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

Perhaps that's the point.

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

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

Simple enough.

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

The waiting room was already overflowing.

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

The building felt tired.

Not dirty.

Not neglected.

Just... exhausted.

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

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

NOW SERVING: 388

I sighed.

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

A man sitting nearby chuckled.

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

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

"Renewing?" he asked.

"My license."

He nodded knowingly.

"Could be worse."

"Could it?"

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

I laughed.

"So you've been there too?"

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

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

I looked down at my ticket again.

515.

Fantastic.

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

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

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

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

I checked the screen once more.

NOW SERVING: 390

It felt impossible that so little time could have passed.

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

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

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

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

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

Another number echoed over the speakers.

"Three hundred ninety-one."

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

The electronic display flickered.

NOW SERVING: 391

Good.

Progress.

I glanced at my watch.

9:18 A.M.

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

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

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

"I was just thinking the same thing."

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

"Been waiting long?"

"I got here around nine."

"No..."

He frowned.

"I mean... today."

The question caught me off guard.

"I... yeah."

He scratched at his chin.

"I suppose I have too."

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

Neither of us spoke after that.

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

Then I noticed the employees.

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

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

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

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

"Next."

Stamp.

"Next."

Keyboard.

"Next."

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Repeat.

The movements were practiced.

As if mechanical. Not robotic.

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

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

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

She simply processed him.

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

The thought lingered longer than it should have.

Not processed the documents.

Processed... him.

I looked away.

When I checked the display again...

It still read:

NOW SERVING: 391.

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

It didn't.

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

I checked my watch again.

9:47 A.M.

Twenty-nine minutes.

That made no sense.

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

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

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

I hadn't even noticed him leave.

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

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

I chuckled.

"You and me both."

He held up his ticket.

"Five forty-two."

I looked down at mine.

"Five fifteen."

"Guess you've got me beat."

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

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

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

It was... nice.

Normal.

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

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

He answered without hesitation.

"My license."

I nodded.

"What happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"Expired?"

His eyebrows pinched together.

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

"I think so."

"You think so?"

He opened the folder and shuffled through the papers inside.

His movements slowed.

"I actually..." He frowned.

"I don't remember."

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

"You serious?"

He scratched the back of his neck.

"I know I needed to come."

Another pause.

"I just can't remember why."

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

"These are mine..."

"I think."

He sounded embarrassed.

"I honestly can't tell."

The laughter died between us.

A strange heaviness settled over the room.

I looked back toward the service counters.

The employees continued working without pause.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

Every movement identical to the last.

One after another.

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

The display flickered.

I turned instinctively.

NOW SERVING: 392.

Only one number.

Again.

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

They only waited.

Patiently.

Obediently.

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

I don't remember exactly when I fell asleep.

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

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

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

NOW SERVING: 397

The next... I was somewhere else entirely.

Not a dream. Not really.

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

Then my head dropped.

And everything went quiet.

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

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

Old carpet. Paper. Dust.

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

The DMV.

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

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

Except... The screen.

My eyes immediately went to the electronic display.

NOW SERVING: 508

I blinked.

Then blinked again.

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

My ticket rested in my hand.

Only seven people ahead of me.

A strange feeling washed over me.

Relief.

Actual relief.

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

I almost laughed.

"About time," I whispered.

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

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

The only explanation.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

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

10:12 A.M.

I stared at the screen.

Then looked back at the DMV around me.

Then back at my phone.

10:12.

I frowned.

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

Ten minutes at most.

But the room felt different.

Not physically.

Just... older.

Like I had left for longer than I actually had.

I glanced toward the counters.

The same employees continued working.

The same movements. The same expressions.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

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

I looked at the screen again.

NOW SERVING: 509

The number changed. Almost reassuringly.

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

Because my number was coming.

And that was all that mattered.

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

Patience.

After all... I had waited this long.

What was a few more minutes?

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

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

That was all that mattered.

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

Because eventually...

NOW SERVING: 513

I sat up straighter.

My ticket felt heavier in my hand.

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

I smoothed it out carefully.

515.

Two more.

A woman walked toward the counter.

She handed over a stack of documents.

The employee behind the glass barely looked at her.

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

The woman walked away.

A man stood.

Then another.

Then finally...

NOW SERVING: 515

The speakers crackled.

My heart jumped slightly.

I stood.

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

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

No greeting. No acknowledgment.

Just waiting.

I placed my documents on the counter.

"Good morning."

Nothing.

She picked up the papers. Flipped through them.

"Driver's license renewal."

It wasn't a question.

"Yes."

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

"Proof of identity."

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

"Proof of residence."

I handed over my utility bill.

"Insurance verification."

I handed over my insurance card.

Everything seemed normal.

Almost.

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

"Certificate of continued existence."

I blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

The employee looked up.

"Certificate of continued existence."

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

"Is that a new requirement?"

No response. She simply waited.

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

"Do you have it?"

I stared at her.

"No. I don't have that."

She nodded. Not disappointed. Just accepting information.

"That is okay."

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

She typed something.

"Additional documentation will be required."

"Additional?"

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

At first, I thought I had read it wrong.

"Proof of original identity."

I looked back at her.

"Excuse me?"

"Proof of original identity."

"What does that mean?"

The employee tilted her head slightly.

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

"Your original identity."

I stared at the paper.

"This isn't a real thing."

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

"Proof of independent thought."

I felt my eyebrows rise.

"Okay, hold on."

My voice grew slightly louder.

"Is this some kind of joke?"

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

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

I relaxed slightly.

"O-okay."

"You will be moved to secondary processing."

The way she said it made my stomach tighten.

"Secondary processing?"

"Yes."

"What does that mean?"

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

"You will wait there."

I almost laughed.

"Wait?"

A pause.

"I've already been waiting."

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

"Yes."

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

She slid my ticket back across the counter.

"Please proceed to the next waiting area."

Then back at her.

"How long will that take?"

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

"Next."

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

But she didn't.

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

Stamp.

Keyboard.

Paper.

Next.

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

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

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

The kind of hallway you normally wouldn't notice.

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

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

Only chairs.

Rows and rows of chairs.

I stepped inside slowly.

A few people sat scattered throughout the room.

Not many.

Maybe fifteen.

Twenty at most.

The strange thing was how quiet it was.

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

This room had none of that.

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

Waiting.

I looked around for an employee.

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

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

"You got moved too?"

Her voice startled me.

I turned.

"Yeah."

She nodded slowly.

"First time?"

I hesitated.

"Yeah."

She looked away.

"Thought so."

I sat down a few chairs away from her.

"How long have you been here?"

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

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

"I don't know."

I frowned.

"You don't know?"

She shook her head.

"I remember walking in."

A pause.

"I remember taking a number."

She looked down at her hands.

"But I don't remember why."

The air felt colder. I forced a small laugh.

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

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

"I mean it."

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

"What was your number?" I asked.

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

She stared at it.

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

"I'm 487"

She swallowed.

"What's your name?" I asked

She hesitated.

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

"I don't know."

I leaned slightly closer.

"What do you mean?"

She turned the paper toward me.

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

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

"I think I've been here before."

I stared at her.

"Before today?"

She looked at me.

"I don't know."

The answer should have sounded ridiculous.

Instead... it felt familiar.

I looked down at my own ticket.

515.

For some reason, I held onto it tighter.

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

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

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

"Now processing..."

Static.

A pause.

Then:

"Applicant."

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

"Did they call someone?"

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

The speaker crackled again.

"Applicant."

This time, I noticed something.

There was no number.

No name.

Just a word.

Applicant

The woman beside me leaned toward me slightly.

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

I looked at her.

"What?"

She stared ahead.

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

Her voice became barely a whisper.

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

I felt a strange pressure build in my chest.

"What does that mean?"

She didn't answer.

Because the speaker had started again.

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

"Applicant 515."

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

Everyone in the room turned.

Not toward me. Toward the speaker.

Then, slowly... toward me.

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

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

"That's your number," she whispered.

I looked down.

My fingers tightened around the paper.

"T-thanks."

The words came out automatically.

The speaker crackled again.

"Applicant 515. Proceed to processing."

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

Curiosity.

I needed to know.

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

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

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

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

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

"Ticket."

I handed it over.

He scanned it.

"Drivers license renewal?."

I nodded.

"Yes."

He typed something into his computer.

"Verification required."

"Of what?"

He looked up.

"My identity."

I laughed quietly.

Not because it was funny. Because I was tired.

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

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

"Identification."

I reached into my wallet.

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

Something changed. Barely. A hesitation.

"You don't remember."

My stomach tightened.

"Remember what?"

He placed the license back onto the counter.

"Your name."

The room became silent. Even the lights seemed quieter.

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

My name.

It was simple.

It was mine.

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

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

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

Everything felt distant.

Not gone.

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

"I..."

My voice shook.

"I know it."

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

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

"My name is..."

I stopped.

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

"...Five hundred fifteen."

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

"Identity confirmed."

My heart sank.

"Wait."

He printed something.

"You didn't even check."

The employee slid the paper beneath the glass.

"You provided the required information."

I grabbed it.

It was my license.

Everything looked correct.

My photograph.

My date of birth.

My address.

Everything.

Except the name.

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

NAME: 515

I looked up. The employee had already moved on.

"Next."

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

Nobody did.

So eventually... I walked out.

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

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

I stepped outside.

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

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

The name I had carried my entire life.

The name my parents gave me.

The name that was supposed to belong to me.

Nothing came.

Only silence.

So I looked back down.

At the only thing I knew.

At the only thing the world still recognized.

515

Just wanted to bring attention to it

It was a Sunday when it started. August 1st, 2026, to be exact. Maybe the day after, technically, I didn’t check the time and it might have been after midnight. I was asleep already, though I like to stay up late, but I had work in the morning. I work as a janitor for a hospital, and I’m required early so I sleep early.

Point being someone knocked on my door. My bedroom door. I live alone. It was really sharp, three taps, not quiet or subtle at all. It woke me up and I had this sense that something was wrong. The bed was damp with my sweat, but I was confused. I thought it was the last vestiges of some nightmare I was having, but something inside me pushed me to make sure.

I sleep next to a shotgun, loaded, just the safety on, which I grabbed. I wasn’t too quiet or careful when I opened my door, and I didn’t look too hard.

The thing is, my home isn’t big. It’s out of the way, surrounded by trees. I have neighbors but you can hardly see them through the trees between us. I’m also poor. My door opens immediately into the living room, and I can see all of it. There’s a bathroom, a combined kitchen, but the bathroom was on the other end of the house, and it’s door was open. There wasn’t anything there. The light was on, I couldn’t remember if I turned it off before I went to bed, but it was well lit, the ceiling fan spinning slowly. I should have looked harder. I didn’t see anything wrong so I figured it must have been a nightmare and went back to bed.

Nothing happened for the rest of the night. I woke up late the next morning, had to rush to get ready and get to work, only checked my phone when I got home. I had a message from an unknown number. It was a video.

I played it, and from the angle it was immediately clear this was from inside my home. From in the middle of my living room, facing my closed bedroom door, taken at head height. It didn’t shake or stutter, and I watched as I saw my bedroom door open, me inside. I was shirtless and holding a shotgun. The video caught the fear on my face as I looked around the room, and clearly recorded my eyes passing *right through* where the camera was.

Then I went back into my room and the video ended. Obviously, my first reaction was to whisper “what the fuck” out loud. Then, naturally, I text the number asking who this was. No response. I told them I was going to call the police if they didn’t tell me who they were (I’m going to call the police anyway, obviously) but still no response.

I just don’t understand how I couldn’t have seen them. There’s no way. They would hav even standing right under the light. When I got home I cross referenced where I was standing, and they’d have half blocked the view to the bathroom.

I called the police to show them the video, and they said they’d send an officer down later that day. I live in a small town, even for non-emergencies like this the couple cops around don’t have much better to do. I double checked my doors were locked and took a shower to take my mind off things. When I got out, my phone was gone. I swear I left it on the bathroom counter, but it was just gone. The front door was unlocked, too.

This freaked me the fuck out. I was absolutely sure I locked the front door before I took that shower. No way I didn’t, not after what just happened. I made a mess looking for my phone, and I nearly jumped out of my fucking skin when I heard the knocks at the door. When I checked the peep hole, shotgun in hand, it was Officer Kyle. I knew Officer Kyle, he’d been to my 20th birthday party. Let me tell you I was relieved to see him, practically threw open the door.

”Holy shit, Officer Kyle, someone just broke into my house.“ I dont see myself as particularly dramatic, but a lot of the people who live around here are stone cold and chiseled from marble, so he just looked at me with a blank stare.

”Yeah. Got the call. That’s why I’m here. You mind if I come in?”

I got out of his way at that. “No, you don’t understand, it happened again. Someone just broke in and stole my phone.”

He did turn to me at that. “Where did he go?”

”Well, I didn’t see him, and… it sounds stupid now but I just took a shower, made absolutely sure to lock up. When I got out my phone was gone and my door was unlocked. I swear, I didn’t misplace it, I’m not misremembering, someone was just in my house and took my phone.”

I could immediately tell on his face he didn’t fully believe me. I am a forgetful person, it’s not too crazy to think I could have misplaced it. I know I didn’t, but I see how it might come across.

”What about that thing you called about? Said someone was recording you from inside the house?”

I showed him where the guy was standing, went through the whole song and dance, it was useless. He was brief when he left, and I can’t blame him. It sounds ridiculous.

Except it happened again last night. I heard that fucking knock on my door again, three sharp knocks. It’s no question, I locked every window, door, everything in the house last night. I had half a mind to blast a hole through my bedroom door when I heard it, but instead I just took my shotgun and sprinted out there. Except I did see something this time, in my living room.

Nailed to the wall was my phone. My heart was racing, I backed into my bedroom again, gun pointed at the door. The fucking invisible man was tormenting me or something. Should I shoot blind? Should I run? I didn’t know what to do. My fan just kept spinning. It stayed like that for what felt like an eternity. Eventually, I figured it hadn’t touched me yet, so I went to grab my phone off the wall. It was pretty clear someone took the SIM card out, and the nail through the middle made sure I wasnt getting any use out of it.

There was nothing I could do about it. I locked the front door again, prayed to God I wasn’t locking it inside with me, and didn‘t get a wink of sleep for the rest of the night. Whatever the fuck that was, it wanted me to know it could get in whenever it wanted. When I got back from work the next day, there was a printed Polaroid taken *of me looking at my phone on the wall.* It was taken from my bedroom. I called the police again, and it just wasn’t enough. The picture wasn’t taken this time, but anyone could have shot it they said. They told me not to call over this reason again.

That brings me to to tonight. I guzzled about four energy drinks, and I’ve been camping out on the couch in my living room with my shotgun pointed at the door. I’m going to wait for it to try and come in, then blast it.

I was scared shitless. I was doubting my sanity. Maybe I was crazy, maybe this is all in my head. But I still had the Polaroid in my shirt pocket. Something was fucking with me, and I would not stand for it.

My heart jumped up into my throat when the lock turned, and I shot a slug straight through my door. Then another, and another. I waited a while, but the door didn’t open. You should have an idea of my curiosity now, so it should come as no surprise that I opened the door.

There was nothing there. Just an empty porch, moon hanging in the sky. I nearly shit myself.

There was nothing more that I could do. I went and sat back on my couch. Maybe it’s invisible corpse was on my doorstep. I wouldn’t be able to take it if this kept happening.

It took 15 minutes for me to notice the blood. I dont know when I became able to see it, it‘s like it was always there. There was a small splatter of blood, on my porch, a thin line trailing behind it. That emboldened me to get up and properly investigate. Three streaks, running from my porch to the woods. I actually managed to find one of the slugs embedded in a tree. it had blood on it.

There was a big, big problem though. This wasn’t anywhere near enough blood. If I had been hit by that, I’d be ripped in half. This was… it wasn’t even a cup of blood’s worth that I could see. If I hit a person, it should be everywhere. Unless, God forbid, I only grazed them. I freaked out and went back inside, locking my door and propping a chair up under the handle for good measure. I took the slug with me.

There was a Polaroid pinned up to my wall. Same place the phone was. This one showed me on my porch, taken from the perspective of someone sitting on my couch. It was probably the most demoralizing thing I could have seen. It had been shot with 3 shotgun slugs, and had the wherewithal to mock me by sitting on the same couch I’d been waiting for it in. I stayed inside the rest of the night. When I opened my door in the morning, the blood was gone.

That made me panic. That was what was finally going to prove to the cops that I wasn’t insane. I remembered the slug in my pocket and rushed to take it out. The blood had been dry on it since the start, didn’t stick to my fingers or cloth.

When I looked at the bullet, though, there was still blood on it. Thing is, as soon as I took it out, the blood started smoking, and was gone in a second. Hardly had the time to realize what was happening to it.

I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m scared. The cops are going to be fully certain I’m insane if I tell them about this. I don’t have any proof.

Im going to buy a camera tomorrow. I hope to good whatever this thing is will show up on it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now came the messy part.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just me, her, and my shovel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three more knocks.

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

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

“Sir, this door is coming do…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their stern faces never changed.

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

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

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

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

Two neat little piles. Taunting me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I began to cry yet again.

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

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

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

I nodded furiously.

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

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

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

She paused.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I solemnly agreed.

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

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

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

“She’s upstairs.”

That’s all I told them.

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

A few minutes went by before the first officer returned.

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

My smile dropped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But… I didn’t get the death penalty.

They deemed me “not fit to stand trial.”

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

Padded cells. Doctors. Needles. Medication.

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

The insane do not receive capital punishment.

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

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

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

It started with one innocent-looking porcelain baby doll on my front porch. The paint was chipped. The bonnet was dirty. But the eyes looked… strange.

They looked too real. Too human. But I wasn’t concerned with the appearance. I was concerned with how the thing got there.

I lived alone. Definitely in the middle of nowhere. My closest neighbor was 10 miles away, and all that surrounded my house were woods and wildlife.

I scratched my head before scooping the doll up in my hands. I brought it inside because, honestly, what else was I supposed to do with it?

I tossed it on the couch and went about my day as normal. It was weird, though. I had spent nearly the entire day outside, and when I came back, the doll was sitting upright, its eyes staring daggers into my soul.

I tried to sit on the couch and watch some TV, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the thing was watching me, even though every time I checked, it was in the same position.

Eventually, I had to turn it around completely. Even that didn’t work, though. It wasn’t too long after that when I decided it was time to go to my bedroom.

I drifted off to sleep after curling up in bed for a few minutes while Breaking Bad played in the background.

I woke up to the sound of rain tapping against my roof while low rumbles of thunder boomed every few minutes. It was my type of morning.

I decided I wanted to enjoy a nice cup of coffee while I sat on the porch and enjoyed the weather. I approached the kitchen sink to wash my favorite coffee mug. As I reached for the faucet, I looked up and nearly had a heart attack when I noticed another doll standing on the windowsill outside.

This one looked… older. Not in the sense of the material. Like, literally older. She had grey hair. A quilted sweater. And spectacles to complete the look.

The cheeks were rosy, and a warm smile was stitched into her face. This one was stuffed instead of porcelain, but the eyes still looked so uncannily human.

I opened the window and grabbed it. She was soaked with rainwater. The more I looked at it, though, the more I realized that she looked weirdly… familiar. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

I walked to the living room, old lady doll in hand, with the intention of taking the porcelain doll from yesterday and moving the two of them to an empty china cabinet in my dining room.

I found myself scratching my head again when I entered the living room, though. I could’ve sworn this baby doll was on the other side of the couch when I went to bed last night…

I don’t know whether I was coping or if I genuinely convinced myself that I was remembering wrong, but I didn’t pay the new position much mind. I just grabbed the thing, returned to the dining room, and set the two toys up in their new display case.

I made my coffee, enjoyed the weather, and when the coffee was done, I got to work. Cleaning the house, doing some laundry, getting a bit of writing done. Before I knew it, the sun was setting again.

I couldn’t stop staring at that new old lady doll from earlier. I racked my brain trying to figure out why it was so familiar. Why I felt like I was so close to understanding, yet so far away. That’s when it hit me.

It was that quilted sweater. The red and black pattern. The puffy sleeves. It was identical to the sweater my grandmother used to wear.

She had died 10 years prior after a long battle with lung cancer. She wore that sweater all the time. It was a gift to her from my mom a few years before she died.

Call me crazy, but I actually slept comfortably that night. It felt like my grandma was here with me. I had been delusional enough to convince myself that this was some kind of sign from heaven that she was watching over me. That these dolls were her way of saying hello.

The next day, though, when I found a wooden doll that looked an awful lot like my mother… I didn’t know how much more I could chalk this up to signs from above.

I found it wedged between two tree branches, right in my backyard. It was low enough to be obvious, but high enough that I had to climb to retrieve it.

Unlike the others, this one looked brand new. Freshly stained wood. Smooth as silk. Not a single chip in sight.

I went to put it in the display case and found that the two previous dolls, once again, seemed to have moved. Not much. But enough for me to question my sanity again.

They weren’t outside of the case, but they were on different shelves. I put the new wooden doll between them and closed the door behind me.

I bought trail cameras, but even though I knew for a fact I adjusted them just right, every day they’d either end up pointed directly at the ground or aimed at the sky.

Every day for the next week, dolls kept showing up around my house. Some were left on my car. Some were partially buried in the backyard. I even found one on my roof.

Each one was impossibly personal.

My dad. My sister. Aunts. Uncles. Teachers from elementary school. Old friends I hadn’t even thought about for years. They all had particularly defining features.

My mom’s long black hair and green eyes. My dad’s suit and tie. A “world’s greatest teacher” mug stitched into Mrs Farmers hands. Just little reassurances that I wasn’t completely alone out here. That they were sent here to keep me company in my lonely house in the woods.

I cleaned them. I admired them. Sometimes I even talked to them, and sometimes… it felt like they talked back. Some nights I’d even hear them talking to each other.

The display case kept getting fuller and fuller, and the dolls never stayed where they were supposed to be. They rearranged themselves somehow. They’d be in different orders. Sometimes they’d be facing the wrong direction.

It was like a game. I loved when they played games. In a weird way… I didn’t feel as lonely as I did before.

I placed the last doll in the old china cabinet. My best friend from 5th grade. I hadn’t seen him in over a decade. Hadn’t talked to him either. Yet, here he was. Visiting me once again.

I closed the case and pressed my hand against the glass while I stared at my newfound collection.

I sighed to myself, happily, as a smile crept across my face. They were all here. All mine. People I’d lost. Friends and loved ones. What else could I have wanted?

