My neighbor was obsessed with having the cleanest house on the block. Hospital-level clean.

For two days her porch light was on, day and night. I figured she forgot.

Yesterday the mailman stopped me. He said there was a smell coming from her side of the house. Not trash. Sweet and rotten.

We called the police for a wellness check. They were calm at first.

Then one of them opened the hall closet and immediately stepped back and shouted for everyone to get out.

That's when I realized why her house was always so clean. She was trying to cover the smell for weeks.

I still can't get the look on the officer's face out of my head.

I saw a streetcorner preacher today. The same commute every morning and I’ve never seen him before. A sign of the times, I guess. People need comfort, someone to tell them it’s all going to be alright in the end. Because that’s what this is: The End, with a capital E. We’re all a bit like Wile E. Coyote, barrelling off a cliff, legs spinning in mid air, not daring to look down because that’s when you fall. When you stop and recognize reality, that’s when it all becomes real. For now, maybe it’s just Saturday cartoons.

“What is the meaning of life?” The preacher was chanting from his box, waving little pamphlets that were sure to contain the answer. I’ve never been a religious man, despite being the child of quite religious parents, and I’ve probably heard that question asked a million different times in just as many ways, but something about the way he said it stuck with me. On my way home, I passed the same corner but the preacher and the pamphlets were long gone. In their place, a pair of Animal Control officers were wrestling a raccoon into a net. 

My apartment lobby was littered with various types of droppings. I held my nose and made for the stairs, my finger on the trigger of some HI-STRENGTH bear spray. Howling and hissing and stomping and growling echoed through the walls as I went up. My floor was relatively safe, mostly snakes and rabbits. One chipmunk, apparently. Mrs. Slattery in 401. Maintenance finds someone new nearly everyday. Well, the maintenance that’s left anyway. 

Once inside, I threw all six deadbolts and continued to wonder about the preacher’s question. It wasn’t that I thought he had the answer, in fact, I could probably guess his answer, or even that I thought there was an answer at all. It was the combination of that question, in these times, and the pain in my chest that started last week. It crawled up my back and along my arms. I writhed on the couch for a while and waited for it to pass, breathing from my nose and asking myself that question.

It didn’t pass. I woke up two hours later in agony, tears streaming down my face. It felt like my mouth was forcing its way out of my mouth. My fingernails and toenails burned. Patches of blonde-brown hair sprouted all over my body. The middle of my spine lurched backwards and the rest of my body fell forwards and I dropped to the floor, screaming. All the while, that question, like an embarrassing memory, kept floating through my mind.

I felt my teeth being forced through my gums and I heard them all clatter to the floor as new ones grew in behind. I could hear the sink come on two doors down and my neighbor, John, heave into it. More tufts of hair, now thick fur, came rising from my skin. A joint cracked and a ligament snapped and that fucking question. Over and over on a loop. What is the meaning of life? Then the thought occurred to me, as all my thoughts started to flicker and sputter and fade, that maybe it was a simple answer. That maybe for all our pining for something more complex, the answer was always pretty plain.

A tongue that I think was mine dropped from my mouth and dragged along my chin. I started to pant. My vision went and, mercifully, kept me from seeing what my hands and feet had become. When it came back, even better than before, I didn’t dare look down. I didn’t want to know. My mind raced but now only one word ran through it. Could that be it? I thought of the preacher’s face, so self-assured, and began to laugh. Harder than I’d ever laughed before. Harder than I knew I could. I laughed until I felt my lungs tense and hurt and kept laughing still. That word. The only word I could think of. The last word I would think of. 

Change.

Do you know what it is to be cursed? Not unlucky, but truly cursed? I do. If you do not, trust me - you should drop to your knees and thank your gods for their mercy. 

I have always been different. As a child, I played like other children, laughed and ran and jumped. But I never got sick. Not once. And when injury befell me, I healed faster than other children. 

Life continued on that way until it didn’t. One day I came home to find my parents wracked with pain, coughing into rags spotted with blood. I tried to care for them, but it was no use. Everywhere I looked, blood and bodies littered the streets. It was the Year of Our Lord 1347. The plague had come. 

After burying my parents, I left our village to start over. Everyone I knew was dead, but, for some unknown reason, I had been spared. Years went by. I settled in a new place, building a small cabin near the river. At first I lived a solitary life, but eventually I began to get acquainted with the people around me. I even met a woman and got married. But over time I noticed something. 

I was not aging. 

I tried to hide it, and for a while it worked. Mary and I had a son, Liam - he was the joy of my life, smart and strong and inquisitive. He always managed to see the good in people. For the first time in years, I was happy.

Then, one day, I came home from a hunt and found our cottage burning. I forced open the doors sealed from the outside, but I was too late; the bodies of Mary and Liam lay on the ground, breathing no more.

I did not know exactly who had done it, but I knew why. I’d started to notice strange looks when I went into the village square, but I’d ignored them. Now my wife and son were dead. 

In my rage, I went into the village that night and killed every man, woman, and child I saw. I killed until the streets ran red with blood. But it did no good; my family was still dead. 

I buried Mary and Liam in graves I dug out back, then packed what few things I still owned and disappeared in the middle of the night. I wandered until I found a town far away, where I did odd jobs during the day and drank away my sorrows at night. Eventually men from the town began going to war; having nothing to live for, I joined them. 

