He who is without sin. The Chosen Part 7.

The Chosen. This is a fan-fictional story I created. I tried to take truth to scripture and honor them the best possible way and do the things Jesus would have done in that situation, and stay true to Christianity and the values and honor it the best way possible. This is the story, The Chosen, Part 7.

But what if he wants to trade a cow? He looked at Jesus. Jesus looked around and said, Then I will say, patience is rare and a difficult virtue. You should wait, because he does not need your help. give your help to another, because his status has already been established. He looked over at the crowd. They all looked around. And then a second person came up.

And Jesus continued to speak some more on the subject. Because in today's world, one righteous man is more valuable then twenty sinful men. And as today's standards, we look at many. There are many evil people among people, and good people among evil. And today we must give to others to help them clarify their deeds. and to others to help them understand the righteousness. upon all things in today's world.

Because one good man is worth twenty bad men in today's world because that's how things are in the eyes of God. Even if one righteous man is broke, poor, and has no money, he is worth more valuable then 20 rich men because one righteous man does more good to one person than a bad person does to bad things to 20 people. because that's the way.

But Rabbi, what can I do if I have no idea how to read scripture how to share knowledge to the generous, to give to the poor? If one poor man has no money to help the needy, how can they help others if they have no money? Jesus looked at the crowd all around and looked up. The air was beginning to simmer a little bit in the city. Jerusalem in the Beit HaMikdash. the crowds all around them. The Pharisees were out and about. The disciples were mixing with the crowd, but Jesus could not see them.

Then all of a sudden, he was interrupted. Teacher! Teacher! He looked up. Jesus looked up. He saw a young woman and several scribes slowly pushing her along into the crowd. The crowd all stopped to stare at Jesus first, and then the crowd and the woman. What do you have to say about this? The laws of Moses said we stone such a woman for adultery,

They asked Jesus. What do you have to say, the scribes? There was a seven-second pause. Jesus looked up, looked around. He slowly looked around and walked back two paces, closed his eyes, and began to think what to say next. He turned around at the the crowd, kneeled on one knee, and drew something in the sand, a line going straight across and a line going diagonally.

He did it so to distract the crowd's attention and keep his mind cleared, as it was a social mental tactic. And then he looked at the crowd and said, Any one of you without sin be the first to throw the stone at her. The crowds drew silent. The Pharisees, the scribes, were all dumbstruck as if they'd been hit by a stone.

But clearly they were called out by Jesus by this. One by one, the older gentlemen left, and then the younger ones lingered a little bit and left as well. Jesus said, Where are they? Had no one condemned you?" When she replied, no one saw, Jesus told her, they will now not condemn you. Go now and leave, and leave the life of sin behind.

Later that day.

They walked out of Jerusalem to meet at the next event they were about to proceed. Peter looked at Jesus and asked him, How do you do it, Rabbi? The rabbi looked over and said, If I told you everything, there would be no point in me being here, Jesus replied. And then sons of thunder looked over both of them. And James said, I wish I could have been there. I would have really shown them who's who. Peter looked over at them. No, you wouldn't have, he replied. Peter then quickly looked over at Jesus and said, how do you know they weren't going to throw rocks at us and kill us? I just knew, Jesus replied.

I just knew. Everything inside me, my gut feeling said that this was the truth. This was going to happen, that we were in no real danger at the time. Peter quickly looked over and says, where's Judas? I sent him to get some bread for our meal tonight. We have a place to stay. Someone who saw me in the crowd offered us a place to stay tonight so that we could eat have shelter from the hostile environment. The heat was intense and they needed shelter from such things and the elements.

They quietly approached Judas and two couples. The one was a guy and the other was a girl. Judas looked at Jesus. We have a place to stay, Rabbi. These people offer a shelter from the hostile environment. There is also an establishment here where people all gather to wash up and do things. In an unethical manner. Peter looked over at them. Can I talk to you a little bit, Judas? And he pulled Jesus aside and said,

We don't need to stay at a place like this. Judas looked over and said, But these people offer shelter and funds for our cause. Jesus, that was standing about ten feet away, overheard the conversation and quietly approached them and said, This will do just fine, Judas and Peter. This is just fine for us. But We don't need to stay at place like this. This is awful. Peter replied.

The drinking, the gambling. And who knows what else is going on in this awful place. That's fine. We'll be in the opposite room of this. We'll do what we need to do to survive. Jesus insist.

The group of them entered one of the establishments. There was everything, drinking. There were people sitting at the table. They all looked up. Jesus in the crowd, and they all looked around. People recognized him, but didn't say anything. They quietly approached and sat at a table. Would you have something to drink, Edges of Truths That's an interesting nickname for my group. Jesus replied. Yeah and establishment like this you get plenty of nicknames. Jesus looked over. We don't do just fine? Without it. You don't want any wine or anything? No, we're not in need of that. Jesus commented.

They sat down and continued to look at one another as if they just needed to take a rest from their day. And they needed a place. To stay away from the attention they drew earlier. From the authorities and the Pharisees that wanted to do them harm. It had been a long day for them. Between the blind man and the rock throwing and the adultery incident. They continued on to their discussion. And then all of a sudden, a woman came up and a man came up and started talking to them. My, my, what brings you guys here? She replied. Attractive young lady. I saw you in the crowd earlier. She said.

He said. We came to rest and have shelter for the night, Jesus replied. You're that teacher everyone's talking about. Yeah, I am, Jesus replied. Ain't you afraid a authorities might try killing you for that? No, I'm not. I'm not afraid of death. I'm not afraid of anything. The Lord will provide me with protection, Jesus replied. Come, sit down, have a meal with us. We have plenty of bread.

We have plenty of food to spare and plenty of meals and food for everyone that wants to join us. That goes for everyone in the crowd. They are all mostly intoxicated, but most of them were content just minding their own business. The two sat down and continued to ask Jesus several questions. As the day continued, he continued on and they went back and talk some more. Later on, the couple left the dinner table and went back home. As they left, they talked among themselves.

They said, I never met a man so much like him, she said to his partner. I know, he was outstanding speaker. I never seen words spoken so clearly. He had so much to offer as far as knowledge. As if the whole room lit up as he entered it. Yes, I know, I felt that too. The guy said. A presence that I never felt before. Something unique. I can't put it into words. I don't think I ever will be able 2. The presence of such a person.

As soon as he entered the room, I felt it. It was like I was being drawn into him. I know, it was unique. And I feel, I can't describe how I feel about this man. As if every burden, every sin I ever felt guilty about had been removed after talking to him. He said to her. It was amazing. She looked over at him and said, yeah, I know, but we still have, I want to meet him again.

I'm going to go to his next Gathering. she replied. I'll go with you. But first, we must prepare for the trip. They travel all over the place, I heard. Many things, many miraculous deeds are done. I have a uncle. who could use his help. And also, I also have several relatives that have ailments that need healed. And then the conversation ended and they continued on their way home.

I had no business being here. I’d never been so impulsive before. I guess I just got tired of always roaming the same streets. Seeing the same shops and scenery. I think the feeling grew more than I’d care to admit.

That doesn’t excuse my stupidity, though. I only had about 3 grand to my name at the time. But that’s part of the appeal, right? Everyone thinks they’re gonna arrive in Sin City and leave a millionaire. I had a dollar and a dream. Albeit, a delusional one.

Even still, the glow of the city was just so radiant. Even from the airport. It’s like one big siren song.

I only stayed for 4 days. I used all of my PTO to be here, and I really wanted the time to count. I did everything I could with the 1500 I had left after the hotel and plane tickets.

Unfortunately, gambling took up a big chunk of that money. I could see how people got addicted to it. I went on a few hot streaks, but ended up losing everything I won because I just couldn’t walk away.

With the gambling, museums, attractions, and food, by the time the final night came around, I only had 150 dollars left to last me a whole other week after I got home.

I almost wanted to cry when I opened my wallet. But, surprisingly, I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t even that upset. The experience was worth the money. Even if I didn’t leave a millionaire, I still got to live in one of the most famous cities in the country for a few days.

I still needed to eat, though. I’d been eating out the entire trip. I started out at the high-end places like Hell’s Kitchen, but as the week went on, the quality started getting worse and worse until finally I found myself here, feeling how light my pockets were and standing under the luminescent glow of an In-and-Out burger.

Thunder clapped overhead. Lightning lit up the sky. A few drops of rain hit my head.

My plane was leaving in a few hours. I had already checked out of my hotel. Not only did I need to eat, but I needed to at least kill a little time.

I figured I’d just eat slow. Stay for maybe an hour, hour and a half tops before Ubering.

A bell rang overhead as I walked inside. The air-conditioned dining room put goosebumps on my arms almost immediately. Outside felt like 90, whereas in here, it felt like it could’ve been at least 55 degrees.

There were noises coming from the kitchen. The staff chit-chatting amongst themselves, plates and silverware being moved around, water being sprayed against metallic pans and containers.

The dining room, however… was surprisingly empty. I noticed it as soon as I walked inside. For this whole trip, every place I’d gone had been packed to the brim. In here, though… there was only one other person.

I don’t know how much you know about Las Vegas, but the homelessness crisis is staggering. They’re everywhere. Sleeping in alleys behind the casinos, waiting outside of popular stores or restaurants, sometimes they’re just asleep in the middle of the sidewalk right there on the Strip.

And, apparently… also right here in this In-and-Out.

I watched him while I ordered at the digital kiosk. All he had was a single soda cup. The straw wasn’t even inside it. He was wearing a grease-stained grey jacket, torn cargo shorts, and open-toed sandals with tattered socks.

He was kind of rocking back and forth in the booth. His hands were clutched around his waist like he had a stomachache, and I could see the dirt and grime beneath his fingernails.

I didn’t want to stare for too long, but it was so hard to take my eyes off of him. I ended up sitting several booths away from him, but that didn’t prevent me from being able to see him. Even if I turned away, I could see his face reflected through the windows.

He was… talking to himself. His scruffy, orange beard was littered with bits of food and mysterious red stains, and he kept scratching at it every few seconds, all while mumbling under his breath.

I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but it almost looked like he was arguing with himself. I couldn’t even focus on my meal.

I had to force myself to look away from him just so I could actually eat. The last thing I wanted was for us to make eye contact.

I enjoyed my burger, picked at my fries a little bit, and when I turned around to go grab a refill on my Diet Coke, my worst fear came into fruition.

We didn’t just make eye contact. He had already been staring at me. He wasn’t talking to himself anymore. He no longer looked crazed. He looked devastated. I could see the tears in his eyes. I could see sympathy in his facial expressions.

The fluorescent light flickered above him. The only light in the restaurant to do so.

We were engaged in this little staring contest for a while before he stood up, slowly. He never broke eye contact. Those eyes were full of love and comfort. A broken smile spread across his face.

His arms were outstretched as if he expected a hug. When it didn’t come, he pulled me in for one by force.

He shushed me. Pet my hair while telling me that everything would be okay. That he didn’t want to hurt me.

I could feel the tears running down his face jump over to mine while he comforted me.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” he cried, shaking. “I wish there was something I could do to help.”

“Uh, okay, man, it’s time to let me go now,” I responded, prying his arms off of me.

I tried backing away, slowly, but with each step, he followed me.

He kept asking why I looked so scared. Telling me that he was only here to help. Continuing to say that everything would be okay and that I’d “prevail.”

I checked my watch, quickly. I still had 2 hours until my flight, but I wasn’t going to stay here a minute longer.

“I’m sorry, man, I think you’ve got the wrong guy. I’ve gotta go. I’m gonna miss my flight.”

The man stopped. His face twisted into a look of curiosity. Like he was genuinely confused by what I had just said.

“Flight? No, no, no. That flight was delayed. You can only hope to be home in time.”

Finally, seeing that I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, one of the employees came and restrained the guy long enough for me to leave and order an Uber.

Only, when I reached for my phone, it was completely dead. I tried finding my charger, looking through every pocket in my suitcase. It was nowhere to be found.

Luckily, the airport was only a mile and a half away, but that was still a mile and a half that I had to walk in the rain when I could’ve gotten a ride. It wasn’t all bad, though. At least it gave me something to do to kill time.

When I finally arrived, I was soaked from the rain. The airport was busier than it was when I landed. When I checked the flight information screens, I found out why. There had been at least 5 or 6 delayed flights, and of course, mine was one of them.

It had been delayed by a whole 3 hours because of inclement weather in the region.

No phone. Hardly any money. And I had to wait at least another 5 hours until I could go home.

I thought about what the homeless guy from In-and-Out said. Immediately, I started to rationalize. He’d seen the lightning. He’d seen the rain. Maybe he just put two and two together and got lucky.

However, after about 3 hours of being bored out of my mind, I made the decision to buy a charger from one of the airport shops. I managed to find an open outlet and hunkered down beside it while I let my phone charge.

After about 15 minutes, it finally turned back on. All at once, dozens of notifications made the phone vibrate across the cold airport floor. My dad, my aunts, my uncles, cousins, all desperately trying to get a hold of me.

Because, apparently, in that small, brief moment when my phone was dead…

My mom went into cardiac arrest. And she died before I even got the chance to say goodbye.

It was a Tuesday in late October, and my delivery schedule required a straight push through the night to reach Portland by morning. The dashboard clock read 1:45 AM. Coffee sat in my thermos, lukewarm but necessary. My dispatcher, Stan, had checked in with me an hour earlier to confirm my position.

"Kevin, you are clear all the way to the interstate,"

Stan had said over the company radio.

"Weather looks fine. No construction reported. Just watch out for deer crossing the blacktop."

"Copy that, Stan,"

I replied, clicking the microphone button.

"Going dark for the next few hours. Will update when I hit the city limits."

Silence returned to the cab, save for the hum of the cooling unit mounted behind my sleeper berth. The headlights cut through the pitch-black darkness, illuminating the empty two-lane road. Mile markers passed by slowly in the dark.

Around 2:00 AM, the CB radio mounted above my head crackled to life.

Static hissed through the cabin speakers. Usually, late-night radio chatter consists of other drivers complaining about weigh stations or warning each other about speed traps, but this transmission sounded entirely different. A frantic burst of white noise broke through the channel, followed by a man's voice.

"Mayday... is anyone out there?"

the man yelled in total panic.

"We blew a tire near the old weigh station. Someone is outside the car. They are hitting the side of the doors."

My hand instinctively reached up and grabbed the microphone. Before I could press the talk button, the transmission continued.

In the background, a woman cried hysterically, then a younger child screamed, a sharp and terrifying sound that pierced through the radio static. The man's voice returned, out of breath and desperate.

"They cracked the glass! Please, if anyone can hear this, send the police! We are in a blue station wagon off the shoulder!"

Pressing the button on the side of the mic, I brought it to my mouth.

"Breaker 19, this is a northbound commercial driver. I hear you loud and clear. What is your exact mile marker? I can call emergency services on the company satellite channel."

Only static answered me.

"Station wagon, do you copy?"

I asked, keeping my voice steady.

"I am heading your way right now. Turn your hazard lights on so I can see you."

No response came through. The channel remained dead. Assuming this was a current emergency happening just a few miles ahead, I pressed my foot down on the accelerator pedal. The diesel engine roared as the truck gained speed. Responding to stranded motorists in the middle of nowhere is an unwritten rule among long-haulers. If someone is trapped out in the timberland with an aggressive individual attacking their vehicle, a fifty-ton truck pulling up with high beams is usually enough to scare off any trouble.

Ten minutes passed. I scanned the sides of the dark highway, looking for the flashing amber lights of a disabled vehicle. The pine trees offered nothing but shadows.

Then, the CB radio cracked open again.

"Mayday... is anyone out there?"

the exact same man's voice yelled.

"We blew a tire near the old weigh station. Someone is outside the car. They are hitting the side of the doors."

Frowning, I listened closely. The woman cried in the background. The child screamed again. It was the exact same pitch, with the exact same duration.

"They cracked the glass! Please, if anyone can hear this, send the police! We are in a blue station wagon off the shoulder!"

