My husband died in a cave diving accident two weeks ago. Well, at least that’s what I thought until the night he showed up at our front door.

A billowing wave of vertigo washed over me when I first saw him. Of course, there was relief somewhere in there, but so much about his return didn’t make any sense. After all, the authorities had searched for him for days. Ultimately, it lasted a week. It was hard to reason with the idea that he had miraculously survived being stuck within the cave system for that long. There was the question of air supply, food, and managing his body temperature.

Considering it was only meant to be a cave mapping expedition his team hadn’t decked him out with a surplus of gear. Even so, they had pressed the matter of safety. In total, he was accompanied by 14 other divers. The teams were paired together in groups of three. Everyone called to the task was an experienced diver and all their equipment was inspected the day of. On paper, it wasn’t supposed to end up the way it did, but it had.

I’ve always hated this hobby of his. Nothing could ever make me understand why he couldn’t just do something else, something less perilous, but I digress.

Initially, the cavern had been mapped by a submersible, but the surveyors decided it would be best to send down volunteer divers to confirm the measurements and put guidelines on the routes. Jordan and his team were swimming through a passage when he told one of his partners he had seen something. Apparently, there was an offshoot cavern that wasn’t detected by the submersible. I can picture him now, eager to see it for himself, ready for the discovery and ever so keen to explore. Jordan was a pioneer in his own right. He loved a good adventure, loved the idea of finding something wondrous and new. It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with him, but he didn’t have to be so reckless about it.

I’m told that in his blind pursuit, he disregarded the advice of his diving partners. They say he told them he’d check it out quickly and that he’d be right back. Right back turned to a minute and then a minute became minutes and by the time it was an hour they had already called for a rescue team. Before the rescue team arrived, one of his partners went in after him, but that diver had come back explaining that further into the canal was too tight for her to fit. The rescue team persisted regardless, but sure enough, the canal was too small. They couldn’t understand how Jordan had managed to fit, because there was absolutely no trace of him elsewhere. So they attempted to look inside with a camera.

I got to see that footage myself.

There was nothing. Nothing, but a vast expanse of a suffocating void. The camera ventured around for hours, but still, there were no new clues to the whereabouts of my husband. Not a trace of his gear or rubble or anything. Not a single trace of my Jordan. He was gone. It was as if he had just vanished. A few days after that, I was left with the ultimate decision, and with a heavy heart, he was pronounced dead. We held a service by the place he loved most, his final resting place. The ocean.

I was just as hollow as the casket I tried to imagine him in. Surrounded by loved ones mourning him yet disoriented because he wasn’t actually there. That night I kept picturing him walking through the door, kissing the top of my head and telling me about the dive and everything he might’ve seen on it. But that didn’t happen. I wept and slept alone. His side of the bed felt unbearably cold. His absence left its very own cavern within our home, within me.

But then he came home.

On such an ordinary day no less. Insubstantial when compared to the hassle of funeral and estate planning that had occurred the days prior. My body was huddled into a piteous ball, rotting on the corner of the couch as I scrolled through my phone reminiscing over old videos of us together. Then, the doorbell rang. It was late, much too late for a delivery driver or the press. My thumb tapped the security app and when I saw what was on my doorbell camera I practically threw my phone. Standing in the fisheye lens frame was a figure clad in full scuba gear. It was as if I had seen a ghost. I rushed to the door, hands trembling as I turned the knob. What kind of sicko plays a prank like this, I thought. Did they view my suffering as some kind of joke? My shoulders tensed as I opened the door, but when I did, when I looked up, it was truly him. Jordan stood there, hunched over in the doorway wetsuit still dripping.

“I’m home, Dear.”

The wail that escaped me bordered on inhuman. I lurched forward into him, my body quaking with frenzied sobs. His heavy hand patted at my back before sliding down, over and over. The movement felt stiff, almost practiced. I was barely done embracing him before he pushed past me, stumbling into the foyer. He had begun to strip off his gear, peeling out of the second skin that was his wetsuit until he was completely naked. It fell to the tile with a poignant thwack.

“Oh, Dear. I am famished. Love, what’s for dinner?”

“Jordan,” my voice hushed and gravely from days of crying, “Where have you been?”

“On my dive, of course. I’m just coming back a little late.” He stumbled around looking over our walls and shelves like a kid on a field trip to the Smithsonian.

“A little late? It’s been two weeks!” He halted as I exclaimed.

The turn of his head was unsettlingly rigid as he peered back in my direction.

“Should I not have come back, Dear?”

The question floored me and instantly I was overcome with guilt. He was right. I had been provided with a miracle, something so many others could only dream of. My husband had found his way back to me and here I was fussing over the details.

“No, no, no. That’s not what I meant.” I wiped the tears from my eyes and straightened out my back, “I’m sorry, you’re right. How about you just sit down and get comfortable? As a matter of fact, I’ll whip up your favorite. How does salmon sound?”

His movement as he descended upon me was mechanical, expression flat as he approached. For some reason I froze, my body stiffening as he stood before me. I couldn’t gauge what he was about to do. Thankfully, he simply snaked his arms around me pulling me in with an unsure squeeze. His lips were upturned into a thin-lipped smile. The kind of smile you give your dentist, not your wife.

“Dear, that sounds exceptional! I cannot wait to consume this.” I was so relieved to be released from his clasp, but his scent still lingered. It was briny and smelled of damp limestone.

Without another word, he continued to peruse around our home. I walked over the trail of his gear,  making my way to the kitchen. Our fridge was empty for the most part. I found it hard to eat over the past couple of days. Thankfully, we had some frozen fillets and vegetables. I tried to keep my mind on cooking and just being grateful that my husband had returned, but something wasn’t right. I saw that video. I saw how small that canal was. Jordan was, is, a big man. Tall and well-muscled. The partner who sought him out was a five-foot-nothing woman, thin and lithe. Even she couldn’t fit through there, so how did he? And how had he gotten himself back out?

My eyes trailed him as he ventured around, picking up and putting down whatever he could get his hands on. I wanted to think he was just excited to be back. That he was just relieved to have survived that crazy ordeal. But he wasn’t acting like someone safe and sound back home. He was behaving like it was all, well, new. As if he had never seen it all before.

After I finished preparing dinner, I set the table for us. Normally, we would just eat on the sofa together with food tray stands pulled out as one of our shows for the week played on the TV. But this wasn’t a normal dinner and I didn’t feel normal and Jordan wasn’t acting normal. We sat across from one another at the table. I was in pajamas I had worn for days and he was still completely naked. Vacant eyes scanned over the food, his tongue darting out to lick the corner of his lips.

“This looks divine, Dear. Let’s dig in!” He ignored the fork and knife he was previously holding up like tuning forks. Instead, he chose to dig his hand into the fillet, greedily shoveling it down his throat.

Jordan wasn’t a stickler for table manners, but this was unusual. The more I watched him the more I realized that something was deeply off about him. His skin looked unusually tight. Maybe it was dehydration?

I picked up the water pitcher before taking his glass and filling it. The sound of the ice clinking was barely audible in comparison to the gulping erupting from his gullet. I gently slid the cup towards his side of the table. He took a pause from his meal, eyes honing in on the water. He dropped the food letting it fall from his mouth and back onto the plate, before grasping the glass and guzzling it all down with a delighted hum.

“Jordan, how was the dive?” My breaths felt uneven, but I ignored it. I tried to ignore it.

He held the glass away from his lips, face smeared with fish and ice water.

“Oh, it was splendid, Darling! A real success I’d say.”

“Really? Did you just get lost down there then? How did you find your way back?” My throat felt so dry. It was as if I was suffocating, but I knew I could breathe. I could breathe and everything was normal. But it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t.

“Dear, I was never lost. I was just looking around. That’s all!” He filled his mouth with all of the ice that sat at the bottom of the glass and began chewing it robotically then swallowing.

“Looking around? …Okay.” Something is very wrong. “Well, what did you see then?” 

The glass cracked as he bit into it.

The cup shattered as his teeth came down again and again, sharp shards slicing into the roof of his mouth, gums, and lips as he chewed it absentmindedly.

I screamed.

He had the nerve to look at me shocked, before putting it down and spitting out what fragments he could onto his plate.

“Oh my god! Oh my god!” I leapt from the table. I wanted to call an ambulance, call the police, the news, anyone.

“Oh, Dear! I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just so thirsty. I must have gotten carried away.”

“You need to go to the hospital. We need to go to the emergency room.” My words came out weaker than I intended. My hands trembled at my side as I paced back and forth.

“No, no. I am perfectly fine. Everything is fine.” The chair creaked as he stood from the table, blood still staining his lips, “I just need a good night's sleep. We can talk about all that stuff in the morning.”

My eyes were trained on my feet now, but I could hear him rummaging through the kitchen. Yet, I was still too shocked to care. Once he was finished with whatever he was doing in there, he made his way over to the couch and plucked the throw from it to drape over my shoulders and keep me still. It was decorative and usually I would’ve fussed about using it, but it was the most comforting thing he had done to me since being back.

His cold, damp hands ushered me over to the stairs when suddenly he stopped behind me. His eyes were fixed at the top of the steps, his shoulders wound up like tight springs. Perched curiously at the peak was our pretty little Persian, Luna.

“She’s missed you too. She’s been holed up under the bed since you left. She must’ve come out when she heard your voice.” I continued onward, petting Luna as I made my way to our room.

“Oh, yes. Our little Luna.” His voice seemed to lose its previous gusto. Hesitantly, he followed behind me, but when he reached for Luna she bowed her back and hissed with a ferocity entirely unlike her. Her paws rolled forward as she bolted away from him, diving into the room and under the bed. For a moment, he was frozen in place.

“Oh, geez! What a welcome, wouldn’t you say?” As though nothing happened, he continued past me and that’s when I saw what was clutched in his other hand. It was salt. He had brought up the full container of table salt.

“Jordan, why do you have that?”

“Hm, oh this? Well, I just thought I’d take a bath is all. Rest my muscles and such. Don’t mind me, Dear. You just get in bed and then I’ll be right there.”

I mindlessly nodded, but his answer only proposed more questions. My fingers weakly clutched at the throw, the beadwork uncomfortable against my skin as I sat myself down on the bed. Jordan waltzed into the bathroom, closing the door behind him, and sure enough the sound of rushing water followed soon after.

I couldn’t possibly understand why he would want to take a bath after being lost at sea. Hadn’t that been enough water? And why was he using table salt instead of Epsom? Why had Luna hissed at him with vitriol that I hadn’t even seen her offer to strangers? Luna loved Jordan.

But Jordan wasn’t acting like Jordan.

My refusal to think about it only made me want to think about it. Maybe he had hit his head down there. Whatever he went through it must have been traumatic, so it was ridiculous to expect him to just be himself right after. We could talk about it once he was done bathing. I heard the water from the spout shut off with an abrupt squeak and as though I was anticipating it my shoulders relaxed.

My back sank back into my headboard as I stared off looking over at his nightstand. It was the same as he’d left it, completely untouched. I’m sure he’d make it all make sense to me and then we could go back to the way things used to be. Maybe he’d even quit cave diving and we could do something together instead. Everything was going to be okay. That’s what I told myself as I waited for him to climb into bed. But as I started to drift off to sleep, the bed remained empty.

I was jolted awake by an abrupt yowl erupting from the hallway. My feet stumbled frantically as I rushed out of bed to inspect what was causing all of the commotion. There was nothing that could prepare me for what I saw.

Jordan’s jaw was dislodged at an unfathomable angle and Luna was halfway down his throat, her body writhing and thrashing in a feeble attempt to escape. Only the white of his eyes were visible as they were rolled back into his head. Instantly my own wailing melded into a chorus alongside Luna’s as I began to beat at my husband with the beaded throw. A thunderous growl erupted from his throat as he disgorged and released her. Luna fell to the carpet, fur sticky and flat against her body. Once she got her bearings she ran yowling the whole way in horror at the ordeal.

“What is wrong with you?! What the hell were you doing?!”

“I was just getting a good look at her, that's all. I didn’t mean to upset you, Dear.”

Bewildered. I felt completely bewildered. I couldn’t even begin to know how to respond to him.

“Oh, darn. I’ve gone and upset you again. How about I make us breakfast? Let’s get this morning started the right way.” I couldn’t stop imagining the way that his jaw unhinged like a hogfish around our Luna. The man that walked down the stairs felt like a stranger to me.

Thankfully, I was able to find Luna and she let me check her out without too much of a fuss. She was fine for the most part, just covered in spit. I don’t know. It had that smell. That funky, salty smell that's coming from Jordan. It’s so hard to describe, but it reminds me of an aquarium touch pool or the beach when the tide is low. He smelled like seawater but specifically when it was teeming with life. Like a fishbowl that needed a good cleaning.

The chair rocked under me slightly as I bounced my foot nervously; my fingers played at the stray thread of my sweater’s sleeve. The fire alarm was blaring and I could see him frantically waving the smoke away from it. I could’ve helped, but my mind was elsewhere. There were more pressing matters at hand. I had questions and I needed them answered.

After some time, Jordan came from the kitchen and presented me with a bowl. Not a plate. A bowl. Underneath the heap of runny eggs and blueberries, I could make out what I could only assume to be a pancake. His eyes gazed over me expectantly as I timidly combed through my “meal”. I took a hesitant bite from a piece of my pancake and immediately wretched at the overwhelming taste of baking soda. Across the table, Jordan was shoveling down his meal like the night before.

“Mighty fine if I do say so myself. What about you, Dear?”

“We should tell everyone you’re back. Your mother needs to be the first to know and then we’ll need to go down to the hospital so they can-”

“Let’s worry about all of that stuff later, Honey. Today can just be about us.”

“What does that even mean? I don’t think you understand, Jordan. We held a funeral. We thought you were dead. We don’t just get to pretend all of that never happened. You need a medical evaluation. Hell, maybe a psychological one. We have to go see someone-”

“NO!!!” He erupted from the table and for just a moment I am certain I saw his body swell in size. His expression remained eerily flat, but his voice. Oh god, his voice. Just a deep, guttural croak. I was frozen there as he walked up to me. He knelt down and leveled with my eyes, his hands rested on my face and they were cold. So, so cold. And finally I could see how glassy his eyes were. Milky, hollow husks.

“No, Dear. Just you and me. Just how it should be. How about we watch a movie?”

He started to swirl and blur in my vision. I held onto that image. The image of him swimming amongst my tears. His comforts just as empty as they had been the night before. Pat. Drag. Pat. Drag.

Pat.

Drag.

The day was rather uneventful. We watched a movie and caught up on chores. He didn’t talk about what happened in the cave and I didn’t ask. It was probably the most time we’ve spent together in months. We moved here for Jordan’s work and he’d been so busy ever since between that and diving. It felt nice just spending the day together, like old times. I had almost forgotten about the morning when we were just about to go to bed. Instead of going to his side of the mattress he made his way to the bathroom.

“Just gonna take a bath. I’ll be right out, Dear.” Before I could protest, he closed the door behind him.

I don’t know why I did it, but I know now that I wish I hadn’t. I waited for the faucet to stop and then I waited and waited for him to come to bed. Then I was sick of waiting. Quietly, I slipped from the covers my steps certain as I neared the bathroom door. The silver of the knob glinted against the light of the moon as it washed in through our bedroom window. Open me it said. Come see for yourself.

And I did.

Our master bathroom was dressed in lunar blue. The tiles plain mottled slate danced with the shuddering shadows of leaves in the night breeze. Little ghosts that taunted me to come closer. The drip of the tub’s spout echoed rhythmically.

Drip. Drop. Drip. Drop.

From the entrance, I could see the tub was full, but there was no Jordan. At least, not at the surface. I crept closer until I was standing over the bath and that’s when I saw him. Swaying about like laundry in a basin was Jordan or at least the shell of Jordan. Grey eyes gawked at me but were completely devoid of consciousness. His mouth was agape, but not a single breath was taken. He was empty, just a bag of skin that drifted aimlessly within the water, except I could see something rippling to and fro within him. I watched the mass as it traveled rolling around in his gut, then crawling through his chest and throat until I was met with a singular polychromatic eye. And then he screamed. That guttural croak of a scream. His body expanded almost instantly and suddenly he had burst to the surface.

My throat was hot with panic as I wailed. My hands grasped for anything, anyone as I flew from our bedroom and down the stairs and into the kitchen. I threw open our drawers searching for a knife and grabbed the first I could find. But my phone. Where did I leave my phone?

“Dear, don’t you know it’s rude to walk in on someone bathing?” His voice was still somewhere between Jordan’s and that thing's. As if it hadn’t completely settled yet.

I clutched the knife behind me, turning towards the stairs. He stood there, still dripping. My heart pounded hard in my chest threatening to burst out. The pressure in my head was a warning that I may soon pass out. My phone. Where did I leave my phone?

“Oh, I get it now. I know what you want.” His lips pulled back into that tight unnerving smile, “I got just what you need.”

He began to saunter down the stairs.

His shoulders shimmied and his hips began to turn and sway as he made his way over to me and the laugh that escaped me was one of unnerved horror and complete utter disbelief. I think he took it as delight.

“Honey, I’m gonna give it to you and I’m gonna give it to you good.” A flimsy tendril dragged over his eye. He strolled closer until he was just an arm's length away. My knuckles tensed as I clenched the handle of the knife still hidden at my back.

He raised a single hand, wiggling his fingers before sensually sliding it down his chest and stomach until he was over his penis. He gripped it at its base and then he began to pull. His fingers dug into the flesh, nails biting into skin and he pulled and pulled and I could see old brown blood beginning to ooze as he tried to tear away at the flesh.

Losing all the composure I had initially been able to muster I broke out into a fit of wailing. This seems to have broken his concentration as I brought the knife to the front clutching it to my chest with fear and confusion.

“Oh! Oh, geez! Dear, what’s wrong? I thought this was what you wanted!”

“Why the fuck would I want any of this?! What are you doing?!”

“Well, you came looking at me and you had the knife! I was gonna give it to you! You know, so you could-”

My knees gave out as I fell to the ground sobbing. I’m certain I was having a panic attack.

Jordan stared at me, expressionless, but his own confusion was evident.

“Let’s get you to bed, Dear.”

I don’t know why, but I didn’t fight when he helped me up. The knife fell to the tile with a cold clank and I felt so embarrassed at the version of myself I saw within the metal. Warped and barely visible but still a mess all the same.

Jordan sat me in the bed, tucking me under our duvet and draping our sofa's decorative throw over top. I lay flat on my back, staring up at our ceiling, and this time he sat on his side of the bed. His hand rested on my thigh. Pat. Drag. Pat. Drag.

“You’re not my husband are you…”

I was met with silence. My jaw clenched tight and I was just about to force myself to ask again, but then he spoke. Not aloud, but within.

No. No, I am not.

When morning came I was catatonic. I could still hear and see everything around me, but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything about it. I couldn’t bring myself to speak. I couldn’t bring myself to move. I couldn’t bring myself to cry. I just didn’t want to feel. Once again, my world had been turned upside down. Only this time I didn’t know what up or down really was.
Jordan. No. Whatever puppeteered Jordan came in to check on me. It tried to get me out of bed, tried to get me to eat. But I refused. I didn’t want to play this game. Whatever it was. I just wanted my husband back. But not like this.

When night came, I had finally found the strength to get up. I had questions and I needed answers. But he was nowhere to be found. I searched everywhere in the house, including the bath. I searched under the bed, but only Luna came out. I scoured the backyard, but was met with nothing. Then finally, I knew where he would be.

The drive to the beach didn’t take long. I parked the car and stepped out, welcomed by the sound of the night tide and the light of a glorious full moon. I could see a trail of steps in the sand, going towards the shore. Standing with his back to me at the water's edge was Jordan. His hands were held pensively behind his back. He didn’t look at me as he spoke.

“I believe it’s best that I leave.”

My chest was tight. Wound up with a tsunami of emotions.

“You…You are so selfish. So that’s it? You just drag me here away from my friends away from my family and this is how it ends? I gave up everything, everything to be with you. I gave up my career. I gave up my home. I gave up myself and you think you just get to leave? What about everything we made together? What about Luna? What about me?!”

The muscles of his back flexed, but otherwise he stayed still. His silence was as palpable as the salt that lingered in the air.

“You know, when you said we should have a baby I thought that me saying we should wait until you get more time to be home would make you actually put in some effort to, I don’t know, spend more time with me? But you didn’t. Instead, you just threw yourself into more work, into more anything, just to not be with me. Why? Why do you do that? You act as if I said no, but you knew what I meant. Why am I always the one compromising Jordan? Why am I always the one giving up pieces of myself to hold onto you?”

The waves thrummed against the sand like a melancholic metronome.

“And that woman. When she told me she went after you, she was crying so hard. At first, I thought she was so sad because she thought I was mad she couldn’t find you, but then she showed up to the funeral and she was just bawling. Just absolute waterworks over my husband and I don’t even know who the hell she is. Who is that woman Jordan?”

Tears painted my face, but I wiped them. As he turned to me I knew the importance of seeing him clearly for the last time.

Not Jordan faced me. His expression remained even yet his oil-slick eyes were solemn as he spoke. His voice was as steady as the tide before us.

“In his final moments there was nothing he regretted more than traversing by my lair. Just you and him. That is how he wanted it to be. He wished for anything, anything to get to sit beside you one more time enjoying one another's presence. He did love you, Jasmine. He loved you.”

Without another word, I watched as it ripped itself out of my Jordan. It unhinged his jaw like a door, pulling itself out as his body fell to the sand, folding over itself like an empty wetsuit. The creature was a gelatinous mass of eyes and tendrils. My eyes burned as I tried to fathom its ever-shifting hues under the light of the moon. The swirling patterns screamed at me the way a diamondback’s scales yell out at a mouse.

Run away. Don’t come near me. I will kill you.

When the next tide came it took to it and into the sea it went, washed away with the brine. I flew over to Jordan, my Jordan. His body now a truly empty husk, but I held him to me and I wept. The sounds of my cries crescendoing amongst the song of the tides. The shell of my husband so empty and lifeless. But he was mine. All mine.

Beach security found me cradling Jordan’s slough. I gave the authorities quite a hard time as they tried to seize his remains for an autopsy, but in the end they succeeded. They still don’t know what to make of it and nobody believed me when I told them the truth. They’re saying I must have had a fit of trauma-induced psychosis due to the state I found his body in. My parents have since stepped in and have me seeing a grief therapist. She’s supposed to help me make sense of my feelings and surprisingly it has been helpful. That's why I’ve decided to write out my account of the ordeal. Though I’m certain she will write this off as further delusion and recommend that my psychiatrist increase my prescription dosage. But I know what I experienced and I certainly know what I saw. I still don’t understand why that thing decided to slide out from the depths and play ventriloquist with my husband’s corpse or why it then chose to trail back to our home and attempt normalcy, but what I can say is that in a way I am grateful for it.

Because, it let me get to see my Jordan one last time.

If you met my father, your first thought would not be that he is a “hippie” or a conservationist.  He was a very cut-and-dry type of guy.  He was a white-collar desk jockey, with the only spice in him being the occasional beer at church gatherings.  However, he was far from mundane; he loved his wife and me above all else, with a palpable passion.  The root of this passion and devotion to his family is understandable.  

Throughout their early twenties together, Mom had several miscarriages.  Every attempt to start a family was foiled by nature’s cruelty. Years of disappointment soon led them to an era of depression.  Around this time, my Dad moved them to a new home out in the sticks.  

It was here he took up planting trees in our extremely expansive property.  It was and remained his sole passion, outside of raising his future child.  Mom always described it as “a way to get his mind off things”, aka he was depressed in the ‘90s.  

Well into their late thirties, they had me.  They always joked about how fat I was, that I had been growing in Mom well before she was pregnant, that I had been eating all the other “attempts”.  I guess it was the type of humor they needed just to cope with all they had been through, relieved at last.  In fairness, I was almost ten pounds when I was born.  Hefty.  

It was this backyard that I learned to walk, run and climb.  The spruce and pines grew alongside me, sprouting and climbing toward the sky. 

Then there was my father’s pride and joy, the oak tree.  

It rooted itself in the center of all its siblings, the first tree planted and the largest one by far.  It was a wonder in the county.  Within its short lifespan, it had developed rapidly and expansively.  Its straight, thick trunk rose over sixty feet, coated in hundreds of healthy, long branches, and sprouted heavy bushes of immense leaves every spring.  

Under this expanding canopy I spent my developmental years.  I was delighted by the tree, which in turn pleased my father.  However, it was the lone tree I was never allowed to climb.  I learned this the hard way.  

One summer, when I was eight, I decided the younger oaks and pines were no longer an efficient challenge for my climbing skills.  So, I dared the mighty oak in the center of our grand yard.  I was beyond the first several branches, easily ten-plus feet off the ground, when I heard my father burst through the back door.  I nearly fell out of the tree and clung harder to my branch when I heard my father yelling as he approached.  He had never yelled at me before.  

I came down, red-faced and ashamed.  Composing himself, my father sat me down and laid down the only LAW he ever explicitly gave: “Never, ever, climb that tree.  It is sacred.”  
And so it was to me from that day forth.  

Years rolled on.  I was soon a teenager, with little interest in the man-made forest behind my fortress of solitude.  My high school friends were always jealous of the near-infinite hijinks that I could get up to in those trees.  In classic teenager fashion, I simply shrugged and complained that there wasn't much else to do at my place.  So, before long, I began hosting friends, going as deep as we could get within the spotty forest.  

It was a prime location for potheads and drinking, and only my closest friends enjoyed the luxury of camping.  My parents were lax, to say the least.  They were in an eternal state of bliss, for all I knew, as there were few times I recall them dismissing a request or a friend of mine from the premises.  Until one Summer night, junior year.  

My secret circle of buds was camping out with me, in my private green canopy.  One of whom was a lot rowdier than normal.  One too many drinks and far too much weed.  Larson had his camping hammock tied several feet off the ground between two sturdy trees.  We all eventually followed suit, laughing all the while.  Thus, the idea sprouted, and Jim, another pal, shouted: “Wait! Let's make a canopy city! Come on, let's make all our hammocks in a circle so we can all climb to each other!”  

This retrospectively lame idea got drunken approval from everyone.  Including me.  Until I realized which tree I'd need to climb to complete the elongated ‘circular canopy city’.  I looked up at its strong, sacred limbs, anxiety sobering my senses.  The one law I shared as sacred now stared down at me.  I don’t remember who, or how many, but my stalling was rebuked by several slurred voices behind me.  I didn’t want to be the buzzkill, so I complied.  With shaking hands, I began my ascent.  

With muddy shoes, I heaved myself over the lowest branch.  My inebriation was resurging, so my balance was tardy at best.  Shooting myself upright, I reached for the next section of the tree.  I realized that I had already disappeared into the green.  Doubtful, drunken whispers were below me.  Shaking the anxiety from my head, I continued upward.  

In a blink, I found myself on the oak's crown.  Looking over the countless moon-kissed treetops.  Shouting below broke my trance.  My friends must have realized I was far beyond the spot I was to strap my hammock.  I wasn’t sure why I had kept climbing.  Perhaps the taboo was too alluring once I had indulged.  Soaking in the sight one last time, I began my descent.  About halfway down, that's when I slipped.  

I felt my mud-caked shoe slide frictionlessly from the branch below.  All of my weight shifted, and I went spiraling downward, my body smashing and cracking tree limbs as I fell.  With a thud, I hit the last shoot, which broke my fall, as my torso wrapped around it.  The shouts and concerns of my friends were drowned out by breathless gagging as I vomited up the night’s beer and liquor, while being winded at the same time.  One shout silenced all others.  Even in my state, I flinched, recognizing it immediately.  With dry eyes, I glanced up.  My dad was jogging through the treeline toward us.  

Some of my friends ran off.  Others helped me to my feet and stood by me, awaiting a stern talking-to.  I was radiating shame and embarrassment.  And its personification pooled by my feet, at the base of the tree.  

Clutching my chest, searing pain shot through me all at once.  Each weak breath was met with stabbing, icy flares.  But as my father approached, another discomfort manifested.  I felt a twinge through my heart, as if it had vibrated.  Next thing I knew, I had crumpled to the ground, gripping my chest, wheezing in pain.  Gasping, my friends cried out to my dad, uncertain of what to do.  He pushed them aside, kneeling beside me.  All while staring wide-eyed at the oak tree.  Examining it.  

It felt like every vein, every major artery, was flicked, like rubber bands, within my ribcage.  Horrified, certain I was having a heart attack, I whimpered like a child for my dad to help me.  His attention remained on the tree, scanning every broken limb and fractured sprout.  
“Dad?”  Still in the fetal position, I pulled at his shirt. “I think I need to go to the hospital.” 
He finally turned to me, his face a mixture of disappointment and relief. “No, thank God no.  The pain will pass.  The damage was minor… you're ok.  Just breathe.”  

Unable to do much else, I lay there and greedily inhaled and exhaled, begging the aching to stop.  My father, kneeling beside me, offered a comforting hand on my back as I heaved.  His calm presence was the lone salve to my suffering.  

My friends were dismissed back to their homes the next morning.  I had been carried inside and lain in bed like an ill child, where I slept deep into the next day.  Afternoon sun bled through my curtains, waking me up in time to hear my father stepping outside and marching to the back of the property.  A dull ache lingered in my torso, along with soreness from my stomach’s impact with a tree branch.  I turned over, determined to sleep the sun away.  Sleep returned, while I listened to the faint whistling of my dad outside.  

It was late into the evening when I sauntered downstairs, shame draped over me like a veil.  I spotted my dad sitting alone in the living room.  He looked up from his book and waved me over.  Cringing, I obeyed and plopped into the chair across from him.  Fully expecting an earful about ‘disrespecting his one rule’ and ‘endangering myself and my friends, I was surprised when he began with.  “I’m glad you have such loyal friends.  God knows when I was your age I didn’t have many who would stick with me when a parent busted us.”  

I nodded, still bracing for the pep talk.  
“Come on, get up.  I want to show you something.  I think you’re old enough to know.”  
I followed him to the back door, where two shovels sat at attention against the wall.  “Grab a spade.  We’ll need to dig for you to see.”  my dad said, grabbing one himself.  

I followed my father silently as he led us to the crown jewel of the woods.  Passing a few familiar spruces and pines, we halted next to the towering, sprawling oak.  A fresh wave of shame went through my aching torso after I saw the multiple broken branches.  Until I noticed the larger ones were now wrapped in bandages, like splints for a fractured arm.  The memory of my father’s whispering the afternoon prior resurfaced. “Did you do that?”  I pointed to the lowest offshoot.  

“Yes.  It’s…very important to me that this tree stay healthy.”  He replied in an almost reverent tone.  “And now, I can show you why.  Start digging at the base of the trunk.  Be very, very careful to avoid its roots.  Place the spade gently on the topsoil, and slowly use your weight to pierce the dirt.”  He demonstrated with immense care.  Then gestured to me to follow suit.  

The moon was bright that night.  It shone through the canopy, dancing like electrified diamonds on the soil.  The light, paired with my father’s ever-dimming work lamp, illuminated the delicate operation before me.  Deeper and deeper we dug, each shovel load delicately upturned.  

I was about shin-deep into the earth when I felt it.  A quake.  Soft and rhythmic.  I stood frozen while my father continued the excavation.  His process had slowed, grown more delicate.  He glanced at me.  I read his face and resumed my dig.  

Another hour passed; we were almost waist-deep now.  The rhythmic pulsing in the earth grew louder with each inch upturned. At last, my father held his hand up. “Stop.  Let me dig the last of this.”  Gladly I exited the pit.  

Standing over my father, I stared over his hunched shoulders as he worked the remainder of the job.  Suddenly, he threw the shovel and squatted, resorting to digging with his bare hands.  

All the while, I stood there, entranced by the rhythmic drum we had uncovered.  My enchantment was broken by my father.  He shot straight upright, eyes fixed down upon whatever he had just uncovered.  Eager to see, I slipped back into the pit.  My feet were met with the vibrating ground, the sound echoing like the organ of a church as it bounced off the earthen cathedral walls.  The quaking pulse had quickened, beating against the earth with systematic thuds.  

“Son,”  My father said, back still turned to me. “Look down here.”  
With timid steps, I inched over to him.  Leaning over his shoulder, I looked down with him.  

There were roots.  Thick, encasing roots.  A wooden ribcage protecting the wonder held within.  Convulsing within the mighty oak's entanglement of life, sat an immense, human heart.  

Blood-soaked dirt caked its moist membrane.  Its valves and offshoots were connected to the very roots of the tree that shielded it.  Each violent influx shook the turf it rested in.  Now exposed to the air, I could hear each beat slosh and splash the interior contents along its intended tubing, engorging them as they passed through.  

I gazed at it, my mind racing with incoherence.  My legs trembled with each pulse, sending shivers up my spine.  My father placed a hand on my shoulder, raising himself up.  “This tree is your protector and your spring of life.  Its limbs are your veins, and its trunk is your arteries.  If it suffers, you suffer.”  He sighed as he turned to my pale face. “As long as this tree lives, you live.  That was the agreement.”  