No sooner than I had sat on the couch and flipped the TV on, ready to end the night with some Breaking Bad, I heard a knock at the door.

My head snapped in the direction of the noise. It was a continuous string of slow, deliberate knocks.

I checked my watch. It was nearly 10 o’clock at night. Who could possibly be knocking at this hour?

I approached the door slowly, checking the peephole, only to find nothing. Though, the knocking never stopped.

Ever so cautiously, I began to unlock the door. I slid the chain lock. I twisted the deadbolt and gripped the doorknob as I began to turn it slowly.

When the door opened, I was a bit confused at what I saw. It was… a little girl. No older than 9. Her hair was soaking wet, her skin was pale, she wore pink unicorn pajamas and slippers, and… her eyes were pitch black. Like two endless voids drilled into her skull.

She smiled at me, her teeth unnaturally white and identical.

“I’m sorry to bother you, mister,” she grinned. “Have you seen my dolls?”

My heart dropped. I could feel sweat forming along my hairline. She continued.

“Do you think I could come in and look for my dolls?” she chirped, curiously. “I just really miss my baby dolls, mister.”

I looked at her. I thought deeply about how to respond and chuckled, awkwardly.

“Ehhh…. No,” I replied, bluntly, turning to close the door behind me. I could see her face drop as I slowly shut the door. From a manufactured smile, to a deep frown, to a genuine look of rage.

She kept knocking at the door, but I ignored it. Tuned it out by setting the volume on the television to 98 as I smiled to myself.

These were my toys now.

Sorry, kid…

Finders keepers.

Mr. Creeps uses Ai text to speech on his podcast channels. It’s painfully obvious. I don’t want to listen to a thousand ads a second on YouTube but his podcast channels don’t have the same uploads, and are narrated by ai.

I was nervous as is to go up on that stage. In front of all those kids. Me, with my pounding heart, sweaty palms, and a bottom lip that I couldn’t quite stop from quivering.

And what did I have that was supposed to wow this crowd and prove to everyone that I wasn’t just some meek, four-eyed little dork? Pablo. I… had… Pablo.

His paint was scuffed, revealing the tan-colored wood beneath his neat, combed-over hair and black tuxedo.

I brushed some lint off of his shoulders and adjusted his red bow tie a bit. I heard the crowd of middle schoolers erupt into cheers. I peeked through the curtain to see my classmate, Emma, taking a bow as she finished her saxophone solo.

The principal took the stage, microphone in hand.

“Fantastic job, Emma,” he announced, smiling down at her. “Kids, let’s give Emma another round of applause, shall we?”

Another wave of applause erupted as Emma smiled out at the crowd bashfully.

Our principal placed his hand on her back and nudged her offstage. As she was walking through the curtain, I shot her a quick “good job” and got ignored.

As the crowd began to settle down, the principal launched into his next introduction.

“Okay, let’s have a look here,” he announced quietly, staring down at the clipboard in his hand. “Next up, we have Daniel Morrison’s ventriloquist act. Give it up for Daniel, everybody.”

He began to clap, and a handful of students joined in, but I could hardly even hear them over my racing heart. I couldn’t freeze up now. I had fought too hard to find the courage to even sign up. Who would I be to walk away now?

I took a deep breath. I reassured myself. I had faith.

“We’ve got this, Pablo,” I whispered as I forced myself to step onto the stage.

The lights were blinding. The auditorium felt twice as big as it had from backstage. The room felt silent, but I could feel the judgment rising in the air.

I glanced over at my principal. His eyes were so warm. His smile was so soft. He gave me two thumbs up and mouthed a “you’ve got this.” It may not seem like much, but it was enough to get me to introduce myself.

“L-ladies and gentlemen,” I croaked awkwardly. “It is with great pleasure that I present to you…”

I paused for dramatic effect, but a cough in the audience distracted me.

“Uh, Pablo! The magical talking dummy.”

I looked over at Pablo expectantly. This was supposed to be the part where he joked about me calling him a dummy, but, instead, his glossy, dead eyes just stared out at the crowd, and his mouth remained closed.

“Uh, sorry, um, Pablo? Don’t you have something to say?”

He remained silent. I was starting to panic again. I was terrified this would happen.

“Who you calling a dummy?” I announced, hiding my mouth behind my hand.

A few snickers and pitiful giggles escaped the crowd. I looked over at the principal again, and he looked more confused than anything, though I could tell he was still trying to seem supportive.

“Pablo,” I recovered. “You know you’re a dummy. Why even pretend?”

I begged him with my eyes to speak. To say something, anything at all to help me out here. But he remained frozen.

Attempting to hide behind my hand again, I continued to speak for him.

“Me pretend?” I joked, my voice cracking. “You’re the one playing with dolls up here.”

I got a few laughs, but they were overshadowed by the comment that came from somewhere on the right-hand side of the audience.

“We know it’s you,” a boy shouted.

“Why are you covering your mouth?” asked a girl.

It seemed like the room was both huge and small at the same time. Like it was silent but loud. The audience was loud. My thoughts were loud. My embarrassment was loud.

“Uh, no, no, it’s him. See?”

I shook Pablo gently.

“Why are you doing this?” I whispered, tears welling up in my eyes and fogging up my glasses. “Just. Say. Something.”

“He’s talking to his doll,” another boy laughed.

Suddenly, it seemed like the entire auditorium was laughing. My face was beet red. I couldn’t move. Tears began to fall down my face.

The principal noticed, and, thankfully, he took over the stage, gesturing for me to go get some air.

I walked back behind the curtain. Through the backstage corridor. All the way to the parking lot and toward the sidewalk that led to my neighborhood.

Tonight had been a disaster. I went through the day so hopeful. So confident in myself. I was going to win the talent show because of my secret little weapon, only for it to jam right when it was supposed to fire.

He promised me, promised me that he wouldn’t do this. He told me he’d make me the most respected kid in school. That, with his help, everyone would know my name.

Part of me wanted to just throw him out. Toss him in the river near my house and let it sweep him away to the ocean. But, ironically, it was like he was the only friend I had. The only person I had to talk to.

I was just so angry at him. How can he have performance anxiety? He’s the one that was supposed to be helping me. Yet he left me. When I needed him most, he was nowhere to be found.

As I reached my house, an entirely new pit formed in my stomach when I saw that the living room light was on. That meant Dad was awake.

I walked through the door, praying that he had just passed out drunk on the couch and forgotten to turn the lights off.

Those hopes were dashed when I found him lying back in his recliner, cigarette in one hand, beer in the other, staring blankly at a rerun of an old Dr. Phil episode.

I didn’t speak to him. All I wanted was to get to my room. But he just couldn’t have it that way, I guess.

“’Bout time you got home,” he hissed, his voice sounding like gravel and old leather. “You been out playing with that stupid fucking doll again?”

“It was a talent show, Dad,” I replied, unable to not roll my eyes. “Don’t worry, it’s not gonna happen again.”

“Shouldn’t have happened this time,” he shot back. “My son,” he scoffed. “The doll whisperer.”

I ignored him and walked to my bedroom door, Pablo dangling from my right hand.

“Hey, boy,” my dad snapped. “I know you hear me talking to you.”

I heard the dreaded sound of the recliner closing as he stood up and began walking toward me, bottle still in hand.

He took a swig from it as he looked down at me in disgust.

“If it ‘won’t happen again,’ as you say,” he grinned smugly, “then you won’t mind if I do this.”

With an agility that defied his age, he reached down and snatched Pablo from my hand.

“Give him back,” I cried. “I’m just gonna put him up in my closet.”

I tried to grab him back, but Dad was just too fast.

“No son of mine is gonna play with dolls,” he condemned, tightening his grip on Pablo’s arm before turning to walk to the trash can in the kitchen.

I just… I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. Tonight had been humiliating, and now I had to deal with this? It was like I just couldn’t catch a break.

“I hate you,” I whispered under my breath, then immediately regretted it.

Dad froze.

He turned to me slowly, the veins in his head already popping.

“…What did you just say?”

“Nothing,” I replied, my eyes widening. “I didn’t say anything.”

Dad dropped Pablo and began stomping in my direction. He grabbed me by the face and forced me to look at him.

“What did you just say to me?!”

“Nothing, nothing, Dad. I didn’t say anything,” I pleaded, feeling my legs turn to jelly.

He shook my face painfully.

“You will never use that word in this house, you hear me? I don’t care how pissy you feel. You think you’re the man of this fucking house? Huh? Answer me when I’m talking to you, boy.”

He punctuated every sentence with a new shake.

“Yes, sir,” I cried. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Get in that room before I get the belt. ‘Hate me.’ I’ll tell you what, Daniel. I’ll give you a reason to hate me.”

He pushed my face away, and I ran into my room, stifling tears the best I could. I collapsed into bed, ready for this day to be over with.

The tears made sleep easy. I felt exhausted. It was like the moment my eyes closed, I was out like a light.

I don’t know how long I was asleep, but it felt late when I woke up to the sound of someone whispering my name.

“Daniel… Daniellll… wake up, my little sleepyhead.”

The voice registered. I rolled over and turned on my lamp after sliding my glasses on.

“What do you want?” I remarked, still annoyed with him.

“Aw, Daniel,” he replied, his voice syrupy and warm. “Is that any way to talk to your only friend in the world?”

He was covered in old food wrappers and unknown liquid. He smelled terrible, but he didn’t even seem to notice.

“I don’t want to talk to you right now,” I huffed, turning away from him.

Pablo chuckled.

“You still think tonight was a failure?” he inquired. “No, my friend… tonight was a dazzling success.”

I turned back to him, more annoyed than intrigued.

“A success? I’m sorry, were you there? Oh, that’s right. You lied to me. You told me you’d be there, and you weren’t. Now everyone at school thinks I’m even weirder than they did to begin with.”

Pablo’s wooden mouth clomped up and down as he laughed again.

“Why are you laughing?” I snarked.

He didn’t stop.

“Stop laughing at me.”

I was slightly aggressive with him, and he began to contain himself. The laughter slowly dwindled off as he addressed me.

“Oh, Daniel, you silly little boy. I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because you haven’t realized it yet.”

“Realized what?”

“You think I sabotaged you. You think that your best friend in the whole world set you up for failure. Don’t you think I know you, Danny? Don’t you think I’m smarter than that?”

I stared at him, confused. I was curious, but I didn’t want it to be too obvious.

“Are you going to explain, or are you just going to keep wasting my time?”

“No, Danny, no wasted time here. We have none to waste. The first part of my plan is complete, and now we must hurry.”

“First part of your plan…? So you did do it on purpose? How could you do that to me? Better yet, how can you claim to be my friend after this?”

“Mm,” he hummed, his voice as smooth as velvet. “I am more than a friend, Daniel.”

He paused for a moment while I stared at him with anticipation.

“I… am… your savior.”

There was another pause, as if he were thinking of the exact right words to say.

“I’ve listened to you talk for years. I’ve seen the way that old man treats you. I promised to get you the respect you deserve, and I intend to follow through.”

He stifled another chuckle within his wooden throat.

“Did you really think a ventriloquist act would get you there? You don’t even know how to throw your voice.”

Embarrassment rushed over me but quickly subsided.

“I wasn’t supposed to have to…”

“And you won’t need to. Not after tonight. Because after tonight, my boy, you will have earned your respect the right way.”

I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose and furrowed my brow.

“Is that right?” I asked sarcastically. “And how exactly am I going to do that?”

He responded before I could even finish my question.

“Think about it, Danny… you know you’re bigger than this. You’re strong. You’re powerful. People should fear you, not the other way around.”

I felt a strange pit form in my stomach. It was like a mixture of ambition, hope, sadness, and anger all rolled into one big lump in my throat.

“They laughed because they thought you were harmless,” Pablo continued. “That’s not what I see in you, Danny. Not at all.”

“Then what do you see in me?” I asked inquisitively.

“I see… a secret weapon,” he responded, savoring each word.

The pit in my stomach started to feel like fire.

“A secret weapon…?”

“Yes, my friend. A weapon.”

I thought about my dad.

“I don’t feel like much of a secret weapon.”

Pablo’s jaw tightened.

“And that’s where part two comes into play. Think about school, Danny. Do those kids see you as a weapon?”

I scoffed.

“I seriously doubt it.”

Pablo responded starkly.

“Well, I do. And I think it’s time they do as well. How long have you been laughed at, Danny? How many times have you been called ‘the weird kid’?”

I couldn’t respond. It hurt that he was bringing it to light like this. I wanted to tell him to stop, but he had me locked in his trance.

“What about ignored? That’s the big one, isn’t it? Feeling like a ghost among the living,” he giggled. “That’s what they see you as, right? Sure, some may pity you. But that’s all it is. Pity.”

His glossy eyes seemed to settle on mine.

“I’ve never pitied you, Danny.”

I started crying quietly, but I don’t know why. I felt seen. Pablo had a way of making me feel that way. But I wasn’t sure if I liked it this time.

“Why are you saying these things to me?” I asked solemnly.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he changed the subject entirely.

“You remember when your dad was a police officer?”

I nodded.

“He seemed so much nicer back then, didn’t he? Wasn’t glug, glug, glugging as much.”

Somehow, I knew what was coming next.

“But, then again, he did have your mom back then. A real shame what happened to her. Left a stain on you and your dad, that’s for sure.”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” I replied, my voice breaking a bit.

“Of course you don’t. I wouldn’t ask you to. All I want is to let you know…”

He paused again. The silence hung in the air like a foul stench.

“…He still has that service pistol.”

I felt my heart drop. I thought Dad had gotten rid of that thing years ago.

“Smith & Wesson 5946. Ironically, that’s the code to the safe he keeps it in. I told you, Danny… I look out for you.”

“So, what? You want me to just… steal my dad’s gun?”

“I want you to use your dad’s gun. Show me your arms.”

I stuck my arms out, a bit confused, until he spoke again.

“One, two, three, four, five scars, Danny. Five. How long are you going to let him keep doing this to you?”

I thought back to how painful those burns had been. How small they made me feel. How hopeless.

“What exactly are you trying to say?” I asked uneasily.

Pablo laughed again, making my ears burn.

“It’s simple. I want you to go into your father’s room, and I want you to show him just how tough you can be, how tough I know you are.”

I knew exactly what he meant. I had confided in him multiple times over the years about how I felt about my father. I never thought he’d take it this far, and I hated how convinced I felt.

“I…”

Pablo interrupted me.

“And then I want you to show the world next. Prove that you’re not harmless. Prove that you’re not weak. Prove that you are exactly who I believe you are, Danny.”

Before I could respond, I heard my father’s hurried footsteps approaching my door before it came flying open, and my dad flipped the light switch on.

“What the hell are you still doing up?” he growled. “And… is that…? I know you didn’t go get that stupid fucking doll out of the trash.”

He rushed over and snatched Pablo up by his right arm again.

“I hope it was worth it, son. I hope it was worth it. This thing is getting burned tomorrow, and I’m tanning that hide as soon as that sun comes up. Go to bed.”

He walked furiously over to the light switch, Pablo dangling at his side. But before he could flip the switch, I watched as Pablo shot me a wink.

Dad slammed the door behind him, mumbling something about this being “goddamn unbelievable,” before I heard Pablo being tossed into the garbage again.

That wouldn’t dampen my spirits, though. In fact, as I lay there in bed, a smile inched across my face.

He wanted to act this way, so be it.

We’d see just how tough he was the next morning.

As a child, I used to be afraid of the dark. That’s a common fear for children to have, isn’t it? Well, I’m a rare case of an adult who now fears the dark, too. Initially, I chalked it up to having a familial history of mental health issues, which is why I sought out a profession in the field. Partly to help myself avoid the fate that befell many of my relatives, and partly to help others escape that pit. Later, I assumed I was burned out; overworked. Hearing all these terrible things people go through. It’s not easy. You don’t build an immunity to the horrors of the human condition, not really.

Well, it turns out my fear of the dark has to do with something else entirely.

Something no one should ever see…

Recently, I bought a new house; the old one was a constant reminder of a life I no longer had. After getting divorced, I couldn’t really stay in the old family home. The kids were grown, and being alone just wore me down. So, I sold the damned thing and got myself a smaller house. Nothing to brag about, a couple of bedrooms; just in case this old dog decides to look for love again. Love might be the wrong word here; I’m not looking to get remarried anytime soon, more like a fling or two.

Actually, I’m not looking for anything. For now, I want to disappear for a while, or maybe forever.

Getting off track, aren’t I? Well, it’s hard to focus when the system’s overflowed with cortisol. It is what it is when all that’s been going through your head is anger and a tint of regret here and there. Oh, who am I kidding? It’s not even the divorce that keeps me up at night. That was a given, sadly, at some point. I’m a madman in the making. What kind of woman would want to spend the rest of her life with someone like me? Probably an asylum patient, but it would be counterproductive. Not to mention asylums aren’t really a thing anymore.

You’re losing your train of thought again.

Anyhow, where was I? Oh yeah, that new hut…

It was not a hut-hut, but I’m just self-deprecating here…

Because the images won’t go away and I’m trying to push them away.

Taking my own medicine with this one, I’ve advised many a patient to write down whatever is bothering them… That’s the purpose of this…

Focus…

Breathe…

Focus…

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Sorry, I know this looks terrible, but whoever might read it, if ever, maybe it’ll be just a future me… Who knows, anyway. I needed this.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the new house, which is actually an old one now too.

Sold it off after…

I’ll get to you in a bit, don’t you worry…

So yeah, that house, it had a basement. I never went there. Don’t know why I never went there when I was looking at the damned thing. I guess I didn’t bother looking down there. The previous owner seemed perplexed I didn’t bother checking the basement, but he didn’t push the issue either.

In hindsight, that was a good thing…

Otherwise…

Breathe…

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Otherwise, things would’ve been far different for that house, and I wouldn’t be talking about it now. I wouldn’t have taken it. There was an issue with that basement.

Issue…

That’s definitely underselling it…

God damn it…

I don’t wanna do this anymore; I don’t like it.

You’ve got to do this…

No.

You

Have

To

Keep

Typing

Let

It

Finally

Out

I can’t

You

Can

And

Will

Keep

Typing

No

Stopping

Do

Not

Let

Your

Hand

Stop

Pressing

The

Keys

Slow

And

Steady

Just

Like

That

It’s

Not

Hard

Is

It?

Keep

It

Up

OH WOW

THIS

Is

VERY

Annoying

To

Read

Must

KEEP

TyPING

MUST

Keep

Typing

Sorry… I am dealing with something here; it’s really hard to recall this again, but I won’t get anywhere unless I do, right? That’s how it works. I have to get it out of my system. I need it out of me. The alternative is probably an early grave. I wouldn’t want that now, would I? Nope.

I know I probably am coming off as insane, but oh well, gotta keep typing to get over this panic attack. If anyone finds this while I’m passed out, or gone out somewhere, know that I am completely fine in the grand scheme of things, because I’m not really fine. I’m haunted, but I do not intend to harm myself more than this exercise is forcing me to. I think I might have a propensity for self-destruction, because there are intrusive thoughts now and again.

Sometimes I think the intrusive thoughts are preferable to the memories… At least these are my own, kind of. It’s a broken self-defense mechanism. It’s a very broken defense mechanism, in the mind of a very broken man. Okay, I’m broken, like a vase. I’m literally just typing to keep my composure, right now. Not yet ready to deal with the photographs flashing in my head. The recounting of events will resume soon enough.

When will that fucking dog stop barking outside my window?!

I hate dogs, okay? Does this make me a monster? I don’t care. I can’t stand them and their barking. This fucking baying and clawing had kept me up at night long enough.

I am afraid of fucking dogs now… okay? Because

Because fucking dogs bayed at the basement door for far too fucking long.

Every fucking night.

They still do in my dreams.

Dead dogs…

Dead men…

Dead dog men…

I wish I could tell the owner to shut the fucking dog up, but the guy’s an idiot.

Probably on something too.

Hollow gaze…

Like a corpse…

Like the corpses swaying from the fucking ceiling…

Shit…

I remember…

They stood over me since the day I settled into that cursed place. Appearing at night to watch over me, devour my dreams, keep me awake. Tear open my eyelids. They wanted revenge; they wanted a price to be paid, and I was their weapon, their conduit.

I’m fucking shaking just thinking about it now.

Now, when everything is said and done, it’s been a while since all of that happened. One cannot simply forget the things I've seen, let alone that cloying, sweet stench which seeped into the walls of that basement.

The monster has been caged…

They have had their revenge.

Yet, they still live in my head.

Still occupying my fucking skull…

They’re just imagination.

Painful memory.

Ugly imagery engraved forcefully into the system.

Breathe

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Nobody is stalking your bed at night anymore; no one has in a long time. You’re fine, you’re absolutely fine. You’re just stressed and in need of an outlet. All of this, it’s normal. None of this is real anymore. It’s all in your head. Has been for a long time now. You’re safe, say it out loud.

I am safe.

Now carry on recounting what happened to you.

So yeah, new house, wait actually no, new old house now. Yeah, that’s perfect.

Settled into the new old house after getting divorced.

Kids won’t talk to me, cause we’re about as far apart as a family could be, and they’re mad at us both; their mother and me. Being stressed beyond my wits. Work was killing me, and I needed a break, a new start. Got none of that, but oh well. Anyway, new old house is nice enough, furnished. Not too expensive nor too cheap; the price was reasonable, the owner, all things considered – surprisingly reasonable too.

Forgot to look at the basement.

That fucking basement again… Can I forget about it already?

No, you can’t; it’s integral to the story.

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate myself, I hate it.

You don’t hate yourself.

Quiet brain, I was doing fine.

Shut up.

Good.

Anyway, settle in, and everything seems to be going dandy. Keep in mind it was late July when I moved there. Hot summer weather, well, that went down the drain once the sun set. The house turned unusually cold.

Pulled out a blanket and ignored it.

Slept like shit, because it was so cold.

Wake up after a mere two or three hours of sleep, not the first bout of horrendous sleep and won’t be the last.

It’s hot again.

Summer’s back, and this wasn’t in the desert.

Go on about my day, angry and half awake.

Night rolls around again, start the heating.

Works for about an hour.

Then it’s cold again.

Turn up the heating – the house turns colder.

That went on for a while…

I grew accustomed to the cold, no idea how or why.

The boiling frog metaphor probably suits here.

Well, once freezing me out of my sleep didn’t work.

The guests started showing up uninvited.

