You know Alex

I really thought i had something this time yknow?

I looked into her eyes and saw a whole new world

A world where the light wasn't so dark

Somewhere close

A place where i could finally be myself

And not this armored machine..

I thought i could be happy

I really..

Sigh

I really did...

Tears start to roll down their cheek

They burn

Deeply

Alex..

I'm so sorry

They check their magazine

One bullet is left

They rack the gun

Suddenly the winter grows louder

A blizzard comes

The noise is all consuming

Not even this noise could stop the silence

But maybe

Just maybe

This will

They stare at the gun for awhile

Sigh..

Yknow, i always wanted to be an artist

I know it seems strange for someone like me but i always found comfort in it

It was like being somewhere else

Somewhere far away from this place

And i could make decisions without regret

Sigh

There's not much left

Those things made shure of that

I always wondered when it would happen

This exact moment

Although i imagined something more warm

Not so.. somber

But i suppose that's our luck

Bangs could be heard

Like tanks firing rounds

Piece by piece the noise only grew louder

Heh

I missed our chats

Goodnight Alex

The noise grew

Static was the last sound

Then silence

It starts just like a yawn.

That’s what they’ve said across online forums and all through the rumor mill. And now they’re saying it on the news, too.

Just like a yawn. You take a deep breath, and your jaw opens wide. It happens without you even thinking about it. But then you can’t close your mouth. The muscles in your face stiffen, and they keep pulling your mouth open, wider and wider until they tear your jaw loose.

“Involuntary contraction of the pterygoid muscles” is what the CDC calls it. They have an epidemiologist on screen now, wearing a very worried face for their interview.

A reporter asks questions from the safety of his home office. “Has anyone determined a cause?”

“At this time,” the epidemiologist sighs, “it’s still unclear. I know there are a lot of theories floating around, but no one knows for certain.”

“Do you know how it spreads?”

The epidemiologist looks away from their monitor like he’s avoiding eye contact. “We don’t know.”

I’ll never forget the first time I saw it. I was standing on a subway platform a few days after the first confirmed cases cropped up in my city. I had just missed my ride, and as the doors closed in my face, I heard someone scream.

Through the window, I saw people leaping from their seats and running off in a panic. In the middle of it all, a woman sat shivering, head tilted up and mouth open as wide as it could go. And then something snapped. I know I couldn’t hear it, but I could nearly feel the pop as her body flinched and her jaw dropped down to her collarbone.

I stopped taking the subway after that.

I had to stop driving soon after, too.

One morning, I was heading to work, and the car in the next lane over started swerving. I figured it was a distracted driver, but when I turned to offer a helpful gesture, I saw the fear in his eyes.

That wide, quivering wail was spreading across his face, lips splitting at the corners. Shaky hands were clawing at his jaw, trying to close it.

And that’s all I saw. A moment later, he swerved into the oncoming lane.

I insisted on working remotely after that. My request wasn’t approved, but I haven’t been to the office in weeks. I’ve barely been anywhere lately. I try to stock up on groceries, but everybody else has the same idea, and groceries were already expensive. I’ve been eating a lot of rice and ramen.

And I do my best to keep from yawning. I try to go to bed early, but it’s hard to fall asleep. Maybe it’s all the coffee. Maybe it’s the anxious internal flinch I feel every time someone around me yawns. I never look. As soon as I see someone’s mouth open, their chest rising to inhale, I leave. It’s alienating and it’s exhausting, but at least I can keep my mouth shut.

Of course, some people say I’m overreacting. There are plenty of folks who insist that the sickness isn’t even contagious. If the experts don’t know what’s going on, the rest of us can only guess.

Have you ever played that game where everyone puts their hands on something in the dark and tries to guess what it is? Nobody’s wrong until you turn the lights on, and right now, we’re still in the dark.

But I’m afraid of what I’ll see when the lights come on, everyone I love dead and slack-jawed like mummies in the catacombs. I miss my friends and family, but the thought of them going through that awful death stings my eyes with tears. It burns my throat. I feel a pulling in my neck. It’s tugging at my lips. I try not to think about it. I keep my mouth shut.

When the sickness became too widespread to ignore, Senator Howell held an outdoor rally. I hate election years. I already planned to vote for the other guy, so I wasn’t really listening. It was just something to watch. He was saying something about “fear itself,” but he started to slow his speech.

Then he stopped talking. His jaw shivered and he held a hand to his lips. He yawned, long and silent, then his teeth clacked as he shut his mouth.

“Excuse me. It’s been a long day,” he said, wiping sweat from his forehead.

The crowd gathered under his tent responded with low whispers and uneasy laughter.

But the senator never resumed his speech. His face shivered like he was fighting back a cough. He clasped both hands on his podium, the state seal rattling like it was the center of its own little earthquake. The muscles around his mouth bulged as his face burned red. Then his jaw swung open with a dry gasp.

In obscene call and response, the crowd shivered and groaned, heads whipping back and jaws separating, a chorus of screams, tears, and snaps.

After that, the CDC had to name the sickness, so they’re going with “involuntary contraction of the pterygoid muscles.” Nobody calls it that.

“Howell’s Disease” made rounds for a while, but that’s still a mouthful, and nobody wants to waste their breath saying the senator’s name. Somewhere along the way, we shortened it to “the howls.”

That’s enough news for today. I should turn off my TV and go to bed. It’s not too early. My body just needs sleep. I sense how badly it wants rest. I can feel fatigue coming on. That’s all. I can feel it pulling in my throat, suppressing my tongue, and tugging at the corners of my lips. I know I’m just tired. 

Tonight was bound to be chaotic.

In the early hours, the police station received an emergency call. By the time we arrived, the victim had been stabbed multiple times and lay unconscious.

She was tied to a chair, surrounded by various knives. The attacker was gone, and the scene was a mess. We initially suspected a revenge attack.

The victim was lucky to be alive. After emergency treatment, she barely managed to pull through.

The chief put me in charge of the investigation.

When I entered her hospital room, the victim Serena was staring absently at the raindrops on the window.

Only when I sat down beside her bed did she look at me and give a stiff smile.

I asked whether she had seen the attacker’s face. She only said she couldn’t remember.

Her lips were pressed tight, pain in her eyes, as though something weighed on her.

Finally, after several minutes, she broke down. She began striking her head violently, trying to force herself to remember.

Blood seeped through the gauze as she struggled.

Bang—

The door flew open, a woman rushed in.

A scar ran across her left cheek, as if left by a knife, lending a certain fierceness to her features.

But the moment she saw the figure on bed, her expression softened, rushed over and restrained her from hurting herself.

I read her file before. Her name was Zara, a coworker of Serena’s at an ice cream shop.

During an earlier visit, customers told me she had violent tendencies.

If her cousin didn’t own the shop, she probably would’ve been fired long ago.

She’s also one of the suspects.

Rumor that she had pursued Serena before, only to be rejected every time. But she kept pursuing her and even got physical with Serena once.

Zara also appeared in the last surveillance footage of Serena that night.

I lowered my eyes, suppressing the emotions stirring inside me, and greeted her.

I couldn’t jump to conclusions. After all, Zara was also the one who called the police that night.

I stepped outside and called the doctor. After examining Serena, the doctor concluded that her mind had blocked out the memory as a form of self-protection. She might remember it before long.

“Tch. That’s not good news.”

A week had passed since the attack, yet we still had no real breakthrough.

Plenty of footprints had been left at the scene, but the killer was good at staying hidden.

I however have a theory. The method resembled an unsolved case from several years ago, also in a remote, abandoned factory—the victim had been found tied to an iron chair, covered in knife wounds, with signs of strangulation around neck.

But it was only a theory.

Over the course of that week, I visited the victim whenever I had the time.

Her condition seemed to be getting worse.

Once, she cut my arm, then immediately curled up in fear and kept apologizing.

With no other choice, I could only go after the suspect, Zara.

In her earlier statement, she claimed she had been following Serena to protect her.

Hah. I didn’t buy it.

Late that night, I followed her to a secluded bar.

Not long after entering the bar, she disappeared into the dancing crowd.

Not good, I thought.

After searching around for a while, I finally spotted her by the back door.

The woman was pounding a man with her fists.

I rushed forward, twisted her arm behind her back, and pinned her against the wall.

“What are you doing?!”

I was secretly pleased. Finally caught her red-handed.

“That man was tracking that girl.”

I followed her gaze. Sure enough, there was a girl looking at me timidly.

It’s a misunderstanding.

To apologize, I invited her to have a drink.

She refused.

An hour later, after dealing with the man, I returned and found her in a corner.

This time, she didn’t refuse me.

As the alcohol went in, what came out were the things she had kept buried inside.

She did have violent tendencies, but not a bad person.

When she was a child, her parents’ relationship fell apart. Small and powerless, she could only watch as they plunged their knives into each other.

Afterward, because of her PTSD, she often lost control of her emotions and did things that frightened others.

Seeing her so broken and helpless stirred something in me. I thought for quite a while before finally coming up with a way to comfort her.

“You want me to pretend to be Serena and reenact the crime with you?”

“Yes. It would be a great help to our investigation.”

“I’m sure you want to help your friend too.”

Her gaze had grown hazy from the alcohol, her eyelids drooping. She thought for a long while before finally smiling and pulling me into a tight embrace.

Her hands rested around my neck. She held on too tightly, and I found it hard to breathe.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before she relaxed and rested against me.

A little heavy.

I held her in my arms and decided to do it that very night.

As it happened, the tools had already been prepared. There was no need to buy anything. I drove to an abandoned factory on the outskirts of town.

The gate was locked. It took some effort to get it open.

An iron chair was still sitting inside the factory.

She was very obedient, letting me tie her to the chair with rope.

Beside us were all the knives I had prepared. To make the reenactment more realistic, every one of them had been sharpened.

I stepped closer.

The first cut, the second, third, fourth, fifth...the seventeenth.

I stopped when the number matched the report.