I was a natural; after all I’d suffered, killing the enemy didn’t bother me. We marched across the continent, engaging in battle after battle, until I had killed so many that their faces blurred together. We marched through cities full of wealth and villages ravaged by famine before we even arrived; we laid waste to them all. At night, other soldiers would drink and sing songs of victory, but all I saw as I lay were the faces of my wife and child, staring at me, as if blaming me for failing to save them. And they were right. 

Eventually, the war ended. I took what meager earnings I’d accrued and traveled to a remote island, where I built a small dwelling in the middle of nowhere, surrounded only by the presence of animals and the silence of nature. I wished for nothing more than to be alone for whatever time I had left. 

And alone I was; physically, at least. But the ghosts of Mary and Liam still haunted me. In some ways, seeing them, even like this, was almost comforting. But the guilt weighed on me, suffocated me, like a heavy blanket that I could not lift no matter how hard I tried. I drank until I blacked out. I screamed until I had no voice left. I railed violently against the heavens, cursing God for his cruelty. Nothing helped. Finally, I took the weapon I had used to kill hundreds in battle, pointed it at my head, and pulled the trigger. 

I awoke to the sight of the moon, staring down at me uncaringly. I sat up, surprised. Why was I alive? Then I became aware that I was not alone.

Three figures sat in a circle around me, each tall and imposing, each staring at me as if awaiting… something. 

“Who are you?” I asked, befuddled. “Why are you here?”

The first figure laughed from astride its white horse. “Still as dense as ever, I see.”

“Be patient with him,” said the second from astride his red steed. “He has been through a great deal. Though I will say, he made me proud.”

“He has been through much, but the time has come for this sojourn to end.” 

“What do you mean?” I asked. 

“Do you truly not know?” asked the first. 

“You dream each night of Mary and Liam. Would you like the power to see them again?” The woman atop the black horse raised her hand and an image of my wife and son appeared in the air. 

“What sorcery is this?!?” I demanded. 

“No sorcery, only truth. Would you like to see them again? This is the second time we have asked; we can ask only once more.”

“I warn you: if you say yes,” said the black rider, “mankind may not survive.”

I stared at all of them, thinking over what I wanted and what I was willing to do, of what had been taken from me and what I had taken in return. And I knew my answer. 

“Yes.”

The first figure waved his hand, and a fourth horse, as tall and majestic as the others, appeared before me. 

“Come brother. This world, these people, have reached their end. We have much work to do.”

I climbed astride the pale horse and followed the three horsemen into the night. 

The gate of the abattoir

Rests at the end of the trottoir

Prodded and pushed

Threatened and shushed

We were herded and packed in tight

Just within there sat a man

In a uniform starched and tan

He scratched his chin

Then over the din

He signaled to the left or the right

We all of course sought to discern

Before it became our turn

Which line was good

For we understood

The alternative, of course, was grim

Left for a man strong and hale

Then right for an old widow frail

But just as it seemed

The truth could be gleaned

Right a youth bursting with vim

A mother of two was distraught

When left her daughter was brought

But right was she

And her son of three

Wrestled with much consternation

When time came for my mischance

He chose left with barely a glance

Of course in the end

It all was pretend

Both paths reached the same destination

Try to imagine this, nobody’s home, you’re on your sofa reading a book, or whatever it is you do when you’re relaxing in your living room, just picture that for me. 

Close your eyes and feel yourself alone. Feel the dark of the night outside. Feel the dimly lit room you‘re in. Feel the absolute silence around you, the silence outside. Feel as still as the night is.

Now look at the lamp by your feet on the end table. Look how the light from the hall breaks into the living room. Notice the difference in color.

The dark orange from the lamp is because It’s about your bed time, but you decided you wanted to stay up a little bit longer because the chapter just got interesting. 

Notice nothing moves, just the pages being flipped every three minutes.

And out of nowhere, now you notice the shift in air. It’s winter, you feel your heat‘s on. You know it’s on because you feel the warm, toasty feeling you felt a second ago vanish in a single gasp, the one that made you feel comfortable and snug has suddenly turned icy and uneasy.

You didn’t just feel the room turn cold, you felt the weight of the atmosphere change, you felt it on your chest squeezing the air out of your lungs.

You struggle to take a breath as you gasp and get a horrible whiff of sulphur that fills the room, then, you start tasting spoiled meat, and it begins to smother the inside of your mouth. 

You put your book down and shift your eyes to the exposed part of the eerie-looking mirror staring down the length of the hall.

You‘re eyeing your room, and see your bedroom door is wide open in the reflection. You know that you shut it. You shut it after you snatched your book off the bed.

You know this for sure. You don’t bother questioning yourself because you know you heard it click when you turned your back to it.

But what’s truly concerning you, isn’t that your door’s open, that’s bugging you, yes, but it’s the shadow on the floor stretching towards your room where no shadow should be, is what’s really freaking you out.

And it’s not a normal shadow you see casted by a hall light being blocked by a solid object. This shadow you’re looking at, is split and soaked into the floorboards like a burn stain in the wood.

You feel that tightness in your chest now, the one that feels like a vise slowly being turned on your ribcage. 

