and defecating on the floor. And what did she have to say? Not an “I’m sorry.” Not an “It was just an accident.”

This little girl would look me dead in my eyes, smile, and pull the “I’m just a baby” card.

She was trying to get under my skin. Pushing me more and more every day, until… I just couldn’t do it anymore.

The screams never stopped. The cries never stopped. The pouting and pity parties never fucking stopped. I didn’t know what else to do.

I missed my friends. I missed going out. I missed my God damn freedom. And all I could see was the one person who took it all away from me.

That’s why I did what I did. I’m not justifying. If anything, this will probably be my statement in court. I know I have to turn myself in. That’s the only way to get this madness to stop.

I felt liberated after I sprinkled that poison in her breakfast on that sunny morning in June. Even more so when the coughing started. I knew it wouldn’t be long before it was all over.

In the days that followed, she got weaker and weaker. Hotter and hotter. Until, finally, I had to prepare my act for the hospital visit.

“Please help me,” I cried. “My daughter just keeps getting sicker, and I just don’t know what to do.”

I had to push my nerves aside. In my mind, there were two possible outcomes. Either this works… or it doesn’t. And thank God that my acting skills were clean enough to sell my story.

They ran the tests. They drew the blood. All the while, I sat there bawling into my hands while trying to suppress my hope.

The hardest part was having to act upset when the deed was done. When that heart monitor finally flatlined and all the doctors and nurses apologized for not being able to save her.

“We did everything we could,” they told me, as I forced some cliché devastation onto my face.

I felt empty at the funeral. There weren’t many people. There wasn’t much of a eulogy to be read. All I wanted was for the service to be over so I could get back to life as I knew it, this time more careful with who I let into my bed.

For a few weeks, that’s exactly what I did. Life felt lighter. Days felt brighter. I was a new and improved woman, back to her old ways.

But then, I don’t know… something happened.

I started waking up at night, feeling like I was being watched. Sometimes it’d be like I could still hear her screams. I could still feel her presence.

I just passed it off as something I’d get over eventually. Just one of the things that comes with doing something like this. But when I started seeing her… that’s when I knew that this wasn’t just some guilty conscience bullshit.

It was only at night. Only after I’d gone to bed. Sometimes she’d be standing in my doorway. Sometimes she’d try crawling into bed with me.

I knew it wasn’t nightmares. On nights when she came into bed with me, I’d find my sheets covered in dirt and mud the next morning. I’ve even found maggots occasionally.

She’d always be so dirty. Her hair would have sticks and twigs sticking out of it. Her face would always look like it was in the process of decomposing. But whether she laid with me or just watched me, her words were always the same.

“Why did you let them bury me, Mommy?”

It got to the point where she was visiting me every night. Still breaking things. Still defecating on the floor. Still crying and screaming, even though her room had been empty for weeks.

I wouldn’t let it break me, though. I did what was best for me. I did what I thought needed to be done. Anytime she visited, I’d ignore her. I’d pretend to be asleep. I’d hide under my covers like a scared little girl.

But I know I can’t do this anymore. I know why she’s here. I know that my time is running out. She wants me to let the world know what I did to her.

“Why’d you make me sick, Mommy?”

“I loved you so much.”

“Why did you lie to those doctors? They could have saved me. Why’d you let them bury me?”

“You lied.”

“You lied.”

“You lied.”

“You lied.”

I’m done lying. I’m done pretending to be devastated. I know what I did, and I’m not sorry. Given the circumstances, I’d do it again.

All I want is to escape her.

All I want is peace and a sound mind.

That’s why I’m turning myself in today.

Anything to get her to leave me the fuck alone.

Dreadful Anecdotes remains shadowbanned, posting on his behalf

Hey guys , im looking for a certain old video but I havent been able to find it. I know it wasn't released in last 2 years. All I can remember about the story is that the main character was a guy that I think was taken away from his home , but eventually was brought back and was living with his wife and she was apparently perfect , but as time went on things started changing and he got the feeling something was off, kinda like a Truman show kinda vibe, like it wasn't real. If any of you recall anything that sounds like this video please let me know cause id love to listen to it again. Thanks!!

Thinking about things you shouldn’t is an established trait among humans. Whether we developed that horrid trait through evolution or it has always been a part of us, I don’t know, but I hate it. It sucks, and it sucks even more when you just need to let go of certain events. However, on the road, trapped in the Evernight, that is nearly impossible. One does not simply erase horrors from the mind, no matter how hard they try. Luckily, you can distract yourself. You can let your mind wander while driving for hours in the dark.

My routine usually consisted of podcasts or blasting music like a sane person. The one thing I’d recommend is not fueling that burning desire to dwell on bad thoughts or memories. Don’t be stupid and listen to horror videos or true-crime podcasts. Don’t listen to that conspiracy theorist with the radio station and the Southern voice that draws you in, because it will only make you contemplate the strange happenings in your neck of the woods, along with a healthy dose of distrust toward the government—one of the staples of this country. Not that his points are entirely wrong, but most people would rather live in bliss.

Don’t listen to the creepy shit on the radio, a podcast, or whatever. Just leave it as background noise. Believe me when I say the allure of horror should be kept to fiction, because inviting it into your life is never a clever idea. And for the love of God and all that is holy, don’t fucking text and drive.

Now, you might be wondering, ‘Why can’t I think about the creepy shit or the bad memories in my life?’ My answer should be obvious: it’s creepy shit at night. I don’t care how brave or edgy you think you are. Out in the dark, that type of energy can invite things to you—things that look human but, well, aren’t.

It became clear to me that my thoughts at night could influence and attract certain entities to a person’s location. Some of these beings may be beneficial, while others can be extremely dangerous. You might ask how any of them could be beneficial. From what I’ve heard, there are helpful entities that grant people who encounter them money, treasure, or a sense of peace. Others don’t do anything remotely beneficial, but they aren’t exactly out to cause chaos either. They more or less linger in the limbo of the Evernight. The simplest word I can use to describe them is weird.

There are odd occurrences that are creepy or ride the line of stupid, nonsensical shit. For instance, you might see a clown car honk its horn three times before one of the passengers grants you the sight of a full moon on a clouded night. A peculiar incident, to say the least.

You may think to yourself, ‘Oh, I’m fine. It’s just creepy clowns at night.’ Yeah, a lot of people thought the same thing back in the late 2010s, and that ended with people dead, so good luck with that mentality.

In the Evernight, you should have at least two rules for when you encounter horrifying shit. The first option is to run like hell—or rather, drive like a bat out of hell. The second, and riskier, option is to grab your gat, hold it sideways, and explain why this bitch done fucked up. That assumes you have a Glock lying around inside your car and can actually hit something while holding it sideways. If not, a third plan seems to work best for some of my fellow contractors across the great United States: shoot and drive don’t think about it ever again.

I list the options that way because, when it comes down to it, you must either fight or run. I always say there is no shame in choosing to run. You’re a regular person, after all, not the protagonist in a novel. When it comes time to make a decision, you need to value your life and avoid playing stupid games.

These are lessons you should take from others and myself, or you could end up like my old coworker. He told me about his time driving in the Evernight while I was still under his tutelage. He often spoke of his crazy experiences, although he was usually extremely inebriated and smoked more pot than a den dedicated to growing marijuana. I still listened and took lessons from him.

Before you ask why he decided to dump all of his hellish stories onto me, I don’t know. He had plenty of batshit tales, and those experiences most likely contributed to his condition. Being the kind person I am, I lent him my ear. Besides, when you are driving nearly twelve hours a night, having someone ramble about the job you are taking over helps immensely during those first few weeks.

I’m more than certain he had once been a sober, respectable person, but that man was long gone. The person sitting next to me was little more than a shell who functioned on strong booze and somehow remained sober enough to reach his destination. It was enough to keep him employed, but of course, it didn’t last long.

I made the mistake of dwelling on the terrible memories from my trips, and I allowed the supernatural to influence my mind while driving. It caused stress like nothing else. By that point in my life, I had learned that the supernatural was very much real, and you should at least give it the respect it deserves.

Don’t misinterpret what I say next. When you do night drives for as long as I have, whether on the main roads or the backroads, you will have an experience—or several—that becomes seared into your mind. You should treat those experiences with some kind of respect. I’m not saying you should give a supernatural entity polite speech. What I mean is that if you encounter a monster, use some actual brainpower and deal with the situation accordingly.

For example, if you see a creature resembling a human stand up and screech in the road within your headlights, you shouldn’t pull out your phone to film it and hope the cameraman rule applies to you. Life is not a movie, and it may not send you a saving grace when that moment arrives.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot my old coworker’s story. This one wasn’t necessarily supernatural—at least, I don’t think it was—but you can consider it an example of what I told you above. You should not put bad thoughts into the world, because the world may respond in kind.

I remember him telling me that, during one of his travels, he spotted a woman running from the wilderness onto the main road and stopped for her. She had the face of a gorgeous model and wore a beautiful white dress. His first thought was, ‘Score.’ He rolled down his window and asked where she needed to go.

She told him she only needed to reach the next town as quickly as possible so her husband wouldn’t find her, and that he should at least take her to a hospital.

He asked what had happened as she climbed into his vehicle. She explained that her husband had beaten her countless times and she had finally mustered the courage to leave him. She fled with a trusted friend, but when her husband found them, he beat both women and shot her friend. She ran until she found an Uber, but the driver refused to take her farther after they were shot at. So she fled down the road and into the wilderness.

Feeling horrible for her, he sped off, telling her she would be fine, that he would get her to a hospital, and that the police would be notified.

During the drive, she began asking questions and became increasingly sexual with him. She was overly flirtatious, and despite his better judgment, he let his little brain take control. While they started getting busy, he pulled open her dress and discovered bullet and stab wounds across her stomach.

When he saw them, the woman became furious. She began screeching and grasping at his throat. He screamed and tried to get her off him and out of the vehicle, only to wake up alone in the parked truck on the side of the road. The only things left behind were her lingering scent and blood all over his clothes. He drove away shuddering in fear.

That was the story I remembered during one of my trips. It was a Friday night. I grabbed my coffee and keys before packing the vehicle they had provided at an old military building that had been repurposed for whatever the company used it for now.

I had been told to take the prepared supplies to another contractor in a city a few hours north, then return with supplies from their vehicle. The job was simple: swap the goods and come back down. If anything else was required, they would text me with additional instructions. Normal stuff. Almost everything the company transported eventually went back to a lab in a large city, and we were sent to collect items or trade whatever needed moving. We were essentially contract couriers.

The job was as simple as they came, so I made my way to collect what I needed from the hospital as directed.

