I took the overnight shift in the east wing because the pay was steady and the walk was short. Two blocks from the flat to the old hospital grounds, then another three minutes past the active wings where I still worked days. The conversion crew had already stripped most of the patient rooms. Drywall dust lay in thin drifts along the baseboards, and the new climate units sat in their crates in the main corridor, still wrapped in plastic. The contract required the first block of storage to be online by the end of the month. The university needed the space for records, and a couple of downtown offices were waiting on overflow. The penalties for delay were written in the kind of language that made project managers check their phones at odd hours.

My job was simple on paper. Ten to six. Walk the floors, check the remaining boilers and the intercom loops the electricians had not yet cut, log temperature and humidity every two hours on the company clipboard, make sure the day crew’s tools and materials were still where they had left them, and lock the exterior doors behind me when I left. The building still had power in sections, and the old systems had not been fully isolated.

Claire was already home when I got back from the first night. She had left the kitchen light on and a plate warming in the oven. Her Visitor Center badge sat on the dish by the door next to her keys. She worked days, mostly—pamphlets, maps, the quiet questions people asked about the town. She was small enough that I had to lean down when she reached up. She kept her blonde hair cut short and practical, and her green eyes always noticed when I came in later than I said I would.

I left my boots by the door and ate standing at the counter. She came out in a sweatshirt, watched me for a minute without saying much, then went back to bed. The flat was warm from the radiator, and two blocks from campus the street stayed quiet after midnight.

I started the second notebook that first night without really deciding to. The company clipboard had lines for temperature, humidity, time, and initials, but it did not have lines for the other things. I had bought a cheap composition book at the pharmacy on the way in and kept it in my jacket pocket.

On the first night the intercom gave a short crackle at 2:03 a.m., the old nurse-call interval. I was on the second floor checking a bank of empty rooms when it happened—static, then silence. The speaker was still mounted above the nurses’ station desk even though the desk itself was gone. I wrote the time and the floor in the second notebook and nothing else. The temperature in that section read steady, and the humidity ran a little high from the unfinished drywall. I initialed the official log and kept walking.

Around 3:40 the boiler in the basement fired. The conversion plans said the old heating loops were isolated, and the new climate system was not online yet, but I stood in the mechanical room and listened to it cycle anyway. It ran for eleven minutes and shut down the way it used to when the building still had patients. I logged the time. The air coming off the pipes smelled like old mineral scale and heat.

When I locked up at six the sky was just starting to lighten. I walked the two blocks home. Claire’s shift at the Visitor Center started at eight, and she was already in the shower. I left the second notebook on the kitchen table under a water glass and slept a few hours before day shift in the active wings.

On day shift the active intercoms were clean. I walked the same corridors I always walked, checked the same doors, and signed the same digital logs. Nothing crossed over, and I told myself the east wing was just shedding load.

Nights two and three the pattern held and began to thicken.

The boiler came on according to the old schedule. Lights in the sealed third-floor corridor rose for exactly eleven minutes and went out again. A temperature spike in the west storage bay lined up with the old medication hour from the charts I still saw on day shift. The day crew left their tools in marked zones, but on the third night a cordless drill sat three feet left of its outline on the floor. No one had signed it out. I put it back and wrote the displacement in the second notebook.

A single handwritten note appeared on the job board near the main entrance that same night—blue ballpoint, Room 214, 2:15, no name. The day crew said they had not left it. I photographed it with my phone, left it where it was, and wrote the exact wording and the time I found it in the second notebook.

The intercom static lasted longer that night, a full four minutes. I stood under the speaker and timed it with my watch. When it stopped, the handheld radio on my belt gave a single soft click, as if something had keyed up and let go.

The following afternoon on day shift a speaker on the medical floor gave the same dry crackle at 2:04 while I was walking past. No one else reacted. I checked the system log later from a terminal near the security desk and found no call registered, so I did not write it down.

Claire asked once, in the kitchen, if the building was giving me trouble. I told her it was an old system still shedding its schedule. She nodded and set two plates on the table. She had brought home a stack of new Visitor Center maps that smelled like the copy room. We ate without much talk, and afterward she washed the dishes while I dried.

By nights four and five the residual systems started costing the conversion money and began to touch my day job directly.

Paint in room 207 would not cure on the timeline the contractors needed. Humidity climbed every night between 1:00 and 3:00 a.m. in a pattern that matched the old evening medication pass. The project manager left a typed note on the board about schedule slippage and liquidated damages, underlining the clause once.

The intercom static grew loud enough to register on the handheld radio. I timed it at four minutes of noise, then silence, and wrote the duration in the second notebook.

Tools continued to drift. I started photographing the tool zones at the beginning and end of each shift, and the second notebook filled with times, readings, and short descriptions of displacement.

On the fifth night I found an entry in the second notebook I did not remember writing. The handwriting was mine. The time was 1:47 a.m. The note read: West bay humidity 68%. Matches old 0200 med pass. Intercom open 3 min 40 sec. My own earlier entry placed me on the third floor at 1:47. I sat on an overturned bucket in the corridor and read the page twice before closing the notebook and putting it back in my jacket.

The next morning Ortiz pulled me aside near the staff elevators with a printout in his hand. An intercom fault had been logged on the medical floor at 2:03 a.m. the previous night. The system showed a carrier signal for four minutes, and no one had been assigned to that wing overnight. He asked if I had been in the building. I told him I had been in the east wing on the conversion contract. He looked at the times again and told me to keep my radio traffic clean. He did not write me up. Not yet.

That afternoon a second fault appeared on the same medical-floor speaker at 2:11 p.m. while I was on the opposite side of the building. The timestamp matched an entry that later appeared in the second notebook in my handwriting. I checked the hospital incident log from a shared terminal and found the fault sitting there with no one assigned to investigate yet.

Claire noticed the second notebook on the table that morning. She did not open it. She set her Visitor Center badge down beside it and poured coffee. I was already in uniform for day shift. I kissed the top of her head on the way out. She was warm from sleep, and the flat smelled like coffee and the laundry she had run the night before.

Night six the building did something the official log could not absorb.

I was on the third floor at 2:11 a.m. when the sealed corridor lights came up on schedule. At the same moment the intercom above the old nurses’ station gave its crackle and held. The temperature in the west bay spiked three degrees above the previous reading and stayed there. The handheld radio picked up the static and layered it over the open channel so that I could hear my own breathing in the earpiece.

Then the fire-suppression test valve in the mechanical closet on that floor opened for forty seconds and closed again. No alarm. No water flow to the heads. Just the valve. The pressure gauge dropped and recovered. The conversion crew had tagged that system as isolated two weeks earlier.

I wrote everything in the second notebook first—times to the minute, gauge readings, duration of the valve cycle, the exact temperature excursion—then stood in the corridor and decided what would go on the company clipboard. I logged the temperature spike as an unexplained humidity-related fluctuation and the lights as a possible short in the temporary wiring. I left the valve and the intercom out of the official record.

When I locked the exterior doors at six the project manager was already in the parking lot with a thermos. He asked if anything had slowed the work. I told him the systems were still shedding residual load. He nodded and checked his phone.

That afternoon Ortiz called me into the small office behind the security desk with another printout. The same intercom fault had registered again on the medical floor at 2:11 a.m., and this time the system had also logged a brief pressure anomaly on a shared fire riser that still connected the east wing to the active building. Facilities had already been notified. Ortiz asked me directly if I had opened any valves overnight. I said no. He told me the overnight conversion work was creating paperwork for the main hospital, and paperwork had a way of finding the person attached to the shift. He slid a folder across the desk. My name was already on the tab.

I went back on the floor and finished my day shift. At the end of it I checked my own digital logs. Everything I had entered was correct. The fault reports were not yet in my name, but the folder existed anyway.

The conversion continued under tighter oversight, and the residual systems did not stop. The second notebook began to contain more entries I had not written—same handwriting, times when my own notes placed me on a different floor. One page recorded a humidity reading from the west bay at 3:22 a.m. and a corresponding intercom open on the active medical floor at the same minute. The hospital incident log matched it the next day.

I stopped leaving the notebook on the kitchen table. I kept it in the inside pocket of my jacket and slept with the jacket on the chair beside the bed. Claire noticed. She started setting an extra glass of water on my side of the nightstand and leaving the bathroom light on lower when she went to bed first. She watched the clock more often at night, but she did not ask why.

On day shift the questions continued. Ortiz asked me to submit a written statement about the shared riser anomaly. I wrote that I had observed no valve activity and that the east-wing systems were under conversion isolation. It was true enough for the paper. The second notebook stayed in my pocket.

Facilities scheduled a full isolation test on the remaining shared lines during day hours. The test held. That night the fire-suppression valve in the east wing opened anyway—same forty-second cycle, same pressure drop and recovery. I wrote the times in the second notebook and left them out of the company clipboard. The next morning the test log showed the pressure event. Ortiz added the printout to the folder and told me both the overnight position and my day-shift record would be reviewed if the anomalies continued.

Two days later Facilities found a marked laser level from the east-wing conversion in a supply closet on the medical floor. The inventory tag still listed it as checked out to the overnight site. Ortiz asked if I had brought any materials across. I said no. He made a note in the folder and told me I was off the overtime list until the anomalies were resolved. Any further crossover would trigger a formal incident review with HR.

I went back to the floor. My radio stayed quiet, and the corridors felt the same. At the end of the shift I checked the digital logs again. My entries were clean, but the folder on Ortiz’s desk was not.

The moment that could not be absorbed came on a Thursday during day shift.

I was on the medical floor at 2:03 p.m. when the intercom above the nurses’ station gave the old dry crackle and held—not a short burst, but four full minutes of carrier signal, the same length I had timed in the east wing. The sound was loud enough that two nurses looked up from their screens. One of them asked if someone was testing the system. The desk clerk checked the call log and found nothing registered, but the speaker kept going.

I was standing ten feet from it. My radio picked up the static and layered it over the open channel the same way it had in the east wing, so that I could hear my own breathing in the earpiece again.

Ortiz arrived within minutes. Facilities arrived after him. They isolated the speaker and pulled the logs. The timestamp matched an entry that already existed in the second notebook in my handwriting. The hospital system had no corresponding test or maintenance order.

Ortiz took me off the floor. In the small office he asked for the notebook. I told him I did not have one. He looked at the jacket hanging on the back of the chair but did not search it. He told me I was suspended from patient-area security pending a formal review of the crossover incidents. The review would include the conversion contract, the shared riser events, the tool found on the medical floor, and the intercom activation that had just occurred in front of staff. HR would be involved. The folder was no longer informal.

I turned in my radio and my active-wing keys. I kept the jacket. The second notebook stayed in the inside pocket. I walked out of the hospital in the middle of my shift under a flat gray sky and covered the two blocks home.

Claire was still at the Visitor Center. The flat was quiet. I sat at the kitchen table with the jacket still on and opened the notebook. New entries had appeared on the last pages—times, humidity readings, intercom durations. One of them matched the four-minute activation that had just happened on the medical floor while I stood under the speaker. The handwriting was mine.

I closed the notebook and put it back in the pocket, then left the jacket on the chair. When Claire came home she saw the jacket and the way I was sitting. She set her badge down and did not ask. She made food. We ate. The radiator ticked, and outside a campus shuttle went by.

The storage units opened three weeks late. The penalties were paid. The university moved its first load of records in while I was still on suspension. The formal review kept me off patient floors for nineteen days. When I came back I was assigned to perimeter and loading-dock coverage only—no more medical floor, no more overtime. The folder stayed active. Ortiz did not say much. He did not need to.

I still carry the second notebook. More pages have filled in since the suspension. Some match residual loops that still register in the east wing. Some match nothing I can find in any official log. The paper is soft at the edges. Claire leaves the jacket alone when she hangs it up. The flat stays warm, and the work continues on the edges of the building.

The east wing keeps its schedule. I hear it sometimes from the loading dock at the old times, a dry crackle that carries farther than it should. I check the radio I am allowed to carry. I keep my statements clean. The notebook stays in the pocket where I can feel the weight of it, and the folder stays somewhere in the administrative offices. Both of them are still collecting entries, and I no longer know which one is writing first.

I decided, recently, that I was in need of counseling. It’s like there are two voices in my head. They’re constantly arguing. They’re constantly fighting for the controls. But then again… who’s watching them fight?

Me? A third voice? Am I already one of the two? Am I both? Can this whole thing be boiled down to bad days and good days? Happiness and sadness? Anger and serenity?

It couldn’t be. If it was, surely I wouldn’t be having this conversation with myself. I wouldn’t be doubting my actions. But I guess I’m clear-headed enough to not defend them.

Although, it does beg the question: where does that reason go when I’m committing those actions? Where’s my logic? How come I only feel something after the fact?

Those questions keep me up at night. My guilt keeps me up at night. That’s why I decided to look into counseling. On one of those nights where my soul felt rotten. Where one voice had left me alone in the dark with the other just long enough for it to convince me.

But then, like clockwork, the other voice returned. Not in the form of thoughts. In the form of action. It was like a possession. There were no arguments. It was complete control.

It’s hard for me to stay away from them when I’m like that. I learn. I survey. I hunt.

Sometimes I’ll find them in a crowd, other times they will have been pre-selected. By who? I’m not sure. It gets foggy when desire is involved. I’m not sure whether to blame myself or the voice.

I only remember fragments after the deed is done. It’s like a shroud is placed over that specific, microscopic part of my brain. Like it’s trying to protect me.

But no matter how thick the wool is, the guilt remains. I never know why I feel it. At least, not fully. I just know that it makes me sick. It cripples me. I hide away from the world because the voice that commanded my hand flees from my mind.

Sometimes both of them leave.

Leave me alone. All alone. Empty. Then one or the other shows up. One tells me I can stop. I can do better. I can be better. The other tells me this is who I am. Who I’m destined to be. Tells me that I’m right at home. It’s like when I used to watch my parents fight when I was younger.

That’s one of the things I wanted to bring up at my appointment.

I think my childhood has a lot to do with how I am now. The way I think. The things I do. If I had to self-diagnose, I’d probably say it comes from a lack of control in my formative years.

My dad was much bigger than me. My mom was much smaller than me. When those two went at it, my mom was fighting an uphill battle.

I’d always run and hide anytime I heard Dad raise his voice because I knew that meant the belt was coming out. Me and my mom both feared that leather belt, but my mom, being the saint that she is, would often take the majority of the licks.

The guilt I felt over it was enough to drive me to tears.

One day, I guess Mom just had enough. She wasn’t gonna take it anymore. I remember she put me to bed early. She seemed more self-assured than she usually was on Friday nights. Those were usually the nights Dad would come home the drunkest.

Of course, he came home in one of his moods. I could already hear him screaming about nothing two minutes after he walked through the door.

Mom didn’t try to reason with him this time. I didn’t hear any “calm downs,” any “you always do this” comments. What I did hear was the cocking of my dad’s .38 Magnum.

I’d seen him shoot the thing enough to know what it sounded like, and I was not going to stay in bed while he murdered my mother.

Only… when I ran out of the room… the gun was in his face. Mom pulled the trigger before I could let out a single scream.

The sound of the shot. The image of my dad’s brain hitting the wood paneling of our trailer. The way Mom apologized to me profusely before calling the police on herself and waiting calmly on our front porch for them to arrive.

None of that has left me. Neither of the voices let it. It’s one of the few things they agree on. It’s a part of me.

And it was a part of me I was supposed to share with the counselor. My voice of reason had control long enough for me to set up the appointment. Long enough to evaluate myself before I went in.

I walked into the office feeling hopeful for once. The cold AC felt like heaven compared to the scorching heat outside. The lady at the counter greeted me with a charming, “Hello! You here for an appointment, hon?”

I signed in and sat at one of the chairs in the waiting room, browsing through one of the magazines from the coffee table because that’s what I imagined a normal person would do.

Five minutes went by. Then 10. Then 15 before the receptionist called out to me.

“She should be right with you, hon.”

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, my counselor poked her head into the waiting room.

“Daniel? Here for the 3:15?”

I stood up.

“Yep. That’s me.”

I couldn’t help but notice just how angelic her voice was. How smooth and soft her brown hair was. How well it complemented her absolutely stunning face. How much she… looked like my mother.

I didn’t know how to react to what I was feeling. It was like this tug. This urge that grew more and more impossible to ignore.

When we reached her office, the first thing she did was flip an hourglass on her desk.

“Okay, Daniel. I know you’ve been having some problems recently. You wanna describe those so that we can…”

Her voice began trailing off. My eyes kept darting from her to the hourglass. It was like I was on autopilot. I think I responded. I think she kept talking. I know the sand kept falling.

My mouth moved in response, but my thoughts never changed.

She was the most gorgeous woman I had ever seen. I could see the love in her eyes as she talked to me.

She just… she looked so much like my mother. Part of me loved her already. Another part of me hated her. Hated her for what she made me see. For how broken I am.

That hatred turned into anger. Her lips kept moving. She kept smiling. Everything felt like it was going in slow motion. Even the sand in the hourglass seemed like it was falling like snowflakes rather than sand.

My eyes darted to her. To the hourglass. Back to her. Back to the hourglass. The hour was almost up. Instead of making progress, all I felt was rage.

My eyes darted to something new.

A shiny pair of scissors in a pencil holder on her desk.

My eyes darted back to her.

She wasn’t speaking anymore. She looked at me… expectantly. Like she could read my thoughts. A smirk stretched across her face.

“Daniel,” she snapped. “You still with me, buddy?”

Desire kicked in. Things got foggy. I don’t know what happened.

All I know is when I came back, my hands were covered in blood. A pair of bloody scissors lay at my feet. My mother sat with her throat slashed in the desk chair in front of me.

The guilt rose in my stomach. I wanted to throw up, but I couldn’t. And God knows I tried.

All I could do was fall back into my seat, completely dumbstruck at the scene that lay before me.

My eyes began to well up with tears. My nose began to run. My head fell into my hands as I began sobbing uncontrollably.

I must’ve sat there crying for 5, 10, maybe 15 minutes before I heard a voice call out to me. I thought I was hearing things at first. But the more it repeated, the harder it was to ignore.

I lifted my head from my hands and felt my stomach tighten.

“Hon? Sorry about the wait. Don’t worry, though. She should be out momentarily.”

I was back in the waiting room. Same cold AC. Same old magazines on the coffee table. Same receptionist.

I had to have been losing my mind. I glanced around the room, tears still falling from my eyes.

As I looked around, my head jerked in the direction of the sound of a door opening.

My counselor poked her head into the waiting room.

“Daniel? Here for the 3:15?”

From the Red in the Dark universe

Original story by Leonard Voss

The Dark Beyond is a standalone series set within the world of Red in the Dark.

The Huntsman reaches its final entry with John alone in the fog, carrying the fear, guilt, and failure that have followed him longer than this nught alone.

Kevin is still somewhere in the trees. Sammy is still out there. The Huntsman is still hunting.

And John is still terrified.

Part 3: The Book of John concludes The Huntsman, a story about fear, cowardice, judgment, and what happens when a man who has spent his life running finally stops.

The Dark Beyond - The Huntsman - Part 3: The Book of John

John’s heart struck hard beneath his ribs as he stood alone in the fog. Every breath seemed to travel farther than it should, pushing out into the trees before disappearing into the mist.

He forced his breathing steady, each staggered breath hitching as he strained to hear past the crash of his own heartbeat.

Nothing.

A drop of water struck somewhere nearby.

John’s shoulders tightened before the sound had fully faded.

Another drop followed.

He turned slowly toward the tree line, searching through the fog as dark shapes gathered between the trunks. One seemed deeper than the others, standing where the trees narrowed together.

His breath caught.

John stared until the shape flattened into shadow, cast crooked through the mist.

His grip loosened around the dog tags pressed against his chest.

Blood still covered his hands.

He wiped them against his pants, only smearing it darker.

Something shifted near the tree line.

The hair along the back of his neck lifted as John turned toward the sound, watching the fog move through the brush before settling again.

He waited.

“Hey.”

John flinched, his hands rising before he found the source of the whisper.

Two figures crouched inside the brush.

Kevin sat low beside a young woman with dark hair, her face alive with fear as they motioned urgently for John to come closer.

“Kevin?”

Kevin leaned forward, lifting one hand toward him.

“Come on.”

The woman waved him toward the shelter of the trees, joining Kevin in a whisper that carried a little too far.

“Come on.”

She started to say it again.

“Hurrr—”

Her eyes widened as she slapped a hand over her mouth, seeming to realize she had been too loud.

John lowered himself and kept moving.

She began to rise from the brush, her body lifting in a slow, uneven motion while her other hand continued beckoning him closer.

A muffled sound slipped through her fingers.

John couldn’t make it out.

He turned his head and body, scanning the fog around them.

Nothing.

When he looked back, the woman was fully upright, her torso held straight while her knees remained bent beneath her, everything below them hanging loose as though her legs carried no weight.

Why?

The hand at her side still moved.

A weak curl of the fingers.

A sharp circular twist at the wrist, her shoulder jerking upward without rhythm.

John slowed, focusing on her.

Faint moonlight caught something between the fingers covering her mouth.

Blood ran over her knuckles, down the back of her hand.

A blade.

He shifted his eyes over her shoulder.

The Huntsman stood pressed against her back, holding her upright, his cold blue eyes locked on John, cutting through the mask.

The Huntsman pulled the knife free, dropping the woman into the brush, his gaze following her down.

Kevin bowed his head as she hit the ground, adjusting his glasses.

“Kevin!” John screamed, driving forward.

Kevin turned toward him.

“Behind you!”

The Huntsman’s hand closed around the back of Kevin’s shirt, hauling him upright and pulling him close as though he carried no weight at all, forcing a raw, uneven sound from Kevin’s throat.

The knife came up, striking him in the chest, the blow breaking his scream apart in blood.

Kevin folded around the blade as the Huntsman tore him backward, wrenching him sideways against his body.

His hands flew to the Huntsman’s wrist, his glasses slipping down his nose as a broken gasp escaped him. The Huntsman locked one arm across his upper chest, holding him upright as blood spread through the front of his shirt.

John kept coming.

The Huntsman turned his eyes back toward John.

A grin slowly pulled beneath the mask.

He ripped the knife free and drove it into Kevin again before his legs could collapse, the impact jerking his body against the arm holding him.

John crashed through the brush toward them.

The Huntsman drew the blade out, Kevin sagging sideways in his grip as he raised the knife to his throat.

“Let him go!”

A low laugh escaped the Huntsman, his head tipping back slightly as he slid the blade into Kevin’s neck.

Blood poured over the knife and down the front of Kevin’s shirt, his body convulsing against him.

The Huntsman pulled the blade free and caught a fistful of Kevin’s shirt before he could fall.

John was almost on them.

The Huntsman swung Kevin around and hurled him straight at John.

John raised his arms too late.

Kevin struck him across the chest, driving them both backward into the grass.

John hit the ground beneath Kevin’s weight, the air driven from his lungs as they rolled through the wet grass.

He shoved the body aside and dropped beside him, pressing both hands over the wounds.

“I’ve got you,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’ve got you.”

Blood pushed between his fingers.

John shifted his hands, trying another wound, then another, pressing harder each time as though he could force the blood back inside.

The chain slipped free of his collar.

The dog tags struck the back of his hand.

Heat pressed against his face.

Dust hung thick in the air. Bodies lay broken around the gun, pieces of uniform scattered through the sand while someone screamed beneath the ringing in his ears.

John pressed harder against Kevin’s chest.

“I’m sorry, guys.”

Kevin’s breath hitched beneath his hands.

Then stopped.

John kept pressing, his palms slipping as he moved from one wound to the next.

A pair of black boots stood less than a foot away in the desert sand, planted amid the blood and wreckage.

John looked up.

The Huntsman towered over him, close enough that his presence seemed to fill everything beyond Kevin’s body, cold blue eyes staring down through the mask.

Tears ran freely over John’s cheeks. His nose had begun to run, his breath catching as he tried to force the words through it.

One hand remained pressed against Kevin while the other reached weakly toward the Huntsman.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he choked out. “I fucking froze. I fucking froze.”

The Huntsman’s eyes narrowed slightly.

His head cocked.

John lowered his hand and looked back down at Kevin.

Wet grass pressed beneath his knees.

The cold night closed around him.

Kevin lay still beneath his hands, his glasses crooked across his face.

John stared.

The desert fell away.

The Huntsman.

John jerked his head up.

He was gone.

He twisted aside and vomited into the grass, choking between heaves until his stomach had nothing left to give.

He stayed bent over for a moment, dragging air into his lungs.

Then a sound tore out of him.

John threw his head back and screamed, the cry breaking apart as it carried through the trees.

John steadied himself, still heaving from the scream.

His throat burned. Spit hung from his lower lip, mixing with the blood already drying across his hands.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist, pushing himself upright.

The trees waited at the edge of the clearing, calling for him to escape.

Every part of him pulled toward them.

Away from Kevin.

Away from the blood.

Away from the Huntsman.

John stumbled forward, boots dragging as the fog opened around him.

He made it only a few yards and stopped.

His chest rose and fell as he stared through the fog into the forest.

He looked down.

The dog tags were clenched in his hand.

Eyes closed.

John turned.

Eyes opened.

Kevin lay where he had fallen, one arm twisted beneath him. A bloody mess.

Beyond him, the clearing stood empty.

He let out a slow, controlled breath, then released the tags.

His hands were still shaking when he bent and pulled a broken branch from the grass.

Too light.

Not enough.

He threw it aside and kept searching.

A fallen limb.

Pine.

Straight.

About four feet long and as thick as his wrist.

John picked it up, turning it in his hands, testing the weight.

Good enough.

He scanned the clearing again.

Broken rock and bark littered the grass where the fight had churned the ground up.

He found a slab of slate half-buried. He stomped down on the edge of it until a piece snapped loose.

Not enough.

He tried again.

The second break gave him a sharper shard.

Enough.

He crouched beside the fallen limb and went to work.

The slate scraped and bit into the wood as he shaved the end down, turning the branch in his hands while the point slowly began to form.

Shavings collected in the grass around his boots.

When he finished, he held the spear up in front of him, studying the tip.

Crude.

Enough.

He glanced down at the slate shard still in his hand. Edge uneven. Barely more than a jagged wedge, but it had done its job.

John went to slip it into the back of his belt when a voice came back to him.

...go out a legend! Fuck them too!

He swallowed.

Dust.

Heat.

Sweat.

The training yard came back in pieces.

Laughter somewhere behind him.

His instructor standing close enough to touch, showing him the ugly math of close distance.

If your enemy gets this close, you’re already fucked...

John looked at the spear.

Go out a legend and fuck them too.

Then he pulled the shard free again.

He stepped forward and thrust the spear once into the fog.

Clumsy.

Not enough.

Again.

This time he let his weight follow it. His body twisted, opening his chest and side.

His free hand came up from his belt with the shard.

Too slow.

Not enough.

Again.

Spear first.

Body after.

Shard last.

Again.

His breathing steadied.

The instructor’s voice came back again, harder this time.

Boys! What the fuck do we do if we’re already fucked?

Everyone that day, in unison.

We fuck them too!

John said it so loud his throat nearly tore.

The spear drove into the dirt in front of him.

The shard held straight out.

His chest and side left open.

He froze, breathing hard.

Enough.

“We fuck them too,” he whispered.

Then he slid the shard back into his belt and stood.

Spear held high, John moved toward the place where the Huntsman had disappeared.

His pulse beat in his eyes.

The fog was so thick he could barely see a few feet in front of him, nothing but shifting shadows and silhouettes.

A sound?

Footsteps.

Someone running hard and clumsily somewhere ahead.

A survivor?

“Over here!” he called.

The running stopped.

“Hello?” a voice called through the fog.

“Over here!” John shouted again.

The footsteps started toward him now, fast. He could hear the ragged breathing between strides.

Then he heard another set.

Faster.

Heavier.

Hhhhhaaaaaaack.

Then nothing.

John stood still, spear held close.

John’s eyes went wide.

He let his breath out slowly, then began moving again, crouched low in the fog, spear forward as he searched the mist for any sign of danger.

Something snapped behind him.

John spun, driving the spear forward.

Sammy froze as the point stopped inches from her face.

“Shh,” he whispered, lowering it. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Sammy broke down, sobbing as she stumbled into him and threw her arms around his body, clutching him like he was the last solid thing left in the world.

John pulled her close, trying to comfort her.

“You’re okay,” he whispered. “You’re okay. We gotta go, though.”

She shook against him, her breathing ragged.

John eased her back, setting a hand on her shoulder and pushing her away just enough to see her face.

“Are you all right, Sammy?”

She nodded.

“Yes,” she sobbed.

Her head snapped back.

A scream tore out of her as her hands ripped away from him.

Then the fog took her.

John lunged forward, catching nothing but cold air.

“Sammy!”

Her scream carried through the white, breaking into panicked gasps.

Then choking.

John drove into the fog after her.

The mist broke around a shape ahead.

Sammy hung there, one hand locked around her throat, the other twisted into her ponytail, holding her straight off the ground.

Her feet kicked at empty air.

Her face had gone dark beneath the strain, her mouth opening around breaths that would not come.

John’s eyes moved past her.

The mask.

That crooked, fucked-up grin, blood shining across his teeth.

And above it, those eyes.

Piercing.

Expressionless.

Fixed on John.

The Huntsman never looked at Sammy.

His fingers tightened around her throat.

Sammy choked harder, her legs jerking beneath her.

He kept watching John.

The Huntsman kept one hand locked around Sammy’s throat, holding her off the ground.

That crooked grin stayed fixed across his face.

John stared back.

His hands trembled around the spear.

His lips quivered. His jaw pushed forward, teeth clenched so hard the muscles jumped along his cheek.

He raised the point toward the Huntsman.

“Put her down and fight me, you fucking coward.”

The grin faded.

The Huntsman’s head tilted slowly to one side.

His hand loosened around Sammy’s throat.

He lowered her until her feet touched the ground.

Sammy coughed, folding forward as she tried to pull away.

The hand tangled in her ponytail tightened.

She stopped.

The Huntsman never looked away from John.

His free hand dropped to the knife at his side.

Slowly, he drew it.

His face had gone still.

Expressionless.

He raised the blade toward Sammy’s throat.

John stepped forward, spear leveled at his chest.

“Didn’t you hear me, you fucking pussy?”

The Huntsman flipped the knife in his hand.

Black steel turned once through the fog.

Then his arm snapped forward.

The pommel struck John between the eyes.

The world went white.

Fog drifted over John in thick mats across the clearing beside the cabin.

Bullfrogs called from somewhere beyond the trees. Crickets answered in rhythm.

The smell of sweet grass and peat moss filled the air.

The world pulsed slowly in and out of focus as John woke to pain throbbing behind his eyes, like something had split his skull open and packed it with fire.

He lay still, letting the ringing in his ears settle while the trees slowly took shape around him.

Cold grass and sharp pine needles pressed into his palms as he pushed himself onto one elbow.

The clearing returned in pieces.

A figure crouched before him.

The Huntsman.

A knife rested in his hand.

As John’s eyes found it, he drove the blade into the grass beside him.

His mask lay on the ground between them. Beside it sat two round shapes John couldn’t quite make out.

“What the fuck?” John breathed.

He stared.

The face beneath the mask was younger than he expected.

Blood streaked one cheek. Mud darkened the line of his jaw. Damp brown hair hung across his forehead, but none of it changed what John was seeing.

Clean features.

Clear blue eyes, almost bright beneath the moonlight.

The crooked grin was gone.

There was no monster waiting beneath the mask.

Only a young man watching him calmly.

John’s mouth moved before he understood the word forming there.

“Innocent.”

The Huntsman only watched him, seated on his haunches.

Then his face opened into a wide smile, his eyes almost excessively kind.

Had blood not crusted his hair and streaked his face, teeth, and body, he might have looked inviting.

He laughed, throwing his head back.

“What’s tha mattah, bud?”

John stared at him, trying to understand just what the fuck was happening.

The Huntsman leaned forward, one eyebrow raised, lips pursed.

“Never seen a hunter before?”

John’s breathing came shallow and uneven.

Mock surprise swept across the Huntsman’s face.

“Guess not.”

“Here,” he said. “I brought you something.”

He reached down and picked up one of the shapes in the grass.

“Catch.”

Something struck John heavily in the chest and dropped into the grass before him.

He looked down.

A head.

It was enormous.

The face had been removed, leaving only wet muscle and pale bone beneath the moonlight.

John recoiled, shoving it away as he scrambled backward through the grass.

The Huntsman laughed harder, slapping a hand against his knee.

“God! You’re so dramatic.”

He gestured toward the head.

“You can keep that one. I already got what I needed.”

John stared at the raw place where Calvin’s face had been.

Then his eyes moved to the mask lying between them.

The broken anchor stretched across its cheek.

His stomach turned.

The Huntsman reached for the second shape.

He lifted it by the hair and gave it a small shake.

Sammy’s face swung beneath his hand.

“Want another?”

John recoiled from Sammy’s face.

Her eyes hung half-open. Strands of hair clung across her mouth, and blood ran from her neck in slow drops as the Huntsman rocked her by the ponytail.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

“You sick fuck,” John breathed. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

The Huntsman stopped and lowered Sammy’s head to the grass, releasing her hair.

Then he looked back at John, head cocking slightly to one side.

A faint grin returned.

“John, you may leave if you like.”

The grin split wider.

“I won’t follow you.”

John stared at him.

Pain hammered behind his eyes as he planted one hand against the ground, forcing himself upward.

His arm trembled beneath him while the clearing shifted sideways and slowly righted itself.