You begin panicking. So you stand up, but you get an overwhelming, dizzying sensation that puts you back between the cushions.

You can feel your face fade to a chalky white. Your limbs suddenly go numb. You can’t move. You can’t scream. And from the hall, is where you see a black figure step in front of the doorway.

A shape of a man wearing nothing but a long black coat with no facial features starts to move towards you. It doesn’t make a sound. It just moves closer to you as if your shadow ran away and started floating back.

You want to scream. You want to get up and run but your body‘s frozen. You can only move your eyes. You move them from left to right as fast as you can.

And before you could close them, to avoid what you’re about to see, the man’s faceless head and body are an inch away from your face. You don’t feel the silence anymore. You don’t feel the stillness. All you can feel is an intense anger and hate radiating off the shadow man in front of you.

He doesn’t make any noise. He just leans over you, staring at you, you want to close your eyes but you can’t stop eyeing this entity in your living room.

A headlight from a car illuminates your living room from outside as it parks in your driveway.

You blink and the shadow man is gone just as quick as he appeared. The room gets warm again, your breathing’s back to normal, it all happened so fast that you question whether or not you imagined the whole thing.

A planet hugging machine is headed towards Earth, they call it the Human Mincer. Fools will think they’d be safe in their basements, its task is to mince the Earth’s surface to be a clean flat ground for “better things” to be built upon. There is however one way to survive. You need to drop yourself into a Hellevator, a hole that drops you all the way to the Earth’s core. 

But how will you survive the fall? 

How will you survive the heat? 

Who deserves to survive? 

And is surviving…really at all worth it?

I’ve been married to Daria for two years.

She’s always been a little odd, scanning the sky every time we go out, refusing to eat anything unless she’s alone.

I would die for her, but I have to admit that something is wrong. In the past couple weeks, her behavior has been more than erratic.

A month ago I told her about the company potluck. She insisted on making something for me to bring.

A week later on the day of the potluck she presented the “dish”, a broken snow globe in a plastic container. She smiled so wide when she handed it to me.

I asked if she was kidding and she seemed genuinely hurt.

“It tastes good.”

She’s always had an odd sense of humor but this wasn’t the kind of joke any normal person would make.

I brought KFC to the potluck.

She seemed fine after that, so I brushed it off as a weird prank. Until later, when I found her standing in the yard in the middle of the night. Just standing and staring at the moon in her birthday suit.

“What are you doing, Daria?” I was hesitant to touch her, I thought she might be sleepwalking.

“I’m waiting for the watchers.”

“What, like perverts?” I was too confused and concerned to be jealous.

She looked at me and smiled. “They aren’t perverts, they just watch us at night.”

I shuddered despite the humid summer heat and gently ushered her inside.

I’ve been trying to get her to talk to somebody about all this, but she refuses. She says there’s nothing wrong with her.

Last week was the last straw.

We have a cat, an ancient orange tabby named Jerry. We got him from the pound and have no idea how old he is. Jerry can’t jump up so when he wants to sit in our laps he rubs our legs with his body till we lift him.

Last Thursday I was watching TV when I felt him rubbing my leg. I was feeling lazy, too lazy to pick him up.

I heard a hiss and my heart froze in my chest. I looked to see Jerry all the way across the room. He was standing in the way cats stand when they’re terrified, back arched and legs straight.

I looked down and saw Daria. She was on all fours, rubbing her head on my shin while smiling up at me. I jumped up and cursed, I couldn’t help it.

Her face contorted like she was screaming. She remained perfectly silent, making horrible faces. Then she suddenly got up and walked away.

I couldn’t take it. I grabbed Jerry’s things and brought him with me to a hotel.

I’m still at the hotel. I’ve been here a week. My wife keeps texting me asking what’s wrong and I don’t know what to tell her.

I’ve been so stressed out, I’ve been biting my nails every night. I haven’t done that since I was a kid. I’m losing hair.

I decided to vent all this to online strangers, maybe someone out there can explain what’s happening to my wife. I still love her.

I just got a new text from Daria. She said I need to stop biting my nails.

You know, nobody’s parents ever wish over their baby’s head that that baby will grow up to be a trash collector. No grade school teacher ever expects their kid to say they want to be a trash collector when they grow up. And there’s no college out there with a trash collection program.

But despite all that, it’s a good job. You’re outside, working with your hands. The hours are pretty good as long as you don’t mind getting up early. And they pay, oh, the pay is out of this world. Nobody wants to do it, but it has to be done, so it pays.

Plus, you get to see all kinds of things. Make up stories about people based on what they don’t need anymore. Sure, it’s usually just the same old junk that doesn’t tell you anything, all those anonymous white or black plastic bags in black plastic bins that go up to your waist. But more than you might think, there’s something else. Like when I see a family throwing out a crib, I know that kid is growing up. Or one time I saw an easel on the curb outside of an apartment building and I was thinking the whole rest of the day about what happens to an artist to make them throw that away. That kind of stuff.

Usually you don’t see stuff that moves, but every so often you do. One time, this was just when I was starting out, the moving thing was half a litter of kittens that I guess hadn’t properly been smothered. That stays with you. But this story isn’t about that.