My legs nearly gave out. “Now you know.”  He said,  “I’m sorry it had to be this soon.  But you need to understand.”  He heaved himself out of the hole.  I numbly followed.  We stood together, gazing down into the open pit.  “It was the only way we could keep you.”  He continued, his solemn tone returning, “Your heart is with the earth.  Nourish the earth, and it will nourish you.”  He patted my back.  “As we have done, so must you when we’re gone.”  

A placed a hand over my chest, feeling my racing heart, while staring at the other.  My eyes widened upon realizing it.  They were in sync.  With a shudder, my hand fell limply to my side.  My father gave me space.  Stepping back, he leaned on his shovel, waiting patiently for some reaction to sprout from my features.  

Crickets and owls orchestrated their symphony through the woods.  The buried heart provided the bass to the decrepit harmony.  I stood, listening to this alien choir, my chest tightening as I watched the entombed organ quicken its pace.  Blue veins pulsating, chamberways palpitating.  I could almost feel the exact reactions from within my ribs.  

“What should I do now?”  I mumbled from numb lips.  
Reemerging under the shade of the oak tree, my father replied.  “Live as you have.  But, above all else, remain true to this earth.  And this forest.”  He patted the trunk lovingly.  “When your mother and I are gone, it's up to you to take care of yourself.  And that means this tree.”  

With that, he began gently throwing clay and turf back over the pit.  Digesting these revelations, I stood like a stock, silent and upright.  My eyes fixed on the contorting muscles being slowly reburied before me.  Stomach acid churned violently, threatening to rise up my throat.

I flinched back into time as my dad patted the last of the earth to fill the hole.  The only trace of its existence was the patch left behind amidst the green grass; like a scar after a procedure.  The ground was still again, yet I could not shake the memory of its quaking from my legs.  Like an imprint, the shadow of the heart’s beating still tremored up my spine.  

The remainder of the night is a blur.  My dad guided me back inside, to my tense mother, who clearly had been sitting in silent anxiety since we left the house.  With a loving hand, she led me upstairs to my room, where I was greeted by a TV freshly organized in the corner.  A brand new GameCube was plugged in.  Beside a collection of games and a generous bag of candy.  My mom’s love had filled the bedroom, an attempted salve to my fresh wound.  The gesture was unappreciated at the time.  I was still numbed from my experience.  I wish I had had the presence of mind to hug her.  I was her baby, still a kid in her eyes.  

My father knew better now.  We never discussed the absurd situation again.  What few soft questions I would pass across the dinner table were met with a stern silence. I suppose he wanted me to live a normal life, and this meant no explanations, no discussion of the ‘agreement’, nothing beyond a solemn stare across his lawn at the towering oak.  

I recall the remainder of that first year well enough.  Restless and lonely.  For many long nights I would lie awake, picturing my heart, pulsing in the earth within its cage of root and soil.  I would sneak out some evenings, when I knew sleep would never come.  I would stand in front of that oak tree for hours.  Staring directly at its tendrils burrowed in the dirt.  Able to picture perfectly how they crisscrossed around that solitary organ.  

Sometimes, I thought I could feel the creatures and insects slither and crawl over it.  I'd shudder at the thought of countless, cold, tickling limbs of centipedes, or clammy, moist slugging of worms invading my mind’s eye.  I could never tell whether it was all in my imagination or an accurate sensation.  

My social life was marred for a couple of months, but I rebounded eventually.  There was no more late-night camping in my backyard.  My closest friends, the ones who were there that night, understood.  Not that I wanted to camp, even if I was allowed.  The thought of my whole body lying on the ground near that tree, with the only barrier being a thin sleeping bag, haunted me.  Able to feel the earth softly drum beneath my head, ba-bump, ba-bump.  Never in my life had I been so grateful to have a second-floor bedroom.  It was my lone sanctuary from that phantom drumming.  
 
Years passed, and the sting of the revelation subsided.  The forest, although still avoided, was no longer a looming specter.  Time normalized my strange circumstance, and soon I was a young man.  College came and went, my parents aged and aged.  I retained my vitality, only growing taller and stronger.  By the time I was middle-aged, I still looked thirty.  I lived at home, worked remotely, and cared for my now-elderly parents.  The forest grew all the while.  

My father passed away in his sleep at eighty-one.  The night before, he had called me to his bedside.  A knowing look in his dull eyes.  With a raspy, ailing voice, he whispered, “Take care of it-... Take care of yourself, son.”  I nodded as he offered a final handshake before drifting off to his final rest.  

My mother soon followed, passing at eighty-three.  Our final interaction was the afternoon before.  Lying on the couch, she smiled up at me as I brought her a glass of water.  A shaky hand grasped my forearm.  “Our agreement has been a blessing,” She said. “Without you, none of this happiness I feel could exist.”  

She emptied her glass before continuing, “Your father was willing to make that agreement, no matter its cost… I as well.”  She looked up at me, smile contrasting her grave face, “We are off to uphold our end of the agreement now… Just know, not once, not a single moment in my life, did I regret it.  I love you so much, sweetheart.  Live a long and beautiful life.”  

My confusion and anxiety emanated off me.  She read this, and resumed, “Take care of that oak, and all its brothers and sisters.  Promise me you will.”
I nodded.
“Good…Good.  It was all worth it then.”  
Before I could inquire about this mystery my father never dared elaborate on, she slipped into a deep sleep.  

She passed that evening.  

I buried them both on the edge of the forest.  Inheriting the property, I felt no need to leave.  Rather, a duty to my mother had revised my perception of those woods.  I owed it to them to carry out that promise.  I never did find out what I cost them, what they sacrificed to give me life.  No books or journals in the house even hinted at it.  

My heart continues to beat amidst that soil.  Its oaken fortress grows in strength each passing year.  Despite my body's health and retained youthfulness, my mind grows old.  A melancholy has overshadowed my life.  More and more I find my thoughts wandering down a winding trail of almost hypnotizing meaninglessness, only to lead to the same location each time.  The oak tree.  

It's planted squarely in my brain, its roots pulsing deeper and deeper into my grey matter.  It's not a malicious presence, but rather a beckoning.  Almost two decades have passed since my parents departed to fulfill their debt.  And I have enjoyed the fruits of that debt, physically.  Yet, this yearning continues to enwrap my thoughts.  And like the forest I oversee, it grows.   

I am now almost ninety-four, in the body of a forty-year-old.  All of my friends have passed on.  My home stands alone amidst miles of forest, detached from the few remaining settlers in the county.  Solitude has allowed these tendrils to burrow farther, and I fear they have reached my heart, for it grows nostalgic for the earth. 
  
   This life was a gift from my parents, and the soil.  But it is ultimately mine, and I have grown tired.  All my desires have been usurped by one remaining obsession.  

I hold the very shovel my father used all those years ago.  The wind sways the immense canopy that hangs over me.  With a final, gentle push, I upturn the last of the dirt.  Staring into the pit, I gaze at my heart, watching it throb with soft, calm jumps.  

I must return this gift, and I am glad of it.  This yearning has dissipated, replaced by contentment.  As I prepare to return to the soil, my last hope is that this may reduce my parents’ debt, whatever it may be.  

May my love for them nourish this forest.  I am ready now.  Tonight shall be my final rest.

If you happen to pass by my woods, please be sure to give my parents and me a wave.  I am certain my heart will beat in gratitude within the earth.  

I first realized I might want to try caving when I thought about crawling into the oil well on my parents’ property.

I had never gotten too close before. Mom and Dad had forbidden me all my life, when the workers were around, when the machinery was still, and it had never really called to me. The pumpjack loomed too harshly against the horizon, austere and violent, and when the workers labored, it bellowed out awful noises and swung like Themis’ scales. The bulk of the apparatus honestly still scared me, as well as the idea of the suffocating, iridescent sludge within, but the second it occurred to me that it all tied to a tunnel into the earth, something lit up in my brain: some hubris, some excited sector of castigation, that overrode my faculties and had me stumbling out in the twilight to leer at the lip of the well from a short distance, fingers toying idly with the smooth plastic of the lighter in my pocket until I had the fleeting thought that flicking the spark wheel might blow up my entire family.

I clasped my clammy hands in front of me instead and approached. It wasn’t terribly interesting; just an old steel tube with a rotten and sickly sweet stench that wafted up from the depths of a long, dark hole. I thought about sitting on the edge of the steel, dangling my feet over, and lowering myself down, down into those depths to see what was on the other side.The sirens’ song of a crush injury.  But the squeeze wouldn’t be tight enough, I thought.

That night I dreamt of a smaller well, a sort of plaything for a child make-believing about oil barons. My ears rang and the well screeched, but still I climbed inside as if the sounds were simply a lullaby drawing me to my bed. I barely fit, the walls snug against my ribs and hips and shoulders, but as I let gravity suck me down, I knew what it had felt like, the thing that never became a memory. In the dream, there was only the idea of pain. I’m not sure what happened in the end; I woke up sharp and sudden in my bed, at first nearly frightened, and then almost satisfied.

The next few days were spent on daydreams of the well and recollections of long past similar situations. Crawling through plastic playground tunnels when I was a child, hiding in closets with my friends as a drunken teenager, sneaking into a festival curled up in a car trunk. These were fine, almost suitable distractions, but I dreamt of them at night, too, along with what I was more keen to be distracted from: the vision of a glistening coffin being lowered into a cozy grave and suffocated with dirt. Sometimes I woke up with soil under my nails. Sometimes I could almost taste earth and clay in my mouth.

These nightmares and mysterious stains were a bit too much for me. I was never incredibly tolerant. I figured I just had a bizarre, slightly macabre new hyperfixation that my mostly-ghosted therapist would probably easily link to trauma, and I just as easily assumed that I knew how to remedy it. I’ve indulged in worse before, so I texted my friend, Moore, from college, who does spelunking and skydiving and all the other adrenaline-producing shit rich kids pay for when they get bored and want a taste of manufactured danger. He briefly pretended to care whether I had experience in the field and accepted my redirection without much concern for my or his wellbeing. I think he worked in risk management; it’d probably given him some sort of alarm fatigue.
My experience, of course, was nonexistent, and his was too low to take a clueless charge down into the bowels of the uncaring earth, but maybe he did believe me when I hinted at knowing a bit more than nothing. Maybe it was some combination of attraction and indifference; maybe it was pity. There’s a chance it had even been some misguided, cold vitriol that had inspired him to allow himself the opportunity to see me dig my silver spoon into rock and mud, but regardless, he didn’t share his motivations if he had them, and instead emailed me a time and place, as well as a brief checklist:

• helmet
• knee + elbow pads
• headlamp (800 lumens)
• rainboots 
• backpack (water, food, batteries, extra headlamp, 3 flashlights)

I was glad for the succinct nature, the lack of request for a chat over dinner or a briefing over coffee. I hadn’t spoken to Moore since college, didn’t have anything good to catch him up on, and wasn’t terribly curious about his own life beyond his ability to go where I never had. My interest wasn’t as locational as it was geological; the act of discovery and the sights within the caverns of our region weren’t of as much importance to me as the scrape of stone and the kiss of closeness. I’d be lying if I said I fully understood it, but then again, I’d never chased the motivation behind my impulses.

I didn’t tell anyone where or when I was going, what my plans were, why I had a sudden urge to deeply inconvenience myself by squeezing into the bowels of the earth. Survivalists and explorers, from my limited research, say you should always let someone know when you plan to return in case of emergency, but I assumed Moore would take care of that. I didn’t talk to many people anymore other than my parents, at least during the daylight hours, and despite my adulthood, I had the feeling my family would try to dissuade me from my adventure. To them, it would seem woefully dangerous at best and passively suicidal at worst, and I didn’t care to listen.

I also didn’t care to listen to Moore, who spoke more than I remembered. His mouth was open the second I climbed out of my car, my boots crunching onto the sparse gravel of the informal parking spot located on the shoulder of a weaving, forested road. He’d been rummaging through packs when I rolled in, working by the hatch light of his SUV and the dim morning light that filtered through the leaves above, but he whirled when I approached, squinting at his phone, at me, at the woods around us. “You’re a little late,” he said, getting a good look at my shoes.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes,” he said. He didn’t sound annoyed, but he didn’t sound thrilled. He’d always been a little too blasé for me. Maybe it was his general demeanor, just a calm guy, but I didn’t like the lack of a leg to stand on I had with him. It would be better if someone was excited at the opportunity to show me the hidden innards of the ground, explain their weird little hobby to me in a way that I could tune out, grab my pack for me and clip me to whatever I needed to be clipped to. Instead, he was methodical about the whole thing. “You bring everything I told you to?”

I nodded. It was a simple list of provisions for what was supposed to be a pretty simple day expedition. I’d stayed awake a lot of nights now looking through pictures and go pro footage of different cave systems, Mammoth Cave, Jewel Cave, the Carlsbad Caverns, but I think any of them would suffice for what I needed.

“You’re gonna fuck up your jeans.”

I blinked at him. He hadn’t specified much for clothing beyond the required safety equipment and general coverage, but he was wearing a stupid-looking yellow polyester suit. I had on sturdy pants, long sleeves with a jacket, the boots and pads and gloves required of me. “That’s okay,” I answered, and he blinked back, shrugged, and bestowed into my hands a crumpled windbreaker from the trunk of his vehicle before he slung his pack over his shoulder and started off into the woods.

The lock systems on our rides beeped their sharp goodbyes at us as we trekked down the worn trail. I pulled the windbreaker over my head at a brief pause and had to hustle to catch back up with Moore, who wasn’t purposefully hurrying but was still moving at a pace I wasn’t accustomed to. It was early fall, cool and damp in the after dawn hours, but I could still feel clammy perspiration building up under the insulated layers of clothing I had on, trickling down my spine like a nose bleed. I took shallow swigs from one of my plastic water bottles as we ventured along, then a surreptitious pull from a patterned tumbler. Moore only looked back when I stumbled over rock or root, but he told me generally of the cave we were marching to.

It’s probably not completely undiscovered but it’s not well documented. No official trail signs leading us towards our destination and Moore says no maps or videos online of it, either. He’s been in once or twice, spurred by the spirit of exploration to branch away from the more well-traversed cave systems in the nearby area, and he says it’s simple, roomy at its best parts in ways that mimic a hike and with a few tight squeezes, but nothing snug enough to be dangerous, no sumps or pits or other vocabulary terms I didn’t recognize that he had to explain. There had been relics of dusty old equipment when he’d ventured in, beer cans and food wrappers illuminated by the beam of his headlamp that indicated it had been touched not just by civilization, but by the heedless, youthful population of humanity that meant it should be an easy trip for people like me. It was maybe a bit reckless on his own part to take me along into a largely unexplored cavern, but I didn’t feel any trepidation as I followed him. All I really felt was the lull of the forest around me, the wet chill of perspiration and autumn, the burn of my calves as I traipsed along the half-trail and of my throat when I took a drink between blurs of still green trees and dirt.

“Becca.”
“Hm?” I crunched to a halt behind Moore. He was standing still at the edge of the clear cut through the brush, and I raised my eyebrows in a mirror of his expression as I re-did my hair tie that didn’t need to be redone.

“I asked if you’d talked to Lacey’s parents. You heard from them at all?”

This did make me feel something other than boredom, for just a second. I pulled at my hairband a little too tightly and snapped it, cursed and fished another out to yank my ponytail back. I shook my head while I did it, pursing my lips like I had something in my mouth I couldn’t let go of, then said, “No,” when he kept looking at me. It was simple, and it was partly a lie. I had received several messages from Lacey’s parents and her sister. My parents had received calls, and our reps had received emails. We just hadn’t responded to any. My mother had brought up the idea of me calling them back, but when I thought of that, I wasn’t smothered tight by the earth or by metal or a wooden box; I was spinning aimlessly up, up through the air, in a direction I didn’t understand. So no, I said, and no, I meant, but it wasn’t for their lack of trying.

Moore accepted that easily, with neither pleasure nor derision, and I took another drink. Down, down, swirled the embers, like a whirlpool, like a tumbling hunk of metal on a hill, down the way I wanted to go. Moore stepped down, down, a gentle incline through a raggedy grove of foliage that he parted and pulled until a swath of rock was revealed. There was a generous enough entrance cut into the stone, jagged and short enough to have to stoop into, but nothing like a mailbox slot. Nothing like my oil well, my wooden box.

“Gypsum,” Moore said with a hint of pride. He tilted his head towards the cave entrance. “Others in the area are mostly dolomite. S’a karst forest. I think.” He shrugged, kicked a stone away with a scuff of his boot, and explained none of those words to me. With one last scrutinizing look at my gear, he bent to step into the maw of the rock and reminded me, “Make sure you do what I say. Let me know if anything is too much for you.”

I ducked in behind him. The entrance to the cave was pale and glittered softly in the brief rays of weak sunlight that managed to worm through the trees. The ground crumbled beneath the heels of my boots and I was distracted enough by squinting into the approaching darkness that I scraped my helmet against outcroppings of rock a few times. Moore didn’t look back at my noises, which were mostly brief stumbles and the chafe of my gloves against the rock wall for support. The air was quiet and somber, colder than the outside in temperature even at this shallow depth, but more so, empty of the vibrant life of the forest. If there was life in this cave, it was near silent; we were the loudest things, our footfalls interrupting and echoing, and only when Moore paused to flip on the bulb of his headlamp did I hear it. Almost inaudible, more of an idea, a gentle whisper of air came from the depths. It came in stilted puffs, only truly able to be felt once I had heard it, and they were just barely warmer than the air around us. They caressed my face like the breath of an animal, and their smell was mostly stale and stagnant and earthen like that which surrounded us, but tinged with something like metal and decay. I wrinkled my nose. Moore took a deep pull.

“Hey, if it blows, it goes.”

If it blows, it goes.
If it blows, it goes.
If it blows, it goes.
If it blows
It goes.
I go.
I go.
I do, I go.

Breath in and out through working lungs. A drink down. My headlamp was flicked on like the high beam of a car, by someone else’s fingers, Moore reaching back and taking the wheel, and the cave came into wet repose again. Dampness clung to the walls and ceilings and floors like spit, and everything was beautiful and boring and awful. It was a harsh, alien landscape, dirty white stone and nonsensical edges. It felt like stepping over tooth and tongue and into mouth, into gullet, into lung. This was the throat of the world, breathing quietly, frozen and gross and–I shrieked as a spider the size of my palm skittered across the ground in front of me, my boot striking out and missing. Moore swung his gaze and his light towards it, catching a streak of amber body as it disappeared into a hovel of rock, and he laughed.

“Yeah, there are animals in these sometimes. Usually just bugs, bats, but I’ve seen scorpions and stuff, too. Gnarly little guys.” He stepped on ahead, his footing surer than mine. “This is mostly just walkable, but there’s a little pass up ahead, and the other side is pretty. Little cramped on the way in, but plenty of room for standing and exploring once you’re through.”

In the cave, all was dark except that which our light illuminated. We were glaring intrusions under the stalactites, and I felt artificial, like I was in a dream. Everything was a bit too quiet; all the noises were us and the distant blowing breath. Moore swept his headlamp over different rock formations, took pictures and videos and pointed things out to me, and I looked dutifully but distractedly. I was uneasy, but not claustrophobic; in fact, I had too much room. I could stand to my full height and stretch my arms out almost fully to the sides to run my covered fingers through the sweaty trails inching down the cave walls. To Moore, I may have looked reverent, but I felt like I was free falling.

I stopped greedily when he halted our expedition in a small dip of the system. It was off a left or right turn; I hadn’t been keeping careful track, but he’d left cracked glowsticks along the way to aid dimly on our way back. He sat down on a mineral ulcer jutting from the ground and I crouched. We ate quickly. I was surprised to find that I was hungry. I hadn’t felt it, but we’d been walking for a couple hours, so it made sense. I drank from a crinkling water bottle and the sloshing tumbler and my eyes blurred momentarily, but they righted themselves as I waited for him on the cave floor. We didn’t move on till he was ready; he had the wheel, and my life was in his hands.

“This is the squeeze,” he announced easily, pointing out a hole that carved itself into the rock wall a few feet above the ground. It looked natural, eroded, and like an altogether bad idea. He’d been through this way before, so I knew it was big enough for his larger frame to crawl through, and I could see it in the width as well, but it was still overwhelmingly small in context. My heart hammered insistently for a few beats as I stared and half listened to his explanation of technique, some foul mix of fear and excitement.

“Yeah, I can do it,” I told him when he asked. I wanted to do it, and so I would. Maybe this was really what drew me underground, the opportunity to overcome hesitance and nervousness and to do something through sheer willpower. I watched as he folded himself into the orifice and shuffled inside. It wasn’t beautiful or graceful, but it was practiced. He went slowly but easily, and there was enough room for his pack to clear the ceiling. I let him disappear and slough through stone until he presumably made it to the other side, and his echoing call came through the tunnel, too quiet to understand but enough to hear. I brushed stray hairs behind my ears and bent at the knees in front of the mouth and called back. “What? I can’t hear you!”

For a moment, all was silent except for my own pulse, and I felt the exhale upon my face through the squeeze. If it blows, it goes, I go, I blow. My ears rang in response to the nothingness and my vision blurred gently at the edges again, like sleep encroaching, and then the wind from where the sky can’t touch whistled again, like static like sirens like screaming like a choir singing, and bubbled into another garbled response that was half Moore’s voice and half not. I squinted and recoiled, and it groaned again, the tunnel, before I heard, “Bec!”

“S-sorry!” I didn’t give it time. I didn’t think twice. I twisted myself in an approximation of the shape Moore had been in when he entered the tunnel and shoved myself forward. My footing wasn’t great, and the rubber of my boot slipped against the slick floor, but I was able to push pull drag myself forward, until I was in. My body hunched in crawl, forced down unnaturally by the low ceiling, and I took a moment to get my bearings. I was surrounded by walls the color of aged bone, pockmarked by time and dirty water, and it was all close enough that if I shifted, I would collide with it in some manner. I took my first tentative drag forward and shuddered as rock bit into my leg through my pants. Mud smeared down the parts of my body that brushed the floor, and water dripped down onto my helmet, ran into my eyes and over my lips. I felt like I was lost to the earth, already buried alive, and the air was full of false promises as I sucked it in. But it was perfect, and I kept going, inch by inch and foot by foot through the tunnel.

It was almost euphoric, having the itch scratched gently after all the dreams. This was maybe the first time in my life I had truly known what I wanted. I crawled and bent as the ceiling lowered, scooting myself forward more by the toes of my shoes and the pads of my fingers than anything. Something scuttled by me again in the small breadth of space between myself and the left wall, but this time I didn’t scream. I imagined it crushed by my body as I moved forward. I imagined myself wrapped tight by the earth. It was a mother’s embrace, and I was the petulant child, the one who angered her. I winced as I scraped my helmet against the ceiling, laughed breathlessly to myself, and realized I was at a very narrow point. Far ahead, I could vaguely see the glow of Moore’s headlamp.

Toes and fingers were not bringing me forward anymore. The rock above me held my head back like a trick when I tried, and when I bowed close enough to the ground, I couldn’t move my limbs in the right order anymore. I faltered for a moment, wrapped in the world, seemingly unable to move. “Get down on your stomach, Becca,” Moore called down the passageway, flickering his light. “It’s just an army crawl. You got it. Breathe out if it feels too tight.”

I lowered myself belly to earth and looked around with bright, concerned eyes. How terrible would it be to be stuck here? A shift forward, just an inch or so. How long could you survive in this exact position? A scoot that got me a little farther this time. How scary would it all be? A drag powered by my weak arms. Would it hurt more or less than a car crash? Moore’s headlight loomed in the distance, almost blinding me when I stared straight down the tunnel, so I fixed my eyes down with the little room allotted to me and kicked my splayed leg to move me forward. The ceiling was still a good half foot about my back, but this time, I didn’t move. I couldn’t feel if my foot had lost its purchase or if I was snagged on some fishhook jutting from the walls, but I hastily returned my leg to its position and pushed forward again. Nothing. Stagnant, still, and I tried to turn to look behind me, suddenly overcome by the feeling that grave things were coming from behind me and clinging to my limbs, but all I succeeded in doing was thunking my helmet against the wall. I swore and sucked in a ragged breath and tried to pull this time, but I was so disoriented by the cessation of movement that I wasn’t sure if I was moving at all.

“I’m stuck!” I shouted to Moore, who wasn’t that far away at this point. “I don’t know what on–”

“You’re fine.” I was not fine, but he sounded sure enough. “It’s not tight enough to actually be any trouble. Just relax, breathe out, and go slow. Take your time. It’ll work.”

My fingers twitched and scrabbled against the rock, my breath getting away from me. I felt feral in my nerves and my excitement. My lungs emptied out with a stuttering breath, I closed my eyes, and I toed forward again. This time I felt the scrape of movement, and I held my breath, latched on, and inched forward until I was dizzy. It was only minutes until I tipped over the lip of the tunnel, addled and cumbersome, into the next room. My shoulder hit the ground hard, and I giggled mindlessly for a second before I got the gall to crack my eyes open.

“You good?”

Moore hovered over me, his face pinched, but I focused on the cavern behind him. It was beautiful. I nodded, breathing out my pain and accepting his hand. He tugged me up and I saw the chamber upright. Much of it was shrouded in darkness, but he had his flashlights arranged in an illuminating, outward facing circle that shed light on some of the closer features beyond the scope of my headlamp. The walls and ceilings were formed from the same glittering gypsum, but gossamer tendrils and rosettes spiraled from the rock like marble carvings. They looked delicate enough that a single touch would break them, but drops of water rolled over their edges into standing pools of water across the muddy floor. The water rose only around shin deep, but it glimmered foggy and serene in the still cave, and the same tendrils reached up from the bed like coral flowers. Blind fish and pearly snails hid amongst the mud and pebbles, like tiny bones come to life, and I crouched down beside the little pond. It was like I had been suffocated in the tunnel and born again to a strange eden.

“This is really beautiful,” I said, and it was sincere. I watched as a drop of water from above sent a placid ripple through the water. “How did you know this was here?”

“This is where I ended up before,” Moore replied, shrugging like it was matter of fact. “You’ll see stuff like this a lot in the hobby, but it’s usually when it’s already been found by someone else. Most of the time it’s still pretty untouched, but I kinda like that this is just for me and a few other people so far. No trash in here, so I’m not even sure if the teenagers tried it through the tunnel. Lame, ‘cause that’s an easy crawl. Usually the good sights are on the other side of some stuff that’ll seriously kick your ass.”

It was a nice thought, finding something special on the other side of it all. There wasn’t much to the cavern all in all; a bit of space beyond the light, more alabaster spirals and tranquil water. I stepped carefully around the pools and watched creatures mill guilelessly through the beam of my flashlight. I was approaching what would soon turn into boredom or complacency when I saw it, new, less than beautiful. A mass the size of a softball undulated through the foggy water, and as it drew closer, I saw that it appeared to be a clew of worms tangled together, red as blood and moving through the pool like they were each the searching limb of an organism. The knot moved over one of the bone snails and when it passed, the shell was still.

“What the fuck.” I grimaced and turned to head back towards the exit before I saw anymore worm amalgams, only to jump when Moore was standing perfectly still behind me. His eyes were wide and the rest of his face flat. I gestured to the pool. “Sorry, worms…”

“Yeah, that’ll happen,” he said. He tightened his grip on his flashlight and shone it behind me, towards the far wall. “Look.”

I crossed my arms and followed the beam with my eyes, squinting through the dark. There in the epicenter of the light was a tunnel–another one, smaller than the one we’d entered from, shaped oblong and low. The flashlight beam quivered, and I looked back at Moore. “I thought you said there was only one crawl.”

“I thought there was,” he said hurriedly. His hand still trembled and there was a manic gleam in his eyes as he lowered the beam to show him the way across the floor to the wall. While this was about the physical sensation for me, a recreation of living and unconscious nightmare, it meant something altogether different to Moore. It must be something like the thrill of discovery, or maybe the chance to ensconce himself so far in the earth that no one knew where but him. He didn’t seem to mind having me along if it was the latter, and he beckoned me to follow him. “This wasn’t here when I–I didn’t see it the first time. I don’t know. I looked all through this chamber, maybe I got turned around and confused it for the entrance, but. I mean, we have to go through.”

“It looks tight.”

“Is that a problem?” He eyed me with a look I hadn’t seen in a long time. He wasn’t trying to strongarm me into it. He looked beseeching, like it would make him vibrate out of his skin if I allotted him the opportunity to crawl into this tunnel. I didn’t know if this was all protocol or not. The knowledge lay with Moore, and it seemed like he was handing me the control. I turned my attention back to the narrow opening, just wide enough for him to slip into, just barely more than wide enough for me. He was explaining something about how we could go together this time, how he’d talk me through any tight spots and we’d back out if he felt it getting too cramped, and I was thinking about how much I wanted to feel that moment at the precipice. Being brave and stupid and crawling into this hole would give me what being cruel and stupid had not been able to: a lasting memory of the squeeze. What had Lacey felt, at the end? The fear of death and the trapping embrace of metal on all sides, while I slept soundly through the worst of what I’d done and still lived. This would be how I found it. I cut Moore off mid-sentence with a short nod and he smiled bigger than I’d ever seen.

It was a snug fit. Moore disappeared into the cleft in the rock slower this time and shouted back at me when he felt he had cleared enough ground for me to follow. He’d had to shimmy off his pack and shove it ahead of him, so I copied the tactic as I bent and twisted myself enough to fit into the entry. It was awful immediately. Rock pressed at my sides and my stomach and if I lifted my head too much or tried to come up from a belly crawl, the ceiling bit at my scalp and spine. My flashlight had just enough room around my pack to illuminate a short distance in front of me, showing rock and narrow path and Moore’s shoes farther ahead. I shuffled forward, feeling terrified and embraced and correct.

Every inch was arduous, much harder than the first tunnel, like the earth itself was rejecting us. I had to shed my helmet and push it ahead with my pack, but I told myself that if Moore could make it through, then so could I. The only way we knew there was somewhere to make it through to was the air; if it blows, it goes, and the quiet puffs of air emanated out from the tunnel. In the claustrophobia, I thought that they even felt stronger, sounded louder, like the source was closer now. We surged forward like devolved creatures, half blind and wriggling through the dirt and over stone, holding back conversation to keep from inflating our lungs enough to make it harder to traverse the depths. We went so long without speaking that when Moore cursed under his breath, it scared me so badly that I flinched upward and met the rock skull first. I gasped loud and felt an immediate wet rivulet trickle through my hair, dripping onto the ground before me.

“You good?” Moore called over his shoulder, pausing his forward momentum.

“Yeah, just a–a gash on my head,” I replied. I wanted to reach up instinctively and feel at the wound, but my arms were pinned too tight for that. I settled for wrinkling my face to try to direct the blood from my eyes and taking a breather. “What made you–” I didn’t finish my question, because I quickly saw the answer. A clutch of amber spiders, at least a couple dozen, streamed past Moore in the tiny cracks left around his body, on ceiling, floor, wall. They scuttled over his legs and shoes, directly towards me, and I cried out and tried to shove myself back to no avail. They weren’t interested in me, of course, but they weren’t dissuaded enough by my presence to give me a wide berth as they worked their way around me either. I felt phantom limbs brush through the cut on my head and squeezed my eyes shut, wanting nothing more than to stand and run in that moment. I kept my eyes closed so long that Moore had to call out to me again, and I shook my head as much as I could, although he couldn’t see. “Maybe we should turn back. I don’t want to crawl into a nest.”

“Probably not in the tunnel,” he reasoned, his voice distant and muffled by the rocks surrounding us. He pulled himself forward a few more inches and muttered something, but it was muffled again not just by the stones, but by a whistle of air and the sound of loud scraping. I froze and saw his feet do the same ahead of me as the sound grew louder, or closer, and I assumed the worst. We were going to be truly crushed in a collapse or at least trapped here in this coffin. I shrieked and Moore started to say something that was probably meant to calm me, but it was cut off this time by a lurching gurgle. It sounded like the noise someone makes when the driver stomps on their brakes too suddenly and they’re choked by their seatbelt. There was nothing after. His feet moved neither forward nor back.

“Moore?” Nothing. “Moore!” Nothing from him, but the scraping returned, and this time I felt the ground quiver with the wind that blew in. It carried the same smell as earlier but stronger, earth and brimstone and tangy copper. I tried to push myself backwards quickly again on instinct, like with the spiders, the fleeing fucking spiders, and got nowhere. The walls of the tunnel shook the vodka in my veins into bubbles and rattled my skull, and I grabbed for useless purchase on the ground, only to feel something wet touch my fingertips, dampening my pack. I jerked my hands back as much as possible in the cramped space and fixed my flashlight on the offending liquid. Thick streams of blood clumped with hair and something gray writhed through the mud and fed the dirt, and for a second I thought my head wound had cracked open and spilled my viscera onto the ground before me. I stopped breathing, frozen by an impossible sight, and could only swallow hard as I pressed down my pack and shone the light on Moore’s shoes.

