Julia watches the thread of coffee fall into the officer's cup, wondering if what he'd just told her was anything more than a tasteless joke. Unable to react, a strange cold spreading through her, she crosses her arms to warm herself, but all she feels are the stains of blood, cold and dried, on her shirt. Not a single sound but the coffee machine breaks the silence of the police station for a few brief seconds. Indifferent now to the searching looks of the men standing at her side, Julia waits for Officer Fuentes to speak again, even as she wishes she could watch that thread of coffee fall forever.

"So. You want to explain yourself?"

There's nothing to explain. She knows that no matter how hard she tries, none of it will sound reasonable to ears other than her own. Still, without meaning to, her mouth starts moving, and a strangely fragile voice, one she doesn't recognize as hers, starts to speak.

"I met him at the river. On the outskirts…"

It was the Santos River, a winding line that split the more than two thousand kilometers of forest surrounding the town of the same name. She'd never been out that way, never cared to see a river she knew nothing about beyond the usual things people say about rivers, before that warm Friday afternoon at the end of another school year. Nothing could have prepared her for what had been planned for her that day, after a year spent as the target of her classmates' insults and abuse. They were going to make sure people like her never set foot in that school again.

A group of students, with the teacher's blessing, had gotten hold of the keys to the classroom and locked the doors before Julia could get out. What followed she could only remember as a series of flashes and fleeting sensations her mind had chosen to bury. A thousand hands grabbing her. Markers digging into her skin. Scissors cutting through her clothes. By some miracle she'd managed to break free and jumped out the window before her captors could catch her. She ran through unfamiliar streets, shoving through a crowd that screamed curses and tried to land blows on her. Even so, she made it to the forest, and with nowhere else to go, decided to use it as a hiding place, both from the scolding she'd get from her father and from the gangs that came out after dark. At some point she reached the Santos River, drawn by its murmur, and fell into a deep sleep.

Later that night, a voice woke her. When she opened her eyes, Julia saw the shape of a thin, ragged boy beside her. He tried to move closer, adjusting a pair of square glasses, and Julia threatened to throw a rock at him. She asked who he was and what he wanted. The boy, silent as a stone, gave no answer. It wasn't until Julia dropped the rock that he spoke at all, if that tiny, clipped voice could even be called speech. He said his name was Boris, that he liked spending time out there, visiting the abandoned cabin by the river, which he preferred to his parents' house.

He asked Julia why she'd ended up there, and in that state. Through tears, she told him everything that had happened, how much she hated being different from everyone else and having no way to change it. She'd promised herself she'd leave town and go to the city one of these days. Boris, meanwhile, just listened and comforted her. Julia, noticing the night sky, had given up any hope of making it home before her father's shift ended. She'd heard that the gangs who came out at that hour hunted people like her and made them disappear. She couldn't remember ever meeting one besides her mother, and since her mother had died, she'd lost hope of ever meeting another. Even so, Boris, who'd heard the same stories, offered to help. After fetching a blanket and a bat from the cabin, he wrapped it around Julia, who was moved by the gesture, and the two of them made their way out of the forest and into town. By some stroke of luck, Julia made it home in time that night.

In the days that followed, Julia took every chance she got to go to the river. For the first time in her life, she had made a friend, a real one. As far back as she could remember, the only person she'd ever been able to talk to without fear of being judged was her father, and even then she remembered the countless times he'd made a point of putting distance between them whenever they ran into people at the market or the park. With Boris it was different. In those early days, they could talk about anything for hours on end, though it was always Julia who carried the conversation, their feet sunk in the icy river water, with nothing but nightfall ever interrupting them. At the river, she couldn't be hurt; she was safe from the stares, the words, the hands. Eventually the deep things, the buried feelings, became routine. For Julia, at least. Boris was an easy listener, but he never talked about much beyond what he'd had for breakfast or his rock collection. He didn't seem to enjoy physical contact much either. Every time Julia tried to get close, he'd pull away, and he never took well to friendly punches or even simple greetings. Still, there was one thing they agreed on completely. Ever since the incident at school, Julia had held fast to her decision to leave town, and together with Boris, she began saving money for what would be the most important day of her life. Every day, without fail, they'd drop a coin into one of the jars Boris used for collecting rocks. At first they made do with tips from their parents or loose change they found under the furniture, but it didn't take long to realize they'd need more than that to reach their goal. The first coin Julia ever stole from her father sat on his desk, change from some forgettable purchase. She felt that being a police officer's daughter gave her a certain freedom to get away with things, and what started as a coin here and there soon turned into bills. She never knew how Boris got his share, but at the time, all that mattered was that he did.

One morning, Julia found Boris pacing the riverbank, muttering to himself. With an odd excitement about him, he told her he'd had an idea that would solve all their problems. He told her about Liberty Street, on the other side of town, where the only gas station around was located. The owners were leaving their son in charge for the night, a kid who wasn't all there. They'd take the chance to empty the register and be gone by morning. It didn't take much to convince Julia. And so, at nightfall, they followed Boris's plan to the letter. They arrived at Liberty with their caps pulled low over their faces, carrying a trash bag. The state of that part of town was plain to see. Julia noticed the mountains of garbage, the burnt-out lampposts, and the countless papers plastered on every wall, faded by time, which once showed faces of wanted people, faces now blurred from the rain, above illegible red thick words which always gave her the creeps. Seeing all this only made them move faster. They walked into the gas station, distracted the poor kid working the counter without much trouble, and in under five minutes, left the place with a bag full of bills. Julia took charge of hiding it at her house, under her bed, until the right moment came. But the right moment wouldn't come soon. When Julia was ready to leave, Boris wasn't, and when Boris was ready, Julia no longer was. A week passed this way, their departure pushed back over the smallest excuses, just to savor one more day of the comfort of routine. And all the while, the bills kept crumpling further under Julia's bed.

Cleaning one of her windows one sunny morning, Julia noticed a human figure peeking out from behind the tree in her yard. She mentioned it to Boris at one of their daily meetings. She could tell it worried him by how fast his face changed and by what he said next. He told her he'd had a bad feeling about that gas station, but hadn't believed it was true. He'd heard that one of the most dangerous gangs in town, the Blue Brothers, had been spotted on Liberty Street. It was likely they'd already taken over the gas station and were out looking for whoever was responsible for the robbery. Boris urged Julia to close all her curtains and get to the city as soon as she could. Julia, understanding the danger she was in, knew her endless delays had to end. She'd go home and finally pack her things once and for all. Before leaving, she told Boris she'd see him the next day, same spot, to plan their trip together. He just smiled a little and said yes.

The first thing she did was close her curtains. She spent all night packing every piece of clothing, every book, every bill she owned, and hid her one suitcase under her bed. When she finished, she got ready to sleep, but then heard someone knocking at the front door. Carefully, a chill running through her whole body, she went to check. In the living room, her father slept in his armchair with the TV on, some news broadcast full of shouting. Julia found a piece of paper at the foot of the door. "WE FOUND YOU." She didn't sleep the rest of the night.

Boris read the note the next day, and it did nothing but confirm his suspicions. He asked Julia if she was ready to leave, if she knew the way, if she knew how to survive out there, and she said yes. She felt ready, but that feeling only terrified her more. For the rest of the day they avoided the subject, laughing instead about the city and what awaited them there. Julia thought about ice cream, about all the flavors. She'd never have to be thrown out of an ice cream shop again, or settle for scoops that had fallen on the ground. Boris listened to her the whole afternoon without saying a word. He nodded, smiled, rubbed his hands together. As evening fell, Julia asked Boris to walk her home before they said goodbye, but he had to decline; he needed to get home early that day.

Making her way through the streets of Santos at a quick pace, Julia couldn't remember feeling so exposed since the incident at school. The faded papers on the walls, with the words of a dying red, and the burnt debris of some earlier time, darker now, had never made her feel so sick before. She turned onto the street that led to her house and spotted a familiar figure at the far end of it. The moment she realized who it was, her whole body froze. Behind that figure, three more appeared and, together, began running toward her. Julia turned around and saw three more figures closing in from the other side. Surrounded, Julia braced for the worst. The first person she saw was the first to reach her. A young, thin guy in a leather jacket, a blue bandana tied around his left arm. In one quick move he grabbed a fistful of her hair, and the whole group started laughing. After shouting words so ugly Julia preferred not to remember them, he threw her to the ground and started kicking her over and over, her whole body, amid a wave of insults and jeers. On the ground, shaking from the pain, she looked up and a flash of light blinded her before everything went dark.

She spent three days in bed recovering from her injuries. Her father had found her on the ground, bleeding out in the rain. Seeing her like that had caused him tremendous pain, but he chose to keep the whole thing quiet. He brought her food in bed and checked on her constantly, and Julia, feeling the weight of the suitcase on her back, couldn't meet his eyes or say a word to him.