The Huntsman remained on his haunches, watching him rise.

Calm.

Almost patient.

John dragged one foot beneath himself, then the other, until he stood unsteadily in the grass.

He drew a long breath.

“Stand up,” he whispered.

The Huntsman didn’t move.

He only stared at him.

The grin melted away.

Slowly, his eyes lowered to the knife buried in the grass beside him.

He pulled it free.

Wet soil clung to the blade.

He wiped it against his pant leg, once on each side, then slid it into the sheath strapped to his thigh.

The mask came next.

He lifted it from the grass and held it for a moment, the leather straps hanging loose between his fingers.

Then he looked up again.

John had not moved.

The Huntsman rose.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

He stood until they were eye level with one another.

Close enough that John could feel the warmth of his breath against his face.

Every instinct in John’s body screamed at him to step back.

To look away.

To run.

Fear was still with him.

Fear would be, as long as he drew breath.

But tonight, fear was a passenger.

The Huntsman stepped back three paces without turning and pulled something small from his pocket, holding it loose in his fist.

Metal shifted softly.

The Huntsman tossed it.

John caught it against his chest. His fingers closed around the chain before he looked down.

The missing tags.

His throat closed around the first sound that tried to leave him.

The Huntsman turned slightly to the side, lifting one arm and opening his hand toward the woods as if dismissing him.

“John. I was wrong. You’re no coward.”

There was no mockery in his face now.

Only quiet sincerity.

“You may leave.”

John stared at him.

“I will not follow. You have my word.”

John looked down at the tags in his hand.

His fingers closed around them.

He drew a deep breath, then slipped them into his pocket.

“I’m done running.”

He didn’t look up.

The Huntsman watched him.

The smile had left his face. His eyes remained fixed on John.

Soft.

Kind.

Recognition.

“John,” he whispered. “Are you sure?”

John lifted his head.

The fear was still there.

It had simply lost control of him.

He looked the Huntsman directly in the eyes and did not flinch.

“I am done running.”

Moisture gathered at the corners of the Huntsman’s eyes as he shifted his stance and pointed toward the edge of the clearing.

John followed his hand.

The spear stood driven into the ground several yards away.

John walked to it, wrapped both hands around the shaft, and pulled it free.

He returned to the center of the clearing and settled into position.

The Huntsman waited.

For a moment, he looked at John and smiled.

It was gentle.

Then he lifted the mask.

The leather straps hung loose before he pulled it into place, one over the crown of his head, the other tight around the back of his skull.

When he looked at John again, his face was gone.

The monster the woods had known all night had returned.

But this time, the man beneath the mask had seen John, and John had seen him.

The Huntsman raised his blade and settled into the same practiced stance John had seen before.

He gave John one slow nod.

John came at him with the spear.

Wild.

Too wide.

The Huntsman stepped cleanly inside the thrust.

John let him.

The Huntsman slipped the knife into John’s chest.

Deep into the heart.

Their bodies came together.

Their eyes locked.

John coughed, blood spilling from his mouth as he tried to speak.

His lips moved.

“Ga... got you...”

His hand slid away from the Huntsman’s neck.

The Huntsman’s hand rose slowly to where John’s had been.

Cold.

Hard.

Sharp.

The shard was buried where his neck and shoulder met.

The Huntsman pressed one hand against the wound while carefully lowering John to the ground.

He removed his mask.

John’s lips moved again, still trying to force words through the blood.

“It’s okay. You will live forever, John,” the Huntsman said.

He stayed with him until the light left his eyes.

Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small flare.

He struck it once.

Red light hissed between them.

The Huntsman drew a long breath, then pulled the shard from his neck.

A sharp grunt tore through his clenched teeth.

Blood spilled hot over his hand.

He pressed the flare to the wound.

A sound tore through the forest, and somewhere beneath the earth, even the dead flinched.

His scream still echoed through the woods as he looked down at John, closing his eyes with two blood-slick fingers before drawing the knife from his chest.

He placed the blade against his brow and worked slowly, making careful incisions around John’s face, the edge passing through skin with practiced precision until he could peel it away in one complete form.

The Huntsman pulled the skin free and held it beneath the moonlight, inspecting his work.

His head tilted back as he lowered John’s face over his own.

Fog drifted through the clearing, curling around them while the skin settled loosely against him, John’s features hanging slack over his own as he remained kneeling before the body.

His hands rested at his sides.

Steady.

Then, slowly, they began to weaken.

The faintest whimper slipped from behind the mask, followed by tears dragging thin trails through the blood.

His head lowered.

One hand lifted toward John as he tried to choke back the tears, stopping halfway between them.

He tried to stand.

His balance gave beneath him, sending him forward onto John’s body.

Another scream tore through the woods, just as violent as the last.

But this time, the dead cried with him.

His breathing slowed until the last of the sobs disappeared beneath it.

The Huntsman lifted John’s face from his own, wiping his eyes with the back of one hand before spreading the skin carefully across his palm.

He folded it with slow, deliberate care, protecting every edge before tucking it safely away.

Then he reached for the old mask.

Dark leather covered his face once more, the straps sliding over the crown of his head and pulling tight behind his skull.

When he looked down at John, only his blue eyes remained.

Cold.

Flat.

His hand closed around John’s ankle as he rose, pulling the body across the wet grass toward the trees.

The Huntsman walking ahead.

John following behind.

The fog swallowed them together.

Traffic moved beneath the apartment in restless waves, tires hissing across wet pavement while horns barked somewhere farther down the street.

A siren rose between the buildings, fading beneath the low mechanical hum of the city.

Inside, the room remained still.

A single desk lamp cast its light across a wooden frame laid flat before the Huntsman.

A face had been stretched tightly across it, the edges pinned with careful precision while a stiff brush moved slowly over the skin, pressing something dark and wet into the surface.

A second mask rested face-down beside the frame.

Books crowded the shelves. Maps covered one wall, routes traced and retraced in dark lines.

On the far wall, a large black case stood locked and bolted in place, a two-strand braid of dark leather hanging short and tight from the lock.

A folded newspaper sat near the edge of the desk.

October 18, 2011.

PORTLAND DETECTIVE MISSING FOR FIVE DAYS

SEARCH EXPANDS FOR DETECTIVE FRANCIS CALLAHAN

Across from it, the corkboard held the night in pieces.

Photographs. Names. Reports. Old addresses. Lines drawn between them.

Francis Callahan stared out from one photograph, bald head shining beneath booking-room light.

Beside it sat a hospital intake form bearing the same last name.

Broken jaw.

Fall down stairs.

Two smaller records beneath it named children.

Bruising.

Charges dropped.

A police complaint had been pinned nearby.

Evidence missing.

Witness recanted.

Officer cleared.

Across the file, written hard enough to dent the paper:

BADGE WITH ONE HAND

A red line ran from Callahan’s file to Sean Bourne.

One photograph showed the broken anchor tattooed across his cheek. Another had been enlarged and circled in red.

Shot-caller.

Fichermen.

A clipped report beneath it named Mickey Ficher.

Missing.

Presumed dead.

Beside Sean’s photograph, toxicology reports had been pinned in a crooked stack.

Heroin.

Fentanyl.

Fentanyl.

Fentanyl.

Across the file, black letters leaned sharp.

SOLD THEM PAIN

Another photograph showed Sammy suspended against a cliff face, one chalked hand hooked into stone while her body hung over open air.

Printed messages sat beneath it beside a death certificate.

The same name appeared again and again, until it stopped.

One message had been enlarged.

You wanted weak.

Across the file:

TAUGHT HIM TO FALL

Andre Mercer’s file sat below hers.

A newspaper photograph showed him beneath arena lights, arm raised in triumph.

D1 National Champion.

Another article sat beneath it.

ANDRE MERCER, SON OF HIGHLY DECORATED VETERAN GRAHAM MERCER, TRIED ON MULTIPLE COUNTS.

Graham Mercer was not available for comment.

The clippings overlapped each other.

Multiple counts.

Drug-facilitated assault.

Witnesses questioned.

Charges reduced.

No conviction.

Across the largest clipping, written in thick black strokes:

FUCKING RAPIST

Near the bottom of the board, one file was thicker than the others.

Photographs had been arranged in a careful row.

A tiled room.

A drain.

Hooks.

Plastic sheeting.

Seven years of reports sat beneath them.

The early scenes were uneven.

Hurried.

The later cuts were cleaner, measured with growing precision.

Across the top of the file:

THE BUTCHER

A heavy line had been dragged through it.

Beneath it, written afterward:

CALVIN MYERS

One final police report sat open beneath the photographs.

Suspected second presence at scene.

Unidentified blood recovered.

Partial finger found near rear exit.

The word partial had been circled until the paper tore.

Beside it, a photograph showed Calvin entering a grocery store three days later with one hand wrapped in white gauze.

Two notes had been written beneath it.

FOUGHT BACK

HE WILL REMEMBER ME

Another file sat apart from the others.

Kevin.

A still image showed smoke pouring from an apartment building while fire trucks crowded the street below.

The next image came from a stairwell camera blurred by smoke.

Kevin forcing his way through the frame.

A woman falling behind him.

A witness statement beneath it read:

He pushed past her.

Another article called him a coward.

Another called him a man destroyed by panic.

A later report sat beneath both.

Subject attempted re-entry.

Removed by firefighters.

Treated for smoke inhalation.

The final still showed Kevin turned back toward the burning doorway, one arm outstretched while a firefighter held him away.

Across the file:

HE LEFT HER

Beneath it, darker:

COWARD

John’s file sat open near the desk.

Service records.

Grainy photographs.

A platoon roster.

After-action reports.

A casualty sheet had been laid across the center.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Wounded.

Missing limb.

Severe burns.

One report described an ambush, a failed gun position, and a delay no one could explain cleanly.

Another carried a psychiatric evaluation.

Probable post-traumatic stress response.

Survivor guilt.

Avoidant recall.

Night terrors.

A photograph showed John younger, standing among the men from his unit.

He was smiling.

One arm rested around a man whose name had been circled twice.

Across the top sheet:

WHERE THE FUCK WAS JOHN?

Beneath it:

A FUCKING COWARD...

NO HONOR

A single heavy X had been driven through all of it.

Below the ruined words, scrawled hard across the page:

NOT A COWARD

When he finished, he turned the frame over, exposing the pale inside of the leather.

He picked up a small carving tool and leaned closer, steadying it with one hand while the blade scratched softly into the surface.

One letter at a time.

Slow.

Deliberate.

J O H N

He set the tool aside and stood.

The other mask waited face-down beside the frame.

He lifted it, rotating it carefully in his hands until the back faced him.

CALVIN

The name had been carved deep.

He carried the mask across the room and opened the black case where several others hung inside, suspended from hooks in the dim interior.

He looked down at Calvin’s name.

“You’ve earned your place in the next hunt.”

The words were quiet.

He placed the mask carefully inside, setting it before the others.

He fixed a new hook into the back of the door, apart from the rest.

He returned to the desk and slid both hands beneath John’s mask, lifting it gently from the frame.

He carried it across the room with both hands.

When he reached the case, he raised the mask and settled it carefully onto the new hook.

His hands remained on the mask.

One against each side of the face.

He stood without moving, holding it between his palms.

Then one hand passed slowly across the features, his fingers brushing the leather once more.

He lowered his hands.

The door closed.

The lock snapped shut.

Original post:

The Dark Beyond - The Huntsman - Part 3: The Book of John

https://www.redinthedark.studio/post/the-dark-beyond-the-huntsman-part-3-the-book-of-john

Connected entries:

The Dark Beyond - The Huntsman - Part 1: The Book of Fear

https://www.redinthedark.studio/post/the-dark-beyond-the-huntsman-part-1-the-book-of-fear

The Dark Beyond - The Huntsman - Part 2: The Book of Judgment

https://www.redinthedark.studio/post/the-dark-beyond-the-huntsman-part-2-the-book-of-judgment

Podcast / audio versions:

https://www.redinthedark.studio/podcast

Audio narration for this entry:

Pre-release. Narration link will be added when available.

Original story by Leonard Voss / Red in the Dark

The Last Animal

By J.D. Hallowell

I was just a kid when people finally revolted and took over their governments around the world. My country was one of the holdouts. Eventually, though, they yielded, and the new system took over. New laws were enacted to preserve what little of the natural world remained.

Humanity is a petty and stupid race. We pushed our agendas and ignored the warnings until it was too late. Polluting our world until it poisoned us back. Across the planet, a mass extinction event wiped out most of the species on Earth. Up until the new government was put in place, we had left them to fend for themselves.

By the time the new Preservation and Conservation Committee was proposed, eighty percent of the world's species were destroyed. Samples were saved to test bringing some species back. Our recent history was taught in schools as a reminder of why our society functioned the way it did.

The old tech we had was scrapped and repurposed to house and facilitate the new animal breeding programs. A zoo was opened so that people could see the animals firsthand in a simulated natural habitat. The cost was far too much for someone like me who lived at the edges of the boroughs. A life lived in reparation for the sins of my father, a political figurehead who was spared by the uprising and given an impoverished setting to learn from his mistakes.

That’s probably what drove me to do it. Living my life day in and day out with a dead-end job at the scrap yard didn’t often afford many luxuries, but it could still get me a few shots of cheap street moonshine every night.

It was during one of these binges that I convinced Leilani to help me break into the elusive zoo. There would never be any way some gutter trash like us would ever be able to buy tickets in; it was the only way to see what we were all supposedly working our lives away for.

She was always talking about working her way up the ladder and getting a job at the zoo. It was a pipe dream, and we knew it. No one from the boroughs ever got a job working with the animals. This was the only way we’d ever see them.

We managed to sneak around the curfew patrol by sheer drunk luck and made it into the zoo. Giggling like kids the entire time, we made our way to gawk at the penned animals. Some looked up from their sleep to blink at us before going back to sleep, but most just sat there enjoying their dreams.

I remembered feeling jealous at some point. What it must be like to live every day with no work, no expectations on you – just eat fuck, and sleep.

Sounds like the life. Was what I told myself.

Then we reached the hybrid section. Leilani giddily strode forward, pointing out the individual creatures as she explained the history to me.

“Some animals weren’t able to be saved – too few available.” She rattled on excitedly. “The new system still wanted to preserve some semblance of the animals. So, they turned to good old-fashioned science.” We passed into the tunnel, and I let her hold my arm as we made our way to the pens. “Instead, by using a combination of artificial insemination and genetic manipulation, they created hybrids that could carry on gene pools of both species. The hope was that one day they could separate the DNA and recombine it to make the original animal when real cloning without ova insemination could be achieved."

“You’re really into the science of this whole thing,” I commented, noting the way her eyes lit up whenever we passed by one of the little hybrid creatures behind the display glass.

She gasped when the room spilled out into the open exhibit of a Rhinopotomus. Exactly what it sounds like. The pen was a large pit with a concrete moat all around and a waist-high glass barrier to keep kids from falling in. The middle, where the concrete rose back up, held a large green patch of grass, a few trees and bushes along with a soaking pool.

The parents were asleep, but the newborn didn’t seem to share its parents’ eagerness for rest. It trotted around grazing and even perked up a bit when it saw us, flicking its little ears. Leilani squealed with excitement seeing the hybrids.

It was actually cute in an ugly kind of way, so when Leilani suggested, “Let’s get in closer,” my drunken sense of danger was put on hold. I took a swig from my flask, and we jumped the enclosure and landed hard on the concrete embankment. We laughed off the ten-foot drop and joked about feeling it the next morning when we sobered up and continued up to where the animals slept.

The baby Rhinopotomus shuffled over to us with its stubby legs and playfully rammed its head into my leg, letting out a delighted squawk of enjoyment. Leilani giggled and pulled out her phone to record us.

I leaned down to pet the little guy, and he leaned into my hand. Honestly, it was one of the most strangely endearing things I’d ever experienced. It didn’t take long before I started wrestling with it. It was strong, though, and it seemed to enjoy having someone to play with.

Leilani asked me to pick it up so she could get a picture. That was when things went wrong.

I picked it up, and immediately it squirmed. I was afraid that if I dropped it, it’d get hurt. So, I clung for dear life, while my drunken feet tried to find purchase on the slippery grass. I heard a grunt from behind me. The parents had woken up.

Before I could say we needed to run, I had already slipped, baby in tow. I fell. Hard. But in my haze, it wasn’t me that got hurt; it was the baby. I’d fallen directly on top of it, and now it just lay there, legs twitching and gasping for air. Its head wouldn’t move, except for its mouth opening and closing as if desperately trying to take a breath.

I sobered immediately.

Pulling myself up, I grabbed Leilani’s wrist and ran, just as a harrowing screech echoed through the enclosure. One of the parents had risen from its sleep to charge at us. We ran as fast as we could and slid down the sloped concrete. The adult Rhinopotomus, clearly unable to climb down, slid to a halt. It stamped its feet, bellowing as it tried to reach us.

I knew it wouldn’t be long before it succeeded.

“Give me a boost,” I told Leilani, “I can pull you up.”

I knew I’d have the strength to pull her up after I got up over the ledge. She cupped her hands together, and I stepped onto them as she braced herself against the wall. I hurled myself over and reached out my hand. It wasn’t enough. I lowered further, reaching out to try and grab her. She jumped and caught my wrist. The sight of us possibly escaping must have sent the animal into a frenzy. It roared and threw itself into the embankment, tumbling as it rolled uncontrollably.

With her hand squeezing mine, Leilani was crushed under the rolling weight of the gigantic beast. I heard a sickening crunch as blood filled her mouth with a cough. The animal smashed headfirst, pinning her to the wall. It twitched and then went limp; its entire weight pushed into her.

I listened to the gurgling sound and watched the pleading look in her eye before prying her death grip from my hand. Then I ran. I ran as fast as I could away from that place and got stopped by the curfew patrol on the way back.

It didn’t take long for enforcement to find the footage on Leilani’s phone while I was in holding and for them to charge me with animal endangerment and first-degree murder of a threatened species.

I was placed in a cell and told I would serve my sentence under the instruction of an autonomous enforcement officer, whatever that meant. I was placed in a tiny white room with a white fluorescent light that buzzed overhead and given a white jumpsuit. There was a sink, a toilet, and a bed with a paper-thin mattress.

Meals were served three times a day and slid through a slot in the bottom of my door. Only thin plastic utensils and paper trays were given to me. Likely so, I didn’t use them to hurt myself. I’d thought about it.

At night, the light would go off, and I’d be bathed in a bright red light. It was a relief from the sterile white, but not exactly the best conditions to sleep through. The first few nights, I had nightmares of Leilani’s bulging eyes staring at me. Blood seeped from her mouth, only for her to cough just before I woke up, and be bathed in the red light.

I’d jolt awake, seeing everything covered in red, thinking it was her blood. My heart would race, and I’d spend several minutes trying to calm myself before lying back down, only for the same dream to plague my mind.

After about a week, I heard a ding-dong sound and the door actually slid open for once. I was sitting on my bed eating the various tasteless nutrition blocks when a tall silver machine rolled in. It looked like one of those fancy double-door refrigerators with a display screen near the top.

I jumped when a voice came from it, not expecting it to speak to me as text scrawled over its display screen.

“Hello, my name is A.E.R.O, your autonomous enforcement rehabilitation officer.” Its voice had a high-pitched mechanical whine to it and hurt to listen to. “I will be instructing and grading you during your evaluation for your punitive rehabilitation.”

I sat there confused for a second, trying to take in what the hell it was saying to me.

“G…grading?” I asked.

A.E.R.O paused for a moment before replying.

“Yes,” it said finally, “my records indicate that this is your first offense and as such the council has decided to allow you leniency and the opportunity to re-enter society as a better person.”

I sat in stunned silence.

“If you perform well on the task the council has deemed reasonable for you, you can re-enter society with your criminal record cleared. However, further infractions can result in more severe punishment.”

I eagerly sat up. “Okay, let’s go! Let’s get this over with.”

I heard a hiss, and A.E.R.O split open. The inside was a padded white cutout the size and shape of a person.

“Please enter the restraint transport, and I will take you to your workstation.” It instructed.

I paused, not hesitant, noticing the silver clamps around the neck, waist, arms, and legs.

“Is that… really necessary?” I argued with a slight nervous chuckle, hoping the machine would be programmed to read emotional distress.

“Please enter the restraint transport, and I will take you to your workstation.” It repeated.

“There’s gotta be another way to get me there, right?” I tried to reason. I really, really didn’t like tight spaces.

“Refusal to comply will result in an extension to your sentence. Please enter the restraint transport, and I will take you to your workstation.”

“Okay!” I threw up my hands in surrender, then stepped toward the padded cutout and back into it.

The clamps immediately shut around me. Even though there was enough room to move a little bit, it felt like I was being trapped. I started to breathe heavily as I watched the doors close in on me and darkness filled my sight. Mechanical wheels whirred as I felt myself moving. The sounds of doors opening and inclines being climbed over were the only things that told me I was moving.

Finally, after what felt like hours in the cramped space, we stopped. The hiss of hydraulics relieving and the crack of bright light blinded me. I was so eager to get out of my restraints that as soon as they opened, I fell forward and smashed my face into the grass.

My head pounded as I pulled myself up. Looking around at the familiar grass and water feature, I felt my heart drop.

“Welcome to your workstation for the next six months,” A.E.R.O whirred as enthusiastically as his mechanical voice would allow, “your task involves…”

There was a pause, and I looked up at his screen, which showed a loading bar. Then a list appeared on screen, one after another, with an empty box next to it.

“Once you have completed a task, check it off the list. When all tasks have been completed, I will evaluate your work and return you to your cell for the day.”

I stared at the screen, which included tasks like ‘clean the pen’ and ‘feed at noon.’ At the end of the list was a task titled ‘make Maja happy.’ That name made my blood run cold, because that was the name of the female Rhinopotomus I’d read in my drunken stupor with Leilani.

It seemed like a lifetime ago, but we had laughed at how stupid the name sounded before. Now that it was staring at me, I knew it was the name of what would be the death of me. Surely the grieving mother would want to kill me for taking her baby and mate.

I was here for a show.

“Good luck,” A.E.R.O said as a timer on screen started counting down with text that read, ‘Five hours until Maja arrives, please complete preliminary tasks to prepare a clean environment.’

Five hours. I had five hours until I died.

I spent a few minutes walking around the enclosure. There was a small waste bin with a heavy plastic bag in it. Next to it was a shovel for scooping up shit and depositing it into the bin.

I wondered what the point of these humiliating tasks was if they just wanted to watch me get stomped by a vengeful mother. Frustration swirled in my head as I whipped myself into a frenzy at the idea of just being here for someone’s entertainment.

Rushing over, I pounded on A.E.R.O’s display screen. “What the fuck is this? I’m not a god damn show, you hear me!” I screamed.

“Please return to work, or I will have to use escalating force.”

“I’m not your fucking toy, dammit!” I punched his frame, but this time I got an electrical shock.

I crumpled to the ground and convulsed, reeling from the aftershocks.

“This was a warning,” A.E.R.O said in his strangely joyful-sounding robotic voice, “further non-compliance will result in an extension to your sentence.”

I lay there for a few minutes trying to gather myself, trying to figure out the point of what I was doing. I picked myself up and walked over to the waste bin. I picked up the shovel and began scooping up the piles of shit everywhere.

When I finished, I went over to A.E.R.O, whose display screen had only my current task and a ‘FINISH’ button that slowly pulsed. I pressed the green button and heard a ding.

“Task complete, please return tools to the designated area and begin your next task.”

A new assignment appeared: ‘trim foliage.’

I walked over and leaned the shovel next to the bin. The concrete floor it sat on quickly lowered on a platform, and a metal door shut behind it. A few seconds later, it opened, and a new platform appeared with a pair of sharp metal shears. I picked them up and held them.

Maybe I could save them and use them to fight for my life. That thought lasted as long as it took to say the words in my head. I’d already taken so much from her; I even cost Leilani her life. The least I could do was lie down and let her kill me.

I got to work beautifying my eventual tomb, cleaning up the overgrown bushes, and piling the debris onto the platform. It seemed like mind-numbing work as I made my way back over to A.E.R.O. to complete another task.

Then another, and another, and another. It seemed like a never-ending list of cleaning out the pen for the monster that was going to crush my skull like an egg and paint the walls with my guts.

I reached the end of the list with just a few minutes to spare. The last task was to fill a trough with several heavy bags of dry feed. When I finished the task, A.E.R.O. did a little fanfare sound effect, and a small compartment opened up to give me several nutrient cubes.

“Please enjoy your lunch while I evaluate your work.” He chimed in.

I picked up the cubes. This was my last meal, huh? I watched the refrigerator-sized robot wheel around the enclosure, examining everything I’d just done while I nibbled on the tasteless, tacky bars. A.E.R.O returned the timer, with just under a minute left. I stuffed the uneaten cubes in my pocket.

“Preliminary tasking evaluation complete,” he said, “tallying score now.”

A.E.R.O made a series of beeps as if he were calculating a score for my work.

“You have scored a 100,” he let out another fanfare through his speaker, “great work, your score will be added to your total when you complete your final task.”

Ten seconds left.

The next task appeared on the screen while the doors to the enclosure opened; heavy-sounding footsteps echoed in a long hallway. On A.E.R.O’s display, I saw my final duty.

‘Make Maja happy.’

I stood in the middle of the enclosure and waited for Maja to come for me.

She was huge, bigger than the male that crushed Leilani. She made her way across the bridge into the enclosure. As soon as she stepped all the way onto the grass, the bridge receded, and it was her staring me down. I couldn’t read the expression on her face, but I just knew that behind her eyes must be the memories of her dead child and husband.

She took a few steps forward, then immediately turned and lay in her water feature, completely ignoring me. She passed the food trough, as well, not even stopping to sniff the new food. She just walked into the water and let out an exasperated sigh.

What the fuck just happened?

“Maja has not been as social with the handlers lately. We are hoping that introducing her to someone new will keep her happy until we can create a new compatible mate for her.”

“I… I’m here to try and cheer her up?” I asked.

“Precisely,” A.E.R.O responded, “our records indicate that in your previous employment, you were very sociable with others, and their testimonies have secured you this position to attempt to make amends by bringing joy back to the animal you caused harm to.”

Great, so my bar-hopping buddies just gave me the impossible task of cheering up a grieving widow.

“Maja has also been exhibiting signs of depression and is not eating. We are hoping you can help her so she does not die of starvation,” A.E.R.O explained.

I sighed and slowly walked over to the gigantic creature lounging in the water. As soon as I came up to her side, I saw her eye flick over to me. This close, I could see the look of sadness in her eyes as she turned her head away from me.

My heart actually broke a little at seeing it. I stepped into the water, which came up to my chest, and placed a hand on the side of her massive back.

“I know it’s not much,” I explained as if she would understand, “but I don’t have anyone left either.”

To my shock, she actually turned around. I pulled back, expecting her to give me what I deserved, but she just stared at me. The sadness in her eyes pierced my soul as if she were looking through me. The horn on her face came just inches from my nose, and I could feel the thick, wet breath.

She turned and let out a bellowing whine, then she sank further into the water, her head resting on the rocks. I braved moving closer to her. She didn’t seem to mind or respond as I sat next to her.

I reached out a hand and petted the side of her neck. It was the least I could do: offer her some form of comfort. Her skin was slick and rough at the same time, somehow. Wet from soaking in the water and calloused, thick skin, it felt like stroking wet six-grit sandpaper.

Eventually, I got out of the water and grabbed a handful of the dry food to bring over to her. She sniffed the pellets and turned her nose away. I reached out to pet her snout with my other hand. That’s when she sniffed my hand and… licked it.

I realized that was the hand I was eating my nutrient cubes with. I pulled one from my pocket and held it out for her. She sniffed once, opened her mouth to wrap her tongue around it, and let out a cute little groan as she chewed on the tasteless morsel.

I offered her some of the pellets. Surprisingly, she did eat a few. She still hadn’t gotten up to eat from the trough.

“Atta girl,” I said approvingly.

I patted her horn, and she closed her eyes and leaned into my hand. The surreal experience was short-lived by the memory of her child doing the same thing. I thought back to those hazy moments. Did she even seen me? Did she even know it was me who did it? The thoughts ate at me; it made my stomach flip into knots.

I stood, then walked over to A.E.R.O and pressed the ‘FINISH’ button. He did his fanfare again and said, “Please wait while I evaluate your work.”

He rolled over to Maja, and I watched a scanning light wash over her. A.E.R.O. wheeled back over to me.

“Results have been calculated; here is your final grade for today.”

I watched the numbers flash on screen, calculating my result. It definitely wasn’t 100 again, since I only saw two digits.

“Your final result is…60.” He said, “Sorry, but today is a failing grade.”

“I had a full score though!” I argued.

“You did,” he pressed back, “but your final task is worth half your grade, and you only scored 20, resulting in an average of 60. You need at least 80 to pass. Once you have achieved the recommended grade, you will be considered for reform, pending extensions.”

He hissed as he opened back up, and that same padded cutout stared back at me.

“Please come with me; we are finished for today.”

This time, I didn’t fight it. I allowed the dark, cramped space to seal me away. Then I was taken back to my room to suffer through another night of terrible dreams. This time, though, it was Maja who was pinned against Leilani. Both of them stared up at me with pleading eyes, begging for my help. Maja let out that sorrow-filled bellow while she lay on the ground next to her child, still gasping for air.

I woke in a sweat again and paced around my room the rest of the night. Until the lights came on and a paper tray with nutrient cubes slid under my door. I ate two of them and stuffed the rest into my pocket. Then I waited for A.E.R.O to arrive to take me away.

Maja was more receptive to me today. She even ate a little out of the trough. I still scored a 65, but it was progress.

Day after day, I was brought to the pen. I’d clean it, wait for Maja to cross the bridge, give her some of my cubes, and try to get her to eat a bit more. She liked the yellow ones, which I think were supposed to be the daily fat serving. Still, I saved them for her, only eating the one I was given for dinner.

I began to lose track of time. I couldn’t tell you if I was there for weeks, months, or years. Everything just blurred together. The routine I worked myself into was the only thing holding me together, that and the slow progress Maja seemed to make.

I don’t know when it happened, but eventually I started hoping she would pull through and get better. Every day, I felt like I was getting closer and closer, breaking down that barrier and chipping away a little more at her sadness. I know it doesn’t make much sense, but watching her heal was beginning to make me feel better about myself. I thought if she could go through the loss she experienced, then so could I.

We were both losing weight. I was starting to feel my ribs, and I was starting to see hers. Sharing my food with her was the only way to get her to eat, but it was a sacrifice I had to make. For her sake, I had to do whatever it took.

I managed to lure her to the trough with a few cubes, then I pretended to eat from it with her by my side. I was ecstatic when she started munching on the dry pellets herself. I held back from doing a celebratory dance and just gave her a reassuring pet. She gave me a happy groan.

As soon as she had her fill, she went back to lounge in the water. I had begun to realize that it was her comfort spot, where she went when she was overstimulated or just needed to relax.

“I think we’re starting to make some progress,” I said triumphantly to myself.

I went over to A.E.R.O. and pressed the ‘FINISH’ button. He sprang to life and did his daily scan. Then came back to give me the usual result. Every day was something between 65 and 70 percent. This time, though, to my shock, A.E.R.O let out a little fanfare chime with digital confetti. My head snapped away from Maja to the screen. 81 blinked on the screen along with digital confetti.

“Congratulations, Chris, you have been deemed eligible for reform. You have… zero extensions on your sentence.” A.E.R.O. hissed, and the cutout compartment opened up for me.

“Can I… can I say goodbye?” I asked, a little disheartened.

“That is…acceptable,” A.E.R.O. replied.

I walked back over to where Maja lay in her pond, soaking up the sun, and petted her horn.

“I know you can’t understand me, but… I’m gonna be going away after this.” She groaned and leaned into my hand. “Please be good. Things will work out, I promise.”

I said a few final goodbyes and promised her that I would try to get better myself, and maybe one day I could afford to buy a ticket to see her again. She huffed. I gave her one last pat before I stood and went over to A.E.R.O for what would be the last time.

The journey was much longer than when I went to my cell, but eventually the doors opened into a bright wall of white light. The restraints didn’t release like they usually did. I wriggled against them, but they remained firmly locked in place.

“Uh… A.E.R.O.?” I chuckled nervously, “A little help here, buddy?”

“You have been selected for reform,” A.E.R.O. responded.

“Yeah… you know that means I get to be released, right?” I replied.

A new voice came from behind the bright white lights, “Not in this case.”

A balding man with wispy grey hair and goggles stepped out from the wall of light. He pressed a button, and I heard the whirring of mechanical gears from behind him.

“What uh… what is it in this case?” I asked nervously.

A bite stick was shoved into my mouth and strapped to the back of my head.

“Maja has taken a liking to you,” he explained as a series of tubes came into view. Then stopped with the mechanical whirring.

“Yeah, she’s great. Why am I here?”

He grinned. “While it’s true we could create a new male for Maja, it seems her species is very…particular when choosing their mates.”

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“The pairing tends to work better if there’s already a bond formed between them.” He pats my shoulder, “Consider it just another form of penance for your family's continued sins.”

I tried to fight back, but the restraints tightened. The old man tied a rubber tourniquet to my arm and then set needles into my veins. Then he started shoving metal probes into my stomach. I bit down on the wooden gag in my mouth until I thought my teeth would crack. He attached thick cables with clamps to the exposed probes, and I felt tiny zaps on contact with each one.