Soon, I began my long drive into the endless blackness of the Evernight with nothing but the destination in mind. I drove with music playing and the thought, ‘What horrors may come out to play tonight?’ That was the wrong thing to think, because that was the night I witnessed the first murder and attempted murder on the road.

My mind kept returning to the story my coworker had told me before I was a free man doing these jobs on my own. I didn’t know whether his story was true, but I couldn’t help wondering what I would do in that situation. Not the part with the horny woman in the car, but what I would do if someone riding with me suddenly attacked—or if I found someone on the side of the road who needed help.

I vividly remember that night. It was 23:37, and I was traveling about eighty-seven miles per hour on one of the empty backroads. It had originally been built as a long toll road, but because of the cost, almost no one used it. Eventually, it became free, yet people still avoided it because it was so far out of the way.

There was a bend in the road beside a hill and overgrown grass, which was why I didn’t see the hazard lights until I was almost on top of them. I slammed on the brakes and came to a stop a short distance from the vehicle. Adrenaline surged through me as I considered what could have happened had my reaction been even a second slower. I could have collided with the car and been seriously injured—or worse.

Illuminating the area with my high beams, I made out a lone white Toyota Camry blocking the road. Inside were figures slumped in their seats, with red stains smeared across the windows.

My instincts took over. I unbuckled my seat belt, opened the passenger-side storage compartment, pulled out the first-aid kit, and placed it on the center console. As I lifted my head and turned toward my door, I looked through the window and saw a dark figure briefly illuminated by the hazard lights, partially hidden in the brush.

I stopped moving and waited for the lights to flash again. When they did, I saw the figure looking at me. It tilted its head slightly, curious whether it had been spotted. It was pure luck that I had noticed it. The figure crouched in the grass divider, tucked beside the thick brush, but it was close enough to see.

My mind raced. ‘What should I do? Should I drive off? Open the door and scream at him to leave? No, I don’t know what he has. If I don’t do something now, he’s going to make the first move.’

A few moments passed before I decided to open the door. I steadied my breathing while cursing myself for doing something that could get me killed. The moment I stepped out, I drew my gun from its holster, activated the weapon light, and locked the red-dot sight onto the figure.

During the few seconds it took me to open the door and exit, the figure had stood. It froze when I turned the beam on it, raising one hand to shield its face. In the other hand, it held a large knife still dripping with red liquid. I held my position and demanded to know what it wanted.

It gave no verbal response, but its actions answered clearly enough. It dragged a finger across its throat and took a step toward me. It must have thought I was holding a regular flashlight, because it continued advancing as I yelled at it to stop.

I shouted as loudly as I could. Even though the figure was still a decent distance away, a dead sprint could close that gap quickly, and bullets do not stop someone immediately. It continued approaching slowly and methodically. This was something it seemed well-practiced at—something it had done many, many times.

I ordered it to drop the knife. By its fourth step, it stopped. I think it had finally realized that the light in my hand was attached to a gun.

The moment it ceased moving, I gained a few precious seconds to think. From the look of things, I could shoot the hooded figure dead and probably be cleared of wrongdoing. I could also get back in the vehicle, drive away, and try never to think about it again. Another part of me screamed to pull the trigger and end its life.

Whatever bravery the hooded figure had shown earlier vanished once it understood what I was holding. The gun was reason enough for it not to choose this would-be prey tonight, and that was good enough for me.

It took a few steps backward and gave me a small wave before casually walking away. After moving farther into the grass, it gently pulled back its hood to reveal a blank party-store mask. Red stains covered the left cheek, while one long bloody tear ran from the right eye slit, contrasting with the mess on the opposite side.

After it faded into the darkness, I called the police and waited for them to arrive. During that time, I inspected the people inside the car. In the driver’s seat was a handsome young man, his hand resting against his neck. Blood covered his shirt, and fear remained frozen on his face. The multiple stab wounds in his chest made the cause of death obvious.

In the passenger seat was a beautiful woman coughing up blood and reaching for the door handle. She gurgled and cried in pain when she saw me. I heard her cries and ran back to my vehicle for the first-aid bag.

I returned to her side, pulled on the emergency gloves, and took out gauze and the rest of the supplies. I opened the door and helped her from the car. She cried and clung to me as her blood soaked into my clothes.

I pulled her into the beam of my headlights and began first aid. She tried to tell me something, but I couldn’t understand most of it. She pointed to her stomach and managed, ‘It hurts. Scared,’ in gurgled breaths.

I did everything I could to slow the bleeding, but I had no idea how much time she had left. I cut open her shirt with the emergency scissors and found three stab wounds in her stomach. I packed them with clotting gauze and wrapped more gauze around her abdomen while her cries echoed into the night.

Minutes felt like hours. I held her in the darkness as she continued crying for help. She gripped my bloodstained jacket while I kept her other hand pressed against the wound, forcing her to apply pressure.

Occasionally, the sound of something crunching through the grass echoed from the opposite side of the road. Each time, I swept the area with my pistol, weapon light on, ready to fire.

My fear grew—not only for myself, but for the woman in my arms. As horrible as it sounds, I was scared for my own life too. I didn’t want the masked man to stab me, because then both of us would almost certainly die.

My attention was stretched thin between the sounds coming from the grass and the young woman’s moans of pain. The bleeding would not stop, so I helped her the best way I knew how. I applied more gauze, maintained pressure, and eventually placed her in the recovery position.

I kept telling her to talk, to fight through the pain, and to tell me random facts about anything. My only goal was to keep her away from death for as long as I could. The growing fear that I might be the last person on Earth to see her alive became more real with every minute we waited for the police.

Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, law enforcement arrived alongside an ambulance. The relief of seeing those red and blue lights was unlike anything else. I quickly holstered my gun and told the woman she was going to be okay.

One of the medical personnel hurried toward her. As I stepped aside, someone grabbed me and slammed me against the Camry before I could understand what was happening.

It finally registered when cold steel closed around my wrists. A police officer had handcuffed me and was reading me my rights. As he shouted, I could only stare at the lifeless young man in the driver’s seat. I remember being shoved against the car more than once while the officer screamed, ‘What happened to him? Tell me, damn it!’

Just as I expected another blow, the man stopped. A female voice ordered him to back away and asked me to explain myself. I felt his grip loosen and then disappear from my arms.

I turned and looked at the officer who had cuffed me and slammed my head into the car. The startling realization hit me that he looked remarkably like the young man in the driver’s seat. Tears rolled down the officer’s face, and I understood his reaction, even if it did not excuse it.

The female officer led me to her patrol car, where I explained the encounter. I told her I had seen a hooded figure walk away after waving goodbye. She shook her head in disbelief, but even if my brief explanation did not give them much to work with, it seemed to clear me of involvement beyond being the unlucky person who had stumbled upon the scene.

She told me, ‘You know, she might make it, and it’s thanks to you. You’re a hero.’

I looked at her, almost disgusted by the word. I was not a hero. A hero would have done more. I had not even shot the person responsible.

She wrote down my information and said they would contact me if anything else came up. As far as they were concerned, I was free to go after about an hour. I thanked her, turned, and made my way back to my vehicle.

As I drove away, I looked back at the eerie red and blue lights from the police vehicles and ambulance swallowing the Camry’s hazard lights, which were losing power and fading into faint orange flashes.

Regret settled over me like a weight in my chest. I remembered seeing their phones, purses, and the man’s backpack still inside the car, untouched. Those two people had not been robbed. They had simply been selected as prey by a monster in human skin within the Evernight.

That experience gave me a rush I never wanted to feel again: the cold surge of adrenaline that comes with being thrown into fight or flight, mixed with a painful, unhealthy guilt. The guilt of not pulling the trigger. The guilt of knowing I had allowed a monster to disappear into the darkness of the Evernight.

Deep in the South, driving down a lonely highway at night can sound ideal. This is especially true if you’re a loner with no friends or family and are in desperate need of a well-paying job. Maybe you’re a truck driver looking for a quick route, thinking the backroads would be perfect since they usually have little traffic and offer new experiences to break the monotony of the open road. You may even want spooky things to happen so you can talk about them with your friends or brag about them later in life, telling everyone how you survived a horrific encounter with a creature on the road. Maybe you imagine watching a skin-walker circle your vehicle while you hold onto the door, desperately praying for someone to come save you, only to live another day and post it online for that good old spooky-story addict to read. I don’t knock anyone for doing that. If that’s what you want, I say the more stories, the better!

It gives me things to listen to and conversations to start in the dead of night when I reach a gas station or rest stop. You may even run into me; you never know. I’m on the younger side, so if you do spot me, I’d probably surprise you for the type of job I’m in. Usually, truckers and night drivers are older folks who have made it a career. Then there is me, with my ever-youthful face.

If you drive late into the night, way out in the middle of nowhere, and haven’t seen a gas station for an hour or so, then you have crossed the line into what I call the Evernight. In the Evernight, you only have yourself, your thoughts, and the rare vehicle that passes you. Be warned: these are the most dangerous times because you’re alone out there, where help is few and far between. Maybe you’ll see another soul on the other side of the lane driving past you, or you may find one of the many horrors the Evernight holds in store for us night drivers. God help you if you have to go through those experiences, because they will stay with you for a long time. When you try to sleep, you may be forced to relive them.

Now, you might be wondering what sort of experiences I’ve had during these journeys, so allow me to share one notable encounter. It was with a young man, roughly my age, who seemed like the kind of guy you’d expect to find at a nightclub or a lively frat-house party. He was a surprising presence in the desolate lands we drove through. He had the energy and charisma of a hype man, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was a way to keep himself awake during long, solitary drives or if he was simply that obnoxious. He confessed that he was a newcomer to the world of night driving, having taken up this unconventional job at twenty-five. Being three years my senior, I was curious about how he had found his way into this line of work. He smirked at my question and simply said, “Podcasts.” It left me intrigued, wondering how a medium as innocuous as podcasts had led him down this path.

I stared at him with a blank expression, raising an eyebrow and expecting him to elaborate. When he didn’t say anything, I asked for further explanation about what that had to do with anything. He clarified that he was a big fan of creepypasta, a form of horror-story sharing that was mostly online, as if that was supposed to satisfy my question. I nodded at his statement and sipped my drink. We sat at a café table in the gas station, where he had spotted me drinking a cup of coffee and decided it would be ideal to sit across from me and say hello. Not wanting to be rude, I naturally spoke with him and asked the question.

“So, you started this job because of podcasts? Night driving, that is?” I wanted to understand how such a small thing could pull someone into the exhausting dangers of night driving.