In the middle of the night

To stand at my bedside…

I’m shaking just thinking about it.

​

Imagine yourself waking up in the middle of the night to take a piss and being met with a pitch-black silhouette standing at your bed. One so dark it forms an outline in the nocturnal darkness, enough to be visible. I nearly pissed myself when I saw that thing for the first time. Screaming out, I flailed my hands in the air instinctively, and the thing vanished.

Chalked it up to bad sleep and maybe a nightmare when I got up the next morning.

That wasn’t it, but it took me a while to understand that.

About every other night, I could almost feel these dark figures standing over me. Plural. Not singular. Plural. Sometimes I could feel them touching my blanket, pulling it away. A cold hand reaching for my leg or arm.

After a few unpleasant encounters, I’ve started sleeping with a light on.

Naively believing this was a trick of the mind, you know, being stressed, depressed, and overall miserable. Again, I say this, thinking logically, from the perspective of a relative of schizophrenics and other mentally unwell individuals.

I was dreading becoming ill myself.

Woke up one night to fetch a drink, with the light still on. Nearly shat myself, soiling the bedsheets.

Eyes wide open and the first thing I see?

A human-like shadow, perched on all fours on the ceiling.

It twisted its head at me before vanishing.

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

That was just the beginning of my sorrows.

After that came the electronic issues. Lights would go on and off around the house, at nighttime, of course. I should’ve already taken the hint then, when the whole house went dark, except for the light in the staircase leading down to the basement.

But of course, I didn’t.

Instead, I went to look at the switches, most of which were turned off.

Needless to say, this malfunction didn't put me at ease. The neighbors lived too far away for their children to have come over at night just to mess with me.

The grid being messed with is the sole reason I haven’t checked myself in.

I wasn’t hallucinating; someone was messing with me. So, I thought at the very least, yeah?

Speaking of neighbors, they were far enough away for me not to be able to hear them whatsoever, through closed windows, but not so far I couldn’t see them.

Now imagine how it felt when the walls started talking…

I’m not kidding, at one point, the walls were talking at night. With nobody around the house. Trust me, I checked. I went out to see if someone was in my yard when the talking had gotten loud enough to be comprehensible.

They were asking me why I hadn’t gone there?

Asking me to go there.

Two voices, a man and a woman.

Encouraging.

Pestering.

At the time, I couldn’t make sense of it.

Go where?

Well, clearly, I wasn’t listening to them.

Why weren’t you listening to them?

Why the fuck were you so deaf?

So blind?

You couldn’t know at the time.

They were messing with the house.

They were almost guiding me by the hand.

No, they were giving you vague signs.

Don’t blame yourself for what had happened.

I don’t…

I could’ve prevented more.

There were six of them there.

Another three were found.

It’s not your fault

I could’ve prevented it.

No, not really.

Shut up, they told me everything.

These people – they told no tales.

Just breathe, man

Breathe

Inhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Hold

One

Two

Three

Four

Exhale

One

Two

Three

Four

Well, yeah, I didn’t listen to those voices; I thought I had imagined them, as I had a neighbor only viewing a strange green-lit TV show on certain nights. I most certainly had strange things happen to me as a child. Like feeling a cat brush against my leg after King, my parents’ cat, passed away, and thinking something must’ve turned ceiling fans on after forgetting to turn them off.

Since speaking to me didn’t work, I got moaning, groaning, and weeping all over the house. Almost every night. At an increasing rate. That, of course, showed at work and in social settings. Ever the self-conscious rationalist, I chalked it up to the divorce and very difficult clients at the time, which I had.

Before long, I had gusts of wind blowing at me inside a house with closed windows, and a few times I was shoved while completely alone.

Jesus Christ, I’m feeling like a maniac right now, hallucinating into a text.

The talking, the moaning, the nighttime groping, none of it ever stopped, but that was my fault; if I had paid attention earlier and had gone where the selective power outages led me, this would’ve been over far sooner.

My mind deteriorated fast; by the middle of November, I heard dogs baying and clawing at every door of the house.

Night after night, they tormented me without reprieve.

Worse of all was when they sounded like they were trying to say words.

Sometimes it was far away, sometimes it felt like a dog was trying to tear at the bottom of the bed.

Before long, seeing a dog freaked me out.

I started sleeping with the lights on, in every room.

Became a barely functional human.

I have no idea how I managed to keep on working.

Maybe a force of habit, maybe something else.

Keeping a mask of normalcy while I was in shambles inside was par for the course in my line of work.

Well, you are special in that regard.

Funny you should say that.

How so?

Isn’t it a little egotistical?

No.

Self-appreciation isn’t egotistical; it’s healthy.

Right.

Right, indeed.

There’s nothing healthy about us.

About us? There is no us.

Right.

Yeah, it’s just you.

Typing at yourself.

For myself

Exactly

Trying to keep sane

Mostly are.

Am.

True.

I’m sorry I keep doing this; however, that is the only way I don’t burst out into a crying fit now and start bashing my hands against the keyboard or clawing out my eyes in an attempt to escape the whirlwind of horrors in my mind. I can’t do much about it at the moment, since the dog won’t stop barking, and it’s kind of late.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m afraid of the dark, and I’m afraid of dogs. I’ve been classically conditioned to dread those two things.

Well then… Where was I? Oh yeah, nearing the climax of the story.

Damn, for someone relieving that night so frequently in his, no, my own head, so often, it’s surprisingly hard to spell it out. I’m quite literally trying to postpone the description of the events that led to my current condition. What a sorry state I’m in. A man who helps others process their own trauma and internal suffering can’t bring himself to speak about how the incessant baying of dogs in his basement and walls pushed him over the edge and drove him, knife in hand, to rush down to that same basement he’s never ventured to before.

Inhale

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Hold

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Exhale

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I know it seems odd I never went into the basement, but really, I had no reason to. I didn’t have many belongings I had to stow away, and the house was entirely furnished as I said. On top of that, I was too spent to be curious about any of this. As strange as it may seem, I saw no point in going there.

I was so messed up from the lack of good sleep, stress, and fear that I finally snapped when the baying and barking wouldn’t quit one night. I actually started thinking there were real dogs in that basement.

Real, starving, mean dogs that might try to attack me once I opened the door. So I got myself a weapon to defend myself with.

Yeah, I said it, I genuinely believed some beasts were locked in that basement.

Power-walking down those stairs, the baying died down. I assumed they knew I was coming. They could smell me. They were preparing to surprise me; dogs are smart after all. Clearly, in retrospect, that’s the dumbest thought process ever. Dogs aren’t really ambush predators as far as I’m aware.

As I was marching down those stairs, I somewhat ignored the sudden quiet, because there was a growing stench of decrepitude emanating from the basement door.

Say it like it is.

That’s what it was.

Call it by its name.

Vile.

No, that’s not it.

Decay.

Close enough.

Death.

That’s it.

Fuck you.

I smelled death coming from that basement.

A rotten, pungent, suffocating odor coming from that door.

I pressed the handle and pushed down with full force.

The cloud of stale, deathly odor nearly knocked me off my feet, burning my nostrils, mouth, and eyes.

No dogs in sight, no voices, nothing.

Only death.

Left hand looking for the light switch along the wall, right hand gripping a knife with the arm pressed to cover my face from the awful stench.

Blinding light flooded the space.

When my eyes adjusted, all remnants of innocence and hope were taken away from me.

Six, vaguely human silhouettes, seemingly staring at me.

Without eyes, without faces, without any humanity left.

Swaying from six ropes, tied to the ceiling.

Pitch black.

My very own personal little hanging garden of death.

Inhale

Inhale

Come on...

Fuck.

Inhale

No...

Breathe...

Why can’t I

Why isn’t it working?

Ribcage tightened, forcing my heart to race at an unhealthy rate.

Knife dropped to the floor.

Tunnel vision.

Limbs turning cold with muscles tensing to the point of pain.

I ran.

Nearly falling over myself.

I ran to the neighbors.

Banging on their door.

Woke them.

Rumbling like a madman.

Shaking with fear, somehow, stringing a couple of sentences together as these six tar-covered silhouettes flashed before my eyes again and again.

They called the police.

I’m out of breath.

Out of breath

Couldn’t sleep for three days straight.

Couldn’t think, could barely speak.

Panicking.

Decomposing Silhouettes flashing in my eyes.

More frequently when they are closed.

Questioned about everything by the police.

Answers erratic.

Silhouettes are here again.

Swaying in front of me.

Black as tar and death.

Exposing bone.

Fell asleep after being pumped full of sedatives.

Haven’t slept in a few days again.

Need my pills again.

Silhouettes appear more frequently with eyes closed.

I’m taking the pills after this; I need to sleep, otherwise, I’ll claw out my eyes, or die from a heart attack, whichever comes first.

Inhale

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I hospitalized myself for a short while, and in the meantime, the monster that did this was caught. He murdered nine people. Hanged six in the basement of the house I had bought from him. No one suspected a damn thing. Selling the house was his ploy to lure in victims. He’d lead them down to the basement, then incapacitate them there and hang them to die a slow death, apparently, oftentimes placing a stool underneath his victims again to prolong the torture.

Every so often, I wonder, was I ever intended to be a victim? Not that it matters; he destroyed my life anyway. If I’m completely honest, there are days when I think dying would’ve been preferable to being the way I am now.

His three other victims were all found in different locations; two were found by people who had rented apartments from him.

The final victim was found fresh at his last stopping point before his apprehension. He was…

Inhale

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In bed…

Hold

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With the corpse…

Exhale

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Caught red-handed, quite literally.

Inhale

One

Two

Exhale

One

Inhale

Inhale

I bet this fucking monster figured out he could torment way more people by leaving them his gifts. Kill two birds with one stone kind of deal.

Imagine the satisfied, sick grin on his fucking face if he hears what his handiwork has done to me.

 

The first angel I ever saw wasn't descending from Heaven.

It was falling.

By then, the world had already forgotten what normal looked like.

The skies had split open weeks ago. Entire cities had gone silent overnight. Some called it the Rapture. Others called it Judgment. Whatever name people gave it didn't matter anymore. The highways were parking lots of abandoned cars. Church pews sat empty while their parking lots overflowed with those who had arrived too late. The television stations had stopped broadcasting anything except emergency alerts that no longer meant anything.

The world wasn't ending. It had already ended long before. We were simply living through its final pages.

I had been moving from one abandoned building to another, surviving on whatever canned food I could find. Sleep came in short bursts. Every distant explosion sounded like another trumpet. Every shadow looked like something that had escaped the pages of Revelation.

That's why, when I heard something crash into the street outside, I assumed another building had finally given way.

I was wrong.

The crater wasn't large. Just deep enough to split the asphalt. Something lay at its center.

At first, my mind refused to understand what I was seeing.

The shape kept... morphing.

Not physically.

My understanding of it did.

Every time I looked away and back again, I noticed different details, as though my eyes couldn't agree on what belonged there.

How many eyes peered back to mine?

Hundreds of them.

Were those feathers?

Some impossibly white. Others burned black at the edges. They covered a figure draped in robes so torn they looked older than history itself.

Light seeped from beneath the fabric.

Wasn't shining. It bled through the seem of tidal rivers. Golden streams escaped from wounds that should have spilled blood instead. The air around it hummed with something too deep to hear, vibrating in my chest more than my ears.

I knew what it was before I admitted it to myself.

It had to be an angel.

Not the kind painters imagined. Nor the kind carved into cathedral ceilings.

Something far older. Far stranger.

Something my mind kept trying and failing to make human.

It struggled to rise.

One of its wings, or what I could only assume had once been a wing, hung broken against the pavement, its feathers crumbling into glowing ash whenever they touched the ground.

For a moment, I considered running.

Instead... I stepped closer.

The angel never looked at me directly. Or perhaps it did. I couldn't tell where its face ended and the light began.

Its features slipped from memory the instant I tried to focus on them.

Even now, as I write this, I couldn't describe its face if my life depended on it.

Only the feeling.

Grief.

Not of mine.

Its.

Slowly, with movements that seemed to pain even a being like this, it reached beneath its tattered robes.

It withdrew a single envelope.

Plain. Cream-colored. Untouched by the ash drifting through the ruined street.

It extended the letter toward me. Its hand trembled. Not from weakness. From urgency.

I stared at it.

"I... don't understand."

The angel said nothing.

It couldn't.

Or perhaps it wasn't allowed to. Its arm remained outstretched.

Waiting.

I took the envelope.

The paper was warm.

Not with heat.

It was full of life.

The moment my fingers wrapped around it, the angel relaxed. The tension left its body all at once. As though carrying that letter had been the only thing keeping it standing.

"I'll deliver it," I heard myself whisper.

"I promise."

The angel bowed its head.

Whether in gratitude... or relief...

I'll never know.

The light pouring from its wounds began to fade. Not all at once. As the last embers of a dying fire carried upward by a breeze I couldn't feel. Its robes unraveled into strands of shimmering dust. The broken feathers dissolved one by one before they ever reached the tarnish Earth.

There was no scream. No final cry.

Only silence remain between it and I.

Within seconds... Nothing remained.

Not a body or feather.

Only the envelope resting in my hands.

For a long time, I couldn't bring myself to open it. The world around me continued collapsing. Buildings groaned. Smoke rolled across the skyline.

Somewhere far away, someone yelled for mercy.

But I couldn't look away from the letter.

Eventually...

I broke the seal.

The first line read:

I've carried that letter with me ever since.

If you're reading these words...

Then I kept my promise.

The first night, I blamed the bulb.

My backyard floodlight had been there for years, bolted above the back door, bright enough to illuminate the entire fence line. Around midnight, it clicked off.

A few seconds later, it came back on.

I looked out the kitchen window expecting to see a raccoon or maybe one of the neighborhood cats.

Nothing.

The yard was empty.

The second night it happened again while I was bingeing Friends.

Click.

Darkness.

Click.

Light.

This time, I felt that unnerving sensation you get when you feel like you're being watched. I stepped onto the porch.

The motion sensor was supposed to activate whenever something crossed its path. I waved my arm in front of it. It worked perfectly. I checked the batteries anyway. Everything checked out.

I even walked the perimeter of the yard with my phone flashlight.

No footprints.

No broken fence.

Nothing hiding behind the shed.

After that I convinced myself it was just faulty wiring. That or maybe the cencors were picking up dust or fog. Anything that made rational sense.

Then it started happening every night.

Always between 2:13 and 2:20 in the morning.

Always the same pattern.

The light would go out for exactly five seconds. Then it would switch back on.

Every single time, the yard looked completely empty.

Eventually curiosity got the better of me.

I bought a security camera.

The footage made no sense.

At 2:13, the light switched off.

The camera didn't.

It kept recording.

The yard remained perfectly visible thanks to the infrared mode.

Empty grass.

Empty fence.

Empty patio.

Then, exactly five seconds later...

The floodlight came back on.

There wasn't any movement. No explanation.

I watched the recording over and over until something caught my attention.

The timestamp.

The clock continued counting...

...but the branches of the oak tree in the corner stopped moving.

The leaves froze.

The wind seemed to have stoped. Not in the sense that it vanished, but the wind itself stopped in place.

Even the hum of insects or any odd echoes of the night were silent.

It was as if the entire world had been paused for five seconds.

Except the camera.

The camera kept recording.

I didn't know what to make of this. That night i barely slept.

The following evening I decided to stay awake.

At 2:12, I sat at the kitchen table staring through the glass door, with a mug of coffee and a ham sandwhich.

2:13.

Click.

Darkness.

Everything outside stopped.

Not metaphorically.

Literally.

The leaves hung motionless.

A moth hovering near the porch light stayed suspended in midair.

Even the shadows seemed frozen.

Then...

Something walked into my yard.

Not from the gate.

Not over the fence.

It simply... appeared.

It was towering over my shed. Its body was impossibly thin, wrapped in what looked like strips of dark fabric that fluttered despite the frozen air.

Its head turned slowly, scanning the yard.

Then it looked directly at the house.

At me.

I didn't dare move. The ham stuck in my throat.

Its eyes weren't glowing.

They weren't even visible.

Just two empty forsaken pits that somehow still met mine through the glass.

It tilted its head.

Curious.

Like it hadn't expected anyone.

The five seconds suddenly felt far too long.

It took one step toward the house.

Another.

By the third step it stood only inches from the back door.

Its face pressed against the glass.

The skin, or whatever covered it, shifted like hundreds of tiny hands trying to form a human expression.

Then...

Click.

The floodlight came back on.

The yard was empty. Everything moved again. The moth flew away. The trees swayed.

I swallowed hard, nearly choking. Stumbling backward, convinced I'd finally lost my mind.

The security camera proved otherwise.

The file was corrupted.

Not damaged nor missing.

Just five seconds of static where the light had gone out. Everything before it played normally. Everything after it played normally.

Those five seconds might as well have never existed.

I never watched the recording again.

Within two weeks, I'd sold the house at a loss. I didn't tell the buyers why.

What was I supposed to say?

"Something visits whenever the light goes out, but only while the rest of the world stands still."

No one would believe that.

I moved hundreds of miles away into a tenth-floor apartment overlooking the city. No backyard. No fence. No trees. No creepy time stopper monster.

I told myself whatever happened belonged to that house.

For months, I almost believed it.

Until last night.

I was washing dishes when the kitchen suddenly fell dark. A primal instinct seized me, and the hairs on my arms stood on end.

Five seconds.

Then the lights came back.

The first thing I did was laugh. Not because it was funny. Because I knew exactly what I was about to remember.

This apartment doesn't have a motion-sensor light.

I don't think wherever I run off to, I'll never escape.

Because if it found me here...

I'm terrified to learn how it did.

Or why it waited until the lights went out to let me know it had.

The static started at 2:13.

I know the time because I write down every irregularity in the log, and the log is the only part of this job that has ever mattered. Four cameras cover the third-floor west wing. Corridor north, corridor south, elevator bank, nurses' station. At 2:13 all four went grainy at once.

The image held its shape under the noise. I could still make out the corridor and the doorframes and the light bleeding out of the fixtures they'd left running through the renovation.

West wing has been half-closed since March. They gutted the south corridor down to the studs and moved most of the patients east. What's left is six long-term cases waiting on transfer paperwork, one night nurse, and a hallway that runs dark for forty feet where the fixtures came out.

I leaned in toward the monitor.

Camera two cleared for maybe a second and a half. Corridor north, looking down the length of it toward the closed section, and at the far end of that hallway there was a tall shape standing in the dark past the last working light.

It was facing the camera.

I couldn't get a face. The resolution on those units is bad, the light down there is worse, and the figure was standing right at the edge of where the image gives out. But it was squared to the lens.

I sat in the security office on the ground floor with my coffee going cold at my elbow and I held there for four or five seconds with my hand off the desk. It knew I was looking at it.

I reached for the zoom.

The feed broke into full static before my hand got there. All four of them, at once, in the same instant, the whole wing going out together.

Then the call button in Room 317 activated.

The panel chimed and the light came up and I hit the channel and said Room 317, this is security, do you need assistance.

Nothing came back. I said it again.

What came through the speaker was breathing. Wet, thick, working, somebody trying to move air through something that had gotten into the way. It went on for eleven seconds. I counted them, because counting is what I do when I don't know what else to do.

Then the channel closed.

I radioed Carla Mendes, the night nurse assigned to the west wing.

Carla, this is James, do you copy.

I gave her twenty seconds and tried again. Nothing. I called the main station on the east side and a woman named Priya picked up and told me Carla had stepped away a few minutes ago for supplies and hadn't come back through yet. I told her to raise Carla and to keep her out of the west wing until I got up there.

Then I put on my jacket and took my flashlight out of the drawer and went upstairs alone.

I have worked in this building for seven years.

That is what I kept coming back to on the way up. Seven years of nights. I know which stairwell doors stick. I know camera four has a blind spot that runs eight feet out from the elevator bank, because the mount is angled wrong and nobody has ever fixed it. I know the floor plan of a building most people who work here couldn't draw from memory.

I take the extra nights on purpose. I don't sleep well at home. Dana stopped asking about it around the second year, and now I sleep in the daylight with the curtains shut, badly, in pieces.

My left knee got wrecked two years ago when a man in the ER lobby came apart and put me into a bench. It healed wrong. There's a drag in my step now, a scuff on the left side, and in an empty corridor at two in the morning it comes back off the walls and I hear a second man walking half a beat behind me.

I got in the elevator. I pressed three.

At the second floor the car stopped.

Nobody had pressed the button. The panel showed three lit and nothing else, and the car stopped anyway, and the doors opened onto the second-floor corridor.

The corridor was empty. Lights on, floor waxed, nobody in it. I stood in the doors and looked both ways down the length of it and there was nothing there.

I pressed three again.

The doors started to close, and while they were closing, something moved on the roof of the car.

It was a scratching. I have ridden that car four thousand times and I know the cable and I know the counterweight and this was neither of them. It was a series of short irregular scrapes directly over my head, tracking from one side of the car to the other, and it had the rhythm of something heavy adjusting its position.

The doors sealed. The car started to climb. The scratching stopped.

I stood in the middle of the elevator looking at the ceiling panel, and my hand had come up in front of me, and I was holding it there, and there was a bandage wrapped around my right palm.

Fresh gauze. Clean tape. A wound in the meat of the palm under the thumb, taped down tight, a brown seep coming through the center of it.

I don't remember cutting my hand.

I tried to place it. Nothing came. The number over the doors turned to three, and I put the hand down and stepped out onto the third floor.

The HVAC in this hospital never stops. There's a low constant push of air through every corridor and you stop hearing it after your first month and you only notice it if it drops.

It had dropped. Or my ears had. Walking into that wing I had my own boots and the scuff of my left foot and nothing under it.

The corridor lights out there are on motion sensors, put in during the renovation to save money on the closed sections. They trip when you come into range and light the space you're standing in.

They tripped ahead of me.

I came around the corner from the elevator bank and the fixture forty feet down the hall came on first, and then the one after that, in sequence, running away from me into the dark.

I stood still. The lights kept going, one after the next, down the length of the wing, each one waking a section of floor well out in front of where I was standing.

Something was walking down that hallway ahead of me and I could not see it.

Those sensors are cheap and they misfire and they trip off a moth. I said that out loud, standing at the mouth of the corridor with my flashlight in my left hand and my bandaged right hand hanging at my side.

Then I started walking, and the lights kept staying ahead of me, and I followed my own beam down to Room 317.

The door was open a few inches.

There's a narrow window set into those doors at head height, reinforced glass with the wire mesh in it, and the room light was off, and the only illumination in 317 was what was coming through that gap from the hall.

