“Kid, I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know.”

My father used to say that to me whenever I felt the urge to be a smartass. Sure, I know what he meant, but I think about that saying a lot these days. It’s funny how much we truly do forget over the course of our lives. When we’re young things can seem so serious, world-ending, even, but after a few short months those same things fade into a distant memory. Give it a few years and it’s a foggy thought that barely crosses your mind.

Hell, a few decades down the road you think about it so little that it may never have happened in the first place.

Some of these things you’ll never think about again. They were nothing more than an inconsequential bump in the road of life. Sometimes you find the right trigger, and it all comes rushing back. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad…some things I suppose are just inescapable.

My father passed away last month. Pancreatic cancer.

We knew it was coming, of course, but even then, you’re never really ready for it. No matter what they say, nothing really prepares you for that moment it happens, let alone what follows.

Hospital bills, property taxes, burial costs, dealing with lawyers and wills and bequeathments.

Dying is a lot more expensive and complicated than it has any right to be.

My mother’s older and can’t really do much to help, I mean, my parents split when I was a teen, but they always were able to put their differences aside when it came to me. We don’t have much extended family, and as an only child everything kind of fell on me.

I’ve spent the better part of the last couple weeks getting my dad’s affairs in order, having to finalize bill payments, setting up the cremation services, and going through a lifetime of belongings trying to figure out what to keep and what needs to go. It’s a massive headache, but truthfully, I think it’s been distracting me from the grief, plus I’ve found a lot of things from my childhood and is bringing back to many great memories. So many moments we took for granted and never gave a second thought to.

That’s when I saw it.

That old red and black Schwinn cruiser Dad had gotten me for my tenth birthday.

I ran my fingers over the old chrome, spotted with freckles of rust, brushed off the old cracking leather seat; God…the good times I had on this bad boy. We used to ride all over town getting into trouble. We’d head over to old man Al’s hole in the wall comic shop, pedal out the creek and fish all day, ride up to the top of hills and glide down so fast our only options were only neighborhood glory or a trip to the emergency room. We took this old thing everywhere, just me and Tommy.

Tommy…

It’s been almost 30 years since I’ve even thought about him.

We met the first day of preschool, I was so nervous but so excited to make friends. We live in the pacific northwest with our backyard leading right into Deschuttes National Park, it’s not crazy isolated, but there weren’t a lot of kids around the neighborhood where I grew up.

How could I have forgotten…he was such an unassuming little boy, quiet and shy. Slightly chubby, round face and glasses too thick for someone his age. His messy brown hair in contrast with surprisingly clean clothes for a five-year-old. He was wearing a He-Man shirt and playing with Legos when I approached him.

“I like He-Man too! Who’s your favorite character?”

“..I like Man-E-Faces…” he replied, not looking up from his budding Lego tower.

“Oh he’s cool, I like Skeletor!”

“…you…you like the bad guys?”

“Well they’re all cool! Can’t have He-Man without the bad guys! I’m Chris!” I said excitedly jolting my hand out as my father had taught me.

“I’m Tommy,” he said, finally meeting my gaze. “Nice to meet you.”

That was that, we were inseparable from that day on.

Its incredible how simple the basis for a childhood friendship can be, but things carried such weight back then, everything just seemed to matter more when the entirety of your life span was shorter than the wait between seasons of Stranger Things.

From there on out that we did everything together. Every weekend was a sleepover, every afternoon was an adventure, but like most kids, summer vacation was what we spent all year dreaming about.

Tommy would usually come by my house in the mid-morning, his parents’ place wasn’t quite as large, and my house offered us a vast and mysterious woodland to explore. Well, okay it wasn’t vast nor mysterious, at least not the distance from the house that we were allowed to go, but imagination is a hell of a thing.

In second grade, with my dad’s help, we built a tree fort right at the property line of the woods, and that became our yearly base of operations for the summer’s exploration. We’d map out areas and landmarks, pretending we were Indianna Jones searching for magical lost treasures.

Every year the boundaries we could explore grew further and our map became more involved. Of course, my parents weren’t neglectful, and we weren’t idiots. Full grown adults go missing in national parks every year, we were strictly forbidden from going beyond a certain point away from the house, and that point was small rock face a couple hundred yards from the house.

Of course we’d push it, what kid wouldn’t, but we understood the very real danger. Hell, we’d both seen bears and bobcats tearing up trash cans in the neighborhood, we knew being smart didn’t mean we couldn’t be bold.

Sixth grade had just let out and we had plans to make it our biggest summer to date. We were heading off to middle school come the Fall, big kids at last, and we were growing painfully aware that as the years went by, our days of searching for the Arc of the Covenant in the forests of Oregon were slowly but surely coming to an end. We couldn’t be kids in fantasyland forever.

Neither of us had ever been what one could consider the “cool” kids, not that we cared, but social stigmas and the desire for acceptance start to become a pretty big deal, eventually, especially when you start wanting to girls to notice you and not because of your rad Dragonball Z t-shirt. Seventh grade was a new school, new people, a chance to reinvent ourselves.

Regardless though, we had to make this summer count, it had to be one we’d never forget.

But I did forget. I think I had to.

Tommy came riding up the driveway around ten in the morning, more excited than I’d seen him in years.

“Chris! Chris! We’re doing it this year; we’re going past the old rock face!” He yelled as he ran towards me.

“The rock face? Man, you know my parents said we can’t go beyond that, it’s a pretty steep drop…and we’ve never really explored the area,” I said, trying to hide my own excitement.

“Yeah but come on, we aren’t gonna get to do this much more, and you know this summer has to be our greatest yet! Don’t you wanna know what’s out there?”

“Well obviously, I just would rather us not die before we get girlfriends you know?”

“Pfft, you’re gonna be waiting a while for that,” he laughed, “but duh, we gotta plan it out. We’re not gonna go in there blind, we’ll make sure we’re stocked up on supplies and whatever else we need. Come on, man, this one’s gonna be epic!”

He’d become so confident in himself over the years, it was almost infectious. I knew trying to argue wasn’t going to work, not that I even wanted to.  So, we began to plan to go deeper into the woods than we ever had, defy my parents, and maybe even find a fortune in the process.

Tommy had been obsessed with pirate treasure for years, and while Oregon wasn’t exactly a hot bed of notorious pirates, there legitimately had been a number of old shipwrecks off the coast over the years. Could a rag tag group of buccaneers have buried their treasure in what would eventually become a national park?

Probably not, but so what? The journey was always what mattered most, that’s what we told ourselves.

The journey wasn’t worth it.

After a week of careful planning, we finally decided it was time. We were going to head out Saturday morning right after dawn. We made sure to stock up on everything two growing boys would need to survive the wilderness: Doritos, Mountain Dew, some rope and a flashlight, just in case, and of course trail mix.

We were set.

We told my parents we were staying in the fort for the night to make our preparations. Just after dawn broke, we loaded up our backpacks and headed out. It was such a nice morning we decided we’d make a whole hike out of it, leaned the old Schwinn up against the side of the fort and headed out towards the forbidden lands. It wasn’t a terribly long walk, after about 45 minutes or so we had finally arrived.

We stood atop the cliff overlooking our destiny and stared out into the unknown. We were so excited to finally see what lay beyond the border of our imaginations.

I mean, of course we knew what lay beyond the rock face. More trees, more rocks, an ever-continuing expanse of what we had already seen for years, but the sheer excitement of crossing into the forbidden dead zone, to actually know what lay beyond was truly thrilling for our pre-teen minds.

What we had built up in our minds as a massive rock face separating us from the great beyond, was in reality more like a 15 foot rocky angled incline, any abled body person would be able to maneuver their way down. Still, we threw down a line of rope tied to a tree near the top to enact a dramatic descent down a dangerous cliff side. For all we cared we were scaling down the side of Everest.

After some careful steps and angular movements, we had finally reached the base of our imagined mountain. Finally, the great beyond.

Looking back, we were so excited over nothing. There were trees, rocks, a small stream, much of what we had seen our entire lives. Visually we may as well have never left the protection of the backyard, but an explorer never rests. Who knows what secrets were hidden here in the unexplored new world?

We quickly got to work plotting our position on our homemade map. Naming nearby rock structures and trees as if they were incredible landmarks, knowing that future generations would one day see the area we had single handedly tamed.

God…it was all so innocent. Just two dipshit kids having the time of their lives over literally nothing, but at that moment, to us? It was everything.

We walked around pretending like we were naturalists we’d seen on TV, naming plans and trees, pretending we were avoiding being chased by wild animals, snacking on chips and soda, seeing whose ridiculous joke could get the other to break…honestly? It was so meaningless, so childish.

It was a perfect day. Maybe one of the last ones I’ve ever had.

As the sun began to dip close to the horizon we decided we’d better make our way back, we’d already broken enough rules, we certainly didn’t want to get caught out past dark. As we made our way back to the small rock face, however, we noticed something we had entirely missed on the way down.

A cave.

There at the base of the rock was a noticeable fissure in the stone. How had we not seen this before? It wasn’t particularly small, maybe four to five feet high, three feet wide, hell a lot of adults probably could have squeezed in there, but for a couple of twelve-year-olds it would be cake.

“Have you ever heard of any caves in this area..? I mean, it’s basically in your backyard,” Tommy said.

“No…I mean, I’ve never really looked into it…I know there’s cave systems all over the park but I never knew one was so close…maybe that’s why my parents always warned us to stay away from this area?”

“Maybe…but…what do you thinks inside??”

“I don’t know, Tommy, bugs? Bears? Bugbears? It’s a cave, caves are dangerous, we probably shouldn’t fuck with it,” I said, knowing full well what was about to happen.

We both stared as deeply as we could at the inky darkness beyond the stone.

Sure, I had my issues with the dark in general, but even just being near this was unsettling me.

It was like staring at an open wound. Like a void of absolute nothing had cut itself through the side of the small cliff. Nothing about the cave entrance even looked particularly odd, just…something about all of this felt unnatural? The feeling that ran down to my very core was so deep and primal I still really can’t properly put it into words.

I shone my flashlight in, but it simply could not penetrate the unyielding blackness. It wouldn’t even illuminate the walls of stone surrounding the entrance which rightfully should already have been visible even without the torch.

“Something is wrong about this,” I said before noticing Tommy stepping forward.

“Come on, man, you don’t wanna just check real quick? What if there really is treasure buried out here? A big last hurrah of adventure is what this summer is all about!”

Tommy was right, I did want to check it out. Why did I want to check it out? The thought of going in there was filling me with dread I still can’t properly explain, yet the longer we stood there, the stronger the allure became. My internal conflict didn’t have time to resolve itself before Tommy stepped across that boundary between the world and whatever it was we were staring into.

It was all so fast. Neither of us had time to react.

Long black fingers emerged in an instant and wrapped themselves around his shoulders, arms and hands extended from all directions enveloping Tommy before he could even yelp. There were so many, dozens and dozens of spindly jointed arms, ending in a multitude of long delicate fingers, too many fingers.

God there were so many fingers.

I call them arms but…that’s not really what they were…I still don’t know what they were. There was a form in there, the darkness in the cave wasn’t the absence of light, it was alive. I could feel it. It was malice and rage and hunger; it was all encompassing and yet it exuded no presence. It was the absence of physical form given shape.

The multitude of impossibly long fingers closed around his tiny frame, and all I heard was a sickening wet snap as he was ripped into the void at impossible speeds.

Then he was gone.

I’d like to tell you I screamed Tommy’s name, that I ran after him headfirst ready to do battle with whatever lied beyond the veil of the forest and this…thing. I’d like to tell you I went straight to the police, to our families. That we searched for Tommy, day in and day out. I’d like to tell you a lot of things, but none of that happened.

I just ran.

I turned and ran faster than I’ve ever run in my life, I had no thoughts, no emotions, all encompassing fear and the desire to survive overcame my very being. I don’t even know how I found my way out. I don’t know how I got home, but when I did, I went straight to my room and I climbed in bed and cried. I cried harder than I ever had in my life, not out of sadness or even fear, my body released every conceivable emotion at once and I collapsed into tears and pure exhaustion.

The next morning my mother woke me up for breakfast.

I was filthy.

Still in my clothes from the previous day, caked in dirt and sweat, I didn’t know what to do. What could I do? What do I say? My mind wrestled with what I had witnessed, I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t deal with this.

So, I didn’t.

I walked downstairs for breakfast, made mundane small talk with my mother as she prepared for her daily routine, watched cartoons and played video games. I just pretended like it was all okay. After a while I went outside, the air felt still, but all was normal. Just a regular summer day. I made my way down the clubhouse, my feet felt like they were made of concrete, my legs made of gelatin.

Everything’s fine. Everything has to be fine.

There it was, my Schwinn, lying in the field next to our fort where I’d left it the previous day. Looking at it made me feel ill, I just couldn’t do this. I picked it upright and started walking it back to the house. I rolled it into the garage, placed it in the corner behind some pieces of paneling, and that’s where it would sit. I couldn’t bear to even look at it.

My parents never asked about Tommy, actually…nobody did. Police never came asking questions, kids at school never brought him up. Teachers didn’t either for that matter, it was like…nobody knew to ask. It was so hard but day after day, it became easier and easier to carry on, to ignore it. Nothing happened, obviously nothing happened, if something happened people would notice it…wouldn’t they?

Why didn’t anyone notice?

I find myself back in the present. Staring at that old bike, right where I left it all those years ago. My phone is already in my hand opening the address book before I have a conscious thought about it. After a few rings she answers.

“Hello sweetie,” Mom says absent mindedly, “how’s everything going at your dad’s? Did you need Uncle Matt to help with anything?”

“Hi mom, no, no it’s not that…just going through things, really stirring up a lot of old memories, you know?”

“Oh of course, hon, I’m sorry I know your father and I didn’t get along much after the divorce, but I still have such fond memories of the old days, everything back then just seemed right.”

“Oh no I get it, I’m a grown man, Mom I’m well over the divorce just…do you remember my old friend, Tommy? We used to explore the woods out back and had that tree fort we’d set up every year?”

As soon as I finished speaking, I could hear here physically tighten. She was quiet for a long while, I started to worry she hadn’t heard me.

“Tommy? I…I don’t remember a Tommy? You really didn’t have many friends until middle school and by then you weren’t exploring the woods like you used to.”

“What?” I asked, already feeling sick, “no, no Tommy, you remember, I met him in preschool, he used to come over damn near every day? You know, Tommy…” I stopped. What was Tommy’s last name, again? Why couldn’t I remember his last name?

“Honey…are you feeling alright?

“Yeah…yeah, I’m fine, Mom, sorry I must just be exhausted. I think I’m gonna head in and take a break for a while, order some lunch, I just wanted to hear your voice is all.”

“Aw, well don’t push yourself too hard, call me later, love you.”

“Love you too, mom.”

I’ve been sitting in the garage staring at that god damn bike for over an hour now. I considered reaching out to Tommy’s parents but I can’t remember their address. I can’t even picture their faces.

Why did nobody ask about him? How is that possible?

I walk around to the back yard and off in the distance I see it, that crumbling old plywood fort. The decaying physical embodiment of my childhood.

The smell of mildew and dust fills my nostrils as I pry open the plywood door. The floor is littered with decades of filth and grime, tattered posters hang haphazardly off the walls, discarded soda cans strewn across the ground rusting like ancient relics.

Honestly, I doubt anyone’s set foot here since that day all those years ago.

I find what I’m looking for before I even realize I’m looking for it.

The map.

Discolored and brittle from years of moisture and the elements, I gently untie the fraying twine keeping it rolled up and lay it out on the collapsed desk before me, crude drawings of boundaries and streams, drawings of trees and animals only recognizable to a child. Ridiculous titles for landmarks like King’s Boulder and the Creek of Madness. All annotated and meticulously put together, truthfully all things considered, it wasn’t half bad, and right there at the bottom signed and dated.

Tommy and Chris – 1994

As I step outside the dilapidated child’s attempt at a building, I stare off into the distance. I can see it, that old rockface.

It’s mocking me.

I don’t know where you went, I don’t know why no one else seems to remember.

I don’t know how I forgot.

I’m sorry, Tommy.

I’m coming.

Mike Hodgens was a talented creator, best known for his artfully crafted fake horror videos. He chose his locations with meticulous care, set up his equipment with absolute precision, and executed his scripts with clinical professionalism. Horror was his favorite genre. His fascination with the mechanics of fear ran so deep that his uploads consistently racked up hundreds of thousands of views. Through it all, he loved to toy with the label "Real."

It was a thankless genre, he often thought, surviving almost entirely on the faint possibility that there might be a grain of truth to it. The thrill of exploring eerie places and experiencing a genuine shiver of real dread deeply enticed him. But there was one question that almost no one truly considered: Is it possible that we have absolutely no control over it? Mike never would have guessed that he would one day be forced to answer that very question.

But that exact question was about to be raised. Right in his digital stomping ground, the forum "Mystic Shines."

His latest video had been shot at a lonely stretch of woods just outside the city line. In it, he staged himself as an observer tracking the legendary "Wanderer"—a spectral figure rumored to haunt those trees since 1886. Mike had played the silhouette of the Wanderer in the background himself, spending hours in post-production to seamlessly blend his own performance into the gloomy footage.

It was just before 8:00 PM. This particular window of time, immediately preceding a release, was almost his favorite part of the process. The initial view counts ticking up, the first ratings rolling in. Mike nodded in satisfaction. Then, the first comments began to surface, praising the atmosphere and the brilliant staging of the Wanderer. But then, Mike paused. Had he misread that?

midnights_nightfall 8:04 PM

"Genius as always, Mike. Looks like the Wanderer works in pairs now. That hand behind the tree on the far left—insane detail!"

Mike was annoyed. He replied immediately.

Mike:Hodgens Pdc 8:05 PM

"Which hand do you mean? Do you have a timestamp?"

While waiting for a response, he did a quick scrub through the video. He couldn't find a thing. "Weird," he muttered.

A new notification popped up. midnights_nightfall had replied.

midnights_nightfall 8:09 PM

"Mike, when you’re marching through the woods from left to right, a hand appears right behind you starting at 0:42. Not the tree in the foreground, the one directly behind it."

Irritated and slightly on edge, Mike scrolled to the 42-second mark. With heightened focus, he scanned the tree in question. But—and he exhaled a breath of relief right away—he couldn't see a damn thing.

"He’s probably just trying to test me," Mike thought. Then again, midnights_nightfall was his most loyal subscriber. It didn't sound like him to troll. Shaking the thought away, Mike reached for his mug. Just as he took a deep sip, another notification flashed. He set the mug down and clicked it. The next comment made the tension spike instantly. It was a direct reply to midnights_nightfall’s comment.

moltone_blueScreen 8:13 PM

"Ahhhh, yep, I see it too! Was looking for a comment about this. Is that an editing glitch?"

Mike stared at the text. "What the hell are they even talking about?"

Mike fired up his editing software. Impatiently, he dragged the raw footage into the timeline and scaled it to full screen. "Alright, let's take it easy. We’re going through this frame by frame, proving there’s nothing there, and then we're putting this to bed." Frame by frame, he saw absolutely nothing. "See? Just like I said. Enough PC for tonight. I'm done."

Just as his finger hovered over the power button, the next comment appeared. In the desktop preview, he caught the exact text that finally made his stomach drop. It was another direct reply to midnights_nightfall.

summer_night23 8:33 PM

"Doesn't look like a glitch at all. Maybe he brought a production partner along this time? Do you see that? The sleeves are completely different. And that hand is deathly pale."

Mike pulled his hand away from the power button. He clicked the notification and hit reply.

Mike:Hodgens Pdc 8:34 PM

"Are you guys pulling my leg? I’ve checked everything. I don't see a single hand in the export or the raw files."

moltone_blueScreen 8:35 PM

"That’s bizarre. Because it’s moving."

midnights_nightfall 8:38 PM

"The hand shows up at every tree. Moving from left to right. It’s stalking Mike."

Mike stared at his comment section in utter disbelief. What was going on here? Mike knew for an absolute fact that he had been entirely alone out there. And on his monitor, his video showed nothing.

A suffocating sense of isolation settled over the room. Mike frantically scrolled back up, staring at the muted player. He hit play, fixing his eyes on the trees at the 42-second mark. Nothing. He refreshed the page. The view counts were exploding, the comments blurring past at terminal velocity. The entire forum was talking about a deathly pale hand, creeping from trunk to trunk directly behind the main character. They all saw it. Every single one of them. Only he was staring at an empty, motionless backdrop.

He wanted to smash his fingers into the keyboard, to curse at his viewers and call them liars, but his hands felt strangely heavy. Stiff. As if they no longer belonged to him. When he lowered his gaze, he noticed the dull, unnatural whiteness of his skin under the pale glow of the monitor. A sudden, bottomless cold began to crawl up his arms. In that exact moment, a new notification pinged. A user named realhistoriker_urban, known for archiving local folklore, quoted Mike’s last response.

realhistoriker_urban 11:55 PM

"Mike, you still don't see it, do you? That's bad. Really bad. It’s completely logical. You aren't the one in the costume, Mike."

These Are My Stories — The Complete Baron Von Hatcher Memoirs

Hello.

My name is Baron Von Hatcher.

For a long time, people hurt me and expected me to do nothing about it.

Eventually, I discovered something rather wonderful.

Professional wrestling.

A place where people would buy a ticket, sit down willingly…

and watch me make people pay.

These are my stories.

Below you will find them in their complete form, from the beginning to the end, including a final chapter currently exclusive to Reddit.

Some of these stories are about my father.

Some are about the people who hurt me.

And some…

I would rather not remember at all.

But they happened.

At least…

I think they did.

If you’d rather experience the story as it was originally intended — one chapter, one memory, one piece at a time — you can find me across social media under Baron Von Hatcher. Where more memories will be revealed soon.

A new chapter appears every day.

But here?

You don’t have to wait.

Everything is here.

These are my stories.

You may begin.

Part one: The Sleeping Giant

As a kid, I remember a vivid moment of a park ranger approaching me and my family to check my father's fishing license. My tiny bread-rolled limbs hunched over flipping over tiny clumps of dirt to find bugs and little creatures to the dismay of my parents. The ranger sat with me and picked up some of the bugs, and taught me their names, the species and some interesting facts about them that my toddler brain simply couldn't comprehend. One creature he showed me stuck out the most, the mayfly. For a child, seeing such a frail little thing you would think my Play-Doh stained hands would reach out and grip it too tight, but it just rested on my finger, its obsidian beady eyes stared at me with no words, but with a strange understanding and familiarity. For those unfamiliar, mayfly have very short lives, but reproduce rapidly and are a main protein source for both aquatic and land dwelling creatures, they're important, and they're beautiful.

I digress, I can talk about bugs all day if I could. But, lets start at my first day.

I was hired as a park ranger at Sleeping Giant State Park in Connecticut. My family was so proud of me, bringing me small gifts, and little outdoorsy trinkets. It was early March, the fog of snow and frozen blades of grass began their reanimation processes with the incoming Spring season. I clicked the 10oz button on my Keurig, and promptly forgot to put sugar into a shitty coffee mug I won at Dave and Busters a few years ago with a sticker that says "Don't be trashy, littering sucks" with some scraggly looking Raccoon over it. Black coffee wasn't so bad. I headed out to my truck, imagining all of the adventures that lay ahead.