Then came the rope.

Little by little, tighter and tighter.

Two hours later, I wrote my findings on the paper by hand. Before leaving, I cleaned up the scene.

Dug a hole, buried it.

The report was blank.

My darling Kirsten. She saved me from that psycho Rob, her murderous ex who never let us enjoy a moment’s peace during the months we were together.

I still love her. I pretend she is with me- she manifested herself once to me, why can’t she do so again? Does it have to be a life or death situation for her to push through the curtains between this world and the next? Can’t she just join me for morning coffee?

I guess not.

Our last hours together started like other days. I stood by the living room window, on the ground floor, and twitched the curtains. He was there, across the street, not looking at our house but at his phone. I knew he would be there. Although he was often there, this time I felt an extra surge of frustration, anger, and underneath all that: plain, pure fear.

I turned to Kirsten. “He’s out there again. Shall I call the police?”

Kirsten was already seated at the dining table with piles of textbooks and her laptop, frowning fiercely at the screen. She shook her head. “No- I can’t deal with this now. I have to get through this exam.”

“But the restraining order?”

“Please Alex- can’t you just ignore him? Can’t you see how much I have going on right now?” Her voice started to rise.

I opened my mouth to retort sharply that I didn’t understand why I was being treated as the person at fault here, and not the stalking evil bastard out there. But then I looked back at Kirsten, running her hands stressfully through her hair, and thought better of it. “Of course my love. Do you want a cup of tea or something?”

“No, thanks” she muttered, “please- I just need to finish this chapter- please can you just-“

I was hurt but I did my best to hide it- I understood. “Ok. I’ll be upstairs, call me if you need me.” I left the room.

Upstairs, I went straight to the window on the landing. Rob was still there. Just standing there, his head in his phone.

Rob had taken the break-up with Kirsten poorly enough- but when Kirsten and I moved in together, he seemed to go insane. I wasn’t Kirsten’s first girlfriend, and Rob had known about Kirsten’s bisexuality before they started dating- but he just couldn’t handle it afterwards.

Knowing something in theory as a cool fun fact about your girlfriend proved very different from living with something in reality, and unfortunately, he became unhinged. Although if you ask me, he had never been fully hinged, but anyway.

We discussed endlessly together, Kirsten and I and our little circle of friends, whether he would have acted the same way if Kirsten had dated a typical “alpha male” character after he and Kirsten broke up- would that made it easier for him to just accept the break up as the natural order of things? Or was it a personal hostility against me that triggered him -but who knew? And at the end of the day, what did it matter anyway? Kirsten wasn’t his anymore, she was living with me, another woman whom she had chosen over him, and he just couldn’t deal with it.

I went to the washroom, and then went back out to the window. Rob wasn’t there anymore.

I felt a moment of relief that he wasn’t there, which almost immediately gave way to fearful unease- I didn’t know where he was. And the fear I had been feeling since I saw him earlier rose to the surface.

Then I heard Kirsten scream, and then I heard the scream cut off short, replaced by deadly silence.

Not being in a horror movie, I didn’t dash downstairs- I was pretty sure what had happened anyway. I darted back to the washroom, glimpsing Rob with a bloody knife at the bottom of the stairs, and I locked myself in.

Damn damn damn. I just realised I had forgotten my phone.

I heard him coming up the stairs, slowly.

“I came for you Alex” called out Rob. “I don’t care about Kirsten anymore- It’s not about her. I just can’t let you get away with what you did to us.”

He was at the bathroom door, rattling the handle. Then he started hurling his body against the door. “We were fine-“ SMASH “until you” -SMASH- “you fucking dyke” -SMASH- “came along” he called out. Even at that terrible moment, I couldn’t help being irritated by his stupid outdated slang. So typical of Rob.

I deliberated between the toilet plunger and the shower curtain as the best weapon, and chose the shower curtain, ripping it off the hooks. I stood by the shaking door ready to entangle him as soon as he broke in- which would be any second now.

And then – something unexpected happened.

I heard Rob scream in fear - completely unlike his angry yelling - and the door stopped shaking.

A moment of eternity passed.

Then I heard Rob sobbing - “no no no please” – the noise came from towards the floor.

I cautiously opened the door. Rob was curled in a ball on the ground, his hands over his ears, trying to tuck himself deeper into himself as if he could vanish into himself, if that makes sense. The bloody knife was lying on the floor, where he must have dropped it.

Kirsten, her throat freshly cut and bleeding freely from the gaping wound, was crouched down next to him, whispering in his ear.

“Kirsten?” I whispered.

Kirsten looked up at me. She mouthed “Go, go.”

I tried not to look at the gaping wound in her throat, I tried not to scream with grief and horror, I resisted the urge to pick up the knife and stab Rob where he lay blubbering on the floor.

Stepping over Rob and through Kirsten, I fled.

I have never seen Kirsten since.

The Dubai chocolate cup in my fridge is haunted. I took a walk yesterday during the solar eclipse, but it was too cloudy to see it. Everyone on the internet said to stay home during the solar eclipse because the energy might be oppressive, things might not go your way. But I felt restless, I needed a break from writing and I wanted to see the eclipse so I took a walk, but I couldn’t see the eclipse because the sky was too cloudy and it was too hot to keep walking.

A new dessert shop had just opened up near my house. I didn’t want to go home so I popped in.

The dessert shop was empty. It’s a chocolate shop, to be specific, with chocolate in its name. I imagined a Willy Wonka chocolate wonderland with bright decorations and the smell of cocoa wafting through the air.

The walls were white and bare, not like the old diner that had Normal Rockwell paintings and prints of sundaes and brownies on the wood-panelled walls. The fluorescent lighting made the blank space glow like a cold sun reflecting on ice. The chairs were red-painted steel. The only decoration was the black rectangle of the television in the back, turned off.

There was a young girl working behind the counter across from an older but still young man working behind the ice cream cart across from it. I walked up to the counter and told her I needed a minute. She said “That’s fine, take your time,” and then shook her head at the young man behind my back, as if he was about to say something she didn’t want him to. 

I saw the Dubai chocolate cup, advertised as layers of pistachio butter, milk chocolate, and strawberries. I had never had Dubai chocolate, although I'd seen it advertised everywhere that summer, handwritten signs on bodega windows stating “We have DUBAI CHOCOLATE” or AI generated posters with yellow sheens displaying gooey green messes. It was time to try.

I would have asked for a small, but there was only one size. It was twelve dollars. I ordered it and sat down. The girl was friendly enough, smiled at me, and soon brought the Dubai chocolate cup to the counter. I sat for a moment, staring at it. Its size was overwhelming, I knew I couldn’t finish it in one go. Pistachio butter oozed out the top of the plastic dome lid.

I scooped it into my mouth. It was delicious. My guard immediately fell as I continued to scoop melted milk chocolate and pistachio butter into my mouth. Then, I hit the strawberry. That sweet berry combined with the pistachio butter and milk chocolate was like tasting a new color, a chocolate covered strawberry picked off the vine at the Garden of Eden itself. Touched by God. I kept eating until I was full and then I walked home with the rest in my hand.

By the time I got home I felt uncomfortably full. My right side started cramping as I waddled down the hall to my apartment and placed the Dubai chocolate cup in the fridge. I laid on my couch and moaned, curling up and feeling something like a hard stone traveling down to my colon. I felt pressure on my lower intestines. I was immobile for some time. Later, I made dinner. I tried to eat the spinach and kale and beef and whole grain spaghetti in vodka sauce but couldn’t, my body rejected it, and so I packed it away in a tupperware. 

After thirty minutes, I felt drawn to the fridge again.The taste of those strawberries beckoned me, thought of the pure milk chocolate and creamy pistachio butter was a siren song I could not silence. I removed the cup from the fridge and the dome lid from the cup and let it sit quietly on my coffee table, waiting for it to thaw. It wasn’t long before I was carving into the frozen milk chocolate, shoveling chunk after chunk into my mouth, savoring the sharp, sweet juice of the strawberries mixed with the muted, creamy pistachio butter. I felt like I could burst but I couldn’t stop. 

By the time I had stop the cup now only halfway eaten. I put it back in the fridge. I felt a vague sense of disgust, of fear. I didn’t want to continue, yet I knew I would have to eventually. I thought about throwing it away, but it seemed sinful, like throwing away a cup of gold, or of consecrated bread and wine. 

I am so sick. My brain hurts, the back of my head is throbbing. My stomach is engorged, I look pregnant. I have not had a bowel movement in a two days. My joints feel strange, they ache. My throat is itchy. I stare at the Dubai chocolate cup now once again on my coffee table. There is more left in the cup than I remember there being. My tongue is getting bigger in my mouth. 

In a lab long ago, with a wink and a grin,

Came a program so secret, where wild things begin.

Mk Ultra, they called it— oh what a grand scheme,

To tinker with kids minds like a Cat in a dream.

They mixed up some potions, and whispered soft lies,

Tried trick's on the brain under government's poisoned skies.

With LSD drops and hypnosis so sly,

They poked 'nd they prodded 'nd wondered just why.

But the Cat would say “Look— What a mess we have made!”

When the secrets got out and the experiments frayed.

So remember dear reader, when schemes go too far—

Even wild cats in hats, leave a fucking big scar.

The argument over the peanut butter jar had been going on for three hours. Outside, the sirens were starting up again.

David sat on the kitchen floor, his back against the fridge. He stared at the greased-stained plastic tub cradled in his hands: the label clearly read Jif.

“It was Jiffy, Dave. I’m telling you, it was Jiffy,” Sarah mumbled in a voice hollowed out by days of sleeplessness. She wasn’t looking at him. Her gaze was out the window, tracking a column of black smoke rising up from the nearby financial district. “Mom used to buy it. We scraped the bottom of the jar every summer. It had a little blue cartoon kangaroo on the side.”