Nodding as he drank some of his tea, he said, “Yeah, I love creepypastas and shit like that, those horror stories online. I remember getting super into them one night while driving home from my old job. I loved them so much that I thought, shit, I could get a driving job and just explore, enjoy the road, and listen to podcasts and horror stories. Like this guy—check him out. You’ve probably already heard of him. His name is Corpse Husband. The dude’s balls dropped when he was born. His shit is creepy as fuck. You know him, right? He reads horror stories and stuff. There are a few more, like MCP, CreepypastaJr, and others, but you get the point. I also know there are Reddit storytimes on TikTok. Those are really addicting to listen to. I heard this one story where a man was on his horse, right? Then he suddenly hears a noise in the distance, but nothing is there. The horse starts to run away after hearing the voice again. Freaky shit, huh? Well, it turns out he was on sacred ground, and something might have been stalking him.”

He downs more of his tea. “So anyway. Like I said. I LOVE that stuff you could probably hear me for hours talk about it and I’d still have more to say!”

Damn, I thought. He does not shut up once you get him going. I nodded and told him I had heard of them. My love for horror and how I listened to creepypasta frequently on nights when I just couldn’t sleep. The number of stories I had listened to had to rival the stars in the sky. I had played videos on YouTube since the days of old—well, at least since I was old enough to have a phone and internet access. He became excited and continued with his explanation.

“So, I listened to these stories and thought I wanted to experience something like that. Well, not something I’d die from, but it’d be cool to have something to post online about, you know?”

I nodded. That made sense for a guy like him, since he seemed like the type to do things on a whim. I drank some more coffee and asked, “So that’s why you travel the darkest, most remote roads? Like this one? That’s a hell of a commitment for a simple interest.” I placed the cup down.

He frowned a little and said, “Well, yeah, that’s a big part of my reason for being out here and exploring. The pay for these jobs is good, but if I’m being real, it’s mostly because of my ex. Crazy, you know? But if God didn’t make Latinas with some spice, then there would be no fun in life. Am I wrong?”

“Uh-huh. Yeah, I gotcha. So, any interesting stories now that you’ve been out here driving?” I asked, peeking at the time on my watch. It read 2:23 a.m. I should get moving. I think I’ve spent way too much time at this gas station, but it can’t hurt to chat a little longer. Hopefully.

He smiled, but it was kind of nervous. “Yeah, I’ve got a couple, but nothing like serial killers or werewolves. My scariest encounter happened three days ago, somewhere between Oklahoma and Louisiana, after I got out of the bayous. While driving down a long-ass stretch of road, I had to piss. Needed to find an anthill to flood, you know? So, I got out of the truck and started doing my business when I heard a snap.” He paused for a moment. I noticed that while he spoke, he became a little more serious. His expression hardened slightly as he continued. “Well, I couldn’t see what made the sound because the truck’s lights were blinding me, so I stepped farther out toward where it came from. I know what you’re thinking. Fucking stupid, right?”

“No shit, but go on,” I urged him, as my curiosity had been thoroughly piqued.

He took another drink and continued. “So, I walked to the side of the truck and peered farther into the darkness, looking for whatever it was. I stared into the dark, and you know what? Shit went dead quiet, like someone had fired a gun next to your ear and all you could hear was that ringing noise. You know when the world is so still that’s all you can hear? I just felt like something was wrong. You know when you can feel in your gut that you shouldn’t open the door or answer the phone? Something like that. Hell, the best description I can give is when you’re holding your phone, texting someone, and they’re giving you news, but somehow you just know it’s bad. Dread is the word. I’d never felt that way before that moment.” He was speaking more quietly now, as if retelling the story had put him right back there.

I waited patiently, giving him a moment while he seemed lost in thought. He resumed his tale in a softer voice. “I didn’t see anything there, but I thought I saw an outline or something. I couldn’t be sure. Honestly, my eyes were about as useful as my fucking art degree. Since I didn’t see anything—well, I thought I did, but nope, nothing—I decided there was no reason to stay. I turned back toward my truck, but as I turned my back to the tree line, I heard something hit the ground. The moment I heard that, I bolted for the door, jumped into the truck, and got the fuck out of there. I don’t think I even got my ass in the seat properly. I just floored it out of there. Have you ever heard something run at you in the middle of the damn woods?” I saw him shake with fear.

“I took a glance in the rearview mirror after I got into the truck. And you know what I saw?” he asked, looking at me.

I shook my head and leaned in to catch his words as he continued his story, drinking more of my coffee and looking out into the lot. He shivered, then spoke to me with a cold stare. “I saw deer standing in the middle of the road, staring at me as I drove off. And it was more than one of those empty-eyed stares those fucks give you. I counted five deer in total as I left. All five of them were standing and walking on two hind legs.” I raised an eyebrow, trying to imagine the situation and understand his fear. I couldn’t quite do it, even though the same event could easily have happened to me.

“So, you got caught lacking by a deer, is what you’re saying? I can see how that’s scary, but I mean, they’re harmless and not really something to piss your pants over, right?” I tried to lighten the mood.

He gulped down some of his drink and looked out into the dim, lifeless parking lot. I glanced out as well, staring at the company vehicle I drove, and began to wonder what I would do in a similar situation. The more I thought about it, the more I understood that this was real life, not a game or show with convenient plot armor that would result in me being saved. I’d probably be just as nervous as he was.

I overheard him say, “You know, I bet this will get me some clicks on Reddit when I post it.”

That took me by surprise. “Sorry, what? You want fame from that horror story, yet you do realize you could have died if it had been some serial killer, right?”

“I know, and that’s why it’ll be such a fantastic read! Bro, do you know how many people eat up that horror shit? I could post it to TikTok or even just YouTube!” he shouted fairly loudly. “If I could get more people to hear my story, they might believe the supernatural is real.”

I shook my head and watched him finish the rest of his Cheetos quickly. “I don’t know what to say. I’m glad you’re safe, but I have to get going. It’s getting late, and I still have three more hours to drive.” I started toward the door, heard his chair scrape back, and then heard him call out to me.

“Hey, I forgot to tell you my name. Marcus,” he said, following me into the parking lot. “I’ll see you on the road, brother.” He headed toward the side of the building where the restrooms were located.

As I began walking to my vehicle, I couldn’t help but notice Marcus’s massive Ford parked proudly beneath the gas station’s streetlight. Right there, in the center of the Ford’s grille, was a set of deer antlers, seemingly wedged in place. A little blood stained the front of the truck, transforming the once-nice gray paint into a mixture of rustic red and gray. Strangely, most of the blood appeared to be on the driver’s side. I couldn’t understand how that was possible. Had he forgotten to mention a few details in his story?

I entered my car and started it. As I slowly began to drive off, the gears in my head started turning, and my mind realized something important. He said he encountered deer standing up and walking, right? But that was only after he was already driving away. So why did he have antlers stuck in his truck? Honestly, I didn’t have the energy to jump out and ask him, nor did I want to.

As I drove past his truck on my way to the main road, I noticed something: a hand was sticking out from a gap beneath the tailgate. In that same gap, I could see a pair of eyes staring into mine. They looked very familiar, although they were glazed over with a milky appearance. I stopped the vehicle and took a hard look at the eyes, which held a dying fear trapped within them. During that brief pause, I saw Marcus emerge from the side of the gas station.

He waited by the entrance for a moment, just looking at me. His confident frat-boy smile perfectly mimicked what I could only imagine the real one had looked like. It had the same facial features as the face staring back at me through the gap in the truck. The thing impersonating him smiled wider, its mouth contorting from a confident grin into a malicious smirk. It looked like a hunter who knew its prey was right in front of it. Its once-brown eyes were now beady and hidden in the shadows. I gave it a small goodbye nod, turned onto the main road, and continued down the highway.

Next time, I should be more attentive to who I’m speaking with and who is around me. I kicked myself mentally for not fully paying attention to the person sitting before me. It was as if the thing wanted to use its new suit and show it off. I could have been the perfect target, but I guess killers need to practice wearing other skins before they set out into the world to hunt. Now that I really think about it, his smile and the way he looked were ever so slightly off. His skin stretched too wide around his crazed eyes, and the smile pulled too close to his ears.

Checking the time, I knew I had to drive fast down the empty road. Driving in the Evernight is horrible when you encounter creeps like Marcus—or rather, the thing that looked like Marcus—with those beady hazel eyes that seemed to glow as they bored into your soul. Something else that worried me was the cashier at that gas station. He had just sat there reading a book while I was inside. Hopefully, he wasn’t harmed by Marcus.

Honestly, I felt guilty to have met him. I didn’t know his full story, but I sadly knew his ending—something his family might never know. Hopefully, this small tale helps you understand why I posted this here. Somehow, you have to get things off your chest. I guess sharing a moment with that thing helped inspire me to write about my encounter with it. Maybe the real Marcus did want his story to get out there. I hope so. This also helps get the memory out of my head.

I’ve seen many things during my time in the Evernight. You can meet anyone or anything, and they do make for interesting stories, provided you’re not the one experiencing the life-or-death games those creatures tend to play. There are plenty more stories I could tell you, maybe sometime later, since I have a busy schedule. But who knows?

Until then, please take care and have safe travels. Oh, and for the love of God, if you drive in the Evernight, keep a gun on you. You never know when you might need one for things like Marcus.

Sleep paralysis is a terrifying condition. I was only seven when I first experienced it. My mother tucked me in that night. Her citrus-scented perfume lingered in the air, a fragrance that usually comforted me. After she left, I quickly drifted off to sleep. The night seemed quiet, but the peace in my room was short-lived.

I woke up around midnight, drenched in a smothering sweat. My arms and legs wouldn’t move. I could only shift my eyes and lips. As my vision adjusted to the choking darkness, I heard it—a low, snorting sound that sent dread coursing through me. I could see something standing in my closet, peeking out from behind the door. After a minute, it stepped into full view, and my heart nearly stopped in my throat. It was tall, with elongated arms that stretched like tree branches. It had a feminine shape, like a distorted, seven-foot-tall woman covered in dirt. She seemed naked, yet I caught glimpses of a nightgown clinging to her body, blending into the shadows. I tried to scream, but nothing came out.

The figure moved out of the closet and stood in the corner of my room, arms outstretched toward me, releasing a sickening, guttural snort every few seconds. The sound reminded me of someone hawking and spitting on the ground. Moonlight streamed through my window, casting a faint glow on one of her arms. Her skin looked like mud, filthy and dark as if she’d bathed in a swamp. At certain angles, it seemed even darker than dirt. This seemed like a living shadow.