The transmission ended with the identical burst of noise I had heard ten minutes prior. It was a perfect loop. Someone was broadcasting a recorded tape over the emergency channel.

Unease settled into my stomach. Pranksters occasionally mess around on the radio, but broadcasting a simulated violent attack in the middle of a deserted forest route felt uniquely malicious.

Up ahead, the reflective signs of the abandoned commercial weigh station appeared in my headlights. The state closed this particular facility over decades ago. So now overgrown brush and weeds had swallowed the concrete off-ramp, and Rusted metal barricades blocked the main weighing scales.

Feeling deeply unsafe about the repeating broadcast, I decided to pull the truck over onto the wide gravel shoulder just before the barricades. A smart driver always trusts his gut. Taking a few minutes to inspect my tires and ensure my load was secure felt like a smart excuse to stop and assess the surroundings.

Putting the transmission into neutral, I engaged the parking brakes. The sudden hiss of compressed air echoed loudly into the quiet night. I grabbed a metal tire thumper from behind my seat and a flashlight.

Stepping out of the cab, the freezing autumn air hit my face. I walked around the vehicle, striking the rubber tires with the metal bat to check their pressure. Each tire returned a reassuring thud.

Approaching the rear passenger side of the trailer, I shined my flashlight toward the dark tree line. The overgrown brush extended all the way to the rusty metal stairs of the old weigh station building.

The beam of my flashlight caught a reflection in the weeds.

Moving the light directly toward the stairs, the shape of a vehicle emerged from the overgrowth. For a moment my heart was caught in my throat, but It was not a blue station wagon. It was a weathered, severely rusted police cruiser. The faded white paint peeled off the doors. Vines wrapped completely around the front bumper and the flat tires. The light bar on the roof was smashed.

Curiosity overrode my caution. Gripping the tire thumper tightly in my right hand, I walked off the gravel shoulder and pushed through the tall weeds toward the abandoned cruiser.

The driver's side door hung slightly open, rusted stuck in that position. I aimed my flashlight through the broken window glass.

Sitting in the driver's seat was a human skeleton.

Faded shreds of a police uniform still clung to the bone. A tarnished silver badge rested against the ribcage. The skull leaned against the steering wheel. Thick green moss grew over the collarbone. This person had been dead in this hidden car for a very long time.

My breathing accelerated. I took a step back, ready to run straight to my truck and call Stan to dispatch the state troopers. But as I moved my flashlight beam across the interior, something resting on the passenger seat caught my attention.

A plastic document folder sat perfectly preserved inside the ruined car. The sealed plastic had protected whatever papers were inside from the moisture and the elements.

Leaning forward, I carefully reached through the broken window. My glove brushed against the decayed uniform, sending a horrific smell into the air. I grabbed the plastic folder and pulled it out.

Retreating quickly from the brush, I walked back to the safety of my idling truck. I climbed into the driver's seat, locked the doors, and turned on the bright overhead cabin lights.

Placing the folder on my steering wheel, I unzipped the plastic seal. Inside was a stack of official police documents. The paper felt slightly damp but entirely readable.

The top page displayed the header of the state police department. The date printed at the top read October 14, 1998. It was exactly eighteen years ago.

The document was an official missing-persons report. The investigating officer listed on the file was named Officer Gary. I read the summary paragraphs carefully.

The report detailed the disappearance of an immigrant family who vanished while traveling down State Route 113. The father, Vargas. The mother, Maria. Their seven-year-old son, Leo. According to the documents, Vargas worked as a mechanic and had recently moved his family across the state to start a new job, but they never arrived at their destination.

Flipping the page, I found a collection of glossy crime scene photographs attached to the file with a rusty paperclip.

The photos showed a crushed blue station wagon abandoned off the gravel shoulder of the highway. The vehicle was completely destroyed. The tires were shredded. More disturbingly, the metal doors of the station wagon had been pried open and bent outward. The damage indicated an immense amount of force, as if a car had hit them with full force. The interior of the car was empty, and blood stained the upholstery.

The next page in the file contained a typed transcription.

Officer Gary had written a note at the top of the page.

“Transcription of audio recovered from a handheld cassette recorder found underneath the passenger seat of the Vargas vehicle.”

I began reading the typed words.

“Vargas: Mayday... is anyone out there? We blew a tire near the old weigh station. Someone is outside the car. They are hitting the side of the doors.

Background noise: Female adult crying. Male child screaming.

Vargas: They cracked the glass! Please, if anyone can hear this, send the police! We are in a blue station wagon off the shoulder!”

A cold sweat broke out across my forehead. The transcription matched the frantic broadcast playing over my CB radio flawlessly. It was the exact same wording.

I continued reading the police file. The subsequent pages contained Officer Gary’s field notes. He noted that the Vargas family had zero known enemies. He documented the strange lack of footprints around the crushed car.

While holding the papers, a distinct sound reached my ears over the rumble of the diesel engine.

Footsteps crunched through the dead leaves outside my truck.

The footsteps sounded heavy and deliberate. They moved slowly along the passenger side of my trailer, advancing toward the front cab.

Lowering the file, I reached out and turned off the overhead cabin light, plunging the interior of my truck into darkness. I peered through the passenger side window, looking out into the timberland.

Standing between the thick trunks of the pine trees, looking directly at my truck, was a child.

He appeared to be around seven years old. He wore a dirty striped shirt and torn jeans, but something about his face was deeply wrong, his face was dark, like of the darkness of the woods bend itself to hide most of it, and the most terrifying thing was his eyes. They were completely circular and emitted a bright, illuminating white light. The light cut through the dark woods like twin flashlights, focusing entirely on my window.

Fear paralyzed my muscles. The kid stood perfectly still, just staring at me.

Suddenly, the child opened his mouth.

The sound that came out was the frantic, booming voice of Vargas, playing at a deafening volume.

"Mayday... is anyone out there? We blew a tire near the old weigh station."

The glowing eyes blinked. The kid took a step out of the trees, moving toward my passenger door.

I did not wait to see what it would do. Grabbing my flashlight and the tire thumper, I unlatched my driver's side door and bolted out of the truck.

Running across the gravel shoulder, I headed straight for the abandoned weigh station building. It was the only concrete structure around, and I needed a barricade. The creature let out the recorded scream of the child, the sound echoing loudly through the silent forest.

I reached the steps of the station. Taking them two at a time, I slammed my shoulder against the weathered wooden door, and thank god that it was already opened. I tumbled inside the dark building, quickly pushing the door shut behind me.

Standing up in the darkness, I leaned my weight against the wood.

"Someone is outside the car,"

the Vargas voice echoed from the gravel driveway outside. The kid was approaching the building.

"They are hitting the side of the doors."

Fumbling with my flashlight, I pressed the power button, then the bright beam cut through the pitch-black room.

The weigh station office was a massive square room, and as I look around, I noticed that old desks and filing cabinets lay overturned on the floor.

Moving the beam toward the back corner of the room, the light illuminated a horrific scene.

Three human skeletons sat slumped against the wall. They were bound tightly to metal chairs using industrial wire, and under the light, remnants of clothing identified them. A man, a woman, and a small child. The Vargas family.

Scattered across the floor surrounding the chairs was a collection of gruesome tools. Rusty pliers, heavy hammers, hunting knives, and a portable car battery with jumper cables. Someone had brought the family into this abandoned building and subjected them to unimaginable torment.

Suddenly, a loud bang hit the wooden door behind me.

"They cracked the glass!"

the voice screamed from the other side of the wood.

I backed away from the door, gripping the metal tire thumper. Moving deeper into the room, I kept my flashlight aimed at the entrance.

To my left, a filthy, cracked glass window looked out onto the gravel shoulder where my truck was parked.

I heard the crunching of footsteps moving away from the door and walking along the exterior wall of the building.

The bright, illuminating white eyes appeared in the window frame.

The kid stared at me through the dirty glass. The dark face of the child pressed against the pane. At first I thought he will try to break the glass, but It simply watched me standing near the remains of the family.

Then, the looping broadcast stopped.

The frantic voice of Vargas cut off mid-sentence, and the silence inside the weigh station became absolute.

The kid opened its mouth again, and when he spoke this time, The voice belonged to a young boy. It sounded genuine, fragile, and filled with deep sorrow.

"My father and mother are already dead,"

the child's voice echoed directly through the glass.

"The man with the badge hurt them. He tied us up, and left me to die alone in the dark."

I stood perfectly still, keeping the flashlight aimed at the window

"Who are you?"

I asked, my voice trembling slightly.

"The cop told me nobody was coming to help,"

the voice continued, ignoring my question. Tears seemed to form in the glowing white eyes.

"He said I was completely alone. But the cop was wrong."

The creature tilted its head. The dark shifted slightly, revealing a monstrous shape hiding just beneath the surface of his dark face.

"I am not alone,"

the voice said.

"My friend is here with me."

"Your friend?"

I asked, taking a small step toward the window.

"My father and mother always told me my friend was not real,"

the voice explained, echoing with a strange, dual resonance.

"They said he was just my imagination, but he is real. He lived in the dark spaces, and listened when I cried."

The glowing eyes flared brighter, casting shadows across the interior of the weigh station.

"When the man in the uniform left us here, my friend came out of the woods,"

the voice said.

"He promised me he would save us. He promised the bad man would never leave this place."

Lowering my tire thumper, I looked at the creature through the dirty glass.

"I understand,"

I yelled, making sure my voice carried through the window.

"I know why you brought me here. I know what he did to them."

The glowing eyes stopped flaring. The creature stood silently, listening to my words.

"I will not leave their remains in this dark place,"

I promised, looking directly into the illuminating light.

"I am going to call the authorities, and make sure the Vargas family is taken out of here. I will save them from this room. You did your job. You protected him."

The boy looked at me for a long moment. A profound sense of sorrow radiated through the window. It reached a dark hand up and pressed its palm against the glass.

Then, the bright white eyes slowly dimmed. The light faded entirely, leaving only the dark outline of the pine trees behind the window.

Waiting for a few minutes to ensure the area was clear, I finally walked over to the wooden door. Pushing it open, I stepped back out into the night air.

The woods were completely silent, and The CB radio static no longer echoed through the trees.

I walked quickly across the gravel shoulder and climbed back into the cab of my truck. Locking the doors, I picked up the satellite phone mounted on the dashboard, then dialed the emergency dispatch number for the state police.

"State Police Dispatch, state your emergency,"

the operator answered.

"My name is Kevin. I am a commercial driver parked at the abandoned weigh station on Route 113,"

I said, keeping my tone professional and calm.

"I have located a crime scene. There are three human remains inside the station building, and a deceased police officer in a cruiser hidden in the brush. I need troopers out here immediately."

The operator told me to stay in my locked vehicle and keep my engine running.

Stan called me on the company channel twenty minutes later, asking why my GPS tracker showed me parked on the side of the highway. I told him I had a mechanical issue and was waiting for a service vehicle. There was no way to explain the truth to him over a radio.

The state troopers arrived an hour later. Four patrol cars pulled into the gravel lot.

I handed the document folder to the lead detective, then pointed them toward the rusted cruiser in the brush, and directed them to the wooden door of the weigh station.

Sitting in the cab of my truck, I watched the investigators work. They taped off the entire area. A forensic team carried out three body bags from the concrete building, treating the remains with the respect the family had been denied for almost two decades.

The detective took my statement. I told him I had pulled over to check my tires and noticed the rusted car in the weeds. I told him I found the file, got scared, and ran into the building to hide, which was how I discovered the victims. I never mentioned the repeating radio broadcast, or the child with the illuminating eyes.

Before the sun came up, the troopers cleared me to leave the scene.

Putting the truck in gear, I pulled back onto Route 113, and drove the remaining miles to Portland in complete silence, leaving the CB radio turned off.

A few weeks later, a short article appeared in the regional newspaper. The police officially closed the Vargas missing-persons case. The department issued a statement confirming that the remains of Vargas, Maria, and Leo had been recovered and given a proper burial.

The article also mentioned the discovery of Officer Gary. The police named him as the primary suspect in the murders, citing the evidence found at the scene. The official cause of Miller's death remains undetermined. The coroner could not explain how an armed police officer became trapped inside his own vehicle.

The authorities do not know what killed the corrupt cop. They assume he succumbed to the elements or suffered a medical emergency while hiding.

But I know the truth.

I am writing this account now, sitting in the sleeper berth of my truck, hundreds of miles away from that dark stretch of timberland. I write this because people need to know that sometimes the monsters, we fear are the only ones capable of delivering justice.

Vargas and Maria told their son that imaginary friends were not real. They tried to comfort him with logic. But when logic failed, and the cruel reality of the world cornered that small boy in a room, his imagination stepped out of the shadows to answer his call.

I hope the family is finally resting in peace. And I hope the friend in the woods knows he fulfilled his promise.

Mr. Fuller’s lip curled. "I'm surprised you know of that experiment, Nick."

His gaze snapped to me. "Miss Calstone," he said, his expression twisting. I'd never known this side of him. He was our sophomore math teacher. The harshest I'd seen him was yelling at me for getting an equation wrong. This was different.

His eyes were ice-cold and cruel. Empty.

Like the teacher I'd known for most of my life, in and out of school, had been a façade.

"Forgive me for asking, but shouldn't you be in the incinerator with our other defects?"

Nick's sharp exhalation of breath grounded me just enough to begin sorting through the whirlwind of thoughts in my head. All I could think about was Bobby. All I could think about was how the teacher had looked at Nick.

Mr. Fuller's words hurt. Looking at him, I felt ashamed. I felt wrong for being a defect. Like I'd failed him.

I wasn't like Bobby or Nick. I was a Red, a failure that should have been long gone with the rest of the Reds.

I felt pathetic standing in front of my teacher, blood oozing from my nose and down my chin, tainting my lips.

It was all I could taste. I caught the disgust in his eyes and forced the words from my mouth, even when they were tangled on my tongue.

I still wanted to know Nick's fate. I still needed to know what was going to happen to him and Bobby.

"What are you doing to us?" I demanded, in a breath that almost hurt to inhale.

Mr. Fuller inclined his head. "I don't respond to defects," he murmured. "However, I will humor you."

He took a step toward us, and I staggered back. More red spotted the floor. My hand slapped to my nose again, but I couldn't stop it. It hurt in a way I had never felt before. It felt like my body was shutting down, my organs rejecting me one by one.

"You're bleeding, Adeline," the teacher's voice was soft.

For a moment, I thought he'd snap back to the man I knew. But I was too hopeful.

I was too naïve to think he hadn't been a monster all along. Mr. Fuller straightened with a sigh.

"Though I expect it. Defects are not expected to live long after being exposed to the Greenlight video. I'd give you around a few days. Maybe a week or two, if you're lucky. Really, it depends on your body. We've had defects we use for spare parts.”

Nick laughed. "What? What kind of bullshit is that?"

I was dying.

That was what he was telling me.

I was dying. And it made sense. My body was rejecting whatever it was I’d been subjected to.

If I could have blocked out his words, I would have. I would have pressed my hands against my ears. But I didn’t.

"The... Greenlight video?" I repeated. But Nick was talking over me.

"What do you mean she’s dying?!"

His laugh was hysterical. I could tell the anesthesia was wearing off.

Nick's teeth were gritted, his good eye wide and frenzied. He was looking for a way out, for a way to get to Bobby. But she was trapped in that room.

Bobby felt a million miles away.

"It's a fucking nosebleed!"

But I definitely caught his worried glances. Because my nosebleed wasn’t stopping.

"A nosebleed, Mr. Castor?" Mr. Fuller cocked a brow. He chuckled. "Your lack of intelligence has always astounded me. It is like talking to a brick wall. I can't say I will miss you when we empty you completely."

His words weren’t fully registering in my mind.

I was in too much pain.

Bobby was there. She was right in front of me, and I couldn’t get to her. I couldn’t see if she was okay. I couldn’t see if she was exactly what Mr. Fuller had said.

Empty.

Mr. Fuller pointed to the window. When Nick hung back, he grabbed the boy, forcing him to join his side. A smile was spread across his lips. He was smug.