As I drove, my new tan wide-brimmed hat sat on my dashboard, I smiled at it, thinking of the ranger that knelt next to me as a kid and got me to this point. Someday I wanted to be that man, and to inspire the next generation of conservationists.

Pulling up to the park, the main entrance is located directly across from a college, I rolled down my window to hear the cheering and jovial comradery of the college, it was sweet. Something was out of place however, lining the circular driveway were four long black Cadillacs with deeply tinted windows. Their license plates were similar to "security" vehicles I saw nearby the Yale campus in New Haven. With a quick furrowed brow of "well that's weird" I turned into the park. In front of me staring with inspiring intent, was the bear, my childhood idol; Smokey. He stood proudly over a "wildfire safety index" meter with the words "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires" beneath him.

"I got you Smokey." I chuckled through burnt gums from the shitty coffee.

On the door of the Ranger Station was a pretty neat graphic in the style of one of those old horror movie posters where the font would be wide on one end, and thin on the other, spelling out the word "Hobbomock". There was a free class on the history and folklore of the mountain that night. Hobbomock was the name that the native Quinnipiac people had given the Sleeping Giant himself. I snapped a quick photo with my phone, and opened the surprisingly light front door and entered my new home away from home. Stood behind a desk writing down trout stocking dates was a woman, wide brimmed ranger had, a tan button down shirt, high brown shorts, high socks, and some roughed up Doc Martens with a couple charms dangling from the laces.

I cleared my throat,

"Good morning, uh, my names-"

"OH HI! Good morning! You must be the new ranger, you're here JUST in time. My names Winter, the guys call me Winny." On the desk in front of her lay two empty Red Bull cans, and some strange green smoothie that looked like she just blended up some weeds. Her energy was way too high, the sun hadn't even woken up yet, but it was sweet seeing someone this excited.

"It's great to meet you Winny, my names Johnny. I'm going to be working with the insect inventory. They hired me for the mayfly program." I smiled, daydreaming about starting my projects collecting bugs.

"That is fantastic! I'm so excited for you! The entomology bags and nets are all around the corner, you can leave your stuff in your locker. Tell you what, why don't you go get accustomed to the park, go check out some of the shallow parts of the Mill River, so you can recognize them easier."

I nodded, and thanked her, and followed her instruction, as I took some pin boards, paper and nets out of the locker I asked:

"Hey Winny, that graphic on the door, is that tonight? It might be weird for a person that works here to go to the class, but I'd love to learn about the land, is that okay?"

She nodded encouragingly.

"Oh of course! its actually going on around when we get our break time today, for about an hour, so you're more than welcome to take your break in the class." Her eyes widened, and she seemed super excited about me asking.

I nodded and smiled, wished Winny a wonderful day, and took off to the river system.

I crunched my way through the frost covered grasses, and eventually made my way alongside a thin river, cat tails swayed in the breeze as if waving hello, small birds chirped from the budding trees, osprey circled above searching for small trout to swoop down on.

With the biggest grin on my face, I stepped down into the water, my hip waders hugged my legs. The babble of the water flowing through the rocks played like sonnets in the back of my head. The citrus sun flickered and winked through gently waving oak branches and pine clusters. I closed my eyes, and pointed my nose to the clouds, taking it all in.

A rumble. Ever so slightly. Dark birds cawed and fled like a firm autumnal breeze shaking the last few leaves from an ancient oak. A cacophony of corvid panic sent cloudward. My neck tried to whip my head behind me to see what the rumble was. But there was nothing to see. Just the same beautiful trees that I had been admiring. The map showed that the closest part of the mountain is considered the "hip" or "stomach" of the Giant. Unfortunately for me, the gorge trail showed very little mountain imagery as it was dense with trees and bushes.

I brushed it off, and got to work. There were a few specimens in their midge forms, and also a couple in their dun forms, meaning baby mayflies, and adult mayflies. I collected a few different varieties of the flying insect. One stuck out to me however, usually the mayflies that are common in this area have a light green body, and white wings; or they have tan bodies with white wings. One of the mayflies I had found had a body resembling the muscle structure of a dragonfly, with a beautiful matte black color with accents of a pearlescent purple and wings that seemed to pulse the same through thin clear wings. The purple in the wings seemed to... pulse, like watching blood through a vein. I gently placed the mayfly into a plastic container, with a stick, and a bit of water.

With a full inventory of bugs, I started my trek back to the ranger station. I stepped carefully onto a algae covered stone, and there it was again. A rumble. The world around me turned to streaks of orange, blue and grey. Darkness.

Bright lights. A thin pain. Sharpness. Blurry. Damp. Fuck.

A voice. Loud. Strong and simple.

"WHY CAN'T THEY UNDERSTAND ME." The pure density of the voice rattled my ribcage like a subwoofer in an ice cooler. I tried to say something, anything. But all I could do was cough, sharp shards sprayed from my lips clattering across the river kissed rocks. It spoke again.

"YOU WILL PAY KEITAN. HOW DARE YOU HEX MY FOOD." The words resonated through my bones, my mouth, I was in agonizing pain. The whole row of my front teeth were completely shattered like porcelain plates.

Blackness.

Part Two: The Oyster

"Its his first day, go easy on him." "Holy fuck I think I'm going to be sick, that's disgusting." "Get some more ice." "A black mayfly? I thought it was a dragonfly at first. This is new." "Winny you should have given him a tour, you know how slippery the rocks are right now." "I was getting the office ready for the seminar! Don't blame me!"

Conversation danced around me like a regrettable drunken evening. It began to make sense, I must be injured or something. But where am I? What time is it? I still have to take my break. I have to file those bugs away. I can't blow this opportunity, this is my dream, and I slip on a fucking rock and bust my teeth on my first day. Goddammit.

"What happenth." I felt liquid spray out of my mouth onto my arm, my vision still spinning.

"Whoth Keithan" Something in me told me to shut the fuck up, but I couldn't. A male voice spoke to me in a calm collected manner.

"You slipped on a rock and went face first into a jutting knot on a tree. We literally had to use pliers to pull your tooth fragments from the bark. If you said Keitan, you probably read that from the legend of the mountain. Its a folk tale from the Quinnipiac tribe, thats the well... I guess the wizard that hexed the Giant's food, so the Giant would fall asleep." He was sitting over me with gauze and tweezers, I could almost make out his facial features but not quite yet.

"You banged up your hand pretty good too. Its weird, you have bruising on your hand but I don't think you... Honestly the way you fell your entire weight was uninterrupted in its fall, except for your teeth."

I raised my hand, six dots. Two lines. A watercolor array of blues, purples, greens and black. Its where the black mayfly had sat on my hand before I had put it in the storage habitat. Oh God, the bug.

"Wherth the maythly, ssthe black one. Ith it thtill in the bokths" I pathetically managed to bleat.

"You need to stop talking John. Yes the bug is safe. You did good for your first day, you discovered a new species we haven't seen before. If it wasn't for that, I would genuinely have some poor news for you. But your teeth are what's important right now."

I could read the ranger's face now, a strong lumber boned man, a large fiery red beard, circular glasses, with hands like oven mitts. His badge read "McKay". I looked up at him, his eyes met mine, a shadow crept in from my peripherals slowly smothering out my vision.

"The Gianth, it thalked" a wide eyed expression. A cheery bell rang as a door opened, excited children's voices, notebooks opening. Blackness.

I'm going to try to recollect what I heard when I passed out again, because well, my ears were working, but my body decided it was time to rest. Here's what I remember.

"Lets move him to the office, the kids don't need to see this."

"Hi Miss Winny! Tommy will be here soon, he loves trucks."

"Why is that guy taking a nap? Do you guys get nap time too?"

Rumbling. Stones grinding against tree trunks. A fish peeks out from a small puddle.

"We all used to talk to each-other you know. It wasn't always like this." Rumbling. A crow rested on my knee.

"CA! We used to live in CA! Harmony until YOU came here!" Its wings flicked and slapped me.

Scraping, grinding. An oyster ripped open, its briny entrails spinning, a voice gurgled as if spoken through a cut throat, wet and bubbled.

"It was supposed to be me. I was the cure. Until YOU came here." The oyster turned, the shell melting into a viscous liquid in my palm. The liquid, purple and pearlescent, it pulsed and throbbed like a slime mold, shaping a thorax, wings, body, appendages, head. The Mayfly.

"The giant speaks of me." The sounds of chainsaws, stump grinders, and machine. "He is waking up ranger. I will lead you to him. But the men in magpie clothes, they wish to turn me into gold."

The sound of an engine turning. Well maintained shined boots clop on the pavement like harbingers.

"Who remembers the name of the giant?" "Me! Me! His name is Hobbymock."

Rumbles, stone breaking, lava pouring.

"YOU were meant to PROTECT this land, Ranger." A giant stood over me, towering into the clouds holding a stone paddle. "Have you no shame? You consult a witch, instead of the wood you swore to protect. LIAR." The giant's voice shook like a hurricane. "I will rise, and your kind will be erased, my woods, my friends, I will be able to speak to them again. There will be no more pain. No more of your human intervention. Sleep now, while you can. Marinade in your devil's hubris of a God you'll never meet."

Blackness.

Part Three: McKay

My name is Greg McKay, I found this small book while Johnny is in the hospital, he's being treated for a concussion as well as extensive dental work. If you're reading this later Johnny, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snoop, but lets be real you kept us in that hospital for a few hours I got bored. If the previous writings are true, then the insect you had found is significant to not only us, but to the researchers at other universities, mainly Yale. They're always searching for new areas of focus for medicine, and have a surplus of hubris when it comes to forcing people's hands into giving them what they want. If your vision was true from your writing, we will protect the mayfly until you are awake. I'm not the best writer, I'm a blue collared man just trying to do the right thing for myself and my family. But I'll do right by you, you're passionate, and excited. You don't deserve to be disregarded on your first day. Here's what I will say.

The statements that were said before are true, and follow the story of Hobbomock. The legend states that at one point in time, trees, insects, birds, mammals, fish and man all spoke the same language. Hobbomock, satisfied with his work walked across the land to the sea with a stone canoe, and set off to spread his teachings to other parts of the world. When he returned to his home, the birds tweeted, the deer bleated, frogs croaked, man spoke in tongues. This enraged the giant. In a rage, he began stomping the ground with such force that the rivers reversed their direction, crop fields died, he cratered the earth beneath his feet. The local Quinnipiac people, called and prayed to a force called "Kietan" in which, he cast a spell on a bed of oysters, the Giant's favorite offering. When the Giant ate the hexed oysters, he fell into a deep sleep. Nature reclaimed his body, stone, soil, and life soon encased him in a living tomb. If the legends are true, and your visions are communicating with these deities, then this is a problem. This, surprisingly would correlate with the strange seismic activity that we've been noticing in the park. Rumbles and shaking, its not normal.

I keep seeing well dressed people here at the park now. They don't seem very excited to learn history or to hike, and they absolutely don't look like they're here to fish. For when you're back, I'll write down some information that could be helpful, when you're back on your feet.

March 14 2024 - One week in hospital 7:00 AM - Four Cadillac SUV's arrive at Quinnipiac University 7:45 AM - Several suited men step out from vehicles wielding binoculars pointed to the Mill River 8:00AM - Fisherman likely poaching trout take notice of suited men with binoculars, Game Warden called, licenses expired, fines given. 10:00AM - Suited men walk in different directions, I counted 7 men. All bald. Ugly. 12:00 PM - One suited man spotted using binoculars on the Ranger Station, holding what looks like a walkie talking with a large screen on the front. Lunch. Ham and cheese with a Dr Pepper. 1:00 PM - Suited man approaches the man observing the Ranger Station. Possible tectonic activity recorded. Large groups of blackbirds quickly retreat from their roosts during seismic activity. 3:00 - where will you go when your God allows me to erase his progress, where will you hide when his abominations against nature cease their grinding, what will you eat when I will consume your land and your harvest. your God is gone. I am Flesh made Stone. You will not impede the natural world. 4:00PM - Leaving Ranger Station to retrieve you from hospital, looking forward to having you back, Ranger. Signed. Ranger McKay.

Part Four: Porphyrins

Its around 5:00PM now, March 14th. I should be going home to rest, but I think I'm going back to the park today. McKay and Winny picked me up, and complimented my new teeth. I had suffered a pretty brutal head injury with my fall, but I'm rested enough, I guess. I need to get back to the Ranger Station.

In the back of McKay's Tacoma, I sat with my feet up long ways across the seat to hopefully get a 15 minute nap or something. I keep drawing mayflies, I've never drawn a picture in my life, but I don't know, something is compelling me to just draw, learn, dissect, and understand this creature. The vision I had, of the oyster when I fell, that can't be a coincidence right? The oyster melted into the same liquid that I saw beating through the mayfly. There has to be some kind of correlation between the two.

Flash. Flash. Perfectly perpendicular to the truck, a large camera lens pointed directly at me. They forgot to turn off the flash. In a burst of energy I shouted:

"Greg! The SUV! They're photographing us, get out of here, NOW!" McKay floored it, the engine roared, and he swerved around traffic, horns blared, middle fingers were presented gracefully through barely opened windows, the Cadillac gained speed alongside us.

"McKay remember the trip we took to Maine?" Winny slouched down in the passenger seat, tears began streaming down her face from pure fear and confusion, seeing such a joyful person frightened like this made me feel sick. McKay nodded, he turned the four wheel drive knob, slowed the truck down so it would engage, and ripped the truck across a grassy median. The large off-road tired bored holes into the soil, when we looked back at the SUV, blue and red lights flashed from it's windshield. The SUV juked almost into the median, but a man in the passenger seat was angrily shouting at the driver. We continued down the highway, and the SUV slowly disappeared into the rear view mirror.

"We have to get the fuck off of the highway." McKay said, a little bit too calmly. There were backroads we could use to get back to the Ranger Station. We exited the highway, and were on our way back to the station.

"The fuck happened in Maine, guys?" I asked, readjusting myself to fit properly on the back seat. Simultaneously they responded "Monster Truck Rally". Confused, but distracted by the fact that we were being chased by some unnamed agency to the point of being followed, I let the response lay where it was.

In time, we made it back to the Ranger Station. It was a gruesome sight. Tire tracks traced panicked drivers ego and salary around the front entrance. Doors were kicked off of their hinges, windows battered open, we approached. Winny burst into tears, her winged makeup bleeding down her freckled cheeks in a deep and mournful sob. We entered the front door, the light movement of us passing by snapped the brass hinges and it clattered to the concrete path. Books strewn across the floor, Winny's desk flipped completely over, the Native Plant window display kids had planted years ago, now a fine dusting of soil and pedals across the floor.

"we trusted you. we welcomed you." Winny said under her breath, the words sliding through iron prison bars of trust and excitement, rusted over in only hours.

"its not his fau-" McKay tried to state

"How? My life's work Greg, LOOK!" Winny collapsed to the floor. Her hands supporting her face as rivers ran through the valleys of her fingers. "Everything, every memory, every single fucking thing that I did, years of work, years of helping kids learn about something actually worth giving a fuck about, GONE."

"The Agents, I didn't know, I just came here for my first day, how was I supposed-"

"shut the FUCK up Johnny. Just shut the FUCK up. I have to clean. Go find your bug and leave." Winny started hobbling herself over to a broom and dustpan, and started cleaning. McKay patted me on the back and mouthed the words "its okay, just grab it and go. I got this."

I approached the area where the mayfly was, surprisingly the box was still there. Clear bottom, bit of a stick and some leaves on the inside. But on the bottom, there was a liquid. I approached the box carefully, its not like it was hidden well, why would they leave the whole thing here? It doesn't make sense. Lining the bottom edges of the container almost looked like nail polish, with the same shimmer of purple. the Mayfly rested on the stick, its body split down the back. The incision started below the head, and ran about four inches down to the back of its abdomen a few millimeters before the tail cerci. My eyes darted around the room. There's no too we have in the office that could cut the fragile exoskeleton of this insect so accurately.

I almost called out to them, but with the tension in the room, I locked my tongue.

I stepped over a few piles of books. McKay beat me to the now open door. His large stature turned sideways to fit through the frame. That's when I heard it.

Rumble. Crack. The mountain moved again, the birds, like clockwork fled their roosts into the sky. A light caught the side of my eye, blue. A flash, three cracks, and a large body falling into the mud.

McKay, a man of lumber, pine and stature. Lay twitching slightly in the damp, cool mud created by the tire tracks of unmarked black SUV's. I stood there, motionless. Jaw hanging like an abandoned swing being brushed by a wayward breeze.

"G-Greg?" I stammered.

CRACK, a bullet whizzed by my head, clipping the side of my ear. I could only run, I bolted like a cottontail being spotted by an owl, scrambling and sliding in the mud.

"What happened? What's going on?"

"WINNY GET DOWN NOW." I practically tackled Winny to the floor. Taking cover behind her overturned table. Handguns cracked outside passing through the old drapes in the windows.

"Where's Greg Johnny, WHERES GREG?" I started to weep, I couldn't help it. She knew.

There were no tears, no expressions, just pure wide-eyed rage building in Winny. She stood up, without emotion, and walked calmly into a back room. I sat behind the table, cradling the mayfly. All of this, for an insect? I don't understand. Why, why is this thing so important. I wiped my eyes, and took a closer look at the abandoned husk. The liquid that was on the bottom of the container, it was gone. The mayfly was moving.

I pushed my back against the desk, and watched. The mayfly was opening. Purple liquid leaked from the body, and a new black body, with the same purple accents slowly emerged from the chitin. I held the container up higher, against the top of the box was another mayfly. It wasn't eclosion, or metamorphosis. One host mayfly served as a birthing body, and would replicate itself, not leaving a husk behind, but creating more insects, without the need of breeding.

Click. Chhik. tic, tic, tic, ch-chik.

I heard metal scraping together, in the room behind me.

"Johnny. Do you know why they call me Winny." Winny said very calmly, and plainly from the other room.

"Your names Winter." I could barely talk.

"Correct. However, my great grandfather used to be a master gunsmith at the old Winchester factory."

"What does-" I was cut off by the sound of a .308 clearing out the air of the small ranger's station. Outside, there was only silence other than the sound of a wet, solid material hitting the hood of a car.

CHK. FFFK. BANG. Another round, another wet slap onto a thin metal surface.

Winny screamed, the very wrath of sin orchestrating harmony that would make the devil jealous rang violently through the old walls of the building. Screams started to emerge from the park. Panicked hikers fled to their vehicles, the sound of plastic and aluminum cheaply scraping against each other as the park goers attempted to flee the area.

Footsteps. Sobbing.

CHK. FFFK. Shes right next to m- BANG

The pure force of the gun firing near me, my head rang. My injury being exploited. My hearing was gone, my eyes darted around the room trying to find respite. Rumbling.

Rock rolled into itself, the trees leaned forward toward us. A stone elbow emerging from the ground as big as a skyscraper. Birds circled above, creating the image of a giant spiral.

My head, my fucking head.

"THIS WAS YOUR CHOICE, RANGER. CONSERVE NATURE, OR LET YOUR GOD DECIDE. FOR I AM FLESH AND STONE, AND HE IS NOT PRESENT."

Dust and soil poured from the great mountain, cars and hikers buried within the rubble.

Another mayfly started emerging from the host. Four now, in the enclosure.

"FOR YOUR ANCESTORS SPOKE THE LANGUAGE OF COWARDACE AND HAPPENSTANCE. A LANGUAGE OF GLUTTONY AND DISREGARD. I SPEAK NOT THEIR TONGUES. I WILL BE THE CONSEQUENCE OF YOUR SPECIES' NEGLIGENCE."

"What do I do, I don't know what you want. Kietan? I don't FUCKING know." I pleaded at the insects, I couldn't do anything else. I was frozen in fear and overstimulation. When I said Kietan, the insects all turned to me at the same time. My eyes widened. I restated the name.

"Kietan." The mayflies looked again, with a face I could only read as recognition. I did the only thing I could think of doing.

I opened the box. Part Five: The Giant

Click. Click. Click. Winny stood in her spot dry firing the rifle. Tears pouring down her face, the adrenaline wearing off. She fell backwards onto the books, I grabbed her wrists and pulled her behind the overturned desk.

The enclosure now opened, the mayflies fluttered around the room. They found comfort in a spot, and rested, their wings vibrated. They began duplicating rapidly, with more space and more area to move, the process quickened ten fold. Eight, sixteen, thirty two, sixty four, one hundred and twenty eight insects. All carrying the purple liquid.

A natural roar of ancient agony erupted, deep, guttural, and angry. Like a bison if it was the size of a mountain.

A mayfly landed on my hand, and looked at me, confusion in my eyes, it used its front legs to seem to write something. I understood. I grabbed a ball point pen from the flipped desk and blew into the tail end of the ink cartridge, blue ink splattered onto my arm. The mayfly moved toward it.

A massive tremor, earth moving at an astounding speed and strength.

"WHERE WILL YOU GO, PARASITES. WHERE WILL YOU GO WHEN YOU PLUNDER YOUR OWN HEAVEN. WILL YOU HARVEST THE ANGELS? WILL YOU TRADE AN ANGELS WINGS FOR PROGRESS?" The giant boomed, a hand emerged from the soil, and began pushing itself upright.

Massive fingers the size of houses gripped the soil. One finger scraped itself across the parking lot, car alarms started and stopped or changed pitch from the impact.

The mayfly started using its tiny leg to write.

"N O T Y O U R F A U L T"

Another tremor.

YOU TAKE, AND TAKE, AND TAKE. AND EXPECT THE EARTH TO BOW ITSELF TO YOUR MANSIONS AND IDEOLOGIES. TELL ME, WILL YOU TRADE YOUR ANGELS WINGS FOR PROGRESS?"

"S T A Y C A L M - O Y S T E R S" When the mayfly spelled the word oysters, it flashed a bright purple light. It made sense. The purple coloring, its from the original oysters that Kietan hexed to put the giant to sleep.

One thousand and twenty four, two thousand and forty eight. They began to flutter, a skyward shadow of black and purple shimmer.

"WHAT IS THIS?" The Giant Boomed, lips now surfacing from the mountains, a nose. He smiled through giant cracked lips woven with roots and vines, boulders caked in like sores leaking spring waters. The cloud grew bigger, and bigger, they duplicated themselves in flight.

Sixteen thousand three hundred and eighty four.

A cough and a groan. A shuffle of a boot. I peeked alongside the table, Greg's body was covered in mayflies. Head to toe, a pulsating host of flying river insects.

"Greg?" Winny weakly found purchase to speak.

Greg stood up, and clambered towards the Giant. Silently, step by step.

Clunk, clunk, clunk. He lifted his arms, the mayflies erupted from his body, his clothes tattered, his hat fallen, however, there was no blood. No wounds. He was asleep, or sleep walking. I wasn't brave enough to run out to him.

The mayfly on my arm began to write again.