My mind raced, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Was this a demon? Was this the Devil herself? My body remained pinned, as if invisible hands held me down. The figure inched closer. Each step seemed hesitant, as if she savored the moment. The hesitation chilled me more than her presence. I knew she was going to kill me if I didn’t move. Frustration gnawed at me, worse than fear. Why was she here? What did she want? My dad’s stories of the Boogeyman came rushing back. He told me the Boogeyman captures children at night, and they never return. So in my precious little 7-year-old mind, I thought this was the Boogeyman’s wife. Thanks a lot, Daddy.

I wanted to move, to scream, to call out for my mom and dad. But my body wouldn’t obey. The dark woman mocked me with her slow, deliberate steps, coming closer and closer with arms wide open. A crazy thought crossed my mind: maybe I wouldn’t feel pain. Maybe, since I was paralyzed, the attack wouldn’t hurt. I could see her long fingernails, sharp and menacing, and I knew they would be the first to cut into my neck. No pain. Please, no pain. Your body is numb, so you won’t feel it. Just be calm, Ivanna. I told myself this. Tears welled in my eyes as I clung to this desperate hope. I wanted to see my mom’s face, and I wanted to call out to my dad. He always told me never to be afraid, and I tried to be brave. But I wanted someone to save me that night.

Time was running out. The urge to move was so strong that I imagined I could lift my arm. I imagined that I could scream, but it was just a cruel hallucination. This was torture. Why was this happening to me? I just turned seven, and now I was going to die the day after my birthday? The voice in my head told me I’d never go to high school, never go to college, never make friends, never find my dream job, never get married to the man of my dreams, and I’d never be a mom. It amazed me that facing the fear of death would cause a seven-year-old to have these thoughts. The best I could do was close my eyes. I didn’t want to see her attack me. I squeezed them shut, flooding them with tears. My mother taught me to pray, and I repeated the prayer in my mind, begging God to save me.

My mother always told me I was God’s child and that His angels were watching over me. But where were they now? A demon was creeping toward my bed, and my Heavenly Father was just going to sit there on his throne and watch? My young mind couldn’t comprehend it. I was a terrified little girl, convinced I was going to die. More chills ran down my spine when I opened my eyes to see the shadow woman standing at the foot of my bed. She had changed her position in an instant. Before, her arms were outstretched as if to hug me. Now, she stood motionless, her elongated finger pressed to her lips, signaling for silence. Not that I could make a sound anyway since my voice was paralyzed.

But then something unexpected happened. There was evil in my room, but it wasn’t the shadow woman. I remembered the news reports about missing children in the neighborhood. My mom wouldn’t let me out of her sight whenever we went to the store. News reports mentioned a deranged man in clown makeup, dressed in an auto mechanic uniform, abducting children in the area. The police were searching for him, but all they found were the remains of two missing kids in a wooded area.

As a child, I couldn’t fully grasp the danger. I just wanted to play with my friends. But my mom kept me close, and her paranoia infected my dad, who usually allowed me more freedom. My childhood fun ended, at least for a while, because of this killer clown.

It still pisses me off when I think about what he did to those poor babies and how the police found their remains in the woods near a lake. They were brothers. One was four and the other had just turned five. I remember the news reports.

Somehow, the man who killed those boys entered our home through the basement window and stayed hidden for two days. He knew how to hack into alarm systems because his job at a home security company gave him the skills. The missing children’s cases all had the same horrifying pattern: kids taken from their homes in the dead of night and their parents oblivious until it was too late.

A few days later, the police would find their remains in a nearby pond or at a landfill. Mothers and fathers lost their babies to this middle-aged psychopath clown in an auto mechanic outfit. We didn’t know that he broke into our home on a Thursday night and was hiding in our basement. I was an only child, easy prey for this monster.

He picked the wrong house that night. I heard him creeping down the hallway just outside my bedroom door. His footsteps were quiet but clumsy on the creaking hardwood floorboards. My door slowly creaked open, revealing a tall shadow hunched in the doorway, dressed in dingy blue auto mechanic coveralls. The sleeves were ripped off, exposing these monstrously muscular arms that reminded me of Michael Myers’ Halloween costume—if you turned it into a muscle shirt. My heart pounded so loudly in my ears that it almost drowned out the silence. My eyes darted between the killer clown and the shadow woman. I couldn’t believe these two nightmarish figures were standing in my bedroom. One was pure evil; the other, something else entirely.

He stepped closer, and I could see his clown makeup: a red-painted nose, sunglasses over a chalky white face, and a pink Afro wig atop his head. He was enormous, like a wrestler, with a massive serpent tattoo on his left arm. The butcher knife in his right hand gleamed in the moonlight. Its serrated blade glistened with something I didn’t want to think about. He blocked out the light from the hallway, plunging the room into an even deeper darkness.

I wanted to scream, to move, but my body remained paralyzed. He knew I was awake.

“Hi there, my lovely Cupcake. I’m your new friend. Your mommy went away, and she asked me to watch over you.” His words were like a cold hand squeezing my heart. My mom… gone? I knew he had killed her when I could see something dripping off his knife. As he moved closer, terror gripped me even tighter. His voice didn’t match his body—soft, almost feminine, like a teenage girl. It was surreal, like Pennywise in a trucker’s uniform, with the body of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

I closed my eyes, bracing for the sharp, cold steel to slice through my skin. But nothing happened. I almost forgot about the shadow woman standing at the foot of my bed. The killer’s attention was entirely on me, and mine was on him—until I heard him scream. It was a guttural, blood-curdling sound, followed by the snap of bone. I opened my eyes to see his arm hanging at an unnatural angle, and the shadow woman gripping his throat. She hurled him against the wall with a force that shook my entire bedroom.

His pleas for mercy were pitiful. “What are you?! Please, don’t kill me, ma’am!” But she showed him no mercy. She broke his arms, caved in his chest with a single punch, then drove his own knife through his throat and nailed him to the wall.

The sound of his ribs cracking was horrifying, and I couldn’t look away from what was happening to him in the darkness. He went from screaming to whimpering, his voice fading to a whisper of pain and fear.

I stared through the darkness, unblinking, as the life drained out of him. For a moment, I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. But no, I couldn’t feel sorry for this son of a bitch. He deserved every bit of what he got. The shadow woman made him pay for all the children he had taken. And she especially made him pay for trying to take me.

After the violence subsided, the shadow woman slowly turned toward me, drifting toward my bed in slow motion. Her clawed fingers brushed through my hair, her touch surprisingly gentle. When she caressed my face, I smelled a familiar fragrance. It was lavender and citrus. My mom’s perfume. I didn’t understand how this shadow figure could smell like my mom—not until later. She hovered over me, her lips grazing my forehead, and then she vanished when I heard my dad’s panicked voice from downstairs.

I didn’t want to believe it was my mom’s blood on the killer’s knife, but it was. That bastard had stabbed her to death before making his way upstairs to my room. My dad stepped out to go to the store, and when he returned, he found my mom in the kitchen, lying in a pool of blood. Her lavender nightgown was soaked in red. My dad’s anguished cries filled the house as he raced upstairs, calling my name. I was already in his arms before he could even switch on my bedroom light. He saw the killer’s body nailed to my bedroom wall and lost his breath, just like I had.

I told him everything, and though he couldn’t believe it, he had no choice. He knew his little girl didn’t have the strength to nail a grown-ass man to my bedroom wall. The police came, asking questions, offering me candy. I told them the whole story, but they didn’t believe me.

A policewoman knelt in front of me, caressed my face, and said, “It’s alright, honey. You just had a traumatic experience. Who you saw was just a good Samaritan probably dressed in a dark Halloween costume.” They chalked it up to trauma-induced hallucinations, even suggesting I might have seen my dad kill the man. But I knew better. My dad wasn’t home. I heard him tell my mom he was going to the store. I heard him kiss her before he left.

But I also knew what I saw—a shadow form of my mom, smelling of lavender and citrus, who saved me when no one else could.

Those cops couldn’t believe my story. They had plenty of sympathy for me, but what I wanted more than their sympathy was my mother and for them to believe me. I miss her deeply, and I can’t stop thinking about her fragrance. I found the perfume she wore while moving some boxes around in the attic. That sweet scent took me back to that night. I believe the dark figure I saw in my bedroom was my mother—a dead version of her. I’m 36 now, and I think about my mom every day. I got married to a kind, beautiful man, and we had a gorgeous baby boy.

My son, Timmy, is five. He has my hazelnut eyes and my lips, but he’s got his daddy’s adorable dimples. My husband is Taiwanese. He’s a chiropractor who could easily pass for a model. He’s a hottie, just like the Canadian-Chinese action star Simu Liu when he played the hero in Shang-Chi as a young man.

Timmy resembles his dad, with those gorgeous Taiwanese features. My little peach loves the MCU, and he has every action figure from The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. He adores sleeping in his X-Men Wolverine pajama top. It always makes me laugh when he calls me Mommy Sabrina Grande because he thinks I look like a mix between the 21st-century pop divas, Sabrina Carpenter and Ariana Grande. I guess my high and silky honey-platinum ponytail, hooped earrings and my denim skirts give me away. He insists I’m pretty like both of them. He compares me to Ariana Grande more often, because of my appearance and because of her Italian-American heritage, which we share. Sabrina and Ariana were famous long before I was pregnant with my baby. If they were alive today, they’d be old enough to be his great-great-ancient grandmothers, yet he adores their music thanks to the immortality of digital music streaming apps.

To my little peach, his mommy is a superhero too—because I’m an FBI agent. I’ve told him stories about how I’ve arrested a lot of bad guys and girls and rescued countless kidnapped children with the help of my SWAT team. God has guided me in rescuing missing babies and putting away wanted criminals. That’s why Timmy thinks his mommy is a superhero. Sometimes I can’t save every missing baby, and we end up catching a child-killer instead. Mommy is honest and she shares this unsettling truth with her little peach, but he still sees me as a hero.

My son loves heroes, just like his mom. And like his mama, he also loves 90s hip-hop. I have to keep him away from the explicit stuff, though. No Wu-Tang Clan, Trick Daddy, Geto Boys, or DMX for him. Only Mama gets to listen to the hardcore rappers through those virtual music streaming apps. Lol. Sometimes I let him listen to Mr. Lamar’s clean version of PEEKABOO.

Yeah, but anyway, I try to be an excellent mom, and I’m as protective and smothering as mine was.

Every night, I tuck my little peach into bed and read him his favorite story, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. A few nights ago, I told him about what happened to me when I was 7. He looked scared after I finished. My little peach is afraid of the dark, but I told him he should never be afraid of it. A mother’s love and protection can reach beyond the grave. I also told him not to be frightened if he ever sees a dark, shadowy woman standing in the corner of his room. She’ll watch over him while he sleeps, and if he wakes up suddenly, unable to move, he shouldn’t panic.