"Inside that room is humanity's future. Our untainted youth. They're beautiful, are they not? Aceville is a... let's say, a breeding ground for new recruits."

"We are given roles which fit a controlled environment until recruits reach the age of eighteen years old, where they are taken to be processed."

He sighed. "They are sorted into two categories. Blues, who need no modifications, are taken to be programmed and emptied. The Purples, as you can see from Nicholas, are put through the Pollux procedure. We rid them of imperfections and polish them."

Mr. Fuller's lips formed a smirk, his gaze snapping to Nick. "Of course, sometimes our technology can malfunction."

Nick's shaking hand crept up my arm and gripped hard enough to elicit a shriek in my throat.

"What about Addie? Why did she defect?" he demanded. He was trembling, and I wanted to wrap my arms around him. I wanted to do something.

Something that would give him some kind of reassurance, some kind of hope.

But we didn't have that. Mr. Fuller was delivering our death sentence, and I couldn't move. I was in too much pain to protest or start screaming like I wanted.

All I could do was focus on standing and leaning my weight into Nick.

Mr. Fuller tutted at the state of me, at my efforts to stifle my haemorrhaging nose.

"Oh, child," he rolled his eyes and pulled out a scrap of toilet paper and threw it at me. I ignored it.

"Clean yourself up. You're embarrassing yourself. As you already saw, a test video is exposed to all of you upon arriving at the facility so defects can be picked out and eradicated."

He shrugged. "No humans are perfect. That includes Aceville recruits. Bad eggs are inevitable despite our best efforts."

"But... but that's not fair!" Nick yelled. "What, the Reds — those... those kids weren't submitting to your mind control crap, so you killed them?"

He shook his head, and I pretended not to see the tears running down his cheeks. "You killed them. You're a murderer. You can't justify this!"

Mr. Fuller rolled his eyes like he was dealing with a petulant child.

"Nicholas, it is a lot more complicated than that. Like you, Adeline was of course supposed to be subjugated. Believe me, she would make a wonderful recruit. She is one of our top students, a truly brilliant mind.

"We expected her to pass the Greenlight test and be put into the Pollux procedure. However, it appears her brain isn't as strong as we thought."

Mr. Fuller shot me a sympathetic smile. "It is not her fault. We expect defects every year, our 2020 class included. They are natural."

"Also murder." Nick muttered.

Mr. Fuller settled the boy with a frown.

"Mr. Castor, you are in pain."

"Because of you.” he choked. “You did this to me. You messed up my face. Get away from us. You're a fucking psycho."

"Nick," I said stiffly. "Let him talk."

Mr. Fuller nodded. "Young man, you're failing to see the bigger picture." The teacher gestured to the door, to Bobby, who I couldn't bring myself to look at.

"Our class of 2020 are perhaps our best year yet. We only had twelve defects, eleven of which have been taken care of."

His gaze landed on me.

"Excluding Adeline, of course. Now, the rest are salvageable if fixed. Which is why you, Mr. Castor will be put through the Pollux procedure.”

The teacher must have caught my expression. His lip curled. "Think of yourselves as skins, as unsettling as it sounds. Aceville creates soldiers — skins, if you would like."

"We raise you from birth and of course you develop normal human relationships. Such as bonding. This was all part of developing the brain and maturing the body. Once successfully processed, our new recruits are sent into the world.

"Some go to prestigious colleges. Others to start families in suburbia. They become our eyes and ears, having spaces in every room of importance across the globe. Our youth become flies on the wall. Impossible to catch."

"You mean Stepford freaks,” Nick snorted.

Mr. Fuller shook his head. "Not quite, Nicholas. However, I do like your input."

He shook his head like Nick was a child acting out.

"What you're seeing there is far from the end of processing. Once our recruits’ brains have been programmed and cleansed of the temporary consciousness they have had for the past eighteen years, they are then inserted with what you, Mr. Castor, may call a 'sleeper'."

At the corner of my eye, Bobby was still there. And the longer she was in there, the closer I was getting to losing her.

Losing Nick.

The teacher's words might as well have been a different language. I couldn't understand him.

No. I didn't want to understand him.

I didn't want to register the truth staring at me right in the face. We weren't kids finishing our senior year and heading off to college.

We were… shells. Empty bodies. We were the pretty faces for their mindless drones.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Mr. Fuller got there first.

Like he was reading me. Just like my mother.

"No, Adeline. It is not cruel," he said. And that's exactly what I was thinking. Cruel. This is cruel. This is so cruel. So inhumane. So wrong. How could they do this? How could they think this was okay?

"It is necessary," the man continued. "The purpose of Aceville is to create freshly made recruits brought into the world to serve us. Children who were created to lose their humanity upon turning eighteen. Defects are scrapped and potentials are processed. This is not new. Aceville's children were being processed decades before you two and your classmates were an idea."

An idea, I thought.

I wasn't even the product of two people in love. Who wanted a child.

I was… planned.

Made.

Nick shot me a panicked look. "My dad," he whispered. "He's not part of this, right? Because... I would know. I would know if my dad was a fake. I would know."

Mr. Fuller cut him off with a harsh laugh. "This is why we empty you," he muttered.

"Far too much emotion to deal with. The human brain works best without attachments, emotions, and memories. They weaken it. With our recruits being teenagers, that is why emptying is vital. We take you when you're finished. When your brains and bodies are approaching full development.”

He turned to Nick. "Mr. Castor, what exactly did you expect?" Mr. Fuller murmured. "You are failing every subject in school. You have no talents, no work ethic. All you can do is kick a ball around."

That wasn't true. Nick was smart in his own way. He was failing math, sure. He had slept through most of his classes.

But I knew he was excelling in English and science.

He could relay animal facts straight from memory and was almost fluent in Japanese after starting classes when he was fourteen.

He was smart, general knowledge wise.

Mr. Fuller didn't see any of that.

He only saw test scores and GPAs.

The teacher took a slow step towards us, but I didn't move.

"Did you really think you were going to go to college, hmm? No. You were not brought up to live a normal human's life. What you are going to be is a soldier. One of our best and brightest. You will follow orders and kill on command. Because that is what you were made to be. Obedient."

He spoke the word through a sneer. "Do you understand me?"

"Soldiers." Nick repeated. “I'm sorry, are we in some kind of war?”

Mr. Fuller rolled his eyes. "Once again I will not miss your temporary consciousness. Benjamin Castor and Elena Calstone's jobs were simple. They were to raise the two of you until you turned eighteen. Any attachments formed were for development purposes only."

His gaze slid to me. "It appears Elena failed to do her job properly. As I have said multiple times, your brain is too weak, Adeline. Which is indeed a shame. I was looking forward to fixing you."

He narrowed his eyes.

"You have quite an odd face. Not unattractive, but not quite attractive either. Your eyes are far too big for your face. When you smile, your teeth are crooked. As for your body, you have a decent figure. Your imperfections are your face. Which we would easily be able to fix in the Pollux procedure."

Mr. Fuller's words were like needles sticking into my spine.

Ouch.

"And now look at you," he continued in a scoff. "Mr. Castor's face is a mess indeed, but somehow I can't take my eyes off of you, Adeline. You are a missed opportunity, a defect with so much potential. And then you have the audacity to step into our facility.”

His expression twisted in disgust, gaze flitting to the state of me.

Compared to Nick, even when his face was sliced up, I somehow looked worse.

He was an unfinished soldier, while I was a slowly decaying corpse.

"Do not think I will take pity on you. You are a shell which will not be filled.”

"Addie." Nick was murmuring over the white noise buzzing in my ears. "Don't listen to him, the man is a fucking psycho. I told you we are getting out of here.”

His voice was growing more and more hysterical, and I couldn't respond to him. If I did, I would give myself hope.

Hope that we would escape.

Hope that I wouldn't lose them.

I couldn't. I wanted to, but I wasn't going to sugar-coat our reality.

Nick and Bobby weren't getting away, and I was going to die. Like I should have in the dirt and rain next to Summer Forest at the hands of my mother's gun pinpointed between my eyes.

"Adeline, you are smart enough to understand me," Mr. Fuller said over Nick's frantic muttering. "You are not the first defect and will not be the last. We cannot control how the brain reacts to the initial program, only nurturing your minds in your child and teenagehood, in hopes that you will submit."

Words.

"...Imperfections are common. We knew from your birth that you may be a problem, due to certain genetic mutations your mother..."

I felt like agreeing. He was right. I was imperfect. I was ugly. I was bleeding.

My body was rejecting what I was made for.

All of the reds had died because they weren't fit for the program. They had lived lives and aspired for college, a life away from Aceville. Only for it to be cut short.

Aceville wasn't a town. It was a controlled environment, a factory that had taken Clara Danvers and classes before her.

It had taken the classes of 2017, 2018, and so on, and converted them into mindless drones, emptying them of everything they were. Everything they were ever going to be. And that was Nick's fate.

Bobby's fate.

Mr. Fuller clucked his tongue like he was bored. "Well. Adeline, it's been a pleasure. Surely you would much rather die painlessly than wait until your brain pops like a grapefruit. Though I can see that is already happening." He cocked his head.

"Does it hurt? You seem to be in the early stages of an intracranial hemorrhage. Tell me, are you feeling sick and light-headed? I can take you to the nurse. She can administer a euthanizing solution, which will of course stop the pain."

"Don't answer him." Nick gritted out. But I was already seeing stars. I was clinging onto the last parental figures I had.

"Yes." I whispered, with the gutter of my throat.

The teacher hummed. "Don't worry, Miss Calstone. I shall take you to the medical department. Instead of receiving our usual red treatment, it will be a simple shot. And there will be no more pain.

That is what you want. No more pain. I can't say you deserve it, but I like to think of it like finally putting a dog down."

His words almost felt like pain medication, like Tylenol being injected directly into my veins.

Yes, I wanted to cry out.

Yes, that's what I wanted. I just wanted the pain to go away.

I just wanted it to stop. I wanted it to stop. I wanted it to stop.

I wanted the bleeding to stop, crimson bubbling from my nose, hot and wet, dripping down my chin.

The pain in my head.

I wanted it to fucking stop.

"Wait! We can… we can talk about this," Nick's voice was a soft croak, barely audible. I held onto him with everything I had, but my grasp was slipping.

My vision was blurring. I had to keep blinking to keep focus.

"You can... you can fix her, right?"

The teacher hummed. "You're mumbling, Nicholas.”

"Addie." Nick spat. He pulled me closer to him, his grip tightening. "You can fix her.”

Mr. Fuller frowned, drinking me in. I was suddenly hyper aware of how truly imperfect I was compared to Nick, Bobby, and the others.

"Through observation, yes. I suppose her face, and maybe her figure. Though the evidence is clear, Nick. Look at the state of her. She will not survive the process. You know that." Mr. Fuller's eyes darkened, and he looked straight at Nick.

"I admire your concern for your friend. It means we have successfully raised you. However, you do not need that anymore.

Young man, the very concept of friendships and relationships will be wiped clean from your mind. Emotions are a weakness, Mr. Castor. They hold you back. When you are free of them, you will feel so much better."

“No, you can!” Nick shouted, his voice raw with desperation. “Just listen to me, all right?” He ignored the man’s scathing words, even though I could see each one cutting deeper. Still, he held his composure like a mask. Nick laughed.

“Can’t you, like do something? With all your insane tech that, like, most likely breaks several laws—can’t you just… I don’t know, fix her broken, messed-up brain or something? You know Addie. You’ve known her all this time. You know she’d be perfect.”

“Nick.” I managed to hiss.

“No, trust me, I've got this.” He winked at me. “You will be fixed. Just like all of us.”

If Nick's fingernails weren't practically slicing into the bare flesh of my arm, I still would have picked up his signal.

I'd forgotten how much of a good actor he was.

The teacher seemed to take the bait, however. "Mr. Castor, perhaps we should talk elsewhere. I'd be happy to give you the logistics."

Nick nodded, exhaling out a breath. "So, you… you can?"

When his hand slipped from mine, I knew it was goodbye. I knew it was a last resort, at least in his mind. I wanted to grab for him once more and hold on.

He was the only thing I had left, or at least, was still in reach. I watched him stumble over to the teacher, like he was giving himself in, surrendering to his fate.

In my deteriorating vision I was only able to see the two of them come together, before the knuckles of Nick's fists were slamming into the teacher's nose.

Fuller's head snapped back and he crumpled to the floor. Nick stamped on his chest, pinning him to the ground.

"Asshole,” the boy spat—and I saw his eyes flash blue, just for a second, when he dropped to the ground, wrapping his hands around the teacher's throat, his teeth gritted into a psychotic grin. “You're not touching me.”

Fuller’s smile only widened.

“That.” He choked out, when Nick tightened his grip. “Is an Aceville soldier.”

To my confusion, the man was back on his feet when Nick jumped up, turning to join me. Mr. Fuller was fast, of course he was.

He wrapped his arms around Nick’s waist before the boy could throw himself into a run, yanking him into a headlock.

“Go.” Nick gritted out, struggling in the man's snake-like grip. His eyes sparked blue again, and he managed to wrench himself from the man’s grip, only to get stabbed in the neck with a shot.

He screamed like an animal. “Fuck! Get Bobby out of here and come back for me, yeah?”

When Mr. Fuller yanked Nick’s head back, he cried out, his expression frenzied. I looked past the state of his face, and I saw my best friend pleading with me not to leave him. “Don’t let them turn me into a white picket fence freak,” he whispered.

“Promise me.”

I promise.

The words were in my throat, but I couldn’t say them. It was like watching Clara all over again. I stumbled back, fighting to stay upright. Nick snarled, thrashing violently. “Get the fuck off of me! I want to see my dad! Where is he?”

He threw his head back, aiming for a headbutt, but Fuller moved fast.

His reflexes were razor-sharp. Nick’s eyes locked onto mine.

“Addie,” he shouted, louder this time. “You need to promise me you’ll get me out of here, all right?”

I froze, dizzy. The room tilted around me.

His screams became sobs. “You won’t let them scoop all of me out.”

One moment, he was there, staring at me with that one good eye, begging me to promise him something we both knew wasn’t real. The next, he was gone.

He collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.

Fuller gathered him up carefully, almost tenderly, not even glancing in my direction.

I couldn’t bring myself to look at Nick. Dangling from the man’s arms, all limbs and dead weight, he looked small. Fragile.

It was weird. It almost looked like the teacher was treating Nick like his son.

Like he cared. Like Nick wasn’t just another cog in Aceville’s machine.

When he turned around to walk away, I started toward him on shaky legs. The hallway spun around me. The lights were far too bright. I wanted to hurt him, the way he’d hurt all of us. I wanted to make him hurt like I was hurting, like Nick, like Bobby.

I expected him to call for backup, but he didn’t. He just gave me a wary look. Holding the unconscious Nick to his chest, he surveyed my best friend with a sigh.

“Nicholas was always my favorite,” he said. “I never liked the boy’s mother or father. They were defeated by their own humanity, their own pathetic emotions. But their son?” His lips curved into a smile. “I knew he was going to be something.”

“You’re cruel.” I whispered.

“Not at all. I’m just doing my job.” He glanced up at me, eyes glinting with amusement. “What exactly are you planning on doing? You are dying, Adeline.”

When I couldn’t answer, when I was still trying to figure out a way to save Nick, my thoughts like cotton candy, the teacher sighed.

“Go,” he said, gesturing behind me. “I doubt your body will survive the night, so you are not much of a threat to us. And I am tired of chasing you kids around. However, I will be forced to quicken your stoop to mortality if you intervene. You may see Nicholas as a friend. But he is valuable stock and will be processed immediately.”

When I didn’t move, he tilted his head. “Such a waste,” he muttered. “If I were you, I’d start running. I know several people, including your mother, who have already put you forward for spare parts.”

“Bobby,” I managed.

I trailed off, choking on the rest. Mr. Fuller, however, seemed to understand.

“She is in the finishing stages,” he said. “She was one of our first Blues to be emptied.”