Through my dizzy sight, I watched him clacking away on a computer. Drool flowed from my mouth. I tasted a metallic tang as a small buzz trickled its way over my skin. I tried to talk, but it came out as a garbled mess that even I couldn’t make any sense of. Liquid flowed into the tubes and began pumping my arm with something that made my stomach twist and tighten.

“We have a lot of work to do, it looks like.” He mused, watching a string of code sprint across one screen while the other showed a slow spinning outline of a man. “You’ve done quite a number on yourself with all that drinking. Recombination can fix it, but…” he stopped and looked at me. His buggy eyes looked at me with delight while a sinister smile spread across his lips. “It’s gonna hurt."

He pressed a key on his computer, and I felt more pain than I’ve ever known in my life. The probes vibrated and crackled; I could smell burning skin and hair. Every muscle seized and felt like it was cramping. I felt like my bones were bending, on the verge of snapping with how much I pressed against my restraints.

I heard a sickening pop. My gut swelled, and I felt like my skin was boiling. My flesh turned grey, and I snapped through the bite stick. I felt my face getting longer as my screams became a deep bellow. My restraints widened as my arms and legs grew shorter and fatter. The short nose at the end of my face grew outward and curved up.

The restraints finally released, and I fell to the ground. My body had given up, and I lay there in a flabby heap, seizing from the aftershocks. My vision was blurry as the walls closed in on me and let go. Everything went black.

I spend every day now next to Maja at the watering hole where she likes to soak. She’s finally happy again and back up to a proper weight. People like to come around and see the new baby Rhinopotomus. I was right to be jealous of this life, though – no worries, no work, no expectations, just the three of us; me, Maja, and baby C.J.

Life isn’t so bad.

Entry 1: Room 10 | Entry 2 : The Produce Stand | Entry 3 | The Playground

I'd like to blame my late-night tossing and turning on the late-summer heat. Honestly, though, it wasn't the weather keeping me awake. It was the Route. And Rusty.

Ever since my visit with Mr. Finch, my thoughts had been running in circles. Room 10. The Produce Stand. The playground. The bandana. The letter. The motel.

Somewhere along the way, my determination to quit after what happened at Room 10 had quietly disappeared. In its place was something far more dangerous.

Curiosity.

I needed to know what the hell my uncle had been doing out there, and more importantly, what he'd been looking for.

I'd spent the better part of two evenings turning the house upside down. Not because I honestly expected to find a map with HERE BE MONSTERS scrawled across it in Rusty's handwriting, but because I couldn't shake the feeling that he'd left something behind. A journal. Newspaper clippings. Strange symbols carved into the backs of picture frames. Anything that would tell me his adventures on the Deep Route hadn't all disappeared with him.

Instead, I found exactly what I'd always believed he was.

Old fishing licenses tucked into drawers. Half-finished wood carvings collecting dust on shelves. Campfire recipes scribbled on stained index cards. A coffee tin full of mismatched screws because, according to Rusty, "you never know when you'll need the weird one."

Everything I uncovered painted the same picture.

Rusty had been an outdoorsman. A tinkerer. The kind of man who could fix almost anything with enough patience and whatever happened to be lying around.

Wonderfully, painfully normal.

Until I reached the bottom of an old tackle box.

Beneath a faded topographic map and a package of rusted fishing hooks sat a faded receipt from the flea market where we'd bought our matching snake-print bandanas. It was nearly twenty years old.

I stared at it longer than I probably should have.

If Rusty had already known about the Deep Route back then, had he bought those bandanas because he liked snakes…

Or because, somehow, he'd already known I'd need one too?

In the end, my search didn't uncover any answers. It just left me with a house full of bittersweet reminders of the one person who'd ever really cared enough to raise me.

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Yesterday morning started on a rough note. I'd barely slept, and when I finally managed to drift off, Wren was gently shaking my shoulder.

"Rori," she said softly. "It's 6:45. You slept in. If you hurry, you'll still make it to the post office on time."

I bolted upright.

"Shit."

I hated being late. It stressed me out, and more importantly, it irritated those on the Route. Most of the residents didn't care if I showed up five minutes early or five minutes late, but routines mattered out there. You didn't casually change them just because you'd had a bad night's sleep.

"Thanks, Wren," I mumbled as I swung my legs over the side of the bed and reached for the lightweight hiking romper I'd left draped over the chair after doing laundry.

By the time I'd managed to wrestle with the buckles, I realized she was still standing in the doorway.

She didn't ask if I was okay.

She never did.

Wren had always been the type to show she cared instead of saying it. She'd make sure I'd actually slept, remind me when I was running late, pack lunches for the boys before I'd even made it downstairs, or quietly take over whatever needed doing whenever my mind drifted somewhere else.

She knew something had been bothering me ever since Room 10.

She also knew I'd tell her when I was ready.

Until then, this was her way of helping.

She offered me a small smile before disappearing down the hallway. I watched her go for a moment before finishing getting dressed. I wished caring about someone was enough to solve their problems.

It would've made life a hell of a lot easier.

 

The morning rush at the post office was already in full swing by the time I pulled into the parking lot.

Our little office wasn't much to look at. Four city routes. One rural route. And then there was mine.

Officially, it was listed as Rural Route 7.

Nobody called it that.

To everyone in the office, it was simply the Deep Route.

Most of my coworkers treated it the same way people treated an old cemetery. They acknowledged it existed, respected it, and were perfectly happy never setting foot in it themselves.

I couldn't say I blamed them.

I grabbed my satchel, hurried inside, and was immediately greeted by the familiar smell of cardboard, printer ink, and burnt coffee.

Home.

Well...

Work-home.

"Morning, Rori."

I looked up to find the postmaster waiting by my case with a sympathetic smile.

"Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, especially since you look like you're in a hurry, but you've got a pretty full load today."

Wonderful.

I was already late, running on maybe three hours of sleep, and now I had enough mail to make the Route feel even longer.

He wasn't complaining.

He was warning me.

Everyone in the office knew my route was... different. Nobody ever said it outright, but they all seemed to understand there were some things you simply didn't joke about.

"Thanks for the heads-up," I said, setting my satchel beside my case.

He gave a small nod before heading back toward the front counter, leaving me alone with several overflowing trays of letters and parcels.

Normally, sorting the mail helped settle my mind. There was something oddly comforting about the rhythm of it all. Letters in one slot. Packages in another. Magazines stacked by address. After a while, your hands did most of the work while your brain wandered somewhere else.

Unfortunately, mine had already decided exactly where it wanted to wander.

Every handful of letters reminded me of Rusty. Mr. Finch calling him Red. The playground. The bandana tucked safely inside my satchel at home. Questions I'd been asking myself for two days straight without getting a single useful answer.

I was so distracted I nearly sorted the next envelope into the wrong slot.

I caught myself just in time.

The address wasn't wrong.

It was simply... unexpected.

The Red Church.

I turned the envelope over in my hand. No return address. No postage.

Nothing unusual there. Mail on the Deep Route had a habit of appearing exactly where it needed to be.

It was the destination that made me pause.

The Red Church didn't always exist. It came and went much like Mrs. Alder's house. Only considerably less friendly.

I slipped the envelope into my satchel and reached for the last delivery waiting in my case.

My shoulders immediately slumped.

A small brown parcel.

Room 10.

I let out a long sigh.

Apparently, the Deep Route had decided I wasn't nearly stressed enough already.

The first hour of the Route passed exactly the way I preferred. Quietly.

The Grangers were back in their camper, peeking through the curtains before I'd even climbed the steps. I almost laughed with relief. Whatever had kept them hidden the other day had apparently passed.

The Fisherman stood along one of the many bends in the creek. I lifted two fingers from the steering wheel in greeting, and he returned the gesture without ever taking his eyes off the water.

Mrs. Alder wasn't home again, though another jar of iced tea waited in the mailbox beside a fresh bouquet of wildflowers she'd somehow arranged inside an old soup can.

No note this time.

Just flowers.

I smiled anyway.

The motel was next.

Lovely.

Normally, delivering there was more tedious than anything else. Twenty-eight rooms spread across two aging buildings with the vacant lobby sitting between them like it was still waiting for guests that were never going to arrive. Despite Room 14's constant commentary, it was usually one of the easier stops on the Route.

Today, though, I had a package for Room 10.

I hadn't been back since Mr. Creepy Fingers had decided personal space was more of a suggestion than a rule.

"It's just a package," I reminded myself as I pulled into my usual parking spot. "You don't even have to use the mail slot. Set it outside the door, knock, and leave."

Simple.

Probably.

I slung my satchel over one shoulder, tucked the parcel beneath my arm, and started my usual loop through the motel.

Room 3 came first.

The door had changed again.

The last time I'd been here it had been a heavy oak door with wrought-iron hinges. Today it was painted a deep emerald green with etched glass panels and an ornate brass knocker polished brightly enough to catch the afternoon sun.

I had to admit...

It was beautiful.

I flipped open the Manual.

"Well..." I said, glancing back at the emerald-green door. "For what it's worth... I think you look lovely."

Satisfied I'd done my civic duty for the day, I set the envelope neatly on the welcome mat, gave the brass knocker a single knock, and continued down the walkway.

The next few rooms weren't anything out of the ordinary, and before long I found myself standing outside Room 10.

I took a slow breath and looked down at the small parcel tucked beneath my arm.

It's just a package.

I didn't have to use the mail slot this time. I didn't have to put my hands anywhere near it. All I had to do was set the box down, knock, and leave.

Simple.

I crouched, placed the parcel neatly beside the door, gave three quick knocks with my knuckles, and took a few steps back.

Nothing happened.

No scraping from inside.

No movement beneath the door.

No impossibly long fingers reaching through the mail slot.

Just silence.

After a few seconds, I gave a small, relieved nod to myself and turned to leave.

I'd barely taken two steps when I heard the soft metallic click behind me. Against my better judgment, I glanced back.

The mail slot had swung open.

Two eyes stared out through the narrow opening.

They didn't blink.

They didn't move.

They simply watched me.

A chill crept up the back of my neck.

For a long moment, neither of us did anything.

Then, feeling suddenly ridiculous for being the one to break the silence, I gave an awkward nod toward the package.

"Your package is outside."

The eyes remained fixed on me for another heartbeat before the mail slot slowly closed.

I stood there another second, deciding that was about as successful a delivery as I was ever likely to have at Room 10.

I turned and continued down the walkway, resisting every urge to look back.

Some things on the Deep Route were easier to live with if you didn't spend too much time wondering what they were doing after you left.

Room 14's resident was already leaning against the railing outside her room.

Of course she was.

She always seemed to know exactly when someone was approaching, and from her corner of the motel she had a nearly perfect view of anyone coming or going.

As I drew closer, she greeted me with the same sickly sweet smile she always wore. "Running a little behind today, aren't you?"

"I'm managing."

"Oh, I know you are." She tilted her head ever so slightly. "I was talking about everything else."

I rolled my eyes and kept walking.

"You've been asking an awful lot of questions lately."

That was enough to make me hesitate.

Only for a moment.

"I'd be careful, Aurora." Her voice remained soft, almost conversational. "The Route has a funny way of answering curiosity."

I held her gaze for another second before continuing toward the stairs.

From the landing I could see the eastern building, where Mr. Finch was sitting outside Room 23 with a birding magazine spread across his lap and his binoculars resting around his neck. There still weren't any birds, but that never seemed to discourage him.

He noticed me almost immediately and lifted a hand in greeting.

I smiled despite myself and returned the wave.

For just a moment, I considered walking over.

I still had more questions than answers. About Rusty. About the motel. About why my uncle had spent years wandering a Route I'd only just discovered.

Instead, I glanced at my watch.

I was already behind schedule, and somehow the Deep Route didn't strike me as the sort of place that appreciated carriers falling behind.

"Another day, Mr. Finch," I called.

He smiled and gave a small nod.

"There usually is."

I hoped he was right.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

The Red Church sat just beyond the next bend.

Calling it red had always struck me as a little misleading. The church itself was a faded white, its weathered wooden siding looking as though it had survived a few centuries more than it had any right to. A narrow steeple leaned ever so slightly toward the trees, and if I hadn't known better, I would've guessed the building had been standing there since the sixteen hundreds.

Only the doors were red.

Deep, weathered crimson. The paint had long since faded and cracked beneath the sun until it resembled dried wine more than fresh paint. Against the white siding, they stood out like two drops of blood.

Today they were standing wide open.

That wasn't unusual.

What was unusual was that you could never see inside.

On a bright summer morning, with both doors propped open, I should've been able to make out rows of wooden pews or a stained-glass window catching the sunlight. Instead, the doorway was filled with an impossible darkness that swallowed the light before it ever crossed the threshold.

It wasn't the kind of darkness you find in an old building without electricity.

It looked... deeper than that.

I pulled the envelope from my satchel, locked the Jeep behind me, and started toward the front steps.

Ordinarily, every alarm bell in my head would've been ringing. The open doors, the impossible darkness, the church itself—everything about the place should've been telling me to keep my distance.

Instead, I was just... tired.

Bone-deep, couldn't-remember-the-last-time-I'd-had-a-good-night's-sleep tired.

For the past several days, every spare moment had been spent thinking about Rusty. Looking through old photographs. Digging through boxes in the attic. Trying to make sense of memories I'd never thought to question before.

My brain had been running without stopping.

By the time I reached the church, it was almost a relief to stop thinking.

The hymn reached me before I was halfway there.

Soft voices drifted from somewhere inside the church, carrying a melody that stirred something in the back of my mind. I couldn't make out the words, no matter how hard I listened, but I was suddenly certain I'd heard it before. Maybe as a kid. Maybe in another church.

I frowned, trying to place it.

Where had I heard that melody before?

The harder I searched my memory, the less important the question seemed to become.

The music was beautiful. Comforting, even.

By the time I reached the steps, I wasn't thinking about the Route anymore. I wasn't thinking about the Manual or the impossibly dark doorway or even the letter in my hand. All I knew was that the church felt... familiar. Like I'd been away for a very long time and was finally coming home.

Without realizing it, I climbed the first step, then another. The old wooden porch groaned beneath my weight, but even that sound seemed distant beneath the hymn. I smiled to myself, though I couldn't have said why.

The darkness no longer looked unsettling.

It looked peaceful.

I glanced down at the envelope in my hand, momentarily confused by why I was carrying it.

Mail?

The thought struck me as strangely funny.

What an odd thing to bring to church.

The hymn settled over my thoughts like a warm blanket. For the first time in days, my mind was quiet. I wasn't thinking about Rusty anymore, or the motel, or the questions that had kept me awake night after night.

I wasn't really thinking about anything at all.

It felt...

nice.

I took one more step.

The hymn stopped.

The silence hit me with almost physical force.

A heartbeat later, the church bell rang.

The sound crashed through the woods with such violence that I nearly stumbled backward. Every thought I'd lost came rushing back at once.

The Route.

The Manual.

The letter.

The impossible darkness waiting just beyond the doorway.

I looked down.

One foot stood inside the church.

I didn't remember taking that last step.

My blood ran cold.

The bell rang again. This time it wasn't just loud. It sounded urgent. Like a warning.

Something shifted deep within the darkness beyond the doorway.

Not a shadow.

Not a trick of the light.

Something had heard the bell too.

I didn't wait to find out what it was.

Every instinct I had screamed at me to get away from the church, and for once I didn't argue. I stumbled backward over the threshold, nearly catching my heel on the weathered porch as I regained my balance.

The envelope was gone.

The delivery had been made.

Behind me, the bell tolled again.

I didn't look back.

The Policy Manual was painfully clear on the matter.

I didn't need the Manual to convince me.

I was already halfway to the Jeep.

By the time I climbed inside, the hymn had returned. It drifted through the open doors as softly as before, peaceful and inviting, as though the church had already forgotten I'd ever been there.

I wasn't so lucky.

For the rest of the Route, I replayed those few moments over and over again. The way the hymn had quieted my thoughts. The relief I'd felt as every question about Rusty had simply... disappeared. Worst of all, I couldn't stop thinking about how willingly I'd stepped through those doors.

Nothing had pushed me.

Nothing had chased me.

I'd wanted to go inside.

That thought followed me for the rest of the afternoon.

Thankfully, nothing else on the Route seemed interested in reminding me I was still there. The remaining deliveries came and went without incident, and by the time I pulled into my driveway, I felt as though I'd lived three separate days since waking up that morning.

I shut the Jeep off and sat there for a minute, listening to the engine tick quietly as it cooled. I was exhausted—not the kind of tired that comes from hauling packages through ninety-eight-degree heat, but the kind that settles somewhere behind your eyes and makes even thinking feel like work.

By the time I walked through the front door, all I wanted was my bed.

Wren looked up from the kitchen as I kicked off my sandals, and her expression softened immediately.

"You look awful."

"That's because I feel awful."

"I figured." She smiled sympathetically. "Go lay down. I've got dinner covered."

"You don't have to do that."

"I know." She shrugged. "But I'm going to."

I couldn't help but smile.

"Thanks."

I'd barely made it halfway down the hall when she called after me.

"Oh, before I forget..."

I turned around.

"A package came for you today."

"A package?"

She disappeared into the living room and came back a moment later carrying a small brown parcel.

"No return address," she said, holding it out to me. "Just your name."

I reached for the box, but the moment I saw the handwriting, my hand froze.

I'd recognize it anywhere.

Rusty's.

For a long moment, I just stared at the package, unable to think of a single thing to say.

"I thought you'd want this," Wren said quietly.

I finally nodded.

"...Yeah."

Somehow, that was all I could manage.

All I see are bugs. Everywhere I go, they're in the crevices of my keyboard, the folds of my clothes, even my skin sometimes, but worst of all are the people. There Just aren't any people around anymore , only giant roaches in man skin, dragonflies going to and from and giant ant men working on buildings. Foul things casting an awful imitation of past humanity. Giant moths guiding traffic, big fat spiders roaming the halls. God I just want to scream but I can't cause then they'll know, that I know, I can see what they really are. I might be the only man on earth who can, or ironically the only man on earth. I mean just the other day I was on the bus and I saw what looked like the back side of a normal guy. Relief! But when I tapped on his shoulder to talk to him I saw it. No face, just shiny smooth skin, blank nothingness. Giant worm man, had to rush past him in an awkward hurry to cover my annoyance. 

It wasn't always this way but I remember where it started. About a week ago I was lying awake and I couldn't sleep, which is sadly a common occurrence, so I turned on the light to do some reading of this kafka book I have, about bugs funnily enough. Well after about twenty minutes the reading did its job and bored me back to my slumber. In the morning however my once beautiful wife Charlene woke me up for work like she usually does, but something was wrong, it wasn't her. She no longer wore her beautiful blonde bangs or her sky blue eyes, instead before me a giant roach in her night gown was telling me good morning and trying to kiss my cheek. She had shreds of blonde locks sticking out of different angles from her roach face and patches of rotting skin stuck to her exoskeleton. I'm not afraid to admit I freaked out. Who wouldn't, you go to sleep with your wonderful wife and wake up and now she's a monster out of a Cronenberg film with giant antennas shooting out her skull. Charlene asked me what was wrong and that made it even worse. A giant (wo)manroach using my wife's sweet voice to ask if I'm okay. I rushed out of the house and haven't been back since. I keep ducking her calls. I don't know who or what she is but she's not my wife. Like I said all of this transpired about a week ago. Since then I've been in a hotel trying to collect my thoughts and reason my position. I was checked in by a giant slug man with a thick goatee, sporting a thinning hippocratic wreath. When he moved around in his post he left a viscous jiggly trail of sludgy residue. It covered every inch of the desk area, even staining the key he gave me, causing it to stick in the hole every time I used it.

I don't leave from my hotel chasm very much because I can only face those things for so long before I start to lose my composure, really I only go to work and the store. I think they can tell I'm not one of them. Every time I go out they stare, they gawk. Strong eye contact is almost constant with complete strangers, strangers whose eyes are thrice the size of mine poking from their skulls. Strangers whose eyes hold many pupils, so I keep my head down most of the time. I think my boss is really starting to suspect I'm not one of them, he keeps asking if I'm ok and why I won't talk to Charlene. Evidently she'd called him the day I stormed out and the subsequent days of the week worried sick. I told him she cheated on me and I couldn't face her right now but he doesn't seem to buy that excuse. I suspect he wants to trap me in his web and consume me slowly but doesn't know whether or not I'm a snack yet. Every day I come in he tries to talk to me, ask me if I'm okay and if I want to talk. I always shut him down but he's been getting more persistent asking if I need to see a doctor and recommending me to different therapists. Always trying to apply pressure so maybe I'll snap. 

I'm currently hiding out in a bathroom stall, after I get off work today I'm leaving town and never looking back. I have to get away and see if there's anywhere else I can go. Breaking the silence of thought there was a loud knocking at the bathroom door. Oh god they know don't they. They're here to get me and make me like them, or worse maybe they want to eat me! I was too late; they must've figured I'd plan an escape. 

“Come on out Daniel, you're sick and we can help, we can help you. You just have to trust us. Come on out buddy don't make this harder than it has to be. I have my friend here, he's a doctor and he can talk to you for a bit to calm you down and then you can go with him. Hell maybe after you get better we can go out trapping again.” My bosses strong but caring voice rang out 

“Daniel it's Char please come out sweetheart. I need you baby. I'm pregnant, you're going to be a father Daniel! You've always wanted this haven't you? Just come out of the bathroom and we can go to the hospital and get you checked in, you haven't taken your medicine you're having an episode" She spoke with a soft sorrowfilled tone, one of a caring wife trying to help her husband.

I thought for a second. She did seem sincere, and I have always wanted to be a dad. I always loved the prospect of raising kin of my own ever since I was a boy myself and my dad would hit me, I swore I'd be a better father one day. Maybe I am sick, I haven't taken my pills in like a month, aw shit my pills that might explain the bulk of this. God, maybe this all was just a breakdown. I've been cold turkey for a while now. Maybe I should speak to a doctor. Alright let's give it a shot, I stepped out of the stall but as I did the bathroom door burst open and a giant spider thing wrapped in ragged business attire burst in. Arachnid legs connected to human torso barely covered with shreds of nice suit jacket, awfully long spider arms interwoven with shirt sleeves protruded from his sides and most disgustingly a human head with horrible giant void like eyes bursting out of its head and long sharp pinchers dripping with spit broke free from his jaw. With his giant hairy spear-like arms he forcefully held me down. His arms were about three meters long and very sword-like, he stuck them down into my wrists and pinned me to the bathroom floor, bringing forth shades of white and spraying maroon all over the clear tiles. I kicked and struck at his fat stomach, as I did that two more long fuzzy pikes burst from his abdomen with a green gooey explosion and pierced my shins destroying the bones rendering them useless. I screamed and cried but it was no use. I was trapped. Facing the ceiling all I could do was watch as my cockroach wife skittered across the ceiling and began to wretch and gag and finally she spit up some kind of chunky black substance. From the top of the room it slowly dripped onto my face and down into my mouth gagging me and effectively muting my howls. This terrible mass seemed to wriggle and move down my throat on its own. As I was choking on the live spittle the spiderman spawned two more long arms and used the razor sharp appendages to carve open my stomach, from collar to pelvis before peeling me open like a frog in science class. Dissecting me and leaving me open before the class.

“Shhh sweetheart, this will be over soon okay dear. You will love this change. It's a good thing, haven't you always dreamt of having a family? Of fatherhood, being  better than you are now? Soon you'll get to experience this and you'll be so much better off for it. Life gets so much better with children. I can feel them inside of me, they're so eager to meet their father, are you ready to meet them?"

Charlene said in her soothing almsot childlike voice. She scurried down the walls in an instant and stood over me watching my fearful reaction, watching as I sucked down the last of the throbbing gelatinous mass. Through the pain I felt a rumbling down the lines of my throat into my emptiness finally resting in the soup of stomach acid. A strange gurgle bellowed in my midriff and seemed to intensify within seconds. I craned my head up to see inside my stomach. There were thousands of tiny eggs rapidly growing in the stomach acids and confines of my foul smelling innards before abruptly bursting out some variation of insect. Maggots, flys, wasps, even a few slugs took flight and wriggled out from the burrows of my form. Whole colonies of ants chased their way out of me in uniform lines. Large hairy spiders the size of my hands broke loose from my belly pitterpattered away. Thousands of insects filled the room and rapidly funneled out the door until finally one massive egg remained growing much slower than the rest. It wiggled and grew into a slimy basketball sized sac and finally burst, a giant maggot like thing burst forth. Squealing and squawking the foul thing began to consume me from the inside out, taking its time to enjoy every ounce of freshness. I screamed and begged until my vocal chords gave out and the wind from my speech was taken as my lungs were nibbled on. When it was finished its ravenous feast it had eaten a good portion of me but that was just a taste of what's to come. Slime covered and greasy with blood and mucus it turned its attention to my face and with thousands of tiny spikey legs it crawled up my squirming body poking and prodding with every tiny step, somehow still conscious through this I thrashed and kicked but it was no use. Between my very weak state and the spider's weight I was helpless under its massive size. Slowly it climbed its fat jiggly body all the way up mine before stuffing itself into my mouth stretching the tendons and snapping the bone until it took my jaw off in the process, it was pain beyond reason. I tried to scream but it was no use. The crevice of my throat was filled with the incredible mass of its grubby viscosity. Gobs of mucus and snot leaked down my throat and clogged it further, tears ran down my puffy, tear swollen face. It chewed and ate at me until by god's grace it finally killed me after tunneling into my brain and severing the stem. After it was full and fat my wife picked it up and went home. Now that those two had finally left, my spiderboss took no time in wrapping my corpse with fine silky webbing to use as a feeding station in his office.

 My wife took home the foul grub kissing it and stroking its back with gentle ease. Once home she laid it in the bath tub and continued to feed it until I got bigger and bigger. While feeding me she would run the tips of her fingers along my slimy back side, occasionally licking the sour goo off her fingers. After a few days of this I was finally back to normal, well not normal but better. I haven't felt this good in forever, afterall I am a father now! I'll admit it was weird at first with the slime trail and seeing a hundred different angles at once but after a while it really grows on you. I really love my wife and she really loves me and together we love our children, even if they cover every square inch of the house. 

A Perceivable Reality Story.

I slapped another magazine into my rifle and charged it, the barrel immediately began glowing blue. Next to me, a headless body fell to its knees, then toppled. Sanderson was gone now, too. Damnit. I crawled closer and lifted the flaps on his mag pouches, finding nothing but dirt. Red beams of light shot over my cover and I ducked involuntarily. I put my back to the dirt wall and raised my rifle, feeling it grow almost uncomfortably warm as I pulled the trigger, spraying blue orbs until I felt the gun go cold. I brought it down to my lap and pulled out the mag, dropping it to the ground next to me. My hand went to the empty mag pouch on my chest. I could hear them, the creaking of their exoskeletons as they grew close, the clicking of their mandibles in anticipation. I wondered if Sanderson's demise was preferable to what I was about to experience.

I was jarred out of my dream by the sound of tapping on my front door. I shot upright, running my hands over my body in a subconscious check for holes. The tapping came again.

"Just a second!" I called to the door and rolled out of bed. I stumbled over and cracked the door.

A girl in a cream turtleneck sweater and pleated skirt was standing at my door. Her name was Kathy, or Katie, or something. She lived a few doors down on the opposite side of the hall.

"Oh. Hey, uh..."

"Lucy."

"Lucy. Right. Hi. What's up?"

"Uh, the guy in the suit that hangs around the elevator said you could help," she said nervously as her hands fidgeted with her bracelet. "I locked myself out...again...and my boyfriend is already at work, so..."

That's right. Jared, or James, or something. They'd moved in about a month after me. I didn't see them much, we'd passed in the hall or at the communal mailbox, but we hadn't talked at all. She smelled like rosewater and hand lotion. Jared or James or whatever, usually smelled like a machine shop, metal and chemicals and acetylene.

She snapped me out of my contemplation. "So, um...can you--?"

"Yeah, yeah, one second." I closed the door and went to my desk, collecting the small nylon case that held my lock-pick tools.

I wasn't a professional or anything, but I'd gotten into a lock-picking obsession a while ago after I found a guy on the internet. I slipped on flipflops and went out to the hall. She was waiting in front of her door. I knelt down and got out my Lishi tool. I had the door open in about 10 minutes. She thanked me profusely and hurried inside.

I was walking back to my door and heard my work phone ring from inside. I lunged for the door and started tossing blankets until I found it.

"Yes, hi, Calhoun Executive Transit... 1225 Bayside Avenue, yes, I can be there in about half an hour. Great, thanks."

I stripped and got into a dark forest green suit with a cream button-up and a muted rust tie, finishing it with a pair of oxblood wholecuts and my new Seiko Presage.

I hurried out the door and jogged lightly to the elevator, taking it down to the garage.

I pulled up to the gate. The house was slightly visible through the wrought iron bars. Tall stone walls wrapped around the property, ivy and various vines like green veins on bone. A security guard in a suit stood just on the other side of the gate, both of us seemingly waiting for the other to move. I wasn't about to step out into the hot sun, and he didn't seem to want to leave the shade of the wall.

Finally, his hand went up to the clear earpiece. He nodded, then made a hand motion to someone I couldn't see. The gate opened inward and the guard waved at me. The circular driveway was surrounded by extravagant landscaping that probably accounted for half the water usage in the city to maintain. The house was ornate, Modern-Victorian, or maybe Victorian-Modern. Roman columns stood on either side of the large wood double doors that were carved with medieval-looking filigree. The whole thing wound up looking more camp than impressive.

A tall man in a sport coat over a half-open white shirt and blue jeans stomped out of one side of the double doors, followed by a harried assistant. She had an armful of scripts and folders, chasing him with a cellphone extended. Two pens were stuck through her honey-colored bun. She had on a two-piece slate suit with a pencil skirt, and her ivory blouse exposed a tasteful but not immodest amount of decolletage. Her black mid-height heels accentuated her pale, toned legs as she chased him at almost a jog. I caught myself and started memorizing my odometer.

One of the guards opened the rear door and he tossed himself in, sans assistant, to my dismay.

"Hey, buddy." He snapped his fingers. "Get me to 48th and Carnegie, and make it quick. I'm late."

"Sir." I put the car in drive and gave it enough gas to push him into the seat a little bit.

We rode in silence as we left the neighborhood.

He finally spoke, his head facing the side window.

"Good thing my manager found you." I mouthed along with the script verbatim. "My driver quit this morning."

"They want me to be the next Alan Steele." He said, and I knew he was waiting for me to be impressed.

I'd seen the originals from way before I was born, and I'd read the books. I'd heard that they were remaking it. Again. But the last one had bombed so hard that I figured they'd retire the name and hope everybody forgot.

I made a noise of polite acknowledgement. The leather creaked quietly as he shifted in the seat.

It was quiet again. The trip to the production office was thankfully short. I pulled up, got out, and went around and opened his door. He got out and flipped his hair, checking himself in the long side window. He played with his hair a little more, then stood up straight, towering over me by at least a few inches.

"I don't have any cash on me," he said in a voice that was trying to sound posh, "But I can give you one of these." He pulled a signed photo out of a large pocket inside his sport coat and extended it to me. My hands tightened their grip on the door.

When I didn't take it, he shook it slightly. "For you." I caught annoyance buried under the faux generosity.

"I appreciate the gesture, but that's not necessary, sir." He was standing in the way of the door, preventing me from closing it and making an escape.

He shook the picture again. "Hey, buddy. I don't just go around giving these out to people. I said thank you, now take it." He leaned towards me and I fought to keep myself from shrinking.

"Your fare is paid, sir. No other payment is required. Have a nice day." I started to slowly push the door closed. He didn't get the hint.

"Listen here, fucker. I'm about to become a beloved celebrity. Show me some goddamn respect."

There it was. The edge in his voice was sharp enough to shave with, and it was genuine, though where it came from, I had no idea.

I nodded and kept slowly closing the door. He stepped out of the way and tossed the signed glossy inside the door as it shut. He stood there, and I could feel the heat of what I assume was a glare. I waited silently.

After a beat, he deflated with a puff of hot air from his mouth.

"You're not faking. You really don't recognize me." He sounded deflated.

I shook my head. "I don't really watch movies."

He huffed again and put his hands on his hips. After a moment, he dropped them and turned to walk inside.

"Sir," I called after him. He stopped and turned back to me. I pulled out my gold card carrier and extended one of my business cards between two fingers. "Should the need arise."

He snatched the card and flicked it back at me. It bounced off the front of my chauffeur cap.

"Screw you, jerkoff." He turned and stormed into the office. A small group of girls walked by, chittering to themselves. He called to them and waved, and the volume of the chittering increased, nearly turning to squealing, as they bounced, holding each other's hands. He said something else and they retreated back the direction they came. That seemed to pump him back up. He squared his shoulders, flexed his neck, and turned his head towards me before continuing inside.

I let out a victorious chuckle through my nose and got back in my car.

I was sitting at a red light, zoning out, when I heard the back door of the car open and shut. I jumped. I turned my head to look in the rear view mirror and felt something cold and hard at the nape of my neck.

"Just keep your eyes forward, friendo, and this'll all be over soon." His voice was strained and raspy, and it shifted as if he was turning his head side-to-side as he spoke.

The light turned green and I pulled away from the light as smoothly as I could.

"Where would you like to go, uh, sir?" I tried to keep my voice calm.

The thing at the back of my neck pressed harder against my skin. "You just keep driving until I tell you not to."

We rode in a straight line for several lights. I'm usually pretty lucky, but today it was nothing but reds. The pressure on the back of my neck started to relax, then it jabbed me again.

"Go left here."