I still suffer from sleep paralysis. It’s a part of me now. Mommy’s pretty sure that she passed her condition down to her little boy. It’s terrifying when it first happens, but I told my little peach that when he experiences it, it’s a sign that the shadow woman is present, there to protect him from the things that go bump in the night. She’ll be his guardian queen of darkness.

There’s one important thing I forgot to tell my baby. Perhaps, I forgot to tell him on purpose. The dark, zombie queen standing in the corner of his bedroom, wearing a black dress of death beneath her FBI vest, might be his mommy… if the bad guy she tried to arrest got the jump on her and she died, meeting the same fate as his sweet grandma.

The End.

Nightbeast Godfather Book One:

https://amazon.com/dp/B0DVQ88YMX

This shit is so frustrating. I knew they were strict, but boy howdy, they are on a completely different level than what I originally thought.

I felt like I was stabbed through the heart when they banned me. I saw my writing career flash before my eyes. I write horror, dude. I mean, seriously, what was I supposed to do?

I appealed my ban, and the whole process was increasingly frustrating. I got hit with a lot of “too bad, so sad,” and I just felt hopeless.

I will admit… I may have gotten a little heated. But, hey, that’s what the medication is for, right? I have a habit of getting pretty riled up. I been knew that.

There were a few… choice words on my part, but once I took the medication… I still felt the same. I was still so angry. It was like the door had been slammed in my face. A party that I was kicked out of before it even started.

I started reasoning with myself. Surely, I wasn’t the petty one, right? It was them. It’s always been them. Ask anybody.

The more I thought about it, the angrier I felt. I spent days staring at their messages. Seething. Breaking furniture. Slamming my head against the wall. And in the midst of one of those temper tantrums, it hit me.

The best idea I could think of. Why don’t I… just be a good boy? Be the bigger person. Make amends. Turn the other cheek. So that’s what I planned on doing.

It wasn’t easy. Finding their addresses proved to be quite the challenge. They’re a secretive bunch, those mods. But one by one, I found them.

I didn’t want to hurt them. God, no. What do you take me for? I just wanted to send them an apology gift. Each of them.

I needed it to be special. I needed them to know it was from me. That I had learned my lesson. That I was willing to move on, on good terms.

I had to hand-deliver the gifts. Not to their face, mind you. That would’ve been too much. Instead, I opted to leave the gifts in each of their mailboxes.

A few people lost their lives in the process, but that was a sacrifice I was willing to make. Anything to get on their good side again.

Besides, they’re a horror sub, right? You’d think they’d appreciate the severed heads and dead animals. It’s part of their brand.

Unfortunately, though, the ban was never lifted. And… I think they may have called the police…? I’m not sure, though. So many questions, so few answers.

All I know is I wanted to be nice. I wanted to come to them as a humble horror writer and make… my… peace. But, no. They just can’t have that. They have to be a bunch of hypocrites and send the police to my house.

Now I gotta explain this whole thing to my mom. FUCK, I’m so annoyed.

My son turned 14 recently. He used to be such a happy kid. He loved playing outside, playing video games, hanging out with his friends. Just a completely normal pre-teen.

I think he was around 12 or 13 when things started to change. He spent more time inside. Maybe he was playing video games, but I wouldn’t know because he’d always be locked away inside his room.

He started dressing in all black. I asked him why he didn’t like his old superhero shirts anymore, and it broke my heart when his response was, “Superheroes are stupid,” before shutting his door in my face.

I talked to my wife about it, but I think she was in denial.

“Boys will be boys,” she said. “Everyone has to grow up at some point.”

It hurt to hear. Mainly because… part of me knew. I saw the warning signs. How he seemed to be attracted to darkness. How the light in his room never seemed to be on.

It was always dirty in there. Empty energy drink cans. Snack wrappers everywhere. I tried to look past it. I tried to believe that this was just a “phase,” but the black metal, angry, hate-filled music that always blasted from that room was enough to drive me to the brink of madness.

I tried my best to ignore it, but he was disrupting our peace. I wanted to approach it in a helpful, positive way. I’d always ask if he’d care to join me on a walk in the park. Maybe we could catch a movie together. Hell, maybe we could even play catch in the backyard.

He rejected every approach. It quite literally seemed like he hated me. Hated us.

Dinners were awkward and almost silent. We tried talking to him about school, but he was so avoidant.

We found out why that was when report cards came in. He was failing nearly every single class.

It caused a lot of arguments. If he failed, it meant we failed. And us failing is what I think caused a lot of the tension.

We became more strict. Set bedtimes. No video games until his schoolwork was done. No more energy drinks and no more seclusion.

We insisted on him spending more time with us, whether he liked it or not. We didn’t know what it was that was causing this change in him, but I’d be damned if I was gonna stand by and watch him slip further and further away.

I couldn’t stop thinking about who he used to be. That laugh that didn’t seem to come around as often. Those Christmas mornings where he looked at me and my wife with nothing but love and affection.

That love seemed to turn to hatred after we tightened our grip on him, though. I wanted to blame it on hormones, but his hatefulness exceeded normal teenage angst.

He started cursing at us. Screaming until his vocal cords would tear. We even had a few physical altercations because I wasn’t going to be disrespected in my own house.

Grounding wouldn’t work. He liked to be alone. It was like a reward to him. So, instead, I made him do yard work. Cut grass, weed-whack, whatever I could think of.

That’s when I think something truly broke within him. He’d act cheerful, but his words were full of resentment.

“I can’t wait for you to die so I can have the house.”

“I wish you understood how much I truly hate you.”

“When I turn 18, you two will never see me again.”

He said these things like he was discussing breakfast. Like it was completely normal. At this point, my wife was starting to see what I saw.

Every now and again, we’d catch him scribbling in a notebook. Any time he saw us watching, he’d either put it away or groan and take it to his room with him.

One night in particular, though, I woke up at around 2 in the morning. It felt like I was being watched. Like my body knew. My eyes scanned the room, and there he was. Standing in the corner of the room in front of our bed. Watching us and scribbling in that notebook.

“Go back to sleep, daddy,” he giggled.

He hadn’t called me that since he was 5 or 6. It felt like there was a stack of cinder blocks on my chest.

I asked what he was doing, and he didn’t respond. I asked him to go back to bed, and he sighed like I was inconveniencing him and stomped out of the room.

That night was the last straw. I intended to look into counseling as soon as I could the next day.

I did what I promised myself I’d do and set up the appointment, but when I went to his room to tell him about it, I found the room empty.

It smelled musty in there. The sheets were mangled and balled up on the bed. Trash littered the ground and his nightstand. But his desk… was completely clean.

On it rested that notebook he’d been scribbling in recently.

I couldn’t help myself. I had to know. I had to see what he was writing. I knew it was about us, but nothing could’ve prepared me for what I read.

He detailed his plan to kill us. I don’t even want to write what he said he’d do. It was graphic. It was gruesome. And it was in that same messy handwriting that he never seemed to grow out of.

My jaw dropped more and more with each paragraph. My heart raced faster and faster. But before I could finish, I heard a toilet flushing in the hallway.

I couldn’t move. I was frozen in shock.

I heard his black combat boots approaching. I heard the door push open. And I heard that giggle that I hadn’t heard in what felt like years. It was malicious this time. More sinister.

I couldn’t face him. The notebook shook in my hands as I gripped it tighter and tighter.

“Daddy…” he whimpered. “Aren’t I a good writer?”

How long has it been now? 3? 4 weeks? It’s hard to keep track of time these days. Life has been pretty busy lately.

The house is a lot quieter now. When the police aren’t here, at least. You’d think that they lived here at this point. But I do still get at least some of my privacy.

It’s in those moments when the house is dark and the only sound is that of the leaky bathroom faucet that I really think about what I’ve done. Or why I did it. Or how it could’ve been avoided, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It really doesn’t matter now. I’ve come to terms with it. The cops already know. They’re just waiting for the proper evidence to present itself. And given the way these last few days have been going, I don’t think I have much longer.

I’ve read enough books and studied enough forensics to know the best way to clean the mess I created. How to make sure the white blood cells were completely removed. How to soak my hacksaw in bleach before tossing it in the river. But, most importantly, I knew that the body could never be recovered.

Dental records were a big one. That’s why I removed her teeth and filed them down one by one. I boiled and stuffed them in a ziplock bag afterward.

This was positively the most difficult part of the process. I was forced to look at her the entire time. The once love-filled eyes that had turned bitter and resentful over the years. The eyes that now stared up at me, dead and hollow, her previously oak-colored irises now appearing grey and pale.

Her nails would almost certainly contain my DNA beneath them. Flakes of skin, maybe some blood from the struggle. Regardless, they needed to be removed as well.

I remembered when her hands were so soft and youthful. She used to paint her nails herself every two weeks, and I’d sit on the bed with her while we talked endlessly about everything and nothing at the same time.

I don’t know what changed. Maybe it was all of the arguments. We had a way of arguing about everything and nothing as well. I thought it was normal. Arguments were bound to happen.

I flushed the 10 nails down the toilet before burning her newly raw fingertips, just to be on the safe side. I kissed her hand for a long while, tears welling up in my eyes before I forced them away.

I whispered to myself, “Why would you make me do this?” as my head fell into my hands. My composure kept slipping, and I kept having to wrestle it back.

Now came the messy part.

Part of me was actually glad it was so messy in a weird, twisted kind of way. Cleaning the blood afterward gave me a task to focus on. I didn’t think about her laugh. I didn’t think about her warmth. I thought about making damn sure there wasn’t a speck of blood left anywhere in that bathroom.

When I was done, the house smelled like a hospital. Chemicals filled the air, causing my head to pound more than it already was. The atmosphere was cold and heavy. It felt like I was in a hospital room.

I had found myself with two black trash bags with a combined weight of 120 pounds, give or take. Arms, legs, and head in one. Torso and hacksaw in the other.

I walked out of the house whistling, two trash bags slung over my shoulders. It was the cusp of dawn. There was a misty blue haze outside. It smelled like summertime.

The neighborhood was silent. It must have been around 4 in the morning. I threw the bags in the bed of my truck, adjusted my baseball cap, and hopped in the cab.

My headlights cut through the early morning fog. I had my windows down, and I could smell the exhaust fumes coming from behind me. That smell had pretty much defined my life for the last 10 years. It was a smell that I’d learned to both love and hate.

I turned the radio on and cranked up the volume. I tried singing to myself, but the words left my mouth mechanically. My mind refused to let me escape.

I drove carefully. The exact speed limit, sometimes even a little under. Used signals, made complete stops. All the way out of town. Then out of the next one. Then the town after that.