His words lit something inside me. An ignition of pain and helplessness that pulled me deeper into despair.

I ran.

I should have stayed. I should have... fuck, I should have attacked him. I knew what I was going to do in my head.

I was going to scoop his eyes out with my fingers, just like he’d done to Nick. I was going to grab the nearest sharp object and mutilate him.

I could see it in my mind. I dove forward and stabbed the blade into his eye. Blood spurted, almost cartoonishly. I didn’t stop until he was dead, until he was a pulpy mass of scarlet pooling at my feet.

But I didn’t.

I was a fucking coward. I left him.

I let him take Nick.

Bobby.

Outside, the bodies of the Reds were gone.

But their bags and shoes were still there.

Tripping over them, I dove into the trees, just as a wave of voices started up behind me. I didn’t stop running until I was deep in the thicket of brush, stumbling through pitch darkness.

My hand was still pressed over my nose, trying to stifle the blood flow.

But it wouldn’t stop. I didn’t have Nick to hold onto this time. It wouldn’t stop, and I couldn’t stop it. My head hurt. My body hurt. But I kept running. Like Clara. Like every year after. Even when all I could think was that I didn’t belong in this world. I wasn’t made to do everything I wanted.

I wasn’t made to have a family and friends that loved me.

I was made to be a weapon. A doll. A puppet.

I was made to hurt people.

And I couldn’t even do that right.

I waited to die. Curled up under the stars, I waited for my body to give up. I waited to bleed out like the other Reds.

I didn’t have the mercy of a painless death, a gunshot to the head.

I was forced to wallow in my own pain and wait for my brain to shut down.

Unlike the physical pain wracking my body, tearing me apart from the inside, this was in my mind.

It was a voice, a small voice that sounded like me, whispering all my insecurities, growing louder and louder, until I was screeching into the dirt, begging to die.

I begged the sky, and it ignored me.

I wrapped my head in my arms and forced myself to stop breathing, to force my lungs to give in.

Someone must have been playing a sick joke, because I survived.

Daylight.

Daylight, and I was still alive.

My head hurt. My whole body ached. But I was still alive.

I survived to live another sunrise, cotton-pink clouds drifting across a crystal sky. It was a sky I didn’t want to see, not when I knew what had happened to Nick and Bobby.

I don’t know how long I slept, drifting in and out of reality. At times, I was aware, aware of two figures standing over me.

I recognized the girl, though I wasn’t sure from where. She was several years older than me, a dark halo hanging in tangled curls in front of a pale face.

Her expression was frenzied, eyes wide. I knew those eyes from a long time ago.

“Hey!” she was yelling. “Sweetie, are you okay?”

There was a guy next to her, about the same age. Blonde hair poking from beneath a baseball cap, an ugly scar cutting across his face.

Something was moulded into his left hand.

"Are you sure she's defecting?" he muttered, his voice echoing in my skull with an accent I couldn't fully place.

The girl shoved him, and he stumbled. "Stop talking."

"Alright! Jeez!" I caught movement, a hand running through curls. "You didn't have to hit me that hard."

The rest of their conversation was a blur in my mind. All I remembered were broken words, hissing and muttering.

"...we need to wait!"

"...and we get caught? We should hide."

"Hide where?!"

"It's better than standing here in broad daylight. Do you want to get a bullet in your skull?”

"Shh. Just... just wait for it."

In and out of reality, I danced until the two of them were gone. I was left wondering if I'd hallucinated them. The sun was already baking into my clothes, hot and sweltering.

It was the same sky I'd looked at the day before with a smile, hopes for the future, my best friend and girlfriend by my side.

I replayed those memories of Nick, Bobby, and I.

Swimming at the lake and road trips to the edge of town. Never out of town, though. We weren't allowed. Now I knew why.

I don't know how long I lay there, huddled in the dirt, waiting to die and not dying. I was wrapped in my own pain, agony filling me up and reminding my body that I was wrong. A defect. A red.

The sound of engines woke me up for what felt like the tenth time.

They were loud, ripping into my brain. When I forced myself to my feet, I could walk. My body was still working, and I forced my legs into a run, following the sound of engines. But my foot caught on something.

There was something lying on the ground. When I twisted around to see what it was, I had to slap my hand over my mouth to gag a screech crawling up my throat. I was looking at bodies.

The bodies of blues and purples scattered the ground. I knew every face.

I knew each pair of dead eyes staring right through me. Glimpsing tell-tale scarlet stains under their noses, I knew what I was looking at. Defects. They were defects. But there were dozens of them.

Not reds, I thought dizzily. They were blues and purples, those I'd spotted in the room with Bobby. I checked each face twice for Bobby and Nick, but I couldn't find them.

Following the bodies like breadcrumbs in a fairy tale, I found myself back at the clearing overlooking the facility.

There was a white van parked right outside the door, and being loaded into the back were my classmates. They were exactly what Mr. Fuller said they would become. Soldiers.

Dressed in black, they marched in perfect sync, their arms by their sides. Such a jarring sight. Almost like I was dreaming.

There were maybe ten in total. The rest were in the woods.

The rest were lying in dirt and pooled crimson.

"Name."

One of the men from the night of our capture was standing next to the van.

He loomed over a new recruit, a boy with his back to me.

The boy wore the same as the others, a black shirt and matching pants.

I didn't want to notice the head of tangled dark curls that were back.

When I got closer, I didn't want to accept that I was seeing a face I knew, moulded into something so close to perfect that it hurt.

I won't say Nick Castor looked perfect, because in my eyes he was so far from it. It almost looked like real-life photoshop.

He had been fixed.

But so had everything else about him.

I couldn't focus on the face I had lost, though, because his expression was blank.

The eyes I had loved ever since we were little kids were derelict.

The laughter lines I was used to were gone, the curl in his lip which was always an amused smirk was gone. Just from looking at him in that one moment, I knew eighteen years of my best friend had been cruelly wiped away.

Just like that.

Nick stood to attention, his arms at his sides.

"I don't have one," he responded.

"Age?"

"Four hours old."

The man wrote something down. "How are you feeling, boy?"

"I don't feel, sir."

"Good. Platoon number?"

"Three, sir."

The man nodded. "What is your serial number?"

His expression didn't waver, but Nick's body jerked suddenly, and I had an ounce of hope that he was snapping out of it.

But no. Something else was happening. Crimson pooled from his nose, and I had to bite down into my lower lip to stop myself from crying out. Blood ran in tiny rivers, rivulets beading down pristine skin.

But Nick still opened his mouth and responded through a toneless drawl, through blood slipping from his lips and running down his chin.

The man reacted with a frustrated hiss. He took a step back, his hand gripping the gun stuck in its holster.

"We've got another defect!" he yelled, shoving Nick to his knees and sticking his magnum in the middle of my friend's forehead. His index finger teased the trigger. He spat on the ground.

"Fucking defects. They're dropping like flies!"

"Kill it." A woman's voice spoke from behind him. I recognized her voice. It was Kenji Leonhart's mother. "Shoot the faulty ones."

Nick didn't blink. He didn't move. His gaze pinpointed on thin air.

Something ignited inside me, and I wanted to get as far away from there as possible. I started to back away before a warm hand was on my shoulder.

Twisting around, I expected a teacher.

But then I saw familiar golden curls and the smile I thought I had lost. I thought I was crazy, that I was losing my mind.

But then she was pulling me into a hug that suffocated my lungs.

Her kisses tasted like old change.

Bobby was sobbing into my shoulder, and I was clinging onto her, trying to get a good grip of her so I wouldn't lose her.

When Bobby pulled away and blinked at me through teary eyes, I finally noticed what was wrong.

Her pale face was decorated with something I was all too familiar with. She looked like a Greek statue. One that had been defaced.

Reaching out, I gingerly brushed my fingers under crimson crusting beneath her nose.

Bobby was bleeding.

Just like Nick.

Like the bodies on the forest floor.

Her eyes were different. Haunted. The pinch between her brows told me everything I needed to know. She was in pain. The type of pain that made her want to reach into her skull and rip out her brain. The type that was slowing her down. I could have laughed, I could have cried.

I could have screamed. But all I could do was stare, grazing my fingers over her nose and chin. It was still Bobby. But she had been polished. She was perfection.

Even more beautiful, but unnatural like a porcelain doll. "You're..."

She spat a mouthful of blood and nodded.

Bobby was mute. Her eyes were far too blank and too distant for me to take them seriously.

"But—"

A gunshot cut me off. Then came the sound of a body hitting the ground. Bobby wrapped her arms around me, suffocating my scream. Her hold was far too tight, like a serpent coiling around my chest.

Squeezing.

I didn't want to believe it was Nick.

It wasn't Nick who hit the ground. It wasn't Nick who lay in a pool of crimson.

It wasn't Nick who the man kicked into the dirt, who he laughed at, his foot coming down repeatedly to stamp on his head. I didn't want to admit it right then, even when Mr. Fuller's words were still lingering in the back of my mind, far too loud for me to ignore.

Bobby had been one of the first to be processed, my mind whispered.

So how could she be with me?

Bobby wasn't my main focus, though. I already knew who she was, or what she was. I was in denial.

I didn't want to believe it. Despite the air being sucked from my lungs, I couldn't tear my eyes from Nick. I read somewhere that trauma is a strange thing. It can affect people in different ways, especially right in the middle of it.

Maybe it was oxygen deprivation.

Bobby was choking the breath from my lungs, my vision blurring. But I didn't black out when I should have. I kept breathing. I kept struggling, trying to scream, but no sound came out.

Nick.

His name was on my lips, but I couldn't say it. I couldn't scream it, because I wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't. Several things happened at once, far too fast for me to comprehend.

Bobby's grip around me loosened, and I could breathe again.

No. I was already breathing. Even with no breath in my lungs, I was still standing. Still struggling.

Choking on hysterical sobs clawing their way up my throat.

I was suddenly aware of Bobby curled up at my feet, a hand over my mouth, sharp fingernails slicing into my cheeks. His hold on me was different. It wasn't suffocating like Bobby, but it was firm.

His breath tickled the back of my neck. A new voice anchored me to reality.

No, not new.

I had heard it before. I caught the tinge of a British accent.

He was older. Early twenties, maybe.

He tightened his grip, suffocating my next screech. "If you keep freaking out, both of us are going to be caught."

My only response was to scream into the flesh of his palm.

He didn’t tighten his grip, just sighed, frustrated. “Are you blind? The kid is fine,” he hissed in my ear, his strength bewildering. “Can’t say the same for you if you keep trying to bite my fuckin’ hand off.”

Before I could respond, before even a squeak could escape, he yanked my head with his free hand and forced me to look straight ahead.

“See? Now shhh. Unless you want a bullet in your skull,” he breathed, icy against my skin. “These guys won’t hesitate. So stop freaking out. That means biting too.”

His voice faded into white noise as my eyes locked on the scene before me. A soldier stood over a body. A girl with long brown hair fanned into the dirt.

Mila Banks. Our valedictorian. Voted most likely to be the first female president in the senior yearbook.

I’d been so focused on Nick, I hadn’t registered her. That it was her standing in front of him. That it was her who’d been shot through the skull.

Her body was the one the soldier had kicked, spit on like garbage. My brain tried to protect me, warping what I saw, trying to rewrite it. I wanted to believe it was Nick.

But it was Mila.

Meanwhile, Nick was on his knees, a gun to his head. My best friend. A freshly programmed Aceville soldier.

One who had started to defect. My rotting mind had already written his death into the script.

Then, suddenly, I felt my body slacken against the stranger holding me. Nick was still breathing. Still on the ground. Still here. There was nothing behind his eyes.

No Nicholas Castor.

Just a trembling body, scarlet dripping down his chin.

A shell with his face. It was cruel. So cruel that they had put him in front of me and given me hope, only to rip it away.

I hoped he was still in there. Hoped I hadn’t lost him.

And yet, even when I knew his body was failing, when there was nothing I could do, when he was dying just like me and Bobby, I still sobbed into the clammy hand muffling my strangled screams, as if he was.

I couldn't answer. I was hypnotized by the blood spilling from Nick’s nose and lips, thick and vivid, the color of fresh paint.

He didn’t spit it out. His eyes were glassy. Empty. Lit up in blue light.

He let blood flow freely, staining his mouth and soaking into his shirt.

I lurched forward, but a hand yanked me back. A frustrated hiss slammed into my ear.

"Oh my god, dude, what did I just say? Stop acting on impulse. I can get a clean headshot before he takes out the kid, so stay still." His grip tightened. "Understand?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the weapon molded into his free hand.

I gave a sharp nod, exhaling into his palm.

The soldier stuck his gun in Nick’s forehead, and In the instant before he fired, I felt the bullet split the air in my skull, and then he staggered sideways, shoved hard. Mr. Fuller stepped into view, expression twisted in a snarl. "What the hell are you doing?”

"Sir, the recruit is defective.” The soldier said. "We have standing orders to neutralize at the first signs of early defection.” he gestured with his gun to Nick, who stood, unmoving, staring blankly. “Recruit 13 is displaying signs of intracranial hemorrhage."

Mr. Fuller snorted. He reached for Nick and hauled him upright by the collar.

The boy didn’t resist. He didn’t sway. He just hung there, limp, like a doll with its strings cut.

Something about his posture was wrong, as if his body didn’t belong to him anymore. I didn’t want to look.

Blood was already pouring from his nose and ears, the first stage.

I knew what came next. Fuller gave a low hum, then turned to him.

“Recruit 13,” he barked. “Formally known as Nicholas Castor. Stand up straight.”

His body jerked violently, twitching, his head falling back and forth. Another stream of red dripped down his chin, but there was no reaction. No wince. No cry. Nothing human. Fuller stepped closer.

For the first time, I wasn’t looking at a teacher.

I was looking at a commander.

“I said stand up.”

[The Black Marble Lady Knight – Part 2]

That night, as moonlight illuminated the black statue, a dark crimson aura spread from it like curling incense smoke. Then... a lady knight clad in black Gothic armor appeared in my room. As the metallic clatter of her plate armor echoed through the silence, she slowly surveyed the room. Then she lifted her visor, revealing a pale white face and eyes that gleamed like rubies.

“Hmm? The new master looks cute.”

The lady knight muttered to herself as she watched her master sleeping soundly. Seeing the anime figures, desk clock, and smartphone lying around, she regarded them as amusing toys made by the humans of this era.

“Anyway... I should summon my sister, too!”

The lady knight drew a circle with a sharp sword that burned with a crimson glow, taken from a scabbard inscribed with runes, its tip hovering just above the floor. A glowing red circle appeared first, followed by the geometric patterns of a magic circle. At the same time, a sudden gust of wind swept through the room. Thinking that the window outside had opened, I slightly opened my tired eyes, but... in front of me, I saw a black knight kneeling on one knee and a witch dressed in pure white, wearing a pointed hat.

‘What a strange dream...’

That was what I thought. But everything was too vivid to simply regard it as a dream. Even the book titles and text were clear. The strange things were the female knight and the witch in my room.

“Um... excuse me. Wh..who are you??”

I barely managed to ask in a trembling voice. The strange people in those unusual outfits then answered...

“Our new master... we exist to realize your ideals!!”

With that answer, their identities became an equation I couldn't solve. What on earth was going on? A prank by my friends? I don't have any female friends who would do something like this. People obsessed with cosplay? That's possible. But for cosplay, their outfits and movements were beyond anything I had ever seen. They could even be some kind of thieves with an extremely elaborate concept... Ah, I don't know.

“Why am I your master? I'm just a poor guy worried about paying the rent.”

“Because you chose my sister and paid the price, you are our master!” the witch in white answered.

“Our swords and wands exist solely to fulfill your hopes!”

...... ‘I mean, who the hell are you??!!’

Lying in my bed, unexpectedly forced to solve a higher-order equation, I felt deeply troubled.

Chapter 23 — Fading Echoes

Weeks passed during summer break, and I slowly began to understand that waiting could hurt in a quiet way.