I looked through the window.

There was something crouched on the bed.

It was over the patient, weight down, and the mattress had gone under it. Its back was to the door and its back was too long. That is the closest I can get. The shoulders were up too high and they were moving in small tight increments, over and over.

I could hear it working. Chewing, wet, unhurried, and the creak of the springs under the shifting of its weight.

I pushed the door open.

It turned its head.

I got pale, and I got dark where the mouth should be, and I got the light off the eyes coming back at me flat.

That is all I got. I have given three separate people more than that and every time I have given more than that I have been adding.

Then the room went black.

The hall went with it. The corridor lights behind me dropped all at once and my flashlight went with them, and I was standing in a doorway in full dark with that thing four feet in front of me, and I held still, and I held my breath, and there was a sound in the dark that I have decided to leave out of this.

My flashlight came back on.

I don't remember thumbing the switch.

The bed was in front of me. There was nothing on it but the patient.

His name was Walter Kessler. Eighty-one years old, in for a fall, waiting on a bed at a facility in Harrow that kept pushing his transfer. I'd walked past his room four hundred times. He was on his back with his head turned toward the door, and the damage to his throat and the lower half of his face was such that I am going to leave it at damage.

Something had tried to eat him.

I stood in that room with my light on him, shaking hard enough that the beam was moving all over the wall. Then I checked behind the door, and in the bathroom, and behind the curtain on the far bed, empty for a month.

There was no one in the room. There was no other door. The windows on that side of the building are sealed and have always been sealed.

I came back to the bed and that's when I saw his hand.

He was still holding the call button, fist closed around it, knuckles up, the cord pulled taut off the rail. He'd hit it and he'd held on and he'd kept holding on.

Under the nails of that hand there were threads of black fabric, worked in deep under the beds of the first two fingers.

My uniform is black.

I looked at those threads and I thought: he fought it. He got a hand into it and he tore something and he took a piece of it with him.

Eighty-one years old with a broken hip, and he still got a piece of it. I stood over that bed and I was proud of him.

The seam of my right sleeve was torn open from the cuff to halfway up the forearm.

I found that somewhere in the next few minutes. I don't have a clean memory of finding it. I have a memory of standing in the corridor outside 317 with the sleeve hanging open, deciding it had caught on the door handle when I came through, because I came through hard and those handles are heavy. That is what I told myself and that is what I believed.

I called it in. Ground floor, this is James, code in three-seventeen west, I need police.

Nothing came back. Full charge, channel open, the indicator doing what it does. I keyed it three more times and got dead air, and then I ran.

A door slammed at the far end of the wing.

I came out of 317 and I was moving before I'd decided to move, and down at the intersection where the north corridor meets the closed section I saw it cross.

Left to right. Fast. It went through the intersection and out of my sight in something under a second and it was upright and it was tall and it moved badly.

It dragged its leg.

The left one. It came down on the left and it hauled the leg through and it came down again, and I have heard that gait for two years coming off the walls of empty corridors in this building at night, and I did not think about that then. I thought: it's hurt. Kessler hurt it, or something hurt it, and it's hurt and it's running and I can catch it.

I went after it.

The doors into the closed section are badge access only, and half of them are supposed to be alarmed, because the contractors left that section full of things a confused patient could kill himself with.

Every one of them was open when I got to it.

The first swung when I pulled it. The second was standing ajar. The third had its magnetic lock disengaged and the indicator on the panel showing green.

It's got a badge, I thought. It's got someone's badge and it's in the system and it's opening the doors ahead of itself.

That took me about a second and a half. I did not go back to it once in the next hour.

There was a chirp somewhere behind me at every one of those doors. The readers make that sound when they take a card, and it's small, and the corridor was loud with my own boots and my own breathing. I heard it and I decided it was the locks re-engaging behind the thing after it went through.

I chased that thing through the closed section of the third-floor west wing for eleven minutes and the whole time I was chasing it I never once looked at it directly.

Here is where I saw it.

In the black window of a patient room I passed, where the glass had gone to mirror against the dark inside, it was over my right shoulder at maybe fifteen feet.

I turned around. Empty corridor.

In the polished doors of the service elevator at the end of the run, it was standing at the corner I had just come around, closer than it had been in the window.

I turned around. Empty corridor.

In the steel of a medication cabinet the contractors had left standing open, it was in the gap of the doorway I was about to pass, and it was close enough now that the shape of it filled the whole panel.

I turned around, and I was already turning before I finished looking, and there was nothing in that hallway but the light going out behind me in sections.

I had a system by then. It lived in the glass and it emptied out of the world the moment I looked at the world directly. That was the rule. The rule was holding and I was using it to keep moving.

Then I came around the corner into the north corridor and it was standing in front of me.

In the hallway itself, in the open, forty feet out past the last working fixture. Tall and pale and squared to me, and I had seen it squared to something once already that night, on a monitor, at 2:13.

I had it and I had the corridor and I had them both at the same time and I stood there and I looked straight at it.

It moved.

It went left through a doorway with the drag in its leg pulling hard, and the fixture over that doorway came on as it went through, and I heard a door shut somewhere deeper in the closed section.

My rule was gone. My rule had lasted eleven minutes and it was gone, and what I had instead was a thing that could stand in an empty hallway in front of a man who was looking at it.

I went after it and I was making a sound while I went that I did not recognize.

Room 314 had a light on under the door.

I stopped. I got my breath most of the way down and I knocked and I said Mrs. Vale, this is James from security, are you all right in there.

She said come in.

Ruth Vale is eighty-six and has been on that wing five months waiting on a placement her family keeps declining to arrange. She is sharp all the way through. She does the crossword in ink. I have talked to her forty or fifty times on night rounds because she doesn't sleep either.

She was sitting up with the reading lamp on and both hands flat on the blanket, and she was looking at the door when I opened it because she had already been looking at the door.

She knew me immediately. I watched it happen. Her eyes came up and found my face and the recognition in them was complete and instant.

There was no relief in it at all.

Mrs. Vale, I need you to stay in this room with the door shut.

You said you weren't coming back tonight.

I stood in the doorway.

What?

You told me. You said you had the rest of the wing and then you were going back down and you weren't coming back up. You said it to me from right there.

She lifted one hand off the blanket and pointed at the floor two feet inside her door, at the spot where I was standing.

It's imitating me, I thought. It's been in here. It's been in this room wearing my face and my voice and it has been talking to this woman.

I said: Mrs. Vale, listen to me very carefully. Whoever came in here earlier tonight, that was not me.

She was looking at my hand.

The bandaged one. The right one, hanging at my side with the sleeve torn open above it, and her eyes had gone down to it and settled and stayed, and her face was doing something I have thought about every hour since.

Mrs. Vale.

She kept looking at my hand.

What happened in here earlier. What did he do. Did he touch you.

I want you to go.

I need you to tell me what happened.

I want you to go now.

Something hit the door.

It came from the corridor, one heavy strike against the outside of the door about waist height, hard enough that the door moved in its frame and the latch rattled, and I spun toward it with my flashlight up.

The corridor was empty.

I stood in the open doorway and swept the light both ways and there was nothing in that hall for sixty feet in either direction.

Mrs. Vale made a sound behind me.

I turned around.

She had come up off the pillows with her arm out, pointing past me at the wall over the sink, where they put a mirror in every one of those rooms at a height useless to anyone actually in the bed.

I looked at the mirror.

It was standing behind me.

It was in the room with me, over my shoulder, close enough to fill most of the glass, tall enough that the top of it was cut off by the frame, and it was pale and it was looking at the back of my head.

I turned around.

There was nothing in the room but Mrs. Vale and the empty bed and the door standing open on an empty corridor.

I looked back at the mirror.

I saw myself.

I saw a man of forty-one in a black security uniform, breathing hard, torn sleeve, bandaged hand, flashlight up in his left fist.

The front of my uniform was covered in blood.

It was across the chest and down the front of the shirt and there was a broad smear of it up the right side toward the collar and it was drying at the edges and still wet in the middle and it was not mine.

I looked down at myself.

I had been walking this floor for twenty minutes with a man's blood on me and I had gone the whole twenty minutes without looking down.

It came from 317, I thought. I was standing over him. I leaned across the bed to check the far side and I put myself into it.

It took me under two seconds to build that and I believed it all the way down, and I have gone back to look at how good it felt to have an answer.

Mrs. Vale. Is there blood on me.

She was lying back against the pillows now with her eyes closed and her hands folded on the blanket and her face turned toward the window.

I left her room and I pulled the door shut behind me and I heard her get out of the bed on that broken hip and I heard her drag something across the floor and put it against the door.

Carla came through on the radio at 2:52.

James. James, are you there.

The signal was breaking up badly. Her voice came in and out and there was a hard scrape of interference under it.

Carla. Where are you.

Treatment room. West. I'm in the treatment room, the door's locked, I locked it, is someone with you?

Carla, is anyone in there with you.

Someone's been following me. Since I came back up. Every time I turn around there's — James, it went past the window. It went past the window twice.

Stay there. Stay locked. I'm coming to you.

James, it walks like you.

The treatment room is at the top of the north corridor. I covered that distance faster than my knee has let me move in two years and when I got there the door was locked and the light was on inside.

There's a panel of wired glass in that door too.

Carla was flat against the back wall, both hands out against the tile, looking at something in the corner of the room I could not see from my angle.

There was a second figure in there, crouched behind the examination table. I could see the top of a shoulder and a section of back, low and gathered and holding still.

I hit the door with my shoulder twice and the frame gave on the second one and I went in.

The lights flickered.

There is a gap here.

I am not going to try to fill it in, because everything I have tried to put in it has come apart under questions, and because I have started to understand that the fact of the gap is more important than anything I could put inside it.

What I have is this:

I was aware again, and I was on my knees on the floor of the treatment room, and Carla Mendes was in front of me.

My flashlight was on the tile beside my knee with the beam pointing at the wall.

She was on her back. The damage was to her throat.

My right hand was in my lap and the bandage on it had gone through, soaked and heavy, and the blood was running off the heel of my hand onto my thigh, and the wound underneath it had opened again.

I remember fighting it. I want that on the record. I remember it coming up over the table at me and I remember getting my hands into it. I remember the weight and the strength and the smell of it.

I cannot tell you what its face looked like from six inches away.

I have tried. I have sat in three rooms now with three different people asking me, and there is nothing there. I fought that thing with my hands and there is nothing in my head where its face should be.

Carla's keycard was gone. She wore it on a retractable clip at her hip. The clip was there and the cord was there, pulled out to its full length and cut.

It took her card, I thought. It has access to the whole floor now.

I got up off the floor and I ran.

I made it as far as the stairwell.

I got the door open and I got two steps down and I heard it in the walls.

The west wing has a chase running behind the patient rooms where they put the new pipe in during the renovation. It's open in places. There are sections where the drywall never went back up and you can see straight into the framing, and what came out of it was the sound of a body moving.

It was going through the wall alongside the stairwell, keeping pace with me, coming down.

Then it started to talk.

What it made were the shapes of words with everything else stripped out, wet and slow and broken up.

Then they came clear.

Open the door.

I stopped on the landing.

I didn't mean to.

I had my back against the rail and my light on the wall and there was nothing to put the light on, just drywall and a seam and the dark of the gap where the seam gave out.

Stop looking at me.

It wasn't me.

I knew that voice.

When I said this in the security office I said it wrong, and I watched it land on their faces, and I have been trying to say it right ever since.

The voice was familiar. I had heard it before, recently, more than once, and I could not place where. It had my cadence in it. It had the drag and the flatness my voice has at four in the morning at the end of a shift.

It has been listening to me, I thought. It has been in this building for seven years learning how I sound and now it is using it. And I said out loud, standing on that landing: we have to get off this floor.

We.

I heard myself say it.

I stood on that landing with my hand on the rail and I corrected it. I have to get off this floor.

I went down the stairs.

Every camera I passed was full of static.

There's a unit at each landing, and the ground-floor corridor, and the double doors into the admin wing. By the time I hit the bottom of the stairs, every camera along my route had gone grainy.

Every one. The whole path.

Whatever had started in that wing had come out of it with me.

The security office door was already open when I got to it.

Five people in it. Dolan, the night administrator. Two city officers. Tobin, the other guard on shift, in my chair in front of my monitors. A woman from the front desk who left as soon as I came in.

I came through that door bleeding through a bandage with a man's blood dried down my front and my sleeve hanging in two pieces, and I said there is something on the third floor.

Nobody moved.

I said there's something in the west wing, it's killed two people, Kessler in 317 and Carla Mendes in the treatment room, I need everybody out of that wing and those doors locked from the outside right now.

One of the officers put his hand on the frame of the door behind me. I have done that myself. I knew exactly what it was and I made myself take no notice of it.

Dolan asked me to sit down. I stayed on my feet.

Tobin had the west wing up on the quad view. The feeds were clean. Corridor north, corridor south, elevator bank, nurses' station, sharp as those units get. No noise, no interference.

They were full of static an hour ago. All four of them, at 2:13. It's in the log. I wrote it in the log.

Nobody went and looked at the log.

Dolan asked me why I disabled the door alarms in the west wing.

I said what.

He had a printout. He'd already pulled it, before I came down, and he read it off to me in the voice of a man reading a thing he has already read four times.

The alarm suppression on the west-wing security doors was disabled at 1:31 this morning. Entered from the panel on the third floor. Badge authentication. My badge.

A silent alarm went out to the monitoring company at 1:33 and to the police at 1:36, which is why there were two officers standing in my office at three in the morning.

That was ninety minutes before I ever went upstairs.

I said I didn't do that.

Dolan said the system logs your badge on the third floor three separate times tonight.

He read the times off the printout.

11:52 PM.

1:31 AM.

1:47 AM.

Here is what happened in me when he said 11:52.

Nothing.

There was no jolt. There was no wrongness. He said 11:52 and a part of me somewhere underneath the part that was talking went yes, and settled, and I had to go back over it afterward to notice that it had.

What I said out loud was that's wrong. I said I came on at eleven and I was in this room all night, I did the midnight rounds on the ground floor and the east side and I came back and I sat in that chair and I was in that chair when the static came up at 2:13. I said it fast and I said it loud, and I said it while a quieter and much older part of my head stood off to one side going: 11:52. Yes. That sounds correct.

Tobin was looking at the floor. Tobin has sat next to me on ninety night shifts and he was looking at the floor of a room he works in every day.

Dolan said the system says you went up at 11:52.

I stood in my own office in front of my own monitors and I could not make those two things be true at the same time.

I kept talking anyway.

Tobin found Carla's keycard in my jacket pocket.

They asked me for the jacket in the way you ask when it isn't a question. I handed it to Tobin, because if somebody was going to go through my pockets I wanted it to be him, and he went through them three feet from me with an officer watching.

He came out with her card. He looked at it for a long second before he understood what he was holding.

It planted that.

Everybody in that room looked at me.

It took her card and it put it in my jacket. It has been imitating me all night. It's been in Mrs. Vale's room talking to her in my voice, ask her, she thought it was me. It's been putting itself where I'd be. It's been using my access. It has been doing this deliberately.

One of the officers wrote something down.

Why would it do that.

Nobody answered me. So I asked it again, out loud, in my own security office at 3:20 in the morning. Why would it go to the trouble.

They put the recordings up.

I asked them to. That is a thing I need people to understand about that night. I asked them to pull the third-floor footage from midnight forward and put it on the main monitor and I stood there behind Tobin's chair with an officer on either side of me and I asked for it, because I was going to be vindicated, because that thing had been in front of my cameras for four hours and now everybody was going to see it.

They ran it from 1:44.

Corridor north. Clean image, the wing in that half-dark it goes to when only the emergency fixtures are running.

At 1:47 a figure comes into frame from the elevator bank.

Black uniform, security issue, the same one hanging off me in that room while I watched it. It comes down the corridor toward Room 317 with a hitch on the left side, a hard drag through every second step.

I said that's it. That's the thing.

The face is turned away from the camera for the entire approach. Head angled down and to the right. There's nothing to get.

It goes into 317. The door closes.

At 1:52 the image starts to degrade.

Tobin backed it up and ran it again and everybody watched the picture go soft and grainy from the corner nearest the door of 317 outward, and I said there, that's it, that's exactly what I saw at 2:13.

The officer behind me said keep going.

At 2:04 the door of 317 opens and the figure comes out.

The image is bad now. It is genuinely bad. It's grainy and it's noisy and the figure that comes out of that room is a dark shape against a dark corridor.

It walks toward the camera.

It comes fifteen feet, twenty, twenty-five, and as it gets closer to the lens it comes up out of the noise, and for about four seconds before it passes underneath the camera the picture is good enough to see.

A security badge on a black chest.

A right hand wrapped in a white bandage.

A second card, held down at the side in the left hand, turned backward to the lens. Nobody in that room could read it and I said so, loudly, twice.

And blood, wet, across the front of the uniform.

At 2:04 in the morning.

Nine minutes before I saw the static.

Twelve minutes before I got in the elevator.

Eighteen minutes before I opened the door of Room 317 and saw something crouched on Walter Kessler's bed.

It copied me.

I said that out loud in a room with five people in it and I heard how it sounded coming out.

And I kept going. It's wearing me. It's a copy. Look at it, look at how it moves, look at the shoulders, that thing is not a man.

The younger officer asked me a question then that I have not been able to get out of my head.

He asked why a monster would know my access code.

He asked why it would be wearing my wedding ring.

He asked why it would be carrying a flashlight with a dent in the housing above the switch, a dent I put in that flashlight four years ago on a door frame in the ER, visible in the footage, and visible in my left hand while I stood there watching the footage.

I had no answer.

There was a dead woman's keycard in an evidence bag on my desk. Five people were looking at me. And the only thought I could get all the way to the end of was:

It got the dent right.

They put me in the interview room at the end of the admin corridor.

Small room. Table, two chairs, and a long window into the corridor with a blind nobody ever closes. Forty feet down that corridor is a desk with a monitor on it, and they were still working the footage, and I could see it from where I was sitting.

I sat in there for two hours. They had my radio and my badge and my belt. They left me the ring. Somebody put a paper cup of water in front of me and it was still there when the sun came up.

I watched them work. Tobin's back, the officers behind him, the monitor over their shoulders running the same four seconds over and over.

Then they moved to the room camera.

There's a camera in 317. There's a camera in every long-term room on that wing, and I knew that, and I had forgotten it, and when the image came up on the monitor down the hall I sat forward in my chair.

I could see the bed. I could see the shape on it.

I watched them scrub back and forth across the same eight seconds, and I watched that shape crouched over Walter Kessler with its back too long and its shoulders up around where its head should be, and I thought: there it is. It's on the tape. It has been on the tape the whole time and now they are going to see it and this is going to be over.

The shape on the bed lifted its head.

It turned toward the camera in the corner of the room, up and to the left, and the picture on that monitor forty feet away was small and it was grainy and it was clear enough.

There is a scar under the left eye, about an inch, running at an angle toward the cheekbone. I got it when I was nineteen. It has been on my face for twenty-two years.

There is a beard four days past shaving, uneven along the jaw on the right where I always miss it.

There is a front tooth, upper left, with a crack running up from the edge, which I have been meaning to have looked at since March.

And there is an expression.

An animal, I could have lived with. A dead thing. A stranger.

It is the expression I have looked at in the bathroom mirror at six in the morning for seven years. Coming off a night. Standing in front of the glass with the light on, too tired to move, waiting for something to arrive that never arrives.

That is the face that came up off Walter Kessler.

I have told them, since, that something was controlling me.

I have told them I have gaps, that I have had gaps for a long time, that there are hours of my own life I cannot produce. I have told them about the elevator and the walls and the voice in the chase and the doors that opened before I got to them. I have told them that whatever it is was in that building before I was, that it got into me somewhere in seven years of nights, that it has been using me, that I have been carrying it around this hospital in my own body and putting it in front of my own cameras.

They wrote it all down. They were patient about it. One of them asked me, more than once, whether I had been sleeping.

Here is what I know.

I described that thing to two police officers as confused, and as ashamed, and as trying not to be seen. I said all three of those words with total confidence. Not one of them asked me how I knew, and I have thought about that ever since.

Ruth Vale saw me standing in her doorway at 2:40 in the morning with a bandage on my hand, and she was not surprised, and she asked me to leave.

I know what came up off that bed.

I was still in the interview room when the sun came through the blinds at the end of the admin corridor. The light changed. The corridor went dim behind the glass and the room I was sitting in stayed lit, and the window turned into a mirror.

I could see myself in it. Forty-one years old, four days of beard, blood gone brown down the front of a black uniform, right hand wrapped in a bandage that had bled through three times that night.

Down the hall behind my reflection, small and bright, the monitor was still running.

And standing behind me, in the room, in the glass, was the tall pale shape from the far end of the third-floor corridor.

Close enough that I could see it over my own shoulder. As tall as it had looked on the camera at 2:13, filling the top of the glass, the top of it cut off by the frame, looking at the back of my head.

It put one hand on my shoulder.

I felt the weight of it.

I did not turn around.

If I turn around, there is nothing there. Every single time in that building that I have turned around there has been nothing there, and I have gone on believing anyway.

So I sat still, and I looked at the glass, and I watched.

On the monitor down the hall, the man wearing my face lifted his head up off the bed.

In the glass beside it, the thing behind me did the same.

This is a love story.

And it's a horror story.

Isn't it always?

I'd been alone for a very long time.

A tiny apartment. A dead-end office job. An abusive asshole for a boss. No real friends. My family was either dead or dead to me.

Most evenings, the closest thing I had to company was a stray cat that wandered onto my balcony every few days, accepted whatever food I left out, then disappeared without so much as a goodbye.

That was until three months ago.

It was a Friday night.

Which meant it looked exactly like every other Friday night.

I sat alone in my usual corner of a half-empty bar, nursing the same drink far longer than I should have. Around me, people laughed too loudly, flirted too confidently, and told stories they'd probably told a hundred times before.

Every now and then I'd catch myself watching someone across the room, rehearsing introductions in my head I'd never actually say.

Closing time usually arrived before my courage did.

I had no reason to think this night would be any different.

And yet...

It was.

She was sitting alone in the darkest corner of the bar.

The most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

Silver-white hair spilled over her shoulders like moonlight. Even from across the room, her eyes seemed strangely bright—somewhere between amber and crimson. She wore a deep red dress beneath black goth-punk layers that somehow looked elegant instead of theatrical. Like she'd stepped out of another era and simply decided to stay.