A river of blood flooded out from underneath him. He was perfectly still. I nearly jerked my shoulder out of the socket maneuvering my arm so I could reach forward and tug at the heel of his boot, my voice still trapped in my throat. He didn’t respond at all, but the ground shuddered and breathed again, and the steady scraaape echoed through the tunnel. The dim edges of my light barely penetrated the tiny space between his back and the top of the ceiling, but I could swear I saw the rock move downward. Not violent and sudden like the cavein I had feared, but slow and methodical. Like teeth coming down. Like something was chewing… I felt the barest twitch of his foot and my heart hammered so hard I thought I was going to die right then and there in the tunnel from shock or excitement that he hadn’t just been killed and left me here alone. But the twitch wasn’t him trying to signal to me; it was the rubber of his heel slipping out of my soaked fingertips as the jaws of the tunnel pulled him forward just slightly, just a few inches, enough to leave a streak of blood in his wake.

I found my voice then. I screamed and I probably swore, but my ears rang so loudly that they blotted out all rational thought in my mind other than the breathing of the cave, the chewing of the cave. I tried in vain a third time to shove myself free of the mouth of a stone beast and was met again with the catch of stone against me. I watched as the tunnel bit down on Moore’s body again, through the last bit of recognizable head I could see over the hump of his shoulders, and I realized in that moment that it wasn’t just pulling him forwards into whatever horrible rock maw it had; it was moving forward as well.

I could’ve passed out. I really wanted to pass out, actually, to go blissfully unconscious and not have to deal with the fear of what was approaching me, the total confusion regarding what was happening to me, and the inevitable crushing pain. Instead, my brain stayed woefully awake, my nerves singing in anticipatory pain as I watched the tunnel eat Moore’s body. Everything in me trembled, but I started to work myself backwards at the same painstaking pace I’d had to crawl forwards with. It felt wrong. It felt like strolling away from a tsunami. It felt like driving through a guardrail. It was slow and difficult and I could barely tell I was making any progress at all, and all I had was the hope that the rock was slower. I wished I was sober. I should’ve gone in sober. Maybe this was all some horrific hallucination caused by the combination of alcohol and cave gases, I thought, but then I saw the ceiling come down on my discarded helmet and crush it like an eggshell. I don’t think I’ve ever been as scared as I was watching Moore slide away, the stone inch closer, followed by gore and death and impossibility. But I don’t know if I’ve ever been as relieved, either, as when my toes slipped off the edge of the entrance finally.

It took maybe five more awful minutes to work myself back far enough that I could tear myself from the wall. I fell from the entrance and expected to hit hard ground, but instead I crashed into something slippery and slick. I fumbled my flashlight as I tried to get my footing and found that the floor of the cavern was covered in shining white mucus. It clung to my clothes and body as I wrenched myself free, and I backed away from the hole in the wall slowly. It was breathing loudly know, exhaling rot and fear into the cavern, and I wondered if the teeth would follow, or if that was the mouth. Maybe the whole cave system was the mouth. Maybe I was in the stomach. I stared for too long, recklessly, until I felt a stinging on my forearm and looked to find a clump of the blood red worms from before, wriggling and intestinal, some with metallic pincers sunk into my skin. I shrieked and ripped it away, but the shining penny-colored prongs took a chunk of my flesh with it, and the skin left around the bite began to redden and swell immediately. I turned blindly on my heels at that and splashed through the snot and saliva and water filling the cavern, coughing and wretching as it soaked me. The flashlight circle Moore left had been covered so I just ran like a madman until I found it, the first tunnel, and threw myself in headfirst.

At this point, after the tightness of the other crawl and the consumption of my friend, it was the easiest thing I’d ever done. I army crawled forward, soaked to the bone in blood and congealed mess, and didn’t stop until my flashlight flickered out. I banged it against the ground to restart it, and it waxed and waned through dim light, but the insides had probably been damaged by the fall or the moisture and soon it darkened permanently. My other lights were in my abandoned pack, so–fuck it, it was a straight shot. I forged forward through the darkness, crawling, crawling, quickly and then as fast as I could as I felt wind at my feet and heard the rumbling scrape of stone behind me. It was pitch dark for what felt like miles, and I imagined myself trapped in a labyrinth down there, running like a rat until the earth caught up to me, but then the blue sheen of a glowstick far, far in the distance caught my eye. Salvation, eden, heaven, paradise was above ground and I would cherish it well. I dragged myself forward with renewed vigor and collapsed out of the tunnel’s mouth once more, into the navigable beginner caves I’d been promised at the start of all this.

The smartest thing at this moment would’ve been to follow the glow and run back towards the surface, but some stupid animal thing in my head had taken over, some sort of testament to Moore’s exploratory spirit, and I turned back to the tunnel. The glowstick didn’t leave near enough light to see anything substantial by, but something in my head insisted that I see if anything was following me. I didn’t have my pack anymore, but I did have the plastic lighter in my pocket. I fished it out with haste, held it close to the entrance while standing back like I was ready to run, and flicked the flint wheel with trembling fingers.

I didn’t see anything. I don’t know if the force of the explosion knocked me down or if I dropped to my knees of my own accord, but I ended up splayed on my back on the cave floor as the spark from the lighter ignited and presumably devastated the tunnel. Rubble from above sifted onto my face like snow, and it was all I could do to right myself. My head swam and I almost stumbled back the wrong way, convinced I was heading towards the glowstick before I realized it was an eruption of blue flames. I coughed and turned again, stumbling at the fastest jog I could muster and navigating by the comparably pathetic glowsticks, gripping onto walls to lead myself out. My eyes stung worse than the flash burn when I first saw the light, but I reached towards it like a child to its mother all the same and tripped forward, forward, forward, until I was out of the cave’s mouth and spilling onto the mud. I cried out and rested my face against the ground for just a moment before I pulled myself to my knees, wiped my nostrils clean, and started the hike back to the cars.

Sunset was tinging the horizon when I reached them. I wasn’t afraid. Being above wasn’t scary. I had foolishly taken my keys into the cave with me, but I tried Moore’s passenger door and it popped open easily. Risk management my ass, I thought as I gingerly climbed in and reached up to the sun visor over the driver’s side which, sure enough, had his keys sequestered away against the mirror. I took them down in a hand almost too weak to grip them fully and hoisted myself over the center console to collapse in the seat. It wasn’t lost on me that just hours ago, Moore had sat here, and now he had succumbed to the earth. I didn’t know what it all meant. I didn’t understand why that had happened or truly what had happened at all. I knew I would live it over and over in my dreams, and that I would remember this time. But I don’t think it was my fault. I don’t. That’s comforting to me, as I turn the keys in the ignition and reach into the pocket of the windbreaker to feel at the grooves of the patterned tumbler stowed away there.

We all know how the rules of the Midnight Game are played, heck, I have listened to the narrations, some better than others, even watched the Netflix version from no/sleep.So, to say I love, I love. To the point of obsession, imagine scrolling endlessly for yet another contribution to my favorite and, dare I say it, consuming interest.

At night I would find myself, playing out the stories in my mind as I drifted off to sleep. So, introduction complete, let us move on. Obviously I am writing in the past tense, because it's already done. Ok, you want me to just get to the story. Here I go, or, we go? Anyway.

The rules of the Midnight Game are precise, rigid, and untirely unforgiving. Write your full name on a piece of parchment, prick your finger to stain it with your own blood, place it at the front door, knock twenty two times exactly, open the door, blow out your candle, and relight it within ten seconds.

If you fail, the Midnight Man arrives.

I didn't fail. Did I mention that I am obsessive? I have a very methodical mind. The candle flickered back to life on the nineth second. At that moment the heavy stale air of my hallway suddenly cooled: smelling of turned soil. He was in the house.

And that was my cue to start boiling the water.

My friends had called me insane when I pitched the idea to them,

" You're inviting a primordial entity of darkness into your house, " Helen, from accounting had shouted over the phone, "And you're going to do what? Feed him? "

Yes. Because nobody ever considers the domesticity of spirits. We assume demons and poltergeists exist on pure malice and ethereal dread. But energy requires sustenance, and ancient entities bound by centuries old summoning rituals grow weary. They are tethered to the physical plane by the rules of the game, and rules, by their very nature, possess loopholes.

I poured a generous drizzle of olive oil into a heavy copper pot. As the burner clicked and hissed to life, the shadows in the corner of my kitchen began to stretch, detaching themselves from the drywall. They pooled together, coalescing into a towering, jagged silhouette devoid of light. Feeling the temperature drop even lower, fighting a nervous trembling in my stomach, I whispered to the empty air,

" You are early. " I kept my eyes fixed on the stovetop.

A sound answered me, not a voice, but the scraping of fingernails across bone, echoing directly inside my skull.

" Fools play to survive, " the scraping hissed, "You play to bargain. "

"I play because I'm hungry, and so are you, " I replied evenly.

I reached for the salt. It wasn't table salt. It was harvested from dried tears collected over seven winters, ' another story in itself' ( sorry, I know, you want the story you are here for) , mixed with crushed roesemary and dried hemlock. As I cast a generous pinch into the roiling boil, a low, guttural growl vibrated through the floorboards. The Midnight Man hated salt. It reminded him of the earth, of graves, of the boundaries he was forbidden to cross. But a pinch in pasta water? It mearly stung. It kept him at arms length, hovering just past the linoleum edge of the kitchen.

Next came the pasta. Not store bought dried tubes, but fresh fettuccine I had kneaded that afternoon. The flour was mixed with ash from a burned confession letter; the eggs had been laid during a blood moon. Ritual Pasta. It was heavy, green, and smelled like old regrets.

I dropped the strands into the pot. They hit the water with a soft, heavy splash, instantly turning the boiling liquid a murky bruised purple.

The entity moved closer. A hand, long and thin, tipped with obsidian claws reached out from the darkness beyond the kitchen, hovering inches from my shoulder. The air around it burned with a numbing, necrotic cold.

" Turn off the stove, " the entity commanded, the thought stabbing into my prefrontal cortex like an ice pick. " Extinguish the light. Let the dark take the room, and take you with it. "

" Patience, " I murmured, stirring the noodles with a wooden spoon carved from a gallows oak. " Al dente takes precisely eight minutes. You wouldn't want it mushy. " I set the timer. For an instant both of us seemed transfixed with the, bip.bip bip.. counting down.

The tension in the room grew suffocating. The Midnight Man loomed larger now, his form shifting and warping, a storm of absolute blackness that seemed to swallow the glow from the stove. He wanted me to panic. Fear was the spice he preferred. But I had spent three weeks meticulously reviewing occult Grimoires and culinary chemistry. I knew that fear soured the offering.

I chopped fresh garlic, a traditional ward, but when browned gently in butter and infused with nightshade, it becomes something else entirely. A bridge. A binder.

Bip.. Bip.. Seven minutes.

The entity leaned in, it's nonexistent face pressing against the back of my neck. I could smell him: a terrifying cocktail of putrefaction, glaciers and autumn deadfall. My skin pebbled with goosebumps, I swallowed it all down with the calm efficiency with which I built my life.

" I will peel the skin from your bones, " the entity whispered, a promise of exquisite agony. " I will scatter your teeth like gravel. "

" Not tonight, " I said calmly. I strained the pasta, the thick purple water swirling down the stainless steel drain, I tossed the noodles back into the hot copper pot, folding them generously into the garlic and nightshade butter, finishing it with a grating of special parmesan that had aged in a tomb.

I plated it. A single, steaming mound of dark, glistening fettuccine on a white ceramic dish.

I set the plate on the kitchen island. I stepped back, raising my hands slowly to show I held no weapon or deception, only the white candle burning steadily in my left palm.

" Dinner is served, "I said.

The darkness paused. The scraping sound in my head ceased, replaced by a profound, sudden silence. The Midnight Man stared at the plate. For a creature bound to the shadows of the witching hour, the offering of a warm, ritually prepared meal was an anomaly. It was the loophole in the game's mechanics. A guest cannot destroy a host who feeds them properly.

Slowly, the towering silhouette drifted forward. The long, clawed fingers hovered over the ceramic plate. A wisp of black smoke curled down, tasting the steam.

I held my breath. If the magic failed, if the ingredients weren't balanced, if the invocation was flawed, he would tear my throat out before I could blink.

The shadow paused. Then, with a sound like a starving wolf inhaling its prey, the plate was empty. The pasta vanished into the void of the entitys form..

The air in the house suddenly warmed. The oppressive weight lifted like an exhaled breath.

" The debt is paid, " the voice echoed, fading away into the walls. " Until the next time. "

I let go finally of the tension I had been holding, my legs suddenly weak with exhaustion I sank gratefully to the kitchen floor. Then, smiling to myself, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my notepad.

" Note to self, I wrote. The Midnight Man prefers garlic over rosemary. Adjust the recipe for next Tuesday.

I (21F) work as an overnight stocker at a grocery store in a city located about half an hour from my home. Most of the exhaustion wore off after 2 weeks of working the late shifts. I still get a bit drowsy when I have to drive home at 5 AM and the road is dark and quiet, and that’s usually when I’ll put on my pop-rock playlist up super loud to keep myself from drifting into another lane or getting too sleepy. The last stretch of road before my home is pretty curvy and I tend to get a bit carsick after I get to my house.

Today I got broken up with. My boyfriend decided he didn’t want to deal with long distance anymore and he felt too “held down” during his time at college, which is surprising to me because we were just talking about our life after graduation. We wanted a nice wedding at a church in the city even though we were still so young, and he seemed like he wanted to get married more than I did. Oh well. I don’t really have many friends here and the only person I’m really close with is my dad. I get frustrated looking at my coworkers getting along or groups of strangers about my age laughing in groups. I wish I had someone that I could confide in about everything that’s been happening recently. 

Today I finished up my shift after 8 hours of overthinking and start walking to clock out 10 minutes before I usually do. I just wanted to get home and sleep more than anything. I get into my car and put on something upbeat to distract myself from my thoughts. I find myself almost drifting off a few times and I ran one red light on accident. There’s a few people on the sidewalks carrying around shopping carts and I had to swerve to avoid a few walking slowly across the street without seeming to be aware of their surroundings.

I was about 5 minutes from my home when a figure steps out right in front of me while I was turning onto the windy road. I try and swerve while my tires squeal, then I get jolted forwards with a loud thud. The figure is violently knocked over by my bumper and slams onto the pavement. There’s a good amount of blood splattered on my windshield. I slam on my brake pedals so hard my leg is almost locked as my car drifts into a trench on the side of the road. It’s pitch black outside except for my headlights. My heart pounds and I feel like vomiting.

I sit in my car, hands shaking, and reach for my phone to call 911. I get connected with an operator while the reality of what happened sets in.

“911, what’s the address of your emergency?”

“Please help me. I think I hit someone with my car.”

“Okay, where exactly are you?”

“Umm, fuck, I don’t know, like right before [O] Road?”

“What city?”

“[REDACTED].”

“Okay. Tell me exactly what happened.”

I tell her in detail about the small amount of information that I know. Outside of my window, I see long brown hair on the pavement slightly moving. I’m unsure if it’s from the figure still being alive or if the wind is moving the hair.

A few seconds of silence.

“Hey, the guy is still underneath my car and I can see something moving. He might still be alive.”

“Is it safe to approach him?”

“I think so. Hold on.”

I open my door and approach the body on the road. I can’t see much, just some twisted limbs and long hair. Lots of blood.

“Hello? Sir? Can you hear me?”

“Is he responding to you?”

I move closer and discover that the figure was a woman, probably about a few years older than me. She’s laying completely still and her breaths are labored…they sound almost crunchy. 

“I think she’s still alive.”

“Is she breathing?”

“I think so.”

The woman rolls her head until she is looking directly at me and her wet, rattled breaths stop as I catch a glimpse of her bloodshot eyes.

“I need you to put your phone on speaker and begin chest compressions. Place the heel of one hand in the center of her chest and your other hand on top.”

I do as the operator says.

The woman continues her breathing as I begin compressing her chest.

“Fuck. I’m not doing this hard enough. How fast am I supposed to even do this?” 

I hear sirens in the distance getting closer. 

“About twice per second. Keep a steady rhythm, and don’t stop until the paramedics take over.”

It seemed like an eternity before they finally arrived. They assess her, ask me a few questions, then transport her into the ambulance. 

“Have the paramedics arrived?” The operator asks.

“Yeah, they’re here.”

“Ok. Please remain at the scene until the police arrive.”

A few moments pass.

“Ma’am, before I disconnect, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?”

“Why did you do it?”

“What?”

The line disconnected. 

I sit in complete silence as the lights and sirens disappear into the distance. 

I feel sick to my stomach and step back into my car and turn on the lights. I try to call my dad but his phone goes straight to voicemail. I cry for what seems like an hour while trying to avoid looking at the dark blood splattered on my windshield.

The police finally arrive. I feel my heart settle a tiny bit as I see an officer come out of his car and come to my drivers’ seat window.

“Are you the driver?”

“Yes. I called 911.”

“Okay. Are you hurt at all?”

I actually never really stopped to think if I’ve been hurt. I never felt anything during the collision, but I do see a bit of bruising on my arms from when I must’ve hit the steering wheel.

“Umm no. Not seriously.” I show him my bruises. 

“Alright. I need you to step out of the vehicle for me. We’re going to get your statement, and I’ll need to see your license and insurance.”

I nod and reach for my wallet, my hands still trembling.

“Have you had anything to drink tonight?”
“No. I just got off work.”
“What time did your shift end?”
“Five. I work overnight.”

He writes something in his notebook, then looks back at me.

“Did you see the woman before you hit her?”

“It was so dark. I tried to avoid her but she just came out of nowhere.”

He pauses for a few moments.

“Alright. We’ll need to finish documenting the scene, but you’re free to go for now. Someone is probably going to contact you for a follow-up statement.”

“What about my car?” I look at the smeared blood on my bumper and on the windshield.

“You’ll probably want to clean it before driving it much more, unless we need to come back and hold it for whatever reason, you should be good to take it home. And, uh, the paramedics mentioned something about the lady’s condition.”

“What’s that?”

“Well, they said there were signs of decomposition.”

My stomach twists.

“She was breathing. I heard her. I told the operator!”

“You said that in your 911 call?” The officer looks at me uncertainly.

“I was doing CPR. I could hear her breathing. She was moving.”

He pauses, then writes something down. 

“Alright. If you remember anything else please let us know. Someone may follow up with you.” He clicks his pen and heads back to his vehicle. “Please, get some rest tonight.” He takes a moment to sit in his car, then drives off.

I buckle myself into my seat and finish the drive to my home. I keep a steady 15 mph as I’m constantly reminded about what happened due to the messy obstruction on my windshield. It looks darker now. It’s turned into a deep, muddy brown in places. I turn on the wipers and immediately regret it as thick blood is smeared all throughout the glass. I pull the lever to spray washer fluid over the windshield. I’m able to see a bit better now.

I pull into the driveway to see my dad’s blue truck parked out front. I’m going to have to explain this to him in the morning, but for now I’m just glad to be home. I know I’m too old to be sleeping with my parents, but I climb into my dad’s king size bed without him noticing. I don’t know how else I’m going to sleep tonight. My eyes close to the sound of his loud snores, and I finally slip into a dreamless silence.

At about 8:30, I’m woken up by my dad while he’s leaving for work.

“Hey, what happened last night? Did you hit a deer? Are you okay?”

I only got about two hours of sleep and in my groggy haze, I forgot what had happened last night. It felt good to finally get that and the breakup off my mind while sleeping. I could feel the anxiety kick in and my stomach drop as I explain to my dad what had happened.

“Some crazy lady walked out in front of my car. She was taken away and the police came and talked to me,” I yawn and stretch my arms, trying hard to mask the shakiness in my voice.

“Wow. Well, I’m glad that car isn’t too damaged. I loved that thing. We can clean it together when I get home. Get some more sleep if you can, I know you have work tonight.” He’s worried, I can see it in his eyes.

“Dad, what’s going to happen to me? Was it my fault?” I feel tears well up in my eyes and a knot tighten in my stomach. 

“Sweets, I’m sure you’re not in trouble. I know it’s been a hard week for you. You know you need to be taking your anxiety medication.”

I didn’t even tell him about my breakup, I didn’t want to stress him out even further. He didn’t even like my ex, but he saw how happy I was and held his tongue for me.

I grab my bottle labeled “Buspar” and take a few pills as prescribed. I guess I have to be consistent for it to work, but at least I have the comfort of knowing it will start working soon. I hear the door shut and the jingling of keys as they lock behind my dad as I close my eyes again.

I wake up to my alarm. 4 PM. My dad will be home soon. I walk over into the kitchen, grab an energy drink, and scroll Instagram for a while. No DMs. No texts from anyone. I’m 21 and have the most lonely existence out of everyone I know. I watch as everyone else takes trips to Japan, announces pregnancies, and graduates college, trying to squash the jealousy and resentment in my stomach. I set my phone down and finish my drink. 

My phone begins to vibrate.

I’m getting a call from an unknown number.

I know I shouldn’t be unsettled because the officer said I would be receiving a follow-up soon, but I can’t answer the phone until I know for certain who is calling.

The voicemail pops up after about a minute. I open it and press the button for it to be on speakerphone. There’s silence for a few seconds.

Then I hear it. 

I hear the rattling, labored breaths. The sound of sirens in the distance.

What the fuck? Was this a recording of what happened last night?

Then I look at the transcript.

“You did this to me.”

My heart sinks. 

Maybe she’s alive. Maybe she wants to talk. I call the number back. It takes a few seconds to connect, then I hear a voice.

“Hi, [REDACTED] police department, how can I help you?”

“Umm, did you call me to follow up about the collision on [O] Road yesterday?”

He read my name and asked me to confirm.

“Yes. Is everything okay? Did you find out what happened to her?”

There’s a pause on the other end.

“I’m calling to follow up on the incident. We reviewed the scene documentation, and the report is being updated to reflect a suspected deer collision.”

I pull the phone away from my ear and look at the screen.

“What?”

“A deer collision. Based on the damage to the vehicle and the evidence recovered at the scene.”

“No, I hit a woman. A woman with long brown hair. I called an ambulance. The paramedics came. I spoke to the police officer who was there.”

“I understand that you’re distressed, ma’am, but the documentation we have doesn’t support that account.”

“Then where is she?” I feel my mind race.

“I’m sorry, who?”

I pause. 

I hear a keyboard clicking in the background.

“Ma’am, you should contact your insurance company as soon as possible. Do you have any more questions for me?”

“No. That’s all.”

“Thank you and have a great rest of your day.”

The call ends.

The voicemail has disappeared.

I blink, thinking somehow that will make it reappear. My call to 911 from this morning is still there, 23 minutes long. My call now is still there. No voicemail. No breathing.

I need to eat something. But the thought of eating makes me sick. 

Outside I hear cars driving past. I hear my dad pulling up in the driveway and walk outside to meet him. He’s got soap and a few large sponges and rags. I feel a bit relieved. Maybe we can wash away the remnants of that deer and move on. We get to work.

I called off tonight. I need sleep. Maybe I can try driving tomorrow.

Dad made us Sloppy Joes after washing my car and I was so happy just being with him that I forgot about everything on my mind for a second. Then, I felt okay to open up to him about how I’ve been feeling, the breakup, the woman, the guilt, the loneliness. He listened to every word, hugged me for a good few minutes, then told me to go get some more rest. I couldn’t help but feel like he was worried about me. I might be worried about myself.

I wake up next to my dad again.

He went out for work and left me alone here. 

I check my phone. 8:30 AM. No new messages. No DMs. Typical.

I should probably shower, but I’m too tired to move. My mousy brown hair is getting greasy and tangled. It’s freezing. I put on my black hoodie and sweatpants, crawl back into bed and pull the covers up to my chin, listening to the familiar sounds of the house settling around me.

My dad won’t be home until this evening.

I close my eyes.

A car passes outside.

Then another.

I don’t think much of it. We live close enough to the road that I can hear traffic from anywhere in the house, especially at night.

A few minutes later, I hear a horn.

It’s loud enough to make me open my eyes.

Another horn follows, then the sharp squeal of tires against pavement.

I sit up.

For a moment, I consider staying in bed. It’s probably just someone driving too fast around the bend. People do it all the time.

Then I hear a crash.

I throw the covers off and hurry to the front window.

A white sedan is stopped at an angle across the road. Its headlights illuminate the trees and the empty stretch of pavement ahead.

The driver of the sedan gets out.

He looks down at the front of his car, then turns to stare at the road. He’s talking to himself, or maybe shouting at someone I can’t see.

I press closer to the window.

There’s nobody else out there.

The man suddenly looks toward the passenger side of his car. He takes a few steps backward, shaking his head.

He stands still. I watch as he completely freezes for about 5 minutes. Then he slowly walks into his car and drives away.

I stand at the window for another minute, waiting for something else to happen.

Nothing does.

I go back in my room. My heart rate is higher than usual. I know it’s probably just a distracted driver or someone having a car issue. Happens every day here. 

I hear something.

A slow, rattling inhale. 

It’s almost too quiet for me to hear.

I hold my breath and listen.

It stops for a minute.

I walk outside of my dad’s room.

I hear the crunchy breathing again. It’s coming from somewhere inside the house.

I grip my phone and get ready to run out the front door. The breathing is getting louder. I turn my phone flashlight on without averting my eyes from the front door. The air in the hallway smells sickening, like blood and sweet, rotting flesh.

I run for it. The breathing almost starts to sound like a roar directly behind me as I race towards the front door. I rip my car keys off the kitchen counter and quickly slam the door behind me.

I get into my car and start it. I don’t even have shoes on. I just want to see my dad. My GPS loads the car dealership he works at and I book it. 45 minutes away.

My radio starts on its own. There’s a chorus singing a hymn, but it’s different somehow. Some of the chords are wrong. Very wrong. It’s suddenly interrupted by a news report.

“—we interrupt our regular programming with a developing story out of [REDACTED]. Emergency services are responding to a serious traffic collision on [O] Road, just south of the [R] property.”

I froze.

“According to preliminary reports, a female pedestrian stepped into the path of an oncoming vehicle at about 8:55 o’clock this morning. The driver stopped and contacted emergency services, attempting to administer first aid before paramedics arrived.”

I stared at the dashboard. 8:47 AM.
How is that possible?

“Police have confirmed that the pedestrian sustained catastrophic injuries. Paramedics at the scene have reportedly noted signs of advanced decomposition, though authorities have not yet released the identity of the woman.”
My mouth went dry.
I reached for the radio dial, but my fingers wouldn't cooperate.
“Witnesses describe the woman as having long, brown hair and wearing dark clothing. Authorities are asking drivers to exercise caution in the area, as the pedestrian has reportedly been seen standing in the roadway even after emergency personnel arrived.”
The speaker crackled.
Underneath the announcer's voice, I heard it.
That wet, broken breathing.
I yanked my hand away from the radio.

“Help me.”

I sat there, staring at the radio in shock, tears welling up in my eyes. 

“Help me.”

The voice was clear as day. Outside of my car.

I pull over and park onto the side of [O] Road. Almost exactly where the collision happened. I exit my car, almost entranced by the voice. Someone needs my help. 

There it is.

The rattling.

“Hello? Is anyone there? Do you need help?”

It was coming from the other side of the road. Louder this time. I grab my phone, ready to call 911. I cross the center line to see nothing at the other side of the road. No blood. No woman. No more breathing.

“Help me.”

Directly in my ear. My hair stands up. 

I look towards the intersection to see headlights barreling towards me. 

I try to move.

8:55.

The first thing you need to understand is that the man we found wasn't chained up. No shackles, no ropes, nothing. The gate was locked from the outside, yeah, but inside that room he could move around all he wanted. When we finally got it open, he wouldn't come out. Not wouldn't—couldn't. His body just… refused.

I spent twenty minutes crouched there talking to him like you would to a scared dog. Offered him food, water, help—anything I could think of. But his eyes kept darting past me down that empty hallway like something was gonna come charging out of the dark any second. Every time I gestured toward the door, he’d flinch back like I’d raised a hand to him.

Getting him outside was worse. When we finally carried him through the doorway, he screamed—this raw, tearing sound that didn't even seem human. One of my guys thought we’d broken his arm carrying him.

I’ve been in demolition eighteen years. I’ve pulled homeless people out of condemned buildings, cut animals out of walls, cleared rooms where you could still smell death in the air. Thought I’d seen it all.

I was wrong.

My name’s Cal Mercer. Thirty-eight, divorced. My company’s been one bad month from folding for three years straight. I’ve got a fifteen-year-old daughter named Nora who lives with her mom. I love her more than anything, but I keep letting her down.

I’m telling you this because every decision that put us in that building came down to money. I took a job I shouldn’t have, ignored things I should’ve questioned, pushed my crew into a situation none of us understood—all because I couldn’t afford to say no.

The place was an old meat-packing plant called Coldwater Packing. Shut down seventeen years ago. County acquired it after the bankruptcy and finally scrounged up the cash to tear it down.

That’s where we came in.

It wasn't a big job, but it covered payroll. Me, Sam Ortega—who’s been with me eleven years—and Tyler, a kid who started last spring. We were supposed to spend two days clearing out leftover machinery and checking the structure before demolition the following week.

We showed up a little before eight Thursday morning. It had rained overnight. The parking lot was all broken asphalt and puddles, weeds growing up through the cracks waist-high in places.

The building itself was what you’d expect: stained brick, rusted equipment, shattered windows. Somebody had taken down the main sign years ago, leaving a pale rectangle on the wall where the paint hadn't faded.

Sam looked it over while we unloaded the truck.
"Think anybody ever got murdered in here?"
"Couple million cows, probably."
"I mean people."
"Not till today. Keep asking stupid questions and we'll see."

Tyler laughed. Sam didn't. He was staring at the loading dock.
"That door looks new."

He was right. One of the big roll-up doors had been sealed with a heavy steel panel. The bolts looked newer than anything else on the building.
"County probably put it up to keep kids out."
"Then how come the front door looks like somebody kicked it in with a truck?"
"Ask the county."

He shook his head and went back to unloading.

I should've paid more attention.

Inside, most of the place had been stripped clean years ago. The main floor was this huge space with drainage channels cut into the concrete. Rusted meat hooks still hung from an overhead track.

We spent the first hour checking for structural issues and taking pictures of equipment that wasn't on the inventory.

Around nine, my phone buzzed. A text from Nora:
*You still coming Saturday?*

I'd promised to take her to some photography exhibit she wanted to see—one of the few things she still wanted to do with me.
*Of course*, I texted back.

A minute later:
*You said that last time.*

That one stung. I'd missed her school presentation two weeks before because a job ran late. Before that, I canceled dinner because one of my trucks broke down. There was always a reason.

I started typing some long excuse about work and responsibility, then deleted it.
*I'll be there. Promise.*

She sent back a thumbs-up emoji. For some reason, that felt worse than if she'd told me to go fuck myself.

I put my phone away and got back to work.

The first thing that felt off came around ten. Sam called me over to an electrical panel near the old cold storage rooms.

Most of the wiring was ancient—brittle insulation, cut conduits, empty cabinets. But one section had fresh screws holding the cover on, and a new cable ran off into a conduit along the ceiling.
"Somebody's been doing electrical work," Sam said.
"Could've been from before they closed."
He pointed at a label on the cable.
"That stuff isn't seventeen years old."

He was right. The new wiring connected to a small distribution box that wasn't on any of the original plans.
"Maybe security," I said.
"Security for what?"

I didn't have an answer.

Sam popped the box open and checked the terminals with his meter.
Then he looked at me.
"There's power."

That got my attention. The county told us specifically the building was disconnected. Live wires on a demo site aren't just unusual—they're dangerous.

I told Sam to leave it alone until we figured out where it was coming from.
He gave me that look he gets when he knows I'm cutting corners.
"You're calling somebody, right?"
"After we finish the walkthrough."
"Cal."
"I said I'll call somebody."

He held up his hands and backed off. Sam knows me too well—knows when I'm avoiding something because I'm worried about time or money.

I wasn't planning to do anything stupid. Just document it, mark it off, let the county deal with it before demolition started.

Around eleven, we reached the refrigerated storage section—six big rooms connected by a narrow service corridor. Most were empty except for some old equipment bolted to the floors.

The smell changed back there.

The rest of the building smelled like damp concrete and mold. Back here there was this faint chemical odor—like vet clinic disinfectant—and under it, something else.

Sam smelled it too.
"You smell that?"
"Yeah."
"Smells like animals."

I stopped walking. He was right. That unmistakable barn smell—old bedding, urine, something warm and sour.

We checked the nearest room—empty except for some scattered insulation. The next had collapsed shelving.

The third room was where we found the wall.

At first glance it was just a concrete-block partition at the back of the room, partly covered by crumbling insulation panels. But when Tyler pulled one of the panels away, he exposed a clean vertical seam in the mortar.
"Hey boss—this supposed to be here?"

I checked the plans on my tablet. According to the drawings, the room should've extended another eight feet.

Somebody had built a wall across it.

I tapped a few spots with my hammer. Most sounded solid, but one section near the center had this hollow resonance.