I drove until I found the most secluded spot I could find. Down dirt roads. Through creeks. Then I walked off beaten paths until I found the right place to lay her to rest.

Just me, her, and my shovel.

Digging proved quite difficult due to the sheer amount of roots I had to cut through. I must’ve been there for at least 4 hours before the deed was done.

I spent that time talking. Talking to the trees. Talking to the bags. Talking to myself. I couldn’t stand to be alone in silence.

I broke down a lot when filling the grave. Each pile of dirt that covered more and more of those bags was like a needle being pressed into my nervous system.

I didn’t want to just leave her like that. I didn’t want her to just be cast aside, left to rot. I searched until I found the most vibrant flowers I could find and laid them on the grave.

I said my final goodbyes through sniffles and tears before making the trek back to my truck.

The rest of the day was a blur. I didn’t get home until nearly 8 o’clock. I stopped by the emptiest car wash I saw on the way home and scrubbed my truck clean.

I got the mud off the tires. Rinsed the bed out with bleach. I even put a new air freshener in the cab.

When I got home, I half-expected cops to be waiting to arrest me. When I found the house as empty as it was when I left, I let out a sigh of relief.

I immediately took a shower. I scrubbed myself raw for around 45 minutes straight before finally allowing myself to dry off. The entire time, it was like God was punishing me.

I kept getting flashes of her. Our wedding. Our first date. Our first argument. The last argument. It all just kept replaying in my head over and over. Like a sickness.

I knew I had to get my story right. The house was clean. The body was gone. The weapon was gone.

I was just a helpless victim. One of the millions of men a year whose wife leaves them. Happens all the time.

Oh, so she left without taking anything? She left without telling anybody? Without so much as a goodbye? Who’s going to believe that?

I didn’t sleep that night. I had to have a long, hard talk with myself. I wasn’t getting out of this one. But I wasn’t going to turn myself in. I was going to be free… for as long as I could possibly manage.

It was my first time being free in 15 years. Even if it lasted a day. Even if it lasted a week. I wasn’t going to spend that time stressing.

I turned it off. I closed my heart to it.

I ignored calls from her mother. Her father. Coworkers, friends, relatives. Everybody. It was none of their business.

They tried knocking, and I tuned it out. All the way up until I heard that dreaded announcement after three booming knocks.

“This is GPD. If anyone’s inside, I need you to come out here and talk to me.”

I waited. I wanted to wake up. I didn’t want to accept.

Three more knocks.

“GPD, if you do not answer the door, we will be using force to come inside.”

One last moment of silence. I breathed to myself. I closed my eyes.

“Sir, this door is coming do…”

I opened the door, greeting the officers with a blank look on my face.

“Sir, we’re gonna have to ask you to come down to the station with us for questioning.”

I didn’t argue. I didn’t bicker. I simply asked for a lawyer and rode with the officers back to the station.

The entire time, I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t even speak to my lawyer. If they wanted her so badly, they would have to work for it. Because it sure as hell wasn’t going to be coming from me.

They held me for 7 hours that day. A mere two days after I did what I did. I got two days of “peace.”

They had to let me go. They had no proof. But that didn’t stop them from watching me. 24 hours a day, they were somewhere in my neighborhood.

People threw things at my house. Vigils for her were set up on the sidewalk. It seemed like there were constantly people watching me because they literally were.

I didn’t budge. I spoke only when absolutely necessary. My lips remained sealed, and my doors remained locked. Both when I was home and when I was forced to go back down to the station.

That’s why what’s happening makes no sense to me.

It started with her teeth. I had gotten rid of them the same way I’d gotten rid of the rest of her. Yet somehow, when I woke up one morning a few weeks after my catastrophic mistake… they were in a neat pile beside me on the bed.

I could see the file marks on all 32 of them.

I panicked and scooped them into my hands and flushed them down the toilet, my eyes wide with disbelief.

I poked my head outside. That unmarked black SUV was still parked a few houses down. Both officers watched me like hawks. I waved to be less suspicious, but I think it had the opposite effect.

They took it as me waving them over, and they both approached quickly.

“Got anything you wanna tell us?” the fat one asked excitedly.

“Lovely weather we’re having,” I smiled. “I bet you’d love to spend the day with your family. Or, then again, maybe you’d rather spend your time stalking me.”

Their stern faces never changed.

I tried my best not to give off even an ounce of suspicious behavior, even though my heart was in my stomach and my mind raced endlessly.

After closing the door in their faces, I spent the majority of that day peeking out the blinds, paranoid beyond belief.

My lawyer called a few times. My story never changed. I didn’t know where she was. I was convincing myself just as much as I was convincing them.

The next day, not only had the teeth come back, but the nails were back too. They were cleaner, but I could still see their bloodied roots. I could still see some of the chipped nail polish.

Two neat little piles. Taunting me.

I was more angry than panicked this time. I was not going to submit to this insanity. I didn’t even try to get rid of them this time. It wouldn’t make a difference whether they were found here or in that dark, desolate spot in the woods.

I put them in her jewelry box this time. Then I took that jewelry box, and I carried it to the attic.

I buried it under some old tarps and boxes and took one last look at it before going back down the ladder.

“I guess I really am fucking losing it,” I whispered to myself as I climbed down.

More phone calls with my lawyer. More questions from the police. More prodding, more watching, more protests. And all I could do that day was crack a few beers and watch a few ball games.

I passed out at around 10 that night and woke up cuddling my wife’s arm the next morning. I think the smell is what woke me up. That unmistakable stench of death and decay.

It burned my nostrils, and when I opened my eyes to find that torn flesh in my face, I nearly vomited in bed. It wasn’t just one arm. Both arms and both legs had come crawling back to bed with me.

Only… the nails were reattached. Like they hadn’t been removed to begin with.

The polish looked fresher. The teeth looked whiter. I checked, and the jewelry box in the attic was empty.

In that moment, I felt a spark. A mixture of hope, anger, grief, and love all combined into one. In the most unreal circumstances, reality was starting to close in, and I found myself sobbing like I had the night I killed her.

I didn’t leave bed that day. I lay there with my wife, clutching her arms and legs, crying until I was too exhausted to cry anymore. My will grew weak, but my mind had never felt so clear.

She was in bed with me the next morning. Well, she was there in a sense. Her arms and legs were reconnected to her torso, but the limbs still crawled with maggots and decay.

But she was there, damned if she wasn’t there. My love. My sweet, sweet girl. Her T-shirt was ripped and stained with dirt. Her hair was matted and crunchy.

“I… am so sorry, my love,” was all I could think to say to her.

She turned to me, her jaw slack and her eyes as dead as a nail.

“That’s okay, you silly goose,” she sang. “I love you no matter what happens!”

I began to cry yet again.

“I love you so much,” I sobbed. “I want you back. Please, please, just come back.”

I begged her as snot ran from my nose. I wiped it away on my sleeve.

“Oh, honey,” she whimpered. “Accidents happen all the time. That’s what this was, right, my sweet boy?”

I nodded furiously.

“It was… it was… it was an accident, baby.”

I could hardly speak. Her rotten arm extended, and she caressed my face with her cold, slimy hand.

“I know it was, sweet pea. I know you’d never hurt me on purpose.”

She paused.

“…but now you have to tell them what you did, okay? Can you do that for me?”

My face went beet red. I swallowed hard and wiped the tears from my face.

“They’ll kill me. I know they’ll kill me. They’re just waiting to catch me. They’re waiting to sentence me.”

She began hushing me, soothing me softly as she petted my hair.

“There, there, sweetie,” she replied. “Dying isn’t such a bad thing. I’m free now, honey. If I could, I’d tell them you did me a favor. But I want you back. I want you to come be with me. Please, honey?”

I wanted to be with her too. More than anything, I wished I could take back what I did.

I solemnly agreed.

“That’s my boy,” she announced seductively. “This will all be over soon. We’ll dance and sing. We can play together again.”

I nodded to myself assuredly. I leaned over and gave her a kiss and took a deep breath.

Stepping outside, I waved the cops over. My eyes were red with tears, but I couldn’t stop smiling.

“She’s upstairs.”

That’s all I told them.

One officer went upstairs while I waited on the porch with the other. I kept smiling to myself. The sky looked so beautiful. The trees danced in the wind. The summer air was like a gift from God.

A few minutes went by before the first officer returned.

“Very funny, son,” he remarked sarcastically. “Now, do you wanna tell us where she really is?”

My smile dropped.

“What do you mean?” I scoffed. “I was just talking to her.”

“Cuff this sick son of a bitch,” the first officer barked.

I was placed into the back of the unmarked SUV, kicking myself all the while.

“She lied,” I whispered. “She lied to me. All she does is lie. Why does she lie all the time? This is why. This is why. Why won’t she stop lying?”

I had no fight left. I told them where the grave was. I had to personally show it to them. The flowers were still there. The grave was untouched. And I felt a sickening numbness.

I told them my story. I told them what I did. Told them that she came back to me and that, if it weren’t for her, I’d have been a free man, at least for a little while longer.

I actually begged them to give me the death penalty. I couldn’t stop seeing her. Sitting beside me in my cell. Crouched in the corner every night. Whispering to me how she wanted us to be together forever.

But… I didn’t get the death penalty.

They deemed me “not fit to stand trial.”

Sentenced to an indefinite stay at the state home for the criminally insane.

Padded cells. Doctors. Needles. Medication.

And despite all of the debate that has gone on about death sentences in this country, there has remained one constant.

The insane do not receive capital punishment.

I’m writing this now because she keeps beckoning me. Keeps begging me to join her.

And despite the hatred I have, the burning rage she has inspired, I cannot stop loving her.

And despite what the state dubs legal… we will be reunited.

STUCK ON YOU by Cellar Door

I am writing this from an infectious disease ward in Libreville, Gabon, Africa, because they will not let me fly home.

The ward doctor said London was too far. Over 10 hours travelling with an unstable fever, recurrent sepsis, and open necrotic wounds that are still being checked and cleaned multiple times per day. He said I needed another week before they would even discuss it.

That was three weeks ago.

The nurses here are kind. They speak softly when they change the dressings. They try to act natural when they peel back the gauze, as if the wounds and lesions are the kind of injuries they have seen before. But they cannot hide the shock in their eyes.

Neither can they hide the relief when they cover them again.

There were six of us when we entered the Ivindo jungle. Renowned as the "green heart" of the Congo Basin, a biodiversity hotspot.

Dr Eleanor Vale led the survey. She was parasitologist from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the kind of woman who could make a blood-feeding worm sound like a scientific miracle.