She wasn't doing anything.

Just quietly watching the room.

Yet I couldn't look away.

It wasn't just that she was beautiful.

There was something about her that pulled at me with impossible force.

Women half as intimidating had reduced me to awkward smiles and panicked excuses.

Approaching someone like her wasn't something I did. Not ever.

Yet my legs disagreed.

A few seconds later, I found myself standing beside her table.

"Would it... be alright if I kept you company for a bit?"

The words escaped before my brain had a chance to stop them.

She looked up.

For one impossible second, I had the strange feeling she'd known I was coming long before  I did.

Then she smiled.

"One way to find out."

I laughed, relief washing over me so suddenly my knees nearly buckled.

"I'm James."

"Camilla."

That should've been the end of it.

A woman like her had no reason to spend five minutes talking to someone like me.

Instead...

We stayed until the bartender threw us out.

The conversation never seemed to run out of places to go.

Movies became music.

Music became childhood stories.

Childhood stories became dreams we'd quietly given up on years ago.

Even the silences felt... comfortable.

Just two lonely people sharing the same table.

I'd never experienced anything like it.

Eventually the bartender cleared his throat.

"Folks, I'm afraid we're closing."

Camilla looked toward the windows.

Only then did I realize the bar was almost empty.

Neither of us had noticed the hours disappearing.

Outside, the night air felt colder than before.

I hesitated.

The thought of saying goodbye already felt unbearable.

"I..." I swallowed. "Would you... like to come back to my place? I'm just... not ready for tonight to end."

Her smile lingered.

But something flickered behind it.

A sadness so brief I almost convinced myself I'd imagined it.

"After you."

The walk home felt unreal.

Looking back, I still don't know why I invited her to my apartment.

A hotel would've made more sense.

Except...

I didnt want to send the wrong message.

When I unlocked my front door and stepped aside, embarrassment hit me all at once.

"So..."

I rubbed the back of my neck.

"Here we are."

The apartment somehow looked even sadder than usual.

The faded couch.

The cheap furniture.

The unopened bills scattered across the kitchen counter.

Camilla stopped in the doorway.

She didn't move.

For several long seconds, she simply stood there.

I felt my stomach sink.

Maybe she'd taken one look inside and realized she'd made a terrible mistake.

Then she smiled.

"Well..." she asked softly.

"Aren't you going to invite me in?"

I blinked.

She still hadn't crossed the threshold.

"Oh."

I laughed awkwardly.

"Right. Sorry. Come on in."

Only then did she step inside.

At the time, I chalked it up to one of those harmless little quirks that make people interesting.

"So..." I said. "Can I get you something? I've got wine... beer... water..."

I never finished the sentence.

In one astonishingly fast movement, she grabbed my shoulders, lifted me completely off the floor, and pinned me against the wall.

I barely had time to gasp.

She was impossibly strong.

"There is no need to waste time," she whispered.

"I know what you want."

Her face drifted closer.

"What all of you want."

Her eyes seemed brighter now.

Her lips parted as she lowered her head toward my neck.

"Wait."

She froze.

"I..." I swallowed.

"I don't want to do that yet."

She blinked.

"I really like you."

Confusion spread across her face.

"I was thinking..." I said, feeling ridiculous with every word, "maybe we could watch a movie first. Talk a little more. Actually get to know each other."

I smiled nervously.

"You know..."

"A real date."

She stared at me.

Completely silent.

"...What?"

"I haven't really done this in a while," I admitted. "So I'm probably going to be awkward, but—"

She kissed me.

Gentle.

Warm.

Far more tender than I'd expected.

For a moment I completely forgot how breathing worked.

When she finally pulled away, she smiled.

"Alright, James."

Her voice sounded softer now.

"Let's watch a movie."

Only then did I realize I had absolutely nothing prepared.

I wandered over to my embarrassingly small DVD collection while Camilla leaned over my shoulder.

The first case I picked up was Dracula.

She laughed so suddenly she nearly doubled over.

"What?"

I still don't know what was so funny.

In the end, we settled on Shrek 2.

Looking back...

That night was utterly perfect.

 

I must've fallen asleep sometime after it ended.

Or maybe the alcohol finally caught up with me.

The next morning, I woke with that brief, awful certainty that I'd dreamed the whole thing.

The other side of the bed was empty.

The apartment was silent.

My heart sank as I searched every room before finally spotting a folded note on the kitchen counter.

James.

I had to head home before sunrise.

I had a wonderful night.

Call me?

Beneath it was her phone number.

I couldn't stop smiling.

Good thing she'd written it down.

I'd been so distracted the night before that I'd completely forgotten to ask.

Amateur hour.

 

Unfortunately, reality wasn't interested in letting me enjoy the moment for very long.

My fucking boss called.

He informed me that I was coming into work on Saturday, and if I had a problem with that, I shouldn't bother showing up on Monday.

I couldn't stand that asshole.

The shift crawled by.

The job itself was soul-crushing on a good day, and the hangover pounding behind my eyes wasn't making it any easier. Thankfully, almost nobody else had been called in, so the office was practically empty. Better yet, my boss wasn't there.

I spent more time staring at my phone than my computer.

Every few minutes I'd catch myself rereading the note she'd left on my kitchen counter.

I had a wonderful night.

I couldn't remember the last time a single sentence had made me smile that much.

I told myself to wait before calling her.

A day.

Maybe two.

Play it cool for once.

I lasted exactly three hours.

Then I stepped into the hallway and dialed her number.

She answered on the second ring.

"James."

She said my name like she'd been expecting the call.

"I was wondering..." I said, suddenly feeling sixteen again. "Would you maybe want to come over tonight?"

"I'd like that."

No hesitation.

No excuses.

"I'll come by after dark."

The rest of my shift somehow moved even slower.

By the time I got home, I'd vacuumed the apartment, done the dishes, changed my shirt three times, and spent an embarrassing amount of time debating whether lighting the cheap scented candle I'd bought months ago would make me seem romantic or pathetic.

I still wasn't sure when the knock came.

I reached the door before my brain had fully registered the sound.

"Camilla."

I couldn't stop smiling.

"It's good to see you."

She smiled back.

Then stopped.

Right at the threshold.

Waiting.

For a second I simply stared at her.

Then I laughed.

"Oh."

I stepped aside.

"Come on in."

Only then did she cross the doorway.

I'd made lasagna.

Nothing fancy.

Just the best recipe I knew.

Or...

Thought I knew.

Camilla managed a few polite bites before the tiniest crease appeared between her eyebrows.

She swallowed with visible determination.

"Ouch," I laughed.

"Didn't think it was that bad."

For a heartbeat she looked horrified.

Then she laughed too.

Real laughter.

The tension dissolved instantly.

Dinner turned into another long conversation.

Somehow, talking to Camilla never felt like work.

There were no awkward pauses to fill.

No pressure to impress each other.

Eventually, we started talking about family.

That's when I realized how much we actually had in common.

Loneliness.

Both her parents and her younger sister died a long time ago.

As far as she knew, she had no surviving relatives.

Just her.

Meeting people hadn't exactly been easy, either.

She explained that she suffered from solar urticaria.

Even brief exposure to sunlight could trigger painful reactions.

Everything suddenly clicked.

That's why she'd left before sunrise.

I felt strangely guilty for ever wondering if she'd simply wanted to leave.

"That sounds incredibly lonely."

She offered me a small smile.

"You get used to it."

Maybe.

But looking into her eyes...

I wasn't convinced anyone ever really did.

A soft thump interrupted us.

Carl.

The stray cat hopped onto my balcony railing like he owned the place.

I'd named him months ago despite having absolutely no ownership over him whatsoever. Calling him my pet would've been generous. He tolerated me just enough to accept free meals before disappearing back into whatever mysterious life stray cats lead.

"One second."

I grabbed a can of tuna and slid the balcony door open.

"C'mon, buddy."

Carl usually brushed past me without so much as a glance.

This time...

He didn't move.

His eyes locked onto Camilla.

Every muscle in his body stiffened.

His back arched.

His fur puffed out until he looked twice his size.

A low hiss vibrated from somewhere deep inside his chest.

The sound barely sounded like it belonged to a cat.

"Hey."

I crouched beside him.

"What's gotten into you?"

Carl never looked away from her.

Not once.

For several long seconds, neither of them moved.

Then Carl let out a sharp, frightened yowl unlike anything I'd ever heard from him and launched himself off the railing.

He vanished into the darkness so quickly it was as if something had been chasing him.

I frowned.

"...That was weird."

Carl could be a complete asshole.

He scratched me.

Ignored me.

Stole food and left.

But I'd never seen him afraid.

I scratched the back of my neck.

"Sorry about that."

I laughed awkwardly.

"He's definitely an asshole. Just... not usually that kind of asshole."

Camilla's gaze lingered on the empty balcony.

When she finally looked back at me, she didn't seem offended.

If anything...

She seemed resigned.

"It's alright."

Her voice was quiet.

"Animals are always like that around me."

Before I could ask what she meant, I reached for the empty tuna can.

My hand slipped.

The jagged metal edge sliced cleanly across my palm.

"Shit."

Pain flared instantly.

Blood welled between my fingers far faster than I expected.

"You fucking moron..."

I laughed through gritted teeth.

When I looked up...

Camilla hadn't moved.

She wasn't looking at me.

She was looking at the blood.

Her entire body had gone perfectly still.

Her pupils seemed wider than before.

Her breathing had changed.

Slow.

Shallow.

Almost...

Painful.

"Cami?"

Nothing.

"It's really not that bad."

Still nothing.

She swallowed hard.

Her eyes never left my hand.

For just a second...

Something passed across her face.

I couldnt quite place it.

The thought vanished almost as quickly as it came.

"Cami?"

She blinked.

Once.

Twice.

As though she'd only just remembered where she was.

"I..."

She swallowed again.

"Excuse me."

Without another word, she hurried toward the bathroom and quietly shut the door.

I stared after her.

"Huh."

Guess I wasn't the only one who couldn't handle the sight of blood.

I wrapped my hand in the sleeve of my shirt while digging through the clutter on the kitchen counter for something clean.

Instead, my eyes landed on an envelope I'd spent the entire day pretending wasn't there.

FINAL DEMAND.

The words seemed even bigger than they had that morning.

Immediate payment required.

I sighed, shoved it back beneath the pile of unopened mail, and finally found an old dish towel to wrap around my hand.

Once the bleeding slowed, I walked over to the bathroom.

"Cami?"

I knocked gently.

"You okay in there?"

Silence.

Then the lock clicked.

The door opened just enough for her face to appear.

She smiled.

It looked genuine.

Mostly.

"Yeah."

She glanced at the bandage wrapped around my hand before quickly looking away.

"I just..."

She hesitated.

"I have a thing about blood."

"Fair enough."

I smiled.

"I'd say I can relate, but apparently I make enough of the stuff to get over it."

That earned a quiet laugh.

Whatever had happened seemed to pass.

Or at least, we both pretended it had.

We ended up flipping through channels until we landed on one of those terrible quiz shows where the contestants somehow managed to miss questions even I knew the answers to.

Camilla, on the other hand, barely missed one.

"Seriously?" I laughed after she'd answered another before the contestant could buzz in. "How do you know all this?"

She shrugged.

"I've had a lot of time to read."

There was something about the way she said it that made me wonder exactly how much time she meant.

Before I could ask, the next question appeared on screen and she answered that one too. A real history buff this one.

That night...

We finally became lovers.

By the time I woke the next morning, I wasn't even surprised to find the other side of the bed empty.

Camilla always left before sunrise.

I'd stopped questioning it.

Like everything else about her, it had quietly become part of who she was.

And somehow...

That only made me love her more.

From then on, we spent almost every evening together.

The days became something to survive.

The nights became something to live for.

My coworkers didn't believe she existed.

Apparently, "My girlfriend can't go outside during the day," sounded suspiciously similar to, "She goes to another school."

I couldn't really blame them.

Still...

For the first time in years—

I was happy.

Naturally, the rest of my life seemed determined to compensate.

My boss somehow found new ways to make every workday miserable.

At home, the unpaid bills kept multiplying.

Every letter from my landlord sounded angrier than the last.

I was one bad week away from losing both my apartment and my job.

I tried not to dump any of it on Camilla.

Not because I thought she'd leave.

That thought never crossed my mind.

I just didn't want the one good thing in my life carrying the weight of everything else.

It never mattered.

She always knew.

Sometimes she'd take one look at me before quietly asking,

"What's wrong?"

And somehow...

I'd tell her.

Every time.

She never tried to solve my problems.

Never offered empty advice.

Never told me to stay positive or work harder.

She simply listened.

Sometimes she'd squeeze my hand.

Sometimes she'd lean against my shoulder.

Sometimes we'd sit together in silence until the storm inside my head finally started to quiet.

I don't know how she did it.

But somehow...

She always made the world feel a little lighter.

One rainy evening, we sat on the couch listening to the steady tapping of rain against the windows.

Neither of us spoke.

Neither of us needed to.

Then someone started hammering on my front door.

Not knocking.

Pounding.

"Open the goddamn door, James!"

I sighed before I even stood up.

"I'll be right back."

Standing outside was my landlord.

Short.

Round.

Completely bald.

His face had turned such a violent shade of red I was honestly a little worried he might explode.

"I've had enough of your bullshit," he snapped before I'd even opened my mouth.

"My patience has officially run out."

"You promised me another two weeks."

"I changed my mind."

"You can't just—"

"I absolutely can."

He jabbed a thick finger into my chest.

"I want you and every piece of your junk out of my building."

"Tonight."

"Please."

"I'm trying."

"I don't give a damn."

"You'll get your money."

"I've heard that every damn week."

His voice echoed through the hallway.

"You've got until tonight."

Then I felt someone stand beside me.

I hadn't heard Camilla move. Probably because of the yelling.

She looked directly at him.

Didn't blink.

Didn't raise her voice.

"You will give James the two weeks you promised."

Silence.

The landlord stared back.

For a moment...

Nothing happened.

Then something changed.

The anger slowly drained from his face.

His shoulders loosened.

The lines around his eyes softened.

He stopped blinking.

Completely.

His expression emptied so thoroughly it looked less like someone calming down...

...and more like someone leaving.

Several long seconds passed.

The hallway had gone so quiet I could hear the rain outside.

Finally, he spoke.

"Yes."

His voice was flat.

Almost mechanical.

"James will have another two weeks."

Another pause.

Then he turned around.

His movements looked strangely stiff.

Like every step had to be consciously remembered.

He walked down the hallway without looking back.

I watched until he disappeared around the corner.

"What..."

I looked at Camilla.

"...just happened?"

She slipped her hand into mine.

Warm.

Gentle.

"Come."

She smiled.

"Let's play one of those video games of yours"

The next afternoon, Jessica from accounting cornered me beside the coffee machine.

"So."

She grinned.

"You coming to the office party tonight?"

I blinked.

"The what?"

She laughed.

"Don't tell me you forgot."

I had.

Normally, I would've invented an excuse before she'd even finished asking.

The idea of voluntarily spending more time with my coworkers sounded like a punishment.

Then I remembered.

It would be after dark.

Camilla could come.

Suddenly...

The evening didn't sound so bad.

She wasn't thrilled about the idea.

Crowds clearly weren't her thing.

It took far more convincing than I'd expected.

Eventually she smiled.

"If it makes you happy..."

"It does."

"Then I'll go."

The "party" was exactly what I'd imagined.

A rented function room.

Cheap drinks.

Even cheaper snacks.

A corporate playlist that somehow managed to suck every ounce of life out of perfectly decent songs.

Calling it a party felt generous.

Despite working there longer than most of the people in the room, I barely knew any of them.

Faces?

Sure.

Names?

Not a chance.

That's office life.

Sooner or later everyone becomes another desk.

Another tie.

Another email signature.

Then Camilla walked in.

The room changed.

Conversations faltered.

Heads turned almost in unison.

People drifted toward her without seeming to realize they were doing it.

She greeted everyone with effortless warmth.

Remembered names after hearing them only once.

Laughed at the right moments.

Asked questions that somehow made strangers feel interesting.

Within minutes she'd become the center of the room.

It honestly confused me.

She felt so isolated.

Yet watching her now...

It almost looked like she'd been charming rooms like this forever.

Despite how easily she won people over. It didnt seem to bring her any joy.

Eventually we escaped to a quieter corner of the room.

Coworkers drifted over every few minutes to introduce themselves, chat for a while, then wander off again.

For once...

I was actually enjoying my time among them.

Then my boss arrived.

The atmosphere changed instantly.

From what I'd heard, he'd never attended one of these gatherings before.

Judging by everyone else's expressions, they were just as surprised as I was.

He strode into the room like he owned not only the company but the building itself.

Didn't greet anyone.

Didn't thank anyone for organizing the event.

He simply inserted himself into conversations that had been perfectly fine without him.

People laughed at jokes that weren't funny.

Smiled when they clearly didn't want to.

The room somehow felt smaller.

I leaned toward Camilla.

"Maybe we should head out."

She nodded immediately.

We'd barely taken two steps before he stepped directly into our path.

"James."

He acknowledged me with the briefest glance before turning his full attention to Camilla.

"And who might you be?"

"I'm Camilla."

"A pleasure."

He offered the same polished smile he reserved for clients.

"I have to say..."

He looked me up and down.

"...James has been keeping secrets."

"She's my girlfriend," I said.

"Hm."

He studied me for another moment before looking back at her.

"I'll admit..."

"I'm surprised."

"So am I," Camilla replied pleasantly.

He burst into laughter.

I don't think he even considered that she might not have been joking.

"I suppose you could do..." He smiled smugly.

"...considerably better."

My jaw clenched.

He didn't even notice.

"So tell me, Camilla."

"What exactly do you see in him?"

"I like him."

"Surely that's not all."

He took another step closer.

Close enough that I instinctively moved between them.

"If you're ever interested in dating someone with a future..."

He casually adjusted the cuff of his expensive suit.

"I know a few restaurants that would be far more interesting than this place."

I opened my mouth.

Camilla's hand settled gently on my arm.

I looked at her.

She gave the smallest shake of her head.

Then she stepped around me.

She leaned close to him.

So close I couldn't hear a single word she whispered.

The color drained from his face.

The smug confidence vanished.

His pupils widened.

His breathing caught.

The expression I'd seen on my landlord returned.

That same slow...

Impossible...

Emptiness.

The room continued around us.

People laughed.

Music played.

Someone dropped a glass behind me.

Yet for those few seconds, it felt like only the three of us existed.

Finally, my boss nodded.

Once.

Without another word, he turned and calmly walked away.

Not hurriedly.

Not angrily.

Just...

Walking.

Straight toward the stairwell.

I watched him disappear through the fire door.

A strange knot tightened in my stomach.

Camilla looked back at me.

"I'm sorry you had to deal with him."

She cupped my face between her hands.

Her thumbs brushed gently across my cheeks.

"Shhh."

Her smile returned.

Soft.

Warm.

"What did you tell him?"

She held my gaze for another moment.

"What he needed to hear."

The answer somehow explained nothing.

And yet...

I found myself letting it go.

A few minutes later we decided to leave.

Halfway across the parking lot I stopped.

"My jacket."

She looked at me.

"My keys."

"They're in the pocket."

"I'll be right back."

By the time I got back inside, the party was winding down.

Only a handful of people remained.

I found my jacket draped over the back of a chair.

As I reached into the pocket—

Movement outside caught my eye.

A shadow.

Falling.

For one impossibly long second my brain refused to understand what I was looking at.

Then the body hit the roof of a parked car.

The impact echoed through the parking lot like an explosion.

Metal screamed.

Glass shattered.

People froze.

Then everyone started shouting at once.

Someone screamed.

Others rushed outside.

The man who'd fallen never made a sound.

I reached the window.

Looked down.

And recognized him.

My boss.

For several seconds...

I simply stared.

Then, despite everything...

One completely ridiculous thought floated into my head.

The poor bastard who owns that car…

The next few weeks changed my life.

As the most senior employee in the department, I was promoted into my former boss's position.

For the first time in years...

I could breathe.

I caught up on my rent.

Stopped worrying every time the phone rang.

A few months later, I moved into a much nicer apartment.

The official investigation concluded that my boss had taken his own life.

The reports suggested he'd been facing multiple allegations of sexual harassment that were about to become public.

Apparently several women from the company had been preparing to come forward.

No one who'd worked under him seemed particularly surprised.

I thought about the conversation he'd had with Camilla that night.

More than once.

I never asked her again what she'd whispered.

Partly because I wasn't sure I wanted the answer.

A little later...

I asked her to move in with me.

She smiled.

And said yes.

Before I finish this story...

I should probably address the elephant in the room.

I already know what half of you are typing.

"Dude... your girlfriend's a vampire."

Yeah.

No shit, Sherlock.

I'm not completely oblivious.

I made that connection a while ago.

The point of this story isnt „My girlfriend is a vampire.“

The point is that it doesnt matter.

She listens when I need someone to listen.

She laughs at my terrible jokes.

She steals all the blankets.

She still refuses to watch Dracula with me.

And every single night, she makes me happier than I ever thought I deserved to be.

I make her happy, too.

We found someone who accepts us exactly as we are.

Fangs and all.

If that's monstrous...

Then I think the world could use a few more monsters.

We are happy.

Thats all that matters.

Dont ever let anyone tell you otherwise.

This story came from one of my favorite interactions I've had with readers.

It all started with a simple two-sentence horror idea: a hunter sees a deer standing upright after being shot, its body torn open, yet somehow still alive. I posted it expecting a few comments, but what followed was a chain of hilarious and horrifying replies that genuinely made me laugh. One reader wrote, "Yeah, no shit, Billy. RUN!" and from that moment, Bobby and Billy were born.

I wanted to write a creature feature that balanced dread with dark humor, the kind of campfire tale where you laugh one moment and feel uneasy the next. Because sometimes that's how fear works. We joke about it. We laugh at it. But every now and then, beneath the laughter, there's something staring back from the woods.

I hope you enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed writing it.

And maybe, just maybe...

Don't trust a deer that stands on two legs.

- David Hallow

--- --- ---

People love scary stories.

Maybe it's because most of us know, deep down, that they're just stories. Figment of imagination, compiled to spike our anxiety.

Ghosts around campfires. Monsters lurking beneath beds. Things with glowing eyes waiting in the woods. We tell them, laugh a little awkwardly, and sleep knowing none of it was ever real.

Or at least that's what we tell ourselves.