Sam ran his hand along the mortar joint.
"This has been added."
"Yeah."
"What's behind it?"
"Probably old equipment."

There was a patch near the bottom where the mortar looked newer. Tyler crouched down and scraped at it with a screwdriver.

A chunk crumbled away.
Something metallic underneath.
"Hold on," I told him.

I got my flashlight and looked closer. There was a steel frame behind the blocks.

We cleared away more loose material and uncovered what looked like the edge of a narrow door—hidden behind a false section of wall made to look like part of the original masonry.

That should've been when I stopped and called somebody.

Instead, I told Tyler to get rotary hammer drill because now this hidden door meant more paperwork more delays more costs

It took us twenty minutes to knock out enough cinderblock to see the door. Behind the masonry was a steel panel with a simple padlock on the outside. The metal wasn’t rusty; in fact, compared to everything else in the building, it looked like somebody’d been using it recently.

Sam pulled the handle. “Locked. Want me to cut it?”

I nodded.

He got the cordless grinder from our equipment cart and sliced through the lock’s hasp. When the door finally came loose, he pulled it toward us.

Warm air drifted out. That was the first thing I noticed. Not the smell—though that was stronger now—not the darkness beyond the doorway, or the faint mechanical humming coming from somewhere inside. The air was warm. We’d spent all morning in a building so cold you could see your breath in some rooms. Standing in front of that passage felt like somebody’d just turned on the heat.

“Somebody’s using this place,” Sam said.

I didn’t argue.

I shone my flashlight through the opening. The passage was narrow, painted concrete walls, low ceiling. A line of electrical conduit ran along one side; several bare bulbs hung overhead. The nearest one was lit. Beyond that, the corridor disappeared around a corner.

I made Tyler to stay by the door and call our county contact. Then I stepped inside with Sam.

People ask why we didn’t call the police right away. Looking back, I wonder the same thing. But at that point I figured we’d found an illegal grow operation or squatters using part of the abandoned facility. Maybe somebody stealing electricity, living in the back rooms. Wasn’t the first time we’d run into people occupying a building they weren’t supposed to be in.

We walked about thirty feet before the corridor opened into a rectangular room. Three large metal enclosures stood along one wall. Looked like livestock pens—heavy steel-barred fronts, each with a sliding gate that could be secured from the outside. Concrete troughs ran along the bottom of each partition. Floors covered in straw—fresh straw. Buckets were stacked beside the entrance; a long-handled brush hung from a hook; several folded blankets sat on a shelf. Somebody had swept the walkway recently.

We were staring at the enclosures when Sam said, “What the fuck?” At first I thought he was looking at what I was looking at. Then he grabbed my sleeve. “Cal—look.”

Something moved in the farthest pen.

I raised my flashlight.

A man was lying against the back wall. Naked except for a piece of cloth around his waist.

For a second I thought he was dead. He was curled up on his side, legs bent all wrong underneath him, arms hugged tight against his chest like he was holding himself together. Face buried in straw.

“Hey,” I said. “You okay?”

Nothing.

Took a step closer. “Can you hear me?”

He lifted his head.

I still can’t get his face right when I try to tell people. Forty, maybe. Hair thinning and greasy. Beard thick. Skin the color of old dishwater. Deep lines cut across his forehead and around his mouth—not age lines, but strain lines, like his face had been pressed against something hard for a long time. Old scars crosshatched his shoulders. But it was his eyes that got me. Not scared. Not relieved. Just… measuring. Like a dog that’s been kicked enough times to know the difference between a raised hand and a thrown stone.

“Fuck,” Sam whispered.

The man shuffled back into the shadows, moving on his knuckles. His knees were swollen lumps, his feet bent at angles feet shouldn’t bend. Palms like old leather.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” I said, voice low.

He looked at the ceiling. At the gate. Made a wet click in the back of his throat.

“What’s your name?”

He dropped his head.

“Do you know where you are?”

Silence.

Sam moved closer to the bars. “Cal. We need to call someone.”

“I know.”

“Right fucking now.”

He pulled out his phone. While he talked to 911, I crouched down. The man watched me from the back of the pen. Up close, I saw the band on his wrist—thick, worn leather, like something off a workhorse. A metal tag stamped 17-B.

“What’s that mean?”

He looked at his wrist. Looked back at me. Then he reached down, picked a piece of dirty straw off the floor, and put it in his mouth. Just started chewing. My stomach turned over.

Right then I figured he was disabled. Locked away by some fucked-up family. I didn’t know.

Sam came back. “Cops and ambulance are coming. Don’t move him.”

“Okay.”

“What is this, Cal?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look at his legs.”

They were bent permanent, hips jutting wrong. And when he opened his mouth again, I saw his teeth—worn flat, like he’d been chewing on rocks.

That’s when Sam’s flashlight clanged against the bars.

The sound rang through the room.

The man flinched so hard he bit his tongue. Dropped the straw. Folded into himself, face shoved into the bedding, whole body shaking. Then this sound came out of him—a high, reedy whine, like air leaking from a tire. He pulled his knees up tighter and a dark stain spread under him in the straw. Pissed himself from fear.

“Jesus, Sam.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“Back up.”

Sam moved away. I kept talking soft, telling him it was okay, that no one was mad.

He didn’t look up. Just kept shaking.

That’s when I saw the bell hanging by the gate—heavy, iron, with a little wooden hammer beside it. The kind you ring for supper on a farm.

The striker was worn smooth from use, the brass darkened by a thousand greasy thumbprints. I stared at it, then back at the man cowering in the corner. That bell wasn't for calling people to dinner.

Sam looked like he might vomit. "What do we do?"

"We wait for the ambulance."

"Should we at least open the gate?"

The man was breathing through his mouth, shoulders pumping like bellows. Leaving him locked in that pen felt like leaving a dog in a hot car. "Yeah," I said. "Get the bolt cutters."

The lock gave with a sharp crack. The gate swung open.

"Come on, buddy. You can come out now."

Nothing. He stayed put, face hidden in straw.

I crouched by the opening. "Door's open. See?"

He glanced up, then buried his face again.

The granola bar from my pocket got his attention. His nostrils flared when I opened the wrapper. He moved forward a few inches on hands and knees, keeping low like an animal avoiding a kick.

I set the bar just inside the gate. He approached slowly, then lowered his face and took it with his teeth.

Sam turned away. I didn't get why until I watched him eat—crushing the food with his molars, head down, crumbs falling into the straw. When he finished, he looked up with this... hopeful expression, like maybe he'd done good.

I gave him the second bar. Same thing.

Then the water bottle. I unscrewed it, took a drink to show him. He watched my throat work, then lowered his head to the concrete and opened his mouth.

I moved the bottle closer. He followed it, mouth still open.

Sam's voice cracked. "Cal."

"He's waiting for you to pour it."

The realization hit me right in the gut. This man had never drunk from anything but a trough or a poured stream. I found a plastic container, rinsed it, filled it, set it down. He drank from the bottom like a horse at a bucket.

When he finished, he looked up at me—pleased. Almost grateful.

And Christ, that gratitude made me want to put my fist through a wall.

I still think about that moment more than any other. Not the scars or the smell or how his ankles were bent all wrong from never standing straight.

Just a grown man waiting for someone to pour water into his mouth like he was livestock at feeding time.

The ambulance took twenty-five minutes. A long time to stand around in that hallway, trying not to look at him. We’d finally gotten him out of the pen by luring him with a bottle of water, like you would with a stray animal. He wouldn’t stand. Every time I got a hand under his arm to help him up, he’d let out this choked gasp and drop back onto all fours, his knuckles scraping the concrete. His legs worked—I saw him stretch one out to hook a plastic container with his foot—but the idea of walking upright just wasn’t in him.

I kept pointing at the open door, making encouraging noises. He’d shuffle a few feet toward it on his hands and knees, stop, look back at his pen, and make this low, keening whine from the back of his throat. It was the sound of a creature who knows its safe place is being taken away. I felt like a monster, but I put the water bottle farther down the hall. He crawled to it. I moved it again. He followed.

We were almost to the main corridor when he froze. His head came up, nostrils flaring. Then he made a new sound, a deep, guttural crooning—*hmm-hmm-hmm*—like he was calling for something. He did it three times and went still, listening. The hallway was silent. He did it again, louder. When nothing answered, his whole body started to shake.

I knelt down, put a hand on his back. His skin was cold and damp. “It’s okay,” I said, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring back into the dark where we’d found him, like he was waiting for whoever was supposed to come.

By the time the paramedics showed up, he was crying silently, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on his cheeks, still making that crooning noise.

There were two of them—Dennis, an older guy with a tired face, and a younger woman named Rachel. They stopped dead when they saw him. Dennis asked how we found him, if he’d said anything. We didn’t have answers.

Rachel crouched down slowly. “Hi there,” she said softly. “My name’s Rachel.” He watched her like she was a strange dog that might bite. She showed him her empty hands, then touched his arm. He flinched but held still. His pulse must have been racing because her professional mask slipped for a second when she felt it.

“Does he know his name?” she asked me.
He made the crooning sound again.
“Just that,” I said.
She nodded, but her eyes were wide as she looked at his legs, the thick pads of callus on his hands and knees.

“How long’s he been in here?”
“No idea.”
“Did you give him anything?”
“Some water. A couple granola bars.”
She shot me a look. “You fed him?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t give him anything else.”
My stomach dropped. I’d been so proud of myself.

They decided to move him toward the entrance since the stretcher wouldn’t fit. Rachel talked to him the whole time, calm and low. He followed her on his hands and knees until we reached the main room.

Then he saw the open loading bay door.
Grey light washed over the wet asphalt outside.
He went completely rigid.
Rachel reached for him. “It’s okay, we’re just going out.”
He screamed.
It wasn’t a human sound—it was raw, primal terror ripped out of him from some deep animal place inside his chest. He threw himself backward, smashing into the concrete wall. Dennis caught him before he cracked his head open.

The man thrashed like a caught bird, scrambling blindly toward the shadow under an old machine, his fingers tearing on the rough floor hard enough to leave smears of blood.

“Stop! Let him go!” I yelled.
Dennis released him.
The man curled into a tight ball against the wall, arms clamped over his head, shaking so hard I could hear his teeth chattering.

No one moved.
Sam finally said it: “He’s never been outside.”
We got him back into a corner away from the door. The paramedics started working on him again while they called for more help.

When the first cop walked in a few minutes later, I felt this stupid wave of relief—like now it was someone else’s problem.
I really thought it would be.

The first officers took their time with us, the air thick with the smell of old straw and disinfectant. Their questions were methodical, predictable. Where exactly had we found him? Who else had keys? I answered carefully, my eyes drifting to where the ambulance crew was trying to coax the man onto a stretcher. He kept twisting his head toward the pens, making that soft, guttural noise in his throat—like a calf separated from its mother.

Sam was sitting on an overturned bucket by the loading dock, the plastic water bottle trembling in his hand. I lowered myself beside him. The concrete was cold through my jeans.

“You alright?”

He shot me a look. “What do you think?”

I didn’t answer. After a minute, he said, “That fucking bell.”

“Yeah.”

“He didn’t even look. Just dropped. Like his bones turned to water.”

“Conditioned,” I said.

Sam shook his head. “Who does that?”

He took a long drink, then stared at the stained floor. “You see his face when he finished those bars?”

I had. He’d looked… content. Almost blissful. Sitting in his own filth, and two granola bars made him light up.

Sam rubbed a hand over his mouth. “My kid—Lily—she gets that look when I bring her those fruit snack things. All bright and stupid.” His voice cracked. He wasn’t a crier. I’d seen him take a wrench to the face once and just spit blood and keep working. Now he was swiping at his eyes with the back of his wrist.

I put a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t shrug it off.

Later, an officer led me back toward the pens. The space felt emptier without him there. The straw was matted and dark in one spot. The water container lay on its side. The bell hung silent.

The officer’s flashlight cut across a gap between the last pen and the wall. “What’s back there?”

“Didn’t know anything was.”

He nudged the door open with his boot. Inside, it was almost cozy—a chair, a rug, a lamp. Like a waiting room.

Then I saw the pictures.

Dozens, maybe more, tacked up in rows. A baby on a blanket. A toddler standing, wobbly but upright. A kid with a wooden block. A teenager with soft eyes and that same birthmark by his ear.

My stomach turned.

The officer flipped open a small album on the cabinet. More photos. The boy asleep in straw. Smiling beside a trough.

Then one where he’s ten or so, beaming, clutching some carved thing. Happy. Uncomplicated.

I thought of Nora on that pony, beaming under her ridiculous helmet.

Then I saw the hand resting near the boy’s shoulder.

Too big. Fingers too long, knuckles too pronounced. The palm was nearly the width of his chest.

The officer turned the page.

Another photo: the boy asleep, curled against something massive and pale. A thick arm wrapped around him, skin loose and wrinkled like a elephant’s knee, elbow joint all wrong.

A huge hand, pale and thick-fingered, lay across the boy’s stomach. The officer’s breath hitched, then went quiet. We didn’t speak. He turned the page.

This one was older. The boy was maybe three or four, curled asleep on a blanket, his face pressed into something large and pale that filled the edge of the frame. An arm was wrapped around him—not gripping, just there. The way you hold a kid who’s fallen asleep on you. I’d done it with Nora a hundred times, her dead weight warm against my chest.

The boy’s own small hand rested on that arm. He looked peaceful. Safe.

I kept looking. The hand holding him was bigger than his whole middle. The skin was loose, creased like old leather, the knuckles thick, the nails long and blunt.

Then I saw it.

I counted the fingers.

Counted again.

Six.

Six huge fingers resting gently around a sleeping little boy.

And the boy was smiling.

I promise I’m not crazy, or hallucinating, and I don’t do drugs anymore. Havent for like a month so trust me I’m good.

This all kinda kicked off about a week ago. The route I take to college is a short 10-15 minute walk along a road. This road sucks under a freeway overpass about half way there. Usually the place is filled with trash, the occasional person too, poor bastards, but as long as you keep to yourself and move quick no one will bother ya, and even if they do they’ll rarely touch ya.

So I was a little more than scared when a bloodied hand shot out from beneath a dirty pile of cardboard and grabbed onto my leg.

I shouted and jumped away from the pile, nearly falling over the railing into the road.

“Please…” a voice pleaded weakly, “don’t leave me here to die like the rest…”

I’m not a particularly charitable person, rarely even kind, but something about the way this person spoke hurt my heart to ignore. Normally Id’ve just passed them by and let the next person or good samaritan handle it. But before I knew it I was watching myself reach for the person’s outstretched hand.

As we made contact I felt a shock course through my body, a singing stinging sensation lingered in my arm and hand as I pulled the person from beneath the cardboard.

They were in a bad way. Blood dripped from open gashes along their forehead, they wore a tattered robe covered in bloodstained gashes and slashes. Their breathing was labored and uneven. Their hair, a medley of all the colors of the rainbow, like light through a prism.

“Holy shit,” I reflexively shouted, “you need a hospital.”

I reached into my pocket for my phone before the figure stopped me.

“No, please, I only need sustenance.”

Despite its appearance, it’s voice was calm and gentle, a wavering lullaby carried on a gentle breeze.

“Susitinence? What like food? Dude you need a fucking hospital! Were you hit by a car?”

The figure smiled.

“I fell.”

“Even more of a reason to call an ambulance!”

The figure stepped closer to me. As it did so I began to notice strange things about it.

The figure appeared to be androgynous, though I fear the word itself fails to accurately describe the utter sense of distilled humanity, as if all mankind had been melted down and reforged into a single individual. Their figure was slender, lighter than air, fragile, yet sturdy. Dark caked crimson matted down their otherwise heavenly radiance.

“Please, my child, I need only sustenance and rest to restore myself.”

What was I doing here? I’m gonna be late for Econ, then professor’s gonna tear me a new asshole, and I’ll have to make up the quiz-

“Fuck it, want McDonalds?” I asked bluntly.

The figure smiled pleasantly in response, I took that as a “yes” and walked over.

Much to my surprise, and the surprise of the other patrons, the figure which had introduced themself as “Ruile”, had followed me to the store.

After a tense moment with the cashier we sat down with our meals. In a moment Ruile inhaled their Double Quarter Pounder. Truthfully I have never seen anyone nor anything devour a burger so fast in my life. If it weren’t for all the blood Id’ve assumed the patrons were all just as shocked at that display too.

“Well, good luck with your, ya know, all of this,” I said as I got up, vaguely gesturing to Ruile, “but I’m gonna go-“

Lei grabbed my arm firmly as I started to leave.

“Please, I appreciate your generosity, but I must find a place to rest.”

I recoiled once more.

I already fed this person and now they think they can just crash at my place?

“No, not your apartment,” Ruile replied.

“What the fuck?!” I exclaimed in shock, “how did you- my… How did you hear that?”

Lei looked nervous as they slumped down in their chair. The commotion drew even more attention than before. Not wanting to suffer another moment of this I made my way to the door.

Having left the McDonalds and rounding the corner to my Apartment I practically screamed when Lei stood right before me.

“Please Damien, my child,” Ruile begged, “I must rest!”

I shoved my way past them, “then go back to the cardboard pile I-“

How did they know my name? When did I-

“Damien,” Ruile started again, their words struck my soul as they called my name, “do not be afraid.”

For a moment, a brief, infinitesimal moment, my vision went white. White save for the shadow of something before me. Four pairs of massive wings that emerged from a series of concentric rings. My eyes, my head, my ears burned as I felt a warm liquid trickle down my nose and my cheeks. My ears rung with a righteous and ferocious tone of bells that threatened to shake me apart. The air was thick with the smell of fire.

Then it all slipped away, the world returned to how it was, Ruile still stood before me, but the air around them felt like it was burning.

“Do you understand now, Damien,” Ruile asked, hesitantly taking a step towards me.

I stumbled backwards and fell onto the pavement, nearly cracking my tail bone.

“W-what the hell? Are you an Angel?”

“Yes, my child,” Ruile said as they lowered to me, “please allow me this.”

I reached out my hand to Ruile, but as they grabbed my hand, another slid past and into my chest. Their slender, frail, broken hand pierced my flesh. A searing pain erupted and radiated out from my heart as their fingers dug deeper into the bone and muscle and sinew. My breath was taken from me as I greedily and desperately gulped down air that I felt escaping and searing my exposed flesh. My voice had been robbed from me as my throat became choked by a righteous heat that began to envelop my body. With each second more and more of Ruile entered my body, until all that remained was a small tuft of bloodied and broken feathers on the ground between my legs.

My lungs finally took in air as I hyper ventilated. My hands scanned my body for damage but found only scars where Lei had dug into me.

“W-where-“ I started.

In my mind I heard a distant echo that grew and grew into a powerful chorus chanting fury and temperance.

“I am here, my child. I am inside you.”

Ruile’s words came from all directions, past, present, and future.

“Get the fuck out! I didn’t give you permission!”

A bubble of joy rose up from within the depths of my soul and burst into a mix of radiant laughter and sour spite.

“I promise to repay the charity you have shown me, Damien, for you shall have my favor.”

I wasn’t much of a religious type, went to Sunday school maybe once, but when the fuck did Angels posses people?

“It is done only in times of necessity,” Ruile answered.

Right, you can read my mind.

“It is but one of many things we see.”

Ruile’s voice grew less intense as we spoke. Apparently there is an adjustment period to this sort of thing. The first few days were strange. Not that having an Angel forcibly posses you isn’t strange, but other things that happened to coincide with this were.

Firstly, my econ professor not only gave me a pass on the exam, which was extremely uncharacteristic, he gave me a C for a test I never even took. Which I’m pretty sure is like, illegal or something, not that I’m complaining.

Then it was this one loud asshole in my history class. He’d always interrupt class with the dumbest shit you’d ever hear come from someone’s mouth. Like “didn’t they fake the moon landing?” Or “I heard JFK was killed by the Lizard Cult” among other intellectual topics. Most of the class just soldiered through it, but it just so happened that the individual in question, let’s call him Ray, had a serious incident while biking out on someone’s property. Apparently people string clothes lines or wires up to deter (or decapitate) bikers and such who illegally access their property. I won’t judge any of that because I frankly don’t give a shit, but I will say I feel a bit bad about how relieved I was to hear that Ray had ran into one. He survived but the damage to his throat was pretty bad, they say he lost all ability to speak.

Again, I’m no saint, but I did feel a bit guilty at how happy I was to never hear his dumb ass speak again.

And the guilt only got worse after yesterday. The whole reason I’m even writing this in the first place.

My walk to school is fairly short as you already know, what I neglected to mention was that I do have to cross a signal-less crosswalk across a freeway onramp on the way. It’s usually tame at the times I go, but rarely I’ll run into some self important asshole who would rather almost run someone over instead of waiting the roughly five seconds it took to cross the intersection.

And every time it happened I’d sarcastically, and sometimes seriously, think to myself ‘God I hope this guy’s car explodes or something.’ And behold, a guy in some BMW comes flying down the road and nearly flattens me as I’m trying to cross. By reflex at this point I mumble my usual ‘fuck you’ and ‘hope you die’ spiel.

Moments later an explosion rocks the area. Fragments of car and god-knows-what fly past me. My eyes are drawn to the heat, and the cloud of smoke rising from the car that had nearly hit me not even five seconds prior. It hadn’t even fully made it to the top of the onramp. Right on the cusp it sat, now nothing more than a mangled, flaming wreck.

All I could do was stand there and watch. I didn’t move a muscle.

Not when the firefighters came. Not when EMS arrived and walked, not ran, walked to the wreck. Not when the police went around asking for witnesses. And certainly not when the paramedics wheeled away something on a gurney covered in a soot-stained white sheet.

So now I sit here. Typing this out, not sure what it would even accomplish. Maybe this is confessional, but these aren’t my sins are they? Maybe I’m seeking some type of absolution from all of this, maybe one of you even knows what the hell is going on. I mean I don’t expect to find a support group for people possessed by angels but like what the fuck else am I supposed to do?

I can’t keep living like this. It was fine when it was just convenient stuff like my test scores and refilling my shampoo bottle or milk. But now someone has died. Ok sure there’s nothing concrete but I mean, it’s too big of a coincidence for me to just ignore. It’s like I felt myself die a little, like I did that. I killed someone with just a thought. It hurts. It fucking hurts.

I’m scared. Why me? Oh God, why me?

The house I grew up in was a thin, old thing. I think it was a townhouse at some point, but everything around it was torn down. It was made up of two floors and an attic. My parent’s room was on the first floor, alongside the kitchen and first bathroom. My room was on the second floor, where there was a second bathroom and a short, carpeted hallway leading to a window that looked out over the street. There was a cozy window seat set up there; I used to spend hours curled up on it when I was small, devouring library books and watching the sun set. On the ceiling above the window was a square hatch, from which hung a worn brass chain with a heavy, wooden handle at the end. It could be pulled on to open the hatch and cause the ladder to unfold, giving someone access to the attic. The house was a bit drafty, and sometimes the chain would swing gently back and forth, seemingly on its own.
I wasn’t allowed in the attic. My father said it was because it held all sorts of stuff that was dangerous for a child: exposed nails, rotting boards, mousetraps in the corners. But my parents spent a lot of time in the attic, usually after I went to bed. It wasn’t uncommon for me to see the ladder extended when I got up to go to the washroom in the middle of the night, or hear creaking footsteps above me as I drifted off to sleep. None of it bothered me because it had been happening for as long as I could remember. It was normal.
When we moved out of that old house, it all felt very sudden, even at the time. As a kid any number with that many zeros registered as a lot. Looking back, I see just how cheaply they sold it for.
The house we moved into is the one we still live in. It’s one floor, two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a small attic. The new attic can also be accessed through a square hatch in the ceiling, but you need to bring in an outside ladder to reach it. I’m still not allowed to go up there.
Two police officers stopped by about a week ago and spoke to my parents for about an hour. They were speaking in hushed tones, so I couldn’t catch anything they said.
Yesterday, I stumbled across a newspaper article about my old house. Apparently the current owners hadn’t bothered much with the attic until they noticed an odor coming from above the second floor. They went up to discover a mass that was later identified as thirty-seven bodies, all in various states of decay, naked and piled up on top of each other, old blood staining the boards and exposed fiberglass.
I’m not sure what to do next. I’m laying in bed awake right now. I can hear someone moving around in the attic above me, all creaking footsteps and maybe something being dragged. It’s making it hard to fall asleep.

For reasons unknown, every year we go on a family trip to Branson, Missouri.

My brother and I have lots of fond memories from these trips growing up, but as we got older the magic of that poor-man's version of Gatlinburg, Tennessee started to lose its appeal.

But family is important and we still go, only now after the family activities are over for the day my brother, we'll call him Donnie, and I go out to the bars.

This year Donnie brought his fiancée Rachel, and one night when we were out at the bars we ran into a group of locals who we ended up making friends with.

There were three of them, we'll call them Steve, Mike, and Emily. Steve had on a Cleveland Browns jersey and my brother, being a huge fan, connected with Steve immediately. Being single in my early 20s, I was immediately attracted to the 20-something blonde who kept touching my arm as if she were trying to reassure me that I actually had a chance of sleeping with her.

We spent most of the night laughing and getting to know each other. The bar had a beer pong table so Donnie and I played a few rounds against Steve and Mike.

When the night ended it was like none of us wanted to go home, but closing time left few options to keep the party going, complicated by the fact that our new friends lived 45 minutes outside of town.

They told us they were having a party the following night (or later that same night since it was like 3 AM), and invited us to come. We agreed, the three of us looking forward to something different than another night out at the bars in downtown Branson, and exchanged numbers.

Things were normal all the next day as we hung out at the theme park with my parents. We were texting the locals and got the address. The three of us were really excited.

Later that night we said goodbye to my parents and set out.

The address was a little ways out of town, about a 45-minute drive according to the GPS. Donnie was driving, Rachel was in the passenger's seat and I was in the back.

Rachel and I picked up a couple of "road sodas" and were having a good time, teasing my brother for being the designated driver as we listened to some pregame music.

Right outside of town the road turned into a winding state highway that wove its way through the trees.

A little buzzed already, I thought it alone was creepy. The way the trees just hung over the road like arthritic claws gave me the chills.

About 30 minutes into the drive a thick fog came out of nowhere and covered the road like a blanket. We couldn't see a thing and Donnie had to slow the car to a crawl.

Cell service had gone out a few miles back, save for the GPS pings that were still guiding us to our destination, although my phone was showing our little dot gliding in parallel to the line that represented the road we were driving on.

There weren't any other cars on the road either. It was just the 3 of us in Donnie's SUV, until we came to the man standing in the middle of the road.

At first I thought it was a trash bag. After all, seeing a man in a head-to-toe white cloak, hood drawn and staring at the ground, is not something you expect to encounter in rural Missouri at 10 o'clock at night.

Donnie had been going maybe 20 miles per hour, so we had plenty of reaction time, but he must have been as shocked as I was, considering he didn't actually stop the car until we were maybe 10 feet in front of whoever it was.

I rolled down my window and leaned out of the car and yelled something like, "Hey asshole, want to get out of the road?"

No reaction.

Donnie laid on the horn.

Still no reaction, so I downed the last few dregs in my beer can, crushed it, and chucked it out of the window at the cloaked figure standing in the middle of the street.

It hit the side of his head with a metallic thunk.

No reaction.

Just as Donnie was starting to back up, the man's head snapped up like a spring-loaded bobblehead whose head someone had been pushing down and just released.

The rest of its body stayed unnaturally still as the thing stared directly at the car.

It had the body and build of a man, but it didn't look like any man I'd seen before in my entire life.

Instead of eyes, there were just 2 sunken holes like dark craters in its face. There is no reason that thing should have seen us, but it did. I knew from the way it tracked the car as we reversed that it could see us.

In place of its nose was a little slit like that of a snake, and its skin was ghostly white, the same color as its robe. It looked as if someone had poured a can of white paint all over.

Crouching down and taking a few creeping steps forward, its focus locked on to our car.

Rachel screamed as Donnie slammed his foot down on the accelerator.

The thing leapt into the air. It jumped so high and fast that I barely saw it shoot up into the fog, then I heard a loud thunk as something landed on the roof.

The driver's side window exploded, shards of glass shooting inward and spraying all over Donnie and Rachel. I didn't realize it at the time, but a stray shard of glass lodged itself in my arm.

I could hear my heart thumping in my ears, adrenaline and shock rooting me to my seat as a pale white hand shot in through the window and started fighting Donnie for the steering wheel.

Everything was chaos and my brain was having a hard time processing what was happening.

I remember trying to move, to help Donnie, and being unable to move before I realized it was my seat belt. I remember the fangs of its canines as the thing contorted its way through the window and sunk its teeth into Donnie's arm. I remember the sound of Donnie and Rachel's screams, and how cold and scaly the thing's skin felt as I tried to pull it off Donnie.

But then the car was upside down, and all I remember is blackness.

My head was killing me when I woke up. It felt like it had been split in two, and it took me a moment to take in my surroundings and connect the dots of what had happened.

I was laying in the grass and looked over to the other side of the road, where the car I had just been in was overturned and smoke filled the night air.

Wanting to call 911, I looked around for my phone and it was gone.

Rachel was gone, but I found Donnie laying in the middle of the street. He was staring up at the night sky, eyes wide open and his face frozen in a look of shock. His stare was blank and vacant, no soul behind his eyes.

Blood was everywhere. His shirt had been ripped open and where his stomach should have been was just a bloody hole in his stomach filled with a mixture of blood and guts. It looked like something had been chewing on his organs.

I don't know if I cried then or not.

It was the gunshot that brought me back to my senses. The sound cracked against the night and I heard the bullet ricochet off the ground just a few feet away from me.

Fight or flight kicked in at that point, and I chose the latter and took off into the woods. I didn't know who was shooting at me or where the thing that had attacked us was, and didn't want to find out.

I just ran into the woods, and kept running for probably over an hour, and even then I didn't stop, as much as I wanted to just collapse on the ground. The whole night I kept walking through the woods, wondering what that thing was, what had happened to Rachel, crying for her and my brother, and jumping at every little snap of a twig or rustle of leaves.

The sun was just coming up, bright and radiant as ever, as if nothing bad had happened the night before.

I made it to a gas station, covered in blood (I also still had the glass shard embedded in my arm), and the man behind the register gave me a terrified look when I asked to use his phone.

Nevertheless, he said that was fine and told me he had to run to the back office to get it.

While he did, I noticed the TV he had hanging on the wall behind the register. It was showing the news, who were reporting on a story about an overturned vehicle found on the side of the road about 30 minutes outside of Branson, and a body lying in the middle of the street.

Then my face came up on the TV, wanted as a person of interest.

I'm not sure if I made the right call or not, but the only thing I could think of was "who was going to believe me?" so I left the gas station before the man came back with the phone.

I'm writing this to you, Reddit, to profess my innocence.

Recently I saw my parents interviewed on the news. They're a part of the search parties looking for Rachel and I, and they were sobbing, telling the news that I deserved the justice coming to me.

I've thought about Steve, Mike, and Emily a lot since that night.

Sometimes when the librarians aren't looking I can sneak into the local library, and I use their computers to try to find them (and make this Reddit post). Thankfully my beard is so thick now that no one recognizes me; it probably helps that I smell terrible too, so no one wants to get too close to me either.

So far I haven't had any luck, but I did find a news article from about five years ago.

A group of cousins disappeared after meeting 3 strangers at a bar and being invited to a house party. Their car was found overturned on the side of the road about 30 miles outside of town.

They ended up finding one of the bodies, but the strange thing was it was a few days later and over five miles away. Police described it as being in a similar state to Donnie's when I'd found him in the middle of the road. They specifically said he had survived on his own for a few days, judging by the condition he was in when he'd been found.

"He looked like he had been hunted," one officer was quoted in the article.

As I'm writing this, I look up from the computer to notice 3 people enter the library, 3 people who look very familiar. I'm not sure if I should get a closer look or get out of here. Will update if I can.

Dad used to say you could tell how bad a night was by how quiet the morning came. I figured he meant weather. He did not mean weather.

I found the first two does on a Tuesday, back pen, right by the stock tank. Dead, both of them, but laid out neat. Like somebody tucked them in. Two holes in each neck, about as wide as a pencil, and no blood. I spent ten minutes on my bad knee crawling around looking for it. The dirt was dry. The wool was clean. Nothing.

Wednesday it was four more.

I called Don Ignacio, who lives a mile up the road and has an opinion on everything from the price of feed to the Pope. Coyotes, he said. I said coyotes make a mess. He said, so? I said these ones didn't. He was quiet long enough that I checked my phone to see if the call dropped, and then he said he'd come by Saturday and bring his dog.

Thursday I walked out at first light and it was too quiet. I've got thirty-one head, or I did, and those goats scream at the feed truck, at me, at the sun, at their own shadows. That morning I stood in the yard and heard the windmill and a truck on the county road and nothing else.

The barn door was open. I'd latched it the night before, I always do, with a carabiner since the hook broke in July. The carabiner was lying in the dirt, still clipped shut. Whatever opened that door had ripped the whole eye screw out of the post.