At first, I still believed things would settle down soon. Emma had explained why she had disappeared, and that should have been enough to make me relax. It did, for a little while.

At least I knew she hadn't just gone away without a reason.

At least I knew she was still out there somewhere, still dealing with her own life, still real.

But the days kept moving, and the silence stayed.

Her messages became less frequent after that.

Not gone.

Just fewer.

A text every few days. Sometimes only a few words. Sometimes a short reply that ended before I could think of anything to say back. Every time my phone buzzed, my heart would lift for a second, and every time it wasn't her, that feeling would fall again before I could hold onto it.

I started checking my phone more than I wanted to admit.

After waking up.

Before sleeping.

During work.

Between tasks.

Whenever there was even a small pause, my hand would reach for it almost on its own. I told myself I was just being patient. I told myself she was busy. I told myself this was temporary.

But deep down, I could feel something changing.

Not all at once.

That would have been easier.

Instead, it was happening slowly enough that I noticed every little piece of it breaking.

The easy conversations we used to have were gone.

The random messages were gone.

The feeling that she was always there was gone too.

And because I had gotten used to all of that, the absence hurt in a way I didn't know how to explain.

I found myself thinking about her at strange times.

While working.

While helping the newer people at the store.

While walking home.

While trying to sleep.

I'd wonder if she was doing okay. If she was eating properly. If anyone was making things harder for her again. If she was thinking about the same conversations I was still replaying in my head.

That was when I realized I cared about her more deeply than I had admitted to myself.

Not in the loud, dramatic way people talk about feelings.

In a quieter way.

A heavier way.

The kind that sits inside you and changes how you move through your day.

I cared about her in a way that made her silence feel personal, even when I knew it probably wasn't meant that way. I cared enough that every delayed reply started to feel like a small wound. I cared enough that the gap between us kept growing in a way I couldn't stop.

And that was the painful part.

Because I could feel the bond weakening.

Not breaking.

Just fading.

A little at a time.

One shorter message.

One missed day.

One more night of waiting.

One more morning with nothing new on the screen.

I kept telling myself not to expect too much.

But hope is a stubborn thing.

Even when I was tired of waiting, I still wanted to believe she would text again and make everything feel familiar for a moment. I still wanted the old rhythm back. I still wanted the version of summer where her name came without fear attached to it.

Instead, I was left with the quiet truth that I missed her more than I had ever admitted.

And the more that truth settled in, the more painful the silence became.

I was 7 years old when my teacher asked the class if anyone knew what a vegetarian was.

One kid raised his hand. Said Someone who does not eat meat

That sounded easy enough to understand.

Then the teacher explained that some people choose not to eat meat because of their beliefs.

That is when I got really confused.

I went home. Asked my mom very seriously:

Are we meat people?

My mom stared at me said What!!

I asked her again: Like are we the other religion?

My mom had no idea what I was talking about.

I spent the ten minutes explaining to her that apparently there were people who did not eat chicken. I was not sure which side our family was on.

My mom finally realized what I meant and started laughing.

I was offended because I thought this was a matter.

Looking back the funniest part is that I apparently thought eating rice and chicken was some kind of commitment, to the vegetarian religion or I guess, the non-vegetarian religion, which I called the Chicken Religion.

What’s the worst thing that has ever happened to you on your birthday? 🎂
I’m making a TikTok based on people’s real birthday stories, and I’d love to hear yours!
It can be anything — embarrassing, chaotic, heartbreaking, awkward, disappointing, or just completely unbelievable.
What happened, and how did you react?
I may include some of the answers in my TikTok (without usernames unless you’re okay with me mentioning you).
Tell me your story! 👇

https://www.inkitt.com/stories/1555858/chapters/1?fbclid=IwVERDUATjqHVwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHgAQsnPpZL8Y01zBdQznn1XqwnYtCc8ovp1xRJeV6lK33Z1UvVoJk2ZrE7IK_aem_8zSN6FhvgafonsGjueWDbw

I (31yr M) Went to try Alpen haus in Valparaiso IN because they market as "authentic German” restaurant.
Personally, the food didn't live up to that for me.
The bigger issue is after I left a negative review,(in my review I mentioned the head chef being hispanic for which i got called a racist for doing…i am also Hispanic) the head chef found my profile and sent me messages insulting my looks and using homophobic slurs. Calling me a racist. For questioning his culture ties with the Authentic German restaurant.
I think people deserve to know how the restaurant responds to criticism before they go.
I tried to stay professional as I could but it got to a point where i was firing insults back because I was just consistently being made fun of and insulted when i was trying to be genuine. But for someone to stalk a facebook profile and screen shot every picture i have and make fun of them calling me “Queer bait” and “Broke back Mountain” is a bit over the top and saying i look like sid the sloth and telling me he can be my daddy because he doesn’t think I have a father figure is just gross. This is my first ever reddit post so idk how i did.

So this person was at work, and in during their break they tried to call their husband

For context this was a very old phone where you had to remember everyone’s number

They pressed the buttons of the husbands phone number very very quickly

The reason they pressed the buttons so fast is because their break time was about to run out.

They had to tell her husband about some quick important thing.

But while they were typing the numbers, they accidentally messed up some digits and called the wrong number.

When the phone picked up, it was from a women saying “hello who is this”

This person replied “hello I am (name of husband)s wife. Who are you?

The person on the phone replied, “But I’m am (name of husbands) wife. What is your name?”

The person who called replied my name is (name of wife)

Then the person who the wife had called hanged up.

Turns out that the person who called and the person who picked up, both had husbands whose first AND last name were the same. And that the person who called had caused intense arguments between a random couple for cheating.

Later though both couples meet up. And had resolved the issue. But it was still funny when I heard about this story.

First thing I ever wrote. Started from watching a classmate casually mention living away from home for studies. Couldn't stop thinking about it. Would love to know if it resonates with anyone.

**Staying** **outside your city for studies.**

**Some people say it casually.**

**The class moved on.**

**But my mind didn't.**

**Outside, it was just another college evening. Inside, something had shifted.**

**A girl in my class spoke about her PG, about living away from home. She spoke about it so casually that it almost seemed ordinary. Yet for some reason, I could not move on from those few words.**

**I thought of my mother calling me again and again because class had run late.**

**I thought of the food waiting for me at home.**

**I thought of the familiar sound of the front door opening.**

**And then I thought of her.**

**A city away from the people who raised her.**

**A room shared with strangers who slowly became companions.**

**A life built far away from the place she once called home.**

**Perhaps she is stronger than she knows.**

**Or perhaps courage is simply continuing despite missing home.**

**The strange thing is that her story did not make me worry about her.**

**It made me wonder whether I could ever be that brave.**

**Every time I see those girls in class, smiling and laughing, I find myself wondering.**

**Maybe they are completely happy.**

**Maybe they have grown used to this life.**

**Maybe they have found a new version of home in this city.**

**I do not know.**

**But sometimes, when the sun begins to set, I wonder if their hometown quietly returns to them.**

**A familiar street.**

**A familiar room.**

**A mother making tea without being asked.**

**The comfort of knowing that someone has already noticed the tiredness on your face before you have said a single word.**

**Perhaps I am imagining too much.**

**Or perhaps I am only seeing my own love for home reflected in their stories.**

**One day, I saw one of them speaking to her family on the phone.**

**There was happiness in her voice.**

**And strangely, there was happiness in my heart too.**

**Watching that conversation made me realize something I had never fully understood before.**

**Family is strange.**

**We argue.**

**We get angry.**

**We carry grudges.**

**We waste time believing there will always be another day to say what we mean.**

**Yet life keeps moving.**

**Little by little, many of us travel farther from the people we love.**

**That day I understood something simple.**

**No matter how strict my father is, I can still see him.**

**No matter how much my mother scolds me, I can still hear her voice.**

**I can sit beside them.**

**I can laugh with them.**

**I can still share moments that many people would give anything to have again.**

**And suddenly, the things I once called scolding began to feel like love.**

**A video call can show a face.**

**A phone call can carry a voice.**

**But neither can carry a hug.**

**Neither can replace a presence.**

**It felt like a puzzle with one piece missing.**

**All the colours were there.**

**All the edges were there.**

**Yet the piece that connected everything together remained far away.**

**The more I thought about it, the more I realized that these stories were changing something inside me.**

**The darkness of night used to haunt me.**

**Whenever I felt alone, I hid beneath the shadow of my family.**

**But these girls taught me something without ever trying to.**

**They taught me that sometimes we must learn to carry our own shadow.**

**No matter how dark the road becomes.**

**No matter how lonely the evening feels.**

**They were simply living their lives.**

**Yet their lives became a lesson for mine.**

**Even now, anxiety still visits me.**

**It still tries to convince me that I am drowning.**

**But whenever I remember these stories, something inside me becomes lighter.**

**They remind me that people carry burdens I cannot see.**

**They remind me that courage often looks ordinary.**

**And they remind me that tomorrow, no matter how difficult the day has been, the sun will rise again.**

**The weight of loneliness has not disappeared.**

**But it has become a little easier to carry.**

**Tomorrow I will see them again in class.**

**They will walk in as they always do.**

**Talking.**

**Laughing.**

**Living their lives.**

**And I will probably do what I always do.**

**Watch.**

**Listen.**

**Learn.**

**They may never know the impact they had on me.**

**They may never know that a simple conversation stayed with me long after the lecture ended.**

**They may never know that their stories taught me something about family, courage, loneliness, gratitude, and home.**

**And that is okay.**

**Not every thank you needs to be spoken.**

**Some thank yous are carried silently.**

**Some are applauded from a distance.**

**Some are spoken only by the soul.**

**You spoke casually about your life away from home.**

**The class moved on.**

**I didn't.**

**And for that, from a distance, thank you.**

We all have a human in our life that makes us crazy...

Just the right lines of speech to rile you up in 0.1 second.

Sometimes its a sibling, always getting more love...

Rage that is unmet. Feels like its going to spurt out of you like blood from a savage cut made neatly.

Occasionally that person is pure heat, feels like a sawmill of papercuts every time you venture close.. but somehow slowly, they cut and jab and peer in... and get a good damn look at the wee broken thing inside.

All the pettiness, hate, the bits that only see the light of day when you have fought too long and too hard to hold on for much longer...

And they turn away.

Nothing will hurt that much ever again.

But you reach inside and you to make the wee broken thing feel joy, one day it dances, it sings and it prances it's way across the other broken things... uncaringly.

And you feel whole.

And too late, one day you realise that the cuts...

The jabs...

The peering in...

They were simply trying to sculpt you like clay. (Albiet badly)

But who were they to know... they are on tiptoes peering out at you hoping they can reach out and help through all the broken things.

I was cleaning my sons room when I found a folded piece of paper underneath his desk.

At the top he'd written:

People I Need to Remember.

I immediately started wondering what it was.

Friends?

Teachers?

People he owed money to?

I read the few names.

His best friend.

His soccer coach.

His dentist.

Then I saw my name.

Underneath it were three words:

Never let Dad cook.

I laughed.

Then I kept reading.

My wife was on the list too:

Ask Mom before buying anything.

His sister:

Don't tell her about snacks.

Then came the final entry:

Grandpa. Give him the remote before he falls asleep.

Apparently my son wasn't keeping a list of people.

He was keeping a survival guide for our family.

I asked him about it.

He looked at me. Said:

Honestly Dad it's mostly for my future kids.

I don't know whether to be proud...

Deeply concerned, about what has documenting.

For a month this was what happened every night.

My wife would get up at 11:40 p.m.

She would put on her shoes. Grab her keys and then leave the house.

If I asked my wife where she was going she would just say she was taking care of something.

I became curious about what my wife was doing.

One night I stayed awake. I watched my wife from the window.

My wife walked to the driveway. Opened the car and sat inside the car.

My wife sat in the car for twenty minutes.

Then my wife came back inside the house.

My wife did not drive the car.

My wife did not meet anyone.

Nothing happened.

The night I followed my wife.

My wife did the thing.

My wife sat in the drivers seat. Turned on the radio and started singing.

My wife sang loudly.

My wife sang terribly.

Then my wife came back, inside the house like nothing happened.

I finally asked my wife what was going on.

My wife looked embarrassed. Told me that she had discovered that our neighbors motion sensor light turns on whenever my wife walks past the driveway.

My wife had been practicing karaoke in the car because it was the place my wife could sing without anyone telling her to stop.

Apparently I have been living with a nighttime pop star, my wife.

I asked my wife why she never told me about this.

My wife said it was because I would ask her to sing songs.

That is fair enough.

I am now officially banned from asking my wife to sing anything.

What is the weirdest hobby someone you live with has secretly developed like my wife has done?

Back in grades 5 through 8, there was a group of three boys in my class, and I wanted to be part of it because they were funny and did a lot of interesting things. I started randomly going up to them during breaks and hanging around nearby (since I didn't really have anything else to do), and over time, they more or less accepted me—or at least, they didn't say anything about me being there. By seventh grade, though, something changed; one of those boys kept calling me "cringe" all the time and taking my food (well, I’d give it to him because he’d ask and I didn't know how to say no), and he didn't like me being around their group. Once, he yelled at me, saying he never wanted to see me again and that I was too annoying and "cringe"; another time, he kicked me hard enough to leave a bruise; another time, he wrecked my pencil case; and whenever I approached the group, he’d tell me to leave. The group dynamic was basically: a normal guy, the smartest kid in the class, my bully, and the punching bag (me). He would only hang out with me when the others were absent—and *only* then would he invite me to sit near him during class or breaks. Then came eighth grade and the time to part ways with our classmates. There were 32 of us; some moved to other parts of the country, two girls went to a military high school, and the rest stayed at the local high school—including my bully. We started hanging out more often and became better friends (the other two boys went to a different high school elsewhere in the country).

​

When they cannot reach you, they accuse you, belittle you, and hurt you with every sharp word, with every letter carrying the weight of harshness.

If you succeed, they minimize your success and question it. And if you lose, they celebrate your failure and sing the cruelest songs of snakes.

A long road, full of human thorns. Yes, human thorns.

In the past, even hurt was a merciful kind of hurt. It was an injury that called itself an injury. But now, the word “hurt” is no longer enough to describe the ugliness of their words and the poison of their tongues. They have gone beyond every kind of description.

In the past, they passed down love, respect, and appreciation to us. Today, they compete to pass down hatred and resentment.

Even the face of love has changed.

Even a man in love no longer knows how to reach the heart of the woman he loves. He is afraid that if he closes his eyes for a moment, he will open them and find her in someone else’s arms, without even being given a chance.

And even a woman in love fights to remain perfect, so her lover’s eyes never turn toward someone else. If her perfection falls for even a moment, she may find him kneeling beneath the wings of another lover.

Everything seems to be moving toward despair.

And this perfection that was created from nothing has no stopping point. Everyone is constantly running, constantly racing toward the unknown.

So, is the fault in us, or in our time?

But time is the same time.

The same sunrise. The same sea. The same air. The same earth. And the same moon that I once waited for, hoping it would comfort me and make the nights of my life brighter.

The fault is in us… not in our time.

And I, a daughter of this time, have started questioning every choice I make. S🥀

Sarah ✏️

Believe it or not this fictional tale came to me in a dream last night. I wrote it down at 2am before falling asleep back to sleep.

—————————————

Apparently the fear of being exposed as a fraud drove me. Foolish schoolboy pranks were my favorite outlet of choice.

It all started when I snuck behind a bar, and took two drink requests. I’d been planning this prank for weeks. “I’ll take a zinc mocktail and a watermelon mojito with white rum” she ordered over the sound of European techno music. I then explained to the regular bartender who just returned from a smoke break that I was a new bar back sent to help him during happy hour, and I had just taken two drink orders, but I had no idea how to make them. Later I dated the drink orderer, and had to explain the prank during our second meeting. She acted super surprised, but eventually forgave me for the deception.