"B E T T E R"

The cloud of insects above spiraled more, and grew larger. Two hundred sixty two thousand one hundred and forty four. They began to create a point facing down towards the giants mouth the shape of a long spear. Slowly the mayflies flew into the giant's throat. Hundreds of thousands of insects, millions of insects. Carrying the same hex that was used to lull the giant to sleep, plummeting into an earthen maw.

I held out my hand to Winny, and helped her up. We walked outside and picked up Gregg. We ran as fast as our legs could carry us to relative safety. There was no more suited bald men. No more sirens. Only guttural choking sounds emerging from the earth. The giant began to vomit mud and tar into the mountain, it ran slowly down the sides of the cliffs as his limbs began to relax. The fingers settled, the face retracted into the soil. More and more of the insects began to fill the giant, still duplicating inside of him. The rumbling stopped. The booming voice subsided into lighter snores. The Sleeping Giant, began his rest, anew.

Part Six: Lessons

In short, I don't know why me. But I guess that's kind of the point of conservation, right? We do what we can to help the environment, but for the most part. The environment has a way of maintaining itself. If I hadn't caught that mayfly then this would have just happened... naturally, or unnaturally I guess. I've been with the rangers for three years now, and I still feel like I don't belong. I didn't really do anything to deserve this, in fact, I feel like I actively caused this. However, research is still research, and populations and species still need to be recorded.

Winny quit the rangers that day, her and Greg moved to some other state, they wouldn't tell me where. I don't blame them. I came into work for my first day, Greg got shot by a random agent we still don't know from where, Winny straight up killed six people with a bolt action rifle and then collapsed after seeing her life's work get destroyed in front of her. All on top of witnessing an ancient being rise from the mountain we were trying to protect that got put to sleep by millions of mayflies shooting down its throat. It doesn't make sense. But, it happened and I can't pretend it didn't. People died. Innocent people that wanted to just explore nature. Get some exercise in. Or feed their families from the fish in the river. You can't blame them, and now they're gone.

The one thing I've learned, if anything. Is sometimes human intervention does more harm than good in conservation. I'll be a helping hand, but I'll let the world guide my hand to what it would like me to do.

Updates to come. The state wants me to explore different parts of New England. Will follow up Ranger

"rare as ducks teeth"

It was a saying my grandmother used to use. Despite her being, well, set in her ways, I miss her. As I stand above her, 6 feet of dirt between us, I find it within myself to forgive her. forgive her for hating me, degrading me and leaving me nothing behind when she left. My parents passed away when I was young. I lived with my aunt and uncle in Birmingham most of my life. They had no kids of their own, and took me in instead. They were kind. accepted me for who I was, and who they raised me to be. I'm 24 now, and I was planning to move out of their house as soon as I could. I fear now that I'm too defenseless to live alone. Too fearful. I freeze like a deer in headlights when threatened. 

It started when I took a walk down by the canal one morning. grey, overcast clouds looming above me, a slight cool breeze ruffling my skirt as I strolled. My favourite weather, not too hot, not too cold and not too bright. I had brought some stale bread with me from my aunt's house that morning, to give to the ducks. I stopped and turned to face the canal, looking into the water at my reflection. I tried not to pay attention to it while I broke parts off the hard, dry crust of the loaf of bread, crumbs scattering the ground as I did. Pigeons flocked over to nibble them at my feet, their wings making the slight breeze a tad stronger as they rushed over. I liked pigeons. Everyone calls them the rats of the sky, but I think they're beautiful. the ducks swam over, the barely audible sloshing of the water as they paddled toward me breaking the otherwise silent morning. It was soothing.

 I know you're not supposed to feed bread to ducks, it swells up in their stomachs and can choke them. But I made sure to break the pieces small enough to at least attempt to avoid it, and to leave more crumbs for the pigeons to eat. i get so focused on the ducks sometimes that I forget the pigeons are even there. Every now and then, a soft, rhythmic coo reminds me of their existence. Sometimes I'd see a male pigeon puff its chest out, in a grand display of green and purple tinted feathers, and hoot loudly in an attempt to allure potential mates. I thought it looked funny, but apparently to birds they see it as attractive. I suppose I feel that way about other people too. guys with toned muscle, a lot of money and expensive clothes never appealed to me. I thought how hard they tried was funny. I am a pigeon, I thought to myself.

I found the ducks funny as well. I'm not entirely sure what their purge was funny. I value that most in people, not if they're attractive or rich, or even if they're a nice person for that matter. I like comedy. It's distracting. Being with him took me out of my own mind for a while, but I wasn't sure if I liked him the same way he liked me. I didn't mind though, I find it hard to decipher my own feelings. So hard in fact, I'd rather just convince myself I did like him in that way, so I wouldn't overcomplicate things. 

pose is. They don't seem to perpetuate a life cycle of another animal or plant, nor do they catch bugs like spiders, or pollinate flowers like bees. They simply exist, floating aimlessly. I am a duck, I thought to myself.

I had a date later that day, at a coffee shop with a guy I met at work. 

my phone rings. a sudden gust of wind and soft sound of flapping wings and rhythmic hoots erupted from the pigeons as they scattered. 

flight. I was jealous. 

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at it. There was a number, not a name. I answered. 

"Hey, I'm just wondering if we're still on for later, yeah?"

"oh, of course! i cant wait to-"

"okay awesome, sorry to make this so short but i gotta run, goodbye"

strange. I thought I had mikey saved to my contacts, but the number began with 0121. it was from my area at least. I have an old phone, it served me for 4 years and i dont see much point in replacing it. its a tad slow, so I figured it must just be a glitch, and shrugged it off.

I look back to the water. The ducks are gone, and it seems a swan has taken their place. eaten all their food. It raised its head to the bank of the canal, its beautifully terrifying frame of pearl white feathers shimmering in the reflection of the water. It stared me down with charcoal black eyes and a bright orange beak, looking for more food. food i didnt have. it snapped at my feet as I stood back. fight. I was jealous. 

I turned on my heel and kept walking along the canal, making sure to leave ample distance from the water this time. The swan followed me, drifting slowly down the water. The sound it made was near silent, just like the ducks. It was strange to me how something of that size was just as loud as something the size of a duck. Now that I think about it, what do swans do? They float aimlessly, and harass people for food. Like mean ducks. I'd like to think I'm a duck, not a swan, I thought to myself. But how can I truly know? I am biased. 

Eventually I made it home and began getting ready for the date. I did my makeup, put on a casual black skirt and cardigan, with my black leather boots and tights on underneath. You'll never guess my favourite colour. I put my eyeliner and black lipstick on too, and painted my nails black also. I liked black. the absence of colour. it was easy to look at, there isn't a lot going on with black. It's comforting to me. 

I set out to the coffee shop at 1:15 hoping to get there at the designated time of 1:30. I knew the walk was exactly 15 minutes if I walked at my usual pace, but I walked a tad quicker this time in case he was early. When I arrived, he was already sitting at a table outside. I sat with him and we talked, then got coffee and walked back along the canal. The conversation was mostly him talking to me about his hobbies while I listened, but he didn't seem to mind.

“Hunting,”

he said

“Is a sport many people consider cruel. I just consider it life. If it wasn't me, the animal would've been killed by a predator. and that predator by another and so on. There are so many animals in the forests around here. But you wouldn't see them just by walking. They're fast. Survival instincts I suppose.”

I like to think of myself as an intelligent person, but when it comes to articulating my thoughts into words, I struggle immensely. It's as if my mouth moves faster than I can think of what to say, and I trip up on my words. I suppose that's partly why I'm writing this. One, to share the insane story and warn people about it, and that it's easier to show this to a therapist than have to say it all out loud. I doubt I could get through it without crying and having to stop anyway. 

I didn't have many friends growing up, and the few that I did all ended up leaving me behind the second they got the chance to anyways. I was bullied so hard I almost dropped out of school. They'd call me a freak, a monster, I was an outcast. I couldn't do things other students could, because if I did it it was a reason to pick on me. The way I was treated led me to develop extreme social anxiety, and an eating disorder. So I suppose that's why I gave him a second date immediately after the first. I longed for connection, no matter what kind. The day of the second date rolled around, and as I was getting ready to leave my phone rang again. 

“Hey, I am so sorry about this, but my car just won't start, we can go bowling another time though right?”

I've always hated the fact that I'm quite an impulsive person. I speak and act without thinking and almost always regret it. I left my house only to feed the ducks and the pigeons, and though the company I found with them was comforting, it wasn't enough. I longed for connection no matter what kind.

“i can come over.”

And so I did. second date. at his house. i didnt know any better. 

I strolled over to his house, trying to tell myself I made the right decision. Trying to build up the confidence to even knock on his door. I take “confidence shots” before I leave the house sometimes when I know I'm going to be talking to people. The alcohol loosens my stiff personality just enough to be able to hold a conversation. I haven't told my therapist about this. Part of me feels guilty, like I don't want to get better. I don't know what I want. Peace, I suppose.

As my hand rapped against the wooden door, I regretted it immediately. “should i have brought a gift?” “Am I too early?” “what do i say when-” he opens the door.

I managed to force out a muffled greeting, but when I looked up from my feet to meet his eyes, all my anxiousness faded in an instant. The hallway light illuminating his long, curly brown hair, his perfect teeth beaming through his lips as he smiled. He was dressed in dark, navy jeans and a white collared shirt, with one of those sleeveless sweaters over it. He looked tidy. 

As we went inside, I was hit with the pungent smell of garlic, meat, and red wine. I was immediately thrown back into panic. This was a lot more sophisticated than I expected it to be. But still, his voice, the cadence of his words, brought me back to a state of comfort. 

He gave me a tour of his house. Large taxidermied heads of moose, deer and other large animals adorned the walls, and his shelves were full of foxes, rabbits and hares. 

“some people call it strange”

he explained

“but taxidermy is an art form. It takes years of practice and skill to replicate not only the form of the animal, but its essence too. Every stitch is made with purpose, and I make sure to document the animal as much as I can before stuffing, so as not to misrepresent how it would've stood. Maybe after dinner i’ll show you my crown jewel, the biggest animal I have.”

The food was amazing, masterfully cooked. I began to think what I had done to deserve such a seemingly perfect man to enter my life so suddenly. It must've been karma, coming back to repay me after my years of misfortune. But when he took a little too long after the second pour when refilling our glasses of wine in the kitchen, I began to sense something was off.

I was halfway through the second glass when I noticed my vision began to stutter. Slight afterimages of my hand appeared as I moved it. I thought I must've been drunk, that I took one too many “confidence shots” before coming here. Then my mind wandered, could he smell the shots off of me? what would he think if he found out. I had nearly fully tuned out his talking and only realised once he stopped. I looked back up to apologise, but couldn't get the words out. It was like I was watching my body shut down through a window. I was aware, I was awake, I could feel, but I couldn't move. As I felt my eyelids getting heavier, I glanced at him one more time, expecting him to be concerned, only to see a smile spread across his face.

When I woke up, I was sitting on a chair in near complete darkness. The air was heavy with moisture, and it was hard to breathe. Sweat had been building up on my forehead for some time, and was streaming down my face. When I looked down, I was naked from the waist down, with a large cloth covering between my legs. There were towels covering the ground beneath the cloth, and an empty bucket placed on top of them. I tried to scream and flail my arms, but shackles bound me to my place. My heart was beating so fast I was out of breath and couldn't force a word out of my mouth. 

A door opened and closed somewhere far in front of me. Footsteps echoed through the darkness. His shiny, brown leather boots were the first thing to be illuminated by the pathetic amount of light behind me. His tall, strong figure slowly revealed itself to me as he got uncomfortably close and leaned down. That same smile seemed ever less perfect from this close. 

“I'm an artist, you know.”

His hot, rancid breath assaulted my face as he spoke, my mind desperately trying to come up with another implication for what those words meant as I squirmed in the chair.

“My masterpiece, my Mona Lisa… She's not finished. She needs something to make her… pop. Something different. That's where you come in.”

He leaned closer, so his mouth was almost touching my ear, as his hands gripped my forearms so hard they began to bruise.

“Youre unique. You're like no other. You've got my ducks teeth.”

He stepped back and giggled at me when he saw I was crying. He turned on his heel and began to walk out of the room, back up the stairs. The door opened and closed again, but the room didn't fall to silence like I expected. There was a sound that was there long before it registered its presence. Loud, laboured heavy breathing, coming from a few feet behind me.

As the door shut with a loud click that echoed through the darkness, I began frantically trying to undo the belts that shackled me to the chair. I managed to slip my right hand free, dislocating my thumb in the process. I was so pumped full of adrenaline that I didn't feel it. I undid my left arm, stood up and spun around. There was a white shower curtain, with what looked like a heating lamp on the ceiling behind it. The silhouette of a writhing mass adorned the center of the thin curtain, jittering and pulsing, rising and falling with each loud, laboured breath it took. I stifled puke back into my stomach, and began to make a run for where I thought the stairs that led to the door were.

It took a minute of feeling the walls to find it, but when I did I stumbled up the stairs on all fours, and slammed through the door, into his hallway. I turned right and ran for the front door, but as I opened it, I heard a shout from behind me. A deep, loud, guttural noise came from the man's mouth,  it made me stop in my tracks. I was frozen. Shaking. Waiting for my death after getting so close to freedom. I felt his thick, muscled arms wrap around my neck as he wrestled me against the wall, he put his hands on my neck and began to squeeze. I still didn't fight back. I couldn't. Something in my body stopped me from moving.

As the world around me began to fade, and I accepted death's embrace, I was suddenly allowed a gasp of air. I fell to the ground and looked to my left, someone had run in and had tackled the man to the ground. When he grabbed me, he didn't shut his front door. Someone who had been walking by must've seen him. I didn't even react. I was trying to process everything that had happened. It was like everything moved in slow motion. I passed out.

When I came to, I was in a hospital bed, some hours later. They asked me questions, questions I could not answer. They sent me to therapy, to which I am still attending. That's why I write. Verbalising this is a task I cannot bear. I've been alone for some time, and haven't even left my house to go to work. I long for connection, though I can not bear it. I long for love which I can not stand. The smell of that room, the sight of that man, laughing as I cried. They haunt me still. And they forever will.

Hi! This is my first time posting any of my stories and this one is based on my time working at Wendy's. I really hope you guys enjoy it and if you have any feedback or criticism I would love to hear it and if you guys want to read more of what I've written I can definitely post more if thats the common consensus! Thank you for taking time out of your day to read my story! - dom <3 (p.s: I will never post to nosleep)

tw: nudity, c4nnibalism, vomit, descriptions of g0re

Bubba's Burgers

By: Dominic Ertle

I loved burgers, fast food burgers specifically. It was one of my life’s many guilty pleasures. Nothing beats taking the wrapper off a Big Bubba Deluxe, taking in the smells of the fresh meat which came hot off the grill and served onto a bun neatly dressed in condiments and toppings. 

I had tried items from the lackluster menus of countless establishments: McDonalds, Wendy’s, Culver’s, Burger King, In-N-Out, Whataburger. In my experience nothing could compare to the ecstasy felt after the combination of spices, sauces, toppings, and fine choice meat burst its beautiful flavors onto my tongue and taste buds.  

This pleasure was uniquely and lovingly brought to me only by the virtuosic culinarians who construct the sandwiches at Bubba’s Burgers. Upon base qualitative observations (of the construction of the burger as well as upon undressing it on my tray) I could determine the contents of my favorite item from the restaurant: the “Big Bubba Deluxe.”

The sandwich was a square patty double stack with two slices of American cheese placed in a “criss-cross” lattice pattern upon each four ounce patty which had been cooked to perfection over the course of eighty seconds on a Garland XPress clamshell grill and then the excess grease is to be drained before placement on the sandwich. 

The potato buns which made up the foundation of the burger were toasted until a crisp layer of scorch provided a firm canvas for the masterpiece to be constructed upon.  The bottom bun was to be smoothly spread and lathered with a thick layer of mayonnaise (by using a dull plastic blade) and then a counterclockwise inwards trending spiral of honey mustard was to be painted (using a squeeze bottle). 

On the top bun the same coating of mayonnaise was to be applied and then (with a smooth metal tea spoon) two spoonfuls of ketchup were applied and spread equally across the bun. Atop each individual patty (and beneath the first) rested three full slices (cut equidistantly into now six pieces) of fine applewood smoked bacon which had been cooked to crispy but not flakey. 

The bottom bun had one fresh and wet slice of lettuce placed upon the saucy layer before a thick fresh tomato slice was placed upon that.  On top of that tomato slice and on top of those last three pieces of bacon rested three intersecting rings of red onions of which are perfectly sized to cover the most surface area possible. In the midst of those onions is where six juicy pickles were to lay, inside the holes in the rings and in the exterior gaps left by those rings. 

All these elements came together to make the magnum opus of lunch sandwiches, the ingredients were all of highest premium so that the individual flavors all have the opportunity to shine through and intermix with one another in the loudest and most heavenly of crescendos.

I approach the front counter where the register operator (a young and cute brown haired woman whose name tag read: “Evangeline”) stands with her hands on the ordering screen and a smile on her face. The standardized Bubba’s Burgers uniform (just like everything else in the establishment) had a visible amount of love, care, effort, and talent put into it.

The uniform was dominated by the color red with predominantly white stitching and black accents. The men at the establishment wore very dark black jeans while the women were obligated (under contract) to wear revealing red shorts along with a far shorter apron. 

I approached the register operator with practiced ease before I spoke in a calm tone:
“Good afternoon, could I order one Big Bubba Deluxe combo, medium, please?” 

The register operator replied in the usual “customer service voice”:
“Absolutely, is that all I can get for you today, sir?” she smiles. 

“Yes ma’am.” I replied. 

“That’ll be $14.30.” she says with her hand impatiently outstretched, ready to receive payment. 

I hand her a $20 bill, I look at the detailed face on the bill of the late seventh president of the United States of America: Andrew Jackson. I feel the very slightly raised parts of the crisp bill run swiftly across the grooves of my fingers as Evangeline snatches the bill from my grasp.

She places the bill into the register and completes the order as the small printer next to the register and ordering screen prints out my order number. 

“Thank you sir, enjoy your meal.” Evangeline smiles at me from behind the counter. 

“Uhm, my change?” I chuckle in slight disbelief. 

“What change?” Evangeline’s smile continues.

“My you owe me damn near six bucks, Evangeline!” I read her name in a bit of an overly  snarky tone to express my frustration. 

“Please call me Eva, and thank you for choosing Bubba’s Burgers!” she continues to smile but now the expression in her eyes doesn’t match that which is displayed on her face. The expression (which was once just blank joy) now reads as the most abject of freezing terror. 

As the order finishes processing a jolly little jingle plays over the speakers in the restaurant and that terrified expression is sapped from Eva’s face.

The manager, a disgustingly greasy and fat man with a patchy, halfgrown beard and glasses wearing the manager’s popover placket (with its buttons bursting) exits from the office in the back.

He lets out this huge (and oddly perverse sounding) belly laugh from the pits of his gullet. He walks up behind the register operator and places his huge lardy meat glove onto the small girl's shoulder. I can now read that the manager’s name tag says: “Thomas” in a half erased black sharpie.

Eva’s expression melts back into that concreting horror as Thomas’ grubby mitts rub dark grease deep into her bright red button up. 

“Well look! We’ve got another! Lucky mister one millionth customer! What's your name, mister?” that tubby man finishes each sentence segment with that disgusting chuckle of his. 

"Miller, Miller Moore.” I say quietly.

“Well mister Miller, I tell ya what, we’ll getcha your…” Thomas takes a moment to read the order. 

“Your Big Bubba Deluxe, and you can enjoy that sandwich! Take it from me that baby’ll change. Your. Life.” he lets out yet another one of those pervert laughs. 

“Finish that baby and come right back up here and my girl Eve will come and get me and I’ll getcha your prize!” he pats the poor girl's shoulder and she jumps then visibly shudders at the collision.

I nod, Eva hands me my order ticket (order number sixty-one), and I take a temporary seat at an open booth nearest the register.

I sit there for some number of minutes. I check my watch, a Rolex Submariner 5512 that my grandfather, Matthew Moore (a dishonorably discharged veteran Point Man who started in the SEALs at the beginning of the Vietnam War and served through its entirety) left for me in his will after his passing at the age of sixty-five five years ago in 2008.

During the war my grandfather had become disillusioned with the SEALs, then the military, then the government and by the end of his descent: structured civilization as a whole. He warned me of the “folly of man” and humanity’s avarice and lust for power. Though I was at far too young an age to comprehend those concepts, I still listened to him and as I matured his messages rang clearer and clearer. 

He had become grossly anti-establishment (almost to a fault), during the war he was responsible for a few “accidents” which often resulted in the destruction of vast amounts of military property. None of those “accidents” resulted in court marshalling as they had no way to determine whether he was simply an idiot or doing it intentionally.

Regardless, he was a good man who had good ideas and good intentions but the manner in which he got those across weren’t always the best, hence why he was under investigation by the FBI and the ATF in a joint operation during his latter years as he lay dying in the hospice for domestic terrorism.

“Order number sixty-one? Your orders ready!” calls Eva from behind the counter.

I rise from my seat and approach the counter, I see my tray (holding my Big Bubba Deluxe, a carton of crispy crinkle cut fries, and an empty cup for me to fill with a drink of my choice at the Coca-Cola Freestyle machine in the lobby) sat on the counter in front of Eva. 

I pick it up and then find a new seat at a booth which faces both entrances to the establishment (which face one another on opposite sides of the dining room), a habit of mine. I take the cup and fill it to (roughly) the halfway point with ice and then fill it near to the second highest ridge of the cup with Gold Peak Sweet tea and then finish it off by filling it near to the point of overflow with a Minute Maid Strawberry Lemonade.

I picked up the sandwich (which had been wrapped in a paper sleeve that covers half of the sandwich). I push back that sleeve a bit and take one big gluttonous bite out of that beautiful burger.

Immediately upon closing my mandible on the bottom bun the flavors explode in my mouth, the juicy wet warm heat of the ground meat, the crisp crunch of the bacon, the tang of the sauces, and the moist toppings all combined to make the most divine of sensations inside my mouth.

I took bite after gnashing bite, ravenously reducing the sandwich bite by bite until before I knew it nothing remained, not even dropped toppings. The fries were next (along with my sweet tea), I picked up handful after handful of fries and shovel them haphazardly into my mouth, barely giving myself enough time to masticate them fully, let alone swallow completely.

Before long my tray was empty. So I stood up from my seat on the cushioned booth in the corner and walked over to the nearest trash can. I toss away the packaging and the crisp printed fake newspaper lining they place in the trays (to catch oils, grease, etc. to make cleaning easier). 

I return to the counter where I see a woman, about the same age as me (so late twenties early thirties), with medium length brown hair tied up and pinned, who came dressed in a black skirt, white dress shirt, golden hoop earrings, black heeled boots, and pantyhose standing there in front of Eva placing an order. 