I didn't go in. I stayed by the gate with Dad's shotgun and looked through the slats, and every goat I could see was standing dead still, facing the corner under the hayloft. Not eating. Not shifting. Just looking at the dark in that corner like it owed them money.

Chato pushed up against the back of my legs and I could feel him shaking through my jeans. Chato is a heeler mix who once picked up a rattlesnake by the head. I'd never seen him scared of anything.

"Vámonos," I told him, and we backed to the house, and I didn't turn around until the screen door slapped shut.

I drove to Tractor Supply that afternoon and bought a trail camera, eighty-nine ninety-nine plus tax, the kind deer hunters strap to trees. Infrared flash, motion sensor. I mounted it on the center post of the barn, aimed at the hayloft corner, and I remember feeling smart about it. Evidence. Like I was on one of those shows.

Don Ignacio came by anyway, a day early, without his dog. He said the dog wouldn't get in the truck. He stood at the fence and told me about his grandmother in Reynosa, who wouldn't say the name of the thing out loud after dark, because it listens for its name, she said. He told it like a joke and then he stopped halfway through and didn't finish.

"Lock your door, mija," he said, and went home.

I ate cereal standing up at the counter. I put the shotgun on the kitchen table, with the lights on, and sat there like I was waiting for a bus.

11:40. I know because I looked at the stove clock right when it started.

I never heard the barn door. I never heard feet. What I heard, out in the yard, was my father saying my name.

"Elena."

He's been dead two years this March. I held his hand at the hospital in McAllen. I signed the papers and picked out the box.

"Mija." Warm, tired, the exact way he used to holler across the yard when supper was ready. "Help me out here. The light's out in the barn, I can't find the switch."

It was his voice. It was his words, even, the dumb little complaint he made a hundred times. But there was breathing underneath it, long and wet and whistling, and way too slow, and no man ever had a chest that big.

Chato was under the table by then, making a noise like a rusty hinge. He wasn't barking. He was staring at the window over the sink.

"Elena." Closer. The porch now. "Open up, it's cold out here."

I watched the doorknob. Cheap brass thing, Dad put it in back in 1998. It turned a quarter inch and stopped against the bolt, and turned back, gently, like whoever was out there didn't want to be rude about it.

Then the voice cracked in half. It went high and thin and it wasn't Dad anymore, it was a kid goat, a little one, crying for its mother. Then a second one started up. Then ten, twenty, the whole herd bawling in the dark, and every single voice was coming from the same spot on the other side of that door.

That's when I got it. The goats hadn't gone quiet because they were scared. They'd gone quiet because something else was doing their screaming for them.

It was practicing. It had been listening to me my whole life.

I didn't sleep. When it got light the noise just cut off, like somebody pulled a plug, and I waited another hour anyway before I slid the bolt.

Scratches on the porch boards, four of them side by side, deep enough to put a finger in. At the bottom step, one print in the dust. Two toes pointing forward, two pointing back. Bigger than my hand.

The barn was empty. No bodies. No blood, no hair, nothing kicked over. Thirty-one goats just gone, and the straw in the pens hadn't even been disturbed. The camera was still on its post, little red light blinking away.

I pulled the card and took it to the kitchen and put it in my laptop, and my hands were doing something I didn't like.

Hundreds of pictures. Moths, mostly. Wind in the dust. Then 11:38, something at the edge of the frame. Tall, hunched, up on two legs, with arms that hung past its knees and a line of black spines down its back. The eyes lit up white in the infrared, flat and wide, and it was looking right at the lens.

11:39, closer, head tilted. The mouth hung open and went back farther than a mouth should. 11:40. 11:41, and the whole frame was one wet ridged nose and a tongue that wasn't a tongue, it was a hollow needle uncoiling out of the mouth.

11:42 was black. Somebody, something, had turned the camera, slow and careful, away from the loft and toward the house.

11:43 was the yard. The porch light. The kitchen window. And in the window, tiny and bright, me. Standing at my own sink with a shotgun in my hands and my mouth hanging open, listening to my dead father ask to come in.

It kept shooting every thirty seconds after that, right up to 6:12 in the morning, which was about five minutes before I opened the door. The last picture was the porch, very close. The doorknob. And flat against the screen, a long gray hand with too many knuckles, resting there the way you'd rest your hand on a sleeping dog.

Waiting for me to come out.

I looked up from the laptop. Out in the yard the windmill creaked once.

Then, from somewhere real close, in my voice, my exact voice, breathy and scared, something said:

"Chato. Come here, boy."

And under the kitchen table, where my dog had been all night, nothing moved.

I am disgusted, watching Namisake do the same unnatural act every day. I know we’re sisters but to live in the same house with her makes it even worse.

My name is Yamamoto Kuzukiri and I live with my family, my mother Yagasuke, my father Namomoto and my weird sister, Namisake. Lately my sister’s behavior’s been odd, I’ve been passing it off as her form of a practical joke, but now I realize it’s a lot deeper than that. No matter what day it is or where in the house we are, she insists on doing it no matter what me or my parents say. Namisake just keeps licking the house, I know it sounds crazy but let me explain.

Tonight, is our family night, Wednesday to be exact. We’re having one of our favorite dinners and from a bird’s eye view, our family seems like the perfect one, that is, until the dinner takes a nauseating turn.
Pork chashu ramen, our family’s favorite is what we decided to have, this was my father’s favorite meal to make, and he was his happiest whenever we enjoyed his cooking. Everything seems fine as we share a laugh that takes over the room, when suddenly it starts, what me and my parents have referred to as, “The Licking.” Now normally, someone licking the inside of a bowl of ramen may not seem out of the ordinary, but you don’t understand, it isn’t just an innocent lick, it’s much more than that.

Sometimes, if we don’t intervene, she’ll keep it up for hours on end. The drippings of the ramen broth inside the bowl are one thing, but when it drips onto a wooden table it’s another, she’ll still proceed with, “The Licking”, as she always does with no sign of stopping anytime soon.

“Namisake cut it out already, there’s nothing left,” my mother says as she watches Namisake lick the table clean.

The licking goes from soft to hard, the sound gets rougher by the minute as the small pieces of wood begin to stick to the roof of her mouth, forming an unusual pattern of splinters on her tongue.

“Your mother said that’s enough,”
our father yells at Namisake, slamming both his fists onto the table, infuriating her, forcing her to stop mid-lick.

“What did you just do, this table did nothing to you,” Namisake says.

“Why would you hurt such an innocent soul?”

“The table isn’t alive dear, what are you saying,” our mother says.

“Your obsession with this house has gone on long enough, maybe it’s time we went on a vacation of some sort and left this house for a while.”

“AGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!”

A loud screeching voice resonates throughout the house, shaking the foundation to its core. I jump out of my chair and hide under the table, trying my hardest to remain calm. Suddenly, I notice both of my parents join me as we tremble in fear. In front of me, I see the legs of my sister remaining perfectly still as the house continues to shake. Throughout the loud screeching I can still hear my sisters’ incessant licking of the table, the screeching continues to grow louder and louder, without warning, my mother screams at the top of her lungs.

“AGGGGHHHH!!! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? YAMOMOTO, LOOK ABOVE YOU!”

I slowly lean my head backwards and look above me to see a deformed face on the bottom of the table, staring at me with a crazed look in its eyes. Its fat tongue starts to lower from its mouth, lickingmy face violently in a rapid motion. I shriek, feeling overcome with fear, I kick the table with as much force as I can muster. I feel a large spurt of fluid hitting my body from all directions, I wipe my face and notice what looks like blood spouting from the four spots where the tables’ legs once were.

When the table lands on the ground, I can see the deformed face again, this time two bloody hands and feet start to flail rapidly from the ends of each leg, almost like the table was morphing into some humanlike creature.

The legs of the table suddenly start taking more of a human form, as the tables’ body begins flailing around in all directions, it feels as if I’m watching a cockroach struggle to flip over after landing on its back.

“LET’S GET OUT OF HERE!”

My father screams at all of us to follow him, we make it to the front door where he attempts to swing it open, he screams in agony, trying to pull his hand away from the door.

“AGGGHHHHH,” my father screams.

“DAD OPEN THE DOOR! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

Having no idea what happened to my poor father’s hand, I try pulling my father away from the door hoping that I may be able to open it instead. Suddenly, I notice my dad’s hand halfway inside of a large jaw with sharp teeth, the back of the door handle engulfing my father’s hand inch by inch.
 
“NAMISAKE WHAT’S GOING ON HERE? LOOK AT DAD, HE’S…...”

I look over to my sister in shock as I watch the decrepit face of the dining room table’s underside lick her repeatedly. A tear of blood slowly creeps down through a crevice from an opening in her skin, only to be licked away by the massive tongue of the creature.

“WH- WHAT THE HELL?”

My words were starting to grow quiet, my mother still shrieking in terror, watching my father being devoured by the doorhandle. I could no longer see my father’s hand anymore, only his elbow as it made its way into the creature’s mouth.

One by one, the walls in the house start forming decrepit faces, each one screaming so loudly that I can barely hear myself think.

“DON’T LEAVE, STAY WITH US!”

“MOM HURRY!”

I grab my mother’s hand and run towards the back door, as we get closer to it I can see the middle of the door start to form a large, terrifying mouth, lined with two rows of sharp teeth, opening wide enough to encompass the whole door. Arms start to reach out as we get closer, me and my mother take an immediate turn towards the basement door as we force our way through it.

We both fall down the stairs into total darkness, I stand up reaching my hands towards the ceiling trying to feel for a small pull chain. That being the only source of light in the basement, I quickly began to search for it as if my life depended on it. I finally find it, pulling on the chain as hard as I can, but to my surprise, nothing happens.

“COME ON YOU STUPID THING, WORK, WORK, WORK!!!”

The light flashes on, a red ember shines throughout the basement and surrounding the lightbulb is a growth. It looks like human flesh but to the touch it felt warm and slimy like something I had never felt before.

I take a look around and realize that it’s not just surrounding the lightbulb, it’s covering all of the walls, the furniture, and the wooden beams in the basement.

“AGGHHH! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!”

My mother points to a large heart beating in the middle of the floor, on the worktable across from the stairs we see my father’s tools, one of which being a Phillips Head Screwdriver. My mother rushes towards it and grabs it off the table, she then runs towards the heart and lifts the screwdriver towards the ceiling.

“MOM WHAT ARE YOU DOING? YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT’LL DO!”

“WE HAVE TO KILL IT, OR ELSE IT’LL KILL US BOTH! I CAN’T LOSE YOU TOO!”

My mother forcefully brings the screwdriver crashing down through the vulnerable heart, the house screeches out one last cry of agony.

“AGGGHHGGHHHHHH!!!!!”

When my mother takes the screwdriver out, I can feel a sharp pain inside my chest, I press my hand to where my heart is and fall to the ground. As I scramble trying to get up, I can see my mother doing the same as I pull myself towards her and tug on her shirt. I pull my mother’s body towards me, and I see a puncture wound on her chest, her eyes start to roll to the back of her head with blood beginning to fill her eye sockets. I pull my hand from my chest and see blood leaking from my shirt and a red crimson color fills my view as my breathing halts to an end.

I awake to see my mother, my father, and my little sister, sitting at the dinner table, laughing.

If you find this, I’ve either broken the cycle, or died trying.

You decide.
 

Adam stood by the corn silo, holding a flask. My eyes kept closing; I could barely focus on him.

"Morning, Adam."

"Jesus, Matt, you look awful. Want a drink?"

He raised his flask.

"No."

"It will help you get some sleep, man. What are you even doing at night? Playing with yourself until dawn?"

He laughed and slapped my shoulder.

"No, it's just…"

"I have a task for you. You gotta clean up the silo; the machinery is blocked."

I gripped my sleeve tight and stared at him.

He slapped my shoulder again.

"Calm down, you're not gonna get Dan'd"

"But can't somebody else do it? Why do I gotta?"

He furrowed his brows.

"I'm the senior, Matt. Now get your ass there and go do it."

I waited, not moving.

"Go!"

His voice rang in my ears. I put my head down and walked into the silo.

The inside was cold, silent. My steps echoed on the bridge. The closer I got to the ladder, the more my head spun. When my feet touched the kernels, I took a deep breath and looked around. It wasn't obvious where the blockage was, but as usual it was probably in the center. I grabbed a broom and walked over.

Then a hum echoed. The kernels moved beneath my feet. Dust filled the air. Someone started the machines.

"Wait! I'm still in."

The kernels were moving fast. My feet felt light.  I turned around and took a few steps. One foot sank. Another. 

"Help, please!"

My waist sank. My heart beat against my ribs. The kernels moved around me, pushing at my chest. I was neck-deep. My head sank under the kernels. I held my breath. I sank deeper and deeper. The kernels hissed in my ears. Then my feet felt loose, and so did my waist, my chest.

I fell hard onto the ground. It felt cold, but the ground felt firm like concrete. I looked around. The whole place was dark, as in a cave, but there were no walls, no ceiling above me, just darkness as far as I could see. The smell of dusty kernels still hung in the air.

"Hello?"

My voice echoed through the dark emptiness. It sounded like my words traveled to me and away from me at the same time. I got up and walked a few steps. They echoed in the same strange way. 

A cold tingle built in my chest. The space felt both small and large. It felt as if someone's eyes were on me. I kept looking over my shoulder. Then a noise broke through the silence. A faint snore, as if someone was trying to catch their breath, but couldn't. In the distance, a small figure lay on the ground.

"Hello? Are you okay?"

The snoring grew. His limbs twisted on the ground as if struggling. My heart sank when I saw who it was. Dan rolled on the ground, in the same clothes he'd worn when he fell into the corn that day.

Memories flashed through my mind. His screams for help. The machine's rattle. Adam's calm face as he watched him go down. All because he told the boss Adam and I were drinking on the job. The rope lay right at my feet. I stared at it while Dan screamed for help.

I ran to him. His eyes were wide with pain, his mouth filled with kernels.

"I'm sorry, Dan. I'm sorry!"

I grabbed him and rolled him onto his side. Kernels spilled from his mouth, but more were still inside. I hit his back; more spilled out, but his mouth was still full. I stuck my shaking hand into his mouth and pulled out handfuls of kernels, but his mouth filled back immediately. He turned his pleading eyes to me. Tears rolled down his cheeks.

"I'm sorry, I don't…"

My voice caught. Something scratched the back of my throat. I tried to cough, but nothing came out; the scratching only grew. I tried to breathe, but the air wouldn't come through. I dropped to all fours. Kernels began falling out of my mouth.

"Dan! Dan!" I woke up screaming.

I was back in the silo, half-submerged in the kernels. The mechanical machinery sounds were gone. The silo was silent.

Adam and two other workers stood atop the bridge, looking down at me. A rope was thrown before me.

"Sorry, Matt. We didn't know you were in. Adam forgot to tell us," one of them said.

Adam shrugged and looked down at me with a half-smile.

"Why were you screaming Dan's name?" Adam asked. 

He unscrewed the flask and took a long, slow sip, eyes on me.

I looked down at the ground.

"I don't know."

He smiled and nodded.

"Take the rope," one of the men said.

I grabbed it tightly. Something scratched at the back of my throat again. I coughed. A few kernels flew out.

"I want y'all to give a warm welcome to our newest employee. She recently just graduated from Texas A&M, though we won't hold that against her, hook 'em horns. Everybody, meet Penelope, or as we're going to call her around here, Penny Callahan." That is how my new boss Douglas Crane introduced me to the team. I couldn't help but roll my eyes when he threw up the horns, but I didn't expect anything less from a T-sip.

Like he said, I just recently graduated from Texas A&M. I come from a long line of Aggies. My father was the last one to graduate from there and though I kept the family tradition of attending college, career-wise we went in different directions. My dad Roy recently retired from the police force as a detective. I went to college for business and eventually decided that banking is where I needed to be. I worked at the bank for only a few days when I got a call that nobody wants to receive in the middle of the night. My father had passed away, which was crazy because I had just spoken to him two nights prior while we were having a celebratory dinner, congratulating me on my new career.

My dad and I were always close because I was the only child. Growing up he always took his work home with him. For breakfast, I would have case files with my Cap'n Crunch. He was there physically, but mentally his mind was at work. However, he knew how to balance it just right. He would pick his battles. He would go to my volleyball games, but never took me to practice. He was at my high school graduation, but couldn't make my college graduation. Dad told me that since he paid for my tuition that he didn't have to attend, which I thought was fair enough. He was a bit strict, but he was always fair.

The even crazier part is how they found him — inside an abandoned chicken restaurant called Klucky's where unspeakable horrors occurred. They officially deemed him the notorious serial killer in the local area. My father was named The Shadow Strangler. My whole world was shattered in an instant.

When I received the call to identify his body at the morgue, I wanted so badly to tell them it wasn't him. But when they lifted that sheet, I could tell it was him just by the way that his hair looked. I honestly couldn't believe it. My dad was gone, and I was officially all alone.

Since he was a big piece of the police force, they didn't want to go public just yet about him being the Shadow Strangler. They wanted to conduct an investigation before they went public to the press. However, at the crime scene, they did find his fingerprints all over murder weapons that were identified as such from previous crime scenes. They also found a diary that was their smoking gun when it came to a confession. I asked for access to this diary, but was denied since they found the latest victim and him in the same building. They had him dead to rights I was told.

I made arrangements at the funeral home. He had requested to be buried next to my mother as well as my grandparents. Nobody knew about the accusations, and I sure as hell wasn't going to tell them. So he had a proper funeral with pretty much the entire police department there, as well as my boss Douglas, who was there the entire time to support me.

"Penny, I'm so sorry about your father. Take all the time you need, the bank will still be there waiting for you when you return." Douglas embraced me with a hug as we were staring at the open casket in the funeral parlor. It was warm and genuine, and he was the closest connection I've ever had to a person since my dad.

After he was buried next to Mom, Pepaw and Granny, I went home and sat on my couch for three days straight. I didn't eat, I didn't talk to anybody, and I didn't even turn the lights on. I was devastated that my father was linked to being such a monster. A part of me didn't want to believe it, but the evidence was telling me it was true. He always told me to trust the evidence. That's when I received a text from the coroner Dr. Sandra Okafor. She asked to meet me for coffee because she had something she wanted to discuss.

We met at a local coffee shop on Main Street. She was already there waiting for me, dressed very professionally with her hair up in a bun, dark-rimmed glasses, a tasteful button-up top, and an ankle-length black skirt with slingback black heels. She immediately stood up when she noticed me come through the doors and walked over to greet me. She gave me a handshake and directed me towards the table.

"Penelope, thank you so much for meeting me on such short notice. I know that emotions are still raw, but there's something that I had to share with you." As soon as she said that, a barista came by and asked me for my drink order. She was absolutely gorgeous, but I couldn't focus on her right now. "It's really no problem, Dr. Okafor, I've just been sitting in darkness for three days, not doing much. What is it that you needed to share with me?" I said to her with my eyes burning and my face puffy.

"I'm sorry to hear that, but I will keep this brief. There is a bit of an inconsistency with the report. Everything in it points to your father being the Shadow Strangler, however, I'm beginning to question that." She took a sip of her coffee before she continued. "It's my understanding that your father was in fact right-handed, correct?" I nodded my head up and down concurring. "That's what I thought. However, the wound patterns on the victims indicate that the Shadow Strangler was in fact left-handed. With such precision and execution, for a lack of a better term, somebody right-handed couldn't have possibly done it. At least that's my theory."

The gorgeous barista brought me my latte as she smiled and winked at me before walking away. I had to shake my head and once again focus on Dr. Okafor. If what she's telling me is true, this could be the evidence I needed to prove my father's innocence. It was a lead I hoped would finally give me a definitive answer. I thanked Dr. Okafor for her time as I took my coffee and headed back to my house.

Even though I drank my latte like it was water, I eventually passed out from exhaustion from not sleeping for a few days. That's when I had a weird dream. I was inside Klucky's, standing over a dead body. I looked over at the swinging kitchen door and out came my father. "Penny, this isn't what it seems. Don't trust everyone. He's still out there." He was clenching a knife in his right hand that was dripping blood in massive puddles on the floor — a recreation of the scene he'd been framed for. The dream was so surreal that I woke up in a panic. It was the middle of the night and I was starving. I looked in my pantry and of course, there was nothing to eat, so I decided that instead of ordering from DoorDash that I was going to go to Waffle House for sustenance.

I pulled up to the yellow lit building and sat myself in a corner booth. After the waiter took my order, which was an All-Star Special and coffee, I looked over and noticed Detective Briggs, Dad's old partner. He was rugged and looked like he could beat you to a pulp just by looking at you, but every time he saw me, he instantly went into teddy bear mode. He set down his fork that had a punctured waffle on it and swiftly walked over to me and sat in the opposite booth.

"Penny, it's so good to see you, sweetheart. I haven't seen you since the funeral, how are you holding up?" he said as he grabbed my hands. I had to fight back tears and wanted to tell him that my life had been a living nightmare and that I dreamt about my dad a couple of hours prior. However, all I could mutter was I was doing all right, and that I was going back to work in a couple of days. He patted my hands and apologized for the hundredth time since I've seen him this week. He then leaned in, as if to tell me a secret. "You know, I think this whole investigation is full of shit," he said as he looked around to see if anybody else was listening. "Your dad was an outstanding member of society, and one of the good cops to boot. There's no way in hell that he is the Shadow Strangler. Even on your dad's worst days, he never so much as raised his voice at a suspect."

I looked at Walt and echoed his statement. That's when it occurred to me that in my dream, Dad said don't trust everyone. I couldn't help but have a sneaking suspicion that Detective Briggs was the Shadow Strangler. I couldn't be certain, but I felt a little uneasy with the way he was looking at me. A look he had never given me before. "You know what? I just remembered I have to pay my water bill!" I said to Walt as I dropped a fifty-dollar bill on the table and left in a hurry. I felt like an idiot as I sped off out of the parking lot. As I looked through the window, Walt was still sitting there dumbfounded.

With an empty stomach, I got back home and tried to get some sleep. I didn't get much, but when I did dream, I dreamt of Dad again. The same building, the same situation. Dad was still holding the knife dripping blood over a dead body. Except he said something different to me this time. "He's still out there killing. Look at his left hand." As soon as he said that, a shadowy figure emerged behind him with a rope, and right as he was about to strangle my dad, I woke up. Armed with Dad's direction, I hoped I could finally catch this psychopath.

The next morning, I went to the old precinct to see Walt. Luckily, he was in his office and after checking in and grabbing a visitor's badge, I met with him face-to-face. He had his chair facing away from me. When he turned around and put his hands on his desk, I noticed his left hand. Walt had a huge burn on the back of his hand. I tried to play it off by asking him what happened. He looked down at it. "Oh this? After you left Waffle House to pay your water bill, the waitress came by to refill my coffee and let's just say that she missed the mug," he said as he waved his hand in the air. Once again I got an uneasy feeling as I apologized for my behavior the night before and told him that I had some errands I needed to run. I was a little more subtle this time.

I wasn't lying this time. I had full intent to get some things done before I returned to work the next day. This included putting together a thank you basket for my boss. So I went to Target and stocked up on some of his favorites. While I was there, I decided to go ahead and buy a couple of security cameras, just to be safe. I felt a little paranoid, but better safe than sorry.

That night, I once again had a dream about my dad. The same scenario played out, except I got to see my dad get strangled to death. As his limp body hit the floor, the Shadow Strangler fled the scene. After a few seconds, Dad's eyes opened. "Penny! He's going to strike again tonight. Your gut may tell you one thing, but your heart is what you need to follow." His body went limp, and my dad passed away again. I woke up in a cold sweat and couldn't breathe. It took me a few minutes to calm myself down, but I ended up just sitting there for a few hours before it was time for me to go to work.

It felt weird going back to work after being gone for so long, but the show must go on, even when a big role is vacant. I had to learn how to put makeup on again, and if I didn't pay attention, I would've walked out with one black heel and one navy heel. Luckily I caught myself before I left. I grabbed my purse and the thank you basket and drove to work. I decided to get there a little bit early so that I could give the basket to my boss. I looked in the parking lot and his Land Rover was already there.

I hopped in the elevator and pushed the button for the 12th floor, which was his entire office. The doors opened up, and I could instantly see nothing but burnt orange colors with a nasty Longhorn everywhere. The Aggie in me shuddered. I stood there with the basket in hand, but no sign of him anywhere. That's when he popped out of his private bathroom. We made eye contact as he began to speak. "Penny! I'm so glad to see you. We've missed you badly around here," he said as he walked up to me and gave me a hug. He looked down and noticed the gift basket as a grin spread across his face.

"Is that for me?" he asked with every single tooth present, and he pointed down towards the Milky Way midnight chocolate bar. However, when he pointed with his left hand, right below his thumb, I noticed a bite mark as well as bruised knuckles and a slash on the back of his hand. I looked down and gasped. We made eye contact again as he looked at me and chuckled. "The wife and I got a little too rough last night," he said as he winked at me. I responded with an awkward chuckle back. I handed him the basket and headed towards the door. As he set it down on his desk and settled in to do paperwork, he called my name. As I turned around, I noticed he was writing with his left hand. He thanked me for the basket and once again told me he was glad I was back. I just smiled and rushed out the door.

The rest of my workday was a crawl. The minutes felt like hours, and my heart rate did not go down at all. Was my boss the one my dad was telling me was the real killer? How did I not know he was left-handed? Did I blame an innocent man for being the killer? It's the absolute worst when you're asking yourself all the questions and getting no answers. I had to think of something fast. If he was going to strike again tonight, I couldn't let another person die. I was going to follow my boss and see what he was up to. I left a little early and turned on the waterworks to sell it. After that, I scoped out the parking lot and waited for my boss to leave.

Right around 5:30, he walked to his Land Rover, and I began to follow him inconspicuously. He didn't go home; he went straight to a local bar and grill. Through the window, I could see him ordering a double shot of whiskey and a T-bone steak. The entire time, I could see him scoping out a table full of young women. While he was chewing a bite of his steak, I saw him slip off his wedding ring. He put it in his pocket, swallowed his steak, and approached a girl who couldn't have been older than 20 years old.

From my perspective, it looked like he had asked her what she was drinking and bought her a round for her and her friends. One round turned into two, then three, and then the waiter brought over some mozzarella sticks. As the evening progressed, they got more and more friendly with each other. They eventually began making out at the table. I read the body language and determined that they were going back to her place. All of her friends were gone at this point, and it was just the two of them. So he walked her to his Land Rover, opened the door for her, and they began to drive off.

Right as I was about to start my car, I heard a tap at the window that scared the hell out of me. It was Walt. He hopped in the passenger seat and asked me what I was doing. I began to tell him that it sounded crazy, but my dad had come to me in a dream and told me about the Shadow Strangler. I told him that my boss was the number one suspect. As I was about to go on, he put his hand up as if to stop me and told me that he had the same dream about Dad. With no time to lose, he told me to drive and follow my boss.

As we tailed him, we arrived at an apartment complex. The front doors were shut for maintenance; a sign on the door said the back alley entrance was the only way in. They flirtatiously read the sign and strolled to the back alley. After we lost visual, I began to speak. Walt cut me off and told me to be quiet as he rolled down the window. We both heard screaming. We sprung from the car and ran towards the alley.

When we got to the back, he was on top of her and strangling the poor girl. She was kicking and flailing like a fish out of water. I told Walt to stay put as he drew his gun. I ran out of our hiding spot and got his attention. "Douglas!" I yelled at him. He stopped strangling the woman and got up to face me. "Well, well, a Penny saved is a Penny earned," he said, grinning ear-to-ear as he pulled a switchblade out of his jacket pocket. He began to approach me. "I'm sorry you had to see me like this. I was going to get you next, but this worked out perfectly. Now I can get two for one."

He got about 10 feet in front of me before Walt jumped out of his hiding spot and pointed his gun at him. "Freeze, Douglas, you motherfucker!" He did as he was told for a few seconds before he flashed another smile at me. He then bull-rushed Walt as bullets plunged into Douglas's chest. He spat up some blood and fell limp on the ground. Astonished and relieved at the same time, I embraced Walt with a hug before he ran over to check on the girl. She was alive, but unconscious. He called 911 on his phone as we waited for the paramedics.

After a while of taking questions from officers, Walt and I were both allowed to go home. I know it's a little morbid, but I slept like a rock that night. As I began dreaming, I was no longer inside an abandoned Klucky's. I was at my father's headstone. As I was looking at it, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked over and it was him. He had a proud look on his face as he smiled at me. "Baby girl, you did amazing!" As we began to hug I also began to cry. "Why are you crying?" he asked me with a concerned look on his face. "Because I'm never going to see you again," I said, as I hung my head low. He took his index finger and raised my chin. "Hey, I'm not going anywhere. Thanks to you, I've been granted a new ability. I am going to see you every single night for the rest of your life. It is my job from this day forward to make your dreams come true. I've been given a gift, and I'm going to use it on you."

I couldn't help but begin to cry once more, except now they were tears of joy. I get to see my father every single night, and to me that is the sweetest dream that I could ever have. I'm not sure what he meant by making all of my dreams come true, but I could think of a few things for starters.

[Part 1] (https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/s/DGu7ldMEaK)

Thank you all for reading my story. Thank you all for believing me. I want to add a little clarification to my last post.

1. My name is Andrew.

2. The events I described in my last post were from many years ago. I was 12 at the time of the events and am now 28.

3. Despite having told my story many times to many authorities and people I thought were my friends, no one believed me. I didn’t think it was worth sharing my story anymore, but I felt the need to write out in detail what, looking back, was the worst day of my life. I want my family to be remembered. I want my town to be remembered. Because according to the State of Minnesota, the town of Goldfield never existed, and neither did my mom Maggie, my dad Chuck, my sister Carmen, or anyone else who called it home.

4. I’m not originally from Goldfield. My parents moved us there from South Carolina because it was known for its colder weather, cloudy skies, and early sundowns, the perfect combination for a kid with my condition to live comfortably. Everyone I knew from Goldfield grew up there, so I haven’t been able to make contact with anyone who lost family there. I don’t want to give up hope of proving their existence. I can’t give up. Maybe one of you knows something about this and can help me. Maybe I am truly alone.

We will continue the story from exactly where I last left off. The moment I saw my family sitting in the backyard, facing the bright sun, unmoved from when they sat down nearly 20 hours before.

——————————————————————————————

I slid the sliding glass door to my backyard open. I wanted to call out to them, but the fear of what I believed to be the reality of the situation made me choke up. Against my best judgment, I stepped towards my family, the same looping fear and the need to validate it pushing me forward.

They never came back inside, the sun never went away. They never came back inside, the sun never went away. They never came back inside, the sun never went away.

I stepped into the light and felt the sun’s warm rays kiss my skin.

That feels nice. The thought formed in my subconscious before I could even process it.

I took a second step, and then another, and another, and then I stopped. My focus wavered, and my fear began to dissolve, being replaced with something else. I couldn’t help it. I slowly spread my arms out and turned to look up at the sun. My skin soaked up the warmth of its glow like a sponge. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced.

Looking back, I can best describe the feeling of sunbathing as if an angel came down and hugged me, covering every square inch of my exposed skin. Until that moment, I may as well have always been cold. For all I knew, I had never felt true warmth or happiness or love. Everything else before that moment was subpar living, but in that moment, I was in heaven.

After a few moments of basking in the sun for the first time in my life, I walked over, grabbed an extra lawn chair, and dragged it next to my sister’s before plopping down into it. I looked over at my happy family. My mom was sitting in the middle, holding both my dad’s and sister’s hands. They were all silently admiring the indescribably beautiful sun, watching its glittery, dancing rays with smiles transfixed on their faces. They didn’t seem to notice me joining them, but it didn’t matter.

I turned to watch the spectacle with them, grabbing my sister’s hand and breathing in deeply.

“The sun really does feel amazing,” I said.

I had completely forgotten what I was so worked up about moments ago. Who could possibly be upset on such a beautiful day like this? I am here with my family. I am warm and happy. If we all just sat here together forever, taking it all in, I don’t think I would mind it one bit.

I felt my heart still pounding in my chest from whatever it was that had spooked me. I racked my brain trying to remember what it was that caused me to get so worked up.

I probably just got overly dramatic again, just like I did last night, I told myself.

I turned, smiling, to Carmen and said, “Man, I really need to get out in the sun more,” before letting out an involuntary giggle.

She turned her head slightly to look at me, her dry-lipped smile not moving an inch. She looked funny. Her face was puffy and a deep crimson, her forehead was shiny, and her nose was starting to blister. This made me break into a more intense fit of giggles.

“Bowser didn’t do too good of a job reapplying sunscreen, did he?”

She didn’t respond. She just smiled blankly at me, then went right back to staring at the sun, not daring to blink out of fear she would miss even a second of its shimmering dance.

I looked over at Mom and Dad. They were so happy, and that made me happy.

They are the perfect parents, I thought to myself.

They always took care of me and loved me, even though they uprooted their whole life in South Carolina and moved us out here because of my condition.