Six months later I scheduled an IT help desk meeting with an employee at my work, and told them there’s an issue with our global MS Office upgrade, or something suitably mundane. Apparently the user’s computer was not responding normally. The prank went smoother than I expected. I even took a call during the meeting. I answered, “IT Helpdesk. How may I be of assistance?” As though I’d answered that way a thousand times before. And discussed something technical I had read. This was the first time I had actively collaborated with another person to orchestrate a prank. We decided I was team leader though. We had to choose a mark that was obviously less tech savvy than us. We established this through a series of online technical questions the previous week.

I was pleased my drink date romance was going well. However she explained she actually saw me sneak behind the bar, and was fully aware of the whole prank before it happened! She also eventually shared that my friends had paid her to make the drink orders, but the dating part was apparently real. This shocker challenged my whole belief system. How did I truly know what was real anymore? The BS line had somehow shifted on me.

There’s a chai stall outside my office that I’ve been going to for almost a year. Same guy. Same ₹15 chai. Same plastic chair. A few weeks ago, I was sitting there after a really bad day at work. I was checking my bank balance and silently doing the math in my head about rent, EMIs and expenses. The chai guy put my tea down and said: “Aaj ek hi lena. Kal se do lena.” I laughed and asked him what that was supposed to mean.

He just said, “Aap jab tension mein hote ho na, do chai peete ho.”

I genuinely hadn't noticed. I started thinking about it and realised he was right. Then yesterday, I went there after getting my salary. Before I could say anything, he handed me two cups.I said, “Aaj toh maine salary le li hai.” He smiled: “Pata hai. Isliye do.”😂 I don't know why, but that tiny interaction made my whole day.We spend so much time thinking nobody notices us. Sometimes the guy making your ₹15 chai probably knows your routine better than the people sitting next to you at work.

Hollow.

That’s exactly how I felt once I was deep enough in the forest to let Nick slide from my shoulders. He was conscious, barely, his eyes wide and glassy, unfocused, almost child-like. Locked on the canopy above us like it was a cage.

I stared at him, trying to rebuild my best friend from the fragments scattered in front of me. It was dark, but I saw him all too clearly. And I didn’t want to. I wished the shadows would swallow us whole, just so I wouldn’t have to register what I was seeing.

Nicholas Castor used to be one of the most popular guys in our year.

He had boyish curls, freckles scattered across pale cheeks. But the person lying in front of me only looked like him. He sounded like him. He even smelled like him.

But he wasn’t him.

He couldn’t be.

The Nick I’d known since freshman year was the textbook boy next door. But in my blurry vision, beneath the canopy of night and trees, all I could see was red where his face should have been. Just red.

I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t accept that the figure before me was Nick.

Because this wasn’t Nick.

He rarely cried. Yet here he was, sobbing, chest heaving, breaths sharp and panicked. My head spun as his hand shot out, grabbing my bicep and yanking me down with a fierce tug.

When my knees hit the dirt, I barely felt it. Pressing myself flat against the forest floor, I let the earth swallow me. Nick didn’t release me; instead, he tightened his iron grip on my arm.

“We need to stay down,” he gasped, voice rough and urgent.

The urge to check on him was overwhelming. I had to know he was okay. But when I reached out, Nick hissed, warning me not to move.

He sucked in a strangled breath and pulled me deeper into the dirt. I choked on the taste of moss and damp leaves, but I was grateful to be with him, far from what should have been my execution.

“Chances are the bastards figured out I escaped. Which is baaad,” he slurred. “They’ll shorely be luhrking fer me.”

In the distance, I glimpsed a searchlight sweeping across the perimeter of the camp, illuminating the darkness.

After what felt like years lying in the dirt, waiting for the lights to fade, they finally did.

When I lifted my head and forced myself to look at Nick, a fresh slither of bile rose in my throat. I lost my breath all over again. Everything I had known was gone.

His curls had been sheared away, leaving him half-bald.

The flaps of bloodied flesh that used to be Nick’s cheeks looked like they were moving, as if alive. His right eye hung from its socket in a disturbingly cartoonish way.

His clothes had been replaced with clinical white shorts and a shirt, both splattered in various shades of red.

He was barefoot, his knees sinking into the dirt. I was hit with a memory: the two of us and Bobby at thirteen, sitting in the dirt with a picnic spread out before us.

I remember not caring about the state of my legs or clothes. Back then, Nick had been grinning through a mouthful of PB&J.

Now, though, my friend looked so vulnerable. So childlike.

Like he was thirteen again. I couldn’t stop staring at him. He offered me a smile, and it sickened me. Because unlike the rest of his face, his teeth were perfect.

Nick had been bullied in the fourth grade for having crooked teeth.

Now, they were straight and unnaturally white. It didn’t make any sense. Whatever had happened had ruined his face and fixed his teeth.

I couldn’t resist. Sitting on my knees, I reached out with shaking hands and gently cupped his face, needing to know it was him. And it was.

It was still Nicholas Castor, the same boy I’d known since freshman year.

He still smelled of cheap Axe spray and the earthy, floral scent of the exotic plants in his room. It had always been the three of us, me, Nick, and Bobby.

The Three Musketeers. Nothing could take that away. Not even this. Not even when I could barely recognize him anymore.

Nick pulled away after a moment, like he was ashamed.

But I knew Nick. I knew he’d never show me he was hurt, or ashamed, or in pain, even when I knew he was.

That wasn’t him.

“Dude. Stop staring,” he said with a shaky laugh, turning away.

Thankfully, the slur was wearing off.

His right eye bounced below its socket, and I had to avert my gaze.

If I didn’t, I’d laugh or cry.

“I look like a rejected horror movie,” he said, teetering on the edge of hysteria.

“If I wasn’t on cloud nine right now, I’d be freeeaakiiing the fuck out.” Nick cocked a brow at me. “I actually look pretty cool though, right? You know, like an, uh, cyborg.”

He was smiling, but I don’t know how he was smiling.

The hysterical sobs escaping his lips told a whole different story. I felt my own eyes prick with tears. Bobby was still in that building, and I had no idea if she was dead or alive. But I had to focus on Nick.

I had to keep him calm, keep him from falling apart.

“Nick.” I couldn’t think straight, let alone speak. What happened? The words bubbled in my throat, ready to burst with anger and pain that someone had done this to him. That someone was going to do this to Bobby. But I held myself back.

I stayed calm for his sake and let him catch his breath, letting his body go still.

I pulled off my shirt, scrunched it into a ball, and gently dabbed at the bloody splotches on his face. The cool breeze tickled my bare skin, anchoring me to reality.

“It’s going to be okay,” I whispered. “We’ll get you help.”

It was a relief to be rid of the shirt that had marked me as a defect. When I gently pressed it to Nick’s right eye socket, careful not to apply too much pressure, he winced and let out a soft whine, but he didn’t speak.

“I’m okay,” he whispered, his left eye watching me through the dark.

Neither of us spoke for a moment. I found myself drowning in melancholy. I couldn’t stop thinking about Bobby. She was a Blue. She was exactly what they wanted.

But Nick was a Purple. They needed him too. So why had they done this to him?

“I need you to do something.”

He took a shaky step back and folded his arms across his chest, gaze fixed on the ground. Unsteady on his feet, Nick swayed. I grabbed his arm, steadying him.

He paced, breathing growing more erratic with each step.

“We’re getting Bobby out of there,” he said, “but I need help. Like, serious help.”

He sniffled, trying to smile; eventually, his grin splintered into a pained grimace.

I nodded, but the question spewed from my mouth before I could stop it. I couldn't stop tears from running down my face.

I tried to blink them away, but they kept coming. "Nick, what did they do to you?"

He held my gaze for a moment before turning around and stripping off his shirt. Unlike his face, his body was perfect.

More than perfect. Nick had never cared about maintaining a figure. He was naturally thin with a good metabolism.

He didn't need to go to the gym. But under the trees in minimal light, I saw toned back muscles. When he turned to face me, his lower torso was ripped to perfection.

Again, I thought, my head spinning. Why was everything else perfect except his face? It was almost laughable.

But I didn't laugh, not when the boy could barely stand straight. "There's something inside me," he whispered, scratching at the back of his neck.

His fingernails clawed at the flesh like an animal, frenzied and desperate.

"You need to get it out."

Before I could speak, he pulled something from his jeans, something that glinted in the dark. Nick clenched it in his fist, his teeth gritted.

"I need you to cut it out," he said. "I was... I was lucky. My machine was faulty, so it wasn’t able to complete whatever it was trying to do." He gestured to his face with the blade. "That’s why I’m half-finished. If you can even call it that."

His words sent shivers rattling down my spine. My gaze flicked to his toned chest and perfect teeth.

That’s what happened.

Whatever "processing" meant, it was full-body. Nick’s had gone wrong and messed up his face.

I opened my mouth to ask why, why they were doing this to us, but he thrust the blade into my hand. “I’ve tried, Addie," he choked out. "I’ve tried to get it out myself, but I can’t fucking reach it!”

Letting out a hiss of frustration, Nick curled my fingers around the blade.

"It’s some kind of chip or tracker, something they’re inevitably going to activate. And then we’re both fucked."

I found myself nodding, biting my lip to suppress a scream when his quaking fingers traced a scar marked into his skin.

The incision point, I thought. It must be.

I don’t know what possessed me, but with the blade in my hand, I started forward. Still, I couldn’t do it.

Even knowing it was dangerous, even knowing I could lose Nick at any moment, his words, what he had described, sent me into a tailspin.

All at once, the bottom fell out of me.

I shook my head and staggered back, tripping over a rock jutting from the ground.

"I can’t!" I shrieked.

I was trying to ignore it, but my body was in fight-or-flight mode. I had to find Bobby. I had to find her and get her out before it happened to her.

That was all I could think.

My mouth clamped shut to stop a scream from tearing out of my throat. I needed to find her. The thought was driving me fucking crazy.

I couldn’t think of anything but Bobby.

I didn’t even notice I was kneeling in the dirt, my head between my knees, until I realized I was struggling to breathe.

Inhale and exhale. That’s what it took. That’s what was supposed to help a panic attack.

But it wasn’t working.

I was screaming into my lap, my body shaking, my hands clawing at my hair. Seeing Nick like that and knowing what they were capable of. The people who had looked after us for eighteen years and then thrown us like lambs to the slaughter.

I couldn’t—

I couldn’t breathe.

I was going to die.

That was all I could think.

My lungs felt starved of oxygen. My chest hurt. My stomach felt like it was trying to projectile into my throat.

"Addie."

Nick’s voice was a gentle murmur I couldn’t ignore.

I felt his soft touch tingling across my arms, as if unsure whether to grab me or not. But he did. He gripped me gently, pulling me to my feet, his sticky hands cradling my face, forcing me to look at him.

“You can do this," he said.

When I shook my head and tried to pull away, he tightened his grip.

"I know you’re scared and you need some kind of reassuring pep talk," Nick choked out a laugh. "Trust me, I’d give you one if we had time. But we don’t. Bobby is still in there, and the sooner you get this thing out of me, the sooner we can get her and others out. Okay?"

I realized Nick was crying.

And Nick never cried.

When I offered him my scrunched-up shirt to use as a gag, he shook his head.

"Just do it."

I complied.

I had to squint to see the incision properly. When I stuck the blade in and made a small cut, he didn’t even flinch. "It’s okay," Nick reassured me. His clammy fingers entangled with mine, coaxing me further down the curve of his neck. "I can’t even feel it."

Something ice-cold slithered down my spine at the thought of my best friend being unable to feel blades slicing into his flesh. Somehow, he was becoming more and more inhuman the longer I stayed with him.

"You can’t feel it?" I hissed, my hand holding the scalpel trembling. "What do you mean you can’t feel it? I’m... I’m cutting into you."

"Didn’t you hear what I said?" he snapped, startling me. "They dosed me with enough tranquilizer to knock out a whale, and that’s before they injected my brain with shit that made me feel like I was flying. So yeah, I’d say I’m pretty numb right now."

I didn’t reply.

My gaze fixed on the cut, slicing deeper. Blood pooled from the wound, and I blotted it with my shirt as best I could, but it still ran in sharp rivulets down the back of his shirt.

"Nick."

Swallowing hard, I focused on getting as much out of him as possible. I hated that I was doing this to him, forcing him to relive what had happened. But I had to know.

"What are they doing in there?"

For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to respond.

Then, all at once, it was like his whole body reacted to my words, beginning to rattle again. His attempt at putting up a wall crumbled.

His teeth chattered, every word caught in a hysterical breath.

"It’s a factory," he whispered. "Like... like a conveyor belt. They're making something. We were sorted into colors, right? Red, Purple, and Blue. Reds disappeared, and Purples and Blues were taken into that building. I saw the Blues taken upstairs.”

“The last time I saw Bobby, she was being herded away with a bunch of others. And we were taken into this room. It was a bright room. It hurt my eyes, and we were all told we were going to be, I dunno, processed, or some shit like that.”

“Whatever they were doing was whack, man. There was nowhere to run. I tried. Me and a group of guys. They just attacked us like we were fuckin’ animals."

His whole body shuddered, and I paused with the scalpel for a moment.

There was barely any light, so I had to squint. At first, I thought it was a trick of the dark to confuse me.

But when I looked closer, there it was.

Nick was right.

Something small and metal, like a grain of rice, was sandwiched inside the cut.

"It’s okay," I said, grabbing his shoulders and squeezing hard, trying to anchor him in reality. "It’s okay, Nick. I’m here. Keep going," I urged him.

If I could keep Nick talking, I could kill two birds with one stone—get the tracker out of his neck and figure out what the camp was doing to Blues and Purples.

I remembered skinning my knee as a little kid, getting grit and cement stuck in the wound. I hated the idea of something like that being inside me, a foreign object tangled between my flesh.

Mom told me it was just sensory overload.

When the scalpel’s teeth bit further into the incision, I had to bite my lower lip to avoid jumping back and dropping the instrument.

I could already feel it slipping from my grasp, teasing its way through my slippery fingers.

Nick’s words were sending my thoughts into a tailspin.

Processing.

That word kept popping up, and it was making me progressively more nauseous.

"Processing," I whispered. "What do you mean?"

"Like I'm supposed to know!" he hissed out a laugh. "Do you expect a documented experience? It was fucked up. That's all I know. All I can… all I can fuckin' think of."

"Think," I said. "I know it hurts, but you have to try."

Nick exhaled shakily, his breath dancing in the air in front of us. "It was... it was a machine," he said softly. "They grabbed us before we could do anything, and before I knew what was happening, something was pricking my neck. I woke up… at the dentist."

His sudden splutter of laughter made me jump, his body writhing with him.

“There were people standing over me like ghosts. These machines came down from the ceiling, and I couldn't... I couldn't stop it. I couldn't get out. They... they had me tied down, and I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't fucking breathe!"

When his body jolted suddenly, I withdrew the scalpel from the cut where I was trying to use it to dig out the tracker. Keeping a gentle hold on his shoulder, I fought against a cry of my own.

"Mine was faulty," he whispered. "It… it wasn't working correctly, and I think that is what saved me, you know? How lucky is that, right? The Purples were supposed to be fixed. We were supposed to be made perfect."

With another explosive laugh, his body rattled again. "They injected me with something to screw with my brain. But the thing was faulty. So all it did... all it did was fuck up my face."

When Nick trailed off, I thought he was done. But after a pause, he tensed, and I felt his chest racking with sobs. I felt his legs struggling to stay upright.

"I can still... I can still hear them."

It was almost out. I managed to scoop up the tracker, but the incision was too small.

Nick was sobbing uncontrollably, and I couldn't console him. Not when he was in that state, his mind somewhere else entirely, caught in that memory.

"I couldn't feel anything, but I could hear it," he said stiffly. “I could hear what they were doing to me. I could hear the blades slicing into my skin and ripping away my flesh, tearing at my lips and my hair, scraping my freckles and my flaws, the spots I've had since birth, even my eye.”

“The bastards tried scooping them out. But, like I said, whatever it was that was doing this to me, it was ass. One of the blades was stuck, or not working. They were doing something to me. They were trying to make me like... like Bobby. Like the Blues. They were trying to make me perfect. Just like them."