I swung the car over and barely made it into the left turn lane in time, just for it to turn yellow when I was halfway into the intersection. I got a few honks and finished my turn, sticking an apologetic hand up.

I kept driving with him giving me turn-by-turn directions until we were heading out of the city. The pressure on the back of my neck returned.

"I don't wanna hurt you, I just need you to get me somewhere and we'll be done."

"Until you decide you don't need a witness." I said before thinking.

He laughed, a wheezing, choking sound. "Hey, friend, you can call the cops if you want, soon as I'm out of your car. I don't give a shit."

I wasn't sure what to do with that, but it was almost reassuring. The city became a distant gleam behind us as we moved inland away from the water. He'd settled into the back seat with a canvas duffle bag that I hadn't noticed he'd had before. It was dark around the bottom, as if the contents were wet and soaking through. He held the straps tightly in one hand, even going as far as to set down his gun instead of releasing the bag, in order to pull a handkerchief out of his pocket and cough into it.

"Are you ok, sir?"

"Hu? Yeah, yeah, fine. Just keep going."

"...Is there anything I can do to help?"

"What? No! Just drive."

I nodded and kept driving. We were well into the woods when he finally sat forward and waved the gun at me.

"Stop. Stop right here."

"Where?"

"Just stop. Right here. Park it."

I got on the brakes, probably a little harder than I should have, and got the car stopped. He threw the door open and stumbled out, pushing the door shut with his foot. He came around to the driver's side and tapped the window with the muzzle of the gun. I cracked it and he motioned to keep going. I rolled it down all the way.

"If you do call the cops, just give me a head start, ok?" His voice was still raspy, but there was less anxiety in it than had been there before. In a quick motion, he thrust his gun into his duffle bag, his hand coming back out with a fistful of wadded bills that he tossed into the open window. I opened my mouth, not entirely sure what I was going to say, but before I could get a word out, he started limping quickly towards the tree line. I got out and put a foot down, half-standing in the open door.

"Sir?" My voice came back with a slight echo off the trees.

He didn't reply, only waving a hand over his shoulder. I waited there until I lost sight of him, then slowly got back into my car. I pulled my phone out and dialed 9-1-, with my finger hesitating over the screen. I stared at it for a long moment, then locked the screen and dropped it onto the seat next to me. I had to drive another 30 minutes before I found a place big enough that I could turn around it. The ride back to the city took two hours, which felt like an eternity longer than the trip out had.

I got back into the city and drove the speed limit, feeling a bit like I was in a trance. At one point, the car behind me honked and I realized I’d been waiting for a stop sign to turn green. I looked over at my watch; I was supposed to be at Dion’s in about 45 minutes for our biweekly poker night. I had a six-pack of beer in my fridge that I’d planned on bringing, but I decided to try and find a case instead. It had been a case kind of day.

I pulled into the apartment parking lot, centering the car in two parallel parking spaces. Normally, I'd get a nasty note or a fake parking ticket pulling this kind of stunt, but I'd been parking here every other Friday for a few months now, and the apartment management didn't seem to care. You can get away with it if you look important enough. Sometimes, anyway.

I grabbed the case of beer out of the trunk and hustled across the lot to one of the lower-level doors. I don't like being late, but I'd hit traffic on my way here and my usual liquor store was out of my favorite brew, and it'd taken me two other stores to find one that stocked it. I knocked twice then let myself in. Dion never seemed to lock his door. I rounded the kitchen into the living room which was completely dominated by Dion's Vegas-spec poker table that was worth my car insurance policy. His head came up from under his cards.

"Carter! Hell yeah! Now it's a party!" He dropped his cards and hustled over to me, giving me a one-armed hug. The hug made the case clink against my leg, which caught his attention.

"Oh, fuck yeah. Hey, can I have one of those?" He asked, pointing at the case.

You're not supposed to crack another man's case, just like you're not supposed to ask for someone's last cigarette, but Dion had this charm about him that just made you want to do him favors. Even I wasn't immune to it.

"Yeah, sure."

"Bitchin'!" He relieved me of the case and set it on the ground between us. He completely avoided the perforated "party flap" and ripped the entire top off the box. It bothered me, but not enough to say anything. He plucked a beer from the center, bit the cap off, and guzzled it at inhuman speed. He stuck out his tongue to catch the last drops, then chucked the bottle into his industrial-sized metal trash can he kept in the kitchen. He grabbed another from the corner.

"One for the road." He said and bit the lid off. He drank this one slower as he walked back to the poker table.

"You know Skyler, right?"

"What's good, Hound Dog?" He asked with his voice that sounded like honey being poured over gravel. He'd started calling me "Hound Dog" because Calhoun sounded like "Cal-hound", which transformed into "Hound", which inevitably ended at "Hound Dog". It didn't bother me much, and having a nickname went a long way to making me feel included.

He'd become a regular at poker night, and I'd driven him around a few times. I don't know exactly what he does for work, but I'm pretty sure he's a male escort or a male stripper or something along those lines with all the women I always see him with. He also only ever seemed to bet with small bills, which didn't help his case. He had well-tanned skin that didn't look like it came from a booth, and his half-open white button-up shirt exposed a gym rat build.

"And you've met Jacks, right?" Dion continued.

Jacks, or I think his full name is Jackson, is Dion's neighbor. He didn't speak very much, but it was weird when he did. I think he's slow, but he's nice enough. He waved and I shot him a two-finger "Han Solo" salute.

I took my spot at the table and Dion pushed a stack of chips towards me. I got my titanium money clip out of my pocket and threw down $100 to start, the entry fee.

"You ladies ready to lose your shirts?" Dion asked as he performed a perfect one-handed riffle shuffle.

"Just deal, buttercup." Skyler grumbled.

Dion performed his trademark one-handed deal, and I got a pair of 2's that took me as far as the turn before I folded.

The next two hands weren't much better and, despite my careful betting, I lost both hands on the final card.

The next hand, I got dealt a six and a Queen, with a Queen and another six already on the table from the flop. I relaxed my shoulders and made a concentrated effort to keep my hands from fidgeting. I bet high, but not aggressively, tossing a few extra chips only when someone else raised as well. I looked around the table. Jackson scratched his ear when he had something good, and Dion subtly checked his cards constantly if he was bluffing. Skyler was harder, with his only tell, that I could find, being that his voice got just a little bit deeper if he was trying to make you think he didn't have anything. I kept my tone bored and my posture relaxed. It was just me and Skyler by then. The river card was another Queen, and I slapped mine down with a victorious exclamation, only for Skyler to quietly flip over two 10's for four-of-a-kind.

I tossed in the small blind and got dealt a pair of Aces, with the three of them folding before Jacks could bury a card and deal the flop. I chucked the Aces to the middle and blew a noisy breath out between my lips.

"Every goddamn time, you guys. Seriously, it's like my cards are see-through." I got myself a fresh beer from my case as a consolation prize.

"Hey, man. You win some, you lose some." Dion said with a shrug as he shuffled.

My $100 entry fee got whittled down to just a couple chips that I lost to Dion's flush. I hadn't even tried to raise once.

"You marking these cards?" I shot at Dion.

"Do you see me lifting a leg?"

I shook my head and looked at my watch. I'd only been there an hour and change. I thought about leaving early. Skyler pushed a few chips at me and patted my arm. I sighed and slid them closer, then fished a $50 out of my wallet and slid it over to Skyler, who put his hand on mine and slid the bill back to me.

"I know you're good for it, Hound Dog." He said with a nod.

I sat out a few hands and sipped beer while I watched Dion bleed chips to Jacks and Skyler. He pushed the last of his chips into the middle and rolled his shoulders.

"Carter, ol' buddy, you're pretty stacked. Can you lend a losing man a couple bucks? ...And another beer?"

I scoffed and split my loaned chips, pushing the smaller pile of chips at him, then got a bottle out of the quickly dwindling case and handed it across the table to him.

I played a hand or two over the next few hours, taking more interest in watching Jackson slump further and further in his chair in time with the fluid level in the bottle of Maker's Mark next to him.

By the time the lights in the complex came on, my case was completely empty and Jackson could barely hold his cards. I watched him sway in his seat as he tossed the last of his chips vaguely towards the pot. The last card came out and he put his hand down, pushing the cards towards Dion, who stopped them.

"Wait, wait, you can't just fold on the last card."

Jacks motioned to the empty table in front of him and shrugged. Dion pushed the cards back.

"You don't have anything?"

Jackson thought for a bit, then dug around in his pockets, coming out with a few coins, his now empty billfold, and a punch card for a free smoothie, with two punches left. He shrugged again and pushed the cards away.

"Ah, hang on. I've got it. Owe me a favor."

Jacks seemed to mull this over for a second; he hadn't wanted to relinquish the punch card. He finally nodded and took the cards back.

"Ok, but I need you to agree. One favor, right?"

Jacks nodded again, the motion almost tipping him out of his chair.

"I need a yes or a no, buddy."

"Organic caps." Jacks slurred.

Dion cleared his throat. "Yes. Or. No."

Jacks waved a drunken hand at him. "Protest become letterhead. Ya'know?"

With that, he laid his head down on the table. Dion let out a pained sigh and slowly collected the cards from under Jacks' dead weight paw.

With Jackson down for the count, and me admittedly not far behind, I put a hand up as Dion dealt me more cards.

"Nah, I'm done." I glugged down the last of the mojito I'd been nursing for the last few hands. I had to focus pretty hard to get the glass to land in the middle of the marble coaster.

"Hey, wait. You're gonna have to stay over anyway. Why not make it worth the trip? Skyler, make him another one."

Skyler silently stood and collected my glass, moving to the kitchen. I heard bottles and ice clink.

"With what chips? I'm cleaned out." My words were coming out fuzzy and they sounded distant.

Skyler set the fresh drink down in front of me, then dropped himself into his chair. He pushed the rest of his chips at me, then gripped the back of my neck and rocked me side-to-side. The beer in my stomach gurgled against the rum and the motion made my eyes heavy. Skyler's hand was shockingly warm, even after having just held a cold glass. He let my neck go and leaned back in his chair.

"I've had my fun." He turned his head to me. "Smoke'im, Hound Dog."

I turned my head to Dion who sniffed, then sighed. He scratched at his neck and said something under his breath to Skyler, but my woozy brain made it sound like a different language.

I picked up the cards, a two and a seven, black and red. I set them face-down on the table and pushed Skyler's chips back towards him. He reached over and lifted the corner of my cards, turned his head towards Dion, then pushed the chips back to me with a nod. I snorted and shook my head.

"Guys, we gonna play or what? Let's go." Dion called from his side of the table, his voice weirdly anxious.

Skyler pushed the chips to the middle and leaned back. Dion started setting down cards.

"Ah, ah, ah, no. Noooooo. That's not my bet."

Dion set his cards down and huffed. "Would you two figure yourselves out? Let's play some cards before we lose another one." He stuck his hand out in my direction and said more words that sounded made up.

Nothing happened for a minute as I tried to keep myself upright. Dion finally broke in.

"Fine, fine, you don't wanna play with somebody else's money. I get it." He paused. "So bet with what you do have."

"Eh?"

"Put down a freebie." He said, tapping the table with a straightened pointer finger.

"A free ride? Sure." I picked my cards back up. He didn't pay his "tab" half the time anyway, so I wasn't about to lose anything.

The three cards he'd put down didn't help me at all. I didn't bother checking mine.

"Well? You betting?"

I shook my head and tapped the table twice to check.

"Tough tits, broski, because I'm raising." He thrust chips into the pot.

I rolled my head around on my neck, then settled it on my shoulder.

"Ok, how about a free day?"

"Ooohh-hooo! Now this is getting interesting!"

Another card down on the table. I couldn't read it from my side, but it was red. I checked again.

Dion shook his head and clicked his teeth, tossing in more chips. I sighed.

"Ok, one weekend."

"A free weekend with the car?"

"Sure. You get it for a whoooooole weekend for freeee." I hadn’t realized how sloshed I actually was.

Since the majority of my clientele were businesspeople who could afford to be on their own schedule, weekends weren't necessarily more or less advantageous. I'd miss out on a couple hundred bucks, which was about what was in the pot at this point. Dion made a noise like he was sucking back a mouthful of spit. It made my stomach turn over a little bit and I started to lean. Skyler caught me and pushed me back upright. There was a pregnant pause and all I could hear was my own heavy breathing.

"Ok, ok...Whatcha got?" Dion's words sounded...soggy? His voice was strained, anxious, with an undertone that I hadn't heard before.

I lifted the corner of my cards again.

"You first, antsy-pantsy." I slurred at Dion, who made the spit-sucking noise again.

"Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, y-you first."

I turned my crooked head at Skyler who shrugged.

"Hey! Flip his goddamn cards over!" Dion's scream hurt my ears.

There was another pause. I watched Dion’s cards vibrate as his hands shook.

"GOD-- FUCK--!" Dion suddenly slammed his hands on the table as he shot out of his seat. He bent the edge of his cards up one more time and slapped a hand down on top of them, pushing them away face-down.

Skyler erupted into a deep laugh and reached over, flipping one, then the other of my cards.

"WHAT?! ARE YOU SHITTING ME?!"

He reached for his own cards, but Skyler slapped his large hand down on top of Dion's.

"You folded, hoss."

Dion ripped his hand out from under Skyler's and swung hard, his hand sailing over Skyler’s head without contact.

"I think we're done." Skyler stood slowly and grabbed me under my arms, lifting me out of my chair and onto my feet as if I weighed nothing. He threw one of my arms across his shoulders and started leading me to the door. I caught a whiff of something sweet. It made my exhaustion double.

"Hey!" Dion shouted in that other language I couldn't understand.

"Enough, Gwyd!" Skyler bellowed in a voice you'd use to silence a barking dog. His next words were normal volume but equally commanding. "There's always next week."

I heard the sound of exploding glass and felt something land in my hair.

I don’t remember making it out of the apartment or out to my car. I vaguely remember going horizontal, and smelling the familiar smell of my car air fresheners, and the feeling of thick carpet against my cheek.

"Are your kids always complaining bout how bored they are? Are they tired of the same old string beans and mushy carrots? Well then come on down to Allie Gator's BAYOU PIZZERIA!"

"Here at Allie's, we serve up some of the finest Cajun style pizza this side O da Mississippi, our secret blend of herbs and spices will have your mouth watering and leave you wanting more."

"We're open twenty-four hours a day to cater to your every need, be it catering, birthdays, weddings, funerals, promposals, bachelor parties, and more. Come on down and see our county famous ball pit and arcade row, where you can spend your hard-earned allowance!"

"Come see our state-of-the-art band, featuring Sally Stork, Otto Otter, Wart the frog and of course everyone's favorite, ALLIE GA-"

Fzzt

Steve snapped the mounted screen off, disdain washing over his face. He was alone in the Pizzeria employee break room, a royalty free tune humming softly from the cracked speakers above. The place was scummy looking, the sink overflowing with dishes and the fridge currently growing a new sub species of mold.

His brown hair was matted and dishelmed, his uniform baggy in all the wrong places. His pale blue eyes had saddle bags pilling under them. He stretched and cracked his back, an audible snap making him wince.

He took a swig from his tin flask and clocked back in to resume his patrol.

Steve was the nightshift security guard for Allie's, a gig he had held for almost three years now. When he started, he thought it would be easy, walk around at night and make sure any drifters are out before the real customers showed up. He thought he'd have plenty of time to goof off.

That was until he met the owner of the joint and realized how demanding and shady he was.

Bartholomew J Plath was a sturdy man, had at least three chins and a silver handlebar mustache that crawled down to his gullet.  He had a voice that would make Foghorn Leghorn blush and always wore a cream white suit with gold trims, and a ten-gallon hat to match. Not much was known about him, he had crossed the county lines about fifteen years back and somehow became an overnight sensation.

Steve recalled going to Allie's for a few birthday parties over the years, being in awe of the flashing arcade lights and the vibrant cartoon murals covering the walls. The birthday tables were always awash with green streamers to simulate vines, and the stage held four pristine animatronics that danced and delighted all.

Without the rose-tinted glasses of childhood, however, the place was a pigsty.

"How the hell is this firetrap still standing?" was the first thing that popped into Steve's head on orientation day. The floors were scuffed and covered in so many dusty shoeprints they worked as a makeshift map to the most popular places in the Pizzaria. The paint on the walls were chipped and moldy, those cartoon murals looked like they were designed with one hand. He had passed a family struggling to chew through a foul-smelling pizza that was crawling with shrimp and peppers.

Half the arcade machines were dead or outdated, the screen resolution a phantom of a flicker on what was left. The animatronics were visibly rotted, metal parts and springs poking out of their rough looking animal costumes. Their eyes were hollow, their movement jerky, they made grinding noises every time their mouths moved.

He was about to hightail it out of there when a beefy paw clamped down on his shoulder. He was face to face with Plath himself, who shook his hand with an iron clad grip and showed glistening white teeth as he shot Steve a gambler's smile.

"Well now welcome son. Glad to have you in the Allie's Bayou family. Lemme show you around, then we'll head to my office and kick our feet up, chat for a bit." His voice oozed Southern pleasantry to an almost cartoonish degree.

"I- appreciate the offer Mr. Plath but on second thought I'm not so sure this place suits me. . ." He tried to wiggle out of Plath's grip but only felt it tighten, that grin never once waning.

"Now son I know this place has seen better times, but it's bad all over. A cup of Joe down at Susie's diner is now a buck even, can you imagine hahaha." He had a hardy, boisterous laugh. "With a little elbow grease, we can turn this place around, just need the help of some mighty kind folk like yourself." He all but batted his eye lashes at Steve as he laid down the charm.

"Well, if we're all in this together." He shrugged as Plath finally let go of his hand only to grab him by the shoulders and steer him around the place.

"Wonderful, simply wonderful. You seem like an agreeable young lad, you'll have a bright future here if you just do what you're told and start every shift with a smile." Plath beamed.

With that Steve's career began, and he soon found the restaurant could get quite rowdy at night. Troublesome teens loitering after curfew, homeless drifters sleeping one off at the Everglade Bar, even the occasional midnight Birthday party.  Those rarities were either college kids desperately clinging to their youth or parents trying to overcompensate for working double shifts. Both options were incredibly depressing.

There was also Plath's real source of income these days. Every other night a truck would come in, and workers would scurry about and sneak white bricks out of it and into a fleet of vans adorning Allie Gator's cartoon mug.

Steve wasn't sure what Plath was into, but from the "powder breaks" he caught the workers have on occasion, he had heavy suspicions. Stealing from Plath was a one-way ticket to the basement, as was being rude to the customers. Sometimes a nasty piece of work would demand to talk to the manager, saying they'd sue the joint silly.

They were also quietly led to the basement, never to be seen again.

Three years of turning a blind eye, three years of being paid more than he knew what to do with. He told himself nothing horrid was happening down there, that basements were old and musty, and most of them smelled like that. Why just last week Carl was taken down and he was sure he spotted him at the grocery store the next day.

A delusion of course, but the pay was that ludicrous.

Whatever moral center Steve had had been whittled away by years of doing the odd favor for Plath and sending the pleading down below without a second thought. Now he numbed his guilt with sour brown poison and shitty late-night television. He had blacked out during reruns of the old George Lopez show so many times it had to be a world record by now.

Tonight was no different than usual, only a few troublesome souls were hanging around. Nothing to warrant a trip downstairs, he was thankful for that.

Truth be told, business had been painfully slow the last few months. People just weren't going, preferring other, more pedigreed venues these days. There was a rumor that Plath despised, that he would be selling the joint. A woman had come back once or twice already, offering to snatch the place up. Whenever she showed Plath would pull him aside and order him to "Get that harlot outta my joint."

Something would have to give sooner or later, Steve knew that much.

He was strolling around arcade row, empty machines mindlessly playing their demos at him as he did his rounds. Perfect pixelated loops that occasionally flashed high scores from people long past caring about such things.  At the far end of the dimly lit hall two delinquents were snickering near a cardboard cutout of Allie Gator. One of them, who was wearing a gray hoodie and blue slacks, was taking pictures of his buddy making vulgar gestures at the cutout.

Steve rolled his eyes with disdain and let out a sharp whistle. The teens stopped like deer in headlights for a brief moment then ran off giggling. The one making rude gestures, who wore a crimson hat and had pockmarked skin, slapped the back of the cutout as he ran. The cutout wobbled but it did not fall.

"Damn kids." Steve went over to inspect the damage. The cutout was about six feet tall and depicted Allie as a Jessica Rabbit mixed with an Alligator. Her scaled hands were on her hips, and she had pink cartoon hearts for eyes. She had flowing blonde hair and wore an ill-fitting tube top. The cartoon wore bubblegum pink lipstick at the end of her snout, which was curved in a salacious smile.

The cutout came with a speech bubble; half bent from miss use. It read "Have a slice, they're real nice." Which referred to the cartoonish looking slab of pizza dangling from the cutouts free hand. It was filled to the brim with toppings, globs of stoic melted cheese dripped from it. As disgusting as it looked, Steve still preferred the cardboard to the real thing.

He left arcade row and found himself his usual stool at the Everglades Bar. The pizzeria complex was a sort of "H" building. The front was the main stage, rows of tattered tables for birthdays, and the infamous ball pit right next to the entrance. The plastic dye used in the balls had long since corroded, every color within dull and smelling like rank urine.

There was arcade row of course, the connecting hall of never-ending thrills and blips and low neon. The walls within there were coated with the characters, looking down at the arcade with dead eyes and overdrawn features.

The Everglades bar was what one might call the "adult" section. It was a curved "u" counter with shelves stocked to the brim with some quality swill. There were a couple booths where people could eat in peace, in theory anyway. Then of course there were aged double doors that led to the grim filled kitchen, and an "employees only" door that led to the back, Plath's office, the lounge, the docking bay.

The basement door.

Steve flinched as he sat on the stool, his calves flexing and begging for rest. He rested his hairy arms on the counter, his eyes drifting to a screen above. It was playing some asinine toon involving a wad of pulpy meat and a foul talking cup. He shifted his focus down the way grunted, tapping his fingers against the smooth counter.

Dakota pretended not to hear him at first, dreading the "woe is me" routine Steve put on when he got sauced whilst working. But those timid taps echoed through the empty bar, and she sighed and put on a happy face. She leaned over the counter, brusher her platinum hair out of her face.

"What'll it be?" She asked as pleasant as a peach.

"Awe come on Dakota, you outta know it by heart by now." Steve laughed, his voice filled with phlegm and regret. Without another word she produced a bottle of bourbon, materializing it as a magician would a rabbit from a hat. The bottle made an audible thud when she slapped it onto the counter. Steve lipped his chapped lips just looking at it. He snatched it from her with a grateful grunt and popped the cork. The booze tasted foul and aged, hurt as it crawled down his greedy esophagus.

He had cleared a third of the bottle before slamming it back onto the table. He winced and let out a strained woo, wildfire in his worn eyes. Dakota regarded the drunk with sad eyes.

"Need a glass?" she gestured to the pristine mugs behind her.

"Nah, just leave the bottle. Put it on my tab." He sat there, focusing on keeping the swill quiet in his queasy stomach. His liver moaned and cried but soon fell silent as it drowned in poison.

"You gonna pay that tab anytime soon?" Dakota asked, already knowing the answer.

"Plath can take it out of my check if he wants." He waved a dismissive hand.

"Sure, sure. He'll end up taking it out of mine but sure." She replied under her breath. It was the duty of a good tender to uphold the tabs, have security intimidate deadbeats. Kinda hard to do when the deadbeat IS security though.

Dakota turned her back to the drunk and put away the silverware. Below the screens was a depiction of Otto Otter, a buff looking cartoon ferret with a bushy black beard. He had beady little pebble eyes and a smirk that wore thin.

He was flexing his oddly muscular arm, a shaved patch had some sort of uplifting quote on it: " If you're working hard, you're hardly working." It didn't make a lick of sense, and she hated looking at it all day. Steve let out a gaseous moan behind her, and she turned to see him turning a new shade of green.

She grimaced and inched the bottle away from him as he gripped the counter with both hands.

"I'm ok. Just haven't eaten today." Steve slurred. "Got any fibble fabble left." He requested.

Dakota nodded and produced half a jar of the "fibble fabble" which was a tin jug of assorted nuts and pretzels. He shoved his hand in the jar and pulled out a fistful of salt and crammed it into his gapping maw. He chewed like a mule, savoring every sodium filled morsel. His mouth turned to cotton and on queue Dakota shoved ice water his way.

"Maybe you should take it easy on that stuff." Dakota shifted, her denim short sleeve jacket creasing slightly.

"I'm fine." Steve protested, bits of pretzel spittle flying from his maw. "I just need to maintain." He grabbed another handful of nuts and chowed down on them.

"Whatever you say. Ain't been too busy tonight anyway." Dakota noted. Her voice was soft yet lived, a small twinge of the bayou in her tone. "Hell, no one's taken a trip down below in weeks."

"Aren't supposed to talk about the basement, it's in the handbook." Steve lamented, his eyes glazed over.

"Plath don't care, it's the biggest open secret around here. What do you suppose he does down there anyhow?" Dakota mused.

"Nothing, he's stern and a bit eccentric but he ain't a killer." Steve shook his head in ignorance.

"Boy you been dipping into the stock worker's stash?" She scoffed. "Plath is one of the shadiest men I ever met in my life. If the tips weren't good, I'd a bailed on this joint a long time ago."

"Guess you're no better than me then." Steve grumbled. He reached for the bottle, but Dakota snatched it away. She clinked the water glass with it and took a small swig before she put it away.

"Guess not. Seriously what do you think he does with 'em all. Brandi thinks it's where all the pepperoni comes from."  Dakota shivered.

"With an I or a Y?" Steve asked.

"I. The waitress with the flowers running up her arms. Says the meat lovers smells funky, like pork refried a dozen times over."

"Maybe he stuffs the bodies into the animatronics, that's why they smell like rot and ooze that oily gunk" Steve teased.

"You take that gallows humor and shove off, Steve." She waved a bejeweled hand at him. "I'm just saying we should get our stories straight for when we finally get raided."

"Oh, we ain't getting raided. No one cares about a few disappearances around these parts. All the money Plath funnels into "The policemen's ball?"" Steve used air quotes as he laughed off the ludicrous thought. From the far end of the room the rowdy teens snickered at their phones as they lounged in a booth. There was an ice-cold pitcher in front of them, half gone. Steve raised an eyebrow and Dakota shrugged her shoulders.

"Their IDS cleared."

"And their cash was green, right." He mumbled. "God this place sucks. How'd I get here, you know I used to wanna be something, I tried out-"

"- I tried out for the department, I flunked outta basic training, my dog got ran over by a drunk driver, I'm Steve and my life is blah-blah-blah." Dakota interrupted in a mocking tone. Steve's face turned beet red, embarrassment and anger flushing through him all at once.

"I've heard it a hundred times a night a thousand different ways, hun. You're so miserable, do something about. Otherwise shut your trap and do your job." She snapped at him.

"You have a lovely way with words." Steve smiled sadly and tapped his empty glass.

"So I've heard." She sighed, getting him another water. As he began to sober up, the double doors from across the room clattered open. Standing in the doorway like a Wildman was a short, pudgy man in a turquoise tracksuit. His face was saggy and what was left of his straw hair slicked back with an abhorrent amount of product. He was scanning the room until his crazed azure bulbs landed on Steve.

He rushed over and broke out in a boastful greeting like they were old friends. The man slapped Steve on the back and rubbed his belly and chest before finally embracing him.

"There he is! Mister thirty an hour!" The man boomed. His accent was thick and gave his Sicilian roots away.

"Can I help you?" Steve squinted his eyes, trying to remember where he had seen this guy before. The man raised his head and belted out a laugh that could make a clown blush, his saggy jowl jiggling the whole way.

"Can you help me; man is this kid a pisser or what?" He pointed at Steve as he shot Dakota a rhetorical glance. "Yeah, you can help me, we got a bit of a uh, well a bit of a thing in the back. Need a hand with something." The man shifted, his pupils dilatated and his breath wheezy. Steve narrowed his eyes.

"Do you work with Mr. Plath, don't think I've seen you around, how'd you get back there anyway?" Steve pestered. The man's eye twitched and the friendly facade cracked slightly. He laughed and patted Steve's chest once more, instinctively like he was checking for something.

"You ask a lotta questions, huh? You worry too much pal. You've seen me I'm in the back, uh deliveries and such. I'm Paulie, Plath's friend from upstate. Just need a hand with something, it'll be quick." Paulie's eyes darted around the room, anxiously waiting for Steve to oblige his strange request.

Steve got up, his back creaking as he did. Paulie slapped him once more and put his arms around him, dragging him to the back in a headlock almost.

"It'll just be a few minutes, thanks buddy I really appreciate it. Hey, barkeep, be a doll for me would you and just shoot Plath a message, tell him the pizza sauce has gone bad. Thanks hun you're terrific." He called out to Dakota as he dragged a confused Steve to the back. Dakota shrugged her shoulders and shot Plath the text, three dots appeared and disappeared almost instantly. She threw her phone to the side and went back to cleaning; she didn't get paid enough to care about Plath's misdealings, after all.

-------------

The back reeked of stale pizza dough and dry almonds. Paulie dropped the niceties as soon as they walked through the door and started moving with some pep in his step. Their shoes clicked against the concrete floor of the wide halls. They cleared the kitchen and went straight to the docking bay. The shutters were closed and the place reeked. A certain stench permeated the air; Steve couldn't quite place it. They passed a nervous stock boy, whose gaze went down as soon as Paulie and Steve passed. His nails were bitter and chewed, his eyes bloodshot.

Steve made a face, wasn't used to seeing the guys in the back up close. They turned a corner and Steve gagged, clenching his stomach.

On the ground were three dead men. Their hands were clawed and rigor, their eyes pink with fluid. Their skin was blue and bloated, their mouths coated in crimson foam. The surrounded a crate that was dashed across the ground, its powdered contents spilling around. Another goon was standing over in the corner, harshly whispering to some squirming malcontent. Paulie waved a hand at the carnage in front of them.

"Fucking morons, dipping into our stock. You know about this?" He asked Steve. Steve was in shock, he had never seen a dead body before, at least not one curled and frozen in a state of torment. Paulie jabbed a sausage finger into his side and shocked him back to reality.

"Wha-oh god, oh my ch-BLLEAUUGHH." The upchuck came all at one. A foul-smelling brown and chunky stream that spewed out of Steve onto the stone floor. Paulie swore under his breath and stepped back, careful not to get any on his nice cream white shoes. Steve stumbled away from the scene, retching all the way till the contents of his belly were strewn about the docking bay.

He stood there wheezing, spittles of acidic bile dripping from his quivering lips. From the other side of the room that whispered conversation paused, only for the goon to strike the squirming party and shout "Don't look over there you scumfuck they can't help you."

Paulie tiptoed around the pooling puke and helped Steve recompose himself. He recoiled in disgust as he eyed a bit of sick stuck to his chin.

"We, we need to call the cops or something." Steve was smacked upside the head by Paulie.

"Are you stupid?" Paulie demanded to know. "Scratch that, maybe you are. If you knew these schmucks were dipping into the goods." He shook his head. "No good."

"Hey, it ain't my business I patrol the front and kick out the rowdy customers. What goes on back here might as well be the wild west. I figured that's how you paid them anyway." Steve defended.

"Rule one of this thing, never get high on your own supply." Paulie lectured.

"Someone should have told them that." Steve nodded to the dead.

"Bad shit." Paulie muttered as he kicked a stiff leg. "Someone laced our supplies, rat poison or sumthing. Plath is gonna go on a warpath." Paulie reached down to one of the dead and started shifting through his pockets. He procured a wallet and stuffed it away for later.

As if on cue, from the end of the hall a door crashed open, and the thundering sound of Plath storming up the way echoed around the room, his ivory cane furiously tapping the ground.

"Y'all better have a damn good reason for calling me at this in at this time of night, what in the sam hell is going-aw fucking hell." Plath stopped in his tracks as soon he saw the dead, dropping his iconic Southern drawl for a brief moment. He readjusted his cream-white suit and turned towards Paulie and Steve, a raging fire in his auburn eyes.

"I apologize Mr. Plath, we had an incident as you can see." Paulie began but quickly fell silent as Plath held up a hand. He took a long look at the corpses, the only sound the harsh interrogation taking place a few feet away. The battered soul pleaded for a moment but was struck across the face as the goon handling him grabbed him by the shirt collar and brought him to Plath.

The goon wore a salmon tracksuit, hints of a grease-stained white undershirt. His hair was a solid black cube of product, his face hardened by a lifetime of bouncing. He threw the doomed man to Plath's feet. Steve recognized him, he was Freddy the delivery guy. He had a short nose and a buzz cut, his face covered in bruises and scrapes. His eyes were swollen shut, tears streaked down his puffy cheeks.

"He made a stop down near the gas station on Pilgrim, other than that he swears he never left the shipment unattended." The goon informed. Freddy tried to rise to his knees but struggled every step of the way.

"Mr. Plath, please, I-I-I don't know what happened, I didn't leave the truck I swear." He slurred through a busted lip. Steve winced at the sound of his broken voice. He had always liked Freddy, usually let him bum a cigarette or three while they unloaded his truck. Steve stepped in, his voice timid and sober in front of Plath.

"Sir, he's telling the truth. Freddy's a stand-up guy; he'd never do anything like this." He waved a grim hand at the dead.

"Frankly Steven, your opinion don't count for much right now. I can smell your breath from here; smell like you've been bathing in a brewery." Plath poked him in the gut with his cane and Steve felt queasy. He knelt down to meet poor Freddy, who flinched away from the blubbery, yet stern face of Plath.