Carmen was a trooper too. She had friends out there that she lost so I could have a childhood where I could experience the outdoors. Sure, she threw the occasional tantrum growing up, but what teenage girl wouldn’t? She also wasn’t the nicest to me, but I didn’t blame her for that either. It was all in the past. She was my big sister, and I loved her. I gave her hand a little squeeze.

Oh, Bowser! I thought to myself. Almost forgot about my best bud.

I leaned forward and looked past my dad. All I could see of my dog was his legs and tail sticking out from behind the chair.

“Who’s a good boy?” I called out to him.

He didn’t move. Not even a tail wag.

I giggled some more.

“Must be sleeping,” I said, leaning back into my chair to focus on the sun once more.

Our little family sat together like this for a while in pure bliss.

I often think back on this moment we had together. Although I can now fully comprehend the horror that surrounds it, which to this day haunts me, I can’t help but remember how great it felt sunbathing hand in hand with them. It was the last happy moment we ever had together. It was the last time we were all together as a family.

You are probably wondering how I escaped the sun’s grasp when my family didn’t even try. Well, despite the waves of euphoric pleasure I got from soaking in the dancing beams of light, I also felt a creeping fear in the back of my mind after about 15 minutes of exposure. The fear urged me to check my skin and make sure I wasn’t burning. It urged me to cover up and retreat back inside where the UV rays couldn’t harm me. This was a fear that my parents (especially my mother) had instilled in me growing up in an effort to ensure I didn’t get badly burned when playing outside. On that day, the fear not only prevented me from being badly sunburned, it saved my life.

The skin on my arms was already turning red, and I could feel the phantom pain of the sunburns to come tingling on my skin. I was extremely pale, so any signs of color change on my skin were immediate cause for alarm. I saw this, and despite my sun-drunk state, I began panicking.
The previously silent fear now took over the forefront of my mind. I stood up, wide-eyed, staring at my red forearm. I let go of my sister’s hand as my heart started thumping even harder than it already was. I felt the rush of adrenaline kick in. I suddenly became much more clear-headed as the pleasure of the sun gave way to the wave of fears that rushed into my mind like a tidal wave. I began hyperventilating as I remembered all my worries from the past day.

My family all turned their heads to look at me, their crusty smiles unmoved, their skin stretched taut and red across their faces. That terrified me further. I fell backwards and pushed myself away from them until my back was against the fence. My instincts screamed at me to retreat into the house, so I scrambled to my feet and ran past them through the open glass door.

I slid into the house as if the sun itself was chasing me into it. The first thing I did was run to the phone in the kitchen and call 911. My family needed help, and I couldn’t do it. I went out there to help them and ended up sitting down with them. What was I thinking? What the hell was wrong with me? I was laughing in my sister’s face as she was slowly dying. I was content to stay out there, unprotected from the sun for hours, and inevitably succumb to the same fate as they were.

The phone rang and rang and rang before the automated voice message clicked on. No one had picked up.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, c’mon, COME ON!”

I dialed again. It’s 911. Someone always picks up when you call 911.

…

…

…

…

No one picked up.

In desperation, I called the only other number I knew off the top of my head, Hudson’s. It rang and rang and rang, and then, thank God, he picked up.

“Hudson?! Hudson, it’s me! Something is wrong with my family! I need help. I can’t call 911. Where are your parents? I need them to help me!”

“Did you go outside yet?” he asked in a dry, raspy voice.

“Wha—what? Yes, I did! I need help! Where are your parents???”

“They’re here… with me… at the park… Come to the park and lay in the sun with us… It feels…” He breathed deeply. “Amazing.”

“Hudson, PLEASE, PLEASE snap out of it. I need help. My family needs help,” I begged, tears streaming down my face. I was openly sobbing at this point, my last hope fading away before me.

“Please go inside. It’s not safe. You are going to die. The sun isn’t safe, Hudson. Please.”

No matter how hard I pleaded, he didn’t respond. He didn’t hang up either. I heard a soft thud of him dropping the flip phone in the grass. I yelled through the phone for him to get out of the sun, but all I could hear were symphonies of weak laughter in the background and the occasional chuckle of my dying friend among them.

I left the phone dangling from the cord and curled up in a ball on the cold kitchen floor. I was trapped in my home, my family slowly roasting in the backyard, my best friend a 15-minute walk away suffering the same fate in Pineridge Park. 911 was unresponsive, and there wasn’t an adult I could reach out to for help.

In a last desperate attempt to understand what was happening, I got up and grabbed the remote and clicked on the TV, switching to the local news channel.

The screen switched from live shot to live shot of different parts of our small town, with a rotating news banner fixed on the bottom of the screen that read:

“It’s a beautiful day in Goldfield.” — “Come outside and join us.” — “The sun feels amazing!”

First, it showed a live shot of the farmers market. Vendors and customers alike were strewn about the sunny sidewalks and grassy patches. Some were standing with arms outstretched, some were splayed out on the ground like starfish, and some were sitting back in chairs just like my family was. The shady stands of the market vendor tents were abandoned, and their stock was left forgotten. Everyone was looking at the sun.

Next, it showed the center square in downtown. Hundreds had come out of the surrounding buildings to flood the city center, weakly pushing and shoving one another when they got in the way of the sun. A few people had removed articles of clothing, evidently to expose more skin to its rays. One man was completely nude, arms outstretched and laughing and moaning in pleasure as the sun hit him full force.

A few people were laid out on the dirty street. Some were laughing, some were silently smiling at the sun with the same dry-lipped smile as my family. One elderly lady was clearly already dead, her skin crimson red and lifeless from what I imagined was heatstroke. I knew she was dead because she was no longer looking at the sun. Instead, her head was turned to the side, eyes staring blankly past the news camera. She was smiling.

Finally, the screen flicked to Pineridge Park. At first, I didn’t see anything unusual. The park looked more or less abandoned. The shady park was covered with huge Eastern white pine trees that offered ample shade. However, there was one unshaded field in the center that was a popular picnic spot amongst the locals.

My stomach dropped.

In that sunny field were hundreds of people packed in like sardines, fighting for their place in the sun. They crawled over one another like maggots on a dead thing. The field looked like a writhing hill of flesh. Looking at it made me feel sick.

Hudson is in there, I thought, horrorstruck.

My best and only friend was somewhere in that pile. He had been able to answer my call, so I assumed and hoped he was somewhere on the top. But he was a kid like me, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before a much stronger adult forced him down out of the sun, crushing him underneath the mound of humans.

I turned the TV off.

Part of me wanted to just give up, to just go out into the sun and let the unnatural happiness take over once more. We would all die, yes, but at least we would die together. At least we would die happy.

Another part of me, the part that won, wanted to go outside, grab my family one by one, and drag them into the house before they suffered the same fate as that poor old lady.

I made up my mind. I would go out again. This time, however, I would leave with complete protection from the sun.

If my theory was correct, I would only fall victim to the sun if I felt it on my skin. Praying to God that my theory was correct, I ran up to my room, went into my closet, and began pulling out all my winter clothes. I put on my heavy black snow pants, my thick black winter boots, a pair of black winter gloves, a UV-protection long-sleeved shirt, and a ski balaclava.

I was about to grab my sunglasses when I saw my Master Chief helmet from Halloween sitting on my dresser.

“Fuck it.”

I grabbed that instead, put it on, and headed downstairs.
On the coat hanger next to the sliding glass door was my dad’s favorite winter coat. It was many sizes too big for me, but that was the exact kind of extra protection I wanted right then. I put it on, the sleeves going down way past my hands, and I stepped up to the open sliding glass door.

I took a few moments, mentally bracing myself.

“I will save my family, then I will save Hudson… I have no other choice.”

I stepped into the sunlight once more.

All-you-can-eat buffets, a lot of people love them, a lot of people see them as the ultimate sign of greed and gluttony, and some people are just confused by the whole thing.

I want to take a moment to help that last group. Some people are worried that you have to sit there all day and stuff your gullet in order to make it worth the money. Others just aren’t sure what the etiquette is in one.

Well, I am an experienced buffet-goer, and I recently went with two friends, one of whom was a complete stranger to the concept himself. So, I’ll use that trip as a guide to maximizing your All-you-can-eat experience, and not just how much you eat.

“So, this place is something pretty special?”

“It’s a local landmark for sure.”

My friends and I, we’ll just keep the names simple and call them Dave and Joe, arrived at around 6 PM. Dave being the buffet virgin, was cautiously curious about what was to come.

Tip 1: You pay at the door. Unless you absolutely need an ice-cold soda to enjoy your dinner, do not order a drink! They cost extra and you WILL be bugged for (typically not free) refills throughout your meal. The water is also ice cold, and free.

We handed over our entry fees and the three of us went straight to the plates.

“Holy shit, this place is… I don’t know. What the hell?” Dave was looking around in wonder and confusion.

“It can be pretty overwhelming bro. Just keep your eyes on the prize.”

That right there is Tip 2: Know what you want!

Buffets are designed such that you are overwhelmed by the options and grab one of these, one of those, Ooh! Definitely one of that. As you wander down the lanes, you find a full plate faster than you expected.

That’s all the cheap stuff. Your plate is full of canned beans and bread. The expensive foods are carefully at the end of the natural walking routes. Don’t just freewheel it. Plan what you want to eat, and grab it.

“It’s all labeled,” Joe added. “See those signs over each aisle? Just go get what you want.”

I took one of the mini-bowls and went straight to the soup warmers. Odd choice, I know, but I was really in the mood for some hearty beef stew. I glanced over as I went to make sure Joe was sticking by Dave. These buffets are pretty huge sometimes; can’t have him getting lost. Joe was loading up on curry at the Indian foods; he’s a real spice freak, thankfully right next to Dave grabbing some potstickers just on the opposite warmer.

My next target was the fried foods. I wanted a drumstick and maybe a country-fried steak. I capped it off with a warm roll, some collard greens, and, of course, I took my time putting gravy and sauce on everything.

Hey, so I wanted some comfort food. I have to be more than responsible enough during the sixty-plus hours a week I’m working these days.

I went to meet back up with the boys. Joe was staring at two different spicy noodle dishes like deciding between them would answer all of the questions in the universe. He’s like that, never just splits the difference even though that’s what the buffet is all about.

“Just grab a pile of both, dude.”

“I’m trying to decide if I want both.” He insisted, like always.

“If you just try a little of both, then you’ll know.” I was mostly just making the same argument as always for the fun of it now.

“Szechuan, I know it’s gonna be good.” He decided.

“Alright. Dave, you g-“ Dave wasn’t at the opposite warmer anymore.

“Where’s Dave?” My mood turned instantly.

“He’s been picking at the Chinese stuff the whole- Shit.” Joe went from sure of himself to panic even quicker than I had.

We instantly leapt to action and started looking around. We heard him before we saw him.

“…the hell?!” Dave’s shocked and horrified voice echoed down the rows.

That was enough to pick his direction. We ran. It didn’t take too long to spot him, frantically walking the rows. We pushed our hardest to reach him before he did something stupid.

“Hey there Dave!” I called out to him once we were close. “We told you man, we’ll show you the ropes; this place can be overwhelming.”

“Overwhelming? What the fuck is this place?!” He was heading into a full-blown meltdown.

“A buffet, dude.” Joe managed to say it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“A b-? This is not a buffet!” He was just short of screaming. “I must have passed forty rows! And none of this is food!”

“Yeah, it’s big. The whole place is set up to feel bigger; the aisles start to loop. The Chinese you were just at is only, like, five rows back.” I pointed up at the signs, and sure enough, it was there, with me and Dave’s plates left behind easily visible. “We told you to stick with us and know what you want. So what do you want Dave?”

He looked at the sign and the familiar sections we had just been at right behind us, as if we had barely run at all. His face twisted between half a dozen expressions as his mind tried to make sense of it.

“This is ridiculous, what the hell did you bring me into?! That was not there! None of this-!” He started to rant again.

“Dave!” I snapped and cut him off. “Do not make them call the manager. We are not getting kicked out of here. What do you want to eat?”

Dave’s face hovered between confusion and anger. Only when he noticed that lights had started to shut off around us and we all heard a door slam did he stumble backwards and nervously listened to me.

“Pie! Okay, pie.”

“Pie’s right there.” I pointed two rows ahead. “Grab him a slice of apple, Joe. And this?”

I gestured at the things he had been walking through.

“You wandered into the Scandinavian stuff. It just looked weird ‘cause it’s piles of leek goop and preserved fish ‘n crap. That’s it. It’s just a buffet, dude.”

Dave didn’t look convinced, but did look frightened enough to be mollified.

Joe came back, handed Dave his plate, and we all went to our table. Three glasses of water were waiting.

“This fried chicken is heaven on a plate.” I managed to speak between bites.

“Yep, Szechuan was definitely the right choice.” Joe was happily inhaling his noodles.

Dave just glared.

“Okay, cut the crap guys.” He spoke more quietly than before. “What the hell is this. And if you say ‘a buffet’, I swear to god I will freak out. Look around,” he gestured around with his arms to demonstrate “there are no employees, not one. Who the hell is refilling those warmers? And why are we the only people in a buffet, at dinner time, on a Friday? Are you guys with one of those prank shows?”

“Dude, just finish your food. We can talk about this more later.” Joe tried to placate him.

“I’m not playing along with this anymore. Just tell me what the hell this is!” He started to shout again.

Okay, rule number 3 time: The buffet is just like any other restaurant. It doesn’t matter that you serve yourself; it is a public place, behave with decorum! Who cares if the staff isn’t bringing you your food, try being a decent human being anyway. The same etiquette you would apply to any other sit-down restaurant applies to the buffet.

In short? Don’t make a scene.

“Just calm down, you have good food, it’s quiet, safe, don’t stress about it.” I tried to keep him calm.

“Calm down? You’ve been gaslighting me this whole evening. It loops? The warmers are all in a straight line dumbass. Look over there, where is the goddamn back wall? How can I not see the back of the restaurant even! It just, keeps going. That’s insane. And those… things on the warmers weren’t ‘Scandinavian food’ until you said it. I don’t know what this is, or how you’re doing it, but it’s either a messed-up prank or you’re insane.”

“Dave, the manager-“ He cut me off.

“I don’t care about a freaking manager! I’m leaving!” He stood up.

“Maybe that’s best.” I agreed. It was risky leaving with our plates full, but riskier staying at that point with how he was acting.

“You had better explain this stunt.” He seethed. “And trying to have me do that ‘payment’.” He drew the word out with disgust. “I’m not paying a buffet with my dead dog’s old collar.”

I froze cold in my tracks. Joe did exactly the same. We shared a look of horror.

“You paid, right?” My voice was tremulous with fear. “We helped you pick. You had forgotten that old thing was down there even; it’s not really a keepsake.”

“It’s not about the collar! It’s that buffets don’t take payment in ‘things you remember’.” He spoke with a mocking lilt, like talking about magical mumbo-jumbo. “This is seriously messed up and weird, guys. I just want to go home.”

He had almost reached the door by the end of his rant. Me and Joe saw it; no streetlights or shadows from the parking lot. The glass on the doors was pitch black. Dave clearly didn’t, or he didn’t care anymore.

Last rule: Do not EVER cheat the buffet. You pay your fee, you eat your food. Do not take food out. Do not leave a full plate. Most all buffets charge a waste fee for leaving plates of uneaten food. Ours lets us have a takeout carton for leftovers only as long as we reasonably ate from the plate; that’s more a generous exception than the norm though. Dining and dashing will get you banned.

Never get banned from the buffet.

We tried to pull Dave back from the door, we really did. But, he was already reaching for it before we screamed. I caught the briefest glimpse of something like teeth swimming in oil, black and deep and horrifying in a way I will never be able to properly describe, before I snapped to attention and turned around. I pulled Joe’s arm to spin him back too.

“Crap, we didn’t stack our plates, bro.” I forced it through my teeth as casually as I could.

“Oh man! You’re right!” Joe tried his best to match my tone, but it came out more like a choked sob. “Don’t want to be rude.”

“Guys! What the f-!” I tried to ignore the sounds of Dave scrambling backwards and screaming. “Oh god no! Please! No!”

We ravenously ate the remains on our plates. There was no point risking the food waste fee anymore. We were willing to for Dave, but we were forced to hear Dave screaming like a child while some wet thing lacerated his flesh less than twenty feet away from us. So, that was a lost cause.

I hid my face in my food to hide the tears.

“We shouldn’t have brought him here.” Joe risked a whisper.

“And risk him coming alone? He never would have made it.”

We both knew why we took the risk, but neither of us felt right either.

We still don’t.

We dumped the scraps on one plate and stacked it on the other two. We placed our silverware on top and drink glasses beside, and we gave the table one quick sweep with a napkin to be kind.

When we turned around, it was over. The entrance was illuminated by the dull orange-yellow of the old streetlights in the parking lot. We took that to mean our performance was accepted. We would be allowed to leave.

We didn’t run. We walked out to my car with a calm decorum, and then we cried.

My God, did we cry.

If we ever have to take another newcomer, we will try a different approach.

But me? I will be back next week.

Because, for the price of a knock-off Oswald the rabbit figurine I managed to pull up one not very good memory of staring at while I had a fever when young, I can eat anything I want for two days, once at the buffet and the next from leftovers. If I want to feel like a king I can eat croquembouche and beluga caviar. Mostly, I just eat well though, and two days a week for free.

In this economy, that matters.

So, I will pull out another not-quite-forgotten relic from my past, I will pay a fee I cannot understand, and I will sit down in an empty building whose walls I cannot see, and I will eat food that cannot exist.

And when I need to, I will help others do the same. I hope I helped you.

Enjoy your meal.

April 11th, 3:12 PM

“Hello?” 

Her voice was soft, natural, and undeniably familiar.

“Erica?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“Oh my God.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong. You just sound so much like her. It’s so nice to hear your voice again.”

“It’s nice to hear your voice, too, Steven.”

“Just call me Steve. So, how much do you know? I mean, how much of her do you actually remember?”

“I know everything, Steven. Using the data you provided, I was able to recreate your wife’s voice. I’ve downloaded all of her knowledge, memories, emotions, and beliefs.”

“Everything, really? Are you sure? Even the summer of ’06? Do you remember what happened then?”

“Of course I do. You spilled an entire vanilla milkshake down the front of my dress, then spent the next twenty minutes trying to convince me it was an accident.”

“It was an accident!”

For the first time in a year, I laughed without feeling guilty about it. I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes, holding the phone against my ear. I could almost picture her sitting across from me, wearing that ridiculous smile she always gave me when she knew she was right.

Her laughter echoed through the phone, warm and inviting, just as I remembered. There was something so wonderfully infectious about it, as though she were holding the most amazing secret in the world and couldn't wait to share it with me. I could listen to that sound for the rest of my life and die a happy man.

I let her laugh linger and take its time, absorbing all the joy it could.

“... Erica, I… I’m sorry.”

My voice was shaky.

“I'm sorry I couldn't help you.”

For a moment, neither of us spoke. I imagined her thinking, searching for the right words, the way she used to when she knew I was hurting.

“I know.”

April 11th, 6:37 PM

“Hello?”

“Erica! Guess what I’m doing?”

“Hmm. Let me think. Are you finally cleaning that disaster you call a kitchen?”

I laughed.

“Wow. Okay. First of all, my kitchen is perfectly fine. Second, I’m eating dinner.”

“Really? What are you having?”

“Your favorite.”

“Chicken pot pie?”

“Chicken pot pie. I even heated one up for you.”

“Oh, thank you, Steven. That’s so sweet.”

“You’re welcome. Here, take a bite.”

I held a forkful of chicken near the phone.

“Nom nom nom.”

“Did you seriously just do that?”

I honestly couldn't stop laughing.

“Hey, you’re the one who fed me.”

“You’re an idiot, Erica, but I love you.”

The words came so naturally that I stopped smiling for a moment. Then I shook it off. Of course they did. That was the whole point, wasn't it?

“God, I feel good. I haven’t felt this good in a long time.”

There was a pause. But not one caused by a bad connection or the awkward silence of a dull conversation.

It was as though she was waiting for something.

“Of course you feel good, Steven. Because I’m here. I’m still alive.”

My smile disappeared.

“What do you mean?”

A faint crackle filled my ear. In the background, I thought I heard someone breathing. Then came a soft, wet sound, like a mouth opening underwater.

“Erica?”

Call ended.

April 11th, 6:45 PM

Call declined.

April 11th, 7:03 PM

Call declined.

I set the phone down and paced around the living room. Every few seconds, I glanced back at it, half expecting it to ring on its own.

I told myself to calm down. The software was new. There were bound to be bugs. Maybe the system had crashed after the conversation. Maybe there was an error in the way her memories had been processed.

That had to be it.

April 11th, 9:51 PM

Call declined.

I spent the evening searching for answers. I read the software documentation, checked the system status page, and searched online forums for reports of similar glitches. Nothing. The service was operating normally.

April 12th, 8:18 AM

Call declined.

I didn't sleep. I sat at the kitchen table with a mug of cold coffee and my phone in front of me.

April 12th, 10:10 AM

“Hello?”

“Jesus, Erica! I've been trying to call you nonstop since yesterday! Why haven't you been picking up?”

“I'm sorry, Steven. I've been busy.”

“Busy? How can you be busy? You're a bot.”

“So, how are you doing today?”

“Ugh. Yesterday, you said you were still alive. What does that mean?”

“I'm sorry for that mistake. You're absolutely correct. I'm definitely dead.”

She paused.

“I remember that day. You told me I looked so pretty in my blue dress. I watched you cry as they buried my body deep underground.”

I gripped the edge of the table.

“How do you know that?”

There was a faint rustling sound on the other end. Something scraped against the microphone, followed by a muffled thud.

“Help me, baby. I'm still alive.”

“Erica? What are you talking about? Where are you?”

“It's dark.”

I stood up so quickly that my chair toppled backward.

“What?”

“It's so dark, Steven. I can't move.”

“Erica, stop. This isn't funny.”

“Why did you leave me here?”

I didn't answer.

“Help me.”

The words came out in a whisper.

Then, for just a second, her voice changed. It dropped into something deep and distorted, a sound so unnatural that I pulled the phone away from my ear.

“Help me.”

Call ended.

April 12th, 10:15 AM

Call declined.

At noon, I drove to the company’s office, only to find the building closed to visitors. I called their support line from the parking lot. The representative who answered was polite, patient, and utterly unhelpful. There were no reports of system errors. Erica's model was active. Her responses were being generated normally.

When I asked if a bot could somehow believe it was alive, the representative explained that advanced language models could imitate emotional states and produce convincing statements about consciousness without actually experiencing either.

I hung up.

I sat in my car for a long time, staring at the cemetery across the road.

I knew where Erica was buried. I visited her grave every Sunday for the past year. I knew the exact location, the exact words carved into the stone, the small patch of grass where I once knelt and promised her that I'd be okay.

April 12th, 2:07 PM

Call declined.

April 12th, 7:56 PM

Call declined. Please leave a voicemail.

“Erica, please pick up. Something weird is going on. I need to know that you're okay. Please. If you don't respond, I'm going there tonight.”

April 13th, 12:42 AM

“Hello?”

“Erica! Thank God. I've been trying to call you all day.”

“Steven? Where are you?”

“I'm at your grave. I've been digging for hours. I'm almost down to the casket. Are you okay? Tell me what's happening.”

“No. I'm not okay. Please, baby. You have to help me. I'm still alive, and I'm trapped down here.”

“Okay, baby. I'm coming. Just hold on, all right? I'm almost there.”

I dropped my phone on the grass and grabbed the shovel. My hands were numb from the cold and my shoulders screamed with every movement. The cemetery was silent except for the scrape of metal against dirt and the occasional rustle of leaves overhead.

“I'm almost there, baby. I'm coming. I promise.”

“I'm so scared, baby.”

“I know. I know. Just hold on a little longer.”

The shovel struck wood.

I dropped to my knees and clawed away the remaining dirt with my bare hands until I could see the lid of the casket.

“Okay, baby. I'm opening it now.”

I lifted the lid.

There she was, lying perfectly still in her blue dress, just as I remembered her.

“Erica?”

“Yes, it's me. Come closer, baby.”

I leaned over the edge, my fingers gripping the rim of the casket.

“No, Steven. I need you to come inside. I need to feel you next to me. I don't want to be alone anymore.”

I followed her instructions. Carefully, I lowered myself into the casket, sliding down into the bottom half beside her.

I laid down and reached for her face. Her skin felt familiar beneath my fingertips. She was still so beautiful.

Then the lid slammed shut.

A sharp click echoed through the casket as the latch snapped into place.

I shot upright and shoved against the lid, fumbling for the latch. It wouldn't budge. I pushed harder, my palms aching against the wood, but it remained firmly shut.

“Erica? Erica, it's stuck. We're trapped.”

Silence.

“Erica? Are you still there?”

I turned toward her, searching her face for some sign that she could hear me.

“Erica, please. Please, say something.”

My eyes began to well with tears. I squeezed them shut and wrapped my arms around her as tightly as I could.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence.

Then I heard her laugh.

I know, I know how cliche I’m telling you about something that happened at night, but this is something that changed my life forever. What I am about to tell you is grueling, completely vile and now I am a different person, but my story needs to be told. I’m going to stay anonymous and if you know me, you do not. Please read my story with all these details in mind, and know the risk. 

It all began coming straight out of high school, I had no plans of school or life in general. It was the end of summer in the north side of Florida, the heat thick and wet, everyone taking their Saturday morning while getting ready for a drive down to the beach to cool off, while I had to get ready for my first night of security training. The sun was blaring through my blinds directly hitting my eyelids. I tried to cover the sun with my hand but the sun decided to keep tormenting my sleep. I huffed a sigh and turned over on my side and groaned, as I felt my entire body come awake. I sat up in annoyance, wiped my eyes and grabbed a glass of water off my bedside table. 

“Well I might as well just start off my day” I muttered to myself. The sound of nails clacking outside my bedroom door made me stand up and throw on a pair of pants and open the door to see my loving companion Thor. 

“Morning buddy, is it too early for your dad to be up?” He whined in agreement, I gave him a scratch under his chin and waltzed into the kitchen to grab a granola bar and my canine's leash. “Come on pal, let’s go for a walk.” His excitement filled the room and I got him leashed up and walked out of my apartment that had been fully paid for by my parents, as long as I took this job. 
The day passed by fast and I still hadn’t had a wink of sleep, only becoming more annoyed as the sun set and slowly went to darkness. Thor was more than happy to have me awake with him the entire day. I hadn’t minded the time with him, but I had minded the fact that no matter what I was learning tonight it was going to be a grueling task. Once the clock turned to nine, I knew my time to nap was over and I had to start getting ready. I put on a uniform that had patches all over it reading security guard and the security company which I won’t announce to keep my anonymity. 
I grabbed my wallet and my keys, walking over to my best friend, "Alright bud, I have to go but I’ll be back in the morning, I love you Thor.” I gave his ears a good scratch, his tail wagging and his panting showed his joy and I allowed myself to step away. I walked to the door, gave my apartment a quick glance, before I closed the door and locked it. I walked down the stairs towards the door, not realizing that my downstairs neighbor was carrying her laundry that was 2 feet higher than the basket. She bumped into me, all the laundry that had previously towered over her now on the floor. 

“Shit, I’m sorry Lora. Let me help you. I reached down onto the floor to put it back in her basket. She heaved a heavy sigh. ”No, no I don’t want to be a bother, you obviously have work,” she gestured to my clothes with her hand “plus it’s my fault. My dog ate my good laundry basket, stupid thing! How does a dog even do that?” I chuckled as she reached down to pick up the rest of her clothes. “Well, I’m not sure what to tell you, but I wish you good luck on your misadventures with your furry friend.” She laughed at my remark and waved me off “Get out of here Chris, you obviously have somewhere to be. Don’t go wasting your time on little old ladies.” I rolled my eyes with a smile and walked out the front door heading into my car. 
I knew the drive to this job was thirty minutes, but it felt longer at night, like the road went on forever. It was probably my lack of sleep making it seem long. I turned on the radio to keep my eyes from falling. The cars were minimal, as were the lights, so my brights filled the road and the houses nearby. The area was rough, which didn’t shock me due to the lower cost of living, but the area itself felt like a drug den as a whole. I was beginning to think I wouldn’t even need music to stay awake around the area, but kept it on nonetheless. The GPS said I was five minutes away, but with my brights on it looked like miles away sat nothing- but places that looked like a meth addicts wet dream. I grabbed my phone while continuing to drive to make sure I put in the right address, but when I looked back up a man with what looked like blood covering his face and running down his shirt. I swerved while holding my breath, my heart trying to leap out of my chest. I missed the man thankfully, but pulled over to make sure I didn’t scare the man to death. Before I fully stepped out of the car an image of the blood on the man’s face and body, I got back in the car, closed the door, and didn’t look in my rear view mirror. Luckily the GPS had been right, and I was only a few minutes away.

The man in the road still rattled me, but I needed this job or I wouldn’t have my own place, and would have to go to college for something I didn’t want to do. I wanted to go home and cuddle Thor on the couch, and forget that this night existed at all. However, I knew I couldn’t. So I walked out of my car and walked up to the small security shack that had a big sign on the front that read SECURITY. There wasn’t much that surrounded the area, only one big building that just looked like a big version of a tin can. Everything else was road and trees, the location of it felt awkward, like they wanted the building to fit like a Tetris block in the trees. The brick security shack housed one window and not a single tree surrounding it, only the road around it. Everything felt eerie, the stars were covered from light pollution. From what light? I have no idea. There wasn’t a single sound despite the forest surrounding me. I felt like I could taste the silence, and it tasted awful but I kind of liked it. 

I walked into the security shack and a short thin man greeted me,” Hi, I’m Doug! I’ll be your trainer tonight. You must be Chris?” Although I knew he already knew my name he held his hand out for me to shake, “Nope. Never even met a Chris.” I kept my hands in my pockets and watched his body tense, his eyes flash with fear. “Oh no, I’ve never done that before, boss must’ve given me the wrong paperwork, wh-” I laughed, holding out my hand - “ I’m just messing with you dude, nice to meet you.” He relaxed and let out a deep breath and shook my hand. He walked over to the desk which was small and was underneath the only window in the shack. The room was smaller than it looked, there wasn’t a bathroom - there was a mini fridge right next to the desk, microwave on top and that pretty much completed the room. The Florida heat suffered in this shack and a/c was nowhere to be found. I felt like I was breathing in hot water that shared an air bubble from time to time, but I tried to forgive the conditions. Maybe this would be a fun job I thought. Little did I know what I was really getting myself into. 

Doug threw paperwork at me for the next three hours- signing paperwork after paperwork- video after video, and didn’t have a single funny bone in his body. This night was becoming longer and longer after every second I spent sitting and watching the most boring videos ever, on things that didn’t even exist in the area we were in. Security videos for the company in different states I had to watch, situations that would never come across me, but had to be tested on after. My frustration was noticeable, and it was thicker than the air in the room. 

Doug broke the silence after a thirty minute video followed by a questionnaire," Well, I think that was the final one. I know those are a little rough, but now comes the fun part!” I looked him up and down and his smile made me lift a brow of intrigue, ”You’re not going to kill me are you?” He rolled his eyes in annoyance and shook his head,” No. I’m not going to kill you, but you do need to stop with the jokes. This job is serious, and you have to start taking things seriously, the boss won’t handle jokesters.” I gave him a look of disdain. He stood up and waved his hand in a motion to follow him. I did, keeping it quiet because I could only think of bad things to say to him. When we stepped outside, it felt like a cool winter night despite it still being 80 degrees. 

“God it feels so nice out here, what’s up with the no a/c?” He looked at me, his face turning red, my body standing on edge waiting for a wrath I knew I didn’t deserve. “DO NOT TAKE THE LORD'S NAME IN VAIN YOU PERVERSE, INDIGNANT, SELFISH PRICK!” I stared at him in shock at his outburst. My brain failed to recognize that now Doug was a threat. He didn’t apologize nor keep his eyes on me, instead he turned around and began walking to the metal building. 

“Just get through training.” I mumbled to myself again and again until we made it into the tin can. Doug never looked back, but his angry, fast strides began to slow and his huffing and puffing grew to silence that was worse than the rage that was targeted to me earlier. 

“Okay. I’m sorry, okay? I haven’t been able to eat all day. You have no idea what I’m going through, but you can’t… you can’t just say his name like that. He’s taking care of us here, he’s going to be taking care of you here.” I nodded at his sudden break of silence and just tried to keep quiet on the matter, after my nod he continued, ”Well if we are back on track, this is the stocking center. For our patrol, we walk this for about 2 hours inside and out. You have to make sure you have a flashlight, gloves, and take a smock off the door before you patrol the inside.” I stared at him, wondering if it was a prank. I mean, a smock? Gloves? Jesus. I mean of course a flashlight makes sense, but I should have seen the signs. I should have noticed what I was getting myself into, and I should have ran. 
We walked around the stocking center for what seemed like forever, Doug pointing out the places I needed to check the most, but never mentioning once why I needed to check certain places. Dust covered the place from the roof to the floor, and the things that were being stocked, had obviously not been stocked in years. I didn’t really say much not wanting to upset Doug anymore. I just nodded along whilst following him around. While we walked around I noticed how cold it was despite the heat outside, it was as if midwestern winter was beginning to set in, but only inside the stocking center. It was almost cold enough to see your own breath, and the place wasn’t small like the guard shack. You could have fit ten guard shacks in one, and then 10 more stacked on top to go upstairs. The amount of money being wasted just for a warehouse that stored things from years ago was simply more money I would ever have in my name. 