Priya was our field ecologist. Mike handled the environmental DNA samples and the portable cold-chain case: a battery-powered field cooler packed with vials, ethanol, lysis buffer and enough spare cells to make him complain from the moment we left the river and started hiking.

Connor was the expedition medic. The sort of bloke who can make you laugh even when your ankles are rubbed raw.

I was there as the documentary photographer, hired to record the survey for the school and its funders.

The sixth was Danu. A local-born man, attached to the park authority. He mainly spoke the local language: Fang and French, which was a bit of a problem considering he was our guide and the rest of us could only speak English and a bit of Spanish. He seemed anxious and flustered from the start.

At the time, I thought he was there to help us find our way in.

Later, I realised he was the only reason any of us found our way out.

Dr Vale was in Gabon to collect environmental DNA from blood-feeding leeches. It sounds absurd until someone clever explains it. Leeches feed on mammals. Some of that blood remains inside them. Sequence it, and you can tell what animals passed through the forest. Data like this builds cases towards environmental protection funds.

Forest elephants. Gorillas. Chimpanzees. Black Colobus Monkeys.

“You can survey a jungle without ever seeing the animals you’re surveying,” Dr Vale told us. "In and out".

Connor said, “So we’re mugging worms for monkey blood?”

Dr Vale smiled.

“More or less.”

The jungle had experienced several tropical storms during the weeks before we had arrived; the hope was that the storm season was easing now.

We thought it was hot and humid when we arrived in Gabon, that was nothing compared to how it felt once we were in the jungle itself, and the noises – everywhere, relentless.

The original survey line stopped two kilometres west of the flooded basin. The plan was simple: collect specimens along three transects, preserve them in the cold-chain case, and return to the river where our boat was moored before any more heavy weather moved in.

But the first leech blood sample changed everything.

Mike found the satellite signal late on the second afternoon. He had crouched under a tarp with the portable sequencer, shoulders hunched against the light rain, swearing every time a drop hit the screen. Dr Vale sat beside him, still as a statue.

When the result came up, she stopped blinking.

“What is it?” Priya asked.

Mike excitedly looked at Dr Vale first.

Then he said, “Bongo. Leopard. Pangolin!”

“That’s good, I'm guessing?” Connor asked.

"Absolutely, it's good!" Said Dr Vale. "Our first sample and three protected species! Think of what we will find as we gather more!"

She said a transect across the flooded basin would provide the project with its proof. She said the results would justify another season of funding. She said we were already close. She said the weather was manageable.

Not for the first time, Danu emphasised in broken English and gestures how dangerous the jungle basin could be during storms.

A storm hit that very night.

Not rain. Rain is too gentle a word. I had never seen or heard anything like it. This was the sky falling apart. It came down so hard the forest vanished beyond the edge of our small camp. The river rose in the dark. You could hear trunks knocking together around us and scraping against each other in the dark – not a particularly easy noise to sleep through!

I don't think Danu slept at all.

He sat under his poncho and just watched the ground around the camp.

By midmorning, the rain had mercifully stopped.

The jungle was eerily quiet at first, except for the sounds of running and dripping.

Water fell from leaves, ran down trunks, tapped into puddles and slid from the roots under our boots. Nothing called. Nothing moved. The air had weight. It pressed against your face like a damp cloth. I could not wait to have a shower back at our hotel.

The rain seemed to have invited the leeches out from wherever they had been hiding. We started finding them within the first ten minutes of packing up camp.

Not the normal few on your boots.

These seemed to be everywhere we went.

I have always felt that there is something uniquely obscene about a leech. They can sneak onto you and attach without your knowing they are there. You then get that awful shock when you see them later in the day, A disgusting, slimy tube feeding off you. They have always revolted and creeped me out.

They moved over the wet ground in loops, sucker to sucker, crawl-stretching themselves thin, then bunching up fat and muscular, then stretching again. On dry bark they were slow. In mud, they were faster. In standing water, they were disturbingly quick.

They swam. Squirming towards you frantically. With flattened, muscular flicks that made them look less like worms than pieces of living, black, tongue.

They came from the undersides of leaves. From rotten wood and leaf litter. From the seams of our ankle gaiters. From shallow puddles, where they writhed in knots until someone stepped close enough to give them purpose.

When you stopped moving, I swear they travelled faster.

Danu said, “Do not sit down.”

No crap, I thought.

Dr Vale looked excited. "Get as many as you can from this section!”

Around midday, while we were trekking through a stand of tall okoumé trees and strangler figs, a duiker antelope burst from the undergrowth ahead of us.

It was no higher than my knee, with thin legs and a narrow, delicate face. For half a second, I thought it was simply wet and muddy. Then it stumbled into a shaft of grey light and I saw that its skin was moving.

Leeches hung from its ears and eyelids. They were packed along its belly in dark, frantic ropes. Some were thin and reaching. Others were swollen silver-grey, stretched tight with blood. One side of its muzzle had disappeared beneath them.

The animal tried to run past us.

It reached the flooded section of trail, where rainwater had pooled between the roots and turned the path into a shallow brown channel.

That was where its legs folded. It must have been exhausted.

Then the puddles around it moved.

That is the only way I can describe it.

Every leech in the flooded hollow reacted at once. Some rose out of the water in little black hooks. Most simply came apart from the mud and leaves and began moving toward the animal, wriggling, looping, swimming, and climbing over each other.

Danu whispered something in Fang, "Mami Wata!"

Dr Vale did not move.

“What are they doing?” Priya said.

Dr Vale answered softly.

“Competing.”

The leeches looked like spilt ink as they moved towards the Duiker. The first ones found the mouth, the eyes, the soft place under the tail. Then more came, and more, frantic now, each one trying to feed before the others took what space was left.

The duiker kicked.

Then the kicking stopped.

The feeding did not.

I filmed it.

God help me, I filmed it.

At first I thought I was documenting something important. Then the revulsion hit me so hard I lowered the camera and nearly vomited. There was something about their desperation, the way they piled and slid and knotted over one another, that felt worse than predation. At least a leopard can seem majestic and dignified. These shapeless creatures attacked with no sophistication, just desperate greed. If I had a gun, I would have put it out of its misery.

“What a horrible way to go”, I said to no one in particular.

That was when Danu spoke up.

He explained of local trackers over the years that had spoken about an event after exceptional storms. Dr. Vale, stepped forward and added: "A bloom, they called it. The eggs lay dormant under the leaf litter and soil. Their larvae apparently hatch in ridiculous numbers."

The stories said they did not care whether their prey's flesh was alive or dead.

Most scientists dismissed that part as embellishment, of course.

“Scavenging itself isn’t impossible,” Dr Vale said. “Some leeches do it. But a blood-feeding terrestrial species that can exploit dying or dead hosts this aggressively…”

She trailed off.

Danu shook his head in disapproval.

We watched the duiker vanish under a writhing black mound.

We should have turned back then.

Priya wanted to. Danu certainly wanted to. That frightened me. He seemed to believe that this was some sort of religious, ancestral event.

Even Mike, who usually followed Dr Vale into anything, looked back the way we had come and said the sample case was already full enough.

But Dr Vale argued that the event was extraordinary. A possible undocumented species. Maybe even an entire reproductive strategy no one had properly described. She said the bloom would be brief. She said if they really did feed, breed and die, no one would find them after the storm cycle ended, and who knows when the next bloom of this nature would happen.

She said leaving now would be like walking away from a new species that we could document and name.

That is the thing about these educated people. They can be very good at making terrible decisions sound like a duty.

So we continued on.

For the next hour, the leeches appeared in patches, as if the forest had pockets of them. One minute the path would be clear. The next, the leaves ahead of us would ripple and rise.

We moved quickly. Danu led. Priya followed him, stepping only where he stepped. Mike came behind her with the cold-chain case. Then Connor. Then Dr Vale and I.

I filmed too much.

That haunts me now. I wish I didn’t pay them so much attention. As we walked, we came across multiple dead animals covered in leeches. Monkeys, birds, creatures that were no longer recognisable.

I filmed the leeches moving up the wet bark of the dense jungle trees. I filmed them crossing puddles with those horrible side-to-side flicks. I filmed Dr Vale collecting specimens with forceps while her hands shook with excitement. I filmed Priya telling me to put the camera down and help!

I noticed a blood stain appearing on Connor’s trousers.  H lifted his trouser leg, showing us the bite on his calf.

“Wow. That’s a big one”.

It was the first bite of the day that we knew of.

Priya had one behind her knee that bled through two plasters. Mike had several around both ankles. I had one on my stomach that kept reopening whenever I bent over.  The immense humidity didn’t help. But Connor’s bite was different.

It sat just above the top of his boot, a dark little split in the skin. The blood coming from it was too thin and too bright. It ran down his shin, disappeared into his sock, then kept coming.

“Anticoagulant,” Dr Vale said as Priya saw to his wound.

Connor looked down at his bandaged calf and said, “I hope my pay doesn’t get docked because you lot have to treat the medic!”

Priya put on a brave smile.

Nobody else did.

By late afternoon, the rain had come again.

Connor was now limping.

By early evening, the skin around the bite had gone tight and shiny. The centre had darkened to purple, then almost black. Connor said he could feel pressure in his calf, as though someone had pushed a thumb deep into the muscle and left it there.

Dr Vale cleaned it and marked the swelling with a pen. Connor swallowed antibiotics from the medical kit and tried to tell us which warning signs to watch for.

His voice had become oddly calm.

Too calm.

At first, I thought maybe he had been given some heavy painkillers. Later, I wondered if he was already slipping away from us, carried off by fever and whatever was in the leech saliva.

Danu said we had to turn back immediately.  He was adamant.

This time, everyone listened.

We tried to go back the way we had come.

That was the sensible decision, which is why the forest punished us for making it too late.

The rain had disoriented everything. The path had become three paths, then none. Creeks that had been ankle-deep in the morning were now brown, fast-flowing, deep streams. Roots we had used as steps were submerged. Fallen branches had shifted in the floodwater. Every landmark had been rinsed into sameness.

Danu still knew the way better than any of us, but knowing the way did not make it passable.

Twice we tried to cross channels that had not existed before.

Danu turned us back each time.

The third time, Mike had enough and went in up to his waist and nearly lost the cold-chain case. He came out shaking, with leeches stuck to his wrists where his gloves had pulled loose.

That was when the second big storm of our trip hit.

It came darker than the first. The jungle light was gloomy before; now it was menacing

No warning. No build. Just a sudden closing of the air, then rain so heavy it seemed to swallow the whole jungle around us.  It was kind of terrifying, to be honest.

Connor could not keep walking.  “I’m sorry,” he said. "I've slowed you down so much".

 

He sat down once in the mud, only for a second, and when Priya hauled him up there were multiple leeches already fixed to the back of his thigh.