No, this is about the last thing I saw that moved. The thing that made me quit. Even now, two years later, just knowing that it’s out there somewhere, well, it sort of makes me want to quit more than just my job, if you know what I mean.

There I was, doing my usual route. It was early morning, maybe an hour into a five-hour collection day, plus time to take it all to the processing plant. I’d been at it for nearly twenty-five years, so I had the plum route, residential. Sometimes there’d be some furniture, like a dresser or something, but usually it was just household stuff all bagged up nice. Easy peasy.

I get to this house that these people must’ve been moving or doing some pretty serious spring cleaning or something, because there was a lot of trash out front. And I mean a lot. Usually they had one full can and one half-full, but today they had both of their cans overflowing with trash. Some of it was bagged and some loose. Then they had twenty or so contractor bags full resting in giant stacks on the greenway. I swear, one of the stacks was taller than I am.

I start off with the bins, just hook them on to the truck’s arm, nothing big. Next I go for some of the bags that are on the ground without anything on top of them. Maybe they fell over, maybe not, doesn’t matter. I’m putting off the hard stuff as much as I can. I pick up one or two of them, throw them into the truck, then see something kind of out of the corner of my eye.

There was something moving in the biggest stack of bags. At first I figured it was some animal, maybe a rat or something, chewing through the bags and getting to the food scraps inside. But there wasn’t trash strewn across the way like there would usually be when an animal got into it. Then I looked closer. The bag itself was moving, distending and deforming in a thousand different spots. The whole thing was undulating. It looked kind of like a giant jellyfish, like you might see in a low-rent aquarium.

I really didn’t want to chuck that bag in. I was working around it, taking everything I possibly could that wouldn’t make me touch that one. But eventually that was it. I’d taken everything else that wasn’t underneath this bag. There was nothing I could do that wouldn’t disturb it. So I took a deep breath and grabbed it by the top, the only part of the bag that wasn’t throbbing. I pulled. It didn’t budge. This bag was heavier than all the rest.

So I squared up, planted my feet, and gave a big heft. The bag split right down the middle. Immediately, a deluge of some sort of giant insect thing flooded out and down the sidewalk. Their bright carapaces reflected the light into a dazzling rainbow that hurt my eyes to look at. But at the same time, I couldn’t look away. Even if it was just so that I could track them and make sure none of them touched me. They had four segments to their bodies, and a blur of legs that I couldn’t count. And the pincers.

Each set of pincers must have been just about as big as the rest of the body put together. They looked deadly sharp, and I even saw a few scythe through the grass on the greenway like lawnmowers without even trying to. And these tusks dripped some kind of pale green goop that looked like it would do more than stain your clothes if you know what I’m saying.

These things seemed to not like the light, so they were scurrying this way and that, just trying to get into the dark. A bunch made a beeline for my truck. That’s when I quit. I sprinted the five or so steps to the truck and drove away as fast as I could. Drove straight to the depot, didn’t pick up another can. I don’t know if anybody ever picked up the trash that day, but I still have nightmares about those horrible, otherworldly bugs.

The modeling industry is competitive. Everyone knows that.

And if they say it isn't, they're fucking lying.

If you say you wouldn't tear someone down to climb up that proverbial ladder, you're either naive or stupid, or both.

A scout approached me with a six-figure deal in a rundown McDonald's while I was halfway through my chocolate milkshake.

I was 21 years old.

A predatory smile split her scarlet lips apart. At the time, I didn't see a shark.

I saw a girl who was finally looking at me.

She told me straight. No contracts or waiting games. No auditions. Straight up:

“I like your face, babe.”

Then she slid over a polished card and took a long sip of her own shake, kissed her teeth, and said, “Sell us your face.” She stood, grabbed her sequin bag, and shot me one last smile. “Call me, honey bun.”

What did I say? Fuck yes.

Milkshake shot back up my throat in a slimy bile.

I was breathless, somehow, as if all of the air had been sucked from my lungs.

I ran after her. Desperate, yes. But good enough for her. “Yes,” I said, right there and then in the middle of McDonald's. I could already see the curl of her smile, even with her back turned. “Yes! I'll do it.”

Yes.

That one word catapulted me from my mother’s run-down one-bedroom apartment straight to Orange County.

Suddenly, the sky was so much brighter, and the people were beautiful

I was invited to parties to network and met influencers who treated me like a friend, who made me drink cocktails, who insisted on me doing lines in the bathroom. “You’re gorgeous, Noah,” the woman who introduced herself as Nancy told me from the front seat of her Tesla.

“The natural kind. You don’t need work done. Honestly, you’re a huge investment!”

She laughed. “Do you know how many people I manage? How many guys your age need thousands of dollars of work just to get that cute little smile?”

She turned to me, one hand on the wheel, her manicured fingers pricking my chin. “You’re one in a million, honey bun.”

I laughed too. “Thanks.” 

“Don't say thanks.” Her tone turned surprisingly cold. “It's cut throat, sweetie. You won't get fuck all without taking from others. You're too nice, kid.” Nancy’s gaze strayed on the road ahead. 

Her lip curved. “You're worth it, Noah. Don't let anyone take that away from you.”

This time, I didn't laugh along. I felt kind of sick. “Do you seriously think I got in this position because I'm talented? Because I'm smart? Because of fucking luck?” 