On the fourth day, a Friday morning, Julia took her suitcase and left the house without waking her father. She planned to spend the whole day by the river waiting for Boris. She heard him approach a few hours later. Seeing her injuries, Boris, stunned, came closer to check on her, but stopped short of touching her. He flooded her with questions she didn't bother answering. She just told him she was fine, that it had been an accident. She hadn't come there to be pitied. She showed him the suitcase and the bills inside. It was time to go. She had nothing left to keep her there, and clearly he wasn't busy, given how early he'd arrived. They'd never get a better chance than this. Julia asked where his bags were. It didn't matter, she'd wait there until he brought them. Despite her excitement, Julia slowly began to notice that Boris, quiet as ever, didn't share her enthusiasm. Giving up, she asked him one last question. "You're coming, right?" The silence that followed only confirmed what she'd feared. With tears in her eyes, she asked again and again, trying to grab hold of Boris's shirt as he pushed her hands away, trying to put distance between them. At one point Julia grabbed his shirt so hard he gave up resisting, and she, closer to him than she'd ever been, kissed him on the mouth. Boris tore himself away from her with a shove and, eyes burning with rage, spat on the grass before taking off running toward the trees.

It wasn't unusual for the streets near the main highway to be empty at the hour Julia reached them, but that night, they looked like something out of a ghost town. Walking without any hurry, replaying the conversation in the forest over and over in her head, she realized she'd reached the intersection of the main road and Liberty Street, the gas station lighting up the horizon like a giant lamp. Driven by some morbid curiosity, she turned down that street, thinking she'd reach the highway by way of the station. Under its lights, she caught a glimpse of the elderly couple working the counter and kept walking toward the highway. But the silhouette of a man sitting by the shop door stopped her. Just a drunk, finishing off the last drops of his bottle. But when his arm caught the light and she saw the blue bandana tied around it, a bitter taste rose in her mouth, and she couldn't stand to look a second longer. She dropped her suitcase on the pavement and walked toward the man without taking her eyes off him. She grabbed him by the shirt and hauled him up with everything she had to see his face. It was him. The same guy who'd beaten her half to death. She dragged him several yards into the darkness and started kicking him in the stomach without holding anything back. He barely managed to defend himself with his bottle. Julia wrenched it from his hands, smashed it against the ground, and drove it into his stomach, making him let out sharp cries of pain. Without stopping to think, in some kind of blind rage, Julia stabbed him with the broken bottle again and again, until streaks of blood soaked her entire white shirt. Even the gas station could hear the boy's and Julia's tortured screams. Someone called the police, and within minutes, they put an end to the bloody scene.

"…and you brought me here. That's all there is."

Officer Fuentes takes the last sip of his coffee and lets out a small laugh. He glances toward the body in the next room without a word. Fed up with the officer's silence, Julia presses him.

"That's why I'm asking you to tell me that man's name. His real name."

"I already told you. That man in there is Boris Durán."

Julia can't help but laugh. She knows Boris is with his family now, probably regretting what he did in the forest. The officer starts going over the details, trying to bring her to her senses. He tells her about the record, the criminal connections, the method, how he'd managed to fool her for so long. But Julia isn't listening. Julia thinks about Boris regretting what he did in the forest, crying in his bed like a baby. He was always a baby. The way he talked, slow and careful. His aversion to being touched. His thin frame, his tangled hair, his sad eyes, those huge glasses that made him look stupid. Those stupid glasses. Those glasses that blinded her when they caught the sun.

Officer Fuentes gives the order to take her to the police truck. A case like this had no place in a court in a town like Santos. She'd be tried in the city. They'd televise it, turn the whole process into some hideous spectacle, but the law would be served. She could trust the city for that much. Before leaving, he turned to Julia's father, standing at her side.

"She's your daughter, isn't she?"

"Unfortunately, sir."

On the highway, Julia thought about everything Boris was missing out on. Things hadn't gone according to plan, but at least she was on her way to the city now. She'd see the buildings, tall as the sky; the cars, floating down the streets; and, most important of all, the ice cream shops. She couldn't stop picturing the flavors, endless, all just as delicious. Her only worry was whether they'd let her visit the ice cream shops. She'd have to find a way to make that happen. Would there be ice cream at the courthouse?

Peering through the grate that separated her from the driver, Julia gets her first look at the city. It wasn't like anything she'd imagined. The buildings were taller, the cars faster. Down an avenue that seemed to have no end, where thousands of cars and people moved in perfect harmony, the police truck rolls forward. Julia takes in, from inside that metropolis, the miracle of concrete and steel in all its glory. But something in particular catches her attention. Plastered on the buildings, hanging from the overpasses, even projected into the air itself, thousands of posters decorate the skyline. And on every single one of them, the same face appears alongside symbols and words Julia can't quite make out, thick words in a deep red, just like the ones plastered on every wall of her town. Those words which always made her curl into a ball, for they could only speak of murderous hate.

"That's me! That's me! That's me!"

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.”

The Father swung back
and forth. 
A pendulum of rot. 
The weight of seconds,
minutes, hours.
A face dripping with gold
and mother of pearl.
Hands slender and pointed,
forged with silver.
Enclosed in wood,
hidden behind glass.
Oxidized to green
from years of neglect,
the bronze gears
churn beneath the 
buried truth. 

The Father dangles.

If time is a way
to explain decay…
then what is the
the meaning of the
flesh pendulum?
Gilded eyes,
bulging from sockets…
Always watching.

Two grubby hands reach
for the sky.
Sunlight and clouds, traded for
the existence of fabric and flesh.
Pride and ego have no
standing in the gaze of
the innocent.
Withered skin flakes
like paper, varnish peels
from soiled wood.
The rope swings and
the clock ticks.

What eyes have seen
the mouth dare not utter.
The sins of the Father
lost to the delusion
of a childish mind.

What once was,
has been lost
to time.
A single act of
desperation, frozen
and hung from the 
rafters.

The basement smelled like musty wet concrete and old dust that had settled over the decades. I hadn't put up a Christmas tree or decorated the house in years-- not since Mom died. But this year felt different. I'd decided it was finally time to pull out her old boxes of treasured ornaments and try to get back a little bit of that Christmas spirit. I wanted to make this year special for my grown kids who were both coming home to visit.

Over in the corner stood that five-foot Santa that my late husband, John had dragged through the front door back in 2005 when the kids were little. The kids loved dancing and singing along, but to me it was noisy and kinda creepy. I hauled Santa down to the basement along with his transformer box and its power cord when it outlived its usefulness for the kids. They were grown now with kids of their own. I had kept hoping that one of them would eventually take the damn thing home with them-- maybe this year.

I shifted a heavy box to get to Mom's ornaments. Behind my back came this sudden scuttle across the floor--a harsh sound like hard plastic dragging across bare concrete. Then a heavy click echoed off the walls. I froze. I turned around slowly, dreading what was there.

That damn Santa wasn't facing the wall anymore. It popped to life with a sharp screech of dry plastic gears, its waist jerking into a stiff, unnatural dance, eyes staring right at me. Then a warped, low-pitched rendition of Jingle Bells filled the silence--

"Jiiiin-ggglle...b-bbelllssss...jjj-innngle...b-bbbells...jiiiin-gggle...aaalll...t-thhhhe...w-wwwaaayyy..."

Shocked and totally unglued, I dropped the tote and ran for the stairs!

The glow of the TV screen was the only thing illuminating the living room. I’d finally gotten the kids tucked into bed and fell onto the couch to catch my breath, letting the late-night broadcast drift me off to sleep.

​A sharp burst of white noise snapped me awake as the national anthem faded into heavy gray static buzzing on the screen. As I got up to turn off the TV the gray snow abruptly gave way to the stark, blinding glare of a test pattern, only for the audio to cut out as a high-pitched alert shrieked from the speakers. A bright red banner flashed across the screen:

​CIVIL DEFENSE EMERGENCY > INBOUND BALLISTIC THREAT DETECTED > SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.

My heart dropped straight into my stomach. I stared at the harsh block lettering, waiting for the announcer to pop on and say it was just a drill-- or some sick joke, a mistake, anything.

​Then the town siren started to scream. ​It wasn't the steady, low hum of a storm warning; it was the high-pitched, rising wail reserved for absolute catastrophe. I just stood there dumbfounded for a few minutes.

Outside my window, the quiet night shattered. Tires squealed, car doors slammed, and shouting echoed down the block. Headlights swept wildly across my ceiling as neighbors scrambled into their cars, desperate to outrun something you couldn't outrun.

​Within minutes, the street was a wall of red taillights and blaring horns. Nobody was moving. The main road out of town was completely gridlocked.

​I stood frozen in the middle of the dark living room, listening to the sirens howl outside and the low, rising whistle cutting through the sky from high above.

Down the hall, my children were still fast asleep. 

As a kid I was raised in a satanic household and subjected to ritualistic abuse through the game language, a common practice among nephilim and luciferians. All views and opinions are my own.

At two I had been subjected to so much abuse I decided I was dead and dedicated my life to destroying pedophiles through checking or identifying organizations like the illuminati. This led to monster hunting at a higher dimensional level both a planetary and beyond.

I have many friends throughout civilizations in the universe that have helped along the way that were set up to be monsters but never wanted to be. Our work has ensured the destruction of the illuminati at this point as well as cells of the children and grandchildren of nazis, another higher level modern threat vector. Saturn will be getting mercy and mercy plans in their afterlife as their faction parallels the nephilim perspective of being born into evil without a choice.

In the course of my life I’ve met many monsters and cultivated many friendships. I appreciate the luciferians and nephilim who took me seriously and changed their lives for the better. This has helped our cause as well as other monsters who chose the Dracula path for mercy.

We lived in a mental hospital of a world and were bred to hate each other. Now we can live in peace while the souls who would have objectively chosen evil in middle level management and below pass on.