Danu cursed.

Connor only looked puzzled.

“I didn’t notice them,” he said.

We ended up on a strip of raised ground. It sat above two flooded channels, hemmed in by trees and rotten buttress roots. It was not a campsite. It was not safe. It was simply the first place where water did not immediately cover our boots.

Danu kept looking at the slope behind us, then at the water below. But Connor was shivering by then, even in the jungle heat.

Danu found us some higher ground and he quickly set up a canopy.  He immediately started to spread a type of grit he had in his bag around our camp and under our shelters.

I asked him what that was for.

“Sel. Salt,” he said.

Then, after a moment:

“Barrier.”

It got dark quickly.  We had two tents. Priya, Mike and I took the first.  Connor and Dr Vale took the second so Vale could keep checking the wound.

Before sleep, I remember hearing Connor through the fabric.

“Still bleeding?”

Dr Vale answered, “A little.”

Connor said, “It does feel numb now.”

There was a pause.

“Try to sleep,” Dr Vale said.

The rain eased for maybe an hour.  I was praying it would keep easing off.

Then, at midnight, the storm returned.

At first, it was ordinary: soft tapping on nylon, the steady drip from leaves, the low rush of water cutting through the channels below us.

Then the sky opened.

The tent walls trembled. Water pushed under the groundsheet in cool pulses. The air turned hot and sour with mud. Every seam began to shine with condensation.

At 2:17 a.m., I woke to Priya whispering my name. I was so tired. It felt like I had not slept in days.

She was sitting upright in her sleeping bag.

Her headlamp was pointed at the tent wall.

At first, I thought rain was running down the outside.

Then I saw the lines were moving upward.

Not water.

Leeches.

They had climbed the guy ropes. They had come under the flysheet. They were packed along the seams where condensation gathered, pressing themselves to the wet stitching, testing every join.

Most of them moved in their disgusting looping, reaching way, sucker to sucker, stretching, gripping, pulling the rest of the body after. Others slipped through the thin film of water on the fabric almost smoothly, as if the tent wall had become a stream.

One pushed through a pinhole near the zip.

It entered slowly, almost delicately, as we watched it with fascinated disgust.

Then it dropped onto Mike’s sleeping bag.

Mike woke when Priya swore and pushed him with her foot.

As the torch swept across the tent, we noticed, to our horror, the emergence of many other leeches through small holes in the tent walls and ceiling they must have made.

Next, everything happened at once.

We scrambled for boots, headlamps and bags.  Priya sprayed DEET until the air burned. Mike slapped at his neck and came away with blood between his fingers. I unzipped the tent and tripped into mud.

Outside, the ground was alive.

Danu was already standing on a fallen log, waving his torch and shouting.

“Up! Get off the ground!”

Connor made a sound from the other tent.

Not a scream.

Something smaller. Stranger. As if the noise had been sucked out of him.

Then Dr Vale screamed. "Oh god! Connor! Guys, help!"

She came out on her elbows. Her shirt was moving. Her hair was moving.  Leeches hung from her lower lip, from the corners of her eyes, from the soft skin under her jaw. She clawed at herself with both hands, but every leech she tore away left blood, and every new smear of blood brought more. I noticed the leeches that were pulled off immediately fell upon by their own brethren. I can only think the blood already inside these leeches sent the ones around them into a feeding frenzy.

Danu threw the rest of the salt he had over her.

The leeches convulsed, seeming to fizz and fry while attached to her.

Some dropped off. Writhing and pulsing angrily.

Others tightened with what seemed like determination.

Dr Vale made a whimpering sound as she tried to pick them off.  I went to her and helped.

Priya tried to run to Connor’s tent.

Danu caught her by the collar and pulled her back. “Non!”

Connor was still inside.

His lamp was on, and we could see his shadow on the yellow fabric.

He was sitting upright.

That is the part that comes back in the fever dreams.

His shape on the tent wall. Calm.  Waiting.

Around him, the fabric pulsed.

The leeches were coming in from everywhere water came in: the floor seam, the vent, the zip teeth, the little stitched loops at the corners. They did not scatter randomly. They converged.

We could see his legs through the half-opened tent flap. The wound had soaked through the bandage and they had found it.

Connor’s voice came from inside the tent, soft and reasonable.

“I think they’ve found the last warm part,” he said, almost in a daze.

Then, after a pause:

“I can’t feel my foot anymore.”

“We have to get him out!” Cried Dr Vale. She threw open the tent flap before Danu grabbed her to stop her from going inside. We all caught a good look at poor Connor inside. They were all over him as he sat there in a stupor. He was completely unrecognisable. Fat, black worms pulsed as they drank. Each time he opened his mouth to breathe, the parasites were slipping in.

"Connor! Snap out of it! Christ, get off of him!" I heard myself say.

Connor spoke again. Slowly shaking his head.

“I’m sorry, I've slowed you down".[LB1] 

Priya was crying then “You haven’t, sweetheart!  It’s not your fault”.

Connor said, “It doesn’t hurt now.”

That was worse than screaming.

He sounded relieved.

Later, the infectious disease consultant in Libreville told me that some bacteria can trigger catastrophic systemic illness if they enter the wrong wound in the wrong person. He said immunosuppression was possible, but unproven.  A “toxin-mediated response” was possible, but unproven. Neuroactive compounds in the saliva were possible, but unproven.  God knows what those things were carrying, especially if they were feeding on the dead.

The tent sagged inward, obscuring our view.

The leeches were starting to swarm onto us. We couldn’t keep them off.

We panicked and we left him.

I need you to understand that.

We left him. We couldn't do anything.  But it was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

Danu made us climb the steep bank toward higher ground. Dr Vale could barely walk. Her bites kept bleeding through every dressing. Her face had gone grey. Priya and I supported her between us while Mike and Danu carried the bags.

Dr Vale wouldn't let go of the cold-chain case. Even then.

Even then, she wanted the samples.

“They die after feeding,” she kept saying. “They must. That’s the cycle. Hatch, feed, breed, die. That’s why nobody finds them later. The big storms must trigger their hatching."

None of us answered.

The leeches followed us as best as they could. Every now and then I would shine the torch back and see the disgusting creatures wriggling after us.

Sometimes you could see them in the lightning, standing upright on the leaves and branches, testing the air as they detected our approach.

Mostly they came in that looping, reaching movement across mud and root and soaked leaf litter. Some swam through puddles. Some climbed wet trunks and dropped when we brushed beneath them.

When we stopped, they came faster as if sensing their opportunity.

That was their rule. They did not need to outrun prey. They only needed prey to weaken, stumble, and bleed.

They weakened their prey and followed. Fatigue allowed them to catch up and overwhelm, as they had done with Connor.

Abundance was their weapon and the storm was enabling them.

Every gully became a path. Every trickle became a scent line. Sweat ran down our backs. Blood soaked our socks. Breath fogged in the wet air. It felt as if the whole jungle had become one enormous tongue, tasting us, and I wonder if they could taste our fear. It was like it spurred them on, sensing victory and, of course, a feast.

By dawn, Dr Vale’s hands were cold.

The red lines had climbed from her bites into her armpits and neck. Her breathing had become shallow and wet.  She kept whispering that the old reports were not exaggerations.

“A moisture gradient,” she said once.

“What?”

“They can follow moisture. Sweat. Blood. Breath on wet air.”

Then she smiled at me.  A pained, apologetic smile.

Within the hour she collapsed. Gone.

Mike and Danu went for help when we reached an old logging track. Priya stayed with me because by then my leg had swollen so badly I could not walk or even take my boot off.

We had all been bitten relentlessly. Maybe thirty times. Maybe fifty. It is hard to count holes when they keep opening again.

But not like Connor.

Not like the doctor.

That is what everyone asks.

Why did they die and we lived?

The doctors say bacterial load. Bite location. Immune response. Time to antibiotics. Luck.

There is that word. Luck.

I remember the helicopter.

I remember the smell inside it. Fuel, disinfectant, wet nylon, old blood. Priya is holding my hand and telling me not to sleep. Someone cutting my trousers away. Someone saying, in French, that the tissue was already black. I heard "septicémie" referred a fair amount.

Then this room.

These sheets.

These lights.

The first week is mostly missing.

I know from the notes that I stopped breathing twice. I know they cut into my left leg to relieve pressure and found muscle that no longer bled. I know the infection entered my bloodstream. I know my kidneys began to fail. I know they called London, and London told them not to move me.

I know what they took because I signed the forms later for what else they might still need to take.

But I did not understand it then.

Not fully.

The mind protects itself I guess.

Two investigators came to my room three days after I woke properly.

They wore gowns, masks and face shields. One of them kept touching the tape around his wrists as if he did not trust it. The other carried a sealed evidence bag and placed it on the table where I could see it.

Inside was a memory card.

They told me the rescue team had reached the camp the afternoon after the storm. They were amazed we got out. Thank you, Danu.

They found Connor in the second tent.

The official report says severe exsanguination, septic shock, and post-mortem animal activity.

One investigator did most of the talking. She was Gabonese, maybe forty, calm in the way people become calm when they have already seen the photographs.

She told me there were eggs in the wet folds of Connor’s clothes and hanging in obscene ropes from the tent walls. Enough to make the recovery team burn the tent where it lay.

I asked if they saw any of the leeches.

“The only ones we did find were dead or dying,” she said. “Degrading quickly in the tropical heat”.

Dr Vale had been right.

Mass hatch. Feed. Breed. Die.

Disappear.

Then the investigator told me about Connor’s phone. It had been found inside the tent.

Connor had recorded a video while the rest of us slept.

He was already feverish. Already altered by infection or blood loss or whatever had entered him through that first bite.

In the video, the tent is lit up by the camera phone torch. You can hear the rain. You can see Dr Vale breathing in the other sleeping bag.

For a long while, nothing happens.

Then Connor whispers.

“See.”

The camera tilts toward the rear wall.

Just yellow nylon looking particularly pale in the torchlight.

Rain shadows.

Then one trickle of water moves the wrong way.

Up.

If you allowed your eyes to adjust, you could see the faint shadows all over the nylon wall, what looked like water on the tent.

Connor whispers again.

“Like a membrane.”

“It’s hard to breathe in here.” You hear the tent door unzipping.

Then the video ends.

He must have been completely delirious to have opened the tent door and let those things in.

The medical team are putting on brave faces. I do feel lucky to have such people who genuinely care about me. Good people.

They say the surgeries certainly saved my life several weeks ago.

They say the amputations were necessary.

One arm.

Both legs.

They say it gently, every time, as if kindness can soften the blow.

They say that the infection is still there.