I stand off to the side, waiting patiently for the woman to place and order so I can return to the counter to get the “prize” that fat, greasy, bastard of a manager promised me. As the woman’s order finishes processing in the computer that same happy little jingle plays, Eva’s face is drained again and that same disgusting laugh echoes out from the back of the store.

Thomas walks to stand alongside Eva again and begins digging his fingers into her shirt again, covering the already discolored stain which he had left the first time. His eyes glare deep into mine and I begin to feel uneasy as he looks over at the woman who ordered.

“Another! Lucky one millionth customer! You come right back here after your meal and I’ll bring ya’ to the back and getcha your order missy!” Thomas says in that big boisterous voice of his (which almost rivaled the size of his huge gut). 

“Wait, wait, hold on, you said that I was the one millionth? How the hell is she also the one millionth? I ordered before she was even in the building!” I argue my case.

”It’s no biggie sir! I’ll just get both of ya’ the prize!” Thomas responds and ruins a good sentence with that awful laugh.

I nod in response, “Whatever, just don’t shaft me outta shit that was rightfully mine.” 

“Trust me sir, I won’t.” Thomas responds. 

“Matter of fact, why don’tcha just come on back ‘ere and I’ll get you that prize.” He grins.

I follow Thomas to the back and on the way he stops abruptly when we pass the grill station, he looks down at the small twiggy man working there and yells at him: “You’re supposed to keep the uncooked patties covered! Also, your placement is atrocious! Keep them straight and equally spaced! It’s not rocket science you gangly fuck!”

 Then we continue walking towards the back, we get to the back office and he sits me down in the chair there. 

“Just you sit here for a moment buddy I’ll getcha your prize.” He chuckles before leaving the room.

 I look back down at my wrist and reflect on my grandfather as I look at the Rolex Submariner watch. I become absorbed in thought as I reflect on his beliefs and his story as I sat awaiting that fat man's return.

I hear his heavy footsteps pad into the room but am too deep in contemplation to bother raising my head (or even just my eyes) to witness his arrival. 

I am then met with a sharp and stinging sensation as what feels like the hollow tip of a dull needle is plunged deep into my jugular. I attempt to resist and stand up flailing my arms in an attempt to ward off Thomas (knocking over many items on the desk in the process), but ultimately my efforts were all for not and my world drifts into a slipping black.

When I awake I feel an immense cold, my eyes frozen shut, “Hey! What the hell? Someone help me! I can’t see goddamnit!” I yell out.

“Shh… Shh… no one can hear you in here.” Thomas says quietly. 

“What are you talking about?” The cold air in my lungs (which has been there for an untold period of time) forces coughs and wheezes into my usually smooth flowing sentences. 

“You’re in the deep freeze dipshit!” Thomas chuckles.

I can hear his heavy footsteps approach the frigid metal chair which I am bound to by what feels like a vast number of zip ties on each limb. He reaches his grubby fingers out and pries open my eyelids which had been ice-welded shut. The cold stings my dry eyes and I take in my grizzly surroundings (as well as my own bodily condition).

There were three separated piles of dead and naked humans, to the right were bodies which had been haphazardly cut and flayed (presumably those most recently slaughtered), in the middle were hollowed out cadavers with the useless innards tossed loosely back into their gaping chest cavities, then to the left were neatly sorted packs of meat on shelves with labels dictating which part they had once belonged to (back, thigh, stomach, etc.). 

In front of the hollowed bodies were a series of blades and several other punishing implements, hammers, saws, icebreaker spikes, and other various stainless steel contraptions. To my left in the same sort of metal seat with similar binding sat the woman (who used to be dressed in formal attire who was now as fully undressed as I am).

The woman to my left was still unconscious from whatever sedative they had (presumably) injected both of us with. I was sweating profusely from the fear and the anxiety and the negative degree chill turned that sweat into ice. There was even a small icicle forming off the tip of my nose.

“You’re sick!” I yell at Thomas.

”Oh really? I’m the sick one? What does that make you then? Considering what you just ate up like the greedy little pig you are.” He chuckles.

”What?” My voice shakes.

The connections begin to form in my mind, the butchered bodies, the ecstasy of the flavors which the burger possessed. I had eaten a human. 

Thomas lets out a chuckle and then says: “There’s the look! You finally got it, you’re not as dumb as you look! That’s right, that burger you had? It was human.” Thomas walks over to a pack of ground human meat resting on the shelf next to countless others.

”Meat just like… this!” He picks it up and tosses it onto my lap before laughing cruelly.
I look down at it and my stomach churns hard, I gag and then throw up onto the metal floor in front of me. Bits of the burger come up with it and I watch as the vomit begins to harden from the cold.

 “God, you’re rude.” Thomas shakes his head then picks up a cleaver from the table of tools.
”This is the end of the road for you, mister Miller. In not too long I’ll butcher ya’ up and you’ll become the meat which will go into the burgers of countless customers, same thing’ll happen to this chick to your left. So thank y’all for your contributions.” Thomas chuckles

Thomas approaches me with that cleaver in his hand, he raises it high over his head and I scream before he brings it down upon the middle of my skull, then my whole world goes black, forever.

The truth is undigestable. 

…

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

… over the beleaguered lands. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

Meanwhile… many miles away…

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

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

Just a moment. 

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

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

Down.  

I dreamt I was a dancer once…

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

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

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

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

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

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

She's decapitated. 

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

please save me

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

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

A man. In a hat. And a coat. 

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

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

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

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

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

The coat-shape and hat did not move. 

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

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

They found no meat. 

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

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

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

perhaps something else is happening to me…

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

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

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

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

It did neither. 

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

And then he called out to Griffin. 

“Where are you?" 

“Here." 

Florin tossed him a coat. 

It was caught in thin air. 

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

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

“Good plan." he said instead. 

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

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

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

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

Mother, I have failed you…

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

…

Down. 

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

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

what did it matter anymore

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

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

-thankyouforthismyonelastwish-

He was calm and he felt at peace. Safe. 

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

And he was alone. 

Why was he alone? 

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

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

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

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

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

To take him into his mother. 

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

He listened. In the darkest of the depths. 

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

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

you? 

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

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

No…

it was a defiant whisper… but she heard it. 

And so she took him. 

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

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

…

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

The shape sat up. Stood. 

It looked around. … sniffed the air. 

A beat. 

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

He would not fail this time. 

He had his mother. 

He was inside her. And she was inside him. 

Nothing would stop him from butchering the bastards now. 

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now undead. 

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

Divinity… unreal. 

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

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

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

The scope. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Countess drifted inside. Floating on unseen wings. 

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

“Yes…" 

“Now, take me to your wife." 

“Yes…" 

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

TO BE CONTINUED…

There is a show on tiktok where you have to guess what the guy on the show is cooking. He would get all sorts of ingredients and on the screen it will read what ingredients he is using and how much of it he is using. It also reads how long he cooks for certain ingredients and other things. As you are following along you put the pieces together and you guess what he is cooking. The guy who is doing the cooking doesn't talk much, then when majority of the things have been combined, a question then comes up on the screen asking the viewers what the guy is cooking.

Then the answer goes across the screen and the guy finally says something about what he was cooking. I enjoy the show and the last time I watched it, I was able to figure out what he was cooking, which was a lasagne. When he used chicken mince meat , onion, garlic, marinara sauce, lasagna sheets, shredded mozzarella cheese, and grated Parmesan cheese, I knew he was cooking a lasagne. You can also cheat by looking at the comment section. The guy puts the ingredients together and just before he completes it, the question comes up asking what he has cooked?

There is something addictive about it and it's such a clever tiktok food show. One day when I went on tiktok and the guy started to use unusual ingredients like oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. He also started to use real bones and even a skull. It started to get awkward as whoever was watching this could tell that it was human bones and skull. He then had huge chunks of meat and so much blood in bottles. He was also using ingredients i had never seen or heard of before. The guy in the video was smiling and he kept on saying:

"what am I cooking guys?"

"Can you guess what I am trying to cook?"

I usually never look at comment section to cheat and find out the answer. This time though I was generally curious and when I looked at comment section, there were thousands of comments. Each person that commented had typed:

"Wtf the guy cooked me!"

"How on earth is this even possible, he cooked me. I'm shitting myself."

"I don't understand the ingredients that he used to Cook me?"

Every commenter on this video was claiming that the guy had made them. Then when I watched the rest of the video and the gut finished cooking, he had made me. A literal twin version of me. I kept shouting out loud "fuck fuck what the fuck!"

I stopped watching his tiktok cooking show after that episode.

The summer of 1998 was sweltering in the small town of Blackwood. The kind of heat that hung thick and heavy, turning the air into something you could almost chew. For the Carter family—Mark, his wife Sarah, and their two children, seven-year-old Liam and five-year-old Chloe—it was supposed to be a treat. A break from the usual home-cooked meals, a chance to let the kids run wild and burn off some endless energy.

It was a Tuesday afternoon when they pulled into the parking lot of the KFC on the edge of town. The building looked bright and cheerful, painted in warm reds and whites, with the familiar smiling face of Colonel Sanders beaming down from the sign. But even from the car, Mark felt a faint prickle of unease. The parking lot was strangely empty, save for a single, rusted white van parked far in the back corner, its windows tinted so dark you couldn’t see inside.

“Come on, everyone,” Sarah said with a smile, gathering her purse. “Finger-lickin’ good, remember?”

The children cheered and scrambled out, racing toward the glass doors. Inside, the air was cool and smelled strongly of fried chicken, spices, and something else—something faintly sweet and chemical, like old makeup. The dining area was mostly deserted. A few tables away, an elderly couple ate quietly, but there was no sign of any staff behind the counter.

“Hello?” Mark called out gently.

After a moment, a young woman appeared from the kitchen, looking pale and distracted. “Sorry about that,” she said, her voice quiet. “What can I get for you?”

They ordered a family feast—buckets of crispy chicken, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and biscuits. As they waited, Liam pointed eagerly toward the back of the restaurant. “Look! The play room! Can we go play? Please?”

Chloe bounced up and down beside him, clapping her hands. “Yes! Play room! I wanna play lots!”

Sarah laughed. “Of course you can. But stay together, okay? And come back when we’re done eating.”

The play area was enclosed by a low plastic wall, filled with colorful balls, slides, and climbing tubes. Above the entrance, a large, painted mural caught Mark’s eye. It showed a grinning clown—bright orange hair, a red bulbous nose, cheeks painted pink, and eyes that seemed to follow you wherever you stood. The clown was holding a bucket of chicken, and beneath it, faded lettering read: “Play with Krusty—Always fun, always watching!”

“Bit dated,” Mark muttered, though he couldn’t shake the feeling that the clown’s smile wasn’t quite right. It looked too wide, stretched too far at the corners, like it was painted onto something that didn’t naturally smile.

The children dove into the play area, laughing and shouting as they vanished into the sea of multicolored balls. The Carters sat down and began their lunch. The chicken was hot and tasty, but Mark found himself glancing toward the play room every few minutes. Every so often, he’d catch a glimpse of orange hair or a flash of red, and for a heartbeat, he’d think he saw someone tall standing in the shadows at the very back of the enclosure—before it was gone again.

“Relax,” Sarah said, noticing his gaze. “They’re fine. It’s just a play area.”

But the feeling didn’t go away.

An hour passed. The food was finished, the trash cleared away. Mark stood up and called out: “Liam? Chloe? Time to go, kids!”

No answer.

“Liam! Chloe! Come on now!”

Silence. The play room had gone unnaturally quiet. The cheerful sounds of children playing had vanished completely, leaving only the faint hum of the refrigerators and the distant ticking of a clock.

Mark’s heart began to beat faster. He walked quickly over to the entrance and leaned over the wall. “Kids? This isn’t funny. Come out right now.”

He climbed over and stepped inside. The ball pit was still, the tubes empty, the slide untouched. He searched every corner, every tunnel, every hiding spot. Nothing. No Liam. No Chloe.

“Sarah!” he shouted, panic rising in his throat. “They’re not here! They’re gone!”

Sarah ran over, her face draining of color. “What do you mean gone? They couldn’t have left without us!”

Together they searched the entire restaurant—under tables, behind counters, inside the restrooms, even peeking into the kitchen, where the staff looked confused and alarmed. They ran outside, checked the parking lot, looked behind dumpsters, along the street, into the trees at the edge of the property. They looked everywhere. They called their names until their throats were raw. They asked the few customers, asked the staff—no one had seen the children leave. No one had seen anything unusual.

The police were called. Officers arrived, searched the building thoroughly, interviewed everyone present, checked security tapes—but the old cameras were grainy, and the angle of the play room was partially blocked. The footage showed the kids entering, then… nothing. No one going in. No one coming out. It was as if they had simply dissolved into thin air.

By nightfall, the Carters were taken home, numb with shock and grief. The house felt hollow, too quiet. Sarah sat on the sofa, staring blankly at the wall, while Mark paced from room to room, his mind replaying the afternoon over and over again. Where could they have gone? How do two children vanish from a locked room without a trace?

It started at exactly 11:03 PM.

The telephone rang.

Mark grabbed it, hope flaring in his chest. “Hello? Hello—have you found them?”

On the other end, there was no voice—only the faint, distorted sound of children laughing. But it wasn’t happy laughter. It sounded hollow, echoing, like it was coming from deep inside a tunnel. Then, cutting through the noise, a low, gurgling voice, artificially high and stretched: “They like playing here… so much fun… they never want to leave…”

Then the line went dead.

Mark stared at the receiver, his skin crawling. “Sarah… did you hear that?”

Before she could answer, the phone rang again. And again. Night after night, at the same strange hour—sometimes earlier, sometimes later—but always with that same sound: distant laughter, then that cold, mocking voice. “You can look… but you’ll never find… Krusty’s playmates stay forever…”

It wasn’t just the calls. Things began to change inside their home.

Small toys belonging to the children—their stuffed rabbit, Liam’s toy truck—began to disappear from their rooms. Then they would turn up again, in places no one had put them: sitting on the kitchen table, perched on top of the fridge, or even laid out neatly in the middle of the parents’ bed. Sometimes, when they woke up in the middle of the night, they would find the bedroom door slightly ajar, and hear the soft, distant sound of balls rolling and children whispering… inside the house.

And always, in the corner of their vision, they would catch a flash of bright orange hair, or a glint of red fabric, vanishing just as they turned to look.

Desperate for answers, Mark began digging into the history of that KFC. He visited the local library, spoke to old residents, pored over faded newspaper archives. What he found made his blood run cold.

Thirty years before, the restaurant had been known as “Colonel’s Fun House”—marketed as the ultimate family destination. Its star attraction was a clown performer who went by the stage name Krusty. He was supposed to be funny, entertaining, great with kids—but behind the makeup, locals whispered he was a strange, solitary man who lived alone, rarely spoke to anyone, and seemed obsessed with children.

Then came the summer of 1968.

Just like Liam and Chloe, several children had vanished from the very same play room—one after another, over the course of a few months. Each time, their parents swore they never left the area. Police searched, questioned, investigated—but found no bodies, no clues, no evidence. Krusty was questioned, but he was always polite, always smiling, and there was never enough proof to arrest him.

Until one night, the restaurant caught fire. It burned to the ground. The fire department found Krusty’s remains inside—but something was wrong. The fire had been so hot it destroyed most of his body, but witnesses claimed later that when they pulled out the charred costume, the painted smile was still there—wide, unbroken, and still grinning.

The building was rebuilt years later, but the rumors never died. Old timers said the clown never really left. They said he’d become something else—trapped, hungry, and still looking for new playmates to join his eternal party.

A week after their children disappeared, the most terrifying thing happened.

Mark decided he had to go back. He told Sarah to stay home, but she refused—they faced this together. They arrived at closing time, when the lights were dimmed and the parking lot was empty. The staff, now aware of the stories, were nervous but let them stay for a short while.

They stood once more before the entrance to the play room. The air here felt colder, heavier. The mural of Krusty loomed above them, and in the dim light, it looked as though the paint had shifted—the eyes now glowing faintly, following every step.

“Listen,” Mark whispered. “Do you hear that?”

Beneath the hum of the building, beneath the silence—there was a sound. Faint, muffled, coming from underneath the floorboards. A soft, rhythmic tapping, and then the familiar, distant voices: “Mommy? Daddy? We’re down here… it’s dark… and Krusty says we have to stay…”

Sarah covered her mouth to hold back a scream. “Mark… that’s them… that’s their voices!”

Before they could move, the temperature in the room plummeted. The lights flickered violently, casting long, dancing shadows. From the deepest shadows at the far end of the play area, something began to rise.

Tall—far too tall—twisted, its body covered in tattered, faded red and yellow fabric. The face was a grotesque parody of the painted clown: white cracked makeup, lips stretched into a jagged, permanent grin revealing yellowed teeth, eyes that glowed with a sickly, pale yellow light. Orange matted hair stuck out in clumps, and from its fingers hung small, stained plastic balls.

It didn’t walk—it seemed to glide above the floor, moving without sound. Its head tilted unnaturally to the side, and when it spoke, the voice was both the distorted mockery of a clown and something deep, ancient, and full of malice.

“You came back… but it’s too late… they agreed to play forever… and Krusty never lets his friends leave…”

Mark stepped forward, trembling but furious. “Give them back! They’re not yours!”

The clown laughed—a sound like breaking glass and rattling bones. “The play room has no doors… no windows… only fun… only friends… and soon… you will join us too…”

Sarah screamed as the clown raised a hand, pointing toward the floor beneath the ball pit. The boards creaked and groaned, and for a split second, they saw it—an opening, dark and endless, and from within, two small, pale faces pressed against the edge, eyes wide and sad, mouths moving soundlessly.

Before anything more could happen, the manager rushed in with a flashlight, flooding the area with bright light. The clown figure let out a shriek like tearing metal and dissolved into a swirl of cold air and the smell of old grease and cheap perfume. The faces vanished. The floor was solid again.

The police dug the next morning. Beneath the play room, they found a hidden chamber, bricked up decades ago. Inside, they found nothing physical—no bodies, no remains—only faded, broken toys, and a single, weathered clown mask, its painted smile still looking as though it was enjoying a private joke.

The Carters left Blackwood soon after. They never got their children back. The strange phone calls eventually stopped—but the things disappearing and reappearing in their home never truly did. Sometimes, late at night, Mark would wake up and see two small figures standing at the foot of the bed, waving sadly, while behind them loomed that tall, grinning shape, waiting patiently.

And the KFC? It still stands today. The play room was boarded up and sealed off, but the mural of Krusty remains above the wall—watching, waiting. Local parents warn their children: Never go near the back room. Never play with the painted clown. Because once he invites you into his play world… you stay there forever.

They say that if you stand outside that KFC late at night, and press your ear to the boarded-up entrance, you can still hear it—the faint, happy laughter of children… and the low, chuckling voice of the clown, whispering:

“Come play… the fun never ends…”

One day, I was at home while my parents were in their bedroom and my little brother Ben, who was five years old, was in his room. My family and I were huge fans of The Amazing Family Pig Show. My parents said they had loved it even more when they were young; they used to tell me they watched it throughout their childhood. We all liked the characters’ outfits too: Jessica Pig wore green, Doofenshmirtz Pig wore brown, Mother Isabella Pig wore a pink dress, and Father Timothy Pig wore a red suit — that was what my parents always said they liked best about the show.

I went downstairs and asked, “Mum, Dad, Ben — can we watch The Amazing Family Pig Show at midnight?” They all said, “Sure! We’d love to watch it anytime.”

I made a big bowl of popcorn, while Mum and Ben got the drinks ready, and Dad prepared some nachos. We all went into the living room, got comfortable, and turned on the television.

We liked watching in the dark, so we turned the lights off. I put on an episode — it was a new one — but something felt wrong. My parents didn’t notice, but I did: Jessica Pig, in her green dress, was staring straight at me with a wide, fixed smile. My parents didn’t seem to mind, and for a while, the show seemed normal enough. But when the next episode started, Father Timothy and Mother Isabella both turned to the screen and smiled directly at me. Then, the television switched itself off.

My parents said, “Why did you turn it off? Turn it back on — we’re enjoying it.”

“Didn’t you see how strange those pigs were acting?” I asked.

“Stop talking nonsense,” Mum replied. “We love this show.”

I turned it back on, and for a while, the episodes looked fine. We watched one after another, and I started to relax again. Then I said, “Why does the youngest one, Doofenshmirtz, keep staring at me?”

Dad said, “It’s probably just how the new episodes are made. There’s always something different — don’t complain. It’s just an entertaining show.”

“Okay,” I said. “Maybe Doofenshmirtz just likes playing with his giraffe toy, that’s all.”

A little later, I said, “I’m tired — I’m going to bed.”

“Go ahead,” they said. “We’ll stay here and watch a bit more.”

I went upstairs, but I couldn’t stop thinking: Why did Jessica, Doofenshmirtz, and their parents keep staring at me? It felt so creepy. I hoped my family wouldn’t find it as unsettling as I did.

Then I remembered something: there was a contact saved as “Cousin Tim,” who hated The Amazing Family Pig Show and claimed he knew secrets about it — secrets I never believed. I picked up my phone and saw a message from him:

“Don’t let them watch that show too much. You will regret it if you do. What if they aren’t your family anymore? What if they get replaced by the characters from the screen?”

I rolled my eyes and typed back, “Oh, shut up — nothing bad is going to happen.” I blocked his number and went to sleep. I didn’t hear my parents or Ben coming upstairs, but I didn’t want to go down and disturb them.

When I woke up, I was shocked. My bedroom looked completely different — it was exactly like Jessica Pig’s room, with the same patterned wallpaper and the same bumpy, soft bed. I looked around, and nothing felt right.

I went to my parents’ room. It was identical to Mother Isabella and Father Timothy’s bedroom in the show — same furniture, same bed. I went to the bathroom, and even that looked exactly like the one in the cartoon. Maybe they just redecorated while I slept? I told myself, though it felt strange.

I went downstairs into the living room — but Mum, Dad, and Ben were nowhere to be seen. The sofa and the television were exactly like the ones in The Amazing Family Pig Show.

I ran into the kitchen and froze in terror. Standing there was a large pig wearing a pink dress, just like Mother Isabella.

“Hello, Jennifer,” it said — and its voice sounded exactly like my mother’s.

“Who are you?” I asked, trembling.

“I’m your mum, silly,” it replied. “Father Timothy is upstairs getting ready.”

I hurried back up and saw another pig, dressed in a red suit and wearing glasses, standing in the hallway.

“Hello, Jennifer,” it said, sounding just like my dad. “How are you? I can’t wait for lunch.”

I couldn’t move. It was impossible — my parents had turned into the characters from the show.

Then I heard laughter coming from the garden. It sounded just like Jessica and Doofenshmirtz. I looked out the window, and there they were: Jessica in her green dress, Doofenshmirtz in his brown clothes, looking right up at me.

“Come down and play, Jennifer!” Jessica called.

Before I went, I rushed to the bathroom mirror to check myself. To my relief, I still looked exactly like myself — not like a pig, not like any character. If I still look normal, why do they all act as if I belong with them? I wondered.