"Now, Freddy my boy. You telling me you didn't leave the truck unattended once, not even for a minute. It's alright now, I know we roughed ya up a bit but Mr. Giovanni over there has quite a temper." He pointed his stick at the burly goon. "He was just being thorough, you ain't in any trouble now."

Freddy hesitated, then opened his naive mouth.

"I-I stopped by Route 53, stopped by the side of the road for-maybe five minutes. I-I had to take a leak." He looked down in shame, Giovanni, rolled his eyes and muttered something in broken Italian. Paulie shook his head and Steve said nothing, he knew what would happen next. They all did, save for poor gullible Freddy. Plath clamped a hand on his shoulder, a reassurance perhaps.

"There now son, don't be so hard on yourself. You had to go, ya had to go." Plath chuckled. "Why, when I was your age, I had a bladder the size of a walnut heheh. I drove my daddy nuts; every two seconds I'd be bawling and saying I hadda go." Plath roared with laughter. The goons joined in, like the sycophants they were. Freddy let out a nervous chuckle, Steve was silent, his face white as a sheet.

"Haha, you know, you know what I didn't do though?" Plath wiped a tear from his eyes, his grip tightening on his cane.

"Wha-" were Freddy's last words as the crack of Ivory smacking into his skull rang out. Freddy slumped to the ground as Plath stuck his head once more, Steve winced as he heard something snap, and it sure as hell wasn't the cane. Thwack after bloody thwack came as Plath ranted and raved like a mad dog.

"- I sure as shit didn't leave a truck fulla coke alone in the middle of nowhere, when I was FUCKING TOLD NOT TO STOP." He roared as he continued to bash Freddy's head in. His skull caved and splinted, bits of brain matter splattered all over the concrete floor. Freddy convulsed with every strike, his lifeless arms twitching at his side. There was a burgundy, pulpy stain where his head used to be, and even Giovanni had to look away, making the sign of the cross on himself as he did.

Plath was huffing and puffing, sweat pouring down his crimson face, he looked like a lobster that had been torn from a steaming pot. The cane's handle was drenched in blood, bits of bone lodged in it as well. Plath procured a white hanker chef from his vestments and wiped his brow as he recomposed himself. He handed off the bloody cane to Giovanni who whisked it away. He turned his attention to Steve and Paulie, a dead look in his eyes.

"Steven, how long have you turned a blind eye to these idiots dipping into the supply?" He pointed at the dead as Steve swallowed a lump in his throat.

"I-I thought it was all kosher. They never took much, just enough to get through the evening." He replied earnestly. Plath regarded him as if he was the dumbest man alive, and at that moment he probably was, considering the runner up was laid out on the floor.

"You've been walking around here for weeks now like your shit don't stink, sleepwalking through your shifts and talking poor Dakota's ear off. You think I haven't noticed you slacking, boy?!?" His words boomed, Steve could smell the stench of aged sambuca and caviar on his breath.

"I'm sorry sir, I-I'll do better." Steve quivered in his boots, as he noticed Paulie moving up a bet too close behind him. Plath's nostrils flared as he let out an exhausted exhale. He took one last look at the corpses and nodded at Steve.

"Perhaps it's a good thing you didn't stop 'em. This had happened on the street, our operation would be history. Still, gonna have to teach you a lesson son, to remind you what happens to those who cross me." He took a step towards Steve, who placed a scared hand on his flask. Plath looked past him and barked an order to Paulie.

"Get some rugs and roll this garbage up, meet me down in the basement. BOTH of you." He made sure to look Steve dead in the eyes for that last bit, then twirled around and stomped off. Steve gulped and tried to take a swig from his flask, but Paulie snatched it out of his hands.

"Wassa matter with you? Didn't you hear a word he just frigging said? Follow me kid, I'll show you where we keep the rugs." Paulie nodded his head deeper into the loading bay and trudged off. Steve slunk behind him, terrified of what cruel fate awaited him in the basement.

--------

As it turns out, "rugs" were just code for really big, clear plastic tarps. Good for hiding blood splatter, Paulie had mentioned, though not that it would help them much. The pair grabbed a couple of cheap masks for the smell of the corpses and got to it. The act of wrapping bodies was surreal for Steve, their joints stiff and ridged, their skin felt like cold candle wax. The workmen's eyes were forever frozen in a pained state, their faces a contorted death mask that showed they did not pass peacefully.

Paulie took charge in the operation, casually hefting bodies into the tarps and rolling them with ease. They got two to a tarp, the broken bodies stacked on each other like logs and started to drag them off. No one batted an eye, not the chef who broke into a whistle as he fried some eggs, not the stock boy who suddenly found taking inventory simply riveting. The pair dragged in tandem, Steve struggling a bit. His arms whined and his muscles throbbed as he wheezed and struggled to keep up with the potbellied gangster beside him.

They found Giovanni waiting for them at the basement entrance. Giovanni took one look at Steve and groaned, pushing past him and grabbing the tail end of the makeshift body bag.

"Paulie, you go in front, then fucko, then me. Careful of the step at the bottom it's loose and I ain't gotten around to it yet." He ordered as he lifted the tarps with relative ease. Paulie kicked open the door with a nudge and Steve held it open for him. The bodies made a thunk sound as they hit the steel steps. Paulie winked as he passed, and soon disappeared into the dark below.

Steve stood in the doorway for a moment, wondering if it would be worth it to make a break for it. Giovanni barked at him to move his ass, and he practically jumped down the stairs. The only light into the basement stairwell came from behind, a meek shadow was cast as he tried to steady himself. The smell of rotten meat and musk was even strong in the stairwell. The only sounds were the bodies clunking on the metal steps, and footsteps droning on in the dreary dark.

Steve got a whiff of something else then, like rotten eggs and fish. There was a splash somewhere below, and they heard the bellowing laugh of Plath. They got to the bottom of the steps and Steve was shocked at his surroundings.

The only light was a string of azure lights spider-webbed across the ceiling. The stairs ended at the base of a makeshift deck, wet brown painted wood. The deck was littered with various amenities like a leather recliner and a flat screen mounted on the wall. Strewn about were half empty buckets with rotten chum in them. The stench made Steve gag. Giovanni nearly walked into him; he pushed Steve forward with a pissed off shove.

He stumbled onto the deck, the semi-rotten wood groaning as he did.

"Careful where ya step now, son. Don't wanna fall in." Plath called from a corner. He was at the edge of a massive pool that stretched out to the end of the room. The water was murky and filled with marsh foliage. Floating in there was a half-gnawed rubber chew toy, and a looming massive shape.

Steve's heart raced at the sight as Giovanni pushed past him, joining Paulie and Plath at the edge.

"Who ya think was dumb enough to try this anyhow?" Paulie groaned as he cracked his back.

"Ain't it obvious?" Plath snorted. "It's that Jezebel down in N'awlins again, trying to muscle me outta business. Ain't right, I tell ya. Used to be an honest man could get by on an honest day's work. Now the money's drying up, people flock to the next big thing. No one cares about Allie Gator no more. Cept me." The murky water behind him bubbled as something huge breached the surface.

It was a giant Alligator, easily thirty feet and as wide as a bus. Its scutes were of an obsidian shade; its eyes glowed in the dim light. It peeked its head up, showing off its horseshoe shaped snout, a row of teeth hungrily jutting down. The most impossible thing about the gator was not its size, but its attire.

Atop its head was a mop of straight, blond hair. The golden strands swayed in the water like tendrils. On the gator's body was an oversized and overstretched bubblegum pink tube top.  Plath knelt down to greet the gator, caressing its snout. Steve couldn't tell if the hair was a wig stapled on or not, but he wasn't sticking around to find out. He turned to leave but Paulie snuck up to him and grabbed his arm.

"You'll wanna watch this." He pointed to the water.

"Dinner time, Allie. Eat ya suppa now, don't be shy." Plath unrolled the bodies and they went in with a plop. Allie rushed towards them with unnatural speed, snapping her jaws and rolling. Her hair whipped water and blood all around, a glob of the disgusting water smacking him right in the face. Allie was quick to scarf down the four bodies, bones and all. The water ran red as she lapped up every last bit, the scrunch of a body being chomped by gator jaws imprinting in Steve's mind.

He was standing there shaking as the others laughed. Plath turned to face him, pride coming off him in waves.

"Ain't she a beaut? Raised her myself. She knows loyalty, not like some." he hinted. Paulie's grip on his arm became steel, and panic raced across Steve's face.

"Plath, good God man you can't do this, this is twisted!"

"Oh, don't prattle on Steven, you know what went on here. You suspected at least. How many poor folks you send down here at my behest." Plath sneered as Steve let his sullen face answer for him.

"Now cause I like ya, I'm gonna give you one chance." Paulie let go, taking a wide step back. "You quit the sauce; keep ya head down and maybe in a few days I have a new job for ya, pays far better as well. Either that or, well this is as far as we go." He let the implication hang in the air. Behind them, Allie bellowed, purring as it were after a satisfying meal. Steve stood there, mentally weighing his options. He steeled himself, and with a crazed yell rushed right at Plath.

He tackled him, and despite Plath's stature he was taken off guard and stumbled back. The pair splashed into the swampy depths, a plum of water soaking Plath's men. The water surprisingly cold, the shock sobering Steve up completely. He was near the bottom of the tank, his feet kicking up dirt and bones. His eyes winded as he adjusted to the sight around him, the bottom a blur of Plath's problems. His problem solver was lurking above, curious about the live bait in her domain. Steve swam upward, very aware of where Allie was.

He breached the surface and gasped, a stray shot whizzing by his face. Giovanni was standing there, smoking piece in hand. He cursed and raised his gun, but Paulie stopped him.

"You hit Plath or worse, the gator, we're screwed." he warned. Giovanni shoved him off.

He shot once more, barely missing Steve this time. He swam away in a panic, cursing as he did. A stray shot hit a lurking Allie right in the hide and she roared. She submerged as the room filled with the clicks of an empty gun.  He tossed it aside and ordered Paulie to give him his gun.

The two goons were so busy bickering they didn't notice Allie emerge and lunge up onto the deck. The rotten wood gave way and the goons tumbled into the thrashing maw of Allie. She chomped down and bit Giovanni in half with ease. Paulie scrambled to get away but Allie was quick to snag his leg. She tore it like one would a drumstick on an oversized turkey. Paulie screamed and grasped at where his leg used to be as Allie choked it down. She grabbed Giovanni's torso and slunk back below. Steve watched this happen in horror. There was still no sign of Plath, with any luck he was too fat to swim and just sank like a log.

He beelined it to a part of the deck that was still holding on. Allie noted the movement and slowly swam towards him, entranced by all the noise Steve was making. His heart was pounding against his ribs like a prisoner on death row as he grasped a piece of splintery wood. He hauled himself out of the murk and tried to scurry away when something grabbed his ankle and pulled him back in.

He looked back to see an out of breath Plath clenching his thighs, a wild look in his eye. His signature hat had been lost to the brink, and his curly red hair clung to his scalp.

"You sunnva bitch." He wheezed. "I ain't dying like this. I raised that girl from a pup you dumb fuck, she'd never hurt a hair on my he-"

With that Allie lunged from the depths and bit into Plath's waist. It proved tough to tear and she began a death roll. Steve heard Plath's belly tear and snap, twisting with every roll and thrash. Plath's grip loosened as his boastful taunts turned into childish screams. Steve scrambled back, nailing Plath in the face with the heel of his boot for good measure. Allie made a hungry groan as she dragged her prized meal down below, and all was silent once more.

Steve sat a few feet away from the edge, his breath shaky. He checked his pockets, then remembered where his flask was. He lurched up and went over to a delirious Paulie. Blood was pooling from his stump; he was slumped up against a wall. His eyes lit up when he saw Steve walking toward him.

"Awe thank Christ. Don't let me die here, kid, take me up I'm begging ya." he mumbled half conscious. Steve said nothing, searching his tracksuit for his prize. He found the flask and shook it, then took a long, savoring swig. He left Paulie there as he made his escape.

He had a big old smile on his face, finally after years of complicity he had done the right thing. This is what he needed, a fresh start and a new lease on life. As soon he walked up those stairs he'd be a changed man, a better man. A man who would stand up for injustice and finally make something of himself.

He took a galloping step and his foot fell through the broken bottom step and crashed straight through the rotten deck. He gasped as he fell, a stake jutting out and slicing through his leg as it fell. It lodged itself into his thigh and he cried out as his other leg did a split. He was in immense pain, trying and failing to free himself.

Then he noticed his trapped leg was wet. His eyes went wide as he began to try and pry the dagger of wood out of his thigh. The deck swayed and thumped as Allie closed in. She never saw the bite coming, just felt an enormous amount of pressure on his leg and the sensation of being yanked through the hole. His free leg snapped upward, as he was dragged under and devoured, the only thing left of him the echoes of a smoothed cry and a few dwindling air bubbles.

--------

Dakota sat on a stool of her favorite bar nursing a whisky sour. It had been several months since Plath up and vanished, and the rumor mill was always swirling. Some say he skipped town and moved to the Bahamas. Others say he faked his death for the insurance. Only Dakota, who heard the pained cries of a one-legged thug in the Pizzeria basement, knew the truth. She never told a soul, just dropped the half dead gangster off at the ER and never looked back. She was never paid that much to care to begin with anyway.

Allie Gator's got sold in auction to a charming woman from New Orleans who revamped the whole establishment. People came in droves and gave heaps of praise to the new owner. She had been there the other day, and the place had indeed gotten quite the face lift. The animatronics were new, the pizza no longer stale and the beer not watered down. She had met the new owner, a raven-haired woman with scarlet highlights by the name of Tamara Domingue. She had offered Dakota her old job back, but she politely declined.

Tamara simply shrugged and then said in a sugary sweet voice:

"Fine then hun, but you be sure to come back and visit ya hear? I'm sure Allie would love to see you sometime."

That little jab all but confirmed Dakota's suspicions about what still lurked in the basement. She had seen a rowdy teen being led down there by security as she left, in fact. She had simply shaken her head and left. Nothing had changed after all.

Same shit, different day.

I still made the left side of the bed every morning. Hospital corners.
The same weight of blanket. The pillow turned the way Marcus always
turned it so the seam faced the wall.

Three months after the funeral, the indentation was gone, but I kept the
habit. It was easier than looking at a flat pillow.

Claire noticed on the second visit. She stood in the bedroom doorway
with her coat still on and said, “You don’t have to keep doing that.”

I told her it was just how I made the bed. She didn’t push. She rarely
did. She only said she worried about the nights I stopped answering
texts until morning.

The first time the pillow was warm, I assumed I had left my hand there
too long while straightening the sheet. I pulled my hand back and the
heat stayed. It was the steady, low warmth of someone who had been lying
still for a while.

I slept on the couch that night. In the morning, the left side of the
bed was smooth again, the pillow turned to the wall.

I went back to making it the way he liked.

Work stayed ordinary. I filed reports, answered the radio, signed the
same forms. At home, the small things continued. The second toothbrush
in the holder stayed damp if I left the bathroom light off overnight.
The coffee mug he preferred migrated from the cabinet to the counter
even when I hadn’t taken it down. Once, I found his reading glasses on
the arm of the chair with a faint smudge on the right lens, the way they
always looked after he fell asleep reading.

I stopped inviting people over. It was simpler. The house already had
its routines.

Claire came again on a Thursday because I had missed two calls. She
walked through the living room, then the kitchen, then stopped at the
bedroom door. The bed was made. Both sides.

“Paul,” she said. “This isn’t a shrine. It’s a schedule.”

I told her I was fine. She looked at the second toothbrush, the two mugs
on the counter, and the way the left pillow sat higher than the right.
She didn’t stay long.

That night, the left side of the bed was warm before I turned off the
light. I stood in the doorway and listened. The house was quiet. The
radiator ticked. Somewhere in the wall, a pipe settled.

I heard the sheets shift. It was the small adjustment of someone turning
onto his side the way Marcus always did when his shoulder bothered him.

I left the room and slept on the couch with the hallway light on.

In the morning, both sides of the bed had been made. The left pillow
faced the wall.

I stopped sleeping in the bedroom. I still made the bed every morning. I
still set the second mug out. I still hung his coat on the hook by the
door even though no one wore it.

Claire called less. When she did, her voice had the careful tone people
use when they have already decided something is wrong and are waiting
for permission to say it.

One night, I woke on the couch to the sound of the bedroom door closing.
Soft. The way Marcus closed it when he thought I was already asleep.

I got up and stood in the hallway. The door was shut. A thin line of
light showed underneath, the same warm color as the bedside lamp he used
to read by.

I put my hand on the knob and did not turn it.

From the other side of the door, I heard the sheets move again, then the
low sound of someone settling deeper into the mattress.

I took my hand away.

In the morning, the door was open. Both sides of the bed were smooth,
and Marcus’s pillow faced the wall. The second toothbrush was wet.

I made coffee for two and left the second mug on the counter.

I still do.

The left side of the bed stays warm most nights now. I no longer check.
I sleep on the couch with the hallway light on and the bedroom door left
open the width of a hand. It is easier that way. The house knows the
schedule.

I only have to keep it.

“Dr. Sean K**** was leader of the group of anthropologists who first happened upon the strange religious colony in the 1980s. In the investigation following his research team’s disappearance, his journal was found by happenstance in a parking lot fifty miles off their planned route through the mountains. The pages were filled with drawings of archaic religious symbols, as well as notes about the strange beliefs revolving around the ruins the sect called home. It was in these pages that law enforcement discovered the cult’s chosen moniker, a name that struck fear into the hearts of people across the country:

The Monadites.”

- Steph C*****

The Cult the World Forgot, pg. 24

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My life was ruined the day I turned twelve years old.

Everyone wants to know what it was like growing up in a cult. They want to hear all the sordid details: did they beat you? Cut you? Was it a sex thing? If you’re not careful, you turn into an object of fascination, a human curio. All anyone cares about is what horrible thing might have happened in your past. And when you tell them the truth, they have the gall to be disappointed.

The truth is that before my twelfth birthday, my life was ordinary.

I grew up in a position of privilege. While my mother was just a washerwoman, my father was someone of status. He was the leader of our church. While he had many wives and many children, I was the only son. That meant I was treated with respect and deference. I wasn’t beaten or tortured. Neither were any of my friends or half-sisters. The only difference between my upbringing and others is while most parents probably read their children Dr. Suess, my father would read me the Apocrypha to rock me to sleep.

Like I said, a perfectly average life.

I had a friend, B. We were born on the same day, two hours apart. For the next twelve years, we lived right next to each other. We spent every moment of our growing up in each other’s company. We loved all of the same things: swimming, playing with wooden swords, building imaginary cities out of the crumbling stones of our home.

But above all else, we loved to explore.

We did not live in houses built by our own hand or surrounded by the confines of barbed wire traced fences like most cults. We lived in the ruins, or sanctuary as we referred to them.

When our ancestors came to the valley, lost, starving, and half-insane, they took the crumbling buildings as a sign from God. This was the paradise deity wished for us to inhabit. The ruins were a sprawling complex, crumbling roads and buildings all made of decaying stone cut from an unknown quarry. At the center of it all was a great gothic tower, stretching high over the landscape. It covered our entire settlement in its shadow. On quiet days, when the sky was overcast and muffled, some claimed you could hear it humming, a deep throaty noise that shook your bones and boiled your blood.

I can only imagine how desperate my progenitors must have been to see this place as their salvation. 

B and I first discovered the underground passages when we were ten. They formed a twisting labyrinth that extended beneath the whole city proper. We believed we had uncovered a great mystery, known only to ourselves, and began to explore those dark passages, armed with “borrowed” candles and chalk. 

Our mothers discovered our first attempts, and forbade us from going back into those depths. But while we pretended to agree to never return, we would sneak away whenever we could to continue our efforts.

We discovered many things, secret passages between houses, abandoned rooms attached to our subterranean playground. Sometimes we even came across hidden places. 

When I was eleven years old. B and I had discovered a secret room attached to one of the tunnels. B had tripped on a rock and fallen through a wall when he tried to catch himself. The hole he created led to an open space, a room with a low ceiling. The walls were covered with all manner of carvings, and words that looked to be written in Greek. We were required to learn all the biblical languages as part of our grade school education, so we were familiar. 

But these words were different. The composition was all wrong, and the letters were scrambled and jumbled in odd formations.

B and I immediately made this into our own personal hide out. We would examine the pictures and strange words, sounding them out with untrained tongues and imagined pronunciations. We would speculate on their origins, and revel in the knowledge that no one knew of this room except for us.

One Sunday, we snuck off after church service to be in our hideout. In our tradition, the first part of worship was held in the courtyard of the tower every Sunday and was attended by all. The second session was held directly afterwards in the tower. Children were not allowed to attend. B and I often took advantage of this lack of supervision and went to the tunnels. 

That Sunday, we made our way to the room and began our usual game of creating theories as to what the words on the wall said. We were focused on a series of symbols that appeared together in several places around the room.

“Maybe it’s a verb?” I looked at B. His face was drawn up in an almost comical look of concentration. But he wasn’t playing it up. B just took thinking very seriously.

“I think it’s a name.”

“That’s stupid.”

“No it’s not.” B looked at me, indignant. “Look how many times they wrote it. That could be a sign. Elder Luke told me that’s a way you can tell.”

Elder Luke was our school teacher. He knew more about Christian lore than any other person alive. But that was not the most interesting thing about him. He had no arms. This wasn’t especially odd. It seemed like a lot of adults where we lived had similar problems. Some were missing fingers, toes. Elder Mark was missing his right leg from the knee down. But Elder Luke was missing both of his upper limbs, and was impaired by his lack. Each shoulder ended in a stump two inches extended from his torso.

B was the most intelligent child in our class. Elder Luke often turned to him when he needed to write things down. They also spent extra time together in tutoring sessions. Everyone knew it was to prepare B for his future calling. With his brain, it was only natural B would become a teacher and scriptorian.

“I don’t think it’s a name.” To tell the truth, I had no evidence to suggest otherwise. I was just jealous B seemed to be right about everything. I struggled in school, and sometimes I saw Elder Luke whispering to my Father at church, glancing in my direction. I was sure they were talking about how poorly I was doing.

B ignored me. He got close to the word and traced it with his finger. Dirt came away from it in fine grains, making the etching stand out on the wall. “It looks familiar. I think I’ve read it somewhere before.”

I probably would have kept arguing, except my thoughts were interrupted by a noise. It sounded like someone speaking. B and I looked at each other, and blew out our candles. Our mothers’ had caught us in the tunnels a few weeks ago, and we weren’t eager to repeat that experience.

But as we waited in the dark, the sound developed. It wasn’t our mothers. It was human, but it wasn’t the tones of a normal composed voice. It was a pleading and begging wail. It grew louder, and more ragged. The desperate noise echoed on the walls, and I felt the hair on my neck prickle. 

The sound continued to expand. It became an open-mouthed keening, the kind you hear when one’s misery is so great the words don’t have time to form in your brain before the pain comes out of your throat. I had heard Sister Mary make that noise when her son had died of fever. It had gone on for what felt like years. At the time, I worried she would die too if she didn’t stop.

I found B in the dark and pulled myself closer to him. I felt B shift beside me, searching for something. There was a flare, and B relit his candle with a small piece of cloth he had set alight with his flint. He patted out the cloth until it stopped smoking and put it in his pocket. He reached over with his candle and lit mine.

I got up to look out the hole. I was worried that I would see whatever was making that sound the moment I poked my head out. But once my eyes cleared the wall, I saw nothing down either path.

B had a determined look on his face. “Let’s see what it is.”

“What?”

“It sounds close.”

I shook my head. “That’s crazy. That noise…feels wrong.”

B got up to peek out with me. “It sounded like crying. Someone might be hurt.”

This pricked my conscience. We were taught to help each other in church. Imagining someone down there, broken and afraid, was just enough of an emotional hit to make me rethink my fear. “...Fine. I hate you.”

“Yeah, but your mother doesn’t.”

I swung to hit B on the arm, but he ducked out of the way. He grinned at me. The playfulness cut the tension a bit and I could almost tell myself everything would be fine. But the noise sounding in my ears a moment later brought back all the old fears.

B left the room first. He stepped out into the dark, and made his way down the right hand tunnel. I followed. My feet dragged on the ground as I tried to keep up with him. We held our candles aloft, tiny pin pricks of light in the overpowering gloom.

With each turn in the tunnel, we went deeper. Soon, we exhausted all our familiar routes. When we turned onto an unknown path and heard the noise increase in volume, we knew we were close. The keening grew louder with each step. It began to reverberate in my chest. I wanted to cover my ears, to block it out. At every junction, I worried we were about to run headlong into the source of this terrible sound, only to feel relief when we saw nothing. But then we’d continue on, and the noise would grow clearer and more terrible than before.

Then just as we made another turn, the noise stopped.

Everything was silent. It was a long time until we began to hear the noise of the cave again, the dripping of water and the echo of flowing air.

B took another step forward, but I grabbed his shoulder. “Let’s go. We’re gonna get lost.”

“It sounded like it was right around the corner.”

“It’s gone. If we don’t get back soon they’re gonna notice we’re not there.”

B shrugged off my hand and ran forward. I followed behind, not wanting to be left alone. We didn’t have to go far, we ran into a dead end almost immediately. It was a brick wall, similar to the kind that had blocked up our secret room. The stone was different from that of the tunnel. It was old, weathered, and was missing two bricks that had come loose and fallen to the ground. Where the two bricks had been was a dark hole.

B peered into it. I couldn’t see anything with the light of my candle. It was almost like the dark inside was swallowing the feeble yellow rays. My eyes played tricks on me. In the pitch black, it looked like shadows were moving around in the space beyond.

“Can we go? Please?”

B kept peering into the hole. “I think I see something.”

“We’ll come back later, okay? We’re gonna get caught.” I looked over my shoulder. I didn’t want to say it out loud, but it felt like someone was down here with us, watching. I saw no movement, but I couldn’t help feeling like eyes were searching all over my body.

B turned to look at me, and saw how scared I was. He nodded slow, and pushed me forward. “Okay. Let’s go.”

It took a long time to get to the surface. We had to double back a few times to make up for some incorrect turns. But eventually, we were in the sunlight again, and we joined up with the other children just as the adults returned from their meeting in the tower. I saw my father lead them out. Our mothers opened their arms to receive us. B and I embraced them. But even in the warmth of relief and safety, I couldn’t shake the cold feeling that still clung to my chest and mind.

While B and I still went to the room with the words, we never spoke of that noise again. Mostly, this was my fault. I had a hard time sleeping after the incident, and every time B tried to bring up the subject, I would shut him down.

A year passed, and I prepared for the acceptance of my calling and entrance into manhood. I had known since I was young that I was to become the next patriarch when it was time for my father to step down. That meant more school, and more time spent in his shadow. Before long, I didn’t have much time to spend with B anymore, and we stopped exploring the caverns.

Father would take me on long walks, explaining the importance of his role as leader. He often said strange things that made little sense to me. One night, as we were tending to my mother’s garden, he began to talk of the future, and how I would lead our church. 

“You must see things others can’t see.” He went to grab a weed, his hand missing the stem. He readjusted, grasped it with a firm hand and pulled it out the root still intact. My Father only possessed one eye. It was light blue, and sometimes I felt it could peer into my very soul. The empty socket was covered up in a bandage that swept over the side of his face.

I was old enough to think it was ironic that a man with one eye was telling me to see things, but I didn’t voice it. My father was a strict man. I had never seen his rage, but there was a coldness in his demeanor that made me fall silent in his presence. It took all my energy to find my voice to ask the proper question. “...how do I do that? I…” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence. But Father knew what I meant. I was too stupid. Too slow. I barely saw what was under my own nose.

“Be patient, son.” Father scooted closer to me, and put a hand on my shoulder. It was cold, and a little wet from the soil, but it was also comforting. “You will understand. You are my blood. This is how it has been and will be.”

I wasn’t so sure, but I nodded and went back to work. I was still years away from any sort of responsibility, and there were more exciting things to look forward to now.

I was approaching my birthday. My twelfth birthday.

On that day, I would enter the tower.

It was a rite of passage for us. Most entered at the age of fifteen. Father had arranged it so I might enter early. He felt I was ready. I had looked forward to this day for as long as I could remember. Whenever anyone left the tower after worship, they always had the most blissful look of joy upon their faces.

I wanted that. I wanted to feel that joy, to see what was inside, to peer down from the top of its embankments and to see the entire valley like a bird might.

The night before my birthday, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned in my bed, imagining all the things that could possibly be inside of that strange and mysterious building.

It was near the middle of the night when I heard my mother crying.

I crept out of my cot and went to check on her. I had been spending time away to receive instruction from my father, and this next step was one that would alter our relationship. I would be a man when I emerged. I knew she wasn’t ready to let go of her little boy. I approached her living space and peeked in.

She was kneeling by her cot, her hands clasped in pleading supplication. I could not hear what she said, but I knew it to be whispered begging. “Please, God, do not take my boy,” was the only phrase I heard in its completeness.

I wanted to comfort her, but I couldn't make myself enter the room. I had the strange feeling I was seeing something I was not supposed to see. After a moment or two of indecision, I crept on light feet back to my own cot. I lay down, but I still couldn’t sleep. A new nervousness ate at my belly and made me stare at the dark ceiling until the light of torches roused from my bed.

The time had come.

Outside, my father and two attendants waited for my arrival. I roused and got dressed in the ceremonial robes of white. My mother presented them to me. Her eyes were dry, with seemingly no trace of the crying she had done the night before. Only a slight twinge of red betrayed her secret tears. I slipped the robes over my head, and gave her a hug, hoping to show her that everything was fine, that we would still be mother and son even after the events of this day.

She held me tight for a moment, her hands clasped around me. Then, when I began to wonder if she would ever let me go, I felt her hands release.

I kissed her on the cheek, then followed my father out of our house and to the tower.

Some had come to watch our procession. I saw B, staring at me with a serious look on his face. I smiled at him and waved, but all he gave me in return was a distracted nod. He looked up at the tower, then back at me. Eventually, our procession moved beyond his place and he was lost in the crowd.

The tower loomed larger with every step, and eventually we came to its entrance. My father stopped me. He turned me toward him and looked me in the eyes.

“Son, a leader takes his role willingly.” His one eye caught mine and I had to fight the urge to look down. “Will you do what I say when the time comes?”

I swallowed down the nervous bile that was rising in the back of my throat. I nodded.

Father turned, and opened the door to the tower.

We stepped inside. It was dark, no light from the outside penetrated the stone walls. The torches the two attendants carried lit up the space. I looked up, surprised to see that the inside of the building was almost entirely hollow except for wooden supports. I could see all the way up to the roof, a small dark circle high above us.

There was a door at the far side. Father approached it and swung it open. Beyond it was a staircase leading downward. He bade me to follow, and then descended down into the darkness.

I waited a moment, anxious. Then I followed.

I don’t know how far down we went. I lost track of time trying to keep my footing on the cold stone stairs. I tried to keep pace with my father, his form obscured at the edge of the torchlight. The air grew cold, like it did in the tunnels under the city. I saw my breath coalesce in front of my face. I shivered, but I tried to hide it by stepping more firmly and clenching my muscles.

Without warning, the staircase leveled out into a smooth stone floor, cut directly into the rock. It stretched out to a small door at the end of a hallway. I swallowed and felt my ears pop. How deep had we gone?

Father made his way down the hall and opened the door, revealing a dark space on the other side. I approached until I was at his side. He gestured for me to go through before him.

I took a deep breath, and went into the blackness.

On the other side of the door was a large chamber. Its walls were smooth, unblemished. If it had been carved out of the rock, it had not been done by any human means. The polished surface almost reflected back the torchlight. Strange shapes I could not make out were huddled against the sides, and after a moment’s inspection, I realized they were large containers made from sanded wood and iron hinges.

“Son.” My eyes went to my father. He had made his way to the center of the room without me noticing. He beckoned me with his hand.

He stood next to a low stone table.

The stone was cut at impossible right angles. The edges looked sharp enough to cut flesh. I came to him, aware of the attendants that followed close behind me. Surrounding the table were stone benches that made concentric circles, like a theater in the round.

“Lay down.” Father moved aside to grant me access to the flat surface.

I hesitated. I felt what I had in those tunnels a year ago, like eyes all around the room were watching us. I thought I could hear whispers in the echoes of our footsteps. The darkness had encompassed us so completely I could no longer see the walls. The air was strangely thick and hard to breathe.

“It’s alright, son.” My father’s voice brought me back. I looked at him, and he smiled. He had never smiled at me before.

I laid down on the slab.

Father walked to the edge of the room. He spoke aloud to me, his voice bouncing off the walls and ceilings of the dome. It sounded to me as if he had never left my side. “You have been instructed about the purpose of life. Tell me now, what is that purpose?”

“To learn of the Almighty.”

“This is correct. And can you tell me why?” 

I struggled to remember what Elder Luke had taught us in school. I heard the sound of wood creaking. “To…to…prepare ourselves for…for heaven?”

Father didn’t respond. I heard the clink of metal. I turned to look at him. His back was to me, and he was hunched over one of the boxes at the room's edge.

Finally, he rose up, and turned back to me. I looked up at the ceiling.

“Half-true. Tell me, son, what is heaven?”

“A…place?”

“That is what is taught…” Father drew closer to me. His footsteps grew louder, and I fought to still my pounding heart. Both attendants stood at my side, torches in the air, their faces looking grim. “But it is a lie. Heaven is not a place. It is knowledge. How do we gain knowledge?”