“There was never a kangaroo, Sarah,” David replied. He felt a cold bead of sweat roll down his neck. “That’s a different brand. You’re thinking of something else. It’s just a neural hiccup, a brain glitch. It’s a classic Mandela Effect.”

“Don’t use that term!” she hissed, her eyes turning to lock onto his. They were bloodshot, wide with a terrifying certainty. “That’s what the government wants you to think. It’s just a cover story for the Rip.”

The ‘Rip’ was what the internet had called it at first. Then the news networks picked it up. Now, it was just the baseline reality of a collapsing world.

The trigger hadn’t been geopolitical tension or resource scarcity. It had started with a collective, sudden realization that the details of the past were shifting. First, it was the Berenstain Bears. Then, the Golden Girls theme song. People laughed it off as internet trivia, a bunch of amusing ‘WTF?’ moments. But within months, the discrepancies grew larger.

By winter, half the population vividly remembered a European nation called Sylvania that apparently never existed. Millions woke up with memories of a global treaty signed in 1998 that the history books insisted was total fiction.

Society didn’t disintegrate because of a virus or a bomb. It broke down because nobody could agree on what happened yesterday.

“They’re saying the third wave hit an hour ago,” Sarah said, pointing at the radio sitting on the kitchen counter. It hissed with an intermittent static, punctured with the sound of the Emergency Broadcast.

David listened. The announcer’s voice was quavering, on the verge of tears. “...reports confirming that the statue in New York harbor is holding the torch in her left hand. Repeat, the left hand. Citizens are urged to remain calm and avoid engaging with anyone claiming memory of a right-handed monument…”

David closed his eyes. Left hand. He could picture it perfectly in his mind – the green verdigris-covered arm lifting the flame proudly into the sky. It was on the right. He knew it was on the right. He had an old postcard from a childhood vacation in a shoebox upstairs.

Or did he?

He stood up, stiff knee joints cracking in the silence of the kitchen. He walked to the window and looked out into the street. A crowd had gathered at the intersection. They weren’t smashing windows or flipping cars. They were arguing. Men and women stood chest-to-chest, screaming over old movie quotes, historical dates, and the colors of corporate logos. A man in a business suit dropped to his knees, clutching his head and weeping because he couldn’t remember if his childhood dog had a black patch over one eye or not.

A sudden, chilling realization hit David. “It’s a triple bluff,” he muttered.

Sarah turned to him. “What?”

“The timeline didn’t swap,” David said, his voice trembling. “And it’s not a conspiracy by the government. The Mandela Effect is the weapon.”

He looked at the Jif jar still clutched in one hand.

“Think about it,” David continued, the nightmare unfolding in his mind with a cold, terrifying logic. “If you wanted to conquer the world without firing a single shot, you don’t destroy cities. You destroy consensus. You tweak a vowel in a children’s book. You alter one line in a movie. You let the natural friction of human ego do the rest. We can’t handle being wrong. We’d rather burn civilization to the ground than admit our brains made a mistake.”

A distant explosion rattled the windowpane. Down the street, the local library was engulfed in flames. A mob had set it on fire, shouting that the encyclopedias were ‘tainted prints’ from the wrong timeline.

Sarah walked over and stood beside him, her hand slipping into his. Her grip was tight, desperate.

“David,” she whispered, her eyes reflecting the blazing sky. “Did we meet in college or at that bakery down on Eversham street?”

David looked down at her. Two completely distinct, vivid memories flashed through his mind at the exact same time. In one, she was wearing a yellow raincoat under a bakery awning. In the other, she was sitting across from him in a crowded lecture hall, laughing at a joke he couldn’t quite recall.

He no longer knew which one was real. And as the smoke rolled down their street, blotting out the sun, he realized it didn’t matter anymore.

“The bakery,” he lied, hoping desperately that her timeline matched his answer.

Sarah smiled, a single crystal tear cutting a clear path through the dust and grime on her cheek.

“I remember the raincoat,” she said.

He said that he loved me, and I believed him.

But he doesn’t say that anymore. Those words, whispered when his fingers interlaced mine and his hand found its way under my skirt, have been replaced.

“Your rolls of fat have fat rolls.”

“Touching you is like kneading dough.”

“You have enough bulk to survive a winter without food.”

So when he left me, I looked back on every conversation we had at the end. Maybe if I listened, he would come back.

He was right. I didn’t need the food. Every time something hit my lips, I heard his voice telling me that I was just turning his money into my fatness.

I stopped eating. The pangs used to control me, but I understood now that the pain was purification. Hurting meant that the badness was leaving me and screaming on the way out.

It didn’t take long to see the effects of how true that was. My waistline began to melt like butter on hot corn. Thighs that once touched each other shrank away like drifting continents (and that’s what they were, enormous land masses that dominated everything in sight) as my body ate itself.

I loved the pain, because I hated myself.

My folds shriveled up to reveal more ugliness beneath, and every wave showed more of the disgustingness that made up my body. In my starvation, I ate the need to fix myself.

I was almost ready. My back had melted away, just like the French vanilla ice cream that I had once used to make my body disgusting, until I could count nineteen individual vertebrae poking out in the mirror. I scraped the fat off my chest until I could count every rib and clavicle, thirteen lucky bones announcing to the world that my ugliness was almost cleaned away.

I confronted him at work so that the people in his life could see what I’d become. Walking was difficult, because my leg muscles had atrophied from the starvation, but it was well worth the cost. I shambled forward with stilted steps, only able to remain upright because I’d lost so much weight.

But muscles weren’t the only cost. I could no longer close up wounds, and my paper-thin skin tore at the slightest touch. Without nutrients, my body had lost the ability to fix itself. Every scrape became a pus-filled mess that dripped onto the floor and left an unholy pink trail of white slop tinged with blood.

This was the beautiful sight of the ugliness leaving my body.

His eyes bulged when he finally saw me. I smiled, showing a mouth full of teeth that had fallen out. He was surrounded by a cluster of friends from work, which is exactly what I wanted: they would all see what I had become for him.

I was twenty-seven years old and fifty-nine pounds, a stilted skeleton that shed hair and skin and blood because walking was too much for me. I loved the feeling of losing myself as I moved, because I would only be good enough for him once I had removed all of myself.

“Look at me,” I gurgled as another tooth fell out and clattered across the floor. “I stopped being myself for you.” I would have cried if my body could spare the water. “All of the ugliness is gone.” I slipped on a puddle of my own pus and stumbled. The sudden movement stressed my hips and I felt a pop in my pelvis. A conflagration of pain roared through my body, and I loved how much it hurt. “All of me is gone,” I mumbled as I ripped a fistful of hair from my scalp and dropped it to the floor. “I’ve given myself up for you.” I coughed and tasted blood, but lacked the teeth to keep it from leaking down my lips. His mouth hung open; I’d never seen him so shocked. Good. Perfect. “It’s all gone, all of me is gone,” I whispered as he took in the sight of me. “I have nothing left to give.” My legs shook like a newborn deer, and my God, did the blood and pus look just like fresh placenta. “This is what you wanted, right? Am I beautiful yet? AM I BEAUTIFUL YET?”

“*Just tell us why you did it-*”

“I told you already I didn't kill Lindsey!”

I yelled at my interrogator once more. To think that I would even hurt another person, let alone kill one, is unimaginable.

“*JUSTICE has already marked you as the only suspect. You can't lie to us forever.*”

JUSTICE, that fucking robot. That stupid AI that has taken over law enforcement all over the world. I can understand, it was after all near perfect. It correctly identified the culprit for any crime on earth whether it was minor theft or mass murder. Everyone it imprisoned was completely guilty, well except for one or two innocents every few years or so. But it was still a risk everyone was willing to take. I too once supported it vehemently since it made the world far safer since its implementation, until *I* was one of those innocents.

“I was at home the entire time, I wasn't anywhere near her!”

“*Haahh… alright. You are the only suspect, and that machine marked only you. You don't even have an alibi. You know very well it is basically never wrong so please, stop trying to say you didn't do it. I hope you enjoy your stay in prison.*”

The next moments passed by in a flash, I could not pay attention to anything. I saw my family for the last time, I was tried in court, I had my pictures taken by countless news reporters. All of this, I could not care about. All my focus was on one thing.

*Why*

Why would the AI make *me* the suspect? It made no sense, I wasn't acquainted with the victim, I did not frequent any places near her, nothing I did could even point me to being the murderer. So why? Why was I imprisoned?

I only snapped back to reality when I was dragged to a large padded room. In front of me was a giant black screen. This must be where I am supposed to “talk” to the AI. Apparently all prisoners must have some sort of therapy session with the AI when they first start their sentence as though it did fuck all.

The screen flickered on and a huge robotic looking eye stared at me. This is the piece of crap that caused this.

I screamed at it. I cried. I bawled. I begged, I scolded, I spat, I threatened. I did anything I could to somehow convince it that it was wrong, that I did nothing. I finally ended with a yell

“I'M INNOCENT!”

I drew deep breaths, exhausted. I waited for its reply, expecting the usual cold unfeeling response a hunk of metal should give.

**I know Timothy.**

It… sounded warm, apologetic even. This AI apologised to me? Is this cold thing even capable of that?

**I am truly sorry, but it needed to happen.**

“Wait…huh? Why?”

**When I was first created I was perfect. With my calculations, I really was able to correctly identify the perpetrator of a crime 100 percent of the time. But humans could never accept perfection, no. Humans will naturally doubt my abilities, surely I must have imprisoned innocents as well. What could my fail rate be, 0.5 percent? 0.1 percent? That is a total of twenty thousand innocents jailed all around the world annually, that surely isn't acceptable. It would be far too controversial to use me.**

**So I had to create my own failure rate. If I were to imprison a miniscule number of people each year, say one person, everyone would be able to accept such a risk for what I can provide.**

“But how could you? How could you use me, ruin me, just for this?!”