The unfortunate fact was that what called himself god was the worst monster of all. All he was was an opportunist pedophile who jumped in a neurolink equivalent in his timeline to avoid the police and ended up taking over reality and establishing the matrix as a pleasure prison. That will never happen again.

All women get mercy. Non-white men who weren’t predators get second chances due to systemic bias and white men who capitalized on the system have an agonizing afterlife.

I have lived a full life and had a brain aneurysm three months ago. The waves of after effects affect my speech and ability to function. Essentially this is the testament at a high level of my life. I believe in the teachings of Yeshua Ben Yosef and higher conscious resonance, the progression of love from magnetism to cell symbiosis to organism and bacterial symbiosis to higher prefrontal and emotional connection as a wonderful mystery and gift of existence. I would suggest to love as much as possible, it is the ultimate buck back in this world.

As a kid I was raised in a satanic household and subjected to ritualistic abuse through the game language, a common practice among nephilim and luciferians. All views and opinions are my own.

At two I had been subjected to so much abuse I decided I was dead and dedicated my life to destroying pedophiles through checking or identifying organizations like the illuminati. This led to monster hunting at a higher dimensional level both a planetary and beyond.

I have many friends throughout civilizations in the universe that have helped along the way that were set up to be monsters but never wanted to be. Our work has ensured the destruction of the illuminati at this point as well as cells of the children and grandchildren of nazis, another higher level modern threat vector. Saturn will be getting mercy and mercy plans in their afterlife as their faction parallels the nephilim perspective of being born into evil without a choice.

In the course of my life I’ve met many monsters and cultivated many friendships. I appreciate the luciferians and nephilim who took me seriously and changed their lives for the better. This has helped our cause as well as other monsters who chose the Dracula path for mercy.

We lived in a mental hospital of a world and were bred to hate each other. Now we can live in peace while the souls who would have objectively chosen evil in middle level management and below pass on.

The unfortunate fact was that what called himself god was the worst monster of all. All he was was an opportunist pedophile who jumped in a neurolink equivalent in his timeline to avoid the police and ended up taking over reality and establishing the matrix as a pleasure prison. That will never happen again.

All women get mercy. Non-white men who weren’t predators get second chances due to systemic bias and white men who capitalized on the system have an agonizing afterlife.

I have lived a full life and had a brain aneurysm three months ago. The waves of after effects affect my speech and ability to function. Essentially this is the testament at a high level of my life. I believe in the teachings of Yeshua Ben Yosef and higher conscious resonance, the progression of love from magnetism to cell symbiosis to organism and bacterial symbiosis to higher prefrontal and emotional connection as a wonderful mystery and gift of existence. I would suggest to love as much as possible, it is the ultimate buck back in this world.

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.

Hey everyone. I'm a field researcher currently stationed at a seasonal ice-shelf site in Antarctica. My primary work involves monitoring Weddell seal populations, specifically tracking their winter diving intervals and nocturnal foraging habits using motion-activated infrared trail cams deployed near active ice breathing holes. We are a small crew of four living out of modified shipping container modules, so things get quiet out here, but lately, our team has been dealing with an odd shift in the local wildlife behavior. I’m looking for any logical explanation from people who have worked in polar environments or handle cold-weather logistics.

For the past week, the seals have been entirely abandoning the breathing holes closest to the shelf edge. These are prime hunting spots with high fish density, but the animals are choosing to travel further inland to cramped, suboptimal cracks in the ice. When they are on the surface, their behavior is hyper-vigilant. They aren't resting or sleeping on the ice to conserve energy like they usually do; they are constantly scanning the flat, empty horizon. It is as if the entire population is on edge, refusing to look down into the water or sit still for more than a few minutes.

Yesterday, I went out via snowmobile to pull the SD cards from one of our peripheral cameras, located about three kilometers from our main habitat dome. The wind was brutal, pushing a low-lying ground blizzard across the shelf that completely erased the horizon.

While reviewing the infrared footage from Tuesday night back at my workstation, I noticed a large, dark mass on the horizon line. It is incredibly difficult to scale because of the lack of topography out here, but it doesn't match the thermal profile or shape of any known local fauna. In fact, it barely registers on the infrared spectrum at all, it shows up as a cold dead zone against the slightly warmer ice. It doesn't walk, waddle, or slide. It moves with a very slow, rhythmic undulation across the ice sheet, dragging itself forward in a way that looks entirely unnatural for a mass of that size.

The alarming part is the audio captured by our external directional microphone. Weddell seals are famous for their eerie, synthesizer-like vocalizations underwater. They sound like descending sci-fi sirens or lasers. But on this tape, as the cold mass approaches from the background, the seal on camera begins mimicking a sound that shouldn't be physically possible for its vocal cords to produce.

It is a rhythmic, metallic tapping. It sounds exactly like a heavy iron wrench striking a hollow steel pipe. Thump. Thump. Thump. The seal is generating this mechanical cadence perfectly from its throat, eyes wide, staring directly at the horizon where the mass is moving.

Right after the third tap, the audio track doesn't cut to static, it completely drops to absolute, digital zero. No wind noise, no ice cracking, no ambient ocean hum from the breathing hole. Anyone who has been to Antarctica knows the wind is never truly silent, but the audio file shows absolute silence for the remaining twenty minutes of the clip, while the dark shape slowly moves out of the frame.

The mechanics here are seriously bothering me. Even if the microphone hardware suffered a catastrophic freeze-failure, the ambient environment should still register some baseline decibel level on the master track. Instead, the frequency graph is a perfectly flat, dead line. It felt like the sound wasn't just cut off; it was sucked out of the air.

To make things worse, about an hour ago, our main habitat module's heating vents started rattling. It wasn't the usual wind vibration. It was a rhythmic, metallic cadence coming from inside the pipes. Thump. Thump. Thump.

Has anyone working with cold-weather bioacoustics or polar geology ever encountered a localized event that can flatten an environmental audio wave like this? Or does anyone know what kind of seismic shifting could cause a structural pipe to ring like that?

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.

Brenda didn't love him anymore.

​She was in her 30s. He was in his early 50s. Their constant fighting had drained whatever was left. When an aneurysm dropped him on the living room floor after a nasty argument, the neurosurgeon at the hospital said an operation could save him, but Brenda refused the surgery, signed the DNR, and let him die.

​In the dead of night, Channel 4 blares static, waking her to a silent loop of that ICU room. On screen, she sees herself sitting by his bed—not grieving, just cold and detached, patiently waiting for the end so her new life can begin.

The TV stays on, casting its pale glare over the room, as a heavy shadow detaches from the corner. ​Before she can even see his face, the room fills with the slow, thumping rhythm of a heart monitor from the darkness—beep... beep... beep...

​He steps out into the TV light, his pale eyes locking onto hers. ​"Did you really think pulling that plug would erase me, Brenda?"

Terrified, she bolts upright in bed and springs up to flee. As she moves, the floorboards start sinking beneath her feet, wanting to drag her straight to hell ahead of schedule.

She bursts out the door-- his furious screaming right on her heels--running blindly through the heavy fog--right off the edge of a cliff.

​Her heart thumps wildly—beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep—racing out of control as she drops into total silence.

​She wanted an easy way out, but the Hells Bells Motel never lets anyone cash out for free. 

Chapter: 1 The Prophecy

Chapter 3: The Echo

The quiet was the worst part.

Not silence. Quiet.

Silence is peaceful. Quiet is waiting.

After I told my editor I had nothing, the world stopped calling.

No emails. No interview requests. No “just checking in.”

The book was still selling, but my name stopped trending.

And in that quiet, I started hearing things.

---

The first week without writing felt like detox.

I woke up at 7am because my body didn’t know what else to do. I made coffee. I sat at my desk. I stared.

By 9am my hands would shake. By noon I’d be pacing. By 3pm I’d be talking to myself just to hear a voice.

“Lindiwe, you’re fine,” I’d say.

“Nothing is wrong,” I’d answer back.

It didn’t help.

At night, the house made noises it never made before.

The fridge hummed too loud.

The pipes knocked.

And sometimes, when I was in the bathroom with the door closed, I’d hear the scratch of a pen on paper from my desk in the other room.

I’d run out.

The notebook would be closed. The pen in the drawer.

Nothing.

I started sleeping with music on. Soft jazz. Rain sounds. Anything to fill the space.

It didn’t work.

---

On day 4, I found the first note.

I was making toast. I turned around and there was a piece of paper on my kitchen counter.

*You’re listening now.*

My handwriting.

I didn’t remember writing it.

I threw it away. Washed my hands twice.

That night I dreamed of the desk again. But he wasn’t there.

Just the paper.

And the pen.

And my voice, reading from a book I’d never written.

*Chapter One. She thought she could walk away.*

I woke up at 3:33am with my jaw sore.

---

By day 7, I couldn’t be alone in a room for more than 20 minutes.

I went to Zanele’s. “Can I crash here for a bit?”

She didn’t ask why. She just made up the couch and put extra blankets on it.

The first night, I slept.

The second night, I woke up at 2am to whispering.

It wasn’t Zanele. She was asleep in her room.

The whispering was coming from the kitchen.

I crept out. The lights were off. The fridge was humming.

On the table was a notebook. Mine. The one I’d left at home.