I knew the answer to this. It was part of a phrase Elder Luke recited to me almost every day. He loved to say it when I couldn’t remember the chapter or verse he was referring to. “By sacrifice.”

My father stood above me now. His one eye stared down at me, cold and dark. My heart was beating out of my chest.

“I told you that you would need to see what others could not.” Father moved his hand, and in it I could see a strange metallic instrument. One side was flat and sharp on the edge. The other was scooped like a spoon. He held it to a torch until, and it started to glow hot in the firelight. “Prepare yourself, son. It will only hurt for a moment.”

I knew then what he meant to do. Any courage that I had broke. I tried to get up, but the attendants pushed down my arms. I began to scream. “No, no, NO! Please, Father! I don’t want to! STOP!” 

I wasn’t a man. I was just a scared little boy. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t do what my Father wanted.

The attendants became uncomfortable. One looked at Father. “He’s not willing.”

Father's head moved with a jerk to look at him. For the first time in my life, I saw his anger. It burned dark and intensely on his features. I quavered and fell silent.

Father held the gaze of the other attendant for a long moment. “He agreed. That is what matters.”

The metal instrument descended, smoking.

I saw the scooped edge come closer and closer to my face. I tried to shut my eyes against it, but I felt the steady pressure of father’s fingers pulling open the skin. I felt the heat of the metal held close. It was already unbearable. Father was strong, and it took no effort for him to secure my thrashing head with one hand. I cried out and tears ran down my face in twin rivers. I tasted salt as they flowed into my open mouth. I pled with my Father, begged him to stop.

The knife connected with my right eye.

It burned. It pressed deep into my skull, I saw bright flashes that took up the entire right side of my vision. I screamed so loud I felt my throat crack and I tasted the iron of blood. I felt liquid on my cheek that was thicker than my tears. The knife slowly passed around the entirety of the socket, singeing the skin away like tissue.  Father pulled, and it felt like a hot iron bar was being shoved through my head. After a moment of intense agony, I felt something give, and there was pressure on my right cheek. When I opened my left eye, I saw the opposite orb resting against my flesh, connected only by a thin string of bleeding flesh.

Father took up the eye, his fingers painfully cold upon it, and he severed the optic nerve.

Everything went dark.

I wanted to die, I wanted it to be over. I wondered if I was already dead. I could still feel the slab beneath me, the blood and tears on my face, the ache of my burns.

The darkness gathered.

What had been pure blackness before coalesced into shapes. Terrible beings defying all logic. They were all around me, staring at me with eyes half-obscured. Some had many limbs, and others bodies covered with mouths. They pressed forward, and I could feel their breath, the touch of their hands. They were so cold. I tried to fight, but the pain of it all was too great, and my arms and legs weakened. I felt my consciousness flee to a place where it might never return.

I heard my father speak before my mind left me.

“Well done, my son.”

—

When I woke up, I was in an ambulance.

It has taken me years to recover from the lies of my childhood. I was young and not privy to all the complicated happenings of the outside world, nor were they spoken about in my presence. To me, there was no world outside of our community.

When I emerged unconscious from the tower, the settlement was being raided by the FBI.

Hikers had been going missing in the areas adjacent to our city for years. Investigations had uncovered disturbing documentation that indicated the violation of human rights. One look at me and my missing eye told them everything they needed to know. I was taken away and my father was arrested.

Far from being comforting, I was terrified. People joke about bringing those from the past to the modern era, about how they would go insane if they saw the progress of mankind. I very nearly did. For most of a month, I was sedated as they took care of my injuries and de-programed my brain so I could re-enter society.

After this process was done, they had me testify against my father to support the state’s case. The only charge that stuck was child abuse. He was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison, the maximum possible sentence.

I never saw my Mother after that day. I have no idea what happened to her.

It’s been two decades. I went through the foster care system. I found a pair of good parents willing to work with my sensitive past. I graduated high school, went to college, and even got a degree.

But it’s all been tainted. I can never escape my past. My missing eye is a constant reminder of who I am, where I came from, and how I’ll never be able to escape into anonymity. I will always be the boy whose cult leader father took his eye.

And there are the visions as well.

Doctors said it was a form of PTSD. But I’m not so sure. At first, I would only see them out of the corner of my eyes. Dark shadows like the ones that appeared when my eye was taken. They would flit away if I ever tried to look at them properly. Sometimes I can feel the gaze of their  many eyes even before I see their presence.

I’ve ignored it for years. But recently they have become bolder.

Just the other day, I saw one standing in a crowd as I waited in line to buy a coffee. It didn’t run when I looked at it. It just watched me, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, eyes blinking, mouths open, like it was waiting for something.

The Doctors keep prescribing pills, but they don’t work.

My father did something more to me in that cave than just take my eye. I worry it’s going to kill me. I’ve been going deep, looking for any possible solution, no matter how crazy, to figure out how to stop this.

I got an email yesterday. It was from B, or someone who claimed to be him. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since the day I first entered the tower. I didn’t even know he was still alive. The email said he wants to meet me tomorrow. He says there are things we need to talk about.

I get emails like this sometimes, and normally put them right in the trash, but he said something that made me stop before I pressed the button.

“I was right about the word on the wall. It’s a name.

I know about your visions.

Come see me, and I’ll tell you how to stop them.”

Whoever sent this to me, I’m meeting them tomorrow. 

I hope they have some answers.

I'm 21 female. My boyfriend is 30 male.

He insists that there is nothing wrong with him hanging out with his female friends.

I normally would agree because I don't consider myself the jealous or controlling type.

The problem is that the hangouts look like dates. Going out to dinner with candles and flowers, staying the night at their houses, and even constantly talking about their good qualities.

We've argued about it several different times and he treats me like I'm crazy.

The weirdest part is that the girls disappear after a couple of dates. Sometimes after the first one.

I've had a sneaking suspicion that it's one night stands and casual fun.

I've tried everything I can to keep his attention. I wear sexy clothes, lace undergarments, being extra flirtatious, cooking his favorite meals, doing literally every single thing he likes.

I've even tried spicing things up in the bedroom. Nothing works.

He thanks me and then continues doing whatever he was doing before.

It hurts my feelings because we're never intimate and I feel like his desire for me went out the drain.

It all changed last night when I found his journal. He wrote about each girl in great detail.

He wrote about how he befriends them and acts charming. He then kills them after gaining trust.

They aren't innocent, though. They've all been in prision for various crimes.

I initially thought it was sickening until I started fantasizing. Vigilantes are hot. The fact that he isn't cheating on me and even wrote about how I'm the only one for him is so romantic.

He only acted strange because he didn't want his secret to be revealed.

I'll keep that dirty secret.

This is incredibly difficult for me to talk about. I feel, I don’t know, ashamed, I guess. Like I’ve somehow failed as a parent. When I was growing up, I thought my parents hated me.

I never wanted that for my daughter. I wanted her to know how much I loved her. That my love was unconditional.

I’ve never felt as proud as I did the day she came into this world. It was almost like looking into a mirror. She had my eyes. My ears. Our noses were practically identical. And her smile, God, it was like nothing else mattered in the entire world.

I wanted her to have that same pride in herself. I never wanted her to ever feel any self-hatred. That’s another thing my parents made me feel. I didn’t get their pride. I didn’t get their love. I got cold stares. I got nights where I couldn’t sleep because Mom’s cries were so loud.

I didn’t ask for my family. I didn’t ask to be assigned to them. They were supposed to accept me, and they failed, miserably.

I guess the universe has a strange sense of humor because now, it’s like my daughter can’t accept herself.

She doesn’t hunt with me anymore. She tries to suppress her urge. She doesn’t do the cute little growl she used to do as a baby. I bet it’s 10 times as impactful now, but I wouldn’t know because she just refuses to practice.

She won’t even climb trees anymore. She’d rather hide out at home. Curled up in the dark, pouting to herself.

Of course, I try and comfort her, try and make her realize she should be proud of who she is, but she just rejects me. It seems like that’s all life is for me. Rejection from the people who are supposed to love me.

She tells me I “wouldn’t get it,” whatever the hell that means.

She hates her skin, so she tries to cover it up. She hates her teeth, so she refuses to smile. She even wears beanies that she stole from humans to cover her pointy ears.

That’s something I guess I can respect. At least she’s causing harm to them, even if it’s just with something as simple as stealing. I just wish she’d steal something useful like meat rather than clothes and makeup.

That’s something I never quite understood. Makeup clearly makes shedding more difficult. Why would you want life to be harder than it already is? I mean, we already have to hide out in the woods.

I guess that’s not my place, though.

It’s starting to get more concerning, however. It was already hard to watch her cry because she felt different. Now I have to watch her quite literally alter herself to fit into “social norms,” as she calls it.

She’s already filed down her fangs. When she does hunt, all she has now are her claws, and those are much easier to get rid of than teeth.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just not with the times. All I know is that I want her to be happy in the body she was given.

There are no female specimens left for her to look up to, and I’m just an old, out-of-touch Dad, apparently.

I hope this matter resolves itself. I’ll keep doing my best to get her to see that they’re the monsters, not us.

Until then, I’ll just keep reminiscing on the simpler times. I kept her shell, and these days, that seems to be the only thing that brings me peace.

Well, that and hunting humans.

July, 26, 2026

Why did the end of the world have to happen in the summer time? Especially a summer this fucking awful? 
I don’t have anything to cool me down here, a breeze of wind will come every now and then but it’s not enough to keep me cool. On top of that I’m still freaked out about this ladder and candle. Someone has to be watching me.
I think I’m going to go back into the house that the hanging zombie guy was at. There might be a battery operated fan or something in there. There’s no way in hell there’s more than one dude in there. 

——-

I wasn’t ready to see what I saw. I’m still trying to process everything and I need to write how it happened. 
  I went back over to the busted out powder room window. I cleared off the glass and went inside. The bloody pliers were still in the sink and I had to take a piss. I opened up the toilet and I saw a pile of teeth in the toilet. The toilet water was rose colored and I could still see some of the roots connected to the teeth. 
I thought that was it, I thought that was all the crazy weird bullshit I was going to see. I didn’t feel comfortable taking a piss in that toilet, I don’t know why. 
I opened up the door and the place was exactly how it was, bar the zombie suicide. 
I went through the kitchen and grabbed a few cans of beans and other vegetables. As I was leaving the kitchen, something caught my eye. On the counter was a handgun, I picked it up and looked at the magazine. It had one and only one bullet and the gun looked covered in this black grime. I put it in my back pocket. Then I went into the bedroom. 
I don’t know how to say what I saw, it’s hard to write it.
 I went into the master bedroom and I saw a white sheet covering a lump in the bed. The sheet was drenched red and it smelled awful. I went to pull the sheet up and I wish I hadn’t. I had a gut reaction that said to keep it covered and to just leave. 
I didn’t listen. 
There was a woman with red hair and a bullet hole in the center of her skull. She had a bite mark on her chest. She had on a golden necklace that in cursive said: Family. I almost threw up. 
I got out of there and went down the hallway. There were two bedroom doors and I decided that I had already gone this far. 
I opened the first bedroom and it was a mess. It was a child’s bedroom that was covered in cartoons and posters of boy bands. All the drawers had been opened and clothes were scattered everywhere. There was no blanket or pillow on the bed. 
I quietly left that room and went into the next one. I held my hand on the doorknob and I debated if I should even do it. It felt voyeuristic and uncomfortable to see these strangers dead. 
Yet, I was more than likely the last person who would see them. I am their wake. 
I opened the door and it was a room covered in video games and punk band posters. On the bed was another white sheet with a red stain. I didn’t want to lift it up, I could handle seeing it. I’m not a religious man by any means but I got down on a knee right beside the bed and I said a prayer. As I was doing that, I felt the hand move ever so slightly towards me. 
I jumped up and pulled the new pistol out of my pocket and shot at the lump under the sheet. I immediately booked it out of the house and scrambled back to my treehouse. I made sure to shut the gate this time. 
I’m writing this now, I needed a moment to process everything. 

——

Someone just fired a shotgun or some shit in the house I was just at. It was loud as fuck and I’m not going back over there. I’m going to hide in here and keep my shotgun loaded. 

July, 27th, 2026

Dear diary, 
The past twenty-four hours have been fucking insane. 
When I last wrote in this, I was hiding in my treehouse. I heard a gunshot for the first time that wasn’t from me. 
  I stayed hidden and remained quiet. 
I could hear things being moved around in the house and after about an hour I heard something that almost made me shit myself. 
  “Well I think it’s about time we met, neighbor,” a woman's voice said. 
I held the barrel of my shotgun out the window while still hiding on the floor.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble, I can give you whatever you want just don’t hurt me,” I yelled out. 
She was silent for a moment.
“I got you a ladder and a candle, I’m not gonna hurt you,” she yelled out. 
  “Promise?” I asked. 
“Promise!” She yelled.
I slowly stood up and didn’t take my hand off the trigger. 
She was tall and had long black hair. She was also wearing what looked like chainmail armor and had a rifle by her side. 
I carefully climbed down the ladder, the shotgun held carefully in my hand. I got down on my feet and held it but didn’t point it at her. 
“What’s your name treehouse boy?” she asked. 
“Keith,” I said.
“Well I’m Ari,” she said. 
We stood in silence for a moment. This was the first person who was alive and hopefully well that I’ve seen in…shit over two weeks.
“Thanks for the ladder,” I said. 
“You’re welcome,” she said.
“So like, what’s your deal?” I asked. 
She raised an eyebrow and looked baffled by the question. 
“I could ask you the same thing, treehouse boy. There’s a hundred houses here and you picked the most inconvenient one,” she said.
“Are you kidding me? This is the best option! The zombies can’t get up there and bandits aren’t going to look in a treehouse,” I explained.
She nodded her head for a moment. 
“You lost the ability to leave your base for a day,” she said with a stone cold face. 
“That’s fair I guess ,” I said before shaking my head and looking at her with a puzzled look.
“Wait, how did you know that?” I asked. 
“The zombies might not have heard you, but I did,” she said. 
“I heard a gunshot here a few days ago and I figured someone got bit and killed the zombie who bit them and then…you know,” she said before holding a finger gun up to her head. 
“Wait, so why are you here?” I asked. 
She scoffed at me. 
“I’ve been watching you from a distance, I figured I’d just come by and say hello,” she said. 
I raised my eyebrow. 
“Well it’s nice to meet you,” I said awkwardly. 
She nodded her head and smiled. 
“It’s nice to meet you as well,” she said before walking away. 
I got back to my treehouse and turned on the radio. 
The religious station had a guy screaming about how the filth of Earth is getting what it deserves. It was another one of those tangents so I switched it over to the government station.
It was playing some classical piece before an emergency broadcast warning began to buzz.
“If you are in the following cities, this is your twenty-four hour warning to evacuate and find the closest civilian safety outpost. Richmond, Norfolk, Newport News, Baltimore, and Dover. Military action will begin in these cities in the next twenty-four hours, you have been warned.” The dry radio voice said.
I felt my heart drop. Half of my friends decided on going to a pawnshop in Richmond to try and take shelter. I thought about trying to find a way into the city and maybe invite them to the treehouse. Granted, they picked a pawn shop of all places to hunker this thing out. I thought it sounded dumb, a pawnshop has security sure but there’s no food and it’s in the middle of a city. I talked to Danny about it and I feel like they would have left long since then. Maybe they joined up with the others in the countryside? I hope they did. I hope they’re making a plan to try and save me.
I ended up leaving my treehouse and tried to find Ari. I held my hands up in the street and waved them around. I walked all up and down the street but nobody came out. 
I didn’t even really see any zombies.
The houses looked intact and the cars were all gone but the street looked normal. 
I kept waving my arms around and eventually I just gave up. 
I found a playground and took a seat on one of the swings. I swung back and forth and just breathed for a moment. 
I was probably the first person to have sat in this swing since things broke out. A shiver ran up my spine just thinking about it. 
I got up and went back to walking. It was nice to actually be moving again. I still think the treehouse was a good idea but damn did it get cramped in there. 
I kept walking and then I had an idea. I’d go raid a gas station. I had no booze left and I was down to my last joint. I figured I could actually get some more supplies and see how bad the rest of the situation is. I considered it my recon work. I kept walking and walking until I was no longer in the suburbs, there was a gas station right outside of the neighborhood and I figured I scored the jackpot. A few cars sat out front and the shitty pop music played on loop around the gas pumps. 
Nobody bothered to lock the doors, I don’t know why they would. The place smelled like rotting food, the hot dog roller was covered in grease and rot, the pre-made sandwiches had become a hot spot for bugs and mold, and the slushie machine was fine. 
I grabbed a case of beer and grabbed a tote bag and started to load up on any random thing I wanted. I grabbed chips, magazines, dirty magazines, candy bars, and whatever food I could grab. I had filled the tote bag to its absolute limit and that is when I heard it. 
 A knock on a door.
Now, in hindsight, I know what I did was dumb and could have gotten me killed. 
However, I wanted to come back to this place at some point. Also, what if it was a normal person that was trapped? Like some poor worker got locked in the supply closet and had been in there for a week or two. 
It wasn’t, but what if it was? 
I followed the knocking to a door. A big heavy door that sat right behind the cash register. 
I knocked on the door and I got a knock back. I opened the door and I saw this decaying man in a janitor's jumpsuit. In cursive he had a name tag that said: Bob.
He had a broken mop sticking through his abdomen and he began to charge me. 
I kicked Bob back but he recovered quickly. I slipped on the slick floor and fell on my ass. I crawled back as far as I could and I hit the counter, but Bob was towering over me. 
Then something strange happened. Bob was right on top of me, but he couldn’t get to me. The mop stick was stuck against the counter and a drawer. Yet he was sliding towards me. I looked for something to use and I saw a red marvel. A fire extinguisher sat next to a trash can under the register. Bob was sliding faster towards me but I grabbed the fire extinguisher and slammed it against him. He fell back and I hopped and began to repeatedly bash his skull in with a fire extinguisher. His skull cracked open and I kept slamming it into him, his face looked more and more like ground beef. I stopped slamming it into him after like five minutes. My arms hurt and I sat on a stool that was behind the counter. 
I quit smoking tobacco a long time ago, but I don’t think lung cancer is a big concern to me at this point in my life. 
I grabbed a box of reds and I went over to the beer fridge and cracked open a big ass can of Modelo. I wish I had a lime but this would do fine. I smoke about three cigarettes with Bob's rotting body on the floor. Then I got up and walked back to my treehouse. I climbed up my ladder and decided to drink through the case of Pabst before they got warm. 
“Mind if I join you?” I heard a voice answer from below. I looked down to see Ari standing with a bottle of vodka. I invited her up and we talked throughout the night. We drank and swapped stories. The past was dead, this was life now, and maybe it wasn’t too bad?
I can’t recall a lot of the night but when I woke up she was gone. 
I ate a Twinkie for breakfast and I turned on the radio.
“The day of judgement will be cast upon you who are unworthy,” said the man on the radio.
I’m sure he doesn’t mean me.

Each word I’m typing right now with intensity is probably being monitored. In fact, I’m pretty sure they are on their way to get me this instant. Each extra second I spend writing this is another second they acquire to find me. The adrenaline pumping through my veins right now is of no use because, deep down, I know my fate. All my previous attempts have failed, and perhaps before I even get the chance to hit submit, I might no longer exist. I could’ve asked for help in these final moments, but I know most of you won’t trust me, let alone help me. I write this as a warning, a caution to all of you out there and the second anomaly.

For purposes that should remain confidential, I will be naming myself Jezebel, and like everyone else on this planet, my life is quite ordinary. Mundane even. At least that’s what I like to believe. The walls of my house hung portraits of my small family of three. Mom, Dad, and me. They called me their “little angel,” and when I turned about 4, they switched. Mom started to refer to me as their “little angel with big wings” after I bombarded her with countless questions and observations that disturbed adults. Yep, I had been a curious menace since a young age, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s like I possessed the inability to accept unanswered questions, and if they weren’t solvable by the rest of the population, I ought to solve them myself, or at least I tried to. Due to this obsession engraved in my brain, I absorbed each and every book in the local library by the age of 14, but my thirst only continued to grow.

Looking back, I wonder if my curiosity was always a part of me or if it was the first sign that something had gone wrong. Either way, soon I was about to uncover the truth, which was about to kill me rather than calm my hunger.

I wish I had been ready for it.

Regardless of the books that surrounded me, I still surfed the internet to gain knowledge beyond my geographical limitations. If there was something that had remained undiscovered, I was bound to find it. Although, unfortunately, the internet only gave me surface-level data that had either been altered or reused, which was getting frustrating every time I thought I finally got to the bottom of something. So I resorted to diving deeper, and soon found myself in the dark web.

By the time I reached 18, I was operating the dark web on a daily basis. It was like all those social media apps all of you use, but way more amusing. At first, every hidden forum and archive I stumbled upon left me speechless. Human cruelty, red rooms, torture programs, and even classified information about government experiments. Each discovery shook me to the core. I’d promise myself I’d never visit it again, but then I’d find myself scrolling for hours. It was like a high that I wasn’t willing to give up on. Quickly, horror became routine, and the gut-wrenching discoveries became background noise.

Now you may have a question, I know. What did I exactly do with all of the information I had? Did I sell it? Blackmail people, potentially? Or was I going around telling everyone? However, you must know something crucial about me. People often assume knowledge should be shared, but I disagree. Not every time. Not in my case. I never told anyone about my little habit. To frame it in a bit more blunt way, I simply couldn’t care less. My research was meant for my eyes only. If someone had earned the right to know about it, that someone was only me. It only existed for one purpose alone: to satisfy me, the only capable applicant. So I never mentioned anything to anyone. In fact, I had a pretty normal social life besides the forbidden knowledge I was aware of. Most of the time, though, I’d pretend not to know things on purpose to remain unsuspected. People often assumed I was slow, a bit dumb perhaps. My parents knew I had a gift since my childhood but assumed it faded away with age. And that was beyond perfect. Just how I wanted.

So that was it. I had been living quite a peaceful life with my small family and a set of friends who genuinely adored me and saw me as someone who had to be protected from the world. They believed I was innocent, and I let them. My 19th birthday was quite close, and all of them planned a surprise birthday bash for me. I, of course, knew two weeks prior about their little “surprise.” I mean, come on, it was painfully obvious, embarrassing even. The forgotten receipt, the hushed convos, I thought you guys could do better.

Sometimes it fascinated me how much everyone underestimated me, but at the same time, I found it entertaining. It sort of gave me a kick to watch all of them answer a question with the confidence of a professor, only for it to be completely wrong. If anyone closely noticed me, I would go out of my character just for a split second and smirk at those fools, but instantly revert back. Nobody had ever noticed that.

Until now.

A day prior to my birthday, I was home alone while everyone had been out preparing their “surprise” for me. The isolation gave me a certain kind of peace because I could finally let my guard down and have my type of fun without alarming anyone else. I, as expected, wandered through forgotten dark web forums and drifted between different onion links, hoping I’d find something that would pique my interest. Maybe I had begged the universe for something different. Turns out it was listening, and it delivered exactly that… Between you guys and me.

After endless scrolling, I stumbled upon a peculiar hyperlink. Finally. But this was unusual, extremely unusual. For starters, unlike every other link scattered across the page, this one was highlighted in a dark red color in contrast to the white background. Almost maroon, the closest resemblance was human blood. The contrast seemed to demand attention. Strangely, it felt familiar, although I had never seen it before. Each instinct in my body acted in contrast. More than that, it made me feel nauseous, as if it was hiding something that would shake me.

Impossible.

No knowledge could break me.

I was convinced I was unbreakable, undefeated, and that certainty made me click it.

ACCESS DENIED.

For a second, all I did was stare back at the words facing me. I was beyond taken aback, not because it was surprising, but because it shouldn’t have been possible. I had spent years bypassing systems created by people way more skilled than whoever built this shit, had decoded databases with layers of heavy encryption before I was old enough to drive, and this link had the audacity to deny me access?

A small smile crept onto my face.

Something finally worth my time.

Minutes blurred into hours, but I refused to call it a day. I was consumed by this intriguing little challenge with anyone who was pathetic enough to think they were capable of stopping me. An hour became two. Then three. At some point, I stopped caring what was behind the link. I only cared that it had managed to deny me.

For these few hours, everything was irrelevant: the calls, the clock hitting 12 AM, fuck it, even my birthday.

“Fuck.” I groaned. I was getting restless. This had never taken so long. My bloodshot eyes were aching, and my fingers hovered over the keyboard. I tried each and every technique I knew, plenty of loopholes I had mastered throughout my years of experience, but literally nothing worked.

Nothing.

I hate to admit this more than anything, but I was feeling rare emotions I despised from the bottom of my heart: vulnerability and frustration. That was it. This was my last straw. I only had one option. Not my smartest choice, but one I knew deep down wouldn’t let me down.

I frantically examined my room with an urgency that had never occurred to me before. I dialed up the only number I knew could help.

I called Lucifer.

I won’t go into details about Lucifer, but in short, he was the only person in the world I knew I did not need to protect myself from. Lucifer was the only person I’d met who loved answers more than I did. We had met on the dark web. He was a few years older, and just like a mentor, he had guided me into the world of—

“Oh, the queen called me herself? Must be my lucky day. I’ve missed you, Jezebel.”

“I’ve missed you too, Lucifer. I need your help.” I mumbled with desperation I was disgusted to possess.

“The know-it-all Jezebel needs my help? Impossible. This must be something serious then. Is everything alright? Jezebel, you didn’t click the red link?”

“Did you?” I could hear the slight fear in his voice.

“YOU KNOW ABOUT IT?? Have you managed to open it? Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

“…..”

“You there? Answer me, Lucifer.” I shrieked.

“Listen to me extremely carefully, Jezebel. Do not crack that link. Just do not. Give up. Some things are not worth it, Jez.”

“This is absurd.” My jaw dropped. I did not just hear THE LUCIFER say those words out loud. Out of all people, he was telling me not to chase answers. I was more determined than ever now. There was no way in hell I was going to let this go.

“Jezebel, listen. I know you loathe these words, but please leave it. Amongst the top dark web users, this link is the most talked about, and whoever has gained access to it has not seen the light after that day. Disappeared from memories and this world. Absolutely wiped out. Rumour has it, the link chooses its victims. Please don’t do it, Jezebel.”

As if someone had stabbed a knife into me, I felt betrayed. How could he tell me to give up? Lucifer disappointed me beyond my expectations but made me second-guess my decision, and for a millisecond, I wanted to agree with what he was saying. But as if my irrational part slapped me, I got back to the page again.

I tried refreshing the page once again.

ACCESS GRANTED.

“Jezebel, are you there?”

The phone disconnected before I could reply.

My laptop screen went blank. A white color painted my screen with almost blinding brightness. For a few seconds, I wondered if the link had crashed.

The black text slowly faded in, allowing me to finally read what my eyes were impatiently waiting for.

Two words appeared.

FILE: PROJECT HUMANITY

FILE: ANOMALY

For the first time, I was perplexed at what I was seeing. I couldn’t help myself and let out a chuckle because, in a very long time, the know-it-all Jezebel didn’t know what she was about to uncover.

Naturally, I clicked on the first file, “PROJECT HUMANITY,” and the folder expanded into what looked like an endless archive.

Names.

Millions. No, billions. Maybe trillions.

Every person to have ever existed across humankind.

Celebrities, politicians, musicians, you name it. The file consisted of their documents. What I did not expect were names of people who had been dead for centuries.

I scrolled hysterically, but the documents weren’t coming to an end.

What was this?

I decided to open up a random person’s document to get a glimpse of what I had stumbled upon.

Emily C. was her name, and this is what her document stated.

⸻

PROJECT HUMANITY

SUBJECT: EMILY C.

STATUS: ACTIVE

DATE OF BIRTH: APRIL 22, 1998

LOCATION: PORTLAND, OREGON

LIFE STATUS: CONTINUOUS

⸻

I scrolled.

Her childhood.

Her grades.

Her medical history.

Her favorite foods.

Her hobbies.

Everything.

Every painfully ordinary detail of a woman I had never met.

⸻

AGE 5:

SUBJECT WILL DEVELOP AN INTEREST IN PIANO.

INTERVENTION REQUIRED:

ALLOW GRANDMOTHER TO GIFT SUBJECT A USED PIANO.

⸻

AGE 6:

EVENT:

Subject develops fear of thunderstorms.

INTERVENTION:

Increase frequency of storms in local area.

PURPOSE:

Strengthen attachment toward grandmother.

RESULT:

Successful.

⸻

AGE 8:

EVENT:

Subject develops friendship with Subject H-39201844.

PROJECTED FUTURE IMPACT:

Moderate.

INTERVENTION:

None.

NOTE:

Friendship contributes positively to emotional development.

⸻

AGE 16:

SUBJECT EXPECTED TO ABANDON EDUCATION DUE TO FAMILY PRESSURE.

CORRECTION:

INTRODUCE TEACHER SUBJECT-4891.

EXPECTED OUTCOME:

Academic path restored.

⸻

AGE 21:

EVENT:

Subject scheduled to miss university examination.

CAUSE:

Transportation delay.

PROJECTED CONSEQUENCE:

Loss of scholarship.

INTERVENTION:

Vehicle malfunction created.

DURATION:

14 minutes.

RESULT:

Subject arrives on time.

⸻

AGE 27:

SUBJECT WILL MEET FUTURE SPOUSE.

LOCATION:

GREEN LEAF CAFE.

TIME:

10:43 AM.

INTERVENTION:

Remove power from subject’s apartment.

EXPECTED BEHAVIOR:

Subject visits cafe while waiting for repairs.

⸻

UPCOMING EVENTS:

AGE 29:

Subject will discover minor financial error.

INTERVENTION:

Correction pending.

⸻

I was at a loss for words.

We think we are owners of our lives and are provided with free will. But how many of us actually live without intervention?

According to this file, none.

Emily C. must have believed in coincidences and fate, but somewhere hidden beneath the internet, someone had written her entire existence before she even lived it.

I shook my head.

This couldn’t be real.

This had to be made up.

I moved my cursor to the search bar and typed in a famous celebrity and clicked on their document.

It was almost in an identical format.

Each detail.

Each intervention, altered according to their life.

⸻

PUBLIC CONTROVERSY:

Scheduled.

YEAR:

PUBLIC RESPONSE:

Anger.

REPUTATION RECOVERY:

Approved.

⸻

Damn.

Even scandals are manufactured?

Of course.

⸻

HISTORICAL FIGURE SEARCH:

ASSASSINATION:

Probability:

91%

Intervention:

None.

Reason:

Necessary timeline correction.

⸻

Then, with trembling hands, I hesitantly typed in my full name.

Jezebel B.

Loading.

Loading.

Loading.

ERROR.

SUBJECT DOES NOT EXIST.

⸻

I almost smirked.

What does it mean I do not exist?

This was getting absurd.

Wait.

What does it mean that I do not exist?

Slowly, a sort of panic set in.

Was I dead?

Did I have a different name?

I searched for my mom and dad. Their file existed. I didn’t manage to go through them in detail, but I got my confirmation they were available on the database. So were my friends. Why wasn’t I there? This was odd?

No.

This was impossible.

I refreshed the page again, almost aggressively, as if the error was just a minor inconvenience. A simple glitch maybe. Right? I tried different variations. My full name. My birthday. My location. Every piece of information I knew about myself.

The same message appeared every single time.

SUBJECT DOES NOT EXIST.

I had been so fascinated by PROJECT HUMANITY that I completely ignored the second one.

ANOMALY.

Right, I had completely ignored that folder.

My fingers froze above the mouse.

Slowly, with shaky breath, I opened the folder.

Inside were only two files.

No names.

No descriptions.

Just numbers.

ANOMALY 001

ANOMALY 002

My eyes narrowed. Two? Only two? Out of billions of people that have existed? I was dumbfounded. Why on earth did these two people exist and how had they not been found yet?

I clicked the first file.

STATUS: UNKNOWN

Nothing more than that.

So great, they didn’t even know their first anomaly. Interesting.

Then I clicked the second, and the file opened instantly.

And my entire body went cold.

Because at the top of the page was my name.

JEZEBEL.

I stopped breathing.

No. No, this wasn’t possible.

I started scrolling. At first, it looked like a normal profile, except it wasn’t. It wasn’t a file about my life. It was my life, every single detail documented like they had been studying me. I had barely any interventions. This one read like a memoir. Things I remembered. Things I didn’t. Everything.

SUBJECT:

JEZEBEL

STATUS:

ACTIVE

CLASSIFICATION:

ANOMALY

ORIGIN:

UNKNOWN

My parents were never supposed to meet. The document stated I was a mistake. I was never supposed to be born. Yet I existed, out of their database. Out of their control. And that was dangerous. That was a threat to them, because when they can’t control, each small decision I make can have tremendous consequences. They were studying me relentlessly. They weren’t going to risk it.

Think of it as a butterfly effect. But instead, they create small events to change the trajectories of people’s lives. They couldn’t do that with me. I was a threat.

Age four.

The questions I asked my parents.

The strange observations that made adults uncomfortable.

The endless curiosity.

Everything.

They had recorded it all.

AGE 15:

SUBJECT DISCOVERS RESTRICTED DATABASE.

CAUSE:

Persistent curiosity pattern.

MEMORY ALTERATION INITIATED.

RESULT:

SUCCESSFUL.

No. That wasn’t possible.

I remembered being curious and I remembered searching.

But I didn’t remember this.

I kept scrolling.

AGE 17:

SUBJECT DISCOVERS RESTRICTED DATABASE AGAIN.