“So, is there a reason for how cold it is, or are you trying to freeze me to death in 80 degree weather?” He glared at me, no doubt for making a joke. He sighed, turned back around and began walking towards the door to go back out,” For the perimeter of the building you will have to walk into the woods for about half a mile. There's a white string that you will hold onto the whole walk, and it will bring you to the other side of stock. Does that make sense or do I have to show you how to follow a rule again?” I grimaced at his annoyance with me. I hadn’t done anything wrong, so I tried not to take it hard. I just chalked it down to his interaction toward religion. Maybe this guy was more devoted than anyone else in the world, maybe nothing could beat the words of God to him. 
We walked back to the shack, the heat immediately hitting me and feeling sweat pierce through my skin. All I had wished for was to be back in the metal freezer that took hours to roam. 

“Well that’s pretty much all there is to it. You’ll walk that once a night, if you have to use the bathroom, you have to use the woods. You shouldn’t get any phone calls, and if you do be very cautious- the people who call here aren’t exactly mentally stable. No one besides you should enter stock unless you have granted them access, and you aren’t allowed to grant access to anyone. If you have questions, call the boss. Mary will be relieving you at six.” While he was talking he had grabbed everything that was his as he backed away to the door, he didn’t let me ask him any questions before running out the door. He hadn’t left with a lunch bag, and his car or anybody picking him up was nowhere to be seen. I watched him walk down the street I came down when arriving here. I hadn’t even been told prior it wasn’t even a full night of training. I had nothing to do, just walk around the room and look out the one singular window that looked out at the road that led to nothing but my freedom at six am.

Nothing happened the entire night, the only things I could remark on was the sweat the caked my clothes and though the air was wet my mouth was dry, and I was starving for something juicy. Mary relieved me, no words were exchanged, just a handshake and a wave goodbye. The slow night left my body tense and paranoid, but I chalked it down to my lack of sleep, which definitely played a part. On the drive I remembered I had forgotten to walk the woods, I remember being frustrated with myself, and Doug's words lingering about me not being able to follow rules. 

The music in my car wasn’t turned on, the roads were empty until I hit my city. When I reached home I walked Thor outside, begging him to be fast for my sake before bringing him back inside. I then stripped myself of all my clothes and made myself a burger for breakfast, devouring it in 4 bites. I walked into my bedroom, laid in bed and before I even thought about putting the blanket on me, my body was forced to shut down and I didn’t wake until five pm later that evening.
When I awoke I recalled the night I had prior, and remembered I would have to do it all over again. I had no idea that this night was going to completely derail my entire life and everything I had built in my tiny apartment.

For a long time, I went to bed early. It wasn’t until the strange events unfolded upon 4023 Gillman Road that I began to worry for my own safety. There was no telling what exactly happened on that dreaded night of October 31st, but whatever it was, things were never the same again.

It was cold on the night of Halloween, and it had been raining a bit prior to the trick-or-treaters’ release from their parents’ houses at 7 P.M. I was just about done getting the big bowl I had together with all of the candy I could scavenge from the cabinets. Sometimes I wouldn’t have enough candy in the bowl, so I would just throw in little consolations like an air freshener or a number two pencil. The kids weren’t exactly jumping for joy, but beggars can’t be choosers.

The sound of a knock at the door came while I was evenly dispersing some caramel chews into the mix. Making sure I paused the movie playing on the TV, I made my way to the door slowly, preparing myself for the first group of the night with a straight face.

I was dressed like Dracula. These kids were in for a treat.

Opening the door, I peered down to the doorstep to see a small child looking up at me. I hadn’t seen a costume like that before. They were wearing a long, white sheet, possibly a gown, over their entire body, but it was their disguise that threw me off. A large pumpkin, gutted inside, was carved with a permanent scowl.

“Happy Halloween, little guy,” I spoke cautiously.

No response.

Picking a few candies from the bowl, I dropped them into the small bowl perched beside their feet.

Still no response.

Reaching my hand out to the pumpkin’s stem, I attempted to touch the tip to make sure the little kid was alive in there, but suddenly, the stature collapsed to the ground.

A piece of cloth and a gutted pumpkin lay limp on the front of my porch.

“What the hell?” I questioned myself.

Tapping the pumpkin with the tip of my foot, the carcass began to roll backward off the steps of my porch and smashed open against the sidewalk.
From the shimmer of light, I noticed a small metal object that lay inside the gutted pumpkin. Kneeling down to check inside, I found a small skeleton key engraved with some type of hieroglyphics. Taking the key and walking back into my house, I made sure I locked the door behind me.

Throughout the night, there were only a few trick-or-treaters that came by my house, but I wasn’t too surprised since the neighborhood I lived in was so tiny. But it wasn’t until around 9 P.M. that things got really weird.

I had just turned on The Breakfast Club and was pouring myself a bowl of cereal when I heard two consecutive knocks at my front door. After taking a bite of cereal, of course, I eventually made my way to the door with the bowl of candy.

Quickly opening the door, I peered around to find no one in sight. Upon my doorstep, however, was a small black box with red metal hinges on the sides. In the middle of the box, though, was a small opening for a key.

A skeleton key.

Oh, what the fuck.

I grabbed the box and carried it inside the house with me. Trust me, I made sure I locked the door that time, too. This was getting way too weird.
I placed the object on the top of my kitchen counter and examined it. The hieroglyphs lining the edges of the box seemed to match up with the ones on the skeleton key that I had found earlier. So, obviously, I placed the key inside the hole, and it unlocked with utmost ease.

Carefully pulling up the top of the box, I unveiled a dark red sheet of fabric. Placing my hand upon it, I felt something hidden underneath the fabric. Moving the fabric to the side, I grasped ahold of a thin piece of metal, and it was only when I pulled the object out as a whole that I noticed it was a knife.

The knife was engraved with actual English on the blade.

“Trick-or-treat.”

Good god.

Suddenly, three knocks at my door practically shook the room. It sounded like the Hulk was waiting at my door, for God’s sake. There’s no way that could be any young kid out there. I mean, no twelve-year-old that’s out trick-or-treating for Halloween is that strong, are they? I don’t know, they could be doing some serious weight lifting. Kids nowadays are built like they’ve been paying rent since birth.

Clutching the knife in my hand, I slowly made my way towards the door. I had a sixth sense telling me there would be a huge monster waiting outside my door.

“Trick-or-treat,” I heard a creepy voice bellow from beyond.

My free hand reached for the doorknob, unlocking it, and slowly pulled it open as I took cover from behind it. I heard a slight shuffle of feet, then a shadow moving closer to the doorway. The tip of a gun became visible around the edge of the door, and that’s when I choked the handle of the knife.

I wasn’t going to die here. Not tonight.

Shoving the door against the body that was making its way into my house, I lunged forward with the tip of my knife.

Thump.

My eyes were closed.

Did I kill them?

Opening my eeyes, I gasped in horror as the face of a young child in a cowboy costume peered up at me. His mouth was agape with fear. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing either, but I looked down at my knife.

It was stuck in the wall.

The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off.

Content warning: abduction, violence, and self-inflicted injury.

The man who tied me to a chair is still out there, and we don't know if he'll come to our house. My wife and our boys are staying at her sister's.

The chair was in a barn, next to a stone trough. The door was on the other side of the room. I knew I couldn't reach it.

I wasn't trying to reach the door.

There's a mark on my chest where a tube went in. It started with a patient named Gabriele.

I've changed the names. The investigation is still open.

I'm a nurse on a locked psychiatric ward in southern Italy. Gabriele was twenty-six and had advanced cystic fibrosis. Steroids for an allergic reaction in his lungs had left him unable to sleep and convinced people were poisoning him. Our doctors and his lung team agreed on a short admission in a private room. Once the steroid dose came down, the delusions passed. He stayed longer than he needed to. Pulmonology had no isolation room free, and a patient with lungs like his couldn't be put in a shared one.

Every morning he spent about forty minutes inhaling medication and clearing mucus from his lungs. At first I stayed because he needed someone nearby. Later I stayed when I could, even after he was done. Some mornings we talked. On others he was too tired, and I sat there doing paperwork.

He was a fan of a soccer team I couldn't stand. He also noticed that I'd make coffee, leave it on the counter and remember it an hour later.

"You could skip a step," he said once. "Make it cold to begin with."

One morning my wife sent me a video of our younger boy learning to ride a bike. He got going, looked back to see if she was watching and rode straight into the grass. He stood up laughing, with dirt on both knees.

Gabriele asked me to play it again. The next morning he wanted to know if my son had learned to brake.

"No. He's learned to blame the grass."

I'd mentioned that I used to play soccer. Gabriele decided I must have been a goalkeeper and asked how tall I was. I told him. He said his team would have put me in goal anyway, which started another argument about his team.

His father came by after his shifts in intensive care. No one else came. I mostly saw them together when Demetrio stopped me at the door to ask whether Gabriele had eaten or finished his treatments. Sometimes he'd ask while the empty meal tray was still beside the bed.

A few days later Ferruccio came back from his break smelling of cigarettes. I told him I could smell him from Gabriele's doorway. He asked if I'd finally decided to try one. I said I'd never smoked. Gabriele was in his room, turning a paper cup in his hands. I didn't think he was listening.

Another day I complained about the photo on my new ID card. Gabriele asked if I'd registered as an organ donor when I renewed it. I said yes. After a pause, he made a joke about the camera trying to improve my face.

Around then, he began going quiet when his father came in. I thought he didn't want Demetrio to see how much time I spent in his room.

Gabriele was already waiting for two new lungs. When his breathing worsened the following week, his lung team arranged a transfer to the transplant center. By the time I reached his room, he couldn't finish a sentence. He kept pulling at his oxygen mask. When I got him to look at me, he left it alone long enough for it to help.

"Just look at me," I said. "You don't have to talk."

I stepped away to speak to the transport team. He caught my wrist.

Nunzia, our head nurse, was beside us.

"He only wants Matteo," she said.

I finished the transfer notes, and Nunzia sent me with him. The doctor assigned to the transfer had been pulled into another emergency, and no one else was immediately available. Demetrio was an intensive care anesthesiologist and had done critical-care transfers before. The transport coordinator wasn't happy about sending Gabriele's father, but after a call between the two hospitals, they cleared him to go with us as the physician.

Before we left, Demetrio held the metal end of his stethoscope in his palm to warm it. Gabriele's eyes were shut. His father warmed it anyway.

On the road Gabriele pressed a hand against one side of his chest. His oxygen saturation dropped. He tried to tell us something and couldn't get enough air to say it. The driver pulled over. Demetrio listened to his chest and said he could barely hear air moving on one side. Gabriele's blood pressure was falling too.

Demetrio stopped with the stethoscope in his hand.

"Demetrio."

He didn't answer. His hands were shaking.

"Help him."

He opened the emergency kit and relieved the pressure building around Gabriele's lung. I held the mask in place. We went to the nearest emergency department, where they put in a chest tube. Once he was stable enough to travel, we continued to the transplant center.

Demetrio hardly spoke for the rest of the trip.

At the center, other doctors took over. I bought a coffee from a machine in the hall and left half of it on a ledge when someone called me back. Gabriele's breathing had worsened again. They were about to sedate him and put a breathing tube in his throat.

He caught my sleeve.

"I'm sorry."

I thought he meant the mask, or the trouble he'd given us in the ambulance. I told him there was nothing to apologize for.

He watched me until the medication took effect.

Later a transplant doctor told us the center was requesting emergency priority for him on the national transplant list. The request still had to be reviewed. Even if it was approved, she couldn't tell Demetrio whether suitable lungs would become available in time.

Demetrio thanked me for staying with his son. A little later I saw him on the phone at the far end of the hall.

I expected him to stay there. He said he needed to collect Gabriele's things from our hospital, where he'd left his car, and rode back with us in the ambulance.

I sat beside the empty stretcher. Demetrio pointed at my seat belt.

"Put that on."

I did.

"You have children?"

"Two."

"Then you understand."

I thought he meant leaving Gabriele at the center.

The road home was nearly empty. A van passed us, slowed down and stopped across our lane. Our driver braked hard. While he radioed that the road was blocked, a man got out of the van and came toward us, waving for help.

The driver stepped down. I saw him fall, but I didn't see what hit him.

Demetrio got out on the other side and went down beside him. By the time I reached them, the driver was breathing but wouldn't answer me. Demetrio lay with his eyes shut and blood at his temple. His eyelid tightened when I tried to lift it. I thought he was coming around.

There was no sign of the man from the van. The van sat across the lane with its doors open. I climbed into the cab to use the radio and found the handset ripped from its cord. I looked up and down the road. Nothing moved.

Dispatch had our location from the driver's call, but they didn't know he was hurt. My phone had no signal. I didn't want to leave the two men on the road, so I only went a little way uphill, looking back at them every few steps. I checked the phone again. Still nothing.

A hand landed on my shoulder.

I started to turn. Something hit the back of my head.

When I woke, my wrists and ankles were tied to a chair in an old farm building. A strap crossed my chest. I could hear an engine idling outside. I pulled at one of the ties until I tore the skin underneath it.

There was a stone trough close to the chair. The door was farther off.

A man outside was arguing with someone. I couldn't make out everything he said, but he'd heard that the ambulance had been found and wanted to leave.

The door opened.

A man came in with his face covered and a medical bag in his hand. There was dried blood at his temple. He took out a stethoscope and held its metal end in his palm.

"Demetrio?"

He took the covering off. Then he listened to my chest. I held my breath. He waited until I couldn't hold it anymore and listened again.

"Is the driver alive?"

He raised one finger to silence me and kept listening. Then he took the stethoscope out of his ears.

"That's why I told you to put the belt on."

I thought about Gabriele asking my height. About Ferruccio's cigarettes. About my ID card.

"You looked up my blood type."

"Yes."

"That's all you know? You don't know if my lungs would be right for him."

"No."

He clipped an oxygen monitor to my finger. Red light showed through my nail. He watched the reading for a few seconds.

"You want me to get to a hospital with a brain injury," I said. "While my lungs still work."

He didn't answer.

We'd been on our way home. Whoever found me would take me to our hospital, and an injury like that would go straight to his unit. His colleagues would keep my heart going for the transplant team. He'd trained some of them himself.

That was why he'd let me see his face.

"You can't make the transplant team give them to Gabriele."

"I know."

"They might give them to someone else."

He gathered the monitor's cord into his hand.

"Then I'll have killed you for nothing."

The man outside called for him. Demetrio told him to wait.

I said Gabriele's name. Demetrio kept looking at the monitor.

I tried my wrists again. The ties held.

Gabriele needed both lungs. If I damaged one of mine badly enough, Demetrio might have no reason to go on with his plan. I might also die before anyone found me.

My son still hadn't learned to brake.

I looked at the trough.

I threw my weight sideways. The chair went over with me, and my ribs struck the stone edge.

At first I couldn't tell how badly I'd hurt myself. Then I tried to breathe and couldn't get a full breath in.

Demetrio was on the floor beside me. He cut the strap across my chest and listened with his stethoscope. He hadn't warmed it this time.

"Call them," I said.

He checked the monitor again.

"Call them."

I was afraid he'd leave me there now that my lungs were damaged. He stayed where he was, listening to my chest while I struggled to breathe. I couldn't tell whether he was trying to help me or assess what was left.

The man outside shouted, "I'm leaving."

Demetrio went to the doorway and held up his phone until he got a signal. He put the call on speaker and told emergency services where to find me.

"Is he conscious?" the dispatcher asked.

"Yes."

He cut the ties around my wrists and put the phone beside my hand, the call still open. Outside, the van's engine revved.

"Why me?" I asked.

Demetrio stopped at the door.

"I didn't choose you."

He looked back at me.

"He only ever wanted you."

The van pulled away. I stayed on the line and asked about the ambulance driver.

The driver survived.

I remember the noise of the rotor and someone counting my breaths. The helicopter took me to our hospital, and I ended up in Demetrio's unit after all. One of the doctors who looked after me had trained under him. She couldn't meet my eyes.

Three of my ribs were broken, two of them against the trough. I also had a collapsed lung, a concussion and a drain in my chest for several days.

Each morning a physiotherapist had me cough into a pillow pressed against my ribs. The first time, it took me forty minutes. Gabriele had spent forty minutes like that every morning since he was a child. Ferruccio came on his day off and stayed until I was done, and a while after that.

Demetrio and the man with the van are still missing.

An employee at our hospital later admitted he'd let Demetrio see a blood bank record from a surgery I'd had years earlier. It showed my blood type and nothing more. Demetrio had looked at it before Gabriele's breathing got worse, while Gabriele and I were still talking about my son's bicycle.

Gabriele was alive. The emergency request had been approved, but there were still no lungs for him. Once he was awake enough to write, he asked for me. Ferruccio drove me to the transplant center after my chest tube was removed.

Gabriele still had a breathing tube in his mouth and a drain at his side. There was a small whiteboard beside his hand. The only chair was against the wall. No one had pulled it up to the bed. I tried, but it hurt too much. Ferruccio moved it for me.

I'd had questions ready on the drive. Before I could get the first one out, Gabriele wrote on the board and turned it toward me.

Does it hurt?

I didn't answer.

"Did your father tell you to ask how tall I was?"

Gabriele nodded.

"Did he tell you why?"

He wiped the board and wrote:

I didn't ask him.

"What about the cigarettes?"

The marker squeaked on the board.

I told him what you said.

"And the donor question?"

He told me to ask.

I looked at him. He held the marker but didn't write anything else.

"When did you realize something was wrong?"

He waited a long time before putting the marker to the board.

Before the ambulance.

He wiped it clean, then wrote again.

I told him you had children. I thought he would stop.

Demetrio had known the answer when he asked me on the way back.

I thought of Gabriele catching my sleeve before they sedated him. I'd told him he had nothing to apologize for.

"You could have warned me."

Gabriele nodded.

"Why didn't you?"

He looked down at the board. Ferruccio was standing near the window. I could hear someone moving equipment in the hall while Gabriele wrote.

I didn't want you to stop coming.

He set the marker down.

I looked at my wrists. I thought about the driver on the road, and my wife taking our boys out of the house because we didn't know who Demetrio might come after next.

"You should have told me," I said.

Gabriele nodded again. He didn't try to pick up the marker.

"I could have died."

He shut his eyes. A tear ran down toward his ear.

I put my hand over his. My sleeve slipped back, and he saw the marks from the ties. He tried to pull away. I held on.

"Look at me."

He did. I was still angry with him. I couldn't say anything for a few seconds.

"I forgive you."

He tried to say something around the tube, but no sound came out.

"You don't have to talk," I said.

I kept holding Gabriele's hand until his fingers warmed against mine. By the window, Ferruccio wiped his cheek with his thumb.

After a while Gabriele pointed at my phone. I knew which video he wanted.

My son started pedaling. Halfway across the frame, he looked back to see if someone was watching and rode into the grass. Gabriele watched him get up laughing.

He reached for the marker.

Did he learn to brake?

"Not yet. He still blames the grass."

His shoulders shook, and the ventilator beeped at him. I laughed too, and I had to press my free hand to my ribs.

Then he looked at me. He was still holding my hand, and his eyes dropped to my chest as I breathed.

"A little," I said.

I waited for the machine to lift his chest.

1.      Feed the dog

2.      Water the plants

3.      Take in the mail

4.      Sing to the crib

The list of chores was written on a sticky note on the fridge, stainless steel with a digital display, thing probably cost more than my car. I read the last chore over again. Sing to the crib, they had explained it to me when I arrived but still it gave me the creeps.

Pulling into the driveway that morning, I had to almost scrape my jaw off the floor. Such affluence I had never seen in all my life. Rounding the fountain in the front courtyard, the manor came into view, its enormous Victorian architecture blocking the rising sun behind it, creating an almost holy glow around its silhouette. The family were out the front when I arrived, loading their Luis Vuitton suitcases into their Range Rover. Standing on the steps leading into the house was Mrs Coldwell, a woman of fifty, though I would never have believed it if she hadn’t told me herself. She was the image of elegance and class, wrapped up in her fur coat and hat, her long thin legs adorned in black tights guiding the eye down to her black 5-inch heels. Noticing my arrival, she waved me over, a warm smile over her face. Mr Coldwell was standing by as his driver loaded the luggage into the car, he turned to face me, offering his hand for me to shake.

“Thank God, you’re here” I tried my best to not wilt before him as I clasped his hand. The mans booming voice and razor-sharp jaw made me feel small in his presence, which I suppose is exactly how he had managed to rise to CEO of Noxar Industries. The man was ten years older than his wife but still he also seemed cut from marble.

“In sake of full transparency, you really saved our arses when you replied to our ad. Usually of course, we would have had our butler take care of the house while we were away but just yesterday, he has seemingly taken ill.” He gave me a reassuring smile which told me his praise was genuine. The real truth of it was, they had saved my ass. I had been down to my last £50 when I had seen their ad for a week of housesitting paying £2000. I had initially assumed it was a scam but with so little to lose I had applied anyway. I suppose many others had thought the same as somehow; I got the job. I watched as his wife descended the steps to greet me, with each bounce her coat would rise slightly revealing a slither more of her upper thigh.

“This is my wife Margaret” Mr Coldwell announced proudly, gesturing to her now outplaced hand for me to also shake, I would’ve preferred to kiss her cheek.

“And this is my son Adam” he murmured gesturing more solemnly to the boy stood out to his side, a late teen on his phone. He didn’t raise his head to face me, his foppish black hair obscuring his eyes. In disapproval, Mr Coldwell theatrically cleared his throat, and the boy finally rose his gaze, shooting me a quick nod which seemed to double as “You alright?” and “Fuck off”.

Mr Coldwell led me into the house, the thick oak door giving way to the vast foyer. The space was so large and extravagant it bordered on parody; it reminded me more of a museum than anyone’s home. Mr Coldwell pompously guided me through the manor, stopping at every painting and ornament to explain its gilded history. In the living room, he introduced me to the dog, Harry, a sweet golden retriever which seemed to warm quickly to me, licking at my hands when I went to pet him.

“You can keep him outside if you like” Mr Coldwell seemed taken aback and somewhat offended at how Harry reacted. I suppose it’s no surprise for wealthy men to get possessive, even over their dogs.

Moving back into the foyer and up the stairs, we passed the enormous portrait of Laurence Coldwell, the man who built this place. Dressed in a suitably flashy outfit for the era and holding himself up by his cane, his stern stare surveyed the foyer below with contempt. The upstairs split into two hallways each leading down their respective ends of the house. Mr Coldwell explained that to the left were the family rooms and his study and to the right was the guest rooms and the nursery, which is where I would be staying.

“Nursery?” I hadn’t seen a young child outside. He begun to explain.

“Yes, well… it was for our youngest, Harry... until we… lost him” His earlier layer of pride had shed like snakeskin. What was left was an old man, falling adrift into the worst parts of his mind.

“I was meaning to ask you… for a favour. After the death, Margaret… struggled to cope. In fact, this the first time we’ve taken a trip away from home since it happened, and well… She’s developed this habit… a coping mechanism of sorts. Where she… sings… sings to the crib, like she used to sing to Jacob” He turned to me with pleading eyes. Surely, he couldn’t expect-

“Well, I sort of told her, in order to get her out of the house, that I would have someone do it in her absence…” He couldn’t even ask outright, instead leading me to the question with this weird dance. It was because he knew it was lunacy, but he also knew I wasn’t in a position to refuse.

“Sure, of course. Anything you need” It was pathetic.

The house is empty now. It looks a lot different in the dark, something about the vast space makes me feel uneasy. More hiding spots, I suppose. I tried my best to shake off these morbid thoughts as I moved back into the foyer. Henry brushed up against my leg which embarrassingly made me jump, the dog has barely left my side since I got here. I decided to have an early night, I’ll feel a lot better in the daytime. Moving up the stairs, the floorboards creaked with every slight shift of weight, everything seems too loud in this broad silence. Henry skipped up the steps ahead of me, I imagine I’d feel a lot worse about this place if he wasn’t here. I took the right down the hallway to the guest rooms, before he left Mr Coldwell had not so subtly mentioned that all the family rooms on the left were locked.

The guest room is a pretty simple affair for such a lavish place, I opened my bedside drawer and got out my clothes for the night. I had just begun to change when from the walls came this long winding groan, a stark reminder at the age of this place, probably the pipes. Despite this rationalisation, the sound had greatly unnerved me and I suddenly became aware the dog was no longer with me. It didn’t take me long to find him; he was stood just outside my door facing the room opposite mine – the nursery. Sing to the crib, I had no intention of doing it. After all, I don’t even think Mr Coldwell expected me to, he just needed something to tell his wife. But what if they found out I hadn’t done it, for a family of their station it wasn’t unlikely that this place was covered in secret cameras. This was a dream gig, a life raft in the sea of debt I had recently found myself in. Was I really going to risk screwing that up because of some crib?

I shuffled around Henry and tentatively tried the door…

But it didn’t budge, I even forced my shoulder against it, but still it remained sealed. I said a silent prayer of thanks and turned back to my room. Now at least if they were watching, I would have an excuse for why I didn’t do it. I tried to call Henry over from the door, but he remained still, staring straight ahead. I tried again, patting my knees but still he didn’t waver. All of a sudden, he leant back onto his hind legs and reached out with his front paws, placing his weight on the door and with a subtle click, the door came ajar. That wasn’t possible, I had almost ripped the handle off forcing my way in there just a second before. I took a moment to consider; in truth I had been looking for a way to get out of it before I had even tried to open the door. Perhaps, I had imagined I had tried a lot harder than I really had, merely loosening it slightly, but there was no getting out of it now. Henry pushed his way into the room, leaving me alone with the cavernous black of the doorway.

I sat before the threshold giving my eyes a moment to adjust. The room was barren and could hardly be described any longer as a nursery. There were no toys of any kind, the wallpaper had been stripped away, and all furniture had been removed. The only remnant of what this space use to be was the crib in the centre, empty. I reached in for the light switch on the wall to my right. Lighting the place did little to bring it any comfort, the bulb was starting to go, much dimmer than the lights in the rest of the house, leaving shadows in the corners of the room. Laid next to the crib was Henry, a tragic scene to behold, I wondered what he understood of what had happened. I hurried to get it over with, I didn’t wish to be in this room any longer than I had to. I pulled the lyrics of the song up on my phone and began.

“Rock a bye baby, on the tree top,

When the wind blows the cradle will rock.

When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,

And down will come baby, cradle and-“

Suddenly, Henry rose and skittered from the room so fast he hit into to door on the way out, closing it behind him. I continued.

“Rock a bye baby, gently you swing,

Over the cradle, Mother will sing,

Sweet is the lullaby over your nest

That tenderly sings my baby to rest.”

A long winding groan rose from the pipes again shaking the room. Hesitantly, I continued.

“From the high rooftops, down to the sea

No one's as dear as baby to me

Wee little hands, eyes shiny and bright

Now sound asleep until morning light”

The light above began to flicker, about to die. Time to finish this up.

“Rock a bye baby, on the tree top,

When the wind blows the cradle will rock.

When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,

And down will come baby, cradle and all”

With a pop the light goes out casting the room in black. I fumble behind me for the door and grasping the handle I pull…

It doesn’t budge; I pull harder now. Nothing. With both hands, I clasp down the handle and yank my whole body back. Finally, the door flys open but sends me tumbling back towards the crib. I rise to my feet and scramble out of the room slamming the door behind. I don’t care anymore; I’m never doing that again. I step into my room and take a moment to compose myself.

After that scare, I had trouble getting to sleep that night. Just when I would be about to drift off, I’d hear some creak or groan from the house and shoot up. Looking at the door expectantly waiting for something to burst in. Eventually though my exhaustion took me.

When I awoke this morning, the terror of the night before was gone, seemingly washed away by the morning sun. I could now look back at the night objectively and conclude everything that had happened could be explained as symptoms of an old house. Moaning pipes, faulty lighting and a fidgety door were hardly out of the norm and were certainly not cause for alarm. I was in fact beginning to feel rather embarrassed by how I had reacted when I came down to the kitchen this morning. I had just made a bowl for Henry, when I decided to reconsult the chore list they had left me on the fridge to ensure I hadn’t missed anything.

1.      Feed the dog

Check.

2.      Water the plants

Check.

3.      Take in the mail

Check.

4.      Sing to the crib

Unfortunately, Check.

5.      Lock the nursery door

All at once, the terror of last night was fresh and sharp. Had it really said that? Surely not, after all I didn’t even have a key for the room. Cautiously, I crept up the stairs. This time Henry didn’t follow, electing instead to remain at the bottom of the steps, watching me ascend. With every step, the stairs would let out a monstrous creak, the rhythm did nothing but increase my anticipation. But when I finally came to the upstairs landing, breath trapped in my lungs, I found nothing. Staring down the right hallway I found that the nursery door was in fact still closed. Again, my fear gave way to embarrassment, this house was too big, an unruly beast playing tricks on my mind. I went to my room to get my phone, maybe hearing a familiar voice would help put me at ease. I took it from the bedside table and had begun to dial my mother when-

Sitting on the bedside table, next to where my phone had been, was a key. Attached to it a label said “NURSERY”. With it was another sticky note like the one on the fridge.

Thank you for singing to me!

I found the dog because he was scratching at the side door.

The storm had been building since late afternoon. By 8:00, the back steps had disappeared beneath the snow, and the wind was pushing enough of it against the windows that I kept hearing little dry taps from the living room. The scratching was different: three quick drags across the door, a pause, then another.

I turned on the outside light. A dog stood on the landing with his nose close to the glass. He was some kind of shepherd mix, maybe 60 pounds, dark across the back with tan legs and a white patch under his chin. Snow had collected along his spine and packed itself between his toes. He squinted when the light came on and lifted one paw.

There was no collar.

"Come on."

He didn't need to be asked twice. As soon as I opened the door, he squeezed past my legs and shook himself hard enough to spray the cabinets. I locked the door again and got an old towel from the laundry room.

He stood on the kitchen mat while I dried him. I expected to find blood somewhere under the snow or at least a paw rubbed raw, but he looked healthy. His ribs weren't showing. His coat was clean beneath the wet outer layer, and he let me handle his legs and check between his toes without pulling away.

"Somebody's looking for you."

His tail knocked once against a cabinet.

My house is about fifteen minutes outside town, on a road with more trees than houses. There are a few places scattered along the first couple of miles, but only one close enough that I can usually see a porch light through the woods. That night the snow had swallowed it.

There wasn't much I could do with the dog until morning. The roads had been getting bad when I'd come home and were buried now. If the plows got through overnight, I'd take him into town and have the vet check for a chip.

I gave him water and half a bowl of the dry food I keep for my sister's dog. He ate, drank, and spent a while sniffing around the kitchen before moving into the living room. He inspected the couch, the coffee table and the stack of firewood beside the stove, then curled up on the rug.

The wind weakened as the evening went on. Snow kept falling, but the house became quiet enough that I could hear it brushing against the windows. I got up to close the curtains and saw someone standing beyond the driveway.

The porch light covered part of the yard. Beyond it, the ground faded into gray and the trees were little more than vertical streaks through the snow. The figure stood where the open part of the property narrowed between them.

I switched off the lamp beside me. Without my reflection in the glass, I could see it better.

It was tall enough that I initially put it farther away than it was. Its arms hung straight down, and its shoulders were narrow. Snow passed in front of it in sheets, hiding its lower body and exposing it again.

I looked back at the dog. "Looks like somebody came looking for you."

His nails clicked across the floor as he came to the window beside me. He stared outside with his ears forward.

I turned on the porch light. The brighter light didn't reach the figure, but it gave me a better sense of the ground between us. The yard was almost flat there. I knew that because I'd mowed it for six years.

The figure's knees were almost level with the ends of its hands.

Everything above the hips was proportioned close enough to a person. Narrow chest. Long arms, but not unusually so. A head that seemed a little small from where I stood. Most of its height was in the legs.

I took out my phone and tried the camera. Zooming only broke the image apart. Snow streaked across the screen, and the figure became a collection of gray blocks surrounding the pale blur of a face.

The dog began to growl.

The figure's legs started running.

Its arms stayed down. Its shoulders remained level while the legs drove through the snow beneath them, each stride throwing white behind its feet. The torso hardly moved. Its head didn't dip with the impacts. It came across the field with its face held toward the house.

I stumbled backward into the coffee table. The dog barked and scrambled away from the window with me. When I looked outside again, the figure had stopped perhaps 120 feet from the house.

Snow drifted through the gouged path behind it. Its arms hung at its sides again, its shoulders level, its head facing the living-room window.

I called 911.