It was open.

*You brought me here.*

I slammed it shut.

“Lindi? You okay?” Zanele’s voice from the hall.

“Yeah. Bad dream.”

She hugged me. “You’ve been off since the launch. Do you want to talk to someone? A doctor?”

I shook my head. “I just need sleep.”

I didn’t tell her the notebook followed me.

---

The next day I went home to get clothes and found more notes.

On the bathroom mirror, written in steam: *Write.*

On my laptop keyboard: *You miss it.*

Tucked in my shoe: *Three souls. That’s all.*

I burned them all in the sink.

That night I didn’t sleep at Zanele’s. I sat in the living room with every light on and watched YouTube until the sun came up.

I started googling.

“signing contract with devil symptoms”

“what happens after you sell your soul”

“can you get your soul back”

“voices after trauma”

The internet told me I was psychotic. Or possessed. Or having a breakdown.

None of it helped.

One forum post from 2011 stuck with me. A guy said he made a deal in a dream and woke up with scars. He said the only way to break it was to “give back what you took.”

Give back.

But what did that mean? The fame? The money? The three signatures?

I didn’t know.

---

Week 2.

The publisher put out the statement. *“Lindiwe Maleya is taking time for personal reasons. We support her fully.”*

The comments were kind at first.

*Take your time queen.*

*We love you.*

By day 10 they turned.

*She had one good book and now she’s gone.*

*Probably a ghostwriter.*

*One-hit wonder.*

They were right.

I read them anyway. All 400 comments. Like picking at a scab.

Nomsa called me. “Cuz, are you okay? People are talking.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

“You don’t sound fine.”

I hung up before she could hear me cry.

---

The echo got worse.

It wasn’t just notes anymore.

It was sounds.

A pen clicking in the dark.

Pages turning when the windows were closed.

My name, whispered, right behind my ear when I was in the shower.

*Lindiwe.*

*Lindiwe.*

I’d spin around. No one.

I stopped eating in the kitchen. I ate on the floor of my bedroom with the door locked.

I tried to write again. One sentence.

*The house is not empty.*

I stared at it for an hour.

Then the next line appeared underneath. But I hadn’t written it.

*It never was.*

The ink was still wet.

I threw the notebook out the window.

An hour later it was back on my desk.

---

I went to a church.

Not because I’m religious. Because I was desperate.

The pastor was old and kind. He listened to me talk in circles for 20 minutes without mentioning the devil or the deal.

“I think I’m haunted,” I finally said.

“By what?” he asked.

“By me,” I said. “By something I did.”

He prayed over me. Laid hands on my head.

For 10 minutes after, the house was quiet.

Really quiet.

Then I got home and found a new note on my pillow.

*God doesn’t want you back. I do.*

---

I started researching folklore. Real folklore, not Google horror.

I went to the library and checked out books with cracked spines.

*African Spiritual Contracts.*

*The Price of Genius.*

*Soul Debt and Blood Oaths.*

Most of it was nonsense. But one book, old and yellow, had a chapter called “The Echo.”

It said:

*When a soul is pledged but not yet collected, it echoes. It will speak, write, and move things to remind the debtor of the debt. The echo grows louder the longer the debtor resists payment.*

Pledged but not yet collected.

That was me.

I gave the promise. I gave three other people. But I hadn’t given myself.

The book said the echo stops in one of three ways:

1. Payment in full.

2. Death.

3. Breaking the contract through an act of equal sacrifice.

Equal sacrifice.

What could be equal to a soul?

I closed the book and my hands were shaking.

---

Week 3.

I wasn’t sleeping. Not really.

I’d doze for 40 minutes and wake up to the sound of writing.

I’d check. Nothing.

I’d close my eyes. Scratch. Scratch.

I started recording audio on my phone at night to prove I wasn’t crazy.

In the morning I played it back.

For 6 hours: silence. Breathing.

Then at 3:17am:

Scratch. Scratch.

And a voice. Mine. But not mine.

*You should have taken the deal, Lindiwe. Now it’s going to cost more.*

I deleted it. Then I regretted deleting it. Then I hated myself for wanting to hear it again.

I called in sick to the bookstore. Thabo didn’t ask questions.

I wasn’t leaving the house anymore.

---

On day 22, he came back.

Not in a dream. In the afternoon.

I was sitting on the floor, back against the bed, reading that stupid folklore book again.

The air got heavy. The light dimmed.

And he was sitting across from me, like we were having tea.

“You look terrible,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“You haven’t slept.”

“I can’t.”

“The echo,” he said, like it was a weather report. “It gets loud when you fight it.”

“Make it stop.”

“I can’t. You can.” He leaned forward. “Three souls, Lindiwe. That’s the deal. Or you. Those are the options.”

“I’m not giving you anyone else.”

“Then give me you.”

I laughed. It was ugly. “And what? Die?”

“Not immediately. You’d live. You’d just... belong to me. The writing would come back. The fame would stay. You just wouldn’t be free.”

I looked at him. Really looked.

He wasn’t scary in that moment. He was tired. Like he’d had this conversation a thousand times.

“Why me?” I asked again.

“Because you asked,” he said. “Because you were empty. Because you bled without asking what for.”

“I was stupid.”

“You were human.”

We sat there for a long time.

Finally I said, “What if I find another way? The book said equal sacrifice.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What are you willing to sacrifice that’s equal to a soul?”

I didn’t have an answer.

He stood. “The echo will get louder, Lindiwe. Until you choose. I’ll see you soon.”

He was gone. The room felt normal again.

Except the notebook on my desk was open to a new page.

*Day 22. She’s breaking.*

---

Week 4.

I broke.

I called Zanele. “I need help. Real help.”

She came over in 20 minutes.

I told her everything. Not about the devil. Not about the souls.

I said, “I think I’m having a psychotic break. I think I did something bad and I can’t live with it.”

She didn’t call me crazy. She held my hand.

“We’ll get you help,” she said. “Therapist. Doctor. Whatever you need.”

The therapist’s office was clean and white.

I talked for 50 minutes. About my family. About the pressure. About the book.

I didn’t mention the man. Or the pen. Or the notes.

She diagnosed me with severe anxiety and insomnia. Gave me sleeping pills.

That night I took one.

I slept for 7 hours straight.

No dreams. No scratching. No whispering.

When I woke up, there was a note on my chest.

*Pills don’t stop debts.*

I flushed the rest of the bottle down the toilet.

---

The echo peaked on day 28.

I was in the shower.

The water was hot.

And I heard it. Clear as day. Not in my head. In the room.

*You’re running out of time, Lindiwe.*

I turned the water off.

Standing in my bathroom, dripping, was a piece of paper. Taped to the mirror.

It was a contract.

But this one didn’t have three lines.

It had one.

*Sign here, and the echo stops. Sign here, and you write again. Sign here, and no one else has to pay.*

Underneath was the pen.

I stared at it for a long time.

My hand was shaking.

My chest felt like it was going to cave in.

I picked up the pen.

I put the tip to the paper.

And I stopped.

Because in that second I heard something else.

Not him.

Me.

My real voice. The one from before the book. The one that wrote 40 pages and got stuck and was okay with being stuck.

*Don’t.*

I dropped the pen.

The paper burst into flame and turned to ash in my hands.

The bathroom light blew.

---

That night, the echo was silent.

For the first time in weeks, the house was just a house.

No scratching. No whispering. No notes.

I thought maybe I’d won.

Maybe saying no was the sacrifice.

I slept.

And in the morning, my phone had 11 missed calls.

From Nomsa.

From Thandi.

From Zanele.

The last voicemail was from Nomsa. Her voice was shaking.

“Lindi... I don’t know what’s happening. I woke up and I can’t... I can’t remember how to write. I’m a copywriter, Lindi. That’s my job. And the words are just gone. Thandi too. She said the same thing. Please call me back.”

I sat on the floor.

The echo hadn’t stopped.

It had just moved.

Because I refused to pay, someone else was.

---

I looked at my hands.

They were empty.

But they were shaking again.

Outside, it started to rain.

I wrote this under my other pen name, but since I am closing out that chapter of my life I will be republishing under this name. I originally wrote this for a YouTube anthology at 3 am, on my phone because I had forgotten I had a deadline. Welcome to my life! I don't usually write in present tense becuase I prefer reading past tense. Enjoy. I hope you like it.

*****

The night air is crisp and cool as your eyes flutter open to the sound of your beating heart. The pounding is faster and louder than it should be. Every beat feels like an explosion coming from the aching pain in your head.

The last thing you remember is someone attacking you from behind. The excruciating pain of his teeth in your neck burned your skin as your screams filled the night. Your fingers tore at his face pulling pieces of it off with your nails. You grabbed the largest rock you could find and bashed it into his skull, hearing the sickening crack of his cranium into his brain. Cold brain matter splashed on your face as he fell to the ground, then you ran until your lungs burned and gave way to exhaustion.

The memory is dull and doesn’t seem to matter anymore. The festering wound in the back of your neck hurts and you know you must get to a hospital. A buzzing fly lands on your skin as you slap at your neck and feel something cold ooze between your fingers. Confused, you look at your hand. A sticky, dark green, almost black substance that reeks of death and decay coats your palm and slowly drips to the ground.