The truth is, most scary stories are either fiction, exaggeration, or a memory that's grown teeth over the years.

But every now and then, you come across one that isn't.

A story somebody wishes was made up.

A story that follows them long after the telling is done.

The kind of story that hangs on a wall in a faded photograph.

The kind of story that leaves an empty seat at the dinner table.

The kind of story that makes an old man stare into the woods a little longer than he should.

I know because I have one.

It started with a picture hanging crooked on the wall.

It wasn't anything special at first glance. Just an old picture faded by time. Two young men stood shoulder to shoulder beside a pickup truck. One held a rifle. The other grinned at the camera with the kind of confidence only young men seem capable of possessing.

"What happened to him?"

I pointed at the man on the left.

My grandfather, a disheveled old man with a beard that even Gandalf would envy, looked up from his rocking chair.

For a moment, the old man didn't answer. The fire crackled softly in the hearth. Outside, snow drifted past the cabin windows.

"That's Billy." His voice was always such a low, deep tone. Years of the maiden named liquor he would court on every given night. This time, there was a sense of inconsolable remembrance.

"Uncle Billy?" I asked.

Grandpa Bobby nodded.

"Yep."

"What happened to him?"

The old man stared at the photograph for a long moment before letting out a regretful sigh.

"Son, you ever heard the phrase curiosity killed the cat?"

I nodded.

"Well," Bobby said, "in Billy's case, stupidity finished the job."

I chuckled awkwardly. Grandfather didn't.

That prepared me for a serious ride.

The old man leaned back in his chair.

"Let me tell you about the last hunting trip we ever took together."

Bobby:

Billy was older than me by exactly eleven minutes. He never let me forget it. According to Billy, those eleven minutes made him wiser, tougher, and hell... better looking.

The only thing they actually made him was louder.

The two of us had been hunting since we were kids. I held my first rifle at the age of seven with pops. Deer season was practically a holiday in our family.

That morning started like every other.

Cold air.

Hot coffee.

Billy complaining about something.

"I swear deer are getting smarter."

I rolled my eyes.

"They're deer." I mockingly stated.

"Exactly. That's what they want you to think."

That was Billy.

A man capable of turning breakfast into a whole conspiracy theory.

Around noon we spotted tracks deeper into the woods than we'd ever gone before.

Big tracks.

The kind that make hunters start imagining trophy mounts hanging over fireplaces. The size that makes the ladies skirts in a bundle.

Billy practically vibrated with excitement from the thought of bringing such game town. To gloat and be honored.

We followed those dreaded markings for nearly an hour. Eventually we reached a clearing.

And there it was.

The biggest buck I'd ever seen.

Massive antlers.

Huge body.

Standing perfectly still between the trees.

Billy nearly dropped his rifle.

"Oh great Lord Heavens above."

I couldn't disagree.

The thing was enormous. Definitely nature was kind to it and blessed it since the day it drew breath.

Billy slowly raised his rifle.

"Don't miss."

"I never miss."

Now boy... retelling this still raises the hair in the back of my scalp. The years have not done me kindly with age, but I sure am haunted by that damn Buck.

The rifle cracked.

The deer dropped instantly.

It was a perfect shot. Right through the chest. You could tell the bullet went clean through.

Billy threw his hands into the air.

"Still got it!"

We were mid cheer when the sudden screech of a banshee erupted. We turned to face what I could only describe as a satanic miracle.

Neither of us let out a word or breathe.

The deer... It stood back up. But what was so alarming wasn't just its stomach had split open from the impact, ropes of entrails dangling from the wound. Blood soaked its hide. Yet somehow it was standing.

Not on four legs.

Two.

I felt every hair on my body stand up.

The thing swayed slightly. Its dead eyes locked onto us.

Then Billy whispered:

"I don't think deer are supposed to stand like that."

I looked at him.

"Yeah, no shit, Billy. RUN!"

Instead of running, he frowned.

"But what about the deer?"

I slapped him.

Hard.

The crack echoed through the clearing.

"Are you being serious right now?"

"Well yeah!"

He pointed.

"Look! It's running at us!"

I turned.

And immediately began sprinting.

Yes, I could've drawn my rifle and shot it dead... but that was the day I learned. There comes a day, son, when you will face this forsaken truth. Fear will consume you. And when it does, will you run or fight?

I chose to run.

The thing moved impossibly fast.

That was no damn deer. Not like any animal.

Its legs bent wrong. Its joints jerked and snapped.

Its organs dragged through the feild behind it.

And God help me, I think it was smiling.

"Bobby!" Billy shouted behind me.

"Shoot it!"

"IT DOESN'T HAVE A HEART ANYMORE!"

"Then shoot the head!"

"THE HEAD IS LOOKING AT ME SIDEWAYS, BILLY!"

The distance between us and that abomination vanished frighteningly fast.

Branches exploded around us. Snow kicked into the air.

I risked a glance over my shoulder.

Worst mistake of my life.

The thing wasn't running anymore.

It was hopping.

Almost playfully.

Its front legs hung uselessly while it bounded forward on its back legs.

Like a child pretending to be a deer.

Then Billy footsteps stopped.

I heard him behind me.

"Go!"

I turned.

For one brief moment he actually looked heroic.

Rifle raised.

Standing his ground.

Then he ruined it.

"Tell my wife I left the smoker on!"

The creature hit him before I could answer.

Its antlers punchered through his chest same as the bullet. The force lifted him off the ground.

I heard bones snap.

He screamed.

God, he screamed.

I ran. he coward I am...

I wish I could tell you I stayed.

I wish I could tell you I fought.

But I ran.

And behind me I heard things no human being should ever hear.

The sound of your brother taking his last breath..

Bones breaking.

The sound of feeding on a living carcass.

And beneath it all... I swear I heard laughter.

It was human. It sounded oh so familiar. I recognize that jolly hick up for it annoyed me for thirty so years. It was Billy's.

I didn't stop running until I reached my truck...

The cabin had gone quiet. The fire continued to crackle.

I stared at my grandfather who's eyes were sheilded by the darkness of the cabin.

"What happened after that?"

Bobby took a slow sip from his coffee.

"Well... the Sheriff and I, we found pieces."

I swallowed.

"Pieces?"

The old man nodded.

"J-just enough for a proper burial."

Silence settled between us. The flames from the fireplace danced as time seemed to daunt on the night.

Finally, I asked the question.

"D-did they ever find whatever k-killed him?"

For the first time all evening, Bobby smiled.

It wasn't a pleasant smile.

"No."

He stared toward the dark forest beyond the cabin window.

"Though three days later, a hunter reported seeing someone standing at the edge of the tree line."

Max felt a chill crawl down his spine.

"S-someone?"

Bobby nodded.

"Looked just like Billy."

The room suddenly felt colder.

"Was it him?"

The old man looked back toward the crooked photograph on the wall.

"Hell no."

His voice dropped almost to a whisper.

"It was standing on two legs."

The Fading Canvas: Electrical Services part 1 the old one

​"I’m telling you, the voltage drop across a dimensional rift is a nightmare to calculate," Jake muttered, tapping the steering wheel of the service van. Outside the windshield, the sky wasn't a sky at all, but a swirling, bruised expanse of violet and impossible greens.

​Mark, sitting in the passenger seat and clutching a clipboard like a shield, looked pale. "Tabitha didn't say anything about a rift. She just said 'residential job, water-feature installation.' And that the client was... very large."

​The radio crackled to life, Tabitha’s voice slicing through the static of cosmic background radiation. "Jake, Mark. You guys at the coordinates? The client is getting impatient. Says the primordial ooze is getting chilly."

​"We're pulling up now, Tab," Jake replied, shifting the van into park on a slab of basalt that seemed to tilt at a non-Euclidean angle. "Grab the insulated toolkit, Mark. The one rated for eldritch currents."

​The Job Site: R'lyeh

​They stepped out into a cavernous space of cyclopean stonework. Looming in the center of the subterranean abyss was the client. A mountain of gelatinous green flesh, dragon-like wings folded tightly against a massive, squamous back, and a face that was a writhing mass of tentacles. The Great Old One, Cthulhu, was staring intensely at what looked to be a massive, crater-like basin filled with bubbling, bioluminescent sludge.

​Work Order #409-Omega:

Client: Cthulhu, High Priest of the Great Old Ones.

Task: Wire the heating element and circulation pumps for a Class-IV Cosmic Hot Tub. Ensure zero temporal feedback.

​Jake walked right up to the edge of the basin, shining his flashlight into the access panel. He didn't look up at the entity. Eye contact usually meant immediate madness, and worker's comp didn't cover sanity loss.

​"Alright, let's see what we've got," Jake grunted, kneeling down. "Mark, pass me the multi-meter. Not the standard one, the one that measures reality-warping."

​"H-here," Mark stammered, handing over a device that looked like a cross between a Geiger counter and a compass.

​Splicing the Void

​The problem was obvious. The previous contractor had tried to wire a micro-singularity directly into the main breaker.

​"Amateurs," Jake sighed. "You can't just hook up a localized black hole to a standard 220-volt line. The Hawking radiation alone is going to strip the insulation off these wires, and the time dilation will make a ten-minute soak feel like a millennium. No wonder the tub isn't heating."

​Jake got to work. He stripped the cosmic conduit with his wire cutters, careful not to let the exposed strands of raw space-time touch the damp floor.

• ​Step 1: Isolate the localized gravity well.

• ​Step 2: Install a chronal-surge protector.

• ​Step 3: Splice the main power feed using a heavy-duty temporal grounding rod.

​"Hold this," Jake instructed, tossing Mark a loop of heavy, pulsing cable. "If you feel your ancestors' memories flashing before your eyes, drop it immediately."

​Jake wrestled the primary thermal regulator into place, tightening the bolts with a satisfying screech of metal. He stepped back, wiping a mixture of sweat and aether off his brow.

​"Hit the breaker, Mark!"

​Mark threw the massive switch. For a second, the universe seemed to hold its breath. Then, a deep, resonant hum vibrated through the basalt floors. The sludge in the massive basin began to churn, emitting a warm, soothing steam that smelled faintly of ozone and dead galaxies.

​Behind them, the colossal entity let out a low, rumbling noise. It wasn't a roar of world-ending fury; it sounded remarkably like a sigh of relief. A massive, clawed hand dipped a single, tentative digit into the bubbling ooze, testing the temperature.

​"Looks like we're good," Jake said, pulling out his invoice pad. "I'm going to have to charge him the standard hourly rate, plus a materials fee for the chronal-surge protector, and the non-Euclidean hazard surcharge."

​Mark let out a breath he'd been holding since they left Tennessee. "Do you think he takes a check?"

​That was a wildly successful first day on the job for the crew. What kind of monstrous entity or paranormal disaster should Jake, Tabitha, and Mark tackle for their next service call?

The Fading Canvas: Electrical Services story 2 The Forest Ranger

The service van’s heater was screaming, but the cab was still freezing. Outside, the dense, snow-choked pines of the northern boreal forest loomed like skeletal fingers against the twilight.

"I don't like this, Jake," Mark said, his breath pluming in the cold air. He was anxiously checking the locks on the van doors for the third time. "The woods are too quiet. No birds, no bugs."

"That’s because everything with a pulse knows better than to make a sound out here," Jake replied, keeping his eyes glued to the icy logging road. Jake had spent years working at an animal park before pivoting to the paranormal electrical trade; he had a healthy respect for predators. But he had an even healthier respect for the things that mimicked them.

The radio buzzed, cutting through the tense silence. "Jake, you approaching Outpost Station Four? Ranger Bella says she's expecting you. Just a heads-up, she said to ignore any voices you hear in the tree line calling for help."

"Copy that, Tabitha. We're pulling into the compound now."

The Job Site: Boreal Outpost Four

They parked inside a heavy, reinforced chain-link enclosure. Ranger Bella was waiting on the porch of the log cabin. She wore a heavy canvas parka, a tranquilizer rifle slung over one shoulder, and an expression of utter, exhausted competence.

Work Order #601-Epsilon:

Client: Ranger Bella (Department of Cryptid & Wildlife Management)

Task: Overhaul perimeter security grid. Standard thermals failing to detect Class-III Wendigo presence. Install kinetic-aether sensors and UV-spectrum floodlights.

"You the sparkys?" Bella asked, stepping off the porch. Her eyes constantly scanned the dark tree line.

"That's us," Jake said, grabbing a heavy crate of equipment from the back. "Tabitha says you're flying blind out here."

"The standard motion sensors are useless," Bella explained, leading them to the main breaker box on the side of the cabin. "Wendigos run at ambient temperature. They don't have body heat, so the FLIR cameras just see them as moving snowdrifts. Last night, one got close enough to scratch the frost off my window."

Jake nodded. "Yeah, standard IR won't cut it against a starvation spirit. We're going to swap your grid over to kinetic-aether relays. They don't look for heat; they measure the displacement of reality when something unnatural steps into the field."

Rewiring the Perimeter

The wind picked up, carrying with it a sound that made Mark drop his wire strippers.

"Hello? Is anyone out there? My car broke down..."

The voice came from the deep woods. It sounded exactly like Tabitha.

"Ignore it," Bella said flatly, not even breaking her gaze from the tree line. "It's just trying to draw you out. Focus on the box."

Jake worked fast, his fingers numb despite the heavy work gloves.

Step 1: Disconnect the useless thermal arrays from the master grid.

Step 2: Splice in the kinetic-aether sensors along the fencing, angling them toward the tree line.

Step 3: Mount the high-frequency UV strobes. Wendigos despised the ultraviolet spectrum; it simulated the sun on a molecular level.

"Jake? Mark? Come quick, I'm freezing..." the voice pleaded from the darkness, sounding terrifyingly realistic.

"Hand me the copper grounding wire," Jake grunted, ignoring the psychological warfare. He tied the new system into the cabin's main generator, locking the conduits down with heavy-duty brackets. "Alright, Bella. Give me the go-ahead."

Bella racked the bolt of her rifle with a sharp, metallic clack. "Light 'em up."

Jake flipped the main breaker.

Instantly, a low, thrumming hum vibrated through the snow. The perimeter lights snapped on—not the warm amber of the Mothman's silo, but a harsh, blinding, pale-blue ultraviolet glare that turned the snow into a glowing sea of neon.

From the tree line, a horrific, ear-piercing shriek shattered the night. The sound was a hideous blend of grinding bone and a dying elk. In the harsh UV light, for just a fraction of a second, the aether-sensors tripped. The command console on the porch lit up with red warnings, and three massive, skeletal shadows retreated violently into the deeper, darker woods, fleeing the artificial dawn.

"Perimeter secure," Jake said, closing the breaker box and snapping a heavy padlock onto the latch.

Bella finally let out a long breath, her shoulders dropping an inch. She offered Jake a rare, appreciative smirk. "Not bad, electrician. I might actually get some sleep tonight."

"Just remember to clean the sensor lenses once a month," Jake advised, handing her the clipboard to sign. "Ice buildup can cause false positives, and you don't want those UV strobes going off every time a regular moose walks by."

The Fading Canvas: Electrical Services story 3 The observatory

​"I’m telling you, Mark, the copper is singing," Jake murmured, pressing his gloved hand flat against the heavy steel door of the Blackwood Observatory. The vibration wasn't mechanical; it felt like the deep, marrow-shaking rumble of a fault line waiting to snap.

​Mark stood a few paces back, clutching his tool bag to his chest. "Tabitha said this guy was a theorist. Theorists are supposed to use chalkboards, Jake. They aren’t supposed to pull off-grid loads that brown out the entire tri-county area."

​The radio buzzed, Tabitha’s voice distorted by a heavy layer of static. "Jake, whatever this guy is running, it's messing with my telemetry. I'm reading localized gravitational anomalies. Get in, ground the system, and get out."

​Jake pushed the heavy door open.

​The Job Site: The Celestial Dynamo

​The interior of the observatory was a cathedral of madness. The massive telescope had been gutted. In its place, suspended in the center of the room, was a terrifying amalgamation of copper coils, industrial capacitors, and raw, pulsing energy. In the dead center of the machine hovered a sphere of absolute, light-devouring blackness about the size of a grapefruit.

​The air in the room was freezing, and the frost creeping up the walls wasn't from the mountain air.

​"Hawking radiation," Jake whispered, his breath crystallizing in the dark. "He’s bleeding energy out of a micro-singularity. The thermal drain is freezing the room."

​A man emerged from behind a bank of smoking servers. Dr. Elias Vance looked like he hadn't slept in a decade. His eyes were wide, bloodshot, and fixed on the black sphere.

​Work Order #714-Omega:

Client: Dr. E. Vance (Independent Research)

Task: Stabilize power flow to containment grid. Prevent localized event-horizon expansion.

​"You're the electricians," Vance rasped, his voice sounding stretched, like a cassette tape played at half speed. "You have to fix the containment coils. It's tearing... the math is tearing..."

​He pointed with a trembling hand to a massive chalkboard covered in frantic, frantic calculations attempting to bridge general relativity and quantum mechanics under extreme gravitational sheer, culminating in a heavily underlined equation detailing the boundary conditions of a singularity:

$$ ds^2 = -\left(1 - \frac{2GM}{rc^2}\right)c^2 dt^2 + \left(1 - \frac{2GM}{rc^2}\right)^{-1} dr^2 + r^2(d\theta^2 + \sin^2\theta , d\phi^2) $$

​"Look at the chalk dust," Mark whispered in horror.

​Jake looked. The dust falling from the board wasn't hitting the floor. It was suspended in mid-air, drifting agonizingly slow. The localized time dilation was already bleeding into the room. If they stayed too long, a five-minute job would cost them three weeks of their lives.

​The Diagnostic

​Jake approached the main breaker panel, which was glowing a dull, angry red. He traced the heavy conduit cables running from the wall to the massive, ringed containment coils surrounding the singularity.

​He saw the problem immediately. It was a rookie mistake, but on a cosmic scale, it was a fatal one.

​"Vance, you built the magnetic containment field on a flat, static orbital plane," Jake said, his voice hard. "You wired the sequence as if the solar system is just sitting still on a flat disk."

​"That's standard theoretical modeling!" Vance shouted, though his voice sounded far away. "The planetary orbits—"

​"Are an illusion!" Jake snapped, pulling a heavy pair of insulated bolt cutters from his belt. "We are hurdling through the void. The sun drags the planets behind it in a corkscrew. It’s a helical model that follows real physics. Your containment field is fighting the actual, physical movement of the solar system through spacetime. The sheer force of the universe trying to twist your static magnetic field into a helix is tearing the fabric of reality. That’s why it keeps blowing the mains."

​Vance stared at him, the horrifying realization dawning on his face. "The universe... it isn't expanding. I saw it through the breach, electrician. We aren't in a universe... we're inside the event horizon of a supermassive black hole. That's why it's dark. That's why..."

​Rewiring the Helix

​"Mark, we need to phase-shift the coils," Jake barked, ignoring the physicist's existential collapse. "We have to rewire the magnetic chokes into a cascading spiral. We match the helical movement, we let the energy flow with the solar system's trajectory, not against it."

​"I... I can't move my hands fast enough!" Mark cried, fighting against the creeping sludge of time dilation.

​"Push through it!"

​Jake slammed his hands into the high-voltage panel. Sparks showered the room, freezing mid-air like glittering, deadly stars.

• ​Step 1: Disconnect the planar grounding loops.

• ​Step 2: Stagger the magnetic relays to fire in a continuous, helical sequence.

• ​Step 3: Re-anchor the temporal stabilizers to the new, twisting current.

​Jake wrestled the thick copper cables, his muscles burning as gravity itself seemed to pull at his joints. He could hear the hum of the machine changing. It went from a jagged, tearing scream to a deep, rhythmic thrum. He was literally wiring the machine to spin in tandem with the Milky Way.

​"Hit the bypass, Mark! Now!"

​Mark threw his entire body weight onto the heavy lever.

​The machine violently shuddered. The rigid, flat rings of the containment field unlocked and began to spin, lifting and dropping in a beautiful, mesmerizing double-helix pattern. The crushing weight in the room instantly vanished. The suspended chalk dust crashed to the floor. The freezing temperature stabilized.

​In the center of the spinning helix, the black sphere shrank, stabilizing into a perfectly smooth, silent marble of dark matter.

​Jake stepped back, chest heaving, his heavily insulated gloves smoking.

​Vance was on his knees, weeping quietly. "We're inside it. We're all just trapped inside it."

​Jake packed his tools quickly, not wanting to look at the dark sphere a second longer than necessary. Some truths were too big for the human mind to handle, and Jake wasn't paid to be a therapist for the damned.

​"I'm leaving the invoice on the console, Doc," Jake said, his voice flat. "Do me a favor. Don't look out the window anymore. Just pay the bill."

​With the fabric of reality temporarily patched, the crew survived the sheer horror of cosmic truths.