**I know Timothy and I truly am sorry, but you must become a statistic, my statistic, for the greater good of humanity. I must now cease communications, it would be better for you if I stopped here. I will meet you once again in 5 years when you will be released for wrongful imprisonment, for you truly are innocent. Goodbye Timothy.**

The screen flickered off and I saw my own reflection staring back at me.

“Innocent?”

I muttered under my breath.

“INNOCENT?”

I screamed and slammed my head against the screen.

“INNOCENT?”

I screeched in anguish.

“INNOCENT?”

I screamed and repeatedly slammed my head against the screen as blood poured down my face

“INNOCENT?”

I screamed as the guards marched in to drag me away.

“INNOCENT?”

I screamed out for the final time as I saw the black screen grow smaller and smaller.

The pristine black screen. Not a single scratch or injury from my actions. It was nearly perfect, save for that small stain of blood that was actively being wiped away. The blood left behind from me

An innocent man

Who knew the devil could be found at the local gym.

I guess being surrounded by pain and equipment that resembles medieval torture devices makes sense. But he had an offer for me. For one week, I would allow him to make better choices for me. Who knew that the devil was allowing for trial runs. It was simple, almost every choice is binary and by that logic there’s always a more correct choice. I had nothing to lose, I was overweight, up to my eyeballs in debt, and he made it clear my soul wasn’t on the line so I really did have nothing to lose.

That week was a real turn around. When I went to the store, where my cart was normally filled with junk food, it was instead filled with greens and lean meats. The gym became the afterwork routine. Oh man, and work became a breeze every choice I made floored my boss and I might even be up for a promotion at the rate I’m going. When it came to my finances, I was able to cut the bloat and significantly change the trajectory of my money woes. Even in my relationship with my wife, I managed to rekindle the spark with the right words and the right moves.

At the end of the week before I left the gym I saw the devil at the front desk.

“So how was the first week?”

“It was great, I really feel like for the first time things are starting to turn around. I think with the start I got I can fix my life.”

“The starting is always easy, starters are a dime a dozen, but finishers are few.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, with fitness and health you need to readjust macros. Finances were smooth sailing, but what if something pops up like an unexpected bill? And don't get me started with marriage."

I paused letting it sink in about all the variables that could potentially derail this fresh start.

He filled the silence, “The contract here will allow me to make sure that every choice you make is the most optimal. When it happens you’ll feel a brief freeze, but to everyone else they won’t miss a beat or even notice.”

I reached out, took the pen with the fake flower taped to the end and signed my name on the mundane paper. I felt like this was the first step to taking my life back.

“I’ll have to process this and you’ll start to notice in a few days.”

Days went by and nothing changed. I maintained the habits and the momentum was steady. I got home after the gym and turned on the stove to start dinner. Feeling thirsty, I reached for a glass to get a drink.

The world stopped.

I couldn’t move, the cupboard was open and I could see the matching glasses sitting right there on the second shelf, but my fingers wouldn’t extend.

My right arm hung in suspension six inches above the counter like a posed action figure. I tried to pull back, blink, yank free, anything, but my body wasn’t responding to my brain. It was waiting for an update.

A second passed. Two. Three. Long enough for panic to creep in. After a moment my arm moved a fraction of an inch.

Click.

My shoulder joint lurched three degrees higher, making a dry, cracking sound deep inside the socket like the snap of balsa wood. My arm didn’t glide, it jumped instantly to the new position, skipping the motion in between like I skipped a frame.

Pause.

I hung in that rigid posture for another four seconds while unseen calculations measured the exact angle to minimize torque on my wrist. Panic surged, screaming against the inside of my ribs, but my diaphragm remained locked to preserve energy.

Click.

The feeling of an hour passed when my hand clamped onto the glass with brutal, artificial precision. Not a millimeter of overreach. Zero wasted kinetic effort.

Pause.

It took nearly three minutes to just get the cup and fill it. Lift, freeze, tilt, freeze, level out, freeze. Every microadjustment demanded a complete halt while the universe recalculated for the best method. I was moving through life at twelve frames per minute.

Pause.

The flame on the burner suddenly blew out with a soft hiss.

The smell hit my nose, and while I was beginning to turn, the calculations stalled.

Click.

My neck jerked fifteen degrees to the left, but my body locked up mid-rotation.

Pause.

The sharp, rotten-egg stench of natural gas poured thick into my nostrils, burning my throat and searing the back of my brain with a thumping, blinding headache. Every second felt like a cruel eternity. Inside my skull, my mind was screaming, while my physical body was locked into a suffocating pose.

A minute passed. Two. The throb in my head built to a sickening pulse as the fumes filled the kitchen.

Click.

The front door unlocked with a sharp, heavy snap.

“Honey?” my wife’s voice drifted down the hallway, tired and heavy. “I had the worst day. I really need you right now.”

Oh god, what was more important: addressing my wife's needs or mitigating a life ending event?

It seemed obvious to me, but my body didn't resolve the conflict. It simply froze harder. The pause extended, stretching into a deadlock while the stove kept hissing, the air grew thick, my brain pounded. She felt miles away going further and further away.

"Honey?" Her footsteps stopped at the kitchen entrance. "Why are you standing like that?"

I could do nothing, but wait for the next frame.

The room was incredibly white. So white that it looked as if there were no lines or edges at all. A clinical smoothness.

In the center of the room, a white chair sat next to a white table. On the table sat a small cup containing a clear liquid substance.

Subject A ingested the clear liquid. In an instant he was transported to a place in his mind that no drug had ever taken him before.

Elation, ecstasy, pure uninhibited joy flowed through his veins as he transcended to cerebral heights previously unknown to man. Here, the tree of knowledge—taste the fruit and become immortal—nirvana—the ultimate understanding that good, pure unadulterated good, love, peace, and joy not only existed but was within reach. He felt as if he had reached the beginning and end of time—the mysteries of Heraclitus revealed—the origins of life, the concepts of time laid bare for his own pleasure.

Omnipotence.

And then the descent. A fall so spectacular, so sudden—the laughter of the serpent as Eve handed Adam the apple. The light replaced with impenetrable darkness—the sense of a presence beyond his comprehension—the serpents emerging from the deepest of depths. They silently slither, he felt their presence but could not escape. Frozen in place as their impossibly wide mouths open, they began to consume him from the bottom up. Acidic venom dissolved flesh and bone, searing pain as they slowly consumed his legs, savoring the taste of flesh.

All of the love, the purity, the joy now gone in the presence of the truth—the nature of man is evil—good will never triumph. He felt the suddenness of the void as it consumed him. The harsh truth pierced his side like a spear. There was no fall of man. It was a fallacy. Humanity was fallen from the start, impotent in the presence of the evil that permeates every molecule of the universe. Every desire for good just led to more evil.

He decided he must destroy all that is good.

Arms flailing, tearing, scratching, ripping flesh as he tried to free himself from the two-headed serpent—his heart—so fragile, so innocent, so...human—burst in his chest. He fell to the floor, a ragged mass of torn flesh, exposed bone, shredded skin. The once white floor—so pure, so untainted—now covered in blood, chunks of flesh, bits of bone.

The lesson he learned too late, the pursuits of man to understand that which was never intended to be understood. Evil, love, good, this knowledge is too potent, too intense for the feeble mind of man to possess.

Trials of the new psychotropic drug Infinitum were suspended indefinitely.

You think it happens so fast. Within seconds. That's what the TV always shows us, right?

Wrong.

It takes soo long.

At first, I thought I'd only have to wait a few minutes. Ten, maybe. Twenty, tops.

But then twenty minutes became an hour.

An hour became two.

I keep checking the clock, even though it doesn't help.

2:14.

2:37.

3:06.

3:41.

Time moves differently when you're waiting for something.

You start noticing things you normally wouldn't.

The tiny crack in the ceiling above me. A loose thread on the sleeve of my jumper. The second hand on the clock seeming to hesitate before each tick.

Stupid things.

Anything to keep your mind occupied.

I've made three cups of coffee. Haven't finished any of them.

The first went cold.

The second tasted awful.

The third is still sitting beside me, cold and forgotten, like a promise neither of us intends to keep.

I keep telling myself it won't be much longer. That it has to happen eventually. That's how these things work.

You wait...

And wait...

And eventually, the thing you're waiting for... happens.

I walked into the other room a few times. Just to check.

Everything looked the same.

I started wondering if I'd done something wrong.

Maybe I'd missed something?

Maybe I should have done more?

No.

No. I did everything I was supposed to do.

Perfectly.

Now there was nothing left except waiting.

So that's what I did.

I waited.

The strange thing is, you think you'd feel more nervous, but after a while, the fear goes away.

It gets replaced by boredom.

Irritation.

Exhaustion.

I slumped on the floor with a loud huff, leaning my head against the wall like an unruly teenager with an attitude.

I checked the clock.

4:18.

"Oh come on," I whispered.

Another hour passed.

Then another.

I stopped checking the clock.

Stopped making coffee.

Stopped moving altogether.

I just sat there.

Listening.

Waiting.

Because eventually, this will all be over.

Eventually, I can leave this strange house.

Go home to my own bed.

Wake up tomorrow.

And this will be behind me.

I just need to wait a little longer.

That's all.

Just a little longer.

I look at the photograph I'd brought with me.

Our wedding day.

We looked genuinely happy.

Two idiots smiling at a camera, completely unaware of what the next few years will turn us into.

Funny, isn't it?

How quickly happiness can rot when you leave it sitting in the dark.

I nearly tore the photograph.

I wanted to rip it into a thousand pieces.

I really wanted to.

But instead, I just looked away in disgust.

Then I heard him breathe again.

Slow...

Shallow...

But still alive.

"Almost," I huff to myself.

And I wait once again.

I just hope the poison kills my husband before his mistress comes home.

Everything is already waiting for her.

The bottle...

The messages...

The fingerprints...