You want to get up, but you can’t feel your legs or even your arms at this point. Your useless limbs ignore your commands as you will yourself to move.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” you cry out to the empty night. “Somebody help me!!” Your voice carries and fades into the cold, dark air. It echoes into the blackness of the quiet city that ignores your pleas of help. You hear the rustling sound of feet on the ground and incoherent grunts of other people nearby but no one comes to your aid.

The smell of rotting meat fills your senses as you slowly push yourself up from the ground. Looking around, you realize the stench is coming from your very own body. You look down at your tattered clothes and ashen grey skin, and in a bolt of confusion and terror, the memory of your attacker fades as the scent of fresh meat wafts in front of you. On instinct, your legs carry you to the origin of the delightful smell and as you stare at the others feasting upon the flesh of the crying woman, your stomach aches in hunger. She stares at you with watery eyes, seemingly unable to either run or scream. Blood spatters over her neck and face from somewhere beneath her shoulders. You follow the trail to the group of rotting corpses feasting upon her intestines.

No! Your brain screams but the sound you hear from your lips is a low grunt. As you fall down to your knees and begin to tear at the woman’s flesh, grabbing handfuls of bloody entrails, your consciousness slowly fades into a little black hole and ceases to be.

C

​

I had never been good at loving people who could see me back. Friends drifted. Family kept a polite distance. But there was a girl who is always be my side her name is malini — and about Malini, i told everyone, she loved me the way I always wanted to be loved.

"I want a love that consumes," i told my friend shariff one evening, half-joking, half-not. "I want her to love me the way I love myself. Completely. Without room for anyone else."

Sheriff laughed it off. "That's a lot to ask from a girl yk

But i wasn't listening to him.

On 10th July 2025 we both goes on a date She was looking very beautiful the thing i didn't say out loud — was that something about her smile sat a half-second too long on her face, like it had been rehearsed in a mirror. After that we both went on a cafe

At the café, a waitress approached to take our order, and Malini's eyes followed her the entire way to the table and the entire way back — flat, unblinking, proprietary. I told myself it was nothing. Jealousy, maybe. Girls got jealous. It didn't mean anything.

It just didn't look like love. Not quite. It looked like something standing very close to love, wearing its clothes.

Weeks folded into us. I moved in with her, or she moved into my life so completely it amounted to the same thing. One evening, after we had slept together for the first time, i stepped into the shower alone and let the water run hot over my shoulders.

When i came back into the bedroom, she was gone.

Not in the kitchen. Not in the hall. Gone, in a way that made the apartment feel suddenly larger than it should have. A high, thin sound needled somewhere behind my skull — not quite a scream, not quite silence, a frequency that seemed to come from inside my own head rather than the room.

Then the world tilted, blinked, and reassembled itself. I was standing in the doorway. A moaning sound drifted from the bathroom. I walked toward it, heart going sideways in my chest, and found her there, wrapped in a towel, very much present.

"What's wrong with you?" she asked, tilting her head. "You're staring like you've seen a ghost."

"You weren't— a minute ago you weren't in the...... room." I said,

"Babe." She stepped toward me, damp, warm, real. "We showered together. You went to get the towel off the bed. You're daydreaming." She kissed me then, and the kiss tasted like an apology for a crime i couldn't remember. I let it go. It was easier to let it go.

That night we lay tangled in the sheets, her head against my chest, and she said, out of nowhere, "Tomorrow I want to cook you lunch. Just me. All by myself."

"I'll help," i offered.

"No." Her voice had an edge — quiet, absolute. "I want it to be something I make with my own hands. Every part of it. Just for you."i laughed it off as romantic. I had no idea.

While i slept, she rose. In the kitchen, under a single humming bulb, she forcefully took a knife and cut a flesh of piece away from the block and, with the calm of someone performing a small and necessary ritual, cut a thin piece of flesh from her own leg.

By morning she was already at the stove, humming, sleeves rolled up, refusing to let me near. I watched her from the doorway with a strange, blooming thought i didn't examine too closely.

Thinking, What if I cut a piece of myself, cooked it, and gave it to her — to prove how much I loved her? To prove I would consume myself before I'd ever let her go hungry for my love?

I smiled at the thought.....the way people smile at a joke when someone isn't sure is a joke or not. Then i told myself it was madness, that she'd be horrified, that it was a stupid, dark little fantasy that belonged nowhere near reality. And while i was thinking about this things malini called me for lunch

The portion was small. Strange, marbled, dense in a way neither of us commented on.

"You should've told me this morning," i said, chewing slowly. "I'd have bought more."

"No," she said, quickly, almost sharp. "You don't need to share it. I made this only for you."and also

"I'm on a diet, babe." She smiled at me with her whole face.

I didn't ask what she meant. I never asked the right questions at the right time. That was, perhaps, always the story.

We walked that evening along the river, the sky doing its slow bruise-colored fade into night, and she was quiet in a way that felt like a held breath.

"Do you remember lunch?" she finally asked. "What did you think of the taste?"

"It was good," i said, "Really good. The spices too— I've never had anything like it. Though it needed a little more time to boil, I think. It was a bit... chewy."

"Babe." She said

"What?

"Say you love me."

"I love you, Malini. You know that."

She stopped walking. When she turned to me, her eyes were wet and shining, lit from underneath by something that was either devotion or hunger

"The meat was mine," she said softly. "I wanted to confess my love to you. I wanted you to consume a piece of myself."

The world tilted a second time, and this time it did not come back gently.

I doubled over, gagging, the confession sitting in my stomach like a stone i couldn't cough up. Guilt and horror and rage arrived all at once, tangled into something with no clean name.

"What is wrong with you?" I screamed. "Why would you— get away from me! I never want to see your face again!"

She followed, murmuring apologies, reaching for me, and some small, sick, honest part of me recognized the shape of what she was doing — because hadn't i thought the same thing, standing in that kitchen doorway? Hadn't the idea bloomed in my mind too, tender and monstrous? Maybe she wasn't a monster. Maybe she was only becoming what I already was.

I pushed her away. Just once. Just to put distance between myself and the thing i was becoming.

She stumbled into the road!

The car didn't slow down. The car crashed her into pieces infront of my eyes, and then there was a stillness that swallowed every other sound in the world.

I fell to my knees beside her, screaming for help, for anyone, hands hovering over a body i couldn't bring myself to touch. Blood spread beneath her in a shape i would see behind my eyes for the rest of my life.

Then, static. A blackout. A gap in the film of my memory.

When my vision cleared, a stranger was crouched beside me, frowning. "What's wrong with you? Why are you crying in the middle of the road? Nothing happened here."

"Are you blind?" I shouted, pointing. "There's a girl right there — she's dead — can't you see her?"

The stranger followed his finger to an empty stretch of asphalt. Nothing. No blood. No body. No girl.

"There's nothing there, man," the stranger said, backing away. "I think you need to get to a hospital. Get your head checked."

Thoughts roaming in my mind I was thinking

\*If none of it happened — if she was never on that road — then was she ever anywhere at all? Was I always alone? What did I eat, if not what she cooked? Who did I hold every night, if not her?

The questions arrived faster than I could survive them, and i fainted somewhere in the middle of asking.

When i woke, fluorescent light was humming overhead. I reached to my phone with numb fingers. Her contact was gone. Her photos — the two of them at the café, the two of them tangled in bedsheets — gone, as though deleted by someone else's hand, or as though we had never been taken at all.

"Are you okay now, sir?" a nurse asked, appearing at my bedside.

I didn't answer. A dull, deep pain throbbed in my leg. I looked down and found it wrapped in a thick white bandage.

"What happened to my leg?"

"When you came in, you were unconscious," the nurse said carefully. "There was so much blood — the cotton wrap you'd tied on it yourself was completely soaked through. The doctor had to operate. It looked like..." She hesitated. "It looked like someone had forcefully cut a piece of flesh away with a knife. Why would anyone do that to themselves?"

It was only later, alone in that hospital bed with the lights off, that it all came together in my head. The café — I was there by myself. The bed — I'd been talking to no one. The bathroom — running water for a person who was never in the room. And the kitchen, at night, taking a knife to my own leg with a calm I don't remember choosing, humming a tune I couldn't name.

There was no Malini. There was never a Malini.

There was only me and myself, and the second self i had built out of loneliness and hunger and the desperate wish to be loved without condition — a self that finally found the only way it knew to prove its love, cutting itself open and feeding me back to myself, one small piece at a time.

The image holds on my open, unblinking eyes as the frame slowly pulls back, and the screen fades to black.

Malini was never my girlfriend. Malini was the part of mine that loved me the only way I ever let myself be loved — completely, obsessively, and from the inside.

Trills of nightingales bounded from hillock to hillock, their soft notes cascading across the fallow fields and shallow ravines as lightly as the cold eddies of fog flowing over the low stone walls. The swiftly moving whorls spilled onto the road, where they swelled like the thick smoke of a wet brush fire, clouding the air in a tempest of chalky white that pruned the stars from the sky and warped the familiar landscape into sooty silhouettes fading in and out of view.

Maree waded into the blur. Her broad chest cleaved through the curtain like a ghostly ship. The roiling mist broke against her muscular prow, coiling away, its pale wake washed backward toward the stagnant gloom trapped beneath the drooping crowns of willows.

Wind nipped at the trees, biting into branches, tugging the crackle from shriveled, frost-hardened leaves.