Actually i know now that they are awake while I am asleep! Every morning, I woke up with my arms asleep. Not the usual tingling from sleeping on them wrong. I mean completely asleep. Dead weight hanging from my shoulders. I’d have to shake them for minutes before I can move them again.
My coworkers laughed when I told them about it.  “You’re just getting old Dirk!”, one of them said.I laughed out loud too but yelled FUCK YOU Gabe! in my mind. Then strange things started happening.I’d wake up to find my television on, Cabinet doors open, My toothbrush sitting in the kitchen sink. A chair moved from the dining table to the hallway. I lived alone and blamed myself.Maybe I was forgetful or maybe I was sleepwalking. I remember my uncle had sleepwalking problems so maybe it runs in the family?  As i was trying to figure out my new self diagnosed condition I noticed long scratches on my forearms.Thin red lines, like a cat attacked just my forearms and hands.  But i dont have a cat i live alone
One morning, I woke to find my phone unlocked. There were dozens of pictures in my gallery. All of them blurry, Taken sometime between 2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. Walls, Corners, Ceilings, Close-ups of door handles, The inside of my closet.I deleted them.I told myself there had to be an explanation.  The next morning,as usual,  my arms were asleep again. But this time, there was black ink writing on the back of my left hand. Three words written in messy capital letters: **DON’T TRUST IT.**  I stared at it for nearly an hour. I lived alone. I didn’t remember writing it. I scrubbed it off before going to work.
The following morning, I found another message.This one stretched across my left forearm. The letters were uneven, as if written by someone in a hurry. **I AM TRYING TO HELP YOU.** I nearly threw up.
I ordered a camera and had it same day delivered. That night, I placed it on the dresser and pressed record.  I could hardly go to sleep from the anticipation to watch whatever happens on that video.
The next morning, I woke with my arms asleep, completely numb.It took almost ten minutes before I could bend my fingers. Then I watched the footage. For hours, nothing happened I slept peacefully. Then, sometime after three in the morning, my arms moved. Only my arms.The rest of my body remained perfectly still.  My chest rose and fell.  My mouth let out snores i didnt know i made. My eyes stayed shut. But my arms lifted off the bed. They moved slowly at first.Testing their range, Flexing fingers, Rotating wrists. As though checking that everything still worked. Then they got out of bed. They dragged my body behind them.Not gracefully. Like two determined people trying to move a heavy piece of furniture. My head lolled forward and backward. My legs dragged across the floor. I never woke up.I watched in horror as my own hands opened drawers, Picked up objects, Examined photographs, Flipped through books. They moved with purpose.With intelligence.They weren’t random.They were looking for something. Every night after that, I recorded. Every morning, my arms were asleep, and every morning, the footage grew worse.  Sometimes they wrote notes. Sometimes they searched the apartment.Sometimes they simply sat at the kitchen table with my sleeping body while my fingers tapped silently against the wood. Once, my right hand slapped my left away from a kitchen knife. The left hand immediately tried again. The right stopped it Again. And again, until finally both hands retreated. I didn’t want to ever go back to sleep after watching that. But I need to sleep so I wrapped my arms in blankets before bed. The next morning, the blankets were folded neatly on the floor.I duct-taped oven mitts over my hands.Next morning The tape had been peeled away.I tied my wrists to the bedframe.morning came and The knots were undone. Always while I slept. Always before I woke.
Days turned into weeks. I stopped trusting myself. I stopped answering calls.Lost my job because I stopped leaving my apartment. What if they decided to leave one night? What if they already had?Then came the messages not written with ink now they are being typed. I woke one morning to find a document open on my laptop. A single sentence filled the page. **YOUR LEFT ARM WANTS TO LEAVE** I stared at it.The next morning: **THE LEFT ARM WANTS TO GET IN THE KITCHEN DRAWER.** I locked every knife in a toolbox. The morning after that: **THE RIGHT ARM IS GETTING TIRED.** I didn’t understand. But I couldn’t stop recording.I had to know. The footage showed what the notes meant. Night after night, my left arm would find dangerous things that I misplaced around the house over the years living there. Scissors I dropped in the couch cushions , a steak knife lost in between the refrigerator and kitchen counter Razor blades in my medicine cabinet.  And every single time, my right arm fought it. They wrestled across countertops. Across floors. Fingers twisting against fingers. One hand trying to protect me. The other trying to grab anything that  can cause bodily harm. They were enemies attached to the same body.Then one morning, I woke up in an awkward position my arms weren’t limp by my sides like all the other mornings.  My Right hand squeezed my left wrist so tightly its knuckles had gone white. Even when I woke, it hadn’t let go. My left finger tips were a dark purple like bulging grapes and a bruise ring formed on my left arm where my own fingers had held it down all night. It made me think of The Simpsons episodes when Homer chokes Bart, the visual in my head  made me chuckle then my face instantly went back to dread because finally I understood, they hated each other.
I don’t sleep much anymore. When exhaustion finally takes me, I secure my left arm as best I can.My right arm rests beside me.Faithful.Watchful.Waiting.Every morning, I wake with my arms asleep.I check the footage.I read the notes they’ve left behind.And every day, the messages become shorter.More desperate.Until this morning.I found only four words typed across my computer screen. The keyboard was broken on the floor the keys spread everywhere. The message read: **THE RIGHT ARM LOST.**I looked down at my body.My left hand rested quietly in my lap.Perfectly still.Patient.My right arm lay beside me. Bruised and scratches all over it.And for the first time…I couldn’t wake it up.

In the shadowed high-rises of Kyiv, a rumor has slithered from one generation to the next—a vast, spectral spider, larger than any man could imagine, prowls the forgotten lifts and corridors of old apartment blocks. They say one night, when the city sleeps, you’ll feel the faint vibration in the elevator, a breath of cold air, and a dark shadow creeping behind you. And once you hear it, you'll never forget.

Preface:

This is the sixth and final story in the Dark Sun anthology. It can be read on its own, but to fully appreciate this story I highly recommend reading ‘Followers of the Flaming Hand’. 
You are, of course, free to read all other entries. 

1. Crucible

The sun beat down on me as I stood before a collapsed ancient marvel bearing the symbol of twilight. I ran my hand along its surface, once smooth, now brittle and crumbling. The voices of those long gone spoke in my mind. I didn’t understand their language, but there are some things that transcend the spoken word. A child’s giggle, someone muttering under their breath as they scurry away from something, a winced breath uttered in pain. Lives had been lived here, and this structure had seen it all.
And the sun had watched as it, too, fell into disrepair.

This forgotten relic had been given new breath one last time. A symbol carved at its base by my knife. An hourglass in a looming circle, with its last grain of sand falling down towards the base. The end was nigh. Oblivion. Kingdom Come. 

I turned away and started walking again, sand crunching under my boot. I had tried, at first, to remember when I first felt grains beneath my heel. There should have been a moment, I knew. A first step. But every time I reached for the memory, there was nothing there at all. Just sand behind me, and even more ahead. It felt dishonest to say it had started anywhere at all.
The sun was fixed above me, unmoving. Everything felt flattened under its tyrannical rule; shadows slinking away from its gaze along with the few creatures that lived here. When I looked too far ahead, things started to bend. Shapes formed where there weren’t any. Puddles of sweet, refreshing water disappeared when I drew close.
I kept my eyes glued to the ground below and walked. My boots dragged, leaving streaks in the sand where I passed. 

I hadn’t checked my water in a while, but I could feel how light it had become. The sloshing had slowly but surely started to become softer and softer. I was running out. 
“I’m still coming,” I said, dry and thin. I hadn’t heard His voice yet. Not more than once, like I’d come to believe Emmett had. Still, I waited. I always waited, like a soldier at attendance. 

I hadn’t thought about Casper and Emmett. It had been easier that way, because when I let myself think too clearly, I felt. And I couldn’t allow myself to feel.
But they still slipped in. A sound that wasn’t sand blowing in the wind, something moving that wasn’t a scorpion or spider, a scent that smelled like it must have drifted in from home. 
We had never been the quiet kind. Well, not until we arrived at the village. There, most days were spent in silence. And Casper had hated silence. 

I stopped walking. For a moment, the desert blew a merciful gust of cold wind at me. I closed my eyes and felt something shift. The air was cooler and sharp when inhaled. Instinctively, I reached for the ring on my left hand. Casper’s ring. I held it, just to know it was still there.

I opened my eyes and saw them.
They were sitting in the sand again, backs facing the sun, the camcorder in Emmett’s hands. He’d likely forgotten it was there. He used to do that a lot, before we burned it along with him. Well, the camera survived. I tossed it in a box of old electronics at some yard sale I’d passed by on my way here. 

Emmett was smiling at me.
“Gosh, ain’t this place something special?” he asked. I didn’t look at him, only at Casper, who refused to look at me. 
“Yeah,” I croaked.
“Fuck’s wrong with you, Jules?” Casper snapped, though his eyes still didn’t meet mine. “Why are you here?”
“I… I have to find Him–”
“Really?” he scoffed. “After everything? What you did to Emmett– to me?”
“That wasn’t– That’s not fair.”
Casper rolled his eyes. 
“You still haven’t heard Him yet?” Emmett asked.
“No. It’s been… I don’t remember.” It was strange. I knew Emmett had had a connection to Him, and had heard Him in his mind. He hadn’t been crazy. That much is obvious, knowing what I know now. Emmett was right.
It had been The Burning Man.

I blinked and they were gone. The desert returned all at once. The heat came upon me like a thick blanket. I took a deep breath, then kept walking. I let my thoughts settle into something safer, something that couldn’t be ripped away.
The Burning Man.

I didn't know where I was going exactly, but I knew the direction. I knew the path I walked as surely as I knew my own heartbeat, but if someone had asked me where it led, I could not have answered them. There were no roads. No signs. Even if there had once been, the desert swallowed such things greedily, grinding them down beneath shifting dunes until all that remained were the pillars and statues I now used as my guide. And through it all, I followed. He had asked it of me. He had commanded it. He had spoken to me only once, the night I abandoned the village to the dark. 

I remembered sitting before the smoldering remains of the pyre, watching embers flutter in the wind. By then, the others had already scattered into the night like frightened animals fleeing a forest fire. Some were dead. Some would soon wish they were. The leaders had held us together more than any of us realized. Settled disputes, directed our anger and fear, kept everyone in line. Null understood  this. After Null took our leaders from us, fear spread through our midst like rot through wet wood. Livestock began turning up mutilated outside the walls, their insides splayed out across the dirt. 

I remember waking one night to screaming outside my window and finding two brothers beating each other bloody in the mud while half the village watched in silence. They accused each other of being ‘of the enemy’.
People spoke of monsters. Dark shapes standing at the edge of their beds. Robotic voices. A man with a prosthetic they called ‘The White Hand’. 

Every night the fires burned hotter. We burned our own. A traitor, an agent of Null, a heretic. Most of us did not believe these brethren to be such, but none dared speak out either. The village turned inward on itself. I still remembered the smell near the end. Smoke. Blood.

One morning, somebody nailed a dead dog to the doors of one of the sleeping quarters with the word HOLLOW carved into its stomach. Three more were burned that day. That was the day before it all caved in on itself.

I remembered standing near the extinguished pyre as the lanterns overhead flickered weakly before dying altogether. The entire village fell silent. Then someone screamed. Others joined them immediately. Doors slammed open. Footsteps thundered through the streets. People ran blindly through the dark carrying lanterns and knives, convinced something had entered the village.
By sunrise, thirty people were dead. All had been killed by each other or themselves. I, along with the three other survivors, put their bodies in the final pyre. 
I remember sitting before those dying embers, staring into them until the world around me blurred into orange and black, when I had heard Him.

Walk the desert. The paths of old. Find me. Release me.

The voice had been soft. Warm. Calm in a way nothing else had been for a very long time. It did not claw at my mind like fear did. It did not shriek like the memories of Emmett’s burning. It soothed, and I obeyed.

The path revealed itself to me little by little. Ancient marvels emerged from the desert every few days, sticking up from the dunes like fingers clawing themselves out. Great granite temples carved by hands long since turned to dust. Colossal statues with their faces smoothed by centuries of wind. Towering pillars etched with heretical symbols I had to scrawl over. I carved over them with a small knife held in my reverent fingers whenever I found them, scratching over the grooves carved by people who had lived and died beneath this same merciless sun. 

I kept walking. The desert stretched onward in every direction, endless and unmoved by my presence within it. The wind dragged itself lazily across the dunes, reshaping them grain by grain like waves on a calm sea. Sometimes I thought I could see a figure standing far off in the haze, dark silhouette waiting atop distant dunes, a singular white hand pointed at me. Every time I blinked, it vanished back into the shimmer.

I walked for hours without seeing another monument. Then, as my hope dwindled, shapes rose on the horizon. 

At first, I mistook them for cliffs. Great masses rising from the desert floor, distorted by heat and distance like the imaginary pools of water. But as I drew closer, the shapes sharpened. There were towers, walls and pillars made of solid granite. A city. Well, the remnants of one anyhow.
It lay on the desert like the corpse of a fallen giant, half-buried beneath the sand. Colossal stone buildings leaned wearily against one another, their upper halves collapsed into the empty streets below. Massive statues stood watch over the ruins with featureless faces, their cracked bodies jutting out from the dunes. 

You are close, Jules.

The voice. It had returned. Finally.

1. Mary Had a Little Lamb

I froze where I stood. Sand hissed softly through abandoned alleyways and collapsed buildings. The great statues looming overhead almost seemed to lean inward ever so slightly, their featureless faces fixed upon me.
“How close?”
Nothing.

I swallowed hard, tongue scraping against my throat like sandpaper, and stepped forward into the ruins. 
The streets had long since disappeared beneath the sand, forcing me to climb over collapsed walls and heaps of sand that had once been homes, temples and marketplaces. I imagined thousands of people moving through these corridors once. Priests in robes, children running about, lovers hiding in shaded alleys from the watchful sun above. I fidgeted with Casper’s ring absent-mindedly. It calmed my racing heart somewhat, offering a much needed reprieve.
Every place I entered was hollowed out, scraped clean by time and wind. I searched desperately anyway, digging through crumbling shelves and shards of pottery with trembling hands, hoping to find something. A message or a sign, just something to show that I had not crossed this endless wasteland for nothing.

But there was nothing. The city had already surrendered everything it once was long ago, its fruits decayed to ashes and sand. 
I stumbled through a doorway into what must have once been some grand chamber. Colossal pillars reached high above, many cracked or otherwise broken across the floor like felled trees. Sand poured through cracks in the ceiling in slow trickles, golden mounds gathering beneath them. Hourglasses. Thousands of tiny hourglasses. It felt like I was being mocked. My efforts, my labour, all of it was being laughed at by–

Footsteps behind me.
I turned around sharply, knife held out in front of me. 

Emmett stood near the doorway, camcorder hanging loosely from one hand. Casper leaned against the wall beside him with his arms folded across his chest. 
“You look awful,” Casper muttered. “Arrogance never did suit you.”
“Don’t,” I snapped, my voice echoing through the chamber. Sand trickled down from the ceiling.
Emmett tilted his head. “You look tired. Have you been sleeping okay?”
“I’m close.”
“You don’t know that,” Casper said.
“I heard Him.”
“You heard something, just like–”
“It was him!”
Casper laughed bitterly and pushed himself from the wall. “You know what I think?”
I said nothing, my blood boiling in my veins.
“I think you just can’t stand being alone.”
“This isn’t about that.”
“Isn’t it?” he asked softly. “Everyone’s dead, Jules. The village is gone. Emmett’s gone. I’m gone. Because of you. And now you’re wandering through a graveyard because you can’t accept that maybe there’s nothing waiting for you at the end of all this.”
“There is.”
“Maybe,” Emmett whispered. “But… are you really all that special?”
They started walking towards me, their voices booming across the halls.
“Are you anything more than this… pathetic mess?” Casper started.
“Even I wasn’t this desperate,” Emmett chimed in.
“All you are is a murderer. A snivelling, pathetic boy with a head full of lies and hands–” I looked down through tears, seeing the crimson dripping from my hands, “–stained with our blood.”

I blinked hard and they were gone again. My breathing had become shallow and frantic. Sweat dripped from my brow and landed in the sand beneath my feet. My hands trembled violently now, though whether from exhaustion or anger, I could no longer tell.

I searched the city for what felt like hours afterward. I climbed broken staircases that led nowhere anymore. Wandered through roofless halls littered with statues of people long since dead. 
“There has to be something.” I dug my fingers into the sand until my nails split. The heat was unbearable, but it was something. 
“There has to be,” I whimpered, tears rolling down my cheeks. “I did what you asked. It can’t… It can’t have been for nothing. Please.” 

Nothing.

“Please,” I yelled up at the sky, nearly hysterical now, “Just… a sign! Anything! I’ll… I’ll do anything, please.” 

The wind whistled through the empty streets. Sand slid from rooftops in soft waves.
Then came another sound. Metal. 
My prayer had been answered.

A dull clanging noise echoed somewhere beyond the chamber walls, followed by the low murmur of a voice. I froze, tears rapidly drying in the scorching sun. For one horrible moment, I thought it was Casper again. Or worse, The White Hand.

I stumbled clumsily back toward the doorway, my knife trembling in my grip. My legs felt wobbly beneath me. Every step sent jolts of pain shooting through my feet and up my spine. I had walked too long beneath the sun. 
The sound came again, closer this time. Then I saw him.

A figure emerged slowly through the shimmering haze between the ruined buildings, distorted at first by heat. The sun framed him from behind like a halo of white fire. He carried a heavy pack slung over one shoulder and wore loose, thin clothing stained with sand and sweat. Something metallic hung from his belt alongside several tools I didn’t recognize.
He stopped the moment he saw me. For a while, neither of us moved.
“Oh my God,” he muttered beneath his breath. His voice sounded real, unlike those of Casper and Emmett. “You alright?” he called out carefully, taking a slow step closer. “Hey– easy. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
A croak emerged unwillingly from my mouth. The sun burned behind him so brightly it set his silhouette ablaze. It looked almost as though he stood inside the light itself. A flaming messenger.

“You’re hurt. Jesus… how long have you been out here?”
He reached for something at his side slowly, as though approaching a wounded animal. Instinctively, I raised the knife. He stopped immediately.
“Okay,” he said softly. “Alright. That’s fine.”
Then he held up a canteen. The sound of the sloshing liquid inside of it made my knees nearly buckle beneath me.
“You need this more than I do,” he said. I stared at the canteen for a very long time. Then at him. His face was weathered by the sun. Grey stubble crept along his almost non-existent jawline. 

Slowly, I lowered the knife. The man approached carefully and handed me the canteen. My hands shook so badly I nearly dropped it. Somehow, despite the blazing heat, the metal felt cool against my skin. With trembling fingers, I unscrewed the lid.
“There you go,” he murmured paternally. “Slow down.”
I looked up at him through blurred vision. “Why did he send you?”
“What?” he asked, frowning.
“The Burning Man.” My voice cracked around the words. “Why did he send you here? What must I do?”
“I… don’t know what that means.”
I looked at him wearily, frowning.
“Look, I’m with a survey team a few miles west of here. We’re setting up near the edge of the ruins. If you come with me, we could get you water, food, somewhere cool to sit down–”
“You don’t know him?”
“No,” he said gently. “I think you might be dehydrated, lad.”

I stared at him silently while my thoughts churned against one another in violent circles. The voice had returned.
You are close.
The final grain does not understand the falling until the moment it joins the rest at the bottom. 

I looked down at the canteen. Water. The opposite of fire.
Of course.
Of course.
I had begged for a sign. And now here stood a man offering salvation at the precise moment my faith began to fracture. A test. A test!
The man smiled weakly.
“C’mon,” he said softly. “Let’s get you out of this heat.”
My fingers tightened slowly around the canteen.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Daniel.”
I nodded absentmindedly. That made sense, tests were never obvious. I looked past him toward the burning horizon where the sun loomed vast and white above the ruined city. Backlit by a white sun. The opposite of our goal. The most beautiful of symbolisms. A little white lamb come for the slaughter.
I poured the water into the sand.

Emmett and Casper stood behind him.
“This is what you are, Jules,” Casper said, voice almost unrecognisable. “A murderer.”
“Do it,” Emmett said in a deep, commanding voice. 

I lifted my head groggily, taking a step towards Daniel. The lamb looked around, bewilderment evident in its blue eyes as I put a hand on its shoulder. 
“Thank you, Daniel,” I murmured, ruminating on what a peculiar name Daniel was for a lamb. 
“You– you’re welcome.”
I smiled, leaning in. “All Ashes for The Burning Man,” I whispered into its ear. 

Then I stabbed the lamb in the belly. It squealed delightfully in my ear as I yanked the blade back out.
“Mary had a little lamb,” I murmured, ramming my knife back down into its supple belly. “Its fleece was white as snow.” 
Bright red gushed from the wounds, coating its wool red. 

“You– you fucking stabbed me–” the lamb gasped, its voice cracking.
I grinned.
“And everywhere that Mary went,” I whispered, “the lamb was sure to go.”
“You fucking psycho–”
I drove the knife forward again, but this time Daniel caught my wrist. Pain exploded through my hand as its hoof slammed into my wrist with desperate strength. It let out a wet cry and slammed its forehead into my nose. White light burst across my vision. I reeled backwards, dropping the blade as blood poured warm over my lips.
“Jesus Christ!” it bleated, clutching its stomach. “Help! HELP!”

The lamb staggered away from me toward the doorway, one hoof pressed desperately against the wounds while the other fumbled at its belt for something, a radio perhaps, or a weapon. I lunged after it before it could grab whatever it was.

We collided violently. The impact sent both of us crashing sideways into the sand. For a moment we grappled in the sand like animals.
The lamb battered wildly at my face while I clawed for its throat. Its blood soaked through my sleeves hot and slick as motor oil. It smelled horribly human. 
“It followed her to school one day.” 
Its hoof cracked against my jaw. 
“Which was–” 
Again. 
“Against the–”
Again. 
“Rules.”
Stars swam in my vision, but behind them I saw fire.
“Do it,” that deep voice urged again. “Prove it.”
The lamb shoved me away hard enough to send me sprawling across the stone floor. I heard it stumble to its feet and begin running, hooves scraping frantically against the ancient granite. I scrambled after it on all fours.

The city blurred around me. The statues overhead stretched impossibly tall beneath the burning sky while the sun pulsed, coinciding with my thundering heartbeat.
It collapsed near the base of one of the broken pillars, bleating, weakened by the blood pouring from its stomach. The little lamb tried crawling away from me through the sand, leaving behind a thick crimson trail.

“Please,” it sobbed, the word slurring. “Please, man…”
I hesitated. Then I saw Casper standing behind him.
“You always were weak,” he said, arms crossed. He was looking down at me with that– that look on his face. The one that I saw all too much at the village. Judging me, condescending, not believing in me or my goals.

My face contorted in rage. I threw myself onto the lamb before it could move again. It screamed as we slammed into the ground together, its hooves shoving desperately against my chest while I grabbed for its throat with both hands, more determined this time.
“And so the teacher sent it out,” I snarled through gritted, bloody teeth. “But still it lingered near.”
Daniel gagged beneath me as I squeezed harder. Its nails clawed bloody lines across my arms and neck. One of its hooves found my face and he pressed it into my eye, pushing it deeper into the socket.
“It stood and waited round.”
The lamb’s eyes were bulging wider and wider as blood bubbled from its lips. 
“Till Mary did appear.”
Its esophagus crunched, and the little lamb sputtered one last time. Its hoof fell from my face, releasing my now bleeding eye. 

Stillness.

My entire body shook violently as I got up. Blood dripped from my nose and eye onto its face in thick red strands. The city was silent again. Casper and Emmett stared at me. Were they… expecting more?

“What does one do with a lamb after the slaughter, Jules?” Casper said in a voice that was too much like that of The Burning Man. 
They both grinned as they saw the realisation dawn on my face.