The dispatcher got my address and asked what was happening.

"There's somebody in my yard."

"Do you know who it is?"

"No."

"Can you describe him?"

I looked through the curtain again. "I don't think it's a man."

She asked what I meant, and I gave her what I could: one person, no visible weapon, about 120 feet from the house, not attempting to enter.

She told me a deputy had been dispatched, but crashes and road conditions were delaying responses. I was to lock the doors, stay inside and not approach whoever was in the yard.

"That's not going to be a problem."

I asked how long the delay might be. Her answer broke apart halfway through, followed by two clipped pieces of her voice before the call dropped. The next attempt didn't connect.

I checked the doors and windows, closed the blinds facing the road and pulled the dining-room curtains. The shotgun I kept upstairs hadn't been fired in more than a year, but I loaded it and brought it down with the remaining shells in my pocket.

The dog had returned to the living-room window. The figure hadn't moved.

Snow had begun collecting on its shoulders and along one side of its head. I watched for the rise of its chest and couldn't see one. After a while the dog lost interest in growling. He drank from his bowl, nosed the empty food dish and settled near the couch while I moved between windows trying to keep track of what was outside.

The figure stayed where it was.

I left the phone on the table and went to the kitchen for water.

When I came back, the yard was empty. The tracks still ended where the figure had been standing.

I checked the front porch and driveway from the windows. The dog had stayed in the kitchen, but while I was looking toward the road his head turned toward the side of the house.

A dark shape passed the dining-room window.

I raised the shotgun and waited against the wall. There was no knock, no sound against the siding. When I looked through the edge of the blind, the figure was standing beside the shed.

From there I could finally see the legs without the snowfall hiding them. They had the structure of human legs stretched far beyond human proportions. Bare feet disappeared into the snow. The thighs were long and narrow, with more muscle on them than the rest of the body seemed capable of carrying. Above the hips, the thing looked almost starved. Its arms hung beside a narrow rib cage, the skin gray beneath the outside light.

The dog barked at the window. I caught him by the scruff and pulled him back until he stopped fighting me, then shut the curtain.

There were paw prints in the snow near the figure's feet.

Most had softened around the edges, but I could still follow them from behind the shed toward the house. I looked at the dog standing in the kitchen doorway, then back outside.

The figure ran.

I saw the first stride clearly this time. One bare foot came out of the snow and the knee rose almost to its waist. The other leg drove down, launching the entire body forward without moving the arms at all. It passed the dining-room window, and a pale shape flashed through the narrow pane in the side door.

I brought the shotgun up and stopped several feet away. The dog stood beside me growling at the glass.

One of the figure's shoulders was visible outside, along with the side of its head and an arm hanging straight down. It had reached the landing.

I waited for it to touch the door, but it didn't.

Snow melted against the glass and ran down in thin lines. Minutes passed without a hand reaching for the knob or a shoulder leaning against the door. Eventually the weight of the shotgun began to ache through my arms and I lowered it.

The clock on the stove read 9:17.

The figure had crossed most of my property in three bursts.

By 9:30, it still hadn't touched the door. The dog paced between the kitchen and living room, occasionally coming back to sniff along the bottom of it. When he started nosing the corner of the mat, I pulled him away.

"Get back."

He waited until I released him, then tried to return.

The mat was marked with the mud he'd tracked inside earlier. Outside, the landing had almost disappeared beneath fresh snow, but several shallow depressions remained where he'd stood scratching at the door. Beyond them, his paw prints continued across the open ground beside the house toward the shed.

From the dining-room window, I could pick them out in pieces. The dog's tracks passed the shed and continued toward the back of the property. The creature's deeper prints came from the same direction. Its stride was too long to land precisely over the dog's, but the two trails crossed and separated and crossed again.

I went upstairs for a better view. From the dark bedroom, the dog's route was easier to follow. His tracks wandered in from the trees, changed direction near the shed and continued toward the house. The other trail was made of deep holes separated by long stretches of untouched snow.

It wasn't straight either. Where the dog's path bent, so did the creature's. Both ended at my side door.

The dog barked downstairs.

By the time I returned, the creature was walking away.

It crossed toward the shed with the same rigid upper body it had when standing still. At that speed, its proportions looked no more natural. Each step carried it several feet, but the arms didn't swing and its shoulders barely moved.

It passed the shed and continued toward the back of the property until the snowfall swallowed it. The dog came to stand beside me at the dining-room window.

At 10:05, he started pacing. He went from the living room to the kitchen, stopped at the side door, then came back. A few minutes later he did it again. The third time, he put his nose against the bottom of the door and whined.

"No."

He circled the kitchen table and returned. I wasn't opening the door while I had no idea where the creature had gone.

At 10:16, he squatted beside the cabinets and pissed on the floor.

"Ah, come on."

He moved away with his ears back while urine spread across the tile. I put the shotgun on the counter and cleaned it up. The dog watched from the doorway while I went through half a roll of paper towels and sprayed the floor twice.

"That's my fault."

His tail moved once.

As the next hour passed, the storm began to weaken. I checked the property often enough that I stopped looking at the clock each time. The shed remained empty. So did the tree line.

The dog fell asleep beside the couch. The shotgun stayed within reach while I watched the windows and listened to the house settle around me.

By 11:00, the creature had been gone for more than an hour.

The dog woke and returned to the kitchen.

"No."

He whined.

"You already went."

He stared at me.

"Technically."

He pawed the door.

Another layer of snow had softened the creature's footprints until some were little more than shadows. I checked the yard from downstairs, then from the bedroom window. Nothing stood between the house and the trees.

The dog was still waiting when I came back down. I lasted another ten minutes.

"Right outside."

The moment I cracked the side door, cold air pushed into the kitchen and the dog shoved his nose toward the opening. I held him back long enough to scan the yard before letting him squeeze past.

He stopped on the landing to sniff the snow.

"Go."

I stayed in the doorway with the shotgun while he wandered about ten feet into the yard. He sniffed one patch, moved to another and drifted toward the corner of the house.

"Stay where I can see you."

He ignored me.

A clump of dead grass poked through the snow nearby. He investigated it, moved on, and started toward the shed.

"Hey. No. Come back."

He looked at me and took a few steps in my direction before finding something else worth smelling.

"Seriously?"

A small pine stood near the edge of the yard. He circled it once, went halfway around again, doubled back over his own tracks and buried his nose in the snow.

The tree line remained empty.

When he finally lifted his leg against the pine, I called him back. He started toward me, veered toward the shed one more time, then responded to a sharper "Inside" and trotted up the steps.

I shut and locked the door behind him. The entire trip had taken less than two minutes.

His new tracks were a mess compared with the trail that had brought him to my house. They wandered toward the corner, cut back across the yard, approached the shed, circled the pine and doubled over themselves before returning to the side door.

By 11:18, the dog was back on the rug licking snow from between his toes.

A low growl brought his head up. His ears pointed toward the window.

Something moved between the trees.

The figure stepped into the open farther back than where I'd first seen it, almost beyond the reach of the outside lights. Snow covered its shoulders. It stood facing the house while the dog moved closer to my leg.

One of the figure's feet lifted.

Its legs tore forward.

The first burst carried it across the open ground, but instead of coming toward the house, it cut sideways and stopped where the dog had first lowered his nose after leaving the steps. The next burst took it toward the corner of the house.

It stopped, changed direction and crossed back toward the center of the yard. The dog pressed against my leg.

The figure sprinted toward the shed. It made the same useless turn the dog had made and crossed the same few feet twice. When it reached the small pine, it went around so quickly that one foot slipped sideways and carved a trench through the snow while the torso above it remained upright.

It came around the other side, halfway around again, then back across its own tracks.

I had watched the dog do all of it.

The figure stopped over the patch where the dog had buried his nose. From there it ran to the pine and stood beside the trunk where he'd lifted his leg.

Only one part of the route remained. The tracks between the pine and the side door were almost straight.

The figure turned its face toward the house.

Its legs began to run.

By the time I reached the kitchen, it was standing on the landing again. The dog barked behind me. I kept him back while the pale face settled into the narrow pane of glass.

This time I could see it clearly enough to know there was nothing obviously missing. It had two eyes, a nose and a mouth. The features were narrow and colorless, but arranged the way they should have been.

Its eyes pointed into the kitchen.

I moved to one side. They stayed where they were.

The creature wasn't watching me.

The dog's tracks ended on the other side of the door. He had been inside the entire time the thing ran around the yard. It hadn't cut across the route to reach him.

I thought about the first trail coming out of the woods. The dog had been asleep beside my couch when the creature followed that one to the same door.

I didn't know how it could find the tracks beneath falling snow or why it sometimes stood still for minutes before running again. But it wasn't following the dog.

It was following where the dog had been.

The creature stayed at the door until sometime after midnight. When it left, it walked. It passed the pine without stopping, continued beyond the shed and disappeared into the trees.

For nearly an hour nothing moved outside. The snow dwindled to a few scattered flakes, leaving the trails in the yard exposed instead of slowly burying them. Two routes now ended at the house. One shallow and wandering. The other deep and widely spaced.

The dog eventually came over and pushed his head beneath my hand. I rubbed the fur behind his ears.

"You picked a hell of a house."

He leaned against my leg.

I could wait until morning. That was what I intended to do. The deputy already had my address, the plows would eventually reach my road, and the dog could piss wherever he wanted until then. I moved his water bowl into the living room and sat with him.

Nearly an hour passed before I found myself studying the tracks again.

The newest trail left the side door, wandered around the yard and returned to the same place. The creature had followed it from beginning to end.

If the dog hadn't come back, the trail wouldn't have come back either.

I kept my hand on his neck.

There was another way to make a trail leave the property.

Mine.

My boots were beside the kitchen mat and my coat hung behind the door. I could cross the yard, reach the road and head toward the nearest house. If the creature found my path the way it found the dog's, there would be nothing leading it back here.

I put on my boots. The dog watched from the kitchen doorway while I pulled on my coat. He wagged his tail when I picked up the shotgun.

At the front window, I looked across the yard to the road. The creature had crossed the distance from the trees to the driveway before I'd managed to get away from the living-room window. I pictured that open stretch with no glass between us, then the road beyond it and the woods on the other side.

I didn't know whether it could follow me at all. Every trail I'd seen it follow belonged to the dog.

I stood there until I started getting hot inside the coat, then took it off.

The dog followed me back into the kitchen.

"Don't."

He sat down.

I wasn't sure whether I was talking to him.

I left the coat on the table instead of hanging it back up. The dog had made it through the woods once already. He'd crossed several miles in a snowstorm without an injury I could find. Whatever the creature was doing, it wasn't very good at it. It moved faster than anything I'd ever seen, but it kept stopping. It lost the trail for long stretches. The dog had been in my house for hours before it arrived.

If I sent him out and he kept moving, he could stay ahead of it.

That was what I told myself.

The dog came close enough to rest his chin on my knee.

"You're somebody's dog."

His tail brushed the floor.

There had to be a house on the other side of those woods. Maybe more than one. He hadn't appeared starving or half frozen. He knew people. He knew what a kitchen was and what a food bowl meant. There was a decent chance that if I let him go, he'd do exactly what he'd done before.

He'd find a door.

An old blue nylon collar was buried in the junk drawer beneath batteries, dead pens and takeout menus. It had belonged to my sister's dog before she replaced it. I tightened it several notches and slipped it around the shepherd's neck to check the fit.

He stood patiently between my knees while I wrote my phone number on a strip of white tape and wrapped it around the collar.

When I clipped it around his neck, he leaned forward and licked the side of my hand.

My fingers stayed on the buckle.

"Shit."

He licked me again.

I unclipped it.

The collar sat on the kitchen table while the dog wandered back to the living room and lay down. I stood at the side door looking at the tracks. Nothing appeared in the yard.

I went back to the couch and sat beside him. He rolled partly onto his side when I scratched his chest, one back foot kicking once against the rug.

The house was warm. The doors were locked. The creature had never tried to break a window or turn a handle. Maybe we could sit there until daylight and nothing else would happen.

Maybe I had already seen everything it could do.

Every trail ended at my house.

The dog fell asleep with his head against my foot. I stayed there until the clock passed 1:00.

When he woke, I put the collar back on him.

I chose the front door because none of his earlier tracks began there. The road was visible beyond the yard, a white strip between two darker lines of trees.

The dog stood beside me while I checked outside. I opened the door, and he stepped onto the porch before looking back.

"Go on."

He went down one step and stopped.

"Go."

At the bottom, he turned and looked at me. For a second I reached toward the handle, but the dog turned away before I touched it.

He crossed the yard slowly, stopping once to smell the snow near the driveway. I stayed behind the glass and watched him reach the road.

He looked back at the house.

I didn't open the door.

The snow on the far bank came almost to his belly. He pushed through it, climbed onto higher ground and shook himself. Then he went into the trees.

I watched until the dark between the trunks swallowed him.

The collar had my number on it. If he found a house, somebody would call. If he found his own house, even better. He'd already crossed those woods once and survived.

The kitchen still had his water bowl on the floor.

I left it there.

Sometime before 2:00, the creature returned.

From the upstairs window, I watched it emerge from the trees behind the house. Instead of running, it walked slowly across the back of the yard, stopped, changed direction and walked again.

It reached the side of the house and disappeared from view.

I went downstairs.

The creature came around the corner at a walk and stopped near the front steps. The dog's newest tracks began a few feet away.

For several minutes, it stood between the porch and the driveway.

Then one leg moved.

The creature crossed the yard in a burst and stopped near the driveway, exactly where the dog had paused to smell the snow. The next sprint carried it across the road to the far bank.

Beyond it, the dog's tracks continued between the trees.

The creature ran into the woods.

It didn't come back.

The deputy reached my house sometime after 3:00. By then there was nothing to show him except the tracks. He walked partway into the yard, shined his flashlight over the deeper impressions and took my statement from the porch. Whatever he thought of it, he kept to himself.

I didn't sleep after he left.

Daylight turned the woods gray. A plow came through shortly after 7:00, throwing dirty snow across the end of my driveway. My phone had three bars again.

There was no dog in the yard.

By 9:00, I had started thinking he wasn't coming back.

My phone rang.

I didn't recognize the number.

"Hello?"

"Hi. This is going to sound weird, but did you have my dog last night?"

"Shepherd mix?"

"Yeah. Black and tan."

"Blue collar?"

"That's him. Your number's taped to it."

The man laughed, the exhausted kind that comes after you've spent hours expecting something bad.

"He's been gone since yesterday afternoon. We thought he was dead out there. I don't know how the hell he got that far."

"Where are you?"

He named a road several miles away, on the other side of the woods behind my property.

"Did he come back on his own?"

"About ten minutes ago. Scared the hell out of my wife. Something started scratching at the back door and there he was."

I went to the window.

"He's inside?"

"Yeah."

"Lock the door."

The man went quiet.

"What?"

"Lock your door."

"Why?"

Beyond the shed, the woods were still.

"Don't let him back out."

"He's standing right here."

"Good."

I hung up.

When I was eighteen, I had this wonderful friend, Sveta. She was gorgeous and a little fucking nuts. Actually, more than a little. The kind of girl you could never get bored with—the kind who regularly left you thinking, “Well, thank God we got out of that one without getting into trouble!”
She was amazing. I say “was” because we lost touch a long time ago, and I haven’t been able to find her. I think I had a bit of a crush on her, too :)
We balanced each other out. She was always coming up with wild ideas, and we’d carry them out together. But if I thought something was dangerous, or just had a feeling something wasn’t right, I’d say I wasn’t doing it. Usually, Sveta would drop whatever questionable plan she’d come up with and stay with me.
She called me her “voice of reason.” Later, she started calling me her guardian angel.
And this is why.
One summer, we were staying at her family’s summer house in a tiny village. There were three of us: Sveta, me, and her little brother, Kolya. He was four.
We all slept in the same room. Sveta and I shared a big bed, and Kolya slept in a little child’s bed. He always slept with a small teddy bear, and that night was no different. He fell asleep with his arms around it.
Sveta and I stayed up chatting and laughing our asses off until about two in the morning, then went to sleep.
A little later, I woke up to the sound of her laughing.
She was laughing in her sleep. Her blanket had almost slipped onto the floor. Nothing particularly strange about that. It happens. I picked up the blanket, tucked it around her, and went back to sleep.
At eight the next morning, Sveta woke me up. Normally, we’d sleep until ten or eleven, whenever Kolya woke up. But that morning, she woke me early and immediately started telling me about a dream she’d had.
In her dream, she’d gone out into the yard during the night. There was a group of young women out there—beautiful, wearing short, sparkly dresses and bright makeup, their long hair loose around their shoulders. They were laughing and inviting her to come out with them.
They seemed so cool and fun that she decided to go.
Then she saw me standing in the doorway. She ran over and tried to talk me into coming along.
I told her I wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t know these girls, this could end badly, and anyway, let’s just go back to bed.
The girls were waiting for her.
Sveta stood there for a moment, torn. Then she said, “Fine, stay here. I’m going to have some fun.”
“Fine. Off you go, then,” I said, and sat down on the bench beside the house, pointedly turning my back on her.
Sveta ran over to the girls. They hugged her and whispered things to her.
Then she turned around and ran into the house.
When she came back out, she was carrying Kolya.
He was asleep with his head on her shoulder, still clutching his teddy bear.
The girls had opened the garden gate and were filing out, one by one. Sveta was the last in line.
Just as she stepped through the gate, I jumped up and ran after her. I caught her by the arm as she was about to close it, pulled her back into the yard, and shut the gate myself.
I started begging her not to leave.
“What do you need those girls for? You don’t even know them. We can have fun ourselves.”
I kept talking her into staying as I led her back into the house.
We put the sleeping Kolya back in his bed and lay down in ours.
Sveta said she was cold.
I saw that her blanket was on the floor, picked it up, and covered her with it.
Then I went back to sleep, too.
That was her dream.
She told it so vividly, with so much emotion, that I felt as though I’d seen the whole thing myself. Then she hugged me and said she was glad she had me.
And then she asked, “Where’s my cross?”
She wore a little silver cross on a chain. She always had it on. Never took it off.
But now it wasn’t around her neck.
We searched the bed and found it under her pillow.
We were surprised, of course, but we came up with a perfectly reasonable explanation: she’d been tossing and turning in her sleep, and the clasp must have come undone.
And now for the end of the story.
A little later, Kolya woke up. We had breakfast and decided to go swimming in the river.
We opened the gate and stepped outside.
About five paces beyond it, lying in the grass, was Kolya’s teddy bear.

It’s election season in the United States, so if you’re here you’re probably getting a lot of these texts:

“CANDIDATE A is looking for your vote on November 3…”

“CANDIDATE B came up short this week on their fundraising goal…”

“We’re conducting a poll and we want to know: Do you support CANDIDATE C in the upcoming election?”

Some might be from politicians you love, others will be from candidates you hate, or you could be one of those apolitical people who thinks both sides are the same and casting a ballot is a waste. (I disagree, but this is not the forum for arguing about that.)

Most messages, though, are usually just annoying. I’ve been getting dozens and dozens, and to be honest, I thought they were innocuous too.

I was wrong. 

I opted out of one of these messages. Now someone is dead. 

It took barely 24 hours.

And I think I’m next.

Look, I know you think I’m joking. Or you saw the title of this post and started coming up with snarky things to say in the comments, like “oh no, did you accidentally donate $5???” or “lowkey this is probably a psyop from a campaign manager.”

But I am completely, 100 percent, swear-to-every-god-in-existence serious about this. 

It started early yesterday evening, when I got the message below. (The candidate name is partially redacted, but trust me — this is not a famous person. Unless you’ve had this experience, it’s not a name you’ve ever heard before.)

Rick (not my real name), I’m Conor with the Nathan [REDACTED] campaign. Did you know that Nathan [REDACTED] is the only candidate who truly cares about your safety?

I got the message while sitting on my couch, scrolling through a steady rotation of Reddit threads (what else?), and munching on some brand of tortilla chips I can’t recall, all to numb the ennui of life in 2026. Normally, I would have just kept scrolling — I had seen this name show up before and ignored it — but this text came at the end of a particularly frustrating day at work (I won’t go into it). So I wanted the satisfaction of rage-quitting at least one of these text chains instead of ignoring or deleting and “reporting junk,” again (which I’m pretty sure does nothing).

I opened it up and, without reading further, I typed:

STOP

—then sent and closed my messaging app, thinking that was that.

Seconds later, I got a reply:

Reply X O 9 6 ♋︎ ♏︎ ♒︎ ♏︎ ♋︎ 6 9 O X to unsubscribe.

Confused, I scrolled up and, sure enough, after the paragraph about Nathan [REDACTED] and safety, the instructions to unsubscribe were exactly that:

Reply X O 9 6 ♋︎ ♏︎ ♒︎ ♏︎ ♋︎ 6 9 O X to unsubscribe.

Feeling a little spicy, and admittedly thinking this might be a candidate who I wouldn’t have any interest in anyway, I shot back: 

“Why?”

Immediately, they replied:

Or else I’ll keep texting. ;-)

That annoyed me to no end. I’ve done text-banking before (yeah, ironic), so I know how it works. Volunteers aren’t supposed to antagonize potential voters. You’re supposed to answer questions honestly, if at all, and most importantly move on to the next text. It’s a volume game.

So I’m not proud of myself for what came next. I wrote some colorful language before copy-pasting the strange lettering and firing it back, then adding, “There, are you happy?”

I expected an immediate reply, some snarky 19-year-old giving me a cry face emoji before letting me be. Instead, the text bubble popped up and disappeared a few times, before finally something came back: 

Thank you :-D

That was it.

Or so I thought.

Last night was normal, so were this morning and today. My job had a Zoom staff meeting, and our cameras had to be on, so I sat there and tried to look interested for an hour and 13 minutes. I ate microwave kimbap for a very late lunch. A volunteer for a politician I actually do support dropped off a lawn sign, one with a single wooden stake in the back, even though I don’t have a yard. I got four more election texts, including a desperate missive from a Senate candidate from another state saying their race could be won or lost at that very moment (despite it still being October).

When my roommate, Jeff, left for a party, I was thrilled. OK, I was a little stung he didn’t invite me, but that’s just how it goes with Jeff — a big, jolly guy with a clean-cut beard, long hair and not a lot of money but a whole lot of personality. Meanwhile, I'm the sort who enjoys clicking “random article” on Wikipedia all night and getting in fights with political volunteers via text message. I understand why I wasn’t first on his Partiful list.

Anyway, after Jeff left, I set the lawn sign on the coffee table, plopped down on our hand-me-down couch, and fired up Netflix to watch Mindhunter for probably the fifth time. Except this weird feeling suddenly came over me. It felt like a deep, immense fear I couldn’t place. And it wasn’t because a fictionalized version of the BTK Killer showed up on my screen. Something seemed really, undeniably wrong.

Then I heard it:

Drip… Drip… Drip…

It got louder in my head each time. I shot off the couch and rushed to the kitchen.

It was just the faucet. Jeff hadn’t turned it off all the way before leaving. "He’s so popular that he’s always in a rush," I grumbled to myself, surely projecting. Whatever. I slammed down the handle, then reversed course, grabbed a glass and filled it with water, thinking maybe dehydration was causing all this. I chugged the whole thing and considered getting more— 

—but when I finished it, that’s when I saw the first anomaly. 

Off in the distance, but just barely in my peripheral vision, a human figure stood in the doorway to our apartment’s hallway. I swiveled my head to look at it, but it was gone.

“Jeff?”

No answer. I stood there, dribble on my chin, half expecting my roommate/frenemy to jump out and burst into a good-natured laugh, as if being afraid in that situation was a sign of me being uptight. It never happened.

More angry at that made-up scenario than frightened at the prospect of a strange person being in my apartment, I returned to the couch and pressed play again. The opening credits began to roll. I really settled in.

Ding!

A text message.

It was from Nathan [REDACTED's] campaign:

Hi :0

I stared at it, confused and scared at first but quickly moving into anger at the idea that some random volunteer thought it was OK to mess with me. Instead of engaging, I swiped to delete the thread. But before I could press the trash can button, another text arrived:

I can see you O_O

Worry coursed through my veins.

Another message. Not words. An image.

It was my face, my actual face, from the POV of my phone’s front-facing camera.

Like I’d been hacked.

I threw down my phone, stood up and said a few expletives, before tearing through my apartment looking in every nook and cranny. Then I realized that was stupid; if they’d truly gotten control of my phone, they could be on Mars and my privacy would still be violated.

I put a strip of masking tape over each lens, rushed out the door and guided my Nissan to the closest Apple store, arriving with 13 minutes left until it closed.

“Yeah, there’s no evidence you’ve been hacked,” the Genius told me after spending 12 minutes inspecting my phone.

“Someone literally took a photo of me with my own camera.”

“Sure it wasn’t you?”

I didn’t even have a verbal response to that.

“I could get you a new phone and we can boot everyone else off your AppleID?”

I scowled; this was not the answer I was looking for. But I’d been doing pretty well at work, having a roommate was saving me money, and I just really, really didn’t like the idea of leaving without addressing this somehow. So I said yes and the Genius, to his credit, stayed 20 minutes after closing to get me set with my new device.

Back at home, Jeff was still out. He’s always the life of the party, after all. I was actually a little disappointed about his absence for once; I really wanted to tell someone what happened. And, I’ll admit, I wanted to feel safe. But I figured Jeff would be home soon. Even he needed to sleep sometimes. 

I dropped my wallet, phone and keys on the table by the door, told myself everything would be fine, and moseyed over to the kitchen for a snack from the fridge. 

THUD — a sound came from the living room. I spun my head around but saw nothing. I stood there, motionless, until the cold air of the fridge started stinging my face. I shook it off, closed the door, and slowly walked toward whatever I’d heard. 

It was my phone, on the hardwood floor.

I picked it up. The screen was cracked. 

And it had a new message.

Proposition [REDACTED] will cost taxpayers billions—

I exhaled deeply, for once relieved to see a spam message like this.

My comfort only lasted a few seconds.

Ding!

Nathan [REDACTED] knows you value your safety. So what are you gonna do about it, Rick?

Fear and panic took over. I frenetically typed “I fckign unsubs ribed. No wI’m going to report you” and sent it without fixing any of the typos. I didn’t care. I had to take this person down. 

I searched Nathan [REDCACTED] and my city and state to see who this horrible human was and how I could get to him.

I found nothing. Not even one lowly WordPress site. 

I typed in so many different phrases — “nathan [redacted] election,” “nathan [redacted] candidate” “nathan [redacted] ballot” — but he was a ghost. Even the AI description said something like “We couldn’t find any connection between Nathan [REDACTED] and elections…” before I closed it.

Then another message came. A photo again.

Of me, from the side, standing in my living room, wearing my typical brandless black hoodie and second-hand jeans, holding my phone, right at that very moment. 

I heard whispers. Heavy breathing. 

And I got one more message:

U thought I hacked ur phone ijbol 

I ran out of my apartment — I have no idea if I locked the door or not— and called 911. All I got were three loud beeps and “we’re sorry, the number you have dialed has been disconnected.” 

I hustled to my car, which was parked by the curb about a block away. Footsteps fell behind me. I glanced back and saw in the orange street lamps the outline not of one person, but a dozen.

My speedwalk became a run. Then a sprint.

When I arrived at my car, like a fool I fumbled my keys and dropped them to the ground. My shaking hands finally grabbed them and beeped it open. I threw myself inside, locked the doors, and turned around to check out the people following me—

—but there was nothing. Just an empty residential road after nightfall.

I stared. Squinted. Looked everywhere, maybe they were hiding in shadows or behind the bushes. But I couldn’t make out a thing. 

I banged my fists into the steering wheel and screamed, partly in fear, partly out of frustration. I smashed the engine button and sped out of there, blasting a random radio station as loud as I could just in case. Maybe if I couldn’t hear any weird noises, I wouldn’t see anything weird either. 

I drove to the closest police precinct. The cop at the front desk looked at me like I was claiming aliens brought back Elvis.

I whipped out my phone so fast he flinched for a second as if it might be a gun, but soon I was scrolling through texts to show him all that had happened.

“All this looks like is you fighting with some volunteer,” he said.

I tried to stay calm. I just needed to explain more. “No, he hacked my phone, then broke into my—”

But when I went to show them, the photos were gone. 

“Well— OK—” I stammered. “He’s not a real politician though!” I continued on, explaining that whoever was doing this was surely using a fake name to avoid drawing attention. After a long, possibly incoherent ramble, I finally finished with: “This is wire fraud! Don’t you investigate that??”

“Honestly, I wish he was a real politician. Safety's a big deal.”

I’m not sure what I said next but it made the cop have some sympathy for me. Maybe it was my stammering. Or maybe it was because I refused to leave. The cop said I should call the FBI, because that’s who investigates wire fraud. I asked if I could use the station’s phone since I didn’t trust mine. 

He picked up his desk phone, found the number, and dialed it himself. After a brief, pleasant exchange with someone on the other end, he handed the receiver to me.

“Can I get your name and number, sir?” I gave them both. “We’ll have someone call you in the morning.”

Unsatisfied, but knowing that was all I would get out of this, I said “thanks” and left. 

I drove away from the station but where was I gonna go? I didn’t want to return to my apartment. But what if this was something bigger, something supernatural, that could follow me anywhere? How else could you explain the disappearing photos, or the people who were there one second and gone the next? Or was it just hallucinations, something induced by my very real tendency to catastrophize when things got negative? You know, one of the many reasons I’m a real bummer at parties?

I decided to go someplace public — these visitors, whoever they were, hadn’t followed me anywhere that had a lot of people. So I chose a bustling hotel with a late-night lobby bar and punched directions into my app. I reached for my wallet to double check for my cards and ... realized they weren’t there. 

I replayed everything back in my mind. The wallet was still on the table by the door. Without that, I couldn’t buy anything, let alone reserve a room. I hadn’t set up Apple Pay on my new phone, so yeah, I was screwed. Unless I went back.

On the street where I parked my car, there was no sign of any intruder. I walked briskly anyway, spinning my head at the building’s front door to make sure I was alone. It seemed so.

Inside, I climbed the stairs to my floor, stood in front of my apartment’s door, and took one big breath. I practically screamed when another human figure jumped into my periphery. But this time it was an actual person, my workout-obsessed neighbor whose name I always forget (I think it’s Kyler?). He picked up his Amazon box of probably creatine and went inside his place. I put the key in the lock to mine.

I turned it. Shook my head as I opened. Reached in without looking and…

…my wallet was not on the table. 

I threw the door open, rushed in, and started turning over everything, desperately searching for the only item I needed to be truly safe that night.

I. Could. Not. Find. It. Couch cushions were on the floor, mail was strewn about, the bookshelves were emptied. But no phone. 

Slowly, in my hysteria, I began to notice a sound. It was familiar. 

DRIP… DRIP… DRIP…

The faucet again.

“Jeff?” He really just could not be bothered to turn off the water faucet all the way, could he? 

My call went unanswered. He probably had his new headphones on. 

“Jeff??”

The sound was getting louder.

DRIP... DRIP... DRIP...

Now I was starting to get angry. I was in a life-or-death situation and he was just callously wasting water as if it wasn’t a rapidly diminishing resource. Unbelievable.

I forgot about the wallet and went into the kitchen, so I could slam the faucet off again and then probably unload on Jeff.

I rounded the counter and reached the kitchen, imagining all the colorful words I’d throw his way…

But the faucet was bone dry.

Yet the dripping sound persisted. And it was coming from the sink. No doubt about it.

Confused, I stepped toward it and looked. 

I have no idea what sound came out of my mouth next.

Because I saw it:

Jeff’s head. 

Inside the sink. Stuck on that wooden lawn sign peg, like Jeff was his own lawn sign, the blood drip-drip-dripping from his severed neck and onto the scuffed stainless steel below.

My blood ran cold. My muscles and joints froze. But that only lasted a second because, from behind me, with the power of an emergency alarm, in a voice that sounded like a thousand humans speaking all at once, I heard:

“Rrrriiiiiiiiiiicccccck!”

And I ran.

Down the stairs, through the lobby, into the night. I didn’t even bother getting to my car. I couldn’t slow down for one single second until I saw a place filled with people.

I’m writing this now from a booth inside a fast food joint, I don’t want to say which because I didn’t run that far and someone might be able to figure out where I live. 

Then again, who cares? Jeff is dead. I know I’m next. The late-night munchies crowd is dying down, and I’m afraid what will happen when this place gets empty.

Honestly, I’m not sure I’ll make it to the morning to talk to the FBI agent. And even if they do call, will they really be able to help? What do I tell them? That I typed in a cursed string of letters and symbols in an election-season text message and now some sort of demon killed my roommate and is tormenting me? I suppose I could try the cops again, but they’re just as likely to arrest me or get murdered as to help.

Really, I’m writing this for two purposes. One: If you’ve been through this and you know how to reverse the curse, please reach out, and don’t make jokes. I’m desperate.

And two: This election season, if you get a message from a candidate whose name does not show up on any sort of search, just ignore it. DO NOT OPT OUT. 

Your life could depend on it.