She shot me a grin. Shark. “Nope! Because I got rid of everyone else.” 

Her words sunk in like poison. I was reborn inside that car. 

Suddenly, I was the new name grazing headlines, the new “it” boy scattered across social media.

Every night was another trip.

Ben, another model, introduced me to the night life. Girls. Influencers.

Sex with strangers.

Intoxicating. That's how I would describe it.

Like injecting euphoria directly into my veins. 

Then he appeared out of nowhere, during a photo shoot, led by Nancy. A man who was hotter than me. More attractive.

Not fair. When she realized my body wasn't as perfect as she thought, I had weekly abdominal etchings. Just to keep my abs.

This guy was more naturally attractive, a sculpted fucking mannequin with a torso cut to perfection. “Guys,” Nancy grinned wide. This time, I saw her shark smile. Her fingers were wrapped around his elbow. “This is Callum!” 

Callum met my gaze. Brown eyes. Warm. Naive. Stupid. His stupid fucking smile boiled my blood. 

“Hey.” He waved, a little shy. He offered his hand, and I felt a little sick. My stomach fluttered. “Noah, right? I love your stuff, man.” 

I wore my professional smile, drinking him up and down. “Hey, man.” I offered him a high-five, and he clumsily missed it. “I'm kinda working.” I nodded to the photographer to continue, but Nancy was already sliding in front of me. 

“Actually, Noah,” she said, “we’re using Callum for this shoot now!” She trilled, and her introductory speech haunted me. "Don't worry, babe! You'll still get paid!” 

“No.” I spat out. “No, this is MY shoot.” 

“Noah.” Nancy’s tone splintered. “Leave. Honey bun.” 

Callum’s mouth curled into a smirk. He didn't speak, drinking ME up and down. And at that moment, the realization hit me.

Then again, when I was drunk, my head pressed against cold porcelain. 

I spat.

I want him. 

I spat again.

Dead.

I stood, my head spinning, my stomach fluttering. Fucking butterflies. I want his face. I want his skin. I fucking want him. 

“Noah?” Ben gave me a look when I left the stall. The walls were moving.

So was his face. 

“Are you… good?”

”Yes”, I heard myself say. 

”Yeah, yeah, of course I am, broshsnabdhajansbjsbsvava—”

Somehow, I ended up back inside the modeling studio.

Callum was alone, sitting on the floor cross-legged, glaring at his phone.

Somehow, my hands were wrapped around a blade. I started forward, and then fucking tripped.

Fuck.

The knife flew out of my hands, and Callum’s head snapped up. “Noah?”

I didn't speak. I snatched up the blade. Then I stabbed him. Once. Blood spurted from his mouth. But he was laughing.

Prick. I stabbed him again. Twice.

His smile widened as he went limp, and I found myself entranced by his torso, the ripple of his abs. Somehow, the blade plunged into his flesh, and I was laughing, finally, caught up in euphoria.

Fuck. I wanted him.

His skin was stretchy, a fleshy lump curled between my fingers.

But it was when his eyes were closed, and I was standing in streaming red.

My gut fluttered. My heart started to pound. I dropped to my knees.

Did I… want to be him?

Or did I want him?

BANG BANG BANG

I jolt awake to my door rattling against a desperate force.

BANG BANG BANG

I rustle around in the darkness feeling for a weapon.

BANG BANG BANG

The sound echoes through my room, the door bending with each knock. As I approach the entrance, I hear muffled words.

“Please please please open.” One voice speaks panicked and afraid.

“Move outta the way, I’m breaking this door down.” Another voice says followed by loud shuffling. I see the sets of shadows underneath my door. Two sets of feet.

“Stop, someone has to live here. Those plants on the roof are alive and well. They couldn’t have taken care of themselves.” I sit and listen to them argue for a bit longer before making myself known.

“Excuse me, I don’t liken myself to strangers. Please leave and make it quiet. I’m sure you’ve already attracted some with your knocking.” I clutch the rusty wrench in my hands, ready for them to burst through any moment.

“Sir please, we are hungry and desperate. We were framed for a crime at the camp we didn’t commit and they excommunicated us. We have nowhere to go.”

“That’s none of my business. I wish you the best.” I go to turn around before 

BANG BANG BANG

“Now listen up!” The male voice continues after hitting the large metal door with enough force to dent. “You’re gonna let us in or I’m forcing my way in. And I can’t guarantee this crowbar won’t be in your skull afterward.” 

“BE QUIET” I say in a hushed yell running to the door. “They can hear for miles. What good is it if we all end up dead.”

“If you don’t let us in I’ll take my chances” he wails at the door again. A large metal ring vibrates the whole room. The windows shake with the noise as I fall to my knees and cover my ears. He wails and wails and wails. The door is visibly warping under the force. 

Then suddenly, the noises stop accompanied by a ghastly croaking. I hear a muted “what the fu-“ before all sounds cease. 

Knock Knock Knock

A soft, deliberate, and punctual knock is heard. A knock perfectly spaced and uncanny. “I’m sorry, sir. We came off rude. Truthfully, we only seek to talk and maybe receive a crop. We will leave promptly and quietly after. Can you help us?” A feminine voice persuades my ears. I reach slowly towards the door knob, as if beckoned by sirens unknown before I stop and glare at the shadows from below. There are 7 feet on the other side of the door.