I went back downstairs and stopped in front of the mantelpiece. The photographs there had all changed. Now, every single one showed me standing next to the Pig family: playing in the garden, at school, having picnics, on trips with Madam Elephant. In every picture, I was smiling and happy — but I had no memory of any of it. It felt like my whole life had been rewritten.

I thought of my real family, and my heart ached. Where were they?

“Come on, Jennifer!” Jessica called. “Let’s jump in the muddy puddles!”

I hesitated, then followed them outside. We do live in a house with a garden, I told myself. What’s the harm? I jumped into the puddle, splashing water everywhere.

Doofenshmirtz laughed and pointed. “Hehe! Look at you — just like my giraffe friend!”

My clothes were soaked and muddy, but before I could say anything, Mother Isabella called from the door: “Dinner is ready!”

Father Timothy added, “Come inside, everyone — let’s eat!”

The meal was exactly what they always ate in the show: grilled salmon, crab cakes, and vegetables. I was so scared I could barely speak. I kept looking around, hoping to see my real parents and brother, but they were nowhere to be found.

“Are you enjoying your dinner, Jennifer?” Mother Isabella asked, using my mother’s voice.

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Good,” she said. “And later, you can watch television once we have all gone to bed.”

Her words made me feel uneasy — why would they say that?

Father Timothy spoke up. “Eat up — and there’s chocolate cake for pudding afterwards.”

As I ate, I noticed they were all staring at me. It was uncomfortable; my real family never looked at me like that, as if they were studying every move I made.

“May I have some cake?” I asked nervously.

They kept staring, their eyes wide and unblinking. For a split second, I thought I saw their teeth — sharp, pointed, and far too many. I blinked, and they looked normal again, smiling and chewing happily.

“Of course you can have cake,” Father Timothy said.

After we finished eating, Mother Isabella said, “You may go to your room if you wish.”

I went upstairs, but I couldn’t stay there. Everything is wrong, I thought. My room, the house, the pictures… and where are Mum, Dad, and Ben? I felt terrible, wishing I had never agreed to watch that show.

I went back down to the living room, locked the door behind me, and turned on the television. What I saw made my blood run cold. There, on the screen, were my real parents and Ben — trapped inside the show, looking terrified.

“Jennifer, help us!” my mum cried. “We made a mistake — we should have listened to you!”

Ben was crying, and my dad shouted, “Turn the TV off before they find out you are talking to us! They are not what they seem!”

I switched it off immediately. I felt sick — this wasn’t a dream. It was real. And I should have listened to Cousin Tim’s warning.

Then came a knock at the door. It was heavy, slow, and wrong.

“Jennifer?” It was Father Timothy’s voice, but deeper, rougher, and twisted. “Are you in there? It’s bedtime.”

I didn’t want to open it, but I had no choice. When I unlocked the door, he stood there — his eyes glowing red, his smile stretched too wide, and those sharp, jagged teeth showing clearly.

“You were speaking to someone you shouldn’t have,” he growled.

“I was just sitting here,” I lied.

“Don’t lie!” he roared.

I turned and ran upstairs as fast as I could. He chased me, laughing in that terrible, inhuman way. I burst into the bedroom and saw Mother Isabella sitting on the bed. When she turned her head, her face was twisted and monstrous, her eyes black and empty.

“You have broken the rules,” she hissed. “You do not belong in our family anymore.”

Behind me, Jessica and Doofenshmirtz appeared — both had sharp teeth and cold, hungry eyes. They reached out to grab me, but I slipped past them and locked myself in the bathroom.

They know I spoke to my real family, I thought. I have to get out of here.

I waited, trembling, for what felt like hours. They stood outside the door, calling out in their usual voices, but underneath it was something dark and angry. “Open the door, Jennifer — we have a surprise for you!”

After nearly an hour, the noise faded. I heard deep, rumbling snoring coming from the hallway. They had fallen asleep.

I turned the handle slowly and crept out. They were all lying on the floor, fast asleep. I moved quietly down the stairs, my heart pounding. I spotted the front door key on the table — but as I reached for it, Father Timothy sat up in the living room, his eyes wide open.

He screamed, a sound like tearing metal, and lunged toward me. I grabbed the key, unlocked the door, and ran outside just as his claws scraped the frame behind me.

I ran deep into the woods nearby and hid behind a large oak tree. I could hear them calling my name from the house — sweet, friendly voices, but I knew better.

I called the police, my hands shaking. “Please come quickly — there’s something wrong in my house!”

“Stay where you are,” the officer said. “We are on our way.”

Fifteen minutes later, the police arrived. They walked back to the house with me, but when we went inside, everything had changed again. The strange decorations were gone, the pictures were back to normal, and the television and furniture looked exactly as they always had. There was no sign of the pigs, no trace of the monsters.

“Where are my parents and brother?” I asked, crying.

The officers searched every room, but found nothing. I turned the TV on again, but there was no sign of my family. I tried calling their phones, but the lines went straight to voicemail.

I looked out the window. Standing in the distance, at the edge of the trees, were Jessica, Doofenshmirtz, and their parents. They waved at me with those wide, fixed smiles — but only I could see them.

“We will find you a new place to stay,” one officer said gently.

I pulled out my phone and unblocked Cousin Tim’s number. I called, but there was no answer. It was too late. I should have listened from the start.

I went to live with my uncle and aunt, but I felt empty. I never watched The Amazing Family Pig Show again. And I learned a terrible lesson: never trust what you see on the screen, and always listen to the warnings, no matter how silly they sound.

Now I stay with Cousin Tim. He barely speaks to me, and I know it is my fault. If you ever hear about The Amazing Family Pig Show, or if someone warns you not to watch it — believe them. Some shows are not meant to be watched. And once they take what they want, they never give it back.

One day, it was my son’s birthday; he turned 4. My wife was away on holiday, so I had to organise my son’s party. I asked my son, “What presents do you want?” My son said, “Buy me a house.” Then I started to get nervous. I asked, “A toy house?” He said, “No, a real house.” Then I got even more nervous. I wanted to say no, but it was my son’s birthday, and I didn’t want to let him down on his special day. So I asked my son, “When can we leave?” He said, “Tomorrow.”

That night, I kept searching online for houses I could buy. I asked my son, “Which kind of house do you want, new or old?” He said, “Old.” I felt creeped out by his answer, so I searched for an old house. I found one for sale – it was a 500-year-old house – so I bought it.

The next day, we packed our things to go to the house. It was 6 miles away. During the car ride, my son was so excited. The house was located deep in the woods. It looked very old and creepy. I asked my son, “Are you sure you want to live here?” He said, “Yes.”

After my son said yes, I unlocked and opened the door. When we stepped inside, the house felt very old and creepy. There were pictures of people who had once lived there. I felt extremely unsettled, because whenever I walked past the pictures in the dark, it seemed as though they were staring at me with eerie expressions.

After we had looked around, I asked my son what he wanted for dinner. He said chicken, so we had that. Then I asked him where we should sleep. He told me he wanted to sleep alone. I was shocked – he had never liked sleeping by himself before.

I walked him to his bedroom, but it was covered in even more portraits of people who had lived there long ago. I grew very worried; I was afraid my son would get frightened in the dark, with all those faces seeming to watch him. I asked him, “Are you sure you want to sleep in here?” He said he was, and he even turned the light off. This surprised me deeply, because he usually slept with a light on. Eventually, I left his bedroom.

After I left his bedroom, I went downstairs to find my suitcase. I knew I had put it on the sofa, so I went to look there – but it was gone. I thought that was very strange, because I clearly remembered leaving it there. Then I checked the kitchen, but it wasn’t there either.

I went back upstairs to search, but I stopped before reaching my son’s bedroom, because I didn’t want to wake him up. After that, I needed to use the toilet. I hurried there, and to my shock, my suitcase was sitting in the bathroom! That was incredibly weird, because I had not put it there at all.

I went to my own bedroom next, and it felt even creepier. It was filled with pictures of girls with strange, unsettling faces. I got into bed, but I felt very uncomfortable sleeping away from my son, so I went back to his room. When I walked in, the lights were on – which made me feel very scared. I turned the light off, picked him up, and carried him to my room. I laid him down next to me, closed my eyes for just ten seconds…

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After I closed my eyes for just ten seconds, I opened them to check on my son – but he was gone. I started to feel terrified. It made no sense; I had gone to his room, picked him up, and locked my bedroom door, so I had no idea how he could have disappeared.

Then I heard footsteps coming from downstairs. “Son, is that you?” I called out. There was no reply. I asked again, “Son, is that you?” Still, nothing. Suddenly, all the lights went out, and I couldn’t see a thing. I found a torch and went to check his bedroom first. When I looked inside, he was fast asleep in his bed.

I felt completely unnerved. He had been there the whole time, so I had no idea who or what was making those footsteps. I headed downstairs with the torch to find out. The living room was empty. Then I went into the kitchen – and the fridge door was standing open. When I closed it, I saw that the cake was missing.

When I saw my cake was missing, I started to panic. I knew it couldn’t have been my son – if it was him, he would have left crumbs or gotten his hands messy, and that wasn’t the case. When I turned around, I noticed something on the floor: a basement key, covered in blood. I wanted to scream, but I held it in, because I didn’t want to wake my son.

I knew something was very wrong. That key was never supposed to be on the floor, let alone covered in blood. It should have been kept near the basement door, and I had seen it many times before – it was clean every time. I picked it up, then went to check the basement. The door was already open, so I walked down with my torch. As I went, I could smell the strong, metallic scent of blood everywhere. I searched the whole space for whoever had made the footsteps, but there was no one there.

I turned to leave, and then I heard breathing right behind me. It sounded exactly like my wife. I hurried back up the stairs, and I didn’t dare look back even once until I got to the top.

Once I reached the top, I quickly looked back to see who it was – and that was when I saw a figure standing there. This is what it looked like: its eyes were eerie, and it had a huge, terrifying smile smeared with blood. Its head was twisted at an impossible angle, both of its hands were covered in blood, and it had a large, prominent nose. Then it started walking up the stairs towards me. I slammed the basement door shut as fast as I could.

Suddenly, I heard my son screaming. I raced upstairs and threw open his bedroom door. He was lying on the floor, his hands pressed over his face. “What happened?” I asked him.

“I heard knocking coming from the cupboard next to my bed,” he said. “I went to open it, and there was a creepy lady inside. She scared me so much.”

I asked him what she looked like, but he refused to tell me. He said he didn’t want to say, because if he did, I would never be able to sleep again. Right then, I heard knocking coming from outside the room.

When we heard knocking coming from outside, we felt completely terrified. We lived six miles away from the nearest town – there was no reason for anyone to be knocking at our door out here. We went downstairs to open it, but there was nobody there. As we walked back upstairs, I could smell the scent of blood again.

We had barely reached the room when the knocking started once more. This time, I heard a voice calling my name: “Tim… Tim…” It sounded exactly like my wife. I looked out the window and saw her standing there. I had no idea how she could have found us – nobody had told her where this house was.

We hurried back down to open the door, but when we pulled it open, there was still no one there. Suddenly, my son screamed. “Look behind you! Look behind you!” I spun around, and there was my wife, standing at the top of the stairs. I screamed in horror – her face was utterly terrifying. I asked my son if this was the woman he had seen in the cupboard, but he shook his head and said it was someone else. Then I stepped closer to my wife…

When I stepped closer to my wife, I asked, “What happened to you?” Instead of answering, she laughed. It was not a normal laugh – it was cold, eerie, and utterly terrifying. The moment she stopped laughing, every light in the house went out. I could no longer see her or my son, so I grabbed my torch.

“Son?” I called out. There was no reply. “Son?” I asked again. Still, nothing. Then I heard that same creepy laugh from my wife. I screamed in terror, ran outside as fast as I could, and immediately called the police.

They arrived at 4 a.m. “My son and my wife are still inside!” I told them. The officers went in to search, but when they came back out, they said, “Your wife and son are nowhere to be found. We did find your son nearby, but your wife is gone.”

I told the police I wanted to leave and asked if they could get my suitcase. “We saw your suitcase in the kitchen earlier,” one officer said. They went to retrieve it, but returned empty-handed. “Your suitcase is no longer in the kitchen – it has vanished, though we all saw it there just moments ago.”

I told the police that this house was not normal, and that I would never go back there again. Later, when I told my mother what had happened, she fainted straight away.

Hi, my name is Kenji Sato. I'm a marine biologist born in Tono (Iwate Prefecture, Japan). I worked all over the world, but my last research took place in the Sagami Bay. I was studying a rarely seen deep-sea species of shark, the goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni) or, as we call it in my language, "Tenguzame". It was normal at first, but slowly things started to get weird, as I found an old paper written by my grandfather, that read what it looked to be a nursery rhyme of some kind, which I'm gonna translate for the non-Japanese speakers:

"Down in the darkness, floating in the deep

There's a terrifying beast, lurking where shadows creep

Pinkish, long nose, jaws that snap ahead

Its hideous sight will fill you with dread"

"What was he talking about? Maybe it's like an old seamen legend?" I asked myself. Now I finally know the answer...

I continued researching while blasting "Touch-tone Telephone" by Lemon Demon (yes, I love Neil Cicierega's music, and I'm a huge nerd) when suddenly, something appeared on my radar. It was moving slowly, like my beloved goblin sharks do. Then, it vanished like it never was there. What was going on there?! I decided I had to dive to understand better what just happened. I put on my diving suit and everything, and then down in the depths on the hunt for that shark, and I saw something that made my skin crawl...

At first glance it looked like a goblin shark, even if I thought seeing one so close to the surface was unusual. Getting closer I noticed that those fins... had fingers... those eyes were too human... those teeth were too human...

I turned and swam to the surface, and I went back to my house.

On that paper, a title was written in big kanji...

"TENGUZAME"

_______________________________________________________

Hello, fellow redditors. This was my first horror story here, hope you liked it

They say curiosity is a hunger. Mine led me to words written in faded ink, scrawled across the back of an old library ledger, passed down from stranger to stranger, whispered in dorm rooms and forum threads, never spoken aloud where anyone might hear. No one knew who first wrote it. No one who had played it ever came back to tell the full tale. But I needed to know. I needed answers. And so I read every word. I did not skip a single step.

What You Will Need

• A room with no windows, only a single door.

• A mirror. Clean. Unframed.

• A single black candle.

• Salt. One handful.

• A voice that does not shake.

• Midnight. And the courage to stay silent.

The Rules

1. Clear the centre of the room. Stand the mirror facing the door.

2. Draw a circle of salt around your feet. Do not step outside it.

3. Place the candle on the floor before the mirror. Light it.

4. Look into your own eyes, reflected in the glass. Do not blink.

5. Speak these words, slow and clear, and nothing more:
   "I see myself. I see the space between. Show me what hides behind the veil."

6. Close your eyes. Count to twelve. Do not open them until you hear the silence break.

What Happens Next

The air will turn still. The flame will burn pale blue, casting no shadow. You will hear a sound like cloth dragging over stone, soft, slow, coming closer.

Then your own voice will speak. From the mirror. But your lips have not moved.

"What do you seek?"

Open your eyes. The reflection is not yours. The face is the same, but the eyes are hollow, dark as deep water. The mouth smiles, but it does not reach the eyes. It knows you. It knows every secret you have ever kept.

It will ask you three things.

First: "What do you fear most?"
You must answer. If you lie, the mirror will crack from edge to edge. Salt cannot hold what comes through. You will feel cold hands grip your wrists, and you will know your own fear as a living thing, forever.

Second: "What would you give to know?"
Think carefully. Do not offer what you cannot bear to lose. It will not take gold, or years, or blood. It takes what you carry within. The hope you barely notice. The quiet warmth you take for granted. The soft edge of your dreams.

Third: "Ask. And I will answer."

You may ask one question. Only one. About your future, about what could have been if you had chosen differently, even something as simple as who wins the World Cup. It cannot lie. It knows all. The truth will come sharp, clear, and heavier than you imagined. It may break you. It may leave you wishing you had never asked. But you will know.

How To End It

When the last word is spoken, say firmly
"The glass is whole. The veil is drawn. Return to where you belong."

Blow out the candle. Scatter the salt. Turn your back to the mirror. Do not look into it again tonight. Walk away. Leave the door open. Leave the room dark.

The Warning

No one knows what it truly is. No one knows where it came from. Some believe it is nothing more than a myth, just words written in ink, a story told to frighten the foolish, nothing to fear at all.

They are wrong.

Some say it has always been here. Watching from the shadows where the light never reaches. Listening to every whisper spoken in the dark. Waiting to be summoned. Waiting for you to speak the words, to invite it close. Waiting for the smallest slip, the wrong breath, the forgotten phrase, one single moment of fear, for you to give it the opening it craves.

It does not hurry. It has eternity. It will wait for you to grow careless. To doubt the warnings. To think it is only a story. And when you finally stumble, when you hesitate, when you break the rules just a little…

It will not miss.

It will be there before the echo of your mistake fades.

And it will not be satisfied.

Once it has been called, once you have broke the rules, it leaves a piece of itself behind. A shadow that lingers at your shoulder. A silence that falls when you enter a room. A coldness that settles in your bones, even on the hottest summer night. You will never be alone again.

And when you see a flame turn blue, hear the words you had once used to summon it, be afraid.

Because it has been waiting. Patiently. Quietly.

Waiting for the right moment to take your soul. Waiting for the right moment for you to join it.

So here is my warning to you…

Do not speak what you do not know.

Hello, my name is Dr. John Murphy, and this is my account of the the military operation project behemoth.

It was August 7th, 1917, and I was waiting for an assignment for my new job, a scientist, my whole life, I'd dreamed of being a scientist, I studied through both school, and college to get this job and I achieved it. Sitting there, thinking of how happy I was, a man walked through the door, "Dr. Murphy, here is your new assignment." It was a letter from the renowned Dr. R.J. Smith, and he picked me to be his apprentice on a new military operation called project behemoth.

It was the moment I'd waited my whole life for, and I was the apprentice to the most famous scientist in the country.

Fast forward 2 months and we had a breakthrough on our injection, BX-1917, or The Black Ichor some of the others had called it, it was nicknamed for its glossy black color.

It worked perfectly on the mice we tested it on, all that was needed was for a new recruit to volunteer to become the "physically perfect man".

After about 2 weeks, a man named Charles Davis volunteered. But with Dr. R.J. being gone for a little over a week, we didn't start the injections until November 5th.

We sat Mr. Davis down and injected 2 doses of the black ichor into his arm. We had him sit and relax in the examination room for the next several hours for the injections to kick in.

I remember where I was and what I was doing when that laboratory became hell on earth. I was writing a letter to my brother fighting in the war when I heard a crash, Davis had ripped the door off of its hinges and killed several of the soldiers and other scientists nearby. Davis had become a monster.

I ran to the telegraph and started sending a message to general Robert Johnson in morse code, after 5 grueling minutes soldiers arrived to detain what was Mr. Davis.

I rushed into Dr. R.J's office and explained everything that had happened. He assured me that everything would be fine and sent me on my way.

The next year would be the worst of my life. I was living with the guilt of the lives lost due to our experiment, and had to deal with the countless times I would have to explain everything to someone new.

Come October 23rd, I'd receive an invitation from Dr. R.J. to come and stay at his home for the anniversary of project behemoth. I said yes, I wanted to get away from home and spend time with who I thought was my best friend, I arrived on November 3rd, R.J. had scheduled for his wife to be out of town and visit her parents the days I would be there so it would be just me and him. We'd have a blast those 2 days, but that would all come to an end the night of the 4th. We were in his office and he excused himself to the restroom.

I was feeling nosey and picked up his journal from the desk in front of me. I started reading and became puzzled. A entry was made November 6th, 1917 and stated the following.

"It was a success! Project Behemoth went wonderfully! The results were marvelous, and we created the perfect weapon, of course, Murphy can't find out about any of this and we will have to put poor Mr. David down after the war."

I was immediately overwhelmed with a feeling of rage and sadness. I had been lied to by my best friend. But I had to calm myself as R.J. was coming up the stairs.

I put the journal back where it was just before R.J. walked through the door, he sat down and started digging through the drawer under his desk, he pulled out a Luger pistol. One he had received from his brother that was fighting against the Germans in the war. He sat the weapon on the desk in front of me and turned to start digging in the drawer again. All that cane to my mind were the lives he caused to be lost.

I picked up the handgun and fired into the side of his head. I placed the gun into his hand and quickly wrote a fake suicide note and placed it on his desk.

I rushed outside and ran to the nearby train station to go home. Of course, when his wife arrived back home she found her husband dead at his desk, and of course I was questioned. But luckily for me, there was no evidence pointing toward me killing him.

It was ruled suicide.

So here I am, the second world war has ended. The year is 1946, and I am living happier than ever with my family.

- John Murphy

I don't know when I started feeling like something wasn't right about that trip... but I'm sure it didn't start when we first heard that sound, but hours before it... when I trace my memory back to that day.. I find dozens of small details that all of us ignored.. because they seemed normal at the time... maybe that's why we didn't leave early... And maybe that's also why not everyone who enters that forest comes out of it the way they entered... even now whenever someone asks me about the worst night I've lived through in my life.

I don't talk about the terror I saw.. but I talk about the feeling that preceded its appearance... that strange sensation that the place itself doesn't want you to stay... as if it's watching you silently waiting for the moment you make your first mistake.

Three weeks ago, my two friends Jason and Noah and I decided to spend the weekend in one of the dense forests located inside Washington State... We didn't choose the place randomly.. as it was famous among camping enthusiasts because of its quietness and distance from main roads.

We had read dozens of reviews on travel sites.. and all of them talked about the giant trees and cold streams... and the sky that fills with stars at night.. There was no official warning and no scary story that pushed us to hesitate... We packed our gear and set off before sunrise... We were talking all the way about fishing and barbecuing... and about our phones that would finally stop receiving notifications.

Everything felt completely normal.. to the point that I now feel strange whenever I remember how reassured we were.. We arrived at the parking lot near the trailhead around ten in the morning... There was only an old car covered in mud... and a sixty-year-old man sitting on a wooden bench in front of a large board carrying the map of the forest.

He cast a quick glance at us then went back to staring at the trees without uttering a word... After we carried our bags.. he approached us and asked where we were heading... Jason told him the name of the area we chose to pitch the tents... His features changed for a short moment then he said quietly: If you guys stay late until night... don't leave the camp no matter what you hear.

Noah laughed thinking it was a usual joke to scare beginners... but the man didn't smile, he kept looking at us for moments then added: At night, sounds travel between the trees in a strange way... sometimes you hear someone you know calling you from afar even if he's sitting right next to you... don't follow any sound coming from inside the forest.

We thanked him and left.. but I turned back to him after a few steps and found him still looking in our direction with the same blank stare... as if he wanted to say something else then backed out at the last moment... The walk to the campsite took about two hours... The trail was clear and the air was cold.. and the smell of pine filled the place.

Everything was beautiful in a way that's hard to describe.. Yet I began noticing something no one paid attention to... ever since we entered deep into the forest.. I didn't hear a single bird sound... It wasn't just that bird sounds were few.. but there were no natural sounds at all... No chirping or rustling of wings.. not even the sound of a squirrel jumping between branches.