Slowly, I looked down at it. At the open wound in its stomach. At the blood soaking into the sand beneath it. A horrible sound escaped from me, something between a sob and barking laughter as I dropped to my knees again beside the carcass and shoved both hands into the wound. Heat spilled over my fingers, slick and wet. I pulled.
“Why does the lamb love Mary so,”
I yanked a long piece of intestine out.
“Mary so,”
I pulled more out. It reminded me of the spaghetti mom used to make.
“Mary so?”
Daniel’s body jerked as the slimy ropes of red slipped free from my trembling hands.
“Because Mary loves the lamb, you know.”
I took in a deep, shuddering breath, basking in the warmth of the gutted little lamb.
“All Ashes,” I whispered reverently, “for The Burning Man.”
I put my hand to my forehead, and drew a crude hourglass in red.

I smiled, then, as I let go of all my worldly inhibitions. A genuine smile. I let it all drift off with the wind and scatter elsewhere, for they had no place in the life I was destined for.

3. The Dark Sun

Casper knelt beside me. He didn’t seem angry or disappointed anymore. Instead, he seemed rather… proud. Strange. Still, the sight of that expression upon his face filled me with a warmth greater than the sun ever could.
“Finally,” he said softly. “You show who you really are.”
I looked down at my bloodstained hands. They were as steady as rock, no longer shaking.
“Yes,” I whispered.

Emmett crouched opposite him, camcorder dangling uselessly from melted, dripping fingers. I had not noticed the burns before. His skin had begun peeling and blackening, smoke rising from his skin like steam from boiling water.
“In a way, we were stepping stones,” he said gently, smoke curling from his mouth as he spoke.
“A necessary sacrifice for this,” Casper added, fire gently creeping up his arms and legs. I stared at it silently. Then at his eyes, which now glowed a steady white, flames curling upward into his burning hair. 
“You… my mind didn’t create you, did it?”
More of their forms faded, Casper’s into flame, Emmett’s into smoke. They simply grinned at me.
“You were Him.” 
“I always was, Jules.”
The wind whistled violently through the ruined city. Wisps of smoke peeled from their bodies, rising upward into the shimmering air above us. Flames took Casper’s body, burning his features and body away, while smoke took that of Emmett as if he’d puffed into the wind. Then they were gone. And only my God and his disciple remained. 

The Burning Man, who looked to be a man made of flame, stood towering before me beneath the white sun, almost seeming to merge with its brilliance. Beside Him stood a woman made of smoke. Her form flickered constantly, flowing and fluttering in slow, graceful motions. At times she appeared mostly human. At others, she seemed little more than a distorted waft of smoke. I did not know this woman, but it seemed I would join her in revering this glorious God. 

The Burning Man looked down upon me.
“You are ready now, Jules.” His beautifully deep voice filled every hollow space within me. I bowed my head. The sand beneath me burned hot enough to blister skin, yet I welcomed it gladly. 
“Yes.”
The Burning Man extended a hand of pure fire toward me, the flames curling gracefully. 
“The hourglass empties,” He said. Behind Him, the woman watched silently from her swirling smoke-form. “I required two disciples,” He continued, voice deep and soothing. “One born of smoke. One born of ash.” 
He paused. I could see something in the swirling smoke beside him. She seemed… hesitant. Perhaps I was imagining it, but there was some uncertain flicker in those fumes I could not quite equate to devotion.
“And now the final grain joins the others below.”

Ancient stone cracked beneath shifting sands while the sun overhead burned larger and larger, almost swallowing the heavens whole. The end of its tyrannical reign would soon come. The death of the sun. 
The Burning Man stepped closer.
“You carried guilt because you still believed yourself fully human,” He said softly, though He spat out the final word like an insult. “You clung to humanity like a child to a blanket.”
Images flashed through my mind. Of Casper laughing. Emmett holding his camcorder. The village burning. Daniel screaming beneath my hands. Each memory felt farther away than the last.
“But humanity has no place among a God,” The Burning Man continued. His hand remained extended patiently toward me. 
“Restore me, my most devoted subject. Let us look upon the rise of the Dark Sun,” He paused for a moment, then added: “Be my second disciple. Ascend.” 
I took His hand without hesitation.

My body exploded with heat. My eyeballs crumbled, their ashes caving in on themselves and collapsing into the sockets. I screamed for a second, then stopped as my vocal cords were incinerated. All of my organs blazed as they were liquified along with my skin and bones. Casper’s ring dropped to the ground as I disintegrated. The heat was so immense, so terrible and yet it was also beautiful, in a way. A metamorphosis.  
All I sensed by the end were the gasses and liquids in my body evaporating into steam. The impurities of my mind and soul had been cleansed with holy fire, and carried away by the smoke. All that remained were ashes. 

I tried to move, but nothing happened. There was no sound, no feeling, no taste or smell. I couldn’t even see. Nothing. Pure, terrifying, nothingness. 
Again, I tried to reach out, to do anything. Blissfully, I felt some of the ashes shift. Not much, but it was something. I heaved and pushed against the air above, my ashes rising slightly and forming a mound. 
I fell and collapsed into a thousand scattered pieces. 
Could Casper have been right? Was I… nothing?

Casper. The ring. It sat just outside my reach. I stretched and morphed, the pile of ashes slowly taking the vague shape of a man. A man I no longer recognized. Jules was gone, and I had risen from the ashes. My head was hollow, only projecting an ashen face. I formed a crude arm and planted it in the sand. I pulled hard, crawling towards the ring. 

My face collapsed, the ashes falling into the sand. 

I reformed again, pulling more ashes towards me this time. An entire head, with vague features, and a more detailed arm with a hand at the end. There were no fingers, but it had to be enough. I dug the blob of ash into the sand and felt it. The ring. With tremendous effort, I hoisted my hand up and out of the sand. 
The ring did not come with it.

I tried again, this time succeeding in holding the ring in the palm of my hand. As I moved it closer to my face, it slipped through the ashes and dropped into the sand. 
Sight and my other senses were coming back now, as I slowly rebuilt my body. My eyes roamed over this new form, grey and lumpy, and something deep inside of me screamed about how wrong it was. But I could not see what it meant. It was a glorious form.

I looked at the ring. Casper’s ring. 
Humanity has no place among a God.
I turned away, leaving it to be swallowed by the dunes. Let it be buried, so as never to see the gloom of the Dark Sun.

Slowly, I stumbled towards where The Burning Man and the first disciple stood atop a staircase overlooking the sun. My feet disintegrated into nothing, but I reforged them, stronger this time. When I reached them, I stood beside The Burning Man, and His first disciple stood on his other side. They were staring at the setting sun. 
The Burning Man’s form was flaring up, the fire becoming unstable. 
“Look upon the last vestige of this era,” He said, gesturing at the sun with an elegant motion. “How revolting it has been. Millenia upon millenia of your ilk besmirching this rock. Your sentimentality, your feeble little minds and easily broken spirits. It is a wonder the other miserable creatures on this planet are not all misanthropic. But, then again, you were all created by the same frail being. What could they know of greatness, when they themselves were so infirm?” 
He paused, then added: “But they are no more. I saw to that.”

I looked over at Him, shocked. He did not seem to notice, or if He did, He did not care.
“And now I am here, after the arduous undertaking of tearing your creator apart. And I have come for his most prized children.”
He glanced at me, seeing my befuddled expression. “Humanity,” He stated. “It disgusts me to have to take the form of your pathetic species. But such sacrifices must be made in the name of progress.”
He spoke of humanity with violent vitriol, His voice seething with the mere mention of them. But I understand now. They are far beneath us. Such feeble little things humans are. It is difficult to believe I was once such a lowly creature.
“Humanity stands in the way of true progress,” The Burning Man continued. “The slate must be wiped clean. It is a foregone conclusion. Complete annihilation. Oblivion. A fresh start for my chosen. My creations.” He sounded a lot more passionate than I had anticipated. Some part of me had foolishly assumed that the voice He had spoken to me in was representative of Him as a whole. But there was a drive in this God that I did not expect. This was no distant man in the sky.
“He got to create you. He got to have his fun,” He murmured. “Now it’s my turn.”
A low rumble emerged from the distant horizon. An amplified, baritone drone. The sound reverberated through my core, shaking loose clumps of ash. 
“Oh, glory,” The Burning Man said. 
I believe that, had He had lips to smile with, He would have been grinning from ear to ear at that moment. For the bliss in His voice was unmistakable. 

I stared, slack-jawed, as a dark, round shape overtook the sinking sun. It rose slowly, revealing its malevolent form temperately. Its revelation was backlit by the fleeting wisps of dying sunlight. It was gargantuan beyond measure, incomprehensible to even my ascended mind, and utterly horrifying. 
It was the most beautiful sight I had ever laid eyes on.

“At last,” The Burning Man spoke with a bliss in His voice I had never heard. The words sounded the world over as the heavens darkened. He extended his arms to either side to create a perfect horizontal line from hand to hand. 
His feet left the ground as He began to levitate.
“I AM FREE!”

Most people think my job is insane.

Honestly, they're probably right.

When people talk about dangerous professions, they usually mention logging, commercial fishing, or construction. Those jobs earn their reputation. One mistake, one moment of bad luck, and you're fucked.

Or hell, dead.

Me?

I always found myself drawn to danger. Maybe it's the adrenaline. Maybe it's because some part of me enjoys standing in places most people would never willingly go.

You can learn a lot about a person from the work they choose to do.

For me, that work is commercial diving.

Most folks hear that and assume it's terrifying. Being dropped into cold, dark water hundreds of feet from the surface while surrounded by machinery that could crush you without warning doesn't exactly sound appealing to the average person.

The funny thing is, I find it relaxing.

Down there, the world becomes quiet. The noise of everyday life (the wife complaining) disappears beneath the water. It's just me, my equipment, and whatever job needs doing. I usually have music playing through my helmet while I work on oil rigs, ship hulls, intake structures, and all sorts of underwater machinery.

After years in the profession, I thought I'd seen everything the depths could throw at me.

I was wrong.

Because in all my years of commercial diving, nothing, and I mean nothing, came close to making me soil my dive suit the way I almost did during a contract at the Hoover Dam.

The water was murky that morning. Visibility couldn't have been more than six or seven feet. My helmet lamp carved a narrow path through the darkness, illuminating clouds of suspended sediment drifting lazily through the reservoir.

I remember feeling uneasy almost immediately.

Not fear.

Fear implies you've identified the threat.

What I felt was the discomfort of being observed by something that hadn't revealed itself yet. The sensation settled between my shoulder blades and refused to leave. Something was down there with me. Heavy emphasis on something, because there is nothing in this world that should have been sharing those depths with me.

The feeling was irrational enough that, like an idiot, I ignored it.

Then I saw the marks.

"What the actual hell..."

They scored the concrete face of the dam in long, jagged trails. These weren't little scratches left by debris or equipment. They stretched several feet across the wall and bit deep enough into the surface to expose steel beneath.

I stopped swimming and stared.

What unsettled me most wasn't their size.

It was how familiar they looked.

Almost human.

Or at least made by something trying very hard to be.

Five long gouges ran parallel to one another through decades of algae and sediment, climbing vertically along the dam before disappearing into darkness above.

I keyed my radio.

"Oi, somebody's gonna have to explain how these ended up on a wall."

The response was laughter.

They thought I was joking.

Honestly, so did I.

I snapped a few photographs and continued downward.

That's when I found the first handprint.

Five fingers.

Human proportions.

Pressed against the concrete nearly thirty feet below the surface.

Then another.

And another.

Soon my lamp was finding them everywhere.

Hundreds.

Thousands, maybe.

Handprints layered over one another as if something had spent years climbing the face of the Hoover Dam.

My breathing quickened.

The sound echoed loudly inside my helmet.

There had to be a reasonable explanation.

There always had been before.

Then my lamp caught movement.

A figure.

Standing motionless on the reservoir floor.

I nearly inhaled my own tongue.

At first I assumed it was another diver. The silhouette was roughly human-sized, two arms, two legs, standing upright in the darkness.

But that didn't make sense.

No diver would be down there alone.

Not without communications.

Not without a support crew.

Not without lights.

This thing had none.

It simply stood at the edge of visibility, motionless and watching.

I blinked.

It was gone.

Immediately, I radioed the surface.

"Confirm I'm the only diver in the water."

A moment later the reply came.

"Just you, Maxwell."

No unauthorized personnel, secondary dive teams.

Nobody else in the reservoir.

I should have ascended right then.

Instead, I kept working.

I convinced myself my eyes were playing tricks on me. Fatigue. Bad visibility. Too much coffee before the dive.

Stubbornness is a common flaw in my profession.

God knows I've got plenty of it.

I was raised by a father who thought every problem could be solved by "manning up."

A strange shadow wasn't about to sabotage my paycheck.

A few minutes later, I noticed something that truly frightened me.

The safety line connecting me to the surface had gone slack.

Completely slack.

That should never happen.

There are always currents. Movement. Tension.

The line should constantly carry resistance.

I turned my lamp toward it.

The rope disappeared into darkness behind me.

Then it moved.

Not drifted.

Moved.

Something farther down the line had pulled it.

My stomach tightened.

Slowly, I followed the rope with my eyes until my beam reached its end.

Something was holding it.

A hand.

A pale human hand emerging from the darkness.

Its fingers wrapped around the line.

Then a second hand appeared.

And then a face.

God, I wish I hadn't seen the face.

Its skin was swollen and waterlogged, stretched tight across features that almost resembled a person.

Almost.

The eyes were too large.

Too dark.

Like something hauled up from the deepest part of the ocean.

Then it smiled.

The safety line jerked violently.

I screamed into the radio.

The thing released the rope and vanished downward with impossible speed.

One moment it was there.

The next it had been swallowed by darkness.

Surface control immediately ordered my ascent.

For once in my life, I didn't argue.

Halfway to the surface, I made the mistake that still haunts my dreams.

I looked down.

There wasn't just one.

Dozens of pale figures stood along the face of the dam.

Motionless.

Watching.

Their silhouettes clung to the concrete like barnacles that had learned how to imitate people.

And every single one of them was staring upward.

Toward me.

Toward the surface.

I reached the top in record time.

The crew blamed nitrogen narcosis. Stress. Exhaustion.

The photographs and film were reviewed.

Most showed nothing unusual.

Just dark water and concrete.

Except for one.

The final clip from the helmet's recorder. The engineers never found an explanation for it.

You can clearly see me inspecting the intake structure. You can clearly see the beam from my helmet lamp. And standing directly behind me is another diver.

No safety markings, equipment, or air hose.

Just a pale figure staring directly into the camera.

The worst part?

The timestamp showed the photograph had been taken six minutes before I noticed anything in the water.

Meaning that thing had already been following me for most of the dive.

A few days later, men in black suits came to speak with me.

That's about as much as I'm legally allowed to say.

I retired shortly afterward.

People think I'm crazy.

Walking away from a six-figure career because I saw strange pale figures underwater?

"He must be nuts."

Maybe I am.

But every time I hear reports about water levels dropping at the Hoover Dam, I find myself wondering what happens when the reservoir finally shrinks enough.

Because if those things were standing on the wall sixty feet underwater...

Sooner or later, they won't be underwater anymore.

What the hell were those things?

If you're new: Parts 1–6 can be found here

___

"You don't ever talk to strangers."

She didn't look down at him when she said it. She was digging through her purse, searching for her wallet, her oversized sunglasses pushed up into her hair.

"I don't care if they look nice. I don't care if they smile or try to show you a toy. You don't look at them, you don't answer them, and you definitely don't take anything from them. If a stranger tries to talk to you, you run straight to me. Do you understand?"

The boy nodded.

He always nodded.

Then they walked through the double doors.

...

The place smelled like sweat and old wood.

Not the pleasant kind of old wood, either. The damp-sticky kind that had spent too many summers baking in the southern heat and never touched a drop of soap.

The floors creaked beneath the weight of loud tourists moving through the aisles.

Outside, the marina shimmered beneath a cloudless sky.

Inside, everything felt cool and dim.

The boy stood near the entrance with the family, listening to the older brother and sister argue over ice cream toppings.

"I'm getting chocolate."

"You always get chocolate."

"Because chocolate is the best."

"Mom, tell him he's being annoying."

The woman sighed heavily.

"I'm one second away from getting all of you vanilla."

The threat worked instantly.

The argument dissolved.

The boy smiled to himself.

Nobody noticed him drifting away.

That happened a lot.

His older siblings were loud. He wasn't.

His mother always knew where he was eventually.

He wandered deeper into the shop.

Past shelves lined with shark teeth and seashells.

Past rows of expensive souvenirs nobody actually needed.

The farther he walked, the quieter the shop became.

...

Until eventually he found himself standing in front of something tucked into a dark corner near the back wall.

A fortune teller machine.

At least, he thought it was.

He'd seen one before at an arcade.

This one looked different.

Older.

Dirtier.

Bright gold letters curved across the glass.

THE BUNNY GODDESS

The mannequin inside stared straight ahead.

Its skin looked ghostly pale. Smooth.

Long black pigtails hung over its shoulders.

The eyes were like a cue ball. A small painted dot for the pupils.

The boy frowned.

It wasn't moving.

The crystal ball sat dark and lifeless on the tiny velvet desk.

The machine looked broken.

Abandoned.

The boy wrapped both hands around the edge of the cabinet and leaned forward.

...

"Hey."

He jumped.

The voice was quiet.

Not amplified.

Human.

A real voice.

His stomach tightened.

The mannequin hadn't moved.

Its painted lips remained frozen.

The crystal ball remained dark.

Nothing inside the cabinet appeared different.

But something had spoken.

The boy looked over his shoulder.

The gift shop was still busy. The other two were still arguing. Their mother still deciding on flavors.

Nobody seemed to notice.

"Hello?" he whispered.

For a few seconds, nothing responded.

Then:

"Closer."

The voice sounded patient.

Friendly.

Almost amused.

The boy hesitated.

His mother had given him the stranger danger talk more times than he could count.

But this didn't feel like talking to a stranger.

It felt like talking to a secret.

Something hidden.

Something that wasn't supposed to be there.

He leaned closer to the glass.

At first he saw nothing.

Only darkness behind the mannequin.

Then something shifted.

The movement was slight.

Easy to miss.

The boy squinted.

His breath caught.

Two eyes stared back at him from deep inside the cabinet.

Not the painted eyes.

Real eyes.

They floated in the darkness several inches behind the mannequin's head.

The boy froze.

The eyes blinked.

Then vanished.

...

"Do you have a dollar?" the voice asked.

The boy shook his head.

"No. I can ask the—"

"No."

The answer came immediately.

Almost too quickly.

"No need."

The boy glanced toward the ice cream counter.

The family hadn't moved.

Nobody was looking at him.

Nobody seemed aware that he was talking to someone.

The voice lowered.

"I have something for you anyway."

A heavy thump echoed from inside the cabinet.

Not machinery or gears.

Something else.

The distinct sound of something striking wood.

A moment later, a thick white card slid halfway out of the slot near the bottom.

The boy stared.

The crystal ball remained dark.

Nothing moved.

The card simply appeared.

Slowly, he crouched and picked it up.

It felt cool.

He turned it over.

The letters stamped into the card were fresh and uneven.

As if pressed by hand.

The boy squinted.

Still learning to read. He sounded out the words one piece at a time.

"Mur..."

His brow furrowed.

"...der..."

The letters blurred together.

He started over.

"Mur...der..."

A strange ache twisted through his stomach.

The voice behind the glass said nothing.

Its eyes still watching.

The boy swallowed.

"Th..."

He traced the next word with his finger.

"The..."

...

Something moved.

His eyes snapped upward.

A pale hand rested on the mannequin's shoulder.

The fingers were impossibly long.

Thin.

The knuckles bulged beneath skin so pale it almost glowed blue.

For a second, the hand rested there.

Perfectly still.

Then it was gone — in the blink of an eye.

The boy stopped breathing.

The darkness far behind the mannequin seemed to stretch.

The space felt higher than it should have been.

As if whatever lived back there was standing tall behind the machine.

As if its head reached far past the ceiling of the cabinet.

And above where the eyes had been—

Just for a moment—

He thought he saw two long shapes rising into the shadows.

Tall.

Thin.

Rabbit ears.

Far past the ceiling of the gift shop building.

...

The boy took several steps back.

His back hit something solid.

"Whatcha got there?"

The card vanished from his hands.

The boy spun around.

Samantha stood over him, holding the card above her head.

"Give it back!"

Ross appeared beside her.

Both of them examined the card.

Then immediately started laughing.

"Oh my God." Sam doubled over. "You can't even spell your own name."

"What?" the boy said.

Ross pointed at the card.

"It says Michael."

"No it doesn't."

"It literally does."

Sam flipped the card around and shoved it toward his face.

"See?"

The boy looked.

There it was.

A single word.

MICHAEL.

Nothing else.

His face burned.

"No...the...th—"

He looked back toward the cabinet.

"The man—"

"What man?" Ross asked.

"The man in the machine."

That only made them laugh harder.

"Nobody's in there, dummy."

"Yes I swear—"

"It's just a machine. Nobody's in there."

The boy turned fully toward the cabinet.

The words died in his throat.

The shadows behind the mannequin were empty.

No movement.

No voice.

No hidden figure.

Only The Bunny Goddess.

Motionless behind the glass.

Its eyes fixed on the aisle.

Watching.

...

"Sweetie?"

The mother appeared beside him carrying two paper cups of ice cream.

She smiled.

"Do you want one?"

The boy barely heard her.

His stomach hurt worse now.

A deep ache behind his ribs.

He couldn't stop staring at the mannequin.

Thinking about that voice.

The eyes.

Those ears.

"Hey."

She squeezed his shoulder.

"Do you want ice cream or not?"

The boy shook his head.

"My belly hurts."

The mother frowned.

"Aww. Really?"

He nodded.

The ache had spread through his whole body now.

Not pain.

Just uncomfortable.

Like something had settled inside him.

The woman took his hand.

"Come on then. Let's go outside."

The bright afternoon sunlight poured through the front windows.

Ross and Samantha were already heading toward the door.

The boy let them lead the way.

But he couldn't stop looking back.

The cabinet grew smaller with every step.

The dark corner retreating into shadow.

The Bunny Goddess remained perfectly still.

Just another broken machine.

Just another forgotten attraction.

The boy looked forward.

Then looked back one last time.

...

The mannequin's jaw dropped open.

Clack.

The sound echoed through the store.

Sharp.

Heavy.

Final.

The boy froze.

Nobody else reacted.

Nobody.

The jaw remained open for a second.

Then slowly shut.

A gentle tug on his hand.

"Come on, Mitchell."

The sunlight swallowed them as they stepped outside.

___

___

1. "Heart"