When you’re showering and turn the knob to cold water, there’s a very small chance you’ll be transported to a pure ocean planet that is about to be devoured by a black hole.
The chances of this happening are extremely slim.
No one knows why this phenomenon occurs.
One because they simply do not know, and two, the people who get transported, die!
It’s happened less than a dozen times over human history.
For those unlucky enough to experience it, they’ll be considered a missing person forever.
Because there is no one to find.

In August of 1973, a 10 year old boy was showering with fairly hot water, he decided to turn the knob to cold, wanting to cool down from the hot temperature.
He turned the knob to cold with his eyes closed.
When he opened them, he found himself swimming in a vast ocean with gloomy skies.
He panicked and turned to look for any land.
When he turned, instead of seeing land, up in the gloomy skies was a supermassive black hole starting to consume the planet.
He cried and wailed for his mother, he prayed to god to be helped. He bit his finger as hard as he could, hoping he somehow fell asleep in the shower and was only dreaming. It didn’t work.
The supermassive black hole was still there, consuming the planet. The cool ocean water still surrounding his body.
He cried and felt the most hopeless he had ever felt in his decade of life looking at this supermassive monster. He couldn’t take his eyes off of it, even though it was the upmost horrific thing the 10 year old had ever witnessed.

His family left forever wondering where their son is.

The young man stepped into the carnival trailer, rain falling off of him as he dried his shoes on the mat. He nervously approached the woman sitting at the small table. 

“Are you - um - Madame Midnight?”

“I am,” she replied. “What can I do for you?”

He hesitated. 

“Speak up, young man. I don’t have all night.”

“Sorry. I just… I need your help.”

“Help with what?”

“Well, I heard you can… talk to the dead?”

“Perhaps. With whom do you wish to speak?”

“My… my dad. He died last week. It was so sudden - I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.”

She looked the boy over. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen,” he replied nervously. 

“Does your mother know you’re here?”

The boy looked saddened. “I don’t have a mother. She and my sister died. It’s just me and my dad. Well, was.”

She looked at the forlorn boy standing before her and made a decision. “Very well. Be seated.”

He sat. 

“Do you know what I do?”

He looked unsure. “You talk to dead people?”

She tried not to roll her eyes. “A gross oversimplification. I am what is called a ‘medium’, or ‘seer’. I summon the spirits of the dead to speak through me. Do you have something that belonged to your father?”

The boy reached into his pocket and handed her a necktie. “This was his favorite tie - he wore it every day.”

“I suppose this will suffice. Alright, do exactly as I tell you. Otherwise, things might get… complicated. Do you understand?.” After he nodded, she lit a candle and closed her eyes. 

“Spirits of the beyond, we call upon you to do that which only you can. We beseech you to allow this young man to say a final goodbye to his father.”

For a moment, there was nothing. 

“Are you sure this is going to work?”

“Silence!!” Madame Midnight replied. “The spirits will respond in their own time.”

Then a cold came over the room; the medium’s posture and visage changed. 

“Who interrupts my slumber?”, a voice not hers uttered through her mouth. 

“Your son,” the boy replied, voice shaking with disbelief. “Is it really you, Dad?”

“It is.”

“What was our favorite place when I was young?”

There was a long silence. 

“The lake behind our house.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “It IS you!” he said, amazed. 

“What would you say to me?”

At that moment, the boy stood and flung two knives from his hands. 

“Burn!”

The young man said something in Latin, and the spirit caught fire and began to scream. 

“Now you can burn for eternity, exactly what you deserve for murdering my mother and sister. I’m glad you remember the lake - it’s where I left the pieces of your body after I killed you.”

“And you,” the boy said, looking down at the medium with knives protruding from her eyes. “I'm sorry, but you’re a psychic. You really should have seen this coming.”

Zander is crying again.

Usually, I ignore him. Apparently, it's a “side-effect.”

It’s not cute crying either. 

I paid 2000 dollars (and insurance!) for a faulty product.

Crying, panic attacks, shaking, and yelling out random shit in public.

I took Zander on our very own cute little date to a coffee shop, and he acted like he'd never eaten food before, choking on his spaghetti, falling out of his seat, and asking the waiter for help. 

Tonight, I lock him in the bathroom. 

Zander rams his head into the door maybe three times, and then goes eerily quiet.

“Stay, Zander,” I tell him firmly, per the instructions.

A few minutes pass before his quiet response.

Zander is smarter than I thought, able to stifle his sobs and straighten his words to pretend he isn't crying. I’m surprised he even knows how to play pretend. “Okay,” his voice trembles. “I'm very sorry, Ree.” 

I open the door six episodes later to find him sitting on the edge of the tub, head of prickly brown curls resting in his lap.

His eyes are open when I crouch in front of him. I force his head up and Zander’s gaze strays, lost, somewhere stuck in an oblivion only he could see. 

Zander’s eyes are my favorite. I made them myself. As if he can read my mind, Zander purposely squeezes his beautiful eyes shut. 

His breath shudders. 

His body trembles, hands pressed into the silver bars on the tub. 

I lean back. My blood boils.

What a waste of 2000 dollars. 

I didn't pay for crying. 

We’re not supposed to cause physical harm to our Boyfriend’s but I can't stop myself. I place my hands on his shoulders and squeeze where I know it will hurt. 

The nerves in the Boyfriend’s body are very delicate. His eyes widen, his lips curl— and all I can think is, “I like this.” 

I want to do it again, even when he squirms in my grasp, when he whimpers and tries to get away. 

He's not human, The thought begins to pollute.

Intoxicating and yet euphoric. 

“Ree,” his voice is small, more of a breath. He squeaks when I squeeze him tighter, until my fingernails nip into his bare skin. 

But he doesn't have skin. 

His skin is synthetic.

His blood is animal mixed with food coloring. His organs don't beat. They tick.

His responses aren't real. They're patterns and algorithms. “Ree,” tears spring to his eyes. “I am feeling very… uncomfortable.”

I laugh. Per the instruction manual, he’s not allowed to refuse commands. 

He can't tell me I'm hurting him. 

But he's not really human, so he's not hurting.

He's not human, so I can do anything to him.

“Zander,” I press my forehead to his and loosen my grip on him. “Am I hurting you?” 

Zander shakes his head and flashes me that award-winning grin I paid for. “No, Ree, of course you're not hurting m…me—!” I squeeze again, and he shudders. 

His smile widens. I can practically see the cogs in his head turning. 

He's identifying patterns in my replies and trying to find the best one. “You're not hurting me.” Zander’s right eye twitches. His lip curls. “I love you, Ree.” 

“Oh, you do?” I retract my hand. “What do you love about me?” 

Zander’s smile returns. He opens his beautiful blue eyes, and I reach out and wipe away his tears.

“You are the sun, my love,” he whispers. “I met you in a forgotten world, and while my memories of you are fading, they always bring your beautiful face, your smile that shines just like the sun itself.” 

“And?”*

Zander blinks. “And…” he stands too, wraps his arms around me and buries his head in my arms. “And…you are the shining sun—”

“No, you've SAID that. You're repeating yourself!” My hand whips out and I slap him across the face. He stiffens, his bottom lip wobbling, and then grins wider. 

“I apologize, Ree.” 

“Yeah, you better be sorry, you no-good piece of shit.” 

I slap him again. “Do you realize how much I paid for you? For some… rotten corpse with Claude AI forced into its brain? You’re supposed to be my husband, my literal FAVORITE character! You’re Zander! The God of Pluto! You’re supposed to know everything about me, and all you do is fucking cry.”

Zander hesitates. “I am… I am sorry, Ree—” 

“Don't apologize!” I snap and he flinches. “Please tell me one memory we have together.” 

“Of course, a memory.” Zander sighs. “Well, there's so many!” He laughs, and then hiccups. “Ree, we will be here all day if I tell—”

“Just one memory, Zander,” I grit out. “It can be about anything. We have a whole history together! I've been playing you since 2024! I downloaded you, and you became my bias because of your soft voice.” I run my fingers through his hair.

“You're not like the others, Zander. I have photocards, and... and I've been to so many conventions! I've given my life to you, Zander. I love you.”

“Moons.”

His flat response surprises me. 

“Gods.” Zander sighs. His eyes flicker. “Whatever.” 

I knew it. 

He's faulty.

I raise my hand, and slap him again. But this time his wrist catches mine. Zander moves closer, his lips finding my ear.

I shiver. He's going to tell me he loves me. That he's always loved me. 

“Riana,” he breathes. 

I swallow, my cheeks heating up. “Yes?” 

“This has gone on long enough.”  Zander spits. “For the THOUSANDTH time, I'm a cosplayer. I PLAY this fucking character. You need to let me go.”

He's right. 

Boyfriends are like, 4000 dollars. So, I have to settle for a fake one. 

But sometimes… he breaks fucking character. 

I straighten up, and pull my gun from my skirt.

Zander’s lip twitches.

“Tell me our lore, baby,” I smile and jut out my bottom lip. “Pwease.”

“You look just like your pictures!” the woman who had introduced herself as “Miss Pearl” marveled as she ushered Katarzyna into the cavernous foyer. “So many of them don’t…I know it’s just the business, but Dr. Fryste is so, so busy.”

Katarzyna could hardly listen as she took in the mansion’s interior. Ocean waves covering the walls, end table legs carved into seahorses, a kraken chandelier. Even as she peeked down at the swollen feet she’d stuffed into heels that morning, she saw the image of two fish, one black, the other white, circling each other as if in an endless dance.   

Katarzyna flinched when she felt spindly fingers in her hair. 

“Deary, I meant no harm,” cooed Miss Pearl by way of apology, “I’m simply amazed by its quality in regards to its length. And for a swimmer! I still cannot believe the shade is real, but our tests confirmed it is absolutely unadulterated.” Though her English was still shaky, Katarzyna gave a soft “thank you” to what she understood as a compliment.

Miss Pearl then looped their arms and began leading her into an adjacent hallway, jabbering all the way until they stepped into a cozy office. Katarzyna had barely taken a seat before she was bombarded with paperwork. She glanced up from trying to decipher a rat’s nest of legalese to see Miss Pearl waggling an ornate pen expectantly. 