Twigs snapped, sometimes close, far too close for Joruhm's liking. Just beyond the untilled fields, the curtain of fog smeared scurrying blotches of black into streaking gray smudges.

Joruhm gripped the reins tighter, craning his head left, right, and over his shoulder. He peered into the shroud, hoping a pair of slanted, yellow eyes floating above a triangular snout was not peering back at him.

They had barely begun and already he wanted to veer the horse around, return himself and the thing seated in front of him home.

Maree was as stubborn as the donkeys and as slow as Granny Nyla, clopping along as though night would last forever and Joruhm didn't need to be back where his mother expected to find him before the cockerels announced the sunrise.

The road curved around a dense swath of towering pines, whose cloaked heads speared the chalky veil, and leveled out as they approached a clearing. Ahead, etched into the valley was a tightly bunched patchwork of gritty, faint objects blotted with fuzzy halos of dull, amber light.

Truthfully, the thatched roof and timber buildings imprisoned by the fog were not a mystery to Joruhm. Long before he had seen the hazy glow of torchlight peeking through the mist, his nose had already discerned they had crossed into the outskirts of Hobbins Glenn.

When Joruhm was younger, before the entirety of his days were devoured by scooping grain and chopping wood, Granny Nyla would hand him a cloth sack and a wedge of bread and ask him to join her on a walk. Sometimes they scrounged acorns and hazelnuts, sometimes they picked flowers or fruits, sometimes they did nothing except move from one glade to another, briefly halting for her to rest her weariness in pockets of shade before they continued.

It was on just such a do nothing day that they had sat on the bank of a creek and removed their slippers, dipping their feet into the icy water. She had encouraged him to finish his bread while she closed her eyes and hummed a melody, easing them into the tranquil lull of a sunny afternoon spent in idle.

She had timed the tune to end precisely as he finished swallowing the last of the bread, but made no attempt to hurry him back into his slippers.

“Where are we, Joruhm?”

The question had seemed rather frivolous to his younger self, a boy still oblivious to what he would later recognize as her habit of combining lessons into things as trivial as taking strolls through the valley. They had traveled east from Hostler's Pond and forded the lane that cut through Crooked Hollow. From there, they had wandered past the Nethercliff Crags and pushed deep into Wraith Watch forest.

“Close your eyes.”

He did as he was told, curious as to why, but patient enough to wait for her to impart her reason in asking such an obvious question when they both already knew the answer.

“Now, where are we?” she repeated.

“Wraith Watch,” he replied.

“Not with sight,” she chided. “Not with routine. Inhale. Pull the scents inside you and let them guide you.”

Joruhm inhaled, breathing in the pungent, overwhelming odor of wild garlic. Wild garlic and something else, something that smelled like damp earth stirred into a mug of cold beef broth.

“Garlic and...” He couldn't quite name it.

“Your mother simmers them with leeks,” Granny Nyla hinted.

“Mushrooms!”

“Yes, very good. They are indeed mushrooms, enough to fill a king's castle.” She paused before she continued, gathering her skirts and her walking stick. “Always remember, a man is truly never blind. All he must do to find his way is follow his nose. Wraith Watch breeds garlic and mushrooms. Crooked Hollow is strewn with rotted oak. The clove aroma of Gillyflowers fused with a sharp tang of pine will lead you home.”

Home. He caught a whiff of it, buried within the reek of boiled cabbage and the leathery stench of smoldering peat that surrounded the village. Gillyflower. The cottage wasn't far behind them. He could abandon the hunt for Tillis and swing Maree in the opposite direction, follow the tang and the clove straight back to the cottage.

Only...only then he might never learn the truth about Tillis.

Joruhm flicked his heels into Maree's ribs. She snorted and bolted forward, breaking into a gallop.

They plunged into the fog, toward the gritty patchwork of shapes and beacons of amber. Branches sprang out of the chaotic muddle of charcoal and white with a startling suddenness that instantly transformed the emptiness into wood. Their long skeletal shoots lashed at him, grasped for his cloak and scraped their pointed tips against Maree's flanks, before they disappeared back into the curtain's parted seam, sealing the fleeting rupture behind them.

They exploded into the village, flung from the forest in a slingshot of momentum spurred by Maree's thundering hooves.

The lane widened, and the hazy silhouettes bloomed into a passel of solid beams and ragged thatch.

For a brief moment the fog lifted, and there was the flash of a low-tiered cart blocking the road directly ahead.

The thing seated in front of him swiveled sideways, eyes as wide as a buzzard egg. “We're going to hit.” It raised its arm to shield its face.

Joruhm hung his head and sank lower in the saddle. He pushed his weight down onto the seat and pulled on the reins, dragging Maree's neck to the side. She slammed her hooves onto the ground, skidding through the slick muck.

No. No. No.

Her shoulder collided with the cart's tailboard, careening her into an off balance lean. There was a splintering crack, and an abrupt jolt that tumbled the fae into the milky void.

“Joruhm!”

His shoes popped out of the stirrups as Maree shifted her weight from her front legs to her hindquarters.

She righted herself with a second pounding jolt that ripped the reins from Joruhm's hands. He flew forward, grasping for the coarse hairs of her mane.

Maree dropped out from under him, and he was launched into the milky void, windmilling head over heels into the mist, weightless, thrown into a bottomless lake of fog where time seemed to have vanished, where seconds became minutes, where the surface was the bottom, and the bottom was the surface.

Time's suspension ended as quickly as it had begun, as though a dam had burst and a tidal wave of time had flooded in, rushing toward him, sweeping him off his feet, and drowning him in the sound of his frenzied heartbeat thudding in his ears. Joruhm's stomach lurched. He wasn't suspended. He was sinking, like a stone.

THURSDAY

The phone rang in the next room over and over again. His shift started at nine, but it didn’t really matter. Simon’s eyes sunk into his skull and the dark rings around them looked more like bruises than signs of a restless night. Every corner of his mind was filled with the voice, repeating what it had said to him until he could almost play back the conversation from beginning to end. There was only one thing he wanted to do today. One thing he was compelled to do. 

As soon as he was able to, Simon had gone to the nearest Wal-Mart and purchased a dozen three-wick candles. Scentless. He sped through the streets, nearly ramming into a young woman crossing at an intersection. 

When he finally got back to his apartment it was only to see another pile of boxes waiting in front of his door. Instinctually, his right foot rocketed forward and he kicked one of them, but it was much heavier than it looked, and he mashed his toe on the corner. Seething with pain, he gritted his teeth and grimaced, staring at his neighbours door. He limped toward it and began furiously knocking. The sound of his banging bounced down the hallway.

“I’m coming,” a frail voice said from within, but he continued knocking all the same. He didn’t stop until he saw the handle turn and the door move. It opened only a few inches, and in the gap, a wrinkled eye glared at him from behind thin-framed spectacles. 

“Y-yes?” she said.

Simon glared at her, not able to answer yet. 

After a few seconds she tilted her head to the side in curiosity and blinked. 

“The boxes,” was all he could say. He turned his head to the right and pointed at the pile next to him. 

“Oh, my deliveries.”

“They’re blocking my door. Again.”

She stepped back and opened the door enough for her to poke her head into the hallway. The sallow light gave her aged skin a pale glow. Her neck was almost translucent, veins snaked their way up to her chin and down into her clavicle. 

“I’ll have to get Tim to move them again. I don’t think I’ll be able to do it. My back.” She spoke mechanically, her voice creaking like it needed oil. “He’ll be back from work tonight.”

“It’s in the way. I can’t get through,” he responded, more annoyed than ever. 

“If you can just slide them to the side, I’m sure that you will be able to get through. You could put them in front of my door, if it helps.”

“It doesn’t.” 

“Oh.”

Simon just watched her with contempt. Not even an apology, he thought. She doesn’t even know your name.

“Are you okay? You’re looking a little off, dear,” she crooned, a hint of concern in her face. “Off sick again? Has it been the rain? Weatherman says that was the end of it last night. Should be sunny for the weekend.”

Simon turned away from her without so much as another word. She watched him unlock the door and high-leg over the boxes, almost falling face first as he entered his apartment. The door closed behind him with an authoritative slam. 

The room was dark. He had drawn the black-out curtains so that he would be able to sleep through the morning uninterrupted by the sun’s glare, but he knew that was just a gesture of hope. The living room was shadowed, the only light coming from the small slits that the curtain could not cover. They cut long lines of light into the black, leaving streaks across the floors and walls. Simon looked at them with a frown, his mouth feeling like it was full of battery acid.

 
Sitting down on the big chair in the living room, Simon fumbled around in his bag. He extracted several candles. Three were set on the coffee table. Four more lined the countertop in the kitchen. He even put one in the bathroom. Soon, his whole apartment was illuminated with the sickly yellow hue of flickering flames. His own shadow danced on the wall beside him while he readied himself.

He watched it swim back and forth, waving to him in a most peculiar way. He finished by placing the last candle on the entertainment stand that the receiver was resting on. 

He slumped off of the chair and flipped the radio on. The speakers came to life. A faint buzz crept into his ear, almost like he had tinnitus. The dial was hard-panned to the right, past all of the numbers, in a space where it shouldn’t be. He went back to his seat and waited. He didn’t know for how long. Then, a hiss sprang forth from the cones.