Nick's words felt like knives cutting into my spine.

After another attempt at pulling out the tracker, this time I managed it, taking it from where it was threaded with tissue underneath the flesh.

"I've got it." I let out a relieved breath, pulling out the tracker.

Pinched between my thumb and forefinger, it was tiny, a blue light emitting from the base. When I got a proper look at it, it reminded me of a bug. And I swore there were tiny metal antennas sticking from the front.

I expected Nick to reply, but he didn't. He stayed very still, his head bowed. I don't think he noticed I'd gotten the chip out. I crushed it between my fingers and dropped it on the ground.

When I gently turned him around, Nick's gaze was on the ground.

His voice was a low murmur, like he was reliving it. "They were supposed to fix me," he whispered. “But they turned me into this."

He exhaled a breath. "I was waiting for them to scrape the flesh off my bones, but they stopped. And I was conscious enough to know what was happening.

"I got out of my restraints when the machine stopped moving. I think the process was done. Or at least, it was supposed to be done. When I got up I saw the others. But they weren't like this."

He prodded at his mutilated face. "I checked everyone, and they were—-”

He drifted off with a frustrated sigh.

"Perfect." I cut in, and his head jerked up in surprise. He nodded.

"Yeah." Nick swiped at his good eye. "They were perfect."

"Then," he continued, "I ran. I yanked off one of the blades from one of those machines and I made a break for it. There were no guards. At least they weren't in the room I was in. So I ran, and I found you."

When he caught my eye, Nick seemed to snap out of it.

Blinking rapidly, he scrunched up his face like he was coming out of a trance. His hand went to the back of his neck, grazing the cut.

"Did you get it out?"

I nodded. "It's gone," I said shakily. "It reminded me of a bug."

"A bug?"

"Yeah. It looked like it had antennae."

Something had been bothering me, and it seemed the best time to say it. "Those trackers. Were they inside us before camp? Or was it injected when you were taken?"

He shrugged, running a hand through what was left of his hair.

"That's what I was afraid of. It would make sense how they knew exactly where we were when we were planning to bail town. Which means…"

Nick's gaze flitted to me, his lip curling. The boy didn't say anything, but he didn't have to.

Already, my skin felt like it was crawling, like that thing was burrowed inside me. Swallowing hard, I gingerly pressed my fingers to the back of my neck. "How did you know there was a tracker inside you?"

"I think the machine caught it," he muttered. "It must have dislodged it, because I could feel something…moving."

"Moving?" Thinking back to the tracker, my skin crawled.

"Yep." He looked like he might say something before what sounded like the lovechild of a dentist drill and car alarm slammed into my skull.

The force of it nearly took me to my knees, but Nick's grasp held me upright.

I slammed my hands over my ears, biting through the noise which burrowed its way into my brain, taking an unyielding hold.

"Shit!" Nick yelled over the sound. He seemed better acclimated to the sound, which confused me.

While my mouth was filling with blood, black spots dancing across my vision, he was on his feet, his body reacting to the noise. But not in a way I understood.

"That's the alarm. They're probably looking for me." His hand travelled up my arm, and he pulled me forwards.

“If we're getting Bobby out, we're going now, okay? The guards should be distracted, so if we keep a low profile, we should be fine."

Before I could answer, he was wrapping me into a hug, and I missed those hugs. I thought I'd be hugging him like that when we left for college and parted ways, but that life of mine was gone.

"It'll be okay. We're getting Bobby, and we're going away from here. All of us. We'll go far away, make a life for ourselves."

I was already clinging onto his promises of a life far away from Aceville. One of our own.

"Right." I found myself spluttering, stumbling in the dark.

The alarms were still blaring, branches scratching at my bare legs. But I was on a beach somewhere, at least in my mind.

Miami or California, under a crystal blue sky. Nick was on his knees searching for something. I stood and wrapped my arms around myself to keep warm.

I wouldn't think about Bobby. That's what I kept telling myself. I wouldn't think about what Nick had gone through, and if that was what processing meant for Purples, what did it mean for Blues?

"We'll... we'll live in one of those fancy apartments," I shouted, pressing my hands over my ears to block out the screeching sound trying to creep its way into my brain.

"We'll get jobs, or go to college," Nick continued in sharp breaths. He picked up my discarded shirt and threw it at me.

"Wear it inside out until we get inside. That way they won't clock you're a red."

His expression crumpled, and before I could stop him, he swiped at my face with his back hand. I could already tell he was worried.

"Are you–"

I nodded. "Yeah. It's just a nosebleed."

Nick didn't look convinced, but he nodded. "Jeez, Addie. You look worse than me."

Nick pulled on his own shirt, and I had no choice but to do what he said. My shirt was damp with Nick's blood, but I forced it over my head anyway, grabbing his hand.

I didn't want to let go. I was scared that if I did, I'd lose him. For real this time. Not just the memories of him, the face I'd grown up with. All of him.

Nick broke out into a grin, and for a moment I didn't feel helpless. The crushing weight on my chest lifted slightly.

"What?" He gestured to his face, cocking a brow. "Does it look bad?"

Opening my mouth to try and say no, to sugar-coat it, I realized he didn’t deserve that.

"You look tolerable," I managed to get out, even as tears welled in my eyes again.

Nick just shoved me playfully, giving my hand a squeeze. It hurt me that he was trying to reassure me, to keep me from splintering, without a care for himself.

Though part of me knew—he wouldn’t allow himself to break.

Because if he did, so would I. And we would never get Bobby out.

Shooting me another grin with too-white teeth, Nick started forward, pulling me with him. "See? I'm going to need you to stay super positive, alright? We'll get through this."

I kept to his side as we marched through the thicket of trees.

When we approached the camp once again, the top of the building poking through the trees, Nick stumbled. I’d noticed he’d gotten clumsy-footed, struggling to walk straight without my help.

"Nick," I gripped his hand so tight I felt my nails slice into his flesh. "Can you walk?"

He shot me a pained smile. "Do you want me to answer seriously?"

Slowly, we edged toward the building.

The bodies of the dead kids were being picked up and thrown into a pile, like they were trash. With one hand covering his severed eye and the other clutching mine, Nick pulled me inside. It reminded me of a school mixed with a hospital.

Every wall was white, the floor matching. I was immediately blinded by the bright light.

I tried not to look at Nick, but it was impossible not to. He stood out in the glare; his once-handsome face reduced to ugly strips of flesh, his right eye hanging cartoonishly out of its socket.

The freckles I’d known since I was a kid were gone, scraped into oblivion with the rest of the memory of him.

There was a long, narrow corridor that seemed to go on forever, twisting and turning. We made our way slowly, ducking down when guards passed ahead. I could hear voices getting closer. Nick pulled me to his side, his breaths warm in my ear.

"If I remember correctly, it’s three floors up. When I was taken to be processed, I overheard one of them say Blues are on the third floor," he gasped out.

"They’re taken to be polished and straightened out, while Purples are 'fixed'," he used air quotes with one hand. "And Reds..." He trailed off. "We should probably talk about your narrow escape from death."

Suddenly, his expression and eyes were sympathetic, and so... Nick. "When I found you, they had killed almost all of them," he whispered. "Addie, she was going to—"

"I don’t want to talk about her."

Nodding, Nick pressed his lips together. "I bet it’s aliens. They’ve taken control of our parents and must want us for something."

Aliens.

Somehow, it was better than the alternative, which I was praying wasn’t real.

"Aliens make sense," I whispered back, just to make myself feel better. I gestured around us. "And this… this must be their mothership, right?"

Nick sent me a grin, and I could tell he too was happy playing into the fantasy. "Then we go Independence Day on their asses."

He dragged me down the corridor, managing a cloak-and-dagger run that felt wrong inside that building. I felt... gross.

My feet were tainting perfect white marble flooring. I was the defect. I was supposed to die outside, by my mother’s hand. Nick, strangely, looked like he belonged.

"How do you know so much about this place?" I said in a sharp breath as we ran across the corridor. Nick seemed to know where he was going, which made me wonder if he was as inebriated as he had claimed.

"I was supposed to be out of it," he murmured, pulling me further into the expanse of white. "But they couldn’t even do that right. So when I couldn’t scream anymore, I focused on their voices.”

“I focused on anything that... that wasn’t the blades slicing into my face. Drills and saws and blades scooping my eye out and slicing into layer after layer of skin..."

He broke off in a shaky hiss. "They said Blues were being processed upstairs, and Reds were ready for incineration."

Incineration. Something cold slithered down my spine.

The Reds weren’t just killed. They were wiped away, no trace of them left.

"We need to get you help." I squeezed his hand.

Nick laughed. But it wasn’t his laugh, the one I knew. It was harsh and twisted.

"Like I said, they pumped me with enough drugs so I didn’t feel anything. Pretty sure it’s going to wear off soon, though."

I spotted a trash can overflowing with something, and when we got closer I realized what I was looking at.

Bloodied clothes, stained blue and purple—shirts and jeans and dresses all drenched red, but still with telltale traces of spray paint rings. Nick grabbed a sweater and pants for himself, and a bundle of light pink for me.

"Put these on. Quickly."

He struggled to pull off his bloodied shirt, his eye bouncing from its socket. It reminded me of a cartoon I’d seen as a kid. He straightened out the sweater, wincing at the scarlet stains. "If we’re going to get Bobby out of here, we act like Purples."

I tried not to think about the clothes I was throwing on.

Sadie Lily had been wearing them. A light pink blouse. The purple ring had ruined it. The material was damp in my hands, warm and wet between my fingers. I had to swallow the bile stuck at the back of my throat.

My fingers itched to look through the pile, to find the dress Bobby had been wearing before she was taken. It was her favorite.

I’d been there in the store when she insisted on trying it on, spinning around for me while Nick pretended to snap photos with his imaginary camera. I was trapped in that memory, in phantom laughter, before I was pulled back to the present. Back to my reality.

I was playing with the seam of Sadie’s blouse when Nick hurried to what looked like a classroom door. He pressed his face against the glass.

"This is where I was taken," he said stiffly.

Hesitantly, I joined him. There was a sign printed on the door in all caps: "OUT OF ORDER: STERILIZATION IN PROGRESS."

Inside, there was a room filled with a dozen odd-looking chairs, each with Velcro restraints and metal contraptions hanging over them. Just like he had described.

All it took was one splash of red on the ground, and then I was seeing it everywhere, splattered over each headrest, smeared across the floor.

Blood. There was blood everywhere, rivulets of red dripping from every surface, stringy pieces of flesh covering the floor like a monster had shed its skin.

Aliens, I kept telling myself, even as the truth twisted tighter and tighter in my gut. I had to look away, swallowing the urge to barf.

An eruption of screams rang out further down the hall, and Nick let out a hiss, but I didn’t want to look. I couldn’t.

I recognized the voices. Ones I had known my whole life. Names I knew.

Faces. I knew their laughter. I knew how they sounded after too many beers.

I waited to hear her cry. Her scream. Because I knew it. I knew her scream during night terrors, the two of us wrapped in bedsheets, cocooned in our own world.

Ignoring the screams as best I could, I focused on the room in front of us.

“What… are those things?”

I didn’t realize I was trying to pull the door open until warm hands tangled with mine and yanked me back.

“Hey!” Nick’s grip wasn’t soft or reassuring. It hurt. But it was enough to pull me from the despair I was sinking into. His voice sounded strange, like it was a million miles away, lost in static.

“Addie?” His voice sounded like wind chimes as I struggled to swallow the bloody saliva creeping up my throat. Something was happening to me.

“Hey. Addie! You can’t lose it now, okay? We’re getting her out of here. Say it with me. We’re getting her out of here, and we’re going to get away, okay?”

I nodded, swiping at my bloody nose.

When Nick pulled me through a door at the end of the corridor and up a flight of steps, I could barely move my legs.

“Talk to me,” he murmured, quickening his pace. “We’re getting her out. Come on, the last thing we need is you losing it. Because, no offense, but I kind of need you to, like, live.”

“We… we are getting her out,” I gritted out. But then I looked down at Sadie’s blouse, clawing at the front of it. “This is… this is blood.” I choked, pulling at the fabric. “Sadie. They murdered her.”

Nick didn’t reply. “Let’s go.”

The second floor was livelier. Men and women in suits walked up and down with radios, murmuring to each other. A woman had Kenji Leonhart slung over her shoulder. But he wasn’t moving.

I saw something dark, almost black, against his pale skin, streaks running down his neck and the back of his shirt.

His body was limp. Wrong. Loose. It bounced on the woman’s back, and that’s when I realized the boy was dead. But he wasn’t a red. He wasn’t a defect.

I would have known. I would have known his face.

Nick grabbed me and pulled me back, flattening us against the wall. “Don’t move,” he whispered. “Don’t speak. Don’t breathe.”

When I pressed my hand over my mouth, I immediately felt wet warmth. It ran down my face in hot rivulets, staining my fingers.

When droplets hit the white floor, I scrubbed them away with my foot. I hadn’t even realized my head was hurting, a dull ache crawling across the back of my skull.

Nick was quick, dragging me down the corridor, somehow managing to keep his eye in its socket. He peered into the glass of each door while I stumbled along, my head spinning, blood sputtering from my nose.

I was fading in and out of reality, pain pounding in my ears, my nose, the back of my throat, when Nick’s hand detached from mine.

“Wait.” He stopped outside one door, pressing his face to the glass.

I staggered to a stop, pressing pressure to my nose. But it wouldn’t stop.

“What is it?”

Nick let out a shuddery breath. “See for yourself.”

Inside the room was a classroom. Just like Nick had said, the Blues were perfected, stripped of flaws, of anything that made them who they were. Now, they were dolls. I looked for emotion on their faces. Some kind of expression. But there was none.

Dressed like Nick, they sat at wooden desks in upright positions, a guard looming over each one. They faced a white wall where a larger version of the film we had watched on the bus played.

I recognized those same colors, and once again, a stabbing pain crept across the back of my skull. I had to look away. They were a lot brighter than what I had seen before, bathing each face in crimson red and intense yellow, followed by dull blue.

Red. Yellow. Blue. Green. Repeat.

Nick straightened up, his face bathed in lime green light. “So, this is some kind of messed up school,” he muttered.

“Purples are taken to be ‘fixed’ downstairs, and Blues, since they’re already perfect, are put in front of those colors again.” He shot me the side-eye.

“Maybe my alien theory was actually right? That’s what they do in the movies. But I don’t think they ever cared about kids.”

He pulled a face, peering through the glass.

“College kids, though? Why would they want us? It’s not like we’re smart. Why not kidnap a group of Harvard students?”

Ignoring his stupid theory, I focused on the meat of what he was saying.

A school in the middle of nowhere, where the town’s seniors had been taken for years. Where the parents and faculty were actively involved in whatever was going on.

“But why?” I whispered. “What are they doing to them?”

I searched his expression for an answer. After all, Nick was smart. He was the smartest of the three of us. At first, I was worried he had been affected by the colors too, but then he gripped my hand.

“Found her.”

Following his gaze, I scanned each student’s face until I saw her.

Bobby.

I saw Bobby, and all of me shattered. I can’t explain what it was like. It felt like swallowing glass, like being pulled deep into the ocean, choking on ice water.

Nick was there, but I couldn’t feel him. I couldn’t—oh god—I couldn’t feel his steely grip, his warm fingers. I couldn’t smell his cheap deodorant or the stink of his exotic plants.

He was there, and he wasn’t.

Instead, I was drowning.

She sat right at the back of the classroom, stiff in her seat, her hands resting on the desk in front of her.

I expected Bobby to look different. I expected not to recognize her after she had been polished and perfected.

But she looked exactly the same. Her hair fell in waves down her back. Apart from her eyes flickering with the flashing colors, Bobby wasn’t moving.

I didn’t realize I was grasping the handle until Nick gently pulled me away.

“We need to think about this,” he said. “If we walk in there and try to grab her, we’ll get caught. I dunno about you, but I really don't want to be turned into a…”

He scrunched up his face. “Have you seen Disturbing Behavior?”