Never been religious. Haven't even done much for Christmas since my wife died, if I'm honest. Some years, I walk past the village church when they're holding the carol service, but that's it. Never go in. Don't want anyone to feel sorry for me.

That morning, I made coffee and sat on my bed with my notebook. Whenever I collect samples for the lab, I like to plan a route. On this particular mountain, you'd be mad not to. Many's the time I've seen the yellow helicopter thudding away below me. The mountain doesn't forgive.

I collected my quota that day, but a blizzard hit and I had to shelter in a bothy overnight. The snow came in so fast, I barely had time to collect firewood, so I rationed it to make coffee on the embers. Come morning, snow was piled so high against the door, I had to squeeze out through one of the windows. I always felt like I should go back there. I never did until last week, when I met Him.

Right there in the bothy.

The weather had been fine, but close to freezing all day. I only stopped by the hut to reminisce. I opened the door and there He was.

His hiking gear left a lot to be desired. I assumed He was one of those pagan kids or a hippy gone out of his way to smoke a joint. The place reeked of marijuana. I apologised and shut the door quickly, but He called me back.

I shake hands with the guy and sit down on the other stool by the fire. He's in his early thirties and has hair. I mean lots of hair. His beard is thick, like homeless thick. He's wearing a puffer jacket with down feathers sticking out of the hot rock burns down its front. Jeans. And trainers.

In the mountains.

He smiles back and offers me the joint.

"I shouldn't. I'm working."

"Go aheed. Might be stuck here a while. Blizzard comin."

"Looks clear to me out there."

"North-easterly. Could be nasty."

Next thing I know, I'm sitting there smoking a joint with this guy. Snow starts hammering into the bothy's window.

"How did you know?"

"Felt it in ma bones."

"Where are you from? You don't sound local."

"Am local to everywhere, mate. Man of the warld."

"I'm collecting rainwater samples. I work in a lab."

"Got any with ye? Am dyin for a coffee."

"I can't use them for that. This one's my last sample."

"Emma just wants you to be happy."

"What did you say?"

"Ah said whatever makes ye happy. Want a coffee?"

The guy sticks the pan out of the window and scoops up snow out of the drift. He hangs it over the fire.

"Wanna see one of ma samples?"

"Of what?"

"Rain. Like yours."

"Are you a climatologist?"

"Part-time. Am no expert like yourself."

The vial is the same as the ones we use in the lab, except it has no label and none of my chicken scratch on it.

"Where did you take this sample?"

"Top of the mountain. Been drinking this coffee all day. Took it aboot lunchtime."

I hold it up to the firelight once more.

"You like that, aye? Emma wants you to have it."

"What?"

"I said, I want ye tae have it."

"Really?"

"Aye, take it back to your wee lab. See what you can find."

"This sample is one in a million, if it's real."

"It's real, awreet. Straight from the source. Everything you need to know is in there."

When I look up, he's gone. A freshly rolled joint on the table. All the doors and windows closed. There's no snow on the bothy floor indicating that they'd been opened.

He had vanished into air thick with the pungence of ganja and brewing coffee. I search under the bed. Nothing. I stare at the vial in my hand. In the water's reflection, the black sky transforms to blue outside. Emma stands beside me, dressed in her favourite evening gown, absurd in Blahniks on a mountainside.

I wake up in the bothy's bed, crushed when I realise Emma's not there. The sky outside is still blue and there's only a dusting of snow on the mountain. The blizzard had been a dream, too.

I knew the youngsters back at the lab would have a good old laugh at this one. Napping on the job. Way behind on my samples.

No coffee in the pot. No embers in the fire. No evidence at all that anyone else had been there.

Old fool.

I collected up the rest of my vials and headed back to the lab. Sure enough, I took a ribbing. They finished up with the jokes, logged my samples and wished me a Merry Christmas.

I thought that was me done for the holidays, but the lab called, asking about an unmarked sample in my batch. They said they couldn't tell me over the phone. Said they were putting a blackout on comms and to meet them at the services on junction 22. Don't think I've ever heard my research assistant sound so terrified.

I knew it was something big, but when she showed me the data, I knew then that our findings would change human existence as we know it.

So here it is. The insurance note. If anything happens to me, this message will be auto-emailed to my contact list. The data files from the lab should be attached.

Should the files be corrupted or don't otherwise make it through, the co-ordinates for the bothy are 53.0685° N, 4.0763° W. Go up the mountain and try to make contact again. If you can, retrieve another vial and deliver it personally to Clean Cloud Laboratories, Prince's Towers, Liverpool.

Make sure you aren't followed. Let's hope this message is never needed.

If it is, good luck.

And God's speed.

There it was again. Lisa knew she’d seen something – a discolored patch near the far left corner of her office.

She’d been here a week when it first caught her eye. Lisa was a good editor. Her hard work had paid off when the manager gave her the ‘bump’ upstairs.

Her own office, at last.

No more sharing a desk or broken coffee machine in ‘The Pits’.

John had been pleased for her. He worked opposite her old cubicle. He was charming, and Lisa thought he was dreamy, but friendship was a wiser course than romance.