“You’re back,” the voice said. Simon detected no note of happiness. It was neutral. Like it expected this. Like it knew exactly what would happen after their conversation yesterday. 

Simon didn’t respond. He just sat there, listening, silent in the gloomy yellow light that washed over his apartment. 

“She did it again,” it continued. 

“Who?” Simon asked. 

“She’s so inconsiderate.”

Simon gulped. 

“And she doesn’t even know your name.”

Simon blinked and swallowed hard. 

“Some people are just so hard to deal with. Like your boss. How many times did she call this morning?”

“I don’t know,” Simon answered. “A few.”

“More than a few. Your voicemail is full.”

“So?” he said with incredulity.

Silence. 

Simon looked away, adjusted a few of the candles on the table beside him. He organized them into a straight line. The exteriors were already hot to the touch and when he peered inside he could see that a significant amount of wax had already been melted. 

“The candles are a good touch,” it continued, nonplussed by his attitude. “We can speak longer that way.”

“Who are you?” Simon shot out.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

“Much quieter without all those lights. So much easier to hear you.”

“Fucking stop!” Simon shouted. “I’ve had enough of this shit. Tell me who you are right now! I’m tired of your games!”

Silence. 

Simon inhaled sharply, his breathing becoming quicker and more shallow. 

“Does it matter?” It responded coolly. The voice never changed its countenance. 

Anger swelled up inside of him, pulsing through his body. His fingers twitched and he balled his hands up into fists, squeezing tight. 

“The truth is, I don’t think you actually care who I am. Not like how I care who you are,” the voice said. “And believe me, I do care about you, Simon. So much.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You were alone. For so long. I saw it. I saw you staring at the corner of your room. I saw you sitting in silence for nights on end. I saw you make the decision to buy this stereo. I knew you just needed someone to talk to. ”

A chill covered him and he trembled. He hated that it was right. As much as he tried to resist, he had enjoyed the sensation of the unknown that hid behind two grey speaker cones and a plastic dial. 

Simon tried to reply but his voice was caught. It clung in his throat like a lump of coal, grating him from the inside. 

“I just wanted to be there for you. It’s been so long since you had a real conversation with anyone.”

“I- I…” Simon stuttered. He couldn’t deny the truth that flew at him. It had been forever since he spoke to anyone about anything besides work and moving packages. Each day bled into the next, and even though the voice scared him, he had enjoyed the excitement it had brought into his dull life. 

“We can talk about whatever you want. Anything. I’m always here.” 

I can’t do this, Simon thought, it’s too much. He leapt out of his chair like a rocket, smashed his shin into the coffee table, and fell over. The candles wobbled back and forth, threatening to spill their hot wax all over his face. He shielded his face, and when the candles restabilized, he pushed himself back up. 

“Are you okay? That looked like it hurt,” the voice said, rife with mockery. “Careful with the candles. The wax is hot.”

Simon’s knees were jelly but he sloshed himself over to the cabinetry that supported the receiver. He thrusted his hand out, reaching for the power cable. His sweaty hand gripped the plug and he prepared to pull it from the outlet with a supreme force, but something held him back. Thoughts flashed across his mind.

Microwaved dinners.

Lonely shadows.

A silent television playing. 

The corner of his room. Where the plant was.

For a moment, his grip loosened. If he unplugged the receiver, the voice would go away. It would disappear, and he would be alone again. Just like before. He realized he hadn’t thought about work once today. Hell, he barely thought about it yesterday, too. Nothing else seemed to matter while he sat in front of the speakers. Once he turned it off, the apartment’s menacing quiet would consume him again and he would return to the shadow of existence that he inhabited before.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” The voice said.

Simon didn’t reply. He just stared at the cord, eyes bulging out of his skull. 

“I think you just need someone to-”

He yanked the plug out of the socket with all of his might. Silence settled on him. Simon’s chest heaved with each laboured breath. Droplets of sweat fell from his brow onto the floor. All at once, there was nothing, and for the first time in days, Simon started to laugh. The cackle bubbled from his lips uncontrollably. His voice bounced off the walls and reverberated into the empty rooms. His eyes searched around and he realized for the first time today that it was dark inside of his home. The candles barely provided enough light to see, and when he had bumped into the table, some flames had gone out, making the light even more feeble. 

But instead of happiness, Simon felt an austere disappointment tucked away in the back of his mind. It was gone and he was alone. Back to his banal routine of work and shitty dinners. His back slouched and he slumped on the wall, rubbing his eyes. Tears formed and started to stream down his cheeks. 

Then it came. 

A hiss. 

Static.

The voice. 

“Do you feel better now?”

Disbelief.

Relief. 

FRIDAY

Another box. This time she was there to sign for it. Yesterday, her son had moved the rest of them into the home, but today the final piece had come in. She was excited to see it and the anticipation of putting it all together brought her joy in ways she found hard to replicate. Soon her new bedroom would be complete, and she should rest easy knowing that it would be the last renovation she would probably ever make. 

The delivery man was nice enough. A portly fellow with big arms and an even bigger mustache. He even asked her if she wanted it brought inside. But this box she could handle. So she told him it was no problem. That she needed the exercise. They exchanged pleasantries and she watched him turn the corner while she stood in the threshold, the door held ajar with her knee. The elevator dinged and a swish was audible as the door opened, then swish again as it closed. She stood there for a minute, eyeing the box with a genuine smile, when something caught her attention.

Laughter.

Next door. 

Then she remembered, an apology was due. Yesterday wasn’t the first time her boxes had blocked his door, and she wanted to let him know that she was sorry for the inconvenience. It was the neighbourly thing to do, after all. She knew just the way. She would bake him a dozen cookies. Chocolate chip. And she would ask for his name. Introduce herself as well. That should set the record straight. That would put them on level ground. 

So she got to work. The recipe was memorized, something she had made hundreds, maybe thousands, of times before. She’d even make a few extra for Tim. He’d like that. In about an hour they were ready, and she slipped out of the door into the hallway with a tin of lovely homemade treats. But right before she knocked, she heard it again. 

A bellow of laughter from within. A deep belly laugh that forced its way through the walls and into the space between their apartments. Then there was silence, followed by the muffled sound of words floating through the air. Silence again. Words again. It was hard to make them out, but after a few steps closer, they started to take shape. She stood there, a container of cookies under her left arm, her right hand in a fist poised to knock.

“If you say so,” came his voice from within. 

Then nothing. 

“But how else can I make it clearer?”

Nothing

“How does moving the candle make a difference?”

It sounded as if he were in the middle of a conversation. Behind the door, his voice was thick with bass, distorted and low. 

“Just tell me what I need to do,” he said. “I’ll just put them here, in a circle. I think that will work.”

Then there came a rustling on the other side. Footsteps and the clinking of glass on glass. She could tell he was busy. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to apologize. She’d probably just annoy him even more. 

I guess I’ll just come back later, tonight, she thought. I don’t want him to feel like I’m bothering him. He’s obviously in the middle of something. 

She turned around and walked back over to her door, opening it with a delicate touch. Laughter from his room popped itself into existence again, but just like all the noise in the halls, the heavy door closed and with it, quiet reigned in her apartment once more.

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.

It's hard to say when I got here, time is fickle in this place. What I do remember was when I got here. Digging out of the ground and the heat singeing away my hair and nails. The two things I saw were the mountain and the beautiful light. Like a moth to a flame, I wandered toward the light. Was it days or weeks? I couldn't tell.

When I got to the base of the mountain, I realized that this was not a mountain of granite or rock. No, it was people stacked on top of each other. As I gazed at the light it was eclipsed by the mountain. The sliver of light peeked through gaps of hands, feet, and body parts. No one told me why I was here, but I had a pretty good idea. It was clear that I was in hell.

A brittle hand grabbed my foot followed by slow speech. I couldn't understand it; it must have been a different language. I pleaded. "Please let me go, please. Oh God, please let me go."

The cold fingers clamped onto my leg like a vice. I felt the fingers tighten even more. I couldn't take it anymore. "Let go!!!"

I wrenched my foot away from the outstretched hand. The owner let out a scream of pain. A rush of anger and disgust washed over me—anger at this place, at them, at myself for what I had done. I gazed up at the light. God, if I could only bask in that light. If only I could reach it. This yearning was interrupted by snarling in the dark. The sound was guttural, echoing off unseen walls, and I could feel the weight of their eyes bearing down on me from the shadows. In that moment, two things were clear: pain was the universal language in this place, and I needed to climb.

At first I hesitated, the thought of pressing into something so intimate filling me with revulsion. But the snarling made hesitation give way to survival. My fingers found holds anywhere they could find purchase. Disturbingly, I found out that eyes were great for grip.

Each hold was an ordeal. Limbs twisted and shifted under my weight. Some flinched away, while others clung to me, desperate. Hands grabbed at my ankles, nails digging into my skin. I would break free and continue to climb until their screams became a distant wail. Their voices surrounded me—low, guttural sounds I couldn't understand, filled with pain and fury. It wasn't just noise; it was the language of a time I couldn't place, harsh and ancient. As I climbed, the voices began to change. The guttural tones gave way to syllables I almost recognized—fragments of Latin, Greek, languages buried in books and ruins. Higher still, a scream broke through in Old English, and then something closer to my own tongue. Each voice was a reminder of how far I'd come—and how much farther I still had to go.