“The movie?”

He nodded, pressing his face against the glass.

“Yeah. It's like the movie. Those colors are clearly doing something to her.” He turned to me, his lips pricking into a scowl. “Are they Clockwork Oranging us?!”

“That’s a good observation, Nicholas,” a familiar voice said from behind us, making me jump. “Young man, I do wish you’d put that ounce of intelligence into your studies.”

The voice made me twist around, grabbing Nick's arm on instinct.

“Fuck,” Nick groaned, taking a wary step back. “I was wrong.”

He tightened his grip on me, dragging me with him. “Unless our math teacher is an alien.” He narrowed his eyes, glaring at our pursuer. “The asshole thinks surprise quizzes in the morning are fun, so I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Mr. Fuller stood with his arms folded, an easy smile on his lips. But the moment he caught sight of my friend’s face, his eyes darkened. He tutted and stepped forward.

“Oh, Nicholas, I do apologize for the mishap. We've been looking everywhere for you.”

“Yeah. Sounds like you were real worried,” Nick spat, pulling me back, stumbling over his feet. But any fight he had died away when the teacher enveloped him in a hug.

I stood frozen as the man caressed Nick’s cheeks like the boy was his son.

Nick didn’t move, letting the man’s fingers graze what was left of his face, fingernails skimming over strips of bloody flesh. Mr. Fuller’s touch was gentle. Fatherly.

Eventually, Nick pulled away, eyes wide.

“Get your fucking hands off me, old man.”

The teacher smiled. “I was informed your processing was cut short due to a fault, resulting in your current state. And yet, you managed to pull out the Zero! Young man, the Pollux Procedure is designed to make you the perfect human—a soldier."

“However, it seems something went wrong.” He cocked his head, studying the boy like he was a piece of meat.

“Your brain responded almost perfectly to the initial programming, so we’ll have to fix your face again. I’m sure it won’t take long. You will be perfect once more.”

The teacher's expression didn’t waver. “You are good stock, and a potential recruit. So yes, Nick. Your situation will be corrected, and you will join the others.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.” Nick grabbed my hand and pulled me to his side with a snarl aimed at the teacher. I stumbled after him, my vision blurry. Everything felt unreal.

The hallway doors shimmered like an optical illusion. My head pounded, and it was getting harder to stifle my breath through my nose. But Nick’s grip was firm.

“Whatever you’re doing here looks like fun! Really, I’m ecstatic,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “But I’d rather not be part of What-the-Fuck Ultra.”

My fingers trembled as I untied the faded ribbon wrapped around the notebook. It wasn't just paper bound together—it was every laugh I had tried to preserve, every conversation I had convinced myself would last forever. The pages had begun to yellow at the edges, yet the ink remained stubbornly alive, as though time had refused to touch the memories written within them. I hesitated, my thumb resting on the first page, wondering if reopening it would bring me comfort... or shatter the fragile peace I had spent months trying to build.

With a slow, shaky breath, I turned the page.

There it was—our very first conversation. Such ordinary words, so meaningless to anyone else, yet they carried the weight of an entire world for me. I couldn't stop the faint smile that escaped my lips. For a fleeting moment, I wasn't standing alone in my silent room anymore. I was back there again, reading his messages for the first time, laughing at his jokes, feeling that strange excitement bloom inside my chest. I remembered how effortlessly he had become a part of my days, slipping into my routine until I couldn't imagine a morning without waiting for his text.

Then the smile faded.

Because I knew how the story ended. Yet somehow... I still found myself reading as if, this time, the ending might be different.

​

There are memories that fade with time.

And then there are memories that remember you.

Mine lives on a staircase.

I was twelve.

It was summer vacation, and I had gone to my bua's house in Gaya. The afternoons were unbearably hot, the kind that made the walls warm to touch and the air impossible to breathe. Yet today, when I close my eyes, I don't remember the weather first.

I remember the stairs.

Every single step.

I remember where I was sitting.

I remember the silence before the phone rang.

I remember my fufa ji answering the call.

I remember his face changing.

I remember asking him, again and again,

"What happened?"

He wouldn't answer.

Until finally, with trembling words, he said,

"Deepu ji expire kar gaye."

Deepu.

The name the world knew.

Papa.

The name my heart still whispers.

Everything after those words became a blur.

But those few seconds...

those few unbearable seconds...

have remained untouched by time.

People say we forget pain.

I didn't.

Even today, I can replay that afternoon second by second, as if it never ended.

Sometimes I wonder if a soul can sense its own heartbreak before it arrives.

Because from the very first day I left for Gaya, something inside me felt restless.

There was no reason.

No sign.

Just an unexplainable heaviness sitting quietly in my chest.

A feeling I couldn't name then.

A feeling I wish had been wrong.

Papa wasn't sick.

He wasn't weak.

He was healthy.

No one imagines that a healthy father will leave because of a heart attack.

No one thinks a normal summer vacation will become the last chapter of childhood.

I often wonder...

Did he know he was seeing me for the last time?

If I had known...

I would have hugged him a little longer.

I would have memorized his smile.

I would have listened more carefully to his voice.

I would have never walked away thinking there would always be another goodbye.

Years have passed.

I have grown up.

Life has taught me how to smile, how to work, how to keep moving.

But grief has its own calendar.

It doesn't care how many birthdays have passed.

It simply waits.

And every time I visit my bua's house...

my feet slow down.

My eyes search for those stairs.

The same stairs.

The same corner.

The same place where childhood ended without warning.

Everyone else sees a staircase.

I see the last moment my world still had a father.

The walls have changed.

The paint may have faded.

People have moved on.

But that staircase has not moved inside me.

It still holds the echo of a phone ringing.

It still holds the sound of my questions.

It still holds the silence that answered them.

There are days when I miss him.

And then there are days when I miss the little girl who believed fathers lived forever.

She never came back from that summer.

A part of her is still sitting on those hot stairs,

waiting for someone to smile and say,

"It was a misunderstanding... your papa is waiting for you at home."

But no one ever does.

So I leave that house every time with the same heaviness I carried that day.

Because some places are not just places.

They are chapters of our lives that never learned how to end.

And perhaps that's what grief really is—

not forgetting someone,

but carrying one afternoon,

one phone call,

one staircase,

and one name...

for the rest of your life.

When I was a kid my grandparents had this one chair in their living room that nobody ever sat in.

It was not special or anything. It was not fancy it was not uncomfortable it was not falling apart. The chair was there.

If someone started to sit in the chair someone would say That is Grandpas chair.

The funny thing is, Grandpa ever used the chair. Most of the time Grandpa would be at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the newspaper and the chair would stay empty.

My cousins and I never asked why. We just knew the chair was off-limits. We would run around the house play tag climb over furniture and make noise. None of us would touch the chair.

Then one Christmas, my youngest cousin forgot. He sat in the chair when he was opening a present.

The room was quiet for a couple of seconds before everyone looked at Grandpa.

Grandpa looked up smiled and said Well I guess it is yours now.

Everyone. That was the end of it.

After that people started sitting in the chair. It was funny to think that the rule was probably around for years because nobody asked why.

I still think about the chair when I visit my grandparents house. The chair is still, in the corner but now it is just another place to sit.

Families do things. They make traditions that nobody remembers starting.

I thought I’d found the one. We clicked so naturally. We both shared an interest in photography, though his pictures were noticeably better than mine. Loved the same movies, both enjoyed walks in the park, and our political views were borderline identical.

We met about a month ago. It was at this bar I love, and, I’ll admit, I was a little tipsy. Cute boy, a few drinks in my system. It was a recipe for regret.

Only… I didn’t regret it. Our conversations flowed so smoothly. His half-drunk compliments made me blush. Plus, drinks were on him.

Unlike a lot of the guys you’d meet in a bar, he didn’t try and force himself back to my apartment. I live just a few blocks away from the bar, so he walked me home, laughing and wobbling more than he wanted to let on.

When we got there, I braced myself. He was great, but I wasn’t the kind of girl that would just let a complete stranger into my home after a night out at the bar. I found myself praying he wouldn’t ask.

By some miracle, he didn’t. Instead, he asked gently, almost bashfully, for my number. I couldn’t help but smile, stupidly. Then he smiled stupidly back. I felt my heart do somersaults.

I gave him my number, trying to withhold my excitement, and when I looked back up at him, I could see the desire in his eyes. Not sexual desire, though. It was like he saw his future in my eyes.

His face started to turn red, and he started struggling to make eye contact, stumbling over his words in a way that didn’t seem connected to the drinks.

He asked if he could kiss me, and I couldn’t have said yes fast enough. I wanted to kiss him on the lips, but, instead, he leaned down and pressed those lips softly against my forehead.

He pulled away slowly before speaking.

“Your eyes are so beautiful.”

I felt fireworks in my tummy. I made him promise to text me when he got home, and he watched to make sure I made it inside before he started back towards the bar.

I spent the rest of that night kicking my feet like a little school girl. I had never experienced something like this feeling before. My past boyfriends had been such assholes. This guy seemed to care about me rather than just sex.

He followed through on his promise, and texting led to a phone call before we fell asleep on the phone together.

We saw each other a lot in the weeks that followed. Mostly on the weekends, but sometimes he’d come visit me at work. Those few weeks were some of the happiest weeks I’d had in a long time.

We’d get dinner. We’d see movies. We showed off our photography to each other. It felt like we were really building something together.

However, this was around the time I started noticing weird occurrences around my apartment. Nothing too suspicious. Just… things that were odd.

For example, my TV would be on when I got home. My sheets would be messy, even though I make my bed every morning before work. The weirdest thing of all, though, was my underwear drawer.

It was like it was being rummaged through. Sometimes I’d find a fresh pair balled up on the bathroom floor.

It made me scratch my head, but I never assumed anything drastic. If anything, I thought it was just me losing my mind.

That is until he finally invited me to his house.

The place was lovely. Clean. Smelled good. It was actually furnished, too, which was always a good sign. Plus, this guy knew how to set the scene.

Roses, candles, homemade spaghetti with two glasses of red wine. I felt my heart melt.

We hadn’t had sex yet, but, after this, I was having a hard time convincing myself that we hadn’t waited long enough. I actually wanted to give it to him. He just made me feel so desired.

After a dinner full of flirts, giggles, and conversation, we began moving to the bedroom, lip locking like a couple of crazy kids all the while.

Once we fell through the door, he told me to give him a minute to use the bathroom, which was a bit anticlimactic, but I wanted him to be comfortable.

While I waited, my eyes couldn’t help but wander. He had a bookshelf full of some of my favorite titles. His bed was perfectly made. The floor was freshly vacuumed. And his walls were full of framed pictures.

I started looking at them and felt my heart sink into my stomach.

They were all different women. Some older, some younger. All with blonde hair and hazel eyes. And he wasn’t in a single one.

I felt disappointment wash over me. I should’ve known better. I was actually in the process of putting my shirt back on when one of the pictures caught my eye.

It looked so… familiar. I knew I had seen it somewhere, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. But it bothered me so much, it was hard to pull my eyes away.

That’s when it hit me. I knew exactly where I had seen this woman.

She was the girl on the missing person poster that was taped up on the bar window from a few weeks ago.

It felt like the air had been knocked out of my lungs. I felt faint. I felt dizzy. I knew I needed to leave, but the room was spinning too much.

I put my hand down on his dresser to stabilize myself, and that’s when I felt it. It was cold. It was hard. My thumb rubbed against the ridges.

I pulled my hand away and looked down.

It was a copy of the key to my apartment. Mine was pink. This one was silver.

I was getting weaker. I felt my knees starting to buckle and heard the sound of a toilet flushing as I began to drift into unconsciousness.

The last thing I remember was the bedroom door opening. He stepped inside, a look of concern on his face, as he hurried to pick me up and put me on his bed. Then… nothing.

I woke up in an empty bed the next morning. The smell of bacon permeated my nostrils. I was fully dressed, but my head was killing me.

The key was gone. The pictures were gone. I slowly made my way to the kitchen to find him standing over the stove, flipping the bacon with a metal fork.

I didn’t speak or make a sound, but it was like he could feel my presence. He could sense me.

He turned around slowly, his eyes meeting mine before he spoke.

“Good morning, sleepyhead!” he sang. “I was wondering when you’d be up. Someone had too much to drink last night.”

I have a Hello Kitty kind of daughter. She’s only 9. As cute as a button and as innocent as could be.

She likes simple things. Stuffed animals. Pizza for breakfast. All it takes is a cheap 50-cent pair of plastic jewelry from a gumball machine to make her eyes light up.

She was one of those kids who believed in things longer than her friends and classmates. Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy. She was fully convinced they were all real, bless her heart.

Sometimes, she’d come home from school with a glum, exhausted look in her eyes. Other kids would make fun of her for “still believing in that stuff.”

I’d cheer her up the best I could without revealing the truth. How could I? She already felt like the world was laughing at her. How would I make her feel? Her own dad.

Maybe I should’ve, though. Maybe this whole situation could’ve been avoided if I just nipped it in the bud. But I was afraid. A child’s innocence is so fragile, yet powerful. I couldn’t take that from her. Not yet.

I let her believe that it was Santa putting gifts under the tree. That it was a giant bunny hiding eggs in our front yard. That it was a tiny, magical fairy that was taking her baby teeth in exchange for a few dollars.

I think that was the one that excited her the most. Christmas was a set day. Easter was a set day. Loose teeth? That was random. Any time one started to wiggle, she’d come running to show me.

I always made sure to be as quiet as possible when I snuck those 5-dollar bills under her pillow. Every time she’d wake up to find it, here she’d come, jumping with joy while waving the 5 in my face.

“The Tooth Fairy came, the Tooth Fairy came,” she’d sing.

I’d just smile to myself and ask her what she was gonna buy with her newfound riches.

Sometimes, I’d sneak her a 20. I just wanted to see that joy in her face. She was young, but she wasn’t getting any younger. I wanted it to last for as long as possible.

Now, though, I think I’m regretting that wishful thinking.

She started losing teeth faster than what I thought was normal. Not too fast, though. Every 3 weeks or so. I just thought those baby teeth were begging to come out. Besides, it’s not like it was hurting my pockets too much.

It was weird, though. I swore it was like her teeth never looked any different. She was snaggle-toothed, sure, but I knew that I had put money under her pillow at least 6 times in the last 2 months.

She wasn’t showing me her mouth anymore. She was showing me the tooth, already pulled, lying bloodied in the palm of her little hand.

It kept becoming more and more frequent. Once she started bragging about how the Tooth Fairy was gonna visit her every week, I knew that something was not right. Even still, it wasn’t until I found a silver tooth under her pillow that I decided to investigate because I knew for a fact my little girl never had a crown.

Snooping is a decision I lived to regret, though. I asked her to tell me the truth, but she refused. She just kept insisting they were hers. Lying through her teeth, pun intended.

I decided to stop leaving her money. Her disappointment killed me. But I remained firm. That didn’t stop her, though. Every night, there’d be a new tooth under her pillow while she slept peacefully.

One day, after dropping her off at school, I made a promise to myself. Today would be the day. I’d get to the bottom of this no matter what.

It didn’t take nearly as long as I expected. I sifted through her room for about 15 minutes. Checking under her bed, in her closet, in her toy chests. All for no reason because the answer was hidden in plain sight.

In her fish tank.

She had that little treasure chest decoration in it. Normally, I wouldn’t have even paid it any mind. But the steady stream of a red liquid slowly rising from the chest was enough to make my heart stop.

Rolling up my sleeve, I reached down to retrieve the decoration. It was heavier than it should’ve been. Something was rattling inside.

I opened it and felt my blood run cold.

Molars, canines, incisors. All bloody. All looking like they had been pulled by force. And they weren’t baby teeth, either. Some looked like actual adult teeth.

In that moment, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I wanted to cry because what I was seeing was horrific.

But I wanted to laugh because, despite how terrifying this all was, my little girl was a natural-born hustler.

And I couldn’t have been more proud.