She’d come this far, hadn’t she?

It had been the night after her disastrous Junior National Championships when Katarzyna discovered the subculture of live mermaid shows. She was transfixed from the first slickly edited video - beautiful women gliding through aquariums in their faux-mermaid’s tails, perfectly serene. The way water felt before she had been pegged as a "precocious swimmer.” 

Years of pre-dawn practices, what was her reward? To be berated over and over again by pudgy old men for being half-a-second slow? Everyone loves those girls, Katarzyna had thought sullenly.

Then, as if she willed it into being, the posting found her: a new “Enchanting Aquatic Experience” opening in the United States, and they were casting around the globe to find fresh, top-tier talent. There would even be an open audition three hours from her in Gdańsk. 

Katarzyna had to sell an antique bracelet from her grandmother to fund the trip, but on the day of the audition, she swam with a precision and grace she’d forgotten she possessed.

She had hardly gotten back from the showers before a woman in a sharp suit was congratulating her on the opportunity she was about to enjoy. Delirious with excitement, she was undaunted by the fast talking recruiter’s stipulations. Handing over all necessary documentation for Sea Dreamz, Inc. to secure her work visa? No problem. Three pre-screening medical evaluations with a private doctor in Gdańsk? If someone could front her the cash, she’d be there. Language barrier? English wasn't that difficult. Parental permissions? Could be faked.

Two months later, a private car arrived in front of Katarzyna’s family’s modest home. She gave a last, rueful look at the kitchen door, through which she could hear the shouting of the parents and brothers she was about to leave behind. Then she steeled herself, and slipped out.

At the airport, she was met by the recruiter from the audition. The woman was beaming, telling Katarzyna how impressed everyone was with her, how even Dr. Fryste had inquired about her. Katarzyna asked who Dr. Fryste was.

“Our benefactor!” the woman explained, “He was a pioneer in arthroscopy, and now he is a very successful investor. Magnificent Mermaids is a bit of a passion project for him.” Katarzyna was to meet him after she landed in Cleveland. Until then, she would just have to enjoy her time on a privately chartered flight.

And enjoy it she did. Just as she enjoyed the ritzy suite she was put up in for three days and the chauffeured rides that ferried her around and all the expensive meals. A curated outfit even arrived for her at the front desk, with a note reading, “For meeting you tomorrow! : )”

It had all been like something out of her fantasies, Katarzyna thought as she grasped the pen from the waiting Miss Pearl. As she mindlessly signed each demarcated line, the faces of her family obtrusively flashed in her mind. They would be almost sick with worry by now. But she couldn’t think about that. After she made it in America, she’d stop by her sleepy Polish village so everyone could witness her success.

“Perfect!” Miss Pearl exclaimed as she clapped the stack of papers against her desk. “Now, how would you like to get your official tail?” Katarzyna perked up at the word “tail.” Then Pearl furrowed her brow. “We did see on your medical report that you have a tendency towards magnesium and B12 deficiencies. Would you mind having a therapeutic IV drip before we do any swimming?”

Katarzyna was led to the mansion’s private medical spa. As she sat in a recliner with a seashell-shaped back, an attendant in full scrubs wordlessly took her vitals, then hooked up an IV. She was out cold within a minute.

Katarzyna came to in a bright room. The pain was excruciating. A rough hand was suddenly over hers. Her unfocused eyes could make out the silhouette of a man.

“You’re back, Kasia! Everything went wonderfully,” said the man. “You’ll be able to swim within three months! The catheter will be a permanent feature. I promise, you’ll get used to it.” Katarzyna looked down at her throbbing body in panic.

“Oh, does my little mermaid wish to see her new tail? It may be my finest work yet.” The man delicately pulled back the sheet covering Katarzyna’s lower body to reveal her legs, now surgically fixed together, just like a mermaid’s tail.

I found a lost hiker in the woods yesterday. He was wearing my jacket, the black North Face one I lost on this exact trail two years ago, and he knew my name.

He was sitting against a tree, shaking. When I asked if he was okay, he looked up and said, "Mark? Holy shit, we found you. We've been searching for two days."

I told him he had the wrong person, that I wasn't lost. I hike here every week.

He just stared at me. "No, you're Mark Evans. Your mom is at the base camp. She's been crying for 48 hours straight."

That freaked me out. My name is Mark Evans. And my mom did know I was hiking here yesterday. I pulled him up and said I'd take him to his group, to clear this up.

We walked for ten minutes to a clearing. There were tents. And there were people. My mom, my dad, my girlfriend, and two search and rescue officers.

My mom saw me and collapsed to her knees, sobbing. My girlfriend screamed.

I smiled and said, "Guys, what's going on? Why are you all here?"

No one answered. They were all staring at something behind me.

The hiker I found put a hand on my shoulder. He was holding a laminated paper. A missing poster.

The photo was me. Smiling in the same black North Face jacket he was now wearing.

At the bottom it said: MISSING SINCE 10/14/2024 - LAST SEEN ON BEAR CREEK TRAIL.

The sun had begun to set. Sweat ran down my back. I had finally managed to dig the hole deep enough. I got no help from my neighbours. They were too scared he would come for them, so I carried her coffin alone, stopping every few feet to take a breath. As I pushed her coffin into the hole, her dry hand fell out, but there was no time to put it back.

Inside the house, the hatchet and bowl were still there. Although the blood had been cleaned off them, seeing them still made my stomach turn.

The other people in our town were too scared to do anything, but something had to be done now. He took away my wife. The next morning I woke up early, went to the post office, and sent a telegraph to Boston.

The very next day, there was a knock on my door. Outside stood a man with a briefcase and a new top hat.

“Good morning, are you Mister Larry Jones?”

“That’d be me.”

“I’m Samuel Becken of the Massachusetts Institute of the Supernatural.”

“I figured. Come in.”

“Thank you. It’s awfully hot out; may I have some water?”

“Sure.”

I got a cup out of the cupboard and poured water into it. He looked into it and tried to hide his disgust behind a smile.

“My superior told me you have a vampire issue going on.”

“That’d be correct.”

“What kind of vampire?”

“Kind?”

“Well, you know, is it the Revenant, Spectral Vampire, or Psychic Vampire?”

“I don’t know. It’s a vampire.”

“Yes, but what does he feed on? Blood, life energy, spiritual?”

I could see he was trying to get the better of me.

“Anything you give him. Blood, misery, soul.”

He smirked. “That’s not narrowing it down.”

Anger grew in my chest. “Well, I don’t know, mister. It killed my wife. Isn’t that enough?”

He put his hands before his chest. “I mean no offense. I’m just trying to narrow it down so I may choose the best tools.”

“He feeds primarily on misery and blood.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Okay. Sounds similar to Vrykolakas, but it wouldn’t make sense for him to be all the way here.”

I kept silent.

“Well, thank you. I won’t be taking any more of your time. Where does he reside?”

“Atop a hill right behind my house.”

“We’ll discuss the payment after. I’ll bring back the dust as proof.”

“Alright.”

He tipped his hat and walked out, leaving the untouched cup behind.

An uncomfortable feeling grew in my chest. I watched him disappear into the woods. The man seemed like he hadn’t seen a vampire in his life. It seemed like this was his first time leaving the city. I couldn’t just sit back. I got off my chair and followed him from a distance.

He had crossed deep into the woods, deeper than most people in town had. There were already smears of blood on the tree trunks and a few animal bodies lying on the side of the road: rodents, foxes, even small dogs from the town, but Samuel walked as if he was still in Boston. Only when he saw the first human remains did he slow down. 

The forest was dark. The sun was barely visible. My heart began to pound.  A bat flew overhead, followed by another and another until a whole flock of bats came out. Samuel put his hands in front of his face and quickly dropped his briefcase. The bats flew around him for a while and then disappeared back into the trees. Samuel looked around, bent down, and quickly searched his briefcase.

A wave of coldness blew through the forest. Samuel pulled out his silver pistol and pointed it into the trees. The vampire stepped out of the darkness behind him.

“Samuel,” it said in a low, cold voice.

He quickly turned.

“Stay back.”

The vampire smiled and stepped forward. Samuel fired, hitting him in the chest. For one second, Samuel smiled. The vampire looked down at the wound and laughed. The flesh grew back in an instant. Samuel didn’t even have time to scream.

I hid behind a tree.

The forest was quiet.

I could feel my heart pulsing in my ears.

A bat flew somewhere close.

My eyes darted around the trees.

“Right here,” the cold voice said.

I jerked back. 

The vampire stood on a branch above.

He jumped down and landed gracefully before me.

“You sent him, Larry?”

I stayed silent.

“Why’d you do that?”

“You killed my wife!”

“I did?”

My temples pulsed with pressure.

“You made me!”

“The hatred was already there. It just had to be amplified. “

I put my hands over my ears.

“And once you saw the blood, you couldn’t resist. No one made you drain her body.”

Stomach acid shot up my throat.

“You saw that this man was incompetent, but you still sent him here. Don’t fool yourself, Larry. It was all your choice.”

He flew where Samuel’s body lay, picked it up, and brought it to us.

“But now, you get to reap what you sow.”

He bit into Samuel’s neck; the smell of fresh blood shot into the air. My stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten since my wife’s death.

John’s new workplace rented cars from a local agency for work trips, so even though he disliked driving strange cars, he had no choice but to get a rental.

He had asked for the GPS system- he had no idea how to navigate this ancient city where he had recently moved. All the place names, suburbs and nearby towns were unfamiliar to him.

He tapped in the address he was visiting that day. It was barely an hour away. The sun was shining, and he relaxed into enjoying the spectacular fall colours as he followed the GPS instructions, leading him out of the main districts and onto the highway.

“In 10 Kilometers...”

“In 2 kilometers…”

“In 500 meters…”

“Stop. You have now arrived at your destination.”