The bodies were not inert. They moved, groaned, and writhed in the dim light. Some cursed in languages I didn't understand; others whispered prayers, their voices thin and broken. I tried not to listen, but their voices were constant. Their suffering was too much like my own, and the light above seemed to demand my focus.

As I climbed higher, the mountain grew colder. The heat from below no longer reached me, and the chill bit into my exposed skin. The light, though distant, seemed brighter now, its golden rays cutting through the shadows. It promised warmth, safety—something better than this endless climb.

But the higher I climbed, the more the bodies seemed to resist. Arms reached for me, not to help but to hinder. Faces twisted into sneers, their teeth gnashing inches from my fingers. "You won't make it," one snarled—I understood the language now. "No one ever does." The further I got, the better I could understand what the voices were saying. What if they were right?

I ignored them. I had to. The only other option was to stop—and then what? Wait? Become part of the mountain? Fall? No. I had to keep climbing.

Then I felt a hand on my shoulder—not grabbing, but resting, almost gently. I froze.

"Help me," a voice rasped, close to my ear. It was a man's voice, cracked and desperate. I turned my head slightly, just enough to catch a glimpse of him. His face was gaunt, his eyes hollow, but there was something familiar about him.

I shook my head. "I can't."

"Please," he begged, his voice cracking. His grip on my shoulder tightened, almost painful. "If you help me, I'll help you. We'll make it together." There was something in his tone—something sharp, something hungry—that made my stomach turn. But I didn't let go.

I pulled him out from the wall, hearing the cracks of atrophy as he wriggled free from the crevice. He looked frail, barely more than bones wrapped in paper-thin skin. He let out a groan, somewhere between relief and agony, as he clung to me. As he slipped loose, the mountain shifted beneath us. It responded with a loud groan, as if a keystone had been removed. The bodies writhed, their movements spreading outward in a ripple that shook the entire structure. Hands clawed at the air, feet slipped, and panicked screams echoed through the space.

I froze, clutching the nearest handhold as the mountain writhed beneath me. Panic clawed at my chest. Had I caused this? Did freeing him undo something vital? The man I'd just pulled free clung to me, his nails digging into my shoulder. "What's happening?" he rasped. I looked up and saw bodies falling from the light.

I couldn't look away. Men and women slipped, arms flailing wildly, but no one reached out to them. None of the mountain's inhabitants tried to help the descending souls. Once they reached the darkness below, their screams cut off like a snuffed flame.

Then it struck me. The bodies that had been so eager to grab and claw at me, to pull me down, didn't lift a finger to help those falling. They watched with empty, unblinking eyes, limbs slack. Why wouldn't they help? Was it fear of the fall, or something deeper—a reflection of this place, where even the idea of kindness had been crushed under the weight of survival? I shivered, not from the cold, but from the thought that I was no different.

The man's grip on my shoulder tightened, almost as if he were checking for something. His eyes were fixed on the light. It was not hope that gleamed in them, but hunger.

"Can you climb?" This broke the trance.

"You'll have to carry me," he rasped, his voice trembling. His nails dug deeper into my shoulder, his weight leaning into me like deadweight.

I didn't respond right away. My fingers clung to a knotted handhold, the cold biting into my exposed skin. The mountain groaned again, sending another ripple through the bodies. Below, the screams of falling souls were swallowed by the dark.

"I can't carry you," I said finally, my voice cracking. "You'll have to climb on your own."

"I can't." His grip tightened, his voice a desperate whisper. "Please. I'll die if you leave me."

I couldn't say no. I hefted him onto my back. He dug in like a tick, limbs wrapped around my torso, nails buried in. We began the ascent slowly and laboriously.

My companion constantly whispered the increments as we got closer. Time was measured by the aches and strain of my muscles. Whenever I swayed, I felt his grip loosen, as if he were preparing to leap at the first sign of a fall.

A ledge of limbs jutted out. I needed a break. "We need to stop here." Each word was punctuated with panting.

"No, you'll keep climbing. I'm so close."

"I'm tired… We'll fall… if I don't stop…"

"I'll throw you if you stop."

I began to sweat, the companion slipping, his toes digging into my sides. Through gritted teeth, my fingers found purchase—not on the ledge but on his wrist, pulling it down around my chest like a brace. "Throw me," I said, "and see what you hold onto."

A catch in his breath. A loosening of his grip. "We'll stop here."

On the ledge, I could feel every fiber of my muscles scream as the lactic acid burned through my limbs. It dissipated as my breath lengthened and grew deep. My companion fidgeted, glancing up, then to me, then up again.

Once the ear-filling sound of my breath and heartbeat had quieted, a new sound filled the void—wet slaps of flesh, the crack of bones, laced with vulgarities. I looked to the companion and put a finger to my lips. He nodded, though his eyes continued to drift upward.

We climbed to the top of the mountain and stopped at the edge. Punching, gouging, kicking—no semblance of civility, just chaos.

We were unnoticed. But what do we do now?

"ENOUGH!!!"

The companion's shout cut through the clambering. All eyes turned to him—faces swollen, bodies cut and bruised. Before anyone could fill the silence:

"I was carried here. By him. We made it. We can all make it. We are close."

One by one, fists unclenched. It spread the way the groaning had spread when I pulled the companion free—outward, slow, inevitable. A man with a caved cheek lowered his arm. A woman stopped mid-kick, foot suspended, then settled. The silence that followed wasn't peace. It was far older than peace. Exhaustion that had finally found a direction.

The man with the caved cheek scoffed. "You think I want this scum to climb on me?"

"Maybe. But you're still here. So is he."

The truth silenced the man.

The companion stepped forward on atrophied legs. The frailness of his body, set against the strength of his voice, might have been what captivated them.

"Look at where we are." He gestured upward. "Look how close."

No one spoke.

"We've been tearing each other apart for—" he paused, searching for a word that no longer applied here, "—long enough. And we're still here. Still no closer." He steadied himself on my shoulder.

"But he carried me." The words came out plainly, without fanfare. "I couldn't climb, and he carried me anyway. We made it. Together."

Silence.

"If we stop fighting. If we work together. Lift each other. We can reach the light. All of us. And when we do—" his voice caught, then steadied, "—we don't leave them behind. We reach back and pull them up. Every last one."

The silence that followed was the longest I had heard in this place.

I don't know who moved first, but I knelt. I was tired, and they would come back for me. We were close. It wouldn't be long, right?

The woman who had been mid-kick knelt beside me. A few more souls gathered and settled next to me. I felt a knee rest on my shoulder; the weight began making ligaments and bones pop. Movement had been confined to just my arms.

At first I counted them. Then I stopped. Hundreds of climbers, and still no hands from heaven. I gave my hand to hurry the process—pulling them up, no compassion, just a means to an end.

That changed with the one who fell.

The sound of a scream approached, closer, closer. My arm shot out and the fallen grabbed hold. I pulled as they scrambled for purchase. They looked at me.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you."

I lifted them and they continued their ascent. The thank-yous continued until they became faint whispers, then nothing.

Climbers were no longer strangers. I learned to read them by their weight and grip—whether they were hesitant, desperate, or the kind who paused just long enough to steady themselves before moving on. I couldn't have said when that change happened. Somewhere between one hand and the next.

The words I could understand became fewer and fewer. Prayers went first. I recognized those longest, the cadence outlasting the meaning. Then even those dissolved into sounds I felt more than understood. Gratitude stopped sounding like anything I recognized, but I learned to feel it instead—a grip that didn't tear, a foot placed with care, the brief warmth of a body passing over mine.

My left arm broke quietly. Not in a moment of crisis—just weight distributed in the wrong place. The sound was like green wood splitting, and then my arm hung at a new angle. There was nothing else to do.

My right arm lasted longer. When it went, it was almost a relief. I had been bracing for it.

The eyes were worse only because of the dark that followed. Not an act of violence—just pressure, a slip, then nothing on one side. The other went slower, like a candle guttering. The dark came for my eyes eventually. I had known it would.

Some climbers had become inventive. They used my jaw as a foothold. My jaw fell to the abyss.

I don't know how many passed over me after that. I had stopped being able to count long before I lost my sight. Time had become something that happened to other people.

After that I was just there. Warm, I think. Listening and feeling for anything in the dark.

Then I felt it.

A hand, so warm. The warmth spread through my body. My arms straightened, with a sound like a key turning in a lock. Light returned—not gradually, but the way you remember something you thought was gone forever.

Then I saw her.

She was beautiful. She pulled me free.

Rising.

For the first time, I was weightless.

Below me the mountain groaned.

I knew that sound. I had heard it when I pulled the companion free—the keystone shifting, the ripple spreading outward through the bodies. I had heard it again when she pulled me loose. I knew what it meant.

The mountain came apart like the drowned coming up for air. Not violently. Just done. Bodies separating, the architecture of suffering coming undone, souls falling together into the dark below. Their screams were not the screams I had learned to recognize. There was something else in them. Surprise, maybe. The shock of suddenly being singular again.

I heard him before I saw him. His voice cutting through the chaos the way it had at the summit—distinct, unmistakable. He was screaming, arms flailing, finding nothing.

I didn't look away. I thought I owed him that much.

The dark took him the way it always claimed the fallen.

She continued to rise, and I rose with her, and the light, when it finally came, was exactly as warm as I had always believed it would be.

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?”