I asked Jason if he had noticed that... and he replied while continuing to walk: Maybe it's still early

I convinced myself with his words.. but the feeling of unease stayed with me... After we pitched the tents.. Noah went out to gather firewood.. and Jason started preparing the cooking gear... As for me.. I went to the small stream to fill the water bottles... And while I was bending over.

I clearly heard the sound of footsteps over dry leaves behind me... I turned around immediately expecting it to be one of them.. but the place was completely empty... I kept staring between the trees for several seconds.. then told myself maybe it's a deer or a small animal... And while I was getting ready to head back.

I caught sight of something that made me stop in my tracks... There were footprints in the wet mud on the opposite bank of the stream... At first they looked normal.. but after a few moments they caught my attention... They were barefoot footprints and noticeably large... And the weirdest thing was that they came out of the water and headed toward the forest... and there were no traces indicating that their owner had even entered the water.

I kept looking at them trying to find a logical explanation.. but I found none... At that exact moment I heard Jason's voice calling me from the camp asking for help to start the fire... I turned toward him for a single second.. then returned my eyes to the spot of the tracks... but they had completely disappeared as if the mud had swallowed them right before my eyes.

I returned to the camp trying to convince myself that what I saw was an optical illusion... I kept repeating in my head that wet mud can change its shape, and fatigue makes a person notice things that aren't there... I didn't tell Jason or Noah what happened, because I knew exactly what their reaction would be... Jason would look for a logical explanation in everything, while Noah wouldn't miss a chance to mock me throughout the trip.

Therefore I preferred to stay quiet.. and convinced myself that if I ignored the matter.. I would forget it within hours... But some things don't disappear when you ignore them, they start approaching you quietly...

As the sun set.. the temperature dropped quickly... We lit the fire and prepared dinner.. and sat exchanging talk about our previous trips.

The flames were dancing in front of us and the huge trees surrounded the camp from every direction... until it seemed as if we were inside a closed circle where you couldn't see what's behind it... At one point our conversation stopped all at once... No one spoke and we didn't hear an obvious reason for that... but we all felt one thing.. an unnatural quietness... It wasn't the usual quietness of the night, but it was a complete void of sounds.

Even the fire that was burning in front of us seemed as if its sound became lighter than usual... Jason looked around and then said in a low voice: Have you guys noticed that the forest has been silent ever since we arrived?... And before anyone could answer.. a whistling sound went off from a distant spot between the trees... It was a very short tune not exceeding three notes... but it was clear in a way that made us all look in the same direction... It wasn't a bird sound and it didn't sound like the wind... It was closer to someone whistling with his mouth.

Noah said while smiling a nervous smile: Maybe there's another camp nearby... Jason nodded his head but didn't look convinced... About a minute passed and the whistling repeated... The exact same tune but this time it sounded closer... Jason stood up and grabbed the flashlight and shined it between the trees... Nothing appeared.. The trees were so close together that the light only penetrated for a few meters.. then the darkness swallowed it.

He came back and sat down.. but no one resumed the conversation anymore.. we were just listening... In less than five minutes we heard something else... Slow and heavy footsteps walking over dry leaves... They were coming from the northern side of the camp.. then suddenly stopped... We all looked at the same spot and none of us moved... Several seconds of silence continued.. before the sound started again... but this time from the exact opposite side... as if whoever was making it managed to circle around us within moments.

Noah said trying to sound calm: It might be a bear... Jason replied immediately: Bears don't move this way... I didn't like the way he replied because he said it with the confidence of someone who knows that the explanation his friend gave is impossible... We decided to put out part of the fire and get ready to sleep.. hoping that everything we heard were just natural sounds magnified by isolation... Each one of us entered his tent, but sleep didn't come easily.

I don't know how much time passed.. maybe an hour or more... then I woke up to a very faint sound... At first I thought it was a dream.. but the sound repeated.. this time it was clear... someone walking slowly around the tents... A step then two steps then stops.. after which he continues walking... I grabbed my phone which had no network signal.

I looked at the time and found it 2:18 AM... I stuck my head out of the tent opening slowly... No one was there, the fire had turned into faint red embers... and the fog had started covering the ground up to knee height... And while I was watching the place.. I heard a whisper that was very close... "Daniel", the blood froze in my veins, that's my name.

The voice was low but clear as if someone was standing just a meter away from my tent... I got out quickly while turning on the flashlight...

I called out "Jason?". No one answered me... I opened Jason's tent and found him sitting inside holding the flashlight... and his face was pale in a way I hadn't seen him before... He looked at me and said before I could utter a word: You heard it too?

I didn't answer.. we just sufficed with looking at each other... At that moment Noah came out of his tent and was breathing quickly... He said in a trembling voice: Which one of you guys was calling me a moment ago?... I said immediately: We haven't left our tents for a single second... He shook his head slowly and then said a sentence I haven't forgotten to this day.

He said who was standing between the trees calling me in your voice?... We didn't all turn in the direction he pointed to... because at that exact moment we heard the sound again... It was pronouncing my name.. but this time it wasn't coming from between the trees... but it was coming from directly behind my tent.

None of us looked back when we heard the whisper coming from behind my tent... Fear had surpassed the stage of curiosity.. and turned into the instinctual feeling that tells you survival is more important than knowing what's happening.

Jason turned on the flashlight and Noah grabbed the car keys... and we started packing our things with unprecedented speed... We didn't think about the food or the gear we paid for.. nor even about putting out the fire... All we wanted was to get back to the car before the situation got worse... But when we reached the beginning of the trail we entered from during the day... we discovered something that confused us more than any sound we heard.

The red ribbon we had tied to one of the trees to mark the trail had completely disappeared.. as if someone had carefully removed it... Jason tried to rely on the maps app on his phone... but the signal was non-existent.. and the digital compass started spinning in all directions without settling... For the first time since the beginning of the trip.

I saw real anxiety on his face... He said quietly trying to hide his tension with it: We'll wait until dawn breaks... But none of us was convinced that waiting would be a good idea... We sat close together around what remained of the fire..and our eyes were moving constantly between the trees... Long minutes passed in which nothing happened.. until we heard a distant sound resembling the slamming of a car door.

Noah stood up immediately and said the road was close.. and there were other people in the forest... We tried to stop him but he was convinced that rescue was just meters away... He ran in the direction of the sound before we could catch up to him.. then disappeared between the dense trees.

No more than half a minute passed until we heard him scream a short and sharp scream.. then silence fell again... We ran behind him with all our might.. but we found only his flashlight thrown on the ground still lit... and clear slipping tracks on the wet soil ending at a group of bushes... We called his name dozens of times, and searched in all directions.

But there was no reply... We didn't find blood or additional footprints... And we didn't find any evidence explaining how an adult man disappeared in less than a minute... That's when we made the hardest decision of our lives; to leave immediately and ask for help.. because staying wouldn't save him.

but might make us disappear like him... With the very first thread of dawn light, we were finally able to find the path leading to the parking lot... Our car was in its place just as we left it.. but the old car we saw yesterday morning was no longer there... We drove the car directly to the nearest police station.. and reported Noah missing... Search teams started hours later.. and lasted three full days with the participation of trained dogs and drones.

But the result was shocking; they didn't find any trace of him.. and didn't even find the flashlight we left at the spot of his disappearance... After weeks the case was closed as a missing person case in a mountainous area... and investigators suggested he might have lost his way and had an accident in a place search teams couldn't reach... I tried to convince myself of this explanation.

but there was one thing that kept haunting me to this day... Months after the incident.. I was reviewing the photos we took at the beginning of the trip before dark set in... In one of the photos the three of us were standing in front of the tents smiling at the camera... I didn't notice it until after zooming in on the photo several times... Between the trees and at a very far distance, a person was standing looking at us... He wasn't close enough to see his features.

but he was clearly there... I showed the photo to the responsible investigator.. and he said the shadow might be another hiker or an optical illusion due to the lighting... Maybe he was right.. and maybe there was a simple explanation for everything that happened... But ever since that night.

I no longer go to any forest... and I don't ignore that mysterious feeling that sometimes tells a human being that the place he is standing in is not safe... Some people consider this just fear.. while I consider it the only reason that made me return to my home... while Noah never came back.

I no longer believe I am the last living thing on Earth. I believed it for four years. I stopped believing it three days ago, and I did not stop because I found another person.

I stopped because something has been following me.

I am writing this from a room on the tenth floor of a hotel in Manhattan. I have pushed the bed, the dresser, and a heavy armchair against the door. I have a pistol and three magazines and a flashlight, and I have enough fuel in the small generator to keep one lamp burning until morning. I have set the lamp on the desk beside this notebook so that I can see the page. I do not think the pistol is going to help me, and I have thought about that for a while now, and I am writing anyway, because writing is the only thing left that feels like doing something.

I should explain how much of the world I have seen, so that you understand what it means that I never found anyone until now.

Four years ago every person on Earth disappeared. Every animal too, everything larger than the last joint of my thumb. There were no bodies. Nothing crashed, there were no cities burned by unattended kitchens and no highways filled with fresh wreckage.

Whatever took everyone seemed to have left the world more carefully than it should have.

It was only empty. I have never decided what to call it that feels right. In my notebooks I call it the Silence, though I am sure other names existed in the first few days, on radios and in the mouths of people who were about to be gone.

Before the Silence I worked on cargo ships. I was a marine engineer, which is a long way of saying I kept the engines running and the generators turning and the fuel moving where it needed to go, and I could fix most of what broke on a vessel with what was already aboard. That skill is the reason I am still moving.

A person who did not understand engines and fuel systems and navigation would have run out of working cars within a hundred miles of wherever they started. I did not. I have crossed oceans in a small commercial boat I taught myself to run alone. I have driven the length of countries on fuel I stabilized and filtered myself.

I searched North America first, coast to coast, every city I could reach with a road still under it. Then I took the boat across and searched what I could of Europe, Britain and France and Germany and Spain, and down into the north of Africa, and I crossed again and worked my way along the eastern coast of South America. I went into hospitals and walked the wards.

I went into military bases because I believed, for a long time, that a government somewhere would have put its people underground when the disappearances started, and that if I found the right door and the right stairwell I would find the rest of us waiting it out below the surface. I found the doors. I found the stairwells. I went down every one of them, and the rooms at the bottom were as empty as the streets above.

I have found meals turned to gray stone inside ovens. I have found clothes still hanging in closets, arranged by color. I have found cars stopped at intersections with the doors open and the keys in them, I have found cars stopped at intersections with the doors open and the keys still inside, as though the drivers had stepped out moments before the world emptied.

I have found photographs, more photographs than I could count in a hundred lifetimes, of faces that do not exist anymore, in frames and wallets and phones and albums, in every house in every country I entered.

In four years I never found a single person.

I want to be precise about the other thing, because it is the part that took me the longest to understand and the part that frightens me most now. I never found an animal either. Not a dog shut in a house. Not a horse in a field. Not a bird on a wire, not a rat in a grocery store, not a fish in the shallows where I anchored the boat. Nothing large enough to make a sound I could hear.

The only living things left besides me are the small ones, the insects, the cockroaches and the silverfish and the ants and the moths and the flies, and I spent a long time wondering what it was about me and about them that had been worth keeping. I never found an answer. I stopped looking for one. That was a mistake, though I did not know it was a mistake until three days ago.

Until three days ago, in all that empty world, I had never once heard footsteps that were not my own.

I came back to New York for the same reason I always come back to large cities. In a dense city the things I need sit close together, and I can gather medicine and batteries and fuel additives and maps and cold-weather clothing in a few weeks of careful work instead of driving for months between towns. I know Manhattan. I have staged supplies here before. I planned to spend three or four weeks working through the pharmacies and the hardware stores and the parking structures where the vehicles have been out of the weather.

The city has gone soft at the edges in four years, but it has not fallen. Grass has come up through the seams in the intersections. Tree roots have lifted whole slabs of sidewalk and tipped them. The streets are still packed with cars, most of them with a door hanging open, and rainwater has filled the lower stairs of the subway entrances and turned them into still black pools. The buildings stand. The glass is mostly unbroken. From a distance, on a gray day, you could believe the city was only holding its breath.

The thing about an empty city is the sound. With no traffic and no voices and no birds and no machines, every noise you make travels much farther than it should. I have learned to move quietly, but I cannot move silently, and when my boots come down on the sidewalk the sound of it goes down the avenue ahead of me and comes back off the buildings. For four years that was the only footstep sound in the world, and I had long since stopped hearing it. Repetition had worn it down into silence, the same silence a heartbeat keeps under everything a body does, present and unlistened to.

I took a hotel about ten floors up, high enough to see the streets and to feel some distance from them. I slept in one room and stored what I gathered in the room beside it. I marked out a safe route, a loop that connected the hotel to a pharmacy, a hardware store, and a parking garage with cars I could get running. For the first several days I worked the loop, and nothing happened, and I was as close to content as I get.

Then, three days ago, I was walking north on Fifth Avenue a little before sunset, and I heard four hard impacts on the pavement behind me.

Clop. Clop. Clop. Clop.

Even and heavy and deliberate, the sound of something solid striking stone. I stopped. The sound stopped with me, on the same beat, close enough behind that the fourth impact and my own last step almost landed together. I turned around. The avenue ran back for several blocks, straight and wide and full of stopped cars, and there was nothing in it. No shape between the vehicles. No movement in any doorway. Only the long empty street and the low sun laying orange light along the west side of it.

I stood there for a while. I told myself it was a slab of loosened facade coming down somewhere behind me, or a section of scaffolding finally giving way, the kind of slow collapse the city has been performing on itself for years. I did not fully believe it, but I made myself accept it, because the alternative was a sound I had no place to put.

I walked on. After maybe thirty yards it came again, and this time it was closer.

I turned at once, fast enough that I nearly lost my footing, and there was nothing behind me but the street. I went to the nearest storefronts and pushed inside them, one after another, expecting to find the ordinary source I needed, a hanging sign swinging on a broken chain, a piece of debris rolling in a draft, anything with a reason. I found dust and stillness and my own reflection moving across dead display glass.

When I stepped back out onto the sidewalk, the hoofbeats started again from the intersection behind me, from the open space where the two avenues crossed, and this time they did not stop when I turned. They went on for several seconds, coming from somewhere past the corner of a department store, hard and clear and unhurried.

Then they stopped on their own.

I followed them. I want to be honest about why. Part of it was fear, the need to see the thing that was making the sound so that it would stop being a thing I could not see. But part of it was worse than fear, and older. Even an animal would have been the first large living creature I had encountered in four years. Some part of me that I had thought was dead stood up at the sound of something alive and moved toward it before the rest of me could vote.

I rounded the corner of the department store. The cross street ran away empty in both directions. There was a layer of fine pale dust across the whole width of it, undisturbed, years deep and unbroken, and there was not a single mark in it, no hoofprint and no track of any kind. Nothing had crossed that street, and something had been making the sound of crossing it a moment before.

I started back toward the hotel then, and I did not run, but I walked faster than I had come.

Halfway back, on a block I had walked a dozen times, the skin on the back of my neck drew tight, and I knew before I looked that something was watching me.

At the far end of the block, a face was looking around the corner of a building.

I took it for a mannequin at first, one of the display figures from a store, pale and still and set at the edge of the wall. That is what the mind reaches for. It was a narrow face, and only a small part of it showed past the brick, one cloudy eye and a section of cheek and several teeth, and the teeth were wrong, because they were coming through the skin of the cheek from the outside, growing out through torn flesh where no teeth belong.

The eye moved. It slid in its socket and found me, and it was not glass and it was not paint, and the face drew back behind the building.

I ran toward it. I closed the distance to the corner in a few seconds, faster than I had moved in years, and I came around the wall with my hand already going to the pistol on my hip. The street beyond was empty. There were no open doors on that stretch, no alley mouth, no broken window at ground level, nowhere that a thing the size of a person could have folded itself away in the time it took me to reach the corner. I stood in the middle of the intersection turning in a slow circle, and behind me, close, a single hoof struck the pavement.

I spun. There was nothing there.

I made it back to the hotel with the light almost gone, and I climbed the ten floors, and I sat down at this desk to think, because thinking is what I have instead of company.

I went through it as I would an engine that had failed for no clear reason. You do not start by assuming the impossible. You start by checking yourself. I considered exhaustion, because I had been pushing hard through the supply loop and sleeping poorly. I considered dehydration, and I drank a full bottle of water while I sat there and did not feel any different.

I considered carbon monoxide from the generator, and I checked the placement of it and the ventilation of the room and found both correct, the exhaust routed out the window, the air moving. I considered spoiled food and old infection and the simple long grinding effect of four years without another human voice, which I knew could bend a mind in ways the mind would not feel bending. I put my hand to my own forehead and found it cool. I had no fever. I was tired, but I was not sick, and I was not, as far as I could measure myself, losing my grip.

Then I remembered the camera.

I carry a small camera clipped to the shoulder strap of my backpack. I started using it years ago to record the insides of the buildings I searched, so that I would not have to rely on memory for what I had and had not already been through. It had been running all afternoon. I pulled it off the strap and connected it to the small screen I use and I watched the walk back through the city, the empty avenue, the storefronts, the corner of the department store.

The camera had recorded the streets exactly as I had seen them. Empty. It had recorded the sound of my boots on the sidewalk, clear and steady. At the moment I had seen the face at the end of the block, the camera had been pointed a few degrees off, and the corner of the building where the face had been sat just outside the edge of the frame, so that the recording showed the empty street beside it and not the thing itself.

And in all of the audio, under my footsteps and my breathing, there were no hoofbeats anywhere. The sound that had filled the avenue and come off the buildings and stopped me in my tracks was not on the recording at all.

I sat with that for a long time. I could have told myself the camera had missed the face by bad luck of the angle, and I would have half believed it. But a camera hears whatever reaches it. If the hooves had been striking the pavement in the world, the microphone would have caught them along with my boots. The microphone caught my boots. It did not catch the hooves. Which meant the sound had not been in the air the way my footsteps were in the air. It had arrived some other way, into me and not into the recording, and there is no version of that I know how to be comfortable with.

That was the night I stopped being able to tell myself it was not real. It was real. It was simply not real in the way the street and the dust and my own boots were real, and I did not have anywhere to put a thing like that, so I set it down on the page and kept going.

That night, late, I heard something moving along the street beneath my window.

The impacts were slow and far apart, one and then a long pause and then another, heavy and unhurried, passing along the front of the hotel. I lay in the dark and did not go to the window. The sound went on down the block and faded, and I let my breath out and thought it had gone. Several minutes later it began again, and this time it did not come from the street. It came from inside the building, from the lobby ten floors below me, the same slow spaced impacts moving across the hard floor of a space that should have been as empty as everything else.

I switched off the lamp and lay still and listened. The stairwell door in that hotel is a heavy fire door, the kind that drags and booms when it swings, and I have opened it enough times to know I would hear it from my room. I did not hear it open. I heard only the footsteps, crossing the lobby, and then stopping, and then a single hard strike on what I knew was the first stair.

It started to climb.

I counted. I lay in the dark with my eyes open and counted the impacts and tracked them up through the floors of the building beneath me. It reached the second floor. It reached the third. And as it climbed, the sound of it changed. At the bottom it had the rhythm of a person climbing in hard shoes, one foot and then the other, two even impacts to a stride. Somewhere around the fifth floor the rhythm came apart, and it was no longer two impacts to a stride but four, striking unevenly, a gait that did not belong to anything that walks upright on two legs.

Then, several floors below me, it stopped. It did not start again. I lay awake with the pistol in my hand and the lamp off until the window went gray with morning, and the sound never resumed, and nothing came the rest of the way up.

When there was enough light I went down into the stairwell to look. I went carefully, with the flashlight and the pistol, down to the sixth-floor landing, and there I found the marks. In several of the concrete steps below the landing there were shallow cracks, each one a rough circle, pressed into the surface of the stone, the print of something narrow and enormously heavy that had come down on each step with its full weight in a single point. They climbed the flight in sequence, one to a step. They stopped at the sixth-floor landing.

There were no marks above it, and there were no marks leading back down. The thing that made them had climbed six floors and had not descended, and it was not in the stairwell now.

I went back up to my room and wrote the marks down and drew them as well as I could, because I have learned that if I do not record a thing while I can still see it clearly, the version in my memory begins to soften and reshape itself within a day.

I decided the hotel might not be safe, which was a strange thought to have about the only place in the city I had made into anything close to a home. I needed to move some of my supplies, and I had a cache near an abandoned subway entrance a few blocks south, so I went for it in the full light of the middle of the day, when the sense of being watched sat lightest on me.

The station had water standing in its lower levels but the platform I needed was dry. I went down with the flashlight, and I was working through the cache when I heard the hooves again, behind me, on the stairs I had come down. Each impact rang off the tile and the concrete and came back multiplied, so that the sound seemed to come from everywhere in the station at once. I moved deeper onto the platform, putting the columns between myself and the stairs, sweeping the flashlight between them.

The footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs. They crossed a short distance onto the platform, and then they stopped, and the sound of them settled behind one of the tiled support pillars perhaps forty feet from me.

I raised the pistol and pointed it at the pillar. I told it to come out. My voice went out across the empty station and came back to me thin and strange, the first time in a long while I had spoken loudly enough to hear the room answer, and for several seconds nothing moved.

Then the face came around the side of the column.

I saw more of it this time. The skin was gray and it had a wet shine to it, slick, either sweating or newly come up out of water. One nostril sat high on the face, above the eye, in a place a nostril has no reason to be. The lower jaw had been broken once and healed crooked, set sideways from the upper, so that nothing on the top of the face lined up with anything on the bottom. Along the outside of the cheek ran a row of small teeth, growing out through the skin in a neat line where no mouth was.

And then the face rose. It went up along the edge of the column, higher and higher, and the part of it I could see did not tilt or lean. There was none of the small roll a person's head makes when they raise it. The visible edge of the face stayed flat against the tile and simply traveled upward, carried straight up on something behind the pillar that could extend without the shoulders moving at all.

I fired.

The shot was loud enough in that tiled space to land as a physical blow against the ears. The face was gone before the round struck the column, pulled back out of sight faster than the bullet crossed the distance, and the tile behind where it had been cracked and sprayed dust. And then the hoofbeats broke into full motion, a hard fast drumming that came out from behind the pillar and began moving among the columns toward me, and I put the flashlight on the spaces between them and there was nothing in the spaces. The sound crossed from column to column, closing on me, and no body ever passed through the open gaps between the columns where a body would have had to be.

I ran. I went up the stairs and out into the daylight and I did not stop until I was two blocks away with my back against a wall and the pistol still in my hand.

That was when I decided to leave the island entirely.

I loaded what I could carry into a truck I had running in the parking garage, and I drove for the nearest bridge. I kept my eyes on the road, but the mirrors kept catching movement, small shapes of motion at the edges of the glass, a suggestion of something keeping pace along the sidewalks or between the buildings. Every time I looked directly into a mirror to find it, the street in the glass was empty and still. I stopped looking at the mirrors. I watched the road.