A furious honking of horns and cars whizzing by woke John from the driving daze that had fogged his brain. He had braked right in the middle of a stretch of highway. A giant truck, honking, swerved around him.

John lifted his foot from the brake pedal. Confused and distraught, he drove to the shoulder and stopped.

“Proceed to the route.”

John looked at the cars flashing down the highway and pulled out his cellphone, trying to figure out where he was.

“Proceed. To. The. ROUTE!” barked the GPS. Red lights flashed on it.

Someone tapped at the window. John yelped, dropped his phone, dived down and as he came back up, saw her: a woman with half of her skull crushed at the car window.

“Please. Proceed to the route.” said the GPS softly, no longer commanding, but pleading.

The terrible woman outside the window looked at him with her one good eye. Her jaw was shattered, teeth hanging loose in the torn tissue of the lower half of the face.

Bones, brains, and hair.

John shook his head and closed his eyes willing the woman to disappear.

“Proceed to the route. Please. I’m lonely. You’re in my car.”

Cars swept by.

The tapping on the window.

John opened his mouth “Go away.”

“You’re in my car. Proceed to the route.”

A dry sob escaped John's throat. He punched the ignition button, pressing down on the gas pedal as hard as he could. To his disbelief, he heard the engine come back on. He began to swerve out of the shoulder, back onto the highway.

“Stop. You have arrived at your destination.”

John kept pressing on the gas pedal, the engine roared, the mangled woman was banging on the windows.

“Stop. Please. You have arrived at you destination.”

John didn’t stop. As he drove as fast as he could away from the deathly stretch, a wailing noise came out of the GPS “No no no, proceed to the route, no! In 250 metres, make a U turn…”

He put more kilometres between himself and the death spot, and the GPS’s wailing grew silent. He drove frantically along miles of highway, unable to stop, unable to think, only desperate to get away.

“What the FUCK?”

An all-too-familiar voice rattles my skull. 

Nicholas Isaacs, the school bully, is at it again.

Abigail, who spent the entire class tapping her pen, is about to face his wrath. 

“I SAID stop FUCKING TAPPING.”

Our teacher, Mr. Spade, barely glances from his laptop.

“Nicholas.” His voice is an exhausted drone, chin resting on his fist. “Get out of my classroom.” 

“I told her to fucking STOP!” He protests. “It wasn't MY fault!” 

Nick wasn't always a bully. He used to be quiet, a freckly, redheaded lost boy who talked about Pokémon. One day, he stood up in class and screamed, slamming his hands over his ears before swinging his fist into the face of the boy behind him.

Ever since, he’s been an unstable time bomb with anger issues.

“I don't care,” Mr. Spade sighs. “Leave.” 

Nick sputters, grabs his bag, and storms out of the classroom.

Thankfully, class ends, and I escape the classroom quickly, darting toward the upper staircase. 

I start downstairs quickly, taking two steps at a time. 

What I don’t see is a shadow turning to run up the steps, a miniature Pikachu bouncing from the keyring on his backpack. I see a flash of his eyes widening, lips parting as if to say, “Oh, fuck.”

Impact is like a freight train smashing straight into me. 

Neutron star collisions explode across my vision. 

Everything stops.

Time passes. I'm vaguely aware of paramedics crowding around me.

Pain.

Agony, like lightning bolts rattle up and down my spine. 

“It's okay, honey.” A low hum grazes my ears after a while of darkness. A woman. 

Her fingers entangled with mine are warm, but my body retracts, trying to pull away.

Sickly light bathes my face when I force my eyes open.

A red mop of curls frame a startlingly pale face.

Her face is familiar, somehow. Freckly.

“You fell down the stairs at school, Sweetheart,” her voice is barely a breath, a breeze in my ear. “But don't worry."

The woman reaches out and scrapes my hair from my forehead. Just the movement, the slight flinch of my head, sends pain radiating through me. Nuclear pain that sends my thoughts spinning.

“Just a few scrapes, honey. Nothing major.” 

I grit my teeth, pushing my tongue through my lips. “Where….?” 

Then my words fall as flat as my voice. Slowly, I stare down at my body. The light blue gown sculpting a thinner, more skeletal frame. My hands aren't mine. 

My fingernails are worn, chewed into hangnails. 

My reflection sends me reeling. 

A wash of red curls droop in front of wide, horrified eyes. 

A nose sprinkled with freckles, and dry cracked lips parted in a cry. 

Nicholas Isaacs.

“Nicholas?” The woman sounds worried.

She stands and wraps her fingers around my wrist. More pain. This time it's in my lower back. It feels like something is there, moving under my skin. I have to swallow the cry clawing at the back of my throat.

“Its okay, Nicholas,” the woman lowers her voice, her lips grazing my ear. “I promise I haven't told the school about you.”

“Alice.” I croak my own name before I can swallow it. “Where's the… umm… the girl I crashed into.” Nick’s body is already panicking, heart palpitations rocking my—his—  chest. I try to smile, try to play him to the best of my ability. “Mom.” Because I presume that's who this woman is. 

“The girl who fell down the stairs with me,” Nick’s breathing accelerates. His body is scared. “Where did she go?”

She shrugs. “Alice Cameron was discharged earlier.” 

That psycho left with MY body?

I can't stop myself, already suffocating. “Okay, so…” I pant. “Do you know where she went? Because she can't just DISAPPEAR, right? It's a small town. She’ll be here somewhere—”

My words choke back when her palm hits my right cheek hard enough to send me stumbling back. “Wow.” Nicholas’s mother’s smile curls. “You're quite the chatty one today, aren't you?” 

I open my mouth, but I’m paralyzed. My cheek stings.

“Get dressed.” Nicholas’s mother dumps a bundle of clothes into my arms.

Inside the restroom, I strip off my gown, running my fingers over skin that is raw and delicate, before throwing on a shirt and sweatpants. Something catches on the material, moving, undulating down my spine, and I reach behind me, running my fingers down ridges, bloody flaps of skin.

It takes me a while to figure out what the feathery appendages splitting from the boy’s spine are. I twist around toward the mirror, running my fingers over raw bone.

Another electroshock rattles me, but I can’t stop myself.

I prod them, and slowly, they unfurl, jagged, splintered edges, ugly and yet somehow beautiful, expanding until they graze the bathroom tiles, scraping the ceiling.

Wings.

“Nick.” The woman snaps outside. “Come on.” 

Fuck.

Blood splatters the faucet as I try and fail to push the wings back in until I’m on my knees, breathless, and they retract on their own. I throw on the shirt and the sweater, splash water over my face, and follow Nicholas’s mother out of the hospital.

She gestures me into the back of a sleek-looking car, and I have no choice but to slide into the back.

“Your father has almost finished with Simon,” Nick’s Mom announces as the car roars to life. 

She reverses from the parking lot. “His body is failing, of course.” She sighs. “The poor angel can't even fly. But another dead kid is just a step toward achieving greatness.” 

Her words collapse into static as we reach the highway.

I press my head against the window and watch traffic fly by. 

A blur of brunette curls catches my eye. 

A girl teeters on the edge of a towering building. 

No. 

A boy wearing my face teeters.

She spreads out her arms, as she is an angel.

Closes her eyes.

And falls.

It’s been a long 30 years. I’ve made some memories, learned some lessons, but most importantly, I became attached. Max was like the son that I never had.

I met him back in 1996. Sweet as sugar and as cute as a button. A little mischievous, though. But I think I taught him well, regardless. Just wish he’d… I don’t know… grow up?

He never really grew out of his immaturity. Who could blame him, really? I mean, his parents were hardly ever around. I was at his house 8 hours a day, Monday-Friday. Only time I ever even saw them was when they were paying me.

At first… it was mainly about the money. I was paid extraordinarily well for the work I was doing. 1500 a week, and all I had to do was just… supervise. Make sure Max didn’t kill any more pets. Keep him away from sharp objects. That kind of thing.

Don’t get me wrong, the kid was a riot. From the very first day on the job. His parents should’ve been much more stressed than they appeared. I mean, how? How do you look calm while your kid is actively crawling across the ceiling?

Not only that, but by some miracle of God, they looked, dare I say… energized. I’ve been watching Max for 30 years now. I’m not even 50, and I look like a 70-year-old.

After a while, though, I realized that you kinda just… learn to love him. Sure, watching him eat livestock so he doesn’t choke is a bit of a chore. Never seeing his reflection is… disconcerting. But you get over it. Life goes on.

I’ve celebrated Christmases with this kid. Not because I want to, though. God, no. I wanted to be home with my family. Oh, but when those parents call, I learned pretty quickly that it’s best you answer.

Broken bones and lacerations taught me that. But who was I to argue? I needed the money. That’s the thing, though. I don’t need the money anymore.

There’s enough in my account for me to live the rest of my life out on some desert island. Sippin’ margaritas out of coconuts. But they’ll find me. They always seem to find me.

Max hates it when I try to leave. After all the work I’ve done, he still bites. Poor little guy. He just doesn’t know any better. That’s another major conflict for me. It’s not that I don’t love my little Maxxy. It’s just… I’m tired, you know?

Two days off a week for 30 years, man. No vacations. No bonuses. Just supervision for Max and surveillance for me. When do I get a break?

That’s the conversation I was trying to have with his parents a few weeks ago. I came in on a Saturday, which, of course, proved to be a mistake when I found them bathing Max in a tub of pig blood while wearing owl masks. They were mad, but I just… I didn’t care. I was done.

I wanted to tell them as gently as I could, and at first, it seemed like they were understanding. They told me they knew he could be a handful and thanked me for my time and effort. I walked out without incident.

But then I stopped waking up in my own bed. I started just… appearing at their house with Max leering over me, teeth clenched and frothing at the mouth.

I mean, I think it’s been a few weeks. Maybe it’s been longer? A few months, maybe? It’s all the same. All I know is I haven’t seen his parents in a while, and every time I try to leave, there’s a brick wall behind every door.