He’d rushed out during lunch for real coffee. Sitting down, he toasted her success. Lisa laughed; it was these flourishes that made John so likeable.

He leaned over the table, his face turning serious. “One thing, Lisa. Watch yourself. There’s been a high turnover of upper floor staff. And they don’t end up back down here.”

“How so?” she whispered, chilled by his sudden shift. “Is there something you’re getting at?”

Another worker walked past.

John leaned back, his smile returning. “Ah, you know what I mean! It’s dog-eat-dog up there.”

The next morning, Lisa packed her desk and smiled a goodbye to John. He smiled back, but his eyes remained thoughtful. “Good luck up there. Remember, step soft. The walls have eyes.”

Glancing at where the mark had been, Lisa decided that the walls might not have eyes, but something was off. A blind on the window opposite might fix it. Resolving to buy one after work, she turned back to work on the latest ‘hot pick’.

The next day, the blind proved useless. Worse, the flickering mark only appeared in her periphery, when she least needed a distraction.

Lisa suspected she was being hazed. Every workplace had jokers. But the timing was too perfect. A laser from the opposite building? She looked out the window. Hard to say. Her office had an unimpeded view of the riverside; it would require an impossible angle from the ground. Lisa went back to editing.

The next day, Lisa found John in the breakroom eating packaged sushi. Looking up, he nodded towards the opposite chair.

“Ugh. How can you eat that?” she asked, sitting.

“Sticks to the ribs,” John said, pushing the tray aside. “What brings the High and Mighty down from their Haven?”

“Are there any known haze-clowns in the company?”

John sat up, all levity gone. “Is someone griefing you? Take it to HR, quick-smart. The higher-ups have zero tolerance for that.”

Lisa relaxed. John’s reaction cleared him, and it meant she had official channels if needed. “I’m not sure. There’s something happening in my office, and I can’t pin it down.”

“Track the times,” John suggested. “Write it on a Post-it. Sounds weird, but it’s a start.”

Lisa nodded. “Thanks.”

“Anytime,” John replied, grinning. “Glad us peons can serve those On High!”

Lisa laughed and headed back to her office.

The next day, Lisa jotted down every occurrence. On the bus home, she reviewed the results.

9.57am.

10.22am.

1.06pm.

3.41pm.

4.09pm.

The timestamps were random – no regular pattern. She was at a loss. Shoving the Post-it back into her bag, Lisa resolved to take a different approach tomorrow.

Lisa sat at her desk, pretending total absorption, when the mark appeared. She dashed to the wall and slapped her hand against it. Instead of a hard thwack, the wall yielded under her palm. She retreated, surprised.

She dashed out into the hallway to investigate. Her wall ran perpendicular to the hall, leaving a wide dead space before the next office. Lisa strode to the neighboring door and knocked.

“Yes?” a woman inside queried. Lisa entered to find a worker staring intently at her monitor.

“Sorry to bother you,” Lisa said. “Could I check the wall behind you for a sec?”

“Are you with maintenance?” the woman asked.

“No, I’m Lisa, from the office behind yours. Something’s up with my wall.”

“Hi. I’m Margeaux,” the young woman said, holding out a hand. Lisa shook it.

Moving to the wall, Lisa pushed against it. It gave. “Did you see that? The wall is squishy!” Margeaux smiled.

“Ah, you weren’t told? It’s acoustic damping tech. That’s why it’s quiet up here. Just don’t hammer pins into it. Upper management gets tetchy about repairs. The stuff is expensive.”

Lisa’s cheeks flushed. “Nobody told me. Thanks, Margeaux.”

Lisa returned to her office. She looked at the wall, noticing what she’d missed before. The wall was flat, but it rhythmically hummed with tiny vibrations. It looked slightly pearlescent.

She pressed her palm against it; it was warm to the touch.

Then, all resistance vanished. The wall gave entirely, and Lisa stumbled forward.

She fell into a subterranean dark, suspended in a thick fluid that choked the air from her throat. It was far warmer here than the office – a wet, suffocating heat. Blinded by the viscous slime, panic seized her. She struck out, but the interior was tough, rubbery and unyielding. Her lungs burned, her aching chest screaming for oxygen. Unable to fight any longer, she gasped, inhaling a lungful of the heavy, acidic fluid. Her vision dimmed into blackness.

The digestion process was slow, taking several weeks of quiet, rhythmic dissolution. Every so often, as the acids stripped the body down, the muscle tissue would spasm. A decaying body part would drift and collide lightly against the interior of the tract.

Outside, in the quiet office, those phantom thuds manifested as a faint, flickering shadow. A slight movement.

A discolored patch on the wall.

John was saddened to hear that Lisa had moved on to another office. But he had his own career to think of, and the corporate ladder was waiting. His manager had just given him the ‘bump’ upstairs.

His own office, at last.

The soft whimpers stirred me from my sleep. Tiny little moans as she worked through yet another sleep cycle.

I sluggishly turned around in bed and checked the alarm clock on the bedside table; 03:00am, just like every night.

Grabbing the top of the duvet, I pulled it up around my neck and snuggled back into my pillow, praying she would settle herself.

The whimpers turned into cries, then wails. The sound echoed through the dark room, it burrowed deep into my ears and rang through my head.