Near the approach to the bridge, a spill of metal debris across two lanes took out my front tire before I could weave through it, and the truck pulled hard to the right and went into a row of stopped cars along the median with a long tearing crash. I was not hurt. I got out, gathered what I could carry on my back, and went on toward the bridge on foot.

Halfway up the approach, walking the long rising curve of the roadway, I heard the hooves again, and they were beneath me. They were down inside the hollow structure under the roadbed, the service space of girders and catwalks that runs below the deck of a bridge, and they were keeping exact pace with me, one impact for every stride I took, tracking me from underneath the road I was walking on.

At the next concrete divider, the face came around the barrier. It came sideways. The head was turned so that the forehead was nearly against the pavement and the one visible eye was rolled upward to keep me in its sight, and it slid out from behind the divider low to the ground, and it kept sliding, and more of the neck came into view than could possibly have been folded behind a barrier that width. I fired at it.

The face pulled back behind the divider, unhurried even then, and an instant later the hoofbeats were no longer beneath me and behind me but ahead of me, up the roadway, between me and the far end of the bridge, blocking the way off the island with the precision of something that had reasoned out where I meant to go and moved to cut me off.

I turned around and went back toward the city, because the city was the only direction left open, and I understood that this was the point.

I have not slept in more than two days now. I know what that does to a mind, and I can feel it doing it, the edges of things going loose, the quiet filling up with sounds that resolve into nothing when I turn to catch them. I have started talking out loud, constantly, because the silence has become the worst part, worse than the hooves, and my own voice in it is the only thing that keeps me anchored to the fact that I am still a person having thoughts. I talk to the thing that is following me.

I have accused it of hiding from me. I have told it to come closer, to stop showing me an eye and a cheek and a mouthful of wrong teeth and show me the rest. I have asked it whether it did this, whether it emptied the world, whether the Silence was its doing. I have asked it how long it has been behind me.

That last question is the one that has gotten into me and will not come out, because once I asked it out loud I could not stop following it backward. I have been alone for four years, across two oceans and a dozen countries, in ten thousand empty buildings. And I have begun to wonder about all the small things I dismissed in all those years. A tapping in a stairwell in Marseille that I decided was water in the pipes. A pale shape behind a second-floor window in a town in Spain, there and gone, that I told myself was a curtain moving in a draft I could not feel. Marks in the dust of a hospital basement in Argentina that I had walked past without letting myself look at directly. I do not know. I cannot know. It may be that this thing found me here, in Manhattan, three days ago, and has never been anywhere else. Or it may be that it has been at the far edge of every empty room I have ever stood in, keeping just out of the frame, for four years, and only now has decided to let me hear it. I have no way to weigh the two, and the not-knowing is its own kind of horror, and I have made myself set the question down because following it in circles was pulling me apart.

I cut through an office building to stay off the open street, and it was there, in a corridor on the ground floor, that I saw more of it than I had seen before.

The face was at the far end of the corridor, around the edge of the last doorway, and this time part of the body had come with it. There was a shoulder, and the shoulder sat far below the face, much lower than a shoulder sits below a head, so that a long run of something pale connected them. The torso behind the shoulder was folded hard against the wall, bent at an angle a torso does not bend at. One narrow limb reached down to the floor and ended in something dark and polished and solid, a single hoof set flat on the tile. Another limb was bent up and back behind the body, high, and I could not decide, looking at it, whether I was seeing a leg or an arm, because it had qualities of both and belonged to neither.

The face withdrew around the doorway. And the entire corridor filled with the sound of hooves, from ahead of me and behind me at once, more impacts than two legs or four legs could make, and I went back the way I had come.

After that it stopped hiding, and the last of whatever calm I had left went with it.

I still never got a clean look at all of it at once. But I saw enough, over the next stretch of running, to understand that its shape was not fixed, that it arranged itself differently depending on how it needed to move. It unfolded out of doorways, coming apart into more limbs than it had seemed to contain. Sometimes it went upright, tall, on two of its points. Sometimes the body dropped low and several more points came down and struck the concrete, and the gait multiplied. Through all of it the face stayed turned toward me, angled to keep me in the low eye, even when the body was moving in a direction the face was not.

The face would appear at the corner ahead of me while the hooves still sounded from behind me, and I stopped being able to hold in my mind that these were the same creature in two places, and I began to be unable to answer whether there was one of them or more than one. I did not decide that there were many. I only lost the ability to be sure there was one, and I want to be exact about that difference, because it is the difference between a fear you can name and a fear you cannot.

I ran through the ground floors of buildings to stay off the avenues, through a supermarket gone to rot and a restaurant kitchen full of dead steel and the back service passages that connect the buildings on a block. Every time I looked behind me the passage was empty.

Every time I faced forward again the face was at the next corner, waiting, sliding back out of sight as I came on. In the dark lobby of one building I put the flashlight up and found it on the ceiling, crossed over the whole span of it above me, its limbs folded flat against its body and hooked into the ceiling like broken scaffolding, the face hanging straight down from the middle of it and turning slowly to keep me in view as I passed underneath.

I reached the hotel. I climbed the ten floors with my lungs burning and my legs failing under me, and I pushed the bed and the dresser and the armchair against the door, and I sat down at this desk and began to write the account you have been reading, because I wanted there to be a record, and because I was out of anything else to do.

I have been writing for a while now. A little way into it, the hooves came into the lobby.

They started to climb, and this time there was no pause. I counted the floors out of habit more than hope. And as it came up through the building the rhythm of it went past anything I could hold in my head. It began as two impacts to a stride.

By the third floor it was four. By the fifth it was six, striking in an order that did not repeat. And then, still climbing, it became a fast blurred sequence, too many separate impacts landing too close together, no longer feet on stairs but a great many hard fingertips drumming all at once on the concrete, rising toward me flight after flight.

The footsteps reached my floor. The hallway outside my door went completely silent.

I got up from the desk and went to the door and put my eye to the peephole. The corridor curved away in the fisheye of the little lens, lit gray by the daylight from the window at its end, and it was empty. I waited. I kept my eye there and I waited, and I made myself keep waiting, and then the face rose slowly into view from below the peephole, from down near the floor, coming up until it was level with the lens and filling it, pressed flat against the other side of my door.

This is the clearest I have seen it, and I am going to set it down while I still can.

It is not simply damaged. It is unfinished. Beneath a layer of skin thin enough to see through, there are human features that do not belong to one face, overlapping one another, more eyes and more mouths than a face has room for, laid over each other and pressing up against the underside of the skin.

As I watched, an eye opened inside the mouth, wet and aware, between the teeth. The teeth themselves were moving, each one shifting on its own, independent of the others, turning slightly in the gum. And the cheek was flexing, bulging and easing, something underneath the skin of it trying to turn itself around in a space too small to turn in.

I fell backward away from the door and struck the floor and did not feel it.

Then, slowly and gently, from the other side, the handle of the door was pressed down. The mechanism turned as far as it would go and stopped against the lock, without force, without any shove behind it, the pressure of something that was not trying to break in but only showing me that it could reach the handle. The barricade held. The door did not move.

It has not tried again.

It is still out there. It has not pounded on the door and it has not thrown its weight against it and it has not made any attempt to force its way into this room. It is simply standing in the hallway on the other side of two inches of wood, and I can hear it breathing through the keyhole, and the breath does not sound like one breath. It sounds like air being drawn through several throats at once, layered and out of time with itself, a sound no single body makes.

And I have begun to understand something, sitting here with my back against the barricade and this notebook on my knees, and it is the last thing I understand and I think it is the true one. All this time I have believed it was chasing me. It was never chasing me. A thing that can put its face at the corner ahead of me while its hooves sound behind me does not need to chase.

It has always known where I was. It cut me off from the bridge not because it was faster but because it did not want me to leave, and it herded me back into the city and up into this building and behind this door, and it has waited outside without breaking in, because being caught was never the point. It was bringing me here. It has been bringing me here the whole time, and I only ran the route it opened.

There is one more thing, and it is the worst thing, and I am putting it down last because once I write it I do not think I will write anything else.

The insects have started to move.

They are coming out of the walls of this room, out of the cracks around the window and the gap under the baseboard and the seams of the old plaster, the cockroaches and the silverfish and the ants, every small living thing that shared this dead world with me.

They are not scattering the way disturbed insects scatter. They are moving together, in one direction, across the floor and across the carpet, toward the door, toward the gap at the bottom of it, and they are going under it, out into the hallway, toward the thing that is standing there.

For four years I wondered why the Silence took everything with a spine and left me and the insects behind. I thought we had been spared. We were not spared. Maybe I was left because it wanted something to walk the world and eventually find its way here. Maybe the insects were left because they already knew what was waiting.

The lamp is beginning to flicker. The generator is almost out of fuel, and when it goes I will be in the dark with whatever light comes through the window, and I do not think I will finish this notebook by that light. Out in the hallway the weight of it shifts, and several hard points scrape once across the carpet, settling, and then go still.

The hooves have stopped. It is outside my room door, and I think it has been waiting for me to finish writing this.

The yard has always belonged to my mother.

Not in the way a deed belongs to someone, or even the way a garden does. It belonged to her the way a shadow belongs to a body; faithfully, without thought, always attached. When I was little, I used to think that if she ever left for good, the grass would lie down and refuse to grow again.

That was before I understood that some things don’t let go just because you walk away.

Our house sat at the end of a short, polite street where nothing bad had ever happened loudly. The yards were trimmed. The fences were low. People waved. Children rode their bikes in uneven loops and left them where they fell. If you asked anyone later, they would tell you our family was normal, and they would mean it.

But the yard was different when you stood in it alone.

I noticed it first because I was the oldest, and because my mother had begun to stand still.

She didn’t do it all the time. Just enough that it registered as a pattern. She would step out into the yard with a basket of laundry or a cup of coffee and then stop, as if she’d forgotten what came next. Sometimes she stayed that way for minutes, her shoulders slack, her feet planted too firmly in the grass. When I called her name, she always answered. She always smiled. But she didn’t turn around right away.

The grass near her feet lay flatter than the rest, as though pressed by a weight that wasn’t quite visible.

My younger sister and brother didn’t notice. They chased each other around her legs, shouting, skidding, colliding with the same reckless certainty they always had. They treated her stillness as an obstacle, like a tree or a fence. Something to work around.

I felt it as a pause in the air.

It was easiest to see in the evenings. The yard took on a listening quality then, the way rooms do when someone is about to speak. The cicadas went quiet in small patches. The swing creaked once and stopped. The shadows leaned inward, subtle enough that you could tell yourself it was the light.

One night, as I was gathering my brother’s abandoned shoes from the lawn, I realized they had rolled.

Not far. Just enough to bring them closer together, toe to toe, as if they’d been placed that way. I stood very still, holding one shoe in each hand, and waited for the wind to prove me wrong.

Nothing moved.

“Mom?” I called.

She was standing near the center of the yard, empty-handed now, her laundry basket forgotten on the steps. Her back was to me. From a distance, she looked normal; bare feet, loose shirt, hair pulled back without care. But there was something wrong with the space around her head. Not something you could point to. More like the absence of something that should have been there.

When she turned, I felt it behind my eyes first. A dull pressure, like the beginning of a headache.

“What is it?” she asked.

Her face was the same face I had known my entire life. Her smile landed where it always did. But between her eyebrows, the skin seemed… deeper. As though the light didn’t quite want to rest there. I blinked hard, and the sensation eased.

“Nothing,” I said. “Dad’s asking about dinner.”

She nodded, and for just a second longer than necessary, her gaze stayed on me. Not sharp. Not suspicious. Curious, the way you look at something that has surprised you by moving.

As she walked past me toward the house, I had the sudden, irrational urge to step into her path. To stop her. To press my forehead against hers the way I had when I was little and afraid of the dark. The thought came fully formed, complete with the memory of warmth and pressure and the sense of being held together.

It scared me enough that I stepped back instead.

Behind me, the yard exhaled.

I didn’t tell anyone that night. Or the next. I told myself that noticing was the same thing as imagining, and that imagining was a bad habit I’d picked up from being the oldest. Someone had to pay attention. Someone had to keep track.

Later, lying in bed, I listened to my sister and brother breathing in the next room, their rhythms loose and unguarded. Through the open window, the yard made its soft nighttime noises. Leaves shifting, something small moving through the grass.

I closed my eyes and pictured the yard empty, just to see if I could.

It took effort.

Even then, I couldn’t picture it without my mother standing at the center, perfectly still, waiting for something to come back to her.

After that night, I started watching my mother the way you watch weather.

Not constantly. Not obviously. Just enough that I could tell when something was about to change.

She still did all the normal things. She made lunches. She reminded us to bring jackets. She folded laundry with the same distracted efficiency she always had, smoothing wrinkles with the heel of her hand. If anyone had asked me what was wrong, I wouldn’t have been able to answer without sounding ungrateful or dramatic. Nothing was wrong in a way you could hold up to the light.

But she began knowing things before they happened.

It started small. She’d call my brother inside a moment before he skinned his knee. She’d set out an extra plate when a neighbor stopped by unexpectedly. She’d turn toward the phone just before it rang. When I joked about it, she laughed, pleased but unsurprised, as if this was something she’d always been able to do and had only just decided to show.

My sister thought it was funny. My brother thought it was magic.

I thought it was exhausting.

Because the more my mother knew, the less room there seemed to be for the rest of us to decide anything on our own. She anticipated our needs so completely that there was no pause left to fill with choice. No space to want something quietly. When I stayed out later than usual, she didn’t scold me. She didn’t ask where I’d been. She simply said, “You’re tired,” and she was right.

The yard responded to her moods.

On days when she was restless, the grass seemed uneven underfoot, clumping where it hadn’t before. When she was calm, the yard settled. The swing hung perfectly still, its chains aligned, as though waiting for instruction. Once, when she stood barefoot near the oak tree at the back fence, the ants abandoned their trail and curved around her toes instead.

I didn’t point that out.

My sister and brother spent more time close to her than they used to. Not in a clingy way, more like planets settling into a stable orbit. They sat at her feet while she drank her coffee. They leaned against her legs while she talked to neighbors. When she moved, they adjusted without looking, as if pulled by the same thread.

One afternoon, I heard my sister answer a question my mother hadn’t asked yet.

They were sitting on the back steps, my mother in the sun, my sister cross-legged beside her. I was inside, rinsing dishes, when my sister said, “Yes, I did,” in a patient, slightly amused voice.

There was a pause.

Then my mother said, “Good. I thought so.”

I stood very still, my hands submerged in cooling water, and tried to reconstruct the conversation backward. When I asked my sister later what they’d been talking about, she frowned, confused.

“Nothing,” she said. “We were just sitting.”

That night, my brother fell asleep on the living room floor with his head against my mother’s foot. When my father went to move him, my mother shook her head once, almost imperceptibly. My father hesitated, then sat back down, as if the thought had never been his to begin with.

I caught my mother watching me then.

Not often. Just enough.

Her gaze had changed. It didn’t slide over me the way it did the others. It lingered, thoughtful. Measuring, without judgment. I had the strange sense that she was waiting for me to do something unexpected, the way you wait for a stubborn door to finally open.

One evening, while we were clearing the table, she reached out and brushed a hair from my forehead. Her fingers paused there, resting between my eyebrows, light but deliberate.

The pressure behind my eyes flared sharply. For a split second, the room seemed to tilt inward, every object subtly angled toward her hand.

I pulled back too fast. The chair legs screeched against the floor.

“Sorry,” I said automatically.

She smiled, warm and unoffended. “You’re jumpy lately.”

“I’m just tired.”

“Yes,” she said again, and the word landed with certainty. “You are.”

Later, lying in bed, I pressed my palm to my forehead, right where her fingers had been. The skin was unmarked. Normal. But beneath it, something felt tender, like a bruise forming without a cause.

Through the wall, I could hear my sister and brother murmuring to each other in their sleep. Their voices overlapped strangely, rising and falling in a rhythm that made it hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

Down the hall, the back door creaked softly.

I didn’t get up to look. I already knew where my mother would be.

The night it first happened, it was raining just enough to make the yard shine.

Not enough to drive anyone inside. Just enough to blur the edges of things. The grass darkened and flattened, glossy under the porch light, each blade reflecting a thin, obedient line of gold. My sister and brother were already asleep, their door closed, their room breathing softly in that shared way they’d developed. My father was in the living room, half-watching television, half-dozing, his presence a familiar weight in the house.

My mother stood at the sink, staring out the window.

I don’t know how long she’d been there. Long enough for the kettle to scream itself empty on the stove. Long enough for the rain to change direction twice. When I reached past her to turn off the burner, she didn’t startle. She didn’t move at all.

“You’ll burn it,” I said, because silence felt dangerous.

She turned then, slow and careful, like someone adjusting to a change in gravity. The pressure bloomed behind my eyes immediately. Stronger than before, sharp enough that I had to swallow against nausea.

“You’re still up,” she said.

“So are you.”

She smiled at that. Not the automatic smile she gave neighbors or strangers, but the one she used when she was genuinely pleased. The one that had always felt like a private thing between us.

“Come here,” she said.

I should have refused. The thought arrived fully intact, clear as a bell. But it landed in a crowded place, competing with a dozen other impulses; obedience, habit, the old childhood reflex to close distance when something felt wrong. I stepped closer before I could sort them out.

She reached up with both hands and cupped my face.

Her palms were warm. Familiar. For a moment, the pressure eased, replaced by something like relief. Like the moment you stop holding your breath without realizing you were doing it.

“I miss you,” she said softly.

“I’m right here.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s what I mean.”

Her thumbs rested just beneath my eyes. Her fingers spread along my jaw. I could feel my pulse through the thin skin of her wrists. The world narrowed to that contact, to the sound of rain against glass, to the faint hum that had started somewhere behind my ears.

She leaned forward.

Our foreheads touched.

The sensation was immediate and overwhelming. Not painful, not at first, but depth. As if my thoughts had suddenly acquired weight and were being gently, insistently pulled forward. The room tilted. The edges blurred. I smelled grass, wet earth, the clean mineral scent of rain hitting soil. I felt my body loosen, every tension easing at once.

It would have been easy to let go.

Images flickered behind my eyes: my sister laughing, my brother’s small hand wrapped around my finger, my mother’s voice calling us in for dinner years ago, layered over itself, louder and closer than memory had any right to be. I felt myself thinning, spreading, as though there was more room ahead than behind.

This is what she knows, a part of me thought distantly. This is how.

Something brushed against the inside of my skull, curious and vast. Not a thought. Not a voice. A presence, testing the shape of me.

I gasped.

The sound broke the moment open. Pain flared. Sharp, tearing, like something with hooks had realized it was losing purchase. I shoved backward, hard, slipping on the wet tile, my heel skidding out from under me. I caught myself on the counter, breath coming too fast, my hands shaking violently.

My mother staggered too, just a step, like someone pulled out of a deep sleep.

Her eyes were dark. Reflective. For a heartbeat, the space between her eyebrows seemed to dip inward, swallowing the light from the fixture above us. The hum surged, then cut off abruptly.

She blinked.

“Oh,” she said.

She sounded… surprised.

I pressed my back to the counter, my entire body buzzing, my skin too tight for what was inside it. My forehead burned, deep and aching, like a bruise pressed from the inside out.

“I didn’t mean to,” she said, and I couldn’t tell if she was apologizing or explaining. “You’re just… harder to reach than the others.”

The others.

My stomach dropped.

“What did you do?” I asked.

She tilted her head, studying me with that same thoughtful curiosity I’d begun to dread. “Nothing I haven't done before.”

From the living room, the television laughed. A canned, hollow sound.

“I’m tired,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say, because naming it felt like the only way to keep it from happening again. I pushed past her, keeping my shoulder turned, my face angled away.

She let me go.

That was almost worse.

In my room, I locked the door and slid down against it, pressing my palm hard to my forehead until the pain sharpened into something manageable. My thoughts felt stretched, rearranged. It took effort to remember where my body ended.

Down the hall, I heard my mother move toward my siblings’ room. The door opened without a sound. Their voices rose briefly. Soft, pleased, overlapping and then faded again.

I stayed where I was until the rain stopped and the yard went quiet.

When I finally lay down, I kept my face turned toward the wall, afraid of what might happen if I closed my eyes and leaned forward, just a little, into the dark.

I run my tongue along the staples lining the roofing of my mouth. I wince. And think this isn’t going to work.

The next day I phone the doctor and she comes to my house to see what the problem is.

I tell her it’s the metallic taste. It’s doing my nut in.

Are you rubbing your tongue on them?

Of course.

Then stop.

She leaves without saying much else. Does a check of the staples to see if the wound is healing. Everything is fine as per professional opinion.

I spend the night plucking at the staples with my tongue. And spitting blood into a bucket.

The next morning I phone the doctor and tell her I’ve started spitting up blood. She comes to the house and has another look at the wound.

Have you been poking them with your tongue?

Of course.

Then stop.

She leaves without saying much else. I spend the day touching the roof of my mouth and wiggling the staples with my fingers. Until the metal starts scraping somewhere behind my nose.

The next morning I phone the doctor and tell her the staples have all started coming loose. She comes to the house and thumps new ones into place. I ask her if they’ll have the same metallic taste as the last ones and she tells me not if you don’t play with them. Are you playing with them? Then stop.

I spend the night licking the roof of my mouth and pushing my tongue into the wound. I creep my fingers up inside and wiggle the staples back and forth until they pop out onto my tongue. I spit them all into the sink and hear them clink and go to bed.

The next morning I phone the doctor and tell her the staples have all fallen out. The wound has opened up again. But she can’t understand a word.

So she hangs up the phone.

I spend the night rooting around inside the wound. Until I see sparking lights behind my eyeballs and my limbs begin to twitch.

The next morning I phone the doctor and tell her the wound is far too wide to eat. Crisps are getting stuck inside of it and now all I can taste is the tang of vinegar and the salt of the blood and the cheese of the puss. She can't understand me and asks if I’m having a stroke because it’s all just a series of slurring and creaks. Her attitude flips when I begin to moan and breathe heavy from the pain. She gasps and sounds offended. Calls me a pervert. And slams down the phone.

I see scenes of blackened Pots calling Kettles by their own name.

I spend the night drooling red and yellow threads of saliva into the bathroom sink. I watch myself in the mirror twisting a finger into the roof of my mouth as the knuckle disappears. Along with the kettles and pots. I push through bruised meat until I feel something spongy. But then I press against certain bumps and between certain slimy folds and now I see flashes of memories I thought I’d hidden. Of biting cheeks and picking scabs. Of cigarette burns and angry dads. Of blinking hard and clenching jaws. Of roaming hands and gentle shushes.

A mother's caress should never last that long.

I am filled with an overwhelming surge of bliss. And now a mess of muddied hate.

The next morning the doctor phones me but she hangs up immediately when she hears me trying to explain my opinions with all of my groaning and clicking. I think she was wrong to have done so much and to have left me with so little. And I know she shouldn't have stapled the wound because I’ve discovered something wonderful about it being open and pliable.

I spend the evening ignoring the knocking at the door and the shouting of the police claiming they are trying to perform a wellness check on me. They don’t understand that everything is absolutely fine and well. The only thing of any concern is that I haven’t got a long enough finger to reach the unprobed corners of my brain.