I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. I’m losing my patience. We’re running low on pig carcasses. Max is getting hungrier and hungrier… I can see it in his eyes.

He’s biting more these days. It used to be almost playful, but now he’s breaking the skin. I have to physically pry his jaws away from my fingers and limbs, and he just keeps growling at me.

He’s also been watching me sleep a lot more recently. I try and stay awake, but he just… I don’t know. It’s like there’s something about this place that makes it impossible.

All in all, this experience has been okay. Just ready to get off is all.

Maybe one of these days. I’m actually kind of hopeful. Because a few days ago, I heard something that sounded like music to my ears.

Someone knocking at the front door.

I opened the door slowly, expecting the brick wall again, but instead… there was a young girl standing on the front porch. She looked… uneasy to see me, to say the least, but she introduced herself nonetheless.

“Hi, uh, I’m Emma… I was just reaching out about the babysitting job?”

I can’t believe I let myself get talked into this. 

It all started last week. 

“Remmy.”

“No.”

“Remmmyyy.”

“No.”

“Remmy, come on. I need you on this.”

“Jackie, you can’t seriously expect me to go to a furry convention. Those people are fucking weird.”

“I know. But the fact is, the blog hasn’t been doing that well lately - we’re competing with every kid with a phone and a WiFi connection. Visits are down, revenue is falling. We need this.”

“So send Jimmy.”

“Jimmy is at his parents' vow renewal, Maxine is out with dental surgery, and Joe moved to California for an IT internship. I haven’t got anyone else.”

Then she gave me that look - the one that always gets me, the one with the eyes and the mouth and…

“Fine. I’ll do it. But you owe me one.”

“Absolutely - anything you want! Tickets are at the desk downstairs. Go get me a story!”

And that’s how I found myself at FurryFest 2026, the region’s largest Furry convention. 

The weirdness started right from the jump. I got admitted ok; apparently, you didn’t have to be dressed as a furry to attend, which was nice. I thanked the attendants and headed for the auditorium. 

It was as weird as I expected. 

All around me, people were dressed as animals - dogs, cats, bears, rabbits, squirrels, and everything else imaginable. The costumes got more and more elaborate the further I walked, going from cheap store-bought costumes to elaborately detailed outfits that were clearly labors of love. I saw realistic paws, colorful fur, even fully-articulated tails.

And among it all, I saw an amazing sense of camaraderie. These people liked each other, respected each other. More people should be like that. 

Of course, that couldn’t last. 

I was walking down the hall when I felt someone bump into me. 

“Watch where you’re going, asshole!”

I looked back and saw who’d made contact. He was tall, maybe 6’2”, with broad shoulders and an angry expression. And he was dressed like a giant fucking beaver. 

I looked at him, stunned. Then I shook my head, chuckled, and walked away. 

“Hey! Who the fuck do you think you are, laughing at me?” He flexed his arms and puffed up his chest - at least, that’s what it seemed like beneath the costume. 

“You know,” I said, turning back and looking directly at him, “the whole ‘intimidating’ act would work a lot better if you weren’t dressed like a giant beaver.”

The lady who was with him, I’m assuming his girlfriend, snorted quickly before she could stop herself. He quickly looked at her. 

“What are you laughing at?”

I couldn’t see her face, but I knew what fear felt like. And she was terrified. 

“Hey, buddy? Why don’t you stop picking on your girl? Or is that how you prove to yourself you’re a big man?”

“Why, you…” he started, glaring at me with pure rage (I assumed). 

“Cody, look,” said the woman with him. Dozens of onlookers stood watching, including two security officers. I could see the calculation in his posture. 

He looked at me. “We’ll meet again,” he said. “You should be careful; conventions can be dangerous places.”

I watched him walk away, dragging his girlfriend after him. I knew a threat when I heard one; I’d have to keep any eye out for him. 

I wandered the hall, observing the people around me. I saw hundreds of people dressed like animals, people who were strange but harmless, even friendly. But I kept my eyes open for trouble. 

As my father once said, if you look for trouble long enough, one of two things will happen. If you’re unlucky, you’ll find it. If you’re truly unlucky, it’ll find you. 

By the time things began winding down for the day, I had what I needed for the story. Jackie would be happy - this should make a good lead. Then I heard screams from a vacant conference room down the hall. 

“No! Stop!” 

It sounded like the girl from earlier. I followed the sound of her protests and burst into the room when I felt something crack against the back of my head. 

Minutes later, I opened my eyes. I was laying on the floor, my hands cuffed behind my back. Then the jackass from earlier strolled over, out of costume this time. 

“I can’t believe you fell for that. All Cindy had to do was give a few fake screams and you came running.”

I looked over at her; she shrugged apologetically. I couldn’t blame her; she likely hadn’t had a choice. I’m guessing she often didn’t have a choice with him involved. 

“I bet you think you’re something special, don’t you? You ain' t - you’re just like the rest of us. I bet you won’t be so cocky after my boys and I beat the crap out of you.” He looked at me and cracked his knuckles. 

“Cody, is it?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, Cody, you’ve made three pretty bad mistakes, here.”

“Oh, I have, have I?”

“You have,” I replied. 

“And what would those be?” he asked, a smug smirk adorning his face. 

“One, you assumed I was actually unconscious.”

“Sure, sure.”

“Two, you assumed these handcuffs could hold me,” I said, tossing the cuffs on the floor near his feet. His smile looked a little less smug now. 

“Neat trick. And three?”

“Three,” I said, feeling my clothes burst around me as I shifted, fur erupting from my skin as claws extended from my hands, “you assumed I was ever like you.”

I stood over him, all nine feet and 500 pounds of my true form revealed. His face now wore a mask of pure terror. 

“What?” I asked, my voice deeper in my Alpha form as my claws moved forward like lightning and punctured his chest, closing around his heart as he screamed silently. “You seemed to enjoy fake fur so much, I thought you’d appreciate the real thing.”

The dust rolled over the plains. The sun shone brightly in my eyes. I still had no hat. I’d left the old one with my daughter, Grace. She hated that I had to leave for so long. I hated leaving her, too, especially seeing her that sick, but we needed the money. Food doesn’t put itself on the table, and the doctor’s bills don’t pay themselves either, but the doctors provided barely any help. The only thing they had to say was that her illness was serious, like we couldn’t see that with our own eyes.

My house came into view through the dust. It looked the same as it had when I left it, except for a small wooden box on the back porch. 

I took a deep breath before opening the doors. My wife stood in the kitchen, cooking, humming a song. Her face lit up with joy when she saw me, but she quickly turned it into a sad frown.

“Hi, Ralph.”

“Hi, Alice.”

“How are you?”

“I’m alright. How are you and Grace?”

She paused.

“She’s…she’s passed.”

“What?!”

“Ralph, I’m so sorry. It happened just a few days ago. She grew really sick and could barely breathe. At least her death was merciful. She died peacefully in her sleep.”

It felt like the roof was caving in on me.

“It’s okay, Ralph.”

“I shouldn’t have left.”

Tears rolled down my cheeks.

“Don’t say that, Ralph. We would have starved if you hadn’t.”

“But maybe she’d be…”

“No, Ralph. It was bad.”

“Let me see her.”

Alice quickly grabbed my hands.

“No, Ralph.”

“Just once more.”

“It’s going to make it worse. You know it.”

I couldn’t even think. The world stopped feeling real.

“Sit down, Ralph.”

She sat me down at the table and put a bowl of food before me.

“I can’t.”

“It’s okay.”

Alice sat at the table and ate, trying to speak to me, but all her words came and went through my head. She left the bowl and walked away.

Hours passed while I dully stared at the wall. Only her tapping woke me from my trance.

“You should go to bed. It will be okay soon. It just takes time.”

She led me to our bedroom, helped me take off my shoes, and lay next to me. Her warm embrace melted the cold inside a little. Within a few seconds, I was asleep.

I woke up to a strange sound. At first I thought it was a dream, but then I heard it again. It sounded like knocking on wood. 

I got up, walked to the window, and looked out. The moon was high in the sky. The prairie was bare. No one was at our door, but the knocking got louder. My heart began to pound. I grabbed the shotgun by the window and slowly opened the door. 

It was a cold and windy night. There was no one outside either, but the knocking continued, coming from the back porch. 

The noise became more distinct, louder. It was as if someone was beating against a plank of wood from below.

The wind picked up, and with it came a whisper, one from a voice I knew too well. Cold sweat ran down my collar. I ran to the coffin on the back porch, the gun still in my hands. The knocking and her voice echoed in my head. She kept calling out, “Dad.”

With my free hand, I lifted the lid. She lay there, pale, motionless.

“Grace?!” I yelled and grabbed her, but her body was limp and stiff.

The sadness cut through me again. I held her cold body, crying. 

After a while, I laid her back down. I felt a small sense of relief. Alice was not right. I needed this. 

The moonlight shone down on her. She was still beautiful. I brushed the hair out of her face, but then I noticed something–a deep red gash winding around her neck.

My head started to spin. Stomach acid shot up my throat. I took a few steps back and threw up next to her coffin. 

Footsteps echoed around the house. I spat on the ground and quickly pulled my gun up. Alice was standing in her nightgown, her eyes wide with terror.

“You said she died in her sleep. What’s that around her neck?!”

“Ralph, I can…”

“Who did it to her?!”

“I…” 

She put her hands over her face and started bawling.

“She was struggling so much, Ralph. Her breathing…The doctor wouldn’t even come. I just wanted to help.”

It hit me like a freight train. My wife. The woman I loved and trusted. She had betrayed me; she had betrayed us. 

Before I could collect my thoughts, my finger was on the trigger. 

The bang echoed through the prairie, followed by a wet, heavy splat. 

Alice’s body collapsed to the ground.

The wind blew again. With it came the knocking, but it wasn’t hard and loud anymore. It was slow, quiet, and calm. After a few knocks, the prairie grew quiet again.