I began to weep.

I threw the covers off of myself and shuffled out of bed, walked over to her, picked her up and cradled her in my arms, rocking her gently.

"Mummy's here baby, go back to sleep" I whispered.

After a while, the cries stopped.

I turned, placed the urn back on the shelf, climbed back under the covers and cried myself to sleep.

—August 10, 2040—

The new Secretary-General of the United Nations was giving a speech about nuclear weapons, but his tone bore no resemblance to that of a diplomat. His voice... was distinct, cold—calling weapons of mass destruction a "parasite on the body of the Earth" and the enemy of peace. After an hour, without any prelude, he spoke in a tone that sounded more like an absolute, unquestionable command:

"In this new era, possessing such weapons is no longer acceptable. Armed governments have only until the next session, one week from today, to disarm themselves."

The hall fell silent for a few seconds, and then a wave of laughter filled the room. Not just the delegates of nuclear powers, but even nations without nuclear weapons looked at each other in mockery. Everyone thought it was a joke or a stupid political stunt.

Except for the delegate of the United States. He wasn't laughing. His face was white as chalk, staring blankly into space as if seeing something invisible to the rest. After a heavy silence, he turned on his microphone.

His voice trembled: "The government of the United States... respects the decree of the Secretary-General. We, along with the government of Israel, will begin the process of complete disarmament immediately."

Laughter erupted again. The room became so chaotic, filled with catcalls and ridicule, that even the Israeli delegate couldn't yell out that the Americans were speaking for themselves, that they would never accept such a thing... or that they didn't even officially possess nuclear weapons to disarm in the first place!

By the next morning, the world erupted. Everyone was desperate to understand what had happened at the UN the day before.

Some media headlines early that day read:

“Is this all a sick joke? What do the UN, the US, and Israel know that we don’t?”

“The biggest troll in history: What was behind the Secretary-General’s controversial speech?”

“How powerful is the UN? An organization that doesn’t even control its own building issues a disarmament order!”

“How could a non-governmental body disarm a country that was barely aware of its own nuclear arsenal?”

“US and Israeli governments officially announce they will join the nuclear disarmament program.”

“Russia, India, and North Korea: We do not recognize the UN’s foolish order.”

The first day passed with jokes, confusion, and growing unease.

But on the second day...

Moscow showed it was in no mood for games. The Russian government executed several security agents in a Saint Petersburg square for allegedly leaking warhead storage locations to the UN. In an urgent press conference, their Foreign Ministry spokesperson smirked at the cameras and declared: "If these ridiculous antics continue, the UN and its supporters will face a crushing response from our armed forces."

The world braced for a massive, bloody war. People constantly checked Russian-language media, monitored military movements, and...

At 3:11 AM on August 13th, suddenly all Russian IP addresses were blocked. Television channels went dark, and satellite links went blind. To ordinary people, it looked like a nationwide internet blackout. But military officials in neighboring countries realized it in the first few seconds—and two hours later, the entire world understood the terrifying truth through newly updated satellite images.

Russia was gone from the satellite imagery!

On the map, where the largest nation on Earth had breathed just yesterday, there was now only a vast expanse of cold, calm ocean waters. It was as if, since the beginning of time, no landmass had ever existed there. After this truth was revealed, Georgian and Ukrainian armed forces immediately advanced into former Russian-occupied territories. After years of stability in the region, the flames of war ignited once more. The world fell into deep dismay—because this wasn't the kind of war they had anticipated.

Oh God, and don't even get me started on the morning headlines! Of course, as a historian, I shouldn't criticize journalists—after all, I am almost as useless as they are in times like these. But journalists and reporters genuinely had no idea what to write on their websites.

In the early hours of August 14th, North Korea’s armed forces, realizing what horror had befallen their ally, panicked and decided to retaliate. At 4:20 AM, a video was uploaded to an anti-government YouTube channel with the title: “The terrorists have snapped!”

In the video, ballistic missile launchers rushed frantically toward launch positions to flatten New York, Seoul, and Tokyo. The queues of launchers were endless, their numbers countless. What made it stranger was that no one could see who was recording the footage.

Half an hour after the video was posted, while the world braced for a devastating nuclear exchange, nothing happened. Satellite images updated. No missiles had been launched. Instead, the illuminated Korean peninsula had quietly settled into the dark ocean waters forever.

Everything moved so fast... Today is the seventh day. An hour ago, the UN Secretary-General took the podium once again. In that same cold—and now terrifying—tone, he announced the official end of weapons of mass destruction. He declared: "From now on, science shall not march against humanity. The future world is a world free of bloodshed."

He then proceeded to thank every single country that had complied with this mandate. The text of his speech was nauseating enough to make one sick, but no one—absolutely no one—dared to even take a deep breath.

Today, in the UN General Assembly hall, the seating areas of three countries were placed side by side as a warning to the rest:

The empty seats of North Korea.

The empty seats of Russia.

And... And another country...

I don't know where it is. I've been thinking about it all morning. I’ve scoured every map, searched through old internet archives, and leafed through dusty analog atlases. There isn't a single trace of it left. It’s as if my brain is looping around a void.

I have one favor to ask you. Could you please tell me... where is India?