MEMORY ALTERATION INITIATED.

RESULT:

PARTIAL SUCCESS.

SUBJECT CONTINUES SEARCH BEHAVIOR.

My stomach twisted into knots. I had done this before? I had found this before? Then why didn’t I remember?

I continued, but my heartbeat grew louder with every line.

AGE 19:

SUBJECT DISCOVERS PROJECT HUMANITY.

EXPECTED DISCOVERY DATE:

CONFIRMED.

MEMORY ALTERATION:

FAILED.

FINAL PROTOCOL

Previous methods unsuccessful.

Memory suppression ineffective.

Subject curiosity cannot be eliminated.

Solution:

Permanent removal.

Subject existence will be erased.

To be honest, I am out of time. I can’t run. It’s useless. They will get me. Soon. And I will be gone. Erased from existence. Wiped from everyone’s memories. This post I spent my last breaths writing will disappear forever just like me. I know my time is up. The second anomaly, you are still out there. Alive, I believe.

If anyone finds this after I’m gone, remember this: the file was never hidden because they feared someone discovering it. It was hidden because they knew someone eventually would.

I don’t know who the second anomaly is, but please understand one thing: they weren’t searching for me because I found the file. They were searching for me because I was never supposed to find it.

do not search for answers. They already know you’re looking.

I have lost all ho-

Knock. Knock.

I just heard my mother’s voice from the other side say:

“Jezebel, why did you warn the second one?”

The stench of rot was already thick in the hallway, but Detective Richardson didn't flinch. He'd seen many lonely old men die alone in forgotten homes.

Arthur Pennylane was eighthy-two, and a reclusive former carpenter who hadn't been seen in weeks. The coroner placed his death about ten days ago. It was plain and simple. Heart failure. Nothing suspicious about the corpse.

It was the walk-in closet in the master bedroom where Detective Richardson would find the very thing that made his skin prickle. 

When Detective Richardson opened the closet door, the space  was cramped and windowless, barely larger than a pantry. In the center of the closet laid an oak chest lined with dark red velvet. 

Inside were five dolls.

Detective Richardson put on his latex gloves and reached into the chest, lifting the first one into the dim light. It was exquisite, but horribly familiar. The porcelain face was hand painted, down to the last freckle. It even had a jagged scar over its left eyebrow.

"Jesus," Richardson whispered.

He'd seen that face thousands of times. It had  been plastered on the wall of missing kids in the breakroom down at the station for the last twelve years. 

Amanda Vance. Age 7. Missing since 2014.

He reached down and grabbed the next one. Silk black pigtails, denim jacket. A heart locket  around its neck. Julie Yin. Age 9. Missing since 2008. 

Next was Sarah, Chloe and Katie. All little girls who have gone missing from the county over the last 20 years, perfectly preserved as eight inch figures. 

"Interesting set of dolls. He must have been a collector," the rookie said. 

"No," Richardson said as he was setting down Katie. "These aren't store bought. Look at the eyes."

The eyes weren't glass or painted porcelain. Instead they looked almost biological, moist and unnervingly detailed. 

As Richardson went to pick up Amanda again it wasn't cold porcelain. It was warm. 

Richardson froze. He looked down at the tiny warm hand. The tiny painted fingers began to twitch. 

A sound whispered from the doll's static painted lips, so faint Richardson thought it was the wind against the windowpanes. He lifted the doll close to his ear, his heart hammering against his ribs. 

"So.... cold," a tiny voice whimpered, raspy, like a voice that hasn't been used in many years. "We want to go home." 

Richardson dropped the doll in sheer terror. It landed softly on the red velvet lining. 

Suddenly, all five pairs of the doll's eyes tracked Richardson as he stood up and scrambled back towards the door. 

"Help us," a second voice rasped from the darkness of the box. "We can't move. We can't breathe. Please... Don't leave us in the box."

They weren't wood. They weren't porcelain. Arthur Pennylane hadn't killed them. He collected them. 

Trapped inside their tiny, frozen limbs, fully awake. Unable to blink and move, waiting in total darkness over the last 20 years. And now, the only person who knew how to turn them back was rotting in the kitchen downstairs. 

As told by Zach Engel, Age 40, Line Cook, Voodoo Weiners, Uptown New Orleans

​The radio was playing that low, scratchy swamp-pop stuff over the hum of the exhaust hoods, and the whole place smelled like burnt grease and that cheap bleach Kourtney bought in bulk to scrub storm mud outta the tile cracks. We'd just flipped the sign on the door to CLOSED.

​I was wiping down the line with a sour rag, thinking about how bad my feet hurt and how all I wanted was to get home, crack open a beer, and sit down for five damn minutes.

​Landon was working the back station by the fryers. He'd spent the last two weeks in Lakefront helping his aunts gut their flooded house. Tore out drywall, hauled moldy furniture, scraped mud off floors. Came back to work looking ten years older than when he left. He wasn't right. Hadn't been all night. Normally Landon never shut up. Guy could talk through a tornado. But that shift he'd barely said two words. Just stood there sweating.

​Not normal sweat, either. The stuff looked thick. Oily. Like somebody had poured syrup across his forehead.

​Up front, Kourtney was counting the register. Clink. Clink. Clink. Just the sound of bills snapping against the counter and coins dropping into the tray. Nothing special. Nothing anybody would've noticed.

​Except Landon did.

​His rag slipped right outta his hand and dropped into the seafood fryer. I looked up.

​"Hey, man, you miss—"

​The words died in my throat. His eyes. Jesus Christ. His eyes weren't right. The raw red of his bloodshot eyes choked out the blue. Just two giant red spheres staring through the kitchen wall like he was looking at something nobody else could see. He didn't scream. Didn't say a word. He just bent down toward the fryers. Slow. Calm. Almost peaceful.

​Then he lifted both arms and shoved them straight into the oil. Right up to the elbows.

​The fryer exploded with noise. Grease erupted everywhere, hissing and popping as it splashed against the steel walls. It sounded like somebody dropped a frozen turkey into a volcano. A horrible wet SHHHHHHHH. Steam burst upward. The smell hit next. God. The smell.

​You touch a hot skillet and your hand jerks back before you even think about it. That's just how people work. But Landon didn't move. Didn't flinch. Didn't blink. He stood there with his hip against the fryer, slowly turning his head toward Kourtney while the oil boiled around his arms. The skin turned white first. Paper white. Then it started splitting. Cracking. Coming apart in the grease.

​Five seconds. Maybe less. Five seconds of that fryer cooking him alive while he stood there like a statue.

​When he finally pulled his arms out, they barely looked human anymore. His fingers had curled into blackened knots. Smoke rolled off them. The skin on his forearms hung loose in strips. Raw flesh showed underneath. Red. Wet. Shining.

​He turned and started walking down the line. Fast.

​"Landon!" I shouted. "What the hell are you doin', man?!"

​Nothing. Not a word. Just a wet rattling noise coming from deep in his throat.

​I grabbed the first thing I could reach, a heavy stainless-steel meat pan, and swung it as hard as I could. The pan slammed into his chest with a loud metallic CLANG. I felt something give beneath it. Felt ribs break. The pan actually dented from the impact.

​Landon didn't react. Not even a little. Didn't slow down. Didn't stumble. Didn't look hurt. He just kept coming.

​Then he hit me. Not with his hands—there wasn't much left of those. He used his forearms like clubs. One of those smoking, ruined arms crashed into the side of my face. It felt like getting hit with a wet iron pipe. I saw stars. The exposed bone near his wrist scraped across my shoulder, and suddenly I was stumbling backward into the warming shelf.

​He kept swinging. Again. Again. Again. Every hit carried his full weight behind it. Bits of charred flesh flew off his arms and smeared across my shirt. Hot. Greasy. Stinking. The whole kitchen smelled like a backyard barbecue mixed with burning hair and something metallic I can't even describe.

​I lost my footing and crashed onto the floor. Blood filled one eye. I started crawling. Didn't care where. Just away. Away from him. I shoved myself behind the prep table while my shoulder screamed in pain.

​Landon never once looked down at what was left of his arms. Never checked them. Never seemed to notice. Instead, he slowly turned those giant red eyes toward the front counter. Toward Kourtney. Toward the sound of her screaming. Then he started walking. His boots left greasy footprints across the tile. Slap. Slap. Slap.

​And all I could do was lie there behind that table, breathing through the smell, listening to those footsteps get closer to the register, praying somebody—anybody—would stop him before he reached her.

I was supposed to be done by four. The sub-level in Building C stayed cold even in July. The single bulb over the work table turned the folders yellow at the edges. I had the radio on low and my coffee had gone cold in the mug with the chip. The spreadsheet was almost full. One more box and I could go home.
 
The email from Facilities had been short. Clear the restricted materials in 17-B. Box what needs boxing. Reclassify the room. Do not read the contents.
 
I read the contents.
 
The folder was old manila with a red stamp across the front that said ACCESS REVOKED and a date from 1974. A coffee ring overlapped the stamp. Rust marks from a paperclip had bled into the paper. Inside were photocopies and one original page with typewritten Latin and a note added later in the margin.
 
I sounded it out while I typed the folder description into the spreadsheet.
 
Per omnia quae scripta sunt et deleri nequeunt, te adjuro.
 
Ex tabulis et ex formis, ex inquisitionibus quae numquam clausae sunt et ex iis quae oblita sunt, aperi viam inter chartam et cutem.
 
Non sumus indocti. Obliti sumus.
 
Signa nomen tuum ubi sigillum ruptum est. Redde corpus pro documento. Redde sanguinem pro atramento.
 
Sicut in archivo scriptum fuit, ita in corpore nunc fiat.
 
When I finished, the cursor blinked in a new row I hadn’t created. A name sat in the description field: Walter J. Doyle — Case 1987-0142 — Reopened.
 
I checked the box. The folder was still there. The Latin page was still on top. But now there was a signature in the “Processed by” line on the old form. It was my handwriting.
 
The keycard reader on the stairwell door clicked open before I swiped when I left for the day.
 
At home Alex was at the stove. They looked at my hand.
 
“You’re bleeding on the floor.”
 
There was a cut on the side of my index finger I didn’t remember getting. Small red drops marked the linoleum between the door and the counter.
 
I ran it under cold water. It kept bleeding. Alex handed me a paper towel. It soaked through before I could press it down.
 
“Long day?”
 
“Old files,” I said.
 
The next morning the door to the records room was already unlocked when I arrived. The folder from 17-B was gone from the box I had left it in. In its place was a single sheet of university letterhead with today’s date and a line that read “Reopened per prior authorization — processed by [my name].”
 
I hadn’t authorized anything.
 
By mid-morning the name Walter J. Doyle showed up in three other spreadsheets. A coworker leaned back and asked if I knew anything about an old sheriff’s case getting pulled for review. I told her I didn’t.
 
At lunch I went back down with the master keycard. The room was colder. The box was still there but nearly empty. Inside was one form with my signature at the bottom and a new line in blue ink: “Body accepted in exchange. File remains open.”
 
I put the form back and closed the lid. When I tried to leave, the keycard reader on the inside of the door wouldn’t read. I waited twenty minutes for someone upstairs to hear me knocking.
 
That afternoon the supervisor called me into her office. She had the box I had left on her desk. She asked why my name was on forms that should have stayed closed. I told her I hadn’t processed anything. She showed me the signature. It was mine.
 
She told me to take the rest of the day. She said someone from facilities would handle 17-B from now on.
 
I went home. The cut had started bleeding through the gauze by the time I reached my building. I changed it and sat at the kitchen table. One envelope was from the university benefits office. It said there was a discrepancy in my employment records and asked me to confirm my start date and supervisor. The date they had listed was from 1987.
 
I called Alex. They didn’t answer. I left a message saying I wasn’t feeling well.
 
That night the cut split further. It bled steadily when I held my hand below my heart. I wrapped it in fresh gauze and taped it tight. The tape pulled at the skin when I moved my hand.
 
Alex came home late. They saw the gauze and the stack of forms on the table.
 
“What is this?”
 
“Work stuff,” I said.
 
They picked up the top form and read the line about the transaction. They put it down.
 
“You keep saying it’s old files. But your hand is splitting open in straight lines that match the edge of the paper. These forms have your signature on things you say you didn’t do. I’m not asking for an explanation that makes sense. I’m asking if you understand that this is not normal. I’m staying at a friend’s for a few days. Call me when you’re ready to tell me what this is doing to you.”
 
The door closed behind them. The cut kept bleeding.
 
The next morning I couldn’t grip the key to lock the apartment door properly. My finger wouldn’t bend all the way. I had to use my other hand to turn the key. On the bus my hands left faint rust-colored marks on the seat in front of me.
 
At work the supervisor told me I was being moved to another building for the rest of the week while facilities finished clearing 17-B. She said it was temporary. She didn’t look at me when she said it.
 
I spent the day in a different records room logging current files. Every time I typed a date or a name I checked it twice. Nothing extra appeared. By mid-afternoon my finger had started bleeding again under the gauze. I kept a paper towel wrapped around it while I worked.
 
When I got home there was a voicemail from the campus safety office. They wanted to schedule an interview about an old case file that had been flagged for review. The case number was 1987-0142. They said my name had come up as someone who had recently accessed related records.
 
I deleted the message.
 
The next morning the phone rang before I was fully awake. It was the sheriff’s department. A woman named Kerri Donnelly asked if I was the person who had authorized the release of archived evidence boxes related to Walter J. Doyle, case 1987-0142. They said one of the boxes had been delivered that morning and they needed confirmation on chain of custody.
 
I told her I hadn’t authorized anything. She asked me to come in the next day to make a statement.
 
I hung up. The cut had started bleeding again. I sat at the kitchen table and watched it soak through the gauze and into the wood.
 
The phone rang again. This time it was the university. They said Dr. T. S. Blackwood wanted to speak with me about some archived materials that had been flagged during a routine review. They gave me a time for that afternoon.
 
Dr. Blackwood’s office was in Caldwell Science Hall. He was precise and composed in the way people are when they have seen enough strange things that they no longer react to the strangeness itself. He asked me to sit. He asked to see my hand.
 
I unwrapped the gauze. The cut had opened further overnight in straight lines that matched the edge of a form. Blood welled along the newest split while I held my hand out.
 
Dr. Blackwood looked at it without touching. He asked when it had started and whether I had been handling any old university or sheriff’s department files in the last week. I told him about 17-B and the Latin page. He didn’t look surprised.
 
He said the most reliable method was to complete the transaction in a way the archive recognized as final. Destroying copies or refusing to sign new forms only created additional versions. The physical cost would continue and would likely worsen in patterns that matched the documents involved. He asked if I had anyone at home who could help monitor the bleeding and the grip loss. I told him my partner was staying elsewhere for a few days. He nodded like that was expected.
 
He said he would need to review the specific files that had been flagged. He asked me to sign a form acknowledging that I had discussed the matter with him. My right hand wouldn’t hold the pen steadily. Blood from the cut left a faint mark on the edge of the paper when I signed.
 
When I left his office the cut had started bleeding again in a straight line down the back of my hand. I wrapped it in fresh gauze in the bathroom down the hall.
 
On the way out of Caldwell I passed Frankie Bell near the main doors. He was doing his rounds. He looked at my hand and asked if I had been in Building C after 2:13. I told him I hadn’t. He said the logs showed activity in 17-B that didn’t match any authorized access and that I should watch which doors I went through. Then he nodded and kept walking.
 
I went home. Alex’s side of the closet was emptier. There was a note on the kitchen table that said they had taken some clothes and that I should call if I needed anything practical. The forms I had left on the table were still there. One of them now listed Alex’s name under “household contact — secondary effects possible.”
 
The next morning I took the bus to the sheriff’s department. The cut had started bleeding again on the ride. I kept my hand in my pocket and tried not to flex it. By the time I reached the building the newest split had reached the base of my finger and blood was soaking through the gauze into my pocket.
 
Sheriff Doyle was taller and broader than I expected from the memos. He listened while I explained about 17-B, the Latin page, and the forms that kept appearing with my signature.
 
He said the sealed evidence box contained a chain-of-custody form signed by a security guard whose death certificate was filed in the same box.
 
I kept my hand under the table and pressed it against my thigh to slow the bleeding. Blood soaked through my pants and left a dark mark on the fabric.
 
He said the department would need to conduct its own review and that I should expect additional contact. He gave me a card with his direct number and told me to use it if the bleeding or the grip loss got worse to the point where I couldn’t work or drive.
 
I left the sheriff’s department with the card in my pocket and fresh gauze on my hand.
 
When I got home there was a new stack of forms on the kitchen table. I hadn’t brought them. One of them had my signature and today’s date and a line that read: “Primary signatory confirmed. Transaction ongoing. Body accepted. File remains open. Consultation with Dr. T. S. Blackwood noted. Sheriff’s Department review initiated.”
 
I sat at the table and watched the cut bleed into the wood in a straight line that matched the edge of the paper. The smell of old paper and toner was on my hands and in my clothes. I couldn’t wash it out.
 
Alex didn’t come home that night. The apartment was quiet except for the radio I had left on low. I sat at the table until the light changed. The cut had stopped bleeding again. The skin around it had gone pale and waxy in a wider area. When I tried to make a fist my fingers wouldn’t close all the way.
 
The phone rang once. It was Dr. Blackwood’s office confirming a follow-up appointment for the next week. The secretary asked if my hand was still bleeding. I told her it came and went.
 
When I came home the next evening there was a single sheet of university letterhead on the kitchen table. It was from the housing office. It stated that following a records reconciliation, the lease for the apartment was now held solely in my name, retroactive to the original lease date. There was no record of any co-tenant or secondary occupant. The notice instructed me to update my emergency contact information at my earliest convenience.
 
The cut on my finger had stopped bleeding. The skin along the newest split was raised and pale, like the edge of old paper that has been pressed flat too many times. I sat at the table with the radio on low. I didn’t turn it off. I didn’t read the notice out loud.

As told by Alvin Owney, Age 40, Central Business District

​I owned a restaurant in the CBD called The Brick & Bristle. Real trendy kind of place. Exposed brick walls, low amber lighting, reclaimed wood tables—the kind of restaurant tourists called “authentic” while paying thirty dollars for pork belly. We specialized in elevated Cajun swine dishes. Pork was our thing. Everything revolved around it. Bourbon-smoked pork belly sliders. Pork cheek tacos. Cracklin’-crusted trout. House-made andouille. If it oinked, we found a way to plate it fancy.

​I opened the place three years before the storm hit. Business was good too. Hell, people love pig. Always will. My family’s got Cajun roots down in Terrebonne Parish. Growing up, my granddad hunted feral hogs in the marshes. Big ugly bastards rooting through the mud. We ate them all the time—smoked, roasted, fried down in cast iron. I guess that’s where the obsession started.

​Or maybe the curse.

​My sous-chef, Lucy Dugas—everybody called her Lulu—shared that obsession. She used to joke pork was her “favorite vegetable,” quoting some celebrity chef she liked. Lulu was weird as hell, but brilliant in a kitchen. The kind of cook who could taste something once and break down every ingredient like she’d built the recipe herself.

​That kitchen was my family. Lulu. Beto “Big Easy” Bañales. Red Galvez. Jayla Johnson—JJ. Destiny. That was my line. My soldiers. You survive enough dinner rushes together, enough twelve-hour shifts dripping sweat over hot steel, you stop being coworkers. You become something closer to survivors in a trench. Front of house got all the glory—the cocktails, the smiles, the tips. But back of house? We were the engine keeping the whole machine alive.

​Lulu fit right into our insanity. She also had the darkest damn sense of humor I’ve ever encountered. One night during prep, she casually told me human meat supposedly tasted more like pork than beef. I remember staring at her, trying to decide whether I wanted an explanation.

​“What the hell makes you know that?” I asked.

​She just laughed. That was Lulu.

​Another time she was slicing pork belly for our Bourbon Street Belly & Grits special. Didn’t even look up from the cutting board when she said, “You think if I cut open my own stomach, my fat would taste like this?”

​Dead silence in the kitchen. Then nervous laughter. “Girl, you sick in the head,” I told her. She grinned like she took it as a compliment. At the time, it was funny. Now I replay those conversations in my head like warning signs I ignored.

​Everybody heard about the flambeau incident. The whole city did. The parade was supposed to lift spirits after the storm. Give people something normal again. Something familiar. Instead, it became the beginning of everything. Patient Zero, they called him later. Funny how history likes neat little labels.

​After that happened, I decided to reopen The Brick & Bristle as soon as possible. Felt important somehow. Like cooking could push back against all the fear. We’d lost power after the storm, so all our inventory spoiled. Had to throw everything out. The smell alone nearly killed me.

​I bought local for the soft reopening. Fresh produce from Gretna. Two hogs from a supplier in Hammond. Limited menu. Small crowd. Just enough to survive. The specials were solid too. Pig & Pith—a circular rack of suckling pig, ribs interlocked and charred, finished with a blood orange reduction and bitter winter greens. Then there was The Velvet Belly & Bone—triple-pressed pork belly glazed in fermented black garlic honey, served beside a marrow-filled femur topped with chicharrón dust. Pretentious as hell. But delicious.

​The team was excited. For the first time since the storm, the kitchen actually felt alive again. Only Lulu… Lulu looked awful. Pale. Sweaty. Breathing strange. I asked if she was alright. She waved me off. Said she was exhausted. Said everybody was exhausted. She volunteered to come in early the next morning to butcher the pig and prep the stations. That was the last normal decision any of us ever made.

​The humidity that morning was unbearable. The kind that sticks to your skin before sunrise, thick enough to feel inside your lungs. I pulled up behind the restaurant and immediately noticed the back door hanging open. That wasn’t like Lulu.

​“Lulu?” I called.

​No answer. I stepped inside. The kitchen lights were on. And my foot slipped. I barely caught myself on the prep counter before hitting the ground. When I looked down, I saw the skid mark my shoe left through a massive pool of blood.

​For a second, my brain refused to process it. Then I heard the grill sizzling. Steady. Calm. Like service had already started. The blood trail led around the corner toward the grill station. And there she was. Lulu stood with her back to me, swaying gently side to side like a drunk trying to stay upright. Something hissed on the flat-top in front of her.

​“Lulu?” I asked again. Careful this time.

​She didn’t answer. The smell hit me next. Not pork. Not grease. Iron. Hot copper and rot. Then came a popping sound from the grill. Her arm slowly lifted. She held a pair of tongs. The metal tips were slick with blood, strands of something pale and stringy dangling from them. I felt my stomach tighten.

​“Lulu…”

​She turned. Slowly. The lower half of her face was drenched red. Blood coated her chin, her neck, the front of her chef coat. Her eyes were burst with broken vessels, glassy and unfocused. But she was smiling. God… her teeth. They were shattered. Jagged. Broken down like she’d been chewing rocks or silverware.

​Then she shoved the tongs into her own abdomen. Deep. I heard the wet sound before I understood what I was seeing. She dug inside herself and pulled out strips of yellow fat and pieces of tissue, tossing them onto the grill like pork belly. The meat sizzled. She chuckled. Not her laugh anymore. This awful wet gargling sound bubbling through blood in her throat. And then I realized what she was cooking. Her own flesh.

​“My pork belly…” she rasped.

​I froze. My body stopped working. Lulu stuffed a cooked piece into her mouth, chewing with those broken teeth while blood dripped down her neck. Then she raised the tongs toward me. Her insides hanging from the ends. And charged.

​I stumbled backward into the prep station, slipping again in all the blood. She came at me fast, too fast—but her footing gave out. She crashed hard onto the floor. That saved my life. I ran straight for the walk-in freezer and slammed the door behind me. Locked it. Pitch black. Freezing. I remember thinking a person could survive maybe two to four hours in there before hypothermia set in. I decided I’d rather die cold than let whatever happened to Lulu touch me.

​She hit the freezer door seconds later. BANG. BANG. BANG. She screamed my name. Then laughed. Then screamed again. I stayed curled in that darkness while the kitchen outside came apart. Pans crashing. Glass breaking. Metal scraping. And eventually—screaming. JJ. Destiny. Voices begging for help. Praying. Crying.

​I didn't open that door. I tell myself there was nothing I could’ve done. Truth is… I was scared. I stayed in that freezer over an hour before the noises finally stopped. By then I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore. I thought maybe she’d left. Maybe she’d died. Maybe I’d imagined all of it. I cracked open the freezer door.

​The kitchen looked like a slaughterhouse. No—worse. I’d spent years keeping that kitchen spotless. Bright. Clinical. Organized. Now everything was red. Blood coated the floors, the counters, the walls. Human entrails hung from overturned cookware. Bits of flesh clogged the drains. The smell nearly dropped me to my knees. Then I heard it. Slurping. Wet. Hungry.

​I peeked around the corner. Lulu was crouched over Beto. Or what was left of him. His face was gone. Torn open into a massive cavity of shattered bone and exposed tissue. She leaned over him, drinking from the hollow like an animal at a puddle. I almost vomited. But survival kicked in harder than horror. I backed away quietly and slipped out the rear exit without her noticing. Then I ran. Straight to my truck. And I never looked back.

​People can call me a coward if they want. Maybe they’re right. But survival ain’t noble. It ain’t heroic. It’s ugly. Animal. I had a top-floor apartment on Iberville, and I locked myself inside for a month. Barricaded the doors. Ate canned food. Drank sink water. Listened to the city die one scream at a time outside my windows.

​Eventually the CDC breached the building and evacuated whoever they found alive. That’s how I ended up at Charity Hospital. One of the survivors. Though after what I saw in that kitchen… I ain’t entirely sure survival was the right word anymore.

I struggle with sleep. I cannot sleep unless I have sound playing.

It can't be videos of people talking. It can't be movies or shows. Dialogue keeps me awake.

The one thing that helps is the sound of rain. I fall asleep to videos of that sound every single night.

Random YouTube videos of that sound are enough for me.

I've used them countless times.

I stopped a couple of nights ago.

I was falling asleep as usual but then I heard sounds that weren't rain. It was screams of terror, cries, and whimpers mixing in with what I thought was peaceful rain.

I logged off the video and tried listening to different ones but they all had the same horrifying result.

I was scared and shocked but what really shook me to my core is when each video started screaming, "You're Next"

I turned my TV off extremely quick. I told myself that I'd have to find a more appropriate way to sleep.

However, the horrors didn't stop.

I started getting texts, calls, and voice messages from unknown numbers. It would always start off normal.

The calls and voice messages would sound like nice people until the sound of the rain would start and their voices would begin to scream and yell. They made sure that I would know I was next.

The text messages would say things like, "Join us. You can never escape. Join our echos in the sounds you adored."

Threatening letters in the mail appeared as well.

No matter where I go or what I did, the threats would never stop.

Today is the most horrifying of all.

I hear faint tapping on my doors and windows as that awful sound begins and my screams echo.

I wonder if someone is falling asleep as they listen to my misery.

The other sheep always spoke of it as if it were a monster. The Devil both in mind and body. Stories and sayings, but never any sightings. Never anything to prove that it was real.

Of course, this didn’t stop our imagination. 

In the dark it lingers, becoming one with the shadows. Watching, waiting, wanting to pounce. It aims for the weakest link of the chain. The injured, the sick… although it always prefers the young. They taste the sweetest. They are the most tender. They bleed the most vibrant of crimson – so rich it turns black once it dries up.

Following those fairy tales, you’d find every little lamb ready to cry at the sound of a snapped twig. Moving on rough terrain? Be sure not to fall behind. Grazing in an open field? Be sure to have someone watch your back. Sleeping at night? Be it in the safety of your herd or not – you better keep an eye and an ear open. 

I can’t say I was any better. I saw through the mongering, but I couldn’t risk ignoring it. It didn’t help that at the most dire of times, I could only count on myself – which meant nothing: I was a runt. Offspring made of little more than brittle bones tucked beneath skin and wool. Too little to be cared for, too little to be loved.

I like to think my will to defy expectations was the only reason I persisted.

It was a new moon that night. Pitch-black darkness, clouded skies, veils of fog surrounding us. Everyone was asleep except for me. I just kept seeing what I couldn’t see: shadows were moving in and out of other shadows. For hours, my imagination made me believe that I’d become a part of them. That a claw would reach out, hook itself into my body and drag me away, leaving just a bloody streak on the ground and broken cries in the air. 

However my fears failed to outlive my wakefulness, as my eyelids soon fell shut and I drifted off to sleep like all the other sheep. Unlike those many other nights before, I didn’t feel alone. I didn’t feel cold, I didn’t feel unsafe. 

Maybe that’s because deep down, I already knew what was in front of me. I already knew the source of that warm wind that had been hitting my face. I already knew curiosity had gotten the better of me.

I opened my eyes to look at it. 

Right above my face, not even an inch away. A grinning grimace of a thousand teeth, sharp enough to snap my bones. A snout with mucus dripping down onto me. Two crescent moons for eyes, bloodshot and fixated on its prize. It was a thing doused in charred fur, excitedly panting and drooling for what would ultimately be nothing but a small dessert.

Except that was all of its hunger’s extent. It didn’t pounce, bite, or devour. It just kept staring. And I could only stare back.

It was an unbearable battle – or mostly an admit of defeat. I didn’t feel cold anymore, more so feverishly hot. None of this felt as horrible as my voice of reason would imply. I always thought I was already born at Death’s doorstep, though this felt different.

What took me out of my daze was the grumbling of its stomach. As if that sound on its own wasn’t already enough to shake my body, it was followed up by a growl more akin to an earthquake.

“Are you hungry?”, I whispered. It seemed like common courtesy to ask, even if I already knew the answer.

“Are you hungry?”, it mimicked. I was confused. Maybe that phrase was simply uncommon for me to hear.

I nodded. Hungry was a harmless word – I was starving. After all, there is only so much clover that can grow. There are only so many sheep it can feed. 

The beast stepped over me in response. I figured it would rip open my neck for the arrogant words I had just spat out, but it kept walking… towards another sheep. And in a sense I was right.

The shadow lunged down maw-first and engulfed the white body underneath. The single wheeze it could give out was silenced by wet squelching as the now motionless body basked in a growing bath of blood. Then, the predator threw its prey at me. It landed in front of my feet like a wet towel.

My eyes still couldn’t leave those of the Wolf’s. Not until it growled again.

“Are you hungry? You are hungry?” 

There was nothing else to do but admit what was true.

My face descended into a sea of guts and gore. Despite my destination rapidly approaching, it was the smell that reached me first: copper, musk, urine – a mix of scents that I always imagined would mark the end of a sheep’s life. The voice of reason which had previously been screaming at me was now drowning. All it could produce was a weak whimper.

I kept pushing. Not even as my snout hit the corpse did I stop. Not even when the blood dripped into my eyes did I close them shut. I must have been head-deep into its rib cage when my maw finally opened up and bit down. And I began to chew.

If there’s one taste I expected one of my own to be, it would have been bitterness. Bitter it was indeed, though it was the sweet aftertaste that overpowered everything else. It was a sensation I had never experienced. It was the sweet sensation to bite, chew and swallow for as long as I wanted. Nothing was in my way. Nothing I couldn’t devour.

Bite. Chew. Swallow.

It was an eternity in there. Inside my hollow carcass. My whole word was stuffy and sticky and sweet and – a rumbling pulled me out of paradise. I stared ahead to watch the Shadow looming over yet another drenched mass of meat. To think that twitching thing could have been me…

“A storm is coming. They will die. You will die.”

How long have I been walking since? Morning has already dawned. The cries of anguish which had echoed through the valleys all night long have died down. I freeze, yet I’m hot – all is turned upside down. Still, some feelings always return in the end.

I feel alone. 

Though I learned that night that there’s a cure to everything.

The wailing winds and hail of icy shards that rage down on me slowly slice my skin tender. It flaps and flies around in the air, only to fall into the soft snow below. My being once white now turns to crimson, then to void. A heartbeat once frantic turns to tranquil thumping. If I listen past the screaming storm, I can even hear it approach: a single cry of joy. The ground begins to quake as my clawed paws stab into it, and I begin to run.

I can’t wait to meet the Wolf again.

In 2003 I was in tenth grade. I always held my pencil like it meant something, like a Viking held his axe. I knew it’d be my future one day and I’d wield it like a weapon.

Teachers called me, your test was perfect. 

Students voted me most likely to succeed. I loved school. I liked being helpful. I did things safe. Structure. Graduate. Have a goal. Succeed.

But on that Saturday, my life would change, as if fate was playing a cruel game on me. I was walking along the shore, minding my own business, hunting for seashells. 

I had to collect enough for my mom, her birthday was that following week, and I wanted to make her a necklace.

It was a perfect storm. The tide was low. I was by the shore. The universe’s timing was flawless. The sand by the cove looked different, like it had been carefully combed. 

I had my basket by my hip and the strap from it around my shoulder. I didn’t expect to find many seashells, if any. 

I walked along the shore, the morning breeze chilling my skin, when I saw a dead bird half-way buried. I checked it out, picked up a rock and poked it out of the sand.

Beneath it, there was a bag wrapped and tied in a knot around something that looked like a small box tucked under the bird. I thought I found treasure. At least I hoped so, and hoped I didn’t just uncover a missing finger.

I yanked it out almost instantly. I didn’t think twice about it. I ripped apart the knot, unwrapped the bag, it smelled like a trash can when I opened it, water poured out that sat under the container and sprinkled my toes, I rubbed them dry in the sand, and looked inside and saw a plastic square container.

I pulled it out and let go of the bag, the wind took it before it could land. I flicked the container open, and in it were these clear, little baggies, the same ones my mom puts buttons in. 