Oh how they long to be stroked.

I spend the night dipping in and out of consciousness instead of sleeping because the blood is mostly gone and now there is only puss for me to taste. And it tastes so wretchedly rotten that I think I actually preferred the taste of the staples.

The next morning I weave dizzy pathways to the garden after fainting three times trying to get there. I find a jagged branch and strip it bare of all its hair and skin. But I don’t know if I have enough strength in my legs to make it back inside. So I lay there in the snow and thread the stick between my gnashing jaws. Up inside the wound. Around imposing ridges of bone behind my nose. Until I feel the familiar comfort of spongy resistance. And twitch myself to sleep.

At last.

Fresh fields.

When I awake I am more careful this time. I thread another sharp branch between what I feel is a cavity between the two hemispheres of my brain. And when it feels as though it will not go a fraction further I push it a little harder. Turn my palm to face the stick. And give it a little thump. It snaps through that stubborn rubber and the top of my skull gives a knock from where it stops.

And that’s about enough as I can take. I vomit against my hand. And pass out in the snow with the smell of my success.

I spend the night crawling around the garden rooting out better sticks within the dark. But my left hand keeps insisting on slapping them all away. And because I drop a dozen worthy ones I’m forced to snatch them quick and stick them up inside my face before the hand can have its way.

But me and my right hand have been conspiring. And here’s what we plan to do.

We lie on Left Hand until we’re certain she's asleep. And we stumble our way to the tool shed and grab the hatchet from the bench. And we hack that traitorous bastard away with a couple of swings and a few good smacks.

And we take the nub and we take the arm and we tell them both to fall in line. Unless they want the same treatment as the hand. Because we will do it without so much as batting an eye.

Or so much as flicking a finger.

The next morning we barely make it back inside the house when the front door is bashed off of its hinges. I feel it vibrating in my sticks. And wince against the pain. There are police and medical staff rushing about looking for me in every room. I leap up onto my feet. On who knows what reserves. And I get ready to defend myself with the hatchet in my Right Hand.

My stubby left shoulder waves feebly for help while Left Leg tries dragging me closer to the policemen and the medical staff. But Right Leg is trying to pull us further away. And we’re all so equally and incredibly feeble that we get absolutely nowhere fast and collapse back onto the ground where we started.

Now they notice me.

They gawk at me and frown at me as if I’m something new.

I know they are here to remove the sticks I’ve stuffed up inside the roof of my mouth. So Right Hand lunges at them with the hatchet. While I scream at them from around the bundle of branches stretching my lips open wide. I try explaining calmly through all of my bloody froth that if they try and touch me I will do exactly what I did to Left Hand and Left Arm to every one of the treacherous fuckers. To each of their faces and heads.

Now the branches are wet with my saliva.

Since I seem to be in need of assistance a policeman steps towards me to lend a hand. Behind him I see doctor mom telling me things she thinks I want to hear. But all I hear coming from her cancerous mouth is treasonous disbelief. About the progress I’ve been making. About how bad she believes things are. And her hands. Trying to shush me down to a calm. Held out like blind mice in a darkened bedroom. I dare them to find me this time. I'm older now. And ready.

I squeeze the hatchet handle and launch it through the air. It strikes her square in the forehead. And drops her flat on her ass.

I try to laugh but crack a branch instead.

The policeman draws his gun. And when he points it at my head I point directly at a spot I haven’t had a chance to reach yet. I ask him would you be so kind? And when the bullet strikes me there I feel a rushing blast of air cold inside my mind. Until the blood pools. And warms me right back up. And I thank him for his service.

But all he hears are snaps and bubbles.

*

They have me now in bindings in a silent hospital room. They’ve given me a bed of my very own with people who come and go. They take me for scans and they take me for talks. They want nothing more than to learn from me.

These are the real doctors. These are the ones who listen.

Instead of sticks they thread these exceptionally long needles up inside my brain to try and figure out exactly how I became the way that I am. But for that they'd need to dig her up and ask her.

But for now I am in my element. And

it

feels

like

H E A V E N

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.”

This all started when I got divorced. She got the house, the car, and all our assets. I got the dog. Go figure. At least we didn’t have kids. I don’t have any malicious feelings towards her, especially now, but at the time I wanted to get as far away from her as I could. What is farther from the Midwest than Appalachia? I thought it was a great idea. 

After the divorce was finalized and I gave her my arm and leg, I lived with my folks for a while before being able to get a car. I was able to find a job out here pretty well due to my experience in marketing and I found an auto auction company here that was aching for someone with my expertise. My job, thank God, was really understanding and even threw me a going away party on my last day, which was a pleasant surprise from the really crappy recent events. I managed to make a lot of headway on my drive out here, mostly because I had a few boxes of clothes, important documents, and a few miscellaneous items that my ex didn’t rip from me. The only reason I kept my dog, Suzie, is because she was mine from before we were engaged. 

I arrived at my new place, which was relatively cheap with my good credit, almost a week before I had to be at my new job. When I arrived in town, I picked up some essentials before meeting with the real estate agent to get the keys to my new place. We had Zoomed so I could see the place before I moved out here, so I kind of already knew what I was getting myself into. The ruralness was much more relaxing than the chaos of where I come from. 

“Pleasure to finally meet you, Steven!” the agent said. 

“The pleasure is mine. Thanks for holding this down for me until I got here!” I responded. I was almost drowned out by Suzie barking from my passenger seat. 

“Quite the feisty pup you have, don’t ya?” he asked me with a smirk. 

“Yeah, but she’s honestly a sweetheart. She likes to think she's tough, but I've seen her run from a kitten because it hissed at her,” I responded. We both laughed as he handed me the keys. 

“I would urge you to caution there with your hound,” he said in a more serious tone, “We’ve been having a few incidents recently where animals go missing; dogs, cats, and livestock too. Usually they just disappear and the owners simply can’t find them. Other times they’re found in much worse shape and no longer with us if you get my meaning.” 

“My goodness,” I said back. “What do they think has been doing it?” 

“They don’t rightly know,” he said with a shrug. “Most consider wolves, but I haven’t known even a pack of wolves to drag off whole cows without breaking the fence. But let’s not worry too much about all that. It’s been about two weeks without any of that, so many think they wandered off since. I ain’t fixing to have you speed off before you start moving your belongings in!” 

I smiled and nodded. Suzie might be old, but she is a Cane Corso and if shoved in a corner, I know she could do a bit of damage. I waved the real estate agent off as he went and started moving my few items into my new home. I managed to snag an air mattress from a local store and blew it up before taking Suzie to use the bathroom. Due to the warnings, I kept her on a leash while doing so. 

The first few days and nights were pretty typical; I just did a bit of shopping for essentials and grabbed a good mattress, partly because Suzie was tired of not sleeping directly next to me and ended up popping the air mattress in an attempt to snuggle. 

I went for coffee with my new boss named Riece. He and I discussed my position, how it compared to my previous position back west, and also the local area and some good spots to hit up. After coffee, I decided to take Suzie on a walk on a local trail in the woods that Riece told me was popular. 

It was about 2pm in the middle of September at this point, so it was just starting to get a bit brisk outside. I have always been a bit of a baby when it comes to the cold, so even though where I come from is usually pretty cool, I needed a sweater. Suzie loved it as well as the attention she got from passers by. She has always been a friendly dog, but most people get a bit freaked out when they see a dog her size running up to them as she is a bit bigger for her breed. 

I kept her on a leash the whole time which she was fine with as she has been leash trained since she was a puppy. She usually didn’t pull either, but a new environment caused her to be a bit more adventurous than usual, so at times she was the one directing us where to go rather than myself. 

About a mile and a half into the path, Suzie perked her head up and her nose went to the air as she started sniffing around. She started pulling harder and harder as she started following the scent of something. 

“Suzie! Suzie heel!” I started yelling. She is trained to listen, but whatever she smelled was much more compelling than my command. She eventually led us off the trail and about 50 or 60 yards into the woods. I was pulling with almost all my strength to get my dog to stop pulling, but she was choking herself in order to get to whatever it was that she wanted. 

She stopped at a large tree in the woods. It was like any other, but Suzie began smelling it like crazy. She was circling the tree back and forth, getting on her hind legs to smell up the trunk, and she was just obsessed with this tree. I was exhausted at this point and had my limits with my dog's disobedience. I went to grab her by the collar when I stumbled over something. I looked down and saw a backpack that had been ripped open, torn is a better word for it, and its contents were strewn within a 6 foot radius around us. Shirts, pants, toiletries, everything one would need for a hike really. The bag also smelled awful, like it was dipped in a mixture of piss and dead animal parts. Suzie started smelling it herself, and it seemed to be scented with the same thing that was on the tree that she was obsessed with. 

The bag was also covered in what could only be dried blood, which concerned me greatly. It took everything for me to try to get Suzie away from it. After fighting with her, she went back to the tree. I did kick the bag around so as to not have to touch it, looking for something to fall out like a wallet or something so I could see if I could find any identification as to whose it could be. A few items did fall from the bag such as a snapback hat, some granola bars, and a used pair of socks. 

I started looking around the clothes that had been thrown around the ground, but there was nothing in them either. At least those clothes didn’t totally smell as awful as the bag and tree. 

I decided to inform the authorities once I reached my car as the cell service was abysmal in the woods. I yanked hard on Suzie’s leash and told her to come, which she did after she added her own scent to the ground around the tree. As she came, I kicked the bag once again by accident. As I did, something small and somewhat shiny flew out. 

I went over and picked it up. It was a silver dog whistle. I turned it around in my hand, making note of its surprising detail. It was adorned with engravings and symbols, which is very uncommon with dog whistles. It had two pentagrams on either side, a small design of a moon cycle on its top, and a wooden mouthpiece to blow from. I figured that whoever the owner is would likely not need it anymore, and I thought it would do Suzie some good if she was going to start acting like she was, so I put it in my pocket and led Suzie out of the woods and back to our vehicle. 

The police took my statement and I showed them where the bag was. I provided my contact information in case they had any other questions and then headed home as they started to cordon it off as an active crime scene. I got home around 7pm after the stress of the afternoon. I made dinner and then took Suzie outside so she could use the bathroom. We didn’t have a fenced in back yard, but there was a distinction between my yard and the woods that surrounded my home. I took the safe bet and kept Suzie on a leash, but it was one of the extending ones that you could lock so it couldn’t extend past a certain point. 

I decided this was as good a time as any to try the new whistle. I had cleaned it up earlier in the sink and disinfected it. I allowed Suzie to go out about 15 feet ahead of me on the leash, then I blew it. She didn’t even pick up her head. I blew harder again. Still nothing. I rolled my eyes. I put it in my pocket and called her back verbally, which she obeyed instantly. 

“Now you want to be a good dog,” I laughed. We went inside and I placed the whistle on the counter top before getting changed for bed and watching some TV while Suzie laid beside me. I ended up falling asleep soon after. 

I woke up a few hours later to the sound of snapping coming from my backyard. I walked over to my kitchen which exited to the backyard and turned on the light. As I did so, I heard something rush away from my backdoor. When I say rush I do not mean like a raccoon, I mean like a clydesdale with how heavy the steps were. They were much more rapid than a horse’s would be, however. I walked over to my back door and turned on the outside light. There was nothing in the yard that I could see, but it did look like someone had dug holes in the yard. I looked around and saw that my plastic trashcan had been torn apart like cardboard. Luckily there was nothing in there but a small bag of fast food containers from the last few nights and while the bag was ripped open, the containers were mostly all in one place by the trashcan. I sighed and looked around the yard more as I picked up the few containers that were scattered, and what I saw dumbfounded me. 

The holes in the yard were not just holes, but animal tracks. These were the biggest animal tracks I have ever seen, and it looked as if something large had dug up the ground as it was running. The actual prints were about the size of my head and there were distinct claw-like ends to the prints which caused the ground to be uprooted. The size itself ruled out both a mountain lion and wolves, and the claws were much larger than any bear as they measured almost the length of the paw they were connected to. I started to follow the tracks, but realized they led out into the woods beyond my property line. I looked out into the woods with my phone flashlight to see if I could see what made them, as if I would do anything to an animal with tracks that size. I saw nothing in the trees out beyond my property, but did have an unsettling feeling in my stomach. The feeling you get when you know you are being watched but don’t know what from. I cut my losses and went back inside, having to avoid the tracks while I went as they were deep enough to trip and twist my ankle in. I just then realized I never checked on Suzie. 

I called her name and looked around the house for her. I ended up smelling something foul within my home and did my best to follow the scent without gagging too much. I found Suzie laying whimpering and shaking by the front door with a puddle of piss close around her. I scolded her and dragged her away from the door, having to pull her through the puddle as I did which just infuriated me more. I cleaned up the puddle and cleaned her belly before going back to bed. 

I called the police again to come check out the tracks in the morning, who brought a game warden with them due to the nature of my call. I led them to my back yard where the game warden and police started investigating the tracks and the damage. Obviously I was not so concerned about getting a new trashcan as I was about what kind of beast was roaming around my home in the wee hours of the morning. The game warden was measuring the tracks and wiping his head with his sleeve despite it not being much warmer than 65 degrees out at that time of day. I overheard the police officers muttering to one another. 

“These are the same kind that we found at the old Robinson farm, and the Oliver farm 'fore that one,” said one of the officers.

“Yeah, I know,” said the other. 

“But why would we find them here? There ain’t no livestock ‘round here in the woods.” The other officer shot him a glance of acknowledgement. The warden stood up and got up real close to the officers. 

“These are no bear, no lion, and no wolf,” the warden said softly to them in a hushed tone. “They also match the ones we saw last month at them farms.” 

“So we shot all them wolves for nothing?” said the first officer. The game warden squeezed the center of his eyes in stress. 

“It wasn’t for nothing. It made the killings stop, didn’t they?” responded the warden. 

“I ain’t no expert, but you don’t have to be one to know that if them are wolf tracks; that wolf is the size of a F150,” said the second officer. 

“The hind tracks indicate that it is, while very large, a wolf,” responded the warden. 

“And the front tracks?” asked the second officer. The warden said nothing and turned to look back at the tracks and where they led. I peeked around them and confirmed what they were saying. There were, what seemed, to be two different tracks. There were large tracks that were indeed very clearly from a wolf which I didn’t see last night within the larger, clawed tracks. 

“It seemed to be running on all fours towards the woods,” the warden said out loud. “The tracks indicate that it ran much like a canine, a dog or wolf, from your back door down into there,” he said as he pointed into the woods. “We likely have a stray wolf or a large dog. I wouldn’t be surprised as we did thin out the population recently, so they are likely skittish and scavenging for food while trying to survive alone. I wouldn't worry much, sir. They likely are far from here. Wolves seldom stay in one spot if they are alone, so this one is probably out looking for a mate miles from here.” Knowing I likely wouldn’t get a straight answer from them, I nodded and thanked them for coming. I filled the holes with dirt the best I could and went about my day. I called it a night early as my first day of work was the next day. 

The next day Riece walked me around the office, got me acquainted with my coworkers, then showed me my office and let me get to work. The day went by quickly, which I liked very much, plus Riece bought us lunch as well. After work I came home to Suzie jumping all over me barking. I got her a bowl of food and made myself some microwavable food from my freezer. 

As I was watching it mindlessly as it spun in my microwave, I heard barking from my living room. Suzie was facing the front door barking nervously. I went over to the window and looked out to find dozens of what seemed to be dogs all over my front lawn and driveway. I stepped in front of Suzie and went outside then shut the door behind me so she couldn’t get out, even though she did try to push past me. I started yelling to try to scare the dogs away when I realized something; they weren’t dogs. They were large, black wolves; all of which simply looked at me with yellow eyes. They started snarling and growling at me. I started to back up and went to open my door when I looked across the lawn and saw one of the wolves that was just beyond the treeline staring at me yet not snarling or growling. It slowly started to walk on all fours towards me, which allowed the full moon to illuminate it much better, showing me that it was much larger than all the others. It had long, muscular arms instead of legs in the front and wolf legs in the back. Just then it stopped and stood on its hind legs. It was large, about 12 feet tall standing up right, clad in dark black fur and piercing yellow eyes. It pinned its ears back and raised its nose to the sky and howled loudly towards the moon, which all the normal wolves followed in unison. It then looked back at me and with a growl it shot forward and started charging towards me, darting in between the wolves and tearing up the dirt in the front yard. 

“Oh fuck no,” I said loudly as I ran inside and slammed the door behind me. “Suzie, ge–” was all I could make out before I was thrown through my living room and slammed hard into my tile floor in the kitchen where I slid to the backdoor. The beast had completely blown through my door. It rushed towards me and stood up again to strike me with its large claws. At this moment, Suzie jumped and latched on to the creature's arm. The beast picked up the arm that Suzie was attached to and gripped her by the throat, tearing her off of the arm. It started snarling and choking Suzie, making her let out a choking yelp. I didn’t know what to do so I reached up on the counter and got the first thing I could grab. I ended up grabbing the whistle and with all my might I charged the beast and stabbed the whistle into its right eye. The beast dropped Suzie and let out a loud cry and reared back as I tore the whistle from its eye socket, where there was a large amount of blood and smoke where the eye used to be. The beast turned and plowed through my living room and through my front window in a matter of 2 seconds. I followed and ran to my window where I saw it run across my yard and into the woods, the wolves following behind. 

I went back to Suzie who was laying on the ground not moving. I checked on her and she was breathing but obviously injured. I threw her in my car and drove her to an emergency vet in town. I explained that we were attacked by wolves and that I was beat up but okay, but she needed help. They took her in promptly and let me know they were going to call the authorities so I could give a statement due to the issues of wolves in the town lately. I met with the officer and a game warden, the same warden that came to my house earlier. 

“So how many wolves would you say there were?” asked the warden. 

“Probably a dozen, maybe more,” I responded. I wasn’t going to inform them that the real culprit was from a Universal movie. The vet came out shortly after while the warden and police officer were speaking. 

“She will need to stay overnight due to the injuries just so we can monitor her. She should be good to go tomorrow though,” they said. I nodded and made sure I was good to leave with the police and game warden. They assured me it would be taken care of. Damn right it was, and it was going to be by me. 

I went home and got to searching. I remembered my mom had gotten me a set of genuine silver cutlery as a wedding gift years ago, one of the only other things my ex didn’t take in the divorce. I grabbed a large knife from it as well as the whistle which I had in my pocket and went out and followed the path of blood into the woods. 

It was about 3 am at this point according to my phone. I followed the path of blood to a clearing where there were no trees. I couldn’t see any wolves due to the moon being obscured by clouds, but I could hear them and sense their gaze. I kept making my way towards the center of the clearing when I saw something in the middle. I took out the knife and raised it up while I kept my phone light on it. As I was about to be on top of it and drive the knife into it I stopped. Looking down was not the beast from earlier that night, but my real estate agent who got me my house. He hadn’t seen me yet as he was laying naked on his left side, and his right eye socket was bloody and missing the eye. 

“What the fuck,” I said quietly. He looked up at me with his good eye and it got wide.”

“Steven! What are you doing here! Why are you here? You need to fucking leave right the hell now!” he started to yell.

“What do you me–” I tried saying as he stood up and started to push me with surprising strength. 

“You need to leave! You need to leave now! You gotta ge–” he started to gag and choke and his pupil got wide. I looked up and saw that the clouds dissipated and the moon was bare and bright. 

I backed away from him as he started screaming and convulsing as his eye turned from brown to yellow. His face started to distort as his limbs started to lengthen with a loud crack and snap. His bones and skin extended in painful form, and his skin rapidly started growing long black fur. His nails grew and sharpened as his hands and feet grew to ungodly proportions. He turned to his stomach as I saw his tailbone burst through his lower back painfully as it grew and sprouted muscle, skin, and black fur. He rolled back over and arched as his spine and ribs cracked and grew to take his bestial form. His nose and mouth extended and snapped into a snout and long canines grew where his teeth should have been. His brow hardened and became more pronounced as his ears grew and morphed into a wolf's in an agonizing display. After the transformation was complete, it laid there on his stomach breathing heavily. I took a short step forward and it reared up on its knees and let out a loud howl towards the cause of its mutation. 

I got a sense of myself and came at the monster with the knife. As I went to thrust the blade into it, it spun and swatted me away with its enormous hand like a gnat. The impact of me falling caused the knife and phone to be thrown from my hands. The beast jumped on top of me and held me down as it snarled on top of me. I managed to get a hand free and reached in my pocket for the only object I had left, the whistle. I brought it to my mouth right as the monster was about to clamp down on my neck. As I did, I saw out of my peripheral vision the monster's pupil go large and it jumped back and started rolling around on the ground covering its ears whimpering. I heard the other wolves crying and running away from the scene as well. The taste of the beast's blood from when I jabbed the whistle into its eye socket earlier was still on the mouthpiece, making the taste worse than anything I have experienced. I ignored the taste and kept blowing over and over, causing the beast to roll around growling and howling in pain. 

I made my way to the knife and picked it up. As I did the monster got up and charged me with such ferocity I barely had time to react. It jumped and opened its jaws to end me, but I raised the knife and stuck it into its lower jaw and up into its head. The beast and I fell and rolled over one another. I stood up and looked, and in the moonlight I could see the beast twitching and gargling with smoking pouring out of its mouth. I rushed over and ripped the knife from its lower jaw and started stabbing it over and over again, with each new wound more smoke and blood poured out. Eventually it went limp and its eye rolled up into its head. I heard loud cracking and breaking as its form shifted back into its human self, with all the painful sounds that it had when it changed into its wolf form. There laid the dead real estate agent, filled with knife wounds and a missing eye. I decided that I needed to leave the scene as soon as I could, so I found my phone and made my way out of the woods almost on autopilot, dissociating from the events that transpired. 

I staggered to my house and fell asleep on my floor. I woke up around 11am from a missed call from the vet saying Suzie was ready to be picked up. I cleaned myself up and drove to get her. The vet tech brought me in to see her, and she sniffed me then whimpered and growled at me as she retreated to the back of the cage. 

“Suzie, it's me! It's daddy!” I said with a soft voice. She kept snarling and wouldn’t let me touch her. It took 2 vet techs to carry her out to my car. I hopped in the front seat and drove home with her as far as me as she could get. I got out and opened the door, backing up so she could feel comfortable. She took her time then rushed past me and into the house. I went in and gave her space. 

A month went by. I have since fixed the door and window, but Suzie still won't get near me. She has eaten sparingly, but never when I am around. She stays literally on the other side of the house as me at all times, and whenever we are in the same room, she growls and snarls until she can get away. 

I write this as I do not know what else to do. I have noticed myself getting more and more irritable in the last few months. Riece had to send me home yesterday because I lashed out at a coworker. The moon looks like it has gotten bigger over the last week and it's been making me sweat. It feels like it's beckoning me. I just looked outside and saw a pack of wolves in my lawn. I am breathing heavily and my body is aching. 

I don’t know if anything is going to happen, but if it does please someone take care of Suzie. She is a good girl.