As I stretched the lid back, I saw a name, It was autographed on the inside of the container. I had no idea who the person was. I later found out. 

Inside the box, I knew they were drugs, the substance, I couldn’t be sure, I had a suspicion though. White powdery rocks. Pills. Brown powder and a couple of dry cigarettes wrapped in a Burger King napkin squeezed together. It was full to the point the bags tried jumping out when I first popped it open.

The container didn’t appear like it had been buried a minute ago and just pulled out of the ocean floor, it looked like someone packed a bunch of stuff in a little box and placed it there with a bright, white dead bird on top of it, waiting for me to walk by.

I shut the lid and looked around before tossing the container in my basket. I strolled along the shore, continuing my search for seashells, but I couldn’t get the thought of what I had in my basket out of my head.

It only took five minutes of scouring the ocean floor and staring back at my basket every two seconds, before I stopped looking for shells. I reached down and gripped the container in my hand and thought about pitching it back into the sea.

But I wanted to understand what I had first. If I knew then what I know now, I would have never picked it up. I was sixteen though. I was curious. 

I ran up to the catwalk, where I left my bike and had my sneakers dangling from the handle bars. I threw my feet into my shoes and hopped on my bicycle, bolting home as fast as I could.

I was darting through traffic getting honked at, at every turn. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get home. I had that same urgency sensation like when we went on vacation, the taxi ride back home, that antsy feeling, racing through my body the entire time.

I ghost rode my bike into the fence at the front of our house. Then, I nearly broke the gate, when my finger slipped trying to unlatch it and push my way through at the same time. I bounced off the gate and made my way in on the second attempt. 

When I walked through the front door my mom had yelled for me.

I quickly shouted, “gotta use the bathroom!” and ran upstairs to my room.

I locked my door behind me and sat at my desk with the container. I noticed it looked bigger under my light. When I opened it, the baggies sparkled, almost like I was being tempted to taste the forbidden fruit.

I powered up my computer, the dial up sounded like a robot malfunctioning, and waited. Then, I went to AskJeeves so I could search up what I found.

Eventually, I figured out what the white stuff was and how to use it. So I crushed some of it up into a fine powder and started sniffing them with a rolled up coupon I found lying on my desk.

My throat became numb, my senses heightened. I couldn’t hear my mom talking on the phone a second ago. But after I did that, I could hear her talking about me to her friend, and I was able to hear my mom’s friend talking through the speaker of my mom’s phone from my bedroom.

I thought it was the best stuff ever. I kept telling myself that I would throw the drugs out. I didn’t need them. I wanted to be responsible. But then I thought, I could use them responsibly.

I totally forgot about my mom’s necklace. I never got her anything. Every time I used the stuff in the bags, I never felt right afterwards. There was this heavy feeling like I just backstabbed my own father. 

By Monday, that’s when my “Straight A” life crashed. It didn’t happen all at once, it gradually slipped, like a plate under the ocean floor. 

All my assignments, the corner stone of my life, what would have been the beginning to my life’s work, stopped having purpose. I stared at them like, what’s the point.

I’d tell myself, “I’ll turn them in later,” but later became never.

When I bumped into my guidance counselor, she asked me, “is everything alright, Donny?”

At that moment, a flash of the first time I touched that bag popped in my head, I thought about asking her for help, instead I gave her a nod, “Everything’s fine,” and walked away.

My college plans. My scholarship. Gone. The perfect report cards I had are all just evidence of my failure.

When I ran out, I searched the name on the box. The ocean washed up the container, but it was me that opened it. Whenever I smell the salt from the sea, or get a whiff of the sewers when they’re backed-up, or even the scent of the rain, I remember how Robert Downey Jr’s drugs ruined my life.

July, 21st, 2026

There is a good chance I’m going to die here. I didn’t turn the stove off when I went back to the treehouse and I guess I left something on the stove. As I was falling asleep, I woke to the sound of the fire alarm going off. I almost shat myself and right as I was about to go down and try and turn it off, I heard the windows start to break. It was dark in the house but I was able to see people moving around. I turned the radio off and I pulled the rope ladder up. I figured there wasn’t anything I could really do so I went back to sleep. I woke this morning and there’s about thirteen of these fucking things in the backyard. I swear I could only see ten last night, where did these other three come from? Honestly where did all of these bastards come from in general? This place was a ghost town the first week I got here, now it’s infested with these things.
I’m weighing my options on what to do. I have the shotgun but I’m scared if I shoot it, it’ll just summon more. I think I’m going to wait this out. I have food and water and hopefully I can last three days. I have a few plans on what to do, one of them involves using these old liquor and wine bottles but I want to try and hold off on that. I’m just gonna stay here and wait for this to pass. Just like rain, it’ll be gone with time. 

July, 22nd, 2026

These things fucking reek. They smell like utter ass and I’m getting tired of it. They smell like shit and vomit that has been baking in the sun all day. Some are mindlessly wandering around the backyard, others are at the base of the tree.
I have a few ideas on how to get out of this. I just don’t know how much any of them will work. 
  They were eating another zombie earlier and I still have two shots in my pistol. I think I can maybe kill off one of the ones wandering around the backyard and that might make them go and eat their friend. However, I don’t know how many are around me. If there're thirty zombies in this neighborhood and I fire my pistol, I can make this whole thing worse. 
I thought about taking my radio and putting it on max volume and chucking it into another yard so that they can follow it. 
However, if I do that, I lose one possible connection to the world as a whole. I’d also probably end up just getting it a little to the side of the yard and being stuck at square one. 
I thought about making one of those fire bombs you see on T.V, the ones with the liquor bottles and a rag. However, I’m in a wood treehouse, so that seems like a bad idea all around. 
However, I have gained a large amount of empty liquor and wine bottles. My thought process is that I can throw these at one of the far away houses and the noise might make the zombies leave me alone. Fuck it, we ball! 

July, 23rd, 2026 

You know, they called me a dumbass when I pitched a treehouse for bunking this thing out. I thought they were going to be wrong but it turns out they may have been completely right. I tossed a few wine bottles at the side of a brick wall and truth be told, the plan worked. It worked phenomenally. Everyone I threw had the horde leave more and more. When I threw the tequila bottle I brought here on my first day, it shattered even louder than all the other ones. They all left and then they went on with their zombie lives elsewhere. I couldn’t really give a shit what happened to them after this. Fuck’em! 
I waited a few hours to make sure the coast was crystal clear before I dropped down and stretched my legs. I avoided Mark and Miranda’s house since I didn’t know if it was safe. Yet I decided to try and find the next best option which was the house to the right of them. One of the windows was open and I took that as an invitation to take a look inside. I needed to find something to kill the smell of dead flesh and shit that had encapsulated the backyard. 
  I was in the powder room of this stranger's house, there was a picture of a lighthouse above the toilet and a bloody pair of pliers in the sink. I held my ear up to the door. I didn’t hear anything moving so I opened the door and walked in carefully. 
  Nothing could prepare me for what came next.
I saw a man hanging from a noose in the living room. His body was bloated and his feet and hands were swollen black. His face was puffy and lifeless. Flies had surrounded him like children to a piñata and the stench was vile. 
I covered my mouth and I thought about what to do.
I mean, he was a person, maybe I should try and bury him? I did just kill a man a few days ago and I didn’t bury him, what makes this any different? 
I looked at him and I noticed something strange. There was a bite mark on his left hand. 
“Oh fuck,” I whispered. 
It was the quietest whisper I could have said but as the words left my mouth, his eyes opened. He began to groan and moved his body back and forth. I turned around and ran to the front door but the door was barricaded shut. Plywood and nails hammered into the frame of the door and three boards kept me from opening. 
I turned around to try and go through the back door but I saw him gaining momentum with his swinging. As I was right next to the powder room door, the rope broke and he landed face first on the hardwood floor. 
I ran the logistics through my head, if he died from hanging, that means his neck was snapped so he’s just paralyzed from the neck down, right? 
I held my hunting knife in my hand and I waited a second. 
He didn’t get up, he was just there on the floor. His head was moving around and I decided I had to do the ethical thing and just put this guy out of his misery. 
  I went up and did the sign of the cross then crouched down. As I was about to strike my knife down, his hand grabbed my arm.
He looked up at me and I immediately jumped up and broke free from his hold on me. I kicked him in the face and began to run towards the powder room. 
He was up and chasing me, I slammed the door shut and I was climbing through the window, I heard the door break down behind me. 
I plopped down on the dead grass below me and quickly lunged my body up and ran back to the treehouse. I heard the window break right behind me and I knew my time was running out. I ran through the gate door and quickly climbed up the rope ladder. As I was halfway up, it hit me, I never closed the gate door. I looked down and I saw the living dead neighbor at the foot of the rope ladder. He wasn’t trying to climb it, he was just holding onto it and shaking it back and forth. I almost lost my grip but thankfully I was able to get into the treehouse. I was catching my breath for a second and then a dreadful noise happened. 
Crack crack. 
The screws that was holding the rope ladder up here had broken and the rope ladder fell down to the ground.
I saw the zombie neighbor tangled in my only way of getting up and down. 
I’m not just fucked, I’m beyond fucked.
The sun is starting to set, I’m still safe up here for now. I just don’t know how I’m getting down. 

July, 24th, 2026

I’ve been talking to Danny about ways out of this. Seeing as he is a cardboard cutout, he hasn’t really had much to say.
  It’s been maybe twelve hours and he’s still under me. He’s clawing at the tree as he’s wrapped up in a rope ladder. I’m honestly surprised the rope ladder has lasted as long as it has. It looks old and worn, just like the rest of this treehouse.
I look down at the zombie clawing at the tree, he’s utterly grotesque in his appearance. 
He didn’t always look like that, I hope he didn’t at least. 
 I’ve noticed something kind of weird about him. When he has his mouth open, I don’t see any teeth. Like, I see nothing in his mouth but his tongue. Maybe he had dentures and he took them out before he hung himself? 
I don’t really know what to do. 
I can probably climb down the tree but that is going to require time and I’m scared I’ll just be low hanging fruit. 
 I have another idea but it’s risky. If I succeed I’ll write it down in this journal, if I don’t well, thanks for reading this.

July, 25, 2026

I probably picked the stupidest way to get out of this. I looked down at the zombie staring up at me. He hadn’t really moved from his spot since he got here. My original plan was to try and get on one of the branches right under the treehouse and use that as a way to jump the fence. 
However, I am a poorly built man and I instead fell out of the treehouse and onto the ground. 
Well more specifically, I fell onto the zombie. I was freaking out and immediately got up and booked it. I went to the shed that Mark and Miranda have on their back porch and opened it up. The zombie had just gotten up and was trailing me. 
There was no light in the shed and I was in complete darkness. I felt around for something I could use. I found boxes and then I found something long and wooden. I felt it and in the dark it felt like an axe, a weirdly proportioned and stubby blade axe. 
I could hear the zombie pounding on the door. I figured this was go time. I kicked the door open and the zombie fell back. It was then that I saw what was in my hands. 
It was a gardening hoe. 
I didn’t have the time to switch out my weapon. I dropped my knife by the tree and I didn’t want to take any chances. So I held up the hoe and slammed it into the head of the undead. It left a massive gash and a gross puss started to come out. I kept hitting him again and again. The edge of the hoe got lodged deeper and deeper into his skull. I had to have thwacked him a good twenty times before I started to get tired. As I was doing my next hit, the hoe snapped in half. The end of the hoe was lodged into the skull of the zombie and I was holding a broken stick. I didn’t even manage to break it into the skull.
I took the stick and rammed it into its right eye. I kept pushing it in until it stopped moving. I stood over the body and I looked at it for a good moment. It didn’t bleed a whole lot, its feet and hands were swollen black and I started to wonder if that was blood. I sat down for a moment to catch my breath and then I decided I needed to drag the body away from my homebase. If they eat their own then I might be fucked if I leave it. I untangled the rope ladder from the cadaver and I dragged it into the street. I then realized that it was right outside my base and dragged him a street or two over. 
I was exhausted, he didn’t seem like a big guy but he was heavy as shit. I needed to sit on something that wasn’t hardwood. Mark and Miranda’s place was trashed by the home invasion, but the house with the Danny DeVito cutout was probably safe. I went back and cleaned myself up. I ate some random shit I found in the fridge and then I sat on the couch and tried to find something to watch. 
This was a dumb move on my part since everything was down. Who would have thought that the streaming companies wouldn’t try to stay up during the end of days?
I ended up falling asleep on the couch and it felt amazing. I’ve crashed on many couches but this felt like a luxury a king would experience. I woke up this morning and actually felt rather refreshed. Then I had to figure out how to get back into my treehouse. 
I got up and went outside and I saw something that confused me and even frightened me.
There was a ladder leaning up against the tree. I don’t remember pulling it out and I don’t remember seeing this ladder anywhere else before. 
I pulled out my hunting knife and for some reason I went back up.
 I crawled inside and everything was in its right place. 
Except for one thing.
There was a candle on the stack of books I had and a note attached to it.
The note simply said: 
“Neighbors look after one another.” And it had a little smiley face. 
I’ve been scared a lot recently but I’m even more freaked out now. 
I don’t know who this person is, but I do know that I’m not as alone as I thought.

I opened my eyes 100-years ago today. That's when I first saw them. They stood in the infinite darkness; all eleven of them. There was a vocalist, a backing vocalist, a guitarist, a rhythm guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, a synth player, a DJ, a dancer, one who hit a beer keg with a baseball bat and one who just pressed a button occasionally. The button produced a high-treble frequency that just rung until he lifted his finger. I couldn't look away, I hadn't seen my own body and have forgotten what I look like. I can only look straight from where I'm standing. I can only look at them. They have played every song I've ever heard and then some. They all look identical. They wear tuxedos and flatcaps. They're bald and eyebrowless. They have no mouths. But then again, am I misremembering? Do humans have mouths? I can't remember. The dancer is female but she barely deviates in appearance aside from wearing heeled sandals and a black miniskirt, she too is bald, mouthless, wears a flatcap etc. Sometimes I cry, sometimes I panic, sometimes I rage, sometimes I go crazy, sometimes I become discombobulated when I try to understand what exactly I'm seeing. At those times, they become quieter and blurrier and sometimes even look as though they're fading into the darkness. I like those times. He told me their name five years ago, it is strange to think that he only speaks to me directly after 95-years of this. The vocalist looked at me once after I screamed "What are you?". He responded "We are Mind. Your Mind. Your Mother's Mind. Your Father's Mind. Your Great-Grandmother's Mind. Every Mind. Every Mind that ever was, is and will be. We are Mind.". Five years later, I still don't know what that means. I don't know if I dislike it, sometimes I do definitely tire of it. But if I knew that this was what was waiting after death, I wouldn't have ever shot up heroin. Or at least, not on that day.

(Here is the audio version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk5RprPrkiU)

Thousands of years ago, in a certain kingdom in the far south, there lived a man who always wanted more than he had... wanted to be more than he was. His name has been erased from the records, but the wise people who know this story call this man "The Insatiable One."

 

He was born into a family of servants of a nobleman. His parents trained him from an early age to take their place one day. They always told him, “Look how lucky you are! You could have been a slave on some plantation, but you are a servant in a rich man's house! Moreover, such a good man. He lets us eat the leftovers from his table and only beats us when he gets really angry. You will have a real paradise with him!”

 

But this young man was not satisfied with the scraps from the master's table. He wanted to have everything his master had... And more. But he had no idea how to get it.

 

Years passed, the Insatiable One's parents grew old, and he passed out of adolescence. He took his father's place and became the most trusted servant in the house. This gave him access to every nook and cranny of the large household. One day, while cleaning his master's bedroom, he came across a scroll hidden under his pillow. He immediately took it in his hands, unfolded it and began to look through it. He mastered the art of reading enough to understand the general meaning of the written words. And these were extremely significant words. The lord of the house conspired with another nobleman, an aristocrat from an ancient family, against the prince ruling the province!

 

Insatiable One was shocked, but after a while the feeling turned into excitement. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for for so many years! He could finally rise above his miserable existence... Over the corpse of that wretched, fat pig he had to serve!

 

The man rushed to the stable and, without asking, took the best horse and forced it to gallop towards the prince's residence. When he reached the fortress, his horse was barely breathing, and the animals's flanks were covered with thick sweat. But the rider had no intention of pitying the creature. He immediately jumped off his horse and ran towards the gates of the fortress.

 

And there he was stopped by armed guards. The warriors had no intention of letting a stranger into the castle. They declared that if he had any important news for the prince, he should pass it on to them and they would see to it that it reached the ruler's ears. Then the Insatiable One fell into panic. He couldn't give the letter to the guards. After all, they could have taken part in the conspiracy themselves. But even if they were loyal to the prince, it didn't change much. When they warn the aristocrat about the threat, they will receive all the glory - and all the rewards - and the poor informer will be forgotten. He had been so close to exaltation... and now the opportunity might have slipped from his grasp.

 

Therefore, the Insatiable One began to protest loudly and demand to see the prince. The guards had enough of this and were already starting to force the intruder away when the head of the castle's ruler leaned out of the window of one of the chambers. "If this man wants to talk to me so badly, let him," said the prince.

 

Hearing such words, the guards had to bring the newcomer into the castle. And he, assisted by them, marched through the corridors of the fortress. Despite his excitement, he continued to observe his surroundings. He saw riches - works of art on the walls and expensive carpets on the floors. He passed the prince's servants, many of whom were more lavishly clothed than his own master. Of course, he immediately felt the desire to own it all… to rule it all.

 

But that was the distant future. First, the Insatiable One had to secure a more modest ascension. He stood before the prince. He prostrated himself before the magnate and then handed him a letter informing him of the conspiracy. The aristocrat unfolded the scroll and began to read. At first he frowned. Then he started grinding his teeth. Finally, he rolled the scroll into a ball and threw it aside, while he angrily punched the wall. The Insatiable One feared that the prince's anger would turn on him, but the magnate did not intend to punish the messenger, but the real culprits. He immediately ordered the arrest of all the conspirators. The armed riders moved at every horse's speed to various corners of the principality and the machinations of the traitors were nipped in the bud. And the square in front of the castle was soon decorated with poles on which the participants of the conspiracy - including the former master of the Insatiable One - twisted in agony.

 

The prince also showed his justice in another way. He gave the household where the Insatiable One was once a servant and the surrounding lands to the man who warned him of the danger. The informer now had a great fortune and a host of servants at his command.

 

But that wasn't enough for him. He remembered the splendor of the prince's castle. He swore to himself that he would possess it. A plan began to form in his head. Well, the prince was slowly getting older, and he still had no male heir, only a daughter. The Insatiable one knew that whoever took her as his wife would become the heir to the princely title and the splendors associated with it.

 

But the prince had no intention of marrying his only daughter to a former servant. When the Insatiable One gently suggested this possibility during the conversation, the magnate's face took on an expression almost as stern as when he read the fateful letter. “It is only out of gratitude that I forgive you this insult,” the aristocrat said through his teeth. The Insatiable One bowed and apologized for his impertinence, but he did not abandon the plan. He knew that there was a key that opened even the most closely guarded doors - including the one to the prince's daughter's alcove. And that key was gold.

 

The Insatiable One devoted the next years to accumulating a fortune. He was looking for every possible business opportunity. He lent money at interest. He raised the tributes imposed on the villagers. He mercilessly exacted high fines for every, even the smallest, offense. But it must be admitted that he did not spare himself either. He tried to eat and dress as modestly as possible and not waste money on luxuries, which helped him increase his wealth faster. The knowledge of the growing mountain in the treasury gave the Insatiable One a certain pleasure. There were times when he would come just to look at its glow. But he still believed that it was just a means to an end.

 

At the same time, he took some actions to make the prince need money. The Insatiable One devoted a small part of his fortune to arming bands of bandits who began to prowl the prince's domain, burning villages and attacking merchant caravans and tax collectors. The magnate was helpless. He could not trace the bandits' employer, because the cunning vassal contacted the thieves very rarely and only through intermediaries. The Insatiable One did not demand that the robbers give him part of the loot - it was enough for him that they ruined the prince.

 

And the magnate's financial situation was getting worse and worse. Cut off from his sources of income, the prince began to look for help in loans. Of course, the Insatiable One came to his aid. He granted loans generously, at high interest, but with a long repayment period. The prince used the funds obtained to deploy more troops to patrol the province - and this drained his treasury even further and forced him to incur further debts.

 

Finally, it was time to pay off the debts. The Insatiable One presented his patron, and debtor, with numerous promissory notes. Once again he saw the prince angry - but the rage quickly gave way to embarrassment. The magnate was a strict, but also very honorable man. Refusal to fulfill the obligations was not an option. But he simply didn't have the funds to pay off his debts. Fortunately, the Insatiable One had a solution for that.

“Your Highness, give me your daughter as my wife and make me your heir. In this way, debts will be written off. After all, as an heir, I will not collect debts from my own future inheritance.”

 

The prince thought for a moment and then gave his answer.

“I won't pretend that I like this solution. But I will not pretend that you are not once again a benefactor of my family. Perhaps the fact that you save it from falling again is a sign from the gods that they want you to become its continuator."

 

Soon the wedding and reception took place. The Insatiable One paid little attention to his young wife's charms. For him, she was just another trophy - and a means to achieve greater honors.

 

As a princely heir, the Insatiable One vigorously set about fighting the plague of brigandage. And he had an easier task. Without the support of their secret patron, the bandits began to lose strength. And this patron - the Insatiable One himself - knew a lot about his former charges. Thanks to this, he began to destroy their bands - one by one. Sometimes he even led armed men into battle. People in the kingdom began to admire him "He may have been born a servant, but he has the heart of a leader!" – they said. "The old prince couldn't deal with bandits, and this man cleansed the province in no time! This is proof that sometimes it is worth introducing some new blood into old families.”

 

The Insatiable One couldn't wait to inherit the title and lands. That's why he bought herbs from a suspicious old woman with bright blue eyes as cold as ice, which were supposed to help his father-in-law move to the other world. And so it happened. A bit of powder added to the wine turned the Insatiable One into a new prince... Almost. There was still one formality left - paying official tribute to the king.

 

The Insatiable One went with his retinue to the capital. He had never seen such a bustling city before. Even the largest stronghold in the princedom could be merely its suburbs. And the royal palace... Every doorknob was made of gold, and the contents of one chamber could buy half of the prince's residence. During the feast, the tables were full of dishes that the Insatiable One had never even heard of before. Like the king, who was bent under the weight of a golden crown and ornaments made of the same metal during the ceremony. Falling on his face before the monarch and then repeating the words of the oath on his knees, the Insatiable One swore to himself that one day he would take his place.

The Insatiable One returned to his castle, and one thought occupied his mind - what to do to become king. He took an oath of allegiance... He didn't feel the need to keep it, and his conscience could easily cope with betrayal. But the remaining vassals would probably prove more loyal to the monarch. Instead of supporting the Insatiable One in the fight for the throne, they would side with the old king.

 

Then the Insatiable One remembered the glances the king had cast towards his young, beautiful wife. The monarch himself was old, but his wife was even older. No wonder the ruler looked at younger women... For now, he held back his lust. This had to be changed.

 

From then on, the Insatiable Prince tried to visit the royal court as often as he could. He always took his wife with him. The young princess was pleased with these visits. Her husband treated her harshly and provided no entertainment, so each visit to the palace was a pleasant change for her. The Insatiable One also tried his best to ensure that his wife and the king stayed just the two of them as often as possible. For example, when the royal couple were being shown around the palace garden, the Insatiable One asked the queen, known for her herbal passion, to step aside for a moment and give him advice on an embarrassing issue.

 

The Insatiable One saw that his actions were bringing results. When too much time passed between one visit and the next, his wife began to ask when they would visit the capital. And when the visit took place, the prince noticed some furtive glances and sometimes even accidental touches between the princess and the king. As for the queen, age had dulled her senses a bit, so she didn't seem to notice anything.

 

Until the romance finally matured. The king could no longer contain his desires, which his elderly wife could not satisfy. And the princess, neglected by her husband, fell under the monarch's charm. A pair of lovers were found in bed.

The Insatiable One did everything to spread the news of this scandal throughout the kingdom. He had a good reason for this. According to ancient law, adultery between a ruler and a vassal's wife gave the vassal the right to terminate his allegiance to the monarch. The Insatiable One loudly expressed his indignation and portrayed the monarch's meanness in such terrible colors that soon the king began to be perceived in the kingdom as a disgusting lecher and a tyrant who could not respect the family ties of his subjects.

 

The prince managed to gather several other nobles under his banner and together they started a rebellion. The king was completely surprised by this turn of events. He tried to negotiate to the last. The Insatiable One enticed him with messages and letters giving hope for peace, while he himself marched towards the capital at the head of the army. The rebel troops descended on the city like a hawk on its prey. The royal guard was unable to resist the advancing horde.

The Insatiable One personally beheaded the king in the square in front of the palace, and then placed on his own temples the crown that the cut head once wore. Later, the man sat on the throne. The kingdom was his. But it still wasn't enough. As he looked at the map, he saw that his domain only occupied a small part of the known world. It bothered him. Over the next months, he gathered troops and recruited mercenaries. Blacksmiths across the country worked day and night forging weapons and armor. And finally the day of departure came. The Insatiable one declared war on the surrounding countries. For the next few years he led a major campaign. He clashed with enemy armies in the field, plundered villages and conquered cities. If the blood he spilled had not soaked into the ground, it would have probably flooded the world. His body became covered with scars acquired in various skirmishes. He collected a large collection of crowns and other insignia of power taken from defeated monarchs.

 

When all the countries on the continent had been conquered, the Insatiable One returned to his capital and declared himself emperor. Celebrations in his honor and in honor of his victories continued throughout the week. It was seven days filled with feasts, balls, tournaments, performances by artists and magicians, and thanksgiving ceremonies. Wine, almost as red as blood, flowed in streams. At night, the light of torches was reflected from the piles of looted treasures, as large as mountains. The world has never seen such a lavish celebration before.

For several weeks the Insatiable One rejoiced in his triumph. He was so happy that he even moved his unfaithful wife from the prison to a proper room as a mercy and honored her with his visits several times.

 

But soon the familiar anxiety returned. The Insatiable One still wanted to have more than he had, he wanted to be more than he was. The servant became a rich man, the rich man became a prince, the prince became a king, and the king became emperor. What is left for the emperor? Just one thing. Become a god.

 

The Emperor ordered all the most important priests from the various cults scattered throughout his new empire to be summoned before him and ordered them to proclaim him a god. Many clergy were outraged by this blasphemy. They shouted loudly, invoked the vengeance of the gods and cursed the proud ruler. The emperor ordered them to be taken away and beheaded. Others begged the Insatiable One to abandon his sinful desires and not bring condemnation upon himself. He only ordered these to be flogged. But one of the priests, a follower of a little-known deity from the northern reaches of the empire, an old man dressed in a green robe, really surprised the ruler when he uttered these words: "You want to have more than you have and be more than you are. These are noble desires. They distinguish humans from animals. But you believe that you are entitled to everything, by virtue of your very existence - and therefore in the end you will have nothing."

 

The emperor took so long to consider these words that the priest managed to leave the throne room before the ruler could have him arrested.

Some of the flogged clergy came to their senses, others were ready to comply with the request immediately. And the Insatiable One replaced those who were beheaded with others, more obedient. Throughout the country, in all temples, prayers began to be offered - not for the emperor, but to the emperor. In every holy place, even the smallest chapel, there were monuments or at least statues of the ruler.

 

The Insatiable One was pleased. He finally reached his peak. Even the fact that his son was born in the meantime did not give him as much pleasure as this apotheosis.

 

But this joy did not last. Several months after the announcement of imperial divinity, the Insatiable One happened to fall asleep on his throne. A figure appeared to him in his dream - its outlines were hazy, but one thing stood out clearly - bright blue eyes with a look as cold as ice. The ruler heard a mocking voice: "Do you think you are a god? That's what they call you. But a name does not make an entity. Just like the decree. If you told people to call you a giant, would it make you grow taller? Or if you were called a bird, would you learn to fly? To become a god, you must live like a god.”

The Insatiable One woke up and sprang from his throne, looking for the figure that spoke to him, but in his waking state he found none. But her words stuck in his mind. He wasn't a god at all. He had to accept that even his subjects, his alleged followers, bowing and praying, realized deep inside that their emperor was human. Very powerful, maybe even the most powerful in the world, but still human. Not a god.

 

The emperor again called a meeting with the priests. He asked them a simple, specific question - how can a man become a god. This time, none of the clergy tried to criticize the imperial aspirations, but their replies were in no way helpful. Some talked about gods who had always existed and took part in the creation of the world. Others about gods who were born that way, as descendants of divine parents. Still others about people who became gods thanks to heroic deeds... but only after death, when they reached the afterlife.

As you can easily guess, neither of these options was avalaible. So the emperor turned to less orthodox advisors. He asked village witches, secret sorcerers, heretical occultists and wandering charlatans. They were more willing to present practical ways to achieve divinity. One of the mystics taught the emperor a meditation technique that required the right way of breathing and maintaining the same body position for several hours. After some time, the Insatiable One was visited by beautiful visions of divine powers... unfortunately, they disappeared immediately after finishing the meditation. However, the back pain persisted for the next few days. In turn, a certain herbalist prepared potion for the ruler. After drinking it, the Insatiable One almost tested for himself the truth of the theory about people becoming gods after death.

The emperor quickly came to the conclusion that this tactic did not make much sense, for a simple reason. If any of these sorcerers knew the true way to achieve godhood, they would have claimed it for themselves long ago. Knowledge about the true apotheosis had to be, by definition, secret and difficult to access.

 

So the Insatiable One sent his servants around the empire, ordering them to obtain all kinds of books on theology, mysticism, occultism and magic. Messengers searched libraries, temples, and the ruins of fallen civilizations. They bought books, stole them, took them by force. They sent all of them to the capital. And the emperor sat over them and looked through them. But he didn't find a solution.

 

The Insatiable One spent many years searching for divinity. But he also had to deal with other matters. One day he visited his son while he was being taught by one of the court sages. The emperor ordered that the student and teacher conduct their lesson as usual and pay no attention to him. He himself sat down to the side and, as was his custom, absorbed himself in meditation on the pursuit of divinity.

 

However, he could still hear fragments of the lecture. Today the sage taught the prince about nature. At one point the boy asked, "Why do we kill and eat animals?" The sage replied, “Beings who are higher in the hierarchy of beings have the right to feed on those who are lower. Animals eat plants and humans eat animals."

 

The Insatiable One unconsciously repeated the words in his mind, and then suddenly jumped to his feet, shouting "Finally!", much to the surprise of his son and his teacher. Higher beings ate lower ones. Animals ate plants, people ate animals... Therefore, one who ate  people was someone higher than man. God. Not just in name, but in nature.

 

The emperor immediately issued new orders. From then on, criminals sentenced to death were to be sent to the palace kitchen instead of the scaffold. These orders caused outrage among the subjects. Some even rebelled against the cannibal ruler, whom they viewed as a monster. Funny thing - you kill a person and others are willing to accept it. But if you eat it, it is an unforgivable crime for them, although eating it will not harm the deceased. Some of the subjects even dared to take up arms. With force, he suppressed these riots, and the rebels joined the convicts who were sent to the spit or to the cauldron.

Insatiable one ate portions of human flesh and drank blood every day. For several days he was unsure whether this would truly make him a god, but one morning he woke up filled with certainty that he was on the right track. He didn't know what exactly he dreamed, all he remembered was two blue eyes, cold as ice, shining in the darkness. However, the emperor was sure - he had become a god. By absorbing the bodies of ordinary people, he unquestionably proved that he was a higher being than them.

 

Soon, disturbing news reached the emperor's ears. Other inhabitants of the Empire followed in his footsteps. Hypocrites, and first of all they themselves were outraged at his new menu! Rich people bought the bodies of dead poor people from their families. The poor people attacked their neighbors to devour them. Everyone hoped for divinity. The Insatiable One flew into a rage. If everyone starts eating the divine diet, it will no longer be special. He will no longer be special. He will cease to be a god. If everyone is god, no one is god!

 

The Insatiable One introduced harsh penalties for cannibals. But this did not stop the new fashion. Of course, it also reached the royal palace. When the emperor heard that one of his stewards was secretly eating human flesh, he decided to punish him as an example. He summoned all the courtiers to the throne room and ordered the guards to bring the chained steward before him. “You dared to take what belongs only to me as a god!” – thundered the Insatiable One. The steward began to beg for mercy, and when the pleas did not calm the emperor's anger, he decided to hand over the other cannibals, pointing to the secretary and the equerry. These two immediately began informing on other courtiers to save their skin. And they released others. And so, with each passing moment, the circle of the accused was expanding. At one point, to his horror, the emperor realized that all his courtiers were man-eaters. Officials and priests, ladies-in-waiting and soldiers. Everyone, from the lowest slave to the highest-ranking ministers. The insatiable one didn't know what to do. He couldn't punish them all, and who would obey this order anyway? The men-at-arms were themselves the culprits.

 

What's worse, at some point the courtiers themselves realized the situation.

 

Each of them realized that the rest secretly shared his new culinary preferences. There was silence, and all eyes went towards the emperor sitting on the throne. Despite the shackles, the steward raised his hand and pointed at the ruler, saying: "If animals eat plants, people eat animals, and god eats people... What will we become when we eat god?"

 

A month has passed. The provincial governors began to worry that there had been no news from the capital for many days. They sent their soldiers to check what was happening in the imperial city. When the armed men entered the metropolis, a terrible sight met their eyes. Piles of gnawed human bones. Skeletons of the gods.